Oshenerth (18 page)

A reassuring arm snaked around her shoulders. “Patience, changeling. Watch and learn. There are things that in battle are even more effective than magic.”

She didn’t understand. “What could be more effective than magic?”

Both great eyes turned to her. “Pain, for one thing.” Two arms gestured. “Having experienced a good deal of it himself, our reclusive hunter also knows how to convey it.”

Irina looked to where the shaman was pointing. The first thing she saw was Chachel, diving downward. The other merson who had been with him on the scouting mission—Jorosab, his name was—flanked the hunter on his left. Somewhat disconcertingly, Poylee swam off to his right. Glint was there, also, together with a dozen or so other members of the Sandrift relief force. Each of the manyarms was wielding a single long-range bow of such size that every cuttlefish, squid, or octopus had to be pushed through the water by an accompanying biped. Serving now as mere conveyances, Chachel and his fellow mersons had sheathed their own spears. Freed of the need to propel themselves, manyarms were notching arrows to baleen bows that were being stretched to their limits.

How could a few oversized arrows make any difference, Irina found herself wondering as she looked on? They might make some kills, yet surely they could not halt the slow but methodical advance of the now rejuvenated and determined spralaker legion?

It struck her that there was something odd about the end of each arrow. Instead of the familiar bone or shell point the tips appeared bloated and globular. They looked too blunt to penetrate a sponge, far less the hard shell of a spralaker. She voiced her disquiet to Oxothyr.

“Your eyes work well, Irina-changeling.” The shaman could not smile, but she received the impression of one. “Keep watching.”

Reacting to the attack from above, a number of the advancing spralakers heaved rocks and long knives. All fell short of their intended target as the fighters from Sandrift unleashed their shafts. More than a dozen plunged downward to strike at the advancing horde. As Irina had predicted, the swollen, bulbous heads of the arrows did not penetrate a single hardshell. Instead, they burst on impact.

For several long moments it appeared as though nothing had changed. The concentric circles of spralaker soldiers maintained their steady advance. Then the center of the attacking multitude began to crumple. Shrieking and chittering, one spralaker after another fought to climb to imagined safety over the carapaces of its startled comrades. Others clawed frantically at themselves. Some went to the extreme of tearing off affected body parts that had begun screaming with pain.

The burst of frenzied activity served to spread the unexpected contagion to more and more of the unsuspecting foe. Curving around in a wide arc, this time the dozen or so manyarm archers and their grim-faced merson mounts dove on the front line of the spralaker swarm. Unleashing a second barrage, they sowed havoc in the center of the attackers’ advance.

From above and behind, an uncomprehending Irina watched anarchy unfold like a black flower among the enemy. “I don’t understand what’s happening.” She looked to Oxothyr, drifting contentedly beside her in a tangle of serpentine arms. “What are on the tips of the arrows our people are firing?”

“Spherical tunicates, Irina-changeling. Simple spherical tunicates. But not the harmless transparent creatures you may be familiar with. Each of these has had its body carefully stuffed with dozens and dozens of tiny jellyfish.”

Jellyfish, she thought. “What kind of jellyfish, shaman?”

Oxothyr returned his attention to the continuing battle below. The entire spralaker force was on the verge of falling apart, the panic that had begun to spread among it doing more damage than actual contact with the contents of the manyarms’ arrows.

“Very small creatures,” he explained. “We call them Death Cubes. One who did not know them would be astonished at their toxicity and think it the result of some lethal magick. But the power of their stings is such that they require no thaumaturgical enhancement.” He went on to describe shape and color and …

Cubes
, Irina thought intently. A cube was a small box. Box jellyfish—irukandji! Within its nematocysts, or stinging cells, was contained a poison that ranked among the most powerful known. Untreated, it could kill a swimmer in minutes—or in sufficient quantity, even the largest spralaker.

Venom, it appeared, retained its lethal characteristics across worlds.

If anything, the mounting chorus of inhuman shrieks from the seafloor below was intensifying. Not only was the sting of the irukandji deadly, it was also incredibly painful. Frantic spralakers were running in all directions now, scuttling desperately sideways on their multiple legs as the manyarm archers dove and struck for a third time. By now all thoughts of taking Siriswirll had evaporated in the attackers’ desperate attempts to scramble or swim clear of the clusters of tiny jellyfish. Where a tentacle struck a fleeing enemy soldier, it left behind an angry welt on previously unscarred carapace. Where it made contact with a soft or sensitive body part, a spralaker died.

Everywhere Irina looked, spralakers were screaming, convulsing, and dying, helpless legs and powerful claws twitching and spasming uncontrollably as the frightful poison short-circuited their nervous systems. Yet despite the chaos and confusion being sown by Sandrift’s bow-wielding cephalopods, the struggle for Siriswirll was not over. The spralakers had one more tactic, one more trick, hidden behind their eyestalks.

Sathi saw them first. Hovering above and to one side of his master, he pointed out the dark shape in the distance that was rapidly approaching the field of battle.

“Master, look! There to the north, where the reef line drops away to the deep. What can it be?”

Oxothyr pivoted upon himself as Irina turned less gracefully to gaze in the same direction. The shaman said nothing, staring at the oncoming darkness until it resolved itself into individual shapes.

“More trouble,” he finally announced. “Tythe, Sathi—summon the silver squadron. The time for them to enter the fight nears.” A pause, then, “What are you waiting for? Stop sucking on your own siphons and make haste!”

Turning tail, the two famuli immediately shot off in the direction of the rear lines, where the last and most significant reserves from Sandrift awaited orders to enter the battle.

Drifting nearer to a confused Irina, Oxothyr slid several arms protectively around her. “I think we will be safe here, changeling—but I cannot tell for how long.”

“But why? What are …?”

The approaching dark mass resolved itself into multiple individual shapes, and she understood.

Some of the mantas in the fast-approaching school must have weighed more than half a ton. How the spralakers had inveigled, or forced, or persuaded them to take part in the fight Irina could not imagine. But it stood to reason that if the mersons could train or cajole fish to fight with them, as they had the bumpheads, then wily spralakers could do the same.

The rationale for the involvement of the big pelagics was immediately clear. Several armed spralakers rode atop each fast-swimming giant. In acquiring this single imposing ally the enemy had overcome the strategic liability posed by their inability to swim. As the school of mantas passed overhead, it began to rain spralakers. Spreading their legs wide and using their flattened bodies to slow their descent, the enemy for the first time was able to mount an attack from above. Short spears, rocks, scythe-like throwing shells and armfuls of poisonous urchins fell from the sky like lethal snowflakes.

Forced to dodge the shower of small weapons that could prove fatal to their soft bodies but that bounced or skid harmlessly off spralaker armor, the soldiers of Siriswirll and Sandrift found themselves exposed to renewed enemy strikes from below. Suddenly the tide of battle threatened to shift back in favor of the aggressors. Nor did the school of rays limit themselves to releasing weapons and soldiers onto the field of battle. Continuing onward to pass above Siriswirll itself, they began to drop dozens of spralaker troops directly onto the town.

While larger soldier’s hardshells dealt with the villagers’ handful of desperate internal defenders, smaller specialist spralakers who had arrived with them were removing containers from their backs. These contained a distinctive blend of acids. Heavier than the surrounding seawater, when poured out it dissolved holes in the coral rock of the town’s buildings. In this fashion the spralaker invaders ate their way into structures intended to repel outsiders, where the community’s young and elderly had congregated for safety.

Beyond the town boundaries and hovering above and behind the increasingly fractious and disorganized battle, Irina and the counselors from Sandrift observed the disarray with increasing dismay. Outwardly Oxothyr exhibited no anxiety, but it was clear as he stared off to the southwest that he was growing increasingly impatient.

“What’s happened to those two idiots? If they’ve stopped to feed on anthias or cardinals, I’ll turn them both into limpets!”

Floating beside him, Irina tried to ready herself mentally to rejoin the fight. It was evident that every hand was going to be needed or else the spralakers were going to take the town. She said as much to the shaman.

He regarded her out of sad, cephalopodan eyes. “You are not trained for this, changeling. But though there is much I would still like to learn from you about your world and your kind, I cannot in good conscience order you to stay back while others are dying. Go and kill, if you will. Watch out for the left claw of the spralaker: they usually feint first with their right.”

She acknowledged the advice, lowered her head, threw her feet toward the sky and kicked downward. Her effort moved her only a couple of feet before a powerful tentacle wrapped around one ankle and held her back.

“Just possibly,” the shaman explained by way of apology, “your exertions and possible sacrifice may not after all be required.” As she straightened in the water, upside down and confused, she looked to where he was pointing. The other counselors were cheering. Sathi and Tythe had neither abandoned nor failed their instructions: they were just a little late.

The silver squadron of greater Sandrift shot past her, the speed and force of their passing knocking her off-balance and nearly causing her to drop her spear, and she found that she was cheering, too.

— XII —

Though they shot through the water too fast for her to make an accurate count, Irina estimated there were between thirty and forty of the silver-sided attack squid. Slimmer and longer than any cephalopodan species she had yet seen, they moved like rockets. In its tentacles each fighter held half a dozen short, sickle-shaped knives.

They tore through the slowly descending rain of armed spralakers like a spray of shrapnel. Razor-sharp blades sliced cleanly through carapaces, eyestalks, and limbs. Clumsy while free-falling, the enemy tried fight back. The silver squid were far too fast and maneuverable for them. They would dart in, strike, and jet clear before even the most agile spralaker could land a counterblow.

Half the squadron went to the aid of the village. The others, having wrought sufficient havoc among the remaining descending foe, now sped downward. Zipping and zooming above the field of battle like so many multi-armed dive bombers, they unleashed the secret weapon with which Oxothyr had equipped them prior to the departure from Sandrift.

Overhead, Irina found herself frowning as she tried to make sense of what she was seeing. She glanced uncertainly at the shaman. “Trepang?”

When an octopus nods, his entire body bobs. “Through the application of a small spell I have enhanced the natural abilities of those that have been brought with us.” His voice was thick with satisfaction. “Guts can be useful.”

Irina let her gaze drop downward again. In addition to their half dozen of curved blades, each squid carried in its remaining arms a pair of the forearm-size, rubbery trepang. Known more evocatively in her world as beche-de-mer, when prodded or irritated trepang ejected not only their inner organs, which were easily regrown, but also white strands known as the tubules of Cuvier. On contact with water outside the body, expelled guts and tubules alike expanded and became—sticky. Very, very sticky. A threatened trepang could eject more than enough to entangle and distract most pursuing predators. As enchanted by Oxothyr, they now became veritable fountains of goo.

It was not pretty.

As the squid sped past above them, one spralaker soldier after another found itself entangled in the incredibly adhesive innards being forcefully ejected by the mindless conscripted trepang. Thanks to Oxothyr’s literally gut-level enchantment, expulsion of the sticky insides of the prolific bottom-feeders did not stop. Instead, they continued to spew without pause.

One by one, individual spralaker fighters found themselves bound up in seemingly endless strands of repulsive slime. Legs were lashed together. Claws that could grind rock found themselves inextricably stuck to the tops and sides of hard-shelled armor. Eyestalks ended up adhering to mouths or undersides, ruining vision. Knives and throwing stones became glued to the very arms that were supposed to wield them. When one stumbling gut-trussed spralaker bumped into another, they ended up stuck together. Soon pairs, then trios, eventually dozens found themselves caught up in an ever-expanding gummy quagmire of gluey white strands.

The stymied masses of spralakers made easy targets for the revitalized soldiers of both towns, who converged on them with spears thrusting and blades a-butchering. Similar scenes of slaughter played out within Siriswirll itself. Emerging from their acid-attacked but still mostly intact homes and public buildings, tentative citizens found spralakers pinned to walls, glued to roofs, and dangling from towers. In place of the traditional weapons that had been commandeered by the town’s soldiers, household utensils proved more than adequate for executing invaders unable to fight back.

Taken by surprise with this new weapon and unable to find a way to counter it, the remaining spralakers finally broke and fled. Led by their charismatic red-hued commander, many tried to escape by scuttling around behind the town. Clinging to the steep incline on its far side, they resolved they would be better positioned to defend themselves. Trouble was, they couldn’t reach the slope. The same relentless upwelling that protected Siriswirll’s rear from attack now forced any fleeing enemy seeking its perceived safety back to the field of battle. Many spralakers who had hoped to find refuge in the depths were swept off the rocks and flung into or over the town by the powerful surge. Feeble swimmers at best, they were quickly picked off by the much more agile mersons and manyarms.

Not all were slain. Some escaped the attentions of the defenders through sheer force of numbers. Yet even those who managed to flee the field of battle were not safe.

As she watched the disorganized retreat, Irina thought she could just make out a distant, furious buzzing. It rose and fell erratically. More than anything, it reminded her of the soft hum of the laser drill in the office where she worked. The shaman explained.

“Shark frenzy.” Oxothyr’s tone was one of quiet gratification. He nodded northward. “Even as we speak the largest of the sharptooths are finding satisfaction.” An arm gestured down toward the rapidly calming battlefield. “Soon the smaller ones will risk coming here in search of still more food. There will be many and they will linger, as there is much to keep them occupied.”

If anything, the mage’s prediction turned out to be understated. In less than an hour the mersons and manyarms had abandoned the field to hundreds of small sharks. Whitetip, blacktip, lemon, leopard—arriving like a pack of stripped-down hyenas, they descended upon the carnage, ravenously consuming with equal relish not only fleshy body parts but bones and shells. Muttering their irritation, they nevertheless gave way whenever a live soldier happened by and momentarily interrupted their glorious feed. Of the customary hostility that existed between merson, manyarm, and shark, on this day there was none. In the presence of such an abundance of trouble-free fodder, traditional enmity was set aside.

On occasion disagreement did raise its scavenging head over possession of a body, mersons and manyarms being as fond of spralaker flesh as any shark. These isolated disputes were quickly and harmlessly resolved, with the grumbling sharks invariably conceding as they moved off to plunder another corpse.

Victory having left behind a real prize in the form of so much food, and a wealth of food being always an excuse for a celebration, the day’s triumph was celebrated that night with a gala the likes of which the town had not experienced in quite some time. Siriswirll was suffused with so much music, dancing, song, and effusive expressions of unconstrained joy that even normally shy nocturnal reef dwellers were drawn to the lights and laughter. For one evening even the tastiest fish were not at risk of encountering net or knife, not even those colored silver or red. At any other time they would be candidates ripe for filleting. Tonight they swam freely with and enjoyed the company of those who would usually see them only as prey.

In contrast to the dionystic frenzy of Colloth, Irina observed, the victory celebration was more about amusement than reproduction. Merriment took the place of unbridled passion. It was just as exciting, but considerably less tiring.

Chachel viewed the exuberant festivities from a distance. Having finally succeeded in losing the persistent Poylee in the maze of buildings, he settled down to rest inside an empty passageway between two small towers. From there he could observe in solitude and with cool detachment the frenetic partying and over-imbibing of thick, heavy, intoxicating liquids. Such wastrelhood was not for him; none of it. To take pleasure in such revelry he would have to let himself go—and he never let himself go. There might be a shark lurking nearby, waiting to extract revenge for killings perpetrated last year. Or a wayward merson, jealous of his hunting ability. Or minions of the dark shadow that always seemed close at hand and ready to strike but forever just out of reach whenever he flailed at them from the depths of his oft-unsettled sleep.

Taking leave of the empty passageway with a desultory sniff, he turned and swam with steady strokes toward the west end of Siriswirll. The structures he passed were deserted and dark, lit only fitfully by the moonlight that filtered down through the mirrorsky. Everyone had gathered in the town center to participate in, or at least to watch, the grand carnival. There could be found food, spice, entertainment, and the company of others. Who would seek deliberately to avoid that?

The one merson who chose to do so strained to kick more forcefully as he drew near the westernmost edge of the settlement. Here the windowless, westward-facing flanks of buildings sloped inward at an angle that allowed the powerful upwelling from the depths to rise up and over their roofs and disperse harmlessly above the rest of the town. He did not turn away as the irresistible power of the deep ocean current began to tug at his face and body. To the hunter, the steady pummeling was a form of rejuvenation, reminding him of who he was and what he had suffered. Subjecting oneself to such flagellation was an uncommon vice.

So he was more than a little startled to discover he was not alone.

Immersed in the full force of the upwelling, the instantly recognizable shape stuck out over the very edge of the precipice. Powerful arms, even eight of them, would not be sufficient to allow Oxothyr to hold such a position for very long, but the shaman had secured himself to the site with something more than mere muscle.

The body of even the least adept manyarm could generate striking changes of color and pattern. Only a master of exceptional chromatophoric skill (and not a little magic, Chachel reflected) could command light that clung.

From the pulsating red-green glow that enveloped the shaman like fog around a mountain, tiny tendrils of pure radiance extended outward in numerous directions. Like miniature luminescent tentacles, they gripped the surrounding rock. Nothing grew there. It was impossible for even the most determined mollusk or anemone to maintain a hold in the face of the relentless current that roared up and over the edge. But the glow-fingers of Oxothyr found places to grasp; holes in the weathered stone, projections of jagged rock, and long-dead coral.

Straining, kicking as hard as he could with both his whole leg and his prosthetic, a curious Chachel strove to reach the mage. The surge threatened to tear off everything from the strip of material that covered his loins to the patch over his left eye. Of the shaman’s manyarm famuli there was no sign. Their master must have granted them permission to join in the revels—or ordered them to do so, Chachel decided as he fought against the current. Abruptly, he found himself swimming into a small area of unexpected calm. The powerful rip vanished and he found it easy to move forward. In the lee of the luminous haze cast by the meditating scholar, the current had absented itself.

Without having looked in the hunter’s direction and continuing to stare out into the darkness of the deep ocean, the shaman murmured politely, “Good evening, Chachel. One solitary thinker finds another, I see. It is always so.”

Chachel moved to hover alongside the mage. A finger-length too far to the left and he found himself once more subject to the full force of the upwelling. A finger-length closer to the pulpy, bulbous body brought him back into the shaman’s aura of aqueous tranquility. The hunter did not question it. He was content to benefit from the marvel.

“I don’t do very much thinking, venerable shaman. I find it slows my ability to react.”

In the near darkness, with the jostle of unrestrained revelry forming a noisy backdrop, one great eye focused on the stolid merson. “Hunter, you think more than you think, I think. No matter.” The eye turned away, to join its counterpart in gazing out at the unimaginable immensity that was the open ocean. “It is left to me to think for all. Sometimes,” the brown mantle seemed to sag in upon itself slightly, “sometimes the burden grows heavy.” A flicker of amusement played around the edge of his beak. “For one who is without bones, particularly heavy.”

“You are the most knowledgeable of manyarms and wisest of the wise,” Chachel reminded him gravely.

The sac-like body rippled, turning pale gold with black hieroglyphs. “What I know is scarcely a diatom more than nothing, hunter. My far-reaching ignorance drives me to study. It compels me to learn. It is a curse. The emptiness inside my mind rivals the one out there.” Sweeping up and out in a wide arc, an arm indicated the vastness before them.

Merson and manyarm were silent for a while, until Chachel murmured, “I know why I am here, at this spot, now. Crowds of others make me uncomfortable. But what about you?”

Oxothyr did not hesitate. “Staring at nothing can sometimes be a most effective way of focusing one’s thoughts. In the depth of night, landlords of the peculiar rise from the deeps. Occasionally the persistent can catch a glimpse of them. Out there away from the warm and well-lit reefs reside stranger things, reclusive hunter, than the mind of merson or manyarm can imagine.”

Maintaining his position behind the shaman’s shielding bulk, Chachel joined him in gazing out into the open obsidian ocean. It was not entirely black. Flickerings of light manifested themselves; pinpoints of color that twinkled and beckoned, tempting him to swim out, to follow, to identify. He knew better. He did not need the shaman to tell him that there were creatures who dwelt in the depths that could swallow a merson whole.

“What kind of things, Oxothyr?” Unlike the intimidated majority, Chachel felt no compunction about making familiar use of the shaman’s name.

The glyphs on the mage’s skin shifted and flowed, though there were none present to read them. “Beings that look like stone but are alive. Creatures of dream and nightmare. Teeth that seem to have no body behind them. Great beauty that can also kill.” Once again the golden eye shifted around to peer at the attentive merson. “Looking at them, you feel as if your head is exploding.”

“You have seen such phantasms?” Chachel asked uncertainly.

The shaman sighed. “Truth be told, mostly in my visions. That does not make them any less real. Just like the coldness I have been feeling.” The one arm not holding onto the edge gestured backward, toward the rowdy celebration that filled the center of town. “I should be there, not here. I enjoy music and dancing, good food and entertainment, as much as the next manyarm. Instead I find myself in this lonely, current-swept place, contemplating the great emptiness, thinking too much, and occasionally shivering with a chill whose source I cannot fathom.”