The Night of the Swarm

by Robert V. S. Redick

  Thasha stared at the little rod. She should know, she almost knew. But if a memory lurked inside her it belonged to Erithusmé, and she could catch nothing more than its echo. She gave the rod to Marila. “Hold this for me,” she said.

  The larger object was rough. She took a firm grip and lifted it out past the nails. There in her hand was a stout bottle made of clay. It was stoppered with a cork and sealed in thick red wax. The bottle was chipped, dust-darkened, unimaginably old. It was solid and rather heavy. She turned it: a slosh of liquid, deep inside.

  Thasha blew away the dust. The bottle was painted in thin white lines. Prancing skeletons of men and horses, dragons and dogs. Bare trees with what looked like eyes. Thasha shifted the bottle to her right hand and gazed at her left. It felt rather cold.

  “Thasha,” said Marila, “do you know what you’re holding?”

  She turned her head with effort; her thoughts felt strangely slow. “Do you?” she asked.

  Marila hesitated. “Put it back,” she said.

  “Back inside the post?” said Neeps. “That’s plain crackers. What if she can’t get it out again? Marila, tell us what you know.”

  “Nothing, nothing, so put it back!”

  “Marila,” said Pazel reluctantly, “don’t get mad, but you’re a terrible liar.”

  “That’s because I’m honest.” Marila’s hands were in fists. Then she saw their baffled looks and the fight went out of her. She sighed. “I think I know what’s in the bottle. Felthrup was reading the Polylex, or talking about what he’d read. It was wine.”

  “Wine?” said Thasha.

  “Yes,” said Ramachni, “wine.”

  The tarboys jumped. The mage stood there in the disordered gloom, with Felthrup squirming beside him. No one had heard them approach.

  “The wine of Agaroth, to be precise,” said Ramachni. “Now there is something I never thought to lay eyes on again, or hoped to. Be careful, Thasha: you are holding a relic more ancient than the Nilstone itself.”

  “It feels sturdy enough,” she said.

  “That is not what I meant,” said the mage. “A spell is at work here. I cannot quite sniff it out, but it is a dangerous charm, perhaps even deadly. I think you feel it already, Thasha. And there is another matter: be careful how long you hold that bottle without shifting your hand, and warming it. Those figures were painted by the dead.”

  Most of the tarboys turned and ran for the compartment door. But Felthrup was overjoyed. “We are saved, we are saved! It is right there in the Polylex! The wine of Agaroth takes away all fear—and fear alone makes the Nilstone deadly to the touch! One gulp of that wine, and the Fell Princes could hold it in their naked hand.”

  “Like Arunis’ idiot, in the Infernal Forest,” said Pazel.

  “If you like,” said Ramachni. “Both knew freedom from fear: the idiot through total madness, the Fell Princes through the taste of this wine. But I do not think the wine’s effect lasted long. No tales speak of the princes marching to war with the Nilstone in one hand and a bottle in the other. But drink they did, and wield the Nilstone they did—briefly, and to evil purpose. In the end they turned orgiastic, and gulped the wine like fiends. I never imagined that any bottle survived in Alifros.”

  Thasha’s right hand was cold. She shifted the bottle to the crook of her arm. Brought here from death’s border, she thought. Who could do such a thing? Who could even dream of trying?

  But inside her the wheels were turning faster and faster, and the answer came: I could. Thirty minutes later she was on the quarterdeck with the bottle in hand. Ramachni and Hercól stood with her, the latter holding a canvas sack. Behind them, at the wheel, stood Captain Fiffengurt. Lady Oggosk had somehow argued her way onto the quarterdeck as well. The witch stood apart from the others, dressed in mourning black. It was the first time Thasha had seen her.

  At Thasha’s feet lay the Nilstone, in the steel box Big Skip had fashioned for it in Uláramyth. Hundreds watched them from the topdeck below. Between the crowd and the quarterdeck ladder stood forty armored Turachs armed with spears. Haddismal’s precaution, and a good one: if any man aboard were seized by evil thoughts, or evil spirits, or plain madness, he would have no hope of reaching the Nilstone today.

  “Right, Lady Thasha,” said Fiffengurt. “Both anchors secured; we’re floating free. The tide’s not with us, but somehow I think that’s the least of our troubles.”

  He trained his good eye at the cliffs, where the drachnars were waiting, quite openly now, for any move by the Chathrand to flee the bay. A hundred more waded along the north shore, gripping enormous logs in their trunks.

  Thasha looked down at the deck. Every friend left alive was watching her. Pazel made himself smile at her for an instant; Neeps and Marila wore looks of deep concern. In Marila’s arms, Felthrup gazed at Thasha and never seemed to blink.

  “Go on, Hercól,” said Thasha.

  With a last look at Thasha, Hercól 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. Hercól 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, Hercól.”

  The task was easier said than done: the selk glass was amazingly sturdy. Watching Hercól’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. Hercól 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 forever. 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, Hercól 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. Hercól 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 Erithusmé 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 Hercól.

  “No one but I would be standing before the Stone, had Erithusmé 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 midmorning 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 with 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 Hercól’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 Bálfyr, 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 drachnars on bare sand.

  Suddenly the Chathrand rocked. The surface of the bay was undulating, as though some great submerged mass were rushing toward 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 the ground and flew like battering rams against those behind, and the wind kept growing. Through it all the midmorning sun looked gently down.

  Once more Thasha’s body shook. On Stath Bálfyr 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 toward 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 Bálfyr, like something done to a sandcastle by the heel of an angry child.

  Thasha was still standing: almost an act of magic in itself. Hercól got to his feet and stumbled toward 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

  Hercól 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 under way. A few hours later Captain Rose’s prediction was upheld: the little island east of Stath Bálfyr 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 dlömu 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 Kirishgán and Nólcindar. 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 Nólcindar. “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 Nólcindar, Captain Fiffengurt—”

  The introductions we
re 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 Kirishgán.

  “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 Hercól. “I was most relieved when you put it down, Thasha. You lingered, toward 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 Bálfyr?” 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 fled into the city, and were never found.”