Oshenerth

by Alan Dean Foster

  That was all. A shell, nothing more. No crackling wands, no stoppered vials of olivine volcanic glass, no engraved and bejeweled boxes of precious potion. There was no tablet inscribed with awe-inspiring ciphers, no enchanted weapon gleaming in the dim light. Just a shell. Modest in size, mottled ivory in color, spiral in execution. It lay on a bed of soft salps, barely bestirred by the slight current, mocking those who gazed upon it.

  Taww gave voice to what she as well as her colleagues were thinking. “Is this a joke, Paramount Advisor? Or a decoy? Are the true tools of potent necromancy sequestered elsewhere?”

  Gubujul was nearly speechless. “I—I’m as shocked as you are. I don’t know what to …”

  “It is the Great Lord’s way of telling us we have only our own courage and weapons to reply upon,” Bejuryar concluded gravely.

  “That, or the shaman Sajjabax’s sense of humor come to the fore.” Cavaumaz sounded resigned. “That is the trouble when one relies upon a master of magic who is demonstrably mad.”

  Gubujul continued to stare at the shell. True, Sajjabax was quite insane. But while many qualities could be attributed to the court conjurer, the Paramount Advisor had never known humor to be among them. Therefore this cone-shaped shell in its elaborate box must represent something more than just a cavalier attempt at mordant farce. As the three Marshals squabbled among themselves, he reached into the box and picked the shell up in both sets of pincers.

  It appeared to be a very ordinary shell, long since abandoned by whatever had once lived in it. Off-white with dark brown splotches, the spiral growth was half his body length. The tip had been broken off. No, wait—he looked closer. The pointed end had been deliberately and carefully sheared, not broken. Where had he seen something like this? At court, of course. Commands shouted through such carefully modified shells emerged enhanced. Experimentally, he brought the trimmed and polished end to his mouth and spoke into it.

  It was fortunate the wider, open end of the shell was not pointed at the bickering Marshals, or he would have lost his entire general staff at the mention of a single careless word.

  Amplified approximately one and a half million times beyond belief, the sonic blast that emerged from the shell blew a perfect hole in the nearby reef. A dozen unlucky soldiers who happened to be positioned there found themselves blown off the rocks and out of sight. Several less fortunate comrades had their shells and themselves smashed flat.

  Lowering the spiral from his mouth, Gubujul eyed it in wonder. Having instantly ceased their bickering, the three Marshals were gaping at him in astonishment. Taww, unsurprisingly, was the first to regain her voice.

  “Sound,” she marveled. “It magnifies sound. Through what realm or reason or magic I cannot imagine.” At the tips of her eyestalks, her slightly oval blue eyes seemed to brighten. “Magnifies it enough to shatter stone.” Built as she was parallel to the ground, it was always a strain for her to look up at her colleagues. “Should it not be used to sound a greeting to our friends within the city that lies before us?”

  Bejuryar moved to one side. Lowering his massive claw, Cavaumaz scuttled to the other. Stepping forward, Taww demonstrated her usual presumption by placing her right claw firmly against the flank of the far more gracile Gubujul.

  “Speak now for all of us, Paramount Advisor. Speak for the First Army. Speak for the northlands entire. Speak for the Great Lord himself and speak for Sajjabax, the rightful and undisputed master of all that is the unknown.” Raising her other claw, she gestured in the direction of distant Benthicalia. “Say a word to our adversaries.”

  Nodding, Gubujul raised the spiral shell in both long, red-banded arms, took aim as best he could with its perfectly round, gaping open end, and declaimed a commoner insult with as much force as he could muster.

  What went into the small open end of the spiral shell was a terse curse. What emerged was—something greater.

  Instead of dissipating, the Paramount Advisor’s slur maintained its coherence even as it strengthened. A shaped charge of focused sound, it grew and grew as it propagated swiftly through the water. The echo of its passing over the milling troops of the First Army tossed unsecured bodies like gymnasts and sent others slamming into their neighbors. Weapons were knocked from claws and strong legs lost their grip on the uneven, rocky ground. Confusion and uncertainty reigned in force. All this was as nothing compared to what happened when the sonic charge struck the outer wall of the city.

  Detonating against the stonework in an eruption of sound, the blast sent defenders flying in all directions. Legs and tentacles flailed furiously as their owners sought to regain their equilibrium in the water. Those who were defending directly on or immediately above the section of wall that was impacted were not only flung aside like strips of sea grass, they had each and every one been rendered totally deaf by the concussion.

  When the first reports came back to Gubujul and his staff, there was general jubilation. “Curse again,” Taww urged him, “and again and again, Paramount Advisor. And when you have tired of visiting insults upon our enemies, we will pass the shell among us and continue your excellent vocal labors!”

  A second blast from the shell knocked down the section of outer wall beside the first. The third shattered the maze-work coral behind, producing the first unobstructed route into the city proper. When a crack squadron of merson fighters made a desperate attempt to swoop down on the promontory where Gubujul and his staff were perched, those who were not slain outright by the Paramount Advisor’s lookouts were blown in pieces halfway to the mirrorsky by a short blast from the deadly trumpet.

  Bejuryar pestered Gubujul for a chance to try out the accursed shell himself, while Cavaumaz was more restrained. The Paramount Advisor spurned both requests. He was having too much fun. For once he was the one dealing out destruction instead of simply passing along orders or facilitating the efforts of others. For once it was he and not the Great Lord who was the dispenser of the people’s vengeance. As the shrewd Taww had suggested, he would keep blowing until he could rage no more. Only then would he turn the sorceral weapon over to his enthusiastic subordinates.

  A feeling of power he had never felt before surged through him. With both long arms, he lifted the shell once more to his mouth.

  O O O

  From above, a bewildered Irina had a clear view of the destruction. Something invisible had blown a hole in first the outer and then the inner walls that protected the city. Something invisible, and very loud. The first sonic clubbing had forced her to clap her hands to her ears. She winced again when it was repeated. Below, confusion had set in among the Tornal. This reverberant bludgeon of the spralakers was something the likes of which they had never encountered before.

  Buoyed by the very visible consequences, the first detachments of spralaker soldiers had begun to surge toward the breach. As they started forward, a fourth aural charge slammed into the outer wall. The gap was widening rapidly. Soon it would be so expansive that no counterattack, no matter how substantial, would be sufficient to keep the enemy from spreading into the city. Something had to be done to counter the devastating and demoralizing noise, and soon.

  Snapping his arms out behind him, Oxothyr warned Irina to stay where she was. With a blast from his siphon, the shaman sped down toward the coral ridge where the Tornal were debating what to do next.

  In his absence, a curious Chachel swam up beside her. “What does the mage intend?”

  “I’ve no idea. Maybe he just wants to hear what they’re saying.”

  The hunter looked down to where a sizable section of the outer wall had been destroyed and the inner had already been breached. “Someone had better do more than talk or listen, or we will find ourselves having to abandon Benthicalia and fall back in the direction of Sandrift. The stories that will be told of this day will not be comforting ones.”

  A renewed burst of activity below caused her to point. “They’re doing something, but what?”

  The hunter shook his head. “I se
e some of the Tornal scattering in all directions, and their escort even more so. They must be giving the order to bring up reinforcements. Perhaps they are going to try and somehow plug the gaps in the walls.”

  She shook her head. “It won’t do any good if they can’t stop the source of that sound.”

  But she was wrong.

  The call went out the length and breadth of Benthicalia. A call for the help of every citizen who was not actively participating in the defense of the walls. A call for them to respond to the request made by Oxothyr, passed along by the Tornal, and disseminated throughout the population. A call for …

  Sponges.

  There were thousands of them scattered throughout the city. Flaunting every color of the rainbow despite the light-absorbing depth, they were cultivated for everything from residential comfort to external decoration. Some were hand-sized, others huge. Irrespective of size, shape, and color, one by one they were ripped from their locations and brought forward as fast as possible to the site of the breach in the city’s ramparts.

  As armed mersons and manyarms provided cover, dozens and then hundreds of the uprooted sponges were jammed into the uneven gap. Under Oxothyr’s direction, others were attached with organic adhesive all along the still-standing sections of outer north wall. But not before they had been sculpted into cones and cavities according to the shaman’s specific instructions and pierced with thousands of tiny holes and slits.

  A rising thunder caused Chachel to grab Irina around the waist and kick upward. “Here it comes again!” he shouted warningly. Shaking her head in disgust at the sight, Poylee joined them. Glint rose with ease. Though Irina could have ascended by herself, she made no move to dislodge the hunter’s helpful arm.

  Booming through the water, the next burst of destructive sound came screaming toward the city. This one was intended to crush a second section of inner wall. It burst upon the hastily erected hedge of perforated sponges—and vanished into silence. Watching and listening from above, Irina was put in mind of the cones and sound-absorbing tiles that lined a typical recording studio. Like them, Oxothyr’s sponges had been modified to soak up noise.

  The makeshift defense had done its job flawlessly. It continued to do so as blast after blast of crashing sound was cast at the city—no longer to damaging effect.

  Even underwater, she mused, it appeared that physics could occasionally trump magic.

  O O O

  Among Gubujul and his staff frustration rose as discharge after sonic discharge failed to make any further impact on the city walls.

  “This is absurd, simply absurd!” Cavaumaz could not believe the reports they were receiving. “Sponges! How can commonplace sponges, which can be shredded by the smallest newborn, stand against something as powerful as the shaman Sajjabax’s shaped sound?”

  Bejuryar confessed himself equally baffled. “I could poke a hole in one with my eye, let alone a claw.” He was staring in disbelief at the distant, still shining, inviolate expanse that was Benthicalia. “There is great magic at work here.”

  “Perhaps not magic.” All of them, including a distraught Gubujul, looked down at Taww. “Perhaps something even stronger than magic.”

  “What could be stronger than the eminent Sajjabax’s magic?” Bejuryar growled scornfully.

  The squat lobster gazed up at her colleague. “Intelligence.” Turning, she nodded in the direction of the city. “Put down the shell, Paramount Advisor. Though we know not how, it is plain that its power has been countered. What other mystic weaponry do you have at your disposal?”

  Among these three general officers, at least, a downcast Gubujul was not ashamed to show his disappointment. “You saw for yourselves. There was only the spiral shell. The box is empty.”

  “Then we are come to rely on the oldest of spralaker tactics. One that promises the least glory. One that involves the simplest of stratagems. But one that in the past our people have demonstrated can work. It demands, most of all, that quality which our armies and our soldiers are so often sorely lacking.”

  Cavaumaz stared down at her. After a moment’s thought, he found himself nodding slowly in agreement, his shell bobbing forward, his eyes turning back toward the distant city. When he spoke, it was in concert with Bejuryar. Their tone was one of resignation, but not defeat. Standing beside them, Gubujul found that much as he did not want to, he had no choice but to agree.

  “Siege.”

  — XXII —

  Days passed, and weeks, but within Benthicalia time seemed to slow to an increasingly despondent crawl. The deep-water gardens cultivated within the city could not feed its population by themselves. Limited stockpiles that had never been intended to cope with such an emergency were steadily drawn down. The usual hunting expeditions had to be forgone, since sizable teams of hunters bearing large nets would draw too much hostile attention. Even smaller foraging parties were quickly intercepted by patrolling squadrons of ray-riding spralakers. Dispersing and swimming hard, their members were able to make it safely back to the city. But they invariably did so without being able to bring back any food.

  Unable to break through the city’s defenses, the two besieging spralaker armies had settled down to enforce a complete blockade. Nothing was allowed to get in or out. While the Tornal were able to exploit specific and fairly simple spells to turn otherwise inedible organic matter such as weavings, decorative sea fans, and scavenged spralaker shell into food, their efforts would ultimately only buy time. The spralaker strategy was plain enough. If they could not overrun the inhabitants of Benthicalia, they would starve them out.

  It was not a glamorous way to win a battle. The victors would not be able to drape themselves in the intestines of the defeated. But it would be a victory nonetheless. And having conquered the city, the spralaker armies would then be able to move freely south and west along the reef lines, annihilating every smaller and weaker community in their path. They had to be stopped at Benthicalia.

  Regardless of whether his fighting limbs are supported by stiff bone or flexible muscle, whether his eyes point forward or to the side, even the bravest soldier cannot long carry on a struggle on an empty stomach.

  And while the now sponge-clad walls of the city held high and strong, the interminable assaults and vexing sorties periodically mounted by the besieging spralakers took a steady toll on the defenders. Every merson lost to a lucky throw, each manyarm surprised from behind while out on patrol, was a soldier who could not be replaced. As the steady attrition continued among the ranks of defenders, the mood inside the city grew increasingly glum. Hammered from two directions by death and hunger, desperate citizens began to whisper hesitantly of abandoning the city and fleeing for their lives.

  Even an outsider like Irina could see the foolishness inherent in such talk. If trained, heavily-armed foraging parties could not escape the attention of spralaker patrols, how could families laden down with offspring and household goods hope to do so? Such dismal scenarios were among the many that she and her new friends discussed as they hovered at the front of the audience chamber in the blue-green lit Palace of the Tornal.

  Several members of that august assembly were unenthusiastically debating strategy among themselves. Off to one side Oxothyr was arguing loudly with a pair of ammonites and one ten-foot long orthocera. Though the details of their deliberations were easy to hear in the enclosed chamber, Irina found her thoughts drifting absently.

  It had all been so fascinating, her mysterious transformation and the time spent here in Oshenerth. Throughout it all she had faced manifold dangers and had come face to face with a watery death on many occasions. But now that it seemed to be closing in on her with an inexorability she had not encountered previously, she found herself longing more than ever before for her former life. For the gentle caress of sunshine on bare skin. For the taste of familiar foods. For laughter and conversation that did not have to travel through the medium of liquid to reach her ears. For the simple feeling of being dry.

 
; Something nudged her inappropriately and she whirled furiously. It was only Glint, come up behind her. The cuttlefish’s bioluminescence trolled in waves of glowing maroon through his mantle.

  “What—why did you do that?” Conscious that her hands had balled into fists, she relaxed the clenched fingers.

  “Anger has a way of dispelling misery, however invalid-seeming the approach,” the cuttlefish explained blithely. “What were you so intense about?”

  She faltered. “I—I don’t really remember. Something that had to do with dying.”

  “Oh, well then.” The cuttlefish changed color to a subdued and soothing turquoise. “I suppose I should have let you simmer, like a black smoker that’s been plugged.”

  “No.” Her spirits did not exactly rise, but neither did they sink any further. “Thanks for trying to help, Glint.” Pivoting in the water, she turned her attention back to Oxothyr and the deliberating Tornal. “Do you think they’ll come up with anything?”

  “You mean a way of raising the siege?” Hovering beside her, the cuttlefish repeatedly twisted his arms together; back and forth, back and forth, like a piece of steel cable continuously fraying and then rebraiding itself. “They’d better think of something, Irina-changeling.” Unfolding from the muscular coil, one of his two longer hunting tentacles curled up and under to stroke his ventral side. “I’m starving. Eventually I’ll shrink until only my head and arms are left.”

  “Then there’ll still be enough left to complain with,” she told him, making sure to add a grin to show that she was joking.

  No such humor was evident among the Tornal. Already old and weary when the spralaker onslaught had begun, they were now almost too tired to debate. Their exhaustion conferred one benefit: they were increasingly disposed to listen to anything arising outside their immediate circle that smacked of a reasonable suggestion, whether it involved means magical or prosaic.

  Unsurprisingly then, they were more than ready to pay attention to Oxothyr.