He was hardly even blue in this light, more a sort of slaty maroon; and the faint dapples on his sides were almost invisible. But his color was not what impressed Nita particularly. Neither was his size, though blues are the biggest of all whales; this one was perhaps a hundred twenty feet from nose to tail, and Kit, large for a sperm, was almost as big. That voice, that stately, leisurely, sober, sorrowful voice that sounded like a storm in mourning, that mattered to her; and so did the tiny eye, the size of a tennis ball, which looked at her from the immense bulk of the head. That eye was wise. There was understanding in it, and tolerance, and sadness: and most of all, great age.
Age was evident elsewhere too. The blue’s flukes were tattered and his steering fins showed scars and punctures, mementos of hungry sharks. Far down his tail, the broken stump of a harpoon protruded, the wood of it rotting, the metal crumbling with rust; yet though the tail moved slowly, it moved with strength. This creature had been through pain and danger in his long life, and though he had learned sadness, it had not made him bitter or weak.
Nita turned her attention back to the others, noticing that Kit was holding as still as she was, though at more of a distance; and even Hotshot was holding himself down to a slow glide. “Eldest Blue about the Gates,” S’reee sang, sounding more formal than Nita had ever heard her, “I greet you.”
“Senior for the Gatewaters,” said the Blue in his deep voice, with slow dignity, “I greet you also.”
“Then you’ve heard, Aroooon.”
“I have heard that the Sea has taken Ae’mhnuu to its Heart,” said the Blue, “leaving you Senior in his place, and distressed at a time when there’s distress enough. Leaving you also to organize a TwelveSong on very short notice.”
“That’s so.”
“Then you had best be about it,” said the Blue, “while time still remains for singing, and the bottom is still firm under us. First, though, tell me who comes here with you. Swift-Fire-In-The-Water I know already—“
Hotshot made the closest sound Nita could imagine to an embarrassed delphine cough. She smiled to herself; now she knew now what to tease him with if he got on her case.
“Land wizards, Aroooon,” S’reee said. “HNii’t—“ Nita wasn’t sure what to do, so she inclined the whole front of her body in the water in an approximation of a bow. “—and K!t.” Kit followed Nita’s suit. “They were the ones who went into the Dark High-And-Dry after the Naming of Lights— “
To Nita’s utter astonishment, Aroooon inclined his own body at them, additionally curling his flukes under him in what she abruptly recognized as a gesture of congratulation. “They’re calves,” S’reee added, as if not wanting to leave anything out.
“With all due respects, Senior, they are not,” Aroooon said. “They came back from that place. That is no calf’s deed. Many who were older than they did not come back — You will sing with us then? What parts?”
“I’m not sure yet,” Kit said. “S’reee needs to see if all her people come in.”
“The Silent Lord,” Nita said.
“Indeed.” Aroooon looked at her for several long moments. “You are a good age for it,” he said. “And you are learning the song—“
“I got most of the details from my manual,” she said. She had been up studying late the night before, though not as late as Kit had; a lot of exertion in salt air always left her drained, and she’d put the book aside after several hours, to finish the fine details of her research later. “The Sea will give me the rest, S’reee says, as we go along.”
“So it will. But I would have you be careful of how you enact your part, young HNii’t.” Aroooon drifted a bit closer to her, and that small, thoughtful eye regarded her carefully. “There is old trouble, and old power, about you and your friend… as if blood hung in the water where you swim. The Lone Power apparently knows your names. It will not have forgotten the disservice you did It recently. You are greatly daring to draw Its attention to you again. Even the Heart of the Sea — Timeheart as your kind calls it — will not be quiet for one who has freely attracted the Lone One’s enmity. Beware what you do. And do what you say; nowhere does the Lone Power enter in so readily as through the broken word.”
“Sir,” Nita said, rather unnerved, “I’ll be careful.”
“That is well.” Aroooon looked for a moment at Kit before speaking. “It js a whalesark, is it not?”
“Yes, sir,” Kit said in the same respectful tone Nita had heard him use on his father.
“Have a care of it, then, should you find yourself in one of the more combative parts of the Song,” said Aroooon. “Sperm whales were fighters before they were singers, and though their songs are often the fairest in the sea, the old blood rises too often and chokes those songs off before they can be sung. Keep your mouth closed, you were best, and you’ll do well enough.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Enough politeness, young wizard,” Aroooon said, for the first time sounding slightly crusty. “If size is honor, you have as much as I; and as for years, just keep breathing long enough and you’ll have as many of those as I do. — S’reee, you travel more widely now than I, so I put you a question. Are the shakings in the depths worse these days than they ought to be at this time of year and tide of Moon?”
“Much worse, Eldest. That was why Ae’mhnuu originally wanted to convene the Song. And I don’t know if the Song will be in time to save the fishing grounds to the east and north, around Nantucket and the Races. Hot water has been coming up close to there, farther east and south. The Shelf is changing.”
“Then let us get started,” Aroooon said. “I assume you came to ask me to call in some of the Celebrants, time being as limited as it is.”
“Yes, Aroooon. If you would. Though as the rite requires, I will be visiting the Pale One tomorrow, in company with HNii’t and Kit. The meeting place for the Song is to be ten thousand lengths north-northeast of the shoals at Barnegat, three days from now. A fast rehearsal — then right down the channel and through the Gates of the Sea, to the place appointed.”
“Well enough. Now administer me the Celebrant’s Oath, Senior, so that I may lawfully call the others.”
“Very well.” S’reee swam up close to Aroooon, so that she was looking him straight in one eye with one of hers; and when she began to sing, it was in a tone even more formal and careful than that in which she had greeted him.
”Aroooon u’aoluor, those who gather to sing that Song that is the Sea s shame and the Sea’s glory desire you to be of their company. Say, for my hearing, whether you consent to that Song.” „
“I consent,” the Blue said in notes so deep that coral cracked and fell on rock shelves some yards away, “and I will weave my voice and my will and my blood with that of those who sing, if there be need.”
“I ask the second time, that those with me, both of your Mastery and not, CTiay hear. Do you consent to the Song?”
“I consent. And may my wizardry and my Mastery depart from me sooner than I abandon that other Mastery I shall undertake in the Song’s celebration.”
“The third time, and the last, I ask, that the Sea, and the Heart of the Sea, shall hear. Do you consent to the Song?”
“Freely I consent,” Aroooon sang with calm finality, “and may I find no place in that Heart, but wander forever amid the broken and the lost, sooner than I shall refuse the Song or what it brings about for the good of those who live.”
“Then I accept you as Celebrant of the Song, as Blue, and as latest of a line of saviors,” S’reee said. “And though those who swim are swift to forget, the Sea forgets neither Song nor singer.” She turned a bit, looking behind her at Hotshot. “Might as well get all of you done at once,” she said. “Hotshot?”
“Right.”
The dolphin went through the Oath much faster than Aroooon had, though his embarrassment at being referred to as Swift-Fire-In-The-Water was this time so acute that Nita actually turned away so she wouldn’t have to look at him. As for the rest of the Oath, though, Hotshot recited it, as Nita had expected, with the mindless speed of a person who thinks he has other more important matters to attend to.
S’reee turned to Nita. “We can’t give K!t the Oath yet,” she said. “We don’t know who he’s going to be.”
“Can’t you just give it to me and leave that part blank or something?” Kit said eagerly. He loved ceremonies.
“Kit!”
“No, Kit. HNii’t, do you know the words?”
