agony of bruises, cuts and aching limbs. An hour passed, and another. The sun began to sink behind the trees.
Then all at once they were on solid earth. Pazel could hardly believe his eyes. It was a raised road of packed dirt, with two wheel-ruts carved into it and moss growing between them. Left and right it curved away through the Fens.
'By this road we entered the Fens this morning,' she said, 'with Mr. Ket, and a most suspicious train of wagons. He left Ormael City in the dead of night. We were hidden in a tool chest, and could not observe what he did along the way. But three times the wagons stopped, and we heard the cries of children. When the chance came we snuck out, and saw how the wagon train entered the Fens at a place well hidden with brush and vines. My guess is that this is a smugglers' road. Ket must be far along it by now.
'You are undone,' she told the boys. 'Rest now; we will keep watch.'
The boys made no argument, but flung themselves down. Pazel watched the ixchel fly to a branch some dozen feet above the road, where they began to pace and whisper. Taliktrum pointed at the boys and made gestures of outrage. Dri motioned for calm.
An hour later she was nudging them awake. It was now quite dark, the sun no more than a dull red glow among the trees to the west. The boys rose, groaning and stiff. The ixchel watched them with folded arms.
'Now listen well,' said Dri at length. 'Since your eviction, foul deeds have been done on the Great Ship. The rat-king, Master Mugstur, has declared Captain Rose a heretic and sworn to kill him. Sandor Ott-disguised as one Commander Nagan-and his lover Syrarys-'
'I knew it!' cried Neeps. 'That harpy!'
'— have so weakened Thasha's father that he barely rises from his bed. We don't know what poison she employs, or how. But they will not kill him until after the marriage of Thasha and Prince Falmurqat the Younger. Nothing will be done that might prevent Thasha's wedding.'
'How can you be so sure?' asked Pazel.
Diadrelu cast her eyes down. After a moment, she said, 'The prisoner, Steldak, has told us a great deal. But we paid a high price for his knowledge.'
'My father's death,' said Taliktrum. 'That was the price. Sniraga the assassin bore him away. And we are lost without him.'
'Talag was also my brother,' said Dri. 'Yes, we are lost. But for his sake we must try not to be. Talag used to say that death was the moment when everything loses value but the truth. I never understood what he meant, but I think I do now. For if we remember something untrue about the dead they are doubly lost to us-in memory as well as fact. Perhaps that is how we ixchel came to the custom of writing letters to the fallen on the night they pass away-letters kept in family archives, to be read by children and grandchildren. But Talag long ago made us promise not to do so-indeed, to serve him no death-rites whatsoever until we reached-'
'Aunt Dri!' shouted Taliktrum, enraged.
Dri blinked, as if starting from a dream. 'Reached the end of the struggle he lived for-that is all I meant. But there is more sad news. As we neared Ormael, the bosun Swellows murdered one of your own. You must have known him: a dark-haired tarboy with a stutter.'
'Reyast!' both boys cried in anguish. In a flash Pazel recalled the gentle, often bewildered face of their friend, quick to laugh, more often laughed at.
'That monster Swellows!' he hissed. 'Why?'
'To grasp that,' said Diadrelu, 'you must first know the true mission of the Chathrand.'
Then, as the boys' flesh crawled with horror, she told them of the visit to the Prison Isle, and the Shaggat Ness, and the use the Emperor planned to make of him.
'The Shaggat's return is foretold by a prophecy,' she said, 'dreamed up by Sandor Ott himself and spread by spies in Gurishal: He will return, it declares, when a Mzithrin prince takes an Arquali soldier's daughter for a wife.'
'Thasha,' said Pazel.
'Of course,' said Taliktrum. 'But the prophecy is little known outside Gurishal. Only when the marriage is sealed, and the news runs like wildfire through their lands, and the Shaggat's worshippers rise, will the Mzithrin Kings realize how they have been fooled. And kill your Thasha Isiq in a heartbeat, naturally.'
'Just as Swellows killed Reyast,' said Dri. 'Smothered him with a sheet, because the boy managed to befriend the augrongs-and one of them showed him what they guard: the hidden cell where the Shaggat is kept.'
'Swellows made the sign of the Tree over the murdered boy,' said Taliktrum. 'And then he jammed a chicken bone into his throat, to make it seem the boy had choked on stolen food.'
There was another silence. Pazel blinked away tears. He was cold and terrified, and had never felt so helpless in his life. But he had to act, he had to keep thinking-Thasha would be killed if he stopped.
'Just a moment,' he said. 'The Shaggat's followers were exiled to Gurishal. That's far in the west. The Sizzies won't let us pass through thousands of miles of their waters to drop him off.'
'No indeed,' said Diadrelu. 'But Chathrand has no intention of going through them. She will go around.'
'Around!' cried both boys. 'Through the Ruling Sea?'
'Where none can follow her, and none shall suspect,' said Dri. 'That is why Rose had to be tracked down and made to pilot the Great Ship again. No other captain has braved the Nelluroq and lived.'
'What happens if they succeed?' Pazel whispered.
'Civil war in the Mzithrin,' said Taliktrum. 'And millions dead. Cities burned, legions of soldiers slain on the battlefield or drowned with their fleets. Of course, the Shaggat will die, too-this time the Mzithrin Kings will make sure of it. But it will be a costly extermination. They will have no strength left to stop Arqual from seizing the Crownless Lands. And Magad will seize them-all of them, within a year or two.'
'That's, that's… savage!' cried Neeps.
Taliktrum laughed. 'But that is nothing. In time, with Arqual grown so mighty and her enemy crippled-don't you see?'
'The Mzithrin? Arqual would attack the Mzithrin itself?'
'Some madmen dream of it,' said Diadrelu. 'Especially the Rin-fanatics, the ones who want the idols of the Old Faith broken, and their sect destroyed, and the Rinfaith forced on all the world.'
'My law is Peace, and my kingdom Brotherhood,' recited Taliktrum, sneering. 'Therefore dwell in my kingdom and keep my law. Such lovely words, in the mouths of murderers and thieves. Delightful to be a giant, no? The chosen people, the lords of Alifros, squatting on a throne of skulls.'
Neeps sat up, glaring. 'At least we don't drill holes in ships full of women and children, and drop 'em on the seafloor!'
'You use cannon,' said Taliktrum. 'Life means nothing to your kind.'
'What do you know, you vicious little-'
'Neeps!' cried Pazel.
'What do I know?' said Taliktrum, with a terrible edge to his voice. 'Shall I tell you a bit of history, Arquali?'
'No, you shall not!' cried Diadrelu, leaping between them. 'And he will not tell you that he would rather be a maggot than a son of Arqual. Fools! While we fight our enemies grow stronger! And they are strong already- stronger than you know, Taliktrum.'
Her nephew looked at her, waiting for an explanation. By a sliver of moonlight Pazel saw fear in Diadrelu's eyes.
She took a deep breath. 'Thasha does not suspect Sandor Ott. Her father does not suspect Syrarys. But no one suspects the most dangerous man aboard, the man who led us all to this place.'
'You're speaking of Ket again, aren't you?' said Pazel.
'Ket is the name he goes by on Chathrand,' said Diadrelu, 'but in the dark annals of history his name is Arunis.'
Taliktrum laughed aloud.
Dri ignored him and went on. 'Arunis was the Shaggat's sorcerer. His was ever the diabolical hand behind the Shaggat. Most believe that he himself invented that twisted strain of the Old Faith that justified the God-King's rise. If that madman had defeated the other kings in the last war, the true emperor of the Mzithrin would be Arunis.
'When the Shaggat and his sons were plucked from the sinking Lythra, so was the sorcerer. All four were hidden in Licherog. But Arunis struggled to escape, and once nearly succeeded. It was then that Sandor Ott decided
