S’reee was there as well. She swam close, whistling Nita a greeting, and brushed skin with her. Hotshot was there too, gamboling and swooping in the dim-lit water — though with just a little more restraint than usual around the silently drifting bulk of Ed.
“A long swim today,” S’reee said to Nita. “Up to Nantucket. Are you ready? Did you get your problem with your dam and sire worked out?”
“Not really,” Nita said. “In fact, it’ll probably get a lot worse before it gets any better. There’s going to be trouble tonight…” She stopped; there was no use letting it spoil the day. “Never mind,” she said. “Let’s go.”
S’reee led the way, a straight course east-northeast, to Nantucket Rips. From her reading and from what the Sea told her, Nita knew those were treacherous waters, full of sudden shelves and hidden rocks. And the wizard’s manual spoke of uneasy “forces” that lingered about those dead and broken ships — forces Nita suspected she would mistake for restless ghosts, if she should have the bad luck to see one.
“You are silent today,” said a dry, cool voice directly above Nita. Glancing upward, Nita saw floating above her, effortlessly keeping pace, the great pale form that had been one of the images keeping her awake last night. “And you did not greet me. Is this courtesy to another celebrant?”
“Good morning, Ed,” Nita said, in the same mildly edgy tone of voice she would have used on a human being who bugged her that way.
“Oh, indeed,” Ed said. “You’re bold, Sprat. And the boldness comes of distress. Beware lest I be forced to hurry matters, so that we should have even less time to get acquainted than you seem to desire.”
“That was something I was meaning to ask you about,” Nita said, looking up at Ed again. “The ‘distress’ business—“
“Ask, Sprat.”
“You said before that it was your ‘job’ to end distress where you found it…”
“You are wondering who gave me the job,” Ed said, sinking to Nita’s level, so that her left-side eye was filled with the sight of him. “Perhaps it was the Sea itself, which you wizards hear speaking to you all the time. You look askance? Doubtless you think the Sea would be too ‘good’ to assign a whole species to nothing but painful and violent killing.” Ed’s voice stayed cool as always, though there was a tinge of mockery to it. “If you think so, look around you, Sprat. The ocean is full of weaponry as effective as my teeth. Poisons and spines, snares and traps and claws that catch are everywhere. We all have to eat.”
Ed smiled at her. A long shiver went down Nita from head to tail; a shark’s smile is an expression the wise person does not provoke. “Those are just dumb creatures, though,” she said, keeping her song as inoffensive- sounding as possible. “They don’t think. You do — and you enjoy what you do.”
“So?” Ed swam closer. “How should I not? Like all my people I’m built to survive in a certain fashion… and it’s only wise to cause what you build to feel good when it does what it must to survive. My nerves are tuned to pain. That fact tells me beyond question what my job is. Distress calls me; blood in the water is the clearest sign of that distress, and I have a duty to it. If I destroy, still I serve life. What can’t elude me is often sick or injured, and suffering; what survives me or outthinks me is stronger and wiser for it. And the survivor’s descendants will be too. Is that so bad?”
“Well, that way… no. But I bet you wouldn’t be so calm about it if it was you dying.”
“Me? Die?” Ed laughed again. “The Master-Shark eats the Silent Lord’s ‘Gift,’ you know, along with the Silent One. There’s immortality in all the sharks, in various degrees. But what good is immortality if you haven’t died first? And nothing in the Sea is deadly enough to kill me against my will.”
Something about Ed’s voice was making Nita curious. “What about with it?”
“Ah, but will must spread to the body from the mind. And after all the years I’ve lived in it, my body is too strong. All it wants is to eat, and live. And so it does; and I swim on. Immortality is of terrible power. It would take something more powerful yet to override it…”
Nita didn’t say anything.
“But all that being so,” Ed said, “for good or ill, I am the Destroyer. Being that, I might as well enjoy my work, might I not? And so I do. Would it help if I decided to be miserable?” There was actually a touch of humor in that cold, dry voice.
“No, I suppose not.”
“So I go about my work with a merry heart,” Ed said, “and do it well as a result. That should please you, I think—“
“I’m delighted,” Nita sang, under her breath.
“—for spells work best, you wizards tell me, when all the participants are of light heart and enjoying themselves. I’ll certainly enjoy eating you when the time comes ‘round.”
“Ed, that’s not funny.”
“It isn’t?” said the Master-Shark, looking at her.
Nita stopped swimming, letting herself coast for a moment. There was something odd about the way he’d said that— “Ed, what was that crack supposed to mean?”
The look Ed gave her was expressionless as ever. “The Silent Lord is pleased to jest with me,” he said.
“Ed!”
“Distress, distress, Sprat. Have a care.”
Ed was drifting closer again, and Nita kept herself as outwardly calm as she could. “Ed,” she said, slowly and carefully, “are you trying to say that you’re actually planning to eat me sometime soon?”
“The day after tomorrow,” said the Master-Shark in perfect calm, “if we keep to schedule.”
Nita couldn’t think of a thing to say.
“You seem surprised,” Ed said. “Why?”
It took Nita a few moments to answer, for her mind was boiling with sudden memories. S’reee’s great relief when Nita agreed to participate in the Song. Her repeated questions to Nita about whether she was sure she wanted to do this. The Blue’s silent, sad appraisal and approval of her. S’reee’s remark about the Silent Lord’s contribution to the Song being the most important of any celebrant—“the Silent Lord has the most at stake.” And the wording of the Celebrant’s Oath itself, with its insistent repetition and the line Nita had been so sure was ceremonial: “and I will blend my blood with theirs should there be need…”
Nita gulped. “Ed,” she said, “the Song, the whole thing… I thought it was just sort of, sort of a play…”
“Indeed not.” Ed seemed unconcerned by her terror. “There’s always blood in the water at the end of the Song. I am no wizard, but even I know that nothing else will keep the Lone Power bound. Nothing but the willing sacrifice, newly made by the Celebrant representing the Silent One — by a wizard who knows the price he is paying and what it will buy. The spells worked during the Song would be powerless otherwise, and the Lone Power would rise again and finish what It once began.”
“But—“ Off on her right, she saw Kit looking curiously at her. But at the moment Kit meant nothing to her, and neither did Ed, or the chill silver light dawning in the water, or anything else. The manual’s words, which she’d skimmed over so casually: those were what mattered now. The whale singing the Silent One then enacts the Sacrifice in a manner as close to the original enactment as possible, depending on the site where the Song is being celebrated. The shark singing the Pale Slayer then receives the Sacrifice… With frightful clarity she could remember sitting on the fishing platform off Tiana Beach and S’reee saying, “The Silent One dived into a stand of razor coral; and the Master-Shark smelled her blood in the water, and… Well…”
Nita started to swim, without any real idea of where she was going, or why she was going there. She went slowly at first, then faster. “Neets,” Kit was singing behind her, “what’s wrong, what is it?”
“HNii’t!” sang another voice, farther away. “Wait! What’s the matter?”
That voice she wanted to hear some more from. Nita wheeled about and hurtled back the way she had come, almost ramming Kit, and not caring, letting him get out of her way as best he could. S’reee saw Nita coming and simply stopped swimming. “S’reee!” Nita cried, one long note that was more a scream than a song. “Why didn’t you tell me!”
“Oh, HNii’t,” S’reee sang, desperate and hurried, “the Master-Shark is about — for Sea’s sake, control yourself!”
“Never mind him! Why didn’t you tell me!”
“About what the Silent One does?” S’reee said, sounding confused and upset as Nita braked too late and almost hit her too. “But you said you knew!”
Nita moaned out loud. It was true, just about finished with my reading, she remembered herself saying. Only
