The Night of the Swarm

by Robert V. S. Redick

  Winds steady & growing, as though the South were anxious to be rid of us. One or two charted isles left ahead of us, then what I must assume is barbarous territory all the way to the edge of the Ruling Sea.

  Rescued that fool Druffle from a suicidal binge. I smelled only rum on the man, but his behaviour suggests some fouler brew: grebel, maybe. He thought I was his father, & he begged, weeping, for some bread & honey—“island honey,” he is on about it again.

  But Mr. Uskins continues to improve. He is consigned to quarters now rather than sickbay, for there are no spare beds in the latter. He is shy, and eats alone, and perhaps suffers from some difficulty swallowing, for his hand is often at his neck.

  Saturday, 23 Halar

  No pursuit. We are rid of both vessels, it would appear. Lest we enjoy the briefest lessening of our dread, however, a terrible vision came tonight. I was far below & did not see it, but those who did can speak of nothing else. They say it was a cloud that moved. That it raced over us with the speed of birds on the wings, but paused over our quarterdeck, & even lowered a little, & that it was black as pitch, & though it boiled & writhed it was thicker than any mist, seeming almost like a black growth or tumor, half as big as the Chathrand. Off it flew northward, & vanished into the thunderheads that broke above us shortly thereafter. Felthrup saw it & has since been impossible to calm: he declares it is the Swarm of Night. Rose saw it too—from the height of the mizzen topgallants, where he’d pulled himself for a last scan of the seas behind us. After the cloud had passed he stayed there, motionless, & when I climbed up to consult him I found his eyes distracted & his face deathly pale.

  “My life has been all wrong,” he said.

  Sunday, 24 Halar

  Star of Rin, grant me courage. The nightmare we have all feared is upon us. Two men have gone mad. I am not speaking of an attack of nerves or a delusion. They have lost speech, reason, everything. They scream and run in panic; they bite and claw and fling their limbs about like monkeys. One is young Midshipman Bravun, of Besq; the other a passenger from Uturphe.

  I have ordered the dlömu not to breathe the word tol-chenni, but in truth the precaution comes too late. The lads all know about the mind-plague. They are afraid as never before.

  Chadfallow too is mortified, and hiding his fear behind an exhaustive medical inquiry. The two men were not acquainted, did not frequent the same parts of the ship, did not even eat on the same deck. Both, however, were Plapps: the midshipman had been recruited to the gang just days ago, I’m told.

  There has already been some trouble on this score: Plapps are whispering that the outbreak was engineered somehow by Kruno Burnscove, maimed & imprisoned though he be. At five bells this morning a Burnscove lad was found in the bottom of the hold—gagged & tied up in his hammock & dangling by his feet. He was positioned over the bilge well, at a height that required him to arch his back & neck to keep his head out of the bilge. He’d done just that through the night, and was found at dawn just as the last of his strength was giving out. Luckily, Rose is the sort of captain who expects to wake up to a statistical report on his vessel, written out & slipped under his door by the officer of the day. Such reports naturally include the depth of water in the well.

  If nothing else Chadfallow’s investigation should help stamp out such noxious stupidity. The Burnscove Boys did not inflict the mind-plague on the Plapps. We know from Prince Olik that the disease is not transmissible from person to person, that it struck Bali Adro like a snowfall—meaning slowly, uniformly, everywhere at once.

  Mr. Uskins’ symptoms were of course very similar to those of the new victims—and Uskins recovered in a fortnight. That recovery bewilders us all. Prince Olik claimed, and our dlömic crew confirms, that no one ever recovers from the plague. “Once you burn down a house, it’s gone,” says Commander Spoon-Ears. “That’s how it was with human minds. You can’t repair something that no longer exists.”

  So what happened to Uskins? Spoon-Ears can’t tell me, and neither can Chadfallow. Least of all can Uskins himself account for his recovery. “I was a long time afflicted, but the illness passed,” he says. “I was warned that madness would come, and that it would be a fate worse than death. But I was spared. I am a new and happy man. Please forgive me for what I did to the tarboys.”

  What he did to the tarboys! That’s a subject I can’t bear to explore with Uskins, yet, though perhaps the lads themselves can enlighten me. If he means that he was cruel to them, I know it already. If he means something more I may just turn him over to the Turach they call the Bloody Son. Either that, or find someone (Chadfallow, Sandor Ott, old onesie-twosie Rain) to attempt a little corrective surgery. I have crossed half the world without murdering Uskins, but Rin knows I’m still prepared.

  Of course that is in awful taste. One should not make a joke of murder, not on this ship at any rate. When I told the captain about the Burnscove Boy who had nearly drowned, I expected a detonation: something on the order of what had happened the day he assaulted Burnscove himself. To my surprise Rose’s reaction was quite the opposite. He listened in perfect stillness, then walked slowly to his desk, where he sat down & played with a pencil. Finally, almost sorrowfully, he told me to start naming members of the Plapp gang—just off the top of my head. I didn’t know them all, I told him.

  “Never mind,” said Rose heavily. “Name all that you can.”

  I complied. The names rolled off my tongue, & he sat there with eyes closed, so still that I began to wonder if he was asleep. I must have named thirty or forty when his eyes suddenly snapped open. “Him,” he said. “Bring him to me at once.”

  “Skipper, with my utmost respect—”

  “Bring him,” said Rose quietly. Then he looked up at me, his face strained & sad. “Or send the Turachs for him, if you prefer.”

  Of course I went myself. The man I’d named was a tall, skinny, red-nosed Etherhorder who’d been with us from the start. He was also a personal favorite of Darius Plapp. He delivered the ganglord’s messages, brought food to his bedside & for aught I know tasted it for poison. I found him seated next to Plapp on the berth deck, grinning & whispering in his ear. He came along with a shrug, snickering at me behind my back.

  “Did you know, sir, there’s men call you Old Fool Fiffengurt, and Rat-Fancier Fiffengurt, and nastier things? Much as we try to keep ’em in line, of course.”

  I did not even glance back at him. This was an old game, insulting officers with a veneer of respect. The lad was playing it crudely. On another day I’d have put him in the stocks.

  “Personally,” he said, “I don’t hold with makin’ sport of a man’s life back in Arqual—do you, sir? I mean, say a dry old geezer falls in love with a brewer’s lass & wants to give up the sailing life—”

  I stopped dead.

  “No one should laugh at ’im. Good luck to the geezer! Maybe he will keep her satisfied, keep her cute little eyes from roaming. There’s odder things in this world—not many, but some.”

  It went on like this all the way to the captain’s door. I thought the man’s nastiness would make what was to come a little easier, but it did not. When we arrived Rose was on his knees, unfolding a dusty oilskin over the polished floor.

  “Come here,” he said immediately. “Not you, Fiffengurt.”

  The man stepped uncertainly onto the tarp. “Shall I help you up, Captain?” he said. There was no hint of a snicker anymore.

  Rose raised his busy head & stared at the man. “You are close to Darius Plapp?” he asked.

  “Mr. Plapp’s been very good to me, sir, yes indeed! I try to do what’s expected of—that is, always assumin’ it don’t get in the way of orders—of my duties, I mean, sir, my duties.”

  Rose climbed laboriously to his feet. “Do not be alarmed,” he said. “I am going to feel your muscles.”

  “What for, sir?” asked the Plapp, as Rose squeezed his arms experimentally.

  “To be certain I do not need a blade,” said Rose. He walked back to hi
s deck & picked up a coiled leather cord. Turning, he held it out as though for the man’s inspection.

  The man shot me a beseeching glance. “What’s this all about, Captain?”

  “Order,” said Rose, & struck him hard in the stomach. The man bent double, & Rose whipped the cord around his neck. It was over quickly. The steward & I wrapped the oilskin around the body & carried it below.

  Darius Plapp went berserk, & had to be restrained by his own thugs, lest he hurt himself. Kruno Burnscove too was shocked at Rose’s escalation. He issued a startling order from the brig: not one of his men was to gloat, or laugh, or be anything short of professional seamen, until further notice. Rose himself carried on as if nothing had changed.

  Druffle is correct: the gangs dare not touch him while their leaders are aboard. Besides, since the day we faced the Behemoth, there is a new air of mystery & fear about the captain. Fifty men saw him laid out on the topdeck, pronounced dead by Chadfallow, gray & motionless for a quarter hour. And fifty men had seen him bolt to his feet & resume command. Even Sandor Ott has been put in his place, they are saying, because Nilus Rose simply cannot be killed.

  Monday, 25 Halar

  Maybe not. But if he is immortal, Rose is alone in that distinction. The whole ship is rising; there is talk of a gang war. Kruno Burnscove has been stabbed to death in his cell.

  11. Fiffengurt refers to the portside heads (toilets). As on most vessels, the Chathrand’s heads are located in the extreme forward section of the bow, where the wind (always somewhat faster than the ship) carries their stench away. —EDITOR

  12. Velamprukut Bedour was captain of the Chathrand in the years 427–36, before the sundering of ties between North and South. A great lover of military history, he may have learned of the glass cube from a notoriously grisly painting at the Oceanic Museum in Bali Adro City. The weapon is of ancient design, perhaps dating to the Maduracha Siege (-1174). It was resurrected by the Plazic generals, one of whom may have drawn his own inspiration from the painting. —EDITOR

  15

  The Editor Takes Certain Precautions

  I am sorry to have denied you the pleasure of my insights. There has been a spot of difficulty with the chancellor, and it became needful to barricade myself in the library, and to write without pause. I scarcely need to mention that doing so is harder with each passing day. My hands are changing shape, the thumb resists bending like a thumb. I have broken two quills, spoiled countless sheets of linen paper. I have experimented with other arrangements, tying the quill to an outstretched finger. It works, after a fashion: I scratch fitfully at the page, like the cat who begs at my kitchen door.

  I must send someone around to feed that animal, for I have not been home in a week. The day before my tactical relocation, the chancellor sent a messenger to my door. Reading from a scroll, the boy declared that I was to visit the head office “without hesitation” (did he mean delay?) and to account for the “irregular conduct” of which I had “made an unfortunate habit.”

  Naturally I laughed. But I could not coax so much as a smile from the flat-faced boy. “Irregular conduct cannot be habitual—surely you see that?” The lad only fidgeted, trying not to stare at me. I tipped him. He fled for his life.

  That night I received a second message—this time from the Greysan Fulbreech Self-Improvement Society (of Delusional Imbeciles) and tied to a brick that shattered a window. I slept through the assault (facedown on my manuscript). The geniuses had chosen to attack my bathroom, and the brick landed squarely in the tub, and yesterday’s bathwater. Finding it the next morning, I dried the threatening note, and read what I could:

  Not much of a narrative, to be sure, but far better than the alternative endings they continued to send me for The Chathrand Voyage.

  I packed my notes, stuffed a bag with clothes, whistled up Jorl. The Young Scholars were waiting in the library tower, as on any morning, and we worked in peace for two days. Then I caught one of them—my favorite, as it happened—stuffing a copy of chapter 16 into his underwear. An interrogation followed, and the sobbing Scholar at last confessed that the Fulbreech freaks were paying him handsomely for every page he smuggled out.

  I dismissed them all. The next day I sent out messengers of my own, and interviewed several copyists from the village. The one I have retained is a mendicant preacher, whose faith decrees that he wear nothing but a loincloth. He stinks, but then so do I.

  I have hired guards, too, and had no end of trouble with them. They are flikkermen, you understand. They took a week to find my residence, and then demanded payment in advance. We came to terms in the end, but they are disgruntled, and like to revisit the argument among themselves, with peevishness and poor diction, just outside my chamber. Nor were they happy to promise not to subject the library patrons to electrical shocks. They wish to see the long hair of the girl-students standing up like quills on a porcupine.

  No matter. Their weird physiognomy had the desired effect: I am free of visitors at last. The terrified cook leaves my meals on the staircase. The flikkermen bring them to me, and empty my chamber pots. I think my food offends their nostrils more than my bodily wastes, and given the declining standards at this academy I begin to concur.

  Since taking to the tower I have had no visits from the Fulbreech Society. I can see them from the window, though: huddling, conspiring. For a day they pressed leaflets into the hands of students, professors, groundskeepers, but the confused indifference these evoked must have demoralized them; now they sit and sulk. But they are not harmless. A few come from wealth. The society’s president, Mr. My-Name-Is-Not-Important, is one such child: his mother gave the school a courtyard full of statuary. Great marble heroes, chests jutting, weapons raised, regal faces spangled with sparrow droppings. The wretch’s passion runs in the family.

  Did he truly wish to kill me, with that knife? I think not. If he wished for anything besides a release of fury, it was to punish me with a scratch. He and his fellow cuckoos need me to finish the tale—to their liking, of course. And they need my singular credentials to see that it is taken seriously. My name on their version of The Chathrand Voyage: that is how they think all this will end.

  Irritatingly enough, I need them too.

  The society, after all, detests one figure above myself—and I am not speaking of Passive Pathkendle. I mean the chancellor, the man who quipped that he would burn the Voyage if it contained any affront to “national pride” (ask him what the phrase means; you will come away bewildered). He is a cowardly soul in almost every respect, but cowards with authority are more dangerous than crocodiles. Above all he fears embarrassment. Certainly a mad (not to say lycanthropic) professor emeritus who seizes a library tower and defends it with the humanoid equivalent of electric eels could prove embarrassing. Above all if said professor remained in said tower during a Donors’ Conference, such as the one that begins next week.

  What could be worse? Many things occur to the imagination. The professor leaping from the tower in broad daylight. Or setting it ablaze. Or a siege by the academy police, and the chancellor’s name tied evermore to visions of slaughtered flikkermen, their bloody hands still sparking, their frog tongues lolling on the stairs; and the weird old prof curled in death around his manuscript.

  Or worse yet: forbearance. The chancellor waits the madman out. The madman finishes his book and sees it published, and the incontrovertible verity of its claims is recognized by all thinking creatures. The donors, falling largely outside this category, rise up in savage denial. Talking rats! Dlömic atrocities! The towers of Bali Adro built by slaves! It will never do! Flag-fondling simpletons, they would prefer no history at all to one that complicates Our Glorious Past.

  You see the chancellor’s dilemma. I have laid a banquet of embarrassments before him, and he must choose his seat and dine.

  But I do not wish him to choose assault—not yet. I need eight days and nights. By the eve of the Donors’ Conference my book will be complete, and the allies to whom I wrote i
n desperation will have come in force—if they are coming at all. Until then I need my guards to protect me from the Fulbreech freaks, and the freaks and their rich mums to hold off the chancellor.

  And so today I have lied. I sent the mendicant with a message for the freaks under my window:

  Dear Sirs: Perhaps I have, indeed, been unfair in my treatment of Greysan Fulbreech. I am reading your proposed endings with an open mind, and find much to my liking. I will give them full and favorable consideration—provided, of course, that the chancellor does not put an UNTIMELY END to this MOST SACRED EFFORT to recount the HEROIC STORY of OUR FOREFATHERS.

  Merely a precaution: I shall of course give their scribbles no consideration at all. How loathsome, this maneuver. And how fitting. The survivors of the voyage were saved as often by enemies as loved ones. We needed them; they needed us; we stained our hands scarlet together. The chancellor is quite right to fear for his school; when my book is published many donors will abandon us, and weeds will grow high about these halls. But I am right to fight him, to not let him falsify the past. On my desk at home, Sandor Ott’s skull grins in the shadows; I can almost hear his taunts: We cannot help it, we ambitious men. We make common cause with fiends.

  16

  Nine Matches

  6 Halar 942

  265th day from Etherhorde

  Neda sat cross-legged in the unfurnished room. Upon her lap a smooth board, and on the board a sheet of linen paper. In her hand the most exquisite pen she had ever touched, with a nib of pure gold and a body carved from the deep red root of a mountain cypress.

  It was a gift of the selk; they hoped she would keep it; they hoped a love for Alifros would imbue the words she wrote with it and that those words would touch many hearts.

  On the floor in front of her were two smooth stones. One weighed down the stack of blank sheets the selk had given her. The other lay atop the pages she had already filled with transcriptions from the Book of the Old Faith. Over the three days she had been writing the second stack had grown to nearly five inches. The stack of empty pages shrank each day, but the selk always brought more.