“A worm,” gagged Myett. “One of those dangling tendrils. It snatched him up by the throat. I was pinned against his neck, but my sword-arm was free, and I managed to saw through the thing. It was lifting us higher and higher.” Her eyes found the dlömu. “Your clan-brother is dead. Many worms seized his limbs; they were fighting over him. I am sorry. They tore him to pieces before my eyes.”
The dlömic soldiers cursed, their faces numb with shock. Big Skip drew an agonized breath. He did not look badly hurt, but he was frightened almost out of his wits. “Lost my knife, my knife—”
“You’re safe now, Sunderling,” said Hercól. At these words Jalantri actually giggled, earning him a furious stare from his master. Jalantri dropped his eyes, chastened, but a smile kept twitching on his face. What’s wrong with him? thought Pazel. Is that all the discipline they’re taught?
But Jalantri wasn’t alone in looking strange. The younger Turach kept glancing to the right, as though catching something with the corner of his eye. And Ibjen was staring at an insect on a frond, as though he had never seen anything more fascinating.
“Never mind your knife, Sunderling,” said Hercól. “We’ll find you a club. You showed us what you can do with one when we fought the rats.”
Big Skip stared up into the darkness. “The rats were easy, Hercól.”
They marched on. The gigantic trees were more numerous now. Pazel had barely cleared the slime from his face when the next torch died.
“Stanapeth!” hissed Alyash. “How much farther have we got to march into this hellish hole?”
Hercól did not answer, but Pazel heard him searching carefully for the matches. Pazel realized that his heart was still racing exceptionally fast. It was not just the heat, he realized—the darkness, the darkness was worse. It had begun to affect him like something tangible, like a smothering substance in which they could drown. Suddenly he thought of the Master Teller’s strange words to him in Vasparhaven: You need practice with the dark. Surely this was what the old dlömu had meant. But the Floor of Echoes had done him no harm, and the last encounter had even been wonderful.
Perhaps that was the point: that the darkness could hide joyful things as well as danger, love as well as hate and death. Yet when he had reached for that woman with love she had vanished, and the world they’d supported between them had been destroyed.
The third torch lit. Hercól looked at Alyash. “We should arrive within the hour, to answer your question. That will leave us three torches to return by, if our work goes swiftly.”
“Our work is the killing of a deadly foe,” said Cayer Vispek. “It may not be swift at all.”
“Then we will find which of these mushrooms best holds a flame,” said Hercól.
Off they started again. The ground descended, slowly; the water gurgling underfoot sounded nearer the surface. The heat, if possible, grew more intense; Pazel felt as if he were entangled in steaming rags. His leg throbbed worse than ever, and now he let Thasha support him, though walking together was hard on such treacherous ground.
“We have to stop and clean that wound,” she said.
“Not when we’re this close,” he replied.
“Stubborn fool,” she whispered. “All right, then, tell me something: your Master-Word. The one that blinds to give new sight. Could it help us, when the torches run out? Could that be the sort of thing it was meant for?”
Pazel had expected the question. “No,” he said. “I’m sorry, Thasha, but I’m sure it’s not. Ramachni said I’d have a feeling, when the time was right. And it feels completely wrong, here—like it would be a disaster, in fact. I don’t think it’s about literal blindness.”
“Ah,” she said. “I see.”
He could hear the effort she was making, trying not to sound crushed by his answer. She was desperate. The thought jabbed him like a splinter, much harder to ignore than the pain in his leg. And that was love, surely: when you could stand your own suffering but not another’s.
Neeps fell into step beside them. “Listen,” he said, “there’s something wrong with me.”
Pazel turned to him, alarmed. “What’s the matter, Neeps? How do you feel?”
“Easy, mate,” murmured Neeps. “It’s probably nothing, just … well, damn it! I keep hearing her.”
“Her?” said Thasha. “Do you mean … Marila?”
“Blary right,” said Neeps, shaken. “And someone else, too, with her. Some man. He’s laughing at her, or at me.”
Thasha touched his forehead. “You’re not feverish. You’re just worked up, probably.”
“I think it’s Raffa,” whispered Neeps, almost inaudibly.
Raffa was the person Neeps hated most in Alifros: his older brother, who had let him be taken away into servitude by the Arquali navy rather than pay the cost they demanded for his release. “I know it isn’t real,” he said, “but it sounds so real. Pazel, Thasha—what’s happening to me? Am I losing my mind?”
“No!” said Thasha. “You’re exhausted, and hungry, and sick of the dark.” She slapped his cheek lightly. “You stay awake, and calm, do you hear me? Pretend we’re in fighting-class back in the stateroom. And what’s the rule in class, Neeps? Tell me.”
“I obey you,” said Neeps, “like you obey Hercól.”
“That’s right. So obey me, and stop listening to voices you know are just in your head.” She leaned close to him, and sniffed. “And if we get another chance, wash your face. You smell sour. You must have got into something different from the rest of us.”
Neeps sniffed at his arm. “You’re cracked,” he said. “We stink like blary convicts, sure, but there’s nothing special about me.” He looked at Pazel hopefully. “Is there, mate?”
Pazel avoided his gaze. “You smell like a bunch of roses,” he said, feeling cruel and false. Even through the general reek of the forest and their bodies, Neeps’ lemon-smell reached him faintly. When was he going to say something? What was he going to do?
“Here!” shouted Alyash suddenly, just ahead of them. “What did you go and do that for?”
The bosun was sopping wet, and glaring at the younger Turach. The group had stopped by the base of one of the great trees. When Pazel rounded the trunk he saw a weird growth attached to it: a kind of bladder-shaped mushroom five or six feet wide, which the Turach had evidently stabbed. The thing had burst open like a ripened fruit, and water—plain water, as far as Pazel could tell—was gushing from the wound.
Alyash, soaked to the skin, was still glaring at the Turach. “I asked you a question,” he said.
“It was sneaking up on me,” said the Turach, still gazing suspiciously at the fungus.
“Sneaking?” cried Alyash. “That blary thing can’t sneak any more than one of Teggatz’s meat pies! You’re out of your head.”
“If he is, your own foolishness is to blame,” said Neda. “Taking your sword to an exploding fungus, coating all of us with spores.”
“That’s right, sister,” said Jalantri, drawing near her. “His stupidity could have killed us all.”
“Stupidity?” Alyash looked ready to explode himself. “You ignorant little groveler. I was smart enough to fool the Shaggat’s horde on Gurishal. I spied on ’em for five years, while you lot ran about saying it can’t be done, they’ll catch him tomorrow, they’ll roast him, eat him. And all the while I managed to get letters out to Arqual. Your shoddy spying guild never caught a whiff.”
“Devils grant the power of deception to their servants,” said Jalantri.
Neda, clearly annoyed at Jalantri’s interference, stepped away from him. To Alyash, who spoke perfect Mzithrini, she said, “I seek no feud with you. I only meant that you and the Turach made the same mistake.”
“Except that his may have done real harm,” put in Jalantri.
“I should blary stab you, and see what harm it does!” said Alyash.
“You should sheathe your weapon, and empty your boots,” said Hercól. “If we turn on one another the mage’s vict
ory is assured. Now be silent, everyone.” He drew Ildraquin and pointed off into the darkness. “Fulbreech is but half a mile away, perhaps less. And he has not moved in hours.”
“Then Arunis must have found what he seeks,” said Cayer Vispek.
“I fear so,” said Hercól, “but that does not mean he has managed to use it yet. Regardless, the time to strike is now. We cannot go on without the torch, but we can stop it from shining forward, until we are nearly atop the sorcerer, and then attack him at a run. Come here, Jalantri; and you too, marine. Grasp each other’s shoulders, that’s it.”
He made the two enemies stand together, as if partnered in a three-legged race. “Why us?” snarled Jalantri.
For a moment Hercól actually looked amused. “For the sake of the Great Peace, of course. And also because you have the widest chests.”
Removing his own tattered coat, he draped it over both their shoulders. Then he passed the torch to Neda and made her hold it low behind the men. He looked at the others, grave once more.
“Stay low until I give the signal to run. Then there must be no hesitation, no turning. Arunis is very great, but with Ildraquin I stand a chance of slaying him. I will take that chance, but you must help me drive through his defenses, no matter how many, or how fell. Think of what you hold most sacred; think of what you love. You fight for that. Let us go now and finish it.”
They drew what weapons they had and crept forward. Pazel thought the heat had never been so intense. The very trees felt hot to the touch. Off to their left something enormous loomed in the torchlight: another of the bladder-fungi, Pazel saw, but this one was the size of a house, and wedged high above the ground between two trees. What were they for? Water storage? Could there possibly be a dry season here?
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 dlömic, 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 Hercól, 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 Hercól 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, Hercól! 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.”
Hercól 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). Hercól 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. Hercól 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, Hercól snagged a corner of the rag in Fulbreech’s mouth and lifted. The rag came out; Fulbreech gagged and retched.
“Master Hercól,” 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? By 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 River of Shadows Page 64