The Night of the Swarm tcv-4

by Robert V. S. Redick

  The mage crept forward, choosing each step. The perfect silence only added to Pazel’s fear, his sense that Thasha was walking to her doom. Inwardly he raged at himself: Trust Ramachni. Like you always have, like she’s done all her life. But at the same time a part of him recalled Thaulinin’s words by the streamside: I fear the youths are not ready.

  At the centre of the Court, Ramachni stopped and closed his eyes. ‘Now, Thasha,’ he said, ‘lift me up.’

  Thasha glanced quickly at Pazel, then bent and gathered the mage into her arms. ‘Step forward!’ barked Ramachni, and Thasha, startled, obeyed at once. Her bare foot came down upon the stone-

  — and passed through, as smoothly as if she had stepped off the end of a pier. She fell, too amazed even to shout as her body vanished into blackness. Pazel cried out and lunged for her. Too late. Thasha and Ramachni had fallen through the stone. Pazel struck the glassy surface; it felt hard as steel. But within the stone he could still see them falling — Thasha reached for him, horrified — deeper, deeper, gone.

  He beat the stone, howled their names, very close to despair. He looked around wildly for help. Death he could manage; death he had so often faced; but not survival without them, left alone with that last image of them sinking in the dark.

  A mistake, he thought, sobbing uncontrollably. Ramachni had made them before. Rin help them, bring them back or take me too.

  Something touched his shoulder. He leaped away in shock. Upon the stone before him stood a human woman, tall and tremendously old, dressed in a green woollen cloak. Her skin was translucent, her arms stick-thin. In her eyes was a fascinated gleam.

  ‘You’re the tarboy, aren’t you? Pazel Pathkendle. The one who keeps trying to get her britches down.’

  He stared. She stared back. She wore glass bangles and a blood-red scarf that looked for all the world as though it were made of fish scales. He felt a powerful urge to get away from her but did not move an inch.

  ‘You’re not going to fall through the stone, if that’s what concerns you,’ said the woman. ‘Ramachni and Old Arim had to work to make it happen, just as I did to rise to the surface.’

  Her accent was a bit like Cayer Vispek’s. Yes, he thought. Erithusme was born in Nohirin, a Mzithrini land.

  She squinted at him, perplexed. ‘Can’t you talk?’

  He was about to answer, but he stopped himself. Let her do the talking. Let her explain why he shouldn’t hate the sight of her. But the woman only clicked her tongue and stomped towards him. Before he could decide whether to fight or flee she slapped one bony hand over his eyes, and when she lowered it the Demon’s Court was changed.

  There were columns, now, and a partial roof. There were heaps of sand and masonry. A wall with chains and shackles. Stone benches so old and worn they looked like waxworks left out in the sun.

  ‘This is how the Court appeared in the days when I wielded the Stone,’ she said. ‘They kept prisoners in that corner, over there; if you look carefully you can still find their teeth. I am glad the selk cleared all this rubbish away.’

  ‘Why did you bring it back, then?’

  ‘I needed something to sit on. The ground may do for tarboys, but not respectable ladies like me.’

  She laughed. Pazel did not. The woman shrugged and walked to a bench.

  ‘Let us get down to business,’ she said. ‘Time has stopped outside the Court, but it is passing for you and me — and for them, especially for them. Watch out for the fire.’

  ‘What do mean? What fire?’

  ‘The one directly behind you.’

  He turned: not five feet away stood an iron cauldron on three stout legs. Within it a few small logs crackled spitefully. The smoke rose straight as a plumb line to the heavens.

  ‘The fire is our timepiece,’ she said. ‘We may talk as long as it burns, and no longer. Come and sit beside me.’

  Pazel stood his ground. The mage looked at him with some irritation.

  ‘I am not some lurking spirit, boy. I have not spied on you two. A little of her knowledge and emotion reaches me, faintly, like noises through a wall. Otherwise I have had nothing to do with her.’

  Liar, he thought. Aloud, he asked, ‘Where are they?’

  ‘Deep in the earth,’ said Erithusme, ‘and you should be glad of that, because what we are doing would be impossible if they were anywhere else.’

  ‘What are we doing, exactly?’

  ‘Thasha is experiencing the anguish that results when a part of oneself leaves the flesh. Ramachni and Lord Arim are protecting her. And I–I am a soul without a body, a soul who has hidden in Thasha’s body for seventeen years, deaf and mute. I could not speak with Ramachni, or the selk, or the few other vital allies the Ravens have yet to kill. Not even, maddeningly, to Thasha. But tonight, and tonight alone, I am free to speak with you. To help our cause if I can.’

  She pinched her arm. ‘This flesh is illusion, of course. I can manage illusion even without a body, in this exceptional place.’

  Pazel walked slowly to the bench. ‘I don’t believe you’re a part of Thasha.’

  ‘Nor am I.’

  He felt a surge of relief — but then the mage tossed her head back, laughing like a crow.

  ‘Ridiculous idea! Of course, Thasha is a part of me. And only a tiny part, a cutting from a sprawling vine. The fact that the girl has a body, and that I destroyed the one you’re gaping at when I hid from my enemies within her — those are incidentals, nothing more.’

  ‘You’ve been trying to steal Thasha’s body,’ said Pazel, hating her. ‘I’ve watched the whole blary struggle. You’ve been clawing at her from the inside, trying to get out.’

  ‘No, Pazel. Thasha has been begging me to come out.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘From a few hours after she slew Arunis. Waking and sleeping, in her thoughts and her dreams. She knows that I must rejoin the fight — and so do you, if you are honest with yourself.’

  ‘We’ve managed without you. We killed Arunis without you.’

  The mage looked at him silently. Pazel met her gaze, not at all sure if he were defending some vital truth or simply making a fool of himself. They had also let Arunis unleash the Swarm.

  ‘The job must be done, boy,’ she said, not unkindly. ‘It is worth the sacrifice of a life. Any life.’

  ‘Isn’t that just what you’ve planned, you and Ramachni? For Thasha to remember, to welcome you back, with your twelve hundred years of memories? To die, in other words?’

  Erithusme laughed again, but now the laugh was bitter. ‘A genius,’ she said. ‘He’s seen right through our wicked hearts! Listen to me: Thasha Isiq was never meant to die — but I was.’

  He stared at her, dumbfounded. The old woman sighed and rubbed the back of her neck. ‘Thasha Isiq’s mind has two chambers. The first is where her soul resides. It controls her body, her senses; it is entirely in charge. The second chamber is my deep refuge, my cave. I am free to leave it — but should I do so anywhere but here, where time is at a standstill, I should be dispersed like smoke on the wind: truly dead at last. Of course you’d like that.’

  ‘I wouldn’t,’ he said.

  ‘Just look at your face. Why, you’d break into song. You and Macadra, and the ghost of Arunis, and the Night Gods waiting to settle Alifros when the Swarm has done its work. I can read a face, boy. I know you wish me death.’

  Pazel turned and walked to the cauldron. The fire was much lower, a shrinking blossom in a grey wreath of ash. ‘You can’t read my face,’ he said. ‘In fact I’m not sure what you can do, except talk and lie.’

  The mage’s eyes flashed, but Pazel found he truly wasn’t afraid. She had her plans. She’d keep to them. Tossing insults back at her wouldn’t change things.

  After a moment Erithusme dropped her eyes. ‘We should not quarrel. We are allies in the greatest fight since the Dawn War. The fight I was thrust into twelve hundred years ago, when I was little older than you. Before I ever suspected I might be a mage. No, I ca
nnot die just yet. And neither can Thasha Isiq.’

  She jabbed a bony finger at him. ‘Watch her. She is tempted to destroy herself. She thinks that if she drowns or suffocates it might let me return, but that is not true. It would be the end of us both.

  ‘And it would indeed kill Thasha if we attempted to share one consciousness — to merge into a single, undivided being. As you guessed, her soul would simply drown in mine. She is indeed a little cutting from my ancient stem, you see. But that cutting has grown roots and leaves and branches. It came from me, but ultimately you’re quite right, boy: it is not part of me any longer. Her soul is tiny, but complete in itself. How did you know?’

  A silence. The mage looked him up and down. ‘Never mind that,’ she said. ‘Just listen, for the love of Rin: Thasha’s soul and my own must dwell in separate chambers, always. But we can still pass in the hall.’

  ‘The hall?’

  ‘Between the two chambers of her mind. Between the seat of consciousness and my darkened cave.’ She spread her hands. ‘There, now you have it. The great nefarious plan came down to this, boy: that our souls would trade places, until this damnable fight is won. Sit down, will you?’

  Pazel just looked at her. ‘Trade places, until we deal with the Nilstone?’

  ‘Until I deal with it.’

  ‘And what then?’

  Erithusme looked away, gazing at the suspended leaves, the frozen figure of Thaulinin on the hilltop, the untwinkling stars. ‘Then,’ she said heavily, ‘I concede the truth of what her mother told me at the start: that it is time for my long life to end. Then I leave both chambers to Thasha Isiq, and let the wind take my soul where it will.’

  ‘You promise that?’

  She shot him a startled look. ‘I promised to let Thasha choose freely.’ An awkward silence fell. Something’s missing, Pazel thought. Is she lying, or just holding something back?

  ‘If what you say is true,’ he asked, ‘if Thasha wants to go into hiding, and let you return, if she’s begging for it — then why in Pitfire hasn’t it happened?’

  The mage leaned forward, eyes bright with rage. ‘Because,’ she said, ‘someone or something has walled off Thasha’s chamber, with her soul inside it, and that wall is harder than this demon’s rock under our feet. I cannot get in. Thasha cannot get out. And it is entirely possible that the girl herself has raised that wall, to enclose herself like a nautilus or a snail.’

  Pazel felt a surge of panic. He knew suddenly what would come next. She was going to ask him to help her break down that wall. To overpower Thasha. She would say that it all came down to him, that their quest would fail if he refused. This was why she had asked for him — for ‘the one who keeps trying to get her britches down’.

  Because Thasha would trust him with her soul.

  He went to the cauldron: only embers remained. He lowered his hand and felt no heat. Their time was almost up.

  ‘I can’t do it,’ he whispered.

  ‘I dare say,’ sighed the mage.

  He blinked. ‘Weren’t you — that is, don’t you want me to convince her?’

  ‘Are you thick, Mr Pathkendle? She is already convinced. She wants me to return. The trouble is that none of us know quite what is preventing me. Learn the nature of that wall — that is what I am asking. Between you and Thasha and Ramachni and the selk, you must learn how it formed, and how in Rin’s name we can destroy it.’

  A thought struck Pazel suddenly. ‘I have one Master-Word left.’

  ‘And a great one; I can feel it from here. A word that “blinds to give new sight”. There might be something in that. When the wall crumbles, Thasha will feel some pain, and your word could blind her to it. But fear of pain alone could not have made the wall so infernally strong.’

  ‘What if it wasn’t Thasha? What if that wall was put there by an enemy — by Arunis, before he died?’

  ‘Then we must find the flaw in the spell that made it. There is always a flaw, be it only a hairline crack.’

  She patted the bench beside her. Pazel shook his head. ‘I still don’t trust you,’ he said.

  ‘Heavens, what a surprise.’

  ‘You used the Nilstone for all sorts of spells. And made a right blary mess of things too.’

  She waited.

  ‘You cast the Waking Spell,’ said Pazel. ‘You made creatures like Felthrup and Master Mugstur.’

  ‘I tapped the potential in their souls, to be precise.’

  ‘And killed every human in Bali Adro through the mind-plague. To be precise.’

  ‘That is true. Sit down.’

  ‘I’ll be damned if I will. You’re a monster. That spell is killing my best friend, right now. It’s done more harm than all the blary atrocities Arunis managed to pull off in two thousand years.’

  She pursed her lips, considering. ‘Hard to say.’

  Her calm was hideous. This, he thought, is the mage who lives in Thasha’s head.

  ‘You should know one thing, however,’ she went on. ‘The Waking Spell was not some idle joke I chose to play on Alifros. It was a final tactic in a long war between mages. Perhaps you’ve heard of Sathek?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Pazel. ‘The one who built that sceptre. The founder of the Mzithrin, although they hate him now. Arunis called up his spirit when we were docked in Simja Bay.’

  Her eyes widened. ‘Did he indeed? That is interesting. . But what you may not know is that Sathek and Arunis were after the same prize.’

  ‘Godhood,’ said Pazel.

  Erithusme nodded. ‘So Ramachni has told you something. Godhood, yes. And it is our great misfortune that the Night Gods, the high lords of annihilation, long ago chose Alifros as a kind of proving ground for their students.’

  ‘Then that part’s true as well,’ said Pazel. ‘Arunis was a student. He didn’t care about Alifros, he just had to destroy it-’

  ‘As an examination, a test. Sathek too tried to pass that test. It is the Night Gods’ standing challenge: scour Alifros of life, and we will make you one of us, deathless and divine. But after Sathek’s failure they made a concession. If one of their students sets the holocaust in motion but dies before it is complete, he may linger in Agaroth, death’s Border-Kingdom, and still take the prize if the world perishes within a century. That is what Arunis is doing: sitting in escrow, watching the growth of the Swarm he unleashed, praying that it kills us all.

  ‘Sathek’s approach was somewhat less efficient: he thought to start by eliminating animal life — all animal life, including rational beasts like humans and dlomu. To that end he launched a series of Plague Ships from his fastness in the Mang-Mzn. The Book of the Old Faith tells the story well: how those vessels dispersed across Alifros, loaded with hides and woollen goods and cured meat and grains; and how embedded like a tasteless venom in each of them was the germ of a pestilence. Each of those ships was a kind of black-powder bomb of disease, and many did their work quite well. Some lands have never recovered. But the most insidious cargo of the Plague Ships was its living animals. Rats, bats, birds, feral dogs. These were simply released in port after port — and Sathek in his cunning had crafted their disease not to start killing its hosts for several years — not until they had multiplied, and passed the dormant seed of the plague down to their offspring. Had that seed ever sprouted, it would have spread like a lethal, wildfire rabies — and no creature would have been immune. The whole web of life in Alifros could have been destroyed in a summer. Indeed it almost was.

  ‘By providence, I detected the plague in time — barely in time. There was no hope of a medical response. I had to fight it magically, with a single, monstrous spell: the greatest I ever attempted.’

  ‘The Waking Spell?’

  ‘Of course. Sathek’s disease attacked the mind, so my spell had to reach those minds first — thousands of them, across the whole of Alifros, without a single exception.’ She looked at him with sudden ferocity. ‘I am a great mage in my own right — greater than Arunis, greater than Macadra — bu
t such a spell was beyond me. Or would have been, without the Nilstone. I had to use it, though I knew better than anyone how it twists all good intentions. That is just what happened, of course. Every infected animal was changed. Total ruin was averted, and the birth of woken animals was a side effect. So was the destruction of every human mind in the South.’

  ‘And it’s still going on.’

  ‘Obviously. The spell does not answer to me. Until someone casts the Nilstone from Alifros, it will continue.’

  Pazel sat down on the bench. It was a struggle to find his voice. ‘You saved the world. . and killed half the human beings in the world.’

  Erithusme nodded. ‘It was a single act.’

  Wonder, horror, vertigo. Pazel thought of the tol-chenni in their cages in Masalym, their huddled forest packs, the stinking mob in the village by the sea. The last Southern humans, mindless and doomed. How could he be talking to the woman responsible for that?

  How could he possibly condemn her?

  ‘I thought you were just mucking about,’ he said. ‘Experimenting. Ramachni could have blary mentioned why you cast the spell.’

  ‘Not without breaking his promise. I swore him to secrecy on that point.’

  ‘Well what in Pitfire did you do that for?’

  She ignored his tone, this time. A strangely gentle look had come over her. ‘I got to know a few of them, the woken animals I’d created. I called a falcon down from the clouds once, sensing the mind awake in him, and he befriended me, and travelled with me until he died. There were others, too: a spiny anteater, a snake.’ She looked at him sharply. ‘I was almost perfectly fearless: a freak of nature in my own way, like them. But they lived with a vast, gnawing fear, a fear in the souls. Who had made them? Why were they here, scattered minds in random bodies, hunted and abused and exhibited in circuses by the humans and the dlomu who surrounded them? It was hard enough for them to stay alive, and stay sane. They needed to believe there might be a purpose behind it, a grand design. I couldn’t give them that purpose, but I let them hope. I wasn’t about to steal that away.’