teasing. “Shark got your tongue?”
The joke was so horrible, and somehow so funny, that Nita burst out laughing, liking this creature instantly. “Fang, is it?”
“It is. HNii’t, is it?”
“More or less.” There was a kind of wicked amusement about Fang’s song, which by itself was funny to listen to — sweet whistles and flutings peppered liberally with spits and fizzes. “Fang, are you from these waters originally?”
“Indeed not. I came down from Baffin Bay for the Song.”
Nita swung her tail in surprise. “That’s in Canada! Fifteen hundred miles!”
“What? Oh, a great many lengths, yes. I didn’t swim it, HNii’t. Any more than you and Kit there went where you went last night by swimming.”
“I suppose,” she said, “that a wizardry done like that — on such short notice, and taking the wizards such a distance — might have been noticed.”
Fang snorted bubbles. “ ‘Might’! I should say so. By everybody. But it’s understandable that you might want to indulge yourselves, anyway. Seeing that you and your partner won’t have much more time to work together in the flesh.”
Fang’s voice was kind, even matter-of-fact; but Nita wanted to keep away from that subject for the moment. “Right. Speaking of which, S’reee, hadn’t we better start?”
“Might as well.”
S’reee swam off to a spot roughly above the wreck, whistling, and slowly the whole group began to drift in toward her. The voices of the whales gathered around to watch the Celebrants began to quiet, like those of an audience at a concert.
“From the top,” S’reee said. She paused a few seconds, then lifted up her voice in the Invocation.
“ ‘Blood in the water I sing, and one who shed it:
deadliest hunger I sing, and one who fed it—
weaving the ancientmost song of the Sea’s sending:
singing the tragedy, singing the joy unending.’ “
Joy… Nita thought, trying to concentrate. But the thought of whose blood was being sung about made it hard.
The shadow that fell over Nita somewhere in the middle of the first song of the Betrayed whales, though, got her attention immediately. A streamlined shape as pale as bleached bone glided slowly over her, blocking the jade light; one dead-black, unreflecting eye glanced down. “Nita.”
“Ed,” she said, none too enthusiastically. His relentless reality was no pleasant sight.
“Come swim with me.”
He arched away through the water, northward toward Ambrose Light. The gathered spectators drew back as Nita silently followed.
Shortly they were well to the north, still able to hear the ongoing practice Song, but out of hearing range for standard conversation. “So, Silent Lord,” Ed said, slowing. “You were busy last night.”
“Yes,” Nita said, and waited. She had a feeling that something odd was going on inside that chill mind.
Ed looked at her. “You are angry…”
“Damn right I am!” Nita sang, loudly, not caring for the moment about what Ed might think of her distress.
“Explain this anger to me,” said the Master-Shark. “Normally the Silent Lord does not find the outcome of the Song so frightful. In fact, whales sometimes compete for the privilege of singing your part. The Silent Lord dies indeed, but the death is not so terrible — it merely comes sooner than it might have otherwise, by predator or old age. And it buys the renewal of life, and holds off the Great Death, for the whole Sea — and for years.”
Ed glanced at her, sedate. “And even if the Silent One should happen to suffer somewhat, what of it? For there is still Timeheart, is there not?… the Heart of the Sea.” Nita nodded, saying nothing. “It is no ending, this song, but a passage into something else. How they extol that passage, and that lies at its end.” There was faint, scornful amusement in Ed’s voice as he lifted his voice in a verse of the Song — one of the Blue’s cantos — not singing, exactly, for sharks have no song; chanting, rather. “ ‘… Past mortal song—
“ ‘—that Sea whereof our own seas merely hint, poor shadows sidewise-cast from what is real— where Time and swift-finned Joy are foes no more, but lovers; where old friend swims by old friend, senior to Death, undying evermore— partner to Songs unheard and Voices hid; songs past our knowing, perilously fair—‘ “
Ed broke off. “You are a wizard,” he said. “You have known that place, supposedly.”
“Yes.” Timeheart had looked like a bright city, skyscrapered in crystal and fire, power trembling in its streets and stones, unseen but undeniably there. And beyond the city stretched a whole universe, sited beyond and within all other worlds, beyond and within all times. Death did not touch that place. “Yes, I was there.”
“So you know it awaits you after the Sacrifice, after the change of being. But you don’t seem to take the change so calmly.”
“How can I? I’m human!”
“Yes. But make me understand. Why does that make your attitude so different? Why are you so angry about something that would happen to you sooner or later anyway?”
“Because I’m too young for this,” Nita said. “All the things I’ll never have a chance to do — grow up, work, live—“
“This,” Ed said mildly, looking around him at the green-burning sea, the swift fish flashing in it, the dazzling wrinkled mirror of the surface seen from beneath, “this is not living?”
“Of course it is! But there’s a lot more to it! And getting murdered by a shark is hardly what I call living!”
“I assure you,” Ed said, “it’s nothing as personal as murder. I would have done the same for any wizard singing the Silent Lord. I have done the same, many times. And doubtless shall again…” His voice trailed off.
Nita caught something odd in Ed’s voice. He sounded almost… wistful?
“Look,” she said, her own voice small. “Tell me something… Does it really have to hurt a lot?”
“Sprat,” said Ed dispassionately, “what in this life doesn’t? Even love hurts sometimes. You may have noticed…”
“Love — what would you know about that?” Nita said, too pained to care about being scornful, even to the Master-Shark.
“And who are you to think I would know nothing about it? Because I kill without remorse, I must also be ignorant of love, is that it?”
There was a long, frightening pause, while Ed began to swim a wide circle about Nita. “You’re thinking I am so old an order of life that I can know nothing but the blind white rut, the circling, the joining that leaves the joined forever scarred. Oh yes, I know that. In its time… it’s very good.”
The rich and hungry pleasure in his voice disturbed Nita. Ed was circling closer and closer as he spoke, swimming as if he were asleep. “And, yes… sometimes we wish the closeness of the joining wouldn’t end. But what would my kind do with the warm-blood sort of joining, the long companionships? What would I do with a mate?” He said it as if it were an alien word. “Soon enough one or the other of us would fall into distress — and the other partner would end it. There’s an end to mating and mate, and to the love that passed between. That price is too high for me to pay, even once. I swim alone.”
He was swimming so close to Nita now that his sides almost touched hers, and she pulled her tail and fins in tight and shrank away from the razory hide, not daring to move otherwise. Then Ed woke up and broke the circle, gliding lazily outward and away as if nothing had happened. “But, Sprat, the matter of my loves — or their lack — is hardly what’s bothering you.”
“No,” she burst out bitterly, “love! I’ve never had a chance to. And now— now—“
“Then you’re well cast for the Silent Lord’s part,” Ed said, his voice sounding far away. “How does the line go? ‘Not old enough to love as yet,/ but old enough to die, indeed—‘ That has always been the Silent Lord’s business — to sacrifice love for life… instead of, as in lesser songs, the other way around…”
Ed trailed off, paused to snap up a sea bass that passed him by too slowly. When his eyes were more or less sane again and the water had carried the blood away, Ed said, “Is it truly so much to you, Sprat? Have you truly had no time to love?”
