The Rats and the Ruling sea tcv-2

by Robert V. S. Redick

  'Saukre ne Shaggat prelichin.'

  'He will be flesh again. Mark my word. Not even Ramachni of Nemmoc can prevent it.'

  They spoke on. The sorcerer was angry and pleading by turns, but the voice of the other never changed. The fire dimmed in the bowl. Whatever it was consuming was almost gone.

  'M'lady, the fumes-'

  'Hush, Ludunte!'

  'I ask nothing for myself,' hissed Arunis, leaning over the dwindling flame. 'Near death have I been, and wrung dry of magic, yet I seek no help on that score. But can you not stir yourself for the sake of what you built? Can you truly wish it left for ever with that old Babqri fool? Do this for yourself, Sathek. Let me be your instrument of revenge!'

  The sorcerer spread his palm an inch above the jumbled bones.

  'Do this, and when I regain the Nilstone I shall build a tomb for your relics the size of a castle, upon a peak in Olisurn. Deny me, and I shall toss them into the bay.'

  The fire winked out.

  'Sathek!'

  The sorcerer froze, listening intently. The cabin was black. With their exceptional night vision the ixchel could still see well enough, but Dri could not tell if his expression was one of triumph or defeat. She kept her hand on Ludunte's arm, warning him not to make a sound.

  For several minutes Arunis did not seem to breathe. Then suddenly he rose to his feet and leaped out of the circles. Rushing to the porthole, he tore frantically at the bolt and threw open the round glass window. The sound of rain filled the cabin; Dri could hear it lancing against the floor. Arunis bent and peered through the opening, then gave a laugh that must have carried through several decks.

  The dog yipped from beneath the bed. At the sound Arunis looked at it for the first time, and an alarming thought seemed to strike him. Rushing to the bed, he snatched up the dog and leaped back within the three circles, holding the squirming animal tight against his chest.

  A thump. Something had alighted in the porthole. It was about the size of a gull, but it was not bird-shaped. It was so black Dri found she could not make out its features. Did it have two legs, or four? Was that a tail or a lanky braid?

  'Go,' Arunis told it, and the fear was naked in his voice. 'Go and get it, creature, and bring it to me.'

  The thing made an animal yowl and leaped at the mage. But at the edge of the first circle it stopped short, groping at the air as if entangled in a web. It spat and clawed, but could not break through. In a fury the creature circled the cabin, smashing cups and flasks and inkwells, overturning the table, emptying the shelves, as Arunis shouted Go, go! and the dog barked murder. But the thing would not cross the lines on the cabin floor.

  'Your master set you a task, incubus! You dare not return to your sphere without seeing it done, and the night is half-spent already. Obey him!'

  The creature hurled itself once more at Arunis, and once more the circles proved impossible to cross. Hissing with rage it returned to the porthole, then seemed to twist and look back. Lightning crackled over the bay, and in its glow Dri saw a face out of nightmare, a baby fused with a rabid dog, and then the thing was gone.

  Arunis leaped to the porthole and slammed it fast. Dropping his pet, he staggered back to his bed and threw himself down. Gasping, he covered his face with his hands.

  Dri motioned to Ludunte: We climb. In a few seconds they were up the wall and crawling away across the ceiling of the adjacent cabin. When a good distance separated them from the mage, Dri sat down and began to work the cramps out of her legs.

  Ludunte spoke in a hoarse whisper. 'He summoned a fiend, m'lady. Right before our eyes.'

  She looked up at him sharply. The boy was in shock.

  'Even now,' she asked, 'will Taliktrum deny the peril this mage represents? Does he think Arunis will suffer a nest of crawlies to divert this mission for ends of their own?'

  Ludunte swallowed. His mouth twisted in frustration.

  'I begin to understand,' said Diadrelu. 'He placed you here alone because you are loyal to me, didn't he? So that whatever you might observe should be tainted and unconvincing to the clan. After all, you're just the sworn servant of a madwoman.'

  'No, no-'

  'And then of course there were the fumes. Perhaps we hallucinated. Who wouldn't prefer to think so? Especially if believing meant turning away from that old story, ixchel against all humans everywhere, and admitting that we must find some to put our faith in, or die with them all alike?'

  'M'lady, do you order me to speak?'

  'No!' said Dri quickly. 'Heridom, I order you not to. You must be able to stand before Taliktrum and declare in all truth that you never told me anything. If he intends to spy on me I'd rather he use you than anyone else. I depend on you now more than ever.'

  Ludunte gazed at his feet for a moment. Then he raised his head and asked, 'Where did Arunis send that creature, do you know? To attack your friends in the stateroom?'

  Dri shook her head. 'His ultimate goal is to recover the Nilstone, but he sent the incubus ashore. Not three miles from here, he said. Whatever he wants is on the island, and in the hands of the one he called that Babqri fool. A Mzithrini, in other words. Well, it is time we left. Go and close the hole.'

  'M'lady, I do not have the spyjack crank.'

  Dri thought she had misheard. She got to her feet, and there was cold fury in her voice.

  'They left you tending a spyjack with no means to close it behind you?'

  Ludunte nodded reluctantly.

  Dri took a deep breath. 'Listen to me, sophister. You will never again consent to watch a spyjack you cannot close — not if the ghost of Yalidryn the Founder himself should rise and demand it. Go to Night Village and fetch a crank. There is no shortage of them. Report what we have seen to Taliktrum, then come back and close the hole. Those are my express commands.'

  'Yes, Mistress.'

  Night Village was the mercy deck; the nearly lightless floor just above the hold, where the ixchel dwelt in a fortress of cargo-crates, ten yards from the bow.

  'Report all that we have seen to Taliktrum,' Dri continued. 'It may be some time before I return.'

  Ludunte looked at her fearfully. 'Where are you going, mistress?'

  She hesitated, then smiled and laid a gentle hand on his arm. 'Where the clan must not follow,' she said.

  She did not go directly where she had planned, however. There was one other matter to attend to first.

  Hercol Stanapeth still slept in his valet's cabin on the berth deck. Diadrelu had no means to enter the stifling little chamber, but as she wriggled between the ceiling and the floor above she heard him move. A rustling in the darkness, then a slight scrape. A pale shaft of light sprang up through a crack she would never otherwise have seen. Hercol was lighting a candle. Dri crawled forward to the crack and looked down.

  He was seated cross-legged on the floor, shirtless, back straight and eyes half-closed. A posture of meditation. His arms and chest were muscled like an ixchel's: no weak spots, no inch of flesh allowed to luxuriate in softness. His blackened sword lay before him like a talisman. This was good luck, Dri decided: it was hard to catch Hercol by himself.

  He raised his hands in a seated stretch. How serene he was, how purposeful. She had come to tell him of the incubus — only the incubus, keep that clear. But doubts assailed her as she watched his steady breathing. What would they say, her people, if they saw her now? There were scores of men in this compartment. The walls were thin, and the air was still and noiseless. It would be reckless to make contact here.

  He twisted his upper body, and she saw the wolf-scar on his ribcage, glistening with sweat. She should have gone to the stateroom, she told herself, to the tarboys and Thasha. What need did she have to approach this man directly?

  Dri felt her heart begin to hammer. She rehearsed her words. I must talk with you, stand up, let me in. I will trust you with knowledge that could kill me. Not of the incubus, but ofShe caught herself up short. Mother Sky, what was she thinking? To speak… of that? Could she t
ell a human about that, and still call herself a member of the clan? She closed her eyes and pressed a clenched fist against her mouth, as though it might speak without her consent. Impossible. Impossible. You are losing your mind.

  One level below, in the gloom of the orlop deck, the Shaggat Ness, God-King of Gurishal and Fifth Monarch of the Mzithrin Pentarchy, stood with his stone ankles buried in straw. Dri studied him with equal parts fascination and disgust. His lifeless face wore a look of outrage, and the beginnings of fear. His left hand, held high but shrunken and withered, grasped the deadliest object on earth.

  The Nilstone. It was small and round and pitch black. Too black, like the body of the incubus: Dri's eyes seemed to stop working when she tried to focus on its surface.

  The large compartment was known as the manger; it was a fodder room for the ship's cattle. Half the straw bales had been removed, the rest stacked against the aftermost wall to within a few feet of the ceiling. Atop these crouched Diadrelu, studying the men below.

  Two of the group, dressed in yellow robes, were chained to the aft bulkhead. One sprawled on the floor, asleep; the other paced the length of his chains, scratching and arguing with himself. These were the Shaggat's sons. They looked to be in their twenties, but were in fact more than twice that age. On the prison isle of Licherog the men's chatter had so annoyed Arunis that he had cast sleeping-spells on them both. The spell had never quite worn off: to this day they were given to fits of narcolepsy.

  They had aged more slowly in their sleep. But the long captivity, and perhaps the oddness of passing so much of their lives unconscious, had eroded a good deal of their sanity.

  The others were all Turach soldiers. Three guarded the room's single door (left open in the vain hope of a breeze), and three more stood in precise formation around the stone king. They were gigantic and terrible men: elite commandos, rated worthy to guard the Emperor himself. They drank fire storax at dawn to shock themselves awake, gulped pills made from the bones of Slevran panthers to increase their strength (though Dri had heard Bolutu begging them to give up the 'vicious habit'), plunged their fists into buckets of gravel and scarlet chilis to deaden them to pain.

  But yesterday, facing Arunis and his corpse-warriors, some of the Turachs had hesitated, seemingly afraid, and in those few seconds lives had been lost. Punishment had come this morning. Sergeant Drellarek, their commander, had stood all those who had retreated in a line on the main deck. He then told his lieutenant to recite the seventh of the Ninety Rules of the Rinfaith.

  'Rule Seven,' the young man had shouted. 'Fear rots the soul and gives back nothing, but wisdom can save me from all harm. I shall cast off the first for the second, and guard the sanctity of the mind.'

  Then Drellarek had drawn his knife and slit the throat of every seventh man in the lineup. Those who escaped bound their comrades' bodies in sailcloth and twine. Monstrous, thought Diadrelu. And very effective. From now on they'll fear nothing but him.

  But was there nothing else to be afraid of? Yesterday they had all learned that to touch the Nilstone brought instant death to any with fear in their hearts. What about standing near it, though, for hours on end? The men looked well enough — just itchy and uncomfortable in the heat. For the moment that was all Dri needed to know. She did not think Arunis would soon come for the Nilstone or his king. By his own admission he was weak — and after Drellarek's measures, she had no doubt that these men and their eighty fellow Turachs would fight him to the death.

  She tried again to see the Nilstone. How can it be there and not there at the same time? What is that damned thing? Ramachni had said it was 'death given form', and had indeed come to Alifros from the world of the dead. He had also assured them it could never be destroyed. And yet she and her human comrades had sworn to get rid of it somehow, before Arunis found a way to use it against them all.

  'I want wine!'

  It was the Shaggat's son. He was glaring at his captors, stamping his feet.

  'Is that a fact,' muttered a sleepy Turach.

  'My father is a god! His hour is come! Surely you don't want to die?'

  'He's not a god, you wretch. Why don't you blary sleep?'

  Diadrelu crawled back from the edge of the straw bale. Nothing more to be learned here. With a sigh she decided to return to the ixchel compound. She did not relish the abuse and ridicule that would await her there. But she was hungry — and like any member of the clan she had communal duties to perform: cooking, maintenance, care of the sick and wounded. Taliktrum had let her know that he had taken a personal interest in her chores.

  'Give that bottle here!' said the Shaggat's son.

  'It ain't wine, it's water. And it's ours. You threw yours up in the hay like a naughty baby, didn't you?'

  Dri smiled: the remains of a shattered bottle lay a few feet to her left.

  The son was actually starting to cry. 'You despise me.'

  'Now you're catchin' on.'

  'Very soon you'll be sorry. When he is flesh again, and the Swarm explodes from the grey kingdom, you shall answer to my father. I will tell him and you will be crushed. You worms, you tiny insects, you — bullies.'

  'What's this swarm you're always on about?'

  But the Shaggat's son had lost the thread of his rant. 'Is it so much to ask, Warden? A good bottle and a bit of cheese? Even local cheese would do.'

  Dri rose, stretched — and a flash of movement overhead sent her leaping, spinning, drawing her sword in midair, and the quickness of thirty years' training saved her life.

  A hideous insect crouched before her. It was as large as Dri herself, double-winged like a dragonfly, with barbed limbs, green composite eyes and a long stinger like a wasp's curled under its body. That stinger had just stabbed the spot where Dri had lain a moment before.

  She drew her knife as well. The creature made a sudden deep buzz, like a crosscut saw biting into a tree. It swivelled its black hairy head, fixed an eye on her, and launched itself into the air. Skies, it's fast. She couldn't see it: then it attacked again. This time she felt the brush of a leg. She struck, but her sword cut only air.

  'Wine and cheese! Wine and cheese!'

  'Shut up! Shut up!'

  The thing was faster than Sniraga the cat. It dived a third time, vanished, dived again and missed her neck by a finger's width. Dri spun into battle dance, into the desperate pinwheeling that can hold off four humans at once. If I stop, I die. If I leap from the hay it will sting me before I land.

  The room was a blur. In ecstatic dance she moved backwards through the shards of glass. There was a higher bale there; she could back against it like a wall, burrow into it if need be. If I have time. How many are there? Then the insect was on her and the stinger pierced her cloak beside her ribs, and knowing she had won before she struck Dri snapped the stinger in two with a twist of her body and plunged her knife-hand to the wrist into the insect's eye.

  It was minutes in dying. Its gore and spittle burned her, head to foot, and a barb on its leg pierced her thigh. But at last its convulsions ceased. She threw the carcass down, bleeding, dumbfounded. What in the black Pits of woe had just attacked her?

  'Will you fetch my bottle, please?' sniffed the Shaggat's son.

  A Turach groaned. 'Fetch it yourself — the chain's long enough. Only I think you broke it, your daftness.'

  Dri took a few staggering steps. The insect's bile stank beyond description. No one in Night Village was going to believe her. She should take back its head, or what was left of it. Then the hay bales moved.

  She whirled. Pithor Ness was gaping at her, chin on the edge of the straw bale, not two feet away. One hand hung frozen above the broken glass. He was terrified.

  'Guards,' he croaked.

  'Careful! Careful, you blary-'

  His hand withdrew. She saw his lips curl, forming another word, and then she flew at him, sunk her knife through his cheek, and using it for leverage stabbed down through his jugular with her sword. Blood struck her in a torrent: she was pract
ically inside the wound. He made a sound that was not the word she feared, groped at the crimson straw, and watched her in disbelief as he died.

  She leaped once more. He took four bales down with him, glass and all.

  It was four in the morning when Diadrelu reached the ixchel stronghold. Men and women who had known her all their lives fell back in astonishment. Blood soaked her from head to foot; even her hair was stiff with it; yet her only wound was a minor cut on the thigh.

  Taliktrum appeared, surrounded by his Dawn Soldiers, the shaved-headed fanatics he had inherited from his father. He questioned her in a sharp, peremptory voice. Was it the rat-king again? Or Sniraga? Was there danger to the clan?

  'Yes,' she said.

  'Of what kind, Aunt?'

  She looked at him, the nervous young leader of Ixphir House. She did not know where to start.

  'You must answer my questions the same as anyone,' said Taliktrum, almost shouting. 'We survive through clan cohesion. We are not threads but a woven fabric, and discipline makes the weaving strong. Let it fray in one corner and the whole cloth unravels.'

  'You don't need to recite children's lessons to me,' said Dri softly. 'I taught them to you, by Rin.'

  The soldiers tensed. Taliktrum looked from one to another. 'My aunt is very fond of invoking Rin,' he said with a nervous sneer. 'As often as she does Mother Sky, or the Wanderer, or any other ixchel figure.'

  Dri shrugged. A part of her was screaming at his weakness, this ugly groping for standing and respect. 'The tradition's old,' she mumbled.

  'And taken from the giants, like certain drugs and diseases. Tell me, Aunt: is Rin a god or a devil for you?'

  She sensed the aggression in his words and was appalled. He was displaying her to his fanatics: 'Here is one unlike myself, one I have risen above, despite our kinship.' It chilled her to the core to imagine what such tactics implied for the future of the clan.

  Suddenly her other sophister, Ensyl, rushed into the chamber. A thin reed of a girl with a prominent forehead, widowed before she could marry, Ensyl was quiet to the point of invisibility much of the time; but Diadrelu knew the iron at the heart of the reed. The girl elbowed her way through the Dawn Soldiers, shot one furious glance at Taliktrum, and led her mistress out.