The Night of the Swarm tcv-4

by Robert V. S. Redick

  There in the plain below waited the King of Nohirin in his pavilion, surrounded by the eight hundred soldiers who dared not enter where the young girl had gone alone. When Erithusme descended, the king praised her, then roughly demanded the Orb, saying, ‘This tool would never profit a peasant’s daughter. Give it to me! It belongs in royal hands.’ But the girl drew back, and reminded him of his promise. ‘One falcon of my choice from your covey did you swear to give me, O King,’ she said. ‘And my choice is there on your huntsman’s arm.’

  The king was angry, for she had chosen his favourite. ‘I will send a suitable bird to your father’s homestead,’ he told her. ‘Now give me Droth’s Eye.’

  Still Erithusme did not yield. The king shouted to his guard, and they moved to seize her. And not knowing what she did. Erithusme raised the Orb before her with a cry, and the king and his eight hundred were swept away in a whirlwind of terrible force, and found later throughout the countryside, crushed against cliffs, impaled on trees and steeples. But the bird flew to her arm and became her companion, and journeyed with her far over Alifros aboard her ship.

  When fresh carrion is plentiful the raptor may not bother to hunt, though it will rarely pass up the incautious mouse or field rat-

  ‘Oh, I say.’ Felthrup shook himself, and looked up from the Polylex. ‘It’s all birds from that point on,’ he said. ‘Nothing more about Erithusme, under Raptors at least. Not so useful, was it? We knew the outline of the story already.’

  Marila gazed down at the book. ‘It does tell us one thing. Erithusme could use the Nilstone from the moment she touched it. And not just for simple tricks. If the book’s telling the truth, she had huge powers from the start. And all because she lacked fear. That’s strange too. What sort of person lacks fear entirely?’

  ‘But she did not,’ said Felthrup. ‘That at least is how Thasha heard the story from the Mother Prohibitor. That little needle-prick became a slight burning, then a stronger pain, and each year she kept the stone it grew worse. And when Erithusme consulted the High Priestess on Rapopalni, she was told no mortal being can ever be wholly emptied of fear — and that consequently the stone would kill her in time. And Thasha believed the same would happen to her, only faster.’

  ‘Much faster,’ said Marila, nodding. ‘We talked about the Nilstone, once. During that week when the boys weren’t speaking to us. She thought it would take the stone about three minutes to kill her, if she was rested and could put up a good fight.’

  ‘Three minutes!’ said Felthrup. ‘Then I hope she never touches it at all.’

  ‘But even three minutes makes her — different,’ said Marila. ‘Everyone else who touches that blary thing dies before they can scream.’

  ‘Unless they’ve drunk of the wine of Agaroth,’ said Felthrup. Marila looked at him blankly. ‘Ah, but you weren’t there, were you? It was in the Straits of Simja, just after the Shaggat Ness was turned to stone. Ramachni spoke of an enchanted wine from the twilight kingdom, used by the Fell Princes when the Stone was in their possession, long eons ago. The wine made them fearless enough to survive the touch of the Stone. Though I doubt it helped their judgement when they used it.’

  ‘What happened to that wine?’

  Felthrup’s nose twitched. ‘What do you think, my dear? They drank it up. You can find it in the Polylex under the heading Incontinence, Sins of.’

  Marila laid a hand on the delicate paper of the book. ‘We know Erithusme and Thasha are connected. Thasha knows that herself. When we were locked up in the Conservatory, there was even talk that Erithusme could be her mother. Thasha went sort of crazy once, and began talking in someone else’s voice. Maybe that voice was Erithusme’s. Neeps thought so.’

  Marila fell abruptly silent. Then she rose to her feet, startling rat and dogs alike.

  ‘I don’t know what we think we’re accomplishing. What does all this matter, if we never see them again? No, that’s not what I’m trying to say. It matters, they matter. But we don’t.’

  She touched her belly, unconsciously. The rat wished for human arms, for limbs that could embrace and protect. Fear was so easy to smell, so terribly difficult to lessen.

  I must return to the River of Shadows, he thought. I must find Orfuin and beg for aid. Somehow we must reach them, if they yet live. Or free ourselves from hope if they do not.

  ‘I can’t stand thinking of him,’ Marila whispered, as if ashamed of the admission.

  ‘You must,’ said Felthrup. ‘Not thinking of him is a human sort of trick, and not a very clever one, my dear. Some pain it is folly to avoid. Think of him, ache for him. Let that longing bring you the strength to do what he would wish you to do.’

  Marila blinked at him. ‘How did you learn to think that way?’

  Felthrup tilted his head as though to say he had no idea. He could not bring himself to admit that he was quoting from a volume of melodramas Admiral Isiq had left in his cabin, under the pillow.

  Marila closed the Polylex and stepped to the wall. Running her fingers along the rough planks, she found the spot she wanted and pushed. There was a click, and Felthrup saw the outline of the hidden cabinet where they stored the irreplaceable book. Marila clawed it open and slipped the Polylex inside.

  ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s see if we can get something out of the witch.’

  They left the stateroom, Thasha’s mastiffs leading the way. In truth, Felthrup had his doubts about their errand as well. Lady Oggosk (with that certainty of obedience she always displayed) had simply ordered him to produce the Polylex. ‘I’m not Arunis, I won’t steal it from you,’ she had declared. But she had turned from him as she spoke the words, as though afraid of what her face might reveal. Inwardly, Felthrup had panicked, matched her evasion with one of his own. He would have to speak to Marila, he’d said, for he could hardly fulfil her wishes alone. Priceless and forbidden books were not to be dragged about in sackcloth, were they?

  Convince her! Lady Oggosk had replied, adding that the very survival of the Chathrand was at stake. After that she’d shut her mouth, waiting for him to go. It was not for rats to question the Duchess of Tiroshi.

  He did not like to cross the witch, despite her curious transformation into his protector and confidant (if such a word could ever apply to one so crafty and calculating). And yet the book was in his trust, his and Marila’s. And so he had questioned further.

  ‘Forgive me, lady, but you had best make a stronger argument. Recall if you will that the Mother Prohibitor herself told Thasha to share the book with no one.’

  Lady Oggosk had thrown a hairbrush at him. ‘The Mother Prohibitor!’ she shrieked. ‘Is she aboard? Did she ever do anything for Thasha Isiq, save imprison her, and teach her how to snare a man with hips and eyelashes? Did she ever raise a finger against the sorcerer, or the excesses of the Secret Fist? I am the one who sacrificed! That woman stayed in Etherhorde to raise catfish.’

  Felthrup shuddered. He knew his favour with the witch could vanish as quickly at it had appeared. He had no idea why she considered him important. Before Masalym she had hardly spared him a glance. Now for some reason she had let it be known that he was under her wing — that the man who laid a finger on the Chathrand’s sole surviving rat8 would answer to her. In her cabin she regaled him with stories of her first excursions with Captain Rose, her low opinions of certain crewmembers (most crewmembers), her hatred of Mzithrinis, her delight in the harm done to them by the Shaggat cult.

  Most disturbing were her hints about the Swarm of Night, which she said was growing like an invisible tumour. ‘It is here, in Alifros,’ she would tell him. ‘Some monster has brought it back — Arunis, possibly, before he fell. I can feel it, the way Rose feels the distribution of cargo in the hold. I can feel the Swarm unbalancing the world.’

  They passed through the invisible wall. ‘Not that way,’ said Marila, as Felthrup started up the Silver Stair. ‘I don’t want the whole ship to see us heading for her door. Let’s cross the lower gun deck. No
thing much happening there.’

  They descended, and set out across the deck. Light poured in through the glass planks in the ceiling, making the floorboards gleam. Beside the open gunports, black cannon waited, like coffins at the doors of some vast crematorium. It was very quiet: Felthrup could hear the island’s shore birds, smell the flat nickel-smell of the rocks. The few sailors at work here tried, as always, not to stare. ‘Evening, Mrs Undrabust,’ some murmured, while others considered them coldly. Felthrup was grateful for Jorl and Suzyt. Opinions about the four youths (Marila stood for all of them, now) ran from wary affection to hatred. Some blamed them for all the disasters of the voyage; others said that they were the only reason the ship was still afloat.

  The dogs’ mouths watered when they passed the galley. Felthrup knew the cause, for he could smell it too, however faintly: the Red River hog. Mr Fiffengurt had promised to save an ounce of its fat for each mastiff, but the gift had never come. When Felthrup had mentioned it, the quartermaster had looked rather ill and changed the subject.

  Suddenly the noses of both animals dropped to the floorboards, as though pulled by strings. Felthrup and Marila stared. The dogs’ great bodies quivered. ‘They’ve picked up a scent,’ said Marila, ‘but it’s nothing in the galley, is it? Look, they’re following it away.’

  The dogs padded forward, entranced. Felthrup rushed after them, trying to rid his nostrils of their sweat and breath and dander. He sniffed, sneezed, sniffed again. Then he looked up at Marila, amazed.

  ‘Ixchel,’ he said.

  Marila’s eyes went wide. ‘Two of them, probably,’ said Felthrup, ‘and not more than an hour ago.’

  ‘Ixchel!’ said Marila. ‘But they haven’t been seen in weeks! Are you sure?’

  ‘I spent a month sniffing them out when I first boarded the Chathrand, my dear. I hunted for them ceaselessly; I thought we might be friends. You know what became of that endeavour. Still I could no more mistake the smell of ixchel than I could the shape of my paw.’

  The dogs had turned the corner at the cross-passage. When Felthrup and Marila caught up they found the animals whining and scratching at a rather decrepit length of floorboard. They were not unheard of, these points of decay. In Masalym the crew had been absorbed with major repairs; only now could they be spared for such smaller jobs, and Mr Fiffengurt’s checklist was immense. The plank before them had a two-inch gap at one corroded corner: more than enough room for an ixchel to pass through.

  Felthrup tasted the air above the gap. ‘They passed through here, between the floorboards and the ceiling of the orlop deck, and then to portside.’ He looked up at the girl again, suddenly excited. ‘And I must follow! Quickly, while no one’s about! Raise that plank a little! Help me squeeze through!’

  ‘Squeeze through? Are you joking?’ said Marila.

  ‘Decidedly not! This is great good fortune! It could be weeks, months before we catch their scent again. Even now it is fading. I might have missed it without the aid of the dogs.’

  ‘You can’t just go down that hole.’

  ‘My dear, you know nothing of the art of the squirm! There have been studies, we rats can pass through any hole wider than our heads, as measured at the lower mandible-’

  ‘Felthrup-’

  ‘That is all one need verify, the mandibular axis, the yaw of the jaw-’

  Felthrup jumped. Marila had just stamped her foot down over the gap.

  ‘Take a look at your foot, you silly ass.’

  Felthrup swallowed. Marila had a point: his left forepaw had never recovered from his first encounter with the ixchel. Lord Talag and his men had sealed him in a bilge pipe. Only at the last second, by jamming his paw between the pipe and its lid, had he escaped suffocation.

  ‘Yes, yes, I fell into their trap,’ he admitted, ‘but Marila, you did not know the Chathrand in those days. Everything was different. We had not met Diadrelu, or heard of Arunis or the Nilstone, or guessed that we would all be fighting together to survive. When Lord Talag caught me he did not even believe I was a woken rat. But in time he came to respect me — even thanked me for my courage, and offered me the services of his cook. They have no reason to hate me now.’

  ‘Talag didn’t have a reason to start with.’

  ‘But he knows me; they all do. Diadrelu called me her beloved friend.’

  ‘They killed her too.’

  Swift and certain logic. But Felthrup was not about to be turned. ‘Remove your foot!’ he hissed. ‘Someone is coming! Sweet friend, we must know how many ixchel are left alive, and reason with them, before they try something atrocious at Stath Balfyr.’

  ‘Something atrocious — you see? Not everything has changed.’

  A man was coming; he could feel the thump of footfalls in the boards. ‘Oh dearest girl! Fond, caring, maternal Marila-’

  ‘Don’t call me that.’

  No reaching her, no use! Felthrup spun in a circle. He could taste it, the burn of breaking faith, the horrid knowledge that even with loved ones, speech could be impotent, language something less than grace. ‘Why are you crying?’ said Marila, and then Felthrup bit her through the boot.

  She screamed and danced away. The dogs howled. Mr Coote appeared at the corner, shouting, ‘What’s wrong, Miss Marila? The little baby? Is it time?’

  ‘No! Pitfire!’ She pointed, but it was too late already. Tufts of black fur edged the gap in the planks. Felthrup had done it; he was gone.

  He was in darkness now, in the six-inch crawlspace between the floor of the lower gun deck and the ceiling of the orlop. The scent led straight to portside. He struggled to crawl in perfect silence, unscrambling the message from his nostrils, alert to the least movement of the air.

  He ploughed forward through the velvety dust. When the scent trail reached the inner hull it veered right. Another scurry, his mind awash with thoughts of how to greet them, what he should say. Talag had ideas of honour: strange ideas, but no less powerful for their strangeness. The key was to access those ideas. We are comrades in arms, Lord Talag, never mind the arm you mangled, why kill me before we chat a little, why kill me period, spear in haste regret at leisure, my enemy’s enemy is my friend, and by obverse induction my friendly enemy is a, is-

  He stopped, nostrils flaring. They had stood here, the ixchel, not thirty minutes before. And then they had disappeared.

  Rin’s eyes, not again.

  Felthrup circled, listening, feeling, tasting the air. The scent was gone; it led to this spot and vanished without a trace. When it came to hiding, rats were experts, but the ixchel were master magicians. He rolled over, pressed an ear to the boards. Nothing but men’s distant footfalls, and the slosh of the sea. He hissed: ‘Come out! It’s only Felthrup! I’m a friend, today and evermore!’ No sound, not even an echo.

  ‘Don’t do this! Suspicious ninnies! I won’t betray your hiding place!’

  The silence mocked him. They could be somewhere close at hand, smiling. Even fondling their spear-tips, circling, tightening the noose.

  He blew one nostril and then another, inhaled deeply, struggling for even the most distant ghost of a scent. Nothing. He pressed his mangled paw against the boards, drew the tender flesh back and forth. What was he thinking? That he would find a hinge, a hairline crack, the outline of an ixchel door? But such doors were never found. What a dreamer he was. Rose had torn the ship apart and found nothing. The ixchel would be seen again when they wished to be, and not before.

  ‘We’re stronger together,’ he told the darkness. ‘We have to stand together, with the humans as well, mind you. Or we’re doomed.’

  Felthrup put his head down on his paws. He was lying to himself. He didn’t fear the ixchel closing in silently to spear him. No, what he dreaded was their absence, their refusal of his peace overtures, their continued loathing for the giants and anyone tainted by their favour. He was not much thinking about where that loathing could lead. He was only feeling the waste: the colossal, shameful waste. You were right, Marila. You ca
n love language and its promise of a straight sunny boulevard, a common currency of the heart. But that’s your faith only, and it moves not mountains. They’re not listening, those mountains. They’re happy where they stand.

  He blinked.

  Something had happened. A finger of cold had touched his stubby tail. He turned about, feeling: there was a large droplet on the plank. He touched his tongue to the water. It was salty — and what was far stranger, clean. This was no seepage, no condensation. This was a splash of fresh seawater, fallen from above, and yet somehow deep in the bowels of the Chathrand.

  He turned away, crawled a few feet, stopped to think again. He touched the board six inches overhead. Then he turned and nosed his way back to where the trail disappeared. The wet spot was still there. He reached up again. This time his paw met with nothing.

  Felthrup stared upwards. There was clearly another hole, larger than the one he’d squeezed through. By why was there no light from the gun deck, with all those open ports? Nervously, he rose on his haunches. There! He felt the edge of the opening, ran his paws about its perimeter. It was about ten inches square.

  He rose higher — and light stabbed his eyes. By sheer instinct he ducked down again, and the light turned once more to blackness. Felthrup was shaken. It had been no lamp, but sunlight: the bright, cold glow of the sun through mist. And what else? The wind: he’d heard a moaning wind, and something that sounded very much like surf.

  He stood mystified. Then, with a gasp, he saw the whole thing, what had become of the ixchel, why Rose had never found a trace.

  ‘Felthrup?’

  Marila’s voice, faint and distant. She was still waiting for him. But no, he couldn’t go back to her, now. He stood on his hind legs again, and the sunlight poured over him, and the wind and surf resumed. He pulled himself through the gap, onto chilly boards. He looked around. He was right where he expected to be, upon the lower gun deck, some fifty yards from where he’d left Marila. And at the same time he was somewhere utterly alien. Somewhere he had never hoped to see.