Water (26 page)

there is a race that has legs like airfolk and can breathe a long while in the air. There are even

legends of merfolk who have been born on dry land, and have not for years realised their true

nature.

At the other end of the range, and also rare, are merfolk who are almost wholly fish. It might be

guessed that these would be despised, as being so near to an inferior sort of creature, but though

merfolk hunt and eat and use the sea beasts, they also respect them, knowing that they

themselves are in a sense interlopers. They therefore value members of their own race who most

closely resemble fish, believing rightly that these have a truer understanding of the many

mysteries of the sea.

Councillor Hormos was such a one, an undoubted mer-woman, but with a large, solid, grouperlike shape, apart from human ears, in which she wore elaborate earrings. She floated vertically

from her place, saluted the king with a movement of her tail, and spoke in a quick, breathy

twitter that went oddly—with her appearance.

“I believe,” she said, “that Her Royal Highness has had the misfortune to disturb the Kraken.”

The Council muttered surprise. The king nodded for her to continue.

“You will remember nursery stories about the Kraken,” she said. “The unbelievably huge

creature that will at the end of time arise from the sea floor and destroy the world. Your reasons

have told you that there can be no such life form, and who knows the doom of the world? But

there are fish that live far below the limit, fish whose ancestors in remote time made their way

down into those lightless depths, and when they did so found that there was something already

there, not of the same creation as sea-things and air-things, something whose nature is pure cold,

pure dark, something utterly other. That is what fish know, in their small-brained way. They

cannot put the knowledge into pictures or words, but it is still there, in their blood. It is in your

blood too, and mine, and perhaps we can dimly sense it. Perhaps it is from this faint memory that

we have constructed the nursery tale of the Kraken. And it is perhaps through that remnant of

knowledge in her blood that the princess, and the huntsmen too, sensed the movement of

something vast and strange in the deeps below them.”

“Others, myself among them, have crossed the limit and returned,” said the king. “We did not

wake this creature. Why should the princess have done so?”

“She has told us she feels it was waiting for these airfolk to fall into its realm,” said Hormos.

“But she took them away, and now it is seeking for them. As I said, I would trust her feeling. It

comes from the knowledge in her blood.”

Another Councillor caught the king’s eye, received his nod and rose.

“Could this thing actually destroy the world?” he asked.

The Royal Archivist sought permission and rose.

“Does anyone remember Yellowreef?” he wheezed. “It’s a legend, of course, but some

authorities believe there’s history behind it. It was in West Ocean, a mountain city much like

ours. The people there found a lode of emeralds, far down, near the limit, and mined them. They

went down and down, making themselves a sort of armour to endure the pressure and the cold,

until something came from even deeper and took the mountain in its grip and shook it so that it

crumbled apart and the merfolk could live there no more.”

Nobody spoke. In the silence Ailsa felt the crystal pillar shudder again beneath her palm. She

caught her father’s eye and knew that he had felt the same. She raised her hand for permission to

speak. He nodded. She rose.

“Yes, we must take them back,” she said. “Or it will shake the mountain to pieces like it did

Yellowreef.”

“But they still live,” said the king. “They are very different from us, but they are people

nonetheless, and under the protection of our laws. I could not send any of our own people to such

a death without their consent.”

“They’ve chosen already,” said Ailsa. “I saw them do it. And it’s the Kraken who’s keeping

them alive. It’s got to be. It wants them alive. Perhaps it can’t keep them alive for ever.”

“Very well,” said the king. “The Council must decide. Before we vote, I will tell you that while I

have been here I have twice felt this pillar shake beneath my hand, and I think my daughter has

felt the same. I have never known it do so before. Now it seems to me that we have only two

choices. We cannot simply keep them here. If they wake, they will die. So either we can take

them back to where my daughter saw them sink, or we can tow them to some shore and strand

them in air, to live or die as their own fate falls. Will those in favour of the former course please

rise?”

It was close. By only four votes the Council decided to take the lovers back to where the Kraken,

perhaps, waited for them.

Their dreams were darker, colder, slower yet. There was death at the edge of them.

They did the lovers full honour, schooling out as if for a royal funeral, the whole court, formally

jewelled, to the sound of sad music. By now few of the merfolk had any doubt that they were

doing what they must. Three times in the night the mountain had shaken so that all had felt it.

Scouts reported that the limit had risen yet further up the slopes.

Ailsa rode near the front, knowing where she had gone yesterday. Cam was still too spent for

work, so she had an elderly quiet blue-fin from the royal stables. The lovers lay on sleds

weighted with boulders and buoyed with bladders so that they would not sink until they were

needed to. Master Nostocal rode beside them, and took their pulses at intervals. He had reported

that morning that their heartbeats were slower and weaker than before, and was afraid that

whatever was keeping them alive was losing its ability to do so.

For a while, with so many people around her, Ailsa was not sure that she could sense the same

immense mass of cold and dark that she had felt yesterday, tracking her across the sea bed. But

even her stolid old animal was nervous, and the huntsmen riding scout on the flanks said they

thought it was there. Slowly she began to feel more sure, and she knew for certain when the great

tide below came to a halt

“This is the place,” she said.

They did not doubt her. They could tell, too.

The music changed. The merfolk gathered round the sleds and held them in position while the air

was released from the bladders. Ailsa, full of grief at what she accepted must be done, was

watching the stream of silvery bubbles shoot towards the wave-roof when a cold, dark thought

slid into her mind. Not, this time, a question. A command.

“It wants me too,” she said.

“No,” said the king.

“I must go with them, or it will break the mountain.”

“No, I will go,” cried someone. Others joined, until the king raised his hand for silence.

“It’s got to be me,” said Ailsa.

He stared at her, and away, and bowed his head.

“Hold the sleds there,” he said, and took her to one side.

“You are certain of this?” he said.

“Yes. It told me. As if it had spoken.”

“Will you come back?”

“It didn’t say.”

Hard lines creased his face. This was how he had looked at her mother’s funeral.

“Very well,” he said.

She raised her hands to remove her diadem. To do the lovers honour, she had put on the same

jewels as the night before, but there was no point in taking them with her. If she did not come

back, her cousin Porphyry would become Prince. He should have them, for his wife when he

married.

“No, wear them,” said her father. “You must go as what you are, a king’s daughter.”

They went back to where the sleds were waiting. Ailsa took the middle of the rope that joined

them, raised her forehead for her father’s kiss, and nodded. The merfolk loosed their hold and the

weight of the boulders carried her down. The light faded, more slowly than when Cam had dived

at full surge. Ailsa was only vaguely afraid. The terror she should have felt was somehow

numbed, like a pain being kept at bay by one of Master Nostocal’s drugs. She could not guess

what the Kraken wanted with her. Perhaps it would keep her in some strange half death, like that

of the lovers, in its kingdom of dark and cold. The massive pressure of water closed around her.

Light died. It became dark as night, dark as a starless midnight, darker than any night. With a

plunge of cold she felt the limit pass.

Beyond it waited the Kraken.

Ailsa was aware of it in her mind, not through her bodily senses. In her mind she could feel the

immeasurable length of it on either side of her, its immeasurable depth below, dark beyond

black, cold beyond ice. It told her to let go of the rope. In her mind she saw the tendrils of dark

that wreathed from it and took the lovers, playing over their bodies. But now there was light,

light seen with her eyes, a dazzling spark as one of the tendrils lifted a jewel from the woman’s

dress. The light blazed from the jewel as the tendril turned it this way and that, and then vanished

as the Kraken took it into itself.

Other jewels blazed or sparkled or glowed in turn, and were lost. The seed pearls on the

woman’s covering woke into an iridescent design which then flowed away, rippling like some

luminous sea-thing, into the Kraken’s inward blackness. When they were gone, Ailsa was once

more in total dark.

Now in her mind she saw the Kraken moving its tendrils to inspect the lovers. Despite the weight

on the sled they had fallen no farther. Light glowed again, but this time she was unsure whether

she was seeing it through her eyes or in her mind, faint streaking glimmers moving to and fro

across and through the immense dark mass—dots of light, she thought, but moving so fast that

they seemed to be glowing lines. She had no idea what this meant.

When the Kraken had done with the lovers, it briefly considered the sleds on which they lay,

then turned its attention to Ailsa. Sensing the movement of the black tendrils towards her, she

raised her hands, removed her diadem and offered it to them. As they touched it, the sapphire

shone with a pure, pale light, more brilliant, more truly a jewel, than she had ever known it.

Always before it had merely refracted the light that fell on it, tingeing that light with its colour.

Now it was as if the Kraken was summoning out of it the sapphire’s inner light, and drawing that

light into its own blackness, just as cold calls heat into it but heat cannot call cold.

When the blue blaze of the sapphire was gone, she offered one by one her carcanet, pendant,

earrings and tail bracelet and watched them sparkle or flame at the Kraken’s touch. There was

one small diamond in the carcanet that Ailsa had never particularly noticed as being different

from any of the others which now shone out with the brilliance of Orion. When the Kraken had

done with each piece, it took it into itself. Then it turned its attention to her.

The tendrils were soft, more feathery than the finest sea fern. She could scarcely feel their touch

as they explored her shape, lingering a little at the waist where the smooth skin ended and the

scales began. She saw again the strange darting lights, fewer than there had been with the lovers.

When they had explored her tailfin, the tendrils moved up her body and gathered at the back of

her head. Three times yesterday she had been asked the same dark question, but had not

understood. Now she did.

The Kraken was not much interested in her. She was an oddity, with her airfolk torso and fish

tail, but the ocean teems with oddities and the Kraken knew as much about them as it wished to.

No, what absorbed it, what had caused it to move its vast mass across the ocean floor and shake

the mountain in its anger, was the lovers. What could Ailsa tell it about them?

This time she did not need to put her story into words, which meant that she could tell it all,

exactly as it had been. She felt that she could show, did in fact show the Kraken every sunlit

droplet that had whipped from the wave-tops and every wisp of cloud-stuff that had puffed from

the black tubes as the fight went on. She created again the arc of the sword through the air,

created the precise poise, serene, passionate, unrepeatable, in which the lovers had balanced on

the rail while the struggle had raged beyond them and the woman had buckled the sword belt

round them so that they should go down unseparated into darkness. She created the final splash,

and the attackers crowding to the rail.

At this point the Kraken seemed to lose interest. While Ailsa had been creating the moment, its

whole mass had glimmered with a network of the streaking lines, but now these mostly died. At

the same time her own mind went dull. If she had gone on to tell it, about her dive to reach the

lovers, she would have had to do so with ordinary, fuzzy, gappy memory.

The brilliance of full recall was gone. That was something that the Kraken had summoned from

her, much as it had summoned the inner light from her jewels. As the tendrils withdrew from the

back of her head, she felt a vague sense of loss. It crossed her mind that the Kraken would now

take her into itself too. She was too numb, too exhausted, to be frightened by the idea.

As she waited for whatever would happen next, she became aware of the cold, and the pressure.