Sorry for the delay--one this long probably won't happen again. Many thanks to those who reviewed. Regarding gopher's unsigned review, this story is not based on any story or movie other than Deep Wizardry by Diane Duane. And speaking of which:
What you recognize is not mine.
I hope you enjoy the chapter. Please review.
He met S'reee and Hotshot in the water off Tiana Beach, but kept silent after their cursory greeting until Kit and Nita joined them. The dolphin and three whales greeted each other warmly—as warm-bloods did—and talked of the plans for the day before setting out. He was a little disappointed that Nita did not greet him as well. He could care less about Kit, but he'd been expecting at least casual words from someone who had surprised him so much the previous day. Perhaps he had misjudged her?
"You are silent today, and you did not greet me," he observed to her as they swam. "Is this courtesy to another celebrant?"
She glanced at him edgily. "Good morning, Ed."
"Oh, indeed. You're bold, Sprat," he laughed, but then made a more sober realization. "And the boldness comes of distress. Beware lest I be forced to hurry matters, so that we should have even less time to get acquainted than you seem to desire." And really, what was it with this desire? For a human, it seemed rather morbid to want to get to know your executioner.
"That was something I was meaning to ask you about. This 'distress business—'"
"Ask, Sprat." It had been at least ten Songs since he'd entertained questions.
"You said before that it was your 'job' to end distress where you found it . . . "
Was there a reason for the pause? Ah, yes—"You are wondering who gave me the job. Perhaps it was the Sea itself, which you wizards hear speaking to you all the time." She looked doubtful. Like many warm-bloods, she seemed to think 'good' was equated with 'painless.' He decided to correct the notion, urging her to look more closely at the world she was trying so desperately to save.
"Those are just dumb creatures, though. They don't think. You do—and you enjoy what you do." It was almost an accusation.
"So? How should I not?" he said bluntly. "Like all my people I'm built to survive in a certain fashion . . . and it's only wise to cause what you build to feel good when it does what it must to survive." He expounded on what the humans called Darwinism, justifying his own methods of serving life. "Is that so bad?"
She looked thoughtful at this. "Well, that way . . . no. But I bet you wouldn't be so calm about it if it was you dying."
"Me? Die?" No one ever suggested he would die. They all knew he was old, even if they didn't know his age, and it would have been utterly impertinent and foolish to ask the Master-Shark such a question. Yet here came this human, swimming into the Sea . . . He laughed. Why not give her an explanation to such a question? Why not expound on his own thoughts of death, unheard by other ears as they were? If she was wise or brave or stupid enough to ask . . .
"The Master-Shark eats the Silent Lord's 'Gift,' you know, along with the Silent One," he said slowly, calculatingly. "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."
"What about with it?"
He snorted to himself. As if anyone could ever actually have the will to die. To spread death to others, yes, but to die oneself? "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 . . . " He thought about that for a moment. Something more powerful than the will to live? He didn't think he personally had it, but he had, of course, witnessed those few who had. Mothers (mostly warm-bloods) protecting their young, friends sacrificing themselves for each other, the almost annoyingly noble Silent Lords . . . And of course, H'roonhiit. But he still did not like to think about her death—
"But all that being so," he went on to Nita, "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?" Oh, he had decided that once, so long ago. And the others had nearly killed him to end his own distress, Master-Shark or no. It was so much better to just cast it out. Cast away fear, despair, misery, and only life was left. And to most people, be they human, shark, fish, or whale, life was precious enough.
"No, I suppose not," Nita said, clearly subdued.
"So I go about my work with a merry heart"—if it could be called merry, he thought wryly. He doubted any warm-bloods would think it so—"and do it well as a result. That should please you, I think—"
"I'm delighted," she sang sarcastically.
He didn't miss her comment, but kept going as if he hadn't heard. "—for spells work best, you wizards tell me, when all the participants are of light heart and enjoying themselves." Like the last Silent Lord, who had been laughing at a joke of the Killer's when she died. That one had been annoying, even if she tasted good. But what was he thinking? They all tasted well enough, and Nita would, too. "I shall certainly enjoy eating you when the time comes 'round."
For some reason, that made the Sprat upset. "Ed, that's not funny."
"It isn't?"
She stopped swimming and stared at him. "Ed, what was that crack supposed to mean?"
That crack? Gallows humor if ever he knew it, even if it was the executioner making the cracking. But she knew that . . . "The Silent Lord is pleased to jest with me," he said finally, regressing to the slang of an earlier time in his slight confusion.
"Ed!"
His blood rose within him. "Distress, distress, Sprat. Have a care." He swam toward her.
Her voice was back to that conscientious calm. "Ed, are you trying to say that you're actually planning to eat me sometime soon?"
Well how else did she think the Silent Lord met her end? Did she think he was in the Song to recite lines? "The day after tomorrow, if we keep to schedule."
He could smell the distress emanating from her, and his teeth started to itch. What in the Sea was wrong with her? She'd signed up for this part, hadn't she?
She gulped. "Ed, . . . the Song, the whole thing . . . I thought it was just sort of, sort of a play . . ."
A play? As in one of those ridiculous human exercises in pretend? Then she hadn't been expecting him to eat her. Well, that was going to cause her no small amount of distress. And he had to be the one telling her. His stomach rumbled. "Indeed not. 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." That much he knew from another Silent Lord who had been an almost-friend—one called Maenhyemuu, who had sacrificed himself two Songs before Atlantis' fall.
"But—" There was a long pause while he waited for her to say something. Then she was swimming away. Slowly and without direction at first, then faster, faster . . . A wise move, perhaps, considering how much distress she was feeling.
Her partner called after her, then S'reee too.
She turned back at S'reee's voice. "Why didn't you tell me!"
S'reee looked nervously to where he was swimming—still some distance away, but being drawn closer. "Oh, hNii't, the Master-Shark is about—for Sea's sake, control yourself!"
He snorted again. As if S'reee could rein in her perpetual anxiety with a fraction of the control the Sprat had just showed. He swam closer, restraining his speed, but advancing nonetheless.
"Never mind him!"—he laughed quietly at this remark, pain-induced or no—"Why didn't you tell me!"
"About what the Silent One does? But you said you knew!"
He was getting too close. He forced himself to circle away, going against the scream in his blood. The urge was so hard to resist that he actually missed hearing part of the conversation as he tried to battle it. A swarm of fish passed just then—he was too distracted to notice just what kind—and sensing their own little fears, he turned on them. The screaming abated as he ended the lesser distresses of several of the small 'dumb creatures' as Nita had called them.
Hotshot was bounding through the water near him, black eyes glittering in ignorance of the distress a short way off. "Hungry, then?"
He ignored the dolphin and turned back toward the conversation.
"—The minute the first Celebrant takes the Oath, the Song's begun," Nita was bleakly informing her partner, "and everything that happens to every Celebrant after that is a part of it."
The fear in the water around her had dimmed somewhat. Insulated by shock, perhaps.
"HNii't, what will you do?" S'reee asked in a soft, anxious voice.
He let his shadow fall over Nita. Surely her fear had dulled enough that she'd be able to control it the rest of the way now? "I thought I sensed some little troubling over here," he said. She remembered what he'd said about lying to a shark, didn't she?
"Yes," the Sprat answered.
"Is the pain done?" he asked dutifully.
"For the moment. Let's go. The Gray is waiting, isn't she?"
He came at the last of the group as they entered the chill and gloomy Old Man Shoals, and he watched the Sprat closely. Not so much a Sprat, he reflected meditatively. Not that he intended to stop calling her one.
Yes, she had to be in shock, he decided. She swam calmly and gracefully—if silently and not as cheerfully as when he'd first met her.
S'reee was clearly miserable at the thought of what had happened, though trying her best not to show it. Hotshot darted through the water as recklessly as always, perhaps a little confused at the happenings he'd missed, but wise enough not to ask. Kit, the sperm whale imitation, was perhaps most curious of all to watch. He was still swimming with that bravado that served as a replacement for his cast-out fear, but he was angry. Not at anyone in particular, but at the Sea and the situation he and his partner had suddenly found themselves in. So protective of Nita—
The distress was making him itch.
He was almost glad to see Areinnye's anger as she greeted the others, and Nita first. He didn't hear all of the argument between sperm whale and human, but he did see Areinnye's wizardry that sent Nita sprawling backwards. He'd never gotten on well with Areinnye. And, he thought suddenly, they really didn't need her for the song since Kit was there . . . Interested at the intensity of her anger, he swam closer.
He did not reach the small gathering before Nita unleashed her own wizardry.
"So the Sprat has teeth after all. I am impressed," he admitted as he finally reached her.
"Thanks," she said. But she didn't go on, and they proceeded to where S'reee—who finally seemed to be coming into her own—was chastising Areinnye.
He circled the group as anger bubbled and accusations were made. Then came introductions, and Areinnye learned of Nita's part in the Song.
Scorn was apparently Areinnye's only offer of respect. She continued to criticize the humans and asked whether Nita had to be tricked into accepting.
A little too close to the truth, there . . .
"Unwise. Most unwise, wizard, to scorn a fellow wizard so—whatever species she may belong to." After all, even he had respect for wizards, and he'd eaten nearly every species swimming in the sea. "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 esponsible 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." He purposely flashed his teeth at her, working his mouth perhaps a little wider through the water than he normally did.
She backed off with a feeble attempt at a comeback. "You take strange sides, Slayer. The humans hunt those of your Mastery as relentlessly as they hunt us."
He didn't show his surprise at her words. "I take no sides, Areinnye," he said coldly. "Not with whales, or fish, or humans, or any other Power in the Sea or above it. Wizard that you are, you should know that. And if I sing this Song, it is for the same reason that I have sung a hundred others: for the sake of my Mastery—and because I am pleased to sing. You had best put your distress aside and deal with the business we have come to discuss, lest something worse befall you."
He let S'reee take over then. Soon enough, the Oath was administered and they were swimming away. He cast Areinnye one last look, then followed the others.
"Boy, that was a close one," Kit said as they left. "If those two got started fighting . . . "
Hadn't anyone ever warned that boy it wasn't smart to talk about sharks as if they weren't there? "It would not have been anything like 'close,'" he informed them.
"Okay, great, she couldn't kill you. But isn't it just possible she might hurt you a little?"
He smiled. "She would regret it if she did. Blood in the water will call in some sharks, true. But their Master's blood in the water will call them all in, whether they smell it or not . . . every shark for thusands of lengths around. That is my magic, you see. And whatevr the Master-Shark might be fighting when his people arrived would shortly not be there at all, except as rags and scraps for fingerlings to eat." He wasn't boasting, just stating a fact. His sharks had destroyed that one sperm whale several thousand moons back, and all he had to show for it was a long scar near his tail.
They changed the subject to Areinnye and her oh-so-cheery disposition. Discussion of her power and of the others the summoning spell would be bringing in lasted until they were back at Tiana Beach. The moon had risen, and Kit and Nita's distress levels rose as they left the water and walked back onto the beach. Just as well he couldn't reach them.
S'reee and Hotshot bade him goodbye, and he set off for familiar hunting grounds.
As he went about his business, ending distress and eating well, he couldn't help but think of what Areinnye had said. You take strange sides, Slayer.
He had taken Nita's side, and he knew it. Oh, what he'd said to Areinnye had been true enough in principle—and if you knew how to twist the truth and believe it, you rarely had to lie. But in that one moment, if it had come to attacking one of the two distressed whales before either had put blood in the water, he would have sunk his teeth into Areinnye.
For the sake of the Song, he told himself. After all, Areinnye could be replaced; Nita couldn't.
And he'd never liked Areinnye, anyway. Far too full of herself. Ae'mhnuu had been quite right not to train her, even if the alternate was S'reee.
But he couldn't ignore the third, more dominant reason for long.
. . . He respected Nita. At least a little, and that was a rare enough event in itself. A little? Oh, all right, a lot. She kept surprising him . . . She reminded him of H'roonhiit. And when all was said and done, H'roonhiit had been friends with him before she knew she was going to die. He'd known she was warm-hearted and brave in the face of distress, but he hadn't known she was going to kill herself for the Sea. That decision had been very much in the moment, and all her lines had been improvisation.
He remembered her teasing him. You're too warm-hearted for a shark. Sure you don't have a warm-blood in your ancestry somewhere? Some Master-Shark you are, when you're friends with a whale—friends with your own food. Such a dark prediction, and neither of them had known it would come true.
She, too, had been afraid of him when they'd first met. She, too, had overcome her fear.
And then she had died.
He'd managed to keep himself from biting into her flesh long enough to hear her last words to him: Not you, Ed. Let some other shark do it. You were never happy enough to be immortal.
But he'd tasted her blood in the end.
Not you, Ed—she had feared and even hated him at the last. He had seen it in her eyes.
He swam past a stand of razor coral, looking for more fish in distress. He wondered, vaguely, what it would be like to dive into those sharp edges, to feel his own flesh being torn, smell his own blood in the water, feel his own life seep away . . .
He swam on. Self sacrifice was for warm-bloods. H'roonhiit and Nita and the rest could be killed by their own wills; his will to live was too strong. He cast out the memories and searched for more fear in the waters to end.