The Night of the Swarm

7

14 Modobrin 941

243rd day from Etherhorde

When he woke, Pazel could hear only ringing, as though a bell that never faded had been struck inside his head. He could feel the water sloshing in his ears, and imagined what Ignus Chadfallow would say. Three near-drownings in a single week. You’ll be lucky if your hearing ever returns.

It was dusk. Pazel was being carried up a steep hillside; the surrounding pines were low and dense, and the sharp smell of resin filled the air. He was clinging to the back of a slender being with olive-green skin and black feathers for eyebrows. A selk. Pazel had met one only the week before, in the temple of Vasparhaven, the first and only such encounter in his life.

The selk who carried him was a woman. She was strangely beautiful, though it was a severe kind of beauty, and quite unlike that of any human or dlomu. The other two were men. All three wore plain grey tunics. No shoes, no helms or armour. But on their belts they wore swords, long straight blades that glistened red in the dying sunlight, as though made not of steel but coloured glass.

‘Thasha-’

The selk woman looked back over her shoulder. ‘The golden-haired one is alive and well, friend human,’ she said. ‘Your other friends escaped as well. Be still now; it is not much further.’

The mist had disappeared. Pazel saw they had carried him right out of the canyon, up some narrow crevasse. He was stiff and cold, but immensely relieved. Everyone had survived, and who had come to their aid but the selk. The selk! Pazel had reason to think that they were both wise and good: certainly Kirishgan, the selk friend he had made in Vasparhaven, had treated him with kindness. Theirs was an ancient people, Kirishgan had claimed: nomads, wanderers, philosophers of a sort. And they had suffered terribly in Bali Adro, whose maddened warlords had blamed them for the decay of their enchanted Plazic weaponry, and tried to exterminate the race. They had come harrowingly close to success.

Where had these selk come from? Were they the ‘hope’ of which Kirishgan had written, in his cryptic message? He had been strangely elusive on certain questions, saying that there were subjects he was forbidden to discuss. Still, Pazel found it hard to imagine that Kirishgan’s people could mean them anything but good.

Pazel’s head began to clear. He remembered selk hands raising him from the river’s depths. He’d seen Thasha vanishing below, lost his head, tried to shout, and nearly swallowed the hrathmog’s bloody ear.

He touched his jaw, found it tender and swollen. I tore off its ear with my teeth. Like an animal. And he wondered if the scent of lemons was in his sweat.

What had happened next was a blur in his memory, though he recalled a fist thumping his back, and crawling from the river onto a warm, flat rock — and Ensyl appearing from somewhere, pulling his eyelid open with her hands, sighing with relief when he managed to focus.

There came a sudden pop, and his hearing returned. He swallowed: his ears hurt, but the ringing noise was gone. And at the same moment Pazel’s Gift surged to life. The selk were conversing quietly, and their tongue had a soft, swift music like rain on leaves. Sabdel, he thought. Their native tongue. Pazel had never heard the language before, but his Gift pounced, and in a heartbeat it was his.

‘They really are human beings,’ said the one who carried him. ‘Surely that proves they came out of the River? What else could they be but castaways?’

‘With two dlomu for travelling companions?’ said the other. ‘And an ixchel woman, and a mink?’

‘All very strange,’ agreed the selk bearing Pazel. ‘Their wounds are recent, also, and not the work of hrathmogs. And this boy has a spell under his tongue.’

‘The girl has another sort of wound, Nolcindar. Could you feel it? A fracture, a broken soul.’

‘I did not touch her,’ said the first selk. ‘But the smallest — he is far along with the mind-plague. Poor boy! I wonder if he knows.’

‘I wonder if the others have it. And what about that bundle, that the tall one feared so much to lose? No, they are not simple castaways. Something about them troubles me.’

Pazel coughed. The selk looked back over her shoulder. Switching to Imperial Common, she said, ‘How is it with you, friend human?’

‘I’m just fine,’ said Pazel. ‘I can walk.’

The selk lowered him gently to his feet. ‘Walk this last stretch, then,’ she said, ‘but tell my brothers and sisters how Nolcindar carried you, or they will think me lazy.’

She sounded youthful, but Pazel knew better than to trust impressions. Kirishgan had sounded youthful too — even when remembering a time before the founding of Bali Adro itself. Pazel looked up and down the trail. ‘Thasha — the girl, did you see what happened to the girl?’

‘The golden-haired one is alive and well,’ said the selk who had carried him. ‘And far more precious to you than gold, to judge by how often you have called her name.’

‘And the others?’

‘They await you. Come, we are almost there.’

As soon as he began to climb, Pazel felt the weakness in his leg. The pain that Ramachni’s spell had eased was returning, creeping outward from the wound. It had not been wise to blunder about on that foggy island, either. But soon the slope grew gentler, the trees taller and further apart. Voices reached him: the voices of his friends. Pazel almost broke into a run. There sat all his party, save Thasha and Ramachni, along with many selk. They were drinking from small silver cups, among the ruins of some ancient structure, now overgrown with trees. Big Skip saw Pazel first: ‘There he is, the boy who wouldn’t sink!’

They all greeted him warmly — even Dastu gave him an uncertain smile. But Neeps stared anxiously down the trail. ‘Where is she, mate?’ he said. ‘How could you leave her behind?’

Before Pazel could answer, a selk called out from deeper among the trees. ‘Patience, Mr Undrabust,’ he said. ‘She will be here, as I promised. She has only made a kind of. . detour.’

The selk who had spoken came nearer. He was not the tallest of the group, but there was a firmness to his voice and a fluid ease to his movements that made one think of great strength. He looked at Pazel for a moment in silence, but with a lively warmth.

‘You are a fighter to be reckoned with,’ he said, ‘even weaponless and drowning. I have seen nine thousand years of bloodshed, alas. But never have I seen a human bite the ear from a hrathmog.’

The others turned to stare at him. ‘You did. . what?’ said Neeps.

Pazel nodded, feeling his jaw.

‘He has been cruelly tested,’ said Hercol. ‘All of us have been, on this journey.’

‘Few come this way of whom that could not be said,’ replied the selk. ‘But where has your weasel gone? Did it run away?’

‘It is a mink,’ said Hercol.

Pazel looked at him, baffled. It? Then Cayer Vispek, standing near him, gave his arm a surreptitious squeeze. All at once he understood: Ramachni had not announced himself. He was pretending to be a mascot, a normal animal tagging along in their wake. Pazel was abruptly on his guard. Did the selk threaten them after all?

‘The creature is not quite tame,’ said Bolutu, ‘but it will not stray far from us.’

The selk leader smiled. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘here is a companion of yours who did stray, though I doubt that will happen again.’

He clapped his hands, and a dog raced out from among the selk. The travellers shouted with astonished joy: it was the same white hunting-hound that had journeyed with them from Masalym, one of three that had followed them into the Infernal Forest. Lunja fell on her knees and embraced the animal: Pazel had never seen the stoic warrior closer to tears. Bali Adrons and their dogs, he thought, but there was a lump in his own throat as well. He bent, and the dog licked his hand. The animal had followed him and Thasha to the riverside where they had first made love.

‘He swam out of the Forest, close to death,’ said the selk. ‘Tooth-fishes were gnawing at a wound in his side. But he is a sturdy animal with a great will to live.’

‘He was Commander Vadu’s favourite,’ said Lunja. ‘I never learned his name, but from now on I will call him Shilu, Survivor.’

Bolutu turned and bowed deeply to the selk leader. ‘We are in your debt, alpurbehn,’ he said.

Once more Pazel’s Gift went to work: alpurbehn was elder brother in Nemmocian, another graceful Southern tongue. Bolutu had used the word as an honorific, a formal endearment.

The gesture was not lost on the selk. Their leader nodded cordially to Bolutu. ‘I am Thaulinin, of the line of Tul,’ he said. ‘I have led these walkers since the fall of the Mountain Kings. However cruel your trials, they have not robbed you of courtesy — nor of all good luck. We were making to ford the Ansyndra not far from the island where we found you. If we had chosen any other crossing we would never have seen you at all. We knew there were hrathmogs afoot, but we sought no fight with them.’

‘I still don’t understand how you rescued me,’ said Pazel.

‘We are strong swimmers,’ said Thaulinin, ‘almost the equal of dlomu, in fact. You were choking; we drew the water from your chest and pulled you to safety. Your companions we helped away before the hrathmogs sent their scouts to the island. And we destroyed your raft, fascinating vessel though it was. You could have ridden it no further in any case: the hrathmogs have a camp on the riverbanks, two miles downstream. Come and rest now, Pazel Pathkendle. Our wine is somewhat fairer than river water, as you will learn.’

Something in the selk’s account of their rescue struck Pazel as incomplete. He could not quite put his finger on it: the dense fog, the extraordinary coincidence of their discovery. . Thaulinin, meanwhile, was leading them deeper into the glade. Pazel saw that the fallen stones marked the outline of a small keep or fortress. Most of the walls had toppled to knee-height, and moss grew over them. But soon they reached a spot where the hillside opened in an arch of fine workmanship, bricks of red stones alternating with others cut from the blue-grey rock of the canyon walls, and the keystone was engraved with the figure of a running fox. At the threshold a fire danced within a ring of stones, and two selk were roasting a hare upon a spit. Torches shown deeper within the ruin.

‘Where have you brought us, elder?’ asked Lunja.

‘These are the remains of Sirafstoran Torr, where once stood a palace belonging to Valridith, a dlomic monarch, whose lands were easternmost of the Mountain Kingdoms of Efaroc. The outer walls enclosed the whole of the glade, but the keep was entered here, through the side of the hill. For most of his life Valridith governed this land with kindness, and wisdom enough. But in his last years he grew suspicious, obsessed with the power of neighbouring kingdoms, indignant at the smallest complaints brought by his people. ‘These are the hairline cracks in my kingdom,’ he used to say, ‘and through them I feel a wind blowing, the cold wind of the grave.’ His only comforts were his son and daughter, who were both fair and gentle. The young prince he sent west to Bali Adro, with orders to seek a marriage — any marriage — within the Imperial family. The lad never returned from the capital, and what happened there is a mystery to this day.

‘Whatever the truth, Valridith was heartbroken, and swore on the charnel-stone of his family that he would protect his daughter better, and choose a husband for her himself. It was a rash oath. For years he kept it merely by forbidding her to travel beyond his inner kingdom. Mitraya was her name, and she was full of love for her father, and all the people of the Torr. The joy of his autumn years, she was — until the day he promised her to a petty tyrant, whose aggressions he hoped to placate. But Mitraya would not oblige him, for she loved another. The king had never been crossed by one of his own, and he imprisoned her in this fortress, swearing he would not release her until she consented to the match. She took her own life, after four years of captivity.’

‘I recall her face in the window there,’ said another selk, gesturing at a heap of crumbled stone. ‘We would bring her wild grapes in autumn. She could smell them when the breeze was right.’

‘After she died, her father went mad with remorse,’ said Thaulinin. ‘He threw his crown into the Ansyndra, and ordered this palace destroyed. When the work was done he paid the labourers handsomely and cut his own throat.’

Dastu shrugged. ‘Old tales,’ he murmured.

But Thaulinin heard him, and shook his head. ‘Not very old. This spring it will be three hundred years. I came here the morning after; the king’s blood still stained the earth. About where you are standing, in fact.’

A slight commotion made Pazel turn. Thasha, escorted by two selk, was marching towards them, shivering. He ran to her; she threw her arms around his neck. She was soaked with river water, cold as a fish.

From the corner of his eye, Pazel saw Neeps, standing near them, his arms half-raised. He had been on the point of embracing her himself. Their eyes met; Neeps reddened suddenly and turned away.

Thaulinin called for a blanket. Neeps, his face still averted, spoke in anguish: ‘Where were you?’

Thasha winced. Letting go of Pazel, she went to Neeps and pulled him close, and whispered something consoling in his ear. Pazel felt his heart beating wildly. She’s doing the right thing. She’s making him feel better. Don’t be jealous, you fool.

The blanket came, and Neeps spread it over her shoulders. ‘I sank,’ said Thasha, ‘through the river, and down to. . the other river.’

‘Yes,’ said Thaulinin. ‘You fell into the undercurrent of Shadow — faster than your friend here, much faster. As if the River were calling you. But Nolcindar dived in after, and brought you back when the current ebbed. She is best of all of us at Shadow-swimming.’

‘I was falling,’ said Thasha. ‘The water beneath me disappeared. There was nothing I could catch hold of — just wind and darkness — and some vines, I think.’

‘She behaved strangely there, Thaulinin,’ said the woman, Nolcindar. ‘We took shelter in a moth-cave, out of the wind, while I waited for her strength to return. She recovered more quickly than I expected — indeed she jumped to her feet, and it was all I could do to prevent her leaping into the shaft. She was not afraid in the least. She looked at me and said, “Unhand me. I must visit the Orfuin Club.”’

Thaulinin glanced sternly at Hercol. ‘And yet you tell us you did not come here from the River of Shadows.’

‘I spoke the truth,’ said Hercol.

‘Nine humans, in a land where humans are extinct. An ixchel woman, thousands of miles from the nearest clan. And a package that reeks of sorcery. You do not wish to name this thing, but you tell us that if we so much as cut away the cloth, we may die. That Macadra craves it and will try to steal it. And that you carried it to Bali Adro in an ancient ship, over the Nelluroq, only to lose it to a thief in the city of Masalym. A thief who brought it here.

‘All this in good faith I have tried to believe. But many are they who come ashore in Alifros from the River of Shadows — some by accident, others by dark design. If you are strangers to the River, how is it that this girl longs to visit the Orfuin Club, that most celebrated tavern in its depths? Think well before you answer! I have patience with many things, but lies are not among them.’

‘Nor have we misled you, though we have not told all,’ said Hercol.

‘The evil thing you carry — that came out of the River, did it not?’ demanded Thaulinin.

No one answered him. For a moment there was no sound but that of the crackling fire.

‘Perhaps I will not return it, until you choose to speak.’

The faces of the selk, which had been so friendly, were now quite cold. Some rose slowly to their feet. Still more had gathered, from within the keep and without.

‘I think it will be best for all of us if you disarm,’ said Thaulinin.

Indignant cries. Pazel’s company drew closer together. ‘We are most of us disarmed already,’ said Hercol, ‘but by misfortune, not threat. Before we surrender the few blades we still possess, I would ask for your word: to restore to us that which we carried, and let us go unhindered.’

‘I will make no promise before I see this thing,’ said the selk leader. ‘Why do you not tell us your mission plainly? That is a small courtesy to offer those who have just saved your lives.’

‘And if we cannot?’ asked Hercol.

‘Then I cannot return your parcel,’ said the other.

Very slowly, Hercol reached back over his shoulder and drew Ildraquin from its sheath. ‘You have lived a long time,’ he said, ‘and seen much that is in Alifros, but you will have met with few swords like this one, and no swordsman like the one before you. I would shed no blood today. But some of us are oath-bound to a certain task, and we are very far from its completion. We can afford no further errors, alpurbehn — including errors of trust.’

‘We would make the same mistake,’ said Nolcindar, ‘if we let you take this thing and go your way. Perhaps you will use it to attack us from behind.’

‘Do we strike you as so depraved?’ asked Ensyl.

‘I do not think so,’ said Thaulinin, ‘but you are creatures of the moment; your whole lives are as a single week in the life of a selk. You did not live through the Lost Age, or the Worldstorm. You do not recall the War of Fire and Spells, when tools of great evil were scattered over Alifros, and scarred its very bones. I do not know what is in your package, but a force bleeds from it that burns my hands, and I have seen what such power can do.’

‘You must know also that such tools are beyond the use of simple beings like ourselves,’ said Bolutu.

‘Always before that was so,’ said Thaulinin, ‘but then you dlomu robbed the graves of the eguar, and fashioned blades from their bones. Into the hands of generals and warlords and petty royalty they went. Look now at the bonfire that was Bali Adro! The waste, the martial lunacy, the slaughter of peoples near and far.’

Of selk, Pazel recalled with a shudder. Rin’s eyes, what are we doing? They could kill us here and now.

‘You make your case poorly,’ said Nolcindar. ‘If you are truly the simple folk you claim, then perhaps you cannot do great harm with this thing — but you are not the ones to guard it, either. Where you set it down, a stand of trees may die, a field wither, a trickle of rain become an acid that scars the land.’

‘Is that any of your concern?’ said Dastu. ‘I thought you were wanderers, just passing through.’

The selk looked at Dastu in silence. A few wore expressions of sorrow; many more of rage. Thaulinin’s eyes held both.

‘Our people do not think in this way,’ he said. ‘We have no permanent home, it is true. But that is only because everywhere is home. When the Platazcra burned the forests of Ibon, we mourned those trees. When madmen poisoned Lake Elsmoc, we wept. Harm elsewhere is harm to us, a despoiling of our home. There are in truth no countries. There is only Alifros: one land, one ocean, drowned in a common sea we call the air. You may say we pass through a place, but we never truly leave it. Nor do you, though a part of you ceases to believe in what you cannot touch. An endearing quality, perhaps — but only in the very young.’

‘We are all young beneath the watchful stars,’ said Pazel.

Every selk head turned. Pazel was almost as startled as they: he had spoken without a moment’s forethought.

‘Where did you hear those words, human?’ asked Thaulinin.

‘From one of your people, in Vasparhaven. He said the stars would wait out our errors, and perhaps even forgive them. Those were his last words to me. But he gave us a written message, also: he told us there was hope downriver, between the mountains and the sea. I think he wanted us to find you, Thaulinin. His name was Kirishgan.’

‘Kirishgan!’ This time surprise contended with a joy the selk could not disguise. Kirishgan was in Vasparhaven Temple? Why, how, when had Pazel seen him? To the latter question Pazel replied that it had been little over a week.

‘He expected to leave the temple the day after my visit. He’d been there for nearly three years. He said he’d learned Spider-Telling. But I know he was eager to return to the outer world.’

‘A world that has missed his wisdom,’ said Thaulinin. ‘This is a heart’s prayer answered. Forty full moons have come and gone since our brother departed. We feared the worst. He has been marked for death by the Platazcra.’

Then his face turned stern once more. ‘I do not doubt that Kirishgan hoped we would meet — but not, I think, for the reasons you imagined. We will feed you, treat your wounds, even guide you from this wilderness. But we will not return your death-bundle. And you will not take it by force.’

At that Cayer Vispek drew his sword as well — and instantly, twenty selk blades whistled from their sheaths. Thasha, wet and shaken as she was, groped for Arunis’ knife but found it gone.

‘We may surprise you,’ said Hercol, ‘though Death alone will smile on what we do here today.’

‘Death and the maukslar searching these hills,’ said a voice from above.

It was Ramachni, curled on a high pine branch, ten feet overhead. ‘Never fear,’ he added quickly, ‘the demon is still far from us. I have been keeping watch by the clifftops; I caught his reek upon the breeze.’

Thaulinin glanced sharply at his people. ‘Eyes forward! Do not let the creature distract you from the fight!’

‘Ramachni, what are you doing?’ cried Thasha. ‘How long have you been watching us?’

‘Long enough for both sides to show their firmness, as I hoped they would,’ said the mage. ‘Be at peace, one and all: you may trust each other now.’

‘I tire of these pleas for trust,’ said Nolcindar. ‘Keep to your tree, little mink, and spare us your fibs and fantasies.’

Ramachni rose to his feet. His black eyes bore down on them, and no one below dared look elsewhere.

‘You have all shown your readiness to die for Alifros,’ he said, ‘but to serve it you must live. Away with your weapons! If you shed blood here there will be no one left to remember, no songs about the second tragedy of the Torr. There will be only darkness, the last pall of death drawn over this world. You know of what I speak, Thaulinin Tul Ambrimar. Shall I give it a name?’

The selk leader waved urgently. ‘Not here!’ he said. ‘But I think I can name you, now, trickster. You have taken a body unknown to me, but your voice is another matter. It is little changed since the Battle of Luhmor, my lord Arpathwin.’

Ramachni’s ears twitched. ‘Arpathwin,’ he said, ‘“Still Flame”. So your people cheered me that morning, over the howling of the Demon Prince we had subdued. No, my voice has not changed, but how your world has, in twelve swift centuries. Arpathwin. I am glad to hear it on a selk tongue once again.’

He descended the tree, and when Thasha bent down he sprang to her shoulder, where he curled like a living scarf about her neck. ‘But why did you not speak at once?’ said Thaulinin. ‘You have walked with us in the Sabbanath Fields, brought us hope in the Twelve Years Winter, built the trap with your great mistress that holds the arch-demon even today. Can you be in doubt of your welcome here?’

‘Had I spoken sooner,’ said Ramachni, ‘you would not have learned that my friends are equally deserving, and equally without fear. But I might pose the same question to you, master selk. For you have shadowed us, I think, since before we left the confines of the Forest.’

Thaulinin was startled; but he nodded briskly. ‘You were not difficult to follow, being blind within the wood. Yes, we watched you from afar.’

‘And from afar you raised the commotion that made the maukslar turn away?’

After a brief hesitation, the selk said, ‘That was not our doing.’

He made a small gesture of his hand, and his warriors stood down, sheathing their swords. ‘But Arpathwin: must we hide? Is the demon approaching?’

‘No, it has flown east,’ said Ramachni. ‘to scour the Ghelvi Marshes. Return it may, but now that I have its scent I may hope to give us fair warning. Nor will the hrathmogs find you on these heights, as I expect you know already.’

‘Then draw near, friends — and no more questions until you are warm and well fed.’

The selk pressed the newcomers close about the fire. They gave them the entire hare, along with handfuls of nuts they had roasted on the coals, and small, delicious fruits one could eat whole, and more bread and wine. Pazel was amazed at how quickly their friendliness returned. They smiled, took delight in watching the humans eat, rushed for new provisions as they thought of them. How was it possible that just minutes ago they had come so close to killing one another?

While they ate the selk brought instruments from within the keep — curious fiddles, wooden pipes, a small silver harp — and played softly, while those at the edges of the fire matched their voices to the music, very low. Pazel strained to catch the words, and was amazed that he could not: the language refused to be named, to be captured by his Gift. For a moment he panicked: when his Gift stopped catching languages it meant his terrible fits were about to descend, maiming him with noise. He went rigid, fighting the urge to leap up and run from the circle. Music was torture at such times.

But the attack did not come. And as he calmed himself, Pazel realised that the music was of a beauty such as he had never heard in life or dream: swift, gentle and elusive, the song of a child that runs alone through a wood at sunrise. But no, he thought, that’s not right, it’s more the music of the very old, in their last or next-to-last summer of life, but so adept at memory that they could still hear and see all that such mornings had revealed to the children they had been, so many centuries ago. And yet he still had it wrong, for something in the music told Pazel that the selk knew neither childhood nor age as humans did. They knew loss, however: every quiet phrase evoked the memory of something fine that had perished or departed, moments of bliss that shattered as soon as they were felt, loving glances that pricked the heart like a needle and were gone.

The food was soon exhausted, but their cups were refilled, and the musicians played on without a moment’s pause, as though the song they were immersed in had no true beginning or end. The stars appeared among the trees. By their faces Pazel knew that the others were caught up in deep and private emotions, but whether of sadness or joy he could not tell.

The music ended the only way it could: suddenly, in the middle of a phrase. In the abrupt silence, Thaulinin said, ‘Your death-parcel lies within the mountain. I will have it brought out to you now.’

‘Let it stay there,’ said Ramachni. ‘When I show it to you in the morning, you may wonder that we did not beg you to keep it.’

‘I start to wonder that already,’ said Thaulinin. ‘Whatever help I can offer shall be yours. If you wish to resume your journey on the morrow, I will send guides with you, that you may find the safest paths. But I warn you that the way is long. The selk run quickly over field and marsh and mountain, but even for us it is twenty days to the sea.’

‘Twenty!’ said Corporal Mandric. ‘By your leave, Mr Ramachni, we’re in no shape for a forced march.’ He gestured at Lunja. ‘Otter here shed her boots in the Forest; she has thorns in her pretty webbed feet. So does Brother Bolutu. As for Pathkendle, he’ll drop before you can say field amputation. That mucking troll nearly chewed him like chicken bone.’

‘There is no other way,’ said Thaulinin. ‘I have told you already that hrathmogs hold the river. In earlier times I might have bargained with them to let you pass, but not today. They have learned the value of handing goods or captives to the Ravens, and Macadra pays particularly well for any curiosities fished out of the River of Shadows.

‘Even afoot, the way is perilous. All the ports and coastal townships from Masalym to Orbilesc are under strict Bali Adro control. Some are being torn apart by infighting, as the madness of the Plazic blade turns general upon general, prince against prince.’

‘Not here in the interior, then?’ asked Ensyl.

‘Not yet,’ said the selk. ‘These wildlands are still considered too troublesome to conquer — but that does not mean that they are safe. Far from it! Macadra is very powerful, but to summon a maukslar she must have given the blood of her own withered veins. If she lusts so deeply for your death-parcel, she will not stop there. Her agents will be groping inward from the coast, and they may take many forms. Plazic squadrons, mercenaries, hrathmog collaborators, murths: she has employed all of these in the past. The selk are adept at eluding such tentacles — and even hacking them off when they grope too far. But the sea belongs to Bali Adro. If with great care and fortune you should reach the coast, what then?’

‘We have a ship of our own,’ said Neeps.

‘Had, you mean,’ said Dastu. ‘They’ve abandoned us. Hercol proved that with his sword-trick, remember?’

‘I proved only that they are making for the Island Wilderness — currently,’ said Hercol. ‘But come, tonight is spent. Let us cast about no more for answers. By daylight we may find our path clearer than we think.’

No words could have been more welcome. Still Pazel felt that Hercol was merely putting the best face he could on terrible circumstances. The selk were kind to offer help, but for all their age and wisdom they were just twenty nomads, living by what they carried on their backs. And what about Neeps? If the selk could do nothing for him, Pazel would beg Ramachni to try deeper magic. He could not just watch and wait.

The selk led them into the ancient fort. The dim lamplight flickered over pale marble columns, and alcoves and doorways intricately carved with figures of men and beasts. The chambers were many and mostly dark, and Pazel thought an air of sadness hung about them. But the eyes of the selk gleamed in the lamplight, and their voices were bright and clear.

The ruin clearly served as a way station, not a permanent home. Still their hosts had made it clean and comfortable; in the room where the company was to sleep, deer skins had been spread over beds of pine needles. ‘Rest well, and fear nothing,’ said Thaulinin. ‘Tonight at least you will be as safe as ever you were aboard your ship.’

‘That is less comforting than you intend,’ said Hercol with a smile, ‘but we thank you all the same.’

‘I would speak with you a while longer, Thaulinin,’ said Ramachni.

‘Then go elsewhere, Rin love you,’ Big Skip implored. ‘Mages and selk may be able to do without sleep, but I’m staved through, and my hold’s filling fast.’

The selk leader laughed. ‘Come, wizard. You have many years to account for.’

He took a lamp from one of his men and led Ramachni from the chamber. The other selk departed, and the company settled down on the deerskins. Most slept like the dead, but Pazel tossed and turned, helplessly awake. Like feral cats, the dark possibilities of what lay ahead prowled through his mind, scratching, spitting, clawing him further from sleep.

The whole coast in the hands of the Ravens. No way out, tentacles closing in. And the Swarm of Night growing larger, like a tumour, like a shroud. Better to have stayed on the Chathrand. Better a hrathmog spear through the gut.

Someone in the room was whispering, praying; or had he dreamed that, just moments ago?

Arunis reached back into this world to frighten us, to try to break our nerve: You killed me but you didn’t; Thasha cut off my head but she failed. Erithusme is dying, dying inside her. And without Erithusme you have no hope.

Lies, hatred. Poison spewed from a dead man’s lips.

Try this one, then: Arunis would have died weeks ago on the Chathrand, if you hadn’t interfered. All your fault: his escape, this exile, the deaths in the Forest, the loosing of the Swarm.

This is what it felt like to go crazy, to be whittled down to madness by your guilt.

Pazel tried to turn his thoughts in a sunnier direction. Thasha. He could still feel her touch. It did not long cheer him to think of her, though. She’d wanted him to promise to keep his distance. Would she ever understand that he had refused out of fear for her? That it was their lovemaking, more than anything else he’d found, that drove the haunted look from her eyes?

Pazel rubbed his face in the darkness. He was haunted too, in an entirely different way. When Thasha kissed him, undressed him, nothing else mattered under Heaven’s Tree. But afterwards. . afterwards, he thought of Klyst, the murth-girl. Which was weird in the extreme.

Murths were a kind of half-spirit, as best Pazel could understand. Klyst, a sea-murth, had appeared to him twice in the flesh, and vanished both times with the suddenness of a candle flame. Since the crossing of the Ruling Sea he never saw her at all. But now and then he could feel her longing for him rise out of nowhere. It was an accident, that longing: her people used infatuation-charms to lure humans to their deaths, and killing Pazel was all she’d had in mind at first. But Pazel’s Gift had made her spell backfire. She thought she loved him. She tried to persuade him to abandon everything, humanity included, and live with her beneath the sea. And she had placed a tiny shell beneath the skin of his collarbone and called it her heart. He could feel the shell with his fingers, that unmistakable bulge. It was sleeping; Klyst could not find him at this distance, apparently. But why was it so hard not to think of her? Was it guilt, that she should be suffering for his sake? Was it fear for her and her people, if they should fail in their quest?

A shroud, a pall, a black smoke filling room after room. .

No good; he was more exhausted than when he first closed his eyes. He sat up and quietly pulled on his boots. He was longing for fresh air.

The passage outside the chamber was deserted and still. He moved left, feeling his way along the passage. Somewhere ahead there was a glimmer of light. As he walked it brightened, until at last the passage opened on a broad stone patio, built against the back of the hill. It overlooked a long valley, awash in the light of both moons, and rimmed on the far side by the jagged mountains he had glimpsed a week ago, before their descent into the Forest. He was high enough to see them again, and marvelled at their sheer number, and how their white peaks gleamed like mother-of-pearl.

Just beyond the patio, a narrow track wound down the side of the hill. And there with a start Pazel saw a lone figure, walking swiftly away. He was tall and moved with grace, despite a certain urgency to his step, and on his belt hung a long straight sword: one of the weapons of the selk.

Even as Pazel reached the balustrade, the figure slowed, as though sensing someone behind him. Without stopping he glanced over his shoulder.

‘Kirishgan!’

Pazel did not shout, but he called out loud enough for the other to hear. It was unmistakably Kirishgan, his friend from Vasparhaven, the only selk he had ever seen before that day. As he looked up at Pazel, Kirishgan did stop — but only for a moment, as though ceasing to move required some great effort on his part. Then he turned and hurried on, down into the shadow of the hill.

Pazel called out a second time. The selk was gone, but he had looked at Pazel, recognised him. Was he dreaming? No, impossible: he was perfectly wide awake. Then he turned and looked again at the rocky hill above the patio. Thaulinin’s troop was sleeping there, under the open sky, curled like deer in the high brittle grass. Some few slept together, limbs entwined, but whether for love or simple warmth he could not guess. As Pazel watched, a blue selk eye opened here and there — single eyes, not pairs — and glowed briefly, firefly-bright, before drifting shut again.

Keeping watch in their sleep.

Then more than ever, Pazel understood that they were among beings unlike themselves, far stranger than dlomu or flikkermen, or any other race he had encountered.

Dawn brought driving rain. The selk were awake and afoot, and they fed the company and brought them cups of steaming tea — and yet something in their eyes had changed. The hostility had not returned, but in its place had come caution and amazement, and perhaps a hint of fear. Pazel was unsettled. Had they unwrapped the Nilstone? Had one of them, Rin forbid, been so mad as to touch it? Or was his glimpse of Kirishgan somehow known to them, and for some reason forbidden?

Ramachni and Thaulinin arrived just after breakfast, and the mage looked pleased, but Thaulinin’s face was drawn like that of all his people. ‘We have ranged the hills all night, Arpathwin and I,’ he said, ‘and we have travelled even further in our speech, and into darker realms. I know the task you are about, and repeat my offer of help.’

‘And I repeat: we ain’t fit to march,’ said Mandric. ‘Twenty days! I’d give us two, before someone goes lame outright — provided you let us rob you of all the food in your larder, Mr Thaulinin.’

‘I can see your wounds for myself,’ said Thaulinin, ‘and they are not to the flesh alone. No, you cannot march to the sea — not yet. And you cannot wait here for the hrathmogs or the Ravens to find you. But there is a third choice, if you will take it.’

‘What choice is that?’ asked Thasha.

‘Shelter and healing, until you are fit for travel, and your scent goes cold,’ said Thaulinin. ‘More than that I cannot say. But I think you will be satisfied, if you place yourselves entirely in my hands.’

The party stirred uneasily. ‘What would you require of us?’ asked Hercol.

‘Sleep,’ said Thaulinin. ‘A profound sleep, aided by a plant I have gathered this evening with Ramachni. It will not harm you, but it will allow us to do a thing we may not do in the waking presence of any non-selk, ever, by an oath as old as these very hills.’

Now there were open grumbles. ‘Last night you drew swords against us,’ said Cayer Vispek. ‘Now you ask for blind trust.’

‘I do not ask for it,’ said Thaulinin. ‘I merely name it as a condition of my greater help.’

‘And you should agree,’ said Ramachni, ‘for I guess already what it is that our host offers but cannot name, and it is a distinction offered to few in the history of this world. And what Thaulinin has not mentioned is the grave risk that he would take on our behalf. By helping us he will face the judgement of his own people, and should they find him in the wrong he will be imprisoned to the end of his days. For a selk, such punishment is worse than death. Indeed many take their own lives rather than be kept from walking freely over Alifros.’

Pazel looked sharply at the crowd of selk. That was it; that was the reason for those chilly, fearful eyes. It’s not just Thaulinin. All of them will be held responsible, all of them will be judged.

Thaulinin looked down at Ensyl. ‘The plant does not work on the little folk,’ he said. ‘You will not sleep, but must be kept from seeing us, and confined.’

‘Caged?’ Ensyl bristled, backing towards the wall. ‘For an ixchel that is a vile proposal. Few of us who enter cages have ever left alive.’

‘Didn’t stop you from caging us,’ growled Mandric.

Dastu crossed his arms. ‘I say, no thanks. I say we’ll take our chances on the trail.’

‘Then you getting die,’ said Neda, ‘like stupid Alyash, like so much crew on Chathrand ship.’

‘Don’t lecture me, girl,’ snapped Dastu. ‘How many Black Rags getting die when Rose blew your fancy ship out of the water?’

‘Peace, Dastu!’ said Hercol, stepping between them. ‘Thaulinin, we must speak apart before we answer you. Be patient with us, pray.’

‘Go and speak, then,’ said Thaulinin, ‘but it is your fate that begs a swift decision, not the selk.’

The party withdrew to their sleeping-chamber to debate, and soon their voices rose in argument. Dastu did not wish to have anything more to do with the selk, and Mandric and Lunja rejected the leap of faith Thaulinin demanded. Big Skip and Ensyl seemed torn. The shouts grew heated. Only Ramachni stood silent. Pazel looked at him in frustration. Why doesn’t he say anything?

‘I do not like blind choices either,’ said Hercol, ‘but we will not heal our wounds on a death march, nor fill our stomachs crouching here underground.’ He looked at Mandric and Lunja. ‘You are both soldiers, trained to trust in weapons more than words. So are Neda and Cayer Vispek. But self-reliance is not always the wisest path. When they surrendered to us — to their arch-enemies — it was an act of courage.’

‘It was the only choice, save starvation and exile,’ said Vispek.

‘And that is exactly where we stand today,’ said Bolutu.

‘Nonsense!’ said Mandric. ‘You might as well say that them two were fools to surrender — they’ve ended up starved and exiled anyway, and in a worse fix than if they’d stayed on the Sandwall.’

‘Worse?’ said Vispek. ‘You did not see the shipwreck near our camp, full of dlomu with their throats slit, and the word Platazcra scrawled in blood across the deck.’

‘And you’re exaggerating anyway, Corporal Mandric,’ said Thasha. ‘The selk have already fed us, and given us shelter.’

‘And played pretty music,’ scoffed Dastu.

Lunja glanced at him curiously. ‘We have a saying in Bali Adro: The singer is more truthful than the talker, and the harp more truthful still.’

‘Very nice,’ said Mandric, ‘but I still don’t fancy getting poisoned.’

‘I’m with you there,’ said Big Skip. ‘We’d wake up confused, he says? Pitfire, we went through that with the mushroom-spores in the Forest! It was blary unnatural.’

‘These creatures aren’t natural either,’ said Dastu, ‘and they’re shifty as midges, by damn. Anyone who trusts them is a blary fool.’

‘I’ll trust them,’ said Neeps.

Everyone stopped talking and looked at him. ‘They know a lot,’ he said. ‘Maybe they can help me. And maybe some of you have the mind-plague too, and don’t know it yet. I doubt they have a cure, or they’d have used it before the humans died out. All the same, I’ll stay with them. I’m no use to anyone if I turn into an animal, and-’ he looked at Pazel and Thasha, blinking ‘-it’s getting harder to think.’

His friends rushed to embrace him. Pazel had to turn his face away, lest Neeps see his tears. Hercol said, ‘Trust is dangerous, but less dangerous than acting in fear. Come, we must decide. Will you not take the hand extended?’

‘No!’ said Dastu. ‘Have you all gone soft? They want the Nilstone! Last night they were on the verge of gutting us over it, like so many fish. They found out we had a mage and decided the fighting-odds weren’t as good as they’d figured. Now they’re counting on desperation to make us walk into their trap.’

‘Did you hear nothing in the music?’ asked Ramachni.

Dastu turned to him, startled. ‘You too? What’s so special about that blary music?’

‘Almost everything,’ said the mage. ‘It was a part of the Cando Teahtenca, the Creation-Song of the Auru, First People of Alifros. It was the Auru who built the tower where we fought Arunis, to guard the River and issue warnings; the Auru whose final charge in the Dawn War drove the Gorgonoths back into the Pits; the Auru whose spell of beauty still rings in certain hearts, like the note of an enchanted bell struck ages ago. They have all gone from the world, but it is said that among the most ancient selk there are a few who walked with them in their twilight, and heard their songs entire. Perhaps Thaulinin erred with us in the matter of the Nilstone. But the selk apologise with gifts, not words, and that rare music was a gift given to few.’

Another silence fell. Then Lunja said, ‘I will trust them. To do otherwise is folly.’

Mandric looked at her, wrathful. ‘You’re right, Otter, damn your sweet eyes.’

Dastu laughed scornfully, but he knew he stood alone. ‘We’ll regret this,’ he said. ‘If we’re lucky enough to do any regretting, that is. If those monsters let us wake up.’

His eyes, or the black humour in his voice, reminded Pazel powerfully of something, but he could not say what. They filed back to the entrance hall, and found Thaulinin’s people ready. One selk approached each traveller, holding a piece of something fleshy and brown. ‘We must watch you swallow,’ said Thaulinin. ‘Fear not; we will catch you if you fall.’

Pazel’s heart was racing. The selk who had carried him up the hill stepped forward with a peculiar smile, and immediately pressed the fleshy thing between his lips. It was tart and slimy. The selk looked at him, waiting. Pazel chewed.

The rain froze motionless in the sky.

‘Swallow,’ said the selk. But his voice was odd, and Pazel saw with a jolt that his upper and lower teeth were fused together, and stretching like toffee with the movement of his jaw.

‘Ramach- Ramachni,’ Pazel sputtered, fearing suddenly for his own teeth.

‘Mushrooms!’ howled Big Skip. ‘Rin’s eyes, these are straight from the Infernal Forest, ain’t they?’

The air was gelatinous. The selk’s smile was a blur. Pazel dropped to his knees. Beside him, Dastu was laughing again, loud and bitter, and suddenly Pazel knew what he was reminded of. Dastu had never sounded so much like his master, Sandor Ott.