kisses.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I change but in death.
Darshirin's form was sleek and graceful, his movements subtle and yet powerful enough to propel him swiftly through the water. It was not yet dawn, though a slight lightening of the horizon would have proclaimed the morning's approach, had the aquatic creature bothered to look. But Darshirin was intimately familiar with the darkling depths of the oceans, and did not need eyes to 'see.'
A flick of his powerful tail sent him rushing forward a few feet above the bottom of the harbor. Small clouds of swirling sand rose from the movement, then floated softly back downward. He emitted sounds; high squeaks and whistles, little clicks and chirps. He had tried to explain this method of 'seeing' with his ears to Damir, but intelligent as the mortal was, and though he had the ability to hear and return some of the ocean's songs, Damir hadn't quite been able to understand.
He did not need to. Darshirin and his kind understood; knew that sometimes song was the most powerful of all the gifts granted to the ocean's inhabitants by the One Who Makes. With his eyes, Darshirin could not see at all in this darkness. But with his vocal vision, he could have counted the number of shells on the sandy bottom, navigated his way through the sturdy beams of wood sunk deep to support Braedon's docks. He passed unharmed beneath the hulls of ships.
The only things that he could not see this way, he recalled with a momentary flash of anger and pain, were the nets used by humans. He had learned to be careful around such things. He had taught himself to distinguish fishing vessels from cargo ships, and gave the former a wide berth. Darshirin certainly did not blame the humans for fishing; fish were delicious food! But neither did he wish to be caught a second time in the frightening strands that lifted him up out of the sheltering sea.
Sounds were emitted; images returned. Broken shards of wood that had once been mighty seagoing vessels, washed up on the sands and in the shallow waters. Fish, and bits of floating items that Darshirin knew as human refuse, coming in from the sewer systems. He was not concerned. The ocean was powerful with a strength that mortals could not comprehend. It would take the filth that the humans spewed into it and make of the insult a gift; food for the ground-feeders and drifting seaweed. The ocean would wear it down, until it was part of the sea itself and no longer an earthly intrusion onto the green and blue depths.
Darshirin paused. His expression did not waver, for in this form his mouth was fixed in a permanent grin. But his heart began to beat painfully. He emitted the high sounds again, and the picture returned. It did not, could not lie.
Something was caught in the sewer mouth, hung up on piles of refuse and trash. Something that someone had intended to wash out to sea and vanish without a trace. Something that had thwarted that someone's intention by not doing so. Something very sad indeed.
Slowly, reluctantly, Darshirin swam closer. The picture in his mind grew more detailed, and horror swelled inside the gentle creature.
It was a human body, female. Probably the poor girl Darshirin had been dispatched to help locate; the councilman's daughter Lorinda Vandaris. He would need to look upon her in daylight, with his human eyes, to distinguish the finer points that would identify her, but he feared he had been successful in his mission.
He wished he had not. Darshirin had swum the oceans for centuries, and was not unfamiliar with human corpses. He had seen far too many sea-swollen, rotting bodies of drowned men for that. He had even been witness to a barbaric burning of a vessel in Braedon's port; had watched sorrowfully as charred bodies clogged the harbor until the merciful ocean had gone about its business and washed them out to sea. But this…
Lorinda, if it was she, had been horribly mutilated. She was lacking many features that Darshirin knew to be common to humans, and the bloated body bore innumerable cuts and slashes. Darshirin darted about, overcome with his horror and revulsion. To do this to one another-he had known humans were barbaric, but…
He recalled what Damir had told him of Lorinda. There is a girl who has been stolen from her people… She is tall, fair as we of the land reckon beauty, and full of laughter. The revolting shape before him could not be reckoned beautiful in anyone's eyes. And Darshirin was glad she had known laughter once, for she had not died with it.
His heart ached in sympathy. Though she was a human, she had clearly been of good heart, or else Damir would not have said so. Not even the evil should end up like this; and that someone who was as kind and mirthful as Lorinda should be found so, hurt Darshirin deeply.
He could not help himself. Those of the ocean kept their love and sympathy for themselves, and though it was not strictly forbidden, they did not share it with the land dwellers. But Lorinda… poor Lorinda. Darshirin closed his eyes and began to sing. He sang, in a voice that could not be heard by ears, of her beauty, and gentleness of nature. He sang of her brutal murder and tragic end. He sang, that those in the oceans might know of and lament the passing of something true and good.
And as far as Darshirin knew, it was the first time since the oceans began to teem with life that the song of the sea had been sung to mourn one whose face was raised to the sun, and whose feet trod upon dry soil.
It was almost dusk by the time Damir reached the meeting place. For a moment, the diplomat allowed himself the luxury of enjoying the beauty of a sunset over the ocean, something he was not often able to witness. The sun was a magnificent, swollen orb of orange-red. The sky itself was a rainbow of fiery hues, ranging from indigo to purple to yellow. Far above the horizon, the bolder, brighter stars were already beginning to appear. The ocean itself seemed to be bleeding, turning a rich variety of shades that mirrored the dying sun.
Damir shook himself out of his reverie. There was a great deal on his mind, and he hoped that tonight, Darshirin would have news for him. He did not permit himself to hope that the news would be good.
Just as the sun dipped below the horizon, a dolphin leaped and splashed down. Damir tethered his mare to the weathered tree, patted her absently, and made his way down to the shore. This time he had no trouble navigating the rocks and rough terrain, as he was properly dressed for just such activities.
Again Darshirin broke the surface, but this time he was much closer and in his human form. And as the sea-being walked slowly out of the water onto the shore, Damir saw that he bore a dreadful burden.
'Ah, no, please, no,' Damir whispered futilely to himself. But he could not escape the truth.
Darshirin's bluish-hued face reflected his own grief, and he carried the burden of the dead and barely recognizable Lorinda with as much gentleness as he might bear a newborn to its mother's arms.
'I have found her,' he said softly. 'And it hurts my heart to have done so.'
Carefully Darshirin knelt on the beach, where the sand was still soft and rocks did not yet encroach into the ocean. He laid the body down tenderly, stroking the ruined face of the once beautiful girl with a gentle, webbed hand.
Damir knelt too, forcing his own sorrow aside and replacing it with shrewd observation. Lorinda had been dead for several days-probably the full week that she had been missing. Damir estimated that she had met her dreadful fate on the same night she was abducted. He made allowances for the immersion in salt water and decomposition, and tried to distinguish what had happened to her while she was alive.
His stomach turned over when he realized that in all likelihood the mutilations had been performed on a living body. Dear gods. Who-what-was loose in Braedon, that would do this to an innocent young girl?
'Do you know who might have done this?' asked Darshirin, echoing Damir's thoughts. Damir shook his head grimly. 'Not yet. But we will. This is… an abomination. Darshirin, you must believe that we're not all like this!'
Darshirin smiled ruefully. His emerald eyes sparkled with unshed tears. 'I thought you were all without compassion, until I met you and Jemma. I know better now. But there is a darkness among your people, my friend, that stains the whole. At least the shark in the ocean gets no pleasure from his feeding; and at least those that he devours help him in turn to live. This,' and the sea-being gestured helplessly at the bloated corpse, 'this, I cannot
