Oshenerth (22 page)

“That is not it,” the shaman told her. “We should not have been confronted at all. Not here. Not so soon after Siriswirll. It implies that our intentions are known to, or at least suspected by, our enemies. Some of those who escaped today will render a report of the encounter. Inevitably, additional attempts will follow. Some may be less significant and less effective, but we are too few to cope with an attack on a truly large scale. Another encounter might not find so many of us surviving. Our strength lies in our ability to pass through the water between Siriswirll and Benthicalia quietly and unnoticed.” He paused as a dutiful Sathi offered him an armload of shelled mollusks. Popping one into his mouth, he spoke as he swallowed.

“We must endeavor avoid future attacks.”

“How do you propose we do that?” a new, high-pitched voice inquired.

Irina looked around. Chachel and Glint had come up behind her. Having asked the question, the manyarm was now engaged in munching on half a spralaker. It was not an orderly meal. Instead of removing the meat or shell, the cuttlefish had simply started in on one side of the body of his dead foe and was methodically eating his way across to the other.

Looking past her in the deepening twilight without excluding her from the conversation, Oxothyr directed his reply to the new arrivals. “We must go deeper.”

Merson and manyarm eyed one another. Chachel turned warily back to the shaman. “How much deeper?”

“Deep enough so that our enemies will not suspect that we have done so.” A long arm gestured into the gathering night. “Deep enough so that those who hunt us will not look for us. Down below we are few enough in number to pass unnoticed. Spralakers and mersons do not see well in dim light.” His gaze shifted to the feeding cuttlefish. “But manyarms do. At depth, we will have the advantage.”

Chachel was dubious. “The spralakers are not stupid. After today’s fight they will put even more scouts in this area, and are likely to offer a reward for information concerning our whereabouts.”

Oxothyr flashed vermilion understanding. “Even so, by descending below the level where they might expect to find us, we will greatly increase our chances of avoiding such unwanted attention.”

Using a tentacle to remove a leg from which he had stripped all the meat and casting the length of empty shell aside, Glint offered his own opinion. “I think it’s a clever move, commander of arms. Even if they know to look for us deeper down, they will have a harder time finding us.” He gestured in the direction of the main camp. “There are those, however, who are afraid of the deep. Even some manyarms who can make their own light to see by.”

Oxothyr was not dissuaded. “Cowards and children can go home. Swimming to Benthicalia was never alleged to be a picnic excursion over pretty reef and clean sand. I don’t want anyone with me who cannot commit.” His body had turned an angry reddish purple. “If need be, I’ll go on alone.”

Chachel kicked forward. “I am with you as always, shaman. I do not fear the deep, and I look forward to confounding our enemies.”

“For my friend,” Glint declared around a mouthful of white spralaker flesh, “that amounts to a speech. Me, I don’t make speeches. I just like to see new places—even where it’s too dark to see them.”

Irina became aware everyone was looking in her direction, including the shaman’s two famuli. She felt pressured, but it did not matter. She had little choice, and if asked would have said as much. Truth be told, she would have volunteered to continue on anyway. Having already been exposed to multiple wonders, she was always ready to appreciate one more. From the descriptions she had heard of Benthicalia, including many that were probably more fanciful than real, it certainly qualified.

“Most will come, I think.” Oxothyr’s anger faded to auburn. “Some because they are brave, some because they are foolhardy, some because they are afraid of appearing afraid, some because they have lost friends in battle.” He eyed the drifting Irina. “Some may even come because they would be embarrassed to be overshadowed by a changeling.”

“You see?” Lateral fins rippling, body flaring with flowing black stripes, Glint turned toward her. “Already you are more helpful than you know.”

Yes
, she thought bitterly. I’m an alien, a monster to frighten, intimidate, or embarrass. What wonderful talent. How heartening to be thought of as so useful.

So heartening that she did not go on to mention that ever since she was a little girl she had been afraid of the dark.

O O O

When they finally stopped descending and leveled off there was hardly any light left at all. That the sun and the mirrorsky continued to exist somewhere high overhead Irina did not doubt. But they were no longer visible. The realm of sunlight had been left behind.

As her eyes adjusted to the new conditions, she was barely able to make out the dim outlines of the mersons around her. The same problem did not exist for the manyarms. By activating the photophores within their skin, all were able to generate their own light. Surrounded by internally illuminated shapes glowing a ghostly blue-green, she kept pace without fear of getting lost. Weeks of continuous swimming had strengthened her leg muscles and tightened those elsewhere.

For sheer outrageous display of self-generated illumination, none could match Oxothyr. Jetting along backwards in the manner of his kind, the shaman toyed with flashing an extraordinary variety of patterns. While his companions could only generate blue-green, blue, or a few limited variations of red light, the mage was able to produce an entire rainbow of colors. It was the first time Irina had ever seen him engage in anything akin to showing off. One evening (she assumed it was evening because they had stopped to sleep), she ventured to compliment him on the colorful displays.

“It’s beautiful, Oxothyr. I wish I could do something like it. I’ve always admired cephalopodan bioluminescence. Before now it was always from a distance, or in pictures.” She had to force herself to keep her vision from wandering out into the utter and complete blackness that enveloped the camp. “When night dives were offered, I always declined.”

Resting comfortably nearby, the shaman turned an intense shade of cobalt blue. “Perhaps if you could generate your own light, like a manyarm, you would be less afraid of the Oshenerth night.”

She looked away. “Maybe. I don’t know. In any case, it doesn’t matter. I’ll have to settle for admiring your lights.” Noticing the two famuli busy nearby, she added, “And Sathi and Tythe’s too, of course.”

In response, both stopped what they were doing to zip over to the changeling in their midst.

“Sweet visitor,” Tythe whispered, “I would lend you my lights if I could.”

“Try this.” Halting close to her, Sathi promptly ejected several small bubbles of ink—the cephalopodan equivalent of a human blowing smoke rings. Jet black in daylight, at depth the liquid glowed a beautiful bright chartreuse. As the bubbles drifted around her head, a captivated Irina found herself encircled by liquid light. It was intense enough to illuminate her hands, arms, and torso. Had she been in possession of a book, she could have read by the organic radiance. As the bubbles began to fade she waved a hand through several, stirring the light like electric syrup.

“That was wonderful!” Reaching out, she let her right hand stroke the famulus from head to tail. The body-length squid performed a delighted roll.

“That
was
interesting,” Oxothyr admitted from nearby, “and not a little flattering.” He moved closer. “Try this, changeling Irina.”

Chanting sonorously, Oxothyr expelled a flush of ink that was considerably greater in volume than the bubbles emitted by his assistant. So completely did it swaddle her in a bath of lambent colors that for a panicky moment she could neither see nor breathe. As she kicked and flailed at the smothering cloud of dazzling fluid it dissipated rapidly.

But—the enchanted shimmering light did not.

Looking first at her outstretched arms and then down at herself, she let out a little gasp. Beneath her skin small beads of blue-green luminescence now burned with a cold chemical light. The glow marched down her arms and legs, clung to the fins on her calves and the webbing between her fingers and toes. A more intense hue flared from the tips of each strand of her hair, as if her floating tresses had been transformed into a headful of blue-infused fiber optics. Red highlights flared from the tips of her fingers, ears, and locales concealed by her increasingly threadbare bathing suit.

Glint inspected her thoughtfully before finally pronouncing judgment. “Now this is the kind of magic I can appreciate! Irina-changeling, you’ve become beautiful. The mage has made you half-manyarm.” He pivoted in the water. “Come with me. This is something that needs to be shared with my cousins.”

Overcome by what she had become, Irina peered down at her ensorcelled bioluminescent self. “You really like it?”

“Take it from me,” the cuttlefish assured her, “you will have the squid tying their arms in knots.”

As they swam off to share Oxothyr’s entertaining morsel of magicking with others of his kind and a seemingly dismissive Chachel left to take his rest, a figure that had been hovering in the darkness now came forward. Its expression was hard, its voice tart, its attitude demanding.

“Why did you do that for her?” Spear in hand, Poylee hovered at a close but respectful distance from the shaman.

“Because she asked.” Arms coiled and rippled around the shaman’s body.

“Well, I’m asking also.” Holding her spear perpendicular to the rocky ground, which at this depth was largely devoid of coral, Poylee readied herself to receive a shower of light.

“There is no need.” Backing away, Oxothyr began the process of squeezing himself into the fissure in the rocks he had chosen for his bed. Despite his size, having no bones allowed him to fit into a hole much smaller than seemed possible. “The inner glow that radiates from you already singles you out as special, Poylee, and lights up the area around you. Good-night.” Folding his arms in front of him and changing their color and pattern to perfectly mimic the surrounding stone, the shaman effectively disappeared into his surroundings. Just like magic.

Poylee mulled pressing the matter, decided against it. More than a little conflicted, she swam slowly off to rejoin the other members of the party. She was not entirely sure what had just transpired, but the more she thought about it, the more she became convinced that she had just been rebuffed with a compliment.

— XV —

Irina suspected that her body’s spectacular subcutaneous shimmering would not last, but while it did, she intended to fully enjoy it. Beyond Oxothyr’s dexterous conscription of what she chose to think of as enchanted luciferase, her newfound glow extended to her spirit as well as her skin. Able now to see with reasonable clarity everything within her immediate vicinity, her fear of the near-darkness began to recede.

If there was a drawback to her altered state of individual luminosity, it was that it threatened to attract the attention not only of her fellow travelers but of numerous dark zone lifeforms. Though surrounded and watched over by the other members of the group, she remained wary. As a diver she had never been so deep. But she had seen pictures of what lived in the depths of her own seas. If similarities with Oshenerth held true, then out in the darkness nightmares dwelled.

Confirming both her suspicions and her fears, the following day one such horror approached to within arm’s length. It had a bloated, skeletal body with nearly transparent skin stretched over thin bones. Filled with long, needle-like teeth, the jaws could open the full width of the body, allowing the fiendish predator to swallow prey even larger than as itself. A bright blue glowing lure dancing at the end of a worm-like appendage protruding from its skull. It halted close to Irina’s face, surveyed this strange potential meal that was too large to fit into even its expansive mouth (for which the potential meal was most thankful), and then departed, dashing away with a speed that belied its stocky build. Its indifference was not surprising.

The monster was only a couple of inches long.

Though their appearance was stupendously fearsome, most of the ogres of the deep were small, like the inquisitive anglerfish she had just confronted. But not all were so harmless. She remained alert, monitoring her companions for any sign that something dangerous and larger than her hand might be in the vicinity. Despite the internal glow Oxothyr had bestowed on her she could still see only a short distance into the darkness.

The mersons did better. Somewhere out front, his path lit only by a few small bioluminescent eels fastened like bracelets around his wrists, ankles, and neck, Chachel was swimming point. The hunter was incredibly brave and must have nerves of steel, she thought. Or else he was just crazy, like so many claimed. Or maybe he just didn’t care.

Where they paused one day for a midday meal, there was no greenery to be found. At this depth, in the absence of light, photosynthesis could not take place and plants could not grow. Deep-sea corals were primarily black and red. Sitting beneath an overhanging charcoal-gray branch coral as tall as a building, chewing and swallowing pieces of fresh fish and rubbery non-soluble strips of a particularly tasty beche-de-mer, she marveled at the untouched coral growth. Merson women adorned themselves with jewelry fashioned from such coral together with shells and found gemstones and thought little of it. Back home, a single such coral “tree” would be worth—she could not put a price on it.

In its natural state it was more beautiful to look at than if polished fragments of it had been hanging around her neck.

A streamlined shape materialized in front of her and she started slightly, wondering if she would ever get used to the velocities squid and cuttlefish regarded as normal. Sathi extended one of his two longer hunting arms toward her.

“Here,” the famulus squeaked. “Master Oxothyr says you should swallow this.”

Taking the tablet from the squid’s tentacle, Irina frowned. The crude reddish disc was the size of a quarter. “I don’t know if it’s a bitter pill or not,” she quipped, “but it’s an awfully big one. Why should I take it? What’s it for?”

Bioluminescent spots and slashes danced along the famulus’ flanks. “The Master says it is to keep your insides from blowing up as we go deeper.”

“Oh.” She nodded slowly. “That sounds like a good reason. I’ll do it.”

The squid’s body bobbed once in acknowledgement. Then he was gone in a blur of blue-green luminescence.

She studied the oversized pill. From Sathi’s blunt description of the consequences that would result if she did not take it, it was clear that the tablet had to do with the increasing pressure she had been feeling as the expedition continued its descent. Evidently the mersons, like their companions the manyarms, had the ability to adjust to and cope with the greater pressures to be found at depth. Oxothyr’s pill was therefore a preventative. Some sort of barometric prophylactic. She had no idea what the pill was made of or how the shaman had contrived it.

Her ignorance caused her no hesitation. By now she trusted Oxothyr completely. Even if she had not, she had no choice. Parting her lips, she shoved the pill into her mouth and sent it careening down her throat. Its diameter caused it to go down awkwardly.

Some of that was due to her body’s instinctive modification of the swallowing reflex. She could hardly chase the pill with a glass of water. Despite not having had, in its former sense, a drink in weeks, she had yet to miss the feeling. In Oshenerth thirst was an all but forgotten sensation.

Not long after the midday meal and the resumption of their journey, she noticed that a dim light which had appeared in front of her had begun to grow stronger. Members of the expedition clustered closer to one another. Seeing Oxothyr in the middle of the gathering, she kicked harder to join him.

The intensifying glow came from the returning Chachel and Glint. She arrived just in time to hear their report. Chachel glanced in her direction but said nothing. For someone who vocally and at length evinced not the slightest interest in her, she had caught him looking at her on more than one occasion. The luminescent eel secured around his neck did nothing to inform his expression.

“Something coming this way,” Glint was telling everyone. “It’s odd. You can feel pressure as if from many individuals, and yet it is slight. Large, but not massive. And there’s something else accompanying it.”

“Spralakers?” one of the manyarm soldiers drifting nearby inquired anxiously.

“No.” Chachel hovered in the glow cast by his friend. “Music.”

O O O

Unsurprisingly, in the dark and quiet of the deep they heard the approaching procession before they could see it. The harmony had a strange synchronization that reminded Irina of hundreds of differently tuned bells. Yet the actual sound was entirely new to her. More than anything else, it put her in mind of a multitude of distant electric harps. Only when the increasing blue-red glow in the distance began to resolve itself into individual shapes did a cautious Oxothyr venture an identification.

“A coelenterate chorus! I have heard of such, but have never seen one.” Emulating his eagerness, his body turned bright yellow with small puce spots. “We must be careful.”

“Why?” Reaching down, Irina nonchalantly pushed aside the tip of a coiling tentacle that was absently trying to loop itself around her left ankle.

“Because that which is rarely encountered is always worthy of caution,” the shaman explained.

But as the deep-water chorus drew close enough so that individual shapes could be more precisely distinguished, and as the sight and sound took her breath away, she found that circumspection was the farthest thing from her mind. She was sure she had seen more beautiful sights underwater—but at the moment she could not think of one.

Jellyfish she had encountered before. Usually as individuals, occasionally in small groups, drifting in aimless glutinous indifference through waters both warm and chill. Sometimes they had been as quiescent as the dead, while on other occasions their pastel-tinged bells had throbbed like transparent round hearts as simple reflex action pushed them spasmodically through the water. Certainly she had never seen them dance.

Much less sing.

A cornucopia of light, sound, and movement, the gelatinous procession approached the travelers in a parade of individual glories. Some of the jellies had specks of impossibly intense crimson and gold running around the edges of their bodies as well as through them, like so many electrified rubies and citrines chasing one another in endless procession. Others sent waves of limpid blue spots running down their trailing tentacles, passionate streams of turquoise fire that dripped away into darkness like incandescent tears.

This flashing, coruscating carnival of bioluminescence was accompanied by a melodious ringing and chiming that put Irina in mind of a traveling Balinese temple procession. Not for nothing in Oshenerth were the bodies of such jellyfish called bells. They rang and tinkled and clanged in perfect mystic counterpoint to the viscous light show. It was as if all the bells in an orchestra’s percussion section had suddenly come to life and decided to mate in an orgy of reverberation with several randy gamelans. She had never imagined, much less heard, anything quite like it.

Sliding in and out, through and among the hundreds of trailing photophore-flashing tentacles were several dozen arrow-like fish. Silver of side and tiny of eye, they generated a different but complimentary sound as they rubbed against the tentacles. They were, she realized in amazement, playing the lethal stinging strands like bows on strings.

Pulsing in time to the music they generated and strobing their internal lights in perfect visual counterpoint, the glutinous chorale was in no hurry to drift on by. Its dawdling progress was fine with Irina. Being a spectacle she might never encounter again, she was keen to savor it for as long as possible. Indeed, once in the vicinity of the captivated travelers the procession seemed to slow, as if its constituents’ rhopalia, or sensory organs, perceived that their energetic visual and auditory efforts had found an admiring audience.

Irina realized that she could not turn away from so much splendor nor close her ears to the hypnotically seductive sounds. Hovering motionless in the dark water she stared and smiled at the nomadic parade, wishing that the presentation might never end. Barely aware of the mersons and manyarms around her, she noticed that though this was their world they were equally entranced by the phantasmagoric display. Even Oxothyr seemed spellbound. Very dimly, a part of her realized that there might be something wrong with this. But the notion evaporated almost as fast as it had formed in her mind.

So focused had become her attention and that of her companions, merson and manyarm alike, that they did not notice nor did it trouble them that the rhythmic, pulsating swarm of sight and sound had ceased moving along its original path and was now drifting toward them with imperceptible patience. Each and every member of the expedition had been seduced by beauty. Utterly entranced by what they were seeing and hearing, it occurred to no one that the procession of soft-bodied medusae might be as dangerous as they were striking.

Of them all, it was Chachel who had fought hardest against the dazzling paralysis. Characteristically morose, he was less subject to the effects of beauteous light and mesmerizing sound than his more ebullient companions. But even he was not immune. One especially glorious jelly shimmied and chimed before his eyes, its alluring array of bioluminescent lights strobing the same splendid pattern over and over again, over and over, over and over. Like the others, he found himself lost in a haze of numbing majesty. Overcome with uncharacteristic emotion and seeking to share it, he turned and embraced the nearest individual.

It happened to be Poylee. She did not hesitate to embrace him back.

At a distance, Irina noted the entwining. It meant nothing to her. Why should it, when she found herself wholly subsumed in the glistening ballet pirouetting before her?
Come closer
, the music and the lights and the motion seemed to be saying.
Partake of the joy and the wonder.
Share in the boundless sensation. Dimly aware that her feet and lower legs seemed to be moving of their own accord, she felt herself being drawn inexorably forward by a beauty she could barely fathom.

Then something was ripping at the bell of the medusa hovering just in front of her, shredding the fragile radiance. The repetitive pattern of bioluminescence the jelly was generating changed to one reflecting discontinuous alarm. She blinked, as if abruptly startled out of a dream. Peering down, she saw that a dozen potentially lethal tentacles dangled less than a foot from her body. Hastily, she backed away.

Looking around, she saw that one by one the other members of the expedition were slowly emerging from the stasis into which they had slipped. The coelenterate procession’s wonderfully harmonious music was collapsing into harsh dissonance. Lights that had been flashing on and off in perfect synchronicity dissolved in bursts of distressed color. Instead of continuing to press their sting-immune silver bodies between and against hanging tentacles in order to generate melody, the numerous bow-fish had drawn themselves up against the bodies of their protectors. They huddled there against the underside of their chosen bells, seeking security.

Meanwhile the enraged Sathi and Tythe continued to rip into one medusa after another, tearing them apart with the suckers on their arms or shredding the frail bodies with their sharp beaks. Each time one was attacked and had its mesmerizing lights and music interrupted, another dazed merson or bewildered manyarm found full consciousness restored to them.

Fleeing at far greater velocity than they had shown themselves capable of attaining previously, the surviving jellyfish and their slender-bodied Piscean cohorts fled into the concealing darkness. Internal lights were turned off and all sound suppressed to cloak their escape.

As soon as they realized what had taken place, the recovering members of the expedition gathered around the two now exhausted famuli. Grateful merson hands stroked the squids’ silvery sides while the tentacles of their fellow manyarms entwined with those of their jelly-coated saviors.

“How did you know what was happening?” a grateful Jorosab asked.

“Yes,” wondered Glint. “Somehow you two were immune.” The cuttlefish was pulsing an embarrassed orange. “I didn’t even realize what was happening to me.”