Oshenerth

by Alan Dean Foster

  Even without its capacious stomach distended, the gulper eel was an odd looker. The several strands of deep-sea gems that had been attached to its rotund upper body sparkled in the light that illuminated the outside of nearby structures. With its enormous brown gut and tiny eyes it resembled an oversized internal parasite, though it was as efficient a hunter of small fish as any of its more physically attractive reef-dwelling namesakes. It was also excessively respectful. Hovering before manyarm and merson like a length of bloated, severed kelp, it bowed low before addressing them with deep-voiced formality.

  “I bring the most remarkable news. I have been sent to inform you that at exactly midday tomorrow you have been granted an audience with the full Tornal. I hope you are aware of what an exceptional privilege has been bestowed upon you.”

  “Thanks,” replied Chachel nonchalantly. The hunter was distinctly unimpressed.

  Oxothyr was more forthcoming, and more tactful. “Please convey to the Tornal the gratitude of my companions and myself. Is the invitation restricted to me or may all attend? I know everyone would find it instructive and enlightening.”

  Its empty belly sac swaying from side to side in the slight current, the gulper peered back uncertainly out of tiny eyes that had little use for anything more than minimal light.

  “I was not told to say that their attendance would be rejected.”

  Oxothyr looked pleased. “Then we will present ourselves at the designated time.”

  Eyeing the watching Chachel with a disdain arising from the knowledge that despite the merson’s larger size the gulper could ingest him in one swallow, the herald turned and slithered off into the city. As soon as it was out of sight, the hunter turned back to the manyarmed mage.

  “Do you really want everyone present for this, shaman?”

  “It is everyone’s life that is at stake,” the octopus replied somberly. “Therefore everyone both deserves and needs to be present.” He turned back to the hunter. “Will you do me the good of relaying to them the specifics of our invitation?”

  “That I can do.” Chachel turned to go, paused. “Oxothyr?”

  The octopus regarded the merson archly. “What is it, two-arm?”

  “Is it necessary for me to be present at this meeting? You know how I dislike being around many others in an enclosed space.”

  “You can command your nerves for this one occasion. Don’t you realize the honor that is being conferred on us, on we simple visitors from a small village high up on the reef line? The Tornal keep to themselves and are not easily met. They do not agree to see just anybody.”

  “With all respect, shaman, like the few other honors that have been sent my way this too is one I would prefer to decline.”

  The mage spread all eight of his arms wide, increasing himself enormously in size and appearance. “Then if you won’t come for the honor, you’ll attend as an important fighting representative of the free swimmers of the Southern Reefs. I prefer those charged with the defense of everyone’s homes and everyone’s freedom to acquire information relevant to such security in person. And finally, if you won’t come for the honor or for the knowledge, you’ll come for me.”

  Not even Chachel the Hunter could ignore the shaman’s subsequent cephalopodan glare. He proffered a resigned nod by way of response. “As you wish, shaman. Though I find your confidence in me to be grossly misplaced.”

  “No,” Oxothyr replied brusquely. “It is you, Chachel, who finds confidence in yourself misplaced. One day I hope that doubt will disappear like blood in the water. Now go, and notify our companions. And when you find those two wastrels Sathi and Tythe, tell them to shut their beaks and high their tentacles back here. I have need of them.”

  They parted then: Chachel upward to the next level of the city where the majority of visitors from Sandrift and Siriswirll had gone to indulge themselves in its urbane delights, Oxothyr back to his borrowed burrow to collect his thoughts for the critical meeting tomorrow. They left nothing behind them but light.

  One by one Chachel tracked down the members of the escort that had accompanied him and the shaman on the long journey from Siriswirll to inform them of the critical meeting that had been arranged for the morrow. Reactions to the news varied among mersons and manyarms without regard to species. Some evinced excitement, others curiosity, a few fear, and others indifference. They had volunteered to come along to see, to learn, and if necessary to fight. Conversation and conferences they were happy to leave to the shaman. But with Oxothyr decreeing that they participate, none dared declare that they would be otherwise than in attendance.

  As always, Poylee was glad to greet Chachel and reluctant to see him go. Learning that he was moving fast in order to carry out the shaman’s mandate, she knew she had no justification for trying to detain him. Though she wanted to, she did not try.

  It was all so very unfair, she reflected as she eased back onto the outside lounge where she had been resting. She wanted nothing but Chachel, whereas the hunter wanted nothing, period. He was polite, even friendly in his limited and imperfect way, but no matter how hard she tried, no matter how subtle she strove to be in her entreaties and invitations and inadvertent little touches, he did not respond. She could school with any male in Sandrift. Instead, she had chosen to try to inveigle a loner, and a damaged one at that. Everyone knew the story of Chachel’s life, of the death of his parents at the teeth of marauding sharks, and of his subsequent choice of a life of self-imposed isolation.

  She could bring him out of that, she knew. Bring him to full flower and the richness of the life she sensed was locked deep within him. She could open him to the realworld as easily and effectively as a child could open a clam with a knife. If only he would let her. If only he would give her the chance.

  Well, she would persist. Through indifference, and callousness, and even war with the spralakers. Eventually he would see her as she knew he could, and should. Eventually, she would break through the shell he had secreted around himself. Nothing and no one could stop her. She was not troubled by his apathy, she did not fear death at the claws of the spralakers, she was not worried about how much time it might take to make her dream a reality. Only one thing really concerned her.

  The changeling.

  With her long golden hair, her strange pale body, and her knowledge of another world, the changeling presented challenges Poylee feared she could not counter. Could not, because she knew nothing of them and could not understand them. How could she fight newness? Above all there was the one thing that left her truly apprehensive about the effect the changeling might have on her carefully nurtured relationship with the fearless and heroic hunter.

  It was that the changeling did not appear to care about such matters at all.

  O O O

  Midday following was as dark as the midday that had preceded it. Without doubt or question it would be equally as dark as the midday that would follow it, and all those that would follow them.

  The mood, if not the surrounding illumination, was bright among the travelers who had come all the way from Sandrift and Siriswirll. There had been no need to clean themselves preparatory to the incipient meeting. Underwater, everyone and everything was always clean. Having journeyed light, they had little in the way of individual frills with which to adorn themselves. Of them all Poylee, unsurprisingly, made the most she could of the opportunity, without even knowing if this Tornal gathering would respond. Her strenuous if limited efforts in the service of personal beautification were intended, of course, as much for Chachel’s edification as for that of some shadowy assemblage with which she was unfamiliar.

  There was need of directions but not an escort. Chatting and murmuring among themselves and with Oxothyr setting the pace in the lead, the band of travel-hardened visitors made their way to the Palace of the Tornal. As they drew near, what had been excited conversation soon faded of its own accord. Oxothyr did not have to say a word.

  When a manyarm catches its breath in amazement, it simply go
es motionless in the water. When a merson does so, the gill flaps of males and females alike tend to open as wide their mouths. Such was the case with every one of the visitors, Irina included.

  Constructed on a ledge that projected outward from the city’s highest terrace, the Palace of the Tornal commanded a sweeping view over all of Benthicalia. As they swam slowly up to the main coralline arch that marked the entrance, the visitors could look out upon all twenty-five remaining levels of the great metropolis spread out below. Illuminated by tens of thousands of streaks and spots of blue and green, yellow and red bioluminescence, Benthicalia seen from above resembled the Milky Way viewed on a clear night from above the mirrorsky.

  Following behind Oxothyr, Irina turned onto her back as she continued swimming. Gazing upward from this highest point of the city, the faintest of pale blue glows tickled her retinas, indicating that high, high above in the shallows it was now midday. Somewhere up there the sun slanted down through clear warm waters, eliminating the need for bioluminescence, phosphorescence, and all manner of internal biochemically-generated illumination. Her first weeks in Oshenerth had seen her pining for dry land. The most recent ones found her yearning for a glimpse of the sun. What else, she wondered, would she next be forced to miss, to give up, to surrender in order simply to survive here?

  She pushed such thoughts and the clinging depression that accompanied them aside. Ahead lay a new wonder that, if it did not exactly compensate for the absence of daylight, was at least striking enough to distract her from looming melancholy.

  Cultivated largely from muted yellow and dark red fire coral, the walls and spires of the palace were their own defense. In addition, anemones the size of trucks had been transplanted to the walls and roofs, the turrets and hollow living quarters, and nurtured until they had reached gargantuan size. A sting from a single tentacle of any one such stationary giant would be more than strong enough to kill a merson, spralaker, or any other uninvited intruder. The correspondingly larger than normal anemone fish who dwelled within the lethal arms were trained to raise the alarm in the event of an attack.

  In addition to the anemones and the walls of fire coral, more nimble sentries were also present. Mersons armed with halberds tipped with razor-sharp mother-of-pearl flanked the main archway. Emblems of office fashioned from found gemstones set in beaten gold hung from their wrists and ankles and covered their shaved skulls. Chain mail armor that was ceremonial more than functional covered their torsos and lower bodies. Composed entirely of strung pearls that ranged in hue from gray-black to pure white, they glistened like platoons of fireflies in the light emitted by the bioluminescent growths that bedecked the walls.

  Corridors high and wide flared off in multiple directions from a spherical entry hall that had need of neither floor nor ceiling. Drifting together in its center, the visitors waited until the most magnificently ornamented cuttlefish Irina had ever seen came jetting importantly toward them. In addition to the strobing luminescence it generated within its own body, it trailed streamers of colored pearls backward from its mantle while the edges of its gently rippling lateral fins had been lined with hundreds of tiny colored diamonds. Catching the surrounding bioluminescence, the gems sparkled with a hundred different colors. In sunlight near the surface, so wondrously bejeweled a manyarm would have thrown back too much light for a mere mortal to gaze upon directly.

  “My name is Qespangl,” he informed them. “The Tornal await your presence.” Gold-flecked eyes of piercing black flicked rapidly over each of the visitors before coming to settle on Oxothyr. If the majordomo was impressed by the shaman’s quiet charisma, he did not show it. “Keep your questions brief and to the point. The Tornal are alert and miss nothing, but they tire easily.”

  Awestruck by both the magnificent surroundings in which they found themselves and by the self-evident solemnity of the occasion, scarce but a few whispers passed among the travelers as they followed their glittering guide deeper into the palace complex. It was, a silent Irina reflected as she marveled at one dazzling artwork and architectural fillip after another, a long way from the simple coral homes and shops of distant Sandrift.

  Eventually the corridor opened into an enormous bubble. Soaring arches of deep red fire coral supported huge curved panels of transparent, impossibly thin crystal. Such a structure would have been impossible to sustain on the surface, where gravity would have collapsed it as if it had been made of spun sugar. Underwater, filaments of quarried quartz served as supports in the absence of steel. Still, it seemed to an enthralled Irina that the pressure at Benthicalia’s depth would crush so expansive and fragile an edifice.

  “The assembly is held in place by something stronger than stone,” Oxothyr explained in response to her question as they swam slowly forward.

  “Something crystalline?” she speculated.

  “Something charmed,” he corrected her. “Not all magic is fleeting. Sometimes sortilege can be called upon to serve as superstructure.” The tip of one tentacle curved around to touch his beak. “Quiet now.”

  They were approaching the Tornal. As they drew near, the august members of that esteemed company turned to face the recently arrived supplicants. Irina was startled to see that unlike her and her companions, the revered members did not swim or float but were compelled to sit upon a platform built up out of swirled and beaded gold. While each of them was a manyarm true and through to the core, as indisputably so as Oxothyr or Glint, Sathi or Tythe, the most sprightly of them could swim but feebly at best. Though not inherently infirm, each would have to be helped from place to place by more robust assistants.

  It took Irina a moment to recognize the Tornal for what they were. The knowledge that enabled her to identify them came from university studies concluded long ago. She breathed in her astonishment softly, her gill flaps collapsing against the sides of her neck as she did so.

  The Tornal was comprised of ten individuals in all, the total possibly representative of the number of arms boasted by cuttlefish and squid, though not by octopods or the more primitive nautiloids. The manyarms who formed the body of the Tornal differed not only from all those she had so far encountered in Oshenerth, but from those she knew from the seas of home as well, except in one respect.

  Every one of the incredibly aged beings now confronting the visitors had an external shell.

  Ammonites, she thought to herself. Living relics from a time that was ancient to both Oshenerth and to her world. Unlike modern manyarms they wore their huge, coiled, thick-shelled homes on their backs. Alternating with the five ammonites were five orthoceras: manyarms whose shells resembled those of an ammonite that had been stretched out straight as an arrow. In addition to their natural markings and patterns, each individual was decked out in jewels and bits of bright metal that had been set into recesses that had been engraved into their respective shells.

  How old was the Tornal, she found herself wondering? A few hundred years? A few thousand? A million or more? She whispered her wonderment to an attentive Oxothyr.

  “No one knows,” he murmured in response. His arms were fully extended and coiled at the ends. “Not even the Tornal themselves. Their collective memories are so vast and comprehensive that the earliest of them have withered with the passage of time. Fortunately our request involves specifics of a far more contemporary nature.”

  Mindful of the shaman’s earlier admonition to keep conversation to a minimum, Irina nodded but did not reply. Peering past the hovering octopod she espied Chachel and Glint. Both struck her as being as overwhelmed by their present surroundings as everyone else. She expected that of Glint, but this was the first time since she had made his acquaintance that she had ever seen Chachel the hunter truly impressed.

  Laboriously pulling herself forward until her heavy shell and body rested near the front edge of the golden platform, the glittering ammonite nearest the center flourished her short, thick tentacles at the visitors and addressed them in a voice that reeked of eons—but not senility. As she sp
oke, the light in the remarkable and nearly transparent chamber brightened and the curving crystalline panels themselves took on a warm amber hue. The huge, coiled shell emitted a pallid blue light that strengthened and faded with the speaker’s voice. It seemed that even the very words of the Tornal, an awed Tythe whispered to Sathi, were charged with prickles of enchantment.

  As she regarded the line of glowing ancients arrayed before her, Irina found questions coalescing inside her like the rising bubbles in a newly opened bottle of champagne. Could they answer queries about the birth and evolution of life in her own world? What did they know of the connections between both worlds and their respective oceans? Between them, the primeval hard-shelled sages might hold the answers to questions that had teased and tormented researchers for centuries.

  So powerful was the sudden lust for knowledge that she felt herself growing queasy as she contemplated the multitude of possibilities. Once Oxothyr had asked his question, would any of the rest of them be given the opportunity to pose some of their own? Having at last made the acquaintance of the Tornal, she could hardly imagine herself retiring from their august presence in submissive silence.

  As events developed, not even Oxothyr would have the chance to voice the query that had driven him and his multi-species escort to fight their way all the way from the upper reefs down to deep Benthicalia.

  Having emerged in front of the others, the shaman calmly and confidently introduced himself and his companions. He then began to lay out, in the simplest terms, their reason for coming to the city and requesting the present audience.

  “Currents are changing, venerable ones. Incomprehensibilities speckle the calm waters of the reefs like a plankton bloom, blocking one’s vision and confounding perception. Change is coming that I sense bodes not well. Possibly not for the deep, but certainly not for the reefs. I am myself as pregnant with questions and concerns regarding this matter as is a wrasse heavy with roe.”