He jackknifed through the main hatch. The ray roared and stabbed with its tail, missing Pazel's head by an inch. Pazel seized at timbers, dragging himself farther inside as the ray tried to squeeze in after him. It succeeded, but it could not spread its wings in the cluttered wreck, and only managed to beat the algae, sand and debris into a whirlwind. Pazel choked (he was breathing it, after all) but pushed on, slamming a rotted compartment door behind him.
He passed dark cabins, broken ladderways. One of the fanged fish that had so alarmed him before rushed out of the gloom. Heedless with longing, Pazel smacked it away.
She was still there on the gun deck, her body glowing behind a mass of broken beams. She saw him and turned to flee.
'Don't go!' he cried out, and his words froze her where she stood. Amazed, Pazel swam a little closer. 'Come out, Klyst, if that's your name. Why are you so afraid of me?'
She stepped out, hugging herself, literally shaking with fear.
'You could be miles away by now, if I'm so frightening. Why did you stay? Please explain all this to me!'
Her sharp teeth were chattering. She shook her head. 'Can't go. Can't disobey. I love you.'
'You love me! Why on earth? I mean… that's extremely… Why}'
'You used ripestry. Humans shouldn't! Humans never could!'
Pazel's Gift told him that ripestry was Murthish for 'language.' But then he started. It was also telling him the word meant 'magic.'
'What! Are they the same thing, to sea-murths?'
'They}' she said.
'Ripestry and ri-' Pazel stopped. Even his Gift couldn't provide another word. It was true: language and magic were one notion to her. To speak was to enchant.
'But for Rin's sake,' he said, 'you were the one doing love-ripestry to me. Weren't you?'
'Yes, yes,' she said. 'But when you said my name you turned it back on me. And since I'd already touched you I… I-'
She leaped forward and wrapped her strange arms around his legs. She pressed her face to his knees and wept-'Hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo!'
Her tears glowed luminescent as they left her eyes, in the instant before the sea diluted them.
'Why are you crying?'
'Land-boy! Land-boy! I love you!'
Her charm had backfired: he was free, she was madly in love. He tried to make her stand up.
'I'll release you,' he said. 'Just tell me how.'
'Hoo-hoo-hoo!'
'Klyst!' he said as gently as he could. 'Please stop crying. We'll find a way out of this.'
At once she made an effort to hold in her tears.
'That's grand,' he said. 'Now tell me, why did you give us water-breathing, and make us love you?'
'Can't help it,' she said. 'We have to drive you away.'
'Well, that's a blary strange way to do it!'
She shook her head. 'It always works.'
'But why not just talk to us?'
'Because you're monsters,' she said. 'Your people, I mean. Wherever you go the ripestry dies. And then so do we. Starved for ripestry, starved to death.'
Her silver eyes stared into his, beseeching, and Pazel stared back without a word. The Volpeks were right, in a sense: the murths were dying out in the Quiet Sea. And if he understood her, mankind was the reason. Men dispelled magic; and her people could not live without it.
'But you have ripestry,' she said at last, smiling. 'You can stay! You can stay with me!'
Darkness. She began to kiss his hands.
'There are many men here,' he said.
'Too many,' she said. 'They've been coming for weeks, and more all the time. Always before, for centuries, men feared the murths and ghosts and spirit-tides, and hurried off. But these men are not afraid. There is an evil ripestry with them that breaks our spells. My father says we must abandon these gardens, where we have lived for ten thousand years-move south, away from the monsters. But our elders are too weak for such a journey. They'll certainly die.'
'You don't have to go!' Pazel said. 'I know what they want. And I promise you, Klyst, they'll leave as soon as they get it. They serve a mage called Arunis. He's the one with the bad ripestry. But all he wants is some Red Wolf.'
The light returned; he saw her look of disbelief. 'That thing? That old iron wolf?'
'You know it!' he said.
'Of course. It went down with this ship forty years ago, when my father was a boy. But the Red Wolf is… ugly, bad. Why would anyone care about it?'
'I don't know. But believe me, Arunis won't leave without it. Will you take me to it, Klyst?'
'Will you marry me?'
What could he tell her? The truth? That except for a few moments under her spell he had never thought of marrying anyone, never longed in that way for anyone, except (in moments of lunacy or insight) for a land-girl named Thasha Isiq?
Feeling rather a cad, he said, 'I can't breathe water forever, now, can I?'
She beamed at him. 'You can if you're with me! A kiss on the hand, that's good for a whole day. You can stay as long as you like. The others will be getting air-thirst soon, of course.'
'Air-thirst? What's air-thirst?'
Klyst just looked at him. Then she crossed her eyes and made desperate motions with her mouth: gulp gulp gulp.
'Drowning!' he cried. 'They'll drown soon? We've got to find them! Oh, Neeps! Where are they, Klyst, where?'
'Different places.'
'Take me! Please, hurry!'
Obedient as ever, she caught his wrist and tugged him out through the gunport. Her friend the scarlet ray was still circling the Lythra. Klyst gave a sharp cry and it swooped down on them like a thunderhead. As it passed overhead Klyst grabbed its wing just behind one eye, and she and Pazel were whisked away through the kelp at breakneck speed. Coral mountains whizzed by. The bathysphere flashed by like a golden apple. Then she let go of the ray and sank with Pazel toward a little trench in the seafloor.
'Too late,' she said.
The pair of boys from the bathysphere were in the trench, feet pointing skyward, dead. At the bottom of the trench was a bed of clams-monstrous clams; the smallest were as broad as dinner platters. Some yawned wide, pearls like goose eggs shining in their pale flesh. Two had snapped shut on human wrists.
Klyst swam up to the nearest boy and bit him smartly on the foot. 'Still warm,' she said, chewing.
'Neeps!' shouted Pazel. 'You've got to take me to Neeps! The other boy!'
Off they went again, flashing by a staved-in yawl, an octopus gliding among blue anemones, an anchor with a broken fluke. Suddenly the ray turned in a circle, halting.
'Blood,' it said.
'Human blood,' said Klyst, sniffing.
Bakru! Spare him! thought Pazel. 'Where is it, Klyst?'
She swam in a circle, eyes shut and lips smacking oddly. She was tasting the sea.
'Hurry!'
Klyst stopped and looked upward. Pazel did the same. Halfway to the surface a body drifted, backlit by the sun.
'Neeps!' Pazel raced upward, dazzled by the brightness above, fighting a sob that wanted to burst from his chest. He seized the body by the arm.
It was a Volpek. Pazel turned the dead man over. The mercenary's throat had been slit. Blood still trickled from the wound.
