Chadfallow opened the door, and they stepped out into a small wardroom.
'Pazel!'
Thasha jumped up so fast she nearly overturned the table where she was sitting with Neeps, Marila and Mintu. She had cut her hair as short as a tarboy's-hacked it off with a knife, by the look of it. She and Neeps ran to embrace him.
'You choose the worst times to have those fits,' Thasha laughed.
'There's no good time,' said Pazel, grinning too.
'You old dog!' said Neeps. 'You really fixed Arunis! Last I saw he was floundering in the water, screaming about a scarlet ray. Did your murth-girl send that ray?'
Pazel's smile faded. His murth-girl. Why had she vanished? Was that how her people died? Or could murths only be seen when you were under their spell-or when they were under yours?
He gave his chest a quick pinch. The shell was still there.
'It must have been Klyst,' he said. 'But what happened? Thasha, was that really you in the boat? You and-'
He whirled around. There by the masthead stood Hercуl. The Tholjassan smiled warmly.
'Yes, Pazel, I too am alive-thanks to you. Had you not alerted my brethren I should have died in Uturphe, just as my old master intended.'
'Your old master?'
'Sandor Ott,' said Hercуl.
'What?' cried Pazel.
'I couldn't believe it either,' said Thasha, smiling slyly. 'I knew someone had made a monster out of him, but-'
'Ott did not make me a warrior,' said Hercуl quickly, and with no hint of an answering smile. 'He snatched me, rather, from a Tholjassan fighting school. Half-trained, and wholly trusting. But this is not the time to discuss my dark years with the Secret Fist.'
'But you were dying in Uturphe!' said Pazel. 'How in Pitfire did you get Aere?'
It had all begun with those two riders, Hercуl explained. They had alerted the Tholjassan Consul, who had sprung into action when he learned of Hercуl's plight, and located him the next morning in a poorhouse, his knife wound already inflamed. The Consul saw that the wound was properly cleaned and dressed. Soon Hercуl woke, and begged his fellow Tholjassan to search the city for Pazel.
'He put nine men on the task,' said Hercуl, 'and soon enough the trail led to the false inn on Blackwell Street, and to the Flikker-men. They fled my brethren down their holes and sewers, but a Tholjassan does not turn easily from his prize. Of course, you and Neeps had already been taken inland, to the flesh market. But my brethren recovered these.'
Hercуl held out his palm, and to Pazel's astonishment, there lay his parents' gifts, the knife and the ivory whale.
'Thank you, Hercуl,' he said, humbled, and pressed them to his chest.
Of course Pazel wished to know what had happened to them all. They tried to explain, but with so many tellers the tale became a patchwork of details and anecdotes, and he had to stop them time and again with simple questions. At last the picture emerged: how Hercуl had subjected his wound to the lightning-fast cures of a Slugdra ghost-doctor (and survived them). How he had hunted Ott's men through the low places of Uturphe, killing three and frightening all, for these lesser spies had never crossed wits or swords with one trained to serve the Secret Fist. How he learned that Chadfallow too was marked for death, and so met his ship and persuaded him not to pass a single night in Uturphe. How together the men had boarded a Simja-bound ship full of cooks, seamstresses, masons, balladeers, dog-catchers and specialists in the elimination of wasps, all claiming some connection to Thasha's wedding. How they disembarked at Ormael to find Chathrand already docked and the city in an uproar, for Thasha had run away in the night.
Ott's spies were scouring Ormael City. But Hercуl had turned again, as Tholjassans will in a crisis, to his kindred. As it happened, several Tholjassans were preparing to ride north toward the Crab Fens, responding to an emergency letter. Apparently a Volpek brig-this very Hemeddrin-had been raiding the coast for a fortnight, landing men in defenseless villages and kidnapping boys and girls in their teens. The ship had last been spotted running straight for the Haunted Coast.
'Ott wasn't interested in Tholjassan youths,' said Hercуl, 'but I was. And when I learned that Mr. Ket, the soap merchant with a knack for turning up at odd times, had left the Chathrand and was also headed north, I knew the coincidence was too great. The doctor and I set off with my countrymen on horseback. We caught up with Arunis and his wagon-team at the edge of the Fens. But we were five men against fifty Volpeks and a mage-and we saw no sign of Thasha, hidden as she was. The best we could do was slow Arunis down.'
'So it was you who blocked the road with trees,' Pazel asked.
Hercуl nodded. 'With a little help from the freebooters.'
'Freebooters? You mean smugglers, men like Mr. Druffle?'
'I do,' said Hercуl. 'But Mr. Druffle had best not show his face among the freebooters of Chereste again, after helping Arunis raid their territory. They are wise enough never to seek treasure among the shipwrecks of the Haunted Coast. And they appear to have made peace with the murths and spirits there. No living men know that country better.'
He seemed about to say more, but then changed his mind. Pazel saw Neeps and Thasha look quickly away. Confused, Pazel glanced from face to face. No one met his eye.
Hercуl cleared his throat. 'Others of my kinfolk met us in the dunes. All told we were but fifteen strong. The freebooters were not many, either: another dozen at the most. They were brave, though, and they had boats hidden in a secret lodge in the North Fens. They were quite eager to help us drive the Volpeks out.'
'As the Mzithrinis might have been,' put in Chadfallow, 'if only-'
'Mzithrinis}' Pazel nearly jumped from the bench. 'What Mzithrinis? Where did they come from?'
'We have all been asking that question,' said Chadfallow. 'Perhaps they were outlaws, enemies of the Five Kings driven into exile. But it is just as likely they were spies. The Mzithrinis surely knew that something odd was brewing in the Gulf of Thуl. One does not bring three ships and a hundred Volpeks that close to the Pentarchy and escape unnoticed. My guess is that they were dispatched to find out what Arunis was up to, and stumbled on Thasha quite by accident. Unfortunately-or perhaps very fortunately-they are all dead. If they were agents of the Five Kings, it would hardly do for them to turn up at Thasha's wedding and identify her.'
'I wish they would,' said Thasha. 'If Prince Falmurqat knew what I looked like then, blood leaking down my chin and all, he'd be the one running away from this marriage.'
'Hear our mistress of peace,' sighed Chadfallow. 'In any case, those six will make no report. But they did not walk to the Haunted Coast. Somewhere they had a boat, and few are the boats that would cross the Gulf of Thуl with a crew of six. Others may have watched your fight from a dune-top, Hercуl.'
'What is done cannot be undone,' said Hercуl. 'And Thasha had no better choice-indeed, she did what I would have done myself under the circumstances.'
'At last a kind word,' said Thasha. 'Hercуl cut off my hair with a knife, Pazel, and dipped me in swamp-muck, and made me go and surrender to that Druffle of yours. And Druffle actually believed I was a Tholjassan sponge- diver who'd given up trying to escape.'
'You don't look a bit Tholjassan,' said Marila. 'Druffle must be a fool.'
'He was enchanted,' said Chadfallow. 'Magically enslaved by Arunis, Rin knows for how long. We have never seen the real man.'
'I can live without that pleasure,' said Neeps. 'But if only you'd caught us still ashore! If Pazel hadn't been sent underwater, and talked with the sea-murths, Arunis never would have found the Wolf at all.'
There was a brief silence.
'I only wanted him to leave,' said Pazel. 'Klyst told me that when men disturb the Haunted Coast, it destroys the ripestiy, the magic that keeps them alive. It's not right for men to do that. Her people have lived there for thousands of years.'
'You have learned things no human ever knew,' said Chadfallow quietly.
'Well, I don't want to learn another language like hers,' Pazel said, so fiercely that they all looked up. 'Klyst called me land-boy-do you want to know why? Because the word for 'human' is striglyffn-chik, that's why. I'll have
