The Night of the Swarm

10

15 Modobrin 941

244th day from Etherhorde

When they realised that the selk had fed them mushrooms, Lunja and the Turach began to fight. The selk were ready, however: blindingly fast, they pounced on the two soldiers, seized their limbs, heads, jaws. Neither managed to spit the fungus out.

Ensyl watched, appalled. Bolutu succumbed first: eyes wide, he raised both hands as though trying to pluck fruit from a tree; then his knees gave way and he toppled gracefully into the arms of a selk. Pazel followed, then Thasha and Big Skip. Dastu laughed viciously before he dropped.

The others had time to sit down. Before his eyes closed, Hercol turned to Ensyl and reached out suddenly, his face full of longing. Ensyl drew a sharp breath. She had rarely been so unsettled by a look.

It was done; only she and Ramachni were awake. Thaulinin looked at the mink. ‘I will not waste words on you, Arpathwin. You will sleep when you wish to, and not before.’ He turned to where Ensyl stood backed against the wall. ‘But for you it is time, lady.’

He beckoned, and a selk came forward holding a strange object. It was about the size of whisky jug, but made of hide stretched over a round wooden frame. At one end the leather thongs had yet to be tightened, leaving an opening like the mouth of a cave.

‘A palanquin?’ asked Ensyl dubiously.

‘But without windows, alas,’ said the selk. ‘We lined it with the fur of last night’s hare. You will find a water flask within, and food as well.’

‘How long will I be held?’

‘Not long,’ said Thaulinin, ‘and you will be most comfortable.’

Ensyl shook her head. You’re wrong there, giant. It was quite true what she had said about her people and cages. Yet she had argued for this choice, and would not be the only one of the party to back down. Taking a deep breath, she bent to squeeze through the opening.

‘I must ask for your sword,’ said Thaulinin.

His request was reasonable: Ensyl could gouge a spyhole with a single thrust. All the same it was hard, unbuckling the tattered baldric, repaired so many times since Etherhorde. She felt naked as she laid the sword on Thaulinin’s palm.

‘I think I will travel with you, Ensyl,’ said Ramachni.

‘There is no need, Arpathwin,’ said Thaulinin. ‘You are no stranger here.’

‘And yet I hardly resemble the Arpathwin of long ago,’ said Ramachni. ‘Nor do all your people know me, in any form. Besides, I also wish to be carried like a lump.’

Ensyl was delighted, even though the fit was rather tight when they had both crawled inside. Thaulinin bent to look through the opening.

‘Two warnings, then,’ he said. ‘You must use no magic of any kind until we release you. And do not call to us, unless one of you should be dying. That is vital. You would place yourselves and all your friends in danger if you forced us to release you early.’

He closed the aperture, and Ensyl felt him tie the leather thongs. Then they were lifted and placed inside a sack of some kind. All was dark and close. Their little fur-lined room swayed, and by its motion Ensyl sensed that they were now dangling from a sling. Ramachni chuckled in the darkness. ‘We shall make this journey like a pair of royals,’ he said.

Or a pair of grouse, Ensyl thought. Aloud, she said, ‘I am glad of your company.’

‘I hope you are still glad when my fleas discover you,’ said the mage.

They were already moving. Ensyl thought they must surely be descending the hill, but the selk carried them so smoothly that it was hard to be sure. The palanquin did not swing wildly about, or even tilt a great deal. She was comfortable, in fact.

‘I could almost sleep,’ she said aloud.

‘You must certainly sleep,’ said Ramachni. ‘After all, we shall be in here for days.’

‘Days!’

‘When Thaulinin said, “Not long,” he was speaking as a selk. Never mind; I shall do my best to entertain you. And don’t bother to bend your voice, by the way: these ears of mine can catch your ixchel-speech perfectly well.’

She could hear the muffled sound of selk voices, and even more faintly, their feet. They were running through that hardscrabble landscape — running with a burden of eleven humans and dlomu, presumably — and yet she felt as though the palanquin were drifting on an untroubled stream. Ensyl had no sense at all of how far they had gone, and in the changeless dark she soon lost track of time as well. There were very few clues: a laugh, a soft command, the noise of a waterfall, a whiff of cool spray penetrating the sack.

‘Ramachni,’ she asked, ‘have you been there before? The place they’re taking us?’

‘I cannot answer you,’ he said. ‘Indeed, you had better ask me nothing about our destination, for what binds the selk tongue binds mine also. But perhaps we should speak of other matters, while we may.’

‘If you mean to ask me where my clan-brethren on the Chathrand disappeared to-’

‘Dear me, lass! Nothing could have been further from my mind. No, I had quite another concern. I am thinking of your mistress, Diadrelu.’

Ensyl froze. ‘What about her?’ she managed to ask.

‘She is in Agaroth, the halfway-land, the Border-Kingdom through which the dead must journey, before they gain their final rest. Nearly all pass through it in a heartbeat or two — like birds, or shadows of birds, they flit over its twilight hills, and are gone. Your mistress descended, seized a branch, stilled the natural flight of her soul. To do this requires magnificent strength, which Diadrelu Tammariken had in abundance.’

‘Yes.’

‘And it requires something further, Ensyl. I think you know what I shall say. It requires love.’

Ensyl hugged herself in the darkness. She hoped Ramachni could not see the way he had in the Infernal Forest. She hoped he was as blind as she was herself.

‘My mistress loved well,’ she said. ‘Hercol was a strange choice, a choice that would have brought her suffering, even in peacetime, if she had lived. But you know how it happens.’

‘Do I?’

‘There’s a song,’ said Ensyl, and recited:

One path through endless pathways, one string unwound from birth,

Through the mountains or the marshlands, over blest or barren earth,

One lover from the multitude, one seedling on the plain,

It is the heart that chooses for us, and who may ask it to explain?

‘That is a human song. My mother heard me sing it once, and slapped me. But it made no difference; I sang it to myself all the more. And that’s the point, you see. The heart goes its own way. You can reason with it a little. Not very much.’

‘That is true of human beings generally,’ said the mage.

Ensyl laughed aloud. ‘We ixchel are exactly the same. My mistress used to call me headstrong, but who in Alifros was more headstrong than she? No one could turn her from a task. She would drive herself past all exhaustion, past the time when even the strongest of the young folk had gone to their rest, and then look at me suddenly and say, “Very well, I have dawdled long enough; it is time to start working.” Do you know, I had to stand with my back to the door to make her eat? At day’s end, when she bathed, I’d hide her trousers, offer her nightclothes only, or she would go out for a third or fourth patrol. Limits were for other people, not for Dri. I begged her to stay clear of Taliktrum, I warned her that he would strike-’

Ensyl broke off, or rather her voice quit of its own accord. There was a wall inside her, solid bricks in the back of her mind.

‘Diadrelu loved you like a daughter, Ensyl,’ said Ramachni.

‘That’s not what I wanted,’ Ensyl heard herself say. ‘I had a mother, she was a wine drunkard; she left us to join another clan when I was ten. I didn’t need more mothering, Ramachni. I wanted Dri to love me as a mate.’

Ramachni lay still. No tears, no tears, thought Ensyl wildly. But how had he done it? How had he pulled those words out of her — those thoughts, forbidden and precious, the ones she never allowed out of her own stifling little cave? How had he made her know?

‘Of all. . curious things to tell a mage,’ said Ramachni at last.

‘You broke his rule,’ said Ensyl. ‘No magic, Thaulinin told you. But you did some anyway. You breathed a spell onto me.’

‘You’re wrong there, lass. I only listened. There is a greater magic at work here than my own, and that too we may call by the name of love. But why this shame? Does your kind condemn this kind of longing?’

‘Yes. Oh, they’d not admit it — that would make us no better than most giants, and worse than some. For every human shortcoming you’ll find an ixchel ready to swear that we have no such problem. But in this case no one would breathe a word about it.’

‘I have heard it said that ixchel do not speak of love.’

‘Rarely the feeling,’ said Ensyl, ‘and never the act. Some things aren’t for telling — that is all an ixchel will tell you. And I’m no different. I don’t want to speak of what happens in the dark. Yes, I am ashamed. There is an order to our lives that the giants cannot comprehend; there are bonds between us that cannot be broken or changed. Dri took me as a student. I wanted more. That is greed, and unforgivable. Because we are different from humans in one way. The heart chooses, yes — but our heart is shared.’

‘The clan above the self, is it?’

‘Always.’

Ramachni sighed. Ensyl waited for him to say more, to reveal why he had felt it necessary to torture her thus with thoughts of Diadrelu. But the silence held, and the pain lay heavy on her, and fleeing it she tumbled into sleep.

How long that sleep lasted she did not know. Dreams assaulted her in fragments, waking moments came and went. She felt like a smooth stone rolled along a riverbed by a stream without end, without pity, over the rounded, polished details of her life. The palanquin swayed, the selk laughed faintly; the warm fur became Dri’s hair as she scrubbed it, in the little herring-tin bathing tub on the Chathrand. Her mistress reached up and grasped her hand, soap-slippery fingers interlaced, she could have died of bliss in that moment. The palanquin shifted. Diadrelu was gone.

‘A shared heart,’ said Ramachni, as if no time had passed at all. ‘That is a lovely idea, whether fact or communal fancy. But now I must tell you what I fear is occurring. Dri has stopped in Agaroth of her own free will. And Arunis is there with her, and they are fighting.’

‘Fighting over what?’

‘Over the fate of Alifros, and the outcome of our struggle. It is an unequal fight, of course. A mage has certain powers even in death. But take heart, for in Agaroth they are closer to equals than they ever were in life. And Diadrelu arrived long before Arunis, and has had time to prepare.’

‘Prepare for what?’

‘I do not know, Ensyl. I have journeyed through many worlds, but none so strange as the Border-Kingdom. Time and thought are different there. One comes to know things suddenly, and to find things merely by thinking of them, and yet losing and forgetting come just as quickly. And always one senses the nearness of that terrible wall at the edge of the kingdom, the seething wall, beyond which is death.

‘As for Diadrelu, she is no slave to the sorcerer, though clearly it was through his power that she appeared beside our bonfire in the clearing. He offered her that chance, meaning to appal and sicken us with her agony — and in that he succeeded, of course. But he never counted on her strength. Even impaled, Dri spoke to us, warned us that Arunis is once more being aided by Sathek the Vile. Well, Arunis will not make that mistake again. Dri, however, will keep on trying to help us, to reach out to us. I do not know if she will find another means — but if she does, it will be through those she loved the best. So I must ask you, as I have asked Hercol, to be watchful. Look for her, listen for her. She might come at any time.’

‘Or-’

‘Never. That is possible too.’

Ensyl lay down on the pelt, curling on her side like an infant. Which was worse: to see her mistress as before, knowing she was dead and suffering or never to see her again? Ensyl felt a sudden, gut-twisting desire for the Nilstone: to touch it, to be obliterated, reduced to an absence, a negative, something that could not feel or think. Look for her, listen for her. The mage’s request merely changed her curse into an obligation. She was already haunted by Dri; now she had to welcome that haunting, pry the wound open whenever it started to heal.

‘I regret the pain I have caused you,’ said Ramachni.

‘You did not cause it,’ said Ensyl. ‘It was there already. Don’t you understand that much? Ramachni, do mages take no partners, ever?’

‘We do not, unless we cease to be mages.’

‘And before? Were you never in love?’

When Ramachni answered her his voice was oddly hesitant. ‘I will tell you this much. The life I lived before is gone, irretrievably gone. It is like the memory of a story — or a sailor’s journal, perhaps. It resides whole and complete in my memory, but behind a wall of crystal through which no heat or sound may pass.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Yes, but I am not. My road has led far from that quiet beginning. I am myself. The life before was another’s.’

He said no more, and Ensyl closed her eyes. Mercifully, oblivion found her again. This time it was far deeper and longer. She had many dreams, many half-wakings, and behind them all was a strange feeling of forgiveness, of sympathy for the folly of her kinfolk, even deluded Lord Taliktrum, whom Myett had loved with as much ferocity as she, Ensyl, had loved Taliktrum’s aunt. Foolish Myett. But in the end, less foolish than Ensyl herself. She had at least confessed her love; Ensyl had hidden, smothered, her own. What if Ramachni was right to doubt the ixchel way? What if the one unforgivable thing was not her love for Dri, but her silence?

I will become a mage. I will transcend this life, set it in crystal, place it on a high shelf where it need never be touched.

Stillness. Ensyl rubbed her eyes. The selk were talking; the palanquin was resting on the ground. A moment later the thongs were loosed and sunlight poured through the opening. ‘Come out, travellers,’ said Thaulinin. ‘You have missed all the rain.’

Out they climbed, stiff and dazzled. They were in a stone tunnel, low and round and stretching away in two directions as far as Ensyl could see. The tunnel was unlit, but its roof was pierced at regular intervals by smooth holes, and it was through these that the sunlight poured. About half the selk from Thaulinin’s band were here. So was their party, though they yawned, and looked unsteady on their feet.

‘Have we. . arrived?’ asked Pazel.

‘Almost,’ said Thaulinin, ‘and that is good, for you were starting to toss and turn inside the slings by which we carried you. Can you manage these last three miles?’

The travellers assured him that they could, although Ensyl had her doubts. Thaulinin gestured to Nolcindar, who held up a bundle of green cloth, tied firmly with a rope. ‘That is your special burden,’ said Thaulinin. ‘It is surprisingly heavy, for such a small thing. Who will carry it?’

The travellers looked at each other uneasily. The question had yet to arise. ‘Be so good as to bear it these last miles,’ said Hercol finally. ‘We are. . not quite ourselves. I for one am dizzy, and have the feeling that I have forgotten something, or several things perhaps. You drugged us, did you not?’

‘With your consent,’ said Nolcindar, ‘though you were reluctant, truth be told.’

The hunting dog leaned wearily against Lunja’s calf. ‘You even drugged poor Shilu,’ said Lunja, bending to caress the animal.

‘And carried him,’ said Thaulinin. ‘He is not woken, but any animal can become so. And those who do retain their earlier memories, animal though they are. We can take no chances, in this troubled age.’

‘I feel like I’ve slept for weeks,’ said Thasha. ‘How long was the journey, really?’

‘Not weeks,’ said Thaulinin, and his tone made it plain that he would say no more.

‘But Thaulinin, where is Dastu?’ asked Ramachni suddenly. ‘I hope you did not forget him back at Sirafstoran Torr?’

A dark murmur passed among the selk. ‘Do not jest,’ said Thaulinin. ‘The youth deceived us. He only feigned swallowing the mushroom, and the sleep it should have brought. When darkness fell on the first day of our journey, we rested atop a deep defile, and laid you all down in rows. He must have been watching through slitted eyes. As we lay there we heard the maukslar bellowing, far behind us on the Torr. We all turned, fearing the demon might come hurtling out of the peaks, despite the care we took to hide our trail. And it was while we were thus distracted that your companion rose and slipped away. We gave chase, but the defile branched into many chasms, and the bottom-lands were wooded and black. All the same I marvel that he escaped us. He must have run almost as fast and silently as one of my people.’

‘What will you do?’ asked Big Skip. ‘Let him run?’

‘By no means!’ said Thaulinin. ‘He can only work mischief, if he manages to stay alive. We will seek him high and low. This is my failure, and his capture will be my charge.’

‘You may hunt long for him,’ said Hercol. ‘Dastu has great talents as a spy.’

‘But no talent for trust,’ said Nolcindar. ‘He would have found only healing and friendship among us. I wonder where his suspicious nature will lead him. To our enemies? Can he have more faith in their mercy than our own?’

‘The Secret Fist does not teach mercy,’ said Hercol. ‘Only power, and sometimes power means striking a bargain. Dastu has just one thing to bargain with: his knowledge of our mission. If he chooses to betray us to our enemies, he can.’

‘There will be no choosing, if the Duirmaulc-Dweller⁹ seizes him in its claws,’ said Nolcindar. ‘His mind will be shorn open, and his knowledge taken as a bear takes honey from the comb.’

‘I think I want to go back to sleep,’ muttered Pazel.

Thaulinin looked at him. ‘Take heart,’ he said. ‘Twice before in my life I have seen Alifros brought to the edge of ruin, and twice before we clawed away from the precipice. And no matter what is to come, there remain the stars.’

‘I just can’t work out how that’s supposed to be comforting,’ said Pazel. ‘The stars business, I mean.’

Thaulinin smiled. ‘Perhaps one day you will. But whatever the future brings, you will be safe for a time in Ularamyth.’

Ularamyth! The word struck Ensyl like a thunderclap. She had heard it before, hadn’t she? Where, when? She could not place it at all, and yet it felt intensely familiar, suddenly, like the name of some home or haven visited as a child, a place where she had been happy; a place lost early in life and never glimpsed again. The name had stirred a response in the others as well, she saw: there was a sudden radiance about them. She might almost have called it hunger.

‘Ularamyth,’ said Ramachni. ‘You have freed my tongue to speak the name. And to think I feared never to see it again.’

‘You’ve been there?’ said Corporal Mandric, shaking his head. ‘Any place you haven’t been?’

‘I have been there, also,’ said Thasha.

The others looked at her, startled, and Ramachni’s dark eyes gleamed. ‘Not you, Thasha,’ he said.

A look of distance and distraction had come over Thasha. Pazel and Neeps drew close to her: they were all too familiar with that look. Thasha did not even glance at them. ‘I’ve been there,’ she insisted. ‘With you, Ramachni; don’t you recall?’

The mage said nothing. Doubt flickered suddenly in Thasha’s eyes. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I’m just confused. Forgive me.’

‘Some know the place with their hearts, before their feet ever touch its blessed soil,’ said Thaulinin. ‘But come and see for yourselves.’

Hercol knelt, offering his shoulder, and Ensyl bounded onto it, steadying herself as always with a fistful of his hair. The tunnel rose gradually, winding like a snake. They moved from one pool of sunlight to the next. She saw that each roof-hole was in truth a shaft leading upwards some ten or twenty feet, and ending in a riot of greenery: ferns, flowers, trailing vines.

‘I know what this tunnel is,’ said Bolutu. ‘It is a lava tube. Is that not so?’

‘Well guessed!’ said Thaulinin. ‘Yes, the blood-fire of the mountain formed this entrance-road, and others. We have been walking it in darkness for some hours already, carrying you. The shafts illuminate only the last few miles, where the jungle above is guarded. Soon we will pass under the mountain, and be in darkness again.’

‘Is the jungle guarded by the selk?’ asked Ensyl, peering up through a shaft.

‘Not here,’ said Thaulinin. He stopped and smiled. ‘Climb up, if you will, and look around. But on your life, do not go beyond the shaft!’

Ensyl glanced at Hercol. ‘I. . will look, if you’ll indulge me,’ she said.

The leap into the shaft was easy, as was catching hold of the lowest vines. Up she went, hand over foot. The sun warmed her, and a wet, fetid jungle smell filled her nostrils. When she finally raised her head above the shaft, she thought she had never seen such a lovely forest. By the height of the sun Ensyl knew it was midday, but the fierce beams slipped through only here and there, and cool shadows abounded. Every shade of green was here in abundance, caught in a thousand forms of leaf and shoot and stem and creeper. Bright droplets sparkled on leaf-tips, and gleamed in spiderwebs flung like a ship’s rigging from tree to tree. Birdsong fell in great melodious threads; bees flowed like minnows through a sunbeam, and on an outflung limb dangled an orchid in brilliant, blood-red flower.

Then Ensyl’s breath caught in her throat. Beyond the orchid hung row upon row of white, ropy vines, straight as piano wire, and as taut. She knew those vines, and the trees they were part of. She looked around, wildly: there! Huge grey trunks, towering over the lesser trees. Far above, those trunks would open in slitted mouths. And those vines, so innocent and still — they could tear a man apart.

She descended in a flash. Back on Hercol’s shoulder, she gasped, ‘The trees, those hideous trees from the Infernal Forest. They’re here.’

‘They are not hideous to the selk,’ said Thaulinin. ‘We have taught them manners, and a wider diet than flesh. For sixteen centuries they have secured this eastern approach to Ularamyth. They would not harm you if we stood at your side.’

They walked on, still climbing. The light shafts ended; one of the selk lit a lamp. Then came a great iron portcullis, barring their way. On the wall beside it was mounted an iron wheel, larger than the wheel of the Chathrand. Thaulinin took a key from about his neck and slipped it into a hole at the wheel’s centre. He turned the key clockwise, then gripped the wheel and spun it in the opposite direction. After a moment it began to turn on its own. Gears clattered, counterweights rumbled in the walls. The wheel spun faster. The great gate began to lift.

When everyone had passed within, Thaulinin removed his key, and ducked inside as the gate slowly descended. On they marched, faster now. A few of the selk asked Thaulinin’s leave to run ahead, which he granted.

They’re as eager as children, Ensyl thought.

A light wind began to blow in the tunnel — and with it came a song. Ensyl felt her heart lift suddenly. The music was high and mirthful, quite unlike the Creation-Song the selk had played for them in the ruins, and yet for all its joy, there was a strangeness to the song that unsettled even as it gladdened her. She could not tell if it was being sung or played on some strange wind instruments, nor even where it came from: ahead of them, or behind, or both?

‘I think the music is in the wind itself,’ she whispered to Hercol.

‘And the stone,’ he replied, gesturing. Now Ensyl saw that there were many small holes in the tunnel surface, scattered at random, and perhaps the music did come from them, indeed. She saw Thasha, her face still strange and radiant, put her ear to the wall.

‘I remember,’ she said. ‘The singing mountain. Just the same as before.’

The selk bearing the lamp glanced at her and smiled. ‘This tunnel we call Ingva, the Flute. It always plays to welcome the return of old friends.’

He blew out the lamp. In the deep darkness, the selk took up the song, full-throated and glad. A hand touched Hercol’s shoulder, guiding him. They walked on, and now the tune became both march and madrigal, a walking-chant and a song of praise.

At last a new light gleamed before them. The tunnel was ending. There was a carved chamber ahead, and stairs climbing up into daylight. Figures appeared, and raised their arms in welcome, but no one called out; no one interrupted the song. They reached the chamber; Ensyl shaded her eyes. They reached the sun-drenched stair, they climbed, she saw it: Mother Sky, she thought, there is goodness in the world after all.

It was what her heart felt, senseless though it might be. She clung to Hercol with both hands. Ularamyth was a great, green bowl, a hollow mountain, roofless and miles wide. A fire-mountain, a volcano: but the fire was long extinguished, and the crater teemed with life. They had passed through the wall of the mountain and stood halfway up the inner rim. Sweeping down and away from them was a lush land of jungle, streams, ponds, rice paddies, water wheels, citrus groves, white boulders, stone houses of fluid line and growing roofs, black horses, painted horses, flocks of restless birds, domes, towers, moss-green ruins, thickets of willow and bamboo. Parts of the crater wall sloped naturally; others were carved into great terraces, sweeping about the valley in concentric rings. Ensyl’s eyes devoured it all, spread there below her like a table buckling under the weight of treasure. So much was starkly visible, and yet there were hiding places everywhere: dense woods, dark tunnel-mouths, fog on a distant lake.

The staircase had brought them out onto a marble landing surrounded by willow trees. Ensyl raised her eyes: the upper rim of the crater was a circle of barren, toothlike stones, the highest of them sparkling with ice. There were no gaps, no fissures: Ularamyth was completely enclosed.

From the landing where they stood, many footpaths and staircases led away — up and down, and horizontally along the terraces — and by all of these routes selk were approaching. They sang as they converged on the newcomers. Some, with faces aglow, clasped the arms of Thaulinin and his party. If any were shocked to find living humans in their midst, they gave no sign.

The song ended, and in the silence Nolcindar came forward and placed the Nilstone at Hercol’s feet, making a deep thump like a cannonball dropped on the marble. For a moment everyone was still. Then another selk woman came forward with a water jug. She held it out to Lunja, who was nearest her.

‘Peace and the stars attend you, citizen,’ she said.

‘Joy to your home and hearth-kin,’ replied Lunja, startled. ‘Yet I fear you are mistaken. I have never been here before.’

‘You are citizens nonetheless,’ said Thaulinin. ‘All who pass the threshold of Ularamyth are granted citizenship, and none may deny them the same. But as for me, Tisani, you had best send for shackles, and conduct me to the Armoured Chamber. I will stand bond alone, if the Five allow it. The choice to bring these travellers here was mine.’

‘You must certainly go,’ said the woman sadly, ‘and perhaps the others may remain at liberty for now. Yet all who walked with you must be judged alike.’

‘What, straight to jail, for bringing us here?’ said Neeps.

‘It seems an unmerciful law, to punish such an act of charity,’ said Hercol.

‘These are unmerciful times,’ said Thaulinin, ‘but I would have you know that I do this gladly, and fear no injustice at the hands of my people.’

‘Nor will your people fail you, Ambrimar’s child,’ said a voice from below the terrace.

All the selk turned, and made a curious gesture: head slightly bowed, hands raised and open, as though to offer them in service. A figure was climbing the staircase with slow dignity. He wore a dark green robe, and a chain of thick silver rings about his neck, and on his head was a circlet of woven vines. He was the first selk Ensyl had yet seen who looked truly old — not just ancient, as they all did, but weathered, worn smooth, his flesh like driftwood on a beach. Ensyl found herself awed: how many years did a selk have to live before they took such a toll?

‘You shall not wear irons,’ he said, ‘and if I am heeded at the council, your stay in the Armoured Chamber will be brief.’ His old eyes passed over the newcomers. ‘Two dlomu, one ixchel — and eight human beings, wondrous to our sight. It is almost exactly as we were told.’

‘Told?’ said Pazel. ‘Told by whom, sir, if you please?’

The elder turned back to the staircase, gesturing. Shilu growled. A huge, snow-white animal padded up the stairs. It was a wolf, and when it stopped beside the selk its shoulder was level with his waist. The creature’s jaws lolled open, showing white teeth. Unblinking green eyes studied the newcomers.

‘By me, Pazel, if you must know.’

That voice! The wolf turned slightly — and Ensyl cried out, and flung herself from Hercol’s shoulder, not caring how hard she landed. And Myett, from her perch on the wolf’s back, did the same, and they met and embraced at the centre of the landing, overcome as ixchel rarely let themselves be. Myett was safe, whole, healed, and Ensyl kissed her hands and her forehead, asking no questions, needing no answers. Ularamyth, Ularamyth, for this I love you already.

For Pazel too, the sight of Myett was overwhelming. He rushed to greet her, along with Thasha, Neeps and Bolutu. He had never quite trusted Myett: she had played a part in Diadrelu’s betrayal, after all. But she was one of them. She had tried to make amends by joining this expedition. And after so much death, she had returned to them alive.

Over their joyous shouts Myett was saying that she had been seized by a woken hawk, and had been here for two days already. Like the selk themselves, the hawk had been terribly suspicious, and had left her with a pair of selk who happened to be circling east around the Infernal Forest, while it flew on ahead to share her story with Thaulinin.

‘The two he left me with got a shock when the bird came back and said Thaulinin had found you, and decided to bring you here, and that I should be carried on ahead. But they obeyed, and tied me up in black cloth like a bundle of sticks. It’s a wonder they didn’t smother me.’

Her habit of gripe had not changed, Pazel saw. And yet it had, for though the words were the same ones the old Myett might have spoken, there was no rancour in her voice, this time. ‘Even when I arrived, the selk had their doubts,’ she added. ‘They thought I was one of Macadra’s spies.’

‘And we feared the same of your companions,’ said Nolcindar.

‘It was not an unreasonable fear,’ said Thaulinin. ‘Macadra has heard of Ularamyth, and hates it, for she knows that the power here is not her kind — not the power of fear and threat, but of healing and nurture. She knows too that those who fight for the Vale do so freely, and with full hearts, while her armies serve with broken hearts, in terror and derangement, and longing for the Empire that was. She dreams that one day the bloodied flag of Bali Adro will fly over Ularamyth.’

‘While we live it never shall,’ said the wolf. Pazel jumped, and looked again at those green eyes. Woken eyes: once you saw it, the intelligence, you wondered how you could have ever failed to.

‘That is certain, Valgrif,’ said the old selk, ‘but who knows how long we shall live? For the fight is coming; the mountains are encircled. Since you left us the noose has tightened, Thaulinin, and every day new servants march eastwards from the river’s mouth. Yet I am sorry, Myett of Ixphir House, that we have been forced to take such precautions.’

‘No ixchel could ever condemn you for them,’ said Myett. Turning to her fellow travellers, she said, ‘This is Arim, second eldest of the Lords of Ularamyth. Lord Arim, these people are my. . clan.’

Pazel looked at her, startled. Myett had struggled with the word, and he knew the weight of her choice. To an ixchel, ‘family’ would have meant far less.

Lord Arim gazed at them piercingly. His gaunt face and fine eyelash plumes made him look like an old bird of prey. ‘You are people of the Chathrand,’ he said, ‘and that alone would mark you as heralds of great change. The Chathrand, Erithusme’s Great Ship. When last I saw her, the wizardess stood upon the forecastle, holding the chains of the demon Avarice. “I will take this one across the sea to a place of punishment, Lord Arim, and return before two summers pass, and dwell with you awhile in the Vale.” So she declared, on that storm-swept morning. But neither she nor the Chathrand ever returned across the Ruling Sea. Until today.

‘Your sister Myett has told us many things,’ the old selk went on, ‘but she too has her secrets. She would not name the burden you carry. I will not name it either, although I could. It is the darkest thing to enter here in many centuries.’

Thaulinin, chastened, bowed his head. ‘We must speak of it soon, my lord,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ said Arim, ‘we must. For the present, take it to the home we have prepared for you, and keep it there, guarded and unseen. Do not unwrap it, or carry it about, unless an elder be with you. Now then, wizard.’ He looked at Ramachni. ‘Why do you not speak? For I think you are an old friend returned.’

‘I am that,’ said Ramachni, ‘and your eyes are as keen as ever, Arim, to spy me out in this disguise. You may call me by the name you chose yourself, on the bloodied sands of Luhmor.’

Cries of joy and wonder rose from many of the selk. ‘Arpathwin! Arpathwin has returned!’ But there were cautious looks too, as though darker memories had been stirred by the name.

The white wolf padded nearer to the travellers, lowering his head and sniffing. ‘Lord Arim, they are gravely hurt,’ he said. ‘The flame-trolls have burned them, and the poisons of the Infernal Forest are in their wounds.’

The old selk walked forward until he stood among them, and turned from one traveller to the next, and his eyes were grave. He looked a long time at Pazel, and even longer at Thasha. But when he came to Neeps a flicker of pain crossed his face.

‘The youths are burning, wizard,’ he said.

‘But with different fevers,’ said Ramachni. ‘We have great need of your physicians, my lord.’

‘Go down into the city,’ said Lord Arim. ‘What can be done shall be done.’ He turned once more to Pazel. ‘But you we shall carry, child of the North, for your wound makes walking a misery, I think.’

Again, Pazel shook his head. ‘You’re very kind, Lord Arim, but I can manage.’

The others tried to persuade him, but Pazel was steadfast. It was true that his leg hurt terribly, and the descent looked very steep. And yet he wanted desperately to walk. He put an arm over Neeps’ shoulder. ‘Just help me, once more,’ he said.

‘Go then, citizens,’ said Lord Arim. ‘Valgrif will escort you, and keep me informed of your progress. Thaulinin, you may walk with them until your paths diverge.’

The wolf looked at the ixchel. ‘You may ride together, if you like,’ he said.

With Myett and Ensyl clinging to his back, the wolf led them downhill, by stairs and sloping paths. The way was narrow at first, and they walked single file, passing over bridges, along raised boardwalks through the rice paddies, beside small streams that trickled down from the heights. At times Valgrif led them through tunnels, where Pazel saw stairs and corridors leading deeper into the earth. Most of the time, however, they walked in bright sunlight. The paths grew wider, the descent less steep. They marched for half a mile through a stand of ancient oaks, where fat acorns snapped underfoot, and unseen creatures scurried in the brush.

Pazel’s leg now ached unremittingly, and yet he found he could bear it more easily than he had feared. And at every turn he was struck by the beauty of Ularamyth, the moist health of its woods and meadows, the sheer variety of its forms of life. Water tanks teemed with fish; an ivy-shrouded doorway let into a hidden smithy; a troop of monkeys raced like agile spiders through the treetops, beehives hummed in a glade. There were few sounds of industry, and none of machines. They did meet with other selk, and occasionally passed groups of houses or workshops cleverly fitted into the landscape. But when he looked out across the sweep of Ularamyth, what he saw was less a city than a garden.

‘I can’t understand,’ he said at last. ‘How can all this be here, lost in the wilderness?’

Ramachni glanced up at him. ‘After what you’ve seen of Alifros, lad? How could it be anywhere else?’

Pazel found no answer. Like Hercol, he had felt upon waking from the drug that his memory was impaired, along with his sense of time. The feeling was mostly gone, but he still wondered if he might be forgetting something.

They stepped through a gate in a hedge. Beyond it the trail forked, and Thaulinin took his leave of the party. The travellers showered him with thanks, but he waved them off, smiling. ‘Rest and heal, and do not forget the world outside. That will be thanks enough.’

He turned and walked briskly away. Far down the trail ahead of him, Pazel saw a small house carved into a hillside. It had a door of iron, and its windows were barred.

The path was level, now; they had reached the crater’s floor. Here the houses grew more numerous, and there were squares and meeting-places between them, and some larger buildings with great porches and balconies draped in flowers. They passed along the streets, under the eyes of the silent, olive-skinned people, until Valgrif stopped at last before a door in a stone wall. He barked once, sharply, and the door flew open.

A trio of selk came out into the street. They were doctors, they said, and bustled around the newcomers to prove it, studying them, touching their wrists and shoulders. They were quiet and serious. Pazel had the feeling that they were paying more attention to what they sensed with their fingertips than what they saw. The effect was unsettling.

‘You’ve, er, never treated our kind, naturally,’ grumbled Corporal Mandric.

The selk paused in their work, looking at him.

‘Turachs, you mean?’

‘Humans, human beings.’

‘But of course we have,’ said the doctor. ‘All our lives — except for the last hundred years. Come in, strip off those rags.’

Inside, they found a series of airy rooms, furnished with beds, wardrobes, dressing tables, shelves of books. Other selk were at work here, and from a back room came the a sound of water gushing into a basin, and a puff of steam.

‘Your home, citizens, for as long as you stay with us,’ said Valgrif. ‘You can dine here, or in the great hall, or anywhere else you like. Of course you have the freedom of Ularamyth.’

Pazel stood in the centre of the large common room. His leg was throbbing so badly that he had broken out into a sweat, but the glad, dreamlike feeling was stronger than ever. He was thinking of Ormael. And as he glanced around he suddenly knew why. The chambers were uncannily like the house of his birth: the same simplicity, the same brightness and warmth. He turned to his sister, and she nodded, speechless. The dining table was the size of their old dining table, and pushed close to the window, just as their mother had liked. There was even a courtyard at the back with a small, spreading tree.

‘It’s not an orange tree,’ said Neda.

In Ormael the soldiers had mutilated her tree, broken its limbs, hurled oranges through the windows of the house. Before they moved on to Neda. Pazel took her hand, expecting her to snatch it away. But she didn’t. She even squeezed his hand in reply. Then Cayer Vispek said, ‘Why should it be an orange tree, sfvantskor?’ and Neda dropped Pazel’s hand as though it burned.

Hercol set the Nilstone down beside Ramachni. He unstrapped Ildraquin, bent and tore off his ruined boots. Then he slid down against the wall. He sighed — and Pazel thought he had never heard a sound remotely like it from the warrior. Rin’s eyes, he’s let his guard down. For the first time since they’d met on the far side of Alifros, Hercol was not protecting anyone. His eyes closed, gentle and serene. He was off-duty. It made him look like another man.

The women moved to the back chambers to undress. One of the doctors was cutting away the left leg of Pazel’s trousers. He stood thinking of Dastu in the mountains, where the hrathmogs hunted and the maukslar raged. Do not forget the world outside.