‘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 backwards. 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 centre 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 travellers 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 main sails 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.
Mid-afternoon 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 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 mid-air.
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. 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 mobilisation in the hills above Ormael, and ended with the collapse of the Red Storm. Between these events, however, were thousands of others, simultaneous but unglimpsed 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.
On Bramian the message had long been expected. As Pazel had learned first-hand, the huge island contained many surprises, one of which was a secret colony of religious fanatics. It was the world’s only community of Nessarim, worshippers of the Shaggat Ness, outside of Gurishal itself. They were just three thousand strong, but what they lacked in numbers they made up for in eagerness and rage.
For thirty years they had waited here, in exile. Thirty years of fever and snakebite; thirty years of raids by tribals with gauntlets of leopard claws, who ripped their victims open, chin to groin; thirty years dreaming of revenge. But not just dreaming. With Arqual’s help, the Nessarim had also built ships.
Now the vessels stood crowded together on the sluggish river, bows pointing seaward. Forty ships – all armed to the teeth, at monstrous expense, by the heretic Emperor of Arqual. What of it? The worst heretics were the Mzithrin kings themselves, who had slaughtered their families, and denied the divinity of the Shaggat Ness. Even now those kings ruled over the Shaggat’s rightful empire. Now, when all the prophecies bespoke His return; now, when his Glorious Son walked among them once more.
The Shaggat’s son. Five months ago, Pazel himself had been present when Sandor Ott brought Erthalon Ness back to the Nessarim. The man was clearly insane. He had spent his life tormented by the Arqualis, by Arunis, and above all by his lunatic father. He could not grasp his present circumstances. Pazel had tried to tell him the truth: that Sandor Ott had nurtured the whole colony merely as one gear in the machine that would topple the Mzithrin. That all their ‘prophecies’ had been composed in the chambers of the Secret Fist, and spread by infiltrators. at their small fleet was meant only to discredit and demoralize the enemy before it was pulverised.
Erthalon Ness had listened to Pazel, but in the end he had gone to his father’s worshippers all the same. And now he was leading that throng – shouting, screaming that the time of victory had come. The clipper’s message was greeted with a war-chant that frightened the tribal people in the hills. The Nessarim were raised for martyrdom, and martyrdom can only so long be delayed.
By the time the clipper reached Bramian, Maisa’s forces had liberated Ormael, and her partisans had spread her message over the whole of Arqual. Suddenly the news was everywhere. The Empress lived. Admiral Isiq lived. They had married, condemned the war, declared Emperor Magad an usurper. Some claimed that part of the Western Fleet had already gone over to her side. If the true scale of the rebellion was minimal, the people’s imagination was not. And with every traveller who landed or set sail from Arqual the story grew.
The Secret Fist rounded up a great number of Maisa’s allies (together with many who knew nothing of her), and what became of those unfortunates hardly needs to be told. But they did not catch everyone. The next placards to appear in the streets denounced the spy guild itself as ‘an empire with the Empire, ruled by a depraved cadre of professional killers’. This was not a revelation; everyone knew the Fist was depraved. But very few had heard the next claim: that the organisation
… FOR REASONS OF BASE INTRIGUE, ENGINEERED THE GREAT SHAME AND BETRAYAL OF TREATY DAY, WHEREUPON THEY SOWED THE SEEDS OF THIS, THEIR LATEST, VILE WAR.
The spy guild panicked. Sandor Ott had never trusted his underlings: not since Hercól Stanapeth’s defection, at any rate. Since then he had concentrated power in his own hands, with the result that when the Chathrand sailed he had felt that no one could be trusted aboard her but himself. Etherhorde, consequently, was left in the hands of spies who were technically capable but unprepared to address a calamity. And the rebellion was a calamity, now: the daily harvest of hearsay was too enormous to be fought by propaganda alone. Ambassadors were grumbling. Youths were tossing stones through barracks windows. Emperor Magad using more deathsmoke by the day, and screaming for someone’s, everyone’s, head.
Those who live in shadows are not immune to striking at them. Soon loyal ministers began to disappear, rock-solid generals were clumsily vilified, a Turach commander was snatched before the eyes of his troops in Ulsprit, who later received an anonymous tip as to his location, stormed the safe house, and found their leader dead from torture.
None of this directly hobbled the armed forces. They knew their duty, and right now duty saw them being redirected in vast numbers to the Crownless Lands, with orders to eradicate the rebels and leave no living trace. But on 19
Halar a bomb changed everything.
The Lord Admiral answered only to the crown. He had never warmed personally to Isiq, but his respect for the Fleet Admiral, second in command of Arqual’s maritime forces, was boundless. Isiq had never lost a campaign, never questioned a deployment, never received orders from the Admiralty with anything but resolve to see them through. It was the Lord Admiral’s misfortune to have reminded Etherhorde of these facts, somewhat publically, when the rumours began. He did not believe the rumours for an instant. Admiral Isiq was dead. Maisa was surely dead, or else confined to some shelter for the aged in Tholjassa. All this was hogwash, and he’d be damned if he’d vilify a hero of Arqual because of hogwash. This too he declared rather too loudly, and too often.
The Secret Fist only wanted him to close his mouth. They might have achieved this in any number of ways, but chose the expedient of a black-powder bomb. The device was planted in the outdoor kitchen of the Lord Admiral’s residence on Maj Hill. The agents involved used the very finest of materials, including a smokeless fuse of Sandor Ott’s own invention, and a timer set for well after midnight. But in their haste to frighten the Lord Admiral, the agents overlooked the fact that his fifteen-year-old son and certain friends met in the kitchen many nights with cigars and brandy and other forbidden things. Four boys (all from military families) were present when the bomb exploded. The building filled with fire, and the Lord Admiral, hearing the screams, lost his mind and ran into the blaze himself. Thirty seconds later he emerged, carrying the still-burning corpse of his son.
None of the youths survived, and the Lord Admiral himself succumbed to his burns within the hour. But as he staggered from the inferno, his screams of grief and hatred, his denunciations, were heard all over Maj Hill. By dawn they had become the chisel that would split the greatest navy in the Northern world.
On the Island of Simja, King Oshiram II had spent the month flirting secretly with suicide.
He put on a brave face, for it was vital that no one suspect. His people knew what mattered already: that he was the great royal fool of his times. He had been used shamelessly by Arqual, an Empire that any son of the Crownless Lands should have known better than to trust. Like a fish, like a mindless tuna, he had swallowed the Arquali bait. An end to war. A marriage to tie enemies together. A treaty to unfang Arqual and the Mzithrin alike, before they could send their armies raging again over the bloodied soil of the Crownless Lands.
The Night of the Swarm (Chathrand Voyage 4) Page 60
