The Night of the Swarm (Chathrand Voyage 4)

by Robert V. S. Redick

  ‘I was falling,’ said Thasha. ‘The water beneath me disappeared. There was nothing I could catch hold of – just wind and darkness – and some vines, I think.’

  ‘She behaved strangely there, Thaulinin,’ said the woman, Nólcindar. ‘We took shelter in a moth-cave, out of the wind, while I waited for her strength to return. She recovered more quickly than I expected – indeed she jumped to her feet, and it was all I could do to prevent her leaping into the shaft. She was not afraid in the least. She looked at me and said, “Unhand me. I must visit the Orfuin Club.”’

  Thaulinin glanced sternly at Hercól. ‘And yet you tell us you did not come here from the River of Shadows.’

  ‘I spoke the truth,’ said Hercól.

  ‘Nine humans, in a land where humans are extinct. An ixchel woman, thousands of miles from the nearest clan. And a package that reeks of sorcery. You do not wish to name this thing, but you tell us that if we so much as cut away the cloth, we may die. That Macadra craves it and will try to steal it. And that you carried it to Bali Adro in an ancient ship, over the Nelluroq, only to lose it to a thief in the city of Masalym. A thief who brought it here.

  ‘All this in good faith I have tried to believe. But many are they who come ashore in Alifros from the River of Shadows – some by accident, others by dark design. If you are strangers to the River, how is it that this girl longs to visit the Orfuin Club, that most celebrated tavern in its depths? Think well before you answer! I have patience with many things, but lies are not among them.’

  ‘Nor have we misled you, though we have not told all,’ said Hercól.

  ‘The evil thing you carry – that came out of the River, did it not?’ demanded Thaulinin.

  No one answered him. For a moment there was no sound but that of the crackling fire.

  ‘Perhaps I will not return it, until you choose to speak.’

  The faces of the selk, which had been so friendly, were now quite cold. Some rose slowly to their feet. Still more had gathered, from within the keep and without.

  ‘I think it will be best for all of us if you disarm,’ said Thaulinin.

  Indignant cries. Pazel’s company drew closer together. ‘We are most of us disarmed already,’ said Hercól, ‘but by misfortune, not threat. Before we surrender the few blades we still possess, I would ask for your word: to restore to us that which we carried, and let us go unhindered.’

  ‘I will make no promise before I see this thing,’ said the selk leader. ‘Why do you not tell us your mission plainly? That is a small courtesy to offer those who have just saved your lives.’

  ‘And if we cannot?’ asked Hercól.

  ‘Then I cannot return your parcel,’ said the other.

  Very slowly, Hercól reached back over his shoulder and drew Ildraquin from its sheath. ‘You have lived a long time,’ he said, ‘and seen much that is in Alifros, but you will have met with few swords like this one, and no swordsman like the one before you. I would shed no blood today. But some of us are oath-bound to a certain task, and we are very far from its completion. We can afford no further errors, alpurbehn – including errors of trust.’

  ‘We would make the same mistake,’ said Nólcindar, ‘if we let you take this thing and go your way. Perhaps you will use it to attack us from behind.’

  ‘Do we strike you as so depraved?’ asked Ensyl.

  ‘I do not think so,’ said Thaulinin, ‘but you are creatures of the moment; your whole lives are as a single week in the life of a selk. You did not live through the Lost Age, or the Worldstorm. You do not recall the War of Fire and Spells, when tools of great evil were scattered over Alifros, and scarred its very bones. I do not know what is in your package, but a force bleeds from it that burns my hands, and I have seen what such power can do.’

  ‘You must know also that such tools are beyond the use of simple beings like ourselves,’ said Bolutu.

  ‘Always before that was so,’ said Thaulinin, ‘but then you dlömu robbed the graves of the eguar, and fashioned blades from their bones. Into the hands of generals and warlords and petty royalty they went. Look now at the bonfire that was Bali Adro! The waste, the martial lunacy, the slaughter of peoples near and far.’

  Of selk, Pazel recalled with a shudder. Rin’s eyes, what are we doing? They could kill us here and now.

  ‘You make your case poorly,’ said Nólcindar. ‘If you are truly the simple folk you claim, then perhaps you cannot do great harm with this thing – but you are not the ones to guard it, either. Where you set it down, a stand of trees may die, a field wither, a trickle of rain become an acid that scars the land.’

  ‘Is that any of your concern?’ said Dastu. ‘I thought you were wanderers, just passing through.’

  The selk looked at Dastu in silence. A few wore expressions of sorrow; many more of rage. Thaulinin’s eyes held both.

  ‘Our people do not think in this way,’ he said. ‘We have no permanent home, it is true. But that is only because everywhere is home. When the Platazcra burned the forests of Ibon, we mourned those trees. When madmen poisoned Lake Elsmoc, we wept. Harm elsewhere is harm to us, a despoiling of our home. There are in truth no countries. There is only Alifros: one land, one ocean, drowned in a common sea we call the air. You may say we pass through a place, but we never truly leave it. Nor do you, though a part of you ceases to believe in what you cannot touch. An endearing quality, perhaps – but only in the very young.’

  ‘We are all young beneath the watchful stars,’ said Pazel.

  Every selk head turned. Pazel was almost as startled as they: he had spoken without a moment’s forethought.

  ‘Where did you hear those words, human?’ asked Thaulinin.

  ‘From one of your people, in Vasparhaven. He said the stars would wait out our errors, and perhaps even forgive them. Those were his last words to me. But he gave us a written message, also: he told us there was hope downriver, between the mountains and the sea. I think he wanted us to find you, Thaulinin. His name was Kirishgán.’

  ‘Kirishgán!’ This time surprise contended with a joy the selk could not disguise. Kirishgán was in Vasparhaven Temple? Why, how, when had Pazel seen him? To the latter question Pazel replied that it had been little over a week.

  ‘He expected to leave the temple the day after my visit. He’d been there for nearly three years. He said he’d learned Spider-Telling. But I know he was eager to return to the outer world.’

  ‘A world that has missed his wisdom,’ said Thaulinin. ‘This is a heart’s prayer answered. Forty full moons have come and gone since our brother departed. We feared the worst. He has been marked for death by the Platazcra.’

  Then his face turned stern once more. ‘I do not doubt that Kirishgán hoped we would meet – but not, I think, for the reasons you imagined. We will feed you, treat your wounds, even guide you from this wilderness. But we will not return your death-bundle. And you will not take it by force.’

  At that Cayer Vispek drew his sword as well – and instantly, twenty selk blades whistled from their sheaths. Thasha, wet and shaken as she was, groped for Arunis’ knife but found it gone.

  ‘We may surprise you,’ said Hercól, ‘though Death alone will smile on what we do here today.’

  ‘Death and the maukslar searching these hills,’ said a voice from above.

  It was Ramachni, curled on a high pine branch, ten feet overhead. ‘Never fear,’ he added quickly, ‘the demon is still far from us. I have been keeping watch by the clifftops; I caught his reek upon the breeze.’

  Thaulinin glanced sharply at his people. ‘Eyes forward! Do not let the creature distract you from the fight!’

  ‘Ramachni, what are you doing?’ cried Thasha. ‘How long have you been watching us?’

  ‘Long enough for both sides to show their firmness, as I hoped they would,’ said the mage. ‘Be at peace, one and all: you may trust each other now.’

  ‘I tire of these pleas for trust,’ said Nólcindar. ‘Keep to your tree, little mink, and sp
are us your fibs and fantasies.’

  Ramachni rose to his feet. His black eyes bore down on them, and no one below dared look elsewhere.

  ‘You have all shown your readiness to die for Alifros,’ he said, ‘but to serve it you must live. Away with your weapons! If you shed blood here there will be no one left to remember, no songs about the second tragedy of the Torr. There will be only darkness, the last pall of death drawn over this world. You know of what I speak, Thaulinin Tul Ambrimar. Shall I give it a name?’

  The selk leader waved urgently. ‘Not here!’ he said. ‘But I think I can name you, now, trickster. You have taken a body unknown to me, but your voice is another matter. It is little changed since the Battle of Luhmor, my lord Arpathwin.’

  Ramachni’s ears twitched. ‘Arpathwin,’ he said, ‘“Still Flame”. So your people cheered me that morning, over the howling of the Demon Prince we had subdued. No, my voice has not changed, but how your world has, in twelve swift centuries. Arpathwin. I am glad to hear it on a selk tongue once again.’

  He descended the tree, and when Thasha bent down he sprang to her shoulder, where he curled like a living scarf about her neck. ‘But why did you not speak at once?’ said Thaulinin. ‘You have walked with us in the Sabbanath Fields, brought us hope in the Twelve Years Winter, built the trap with your great mistress that holds the arch-demon even today. Can you be in doubt of your welcome here?’

  ‘Had I spoken sooner,’ said Ramachni, ‘you would not have learned that my friends are equally deserving, and equally without fear. But I might pose the same question to you, master selk. For you have shadowed us, I think, since before we left the confines of the Forest.’

  Thaulinin was startled; but he nodded briskly. ‘You were not difficult to follow, being blind within the wood. Yes, we watched you from afar.’

  ‘And from afar you raised the commotion that made the maukslar turn away?’

  After a brief hesitation, the selk said, ‘That was not our doing.’

  He made a small gesture of his hand, and his warriors stood down, sheathing their swords. ‘But Arpathwin: must we hide? Is the demon approaching?’

  ‘No, it has flown east,’ said Ramachni. ‘to scour the Ghelvi Marshes. Return it may, but now that I have its scent I may hope to give us fair warning. Nor will the hrathmogs find you on these heights, as I expect you know already.’

  ‘Then draw near, friends – and no more questions until you are warm and well fed.’

  The selk pressed the newcomers close about the fire. They gave them the entire hare, along with handfuls of nuts they had roasted on the coals, and small, delicious fruits one could eat whole, and more bread and wine. Pazel was amazed at how quickly their friendliness returned. They smiled, took delight in watching the humans eat, rushed for new provisions as they thought of them. How was it possible that just minutes ago they had come so close to killing one another?

  While they ate the selk brought instruments from within the keep – curious fiddles, wooden pipes, a small silver harp – and played softly, while those at the edges of the fire matched their voices to the music, very low. Pazel strained to catch the words, and was amazed that he could not: the language refused to be named, to be captured by his Gift. For a moment he panicked: when his Gift stopped catching languages it meant his terrible fits were about to descend, maiming him with noise. He went rigid, fighting the urge to leap up and run from the circle. Music was torture at such times.

  But the attack did not come. And as he calmed himself, Pazel realised that the music was of a beauty such as he had never heard in life or dream: swift, gentle and elusive, the song of a child that runs alone through a wood at sunrise. But no, he thought, that’s not right, it’s more the music of the very old, in their last or next-to-last summer of life, but so adept at memory that they could still hear and see all that such mornings had revealed to the children they had been, so many centuries ago. And yet he still had it wrong, for something in the music told Pazel that the selk knew neither childhood nor age as humans did. They knew loss, however: every quiet phrase evoked the memory of something fine that had perished or departed, moments of bliss that shattered as soon as they were felt, loving glances that pricked the heart like a needle and were gone.

  The food was soon exhausted, but their cups were refilled, and the musicians played on without a moment’s pause, as though the song they were immersed in had no true beginning or end. The stars appeared among the trees. By their faces Pazel knew that the others were caught up in deep and private emotions, but whether of sadness or joy he could not tell.

  The music ended the only way it could: suddenly, in the middle of a phrase. In the abrupt silence, Thaulinin said, ‘Your death-parcel lies within the mountain. I will have it brought out to you now.’

  ‘Let it stay there,’ said Ramachni. ‘When I show it to you in the morning, you may wonder that we did not beg you to keep it.’

  ‘I start to wonder that already,’ said Thaulinin. ‘Whatever help I can offer shall be yours. If you wish to resume your journey on the morrow, I will send guides with you, that you may find the safest paths. But I warn you that the way is long. The selk run quickly over field and marsh and mountain, but even for us it is twenty days to the sea.’

  ‘Twenty!’ said Corporal Mandric. ‘By your leave, Mr Ramachni, we’re in no shape for a forced march.’ He gestured at Lunja. ‘Otter here shed her boots in the Forest; she has thorns in her pretty webbed feet. So does Brother Bolutu. As for Pathkendle, he’ll drop before you can say field amputation. That mucking troll nearly chewed him like chicken bone.’

  ‘There is no other way,’ said Thaulinin. ‘I have told you already that hrathmogs hold the river. In earlier times I might have bargained with them to let you pass, but not today. They have learned the value of handing goods or captives to the Ravens, and Macadra pays particularly well for any curiosities fished out of the River of Shadows.

  ‘Even afoot, the way is perilous. All the ports and coastal townships from Masalym to Orbilesc are under strict Bali Adro control. Some are being torn apart by infighting, as the madness of the Plazic blade turns general upon general, prince against prince.’

  ‘Not here in the interior, then?’ asked Ensyl.

  ‘Not yet,’ said the selk. ‘These wildlands are still considered too troublesome to conquer – but that does not mean that they are safe. Far from it! Macadra is very powerful, but to summon a maukslar she must have given the blood of her own withered veins. If she lusts so deeply for your death-parcel, she will not stop there. Her agents will be groping inward from the coast, and they may take many forms. Plazic squadrons, mercenaries, hrathmog collaborators, murths: she has employed all of these in the past. The selk are adept at eluding such tentacles – and even hacking them off when they grope too far. But the sea belongs to Bali Adro. If with great care and fortune you should reach the coast, what then?’

  ‘We have a ship of our own,’ said Neeps.

  ‘Had, you mean,’ said Dastu. ‘They’ve abandoned us. Hercól proved that with his sword-trick, remember?’

  ‘I proved only that they are making for the Island Wilderness – currently,’ said Hercól. ‘But come, tonight is spent. Let us cast about no more for answers. By daylight we may find our path clearer than we think.’

  No words could have been more welcome. Still Pazel felt that Hercól was merely putting the best face he could on terrible circumstances. The selk were kind to offer help, but for all their age and wisdom they were just twenty nomads, living by what they carried on their backs. And what about Neeps? If the selk could do nothing for him, Pazel would beg Ramachni to try deeper magic. He could not just watch and wait.

  The selk led them into the ancient fort. The dim lamplight flickered over pale marble columns, and alcoves and doorways intricately carved with figures of men and beasts. The chambers were many and mostly dark, and Pazel thought an air of sadness hung about them. But the eyes of the selk gleamed in the lamplight, and their voices were br
ight and clear.

  The ruin clearly served as a way station, not a permanent home. Still their hosts had made it clean and comfortable; in the room where the company was to sleep, deer skins had been spread over beds of pine needles. ‘Rest well, and fear nothing,’ said Thaulinin. ‘Tonight at least you will be as safe as ever you were aboard your ship.’

  ‘That is less comforting than you intend,’ said Hercól with a smile, ‘but we thank you all the same.’

  ‘I would speak with you a while longer, Thaulinin,’ said Ramachni.

  ‘Then go elsewhere, Rin love you,’ Big Skip implored. ‘Mages and selk may be able to do without sleep, but I’m staved through, and my hold’s filling fast.’

  The selk leader laughed. ‘Come, wizard. You have many years to account for.’

  He took a lamp from one of his men and led Ramachni from the chamber. The other selk departed, and the company settled down on the deerskins. Most slept like the dead, but Pazel tossed and turned, helplessly awake. Like feral cats, the dark possibilities of what lay ahead prowled through his mind, scratching, spitting, clawing him further from sleep.

  The whole coast in the hands of the Ravens. No way out, tentacles closing in. And the Swarm of Night growing larger, like a tumour, like a shroud. Better to have stayed on the Chathrand. Better a hrathmog spear through the gut.

  Someone in the room was whispering, praying; or had he dreamed that, just moments ago?

  Arunis reached back into this world to frighten us, to try to break our nerve: You killed me but you didn’t; Thasha cut off my head but she failed. Erithusmé is dying, dying inside her. And without Erithusmé you have no hope.

  Lies, hatred. Poison spewed from a dead man’s lips.

  Try this one, then: Arunis would have died weeks ago on the Chathrand, if you hadn’t interfered. All your fault: his escape, this exile, the deaths in the Forest, the loosing of the Swarm.

  This is what it felt like to go crazy, to be whittled down to madness by your guilt.

  Pazel tried to turn his thoughts in a sunnier direction. Thasha. He could still feel her touch. It did not long cheer him to think of her, though. She’d wanted him to promise to keep his distance. Would she ever understand that he had refused out of fear for her? That it was their lovemaking, more than anything else he’d found, that drove the haunted look from her eyes?