touched the Nilstone and it didn’t kill me, though it should have. And I told the rats I was the Angel they worshipped, and they believed me. Of course I didn’t know that the Angel’s coming would make them want to go to heaven on a puff of smoke.”
Taliktrum stared at her a moment, then nodded to Myett. Agile as spiders, the two ixchel crawled onto the Shaggat’s arm and set about untying the ropes.
The cloth slithered to the ground. “Behold your ally, men of Arqual,” said Taliktrum.
The hand, etched in stone but withered to a skeleton, was every bit as hideous as Pazel recalled, but now he saw long cracks extending down the arm, nearly to the shoulder. And there, clenched in the fleshless fingers, was the Nilstone. It was no larger than a walnut, but terrifying all the same, for the Nilstone was black beyond seeing. To look at it was like staring at the sun: a black sun, that dazzled without light.
“Oh,” said a man’s voice, weak and troubled. “Oh dear, that is wrong.” It was Dr. Rain. He was shaking his head and pointing at the Stone. “Crawlies, Mr. Fiffengurt-that is all wrong. Do you hear me? Wrong! Wrong!”
Suddenly he was shouting, red-faced, hands in fists, stamping his foot so hard on each Wrong! that his body jerked in a kind of circular war-dance.
“Get him out of here!” snapped Haddismal, gesturing to his men. But before any of them could move Rain straightened up, drew a great sucking breath and fled the chamber.
“Why in the belching Pits did you summon that fool?” said Alyash.
“He’s a doctor,” said Myett, her voice low and feline, “and your precious Shaggat is disintegrating.”
“From his dead hand down,” said Taliktrum. “Mr. Fulbreech, Mr. Bolutu, you’re the only medical men left here. What do you see? What would happen to this madman should the enchantment end?”
Fulbreech and Bolutu approached the Shaggat, flinching when their eyes passed over the Nilstone. Bolutu, among so much else, was a renowned veterinarian. Fulbreech, by contrast, was a mere surgeon’s mate, and a new one at that. But his tutor over the past four months of storm and combat had been none other than Ignus Chadfallow, and Pazel well knew what a driven teacher the doctor could be.
“If those cracks become lesions?” mused Fulbreech. “No question, gentlemen. He will lose the arm.”
“And his life, should the cracks spread greatly,” added Bolutu.
“A tourniquet can stop the bleeding only if it can be fastened to a stump.”
“Then what’re you waiting for?” growled Haddismal. “Patch up his blary arm! Gods of death, Bolutu, the fortunes of our Empire rest on that man!”
“Your Empire,” said Bolutu. “I came north to fight Arunis and the evil he would do to all lands. But Arqual has never been my home. Your contempt for my skin assured that, as much as your vile ambition to destroy the Mzithrinis.”
“Why has no one stabilized the arm?” demanded Taliktrum.
“Chadfallow warned ’em off,” said Alyash. He waved a hand imperiously, spoke in a fair imitation of the doctor’s stentorian voice. “ ‘Nothing you do will slow the decay. Plasters, splints, bandages-none of these can help. You’ll only crumble him the faster, mark my word, mark my word.’ ”
Bolutu and Fulbreech looked at each other and frowned, as though they doubted the verdict. But Alyash pointed irritably at the Shaggat’s hand.
“It’s that Stone we have to deal with, if we want to save the monster,” he said. “He’ll be dead before you can sing him a fare-thee-well, if he turns back to flesh with that thing in his hand. And if Arunis is still aboard-”
“He is,” said Mr. Uskins suddenly.
Pazel started; he had almost forgotten that Uskins was in the room.
Alyash, flustered, carried on: “-then we know he’s toiling away in a fever, trying to learn how to use it.”
“And failing, so far,” said Haddismal. Turning Thasha a skeptical look, he added, “You expect us to believe that you did something that mucking sorcerer won’t even try?”
“I touched the Stone,” Thasha stated flatly, “once.”
“Just reached up and gave it a squeeze,” scoffed Haddismal. “On a whim, like. The deadliest blary thing in Alifros.”
“If I hadn’t we’d have died anyway,” said Thasha.
“Do it again,” said Taliktrum.
Uproar, loud and general. Taliktrum and Myett leaped straight up from the Shaggat onto a crossbeam above. Every human voice (and two dlomic) in the chamber cried out against the notion, and Jorl and Suzyt erupted in howls. Pazel squeezed Thasha’s elbow. No, no, no, his shaking head proclaimed.
“You’ll shatter the arm!” shouted Alyash.
“Be quiet!” Thasha bellowed, and everyone obeyed. Thasha handed the dog’s leashes to Pazel. Then she walked right up to the Shaggat Ness, raised a hand and touched the statue’s arm, spreading her fingers wide.
“Thasha, don’t!” hissed Pazel.
Thasha closed her eyes, tracing the stone bicep, sliding her fingers around and upward in what was almost a caress. She reached the elbow, lingered there, then moved her hand slowly higher.
“I could,” she said, and as she spoke Pazel thought the manger darkened, and a cold, prickling sensation swept over his body. The men looked at one another, aghast. Thasha reached higher still, until her fingers rested atop the Shaggat’s own, with the throbbing blackness of the Nilstone lancing between them. “I could take it from his hand, right here and now. But what would be the point?”
She dropped her hand, and a sigh of relief passed through the room. Pazel felt light-headed, as though he had just caught his balance at the edge of a cliff. But Alyash gave a mirthless laugh.
“You’re lying through your pretty teeth,” he said to Thasha. “You know what the point would be. You could send Arunis flying from this ship like a cannonball. The rest of us, too. You could get your friends out of the crawly trap, whisk us home across the Nelluroq and be sittin’ down to tea and toast with Daddy by New Year’s Day. Pitfire, you could topple Magad the Fifth and take his place as Emperor of Arqual. The whole blary game’s up if someone masters the Nilstone.”
“I never said I could master it,” said Thasha. “I’m no mage. I only told you I could claim it.”
“Do you mean to say that while you can survive the touch of the Stone, you’re unable to use it at all?” asked Taliktrum.
“I don’t know how long I’d survive, if I took it from him,” said Thasha. “I have a feeling it would kill me too, just a bit more slowly.”
“You see?” said Taliktrum, glancing quickly around the chamber. “She is in some sense mightier than Arunis, who fears to touch it at all. Why haven’t you applied yourself to its mastery? Have you no desire to help us?”
Thasha gave him a long, poisonous look. “If I survived the attempt,” she said, “I still couldn’t do anything with the Stone that isn’t ugly.”
“Ugly,” said Taliktrum. “What does that mean? War is ugly, girl. Killing, hunger, disease are ugly. You must risk it. We must be prepared to use every tool in our arsenal.”
Thasha turned and walked back to her friends. “Not this one,” she said.
“Taliktrum,” said Fiffengurt suddenly, “you want to play captain? Try acting the part. You said this meeting would be ‘brief and decisive,’ as I recall. Well, it ain’t been brief, and we’ve not decided a blessed thing.”
“That’s about to change,” said Haddismal.
Drawing his Turach broadsword, he stepped forward and thrust it at Taliktrum, the blade horizontal, in the ritual challenge of the Arquali military. “We can have this out right now,” he said. “You’re holdin’ hostages, our true captain among them. But there ain’t a man on this ship-or a woman either-who hasn’t stared down death these past few months. And whether you kill them or not, you’ll have doomed yourselves. We’ll smoke you out of your holes and deal with you the Arquali way, and your people will die cursing the day they ever heard the name Tliktrum-Talakitrim-”
“Taliktrum, you great oaf,” muttered Bolutu.
“Withhold the berries, my lord,” said Myett. “See how fierce they are when their people feel the claws of the poison ripping at their lungs.”
Alyash drew his sword in turn. “You think you’ve got us by the gills, don’t you?” he said.
Taliktrum nodded. “Exactly right, Bosun: we have you by the gills. My father, Lord Talag, is never careless with detail, and he planned this campaign for twelve years.”
“And the Secret Fist planned for forty,” said Haddismal. “You have no muckin’ idea who you’re dealin’ with. The water emergency’s over, crawly, and so’s your little game. We’ll drop this ship to the seabed before we let
