The Night of the Swarm

‘Nor a selk,’ said Kirishgan, ‘but rocks can sink swimmers as well as boats, and the north beach too may be guarded. And once we board the Chathrand, how do we help her escape?’

The others glanced furtively at Ramachni, and the mage saw their glances and sighed. ‘My powers will not be enough to save the ship. One or two boulders I might turn aside, but not a hail of them. And I cannot lift the Great Ship into the air — not even my mistress in her prime could manage such a feat, save with the power of the Nilstone.’

‘I could protect them, maybe,’ said Thasha.

The others looked at her sharply. ‘That is yet to be proven,’ said Hercol, ‘and besides, you are not aboard.’

‘I can swim that far.’

‘Don’t be daft, Thasha,’ muttered Pazel.

‘I’m not,’ said Thasha calmly. ‘This isn’t like that night at the Sandwall. There’s something waiting for me on the Chathrand. Something Erithusme knew could help us.’

Hercol and Pazel turned away, and Ramachni’s eyes told her nothing. Thasha knew they would have to listen sooner or later. For months they had all been sheltering her, trying to shield her from outward danger, even as she struggled to set Erithusme free. It was hard on Pazel, and all her friends. They were carrying her like a vase through the hailstorm; she was trying to shatter on the floor.

Then, two days ago, she had overheard Pazel and Neeps whispering about some ‘other way’. She’d confronted them immediately. At last Pazel had yielded, and shared the mage’s words:

Take Thasha to the berth deck, to the place where you used to sleep. When she is standing there she will know what to do.

Some hidden power, available to her alone. Thasha felt like smacking the tarboys for keeping quiet so long; but it was love, after all, that had sealed their tongues. Love, and fear. ‘Erithusme made it sound mucking deadly, Thasha,’ Pazel had told her. ‘She called it a last resort.’

Of course, that warning had not dissuaded her: it was high time for last resorts. Any doubt of that had vanished yesterday, when they woke to find themselves looking at the Swarm.

You could spend a lifetime struggling to forget the sight. A black mass the size of a township, high in the clouds, possessed of will and purpose. It appeared too solid to be airborne, and it squirmed, like a muscle or a clot of worms. It had been moving along the edge of the Red Storm, pausing, charging, doubling back again, an animal prowling a fence. Looking for a gap, said Ramachni. Hungering for death, for the greatest glut of death anywhere in Alifros. Hungering for the war in the North.

Is my father in the middle of that war?

Thasha left the others arguing by the mast. The Swarm had vanished eastwards yesterday, leaving a changed Promise in its wake: the humans and dlomu shocked and fumbling for words, the selk grim and philosophical. They had caught no sight of it today, but Thasha could still see the Red Storm, many miles to the north, a scarlet ribbon between sea and sky.

Time barrier, she thought. We fight and fight on this side, but for what? A home we may not recognize when we get there. A future Arqual that’s forgotten us, or a dead one. Unless we too find a gap.

Walking to portside, she leaned on the rail and stared at the wooded island. Seabirds gyred above the north shore; waves shattered on the rocks. She willed the place to open to them, somehow, to let them take their ship and their people and be on their way.

You’ve won, Talag. You let your sister die and your only child go mad, but you’ve won. Your people are home. Don’t be so proud that you end up killing them, killing all the world.

But her next thought was like a blow to the face: Talag’s not the problem, girl. You are.

All the self-loathing that had assaulted her in the Infernal Forest, and at the Demon’s Court in Ularamyth, welled to the surface once more. She was failing them, and her failure was bringing the house down upon their heads. They could not wait. Macadra was drawing closer; the Red Storm was weakening. Any day, any hour, the Swarm might slip through into the North. They could not wait, and yet they waited. For her.

All that month on the Promise, her friends had tried to help her. Oh, the things they’d tried! Ramachni, exhausted as he was, had undertaken a journey into her sleeping mind. It was a complex spell that had taken him days to prepare, but the journey itself had lasted only a single night. He had reached the wall, examined it — and declared on waking that it had nothing to do with Arunis.

‘But it has everything to do with Thasha’s will to live,’ he had continued. ‘It is built of the same stuff as the outer, permanent walls of her mind, and its foundation. For good or ill, Thasha, the creator of that wall is you.’

His words made her think again of what she had felt in the Demon’s Court. That Erithusme would return if she perished, and only then. She was ready to die. A part of her knew quite well that she had the courage. But Ramachni had sensed the direction of her thoughts, and intervened.

‘Listen well to me, Thasha: your death is not the solution, on that point Erithusme gave her word.’ Pazel went even further, claiming that the mage had told him that Thasha’s death would mean Erithusme’s as well. But the feeling persisted: only her death could break down the wall.

Nolcindar had also tried to help. She had sat with Thasha across the length of three cold, clear nights when the seas were calm. It had been a kind of selk meditation, Thasha supposed, but it had also felt like enchantment, for she had found herself transported to distant times and places in Alifros, walking green paths under ancient trees, or through deep caves where veins of crystal blazed in the lamplight, or down the avenues of cities that had fallen centuries ago to drought or pestilence or war. Sometimes Nolcindar was there at her side; often she was not. Alone or accompanied, Thasha had felt each of the places tug powerfully at her heart. When it was over Nolcindar said that she had merely been telling stories of certain lands Erithusme was known to have travelled, in hopes of stirring memories that would open a crack in the wall. The memories had been stirred, maybe; but only distantly, and the wall remained sound.

Then it had been Hercol’s turn. His efforts harkened back to their Thojmele training, which placed clarity of mind and strength of purpose above all virtues. Late one night he took Thasha to a lower deck of the Promise and showed her a doorway blocked with sandbags. They were tightly fitted, reaching all the way to the top of the door frame. ‘Sit alone beside this barrier,’ he said, ‘until it becomes the wall within your mind. Then pass through. Fear nothing, hope for nothing; do not dwell in emotion. This is a challenge, but not a judgement. If it is in you to do this, you will.’

Then he had taken the light away, and Thasha had put her hands on the black sandbags and calmed herself in the Thojmele manner. For two hours she had not moved or spoken. Then Thasha stood, limbered her body, tightened her boots. She planted her shoulder against the wall of sandbags and pushed, and felt a shout of inner despair that made a mockery of her training. The bags might as well have been stone. She took a deep breath, steadying herself, reciting the codes Hercol had taught her across the years. The task demanded of the body is welded to the task of the mind. Neither is a true accomplishment without the other. When you have mastered the Thojmel you will perceive but a single task, and know when you may achieve it, and when to forbear.

Her training promised clarity, not success. It became very clear that she would not be passing through the door. When Hercol returned he showed her the wetted boards they had stacked between the sandbags. The wood had expanded with the moisture, creating a wall so tight they could only dismantle it by slitting the bags and letting the sand spill out. ‘I made sure you had no knife,’ he said. ‘You were not to pass through without the mage’s help.’ For that, after all, was the whole point.

The tarboys had suggested no experiments, but they had helped more than anyone, simply by being near her, breaking her morbid silences, helping her think. Pazel still had a Master-Word: the word that would ‘blind to give new sight’. For over a year he had known it, carried it about like an unexploded bomb, and he still didn’t know what it would do.

‘What if it doesn’t cause real blindness?’ Neeps had asked him. ‘What if that just means forgetfulness or ignorance about some specific thing? Maybe Thasha needs to forget about Erithusme altogether, before setting her free.’

Pazel looked at him thoughtfully. ‘It could work that way. But I’ve no way to know. The Master-Words, they’re