Диана Дуэйн - Deep Wizardry

a life for life, as it was done of old—"
Slowly Areinnye turned, and the glitter of the wizard-light in her eyes as she looked at Nita was horrible to see. "Life," she sang, one low, thick, struggling note— She leaped at Nita. In that second Fang, on her left, arrowed in front of Areinnye, punching her jaws away from Nita in time for Nita to roll out of their way. But Fang didn't recover from the blow in time to flee himself; Areinnye's head swept around and the great teeth of her upper jaw raked frightful gashes down Fang's side. Nita pulled herself out of her roll just in time to see something else hit Areinnye—Kit's huge bulk, slamming into her with such force that she was knocked straight into the side of Caryn Peak. She screamed; the water brought back echoes of the sickening sound of her impact. And then she was fleeing—out of the wizard-light, past the bound-aries of the protective spell, out into the darkness past the peak.
The Celebrants stirred about in terrible confusion, while S'reee hurried to Fang's side and examined him. Nita stroked over quickly and brushed Fang's good side, very lightly. One of those merry eyes, now slightly less merry, managed to focus on her. "We need you—Silent One," Fang said.
"We do," S'reee said. "These wounds aren't deep, but they're bleeding a lot—and the Master-Shark's about. I've got to handle this. Meanwhile, we're shy the Gray Lord—and I don't think she's going to come back and take back what she said. Kit, are you willing?" Nita looked swiftly behind her. Kit was hanging there, looking down at Fang. "I'd better be," he said.
"Good. HNii't, administer him the Celebrant's Oath. And hurry." S'reee turned away from them and began one of the faster healing spells. "Kit, are you sure—" "Get going," he said.
She led him through the Oath. He said it almost as quickly as Hotshot had, tripping in only one place: ". . . and I shall weave my voice and my will and my blood with theirs if there be need. . . ."He was looking at Nita as he said that, and the look went right through her like a spear.
"Done," S'reee said. "Fang, mind that side—the repair is temporary—Swiftly, now. Everyone circle, we can't afford a delay. Kit, from 'No, ' must think—' " They sang. And if the Song had been frightening before, it was becoming
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frantic now. Underneath them all the Celebrants could feel some malicious force straining to get free—
Nita watched Kit closely. He didn't rehearse any of this stuff, she thought. \Vhat if he slips? But Kit sang what remained of the Gray Lord's part fault-lessly; he had laid himself wide open to the Sea and was being fed words and music directly. Nita felt a lump in her throat—that reaction humans shared with whales—at the perfect clarity of his voice. But she couldn't stop worry-ing. If he's this open to the Sea, he's also open to that Other— And that Other was working on him. Kit was beginning to tremble as the second part of the Gray Lord's rebuff came to an end. The soundless voice, when it spoke for the last time, was all sweet reason:
" '—strength is no use. Give over the vain strife that saves no one, keeps no old friend alive, condemns the dear to death. Take but my Gift and know long years that end not, slow-burnt days under the Sun and Moon; not for yourself alone, but for the other—' "
"No," Nita said—a mere whisper of song. Kit looked at her from the heart of the circle, shaking. In his eyes and the way he held his body Nita read how easy it would be for him to desert the Song after just these few lines, destroy it, knowing that Nita would escape alive. Here was the out he had been looking for.
"No!" she tried to say again, but something was stopping her. The malice in the water grew, burning her. Kit wavered, looking at her—

the next part would be the group singing—the battle.
S'reee lifted her head for the secondary invocation.
The ocean floor began to shake. And Nita suddenly realized that it wasn't lust the Lone Power's malice burning all around her. The water was heating up.
"Oh, Sea about us, no!" S'reee cried. "What now?" "Sing!" came a great voice from above them. Aroooon had lifted out of the c ircle, was looking into the darkness, past the great pillar of Caryn Peak. "For A ur lives, sing! Forget the battle! HNii't, quickly!"
She knew what he wanted. Nita took one last great gulp of breath, tasting 't as she had
never tasted anything in her life, and fluked upward out of the Clr cle herself, locating one of the sharp outcroppings she had noticed earlier.
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A flash of ghostly white in the background— Good, she thought. Ed's close "Sea, hear me now," she sang in a great voice, "and take my words and make them ever law—"
"Nitaaaaaa!"
"HNii't, look out!"
The two cries came from opposite directions. She was glancing toward Kit, one last look, when something with suckered arms grabbed her by the tail and pulled her down. The moments that followed turned into a nightmare of thrashing and bellowing, arms that whipped at her, clung to her, dragging her inexorably toward the place where they joined and the wicked beak waited. No one was coming to help her, Nita realized, as she looked down into that sucking mouth. The water was full of screams; and two of the voices she heard were those of sperm whales. Two— She thrashed harder, getting a view as she did so of S'reee fleeing before a great gray shape with open jaws—Areinnye; and coming behind Areinnye, a flood of black shapes, bigger than any the Cele-brants had had to handle in Hudson Canyon.
She's sold out, Nita thought miserably. She's gone over to the Lone One. She came back and broke the circle, and let the krakens in, and everything's going to go to hell if I don't— Nita swung her head desperately and hit the kraken with it, felt baleen plates in her mouth crack, felt the kraken shudder. Let go of me, you disgusting thing! Nita was past working any wizardry but one. Brute force was going to have to do it. Let go! She slammed her head into the kraken again, sideways. It let out a shrill painful whoop that was very satisfying to her. Your eye's sensitive, huh? she thought. One more time! She hit it again. Something soft gave under the blow, and the kraken screamed. Nita tore free of the loosening arms and swam upward, hard and fast, heading for her sharp outcropping. The whole area around the base of Caryn Peak was boiling with kraken, with Celebrants fighting them and trying desperately not to be dragged out of the boundaries of the protective spell. The bottom was shuddering harder; hot water was shimmering faster and faster out of the vent. It's got to be stopped, Nita thought. "Kit," she called, looking around hurriedly. There's just time enough to say good-bye-Two things she saw. One was that ghostly white shape soaring close by, bolting down the rear half of a kraken about the size of a step van and gazing down at her as it passed by. The other was Kit, turning away from a long, vicious slash he had just torn down Areinnye's side—looking up at Nita and singing one note of heart-tearing misery—not in the Speech—not in the human-flavored whale he had always spoken before—but in pure whale.
Oh, no. He's lost language! Nita's heart seized. S'reee had said that if that happened, the
whalesark was about to be rejected by Kit's brain. Unless
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something was done, it would leave him human again, naked in the cold, three miles down.
That thought, and the echoes of Kit's cry of anguish, suddenly meant more to Nita than any abstract idea of ten million deaths. And in that second Nita came to understand what Carl had been talking about. She wheeled around and stared at the outcropping—then chose to do, willingly, what she had thought she'd no choice but to do. The triumph that instantly flared up in her made no sense: But she wouldn't have traded it for any feeling more sensible. She turned and fluked with all her might and threw herself at the stony knives of the peak—and hit—