During a period of clear sky between squalls in the middle of the afternoon, they were standing at the rail halfway up the starboard foredeck, watching clouds as black as disaster drag purple and slashing rain across the water like sea-anchors, when a shout sprang from the foremast. A shout of warning. Honninscrave replied from the wheeldeck. An alarm spread through the stone. Heavy feet pounded the decks. The First and Pitchwife came trotting toward Linden and Covenant.
“What-?” Covenant began.
The Swordmain reached the rail beside Linden, pointed outward. Her gaze was as acute as a hawk's.
Pitchwife positioned himself directly behind the Unbeliever.
Suddenly, Seadreamer also appeared. For an instant, Linden leaped to the impossible conclusion that the Isle of the One Tree was near. But Seadreamer's stare lacked the precise dread which characterized his Earth-Sight. He looked like a man who saw a perilous wonder bearing down on him.
Her heart pounding, she swung to face the sea.
The First's pointing arm focused Linden's senses. With a shock of percipience, she felt an eldritch power floating toward the Giantship.
The nerves of her face tasted the weird theurgy before her eyes descried it. But then an intervening squall abruptly frayed and fell apart, dissipated as if its energy had encountered an apt and hungry lightning rod. She saw an area of calm advancing across the face of the sea.
It was wider than the length of the dromond, and its periphery was not calm. Around the rim, waterspouts kicked into the air like geysers. They burst straight upward as if no wind could touch them, reached as high as the Giantship's spars, then fanned into spray and rainbows, tumbled sun-bedizened back into the sea. In turn, irrhythmically, now here, now at the farther edge, the spouts stretched toward the sky like celebrants, defining the zone of calm with their innominate gavotte. But within their circle the sea lay fiat, motionless, and reflective-a sopor upon the heart of the deep.
The waterspouts and the calm, were moving with slow, bright delicacy toward Starfare's Gem.
Covenant tried again. “What-?” His tone was clenched and sweating, as if he felt the approaching power as vividly as Linden did.
Stiffly, the First replied, “Merewives” And Pitchwife added in a soft whisper, “The Dancers of the Sea.”
Linden started to ask, What are they? But Pitchwife had already begun to answer. Standing at Covenant's back, he breathed, “They are a widely told tale. I had not thought to be vouchsafed such a sight.”
The waterspouts were drawing near. Linden tasted their strength like a spray against her cheeks, though the sensation had no flavour except that of the strength itself-and of the faint poignance which seemed to arise like longing from the upward reach of the waters. But Honninscrave and Starfare's Gem made no attempt to evade the approach. All the Giants were entranced by wonder and trepidation.
“Some say,” Pitchwife went on, “that they are the female soul of the sea, seeking forever among the oceans for some male heart hardy enough to consummate them. Others say that they are the lost mates of a race which once lived within the deeps, and that their search is for their husbands, who have been slain or mazed or concealed. The truth I know not. But all tales agree that they are perilous. Their song is one which no man may gainsay or deny. Chosen, do you hear their song?” Linden did not speak. He took her response for granted. “I also do not hear it. Perhaps the merewives have no desire for Giants, as they have none for women. Our people have never suffered scathe from these folk.” His voice sharpened involuntarily as the first spouts wet the sides of the Giantship. “Yet for other men-!”
Linden recoiled instinctively. But the spray was only saltwater. The strength of the merewives did not touch her. She heard no song, although she sensed some kind of passion moving around her, intensifying the air like a distant crepitation. Then the first spouts had passed the dromond, and Star fare's Gem sat inside the zone of calm, resting motionless within a girdle of rainbows and sun-diamonds and dancing. The sails hung in their lines, deprived of life. Slowly, the Giantship began to revolve as if the calm had become the eye of a whirlpool.
“If they are not answered,” Pitchwife concluded, nearly shouting, “they will pass.”
Linden heard the strain in his voice, the taut silence beside her. With a jerk, she looked toward Covenant.
He was bucking and twisting against Pitchwife's rigid grasp on his shoulders.
Twenty Three: Withdrawl from Service
THE call of the merewives went through Covenant like an awl, so bright and piercing that he would not have known it for music if his heart had not leaped up in response. He did not feel himself plunging against Pitchwife's hold, did not know that he was gaping and gasping as if he could no longer breathe air, were desperate to inhale water. The song consumed him. Its pointed loveliness and desire entered him to the marrow. Vistas of grandeur and surcease opened beyond the railing as if the music had words –
Come to us for heart-heal and soul-assuage, for consummation of every flesh.
— as if the sun-glistered and gracile dance of the waterspouts were an utterance in a language he understood. Only Pitchwife's hands prevented him from diving into the deep sea in reply.
Linden's face appeared in front of him, as vivid as panic. She was shouting, but he did not hear her through the song. Only those hands prevented him from sweeping her aside on his way to the sea. His heart had stopped beating-or perhaps no time had passed. Only those hands-!
In a flash, his fire gathered. Wild magic burned through his bones to blast Pitchwife away from him.
But power and venom turned the music of the merewives to screaming in his mind. Revulsion flooded through him-the Dancers' or his, he could not tell the difference. They did not want a man like him-and Pitchwife was his friend, he did not wish to hurt his friend, not again, he had already hurt more friends than he could endure. In spite of Pitchwife's Giantish capacity to sustain fire, his grip had been broken. Not again!
Free of the song, Covenant stumbled forward, collided with Linden.
She grappled for him as if he were still trying to hurl himself into the sea. He wrestled to break loose. The passing of the music left incandescent trails of comprehension through him. The merewives did not want the danger he represented. But they desired men-potent and vital men, men to sustain them. Linden fought to hold him, using the same skills she had once used against Sunder. He tried to shout, Let me go! It isn't me they want! But his throat was clogged with memories of music. Consummation of every flesh. He twisted one arm free, pointed wildly.
Too late.
Brinn and Cail were already sprinting toward the rail.
Everyone had been watching Covenant. Seadreamer and the First had moved toward him to catch him if Linden failed. And they had all learned to rely on the invulnerability of the Haruchai. None of them could react in time.
Together, Brinn and Cail bounded onto the railing. For a fractional instant, they were poised in the sunlight, crouched to leap forward like headlong joy. Then they dove for the sea as if it had become the essence of all their hearts' desires.
For a moment like the pause of an astonished heart, no one moved. The masts stood straight and still, as if they had been nailed to the clenched air. The sails dangled like amazement in their shrouds. Yet the dromond went on turning. As soon as the calm gathered enough momentum, the vessel would be sucked down. The Haruchai had left no splash or ripple behind to mark their existence.