“Yeah. ‘Hudson Canyon,’ it says—“
“The Gates of the Sea,” said Tom. “That’s the biggest undersea canyon on the East Coast, and probably the oldest. It cuts right down through the Shelf. Those walls are at least two or three thousand feet high, sometimes four. Some of the canyons on the Moon and Mars could match the Hudson — but none on Earth. And for the whale-wizards, the Gates have become the traditional approach to the Great Depths and the Crushing Dark.”
The thought of canyon walls stretching above her almost a mile high gave chills. She’d seen a rockslide once, and it had made her uneasy about canyons in general. “Is it safe?” she said.
“Of course not,” Tom said, sounding cheerful. “But the natural dangers are Carl’s department; he’ll fill you in on what precautions you’ll need to take, and I suspect the whales will too.”
“ ‘Natural dangers,’ “ Kit said. “Meaning there are unnatural ones too.”
“In wizardry, when aren’t there? This much I can tell you, though. New York City has not been kind to that area. All kinds of things, even unexploded depth charges, have been dumped at the head of Hudson Canyon over the years. Most of them are marked on your map; but watch out for ones that aren’t. And the city has been dumping raw sewage into the Hudson Channel area for decades. Evidently in the old days, before people were too concerned about ecology, they thought the water was so deep that the dumping wouldn’t do any harm. But it has. Quite a bit of the sea-bottom life in that area, especially the vegetation that the fish depend on for food, has been killed off entirely. Other species have been… changed. The manual will give you details. You won’t like them.”
Nita suspected that Tom was right. “Anyway,” he said, “let me give you the rest of this. After you do the appropriate rituals, which the whales will coach you through, the access through the Gates of the Sea takes you down through Hudson Canyon to its bottom at the lower edge of the Shelf, and then deeper and farther southeast — where the canyon turns into a valley that gets shallower and shallower as it goes. The valley ends just about where the Abyssal Plain begins, at seven hundred miles off the coast, and seventeen thousand feet down. Then you come to the mountain.”
It was on the map — a tiny set of concentric circles — but it had looked so peculiar, standing there all by itself in the middle of hundreds of miles of flatness, that Nita had doubted her judgment. “The Sea’s Tooth,” she said, reading from the map.
“Caryn Peak,” Tom agreed, giving the human name. “Some of the oceanographers think it’s simply the westernmost peak of an undersea mountain range called the Kelvin Seamounts — they’re off the eastward edge of your map. Some think otherwise; the geological history of that area is bizarre. But either way, the Peak’s an important spot. And impressive; that one peak is six thousand feet high. It stands up sheer from the bottom, all alone, a third as high as Everest.”
“Five Empire State Buildings on top of each other,” Kit said, awed. He liked tall things.
“A very noticeable object,” Tom said. “It’s functioned as landmark and meeting place and site of the whales’ great wizardries for not even they know how long. Certainly since the continents started drifting toward their present positions… at least a hundred thousand years ago. And it may have been used by… other sorts of wizards… even earlier than that. There’s some interesting history in that area, tangled up with whale-wizards and human ones too.”
Tom’s voice grew sober. “Some of the wizards who specialize in history say that humans only learned wizardry with the whales’ assistance… and even so, our brands of wizardry are different. It’s an old, old branch of the Art they practice. Very beautiful. Very dangerous. And the area around Caryn Peak is saturated with residue from all the old wizardries that whales and others, have done there. That makes any spell you work there even more dangerous.”
“S’reee said that the ‘danger’ level wouldn’t go above ‘moderate,’ “ Kit said.
“She said it shouldn’t,” Nita said.
“Probably it won’t,” Tom said. He didn’t sound convinced, though. “You should bear in mind that the ‘danger’ levels for humans and whales differ. Still, the book said she was about to be promoted to Advisory status, so she would know that— All the same… you two keep your eyes open. Watch what agreements you make. And if you make them — keep them, to the letter. From all indications, the Song of the Twelve is a lovely wizardry, and a powerful one… probably the most powerful magic done on a regular basis. The sources say it leaves its participants forever changed, for the better. At least, it does when it works. When it fails — which it has, once or twice in the past — it fails because some participant has broken the rules. And those times it’s failed… Well, all I can say is that I’m glad I wasn’t born yet. Be careful.”
“We will,” Nita said. “But what are the chances of something going wrong?”
“We could ask Peach,” Kit said. It was a sensible suggestion; the bird, besides doing dramatic readings from Variety and TV Guide, could also predict the future — when it pleased her.
“Good idea. Carl?”
“Here I am,” Carl said, having picked up an extension phone. “Now, Kit, about the monsters—“
“Carl, put that on hold a moment. What does the Walter Cronkite of the bird world have to say about all this?”
“I’ll find out.”
Monsters? Nita mouthed at Kit. “Listen,” she said hurriedly to Tom, “I’m going to get off now. I’ve got to be around the house when my folks leave, so they won’t worry about my little sister.”
“Why? Is she sick?”
“No. But that’s the problem. Tom, I don’t know what to do about Dairine. I thought nonwizards weren’t supposed to notice magic most of the time. I’m lot sure it’s working that way with Dairine. I think she’s getting suspicious…”
“We’ll talk. Meanwhile, Carl — what does the bird say?”
“Oh, it is, it is a splendid thing/To be a pirate kiiiiiiiiiiiiing!” Picchu was singing from somewhere in Tom’s living room.
“Picchu—“
“What’sa matter? Don’t you like Gilbert and Sullivan?”
”I told you we should never have let her watch Pirates on cable,” Tom remarked to his partner.
“Twice your peanut ration for the week,” Carl said.
“… and I did the deed that all men shun, I shot the Albatross…”
“You’re misquoting. How about no peanuts for the rest of the week—“
“Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight!”
“How about no food?”
“Uh—“ There was a pause. It didn’t take Nita much imagination to picture the look that Carl was giving Picchu. She was glad no one had ever looked at her that way.
“Give.”
“Well.” The bird paused again, a long pause, and when she spoke her voice sounded more sober than Nita could remember ever hearing it. “Do what the night tells you. Don’t be afraid to give yourself away. And read the small print before you sign!”
Kit glanced at Nita with a quizzical expression; she shrugged. At the other end of the line, sounding exceptionally annoyed, Carl said to Picchu, “You call that advice? We asked you for the odds!”
“Never ask me the odds,” Picchu said promptly. “I don’t want to know. And neither do you, really.” And that end of the conversation swiftly degenerated into more loud squawking, and the excited barking of dogs, and Carl making suggestions to Picchu that were at best rather rude.
“Thanks,” Nita said to Tom. “I’ll talk to you later.” She squeezed out of the phone booth and past Dog, who growled at her as she went. Behind her, Kit said, in entirely too cheerful a tone of voice, “So, Carl, what about the monsters?”
Nita shook her head and went home.
The Blue’s Song
“Giant man-eating clams,” she said to Kit later, as they walked down an isolated stretch of Tiana Beach toward the surf. “Giant squid—“
