Verse XIII

  To a delphin, names were a difficult and complicated concept. The pink one who knew herself as Watch-with-Clicks did so because that was the thing she did. Not so long before, she had been Catch-the-Fast-Fish, or Hide-in-Kelp, or Little Daughter. As she changed and grew, so did the way she described herself in song. Mers were different, however. She had spent enough time watching and listening to understand that the wicked ones put names on things and expected them to stick like mud and slime.

  She did not know that the city she now cautiously circled was called Mezzeret, nor would she care about some name in the mer-song, at once so simple and yet so impossible to pronounce. After a morning's observation, Watch-with-Clicks had come to a conclusion: This city was the Flow-Through-Place. Currents met here, gentle but powerful, and nothing in the city seemed to obstruct that flow. In fact, many things moved with it, lifting and drifting lazily as their tethers pulled fast. Even the great thick colonies of sargo and other greenery swayed gently, and the yummy fish which lived amid the green would on occasion find themselves pushed or pulled into open water, where a certain young delphin might be Catch-the-Fast-Fish for a while once more.

  With her belly full, Watch-with-Clicks settled into a bed of kelp, ignoring for now how the blades of green tickled her skin. As high as the mass of foliage floated in the waters, it was a simple matter to kiss the firmament as necessary to keep the breath in her lungs while allowing her eyes to remain focused below. The pink delphin had no doubts that her mers-to-guide would show themselves soon.

  Downwards, a shout. The careful, limited modulations of mer-song. Words that meant nothing, tones that meant all. Watch-with-Clicks relaxed in her hiding place. Mers were easy to excite, but she was not the cause of this.

  There! A spot of green, moving along like no clump of kelp or weed could. Green-haired-mer, Child-of-Waves. Red-hair-mer. Other mers-to-guide swam with them. Many of the strange, whale-tailed mers gathered. More shouts, more noise. Tones of surprise. Tones of worry. None of anger. All came together below the mass of green.

  Kelp shivered and swayed in new currents, strange currents. Mer-song filled the waters, until the pink delphin was forced to hide deeper within the foliage, so itchy and against her skin, so the noise would not hurt so much. She squeaked and clicked to herself a little song, such as her mother's mother had taught. In her little space within the green, the waters ebbed and went still. Went silent, almost. The swaying motion of the greater green brought small noises, but the grating mer-song faded away.

  Watch-with-Clicks now focused on being Calm-in-Rest. Sing the song to lengthen and preserve the breath within the lungs. Stay still, so the song would last. Hope that the whale-tailed mers did not take their mass of green too far, lest the song fade and the need to kiss the firmament return before it stopped.

  Calm-in-Rest waited.

  Verse XIV

  Ardenne had had enough of being tied down. When the option was suggested, she happily chose to ride the outer layers of Morag Head with the equmara singers. Having ridden the greater flows with their little flaot, she thought she knew what to expect. She was almost correct. There was only the matter of degree.

  The great flows were faster, for certain, but when she traveled them it was as a moving body in moving water. Morag Head moved, but the water around it did not. Still waters felt swift as it passed through them. Far below, the sands continued in their pale sameness, with only the occasional stone moving swiftly past to reveal their true speed.

  She tried not to focus on anything in particular. It only made her dizzy.

  The far reaches were hidden in their usual haze, holding their secrets for as long as they could before Morag Head's approach inevitably revealed them. The dark stones which broke the sands grew in number, coming together into steep hills which shed grit into narrow crevices to form crazed patterns across their faces. They rose up into cliffs and mounts topped with green, and the song of the verdant float slowed in tempo so the equmara could maneuver it more handily though the depths between them. The water which passed over Ardenne now was swift on its own, and it brought with it clouds of grit and strange tastes upon its current.

  She hoped they were soon to arrive. Her eyes searched the farthest haze, where the shadows of mounts rose towards the firmament. Some may even have breached the bright glow above, but hid that deed with crowns of sargo and fringes of kelp and grass.

  Morag Head navigated its way through the maze of peaks, coming uncomfortably close to several. But then the mounts fell away, fell behind in the wake of their passing. Ahead was an open expanse, clear through to the far reaches and practically a small sea unto itself. The lower depths were filled with the same white sand of Almezzeb, except for at its center were a single great stone rose like a spear through the water. Moored to it was the largest growth of sargo, kelp, and weed that Ardenne had never imagined possible. It expanded from the top of the stone as a nearly perfect bubble of green. Its edges were ruffled by a current that never seemed to quit. From higher above, the firmament shone down with its light, bringing new and strange colors to life amid the foliage.

  The Flowing Gardens. From how the equmara spoke of them, Ardenne had not been sure what to expect, but there was an unexpected beauty in how the colors shifted across its surface as currents tickled through layers of multi-hued foliage. According to their hosts, the gardens held paths and passages within it, a veritable maze the center of which was only legend.

  The strange message of the shrine in Sangolia had not said as much, but none doubted that their goal was at the heart of the green. On a whim, Ardenne retrieved the black ring from around her neck and held it between thumb and forefinger, so as to see the gardens through its hole.

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  The world went dark, in that strangely familiar way, where the light fled and was replaced by a thousand hues without names. Greens to reds, blues to yellows, and all around were the outlines of plant and mer in glowing streaks of black. In the middle of the ring's point of view, the Flowing Gardens blazed with colors that bit into the back of the eyes and refused to let loose.

  She lowered the ring, and her vision returned to normal. No headache came this time, no sense of blood rushing to her head, nor of pressure behind her face. Whatever the ring had done, it was less spectacular than before. Small blessings, she thought.

  "So, we're really going into that?" she asked Sera once the rogue had emerged from the innards of Morag head with the other manoa passengers.

  "Only way to go," replied Sera. "Supposed to have an old shrine in the middle, what the equmara built long time back. Before the Fugitives War, even. No one's seen it in livin' memory, but they know it's there. Follow the paths, get there, look around, leave."

  "Nothing is ever so simple as that." Ardenne looked the verdant mass over once more. "Where is the entrance?"

  The red mer pointed. "Bottom of the main body, near to the stone. So they tell me."

  The twins had shrugged on their packs and shouldered their hammers, those blunt weapons of solid stone held with kelpen bindings. We'll check ahead, then," said Jumilla.

  "Be careful."

  "At least one of us shall be," Jumella assured her.

  "Spare me, sis."

  *

  Jumilla knew stone as only a galda could. She had worked it, shaped it with her own two hands into forms both useful and fantastical. There was a feel to worked stone that a natural outcropping would never have, and yet that was exactly what her hands found when they touched the base of the garden spire. It was not where it should have been, this stone; some mer had moved it or placed it.

  Her eyes went left and right, noting how far her sight traveled before any degree of curve could be seen. Her hands told her that it had been worked, wrought in some fashion, but everything else about it said that this was not possible. She rubbed at the surface of the stone some more, tickling it for further information, like the crab had done to the whelk.

  This was not one of Granny Liesa's silly stories, unfortunately. The spire told her nothing.

  Not far off, Jumella was performing an examination of her own. Catching her eye, Jumilla's twin nodded in silent agreement.

  Depths. How did anyone make something like this? Where had the skill, the knowledge of the skill, gone?

  They kept their hands against the stone as they rose, noting any patterns or designs. For the first fathom or so, all they found was graffiti left by some equmara of old, the etchings filled with years of weed. As the mass of green neared, looming over their heads until the firmament was blocked from sight, more patterns appeared. Most common were circles with looping lines within them, twisting and connecting and coming together at the center. Perhaps they were meant to be maps. Not a one was the exact same pattern as the next.

  And then, the entrance: a squared-off frame of stone fixed perpendicular to the spire. Greenery grew all around, but not within. More magic, she figured. Somehow, this little proof of power seemed more comprehensible and thus more impressive than the immensity of the spire itself. Jumilla stuck her head up and through, into a shaded space filled with vague shapes. As her eyes adjusted to the gloom, Jumilla could see that there were statues of mers—not just of equmara, but manoa, leondra, and even galda as well—set into the spire. Foliage grew above and below, but not on or in-between.

  She was examining the statue of the mer galda, admiring the fine work of its graven fringed scales, when the others swam up through the entrance.

  "Coo-ee," said Rook. "Can yer feel the power in here? Layers upon layers upon sunken layers of runes, I'm a-thinkin'. Rhia, yer get what I'm sayin'?"

  The princess nodded absently, with only one ear turned to the conversation. With soft strokes, she floated over to the statue of the manoa. "Yes, yes. It is... ah, how did that spell go..." After a few beats of staring at her own fingers, Rhiela managed to summon a small bubble of light to her hands. Its glimmer revealed colors set into the statues, mostly with small tiles of glass—difficult work, that—but occasionally with true gemstones. Jumilla's estimation of the crafters who'd made these could not have risen any higher, for it already lofted above the firmament itself.

  One color there was that all the statues had in common: the head of each was topped with the green of fresh kelp. Even the crest on the galda was of a matching color, unlike any Jumilla had ever met.

  Unlike any of them had ever met, prior to a few weeks ago. Jumilla was not staring at Ardenne, and she hoped that no one else was, either. The hunter got punchy when she was embarrassed, as the twins had learned.

  "This is a place like the cave behind the palace," said Ardenne, as if they hadn't all thought it already. "A place of worship."

  "No temple, though," said Sera. "The prestra wouldn't approve 'a the statuary."

  "Um, why not?" asked Rook.

  "Too flat-chested by half. Never seen a statue of the Mother Cythera what hadn't so much on top that it'd be a wonder for her to swim."

  Above the flickering bubble of light, the princess's face easy to see but difficult to read. "Be that as it may..." said Rhiela, "and I am not saying you're wrong, but... is this the place we are actually looking for? I would have expected something more..."

  Jumilla nodded to that. "Interesting as it all is, we're still looking at the entrance hall. There's supposed to be a maze in here, right? So where is it?"

  "Above." All eyes turned to look where Ardenne was pointing. Three stone circles were clear to see in the foliage overhead, each perfectly cut and fitted, but without any sign of support beyond the plants themselves. "Three paths, probably cramped. We should split up."

  "Not sure if'n that's the best idea," said Sera.

  The hunter shrugged. "There's not enough room to do much beyond get in each other's way. Hardly a better idea."

  "True, but still—"

  The princess groaned. "Enough talk! The hour is waning, so let us get to it! Come on," she said as she grabbed Ardenne by the bicep and pulled the green mer to the middle entrance. "We shall see where this one goes."

  "Well then," Jumilla said to her twin. "Shall we take the one on the right?"

  "Might as well." Jumella hefted her gear, then sculled upwards to the circle of stone.

  "See you two at the end," Jumilla called back to Rook and Sera as they swam off.

  *

  Snug as she was within her little bubble amid the green, Watch-with-Clicks was slow to realize that she had ceased to move. Stillness, calmness all around, and no mer-song to hear once her bubble was dispelled. Poking her beak out through the foliage, she sent out a few brief squeaks and clicks to listen and see what lay without.

  Open water, many mers, a tall thing that her squeaks barely felt around, but... There was something in the water here, an energy. It was like the resting place of Strength-of-Waves, and that was all she needed to understand about it.

  They had arrived. They were at the next importance-of-being. Mers-to-guide were already inside, most likely. Watch-with-Clicks was outside. The song of her kind had many things to say, none of them bad enough to describe this.

  Carefully, quietly, the pink delphin squirmed her way out of the greenery. It was with fast fins that she shot to the firmament, breaking through into the sweet breath above to fill her lungs and sing the song of longest breaths so that it would last her as she dove deep and followed. Mers-to-guide would need Guide-for-Mers.