but larger than any star.
“What is it?” he whispered.
“A legend of the South proved true,” said Hercol. “The Polar Candle, the Little Moon of Alifros. North of the Ruling Sea it cannot be glimpsed, not ever. Bolutu tells me that many in the South think it has power over their lives and fates. Come, we are almost there.”
At the dune’s flat summit, the roots of shrubs and sea oats bound the sand into a fibrous mat. Hercol wriggled forward, keeping his head well below the height of the grass. Pazel imitated him, cursing inwardly as burrs and thorns began to pierce his skin. There were crawling, biting insects too, and many small burrows from which came scurrying sounds. He would have been miserable, Pazel thought, even fully clothed.
The dune was wide, but they crossed it at last. And suddenly they were lying, side by side, looking down upon a wide sand basin. It was about the size of the village square across the inlet, and ringed on all sides by dunes, except for a narrow gap on the north side leading down to the sea.
In the center of the basin a fire was crackling, somewhat larger and brighter than their own. And beside the fire three figures crouched.
“They’re human!” Pazel whispered.
“Yes,” said Hercol.
“Not, not the-”
“Not tol-chenni, no. Be very still, Pazel, and watch.”
They were roasting a small animal on a spit. They wore tattered clothes-but they were clothes, not scraps and rags like the tol-chenni. Indeed the three figures had an encampment of sorts: crates stacked up like building blocks, a makeshift tent of rough fabric, jugs and amphorae squatting in the sand. And the figures were armed: swords, daggers, some kind of club. All three looked strong and capable.
Two were men. The figure on the left, turning the spit, might have been forty: he had a severe face and black hair streaked with gray that fell in curls to his shoulders. Across from him crouched a younger and much larger man, big as any Turach. His eyes were shut and his hands folded before him; he might well have been speaking a prayer. The third figure, whose back was to them, was a young woman.
“Then it’s not true,” Pazel hissed. “The mind-plague, it hasn’t wiped everyone out! Hercol, maybe it never struck anywhere but the village. And if they’re wrong about the plague, they could be wrong about the two hundred years!”
“Gently, lad,” said Hercol.
But Pazel, clutching suddenly at hope, was not to be calmed. “Maybe the village was quarantined-way off the mainland, see? — because everyone there went mad together, dlomu and humans alike.”
“Come,” said Hercol. “The humans become idiots, and the dlomu at the same time fall victim to a shared delusion about the cause?”
“Why not? It’s more likely than what they claim, isn’t it?”
“Watch the girl, Pazel.”
Pazel looked: she was lifting a blackened kettle from the embers. Turning, she filled three cups beside her with steaming drink. Pazel saw her silhouette against the fire, and thought his heart would stop.
“Neda,” he said.
“Ah,” said Hercol.
“Aya Rin,” said Pazel. “Hercol, she looks exactly like my sister Neda.”
“Perhaps she is.”
Pazel gazed helplessly at the swordsman. He could not speak for fear. It wasn’t the villagers, or Thasha, or half the human race who had gone mad. It was just him, Pazel. Actually mad: he would shut his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them again he’d be in sickbay, feverish, his tenth day without water; or still tied up in that cave on Bramian. That was the only explanation.
“When one of the men turns away,” said Hercol, “try to catch a glimpse of his neck.”
“You never met my sister. You couldn’t know what she looks like. I think I’m crazy, Hercol.”
“Enough of that. I’ve looked at her portrait a hundred times. It hung for years in Dr. Chadfallow’s study in Etherhorde, alongside your mother’s and your own. It hangs in his cabin now. But that portrait must be ten years old. I could not be sure it was her, until you saw for yourself.”
“But how in the blary howling Pits could she be here?”
“Look! There’s an answer for you, or the beginning of one.”
The older man was reaching for something on his right. He leaned forward, and his long hair fell away from his neck. The firelight showed a black tattoo, a pattern of strokes and diamonds.
“Lord Rin above,” said Pazel. “They’re Mzithrinis.”
So they were: three citizens of the Mzithrin Pentarchy, the enemy state, the rival power that had fought the Empire of Arqual to one blood-soaked draw after another, for centuries. Dr. Chadfallow had always claimed that he’d placed Neda in the hands of a Mzithrini diplomat, to save her from becoming a slave or concubine of the invading Arqualis. It could have happened, Pazel thought: she might have taken on their customs, their beliefs. In five years she might have become almost anyone.
“What should we do?” he whispered.
“I brought you here that you might help me decide,” said Hercol. “They are Mzithrini, to be sure. Which means that they, like us, have somehow crossed the Ruling Sea. But they are not common sailors. Those tattoos declare holy orders. They are sfvantskors, warrior-priests. And if they choose to attack us, they will win.”
“Neda won’t attack me.”
“Pazel, if she has taken the Last Oath and become a true sfvantskor, she will do whatever her leader commands. In some parts of the Mzithrin the newly sworn are told to leap one by one into a covered pit. Most find the bottom filled with rose petals, but one lands on razor-sharp stakes. The rest honor his sacrifice with prayers, and taste his blood for discipline.”
“That’s horrible!”
“No worse than what a Turach endures. Those three, however, may have a special reason to detest us: the loss of their ship. The men were aboard the Jistrolloq when it drew alongside us in Simja. I dare say your sister was as well.”
“She spoke to me,” said Pazel suddenly. “A sfvantskor girl in a mask whispered to me in the shrine-she told me to turn away from evil, as if one could-Hercol, how can they be alive? We sank the Jistrolloq months ago, in the middle of the Ruling Sea.”
“Months,” said Hercol, “or two hundred years?”
Pazel froze, then lowered his face, grinding his forehead into the sand.
“If we decide to speak to them,” said Hercol, “let us take care not to speak of that. So far it has been a secret among the two of us, Thasha and Bolutu. Let it remain so, for now.”
“It’s not true, anyway,” said Pazel. “That part can’t be true.”
“Why not?” said Hercol.
“Because if two hundred years have passed, then the whole conspiracy’s failed. And the war must be long over, if it ever came to war.”
“Certainly,” said Hercol.
“And your Empress Maisa is dead, and everyone we cared about, everyone who knew our mucking names.”
“Catastrophes are only unthinkable until they occur. You Ormalis should know that.”
“I’ll tell you why, then,” said Pazel. “Because if it’s true then I really will go mad. Barking blary mad.”
Hercol’s hand slipped under his jaw. Gently, but with an iron strength, he lifted Pazel’s chin. His eyes were sharp and wary in the moonlight.
“Please,” he said, “don’t.”
The Mzithrinis could smell the rabbit crackling on the spit. It was all they could do not to pluck the carcass from the fire and devour it, raw though it surely was on the inside. They had come ashore ravenous, and found only crabs. They had lived for four days now on crabs-to be precise, on the legs and eyestalks of crabs: the bodies of the creatures had proven so toxic that their leader, Cayer Vispek, had nearly died, his throat swollen until he battled to breathe. When he recovered he cited the Old Faith proverb about the glutton who choked on the wishbone of a stolen goose, and the younger sfvantskor laughed.
