A Door Into Ocean Read Online Free

strand, which had turned into a circlet. Hesitantly Spinel accepted the gift, and it rested on his palm, strong and fine as a silver chain.
    He recovered some nerve. “What are you?” he ventured. “Cloth-workers, or medicine women?”
    â€œWe are what we need to be.”

    Spinel frowned and sucked his tongue. “Even soldiers?”
    Merwen cupped her chin in the scallop between two fingers. “You might call us soldiers of learning.”
    â€œWhat’s that?” He leaned forward, hands on his knees. “You mean spies?”
    â€œSomething like that.”
    His thoughts whirled. Hordes of purple fish creatures invading Valedon—the vision came and went. “You wouldn’t tell me the truth, if you were real spies.” Why should he believe them, any more than the moontraders?
    â€œTruth is a tangled skein, and time ravels it.”
    â€œWhen do you plan to invade us?”
    â€œValans have invaded Shora for a long while.”
    That was a twist. He had never heard of Protectoral troops invading the moon. Pyrrhopolis kept them busy enough. “Is there really no dry land on Shora? Where do you live, then? Do you hide all your men, even your Protector?”
    â€œSea blankets the land. We dwell on living rafts, and our protection-sharer is Shora, the mother of all ocean.”
    No human Protector? The Patriarch would never allow such a thing. Before the rule of Torr, men throughout the galaxy had lived free as gods, with firecrystals more plentiful than grains of sand. But then, men who live as gods die as gods, as the saying goes. They had died by the planetful until those who remained gave up their powers to the Patriarch to keep the peace among them. His Envoy came to Valedon every ten years, and there was no help for those who disobeyed.
    Perhaps the Patriarch did not care about nonhumans. “You’re not human, are you?”
    Merwen paused, and Usha leaned over her shoulder to exchange speech that sounded like ocean laughter. Then Merwen asked, “Will you come to Shora to find out?”
    Terror struck again; they would capture him and steal him away. “I won’t bother you again, I promise: I swear by the Patriarch’s Nine Legions!”
    â€œYou fear us. Why?” Merwen watched him, her face strained as if intent on his answer.
    Spinel thought about it and felt a little silly. “I thought you might … make me come away with you.”
    â€œWe cannot … make you do anything.” She seemed to have trouble
with the words. “Remember that. Share our return, if you wish. We’ll go long before the sea swallows again.”
    â€œSea swallows?”
    â€œTwice a year, great seaswallowers migrate from pole to pole. Beasts of the deep, they swallow all in their path. Usha and I must be there to help secure the home raft.”
    â€œThat sounds scary, all right.”
    â€œIt scares me, though I’ve seen forty years of it.”
    The admission surprised him. Perhaps Merwen wanted men to come help her out, men who would not hide away. An attractive adventure, actually. “I wish I could go, but if I don’t choose a stonesign before long I’ll end up a beggar or a cornpicker.”
    â€œShora has neither beggars nor corn.”
    No beggars and no corn? What sort of place was this?
    Usha added, “No stonesign, either.”
    Startled, Spinel looked up at her. “You’ve got to have stonesigns.”
    â€œNo stone,” Usha said. “Except on the sea floor, where the dead dwell.”
    Merwen caught Usha’s arm as if in warning or reproof.
    Spinel was thinking that if he went off to Shora he could put off getting signed for months, if not a year, which was as good as forever to him. Still, there had to be a catch somewhere. “How do you get on, without having some sort of sign for what you are?”
    â€œWe are what you see. We share all things,” said