Mav had held locks before, but never like this.
It was like holding a dozen ropes in a storm. Each one ran from his head to a seaweed behind him: Twelve, the needlefish that carried seaweeds, Pip, Puddle, Moss. Every one of them was being pulled, slowly and steadily, toward the gray-green tangle on the serpent’s neck. He held them all, the way that he had held Cedar’s lock for two days, with his whole will. This time, though, there were a dozen of them, with something else pulling on all of them at once.
Mav couldn’t let go of a single one.
When he tried to reach for Dart, three of the ropes slipped at once. Twelve’s point swung toward the serpent like a needle swinging north. He let go of Dart at once, before it even came, and pulled her back.
’Twelve,’ he said. ’Stay with me.’
"I’m trying," Twelve said. Her voice was thin and strange, as if she were talking in her sleep. "It’s calling, Mav. It’s so sad."
He knew. He could feel it too, the long, gray loneliness at the other end of the pull. That was what made it so hard. There was no anger in it, only a lost thing calling for someone to come home.
’It’s not yours,’ he told her. ’You’re mine. Stay.’
She stayed. But he could feel how much it cost her.
-----
The serpent lifted its head.
It came up slowly, off the floor at the foot of the column, higher and higher, until its head was level with the opening where they hung. The rest of its body didn’t move from the column. It didn’t need to. Its neck alone was longer than the main street of his city.
It looked at them with its small white eyes, and then it struck.
Mav couldn’t use Dart. He couldn’t use anything that he didn’t already hold. He threw himself sideways in the water with his own arms and legs, like a boy in a pond. The serpent’s jaws closed where he had been. The wave of it threw him against the wall. He hit hard. Regeneration went to work on his shoulder at once, but he barely felt it. All of his mind was on the ropes.
’I can’t fight it,’ he understood. ’Not while I’m holding them. So who can?’
So he didn’t fight. He let the others do it.
-----
’Sela,’ he said. ’The floor around its head. Can you lift it?’
Sela didn’t answer in words. She sent him a picture, quick and clear: the stone slabs of the chamber floor, rising up out of the mud, standing on end around the serpent’s head like the walls of a well.
Then she and her two water movers dived.
Sela’s seaweed held her by choice, not by force, and so did theirs. The old seaweed pulled at them too, but they could pull back on their own. Mav felt them go down past the serpent’s long neck, fast and small, to the floor at the foot of the column. They landed beside the great flat head. They put their hands on the stone.
The serpent saw them. It turned its head toward them, slowly.
’Pip,’ Mav said. ’Puddle. Its eyes.’
"Yes," they said together.
Pip and Puddle went down after Sela, with their 10 young behind them. Mav felt their locks swing hard toward the seaweed as they came close to it. He pulled them back so hard that his head rang like a bell. He held them, held them. They kept swimming.
Their young didn’t feel the pull at all. They had no seaweeds of their own. They only followed their parents, the way that they always did.
The serpent opened its mouth over Sela’s head.
Then the water around its eyes started to boil.
Pip and Puddle used Boil from the left, and all 10 of their young from the right, together. The water in front of the serpent’s eyes went white with bubbles. The great head jerked back. A sound came out of it, low and huge, that Mav felt in his chest and in his teeth. Its eyes were shut tight. It shook its head from side to side, blind, trying to get out of the hot water.
Sela’s movers lifted the floor.
They lifted it the way that they lifted stone in the city, with their hands raised, their whole small bodies shaking. The slabs here were thinner than the blocks of the city walls, but it still took everything that they had. The slabs came up out of the mud on both sides of the serpent’s head, one after another, and fell against each other. Sela put the last one in place over the top, to close the ring. For a moment, the serpent’s head was inside a box of stone, with boiling water around its eyes.
It wouldn’t hold for long. Mav knew that. But it would hold long enough.
’Moss,’ he said. ’Now.’
-----
Moss had been waiting.
She had lain flat against the wall since the fight began, the color of the pale stone, without moving. Mav had been holding her lock harder than all the others, because she was the closest to the serpent and the old seaweed pulled on her the most. He had felt her fight it, very quietly, without a word, the way that she did everything.
Now she let go of the wall and swam.
She went down the serpent’s neck, along its back, as fast as she could. The white scales were as wide as her body. She ran along them on her six legs, gripping them, until she reached the place behind the stone box where the gray-green tangle began.
She closed her jaws on it.
The old seaweed screamed.
There was no sound. Mav felt it in his head, through its point, a long, high scream of pain and rage, and he almost let go of every rope at once. Moss held on. She tore at the tangle with her hooked teeth. Gray-green roots came loose in clouds. The serpent’s whole body went rigid around the column, every coil tightening at once. The column cracked from top to bottom.
Then the serpent broke the box.
The slabs flew apart. Sela and her movers were thrown across the floor. The serpent’s head came up out of the boiling water, blind and furious. It swung its neck against the column, hard, with Moss on it.
Mav felt her hit the stone.
Her point went dim. It didn’t go out, but it went dim, and her lock went loose in his hand. The old seaweed pulled on it at once. Mav pulled back with everything that he had left.
Somewhere far back in the dark, behind the ropes, he felt one of Twelve’s needlefish slip.
He felt it go. He couldn’t hold it and Moss together, and he chose Moss. The needlefish swam toward the serpent in a long, slow line, as if it were going home. The serpent’s mouth opened, and closed.
[A Subject has died. Killed by: Old White Serpent, Rank C.]
Mav made a sound that he had never made before, a cry of pure rage. He didn’t care who heard it.
-----
Then everything changed.
The pull stopped.
It didn’t fade. It stopped all at once, from every rope, as if someone had cut them. Twelve shook herself in the water, then her needlefish. Pip and Puddle turned toward Mav, confused. Moss lay at the foot of the cracked column, dim but alive, with her lock lying loose and still in his head.
Mav didn’t understand at first.
Then he felt where the pull had gone.
It had turned. Every bit of it, every gray root and every lost, hungry thought that the old seaweed had left, was turning slowly toward the strongest seaweed in that chamber. It was turning toward the one that was the oldest and the closest to what it had been.
It was turning toward his neck.
Around his chest, One went tight, and then very still.
The mad seaweed turned toward One.