'Maybe because we're only boys,' said Pazel uneasily. 'We'd better be careful.'
'Just you be careful not to insult them again.'
It was no use protesting: Neeps was positively convinced Pazel had said something nasty in Murthish. They swam up to Mintu and clasped his arms. He had a girl's silver hair-clip in his own brown locks.
'She fed me clams,' he said. 'And she healed a cut on my foot. I don't think murths are half as bad as people say.'
'Your sister nearly drowned looking for you,' said Pazel. 'You'd better get back to the sphere and let her know you're alive.'
'Oh! Yes, I… I will.' Mintu looked reluctantly back toward the coral arch.
'Go on,' urged Pazel, 'or she'll try it again. She's in no shape for that.'
Mintu looked at his murth-girl playmate. She drew back into the ruined ship, eyes pouting, as if she knew their game was over.
'I'll come right back,' he said.
Pazel watched Mintu swim all the way to the arch. Then he turned to see Neeps sitting cross-legged on the seabed, inches from a murth-girl in the same position.
'Hello, dream,' said Neeps.
They were making faces at each other. The murth-girl laid a finger on his worm-wound-and it vanished, melting into his skin like a snowflake.
'Thank you!' laughed Neeps. 'Pazel, how do you say 'thank you'?'
Pazel didn't answer. He looked up at the two boys and their friend. They had released the topgallant and were holding hands in a circle, serenely sinking. Another murth-girl, almost completely hidden in the weeds, looked out as they passed.
'They're ready, Thysstet,' she told the girl as she passed.
'Almost!' laughed the other.
Ready for what? Pazel knew how to ask the question. But what if they vanished again at the sound of his voice?
The girl in the weeds leaned out farther. Pazel's heart leaped: it was her, the one who had touched him. Suddenly nothing else mattered. He swam toward her as fast as he could. Their eyes met. She was beautiful!
She was gone.
He felt stabbed in the chest. One glance and she had fled into the weeds.
And when he looked down, Neeps had vanished, too. There on the sand lay his collecting bag, hook and ring- the latter with the rope still attached.
'Neeps! Neeps!'
Pazel flew toward the sole remaining murth-girl. She saw him and cowered behind the two boys.
'Stop!' they growled at him. 'What's the matter with you! She's ours!'
'It's a trap!' he cried. 'They're separating us! And you've lost your ropes!'
'Who needs ropes?' laughed one boy. 'Who needs them blary Volpeks and their bath-a-spear?'
'But how will you get back to land?'
'Swim! Walk! Who cares? Maybe I'll wait a week. All I know is that I'll go ashore far from Arunis! Ha! We can even say his name down here. What's he going to do about it?'
'Arunis! Arunis!' shouted the other boy.
The murth tickled him from behind. But she still watched Pazel with fear.
He begged the boys to help him find Neeps, but they called him killjoy and swam away. Pazel shouted for Neeps again. How far did his voice carry underwater? And where should he search?
Quite at random he circled the bow of the Lythra and the massive rock. No Neeps, no murth-girls. Only fish, a few spiny lobsters, and in the distance a red, swift shape like a flying carpet: a scarlet ray. Pazel had never seen such a huge one-it was easily twelve feet from wing tip to wing tip-and he kept his distance. Scarlet rays were not aggressive, and they had no teeth, but the stingers in their whip-like tails were notorious. In Besq, Pazel had seen a fisherman stung on the hand by a scarlet ray tangled in his net. He had passed out from sheer agony.
He set off among the rocks and weeds. Shouting for Neeps, but thinking despite himself of the girl, the girl, the girl. Of course she would be frightened to hear a human speaking Murthish. But so frightened? And what had she meant by Mine?
His rope went slack. He reeled it in, more alarmed by the second. Something very sharp had cut the rope, and he hadn't felt a thing. Not one of them was tethered to the bathysphere. And only he was aware of the danger.
What could he do? He rose. At thirty feet below the surface most of the reef was below him. A little farther and the kelp closed around him too. He could see nothing at all until his head broke the surface.
Where was he? The wind had risen and the waves had grown. The sun was bright as ever, but the shore seemed to have changed shape. Then he caught sight of the barge and realized he was much farther north than he had guessed. He could see the Volpeks on her deck, and in the smaller craft around her, looking anxiously at both shore and sea. Far out in the Gulf of Thуl the heavily armed brig still waited, brooding. He turned to face the shore-
— and dived, just in time. A longboat was driving straight at him, making for the barge. Pazel watched as it passed a yard above his head, four pairs of oars pulling swiftly. Then he rose until his eyes just cleared the water.
Arunis was standing upright at the prow, in a dark cloak, his tattered scarf flapping in the wind. The white dog stood beside him, motionless. The sorcerer waived irritably at his men.
'Faster!' he shrieked. 'Can't you see that fog bank, Druffle, you louse?'
Mr. Druffle was indeed among the rowers. Looking miserable and cold, the wiry man glanced southward. Pazel looked, too: there was indeed a broad mantle of fog upon the Gulf, two or three miles off. Like the shreds of mist he had glimpsed from the dunes, it was thick as white wool, an unnatural sight under the gleaming sun. But this fog bank stretched in an unbroken line from the southern shore deep into the Gulf. And it was creeping relentlessly their way.
Arunis screamed at the rowers again, and they increased their speed. Pazel flipped over and swam straight down. One calamity at a time.
Below, he found no sign of man or murth. Clownfish darted; the scarlet ray swept by near the wreck. Otherwise the sea was still.
A hunch came to him suddenly. Before he sank any farther, Pazel moved well into the ribbon kelp. Then, hand over hand, he pulled himself into the depths. If the weed could hide murths it could hide him, too.
After descending another thirty feet he held still. He could see the whole clearing, from the Lythra to the coral wall, but it would take a sharp eye indeed to spot him.
No one came. No silver laughter reached him. But strangely, the scarlet ray kept up its circling of the wreck. What was it up to? Not feeding: scores of fish passed right under its nose, and the giant ignored them all.
Long minutes passed. Then the ray did something odd. It stopped, pivoted its huge, flat body left and right and dived behind the wreck.
Pazel burst from the weeds. That was no normal behavior for a ray. He swam low, hiding behind the wreck as long as possible. When he could go no farther he shot upward, across the topdeck, and peered down along the side of the ruined hull.
The ray was hovering beside a gunport, its deadly tail writhing. Pazel heard its voice, like that of a weird overgrown bird: 'Gone-gone-gone, Lady Klyst! Come out, find your kin, land-boy loses, murth-friends win.'
The ray withdrew slightly and the girl's face appeared-his girl. Timidly she pulled herself halfway through the gunport. The golden joy coursed through Pazel again. He could not be silent.
'Klyst!'
She looked up in horror. And vanished back into the wreck. The ray, however, turned with a furious roar. 'Land-boy! Land-boy! Kill you! Kill you!'
Pazel knew he was no match for a humiliated scarlet ray. He kicked off the broken gunwale and shot down the length of the Lythra's topdeck with the beast howling behind him. He would never reach the kelp beds: the wreck itself was his only hope. Under the broken foremast he swam, dodging a skeleton snagged on the pinrail. The foreward hatch was blocked with debris. He swam on desperately. The ray's fleshy horns brushed his toes.
