Their numbers seemed to reinforce their confidence in Maulkin's leadership. Maulkin near-glowed now, his golden eyes gleaming the full length of his body. By their numbers, too, they provided what each might lack individually. They comforted one another with the memories each held, and often a word or a name from one would wake a recollection in another.
Yet despite their numbers, they were no closer to finding the true migration path. The shared memories only made their wandering more frustrating. Tonight, Shreever could not rest. She untangled herself from her sleeping comrades, and allowed herself to drift free, staring down at the living forest of serpents. There was something tantalizingly familiar about this place, something just beyond the reach of her memory. Had she been here before?
Sessurea, sensitive to her moods from their long companionship, writhed up to join her. Silently he joined in her sweeping survey of the sea floor. They let their eyes open wide to the faint moonlight that reached these depths. She studied the lay of the land by the faint luminescence of both serpents and minute sea life. Something.
'You are right.' Those were the first words Sessurea spoke. He left her side to undulate gently down to a particularly uneven piece of sea bed. He turned his head back and forth slowly. Then, to her consternation, he suddenly grasped a large frond of seaweed in his jaws and tore it loose. He flung it aside, seized another mouthful and dealt with it likewise. 'Sessurea?' she trumpeted questioningly, but he ignored her. Clump after clump of seaweed he tore free and discarded. Then, just as she was sure he had gone mad, he settled to the bottom, then lashed his tail wildly, disturbing the muck of decades.
Her call and Sessurea's strange antics had awakened some of the others. They joined her in staring down at him. He uprooted more seaweed and then thrashed again. 'What is he doing?' asked a slender blue serpent.
'I don't know,' she replied woefully.
As abruptly as he began, Sessurea ceased his mad writhing. He flashed swiftly up to join them. He sleeked himself through a grooming turn before wrapping her excitedly. 'Look. You were right. Well, wait a bit, until the silt settles. There. Do you see?'
For a time, she saw only drifting sediment. Sessurea was out of breath, his gills pumping with excitement. Then, a moment later, the blue beside her suddenly trumpeted wildly, 'It's a Guardian! But it cannot be here, in the Plenty. This is not right!'
Shreever goggled in confusion. The blue's words were so far out of context, she could not make sense of them. Guardians were guardian dragons. Were there dead dragons at the bottom of the sea? Then, as she stared, the vague shapes amidst the drifting silt suddenly took a new form. She saw. It was a Guardian, obviously a female. She sprawled on her side, one wing lifted, the other still buried in the muck. Three claws had broken off one raised forepaw. Part of her tail thrust up oddly beside her. The statue had been broken in a fall; that much was clear. But how had it come to be here, beneath the sea? It had used to stand above the city gates of Yruran. Then her eyes discovered a fallen column. And over there, that would have been that atrium that Desmolo the Eager had built, to house all the exotic plants his dragon friends had brought back to him from the four corners of the earth. And beyond it, the fallen dome of the Temple of Water.
'The whole city is here,' she trumpeted softly.
Maulkin was suddenly in their midst. 'A whole province is here,' he corrected her. All eyes followed him down toward the revealed remnants of the world they could almost recall. He wove his way through them, touching first one and then another of the exposed landmarks. 'We swim where once we flew.' Then he rose slowly toward them. The entire tangle was awake now and watching his gentle undulations. They formed a living, moving sphere with Maulkin at the center. His body and his words wove together as he spoke.
'We seek to return to our home, to the lands where we hunted and flew. I fear we are already here. When before we found a statue or an arch, I pretended that chance had tumbled a coastal building or two. But Yruran was far inland. Below us lie the sunken ruins.' He looped a slow denial of their hopes. 'This was no minor shaking of the earth. All features have changed beyond recognition. We seek a river to lead us home. But without a guide from the world above, I fear we shall never find it. No such guide has come to us. North we have been, and south we have been, and still we have not found a way that calls to us. All is too different; the scattered memories we have mustered are not sufficient to this task. We are lost. Our only hope now is One Who Remembers. And even that might not be enough.'
Tellur, a slender green serpent, dared to protest. 'We have sought such a one, to no avail. We grow weary. How long, Maulkin, must we wander and yearn? You have mustered a mighty tangle, yet many as we are, we are few compared to what we once were. Have they all perished, the other tangles that should be swarming now? Are we all that is left of our people? Must we, too, die as wanderers? Can it be, perhaps, that there is no river, no home to return to?' He sang his sorrow and despair.
Maulkin did not lie to them. 'Perhaps. It may be we shall perish, and our kind be no more. But we shall not go without a struggle. One last time we shall seek One Who Remembers, but this time we shall bend all our efforts to that quest. We shall find a guide, or we shall die trying.'
'Then we shall die.' His voice was cold and dead, like thick ice cracking. The white serpent wove his way to the center of the serpents, to twine himself insultingly before Maulkin. Shreever's mane stood out in horror. He was provoking Maulkin to kill him. His insolent postures invited death. All waited for judgment to fall on him.
But Maulkin held back. He himself wove his body in a larger pattern, one that encompassed the white's insults, forbidding the others to act against him. He spoke no word, though his mane stood up and leaked a pale trail of toxins in the water as he swam. The silence and the poisons became a web around the white serpent. The white's movements slowed; he hung as motionless as a serpent could be. Maulkin had asked him no questions, yet he answered angrily.
'Because I have spoken with She Who Remembers. I was wild and mindless, as much a beast as any of the dumb ones who now follow you. But she caught me and she held me fast and she forced her memories on me until I choked on them.' He spun in a swift vicious circle as if he would attack himself. Faster and faster he went. 'Her memories were poison! Poison! More toxic than anything that ever flowed from a mane. When I recall what we have been, what we should be now and compare it to what we have become… I gag. I would disgorge this foul life we still embrace!'
Maulkin had not paused in his silent, weaving dance. His movements formed a barrier between the white and the serpents that hung listening.
'It is too late.' The white trumpeted each word clearly. 'Too many seasons have passed. Our time for changing has come and gone a score of times. Her memories are of a world long gone! Even if we could find the river to the cocooning grounds, there is no one to help us make our casts. They are all dead.' He began to speak faster, his words gushing like a running river. 'No parents wait to secrete their memories into our windings. We would come out of our metamorphosis as ignorant as we went in. She gave me her memories, and I tell you, they were not enough! I recognize little here, and what I do recall lies wrong. If we are doomed to perish, then let us lose our voices and our minds before we die. Her memories are not worth the agony I carry.' His erect mane suddenly released a cloud of numbing toxins. He plunged his own face into it.
Maulkin struck, as swift as if he were taking prey. His golden eyes flashed as he wrapped the white and snatched him away from his own poison. 'Enough!' he roared. His words were angry but his voice was not. The foolish white struggled, but Maulkin squeezed him as if he were a dolphin. 'You are but one! You cannot decide for the whole tangle, or for the whole race. You have a duty, and you will do it before you take your own silly, senseless life.' Maulkin released a cloud of his own toxins. The white serpent's angrily spinning scarlet eyes slowed and became a dull maroon. His jaws gaped open lazily as the toxins did their work. Maulkin spoke gently. 'You will guide us to She Who Remembers. We have already absorbed some memories from a silver provider. If need be, we can take more. With what we shall gain from She Who Remembers, it may be enough.' Unwillingly, he added, 'What other choice have we?'
KENNIT BALANCED BEFORE HIS MIRROR, TURNING HIS FACE FROM SIDE TO SIDE before his reflection. A sheen of lemon oil gleamed on his hair and trimmed beard. His moustache curled elegantly, but without pretense. Immaculate white lace cascaded down his chest and from the cuffs of his deep blue jacket. Even the leather of his stump cup had been polished to a high gloss. Heavy silver earrings dangled. He looked, he reflected, like a man ready to go courting. In a sense, he was.
