“We must take them to my father,” she said, refusing to explain.
“If you say so, my lady,” he said, but clearly didn’t like it.
A conch sounded nearby. Scyto answered, and Aspar came surging up, saying the same things and asking the same questions.
“We are taking them to my father,” said Ailsa.
“Airfolk! Dead!” said Aspar.
“Do what you’re told, lad,” said Scyto. “Steady, there. Steady!”
This last to his blue-fin, which had shied as he was looping the lead rope onto the load hook. A moment later Aspar’s blue-fin shied violently and might have bolted if Aspar hadn’t forced its head round.
“What’s into the blue-fin?” he muttered.
“Dunno,” said Scyto. “You take the princess. Let’s go.”
Ailsa gripped the load hook and laid herself along the flank of the big blue-fin. Aspar flicked his tail and they pulsed away. Two more huntsmen curved in to join them, blowing their conches, and then others, so that they schooled along together, calling continuously that the hunt was over. It was a sound Ailsa could remember from her earliest years. She had always liked the huntsmen, and they had seemed to like her. Things seemed almost normal once more, so that for a while she lost the nightmare sense of being tracked from below by something huge and cold and dark, and began to worry again about how she could face her father. Then she noticed the huntsman to her left lean out and peer down, and another beyond him doing the same. The calls faltered and the Huntmaster, Desmar, riding lead, raised a hand to signal a halt.
“Anyone notice?” he said.
“Way down?” asked several voices.
“Blue-fin are twitchy as hell,” said someone.
They hovered, craning to see what lay below, but there was only shapeless dark.
“Airfolk,” grumbled someone. None of them would look towards the drowned lovers dangling at the rope’s ends. Huntsmen were always superstitious. Their task depended so much on the luck of the ocean. Left to themselves they would have untied the rope and let the airfolk fall.
“We must take them to my father,” said Ailsa.
“Right then,” said Desmar. “Let’s get on with it.”
The king rode out to meet them above the slopes of the mountain. Relays of conch-calls had told him that his daughter was found. His green skin was flushed dark with anger, but he remained, as always, firmly calm. In silence he accepted Ailsa’s formal salute, palms together, head bowed, tail curled under. In silence he glanced at the airfolk, turned his head and gestured. Master Nostocal, the court physician, bowed and drifted across to inspect them. Ailsa guessed that old Nosy must have come out with her father in case something had happened to her.
The king drifted aside with Desmar and spoke with him, staring down the mountain. He beckoned to two of the huntsmen. They saluted, listened to their orders and rode their blue-fin downward. At last he beckoned to Ailsa.
“You cut school,” he said. “I had thought you were past that, but we will talk about it later. What then?”
She told her story as clearly as she could. He listened without interruption to her account of the fight and her dive to reach the airfolk. At that point he stopped her.
“You crossed the limit? You were not afraid?”
“There wasn’t time. I had to reach them. But then, as soon as I turned back . . . It was worse than nightmares. . . .”
“Something specific had made you afraid?”
“Yes. I don’t know what. When it happened, I just panicked, I didn’t know why. But I got away, above the limit, and it was better there. But then whatever it was started to follow us up. That’s why Carn bolted. I had to let him go. It wasn’t his . . .”
“Yes. This thing. You didn’t see it? Feel something in the water?”
“Not like that. I can’t explain. But it’s been following me . . . us . . . them . . . And the huntsmen felt it too. And all the blue-fin.”
He floated silent, withdrawn. The dark green of his anger was gone, but that did not mean that her delinquency was forgotten. He would return to it in due time.
“You could have let them fall,” he said.
“No. I mean, not once I’d followed them down and brought them back up . . . it wouldn’t have been right. You can see she’s a king’s daughter . . . I think . . .”
Even that certainty, so obvious while she had watched the lovers at the rail, was now blurred. What did she know of the kings of the airfolk?
Her father nodded and glanced enquiringly beyond her. Ailsa turned and saw Master Nostocal hovering there with an excited expression on his lined old face. He saluted and, barely waiting for permission to speak, blurted out, “The airfolk are still alive, my lord!”
“Alive? Airfolk die in water. Is this not known?”
“Hitherto, my lord, but these. . . . I have felt their pulses, firm, but slow beyond belief—eighteen of mine to one of theirs. They live, my lord.”
“No doubt at all?”
“None, my lord.”
“Then I cannot decide their fate alone. We must take them home and hold council. Ailsa, you will go straight to your rooms and stay there, not speaking to anyone of any of this, until I send for you.”
Ailsa made the salutation and backed away. She could see Aspar waiting by his blue-fin, but chose a course that took her past the lovers. She slowed and gazed down at them. Even the unbelievable knowledge that they were still alive seemed vague to her as she saw once more in her mind the poised instant before they had leapt from the ship. The memory seemed still as vivid as the event itself, when she had watched it from the wave-top. But now it faded and something seemed to form where it had been, a cold, dark, numbing question.
“The king is mounted, my lady,” said Aspar’s voice. From his tone Ailsa could hear that he had said it more than once. Dazedly she let him clip her into his harness and then he free-rode the blue-fin home.
They dreamed slow dreams of dark and cold.
Home was an immense undersea mountain, an extinct volcano riddled with tunnels and caves and underground chambers which the merfolk over many generations had shaped and enlarged to their uses. The palace was only a small part of the complex, running a hundred lengths or so along the southern slope of the mountain, above the solid, unchambered spur along which Ailsa had slipped out that morning to find Carn. Now she waited at her window, looking out over this view, and thus it was that she saw the return of the two huntsmen who had ridden down the slope at her father’s command. They rode a single blue-fin, which the one who held the reins struggled to control as it surged towards the main gate and out of sight.
Food was brought, not the punishment fare that used to follow her old escapades, but clam strips on a bed of sweet-weed, ripe sea-pears and manatee cheese. She ate and tried to read, but mostly she watched from the window as the Councillors gathered. Time passed. Twice more, unwilled, the scene she had witnessed that morning formed in her mind, and each time it was followed by the same chill question. The light on the wave-roof changed from gold to pink to purple, and when it was almost dark, a chamberlain came with a phosphor lamp and said it was the king’s wish that the Princess Ailsa should attend him. This seemed strangely formal, and when she moved, expecting him to lead the way, he coughed and said, “His Majesty is in Council, my lady.”
Startled, she fetched her diadem from its case and threaded its horns into her hair. Checking in the mirror, she decided that she looked silly wearing only the single large sapphire and an everyday necklace, so she added the white-gold carcanet with the rubies that had been her naming present from her grandmother, and the pearl and sapphire pendant and tail-bracelet that had been her mother’s favourite jewels. The chamberlain nodded approval and led her first along the familiar passageways of the domestic quarters, and on down through grander windings to the Council Chamber.