"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."