He let go of Thasha and pressed her forward, shaking his head when she objected. He feared he would be no use in the fight. But Thasha would be, if he let her. He hobbled, gritting his teeth against the pain.
Neeps looked back at him over his shoulder, his face utterly filthy. Neda glanced back at him too. Pazel nodded to them: I’m managing. And to his great surprise he felt a kind of happiness. His best friend, his sister and his lover: all here with him, even if here was hell. They cared for him; it seemed somehow miraculous. He thought: I’m going to fight you, Arunis, on one leg or two.
Then he went mad.
He was sure of it, for a horror beyond anything he had ever dreamed had enveloped him, a horror you could not look at and stay sane. They were walking on babies. Mounded, rotting, torn open as if by the gnawing of animals, human babies, and dlomic, and They were gone. A hideous lie, an illusion. He was bathed in sweat, and needed to scream. What had just happened to him? Was he mad? Or was something attacking his mind, some illness, some enchantment?
The spores?
Alyash and several others had been stung by the spores. But what if not all of them stung? What if some could not even be seen, or smelled or tasted, but were potent nonetheless? They had shoved and stumbled through miles of fungi. Of course the spores were inside them. Could they brew visions in the mind? Neeps was hearing voices, and the Turach had seen that bladder-fungus move…
“Now!” said Hercol, and flew forward like the wind. The others bolted after him, weapons high, rushing heedless through the fungi, slashing through the dangling worms, moving like a scythe toward their goal. Pazel ran too, faster than he thought himself capable. He actually passed Ibjen and Neeps, and drew level with Bolutu. They jumped a stream, darted around several of the towering trees (how close together they were now!), slid down an eight-foot embankment of roots and globular fungi, leaped through a last tangle-and saw the whole party, standing still and aghast beside an orange pool.
It was not sunk into the ground but raised in fungal walls some five feet high, and in the center lay Greysan Fulbreech. The rim of the pool was a mass of wiry tentacles that strained to reach the newcomers. Fulbreech was floating on his back. He was withered, and shirtless, and a rag that might have been part of his shirt was wadded and stuffed into his mouth. Bruises and burns marked his skin, along with cuts that looked raw and inflamed. His eyes were open but he barely moved. A weak groan escaped him. He did not even turn his head in their direction.
Lifting the torch, Neda raced around the pool, gazing beyond the towering trees. “Arunis is not here!” she cried, desolate, enraged. “The Nilstone is not here! We have been following that bastard and no one else.”
Even as she spoke the torch seemed to leap out of her hand. Neda whirled, lunged after it, and then the light was gone.
The Uses of Madness
Thasha knew they were under attack. Voices howled-more voices than there were people in the party-and hands were groping at her out of the darkness. A sword whistled, sickeningly close; blows were falling, bodies crashing to the ground. She tried to back away from the fighting, but someone collided with her, knocking her hard into the fern-fungi. Then all at once she was seeing again, but all she saw were shapes from a nightmare. Cats, hundreds and hundreds of them, famished, feral, converging on them from all sides. Thasha raised her arms before the onslaught; they were closing, leaping They vanished like soap bubbles as they struck.
A hand on her arm. She whirled. It was Pazel, embracing her, drawing her close. She leaned into him, whispered his name; he opened his mouth for a kiss.
And laughed. The flame-spittle of the trolls burst out of him, straight into her face. Thasha screamed and broke away.
She was not burned.
I’m dreaming. No-hallucinating. I’m mucking wide awake! With a tremendous effort she made herself stand still. Once again she was perfectly blind, but that was better than the alternative. Some of the others were still at it, shrieking in terror or in pain.
Thasha shouted at the top of her lungs: “Stop fighting! It’s in your head, your head! There’s no one here but us and Fulbreech!”
Bolutu and Hercol were already shouting much the same thing. “Stop fighting! Stop fighting! We’re lighting another torch!” Then she heard Pazel say: “Don’t light it yet, Hercol! Look at the pool! Are you all seeing that, or is it just me?”
Thasha at least could see it: the pool where Fulbreech lay was starting to glow. The light came from the fungal walls, and rather than orange it was now an indistinct purple, a weird radiance that seemed only to strike the edges of things. Still it brightened, until they could see Fulbreech plainly, one another less so.
“Here is the torch-drenched,” said Myett, from the edge of the clearing.
“Something struck it from my hand,” said Neda. “A globular thing. It flew out of the darkness as though someone had hurled it.”
“Hear me, people,” said Bolutu. “We have been drugged. We are seeing and hearing what is not there. Do not trust your eyes. And for the love of Alifros, do not be guiled into attacking one another!”
“The trouble,” said Pazel, “is that some of the dangers are real. Those white worms, for instance. And whatever struck the torch.”
“The fungus-trap holding the boy is real as well,” said Ensyl.
“And I know just the solution,” said Alyash. “We’ll find a long stick, see, and push his mucking head under the surface. Deceitful son of a whore! He’s managed to betray us one last time. Arunis could be anywhere by now.”
“How do you propose to find out, if you kill the boy?” said Cayer Vispek.
But the bosun was suddenly distracted. “Look up,” he murmured.
Whispered curses: dangling overhead was an enormous mass of crisscrossed vines, so laden with growths they looked almost like a second forest floor. And hanging on the underside of every surface were bats. They were tiny, no larger than hummingbirds, but their numbers were incalculable. Most dangled motionless, upside down, their wings enveloping their bodies like cabbage leaves. But a few strained their necks around to look at the travelers. Their eyes gleamed purple in the torchlight.
“Those!” said Neda suddenly. “It was they who snuffed the torch! Why would they burn themselves up, attacking a fire?”
“Light here seems to be the enemy,” said Bolutu. “Or rather: our kind of light. If they live off the fungus, perhaps they do it a service, too. The pool’s glow draws creatures near; the liquid catches them. And the bats-they eat something that thrives here, around this pool.”
“They’re weighing down the vines,” said Alyash.
It was true that something was making the vines hang low and taut, as though under some heavy strain. “It’s not the bats,” said Pazel, “they’re too small, even if there are ten thousand up there. You could set a mansion on those blary vines, Mr. Alyash.”
“There is something else,” said Ensyl, shielding her eyes. “Something wide and smooth. I can’t quite make it out, but it is enormous-far wider than this clearing.”
Hercol stepped away from the others. With a sidelong swipe of Ildraquin, he slashed away a yard or more of the wriggling tentacles. The other appendages writhed in distress, and the bats quivered and squeaked (more were waking; a few flitted about). Hercol raised the sword high. “Watch your feet,” he told the others. Then he struck, lightning-fast, and a V-shaped chunk of the pool wall fell outward. Hercol jumped back. The gelatinous substance began to ooze through the gap, and Fulbreech, floating like a raft, slid toward it as well.
They groped for sticks in the weird light and used them to drag the limp youth through the incision, out of the worst of the spreading ooze. With the tip of Ildraquin, Hercol snagged a corner of the rag in Fulbreech’s mouth and lifted. The rag came out; Fulbreech gagged and retched.
“Master Hercol,” he rasped, his voice a feeble mockery of the one that had, briefly, excited dreams in Thasha’s heart. “Master Alyash. It’s really you, isn’t it? B
y the Blessed Tree, you’re not illusions, not ghosts.”
“Are you certain, Fulbreech?” said Alyash. “I think we’d better prove it to you.”
The Simjan’s face looked drowned: not in the substance of the pool, but in a boundless immensity of terror. “I can’t feel my limbs,” he said.
“That’s all right, boy,” said Alyash. “You won’t be needing ’em.”
Fulbreech gazed helplessly at the bosun. “He will not harm you without my consent,” said Hercol, “and I will not give it, whether you help us or refuse. For I have done you a disservice, Fulbreech.”
Thasha, and most of the others, looked at him in shock. “A grave disservice,” Hercol went on. “I have had some opportunity to reflect on my mistake, these last days of traveling. How you came to be Arunis’ creature I will never know. Were you madly ambitious as you seem? Or were you weak, like Mr. Druffle, seduced into lowering your defenses, until he made a puppet of you, colonized your mind? Do not speak yet! I will believe nothing you say. But the fact is that when I guessed whose work you did, I chose to leave you in his clutches, for weeks. It was the only way I could think of to locate Arunis’ hiding place on the Chathrand. But in so doing I treated you as a pawn, just as Arunis did. I might have struck a deal with Ott, had you safely confined, asked Chadfallow and Lady Oggosk to attempt the rescue of your soul.”
“You don’t know that he needed any rescuing,” said Thasha, her rage boiling over. “You don’t know that he wanted any.”
“And now I never shall,” said Hercol, “unless we escape this place. Then, Fulbreech, I will seek help for you-again, whether you aid us now, or not.”
“Damn it, Hercol!” Pazel exploded. “Why don’t you make him your mucking heir and be done with it?”
“Pazel’s right,” said Neeps. “You’re going too blary far.”
“Thashiziq!” said Ibjen suddenly. “I hear voices. From the black water beneath the roots.”
Hercol waved imperiously for silence. “What you must appreciate, Fulbreech,” he went on calmly, “is that if you do not help us, we cannot prevail. And then you will be doomed. Your body will perish here, and your soul-what did he say would become of it, lad? He had a promise for you, didn’t he?”
“They’re calling me, calling me away,” whispered Ibjen.
Bolutu shot him a quick, distracted look. “You’re in nuhzat, lad. Be still and it will pass.”
Ibjen sank to the ground, hugging his knees. Thasha crouched down and held him, whispering, begging him to hush. Whatever Hercol was attempting she didn’t dare interrupt.
Fulbreech’s tongue slid over bloodless lips. “I don’t know what you want, Master Hercol,” he said.
“What I want is answers,” said Hercol, “although I know you cannot give them if you still serve the mage. If that is the case we must fail, and perish here together. But even then I will help you.”
“How?”
“With a clean death,” said Hercol, “and if I discover you in a lie I will do it instantly, for our time is very short.” Then, as if following a sudden impulse, he added, “I will also do so at a word from Mr. Undrabust. You may not be aware of it, Fulbreech, but he has a nose for lies. The best I have ever encountered.”
Neeps stared at him, shocked silent in his turn. Pazel reached out and squeezed his shoulder. Courage, mate. Hercol rested the tip of Ildraquin on Fulbreech’s throat.
“Speak a little truth,” he said.
Fulbreech lay there, blinking and trembling. He licked his lips again. “Arunis can use the Stone,” the youth whispered. “He’s already doing it. Through the tol-chenni we brought from Masalym. He has terrible powers now, worse than anything you’ve seen.”
“Then we’re too Gods-damned late,” hissed Big Skip. But Ensyl, on his shoulder, hushed him quickly.
“He’s keeping the forest dark,” said Fulbreech. “He says it’s always full of light-made by creatures, and plants, and mushrooms-just not the kind our eyes can see. Only the fireflies make our sort of light, and he’s driven them into hiding. And he… created this place around me. As a trap, in case you made it this far.”
“What is the danger here?” asked Hercol. “The bats? The pool itself?”
Fulbreech shook his head slightly. “He said that if I didn’t know, I couldn’t tell you. That’s the truth, by all the Gods. But I know this: he has power from the Stone, but not control-not yet. The idiot really is mad-dangerously mad. And to use the Stone, Arunis has to reach into his mind and make him see what he wants.”
“How much does he know of us, boy?” said Lunja suddenly. “Our numbers, our distance from him? Is he watching us even now?”
“No,” said Fulbreech. “He has caught only glimpses of you, though they seemed to grow clearer with each day-as you grew closer, perhaps. When we stood on the shores of the glacier lake, he closed his eyes suddenly and cried, ‘Vadu! Vadu has drawn his knife, somewhere on the plain below! That buffoon is chasing us!’ Then again, a day later, he stopped and pressed a hand to his forehead. He was furious, and I heard him growl: ‘So you are bringing her, are you, Counselor?’ I thought he meant Macadra, the sorceress from Bali Adro City: after all, we fled when he learned that she was coming for the Stone. But now I think he meant you, Thasha darling.”
“Enough of that talk,” snapped Hercol. “Where is Arunis now?”
“Deeper inside the forest. Where the River of Shadows breaks through to the surface.”
“That is no help,” said Cayer Vispek. “Which direction, and how far?”
Fulbreech shook his head again. “I don’t know. He would not tell me.”
Hercol and Neeps exchanged a glance. “Continue,” said the swordsman.
Fulbreech coughed: it was like an old man’s rattling wheeze. Then he lay still, gazing strangely at Hercol. “Are you finished?” said the swordsman at last. “Have you nothing more to tell?”
“You want to know how I came to be in his service?” said Fulbreech suddenly, and there was pride in his ruined voice. “Perhaps you think he seized on some weakness. Oh no, Stanapeth, not at all. I went to him. In all that multitude at Thasha’s wedding, I alone saw through his disguise, saw that he was the power behind the spectacle, the master of ceremonies, the one who would win.” He turned his head, gazing at them in defiance. “And when you know that, do you linger on the losing side? Not if you’ve been poor. Not if you mean to go places in your life, to be something better than a clerk in a backwater kingdom on a humdrum isle.”
“You were already goin’ places, you little bastard,” snarled Alyash. “We’d seen to that.”
“The Secret Fist,” said Fulbreech. “A priesthood of cutthroats, bowing to a crude stone idol named Sandor Ott. I would never have remained like you, Alyash, a cringing servant. When I guessed that Arunis was manipulating Ott’s conspiracy, I walked right up to him, right there at the procession. I told him I was Ott’s man, and would be his if the terms were better.”
“Were they?” asked Bolutu.
The Simjan’s eyes widened, but he was no longer focusing on what was before them. “Choosing sides,” he said. “That was my talent; that was my only gift. I told you, Thasha: I placed all my trust in that gift, and I have never been wrong.”
“This time you were wrong, giant,” said Myett.
Fulbreech kept his gaze on Thasha. “Cure me,” he said. “I know you have the power. Cure me, heal my limbs, and I will tell you about the River of Shadows.”
“What about the River?” she asked.
“Don’t listen to him, Thasha,” said Neeps. “I doubt he knows any more than we do.”
“You know that it surfaces here, in this forest,” said Fulbreech, “and you know that it touches many worlds, that if you fall into its depths you might wash up anywhere. But what good does that do you? I know something Arunis wishes no one to know. Something priceless to your quest. I know where the River touches the world of the dead.”
Bolutu turned him a sudden, piercing loo
k. “Yes,” said Fulbreech, “I was there when Arunis discovered it; I saw his fury and disbelief. The world of the dead, Thasha. The one place that can save you. The place where the Nilstone belongs.”
“Where is this place?” demanded Hercol.
A vein pulsed on the youth’s white forehead. “Cure me,” he said to Thasha. “It is a small deed for you.”
“Greysan,” she said, “you’re wrong about me. Everyone is, by the Pits.”
“Don’t lie,” he said. “Heal me, Thasha, let me walk. I can help you defeat him. With your power, and all I’ve learned-”
“I am not a mage,” she said.
There was steel in her voice. Fulbreech watched her a long time, and Pazel saw belief welling in his eyes, and then a new, colder look. “None of you stand a chance, then,” he whispered. “You’re the walking dead. He’s won.”
“Not while one of us draws breath,” said Hercol.
“You’re dead,” said Fulbreech again. “You’ve never known who you were fighting. You think he’s just a beast, a monster, someone who hates for no reason. But he’s not.”
“What in Pitfire is he, then?” said Pazel.
Fulbreech’s eyes swiveled until they locked on Pazel. A ghastly smile appeared on his face. “You should have guessed by now,” he said. “Why, he’s the same as you, Pathkendle. A natural scholar.”
Pazel looked as though he might get suddenly ill. Fulbreech’s smile grew. “Thasha talked a lot on that bed, when I let her. She told me what you loved as a child. Books, school, good marks. Treats for cleverness from your betters. And who were your betters? Old Chadfallow, of course, and all those captains who let a dirty Ormali set foot on their boats. And of course, Thasha herself. Tell me, Pazel, was it worth it? Did you ever earn your treat?”
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