Defender of the Future
book one of
The Tidesinger Trilogy

Chapter Seventeen

Consciousness returned slowly, and for a long while Ecco wasn't sure where he was or what he had been doing--only that there was a dull ache in his side, and a sharp stinging pain upon his back. Delphine voices sang softly to him, a song of peace and sleep. He opened his eyes for a moment, saw nothing, and returned to the world of darkness and silence.

He was brought round a second time by the awareness that somebody was touching him, gently supporting him in the water. The pain in his body had faded, but it was still there at the back of his mind, not yet willing to let him go. Slowly he opened his eyes and looked into the beautiful dark orbs of Naylle.

"Who... how..." Ecco couldn't manage to get the rest of his question out. He closed his eyes again and just lay there, feeling exhausted. Sounds were starting to fight for his awareness now--the sounds of dolphins, many dolphins, and whales as well. And in the background, the shrieking of the Foe, and a strange rushing, snarling, worrying noise that seemed to be coming from everywhere at once.

"How are you feeling?" Naylle asked softly, her voice calm and perfect like a finely tuned musical instrument.

"I..." He shook himself and started swimming with a convulsive jerk. The two dolphins who had been holding him up turned and moved off, away from the Stone. Ecco surfaced, remembered he didn't need air, and sank back down. Above them the moon was rising slowly in the south-eastern sky, full and round. The full moon... the time had come. Ecco blinked slowly, trying to understand. "The Foe..." He turned and faced Naylle, who waited silently for him to speak. Her white body glittered faintly with reflected moonlight, showing shimmering points of light on her sides. For a moment he was reminded of Mallidith, and he shivered despite himself, but Naylle's dark eyes were not like Mallidith's pale ones. Ecco shook himself again, remembering the terrible scene between him and the white dolphin, and spoke. "Karkol--"

"He will live," she said gently, seeing his distress. "He was badly injured, like you, but we came just in time to save you. We have been hard at work upon you both, singing songs of healing. You will need all the strength we can give you in the next few hours."

"The Moonsong..." Ecco breathed, then blinked. "The Slayer! Naylle, she chased off the Foe! Where's Greshruk? How did she come to be here in the first place?"

Naylle was smiling. "I think there is one here who can answer that better than I," she said, and made way for a small, bobbing light that made its way towards him, flanked by two porpoises.

"Chang!" Ecco squealed.

The angler-fish laughed at his surprise, and bobbed right up to him. Her fat little body trembled with delight at being reunited with him. "Hi, Ecco!" she cried joyfully. "Oh, there's so much to tell you!"

"The Slayer?" he prompted, then stared at her in utter shock. "No... you wouldn't have... You couldn't have!"

Naylle nodded gravely. "Word came up from the deep-down about the Foe massing in the north. Little Chang took it upon herself to carry the message to Greshruk, and told her that the Foe planned to stop the Song being performed. It is thanks to her that the sharks are here to defend us."

"The sharks?" Ecco repeated, knowing that he was being stupid.

"The Foe are outside the lagoon." Naylle lowered her head, and her paleness became more so. "I am so sorry, Ecco... the reason the Foe were here, waiting for you... it pains me to admit it, but one of our number turned traitor."

"Mallidith," Ecco said. "I know."

She looked at him in shock. "Mallidith? You knew--you saw him?" A whole gamut of expressions passed through her deep black eyes, starting with surprise and ending in grief. "Then... I am sorry for him also. He was to be leader after Afarellan. But, Ecco, do you know why he could have done this terrible thing?"

"I know why he did. I don't know why he could." Ecco sighed. "I'm sorry too. What will happen to him now?"

"We do not know," Naylle said softly. "Nobody has seen him." A spark kindled in her eyes as she went on, "But he will never come back to Lunar Bay, Ecco. There can be only one punishment for such treachery--banishment. No singer will speak his name, no creature of the water, land or air will exchange words with the one who would have given the world away."

Ecco dropped his head.

The white dolphin whistled softly, making an effort to pull herself out of the gloom into which they had both fallen. "Ecco," she said firmly, "now is not the time. We will grieve later. But now we have to prepare ourselves for the Song--and we have little enough time as it is. The Foe are massed outside the lagoon, and only the bravery of the Slayer and her people prevent them from storming the Stone itself. Are you still prepared to do this?"

"Yes," he said, steeling himself, and then asked, "What about Karkol?"

She nodded. "We have done the best we could, in the time. Follow me, Ecco, and I will take you to him."

The vibrations of battle filtered through the water as Ecco followed Naylle across the lagoon. That rushing, tearing noise that had woken him was the sound made by thousands of sharks as they fought and rolled, killing and being killed. Ecco remembered Karkol's funny turn that morning, and how the young shark had spoken dreamily about death in the water. "Naylle?" he asked, and the white dolphin glanced back at him. "The Slayer--she's fighting for us? I thought sharks didn't gather together, but I can hear... Delphinius, you know what I can hear!"

Naylle nodded slowly. "It is true, sharks do not come together--save when the Slayer calls. She has gathered every finned one for thousands of miles to her standard. At the moment, her people are the only thing standing between us and destruction. I do not know how much longer they can last, so we must hurry. The moon is nearly full..."

Karkol was lying on his belly in the shallow water, flat out on the sand with his eyes closed. Two dusky dolphins stood guard over the big shark; they bowed respectfully as Naylle approached, and backed away. For one horrible moment, seeing Karkol so still, Ecco thought that he was dead--a great white shark never stopped swimming--but then he remembered that Karkol had the Power of Air and no longer needed to keep moving. Slowly he approached, seeing the pale and sunken marks of what had been horrific wounds on the body of his friend.

"Did you... heal... him?" he asked hesitantly, looking back at Naylle.

"We did," she answered gravely. "In the same way we healed you, Ecco--we still have a little of the old magic. We struggled with him a little--delphine healing does not easily work on those not of our kind--but eventually we won through. Look, he wakes..."

Karkol's muscles trembled, and slowly the shark opened his eyes. He looked up, a little confused to find himself stationary, and then saw the dolphins gathered around him. "Huh..?" he said dizzily. "Ecco?.."

"It's me," he agreed, relieved almost beyond words to see the shark alive. "You okay, big guy?"

Karkol pushed off the sand and started to swim, a little jerkily. Ecco fell in beside him, and Naylle stayed with them a little way off. "I'm okay," the shark said after a moment. "Bit stiff. What the heck happened back there?"

Ecco laughed. "The Slayer, Karkol--she came and saved us! She brought all the sharks to fight, too!"

"Not only sharks, my friend..." The fluting tones of another familiar voice sped through the water to them, heralding the approach of a familiar face. The black-and-white body of a killer whale appeared out of the murk. There were cuts and slashes all over Khorik's body, but he was grinning wider than the Slayer even could at their shock and surprise. "How is it with you, hunt-brothers? I knew we would meet again!"

"I don't believe it!" Karkol yelled. "You--you got away?"

"Not only myself, but my mate and my two calves." Khorik's brown eyes twinkled brightly. "We grieve for our hunt-brothers and hunt-sisters who perished, but we know that they gave their lives for something they believed in--and in the eyes of Delphinius, is that not living?" The whale backfinned a little, and bowed. "We have come to lend our voices to the song, my friends. Not for all the world would we miss this fight!"

"This is more than I ever hoped for," Ecco said, hardly able to get the words out. "Khorik--I'm so glad you're alive. And the calves, too! We both thought... well, you know."

"'Tis but a scratch," the whale said with a grin, though his black-and-white hide was riddled with barely closed scars. "Well, hunt-brothers, we must take our leave and our places in the circle! The whole world will be joining in this song!"

And with that, Khorik swept away into the misty water. The moon shone above, nearly at its zenith, a great round ball of white light.

"Come," Naylle said, moving forward, "back to the Stone. Everybody is waiting now; we are nearly ready."

"Who's singing?" Ecco asked curiously, hurrying to catch up with the white dolphin. Karkol swam at his side, already losing some of the stiffness that had slowed his usual grace.

"Almost everyone," Naylle said, not looking back. "The birds flew faster than we could have hoped, Ecco--the word ran across the waters like a lightning bolt. We have the blue whales down from the far north, the killers, the humpbacks... many hundreds of dolphins, even those who had never before ventured out of the estuaries where they lived. We even have word that our cousins on land, from whom we have been sundered many millions of years, are going to lend their voices to the song."

As they swam into the lee of the Stone, Ecco saw what she had meant. The moonlit water of the lagoon was filled with dark shapes--he had to use his sonar to click a path through all the warm bodies. Voices of all kinds sounded softly in the water--pilots, humpbacks, right whales, fin whales, minke whales, common dolphins, sawtooth dolphins, bottlenoses and white dusky dolphins, porpoises... and fish, millions of fish! After the isolated waters through which they had traveled, this teeming multitude was a shock to the system. Ecco felt buffeted by sound, and everybody seemed to be turning to look, saying his name... He was sure that he caught sight of Castor's familiar face in the midst of a group of sperm whales, and that the great one smiled at him.

They stopped at the base of the Stone itself--Ecco and Karkol waited as Naylle spoke softly and questioningly to a great dark shape, shaping her high delphine voice around the mellow vowels of whalesong. In a few moments the whale answered, in a cacophony of stunningly beautiful sound. The white dolphin responded swiftly then turned back to where Ecco and Karkol were. "This is Talobrenderiel," she said, working carefully around the long and ornate name. "She is young, but the best singer among the humpback kind. She and her cousin Wylalaeraen will be leading the Moonsong."

Ecco bowed his forequarters respectfully as the humpback came towards them. "I'm honored to make your acquaintance, Talobren...brenderiel." He stuttered on the name, and flushed in embarrassment. "Pardon me... your name is very difficult for me..."

The whale buzzed out laughter that tickled his skin. "I understand," she said in a voice like melting honey. "If you like, you may call me Bren. And my cousin's shorter name among your kind is Wil." Ecco smiled gratefully, thankful for the overture.

"It's good of you to come all this way," Karkol said, looking up at the whale. "I mean, you must've come hundreds of miles. You're from the deep south, aren't you? I recognized the accent."

"I am," Bren agreed. "It was a long way, but we are used to the traveling. We are grateful to be here and to participate in the song. We wish you good luck, friends."

"Thanks," Ecco answered softly, glancing at the shark. Karkol said nothing more, but looked at Bren with a curious expression in his dark black eyes. Above them, the moon was within a few degrees of midnight.

Suddenly there was a flurry of movement among the whales--giant bodies moved with nervous swiftness, ducking and diving out of the way. A great pale bulk slid silently through the water towards the Stone, moonlight gleaming off its back. Ecco backfinned nervously, seeing the Slayer approach, but Greshruk merely looked at him for a long moment. She was covered in wounds--great deep gashes across her head and back, some still oozing red--but she seemed almost unaffected by her injuries. She was so huge that the Foe had not been able to cause any serious damage yet, although they were obviously working on it. "Well met, small fry," she said in her low, hissing voice, and many of the nearest whales drew away a little more.

"Greshruk," Ecco said carefully. "Thanks for coming, even after what happened."

She nodded slowly, her jaws working. "It seems I'll have to put off my plans regarding you for a little while yet."

"I'm grateful," he said sincerely.

Greshruk's black eyes switched to Karkol, who watched her with a kind of frightened fascination. "I know you, flesh of my flesh," the Slayer said slowly. "I never thought to see a child of mine swimming with one of Tidesinger's whelps... well, well. I charge you--keep him safe until he has done what he needs to do."

"I'll do my best," Karkol said stoutly, gaining heart from the Slayer's neutral tone.

"Hm." She looked at him, then back at Ecco. "Well, this will be a night to remember..."

There was another commotion from the whales--voices were raised. Flashing in the moonlight, a slender blue shark slipped between them and dashed up to Greshruk. She turned, jaws agape as if she would snap up the graceful pelagic hunter, but it darted quickly out of the way. "Slayer... swiftly... breaking through..." the shark gasped out, then turned tail and dashed back out of the shadow of the Stone, towards the entrance of the lagoon.

"I must go," Greshruk said, turning ponderously. She cast one eye back towards them. "There will be good eating indeed for me and mine this night." And with that parting shot the Slayer left the circle, a sharp-toothed goddess of death under the pale moon. The whales rumbled nervously amongst themselves as she vanished into the darkness.

"Now," Naylle said quietly, swimming forward, "it is time. Thank you all for coming in such a dangerous time. I am sure you all know what is at stake here. We must sing the Moonsong once more, and allow Ecco and Karkol to ascend the moonstream and stop the Foe. The sharks are doing their best to hold them back underwater, and the air is guarded likewise by our winged allies. While we still have the time, let us sing from the depths of our heart." She paused. "Delphinius looks down upon us and our cousins all around the world. Let us make him proud of his children. Now, my friends--let us sing down the moon!"

"We're really dead this time," Karkol muttered. Ecco gave him a wry look and ascended towards the surface of the water. The Stone towered above them, but its shadow was barely there now--the moon was right above their heads, and the Stone was pointing directly towards it. Moonlight showered the entire lagoon, lighting everything up in pure silver.

The killers were the ones who started it. Their soft, rich voices sounded clear as a bell through the murky water that was now tossed by violent winds. Largest of the dolphinkind, the killers' song sounded of their fierce, joyful natures. In moments they were joined by the shrill singing of the dolphins and porpoises, and then by the slow majestic caroling of the great whales.

The winds began to slow, and then die away. Above, the clouds slipped away from the face of the moon and the silvery light brightened and grew stronger. Distinctly audible in the distance was the sound of the battle being fought between the Foe and the sharks.

Ecco and Karkol floated silent in the middle of it, too amazed and awed to speak. Every voice around them was lifted into song, not delphine and not the common patois known to every creature in the sea--this was the ancient rolling melody of true whalesong. The sound thundered inside their bodies, rocked the very water in which they swam.

Above their heads, the song was heard and taken up by the birds who circled and fought the aerial foe--the albatrosses, the gulls, the eagles who had come overland to fight for them. Their high, wild voices took it up and threw it across the high airs until it came to land itself, and was caught up in its turn by those who had waited there for it. The creatures of five continents lifted their muzzles to the great round moon and sang out in a million different voices their overpowering love for their world.