Oshenerth

by Alan Dean Foster

  Looking to him and not behind or beneath her, she did not see the approaching male white death. How something so massive and powerful could come right up to one in complete silence was one of the deadlier mysteries of the sea. Her lower limbs disappeared into its wide-open mouth. The great jaws did not close until they were halfway up her thighs. Then they snapped shut, and in one bite the shark neatly bit off both legs halfway to her hips.

  Rendered as immobile by the sight as if the blood in his veins had suddenly ceased flowing, a paralyzed Chachel could only stare. So transfixed was he that he did not even feel the pain of individual white teeth slashing at his own undefended limbs and torso. His non-reaction was all that saved him. Perceiving him as unfeeling and therefore probably dead, the cursed triangular teeth sped elsewhere in search of more responsive targets.

  Once the jaws of the great white locked tight, everything thereafter seemed to take place in slow motion. So massive was the trauma that shock kept his mother from screaming. Turning her gaze away from her offspring, she looked down at herself as the shark pulled away. Dark red liquid ribboned outward in all directions from the stumps of her legs. She stayed conscious for a surprisingly long time, until the reduced blood supply to her brain brought with it blissful unconsciousness. By then her drifting form had been swallowed up in an eddying boil of blood, entrails, fins, limbs, bone, and cartilage that mercifully shielded Chachel from the sight of last bites.

  Something came down firmly on his shoulder. It snapped him out of his shock. Whirling, he brought his remaining spear up and around, halting the thrust in time to see that it was Glint, the youngest of the cuttlefish who had joined the hunting party. Behind him hovered Germael. A senior seeker, not as skilled as Jeralach but wise in the ways of hunting—and also of combat. Employing arms and tentacles in equal measure, merson and manyarm proceeded to half urge, half drag the wounded apprentice toward the dark towers of Splitrock.

  All told, out of the entire hunting party seven of them made it to the wide fissure that split the stone spires. Three injured hunters, three traumatized apprentices, and the surviving juvenile cuttlefish who had helped to save Chachel. Under Germael’s direction they hunkered down inside a cave at the base of the gap. Each of the mersons had managed to hold onto at least one spear; a couple still had both of theirs. They also retained their killing knives, and the cephalopod had his sharp beak.

  “Not much to fight with.” Tired and shaken, the senior hunter muttered disconsolately to himself as he took stock of the survivors’ meager arsenal. The dearth of weaponry was hardly surprising. The hunting party had left Sandrift outfitted for foraging, not war. “It will have to do.”

  “What now?” The surviving female apprentice’s name was Lillanech. She was trembling so badly that she could barely hold onto her spear.

  “We wait.” Germael’s expression was grim as he turned to peer cautiously out of the cave mouth toward the canyon that separated the twin summits. “The mob may have enough to ea … may become sated. If not, we will have to fight again.” Reaching up, he tapped the solid stone ceiling of the cave. “At least here we have something at our backs. A few spear points cannot defend the six directions at once, but here we need only guard this entrance. A big shark would have trouble getting in. Two or even three blues might manage entry in tandem, but that I think we have a chance of fending off.”

  “What if they’re neither sated nor ready to challenge?” wondered one of the surviving hunters. That he had lost several fingers to a bite had not kept him from fighting his way to the cave.

  Germael considered. “We’ll wait them out. As far as food, we’ll manage somehow. There are always shellfish affixed to the rocks.”

  All the rest of that awful day they huddled in the cave, but no sleek-finned shapes came to inspect the entrance. Night-time was the worst. The few bioluminescent lifeforms that visited the cave mouth emitted only enough illumination to light their own way. All of the expedition’s tame tethered glowfish had been lost along with the rest of their supplies. Glint helped as much as he was able, but he could not illuminate more than a small portion of any one of them, or of their surroundings. In contrast to their ocular helplessness, Chachel knew that sharks could easily find a fish or a merson in complete darkness by utilizing the special sensory organs that lined their snouts. Mersons possessed no such extraordinary extra sense. In the blackness inside the cave they were blind. Sitting slightly off by himself, Chachel clung tightly to his spear and sorrowed silently for his dead parents.

  On the positive side, while they could perceive things in the dark, sharks could not make weapons, he reminded himself. Magic, yes. Especially biting magic. That they could conjure. But not weapons.

  Morning brought with it no sign of their attackers. Venturing partway out into the chasm, Germael scanned the open water to left, right, and overhead before reporting back to his fellow survivors. Swifter than any merson, brave young Glint extended the reconnoiter by jetting as far as the crest of the nearest summit.

  “I see not one sharptooth,” he reported back. “Not even a local patch reef claiming whitetip. The schools of fish we found when we first arrived have returned. They would not do so if sharks were still hunting here.”

  “But they might,” pointed out one of the other hunters, “if there were sharptooths about who were just sleeping.”

  “Sleeping is almost as good as absent,” Germael argued. “Especially,” he added with obvious reluctance and an eye toward the trio of apprentices, “if they are doing so on full stomachs. If they are still in the vicinity but sleeping off a heavy feed, it would behoove us to depart before either their alertness or their appetite returns.”

  “I don’t know.” The hunter who had lost fingers was disinclined to agree. “It’s dangerous.”

  “Staying here is dangerous,” Germael shot back. “Going is dangerous. Everything uncertain and unknown is dangerous. This I know.” His gaze flicked over everyone clustered in the cave. “I also know that starvation is a worse way to die than by fighting.” With his spear he gestured at the clear, mirrorlight water outside. “This may be our best chance to make a swim for it. This may be our only chance.”

  They emerged from the cave one by one; the hunters leading the way with the apprentices following. In spite of the danger, it felt good, Chachel decided, to be out in open water again. Caves were fine for sleeping, but in the mirrorlight a merson needed to be able to move about in a space that more than exceeded his own body length.

  Led by Germael, they swam slowly to the northeast. Another hunter swam patrol slightly above the rest, watching the sky. Within the gorge they were open to attack from only three directions. Back out in open ocean, they would once more have to be alert to all six.

  A single pair of eyes to keep watch in each direction, Chachel realized as he kicked steadily and slowly. At least they would not be taken by surprise.

  They had not anticipated an ambush in waiting.

  Whether the dozen or so blues had missed out on their fair share of the bloody feast of the previous day or were simply exercising the gluttony for which their kind was known did not matter. Rocketing out of the dark depths that had concealed them, they hit the little party of survivors simultaneously and from the same direction. The hunters were as ready as could be; the youngsters less so. As Glint shot a relatively futile burst of ink at a charging shark, Chachel had the satisfaction of seeing his spear go right down the throat of an over-eager blue attacker.

  “Choke on this, gnawer of bones! Filth with fins!” Wrenching the shaft free, he slammed it forward again. Blood gushed from the shark’s mouth as it struggled to free itself from the impalement. All around him, Chachel’s friends and mentors were stabbing, thrusting, and kicking. The surprise had not been complete. One shark after another found itself impaled on a spear point. Wielding his filleting knife, the hunter who had been swimming above the others plunged downward to nearly cut one blue’s head half off with a single powerful stroke.
>
  Chachel felt something chewing on his right leg.

  He hadn’t seen the mako approach. There were three of them. Swiftest of all the sharptooths, they moved through the water so fast they made even the blues look as if they were standing still. The mako fastened to his leg was a big one. Viciously slinging its head and upper body from side to side, it tore most of Chachel’s right calf muscle right off the bone. Left bleeding badly and unable to maneuver at speed, he still managed to fend off its bite at his face by ducking beneath the jaws and stabbing upward with his spear. He could feel himself weakening as he fought to remain conscious.

  Then the mako came back and almost gently took the left side of his head in its mouth.…

  — V —

  As he finished the story, the last bits of crab shell fell from Glint’s parrot-like beak. They spun and tumbled like baroque pearls toward the bottom of the chamber. Tracking their descent, Irina noticed that the floor was layered with a dull whitish deposit of hollowed out crab and lobster shells several feet thick.

  “Now you know how Chachel lost the lower half of his right leg.” His body pulsing with tints of black and gold, Glint faced the new merson. “It was Germael who killed the mako before it could kill him. But as it wrenched backward in its death throes, one of the sharptooth’s teeth took Chachel’s left eye.” Tentacles splayed wide, the cephalopodan equivalent of a shrug. “The villagers think him mad, but I know that he sees more with one eye than the rest of them do with two. Except for Oxothyr, of course. But then the shaman looks at things with other than mere eyes.”

  Irina’s gaze rose toward the tunnel that was both the way in and out of the mage’s residence. “And he’s been bitter ever since,” she whispered.

  “Bitter—yes.” Lateral fins rippling, Glint came close. This time she did not flinch away from him. “Bitter and angry. He feels the senior hunters should have prepared better for such an eventuality. Especially Jeralach, whose idea the expedition was. He blames them for the deaths of his mother and father—insofar as one can blame the dead. It has been many years.” The cuttlefish’s cylindrical body bloated momentarily in a heavy sigh. “Chachel should be mated by now, with offspring of his own to chide.”

  “But the women—the female mersons—won’t go near him?”

  “Not so.” One gold-flecked eye focused on her two. “He is the strongest hunter in the village, the best provider, and probably smarter than the other males as well. It is he who refuses to go near them. He will not even donate seed. He dwells outside the village proper and has as little contact with it and its inhabitants as possible. He lives in a cave. Not a proper merson home of carefully primed and groomed coral, but an actual cave. Myself, I think it reminds him of the cave at Splitrock. Of the last times he felt safe. Sometimes I keep company with him there outside of a hunt. But then, I am mad, remember.” Ten tentacles fluttered in mock-threat at her face.

  A beaked cuttlefish could no more smile than could a clam, but she swore she sensed the expression even if she could not see it.

  A massive, rhythmically writhing shape emerged from the dark cavity that scarred the far side of the chamber. This time she was not afraid. She had come to realize that Oxothyr’s bulk was exceeded only by his intelligence and compassion. The shaman’s body sac was a reassuring sunny yellow in a place where the sun itself was known only as a burning blot that hung high above the mirrorsky. Kindly cephalopodan eyes danced from newly-made merson to cuttlefish and back again.

  “You two have been talking.”

  “Not exactly.” Irina smiled. By now she was used to the salt water that passed unhindered between her lips when she spoke; a saline stroke of her mouth and tongue she felt she had been missing all her life. “Glint has been talking. I’ve been listening.”

  The mage squirted a few bubbles from his siphon. “Our friend has short arms and a big mouth. I hope he did not bore you.”

  “On the contrary.” Involuntarily, she looked back to the tunnel where Chachel had disappeared. “This is all new to me, and I’m learning a lot. That’s how I mastered my own profession: by watching and listening.”

  “You would make a good famulus, I think.” Behind him, Tythe and Sathi immediately turned an angry blue-black. “But I am already rewarded in that department.” The mantle coloration of the squid pair faded to a more contented green with red splotches. “We will have to find something else for you to do.”

  “What I want to do,” she responded tiredly, “is go home.”

  “Of course you do. We all want to go home.” The shaman’s tone was consciously soothing. “But until that can be managed, if it can be managed, we must find something for you to do and a place for you to dwell.” Uncoiling like an awakening snake, one tapering tentacle gestured behind him. “You cannot stay here. Much as I might enjoy such unusual company as yours, I have much to do. Events are in motion that make no sense, and are discernible only through the contrary consequences they propound. Trying to understand what is happening so far from here demands my full attention. I cannot allow myself to be distracted by the fascinating conundrum your presence poses.”

  Feeling herself flattered and dismissed in the same breath, Irina barely protested. “I wouldn’t be a distraction.”

  The octopus flashed hot pink. “Your saying that you would not be a distraction is itself a distraction.” Two arms gestured commandingly at Glint. “Our unfortunate visitor will, I think, be happier in the company of a female merson.”

  The cuttlefish gestured his understanding. “I know one who might fill the need, and who is bold enough to be both willing and sympathetic.”

  Oxothyr’s body bobbed approvingly. “Then present our guest to her, with my appeal, and explain that I will contribute to the upkeep.”

  With that the shaman whirled and disappeared back into his inner sanctum, a mass of arms trailed by his pair of beaming assistants.

  Sandrift was not large, nor a tenth as impressive as a far southern city like Coreleatha, but it was strange and new and wonderful enough to take Irina’s breath away. When the reflexive response caused her gill flaps to flare, it was a mark of her speedy adaptation to her new marine physicality that she did not even react to the fluttering of the skin slits on either side of her neck.

  Sandrift’s residences and commercial structures gazed out at one another across a broad and comparatively steep river of sand that started high up in the shallows and flowed downward to depth. Seeing it put Irina in mind of a dry, granular, yellow-white glacier. Except that unlike the tongue of a glacier, the sand river was in constant, if slow motion. A trickle would start and build to a tumble, a tumble to a spill, a spill to a rush that might last for seconds or minutes. Somewhere high above, she knew, there must be an enormous river that constantly deposited fresh material into the sand-filled canyon. Did anyone or anything live on the land here? What of the demons that had originally been spoken of? How deep was the connection of this world to her own?

  She could not worry about that now. Glint was about to ask someone to provisionally take her in, and she needed to concentrate on making a good impression. Reaching up, she started to fiddle with her hair. If nothing else, the pointless activity turned out to be good for a quiet laugh. She had no comb, no gel, no spray, and it would not have mattered if she did. Here, underwater, her blonde tresses hovered around her head in an undisciplined aura, like so much golden seaweed. In this alien underwater realm, or for that matter in any underwater realm, terrestrial makeup was about as useful as a television.

  She soon saw that the practice of personal adornment was not entirely absent from merson culture, however. Stylish jewelry was present in plenty. Bracelets, rings, necklaces, earrings—all were visible in abundance on the females she encountered as well as on many of the males. Some of the women wore strings of naturally radiant salps around their necks, blue and red being the most common bioluminescence hues. Others sported bracelets of complaisant comb jellies that flashed bands of rippling iridescence. One ma
ture female had so many fastened around one ankle that as she swam she appeared to be dragging a strand of pulsating neon lights behind her. Each of the town’s residents also carried one or two small woven or shell bags slung crosswise over their shoulders.

  Some of Sandrift’s manyarm inhabitants also sported individual ornamentation. In the case of several perambulating squid, their ability to change the color and patterns of their bodies combined with clusters of luminescent ctenophores attached to their mantles to produce blazes of tentacular glory that gave them the appearance of drifting pieces of an exploded casino.

  Individual homes and businesses sported larger, if generally less elaborate decoration. While Oxothyr’s enchantment had gifted Irina with the ability to breathe underwater, it had not enabled her to read the sweeping script she saw chiseled into tidy coralline walls, spelled out by transplanted anemones, or written in enchanted cephalopodan inks. Beyond their chromatic expressionist facade, signs that fluttered with the canyon current meant nothing to her. As she marveled at it all, Glint was happy to translate.

  Both banks of the underwater sand river were lined with busy establishments selling everything from tools whose function Irina occasionally recognized, to distinctive foodstuffs she did not, to inventory whose purpose she found utterly unfamiliar. While the entrances to some shops were of normal size, shape, and location, others had their doorways in the roof. Nearly every window boasted a screen of fabric woven tightly enough to keep out all but the smallest intruders. Where human habitations suffered from infestations of insects and rodents, here problems consisted of tiny nibbling fish and curious crustaceans.

  The dwelling Glint headed for was set on one of several parallel coral ridges that extended outward from the main reef into deeper water like so many questing rocky fingers. The entrance was located on the side of the structure. As for the residence itself, like its owner it was neither the smallest nor the most impressive they had encountered.