by Diane Duane
“Well, that way… no. But I bet you wouldn’t be so calm about it if it was you dying.”
“Me? Die?” Ed laughed again. “The Master-Shark eats the Silent Lord’s ‘Gift,’ you know, along with the Silent One. There’s immortality in all the sharks, in various degrees. But what good is immortality if you haven’t died first? And nothing in the Sea is deadly enough to kill me against my will.”
Something about Ed’s voice was making Nita curious. “What about with it?”
“Ah, but will must spread to the body from the mind. And after all the years I’ve lived in it, my body is too strong. All it wants is to eat, and live. And so it does; and I swim on. Immortality is of terrible power. It would take something more powerful yet to override it…”
Nita didn’t say anything.
“But all that being so,” Ed said, “for good or ill, I am the Destroyer. Being that, I might as well enjoy my work, might I not? And so I do. Would it help if I decided to be miserable?” There was actually a touch of humor in that cold, dry voice.
“No, I suppose not.”
“So I go about my work with a merry heart,” Ed said, “and do it well as a result. That should please you, I think—“
“I’m delighted,” Nita sang, under her breath.
“—for spells work best, you wizards tell me, when all the participants are of light heart and enjoying themselves. I’ll certainly enjoy eating you when the time comes ‘round.”
“Ed, that’s not funny.”
“It isn’t?” said the Master-Shark, looking at her.
Nita stopped swimming, letting herself coast for a moment. There was something odd about the way he’d said that— “Ed, what was that crack supposed to mean?”
The look Ed gave her was expressionless as ever. “The Silent Lord is pleased to jest with me,” he said.
“Ed!”
“Distress, distress, Sprat. Have a care.”
Ed was drifting closer again, and Nita kept herself as outwardly calm as she could. “Ed,” she said, slowly and carefully, “are you trying to say that you’re actually planning to eat me sometime soon?”
“The day after tomorrow,” said the Master-Shark in perfect calm, “if we keep to schedule.”
Nita couldn’t think of a thing to say.
“You seem surprised,” Ed said. “Why?”
It took Nita a few moments to answer, for her mind was boiling with sudden memories. S’reee’s great relief when Nita agreed to participate in the Song. Her repeated questions to Nita about whether she was sure she wanted to do this. The Blue’s silent, sad appraisal and approval of her. S’reee’s remark about the Silent Lord’s contribution to the Song being the most important of any celebrant—“the Silent Lord has the most at stake.” And the wording of the Celebrant’s Oath itself, with its insistent repetition and the line Nita had been so sure was ceremonial: “and I will blend my blood with theirs should there be need…”
Nita gulped. “Ed,” she said, “the Song, the whole thing… I thought it was just sort of, sort of a play…”
“Indeed not.” Ed seemed unconcerned by her terror. “There’s always blood in the water at the end of the Song. I am no wizard, but even I know that nothing else will keep the Lone Power bound. Nothing but the willing sacrifice, newly made by the Celebrant representing the Silent One — by a wizard who knows the price he is paying and what it will buy. The spells worked during the Song would be powerless otherwise, and the Lone Power would rise again and finish what It once began.”
“But—“ Off on her right, she saw Kit looking curiously at her. But at the moment Kit meant nothing to her, and neither did Ed, or the chill silver light dawning in the water, or anything else. The manual’s words, which she’d skimmed over so casually: those were what mattered now. The whale singing the Silent One then enacts the Sacrifice in a manner as close to the original enactment as possible, depending on the site where the Song is being celebrated. The shark singing the Pale Slayer then receives the Sacrifice… With frightful clarity she could remember sitting on the fishing platform off Tiana Beach and S’reee saying, “The Silent One dived into a stand of razor coral; and the Master-Shark smelled her blood in the water, and… Well…”
Nita started to swim, without any real idea of where she was going, or why she was going there. She went slowly at first, then faster. “Neets,” Kit was singing behind her, “what’s wrong, what is it?”
“HNii’t!” sang another voice, farther away. “Wait! What’s the matter?”
That voice she wanted to hear some more from. Nita wheeled about and hurtled back the way she had come, almost ramming Kit, and not caring, letting him get out of her way as best he could. S’reee saw Nita coming and simply stopped swimming. “S’reee!” Nita cried, one long note that was more a scream than a song. “Why didn’t you tell me!”
“Oh, HNii’t,” S’reee sang, desperate and hurried, “the Master-Shark is about — for Sea’s sake, control yourself!”
“Never mind him! Why didn’t you tell me!”
“About what the Silent One does?” S’reee said, sounding confused and upset as Nita braked too late and almost hit her too. “But you said you knew!”
Nita moaned out loud. It was true, just about finished with my reading, she remembered herself saying. Only one thing I don’t understand; everything else is fairly straightforward… And, I got it, S’reee, let’s get on with it… But the truth didn’t break her rage. “You should have made sure I knew what you were talking about!”
“Why?” S’reee cried, getting angry herself now. “You’re a more experienced wizard than I am! You went into the Otherworlds and handled things by yourself that it’d normally take whole circles of wizards to do! And I warned you, make sure you know what you’re doing before you get into this! But you went right ahead!”
Nita moaned again, and S’reee lost her anger at the sound and moaned too. “I knew something bad was going to happen,” she sang unhappily. “The minute I found Ae’mhnuu dead and me stuck with organizing the Song, I knew! But I never thought it’d be anything as bad as this!”
Kit looked from one of them to the other, somewhat at a loss. “Look,” he said to S’reee, “are you telling me that the whale who sings the Silent One actually has to die?”
S’reee simply looked at him. Nita did not look at him, could not.
“That’s horrible,” Kit said in a hushed voice. “Nita, you can’t—“
“She must,” S’reee said. “She’s given her word that she would.”
“But couldn’t somebody else—“
“Someone else could,” S’reee said. “If that person would be willing to take the Oath and the role of the Silent Lord in HNii’t’s place. But no one will. What other wizard are we going to be able to find in the space of a day and a half who would be willing to die for Nita’s sake?”
Kit was silent with shock.
“Anyway, HNii’t took the Oath freely in front of witnesses,” S’reee said unhappily. “Unless someone with a wizard’s power freely substitutes himself for her, she has to perform what she’s promised. Otherwise the whole Song is sabotaged, useless — can’t be performed at all. And if we don’t perform it, or if something goes wrong…”
Nita closed her eyes in horror, remembering the time the Song failed. What Atlantis couldn’t survive, she thought in misery, New York and Loni Island sure won’t. Millions of people will die. Including Mom and Dad, Dairine, Ponch, Kit’s folks—
“But the Song hasn’t started yet,” Kit protested.
”Yes, it has,” Nita said dully. That she remembered very clearly from her reading; it had been in the commentaries, one of the things she found strange. “The minute the first Celebrant takes the Oath, the Song’s begun— and everything that happens to every Celebrant after that is part of it.”
“HNii’t,” S’reee said in a voice so small that Nita could barely hear her, “what will you do?”
A shadow fell over Nita, and a third and fou
rth pair of eyes joined the first two: Hotshot, grinning as always, but with alarm behind the grin; Ed, gazing down at her out of flat black eyes, emotionless as stones. “I thought I sensed some little troubling over here,” said the Master-Shark.
Kit and S’reee held still as death. “Yes,” Nita said with terrible casualness, amazed at her own temerity.
“Is the pain done?” said the Master-Shark.
“For the moment,” Nita said. She could feel herself slipping into shock, an insulation that would last her a few hours at least. She’d felt something similar, several years before, when her favorite uncle had died. The shock had gotten Nita through the funeral; but afterward, it had been nearly two weeks before she had been able to do much of anything but cry. I won’t have that option this time, she thought. There’s work to be done, a Song to sing, spells to work… But all that seemed distant and unimportant to her, since in a day and a half, it seemed, a shark was going to eat her. Kit looked at Nita in terror, as if he suddenly didn’t know her.
She stared back, feeling frozen inside. “Let’s go,” she said, and turned to start swimming east-northeast again, their original course. “The Gray is waiting, isn’t she?”
By the sound of her way-song Nita could hear S’reee and Kit and Hotshot following after her; and last of all, silent, songless, came Ed.
I’m going to die, Nita thought.
She had thought that before, occasionally. But she had never believed it.
She didn’t believe it now.
And she knew it was going to happen anyway.
Evidently, Nita thought, Ed had been right when he’d said that belief made no difference to the truth…
The Gray Lord’s Song
They found the whale who would sing the part of the Gray in the chill waters about Old Man Shoals, a gloomy place strewn full of boulders above which turbulent water howled and thundered. The current set swift through the shoals, and the remnants of its victims lay everywhere. Old splintered spars of rotting masts, fragments of crumbled planks, bits of rusted iron covered with barnacles or twined about with anemones; here and there a human bone, crusted over with coral— Broken-backed ships lay all about, strangled in weed, ominous shapes in the murk; and when Nita and Kit and the others sang to find their way, the songs fell into the silence with a wet, thick, troubled sound utterly unlike the clear echoes that came back from the sandy bottoms off Long Island.
The place suited Nita’s mood perfectly. She swam low among the corpses of dead ships, thinking bitter thoughts — most of them centering on her own stupidity.
They warned me. Everybody warned me! Even Picchu warned me: “Read the fine print before you sign!” Idiot! she thought bitterly. What do I do now? I don’t want to die!
But “Any agreements you make, make sure you keep,” Tom had said — and though his voice had been kind, it had also been stern. As stern as the Blue s: “Nowhere does the Lone Power enter in so readily as through the broken word.”
She could see what she was expected to do… and it was impossible. I can’t die — I’m too young, what would Kit say to Mom and Dad, I don’t want to, it’s not fair! But the answer stayed the same nonetheless.
She groaned out loud. Two days. Two days left. Two days is a long time-Maybe something will happen and I won’t have to die.
“Stop that sniveling noise!” came a sharp, angry burst of song, from practically in front of her. Nita backfinned, shocked at the great bulk rising up from the bottom before her. The echoes of her surprised squeak came back raggedly, speaking of old scars, torn fins and flukes, skin ripped and gouged and badly healed. And the other’s song had an undercurrent of rage to it that hit Nita like a deep dive into water so cold it burned.
“How dare you come into my grounds without protocol?” said the new whale as she cruised toward Nita with a slow deliberateness that made Nita back away even faster than before. The great head and lack of a dorsal fin made it plain that this was another sperm whale.
“Your pardon,” Nita sang hurriedly, sounding as conciliatory as possible. “I didn’t mean to intrude—“
“You have,” said the sperm, in a scraping phrase perilously close to the awful sperm-whale battlecry that Nita had heard from Kit. She kept advancing on Nita, and Nita kept backing, her eye on those sharp teeth. “These are my waters, and I won’t have some noisy krill-eating songster scaring my food—“
That voice was not only angry, it was cruel. Nita started to get angry at the sound of it. She stopped backing up and held her ground, poising her tail for a short rush to ram the other if necessary. “I’m not interested in your fish, even if they could hear me, which they can’t — and you know it!” she sang angrily. “Humpbacks sing higher than fish can hear — the same as you do!”
The sperm kept coming, showing more teeth. “You look like a whale,” she said, voice lowering suspiciously, “and you sing like a whale — but you don’t sound like a whale. Who are you?”
“HNii’t,” Nita said, giving her name the humpback accent. “I’m a wizard. A human wizard—“
The sperm whale cried out and rushed at her, jaws wide. Nita arrowed off to one side, easily avoiding the sperm’s rush. “Spy! Murderer!” The sperm was howling, a terrible rasping song like a scream. It came at her again—
Again Nita rolled out of the way, her maneuverability easily defeating the other’s rage-blinded charge. “I may be a human,” she sang angrily, “but I’m still a wizard! Mess with me and I’ll—“
WHAM! The sperm whale’s spell hit her with an impact that made the displaced-water explosions of Kit’s shapechanges seem puny. Nita was thrown backward, literally head over tail, thrashing and struggling for control as she swore at herself for being caught off guard. The spell was a simple physical-violence wizardry, as contemptuous a gesture from one wizard to another as a slap in the face… and as much a challenge to battle as such a slap would have been from one human to another.
Nita went hot with rage, felt about for her inner contact with the Sea, found it, and sang — only three notes, but pitched and prolonged with exquisite accuracy to take the power of the other’s spell and turn it back on her tenfold. The spell and the water thundered together. The sperm whale was blown backward as Nita had been, but with more force, tumbling violently and trailing a song of shock and rage behind her.
Nita held still, shaking with anger, while S’reee and Hotshot and Kit gathered around her. “I’m all right,” she said, the trembling getting into her song. “But that one needs some lessons in manners.”
“She always has,” S’reee said. “HNii’t, I’m sorry. I would have kept you back with us, but—“ She didn’t go on.
“It’s all right,” Nita said, still shaking.
“Nice shot,” said a low scrape of song beside her ear, angry and appreciative: Kit. She brushed him lightly with one flank as a great pale shape came drifting down on the other side of her, eyeing her with dark-eyed interest.
“So,” Ed said, calm as ever, “the Sprat has teeth after all. I am impressed.”
“Thanks,” Nita said, not up to much more conversation with Ed at the moment.
Slowly they swam forward together to where S’reee was hovering in the water, singing more at than with the other whale. “—know you were out of bounds, Areinnye,” she said. “There was no breach of protocol. We came in singing.”
“That one did not,” said the sperm whale, her song so sharp with anger that it was a torture to the ears. “My right—“
“—does not extend to attacking a silent member of a party entering your waters within protocols,” S’reee said. “You attacked HNii’t out of spite, nothing more. First spite, then anger because she was human. We heard—“
“Did you indeed? And what else have you heard in these waters, you nursling wizard, you and your little playfellows?” The sperm whale glared at them all as they gathered around her, and the rasp of pain and hatred in her voice was terrible. “Have you seen my calf hereabouts? For all your m
agics, I think not. The whalers have been through these waters three days ago, and they served my little M’hali as they served your precious Ae’mhnuu! Speared and left to float belly-up, slowly dying, while they hunted me — then hauled bloated out of the water and gutted, his bleeding innards thrown overboard by bits and pieces for the gulls and the sharks to eat!”
When S’reee spoke again, her voice was unhappy. “Areinnye, I share your grief. It’s things like this that the Song will help to stop. That’s why we’re here.”
The sperm whale laughed, a sound both anguished and cruel. “What lies,” she said. “Or what delusions. Do you truly think anything will make them go away and stop hunting us, S’reee?” Areinnye looked with hatred at Nita. “Now they’re even coming into the water after us, I see.”
Kit glided forward ever so slowly, until he was squarely between Nita and Areinnye. “I guarantee you don’t know what she’s here for, Areinnye. She’s saving your life, along with those of a lot of others — though at the moment, in your case, I can’t imagine why anyone would bother.”
Areinnye made a sound at Kit that was the sperm-whale equivalent of a sneer. “Oh, indeed,” Areinnye said. “What could she possibly do that would make any difference to my life?”
“She is the Silent Lord for the Song,” S’reee said.
Areinnye turned that scornful regard on Nita. “Indeed,” the sperm said again. “Well. We are finally getting something useful out of a human. But she doubtless had to be compelled to it. No human would ever give up its life for one of us, wizard or not. Or did you trick her into it?”
Gently, hardly stroking a fin, Ed soared toward Areinnye. “Unwise,” he said. “Most unwise, wizard, to scorn a fellow wizard so — whatever species she may belong to. And will you hold Nita responsible for all her species’ wrongdoing, then? If you do that, Areinnye, I would feel no qualms about holding you responsible for various hurts done my people by yours over the years. Nor would I feel any guilt over taking payment for those hurts out of your hide, now.”