Диана Дуэйн - Deep Wizardry

Ed had said. It was a certainty, as sure as looking up toward a lighted window and seeing the person who's been staring at you drop the curtain and turn away. She wrenched her attention back to the Blue, who was at the end of one of his long stately passages. But it was hard.
" '—Nay, slowly, Sounder. Slow is the wise whale's song, and wise as slow; for he who hastens errs, who errs learns grief. And not the Master-Shark has teeth as fierce: grief eats its prey alive, and pain grows greater as the grief devours, not less. So let this Stranger sing his peace: what he desires of us; there's Sea enough and time
to hear him, though he sing the darkened Moon to full and back again. Ay, let him speak. . . .' "
And to Nita's shock and fascinated horror, an answer came. The voice that raised itself in the stillness of the great depths was the sonic equivalent of the thing one sees out the corner of one's eye, then turns to find gone, or imag-ined. It did not shake the water; it roused no echoes. And Nita was not alone in hearing it. She saw the encircled Celebrants look uneasily at one another. On the far side of the circle, Kit's coolness was suddenly broken, and he stared at Nita like someone believing a myth for the first time. The innocent, gentle-spoken, unselfconscious evil in the new voice was terrifying. "With Pow'rs and Dominations need I speak," sang that timbreless voice in quiet sincerity,
" 'the ancient Lords who hold the Sea in sway. I pray thee, Lords of the Humors, hear me now,
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last, least and poorest of the new-made whales, new-loos'd from out the Sea's great silent Heart. No Lord have I; therefore to ye I come, beseeching low thy counsel and thy rule for one that's homeless, lawless, mateless, lost.
"Who art thou, then, that speak'st?" sang S'reee, beginning the Singer's questioning. At the end of her verse she was answered, in more soft-spoken, reasonable platitudes—words meant to lull the unwary and deceive the alert. And questions and answers continued, until Nita realized that there had been a shift. Rather than the Singer asking the Stranger what he wanted, the Stranger was telling the Singer what he knew she wanted—and could offer her, if only she would take the unspecified Gift he would give her.
Nita began shaking steadily now, and not from the cold. The insinuating power of that not– quite-voice somehow frightened her worse than head-on conflict with the Lone Power had, a couple of months ago. There the Power had been easily seen in its true colors. But here it was hidden, and speaking as matter-of-factly as the voices in the back of one's own mind, whose advice one so often tends to follow without question. "Your Mastery is hollow," said the voice to S'reee,
" '—cold song, strict-ruled by law. From such bland rule come no great musics. Singer, follow me, accept my Gift and what it brings, and song shall truly have no Master save for you. My gift will teach you lyric that will break the heart that hears it; every seaborne voice will curse your newfound art, and wish that art ;•• its own. Take up the Gift, O foremost ; Singer. . . .' "
Nita glanced over at S'reee. She was trembling nearly as hard as Nita was, caught in the force of the temptation. S'reee sang her refusal calmly enough; but Nita found herself wondering how much of that refusal was the ritual's and how much S'reee's own. She began watching the other Celebrants with as much care. Iniihwit sang the Gazer's questioning and rejection with the outward attitude of mild unconcern that Nita had in their brief acquaintance come to associate with him. Aroooon's refusal of the prize offered the Blue by the Stranger, that of Power over all the other whales, was more emphatic, though it came in his
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usual rich, leisurely manner. He sang not as if making ritual responses, but as if he rejected someone who swam in the circle with him and dared him to do something about it.
After that, the unheard voice sounded less certain of itself, and also impa-tient. The Song passed on to what would for the Lone Power be more successful ground: the Wanderer and the Killer and the Forager, all of whom would succumb to the Stranger's temptations and become the Betrayed— those species of whales and fish to whom death would later come most frequently and most quickly. One by one Roots and Fang and Hotshot sang with the Lone One, were tempted, and in the place of the original Masters, fell. Nita tried to keep herself calm, but had trouble doing it; for each time one of the Celebrants gave in to the Lone One's persuasion, she felt the voice grow a little more pleased with itself, a little more assured—as if something were finally going according to plan. Nita stared across at Kit. He traded looks with her and began to make his way around the circle toward her.
The Lone One was working on the last three whales in the circle now, the ones who would become the Undecided. Their parts were the most difficult, being not only the longest sung passages but also the most complex. The Undecided argued with the Lone Power much more than did the Un-touched, who tended to refuse quickly, or the Betrayed, who gave in without much fighting. Tlhlki sang first, the Sounder's part; and strain began to show as the Power offered him all the hidden knowledge of the great deeps, and the Sounder's song went from smooth flowing melodies to rumbles and scrapes of tortured indecision. Not all that carrying on is in the Song, Nita thought nervously. What's happening? And indeed, though the Sounder fin-ished his passage and turned away, ostensibly to think about what the Lone Power had said to him, Nita could see that T!h!ki looked pallid and shaken as a whale that's sick. The Listener fared no better. Fluke sang steadily enough to begin with; but when the voiceless voice offered him the power to hear everything that transpired in the Sea, from the random thoughts of new-hatched fry to the secret ponderings of the continental plates, he hesitated much too long—so long that Nita saw S'reee look at him in surprise and almost speak up to prompt him. It was bizarre; in rehearsals Fluke had had the best memory of any of them. He finished his verses looking troubled, and seemed relieved to turn away.
It's what S'reee said, very early on, Nita thought. The whales picked have to be close in temperament to the original Celebrants—loving the same kinds of things. But it makes them vulnerable to the temptations too.
And then Areinnye began to sing, questioning the Power in her disturb-ingly sweet voice, asking and answering. She showed no sign of the unease
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that had troubled the others. Nita glanced over at Kit, who had managed by this time to work his way fairly close to her; he swung his tail a fraction, a whale's version of a worried headshake. Areinnye's singing was polished, su-perb, her manner poised, unruffled, royal. She sang her initial rebuff with the harsh certainty the Gray Lord's song called for.

" 'Stranger, no more— Power am I, as my foes flee. In the Below Speak not to me.
The voice that answered her was as sweet and poised as her own.
"And do you then desire no gift of mine— you who have lost so much? Ah no: you have strength of your own indeed—great strength of jaw, of fluke, of fin; fear goes before your face. But sorrow follows after. What use strength when slaughtered children rot beneath the waves, when the sweet mouth that you gave suck is gone, rent to red tatters by the flensing-knives; and when the second heart that beat by yours lies ground for dogs' meat in a whaler's hull? Gray One, accept my Gift and learn of strength—"

give me no gift. fear in the water I need no boon. all bow before me. Speak not of gifts.' "
That's not in the Song! Nita stared in shock at Kit, then at the other Celebrants—who, all but Areinnye, were trading horrified looks. The sperm whale held very still, her eyes turned outward from the circle; and she shook as violently as Tlhlki had °r, for that matter, Nita. The Lone Power sang on:
"—learn power! Learn how wizardry may turn to serve your purpose, sinking the whalers deep, taking the brute invaders' lives to pay for that small life that swims the Sea no more; take up my Gift—"
'There is—there is another life," Areinnye sang, trembling now as if storm w aters battered at her, breaking the continuity of the Song. "Saved—she saved—"
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"—what matter? As if brutes who fear the Sea are capable of thought, much less of love! Even a shark by accident may save a life—then turn and tear the newly saved! Take up my Gift and take