The Night of the Swarm

36

The disc of stars was shrinking.

Pazel gazed up at the twinkling lights and wanted to speak to them, to offer thanks, or perhaps farewell. The Swarm’s mouth was closing, converging on all sides towards a point somewhat inland from the Arrowhead Sound. It might, he reflected, be the last starlight his world would ever see.

The sound was only slightly wider than the gigantic rock that marked its entrance. At first the dry, eroding cliffs ran parallel; then they drew much closer together, and the sound become a flooded canyon, crooked and deep. Into this strange fjord they tacked, on two masts and tattered sails. Great black birds swept over them: vultures, probably, although it was too dark to be sure. Their flapping echoed morosely between the silent cliffs.

There was no wind to speak of. Pazel looked up at the limp canvas: it seemed almost a miracle that they could move at all. But they were moving, and rather smartly. Elkstem and Fegin manned the wheel together, sweating and scrambling. The lookouts strained their eyes for rocks.

After two miles, a long, grey beach appeared under the western cliffs. Pazel squinted, then felt nausea strike him like a blow to the face. The beach was strewn with bodies: dlomic bodies, and human. Nothing moved but the carrion-birds, hundreds strong and feasting. All over the Chathrand sailors made the sign of the Tree.

Prince Olik raised his hand and pointed: a stone staircase, also strewn with bodies, wound its way up the cliff and vanished into the hills.

‘The Death’s Head came this far, searching for you,’ he said, ‘and here some of my people tried to flee. A few escaped into Gurishal, but most were driven back to this shore by the Nessarim. Macadra did not discriminate between them: she launched a terrible glass cube over the beach. It exploded, filling the sky with needles, and everyone ashore fell dead. After this Macadra dared sail no farther, but turned her vessel back to the sea.’

‘Of course she did,’ said Fiffengurt, ‘and let me say this perfectly clearly: we won’t be able to turn back, if this canyon narrows any further. There’s depth here, I’ll grant you. But a ship needs seaway too. It’s blary suicidal to be squeezing her into this sort of crack.’

‘The only act of suicide would be to hesitate, Captain,’ said Hercol, ‘though it gives me no joy to say so. Could the tides offer us no hope of escape?’

‘The tides!’ Fiffengurt gave an appalled little laugh. ‘A tidal race would carry us out to sea again, to be sure. In bits and pieces, after the rocks and cliffs had finished with us. As for the keel — well now, the keel. .’

Fiffengurt let his voice trail off. Pazel knew he must be struggling to keep his mind on higher things, despite all his instincts as a mariner, and as a man who’d served the Chathrand most of his life. Suddenly Pazel wished he could put an arm around the man’s weary shoulders. What was it doing to him, to know that his ship’s long tale was ending?

Another mile, another silent beach. There were no bodies here, but as they glided past, Kirishgan’s sharp eyes caught sight of a small black animal. It was running alongside them in the surf, trying to keep up. ‘Arpathwin!’ he cried. ‘Hurry, change! Take owl-form and fly to us!’

The black mink did not change, and was soon falling behind. Fiffengurt called for shorter sails. But as the men furled canvas, his face grew puzzled. The Chathrand did not appear to be slowing.

Thasha looked at the others in alarm. ‘I don’t think he can change at all,’ she said. ‘I think his powers are gone.’

‘Then we will bring him ourselves!’ said Bolutu. ‘Come, Prince-’

Before they could dive, however, Niriviel leaped from the rail. ‘Stay, the bird is swifter,’ said Hercol, ‘and he has carried heavier loads than one exhausted mink.’

‘Undrabust, heave the blary log,’ said Fiffengurt. ‘I could swear we’re gaining speed.’

Neeps gathered the knotted rope and threw the weighted end into the sound. Moments later he had a reading: ‘Six knots, Captain.’

Fiffengurt tugged at his beard. ‘You there, aloft!’ he cried at last. ‘Strike the mains, and the topsails also. No, by the Tree, strike all the canvas. You heard me, lads: go to.’

There was not much canvas left to strike. In short order the two surviving masts stood naked. But the Chathrand plowed on, unchanged. Like a man in a dream, Fiffengurt walked to the rail, snatched off a midshipman’s hat and flung it overboard.

‘It’s just bobbing there on the surface,’ he declared. ‘There’s no current at all. Blue devils, what’s making us move?’

‘The cargo,’ said Marila.

Everyone started. ‘How do you figure?’ asked Neeps.

Marila looked at him. ‘The way most people do. You should try it.’ To the others, she said, ‘Look at Elkstem and Fegin.’

The two sailors were barely managing to control the wheel. They looked, Pazel had to admit, rather clumsy and inept.

‘They know how to sail,’ said Marila, ‘but we’re not sailing. I’ll bet you all the gold on this ship that if they dropped the wheel we’d spin around and float backward.’

‘The Nilstone,’ said Thasha, wonder in her voice. ‘It’s in my cabin, near the stern. Marila — you think it’s pulling us?’

‘Or pushing,’ said Marila, ‘as long those two can keep us from spinning around.’

The notion was, to say the least, disconcerting. Pazel could not dismiss it, however. Just hours ago, he and Neeps had wondered what might happen to the Nilstone as they neared their goal. If Marila was right they had their answer.

Niriviel returned bearing Ramachni, and Thasha ran to him and took him in her arms. Ramachni looked gaunt and haggard, and his fur was singed, but his black eyes gleamed even here in the darkness.

‘Gently!’ he said. ‘I am spent as you have never seen me, dearest.’ He looked over the ship. ‘You have roped off the forecastle: just as well. The poison there will linger a long time.’

‘Longer than this ship has to live,’ said Niriviel. ‘I will scout ahead.’

‘I would feel better if his master were still in a cage,’ said Bolutu, as the falcon climbed into the night.

‘The clan will find him,’ said Ensyl. ‘Isn’t that right, Lord Talag?’

The old lord glanced at her and nodded briefly. His face was careworn; he had barely spoken since the death of his son. Beside him, Myett’s expression was even more distant. Her eyes were glassy; her hands hung limp at her sides. Pazel’s heart went out to her. She had expected her lover to survive his burns. It made no sense, except in the language of the heart.

Neda touched Hercol on the elbow. In the Mzithrini tongue, she said, ‘We can test Marila’s theory, Asprodel. Just put on the gauntlets and move the Nilstone to another part of the ship.’

Hercol blinked at her. ‘You’re a genius, Neda Pathkendle.’

A small crowd descended to Thasha’s cabin; Bolutu carried one of the last lamps with oil left to burn. Thasha donned the gauntlets from Ularamyth as Pazel opened the cabinet. But he could not budge the iron slab. Hercol stepped up beside him Together, muscles straining, they just managed to move it.

The Nilstone slid into the chamber. Everyone flinched and moved back a step. It had not grown, and Pazel could feel no heat or other force that he could have given a name. But he could feel its power, and its utter wrongness. Looking at it was like gazing down into a bottomless pit.

‘The slab wasn’t stuck like before,’ said Pazel. ‘The Nilstone’s gotten heavier, somehow. Much heavier.’

Thasha put her gauntleted hand on the Nilstone. ‘Credek,’ she swore, ‘I can’t move it an inch.’

‘Give me those things,’ said Hercol.

When both gauntlets covered his hands he squeezed the Nilstone between them, bent low at the knees, and lifted. He groaned with effort. Veins stood out on his neck and forearms. At last he stopped and shook his head.

‘Now we know why Erithusme made that slab as strong as a ship’s anchor.’

‘And why the stern’s riding so low,’ said Marila.

‘Can’t you make up your mind?’ said Neeps. ‘A few minutes ago you told us the Stone was pulling us deeper into the canyon. Now you say it’s pulling down.’

Again, Marila directed her reply to the others, never glancing at Neeps. ‘It’s pulling towards this “door to death’s kingdom.” Which is somewhere ahead of us and down. That’s what I think, anyway.’

‘So do I,’ said Hercol, ‘for if the Stone is truly so heavy that it can alter the balance of the Chathrand, we should not have been able to move that slab with any effort. So why could we? Because the Stone’s own forwards pull was helping us.’

Neeps was blushing. ‘Marila,’ he said, ‘you’re one smart woman.’

Marila pinned him with a glance. ‘I’m not sure about that,’ she said, and walked out of the room.

An awkward silence. Neeps, defiant and ashamed at once, could not meet anyone’s eye. ‘Let’s just get out of here,’ said Thasha at last. She left the cabin, and the others, relieved, filed after her. But at the stateroom door Pazel seized his friend by the elbow.

‘I want a word with you.’

Thasha stayed as well. Neeps looked from one to the other. ‘Save your breath,’ he said. ‘You’re not going to take my side, I can tell that already.’

‘Gods damn it, I don’t know what your side is,’ said Pazel.

‘You wouldn’t, would you?’

‘What’s that crack mean, then?’

‘It means you’re a one-note whistle,’ said Neeps. ‘You have Thasha. You don’t need anything else. You’ve got it all worked out. But then nothing’s ever mucked with your head, has it?’

‘Oh no, mate, never,’ said Pazel acidly.

‘You know what I mean!’

‘There’s no time for this,’ said Thasha. ‘Listen, Neeps, everything mucks with our heads. Living, dying, magic, hunger, falling in love, falling out of it-’

‘Who says I have? Who in the Pits do you two think you are?’

Crash.

The deck lurched, and they crashed to the floor. Howls erupted from above and below. The ship had struck, and struck badly. She was rolling, twisting on whatever rock was grinding beneath her keel. The noise! Cracking, splintering, groaning of the ancient wood. Pazel could almost feel it, like a mutilation with a dull instrument of torture.

Another lurch. The Chathrand had twisted free of the rock and righted herself. But Pazel knew what he had heard. Not damage, but a death-blow. From the lower decks men were screaming already:

‘She’s breached! She’s staved! Abandon ship, abandon ship!’

‘Marila!’ shouted Neeps. He flew from the stateroom and into the dark passageway. ‘Be careful, damn it!’ Pazel shouted, following as fast as he could.

On the Silver Stair it was pitch-black. Men were streaming upward, groping, shoving from behind. Pazel heard Mr. Teggatz sob in the darkness: ‘Lost, lost, my home is-’

Crash.

A second strike. The ladderway became a chute of bodies. Pazel was hurled backwards onto the landing, and five or six men fell atop him. Somewhere above Neeps was still shouting Marila’s name.

‘Out, out or drown!’ men were screaming. The sweaty mass of men groped upward, towards the weak starlight, the slanting deck. Many helped one another. Others trampled and fought. Pazel at last found Neeps, pushing against the tide, and shouting for Marila with rising fear.

‘Oh Gods, sweetheart-’

Pazel joined the blind search. Thasha was here as well, but all they found were more sailors, dazed and bleeding, trying to drag themselves up the ladderway. Then Hercol’s voice reached them faintly over the din.

‘It’s all right, Undrabust. She’s up here, on the topdeck. She’s unharmed.’

Pazel was glad of the darkness, for his friend’s sake. Neeps had burst into tears.

The youths crawled out through the hatch. It was very dark: the Swarm’s mouth had closed even tighter; the disc of starlight above them had shrunk. They were careening between the cliff walls, thumping over one submerged rock after another, still with remarkable speed. Most of the crew had already reached the topdeck, and were clinging for dear life to the rails, davits, hatch coaming, anything fixed and solid. The captain and Mr, Elkstem remained on the quarterdeck, but no one was at the wheel. The last vestige of control was gone.

The ship rolled, and Pazel found himself sliding back and forth like a shuffle-puck from port to starboard. He saw Lady Oggosk clinging to Thasha, wailing; Hercol with one arm hooked over a cleat and the other around Neda, who clung to him, arms about his waist. He clawed his way to where Felthrup was holding on by his teeth to the remains of a halyard, and seized him by the scruff of the neck.

‘Hold still! I’ve got you.’

Felthrup did not hold still, but he let Pazel lift him up against his chest. ‘Thank you! But you’re utterly filthy, you know, and you are bleeding from the chin. Did I ever tell you of my fondness for soda bread?’

‘Oh Felthrup, please shut up.’ Pazel flung himself over heaps of wreckage that shifted beneath his feet. The rat squirmed up to his shoulder.

‘For you I will, Pazel Pathkendle. Yes, soda bread, and the pumpkin fritters they make in Sorrophran. And higher education. I think I shall try to become a professor of history.’

‘Do that.’

‘Ah, but now you are flippant, when I am only motivated by a wish to share some last intimacies with you, before the voyage ends. And it has almost ended, Pazel. As you would know if you looked over your shoulder. In fact it is ending n-’

CRASH.

Pazel fell, and managed to curl into a ball with Felthrup at the centre. He rolled wildly across the deck, alongside countless others. This third collision was not like the first two. It was soft, but massive, affecting the whole ship at once. Pazel came to rest on the stomach of one of the augrongs, who was in turn sprawled atop his brother, who was flat against the wall of Rose’s cabin. A few feet away Neeps lay holding Marila, like a man who would never let go.

For an instant no one moved on the Chathrand. Then out of the pile of bodies, Sandor Ott rose and dusted himself off ‘Well, traitors,’ he said cheerfully, ‘welcome to Gurishal.’

It was a narrow beach, filling the canyon wall to wall, as the sea had done up to this point. The ship lay wrecked with massive dignity, leaning only slightly to starboard, not fifty feet from shore.

Pazel stood in the shallows with his hand on the hull, watching the evacuation. Four accordion-ladders snaked down to the water’s edge, and the midship portal, sealed since Bramian, had been thrown open. Sailors were leaping into the water, splashing and sputtering; the frail and the wounded crossed the fifty feet on makeshift rafts. When they touched ground, the Arqualis knelt and kissed it, intoning the ritual words:

‘Hail Cora, Proud and Beautiful. Hail Cora, Earth-Goddess, embracing us at journey’s end. Hail, hail. .’

Sergeant Haddismal had taken it upon himself to save at least part of the Imperial treasure. The Turachs laboured by candlelight, prying open boards in the inner hull, wrenching out thin iron cabinets, hauling them jingling ashore. Sandor Ott, leaning against the mainmast, watched him through narrowed eyes.

There was moonlight, now: a pale search-beam through that last, closing aperture of the Swarm. By its glow they could see that the beach climbed into dunes, and the dunes in turn gave way to small, rugged trees. But the selk could see farther.

‘The cliff walls draw very close together, about a mile from where we stand,’ said Kirishgan, ‘and between them, a vast wall rises, sealing off the canyon. It is sheer and mighty, like a cliff unto itself. But there is a staircase carved into the cliff on one side. Or rather, many staircases, one above another.’

‘Twenty, by my count,’ said NN. ‘They climb all the way to the top of the wall. And above the wall one may scramble up the bare mountain to a high table-land. There are meadows in that place, and a gentleness to the earth.’

‘Twenty staircases?’ said Pazel. It was not much, beside all that they had come through to reach this place. But just now it felt like a death-sentence.

‘And long, each one of them,’ said Nolcindar. ‘I think this wall is the work of the First People.’

‘First at what?’ asked Fiffengurt.

‘She means the Auru, Captain,’ said Ramachni, ‘who built the tower at whose foot we killed Arunis, and who stood guard for centuries wherever the River of Shadows surfaced in this world. That wall is no surprise. Indeed it would be strange if they had not built some edifice on Gurishal.’

‘And if Dri had it right, death’s kingdom is entered by an abyss, somewhere beyond that wall,’ said Hercol.

Nolcindar raised her sapphire eyes. ‘The falcon returns,’ she said.

At her words, Sandor Ott started to his feet. He had been sitting apart from everyone, refusing to help with the evacuation, or to take part in any discussion of their next move. They had killed the Shaggat, and with it his savage dream. Their cause be damned, he’d said. He would not end his life aiding traitors to the Crown.

Ott raised his eyes. He’d wrapped one arm in sailcloth, and Pazel had thought him wounded there. Now he knew better: the thick cloth was to serve as his falcon-glove. Niriviel was his last, loyal servant, and he had yet to see the bird since his escape from the brig. From the darkness, the bird gave a shrill, fierce cry.

Ott lifted his arm and cried out, ‘Niriviel, my champion!’

The bird swooped past him, alighting on the sand near Hercol. Ott turned and gaped. He looked like a man whose child had just left him to die.

‘We are in the right place,’ Niriviel said to the others. ‘Our goal lies straight ahead.’

‘Our goal?’ cried Sandor Ott.

The falcon trained one eye on the spymaster. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘ours. All my life I let you guide me, Master. But your teachings were selfish, and your conspiracies have brought us only death. I would face death clothed in something better than your lies.’

‘I created you.’

‘You caged me,’ said Niriviel, ‘first in body, then in mind.’

Ott was shaking with fury. ‘Service to one’s rightful lord is no cage. And I am your lord, Nirviel. I speak for Arqual. I act by writ of His Supremacy.’

The bird gazed at him in silence. ‘That is nothing to me any longer,’ he said at last. ‘I renounce you, old man.’

He turned back to the others. ‘I saw it,’ he said. ‘A black funnel sloping down into the earth, with a pit of darkness at its heart no light will ever pierce, and a river vanishing into it, like a trickle of rain down the side of a well.’

‘Thank all the Gods,’ said Prince Olik.

‘Do not thank them,’ said the bird. ‘You will never reach that abyss. It lies beyond the wall at the top of those long stairs. Fifty miles beyond, at the minimum.’

A horrified silence fell: once more the specter of defeat stood among them. ‘The canyon runs on beyond the wall,’ said Niriviel, ‘but there is no path, nor even level ground. There are only endless rocks, crevasses, slides and scrambles. You will not reach it in one day, or three.’

‘Well, let’s blary try,’ said Neeps. ‘There’ll be daylight soon enough. Maybe we have longer than we think‘

Hercol shook his head. ‘Look at the Swarm, Undrabust. In the last six hours, the gap above us has shrunk by half. We might have another six hours, perhaps even eight. But we do not have days.’

‘And to judge by the way our stern was wallowing,’ added Fiffengurt, ‘that blary Stone weighs more than all the cannon on the ship put together. How are we to carry it up those stairs, let alone over fifty pathless miles?’

Despite himself Pazel glanced at Ramachni. ‘No, Pazel,’ said the mage, ‘I have tapped the wellspring of my power until the water turned to salt, and then I tapped again, and yet again. There is not even salt water now. It may well be a year or two before I can so much as change the colour of my eyes.’

This is why Erithusme believed we’d fail without her, Pazel thought. This is why Thasha’s got to come through.

Bolutu started at a sudden thought. ‘Pazel, your power is not all gone. You still have a Master-Word.’

‘Right, and some of us have wolf-shaped scars,’ said Pazel, ‘but what does that matter now, Bolutu? Dri and Rose are dead. There was a moment when those scars could have given us the answer, but the moment’s come and gone. It’s the same with my Master-Word: I missed the chance, somehow. If the chance ever came.’

‘You don’t know that,’ said Neeps.

‘Fine, mate,’ said Pazel. ‘The last word is one that blinds to give new sight. Go on, tell me who I’m supposed to blind, and what mucking good it will do.’

‘What about that magic clock of yours, then?’ said Fiffengurt. ‘Ain’t there nobody on the other side you could call on, Ramachni?’

‘If I could summon such help, would I not have done so already?’ said Ramachni. ‘There is no one left, Captain Fiffengurt. We are alone.’

‘Then we’ve had it,’ said the tarboy Saroo, from the edge of the circle. ‘Face facts, why don’t you? This is where we make peace with our Gods, and commend ourselves to their care.’

‘You sound like a fool,’ snapped his brother Swift. ‘And anyway, just yesterday you said that the Gods don’t exist.’

‘They exist, all right,’ said Marila. ‘At least the Night Gods do. Arunis made a deal with them, remember?’

Thasha looked up at the black lips of the Swarm, so close above them now, closing in from all sides. ‘The Night Gods,’ she said. ‘They’re coming, aren’t they?’

‘Lower your gaze, Thasha Isiq,’ said Ramachni. ‘And hear me, all of you: however else we spend the time that remains to us, we will not spend it fighting one another. We have six hours. Let us plumb our minds and hearts for an answer. We are not defeated yet.’

Her spine was cracked, her hull giving way, her seaworthiness ended after six hundred years, but the Chathrand still had a duty officer committed to ringing the hour. Whoever it was gave the old bell two strikes. One hour had slipped away already.

It was very cold, now: frost was spreading lacework fingers over porthole glass. The moon had set, but dawn had not yet come. Most of the crew had gone ashore. Pazel had heard more than one man say he preferred to die anywhere but on that ship. Thasha, however, had boarded her again, and Pazel had followed. If he was to die he would do it beside her — even if, as it seemed now, she was barely aware of his presence.

For her old distance had suddenly returned. He had watched it come over her, there on the beach, when Ramachni said with finality that there was no help he could give. Pazel knew he should feel for her: she thought the world was perishing on her account, through some moral cavity in her heart, some perverse defeat it meant to deliver to Erithusme. But that absent look made him furious. He wanted to strike her, cause her pain until she noticed him, until her eyes moved to his with recognition. He couldn’t bear the thought that when the end came she might glance at him for the last time with the indifference of a stranger.

They were crossing the lower gun deck, rounding the cold galley (where Teggatz still worked by candlelight, banging pots and blubbering), tripping over wreckage, over bodies, smelling deathsmoke in corners where addicts had gathered, waiting for the end.

‘Where are we going?’ he demanded.

He had to repeat the question twice before she deigned to answer. ‘I don’t know about you,’ she said. ‘I’m going to sickbay.’

‘What for?’

‘Chadfallow’s papers. That table he made, to help him find the Green Door.’

‘Thasha!’

‘I’m going to let Macadra out. She thinks she can use the Stone: who are we to say she’s wrong?’

‘Don’t be a mucking fool. She’s a lunatic. She won’t use its power just to toss it away. And she can’t use it to fight off the Swarm. Ramachni said so. Pitfire, Erithusme told me that herself. Anyway, Chadfallow’s papers aren’t in sickbay anymore. Felthrup wanted them. I brought them back to the stateroom.’

Thasha turned so suddenly that they collided. She shoved past him. He turned to follow.

‘Let’s go back to the others,’ he pleaded, ‘maybe Hercol has thought of something.’

‘We’d know. There’d be shouting.’ Thasha stalked on, not looking back.

They passed out of the compartment, around the entrance to the Silver Stair and down the long corridor. Dust and soot coated the magic wall, rendering it visible. Thasha stepped through it and turned to him. The dirt had come off on her face and clothes, leaving a vaguely Thasha-shaped window through which they faced each other.

‘Macadra’s our last hope,’ said Thasha. ‘Sometimes lunatics come to their senses, when things get dark enough. Look at Rose, for instance.’

‘Sometimes the darkness just makes them crazier. Look at Ott.’

‘Do you have a better idea? Do you have any ideas at all?’

His cold breath fogged the wall between them. ‘No,’ he admitted, ‘not yet.’

‘Then you can’t come in.’

‘What?’

She turned away, marching for the stateroom door. He moved to follow — and for the first time in almost a year, the wall stopped him dead. It answered to her even now. She had withdrawn her permission; she was shutting him out.

‘Don’t do it,’ he heard himself say. ‘Don’t leave me before we die. Neeps is right, Thasha, I am a one-note whistle. Nothing matters to me anymore but being with you.’

She stopped with her hand on the doorknob. She turned and struck the passage wall with her fist. She was weeping. He called to her, begging, and the third time he did so her shoulder slumped, and the wall let him through. He ran to her and tried her tears away.

‘Stop it,’ she said.

‘Why?’

Thasha shook her head. When he touched her hair again she started, then took his hand and dragged him brutally into the stateroom and kicked the door shut. She put her hands beneath his clothes, kissed him wildly, avoiding his eyes. She pressed her body against his own.

‘What are you doing?’ he said, appalled.

‘Make love to me.’

‘Thasha, stop. What in the Pits is wrong with you?’

She tripped him, threw him down upon the floor. In Pazel’s mind instinct took over, and he pulled her down with him as he fell. They grappled, smashing against the admiral’s reading chair, the samovar, the tea-table from which he’d snatched a piece of cake on his first visit to the stateroom. The time he’d nearly walked out of her life. He did not know if this was a real fight or something else altogether, if she was angry or aroused. Whatever it was, he didn’t want it: not this way. He stopped resisting, letting her win. Glaring, she pinned his back to the floor.

‘You still don’t trust me,’ he said. ‘After everything, you’re still not sure I’m on your side.’

‘What mucking rubbish.’

‘If you trusted me, you’d just tell me what was wrong.’

Thasha’s slapped the floor beside his head. ‘Would I? Would that help? Will anything help us now?’

‘You’re giving up?’

‘I’m going to pick up the Stone myself. Erithusme created me. She made my mother conceive. It won’t kill me as fast as it kills other people. I might have a minute or two.’

‘Oh, Thasha-’

‘But you have to stay away. If you’re there I won’t be able to make myself do it.’

‘It took you five minutes to get the ship out of the bay at Stath Balfyr, with that wine in your stomach. And you only had to move the ship a mile.’

‘I know that, bastard. I was there.’

Then the words began to spill from her, a wild, almost delirious plan for moving the Nilstone down that canyon, an idea so ludicrous it made him ache to hear the desperate hope she placed in it; a fantasy, a dream.

‘In two minutes?’ he said.

‘Maybe I’ll have longer. I could fight the Stone. Fight back.’

‘Do you think you can do it, Thasha? Just tell me the simple truth.’

Her eyes were furious. She was going to hit him, bite him, burn him with her hate. She laid her head down on his shoulder. One hand found his cheek and rested there, gently. It grew quiet. He could hear the waves breaking softly against the stern.

‘No,’ she said.

He put his arms around her, and they both lay still. Through the tilted windows he could see the Swarm boiling out towards the horizon, growing before his eyes.

‘In the mountains,’ she said, ‘when you lifted Bolutu’s pack by the cliff, I didn’t think you were going to throw it over the edge. I thought you were going to jump.’

‘I considered it,’ he said. ‘That bastard with the Plazic Knife might have had a harder time lifting me and the Stone together.’

Thasha began to cry — not hysterically, this time, but with a deep, despairing release. ‘I wanted to stop you,’ she said. ‘I reached deep into my mind and called to her, begged her to break down the wall and stop you. I gave her my blessing, my permission. And nothing happened. Even to save your life I couldn’t bring Erithusme back. That’s when I knew I never would.’

‘You will,’ he said, ‘somehow.’

‘The wall’s too strong, Pazel. I take a hammer to it in my dreams. There’s a crack, but it closes before I can lift the hammer again. It heals stronger than before.’

‘What’s it made of?’

‘Stone. Steel. Diamond.’

He shook his head. ‘Thasha, what is it made of?’

She fell silent, her hand still resting on his face. At last she said, ‘Greed. My greed, for a life of my own. No matter what Erithusme told you there’s a part of me that thinks I’ll die when she returns. The woken part of me is brave enough to face that. But there’s another part I can’t control, and it takes over. Every time. Once in a while I just throw myself at the wall like a madwoman, and Erithusme feels it, and does the same on the other side, raging and smashing, and I start to think we might just do it, might just tear the wall to pieces. That’s when the other part of me begins crying out, crying out, and it doesn’t stop until every crack is sealed.’

‘Crying out to whom?’

Thasha froze, as if deeply shocked by the question. ‘Who do you mucking think?’ she said.

Her tears grew stronger, racking her body. The loyal officer struck three bells. Pazel held her tighter, heartbroken and deeply afraid. Was he supposed to save her, sacrifice her? Was there any reason to keep trying, to torture her with hope in these final, blessed moments before the end?

As he lay there facing the ceiling, blinking his own tears from his eyes, Pazel felt something small tickle the back of his neck. He shifted his gaze and saw a hint of blue and gold. Thasha’s Blessing-Band. The embroidered ribbon from the Lorg School, meant for the wedding ceremony on Simja. He lifted it: the silk was partly torn, but he could still read the ambiguous words: YE DEPART FOR A WORLD UNKNOWN, AND LOVE ALONE SHALL KEEP THEE

Within him, something changed. Thasha felt it. Still weeping uncontrollably, she moved her hand to his face, probing.

‘What happened?’ she said. ‘Have you started hating me?’

‘Oh, Thasha-’

‘You don’t have to hide it. I wouldn’t. I’d tell you the truth.’

Then he told her to stop crying, kissed her hand, her hair, and promised her he wasn’t crazy, that he loved her now and had done so since the day she first pinned him to the floor in the adjoining cabin, that they must get up and call the others together, that they must hurry, because at long last he knew.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘It is cruel.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘What is it, a campfire?’

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

‘Now I’ll make love to you,’ he said.

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

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

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

‘It will last, though, won’t it?’

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

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

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

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

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

‘Towards the Chathrand?’

‘That’ll do.’

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

‘It can’t be what she has in mind.’

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

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

‘Don’t promise me that, Thasha.’

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

‘Trust feels good,’ she said.

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

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

He watched her walk away onto the open sand.

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

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

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

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

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

Pazel stared at her.

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

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

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

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

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

‘Where and when, pray?’

‘A few months ago, in-’

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

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

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

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

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

‘She thought of this plan? The girl?’

‘Why do you find that so strange?’

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

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

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

‘It’s because I love her,’ he said.

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

He nodded.

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

‘Something you can’t understand.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fourteen staircases. A tremor shook the earth.

Pitfire. Pitfire. I’m too late.

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

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

Then the Arrowhead fell.

‘Oh credek, no!’

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

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

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

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

‘Get up you damned fool!’

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Thank you,’ he said at last.

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

‘Woolgathering.’

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

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

‘Neda!’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Disconcerted, Marila went back and sat beside Neeps. They were talking about Thasha, speculating on her fate. Pazel moved past Bolutu and Prince Olik, who nodded at him distantly. When he crouched in front of Felthrup, the mastiffs growled.

‘Hush, you boisterous brutes!’ said Felthrup. ‘Never mind them, sir. They’re a bit uneasy around strangers, but they will do you no harm.’

‘Look what I found in my pocket,’ said Hercol. On his palm lay the ivory whale Pazel’s mother had given him so long ago. ‘Rin knows where it came from,’ said Hercol, ‘or why it especially caught my eye. You want it, Neda Phoenix-Flame?’

Pazel climbed a little higher and sat on a rock. They had their arms around each other. They were tending the wounded, wiping away tears, wondering aloud how soon the Nighthawk would come for them, and what would happen next. Even laughing, just a little. They were starting to allow themselves to imagine their lives going on. It was a conversation in which he played no part.

An hour passed, and the survivors of the voyage began a careful descent. ‘You there, lad!’ Hercol called to him. ‘I don’t know your story, or how you came to be aboard. But never mind that. You’re alive, and the world is new. Get up, come along with us. This is still a dangerous island. You don’t want to stay here alone.’

‘I’ll be right behind you,’ Pazel heard himself say.

It was a lie, of course. He wasn’t going to move. As for being alone, that was something he’d be getting used to.

A slight sound: he turned and saw Ramachni seated beside him, gazing as he was at the canyon, the water still draining backwards into the sea.

‘Not all forms of blindness endure, my lad,’ he said.

‘You know me?’

‘I know you, curiously enough. Perhaps because I was the one who gave you the Master-Words to begin with, or perhaps because I am a mage. But there is a certain flavour to permanent transformation, and another to the temporary sort. This is the latter. They will remember you, in time.’

‘How long? Days?’

‘Longer, I think.’

‘Months? Years?’

Ramachni gazed at him quietly. ‘I don’t know, Pazel. But I can tell you this: Erithusme, and Thasha within her, left the world aboard the Chathrand. My mistress called out to me in the mind-speech as she passed. And her last words were these: Tell him my promise stands.’

Pazel caught his breath. ‘What does that mean? Her promise to return Thasha’s body, to let her live?’

‘Unless she made you some other.’

‘But how can she keep that promise now?’

Ramachni turned and looked towards the abyss. ‘By passing through death’s kingdom, and out the other side. Erithusme has the strength to attempt such a journey, but it will not be an easy one, or short. Thasha’s soul will be protected, in that back chamber of the mind where Erithusme dwelt so long. She will not age, or suffer any harm.’

Deep in Pazel’s chest a spark flared up. It had almost been extinguished, but he thought he might just keep it burning now.

‘You must temper your hopes,’ said Ramachni. ‘Like other portals you have passed through-the River of Shadows, the Red Storm — any return from the land of the dead runs the risk of metamorphosis. If you find her again, she may have taken a different shape, a different name. She may be older than you, or have stayed frozen in time while you yourself have aged.’

‘I don’t care. I don’t care at all.’

Ramachni leaped up into his lap, and rested his chin on Pazel’s knee. ‘But you do care, Pazel Pathkendle, and that has made all the difference, in the end.’