The Red Wolf Conspiracy

by Robert V. S. Redick

  Neeps shook his head. “Druffle's back. Think he's missed us much?”

  “I doubt it,” said Pazel. But he was thinking: Caught off-guard by whom?

  The day was brilliant and clear—except for those strange clots of mist, which seemed to prowl willfully among the offshore wrecks. Suddenly the cage picked up speed. Pazel steadied himself, then turned to look at the barge. Volpeks were straining at the capstan, two men to each bar. They were winding in the chain, winching the bathysphere up to the surface again. That's some job, he thought.

  “Up here, lads and ladies.”

  Ten heads swiveled up. A Volpek crouched atop their cage, waving. He could only have come from the higher masts of the vessel behind them, but no one had heard him climb aboard. His round, bald head put Pazel in mind of a sunburned ape. He gave them a rascally grin.

  “The Red Wolf!” he said. “That's your goal. Silver is sweet and gold is gravy, but we must find that red iron wolf, come storm or sunstroke. Not one of us is going home without it, see? So don't leave behind anything that might have paws. That's rule number one.

  “Rule number two is stay alive. The sphere has plenty of air, but you can only take one chestful at a time down into the wreck. Search your hearts out, and when you can't hold your breath any longer, give three tugs on your rope. Then watch out! We'll haul you in faster than you can say ‘drowned doggy’!

  “At the end of your ropes you'll find a sack, a ring and a hook. Little treasures go in the sack. Big stuff you wrap up tight with rope. Then clip the hook to the ring and give two tugs—just two, for merchandise—and don't forget to hold on yourself!

  “You'll see the keel of the Lythra soon as you reach the seabed. The rest of her's spread out east of here, or maybe north. She wedged between two rocks, see, and at some point the tides just snapped her in two. Her innards have been washing about these forty years.”

  He paused, then gave a smile of forced good cheer. “As to the little matter of sea-murths: rubbish! Fishwife talk! There ain't been murths in the Nelu Peren for over a hundred years! Mankind's rooted 'em out. You'll do better to worry about tanglin' your line in sharp coral, or that blary weed. It's easy to get lost in a kelp forest, and this sort—ribbon kelp—is the worst of all. Greenery's worse than ghosts, mark my words.”

  His speech was interrupted by shouts from the barge. Men were crowding around the dive portal, waving encouragement to those working the capstan. The latter threw themselves into a final shoulder-straining heave, and with a sound like a breaching whale the bathysphere rose from the hull portal. Water gushed from it; long ribbons of weed trailed back into the sea. To bring such a thing here! Pazel thought. In secret! Along with wagons, three ships, maybe a hundred men. All for an iron wolf?

  As they drew nearer, a rope ladder dropped from the bottom of the sphere. A man on deck caught the trailing end and secured it to the crane. At once a line of youths began to descend. They were shaking and slow. All looked rather ill. When they reached the deck they let themselves collapse.

  Next to emerge were baskets of the kind of loot the Volpeks had been busy with ashore. These were handed up into a separate cage on the shorebound side of the pulley system. Then it was the newcomers' turn.

  The bald Volpek climbed down the outside of their cage. “Stand back!” he cried, and kicked the trapdoor open with his foot. A man tossed him the end of another rope ladder. It ended in a pair of short ropes, and these he tied swiftly to the bars of the cage. Then, “Down! Down!” he cried. “Don't make me step on your fingers!”

  Down they went, swaying and lurching. Pazel saw now that at the bottom of the bathysphere was a lidless hole some eight feet across. On deck the prisoners huddled together. None of those who had come from the bathysphere had yet stood up.

  The Volpeks formed them into a line, toes to the edge of the dive portal. The last baskets were lowered from the sphere, and yet another ladder followed.

  “Climb,” they said.

  Up again, into the dark mouth of the bathysphere. As Pazel stuck his head and shoulders through the hole he felt strong hands seize him by the arms. Two mighty Volpeks, wearing only loincloths and knives, pulled him up into the metallic gloom. It was clammy and cold. A bad echo distorted every sound. There were nets strung along the walls, climbing-cleats, benches high overhead. From the apex of the sphere hung an assortment of pulleys and coiled ropes.

  Soon all the captives were seated inside. Each was handed a rope-end with the promised sack, ring and hook. The sacks had small holes to let the water through, drawstrings for sealing them tight. Pazel saw Marila slide a hand through her ring and push it up to her elbow. She caught his eye.

  “This way … can't drop it,” she seemed to be saying (the echo made it hard to be sure). “Lose your rope … never get back … all that weed.”

  “STOP TALKING!” bellowed their captors, who made themselves understandable by sheer volume. “HOLD ON TO THE CLEATS!”

  The sphere gave a little jerk, like a puppet on a string. And then it plunged. The sea appeared to leap straight up. There was a deafening boom, and water boiled to their ankles before being checked by the stoppered air. Through the windows they saw the walls of the dive portal, then the bottom of the sea barge and a dark blue-green immensity below. It was abruptly quiet. The captives gripped the cleats in trembling fists. The water in the sphere began to rise.

  “Swallow!” said Marila. “Over and over! Stretch your mouth wide or your ears will break!”

  She demonstrated. Pazel copied her, and saw that Neeps and the others were doing the same. The air was indeed growing heavy pressing in on Pazel's ears and nose and chest. The water passed their shins.

  Neeps was frowning, concentrating. In fact everyone was: even Mintu had decided there was no use in tears. Pazel looked out through the windows again. Nothing but blue water—and then, like green flames all around them, the weed.

  Ribbon kelp was the perfect name. The weed rose straight and thick, just inches between one flat frond and another. Pazel was surprised how delicate it looked, and how lovely. It glowed in the midday sun, but because it grew so straight the rays pierced the narrow gaps in long splinters of light. Small fish and tiny translucent shrimp darted everywhere. Yard after gentle yard spooled out before his eyes.

  Sudden cold: the water had reached his waist.

  “SWIM UP TO THE BENCHES!” roared the Volpeks. “DON'T DROP YOUR BLARY ROPES!”

  When over half the sphere had filled with water, and all the youths were huddled on the benches, their descent stopped. Pazel looked down through the bathysphere's open mouth: was that sand, thirty or forty feet below?

  He had little time to wonder. His captors were screaming again. “STAY CLOSE TO YOUR MATES, BUT NOT TOO CLOSE. IF YOUR LINES CROSS EVERYBODY DROWNS.”

  With those words a Volpek handed Mintu a dark stone. The boy nearly dropped it, startled by its weight, and Pazel realized it was a lead sinker. Then the Volpek grabbed Mintu's arm, yanked him from the bench and dropped him. Rope trailing, eyes fixed on his sister, he vanished below.

  Marila did not wait to be yanked. She grabbed another sinker and pushed off from her bench. Seconds later she too was gone. Neeps looked Pazel in the eye.

  “Right,” he said, feeling above him for a sinker, “let's get this over with.” And he jumped as well.

  Pazel had thought himself scared all along, but now he realized his fear had scarcely begun. His heart raced. Couldn't he just sit here quietly? There were six other divers. Maybe he would be picked last. Maybe someone would find the Wolf quickly and he'd never have to dive at all.

  But Neeps and Marila and Mintu were already below. He could never face them—face Thasha—if he crouched there, hoping to be spared. He coiled the rope over his shoulder. Do it now or the fear will stop you. He picked up a sinker. He took a last, huge breath and jumped.

  Suddenly events (or his mind, or both) sped up. The sinker dragged him straight down through the mouth of the sphere. The kelp engulfed
him, the sandy bottom rushed upward. Where was the wreck? He was spinning, helpless, the rope scraping his arm. He would not even find the Lythra, let alone any part of her cargo, before his breath ran out.

  Darkness—pitch darkness! He looked up in terror. Had he fallen into a cave? Then, just as suddenly, the light returned and he saw what had occurred. A surge of current had bent the kelp over, like prairie grass in the wind. Strand against strand, it had blotted out the sun. As soon as the surge passed it straightened, and the light flooded down.

  It happened again. Darkness, light. Why hadn't anyone warned them?

  Then, forty feet under the bathysphere, he saw it: a great black timber on the seabed. It was weed-wrapped and barnacle-chewed, but unmistakably a sternpost. Pazel dropped the sinker and swam for it. There, and there! Other divers' ropes, vanishing in the weeds. He kept his distance. His lungs were aching already. The timber pointed like a finger through an opening in the kelp, and as Pazel kicked through the gap, an awe-inspiring vision met his eyes.

  The Lythra sprawled before him, cracked open like an eggshell. But no—it was just the stern half, snagged on a jagged rock. It was as if monstrous hands had torn the ship in two. But where had the bow section gone?

  Darkness, light. He could see Neeps, swimming low beside the wreck, his eyes scanning this way and that. Pazel followed, and in a moment his fingers touched the hull. A gunport lay open before him. Inside, a crusted lump, the cannon. He was almost out of breath.

  Darkness.

  He put his hand through the gunport, feeling.

  Something moved. Pazel let out a mouthful of bubbles. It was a leathery creature, and it shot away from him into the depths of the ruined gun deck.

  Light.

  Fish or shark or otherwise, it was gone—and so was Pazel's breath. He flailed for his rope. He had waited too long, couldn't possibly make it back. He gave three tugs.

  All he recalled of his rescue by the Volpeks was the slap of weeds against every part of his body. When he entered the sphere, hands reached down and tore kelp in bunches away from his face.

  “SPIT OUT THE WEEDS!”

  He spat out the weeds. The men propped him on a bench just out of the water, where he gagged and wretched. They looked in his empty bag and frowned.

  “NEXT TIME, START SWIMMING THE MINUTE YOU JUMP.”

  Next time? Pazel thought he'd be ready in about a week. Lying stunned on his bench, he saw Marila sitting across the sphere, watching him with those unreadable eyes. Mintu lay beside her, looking ill. The weed-darkness fell on them again, and when it passed the men had a writhing ball of kelp between them. Neeps. He blew a mouthful of water in a Volpek's face.

  “Creatures!” he gagged. “Strange creatures … murths!”

  “THERE ARE NO MURTHS IN THE QUIET SEA!”

  More divers were hauled in. One had tied a whole sea chest up in his rope. Another held up a cast-iron skillet, which a Volpek tossed angrily back into the water.

  Two boys did not return at all. The men hauled in their ropes and found only weeds attached to the hook and ring. Nothing had broken. It was as if they had simply let go.

  On their second dive, Pazel and Neeps kept each other in sight. They got much farther, too, for they swam for the wreck the instant they jumped. Pazel saw now that there were paths through the kelp forest: neat paths, almost like roads. In a flash of light he peered down one long avenue and thought he saw colonnades, and statues of men or animals, and moving shadows that were not cast by the kelp. But there was no time to linger. Greatly afraid, he made himself enter the wreck.

  Inside was a terrifying chaos. The forces that had cracked the Lythra in two had also swept through her, blowing cannon through bulkheads, wrapping chains around masts, impaling skeletons on broken beams. There were skulls rolled into cabinets and wedged behind doors. There were skeletal hands in barrels, and clouds of silt, and an obscene fanged fish that lunged each time the darkness fell. Pazel struck at it desperately with his hook. How could anyone find a thing down there?

  When the two boys again returned empty-handed, the Volpeks exploded. “IF YOU DON'T FIND SOMETHING NEXT TIME, DON'T COME BACK AT ALL!”

  Neeps kicked the water into a froth. “You try it, you daft, ugly, bellyachin' baboons! Want to fight? Do you?”

  Just then Marila surfaced beside them with a hideous gasp. “Mintu … gone … he's gone!”

  She was in agony; she had been under twice as long as the boys. They had to hold her head above water.

  “Where did he go, Marila?” Pazel squeezed her arms. “Tell us where!”

  “The arch!”

  “I saw it!” Neeps cried. “That coral arch? Why the blazes did he go through there?”

  Marila gasped and sobbed. “Followed … couldn't find him … awful place—”

  Her whole body began to convulse. More irritated than concerned, the Volpeks tossed her onto a bench. Pazel and Neeps looked at each other. There was nothing to say. They were not ready to dive, but they had to. No one else would even try to save Marila's brother.

  Down they went for the third time. Pazel too had glimpsed an arch: an opening in a long, towering reef-wall, some distance from the Lythra. He couldn't imagine why Mintu would have passed through it. Had he glimpsed something beyond, a treasure he couldn't resist? Had he seen the Red Wolf?

  Pazel arrived a few strokes ahead of Neeps. He saw now that the arch was actually quite deep—a tunnel, in fact, about twenty feet long. Barely a yard between the roof and the seabed. Not tempting in the least, but Neeps was poking him as if to say, Swim, or get out of the way! He swam.

  It was worse than he feared. The tunnel floor bristled with sea urchins, black living pincushions whose spines burned like acid at the merest touch. There were also clots of translucent orange worms dangling from the roof, flexing sucker-like mouths. The only possible way through was the exact center, kicking fast lest one rise or sink, but at the same time keeping one's hands and feet very close. The orange worms writhed obscenely. The tunnel seemed to go on forever.

  Yet somehow Pazel emerged unscathed. Beyond was a sandy clearing, a meadow in the kelp forest, broken here and there by red coral and towering rocks. There was no sign of Mintu.

  Neeps emerged with pain in his eyes. Attached to his leg was a fat worm, already darkening with his blood. It took them several precious seconds to rip the creature loose, and a mouthful of Neeps' flesh went with it. Pazel looked at the wound, the suppressed horror in Neeps' face, the long cliff of coral stretching away left and right. This was madness. They had to go back right now, before their lungs burst and Neeps lost too much blood. Then Neeps went rigid. He grabbed Pazel's arm and spun him around.

  Half a dozen sea-murths were swimming their way, faster than sharks. They were the strangest beings Pazel had ever seen. They looked like humans, girls in fact, but their limbs curved and coiled like no human limbs, and the sun struck rainbow colors where it touched their skin. Long, white hair streamed behind them, and their eyes were luminous silver. Their clothes seemed wraps of milky light.

  In no time the boys were surrounded. The murth-girls had beautiful faces but very sharp teeth. Were they smiling? It appeared so, but did smiles mean friendship or menace to a sea-murth? In one sense it hardly mattered: they were out of air. They had failed Mintu, and would be lucky to escape with their lives. Pazel gestured at the tunnel: Now. Then a murth-girl touched his ankle, and the world changed.

  A feeling of golden bliss ran up Pazel's leg. He could breathe! He knew it instantly, and without the least fear opened his mouth and filled his lungs with water. It was as effortless as breathing air. One of the creatures must have touched Neeps as well, for there he was, mouth open, grinning like a perfect fool. Their hearing had changed, too: they could hear water rushing through crevasses, the squeak of eels, the growl of a passing drumfish. Above all, like a silver music, they heard the laughter of the murth-girls.

  “Look at them smile! They had even less air than the first ones!” />
  “I like these better. Almost grown, they are.”

  “Which one for a husband, Vvsttrk? He he he!”

  “That one is short enough for you. But the dark one likes you better, I think.”

  The boys trod water, back to back, as the murth-girls flitted about them in circles. Neeps put out his hands, laughing as the last bubbles of air escaped his mouth. Then a girl stopped face to face with Pazel. She had a teasing smile, and hundreds of tiny kulri shells braided into her hair. One delicate hand touched his face, and he knew somehow (the gold was rushing through him again) that it was the same girl who had touched him before.

  “Mine,” she said, and her sisters laughed.

  Then Pazel said, “Have you seen a small boy?”

  She was gone. They were all gone. Pazel had barely caught the murth-girls' looks of terror before they vanished into the kelp.

  Neeps turned to him angrily. “What did you do that for?”

  “Me?”

  “They just laid the sweetest magic I ever heard of on us, and you scare 'em off? What rude thing did you say?”

  “Nothing! Didn't you hear me?”

  “Sure,” said Neeps. “I heard, Skrreee—glik—glik—scrreeeeeeee!”

  “What?”

  “Come off it, Pazel. You were speaking Murthish.”

  Pazel covered his ears. Oh no.

  There it was: the purring. His Gift had started up again, and taught him their murth-tongue. But how long ago had it begun? All these days of noisy imprisonment, buzzing insects, storms. What if these were his last few hours—or even minutes?

  “Neeps,” he said, “you've got to listen carefully. I told you how my Gift works? How it always ends in a fit, where I can't talk or understand anyone, and those horrible noises blast me? Well, it's going to happen again.”

  “No worries,” said Neeps, who had calmed down already. “I'll take care of you.”

  “Don't let the Volpeks scream in my face! Tell 'em it's something natural, like the hiccups.”

  “The hiccups. Have you seen yourself, mate? Not even those boneheads will—Pazel, look!”