'Ha!' said Pazel. 'That's for sure! Blur baffle-'
Thasha made a face at him. She was overjoyed.
'And now,' said Ramachni, 'we must concentrate on the peril at hand. This much I have learned by eavesdropping: besides the mage, who has been aboard for many weeks, another man of evil will soon be among us. Someone terrible. All the sly whispers center on him. He may be passenger or sailor or servant. He may stay aboard for weeks or hours: I do not know. But Rose and Uskins-and the mage-in-hiding, too-think of little else. And the only being of goodwill who knows this terrible man's name is a rat.'
'A rat!' cried Pazel and Thasha together.
Ramachni nodded. 'A woken rat, amazingly. You will know him by his stumpy tail. I've tried many times to speak to him, but the rats of Chathrand are ruled by some awful fear and attack anyone who approaches their warren. If you find him, treat him kindly. He must be the most unhappy creature on this ship.'
On that point Ramachni was wrong, Pazel thought: no one could be as miserable as Steldak, the prisoner in Rose's desk. But the little mage did not seem to know about the ixchel, and Pazel dared not speak of them. He could still hear Diadrelu: They will be the last words you ever speak. And she was the friendly one.
'Ramachni,' he said, 'why have you been looking for me?'
'To enlist your help,' said the mage. 'By that I mean: to ask you to accept another Gift.'
A brief, astonished silence. 'You're joking,' said Pazel.
The mink shook his head.
Pazel fumbled behind him for the doorknob. 'Absolutely not,' he said.
'It would have no unpleasant effects,' said the mink. 'At least, not for many years.'
'Fantastic-not much chance of living many years with this crowd. But if I do? What then? Do I sprout horns and tail, so that when I start babbling like a murth I'll look the part?'
'Oh sky!' said Thasha suddenly. 'Grow up, Pazel. Ramachni's so careful with magic I didn't think he could do any for the first year I knew him. If he says it's safe, it's safe.'
'But he's not saying that.'
The mink clicked his teeth, making him appear to grin once again. 'Very true, I am not.'
'Pazel,' said Thasha, 'are you afraid?'
Idiotic question. He opened the door and fled across the stateroom-snatching up the cake as he went. Then he heard feet pounding behind him. A whirl of motion, and Thasha stood between him and the outer door.
'You can't say no to Ramachni.'
'No?'
Pazel looked back at the mage, who had walked calmly into the stateroom. 'Do it to Thasha the Brave, here,' he said. 'One Gift was enough to ruin my life.'
'It will not be enough to save your world from death,' said Ramachni.
Pazel froze, the cake halfway to his mouth. Ramachni sat back on his haunches.
'Eavesdropping is difficult in the hold of a ship, but it is a thousand times more difficult from another world. For ninety years Alifros has been my chief concern, bound as it is to my own world by blood and happenstance. Dawn to dusk have I listened, and midnights, too. Now at last the moment comes. A fell power is brooding over the Chathrand. Greater than the evil mage already aboard her, or the horrible man who will board soon-though they perhaps seek to use it. What is it? When and how will it strike? I do not know. But I know that it cannot be ignored, for I have walked in lands where it prevailed, where men hoped it would pass them by, and were wrong. Trust me this far, Pazel Pathkendle: you do not know the meaning of ruin.'
Pazel looked at him: a small creature on a bearskin rug, its black eyes blazing.
'What do you want?' he said.
'To listen with you. And if you should hear something… extraordinary, to teach you a word to know it by. Perhaps several words. It depends on what you hear.'
'That's all?'
'That, Pazel, is enough to shake the foundations of this world. The words I would teach you are Master- Words: the very codes of creation, spoken in that ethereal court where will is matter, and rhymes become galaxies. Normal men cannot learn them, you see-'
'But he can,' said Thasha.
'Perhaps,' said Ramachni. 'But Pazel's Gift is a tiny spark compared with the wildfire power of such words. Only two or three do I dare teach you-for your sake, and that of Alifros itself. And Pazel, you will only be able to speak each word once. After that it will vanish from your mind forever.'
'But why don't you use them yourself?' Thasha asked.
'I am a visitor here,' said Ramachni. 'The Master-Words belong to this world, not mine. They would be as dust on my lips.'
Still Pazel hesitated. 'What am I to do with these Master-Words?'
'Fight the enemy.'
'But how? You don't even know who he is!'
'In time he will show himself. And then you must choose the word, and the moment for its use. And you must choose wisely, for there will be no second chance.'
'This is… absurd!' sputtered Pazel. 'I don't even know who I'm supposed to fight! How can you expect me to beat him? What if he just stabs me in my sleep?'
'He will not know about you, either, nor of the power in your keeping. And years may pass before he strikes- years, or days, or mere hours. Try to understand: this is a battle in the dark, and I am as blind as any. I know only that I have found in you and Thasha my best champions-the very best in ninety years of searching. Will you refuse?'
Pazel walked slowly to the table and put down the cake. 'No,' he said. 'I won't refuse.'
'Then as soon as we can arrange a time-'
'Now.'
Ramachni twitched his tail in surprise. 'Are you certain? It will tire you greatly.'
'I'm certain. Do it now. Before I change my mind.'
Ramachni drew a deep breath. He looked at Thasha. 'When this is done, Pazel will be tired, but I shall be exhausted. Too exhausted even to return to my world through your clock. I will go to my secret place in the hold, and sleep for some days. Can I depend on you, Thasha? Will you guard him, and guard yourself, and be strong for everyone till I awake?'
Beaming at his confidence in her, Thasha said, 'I will.'
'Then go to the window, Smythнdor, and lie down.'
Pazel walked to the gallery windows. The window seat was eight feet long, with red silk cushions propped in the corners. Did they have time for this magic? Was he wrong to have insisted it happen now? He lay down, trying not to touch the cushions. Even after his bath he was still too dirty for this room.
The little mage sprang up into Thasha's arms, then twisted about to face him.
'Do not think,' he said. 'Thought is the task of all your life in this frail universe, but just now it is the wrong task. Instead, listen. Listen as though your life depended on it, as one day it shall.'
Pazel looked at him, but the mage offered no further instructions. So Pazel crossed his arms on his chest and listened.
At first he merely heard the ship-sounds so familiar he scarcely noticed them anymore. Beneath the windows her sternpost churned the swell, and her rudder creaked as Mr. Elkstem turned the wheel. Gulls cried. Men laughed and shouted. There was nothing strange about any of it.
Then Ramachni whispered something to Thasha, and she leaned over Pazel and flung open a window. Wind filled the chamber, lifting her hair, and Ramachni slid from her arms to the window seat. Gingerly he crept onto Pazel's chest.
'Shut your eyes,' he said.
Pazel obeyed, and the instant his lids closed he was gone-hurled like a leaf on a vast cyclone of sound. It was not loud, but it was deeper than the sea itself. He heard a thousand beating hearts: every one on the Chathrand, from the slow kettledrum hearts of the augrongs to the bipbipbip of newborn mice in the granary. He heard the sound of Thasha blinking. He heard Jervik laugh secretly at something, and Neeps retching at some foul chore in the galley, and the lookout sobbing a girl's name ('Gwenny, Gwenny') in the privacy of the crow's nest. He heard a rat
