a flipper in greeting.
Ezroc wheeled and swooped down to land on the ice beside him.
‘Greetings, Burgoss. May your moustache never grow less! I’ve been away a while – what is the word along the Ice Cliffs?’
‘Greetings, young ‘un,’ the walrus grunted. ‘What makes you think I have time for the jabber of chicks and pups? I don’t listen to children’s gossip, and when they’re grown their talk is all of food and sex. Enough to deafen you with boredom. If that’s the word you seek, ask elsewhere.’
‘You are the oldest and wisest creature in all the seas,’ Ezroc said, flattering shamelessly. ‘Except for the whales. If there is any news worth knowing, you will know it.’
‘Not so much of the oldest.’ The walrus shook himself, feigning displeasure. ‘You have a beak on you, young Ezroc, you always did. I’d say you were getting too big for your wings, if they weren’t grown so wide I can barely see from tip to tip. What’ve you been eating, down in the south? Hammerhead?’
‘Too small,’ Ezroc said airily. ‘I feast only on sea monsters.’
‘All boast and no bulwarks,’ the walrus retorted. ‘Hrrmph! Well, I can guess the kind of news you need to hear, and it ain’t good. A piece broke off the Great Ice away westward, maybe five longspans across. Perhaps Nefanu is bringing the sun north to melt us, though the days don’t seem any longer to me. But I’m not as young as I was, and could be I’m out of my reckoning.’
‘She won’t bring the sun,’ Ezroc said. ‘I don’t think she has that power. Anyway, she doesn’t need to. All she has to do is divert one of the warmer currents. If she hasn’t tried that yet, it’s only because she hasn’t thought of it.’
‘Those old gods are as dumb as dugongs,’ Burgoss remarked. ‘How else did her queenship manage to wipe out the rest of them? Anyhow, ice breaks in the spring. It may not mean much. You’ve got other things to worry about. The Spotted One says he saw merfolk scouting below the Cliffs last moondark. Says they took a snowbear, though there’s no proof. The bears don’t lair together; they wouldn’t know if one’s gone missing.’
‘The Spotted One …’ The albatross might have frowned, if birds could frown. Nathan could sense his unease.
‘The others don’t listen to him,’ the walrus said. ‘Since old Shifka died they’ve grown complacent – complacent and careless. Apathy! Huh! The biggest killer of all time. Once that sets in, you’re half way to extinction. I’m old – though not as old as you seem to think – but I can still smell trouble coming. If the Great Ice were to break up – if the merfolk mounted a serious attack—’
‘Do you believe him?’ Ezroc interjected.
‘Possibly. He’s surly and solitary, but that don’t make him a liar. Been an outcast since he was a pup, when they taunted him for his spots. Seal-brats can be cruel – cruel and stupid – just like any other young ’uns. He wasn’t quick with words so as he got older he fought – fought tough and fought dirty – teeth, flippers, fists, he didn’t care what shape he used as long as he won, and the odds were always against him. Can’t blame him for that.’
‘He killed someone,’ Ezroc said.
The walrus shrugged, a great rippling shrug that flowed right down his massive body. ‘It happens. Don’t think he set out to kill – he always wanted the others to feel their bruises, or so I guess – but the brat got his head smashed on the ice, and that did for him. Skull too thin or something.’
‘Brat?’ Ezroc was appalled. ‘He killed a pup?’
‘Nah. Just some half grown flipperkin shooting his mouth off. They’re all brats to me. Point is, after that they avoided him, and he – well, he’d have made himself an outcast, even if they didn’t. It suited his mood. I thought you’d know the story.’
‘I was only a chick,’ Ezroc said. ‘Keerye never went into details. He used to talk to Nokosha sometimes – he wasn’t like the rest of them.’
‘Young Spots was the only one he couldn’t best in a fight,’ Burgoss said. ‘Strongest selkie on the Cliffs. I daresay Keerye respected that.’
‘Nokosha still blames me for his death, I think,’ Ezroc said. ‘I’ve never had anything from him but foul looks.’
‘When you’ve only got one friend, you’d want someone to blame for losing him,’ the walrus said philosophically. ‘If you want to ask Nokosha about the merfolk, you’ll have to get past that.’
‘How?’ Ezroc asked.
‘Up to you.’
‘Where do I find him?’
‘No idea. Wherever the others aren’t. Those big wings of yours must be good for something. Use ’em.’
The albatross made a sound which Nathan knew for laughter – bird’s laughter, harsh as a cry. ‘Thanks, Burgoss,’ he said. ‘I owe you. You are the wisest – and the fattest – creature in the sea, except for the whales—’
‘Hrrmph! Be off with you, or you’ll find I’m not the slowest, whatever you may have heard.’
The albatross veered away, taking off in a few strong wing-beats, launching himself into a long glide out over the water. As he circled higher Nathan felt his doubts, the growing weight of fears still only half formed and founded on uncertainty. If he had learnt one thing in all his travels it was that the hatred of the Goddess was unrelenting and her hunger insatiable. Once, she had hated the islands and all those who lived there, man, beast or bird, drowning them in her tempests, driving out rival gods. Now, she had turned her enmity on the last vestiges of the People of the Air – the lungbreathers whom she saw as aliens, dwelling in her kingdom but not of it, corrupting the purity of the great ocean. And when we are gone, Ezroc thought, who will she have left to hate? The rocks that hold up her reefs? The whales and dolphins who are not true fish – the crabs and sea-scorpions because they have legs – any creature who ever tried to crawl or wriggle into the sun, when there was still something to crawl on?
But as long as the Great Ice endured, the northfolk could withstand her. If they were careful – if they were watchful – if the merfolk stayed in the warm seas of the south …
He flew over a blue-green inlet, walled with ice, where a group of selkies were leaping and diving; Nathan could see them changing shape as they plunged beneath the surface, shedding their half-human form for the seal-fell native to the element. He knew from his bond with Ezroc that selkies could transform themselves at will, though they rarely used their legs. A couple of them waved to the albatross, but although he dipped his head in acknowledgement he did not stop. A little further on he came to a place where a great berg had broken away from the Cliffs and was rocking gently on the swell. There was a figure on the lowest part of the berg, lying on its stomach, gazing into the depths below. Fishing, maybe. As Ezroc drew nearer Nathan saw it was a selkie, but unlike the others, his tail-fur dappled with curious markings, black spots within grey, his thick hair, also somehow dappled, bristling like the mane on a bull-seal. The bird lost height, and Nathan made out the ridged vertebrae along the selkie’s back, and the bunched muscles in arm and shoulder. There was even a faint mottling under his skin, the ghost-markings of his dual self.
Ezroc circled the berg, calling out: ‘Nokosha!’, but the
