The Night of the Swarm

by Robert V. S. Redick

  Cayer Vispek had not yet seen the marvelous pen. Neda had found a simpler one in the common room and used that when he came near. If he saw the pen he would tell her to leave it behind.

  She wrung the stiffness from her hand and started again. Her arm raced across the sheet, the words spilling out in a shape that declared her mongrel heart: angular Mzithrini characters ever so slightly distorted by the rounded, flowing style of an Ormali schoolgirl.

  Then will you know thy calling: for the Dragon seeketh naught but the Dragon’s prey, and never dines on base creatures of the barnyard, in their own filth confined.

  Memory was a weapon, memory was a curse. As Neda wrote the phrase she could see the face of her first master, the high priest known as the Babqri Father, reciting it on the day of her induction. The Father had rarely smiled, but that day he had glowed. Neda was his discovery. He had plucked her from a bleak life of concubinage and made her an aspirant to the order of the sfvantskors, the first non-Mzithrini ever to receive such a singular honor. That day she would begin the training, renounce her former life, devote herself forever to the Gods. She remembered the mischief in his eyes: the choice of her had already become a scandal. Being Neda, she could also recall his smells (green onions, sweat), his silk robe (a long thread had trailed down his back from the golden collar, as though he were being unraveled by imps), his ailments (a toothache, a wheeze when he rose from a chair, a fresh scratch on his left wrist given to him by his favorite alley cat, whom he called Shadow and the village boys called Smoky and the half-blind cook in the refectory called Dirty Thief).

  So will thy purpose seize you: in jaws of iron and enduring flame.

  Being Neda, memory-blessed, she could hold up that long-lost day for inspection as a jeweler might a ring. There was the colossal edifice of the shrine, its dark interior still cold though the city itself was steaming. There was the pitcher of sacramental milk (small chip in base of handle), the golden cups (two dented, but the dents had noble histories), the basin where the aspirants would wash their hands. There were the lonely candles (twenty-four green and burning two green and not burning sixteen white and burning five white and not burning one white fallen sideways abandoned dust-covered forgotten forever by everyone but Neda, mongrel monster prodigy freak).

  The way of the sfvantskor is perfection. Thy soul will make a slave of the flesh, whereas in lesser men the flesh takes mastery of the soul.

  And there were the other youths come for training (Sparro Suridín Adel Ommet Ingri Jalantri Tujinor Kat’jil Perek Fynn Ushatai Mendhur Malabron), all but six of whom would fail the initial tests. All but six of whom would go home to devastated families, to start the long, loud complaint that a foreign girl had been given what they themselves were denied.

  The way of the sfvantskor is perfection.

  Weapon, curse. Neda had understood the connection between the two for a very long time. Memory (the weapon) gave her power over others, reminded her of their weaknesses, the word or notion or name that brought them to tears, to fury, to a readiness to do as she wished. Memory (the curse) flooded her with proof that she was stumbling on her chosen path.

  The young sfvantskor’s mind had to be nurtured by the elders, cleansed of distraction, pruned of idle curiosity, disciplined in the service of the Unseen. Above all, it had to be equipped with a vision of Alifros and its heavens, its hells, its mystic byways; a vision that told the sfvantskors where they stood and why they were suffered to live and breathe and consume the bounty of the world.

  It was a beautiful vision. The world was one family: rocks, trees, people, white monkeys, black crocodiles, birds, bacteria, dust. All one. The wind its breath, the waters its blood. The night simply the closing of one great, shared, polyfaceted eye. But Alifros was also a family adrift, a ragtag entity wandering a savage universe. The sfvantskors were its defenders, the guards who passed the night awake.

  And she, Neda, meant to abandon her post.

  A spasm went through her, making her ruin a word. You don’t just mean to, she thought, you’ve done it already. For belief did not end with a public renunciation, a moment when one’s brethren called one a heretic, and damned. Belief ended in solitude and silence, the same way it began.

  She had opened her eyes this morning and known it was over. The room was still dark; Uláramyth was quiet and still. A bird was singing outside the window, each phrase like an urgent but reasonable question, which hung unanswered in the silence until the bird could no longer stand it, and asked the question again. Finished, gone. She no longer believed. She lay there in stark terror between Lunja and Thasha, afraid to move, afraid to think. When the tears came she did not understand them. She thought: I love the Book, I love the Book more than ever. She loved her master and the Father who had trained her, and her brother sfvantskors who had fallen in battle. And she had no doubt that the Old Faith had been a gift to this world from the divine.

  Long ago. Too long. In a form that no one could extract from the bowels of the creature that had swallowed it, the corrupt thing that prayed and shambled and made war and hated happiness, the modern Old Faith, the beast she had tried so hard to love.

  She had stared at the ceiling, wondering if this was madness, if she would presently start to scream. Why now? What had happened? Was it Cayer Vispek’s command four days ago—just that and nothing more?

  Her master had caught her laughing and sharing a melon with two selk warriors in the village square. He had asked her coldly to return to the house. Later he made her tell everything, how she had run with them (for the joy of running, climbing, sweating in the midday sun) almost to the top of the crater wall, then lain back beside them on the snowdrift there, so hot her skin almost sizzled, wildly happy in a way that bewildered her, until she realized with a start that it was only because they were happy. Because beings thousands of years old could still exult in mere sun and tired muscles, and the cool shocking snow.

  She told Vispek they had asked her to wait while they looked over the rim: like all the travelers she knew she was forbidden to gaze beyond Uláramyth, lest she gain some clue as to its location. She had waited for them, studying the tiny starburst flowers that grew between the rocks, wondering if today or tomorrow would be their last in this strange haven, or their last alive.

  When the selk returned their faces had changed. “What is wrong?” asked Neda. “Did you see Macadra’s forces? Are they near?”

  “We saw them, but they did not see us,” said the selk. “Uláramyth remains hidden from all enemies, for now at least. But we also saw something much worse: a black cloud, racing. It was the Swarm of Night, Death’s hunting-cloud, and it chilled our souls to see it, even from afar.”

  They descended in silence. At the bottom of the hill they went together to Lord Arim and Ramachni and explained what they saw. She stayed with her selk friends for a time after that, and slowly their spirits revived. While they were sharing the melon the selk performed silent impressions of her friends. A straight, serene posture and a piercing stare: that could only be Hercól. A wild-eyed figure grabbing at imaginary tools: Big Skip. The selk were clever mimes. Neda laughed until she ached.

  Cayer Vispek had listened to all this without saying a word. Then he had gone away into his chamber awhile. When he returned he said that she must avoid the selk whenever possible, share nothing but brief pleasantries, excuse herself if they became familiar. “You were trained for a purpose, and that purpose is not to sit and laugh with men of any race.”

  “I was not beguiled by them, Cayer,” she said. “I thought they might tell me something to our advantage.”

  “Then why did you look shamed when I chanced upon you?”

  Before she could recover enough to answer he shook his head and went on: “I have been careless with you, Neda Ygraël. All my thought was of survival until we came here, but threats to the body are not the only kind. Your mind is growing distracted by pleasure, your instincts dulled by the ease of this place. As your elder and teacher I am t
o blame.”

  “But Master, I have said my prayers, performed my meditations—”

  “You see?” he broke in. “You feel a need to defend yourself. That feeling is your soul crying out for order, for a return to what is real.”

  “But what harm has befallen me?”

  At that Vispek had become truly angry. One objection he had tolerated; two bordered on rebellion. He did not rage or shout. He merely dropped his eyes, as though he could not bear to look at her. Neda quailed. She felt unclothed. Vispek asked her in a distant voice if she might write some passages from the Book.

  “Which verses, Master?” she asked.

  Vispek started for the door. “Anything you remember,” he said.

  She had taken him at his word. This morning she had written 750 verses from memory, filling sixty sheets. Her gift was cooperating; it liked these manic feats of memory better than anything measured or practical. As long as she kept writing like a madwoman the gift would no doubt carry on as well, feeding the holy text into her consciousness like coal into a stove.

  When a band of sfvantskors became separated from the Book it was the task of the eldest student to speak or write long passages from memory, to be shared by all. That student had been her faith-brother Jalantri until he died in the Infernal Forest. Consequently Neda had never written any passages for Vispek’s approval. He knew she had a special memory, but did not begin to guess just how special it was. Neda’s transcriptions were more accurate than his own. Would he rejoice in her knowledge or consider it a mockery, a magical cheat? Was learning the Book by heart still a holy act if one did it by accident, if one had not even tried?

  The twelve core chapters every aspirant had to memorize simply to become a sfvantskor. A much larger section, known as the Inner Path, might require decades, if it was learned at all. The whole of the Book’s ninety-seven chapters had been memorized only by certain heroes of the Faith, high priests and mystics scattered through its history. And Neda, of course.

  In the seventh chapter the Book laid out the duties of a sfvantskor. They were many and complex. The sixth verse of the chapter was Neda’s favorite:

  Recall as well that man’s wisdom is a fair crystal, but Fact the blade of diamond that cuts the crystal, a blade created by no man but hidden in the earth from the beginning. Shield not man’s certainties from the diamond knife, but know that with each cut their shape is lovelier and more true.

  No command could be clearer. Use your mind. Use your eyes. Do not prop up old ideas like a shack in a windstorm. Accept what you see, even if it shatters what you’re told is true. Don’t substitute a story of Creation for Creation itself.

  Of all the commandments in the Book it was the one least favored by her masters, the one they never invoked, the one Neda suspected they would like all believers to forget. Most of them could only wish, of course. But the Father, her beloved teacher, had the power to make that desire come true, for he alone placed his chosen aspirants in trance.

  Almost nightly, they had surrendered to his control. Trance was the only proper state in which to receive the holy mysteries. And while in trance the Father could order his sfvantskors to forget any inconvenient fact or notion, and they would forget. It was a terrible, tempting power, and he had held it alone for half a century.

  But it had failed with Neda. Her gift brought everything back. Usually it happened the instant he released her from the trance: she would wake in the full, scarlet shame of remembering. But at other times the forgetting would linger for days, or longer. She had once passed the burned-out shell of a mansion in Babqri City and suddenly remembered standing guard there a few nights before, at a great feast honoring one of the Five Kings of the Mzithrin. Halfway through the meal some terrible insult had been uttered or implied; the King had departed hastily, and late that night the elder sfvantskors had returned to the shrine with spots of blood upon their sleeves.

  On another occasion she had gone to meditate in the Hall of Relics, before a small clay cup. Many centuries ago the angels had filled that cup with milk in the desert, thereby saving the life of the prophet Mathan, an early champion of the Faith. She had gazed at the humble cup and suddenly known that it was an imitation, a fake. The true cup had been stolen by the Shaggat Ness, in the same raid that took the Red Wolf and other wonders: she remembered the lecture clearly. But some weeks ago the Father had decided that the Faith still needed the cup. He commanded them to forget the lecture, and to recall instead that the cup had resided in the Hall of Relics for hundreds of years.

  So many things she wasn’t supposed to remember. So many certainties protected from the diamond knife.

  Neda raised her eyes from the sheet. Amber light filled the window, making the green leaves blaze. The Gods had left her. The Unseen was becoming unfelt. If she had felt its presence at all it had been in that moment of abandon, spread-eagled in the snow beside two gasping strangers.

  She rose and carried the stack of pages to her master’s room. His door stood open, and in the center of the room she saw him motionless, stripped to the waist, and balanced on one hand. Neda’s breath caught in her throat. His body was straight and rigid, his eyes gently shut, his skin aglow. The way of the sfvantskor is perfection. She set the pages down outside the door with the stone atop them and crept back to her room.

  Her heart was pounding. She had been thinking about her stolen memories because another was trying to come back. The sight of those two beautiful selk, and now of Vispek, was bringing it nearer. She wanted to run again; she wanted to steal from the house unseen. There were voices in the outer chamber: her brother was asking if anyone had seen Neeps, and whether Neda was still hiding in her room.

  Neda slipped out of the window and crossed the little garden and pulled herself easily over the wall. There was a shaded lane here. She looked left and right and saw that she was alone, then leaned back against the wall and closed her eyes.

  Thy soul will make a slave of the flesh, whereas in lesser men—

  She slid down the wall, and the thing she’d been commanded to forget came back to her. It had happened two years ago, in one of the darkened chambers where the Father often left his children in a trance until sunrise. Neda had been in deep, dreamless trance, all volition gone. Someone had stepped into the room and touched her. It was not the Father himself: she knew the rattle of his ancient hands. Two fingers had caressed her hair, grazed her lips, touched her briefly on the throat. Then the man had drawn back, sighing, struggling with himself. At last, surrendering, he had kissed her hand over and over, weeping a little and murmuring Neda, Neda, my phoenix, my dream. The voice was faint even now. She’d been commanded very firmly to forget.

  Who could have dared? One of the other aspirants? Malabron, whose sanity she had always doubted? Or poor Jalantri? Neda thought he had probably loved her, though he had never admitted the truth even to himself. How could he? The sfvantskors were commanded to love things eternal. To pursue carnal love was a grave sin; to pursue one’s faith-sister, unthinkable. No wonder Vispek had warned Jalantri to keep his distance from Neda at the first slight sign of his temptation.

  Neda covered her eyes, digging for the memory, for clues. The man had said he loved her. He’d said it many times through his tears.

  She thought again of Vispek. Neda had known him in Babqri; he was their weapons trainer; he had stood behind her and guided her arms through fluid sword-strokes. Impossible to think, sinful even to imagine, that it could have been him.

  She hugged herself and felt debauched. She did not know who had come to her that night and feared that she would never know. But she knew this much: it had taken so long to remember not because of the strength of the Father’s command, but because she herself had wished so desperately to forget. And she had wished to forget out of not horror but shame.

  For when the man had left the chamber she’d been sorry. She wished he had stayed there, bathing her hand with tears and kisses; until the dawn broke her trance and she could move again, to
uch him maybe, see the eyes of the one who had told her she was loved.

  That night for the first time in years Neda dreamed of her mother.

  They were in the kitchen of the Orch’dury, the family home on the hillside above Ormael City. Suthinia was chopping vegetables with a will. Leeks, carrots, turnips, chives. She scooped them up on the big knife’s edge and tossed them into a steaming vessel, never looking at her daughter who stood six feet away.

  “Mother,” said Neda. “Who are you cooking for?”

  “Oh, oh,” said Suthinia breezily, turning to the rack of spices.

  Neda told her mother that she was not in the mood for visitors. Her mother hummed and went on cooking, like some kind of strange machine. Neda walked through her beloved house and saw the floor littered with children’s toys. The beautiful pen from the selk was among them, just lying there on the floor waiting to be trampled. Irritated, she retrieved it and slipped it into the folds of her cloak. She was startled to find that she was naked beneath the robe.

  “Out of matches,” said Suthinia. “Shit, shit, shit.”

  Neda ran a hand surreptitiously over her own body. All her battle-scars were there. And glancing up at the mirror above the fireplace, she caught a glimpse of her red Mzithrini tattoos.

  “Finish up, do you hear me?” her mother shouted. “Pazel has to bathe before we eat.”

  Neda looked at her. “Are you talking to me?”

  Her mother started, knocking over the bottle of cooking wine.

  On the kitchen wall hung an old map of the city before the shattering of the wall. Ormael: Womb of Morning. That was what the name meant, in some ancient tongue; she’d not thought of it in years. She looked in the mirror again. She had been born here, born of that womb, and the womb of that impossible woman behind the stove. Before her rebirth as Neda Ygraël, Phoenix-Flame, servant of the Unseen.