The Red Wolf Conspiracy

by Robert V. S. Redick

  “A leech! A stinking, bloodsucking leech!”

  “Hush, Neeps! We've done it! We've lost them!”

  Neeps ripped the slimy creature from his leg. “I guess we have,” he said. “But all I want now is a modestly dry log, or a tree we can climb.”

  Pazel rubbed his eyes, turned in a circle. “There's your tree,” he said, pointing across the Fens to a solitary oak. “I'll bet we could scramble up her in a pinch.”

  “Let's try, anyway,” said Neeps.

  The tree was farther than they thought, and taller than it had looked from afar. But when they reached it they found that its roots formed a kind of raised lattice over the filth and mud. They dropped, exhausted, and found it surprisingly comfortable, like a firm hammock.

  For twenty minutes they lay on their backs, staring up into the vines and branches, wordless.

  Then Neeps said, “We should have jumped at Ormael.”

  “No,” said Pazel. “You were right. We didn't stand a chance.”

  “But what'll we do now?”

  Pazel leaned his head back. “I'll tell you. We'll climb this tree and figure out where the shore is. We'll make our way back there by nightfall and walk east along the inside of the dunes. We'll be halfway to Ormael by sunrise.”

  “No ye won't, my Chereste heart.”

  Druffle leaned around from the far side of the tree, grinning. As the boys leaped to their feet he did the same, cutlass in hand. He had never looked more deranged.

  “You're foxy,” he said, cornering them against the trunk, “but not foxy enough for Druffle. I picked this tree out an hour ago, and watched you slog up to her. Nice of you to do that—I was wrung out, and that's the truth.”

  “Mr. Druffle,” said Pazel, eyes on the long blade, “you're not really this sort of man, are you?”

  Druffle's grin faded. He appeared deeply struck by the question. “No, I'm not,” he said.

  He looked at the cutlass, and heaved a great sigh. Then he plunged it into the mud and leaned on it with both hands. “I've just had such rotten luck. You understand, boys?”

  They assured him emphatically that they did.

  “I've made mistakes!” Druffle cried suddenly. “Never denied it! Dollywilliams Druffle isn't one to blame others for his faults. But all the same, rotten luck.”

  He shook his head, grimacing. “Ashamed, ashamed,” he murmured.

  “Don't be, sir,” said Pazel.

  Druffle gestured helplessly at the Fens. “Nobody expects to be reduced to this! Time was I could afford a decent ship, and proper mercenaries. Disgraceful! I've never seen such bad shots in my life! Why, they didn't even wound you! Still, I suppose I'd better call 'em in.”

  He straightened and cupped a hand to his mouth. But no shout came: instead he doubled over with a gasp. Neeps, who had guessed sooner than Pazel what Druffle was ashamed of, had dug a stone from the mud and hurled it point-blank at Druffle's side. It was a good-sized rock, and Druffle reeled, glaring like a fiend.

  It was their one chance. Pazel groped for a weapon, found a fallen tree limb and swung it with all his might. The branch cracked across Druffle's back, and the wiry man staggered and cursed. He stabbed: the blade fell an inch short of Pazel's chest. Neeps, finding no further rocks, was reduced to flinging mud. Pazel swung his branch again, but Druffle dodged like a snake and clubbed him down with the hilt of his cutlass. The next instant Pazel felt the blade against his windpipe.

  No one moved. Druffle wiped blood from his eye.

  “I actually liked you two,” he said. “Honest, my dears, I liked you. But orders are orders. The Customer said I was to kill any boy who raised his hand against me. As an example to the rest.”

  “An example?” Neeps whispered.

  “You have it, lad.”

  “But we're all alone,” whispered Pazel.

  “You could just tell him you killed us,” said Neeps.

  Druffle looked gravely insulted. “Lie, you mean? For shame, lads! In business, your word is your bond! Learn that, or you'll never get anywhere.”

  He lifted the cutlass. But instead of bringing it down on Pazel's throat, he raised his eyes to the horizon, as if savoring a thought. Then his jaw fell open and he toppled backward into the swamp.

  Neeps leaped forward and kicked away his blade. “Out cold! What happened? Is he dying?”

  Pazel slapped the man's cheek. Not an eyelid flickered. He bent an ear to Druffle's mouth.

  “I don't think he's breathing, Neeps.”

  “I'm a murderer,” Neeps whispered. “I must have cracked his liver with that stone!”

  At that moment came the startling sound of birds' wings. The boys jumped away from Druffle, and saw the oddest creature imaginable: a barn swallow with the face of a woman. The tiny creature swooped low past their heads, beat its wings fiercely for a moment and came to rest on Druffle's back.

  “You're no murderer,” she said, looking at Neeps. “And he is not dead.”

  On the Trail of the Sorcerer

  3 Teala 941

  81st day from Etherhorde

  “Diadrelu!” cried Pazel.

  For it was she, in an astounding feathered cloak that seemed to turn her arms into wings, her body into that of a dusky bird. Neeps was speechless: he had never in his life beheld an ixchel, let alone one that could fly.

  “What are you doing here?” Pazel cried out.

  “Saving your lives,” said another voice. “Isn't it obvious?”

  Pazel knew that voice: it was the younger ixchel, Taliktrum. There he was, swooping down in a suit like Diadrelu's. Pazel flinched, remembering how Taliktrum had scraped his knife back and forth behind his ear.

  Diadrelu turned to Pazel. “You spoke of our presence aboard the Chathrand,” she said severely. Then she continued more gently: “But it was only to pass word that one of our kin lay in chains, and so we pardon you.”

  “What's she talking about?” cried Neeps, still looking as though he expected to be bitten.

  “It's a long story,” said Pazel.

  “Not so long,” said Taliktrum with a shrug. “He gave my aunt his word. He did not keep it. Some of us died as a result, and if the girl spoke as well, before she fled the ship, Rose and his killers may be murdering our whole clan. That's the story.”

  “Thasha fled the Chathrand?”

  “Yes,” said Dri. “She slipped away into Ormael, and no one knows her whereabouts. The governor's men are tearing the city apart: her wedding is but five days off. But she did not reveal our presence, as you well know, Taliktrum—not even to her beloved Ramachni, the mage. It was the rat Felthrup who told him.”

  “They're crazy, right?” Neeps looked desperately at Pazel.

  “Diadrelu,” said Pazel, “what brings you out here?”

  “A conspiracy,” she said gravely.

  “A merchant,” said Taliktrum. “A fat man who sells soap.”

  “Soap?” said Pazel. “You mean the Opaltine fellow—Ket?”

  “That is one name he uses. But come: we have miles to cover before nightfall, and the Volpeks hunt you still.”

  “What about Druffle? What did you do to him?”

  “Something very costly, for us,” Dri said. “We pricked him with an arrow soaked in blané, or foolsdeath. He will soon wake: the arrow bore a minimal dose.”

  “Why do you carry such a strange poison?”

  “That's none of your business,” snapped Taliktrum. “The poison saved you from this man's blade—isn't that enough?”

  “There is much to discuss,” said Diadrelu. “Once we reach higher ground.”

  The ixchel led them north, flying from branch to branch, returning to rest on the boys' shoulders. Flying clearly was no easy matter for them, for they had landed exhausted, and Pazel wondered how on earth they had journeyed so far from the Chathrand.

  But if the ixchel were tired, he and Neeps were wrecks. They slogged along after Dri and Taliktrum in a dumb agony of bruises, cuts and aching limbs. An hour pa
ssed, and another. The sun began to sink behind the trees.

  Then all at once they were on solid earth. Pazel could hardly believe his eyes. It was a raised road of packed dirt, with two wheel-ruts carved into it and moss growing between them. Left and right it curved away through the Fens.

  “By this road we entered the Fens this morning,” she said, “with Mr. Ket, and a most suspicious train of wagons. He left Ormael City in the dead of night. We were hidden in a tool chest, and could not observe what he did along the way. But three times the wagons stopped, and we heard the cries of children. When the chance came we snuck out, and saw how the wagon train entered the Fens at a place well hidden with brush and vines. My guess is that this is a smugglers' road. Ket must be far along it by now.

  “You are undone,” she told the boys. “Rest now; we will keep watch.”

  The boys made no argument, but flung themselves down. Pazel watched the ixchel fly to a branch some dozen feet above the road, where they began to pace and whisper. Taliktrum pointed at the boys and made gestures of outrage. Dri motioned for calm.

  An hour later she was nudging them awake. It was now quite dark, the sun no more than a dull red glow among the trees to the west. The boys rose, groaning and stiff. The ixchel watched them with folded arms.

  “Now listen well,” said Dri at length. “Since your eviction, foul deeds have been done on the Great Ship. The rat-king, Master Mugstur, has declared Captain Rose a heretic and sworn to kill him. Sandor Ott—disguised as one Commander Nagan—and his lover Syrarys—”

  “I knew it!” cried Neeps. “That harpy!”

  “—have so weakened Thasha's father that he barely rises from his bed. We don't know what poison she employs, or how. But they will not kill him until after the marriage of Thasha and Prince Falmurqat the Younger. Nothing will be done that might prevent Thasha's wedding.”

  “How can you be so sure?” asked Pazel.

  Diadrelu cast her eyes down. After a moment, she said, “The prisoner, Steldak, has told us a great deal. But we paid a high price for his knowledge.”

  “My father's death,” said Taliktrum. “That was the price. Sniraga the assassin bore him away. And we are lost without him.”

  “Talag was also my brother,” said Dri. “Yes, we are lost. But for his sake we must try not to be. Talag used to say that death was the moment when everything loses value but the truth. I never understood what he meant, but I think I do now. For if we remember something untrue about the dead they are doubly lost to us—in memory as well as fact. Perhaps that is how we ixchel came to the custom of writing letters to the fallen on the night they pass away—letters kept in family archives, to be read by children and grandchildren. But Talag long ago made us promise not to do so—indeed, to serve him no death-rites whatsoever until we reached—”

  “Aunt Dri!” shouted Taliktrum, enraged.

  Dri blinked, as if starting from a dream. “Reached the end of the struggle he lived for—that is all I meant. But there is more sad news. As we neared Ormael, the bosun Swellows murdered one of your own. You must have known him: a dark-haired tarboy with a stutter.”

  “Reyast!” both boys cried in anguish. In a flash Pazel recalled the gentle, often bewildered face of their friend, quick to laugh, more often laughed at.

  “That monster Swellows!” he hissed. “Why?”

  “To grasp that,” said Diadrelu, “you must first know the true mission of the Chathrand.”

  Then, as the boys' flesh crawled with horror, she told them of the visit to the Prison Isle, and the Shaggat Ness, and the use the Emperor planned to make of him.

  “The Shaggat's return is foretold by a prophecy,” she said, “dreamed up by Sandor Ott himself and spread by spies in Gurishal: He will return, it declares, when a Mzithrin prince takes an Arquali soldier's daughter for a wife.”

  “Thasha,” said Pazel.

  “Of course,” said Taliktrum. “But the prophecy is little known outside Gurishal. Only when the marriage is sealed, and the news runs like wildfire through their lands, and the Shaggat's worshippers rise, will the Mzithrin Kings realize how they have been fooled. And kill your Thasha Isiq in a heartbeat, naturally.”

  “Just as Swellows killed Reyast,” said Dri. “Smothered him with a sheet, because the boy managed to befriend the augrongs—and one of them showed him what they guard: the hidden cell where the Shaggat is kept.”

  “Swellows made the sign of the Tree over the murdered boy,” said Taliktrum. “And then he jammed a chicken bone into his throat, to make it seem the boy had choked on stolen food.”

  There was another silence. Pazel blinked away tears. He was cold and terrified, and had never felt so helpless in his life. But he had to act, he had to keep thinking—Thasha would be killed if he stopped.

  “Just a moment,” he said. “The Shaggat's followers were exiled to Gurishal. That's far in the west. The Sizzies won't let us pass through thousands of miles of their waters to drop him off.”

  “No indeed,” said Diadrelu. “But Chathrand has no intention of going through them. She will go around.”

  “Around!” cried both boys. “Through the Ruling Sea?”

  “Where none can follow her, and none shall suspect,” said Dri. “That is why Rose had to be tracked down and made to pilot the Great Ship again. No other captain has braved the Nelluroq and lived.”

  “What happens if they succeed?” Pazel whispered.

  “Civil war in the Mzithrin,” said Taliktrum. “And millions dead. Cities burned, legions of soldiers slain on the battlefield or drowned with their fleets. Of course, the Shaggat will die, too—this time the Mzithrin Kings will make sure of it. But it will be a costly extermination. They will have no strength left to stop Arqual from seizing the Crownless Lands. And Magad will seize them—all of them, within a year or two.”

  “That's, that's … savage!” cried Neeps.

  Taliktrum laughed. “But that is nothing. In time, with Arqual grown so mighty and her enemy crippled—don't you see?”

  “The Mzithrin? Arqual would attack the Mzithrin itself?”

  “Some madmen dream of it,” said Diadrelu. “Especially the Rin-fanatics, the ones who want the idols of the Old Faith broken, and their sect destroyed, and the Rinfaith forced on all the world.”

  “My law is Peace, and my kingdom Brotherhood,” recited Taliktrum, sneering. “Therefore dwell in my kingdom and keep my law. Such lovely words, in the mouths of murderers and thieves. Delightful to be a giant, no? The chosen people, the lords of Alifros, squatting on a throne of skulls.”

  Neeps sat up, glaring. “At least we don't drill holes in ships full of women and children, and drop 'em on the seafloor!”

  “You use cannon,” said Taliktrum. “Life means nothing to your kind.”

  “What do you know, you vicious little—”

  “Neeps!” cried Pazel.

  “What do I know?” said Taliktrum, with a terrible edge to his voice. “Shall I tell you a bit of history, Arquali?”

  “No, you shall not!” cried Diadrelu, leaping between them. “And he will not tell you that he would rather be a maggot than a son of Arqual. Fools! While we fight our enemies grow stronger! And they are strong already—stronger than you know, Taliktrum.”

  Her nephew looked at her, waiting for an explanation. By a sliver of moonlight Pazel saw fear in Diadrelu's eyes.

  She took a deep breath. “Thasha does not suspect Sandor Ott. Her father does not suspect Syrarys. But no one suspects the most dangerous man aboard, the man who led us all to this place.”

  “You're speaking of Ket again, aren't you?” said Pazel.

  “Ket is the name he goes by on Chathrand,” said Diadrelu, “but in the dark annals of history his name is Arunis.”

  Taliktrum laughed aloud.

  Dri ignored him and went on. “Arunis was the Shaggat's sorcerer. His was ever the diabolical hand behind the Shaggat. Most believe that he himself invented that twisted strain of the Old Faith that justified the God-K
ing's rise. If that madman had defeated the other kings in the last war, the true emperor of the Mzithrin would be Arunis.

  “When the Shaggat and his sons were plucked from the sinking Lythra, so was the sorcerer. All four were hidden in Licherog. But Arunis struggled to escape, and once nearly succeeded. It was then that Sandor Ott decided that he was too dangerous to live. Arunis was hanged on the Prison Isle, cursing his captors, the Gods, the universe entire. His body was left nine days on the gibbet, then cut to pieces and tossed into the sea—and yet he lives. Somehow, he lives.”

  Pazel looked from one ixchel to the other. “This Arunis … is aboard the Chathrand?”

  “No,” said Taliktrum bluntly.

  “Yes,” said Dri. “Or he was until she landed yesterday, and he began his journey here. Rose, Ott, Drellarek, Uskins—not one of those villains suspects him. Nor did we ixchel. By great efforts we discovered Ott's plan, and a monstrous discovery it was, like a pit beneath a banquet hall. Yet my heart tells me there is a pit beneath the pit.”

  “What do you mean?” Pazel asked. “Doesn't Arunis want the same thing as Ott and the Emperor—to start a war?”

  “Oh yes,” said Diadrelu. “But I think he wants a different ending.”

  “Arunis the sorcerer, risen from the dead,” sneered Taliktrum.

  “Or never dead at all,” said Diadrelu.

  “Diadrelu,” said Pazel, “Mr. Ket saved Hercól's life. If he's such a wicked man, why would he risk his own life for a stranger?”

  “We saved Hercól together,” said Diadrelu with a sigh. “The arrow that made the cutthroat stumble was mine. Mr. Ket appeared moments later, and fought the man quite viciously—too viciously for a well-fed merchant. But I have asked myself the same question a hundred times since that night. Does Arunis need Hercól alive for some reason? Could they possibly be allies?”

  “Absolutely not!” said Pazel. “Hercól loves Thasha like a younger sister. And he's a good man, damn it—you can just tell.”