The Night of the Swarm tcv-4

by Robert V. S. Redick

  Nilus believed as well. He had long since begun to call Yelinda ‘Mother’, and firmly believed that he had sprung from her womb. This certainty lasted well up into his fifties, when Oggosk punctured it with her usual tact:

  ‘She was supposed to be your mother, wasn’t she? Because you were the first-born, and she was the eldest. Theimat wanted things that way: orderly, shipshape. He took each of us whenever he liked, but he intended to dispose of us in order of age. Therefore Yelinda had a job to do. Therefore she’s your mother.’

  ‘But he was there, Oggosk,’ Rose had protested. ‘You all were.’

  ‘Pah. Your father left on a sea voyage before the pregnancy was two months old, and barely made it home by your first birthday. He never saw anyone’s belly grow fat, except his own. As for the rest of us, we let the story stand. If Theimat believed one of us had coughed up a son, out of order — well, poor Yelinda would have been shown up as useless, and sold in a fortnight.’

  ‘Then who was it, damn you? Which of you is my mother?’

  Oggosk had cackled. ‘All of us. None of us. You’ll never find out from me.’

  Whether or not Yelinda was truly Nilus’ mother, she had grown obsessed with being his father’s wife, and would never agree to murder. The stand-off lasted for years. In that time Gosmel’s powers as a witch increased. Very early she learned to hoard that power, rarely casting so much as a spell to keep the milk from turning. All the while, however, she was plotting another end for Theimat Rose.

  By the time Nilus was ten, Gosmel was almost ready to act on her plan. Then a day came when Theimat raped the bride-to-be of a peasant who worked his land. The captain pronounced himself within his rights, claiming that the (illiterate) man had signed an agreement stating that his debts could be collected in a variety of forms, one of them being carnal. Biyatra had been friendly with the girl, and that evening she herself went to the barn for rat poison. Her courage began to desert her before she reached the house again, but Gosmel was ready for that. ‘I’ll do it,’ she said, taking the jar of lethal powder. ‘Just keep Yelinda out of the way.’

  But the Baby failed even in this. She did send for her eldest sister at the appropriate time, but when confronted by Yelinda she froze in terror at her own complicity, and could not make conversation or explain why she had called. Yelinda presently laughed and went her way — which happened to be to the liquor cabinet in the den. She poured Theimat’s evening cup of rum and took it to him in the library. Then, exercising the privilege of a wife, she returned to the den and poured a second glass for herself. Moments later Gosmel heard the violent choking sounds she had wanted to hear — but from two chambers, and two throats. She ran screaming for the den, and arrived just in time to watch Yelinda die with foamy spittle on her lips.

  It was at this point that Nilus himself heard the noises and raced down the stairs in his pyjamas. His first sight was his father, in the hall outside the library, lying in an odd position with a hand on his throat. Frightened by this apparition, he turned away from the corpse and ran towards the other voices in the den. There lay his dead Aunt Yelinda, better known to him simply as Mother. Over her stood Aunt Gosmel, howling with tears. Then Biyatra appeared in the doorway behind Nilus, and Gosmel pointed at her and screamed that she had killed their sister.

  ‘I?’ shot back the Baby. ‘You bloody-minded witch! The only murderer in this house is you!’

  Aunt Gosmel’s face had twisted in a spasm of hate. She raised her hand as though gathering some force, and then flung it at Biyatra, and with it the curse she had saved six years for their tormentor.

  Rose laid the portrait flat. He heard Oggosk’s screaming long before she reached his outer door. There was little hope that the steward would turn her aside, and he did not. The greater surprise was that Fiffengurt and the girl Marila entered with her. No surprise at all of course was the red animal that snuck in with them: Sniraga, whose name meant ‘Cowardly’. Sniraga, who had once been Biyatra, the Baby. Who had become a cat three feet away from him, the worst fright so far in the life of a child who had already suffered fears aplenty. Who was first a sister, then a pet to this unbearable banshee of a woman standing before his desk and screaming ixchel, ixchel, of all absurdities. This repugnant crone who was as likely to be his mother as the one she had cursed, or the one they poisoned alongside his father.

  ‘I am not listening to you, Oggosk,’ he said wearily.

  ‘You mucking well should! You think their claim is so fantastic, so impossible?’

  ‘I think nothing one way or the other.’

  ‘It fits, Nilus, can’t you see? They came aboard for a reason. They’re not ignorant and they don’t ride any ship without a purpose. I told them — Glaya, I ordered this ugly swamp-rat of a girl to bring me the book! Stath Balfyr! It’s certain to be in the thirteenth Polylex! We needn’t ever have gotten ourselves into this unforgivable fix! And your afflicted quartermaster has kept the secret for months!’

  ‘I am the one who is afflicted.’

  ‘Hang them, Nilus! Give them to Ott!’

  ‘Snakes and devils, woman, can’t you be quiet!’

  Oggosk struck the desk with her walking stick. The captain shot to his feet and leaned towards her, and the bellowing began to look dangerous. Fiffengurt and Marila backed away.

  Then the adversaries stopped together, gaping.

  ‘What did you say, hag?’

  ‘I said that anyone who sets foot on shore will be killed. By crawlies, or some crawly trap. What did you say?’

  ‘That I have the plague,’ said Rose. ‘Chadfallow has confirmed the symptoms. In a matter of weeks my mind will be gone.’

  Oggosk’s screams began again, but they were short-lived. She collapsed, and the two men carried her to Rose’s bed, while Marila ran for Chadfallow.

  The creature in the cell was still looking at Felthrup, still waiting. Its head was as round and podgy as a newborn baby’s, and from the fat cheeks two small, deep-set eyes twinkled in sudden flashes of gold. Large ears like withered yams stuck out from its head. The creature wore nothing but a winding-cloth belted at the waist and tossed over one shoulder: that and many rings with enormous, multicoloured stones on its podgy fingers. The body too was fat, but powerful, like some wrestler who has endlessly indulged. But below its knees the creature’s legs became those of a monstrous bird, and ended in talons that rasped against the floorboards. Upon its back a pair of great black wings lay folded.

  ‘You are a demon,’ said Felthrup.

  ‘And what is a demon, pray?’

  Felthrup said nothing. More than ever he wished to run, to leap out among the friendly chickens and ducks and wattle-swans, to slam the Green Door and never look for it again. The creature smiled. ‘Come here, and I shall tell you how you will die.’

  ‘No thank you,’ said Felthrup.

  ‘Your ship may well be sunk here at Stath Balfyr, and all of you drowned or murdered. If that does not come to pass you must either sail south into the death-throes of Bali Adro and the clutches of the White Raven, whom you call Macadra. Or you must continue north into the Red Storm, and be hurled into the future.’

  ‘But the storm is weak,’ said Felthrup.

  ‘Oh, very weak, compared to the maelstrom it was,’ said the creature. ‘But you are forgetting something far more powerful. You are forgetting the Swarm of Night. I cannot forget it, however. I was here when last it burst into Alifros. I saw it, fled from it, barely outraced it with my lungs bursting and my wings so strained I feared they would be torn from my back. That was at the height of a war more terrible than you can imagine, and the Swarm had grown monstrous, bloated with death. Today it is still an infant, no larger than the Chathrand. If you had lingered in the open sea another day or two you would have seen it.’

  ‘Again?’

  ‘It is prowling along the edge of the Red Storm,’ said the creature.

  ‘There is more killing in the Northern world than the Southern, currently, and like a moth t
he Swarm flies to the brightest candle. But it cannot yet cross the Storm without great harm to itself. And so it prowls, impatient, waiting for a gap to open. When that happens it will speed to the battlefields of the North, and feed, and grow enormous, blotting out the sun, and plunging the world beneath it into a perpetual, starless night. There will be no stopping it then.’

  ‘There is no stopping it at all, unless we get rid of the Nilstone!’ wailed Felthrup, throwing himself on the ground. His fear of the creature was subsiding as he thought of the greater doom facing them all. ‘We do not even have the Stone, and if we did we should not know what to do with it, and Macadra is using all that remains of her Empire’s might to find it. She may already have found it. She may have killed Lady Thasha and Pazel and all my friends! What do you say to that, you lying thing? What hope can you possibly give me?’

  ‘The only worthwhile kind,’ said the creature. ‘The kind that comes with knowledge. And here is some knowledge I will give you for nothing, as a token of my good faith. Macadra does not have the Stone. Your beloved Erithusme has it — or someone she travels with.’

  ‘My Erithusme?’

  ‘You call her Thasha Isiq.’

  Felthrup sat up slowly, blinking. ‘Thasha is a girl of seventeen years.’

  ‘She is a mage of twenty centuries. The girl is a mere facade, like the one I showed you. But it is true that she has lost her powers. Otherwise she surely would have used the Nilstone, while she and it were still aboard.’

  ‘How is it you know of Thasha’s deeds? How do you know my name, and which island we have reached, and so much else?’

  The creature gazed at him for a moment. Then he looked up, sweeping his golden eyes across the ceiling, and at the same time spreading his corpulent arms. The lamp darkened, but the walls grew bright — and then, with a brief shimmer, they became glass. Felthrup crouched in fear and astonishment: the floor beneath him was transparent, and the walls of the chamber, and all the walls beyond as well. The Chathrand surrounded them, but it was a Chathrand of flawless crystal. He could see through deck after deck, right up to the topdeck and the glass spider-webs of the rigging, the gleaming spires of the masts. He could look down all the way to the hold, and gaze through the crystal cargo and ballast into the waters of the bay. Only the people remained unchanged. He could see them in their hundreds, figures displayed in a jeweller’s shop: crossing invisible floors, climbing transparent ladder-ways, lifting glass spoons to their mouths in the dining hall.

  The creature lowered his hands. The vision was gone. ‘You are correct, Felthrup Stargraven. I am a demon, though maukslar is a fairer term. And although I am a prisoner here, I am not helpless. Indeed I have powers that could be of great use to you.’

  ‘I know what comes of that sort of help,’ said Felthrup.

  ‘No, you know only what comes of helping sorcerers, though of course you never meant to help Arunis. But consider what will come of refusing help, when it is offered: of standing on purity to the bitterest, bleak end. Not only death. Not only a lost world — and what a jewel is Alifros yet, despite the wounds she has suffered — not just these, I say, but the knowledge that you might have acted, but chose fear instead.’

  ‘Was it Erithusme who imprisoned you?’ asked Felthrup.

  The demon held very still. ‘Some things you will not learn for nothing,’ he said.

  ‘Can you strike others from that cell? If I turned to go, could you stop me?’

  No answer. The creature was no longer smiling, but his eyes still twinkled gold.

  ‘If I were to bring you an egg from the chicken coop and roll it through the bars, could you make it float in the air?’

  ‘I could make it float, or hatch, or turn to silver, or glow like the sun. But none of those would help you.’

  ‘How would you help us, then?’

  ‘Free me from this cage, and I will tell you where the Nilstone must be taken, if you would expel it from Alifros.’

  ‘But we do not have the Stone. Can you bring it to us across the seas?’

  ‘Certainly I could. Let me out and I will fetch it.’

  ‘Along with all our friends?’

  The demon laughed. ‘What do you imagine, rat? That I will fly here all the way from the Efaroc Peninsula with that party dangling beneath me in a blanket? No, you must finish the task without them. Hold them in your memory, but go on while you still may.’

  ‘So that is your counsel,’ said Felthrup. ‘To trust you, and abandon my friends.’

  The demon shook his head. ‘You abandoned them when you sailed from Masalym,’ it said. ‘My counsel is that you face the truth. You are outmatched. Upon this ship you are a tiny minority, protected from execution by the whim of that lunatic Rose. You need new allies, for the old will not be returning.’

  ‘Liar!’ cried the rat. ‘You tell me Thasha lives, that they have recovered the Stone from Arunis, and that after this miracle, a smaller one cannot be achieved? I will not abandon them! I will not set you free to steal it from them! I have sound reason to doubt you and none at all to give you my trust! I do not even know your name!’

  Resolved this time, he raced away down the passage. He could almost feel the glittering eyes upon the back of his head. At the threshold he nudged the Green Door open and smelled the blessed, natural stink from the coops. Then the demon shouted behind him:

  ‘Tulor.’

  Felthrup looked back once more. ‘Tulor? Your name is Tulor?’

  ‘Another gift,’ shouted the demon, ‘and my last, to one who gives nothing in return. Go, and think of your choices — but do not think too long. Alifros is nothing to me. But for the likes of you it is everything. Where will you run on the night of the Swarm, Felthrup? Where do you think you can hide?’

  20

  Nipping the Tiger

  On 11 Halar 942, as the Chathrand crept north between scattered islets, and Pazel and his friends neared the bridge over the Parsua, Empress Maisa of Arqual declared herself to the world.

  She did it through simultaneous letters to her peers on fourteen thrones, from the Crownless Lands to Noonfirth, from Tholjassa to Bodendell and Auxlei City. She did it also through anonymous placards erected overnight in every town and city of the Empire she meant to reclaim. The announcements were explicit, describing the circumstances of her overthrow, the defamation of her character, the purging of her loyal subjects, the murder of her sons. And very significantly, it announced her marriage to ‘Arqual’s proudest native son’, Fleet Admiral Eberzam Isiq.

  But Maisa declared herself most clearly in the cries of the two thousand lean fighters who coalesced out of the still-snowy Highlands and swept down into Ormael City, and in the cannon-fire of the twenty ships that took the harbour at dawn.

  She had timed the attack with exceptional care. Arqual had held little Ormael for almost six years, and its forces were entrenched. But in early spring the Empire found it necessary, or perhaps merely comfortable, to adjust its grip on the city-state. The new war with the Mzithrin was going its way: Commodore Darabik had led a second incursion into the Gulf of Thol — far larger than the one Isiq had witnessed on his way to the Crab Fens — and had lost far fewer ships and men than anticipated. In Etherhorde this was seen as proof of Mzithrini weakness16 and a reason to accelerate their plans for conquest.

  Thus, late in the month of Modobrin, six thousand Turachs were withdrawn from Ormael to Ipulia for training in mountain warfare. Most were soon dispatched for hidden bases in the Tsordons, on the very margin of the Mzithrini heartland. Others were placed on war vessels and sent south to the Baerrid Archipelago. The White Fleet had been spotted conducting exercises north of the angry volcanic island called Serpent’s Head. There were even reports of Mzithrini vessels slipping east into the Nelu Rekere. Arqual feared nothing so much as an assault from the Rekere, which was too long and rough to guard completely. It was in the Rekere that the White Fleet had crushed Arqual’s navy in the last war. Never again would Emperor Magad be caught
unprepared.

  But the first assault came from the mountains, not the sea. Maisa’s foot soldiers, trained over a decade in the Crab Fens, had been moving into the sparsely patrolled Chereste Highlands for more than three years. They looked like peasants, not soldiers; and they had entered the Highlands by the rudest of Highland paths. Threadbare and shuffling, they had taken up not arms but agriculture, blending in with the mountain folk. Year after year Maisa’s emissaries had moved among these villagers: boys in rags, girls leading scrawny goats, women bent under bundles of sticks. Every one an operative, passing the Arquali checkpoints with blank faces, fearful stares. Every one with a message for the dormant fighting-force: The lake is filling, but it is not yet full. When the lake is full the dam will burst. Some will drown in the flood, but we will ride it. Listen, listen, for the bursting of the dam.

  On that decisive morning, Maisa’s forces swarmed over the city’s northern wall. Ormael had faced no Highland enemies in three hundred years, and the occupiers had gradually relaxed their guard on the sleepy northern quarter. Even when the attack came the Imperial governor felt more embarrassed than afraid. Two thousand peasants? What sense did it make? Even after the redeployments of the previous month, he still had three thousand trained Arquali soldiers, including several hundred Turachs, who were each as good as five. The simpletons had not even slowed down to contest the wall itself, but had pushed deep into the northern quarter — looking for meat pies and brandy, no doubt. They were trapped. They would be slaughtered. Why had Emperor Magad condemned him to rule a land of dunces and suicides?

  But the dunces fared better than expected. They were not seeking meat pies but the northern armoury, which they seized and raided; and the gates between the city’s third and fourth quarters, which they lowered and jammed, thus delaying the arrival of reinforcements. They were also joined by a number of regular Ormalis, labourers from the tanneries and the docks. This was not quite, the governor conceded, a spontaneous raid. But surely it did not amount to a revolt?