The River of Shadows

Stealing the Nilstone

5 Modobrin 941

Ensyl leaned back against the scabbard of Ildraquin, winded. The dust was going to make her sneeze. With a bit of string she’d found under Thasha’s bed she had just hoisted the weapon to the top of the cupboard in the stateroom. Not much of a hiding place, but it would be out of sight from the floor, and as long as the ship was on dry land there was no danger of it shifting. In any case it was better than leaving it inside the straw mattress in Bolutu’s cabin, where she had stashed it three nights ago, in desperate haste, just to keep Vadu from fishing it through the tiny hole he’d cut in Thasha’s wall.

She had watched that deed from the inside, watched him slide his arm toward Hercol’s blade. She had charged, ready to hack the fingers from that hand, but then the wall itself had attacked Vadu, burned him, and she had danced sidelong into the shadows again, still unseen. When Vadu retreated she had dragged the sword to Bolutu’s chamber, then raced back by the ixchel’s secret paths to a vantage point on the quarterdeck.

Like so many heads of cattle, the humans were being herded ashore. Far down the lightless avenue she could see them trudging in the chilly rain, soldiers on sicunas pacing among them, dogs to either side watching for strays. Where were the tarboys, the young women, Hercol? She had not caught sight of any of her friends since well before the dlomic charge.

But then Fiffengurt had appeared across the quay, supporting Lady Oggosk as he might his own mother. His true eye glanced back at his beloved Chathrand, searching for any sign of hope. Ensyl wanted to go to him, show herself, prove that the fight was not lost. If only, she thought, I had a swallow-suit. Pointless yearning. She would never again be trusted anywhere near such a treasure of the clan.

Now, dust-coated, she sat atop the cupboard, elbows on knees, looking down at the chamber of her allies. Vast, safe, deserted. Alone at last. She didn’t dare laugh at the thought; laughter could too easily slide into tears.

What had she just accomplished, wrestling his sword up here? What would she do next, clean the windows? The thought pounced on her suddenly: they were defeated, utterly crushed, stripped of their vessel and their freedom and any chance to determine their own fates.

They? Who do you mean by they, Ensyl?

I don’t mean they. I mean us.

Your clan despised you, abandoned you Not the clan, forget the clan, count me out of it, that broken thing, that lie.

You just mean her.

And what if she did? What if it had all been for Dri-for her beautiful, murdered mistress? Dri, who understood the life inside the ritual, who knew what clan could mean, ought to mean, the deeper us, the source in the heart, that chance of kinship no matter the bodies or the histories involved.

Dri, killed because she loved out of turn.

You hate Hercol Stanapeth, don’t you? The noblest soul on this ship, maybe, and you hate him. You think of them together and you could stab him through the heart.

Ensyl tried desperately to still her mind. The guilty conscience exaggerates: that was something Dri herself used to say. When guilt would claim you, be cold. Accept the whole truth, but no more than that, or you will wander among phantoms alone.

But wasn’t that exactly what she was doing? Her mistress had died. Her clan-brethren had fled, and not trusted her with the secret of where they had gone. Her human allies had been marched off down a dark road through the Lower City. All her pride in her choice of loyalties, and what was she left with for company? A bearskin rug. A black, stained sword.

Then a door creaked, and Ensyl was herself again. Flat against the cabinet-top, hidden, one hand reaching for her knife.

A slight scrabbling from below, and then a shrill, worried voice called out timidly, “Thasha? Hercol? Where is everyone?”

Ensyl shouted with joy. “Felthrup, why, Felthrup, you-rat!”

She was down to the floor in seconds, embracing the startled beast. He was glad to see her, too, but frightened and disoriented, and very thirsty. He knew nothing of the fight with Arunis or the seizure of the ship. He had been asleep, as they both soon realized, for three days.

“Three days! How did you manage that?”

“It was hard work,” he said, “but worth it. Oh, I pray it was worth it. Somehow I feel as though I’ve accomplished a great deed, only I cannot remember anything about it. But where are the others, Ensyl? Why is the ship so still?”

Ensyl told him about the events he had slept through, and Felthrup ran in circles about her, in a paroxysm of remorse. “Fulbreech! I hate him! I will give him the sort of bite he can’t recover from! I knew it, I always knew-and yet when Lady Thasha needed me most I lay asleep in a closet, not twenty feet from that-that-androsuccubus, is that the word?”

“I’m sure it is,” said Ensyl. “But you could not have helped her then. Let us go to work now, and perhaps we will find our revenge.”

Then they both heard it: a faint cry, from beyond the doorway. “That’s an ixchel voice!” said Ensyl, and flew to the door. Reaching the knob was an easy leap; turning it, a whole-body effort. But she managed, and Felthrup nosed open the door, and both of them tumbled through.

Counselor Vadu had made his men paint around the hole he had cut in the magic wall. Now a splotch of white enamel hung in the air at the center of the crossed passages, outlining the jagged rectangle. And beneath the hole, cradling her hand, stood Myett.

They raced toward her; she watched them come. “The edges are sharp, like broken glass,” she said, displaying a long cut on her hand.

“You dare not try to pass through it,” said Ensyl. “Counselor Vadu was branded by it, like a mule. What are you doing here, Myett? Did you not go after Taliktrum, as the clan supposed?”

Myett just looked at her, wary and mistrustful, and Ensyl wished she hadn’t spoken.

“Is there food in the stateroom?” asked Myett.

Ensyl told her to wait in Bolutu’s chamber while she ran and gathered bread and biscuit crumbs and the last dlomic peach into a bundle. Then she ran back to where Felthrup waited, and the two of them stepped out through the wall and went to the veterinarian’s cabin. Myett ate and ate; Ensyl had rarely seen one of her people so famished. “The humans are gone,” she said between mouthfuls. “They’re being treated like kings, though-captive kings. Fattened up, in a great pavilion across the city. And given new clothes, and baths, and nurses to scrub them and kill their fleas.”

“You went there?”

“I rode there, in a wagon with the invalids who could not walk. And back upon a dog-drawn coach. I could see them eating through a window in the pavilion, but I couldn’t get a bite. The dlomic giants don’t waste food like humans; they don’t drop it and throw it about. They’re giving heaps of it to their prisoners, but all the same-” She looked up, puzzled, at Ensyl and the rat. “I don’t think they have that much.”

“We’re trapped, then,” said Felthrup, eating alongside Myett. “Unless they bring the crew back, and set us afloat upon the gulf.”

“We’re trapped,” Ensyl agreed. “There are a hundred dlomu on the topdeck, at least five times that number surrounding the port. And by day there are the shipwrights, the dockworkers, inspectors going through every compartment and cabin. There will be no fighting our way out of the Jaws of Masalym, even if all the humans fought at our side. I doubt we could master the river-machines, the gates and shafts and spillways, without destroying the ship in our trial and error. No, there’s no escape by sea. If we leave this city, we do so without the Chathrand.”

Myett did not look at her. Sullenly, she asked, “What does Lord Talag say?”

Ensyl hesitated, and then Myett did look at her, with a certain gleam of understanding. “You missed the rendezvous on the orlop,” she said. “You were in the stateroom with your true friends. Of course.”

“I was fighting the sorcerer,” said Ensyl. “Do you know where they went?”

She nodded. “A safe place indeed. Even the dogs will not sniff them out. But Ensyl: I will not go there with you, nor tell you how to find it.”

Ensyl was taken aback. “Sister,” she said, “everything has changed now. Perhaps you did not see them? Arunis is allied with the rulers of the city. They do his bidding, or much of it. We cannot quarrel among ourselves. Your lover accused me of treason, and it is true that I disobeyed him. But that is all beside the point. Doom is coming for us like a great wave, Myett. We must help one another to higher ground or be washed away.”

“Everything has changed,” said Myett, nodding, “and I have changed with it. Your treason is nothing to me, nor is your standing, or mine, or all the old stale points of honor. Let our fellow crawlies help one another to escape the wave, if they can find the will to do so. I want no part of that struggle. I am alone.”

For an ixchel, the last statement was close to heresy. Ensyl struggled to keep her voice even and low. “Sanctuary awaits us, sister,” she said.

“We will never reach it,” said Myett, “and they-they do not deserve it.”

Her look was adamant, and Ensyl’s heart sank. Myett the worshipful had become Myett the indifferent. She had not run off, like Taliktrum, but she had exiled herself all the same. The clan was crumbling; foolishness and self-deceit would be their epitaph.

“But, sister-”

“I am no one’s sister anymore.”

Ensyl could not summon the strength to argue. But Felthrup, who had been gaping at Myett, shook himself and stood up from his meal. “Now see here,” he squeaked. “You owe your life to Ixphir House.”

“Don’t lecture me, rodent,” said Myett with a caustic laugh. “I know my debts, all right.”

“Be quiet, you know very little,” said Felthrup, his mouth twitching so hard that crumbs flew from his whiskers. “You have a grievance with Taliktrum. That is plain as a bruise on your face. Be quiet, be quiet! You have no grievance with Ensyl, who has only shown you kindness. And you have no right to destroy the clan that raised you. No right by your people’s laws, nor by the moral constant that unites all woken souls.”

“You read too much,” said Myett.

“A clan, a crew, a colony of rats: they are neither blessed nor damned, neither chosen nor cast out. But they are your family. Some have mistreated you. What of it? The rest need your strength, and more wisdom than you’ve shown.”

What had happened to Felthrup in his sleep? Ensyl wondered. He was shaking and nervous as ever, but at the same time he was speaking in a rapture of certainty, not breaking eye contact with Myett.

“They need you,” he said, “and that matters more than your damage and pain. You must let it matter more.”

“They despise me,” said Myett. “They have taken decades of my life and given back only scorn.”

“And did they take nothing from me?” Felthrup displayed his mangled forepaw. “They sealed me in a bilge-pipe to suffocate. But they rescued me, too-from my family, my diseased and mutant kin, the ones who bit three inches off my tail. I gnawed at that stump, Myett-gnawed it back to bleeding, each time it started to heal. Oh, how I pitied myself! I dreamed of drowning, and I did not care who drowned with me.”

At the word drowning, Myett’s face changed. “That was you, scrabbling in the dark!” she cried. “You little vermin. You followed me, you watched. You watched me and said nothing!”

“I watched you rush into the hold as the water rose,” said Felthrup, “and wondered what you sought there. I never dreamed it was death.”

Ensyl turned her back, so as not to shame the young woman before her. Aya Rin, Myett. Was it love of Taliktrum that drove you to this?

“I will not tell you again,” said Myett, breathing hard, “to leave me in peace.”

“That is what I mean to do,” said Felthrup. “I will go to the manger, to have a look at the Nilstone. And you, friend Myett: you will do the right thing, and be strong. Take Ensyl to warn your people. The water spared you for a reason, as that pipe spared me. It is up to us to discover those reasons, I think-and if we cannot, then to find reasons, create them if necessary. Yes, I mean it. Sometimes we must fabricate reasons to live.”

Ensyl looked at Myett once more, and saw a broken agony in her face, a desperation. Myett lifted a hand toward her knife, and Ensyl froze. Don’t make me fight you, Myett. Don’t make one of us die. We’re both victims of our love for that family.

Myett’s hand hovered over the knife. Then it rose, slowly, as though she would touch Felthrup on the muzzle. She did not complete the gesture, but something in her own face changed, and she turned swiftly to the wall. She could not face them, maybe, but Ensyl thought she stood a little straighter than before.

“Damn you, Stanapeth! We’re not ready to tackle the ship!”

Alyash was fuming. Neither Sandor Ott nor Hercol responded to his whispered outburst. They were moving as only trained assassins could, shadow to shadow, crouch to crouch. Alert to the tiniest noises, wearing dark clothes swapped with or stripped from other crew members, faces and hands and bare feet blackened from a pouch of soot. Boots would have been safer: glass and splinters and rusty nails littered the streets. But they had no proper, soft-soled footwear, and one accidental thump could make the difference between life and death.

“Do you hear me? Nabbing the Stone tonight is blary impossible! We’ll be lucky to get aboard her at all.”

Ott did not like sudden changes to careful plans anymore than Alyash. But Hercol’s reasoning was sound. Take the Nilstone tonight or lose it to enemies tomorrow. Lose it to enemies, and you will never defeat them.

But Alyash had a point as well. The ship was under heavy guard, and they had not yet cased her fully. Blind terrain! How he hated it! Ott himself had already been attacked: a dozen creatures, like small monkeys but for their hairlessness and fangs, had exploded from the window of a gutted house. All on him, coordinated as a wolf pack, and Ott wondered if they had somehow decided that he was the weakest of the three. He had responded with a frenzy of killing, and sent the few survivors screeching into the night.

In fact the ruined state of the Lower City was mostly to their advantage. Only near the cliff where the Middle City began did the streets come to life. Descending that cliff had been a moderate challenge. It had been more difficult to persuade Thasha Isiq to go with Dastu, seeking an exit to the mountains, a place they might flee to, a hideout.

They were halfway to the port.

Right now the greatest danger was the dogs. Killing them was too dangerous: they had only six arrows and one bow, of strange dlomic design, taken off a man Ott had personally authorized Dastu to kill. A foot soldier, sent back to the barracks for a cough, and quite unaware of the falcon gliding soundlessly overhead, guiding Dastu through the darkened city. The cough, at least, would bother him no more.

But they could not waste those precious arrows on dogs. And a wounded dog might howl. That wouldn’t do. They had to mount to the rooftops whenever the creatures stirred. Luckily the houses were low and ramshackle, and often abandoned. Four or five empty streets for every one where citizens clung together, fearful and poor, night watchmen armed with no more than sticks to keep the feral dogs and other, stranger animals at bay. Given a month Ott could have learned to mimic the sounds of these animals, and thus moved through Masalym with far greater ease. But they had only tonight. Had they been spotted already, though? Taken for dlomic criminals? Surely there were many such parasites, feasting on this carcass of a city.

Most of the houses were slate-roofed-easy to climb, hazardous to cross-but eventually Hercol beckoned, and sprinted to a flat-roofed building. It was the drainpipe he’d spotted: a solid iron thing. It bore his weight as he pulled himself up, hand over hand. Despite himself Ott had to smile as he watched Hercol’s fluid movements. Alyash had strength and utter fearlessness, and a mind like a steel trap. But Hercol had something more: blazing intuition, a welding together of thought and deed that was swifter even than Ott’s own. Such a masterful tool. And yet Hercol was not his to wield, ever again, for Arqual or any other cause. He’s wielding you, if anything, old man. Your hunting days are numbered.

When he crawled forward to the roof’s edge, Ott saw why Hercol had chosen it. Before them stretched a wide, dark road: the avenue up which the captives had been marched. Half a mile to the south the Chathrand towered over the quay. The lamps of the dlomic guard blazed on her topdeck.

“They’ve mounted the new foremast,” said Alyash. “There’s rigging on it too, by the hairy devil. They work fast.”

“The breach in the hull is surely repaired as well,” said Hercol. “No boarding her from below, then. And if we climb the scaffold they will spot us for certain. We will have to enter by one of the starboard hawse-holes.”

“Like rats,” said Ott, and smiled.

“I just hope your knife’s good and sharp,” muttered Alyash. “The splash-guard on the inside of those holes is made of walrus hide. You’re going to have a dandy job cutting through it while dangling from the cable.”

“My knife is sharp,” said Hercol, “and your plan is sound, of course, Master Ott. A direct approach would be suicide. But this way we have a chance.”

He calls me master! By the Night Gods, I taught him respect! He was not deceived, of course: there was hateful irony when Hercol spoke the word, even if he had never found another to replace it.

Sudden wings overhead. Ott rolled onto his back: Niriviel swept over them, cutting a turn that meant No enemies moving. “All clear,” said Ott. “Let’s get on with it, gentlemen.”

They climbed down, rounded the building, broke across the road. At once a door slammed off to their right. Well, Pitfire, they’d been seen. But recognized? Not likely. You open a door, you see figures running in deadly earnest, you slam it. Nine men in ten will hold their breath and hope the danger passes. Of course, these were not exactly men.

Keep running, keep cold. In the lead, Hercol reached the far side of the avenue and dived into a side street, ducked left at the first alley, then right into the next. This one was straight and long and amazingly narrow, three- and four-story row houses so close together that you could, at times, touch both walls at once. Mounds of refuse, scent of just-burned garbage, rodents squeaking and popping out of their way, fitful candlelight in scattered windows. They ran.

One block, two. No incidents. Then disaster-a dlomic woman’s shriek, half a dozen answering voices, rage and fear and shouted names. A cacophony of dogs’ howls, objects shattering near their heads. They flew into the fast sprint they had not yet asked of themselves, saw the vicious monkey-squirrels leaping across the alley through open windows ahead of them, then all around them, like crossfire, and then they were at the end of the alley, dashing over a ring road paved with old cobbles, and vaulting onto the eight-foot wall at the rim of the basin.

“The floor below is curved,” cried Hercol. “Drop! Drop and run!”

Cries from behind them; stones whizzing past their ears. They dropped, struck ground, rolled onto their feet. They were in the mile-wide basin into which the Chathrand had been lifted when she entered Masalym. It was a great stone bowl, half empty, with a disc of water at the center. They made for that disc, racing down the side of the bowl, then crouching and sliding, clowns and not killing machines when they hit the slippery slime-layer near the water’s edge. Once submerged they dived deep, so no ripple would betray them above. They rose together, breathed together, dived at the same time. Like my lads crossing the border at the River Narth, to kill the Sizzies in their sleep, thought the spymaster. We’re strong swimmers, and we know what we’re about. But beside the dlomu we’re slow as cows. If they catch us in the water we’re dead men. Stay deep, my boys, stay with me.

Stones and arrows fell around them. But they did swim deep, and none of the arrows found its mark, and Ott heard no sound of pursuit. With long, swift strokes they crossed the basin, until at last the curved floor met their feet once more. Out they crawled into the slime, three crocodiles, belly-sliding right to the foot of the stone gate across the Chathrand’s berth.

“Not here,” said Ott. “Too many eyes. We should climb out at the third berth, the abandoned one. Good cover there: it’s full of derelicts and weeds.”

Hercol nodded. The three men bent low and ran along the wall for some five hundred yards. No guard here, no lights. And the makeshift grappling hook bit on the third throw, bit and held tight: such splendid luck. Right up the wall Hercol climbed, forty feet, hand over fist. Alyash followed. When Ott’s turn came he found the two men hauling him up.

Red fury engulfed him. He glowered as he hooked a leg over the rim.

“I need no man’s help up a wall,” he said. “Do you think I’d be out here tonight if I doubted for my readiness to-Eh?”

The others were staring, transfixed. Ott sprang to his feet and looked in the same direction.

They were at the edge of the abandoned berth, some five hundred yards from the Chathrand. At their feet, three boats sat in dry dock in various stages of decay. Upon the largest, which was draped like some ghastly burial chamber with the moldered remains of her sails, dark figures were moving toward the bows.

Ott pulled the other men down into the weeds. The figures numbered ten. Eight of them wore black clothes, rather like the men watching ashore. They were dlomu, of course: the slight gleam of silver about the eyes proved that. All had light, thin swords, and three carried bows as well, with arrows already nocked.

The last two figures were bound at the wrists. One was a youth in a ragged shirt and trousers; the other wore a soldier’s mail. Both had dark leather sacks pulled over their heads.

The archers took up positions on the boat’s perimeter, studying the darkness. The others led the prisoners to one of the few remaining sections of rail and forced them to their knees.

“Bandits,” said Alyash, “settling scores. Come on, they’re the last ones we need to worry about.”

“Look again,” said Ott.

The archer at the stern of the vessel, having raised a hand to his neck, was holding oddly still. Hercol’s mouth fell open in the surprise. “Dead,” he declared with certainty, and even as he spoke the man pitched forward and toppled without a cry upon the stone below.

“What in the bottomless black Pits!” hissed Alyash.

The wheelhouse obstructed the others’ view; they had not missed their companion yet.

“Did you see an arrow?” Ott demanded.

“No, Master,” said Hercol. “But look at the prisoners now.”

The youth was being held with his forehead to the deck, but the sack on the other’s head had been pulled off. Ott could make out none of his features, but somehow, even on his knees, there was pride in his bearing. He twisted about to look up at his captors. Suddenly he cried aloud:

“Don’t you know the law? It is death to touch me.”

“That is no soldier!” hissed Hercol as one of the captors kicked the kneeling figure in the stomach. “That is Prince Olik!”

“By damn, it is!” said Alyash. “Well, well-he did say he wasn’t popular. But it’s not our problem, Stanapeth. You wanted to go for the Nilstone tonight. You can’t play hero-to-the-fish-eyes as well.”

“Alyash! We are looking at regicide!”

“You are-I’m looking at dawn in the east. Think a moment, you softhearted fool. Dastu and your little girly will be waiting outside that blary nuthouse before long. Are you going to just leave ’em there? Oh, devil’s arse!”

A second bowman was down. This one crumpled forward onto his knees and remained that way, chin to chest. Still the executioners at the bow saw nothing-they were bending the struggling prince over the rail, holding him by his arms and his hair, and one was testing the sharpness of a knife-but this time Ott caught a glimpse of something tiny and airborne lifting away from the fallen bowman.

Alyash was ready to burst. “Do you know what that was? It was a crawly in one of their wing-suits! That prince has crawlies working for him! But it’s a bit late all the same.”

The dlomu was lowering his knife to Olik’s throat.

“A good, quick death,” said Alyash. “That prince will hardly feel a-”

Ott’s bow sang. The dlomu with the knife staggered backward, with a surprisingly low cry of pain considering that the arrow had passed through his leg above the knee.

Hercol was already sprinting for the boat. Ott rose and followed. “You mucking bastards!” Alyash roared behind them, but he came on too. Ott was his commander, and he knew just how far insubordination could go.

The dlomu had seen them, were scattering, drawing their weapons. The deck was some ten feet forward and thirty feet below the rim of the berth. Hercol flung himself into space, and Ott followed, and wanted to scream with the joy of it, free fall, the longest since his leap through the palace window in Ormael, and slaughter at the end of it, beside the best man he’d ever trained. He made it as far as the rigging-of course he did, a given-brought down bushels of the rotten canvas, turned as he fell, and had a yard of sound rope pulled taut between his hands to catch the first blow aimed at him. The dlomu was crushed under his knees; the sword was gone; Ott whipped the rope around his neck in a blur and jerked and that was one of them, still kicking but dead, and then almost wondering why he did it Ott rolled, and took the body with him, held tight by the twisted rope, and felt the prick of his next foe’s blade pass through the man and half an inch, no more, into his own chest. He kicked. The dlomu tumbled. They were trained but not sufficiently; Hercol had slain two at least. Ott’s next kick disarmed his opponent. He felt a webbed hand claw at his face, seized it, wrenched himself atop the dlomu. As his elbow crushed the other’s heart Ott found himself saddened at the thought of an Empire forced to rely on such mediocre assassins. Give me a year with them. They’d never be the same.

His sadness did not last long, however. Their final opponent was fleeing. Ott assumed he’d try to break over the plank onto solid ground, and the dlomu at first seemed intent on doing just that. But something overcame him as he ran, and oddly, he veered away from the plank around the starboard side of the wheelhouse, like a runner circling a very small track. And when he emerged to portside the spymaster thought for an instant that he’d been replaced by someone else. The dlomu was singing-a weird, wordless noise-and what had been a clumsy fighter was suddenly Great Gods!

They clashed. The man was his equal; Ott was forced backward, his moves defensive; the keening dlomu was suddenly imbued with a speed and grace that would be the envy of any fighter alive. He wasn’t thinking; he was possessed. When Alyash came at him with his cutlass the dlomu spun away from Ott, his thin sword whistling, falling short of the bosun’s jugular by a quarter inch. Hercol was in the fight as well, now, but the three of them, for Rin’s sake, were barely holding the man at bay. Ott danced backward and nocked an arrow. The man sensed it somehow, pressed after him; Ott had to twist the bow around to save his own neck from that damnable, flimsy-looking sword. Another spin; Hercol leaped backward, sucking in his chest; Ott twisted, and felt the sword’s tip graze his jaw.

Rage, and the certainty of time running out, awoke something long dormant in Ott. He leaped straight up, mouthing a bitten-off curse from campaigns long ago. His foot lashed out; the singing ceased. The dlomu fell with a broken neck upon the boards.

“Great flames, what a fighter!” said Alyash, gasping for breath.

“What happened to that man?” said Hercol. “He was the weakest of them all. He was hanging back, terrified, only darting with his sword.”

“Don’t you know?” said a voice behind them. “It was the nuhzat, gentlemen. You could see it in his eyes. Here now, won’t you help that boy, before he falls?”

The hooded youth was bent over, trying to pull off the sack over his head by pinching it between his knees. Hercol steadied him, then wrenched the sack away. It was the village boy, Ibjen. He was nearly hysterical with fear, and jumped away from the bodies on the deck. “The nuhzat!” he cried.

“You needn’t speak the word as if it means ‘plague,’ ” said Olik. Then, turning to the others, he said, “You saved our lives. May the Watchers shower you with favor.”

“The nuhzat!” cried the boy again.

“Silence, you fool!” hissed Alyash. But of course it was too late: the dead man’s singing had been as loud as a scream. Ott looked up at the Chathrand and saw the row of lanterns, the mob of dlomic soldiers, gazing at them over the empty berth. They were repeating the same strange word, nuhzat, nuhzat, murmuring it in fear and doubt.

“But Ibjen, it is perfectly natural,” the prince was saying as Hercol cut their wrist-bonds. “Dlomu have had the nuhzat since the dawn of our race.”

“Natural, my prince? Natural as death, perhaps. We must get away from these bodies, wash ourselves, wash and pray.”

The soldiers on the Chathrand were growing louder, more frantic.

“You realize,” said Alyash, “that we’re not taking another step toward the Great Ship? We’ll be lucky to get out of here with our skins.”

Hercol turned to Olik. “What is this nuhzat you speak of?” he demanded.

“Why, a state of mind,” said the prince (at this Ibjen broke into a sobbing sort of laughter). “It is a place we go inside ourselves, in times of the most intense feeling. Or used to: it has almost disappeared today. A pity, for it offers much. It is the door to poetry and genius, and many other things. Very rarely it manifests as fighting prowess. But there’s an old saying: In the nuhzat you may meet with anything save that which you expect. Usually only dlomu can experience the state, but in the old days a small number of humans were able to learn it as well.”

“Learn it? Learn it!” Ibjen threw up his hands.

“If they counted dlomu among their loved ones,” added the prince. “And strangely enough those humans were the last to become tol-chenni.”

Another voice began to sing. This time it was a soldier on the Chathrand’s quarterdeck. His song was slower, deeper, but still eerie, like a voice that comes echoing from somewhere very far away. Not unpleasant, thought Ott, and yet it produced only terror on the Great Ship. Most of the dlomu ran, leaping from the quarterdeck, dropping lanterns, shoving and jostling. The singer’s nearest comrade shook him by the arms, then slapped him. The man paused briefly, then raised his arms to the sky and resumed the song. His comrade darted into the wheelhouse and returned with a rigging-axe. He clubbed his friend down with the flat of the axe-head. Only then did the singing cease.

“Now do you understand, at last?” cried Ibjen. “Now do you see why madness is not something we joke about?”

Dlomic officers were screaming: “Hold your ground! Stay at your posts!” A few soldiers obeyed, but the bulk simply fled, over the gangways, down the scaffolding, away from the fallen man and the scene on the derelict. All around the port, lamps were appearing, swinging wildly as their bearers ran here and there. Cries of panic echoed through the streets.

“Gentlemen,” said Olik, “the Nilstone is gone.”

“What?” shouted Hercol. “How do you know this? Tell me quickly, Sire, I beg you!”

“I was aboard the Chathrand not thirty minutes ago,” said the prince. “Vadu caught me, demanded to know what I had done with the Stone, made oblique references to my death. He drew the tiny shard of the Plazic Blade he carries and showed it to me. ‘This,’ he said, ‘is eguar bone. I could use it to dry the blood in your veins, or to stop your heart-without touching you, without breaking the law.’ Then he told me that the Issar had just received a message from Bali Adro City, by courier osprey. Absolutely no one was to meddle with ‘the little sphere of darkness’ in the statue’s hand, until further notice. On pain of death. Vadu said he had rushed to the ship to redouble the guard, but had found his men slain in the doorway to the manger, and the door unlocked, and the statue empty-handed, with two broken fingers lying in the hay.

“Then Vadu raised his blade, and I felt a sudden cold grip my heart. I had a last, desperate card to play, and I did so. ‘The Imperial family is defended by more than laws, Counselor,’ I said. ‘Ours is a destiny as old and certain as the stars. No one who draws my blood shall escape the wrath of the Unseen.’ I could see that he was not wholly convinced. ‘The Nilstone has vanished,’ he said, ‘and you alone are here at the moment of its vanishing. You would do better to confess what you know than to threaten me with superstitions.’ I assured him that the Stone was a deadly weapon-deadlier by far than his Plazic Blade-and that only Arunis could have stolen it. Vadu replied that he had the Great Ship surrounded, and that no one had been in or out of the ship save his guards-and me.”

The shouting now was like the mayhem of a town besieged by pirates. Children and parents all screaming, dogs howling, maddened; everyone running away. The exodus from the Chathrand was almost complete: only a score of guards remained on the topdeck.

“What were you doing aboard?” demanded Ott.

“Looking for gold,” said the prince, “to bribe the Issar on your behalf. I do not know what he intends to do with you, gentlemen, but despite the repairs to your vessel I doubt strongly that he means to let you go on your way. Ibjen and I have spoken often of your plight since we jumped ship. You made a deep impression on the boy, Mr. Stanapeth-you, and Fiffengurt, and your three younger allies. Ibjen has the idea that there are riches aboard, and Mr. Bolutu, whom I visited this morning (he remains locked up with your shipmates, incidentally), confirmed it, though he has no idea where they might be hidden. It occurred to me that they might be in the stateroom, for where else could they be safer than behind the wall? But I found nothing: only your rat-friend, Felthrup. He is in a curious state of mind himself.”

“You took a grave risk for us,” said Hercol, but his voice was still uncertain.

“And nearly died for it,” said Ibjen. “Counselor Vadu is a traitor! He has raised his hand against the royal family!”

“Strange, isn’t it?” said Ott. “A man in his position will have thought hard about that law, and especially the words on pain of death. All the same he decided it was time to kill you. Though he feared to wield the knife himself.”

“And so hired assassins,” said Olik, nodding, “and presumably meant to have them killed in turn. But it was still an astonishing move. I wonder what else was in that message? Does the Emperor himself wish me killed? And if death is to be my fate, what can they mean to do with you?”

“I know what Bali Adro means to do with us,” said Hercol. “I have learned it this very night.”

“You have?” snapped Sandor Ott. “From whom? When were you going to tell us, damn your eyes?”

“As soon as we found a moment’s safety,” said Hercol. “But I will not tell you, prince. I am glad we saved you, but I cannot give you my trust: not after your words in the doorway of the stateroom.”

“Hercol Stanapeth,” said the prince, “that is exactly why I spoke them. I dared not leave you thinking well of me. Arunis was spying on your thoughts-crudely, but persistently. If trust and warmth had been uppermost in your minds, he would have known at once that I was his enemy, and turned Vadu against me that much sooner. But he has fled now. He has betrayed Vadu and the Issar, and stolen the Nilstone, and disappeared. And now I may stand before you and speak the simple truth. I am one of your number, swordsman: a foe of Arunis and the Raven Society, and a friend of Ramachni. I would be your friend also.”

“Well that’s blary scrumptious,” said Alyash, “but what are we to do about the Nilstone?”

Hercol turned to Olik. “You say that Vadu told you he’d searched the ship?”

“Deck by deck,” said the prince. “There was no sign of Arunis. Vadu was convinced the mage had taken refuge behind the magic wall. I tried to explain the impossibility of that, but I am not sure he believed me.”

Hercol looked from the prince to Ott, and back again. “I may yet regret this choice,” he said, “but I think you are exactly what you claim. Prince Olik Bali Adro, here is what I know: Arunis has made magical contact with a sorceress almost as powerful as himself. Someone close to your Emperor by the name of Macadra.”

“Macadra!” The prince started forward in terror. “The White Raven! Are you sure?”

“Let me finish,” said Hercol. “She has dispatched a ship for Masalym; it is to arrive any day. And when it does the crew of that ship is to take possession of the Chathrand, and sail with it, and the Nilstone, back to where she waits in your capital.”

“Flames of the Pit!” shouted Ott, enraged. “How long have you known this, Stanapeth?”

“Not two hours,” said Hercol. “But there is yet a little more. Rivalry may well exist between Arunis and Macadra, but they both intend to see the Nilstone used to dominate or destroy the lands we come from. Not Arqual alone, Master Ott. I mean all lands north of the Ruling Sea. And Arunis, perhaps, does not mean for it to end even there.”

“By the eyes of heaven,” said the prince, “you do come at the time of the world’s ending! You have brought both the devil and his tool into our midst, and now our own devils are joining the game.”

He checked himself with a sigh. “No, that is not fair. Arunis is our devil as much as anyone’s, and the Nilstone has plagued both sides of the Ruling Sea, and the Chathrand was built in Bali Adro herself. How small the world becomes, when we contemplate its doom.”

“I don’t understand,” said Ibjen. “Why would Arunis steal the Nilstone if he is a friend to those who are coming from Bali Adro City?”

“A fine question,” said Olik. “Arunis and Macadra founded the Raven Society together, and have long worked side by side. But if it is true that jealousy has arisen between them-well, that at least could be called good fortune.”

“It would have been better fortune,” said Alyash, gazing up at the Chathrand, “if that nutter on the quarterdeck had started to crow a little sooner. Have a look at the Gray Lady now, will you?” He gestured at the Chathrand. “Nine guards, maybe ten. We could blary walk aboard unchallenged.”

Hercol grew suddenly still. “Or… walk off,” he said.

He glanced sharply at Ott, and the spymaster felt his heart quicken again. “The pump room,” he said. “The hidden chamber. If Arunis slipped back in there, right after snatching the stone-”

“Alyash,” said Hercol, “stay with the prince.”

“I’ll be Pit-pickled if I will, you mucking-”

“Do it,” said Ott, and then they were racing, flying for the plank that led ashore, leaving behind the two dlomu and the swearing bosun, and the weird alien port flashed by as in a dream, and the dlomu on the deck saw them coming and cried out, and fired arrows that splintered on the stones beside their feet, and the joy of it, the joy of the horror, came back to Ott, as his old, old body strained to keep up with his protege, and just managed, though the price was fire in his chest and a throat so raw it felt torn by fangs.

But when they gained the topdeck, ready to fight any dlomu that braved their onslaught, a death-scream rose above the general mayhem. It came from the far side of the Chathrand’s berth. Ott saw a terrible suspicion bloom in Hercol’s eyes. They raced the hundred yards from port to starboard and looked down.

Arunis was there on the quayside, mounted, a freshly murdered soldier by the horse’s hooves. Their sprint to the Chathrand had distracted the only guards brave enough to remain aboard. They had made it possible for Arunis to escape.

Hercol spun around in search of a bow to fire, but the sorcerer was already galloping away, galloping into the dark sprawl of the Lower City, a small round bundle held tight to his chest.