The Night of the Swarm

by Robert V. S. Redick

  “What are you holding against your face?”

  “My cloth from Uláramyth. Kirishgán says I should cover the wounds with it until dawn.”

  “You must be tired of holding it. Give it here.”

  “I am not tired, boy.”

  A silence. Then Neeps asked, “Your people can grow back fingers and toes. Can you grow fresh skin as well?”

  Thasha saw the fierce gleam in Lunja’s eye. “Will I be scarred, do you mean? Will I be ugly? What is that to you?”

  Thasha moved away from them, not wanting to hear more. She took a turn at the halyards, in a line of selk, their blue eyes shining in the darkness like living sapphires. An hour later, as they cleared the Sandwall and emerged into the high, thrashing seas beyond, she saw Neeps and Lunja seated side by side against the hatch coaming. The dlömic woman was asleep with her head on his shoulder, and Neeps was still pressing the cloth to her cheek.

  That night Thasha held Pazel close, and he murmured a song into her ear. It was in the selk language he had learned on Sirafstöran Tor, but he himself could not say where he had learned the tune.

  “Someone must have been singing it in the Uláramyth,” he said. “There are times when I feel as if we spent years in that place. As if a whole stage of our lives passed there in safety.”

  They slept, and Thasha dreamed they made love, and in the dream Pazel changed many times. He was a selk, and then he was Hercól, and then a dlömu with the voice of Ramachni, singing Allaley heda Miraval, ni starinath asam, and then he was a sea-murth with sinuous limbs, and he sang a murth-song, and when she woke there were tears in Pazel’s eyes.

  The shadow of a bird swept over her face. Starting from her reverie, Thasha reached up and grasped the carved mane of the horse above her, and stood. It was very early; only a handful of selk were about, and none was near. She had spent an hour on this platform already, puzzling over the erotic dream and the song that came to her in such detail; Leheda mori, was that “goodbye in this lifetime,” “goodbye in this world”?

  Idle fool. What impulse had brought her here? She had meant to rise and go straight to the struggle, that inner assault at the wall between herself and Erithusmé. It was how she had begun every day on the Promise: seeking desperately for any fissure, any hidden latch or keyhole. Smashing, flailing. And finding nothing. You’re out of time, out of time, chided a voice in her head, and every day it rang more true. If they were caught on the high seas, pincered between warships or snared by some Platazcra deviltry, what then? The selk and twenty fishermen could not fight off a host, or shield the Promise from withering cannon fire. No one could help—save possibly Erithusmé, furious and caged. And every day she feared Hercól would draw Ildraquin and learn the dreaded news: that the Chathrand was leaving, setting off into the Ruling Sea, waiting no longer.

  The others felt the same urgency now. Hercól had questioned her about every moment in the last year when she had noticed any trace of that other being inside her, however remote. She answered his questions dutifully, but they brought no breakthrough. Then Lunja and Neda had taken her off to a little cabin in the stern and asked other questions, mortifying questions, about Greysan Fulbreech. It seemed the builder of the wall might be Arunis himself, and Greysan the tool he used to put it in place. But Ramachni had said that to do so would have required some force, and that Thasha would have felt it—unless greatly distracted. Were there such moments? Scarlet, Thasha admitted that there had been: two times, before her suspicions of Fulbreech became acute. No, she’d not let him go too far. But yes, Rin help her, she’d been distracted, aware of nothing but his kisses, his hands.

  A soft sound from the deck above. Someone was waiting for her, Hercól or Pazel or Neda or Neeps. Waiting and hoping: had she found the key at last? Thasha closed her eyes. One more day of disappointment. One more day when they would cheer her, warm her, salute her for the fight she was waging.

  She turned and ducked under the bowsprit, seized the top of the rail, pulled herself to the height of the topdeck. And froze.

  A few yards across the deck lay an ungainly brown bird. A pelican. It was splayed on its side, one black eye gazing skyward. It was so still Thasha feared it was dead.

  She slid over the rail. Nólcindar and several dlömic crew members had also noticed the bird. The dlömu stared with wonder, and Thasha realized with a start that she had not seen one pelican south of the Ruling Sea. The dlömu were edging nearer, but when Nólcindar saw Thasha she waved for them to be still. Thasha stepped closer. A muscle twitched in the pelican’s wing, but otherwise it did not move.

  Thasha knelt. The pelican was breathing, but only just; its eye had begun to glaze over. The moment felt unreal and yet absolutely vital: she was kneeling beside a bird and the bird was half dead of exhaustion and the fate of their whole struggle was in that failing eye. She stared: the orb was dreadfully parched. Once more bowing to impulse, she breathed on the eye, and saw the fog of her breath upon its surface.

  Then the eye blinked. The two halves of the yellow-orange beak parted minutely, and a sound emerged. It was not that of any bird. It was a voice, huge and deep but extremely distant, like an echo in a canyon far away. She could catch no words, but there was an awesome complexity to the sound, thunder within thunder, lava boiling in the earth. And Thasha knew she had heard the voice before.

  “Bring Pazel,” she said aloud. “Someone fetch him, please. And hurry.”

  Pazel must have been already on his way, for seconds later he and Neeps were beside her. Thasha took Pazel’s hand and drew him down.

  Neeps stared with wonder at the pelican. “Where did that come from? Is it dead?”

  The strange voice was fading. Thasha pressed Pazel’s head closer. “Listen! Can’t you hear it?”

  He strained to hear—and then he did hear, and looked up in horror.

  “What’s the matter?” said Neeps. “What in Pitfire’s going on here?”

  Thasha just shook her head. “Get ready,” was all she managed to say.

  Pazel was shaking. “Oh credek. Help me, help me. Gods.”

  His lips began to work. Thasha had no idea how to help, so she embraced him, and Neeps wrapped his arms around them both. The three were bent over the pelican like a trio of witches, but only Pazel was caught in the spell. His mouth opened and closed; his tongue writhed, his face twisted and he clung to them savagely. A soft rasping noise came from his throat.

  “What’s he doing?” cried Neeps. “Is that the demon’s language? The one he learned in the forest?”

  “No,” said Thasha, “it’s worse.”

  A convulsion struck Pazel like a lightning bolt, the spasm so violent that they were all three hurled backward. He kicked and flailed, and Thasha shouted at Neeps to hold on.

  The sound exploded from Pazel’s chest, an impossible roar that seemed to lift him with its power, that shook the deck of the Promise and trembled her sails and made the selk recoil in frightened recognition. Then it stopped, cut off at a stroke. Pazel gasped, restored to himself but coughing, gagging on blood—his own blood; he had bitten his tongue. But he didn’t care about that. He was trying desperately to pull them to their feet.

  “Away, get away!”

  The bird was twitching. They dived away from it as from a bomb. Out of the corner of her eye Thasha saw the transformation, the small form expanding with the suddenness of cannon fire, and then across the bow of the Promise sprawled an eguar, forty feet long, shimmering, blazing, black. Its crocodilian head punched straight through the portside rail. Flames licked at shattered timbers. The creature’s fumes rolled over the deck in a noxious cloud; everyone in sight had begun to choke.

  The eguar pulled its head back through the rail and stood. Rigging blazed and snapped; the foremast listed. “Nólcindar, Nólcindar!” the dlömic fishermen were crying. “We are finished! What have the humans done?”

  The creature’s white-hot eyes swept over them. Beneath its stomach the deck was smoking. Then its eyes found
the youths and remained there. Its jaws spread wide. Thasha heard Pazel groaning beside her, “No more, please—”

  The jaws snapped—and the eguar vanished. The fumes immediately thinned. There at the center of the devastation stood Ramachni, the black mink.

  “Hail, Nólcindar,” he said. “Permission to come aboard?”

  Then he fell. Thasha ran and lifted him in her arms. The mage’s tiny form was limp. “Water,” he said. “Pumps, hoses. Tell them, Thasha: they must scour the vessel clean.”

  Nólcindar was already shouting orders: eguar poisons were no mystery to the selk. Thasha pressed Ramachni to her cheek and wept. “Oh, you dear,” she babbled. “You mad dear disaster.”

  The other travelers crowded near them. “Ramachni, master and guide!” cried Bolutu.

  “And friend,” said Hercól. “Once again we have been lost without you. Heaven smiles on us today.”

  “I was the one lost,” said the mage. “Sitroth gave me his form, and gave up his life so doing, but his life was just a part of the cost. Oh, I am weary. But have I hurt you, Thasha? Hurt anyone?”

  There were no injuries—save for Pazel, who had bruised himself badly. Neeps was still gripping his shoulders. “Something’s wrong,” he said. “He won’t talk.”

  “His tongue is bleeding, fool,” said Lunja.

  “It’s not just that,” said Neeps. “Look at him. There’s something wild in his face.”

  Pazel sat gripping himself, as though chilled, but there was sweat on his brow, and his eyes darted fitfully. Behind the bloody lips his teeth were chattering.

  Ramachni leaned out, and Thasha held him close enough to touch Pazel’s cheek. The tarboy flinched, then gazed at Ramachni as if seeing him for the first time, and his look of fear lessened slightly.

  “Pazel called me back,” said Ramachni, “in the last tongue I could hear in this world. Sitroth and I fought the maukslar together, and made it flee to the Pits. The fight was terrible, but it was the journey that nearly finished me. Twelve days have I sought you, and that is too long for me to take any shape but this, my prime form in Alifros. But there was no trace of you, so each day I went on as owl or pelican. And each day it grew harder to remember who I was, or the path back to myself. At last in despair I flew the length of the Sandwall, until I came to a tiny inlet with an abandoned outpost, and signs of a fight. It was my one chance. Blindly, I set out north over the open sea, driving myself to death’s door with the effort. By the time I saw the boat I had lost speech, reason—almost every part of my thinking self.

  “The one spark that remained was eguar-fire: deep within me, I could still howl in the eguar’s tongue. And Pazel heard me, and responded in kind. But in doing so, he did what he always feared: set his mind to forming words in that language, which no human mind is meant to encompass.”

  Neeps took off his coat and slipped it over Pazel’s shoulders: his friend had curled into a shivering ball. Thasha could read the anger and confusion in his face. What right had Ramachni to use Pazel in this way?

  Ramachni must have sensed Neeps’ feelings as well. “I did not ask this of him, Neeparvasi. I was beyond asking. He simply heard me crying out in the darkness, and answered. But I do not think he has taken lasting harm. Probably he will suffer one of his mind-fits as soon as he regains a little strength. Later we must try not to speak of eguar, for it will be harder now to keep his thoughts from shaping words in that tongue.”

  “For long?” asked Neda, touching her brother’s head.

  “Yes, Neda, for long,” said Ramachni. “For the rest of his life, unless a merciful forgetting should strip him of the language. We mages have an old rule: that every act of enchantment takes precisely as much from the world as it gives back, though we rarely grasp the whole of the exchange. You should help him to a quiet place before the fits begin.”

  “We’ll have to carry him,” said Thasha.

  “Then do so. And carry me to my rest as well. But first you must be warned.” He raised his head and looked at Nólcindar. “The Kirisang, the Death’s Head, is coming. She was the last thing I saw before my reason fled. And she was already north of the Sandwall, flying fast over the seas—much faster than the wind should have allowed for. She has called up a false wind, somehow, and harnessed it.”

  “She is flogging the last drops of power from her Plazic generals, maybe,” said Olik, “or else the pact that gave her a maukslar servant has given her other powers, too. I wonder what the price will be in her case.”

  “What matters now is that she is on our trail,” said Nólcindar. “Go to your rest, Arpathwin, for I fear we will need you again before long. And I must see that foremast braced anew, if not better than before. We must outrun the Death’s Head, and the mistress of death at her helm.”

  Ramachni’s sudden return lifted all spirits. But within the hour a sail emerged from the morning haze, fifty miles southwest. It was not one of the Behemoths, but it was a huge ship: the size of the Chathrand, probably. The keen-eyed selk soon confirmed it: the ship was the Death’s Head. The terrible news was allayed by one fact alone: that the larger vessel’s course paralleled their own without converging. Macadra had not spied them yet.

  At once Nólcindar turned the Promise away, east by northeast, so that their narrow stern faced the Death’s Head, rather than their flank and sails. The crew hooded the lamps and draped the stern windows in sailcloth, lest any glass catch the sun. There were islands ahead, and for a time it appeared the little Promise might just reach them, and slip away into a maze. But a cry from the lookout dashed their hopes:

  “Death’s Head changing course. Two points to starboard, Captain Nólcindar. She means to intercept.”

  “Daram, let us see that she fails. Aloft, selk and dlömu! The white horse must gallop on the wind!”

  In scant minutes the crew had spread topgallants and skysails, and were bending curious, ribbed wing-sails to the lower yardarms. But before they had even finished the job Nólcindar was giving orders for them to brace the mainsails anew. The wind had turned suddenly fitful. They were slowing—even as Macadra’s ship somehow gained speed.

  Faces darkened: the gap between the ships was starting to close. “She has spoken to the wind,” said Kirishgán quietly. “It does not obey her happily, but it concedes her something. I have not seen such a spell deployed in many hundreds of years.”

  Soon thereafter Pazel began to howl. It had all the hallmarks of his regular mind-fits (pain in his skull, babble from his lips, agony in the presence of voices), but it was far more punishing than any Thasha had witnessed before. His shaking grew so violent that he could not be left alone. They sat with him in shifts, trying not to make a sound.

  Thasha found it hard to leave his side. After her third shift she began to wave the others away: she wasn’t tired; her lover needed her; surely it was almost through.

  Then the explosions started: the Death’s Head had opened up with her long-range guns. Now everyone was shouting, hatches slammed and boots pounded, and beyond the hull the iron missiles began to scream. Thasha listened, transfixed, her arms enclosing Pazel’s head. Fifty yards to starboard. Now eighty or ninety to port. Twenty to port! A deep, sickening boom near the stern.

  Neeps came and gave her a scrap of paper: Macadra can’t seem to close: when she draws near, her own wind-charm speeds us up. But we can’t shake her, either. Maybe at sundown, if we last.

  But sundown was still hours away. The barrage went on and on, and so did Pazel’s agony.

  Midafternoon there came a rending, shattering noise. A direct hit, probably to a mast or spar. Crash of falling timbers. Soft, sickening thumps of bodies dropping to the boards. Pazel shook and twisted and made impossible sounds, jackal, steam-pipe, wildcat, wounded horse. His body was drenched in frigid sweat. Thasha wrapped him in blankets, kissed his clammy cheeks, appalled at her own impotence. Erithusmé could help him. Erithusmé could turn those missiles around in midair.

  Thasha did not notice when darkness
came. She locked her arms about Pazel, trying to control his shaking, biting her lips to be sure she never spoke. In lucid moments he would smile at her, but the smile always cracked into a spasm of pain.

  The cannon fire ended. Pazel’s fit did not. Long into the night it raged. He vomited, wept from sheer fatigue. But at last it too was over, and he slept curled on his side with Thasha draped over and around him like a blanket herself. She let herself doze, then, and when she woke it was to his grateful kisses on her hands.

  26

  Good Sailing

  Moments come in the life of any world when the forces shaping its future, however disparate they appear, begin inexorably to converge. In Alifros such a moment arrived in Halar, Western Solar Year 942. The month began with Empress Maisa’s secret mobilization in the hills above Ormael, and ended with the collapse of the Red Storm. Between these events, however, were thousands of others, simultaneous but un-glimpsed from one region to the next.

  On the foggy morning of 6 Halar, fate handed Arqual a substantial victory over the White Fleet, when a Mzithrini commander on the Nelu Rekere mistook his position and led his eighteen warships to disaster on the Rukmast Shoals. A lesser number of Arquali ships had shadowed the Mzithrinis for days; now they closed and raked the hapless vessels at their leisure. In a few hours they sank all eighteen without suffering a scratch.

  Aboard the Arquali flagship, Sandor Ott’s regional lieutenant observed the carnage with satisfaction. The Black Rags were floundering, not just here but everywhere. One battlefield report after another confirmed their fragility. They had vast forces, but no steadiness of purpose, no unity. The latest dispatch even spoke of Turach raids below the Tsördon Mountains, in the very heart of Mzithrini territory. An almost unimaginable advance.

  As he watched the enemy drown, the lieutenant came to a decision. They were off-balance; it was time to unbalance them further. That night he dispatched a small clipper to Bramian with a message: The day has come. Push the fledglings out of the nest.