The River of Shadows cv-3

by Robert V. S. Redick

  The Debate in the Manger

  At first glance we saw animals in clothes. We recoiled; it was not proper to look at such things; it was not right to acknowledge their existence. But we could not help ourselves. Looking again we saw avenging demons, straight out of our past. We saw the bottomless fury of demons, the violence, the hatred even for themselves, when they slew one another on the deck of that immense ship, howling in an archaic language that was almost our own. That is when we clung to one another in greatest fear. We knew catastrophe was close; it had befallen nearly everyone else already. And heaven knows these human beings had much to avenge. -Masalym Before the Storm: Recollections,

  Uluja Thantral

  22 Ilbrin 941

  “You don’t have to do this,” said Pazel.

  “Stop saying that,” said Thasha. “I told you Neda didn’t hurt me. You’re the one covered with bruises.”

  Thasha passed under a glass plank, and the afternoon sun touched her hair-brushed and tied but still brittle; she had not yet rinsed out the salt. They were in a passage on the main deck, heading for the Silver Stair. Jorl and Suzyt, Thasha’s enormous blue mastiffs, walked before her like a pair of guardian lions, too proud to tug at their leads. Overhead, boots clomped and clattered; men were laughing, almost giddy. Literally drunk on water. Men had wept at the cool mineral taste. The dogs had lapped two quarts apiece, and looked up hopefully for more.

  “It’s not bruises I’m worried about,” said Pazel.

  Thasha flicked Pazel a glance. “What is it, then?” she said.

  Pazel wished she would slow down. “Lady Oggosk, for starters,” he said.

  Thasha looked baffled. They were about to face some of their worst enemies, but Oggosk would not be among them. The witch remained imprisoned in the forecastle house, along with the captain she so fiercely adored.

  “They’re plotting something,” said Pazel. “Oggosk, and Rose, and maybe Ott for that matter. I went to see Neeps the minute the guards took Neda away. All three of them were at the window, talking to Alyash.”

  “Well, of course they were,” said Thasha. “He’s the bosun, you dolt. He’s Rose’s blary right-hand man, now that Uskins is falling apart.”

  At the ladderway a fungal stench met their nostrils. They started down into the warm gloom of the lower decks, the big dogs struggling for balance on the stairs. Men and tarboys shrank from the dogs, tipped their hats to Thasha, eyed Pazel with a confused mix of fascination and fear. Some still blamed him for the ship’s evil luck; others had heard that he was the only reason the Chathrand was still afloat.

  Pazel leaned closer to Thasha. “I heard Oggosk say, ‘The girl,’ ” he murmured.

  “For Rin’s sake,” cried Thasha, “is that all it takes to rattle you? Oggosk was probably talking about poor Marila. She’s the one locked in with them all.”

  Beneath the level of the gun decks they had the stairs to themselves. “Come off it,” said Pazel. “You know that hag is obsessed with you. And this time she sounded mean. Kind of desperate, like.”

  “I’d be desperate too, if I were stuck in that compartment with Sandor Ott.”

  Aware that his own desperation was mounting, Pazel thrust his arm across her path.

  “It’s not just Oggosk, damn it,” he sputtered. “It’s that we’re going… there. Where it happened to you. Where the rats went mad, and the Stone-where you… you-”

  “Where I touched it,” she said, touching him.

  Pazel flinched; but her fingers on his cheek were just her fingers; no lightning jumped from them but the kind he expected, the thrill and promise that tore him from sleep with thoughts of her. He closed his eyes. Stop shaking, Pazel, you’re not doing anything wrong. There had been months when her touch, her very nearness, had brought scalding pain, but that spell (laid on him by a murth-girl thousands of miles to the north) was broken or dormant. There had been threats from Lady Oggosk, who harbored some unfathomable plan for Thasha, a plan that required her to be unloved. But Oggosk had nothing to threaten them with anymore. Pazel took her hand, slid his fingers from her palm to her wrist. The Blessing-Band was still there.

  “I thought you’d lost this in the gulf,” he said.

  Thasha lowered her hand from his cheek to the blue silk ribbon, turned it until they could read the words embroidered in gold thread: Ye depart for a world unknown, and love alone shall keep thee

  “I left it behind in the stateroom,” she said, tracing the words with her fingers. “It’s not something I’m willing to lose.”

  The silk band was to have played a role in Thasha’s wedding back in Simja. Three nights ago, Pazel had at last performed the tiny part of the ceremony allotted to him, and tied it around her wrist. The meaning of the act, of course, had utterly changed, but those ambiguous words troubled him yet. Wasn’t she still departing? Not into life with a Mzithrini husband, but into some region of the mind where he could not follow?

  Nonsense. Nerves. Thasha was touched by magic, somehow-but not touched in the head. Pazel himself had been living for years under a potent charm and had managed to remain who he was. He put his arm around her, drew her closer, felt her breath tickling his chin.

  “You’re trembling,” she whispered. “Why are you afraid?”

  Why was he afraid? He had torn a cursed necklace away from her throat, dragged her up flaming stairwells; he had seen her naked and bleeding on a beach. He could kiss her here and now (so far she had planted the kisses, though not always on him) and no disaster would follow.

  Presumably.

  It was never supposed to happen. You believe me, don’t you?

  Rin’s teeth, he was sweating. And Thasha, impatient, was slipping under his arm and down the staircase, slipping away.

  “I’m stronger now,” she said. “I can face them. They can’t make me do anything I don’t want to do.”

  On they went, past the berth deck with its sound of snoring (some forty victims of the ixchel’s sleep-drug remained unconscious) and out into the rear compartment of the orlop deck. The darkness increased, and so did the stench. And flies-more flies with every step, droning like tormented ghosts.

  Then Pazel stopped, overcome with sudden disgust. Pitfire, they’ve still not cleaned the lower decks. He was smelling dead men, dead animals-above all, dead rats. Six weeks ago, every last rat on the Chathrand had suffered a hideous change, swollen to the size of Thasha’s dogs, and rampaged through the ship. Only their mass suicide had prevented the creatures from killing everyone aboard.

  “Pathkendle. Thasha.”

  Hercol was crossing the dim compartment. As he drew close, the swordsman noticed Pazel’s look of revulsion. “The bodies are gone,” he said, “but not the blood. Fiffengurt chose to risk disease rather than oblige the men to sweat away the last of their water scrubbing gore out of the planks.”

  He and Thasha regarded each other warily. They had exchanged many such looks recently, before and after their arrival at the cape. Pazel had no idea what those looks were about, but he knew that Thasha’s mood darkened whenever the swordsman approached, as though he reminded her of some unwelcome duty or predicament.

  “I hoped Pazel would convince you not to attend this council,” he said.

  “He failed,” said Thasha, “and so will you. Enough nonsense, Hercol. I want to get this over with.”

  Hercol gripped her shoulder, looking at them each in turn. “Let them wait a bit longer. Come with me first, won’t you?”

  He led them across the dim compartment, around a jagged hole in the floor (there were many such scars on the Chathrand, marks of the suicide-fire of the rats) and out through the bulkhead door in the north wall. They stepped into a small square cabin with two other doors, through one of which some light poured down from a shaft in the adjoining corridor. Dominating the room was a round porcelain washtub. This was the “silk knickers room” (as tarboys called it): the chamber where first-class servants scrubbed their employers’ socks and shirts and petticoats. The
big tub had survived the crossing, but it was smeared with dried blood and fur, and the benches and washboards had been reduced to charcoal.

  Hercol closed the door by which they had entered. “Once we join the others we must watch our every word. It is well that we told Taliktrum of the mind-plague, but of the time-skip His Lordship knows nothing, and I do not think we should enlighten him today. Let us not speak of it.”

  “Let’s not speak to him at all,” said Pazel. “He’s not fit to lead his clan, let alone this ship.”

  Hercol looked at him severely, but made no rebuttal. “Even allies like Mr. Fiffengurt may not yet be ready to face the truth of it. One could almost wish that his dear Annabel’s final letter had never reached him, telling him that she was with child.”

  “You could wish it, maybe,” said Thasha. Pazel looked at her in shock. “I mean,” she added hastily, “that we can’t begin to guess what he feels like. They were going to be married; he’s been saving his pay ten years. I don’t think we should ever tell him. Let him think they’re alive, for as long as he can-Annabel and that little boy or girl. Let him hope. That’s not too much to ask, is it?”

  She was still watching Hercol with surprising ire. But if her old mentor understood her anger, he did not rise to the bait. “You’re right,” he said after a moment. “In time we may be forced to tell him, or he may find out some other way; but for now it can do little good. Yet we must not forget the truth for a minute, however much we long to, if we are to find a way out of this darkness.”

  “There is no way out,” said Pazel, and immediately wished he hadn’t spoken. The others turned to him, astonished-and then a voice rang out in the darkness.

  “I should bite you for that, Pazel Pathkendle! No way out, for shame.”

  “Felthrup!” cried Pazel. “Are you mad? What are you doing here?”

  His tiny figure emerged from the gloom: a black rat with half a tail and a mangled forepaw. Thasha’s dogs pounced, licking and snuffling; their adoration of Felthrup knew no bounds. With a quick leap the rat was astride Suzyt, balanced between her shoulder blades. His dark eyes glistened, and a sweet, resinous smell wafted from his fur.

  “Should I be content to hide forever behind the stateroom’s magic wall?” he asked. “Ashore they may have condemned all woken beasts, but not on the Chathrand. Not yet.”

  “The crew will not stop to talk to you,” said Hercol. “They will see a rat, and they will kill it.”

  “Only if they catch it,” said Felthrup. “But the men of Chathrand are not all ignorant brutes. They do not know what is happening-and I agree that you must not tell them, yet-but they know something is terribly amiss, and a few may recall that it was I who first said so, when I smelled the emptiness of the village. Surely they will realize the utility-is that the word I want, utility? — of having a rat’s olfactory prowess at their disposal. Utility, avail, expedience-”

  “No,” said Thasha, “they won’t. They’ll be afraid that you’re about to turn into a monster before their eyes.”

  “They should fear no such thing,” said Felthrup. “I am safe, thanks to Lady Syrarys.”

  “Syrarys?” said Pazel. “Felthrup, what are you talking about?”

  Syrarys, the consort of Thasha’s father Admiral Isiq, had been revealed to be in league with Sandor Ott. She had worked for Thasha’s death, and nearly killed the admiral by poisoning his tea.

  “How excitable you are!” said Felthrup. “I was only speaking of mysorwood oil. The wicked lady used to dab it on her neck, but Mr. Bolutu pointed out that it is better even than peppermint oil at deterring fleas. He applied it to my fur, and I am a new rat! Freed, emancipated, delivered from their masticatory assaults-and are we not agreed that those hungry vermin inflicted the mutation upon the rats, and not vice versa? Rats do not, you will allow, bite fleas. But this despair, Pazel! How unlike you, how unbecoming!”

  “Unbecoming.” Pazel stared at the rat. “Do you understand that our families are dead?”

  “Your sister is not dead,” said Felthrup. “And as for my family-it is aboard this ship. My rat-brethren back in Noonfirth cast me out, the very day I woke. They were terrified of my verbosity. They slew my mother’s second litter before her eyes, ten blind bleating things not a day old, and chased her off into the streets. When I fled they were trying to determine who had mated with her, so that they could kill or scatter those unlucky males as well.”

  Pazel closed his eyes. He was, in fact, intensely grateful for Felthrup’s presence, his grounding inanities and madcap wisdom. But you had to have patience, barrels of it, whenever the rat warmed to a theme.

  Thasha managed it better than anyone. “We’re late for the council, Felthrup dear,” she said. “What is it you wanted to tell us?”

  “That I have been eavesdropping,” he said. “Dr. Rain has lately been interrogated by several officers concerning one of his patients. Have you heard the rumors surrounding the topman, Mr. Dupris?”

  “I heard that Rain had quarantined the man,” said Hercol. “Something about a fever.”

  “He has no fever now,” said Felthrup. “When that serpent neared the Chathrand, and every man aboard feared the worst, Mr. Dupris fled his post, screaming, ‘I won’t touch it, I won’t, I won’t!’ That sort of nonsense. Later his friends dragged him to sickbay. He was in a terrible state, but he grew calmer once they strapped him down: indeed he thanked the doctor for strapping him down. But then the surgeon’s mate discovered his high temperature. Fearing he might infect the rest of the ward, he persuaded Rain to send the man to an empty cabin. They moved him late at night. But on the way to the cabin, Dupris asked for some fresh air, so Rain and the mate brought him to one of the open gunports and let him bend down. He took a deep breath. Then he looked over his shoulder at them. ‘He cannot make me do it. I’ll never touch that cursed thing.’ With those words Dupris cast himself into the sea.”

  A silence fell. “Arunis,” said Pazel at last. “He was talking about Arunis.”

  Thasha sighed. “And the Nilstone, of course.”

  “So Arunis has begun to kill,” said Hercol, “as he always promised he would. It is terrible news that he has grown strong enough to attack our minds in such a way. I always thought that he managed it with Mr. Druffle through some prolonged contact with the man-through potions or torture. Now it appears he can do so without ever touching his victim-from hiding, where no one can interfere. During the crossing, when the Turach committed suicide by placing his hand on the Stone, I thought the poor man had simply despaired. Now I wonder.”

  “Why isn’t the whole ship talking about Dupris?” asked Pazel.

  “Mr. Alyash feared to start a panic,” said Felthrup, “and so he ordered Rain and Fulbreech to keep the man’s death a secret. But I can tell you something more, friends: I was not alone in listening to their conversation. There were ixchel, somewhere close, for I heard their whispers. They did not hear me, I think. I have become a better spy on this voyage, if nothing else.”

  “What did they say?” asked Thasha.

  “Something very curious. They said, ‘So it’s happening to the giants as well.’ ”

  A low groan escaped Pazel’s chest. “Arunis must be working on the ixchel too. And why not, since they’re in charge? But what in blazes does he want? He still needs a crew to sail the ship, doesn’t he?”

  “We should go to the council,” said Thasha. “Not that anyone’s going to listen to us.”

  “Whether they listen or not, we must keep our purpose clear,” said Hercol. “We swore to place the Stone beyond the reach of evil-and that we must do, somehow. Where is that place? I do not know. Even Erithusme, greatest wizardess since the time of the Amber Kings, did not know. But it exists, or Ramachni would not have set us looking for it. Taking the Nilstone to that place will be impossible, however, so long as the Chathrand remains in the grip of evil men. We must break that grip.”

  “That could mean killing,” said Thasha.

  �
�I expect it will,” said Hercol. “Arunis will never relent; Sandor Ott does not know how. If we have truly leaped forward two centuries, then his Emperor is dead, and the very dynasty of the Magads may well have failed. That at least would be no tragedy. But Ott does not know this, and my heart tells me he would not believe it even if he stood before the tomb of the last Magad to sit on the Ametrine Throne. No, he will fight on, even as a prisoner of the ixchel. Other hearts may change, however. In that possibility we must always have faith.”

  “Not all change is for the better,” said Felthrup.

  “That’s blary true,” said Thasha. “Those horrid ships-they were flying Bali Adro flags. The whole Empire that Bolutu thought would come to our rescue must have turned into something foul.” She looked up at Hercol with sudden dread. “We can’t let them take the Chathrand.”

  “Now you see it,” said Hercol. “If Bali Adro is ruled by mass murderers, what greater crime could we commit than to bring them the Nilstone? We are charged with keeping it from evil, not laying it at evil’s foot. Once we imagined the South an empty land, where we might persuade the crew to abandon ship in sufficient numbers to strand her, until the villains gave command of her to us. Now the villains may well be everywhere. A sound ship and a willing crew are our only hope of survival.”

  Pazel felt anger tightening his chest. “You want us to go on helping these bastards? Helping Rose and Ott, Alyash and Taliktrum and his gang?”

  “We cannot proceed without them, Pazel. Of course I don’t imagine that they will make it easy. But we must remember the lesson of the fishermen and the crocodile.”

  “Ah!” said Felthrup. “An excellent parable; I have heard it myself. Two fishermen made long war over a favorite spot to cast their nets. Each day they came and bickered, racing each other in their labors. Finally, at the end of one hot, sticky, altogether infelicitous day, they came to blows, and one man clubbed the other nearly senseless, and left him crawling on the banks. There Tivali the crocodile found him, and delightedly feasted.”