And the Ancient Master Carcharodon circled before the rock, and the long low sweep of his body was as the moon upon the tides, and the waters parted before him. And yet the White Lord Tidesinger coiled in his cleft like a shining sea-snake, and he was not afraid.
And Carcharodon the Black, who is called Megalodon by Man the Namer, and Sal-Heth by those who are gone, and Zar by the little fish, spake thus: "Thou wilt cross me one time too many, O trespasser in my domain.
But the White Lord was not afraid, and he answered with a sugared tongue. "O great and terrible master of the waters, whose wake is red with the blood of thine enemies, I seek only knowledge from thee."
"Ask, little singer, and I shall grant thy request as a last mercy"
"Then, O Lord of a thousand deaths, whose gape is as wide as the oceans, whose tail is as huge as the moon, I would ask one thing only of thee. I wish to know the secret of the Foe"
And Carcharodon laughed, and the sound of his laughter was death, and the waters trembled and the little fish fled for miles around. Yet the White Lord was not afraid.
At last, thus spake Carcharodon. "Thou, little singer? Thou wilt stand before the Foe? And how shalt thy people fight, with thy weak little jaws"
But the White Lord Tidesinger, whose body was marked with the stars of the Ancients, answered, "Do not judge me by the failings of my people, O Slayer of the Seas, for I am he who swims alone, and I have my own strength."
-from Talobrenderiel's Song
Chapter One
The sun rose slowly over a cool sea. There were few waves on this warm summer's morning--the elements were kind at this time of year. The water rippled like living glass; the sky was sapphire slashed with gold. Over the expanse of ocean, nothing moved. No fin cut the surface, no spatter of mackerel marked the presence of a shoal. It seemed that all life was at peace; even the natural order which prevailed within the ocean seemed to have taken a momentary rest.
Yet appearances were deceptive. Out of the night, winging towards the sun, came a white-winged shape, a great bird that scythed through the still morning air. Its eyes glistened golden in the sun as it came onward, flying without a wingbeat, gliding through the air as if held up by a sense of its own majesty. Its fierce eyes scanned the seas, searching for a sign...
The albatross had flown for many hours now, yet its wings still remained as unbending as ever. It swept onwards, across the Atlantic waters that changed now from blue to misty gray upon scythes of white.
The sun was well up over the horizon by the time the bird sighted what it had been looking for all this time--the dark smudge of land upon the horizon. Letting out an eerie cry of triumph, the albatross swept towards the coastline. Before, out over the open ocean, it had been utterly alone. Now, other seabirds circled slowly in the sky, their fluttering wings no match for the albatross's frozen grace--or bobbed in the waters, ducking for fish. The albatross bore its smaller cousins no ill-will, so it swept past and took their suspicious glances. Its business was not with them.
The great bird was the bearer of a message, and as it neared land its eyes became ever busier in the search for the one for whom the message was bound. It turned and slid down southwards, moving now parallel with the coast. A couple of Little Gulls followed it for several miles, letting out their high shivering calls to let it know that it was not welcome.
At last the albatross's golden eyes sighted the place it had been searching for--a coastal inlet, a shallow lagoon where the waters lapped gentle onto a smooth and sandy shore. The bird still did not turn inland--its business was not there, with the creatures of the High and Dry. Instead it veered towards a rock that stood alone, its tip just poking out of the water's surface at the entrance of the bay. Incomparably graceful, the albatross soared in and landed upon the stone, cycling its great wings back and forth for balance as it struggled for a footing. It found it, and the white bird straddled the stone, folded back its wings and waited.
It did not have to wait long. Presently its sharp eyes caught a movement in the water around its stone. The bird remained still, waiting to see whether these were indeed the ones whom it had sought. At long last, a gray back broke the surface and a smooth curved fin trailed the air for a moment. The albatross was satisfied. It let out a low honking call, drawing attention to its presence.
A sleek gray head broke the water's still surface. Two dark eyes regarded the bird with puzzlement behind the ever-friendly smile. Almost invisible under the sunlight, a group of five starlike markings glittered faintly on the dolphin's rounded forehead.
"Hi," it said, and blew.
The albatross recoiled at the smell of fish and tried to remember its not-altogether-good delphine. It was an old bird, and had learned what it knew of the tongue from the whales that were older still--it was passable in whale, but the shorter dialect of the smaller singers was a trial to it. "Hail, finned friend," it called softly. "I seek the Defender of the Future."
The dolphin's friendly expression didn't change, but a twinkle in its warm brown eyes told the albatross that it was amused. "He's me," it said. "At least, that's what people say. What do you want with me?" Other dolphins were surfacing now, glancing curiously over to where the albatross stood on its rock before blowing. The bird shifted its feet nervously as spray spotted its breast feathers.
"I have flown far in search of thee, scion of Tidesinger. I bring a message from thy starred kinsfolk in the far West. Those who sing under the eternal moon do beg audience with thee."
"You mean Afarellan?" the dolphin asked, sounding interested. "The lone-swimmers want me? Again? Can't it wait? Only--" He rolled onto his side, exposing a long and smooth underbelly. One slender fin flapped lazily in the air. The albatross noted the thin lines of scars that marred the finned one's body--a surprising number of battle markings for one so young. "We're kind of busy right now," the dolphin finished, righting himself and turning his head so that he regarded the albatross out of one mischievous dark eye. "The salmon run is on."
The albatross mentally cursed all mammals and their hedonistic lifestyles. "The Lord Afarellan did beg thy most prompt attendance, mighty star-bearer," it said, bobbing its head slightly to lend urgency to its words. "To bestow upon thee his message have I traveled all night, o'er land and wide water. I pray thee, heed the summons forthwith, for 'tis of great import."
"I guess it must be, if Afarellan sent you..." The dolphin sighed, another whiff of fishy breath to make the albatross reel back. "Okay. Did he say why he wanted me?"
"I know not what hath transpired, great warrior of the water, but I was led to understand that it is most urgent thou attend'st with due speed."
The dolphin was silent for a moment, regarding the bird with a thoughtful expression, then he dipped his snout in acknowledgment. "All right. Give me half an hour to deal with things my end, then I'll be on my way. You can tell Afarellan I'm coming."
With a billow of wind, the albatross lifted his majestic wings. "My thanks, noble star-brow. I shall return forthwith to inform his lordship of thy impending arrival."
He leaped from his rock and fought for height, trying not to hear the giggles of the dolphins below. The albatross, although as graceful as a zephyr once in the air, was clumsy in actually becoming airborne, and those long wings flailed at the air, their tips slapping the surface of the water, until he had gained enough height to slip into a long, rising glide and lock his curved wings in position. He turned in the air, glancing down into the bay where the long gray shapes slid easy through the water, then turned and swept off again towards the receding night. It would be another long flight to return home, but the albatross could fly for weeks without rest.
"Are you really leaving again, Ecco?" Star asked wistfully as he slid back under the water. The albatross had already disappeared into the sky, flying back towards the west and Lunar Bay.
Ecco paused, thinking it over. He was tempted by the idea of staying with his family, at least for a little while. It hadn't been so long since he had been separated from his friends, during an adventure that had taken him from coast to coast and even above the water. When the evil alien race named the Foe had threatened Ecco's pod and the survival of the entire world, he, plus a few friends, had risen up against the monsters, eventually meeting them on their own turf--the chill black vacuum of space.
Now, for the first time in what seemed like an age, he was able to enjoy peace and quiet with his friends. He supposed he ought to have known it wouldn't last. Ecco exhaled, feeling tired at the prospect of another adventure--and surely Afarellan wouldn't have sent out the albatross to call him if it had just been something simple. If they needed the Defender of the Future in Lunar Bay, something was up.
"I have to go, Star," he said a little reluctantly. "Afarellan wouldn't call me if it wasn't important." He started to swim, moving aimlessly forward across the perimeter of the bay. A little nervous at the proximity of the open water, Star followed him--most dolphins would not have ventured off alone on such a still morning, but Ecco feared little within Earth's waters.
"Don't go..." The female dolphin nosed him playfully in the side. "We're going to head south and catch the sardines at the Tall Rocks. Wouldn't you like that? I've never seen the Tall Rocks before, or the gate to the Inland Sea."
"Neither have I," Ecco admitted, and sighed. "Well, whatever Afarellan's got planned, it can't take all summer." He rolled over in the water and gazed at his creamy-bellied playmate with a smile that was wider than usual. "I'll meet you and the others there, Star, in a few weeks. How about that?"
She pouted. "You promised you'd stay with me..."
"Well, when the lone-swimmers call, it's usually something important. They're not the sort who'd send an albatross right across the ocean because of a minor problem..." Ecco surfaced and glanced around in search of the albatross, but the skies were clear. The bird would be winging its way back to Lunar Bay right now with the message that he was coming. "I have to go," he said to Star.
"You're always off with those lone-swimmers! They're not your family!" She slapped the water with her tail-flukes and sped off, back towards the safety of the shallow water and the pod. Ecco sighed and let off a few sonar-clicks: the echoes showed him the female dolphin skimming off through the clear blue sea. Her slight exaggeration in moving--the extra flick of the tail at the end of the upswing, the splaying of the pectoral flippers--sent a shiver of strange excitement through him, and for a moment he seriously considered ignoring the summons and chasing her back through the warm waters into their lagoon. Recently Star had been becoming more and more interesting to him. She had always been close to him--they had been childhood playmates--but suddenly she was more to him than that. He didn't quite understand the way he felt around her, or the knowing looks directed at the pair of them by Corse and Ai.
Ecco's dreams of Star were interrupted by the encroaching thought of Corse. The brusque pod leader was acting differently towards Ecco nowadays, too. Always before, Ecco had been one of the lowest ranking members of the Sapphire Bay pod; he was young and silly and lacked experience of the world. After the adventure with the Foe, he had found that Corse actually deferred to him on occasion. The older dolphin had been weakened by his ordeal with the Foe, and he knew it--it had been Ecco who had defeated the Foe, not Corse. Sooner or later, Corse would step down to make way for a new leader of the Foe.
But Ecco didn't want the job. The thought of spending the rest of his life with his family was, despite the delectability of Star's part in it, generally claustrophobic. He wanted to be out there doing something. Perhaps it was something to do with the lone-swimmer genes he was carrying--Ecco's own father Rhiellan had been a lone-swimmer, one of the mystics who chose the solitary wandering life over a close-knit family group.
His mind was made up. The sardine run would be fun, but the wanderlust would not let him lie--and the others were so provincial sometimes. He could never make Star understand why some things were so important to him, and sometimes her selfishness irritated him. Ecco glanced back into the bay, where he could hear his companions singing softly amongst themselves. Star would tell them he had left.
He turned his nose to the open sea, tasting the cooler salt of the deep waters, and started to swim west... following the albatross to the place where the sun and moon set.
The dolphin named Ecco made good time. He swam ceaselessly all day, finding his way unerringly in the water that was unmarked by any landmarks, while above him the sun swung over its arc and then sank towards the horizon once again. Ecco had made this journey before now, only then he had had an unlikely companion in tow--Karkol, the young Great White shark. A strange chance it had been to bring him and the fish together. He smiled as he thought of Karkol--they were natural enemies, had been for millions of years. Ecco's ancestor, the legendary Tidesinger, had been maimed by Karkol's own grandfather Carcharodon. Yet he and Karkol had hit it off at once... He wondered where Karkol was right now... carving a suitably bloody name for himself in his own hot southern waters, he supposed. It just wasn't the same traveling without the big fish along for the ride--grinning rakishly, laughing, looking at him with a sparkle in his flat black eye, or just swimming, powerful and patient and loyally by his side.
The sun slipped below the horizon, and still Ecco swam. He paused to rest his aching muscles for a short time, hanging still in the midnight waters with a pale moon-sliver above his head, and stopped again a little later to feed his stomach on some lost and unfortunate mackerel.
At around two in the morning, he heard a sound which would have chilled any dolphin's heart. The mellow, fluting sounds of whalesong shivered through the water--not just any whalesong but the deadly laughter of the piebald killer whales. Ecco halted, listening with his heart in his mouth. Killers were swift and fierce, and they ate dolphins when they could catch them. He was on the point of fleeing the approaching hunters when he picked out a familiar voice from the crowd and almost chattered with relief.
"Khorik!" he called out loud. "Khorik, is that you?"
"Who out here knows my name?" came the reply, half-laughing at the absurdity of such a meeting. Out of the dark waters came a glistening white shape--the white underside of Khorik showed up pale as he cruised towards Ecco, flanked by the others of his pod. Kalen and Kren, Khorik's two sons, swam on either side of the huge pod leader--they had grown from the lanky adolescents they had been into hulking giants well equal to swim alongside their mighty father. "Hello there, little sprat," the killer said equably, drawing to a halt in front of him. "Where's your grinning friend today?"
"Karkol?" Ecco laughed. "He's found some seal colony and is doing what sharks do best, I'd guess. What brings you out here so late?"
A sudden serious look crept into Khorik's sparkling brown eyes. "I hope it is not the same thing that sends you abroad, my friend," he said soberly. "We seek counsel. One of our number was taken two nights ago."
"Taken?" Ecco asked, staring. The killer whales, the largest of the children of Delphinius, were truly mighty hunters and had no natural predators in Sea. Everybody steered clear of them, even the giant humpback whales. He couldn't imagine what could successfully attack an adult killer, and said so."
Khorik inclined his head. "Ha," he said, "and there you have hit the heart of the matter. Kale was a mighty warrior indeed. He was out away from the pod, stirring up a salmon bloom, when we heard his death cry. By the time we got there, there was only blood in the water. Perhaps the Slayer swims again... but then there has been no word up from the deep-down, and when she enters foreign waters, everybody knows about it."
Ecco nodded slowly, remembering his three encounters with Greshruk the Slayer--the gigantic Great White who was the Shark Mother and leader of the saw-toothed race. Greshruk could certainly have taken a killer in the night, but Greshruk was held in such awe by the fish of the oceans that they would have heard of her presence a tenday before she arrived. The only other thing he could think of that might have done it was the Foe who had decimated Khorik's previous pod, yet the Foe too he would have known about days ago--they left behind them patches of dead water, stripped bare of every living thing.
Khorik rose and blew, then returned to his smaller companion. "We were going south," the killer said, "to find the Slayer. If she did not do it, she might perhaps know what could have."
Ecco's eyes widened slightly--he admired the killers' bravery in seeking out Greshruk, but at the same time he was concerned that Khorik and his pod could be swimming to their death. Even a pack of killers would have their work cut out fighting the Slayer. "Be careful," he said at last, understanding that whatever he could say would have little effect on the killers. They wanted to find out what had threatened their security so drastically, and they were fighters--they would not be intimidated.
Khorik dipped his head in agreement. "You too, little singer," the killer told him. "Now tell me, what brings you here again? Tired of you peaceful bay in the balmy eastern seas?"
Ecco laughed. "Nothing so pleasant. I got a message from Afarellan, asking me to come to Lunar Bay. I don't have any idea what it's about yet--the albatross didn't tell me anything."
"Ha," Khorik said, baring his peg-like teeth in a grin. "I know how that goes. Those birds talk like humpbacks, all thees and thous. Pfah!"" Becoming momentarily serious once again, he turned his head and looked Ecco up and down with one gleaming brown orb. "I hope our two errands are not connected in some way, my small friend. Ever we seem to meet in danger."
"Let me know how you get on," Ecco told him. "I'll meet up with the rest of my pod at the Tall Rocks sardine run later this year."
"We'll find you," Khorik promised. "Or if we don't, we'll give your pod a message--if we can get close enough! He and his two sons laughed uproariously; as dolphins were one of the many things on the killer whale menu, Ecco's family were likely to keep their distance from Khorik and his unruly brood.
The killers soon departed, and Ecco resumed his lonely journey westwards. The sun rose onto another day and then set again without his even seeing another living thing. But, as the sweeter taste of land began to filter into the water, he started to feel as if he were accompanied in some way. He glanced left and right, catching an occasional startling glimpse of a shadow at his side, but whenever he looked there was nothing there, and echolocation yielded no further results. "Vapors," he muttered to himself, wryly. "I'm too old to be scared by vapors." Yet Khorik's tale unnerved him still.
He arrived in coastal waters on the morning of his third day's traveling, having made good time and kept up a constant pace. It was another gift of his lone-swimmer heritage, this ability to cross vast distances in a single tireless bound. Ecco had crossed the Atlantic in seventy-two hours. Yet, even so, he found himself not unexpected. As he crossed the coral reefs, two white-bodied dolphins swam out to greet him--white dolphins with sooty black extremities and bodies that glistened with faint sparks.
"Welcome back, my friend," one of the dolphins said in a soft female voice, and he laughed, recognizing Naylle. One of the few lone-swimmers he knew personally, Naylle had been present at the Moonsong during his first great adventure. She bowed her head in deference, then looked up and smiled at him. "It is good to see you again, Ecco. Thank you for coming as promptly as you did."
"I couldn't do otherwise," he said, slightly surprised. "So what's the big hurry? Why do you need me here?"
Naylle and her companion began to swim through the reefs. She cast a glance back at him, inviting him to follow her; he fell into formation with the two lone-swimmers. They headed off between towers of shimmering coral. "Afarellan will tell you about it later," Naylle said, glancing back at him.
"It's nothing serious, is it?" He hesitated. "I was going to spend the summer with my family, that's all..."
She laughed. "I promise you, Ecco, you will have plenty of time to swim with your pod. We will not take up too much of your time. The situation is, a couple of lone-swimmers were attacked by a shark in a cave up north. We want to know why--by ancient agreement, the lone-swimmers are exempt from the First Law while within their sacred places. You know more about the hungry ones than any other singer alive. Afarellan hopes that you will be able to speak with them and find out why they attacked our podmembers.
"I can try," Ecco said doubtfully. "I think you overrate my influence with sharks, though, to be honest."
Naylle sent him a laughing look. "This from one who survived three meetings with the Slayer?"
"She did promise she'd kill me next time."
"We will see," the white dolphin said. The rock wall, the barrier which kept the lone-swimmers' bay separate from the rest of Sea, loomed up before them. Without hesitation Naylle and her companion passed through, but Ecco had to steel himself before moving onwards--though by now his head knew that the wall was not real, his heart told him insistently that he could not pass through solid objects. At last, however, he opened his eyes and found himself once more under a starry sky--though it had been bright midday when he had met Naylle on the coral reef. Lunar Bay was well named: its sky endlessly showed that one bright night, thousands of years ago, when Tidesinger had sung down the moon to fight off the Foe.