Areinnye refused to be driven. Swiftly she turned and her fangs found Ed’s side, scoring a long deep gash from gills to tail. The Master-Shark swept away from Areinnye, his wound trailing a horrid boiling curtain of black blood-smoke in the failing wizard-light.
Nita flailed and gasped with exertion — and got air from the protective spell, much to her surprise. She was still in whaleshape. And stuck in it, I bet, she thought, till I get the power back. What in the world’s Ed doing?
The sea bottom around the vent suddenly heaved — lifting like some great dark creature taking its first breath… then heaved again, bulging up, with cracks spreading outward from the center of the bulge. The cracks, or something beneath them, glowed red-hot.
The sea floor thundered with another tremor. Superheated water blasted up from the remains of the vent; rocks rained down from Caryn Peak. The red glow burst up through the widening cracks. It was lava, burning a feverish, suppurating red through the murk and the violently shimmering water. The water that came in contact with it — unable to boil at these pressures, regardless of the heat applied to it — did the impossible, the only thing it could do: It burst into flame. Small tongues of blue-violet fire danced and snaked along the outward-reaching tentacles of lava.
The wizard-light remaining in the water was a failing, sickly mist. Caryn Peak shook on its foundations. The Celebrants were scattered. Nita swam desperately upward, trying to do what she saw Kit doing — get safe above the roasting heat of the sea floor. All the bottom between her and the peak was a mazework of lava-filled cracks, broken stone floating on the lava, and violet fire.
Under the stone, under the lava, in the depths of the great crack that had swallowed the vent, something moved. Something began to shrug the stone and lava aside. A long shape shook itself, stretched itself, swelled and shrank and swelled again — a shape clothed in lava and black-violet fire, burning terribly. Nita watched in horrified fascination. What is it? Nita wondered. Some kind of buried pipeline? But no manmade pipeline was a hundred feet across. And no pipeline would seem to breathe, or move by itself, or rear up serpentlike out of the disintegrating sea bed with the dreadful energy of something unbound at last.
That shape was rising now, letting go its grasp on part of that long burning body that stretched away as far as the eye could see from east to west. A neck, Nita thought, as the shape reared up taller, towering over the sea bottom. A neck and a head— A huge snake’s head, fringed, fanged, long and sleek, with dark-burning lava for a hide, and eyes the sick black-violet of water bursting into flame—
In the guise It had first worn after betraying the whales, and wore now again in gloating token of another victory, the Power, the many-named darkness that men had sometimes called the Old Serpent, towered over the sea bed as the binding that had held It shattered. This, Nita realized, was the terrible truth concealed under the old myths of the Serpent that lay coiled about the foundations of the world, waiting for the day It would crush the world in those coils.
And now Its moment was at hand: But It was stretching it, savoring it. It looked at Nita, drifting not two hundred feet from Its immense stony jaws— looked at her out of eyes burning with a color that would sear its way into the nightmares of anyone surviving to remember it. And those eyes knew her.
She was frightened; but she had something to do yet. I know my verse now without having to get it from the Sea, she thought. So maybe I won’t need wizardry to pull this off. And maybe just doing the Sacrifice will have its own power. Let’s find out…
Nita backfinned through the thundering water, staying out of reach of those jaws, watching for any sudden movement. She drew what she suspected was a last breath — the protective spell around her was fading fast — and lifted her voice into the roaring darkness. Ed, she thought, don’t blow it now!
“Must I accept the barren Gift?
learn death, and lose my Mastery?
Then let them know whose blood and breath
will take the Gift and set them free! — ‘ “
The gloating eyes were fixed on her — letting her sing, letting Nita make the attempt. But the Lone Power wasn’t going to let her get away with it. That huge, hideous head was bending closer to her. Nita back-finned, not too obviously, she hoped — kept her distance, kept on singing:
“ ‘Not old enough to love as yet,
but old enough to die, indeed—
the death-fear bites my throat and heart,
fanged cousin to the Pale One’s breed—‘ “
And with a low thick rumble of amusement and hunger, the Serpent’s head thrust at Nita in a strike that she couldn’t prevent.
This is it!
The sudden small shock in the water made her heart pound. She glanced downward as she sang. There was Kit — battered and struggling with the failing whalesark as if it were actually someone else’s body — but ramming the Serpent head-on, near where the neck towered up above the slowly squeezing coils. Their pressure was breaking the sea bed in great pieces, so that lava and superheated water gushed up in a hundred places. But Kit ignored the heat and rammed the Old Serpent again and again. He’s trying to distract It, Nita thought, in a terrible uprush of anguish and admiration. He’s buying me time. Oh, Kit! The gift was too precious to waste.
“But past the fear lies life for them,” she sang,
“ ‘—perhaps for me; and past my dread,
past loss of Mastery and life,
the Sea shall yet give up Her dead!’ “
Annoyed — as a human might be by a gnat — the Serpent bent Its head away from Nita to see what was troubling It. Humor and hunger glinted in Its eyes as It recognized in Kit the other wizard who had once given It so much trouble in Manhattan. It bent Its head to him, but slowly, wanting him to savor the terror. Now, Nita thought, and began to sing again. “Lone Power—“
“No!” cried another voice through the water, and something came hurtling at her and punched Nita to one side. It was Areinnye — wounded, and crazy, from the looks of her. I don’t have time for this! Nita thought, and for the first time in her life rummaged around in her mind for a spell that would kill.
Someone else came streaking in to ram. Areinnye went flying. There was blood in the water: Ed’s, pumping more and more weakly from the gash in his side. But his eyes were as cool as ever. “Ed,” Nita said, breaking off her singing, “thank you—“
He stared at her as he arrowed toward her — the old indecipherable look. “Sprat,” he said, “when did I ever leave distress uncured?” And to her complete amazement, before Nita could move, he rammed her again, close to the head — leaving her too stunned to sing, tumbling and helpless in pain.
Through the ache she heard Ed lift his voice in song. Nita’s song — the lines that, with the offered Sacrifice, bind Death anew and put the Lortf Power in Its place. Kit just went on pummeling at the great shape that bent closer and closer to them all, and Nita struggled and writhed and couldn’t make a sound.
No! she thought. But it was no use. Ed was taking her part willingly, circling in on the Lone Power. Yet even through Nita’s horror, some wonder intruded. Where did he get such a voice? she thought. It seemed to fill the whole Sea.
“ ‘Lone Power, I accept your Gift!
But take my Gift of equal worth:
I take Death with me, out of time,
and make of it a path, a birth!
Let the teeth come! As they tear me,
they tear your ancient hate for aye—
so rage, proud Power! Fail again,
and see my blood teach Death to die!’ “
And the Master-Shark dived straight at the upraised neck of the Serpent, and bit it. He made no cry as Its burning hide blasted his teeth away and seared his mouth instantly black; he made no cry as the Lone Power, enraged at Its wounding, bent down to pluck the annoying little creature from Its neck and crush it in stony jaws.