Defender of the Future
Book One of
the Tidesinger Trilogy

From the abyss at last rose Tidesinger's seed:
Out of dark, out of deep, into desperate need
Came the finned one, the air-breather
Star-brow, swift-scythe swimmer
Raced the moon in the tide-pools, chased
The Salmon-God's silver light.
A race 'gainst time he swam, 'gainst the deadly Foe.
Heir of the Lone-swimmer was he, the star-glow
On his forehead. He was the stone
That split the stream of time. Yet not alone
Swam the star-browed. Teeth-in-the-water swam
With him; rose dark from Atlantis' sand
Young spawn of Greshruk, scion of death
Whose jaws of legend rent Tidesinger's flesh.

This is the song, this is the story
Of Ocean's hope and Tidesinger's glory.

-from the Tale of Tidesinger

Chapter One

It was at the change of the tides, when the waters were at their highest, that destiny swam into Ecco's life. On reflection, he supposed, he should not have been surprised at that fact; every calf knew that the tides brought in change, and that the waning tide was the worst for bad things.

But, as the situation stood at the time, it came as a complete shock to the young dolphin when things started to happen. He was playing with Star, up and down the sandbanks in a noisy game that was at times chasing and at other times something else. Still an adolescent and only recently having left his mother's side, Ecco was one of the lowest-ranking members of the pod, and was generally thought of as rather silly. He didn't care; he liked to have fun.

He had it a lot with Star. He had been friends with the female dolphin ever since they had both been calves; their mothers were related in some erratic way. Star was a few weeks younger than he, but had a sense of mischief that would have rivaled anybody's. When they had been children, the terrible twosome had driven most of the adults to distraction at one time or another, often being punished for their over-boisterous spirits. The nearness of adulthood had done little to mellow them.

It was a warm day; the sunlight sparkled in the water. The two young dolphins chased each other through the shafts of sunlight, squeaking and whistling joyfully to each other and occasionally rising to the surface together to breathe. They feared little enough in the bay; the adults kept sharks out and there were few other things in the sea that would give a swift dolphin pause. Yet, today, something distracted the twosome from their leisure: a sound.

Momentarily breaking off the game, Star rolled on her side and exposed a long and creamy underbelly; the tip of one flipper trailed the water surface. "Do you hear that?" she asked, a long trill of clicks and pops.

Ecco paused in the water, listening. "Hear what?" he asked.

A moment later, he heard it too--the wailing song of something in desperate need. There was a pause, possibly for breath, and then another sad wail. He backfinned nervously, rolling his eye towards the deep blue at their right. Whoever it was, it was coming closer.

"It's not one of us," Star remarked, puzzled. "Where's his pod?"

The song was without words, but it was of pain--listening to it, Ecco could feel what the singer was feeling. The miserable agony of the wound, the fluking through the water with bloodtrail stretching out behind you--the sharks always at your tail, swimming up the path you left in your wake. It was an unnerving sound. He shivered involuntarily, imagining the teeth ripping at his flesh.

Other songs rippled out into the water; songs of confusion and sudden fear as the other dolphins responded to the stranger's cry. Shadows passed by in the water several feet away. There was Corse, the pod leader, and Dairine...

"Let's go!" Star exclaimed, sweeping by. Caught up in the sudden urgency, Ecco hurried to catch up with her, darting through the warm water. Other delphine shapes flashed past, all heading in the same direction.

He wrestled his way through a narrow pass and came out in the coral reef with Star at his shoulder. The owner of the voice was visible now, and just as Ecco had suspected, he was trailing blood. He was a different species to them; a common dolphin, colored gaudily with white, yellow and a deep Atlantic greeny-black. He came slowly, beating weakly with his tail and rolling continually onto one side before correcting. A ragged wound in the other dolphin's back told them what had happened. "Sharkbite," whistled Dairine from behind him, in a shocked tone. "Looks bad..." A slender coil of red trailed out behind the stranger, fading into fog with distance.

Corse and Ai wasted no time; without hesitating, or even looking for sharks, they fluked towards the stranger and supported him in the water. With the two bottlenoses helping out, the injured stranger ascended and took a long, shaky breath. The others fanned out to watch for predators as Corse and Ai helped their wounded acquaintance towards the shallower water where he could rest. Sonar shivered through the water like sunlight.

The stranger's head and fins drooped in utter exhaustion. Ecco shook himself into movement and kept pace with the slow procession, clicking worriedly; Star swam up beside him and lightly brushed his side for a moment before taking off elsewhere. He paid her no heed. Something was speaking to him--perhaps it was Sea itself. He had a strange feeling in his gut that this unknown would bring more than an exhausted lone one to their shores. Excitement, adventure...

"...Thanks..." the stranger gasped out weakly, "...owe you..."

"Never mind all that," Corse answered sternly, aiding the other up for another breath. "Just rest for now--talk later. We'll take care of you, don't worry."

"...no... I have to tell you now..." The stranger let out a stream of bubbles, struggling to continue. "Danger in... the waters..."

"Danger?" Ecco whistled out loud, unable to curb his curiosity. One or two of the adults eyed him balefully, warning him not to start chattering.

He wasn't needed, anyway; the stranger seemed more interested in talking than in resting. "Came for us... no warning... only survivor. You have to flee... please, you have to..."

The dolphins murmured uneasily amongst themselves, more than one backfinning a little out of nervousness. Corse took charge, wheeling around and chasing off one or two of the over-curious youngsters. Ecco backed off but remained in sight, desperate to know what the stranger was talking about.

"It attacked us at dawn," the stranger gasped out wearily. The utter exhaustion in his tone spoke volumes about how desperate he was to be heard--it was a struggle for him just to speak. Ai pressed against him, trying to comfort him by her touch. He rolled away from her in sudden fear and had to be steadied by Corse. "Came out of nowhere... I don't think the others escaped. Please... they'll come here sooner or later. You have to get help... can't fight this ourselves."

Ecco's eyes widened. Some creature? "Was it a shark?" he asked curiously, finning a little closer in his eagerness to hear the tale. "A feeding frenzy?"

The stranger let out a moan, and Corse rounded on Ecco, driving him off. "A shark," the pod leader whistled fiercely, once he had gotten Ecco far away enough. "Big shark took a bite out of his back. That's all you have to know. Now get out of here!"

"But I--"

"Go on!" Corse eyed him dangerously; Ecco turned tail and fled.

But he slowed down quickly, and was just able to hear the comment from Ai as Corse turned back.

"This is no shark bite..."

It was evening before Corse called the scattered pod together, and Ecco spent most of the intervening period nosing around the sandbanks, feeling grumpy and left out. Star tried to draw him out of his depression, but he chased her away.

Something within him knew this was a chance to do something. A chance of adventure. And Corse was depriving him of it! It wasn't fair!

Time seemed to pass far too slowly for the impatient young dolphin. When the call finally came out to assemble, he practically flew through the water. Corse had called them by the Meeting Stone, a tall pillar that stood by itself in the center of the bay; by the time Ecco arrived, there were only two others there. A little nervous in front of matriarch Ai and the battle-scarred warrior Klik, he drew his fins in and waited. Corse was in front of them, the stranger at his side. The wound on the other dolphin's back had finally stopped bleeding, Ecco saw, but it still looked very painful, and indeed when the stranger lifted his head and glanced at him, he saw the pain-mist still in the sad eyes.

He waited impatiently, surfacing to breathe often, while the others arrived in dribs and drabs. There were fifteen dolphins in the pod, including four very young calves; it was a reasonably sized group. Ecco eyed the stranger, wondering what had happened to his own group that he had limped in on his own.

Corse swam forward a length and sharply whistled the others to silence. Without wasting any time on formalities, the other dolphin went into business. "The stranger has something he would like to tell us." One or two of the younger bottlenoses whistled to each other knowingly, but Corse glared them to silence.

Slowly and stiffly, the stranger swam forward to face the unruly pod. "Thank you," he said quietly. His voice was calm now, and though still weak it lacked the wheezing tones of exhaustion it had had earlier. "Allow me to introduce myself. I am Orcus, leader of the Sun River Pod--although I fear they are no more. I am the only survivor."

Shocked whistles went up. Orcus gravely inclined his head.

"It is true. My pod entered coastal waters late last night after a journey across the Medusa Straits. I remember that my spouse was uneasy; she felt something had been stirred up by the great storm three nights ago." Ecco remembered the storm--it had been quite something. Orcus was looking over the silent dolphins; he was tiring now, it was no little effort for him to tell his story. He let out air and doggedly went on, his words washing over his spellbound audience like a current. "The creatures attacked at dawn. I never got a close look at them; they came up from below."

The common dolphin groaned softly to himself, reliving the experience, and when he next spoke, his voice was softer, almost dreamlike. He was back there. "The creatures cling like kraken, and they leave scars--but they have jaws like sharks too. I try to defend the pod, but the creatures are too many. I break many of them with swift charges. They slip between us and take the weak first, but then they attack the strong too, until the water is red with blood. They have a hunger greater than anything I ever saw before. I lose track of how many of my people still live... finally I know there are none left. I give a great cry--I rush at one of them. They have taken my spouse, Nautila, my love and light. I want to rejoin her in the afterlife--there is nothing left for me here. Jaws rake across my back and I feel the lifeblood rush from me. The pain makes me flee. I leave my pod and race across the straits. I am ashamed: I am a coward. Yet I dare not face the foe. I am too old, too infirm..."

"This is dreadful," Star moaned, shaking. "Please, somebody make him stop..." Ecco nudged her gently in the side, trying to comfort the stricken female.

Orcus gave a start, and then shook himself, coming back to the here and now. The common dolphin raised his gaze and swept the assembled pod before him. "I come before you now in disgrace," he said with a kind of desperate dignity. "I failed my pod when they had most need of me. I should have gone quietly into the night, but I loved my own vanishing life too much." A sigh escaped him in a silvery trail of bubbles. "The sharks came after me, of course--they sensed my distress, merciful beasts. I would have gone to them, but I remembered Nautila, and I could not give up. So I sought out other dolphins, barely knowing what I did. And I have brought you the tidings of my fall from grace, in order that you may be prepared for a struggle of your own."

There was a long silence.

"Orcus-fa," Corse said at last, giving the other dolphin the honorific suffix of a respected pod leader, "if only half of what you say is true, you were not to blame. No dolphin could have resisted a foe like that of which you speak. But are you sure that they were not sharks? A--a pack in the throes of the Tearing Hunger, perhaps?" The dolphins shifted and murmured at the mention of the Tearing Hunger, the shark frenzy.

Orcus shook his head. "Sharks I have seen, and many. In my younger days I fought off the great tiger sharks that menaced my people. I faced down a white pointer in the deep south. These things were not sharks." He gazed at the Sapphire Bay leader with a solemn, dark eye. "I tell you this in all honesty: sharks do not have such a great hunger as these things did. I swam where they had been, and the water was dead. Dead. Even the coral was stripped bare."

A great whistling and cacophony of voices rose up, most pregnant with dread. The idea of dead waters was a haunting one. All dolphins were used to the idea of death--mainly the death that came in a cloud of blood and silver scales and roiling finned jaws, but quite often the death that crept up unawares and took an old warhorse in his sleep. No, death was nothing new to them.

But things were always left behind in death--the mortal shells. Even sharks left something, whether it were a shred, a cloud of blood, a jawbone. And even sharks could be sated.

"Silence!" That was Corse's voice, piercing the din like a swordfish's charge. The pod leader cruised back and forth between Orcus and the others, until he had intimidated everybody into silence once again. "Now listen," he commanded, his voice coming sharp and clear, "we cannot afford to ignore this. I will take comments and suggestions. I appeal to you--what should we do?"

"Do as he says!" called Ai. "Flee while we can!"

"No!" broke in Klik. "We should investigate! Why flee from something you don't even know?"

"Stay put. Sun River is a long way from Sapphire Bay--they probably won't even come this way."

"That's insane! We have to get out of here!"

"Where would we go? This is our home--"

Ecco winced and drew in his fins. The debate escalated rapidly until it seemed that the whole of Sea was awash with shrill delphine voices. Everybody was shouting at each other, and it was becoming more and more clear to him that nobody knew what to do. His heart beat wildly. The fools! Wasn't it obvious?

"Send someone to ask the whales for help!"

The entire pod was silent. Ecco blinked. Who had said that?

Corse was staring at him. They were all staring at him.

He gulped. Oh, Sea... it wasn't me, was it?

Slowly, Corse cruised towards him, floating easily on the water. "That's your opinion, is it, young Ecco?" he asked. The buzzes and clicks in his voice set Ecco's teeth on edge.

"With all due respect, Corse-fa,", Ecco whistled respectfully--but unable to extinguish the tinge of irritation in his voice--"I think it's the only thing to do. Nobody here has seen these things before, and the only logical thing to do would be to ask the whales what to do."

Corse turned with a flick of his tail and began to circle again, around and around the exhausted Orcus. "You know, of course," he said, "it's out of the question. If there is such an enemy close at hand, I cannot afford to spare any of the pod's fighting members." He rolled in the water, and his eye swept over Ecco. The young dolphin felt a sudden irrational thrill. Was Corse suggesting..?

"Let me go," he whistled. Voices rose up again, in disbelief and scorn, but Corse whistled them all to silence.

"Let us hear what the youngling has to say," the pod leader ordered sternly. Ecco felt a sudden spurt of pride at that. Corse glanced at him, then at Orcus who was about all in; Ai was close by the common dolphin's shoulder, ready to support him if he needed it.

Everyone was looking at Ecco again, and he felt a hot flush; he was unaccustomed to having the whole pod listen to him, except when he was answering for one or other of his misdeeds. "Well, I..." he began, but his voice turned into a squeak. Embarrassed, he surfaced for air, took a calming breath, and then started again. "I think that, since we don't know what the creatures are or how to deal with them, we need to ask the advice of the whales. Nothing tackles a blue whale and lives. We wouldn't have to send a delegation--I could go on my own. The blues aren't far from here at this time of year, are they?" He was warming to the idea. "I could be there and back in a day or two."

"You would have to cross the straits," Orcus warned, "and run the gauntlet of the foe. Aren't you afraid of them, after what I told you?"

"I'm not scared," Ecco said bravely, and then quailed under Corse's eye. "Well, a little," he amended embarrassedly, "but it won't stop me, honest!" The dolphins were looking at each other dubiously, and he whistled in desperation. "Please, let me go! I promise I'll do my best--and--and I won't do anything to embarrass the pod!"

A short fizz of laughter went up at that last, legacy of Ecco's childhood escapades with Star. Corse glanced at Ai, and then back towards Ecco. "If my memory serves me right, the blues north of here are led by Sendarian," he said. "He is very old and wise; he might possibly have heard something of this foe."

Ecco's heart did a flip-flop. "So you're letting me go?" he asked hopefully.

Corse turned and coasted off, Ai and Klik close by. The three dolphin elders held a whispered conversation before coming back, sweeping past Orcus with dignified grace. "You'll have to go alone, young Ecco," Klik said sternly, "for we can't spare anybody else to go with you. You realize that it'll be dangerous."

"I know," Ecco said softly. "I want to do it. Please, let me try!"

The three elders had another quickly whispered conversation, then Corse turned to face Ecco once more. "Leave," he said. "We will consider your offer. Come to the mouth of the bay when the moon is high, and we will talk further."

Ecco turned, feeling the water of evening wash against his sides, and swam off slowly, very conscious of how heroic he must look. He felt Star's admiring eyes on his retreating tail, and his heart sang within him. This promised to be a great adventure.