Defender of the Future
Book one of
The Tidesinger Trilogy

Chapter Eight

At least there were fish down here, Ecco thought morosely as he snapped up one of them. Foul little things, all spines, but they were edible if you didn't mind lightly lacerated jaws.

Greshruk's rage had brought what seemed like half a mountain down into the little inlet. There was no way back; all he could do was explore the caves and search for another way out. So far he had been here for several hours. Here and there he had found air-pockets where more or less pure oxygen had been trapped in the tunnels; they provided breathing places for the tired dolphin. He was more or less getting used to the darkness, as his ability to navigate purely on sonar grew better. All the same it was unpleasant, nosing around in the blackness.

The largest creature he had "seen" so far had been a gurnard, a bottom-feeding fish. It looked as lost as he was as it poked slowly along one of the smaller tunnels. Ecco was getting a feel for the tunnels now, an idea of how they were laid out. He appeared to have wandered into a maze of natural caves which honeycombed the rock beneath the ocean floor--or possibly he was actually below land now, he had no way of knowing. At least there was nothing dangerous down here, or so he hoped.

Currently he was progressing slowly through the tunnel network, moving from air pocket to air pocket in a bid to conserve his air. He had never before been in a position where he couldn't surface should he need it, and his new circumstances necessitated a change in his thinking. You had to go slow, measure your ability to continue, always have a rough idea of how far you could go before you needed to breathe.

Ecco had no idea how long he had been down here, but it seemed to have been a long time so far. The tunnels seemed to lead down all the time, and he had soon lost his bearings in the dark and the twisting passages. He was no longer sure which way exactly was north, and that was a strange feeling.

Talking to Greshruk had been a mistake. He should never have called to the great white; he could have realised what would happen when he attracted her attention! Sharks were sharks, no matter how old they were. Ecco let out air in irritation at himself. He had nobody else to blame--Quiahuit had warned him that the Slayer would not be amenable.

"Still, somebody could have told me what the Slayer was!" he whistled to himself, annoyed.

He was swimming down a long and twisting tunnel that was in places very steep, using his sonar to see his way. It was almost as good as eyes--better at night, and invaluable when finding your way around in murky water. The tunnel unfolded in his mind as if he were seeing it, even its textures rendered lovingly. Ecco swung his head slowly from side to side as he swam, brushing his sonar over the walls like a delicate antenna. He remembered something he had heard from a porpoise once: there were actually dolphin species that were blind. River dolphins, or something like that--they lived in estuaries that were so stirred up with mud and sand that they had actually lost their eyes over the years. There was something faintly revolting to him about that thought--a dolphin, pale and eyeless, nosing along the bottom, disturbing clouds of fine silt with its snout.

Ecco had been doing a lot of thinking while he was swimming down here. There was little else to do, and the constant darkness seemed to make his brain work on overdrive. He swam steadily on down, remembering all sorts of things he had heard in his life, tales of sea-monsters and caves of secret wonders. "Hah," he muttered to himself. Maybe there were secret wonders down here somewhere... nobody ever mentioned those caves being dark.

He stopped dead suddenly. There was something moving up ahead--he could hear the scrabbling. And... Love of Delphinius! Was that a... LIGHT?

A faint reflected glow was coming off the walls ahead, where the passage turned. A shadow flickered there, coming slowly closer. Ecco blinked, trying to accustom his eyes to the new level of light, and then frowned. If he was not much mistaken, the light was actually moving...

"Hello?" he called, and there was a sudden flurry of movement. The light-bearer was swimming swiftly away, taking the light with it; things rapidly grew darker again. Ecco gave chase swiftly. "Wait!" he cried out. "Please! I won't hurt you--I just want the light!"

He rounded a corner and saw it again. There was a glowing thing which had wedged itself tightly into a crack in the rocks; the tunnel opened out here into another submarine cave. Ecco looked around with wonder; from the pale radiance he could see the colors in the stone for the first time. The rocks were coated with glittering substance, all the colors of the reef and more, and the light shone through great crystals of it. Ecco stared around, his eyes widening as he realized: they weren't a natural phenomenon. There were pictures, just visible at the edge of the light.

The dolphin returned his attention to the owner of the light. Whatever the thing was, it seemed afraid of him, and he could see even from the small portion visible that the creature was smaller than he. He swam slowly towards it and stopped two lengths away, trying not to startle it. "Er... hello?" he asked hesitantly.

The creature shrank back into its hole a little more.

"Please, I won't hurt you. I just want to use your light--if that's okay." Ecco sighed a little. "I'm lost down here, and I can't see where I'm going."

There was a pause "You a whale?" the creature asked in a small, suspicious voice.

He laughed. "You think I could fit in here if I was?"

"You sound like one... you're not going to eat me?"

Ecco shook his head. "No way, I promise."

The creature came out of its hole, hesitantly, and looked up at him with eyes the size of dinner-plates. He had to narrow his own eyes to make it out behind the light of its lantern.

It was a fish, or something like--but it was like no fish he had ever seen. The creature had a fat, squat body, and ridiculously small fins; its mouth was filled with spiky teeth that stuck out in all directions. Its body was dotted with small points of light like miniature stars. And, most bizzarely of all, was the main light-giver--a tendril or tentacle sprouted from the fish's forehead, to end in a bulb which hovered in front of its mouth. The bulb was giving off a pale white light which seemed startlingly bright in the darkness of the caves.

Ecco wanted desperately to ask what the creature was, but he didn't want it to think him rude--he could manage on sonar alone, but he much preferred being able to see what he was doing. "Hello," he said, as politely as he could. "I'm Ecco. Erm... do you live here?"

"Not exactly," the fish said, looking at him unhappily. "I'm lost. I sort of wandered in here, and I don't know how to get out. Do you know?"

"Sorry," he sighed. "What's your name?"

"Chang. I'm an angler-fish," the fish added. It put an odd little upwards stress on the end of that, as if it were asking him a question. Its dinner-plate eyes blinked uncertainly at him, and he realized that despite the size of those orbs, it didn't really have very good eyesight at all. He got a strange and unrelated feeling that it was a girl.

"I've never heard of angler-fish," Ecco admitted, glad simply to have someone to talk to. "I'm a dolphin. --I guess you haven't heard of those, huh?" He whistled in sudden realisation, looking at the glowing lights on the angler-fish's body. "Oh, you're a deep-down dweller, aren't you?"

"I should be," Chang said unhappily. "I've been stuck in here for months maybe... I can't find a way out."

"Well, we want the same thing, anyway..." Ecco looked at the angler-fish with a sudden grin. "Why don't we work together for a little while? I could use your light, and I guess you could probably use the company!"

Chang blinked. "You mean, go around together? Isn't that a little... weird?"

"With two of us, we both stand a better chance of getting out of here..." Ecco curled his tail-flukes in a delphine shrug. "What about it? We can try one of these new tunnels, as soon as I find some air."

"Air?" The angler-fish stared at him with wonder. "What's that?"

Ecco blinked. The culture gap had rarely seemed so wide.

Even Chang had to admit, though, they made much better time together. Ecco managed to persuade the angler-fish to swim up and cast her light on the pictures for him; aided by the pale glow, he was able to examine them. They made no sense to him.

Pictures lined the tunnels here, which seemed strangely regular in places--the rock walls were composed of stone blocks that lay together in a regimental fashion. Ecco had never seen anything quite like it before--he nosed at them, trying to figure out their secret. On the walls were pictures--of dolphins and other sea life, but mainly of one particular dolphin he saw again and again. The beast had a long white body, turning to smoky black along the extremities--the nose, the tail, the fins. It also had a tail that was shaped more like a sickle than anything else he had seen, and the whole thing was strangely elongated. Clear gems studded its body, like stars. This odd stranger was depicted resting on the back of a manta ray, appearing to lead a school of fish, and even giving a ride to what could only have been Man. One picture had particular resonance for Ecco: the white dolphin was shown curled in a deep crack, while outside a great shark circled.

"Why are you so interested?" Chang asked, irritated. "They're nothing special, they're all over the place down here. They get boring after a while."

"I guess..." Ecco said doubtfully, swimming down the tunnel a little further. "Hey, what about this one?" The white dolphin was in a kind of hall, lined with pillars, and appeared to be speaking--or attacking--something strange composed of twisting lines of spheres.

"Come on, Ecco!" the angler-fish begged. "Let's just see what's at the end, okay?"

"Okay," Ecco sighed, tearing his attention away. He followed Chang along the passage and managed to keep his eyes off the pictures for fully two more lengths, before he caught sight of something which made him stop dead. "Chang! Come here, quick!"

"Now what?" the angler-fish muttered, swimming back with her stubby tail vibrating like a motor.

The white dolphin was facing two creatures. Even painted on the wall, they were horribly familiar to Ecco. Foe. The white dolphin's slender body was curled, preparing to charge; one of the Foe hung back, limbs spread wide, while the other charged. He could see the jaws that had been lovingly rendered, the teeth glimmering white, and he shuddered.

"They're funny things," Chang remarked. "Looks a bit like a kraken... or maybe a gulper."

"I've seen them before," Ecco said darkly. "They're terrible monsters. Think of whatever's the most frightening thing in the sea, and then double that. That's how bad they are."

"Worse than a gulper?" The angler-fish stared at the picture. "Wow."

Ecco turned to move on, and then nearly inhaled water again as he saw the next picture. The white dolphin again, with its head poking out of the water. Above it was a night sky, in which hung a gigantic silver moon; Chang's light gleamed off the reflective surface. Cascades of what seemed like water were pouring down from the moon into the water; the dolphin seemed to be prepared to swim up the cataract. Singing down the moon... Tidesinger! These pictures told the story of Tidesinger!

"You said there are more of these?" he asked the angler-fish.

"Sure." Chang cocked her head to one side. "Like I said. They're all over the place. Half the tunnels are covered with them. Why?"

"I can't explain right now, but this could turn out to be really important..." Ecco realised he needed air. "Come on. We'd better get going--"

"What?" Chang looked at him in puzzlement. "What's up with you?" He had stopped dead.

"Ssh!" he hissed frantically.

He could hear it. Clear as a bell. A faint, high, alien screeching, somewhere within the tunnels themselves. The confused acoustics meant he couldn't tell whether the noise was coming from ahead or behind, but it was there... The Foe! "Chang?" Ecco said softly. The angler-fish looked up at him, blinking her dinner-plate eyes. "I don't know if you can hear, but... Those things in the picture... they're in here with us."

"What? We have to get out of here!"

"I know! Keep calm!"

"Worse than a gulper and you want me to keep calm?"

"Swim," he said coldly, and started to follow his own advice, moving slowly along the tunnel. Chang kept by him, whimpering softly to herself. Ecco already knew the angler-fish wasn't a particularly fast swimmer; he cursed inwardly. If they were to meet the Foe, he would have to make a tough decision... flee, or try and save his small companion.

The tunnel ended just ahead. Ecco and Chang swam out together, and he rose up to collect air from the pocket above. Diving again, he listened hard. The screeching was louder, and it had a pleased sound to it. They've picked up my trail, he thought grimly. They must be able to smell me, like a shark would smell bloodtrail. He cast about, trying to tell exactly where the sound was coming from. There... the Foe were somewhere back the way they had come. Ecco envisioned the monsters coming for him, flying through the tunnels like terrible ghosts... screeching as they closed in. He trembled.

"Ecco?" Chang was nudging him. "Ecco, what are we going to do?"

He glanced down at the smaller fish. "They're after me, but they'll take you too when they find you--there's nowhere you can hide from them." There was an opening in the floor of this particular cavern, leading down still further. It was the only way to go. Ecco looked towards the tunnel from whence they had come, hearing the tone of jubilation in the voices of the approaching Foe. They knew...

"Chang, do you trust me?"

"What?" She stared at him.

"Do you trust me?" Ecco asked insistently.

"I--I--yes, I trust you. Why--?"

He lunged at her. She tried to get away, but his jaws clamped down on her plump body. Holding the  struggling, squealing angler-fish as best as he could, Ecco hissed, "Stay calm! I'm going to get us away!"

Dark shapes appeared at the far end of the tunnel. The Foe's screeching reached fever pitch as they saw Ecco with the angler-fish and screamed towards him. He wasted no more time: tightening his grip on Chang, who appeared to have gone limp with shock, he flung up his tail and dived down into the hole in the floor.

The Foe came after him, but the new-found toughness in his muscles allowed him to keep ahead of them and even gain a little. All that exercise had come in useful... Chang's light saved him from having to use his sonar, which would have wasted time. He dashed from hole to hole, tunnel to tunnel--each time when he came out into a larger cavern making a split-second decision which way to go. He didn't allow himself to even consider the possibility that he would run into a dead end. How many are behind me? He couldn't tell--from the screeching, maybe half a dozen. Tidesinger, help me!

Octupi and strange, transparent things scuttled out of his way as Ecco came charging down the shaft. He was going straight down now, he knew--the water pressure was tough, but he could bear it, he'd been acclimatising slowly as he explored the deeper tunnels.

Something snapped at his tail, and he forced more speed out of himself, drawing away from them again. The bottom of the shaft was fast approaching, and Ecco stifled a squeak of rage and fear when he couldn't see another passage for a moment. Then Chang's light fell on a low tunnel which had been obscured by an overhang, and he swept towards it without a second thought. The Foe were only a few lengths behind him as he dashed into the new, horizontal passage. Bright pictures lined the walls and ornate stonework gleamed in Chang's light, but Ecco had no time to glance either left or right. He almost flew through the low passage, scraping his dorsal fin on the roof, and shot out into another cavern--a much larger one, from which there was no exit. There was something in here, but Ecco didn't have time to take it in. Releasing a stunned Chang from his jaws, he turned with a snarl of rage to face down the Foe--to battle at long last.

There was a great heap of loose rock just above the tunnel entrance, held up only by thin supporting slabs. An idea hit him like a thunderbolt. Thanks, Greshruk!

He flung himself forward, ramming his body into the wall of the cavern with as much strength as he could muster. It knocked much of the air out of him, but he didn't care--with a slow crashing noise, the rocks fell and blocked the entrance. One of the Foe made it out, but was crushed beneath the tons of masonry; the others were blocked back in the tunnel, behind several square feet of solid stone. Their enraged shrieks became muffled.

Ecco allowed himself to relax for a moment, hanging in the still water as if dead, and then he turned to see why Chang's light seemed to have gotten so much brighter all of a sudden, and was flickering so much. The angler-fish was swimming shakily about, blinking in a shocked, owlish fashion and bleeding slightly where his teeth had grazed her skin. But she wasn't the main light source any more.

There was something else. He whistled, remembering the pictures he had seen. Tidesinger, speaking to the strange jewelled sphere-strands. The thing from the picture was right in front of him. From floor to ceiling of the great cavern, two--no, three, four even--long chains of balls hung, forming a slowly shifting spiral as they twisted around each other. It was these spheres that gave off the light; they shone with pearly hues, all the colors in the rainbow.

"Chang?" Ecco asked softly.

The angler-fish turned towards him. "Is--is it alive?" she whispered. There was no doubt as to what she referred to.

A voice sounded through the cavern, but it was not Ecco's.

Yes, little one. The spheres glittered, pulsating with light. We are indeed alive. Although it has been long since we have known it. You have woken us from our long slumber.

Ecco gulped. "Who are you?" he asked tremulously. Chang's eyes were filled with wonder as she stared at the spheres.

The answer came, sending a shiver of shock and wonder through the awestruck dolphin.

We... are the Asterite.