The Red wolf conspiracy

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The Flikkermen tied Pazel's hands and feet and threw him into the well. He plunged twenty feet into black water, certain they meant to drown him and chop his body into fish food, and blind with terror as he was, part of him felt insulted to be considered so worthless.

Seconds later he was dragged out of the water and up onto a cold stone floor. He sputtered and gagged. In the darkness ten or twelve bare-chested Flikkermen squatted around him, whispering and croaking. They soon stripped him of his gold, his knife and his mother's ivory whale. All three delighted them, and they patted his face with their round, sticky fingertips and said "Shplegmun"-good boy.

Pazel had learned one thing during the invasion of Ormael: when a mob lays hold of you, do not fight. Become silent, docile, do as you're told. Above all, study your captors. It was easier said than done, in that dim room. But now and then one of the creatures would flash, as if releasing energy it could no longer contain. An awful sight: the Flikkerman's whole body would light up like a glow-worm, and through its translucent flesh Pazel saw veins and roots of teeth and the six pulsing chambers of a Flikker heart.

"Swellows tricked him," one said in their tongue. "Bought his trust with coins. Does he have all his fingers?"

They worked swiftly, checking each of Pazel's joints as if to be sure his pieces were in working order, feeling his head for cracks. Then they began to argue his fate.

The Flikker who had met Pazel at the gate was for selling him to the Uturphe Bladeworks, but another felt he was too small to pour molten iron, and would not fetch a good price. Another said they should sell him to a ship bound for Bramian, where hunters needed boys to lure tigers out of their caves. Still another knew a magician who wanted to replace his last boy assistant, whom he had turned into a block of ice for a party trick and then forgotten, until the lad melted and trickled away through the floorboards.

They had many such fine ideas, and the debate wore on. At last the head Flikkerman burst into light. Since they could not agree, he declared, they would let the buyers themselves decide. The boy would go to auction.

The others grumbled: the auction was quite far away, apparently. But their chief had spoken, and they obeyed.

Soon Pazel was back in the water, this time in the bottom of a narrow boat like a cross between a decrepit fishing-dory and a gondola. With their flat feet on top of him, his captors poled down a long, dark, dripping tunnel. What it had been built for Pazel could scarcely guess, but it was clearly one of the secret ways the Flikkers moved children in and out of the city. They turned corners, ducked under low ceilings, opened moss-covered gates. Eventually they sat him up and pressed a flask to his lips. What he swallowed was sweet and briny and rushed to his head like wine.

On and on they went. At length the Flikkermen began to sing. Theirs was a cold, swift, mournful music, like that of a river approached in darkness, and it made Pazel wonder for the first time just who they were, these Flikkermen, these people who never went to sea, and lived as a race apart in the cities of humankind.

We cut the sod where the gold wheat grows.

We dropped the seed of the poplar groves.

Men all forget, we sing it yet:

We still recall where the deep flood goes.

We felled the trees for the conquering fleet.

We dug the ore for the blacksmith's heat.

Twilight to dawn and a century's gone:

We lay the cobbles beneath your feet.

Fearsome the wind o'er the stolen earth.

Fearsome the morning of our rebirth.

Dawn-light to day the Flikkermen say:

We set the price of your children's worth.

Do not tarry where the schoolyard ends.

Do not linger where the alley bends.

New blossoms pale, empires fail:

We keep the coin the world expends.

Wind shall tear pennant from heartless tower.

River shall rise and wave devour.

Men all forget on what road we met:

We shall be kings in the final hour.

The last words were scarcely out of their mouths when the next song began. Pazel's head still swam with the drink. Soon he found himself drifting into miserable sleep in which the voices sang on, conjuring stories of lost tribes and swamp banquets and Flikker queens with onyx crowns and shawls of butterfly wings.

At some point he half woke, and found himself no longer underground. The boat was now gliding down a river under a brilliant moon. The banks were high, the land dew-soaked and desolate. A few stone farmhouses squatted in the distance, lamplight blazing in their windows, and once a riderless horse pranced and nickered at them from behind a fence, but there was no one to whom he might have shouted for help.

He slept, and woke again, and it was day. The boat was surrounded by reeds and tall marsh grass; Pazel could not even see the open river. They were anchored, and the Flikkers were eating cold fish and hot peppers wrapped in some sort of leaves. When they were finished one propped him up and gave him another long drink of the salty-sweet wine. Then they checked his ropes, washed their faces with marsh water, and curled up in the boat to sleep. In a few minutes the wine did its work, and Pazel dropped forward among his captors.

He woke after nightfall, sunburned and hungry. They were back on the river. Other boats ran close beside them; other Flikkermen had joined his captors' songs. Pazel saw prisoners bound like himself, weariness and terror mingled in their looks. The countryside was open and silver by moonlight, but there was no sign of farmland or any human dwelling. After another sip of the ubiquitous wine they fed him three mouthfuls of their leaf-wrapped fish. It was sour-tasting and sharp, but he ate it eagerly, and the Flikkermen laughed: "Shplegmun."

A short time later he noticed that his captors were watching the shore. Lifting his head Pazel saw a pack of ghost-gray dogs racing through the underbrush, studying them with eyes that glowed red as coals. Sulphur dogs. It was said that when they killed, they ate the flesh warm and chewed the bones to daybreak, grinding them to meal. How they communicated no one knew, for they never barked or howled. For a long time Pazel lay watching the pack run in silence, keeping pace with the boats.

The next three days were much like the first-sleep by daylight, in some hollow or thicket or marsh; swift travel by night. But Pazel felt a queasy ache in the pit of his stomach. It grew hour by hour, and by the third day he was shaking and chilled.

"What's wrong with him?" the Flikkermen asked one another.

"Fever," Pazel told them, "I've got chills and a fever."

"Babbling. Delirious." They shook their heads.

"That fish would make a wharf-rat sick. Don't you have anything else?"

They wondered aloud what tongue he was speaking. And Pazel bit his lips with rage, for he thought they were teasing him. Your tongue, you ugly louts! Only much later did he realize that they were right: he was delirious, and speaking Ormali, and he wondered if he might be starting to die.

Time became even more fragmented: one moment it was a hot, fly-plagued afternoon, the next a damp and chilly midnight. Through all the pain, cold sweats and dizzy spells, Pazel suffered most in his mind. Questions preyed on him like vultures, one ravenous bird after another dropping out of the sky to peck at his brain. Was Hercуl alive? Who had attacked him, and who had killed that Zirfet fellow? Had the ixchel realized that Thasha knew of their presence on the Chathrand, and slit her throat? What would the Flikkers do if he was too weak to sell?

Clammy palms swept flies from his face. Wet cloths were pressed against his forehead, and something astringent rubbed on his chest. He was lifted in and out of boats. Warm broth was spooned into his mouth; plain water replaced the wine. Days and nights were like the violent banging of a cottage door in the wind: lamplight, darkness, lamplight again.

Then a dawn came when Pazel realized with a jolt that his illness was gone. He was thinner and weaker, but his head was so clear it was like a stiff sea-breeze driving away the clouds, revealing a cool, clean starlit night.

He was in a larger boat, with a roofed cabin. He was unbound and undressed, but wrapped in a blanket tucked snugly beneath his feet. A Flikker woman was crouching by a wood-burning stove, stirring a pot of stew and singing: Poor little field mice, lost in a storm, only a wildcat to keep them warm.

She was very old. Her green-brown skin was dry and wrinkled, and the joints in her great hands were swollen and stiff. She glanced at him and gave a satisfied croak.

"Awake!" she said, in the Flikkers' old-fashioned Arquali. "I knew thy heart was strong. Art thou improved, boy?"

"I'm much better," said Pazel, in her own tongue.

The old woman lit up like a firecracker, and dropped her wooden spoon. "You speak Flikker!" she cried.

"Where am I, please?" asked Pazel.

She recovered her spoon, hobbled forward and whacked him smartly with it across the cheek. "Feel that?"

"Why, yes," said Pazel, holding his cheek.

"Praise the blood of the earth! A few days ago your skin was numb-numb and cold, like a drowned man's. But look at you now! You're going to live, strange human boy."

Pazel saw his tattered clothes folded on a corner of her low wooden table. Scattered over the rest of the table, to his astonishment, were books. They were soiled, fourth-hand volumes, spines cracked and resewn, pages hanging in tatters. Nearly all were medical in nature; indeed the first book his eyes lighted upon was Parasites: An Appreciation by Dr. Ignus Chadfallow.

"You've been caring for me, haven't you?" he said.

"Right you are," said the old woman. "Thirteen days."

"Thirteen!"

With a kindly smile (an expression Pazel had not imagined possible on a Flikker face) she helped him out of bed and into a chair by the stove. Her name was Glindrik, she said: this was her home.

"What happened to the others? They were going to auction me off."

She cackled. "Your illness took care of that. You slept right through the auction. Old Pradjit was so angry he wanted to finish you off, boil you down to bones, and sell 'em for half a cockle to the Slugdra ghost-doctors. Luckily I got to you in time. Keep that blanket over your chest, dear. And put your feet up on the fender; they're still cold as meltwater."

She served him a bowl of hot stew, then sat across from him and began to chatter. She was plainly a most unusual Flikker, and knew it-they called her Mad Glindrik of the Westfirth, she observed with a certain pride. It seemed that dying humans were her hobby. For two decades she had lived alone here, just across the river from the "auction," whatever that was. And each time the Flikkermen from Uturphe arrived with a captive too sick to be sold profitably, Glindrik bought him cheaply, and set about saving a life.

When Pazel asked her why, she frowned at him. Why not? She had no children. Her husband was long dead. What else should she do with the scant years left to her?

He almost asked, But why help humans? Something in her eyes, however, gave him to know that the question would cause deep offense. And Pazel at once felt ashamed for assuming that no Flikker could wish him anything but harm.

Through her window he saw that the river here was enormously wide. He could make out the far shore, miles away it seemed, and scores of islands thick with dense woods, over which gulls and other shorebirds wheeled.

"We're near the sea, then, Glindrik?"

"Very near," she said. "The water's too salty even for Flikkers to drink. But there's a well on the hillside, past the apple trees."

"Are there many auctions?"

"Every fortnight. But how did you learn Flikker, boy? Were you raised among us?"

They talked the morning away. She wanted to know all about his Gift, and was fascinated by his mind-fits, even turning to her books in search of some other way to prevent or delay them. "Night-blooming blacksap, maybe," she said. "Chew the flowers: they dull the mind's sensitivity to spells. Worth a try, anyway."

In the afternoon he napped, and when he woke again he felt perfectly cured. He dressed, and stepped ashore by the little gangway connecting her houseboat to the bank. Over her objections he took her hatchet and split several dozen logs into pieces for her wood-stove, and carried them in. Then Glindrik told him that in three or four days an elk-hunter would pass by, an "honest coot" who would take him back to Uturphe by land.

"How can I thank you?" Pazel asked her.

Glindrik smiled. "What do you want to do with your life, Pazel Pathkendle?"

Pazel looked at her, startled. "I've never been asked that before," he said. "I don't know the answer, either. Sail like my father, I always thought, but the Code will keep me from that. So perhaps I'll go back to school, one day, if I find one that takes Ormalis. But first I have to stop this blary war, and find my family, of course, and-"

He stopped abruptly. An image of Thasha's face had suddenly leaped into his mind.

Glindrik put out her spindly hand and touched his own. "Complicated!" she said. "My own dream was never so hard to tell." She smiled, rather sadly. "No, telling was easy."

"What was it, Glindrik?"

She got up with a sigh. "After I fetch the water."

"Let me," Pazel said, jumping up.

She looked at him, considering. At last she said, "Fetch it, then, dear, but whatever you do, don't be long. You'll want to lie down again soon. I want you back in ten minutes, you understand?"

"Yes, Doctor," he said, and Glindrik laughed, delighted.

The path to the well straggled up the sandy bank, through Glin-drik's vegetable patch and a copse of gnarled apple trees. There were bees and grasshoppers, and rabbits growing fat on her cabbage and kale. Pazel reached the well and threw back the wooden cover.

A chill touched his spine: he thought suddenly of hands on his arms and legs. Hands like Glindrik's, lifting and hurling him down a shaft very much like this one.

Shaking off the thought, Pazel filled the buckets and set them down to rest a moment. He looked north, where the broad loops of the river vanished into the Westfirth hills. Dry land, he mused. To think that one could set off into it, as a ship did the open sea, and travel months or years without reaching a shore. The idea always struck him as absurd.

He looked back down the hillside. He could not make out her houseboat, but through the low pines the sea winked back at him. Twenty years, alone, he thought. What was that dream of yours, Glindrik?

Then he turned, and saw the graveyard.

It was laid out neatly beyond the apple trees: twenty or thirty graves in short rows, each one marked with river stones in the shape of the Milk Tree. Human graves, he thought: Flikkers did not worship Rin, or any god of humankind.

The scene might have been touching, but after the awful memory of his deceit in Uturphe, Pazel found himself alarmed, and suspicious. Glindrik had never spoken of those who died in her care.

Suddenly her voice rang out from below: "Pazel! Pazel! Come back now, boy. Time to rest!"

Pazel didn't move. Why hadn't she mentioned the graveyard, when they had talked of so much else?

Glindrik shouted again, more urgently this time. He lifted the buckets and began to pick his way down the hill. But he dragged his feet. A terrible thought came to him: had she experimented on those boys? Tried out her brews and potions on humans first, to see if they cured or killed?

Pazel stopped behind a rambling shrub. No sound but the buzzing bees: Glindrik had stopped calling his name.

This is rubbish, he thought, she saved your life. Yet some instinctive fear kept him where he was a moment longer. Then he took a deep breath and walked down the bank to the houseboat.

He thought she would be waiting on the shore, but she was inside.

He crossed the gangway and stepped down onto the deck. He heard her voice within the cabin.

But Glindrik was not talking to him.

"Very sick!" she was saying. "No use to you at all. And now he's gone and hobbled off into the woods. To die, I suppose."

"Didn't I tell you?" said a male Flikker, laughing.

"You told me, Pradjit. I'll never learn, old fool that I am."

Pazel froze. They were back, his captors. Silently he put the buckets on the deck.

"We should take his bones," said another Flikkerman.

"His bones are mine!" said Glindrik, almost shrieking. "I bought him from you, remember? In any case he ran off days ago. No, friends, he's gone, long gone!"

"Why do you shout, woman? Are you deaf?"

Pazel knew why. Heart pounding terribly, he stepped back onto the gangway. On tiptoe he crossed the plank. Once his feet were on firm ground, however, he found it impossible not to run. Up the hillside path he sprinted, then dashed through the garden, rounded the shrub-

— and collided head-on with a Flikkerman, who croaked, dropped his armful of apples, and stunned Pazel senseless with a touch.

When he woke it was quite dark. He was facedown in one of the narrow Flikker boats: it might have been the very one that brought him from Uturphe. His hands were tied behind his back.

"The lying hag," a Flikker voice was saying. "This boy is perfectly healed; we'll get more for him tonight than we would have at last auction. Why does she lie, though? Why not sell them back to us?"

"She cheats," said a second voice. "She must have another buyer. Why else would she fight so hard to save them?"

It was all Pazel could do not to beat his head against the hull. Idiot, flaming idiot! Glindrik was exactly what she seemed: a friend. She had wanted him back in bed to feign sickness once more, before Pradjit and his men turned up. Now Pazel was back where he started two weeks ago. How could he have been such a fool?

Groaning with rage, he twisted around and sat up. He could just see Glindrik's houseboat by the dwindling shore, and the old woman watching sadly from the deck.

His captors no longer called him Shplegmun. Already their boat was nearing an island: a great river island, its sandy shores glowing by moonlight. Low trees reared up beyond the dunes.

The boat struck sand; the Flikkers leaped out and pulled it ashore. There were other craft beached around them, and Flikker voices nearby. They pulled Pazel to his feet and nudged him onto the sand.

The voices came from a crowd at the edge of the trees: at least a dozen Flikkermen, with eight or ten captured boys. Pazel looked them over: most of these boys were tall and strong. They would sell fast enough. But one figure at the back of the crowd was very small. His captors were poking at him, grumbling: No profit, wait and see, we'll be stuck with him at night's end.

One yanked maliciously at the small boy's rope. The boy shouted back: "Leave off, you toad! That blary hurts!"

Pazel was thunderstruck. The high-pitched voice was unmistakable.

"Neeps!"

The small boy pushed forward through the crowd, and there he was, gaping.

"Pazel Pathkendle! I'll be blowed!"

"Neeps, you mad cat! How did they get hold of you?"

"Dismissed for fighting!" said Neeps.

"Not again!"

"It was that lout Jervik's fault! Him and that crook Swellows, I should have-"

"No talking!" snapped the lead Flikkerman, his body sparking with anger. "Form one line! We go to auction!"

Up the dune they marched the captive boys. Pazel felt a strange clash of emotions: joy at seeing his friend, astonishment that he should be here, dread at the thought of what lay in store for them both. Worst of all, he felt a nagging suspicion that Neeps' dismissal had something to do with him.

At the top of the dune Pazel turned and looked back the way they had come. A broad river delta spread below them in the moonlight, a fan of rippling silver and black shadow-islands. Beyond lay the open sea. Hidden among the islands, however, was a cluster of ocean ships: fifteen or sixteen little brigs and schooners bobbing at anchor.

Neeps saw them, too. "Something tells me we won't be here long," he whispered. "Belching devils, mate, I've been such a blary fool."

Pazel thought that Neeps couldn't possibly have outdone him in foolishness. "But how did you get here?" he demanded.

"Later," said Neeps. "They're watching."

After the dunes came a muddy slog through the island's brush forest, where every nightbird that ever lived whooped and whistled and trilled and honked. Now and then Pazel caught glimmers of firelight through the trees ahead. When the wind turned he caught a smell of woodsmoke and frying fish.

Harsh laughter reached his ears. The path opened suddenly into a great clearing where bonfires roared. A crowd of hundreds had gathered here-eating, wrestling, guzzling liquor, trading jibes and insults. Except for some twenty Flikkers they were all humans, but none inspired Pazel with hopes of rescue. There were many sailors-one could always spot them by their leathery skin-but when they looked at him they showed no brotherly warmth. All carried blades. Some had bones or other murth-charms knotted up in their beards. Quite a few were missing teeth or eyes or fingers. Rin save us, Pazel thought, they're pirates.

The head Flikkerman drew a line in the dirt with his boot-heel, and the others arranged the boys along it by size. Was this a slave-market? Pazel wondered. Certainly it resembled what he'd seen during the rape of Ormael-except that no ownership papers were involved here, and no branding iron. And of course, the Flikkers were in charge.

They worked in pairs. One stood with his hand on the head of a captive. The other jumped onto a crate, raised his long-fingered hands over his head and sang the prisoner's qualities in a weird, half-rhyming chant: "Strong-strong-boy, hop-a-long-boy! Clean-never-never-sick-head-thick-boy! See-how-tall-he'll-carry-all!"

And so on. When a customer shouted out a price, the lower Flikkerman pointed in his direction and began to glow softly. Then a higher bid would come, and the Flikkerman turned and pointed to the new customer, and glowed a little brighter, and his partner above would sing with more excitement and exaggeration: "A perfect child! So-good-mannered-mild! Tough as a lion, wilt thou not buy 'im?"

When someone did buy a boy, the two Flikkers cried, "Eeech!" in unison, and the glowing one went out like a snuffed candle. The whole display appeared to have a kind of hypnotic effect on the pirates, who were spending money rather freely for people who went to such lengths to obtain it.

As his captors waited their turn, however, Pazel saw that the cleverer pirates knew better than to listen to the song. They poked and prodded the boys, examined their teeth and eyes.

"Too many sellers," grumbled one of their captors. "We'll make nothing on these runts."

"These brutes don't want quality goods," whined another Flikkerman. "Any boy will do, when he's sure to be drowned or stabbed or cannon-blasted in a few months."

"So inefficient! I don't understand why humans kill one another."

"Neither do they."

Then the first speaker gave a chirp of surprise. "Ehiji, look! It's Druffle, Dollywilliams Druffle! What's he doing out here?"

The Mr. Druffle in question was a most unusual-looking man. He had greasy black hair that hung limply to his shoulders, a long nose and a filthy coat from which his bony hands emerged like implements for poking a fire. Over one shoulder hung something slick and rubbery. As he drew closer Pazel saw that it was an enormous eel.

Just behind Druffle came four huge men-at-arms. They had black beards trimmed to paintbrush points; their muscles bulged against iron bands around their forearms. Each carried a spear filed to razor sharpness and thick with dried gore where spearhead met shaft. As their eyes scanned the crowd, even the fiercest pirates stepped out of their way. "Volpeks," men whispered. And so they were: Pazel knew them from drawings in his father's books. Now here they stood in the flesh: the dreaded mercenaries of the Narrow Sea, who would fight and kill for anyone who paid.

Behind the Volpeks shuffled a line of eight boys, chained at the wrists. Their faces and skin spoke of many homelands. One trait they had in common, however: they were all rather small.

"… most certainly experienced!" Druffle was saying to the Flikkerman. "They won't have time to learn between here and Chereste!"

Pazel's heart skipped a beat. Chereste was home! It was the peninsula on whose tip stood Ormael City.

"But why dost thou another's bidding?" demanded the Flikkerman.

"Call it that if you will," said Druffle. "I call it gold for easy service. And gold he has, a-plenty."

"A merchant, sayest thou?"

"Aye, Froggy," said Druffle. "A gentleman bound for Ormael himself. We're to meet there in a week's time. So you see I must depart with the dawn-absolutely no later. Two more divers, just two, and I'll chance it. You!" He stopped before a skinny boy on Pazel's left. "Ever dived for pearls?"

Flabbergasted, the boy sputtered: "Yes! Oh yes, sir! Lots of times!"

"Where?"

"Where… where them pearls is found, sir."

"You lie. Bah, hold your breath anyway. Go ahead."

A silver pocket watch appeared in Druffle's hand. The boy took a deep breath. Druffle put his ear close to the other's face, listening for any cheating breath. Soon the boy's face began to purple.

At the end of the row, Pazel saw Neeps lean forward to look at him. Quite out loud, but in Sollochi, he said: "Start breathing now, mate. Breathe as deep as you can-augh!"

A Flikker cuffed him into silence. But Pazel had understood. Neeps was a diver-a pearl diver, in fact. Druffle would certainly buy him. And if there was any chance of them staying together, Pazel would have to pass the test as well.

The skinny boy was looking ill. Druffle slid the huge eel off his shoulder. With a wink he brought the gray-green head close to the boy's face-and then suddenly clamped its jaws tight on his nose.

"You're underwater, lad! Don't breathe, don't breathe!"

"Taauugh!"

The boy breathed. Druffle gave a snort of disgust.

Following Neeps' instruction, Pazel started gulping huge breaths. Light-headed but determined, he watched Neeps easily pass the test, and Druffle counting gold into a Flikker's hand. The man looked up and down the row.

"One more," he said.

Taking a risk, Pazel sang out in Ormali: "Try me, sir!"

The head Flikkerman raised a warning finger. Druffle, however, broke into a smile. "A Chereste boy!" he said. "Well, that makes two of us. Long since you've been home?"

"A very long time," said Pazel.

"So you'll tell me anything to get back to Ormael. Just as Froggy here will tell me anything for gold. Where did you dive?"

"Off the side of a whaler. My captain made us look for salt-worms, every fortnight."

Druffle sighed, turning away. "No long dives, then?"

"Well, sir!" said Pazel, catching his sleeve. "You wanted the truth, and the truth is I can dive like a blary seal! Pardon the adjective, sir. You'll find my lungs capacious, out of proportion to my size-"

"He he," laughed Druffle.

"And the murths, Mr. Druffle! I nearly forgot the sea-murths! They love whales and hate whalers, that's what our captain said. He feared they wrote hexes on the bottom of the ship, and we had to dive and look for them, sir, and erase them thoroughly, which was quite a challenge when they didn't exist-"

"Shut up! If you can hold your breath after that jib'rishing you're a diver indeed! Go on, try."

Pazel's outburst had indeed canceled out all his deep-breathing efforts, but what choice did he have? He took a last gulp of air and held it. Druffle looked at his watch. The Flikkers looked at Pazel. The Volpeks shook their massive heads.

Rather soon Pazel's own head began to feel as though it were being stepped on by a horse. "Don't breathe!" hissed Druffle, and, "Don't breathe! Don't breathe!" croaked all his captors, waving their hands and flashing like lightning bugs. The head Flikker pinched his nose.

When he had lasted twice as long as the first boy, purple spots rose before his eyes. Don't breathe! Don't breathe! He stamped his foot. Neeps' anxious face swam into view, but it was blotted out by Druffle's face, which seemed to be morphing into that of the eel. The purple spots became black. He was about to fall.

Goodbye, Neeps.

Suddenly Druffle lunged, knocking the Flikker's hand away. "Breathe, breathe, for the love of Rin!" he shouted. "You're mine!"