The Night of the Swarm

‘You are a demon,’ said Felthrup.

‘And what is a demon, pray?’

Felthrup said nothing. More than ever he wished to run, to leap out among the friendly chickens and ducks and wattle-swans, to slam the Green Door and never look for it again. The creature smiled. ‘Come here, and I shall tell you how you will die.’

‘No thank you,’ said Felthrup.

‘Your ship may well be sunk here at Stath Balfyr, and all of you drowned or murdered. If that does not come to pass you must either sail south into the death-throes of Bali Adro and the clutches of the White Raven, whom you call Macadra. Or you must continue north into the Red Storm, and be hurled into the future.’

‘But the storm is weak,’ said Felthrup.

‘Oh, very weak, compared to the maelstrom it was,’ said the creature. ‘But you are forgetting something far more powerful. You are forgetting the Swarm of Night. I cannot forget it, however. I was here when last it burst into Alifros. I saw it, fled from it, barely outraced it with my lungs bursting and my wings so strained I feared they would be torn from my back. That was at the height of a war more terrible than you can imagine, and the Swarm had grown monstrous, bloated with death. Today it is still an infant, no larger than the Chathrand. If you had lingered in the open sea another day or two you would have seen it.’

‘Again?’

‘It is prowling along the edge of the Red Storm,’ said the creature.

‘There is more killing in the Northern world than the Southern, currently, and like a moth the Swarm flies to the brightest candle. But it cannot yet cross the Storm without great harm to itself. And so it prowls, impatient, waiting for a gap to open. When that happens it will speed to the battlefields of the North, and feed, and grow enormous, blotting out the sun, and plunging the world beneath it into a perpetual, starless night. There will be no stopping it then.’

‘There is no stopping it at all, unless we get rid of the Nilstone!’ wailed Felthrup, throwing himself on the ground. His fear of the creature was subsiding as he thought of the greater doom facing them all. ‘We do not even have the Stone, and if we did we should not know what to do with it, and Macadra is using all that remains of her Empire’s might to find it. She may already have found it. She may have killed Lady Thasha and Pazel and all my friends! What do you say to that, you lying thing? What hope can you possibly give me?’

‘The only worthwhile kind,’ said the creature. ‘The kind that comes with knowledge. And here is some knowledge I will give you for nothing, as a token of my good faith. Macadra does not have the Stone. Your beloved Erithusme has it — or someone she travels with.’

‘My Erithusme?’

‘You call her Thasha Isiq.’

Felthrup sat up slowly, blinking. ‘Thasha is a girl of seventeen years.’

‘She is a mage of twenty centuries. The girl is a mere facade, like the one I showed you. But it is true that she has lost her powers. Otherwise she surely would have used the Nilstone, while she and it were still aboard.’

‘How is it you know of Thasha’s deeds? How do you know my name, and which island we have reached, and so much else?’

The creature gazed at him for a moment. Then he looked up, sweeping his golden eyes across the ceiling, and at the same time spreading his corpulent arms. The lamp darkened, but the walls grew bright — and then, with a brief shimmer, they became glass. Felthrup crouched in fear and astonishment: the floor beneath him was transparent, and the walls of the chamber, and all the walls beyond as well. The Chathrand surrounded them, but it was a Chathrand of flawless crystal. He could see through deck after deck, right up to the topdeck and the glass spider-webs of the rigging, the gleaming spires of the masts. He could look down all the way to the hold, and gaze through the crystal cargo and ballast into the waters of the bay. Only the people remained unchanged. He could see them in their hundreds, figures displayed in a jeweller’s shop: crossing invisible floors, climbing transparent ladder-ways, lifting glass spoons to their mouths in the dining hall.

The creature lowered his hands. The vision was gone. ‘You are correct, Felthrup Stargraven. I am a demon, though maukslar is a fairer term. And although I am a prisoner here, I am not helpless. Indeed I have powers that could be of great use to you.’

‘I know what comes of that sort of help,’ said Felthrup.

‘No, you know only what comes of helping sorcerers, though of course you never meant to help Arunis. But consider what will come of refusing help, when it is offered: of standing on purity to the bitterest, bleak end. Not only death. Not only a lost world — and what a jewel is Alifros yet, despite the wounds she has suffered — not just these, I say, but the knowledge that you might have acted, but chose fear instead.’

‘Was it Erithusme who imprisoned you?’ asked Felthrup.

The demon held very still. ‘Some things you will not learn for nothing,’ he said.

‘Can you strike others from that cell? If I turned to go, could you stop me?’

No answer. The creature was no longer smiling, but his eyes still twinkled gold.

‘If I were to bring you an egg from the chicken coop and roll it through the bars, could you make it float in the air?’

‘I could make it float, or hatch, or turn to silver, or glow like the sun. But none of those would help you.’

‘How would you help us, then?’

‘Free me from this cage, and I will tell you where the Nilstone must be taken, if you would expel it from Alifros.’

‘But we do not have the Stone. Can you bring it to us across the seas?’

‘Certainly I could. Let me out and I will fetch it.’

‘Along with all our friends?’

The demon laughed. ‘What do you imagine, rat? That I will fly here all the way from the Efaroc Peninsula with that party dangling beneath me in a blanket? No, you must finish the task without them. Hold them in your memory, but go on while you still may.’

‘So that is your counsel,’ said Felthrup. ‘To trust you, and abandon my friends.’

The demon shook his head. ‘You abandoned them when you sailed from Masalym,’ it said. ‘My counsel is that you face the truth. You are outmatched. Upon this ship you are a tiny minority, protected from execution by the whim of that lunatic Rose. You need new allies, for the old will not be returning.’

‘Liar!’ cried the rat. ‘You tell me Thasha lives, that they have recovered the Stone from Arunis, and that after this miracle, a smaller one cannot be achieved? I will not abandon them! I will not set you free to steal it from them! I have sound reason to doubt you and none at all to give you my trust! I do not even know your name!’

Resolved this time, he raced away down the passage. He could almost feel the glittering eyes upon the back of his head. At the threshold he nudged the Green Door open and smelled the blessed, natural stink from the coops. Then the demon shouted behind him:

‘Tulor.’

Felthrup looked back once more. ‘Tulor? Your name is Tulor?’

‘Another gift,’ shouted the demon, ‘and my last, to one who gives nothing in return. Go, and think of your choices — but do not think too long. Alifros is nothing to me. But for the likes of you it is everything. Where will you run on the night of the Swarm, Felthrup? Where do you think you can hide?’

20

Nipping the Tiger

On 11 Halar 942, as the Chathrand crept north between scattered islets, and Pazel