“I listened to you,” said Hercol, “but also to what Pazel heard from the fisherman, and to what Olik knew, and to my own counsel above all. You may be sure that I am making no light choices. We have abandoned our ship for this cause. And our people.”
“Then let it be worth your sacrifice!” said Vadu, his head starting to bob. “You are said to be a warrior, but this tactic is more suited to a counting-clerk. Show some courage. Let us go now, and quickly-and if we must run the last mile, so be it. Come, our goal is the same.”
“It is,” said Hercol, “but we are not agreed on how to reach it. For I am thinking like a counting-clerk. I am counting every person in this expedition, and intending to send none of them heedlessly to their deaths.”
“Heedless?” The counselor’s voice rose in anger. “You claim that death awaits all of us, if Arunis masters the Nilstone. Do you not understand where he is going? The River of Shadows, the River of Shadows enters Alifros just downstream from the Tongue, in the heart of the Infernal Forest. Throughout the ages of this world it has been a pilgrimage site for wizards good and evil. Whatever advantage Arunis thinks to find is surely there. He does not have far to go, Stanapeth, and neither do we.”
“I have heard you out,” said Hercol, “and you, Vadu, have sworn to abide by my decisions. I gave you a warning then, and I repeat it now.”
“I am no child, and need no warnings,” said Vadu.
“No?” said Hercol. “Did you place your hand on the knife-hilt, Counselor? Or did the knife call it there, as it has called the tune before?”
Vadu started, and jerked his hand away from the Plazic Blade, wincing as he did so as if the gesture caused him pain. He was breathing hard, and his men backed a little away from him. “Do as you will, then,” he said, “but I am not responsible.”
“Only for yourself,” said Hercol, watching him steadily.
The party retreated into the trees and found a level spot to rest. “I think we must light no fire,” said Jalantri.
“How about a candle?” said Big Skip. “The ixchel are cold and wet.”
Ensyl and Myett protested, but Hercol at once gathered stones into a ring and thrust four candles into the ground within them. Pazel looked at the two women, warming themselves amply by the little flames, shaking their short hair dry. We’re finally in the same boat, he thought, cut off from our own kind, in a world that knows nothing about us. But it wasn’t the same, not really. The humans numbered thirteen, not two; and they had not been raised in a clan that honored the whole above the parts, the House above the self. And they were not eight inches tall.
The humans and the dogs settled down to wait out the day, posting watches on the Black Tongue. Pazel fell asleep almost instantly, and dreamed of Chadfallow. He was lecturing Pazel in his old professorial way, but the subject, oddly, was how to trim a foresail brace-line. “Up, in, down to the pin!” Chadfallow kept repeating, watching Pazel struggle with rope and cleat. And as his frustration grew, Pazel realized that Chadfallow wore a captain’s uniform. “No good, boy, no good,” he said. “It’s that hand of yours. Too fishy by far.” Pazel looked at his left hand and saw nothing unusual, just the leathery scar he’d borne for months. “Not that one,” said Ignus crossly, and raised Pazel’s other hand by force. It was black and half webbed.
Dawn came, and with it Pazel’s watch. He was paired with Ibjen; they lay low at the edge of the trees, listening to the chatter of unseen birds, and watching the flames spout and sputter on the Tongue. The nearest fumarole was only about a hundred yards from where they lay, but the big ones-wide enough for something man- sized to crawl from them-were much farther down the lava flow. Sounds issued from them: soft piping like stone flutes, low surging moans. With every noise Pazel half expected to see a troll crawl out into the daylight. Ibjen, however, seemed more worried about Vadu and his Plazic Blade. Hercol, he said, should have driven the man off while he could.
“I thought so too,” Pazel admitted. “But Hercol’s thought carefully about it, and I trust him.”
“He hardly sleeps,” said Ibjen. “That cannot continue, you know. Unless he too draws his strength from some unnatural source.”
“Ildraquin isn’t cursed,” said Pazel, “and Hercol is strong without help from any blade.”
“Pazel,” said Ibjen, “is it true that you can cast spells?”
“What?” said Pazel, startled. “No, it isn’t. Or… just one. And Ramachni says it’s not even right to call it a spell. It’s a Master-Word. He gave me three of them, but I’ve spoken the other two, used them, and that erases them from my mind.”
“How are they different from spells?”
Pazel thought back. “He said that a Master-Word is like black powder-gunpowder, you understand? — without the cannon to control the explosion. He said the key thing about spells is that control. Otherwise you can’t stop them from doing what you don’t want to do.”
“Like turning men into dumb animals,” said Ibjen, “when your goal is to make animals think like men.”
Pazel sighed. “I suppose Erithusme didn’t have much control either, when she cast the Waking Spell. But that spell drew its power from the Nilstone, and it ruins everything it touches, I think. And I wonder, Ibjen: what’s going to happen to woken animals, if we succeed? I’m afraid for Felthrup. For all of them, really.”
He gazed out at the Tongue, the sudden plumes of flame that came and went like harbor-signals. Ibjen was quiet so long that Pazel glanced at him, wondering if he’d nodded off. But the silver eyes were wide, and staring at him with concern.
“I must add to your fears, Pazel,” he said. “I’m sorry. It’s Neeps.”
Pazel gave a violent start. “Neeps? What about him? What’s the blary fool done this time?”
“I wasn’t sure at first, because the stench from the Black Tongue was so strong. But it’s there, all right.”
“What’s there?”
“The smell of lemons. I know that smell, Pazel: my father tamed tol-chenni on the Sandwall, you know. Once you’re used to it there’s no mistaking it for anything else.”
When he finally understood, Pazel felt as though his own death had just been handed to him, as if he’d thrown back a drink only to learn it was poison. “No,” he muttered, shaking his head, looking away from the dlomic boy.
“Father always claimed it was the sure sign,” said Ibjen gently, “back in the days when humans were changing.”
“It isn’t true, Ibjen, it’s not happening, you’re crazy.”
But even as he spoke Pazel remembered Olik’s words in the stateroom. Rage was one warning sign, he’d told them, along with a sharp smell of lemon in one’s sweat. And what had Neeps said, when they were sitting beside the signal-fire? There are times when my mind just seems to vanish. Panic, deep terror, welled up inside him. Ibjen’s hand was on his arm. “How long does it take?” Pazel heard himself ask.
“Five or six weeks,” said Ibjen. “I think that’s what Father used to say. Pazel, are you crying?”
Pazel pinched his eyes shut. Images from the Conservatory assaulted him. The mindlessness, the filth. He would not let Neeps become a tol-chenni. He turned to Ibjen and gripped his hand in turn. “Don’t say a word about this,” he begged. “The plague doesn’t spread from person to person anyway. Your father told us that.”
“I know,” said Ibjen, “and I won’t tell anyone. You’re right, it would only make things worse. The others might drive him away.”
“We’re going to stop it,” whispered Pazel, “before he changes. We will, Ibjen. We have to.”
Ibjen said nothing for a time. Then he asked, “What does it do, your Master-Word? The one you haven’t spoken yet?”
“I don’t know,” said Pazel. “Ramachni told me it would blind to give new sight. What that means even he couldn’t guess.”
“Blindness?” said Ibjen. “Blindness, from a kind of magic that you say runs out of control?” The dlomic boy looked terrified. “You must never speak that word, Pazel. Try to forget it, and soon, before you utter it one day in your sleep.”
Pazel shook his head. He trusted Ramachni. His two previous words had shaken the fabric of the world around him, but done no lasting damage. Ramachni had assured him of that, just before repeating his promise to return. But in his mind Pazel still heard Arunis back at Bramian, gloating, saying that the mage had abandoned them, vanished into the safety of his own world. And now Neeps “Look there!” whispered Ibjen, pointing.
