The Night of the Swarm

4

12 Modobrin 941

241st day from Etherhorde

The raft did not inspire confidence. The party stood around it, staring; none of them could quite believe what they had built. ‘It looks like a pig’s stomach tied to a loom,’ said Neeps.

‘Your imagination does you credit,’ said Bolutu.

‘It is sturdy enough,’ said Hercol, ‘but I dare say it will be like no float any of us has ever taken.’

‘I don’t like it,’ said Dastu, probing the raft with his foot.

‘What would you like?’ Pazel asked him. ‘In case you haven’t noticed, we don’t have a highway to follow.’

‘Or wings to fly,’ said Ensyl, gazing upwards.

Thasha felt a stab of grief. It was about this time yesterday that Myett had been taken. Pazel had slept through the tragedy, but Thasha had seen Ensyl leap up as though stabbed, hearing what they could not: a fellow ixchel’s cry. Looking skyward, they had all seen the bird of prey, fighting in midair with something gripped in its talons, before beating a swift path to the south. They had raced up the stairs, crying Myett’s name. Ensyl had continued far up the ruined wall, her shouts and wails so eerily silent to human ears. She had come back stone-faced. ‘We are thirteen now,’ she’d said.

Of course Dastu had a point about the raft. It was a freakish thing. Its body was a huge bladder-mushroom, a tendril-fringed bag some fifteen feet in diameter. Half the party had ventured into the forest in search of such a fungus, Ramachni lighting the way, one last time, with fireflies. Thasha had joined the search: loath as she was to set foot in that hot, dripping hell, the thought of waiting for others to return from it was worse.

And light made all the difference. Beneath the bright canopy of insects the forest had mostly shrunk from them, closed its petals and pores. The flesh-eating trees withdrew their tentacles; the lamprey-mouthed fungi turned away. What could replace the fireflies, once the journey resumed?

It had taken hours to locate a bladder of the right size, and immense care to drain it from a single incision and cut it free of the ground. Even emptied, the thing was heavy, like a great rubbery hide. They slogged back to the clearing with it draped on their shoulders. When they arrived it was well past sundown. A fire burned in the clearing, with two geese roasting on spits, and when she tasted the sizzling meat Thasha groaned with pleasure.

‘I am telling you, no?’ said Neda, catching Thasha’s eye. ‘My master is best to kill with a stone. He is hitting anything, whatever you want.’

There were a handful of young pines in the clearing; those who had remained behind had felled and stripped them already. When dawn came, they had notched the soft wood with swords, tied them into a square frame with the vines that boiled at the forest’s edge, and woven a net of these same vines on which to rest the giant bladder. Then everyone had helped to stuff the bladder like a cushion, with anything that would float: dry grass, hollow reeds, a spongy moss that grew on the ruin’s north face. At last, using Ensyl’s sword like a sewing needle, they had stitched the incision shut as best they could.

‘It should carry us as far as the forest’s edge,’ said Hercol, ‘provided we keep that hole above the water line.’

The sun was by now almost straight overhead. They ate a hurried meal of cold goose. Then Ensyl brought something from among the stones, and Thasha felt the ache again, worse than before. It was a rough pine carving of a woman, standing straight, arms raised high like a child who expects to be lifted in its mother’s arms.

‘Farewell, sister, honour-keeper, brave daughter of the clan,’ she said, bending her voice so the others could hear her. Then, methodically, she broke the statue into twenty-seven pieces, and wrapped each one in a bit of cloth. Everyone but Dastu had contributed a scrap or two from their clothing. Ensyl gave the parcels to the stream one by one, and Thasha blinked back tears. If Myett had died among them, it would have been parts of her body in those little shrouds. Thasha had witnessed it before, this grisly rite, an assurance that no trace of the dead could ever be found by humans, and thus endanger the clan. Even funerals were part of the ixchels’ struggle to survive.

The ceremony over, Hercol brought out the sack containing the Nilstone (another sort of death-parcel), and tied it firmly near the centre of the raft. Ramachni circled it once, his black fur raised. Then he turned and looked at the others.

‘The sorcerer’s reek is still about the Nilstone,’ he said. ‘Stay as far from the sack as you can. If anyone should reach for it, we must assume his mind is under siege, and stop him by force.’

‘To do so would be simple mercy,’ said Hercol. ‘Four men on the Chathrand touched the Stone, and four men’s bodies withered like leaves in a fire. Come, it is time we left this place.’

Together they dragged the raft into the shallows. Hercol and Vispek held the frame as the others scrambled aboard. The raft heaved and shifted, but it bore their weight. They spun away from the clearing, pushing off with long poles, and Thasha felt the current gather them into its arms.

Big Skip laughed aloud. ‘We’re ridin’ a blary jellyfish,’ he said. ‘By the Tree, I hope I live just to hear what people say when we tell ’em.’

‘They’ll say we are liars,’ said Bolutu.

‘Be still, now,’ said Ramachni. ‘We are above the very spot where the River of Shadows roars up most powerfully into the Ansyndra. The blend of shadow and water is very thin here. If we do not sink in these first minutes we may have hope for the rest of the journey.’

They brushed the side of the tower where it jutted out into the stream. ‘We are sinking!’ cried Ensyl. And it was true that the raft was suddenly very low, ripples and wavelets lapping over the frame.

‘Spread out! Lie flat!’ Ramachni hissed, and they hurried to obey. The raft was teetering, one side and then another vanishing beneath the surface. Thasha lay on her stomach, half submerged, watching the river slosh around the crude surgical scar in the middle of the raft. She prayed, a reflex. The water black and chilling. They knocked along the tower wall, spinning like a leaf, then gyred out into the swifter current.

No one was laughing now. Thasha was dizzy and cold. She sensed a frightful nothingness below her, as though an endless black cavern waited for her there, lightless and roaring with wind; and this river surface, delicate as a soap bubble, was all that held them above its maw.

They sank lower still, clinging to the frame and to one another. The craft was all but submerged; the hole was like a pair of sealed lips just inches above the water. Helpless, Thasha watched the first surge of water pass over it. There were oaths. A second surge followed. Air bubbled around the wound.

And then, by the Blessed Tree, it stopped. The raft held steady, and — was she imagining it? — even began to rise. Thasha glanced at Ramachni, wondering if he had cast a spell after all. They rose higher, and picked up speed. ‘We’re out of it, aren’t we?’ said Pazel.

‘The worst of it, yes,’ said Ramachni. ‘Almost pure shadow lay beneath us for a moment. It was there that the Swarm of Night burst forth into Alifros, when our enemy called it yesterday. The further we drift from that spot, the thinner the darkness beneath us — but do not be deceived. The Ansyndra will go on mixing with the River of Shadows for hundreds of miles. We must try to avoid swimming — and never, ever dive.’

They were far from shore, now. Thasha looked back but could not see the campsite, the place where they had bled and triumphed, where she had killed a mage but failed to become one herself, where Ramachni had at last been free to tell her the truth of her birth. A strange truth, an awful truth. She had thought herself the child of Erithusme; now she knew that she was the great mage, one soul shared between them: Erithusme’s soul. The wizardess had sparked life in the sterile womb of Thasha’s mother, but not as an act of kindness. She had needed a hiding place, as her enemies closed in. She had bricked up her memories and magic behind a wall in the back of the unborn child’s mind. Out of everyone’s reach, even the girl herself. For seventeen years Thasha had lived in ignorance of that wall and the force behind it.

And now she had to let it out. Ramachni had told Pazel that they could not win otherwise. In fact Ramachni had believed that his mistress had already returned, after Thasha beheaded Arunis. But it was Thasha who had done that killing, not Erithusme. Arunis’ head had told the truth: Erithusme could not return. The wizardess might have dismantled her own wall, but the young girl had built another. No one knew how or why, least of all Thasha herself. She only knew that it had to be broken.

‘The current is swift,’ said Hercol. ‘Very soon we must face the darkness again.’

Thasha gazed ahead, where the vast trees arched out over the river, their thick leaves fusing together, shutting out all light. She felt Pazel’s hand on her own and gripped it fiercely, caught his eye and saw the love there, and marvelled. How he steadied her. The things he did without speaking a word.

‘Listen, now, for I have a solution of sorts,’ said Ramachni. ‘There is a light peculiar to this forest, produced by the plants and mushrooms themselves. Your eyes cannot perceive it, but mine can. I can share my vision — but with no more than two of you at a time. We must defend the raft, three at a time. Come here, Thasha and Neeps; you shall be the first.’

‘Why the boy?’ said Cayer Vispek. ‘He is brave-hearted, but new to the warrior’s arts.’

‘Trust his choices, Cayer,’ said Hercol.

Thasha and Neeps crept close to Ramachni. ‘Shut your eyes, and cover them as well,’ he said.

Thasha obeyed. A moment later Neeps gave a yelp of pain. ‘Keep your hands in place, Neeparvasi Undrabust!’ snapped Ramachni. ‘Do not move until I speak!’

Thasha was shocked; Ramachni had never snapped at anyone before. His paw touched her chin, lingered there a moment, withdrew. Thasha waited. ‘I don’t feel a thing,’ she said at last.

‘That is because you listen to your betters,’ said Ramachni. ‘Lunja, come closer. If this knave has not seared his eyes with daylight, you must lend him your sword.’

They were back in the forest: Thasha could feel its hot, moist breath on her skin. The noise of the river grew, as though it were echoing in a cave. ‘Keep your eyes covered,’ said Ramachni, ‘until we round the first bend, and the clearing is gone from sight. Not long now-’

Such heat! Already Thasha longed to splash water on her face. But when at last the mage told them to uncover their eyes she forgot everything but the message of her eyes.

A purple radiance, a kaleidoscope of melting images and hues, flooded her vision. She stretched out her arms and could not see them. She blinked, and the radiance moved. Slowly the kaleidoscope began to settle, the colours to sharpen and divide. There were her hands, two flickering lights. Here was the raft, a spinning pool of jade, and her friends like burning spirits upon it. And the forest, Aya Rin! Endless, vast pillars of tree trunks, supporting the distant roof of joined leaves, in which veins burned like hot wires, and eye-stabbing colours flashed like wormy lightning and were gone.

Along the banks, the riot of mushrooms overwhelmed her: they bled colour and form in such profusion that she simply had to look away. The river itself had become a thing of glass, revealing a second forest of water-weed and knobby coral-like growths beneath their feet. Some reached to within a few yards of the surface; in other places the lights flickered from startling depths. There were fish like tiny particles of fire, fish as large as sharks with glowing gills, fish that resembled arrows, hatchet-heads, stingrays, moths. And under everything ran veins of darkness, pulsing, impenetrable, but thinning like ink as they rose. Thasha shuddered: those were the depths she had sensed at the beginning, when they had almost sunk. Veins of shadow from the River of Shadows. The blood of another universe, leaking into their own.

‘Well, I’m not blind,’ said Neeps, ‘but Rin’s gizzard, Ramachni: wouldn’t it have been easier to light some magic lamp, if you can’t bring back the fireflies?’

‘Savant!’ said Ramachni. ‘Thank heaven we brought you along.’ Then, more gently, he added, ‘I considered it, lad. And of course I could produce such light at need. But a mage-lamp bright enough to pierce this River’s depths would make us visible for miles about. It would also take more from me than sharing my vision. I prefer to do as much as possible with as little as possible, for now.’

Thasha felt a nervous tightening of her limbs. He’s been drained. He gave all his strength fighting Arunis, keeping us alive.

But Ramachni, as if reading her thoughts, added, ‘My powers are far from spent — but we are far from our goal as well. And no rest in this world will allow me further magic than what I harbour within me now. Do you remember when I spoke of carrying water across the desert, Neeparvasi?’ He sighed. ‘There is a final desert before us. My powers must see us across it, to the place where our work is done at last.’

‘And then you’ll return to your own world, and recover,’ said Pazel. ‘Won’t you?’

The little mage did not answer. Thasha’s fear redoubled. He came back through this River, but he can’t go home without my clock. He’s trapped here, unless we somehow make it back to the ship.

Then she recalled the first time she had seen Ramachni drained of magic, in Simja, after their first great fight with Arunis. He had warned them that he had no choice but to leave. If I do not go while I have the strength to walk away, I shall still depart, by burning out like a candle.

He wasn’t risking exile by standing with them now. He was risking death.

The three of them took up positions at the edges of the raft. The others, perfectly blind, kept low and still. The hardest job was keeping the raft off the coral-like growths and fallen tree limbs. They loomed up suddenly, and Thasha and Neeps had to scramble to pole the raft left or right. ‘Faster!’ Ramachni chided them. ‘One scratch from below and our proud ship could sink! Above all, do not lose your balance! We have no means of stopping for you — or of knowing what lurks in these waters. Thasha — on your right!’

Over and over they lunged with the poles. The light was deceptive: what they took for coral proved a surface mirage; what looked like soft weeds would resolve into a branch. There were also dangers from above: vines that stuck to them like taffy, or burned at the touch — and the groping white tentacles of the trees themselves. Neeps and Thasha hacked at them, and lengths of the tentacles fell upon the raft, still writhing, among their blind companions.

The struggle went on and on. Thasha’s head hurt and her eyes were throbbing. Tentacles snatched at them; a spiny fish leaped onto the raft and flopped about like a living pincushion; a storm of bats swept around them in a cloud. The river curved and twisted and appeared to have no end.

When Hercol and Bolutu relieved them at last, Thasha dropped beside Pazel and pulled him close. He fumbled for her, bathed her face with a river-wet rag. She put her lips to his, forced his mouth open, kissed him in hunger and exhaustion. Before the kiss was over Ramachni’s magic left her and she was blind.

She lost track of the hours. Hercol and Bolutu’s shift ended; Pazel and Cayer Vispek took their places. Thasha found being blind and motionless every bit as awful as manning the poles. Every sound became a danger. Every tilt or shudder in the raft meant they were sinking at last. But somehow the vessel bore them on, mile after lightless mile.

There were spells of calm, in the deep centre of the river where no snags threatened them, no tentacles groped. During her second shift Thasha was paired with Pazel. She watched Ramachni’s mage-sight come over him: a gasp, disorientation, finally a grin as his eyes met hers. They shared a strange privacy for a time. Thasha waited until the mage looked elsewhere, then leaned close to Pazel and mouthed I want you, and laughed when he nearly dropped the pole. After their shift Pazel sat beside her, kissed her, slipped a hand beneath her ragged shirt. Thasha laughed again and pushed his hand away. Pitfire, he’d thought she was serious.

Later she must have dozed. A hand touched her again, but it was not Pazel. It was Big Skip, shaking her by the shoulder and whispering: ‘Lady Thasha, wake up. Something’s amiss.’

She bolted upright. The raft was not moving. ‘What happened? Did we wreck?’

‘Softly!’ came Hercol’s voice. ‘We are not wrecked but beached in the shallows, and we are all of us blind. Ramachni has cancelled the seeing-spell. There was a strange sound from behind us. Like thunder, or a monstrous drum.’

‘Where has Ramachni gone?’

‘Up a tree, with Ensyl,’ said Bolutu. ‘We couldn’t talk him out of it — or very well prevent his going. Hark!’

This time she heard it: a deep rumbling, far off but furious. An eruption, or the peal of some war drum of the Gods. The sound rolled past them like a storm front. When it ended the silence was profound.

‘Closer, this time,’ whispered Bolutu.

‘What he is wanting in the tree?’ hissed Neda. ‘I think to climb is not sensitive.’

‘Sensible, lass,’ corrected Mandric.

‘The sound came from outside the forest,’ said Pazel. His voice was oddly strained. Thasha reached for him, wishing she could see his face. ‘Pazel?’ she said.

His arm trembled beneath her fingers. ‘My mind-fit’s coming,’ he said. ‘Soon, I think. And it’s going to be a bad one.’

Dastu muttered a curse. ‘Brilliant timing, Muketch,’ he added.

‘Your hearing is sharpened, then?’ asked Cayer Vispek.

‘Yes, it is,’ said Pazel. After a moment, he added, ‘Ramachni’s singing to himself, up in the tree. I think he’s weaving a spell. And that wasn’t thunder, Hercol. It was a voice.’

‘A voice,’ said Dastu, scornful. ‘You’re mad as a mudskipper, Pathkendle. What sort of voice?’

Pazel was silent for a very long time. Then he said, ‘A demon’s?’

Even as he spoke, light appeared: a stabbing red light that made them all recoil. Wincing, Thasha forced herself to look: the glow came from about a quarter-mile away, at the height of the forest roof. Already it was growing, spreading. ‘Tree of Heaven, that’s fire!’ said Mandric. ‘The mucking forest is on fire!’

‘Do not move!’ said Ramachni suddenly. Thasha heard the mage and Ensyl scrambling aboard, felt Ramachni’s sleek shoulder brush her arm. ‘Be silent, now,’ he said, ‘and whatever happens, do not leave the raft. We are in unspeakable danger.’

The light became a sharp red ring: the leaf-layer, burning outward from a central point, like dry grass around a bonfire. The fire’s glow danced on the river beneath it, and soon the red-rimmed hole was as wide as the river itself. But there it stopped. The blinding light faded, leaving only a fringe of crackling fire, and another light replaced it: pale blue and gentle. It was the Polar Candle, the little Southern moon. The fire had burned through all four leaf-layers and opened a window on a clear night sky.

Oh Gods, it’s true.

In the fiery gap a monstrous head had appeared. A hideous sight: part human, part snake, larger than the head of an elephant. Fire dripped from its jaws, dark runes were etched upon its forehead, and its eyes were two great yellow lamps. A long neck followed, snaking in through the burning hole. The lamp-eyes swung back and forth, casting the trees in a sickly radiance. When they passed over her, Thasha felt a prickling in her mind. She shuddered. Now it was Pazel’s turn to reach for her, pull her close. The lamp-eyes returned. When they touched the raft again they grew still.

Deep within Thasha’s mind, another being sensed those eyes, and reached out for them as if to feel their heat. Another being, who did not fear them as Thasha did.

No girl, not another. Your maker, your soul-sharer. The part of you that’s lost.

Beside her, Ramachni tensed, bearing his tiny teeth, flexing his claws one by one. Then the creature roared: a deafening, complex blast of noise that shook them to their bones. Beside her, Pazel’s face showed a horror unlike that of the others, and suddenly she knew that he was understanding. His Gift had given him this creature’s language; there was meaning in that awful sound.

Ramachni turned suddenly to look upstream. To Thasha’s amazement the creature did the same, breaking off its roar and turning its fell eyes away from them. It looked very much as if both mage and monster were straining to catch some far-off sound. Thasha listened but heard nothing at all.

The creature faced them once more, and spat a meteoric glob of liquid fire, which hurtled towards them with a whistling noise, tore through the low vines at the river’s edge, and exploded in the shallows thirty feet from the raft. Over the wall of steam Thasha saw the snaky neck retract upwards. She caught a glimpse of ragged wings, spreading, filling, and then the beast was gone.

Ramachni was the first to move, stretching out catlike on the raft. ‘Well,’ he said, as fire fell sizzling around them, ‘now we have faced a maukslar out of Neparv Nedal. I am afraid we must get used to such things.’

‘What — what-’ The old Turach found no other words.

‘A maukslar. A demon.’ Pazel’s voice was hollow. Dastu stared at him, aghast.

‘The beast was a scout from Macadra,’ said Ramachni. ‘I did not know she had grown strong enough to pluck servants from the City of the Damned. She must have wagered her very life on obtaining the Nilstone. I wonder how much she knows of us, and our friends on the ship.’

‘Why did the thing not attack?’ demanded Hercol.

‘It was never certain we were here,’ said Ramachni. ‘Some hours ago it reached the clearing, and pawed the ground where we burned the sorcerer’s remains. I sensed it then, and shrouded us in a mist, and the demon turned away. But as you see, I should have done more. When it came racing back, I threw the mightiest hiding-charm I could fashion over us all. It was not quite enough, alas. The creature smelled something. It would have rushed straight at us, probably, if not for that. . flash.’

‘Flash?’ said Pazel.

‘Of spellcraft,’ said the mage. ‘Somewhere miles to the east, another power showed itself — for the blink of an eye. That blink saved us. The maukslar has flown off to investigate. And we must go too, before it decides to come back.’

‘Those marks upon its forehead,’ said Pazel. ‘I couldn’t read them all, but one of them said Slave. In the creature’s own language.’

Neeps turned to him, startled. ‘Your Gift just-?’

‘Yes.’ Pazel stared at his friend in some consternation, as if the idea was still sinking in. ‘Pitfire, mate,’ he whispered, ‘I–I — Thaaurollllllgafnar, madocron, Oh credek, get it out of me, Ramachni, pull it out, pull it out-’

More ghastly, barrel-deep sounds escaped his chest. Terrified, he stuffed a hand into his mouth. His jaw went on working, biting down; his lips struggled to form words. ‘Neda!’ shouted Ramachni. ‘Come and help your brother!’

‘How help?’ she cried, rushing forward.

‘Not with your babyish Arquali, lass! Speak Ormali with him. Tell him anything, nursery rhymes if you like — only fill his ears, and do not stop speaking until he does. Pazel will master the demon-tongue, but first he must subdue it, or it will drive him mad.’

‘I am six years not speaking Ormali!’ said Neda, looking sidelong at her master. ‘Is heretic’s tongue!’

Pazel sank to his knees, gabbling and moaning. ‘It is your birthtongue, girl!’ said Cayer Vispek. ‘And you are sfvantskor, foe of devils! Obey him!’

Neda bent and took her brother in her arms. ‘Kuthyn, kuthyn, Pazeli,’ she said. Pazel fought her, but Neda’s arms were those of a warrior-priest. He took his hand from his mouth and spat the ugliest sounds Thasha had ever heard. Neda gripped him tighter, pressed her cheek against his own, her lips against his ear as she spoke. They fell; she rolled him onto his back. They looked like lovers, coming together after bitterness or pain.

But already Pazel was quieter. His eyes streamed with tears. Thasha reached out for him, but Hercol gently caught her hand.

‘You are not the one to help him, this time,’ he said.

‘His mind-fit-’

‘Has not yet begun,’ said Ramachni. ‘This is different: a human mind forced to reckon with the language of the Pits. And lest we all face a reckoning with that beast, we must go.’

He gave the mage-sight to Dastu and Lunja, and they poled the raft away from the shore. The journey resumed; the forest once more went on the attack. The hot air pressed down on them like a blanket soaked in bathwater.

Blind again, Thasha listened to Pazel’s moans, Neda’s soft chatter in a tongue she didn’t understand. She was jealous of Neda, and tried to be amused by the fact. She could hear what her father would say: You’re a fool beyond all redemption, Thasha Isiq. With a smile to make it clear that he thought nothing of the kind.

Her father. By now the admiral would have heard that she was alive, for all the good it would do him. Once again she thought of the odds of ever returning to the North, seeing him again, kissing his bright bald forehead. What was he doing now? Pazel’s mother had said only that he lived, in her single dream-visit with her son. Was he still in Simja, playing the part of Arqual’s ambassador to that island nation? Or was he back in Etherhorde, under the thumb of Emperor Magad, and Sandor Ott’s network of spies?

She dipped a hand in the river, splashed tepid water on her face. No use dwelling on the bad possibilities. Then Neeps groped towards her and took her hand. He was trembling. Thasha found his cheek and kissed it, tasting lemon sweat, and steeled herself not to cry. No use, no use. She wished for somebody to fight. He embraced her, clumsily. ‘Don’t worry,’ he whispered, ‘I know what’s going to happen to me.’

Neeps stayed close to her after that. She sensed the fear in him and tried not to return it. ‘Nothing’s going to happen,’ she told him, much later. ‘You’re tired, and you’re a fool. Stop thinking that way.’ When her next shift came she stole glances at him: awake, alert, casting his blind eyes about as if searching for something. Each time she spoke, Neeps lifted his head in her direction.

The hours passed, her shift ended; she was exhausted and filthy and bruised. She wanted to go to Pazel and hold him, but he was still sleeping peacefully, and Neeps looked cornered, lost. As the seeing-charm faded and the darkness flooded back, she went to him and knelt.

‘You need a shave,’ she said, as brightly as she could manage. ‘Marila wouldn’t know her husband.’

Neeps smiled, touching his woolly chin. Then he raised his hand to his temples and the smile disappeared. ‘I can feel it already,’ he said. ‘Like an empty spot inside me, a place I can’t go any more.’

‘Just go to sleep, you donkey. When was the last time you slept?’

This time he didn’t smile. Thasha took his hand. As her blindness gathered she watched his face disappear.

She slept, Neeps’ arm over her shoulder and the world’s horrors forgotten, and the woman that was part of her and yet a stranger walked the catacombs of her mind, seeking egress, seeking light. She would fail of course. Thasha’s mind was a salt cavern beneath a desert, no mouth, no tunnel to the surface, no way in or out. The woman knew this better than Thasha herself; she knew every inch of the place, could have drawn it from memory, walked it in the dark. She had lived there seventeen years.

‘Light! Light!’

Was she dreaming? Was that Ensyl, tugging at a lock of her hair? Someone whistled, bodies were stirring on the raft. Neeps just groaned and pulled her closer.

Ensyl tugged at her again. ‘Wake up! Look around you!’

Thasha raised her head, wincing. There was light, natural light, gleaming along one side of the trees ahead.

‘It stings at first, doesn’t it?’ said Lunja.

‘I don’t care if it stings for a week,’ answered the Turach.

The river had narrowed; the raft was tumbling around a curve. All at once something dazzling spun into view. After a few painful blinks, Thasha realised she was looking up at high cliff walls, glowing in the midday sun.

Neeps twitched, and Thasha looked at him again. He was awake, still holding her. Their faces were inches apart.

Then Pazel said, ‘We did it.’

He extended a hand to each of them. If he was disturbed to find them nesting like two spoons, his face showed no sign. They rose awkwardly, and Pazel threw his arms over their shoulders. They had reached the forest’s edge. Before them, the Ansyndra flowed out through a great crack in the crater and into a canyon of grey-blue stone.

‘Chins up, you dolts, we’re alive,’ said Pazel. Thasha gripped him tightly, felt Hercol’s hand squeeze her shoulder, and brushed it with her cheek. Gratitude was all she felt, so fierce and pure that it was almost pain.

‘Rin’s eyes, I never thought we’d make it,’ said Big Skip.

‘Some of us did not,’ said Hercol.

Thasha squeezed her eyes shut. The image of Greysan Fulbreech, paralysed and mad, had suddenly risen before them. The Simjan youth had betrayed them, but he had betrayed himself long before. She had tried to fall in love with Fulbreech: had hoped, maybe, that his charm and handsome body would save her from the frightening, foolish immensity of what she felt for Pazel. Then, at Hercol’s insistence, she had used him: played the infatuated young woman, dazzled by his attentions, hungry for his touch. All with the aim of ferreting his master, Arunis, from his hiding place on the Chathrand. It had worked; they had found the sorcerer, kept him from killing anyone else on the ship.

But in the end they could do nothing for Fulbreech.

They were small matters, of course: his death, the soldiers’ deaths, the death of Ott’s agent Mr Alyash. The death of Jalantri, the young sfvantskor who had fallen in love with Pazel’s sister. The disappearance of Ibjen, the dlomic boy, into the River of Shadows. The deaths of the hunting dogs who had followed them under the trees.

Small change, trivial losses, compared with the gigantic horror they were trying to prevent. Thasha knew this, and knew also that she would never believe it in her heart.

When she opened her eyes the raft had cleared the forest’s shadow, and they were free.

‘Can you guess how I got this one, Thasha?’ asked Neeps.

‘No,’ Thasha mumbled. She did not particularly want to learn, either, or to see another of his scars. Both he and Pazel looked barbaric in the sun. Thasha glanced at their ten-day beards and thought of pig bristles, and wondered that she’d managed to kiss Pazel without scratching herself raw. No denying how strong they’d become, though. The tarboys matched her in muscle, now, and that was shocking. If she wrestled either of them she’d have to rely on skill alone.

They had floated for several hours through the silent canyon, the sun playing hide-and-seek in a white fog that was gathering near the clifftops. The walls of the canyon were sheer to about a hundred feet, then broke into forbidding crags and boulders. The company squirmed and shifted. Holding still on the jittery raft was becoming a kind of torment.

‘My little sister bit me, that’s how,’ said Neeps.

‘You must have deserved it.’

Neeps laughed aloud, as though she had said something very clever. Thasha smiled to hide her unease. Since that unexpected embrace in the forest Neeps had not left her side. Thasha had never seen him like this: so soft-spoken, so confiding. He talked of his brother Raffa’s treachery, those two pounds of Sollochi pearls chosen instead of Neeps’ life — and how his desire to kill Raffa had turned slowly into a desire to convince him, ‘intellectually, like’, that he had chosen wrong. He talked of his grandmother’s battles with crocodiles, the whistle his grandfather invented that could call catfish, the girl at the docks in Etherhorde who’d fancied him, and her gangster uncles who had made sure that they never exchanged more than burning looks. Neeps did not speak once of Marila.

Now the canyon’s heights were lost in the mist. ‘We’re still trapped,’ said Corporal Mandric, staring up into the haze. ‘Mind you, I’m glad to be out of that mucking forest. But sooner or later we’ve got to find a way to scramble out of here.’

‘And what then?’ said Big Skip. ‘Getting out of the Forest alive was all I could think about, but there are hard choices waiting for us now. The road back to Masalym will be a dark one.’

‘Only if you take it,’ said Ramachni.

‘If?’ said Cayer Vispek. ‘Great mage, how could we do otherwise? We have no notion of what lies ahead. We know nothing of this peninsula except that it is vast and desolate, and that the sea lies much further to the west than we have travelled thus far. We must go back.’

‘There’s the small matter of the flame-trolls to consider,’ said Corporal Mandric.

‘Not to mention that iron ladder that came loose from the cliffs under Ilvaspar,’ said Pazel, ‘and that cliff was much higher than these. Without that ladder there’s no way up.’

‘A sfvantskor takes such hurdles as gifts from the Unseen.’

‘Gods of death, he’s serious,’ said the Turach, amiably enough.

‘It is true that we know little of the trail ahead,’ said Ramachni, ‘but we know a great deal about what awaits us back in Masalym.’

‘Our ship is there, maybe?’ said Neda.

Ramachni sighed. ‘Hercol, it is time you settled that particular question.’

‘Agreed,’ said the swordsman. While the others looked on, uncomprehending, he moved carefully to the raft’s edge, as far from the Nilstone as possible. There he knelt and lay Ildraquin across his knees.

‘What is this?’ said Vispek. ‘More enchantment in the sword?’

‘The same, Cayer,’ said Hercol. ‘You know that Ildraquin can guide its wielder to any soul whose blood it has drawn.’

‘You proved as much with Fulbreech,’ said Lunja. ‘What of it?’

‘The morning we left the Chathrand, I drew the blood of Captain Rose.’

‘Pitfire, now you tell us!’ cried Thasha. ‘Why were you keeping that a secret?’

‘You’re talking about that scratch on his wrist, aren’t you?’ said Neeps.

‘Of course,’ said Hercol, ‘and I assure you it was done with his cooperation. As for my silence, the fact is that I hardly dared to think of Rose myself. The sword can follow but one blood-trail at a time, and if ever you turn aside, the trail goes cold, and cannot be found again. I dared not take that risk with Fulbreech: he was our only link to the Stone. But now-’

He slid the blade a few inches free of the scabbard, and sat with his hand upon the pommel, closing his eyes. The party fell silent, watching, and Thasha saw the frown begin at the corner of his eyes. Then he opened them and looked gravely at Ramachni.

‘They are gone,’ he said. ‘Far from Masalym, and sailing further by the day. Since yesterday they have sailed northwards almost two hundred miles.’

‘Damn the lying dogs!’ exploded Mandric. ‘They promised to return for us! All that about laying low in them islands outside the whatsit, the Northern Sandwall, sending lamp signals, waiting for that hag Macadra to clear out!’

‘Perhaps she is in Masalym yet, or her ministers,’ said Ramachni. ‘Either way, Prince Olik will have been deposed. Do you see how foolish we would be to return, Cayer Vispek? Only death awaits us there.’

‘Northwards,’ said Dastu, clearly shaken. ‘So they mean to cross the Nelluroq, and abandon us for good. We’ll never see home again.’

Hercol looked at Dastu with compassion. ‘When did you last see home, lad? When you walked the streets of Etherhorde as a spy? When you sat at your mother’s table, concealing the fact that her son was learning to slit throats, hide bodies, brew tasteless poisons? Even if you do return to Etherhorde, you will remain a creature of the shadows, pretending to a life more than living it, unless you break with Sandor Ott. Your home was lost the day you joined the Secret Fist.’

‘Go drown yourself,’ snapped Dastu, ‘although drowning’s a lot kinder than what’s in store for the rest of us. We’re going to live and die in this Rinforsaken country, surrounded by their sort-’ he waved at Bolutu and Lunja ‘-and treated like animals, like apes. That is, if we don’t become apes, the way your tarboy pet-’

Thasha’s fist closed; she saw herself breaking Dastu’s teeth, saw the same rage in Pazel’s eyes. But before she could move, something whirled at the youth. Ensyl had leaped with that matchless ixchel speed onto Dastu’s shoulder. One hand gripped his ragged shirt. The other held her sword against the soft flesh beneath his eye.

‘If you dare say another word-’

Dastu held his breath, motionless but for his darting eyes.

‘Ensyl,’ said Ramachni, ‘come away from the youth.’

Silence. The raft bobbed and spun. Then, quick as a grasshopper, Ensyl sprang away from Dastu and landed by Hercol’s foot. She kept her eyes fixed on Dastu as she sheathed her blade.

‘This is a new life, with new requirements,’ said Ramachni, ‘and first among them is that we stand together. Let the old hates languish: you will find they vanish like dreams, if you permit them to.’

‘Don’t imagine that I mock your past allegiances,’ said Hercol, ‘for were they not mine as well? We need your skills, Dastu of Etherhorde. Stand with us, I say.’

Dark emotions played over the youth’s face. He touched his cheek near the eye. ‘Those crawlies nearly sank our ship,’ he said. ‘I don’t know why you brought a pair of them along. But one’s dead. Get rid of the other, and then talk about standing as a team.’

‘Some are more wedded to hate than others, Ramachni,’ said Ensyl.

‘My mother’s table,’ sneered Dastu. ‘Maybe that’s how it was for you, Stanapeth, with your farms and manor houses. But as for me, I found my home when I joined Master Ott. The first in my mucking life. I’m not about to toss it off and go seeking another, though that’s clearly the fashion in this company.’

The fog lowered. The canyon walls faded in and out of sight. It was disconcerting, but safer, Thasha knew: if the maukslar returned they would be hidden almost as well as before. The river ran swift, and looking down into its depths Thasha still imagined she could see veins of darkness, and feel the vertigo of endless space.

At some point in the afternoon, Lunja suddenly called for silence. A faint, deep noise was echoing down the canyon.

‘Hrathmog drums,’ said Lunja. ‘The creatures send messages in this way. I have heard them often on the road to Vasparhaven.’

Thasha tensed. She had seen a single hrathmog, dead in the jaws of one of the great catlike steeds called sicunas. Even dead it had been menacing, an axe-wielding, fur-covered humanoid with enormous arms and a mouthful of knifelike teeth. ‘Do you think they’ve spotted us, Lunja?’ she asked.

Lunja shook her head. ‘When hrathmogs spot an enemy their drums fall silent, unless they fear a rout. The silence itself alerts other bands of the creatures. We guardians of Masalym have learned this through many ambushes, many deaths.’

The drums sounded again, even more faintly — but this time the echo came from downriver.

‘They’re just saying hello, I shouldn’t wonder,’ said Big Skip. ‘Eight bells, and howdy-do-sir.’

‘Well,’ said Hercol, ‘better to learn of them while they are still at a distance.’ He squinted at the canyon walls, and Thasha could almost hear his thoughts: Hard climbing. For some of us, impossible.

They floated on, and heard no more of the drums. Soon Neeps was beside her again, uncomfortably close. Thasha tried to draw Pazel into their chatter, but he was keeping far from them both, which maddened her. She was terrified for Neeps. He was Pazel’s best friend; this behaviour had to be a side-effect of the plague. He reached for her hand, and she let him hold it. She couldn’t bear the thought of hurting him, in what might be his last days of human life.

Sometimes he grew flushed with excitement. ‘I didn’t expect this,’ he said. ‘What I’m feeling. It’s so good.’ Thasha turned away, wiped her eyes. Would they have to tie him like an animal? Would he have lucid moments, aware of what he’d become?

Late afternoon, a sandy beach loomed out of the fog: it was an island, crowned with oaks and cedars, splitting the river in two.

‘Left or right?’ asked Bolutu.

‘Neither,’ said Hercol. ‘Twenty minutes ashore, to wash and stretch our limbs.’

They beached the raft. Neeps bounded up and helped Thasha to her feet. She saw Pazel glance in their direction and turn quickly away.

‘Some of the vines have broken,’ said Hercol. ‘Come here, Neda, and help me lift the frame. You too, Undrabust.’

Thasha felt like running. She marched up the foggy beach and stepped into the trees. After a dozen yards she stepped behind an oak, then leaned out to look back at the shore. The others had stayed close to the raft. Pazel bent and tried to help with the repairs, but Hercol waved him firmly away — in her direction, as if by chance. She could have hugged him. Nothing escaped her mentor.

When Pazel drew near, she whistled softly, then beckoned him near and hid again. Eventually she heard his footsteps approaching. When she could stand it no longer she stepped out and dragged him behind the tree.

‘You blary imbecile,’ she said. ‘Why didn’t you help me with him?’

Pazel made no reply. He shrugged off her hand and walked deeper into the mist-shrouded trees. Furious, she plunged after him. The land rose, and they scrambled up the brief incline. When the ground levelled off the mist was brighter, and a pale green moss covered the feet of the oaks.

Thasha cornered him against a fallen tree. ‘I could kill you,’ she said. ‘You just mucking stood there! Couldn’t you see how bad he was getting?’

Pazel nodded.

‘Look at me, you sorry-’

He kissed her, gently at first, then with abandon, his hands under her clothes, his hips pressing hard against her. Thasha gasped; her arms went around him, and for a moment she did not know if she was struggling or urging him on, helping him free of his trousers, giving in to his need and her own. His eyes were half-shut, he was devouring her with kisses, how could she stop him, how could she keep these boys from pain?

‘Thasha-’

‘Stop talking. Stop talking.’

He had a hand between her legs; she had her shirt up so that her breasts could touch his skin. This was the end, they were ruined. She was going to scream.

He was still. She hadn’t screamed but her mind had gone elsewhere. Those were only his fingers, his fingers; she had lost all restraint but he hadn’t, thank Rin. Her mind was racing, bliss and sadness and memories and mad notions of her destiny, all bent by the prism of his touch. That wanton girl, Arunis had cackled. Not everything he’d said was a lie.

Warm rain on her shoulder: Pazel was crying. ‘Neeps wanted this,’ he said.

‘Maybe. Yes.’

‘I was trying not to hate him. I was so angry I could barely breathe. I couldn’t look at the two of you.’

‘It’s not his fault,’ she said.

‘I know, I know. And it doesn’t matter, either. If it helps him somehow I don’t care what you do.’

They still had not moved. ‘It wouldn’t help him,’ she said. ‘Making love doesn’t protect you from the mind-plague.’

‘Maybe it does, though. Maybe he senses something. Like animals do when they’re sick.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘If this were enough, humans would still be here, wouldn’t they? Besides, he and Marila did it eight times-’

‘Eight?’

‘That’s what she told me.’ Thasha kissed his cheeks, his eyelids. ‘Pazel. . you were in nuhzat, just now.’

‘What?’

Appalled, he tried to break away, but Thasha held him tight. ‘Hush, hush. It was over in seconds. But I saw your eyes change, turn solid black like Ramachni’s. It was beautiful, you were beautiful. That’s when. . I stopped thinking.’

He was barely listening. ‘It’s the second time it’s happened to me,’ he whispered.

Thasha knew that only dlomu could experience the nuhzat, that waking trance with its visions and powers, its fear. Dlomu, and in the rarest of cases, humans who had been raised by them. Or loved them. She knew also that Pazel had slipped into nuhzat in the temple at Vasparhaven. He had told her that much. But he had told Neeps more — and Neeps, in his disordered state, had babbled some of it to Thasha.

‘You were with a dlomic woman,’ she said, hoping she didn’t sound accusatory.

‘No!’ said Pazel. ‘I mean, yes. But not with her, not like this. I can’t explain.’

She did not like the change in his voice, or the way his eyes stared past her as he spoke. ‘Anyway,’ he added, ‘I’m not sure she was a dlomu.’

‘What else could she have been?’

Pazel hesitated. ‘A spider,’ he said at last.

‘You’re insane,’ said Thasha. ‘Or I am. Oh credek. Pazel, listen: we can’t do this any more. Not until we’re safe somewhere. You know that, don’t you?’

His answer was a kiss. She returned it, not caring if the kiss meant yes or no, for the blackness was flickering in his brown eyes again, and her youth was her own and not Erithusme’s, that was as certain as his beauty, his urgency, the rising of the sun.

She turned from him again.

‘It’s too dangerous,’ she said. ‘This time I wouldn’t have stopped.’

‘I didn’t stop,’ he said. ‘I just — it was just-’

‘Oh, Pitfire.’ Thasha stepped back, lowering her shirt. ‘That’s it. I can’t end up like Marila. You have to promise me you’ll stay away.’

He laughed, reached to touch her again. Glaring, she caught his hands.

‘Night Gods, Thasha,’ he said. ‘A few minutes ago you wanted to kill me because I was keeping away. Listen, stop worrying-’

‘Oh, why should I worry? You listen, you blary ass. This time we got lucky. The first time I kept my head. No more.’

He was fumbling with his trousers, which were literally held up with string. Loving him desperately, she gripped his chin and raised it.

‘Promise.’

She was quite certain about what she was doing. Pazel, however, managed to surprise her again: he turned and rushed down the hill in the direction of the raft. Suddenly she realised that he was limping. You idiot! she thought. Why did you let him climb the hill?

She closed her eyes. His stubbornness had left her shaking with rage. When she looked again Pazel had vanished in the fog.

Once more she bolted after him. She had no clear idea of what would happen when she caught up — tears, apologies, violence? Aya Rin, don’t let him fall on that leg.

She reached level ground. The fog was now so thick that she could see just a few trees ahead of her, and only realised she was nearing the shore when the earth grew sandy among their roots. Where had he gone? She drew a breath to shout, but some instinct for caution made her hesitate. She rushed forward to the river’s edge. There was no one in sight. Had they descended the wrong side of the island? Of course not, there was the raft, and-

Pitfire!

Thasha drew her knife, whirled into a defensive stance. The raft was destroyed. The vines cut, the bladder-mushroom slashed — and the Nilstone gone. The ropes that had secured its sacking trailed in the water. Footprints surrounded the raft, a confusion of footprints, radiating in all directions from the shore. She could see no other sign of the party.

As ever in a crisis, she thought of Hercol, his wisdom and severity. Her mind became clear. She bent low beside the nearest footprints. River water was trickling into the heels, softening them even as she watched. The prints were only seconds old.

She turned at bay. Now she heard it: a wide, dispersed sound, as of many persons or creatures moving in near-silence. The heart of the sound was at too great a distance to be coming from the island itself. The shore, then. Or other boats. Whatever it was, the party was no longer alone.

Thasha stepped carefully away from the raft, then turned and darted along the shore, putting distance between herself and that unseen host. She had taken no more than ten steps when Pazel materialised out of the fog.

‘Don’t move, Thasha,’ he hissed.

Pazel was stock-still. And the next instant she saw why. A hrathmog stood facing him, gripping a huge, double-bladed axe. Water dripped from its black fur; long white fangs showed in its mouth. The shoulders beneath the crude leather jerkin were enormous.

The creature’s eyes were fixed on her, now. It stood head and shoulders taller than either of them. She held her breath, muscles twitching with apprehension. The hrathmog fingered its axe.

Then Pazel spoke: a single word in a hard, guttural tongue such as Thasha had never heard. The creature gave an uncertain reply, its voice like the growl of a bear.

‘It’s afraid of us — afraid of humans,’ Pazel murmured in Arquali. ‘It said it didn’t know this island belonged to the Lost People. That it was ordered here by its chief on the far shore. That it’s sorry for disturbing our rest.’

‘It thinks. . we’re dead?’

Pazel nodded, then spoke again in the hrathmog’s tongue. The creature shuffled back a step. ‘Where are the others?’ Thasha whispered.

Pazel shook his head: no idea. The hrathmog lowered its axe. Thasha imagined it was breathing easier. She was not.

‘The raft’s destroyed,’ she said.

Pazel shot her a look of dismay. Then his eyes snapped back to the creature. ‘Right,’ he said, ‘we’re ghosts, see? And we’re just. . going to. . back away.’

They began a slow retreat, foot by careful foot. ‘Into the river,’ he said, ‘just until we’re out of sight. Then we’ll swim.’

‘Not too deep, though,’ she said. ‘Ramachni warned us-’

‘I know.’

They backed offshore until the water reached their knees. The hrathmog watched, unmoving. Already its form was dimming in the fog. Pazel murmured a last word to the creature, and Thasha silently exhaled. His Gift had just saved them again.

Then her legs collided with something in the water. She whirled. A second hrathmog was floating beside her, face up. An arrow protruded from its throat. Although quite dead, the creature still gripped the arrow shaft with one hand.

Whose arrow? Their party had no bows.

Suddenly the hrathmog on the island rushed forward, narrowing its eyes. When it saw the body it threw back its head and gave a monstrous howl. From the far shore, dozens of voices rose in answer. But the hrathmog did not wait for its comrades. The two hairless creatures were not ghosts but tricksters, murderers. It raised its axe and charged.

Thasha grabbed Pazel by the shirt and flung him behind her. They stumbled backwards, flailing for deeper water, but then the hrathmog raised the great axe over its head, preparing to hurl it, and Thasha saw her death. The water had slowed her. She was offering the blade her chest.

The beast hurled the axe. But as it stepped into the throw, a second arrow pierced its calf. The hrathmog stumbled, the blow struck the water a foot from her chest. As the creature charged, Thasha groped for the weapon, pulled it from the river bottom, and swung.

How weak, how feeble, but somehow she’d cut the creature’s hand. She kicked backwards, swimming now, screaming at Pazel to Go go go! The hrathmog snatched at the weapon; Thasha flung it away. Chase it, chase it please! The hrathmog lunged and caught her by the leg.

Thasha’s knife flashed: now both its hands were bloody. Then those maimed hands caught her by the throat.

It tried to close, to bite. She forced an arm under its chin. They fell back into deeper water, the current whirling them downstream. Her knife was gone; Pazel groped for her and was gone; hairy thumbs dug into her windpipe. She twisted, clawed at its eyes. She was failing, the thing was killing her, it was just too strong.

All at once a spasm shook the creature. Pazel was on its back, his head over its shoulder. The creature screamed; its hands released Thasha and seized Pazel and hurled him away, and in the half-light she saw that Pazel had most of its ear in his teeth.

In a killing frenzy the hrathmog dived after Pazel. She clung to it, knowing it would tear her lover to pieces. The creature dragged her on, heedless — and then, suddenly, it was dead. Other beings surrounded them. Knives flashed. Dark blood billowed from the hrathmog’s neck.

She was choking: she must finally have gasped. Her vision dimmed and a roaring filled her ears. Her last sensation was of the veins of darkness in the river’s depths, coiling about her ankles, pulling her down.