Becoming a tarboy had been merely the best of the awful choices before him. It was not clear whether Neda understood that choice, or could forgive it. But something had changed in the last few days. Her glances, even the sharpest ones, had a little less of the sfvantskor in them, and a little more the elder sister.
‘When do we march, Hercól?’ asked Neeps abruptly. ‘Tell me it won’t be sooner than tomorrow.’
‘When’s just one of the questions,’ added Big Skip Sunderling, the blacksmith’s mate from the Chathrand. ‘I’m more worried about how. Some of us ain’t fit to march.’
‘We will do as Ramachni commands,’ said Hercól. ‘You have followed me thus far, but make no mistake: he is our leader now.’
‘I would be a poor leader if I drove you on without rest,’ said Ramachni. ‘We need food as well, and Bolutu and I must do what we can for the wounded. And for all of us there remains one grim task before we depart.’
‘Do not speak of it just yet, pray,’ said a high, clear voice.
It was Ensyl, with Myett close behind her, scrambling down the broken staircase. At eight inches, neither ixchel woman stood as tall as a single step, but they descended with catlike grace, copper skin bright in the sun, eyes of the same colour gleaming like coals. Each carried a bulging sack, fashioned from bits of cloth, over her shoulder.
‘We have ventured high up the wall in search of breakfast,’ said Ensyl, lowering her burden with care. ‘The wind is ferocious above, though you cannot feel it here. But it was worth the struggle: these dainties, at least, did not come from the forest.’
The humans sighed: within the sacks lay twenty or thirty eggs. They were of several sizes and colours; the most striking were perfectly round and gleamed like polished turquoise.
‘There are strange birds aloft,’ said Myett. ‘Some have claws halfway down their wings, and hang by these from the rock face. Others are so small that at first we took them for insects. Atop the spire there are nests the size of lifeboats, made of moss and branches. We did not see the birds that built them.’
She looked sourly at the faces above her. ‘You giants won’t be happy until you boil these eggs into hard rubber, of course—’
Big Skip seized an egg. Tilting his head backwards, he cracked the shell against his lower teeth, emptied yolk and white into his mouth, and savoured both in silence a moment. Then he swallowed. A shiver passed through his big frame.
‘Tree of Heaven, that’s good,’ he said.
The remaining humans dived on the eggs. Pazel gulped his down in one swallow; Thasha licked the inside of her shell like a cat cleaning a dish. Ensyl grinned; Myett pressed her lips tightly shut.
Bolutu did not partake, however. Lunja took an egg and held it up before her eyes, as though considering. ‘No more,’ she said at last, returning it. ‘We have swallowed enough little suns, who served in the armies of the Platazcra.’
‘Little suns?’ said Pazel.
‘For our people,’ said Bolutu, ‘to eat an egg is an act of great pride – unhealthy pride, my father used to tell me.’1
‘In Bali Adro today, only soldiers and royals may eats eggs,’ said Lunja. ‘We turn it into another bit of flattery for the Empire. “The sun itself we shall devour, in time.” If I were still in Masalym, I should have to eat this egg, and say those fatuous words, or be accused of disloyalty.’
‘That’s a blary shame,’ said Mandric, licking his fingers.
Ramachni neither ate nor spoke. His watchfulness soon gave the others to realise that the ‘grim task’ would not long be put off. They finished quickly, leaving a few eggs for later, and turned their attention to the mage.
‘Hercól,’ he said, ‘is the Nilstone safe?’
In answer the swordsman pointed gravely at a small mound of rocks, carefully arranged beside the tower wall. Through the spaces between the rocks Pazel could see the Nilstone’s inverse glow, its blacker-than-all-blackness, and felt a touch of that deep, flesh-chilling aversion the relic always produced in him.
‘We have one sturdy sack in which to bear it,’ said Hercól, ‘but I will wrap the Stone first in whatever spare cloth we can find. No one will die of an accidental touch.’
Ramachni nodded. ‘We will not leave this place before tomorrow,’ he said, ‘and I will confess to you that I am not sure how the deed is to be done. Walking would be terribly dangerous: there are few ways out of the crater at all, and most of the openings that do exist are traps, designed to lure prey down to the forest floor and keep them there. I had hoped that the river could carry us to freedom, for it does flow out of the forest at some point. But the river has dangers of its own, and it winds like a snake – and besides, we have no raft. The wood of the great trees is so dense that it sinks like stone.’
‘There are young pines by the forest’s edge,’ said Cayer Vispek, gesturing, ‘but they are few and small.’
‘We have a final problem, alas,’ said Ramachni. ‘The fireflies cannot go with us.’
Cries of dismay. ‘You can’t mean it!’ said Big Skip. ‘Go blind again into that mucking forest?’
‘I did not say blind,’ said Ramachni, ‘only without the fireflies. They are fragile creatures, and I can ask little more of them.’
‘Ramachni,’ said Bolutu, ‘can you induce the nuhzat?’
Lunja shot him an appalled glance. Pazel too was startled: the nuhzat was the ecstatic dream-state of the dlömic people, and when it struck they exhibited all sorts of odd behaviours and abilities. But it had become extremely rare – so rare indeed that most dlömu were afraid of it.
‘I have done so,’ said Ramachni, ‘in the distant past.’
‘Madness,’ said Lunja.
‘Or salvation,’ said Bolutu. ‘Sergeant Lunja, we were both in nuhzat in the Infernal Forest. I heard your singing, and I saw your eyes: black as midnight they were. When the torch went out, I found that the nuhzat had given me a kind of inverse sight. It was frightful and bewildering, but I could make out the shapes of trees, mushrooms, people. As a last resort we might link the party together with rope, and you and I could lead them.’
‘Only if the nuhzat gave you that exact gift again,’ said Ramachni, ‘and that no one can guarantee. There is a reason your dream-state was never harnessed as a tool of warriors or athletes, Bolutu. It is by nature a wild condition, a wayward grace. It liberates, but it does not willingly serve.’ He turned to Ensyl and Myett. ‘I wish we had spoken before you climbed the ruins. A bit higher, and you might have described the land downriver for us.’
‘We will climb again,’ said Ensyl.
Myett shot her a hard look: Speak for yourself.
‘A noble offer,’ said Ramachni, ‘but let us stop thinking of our escape for a while. The time has come: we must burn the sorcerer.’
He nodded at a giant cube of rock some twenty yards away: one of the structural stones of the broken tower. In the grass about it Pazel could see one withered arm, sticking out from behind the stone. The fingers were desiccated, curling like strips of parchment. The hand seemed almost to beckon him.
‘Arunis is slain,’ said Ramachni, ‘but his death opens the way to dangers that were absent before. To begin with, I expect he was using his arts to hide from Macadra.’
‘Macadra!’ cried Lunja. ‘The Emperor’s mage? What has she to do with Arunis?’
‘She may pose as a servant of your Emperor,’ said Ramachni, ‘but that sorceress has long since become the keeper, rather than the kept. In any case, Macadra Hyndrascorm covets the Nilstone as much as Arunis ever did, and will be seeking it with all her powers. Worse still, Macadra can draw upon the might of a whole empire in her hunt. Indeed she is the Empire of Bali Adro, at least for purposes of violence and intrigue. We are fortunate to be so far from any town or garrison. But this wilderness cannot protect us for long.’
‘That’s how it is, eh?’ said Mandric. ‘We were hunters, and now we’re prey?’
‘Let us hope it will not come to that, Corporal,’ sa
id Ramachni. ‘I do not think that the Nilstone itself calls out to any mage; otherwise Arunis would have plucked it from the seabed off the Haunted Coast with far greater ease. But the corpse of a mage is very different. Magic leaks from it as well as blood, and by that magic it shines like a beacon-fire on a hilltop. We must snuff that beacon quickly, or she will know it for Arunis. It may already be too late.’
‘Why burn him?’ asked Dastu, the young Arquali spy. ‘Why not toss him into the river and be done?’
Pazel looked at Dastu with a calm, cold hate. Like Neeps and Thasha, he had once considered the older youth a friend – before he had revealed himself as a protégé of Sandor Ott, the Imperial spymaster. Before his betrayal had exposed their resistance to Ott’s plans, and seen them all sentenced to death as mutineers. Captain Rose had suspended that sentence, but he had not pardoned them – and Pazel doubted any of them could pardon Dastu, either.
‘You know we can’t just toss the body in,’ said Thasha. ‘That’s no normal river. It’s a path between worlds.’
Dastu shrugged. ‘If you’re telling the truth—’
‘If?’ said Pazel. ‘Damn it all, Ibjen was right next to me. I saw him – taken. Like a leaf in a hurricane, carried off Rin-knows-where.’
‘That’s the idea, Pathkendle,’ said Dastu. ‘Arunis will just disappear.’ Then he jumped, as though struck by a sudden thought. ‘Gods of death, have we all gone simple? The Nilstone! We can throw the Nilstone into the River of Shadows as well! Right here, this very morning. No one will ever see it again.’
Utter silence. Dastu looked from face to face. ‘What’s the matter now?’ he demanded. ‘Isn’t this what you lot have been seeking? A way to toss the Nilstone out of Alifros?’
‘Yes,’ said Hercól, ‘but not this way.’
‘He has a point, though,’ said Mandric. ‘You’ve always said it can’t be destroyed.’
‘Nor can it,’ said Ramachni, ‘and indeed the Nilstone must be hurled into the River of Shadows – but where it exits this world, not here where it enters.’
‘Is that so crucial?’ asked Lunja doubtfully.
‘Utterly,’ said the little mage. ‘The stone belongs in the world of the dead. My mistress Erithusmé tried with all her might and wisdom to send it back there. She failed – but she had a glimpse of how it might be done, in the last days before Arunis drove her into hiding.’
Pazel glanced at Thasha, but her eyes were far away.
‘We know the task before us. The River flows into death’s kingdom at the point where it leaves Alifros, and nowhere else. That is where we must take the Stone.’
‘And that place is the island of Gurishal,’ said Dastu. ‘But Ramachni, it can’t be done! Gurishal is on the western edge of the Mzithrin Empire. We’re standing by a river in a wasteland on the far side of the Ruling Sea, hurt and hungry and lost.’
‘While the hag who controls this whole blary Empire is out hunting for the Stone,’ put in Mandric, with a bitter laugh. ‘Us, take the Nilstone to Gurishal! It’s worse than ludicrous. It’s a deathsmoker’s dream.’
‘The cause is not hopeless yet,’ said Ramachni, ‘and whatever the odds, we must try.’
‘We’ve heard that one before, haven’t we?’ said Dastu. ‘Just before you led us into battle, and Arunis nearly skinned us alive. Only now the odds are even worse. There’s no ship waiting for us at the coast, Ramachni. Only enemies, with Plazic blades that make them itch for murder, and sea-weapons like nothing the North has ever dreamed of. And there’s still worse, by the Blessed Tree. Didn’t you say that the River of Shadows almost always flows deep underground?’
‘In this world, yes,’ said Ramachni.
‘Then what if that’s the case on Gurishal? Master Ott has studied the island for forty years. Alyash lived there. Neither of them ever spoke of any strange river, any doorway to a land of death. What if it’s buried, eh? What if we do get there – miracle of miracles – and find that the River’s under a mile of stone?’
‘Then we dig,’ said Ramachni, ‘but we will not cast either the Stone or the sorcerer’s corpse into the River here.’ The mage spoke quietly, but there was cold steel in his voice. ‘Would you throw poison into a stream, Dastu? That is a crime, even if it be a stream you yourself will never drink from. That, in fact, is how the Nilstone came to enter Alifros to begin with – a selfish and a careless act, by one who wished only to be rid of it quickly. That is how its long history of ruin here began. Impossible, you think our goal? Do not believe it. This night past we killed Arunis, and ended his thirty centuries of power and scheming. Today we work. Tomorrow we will do the impossible again.’
But even today’s task promised to be hard. The trees shed few branches, and the mushrooms, though plentiful, were too wet for burning. Hercól forbade anyone to venture into the forest beyond the nearest trees, and for once not even the sfvantskors were inclined to argue.
Still, the banks of the river yielded logs and sticks, and with persistence they achieved a respectable bonfire. Hercól and Cayer Vispek lifted the headless corpse and tossed it heavily atop the blaze.
‘Stand away!’ said Ramachni. ‘Do not breathe the smoke. Curses may linger anywhere about the corpse.’
The fire quavered; the flames licking the body turned a strange, dark red. Pazel worried for a moment that they had not gathered enough fuel for the task, but it was soon clear that no such danger existed. The flames grew tall and voracious, gobbling the corpse. Pazel glanced at Ramachni and saw that he was very still, facing the fire with his cut eyes tightly closed. You’re helping, aren’t you? Then you’re not entirely drained.
Thasha came up next to Pazel and leaned gently against his side. ‘Burn,’ she whispered, eyes locked on the corpse.
He understood how she felt. Arunis had started everything. All the scheming and most of the deaths traced back to him. Arunis had made the puppets dance, even those who never guessed they were puppets, even those with puppets of their own. Pazel knew that he hated Arunis, but right now he felt nothing but an overpowering desire to see the process through. Let the body become ash, the ash blow away, the world start to heal and forget this monster …
A look of peace crept over the watching faces. If evil could die, perhaps good might grow. And now a great mage was leading them, not attacking. Why shouldn’t they prevail? For the first time in many days Pazel let himself think of his mother and father, the old life, the far side of the world. It no longer seemed quite so absurd to hope that one day, somewhere, they might all be—
‘The head,’ said Ramachni suddenly, opening his eyes. ‘What has become of the sorcerer’s head?’
‘I was about to fetch it,’ said Cayer Vispek. ‘It lies there behind the stone.’
‘Do so quickly,’ said Ramachni, ‘while the flame is at its height.’
‘I will go, Master,’ said Neda.
She ran behind the great carved stone. When she returned a moment later, Pazel knew that the horror was starting again.
The thing in Neda’s hands was not the mage’s head. It was a large yellow mushroom, one of the few that sprouted in the clearing. Neda held it at arm’s length, her lips curled in wary disgust. Already she was preparing to throw it in the fire.
Cayer Vispek snatched at her arm. ‘Are you mad, girl?’ He knocked the mushroom from her hands. Neda cried out, reaching for it, and Vispek slapped her across the face. ‘You’re charmed, you’re magicked!’ he shouted, and dashed behind the stone himself.
‘Have a care, Vispek, the same may befall you!’ cried Hercól, racing after him.
‘Rin’s eyes, it’s right there on the ground!’ cried Ensyl. She was pointing at the Turach’s helmet.
‘Be still, I have it!’ shouted Vispek, returning. In his hand was a fistful of grass.
Something close to panic seized the company. The world was off-balance; the fire was suddenly dying, and a noise like laughter echoed through the ruins. Pazel whirled, and saw the gory head a stone’s throw away.
He rushed towards it, calling desperately to the others: but no, it was further off, almost under the trees. Neeps and Mandric were making for different parts of the forest, pointing and shouting; others were racing back to the burning corpse. Stones, mushrooms, clods of earth, weeds, eggs, boots, were hurled into the fire.
‘Hold!’
Ramachni’s voice cut through the mayhem like a scythe. The distant laughter ceased; the world rebalanced itself. The mage, looking very small, stood beside the mushroom Neda had brought in the first place.
The party reassembled. Ramachni’s white teeth flashed. ‘Come here, young sfvantskor, and finish your work. But this time, speak your prayer as if you mean it.’
Neda hesitated, one hand touching the cheek her master had slapped. ‘The prayer?’ she said.
‘Child,’ said Ramachni, ‘that hand is too close to your mouth.’
Neda’s hand fell like a stone. Thoroughly unsettled now, she knelt before Ramachni. She put out a hand towards the mushroom, made a fist, and shouted several words in Mzithrini, the language of her faith.
And suddenly they all saw it: the gaunt, cruel, mud-caked, goresplattered head. The eyes were closed and the mouth hung wide. Below the chin, Thasha’s cut was remarkably neat.
‘Old Faith prayers are rich in antidemonic patterns,’ said Ramachni, ‘and the oldest and most uncorrupted of them, the songs of Tzi-Haruk and Lisériden, were taken from the guardian-spells laid down in the Dawn War. They have almost gone cold, those ancient spells. But a few embers remain alight.’
‘Our prayers are not hexes, wizard,’ said Cayer Vispek sternly.
The Night of the Swarm (Chathrand Voyage 4) Page 2
