Oshenerth

by Alan Dean Foster

  A long moment transpired. Nothing happened. The always impatient Taww uttered something under her breath that, while incomprehensible, stank clearly of disgust. Attentive to the taxing work that lay ahead, a more phlegmatic Bejuryar started to turn away. If Gubujul could have perspired, he would have begun to do so.

  “Wait.” Eyes forward, claws clenched, Taww stopped and pointed. “What’s happening there?”

  The sealed end of one container had begun to bulge outward. Nearby, a second cylinder showed evidence of a comparable swelling. Within minutes every one of the stacked tubes was showing signs of similar internal pressure, as if something within was straining to emerge. Or be born.

  Without sound or warning the first cylinder burst apart. That which had been contained within not so much by tight sea fan weave but by Sajjabax’s spell exploded forth. A second cylinder ruptured, then two more.

  With instinct born of long soldiering, both Marshals pulled eyes and limbs back into their bodies as the swarm of strange creatures shot past overhead. Panicked guards scrambled for cover. It was left to Gubujul, antennae waving gracefully, to stand tall and proud as the last of the apparitions sped off, heading south at incredible speed. He did so not because he was any braver than Taww or Bejuryar or the flustered sentries, but because he didn’t know any better.

  Emerging from where they had withdrawn into his shell, Bejuryar’s eyestalks turned in the direction taken by the bevy of departed specters. So fast were they traveling that they had already passed from view.

  “What—what are those things?”

  Though Gubujul’s forearms were too long to place on the hips he did not have, his satisfaction was nonetheless evident. “The great mystic Sajjabax made them. By crossing spears hewn from the toughest bone with the swiftest of fish, he has brought forth the Talspears.” All eight of his legs kicking in unison, he started swimming back toward the mount of rock he had chosen for his point of dominion. “I regret only that there is not enough light for us to see clearly the devastation they are about to inflict on our enemies.”

  “I saw the creatures.” Taww had to work hard to keep up with the Paramount Advisor. “They had no eyes that I could see. How will they know to tell friend from foe?”

  Enjoying his moment of ascendancy, Gubujul glanced condescendingly over at the Mud Marshal. “That is a mark of the estimable Sajjabax’s acumen. No Talspear, I was told, will harm anything that wears a shell or its skeleton on its outside. All spralakers have shells or exoskeletons. No mersons do, nor any manyarms save the lazy nautilus.”

  Walking sideways in parallel to the others, Bejuryar found himself marveling at the sagacity of the great and terrible Sajjabax. “This is a fearsome creation. With the wisdom of the wizard on our side, we may yet prevail utterly.”

  Flush with the triumph of the moment, Gubujul could only agree. “I for one have never doubted it.”

  O O O

  Having returned to the vicinity of the inner barrier, Irina was hovering just above the thrusting projections of the still unbreached coral maze when the initial wave of Talspears struck. It was Chachel, however, who first identified this latest attack as something radically different than anything that had preceded it and marking a new and frightening escalation of spralaker warfare.

  Drifting beside the merson while holding onto her own weapon, Irina strained to see beyond the still largely intact outer wall. “Something’s coming this way that I don’t recognize, Chachel. I think,” she squinted into the blue-green light, “it must be some kind of fish. More allies of the spralakers?”

  “Not fish.” Kicking once, Chachel moved slightly forward of the changeling. “Not like anything I’ve ever seen before.”

  “Nor I,” added Glint from where he was floating just beneath his friend. “What kind of creatures can these be?”

  “Unnatural ones. Manifestations of some foul magic.” Though knowing little of sorcery himself, Chachel could recognize it when he saw it. His eyes widened. In all the time she had known him, Irina had never seen the hunter so unsettled. “Glint! Go and find Oxothyr and bring him here. Quickly! Tell him there is evil aswim only he can deal with.” He waved an arm at the hovering cephalopod. “Go in haste!”

  Spinning around, the cuttlefish vanished cityward in a flash of lingering bioluminescence and trailing tentacles.

  Increasingly uneasy, Irina instinctively drifted closer to the bigger merson. “What is it, Chachel? If not some kind of fish, what do you see?”

  “Not spralakers. Not manyarms, or fish, or anything else born of an honest egg. I see spears with tails and fins and tiny eyes, and they are moving faster than any possible forbearer.” Legs scissoring, he arched his back and dove straight down toward the fortification of the inner wall.

  Irina followed without having to be told.

  — XXI —

  The Talspears struck the city’s outer defenses with the force of a seaquake. Like attenuated torpedoes, they brushed aside parrying attempts by mersons and manyarms alike. Their great speed enabled them to not only run down but also pierce completely through the boneless bodies of vulnerable manyarms. Slaying a merson occasionally gave them pause when they encountered part of a skeleton. Such attacks forced the deadly creations to have to back up and work their way free of the clinging corpses they created.

  Mayhem broke out all along the city’s northern defenses as one defender after another fell to the streaking, stiletto-like destroyers. Killing them proved nearly impossible. Composed of solid bone except for their flexible tails and fins, the Talspears could not be injured by weapons made of similar material. They were too slender and moved too fast to be hit by otherwise accurate manyarm arrows. Unlike the chunkier, slow-moving spralakers on whose behalf they fought, stones cast in their direction or dropped from above were easily dodged. The Talspears were agile, fast, and lethal.

  At great risk to themselves, a number of mersons and manyarms managed to grab hold of solitary Talspears. The friction created by their clinging bodies slowed the slayers and the added weight dragged some down to the walls themselves. There the struggling, pinioned Talspears could be pounded with rocks until their slender bodies cracked. When they did so, they leaked a viscous, reeking fluid that smelled like anything but blood. When one such successful kill occurred close to Irina, the stench of the fetid liquid put her mind of the worst examples of advanced oral necrosis.

  Swooping and diving along the length of the inner and outer north walls, the Talspears picked off defenders like needles attacking an anthill. They were too fast and too lethal. Minding Chachel’s counsel to stay close, Irina joined Poylee in guarding the hunter’s back. Only his agility and his special ability to clot water allowed him to ward off a Talspear that came their way. Shunted aside by Chachel’s talent, it streaked past, heading for the inner wall. Irina watched it go, then turned away. There would be others.

  A shout from a familiar voice made her turn.

  “Glint!” Whirling, she saw the familiar streamlined shape of the glowing cuttlefish heading tail-first toward her. Her heart lifted as she saw that Oxothyr was with him.

  And the shaman was not alone.

  Borne along by a host of mersons and manyarms, the entire Tornal accompanied the cuttlefish and the mage. A hopeful Irina recognized each ancient ammonite, every wizened orthocera. Clearly, Glint and Oxothyr had convinced the legendary overlords of Benthicalia that the situation was sufficiently dire to demand their personal attention. They would not have left the safety of the palace otherwise.

  What could they do, she asked herself. Not only were they incredibly old, they were feeble and slow. Like the spralakers, their bodies were designed for bottom-living. The most active of them could barely elevate into the water column and then swim but fitfully. How could they possibly counter the lightning-fast attacks of the spralakers’ malevolent latest weapon? She asked the question of Oxothyr as soon as he rejoined her and her companions. Unhappily, the shaman’s response was less than encouraging.
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  “I wish I knew, Irina-changeling.” The octopod’s eyes were focused on a flat area on the top of the inner coral wall where, one by one, the Tornal were being gently placed by their solicitous attendants. “But this I do know. Watch, observe, and pay attention, for I am convinced what we are about to see is some of the true wet magic of the ancients.”

  But even the most efficacious magic takes time to make ready, and the stronger the sortilege, the more time is required for proper preparation. Becoming aware of the cluster of caucusing Tornal, half a dozen Talspears changed course and streaked toward them. Blood and bits of flesh trailed from their sleek flanks and sharp points.

  Detecting their approach, several mersons and manyarms swam hard to intercept. Those who managed to do so found themselves mercilessly skewered, knocked aside, or simply avoided as the finned spears homed in on their chosen targets. Looking on from a distance, a wide-eyed Irina caught her breath.

  As they took note of the incoming attack, one by one the Tornal’s attendants scattered. Having no weapons of their own there was nothing they could do to protect the masters. Increasing its speed and leaving a trail of froth in its wake, the lead Talspear chose as its target the Speaker-to-the-Tornal herself, and struck home with mindless ferocity.

  To promptly glance off, leaving behind nothing more damaging than a slight scrape on the Speaker’s thick, coiled shell.

  The other attacking Talspears’ efforts at assassination fared no better. Conjured by Sajjabax, they had been imbued by him with the wherewithal to pierce the soft bodies of spralakers’ traditional enemies. Mersons and manyarms were fast and agile, but unlike the spralakers they grew no protective shells.

  But the members of the Tornal, ancient and supposedly primitive relatives of modern manyarms, did.

  Again and again the determined Talspears swept around in tight circles to launch themselves at the virtually immobile Tornal—and again and again their well-aimed strikes merely slid off the solid shells of ammonite and orthocera. Preoccupied with mounting frustration, wholly single-minded, they ignored everything else. And so one by one they were brought down by the grim-faced mersons and active manyarms who had arrived to swarm them in ever greater numbers.

  Elsewhere the fight against their fleet, deadly clones began to turn as alert mersons brought forth from the city tough, finely-woven fishing nets. The inherent speed of the Talspears was not enough to save them once they were entangled in one or more of the nets. Such mesh devices were useless against the spralakers, the smallest of whom could cut their way free with sharp, powerful claws. But against the otherwise deadly Talspears they proved extremely effective, since the living lances had no claws of their own or hands with which to wield net-slicing knives. One by one they were entangled, brought to a halt, and methodically smashed to pieces.

  There remained the ongoing threat from the methodically grinding homaridae, who under the protection of swarms of shepherding spralaker soldiers continued to gnaw away at both the outer and inner city walls. Spreading themselves in a line along the top of the inner coral maze, the Tornal raised their tentacles and began to chant in unison. Their primordial sing-song resounded through the coral but did not reach very far.

  “What are they singing?” From above, Irina looked on in fascination.

  “I do not know.” A tangle of luminescent arms hovering beside her, Oxothyr strove for comprehension. “I am acquainted with many spells and chants, but this I cannot identify. It is very old, I think. Some of the wordings I can grasp, but others are strangers to me.”

  Suddenly Irina found herself pointing. “Look! What’s happening there?”

  Oxothyr stared. “Odd. The silver light of the night sky far above us is not at its brightest, nor is it the right time of year.”

  She blinked in confusion. “The right time for what?”

  “For the coral to give birth.”

  All along the length of the high, convoluted inner wall, the coral was spawning. Every kind, every variety, every size, shape, and color had begun to spew forth billows of eggs and milt, all of it ablaze with internal phosphorescence. Steered by the current-chanting of the Tornal, the clouds of luminescent procreation were carried not upward as usual toward the light of the unseen moon, but outward. North, toward the attacking spralaker army.

  “I see,” Irina murmured. “All those eggs and sperm will stick to the eyes of the enemy, and blind them.”

  “Yes,” agreed Oxothyr, “and perhaps, just perhaps, something else. I think there is more to this than sticks to the eye, changeling.”

  Given impetus by the Tornal’s droning mantra, the living clouds swept toward the outer wall. Those defenders who were unable to swim up and out of the way soon found their clothes and skin and bare flesh coated with hundreds of bits of the highly adhesive macrobiotic mass. Other than inciting some severe itching, the coral spawn caused mersons and manyarms no difficulty.

  The reaction was very different when the enormous billowing mass drifted over the outer stone wall and began to settle like a malignant nebula atop the front lines of the besieging spralaker army.

  A collective high-pitched shrieking wafted up to where Irina hovered close by the somber shaman. It was louder and more shrill than that which accompanied the typical howl of battle, as if routine death had been magnified by some new horror. Gazing into the dimly-lit distance she could make out where whole clusters of spralaker troops had begun to fray, break, and finally flee. The surviving wall-breaching homaridae they were supposed to defend also turned to try and escape, but like its protectors the tank-like, slow-moving monsters could not escape the smothering of the spreading coral spawn.

  The living corals that comprised the inner wall of Benthicalia had fully absorbed the potent enchantment levied upon them by the Tornal. Their spawn had become more than sticky, their presence more than aggravating. Wet magic had transformed them. Now they sought more than simply to mate and attach themselves to a firm foundation.

  The Tornal enchantment had turned them hungry.

  Specifically, it had inculcated in each and every egg and sperm an appetite for calcium. An appetite whose satiation found most immediate satisfaction in the form of the principal chemical component of spralaker shells. A couple of mersons who inadvertently inhaled some of the cloud lost a few teeth to this effect, but those were the only casualties suffered by the shell-less defenders. The mersons’ bones were shielded from the voraciously enchanted coral spawn by their soft flesh, and the manyarms had even less to fear. Bending, Chachel made sure the place where his prosthetic half right leg met flesh was tightly sealed against intrusion.

  A dense fog of luminous eggs and milt settled on the giant boring homaridae. Huge claws and legs began to scratch, then to strike, and finally to flail at their own body. Transformed spawn ate its way into the shell of every spralaker with whom it came in contact. All along the inner and outer wall the enemy onslaught began to falter as panic spread through the ranks. It is unreasonable to expect a soldier of any species to sustain courage when one’s comrades are being devoured before their very eyes.

  Those spralakers whose shells were only partially consumed found their soft inner bodies now exposed to the weapons of patrolling mersons and manyarms. Unaffected by the spawn as long as they kept their mouths closed, merson spearmen picked off rising numbers of the increasingly vulnerable enemy. Finding their targets devoid of natural armor, manyarm archers were able to loose their arrows to ever greater effect. The battle for Benthicalia threatened to become a rout fit to make the one at Siriswirll look like an orderly retreat.

  From their position atop a stone spire of temporary dominion the trio of Mud Marshals and the Paramount Advisor could make out the spreading pandemonium. Increasingly ill at ease, they had to wait for a runner to arrive with an explanation.

  “Spawning coral does not devour shell.” Bejuryar was not panicked, but his indecisive tone reflected his sudden confusion. “Eggs and milt do not parasitize.”

  �
��There is great sorcery at work here!” Cavaumaz was more conclusive. He and Taww turned as one to the flustered Gubujul. “Our soldiers are brave, but they cannot fight theurgy. Weapon must counter weapon! Type must battle type.” With his oversized right claw he pointed past the anxious stenopus toward the shadowy turtleshell box. “Talspears are of no use against small eating things in the millions. We need something vaster and more inclusive.”

  “I will see.…” Turning, Gubujul kicked his way toward Sajjabax’s enigmatic container. “There must be something!”

  There had to be something, he told himself as the Marshals followed close behind, or they all might as well keep going in the direction he was presently swimming.

  The key to the mysterious box swung from a braided chain looped around the Paramount Advisor’s neck—or rather, that portion of his integrated body where a neck would have been if he’d had one. It had hung there ever since the Great Lord himself had slipped it over Gubujul’s antennae prior to the army’s departure from the northlands. Reaching up with a claw, he gripped the sliver of metal firmly between his pincers and pushed it into the lock on the box. The lock itself was an intricate and expensive mechanism, metal that had been forged in the heat of northern black smokers.

  Within the lock, something shifted. It might also have cried out softly, though in the din and confusion of battle Gubujul could not be certain.

  Removing the key, he let it fall down below his head. With both banded arms he lifted up the curved, polished shell that formed the upper half of the container. He could feel all three of his Marshals crowding close behind him. Their presence was real and physical, not imaginary and mental. Every time they moved, the small volume of water they displaced was sensed by his own body.

  The interior of the box was dark. An impatient Taww held out a small, brightly glowing sea slug. The creature’s blue-green light illuminated the shallow interior space. Gubujul caught his breath. For once, the constant weaving of his multiple antennae ceased. The box contained a shell.