Deep Wizardry

Foregathering Song

Nita sat hunched in a miserable little bundle on the beach, her arms around her knees — staring at the bright morning sea and not seeing it.

She had gone to bed with the feeling that everything would be all right when she woke up in the morning. But she’d awakened to a pair of parents torn among insane curiosity, worry, approval, and disapproval, who drank cup after cup of coffee and stared at the lump of lunar pumice in the middle of the table, and made little sense when they talked.

She hardly knew them. Her mom and dad alternated between talking to her, hanging on every word she said, and talking over her head about her, as if she weren’t there. And they kept touching her like a delicate thing that might break — though there was an undercurrent of anger in the touches that said her parents had suddenly discovered she was in some ways stronger than they were, and they didn’t like it.

Nita sighed. I’d give anything for one of Dad’s hugs that squeeze the air out and make you go squeak! she thought. Or to hear Mom do Donald Duck voices at me. But fat chance of that…

She let out a long, unhappy breath. Kit was finishing his breakfast at a leisurely pace and handling endless questions about wizardry from her parents — covering for her. Just as well: She had other business to attend to before they left.

“Tom,” she said, almost mourning, under her breath. She had been down to Friedman’s already and had “minded the store” under Dog’s watchful eye for a long time, waiting for Tom to return her call. She needed expert help, in a hurry. I’ve gone as far as I can on my own, she thought. I need advice! Oh, Tom, where are you?

As she’d expected. Nothing—

The last thing she expected was the sudden explosion of air that occurred about twenty feet down the beach from her, flinging sand in all directions. No, Nita corrected herself. The last thing she expected was what the explosion produced: a man with one towel wrapped around his waist and another draped around his neck — tall, broad-shouldered and narrow-waisted, with dark hair and the kind of face one sees in cigarette ads, but never hopes to see smile. It was not Tom, but Carl. He looked around him, saw Nita, and came over to her in a hurry, looking grave. “What’sa matter, Nita?” he said, casual as always, but concerned. “I heard that even though it wasn’t meant for me.”

She looked up at him wanly and tried to smile just a little; but the smile was a dismal failure. “Uh, no. Look, no one was answering the phone — and then I was just thinking—“

“That wasn’t what I would call ‘just’ thinking,” Carl said, sitting down on the sand beside her. “Sometimes I forget what kind of power wizards have when they’re kids…”

Nita saw that Carl’s hair was wet. “I got you out of the shower,” she said. “I’m sorry…”

“No, I was out already. It’s okay.”

“Where’s Tom?” Nita said.

“He has a breakfast meeting with some people at ABC; he asked me to take his calls. Not that I had much choice, in your case… You’ve got big trouble, huh? Tell me about it.”

She did. It took her a while. Though she braced herself for it, the look of shock on Carl’s face when he heard about Nita’s accepting the Silent Lord’s part was so terrible, she started to leak tears again. Carl sat still while she finished the story.

“Do your folks know?” he said at last.

“No,” Nita said. “And I don’t think I’m going to tell them. I think Dad suspects — and Mom knows he does and doesn’t want to talk to him about it.”

Carl let out a long breath. “I don’t know what to tell you,” he said.

This was not the most encouraging thing Nita had ever heard. A Senior Wizard always knew what to tell you. “Carl,” she said, tears still thick in her voice, “what can I do? I can’t — I can’t just die!”

It was the first time she had actually said the word out loud. It left her shaking all over like the aftermath of a particularly large wizardry, and the tears started coming again.

Carl was quiet. “Well, yeah, you can,” he said at last, gently. “People do it all the time — sometimes for much less cause.”

“But there must be something I could do!”

Carl looked down at the sand. “What did you say you were going to do?”

Nita didn’t say anything; they both knew the answer very well. “You know what caused this?” Carl said.

”What?”

“Remember the blank-check sorcery you did while in the other Manhattan, that time? The open-ended request for help?”

“Uh-huh.”

“That kind of spell always says that at some later date you’ll be called upon to return the energy you use.” Carl looked somber. “You got your help. But it must have taken a lot of energy to seal a whole piece of another space away from every other space, forever…”

Nita scrubbed at her eyes, not much liking this line of reasoning. “But the spell never said anyone was going to have to die to pay back the price!”

“No. All it said was that you were going to have to pay back the exact amount of energy used up at some future date. And it must have been a very great amount, to require lifeprice to be paid. There’s no higher payment that can be made.” Carl fell silent a moment, then said, “Well, one.” And his face shut as if a door had closed behind his eyes.

Nita put her head down on her knees again. This wasn’t working the way it was supposed to. “Carl, there has to be something you, we could do—“

The surf crashed for a long time between her words and his. “Nita,” Carl said finally, “no. What you absolutely do not want is ‘something you could do.’ What you really want is for me to get you off the hook somehow, so you don’t have to carry through with your promise.”

Her head snapped up in shock. “You mean— Carl, don’t you care if I die or not?”

“I care a whole lot.” The pain in Carl’s voice made it plain that he did. “But unfortunately I also have to tell you the truth. That’s what Seniors are for; why do you think we’re given so much power to work with? We’re paid for what we do — and a lot of it isn’t pleasant.”

“Then tell me some truth! Tell me what to do—“

“No,” he said gently. “Never that. Nine-tenths of the power of wizardry comes from making up your own mind what you’re going to do. The rest of it is just mechanics.” Carl looked at her with a professional calm that reminded Nita of her family doctor. “What I can do is go over your options with you.”

She nodded.

“So first — what you’d like to do. You want to break your word and not sing the Song. That’d be easy enough to do. You would simply disappear — stay on land for the next week or so and not have anything further to do with the whales with whom you’ve been working. That would keep you out of the Song proper; you’d be alive three days from now.”

Carl looked out to sea as he spoke, nothing in his expression or his tone of voice hinting at either praise or condemnation. “There would naturally be results of that action. For one, you took the Celebrant’s Oath in front of witnesses and called on the Powers of wizardry themselves to bring certain things about if you break the Oath. They will bring those things about, Nita — the Powers don’t forget. You’ll lose your wizardry. You’ll forget that there is any such thing as magic in the world. Any relationships you have with other wizards will immediately collapse. You would never have met Kit, for example, or me, or Tom, except for your wizardry. So we’ll cease to exist for you.”

Nita held still as stone.

“There’ll also be effects on the Song itself as a result of your leaving. Even if the group manages to find a replacement wizard to sing the Silent One—“ Nita thought of Kit and froze. “—the Song itself will still have been sabotaged by your betrayal of your Oath. It won’t be effective. The undersea tremors, the pollution and the attacks on the whales and all the rest of it will continue. Or the Lone Power will enter into the wizardry and throw it completely out of control — in which case I don’t want to think of what will happen to New York and the Island, sooner or later. If all the other wizards in the area worked together, we might be able to slow it down. But not for long.”

Carl took a breath. “And on top of everything else, breaking the Celebrant’s Oath will also be a violation of the Wizard’s Oath, your oath to assist in slowing down the death of the Universe. In your last moment as a wizard, as you lose your magic, you will know beyond all doubt that the Universe around you is going to die sooner because of your actions. And all through your life there’ll always be something at the bottom of your heart that feels sad… and you’ll never be able to get rid of it, or even understand it.”

Nita didn’t move.

“That was all the ‘bad’ stuff. On the ‘good’ side I can tell you that you probably wouldn’t die of the upheavals that will start happening. What you did in Manhattan with Kit wouldn’t be forgotten by the Powers either; they pay their debts. I imagine your folks would get a sudden urge to go visit some relatives out of state — something like that — and be a good distance inland when the trouble started. And after the trouble, you would go on to live what would seem a perfectly normal life… after all, most people think it’s normal to have a nameless sorrow at the bottom of your soul. You’d grow up, and find a job, and get married, or not, and work and play and do all the other things that mortals and wizards do. And then you’d die.”

Nita was silent.

“Now the second option,” Carl said. “You go down there and keep your word — though you’re not happy about it, to say the least. You sing the Song, and when the time comes you dive into that coral or whatever and cut yourself up, and the Master-Shark comes after you and eats you. You experience about two or three minutes of extreme pain, pain like being hit by a car or burned all over, until you go into shock, or your brain runs out of oxygen, whichever comes first; and you die. Your parents and friends then have to deal with the fact of your death.”

Nita’s tears started again.

“The ‘good’ side to this option,” said Carl, “is that the Song will be successfully completed, millions of people will continue to live their lives untroubled, and the Lone Power will have suffered another severe setback. My estimate is that It couldn’t interfere in any large way with the Sea’s affairs — and, to some extent, with the land’s — for some forty to fifty years thereafter. Possibly more.”

Nita nodded slowly. “So if—“

“Wait. There’s a third option,” Carl said.

“Huh?”

He looked at her with an expression she couldn’t fully decipher. “Sing the Song and make the Sacrifice — but do it willingly. Rather than just doing it because you have to, to keep terrible things from happening.”

“Does it make a difference?”

Carl nodded. “If you can make the Sacrifice willingly, the wizardry will gain such power as you can barely imagine. The Lone One’s power is always based on Its desire to have Its own way in everything. Nothing undermines Its workings faster than power turned toward having something be the way someone else wants it.”

Carl looked hard at her. “I have to make real sure you understand this. I’m not talking about the sort of fakery most people mean when they talk about ‘sacrifice’—none of that ‘unselfishness’ business, which usually has the desire for other people to feel guilty or sad hidden at the bottom of it. No being a ‘martyr.’ That would sabotage a wizardry almost as badly as running out on it. But to willingly give up one’s life for the sake of the joy and well-being of others will instantly destroy whatever power the Lone One has currently amassed.” He glanced away. “That doesn’t mean you couldn’t be afraid and still have it work, by the way.”

“Great,” Nita said with a nervous laugh.

“The important thing is that, other times when the Sacrifice has been made willingly, there have been fewer wars afterward, less crime, for a long while. The Death of things, of the world as whole, has been slowed… ”

Nita thought of people beating and shooting and stealing from each other; she thought of A-bombs and H-bombs, and people starving and poor — and she thought of all that slowed down. But all those troubles and possibilities seemed remote right now compared to her own problem, her own life. “I don’t know if I could do that,” Nita said, scarcely above a whisper.

There was a long pause. “I don’t know if I could either,” said Carl, just as quietly.

She sat still for a long time. “I think—“

“Don’t say it,” Carl said, shaking his head. “You couldn’t possibly have decided already. And even if you have—“ He glanced away. “You may change your mind later… and then you’ll be saved the embarrassment of having to justify it to me.”

“Later—“ She looked at him in distress and confusion. “You mean you would still talk to me if I—“ She stopped. “Wait a minute. If I don’t do it, I won’t know you! And if I do do it—“

“There’s always Timeheart,” Carl said softly.

Nita nodded, silent. She had been there once, in that “place” to which only wizards can find their way while still alive; that terrible and beautiful place where things that are loved are preserved, deathless, perfect, yet still growing and becoming more themselves through moment after timeless moment. “After we— After we’re alive, then—“

“What’s loved,” Carl said, “lives.”

She looked at him in a few moments’ sorrowful wonder. “But sure,” she said. “You’re a Senior. You must go there all the time.”

“No.” He looked out over the sea. “In fact, the higher you’re promoted, when you’re a wizard, the more work you have to do — and the less time you get to spend outside this world, except on business.” He breathed out and shook his head. “I haven’t been to Timeheart for a long time, except in dreams…”

Now it was his turn to sound wistful. Nita reached out and thumped Carl’s shoulder once or twice, hesitantly.

“Yeah,” Carl said. Slowly he stood up and brushed the sand off his towel, then looked down at her. “Nita,” he said — and his voice was not impassive any more, “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah,” she said.

“Call us before you start the song, if you can, okay?” The New York accent was pronounced and raspy, as if Carl’s nose were stuffed.

“Right.”

He turned away, then paused and looked back at her. And everything suddenly became too much for Nita. She went to Carl in a rush, threw her arms around him at about waist height, and began to bawl. “Oh, honey,” Carl said, and got down on one knee and held Nita tight, which was what she needed. But the helpless expression on his face, when she finally got some control over herself and looked up, almost hurt her more than her own pain.

After a while she pushed him away. Carl resisted her for a moment. “Nita,” he said. “If you— If you do…” He paused. “… Thank you,” he finally said, looking at her hard. “Thank you. For the ten million lives that’ll keep on living. They’ll never know. But the wizards will… and won’t ever forget.”

“A lot of good that’d do me!” Nita said, caught between desperate laughter and tears.

“Sweetheart,” Carl said, “if you’re in this world for comfort, you’ve come to the wrong place… whether you’re wizard or just plain mortal. And if you’re doing what you’re doing because of the way other people will feel about it — you’re definitely in the wrong business. What you do has to be done because of how you’ll feel about you… the way you did it last night, with your folks.” His voice was rueful. “There are no other rewards… if only because no matter what you do, no one will ever think the things about you that you want them to think. Not even the Powers.”

“Right,” Nita said again.

They let go of each other. Carl turned and walked away quickly. The air slammed itself shut behind him, and he was gone.

Nita walked back to the house.

She kept her good-byes brief. “We may be back tonight,” she said to her mother and father as they stood together on the beach, “or we may not. S’reee says it’ll depend on how much of the rehearsal we get finished.”

“Rehearsal—“ Her mother looked at her curiously.

“Uh-huh. It’s like I told you,” Kit said. “Everyone who sings has his own part — but there’s some ensemble singing, and it has to be done right.”

“Kit, we’re late,” Nita said. “Mom—“ She grabbed her mother and hugged her hard. “Don’t worry if we don’t come back tonight, Mom, please,” she said. “We may just go straight into the Song — and that’s a day and a half by itself. Look for us Monday morning.” Us! her mind screamed, but she ignored it. “Dad—“ She turned to him, hugged him too, and saw, out of the corner of her eye, her mother hugging Kit.

Nita glanced up and down the beach. “It’s all clear, Kit,” she said. She shrugged out of the towel wrapped around her, leaving it with her mother, then sprinted for the water. A few fast hops over several breakers, and there was depth enough to dive and stroke out to twenty-foot water. Nita leaped into the whaleshape as if it were an escape rather than a trap from which she might never return. Once a humpback, she felt normal again — and felt a twinge of nervousness; there was something S’reee had warned her about that…

No matter. Nita surfaced and blew good-bye at her mother and father, then turned for Kit, who was treading water beside her, to take her dorsal fin and be towed out to depth.

Out in the fifty-foot water Kit wrapped the whalesark about him and made the change with a swiftness that was almost savage. The sperm whale that appeared in his place had a bitter, angry look to its movements when it began to swim away from shore.

“Kit,” Nita said as they went, “you okay?”

It was some time before he answered. “No,” he said. “Why should I be? When you’re going to—“ He didn’t finish the sentence.

“Kit, look—“

“No, you look. Don’t you see that there’s nothing I can do about all this? And I don’t like it!” His song was another of the scraping sperm-whale battlecries, soft but very heartfelt, and the rage in it chattered right down Nita’s skin like nails down a blackboard.

“There’s not much I can do about it myself,” she said, “and I don’t like it either. Let’s not talk about it for now, please! My brain still hurts enough from last night.”

“Neets,” he said, “we’ve got to talk about it sometime. Tomorrow’s it.”

“Fine. Before tomorrow. Meanwhile, we’ve got today to worry about. Are we even going the right way?”

He laughed at her then, a painful sound. “Boy, are you preoccupied,” Kit said. “Clean your ears out and listen!”

She stopped everything but the ticks and clicks a humpback uses to find its way, and listened — and was tempted to laugh herself. The sea had a racket hidden in it. From the southwest was coming an insane assortment of long, odd, wild sounds. Sweet high flutings that cut sharply through the intervening distance; clear horncalls, as if someone hunted under the waves; outer-spacy whistles and warbles like the electronic cries of orbiting satellites; deep bass scrapes and rumbles, lawn-mower buzzes and halftone moans and soulful sighs. And many of those sounds, sooner or later, came back to the same main theme — a series of long wistful notes, slowly ascending into pitches too high and keen for human ears, then whispering away, lost in the quiet breathing of the water.

Nita had never heard that main theme before, but she recognized it instantly from her reading and her wizard’s-sense of the Sea. It was the loss/ gain/sorrow motif that ran all through the Song of the Twelve; and what she heard now, attenuated by distance but otherwise clear, was the sound of its singers, tuning up for the performance in which that mournful phrase would become not just a motif but a reality.

“Kit,” Nita said with a shiver, “that’s a lot more than ten whales! Who are all those other voices?”

He bubbled, a shrug. “Let’s find out.”

She whistled agreement and struck off after Kit, due west, away from the south shore of the island and out across the Atlantic-to-Ambrose shipping approaches once more. Song echoed more and more loudly in the sunlit shallows through which they swam; but underneath them Nita and Kit were very aware of the depths from which no echo returned — the abyss of Hudson Canyon, far below them, waiting.

“This is it,” Kit said at last, practically in Nita’s ear, as they came to the fringes of the area S’reee’s instructions had mentioned — fifteen miles east-northeast of Barnegat, New Jersey, right over the remains of an old sunken tanker six fathoms down in the water. And floating, soaring, or slowly fluking through the diffuse green-golden radiance of the water, were the whales.

Nita had to gulp once to find her composure. Hundreds of whales had gathered and were milling about, whales of every kind — minke whales, sei whales, sperm whales, dolphins of more kinds than she knew existed, in a profusion of shapes and colors, flashing through the water; several blues, grave-voiced, gliding with huge slow grace; fin whales, hardly smaller than the blues, bowhead whales and pygmy rights and humpbacks, many of them; gray whales and pygmy sperms and narwhals with their long single spiral teeth, like unicorn horns; belugas and killers and scamperdowns and bottle-nosed whales— “Kit,” Nita sang, faint-voiced, “S’reee didn’t tell me there were going to be people here!”

“Me either. I guess spectators at the rehearsal are so common, she forgot…” Kit sounded unconcerned.

Easy for you, Nita thought. You like crowds! She sang a few notes of sonar, trying nervously to hear some familiar shape. One shape at least Nita recognized, accompanied by the slow, calm, downscaling note of the Blue, as Aroooon passed by, a gold-tinged shadow in the background of greenness and the confusion of bodies. And there was Hotshot’s high chatter, some ways off, accompanied by several other dolphin voices very like his — members of his pod.

Stillness swept over the spectators as she approached with Kit, and they recognized who she was. And a single note began to go up from them, starting at the fringes of the circle, working its way inward even to the Celebrants, until she heard even Aroooon’s giant voice taking it up. One note, held in every range from the dolphins’ dog-whistle trilling to the water-shaking thunder of the blues. One thought, one concept in the Speech, trumpeting through the water with such force that Nita began to shake at the sound of it. Praise. They knew she was the Silent One. They knew what she was going to do for them. They were thanking her.

Stunned, Nita forgot to swim — just drifted there in painful joy.

From behind, as the note slowly ebbed away, Kit nudged her. “Get the lead out, Neets,” he sang, just for her hearing. “You’re the star of this show-So start acting like it! Go in there and let them know you’re here.”

She swam slowly through the spectator whales, into the clear water in the center of their great circle, where the Celebrants were gathered.

One by one, as she circled above the weed-covered remnant of the trawler, Nita quickly identified the whales she knew. Aroooon, yes, swimming on more or less by himself to tideward, singing his deep scrape of notes with the absent concentration of a perfectionist who has time to hunt perfection; Hotshot, doing barrel rolls near the surface and chattering through the quick bright harmonies of some part of the Wanderer’s song; Areinnye, aloof from both Wanderer and Blue, running again and again over a phrase of the Gray Lord’s song and paying no further attention to Nita after a quick glance.

There were also five other whales whom Nita didn’t know, exactly as Kit had pegged them. A beluga, dolphin-sized but whale-shaped, lazing near the surface and singing some longing phrase from the Gazer’s song; a pilot whale, long and slim and gray, silent for the moment and looking at Nita with interest; a right whale, with its huge, strange, bent-out-of-shape baleen mouth, listening to the beluga; a killer whale, the sharp blacks and whites of its hide a contrast to the grays and quiet mottlings of most of the others.

And — thank Heaven! — S’reee, swimming toward Nita from beside the killer. Nita had been shaken by the sight of the killer — killer whales being one of a humpback’s most persistent natural enemies — but just now her composure was so unraveled, there wasn’t much more damage that could be done to it. As S’reee came up to greet her, Nita managed to sing in something like a calm voice, and as if she were actually in charge, “Well, we’re late. Should we get started?”

“Good idea,” said S’reee, brushing skin briefly and reassuringly with Nita. “Introductions first, though.”

“Yes, please.”

S’reee led Nita off to the north, where several of the singers were working together. “We’ve been through the first part of the Song already this morning,” said S’reee, “the name-songs and so forth. I’ve heard you do yours, so there was no need for you to be here till late. We’re up to the division now, the ‘temptation’ part. These are the people singing the Undecided group—“

“Hi, Hotshot,” Nita sang as she and S’reee soared into the heart of the group. The dolphin chattered a greeting back and busied himself with his singing again, continuing his spirals near the surface, above the heads of the right whale and a whale whose song Nita hadn’t heard on the way in, a Sowerby’s beaked whale. She immediately suspected why she hadn’t heard it; the whale, undoubtedly there to celebrate the Forager’s part, was busy eating — ripping up the long kelp and redweed stirring around the shattered deck-plates of the wreck. It didn’t even look up as she and S’reee approached. The right whale was less preoccupied; it swam toward Nita and S’reee at a slow pace that might have been either courtesy or caution.

“HNii’t, this is Tlhlki,” said S’reee. Nita clicked his name back at him in greeting, swimming forward to brush skin politely with him. “He’s singing the Listener.”

Tlhlki rolled away from Nita and came about, looking at her curiously.

When he spoke, his song revealed both great surprise and some unease. “S’reee — this is a human!”

“Tlhlki,” Nita said, wry-voiced, with a look at S’reee, “are you going to be mad at me for things I haven’t done too?”

The right whale looked at her with that cockeyed upward stare that rights have — their eyes being placed high in their flat-topped heads. “Oh,” he said, sounding wry himself, “you’ve run afoul of Areinnye, have you. No fear, Silent Lord — HNii’t, was it? No fear.” Tlhlki’s song put her instantly at ease. It had an amiable and intelligent sound to it, the song of a mind that didn’t tend toward blind animosities. “If you’re going to do the Sea such a service as you’re doing, I could hardly do less than treat you with honor. For Sea’s sake don’t think Areinnye is typical…

“However,” Tlhlki added, gazing down at the calmly feeding beaked whale, “some of us practically have to have a bite taken out of us to get us to start honoring and stop eating.” He drifted down a fathom or so and bumped nose-first into the beaked whale. “Roots! Heads up, you bottom-grubber, here comes the Master-Shark!”

“Huh? Where? Where?” the shocked song came drifting up from the bottom. The kelp was thrashed about by frantic fluking, and through it rose the beaked whale, its mouth full of weed, streamers of which trailed back and whipped around in all directions as the whale tried to tell where the shark was coming from. “Where — what— Oh,” the beaked whale said after a moment, as the echoes from its initial excited squeaking came back and told it that the Master-Shark was nowhere in the area. “Ki,” it said slowly, “I’m going to get you for that.”

“Later. Meantime, here’s S’reee, and HNii’t with her,” said Tlhlki. “HNii’t’s singing the Silent Lord. HNii’t, this is Roots.”

“Oh,” said Roots, “well met. Pleasure to sing with you. Would you excuse me?” She flipped her tail, politely enough, before Nita could sing a note, and a second later was head-down in the kelp again, ripping it up faster than before, as if making up for lost time.

Nita glanced with mild amusement at S’reee as Hotshot spiraled down to join them. “She’s a great conversationalist,” Hotshot whistled, his song conspiratorially quiet. “Really. Ask her about food.”

“I kind of suspected,” Nita said. “Speaking of the Master-Shark, though, where is Ed this morning?”

S’reee waved one long fin in a shrug. “He has a late appearance, as you do, so it doesn’t really matter if he shows up late. Meanwhile, we have to meet the others. Ki, are you finished with Roots?”

“Shortly. We’re going through the last part of the second duet. I’ll catch up with you people later.” The right whale glided downward toward the weeds, and S’reee led Nita off to the west, where the Blue drifted in the water, and the beluga beside him, a tiny white shape against Aroooon’s hugeness. “Aroooon and I are two of the Untouched,” said S’reee. “The third, after the Singer and the Blue, is the Gazer. That’s Iniihwit.”

“HNii’t,” Aroooon’s great voice hailed them as Nita approached.

Nita bent her body into a bow of respect as she coasted through the water. “Sir,” she said.

That small, calm eye dwelt gravely on her. “Are you well, Silent Lord?” said the Blue.

“As well as I can be, sir,” Nita said. “Under the circumstances.”

“That’s well,” said Aroooon. “Iniihwit, here is the human I spoke of.”

The beluga swam away from Aroooon to touch skin with Nita. Iniihwit was male, much smaller than Nita as whales went, though big for a beluga.

But what struck her more than his smallness was the abstracted, contemplative sound of his song when he did speak. There were long silent days of calm behind it, days spent floating on the surface alone, watching the changes of sea and sky, saying little, seeing much. “HNii’t,” he said, “well met. And well met now, for there’s something you must hear. You too, Senior.”

“The weather?” S’reee said, sounding worried.

“Yes indeed. It looks as if that storm is not going to pass us by.”

Nita looked at S’reee in surprise. “What storm? It’s clear.”

“For now,” said Iniihwit. “Nevertheless, there’s weather coming, and there’s no telling what it will stir up in the depths.”

“Is there any chance we can beat it?” S’reee said, sounding very worried indeed.

“None,” the beluga said. “It will be here in half a light. We’ll have to take our chances with the storm, I fear.”

S’reee hung still in the water, thinking. “Well enough,” she said. “Come on, HNii’t; let’s speak to Areinnye and the others singing the Undecided. We’ll start the group rehearsal, then go straight into the Song. Time’s swimming.”

S’reee fluked hard and soared off, leaving Nita in shock for a moment. We won’t be going home tonight, she thought. No good-byes. No last explanations. I’ll never set foot on land again…

“Neets?” Kit’s voice said from behind her.

“Right,” she said.

She went after S’reee to see the three whales singing the Undecided. Areinnye greeted Nita with cool cordiality and went back to her practicing. “And here’s the Sounder,” S’reee was saying. “Fluke, this is HNii’t.”

Nita brushed skin with the Sounder, who was a pilot whale; small and bottled gray, built along the same general lines as a sperm, though barely a quarter the size. Fluke’s eyes were small, his vision poor, and he had an owlish, shortsighted look about him that reminded Nita of Dairine in her glasses. The likeness was made stronger by a shrill, ratchety voice and a tendency toward chuckles. “Fluke?” Nita said.

“I was one,” the Sounder said. “I’m a triplet. And a runt, as you can see. There was nothing to do to hold my own with my brother and sister except become a wizard in self-defense.”

Nita made a small amused noise, thinking that there might not be so much difference between the motivations and family lives of humans and whales. “And here’s Fang,” said S’reee.

Nita found herself looking at the brilliant white and deep black of the killer whale. Her feelings were decidedly mixed. The humpback-shape had its own ideas about the Killer, mostly prejudiced by the thought of blood in the water. But Nita’s human memories insisted that killers were affable creatures, friendly to humans; she remembered her Uncle Jerry, her mother’s older brother, telling about how he’d once ridden a killer whale at an aquatic park in Hawaii and had had a great time. This killer whale edged closer to Nita now, staring at her out of small black eyes — not opaque ones like Ed’s, but sharp, clever ones, with merriment in them. “Well?” the killer said, his voice 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?”

Mom and Dad, Nita thought ruefully. Dairine. That’s not love, I don’t love Dairine! — do I? She hardened her heart and said, “No, Pale One. Not that way. No one… that way.”

“Well then,” said the Master-Shark, “the Song will be sung from the heart, it seems. You will still offer the Sacrifice?”

“I don’t want to—“

“Answer the question, Sprat.”

It was a long while before Nita spoke. “I’ll do what I said I would,” she said at last. The notes of the song whispered away into the water like the last notes of a dirge.

She was glad Ed said nothing for a while, for her insides gripped and churned as she finally found out what real, grownup fear was. Not the kind that happens suddenly, that leaves you too busy with action to think about being afraid — but the kind that she had been holding off by not officially “deciding”: the kind that swims up as slowly as a shark circling, letting you see it and realize in detail what’s going to happen to you.

“I am big enough to take a humpback in two bites,” Ed said into her silence. “And there is no need for me to be leisurely about it. You will speak to the Heart of the Sea without having to say too much to me on the way.”

Nita looked up at him in amazement. “But I thought you didn’t believe— I mean, you’d never—“

“I am no wizard, Nita,” Ed said. “The Sea doesn’t speak to me as it does to you. I will never experience those high wild joys the Blue sings of — the Sea That Burns, the Voices. The only voices I hear cry out from water that burns with blood. But might I not sometimes wonder what other joys there are? — and wish I might feel them too?”

The dry, remote pain in his voice astonished her. And Nita thought abruptly of that long line of titles in the commentaries in her manual: as if only one shark had ever been Master. Sharks don’t die of natural causes, she thought. Could it be that, all these years, there has been just one Master? And all around him, people die and die, and he — can’t— and wants to? And so he understands how it is to want to get out of something and be stuck with it.

Nita was terribly moved — she wasn’t sure why. She swam close to the Pale One’s huge head for a moment and glided side by side with him, matching his course and the movements of his body.

“I wish I could help,” she said.

“As if the Master could feel distress,” Ed said, with good-natured scorn. The wound in his voice had healed without a scar.

“And as if someone else might want to end it,” Nita said, sarcastic, but gentle about it.

Ed was silent for a long while. “I mean, it’s dumb to suffer,” Nita said, rather desperately, into that silence. “But if you have to do it, you might as well intend it to do someone some good.”

In silence they swam a few lengths more through the darkening water, while Nita’s fear began to build in her again, and one astonished part of her mind shouted at her, You’re running around talking about doing nice things for someone who’s going to kill you? You ‘re crazy!

Ed spoke at last. “It’s well said. And we will cause it to be well made, this Sacrifice. You, young and never loving; I, old and never loved.” Calm, utterly calm, that voice. “Such a Song the Sea will never have seen.”

“HNii’t?” came a questioning note through the water, from southward of Ambrose: S’reee’s voice. “It’s almost your time—“

“I have to go,” Nita said. “Ed—“

“Silent Lord?”

She had no idea why she was saying it. “I’m sorry!”

“This once, I think,” the passionless voice said, “so am I. Go on, Sprat. I will not miss my cue.”

Nita looked at him. Opaque eyes, depthless, merciless, lingered on her as Ed curved past. “Coming!” Nita sang in S’reee’s direction, loud, and tore off southward.

No pale shadow followed.

The next few hours, while the water darkened further, ran together for Nita in a blur of music, and annoying repetitions, and words that would have been frightening if she hadn’t been too busy to be frightened. And something was growing in her, slowly, but getting stronger and stronger — an odd elation. She sang on, not questioning it, riding its tide and hoping it would last through what she had to do. Again and again, with the other Celebrants listening and offering suggestions, she rehearsed what would be the last things she would ever say:

“… Sea, hear me now, and take my words and make them ever law!—“

“Right, now swim off a little. No one hears this part. Upward, and toward the center, where the peak will be. Right there—“

“ ‘Must I accept the barren Gift?

learn death, and lose my Mastery?

Then let them know whose blood and breath

will take the Gift and set them free:

whose is the voice and whose the mind

to set at naught the well-sung Game—

when finned Finality arrives

and calls me by my secret Name.

Not old enough to love as yet,

but old enough to die, indeed— (“— Oh Lord—“)

the death-fear bites my throat and heart,

fanged cousin to the Pale One’s breed.

But past the fear lies life for all—

perhaps for me: and, past my dread, p

ast loss of Mastery and life,

the Sea shall yet give up Her dead!’ “ and then the paleness came to circle over her, bringing with it the voice that chanted all on one soft hissing note, again and again, always coming back to the same refrain—

“ ‘Master have I none, nor seek.

Bring the ailing; bring the weak.

Bring the wounded ones to me:

They shall feed my Mastery…’”

That strange excitement was still growing in Nita. She let it drive her voice as she would have used it to drive a wizardry, so that her song grew into something that shook the water and almost drowned out even Ed’s voice, weaving about it and turning mere hunger to desire, disaster to triumph—

“ ‘Lone Power, I accept your Gift!

Freely I make death part of me;

By my acceptance it is bound

into the lives of all the Sea—

yet what I do now binds to it

a gift I feel of equal worth:

I take Death with me, out of Time,

and make of it a path, a birth!

Let the teeth come! As they tear me,

they tear Your ancient hate for aye—

so rage, proud Power! Fail again,

and see my blood teach Death to die!’ “

… The last time she sang it, Nita hung unmoving, momentarily exhausted, for the moment aware of nothing but Kit’s anxious eyes staring at her from outside the circle and the stir of water on her skin as the Pale One circled above her.

“That’s right,” S’reee said at last, very quietly. “And then—“

She fell silent and swam out of the circle of Celebrants. Behind her, very slowly, first the Blue and then the rest of the whales began to sing the dirge for the Silent Lord — confirmation of the transformation of death and the new defeat of the Lone Power. Nita headed for the surface to breathe.

She came up into early evening. Westward, sunset was burning itself into scarlet embers; eastward a Moon lacking only the merest shard of light to be full lifted swollen and amber through the surface haze; northward, the bright and dark and bright again of Ambrose Light glittered on the uneasily shifting waves, with the opening and closing red eyes of Manhattan skyscraper lights low beyond it; and southward, gazing back at them, the red-orange glow of Arcturus sparkled above the water, here and there striking an answering spark off the crest or hollow of some wave. Nita lay there gasping in the wavewash and let the water rock her. Heaven knows, she thought, I need somebody to do it.

Beside her Kit surfaced in a great wash of water and blew spectacularly— slightly forward, as sperms do. “Neets—“

“Hi,” she said. She knew it was inane, but she could think of no other way to keep Kit from starting what he was going to start, except by saying dumb things.

“Neets,” he said, “we’re out of time. They’re going to start the descent as soon as everybody’s had a chance to rest a little and the protective spells are set.”

“Right,” she said, misunderstanding him on purpose. “We better get going, then—“ She tilted her head down and started to dive.

“Neets.” Suddenly Nita found that she was trying to dive through a forty-foot thickness of sperm whale. Nita blew in annoyance and let herself float back to the surface again. Kit bobbed up beside her — and, with great suddenness and a slam of air, threw off the whalesark. He dogpaddled there in the water, abruptly tiny beside her bulk. “Neets, get out of that for a minute.”

“Huh? Oh—“

It was a moment’s work to drop the whaleshape; then she was reduced to dogpaddling too. Kit was treading water a few feet from her, his hair slicked down with the water. He looked strange — tight, somehow, as if he were holding onto some idea or feeling very hard. “Neets,” he said, “I’m not buying this.”

Nita stared at him. “Kit,” she said finally, “look, there’s nothing we can do about it. I’ve bought it. Literally.”

“No,” Kit said. The word was not an argument, not even defiance; just a simple statement of fact. “Look, Neets — you’re the best wizard I’ve ever worked with—“

“I’m the only wizard you’ve ever worked with,” Nita said with a lopsided grin.

“I’m gonna kill you,” Kit said — and regretted it instantly.

“No need,” Nita said. “Kit — why don’t you just admit that this time I’ve got myself into something I can’t get out of.”

“Unless another wizard gets you out of it.”

She stared at him. “You loon, you can’t—“

“I know. And it hurts! I feel like I should volunteer, but I just can’t—“

“Good. ‘Cause you do and I’ll kill you.”

“That won’t work either.” He made her own crooked grin back at her.

“ ‘All for one,’ remember? We both have to come out of this alive.” he looked away.

”Let’s go for both,” Nita said.

Silence.

She took a deep breath. “Look, even if we don’t both get out of this, I think it’s gonna be all right. Really—“

“No,” Kit said again, and that was that.

Nita just looked at him. “Okay,” she said. “Be that way.” And she meant it. This was the Kit she was used to working with: stubborn, absolutely sure of himself — most of the time; the person with that size-twelve courage packed into his size-ten self, a courage that would spend a few minutes trembling and then take on anything that got in its way — from the Lone Power to her father. If I’ve got to go, Nita thought in sudden irrational determination, that sheer guts has got to survive — and I’ll do whatever’s necessary to make sure he does.

“Look,” she said, “what’re you gonna tell my folks when you get back?”

“I’m gonna tell them we’re hungry,” Kit said, “and that you’ll fill ‘em in on the details while I eat.”

I did tell him to be that way… “Right,” Nita said.

For a long time they stayed where they were, treading water, watching the Moon inch its way up the sky, listening to the Ambrose fog signal hooting the minutes away. A mile or so off, a tanker making for New York Harbor went by, its green portside running lights toward them, and let off a low groaning blast of horn to warn local traffic. From under the surface, after a pause, came a much deeper note that held and then scaled downward out of human hearing range, becoming nothing but a vibration in the water.

“They’re ready to leave,” Kit said.

Nita nodded, slipped into whaleshape again, and looked one last time with all her heart at the sunset towers of Manhattan, until Kit had finished his change. Then they dived.