The Red wolf conspiracy

Plunder on the Haunted Coast

4 Teala 941

82nd day from Etherhorde

The guards drove the prisoners on. As they neared the base camp, another facet of the operation came into view. Iron cages dangled from the ropes between the land, the cargo ship and the sea barge with its bathysphere. Shielding his eyes, Pazel saw that the ropes were threaded through a gear-and-pulley network in an enormous loop, and that the dangling cages were moving between the vessels and the shore. On the towering rock beside the shore camp, Volpeks were turning a heavy crank like a ship's capstan.

Even now a cage was making its jerky way out to sea. And inside the cage, he saw with another start, were a dozen prisoners.

"So that's how we get to the wreck," said Neeps.

"I want to go home!" sobbed the small boy. The round-eyed Tholjassan girl held him by the shoulders, then bent and whispered in his ear. The boy sniffed but cried no more.

At least twenty well-armed Volpeks were at work in the camp. Besides the gear-turners and the lookouts, a great many were clustered about a heap of what at first glance looked like no more than slimy, vaguely colorful rocks. Using picks, chisels or their bare hands, the men attacked the objects: tearing out weeds, cracking coral deposits, stripping barnacles. In most cases they found nothing but stone. In a few, however, the objects' true forms came suddenly to light: here a sea chest, there a broken amphora, elsewhere a bust of some forgotten prince. There was a birdbath fashioned from a giant clamshell, a stone eagle with a broken wing, a curling elephant's tusk banded with gold. The men pushed these treasures aside with hardly a glance. They were clearly after something quite different.

"Is it the Red Wolf they're seeking?" Pazel asked a guard.

"Of course! Now step back!"

Another cage was nearing the shore, also heaped with plunder. It passed above a tall mound of freshly dug sand.

"Hold!" shouted someone. The gears stopped; men scrambled up the mound with nets and poles. One pulled a latch and the bottom of the cage swung open like a trapdoor. Out tumbled the salvaged artifacts, into the waiting nets. A guard-captain looked around until his eyes settled on the newly arrived youths.

"Ten divers!" he shouted.

Quite at random, the Volpeks seized ten, among them Pazel and Neeps, the round-eyed girl and little boy. All were marched up the sand mound, then lifted one by one into the air.

"Grab the bars! Climb in!" roared the guards.

The young people could just reach the swinging cage. In they went, shaking with fear, and clung to the sides with hands and feet. When the last boy had entered, the men latched the trapdoor anew.

"Rest easy," they jeered. "Enjoy the ride."

Another shout and the cage began moving seaward. The prisoners gripped the salt-slimy bars, looking down as sand turned to foam beneath them. The cage moved slowly: Pazel had time to look back and see Arunis' covered wagon being carried, not rolled, over the dunes.

Then Neeps cried, "Look!" and Pazel turned in time to see the brass sphere vanish-no, plunge-from the arm of the crane straight down through the barge's main hatch. There came a distant boom and a spray of water from the hatch; then a great chain began to slither through the crane into the depths. And Pazel realized that he was not looking at a hatch at all but rather a square opening built right through the hull.

A diving portal. Of course.

"They're going to put us in that thing, aren't they?" said Neeps.

"Yes," said the girl.

"You seem to know a lot about diving," said Pazel. "Can you guess how deep it is out there?"

She frowned at the waves. "Twelve fathoms?"

"Lord Rin!" cried Neeps. Twelve fathoms was over seventy feet. How could anyone dive so far? But the girl remained calm. She had the look of someone almost irritatingly calm, Pazel thought, although the talk of ghosts had rattled her a bit.

"There's something wrong with the water," she said, pointing to their destination. "See how green it is? I think that wreck is in a kelp forest."

She was right about the water: nearly all of it near the spot where the bathysphere had plunged was shimmering green.

"But that will make finding anything much harder, won't it?"

The girl just nodded, her face expressionless. Her name was Marila, she told them. She had been diving for sponges in the coves around Tholjassa since she was twelve. The frightened little boy, Mintu, was her brother.

"This sorcerer's mad," she said. "Nobody ever gets away with treasure from the Haunted Coast. Everyone knows there's a curse on it. See that wreck?" She pointed at a single, tilting mast in the distance.

Pazel nodded. "What about it?"

"That's a Mzithrini Blodmel, ninety guns. Tholjassan ships turn away from land if they're close enough to see her. They say she had a captain who noticed something shiny at low tide. He dived himself and came up with a golden Star of Dremland. One little star. He tossed it up to his son, told him the seafloor was covered in jewels, and dived back for more. It was just twenty feet deep, but he vanished."

She made a little poof gesture with her hands.

"The ship left him and retraced its path exactly. But this time there was a reef, where there had been nothing before. It split them wide open. They abandoned ship, and a storm blew up and swamped the lifeboats, and the only one who made it out was the man who had thrown the gold star back into the water. You can't take so much as a shell from this place, everyone knows."

The Mzithrinis did what Thasha feared most. They waited.

It gave them time to think, to recover from their amazement at the defeat of their brother in a matter of seconds by an unarmed girl. She was unarmed no longer, but she was still alone.

They waited, and in seconds the remaining three fighters, those who had stayed behind to watch the Volpeks, appeared over the dune. They looked at the golden-haired apparition, the man groaning and twitching at her feet. Then all five Mzithrinis drew their swords and whirled them with easy grace, advancing.

Thasha had one skill even Hercуl considered exceptional: she made choices with lightning speed. Those five spinning blades drove her next decision, and it surprised her almost as much as the Mzithrinis. She threw her own sword away.

Reason caught up with instinct a split second later. Oh, thank the Gods. For she knew now that to fight them was to die. The blade was strange to her, narrow at the hilt, broad and heavy near the point. She could not have prevailed against one man trained to use it, let alone five.

The men stared at her, but paused only for an instant. She still held the knife.

Thasha's next decision took longer. Run? Impossible. Surrender? Not likely-the man she'd fought could well have been taking her aside to murder her. She dropped to her knees. Seizing the wounded man by the shirt, she hauled him up against her chest and set the knife to his throat.

Now they stopped dead. The man was waking from his daze: she pressed the blade hard until he felt it. His eyes blinked open, and Thasha felt his muscles tense. For a moment nothing moved but the sea oats in the breeze.

One thing he would not do was throw himself on the knife: suicide was forbidden by the Old Faith. They were all trapped. It gave her time to think again.

Mzithrini phrases danced before her eyes. Who shall wed? Thasha and His Highness shall wed.

"I… I promise-" she stammered.

Again they were amazed. "You speak Mzithrini!" said one, apparently their leader.

"Little, little! I am friendly!"

"Friendly."

Blood trickled from the nose of the wounded man. He put a weak hand on her arm. She pressed the blade harder against his throat.

The men crept a step nearer. Could she possibly tell them she was the Treaty Bride? How could they believe her?

At last the words came back: "Hear my vow, ye many!"

It was awkward, but they understood. Thasha indicated the knife. "I give this."

"Yes," said the Mzithrini leader. "Do that."

"And you… you… don't touch any of my goods."

It was the old Polylex phrase. The Mzithrinis looked at one another. Then they advanced another step.

"We won't touch you, girl," said their leader. "Don't worry. We're friendly."

The man she was holding actually laughed. Only by twisting the knife even harder against him did she make them pause again. They had spread around her. She had to turn this way and that to see them all.

Suddenly the wounded man let his hand fall from Thasha's arm. He gave a low gurgle; then his body went limp. Thasha cried out. His head flopped down against her wrist.

"Oh no!" Thasha shook him, horrified, she had never killed, never wanted to-

He erupted beneath her. Bit her arm. Struck the knife from her hand. The other Mzithrinis charged with a roar. Their captain raised his broad sword in an arc over her head.

And fell slain. His chest riven with arrows. The wounded man dropped beside him, a shaft piercing his neck.

Thasha leaped to her feet. Down the dune behind her rushed six or eight men, tall and gray-clothed, swords held high. They clashed with the gaping Mzithrinis with cries of "Syr-ahdi Salabieбc!" And Thasha's heart leaped: those words she knew. They were a prayer Tholjassan warriors spoke before closing with the enemy.

The Mzithrinis begged no quarter. Their heavy blades flashed in the sun with terrible speed and rang as they met the lighter Tholjassan swords. But they were doomed: two had fallen to arrows, two more in the first moments of swordplay. The last pair rushed together and stood back to back, swords a-whirl, snarling their defiance.

"Enough!" cried a Tholjassan. "Maro dinitie! Fight no more, and live!"

The Tholjassans paused, giving their foes time to consider. The Mzithrinis, however, leaped once more to the attack. In a matter of seconds both lay dead at the Tholjassan's feet. But Thasha stood rooted to the spot, wondering if she had taken a blow to the head. She looked at the man who had spoken. That voice!

He wiped blood from his sword against his breeches. Then he turned to face her-and in broad daylight, far more clearly than the night before, Thasha saw a ghost.

Pazel winced. The iron cage was salt-corroded, the bars rusty and sharp against his skin.

They had left the surf behind and were nearly at the cargo vessel: a wide teakettle of a ship. Her captain rushed back and forth with his telescope, watching the commotion around the barge, the guns on the Volpek brig. He spared barely a glance for the prisoners in their iron cage, rumbling by on pulleys slung between his masts.

"The Customer's reached the shore!" boomed a lookout in the crosstrees. "And Druffle too, that old straggler! Looks like they're heading our way!"

"I can see the beach!" shouted the captain. "Keep your eyes on the deep water! If we're caught off-guard I'll make you sorry, by the blazin' Pits!"

The prisoners left the cargo ship behind. No one had addressed a word to them.

Neeps shook his head. "Druffle's back. Think he's missed us much?"

"I doubt it," said Pazel. But he was thinking: Caught off-guard by whom?

The day was brilliant and clear-except for those strange clots of mist, which seemed to prowl willfully among the offshore wrecks. Suddenly the cage picked up speed. Pazel steadied himself, then turned to look at the barge. Volpeks were straining at the capstan, two men to each bar. They were winding in the chain, winching the bathysphere up to the surface again. That's some job, he thought.

"Up here, lads and ladies."

Ten heads swiveled up. A Volpek crouched atop their cage, waving. He could only have come from the higher masts of the vessel behind them, but no one had heard him climb aboard. His round, bald head put Pazel in mind of a sunburned ape. He gave them a rascally grin.

"The Red Wolf!" he said. "That's your goal. Silver is sweet and gold is gravy, but we must find that red iron wolf, come storm or sunstroke. Not one of us is going home without it, see? So don't leave behind anything that might have paws. That's rule number one.

"Rule number two is stay alive. The sphere has plenty of air, but you can only take one chestful at a time down into the wreck. Search your hearts out, and when you can't hold your breath any longer, give three tugs on your rope. Then watch out! We'll haul you in faster than you can say 'drowned doggy'!

"At the end of your ropes you'll find a sack, a ring and a hook. Little treasures go in the sack. Big stuff you wrap up tight with rope. Then clip the hook to the ring and give two tugs-just two, for merchandise-and don't forget to hold on yourself!

"You'll see the keel of the Lythra soon as you reach the seabed. The rest of her's spread out east of here, or maybe north. She wedged between two rocks, see, and at some point the tides just snapped her in two. Her innards have been washing about these forty years."

He paused, then gave a smile of forced good cheer. "As to the little matter of sea-murths: rubbish! Fishwife talk! There ain't been murths in the Nelu Peren for over a hundred years! Mankind's rooted 'em out. You'll do better to worry about tanglin' your line in sharp coral, or that blary weed. It's easy to get lost in a kelp forest, and this sort-ribbon kelp-is the worst of all. Greenery's worse than ghosts, mark my words."

His speech was interrupted by shouts from the barge. Men were crowding around the dive portal, waving encouragement to those working the capstan. The latter threw themselves into a final shoulder-straining heave, and with a sound like a breaching whale the bathysphere rose from the hull portal. Water gushed from it; long ribbons of weed trailed back into the sea. To bring such a thing here! Pazel thought. In secret! Along with wagons, three ships, maybe a hundred men. All for an iron wolf?

As they drew nearer, a rope ladder dropped from the bottom of the sphere. A man on deck caught the trailing end and secured it to the crane. At once a line of youths began to descend. They were shaking and slow. All looked rather ill. When they reached the deck they let themselves collapse.

Next to emerge were baskets of the kind of loot the Volpeks had been busy with ashore. These were handed up into a separate cage on the shorebound side of the pulley system. Then it was the newcomers' turn.

The bald Volpek climbed down the outside of their cage. "Stand back!" he cried, and kicked the trapdoor open with his foot. A man tossed him the end of another rope ladder. It ended in a pair of short ropes, and these he tied swiftly to the bars of the cage. Then, "Down! Down!" he cried. "Don't make me step on your fingers!"

Down they went, swaying and lurching. Pazel saw now that at the bottom of the bathysphere was a lidless hole some eight feet across. On deck the prisoners huddled together. None of those who had come from the bathysphere had yet stood up.

The Volpeks formed them into a line, toes to the edge of the dive portal. The last baskets were lowered from the sphere, and yet another ladder followed.

"Climb," they said.

Up again, into the dark mouth of the bathysphere. As Pazel stuck his head and shoulders through the hole he felt strong hands seize him by the arms. Two mighty Volpeks, wearing only loincloths and knives, pulled him up into the metallic gloom. It was clammy and cold. A bad echo distorted every sound. There were nets strung along the walls, climbing-cleats, benches high overhead. From the apex of the sphere hung an assortment of pulleys and coiled ropes.

Soon all the captives were seated inside. Each was handed a rope-end with the promised sack, ring and hook. The sacks had small holes to let the water through, drawstrings for sealing them tight. Pazel saw Marila slide a hand through her ring and push it up to her elbow. She caught his eye.

"This way… can't drop it," she seemed to be saying (the echo made it hard to be sure). "Lose your rope… never get back… all that weed."

"Stop talking!" bellowed their captors, who made themselves understandable by sheer volume. "HOLD ON TO THE CLEATS!"

The sphere gave a little jerk, like a puppet on a string. And then it plunged. The sea appeared to leap straight up. There was a deafening boom, and water boiled to their ankles before being checked by the stoppered air. Through the windows they saw the walls of the dive portal, then the bottom of the sea barge and a dark blue-green immensity below. It was abruptly quiet. The captives gripped the cleats in trembling fists. The water in the sphere began to rise.

"Swallow!" said Marila. "Over and over! Stretch your mouth wide or your ears will break!"

She demonstrated. Pazel copied her, and saw that Neeps and the others were doing the same. The air was indeed growing heavy pressing in on Pazel's ears and nose and chest. The water passed their shins.

Neeps was frowning, concentrating. In fact everyone was: even Mintu had decided there was no use in tears. Pazel looked out through the windows again. Nothing but blue water-and then, like green flames all around them, the weed.

Ribbon kelp was the perfect name. The weed rose straight and thick, just inches between one flat frond and another. Pazel was surprised how delicate it looked, and how lovely. It glowed in the midday sun, but because it grew so straight the rays pierced the narrow gaps in long splinters of light. Small fish and tiny translucent shrimp darted everywhere. Yard after gentle yard spooled out before his eyes.

Sudden cold: the water had reached his waist.

"SWIM UP TO THE BENCHES!" roared the Volpeks. "DON'T DROP YOUR BLARY ROPES!"

When over half the sphere had filled with water, and all the youths were huddled on the benches, their descent stopped. Pazel looked down through the bathysphere's open mouth: was that sand, thirty or forty feet below?

He had little time to wonder. His captors were screaming again. "STAY CLOSE TO YOUR MATES, BUT NOT TOO CLOSE. IF YOUR LINES CROSS EVERYBODY DROWNS."

With those words a Volpek handed Mintu a dark stone. The boy nearly dropped it, startled by its weight, and Pazel realized it was a lead sinker. Then the Volpek grabbed Mintu's arm, yanked him from the bench and dropped him. Rope trailing, eyes fixed on his sister, he vanished below.

Marila did not wait to be yanked. She grabbed another sinker and pushed off from her bench. Seconds later she too was gone. Neeps looked Pazel in the eye.

"Right," he said, feeling above him for a sinker, "let's get this over with." And he jumped as well.

Pazel had thought himself scared all along, but now he realized his fear had scarcely begun. His heart raced. Couldn't he just sit here quietly? There were six other divers. Maybe he would be picked last. Maybe someone would find the Wolf quickly and he'd never have to dive at all.

But Neeps and Marila and Mintu were already below. He could never face them-face Thasha-if he crouched there, hoping to be spared. He coiled the rope over his shoulder. Do it now or the fear will stop you. He picked up a sinker. He took a last, huge breath and jumped.

Suddenly events (or his mind, or both) sped up. The sinker dragged him straight down through the mouth of the sphere. The kelp engulfed him, the sandy bottom rushed upward. Where was the wreck? He was spinning, helpless, the rope scraping his arm. He would not even find the Lythra, let alone any part of her cargo, before his breath ran out.

Darkness-pitch darkness! He looked up in terror. Had he fallen into a cave? Then, just as suddenly, the light returned and he saw what had occurred. A surge of current had bent the kelp over, like prairie grass in the wind. Strand against strand, it had blotted out the sun. As soon as the surge passed it straightened, and the light flooded down.

It happened again. Darkness, light. Why hadn't anyone warned them?

Then, forty feet under the bathysphere, he saw it: a great black timber on the seabed. It was weed-wrapped and barnacle-chewed, but unmistakably a sternpost. Pazel dropped the sinker and swam for it. There, and there! Other divers' ropes, vanishing in the weeds. He kept his distance. His lungs were aching already. The timber pointed like a finger through an opening in the kelp, and as Pazel kicked through the gap, an awe-inspiring vision met his eyes.

The Lythra sprawled before him, cracked open like an eggshell. But no-it was just the stern half, snagged on a jagged rock. It was as if monstrous hands had torn the ship in two. But where had the bow section gone?

Darkness, light. He could see Neeps, swimming low beside the wreck, his eyes scanning this way and that. Pazel followed, and in a moment his fingers touched the hull. A gunport lay open before him. Inside, a crusted lump, the cannon. He was almost out of breath.

Darkness.

He put his hand through the gunport, feeling.

Something moved. Pazel let out a mouthful of bubbles. It was a leathery creature, and it shot away from him into the depths of the ruined gun deck.

Light.

Fish or shark or otherwise, it was gone-and so was Pazel's breath. He flailed for his rope. He had waited too long, couldn't possibly make it back. He gave three tugs.

All he recalled of his rescue by the Volpeks was the slap of weeds against every part of his body. When he entered the sphere, hands reached down and tore kelp in bunches away from his face.

"Spit out the weeds!"

He spat out the weeds. The men propped him on a bench just out of the water, where he gagged and wretched. They looked in his empty bag and frowned.

"Next time, start swimming the minute you jump."

Next time? Pazel thought he'd be ready in about a week. Lying stunned on his bench, he saw Marila sitting across the sphere, watching him with those unreadable eyes. Mintu lay beside her, looking ill. The weed-darkness fell on them again, and when it passed the men had a writhing ball of kelp between them. Neeps. He blew a mouthful of water in a Volpek's face.

"Creatures!" he gagged. "Strange creatures… murths!"

"There are no Murths in the quiet sea!"

More divers were hauled in. One had tied a whole sea chest up in his rope. Another held up a cast-iron skillet, which a Volpek tossed angrily back into the water.

Two boys did not return at all. The men hauled in their ropes and found only weeds attached to the hook and ring. Nothing had broken. It was as if they had simply let go.

On their second dive, Pazel and Neeps kept each other in sight. They got much farther, too, for they swam for the wreck the instant they jumped. Pazel saw now that there were paths through the kelp forest: neat paths, almost like roads. In a flash of light he peered down one long avenue and thought he saw colonnades, and statues of men or animals, and moving shadows that were not cast by the kelp. But there was no time to linger. Greatly afraid, he made himself enter the wreck.

Inside was a terrifying chaos. The forces that had cracked the Lythra in two had also swept through her, blowing cannon through bulkheads, wrapping chains around masts, impaling skeletons on broken beams. There were skulls rolled into cabinets and wedged behind doors. There were skeletal hands in barrels, and clouds of silt, and an obscene fanged fish that lunged each time the darkness fell. Pazel struck at it desperately with his hook. How could anyone find a thing down there?

When the two boys again returned empty-handed, the Volpeks exploded. "IF YOU DON'T FIND SOMETHING NEXT TIME, DON'T COME BACK AT ALL!"

Neeps kicked the water into a froth. "You try it, you daft, ugly, bellyachin' baboons! Want to fight? Do you?"

Just then Marila surfaced beside them with a hideous gasp. "Mintu… gone… he's gone!"

She was in agony; she had been under twice as long as the boys. They had to hold her head above water.

"Where did he go, Marila?" Pazel squeezed her arms. "Tell us where!"

"The arch!"

"I saw it!" Neeps cried. "That coral arch? Why the blazes did he go through there?"

Marila gasped and sobbed. "Followed… couldn't find him… awful place-"

Her whole body began to convulse. More irritated than concerned, the Volpeks tossed her onto a bench. Pazel and Neeps looked at each other. There was nothing to say. They were not ready to dive, but they had to. No one else would even try to save Marila's brother.

Down they went for the third time. Pazel too had glimpsed an arch: an opening in a long, towering reef-wall, some distance from the Lythra. He couldn't imagine why Mintu would have passed through it. Had he glimpsed something beyond, a treasure he couldn't resist? Had he seen the Red Wolf?

Pazel arrived a few strokes ahead of Neeps. He saw now that the arch was actually quite deep-a tunnel, in fact, about twenty feet long. Barely a yard between the roof and the seabed. Not tempting in the least, but Neeps was poking him as if to say, Swim, or get out of the way! He swam.

It was worse than he feared. The tunnel floor bristled with sea urchins, black living pincushions whose spines burned like acid at the merest touch. There were also clots of translucent orange worms dangling from the roof, flexing sucker-like mouths. The only possible way through was the exact center, kicking fast lest one rise or sink, but at the same time keeping one's hands and feet very close. The orange worms writhed obscenely. The tunnel seemed to go on forever.

Yet somehow Pazel emerged unscathed. Beyond was a sandy clearing, a meadow in the kelp forest, broken here and there by red coral and towering rocks. There was no sign of Mintu.

Neeps emerged with pain in his eyes. Attached to his leg was a fat worm, already darkening with his blood. It took them several precious seconds to rip the creature loose, and a mouthful of Neeps' flesh went with it. Pazel looked at the wound, the suppressed horror in Neeps' face, the long cliff of coral stretching away left and right. This was madness. They had to go back right now, before their lungs burst and Neeps lost too much blood. Then Neeps went rigid. He grabbed Pazel's arm and spun him around.

Half a dozen sea-murths were swimming their way, faster than sharks. They were the strangest beings Pazel had ever seen. They looked like humans, girls in fact, but their limbs curved and coiled like no human limbs, and the sun struck rainbow colors where it touched their skin. Long, white hair streamed behind them, and their eyes were luminous silver. Their clothes seemed wraps of milky light.

In no time the boys were surrounded. The murth-girls had beautiful faces but very sharp teeth. Were they smiling? It appeared so, but did smiles mean friendship or menace to a sea-murth? In one sense it hardly mattered: they were out of air. They had failed Mintu, and would be lucky to escape with their lives. Pazel gestured at the tunnel: Now. Then a murth-girl touched his ankle, and the world changed.

A feeling of golden bliss ran up Pazel's leg. He could breathe! He knew it instantly, and without the least fear opened his mouth and filled his lungs with water. It was as effortless as breathing air. One of the creatures must have touched Neeps as well, for there he was, mouth open, grinning like a perfect fool. Their hearing had changed, too: they could hear water rushing through crevasses, the squeak of eels, the growl of a passing drumfish. Above all, like a silver music, they heard the laughter of the murth-girls.

"Look at them smile! They had even less air than the first ones!"

"I like these better. Almost grown, they are."

"Which one for a husband, Vvsttrk? He he he!"

"That one is short enough for you. But the dark one likes you better, I think."

The boys trod water, back to back, as the murth-girls flitted about them in circles. Neeps put out his hands, laughing as the last bubbles of air escaped his mouth. Then a girl stopped face to face with Pazel. She had a teasing smile, and hundreds of tiny kulri shells braided into her hair. One delicate hand touched his face, and he knew somehow (the gold was rushing through him again) that it was the same girl who had touched him before.

"Mine," she said, and her sisters laughed.

Then Pazel said, "Have you seen a small boy?"

She was gone. They were all gone. Pazel had barely caught the murth-girls' looks of terror before they vanished into the kelp.

Neeps turned to him angrily. "What did you do that for?"

"Me?"

"They just laid the sweetest magic I ever heard of on us, and you scare 'em off? What rude thing did you say?"

"Nothing! Didn't you hear me?"

"Sure," said Neeps. "I heard, Skrreee-glik-glik-scrreeeeeeee!"

"What?"

"Come off it, Pazel. You were speaking Murthish."

Pazel covered his ears. Oh no.

There it was: the purring. His Gift had started up again, and taught him their murth-tongue. But how long ago had it begun? All these days of noisy imprisonment, buzzing insects, storms. What if these were his last few hours-or even minutes?

"Neeps," he said, "you've got to listen carefully. I told you how my Gift works? How it always ends in a fit, where I can't talk or understand anyone, and those horrible noises blast me? Well, it's going to happen again."

"No worries," said Neeps, who had calmed down already. "I'll take care of you."

"Don't let the Volpeks scream in my face! Tell 'em it's something natural, like the hiccups."

"The hiccups. Have you seen yourself, mate? Not even those boneheads will-Pazel, look!"

Neeps pointed into the gloom. About sixty yards away, against a great black rock, stood the other half of the Lythra. Her shattered beam-ends anchored her in the sand. Her figurehead, an angel, spread her barnacled wings and gazed forlornly at the sky. A row of gaping cannon-shot wounds ran down her hull, straight as punches in a leather belt, as though she had been fired on at point-blank range.

And gazing from one of these holes was a young boy.

"Mintu!"

He waved, and his voice carried faintly to them. "Pazel! Neeps! They changed you, too?"

A murth-girl's shy, mischievous face appeared behind him.

Mintu laughed. "She's my friend!"

The boys were so delighted to find him alive that they forgot all about Pazel's impending mind-fit. Swimming toward the wreck, they heard the musical laughter again from inside the kelp forest. When the next spell of darkness came they saw the murth-girls glowing faintly in the weeds.

More laughter above. There were the other missing boys: dangling from the Lythra's main topgallant, holding a slender murth by hands and feet so that she swayed between them like a hammock.

"Why are there only girls?" Neeps asked. "Not that I'm complaining, mind."

"Maybe because we're only boys," said Pazel uneasily. "We'd better be careful."

"Just you be careful not to insult them again."

It was no use protesting: Neeps was positively convinced Pazel had said something nasty in Murthish. They swam up to Mintu and clasped his arms. He had a girl's silver hair-clip in his own brown locks.

"She fed me clams," he said. "And she healed a cut on my foot. I don't think murths are half as bad as people say."

"Your sister nearly drowned looking for you," said Pazel. "You'd better get back to the sphere and let her know you're alive."

"Oh! Yes, I… I will." Mintu looked reluctantly back toward the coral arch.

"Go on," urged Pazel, "or she'll try it again. She's in no shape for that."

Mintu looked at his murth-girl playmate. She drew back into the ruined ship, eyes pouting, as if she knew their game was over.

"I'll come right back," he said.

Pazel watched Mintu swim all the way to the arch. Then he turned to see Neeps sitting cross-legged on the seabed, inches from a murth-girl in the same position.

"Hello, dream," said Neeps.

They were making faces at each other. The murth-girl laid a finger on his worm-wound-and it vanished, melting into his skin like a snowflake.

"Thank you!" laughed Neeps. "Pazel, how do you say 'thank you'?"

Pazel didn't answer. He looked up at the two boys and their friend. They had released the topgallant and were holding hands in a circle, serenely sinking. Another murth-girl, almost completely hidden in the weeds, looked out as they passed.

"They're ready, Thysstet," she told the girl as she passed.

"Almost!" laughed the other.

Ready for what? Pazel knew how to ask the question. But what if they vanished again at the sound of his voice?

The girl in the weeds leaned out farther. Pazel's heart leaped: it was her, the one who had touched him. Suddenly nothing else mattered. He swam toward her as fast as he could. Their eyes met. She was beautiful!

She was gone.

He felt stabbed in the chest. One glance and she had fled into the weeds.

And when he looked down, Neeps had vanished, too. There on the sand lay his collecting bag, hook and ring-the latter with the rope still attached.

"Neeps! Neeps!"

Pazel flew toward the sole remaining murth-girl. She saw him and cowered behind the two boys.

"Stop!" they growled at him. "What's the matter with you! She's ours!"

"It's a trap!" he cried. "They're separating us! And you've lost your ropes!"

"Who needs ropes?" laughed one boy. "Who needs them blary Volpeks and their bath-a-spear?"

"But how will you get back to land?"

"Swim! Walk! Who cares? Maybe I'll wait a week. All I know is that I'll go ashore far from Arunis! Ha! We can even say his name down here. What's he going to do about it?"

"Arunis! Arunis!" shouted the other boy.

The murth tickled him from behind. But she still watched Pazel with fear.

He begged the boys to help him find Neeps, but they called him killjoy and swam away. Pazel shouted for Neeps again. How far did his voice carry underwater? And where should he search?

Quite at random he circled the bow of the Lythra and the massive rock. No Neeps, no murth-girls. Only fish, a few spiny lobsters, and in the distance a red, swift shape like a flying carpet: a scarlet ray. Pazel had never seen such a huge one-it was easily twelve feet from wing tip to wing tip-and he kept his distance. Scarlet rays were not aggressive, and they had no teeth, but the stingers in their whip-like tails were notorious. In Besq, Pazel had seen a fisherman stung on the hand by a scarlet ray tangled in his net. He had passed out from sheer agony.

He set off among the rocks and weeds. Shouting for Neeps, but thinking despite himself of the girl, the girl, the girl. Of course she would be frightened to hear a human speaking Murthish. But so frightened? And what had she meant by Mine?

His rope went slack. He reeled it in, more alarmed by the second. Something very sharp had cut the rope, and he hadn't felt a thing. Not one of them was tethered to the bathysphere. And only he was aware of the danger.

What could he do? He rose. At thirty feet below the surface most of the reef was below him. A little farther and the kelp closed around him too. He could see nothing at all until his head broke the surface.

Where was he? The wind had risen and the waves had grown. The sun was bright as ever, but the shore seemed to have changed shape. Then he caught sight of the barge and realized he was much farther north than he had guessed. He could see the Volpeks on her deck, and in the smaller craft around her, looking anxiously at both shore and sea. Far out in the Gulf of Thуl the heavily armed brig still waited, brooding. He turned to face the shore-

— and dived, just in time. A longboat was driving straight at him, making for the barge. Pazel watched as it passed a yard above his head, four pairs of oars pulling swiftly. Then he rose until his eyes just cleared the water.

Arunis was standing upright at the prow, in a dark cloak, his tattered scarf flapping in the wind. The white dog stood beside him, motionless. The sorcerer waived irritably at his men.

"Faster!" he shrieked. "Can't you see that fog bank, Druffle, you louse?"

Mr. Druffle was indeed among the rowers. Looking miserable and cold, the wiry man glanced southward. Pazel looked, too: there was indeed a broad mantle of fog upon the Gulf, two or three miles off. Like the shreds of mist he had glimpsed from the dunes, it was thick as white wool, an unnatural sight under the gleaming sun. But this fog bank stretched in an unbroken line from the southern shore deep into the Gulf. And it was creeping relentlessly their way.

Arunis screamed at the rowers again, and they increased their speed. Pazel flipped over and swam straight down. One calamity at a time.

Below, he found no sign of man or murth. Clownfish darted; the scarlet ray swept by near the wreck. Otherwise the sea was still.

A hunch came to him suddenly. Before he sank any farther, Pazel moved well into the ribbon kelp. Then, hand over hand, he pulled himself into the depths. If the weed could hide murths it could hide him, too.

After descending another thirty feet he held still. He could see the whole clearing, from the Lythra to the coral wall, but it would take a sharp eye indeed to spot him.

No one came. No silver laughter reached him. But strangely, the scarlet ray kept up its circling of the wreck. What was it up to? Not feeding: scores of fish passed right under its nose, and the giant ignored them all.

Long minutes passed. Then the ray did something odd. It stopped, pivoted its huge, flat body left and right and dived behind the wreck.

Pazel burst from the weeds. That was no normal behavior for a ray. He swam low, hiding behind the wreck as long as possible. When he could go no farther he shot upward, across the topdeck, and peered down along the side of the ruined hull.

The ray was hovering beside a gunport, its deadly tail writhing. Pazel heard its voice, like that of a weird overgrown bird: "Gone-gone-gone, Lady Klyst! Come out, find your kin, land-boy loses, murth-friends win."

The ray withdrew slightly and the girl's face appeared-his girl. Timidly she pulled herself halfway through the gunport. The golden joy coursed through Pazel again. He could not be silent.

"Klyst!"

She looked up in horror. And vanished back into the wreck. The ray, however, turned with a furious roar. "Land-boy! Land-boy! Kill you! Kill you!"

Pazel knew he was no match for a humiliated scarlet ray. He kicked off the broken gunwale and shot down the length of the Lythra's topdeck with the beast howling behind him. He would never reach the kelp beds: the wreck itself was his only hope. Under the broken foremast he swam, dodging a skeleton snagged on the pinrail. The foreward hatch was blocked with debris. He swam on desperately. The ray's fleshy horns brushed his toes.

He jackknifed through the main hatch. The ray roared and stabbed with its tail, missing Pazel's head by an inch. Pazel seized at timbers, dragging himself farther inside as the ray tried to squeeze in after him. It succeeded, but it could not spread its wings in the cluttered wreck, and only managed to beat the algae, sand and debris into a whirlwind. Pazel choked (he was breathing it, after all) but pushed on, slamming a rotted compartment door behind him.

He passed dark cabins, broken ladderways. One of the fanged fish that had so alarmed him before rushed out of the gloom. Heedless with longing, Pazel smacked it away.

She was still there on the gun deck, her body glowing behind a mass of broken beams. She saw him and turned to flee.

"Don't go!" he cried out, and his words froze her where she stood. Amazed, Pazel swam a little closer. "Come out, Klyst, if that's your name. Why are you so afraid of me?"

She stepped out, hugging herself, literally shaking with fear.

"You could be miles away by now, if I'm so frightening. Why did you stay? Please explain all this to me!"

Her sharp teeth were chattering. She shook her head. "Can't go. Can't disobey. I love you."

"You love me! Why on earth? I mean… that's extremely… Why}"

"You used ripestry. Humans shouldn't! Humans never could!"

Pazel's Gift told him that ripestry was Murthish for "language." But then he started. It was also telling him the word meant "magic."

"What! Are they the same thing, to sea-murths?"

"They}" she said.

"Ripestry and ri-" Pazel stopped. Even his Gift couldn't provide another word. It was true: language and magic were one notion to her. To speak was to enchant.

"But for Rin's sake," he said, "you were the one doing love-ripestry to me. Weren't you?"

"Yes, yes," she said. "But when you said my name you turned it back on me. And since I'd already touched you I… I-"

She leaped forward and wrapped her strange arms around his legs. She pressed her face to his knees and wept-"Hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo!"

Her tears glowed luminescent as they left her eyes, in the instant before the sea diluted them.

"Why are you crying?"

"Land-boy! Land-boy! I love you!"

Her charm had backfired: he was free, she was madly in love. He tried to make her stand up.

"I'll release you," he said. "Just tell me how."

"Hoo-hoo-hoo!"

"Klyst!" he said as gently as he could. "Please stop crying. We'll find a way out of this."

At once she made an effort to hold in her tears.

"That's grand," he said. "Now tell me, why did you give us water-breathing, and make us love you?"

"Can't help it," she said. "We have to drive you away."

"Well, that's a blary strange way to do it!"

She shook her head. "It always works."

"But why not just talk to us?"

"Because you're monsters," she said. "Your people, I mean. Wherever you go the ripestry dies. And then so do we. Starved for ripestry, starved to death."

Her silver eyes stared into his, beseeching, and Pazel stared back without a word. The Volpeks were right, in a sense: the murths were dying out in the Quiet Sea. And if he understood her, mankind was the reason. Men dispelled magic; and her people could not live without it.

"But you have ripestry," she said at last, smiling. "You can stay! You can stay with me!"

Darkness. She began to kiss his hands.

"There are many men here," he said.

"Too many," she said. "They've been coming for weeks, and more all the time. Always before, for centuries, men feared the murths and ghosts and spirit-tides, and hurried off. But these men are not afraid. There is an evil ripestry with them that breaks our spells. My father says we must abandon these gardens, where we have lived for ten thousand years-move south, away from the monsters. But our elders are too weak for such a journey. They'll certainly die."

"You don't have to go!" Pazel said. "I know what they want. And I promise you, Klyst, they'll leave as soon as they get it. They serve a mage called Arunis. He's the one with the bad ripestry. But all he wants is some Red Wolf."

The light returned; he saw her look of disbelief. "That thing? That old iron wolf?"

"You know it!" he said.

"Of course. It went down with this ship forty years ago, when my father was a boy. But the Red Wolf is… ugly, bad. Why would anyone care about it?"

"I don't know. But believe me, Arunis won't leave without it. Will you take me to it, Klyst?"

"Will you marry me?"

What could he tell her? The truth? That except for a few moments under her spell he had never thought of marrying anyone, never longed in that way for anyone, except (in moments of lunacy or insight) for a land-girl named Thasha Isiq?

Feeling rather a cad, he said, "I can't breathe water forever, now, can I?"

She beamed at him. "You can if you're with me! A kiss on the hand, that's good for a whole day. You can stay as long as you like. The others will be getting air-thirst soon, of course."

"Air-thirst? What's air-thirst?"

Klyst just looked at him. Then she crossed her eyes and made desperate motions with her mouth: gulp gulp gulp.

"Drowning!" he cried. "They'll drown soon? We've got to find them! Oh, Neeps! Where are they, Klyst, where?"

"Different places."

"Take me! Please, hurry!"

Obedient as ever, she caught his wrist and tugged him out through the gunport. Her friend the scarlet ray was still circling the Lythra. Klyst gave a sharp cry and it swooped down on them like a thunderhead. As it passed overhead Klyst grabbed its wing just behind one eye, and she and Pazel were whisked away through the kelp at breakneck speed. Coral mountains whizzed by. The bathysphere flashed by like a golden apple. Then she let go of the ray and sank with Pazel toward a little trench in the seafloor.

"Too late," she said.

The pair of boys from the bathysphere were in the trench, feet pointing skyward, dead. At the bottom of the trench was a bed of clams-monstrous clams; the smallest were as broad as dinner platters. Some yawned wide, pearls like goose eggs shining in their pale flesh. Two had snapped shut on human wrists.

Klyst swam up to the nearest boy and bit him smartly on the foot. "Still warm," she said, chewing.

"Neeps!" shouted Pazel. "You've got to take me to Neeps! The other boy!"

Off they went again, flashing by a staved-in yawl, an octopus gliding among blue anemones, an anchor with a broken fluke. Suddenly the ray turned in a circle, halting.

"Blood," it said.

"Human blood," said Klyst, sniffing.

Bakru! Spare him! thought Pazel. "Where is it, Klyst?"

She swam in a circle, eyes shut and lips smacking oddly. She was tasting the sea.

"Hurry!"

Klyst stopped and looked upward. Pazel did the same. Halfway to the surface a body drifted, backlit by the sun.

"Neeps!" Pazel raced upward, dazzled by the brightness above, fighting a sob that wanted to burst from his chest. He seized the body by the arm.

It was a Volpek. Pazel turned the dead man over. The mercenary's throat had been slit. Blood still trickled from the wound.

"Others, too," said Klyst, pointing. Some yards away were three more Volpek bodies, sinking slowly. Among them, Pazel saw with a gasp, was the captain of the cargo ship. The water about him was clouded with blood.

"Your people did this?" Pazel asked.

"No!" said Klyst firmly. "We don't kill this way, with knives and mess. And we hide the bodies afterward. Humans fear most what they don't see."

Who had killed the Volpeks, then? Had someone attacked the cargo vessel? He glanced at the sunny disc of the surface overhead. What was happening up there?

Then he started-Neeps was still missing. "Onward!" he begged Klyst. "While he can still breathe!"

The ray bore them a little farther, to the mouth of a dark cave. Pazel caught a sickening glimpse of skulls and rib cages, and a well-fed eel. But no fresh bodies, and certainly no Neeps.

"He's not here, Klyst!"

The murth-girl looked surprised. "Vvsttrk always brings them here."

"Well, she's turned over a new leaf! Klyst, he's my best friend! Please, think! Aren't there other places you do… this sort of thing?"

At best friend her face grew hard. "Neeps." She said it the way one might say mumps or hives.

"Listen, girl," said Pazel, "if he dies I'll be very unhappy. With you. Forever."

The murth-girl's jaws worked. Then she called the ray back to her side, and together they shot off into the kelp.

Two minutes later they were at the stern half of the Lythra. She took him to the orlop deck, through a shattered door and down two levels, to what might have been the ship's brig. Old prisoners' bones (and a few not so old) lay shackled to the walls. That was all.

They checked the hold, the galley. Last of all, the captain's cabin.

"Pazel!" cried a familiar voice. Neeps was still breathing-and tied by his own rope to the foot of an ancient bed frame. "Get me out of here!" he cried. "That sea-vixen fooled me!"

Pazel was so relieved he pulled the murth-girl into a hug. She glowed like the full moon at his touch.

"You let her do this to you?" Pazel asked, turning back to Neeps.

Possibly the first boy ever to do so underwater, Neeps blushed. "She said she'd be right back."

"Never mind. We've got to get you back to the surface. Help us, Klyst."

The rope was no match for the murth-girl's teeth. As she chewed she stared at Neeps with unmistakable loathing.

"What's wrong with this one?" Neeps asked. "She looks like she'd rather eat me than set me free."

"She's jealous," said Pazel. "It's not her fault, exactly. Come on, your charm's wearing off."

Out through the stern windows they swam, Klyst tagging moodily behind. The bathysphere was rising: in fact it was halfway to the surface. As they sped toward it, a lone diver plunged from its dark mouth. It was Marila.

No murth-magic had been done to her: she was holding her breath, and still looked far too weak to be diving. At the sight of the boys her eyes lit up with astonishment. She didn't smile (could she smile?) but still she managed to look as close to happy as Pazel had seen her. Dropping her sinker, she rose with them into the sphere.

The Volpeks gaped in amazement at the boys' return. From a shelf above the waterline, Mintu laughed. "Pazel! Neeps!" he cried. "I told them you weren't dead!"

"Two of us are," said Pazel. "And Neeps almost made three. Do you hear?" He raised his voice to Volpek level. "Don't send anyone else. I'll bring you the wolf."

"You found the Red Wolf?!"

"Just give me a rope, will you?"

Marila leaned close, whispering to fight the echo. "Hurry," she said. "They're nervous up above. Something about a mist closing in. They're afraid it's black magic."

"We shouldn't be here," said Pazel. "Humans, I mean. It's not our coast."

"Pazel," said Neeps, "you're not still under that murth-girl's charm, are you?"

"Of course not!" said Pazel. Rope in hand, he dived. Klyst emerged from the weeds and all but tackled him.

"I thought you wouldn't come back," she said, clinging to his arm. "Who was that ugly, wicked girl?"

"Nobody," said Pazel, exasperated. "Klyst, you've got to let me have that Wolf. I swear all these men will leave the Coast as soon as they get it."

"And you'll leave with them."

"I have to, Klyst."

"Then I'll follow you. I'll follow your ship."

"This is nonsense!" said Pazel. "We're trying to stop a war! A huge war, do you understand? And that is much more important than you and your silly-"

But then he saw her tears oozing into the water again. Before he could find a word of comfort she broke down completely. "HOO-HOO-HOO-HOO-HOO!"

She tore out handfuls of hair, braided shells and all. Then she dived. Pazel gave chase, but it was like a kitten chasing a mountain lion. When at last he found her she was kneeling by the coral arch, tearing the orange worms from the rock and stuffing them one after another into her mouth. Their venom burned her lips, but she kept chewing, weeping all the while.

Pazel caught her by the waist and dragged her back from the arch. "Spit them out! Out!"

She put her hands over her ears.

"You heard me!"

Reproachfully she spat out the worms. "If you go I will die! I love you!"

"Tell me how to reverse the love-ripestry."

"You can't!"

"Is that true?"

She glared and glared. "You can. But it's not easy. And I'll kill myself before you do it!"

Defeated, he let her go. "Just show me the Wolf," he begged. "As soon as they have it we can sit down and talk."

"About getting married?"

"About anything you want."

She wiped her eyes and pointed into the arch. "We buried it here long ago. It attracts the worms, and other bad things."

"Right here?"

She nodded. "You can't dig it up, though. It would take you all day."

Pazel sighed. "I was afraid you'd say that. Well, I'll go and tell the others. We can dig in shifts, and maybe-"

"No," said Klyst. "No more humans."

"Why not?"

"They'll be killed," she said. "Very quickly. We start by using girls, but when that fails we have… other ways. Do you understand? My people won't wait much longer."

Pazel peered into the kelp forest. "Tell me what to do," he said.

Klyst paused, thoughtful. "Get ropes," she said at last. "All the ropes you have. The Wolf is very heavy. When you come back I will tell you more."

"What are you going to-"

"Go, land-boy Hurry."

She glanced up at the bathysphere. He watched her for another moment: there was something she did not want to say. But he had to trust her-what choice did he have?

"Wait for me here," he said, and rose.

He met the bathysphere just below the surface. At once he shouted to the Volpeks for more ropes. Neeps, Marila and Mintu watched him with looks of dread, but none of them said a word. Suspicious, the Volpeks threw him all the rope-ends they had.

"The customer didn't say it was huge."

Not bothering to reply, Pazel dived once more, five ropes uncoiling behind him.

Was Klyst alone? For a moment Pazel thought he saw more than one figure near the coral arch. Then the darkness fell and he swam on by memory, and when he could see again there was no one beneath him but the murth-girl.

She flitted to his side and pulled him quickly down into a little rocky crevasse.

"I thought you said it was under the arch," said Pazel.

"It is. Give me the ropes."

Quickly she wound the ends of all five ropes around a coral knob. Then she backed deeper into the crevasse and beckoned him to do the same.

"Crouch down. Hold on."

There was barely room for the two of them. She smiled to be so close to him, her serpentine legs against his own. She took on a soft yellow glow.

"Klyst," he said stiffly, "we must go and get that Wolf."

"We are."

She grew very still. The sea too seemed to hold its breath. And then out of nowhere the scarlet ray shot by like a great leathery dragon, raked them with an indecipherable look, and vanished over the top of the coral wall. And in its wake came a storm of silver.

They were needlefish, thinner than broom handles and faster than arrows, and they blasted by a yard from Pazel's face in a school so tight it was like a solid body. The sound was like nothing he had ever known: a soft enormity, the pulse of a giant's vein. The school plunged right through the coral arch, blotting out all view of worms and urchins as they passed.

"What was all that for?"

"Ripestry," she said. "Don't move."

The needlefish were gone. But then Pazel felt the sea begin to change. A gentle tug at first, then a stiff current like the recoil of a wave, flowing unmistakably toward the arch. Klyst put her arms around him. The current doubled, then doubled again. It was a riptide now, gushing quietly but with immense power through the arch. Sand rose from the tunnel floor. The vile worms began peeling away.

Embracing him, Klyst began to sing. In song, her voice and language were suddenly beautiful, and free of all fear. It was strange to hear joy in her voice, for the words were somber.

Mothers from out of the ancient cold,

Fathers from fire descended,

Bound to a destiny none foretold,

Birthed us, the never-intended.

Oh never, never again to be

Of this mortal world, this migrant sea.

Children of lsparil's morning call,

Sired on Night's feral steed,

Heirs to a promise that none recall,

Prisoners of dawn-thwarted need.

Oh never, never again to be

Of this wounded world, this wastrel sea.

The current was lifting more and more sand from the seafloor, whirling it away through the tunnel. And slowly a figure appeared.

It was encrusted with old limpets and barnacles, clams, algae, knobs of withered coral. But it was unmistakably a wolf, and its color was a dark blood-red. It stood upright, iron muzzle raised in a silent howl. Pazel felt a great menace in it, although he could not have said why.

"It's no bigger than a real wolf," he said.

"Heavy, though," said Klyst.

Even as she spoke the blasting current died away. Klyst freed the ropes from the coral and at once began trussing up the wolf. She was good with knots-Pazel tried not to imagine what she practiced on. Two ropes she looped around the Wolf's head, another two about the midsection. The last she braided through its legs.

When she had finished, Pazel gave the ropes two stiff tugs. The Volpeks responded at once. The lines tightened, shifted, tightened again. But the Wolf did not budge. This was, Pazel knew, extremely weird: five ropes and pulleys should have allowed the men to lift an iron hippopotamus. He looked up: more Volpeks were leaping through the dive portal and entering the sphere. A moment later the ropes snapped tight again.

The Wolf slid forward an inch, then another. The ropes strained tight as bowstrings. At last, like a tree wrenched from the earth, it left the seabed. First it swung out of the arch; then, revolving slowly, it rose.

Pazel heaved a great sigh. "Your people can stay," he said. "These men will be gone before you know it. They're all afraid of the Haunted Coast. They can't wait to get out of here."

With many a jerk and stutter, the Wolf climbed inexorably toward the bathysphere.

"I know you do not lie," said Klyst, taking his hand. "This is why you've come, why the Lord of the Sea gave you to us. This is why it is my fate to love you, a curse that is no curse."

Pazel was glad it was taking so long to raise the Wolf, for he had no idea how he would convince Klyst to let him break the enchantment. Simple reasoning (that he didn't eat other humans, that his ripestry was just a spell gone wrong) would clearly get him nowhere. He would have to tell her the worst: that he did not feel what she felt, and didn't want to.

Then he would have to command her not to do herself harm.

Silent, they watched the Red Wolf enter the sphere. Then Klyst turned and led him beneath the arch, which now bore an unfortunate resemblance to a chapel doorway. They knelt. Pazel's stomach twisted in knots. He had to tell her the truth. But there she was, beaming at him, pulling his hands into her hair-strange, thick hair, with those braids of tiny kulri shells. He felt as if he was holding the sea itself

"Nine hundred shells in my hair," she said. "All perfect, white, clean. That is the rule for murth-girls: a very strict rule of purity. But one shell I keep secret. It has a rose heart. Look."

He took his hands away. And although he had not pulled or grasped at anything, there it lay on his palm. A shell like all the rest, but blood-red on the inside. She took it from him and held it for a long time, and he wondered if she was having second thoughts. Then she reached out and pressed it against his chest, just below his collarbone.

The shell vanished.

"Where did it go? Did you drop it?"

"Pinch your skin," she said.

Pazel pinched a fold of his skin, just where she had placed the shell. "It's inside me," he whispered.

She nodded. "A shell is a home that drifts. I have named you my secret home, given you my secret heart. If you want me to stop loving you, cut it from your flesh. Otherwise I am yours. Will you marry me, land-boy, and live on starfish and coral wine, and learn the songs of my grandfathers, and know the million wonders of the murth-world?"

She touched his cheek. His heart was beating so hard he thought he might faint. He no longer knew what he wanted. Images of Thasha and Neeps, of his family, of sorcerers and kings, passed before his eyes like drawings in a storybook, or a dream he was quickly forgetting. Nothing was real but her eyes.

On Klyst's face he saw the gentlest of smiles appear. He felt the beginnings of an answering smile on his own face, and a warmth where she touched him.

And at that precise moment, his mind-fit struck.

It came like a stampede of horses, thundering, trampling. Panic took him entirely. Klyst was shouting, but he heard only that dreaded noise. He knew he could not speak a word-but what was worse, silence or gibberish? Either way she would think he hated her.

"Squalaflagrapaga! Paj! Nag! Zelurak!"

She was weeping and screaming. He fell back on the seafloor, covering his ears. But there was no shutting it out. And the next instant her voice was joined by others, much lower and angrier. A dozen sea-murth men were laying hands on him, biting, strangling, piercing him with their sharp nails and teeth. They must have been watching all along. Behind them Klyst wailed and pleaded.

Their argument was deafening. But Klyst won, and the murth-men let him go. Howling with sobs, she pulled him toward the surface, the raging men just behind. Pazel found himself crying, too. But his tears did not glow, and Klyst would never know he had shed them.

The bathysphere was rising from the waves. Klyst stopped him a yard beneath it and covered his hands with kisses. She looked at him and waited. He bent to do the same to her hands, but she shook her head. She wanted him to speak.

He bit his lips. He would not subject her to that noise.

Klyst saw his look of refusal and let out a final, agonizing scream. Then, with the sound still breaking from her throat, she faded. It happened suddenly. One moment she was there, solid as he was. The next he saw the kelp through her skin. And the next (the scream snuffed out like a candle) there was no murth-girl before him at all.

Spitting hatred, the murth-men turned and fled. Pazel gasped-and choked instantly. He could no longer breathe water.

Flailing, he surfaced. He was surrounded by boats. Clouds of white mist were racing toward them over the water. Twenty feet away, the bathysphere dangled over the deck of the sea barge. All about it the Volpeks stood gaping. And directly beneath the sphere, arms raised, stood Arunis.

The Volpeks in the sphere were lowering the Red Wolf down through the hole. The sorcerer reached for it, ecstatic. When his fingers brushed it at last, he let out a bellowing noise that even through the distortion of his mind-fit Pazel knew for laughter.

What have I done?

Pazel splashed toward the barge. Knock him into the sea, drown him, drown with him.

Saving Klyst's people had been his only thought. But in so doing he had aided a monster.

"I'll kill you!"

Arunis glanced around, trying to locate the source of the meaningless squawk. And then-

Boom.

A violent wave. Pazel was hurled back and down. Volpeks tumbled from the deck. Arunis lost his grip on the Wolf and plunged into the sea.

Cannon fire!

Somehow Pazel rose. No one was motionless now. Men ran, oars churned; terror showed on every face.

Boom. Boom.

They were under attack.

On Pazel's right a skiff was blasted to splinters. The air was full of wood, water, blood. Pazel swam toward the nearest boat, screaming for help. It was overfull: Volpeks and their young prisoners, stuffed like worms in a baitbox. And it was drawing away, much faster than he could swim.

"Help! Help!" ("Kquak! Kquak!")

He chased it, but his strength was gone. Another wave sank him, and when he struggled to the surface again he knew it was for the last time.

The drowned, like those who die of thirst, suffer visions: every sailor knows that. So Pazel was not too surprised when familiar faces appeared in the departing boat. There was Neeps, throwing punches. There was Thasha fighting like a champion. And there, dashing one Volpek after another into the sea, was Hercуl of Tholjassa. A pretty dream, he thought, not believing in it for an instant.

Boom.

The fighters ducked. Something whistled overhead. Then came pain, and darkness like sudden nightfall, and quiet at last.