— XVII —

Irina had been enchanted by Sandrift, sobered by Shakestone, and impressed by Siriswirll. So it was not unreasonable for her to believe that she had some idea what to expect of Benthicalia.

She was as wrong as she was overwhelmed.

When her companions had called it a city, she had envisioned something like Siriswirll, only on a larger scale. She was simply not prepared for the sight that greeted her eyes as the group swam over a last rocky rise and the city came into view. Slammed them was more accurate, since during the preceding days of travel in near darkness they had become accustomed to a much more muted level of illumination.

Rising from the depths toward the unseen mirrorsky, Benthicalia spilled over the terraces of multiple ancient and now drowned shorelines. Every succeeding level (she counted more than two dozen) was crowded with fantastical structures each of which was more wondrous than the next, and all were ablaze with light.

“How …?”

Jetting easily alongside her, Oxothyr anticipated her query. “It is the light that fascinates. It is the light for which Benthicalia is famed. Look hard, changeling Irina, and you will be able to recognize, and to comprehend.”

She strained to do just that, but still needed help from the manyarm to understand what she was seeing. What was immediately evident was that a great deal more magic was at work here than she had encountered previously anywhere else in Oshenerth.

Shining and flashing within transparent longitudinal and vertical containers, tens of thousands of light-emitting fish and other bioluminescent ocean dwellers bathed the city in pale blue and yellow light. From a distance the streets and spires looked, she thought, like a cluster of exploding stars. The variety of containers themselves were as fascinating as the photophoric lifeforms they kept in check. As the visitors began their final approach, she saw that the fabulous transparencies were fashioned neither of glass nor crystal. Instead, they were sundry species of giant tunicates that had been trained to let food in to feed their captive light-emitters as well as themselves, but not to let the smaller glowing creatures escape. Here was a city where lights were not manufactured, she mused, or purchased from a store, but rather where they were grown and nurtured.

From every level, rose towers of brightly colored deep-sea coral. Rose, or rather thrust, she corrected herself. In Benthicalia, as many towers grew sideways as upward, creating a latticework of coralline architecture bedecked with sculpture both living and dead. Benthicalian artisans had decorated numerous buildings with bas-reliefs depicting scenes from the city’s history, its surroundings, and its daily life.

Each individual animal serving as home to thousands of anemone fish, the tentacles of gigantic anemones swayed back and forth in the mild currents that kept the city clean. Some of the brightly colored immobile creatures were the size of a city bus.

The lowest level of the metropolis was dominated by a great coral stadium. Examining the huge spherical structure, Irina inquired as to its function. Sporting events, Oxothyr informed her, and theater, and other entertainments and civic functions.

“Look to the center of the uppermost level of the city. That is where we will find the Tornal.”

Rotating his body, the shaman pointed to a rocky promontory. Clinging like a live thing to the jutting shelf was a small limestone citadel composed of red and yellow fire coral that had been carefully cultivated to produce a fanciful hodgepodge of interconnected spires, spheres, and chambers. Though it served as a meeting place of considerable importance there was no sign of armament, no occupied guard stations. They were not necessary, since the coral of which the structure was composed was itself a more than adequate deterrent to unauthorized entry. Mere contact with fire coral would leave flesh burning and stinging for days. Extensive contact could result in paralysis, and even death.

A glance showed that while mersons, manyarms, and fish could enter the city from any angle, stone walls far higher and more permanent than anything she had seen before provided an insurmountable barrier to any marauding spralakers.

She indicated the Palace of the Tornal. “That’s where we’re going, then?”

The shaman turned an amused orange. “Even the bearers of important news do not simply float in on the Tornal.”

“Not even you?” she ventured curiously.

“Not even I, changeling flatterer. We must make a formal request for a meeting and await approval. Only then can we present ourselves.”

She hesitated. “Am I included in this?”

“We are all a part of it. That is as it should be. One never knows who may recall an item of significance that would otherwise be overlooked, or have something of consequence to contribute.” He flashed gentle amusement. “Perhaps even a changeling still uncertain of herself and her place in the world. Experience has shown me that it is the highly knowledgeable and experienced who often overlook the obvious.” Noting her misgiving, he added, “You will be fine, Irina-changeling. You have adapted well.”

She blushed slightly at the compliment, wondering if the flush was visible at this depth. “I’m trying. Really hard.”

“Trying is better than dying,” he remarked impassively.

The city was no less astonishing up close than it had been when viewed from a distance. Criss-crossing channels cut through the rock and coral took the place of streets. Noticing dozens of reef fish moving freely among the resident mersons and manyarms, she wondered how they were able to survive so far beneath the mirrorsky. Once more it was left to Oxothyr to explain.

“A large field of black smokers fumes and boils off to the west,” he told her as he gestured in that direction. “An elaborate system of sculpted coral conduits carries superheated water to the lowest level of the city. Useful minerals are removed there and the water then is allowed to percolate upwards through a network of smaller tubes. You will find the outlets scattered throughout the city across all levels. That is how creatures accustomed to warmer waters can be made comfortable here.” Several arms gestured in unison.

“As you have already seen, life at this depth is less abundant than nearer the mirrorsky. For a city the size of Benthicalia to thrive here, food must be brought in from above. Minerals and other materials found or mined nearby are exchanged for food and other substances with the inhabitants of the shallows.”

She considered. “If food is in such short supply, why do any of your kind or any mersons choose to live down here instead of higher up where it’s warmer, brighter, and easier to find something to eat?”

Wise old eyes regarded her with what she decided (or maybe hoped) was something less than pity. “My young changeling, while food is life, there is more to life than food. Benthicalia is famed for its culture, as a place to stimulate and exchange ideas, and as a community that offers peace in a setting of great solitude. It is those from above who come here to find rest and rejuvenation; not the other way around. Have you no such communities in your own world?”

Irina could think of several, but since there was no point in naming them she merely nodded.

Oxothyr appeared satisfied. “In our time here you must try to avail yourself of such edifying enrichment. It is incumbent upon one fortunate enough to be able to visit Benthicalia to do more than simply stare at pretty lights and gawk at noteworthy buildings.”

“Will there be time?” She found herself marveling at a cylindrical tower that sprouted branches like a baobab. Providing living quarters for numerous manyarms, each branch terminated in a red-hued globe filled with swimming deep-sea fish that all emitting the same steady vermilion glow.

Led by Chachel, the travelers rounded a corner and began to follow a sharply angled avenue up to the next level of the city. “Despite the urgency of the message we bring,” Oxothyr told her, “I do not expect the Tornal to grant us an audience for at least a day or two. That will give you time to absorb at least a few wonders.”

“You’ll show me around?” she asked hopefully as she performed a relaxing barrel roll beside him.

“Certainly not. I have far more pressing matters to attend to. If you cannot make your own way around a city as civilized and welcoming as Benthicalia, then I fear that your future in the realworld will amount to very little.” Letting forth a larger blast from his siphon he jetted on ahead, leaving her adrift in her own presumption.

Unlike in a terrestrial city, the structures that clung to the wide terraces on which Benthicalia was built were as easy to reach for residents and visitors alike as if they had been laid out on a flat mesa. Beneath the mirrorsky, up and down required no more effort to reach than did back and forward. Even more than in Sandrift and elsewhere, it was in Benthicalia that Irina truly came to appreciate the ease of access than came from free swimming as opposed to gravity-bound walking.

In the pleasant visitors’ residence where they found accommodation, windows served the same function as doors. Though there was a view from every chamber, there were no decks or porches. There was no need for such when one could drift outside a room, hover, turn somersaults, and take in the expansive, twinkling view from any conceivable angle. One spoke of moving in and out rather than up and down.

Unlike her companions, she was assigned her own separate living space. Whether this was out of deference to her presumed changeling sensibilities or because no one wanted to be around her any longer than was necessary she did not know and did not care. After weeks of living in intimate proximity to crowds of travelers and fighters, she was glad of the solitude.

There was not much to do in the warren-like residence while she and everyone else waited for a response to Oxothyr’s request for a meeting with the Tornal. Pale maroon with splotches of blue, the capsule-like chamber had been nurtured out of solid coral and then cultivated and hewn to add storage areas, a hygienic chamber whose facilities operated through the use of pressure differentials, and a small separate sleeping area dominated by enormous sponges that grew horizontally from the base of one wall. These provided as comfortable a sleeping platform as any she had yet encountered.

So much so, in fact, that she overslept. In the near total absence of daylight she only found out what had happened because she asked the time of a desk clerk. Juggling half a dozen thin inscribed tablets, the octopod flushed a polite pink as she provided not only the time but a brief explanation of how the inhabitants of the city managed to keep track of it in the absence of normal day and night.

“We keep time with fish,” she explained to the inquisitive visitor in a tone that was not at all condescending.

“Fish?” Irina had a vision of a clock face with herring forming the numbers of the hours and a pair of mackerel serving as ticking hour and minute hands.

“They’re on contract to the city.” The clerk emphasized her words by gesturing conversationally with several tentacles that were not occupied in other tasks. “I think it’s a school of amberjack who have the responsibility now. They migrate in a continuous vertical column. The ones at the top note the time according to the light and pass it down the line to the ones at the bottom. The last in line informs a city time worker who is responsible for seeing that the information is disseminated throughout the community. So despite the absence of natural light, we in Benthicalia always know what time it is.”

“Ingenious,” murmured an admiring Irina.

“Piscean,” corrected the octopus amiably. “I would never wish to be a fish myself, but they do have other uses besides as food.” She indicated a carved stone bowl resting on the coral counter. It was brimming with live mussels. “Snack?”

“Uh, no thanks. I don’t think my teeth are up to it.”

Several bands of commiserating blue ran through the length of the clerk’s body. “You unfortunate mersons. Give me a beak over teeth any day.”

As Irina explored the habitat, the other members of the Sandrift-Siriswirll group were nowhere to be found. Oxothyr’s whereabouts she knew: the shaman was off conducting important business, foremost of which was striving to obtain the meeting with the Tornal. The others were doubtless relaxing according to their individual tastes, recuperating from the long and difficult journey from Siriswirll. The strange changeling had been left to her own devices. That no one felt it necessary to look after her was a back-handed compliment to how well she had adapted, but it left her wondering how to proceed.

Gathering her nerve, she decided to go exploring on her own. She could not really get lost. Benthicalia was a big city, yes, but it did not compare in size or complexity to those of her own world. If she ran out of light, she would know it was time to retrace her kicks.

Swimming through the streets and passageways, exploring and marveling at the metropolitan surroundings, it took her a moment to realize why the act of simply moving around was such a pleasure. There were no vehicles, no forms of mass transit here. They were not necessary in a place where an individual’s own personal top speed was the benchmark for commuting. Some swimmers were, of course, faster than others. No merson could keep up with a manyarm, and many fish could out swim them. When you could as easily go over something as around it, distances shrank rapidly.

The city being divided into twenty-six levels instead of districts or boroughs, she amused herself by swimming from the fifteenth, where she and her companions had taken up residence, all the way up to the tenth. Evaluating each level along the way, she saw little difference between them. There were no pockets of poverty or great mansions. Wealth here was accounted in different ways than at home. Knowledge and skills still counted for much, but rewards took forms other than the crass accumulation of material things.

As the day wore on she could detect no lessening of or increase in activity. Sunk in and surrounded by darkness, the city functioned around the clock. She knew only that she was starting to get tired when she swam into an establishment from which music of a particular strain was emanating loudly.

Clearly very popular, the place was as crowded as any she had encountered. She moved freely within, staring wide-eyed at the lavishly decorated interior. Never had she seen so many colorful deep-sea colors. Hanging from the ceiling, the skeletons of black, red, and pink coral had been polished to a high sheen. Decked out in such natural jewels, the ceiling glistened like a magician’s cave.

Along with piped-in warm water, mersons and manyarms circulated through the large artificial cavern. Many were chatting animatedly, others were eating, a few were dancing. What drinking took place involved downing sealed thin-skinned tubes of edible material that had been filled with various dark, flavored liquids. Here one did not have to look hard to discern someone who had imbibed too much of the wrong fluid. Since their mouths tended to open before they had finished swallowing, a visible haze hung around the heads and in front of their faces of the heaviest drinkers.

The establishment was home in equal numbers to mersons and manyarms, with a number of less intelligent but still interested fish finning cautiously among them. Seated atop a raised dais off to one side was the band whose music had first drawn her inside. Percussion was provided by (perhaps unsurprisingly) a large blue-ringed octopus each of whose eight arms held a stone hammer. Striking large shells of different sizes produced not only varying tones but also generated a different-colored pulse of light from the small bioluminescent lifeforms that inhabited each shell. When a shell cracked after receiving one too many blows, the octopod’s assistant replaced it with another of the same size, much as guitar player might replace a snapped string. Nary a beat was missed.

A trio of yellow trumpetfish needed no extraneous instruments to supply a jazzy counterpoint, while an oversized pufferfish attended to what looked like some finely tuned cast-off plumbing. A cuttlefish smaller than Glint clutched several armfuls of empty bivalves whose halves she adeptly clicked like castanets. Among all the tootling and clacking and banging there was not a single stringed instrument. That one could be fashioned she had no doubt, but it was evident that any sound generated by such a device would not carry well underwater.

Drifting off to one side, she watched as a pair of squid dominated the area reserved for dancing. Their incredible ballet could not have been replicated by the most agile of mersons. Locking arms, propelled by their siphons, they shifted and swung in all directions while their bodies simultaneously changed colors in complimentary patterns. Other waltzing manyarms and tangoing mersons admiringly made space for them.

“Like to join them?”

The three mersons who had come up behind her were large, young, and manifestly male. Their attention was clearly fixated on her and not the action elsewhere in the establishment. Another time, another place, another world, she might have been flattered. Not here. Besides, in close proximity even to the friends she had made she still found the regular in-and-out pulsing of gill flaps anything but attractive. She eased away from them.

With a single powerful scissor kick, one swam around in front of her to block her way. Another hovered overhead. Gazing fixedly at her while floating upside-down with his face level with hers, he reached out and began to finger multiple strands of her drifting blonde tresses.

“Never seen hair this color. What kind of merson are you? Not from the city, that’s plain. Are there others like you?”

“If possible two more of you,” echoed one of his companions.

Twisting away, she flipped her hair out of the fondling fingers, her quick spin winding it around her head like a golden band. It would not stay like that for long, but at least for now it was out of reach.

“There’s just one of me,” she snapped, “and the one of me isn’t interested in either of the three of you. Leave me alone.”

“Cannot do that.” Reaching out, the first speaker put a hand on her shoulder and drew it slowly downward. “I personally am too obsessed with the new. You are a very new, silash.”

The last word was merson slang, uncivil and borderline vile. She looked around. No one had been attracted to the conversion, no one was interested in the confrontation. Apparently in a place like this you were on your own, be you merson, manyarm, or changeling. She realized now it had been foolish to go off by herself. This was not simple, rustic Sandrift or even its larger cousin Siriswirll. Merson culture was neither homogeneous nor inherently idyllic. Threats existed in this world that had nothing to do with sharks or spralakers.

She’d found herself caught in similar situations once or twice before. But both times the surroundings had been familiar, the testosterone-fueled tropes typical, and the means for extricating herself practiced and polished. Here everything was different, for all that certain aspects of life seemed universal even in another world and even under the water.

“I’m asking you nicely.” She found herself swatting away hands in all directions. “To leave me alone. Or I’ll yell for the police.”

“Police?” Two of the self-confident nuisances exchanged a glance. “What are ‘police’?”

“I think she means the civil guard,” suggested the third member of the disagreeable trio. He moved a little closer. They were hemming her in now; from front, back, and above, reducing her room to maneuver, to get away. Blasting out so much percussion, the band made it difficult for her to make herself heard.

Could she make herself heard? How far would her cry for assistance travel underwater, swamped as it was likely to be by the wail of the band? Would anyone respond if they did hear her, and did anyone care? For all she knew of local culture, in Benthicalia this increasingly unpleasant confrontation was a common and accepted method through which representatives of one gender initiated contact with another. Certainly it was no less intrusive than the courtship rituals employed by certain species of dolphin in her own world.

She was no dolphin, and she wanted out.

In frustration as much as anger, she struck out at the nearest merson. Slowed by the intervening water, her slap barely grazed him. Worse, he appeared to take it as some kind of perverse invitation. Moving toward instead of away from her, he reached out to tickle the outer edge of her left gill flap. If it was supposed to send some kind of intimate sensual signal it failed miserably with Irina, reminding her as it did only of newfound opportunities for suffocation.

The merson behind her was intent on committing a gesture considerably more familiar though no less unwelcome when a horizontal blur slammed into him and knocked him prone in the water. Now some in the crowd did pause in their partying to turn and look, though no one seemed inclined to summon the aforementioned civil guard. Blinking at the abruptness of the intervention, Irina was too shaken to thank her rescuer.

Pivoting sharply in the water, having knocked insensible one of the trio who were vexing Irina, Poylee cocked both arms in front of her.

“I think I heard the changeling ask you nicely,” she hissed.

The unconscious merson’s cohorts barely glanced at the confrontational new arrival. They were too busy gaping at Irina. “A changeling!” echoed one. “That explains the strange hair.”

“Yes.” His companion nodded in the direction of their free-floating friend. “Welenhu has gone to sleep and left this intriguing creature for us to examine. We would be lax in our duty as friends if we were to retire without learning more.” Putting his own hands out in front of him, he advanced on Poylee while his associate closed a new circle around the uncertain Irina.

Suddenly he was arching backwards. Having slid an arm around each side of the advancing merson’s neck, his assailant clutched his own forearms with opposing hands. The result was a firm hold that forced tightly shut the gill flaps of Irina’s tormentor. The merson thus restrained began to kick frantically. Locked together, the pair spun around and around in a series of increasingly desperate somersaults. Other patrons of the establishment backed up to give the fighters more room as the thoroughly blasé band segued smoothly into another, somewhat faster, selection.

As he slowly suffocated, the wild flailing and kicking of the merson who had been surprised from behind began to moderate. After he passed out but before he died, Chachel released the double-arm choke hold and swam to pull the last remaining assailant off an increasingly hard-pressed Poylee. Swimming to the first and still unconscious merson, Irina stood watch over him to make sure he didn’t revive in time to rejoin the fray. Out of the corner of an eye she saw a nest of arms come into view: Glint had arrived.

Gesturing to where Chachel now had his hands full with the third and largest of the troublemakers, she snapped at the splendidly hued cephalopod. “Why don’t you go help Chachel? Isn’t he still your friend?”

The cuttlefish replied with considerable dignity. “I don’t interfere in the mating rituals of mersons.”

The male beside her was starting to revive. Extending a leg, she shoved a webbed foot against his left gill flap. His eyelids fluttered and he promptly passed out again.

“This isn’t a mating ritual, you ghost of a calamari dinner! It’s a fight! A brutal, kicking, scratching, head-butting fight!”

Unperturbed, the cuttlefish cocked one eye at her. “Where mersons are concerned, it is often impossible to tell where one begins and the other lets off.” Extending themselves, several tentacles gestured. “Chachel fights sharks single-handedly and with only two arms. I am not concerned as to the eventual outcome of this encounter, nor should you be.”

The fact remained that despite the manyarm’s reassurances, she was concerned. Her anxiety level dropped when she saw Chachel spin his opponent into a wall. Coral was notoriously unyielding. Her apprehension eased still more as Chachel, holding onto the dazed merson with one hand, began pummeling him with the other. Blood from the unlucky merson’s face began to flow into the surrounding water in tight little trickles, like threads of cuttlefish ink. At this depth and in the bioluminescent light, it appeared dark green instead of red.

Poylee finally managed to pull Chachel off the now comatose nuisance. The excitement over, those patrons who had stopped to watch now returned to their momentarily interrupted pursuits of eating, dancing, conversing, and listening to the music of the band, which had never paused in its playing. There was no sign of any representatives of the civil guard.

Benthicalia might be beautiful, and sophisticated, and the most advanced metropolis in this part of Oshenerth, Irina reflected, but it was not without blemishes of its own.

She swam over to where Poylee, irritated and stressed, was working to catch her breath. The merson appeared unharmed.

“Poylee, I don’t know how to ….

“Oh, shut up, changeling!” The female growled through clenched teeth. “Can’t you do anything right? After all this time among us? You don’t have the sense of a spasmed oyster!” Before Irina could say a word, the first of her two saviors was kicking hard for the exit.

Duly unsettled, she approached Chachel more cautiously. At least he let her talk long enough to express her gratitude before he initiated his own verbal pummeling. This was at once less irate and more forceful than Poylee’s.

“From now on I suggest you don’t go anywhere without the company of a real merson, or one of the manyarms in our group.”

Did he ever blink, she wondered? Come to think of it, while the reflex gesture was common enough here, it was not necessary. A merson’s eyes were always moist.

“You are a lot of trouble, changeling,” he finished.

“I don’t mean to be.” She was not going to cry, she told herself. How could she, when her rising anger threatened to overcome her relief at having been rescued from an increasingly unpleasant set of circumstances. “I’ve been trying to see and learn as much about your world as possible. That’s what I was doing out on my own. That’s what I was doing here.”

“Learning a thing is not much good if it’s the last thing you learn. Watch where you stick your head, changeling, lest you shove it into a hole occupied by a drunken moray and end up withdrawing without it.” He nodded to where the bodies of two of the unconscious mersons had drifted up against each other. “Or worse.”

She was struck by a sudden thought. “How did you know where to find me? I didn’t tell anyone where I was going. I couldn’t have, since I didn’t know myself.”

Instead of replying, he just stared at her. The longer he held the gaze the more his expression seemed to soften. Or maybe, she thought inconclusively, it was just the effect of the shifting luminescence in the enclosed space and the distortions caused by the constant movement of water within the busy establishment.

In any case, he didn’t answer. After a pause that seemed even longer than it was, he turned and swam away, picking a path through the churning crowd as easily and effortlessly as he would have through a school of skipjack. Unsurprisingly, Poylee was right behind him. Watching her trail close behind the hunter as he left the establishment, it struck Irina suddenly what kind of fish the young female reminded her of.

A remora.

“What are you smiling at? You were in an uncomfortable situation. You should not be smiling.”

Her accuser was Glint. Responding to the stimulus of his present dynamic surroundings, he had strained his chromatophores to saturate his skin with intense orange color infused with sequencing purple bands, all lit by his own internally generated pale blue and red bioluminescence. It was a sight to supersede any human—or merson—make-up. Among cephalopods, cosmetics were not only intrinsic, they were a biological imperative.

She turned to face the leisurely writhing mass of colorful tentacles and the body to which they were attached. “Smiling? Was I smiling?”

“I think that you were.” The cuttlefish drifted closer. “Though I suppose with changelings, as with mersons, a sensible person can never be sure. I heard your question.” An arm gestured in the direction of the way out. “When Chachel found out that you had left to explore the city on your own, he became uneasy.”

“Really?” She found herself staring at the exit Chachel and Poylee had taken.

“I think he was more irritated than troubled. Nevertheless, he opted to follow you to ensure your continued well-being. He thinks that you may in some way be connected to everything out of the ordinary that has happened since I saved you from drowning in the void.”

“You saved me?” she responded.

“Ah, I was correct. That is a smile. Both of us saved you, of course. I float corrected.”

She was thinking hard. “He followed me to look after me just because of that?”

“Of course.” Glint sounded guileless. “Why else would he do so?”

Why else indeed, she thought to herself. “And Poylee?”

“The merson accompanied him for the same reason. Why else would she have done so?”

I can’t imagine. This time Irina knew the cuttlefish would recognize her wider smile. Was he conversant enough with human/merson expression to also distinguish the real meaning behind it? If not, she saw no reason to point out that Poylee’s principal goal in life was to stick as close to the hunter as mersonly possible, lest he …

Lest he what? More useless, time-wasting speculation on a subject that did not interest her anyway.

“Are you feeling unwell, Irina-changeling? The look on your face is most peculiar.”

“I’m fine.” Maintaining an intentionally broad grin, she raised her voice so that her words resounded well above the pounding of the band. “I’m fine! And since I’m fine, there is much more of the city I’d like to see.” She extended her right arm. “As everyone seems to be so ‘worried’ about me—Glint, would you do me the honor of being my escort for the remainder of our resting time?”

Extending outward from the sucker-filled body, a pair of strong hunting tentacles serpentined around her bare arm. “I would be pleased to do so, Irina, since I am not presently interested in making the acquaintance of a mate-worthy female of my own kind. It is not the right time of the month.”

“How do you know? You can’t see the moonlight down here.”

“The moonli—oh, you mean the disc that breathes silver life into the mirrorsky. No, I cannot see it.” Another arm gestured upward. “But we manyarms know when the time is right. The knowing of it is born into us. You might say,” he added as his epidermis changed from orange to mauve, “that the why of it is a different kind of light that dwells within each of us.”

If only, she mused as they departed the establishment in tandem, interpreting the motivations of other mersons was as easy for her as was the telling of time for a manyarm.