The Night of the Swarm

28

12 Fuinar 942

300th day from Etherhorde

‘That, my dear selk, is a Bali Adro exclusion flag,’ said Prince Olik, training the telescope on the bay, where the Chathrand sat at anchor. ‘A warning, in other words: Keep a safe distance.’

‘We shall do so,’ said Nolcindar. ‘Stath Balfyr is unchanged, then. A lovely bay one must not enter, an island where no landing is allowed.’

The Promise was three miles offshore, sweeping north past the mouth of the bay. It was almost noon, but the east wind was frigid, and now it looked like rain. Thasha gazed at their beloved Chathrand, and felt a stab of irony: twenty-eight days racing to meet her, and now that they’d finally arrived she was warning them off.

‘Not an ixchel in sight,’ said Hercol, who had the only other telescope. ‘Perhaps they have all gone ashore, somehow. In any case, Lord Talag has proved himself a genius — of a sort. He said he would bring the Great Ship here, and he has done it. However deranged, the plan was a strategic miracle.’

‘But a heartless one,’ said Ensyl, anger darkening her voice. ‘All of us have paid dearly for his dream. I only hope our brethren find happiness there.’

‘More flags,’ said Hercol. ‘One is white with two red bars. Another, blue with a white half-circle.’

‘Arquali pennants,’ said Pazel, taking a turn at the scope. ‘Two red bars: that’s Enemies near. And the other is — damn, I’m forgetting. .’

Thasha cast her mind back — so very far back, almost another life — to her days sitting in the family library, poring over her father’s books. ‘Ambush,’ she said at last.

‘Ambush! Right.’ Pazel gave her a private smile. He had mocked her sailing-savvy once. That too was a lifetime ago.

He looked again through the telescope. ‘She’s been in a firefight. Look at the cathead. Scorched.’

‘To the Pits with your cathead,’ said Neeps, ‘don’t you see any people?’

‘Yes,’ said the prince. ‘The deck is busy with sailors. Human beings, and a few dlomu — my loyal Masalym guardsmen, they must be. Have a look for yourself, Mr Undrabust. Perhaps you’ll spot your wife.’

Neeps pounced on the telescope. Thasha watched his face, and knew in short order that Marila was not on the topdeck. She glanced at Pazel: he looked almost sick with frustration. To be stopped this close to the Chathrand!

Still, things were much better than they’d feared. Day after day, Ildraquin had whispered to Hercol that Rose was motionless, and what was more likely to account for that than a wreck? To find her whole and apparently seaworthy should count as a miracle. The ixchel, or some other ‘enemies’, might be holding them prisoner, but at least they were alive.

‘There’s that old rotter, Latzlo,’ said Neeps, ‘and Swift and Saroo, by the Tree! But where are the officers? Where’s Captain Rose?’

‘I still say we should circumnavigate the island,’ said Corporal Mandric.

‘There is no other harbour,’ said Nolcindar, ‘and by the time we return to the mouth of this bay we may find Macadra guarding it.’ She raised her telescope again. ‘They have not been boarded, unless those who boarded have come and gone. The men on deck are not starved or sickly. But I believe they are sick with fear. Shall we try mirror-signals? If there are real sailors among your guard, Prince, they will know the Maritime Code.’

‘Look there!’ cried Neda, pointing.

From the deck of the Chathrand, flashes of sunlight were leaping: short, measured, steady as a ticking clock. ‘They are one step ahead of us,’ said Kirishgan. ‘Let us answer quickly.’

A silver platter was fetched from the pantry, and Nolcindar angled its polished face at a halfway angle between the zenith of the sky and the Chathrand. She adjusted the angle again and again, until a pause in the Chathrand’s signals told her that contact was established. She waited, and the flashes from the bay resumed. Now the pattern was more complicated. After a moment Nolcindar frowned.

‘I know codes of Bali Adro, Thudryl, Nemmoc and beyond, but I do not know this one. I expect it is a human code out of the North.’

‘It’s the Turach cypher!’ said Corporal Mandric, squinting. ‘That’s one of my mates! Here, give me that trinket, Captain. Rin help me, it’s been so long-’

Mandric was indeed out of practice, and the roll of the ship did not help matters. Time and again he interrupted the Chathrand with flashes from the silver platter, muttering: ‘Repeat, repeat, you jackass, that’s not right, it can’t be-’

Letter followed doubt-ridden letter. With excruciating slowness, words took shape.

BOULDERS — FROM — CLIFFS — REEFS — NORTH — NO — EXIT — NO — ENTRANCE — HELP

The flashes stopped. The travellers looked at one another. ‘Strange, but useful,’ said Hercol. ‘At least we know something of the nature of the trap.’

Mandric pointed at the clifftops. ‘There’s your boulders.’ Thasha saw that it was true: the cliffs were strewn with great loose stones, giving the whole ridge a shattered look.

‘And reefs north,’ said Pazel. ‘Do you know, I think they mean the north side of the inlet to the bay. Look at all that choppy surf.’

‘I fear you’re right, Pazel,’ said Ramachni, studying the waves. ‘Well then: reefs on the north side, boulders from the south. Little wonder the ship cannot escape.’

‘The Chathrand is ten times our size and draught,’ said Nolcindar, ‘but reefs are reefs, and the Promise will never clear them.’

‘What about landing a boat on the north side, there beyond the inlet?’ said Neeps. ‘You can see that the island narrows down to a strip.’

‘You may be on to something, lad,’ said Prince Olik, looking again through his telescope. ‘The spot is both low and narrow: those palms are barely above sea level.’

‘We could run that strip in minutes,’ said Neeps, ‘and be swimming to the Chathrand before anyone knew.’

‘We could swim from right here,’ said Lunja. ‘Three miles is nothing for a dlomu.’

‘Nor a selk,’ said Kirishgan, ‘but rocks can sink swimmers as well as boats, and the north beach too may be guarded. And once we board the Chathrand, how do we help her escape?’

The others glanced furtively at Ramachni, and the mage saw their glances and sighed. ‘My powers will not be enough to save the ship. One or two boulders I might turn aside, but not a hail of them. And I cannot lift the Great Ship into the air — not even my mistress in her prime could manage such a feat, save with the power of the Nilstone.’

‘I could protect them, maybe,’ said Thasha.

The others looked at her sharply. ‘That is yet to be proven,’ said Hercol, ‘and besides, you are not aboard.’

‘I can swim that far.’

‘Don’t be daft, Thasha,’ muttered Pazel.

‘I’m not,’ said Thasha calmly. ‘This isn’t like that night at the Sandwall. There’s something waiting for me on the Chathrand. Something Erithusme knew could help us.’

Hercol and Pazel turned away, and Ramachni’s eyes told her nothing. Thasha knew they would have to listen sooner or later. For months they had all been sheltering her, trying to shield her from outward danger, even as she struggled to set Erithusme free. It was hard on Pazel, and all her friends. They were carrying her like a vase through the hailstorm; she was trying to shatter on the floor.

Then, two days ago, she had overheard Pazel and Neeps whispering about some ‘other way’. She’d confronted them immediately. At last Pazel had yielded, and shared the mage’s words:

Take Thasha to the berth deck, to the place where you used to sleep. When she is standing there she will know what to do.

Some hidden power, available to her alone. Thasha felt like smacking the tarboys for keeping quiet so long; but it was love, after all, that had sealed their tongues. Love, and fear. ‘Erithusme made it sound mucking deadly, Thasha,’ Pazel had told her. ‘She called it a last resort.’

Of course, that warning had not dissuaded her: it was high time for last resorts. Any doubt of that had vanished yesterday, when they woke to find themselves looking at the Swarm.

You could spend a lifetime struggling to forget the sight. A black mass the size of a township, high in the clouds, possessed of will and purpose. It appeared too solid to be airborne, and it squirmed, like a muscle or a clot of worms. It had been moving along the edge of the Red Storm, pausing, charging, doubling back again, an animal prowling a fence. Looking for a gap, said Ramachni. Hungering for death, for the greatest glut of death anywhere in Alifros. Hungering for the war in the North.

Is my father in the middle of that war?

Thasha left the others arguing by the mast. The Swarm had vanished eastwards yesterday, leaving a changed Promise in its wake: the humans and dlomu shocked and fumbling for words, the selk grim and philosophical. They had caught no sight of it today, but Thasha could still see the Red Storm, many miles to the north, a scarlet ribbon between sea and sky.

Time barrier, she thought. We fight and fight on this side, but for what? A home we may not recognize when we get there. A future Arqual that’s forgotten us, or a dead one. Unless we too find a gap.

Walking to portside, she leaned on the rail and stared at the wooded island. Seabirds gyred above the north shore; waves shattered on the rocks. She willed the place to open to them, somehow, to let them take their ship and their people and be on their way.

You’ve won, Talag. You let your sister die and your only child go mad, but you’ve won. Your people are home. Don’t be so proud that you end up killing them, killing all the world.

But her next thought was like a blow to the face: Talag’s not the problem, girl. You are.

All the self-loathing that had assaulted her in the Infernal Forest, and at the Demon’s Court in Ularamyth, welled to the surface once more. She was failing them, and her failure was bringing the house down upon their heads. They could not wait. Macadra was drawing closer; the Red Storm was weakening. Any day, any hour, the Swarm might slip through into the North. They could not wait, and yet they waited. For her.

All that month on the Promise, her friends had tried to help her. Oh, the things they’d tried! Ramachni, exhausted as he was, had undertaken a journey into her sleeping mind. It was a complex spell that had taken him days to prepare, but the journey itself had lasted only a single night. He had reached the wall, examined it — and declared on waking that it had nothing to do with Arunis.

‘But it has everything to do with Thasha’s will to live,’ he had continued. ‘It is built of the same stuff as the outer, permanent walls of her mind, and its foundation. For good or ill, Thasha, the creator of that wall is you.’

His words made her think again of what she had felt in the Demon’s Court. That Erithusme would return if she perished, and only then. She was ready to die. A part of her knew quite well that she had the courage. But Ramachni had sensed the direction of her thoughts, and intervened.

‘Listen well to me, Thasha: your death is not the solution, on that point Erithusme gave her word.’ Pazel went even further, claiming that the mage had told him that Thasha’s death would mean Erithusme’s as well. But the feeling persisted: only her death could break down the wall.

Nolcindar had also tried to help. She had sat with Thasha across the length of three cold, clear nights when the seas were calm. It had been a kind of selk meditation, Thasha supposed, but it had also felt like enchantment, for she had found herself transported to distant times and places in Alifros, walking green paths under ancient trees, or through deep caves where veins of crystal blazed in the lamplight, or down the avenues of cities that had fallen centuries ago to drought or pestilence or war. Sometimes Nolcindar was there at her side; often she was not. Alone or accompanied, Thasha had felt each of the places tug powerfully at her heart. When it was over Nolcindar said that she had merely been telling stories of certain lands Erithusme was known to have travelled, in hopes of stirring memories that would open a crack in the wall. The memories had been stirred, maybe; but only distantly, and the wall remained sound.

Then it had been Hercol’s turn. His efforts harkened back to their Thojmele training, which placed clarity of mind and strength of purpose above all virtues. Late one night he took Thasha to a lower deck of the Promise and showed her a doorway blocked with sandbags. They were tightly fitted, reaching all the way to the top of the door frame. ‘Sit alone beside this barrier,’ he said, ‘until it becomes the wall within your mind. Then pass through. Fear nothing, hope for nothing; do not dwell in emotion. This is a challenge, but not a judgement. If it is in you to do this, you will.’

Then he had taken the light away, and Thasha had put her hands on the black sandbags and calmed herself in the Thojmele manner. For two hours she had not moved or spoken. Then Thasha stood, limbered her body, tightened her boots. She planted her shoulder against the wall of sandbags and pushed, and felt a shout of inner despair that made a mockery of her training. The bags might as well have been stone. She took a deep breath, steadying herself, reciting the codes Hercol had taught her across the years. The task demanded of the body is welded to the task of the mind. Neither is a true accomplishment without the other. When you have mastered the Thojmel you will perceive but a single task, and know when you may achieve it, and when to forbear.

Her training promised clarity, not success. It became very clear that she would not be passing through the door. When Hercol returned he showed her the wetted boards they had stacked between the sandbags. The wood had expanded with the moisture, creating a wall so tight they could only dismantle it by slitting the bags and letting the sand spill out. ‘I made sure you had no knife,’ he said. ‘You were not to pass through without the mage’s help.’ For that, after all, was the whole point.

The tarboys had suggested no experiments, but they had helped more than anyone, simply by being near her, breaking her morbid silences, helping her think. Pazel still had a Master-Word: the word that would ‘blind to give new sight’. For over a year he had known it, carried it about like an unexploded bomb, and he still didn’t know what it would do.

‘What if it doesn’t cause real blindness?’ Neeps had asked him. ‘What if that just means forgetfulness or ignorance about some specific thing? Maybe Thasha needs to forget about Erithusme altogether, before setting her free.’

Pazel looked at him thoughtfully. ‘It could work that way. But I’ve no way to know. The Master-Words, they’re like faces moving deep underwater. I can see them, but they’re dark and blurry. I only know exactly what will happen when they surface. And they only surface at the bitter end, just before I speak. This last one, now: sometimes I think I could direct it at a single person, but other times I think it might change the whole world. Ibjen thought I should never use it at all. What if I start a blindness plague?’

‘I think Ibjen was wrong, this time,’ said Thasha.

‘So do I,’ said Neeps. ‘The first two words shook you up, I know that. But in the end they didn’t change anything beyond the ship, did they?’

Pazel hesitated. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘But this wall inside you already exists, Thasha. If you forget about Erithusme, you might not see any reason to tear it down.’

‘I don’t know that I’d even be able to find it, without her voice calling to me from the other side,’ said Thasha. ‘And not being able to find it, to feel it: that would be just as bad-’

‘As not being able to tear it down,’ said Pazel.

Thasha nodded, and the conversation had died. She could certainly feel the wall today, however. It was both real and unreal, a solid obstruction and the hazy symbol of her failure. Almost nightly she stood before it, the same stone wall she had dreamed of on their last night in Ularamyth. But now the cracks were closing, not widening; and the voice from the other side was growing faint. Rather than crumbling, the wall was growing stronger, more determined to stand.

Failure. Turn your mind in that direction and you’d find madness waiting, a vulture in a tree. Failure was darkness, death, a world devoured by the Swarm. Lifeless seas, barren hills, dead forests crumbling year by year into dust. No colours but the colours of stone. No spring renewal. No animals. No children.

She dreamed of children, now and then. She could close her eyes and almost see them: those angelic phantoms, impish and laughing, clumsy and perfect, blends of Pazel’s features and her own. She wanted, with brute selfishness, to live on through them. Not her cheekbones or her eyes or nose but her cherished memories, the sweet story of the alliances they’d made, the trust they’d earned and given, the terrors that had proved less potent than love.

No children would learn any of that. No tales would be shared. No history could be written of a world that had died.

As she stared, helpless and angry, one of the seabirds lifted above the rest. It was making for the open water. Thasha stood up, frowning. The bird was flying very straight and swift — not directly towards them, but just a bit north.

An intercept course.

Thasha’s heart was pounding. She walked back to the others and interrupted their talk. ‘You can put down that platter, now,’ she said.

The others just stared at her. Thasha couldn’t help it, she laughed aloud. Then she turned and shouted a name into the wind, and the moon falcon answered with a shrill, savage cry.

Niriviel’s report confirmed the earlier signals. The bay’s entrance was a deathtrap: reefs to the north, flying boulders from the south. ‘I can come and go as I please,’ he said, ‘but I am the only one.’ And yet the travellers had no choice but to seek entrance somewhere. For Niriviel had also warned them that the Chathrand’s crew was nearing breaking point.

‘Forty-three have succumbed to the plague. Forty-three locked in cages, reduced to mindless beasts. And Plapps and Burnscovers kill each other in the shadows, and the deathsmokers show their faces by daylight, and there is only the one fool doctor to treat them all. The traitor Fiffengurt has been made captain, and Sergeant Haddismal permits this, and submits to his will. Or pretends to. But this is only because there is no other leader the sailors trust. Not since Captain Rose was killed.’

‘By a feral madwoman,’ added Hercol, ‘who appears out of nowhere, sneaks by night into his cabin, kills Rose and his steward, and succumbs instantly to the mind-plague. Quite a tale, is it not? My sword Ildraquin has led me to corpses before, but never to so mysterious a death.’

‘I tell you only what others claim,’ said the bird. ‘Lady Oggosk says the woman is innocent, but she was found alone with the corpses, her mouth and hands dripping blood.’

‘What does your master say?’ asked Thasha.

‘Ask him yourself, but do not expect an answer. I cannot even-’ Niriviel stopped, as though aghast at his own words.

‘Go on,’ said Ramachni.

The falcon looked at him with one eye and then the other. ‘We are thousands of miles from Emperor Magad,’ he said at last. ‘Arqual is mighty, but is it mightier than Bali Adro? Should it try to be, or will it only destroy itself, as Bali Adro has done? Master Ott says that Arqual will one day rule the world, that these corrupt lands of the South will implode, and we alone shall be left standing, the inheritors of all power. But Master Ott told me to tear Lord Talag from the sky.’

The bird flapped and fidgeted on the rail. ‘I could have killed him. The crawly flies so slowly on his flimsy wings. But I have heard Talag myself begging the island crawlies to let the Chathrand go. What sense did it make to kill him? Was it merely because he embarrassed Master Ott? But Master Ott is not the Emperor, though he has been more than Emperor to me. I did not kill Talag. I let him go to the island, and Master Ott must know by now. Master Ott knows that I lied!’

Suddenly the bird screeched with anguish. ‘Where has he gone, where has he gone? No one aboard will tell me. Has he died, or does he just refuse my service? How could he, when he says he trusts me like his own eyes? He said that, and more. He said I was the only thing of perfection that he has ever made.’

‘Sandor Ott did not make you, Niriviel,’ said Ramachni. ‘I hope a day will come when you see that you are your own author, and that your tale may go on without him.’

‘We are as good as brothers, falcon,’ said Hercol. ‘Your master said the same to me once, before sending me out to kill.’

‘We are not brothers,’ said the bird. ‘I love my master and will fight for the Ametrine rone. You are a traitor. You failed him, you lied-’ The falcon broke off, confused. ‘All the same we must be. . sensible. We are woken creatures after all.’

‘Sensible is quite good enough for today,’ said Ramachni. ‘Come, let us make a plan.’

Two bells: it was the hour before dawn. In the bay high tide was approaching, and the waters of the inlet were slowing almost to a standstill. Both moons had set, and while the Red Storm still pulsed and flickered, its light did not penetrate the bay. The Chathrand, trying to conserve lamp oil (along with everything else) stood in darkness. It was the twelfth night of the stand-off, and it would prove to be the last.

Atop the cliffs, the ixchel of Stath Balfyr kept up their watch, looking for the selk ship that had sailed with obvious intent to the mouth of their island, and been warned away by the humans. The Promise had extinguished her running lights, but if she tried to enter the bay they would know it: their ixchel eyes could spot such a large ship even by starlight, even by the dimmest glow cast by the Red Storm, if that ship passed at their feet.

But they could not see the lifeboat.

Without sail or mast it went gliding, pulled by twenty dlomic swimmers who kept all but their heads submerged, and only raised the latter to gulp a little air at need. Over the submerged reefs they passed, among the dark schools of fish, the black shadows of larger creatures, guiding the boat through the coral maze. Only in the deepest troughs of the waves did the boat strike the coral, with a dull thump that carried a little distance, but not far enough.

In the boat, Thasha crouched between Ramachni and Hercol. Neeps and Pazel were behind them, and last of all came Bolutu, who had insisted. ‘You heard Niriviel,’ he’d told them. ‘Ignus Chadfallow is being run off his feet. I may be an animal doctor, but I’m a blary good one. And the sooner I get aboard, the sooner I can help.’

He and Ramachni were the only ones Hercol had not smeared with soot. The boat too he had blackened, right down to the waterline. That line would have been higher but for the last item in the boat: the Nilstone, still safe within Big Skip’s protective shells of glass and steel. Today the Stone felt heavier than lead. Wherever they moved it became the low spot in the boat.

The half-mile inlet felt excruciatingly long. Some reefs were shaped like walls, others like rocky hilltops. The dlomu had to Rounder among them, feeling their way in the darkness, keeping the boat from any knobs or protrusions of coral, and never turning in the direction of the cliffs.

Lunja was out there in the water, leading the swimmers, for she was the strongest of them all. After the Promise launched the lifeboat, she had swum near them and rested a hand on the gunwale.

‘We are nearly all in our harnesses,’ she had said. ‘And we have knives. If any of us should get entangled in the reefs we will cut ourselves free so that the others may go on, and tie on again when we can.’

‘The spare ropes are already secured,’ said Hercol. Take every care, Sergeant! The dangers may not all be from above.’

‘Whatever happens to us,’ said Ramachni, ‘you must see the Nilstone aboard. Its power would continue to flow to the Swarm of Night from the floor of the bay, or for that matter the deepest trench in the Ruling Sea.’

‘I understand,’ said Lunja. ‘Farewell for now.’ Still she had hesitated. Then Thasha had realised that she was looking at Neeps. The tarboy was gazing at her wordlessly; his breath seemed caught in his throat. He leaned closer, but in that moment Lunja turned and vanished in the darkness. Only when she was gone had Neeps managed to speak her name.

Now a little light glowed behind them in the east. They were almost within the bay. Once there the dlomu could pull in a straight line for the Chathrand for one more unobstructed mile — and the guardians of Stath Balfyr, with any luck, would be powerless to stop them.

There came a hard thump near the bow. ‘Upa, that was no reef,’ hissed Pazel. ‘Something just smacked into us, by Rin.’

‘We are nearly out of the coral,’ said Hercol. ‘Stand by oars — let us give the swimmers all the help we can. Steady, steady. . now.’

Two sets of oars plunged into the water. Neeps was left the job of holding the Nilstone, while Ramachni kept watch upon the bow. ‘Pull!’ he urged. ‘The light is growing, and we are still too near the shore.’

Suddenly Lunja’s head broke the surface next to them, along with those of two other dlomu. ‘That reef was like a forest of blades,’ she said. ‘Many of us are bleeding, and some of the ropes have been cut. I fear we did not bring enough spares.’

It was then that the cry broke out: a strange trumpeting noise, strident and huge. It began on the clifftops, but was soon taken up on the north shore, which was much nearer the boat.

‘Away, away!’ cried Hercol. ‘They have seen us!’

Lunja and her two companions seized the spare ropes coiled on the bow and vanished ahead. Thasha looked at the cliffs: the shadows of the boulders appeared to have multiplied.

The trumpeting grew louder. From the north shore there came a sound of crashing and breaking limbs, as though some great herd of animals was stampeding through the forest. Then a great concussive boom sounded on their left. Spray struck their faces, and a wave lifted and rolled the boat precariously. ‘They’ve started with the rocks!’ said Neeps. ‘Say your prettiest prayers that we’re out of range. Upa! Their aim’s improving! Can’t you blary row any faster?’

Thasha wanted to kick him, but she did row faster. Then she heard Bolutu gasp. He was looking at the northern shore.

In the half-light, a pale strip of sand glowed between the trees and the water, and crossing it were twenty or thirty of the largest animals Thasha had ever seen. They were shaped like buffalo, or bulls, and yet not quite like either, and they stood almost as tall as the trees themselves.

‘Pull!’ cried Ramachni. ‘Pull for you lives! Those are drachnars, and they are the ones hurling the stones!’

The beasts were thundering into the water. Not buffalo: they were more like elephants, great shaggy elephants that would have dwarfed any specimen in a Northern zoo. The great ogress they had fought in the mountains would scarcely have reached the shoulder of one of these. But they were not elephants either — not quite. The mouths were like shovels, with great flat incisors on the lower jaw. The trunks were much thicker and stronger than elephant trunks, and strangest of all, they divided into three halfway down their length. Yes, she thought: those trunks could grasp boulders, and hurl them. And if they could manage boulders, why not-

‘Look out! Look out!’

A palm tree struck the water like a spear, not five yards away. The boat rocked wildly. Thasha rowed with all her might. She could see now that many of the creatures were grasping logs or stones that they had dragged out of the forest, and some were already rearing up to hurl them. Others were still wading into the bay. They had come several hundreds yards already, and the water was not yet to their necks.

‘Halfway!’ said Ramachni. Pain seering Thasha’s arms, her shoulders. On the ship, lamps blazed. Thasha could hear screeching — Oggosk’s screeching; had she ever imagined she could miss it? — and the rattle of davit-chains. The drachnars pelted them with whatever they could scavenge — old logs, young trees, even the remains of some other wreck. But the dlomu were swimming in formation, now, and pulling like a team, and soon the north shore fell behind them, and they were out of range.

Then Niriviel swept down out of the sky. ‘I could not warn you,’ he cried, hovering. ‘Those creatures have never emerged by daylight. We did not know what we faced.’

‘Never mind,’ shouted Hercol. ‘But tell us, brother, has Fiffengurt prepared the ship? Is she ready for the Ruling Sea?’

‘The Ruling Sea!’ cried Niriviel. ‘You do not know what you are saying. The crawly lunatics will never let us depart. Can you not see them, riding on the heads of the monsters ashore?’

‘Riding them!’ said Ramachni. ‘Well, there is the secret of Stath Balfyr’s defences: the ixchel have tamed the drachnars, or at least allied with them to fight intruders. No, falcon, our eyes cannot match your own. But hurry, now: back to the Chathrand. Tell Fiffengurt to start weighing anchor, if he has not begun already.’

‘I will tell him,’ said Niriviel, ‘but there is no way out of this bay.’

The falcon departed. Pazel glanced over his shoulder at the Chathrand, caught Thasha’s eye, and forced himself to smile. Whatever lay ahead, they were almost home.

Two of the dlomic swimmers returned to the boat. They were clearly weakened, and once aboard Thasha saw that they were bleeding from many spots. ‘Bandages, Undrabust!’ shouted Hercol. ‘You two: are no others hurt?’

‘How could we know?’ they said. ‘In dark water it is hard to judge your own wounds, let alone someone else’s. But Lunja must have had the worst of it, for she led us through that coral maze.’

‘Then she should come in!’ cried Neeps.

‘So we told her. But she paid no attention.’

‘The Chathrand is lowering a skiff,’ said Ramachni, gazing ahead. ‘We must see the wounded aboard first — and then the Nilstone, and Thasha. Pazel, you must go too, since Erithusme bid you escort her, and — Oh fiends beneath us, no!’

On either side of the boat, dark fins sliced the water. They were sharks: the same grey, man-sized creatures that had trailed the serpent off Cape Lasung. But these sharks were not following any serpent. They were following blood.

Everyone in the boat howled a warning. Someone among the swimmers must have heard, for they all broke formation, and then began to pull for their lives.

‘They’ll be slaughtered!’ cried Neeps. Hercol stood and raised his bow.

‘Put that away, are you mad?’ cried Ramachni, leaping onto the prow. ‘Cut the swimmers free, and row on!’ With that the little mink launched himself from the prow, and took owl-form before his body could strike the waves.

Hercol drew his knife and slashed at the ropes. He was leaning far over the prow, and Thasha clung desperately to his belt, terrified that he too would fall among the sharks.

‘Who’s that one, what’s he doing?’ cried Pazel.

Thasha squinted: one of the dlomu was peeling away from the rest — and the sharks were following. As they had done off Lasung, the creatures hunted in a tight school that never divided. It seemed that terror had overcome one swimmer, who must have expected the sharks to follow the larger group. But who knew how that collective mind made its choices? The lead shark reached the swimmer, and Thasha saw the dlomu turn and open its arms — a gesture strangely like an embrace. Thasha closed her eyes for an instant; when she looked again the swimmer was gone.

Ramachni passed over the sharks, folded his wings, and dived.

The dlomu were making for the Chathrand with what remained of their strength. But now the sharks turned like a single body, resuming the attack. The lifeboat fell further behind. Neeps was almost sobbing as he cried Lunja’s name.

Suddenly a change came over the water around the sharks. At first Thasha could not tell what it was. Then she knew: the water was boiling. Seconds later it was turning to lethal steam.

Oh, thank the Gods. Ramachni was surfacing, in eguar-form, and the unimaginable heat of his body was literally vaporising the sea. They could see him, a dark monstrosity suspended in foam; and they could smell the sulphuric fumes. The nearest sharks were killed instantly; those behind swam on, blood-maddened, to their deaths. Many scattered in confusion, but they never regrouped and pressed the attack. In another minute the first dlomu were hauling themselves into the skiff that bobbed by the Chathrand’s side.

The beast that was Ramachni kept its distance, but its white-hot eyes blazed at them out of the steam. ‘Row on!’ cried Hercol. ‘Our mage himself is in some danger, I fear — else he would not turn those eyes upon us.’

At last they neared the ship. High above, men were labouring at the capstan, raising the skiff and the wounded dlomu to the deck. Then a high voice rang out over the water:

‘Triumph! Triumph! Triumph! Triumph! Triumph!’

Thasha looked up and burst into tears of joy. Fiffengurt and Marila were waving from the rail, shouting their names over and over. The mastiffs were baying to raise the dead, their paws and faces appearing and vanishing again. Suddenly Fiffengurt turned and beckoned, and a mob, a throng rushed the rail, cheered them, bellowed at last without reservations, without divisions or doubt. And through it all she could still hear Felthrup, hysterical, squeaking Triumph! as though it were the only word he knew.

Ramachni, still in eguar-form, raced away from them at high speed. ‘Where in the Nine Pits does he think he’s going?’ asked Pazel. But at that instant the great, black form of the eguar vanished, and the small, helpless form of the mink took its place.

‘Gods of death, he is barely swimming!’ said Bolutu. He stood and dived without another word, and swam powerfully towards the mage.

‘Don’t you understand?’ said Thasha. ‘Ramachni had to be moving fast when he changed back. If he let the water heat around him he’d have been killed just like the sharks.’

When Bolutu returned with his small burden, the mage was too exhausted even to stand. Thasha took him and tried to dry him with her shirt.

The cheering went on and on. Soon the lifeboat from the Promise was snug in the davit-chains and rising up the Chathrand’s side. ‘That transformation has cost me,’ said Ramachni. ‘I may recover my strength before I leave this world — but then again, I may not. You must not depend on me if it comes to fighting again.’

‘Just rest,’ said Thasha. ‘We’ll do the fighting, next time.’

Ramachni let his head drop onto her knee. ‘I believe you just might,’ he said.

The moment they cleared the rail, Neeps jumped to the deck and threw his arms around Marila. She had watched them ascend, wild-haired, round-bellied, hands in fists. She had screwed her face up into a frown, struggling desperately not to cry. Now he kissed her and the struggle ceased. Her arms went around her husband, and her loud, nasal sobs made Thasha understand why she tried so hard to repress her feelings at other times. Neeps laid a gentle hand on her stomach, and a look of wonder came over his face.

Felthrup, for his part, had stopped shouting only because he too had been choked by tears. ‘Thasha, Thasha, you have been gone a lifetime. You have brought goodness back to this ship and redeemed her!’

‘Not yet, Felthrup dear.’

‘And you have done it, you have taken the Nilstone back from Arunis, and killed him!’

‘Felthrup! How did you know that?’

‘Arunis,’ said the rat. ‘Oh dear, there are volumes to tell-’

‘Rascals! Reprobates!’ Fiffengurt was laughing, an arm around the neck of both tarboys, coating his uniform with soot. ‘Lady Thasha, how’d you manage to live so long with this pair of apes?’

‘How did you manage to keep the ship afloat without us?’ said Pazel. Neeps was about to make a quip of his own, but his smile vanished when he looked at the wounded dlomu, who were being treated a short distance away by the tonnage hatch. The youths had been making their way to the dlomu to give them their thanks, and to help bind their wounds if they could. Hercol and Bolutu were already among them.

Marila looked at Neeps’ face. ‘What is it?’ she said.

Neeps pulled away from Fiffengurt and ran ahead. He pressed among the wounded, shouting. Then Hercol rose and took him by the shoulders.

Neeps cried out, his voice sharp as a child’s, and covered his face with his hands. Marila turned to the others in a panic. ‘Someone’s died,’ she said. ‘Who was it? Tell me, Thasha, for Rin’s sake!’

Bolutu came and spoke to them. It was Lunja who had peeled off from the other swimmers. Not with the hope of saving herself, but because she knew the sharks would follow her, bleeding profusely as she was from her cuts on the reef. ‘That is the Bali Adro I remember, the way of love and sacrifice,’ said Bolutu. ‘My brethren owe their lives to Sergeant Lunja as surely as to Ramachni.’

‘What about Neeps?’ asked Marila. ‘Did she save his life too?’

Yes, they told her, so swiftly that they sounded false. As though there were something to be ashamed of, some betrayal. Marila closed her eyes. ‘Don’t tell me,’ she said. ‘I want to hear it from him.’

Thasha looked at Pazel. ‘The berth deck,’ she said. ‘Take me right now. Before anything else happens.’

‘What could happen?’

‘Oh Pazel, don’t say that! Just take me there, you buffoon.’

‘One thing first,’ said Pazel. ‘I won’t be a minute, I swear.’

He ran forward, skipping through the well-wishers who tried to stop and cheer him, who slapped his back and shouted, ‘Bravo, Muketch, you’re a wonder, you’re a man!’ en he raced down the Holy Stair and was gone.

Thasha smiled. ‘He’s heading for sickbay,’ she said.

‘Don’t tell me he’s ill,’ said Marila.

Thasha shook her head and laughed. ‘For once, he’s not. There’s nothing wrong with him at all.’

A look of understanding, and deep dismay, came over Marila. She glanced at Fiffengurt, whose face had also darkened. Then she raced after Pazel, shouting his name.

‘Oh Missy,’ said Fiffengurt. ‘There ain’t been time even to mention it yet. Dr Chadfallow was murdered.’

Tears, once more — how they could surprise one. She had never warmed to Chadfallow, but surely that would have changed. She knew Pazel loved the man, though he had spent half the voyage pretending otherwise.

‘Niriviel told us that there was just one doctor aboard,’ she said. ‘I thought he meant that Dr Rain didn’t count. Who killed him, Mr Fiffengurt? Was it Ott?’

‘Oh, no,’ said Fiffengurt. ‘That bastard’s in no position to hurt anybody. He’s got himself in a fix, and I can’t say I’m sorry.’

‘Who did it, then? Who would kill a blary doctor?’

Fiffengurt drew a deep breath. The weight of all that had transpired seemed etched in his dry and weary face, and Thasha knew she would only ever grasp a part of it, that most of the tale would be lost.

‘Arunis,’ said Fiffengurt.

Shark bites were ragged, hideous things. Eleven dlomu had been attacked; one man was in danger of losing his arm. Neeps moved among them, his eyes red, cleaning wounds with an iodine solution someone had brought from the surgery. The survivors grinned morbidly, passing around a yellow, serrated tooth the size of a playing card. It had been extracted from a swimmer’s leg.

At length Bolutu took the humans aside. ‘Your help is a blessing,’ he said, ‘but another task awaits you. Go, and take the Nilstone, and do what my people fought and died to let you do. We have enough hands here.’

‘We must find Pathkendle first,’ said Hercol.

That was not hard: Pazel and Marila were seated in the passage outside sickbay, leaning against the wall. Pazel’s eyes were very red; Marila held his hand.

Across from them, bearded now but otherwise unchanged, sat Jervik Lank. He jumped to his feet.

‘I wanted to greet you up top,’ he said, ‘but the ward’s a handful, m’lady, and there weren’t nobody to cover for me.’

‘It’s horrible in there,’ said Marila. ‘The beds are full of deathsmokers, strapped down so that they can’t hurt themselves. And others who’ve been knifed or beaten up. The gangs don’t have tactics any more. They just hate each other, and the marines, and anyone who tries to stay neutral.’

They too stood up, and Thasha put a hand on Pazel’s cheek. He smiled sadly at her. ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘Ignus wasn’t my father, you know. Although in the end he’d have made a pretty good one.’

‘This ship’s gone mad,’ said Jervik. ‘Until this morning, anyway. I could hear ’em cheering you, all the way down here. They did that for Rose, on New Year’s Day. But there ain’t been a blary moment since when the crew felt like a crew. You done a fine thing just by comin’ back.’

‘And you’ve helped save the ship we came back to,’ said Thasha. ‘I’ll always be grateful for that. A lot of men would have just given up.’

‘A lot of men did,’ said Marila.

The older tarboy fairly glowed with their praise. ‘When a Lank makes up his mind to do something, he does it.’ Then all at once he looked abashed. ‘No, no. That ain’t the truth. You know what my life’s been — the life of a great pig, eh, Muketch? I nearly killed you, once or twice.’

‘Forget it, mate,’ said Pazel, barely listening. ‘We’ve all of us changed.’

‘Have we?’ said Jervik. ‘You’re all still clever. And me-’ He shrugged. ‘Ragweed don’t make roses, and dullards don’t grow wise. That’s me, ain’t it? You don’t have to pretend.’

Marila stepped close to Jervik. She reached up and took hold of the tarboy’s jaw, which dropped in amazement. ‘Promise me something,’ she said.

‘Wha?’

‘That you will never say that again. You’re not stupid. It’s a lie somebody told you, because they couldn’t mucking say you were weak. Spit it out.’

There was a silence. Jervik’s eyes swivelled to the other tarboys.

‘If you want your chin back, you’d better promise,’ said Neeps.

Jervik blinked. ‘No lady never asked me for my word on nothin’,’ he said. ‘But since you want it, well — I promise, Mrs Undrabust. On my departed mother and the Blessed Tree.’

The tarboys’ quarters were almost directly beneath sickbay. Neeps and Pazel slipped inside first. Thasha heard boys scrambling and swearing. ‘All right,’ Neeps shouted. ‘Everyone’s dressed, after a fashion.’

Within, the compartment was a maze of dark hammocks, dropped clothes, open footlockers, unwashed plates. Had inspections ceased, Thasha wondered, or just the consequences of failing them?

There were only a handful of tarboys about. Among them were the twins, Swift and Saroo, who had been cold to Pazel and Neeps since the massacre of the ixchel. They were cold now, too.

‘Your whole gang’s back, is it?’ said Saroo. ‘And your pal Mr Fiffengurt’s in charge. You must be tickled pink.’

‘Just what the Chathrand needs,’ added Swift, ‘another gang.’

‘Ease up, mates, they’re heroes, like,’ said the freckle-faced Durbee, a tarboy from Besq.

‘Fiffengurt will make a good skipper,’ said Neeps.

‘I suppose from now on you lot will decide what’s good and what’s bad,’ said Swift.

‘We didn’t all make it, actually,’ said Pazel. ‘Big Skip was killed, and Dastu. And nearly all the marines. And Cayer Vispek and Jalantri.’

‘The Mzithrinis,’ said Neeps, when the tarboys looked blank.

‘Oh, them,’ said Saroo. ‘Well now. I don’t suppose even you cried much for a pair of blood-drinkers.’

‘The stanchion’s over here,’ said Pazel, as if Saroo hadn’t said a word. Despite the twins’ hostility he had spoken with no rancour at all. Thasha felt an ache in her chest — just pride, just love for her friends. These tarboys were all roughly the same age, but how much older Pazel and Neeps seemed. And no wonder, she thought. Tear your heart and your body to pieces, bleed and burn and freeze and make love and lose love and kill — and heal just partly, and hide what will never heal. Then try it. Try to stay innocent, try to pretend you’re still the person you were.

‘That’s my muckin’ post!’ said Saroo, when Pazel stopped before the stanchion with the eight copper nails. ‘You can’t just come back and swipe it. You ain’t slept there in months.’

‘What’s the matter, Pathkendle?’ said Swift. ‘Fleas in your girl’s brass bed?’

Pazel drew his knife.

‘Pitfire, mate, there’s no cause for that!’ said Durbee, jumping between them. But Pazel only reached up and cut the hammock rope around the upper part of the stanchion. He sheathed the knife and glanced at Thasha.

‘Erithusme said you’d know what to do. Was she right?’

Thasha looked at the copper nails. They were arranged in a half-circle, with the open side facing the ceiling, like a cup or a bowl. She stepped nearer the rough wooden post, ran her fingers down its length. It felt like rock.

‘Mr Fiffengurt says that’s one of the oldest bits of wood on this vessel,’ said Durbee cautiously. ‘He says it was ancient when the boat was built. We all figured that’s why you had such good luck, Pazel. Because there was some sort of charm on it. And that’s why Saroo claimed it after you left.’

‘Aught good it’s done me, though,’ grumbled Saroo.

Thasha closed her eyes. Trying with all her might to listen, to heed the voice behind the wall. Almost of its own accord, her left hand slid up to the nail-heads.

She hammered these herself. She laid power away for just such a moment.

Her hand passed through the wood as if nothing were there.

Swift and Saroo backed away in fright; Durbee made the sign of the Tree. Eyes still closed, Thasha found that the nails remained solid: she could feel them, suspended in the phantom wood. And just beyond them, more solid objects. Two of them. She closed her hand on the smaller and drew it out.

It was a short, tarnished silver rod. One half was quite plain, the other scored with a complex set of notches and grooves.

‘What is it?’ Pazel asked her. ‘Do you know?’

Thasha stared at the little rod. She should know, she almost knew. But if a memory lurked inside her it belonged to Erithusme, and she could catch nothing more than its echo. She gave the rod to Marila. ‘Hold this for me,’ she said.

The larger object was rough and slightly top-heavy. She took a firm grip and lifted it out past the nails. There in her hand was a stout bottle made of clay. It was stoppered with a cork and sealed in thick red wax. The bottle was chipped, dust-darkened, unimaginably old. It was solid and rather heavy. She turned it: a slosh of liquid, deep inside.

Thasha blew away the dust. The bottle was painted in thin white lines. Prancing skeletons of men and horses, dragons and dogs. Bare trees with what looked like eyes. Thasha shifted the bottle to her right hand and gazed at her left. It felt rather cold.

‘Thasha,’ said Marila, ‘do you know what you’re holding?’

She turned her head with effort; her thoughts felt strangely slow. ‘Do you?’ she asked.

Marila hesitated. ‘Put it back,’ she said.

‘Back inside the post?’ said Neeps. ‘That’s plain crackers. What if she can’t get it out again? Marila, tell us what you know.’

‘Nothing, nothing, so put it back!’

‘Marila,’ said Pazel reluctantly, ‘don’t get mad, but you’re a terrible liar.’

‘That’s because I’m honest.’ Marila’s hands were in fists. Then she saw their baffled looks and the fight went out of her. She sighed. ‘I think I know what’s in the bottle. Felthrup was reading the Polylex, or talking about what he’d read. It was wine.’

‘Wine?’ said Thasha.

‘Yes,’ said Ramachni, ‘wine.’

The tarboys jumped. The mage stood there in the disordered gloom, with Felthrup squirming beside him. No one had heard them approach.

‘The wine of Agaroth, to be precise,’ said Ramachni. ‘Now there is something I never thought to lay eyes on again, or hoped to. Be careful, Thasha: you are holding a relic more ancient than the Nilstone itself.’

‘It feels sturdy enough,’ she said.

‘That is not what I meant,’ said the mage. ‘A spell is at work here. I cannot quite sniff it out, but it is a dangerous charm, perhaps even deadly. I think you feel it already, Thasha. And there is another matter: be careful how long you hold that bottle without shifting your hand, and warming it. Those figures were painted by the dead.’

Most of the tarboys turned and ran for the compartment door. But Felthrup was overjoyed. ‘We are saved, we are saved! It is right there in the Polylex! The wine of Agaroth takes away all fear — and fear alone makes the Nilstone deadly to the touch! One gulp of that wine, and the Fell Princes could hold it in their naked hand.’

‘Like Arunis’ idiot, in the Infernal Forest,’ said Pazel.

‘If you like,’ said Ramachni. ‘Both knew freedom from fear: the idiot through total madness, the Fell Princes through the taste of this wine. But I do not think the wine’s effect lasted long. No tales speak of the princes marching to war with the Nilstone in one hand and a bottle in the other. But drink they did, and wield the Nilstone they did — briefly, and to evil purpose. In the end they turned orgiastic, and gulped the wine like fiends. I never imagined that any bottle survived in Alifros.’

Thasha’s right hand was cold. She shifted the bottle to the crook of her arm. Brought here from death’s border, she thought. Who could do such a thing? Who could even dream of trying?

But inside her the wheels were turning faster and faster, and the answer came: I could.

Thirty minutes later she was on the quarterdeck with the bottle in hand. Ramachni and Hercol stood with her, the latter holding a canvas sack. Behind them, at the wheel, stood Captain Fiffengurt. Lady Oggosk had somehow argued her way onto the quarterdeck as well. The witch stood apart from the others, dressed in mourning black. It was the first time Thasha had seen her.

At Thasha’s feet lay the Nilstone, in the steel box Big Skip had fashioned for it in Ularamyth. Hundreds watched them from the topdeck below. Between the crowd and the quarterdeck ladder stood forty armoured Turachs armed with spears. Haddismal’s precaution, and a good one: if any man aboard were seized by evil thoughts, or evil spirits, or plain madness, he would have no hope of reaching the Nilstone today.

‘Right, Lady Thasha,’ said Fiffengurt. ‘Both anchors secured; we’re Roating free. The tide’s not with us, but somehow I think that’s the least of our troubles.’

He trained his good eye at the cliffs, where the drachnars were waiting, quite openly now, for any move by the Chathrand to flee the bay. A hundred more waded along the north shore, gripping enormous logs in their trunks.

Thasha looked down at the deck. Every friend left alive was watching her. Pazel made himself smile at her for an instant; Neeps and Marila wore looks of deep concern. In Marila’s arms, Felthrup gazed at Thasha and never seemed to blink.

‘Go on, Hercol,’ said Thasha.

With a last look at Thasha, Hercol crouched beside the Nilstone. First he laid a hammer and chisel on the deck. Then he removed a key from the sack and unlocked Big Skip’s box. Reaching into the bag once more, he removed a pair of fine metal gauntlets and slipped them on. Next he gripped the steel box in both hands and twisted. His muscles strained. The box split in two.

Boom. The plum-sized sphere of glass fell to the deck with a sound like a dropped cannonball. Hercol stopped its rolling with his hand, then whipped the hand away and used his boot.

‘It burns,’ he said, ‘through selk glass and selk gauntlets, it still burns a little.’

‘It won’t burn me,’ said Thasha. ‘Break the glass, Hercol.’

The task was easier said than done: the selk glass was amazingly sturdy. Watching Hercol’s great overhand blows, Thasha couldn’t help but think of that other ceremony, when Arunis had assembled the crew to witness his triumph. But this time was different. They knew exactly what the Nilstone would do to anyone unlucky enough to touch it. And they were drawing on its power only to help them get rid of it. Not to annihilate the world as a proof of one’s powers, but to save it. For that reason, and that reason alone.

At last the chisel cracked the polished surface. Hercol struck again, and the crack widened. On the third blow the glass split like an eggshell, and the Nilstone slithered between the shards onto the deck.

Ramachni’s fur stood on end. Thasha had not looked plainly at the Stone since that day in the Infernal Forest, after she beheaded Arunis, when it had fallen inches from her leg. She stared into its depths. Hideous, fascinating, beautiful. Too dark for this world; so dark that its blackness would stand out within a sealed cave, a cave under miles of earth, a cave sealed for ever. Thasha had the strange idea that she could put her hand right through it, as she had with the stanchion, but that this time she would be reaching into another world. Another Alifros, maybe a better one, where deep wounds had yet to be inflicted, hard curses never cast.

Ramachni clicked his teeth.

Thasha blinked, and wrenched her gaze from the Nilstone. Beside her, Hercol too looked shaken from a dream. How many had been seduced by the Stone and its mysteries, before it killed them?

A hand touched her arm: Lady Oggosk. Hercol tensed, ready to intervene. But Oggosk merely looked at Thasha and murmured. ‘I will do this thing, if you wish.’

Thasha looked at her in amazement, and more than a little suspicion. ‘The power won’t last, you know,’ she said, ‘and it has limits. You can’t use it to bring back Captain Rose. Not even Erithusme could raise the dead.’

‘I know all that, girl!’ said Oggosk irritably. ‘But there is some danger here that we have yet to identify.’

‘She knows, Duchess,’ said Ramachni. ‘All the same this task falls to Thasha alone.’

‘Why?’ asked Oggosk. ‘I am old, wretched. I cursed my sister. And I have outlived my son — yes, my son, I have every right to claim him!’ Her old eyes flashed, as though someone might venture to object. If I fall, no matter. But her life is barely started. You don’t have to-’

‘Yes,’ said Thasha, ‘I do. Thank you, Lady Oggosk. I never dreamed you would make such an offer. But I can’t accept.’

‘For what it’s worth, I received the same answer, Duchess,’ said Hercol.

‘No one but I would be standing before the Stone, had Erithusme not been clear in her instructions,’ said Ramachni. ‘Stand aside, Duchess: the time for talk is past.’

Oggosk retreated to the wheelhouse. And Thasha, resisting the urge to look at Pazel one last time, broke the seal, uncorked the bottle, and drank.

When she tilted her head, the front of Thasha’s pale neck shone in the mid-morning sun, and the crowd below could plainly see the scars left behind by the cursed necklace, almost a year ago. A stab of old pain leaped through Pazel at the memory. But it was nothing compared to the fear he felt when Thasha lowered her head.

Her eyes were wide open, and she did not blink. She was looking past them into the distance. Pazel saw one droplet at the corner of her mouth; then her tongue snaked out and licked it away.

Her throat seized. She was fighting not to vomit. She thrust the bottle into Hercol’s grasp and fell to hands and knees, staring down at the deck. Her back arched and veins stood out livid on her arms. When she raised her head again her face was twisted, crazed.

‘Pah! The wine is poisoned! It’s going to mucking kill me!’

Eight hundred voices rose in cries. Pazel thought he would go mad. He made a run for the ladder, but the Turachs stood firm. Then Thasha shouted: ‘Get away from the quarterdeck! Get back!’

She lurched away somewhere beyond his sight, and when she appeared again the Nilstone was there in her hand. Pazel’s first thought was terrible: She looks like the Shaggat. For Thasha was unconsciously mimicking his gesture, lifting the Stone high in a single hand, as though pitting its darkness against the light of the sun.

‘Get back!’

This time the voice exploded from her, an unearthly roar that swept the length of the Chathrand. Thasha wrenched her eyes from the Nilstone and gazed left and right, studying the water, the island, the sky. The crew did fall back, leaving only the Turachs and Thasha’s closest friends looking up at the figures on the quarterdeck. The wind rose suddenly. Pazel felt a trembling in the planks beneath his feet. Thasha looked mad, and extraordinarily focused, but there was no hint of fear about her, none.

Then her eyes ceased roving, and fixed on one spot: the north shore. The thin arm of Stath Balfyr, that half-mile of forest between ocean and bay. The drachnars were pacing there in the surf.

Thasha staggered into the wheelhouse. Oggosk and Fiffengurt shrank from her, clinging to the wheel. With no purpose, no thought at all but that she was in danger, Pazel shouted her name. Thasha turned as though whipped. A convulsion racked her, so violent she almost lost her feet.

But what occurred beyond the ship was on another scale altogether. From out of nowhere came a furious wind. Timber groaned, pennants filled and strained at their tethers; the rigging shrieked as if in memory of hurricanes. On the north shore, the surf withdrew, leaving the astonished dranchnars on bare sand.

Suddenly the Chathrand rocked. The surface of the bay was undulating, as though some great submerged mass were rushing towards the shore, lifting a bow wave before it. The wave grew and grew. The drachnars saw it coming and wheeled about, fleeing for their lives. The wave struck the beach and raced up it, surging through the legs of the stampeding creatures, combing at last through the palms beyond the sand.

Thasha convulsed again, and the surge increased tenfold. It was horrific: the bay was stabbing at the island like a sword. The palms, their roots stripped bare, let go of the ground and flew like battering rams against those behind, and the wind kept growing. Through it all the mid-morning sun looked gently down.

Once more Thasha’s body shook. On Stath Balfyr there was a titanic explosion of sand, water, trees. Pazel gasped: the entire bay was shifting, and then turmoil caught up with the Chathrand and he found himself thrown, sliding with scores of others across the deck. Gods, she’s sinking us. But no, she was righting herself after all (good ship, sweet Rin what a darling) and the men locked arms like toy monkeys to save one another and Pazel was dragging himself to his feet.

The Chathrand was in motion, racing towards a huge wall of dust and sand that hung in the air over the north shore. They were not sailing; they were being hurled, leaning and pitching, helpless as a paper boat upon a stream. Pazel squinted at the oncoming wall, and perceived that a channel had been cut between the bay and the open sea: a second inlet, narrow as a village street, but widening even now.

Fiffengurt was roaring — ‘Away from the rails, away!’ — but few men saw or heard him. And suddenly the ship herself was in the channel, and there came an explosion of thumps and cracks and crashes: palm trees striking the hull. The ship careened, utterly out of control, rolling so far to starboard at one point that the torrent boiled over the rail, and Pazel looked up to see the tops of trees racing by at eye level. The deck was awash with foam, foliage, sand; and into that blinding slurry men tumbled and disappeared.

But Thasha had aimed her fury well, and before they knew it the tempest carried them out upon the sea, right through the humbled breakers, and left them revolving in an eddy that quickly died away to stillness. Away to the east stood the Promise, and to the north, the pale infernal glow of the Red Storm. Behind them, a great hole had been gouged through Stath Balfyr, like something done to a sandcastle by the heel of an angry child.

Thasha was still standing: almost an act of magic in itself. Hercol got to his feet and stumbled towards her, but before he closed half the distance she waved him off. He stopped. Thasha lowered the Nilstone, caressed its blackness thoughtfully, then set it down upon the deck.

‘That wasn’t so hard,’ she said.