The Night of the Swarm

by Robert V. S. Redick

  Tears, and more darkness. This time it did not lift when Thasha opened her eyes. Her legs were useless, two frozen logs. She swung her eyes left and right. The porthole still glowed dimly. The opposite wall, behind Hercól and Mr. Fiffengurt, was simply gone. Black shapes rose in the distance: barren trees. Above them, the birds, that endless flock racing east. Her friends’ voices faded. Neeps had pulled Pazel lower, wrapped his arms about his head. They were waiting, weren’t they? They had tried everything they knew.

  “Keep fighting, Thasha,” Myett whispered in her ear. “Don’t go, don’t let it take you. I almost did. I was wrong.”

  Now the bed lay in a forest. A terrible place: the forest she’d seen in blanë-sleep. The trees with eyes, oily and cruel. The steam and whispers from holes in the earth, the cold that hurt her lungs. She could see her own breath, but not that of her friends. They were becoming shadows, and she was leaving them, leaving with her work undone.

  “The wine,” said Myett. “Do you hear me, Thasha? The wine.”

  Thasha wished she would be quiet. She knew it was the wine. But Myett was still there beside her pillow. Dimly, Thasha felt the touch of her hand.

  “Look at me.”

  She looked. The ixchel woman beside her was not Myett but Diadrelu, their murdered friend. She was clearer than the others. Her face brightened when Thasha turned.

  “Mother Sky, I thought you’d never hear me! Thasha, the wine is the poison and the cure. You must drink it again, immediately. Where is it, girl? Where is the wine of Agaroth?”

  “Too late,” whispered Thasha.

  A voice laughed, high with delight. There he was, Arunis. Crouched on the limb of a tree, sharply visible like Diadrelu, and leering.

  “Yes,” he said, “far too late. Never mind the crawly, little whore: your battle is done. Agaroth surrounds you, and Death’s border is but a short walk from where you lie. But we must settle our accounts first.”

  He sat back on the limb. Grinning, he opened his robe at the collar and showed Thasha his neck. A thin diagonal gash ran all the way across it. No, all the way through it. The gash was the one she herself had cut, with Ildraquin, when she beheaded him by the ruined tower.

  “I scarred you with a necklace, once,” said Arunis. “You returned the favor with a sword. But it is my turn again, and three is the charm.”

  Thasha tried to move, but only managed to roll her face skyward. They were not birds, those shapes overhead. They were the souls of the fallen, racing above this Border-Kingdom and into Death’s own country. As every soul flew in time. As she would, at any moment: a little death among the millions, a leaf in a hurricane, a speck.

  “No!”

  Diadrelu slapped her with the full force of her arm. “Thasha Isiq! Warrior! Raise yourself, raise yourself and call to your friends before they vanish! The wine, girl, the wine!”

  Nothing she had ever attempted was half so difficult. Her lips were all but dead, her voice was a fingernail rasping on a door. No one turned; they were weeping. She tried again. They didn’t hear a thing.

  But Arunis did, and the fact that she could manage even this much scared him, evidently. He leaped down from the tree and advanced—and Diadrelu whirled like a tiger to face him, drawing her ixchel sword.

  “Now we come to it! Can you hurl death-spells in Death’s antechamber, mage? Is your soul stronger than mine? Take her from me, then! Come, come and take her!”

  With that Diadrelu leaped from the bed, and when her feet touched the forest floor she was suddenly the size of Arunis, raging and deadly. Thasha gasped—and in that other world, the shadow that was Ramachni heard her.

  “Silence, everyone!” he roared. “Thasha, did you speak?”

  Arunis began to circle the bed, hunched low, a shadow among the trees. Diadrelu matched him step for step, keeping herself between Thasha and the mage. She taunted him, whirling her sword.

  “You could not defeat them in life. You will never do so in death. You will not touch this girl.”

  Thasha forced the last of her energy into her voice. She found it, wheezed a single, barely intelligible word. Again and again.

  “Wine!” cried the shadow-Felthrup. “She is asking for the wine! Run, run and fetch it!”

  A figure turned and vanished into the dark.

  Suddenly Arunis dropped to his knees and plunged his arm into one of the steaming holes. A voice from underground gave a cry. Arunis jerked his arm free. In his hand was a war-axe, double-bladed and cruel, but a skeleton-arm came with it. The arm was moving, fighting him for the weapon. Arunis flung it into the trees.

  Then he charged, and the battle joined. It seemed that Diadrelu was right: Arunis could not attack with spellcraft. Yet he was a terrible opponent, fast and vicious and strong. He swung the axe in two-handed arcs at shoulder-height, or flashing down from above. Thasha was appalled by his skill. But Diadrelu was an ixchel battle-dancer: a fighter who would have shamed Turach or sfvantskor or Tholjassan war-master, if they had ever faced such a foe of human size. Whirling, spinning, her blade like a solid ring about her, she moved at twice the mage’s speed. The trouble was that her spectacular movements were better at evading an enemy than holding ground against him. From childhood, ixchel learned to weave and dodge and slip through human fingers. They did not hold ground. Diadrelu had to fight her very instincts to keep Arunis from reaching Thasha’s bed.

  Except that there was no bed any longer. Thasha lay on bare earth, head propped on a stone, the roots of the evil trees wriggling beneath her. Alifros was nearly gone: nothing of it was visible save the porthole, a slight discoloration of the darkness. Her friends’ shadows lacked definite shape; their voices had dwindled to meaningless sounds.

  But Diadrelu was improving. She slipped inside the sorcerer’s blows, stabbing at him, forcing him to parry with the axe. When he tried to grapple with her, she twisted under him and whirled and clubbed him down with her sword-hilt.

  Arunis rolled, and swung the axe one-handed, expertly. Dri leaped back, sucking in her stomach, and the blade passed within a hair’s breadth of her ribs. Arunis swung again, sensing his advantage, driving her back toward Thasha. Dri’s balance was lost. She dodged a third blow, reeling now, and Arunis came at her with a gleam in his eye.

  His fourth blow was too eager, and hence his last. Dri whirled out of range, then spun back again and kicked the mage hard in the chin. Arunis staggered, and whiplash-quick Dri wrenched the axe from his hand and clubbed him down. With one foot upon his neck, she swung the mage’s own weapon. The axe severed his arm at the wrist.

  Arunis howled. But the wound did not bleed: perhaps there was no blood in Agaroth, as there was no true and final death. Diadrelu snatched up the severed hand and flung it with all her might into the dark.

  “Go!” she said to Arunis. “And if you return, I will take your other hand, and both feet, and give them to the corpses in those holes.”

  A shadow appeared beside Thasha, hovering over her, speaking without words.

  Arunis groped to his feet and plunged into the darkness. When he was nearly gone from sight he turned and shouted: “You cannot prevail. Night comes for Alifros! The Swarm will devour these maggots you defend. There is no stopping it. I have already won.”

  With that he fled, cradling the stump of his arm. Then Thasha felt a gentle hand lifting her head, and cold liquid against her lips.

  The wine was delicious, here in the land where it was made. Thasha felt life returning even before she swallowed. A vibrant energy rushed through her from head to toe. The shadow closest to her took shape: it was Pazel. She could hear him, feel the warmth of his hand.

  Diadrelu rushed to her side. “They’ve done it, haven’t they?” said Dri. Evidently she could not see the others in the cabin, or the bottle at Thasha’s lips. “Not too much!” she cried. “Two swallows, and no more.”

  Thasha had just swallowed for a second time. With effort, she turned her head away. “Dri,” she said, “is this really death?” />
  “It is death unfinished,” said the ixchel woman. “Agaroth is a strange and frightening land, but still more like the world of the living than what comes next, I think. The dead may reach backward from here. It is that reaching that keeps them from sailing on with the tide of souls.”

  “The ghosts that walk the Chathrand—”

  Dri shook her head. “Ghosts are different. They are souls who have yet to come even this far. They are trapped in a living world, a world with no use for them. I think they suffer more than those in Agaroth. Captain Rose is among them now.

  “But listen carefully, Thasha, while you can still hear my voice. I have been to the dark vineyards where this wine was made, and spoken with those decrepit spirits who guard its secrets.”

  “You did that for us?”

  “Listen! Erithusmé’s spell on your bottle was a sound precaution, given the wine’s evil past. The Fell Princes used it for a century: they sipped the wine slowly, making each bottle last years. This allowed them to wield the Nilstone for years as well—and they did so, to the sorrow of Alifros. They exterminated whole peoples, made pyres of cities, withered entire lands.

  “Erithusmé wished to leave a weapon hidden on the Chathrand, but she could never risk creating another tyrant. Hence the curse, which forces the drinker to finish the wine in a matter of days. Each sip gives a few minutes of perfect fearlessness, and so the ability to use the Nilstone. But each sip also forces the drinker to sip again within two days. Otherwise the poison is activated.”

  “I think Ramachni detected the spell at last, after it was triggered,” said Thasha. “I heard them fighting about it. But Dri, what happens when I run out of wine?”

  “Very simple: you swallow the dregs at the bottom. They contain the final cure. Better yet, pour off the wine and swallow the dregs immediately. Only then will you be out of danger.”

  “But I can’t do that, Dri. We need this weapon!”

  “This weapon nearly killed you.”

  Suddenly Pazel’s voice cut through the fog: “Thasha! Can you hear me? Come back, please come back—”

  She could dimly make out his features, now—but Agaroth was fading, and with it Diadrelu. Thasha was suddenly, almost unbearably conscious of how much she had missed the ixchel woman. “Don’t go. Not just yet.”

  “It is you who are going, Thasha, back to the living world. But I have one last discovery to share with you first. You are bound for Gurishal, to cast away the Nilstone. But Gurishal is immense, and overrun with the Shaggat’s worshippers. You will have no time to search it shore to shore. Look for a sea-rock called the Arrowhead, Thasha. Can you remember that?”

  “The Arrowhead?”

  “That is where you must land, if you have any hope of sending the Nilstone back to the land of the dead. Oh, if only you could place it in my hands! For I shall soon be crossing over, and would bear it gladly, and rest fulfilled.”

  “But Dri, how did you learn about this rock, this Arrowhead?”

  “By making a nuisance of myself. Many come to this land by the River of Shadows. They told me of a terrible fall into an abyss, down a stone tunnel, with a last round glimpse of blue sky above them, and endless darkness below. Some had heard whispers of the place before they reached it, and knew it lay near the shores of Gurishal, at the spot marked by the Arrowhead. Remember, Thasha.”

  The light was growing. Diadrelu’s form grew paler still, and Thasha fought back tears. “I’ll remember. Oh, Dri, what they did to you, Taliktrum and the others—”

  “Never mind. Show them a better example, as you always have done.”

  “You’re the best of us all, Dri, and the strongest.”

  The ixchel woman smiled. “From childhood I thought my reason for living was to fight for my people. I was right about that. But it took a great deal longer to find out who my people were.”

  “Hercól still loves you.”

  Dri paused, then looked up at the sky, where the ceaseless flow of souls went on. “I must leave soon. I do not know what awaits me in the land of the dead. But make certain he knows that I died undefeated, with a heart made whole by him. And say that I will look for him when his turn comes to make the final journey. But Thasha—tell him not to wait for that day, and a reunion that may never come. Do you hear me well?”

  “I hear you.”

  “Tell him the kiss I send with you is a command. He must go on living. Embrace every joy that still awaits him, every scrap and crumb of life. That is my wish for dearest Ensyl, too. It is my wish for you all.”

  She bent down, and pressed her lips to Thasha’s own, and Thasha lifted her arms and embraced her. For an instant she felt the hard strength of the woman’s shoulders, the warmth of her lips. Then both sensations were gone. Dri’s body lifted, escaping Thasha’s arms like smoke. The darkness vanished, and with it Agaroth, and Dri herself.

  The room was dazzling. Her friends were beyond words. They only embraced her, repeated her name, bathed her in tears of relief. Pazel was kneeling and kissing her hands again and again. She tried to hold him still but it was impossible; he was overcome.

  Even Ramachni was shivering with emotion. “You have aged me today, Thasha Isiq,” he said. “By the time I guessed the nature of the curse, it was too late for any treatment I could devise. I nearly put you in the healing-sleep, which slows poisons to a crawl. But by then you were too weak.”

  “How long has it been?” she said. “I mean, how long since I drank the wine?”

  “Perhaps ten minutes, dear one,” said Hercól. “Why do you ask?”

  Thasha closed her eyes, furious with herself. “I lost a chance to use the Nilstone, that’s why. I could have done something. Changed the winds, maybe even parted the Red Storm. There are just a few swallows left. I can’t be wasting them.”

  “Wasting?” said Neeps. “Thasha, that mouthful brought you back from the dead.”

  Thasha looked at him. Back from the dead. It was close enough to the truth. She’d gone much deeper this time than before, during the blanë-coma. She looked at their bright, beloved faces. They could never know, never grasp what she had seen. It will stand between us, she thought.

  “I was … told things.”

  “Told?” said Marila. “By whom?”

  “Give her a little time,” said Ramachni.

  “And some food, if there is any. I’m famished. Oh, Pazel, stop.”

  He was devouring her hands with kisses. She raised his chin, and understood: he’d been hiding his face, afraid he’d break down once again. Thasha kissed him squarely on the lips.

  “Out, everyone, and let me dress. You too, Pazel, go on.”

  They obeyed her, limp with exhaustion. But as Hercól made to leave, Thasha touched his hand. The warrior turned and looked her in the eye.

  “Stay a moment,” she said. “I have something for you.”

  20. The feeling was mutual, as the dlömic soldiers’ letters and other testimony make clear. —EDITOR

  30

  Deadly Weapons

  15 Fuinar 942

  303rd day from Etherhorde

  Thasha’s brush with death had several immediate consequences. One was an end, for the moment at least, to any sign of division between Neeps and Marila. Pazel could not tell if they were truly reconciled, if the shock of nearly losing Thasha had made Neeps wake up to the danger of losing Marila as well; or if they were both simply making an effort to believe that his heart was not torn. Perhaps Neeps did not know himself. For now Pazel was simply glad to see him trying.

  Thasha had also managed to devastate Hercól. This second encounter with Diadrelu had come only through Thasha’s lips (in two senses), and yet it proved harder to surmount. In the wilderness he had faced new tasks and dangers by the hour. On the Chathrand, others took the lead, and no matter how busy he kept himself with shipboard labors, his mind was free to brood. He was kind and grateful to Thasha, but his mood clearly darkened in her presence.

  In a broader sense, of course,
Thasha’s news had brought hope to them all. They had more than a vast island to aim for, now: they had a landing place, or at least a sign pointing the way.

  Neda confirmed at once that the Arrowhead was real. “Tabruc Derelem Na Nuruth, we call it,” she told Pazel. “The great standingstone that ought to fall, but doesn’t. Cayer Vispek told us of it once. He said it was a holy place before the rise of the Shaggat. The elders of the Faith sometimes went there to die.”

  “Die how? Is there a great shaft, an abyss, like Thasha’s talking about?”

  Neda shrugged. “After the Shaggat’s rise we were forbidden to speak of the place. Cayer Vispek was bending the rules even to speak about the Arrowhead. He said there was a legend that the great rock would fall when the Unseen takes its gaze from Alifros, and leaves us alone in the night.”

  Pazel asked if she knew where along that massive shoreline they should seek the Arrowhead. Neda shook her head, then laughed. “Ask the Shaggat,” she said, “if you can get the marines to stand aside.”

  Ott and Haddismal had kept the Shaggat locked in the manger, hidden away from everyone but a few handpicked Turachs. “I could, maybe,” said Pazel. “Haddismal’s not spiteful like Ott; he just likes to win. And he might want to question the man himself. He doesn’t speak a word of Mzithrini.”

  “The Shaggat doesn’t speak a word of sane,” said Neda. “He’s the devil.”

  “Maybe he’s calmed down,” said Pazel. “And you’re a beautiful woman. He might drop his guard.”

  She looked at him blankly. Then she turned and showed him her tattooed neck. “See the hawk? That’s a sfvantskor emblem. I’m not a woman to the Shaggat Ness. I’m an enemy, a heretic, a spawn of the Whore of the Third Pit. You don’t talk to the likes of me. You kill us and mutilate our bodies and put what’s left on stakes by the roadside. And I feel the same way about him, do you understand? The only talking I’ll ever do is with a blade.”

  The ship ran west, and the Red Storm weakened further. Mr. Fiffengurt kept double lookouts aloft, and ordered redundant inspections of every element of their fighting arsenal. Still the gray-green seas lay empty.