Elemental Magic: All-New Tales of the Elemental Masters

by Mercedes Lackey

  The air brightened and she blinked at a sudden blaze of emerald from the sea. Below the distant cliffs she could make out a white fringing of surf, and more surf edging three low islands that lay between the ship and the shore. The wind was still strong, but at least they could see where they were going now.

  That was when she saw Meto halt as if listening. In the next moment, she heard it as well.

  Singing. . . .

  It’s the wind in the rigging, she told herself, or the call of a gull. But no gull ever had a voice so pure. She staggered as the sail flapped suddenly.

  “Secure that brace!” called the captain as the sailor she had talked to before let the rope that ran from the end of the yardarm fall. One of the other men grabbed it, and the ship steadied as he wound it tightly around its peg at the stern.

  “As for you—” The sailor scarcely seemed to notice as the captain gripped his arm.

  “Can’t you hear her?” he asked in a conversational tone. “Can’t you hear her calling me?”

  Now other men were stopping, the confusion in their eyes giving way to wonder. Wave-Dancer shuddered as the steersman let go.

  “Poseidon strike you! Get back there!” the captain started toward the stern, shouldering past Archilaus, who had emerged from the tent to see what was going on.

  Kyria shook her head, trying to sort out the singing from the babble she heard from the sea. Then she saw that Meto had followed the helmsman to the rail. She lurched across the heaving deck, grabbed his tunic with one hand while the other gripped the rail. He did not even seem to know she was there.

  “Is there danger?” asked Archilaus.

  “Oh, sir, just listen!” Meto’s voice rang with joy. “She’s singing about the holy numbers—the secrets of music—everything you tried to teach me, but I couldn’t understand!”

  The philosopher cupped a hand behind his ear, brows bent in frustrated curiosity. There was a splash as one of the sailors leaped into the sea.

  “Stop your ears!” Captain Libano’s voice cracked. “Gods save us! We’ve come to the Siren’s isle!” Two more men went over the side, and the words borne on the wind mingled with a chorus of lamentation from the sea.

  The captain looked wildly around him and gestured frantically to Archilaus, who alone among them stood unmoved. “Sir! Take the steerboard! Hold her as she goes!”

  As the philosopher grasped the steering bar, the captain clapped his hands over his ears. The ship wavered, and Meto began to struggle in Kyria’s arms. More crewmen were diving overboard, crying out in eager greeting to women only they could see.

  Now she could hear words as well—a song of home and hearth and heart’s desire—but louder still was the chorus of warning she heard from the waves. She saw her father struggling with the steerboard, but it had been too many years since he had grasped anything but a pen. He went sprawling as the wooden bar wrenched free, and Kyria staggered as Wave-Dancer heaved round. The starboard brace snapped with a ping as the precise relationship between sail and steerboard failed, followed by the sheetline below. As the yardarm swung, the flapping corner of the sail caught the captain across the chest and swept him away.

  In another moment, the portside lines were gone as well. The sail flared forward like a gigantic flag and Wave-Dancer followed, prow aimed at the islands, running before the wind.

  “Let me go!” Meto tried to push Kyria away. “The voices—now they are telling me how to ride the wind!”

  “It’s all right—” she tried to soothe him. “Look—in another moment we’ll be there!” They were already passing the first island, a round lump surrounded by foam. The larger, crescent-shaped mass ahead of them was approaching with frightening speed. White water frothed around a stony shore, and that was just the rocks she could see!

  Her father was tying her mother to the mast. He gestured to her to come over, but she could not pry Meto away from the rail. She shook her head. They were all going to drown anyway, and in that moment it seemed to her better to die as Meto’s wife than as her parents’ child.

  “Farewell—” her father cried, “—until we meet again in that sphere where all is Real . . .” He should have looked ridiculous—an old, bony, man with scant silvered hair flying wildly in the wind, but she saw in him a nobility worthy of the Master he revered.

  The ship jerked; she heard a groan as the hull scraped stone. Meto’s gaze focused at last, and he flung his arms around her. “Kyria—” Everything he had not known how to say was in the way he spoke her name.

  Another shock brought the sound of breaking crockery as some underwater fang pierced the hold and wine flooded into the sea. They were still moving forward, but the ship’s motion was more sluggish now. Another surge lifted them.

  “Sea Sister, help us!” Kyria screamed as a mass of gray stone reared up before them. Then they struck. The deck tilted. She glimpsed the mast torn from its wedging by the impact and whirled overboard, and then the great wave arching overhead.

  “Let go!” came a voice that was, and was not, within. “Let go and give yourself to the Sea!”

  Blue hair streamed upward along that endless curve, shining arms reached, she saw the delicate webs between the long fingers of graceful hands. As the wave fell, Kyria released her death-grip on the rail and let it sweep them away.

  * * *

  Kyria’s first awareness was the rough prickle of sand beneath her cheek. She lifted her head, forced muscles to move so she could brush it away. Everything hurt. She licked dry lips and tasted brine, flinched at the brightness of sun on sea.

  As memory began to return she tensed, but there was no singing. She looked for Meto, and felt a pang of loss whose intensity surprised her as she realized he was not there. She had been washed up in a rocky cove just above the high tide line. Beyond the thin edging of sand the ground rose steeply, covered with dwarf oak and broom and crowned with spindly pines. The gurgling water was retreating now, leaving behind a wonderland of barnacle covered rocks and tidepools where orange starfish clung and the feathery fronds of white and purple anemones waved.

  “She wakes . . .” said a small voice from somewhere among the rocks. Kyria spun around and, squinting, realized that what she had taken for a flare of sunlight on the water was a small being, human in shape but with wings that glistened like those of a dragonfly and a slim body scattered with opalescent scales.

  “Are you a nereid?” she breathed.

  “Nothing so lofty!” there was a ripple of falling water in the creature’s laugh. “Only a lesser sprite, Despoina, a nymph of the tidepool, at your service.”

  Kyria blinked. “Why do you call me mistress?” More laughter came from the rocks around her.

  “Because you can see us. Because the daughter of Nereus saved you. You have the favor of the sea. . . .”

  “We are happy you live,” said another. “The crabs are outgrowing their shells from devouring all the man-flesh washed ashore.”

  Kyria’s heart sank at the thought of her parents’ bodies being nibbled by the creatures of the sea. And Meto—

  “Have others washed up recently?” Her voice wavered. “An older man and a woman, and a young man . . . with fair hair?”

  Sound washed around her.

  “Beyond those rocks—” With a whirr of gossamer wings, the sprite darted ahead, motioning to Kyria to follow. Heart pounding, she picked her way over the tumbled stone. On the other side, a shimmer of light pulsed above a pile of seaweed and broken boards. Closer, she could see shapes in the cloud, like the sea-sprites in form, but transparent as glass. They were hovering above an outstretched hand.

  “More dead meat?” Kyria asked tightly.

  “No, mistress! The sylphs say he lives!”

  Suddenly she could move again. She fell to her knees in the sand and began to tear away the sea wrack until he lay bef
ore her, limp as the seaweed, but not as cold.

  “Meto! Meto!” A pulse beat in his throat, but he did not stir. She turned to the sprites. “Is there any fresh water here?”

  Another subliminal gabble brought her to a little rivulet. She filled a piece of broken amphora from the wreckage, drinking until she felt parched tissues ease, then carried it carefully back to Meto. By the time his shallow breathing gave way to a deeper, shuddering gasp, it seemed to her that hours must have passed, but the sun was only beginning to dip toward the sea.

  When his eyes opened, the sylphs chorused in delight. For a moment he stared without focus. Then he reached up to touch her face.

  “You’re real . . .” he whispered. “We survived.”

  For a moment all she could do was smile. Then she pointed toward the sylphs.

  “Tell me. When you look over there, do you see anything . . . strange?”

  Meto winced as he turned his head. Then she saw his eyes go wide. “You mean you see them too? I’ve glimpsed them before, but I never dared to tell anyone for fear they would think I was crazed.”

  The sylphs spiraled upward, greeting him with a shimmer of light and song.

  “And over there?” she indicated the nymphs.

  “Yes, but not so well. They are not like the other ones.”

  Kyria smiled. “The ones you see call themselves sylphs. The nymphs are water sprites that came to me. It seems the gods have given to you and me a knowledge of the elements that goes beyond even my father’s philosophy. We were never willing to admit we were seeing them before.”

  Meto levered himself upright. “As soon as we get back to the lands of men, I will make an offering to thank Hera for giving you to me. When our parents arranged the betrothal I was glad, and then terrified that I would betray myself and you would fear me.”

  “When we get back?” She sat back with a sigh, the frantic energy that had fueled her search for Meto gone.

  “The Powers saved us. I cannot believe they will abandon us now!”

  “What about the Powers that almost killed us?” she objected. “Any ship that comes near this isle will be in danger from the Sirens’ song . . .”

  He nodded toward the nymphs. “Cannot your friends help us?”

  The sea sprite shivered, splattering drops across the sand. “We are no kin to the Sirens. The songs that called your sailors to their death did not come from the people of the sea.”

  Meto sighed. “It is true. They sang of fertile fields and the sweet scent of flowers on the wind. . . .”

  “Ah! That would explain why you heard them so clearly,” said Kyria, “but their songs had little power over me.”

  “Their strength is of the earth and the air—” sang the sylphs. “But since Odysseus defeated them, they fly from one island to another, seeking revenge. The unburied bodies of those they kill pollute this place. We do not want them here!”

  * * *

  That evening, shellfish and the garnet-colored seaweed that grew on the rocks staved off the worst of their hunger. They fell into exhausted sleep on a bed of dry grass beneath the pines, clasped in each other’s arms. They woke at dawn, sore and hungry but cheered by the bright day. They were just washing at the little stream when Meto stiffened.

  “They are singing again . . .” he said hoarsely.

  Kyria ripped at the ragged hem of her chiton and wadded up pieces of cloth to press into his ears. In the next moment the sylphs had descended in a cloud around him, producing a soft humming that muted whatever parts of the Sirens’ song he could still hear.

  One of the nymphs manifested from the stream. “There is a ship. The evil ones are singing, but the sailors are too far away to hear.”

  “How can I keep us alive until we are rescued when at any moment I may be drawn to my doom?” asked Meto, pulling the plugs out of his ears. Kyria nobly did not point out that up to now it had been she who had been keeping him alive. “What do the Sirens want?”

  “They desire what they failed to get from Odysseus . . .” said the nymph, “the love of a living man.”

  Meto shivered, frowning. Kyria reached out to him, then let her hand fall. Her mother had warned her never to try to talk to a man when he was thinking. A woman could watch a pot, comfort a child, and carry on a conversation, but a man’s mind could only focus on one thing.

  “We will have to think of something,” he said finally. “Even if we plug my ears with wax as Odysseus did for his sailors, so long as the Sirens sing, no ship will be able to get near, and neither one of us will survive.”

  “In that case,” Kyria replied, “while we are thinking, let us give the souls of our lost sailors peace.”

  The sprites led them to the drowned men. A handful of soil scattered across each body served to release the ghosts before Meto and Kyria covered them with wreckage from the ship—the best they could do for burial. They found Captain Libano, but the bodies of her parents were not there. She tried to hope that some ship had rescued them, knowing it all too likely that they were at the bottom of the sea.

  That night they slept curled in their nest of grass once more. But despite the day’s labors, she found it hard to sleep, acutely aware of the warmth of Meto’s body next to her own. Though they lacked the feast and blessings, they were already bound by law. She had expected that he would want to lie with, as well as beside her. But when he had kissed her on the brow, he turned his back to her and lay still.

  He is tired, she thought. He did most of the work today, and he was more harshly treated by the sea. But he did not lie with the limp abandon of exhaustion as he had the night before. She could feel the tension in his long frame, but if he did not want comfort, she would not pry. And if he did not want to make love to her, she would not beg.

  She lay silent, using the branches of the pines to track the passage of the stars, her cheeks wet with tears. Eventually her eyes closed.

  When she opened them to the new day, he was gone.

  * * *

  “Why didn’t you wake me?!”

  The sylphs were absent, but the sea-sprites had come flying in a glistening mob at Kyria’s anguished cry.

  “You ordered us to leave you alone!” The nymph said sulkily.

  Kyria rubbed her eyes and sighed. It was true that when she and Meto lay down the night before she had told the sprites to go away, not wanting to make love in front of an audience. But her anger was all that was holding off despair now.

  “Where—” she began, but she did not really need to ask. Meto has gone to do something noble, she thought bitterly, but at least he had taken the wax plugs they had made from the stopper of a broken amphora that had washed ashore. There might still be some fragment of his soul he could call his own.

  She felt marginally more hopeful when she had bathed her gummy eyes and eaten the last of the seaweed collected the day before. But her heart raced as she picked her way along the island’s eastern shore.

  The nymphs had taken to the sea again, leaping like dolphins through the waves. But soon enough she ceased to need their guidance. From somewhere ahead she could hear the Sirens’ triumphant song.

  “Daughters of Earth and the flowing river, ancient and fair are we—” trilled the first voice, fresh as the first breeze of spring.

  A second voice, golden as summer, continued, “From Earth’s womb drawn to dance on the air, and prey upon the sea.”

  Hardly daring to breathe, Kyria crept forward.

  “Leucosia the first, Ligeia the next, and ripe Parthenope!” The third voice was rich and full.

  Kyria pulled down a branch of scrub oak so she could see. Before her, a thin layer of soil covered a broad slab of rock, bearing grasses that were turning now from the green of spring to summer gold, edged with yellow broom and scattered with crimson poppies and rockrose. Of the singers, all she
could see at first was wings.

  They were sitting on an outcrop of dark stone. Leucosia was pale, white-winged, with silvery hair that floated on the breeze. Ligeia must be the one who was all amber and gold, and Parthenope darker, with hair and feathers shading from copper to bronze. About halfway between the Sirens and the edge of the rocks stood Meto, swaying a little to the music, head bowed. His own sylphs hovered in an anxious cloud behind him, too fearful to help, but too devoted to leave.

  With his ragged tunic and tangled hair, he should have looked pitiable, but there was something in his stance that reminded her of a patient god. Were they playing with him, or was he resisting their allure? Whatever Meto had intended, it did not seem to be working. But he would be safe if she could get him into the sea.

  As she began to ease back, the bronze Siren, Parthenope, rose. Kyria stifled a gasp. The Siren’s upper body was as beautiful as her voice, with generous breasts and smoothly rounded arms. Below, she had the feathered thighs and clawed feet of a bird.

  “Though shy you are, my fledgling boy, you never will be free!” the Siren sang.

  Kyria slid back through the trees and scuttled across the rocks, scarcely pausing when she bruised her feet and scraped her knee. At the edge of the water, the nymphs rose to greet her in a shimmer of glistening wings. She slid gratefully into the waves. The sting of salt-water on her wounds became a tingle and the entire sea began to glow, but she had no time to wonder at it now.

  By the time she reached the rocks below the meadow, all three of the Sirens were stalking forward. A sylph darted past Meto’s ear, whispering. He cast a quick glance behind him, saw Kyria, then tipped back his head and sang.

  “Too fair by far for mortal love, Sirens, let me be!” He had been trained in Pythagorean music, and each note was accurate and pure.

  The Sirens halted. Kyria wondered if anyone had ever sung to them before. A billow lifted her onto one of the rocks and she struggled to stand.

  “Let goddesses be loved by gods,” she echoed him, “and leave this man for me!”