The Rats and the Ruling sea

26

23 Freala 941

That evening on the Chathrand, Pazel's friends found it hard to keep up their spirits. The landing party had been two days ashore. Hercol remained locked in the brig; and Thasha, Neeps and Marila were hardly less prisoners themselves, albeit in grander quarters. Mr Uskins had painted a red line on the deck along the base of Ramachni's magic wall, and placed four soldiers there with orders to let no one in or out without his permission. Each time Thasha appeared in the doorway, they glared. They were the proudest soldiers in Alifros, and they'd bungled orders to arrest a sixteen-year-old girl.

Mr Fiffengurt came to the stateroom at eight bells, carrying a jug of drinking water and a plate of Mr Teggatz's pigsfoot-and-barley casserole. He also bore the dismal news that the skiff had not returned from Bramian, and presumably would not do so before morning.

The quartermaster did not linger, for the ship was in an uproar of last-minute preparations for the voyage out. 'Don't worry about Pathkendle,' he said as he turned to go. 'The lad's no use to them dead. They may not like him, but they'll keep him safe.'

'It's not what they'll do that worries me,' said Neeps. 'Pazel can get in trouble all by himself.'

Neeps wanted to pounce on the casserole, but Thasha insisted on a fighting class first, despite Hercol's absence.

'Forget your stomach for once,' she said, cutting off his objections before they began, 'and come at me hard, because if I don't think you're trying to kill me I'm blary well going to show you how it's done.'

Neeps hesitated, fuming. He wolfed one bite of the casserole, slammed down his fork and retreated to the washroom to change into his fighting-rags. Thasha whistled her dogs into her own cabin and changed as well, strapping the wooden shield to her arm and tying a leather neck-guard in place.

They unscrewed the furniture and slid it against the walls, and rolled up the bearskin rug. While Marila sat reading quietly in a corner, and Felthrup balanced on the back of her chair, muttering and swaying with exhaustion, Thasha and Neeps battled all around the stateroom with the balsa swords.

For once Neeps rose to her challenge. He had long passed the stage of angry charges, having tired of finding himself flat on the ground or symbolically beheaded. Thasha would not have told him (for Neeps' pride needed no encouragement) but she was astonished at his progress. He was the only young person she had ever known more hotheaded than herself, and yet here he was, biding his time, matching his movements to hers — fighting with his mind. And his form when attacking was better too: his jerky tarboy strength was mellowing into something more fluid, more likely to keep him alive.

It was almost a shame to have to keep winning. Still, Thasha could not approach combat with any outlook but victory: the sixth apothem reminded students that practice is never a game, but the prelude to a moment when a life may end.

'Surprise me,' she taunted him, darting from one side of a stanchion to another, bruising his left side and then his right, turning him at bay or forcing a retreat. 'Do something I haven't seen you do fifty times. Tired, are you? That's when you die, you Sollochi runt. Come at me!'

Neeps did not even blink. He was shutting out her insults, refusing to be drawn. To Thasha this seemed almost a miracle.

At last she raised her hand and stopped him. Neeps dropped his wooden sword and bent over, gasping, his face like a bruised tomato. He fumbled at the buckle on his shield. 'You did well,' Thasha conceded, stepping towards him. 'What made the difference, this time?'

'I just-'

He slashed at her with the edge of his shield, catching her squarely in the gut.

'-pretended-'

He had her down, pulled her against him, caught her neck in the crook of his arm.

'-that you were Raffa, Raffa-'

He spat the name, and tightened his grip uncomfortably. Thasha was furious — surprise me did not mean attack when the drill is over — and resolved to teach him a lesson. But when she thrust her elbow hard into his side, none too gently, his response was not at all what she expected. Instead of doubling over as she had done upon his shield, Neeps hurled them both backwards onto the floor with amazing violence, and at the same time tightened his grip on her neck even further. Much further: Thasha remembered the bite of her necklace: the youth's arm was crushing her windpipe with the same deadly force. She clawed at him. She felt him buck and twist, slamming her face against the wooden floor, putting the weight of his chest against her temple. Her dogs were howling behind the cabin door; Marila was screaming, 'Stop it! Stop it!' and then came an explosion of glass and water. But Neeps did not stop, and Thasha felt her vision dim. She had a vague impression of his sweaty, wild-eyed face above her own, still mouthing the name.

And then, thank all the gods, he let her go — and began to scream himself. Thasha fell on her side and saw Neeps throwing himself from side to side. Felthrup's teeth were locked on his ear.

'Let go! Let go! Damn you, Felthrup, you're out of your mind!'

'He's not!' shouted Marila, from the far side of the room.

Thasha drew a strangled breath, and Neeps whirled. A look of indescribable horror filled his eyes. 'Aya Rin,' he whispered. 'Thasha, Thasha. What've I done?'

Ten minutes later the four of them — Thasha, Marila, Neeps and Felthrup — were all collapsed together on the divan. Thasha was massaging her neck, while Felthrup teased bits of glass (shards of the water jug Marila had hurled at Neeps) — from his fur and the fabric of her shirt. Marila, leaning back against Thasha's knees, was holding one of the Great Peace dinner napkins against Neeps' bloody ear. Neeps himself sat curled in a ball, staring at nothing. When the lamp sputtered out they were glad of it; none of them could quite stand to look the others in the face.

'I almost let the dogs out,' said Marila.

'Oh gods,' said Thasha with a violent shudder. 'He would have died. I'd lost my voice, Marila, I couldn't have called them off. They'd have torn him to pieces.'

'That occurred to me,' said Marila, 'when I heard the door starting to splinter.'

'One of you was meant to die, I think,' said Felthrup.

'Neeps,' said Thasha, touching him with her foot. 'It wasn't you.'

'Yes it was,' said Neeps quietly. 'That's just it. The… madness. It came from inside me.'

'That still doesn't make it your fault,' said Marila.

'Then I'd like to know whose fault it is,' said Neeps.

'Now you are asking the right question,' said Felthrup.

'You were magicked, somehow,' said Marila, dabbing at his ear. 'I saw the change halfway through the practice session. Your eyes went all funny. I thought you'd had too many whacks on the head.'

'Thasha-' Neeps began.

Thasha squirmed abruptly; the divan shuddered and groaned. 'This blary thing's too small,' she said. 'Unless anyone wants dinner I suggest we all go to sleep.'

No one moved. 'I don't want to sleep,' said Felthrup.

'You've been up for days,' said Thasha.

'Neeps,' said Marila. 'You kept saying Raffa, Raffa. What was all that about? Raffa who?'

Neeps took the napkin from her hand and turned to face the window. After a long silence he said, 'Undrabust.'

'Ah,' said Thasha.

Neeps' voice was hollow. 'I told Pazel a bit, once. How I jumped my ship when it landed at Sollochstol, and ran home to my village. And how the Arqualis came after me, and caught me the same afternoon. But that's not… the worst part.'

He looked at them, angry and beseeching. 'My older brother, Raffa, asked 'em how much it would cost for them to let me go, while they were still lounging around the village, drinking. Three pounds of pearls, they said. And Raffa haggled. Right there in front of me, wheedling like, until finally they caved in. "Two pounds, since he's so small, and you're such a nuisance." Raffa told 'em he'd see what he could find. The Arqualis said they'd only wait an hour. But in fact they waited all afternoon. They wanted those pearls more than they wanted me.

'Trouble was, so did Raffa. He was the best pearl diver in the village. He had boxes of 'em hidden in the smokehouse. He was saving up for a ticket to Opalt. A cousin had come back from there years before and told Raffa our palm roof was embarrassing. He said Sollochis lived like animals. That Ballytween City was the place for a man to get ahead.'

Neeps fell silent. Thasha wanted to say something, but was afraid to; all at once she felt like a fraud. She'd grown up in a mansion on Maj Hill, in the heart of the world's greatest city. She remembered Syrarys combing her hair, telling her that they lived in the only place in Alifros that nobody could look down on. Why don't they hate me? she thought. Why doesn't Pazel hate me?

'Raffa never came back that day,' said Neeps. 'I guess the price was too high.'

Marila silently touched his arm. They stayed there, motionless, listening to the thumping and bellowing of men on other decks. Fiffengurt had said the work might go on all night, but to Thasha the noise was soothing; the warm stateroom felt like the centre of a hive. As she closed her eyes she heard a wet sound that was either kissing or one of her dogs flopping down with a contented slobber. Then she realised Marila had her arms around Neeps. That blary vixen, she thought, and fell asleep.

Felthrup slunk away from the divan when Neeps and Marila began to kiss. He was not quite clear why humans did such things — the written accounts varied wildly — but he knew they did not much care to be watched in the act. He crept over to Suzyt, who lay beside the washroom door.

'I won't go to sleep,' he told her.

The mastiff 's tongue enveloped him like a warm, wet towel. Felthrup curled tight against her chest, looking out at the darkened stateroom. He had fought to remember the dreams until his brain ached, and had come up with almost nothing: a pair of glasses, a taste of candy and the words 'peppermint oil'. He was a nervous idiot. What could be so terrible about dreams he did not even remember? There were a million rats in Alifros who would kill for the kind of safety he enjoyed.

'Master Stargraven,' said a gently mocking voice.

Felthrup gave a start. The dog slept on beside him, but how she had shrunk! No, she was the same — but he had done it, he had fallen asleep at last, and now everyone would pay for his weakness.

He stood up and adjusted his spectacles.

The three youths slept like the dead. He walked to the divan and looked down at them. So peaceful: Neeps' head lay pillowed on Marila's lap. He saw the damage his own teeth had done to the boy's ear, and winced. But he had saved Thasha's life.

Surely it was Arunis who had called his name? There was no sign of anyone else in the room, but that would not keep him safe for long. In every dream he felt a compulsion to walk, to leave the shelter of the stateroom and wander, until the sorcerer found him and the torture began.

Tonight was no exception: his feet were already guiding him towards the stateroom door. Twice he swerved and teetered clown-like back into the centre of the room. But he could not hold still. I will betray them again. Every time it grows worse. I will be the reason they perish, the reason Arunis comes to rule the world.

Suddenly he knew what to do. He could end the dreams as quickly as they began. But how? A sword? A mouthful of broken glass? No, no — that was the sort of thing Arunis did to him anyway. He would be swifter. He looked at the gallery windows, gave a pitiful squeal, and ran straight for them.

He never arrived. Between one footfall and the next the ship spun about like a carousel, and instead of crashing through the window he found himself throwing open the stateroom door.

Lamplight: the Turach soldiers were still at their post. Behind them, and as invisible to humans as Felthrup himself was during their dream-walks, stood Arunis. The mage's eyes fixed him like spearpoints. He crooked a finger.

Get out here, you feeble, vacillating, sewer-pipe sniveller.

The call was terribly powerful, but Felthrup, with a last mind-cracking effort, slammed the stateroom door and leaned against it. Help, he thought, help. This time I really will go mad.

Then, very faintly, he heard the voice again. The first voice, the one by which he had woken into the dream. It was not the sorcerer's. It was coming from Admiral Isiq's sleeping cabin.

Felthrup broke away from the door and ran towards the bedchamber, crashing against a shifted chair. Anything was better than what awaited him in the passage. He kicked the bearskin rug away from the door, reached for the knob — and froze. Surely this was another trick? What if Arunis had somehow penetrated the magic wall this far? What if the very act of opening the door was all he needed to breach their last defence? Felthrup cringed. He suddenly felt very ratlike indeed.

'Turn the knob,' said the voice, almost too softly to be heard.

Felthrup turned the knob, half-expecting some horror to burst from the chamber, savage his sleeping friends, end their months of struggle in a heartbeat. Nothing of the kind occurred: the room held only dust, and the furniture Isiq had left behind. A large bed, two chests of drawers, Syrarys' jewellery table, a dressing mirror, a mannequin draped in an elaborate gown: what the vicious woman had planned to wear on Simja, perhaps.

'Over here, lad, hurry now.'

The voice was louder, and suddenly Felthrup knew it, and gave a squeal of joy. He dashed into the room, afraid now only of waking, and cried, 'Where are you, where are you?'

'The mirror, Felthrup. Dust it off.'

Felthrup looked at the mirror. It was tilted towards the ceiling, and the dust lay like a grey pelt upon the glass. He put his silk sleeve against the mirror and swept it clean.

Within the mirror there was no reflection. Instead he found himself looking into a dark and cluttered chamber of stone. He had an impression of clocks and telescopes, astrolabes and smoked-glass spheres, an icy window, lamps that threw clots of whirling colour on the floor.

But all this he saw with but a corner of his mind, for directly before him stood a tall man in a sea-green cloak. The man was perfectly bald, but he had a thick white beard and enormous bottle-brush eyebrows, and beneath them, eyes that were bottomless and dark.

'It's you, isn't it?' said Felthrup, feeling a lump rise in his throat. 'It's how you really are.'

'Right in the first count, wrong in the second,' the man replied. 'Indeed I'm surprised one as afflicted with imagination as you still clings to the notion of real. Now step to one side — that's it.'

The old man turned and walked away, deeper into the stone chamber. When twenty feet separated him from Felthrup he turned again, and then ran, with the ease of a much younger man, straight at the surface of the mirror. At the last instant he leaped, head first-and the black mink, Ramachni Fremken, sailed into the chamber as through an open door. This was the mage as Felthrup knew him: the one who had rescued him from drowning, slain fleshancs, taught Pazel the Master-Word that changed the Shaggat to stone. The one whose very name brought a look of fear into Arunis' eyes, no matter how the sorcerer tried to conceal it. He landed in a cloud of dust on Isiq's bed. Felthrup knelt beside him, sneezed, and burst into tears.

'Stop that at once,' said Ramachni. 'What on earth is the matter, Felthrup? Surely we meet in better circumstances than before?'

'Oh no, Master, not at all.'

Ramachni sprang from the bed and vanished into the stateroom. Felthrup rushed after him, still crying, though he could not have said exactly why. He found the mage on the arm of the divan, looking down at the three sleeping youths.

'How untroubled they look,' said Ramachni, echoing Felthrup's earlier thought. 'And how fortunate that your dream-life is so splendid. But look what you have done to yourself tonight, my dear rat! Some turn themselves into warriors, angels, kings. You've become a librarian.'

'Not just tonight, m'lord. This is the form I take in every dream.'

'Every single dream?' said Ramachni, turning to him with surprise. 'That is something to ponder, when I have a moment. But can't you hold still, Felthrup? Why do you keep starting for the door?'

Felthrup checked himself, and dropped his head in shame. 'Arunis is calling me. He never stops. He has a terrible power over me, and he is using me against our friends.'

'We shall see about that,' said Ramachni with a hint of temper.

'My lord!' said Felthrup, rubbing his chin with both hands in a most ratlike gesture. 'Did you not say that Arunis was the stronger in this world, that when you travel here you leave a great part of your strength behind?'

'I did,' said Ramachni, 'although when next I come to Alifros it shall be with a strength you have never seen. But tonight, Felthrup, the only traveller is you. When your dream began you departed the Alifros you know and came here, to a dream-Alifros, only a small part of which was created by your mind. Arunis and I were here already, for dreams exist in a territory that the mage never entirely ceases to inhabit.'

'He is standing just outside your magic wall.'

Ramachni shook his head. 'That wall is not of my making.'

'Not of your making!' cried Felthrup. 'Then there is some other mage aboard, who wishes us well?'

'Perhaps,' said Ramachni, glancing curiously around the stateroom. 'But this I can tell you for certain: the spell that made the magic wall was cast long before the Chathrand left Etherhorde — years before, in fact. How cunningly hidden it must have been, to keep me from detecting it! I wonder if there are more such surprises, and if they will all prove so helpful.'

Suddenly he turned and sniffed the air. Then he bounded across the room and onto the table, where he peered suspiciously at the pigsfoot casserole.

'Do not eat this,' he said. 'Someone besides Mr Teggatz had a hand in its preparation. There is a whiff of magic about it — dark magic, you understand. It is only a distant aftertaste, nothing so obvious as a curse or a potion. But we must take no chances.'

Felthrup clenched his hands in fists, and stared at them as if he had never seen anything more impressive. Then he picked up the casserole, crossed the room to the window and flung the dish overboard.

No sooner had he closed the window, however, than doubt returned to his face. 'In my first dream Arunis flung Sniraga into the sea,' he said, 'but the cat is still aboard. My dreams change nothing, do they? When I wake that dish will again be on the table. And my waking self remembers nothing of what passes in these dreams. I shall not be able to warn them, Ramachni.'

'Do not be so certain, lad. Your dreams certainly change you. I hear the exhaustion in your voice: you've been fighting for your very soul. In any case, you must try. Whatever is in that food was put there with malice of the blackest sort.'

Felthrup jumped, remembering. 'Neeps took a bite!' he said. 'And a short time later he went mad and tried to kill Lady Thasha. He almost succeeded.'

Ramachni looked up from the table. Now the anger in his eyes was terrible to behold. 'It is time, Felthrup. You called out for help, and I am here to give it. Let us go and see the sorcerer.'

Felthrup swallowed, and pushed his spectacles up his nose. Ramachni jumped to the floor, crossed once more to the divan, and crawled up beside Thasha's shoulder. His pink tongue dabbed once at her forehead; then he turned and studied the chamber again. His eyes settled on the bearskin rug. A look of satisfaction crept over his face.

'How dare you keep me waiting.'

The sorcerer waited just beyond the red stripe, his mouth twisted with anger. The four Turachs leaned against the walls. Arunis watched the thin, bespectacled man leave the stateroom without closing the door.

'So you can fight my summons now? Well after tonight you'll wish you'd never tried, you mangled, three-legged misery of a rat. Get out here!'

The thin man took his time, but at last he reached the magic wall. He did not immediately step through it, however. Instead he paused with his face just inches from the sorcerer's own.

'After tonight,' he said quietly, 'you will wish you'd never invaded his dreams.'

'Whose dreams?'

'Felthrup's, you fool.'

With that the man in spectacles reached through the wall and seized Arunis by his scarf. At his touch the mage gasped aloud and tried to pull away. But the thin man held him fast, and began to chant:

Light is the purse that brimmed with deceit

Fierce are the hunters, and swift their feet

And the night so late and lonely.

Bribe them you might, but what can you offer?

A curse, and a kick, and a black barren coffer,

And the taste of treason only.

Dear have you cost us, but never so dear

That we'll tender our souls to a peddler of fear.

Pride may be costly, but pain is free:

For thee, old deceiver, it comes for thee.

On the last word he let go of the scarf, dropped to the deck, and became once more a mink. Arunis leaped back in terror. But the mink did not attack him. It fled.

'What's this?' roared Arunis. 'The great Ramachni, turning tail? Have you nothing but rhymes to fight with?'

A deafening roar filled the passage behind him.

Arunis whirled, and for one second he gaped at the bear, a huge brown boulder of an creature, looming over him, so tall its shoulder touched the roof of the passage.

'Stop, Felthrup!' he shrieked. 'I order you-'

Then its weight was upon him, and its claws like mallet-driven spikes, and its teeth that ripped his dream-flesh like so much tissue paper, like the wrapping on a box that held no gift, nothing but emptiness and a voice that cursed and was gone.