by Kevin Hearne
The cave was serene and beautiful as long as you didn’t look down at the floor of corpses and the clawed or writhing things feasting on them. I bet all that beauty was fed by the deaths of Seekers somehow and the soft glow of those plants was concentrated despair, fear, and desperation.
Outside the cave the water darkened, but something darted toward me in the gloom. I thought it was a bladefin at first, but it pulled up and resolved itself into a clothed woman in military colors. She was much younger than I, and when she waved and smiled, I suddenly remembered that I was acutely naked.
I hadn’t cared about diving into Bryn’s Lung naked, thinking I would be dead soon, but now I felt I might die of embarrassment.
She pointed up to the surface with one hand, wordlessly suggesting that we ascend, and I nodded. She offered her other hand, and I took it. Her grip was strong, and I soon discovered the reason as she pulled me up through the water not by swimming but by using her kenning to propel us. It was strange and exhilarating, moving that fast and feeling the ocean flow around us. When we broke the surface, we both took a moment to sheet the moisture away from our eyes, and she smiled again.
“Congratulations, sir! You’ve been blessed by the lord Bryn! You’re a Water Breather.”
“Thank you,” I said, because I couldn’t think of what else to say.
“I’m Gerstad Nara du Fesset, a rapid in the pelenaut’s service. I’m going to help you figure out your blessing, and then we’ll get you ashore and settled. What’s your name?”
I told her, and she said it was a pleasure to meet me.
“First, cup your hand like this and scoop out a handful of water,” she said, demonstrating. When I did so, treading water with the rest of my limbs, she continued. “I want you to focus on the water in your hand, not the water all around. Really concentrate on it and ask yourself if it’s clean. You should be able to tell.”
“Really?”
“Try it.”
It looked clean to me, just like any other handful of water, but I couldn’t tell anything special about it. “I don’t know. I guess it’s clean?”
Nara shook her head. I had guessed wrong.
“Then it’s dirty water,” I said, trying to recover. “Bad, naughty water.”
No smile, just a raised eyebrow. “You should know precisely what’s wrong with it.”
“I don’t. I’m sorry.”
“You’re not a hygienist, then. That means you’re one of the fast swimmers.”
“I am? I don’t think so, because down in the Lung I was terribly slow.”
“You wouldn’t have known yet. It takes a while to develop, and even if you did get it right away, you wouldn’t know how to access it. I’m going to teach you.”
“All right.”
“Think about putting on clothes—”
“I’ve been thinking about that since we met. Do you think we can get some?”
That earned a smile. “Soon; don’t worry. When you put on pants, you push your leg down as you pull the pants up. Both are happening, but the pushing is in the center moving in one direction while the pulling is on the outside moving in the other. That’s how you use your kenning to travel through water—you pull the water ahead of you down to your feet and then push up through the center, and you naturally move into the space ahead of you where you displaced water. So visualize your body as the foot moving through the pants leg or your fist pushing through the sleeve of a shirt. We actually call it sleeving. And what you want to do is focus on moving your center in the direction you want to go.”
“What, I just think about it and it happens?”
She pinched her fingers close together and squinted. “There’s a little more to it than that. Control takes lots of practice. But generating thrust, pulling and pushing water around? That’s mostly visualization and commitment now that water is your element.”
“Visualization and commitment?”
“It takes some energy on your part, just like treading water does. You’ll get tired after a while. Let’s try it. We’ll start with a fountain.” She pointed to her left, and a tight geyser of water jetted up from the surface of the ocean and continued. “See how there’s a little swirly depression around the base? That’s me pulling the water down, and then it pushes up in the center. Now you. Pick a place, visualize what you want and concentrate, pull the water down, and redirect it up.”
Still not believing that this was possible for me, I chose a spot off to my left and pictured the same sort of fountain that Nara had made, willing the water to form a whirlpool and then fountain up in the center. Nothing happened for a few seconds, and Nara encouraged me to keep trying, to be very clear with my visualization. And then something did happen, but on a larger scale than Nara’s petite fountain. The seawater circled and sucked down in a funnel the circumference of my head.
“Good! Now force the center up instead of down!” Nara said.
She made it sound so easy, but what happened instead was that the whirlpool collapsed and resulted in a sloppy splash instead of a tightly controlled jet.
“That was excellent!”
“It looked miserable.”
“I told you the control takes a lot of practice, and you’ll need to work on that. But now that you know it can be done, you can probably do it better, right?”
“I suppose so.”
“Great. So now you’re going to go much bigger, much stronger. You’re going to make yourself the focus of the energy and move through the water purely on the strength of your kenning. Visualize your center as a sphere just below your ribs but above your hips. That’s what you want to move. You’re going to pull the water down all around you and then push it up from underneath so that you rise up out of the water, like this.”
The gerstad spread her arms out flat on the surface of the ocean, and the water abruptly sucked down in a circle with her elbows marking the circumference. I could feel the water churning nearby, and then my jaw dropped open as a column of water shot her up bodily out of the ocean. She arched her back and flipped over, gracefully diving back into the water. When she resurfaced, we were both smiling.
“That was great,” I said.
“Now it’s your turn.”
“Oh, no …”
“You can do it. Your first attempt was quite strong, you know. You have a good visual mind. Keep your feet together, heels flat, and make the water propel you from there.”
It did look like fun, and I felt flattered that she thought I was ready so quickly. I spread out my arms, focused on imitating Nara’s feat, and tried to commit, as she put it, my energy to executing the maneuver. It happened more slowly at first, but once the water began to sink and swirl around my body, I was encouraged and committed even more strongly. I remembered to put my feet together just as the water gushed up and shot me high into the air, much higher than I wished to be: about ten lengths.
Panicked instead of graceful, I splayed my legs and waved my arms and remembered how very, very nude I was and that Nara was looking. I flailed and thrashed, but it was too late to gain some kind of form, and I hit the water far closer to the horizontal axis than the vertical. The expected sting of a belly flop didn’t happen, though. While there was definitely a slap of impact on the surface, the water felt like a cushion and a welcome and there was no pain. Another bonus of being blessed by the god of the sea.
When I resurfaced, Nara was laughing unabashedly.
“That was amazing!” she gasped. “Oh, I love my job sometimes.”
“You did that on purpose!”
“Yes, I did. Nothing better than the newly blessed who can’t control themselves.”
Wounded, I said, “Isn’t that kind of mean?”
“No, it’s hilarious. Look, I know you’re never going to be that undisciplined again, so don’t worry about that. And for you it’s a valuable lesson on the need to practice, to achieve that discipline. Power without control is useless. For me—well, look. I’m one of the people who has to
clean the skeletons out of Bryn’s Lung every so often. I need to get my laughs where I can.”
Since I hadn’t been hurt and she knew I wouldn’t be, I supposed it had been funny and I could laugh with her. She coached me for a while longer on how to direct myself through the water, and once I had demonstrated to her satisfaction that I could move in any direction and stop when she said stop, she had one more test for me.
“This is the last thing we need to do. After this we’ll go get you dressed and signed up in the pelenaut’s service. After all that you’ll be itching to get back in the ocean, trust me.” She pointed to another couple that had surfaced during my practice: some other rapid helping out the newly blessed. “We need to get out of the way for this. Follow me out a bit deeper.”
We sliced through the choppy waves for perhaps a hundred lengths at a moderate clip before she called a halt and we treaded water.
“Okay, face south from here. There’s nothing in your way, nothing you have to steer around. Open ocean but not so deep that you have to worry about the huge predators coming up from underneath. We are going to propel ourselves south as fast as we can. Try to keep up with me—no: try to beat me. If you do pass me and you feel yourself coming apart, stop immediately.”
“Coming apart? That’s a thing I have to worry about?”
“It’s not a bad thing—poor phrasing. I mean if you feel your body kind of letting go and you’re becoming one with the water to move faster through it, just stop. Really.”
“All right.”
“Dinner’s on me if you beat me.” She flashed a grin and then shot through the water without warning, sloshing me in her wake.
“Hey!” That wouldn’t slow her down, so there was only one thing to do: go that way, really fast.
The power rose faster now at my command, practice and confidence making visualization and execution nearly simultaneous. I didn’t think at first I could ever catch up because she was seriously moving through the water faster than a horse could run on land, but I kept willing myself to move faster and faster and committed my whole will to surpassing her, and the gap between us narrowed. In a minute my fists were even with her feet, and in the next five seconds I had surpassed her, my heels even with her fists. It was thrilling to slice through the water like that, vast plumes of spray arcing in our wake, moving much faster than most fish could swim, and I kept going, the ocean beckoning me forward, and I realized that I was grinning in the face of it, truly enjoying my life for the first time since hearing that Festwyf had fallen. But that thought triggered another cloud bank of rage in my brain, and I was no longer swimming for the pleasure of it or for a friendly contest but in rage against those who had taken my family, adding on speed in a desperate attempt to outrun my grief.
I knew something had gone wrong when the pressure of water against my fists abruptly ceased and I could no longer in fact see my hands in front of me. I stopped wishing to move forward, and something wrenched inside of me, a stabbing pain in my chest and a throbbing vibration behind my eyes as I slowed to a stop in the water and windmilled my arms to turn around. I felt exhausted and winded and wondered where Nara had gone. I checked that I was truly facing north, and I was: the coast lay off to my left now. Where was Gerstad du Fesset? Had she perhaps passed me without my knowledge? I turned to check the south sea again but saw nothing. Growing worried, I faced north again and was relieved to see the telltale spray of the rapid’s wake approaching. I sent up a fountain of water—a large but still quite sloppy one—to give her my location.
When she slowed herself and the water calmed around her, I said, “I like lobster for dinner.”
A sardonic nod. “Congratulations, Culland. You’re Brynlön’s newest tidal mariner.”
“What?”
“Only thing faster than a rapid is a tidal mariner. That’s how we test. How are you feeling?”
“Worn out.”
She nodded. “Tapping into that speed will age you.”
“Is that the only difference between a tidal mariner and a rapid?”
“No, there are more. That’s just the easiest thing for us to test. We have a tidal mariner in the palace who will train you from here. Let’s head back, but at a slower pace, and we’ll get you some clothes finally.”
She led me back to Pelemyn and underwater near the palace. There was a locked hatch door near the ocean floor, and she spun the handle around and hauled it open. We entered and swam up through clear water through three more doors until we emerged in a pool inside the palace. A mariner was waiting nearby, and when she saw me, she plucked a robe off a hook and smiled, offering it to me. “Welcome, sir. Let’s get you dry.”
“Where are we?” I asked.
“You’re in the Wellspring of Brynlön,” Nara said, pulling herself out of the water and dripping on the marbled tile. “The pelenaut wants to meet all new tidal mariners immediately. Standing orders.”
“The pelenaut? I’m going to meet Pelenaut Röllend?”
Gerstad du Fesset reached for a towel and ran it over her closely cropped head, leaving the mariner to nod and smile at me. I hauled myself out of the water and put on the robe, feeling a chill develop in the air.
“You’ll want to practice doing this,” the gerstad said, and as I watched, the water soaking her uniform fairly leapt out of the fabric and dropped back into the pool, rendering the towel unnecessary.
“Definitely handy.”
The gerstad beckoned me to follow, and it was only a short distance to the front of the Wellspring, where a cluster of blue and white uniforms stood out against the coral of the wall and a sheet of water cascaded into the same narrow pond from which we had emerged. I felt underdressed. I couldn’t see the pelenaut, and my attention was so preoccupied with trying to see him that I didn’t realize the gerstad had stopped in front of me, and I ran into her.
“Oh! Sorry.” There was another woman in front of me who looked a few years my senior. Lines on her neck and face and a bit of gray at the temples. She had many shiny things on her uniform, and I had no idea what any of them meant.
“No harm done,” the gerstad said. “Culland du Raffert, I’d like to introduce you to Second Könstad Tallynd du Böll, our senior tidal mariner. She’ll be handling your training from here.”
We bowed to each other, and the Second Könstad thanked the gerstad for the introduction and dismissed her.
“Farewell, Master du Raffert,” Gerstad du Fesset said. “If you are free for that dinner later, you may find me at the garrison after 1500. Otherwise, another night.” She gave me a tight nod and spun on her heel, leaving me with the impressively festooned officer. My knowledge of the military was so minuscule that I had no idea what her rank meant except that it must be higher than gerstad.
“A new tidal mariner is very welcome! But you look a bit overwhelmed,” she said. “Not the kind of day you expected, is it?”
“No. Rather expected it to be my last day.”
Her nod was grim and understanding. “The queue for the Lung is long these days. Lots of people figuring they should have been taken with their families, and they see it as the honorable way out.”
It was so precisely what I felt that I welled up and looked away, wiping my eyes. “Yes. Excuse me.”
“Apologies. Who did you lose?”
“My family. In Festwyf.”
“I’m very sorry. I lost my husband—not to the Bone Giants but earlier. I know the sting of that pain. We can’t bring them back, but you’re in a position now to save the families of many others and perhaps exact a bit of vengeance if you wish it.”
“How?” The idea of revenge hadn’t occurred to me before—it seemed an impossibility—but now that she had suggested it, I found the concept attractive.
“Let’s get to that after we meet the pelenaut. He will simply welcome you and thank you for serving the country, so there’s nothing to worry about.”
I wasn’t sure that I wanted to serve the country or wear a uniform, but I also
didn’t have an inkling of what to do with my kenning otherwise.
Meeting the pelenaut was … intense. When a man whose attentions are pulled in so many directions forgets everything and focuses entirely on you, you feel the weight of that stare. He grabbed my hand with one of his and covered it with the other and pinned me with his eyes. “Culland! Culland. Welcome. And thank you. I know that people who dive into the Lung are often beset by many troubles, and I’m sure you’re no exception. But you are wanted and needed here, and I am so grateful that you are.”
My throat closed with emotion again at the unexpected kindness, and all I could manage was a nod. Seeing this, the pelenaut continued.
“You’re in excellent hands with Second Könstad du Böll. She’ll have you feeling comfortable in no time. I look forward to speaking with you again. We’re going to fix things and be prosperous again with your help.”
“Yes, sir,” I said. He seemed pleased with the affirmation, and his attention drifted to someone to his right with a uniform even shinier than the Second Könstad’s.
She gave me another smile. “Not so bad, was it?”
“No.”
“Come on, let’s get you settled.” She led me out of the Wellspring and to the garrison barracks, during which time I noticed that she favored her left foot, moving with a significant limp. People saluted her along the way, and she greeted them with nods and addressed them by rank: Mariner. Sarstad. Mynstad. Gerstad. This intensified inside the barracks themselves, but she spoke between all the salutes. “You’re going to be a gerstad so that no one can really order you around except me, Könstad du Lallend, or the pelenaut. At the same time, we’re not going to be having you ordering a lot of people around either. You have a military rank, but as a tidal mariner you’re not really part of the land or naval forces like the rapids or hygienists. You are a force all by yourself and act alone. Everyone understands that.”
“I didn’t know that, but I guess I do now.”