tuna— heads, tails, pieces too mangled to name, let alone to bear close examination. Some of these drifted slowly to the bottom, where the scavengers — salt-water catfish and crabs and other such — ate them hurriedly, as if not wanting to linger and face whatever hunted above.
Nita didn’t want to attract its attention either, but she also wanted Kit’s reassurance. This place to which S’reee had brought them was unquestionably the location of a shark’s “feeding frenzy,” in which the hunter begins to devour not only its prey, but anything else that gets in the way, uncontrollably, mindlessly, until sated.
Inside the cloud of blood, which the current over the shoals was taking away, something moved. Impossible, was Nita’s first reaction as the circling shape was revealed. It broke out of its circling and began to soar slowly toward her and Kit and S’reee. Sonar had warned her of its size, but she was still astonished. No mere fish could be that big.
This one could. Nita didn’t move. With slow, calm, deadly grace the huge form came curving toward them. Nita could see why S’reee had said that this creature was a good candidate for the title Master-Shark, even if the original had lived ten thousand years ago, when everything was bigger. The shark was nearly as long as Kit — from its blunt nose to the end of its tail’s topfin, no less than ninety feet. Its eyes were that same dull, expressionless black that had horrified Nita when she’d watched Jaws. But seeing those eyes on a TV screen was one thing. Having them dwell on you, calm and hungry even after a feeding frenzy — that was much worse.
The pale shape glided closer. Nita felt Kit drift so close to her that his skin brushed hers, and she felt the thudding of his huge heart. In shape, the shark looked like a great white, at least as well as Nita could remember from Jaws. There, though, the resemblance ended. “Great white” sharks were actually a pale blue on their upper bodies and only white below. This one was white all over, an ivory white so pale that great age might have bleached it that color. And as for size, this one could have eaten the Jaws shark for lunch, and looked capable of working Nita in, in no more than a bite or two, as dessert. Its terrible maw, hung with drifting, mangled shreds of bleeding tuna, was easily fifteen feet across. Those jaws worked gently, absently, as the white horror cruised toward the three of them.
S’reee finned forward a little. She inclined the fore half of her body toward the white one and sang, in what seemed utter, toneless calm, “Ed’Rashtekaresket, chief of the Unmastered in these waters, 1 greet you.”
The shark swam straight toward S’reee, those blank eyes fixed on her. The whale held her position as the Pale One glided toward her, his mouth open, his jaws working. At the last possible moment he veered to one side and began to describe a great circle around the three.
Three times he circled them, in silence. Next to Nita, Kit shuddered. The shark looked sharply at them, but still said nothing, just kept swimming until he had completed his third circle. When he spoke at last, there was no warmth in his voice, none of the skin-stroking richness she had grown used to in whale-voices. This voice was dry… interested, but passionless; and though insatiably hungry, not even slightly angry or vicious. The voice destroyed every idea Nita had of what a shark would sound like. Some terrible malice, she could have accepted — not this deadly equanimity. “Young wizard,” the voice said, cool and courteous, “well met.”
The swimmer broke free of his circling and described a swift, clean arc that brought him close enough to Nita and Kit for Nita to see the kind of rough, spiky skin that had injured S’reee so badly two nights before. The great shark almost touched Nita’s nose as he swept by.
“My people,” the Pale One said to S’reee, “tell me that they met with you two nights since. And fed well.”
“The nerve!” Kit said, none too quietly, and started to swim forward.
Aghast, Nita bumped him to one side, hard. He was so startled he held still again. “Keep your mouth shut!” she said quietly. “That thing could eat us all if it wanted to!”
“If he wanted to,” said the Pale One, glancing at Nita and fixing her, just for a moment, with one of those expressionless eyes. “Peace, young human. I’ll deal with you in a moment.”
She subsided instantly, feeling like a bird face to face with a snake.
“I am told further,” said the shark, circling S’reee lazily, “that wizardry struck my people down at their meal…”
“And then released them.”
“The story’s true, then.”
“True enough, Unmastered,” said S’reee, still not moving. “I’m no more ignorant than Ae’mhnuu was of the price paid for the reckless wasting of life. Besides, I knew I’d be talking to you today… and even if I didn’t, I’d have you to deal with at some later time… Shall we two be finished with this matter, then? I have other things to discuss with you.”
“Having heard the Calling in the water last night, I believe you do,” said the Pale One, still circling S’reee with slow grace. His jaws, Nita noticed were still working. “You were wise to spare those of my Mastery. Are your wounds healed? Is your pain ended?”
“Yes to both questions, Pale One.”
“I have no further business with you, then,” said the shark. Nita felt Kit move slightly against her, an angry, balked movement. Evidently he had been expecting the shark to apologize. But the shark’s tone of voice made it plain that he didn’t think he’d done anything wrong… and bizarrely, it seemed as if S’reee agreed with him.
“Well enough,” S’reee said, moving for the first time, to break out of the Pale One’s circle. “Let’s get to business.” The shark went after, pacing her.
“Since you heard the Calling,” S’reee said, “you know why I’m here.”
“To ask me to be Twelfth in the Song,” said the shark. “When have I not? You may administer the Oath to me at your leisure. But first you must tell me who the Silent One is.”
“She swims with us,” S’reee said, rolling over on her back as she swam— something Nita would certainly never have dared do, lest it give this monster ideas — and indicating Nita with one long forefin.
Nita would have preferred to keep Kit between her and the shark; but something, the Sea perhaps, told her that this would be a bad idea. Gulping, she slipped past Kit and glided up between S’reee and the great white. She was uncertain of protocol — or of anything except that she should show no fear. “Sir,” she said, not “bowing” but looking him straight in those black eyes, “I’m Nita.”
“My lady wizard,” the Pale One said in that cool, dry voice, “you’re also terrified out of your wits.”
What to say now? But the shark’s tone did have a sort of brittle humor about it. She could at least match it. “Master-Shark,” she said, giving him the title to be on the safe side, “if I were, saying so would be stupid; I’d be inviting you to eat me. And saying I wasn’t afraid would be stupid too — and a lie.”
The shark laughed, a terrible sound — quiet, and dry, and violent under its humor. “That’s well said, Nita,” he said when the laughing was done. “You’re wise not to lie to a shark — nor to tell him that particular truth. After all, fear is distress. And I end distress; that’s my job. So beware. I am pleased to meet you; but don’t bleed around me. Who’s your friend? Make him known to me.”
Nita curved around with two long strokes, swam back to Kit, and escorted him back to the white with her fins barely touching him, a don’t-screw-it-up! gesture. “This is Kit,” she said. “He may or may not be singing with us.”
“A whalesark?” said the Pale One, as Kit glided close to him.
“Yes,” Kit said bluntly, without any honorific note or tone of courtesy appended to the word. Nita looked at him in shock, wondering what had gotten into him. He ignored her, staring at the shark. Kit’s teeth were showing.
The Pale One circled Kit once, lazily, as he had when offering challenge to S’reee. “She is not as frightened as she looks, Kit,” he said, “and at any rate, I suspect you’re more so. Look to yourself first until you know your new shape better. It has its own fierce ways, I hear; but a sperm whale is still no match for me.” He said this with the utter calm of someone telling someone else what time it was. “I would not make three bites of you, as I would with Nita. I would seize your face and crush your upper jaw to make myself safe from your teeth. Then I would take hold of that great tongue of yours and not let go until I had ripped it loose to devour. Smaller sharks than I am have done that to sperm whales before. The tongue is, shall we say, a delicacy.”
The shark circled away from Kit. Very slowly, Kit glided after. “Sir,” he said — sounding subdued, if not afraid, “I didn’t come here to fight. I thought we were supposed to be on the same side. But frightening us seems a poor tactic if we’re supposed to be allies, and singing the same Song.”
“I frighten no one,” said the shark. “No one who fears gets it from anywhere but himself. Or herself. Cast the fear out — and then I am nothing to fear… No matter, though; you’re working at it. Kit, Nita, my name is
