The Night of the Swarm (Chathrand Voyage 4)

by Robert V. S. Redick

  The wall was indeed enormous, the stairs many and steep. In the pale light of early morning Pazel and Thasha watched the long procession. Men, dlömu, ixchel, augrongs, selk. Not that you could really tell them apart. He smiled. From this distance they were simply his crew.

  And they were making good time, he thought, even though some were bearing stretchers, and others splints. But then they had to be quick. Dry land would soon be scarce, if things went as planned.

  Their friends looked back often, and waved: Bolutu, Olik, Nólcindar, Hercól and Neda linking hands. Above them, already blurred with distance, climbed Neeps and Marila. They had started early, in case Marila had to set a slower pace. Pazel smiled. No chance of that.

  Only the Mzithrinis were slow, for they carried the heaviest and strangest burden: the Shaggat’s corpse, embalmed in the mariner’s fashion, in a coffin sealed in wax. They still had a task to perform with it, a cult of murder to destroy.

  Murder. It made Pazel think of the one figure who was missing from the crowd. Sometime in the last few hours, Sandor Ott had simply disappeared. No one had seen him depart, but their last sweep of the ship had turned up nothing. Had he raced ahead of them? Was he hiding out among the trees? Or could he have escaped into a vanishing compartment? Was he sitting, even now, on that speck of an island just vacated by the ixchel, beside that other Chathrand, and a graveyard sinking into the sand?

  They might never find out. Pazel merely hoped that Ott was finished with his bloody intrigues. That he would stop hurting others, perhaps even himself.

  ‘Well, Felthrup,’ said Thasha, ‘it’s time you were on your way.’

  ‘But I do not wish to leave you, Thasha,’ he said.

  ‘The dogs will not climb without you,’ said Ramachni, ‘and neither, for that matter, will I. Come, rat-friend; you know this is the only way.’

  ‘It is cruel.’

  ‘Perhaps, but not only cruel. And the alternative does not bear thinking about. Go, Jorl; bear him off. Suzyt and I will catch you by the second switchback.’

  At a gesture from Thasha, the great mastiff bent down, and Felthrup, sniffling, crawled onto his back. ‘Do not forget me, Thasha!’ he said. ‘If we do not meet again, remember that I loved you with all the heart I had.’

  Thasha bent down and kissed his muzzle on both sides. ‘That’s more heart than anyone I know,’ she said. ‘But this isn’t the end. I’ll find you. Just be strong until that day comes. And remember for us, will you?’

  ‘It would appear I have no choice. I will wait for you above, Pazel Pathkendle.’

  ‘Don’t wait,’ said Pazel. ‘Get to the ridgetop, and for Rin’s sake, be sure there’s no one left behind you. Except me, of course.’

  Thasha kissed her brave Jorl too, and stroked him and whispered loving words into his ear. Then she pointed to the mountain stair and said, ‘Go on.’ Reluctantly, Jorl obeyed, with Felthrup crouched low upon his back.

  Now only Ramachni and Suzyt were left beside them. The mage looked at each youth in turn. ‘I knew,’ he said. ‘When I first saw you together, I knew I beheld a power to redeem this world.’

  ‘That makes one of us,’ said Thasha, holding Pazel tight.

  ‘Do what you must do, Pazel,’ said the mage, ‘and then take the stairs at a run. If you drown I shall never forgive you. As for you, Thasha my champion—’

  He gazed at her a long time. ‘What words can be enough?’ he said at last. ‘Know this: that long ages ago, there was one for whom I felt so deeply that I dreamed of renouncing magic, living a natural life, knowing human love. I made the right choice: this mission proves it, and there have been other proofs across the centuries. But the pain of that choice was so great that I had to flee not only my friends and family, but my body, and my world. Casting everything aside let me forget that pain, and no one ever evoked such feelings in me again. Until your birth. In you, I saw the daughter that might have been mine, the life I had chosen to forsake. That is why I asked my mistress to name me your guardian. Never was anyone so grateful for his charge.’

  They walked with him into the trees, and along the path to the foot of the first staircase. Thasha lifted him a last time and squeezed him tight against her neck. ‘I’m all out of tears,’ she said.

  ‘Then smile for me, and for your triumph,’ said the mage, ‘and know that I, too, plan to see you again – in this world or the next. Come, Suzyt.’

  The great dog bounded after Jorl, with Ramachni clinging tight to her back. Thasha and Pazel watched them until they reached the top of the first flight and vanished around a rock. Then they walked back towards the water until the trees began to thin. They could see the huge, empty ship canted over on her side. The Swarm was closing. The starry window above them like a porthole, now, but all the more beautiful as it shrank.

  Thasha glanced to their left. A soft light was flickering among the trees. ‘What’s that?’ she said.

  ‘A gift from Neeps and Marila,’ said Pazel.

  ‘What is it, a campfire?’

  Pazel nodded, and led her to the clearing, the sweet smell of crackling pine, the heat on his legs. There was a folded blanket. He turned to Thasha and brushed the hair from her eyes.

  ‘Now I’ll make love to you,’ he said.

  He knew it was what he wanted, and knew also that it would increase the pain to come, and it did. To do in haste what they would rather have done gently, slowly; to kiss her and taste her and try to know every inch of her; to risk now what they hadn’t risked before, because now was what they had and all they might ever have: yes, it would hurt for the rest of his life. And maybe sustain him, gladden him in whatever future he found.

  ‘It might not last,’ she said. ‘The effect, I mean. It might fade in month or two, or even less.’

  They hadn’t moved yet. He said nothing, kept his chin on her shoulder, his mind on what he’d felt, could still feel, would never feel with any other. He wouldn’t say Yes, you’re right you know, we might be back here by nightfall. He didn’t want to start lying, to Thasha or to himself.

  ‘It will last, though, won’t it?’

  ‘It will,’ said Pazel. ‘Long enough. Maybe forever.’

  ‘You could just tell me about yourself. If you kept at it I’d believe you.’

  He raised his head a few inches. She made a small sound of grief and clutched his hips, not letting him leave. Pazel moved his hand to her breast and cupped it, and doubted anything Ramachni had learned in twenty centuries could be worth losing this.

  A memory came. Another fire, beside a cold lakeshore in the mountains, far away in the South. Thasha drying his hair with a towel, then plucking from an exquisite shard of crystal. A shard that melted in her hand. We can possess a thing but not its loveliness: that always escapes. Kirishgán had warned him, but no warning could be enough. Thasha met his eyes, and slowly loosened her grip. Pazel rolled away, trying not to let go of her, and then they groped for their clothes.

  Thasha stood. ‘I think I’d best face away from you.’

  ‘Towards the Chathrand?’

  ‘That’ll do.’

  She tightened a bootlace, looked up at him with a grin. ‘I’m glad we weren’t careful this time. A child would fix her.’

  ‘It can’t be what she has in mind.’

  They smiled for each other. He was grateful when she didn’t force herself to laugh.

  ‘I’ll be looking for you, you know,’ she said. ‘When I can. If I can.’

  ‘Don’t promise me that, Thasha.’

  She nodded, wiped her eyes, kissed him swiftly once more. Then she turned away from him, and without looking back handed him the Blessing-Band.

  ‘Trust feels good,’ she said.

  ‘Nothing better,’ he agreed, and spoke the word that blinds to give new sight.

  This time there was no concussion, no bending of reality, no darkening of the sun. A little pulse went through his temples, dizzying him, but it passed in a heartbeat, and he felt unchanged. Thasha tilted
her head as though at a curious thought. Her back was to him, but he could have touched her. A moment ago it was so easy. He wasn’t even dry from their lovemaking.

  He watched her walk away onto the open sand.

  When she had gone twenty paces she looked up at the Swarm. Then into the distance. Slowly she raised her arms and wrapped them around her head. Pazel waited, barely breathing. Thasha lowered her arms, looked at her left palm, and cursed— ’Bugger all, she did it! The wretched girl did as she was told!’

  Thasha’s voice, but not Thasha. She moved her hands experimentally, felt the contours of her body. His lover’s body. Then she whirled and looked at him, affronted.

  ‘What the devil?’ she cried. ‘Is this Gurishal? Am I standing by the Arrowhead Sound?’

  He said yes, that was where she was. Then he told her the rest of what she needed to know.

  ‘I do recognise the vessel,’ she said sharply. ‘It’s mine, after all. And I’m well aware that the Nilstone is aboard. I could feel it, even from – a great distance away. Never mind. Why are you skulking around behind me? What is it you want?’

  Pazel stared at her.

  ‘Speak up, boy!’ she shouted. ‘Have we met?’

  ‘Gods,’ he said, ‘I never thought it would work on you.’

  He had directed the Master-Word to blind Thasha to his existence, to make her forget she’d ever known someone named Pazel Pathkendle. But Master-Words could be brutal, or least brutally imprecise. This one had swept right through Thasha’s mind, and erased Erithusmé’s memory of him as well.

  Now her look contained the hint of a threat. ‘Work on me?’ she said.

  He did his best to explain. ‘Your disciple Ramachni gave me the words. This was the last of them. And yes, we’ve met before.’

  ‘Where and when, pray?’

  ‘A few months ago, in—’

  His voice froze. The magic of Uláramyth still sealed his tongue.

  She waved at him irritably. ‘I think you are touched in the head. If you’re not, or not too badly, start running for your life. I may have to do some terrible things in the next few minutes.’

  ‘Oh, you do,’ he said. ‘Look in your shirt pocket.’

  She jumped, looked at him with even more vexation. She raised her hand to her pocket and removed a bit of folded parchment. ‘Whose writing is this?’ she demanded.

  ‘Yours. I mean hers, Thasha’s. The idea was hers, too.’

  ‘She thought of this plan? The girl?’

  ‘Why do you find that so strange?’

  ‘I believe I shall do it,’ said Erithusmé, amazed at her own words. ‘The force should suffice. It could be the only force that will suffice.’ She glanced at him again. ‘Did I not say that you should run?’

  ‘I mean to,’ said Pazel. ‘But Erithusmé: remember your promise. When the Nilstone is gone, you’ll give that body back to her, you swore—’

  ‘Never in two thousand years have I broken an oath!’ she shrieked. ‘Get on, you needling brat! This is the last deed of my life, and you are making it unbearable!’

  ‘It’s because I love her,’ he said.

  She laughed, indifferent. Then she blinked, turned to gaze at him with deeper understanding. ‘And she you.’

  He nodded.

  ‘Desperately,’ she said. ‘That was it, that was what made her keep fighting me. That was the power that kept rebuilding the wall. She could want to give way to me, let me return and deal with the Nilstone. But she couldn’t ever truly want to lose you. She mated with you, with doom hanging over you both like a pall.’

  ‘Something you can’t understand.’

  The mage considered. ‘Quite right. I cannot. But I know power when I feel it. And I will return Thasha her body when this job is done – and only then. Now for the last time, run.’

  He ran. The dunes fought him, swallowing his feet. He doubled back to grab the blanket but could not find it, and then, in the thicket of trees, he could not find the stairs. When at last he did he took them two at a time, ambushed by the fear of having waited too long.

  If he drowned today she’d be searching for a dead man.

  At the top of the fourth staircase he saw her climbing an accordion-ladder. By the time he topped the seventh, the gunports were sealing themselves, one by one. He was already winded. Thirteen to go.

  Far above, the last of the climbers were spreading out along the ridgetop, hundreds of feet above the saddle where the canyon began. There were Jorl and Suzyt; there was Marila’s round belly, and Neeps holding her close.

  Twelve staircases behind him. Now he could look back over the sound, all the way to the Arrowhead, the stone that ought to fall. Thirteen staircases. On the beach, the Chathrand suddenly righted herself, slid into deeper water, turned her prow to face the wall.

  Fourteen staircases. A tremor shook the earth.

  Pitfire. Pitfire. I’m too late.

  He could barely feel his legs, but they still served him, he still climbed. Not high enough. You can’t stop. Keep going. He was dizzy, falling and bouncing to his feet again, scraping his hands. Was this the fifteenth staircase? The sixteenth? He was no longer sure.

  The wall still loomed above him. He was crawling. And that wouldn’t do.

  Then the Arrowhead fell.

  ‘Oh credek, no!’

  It toppled straight inland, like a tree. Millions of cubic feet of rock struck the water in an instant. And then the wave came, like a second mountain. Like an act of vengeance by the Gods.

  He was seeing stars. The wave was big enough. That was all he could think of, all that mattered. It would lift the ship and everything else on that mile-long beach, and would not stop for anything, anyone, between here and death.

  A monstrous roaring filled the canyon. As the canyon narrowed the wave grew taller and taller still. He crawled a few more steps. A wind rose that nearly knocked him flat.

  Yes, it was big enough, and Erithusmé was there with her hand on the Nilstone, holding her broken ship together by will and sorcery. That was enough. It would have to be enough. He had earned his rest.

  ‘Get up you damned fool!’

  Neda. Neeps. They had come out of nowhere and seized his arms, one on each side, and all but carrying him they flew up the stairs, swearing in Sollochi and Ormali and Mzithrini, dashing and stumbling beside drops of five or six hundred feet, looking back with horror in their eyes. They were above the wall, now, and Pazel saw the long, dismal canyon, and a black funnel in the distance, a place even the Swarm could make no darker than it was.

  The wave crested thirty feet above the wall, and twenty below the spot where Neeps and Neda ran out of strength and dropped beside him in the dirt. Then the wall collapsed, and stones the size of mansions blasted into the canyon beyond. Then the Chathrand came, pitching and rolling but beautifully afloat, and the Goose-Girl swept them with her wooden eyes.

  The water swept like lightning down the canyon. The three of them lay there, spent, the wind still tearing at them, and watched the unfathomable torrent’s progression. By the time the wave reached the abyss they had lost sight of the Chathrand. But the abyss swallowed the wave, and surely everything it carried. And everyone.

  Pazel waited. The Swarm felt almost close enough to touch. He was not going to flee it down the mountain again, into that flooded devastation. He was finished.

  Nor did he have to flee. Before his eyes the great mass began to shrink, to implode. Faster and faster it shrunk, the sky brightening by the minute, and the withering shadow it had cast over land and sea contracting too. He stood up. The Swarm contracted to the size of the Arrowhead, then the size of the beach. At last it too began to race towards the abyss, as though it were tied by an invisible cord to the Nilstone, and the cord had at last run out. Pazel shielded his eyes and saw it falling, a black star, leaving Alifros for the land where its evil was no evil but the order of things. He watched it vanish. He felt the warmth of the sun.

  For a time no one spoke. Pazel could h
ear Jorl and Suzyt barking hysterically in the meadows above.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said at last.

  Neeps turned around and looked at him. ‘You’re a nutter,’ he said. ‘What in Pitfire were you doing down there?’

  ‘Woolgathering.’

  ‘Sense of humour, too. What are you, a tarboy?’

  Pazel grinned at him. Neeps did not grin back. Slowly Pazel’s smile began to fade. Neda said, ‘You are on Chathrand, since Serpent’s Head?’

  ‘Neda!’

  His sister jumped. So did Neeps. ‘Listen, mate: who are you? How do you know her name? We know you’re one of Darabik’s boys, but why’d you bother to come aboard, if you were just going to hide out below?’

  ‘I am seeing him before,’ said Neda. ‘I think so. Maybe.’

  Pazel tried to speak again, and failed. At last Neeps shook his head.

  ‘Maybe he’s afraid of sfvantskor tattoos, Neda. After all we’ve just been through! Well, come up and join us, mystery boy, when you’re done quaking in your boots. We’re all on the same side, you know.’

  They trudged wearily up the ridge, leaving him sitting there. Pazel put his head in his hands. The Master-Word had done its job, all right. But it had not stopped with erasing him from Thasha’s mind. It had reached up the mountain and touched his best friend, and his sister. And who knew how many more.

  He climbed up to the meadows, among the hundreds of men and women with whom he’d crossed the world. Some were laughing with relief; others were crying, or just lying flat and spreadeagled, making love to the earth. A few looked at him with curiosity, or pity when they saw his distress. But not with recognition, none of them. Even Neda merely frowned at him, puzzled. Fiffengurt sat beside the travel case into which Thasha had packed her clock. Hercól offered him water. Marila stood up and brought him something wrapped in her kerchief.

  ‘It’s called mül,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t look like food, but it is.’

  He held the tiny package, dumbstruck, lost. ‘Thanks,’ he whispered at last.