Verse XV

  This place was too much like the still waters of the cavern behind Bryndoon. Rhiela could feel it in the waters that flowed over her gills, could catch a hint of an odd taste-that-was-not. There was something floating around them, floating through the walls of green that moved with the passage of the currents. The local kelp grew thick and lush, and even the hunter's knife could not make more than the smallest of cuts in it. Water may pass, but they could not.

  Above, the firmament appeared between blades of kelp and mats of sargo, lending everything a dappled pattern of pale green. The open space of the maze continued in a long passage that curved up, over, and around thick beds of weed and ancient blocks of coral. There were no turn-offs, no splits in the path, but only twists and turns to make the head spin and cloud a mer's sense of direction. Where exactly they might be in relation to the entrance, Rhiela could not say.

  And then they exited the green. Into the entrance hall, from the lefthand portal. "How!?" she demanded of the waters. They didn't bother to answer her.

  "This entire place is impossible," said Ardenne. "Come on, let's try it again."

  Rhiela glanced at the statues. They were as they had always been, and it was her own annoyance that made their faces seem amused. "Yes..." she hissed. "Same entrance, or another?"

  "The same one, first," Ardenne replied. "To make sure we didn't miss anything."

  They had not. The passage was far from straight, but it had no branching paths. This time, they exited via the righthand portal. "What is wrong with this stupid maze?" she groaned. "What are we supposed to do?"

  "Calm down, first of all." The green mer's hand was warm on her shoulder, and she sighed at the touch. "If there is a trick, it is in our heads," the hunter concluded.

  There was wisdom in that, she felt, but like most words of wisdom the princess had received over the years from lessons and instruction, it did not seem to be of immediate help. She should be the first to admit that her head was a mess, had been for over a week. "I... I wish Marai was here," she admitted. "I wish I'd told her to go with the twins when there was the chance."

  "Your friend in Bryndoon?"

  "More than a friend," she said. "My fate-bound sister, born on the same day and in the same hour. We'd been together so long, did everything together, and I didn't think about how it would feel to be apart, and..." Dearest Cythera, she was babbling worse than Rook, but now that it was going, her mouth did not wish to stop. "I do not truly know what I am doing here, or why, but everything seems to get on my nerves, and..."

  "Guess we're both lost," said the hunter. Ardenne tapped the side of her head. "In here, at least. Maybe that's what's wrong?"

  "That would be a great and terrible grammar to cast over this place," said Rhiela. "Like something out of a child's tale or a parable of the Goddess." Another groan bubbled its way from her chest. "What are we to do?"

  *

  "So, er, Red. I was wonderin', since it's just the two of us, me and yer, right-a-now and might be yer know more 'bout this than anyone else I could ask, but..." Rook's eyes watched the surrounding green with nervous twitches, but her thoughts and words were soundly elsewhere.

  A sigh from her companion. "What is it?"

  "Well, yer see, it's about last night..."

  "Oh, yeah. Blaer and Elspeth, wasn't it?" Sera winked and thumbed at her. "Kinda surprised us all, actually. Those two are a right pair, thick as kelp since they were littles. Not even a real leman between them for the longest time."

  "Yeah, er, yeah. What's'at word mean again? They used it a few times an' I felt dumb for not knowin', but gots the feelin' that it's important an' I should be knowin' what's up wi' it."

  Red nodded in that way that a big sister might have. "It's one of their words. Don't think any mer not friendly with the equmara would ever hear it. Sort of more than a lover, not as much as a bonded partner. Most mer equmara end up with one or two mutual partners, all official-like with happy ceremonies and big parties to celebrate, but they can't do that till they all got a daughter. Before that, they'll fool 'round with most anyone they like, or even a mer they don't like."

  "What, really?" Rook tried to get her brain around that, but couldn't quite.

  "Yeah. Got a few funny words for that sorta thing, but not very nice ones. An experience, though, getting together with some mer you absolutely detest for a crazy night."

  Her brain slowly caught up, but it still took a few beats. "So, yer..."

  "You met her." Red chuckled at the grimace that crossed the orange mer's face. "Yeah, that one. Just the once, never again. Much prefer a mer what likes me, and me her. So what me and Rohaise has, that's leman. If'n we're ever in the same waters, then we're together. Ain't promised or bonded, and even if'n we were, there'd still be that special thing 'tween us. Lotta times, an equmara's leman ends up her partner for life, anyhow."

  "So if, um, they asked me to, um..."

  "Then count yourself blessed, lucky, and beloved," Red told her. "Means they really, really, and I mean really, liked you and want to continue their relationship with you for as long as they can. Said yes, I hope?"

  "Of course!" Oh.. she could feel her face turning red. The warmth was there, but the dappled light of the firmament helped hide the colors. "Just, um, never really thought about this sort 'a thing before, and now there's this, and there's them, and I mean both of 'em..."

  A snicker carried beautifully through the narrow confines of the maze passage. "We're all young, so enjoy it. Believe me, the mer equmara are the best lovers in the nine seas. Lots to learn from 'em."

  "If yer think so..." Rook glanced around. "Er, we ain't made any turns, right?"

  "Yeah, why..." Red paused. With a muttered cantrip, she waved a hand through the waters. Rook's ears couldn't quite grab the full meaning of the little grammar, but it felt like one of those old rhymes meant to help with something, if anyone could recall the sound of it right. Maybe the red mer had. Rook couldn't tell, but the expression on the rogue's face turned sour. "Basic orientation charm," she explained. "Should give a sense of how far we've swum, only..."

  "Nothing?" Rook guessed.

  "Fat muddy opposite. A sense we've swum farther than the breadth of the garden already."

  "The big curves? Goin' round and round the spire?"

  "Perhaps... or perhaps something else. These waters are strange." The red mer stiffened her flukes. "Feel that?"

  She was about to ask what the rogue meant when the feeling passed her, too. A small ripple, a disruption to the flow of the current, the suggestion of an echo as something moved against everything else. A...

  A section of kelp rustling out of time with the rest. "Behind me," Red ordered. Her knives were already out.

  In a little pocket on her hip, Rook kept a number of small, rounded pebbles. They didn't look like much, mostly because they weren't, but they were enough to anchor all sorts of spells in a pinch. That had saved her tail not so far in the past. Cupping a pebble in her hand, she got the runes for a caloric bubbler all ready in her head for her to recite.

  The foliage rustled, shivered, then fell quiet. They stared at the spot. "Eh, maybe a fish?" Rook suggested with a sinking lack of hope.

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  "Never so lucky."

  *

  How long had it been, Jumella wondered, since she and her twin had had time to themselves, just the two? Not since their flight from Bryndoon, she figured. Even in the calmest of times, someone else would be around to chat, and while she would never grudge their company, still it was nice to have a moment alone with her sister, to be a regular school together.

  She could only wish that her sister might share her exact feelings in that regard, or agree with her idea of good conversation.

  "Come on, sis! You can tell me. How was it?"

  "It is not my place to say," Jumella replied, for the fifth or the sixth time. She didn't care to keep count.

  "But why not?" Jumilla pressed on. "Seriously, I mean. We know they won't mind. Probably talked about us a dozen times already, so..."

  Navigating the passages of green was annoyance enough. At times it got so narrow that her shoulders kept scratching against the sides. She did not need her sister's incessant questions grating on her nerves. With a grunt, Jumella acknowledged defeat. It was better to remove one annoyance at a time. "Nothing happened," she finally admitted. "Some kissing, some cuddles, but we didn't go beyond that."

  "Oh..." The waters went quiet for a three-beat. "You too, huh."

  "What do you mean, 'you too?"

  "Well, you were acting so confident the other night with what's-her-name..."

  "Aislee."

  "Yeah, her. So I had to, you know, match up. Got all kissy with Cairisty, but..." Her twin sighed. "Got nervous and couldn't get much past that."

  That was worth a chuckle, and Jumella paid up happily. "We are quite a pair, aren't we."

  "Matched set, even." Jumilla flicked a finger at the decorative pearl earring in her left ear. Jumella copied the gesture with her right ear automatically. "So, when we get back..."

  "Yes?"

  "Are you going to kiss her again? Or should we swap? Cairisty was curious, after all."

  "We are not having this conversation." With hard strokes, Jumella left her sister protesting in her wake. Neither paid much attention to how the kelpen walls behind them shifted and moved against the current.

  *

  Did any see? Did any notice? Guide-for-Mers knew not, thought not, hoped not. Without family, without pod, delphins were for mers an easy catch. Whale-tailed mers did not have teeth-in-hand like others did, but not-safe, not-safe! Not for straight across the water, not for open swim. Fast fins from sargo patch to next, always hiding, always safe. Guide-for-Mers was Hope-to-Hide too often that morning.

  Last stretch, open water. Guide-for-Mers was briefly Fast-of-Fin, crossing the distance between long beats of her heart. To the strange stone up its side. A moment to be Watch-with-Clicks again, to speak and see the opening with her forehead. Fast-of-Fin again, swimming up the side, through the opening, into the dim green water.

  Two mers-to-guide, here. Once more Guide-for-Mers.

  "A delphin!" Simple notes, simple sounds. Too basic for true meaning, but the tone told more. Word-of-self for lesser whales. Word-of-fear, right now.

  "It's out little friend from Sangolia," said green-haired mer, Child-of-Waves. "Did you follow us all the way out here? I thought we'd lost you on the way to the Mere Almezzeb." Again, simple sounds, no poetry, but tone was friendly. Friendlier.

  A squeak of welcome echoed through the waters, returning to her forehead with an image of walls around and mers-of-stone. Three openings above. A choice? An indecision? Simple mers could not decide, perhaps. In need of Guide-for-Mers. She floated up to the openings, sounding them out. The first echoed down, and then back through the second. The second went up, and then back out the third. The third echoed back to itself.

  Simple mers, not-so-simple trick. Three more squeaks, three different results. Strange side-echoes, muffled by soft kelp. Perhaps. Perhaps.

  Loud squeaks, calls for attention. Circles swum in place, below the middle opening.

  "I think she wants us to follow." Tones of surprise.

  "But we already tried that one..." Tones of doubt.

  "I don't think it matters," said green-haired mer. Tones of decision. Loud squeak of agreement. If no choice was right, then no choice was wrong. Swim, follow, find. Guide-for-Mers to do her job.

  Kelp sticky, stretchy, grabby. Strange against the skin. No delphin liked the thick kelp forests or grass fields of the reef, those places for wicked mers. Narrow spaces, narrow planes, not for delphins at all. But the job was to guide, and so now she was Guide-for-Mers. Squeaks and clicks to find the way, feeling strange things move the kelp this way or that.

  Wait for thing to pass, for wall to thin, and then Guide-for-Mers could push through with her beak, could see through with her forehead. Open space, mers-to-guide. She squeaked to green-hair-mer and brown-hair-mer, and they followed her through.

  *

  Sera could swear that she and Rook had traveled around the entire curve of the Flowing Gardens three, perhaps four times by now. She could swear that and swear at these same gardens in the same thought. Forwards or backwards, the view never changed. And her little pathfinding cantrips only made her more confused.

  More than that, however, Sera was worried. Twice again they had caught a sense of something moving within the walls of kelp, and there was no doubt in her mind that this same something was responsible for their confusion. If it was deliberate—and it certainly seemed to be—then she had to assume that the mystery something was a threat. Her knives did not leave her hands, and she noted that Rook had a pebble at the ready.

  Enough with the games, she decided. It was time to make a move. "Rook? If'n you could spare a spell, throw a pebble into the wall ahead." The kelp there was even now rustling counter to the currents. "Don't care much what it does, just need something."

  "Right-o." The speckled mer cupped the pebble in her hand and whispered to it carefully. There was a flush of heat upon the water between them, and Rook hissed in pain as she through the overly warm stone as fast and as hard as she could. "Gotta work on timin'," she muttered.

  Sera's attention was on the wall. As the stone came near, its heat producing a boiling froth of steam bubbles around it, the kelp was pushed back by the thermal currents to reveal... something. Even seeing it, she had trouble putting a name to it. Thick, long, studded with spikes along ringlike segments of armor, it flexed and bent to avoid the orange mer's bundle of concentrated heat. As it rolled, it revealed an underside full of tiny, pinching claws.

  It was unlike any living thing she had ever seen, which decided the matter of names for her. Only one word would fit: "Abomination." She spat the word into the water. A beat later, it was joined by much swearing.

  With a tremor upon the waters, the armored tentacle ripped free of the kelpen wall and reached for them.

  *

  There was no warning that Jumilla could see. The wall of kelp nearest her sister bulged and burst. A tentacle as thick around as her own arm swung through the waters, slamming into Jumella and throwing her towards the patchy top wall of sargo. Thin trails of blood drifted in its wake.

  "Sis!" Her hammer was out and in motion. The heavy stone on its kelpen cable spun around, gaining momentum to smash its target. Thick as it was, however, the tentacle presented a narrow profile, and her first strike was more bounce than bash.

  It did get the attention of the monster, at least. The tentacle lashed out blindly at first, but tensed and waved as she kicked with her flukes to dart out of the way. The next swing came far too close for comfort, and Jumilla got a good look at the rows upon rows of pinching claws upon its underside.

  So, it was blind, or at least fumbling in the dark, but like many night feeders or deeper denizens, its sense of flow and motion was excellent. Jumilla sculled as carefully as she could to minimize her presence in the water while she tried to figure this beastie out.

  Armored, heavily. Lots of layers and chinks to keep it bendy and mobile. A good knife might get a prick in, but she couldn't say how much good it would do. She couldn't even way what this thing was, or was supposed to be, but a thing with a reach like that had to keep its important bits elsewhere.

  The tentacle hadn't stopped moving. It winded in a sinuous motion like a blind cave eel, and when it came close beneath her, Jumilla swung her hammer again. This time, she wasn't aiming to strike. The stone head of the hammer looped beneath the tentacle in a narrow arc, the cable binding around it tight as she twisted.

  Muscle or blood or whatever it was that made the thing move, a tourniquet might... yes. There was a faint squelch, then the sensation of something within the tentacle bending and giving way. The entire length beyond it, all the way to the tip, spasmed for a beat before going slack. There was a distant roar, and the tentacle's owner pulled it back, dragged it back as fast as it could.

  Jumilla let it go. She had more important things to focus on.

  "Sis? Sis! Are you okay up there?" she called. The only reply was a groan of pain. "Hang in there, sis! I'm coming for you."

  She found Jumella wedged between two stands of sargo, the stiff-edged plants providing enough support to keep her twin from sinking. Jumella had made no attempt to pull herself free yet, and a quick check told Jumilla why that was.

  "Depths," she swore at the sight of welts running down one side of her twin's body. It looked like a dozen tiny crabs had held a dinner party, snip-snapping strips of skin and scales. An examination of her own hammer showed where the thick cable had been chewed upon in untold tiny bites.

  "M-Jumilla?" The words were followed by a shiver. "It's c-cold and it burns and..." the skin around the bites was turning red, and the color was spreading. "Venom, I th-think."

  The syllables of the healing cantrip were already on Jumilla's lips, and in her head she accompanied them with a prayer to the Goddess Cythera that she remembered the spell all properly. Sera had done her best to teach them how to use the basic healing tricks, but there hadn't been much time to practice until now, which made it the absolute best and worst time to do so.

  Now wasn't the best time to test her mettle, but was there ever a better moment?

  As she finished the chant, the answer came to her as a pleasant, warm glow which surrounded both sisters. There were nicks and scratches on Jumilla that she didn't even realize were there until suddenly they faded, and Jumella's twitches and jerks lessened as the red marks faded. In a few beats, they were only slightly worse for wear, rather than half-beaten out of shape.

  "Well then," said Jumilla. "Glad that worked. Can you float? Swim?"

  "I think so." Her sister winced as she pulled herself free of the sargo, but she steadied up and nodded. "Yes. We should go find the others."

  "Way ahead of you." She pointed to the break in the kelp, from which the tentacle had emerged. There was a deep hole, and on the side the view of an open space. "Let's go check that out, shall we?"