The Night of the Swarm

by Robert V. S. Redick

  “What’s wrong, Dr. Chadfallow?” demanded Marila.

  “What isn’t?” he replied, not looking back.

  Marila ran to catch up with Rose. He was talking to himself, rubbing his hands against his shirt as though he had touched something loathsome. He even sniffed them as he reached the Silver Stair and began to climb. To her pleas for attention he made no response at all. When they emerged into the hot sun again he made straight for his own chamber beneath the quarterdeck.

  Rose hurled open the door and walked through.

  “Keep her out!” he bellowed to his steward. The man was reeling; the door had struck him in the face. Hobbling forward, he made a gesture for scaring pigeons.

  “Get on. You’re a nuisance. Always have been. Go make trouble for somebody else.”

  “You think there’s trouble now,” said Marila. She turned on her heel and began the long march back to the forecastle.

  At the mizzenmast she intercepted Fiffengurt, who was rushing aft. The quartermaster too looked as though he might prefer to avoid her.

  “You didn’t tell him,” she said, accusing.

  “Tell who?”

  Marila just stared.

  “Ah, no, that I didn’t,” said Fiffengurt. “Captain Rose—well, I couldn’t, you see. The timing wasn’t right.”

  “We’re out of blary time. We’ve been here for nearly two days. How long do you think they’re going to wait?”

  Fiffengurt looked sheepish. “He was confiding in me, lass. He’s never done that before.”

  Marila shook her head in disbelief. “You and I are going to Oggosk,” she said. “We’ll bring Felthrup; he should be waiting for me at the bird coops. We can’t put this off any longer.”

  But Fiffengurt said he could not possibly go with her until the ship was safely inside the bay.

  “How can you use the word safely?” asked Marila, struggling to keep her voice down.

  Fiffengurt too spoke in a strained undertone. “We’ll be no more blary vulnerable inside the bay than out. It ain’t the same as landing, my dear.”

  “I know the difference,” said Marila.

  “ ’Course you do. Well, the main thing is, we’ll be hidden from any Bali Adro vessels, see? Give me thirty minutes; then you and I can have our little chat with the duchess.”

  “What if Rose orders you to put a landing craft in the water right away?”

  “That ain’t likely. Now go stand over there.”

  Marila planted herself near the quarterdeck ladder, arms crossed, as Fiffengurt shouted at the sailors and Mr. Elkstem worked the helm. The maneuver did not look challenging. The mouth of the bay was a mile wide. The Chathrand had come around in a gentle arc from the south, close to the southern headland, and once past it they could see the bay’s white, sheltered beaches, and stands of majestic palms.

  But as they drew closer the forward lookouts sounded an alarm: whitecaps, which meant shallows, or perhaps another reef. “Topsails down!” bellowed Fiffengurt, and very soon the Chathrand slowed to a crawl. A lieutenant came running from the forecastle: there was a reef, he reported, but it did not close off the whole of the bay. The southern third of the mouth appeared wide open. They would have to skirt nearer to the cliffs, but they should still be able to pass inside with ease.

  Fiffengurt so ordered. They sailed on, but the reports kept coming: reef outcroppings to starboard, deep clear water along the cliffs. With each report they nudged closer. Elkstem and Fiffengurt exchanged a look.

  “There’s no drift to speak of,” said Elkstem. “We can tiptoe right in along the cliffs, if that’s what you want. She’s a beauty of a bay on the inside, that’s plain to see.”

  “Yes,” said Fiffengurt, pulling savagely at his beard, “all the room in the world, once we’re past the cliffs. Not more than half a mile to go.”

  “Only if you don’t mean to take us in, speak now,” added Elkstem. “There’s still room to come about, but who knows for how long? What d’ye say, Graff? Steady on?”

  Marila shook her head emphatically, but Fiffengurt did not see her. Or chose not to see her. “The captain’s word stands, Mr. Elkstem. Take us in, and round off mid-bay with Her Ladyship facing the mouth once again. Then we’ll await Rose’s pleasure.”

  On a single topsail they crept on, until the cliffs were sliding past them a mere sixty feet from the portside rail. Marila looked up. It was strange to be in the shadow of anything, here on the topdeck, but the rocky clifftops loomed four hundred feet above the height of the deck. Even the lookout high on the mainmast was staring up at them, not down. There were great boulders poised at the tops of the cliffs. Where they’ve been for thousands of years, she told herself. Pitfire, girl. It’s not as if the ixchel are going to throw them.

  Nor did they. The half mile passed, and soon they found themselves in as lovely a bay as one could ask for, holding steady on topgallants a mile or more from any point of land. Fiffengurt turned and smiled at Marila. She did not smile back. Together they went in search of Felthrup and Oggosk.

  The rat was nowhere to be found. In the chicken coops, however, the birds were in a state of severe agitation. “Someone’s been here; the stool’s been moved,” said Marila. “Egg thieves again, probably. Fine, we’ll go and see her alone.”

  “Marila, dear, d’ye really think that’s wise?”

  “If you don’t want to tell her, I will.”

  Fiffengurt shook his head firmly. “Ah, lass, there’s no cause to be that way. I’ll tell her, don’t you worry.” But there was a tremor in his voice.

  They could hear Oggosk screaming from twenty yards, though they could make no sense of the string of names, dates, cities, ships and bodily fluids, all punctuated by crashes and wordless shrieks. “What’s the matter with her?” whispered Fiffengurt.

  “Something about a letter,” said Marila. “One of those crazy letters to Rose that she says come from his dead father. Usually she just tosses them off, but this one’s different somehow. Felthrup knows more than I do.”

  Glass shattered against the inside of her cabin door. “Dead!” screamed Oggosk, within. “Caught by fishermen, washed up on beaches, stranded by the tide!”

  Marila took a firm grip on Mr. Fiffengurt’s arm.

  “Ninety-three years of bloated crab-nibbled corpses!”

  Marila pounded on the door. Oggosk fell silent. After two minutes Fiffengurt said, “She ain’t going to let us in. We’d best try another time.”

  He was smiling. Marila just waited. Very soon the door opened a crack, and one milky-blue eye stared up at the quartermaster.

  “Well?” she croaked. “What have you done now, you old piece of gristle?”

  Fiffengurt cleared his throat. “Duchess,” he said, “perhaps you’ve heard some of the debate concerning the name of this here island?”

  “It is Stath Bálfyr,” said Oggosk.

  Fiffengurt smiled, fidgeting terribly. “Well now, m’lady, that’s quite correct. Only it happens that things are just a trifle more complicated than we hoped. It’s no cause for alarm, but—”

  “The island’s useless,” said Marila. “Ott’s papers were forged by the ixchel. Stath Bálfyr is where they came from, centuries ago, and they’ve tricked us into bringing them home. We don’t have course headings from here—they’re all fake. If we cross the Ruling Sea from this island we could come out anywhere in the north.”

  Now she could see a bit of Oggosk’s mouth, which hung open like an eel’s. “What?” said the old woman.

  “Oh, and the whole clan’s still aboard,” said Marila, “the ones that we didn’t kill in Masalym, anyway. They’re going to do something and it will probably be terrible. Stath Bálfyr is the only reason they ever came aboard.”

  Oggosk closed the door again. Fiffengurt looked at Marila awkwardly. “I was about to say that, missy. You beat me to it, is all. Well now, we’d best leave the duchess to mull this over, don’t you think?”

  Before Marila could tell him that she t
hought nothing of the kind, the door flew open, and Oggosk emerged with her walking stick, which she swung with great force at Fiffengurt.

  “Traitor!” she screamed. “Crawly-lover! You’ve known about this for months, haven’t you? That’s why you look like you’ve swallowed a poison toad every time we mention Stath Bálfyr!”

  Fiffengurt backed away, shielding his head. “Duchess, please—”

  “Don’t speak to me ever again! Don’t look at me, you lying, worm-laden bag of excrement! Move! Walk! We’re going to the captain, and I hope he skins you alive!”

  The corridor was wide and black. Felthrup looked up at the cargo stacked to either side of him: musty crates, huge casks for spirits or wine, clay amphorae nestled in rotting burlap, secured with ancient ropes. The air was chill, and the only light came from the chamber at the end of the passage, fifty feet ahead, where a single lamp dangled on a chain. The brightness of the lamp was slowly, steadily increasing.

  “Sweet heaven’s mercy! You’re here!”

  The man’s voice also came from the chamber ahead, but Felthrup could see no sign of movement. He did not answer, but crept forward along the edge of the cargo, keeping out of the light. The voice implored him to hurry, but he did not. Every instinct told him that he was in a place of unspeakable danger.

  “Where are you? Why don’t you say anything?”

  Felthrup reached the chamber and drew a sharp breath. He was looking at a jail. Thick iron bars divided the room into cells: four cells, two on either side of the dangling lamp. He saw now that the lamp was an odd specimen of ancient brass, although it burned as brightly as any modern fengas lamp. The two cells on the left stood wide open, but the right-hand cells were closed. And in the nearer of these stood a young man in rags.

  He saw Felthrup and put a hand through the bars: a gesture of joy or excitement, maybe, but Felthrup responded by leaping backward.

  “No! No!” cried the man. “Don’t be frightened! Please don’t run away!”

  In the cell next to the ragged man there lay a corpse. It was curled on its side like a sleeper, its face turned to the wall. Indeed Felthrup might have taken it for a sleeper, if not for a glimpse of one hand, where bones protruded through a translucent layer of rotten skin. The rest of the figure was completely clothed: heavy coat, trousers, headscarf. Felthrup had no idea whether the thing before him had been a man or a woman.

  “It is too late for Captain Kurlstaff,” said the man, “but not for me. Oh, please, come here and nudge open the door! There is no latch; enchantment alone prevents me from swinging it wide.” Demonstrating, he took the door in both hand and shook it violently. When Felthrup jumped again he checked himself and smiled.

  “Forgive me. This is not my real nature. It’s just that I have been so long alone—Tree of Heaven, you don’t know how long!”

  “Tell me,” said Felthrup, glad to hear that his voice did not crack. He was examining the man’s feet, for he had already discovered that he did not much care to look at his eyes.

  “My dear friend, you won’t believe it. This is the Vanishing Brig of the IMS Chathrand, and I am its forgotten prisoner. It is a cunning and merciless invention: set but a foot inside one of these cells, and the door slams behind you, and cannot be opened from within—not ever. I have been locked in here since the days of the Black Tyrant, Hurgasc, who took the Great Ship and used her for plunder. My family opposed Hurgasc more bitterly than any others in the Kingdom of Valahren.” The man lowered his voice, and his eyes. “He slew my brothers one by one and cast their bodies out upon the plain, where the jackals gnawed their bones. I wish he had done the same with me. Instead I was brought to this cell, in which no man may ever age, and left for all eternity.”

  “You do not age?” asked Felthrup.

  “Nor sleep, nor tire, nor feel anything but a dull hunger that never abates. I lie still for years at a time. The lamp springs to life for visitors; otherwise I lie in perfect darkness. For centuries, my friend. No one comes here anymore.”

  “But someone used to?”

  “Oh, very rarely—and when they come, fear masters them, and they flee like cockroaches. But you, woken rat! You’re braver than any human ever was!”

  Or more foolish, thought Felthrup.

  “But open the door, open the door!” cried the man. “I will tell you my whole sorry tale, and show you other secrets of the Chathrand. Did you know that there was gold aboard, hidden in many places?”

  Felthrup knew it perfectly well. He gazed back along the corridor. The Green Door stood ajar, but the light of the lamp was so bright that he could barely see it.

  “You don’t trust me,” said the man, his voice taking on an air of desperation. “Gods below, it is almost funny! Little rat-friend, do you know why my family ran afoul of Hurgasc? Because we sheltered woken animals like yourself. The Tyrant had a wild superstition that they were his defeated enemies, returned to life in bestial form. Madness, but that did not stop him from killing every woken animal he could. We gave refuge to scores of them in our family estate. I was raised by such creatures! But for every good man there are five who burn with jealousy merely because he is loving, and they are not. One day some mucking dog informed on us, and Hurgasc stormed the estate, and we fled to the wilderness to begin our life as rebels.”

  “And this Vanishing Brig, who made it? What is it for?”

  “The shipwright-mages of Bali Adro made it, sir—dlömu and human beings and selk, all working together in those days. No doubt they intended it for noble purposes, but they are all gone, and the ship has had so many lives and owners since. There is no escape from these cells save death—and that is what most choose.” He gestured at the corpse. “Kurlstaff there broke his pocketwatch, and swallowed the pieces, glass and all, and so made his escape. Others did so before him, and their bodies were at last removed. Now then: will you not be bold, and free a friend of your kind? I tell you I was imprisoned for nothing. Why, I was never even accused!”

  “That has just changed,” said Felthrup. “I accuse you of lying.”

  The man looked up sharply. Felthrup’s nose twitched with irritation.

  “Some of ‘our kind’ read,” he said, “and among those few, one at least reads history. The Chathrand was built five hundred years after the slaying of Hurgasc. To be precise, five hundred and three. And Valahren—well, really. In Hurgasc’s time the name did not exist; it was Valhyrin, and would remain so for centuries, I believe. And when Hurgasc ruled in Valhyrin, ‘our kind’ did not exist at all, for the Waking Spell that created us had yet to be cast.14 But if woken animals had existed then, and your family had loved them so keenly, you might possibly have lost the habit of referring to those you despise as mucking dogs. And now good day.”

  He would have liked to walk with dignity from the chamber, after such a speech. But in fact he was still terrified, and so he ran. The prisoner watched him, statue-still. Felthrup was halfway back to the chicken coops before he broke his silence.

  “Your quest is doomed, Felthrup Stargraven.”

  Felthrup skidded to a halt.

  “The Polylex has taught you a little. But it yields its wisdom slowly, does it not? Too slowly to help you save this world. I can do better, for a price.”

  Felthrup turned and looked back into the chamber. The voice had not changed, and the lamp burned on as before, but the figure he saw by its glow was not a man.

  Nilus Rose sat at his desk with the curtains drawn. Propped before him was a small, ornate picture frame, which he had just rummaged from the bottom of a drawer. It was a portrait of three young women: the two elder seated, the youngest standing before them. All three beautiful, distracted, docile as sheep. They wore identical gowns: the straight and formless gowns in which wealthy Arqualis draped their daughters, before sending them to temple, or to bridal interviews.

  They were quite obviously sisters. Behind them stood a man with a broad chest and choleric expression; a man old enough to be their father; a man any casual
observer would have identified as Rose himself. In this the observer would have been deceived, but not entirely wrong: the figure was Captain Theimat Rose. He was indeed a father—but to Nilus, not these women. They were his concubines, his slaves. His father had not bothered to conceal his intention to wear them out, one after another, until their usefulness as childbearers and his pleasure in them were alike exhausted, and then to find some other place, far from his sight, where they could age.

  The eldest, Yelinda, had ruined the lives of all three. Poor island women, they nonetheless had freedom of a limited sort, until Yelinda fell under the sway of a sweet-voiced, gentle-faced man from Ballytween, who promised all three sisters jobs in a wealthy household in the Crownless Lands, and instead deposited them in the slave-school on Nurth. They were spared the long tutelage in servitude meted out at the school, however. A young captain by the name of Theimat Rose, having just come into money by some swindle or other, grew excited at the thought of possessing sisters, something none of his peers could boast of. He had bargained for all three, and the price he settled on became another boast, though he tended to lie about their pedigree.

  Before they reached Mereldín Island and the Rose estate, Theimat informed them all of the shape of their future. Yelinda would be shown to the world as his wife, though he had no intention of actually marrying her or otherwise bestowing any semblance of rights; the younger sisters were henceforth mere cousins that he had taken into his household out of charity. They were never to leave the estate, nor to speak to anyone save the peasants who worked it; they were to bear him sons, one apiece, and to spare him even the sight of any girl-child who might be born into the household. During his absences at sea they were to dedicate themselves to prayer, and later the raising of his children. He would not tolerate noise, sloth, disagreeable odors, despondency, laughter, tears, the presence of cats or imperfect table manners. He promised to sell them separately, and “into households that will make you appreciate what you have lost,” if they should displease him.

  Upon arrival he showed them a weedy spot outside the garden wall. It was where his own father had buried the bodies of two slaves. “They tried to run,” said Theimat. “Very foolish, on so small an island.”