The Night of the Swarm tcv-4

by Robert V. S. Redick

  ‘Go on, Hercol,’ said Thasha.

  With a last look at Thasha, Hercol crouched beside the Nilstone. First he laid a hammer and chisel on the deck. Then he removed a key from the sack and unlocked Big Skip’s box. Reaching into the bag once more, he removed a pair of fine metal gauntlets and slipped them on. Next he gripped the steel box in both hands and twisted. His muscles strained. The box split in two.

  Boom. The plum-sized sphere of glass fell to the deck with a sound like a dropped cannonball. Hercol stopped its rolling with his hand, then whipped the hand away and used his boot.

  ‘It burns,’ he said, ‘through selk glass and selk gauntlets, it still burns a little.’

  ‘It won’t burn me,’ said Thasha. ‘Break the glass, Hercol.’

  The task was easier said than done: the selk glass was amazingly sturdy. Watching Hercol’s great overhand blows, Thasha couldn’t help but think of that other ceremony, when Arunis had assembled the crew to witness his triumph. But this time was different. They knew exactly what the Nilstone would do to anyone unlucky enough to touch it. And they were drawing on its power only to help them get rid of it. Not to annihilate the world as a proof of one’s powers, but to save it. For that reason, and that reason alone.

  At last the chisel cracked the polished surface. Hercol struck again, and the crack widened. On the third blow the glass split like an eggshell, and the Nilstone slithered between the shards onto the deck.

  Ramachni’s fur stood on end. Thasha had not looked plainly at the Stone since that day in the Infernal Forest, after she beheaded Arunis, when it had fallen inches from her leg. She stared into its depths. Hideous, fascinating, beautiful. Too dark for this world; so dark that its blackness would stand out within a sealed cave, a cave under miles of earth, a cave sealed for ever. Thasha had the strange idea that she could put her hand right through it, as she had with the stanchion, but that this time she would be reaching into another world. Another Alifros, maybe a better one, where deep wounds had yet to be inflicted, hard curses never cast.

  Ramachni clicked his teeth.

  Thasha blinked, and wrenched her gaze from the Nilstone. Beside her, Hercol too looked shaken from a dream. How many had been seduced by the Stone and its mysteries, before it killed them?

  A hand touched her arm: Lady Oggosk. Hercol tensed, ready to intervene. But Oggosk merely looked at Thasha and murmured. ‘I will do this thing, if you wish.’

  Thasha looked at her in amazement, and more than a little suspicion. ‘The power won’t last, you know,’ she said, ‘and it has limits. You can’t use it to bring back Captain Rose. Not even Erithusme could raise the dead.’

  ‘I know all that, girl!’ said Oggosk irritably. ‘But there is some danger here that we have yet to identify.’

  ‘She knows, Duchess,’ said Ramachni. ‘All the same this task falls to Thasha alone.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Oggosk. ‘I am old, wretched. I cursed my sister. And I have outlived my son — yes, my son, I have every right to claim him!’ Her old eyes flashed, as though someone might venture to object. If I fall, no matter. But her life is barely started. You don’t have to-’

  ‘Yes,’ said Thasha, ‘I do. Thank you, Lady Oggosk. I never dreamed you would make such an offer. But I can’t accept.’

  ‘For what it’s worth, I received the same answer, Duchess,’ said Hercol.

  ‘No one but I would be standing before the Stone, had Erithusme not been clear in her instructions,’ said Ramachni. ‘Stand aside, Duchess: the time for talk is past.’

  Oggosk retreated to the wheelhouse. And Thasha, resisting the urge to look at Pazel one last time, broke the seal, uncorked the bottle, and drank.

  When she tilted her head, the front of Thasha’s pale neck shone in the mid-morning sun, and the crowd below could plainly see the scars left behind by the cursed necklace, almost a year ago. A stab of old pain leaped through Pazel at the memory. But it was nothing compared to the fear he felt when Thasha lowered her head.

  Her eyes were wide open, and she did not blink. She was looking past them into the distance. Pazel saw one droplet at the corner of her mouth; then her tongue snaked out and licked it away.

  Her throat seized. She was fighting not to vomit. She thrust the bottle into Hercol’s grasp and fell to hands and knees, staring down at the deck. Her back arched and veins stood out livid on her arms. When she raised her head again her face was twisted, crazed.

  ‘Pah! The wine is poisoned! It’s going to mucking kill me!’

  Eight hundred voices rose in cries. Pazel thought he would go mad. He made a run for the ladder, but the Turachs stood firm. Then Thasha shouted: ‘Get away from the quarterdeck! Get back!’

  She lurched away somewhere beyond his sight, and when she appeared again the Nilstone was there in her hand. Pazel’s first thought was terrible: She looks like the Shaggat. For Thasha was unconsciously mimicking his gesture, lifting the Stone high in a single hand, as though pitting its darkness against the light of the sun.

  ‘Get back!’

  This time the voice exploded from her, an unearthly roar that swept the length of the Chathrand. Thasha wrenched her eyes from the Nilstone and gazed left and right, studying the water, the island, the sky. The crew did fall back, leaving only the Turachs and Thasha’s closest friends looking up at the figures on the quarterdeck. The wind rose suddenly. Pazel felt a trembling in the planks beneath his feet. Thasha looked mad, and extraordinarily focused, but there was no hint of fear about her, none.

  Then her eyes ceased roving, and fixed on one spot: the north shore. The thin arm of Stath Balfyr, that half-mile of forest between ocean and bay. The drachnars were pacing there in the surf.

  Thasha staggered into the wheelhouse. Oggosk and Fiffengurt shrank from her, clinging to the wheel. With no purpose, no thought at all but that she was in danger, Pazel shouted her name. Thasha turned as though whipped. A convulsion racked her, so violent she almost lost her feet.

  But what occurred beyond the ship was on another scale altogether. From out of nowhere came a furious wind. Timber groaned, pennants filled and strained at their tethers; the rigging shrieked as if in memory of hurricanes. On the north shore, the surf withdrew, leaving the astonished dranchnars on bare sand.

  Suddenly the Chathrand rocked. The surface of the bay was undulating, as though some great submerged mass were rushing towards the shore, lifting a bow wave before it. The wave grew and grew. The drachnars saw it coming and wheeled about, fleeing for their lives. The wave struck the beach and raced up it, surging through the legs of the stampeding creatures, combing at last through the palms beyond the sand.

  Thasha convulsed again, and the surge increased tenfold. It was horrific: the bay was stabbing at the island like a sword. The palms, their roots stripped bare, let go of the ground and flew like battering rams against those behind, and the wind kept growing. Through it all the mid-morning sun looked gently down.

  Once more Thasha’s body shook. On Stath Balfyr there was a titanic explosion of sand, water, trees. Pazel gasped: the entire bay was shifting, and then turmoil caught up with the Chathrand and he found himself thrown, sliding with scores of others across the deck. Gods, she’s sinking us. But no, she was righting herself after all (good ship, sweet Rin what a darling) and the men locked arms like toy monkeys to save one another and Pazel was dragging himself to his feet.

  The Chathrand was in motion, racing towards a huge wall of dust and sand that hung in the air over the north shore. They were not sailing; they were being hurled, leaning and pitching, helpless as a paper boat upon a stream. Pazel squinted at the oncoming wall, and perceived that a channel had been cut between the bay and the open sea: a second inlet, narrow as a village street, but widening even now.

  Fiffengurt was roaring — ‘Away from the rails, away!’ — but few men saw or heard him. And suddenly the ship herself was in the channel, and there came an explosion of thumps and cracks and crashes: palm trees striking the hull. The ship careened, utterly
out of control, rolling so far to starboard at one point that the torrent boiled over the rail, and Pazel looked up to see the tops of trees racing by at eye level. The deck was awash with foam, foliage, sand; and into that blinding slurry men tumbled and disappeared.

  But Thasha had aimed her fury well, and before they knew it the tempest carried them out upon the sea, right through the humbled breakers, and left them revolving in an eddy that quickly died away to stillness. Away to the east stood the Promise, and to the north, the pale infernal glow of the Red Storm. Behind them, a great hole had been gouged through Stath Balfyr, like something done to a sandcastle by the heel of an angry child.

  Thasha was still standing: almost an act of magic in itself. Hercol got to his feet and stumbled towards her, but before he closed half the distance she waved him off. He stopped. Thasha lowered the Nilstone, caressed its blackness thoughtfully, then set it down upon the deck.

  ‘That wasn’t so hard,’ she said.

  29

  Kiss of Death

  13 Fuinar 942

  Hercol and Bolutu left the topdeck at once, bearing the Nilstone and the wine of Agaroth. Thasha’s other friends crowded near her, touching her as they might something exceptionally fragile. Men crept gingerly through the wreckage, inspecting the rigging, the masts. Whole palm trees were heaved over the rail. A stunned Captain Fiffengurt began to issue orders, salvaging his ship.

  The disorder was massive, but the damage proved slight, and by two bells they were underway. A few hours later, Captain Rose’s prediction was upheld: the little island east of Stath Balfyr yielded both fresh water and forage. With dusk approaching, Sergeant Haddismal led a Turach squadron ashore with casks and heavy equipment. The pumping went on well into the night, lit by the glow of the Red Storm.

  The Promise followed the Chathrand to the little isle, and even as the marines were landing, she dispatched a second lifeboat. Folding ladders were lowered from the Chathrand, and soon the last members of the inland expedition were climbing aboard: Mandric, saluting the new captain and the Arquali flag; Neda, her sfvantskor tattoos still uncovered but her expression somehow changed; Ensyl and Myett riding Neda’s shoulders, scanning the deck for any sign of their people, and finding none. Next came Prince Olik. At the sight of him the Chathrand’s dlomu cheered and fell on their knees, and many wept with joy. They were all volunteers, the most loyal and loving of his subjects, and they had feared him dead at Macadra’s hands.

  Last aboard were Kirishgan and Nolcindar. Tall, olive-hued, eyes glowing like pale sapphires in the dimming light, they struck wonder into the crew of the Chathrand, not one of whom had ever seen a selk. They went to Fiffengurt and lay their bright straight swords at his feet, and bowed. ‘Master of the Great Ship,’ said Nolcindar. ‘You carry the hope of the world upon your vessel. May the wisdom of the stars guide your choices.’

  ‘It is our heads that should be bowed, m’lady,’ said Fiffengurt.

  ‘Let us have done with bowing altogether,’ said Prince Olik. ‘Rise, Bali Adrons — and you too, my good selk. Captain Nolcindar, Captain Fiffengurt-’

  The introductions were mercifully brief. As soon as they were over, Neda turned to Thasha and pressed her hand. ‘Sister,’ she said, ‘the Nilstone is not hurting you?’

  ‘It didn’t hurt me, no,’ said Thasha. ‘In fact I’m perfectly fine, at least as far as I can tell.’

  ‘She didn’t look fine,’ said Pazel. ‘She even shouted that the wine was poisoned.’

  ‘I was wrong. It was only bitter — and cold. Terribly, magically cold. Maybe wine from Agaroth has to be kept that way. In any case, I have an idea that the bottle is enchanted too. Opening it was like opening the mariner’s clock, and looking into another world — but not an inviting one like yours, Ramachni. It was a freezing, frightening land.’

  ‘A land we all must visit, one day,’ said Kirishgan.

  ‘I was only scared until I drank, of course. After that nothing in the world could frighten me: the wine worked perfectly. But I thought it would last much longer — hours, or even days. No such luck: in minutes, the fearlessness was gone, and so was my control over the Nilstone. There was no warning, either: suddenly I just felt pain. It was as if someone were trying to strike a match down my side, and if the match lit I’d burn up like a scrap of paper.’

  ‘As we have seen others do, who touched the Nilstone,’ said Hercol. ‘I was most relieved when you put it down, Thasha. You lingered, towards the end. I feared you were in a trance.’

  Thasha turned and looked into the Red Storm’s eerie glow. ‘No, not that.’ Something in her voice made Pazel uneasy.

  ‘In any event, we cannot linger,’ said Ramachni. ‘What Macadra knows of our whereabouts is not yet clear. But if she has somehow learned our destination, she will not tarry. And we have already seen that she can harness the winds.’

  ‘But how could she know about Stath Balfyr?’ asked Fiffengurt. ‘Did she wring the name out of someone in Masalym Palace?’

  ‘Impossible,’ said Olik. ‘No maid or manservant or palace guard was in earshot when we discussed the route ahead. Your destination was known only to me.’ He paused, uncomfortable. ‘Of course, there were those twenty of your crew. The ones who Red into the city, and were never found.’

  ‘Stath Balfyr was a secret from the crew as well,’ said Pazel. ‘They couldn’t have told her. They’d never heard of it.’

  ‘One of them had,’ said Myett.

  The others looked down at the ixchel. ‘She means Taliktrum,’ said Ensyl, ‘but we do not know what became of him, sister. I doubt Macadra is even aware of his existence.’

  ‘I wonder,’ said Olik. ‘He did not strike me as a man content to end his days in the shadows.’

  ‘And some on this ship ain’t content to end their days in the North,’ said Fiffengurt. ‘I mean your dlomic volunteers, Prince Olik. When they came aboard they thought we’d be sailing back to Masalym in a fortnight. Captain Nolcindar, will you take ’em home?’

  ‘I will,’ said Nolcindar, ‘but first, Kirishgan and I would speak to you of the journey ahead. We have crossed the Ruling Sea, long ages ago, and remember something of the winds and the currents.’

  ‘That would be a fine gift,’ said Fiffengurt, ‘and even finer if we knew we could start for home. The Red Storm’s looking weaker off to the west, and we’ve sent our falcon scouting that way. But I won’t sail us into that Storm, unless Ramachni here tells me it’s the only choice. We need to find a gap.’

  Pazel couldn’t stop himself from scanning the horizon. Somewhere out there, the Swarm was also searching for that gap.

  ‘The work ashore will last some hours,’ said Nolcindar. ‘If time permits, I would walk the decks of Chathrand a while, after we discuss your heading. To come aboard her has long been my dream. I remember the day I first saw the plans. I doubted such a ship could ever be built.’

  Fiffengurt looked at her, puzzled. ‘What can you mean, m’lady? The Chathrand is six hundred years old, and you-’

  Nolcindar raised a feathered eyebrow.

  ‘That is,’ Fiffengurt stammered, ‘I’m sure you’re wise and strong and full of — benefits, or rather — I mean to say, you’re young. A spring flower, or a sapling at the most.’

  Nolcindar held his gaze sternly. Then she broke into a laugh of pure delight.

  ‘A sapling! As a child, I pruned the saplings in my father’s plot. That was far away to the west, in the green valley of Tarum Thun. A selk land, of such peace and stillness that a year might pass without words, and another when we chose to do nothing but make music, for the joy of it alone. From seeds to giants I watched those trees grow, and when they were very old and losing branches, we felled a few. Some went to ships, and the ships had long lives indeed. But today they are sleeping on the ocean floor, and some of us are still here, enjoying compliments.

  ‘As for Chathrand, a few of her oldest timbers may have come from my father’s wood. I always hoped to board her, and listen to
them speak. But early in her life Chathrand went north, into service with the Becturian Viceroys. When she returned at last, Erithusme was her mistress, and suffered no one to board her merely to appreciate her beauty, or because they loved the shipwright’s art.’

  ‘Love and beauty were never the concerns of Erithusme the Great,’ said Kirishgan.

  Pazel smiled bitterly. You knew her, all right. But Ramachni looked up with sorrow in his eyes.

  ‘Never is a place beyond our understanding, Kirishgan. Like the deepest chambers of the heart.’

  While Fiffengurt escorted the selk through the Chathrand, the youths descended to their beloved stateroom. At first it seemed that nothing had changed. The invisible wall still sealed off the passage fifty feet from the door; Thasha could still permit or deny entry with a thought. The elegant furniture remained bolted down much as it had since Etherhorde. The enormous samovar still gleamed.

  But at second glance Pazel saw damage aplenty. The escape from Stath Balfyr had done more harm even than the assault by the Behemoth. Flying objects had smashed many windowpanes. Admiral Isiq’s crystal bookcase had shattered, disgorging antique volumes in a heap. And where the heavy armchair should have been, two long, narrow holes gaped in the floorboards. The chair had ripped free of the boards and careened about the room, smashing lesser furniture, and lodging finally behind the table, like a stout skier upended in a snowdrift.

  Felthrup apologised so profusely one might have thought he had personally ransacked the chamber. ‘Oh fool! Never, never again will I ignore a squeaky floorboard! I tested every screw, twice daily when I could. But what good is a screw if the board needs replacing? Look at this place! And Marila worked so tirelessly — cleaning, repairing, fighting dust and mould. She wanted your homecoming to be splendid.’

  Awkwardly, Marila took Neeps’ hand. ‘I just wanted you back,’ she mumbled. It was the most affectionate thing Pazel had ever heard her say, but Neeps seemed not to be listening: his eyes were on the windows, and the cold water beyond.