The Night of the Swarm

18

At midnight the party filed out of the snug little house, packs on shoulders and the dog Shilu at their heels. Pazel had expected a lonely walk through a sleeping Ularamyth, but what he found was quite different. Some two dozen selk had gathered outside. Each one carried a staff that curved at one end like a shepherd’s stick, and at the end of each hook dangled a pale blue lamp. The light danced in the sharper blue of the selks’ eyes. There was no other light from any quarter, save the heavy brilliance of the stars. But Pazel could see a line of the blue lamps, marking the path through the village and beyond.

As the travellers emerged the selk began to sing, their voices so soft that they merged with the night wind. As before the words defied Pazel’s understanding, but it did not matter; the feeling in them was clear. A nomadic people had come to witness another departure, another leave-taking, the very stuff of their lives.

When they started walking the crowd of selk went with them. They passed the workshop where Skip had become so enthralled with selk craftsmanship, the tree where the tortoise slumbered in his burrow, the little volcanic hill. Each selk they came upon fell in with the rest, taking up the melancholy song. But when they reached the great hall the singing ceased. Lord Arim stood among the pillars with his hand on Valgrif’s shoulder. Thaulinin too stepped from the shadows, and the three figures approached without a word.

Now the procession walked in silence, so that Pazel could hear the night birds, the autumn crickets, the gurgle of the streams. In this way the miles passed, and the hours. Lord Arim walked as swiftly as any, though now and then a look of pain creased his face.

They reached the end of the crater floor and began to climb. There were by now several hundred selk with them, and the lamps swayed close together like a school of deep-sea fish. Up they went, by stair and switchback. Pazel walked beside Thasha, now and then touching her arm, or holding her hand for a few paces. He noticed that both Neeps and Lunja, though they walked some distance apart, looked often for the other, as thought to be certain the distance between them had not changed.

By the time they reached the North Door it was very cold. Here the path broadened into a great stone shelf, large enough for all the selk who had joined the climb: and surely almost the whole thousand were here, Pazel thought. The black triangle was just what it had seemed from below: a tunnel mouth, framed with great blocks of stone, and richly carved with both figures and words. An icy wind issued from it, much colder than the air about them. Pazel squinted at the carved words, but it was still too dark to read them. There was also a smaller door at one end of the shelf, and several windows carved into the stone: the Way-House, Pazel guessed.

Thaulinin called the travellers together and presented the ten warriors who were to join them. He told a little of their deeds and life-stories (a very little; the youngest was two thousand years old) and voices in the crowd called out with contributions of their own. Then the selk gave each traveller a folded cloth, silver in colour but woven of some rough, sturdy fabric.

‘Tie back your hair with these,’ said Thaulinin, ‘or wash your face, or bundle them about something you do not wish to lose. They do not look like much, but they were woven by Arim’s mother, Irehi, before the journey from whence she never returned. And this week they have been soaked in the five sacred springs, and touched and blessed by every selk in Ularamyth. Still you need not handle them like relics: they are strong, and meant for use.’

Then Pazel felt a hand on his shoulder. Lord Arim himself stood beside him, and his old lips formed a smile.

‘You tried to read the words above the threshold,’ he said, ‘and well you should: they are a parting wish for travellers. Shall I recite them for you?’

He spoke then in Sabdel, and Pazel was moved by the beauty and simplicity of the verse. Then Arim repeated the lines in the language of Bali Adro, for all to hear:

Behind you dieth a dreamland, ahead is the blinding day.

Still thy song is in all tongues and on all voices lifts,

And even the white range declares it to the skies.

Never but by you is it forsaken, no silence but thine own is its decay.

Go not mourning what is ended.

Go not with winter in your eyes.

‘That is our hope for you all,’ he said. ‘But come: we must rest in the Way-House. Your true journey begins at sunrise.’

Then the selk came forward in groups, touching their arms, whispering words of farewell. Pazel had come to know some by name, and dozens by sight, and felt a great sadness at this leave-taking. Very soon it was done, however, and Arim led the travellers into the Way-House, and a simple room where they could sleep.

Most did so quickly, but once more Pazel found himself wide awake, and unable to be otherwise. This is crazy, he told himself. Sleep, fool, or you’ll be useless at dawn. At last he gave up, as he had done on Sirafstoran Torr, and found his way back outside. He crossed the wide shelf, and saw a ribbon of blue lamps snaking down into the darkened Vale, and dispersing by many paths along the crater floor.

An hour later the party was on its feet, and the sun was gleaming on the crater wall. They glanced a last time at Ularamyth, and Prince Olik knelt on the trail where it began its descent into the crater, and kissed the earth. Then they all turned away, and followed Lord Arim into the tunnel, and not one of those travellers ever again set foot in the Secret Vale.

It was dark in the tunnel, but the selk still had their lamps. Pazel tightened his coat against the biting wind. Very soon he saw ice slicking the walls, felt his boot crunching a thin crust of snow. Every five or ten minutes they would climb a long, steep staircase. They were still ascending the mountain, only this time from within.

After an hour’s march they reached a gate very much like the one in the tunnel by which they had entered Ularamyth. Thaulinin opened it with the same key he had used before, and when they had passed through he locked it behind them. Shortly thereafter Neda remarked that the air was growing warmer, and so it was: decidedly warmer, until they were all loosening their coats. Walking beside Valgrif, Pazel asked what was happening, but the wolf said only that he would see soon enough.

Then the tunnel widened abruptly, the walls falling away left and right, and Pazel realised that they had stepped into a natural cave. The air here was dry and hot. By the dim lamplight he could just make out the ceiling, where stalactites hung like rows of teeth. Fifty feet or so ahead, a staircase climbed the left-hand wall. As they moved nearer he saw that it led to a large, round archway overlooking the cave below.

‘Now,’ said Lord Arim, ‘I must speak to the guardian of the North Door. You may come with me, Arpathwin; but the rest of you must wait for us to return. Do not approach, no matter what you see or hear! You cannot go on without the guardian’s consent.’

He started off at once, and Ramachni went with him. Pazel studied the archway. There was something about it he did not like at all. He glanced at the others and saw that they did not feel it. They were curious, and perhaps slightly worried by the mystery, but none were suffering from the dread he felt, the sense that something terrible was near.

Arim and Ramachni climbed the stair, and stepped before the archway — rather cautiously, Pazel thought. Then they walked inside. ‘Valgrif,’ Pazel murmured, ‘what sort of creature is this guardian? Why was Lord Arim so concerned that we not approach?’

‘Because we could not help, only imperil ourselves,’ said the wolf. ‘Let us speak no more of it. They will return at any moment.’

But the selk and the mage were gone much longer than Valgrif predicted. Through the stone, Pazel thought he felt a low, angry rumble, as though thunder were shaking the earth. At last the two figures emerged from the opening and started back. Ramachni walked straight to Pazel, and in his black eyes was a look of concern.

‘My lad,’ he said, ‘the guardian is an eguar.’

‘An eguar!’ cried Pazel. ‘Oh credek, no!’ Of all their party, he alone had ever faced one of the demonic reptiles — and it had savaged him, burned him, and dug like a mole into his mind. Worst of all, his Gift had forced him to learn its language, and it was the weirdest and most painful tongue Pazel had ever heard before that of the demon in the Infernal Forest.

‘Ramachni,’ he said, ‘I don’t want to see an eguar. Kirishgan told me the selk sometimes talked to them, but I didn’t know they used them as blary border guards.’

‘The creature will not harm you,’ said Ramachni. ‘Arim and I had words with it. They have an accord of long standing: the selk permit the beast to live on the doorstep of Ularamyth, hidden from enemy eyes by the same spells that hide the Vale itself. And in return the eguar keeps watch on the North Door.’

‘It is a task well suited to the eguar’s stillness,’ said Lord Arim. ‘Forty years have passed since last a traveller came to us by way of the Sky Road. But each door must have its watch, and this eguar has been a friend to Ularamyth for centuries. I am sorry, Pazel: I did not know that you had faced an eguar before. They are deadly, of course. But as a rule they are not evil — not given to killing for its own sake, or to mindless hatreds. The creature you met on Bramian is an exception. I know him: Ma’tathgryl, a wounded and embittered beast. This one is also an exception, but of the opposite sort. He has given us many timely warnings of the enemy’s deeds, and has even descended into the Vale, and bathed in the waters of Osir Delhin. He discarded his birth-name in favour of the one we gave him: Sitroth, which means Faithful. We selk revere him for his wisdom, and his guardianship.’

‘But you protect him as well?’ asked Bolutu. ‘What threatens him?

‘In the past, nothing,’ said Arim. ‘But today the Platazcra madness has brought death to the eguar as it has to many others. You know that the Plazic weapons were made from their ancient bones and hides, dug from eguar grave-pits by the alchemists of Bali Adro. In time those pits were emptied, and the warlords faced an end to their power. They tried to leach that power from other materials, such as the bones of dragons and the teeth of the Nelluroq serpent. None of these efforts succeeded. At last, in desperation, they sought out living eguar to butcher and exploit — at a terrible cost in dlomic lives, needless to say. And these experiments too were failures.’

‘But not perfect failures,’ added Ramachni.

‘No,’ said Arim, ‘and for an addict, even the smallest whiff of one’s chosen poison can be irresistible. To our knowledge, fifty-one eguar were sought out and killed to provide such whiffs: a sword that splintered on its third use, a siege engine that exploded on the battlefield, a helm that gave the wearer titanic strength, then burned through flesh and skull like some horrible acid. Fifty-one eguar: and to our knowledge that leaves but eighteen alive in all the world.’

Corporal Mandric hissed. Pazel looked up, and terror seized his heart: from the archway a sea-green light had begun to shine. It grew stronger even as he watched, and so did the heat.

The dog growled. Pazel was struggling to breathe. I don’t want to see it, I don’t want to hear it. He stepped backwards, and would have tripped if Neeps had not caught him.

‘Rin’s blood, Ramachni!’ said Thasha. ‘That mucking thing’s language is a torture to Pazel, you know that!’

‘Peace, Thasha,’ said the mage. ‘The creature has pledged not to speak in his native tongue.’

‘But what a splendid gift, Pazel Pathkendle!’ said Thaulinin. ‘Not even the selk have ever learned to speak the language of the eguar.’

Pazel was shaking all over. ‘Never. . try,’ he said.

At that moment a shimmering vapour began to pour from the archway. It was exactly the same vapour that had engulfed Pazel on Bramian — and there, there was the smell: rank, acidic, burning his nostrils. Out it came: the sliding, slouching black creature, lizard-shaped, elephant-huge, hotter than the depths of a furnace. The row of spines along its back scraped the top of the archway, and above the black crocodile jaws its eyes glowed white-hot.

The creature emerged only halfway from the arch, then settled on its belly at the top of the stairs, with one great clawed foot dangling over the ledge. Within the cloud of vapours it was hard to look at steadily. But its eyes drilled down at them with an intensity that was almost physically painful.

‘Humans!’ it said, and its voice was like a boulder shifting. ‘Woken humans! Come forward, and do not fear me. It brings me joy to see you.’

‘Why is that, old father?’ said Ramachni.

‘So many reasons,’ said the eguar. ‘Because their form is fair. Because I sense friendship, even love, between them and their dlomic comrades, although the dlomu enslaved and killed them. Because to see the proof that their race is not extinguished gives me hope for my own.’

With each breath, the creature threw off waves of some great force; Pazel could not see anything, but felt them pulsing through his body. His mind was thrown into confusion: the eguar had spoken with undeniable courtesy, and yet it was so much like that other, a creature that had swallowed a man whole before his eyes.

‘They must pass swiftly on, Sitroth,’ said Lord Arim, ‘but I shall return within the hour, and will count myself blessed if you will talk with me awhile.’

‘You honour me, my lord,’ said the eguar, ‘but can they not tarry a little while? Since I cast my lot with the selk my blood is thinned. I crave company, and speech, although my kind would call me weak if they heard of it.’

‘Our kind calls you friend,’ said Arim. ‘But no, they cannot wait. The humans are castaways, and the one ship that can bear them home is drawing away even now. They must hurry to catch up with it while they can.’

The eguar lowered its head onto its forelegs. ‘That need I understand. The fate of the castaway is hard. Go, then, humans, and seek your ship.’

Pazel dared another glance at those burning eyes. Dumbfounded, he realised that the terrifying creature was lonely, starved for companionship of its own kind or any other. It had allied with the selk, and been changed — as they themselves had, perhaps. For just an instant he felt tempted to speak to the creature in its own tongue. But no, that was impossible: eguar put whole speeches into single, unimaginably complicated words. On Bramian, just hearing one of them had felt like being screamed at for an hour by a mob. Trying to form such words might just drive him mad.

But he could speak to it in the common tongue.

‘I wish-’ he said aloud, sputtering (what in Pitfire did he wish?). ‘Oh, credek — that is, I wish you could be happy.’

Happy? Neda and Neeps were both staring at him, incredulous. The selk warriors looked simply astonished. Slowly, the eguar turned its enormous head in Pazel’s direction. Black lids closed slowly over the searing eyes, opened again. It spoke.

‘When my grandfather first took this spire in his claws, little eel, the world beneath it was still a tomb of ice. He lived in the long, terrible ages before any creature with hands yet walked the earth. In his day the Gorgonoths still crawled, who ground the bones of the earth in their teeth, and cut the chasms of the sea. And then in my father’s day the world caught fire, and ashes rained from heaven for a century; but he waited, and new trees grew, and Urmesu the Bear emerged from her cave and prowled the forests of the South.

‘I can see through their eyes: I can examine the world that was. Even now I look, and see that cold star falling in Siebr Shidorno that carried you to brutal Alifros — that slow-falling star that set the plain alight, as though in tribute to your birth. And in all that time not one of you has wished us happiness. If you speak the truth you are a stranger being than you seem.’

‘He’s pretty strange,’ murmured Neeps.

Thasha elbowed him. Then she in turn looked at the eguar, and Pazel knew that she too was aware of its loneliness. ‘When our work is finished,’ she said, ‘I will gather your people together in one land, if you wish. There’s room enough in Alifros.’

‘Gather us, child?’ said the creature. ‘By what unearthly power?’

Thasha looked as though she might speak again, but then Hercol touched her arm, a gentle warning. ‘You cannot have forgotten our love of fantasy, great one,’ he said. ‘Forgive our chatter; we will leave you now.’

‘I will be with you anon, Sitroth,’ said Arim. ‘Come, travellers; the road ahead is long.’

One by one they passed the staircase, right under the beast, coughing as they touched the vapour cloud. Pazel feared the waves of force surging out of the creature would make him stumble, but he kept his feet. When they were all passed he felt an immense relief. Some distance ahead the cave narrowed once more into a tunnel. But they still had to get there, and Pazel could still feel those blazing eyes.

‘Happy,’ whispered Neeps, shaking his head. ‘ “I wish you could be happy.” Has it occurred to you, Pazel, that you’re raving mad?’ Then he jumped and cast a guilty look at Lunja. ‘Aya Rin, sorry-’

The dlomic woman brushed against him deliberately. ‘You will be sorry,’ she murmured, mock-severe. ‘Mad this, crazy that-’

‘Yes, yes, I know,’ said Neeps, hushing her in turn.

So blary intimate, thought Pazel. Like lovers, Neeps and Lunja were starting to talk in a style no one else could quite understand. It’s the only way, he reminded himself. We asked her to do this, and she’s trying. They both are, magnificently.

To their right, Olik was coughing badly; the fumes seemed to have affected him more harshly than the others. Bolutu took him by the arm.

‘A few more steps, Prince Olik. When we reach the tunnel you’ll feel just-’

Lunja howled. A warning. Pazel clutched his temples: the waves of force had surged a hundredfold. Instinct took over: he turned and dived on Thasha, whose hand was already on her sword. The eguar was smashing through them like a cannonball. Thaulinin had been knocked aside; another selk was in the creature’s teeth. Pazel tried not to breathe, while the others fell around him, writhing in pain. This close the vapours were like a mule-kick to the chest.

Olik! The eguar’s white-hot eyes were locked on the prince. Olik had his sword out and was holding his ground — but then Hercol lunged before him, whirled with blinding speed, and stabbed.

The eguar gave a deafening roar: Ildraquin had pierced its flesh behind the jaw. The beast threw its head, wrenching Hercol from the ground and hurling him away. The eguar spat out the fallen selk and lunged once more at Olik — and then a searing light filled the cave. The beast twisted, and its roar grew louder still, shaking the cave and bringing stalactites down like hail. Then it turned and fled. In three heartbeats it had flown up the stairs and vanished through the arch. They could still hear its bellows of pain.

‘Lord Arim!’ cried Thaulinin. ‘Eyache, master of masters, are you burned?’

Arim had fallen on his side. ‘I am burned,’ he gasped, ‘but by my own spell merely. It is long since I called down the lightning, and this body is too old to be a lightning-rod. Never mind, Thaulinin! What of the others?’

The answer to his question was plain to see: the selk that the eguar had bitten was dead, his body horribly torn and scalded. Another warrior had also been burned by the spittle of the creature, and Hercol was bruised and shaken, but both were on their feet.

‘Arpathwin, you matched my spell, as in elder times,’ said Lord Arim. ‘How do you fare?’

‘I have felt better,’ said Ramachni, shaking the dust from his fur, ‘but also much worse. You took the better part of the shock, my lord.’

‘Betrayed,’ said Thaulinin, kneeling by his kinsman’s corpse. ‘After all these centuries, Sitroth has turned on us. How could this happen?’

‘Could he be under another’s spell?’ asked Pazel.

Lord Arim shook his head. ‘No spell to control the mind of an eguar has been cast in Alifros since the Dawn War, and even then it was a great undertaking. No, something terrible has occurred in the heart of Sitroth, to bring him to this pass.’

Ramachni looked up at the prince. ‘You were his target, Olik Ipandracon. He attacked the moment Bolutu mentioned your name. No, Doctor, the fault does not lie with you-’ for Bolutu had bowed his head in shame ‘-nor with any of us. This was a disaster no one could have foreseen.’

‘And it leaves an entrance to the Vale unguarded,’ said Thaulinin.

‘Yes,’ said Arim, ‘for we cannot let Sitroth remain here. The faithful one was not faithful.’ He sighed. ‘I must do a thing while the power is in me. Go, all of you, into the tunnel ahead, and await me there.’

Thaulinin protested, but Arim waved for silence. ‘You must remove every bit of clothing that the eguar touched. Leave it here; I will send our people back to collect and burn it. Then wash your hands and faces, and clean any wound with utmost care: first with water, then with our good wine. Do it quickly! There is poison to rot flesh and weaken hearts in an eguar’s mouth.’

He made for the staircase, and the others reluctantly obeyed him, leaving the cave for the narrower tunnel. The selk had the worst of it, but Hercol and Olik too had to discard their coats and gloves, and Thaulinin personally scrubbed out a wound on the back of Hercol’s hand.

‘Aya!’ said Hercol, gritting his teeth. ‘So that is eguar spittle! It is far worse than the slobber of the flame-trolls.’

Suddenly there came a great boom and a blast of air and dust. Thaulinin dashed into the cave, and returned supporting Arim, who looked exhausted and frail.

‘I have collapsed the tunnel behind Sitroth,’ said the old selk. ‘He has another exit to the mountains, but he will not soon be returning to Ularamyth. And now I must rest, and return with our fallen comrade’s body, when I can.’ He looked at the travellers sadly. ‘I have failed you, here in this first moment of your journey. If I had the strength I would go with you to the Sky Road. But that strength is fled. I called, and it came a final time. I do not think it will dwell in me again.’

‘You failed us in nothing, Arim,’ said Ramachni. ‘Go to your rest, and be certain that a part of us goes with you.’

Thaulinin commanded two selk to escort him, and to carry the body. ‘We will make do with your seven comrades,’ he said. ‘But you two: leave your coats and gloves for Hercol and the prince. Their road will be far longer than yours.’

Lord Arim looked up at Thasha. ‘You are trying to breach the wall inside you,’ he said. ‘You must persist in that struggle, but do not overlook its cost. A battle in the mind will tax the body, and in the High Country your body will need all its strength. At all costs you must reach the sea alive. Once aboard the Promise you will be warm and fed, and have long days to seek a path to Erithusme.’

Then his gaze swept them all. ‘Farewell, citizens. Your quest is our own, though we did not foresee its coming. It is not likely that we shall meet again in your short time in Alifros. But there are worlds beyond Alifros, and minds that reach out to us from them, and in that reaching there is hope for us all.’

With that he started back towards Ularamyth, and the selk warriors lifted the body of their companion and followed after.

‘Quickly, now,’ said Thaulinin. ‘The portal is just ahead.’

He led them on, and very soon it proved so: the tunnel ended in a pair of tall and curious doors. They appeared to be carved from two enormous pieces of jade, and on each was carved a staring eye.

‘The Gates of Cihael the Explorer,’ said Thaulinin. ‘He was the greatest mountaineer of all our people, and he fell here, defending Ularamyth from the ogres of the Thrandaal Caves. Shield your eyes when I open the door, or the sun will dazzle you.’

He strode forward and set a shoulder to one of the doors. He pushed, then looked back with a sad smile. ‘Blocked with snow. Ah well; perhaps we had better remain.’

The prince actually laughed, and went forward to help him. Together they pushed, and the door moved slightly, and a blade of sunlight appeared in the crack-

— Pazel was swaying, stumbling on his feet, and then he fell. His knees met snow. Wind-driven snow tapped at his face. Everything was white. A hand gripped his shoulder.

‘You’re confused,’ said Hercol. ‘Don’t worry. You will not be for long.’

They were on a narrow ridgetop covered in snow. The sun was high, and the others were all here, ten white-clad figures against the whiter snow. Pazel was exceptionally tired, as though he’d been walking for days. All around them, close and savage, towered the peaks.

‘What — how-’

‘You can’t remember coming here,’ said Hercol.

‘Of course I can, I-’

Pazel looked back over his shoulder. The ridge ran straight behind them for a mile, then twisted down and to the left. There was no door of jade. There was no opening of any kind to be seen.

‘It is happening to us one by one. I myself came out of the memory-fog just minutes ago.’

‘Memory-fog?’

‘The doorway set a spell in motion,’ said Bolutu, coming up beside them. ‘We have been walking a long time, Pazel. We have descended into valleys, and climbed again to saddles like this one, and turned at many forks and crossroads. It has all been stunningly lovely, and quiet. And now as the spell breaks it is carrying away all our memories, from when we passed through the door of jade — to this very moment. Thus is Ularamyth protected: we cannot find our way back there, or tell another soul just where it lies.’

‘Why do you remember?’ Pazel demanded.

‘Because the spell has yet to break for Belesar, of course,’ said Ramachni, picking his way through the trampled snow. ‘In time his memory will vanish, too — and you may be explaining all this to him, or to Lunja, or your sister. Those three are the last holdouts.’

‘How long have we walked?’ said Pazel.

Bolutu flashed him a smile. ‘I’d rather not say.’

‘Ah. Right.’ Pazel struggled to his feet. ‘You mustn’t tell me. That’s the whole idea, isn’t it?’

‘The rule of the house,’ said Big Skip, laughing. ‘And an irritating one, to be sure. I’d like to know how long I’ve been on my feet.’

‘Days,’ said Thaulinin, ‘but more than that we cannot tell you. We have our oaths. But this much I will gladly tell: we are at last upon the Nine Peaks Road. Do not imagine that we will be climbing nine of these grandfather-mountains from the base — not at all. Rather we shall climb once, and never fully descend until we pass the ninth. A massive ridge runs through Efaroc, like a wall of the Gods. The peaks are like turrets along that wall — and the Road is a like a set of daredevil catwalks leaping between them.’

‘I thought it was supposed to be a grand highway,’ said Pazel.

‘We have not yet reached the Royal Highway,’ said Thaulinin, ‘nor will we always be upon it, for we must take every shortcut we can.’ He pointed at a huge, crooked, ice-sheathed summit in the distance. ‘There stands the first of the Nine Peaks, which we call Isarak. A shelter awaits us on its western slopes. And that is fortunate, for I sense that tonight will be colder by far than any other night this year. Our tent will not suffice. We must reach Isarak by nightfall, or freeze upon this ridge. And it is already past noon.’

He started walking — or resumed walking — and the others fell in behind him. Pazel winced: his shoulders were sore and his muscles ached. Of course they do. You have been walking for days! Just how many? It unsettled him to think that he would never know. But his selk boots were dry and comfortable, and the pack, which they had made for him, rode snugly.

Nor was the snow as pervasive as he had thought at first. They were passing through a long drift, but just ahead the ridge was bare, and there were even tufts of ice-withered greenery along the trailside. The peaks themselves were deeply snow-clad, but the slopes beneath them less so. They were not too late, it seemed. Even the light snowfall of a moment ago soon ended, and ahead was bright blue sky.

When they were out of the snowdrift and marching over frozen soil, Hercol approached him again. ‘You’re a lowlander,’ he said. ‘Those bumps above Ormael you call Highlands do not count. Listen to one who came of age in the wicked Tsordons, and take no chances on the trail.’

‘Don’t worry about that,’ said Pazel.

‘I worry with reason,’ said Hercol. ‘Thaulinin says that the way will soon grow treacherous. Besides, the air is thin, and will grow thinner as we ascend. You may feel dizzy and careless, but you cannot afford to be.’

Pazel shivered. Still ascending. He wondered how cold it would get. Then he felt a stinging blow to his cheek: Hercol had cuffed him, not at all gently.

‘Even now your mind wanders!’ Hercol aimed a finger at the peaks ahead. ‘We are going through those, Pathkendle, do you hear? Stay sharp, if you would stay alive. One careless footfall and your journey will have a pitiful conclusion.’

They marched on. Big Skip came and walked by Pazel’s side. ‘He’s had the same talk with all of us “lowlanders” as we pop out of the spell. He didn’t have to smack you, though.’

Pazel looked at the mountains before them: huge, cold, insanely steep. ‘I think maybe he did, Skip. But thanks all the same.’

The path was now climbing steadily, but the mountain did not seem to grow any nearer. In the middle of a rough scramble Pazel saw Lunja stop in her tracks, staring without recognition at the world around her. It was Neeps who went to her and took her hand.

Pazel watched them furtively. She doesn’t look as though she finds him unbearable. But even as the thought came to him, Lunja took her hand from Neeps’ own, and held it strangely, as though repressing an urge to wipe it clean.

Bolutu’s release from the spell came shortly thereafter. As he recovered, Thasha hurried to Pazel’s side. ‘What’s the matter with you? Go walk with your sister! She’s the last one.’

‘I thought she’d rather be with Cayer Vispek,’ he said.

‘With Vispek? Didn’t you — oh, Pitfire, that was before your spell broke. Pazel, he spat at her. I thought he was going to hit her.’

‘What?’

‘Nobody knows what it was about. Hercol started forward, and Vispek shouted at him to stay out of their affairs, and stalked off ahead. Go on, will you? Make her talk to you. Once her memory breaks she won’t even remember fighting with him.’

Pazel moved carefully past Hercol and Bolutu. Cayer Vispek walked twenty feet ahead, with Prince Olik and the selk. Neda marched grim and soldier-straight. But her eyes softened a little at the sight of Pazel.

‘When the spell breaks you don’t feel a thing,’ he said in Mzithrini.

Neda looked at Cayer Vispek’s back, and glowered. ‘Speak Ormali,’ she said. ‘I don’t want him listening.’

‘What happened, Neda?’ he said.

His sister drew a deep breath. ‘He wanted me to tell him. . everything. The length of our journey, and the turns, and everything that happened after we passed through the gate. He wanted me to cheat the spell, before my memory goes. I asked him why he would wish to do such a thing. And he was furious. Of course I already knew. He is afraid. Cayer Vispek, the war hero, the sfvantskor master, is afraid of any spell that affects his thoughts.’

‘So am I, if you care to know.’

Neda shot him an irritated glance. ‘Don’t you understand? I asked him why. Instead of simply obeying. That is not something a sfvantskor is allowed to do. I placed Ularamyth above my vow of obedience.’ Neda paused, eyes straight ahead. Then she said, ‘I am no longer of the Faith.’

‘What!’

‘Pazel, don’t tell.’

‘Because you blary asked him why?’

Again she was silent. ‘Because I don’t believe any more,’ she said at last. ‘In the Path of the Seraphim, in the divine blood of kings, in persecution by devils, in the Unseen.’

Tears glittered in her eyelashes. They crunched forward over the frozen ground. ‘Or maybe I still believe in the Unseen,’ she said, ‘but I don’t believe we know anything about it. Whether it’s good or evil, or distracted, or insane.’

Pazel did not know quite what Mzithrinis meant by the Unseen. But he thought of the Night Gods, setting the murder of a world as a challenge on a school exam. ‘My money’s on insane,’ he said.

Once more she looked at him askance. ‘Don’t make jokes,’ she said.

‘I wasn’t.’

She stomped on, and he feared she was too angry to talk any longer. The path narrowed, until he could no longer walk at her side. ‘Neda,’ he said, ‘is there anything you want to remember, about the. . words that passed between you and Vispek? Something you want me to remind you of later on?’

Neda looked back at him, startled. ‘Pazel, I came out of the spell hours ago.’

For a moment Pazel was at a perfect loss. Then he saw it, and wondered that he had not before. ‘Your Gift,’ he said.

She nodded. ‘The door-charm worked. I did lose my memory — for a heartbeat or two. Then everything came back. It happened even faster than it used to in Babqri, when the Father put me in a trance. And that’s not the worst part. I remember everything, Pazel. Every turn, every trail, and how long we spent on each, and twenty, thirty landmarks. I could draw you a map.’

‘Pitfire, Neda.’

‘I can’t help it. There’s no way to make it stop.’

Pazel looked at the selk ahead, and lowered his voice. ‘Didn’t they know about your Gift? I thought Ramachni talked about it.’

‘We both did. I even showed them what I could do. But they still didn’t imagine it would prove stronger than the magic of the gate.’

Pazel was shaken. ‘People underestimate our mother,’ he said.

Neda’s hands were in fists. ‘I swear on her life,’ she said, ‘that I will not be the one to betray that place. Never.’

‘Oh, for Rin’s sake,’ said Pazel. ‘You’re not going to betray anyone. Just keep your mouth shut about Ularamyth, that’s all.’

‘And what if I’m captured? I might be able to withstand torture — we are trained to resist the methods of the Secret Fist — but what could I do against a spell? What if they use magic to dig the secret from my mind?’

‘You tell me. What then?’

This time Neda stopped and leaned over him, the way she used to in the days when he only came up to her waist. He could not really look at her; he was facing into the sun.

‘Then I’ll claim the privilege of an unbeliever,’ she said, ‘and cut my throat.’

By mid-afternoon they had climbed much higher: the path behind them dwindled to a thread. For a long time they walked in the mountain’s shadow, and the air grew cold indeed. At length they joined a wider, flatter trail. Pazel could see old paving stones poking out here and there from beneath the frozen soil. ‘Those are fragments of the Royal Highway,’ said Thaulinin, ‘by which travellers could once walk or ride, or even hire a carriage, from these slopes all the way to the city of Isima, and beyond it to the Weeping Glen. It was from Isima that the greatest of the Mountain Kings ruled: Urakan he was called, him for whom the tallest peak is named, and great-grandfather to Valridith the suicide. In Urakan’s day the high country bustled with merchants and peddlers and herdsman, passing from one fastness to the next.’

As they marched on, Pazel saw other hints of the glory of those lost days: a great limbless statue on a ridgetop, its boulder-sized head cracked open like an egg beside the trail; square holes that might have been the foundations of houses; rock walls enclosing barren fields — former pastures, maybe, or cemeteries.

Round one steep knoll they came suddenly upon a chasm, spanned by a stone bridge. It was a narrow crevasse; Pazel might easily have thrown a stone across it, but the bridge was less than four feet wide, and frighteningly unrailed, and the wind came in blasting gusts between the cliff walls. Here for the first time they bound themselves together with rope. Even Shilu was tied to the rest, although Valgrif crossed untethered, crouching low on his belly. Creeping over the arch, boots skidding on tiny patches of ice, Pazel felt dizziness assault him suddenly. His head was light. The wind pushed, pulled, teased. He could almost see it, snapping and coiling in the gorge. .

A hand touched his shoulder. It was Cayer Vispek, who had been tied into the line behind him. The sfvantskor’s voice was low and calm.

‘The bridge is two lines painted on solid ground. Fear not: you could walk between them in twice this wind. You have that level of control. Think of walking, nothing else.’

Pazel took a deep breath, and tried to obey. Two lines on solid ground. He stepped forward, and found to his surprise that the dizziness was almost gone. He knows what he’s doing, Pazel thought, in some matters at least.

Just beyond the bridge there stood a dense clump of pines. The selk, heavily burdened as they were, dropped their packs and began snatching up armfuls of dry, dead limbs. The rest of the party joined the effort. The limbs they tied up in bundles and strapped atop their packs, and into any spaces left over they stuffed pine cones. Brilliant, thought Pazel. We’re going to need these when we reach that shelter. But when he felt the extra weight on his back he wondered if they ever would.

Now Thaulinin set a faster pace, for the sun was low in the sky. They even ran where the trail was level. In this way they came at last to the base of the first peak, Isarak — and saw before them a disaster.

The road ahead was carved into the mountainside, its outer shoulder a cliff that fell away to terrible depths. And covering it, burying it, was snow: deep, powdery snow, in a wind-sculpted drift that followed the trail for a mile or more. Pazel thought: Impossible. We can’t go through that. We’re not blary miners, or moles.

‘Sheer cliffs above and below,’ said Ensyl, shielding her eyes. ‘We may be spending the night in that tent after all.’

Thaulinin turned and looked at her sharply. ‘We cannot,’ he said. ‘The cold that is coming is too great. We need stone around us, and a fire.’

‘That is not fresh snowfall,’ said Hercol, raising his eyes. ‘It must have broken away from the summit on a warm day, and settled here.’

‘Who cares where it came from?’ said Big Skip. ‘There’s no muckin’ way we can-’

‘Dig!’ said Thaulinin. ‘Dig or perish! In an hour’s time this trail will be black!’

Straight into the white mass they dived. The snow was light, but piled to depths of twelve feet or more. They were digging a tunnel, and each time they advanced a yard it collapsed. Their new coats were tight at sleeve and collar, yet it trickled in all the same. The selk had the worst of the job, cutting the initial trail, mindful always of the savage drop-off nearby. But for everyone the labour was exhausting. The snow toppled; they scooped it away and wriggled forward. It was like an odd sort of swimming: half dog-paddle, half treading water. But how long could you do that before you grew tired and sank? Ahead, behind, above: there was nothing to see but snow — that and an occasional, stomach-churning glimpse of the distant lowlands, when they strayed close to the precipice.

Dusk fell. Pazel rubbed his eyes, struggling to distinguish snow from air. Ramachni and the ixchel, walking atop the drift, shouted down encouragement. But they had been doing that for ages. If they all curled up here, close together beneath the snow, would they keep each other warm? Or would they die in their sleep, frozen, fused together like an unfinished sculpture, and be found by crows in the springtime?

Even as he mused on the question he heard glad cries from the selk: they had reached the far side of the drift at last. One by one the party stumbled out, shaking snow from their clothes and hair. The sun was gone: only a dull red glow remained in the sky. Now, as he felt the knife of the wind, Pazel had his answer: they would freeze to death if they stayed here. The snow melted by the heat of their bodies had soaked them through.

‘I feared as much,’ said Thaulinin. ‘We have taken too long. The shelter is still three miles away.’

‘Then let us tie ourselves together and run,’ said Hercol. ‘Not quickly, but steadily, wherever the trail permits.’

‘Locate your fire beetles,’ said Thaulinin, ‘but I beg you: do not use them unless you feel death itself tugging at your sleeves. The heat they contain is terribly potent, but it will not last long.’

Once more they bound themselves together. Then they ran, limbs shaking, teeth chattering uncontrollably. The light dimmed further, the trail narrowed and grew steep. Bolutu slipped on a patch of ice and skidded wildly; the rope stopped him only when his torso was already over the precipice. They raised him, clapped him on the back — and shuffled on, half-frozen, dogged as the chain gang they resembled.

When the way was too steep, they walked; when the light was gone they lit torches. Hercol shouted at them over the wind: ‘Move you fingers, wiggle your toes inside your boots! Let them seize up and they’ll snap like carrots!’ Pazel felt the fire beetle in his coat, and fought the urge to put the thing into his mouth. Not yet. Somehow they kept going, right around the peak, and came at last to Isarak Tower.

It was a grander shelter than Pazel had expected: a soaring ruin two hundred feet tall, though its crown was shorn off like an old forest snag. The great doors were long gone, and snow had filled the bottom floor, but a stone staircase hugged the inner wall, and when they dragged themselves to the second floor they found it windowless and dry. By now the humans and the dlomu were so cold they could barely speak. They rushed about in the dark, swearing in many tongues, brushing the snow from the firewood. Aya Rin, please let it burn, Pazel thought, maniacally wiggling his toes.

Neda and Big Skip appeared with two more armloads of sticks: Pazel had no idea where they had come from. They mounded all the wood together, lit pine cones by the torches and nudged the cones under the pile. Hercol bent and blew. There was a glimmer, then a tongue of flame; then the dead wood roared to life. Soon everyone was crowding around the blaze, stripping off their wet clothes and putting on dry: men, women, human, ixchel, dlomu, selk. Only Cayer Vispek changed alone, far from light or warmth.

The selk passed a skin about, and they all took a sip of the smoky selk wine. For a few minutes even Pazel’s fingertips were warm. In the dimming light he looked around for his friends. There was Thasha, still dressing: her bare legs pale and strong, her wind-chapped lips finding his own for a haphazard kiss. There were Ensyl and Myett, laughing among the embers, drying each other frantically with Hercol’s gift-cloth from Ularamyth. And Neeps? Pazel turned in a circle. His friend was nowhere in sight. He asked the others: no one knew where he had gone.

‘He was acting a bit strange after we got out of the snow,’ said Thasha. ‘Holding his hands up in front of him as we went. I thought he was afraid of his fingers breaking off.’

‘Neeps!’ Pazel shouted. ‘Speak up, mate, where are you?’ Only his own voice, echoing; then a silence that chilled his blood.

And then, very faintly, a moan. Pazel froze. The sound came again: from somewhere overhead. With Thasha beside him he ran to the staircase and climbed headlong, feeling out the steps in the dark. The third floor was windowless like the first, but the voice — no, voices — were coming from higher still.

The fourth floor had a large pair of windows. Through one, the little Southern moon was shining on a snow-dusted floor; and Pazel saw fresh footprints, and clothes discarded in haste. Before the other, darker window, two figures were embracing, their voices low and urgent, their bodies a study in contrasts: tall and short, jet black and almost-white. Unaware of the intrusion, they moved together, holding on so tightly they seemed scarcely able to breathe; and yet their limbs struggled to tighten further, as though the lack of any distance between them were still too much distance, and must somehow be overcome.

Thasha tugged Pazel away.

On the third floor steps they sat in darkness, stunned. Neeps cried out. Thasha held Pazel’s hand, and he remembered what it felt like, when the hand was webbed, when the woman who touched you was not human but this other thing, this cousin-creature, with skin like a dolphin’s or a seal’s.

They were about to go down to the others when Lunja suddenly crashed into their midst, still fastening the buckle on her belt.

‘You!’ she snapped at them. ‘You keep him away from me now! Do you both hear me plainly? My work is done!’

She shoved past them, a hand covering her mouth. Thasha went after her, but Pazel climbed the stairs again to find Neeps standing barefoot in the snow, his trousers pulled on hastily — by Lunja? — and his hands in fists. He was staring vacantly at the floor, and singing under his breath: a weird, wordless tune. Pazel led him to the moonlit window and raised his chin: Neeps’ eyes were solid black.

‘You mucking impossible Gods-damned-’

Pazel broke off, glad that no one was there to see his own eyes stream with tears. Neeps stood insensate, like a deathsmoker, like a stump. But it was all right, all right at last. He was in nuhzat. Pazel embraced him, and smelled the sweat and grime of that endless day. There was no smell of lemons at all.

‘One down,’ said Thasha, gazing out through the gap in the wall, ‘and all those mountains still to go, by the Tree.’

‘Warmer air is coming from the east,’ said Thaulinin. ‘Winter does not yet reign supreme, last night’s cold notwithstanding.’

Pazel stepped up beside them. It was early, most of the others were just beginning to stir. He and Thasha had found Thaulinin here on the highest (remaining) floor of the tower. Warm air might be coming, but it was not here yet. The wind gnawed at any bit of Pazel’s skin it found uncovered. Beads of ice had formed in Thasha’s hair.

Thaulinin passed him a selk telescope, and showed him the slide-whistle manner of its focusing. ‘I saw hrathmogs at sunrise,’ he said. ‘A great host of the creatures, marching along a lesser road there in the south. And dlomic riders along that stretch of river, further yet. Neither of them was bound for the high country, however. And from this vantage I can see the road ahead in some dozen places. Not much of it, to be sure — a bend here, a short stretch there. I had hoped for better: when last I came this way, this tower had five more stories, and one could see all the way to the aqueduct on Mount Urakan, greatest of the Nine Peaks.’

‘How many centuries ago was that?’ asked Thasha.

Thaulinin smiled. ‘Just two. But there has been an earthquake since. We are fortunate: no man or beast appears to be moving on the Nine Peaks Road. The high country is empty, except for foxes and mountain goats. Perhaps Macadra has forgotten its existence altogether, or merely decided the way was too treacherous for anyone to use. If the latter, we must make haste to prove her wrong.’

Soon the party was back on the trail. At first it threaded a path between towering boulders, but Pazel could see bright sun ahead, and his spirits rose. Just before the trail emerged from the rocks Thaulinin called them together.

‘We are stepping up onto the spine of the mountains, and a long stretch of the Royal Highway. This means we shall often be visible from afar. That cannot be helped, but there are measures we should take to aid our chances. Do not shout: echoes travel for miles if the wind is right. Your shields are wrapped in leather, and your scabbards, buckles and the like are all dulled with paint. But your blades will reflect the sun, so think carefully when you draw them.’

‘And the dlomu must remember their eyes, which outshine silver,’ added Valgrif.

Out they stepped onto the Highway. It was a relic, of course: the broad stones cracked and heaving, and ice and scree burying them in many places. Still it was pleasanter walking, for the Highway neither climbed nor descended much, and here at least it hugged no frightening cliffs. The snows had yet to claim this open land. Sinewy bushes and low, storm-blasted trees grew alongside ruined walls and broken colonnades. There were even patches of late wildflowers, yellow and scarlet, lifting their tiny heads among the stones.

Pazel and Thasha walked with Neeps, and Pazel found himself smiling. His friend was his old, cheeky self, teasing Thasha about the way she’d tried to blackmail him on the Chathrand, a lifetime ago it seemed, by promising to accuse him of stealing her necklace.

‘If only I blary had,’ he said. ‘Imagine if you’d never put that cursed thing around your neck again, never let Arunis get that power over you.’

‘Don’t even start with the if’s,’ said Thasha, smiling in turn.

‘If, if, if.’

He was healed, at least for the present. But when he thought Pazel and Thasha were looking elsewhere he shot glances over his shoulder. Pazel knew why: Lunja was behind them, walking with Mandric and Neda. She had not said a word to any of them since dawn.

They rounded the second peak, just a few miles from the first, before the sun was halfway to its zenith. Nor did the third appear too distant. But now the destruction caused by the old earthquake grew more severe. In one place the ground had been forced up nearly twenty feet, road and ruins and all, only to drop again a quarter-mile on. At another they were forced to leave the road and walk for miles around a gigantic fissure that had opened across their path. When at last they returned to the road Hercol looked back over the fissure and shook his head.

‘Two hours to advance a hundred feet,’ he said.

They were nearing the third peak when something odd happened to Pazel. For no reason he could think of he felt briefly, intensely unhappy, as though he had just thought of something dismal that for a time he had managed to forget. He looked down the ridge on his left, miles and miles, to lesser slopes dark with forest. The thought or feeling had something to do with that land.

His listened, and thought he heard a faint rumble echoing through the mountains. The feeling returned, stronger than before. Pazel shielded his eyes, but his eyes caught nothing unusual in the landscape. Then Ramachni appeared at his side.

‘You heard it, did you not?’ asked the mage.

‘I thought I heard something,’ said Pazel. ‘What was it? Thunder?’

‘No,’ said Ramachni, ‘it is the eguar, Sitroth.’

Pazel jumped. ‘How do you know?’

‘The same way you know a brig from a barquentine when you see one on the horizon, Pazel. Because it is your business to know. So it is with mages and magic, except that we feel better than we see. An eguar’s magic is unlike any other sort in Alifros. Sitroth is down among those pines, somewhere, trying to commune with others of its kind. There was a time when all the eguars in this world, North and South, could link minds and share their knowledge. But this linkage was a collective effort, and as the eguars’ numbers dwindled it became much harder. After the massacres Lord Arim spoke of, I would not be surprised if Sitroth is struggling to reach even the nearest of his seventeen remaining kin.’

‘What do you suppose he wants to say?’

‘My lad, how should I know? Perhaps he hopes one of them can offer him refuge, or tell him where best to hide from Macadra. Perhaps he is still venting whatever fury led to his betrayal. Perhaps he is asking advice.’

‘I’ve seen two of them,’ said Pazel, ‘and both of them killed before my eyes. I hope I never see another. But it’s horrible what’s happened to them, all the same. Ramachni, do you know why Sitroth wanted to kill Prince Olik?’

The mage looked over his shoulder at the prince. ‘No,’ he said, ‘but I think His Highness does.’

The second night was even colder than the first, but they faced no tunnelling, and were still dry when they took shelter. This time there was no roof above them, merely rough cold stone, the foundation of some long-ago ruined castle or keep. The travellers pressed tight into the chilly corner. Pazel fell asleep sitting up, back to back with the prince.

For the next two days the road was utterly abandoned. Of the eguar there was no further sign, and only once did they spot the enemy: a plume of dust revealed itself to be some twenty dlomic riders, galloping along a distant track, and vanished almost as soon as seen. They were alone here in these heights, in this wreckage of a perished kingdom.

On the sixth day the character of the road changed again. The Royal Highway turned north to begin its descent to the ruins of Isima, city of the Mountain Kings; but the travellers kept to the Nine Peaks Road, west by southwest, even as the Road dwindled to a narrow, death-defying trail. Gone was the solid spine of the mountains. Everything became jagged and steep, and far more treacherous than the worst moments of the previous days. The path hugged spires that rose like crooked tombstones. It leaped between them on bridges as astonishing to look at as they were terrible to cross: ancient stone bridges, where the wind sighed through top-to-bottom cracks; hunchbacked bridges of impossible workmanship; bridges squeezed into canyons or wedged between eroding cliffs; bridges the Gods might have lowered from the sky. And when had the party climbed to such altitudes? There were clouds drifting eight and nine hundred feet below them, and entire ranges that reached away like fingers into the distance, their highest peaks a mile or more below the travellers’ feet.

The path twisted and meandered so greatly that they scarcely seemed to be advancing. Thaulinin swore that it was by far the quickest way through the mountains, however, and promised that they would be out of the maze by the next afternoon.

As if to spite him, a savage wind chose that moment to blow up from the south. Minutes later a driving sleet began. The treacherous path became quickly, obviously deadly. Stung by the downpour, the party huddled to confer.

Thaulinin had hoped that they would camp that night on Mount Urakan. ‘It cannot be much further — two hours at the most. There are hidden caves on its eastern face, where the selk keep firewood and other stores. Nolcindar’s troop may have passed that way, with Valgrif’s sons, and left us some word. But to reach Urakan one must cross the bridge over the Parsua Gorge, and that is not a thing to be attempted in bad weather. The Gorge is a terrible abyss, and that bridge is wind-plagued at the best of times.’

‘Let us choose quickly, ere we are soaked through again,’ said the prince. ‘Dry clothes are not a luxury here: they are the difference between life and death.’

To this everyone was agreed, and it was swiftly decided that they would retreat to the last structure they had passed, just a few minutes back along the trail. Pazel had taken it for a kind of stone silo, but this did not prove to be the case. Stepping through the doorway, they found the floor several feet below ground level, and when they dropped upon it they found themselves on smooth, solid ice.

‘A cistern,’ said Thaulinin. ‘Of course: there are ruined waterworks all about the summit of Urakan. Well, it must do. At least the roof is sound.’

Bolutu stamped his heel against the ice and laughed. ‘A hard bed’s nicer than no bed at all. Let us go no further today.’

‘That I cannot promise,’ said Thaulinin. ‘Dusk is still hours away. If the sleet relents we should press on, at least to the old customs-house at the foot of the bridge.’

‘What, go on up that mad path today?’ said Big Skip, appalled. ‘We’ll end up at the bottom of a cliff!’

‘If we don’t hurry,’ said Thasha, ‘we’ll end up in Macadra’s hands.’

‘That’s better than dead, Missy.’

‘No, Skip, it is not,’ said Ramachni, ‘but there is still hope of avoiding either fate. In any event we cannot cross the Parsua in sleet or darkness. If we can safely reach the foot of the bridge tonight, we shall. For the moment, rest, and eat some of the bounty of Ularamyth. I believe there are persimmons left.’

To Pazel’s surprise, sleeping on the ice was not unpleasant. It was flat and smooth, and the cold did not penetrate their bedrolls, which were made of the same marvellous wool as their coats. As he nodded off, Pazel gazed at the sleet lancing past the doorway and hoped, selfishly, that it would last until dark.

For better or worse, it did not: an hour before nightfall the sleet ended and the sun peeked out. Cautiously they ventured outside — and Corporal Mandric fell flat on his back.

‘Pitfire! The mucking trail’s a sheet of ice!’

It was no exaggeration: Pazel too had to struggle at every step. ‘We selk can walk this path,’ said Thaulinin, ‘and I dare say Hercol and the sfvantskors could follow me. But for the rest it is too dangerous. I fear we must remain here after all.’

Valgrif padded confidently forward. ‘I was raised on such trails, and can manage them even in the dark,’ he said. ‘Give me leave to scout ahead, Thaulinin, and we shall be that much better prepared for the morning.’

Thaulinin nodded. ‘Go a little distance,’ he said, ‘but do not try your luck in the dark: that I cannot sanction. And I must forbid you to set foot on the bridge, should you go that far.’

Valgrif bowed his head, then turned and looked at Myett. ‘Will you come with me, little sister? Your gaze is even sharper than my own.’ Myett agreed at once, taking her familiar place on Valgrif’s shoulders, and with careful steps the wolf moved down the trail.

For the others there was nothing to do but wait. They had no dry wood to burn, but in the shelter of the cistern’s wall the late sun warmed them a little. Thaulinin told them further stories of the Mountain Kings, and of the terrible overthrow of Isima by ogres from the south. But Ramachni said one should not make too much of the invasion.

‘The city was doomed before the first foe lumbered from the Thrandaal,’ he said. ‘King Urakan’s people starved themselves. They cut the forests that slowed the spring meltwater, and their croplands vanished in floods. They drained the marshes downriver that fed the game birds, and dragged nets across the lakes with such efficiency that not a fish remained to be caught. They were weakened; their unpaid army devolved into gangs; their famished peasants fled westwards before they could be drafted to the city’s defence. The avalanche was coming; the Thrandaal ogres were merely the stone that set it off.’

‘Were you there?’ asked Thasha.

Ramachni shook his head. ‘I saw Isima only in smoking ruin, with Lord Arim at my side. It was the first and last time I ever saw him shed tears. He had tried to warn the city, and when that failed, to defend it. But it was too late: the ogres had already conquered the southern mountains, and were advancing on Urakan. Still Arim worked a mighty spell, at great cost to himself, diverting a blizzard that would have closed the Royal Highway. By his deed the city’s children were evacuated and saved. To this day the descendants of those children inhabit the Ilidron Coves, and bless themselves in Arim’s name.’

Night fell, but Valgrif and Myett did not return. Thaulinin gazed anxiously down the trail. ‘I consented too easily,’ he said. ‘Who knows how treacherous the path becomes when one approaches the Gorge?’

‘Valgrif is a wise beast,’ said one of his men. ‘I watched him train his sons to respect the dangers of the ice. He will come to no harm.’

But when another hour had passed they all felt the same anxiety. Then Thaulinin lit a torch and called his men together. ‘Bring rope, and your spikes and mallets,’ he said. ‘We may find them clinging to some ledge.’

Hercol and Vispek wished to go along, but Thaulinin refused. ‘You are mountain-trained to be sure, but even the best human feet cannot move as swiftly as our own.’

Then Ensyl laughed. ‘Wolf feet are another matter, it seems. Look there!’

She pointed not down the trail, but above them, on the icy ridge over the cistern. Pazel squinted, and at last made out Valgrif cutting a zigzag path towards them downhill. Moments later he slid to a halt at their feet, Myett still clinging to his shoulders. The wolf was exhausted and panting.

‘Enemies!’ he gasped, dropping on his stomach. ‘And the bridge-’

‘The bridge has fallen,’ said Myett. ‘We came to its foot: there are only fragments arching out over that terrible gorge. And Valgrif smelled dlomu on the far side, when the wind gusted towards us.’

‘You didn’t see anyone, then?’ asked Pazel.

Myett looked from face to face. ‘We saw one figure only,’ she said. ‘We saw Dastu.’

‘Dastu! Here!’ cried the others.

‘He was among the trees on the far side of the gorge,’ said Myett. ‘We did not let him see us. He was pacing back and forth.’

‘What in the devil-thick Pits can that rotter be doing here?’ said Neeps.

‘Nothing good,’ said Prince Olik. ‘I remember that one: he followed your spymaster about like a dog, but he also had a cunning of his own.’

‘That he should have come here from where he ran from us strikes me as all but impossible — without help at any rate,’ said Thaulinin. ‘Perhaps Nolcindar found him and took pity. She might be there right now, along with Valgrif’s sons.’

‘I smelled neither selk nor wolves,’ said Valgrif, ‘and the scent of the dlomu came faintly, from the far side of the gorge. We waited, and once there came an echo of a voice — not a dlomic voice — from above us.’

Myett pointed at the ice-slick path. ‘This trail ends at the fallen bridge, but when we heard that echo I climbed the cliff above us, and saw another bridge around a bend in the chasm. It was high above me still, and oddly built, with the far side higher than the near.’

‘The Water Bridge,’ said Thaulinin. ‘So one span at least survived the earthquake. That bridge is part of the King’s Aqueduct, which ran for nearly two hundred miles, carrying snowmelt from the high peaks to the farmlands below. Alas, it was built too late to save them.’ He looked at Ramachni. ‘The Water Bridge is not a pleasant way to cross the Parsua. But cross there we must, unless we would retrace our steps all the way to Isarak.’

‘That we cannot do,’ said Ramachni, ‘but there is another explanation for Dastu’s presence, is there not?’

‘Yes,’ said Neda. ‘Selk not bringing him. Macadra bringing, as the trap.’

‘As a trap,’ corrected Mandric automatically, ‘but I was thinking just the same. Rin’s gizzard, that’s all we need: another young pup helping the enemy.’

‘It does seem the likeliest explanation,’ said Hercol, ‘but if Dastu is helping Macadra, I am sure he does not do so willingly. Dastu is flawlessly loyal: both to his master and his master’s religion, which is Arqual. He is not Greysan Fulbreech.’

‘There is something very strange about him,’ said Valgrif. ‘I cannot explain it even to myself. I wish I had caught his scent.’

‘One thing is certain,’ said Cayer Vispek. ‘His presence at that bridge is no coincidence. He is waiting for someone, and who could that someone be but us?’

Thaulinin squatted down beside Valgrif and put his chin on his hands. ‘We have been fortunate, and I have been rash. We should have sent you out ahead of us each day, Valgrif: the enemy would not know you for a woken animal, let alone the citizen that you are. If Macadra has sent Dastu here, then she has not overlooked the Nine Peaks at all.’

‘And we’ve lost already,’ said Big Skip.

‘No, not yet,’ said the selk, ‘for she has many roads to watch, and on some of them my brethren will have harried her forces and led them astray. If she is trying to watch every road, then she cannot dedicate too many servants to each. And what better place for a small number to guard the high country than at the bridge over the highest gorge of all?’

‘So she sends a team of soldiers here to wait for us, along with Dastu,’ said Pazel, ‘and finds the bridge destroyed. What then?’

‘Then she waits to see if we come blundering up to the Gorge, as I would have led us to do,’ said Thaulinin. ‘A fall of sleet may well have saved us, this day.’

‘They’ll be watching the aqueduct, too,’ said Thasha.

‘Presumably,’ said Hercol. ‘We must approach in stealth.’

They passed a night of great unease, and Hercol roused them all before sunrise. ‘Now more than ever, take care with the metal on your persons, lest it be seen or heard,’ he said. ‘Remember the council at Thehel Bledd: we could doom our quest just by being seen, if one of Macadra’s servants flees the mountains and sounds the alarm.’

The selk had been out already, and chosen their path up the ridge. It was a rough, cold climb under frigid stars; and a very long one, as they struggled up one sharp rise after another, winding among sheer falls of rock. Pazel thought of Bolutu, struggling with the weight of the Nilstone on his back. He had asked no one else to carry it since Ularamyth.

After nearly three hours they broke suddenly onto a jagged ridgetop. It was not the very summit of the ridge but rather a broad, irregular shoulder that curved away towards the chasm, studded with boulders and small shrubs and rounded, ice-glazed drifts of snow. By now the sun was beginning to glow behind the eastern mountains. Thaulinin made them all crouch low. ‘I can hear the wind in the canyon,’ he hissed. ‘We are very close.’

Like a band of thieves they crept across that flattened ridge. Pazel could see what looked like a gap ahead, and soon he too heard the change in the wind, as though it were moaning through a narrowly cracked door. Pazel tried to keep his teeth from chattering. He could hear his every footfall on the icy ground.

The wind rose, and so did the light. And suddenly before them lay the aqueduct. It was an astonishing relic: a stone chute some twelve feet wide and half as deep, built right into the ancient rock. The chute was pitched gradually downhill, and when he looked to his right Pazel saw that where the ridge fell away the chute emerged from the ground and was held aloft by columns, so that the angle of descent never changed. Straight as an arrow it raced away across the mountainside, until at last, very far away to the east, it made a sharp turn and set off northwards.

Pazel was awed. Two hundred miles. How many years, how many decades, did the Mountain Kings’ people give to the building of the waterway? Even now there was a little ice-fringed water flowing along the bottom of the chute.

Thaulinin beckoned them all to drop back, and then led them west, parallel to the aqueduct but on lower ground. It was a sheltered area, crowded with boulders and small, dense firs. After a few minutes they found themselves on a narrow trail.

Hercol flung out his arm, stopping the party in its tracks. The aqueduct loomed before them, suspended on its stone arches. But that was not what concerned Hercol. There was a clearing before the structure where no trees grew, and beside the clearing was an abyss. It was the chasm, of course: perhaps two hundred feet wide, and far too deep for them to dream of seeing the bottom from where they stood. The aqueduct leaped over the chasm in a single span, with no arch to support it, and as it crossed it rose much more steeply than elsewhere along its length, joining the opposite cliff some fifty feet higher than it began. The Water Bridge. Clearly ancient, it might once have been beautifully carved. Now the knobby protrusions along its sides were blurred and indistinct: dragons or leopards, serpents or vines. At its foot, across the chasm, rose a crumbling tower. On the tower’s battlements sat a large, black bird.

Right at its centre the bridge was mortally cracked. The fissure stretched halfway across the water chute, and where it began whole stones had fallen away, leaving a gap some eight feet wide. Above the crack the chute was filled with rushing water to a depth of several feet, but nearly all the water passed out through it, gushing straight down into the gorge and fringed by immense beards of ice.

Thaulinin was correct: the structure was built for water, not people. But beneath the water chute there did, in fact, run a kind of footbridge, accessed by a staircase leading down from the edge of the cliff. Pazel felt ill at the very sight of that footbridge. It was about two feet wide and suspended between V-shaped struts that descended from the underside of the water chute. No rails ran between the struts. The water gushing through the crack poured right over the footbridge, and from that point all the way back to the travellers’ side of the chasm the narrow platform lay sheathed in ice.

Sudden movement along the opposite cliff. Pazel jumped: it was Dastu. The older youth had been sitting on a rock, so still that Pazel’s gaze had swept right past him. Now he walked slowly, idly along the edge of the chasm. Then he shot a glance at the bird.

The party fell back. The faces of the others were ashen. ‘Two watchers, Thaulinin,’ said one of the selk. ‘The eagle cocked its head at the human youth, just as the youth looked up at the eagle. They are in league.’

‘And surely not alone,’ said Valgrif. ‘What is the matter with that boy? I tell you I do not like how he behaves.’

‘You don’t know the half of it,’ said Neeps. ‘So that was an eagle? I’ve never heard of black ones.’

‘They have long been my family’s playthings,’ said Prince Olik. ‘They are hunters, bred for strength and endurance — and keenness of eye.’

‘Ramachni,’ said Pazel. ‘What if that mucking bird’s woken? What if it sees us and flies right to Macadra?’

‘Then your quest fails, and your world soon after,’ said Ramachni. He looked at Hercol and seemed about to say more, but something in the swordsman’s gaze made him save his breath. Hercol understood, and Pazel felt he did too. The bridge was held against them. Possibly by unseen enemies. At the very least by one that could flee and sound the alarm.

Realizing that they had to get out of sight at once, the party retreated to the nearest cistern, which was also filled with ice. The roof was partly collapsed, and to keep out of sight from the air they had to huddle in the shadows by the opposite wall.

‘Now,’ said Ensyl, ‘you must let the ixchel earn their keep. Valgrif might pass for a common wolf at other moments, but any creature seen approaching that chasm is sure to raise suspicions. Myett and I will not be seen, however. Let us go and watch the bridge awhile, and see what else we may discover.’

‘My lady,’ said Prince Olik, ‘those eagles spot creatures your size from a thousand feet.’

‘But not ixchel,’ said Myett. ‘We have been hiding from birds of prey as long as we have from humans, if not longer. Besides, the deadliest foe is the one whose face you never see. If that eagle takes to the air we will bury ourselves beneath the pine needles, or the snow. I was unforgivably careless when I let the eagle from Ularamyth catch me in its talons. That will not happen again.’

Hercol sighed. ‘We cannot go back, and we dare not go on before we learn just what we are up against. I do not like it, my ladies, but I think we must accept your offer. Go then, and take twice the care as ever you did in the streets of Etherhorde.’

‘Note everything you see, however trivial it appears,’ said Ramachni. ‘Above all, heed the fine instincts of your people. If they tell you to flee, do so at once, even if you think yourselves perfectly hidden. Some means of detection require neither eyes nor ears.’

‘We have no wish to die,’ said Ensyl. Then she looked at Myett and winced, as though regretting her choice of words. But Myett just smiled grimly. ‘No,’ she said, ‘not even I wish for death any longer. Let us go.’

They took a long look at the sky, and then darted back along the trail towards the chasm, moving like a pair of swift white spiders from one snowbank to the next.

This time Pazel found the waiting almost unbearable. He could not even pace: the ice was too slippery, and the cistern too small. An hour passed, possibly longer. Neda looked at him and tried to smile. Thasha’s eyes were distant, in that worrying way he knew.

Then suddenly Ensyl and Myett burst back into the cistern, and the news spilled out. ‘Hrathmogs!’ said Ensyl. ‘At least six of the creatures, maybe more. And three dlomic warriors with the Bali Adro sun and leopard upon their shields.’

‘Their leader is one of the dlomu,’ said Myett. ‘He wears a fell knife at his waist. It is a Plazic blade, like the one Vadu used against us on the Black Tongue. The dlomu and the hrathmogs came out of the rocks and spoke together, then slipped back out of sight.’

‘So it is an ambush,’ said Big Skip.

‘And a Plazic warrior in command,’ said Thaulinin grimly. ‘I should have known Macadra would send one of them. They are dying very quickly, and she no longer trusts them with command of her armies. Some have turned on her — on the Ravens, and even your family, Prince Olik — but the lesser blade-keepers she still controls, and uses for special tasks.’

‘Such as searching for Ularamyth,’ said one of his men.

Thaulinin nodded. ‘We must beware of that man. If he has come this far, then the blade has not yet crippled him. He may still be able to draw on its power.’

‘There are dogs with them,’ said Myett. ‘Great red animals that slavered and growled. Their jaws looked as powerful as those of horses, but full of canine teeth.’

‘Worse and worse,’ said Prince Olik. ‘Those are athymar eight-fangs, the same creatures that chased me west of Masalym.’

‘They are abominations,’ said Valgrif, his lip curling back with rage. ‘They were bred for killing and rending, and have no minds for anything but death.’

‘Is there more to tell?’ asked Lunja.

‘Yes,’ said Ensyl. ‘We think there is something inside the tower. The door faces away from the cliffs, so we could not see inside. But they all glance at it oddly, and approach the door with caution. And the black eagle is woken, or the cleverest bird I ever saw. It sat upon the battlements listening to their speech, as though it understood every word.’

‘And the boy?’ asked Ramachni.

‘Dastu is one of them — or that at least is what anyone would think, to see how they look at one another. He does not cringe before them, or show any special deference, although he keeps his distance from the dlomu with the Plazic knife. He is still there, and so is the eagle.’

Now the debate began in earnest. No one suggested turning back: that would be to abandon the Chathrand for ever, along with any hope of crossing the Ruling Sea. But how to go forward? Pazel thought of how they had charged Arunis in the Infernal Forest, armed mostly with sticks. That had been terrifying but comprehensible: the mage had been their only foe, and they had simply crossed the ground to him at a run. Now they were facing many foes — and the worst of them might be the bridge itself.

‘We have to fell that bird, right?’ said Mandric. ‘So why not start with a good spray of arrows?’

‘We would be hazarding the whole of the quest on those shafts,’ said Prince Olik. ‘and I do not like the odds, my good man. We would be shooting a great distance, at a small, swift target, and worst of all, through the blasting winds over that chasm. Still, I do not see a better choice.’

‘What of your powers, mage?’ said Cayer Vispek, his tone almost accusing. ‘You could kill the bird with a single charm, could you not?’

‘I might,’ said Ramachni, ‘and indeed I will try, if there is no other choice. But to kill with a word is no small spell, Cayer, and you might wish that I had saved my strength for other uses, if that Plazic warlord draws his knife. And remember that we may not have seen all our foes.’

‘We could wait for nightfall,’ said Neeps.

‘Hear the fool,’ said Lunja. ‘If we try to cross that bridge in darkness we will die.’

‘I fear the sergeant is right, Neeps,’ said Hercol, ‘and we can ill afford to lose even one more day.’

‘What about Nolcindar and her company?’ asked Thasha.

‘It was never certain that they would come this way,’ said Valgrif, ‘and with hrathmogs on the mountain it is less likely still. But if she has come and gone she would leave a tiny mark upon the bridge itself — upon both bridges, probably.’

‘What if them dogs are woken too?’ said Big Skip.

‘What if the mucking bridge falls?’ snapped Mandric. ‘Think too much and you’ll soil your leggings. Get your blood up for butchery, and stop hoping someone else will do it for you. That’s my strategic advice.’

‘They will do it for us, if we are careless,’ said Thaulinin.

The bickering went on. Pazel could taste his fear mounting with every word. Not now, he thought furiously. Be afraid when it’s over. He touched the pommel of his selk sword; and in his pocket, the reassuring weight of Fiffengurt’s blackjack. He glanced at Neeps and Thasha: he could read them like the pages of a cherished book. Neeps was looking fierce and defiant. And while Thasha’s eyes brightened a little at his look, she was really gazing inwards, searching for the power that could save them, at whatever the cost to herself. Searching for a gap in the wall.

And not finding it. Pazel could see that too, by the deep frown of guilt that was gathering in her lips, her eyebrows. She’s taking it all on her shoulders, he thought. She’s wondering who’s going to die because of that wall.

He reached for her hand, but she pulled it quickly away. ‘Ramachni,’ she said, ‘what did it cost you to fight the eguar? Are you empty inside, the way you were in Simja?’

The mage stepped close to her. ‘No, not like that,’ he said. ‘Lord Arim shouldered most of the burden of the lightning strike. I have been stronger, but I am still quite strong.’

‘You said once that the quest had no hope without Erithusme,’ said Thasha. ‘Was it because you foresaw a moment like this?’

Ramachni’s dark eyes looked at her with compassion. ‘This moment was foreseen by no one, my champion. Not by us, nor by those across the bridge, nor by the sorceress who set them in our path. How it will end is not predestined. We must remember that, and seek the ending without fear.’

An hour later the party launched its assault.

Once more the ixchel led the way. It was their awful task to cross the bridge unseen and slay the eagle — silently if they could, but in the end by any means whatsoever. The two women had decided against the footbridge beneath the water chute: neither had much confidence that they could pass through the falling torrent at the bridge’s centre and not be swept away. They had also seen the dlomic soldiers descending the staircase beneath the aqueduct to have a look at the footbridge.

That left only the main bridge to consider. There was a foot-wide rim on either side of the watercourse, and the sun had kept both free of ice. But for a stealth attack, the upper surface of the bridge was out of the question, for it was in plain view of both Dastu and the eagle. At last the ixchel had chosen a more harrowing course: along the side of the bridge, clinging vertically to those ancient carvings. Dastu was keeping largely to the near side of the aqueduct, and the eagle’s perch on the tower gave it a view of the clearing and the open top of the watercourse, but not the side. Unless one of them (or some other enemy) moved to the northern edge of the clearing, Ensyl and Myett would be hidden. They would also, of course, be exposed to that monstrous wind, with nothing to hold on to save the faint, time-smoothed shapes of animals and men. And what if they encountered ice?

‘Do not let the wind take you, little sisters,’ said Valgrif as the two women set out.

Ensyl and Myett looked back at the party. ‘Human beings named us crawlies,’ Ensyl said. ‘Judge us today by our crawling.’

‘If you can feel these eyes upon you,’ said Hercol, ‘then you will know that they watch not with judgement but with love.’

The two women gazed at him in silence a moment. Then they crawled forward on their stomachs, with infinite care, until they could just see the eagle on its perch.

The rest of the party crouched among the boulders, watching with the deepest anxiety. Pazel could still see Dastu meandering back and forth. What was he doing with them? How had he been treated? The telescope revealed no obvious wounds or signs of torture. Despite what Hercol had said about his loyalty to Arqual, Pazel found himself wondering if Dastu might not have quickly agreed to help Macadra any way he could.

‘Now,’ whispered Ensyl.

The two ixchel sprinted for the pines, and froze as one behind a trunk. Pazel held his breath: the eagle did not move. It had seen nothing, and the ixchel were now halfway to the cliff.

Bows at the ready, Hercol and three selk warriors crept into position behind the boulder nearest the pines. They had no clear shot of the bird from here, but could at least rush forward and fire from the chasm’s edge. If Myett and Ensyl failed, their shots would give the quest another chance.

The ixchel sprinted again. This time they made for a rock in the centre of the clearing. It was utterly exposed, and barely large enough to hide them both: they came to rest on hands and knees, with Myett folded over Ensyl’s body and their heads curled down. Once more they stayed hidden, this time by a finger’s width. Another pause, then they ran for the third and final time, and reached the shelter of the stairwell. Ensyl looked back and gave a wry salute. Then they slipped under the aqueduct, making for the blind side of the bridge.

Aya Rin, thought Pazel, let them do that well above the gorge.

Now all eyes turned to Ramachni. They could see him by looking under the aqueduct; he was at the opposite side of the clearing, lying flat behind a fallen pine. It had taken him a long time to squirm down the ridge to that position, but it had a singular advantage: from there he could see both the party and the ixchel as they climbed. For the others, Ensyl and Myett would be invisible until the moment they attacked.

They would need at least thirty minutes for the crossing, Ensyl had said. Pazel wiggled his toes. He thought, The waiting will be the worst part. Then he thought how unlikely that was to be true.

Looking at those crouched beside him, Thaulinin tapped his vest pocket meaningfully. The fire beetles. On Isarak he had warned them that biting into the creatures might prove more dangerous than the cold itself. But digging through a snow drift was one thing, and wading uphill against a three-foot-deep flood of meltwater quite another.

Pazel’s knees were growing stiff. On the far side of the chasm the eagle stretched its wings. Dastu climbed the stairs to the top of the watercourse and sat upon the rim.

Pazel looked back over his shoulder. Neda and Cayer Vispek were mouthing silent words to each other, sketching movements on their palms. Vispek’s eyes were fierce and hard. In recent days he had barely spoken to Neda, and Pazel knew that her master’s coldness had wounded her. But they had trained together, and Vispek had insisted that they would fight side by side.

The others looked about as bad as Pazel felt. Big Skip caught his eye, smiled with some effort, made the sign of the Tree. Lunja glanced savagely at Neeps and motioned for him to button his coat.

Then at last Ramachni raised his head. Everyone grew still. Through the pine limbs Pazel could just see the tower battlements where the eagle perched. Ramachni lifted one paw from the ground: Steady, steady-

The eagle shot into the air.

Instantly everyone was in motion. Ramachni bolted for the bridge. Hercol and the selk archers erupted from behind their boulder and flew towards the cliff. Behind them, the rest of the party sprinted forward as well.

The eagle, veering erratically, was already soaring away from the bridge. The archers let fly, but the surging wind over the chasm blew their arrows wildly off-target. Dastu turned to them, waving and shouting: ‘You’re here! Don’t shoot! Ramachni, let me explain! Don’t shoot that bird!’

Ramachni had bounded onto the lip of the water chute and was charging up the bridge’s steep incline. He ignored Dastu’s shouts.

Pazel surged up the stairs, gasping at the force of the wind. For an instant he gazed down into the gorge — hideously deep, the bottom so far away it was like gazing at another world — and then jumped into the chute beside Prince Olik, and felt the icy water close about his feet. The archers fired again and again, but the shot was hopeless now: the eagle still flew erratically, but it was disappearing fast.

‘You fools!’ cried Dastu. ‘Thank the Gods you missed! That bird’s on our side!’

‘Whose side is that, boy?’ shouted Cayer Vispek.

‘Yours and mine! Come across and I’ll tell you everything! What’s happened to you? Did the selk let you keep the Nilstone?’

The question swept the last doubt from Pazel’s mind. Dastu had betrayed them a second time — was betraying them even now.

‘Tell me something, mate,’ he shouted on an impulse, ‘are you doing this for Arqual?’

Dastu’s response caught Pazel quite off guard. He did not sneer or shake his head or frown with anger. He simply looked at Pazel with no comprehension whatsoever.

Now Pazel was mystified. Had Dastu been so changed and tormented that he had forgotten even his beloved Empire?’

Then Thasha cried out and pointed west. Pazel looked up and saw the eagle fall like a stone from the sky.

The ixchel! Pazel thought. One of them was on its back all along!

One of them had just fallen with that corpse.

Dastu had also turned at Thasha’s shout. When the bird fell he reached for it, clawing at the air. Then he screeched. It was the ugliest sounds Pazel ever heard from human lips.

From the trees on the far side of the chasm, figures erupted: hrathmogs, dlomu, athymars. All of them raced towards the bridge. More hrathmogs burst onto the roof of the tower, bows in hand.

Ramachni was far ahead of the others; he had already passed the great crack at the centre of the bridge. The hrathmogs targeted him first, and Hercol bellowed at the mage to take cover. But as the archers drew, Ramachni fixed them all with a stare, and suddenly three of the creatures turned and fired on their comrades. Those who were not slain leaped on those who had attacked them, and the tower descended into chaos.

The diversion gave the attackers the chance they needed. They gathered into a tight column, huddling beneath the shields of the fighting men, and charged. Ramachni, meanwhile, leaped onto the bridge’s stone foot, and then onto the snow. He was making for Dastu, and the youth was retreating, shrieking and gesturing for aid. The hrathmogs with their great axes were too slow to strike at him, but the dogs came on like furies. When their fangs were inches from him the tiny mage whirled and made a sweeping motion with one paw. The dogs were tossed backwards away from him like so many dice. Ramachni turned to Dastu. The youth was at the edge of the chasm, still screeching like a lunatic.

Suddenly he turned to face the cliff.

Credek, no!

He leaped. The wind cupped him and spun him as he fell and thrashed his body against the cliff. Pazel watched, sickened, torn. Rotter! Quitter! Piss-ignorant fool! You didn’t have to do that, you-

‘Oh Gods,’ said Thasha, ‘he’s changing.’

It happened so quickly Pazel almost doubted what he saw. Dastu’s body blurred, then grew suddenly enormous, and solidified once more. Below them now was a nightmare beast: humanoid body, long snake-like neck, leathery wings, whiplash tail. It was the maukslar: foulest servant of Macadra, the very demon that had hunted them in the forest. Its wings filled. As the party turned the creature rose before them, yellow runes burning on its forehead, and then that snake’s head struck with blinding speed, and Big Skip’s arm was in its jaws.

Skip howled. Pazel saw his face for an instant, transformed by pain and the imminence of death, and then the maukslar’s neck jerked back, and Skip was wrenched from his feet and hurled into the abyss.

Gone. Even his scream swallowed instantly by the wind. Pazel thought he would go mad with the horror of it. But he did not go mad, and he did not freeze, and neither did anyone else. They flew at the demon, and Hercol was out ahead of them all, swinging Ildraquin in a killing arc. But the maukslar was too quick: just in time it flung its head back, and the sword only grazed its jaw. Then the creature dropped beneath the bridge. The party turned at bay: it was directly under them, screaming. One clawed hand rose above the rim on the bridge’s north side — and while their eyes were turned that way, its tail whipped up from the south, caught a selk guard by the neck, and hurled him after Skip into the gorge. Pazel whirled. His will was strong and his sword raised, but there was nothing to strike at, nothing he could reach. Then a hideous cry, and the maukslar rose, wings beating hard, neck retracted like a cobra preparing to strike.

But it did not strike. As Pazel watched, the demon began to tremble, then to writhe with great violence, beating itself against the bridge. The party fell back, for the very bridge was shuddering. It was worse than any seizure — worse than what the creature’s own body should be capable of, Pazel thought.

He cast his eyes about for an explanation — and found it. Ramachni had come back to them. His fur stood on end, and he was shaking, shaking in wild fury, snapping his tiny head back and forth as minks do when they mean to kill the pray in their teeth. The demon was twenty times Ramachni’s size, but was caught in his spell all the same, and Ramachni meant to shake it to death.

The maukslar screamed and flailed. It clawed at the bridge, ripping stones away. It tried to fold its wings before they were crushed but could not turn its body to do so. The others lunged and stabbed, and Neda’s sword pierced its side. Even as she did so, however, the beast knocked another stone free with a swing of its arm. The stone ricocheted off the wall of the chute, narrowly missed Neda’s head, and struck Ramachni on the flank.

The mage was briefly stunned — and in that instant the maukslar was free. With a croak of pain it released the bridge and fell into the chasm.

‘Arpathwin, it can still fly!’ cried Thaulinin, gazing over the rim. ‘It is departing! It is going to Macadra!’

Ramachni stood and shook his fur. ‘That disguise,’ he said. ‘I should have guessed. Once upon a time I would have guessed. And now there is only one way to proceed.’

He leaped deftly onto the rim once more. Then he looked back at them, a tiny creature buffeted by the wind. ‘You know what you must do,’ he shouted. ‘Fight on, stop for nothing. Find and kill them all.’

‘Ramachni?’ said Thasha.

‘I hoped never again to leave your side,’ he said, and jumped.

Thasha screamed. Pazel grabbed at her, irrationally fearful that she would try to follow the mage. ‘Where is he, where did he go?’ shouted Neeps, leaning over the rim.

Pazel heaved himself up and looked into the abyss. He could not see Ramachni, but he could see the maukslar: the demon was soaring away, following the contours of the Parsua like a great bird. Then came the ghastly thought: Ramachni’s magic had failed, the demon had blocked it somehow; he had stepped off the bridge and fallen straight down to his death.

Then Thasha pointed.

Far below the bridge, yet still hundreds of feet above the maukslar, soared an owl. It was no creature of the mountaintops; it looked very small and out of place. Yet its wings churned the thin air powerfully, and when the demon turned, so did the owl.

‘That’s him,’ shouted Neeps. ‘He took that same shape exactly in the forest. But what will he do if he catches that thing?’

No time for further talk. The enemy had regrouped, and five or six hrathmog archers were firing from the tower. The three dlomu, including their fell-looking commander with his Plazic knife, waited by the foot of the bridge, with the athymars circling and baying at their heels.

‘Assemble, assemble!’ Thaulinin was shouting. ‘Shield-bearers, forward!’

Clenching his teeth, Pazel stepped back into the frigid water. The column reformed; they scrambled on and up. It was hard to climb in a crouch, and harder still when one’s feet were numb with cold. The floor of the water-chute was very slick. But between the shields and the walls of the chute the hrathmog archers could find nowhere to sink a shaft. Beside Pazel, Bolutu’s eyes were streaming. He and Big Skip had become fast friends.

Finally they reached the great crack. There were hisses and oaths, for it was even wider than they had imagined, and the gushing torrent made it difficult to tell just where the edges lay. Still lofting the shields they tried to squeeze past it, two by two, feeling out the stones with their feet. Pazel’s head was reeling: a few inches to his left there was nothing: air, spray, sucking wind. He felt a stone shift under his foot.

Think of walking, nothing else. Others had done it, somehow. He stilled his heart, and inched forward, and he was through.

But things only grew worse. Above the crack they were right in the flood, wading uphill against a ripping current that splashed to their thighs. Pazel wanted to scream: the cold was agonizing, like long-nailed fingers stripping the flesh from his bones.

Now, he thought. Wait any longer and you’ll fall down dead.

With clumsy fingers he tugged the beetle from his vest pocket and put the frozen, scaly thing into his mouth. But he could not bite; his teeth were chattering like some strange machine. At last he used his hands to force his jaws together, until the beetle’s shell cracked like a nut.

Oh Gods.

The heat passed through him in a scalding wave. His mouth was a furnace; his head was on fire, and even his vision changed, as though he were seeing the world through pale red wine. He half expected to see steam rising from his body.

Remembering Arim’s warning, he spat the beetle out, along with a fair amount of blood: the insect had literally burned his tongue. Other beetles floated past him: he was not the only one who had decided the time had come. But what of Valgrif and Shilu? The wolf was almost swimming, and Lunja was even now struggling to tie a harness around the neck and shoulders of the dog. They should have waited on the cliff, thought Pazel. They’ll die if this takes too long.

Hercol stood up suddenly from beneath his shield. He fired the selk bow twice in rapid succession, and two archers fell. How many did that leave? Hrathmogs were still firing from atop the tower, several more from the foot of the bridge. A selk cried out: he had raised his bow as Hercol had done, but this time one of the hrathmogs sank a shaft deep in his side. Thaulinin lifted the wounded man, trying to guard them both with his shield. Hercol fired again, and another hrathmog fell.

The dlomic commander turned and ran for the tower. Pazel was close enough now to see that a massive archway opened in its wall on the northern side. The commander stopped at the threshold and shouted into the tower, pointing imperiously at the bridge as he did so.

There was a rumbling sound, and the archers on the towers swayed, as though the building had just rocked beneath their feet. Those still firing from the bridge turned and fled. Only the ravenous dogs held their ground.

Through the tower arch something huge and pale was crawling. At first Pazel could only see its face: an old woman’s face, bloated, pockmarked, with protruding eyes and a mouth full of black and rotting teeth. An iron crown, spiked and bloody, sat upon her head, and from beneath it yards of grey, matted hair hung like sheets of bog-moss. Then the creature rose to its feet.

‘Miyanthur, save us!’ shouted the selk. ‘That is a Thrandaal brood-mother, an ogress of the race that conquered the Mountain Kings!’

She towered over them, dressed in rotting leather from which a few shells, bones, glass beads and other trinkets still dangled. A sack tied to her waist leaked a soot-like powder that stained the snow. A mighty chain dragged from a manacle at her wrist.

The creature’s first act was to pounce on one of the fleeing hrathmogs. It tore the beast’s armour away, then stuffed the hrathmog head first into its mouth. The hrathmog’s legs still protruded, still kicked; then the ogress bit down and the kicking ceased.

‘Fear no devils!’ bellowed Cayer Vispek. ‘Forward, while yet we may!’

They tried to climb faster, but the current was too fierce, the ascent too steep. The ogress was chewing thoughtfully, an old grandmother with a mouthful. It was slow to notice the Plazic commander, who was howling with fury: ‘Not them! The bridge! Kill the creatures on the bridge!’

The ogress trained a lazy eye in the party’s direction. It spat a bone at the commander, and began to turn away. The dlomu leaped into its path.

‘By the curse I carry, animal, you will obey!’

The commander gripped the handle of his Plazic knife. The ogress hesitated, suddenly wary. Then with a gesture of agony (like one ripping stitches from a wound) the commander jerked his arm upwards. In his hand shone a ghost-knife, the pale image of a blade that had once been long and cruel, but was now corroded down to a few blunt inches of bone. The commander himself gazed at it with hatred. But with that stump of a blade he struck fear into the monster: it recoiled, shielding its eyes from the weapon. Then it groaned and rushed the bridge.

The party had sixty feet to go when the ogress climbed atop the aqueduct. It stared at them with dull hate, then it raised its manacled arm and swung the chain over its head. The chain came down with thunder, and the last iron link struck the wounded selk leaning on Thaulinin’s arm. Thaulinin himself was not touched, but the man was torn from him, and Pazel watched with horror as the flood bore the lifeless body away. The ogress hauled in the chain for a second swing.

‘Back, back!’ cried Hercol. ‘That chain will be the end of us!’

But backing up was not something they had tried; it was hard enough to keep one’s feet when climbing forward. Warning shouts; then the chain struck again. There was a great splash: this time everyone had managed to dive to one side or the other. But in so doing many had lost their feet. They clawed at the stone, the ice, each other: anything to stop themselves from sliding headlong into the crack. Pazel, luckier than most, managed to lock an arm over the bridge’s rim. Prince Olik, nearly submerged, reached out wildly and caught his other hand. With a single furious tug Pazel hauled him from the water, and then saw with amazement that he had somehow found the strength to lift Thasha too: the prince had hold of her belt.

As he struggled to gain his feet again Pazel looked back along the bridge.

Neda!

His sister was whirling down the chute. She was limp, barely conscious; he thought she must have fallen and struck her head. So fast. Pazel had barely time to scream, to feel a part of him dying, to wish for death for the first time in his life. One moment his sister was there in the sunlit water; the next her body folded down through the crack and was gone.

He howled, the world blurring with tears. He let go of the bridge and tried to follow her, and Olik and Thasha had to fight him with all their strength. Then came the next ghastly shock, as a second body reached the crack and was sucked away to oblivion: Cayer Vispek. But the elder sfvantskor had not gone helplessly. He had been wide awake. He had aimed his body for the hole.

Crash. The chain fell again, splitting stone, but for the moment the party had slid beyond its reach. The ogress screamed at them from the edge of the watercourse; clearly she had no wish to climb out over the abyss itself. Plunging a hand into the sack at her waist, she drew out a fistful of black powder. Thaulinin bellowed a warning, but it was too late: the ogress blew the powder from her hand, and as she did so it burst into flames.

A plume of orange fire billowed towards them. Above the rim of the chute it was soon dispersed by the wind, but just over the water’s surface it slithered on until it broke against the warriors’ shields. Pazel saw their faces: some of them were burned. Already the ogress was raising another fistful to her lips.

Hercol’s bow sang again. The ogress gave a murderous scream, dropping the powder and clawing at her face. The shaft was buried in her eye.

The monster’s scream went on and on. She tore the shaft away, along with much of her eyeball. She whirled and swung the chain blindly, and the remaining archers were swept from the tower. When she managed to strike the bridge again the chain passed inches from Thaulinin’s face.

Then the selk leader did an amazing thing: he dived upon the chain. The ogress had fallen to her knees, one hand over her bloody eye socket. With each jerk of her arm Thaulinin was pulled further up the chute.

The dlomic commander saw what was happening and cried out. Two athymars burst onto the bridge and were crushed when the ogress rolled on them in her agony. As she struggled to hands and knees Thaulinin released the chain and drew his selk sword. Then he reeled. A hrathmog arrow had pierced his leg below the knee.

The ogress saw Thaulinin then, and fumbled for him. But Thaulinin was not bested yet: he leaped sidelong into her blind spot, then reached up and caught a handful of her matted hair. The ogress whirled around, swinging him through the air, and Thaulinin drew his blade in a precise, slashing motion across her jugular.

Blood exploded from the creature’s neck. Thaulinin was tossed high and landed in the clearing. The ogress fell forward into the chute, and for a few seconds they all felt the warmth as the torrent around them turned crimson. Then the flow stopped altogether. The body of the ogress was blocking the chute, and the water was spilling over the sides.

Like some crazed band of cannibals, blood-splattered from feet to faces, the survivors charged. Pazel heard the savagery in his own voice and did not recognize himself. He was changed; he had lost his sister. He climbed the body of the still-quivering ogress and plunged his sword into her stomach. Only killing could blot out the death inside him. He leaped down into the clearing, howling for more.

It came. The hrathmogs were returning, now that the ogress was slain. The party outnumbered them, but the creatures were tall and ox-strong, and they were better with both axes and teeth than they had been with their bows. Still Pazel felt no fear. And as he attacked he felt the rage and grief diminish also. There was no room for them; in his mind there could only be deeds. He danced through axes, judging, voracious, calm, and then he feinted left and whirled about to the right beneath an axe-blow and cut a hrathmog’s throat to the bone.

He did not kill again that day, although he helped Corporal Mandric do so, distracting one of the creatures with his charge long enough for the Turach to drive his blade through the creature’s back. Pazel was not tired, he was not cold. Through his mind all the practice and the forms and the earlier battles of the voyage danced like lightning, and he followed without a conscious thought. Hercol had said it: In the battle you make choices; when it is over you find out what they were.

A time came at last when there were no more hrathmogs to kill. Pazel turned in a circle. A selk was hacking the last of the creatures to the ground. One dlomic soldier lay twitching feebly. Another selk had died upon a heap of snow, an axe still buried in his chest.

Then Pazel saw Thaulinin.

The selk leader was near the edge of the clearing, the two remaining athymars had him in their teeth. One dog had sunk its fangs into his thigh, the other his opposite forearm. Behind them, the dlomic commander stood with his back to a tree and his ghost-knife pointing skyward. Thaulinin was awake but not resisting. Within two yards of him, Valgrif lay still.

Lunja was racing to Thaulinin’s aid, and Hercol was not far behind. Pazel sprinted after them, but even as he ran he saw Lunja fall forward, helpless and stunned. Hercol tried to stop as well, but it was too late: he dropped beside Lunja and lay still.

Pazel skidded to a halt. All three warriors had rushed into a trap, a spell-field created by the Plazic blade. Valgrif was another victim: Pazel saw now that the wolf was awake.

‘Disarm!’ screamed the commander. ‘Throw your weapons into the gorge, or I will kill him here and now!’

‘You muckin’ bastard!’ cried Mandric. ‘We’ll chuck you over that cliff, one little piece at a time.’

The dlomu shouted a word of command. At once the dogs released Thaulinin’s limbs and pounced on his unguarded face and throat. Pazel closed his eyes — too late; he had seen it and could not unsee. He turned away and vomited. Thaulinin was dead.

When he looked again the dogs were standing over Lunja. The dlomic commander pointed at the gorge. ‘Every last weapon!’ he shouted. ‘Or do you wish her to die next?’

There were no taunts this time. Thasha had thrown her arms around Neeps, who was staring at Lunja like a man deranged. Everyone was still. Pazel heard the distant cry of some mountain bird. He noted with a stab of disappointment that Prince Olik had fled somewhere; indeed he realised now that the monarch had skipped the fight altogether.

The dlomic leader, calmer suddenly, turned them a ghastly smile.

‘I will not be counting to three,’ he said.

Deep inside, Pazel felt his decision: the decision he would understand only when it was over; when everyone who was going to die had died. He walked to the cliff and threw his sword into the depths. Then he went to Bolutu and took his sword, and asked for his backpack as well.

Bolutu shed his pack, dumbfounded. Pazel tried to lift it from the ground, and failed. The pack was suddenly unnaturally heavy. Since the fight with the hrathmogs began Pazel had thought his strength inexhaustible, but it was deserting him quickly.

Not yet, he told himself. But he had to settle for dragging the backpack to the cliff.

When he was as close as he dared, he tossed Bolutu’s sword over the edge. The commander watched him, increasingly confused. ‘Why is the boy the only one who obeys? You wish the dogs to kill her? Very well, watch them, if you have the stomach for it.’

With great difficulty Pazel lifted the pack from the ground. ‘All the weapons, Commander?’ he said.

‘All of them! Is your whole company deaf?’

Pazel heaved the pack over the cliff.

‘What did you have in there, boy? Stones?’

Pazel gazed at him, winded. ‘Just one,’ he said.

The commander froze. A look of terror came over his face. He sprinted for the bridge and dashed up the stairs, bounding onto the corpse of the ogress. Looking down into the chasm, he lowered his knife and shouted: ‘Valixra!’

The magic was evidentally something unpractised, for he tried again and again, stabbing at the abyss and screaming ‘Valixra! Eidic! Rise, rise!’

At last he held still, and it appeared to Pazel that a painful energy was coursing through him. Pazel sighed and turned his back, staggering away from the cliff. He was feeling every wound now. At least every wound to the body.

The commander was shaking. His free hand made a grasping motion at the air. Then his eyes lit with triumph. Seconds later Bolutu’s pack shot past the clearing and high into the air. The commander guided it with the point of his blade, in a long descending arc towards the clearing, where it landed with a resounding boom.

Then Pazel hurled the axe.

The hrathmog weapon was long for him, and very heavy, but he had swung it like a mallet, both hands over his head. It flew straight, and struck the commander squarely in the chest. The Plazic knife flew from his hand, and the commander fell backwards off the bridge, never crying out, and was gone.

Snarling erupted behind him: the paralysis spell had broken. Lunja had stabbed the athymar nearest her face, and the others attacked it from the sides. The last dog turned and fled, and Valgrif, his face already scarlet, pursued it into the trees.

Pazel knelt in the bloodied snow. The survivors crowded to him, praising him; Mandric called him a genius, but Neeps and Thasha just held his arms and said nothing, and Pazel was grateful for that. No hiding behind the danger now. The real pain was just beginning.

But there are kind fates as well as cruel in Alifros. Even as his friends embraced him, a shout came from the direction of the chasm. It was Olik. He was on the footbridge beneath the main structure, one hand braced against the chute above him, and the other holding a body to his chest.

‘Help me, damn you all!’

It was Neda. She was drenched, and her skin was a ghastly blue, and her open eyes did not see them. But she was breathing, and in her mouth they found the shattered remains of a fire beetle. And when ten minutes later a fire blazed (dry wood in the tower, matches on their foes) she woke and asked for Cayer Vispek, and then remembered, and broke into loud, un-sfvantskor-like tears.

‘My coat snagged on the ice,’ she told Pazel in their mother tongue, when she could speak again. ‘I was hanging there in the falling water. He came through and caught one of the struts, but the force of it dislocated his arm. He was bleeding too, but with his good arm he pulled me out of the water and onto the footbridge. Then-’ She put a hand to her lips. She could not go on.

‘He kissed you?’ said Pazel.

‘No. Yes.’ Neda stared helplessly at her brother. ‘He gave me his fire beetle. He pulled it from his coat pocket with his teeth. I tried to share it with him, but he shut his mouth and turned away. Then he held me against him, gave me all the warmth he had left in his body. Why would he do that, Pazel? For a damned soul? I was dead to him, wasn’t I? Wasn’t I?’

Cayer Vispek’s body remained beneath the Water Bridge, and with great care they extracted it and brought it to solid ground. An hour later Valgrif emerged limping from the forest. He had chased the dog far across Urakan, but slain it at last, then staunched his bleeding foot in the snow. On the way back he had found Ensyl and Myett upon the trail. Neither woman was scratched. They had jumped the eagle together, and killed it with their swords, and when it had crashed into the pines they had leaped together and fallen through a lattice of needles and thin branches, which had slowed them so gradually that they had actually come to rest a yard above the earth. They had dropped lightly to their feet, and Myett had sheathed her sword and remarked how good it was to be alive.