— XXI —

The Talspears struck the city’s outer defenses with the force of a seaquake. Like attenuated torpedoes, they brushed aside parrying attempts by mersons and manyarms alike. Their great speed enabled them to not only run down but also pierce completely through the boneless bodies of vulnerable manyarms. Slaying a merson occasionally gave them pause when they encountered part of a skeleton. Such attacks forced the deadly creations to have to back up and work their way free of the clinging corpses they created.

Mayhem broke out all along the city’s northern defenses as one defender after another fell to the streaking, stiletto-like destroyers. Killing them proved nearly impossible. Composed of solid bone except for their flexible tails and fins, the Talspears could not be injured by weapons made of similar material. They were too slender and moved too fast to be hit by otherwise accurate manyarm arrows. Unlike the chunkier, slow-moving spralakers on whose behalf they fought, stones cast in their direction or dropped from above were easily dodged. The Talspears were agile, fast, and lethal.

At great risk to themselves, a number of mersons and manyarms managed to grab hold of solitary Talspears. The friction created by their clinging bodies slowed the slayers and the added weight dragged some down to the walls themselves. There the struggling, pinioned Talspears could be pounded with rocks until their slender bodies cracked. When they did so, they leaked a viscous, reeking fluid that smelled like anything but blood. When one such successful kill occurred close to Irina, the stench of the fetid liquid put her mind of the worst examples of advanced oral necrosis.

Swooping and diving along the length of the inner and outer north walls, the Talspears picked off defenders like needles attacking an anthill. They were too fast and too lethal. Minding Chachel’s counsel to stay close, Irina joined Poylee in guarding the hunter’s back. Only his agility and his special ability to clot water allowed him to ward off a Talspear that came their way. Shunted aside by Chachel’s talent, it streaked past, heading for the inner wall. Irina watched it go, then turned away. There would be others.

A shout from a familiar voice made her turn.

“Glint!” Whirling, she saw the familiar streamlined shape of the glowing cuttlefish heading tail-first toward her. Her heart lifted as she saw that Oxothyr was with him.

And the shaman was not alone.

Borne along by a host of mersons and manyarms, the entire Tornal accompanied the cuttlefish and the mage. A hopeful Irina recognized each ancient ammonite, every wizened orthocera. Clearly, Glint and Oxothyr had convinced the legendary overlords of Benthicalia that the situation was sufficiently dire to demand their personal attention. They would not have left the safety of the palace otherwise.

What could they do, she asked herself. Not only were they incredibly old, they were feeble and slow. Like the spralakers, their bodies were designed for bottom-living. The most active of them could barely elevate into the water column and then swim but fitfully. How could they possibly counter the lightning-fast attacks of the spralakers’ malevolent latest weapon? She asked the question of Oxothyr as soon as he rejoined her and her companions. Unhappily, the shaman’s response was less than encouraging.

“I wish I knew, Irina-changeling.” The octopod’s eyes were focused on a flat area on the top of the inner coral wall where, one by one, the Tornal were being gently placed by their solicitous attendants. “But this I do know. Watch, observe, and pay attention, for I am convinced what we are about to see is some of the true wet magic of the ancients.”

But even the most efficacious magic takes time to make ready, and the stronger the sortilege, the more time is required for proper preparation. Becoming aware of the cluster of caucusing Tornal, half a dozen Talspears changed course and streaked toward them. Blood and bits of flesh trailed from their sleek flanks and sharp points.

Detecting their approach, several mersons and manyarms swam hard to intercept. Those who managed to do so found themselves mercilessly skewered, knocked aside, or simply avoided as the finned spears homed in on their chosen targets. Looking on from a distance, a wide-eyed Irina caught her breath.

As they took note of the incoming attack, one by one the Tornal’s attendants scattered. Having no weapons of their own there was nothing they could do to protect the masters. Increasing its speed and leaving a trail of froth in its wake, the lead Talspear chose as its target the Speaker-to-the-Tornal herself, and struck home with mindless ferocity.

To promptly glance off, leaving behind nothing more damaging than a slight scrape on the Speaker’s thick, coiled shell.

The other attacking Talspears’ efforts at assassination fared no better. Conjured by Sajjabax, they had been imbued by him with the wherewithal to pierce the soft bodies of spralakers’ traditional enemies. Mersons and manyarms were fast and agile, but unlike the spralakers they grew no protective shells.

But the members of the Tornal, ancient and supposedly primitive relatives of modern manyarms, did.

Again and again the determined Talspears swept around in tight circles to launch themselves at the virtually immobile Tornal—and again and again their well-aimed strikes merely slid off the solid shells of ammonite and orthocera. Preoccupied with mounting frustration, wholly single-minded, they ignored everything else. And so one by one they were brought down by the grim-faced mersons and active manyarms who had arrived to swarm them in ever greater numbers.

Elsewhere the fight against their fleet, deadly clones began to turn as alert mersons brought forth from the city tough, finely-woven fishing nets. The inherent speed of the Talspears was not enough to save them once they were entangled in one or more of the nets. Such mesh devices were useless against the spralakers, the smallest of whom could cut their way free with sharp, powerful claws. But against the otherwise deadly Talspears they proved extremely effective, since the living lances had no claws of their own or hands with which to wield net-slicing knives. One by one they were entangled, brought to a halt, and methodically smashed to pieces.

There remained the ongoing threat from the methodically grinding homaridae, who under the protection of swarms of shepherding spralaker soldiers continued to gnaw away at both the outer and inner city walls. Spreading themselves in a line along the top of the inner coral maze, the Tornal raised their tentacles and began to chant in unison. Their primordial sing-song resounded through the coral but did not reach very far.

“What are they singing?” From above, Irina looked on in fascination.

“I do not know.” A tangle of luminescent arms hovering beside her, Oxothyr strove for comprehension. “I am acquainted with many spells and chants, but this I cannot identify. It is very old, I think. Some of the wordings I can grasp, but others are strangers to me.”

Suddenly Irina found herself pointing. “Look! What’s happening there?”

Oxothyr stared. “Odd. The silver light of the night sky far above us is not at its brightest, nor is it the right time of year.”

She blinked in confusion. “The right time for what?”

“For the coral to give birth.”

All along the length of the high, convoluted inner wall, the coral was spawning. Every kind, every variety, every size, shape, and color had begun to spew forth billows of eggs and milt, all of it ablaze with internal phosphorescence. Steered by the current-chanting of the Tornal, the clouds of luminescent procreation were carried not upward as usual toward the light of the unseen moon, but outward. North, toward the attacking spralaker army.

“I see,” Irina murmured. “All those eggs and sperm will stick to the eyes of the enemy, and blind them.”

“Yes,” agreed Oxothyr, “and perhaps, just perhaps, something else. I think there is more to this than sticks to the eye, changeling.”

Given impetus by the Tornal’s droning mantra, the living clouds swept toward the outer wall. Those defenders who were unable to swim up and out of the way soon found their clothes and skin and bare flesh coated with hundreds of bits of the highly adhesive macrobiotic mass. Other than inciting some severe itching, the coral spawn caused mersons and manyarms no difficulty.

The reaction was very different when the enormous billowing mass drifted over the outer stone wall and began to settle like a malignant nebula atop the front lines of the besieging spralaker army.

A collective high-pitched shrieking wafted up to where Irina hovered close by the somber shaman. It was louder and more shrill than that which accompanied the typical howl of battle, as if routine death had been magnified by some new horror. Gazing into the dimly-lit distance she could make out where whole clusters of spralaker troops had begun to fray, break, and finally flee. The surviving wall-breaching homaridae they were supposed to defend also turned to try and escape, but like its protectors the tank-like, slow-moving monsters could not escape the smothering of the spreading coral spawn.

The living corals that comprised the inner wall of Benthicalia had fully absorbed the potent enchantment levied upon them by the Tornal. Their spawn had become more than sticky, their presence more than aggravating. Wet magic had transformed them. Now they sought more than simply to mate and attach themselves to a firm foundation.

The Tornal enchantment had turned them hungry.

Specifically, it had inculcated in each and every egg and sperm an appetite for calcium. An appetite whose satiation found most immediate satisfaction in the form of the principal chemical component of spralaker shells. A couple of mersons who inadvertently inhaled some of the cloud lost a few teeth to this effect, but those were the only casualties suffered by the shell-less defenders. The mersons’ bones were shielded from the voraciously enchanted coral spawn by their soft flesh, and the manyarms had even less to fear. Bending, Chachel made sure the place where his prosthetic half right leg met flesh was tightly sealed against intrusion.

A dense fog of luminous eggs and milt settled on the giant boring homaridae. Huge claws and legs began to scratch, then to strike, and finally to flail at their own body. Transformed spawn ate its way into the shell of every spralaker with whom it came in contact. All along the inner and outer wall the enemy onslaught began to falter as panic spread through the ranks. It is unreasonable to expect a soldier of any species to sustain courage when one’s comrades are being devoured before their very eyes.

Those spralakers whose shells were only partially consumed found their soft inner bodies now exposed to the weapons of patrolling mersons and manyarms. Unaffected by the spawn as long as they kept their mouths closed, merson spearmen picked off rising numbers of the increasingly vulnerable enemy. Finding their targets devoid of natural armor, manyarm archers were able to loose their arrows to ever greater effect. The battle for Benthicalia threatened to become a rout fit to make the one at Siriswirll look like an orderly retreat.

From their position atop a stone spire of temporary dominion the trio of Mud Marshals and the Paramount Advisor could make out the spreading pandemonium. Increasingly ill at ease, they had to wait for a runner to arrive with an explanation.

“Spawning coral does not devour shell.” Bejuryar was not panicked, but his indecisive tone reflected his sudden confusion. “Eggs and milt do not parasitize.”

“There is great sorcery at work here!” Cavaumaz was more conclusive. He and Taww turned as one to the flustered Gubujul. “Our soldiers are brave, but they cannot fight theurgy. Weapon must counter weapon! Type must battle type.” With his oversized right claw he pointed past the anxious stenopus toward the shadowy turtleshell box. “Talspears are of no use against small eating things in the millions. We need something vaster and more inclusive.”

“I will see.…” Turning, Gubujul kicked his way toward Sajjabax’s enigmatic container. “There must be something!”

There had to be something, he told himself as the Marshals followed close behind, or they all might as well keep going in the direction he was presently swimming.

The key to the mysterious box swung from a braided chain looped around the Paramount Advisor’s neck—or rather, that portion of his integrated body where a neck would have been if he’d had one. It had hung there ever since the Great Lord himself had slipped it over Gubujul’s antennae prior to the army’s departure from the northlands. Reaching up with a claw, he gripped the sliver of metal firmly between his pincers and pushed it into the lock on the box. The lock itself was an intricate and expensive mechanism, metal that had been forged in the heat of northern black smokers.

Within the lock, something shifted. It might also have cried out softly, though in the din and confusion of battle Gubujul could not be certain.

Removing the key, he let it fall down below his head. With both banded arms he lifted up the curved, polished shell that formed the upper half of the container. He could feel all three of his Marshals crowding close behind him. Their presence was real and physical, not imaginary and mental. Every time they moved, the small volume of water they displaced was sensed by his own body.

The interior of the box was dark. An impatient Taww held out a small, brightly glowing sea slug. The creature’s blue-green light illuminated the shallow interior space. Gubujul caught his breath. For once, the constant weaving of his multiple antennae ceased. The box contained a shell.

That was all. A shell, nothing more. No crackling wands, no stoppered vials of olivine volcanic glass, no engraved and bejeweled boxes of precious potion. There was no tablet inscribed with awe-inspiring ciphers, no enchanted weapon gleaming in the dim light. Just a shell. Modest in size, mottled ivory in color, spiral in execution. It lay on a bed of soft salps, barely bestirred by the slight current, mocking those who gazed upon it.

Taww gave voice to what she as well as her colleagues were thinking. “Is this a joke, Paramount Advisor? Or a decoy? Are the true tools of potent necromancy sequestered elsewhere?”

Gubujul was nearly speechless. “I—I’m as shocked as you are. I don’t know what to …”

“It is the Great Lord’s way of telling us we have only our own courage and weapons to reply upon,” Bejuryar concluded gravely.

“That, or the shaman Sajjabax’s sense of humor come to the fore.” Cavaumaz sounded resigned. “That is the trouble when one relies upon a master of magic who is demonstrably mad.”

Gubujul continued to stare at the shell. True, Sajjabax was quite insane. But while many qualities could be attributed to the court conjurer, the Paramount Advisor had never known humor to be among them. Therefore this cone-shaped shell in its elaborate box must represent something more than just a cavalier attempt at mordant farce. As the three Marshals squabbled among themselves, he reached into the box and picked the shell up in both sets of pincers.

It appeared to be a very ordinary shell, long since abandoned by whatever had once lived in it. Off-white with dark brown splotches, the spiral growth was half his body length. The tip had been broken off. No, wait—he looked closer. The pointed end had been deliberately and carefully sheared, not broken. Where had he seen something like this? At court, of course. Commands shouted through such carefully modified shells emerged enhanced. Experimentally, he brought the trimmed and polished end to his mouth and spoke into it.

It was fortunate the wider, open end of the shell was not pointed at the bickering Marshals, or he would have lost his entire general staff at the mention of a single careless word.

Amplified approximately one and a half million times beyond belief, the sonic blast that emerged from the shell blew a perfect hole in the nearby reef. A dozen unlucky soldiers who happened to be positioned there found themselves blown off the rocks and out of sight. Several less fortunate comrades had their shells and themselves smashed flat.

Lowering the spiral from his mouth, Gubujul eyed it in wonder. Having instantly ceased their bickering, the three Marshals were gaping at him in astonishment. Taww, unsurprisingly, was the first to regain her voice.

“Sound,” she marveled. “It magnifies sound. Through what realm or reason or magic I cannot imagine.” At the tips of her eyestalks, her slightly oval blue eyes seemed to brighten. “Magnifies it enough to shatter stone.” Built as she was parallel to the ground, it was always a strain for her to look up at her colleagues. “Should it not be used to sound a greeting to our friends within the city that lies before us?”

Bejuryar moved to one side. Lowering his massive claw, Cavaumaz scuttled to the other. Stepping forward, Taww demonstrated her usual presumption by placing her right claw firmly against the flank of the far more gracile Gubujul.

“Speak now for all of us, Paramount Advisor. Speak for the First Army. Speak for the northlands entire. Speak for the Great Lord himself and speak for Sajjabax, the rightful and undisputed master of all that is the unknown.” Raising her other claw, she gestured in the direction of distant Benthicalia. “Say a word to our adversaries.”

Nodding, Gubujul raised the spiral shell in both long, red-banded arms, took aim as best he could with its perfectly round, gaping open end, and declaimed a commoner insult with as much force as he could muster.

What went into the small open end of the spiral shell was a terse curse. What emerged was—something greater.

Instead of dissipating, the Paramount Advisor’s slur maintained its coherence even as it strengthened. A shaped charge of focused sound, it grew and grew as it propagated swiftly through the water. The echo of its passing over the milling troops of the First Army tossed unsecured bodies like gymnasts and sent others slamming into their neighbors. Weapons were knocked from claws and strong legs lost their grip on the uneven, rocky ground. Confusion and uncertainty reigned in force. All this was as nothing compared to what happened when the sonic charge struck the outer wall of the city.

Detonating against the stonework in an eruption of sound, the blast sent defenders flying in all directions. Legs and tentacles flailed furiously as their owners sought to regain their equilibrium in the water. Those who were defending directly on or immediately above the section of wall that was impacted were not only flung aside like strips of sea grass, they had each and every one been rendered totally deaf by the concussion.

When the first reports came back to Gubujul and his staff, there was general jubilation. “Curse again,” Taww urged him, “and again and again, Paramount Advisor. And when you have tired of visiting insults upon our enemies, we will pass the shell among us and continue your excellent vocal labors!”

A second blast from the shell knocked down the section of outer wall beside the first. The third shattered the maze-work coral behind, producing the first unobstructed route into the city proper. When a crack squadron of merson fighters made a desperate attempt to swoop down on the promontory where Gubujul and his staff were perched, those who were not slain outright by the Paramount Advisor’s lookouts were blown in pieces halfway to the mirrorsky by a short blast from the deadly trumpet.

Bejuryar pestered Gubujul for a chance to try out the accursed shell himself, while Cavaumaz was more restrained. The Paramount Advisor spurned both requests. He was having too much fun. For once he was the one dealing out destruction instead of simply passing along orders or facilitating the efforts of others. For once it was he and not the Great Lord who was the dispenser of the people’s vengeance. As the shrewd Taww had suggested, he would keep blowing until he could rage no more. Only then would he turn the sorceral weapon over to his enthusiastic subordinates.

A feeling of power he had never felt before surged through him. With both long arms, he lifted the shell once more to his mouth.

O O O

From above, a bewildered Irina had a clear view of the destruction. Something invisible had blown a hole in first the outer and then the inner walls that protected the city. Something invisible, and very loud. The first sonic clubbing had forced her to clap her hands to her ears. She winced again when it was repeated. Below, confusion had set in among the Tornal. This reverberant bludgeon of the spralakers was something the likes of which they had never encountered before.

Buoyed by the very visible consequences, the first detachments of spralaker soldiers had begun to surge toward the breach. As they started forward, a fourth aural charge slammed into the outer wall. The gap was widening rapidly. Soon it would be so expansive that no counterattack, no matter how substantial, would be sufficient to keep the enemy from spreading into the city. Something had to be done to counter the devastating and demoralizing noise, and soon.

Snapping his arms out behind him, Oxothyr warned Irina to stay where she was. With a blast from his siphon, the shaman sped down toward the coral ridge where the Tornal were debating what to do next.

In his absence, a curious Chachel swam up beside her. “What does the mage intend?”

“I’ve no idea. Maybe he just wants to hear what they’re saying.”

The hunter looked down to where a sizable section of the outer wall had been destroyed and the inner had already been breached. “Someone had better do more than talk or listen, or we will find ourselves having to abandon Benthicalia and fall back in the direction of Sandrift. The stories that will be told of this day will not be comforting ones.”

A renewed burst of activity below caused her to point. “They’re doing something, but what?”

The hunter shook his head. “I see some of the Tornal scattering in all directions, and their escort even more so. They must be giving the order to bring up reinforcements. Perhaps they are going to try and somehow plug the gaps in the walls.”

She shook her head. “It won’t do any good if they can’t stop the source of that sound.”

But she was wrong.

The call went out the length and breadth of Benthicalia. A call for the help of every citizen who was not actively participating in the defense of the walls. A call for them to respond to the request made by Oxothyr, passed along by the Tornal, and disseminated throughout the population. A call for …

Sponges.

There were thousands of them scattered throughout the city. Flaunting every color of the rainbow despite the light-absorbing depth, they were cultivated for everything from residential comfort to external decoration. Some were hand-sized, others huge. Irrespective of size, shape, and color, one by one they were ripped from their locations and brought forward as fast as possible to the site of the breach in the city’s ramparts.

As armed mersons and manyarms provided cover, dozens and then hundreds of the uprooted sponges were jammed into the uneven gap. Under Oxothyr’s direction, others were attached with organic adhesive all along the still-standing sections of outer north wall. But not before they had been sculpted into cones and cavities according to the shaman’s specific instructions and pierced with thousands of tiny holes and slits.

A rising thunder caused Chachel to grab Irina around the waist and kick upward. “Here it comes again!” he shouted warningly. Shaking her head in disgust at the sight, Poylee joined them. Glint rose with ease. Though Irina could have ascended by herself, she made no move to dislodge the hunter’s helpful arm.

Booming through the water, the next burst of destructive sound came screaming toward the city. This one was intended to crush a second section of inner wall. It burst upon the hastily erected hedge of perforated sponges—and vanished into silence. Watching and listening from above, Irina was put in mind of the cones and sound-absorbing tiles that lined a typical recording studio. Like them, Oxothyr’s sponges had been modified to soak up noise.

The makeshift defense had done its job flawlessly. It continued to do so as blast after blast of crashing sound was cast at the city—no longer to damaging effect.

Even underwater, she mused, it appeared that physics could occasionally trump magic.

O O O

Among Gubujul and his staff frustration rose as discharge after sonic discharge failed to make any further impact on the city walls.

“This is absurd, simply absurd!” Cavaumaz could not believe the reports they were receiving. “Sponges! How can commonplace sponges, which can be shredded by the smallest newborn, stand against something as powerful as the shaman Sajjabax’s shaped sound?”

Bejuryar confessed himself equally baffled. “I could poke a hole in one with my eye, let alone a claw.” He was staring in disbelief at the distant, still shining, inviolate expanse that was Benthicalia. “There is great magic at work here.”

“Perhaps not magic.” All of them, including a distraught Gubujul, looked down at Taww. “Perhaps something even stronger than magic.”

“What could be stronger than the eminent Sajjabax’s magic?” Bejuryar growled scornfully.

The squat lobster gazed up at her colleague. “Intelligence.” Turning, she nodded in the direction of the city. “Put down the shell, Paramount Advisor. Though we know not how, it is plain that its power has been countered. What other mystic weaponry do you have at your disposal?”

Among these three general officers, at least, a downcast Gubujul was not ashamed to show his disappointment. “You saw for yourselves. There was only the spiral shell. The box is empty.”

“Then we are come to rely on the oldest of spralaker tactics. One that promises the least glory. One that involves the simplest of stratagems. But one that in the past our people have demonstrated can work. It demands, most of all, that quality which our armies and our soldiers are so often sorely lacking.”

Cavaumaz stared down at her. After a moment’s thought, he found himself nodding slowly in agreement, his shell bobbing forward, his eyes turning back toward the distant city. When he spoke, it was in concert with Bejuryar. Their tone was one of resignation, but not defeat. Standing beside them, Gubujul found that much as he did not want to, he had no choice but to agree.

“Siege.”