him toward the surface, the raging men just behind. Pazel found himself crying, too. But his tears did not glow, and Klyst would never know he had shed them.
The bathysphere was rising from the waves. Klyst stopped him a yard beneath it and covered his hands with kisses. She looked at him and waited. He bent to do the same to her hands, but she shook her head. She wanted him to speak.
He bit his lips. He would not subject her to that noise.
Klyst saw his look of refusal and let out a final, agonizing scream. Then, with the sound still breaking from her throat, she faded. It happened suddenly. One moment she was there, solid as he was. The next he saw the kelp through her skin. And the next (the scream snuffed out like a candle) there was no murth-girl before him at all.
Spitting hatred, the murth-men turned and fled. Pazel gasped-and choked instantly. He could no longer breathe water.
Flailing, he surfaced. He was surrounded by boats. Clouds of white mist were racing toward them over the water. Twenty feet away, the bathysphere dangled over the deck of the sea barge. All about it the Volpeks stood gaping. And directly beneath the sphere, arms raised, stood Arunis.
The Volpeks in the sphere were lowering the Red Wolf down through the hole. The sorcerer reached for it, ecstatic. When his fingers brushed it at last, he let out a bellowing noise that even through the distortion of his mind-fit Pazel knew for laughter.
What have I done?
Pazel splashed toward the barge. Knock him into the sea, drown him, drown with him.
Saving Klyst's people had been his only thought. But in so doing he had aided a monster.
'I'll kill you!'
Arunis glanced around, trying to locate the source of the meaningless squawk. And then-
Boom.
A violent wave. Pazel was hurled back and down. Volpeks tumbled from the deck. Arunis lost his grip on the Wolf and plunged into the sea.
Cannon fire!
Somehow Pazel rose. No one was motionless now. Men ran, oars churned; terror showed on every face.
Boom. Boom.
They were under attack.
On Pazel's right a skiff was blasted to splinters. The air was full of wood, water, blood. Pazel swam toward the nearest boat, screaming for help. It was overfull: Volpeks and their young prisoners, stuffed like worms in a baitbox. And it was drawing away, much faster than he could swim.
'Help! Help!' ('Kquak! Kquak!')
He chased it, but his strength was gone. Another wave sank him, and when he struggled to the surface again he knew it was for the last time.
The drowned, like those who die of thirst, suffer visions: every sailor knows that. So Pazel was not too surprised when familiar faces appeared in the departing boat. There was Neeps, throwing punches. There was Thasha fighting like a champion. And there, dashing one Volpek after another into the sea, was Hercуl of Tholjassa. A pretty dream, he thought, not believing in it for an instant.
Boom.
The fighters ducked. Something whistled overhead. Then came pain, and darkness like sudden nightfall, and quiet at last.
A Betrayal Ended
5 Teala 941
83rd day from Etherhorde
Moonlight. No sound of a battle.
Was he sleeping on the bottom of the sea?
No, he could not breathe water anymore. If he were under the waves it meant he was dead, and that seemed likely enough. But if he had drowned his lips could not be parched, nor his scalp tickled by what felt suspiciously like a flea.
'Well,' said a man's deep voice, 'the last time it was you who waited on me. Now I can return the favor. Care to sit up and drink something?'
Pazel's head ached terribly. He was in a small, neat cabin without lamp or candle. And seated on the corner of the bed was Ignus Chadfallow.
'You're here!'
'And so, more surprisingly, are you. Don't jump up! You took a flying plank to the back of the head-a blow that would have split a coconut. Fortunately your skull is rather harder.'
He smiled-the first smile Pazel had seen on his face in years. But Pazel found he could not return it: Chadfallow had played him one trick too many. The doctor's smile faded, and it was then that Pazel noticed how tired he looked. There were lines of care on his face that had not been there in Sorrophran, and his eyes were grim.
A memory suddenly blossomed in Pazel's head. 'My father was here!' he said. 'I heard him-was it just a few minutes ago? I heard him talking about me.'
Chadfallow lowered his eyes. 'You have been asleep for twenty hours, Pazel.'
For a moment Pazel refused to believe it: the voice had been so real, so close. But of course it had been a dream; his father could not have been there. And yet-
'Where are we?'
'Two leagues from Ormael City, I should say. We'll be docking within the hour.'
'Ormael! How did we get here? What ship is this?'
'The brig Hemeddrin. A Volpek warship, but we have found her a better flag. Rise carefully, if you can rise at all, and put these on.' He handed Pazel a shirt and pair of breeches. 'They are the smallest I could find. Volpeks do not keep tarboys.'
Pazel got to his feet, wincing. Every muscle in his body hurt. As he dressed, Chadfallow bent over a sack at his feet and withdrew a glass bottle. Pulling the stopper, he decanted a few ounces into a mug and held it out to Pazel.
'Drink.'
Pazel just looked at him. No other word could have done more to remind him of his distrust of Ignus Chadfallow. The doctor took in his expression and smiled sadly.
'It's medicine, my boy. A powerful but entirely unmagical sort, and the very thing for one in your condition. Go on, drink it down.'
Pazel shut his eyes. He drank. And retched. 'It tastes like something dead.'
'Oil of grubroot,' said Chadfallow. 'The caviar of emetics. Here you are.' He handed Pazel a brass dish.
'What's this for?'
Chadfallow said nothing; he appeared to be counting seconds. All at once Pazel doubled over, vomiting copiously into the dish. Chad-fallow studied his expulsions with interest.
'No ulcranous pills!' he said. 'You're lucky; but then Arunis didn't have you in his keeping long. The other divers coughed up a number of tiny pills, which were perhaps embedded in their biscuits. Awful weapons: they are coated with a lacquer that dissolves over the course of ten days. After that the beads shatter, filling the stomach with powdered glass. Death follows-slowly.'
'He was going to kill us!'
'After you brought him the Wolf. He wanted no one left alive to tell tales.'
'Have you given the others that grubroot stuff?'
'Of course. Now, can you walk? People are waiting to see you.'
