“Harroo!” Tauno shouted. He plunged forward in a burst of speed. Rinna and Raxi fell in alongside him. The three broke into the “Song of Retumings” he had made for them:
Here may I hail you, my homeland, my heartstrand.
Well for the wanderer’s weal is the way’s end.
Call up the clamor on conchs and on kettles!
Stories I’ll strew from the silver-paved swanroad. Gold the dawn glittered and glad wheeled the gulls when—-
Suddenly his companions screamed. They clapped hands to ears, their eyes were shut, they milled about blindly and wildly kicking till the water seethed.
Tauno watched the same craziness take all of Liri. “What is this?” he cried in horror. “What’s wrong?”
Rinna wailed her anguish. She could not see nor hear him. He caught her. She fought to break loose. His strength gripped her from behind with legs and one hand. His other hand closed on the silken tresses to hold tight her jerking head. He laid mouth to an ear and stammered, “Rinna, Rinna, it’s me, Tauno. I’m your friend. I want to help you.”
“Then let me go!” Her shriek was ragged with pain and fright. “The ringing fills the sea, it shakes me like a shark, my bones are coming apart-the light, the cruel blaze, blinding, burning, bum-ing-the words-Let me go or I die!”
Tauno did, altogether bewildered. Rising several yards, he made out the shivering shadow of a fisher boat, and heard a bell. . . was a fire aboard too, and was a voice chanting in some tongue he knew not? No more than that. . . .
The houses of Liri rocked as in a quake. The crystal dome on the hall shattered and rained down in bright shards. The stones trembled and began to slide from each other. That crumbling, of what had stood here since the Great Ice melted, sent its shuddering through Tauno’s flesh.
Dimly he saw his father come forth, astride the orca which had its airspace in the hall and which no one else dared mount. Oth-erwise the king had naught but a trident; and he was clad in naught but his own majesty. Yet somehow his call was heard: “To me, my people, to me! Quickly, before we die! Seek not to save any treasure beyond your children-and weapons-come, come, come if you would livc!”
Tauno shook Rinna and Raxi back to a measure of sense, and led them to join the throng. His father, riding about rallying the terrified merfold, had time to say to him grimly: “You, half mortal, feel it no more than does this steed of mine. But to us, these waters are now banned. For us, the-light will blaze and the bell will toll and the words will curse until the Weird of the World. We must flee while we still have strength, to seek a home far and away.”
“Where are my siblings?” Tauno asked.
“They were on an outing,” said the king. The tone that had
trumpeted went flat and dead. “We cannot wait for them.”
“I can.”
The king gripped his son by both shoulders. “That heartens
me. Yria and, aye, young Kennin need more than Eyjan to ward them. I know not where we are going. Maybe you can find us later-maybe-“ He shook his sun-bright mane. His visage drew into a mask of torture. “Away!” he screamed.
Stunned, beaten, naked, most of them unarmed and without tools, the merfolk followed their lord. Tauno hung, fists clenched on harpoon, until they were out of sight. The last stones of the royal hall toppled, and Liri was a ruin.
III
IN the eight years that she dwelt beneath the waters, fair Agnete bore seven children. This was less than a seawife would have done, and maybe the unspoken scorn of those females helped drive her back to land, even as the bells of the little church and the sight of little thatch-roofed timber houses had drawn her.
For though the merfolk, like others of Faerie, knew no aging (as if He Whose name they did not speak thus repaid them for lack of immortal souls), their way of life had its harsh side. Shark, orca, sperm whale, ray, sea serpent, a dozen kinds of killer fish hunted them; the creatures that they in turn hunted were often dangerous; tricks of wind and wave could be deadly; poison fangs and spines, cold, sickness, hunger carried many off. This was most true of their young; they must reckon with losing all but a few. The king had been lucky with those he got with his human mate. Behind his home were only three graves whereon the sea anemones had never been let die.