“Sir,” Nita said, rather unnerved, “I’ll be careful.”
“That is well.” Aroooon looked for a moment at Kit before speaking. “It js a whalesark, is it not?”
“Yes, sir,” Kit said in the same respectful tone Nita had heard him use on his father.
“Have a care of it, then, should you find yourself in one of the more combative parts of the Song,” said Aroooon. “Sperm whales were fighters before they were singers, and though their songs are often the fairest in the sea, the old blood rises too often and chokes those songs off before they can be sung. Keep your mouth closed, you were best, and you’ll do well enough.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Enough politeness, young wizard,” Aroooon said, for the first time sounding slightly crusty. “If size is honor, you have as much as I; and as for years, just keep breathing long enough and you’ll have as many of those as I do. — S’reee, you travel more widely now than I, so I put you a question. Are the shakings in the depths worse these days than they ought to be at this time of year and tide of Moon?”
“Much worse, Eldest. That was why Ae’mhnuu originally wanted to convene the Song. And I don’t know if the Song will be in time to save the fishing grounds to the east and north, around Nantucket and the Races. Hot water has been coming up close to there, farther east and south. The Shelf is changing.”
“Then let us get started,” Aroooon said. “I assume you came to ask me to call in some of the Celebrants, time being as limited as it is.”
“Yes, Aroooon. If you would. Though as the rite requires, I will be visiting the Pale One tomorrow, in company with HNii’t and Kit. The meeting place for the Song is to be ten thousand lengths north-northeast of the shoals at Barnegat, three days from now. A fast rehearsal — then right down the channel and through the Gates of the Sea, to the place appointed.”
“Well enough. Now administer me the Celebrant’s Oath, Senior, so that I may lawfully call the others.”
“Very well.” S’reee swam up close to Aroooon, so that she was looking him straight in one eye with one of hers; and when she began to sing, it was in a tone even more formal and careful than that in which she had greeted him.
”Aroooon u’aoluor, those who gather to sing that Song that is the Sea s shame and the Sea’s glory desire you to be of their company. Say, for my hearing, whether you consent to that Song.” „
“I consent,” the Blue said in notes so deep that coral cracked and fell on rock shelves some yards away, “and I will weave my voice and my will and my blood with that of those who sing, if there be need.”
“I ask the second time, that those with me, both of your Mastery and not, CTiay hear. Do you consent to the Song?”
“I consent. And may my wizardry and my Mastery depart from me sooner than I abandon that other Mastery I shall undertake in the Song’s celebration.”
“The third time, and the last, I ask, that the Sea, and the Heart of the Sea, shall hear. Do you consent to the Song?”
“Freely I consent,” Aroooon sang with calm finality, “and may I find no place in that Heart, but wander forever amid the broken and the lost, sooner than I shall refuse the Song or what it brings about for the good of those who live.”
“Then I accept you as Celebrant of the Song, as Blue, and as latest of a line of saviors,” S’reee said. “And though those who swim are swift to forget, the Sea forgets neither Song nor singer.” She turned a bit, looking behind her at Hotshot. “Might as well get all of you done at once,” she said. “Hotshot?”
“Right.”
The dolphin went through the Oath much faster than Aroooon had, though his embarrassment at being referred to as Swift-Fire-In-The-Water was this time so acute that Nita actually turned away so she wouldn’t have to look at him. As for the rest of the Oath, though, Hotshot recited it, as Nita had expected, with the mindless speed of a person who thinks he has other more important matters to attend to.
S’reee turned to Nita. “We can’t give K!t the Oath yet,” she said. “We don’t know who he’s going to be.”
“Can’t you just give it to me and leave that part blank or something?” Kit said eagerly. He loved ceremonies.
“Kit!”
“No, Kit. HNii’t, do you know the words?”
“The Sea does,” she said, finding it true. S’reee had already begun the ritual questioning; Nita felt for the response, found it. “I consent, and I will weave my voice and my will and my blood with that of those who sing, if were be need.” It was astonishing, how much meaning could be packed into a few notes. And the music itself was fascinating; so somber, but with that odd thread of joy running through it. She threw herself into the grave joy of we final response. “… And may I find no place in that Heart, but wander forever amid the broken and the lost, sooner than I shall refuse the Song or what it brings about for the good of those who live.”
“Then I accept you as Celebrant of the Song, and as Silent One, and as the latest in a line of saviors. And though those who swim are swift to forget, the Sea forgets neither Song nor singer.” S’reee looked at Nita with an expression in those blue eyes of vast relief, so much like the one she had given her and Kit when they’d first agreed to help that Nita shuddered a little with the intensity of it, then smiled inside. It was nice to be needed.
“That was well done,” Aroooon said slowly. “Now, S’reee, give me names so I’ll know whom to call.”
A few moments of singing ensued as S’reee recited the names of five whales Nita had never heard of. Her inner contact with the Sea, moments later, identified them all as wizards of various ratings, all impressive. Aroooon rumbled agreement. “Good enough,” he said. “Best get out of the area so that I may begin Calling.”
“Right. Come on, Kit, HNii’t. Till the Moon’s full, Aroooon—“
“Till then.”
They swam away through the darkening water. S’reee set the pace; it was a quick one. “Why did we have to leave in such a hurry?” Kit said.
“There aren’t many wizardries more powerful than a Calling,” S’reee said as she led them away. “He’ll weave those whales’ names into his spell, and if they agree to be part of the Song, the wizardry will lead them to the place appointed, at the proper time.”
“Just by singing their names?”
“Kit, that’s plenty. Don’t you pay attention when someone calls you by your name? Your name is part of you. There’s power in it, tied up with the way you secretly think of yourself, the truth of the way you are. Know what a person’s name means to him, know who he feels he is — and you have power over him. That’s what Aroooon is using.”
That was a bit of information that started Nita’s thoughts going in nervous circles. How do I think of myself? And does this mean that the people who know what I think can control me? I’m not sure I like this…
The first note rumbled through the water behind them, and Nita pulled up short, curling around in a quick turn. “Careful, HNii’t!” S’reee sang, a soft, sharp note of warning. Nita backfinned, hovering in the water. “Don’t disturb his circle—“
Looking back, she wouldn’t have dreamed of it. The water was growing darker by the second, and as a result the glow of the krill in it was now visible — a delicate, shimmery, indefinite blue-green light that filled the sea everywhere. The light grew brighter, moment by moment; but it was brighter still at the surface, where the waves slid and shifted against one another in a glowing, undulating ceiling. And brightest of all was the track left by Aroooon’s swimming — a wake that burned like clouds of cool fire behind him with every slow stroke of his tail.
At the head of the wake, Aroooon himself traced the grand curves of his spell, sheathed in bubbles and cold light. One circle he completed, melding into itself as he sang that single compelling note; then he began another at right angles to the first, and the water burned behind him, the current not taking the brilliance away. And the blue’s song seemed to get into the blood, into the bone, and would not be shaken—