— XXIV —

Having already released their containers of acid, a trio of barracuda riders had trapped Irina and her companions against the side of one of the city’s tallest coral towers. As the swift silver slayers and their pale riders drew closer and closer, tightening the circle around the increasingly disheartened and fatigued defenders, out of the corner of an eye Irina saw another group of swimmers approaching from the vicinity of the Tornal’s palace. That holy of holies itself was threatening to succumb beneath a steady, withering assault; not only from the barracuda-riding ghost crabs but from the first columns of spralaker ground troops who had begun to pour into the city through the broad gap that had been made in the North Wall.

The small band that was hurrying toward her now was not comprised of spralakers or their allies, however. While she recognized none of the other fighters, there was no mistaking the bulky cephalopodan figure in the middle.

“Oxothyr!”

Hearing Irina’s joyful shout, Poylee took her attention off a circling barracuda long enough to join in the changeling’s excitement. Recognizing the shaman from Sandrift, she let out an elated cry of her own. The relief he was bringing with him might only be temporary, but it was most welcome.

Rushing in upon the circling barracuda from behind, Oxothyr and his followers managed to wound one and scatter the others. However fleeting, it was a victory of sorts, though the fighters surrounding Irina barely had strength enough left to taunt the retreating enemy with a few defiant shouts of their own.

“Thanks for coming, Oxothyr.” Irina regretted she did not possess sufficient armature to greet the mage appropriately, in the manner of his own kind.

“I could see you were in serious trouble.” A familiar S-shaped iris rotated toward her as a pair of arms gestured back the way he had come. “There was little more I could do at the palace in any case.” Another tentacle slipped around her shoulders, and a fourth around Poylee’s. “I am glad to find you both still alive, with all limbs intact.”

“More or less.” Irina pointed out the cut on her arm, then nodded forward. Doubtless awaiting reinforcements, two of the barracuda who had attacked the small group continued to patrol back and forth in front of the cluster of exhausted defenders. Their spectral hardshell riders held their short bows loaded and ready, waiting for an opportunity to strike.

“I am prepared to die.” Hovering beside Irina, scarred and weary, Poylee looked resigned.

“Do not be in such a hurry to give up your life, which has enriched and irritated so many others in equal measure.” Raising his voice, Oxothyr addressed the surviving defenders who had gathered around him. “All of you, hold your positions and stay alert!” Turning in the water, he looked back across the ravaged but still radiant city. “Something terrible is coming out of the south. I feel it.”

Open-mouthed and open-gilled, Irina stared fixedly at the inscrutable shaman. “I’m sorry, Oxothyr, but if that was meant to be encouraging, it wasn’t.”

His body turning an unexpected pale blue striped with jade, the wizened octopod turned back to her. “I suppose I should explain further. This time, little changeling, the something terrible is on our side.”

Spears aimed outward, remaining bows drawn taut, the small band of mersons and manyarms waited. The pair of barracuda and their spectral riders continued to sweep back and forth in front of them to prevent any escape. Ominously, they were soon joined by two more. Setting aside the shaman’s perplexing assurance, Irina steeled herself for a final fight, expecting the quartet of barracuda and riders to charge at any moment.

And then, just like that and without warning, the four argent assassins and their deadly riders turned tail and shot away, disappearing at high speed in the direction of the despoiled North Wall. In their wake they left a small knot of stunned mersons and manyarms. Even well after it was clear that they had fled, neither Irina nor Poylee lowered their weapons.

“What …?” Irina started to say.

Her question was interrupted by a new disturbance. Something was roiling the water. Looking around, she saw that every one of her fellow defenders was also struggling to maintain their position. Something was seriously perturbing the sea around them. Whatever it was, to displace so much volume at once she knew it had to be massive.

They were.

She saw the lights first. So strong was the approaching phosphorescence that whole sections of city around her were thrown into increased relief. Struggling against the disturbance and mindful of Oxothyr’s pledge, she fought her way around the tower and against the push of moving water to see what was coming.

Squid. But not just—squid.

The force of oncoming manyarms were electric with their own bioluminescence. And riding the one in the lead was none other than the master of merson moroseness, the phlegmatic yet ever defiant Chachel. Stretched out flat, his legs trailing behind him, he clung with both hands to the leading edge of his mount’s right fin. Beside him, a manyarm of modest size hung on with all ten—no, seven—of its tentacles. On the other side a small but determined octopod rode proud, for all that he was facing backward. All that kept them from being swept off the fins to which they were clinging was a cone of calmness: a small but very useful bit of water magic that had been called forth by the merson hunter.

The tail fin from which their bodies fluttered like flags was bigger than they were.

The water displaced by their collective mass shivered the towers of Benthicalia as nearly two hundred giant and colossal squid came thundering into the city. Spreading out, they began to pick off would-be pillagers; sometimes singly, often in whole groups. Giant squid with bodies more than twenty feet long snatched up spralakers and crushed them in powerful hunting tentacles extending another eighty feet in length. Desperate barracuda and their frantic ghost crab riders were plucked from the water as if they were standing still. Not as long but more massive, with enormous glowing eyes greater in diameter than a merson was tall, colossal squid weighing many tons crunched their way through the terrified invaders, ripping them apart with telephone-pole thick arms whose suckers were lined with brutal, curving hooks.

Rallying to the enormous swarm, the city’s surviving defenders let out a collective bellow of defiance as they counterattacked. Driven from pathways and walls, rooms and acid-eaten buildings, panicked spralakers fled toward the open plains of the north and the depths to the west.

In Benthicalia, it began to snow.

At first taken completely aback, Irina finally managed to catch several of the drifting flakes in her hands. It was not snow, of course, but rather bits and pieces of shell. Spralaker shell.

Her reverie was interrupted by the chirupping arrival of two cephalopods considerably smaller than the leviathans who were driving the invading spralaker armies from the city and its surrounds.

“Good thing you sent us to look after the others, Master.” Floating before Oxothyr, Sathi was letting his arms do additional talking.

“Yes, they never would have made it without our intervention,” piped up a cheery Tythe from alongside his colleague.

“The thing was—well enough done,” Oxothyr conceded by way of grudging compliment.

Irina expected him to say much more, but that was not the shaman’s way. But if his words belied what he was feeling, the chromatophores in his skin did not. He turned a bright, congratulatory mauve as he shifted his position slightly to face the emissary Oultm.

“It is plain that I do not have to press you, noble one, for the details of your diplomacy, as the success of your efforts is self-evident.”

Fluttering his eight arms just enough to position himself in front of the two famuli, Oultm the envoy halted before the shaman. For all that he was significantly smaller, the emissary managed to appear no less impressive.

“As had been surmised, the task did not prove to be an easy one, esteemed mage. Normally of a gruff and solitary disposition, the great ones of our kind had gathered, as they do in one place only once a year, exclusively to mate. Needless to say they did not take kindly to our presence, to our persistence, or to our entreaties.”

“They talked of making us food!” Tythe blurted indignantly.

“Yes, quite,” murmured Oultm, dismissing the interruption. “Yet by dint of perseverance and, need I add, the execution of great skill …”

“Nearly got us executed,” Sathi muttered from behind him.

“… I was able to convince them that the danger of which you spoke, venerable Oxothyr, would ultimately expand to embrace and overwhelm even them, in all their solitude and strength. Better for all, for them as well as for their smaller relations and their ancient friends the mersons, to begin to confront that danger here, at Benthicalia.”

Arms drifting petal-like about his person, Oxothyr gazed thoughtfully at the diplomat. “But the danger of which I spoke involves a malevolence as yet unidentified, and may have nothing at all specifically to do with rampaging spralakers and their noxious ilk. That is why we need to consult the Deep Oracle.”

The envoy shrugged orange. “Yes, well, I left that bit out, you see. In diplomacy as in other endeavors, avoidance is not a lie.”

He would have said more, much more. After all, even the lowliest diplomat delights in the opportunity to elaborate on a triumph. But Oultm did not have the opportunity, as he soon found himself swarmed by jubilant mersons and elated manyarms anxious to offer their personal congratulations.

Beyond this and the many other pockets of joy that were springing up among those who realized that the city was saved, outside Benthicalia’s walls a slaughter had commenced on a scale not witnessed in Oshenerth since primeval times. What little she could see of it from her present high location left Irina appalled. Despite the depredations they had inflicted, she found herself feeling almost sorry for the fleeing spralakers.

Able to do little enough against free-swimming mersons and normal-sized manyarms, the besieging hardshell armies had no counter for the two species of gigantic squid. In their defense, neither would most any other creature in the sea. Tentacles like steel cables swept the ground clean of whole platoons of soldiers. Beaks powerful enough to bite through iron crushed the shells of the largest invaders. Tooth-lined suckers ripped fleeing fighters inside out, paving the battlefield with internal organs that had been pulled from their protective shells. From a distance the bobbing, weaving bioluminescent lights of the giant and colossal squid gave the battlefield the look of a nocturnal airport gone berserk.

The shrieks of the hundreds of dying were no less terrible for not being human.

O O O

Defeat came to the spralaker First Army on the cusp of its greatest victory. One moment its multitude, led by the acid-deploying barracuda and ghost crab strike force, had begun to swarm into and take the city. The next, all found themselves overwhelmed by prodigious horrors from the deep.

To Gubujul’s credit, though no master of battlefield tactics himself, he was quick to descry the catastrophe in the making. As soon as he saw the gargantuan manyarms descend upon and begin to wreak unstoppable havoc on his troops, he gave the order to flee and disperse. He did not wait for confirmation from his Mud Marshals. The critical avoidance of complete annihilation could not wait on an afternoon of respectful discourse. Nor did he hesitate to apply this universal ruling to himself. Gathering his personal staff around him and commandeering a squadron of crack reserve troops, he set off on a northeast heading at the maximum speed that could be made. He would deal with any recriminations and second-guessing later. Were he not to keep himself alive, he reasoned, he would not be able to participate in any such post-conflict discussions.

Certainly the logic of his flight was unassailable.

Bejuryar received word while he was trying to withdraw to join up with the Paramount Advisor and his unit. As he was retreating from the vicinity of the North Wall, the plain around him was suddenly thrown into bright relief. Along with the troops accompanying him he found his eyestalks tilting back as he looked upward.

Something was descending toward them. Back home in the northlands on certain especially clear nights, when the mirrorsky was at its most tranquil and transparent, he had witnessed a similar phenomenon. Ripples in the mirrorsky shattered the night light into a thousand shimmering points of radiance. It was a sight that delighted the eyes and pleased the hearts of all who were privileged to observe it.

Here at depth the resemblance to that grand vision now found itself echoed. Echoed, and transmogrified into a tangled, writhing horror that was soon ripping the legs and claws off screaming soldiers all around him. Scuttling to find a way clear, shoving and pushing his way through ranks of terrified troops, the Mud Marshal sought to escape the hook-lined arms that reached and tore and eviscerated. Turning wildly, he caught a brief glimpse of a glowing blue-green eye that was bigger around than his shell was broad.

Then something angry and irresistible yanked his eyestalks out of his body, purging him of both vision and consciousness.

Though smaller than many of the fighters who were fleeing all around her, Taww dug her short but strong legs into a small thumb of rock that protruded from the plain and tried to rally them. Her efforts were futile. No shouted words, no furious commands, no orders no matter how forcefully delivered could stem the rout. Discipline within the First Army of the Northlands had imploded completely. It had become every hardshell for themselves.

Occasionally and in desperation she would thrust the long, curved knife gripped in her left claw at random into the fleeing rabble. Such warning thrusts did nothing to slow the retreat or stem the panic.

“Cowards!” she screeched. “Abandoners of eggs, deserters of burrows! Fugitives and renegades! Stand and fight! Are the claws of the First Army now good for nothing but the scraping of algae from rocks?”

A surge of displaced water nearly knocked her off the mound, but she held tight to the top of the small finger of rock. Dropping down in front of her was an enormous tangle of arms lined with razor-edged suckers. Several of the tentacles were already engaged in the gruesome task of separating spralaker soldiers from their limbs. One arm lunged toward her. Springing to one side and out into the water column, she deflected the strike with her knife. The massive questing appendage slid past.

It was so unjust, she reflected as she found herself floating free, to suffer this loss at the very moment of victory. Bringing the monsters of manyarm kind into the fray was unfair. So of course was the use of magic, the employment of which by the Great Lord’s Paramount Advisor had been a key component of spralaker strategy. One invidious turn deserved another, she supposed. Continuing to parry and block the coiling tentacle that searched for her, she did not see the even more massive hunting arm that came curling around behind. Probably it was just as well.

It cracked her like an egg.

Of the three Mud Marshals who constituted the First Army’s general staff, only Cavaumaz escaped to join up with Gubujul’s force. Seriously reduced in strength, remnants of both the First and Second armies gradually gathered around their surviving leaders in straggling northeastward toward home. Each exhausted soldier had left many comrades and fellow fighters behind, usually in bits and pieces. The battlefields to the north and west of still unconquered Benthicalia were littered with the limbs and shells of the dismembered.

Only when they were many days march out from the defiant city did the Mud Marshal find the strength of spirit to speak to the Paramount Advisor.

“What will you do when we get home?” Looking nervously back over his shell, Cavaumaz added, “Assuming the monsters do not pursue and we succeed in safely reaching the northlands.”

“Do?” Skittering along on slender, fragile, but still intact legs, Gubujul turned a doleful eye on the tactician. “I will beg for my life, of course. As will you and any other survivor of rank. I would expect we will all end up as part of a ceremonial meal in the palace.” One long, red-banded arm gestured in Cavaumaz’s direction. “I will be honored by being a component of the main course. I fear you will have to be satisfied with being relegated to the rank of appetizer.”

Cavaumaz did not look flattered. “You think it will be as bad as that?”

“As bad?” Bubbles burst from the Paramount Advisor’s mouth as he failed to contain his laughter. “Why, that is my most optimistic assessment of our prospects, respected Marshal! More likely and much worse, we will be kept alive for the amusement of those who charged us with the success of this unfortunate enterprise.” Like the bulk of the two spralaker armies, the laughter soon died. “But even that, I fear, is still not the worst option.”

Though loath to hear the answer, a distraught Cavaumaz still found himself asking the inescapable question. “What might that be, Paramount Advisor?”

The stenopus turned to look more sharply at him. “At the Great Lord’s discretion, we will be given to Sajjabax. I would far, far rather be consigned to the tender mercies of the kitchen or the torture chamber than to the exquisite ingenuity of the mad mage.”

Cavaumaz swallowed hard. “Perhaps it lies within the demented wizard’s province to prove merciful?”

“Yes,” murmured Gubujul. “I am as confident of that as I am that when word of our final disposition is received, I will be sure to take steps to kill myself in as painless and expedient a manner as possible. You might consider preparing your own demise. One option would be to offer yourself up to the beaks of the manyarms before chancing the benevolence of the black-shining Sajjabax.”

Cavaumaz was silent for awhile, still sneaking furtive glances back the way they had come. “We had no chance against them, did we?”

Gubujul gestured wearily. “Just one more day and we would have overrun the city, dealt with its inhabitants, and ensconced ourselves so thoroughly in its maze of passageways and buildings that not even the greatest and most powerful of the manyarms could have rooted us out. One more day.” For the first time, he joined the Marshal in looking back in the direction of the distant city.

“Though diplomacy and protocol are more my métier, I have discovered that war is much like the currents that surge through all of Oshenerth. Never take anything about them for granted, for on a moment’s notice they can sweep you up and carry you away, smash you against the rocks, or spin you into the center of a maelstrom from which you may not be strong enough to extricate yourself. Nothing about a strong current is predictable or certain.”

“The judgment of the Great Lord …,” Cavaumaz began plaintively.

“No.” Gubujul lengthened his stride slightly to take advantage of the slight following current. “That much, at least, is certain. Unless …”

Though he knew his chances of surviving the fallout from the rout at Benthicalia lay somewhere on the downside of nil, the Paramount Advisor found himself beginning to plan, and to scheme. It was not in his nature to go quietly into the Empty Water.

An aide, all fluttering arms and quivering palps, intruded on his meditating. “Your pardon, Paramount Advisor, but we should increase our efforts to depart from this place.”

“Why?” Cavaumaz had enough strength left for contempt. “The battle for Benthicalia is over. We have lost. There is no need now for haste. Only for recrimination.”

The smaller crustacean inclined his body forward as a sign of respect, but a hint of defiance crept into his tone. Defiance, and dread. “Your pardon, my lord, but there is. The sharks who have been waiting Outside are now coming to seek the reward for their patience.” One claw, trembling visibly, pointed out into the darkness. The darkness that was closing in inexorably around the ragged lines of exhausted, retreating troops. Wounded, bleeding troops.

“There are thousands of them, my lord.”

O O O

Though it was a long way indeed from battered Benthicalia to the great volcanic palace of the northlands, the illustrious and all-conquering Lord Kulakak did not have to wait for a herald to bring official word of the total defeat of his armies. All that was necessary was for him to confront the tightly restrained figure of Sajjabax where the mage was held captive in his alcove.

“Things are not going well,” the wizard informed his master. “I sense panic and alarm, terror and dread.” There was almost a hint of amusement in the mage’s sepulchral voice. “It would seem that Benthicalia is not to become the summer residence you so ardently desired.”

“Nor yours, remember,” a quietly raging Kulakak growled. His great claws clenched and opened, clenched and opened. He longed for a shell to crush, an eye to put out, but none were at hand. Obtaining them was not difficult, but would take at least a moment or two, and would mean terminating his dialogue with the mage. Ordering up a sacrificial outlet for his fury would have to wait until later.

“It’s the fault of that wretched, worthless advisor of mine. I should never have put him in overall command. I should have opted for ability over trust.”

“Everything I perceive tells me that this setback is not the fault of the cunning and loyal Gubujul.” Striking out with both main claws, Sajjabax attempted to kill the Great Lord. Though deep in thought Kulakak was not so preoccupied, however, as to let himself drift within range of the mage’s murderous arms. The lethal cavitation unleashed by Sajjabax’s double blow dissipated through the water long before the heat and pressure generated could do little more than tickle the Great Lord’s shell. The conversation continued as if the blatant attempt at murder had not taken place.

“If the catastrophe is not the responsibility of the Paramount Advisor, then what?” Kulakak was as determined to know the reason for defeat as he would have been for the victory that was evidently not to be. “The First and Second armies of the northlands were strong, their leaders brave, the general staff of both suitably determined and experienced. What happened to bring about so complete a humiliation?”

“All is not transparent.” Since he had no eyelids, it was never possible to tell what the enchanter Sajjabax was actually looking at. “In the confusion of defeat, there is contusion of perception. It clouds my vision. But one thing I do see clearly.” On their stalks, his singular eyes inclined slightly forward and down.

“There is another magician.”

That got the Great Lord’s attention. “The mersons and the manyarms have a wizard of their own?”

“Not a true mage, I think.” Unusually, Sajjabax was showing signs of strain. “A shaman. A simple rural practitioner of tricks and dispenser of potions. I cannot clearly divine the extent of his participation, but there is no doubt he is in someway connected to the disaster. There are others as well. Because of their great age I dismissed them as irrelevant. It is now become clear that while very old indeed, they are not wholly senile, and that at least some of their powers are retained. And,” he paused, clearly struggling with the effort to see beyond the chamber, “there is something else. Something more. Or possibly something less. I cannot tell. Not—yet.”

Kulakak’s tone was grim. “Go on.”

“I think it is, I believe it may be, some sort of—changeling. Its full involvement in the affairs of Oshenerth I cannot clearly glimpse. A strange creature, at once female and strong, if oddly conflicted. Weak-seeming, and yet …” He went silent.

“And yet?” the Great Lord prompted him.

But the mage had gone quiescent, overcome once more by the madness that ebbed and flowed within him like a tide, revealing sometimes coherence and most of the time a hushed incomprehensibility. Frustrated, Kulakak turned and scuttled slowly away.

What now? he asked himself. What to do now that the intended cleansing of the southern reefs had been brought to a sudden and ignominious standstill? In the stillness of the palace and the shutdown of Sajjabax he found that he yearned for Gubujul’s counsel. Had the Paramount Advisor escaped the calamity? What should be done with him if he returned to the capital? Kulakak knew that he needed the smaller spralaker’s advice as never before. He also knew that upon setting eyes on the advisor he would be hard-pressed to keep from dismembering him one joint at a time.

He shrugged it off. Revenge was for the weak-minded, for those who could not control their emotions. For those who could not see the greater picture. And that picture showed him, as it had for some time now, that the south must somehow be conquered. Must be taken for the greater glory not only of Kulakak but for all spralakers.

Because if they did not vanquish the mersons and manyarms who controlled the southern reefs and take it for themselves, he and his kind were most surely doomed to a slow, lingering, and inevitable death.

O O O

Only the outside of the Palace of the Tornal had been damaged. The intricately decorated interior, with its fluctuating bioluminescent lights and fluted silicate embellishments and gleaming reflective surfaces, was still intact.

So, it seemed, were the Tornal themselves. Looking on as they lumbered or dragged themselves laboriously out into the audience chamber, Irina counted carefully and could find none absent.

The ammonite who served as Speaker trundled slightly out front of the others, pulling herself along with her strong tentacles. Her coiled shell glistened with recent attention. Speeches would have to be given. Celebrations were anticipated. Congratulations had to be extended. The Tornal were not looking forward to it.

But first another obligation need be discharged.

The Speaker entwined tentacles with Oxothyr. “To your intervention we owe our continued existence.”

The shaman dismissed the compliment. “It was your diplomat who persuaded the great deep ones to come to the salvation of the city.”

“And it was the escort provided by the village of Sandrift that enabled Oultm to carry out his mission,” declared a beautifully striped orthocera from nearby.

At the mention of their home, those mersons and manyarms in attendance let out a soft, concerted bubbling, the underwater equivalent of a collective sigh. Irina could only envy them. It appeared they would have a home to return to, one likely to be safe from any immediate future depredations by spralakers of any kind. Not only could she not return to her home, she did not even know where it was. Pushing the depressing thought aside, she tried to concentrate on the ceremony at hand. The Speaker for the Tornal was coming to the point that had brought Irina and her newfound friends to Benthicalia in the first place.

“What would you claim as reward?” the ammonite burbled. “Insofar as we have it; food, medium of exchange, supplies of any sort, they are yours for the asking. If it’s a parade you wish, or acclamation of another kind, it will be done. Should you require …”

Sensing that the recitation of offerings could go on for quite some time, Oxothyr twisted a pair of arms in a certain fashion and made so bold as to cut the speaker off.

“We require only that for which we originally chose to visit your wondrous city, venerable speaker. The answer to a question that will hopefully allow us to seek the answer to a question. The information that, if you recall, I was on the verge of requesting from you when word first came of the spralaker offensive.”

Bemused, the Speaker eyed her companions. “As with food, acclaim, or anything else that is to be found in our community, if we have this knowledge then it is yours for the asking.”

Oxothyr turned a rich shade of indigo marked with bright yellow spots. The effect was striking. Looking on, Glint knew he could never have equaled it.

“We need to find the Deep Oracle, and have not the faintest notion of where to begin searching.”

A murmur rose from the assembled Tornal. Listening intently, Irina felt she could make out no hint of dismay. They were simply debating the matter among themselves. The buzz of communication, she decided, bode well for the eventual response. It was not long in coming.

“We have discussed your request,” the Speaker announced, “compared knowledge, and processed remembrances. By all accounts and based on what is known at present, the Deep Oracle should be keeping to itself somewhere in the vicinity of the Pinnacle of Clariondes.”

A ripple ran through Oxothyr’s entire mantle. “I know the place. I have never been there, but I recall more or less where it is. Thank you, masters of arcane seeking. That is all we needed to know.” Pivoting in the water, he turned to leave and to take his friends and escort with him. Halting in the midst of the attentive gathering of fighters from Sandrift and Siriswirll, he paused to look back.

“If it would not be too much to ask, we could use some replenishing of our supplies. From here to the Pinnacle of Clariondes is a fair distance.”

“A very fair distance,” agreed another of the aged orthoceras.

“Considerably more than a fair distance,” commented a weathered ammonite sagely.

With a fluttering of her multiple arms, the Speaker indicated that she concurred with these opinions. “If there is anything more we can do …”

“Everything’s well enough done,” declared a curt voice from behind and apart from the group of visitors. Irina did not have to turn to identify the owner of the voice that had rudely interrupted. Chachel continued. “We’re finished here. Let’s get moving.” Without waiting for comment or response and accompanied by an equally fast-moving Glint, he turned and swam for the outer hallway.

“He is so impolite!” affirmed Poylee admiringly as she kicked hard to try and catch up to the hard-swimming hunter and his manyarm companion.

“And tactless,” added Sathi from where he and Tythe flanked the patiently retiring Oxothyr.

“Brave, courageous—and utterly devoid of discretion,” agreed the other famulus readily.

Irina considered joining Poylee but decided against it. Though she was an excellent swimmer whose magically augmented hands, feet, and legs had increased her speed remarkably, even on her best day she doubted she could keep pace with the irascible female merson. Instead, she found herself drifting closer to the more sedately leave-taking shaman and his supercilious famuli.

“So, Oxothyr, just how far away from Sandrift is this Deep Oracle we’re looking for?”

A black S-shaped pupil focused on her. “It matters not how far the Pinnacle of Clariondes lies from Sandrift, but how far it is from here. We are not returning to our homes.”

She was taken aback. “But I thought surely we would return, if only for a little while, so the fighters from there and from Siriswirll could spend some time with their friends and families before having to set out again.”

“Time is the one thing we do not have, Irina-changeling. The spralakers have been beaten here at Benthicalia. Where and when they may strike next remains a treacherous unknown.”

She considered that. “You think they’ll attack the city again?”

“Perhaps, or having been vanquished here they may choose to concentrate their efforts elsewhere along the reefs. It does not matter. The spralakers are a sideshow.”

Irina thought of the thousands on both sides who had just died or been maimed both within and outside the walls of Benthicalia. “Sideshow” was not a description she would have used to depict what she had just seen and experienced. Spreading her arms wide, she took in their immediate surroundings and by implication the rest of the city beyond.

“If this was nothing but a sideshow, then what do you consider a real danger?”

“That which comes this way and that I cannot discern. That which in order to identify we must seek the insight of the Oracle.” His gaze rose past her, to focus on something beyond her ken. “That which chills me in the dark and to which I can as yet assign neither description, meaning, or name.” A kindly arm snaked reassuringly around her.

“But come now. This is all new to you, and you must not fear the new but rather embrace it. The more you open yourself to the realworld, the more you will be infused with its meaning and beauty.”

“I’m trying,” she told him as they swam along together. “I’m really trying. Because I know,” she choked slightly, “I know I might never get home again, and that I might have to spend the rest of my life here.” She took a deep breath and forced a smile. “It’s a good thing I like the water.”

“How could one not like the water?” Tythe wondered from nearby. “The water is the world, and the world is water.”

“Not entirely.” Oxothyr corrected his famulus gently. “There is also the void.”

Showing his opinion of that, Tythe went black all over and let out a snort of ink.

“We cannot expend the time to return to Sandrift or Siriswirll,” the shaman explained as they left the audience chamber behind, “because the Deep Oracle does not long remain in any one place. It moves around. The Tornal’s best guess is that it is presently to be found somewhere near the Pinnacle of Clariondes. I do not know about your world, but Oshenerth is a very big place. Linger here or anywhere else too long to recuperate and celebrate and we might lose forever our one opportunity to seek out the Oracle’s counsel. Without it,” he concluded, “I do not feel that I can identify the true nature of the greater menace that threatens us all. And if I cannot identify it, then I most surely cannot foresee a way to counter it.”

She was silent for a long while, until they emerged from the palace back out into the crazy quilt of passageways that threaded the city from its uppermost level to the twenty-sixth one far below.

“It’s that bad?” she finally ventured softly.

“I fear so. The very order of existence is in danger of being upturned. We must seek to right it.”

A new thought struck her. “Why us? Why you? Why not the Tornal, or others better placed or more powerful or more experienced?”

“Because,” he explained to her as one would to an infant, “we do not know if anyone else, anywhere, has perceived it, and as I just informed you, we do not have the time to seek, ask, and look around to learn if anyone else has. We must proceed as if we are the only ones to have acquired this painful information. Those who acquire knowledge,” he finished, “are condemned to act upon it.”

That seemed to satisfy her. Or at least, she asked no more questions. Not that day, or the next, or on up to the time they finally took their leave of Benthicalia.

It was just as well that she did not, Oxothyr mused. Had she pressed further, he would have been compelled by various self-imposed oaths and promises to answer her to the best of his ability, even when he believed that to do so might not be in her best interest.

After all, how could he explain to her that despite her lack of abilities relevant to the present desperate situation he felt she was somehow destined to play a critical role in the hopeful resolution of the forthcoming crisis?