Canticle IV

  In silent seas, near as a thought

  The Weaver of Light sorts the threads

  Some are scattered, adrift

  Some are clumped, knotted

  None flow straight

  Pairs have been split

  Pairs have been paired

  New threads added

  Old threads separated

  Across the weave, darkness

  Below the weft, light

  Throughout the warp, sadness

  Between the threads, hope

  Dancing in the current

  Adrift, they sway

  Finding one another

  Seeking themselves

  Canto IV - Sea of Homecoming

  Verse I

  There was a sea of wonders out beyond the farthest haze, if one bothered to go look. There was one in the shadowy depths, and another above the grand firmament, where the fathoms ended. And, behind the looming cliffs that encircled and embraced the Harbor of Bryndoon, the cliffs upon which the palace rested and the Crown resided, there was no end to the mystery.

  Marhyd, head of the royal ministry of knowledge and general odd-jobs mer for the Crown, understood this in her heart of hearts. She was used to the darkness of the tunnels from long experience. The inky black would wrap around her, swaddle her in its comforting embrace as she bobbed along. There were times where she regretted the necessary benefit of the glow-lamps, that her bulk made it unsafe to venture blindly along unfamiliar passageways. Such was the price of a life so well-lived as her own.

  Then, one last stroke of the flukes sent her out of the familiar darkness and into something deeper. The glow of her feeble lamp, just enough to limn the tunnel walls and mark their presence, was consumed wholly by the cavern before her. In this night-beyond-night, where the firmament did not glow and the walls were unseen, everything was made small and insignificant.

  Only three things brought a challenge against the tenebrous crush. The first came from high above, where the faintest of glimmers suggested a connection to the firmament after all. This far into the evening hour, the twilight barely made its presence known. The other two things were large clusters of lamps set by mers of the Home Guard and her own ministry. One grouping of lamps gathered around the bodies of a mer and an abomination. To the dead mer, Marhyd paid scant attention; the guard's uniform was plain to see, and as such was left to the guards to deal with. Already they had the kelpen wrappings ready.

  The abomination, now, that interested the ministra greatly. From a distance, one could mistake it for a mer. It possessed the same basic plan of the body, the same assortment of limbs and flukes. But with a true mer nearby to provide perspective, the thing's size became obvious. Its tail alone was two tail-lengths, and stretched out as it was, the abomination was clearly twice the size of the largest mer in the guard. On a closer look, Marhyd noted the deformities: the grey, scaleless skin, the shrunken eyes in a face otherwise dominated by a toothy, jawless mouth...

  Oh yes, this was a rare specimen indeed.

  Rarer still was the state of preservation she saw before her. From her sash, Marhyd took a long, thin rod of polished bone. She prodded the corpse, noting the rubbery flesh and the way the thick mucus sloughed off of it in sheets. It felt very solid, very material. Other abominations rotted away quickly upon death, their flesh soon sublimating into the water as a foul taste upon the current. Why was this one so different?

  "A strange evening," said Aysmin, pulling up alongside her. The duchess carried herself well, but the ministra could see the telltale signs of exhaustion around the mer's one good eye. Aysmin's abalone shell glimmered in the lamplight, dominating the left side of her face.

  "It is a change of tide, to be sure." Marhyd turned her gaze back to the abomination. "I must confess that I am interested in seeing where it takes us."

  The duchess eyed the wide, split mouth of the thing before them. Its stubby tentacles had curled outward and back upon themselves, revealing rows of narrow teeth. "This is what took Shalar from our ranks," she said.

  "The guard, you mean?"

  A solemn nod. "Shalar min Shandra, of the long knives. An able sergeant. She will be missed."

  "Long knives, you say?" Marhyd brought her lamp in close to the flaccid body. "I see knife marks in this flesh, of different sizes. Also, it was stabbed quite a few times by a spear, if I am to judge. Was she alone?"

  Aysmin's mouth skewed unhappily. "There was another guard with her, a recruit from the backwaters. It was she who finally made it back to the main halls to report this, though we've had a hard time getting her details straight. We shall know more on the morrow, once she's had time to sleep and calm herself."

  "Not a spear-user, was she?" Marhyd continued her observations. "Some deep stab wounds here, though I am not sure they were all from before the abomination died. This mer wanted to be sure it was dead."

  "I understand that feeling well enough. But no, to answer your question," said the duchess. "The recruit had a basic blade and little ability with it. Other mers were here, and they must have taken their weapons with them. As well as one of Shalar's knives, for whatever reason. That part is less important than knowing who wielded the spear that killed this monster."

  Marhyd had her rod in the thing's mouth, poking and prodding. "No one," she told the duchess. "Or rather, it was not a spear that dealt the final blow." Wedging the jawless orifice open further, she noted the irregular dark patches on the inside of the cavity. "Interesting..." With a wave of her hand she summoned an assistant to her side. "Examine the alimentary canal," she ordered.

  The grey-clad mer complied, forcing her arm down the thing's gullet all the way to her shoulder. Its teeth were still wickedly sharp, and the poor mer's upper arm was soon a meshwork of thin and bloody cuts. The mer did not pay it any mind, so intent was she on her task.

  The ministra pretended not to notice the grimace that flashed across the face of the duchess. While she had nothing but the utmost respect for Aysmin and her work with the Home Guard, the pursuit of knowledge was no place for the squeamish. Instead, she kept her eyes on the assistant, who was not extracting her lacerated appendage with a prize in hand. Marhyd was presented with a rounded pebble. It was suspiciously pristine for something found within the gullet of an abomination, and neither slime nor ichor would cling to its surface. Taking it in her palm, the ministra noted an unnatural warmth that was unmistakable in the cooling waters of the evening.

  "Here is what killed our monster," she declared, presenting the pebble to the duchess. "An act of rune-work was used to push a tremendous flow of the caloric force through the creature's body."

  "You mean a runic weapon?"

  "Hardly anything that sophisticated. This was an act of improvisation, likely born of desperation," said Marhyd. "Offensive workings are not taught these days."

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  "As well they should not be," came a voice from behind. Mitera Yesca's gruff tones carried well ahead of her, the ripples of sound heralding the leondra's approach as she swept into the chamber. The mitera was in a fine, foul mood such as Marhyd had rarely seen the mer, and every square thumb of her fur was prickled for reasons not connected to the chill of the local waters. Behind Her Holiness, a younger leondra in the kilt of a temple prestra bobbed along with far less presence or confidence.

  "The runes of power and their grammar," Yesca continued, "are a gift from the Mother of All, and to use them with the intent to harm Her creations would be sacrilege before Her."

  "Well argued as always, Your Holiness," replied Marhyd. "Though in this instance, I believe the results speak for themselves." She waved her rod across the corpse of the beast. "Does your concern for the sanctity of life extend to abominations? For if not, then we could surely use the help in defeating them."

  She noted with satisfaction the twitch of the eye that showed her words had hit a mark. A point it was for her, then. The mitera was always so guarded that it made counting coup on her quite the challenge. All the more fun for her, then.

  "Yesca, I understand your misgivings," Aysmin said. "But let us bring the matter before the council, at least. The ministra is right in that we must consider all options."

  "Understood." The word was clipped and neutral, but far below her the mitera's tail flukes swept clean a patch of tile with their nervous motion. Another point for her, then. Marhyd could barely contain a grin. Her Holiness was in a fine foam of stress this evening.

  The mitera foamed for another beat before waving her little attendant over. "Nehemi, see to the fallen guard. Make sure the prayers are said properly, and that the body is treated well."

  "Y-yes, mitera..." The young leondra was shaking at her extremities, holding it all in with nothing more than that leondra seriousness that they must teach at the home temple in the Mere Kamazon. Certainly it seemed that not a one of their tribe was ever more than mildly discomfited by anything in normal times. Times were not normal, however, and from the way the prestra approached the body, now freshly wrapped in kelpen fabric, Marhyd could see that she'd known the deceased.

  Ah, it was good to know that not all among the mer leondra had chilled veins.

  Mitera Yesca waited until the young prestra was away before changing to the other subject on everyone's mind. "And the princess?"

  "There were scales in her color near the guard's body," reported Aysmin. "At a guess, she was knocked to the floor at some point. There were a few more near the statue." The duchess took her bond-sister's arm and led her in that direction. Marhyd followed out of curiosity. Her assistants were already busying themselves with the monster, and while the ministra would like nothing more than to take a set of shearing blades to its rubbery flesh, her gut was telling her to watch the mitera now.

  "Can we be sure they are hers?" asked Yesca.

  "It is not like Rhiela's color is a common one," noted the duchess. "We also found scales in red, green, and orange, which would match what Marai told us."

  "And you trust your daughter on this, Ministra Marhyd?" the leondra said, without turning to face her as they stroked along.

  That only meant that the mitera could not see the current shape of her grin. "My trust in my dearest child is strong and true," she replied cheerfully. It was not at all a falsehood; she trusted Marai to do exactly whatever Rhiela told her to do. She could inquire into the savory details later in private.

  The ruff of fur at the base of the leondra's neck bristled, letting loose a flurry of silver bubbles to dance in the lamplight. Another point, so soon after the rest? Mitera Yesca was in a fine mood, indeed. It took Marhyd a moment to realize that she was not the one to score that particular coup, however.

  A statue. She had not paid attention to it as she came in, so intent had she been on the dead monster. The stone in mer form lay at the edge of the lamplight, as grey and unnoticed as her assistants. At the mitera's command, lamps were brought in closer to reveal the glint of a thousand tiny jewels embedded in its surface. It was a queen's bounty, a collection to humble the efforts of every mer galda in the Mere Kazahn. And so well preserved...

  Marhyd let her senses flow away from her body and into the surrounding water and stone. Yes... She could feel the lines of telluric force crisscrossing the cave, protecting the stones from the ebb of erosion. The network of grammar was vast, complicated, and self-supporting. That aspect alone made it a masterwork of a level unseen in centuries. Oh, for a year of quiet evenings in which to study its intricacies...

  And then the lamplight passed behind the head of the statue, and all conversation in the chamber ceased. The crystal that formed its hair caught the light, held it, and formed a halo of green to encircle the face. And what a face! Marhyd preferred them plump and innocent, but the statue projected a noble strength that was attractive in its own way. The combination of face and hair was enough to still the flow in her throat for just a moment, leaving her without words to speak.

  The mitera did not share her sense of wonder, nor her appreciation for beauty. "This should not be," Yesca muttered into the still waters, forgetting for a moment that she was not alone.

  "Should not be what, Your Holiness?" asked Marhyd.

  "This statue. It is wrong, misbegotten, in ways that should remain forgotten. It is a remnant of an evil time, when wicked mers turned to the Mother's eternal foe for dire inspiration."

  "Luher worship?" She tried to keep the humor out of her voice, though her eyes still rolled. In all her years, she had never heard of such things as being more than bubble and foam, rumors that only grew in the telling. At least, in the here and now. Her mother's mother had spoken of records, archives, lost long before the Fall of Le?si. She would have to search her memory when the time was available.

  "The Holy Temple has a long memory, ministra," said Yesca. The mitera attempted to smooth her hackles down, but her claws still showed. "The heresy was eliminated long ago, but this statue was a piece of it. The hair proves as much."

  "The green color, you mean? It really is a nice shade..."

  "Yes! When was the last time this was seen on a mer, this shade like the grasses on the far shelf-lands?"

  The mitera obviously meant this to be rhetorical, but Marhyd had an answer ready all the same: "This afternoon, according to my daughter."

  "What!?"

  A-ha! Another point for her! It was a good day for Marhyd's scorekeeping.

  "You should listen more carefully to official reports," the ministra said smugly. "One of the mers last seen with Her Highness was green of hair and scale. Personally, I thought her to be from some backwater lineage and nothing more, but..."

  "The description matches that of one mer from the Mere Sangolia," said Aysmin.

  "The one who was reported as killed," added Marhyd.

  "And whose mother was given to your tender care, ministra," the duchess shot back.

  That deserved a full-bodied huff of indignation. "Well, if I had been informed that Messra min Na?da had living relatives out there who might plot an escape, I would have requested more guards for the ministry tunnels. As it is, I am down two assistants and several rare pieces of fulgurous rune-work."

  The grizzled leondra was actually choking on her own water now. Bubbles sped from her gill slits and caught in her fur, lending the mitera an extra mane of froth and fury. Marhyd had never seen the like. For a five-beat, the only sound was the dull vibration of a growl passing through the mitera's teeth. The harmonics of its waves, densely packed, danced along the spines of all within earshot. It was a rare sound to hear from any of her race, proud as they were of their serenity and self control, and to Marhyd it was a shocking reminder of a time long ago when perhaps the foremothers of the leondra had not been so pacific. Not a current stirred, not a mer moved while the mitera had the black mood upon her.

  Marhyd took the opportunity to observe this dramatic lack of cool. It was so out of character. Whatever significance this green mer held was lost on the ministra, but that would have to change. It was her job to know secrets, and she had done so ably for many years. She would be sunk if she did not know what could cause such a froth in Her Holiness, but it must have been important indeed.

  "Search this place." When the words came, they were hardly better than the growl. "Determine which way the princess was taken, then remove all guards from these waters. Let no one else in. Ministra Marhyd." The low rumble bore down on her. "Once the duchess is finished with her business here, you are to destroy the statue and block all access to this space."

  "And how shall I do that, Your Holiness?"

  "Be creative."

  Or rather, the diametrical opposite of creative. Marhyd's mouth curled at the corners until her usual grin was a smile as broad as any shark's. Oh, she could think of all manner of ways to bring the entire cavern down; the only problem was that she could not use them all at once. The possibilities...

  She like Mitera Yesca far more when the leondra was angry. Such fury made for poor decisions, and thus great fun for her.