The Night of the Swarm

like faces moving deep underwater. I can see them, but they’re dark and blurry. I only know exactly what will happen when they surface. And they only surface at the bitter end, just before I speak. This last one, now: sometimes I think I could direct it at a single person, but other times I think it might change the whole world. Ibjen thought I should never use it at all. What if I start a blindness plague?’

‘I think Ibjen was wrong, this time,’ said Thasha.

‘So do I,’ said Neeps. ‘The first two words shook you up, I know that. But in the end they didn’t change anything beyond the ship, did they?’

Pazel hesitated. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘But this wall inside you already exists, Thasha. If you forget about Erithusme, you might not see any reason to tear it down.’

‘I don’t know that I’d even be able to find it, without her voice calling to me from the other side,’ said Thasha. ‘And not being able to find it, to feel it: that would be just as bad-’

‘As not being able to tear it down,’ said Pazel.

Thasha nodded, and the conversation had died. She could certainly feel the wall today, however. It was both real and unreal, a solid obstruction and the hazy symbol of her failure. Almost nightly she stood before it, the same stone wall she had dreamed of on their last night in Ularamyth. But now the cracks were closing, not widening; and the voice from the other side was growing faint. Rather than crumbling, the wall was growing stronger, more determined to stand.

Failure. Turn your mind in that direction and you’d find madness waiting, a vulture in a tree. Failure was darkness, death, a world devoured by the Swarm. Lifeless seas, barren hills, dead forests crumbling year by year into dust. No colours but the colours of stone. No spring renewal. No animals. No children.

She dreamed of children, now and then. She could close her eyes and almost see them: those angelic phantoms, impish and laughing, clumsy and perfect, blends of Pazel’s features and her own. She wanted, with brute selfishness, to live on through them. Not her cheekbones or her eyes or nose but her cherished memories, the sweet story of the alliances they’d made, the trust they’d earned and given, the terrors that had proved less potent than love.

No children would learn any of that. No tales would be shared. No history could be written of a world that had died.

As she stared, helpless and angry, one of the seabirds lifted above the rest. It was making for the open water. Thasha stood up, frowning. The bird was flying very straight and swift — not directly towards them, but just a bit north.

An intercept course.

Thasha’s heart was pounding. She walked back to the others and interrupted their talk. ‘You can put down that platter, now,’ she said.

The others just stared at her. Thasha couldn’t help it, she laughed aloud. Then she turned and shouted a name into the wind, and the moon falcon answered with a shrill, savage cry.

Niriviel’s report confirmed the earlier signals. The bay’s entrance was a deathtrap: reefs to the north, flying boulders from the south. ‘I can come and go as I please,’ he said, ‘but I am the only one.’ And yet the travellers had no choice but to seek entrance somewhere. For Niriviel had also warned them that the Chathrand’s crew was nearing breaking point.

‘Forty-three have succumbed to the plague. Forty-three locked in cages, reduced to mindless beasts. And Plapps and Burnscovers kill each other in the shadows, and the deathsmokers show their faces by daylight, and there is only the one fool doctor to treat them all. The traitor Fiffengurt has been made captain, and Sergeant Haddismal permits this, and submits to his will. Or pretends to. But this is only because there is no other leader the sailors trust. Not since Captain Rose was killed.’

‘By a feral madwoman,’ added Hercol, ‘who appears out of nowhere, sneaks by night into his cabin, kills Rose and his steward, and succumbs instantly to the mind-plague. Quite a tale, is it not? My sword Ildraquin has led me to corpses before, but never to so mysterious a death.’

‘I tell you only what others claim,’ said the bird. ‘Lady Oggosk says the woman is innocent, but she was found alone with the corpses, her mouth and hands dripping blood.’

‘What does your master say?’ asked Thasha.

‘Ask him yourself, but do not expect an answer. I cannot even-’ Niriviel stopped, as though aghast at his own words.

‘Go on,’ said Ramachni.

The falcon looked at him with one eye and then the other. ‘We are thousands of miles from Emperor Magad,’ he said at last. ‘Arqual is mighty, but is it mightier than Bali Adro? Should it try to be, or will it only destroy itself, as Bali Adro has done? Master Ott says that Arqual will one day rule the world, that these corrupt lands of the South will implode, and we alone shall be left standing, the inheritors of all power. But Master Ott told me to tear Lord Talag from the sky.’

The bird flapped and fidgeted on the rail. ‘I could have killed him. The crawly flies so slowly on his flimsy wings. But I have heard Talag myself begging the island crawlies to let the Chathrand go. What sense did it make to kill him? Was it merely because he embarrassed Master Ott? But Master Ott is not the Emperor, though he has been more than Emperor to me. I did not kill Talag. I let him go to the island, and Master Ott must know by now. Master Ott knows that I lied!’

Suddenly the bird screeched with anguish. ‘Where has he gone, where has he gone? No one aboard will tell me. Has he died, or does he just refuse my service? How could he, when he says he trusts me like his own eyes? He said that, and more. He said I was the only thing of perfection that he has ever made.’

‘Sandor Ott did not make you, Niriviel,’ said Ramachni. ‘I hope a day will come when you see that you are your own author, and that your tale may go on without him.’

‘We are as good as brothers, falcon,’ said Hercol. ‘Your master said the same to me once, before sending me out to kill.’

‘We are not brothers,’ said the bird. ‘I love my master and will fight for the Ametrine rone. You are a traitor. You failed him, you lied-’ The falcon broke off, confused. ‘All the same we must be. . sensible. We are woken creatures after all.’

‘Sensible is quite good enough for today,’ said Ramachni. ‘Come, let us make a plan.’

Two bells: it was the hour before dawn. In the bay high tide was approaching, and the waters of the inlet were slowing almost to a standstill. Both moons had set, and while the Red Storm still pulsed and flickered, its light did not penetrate the bay. The Chathrand, trying to conserve lamp oil (along with everything else) stood in darkness. It was the twelfth night of the stand-off, and it would prove to be the last.

Atop the cliffs, the ixchel of Stath Balfyr kept up their watch, looking for the selk ship that had sailed with obvious intent to the mouth of their island, and been warned away by the humans. The Promise had extinguished her running lights, but if she tried to enter the bay they would know it: their ixchel eyes could spot such a large ship even by starlight, even by the dimmest glow cast by the Red Storm, if that ship passed at their feet.

But they could not see the lifeboat.

Without sail or mast it went gliding, pulled by twenty dlomic swimmers who kept all but their heads submerged, and only raised the latter to gulp a little air at need. Over the submerged reefs they passed, among the dark schools of fish, the black shadows of larger creatures, guiding the boat through the coral maze. Only in the deepest troughs of the waves did the boat strike the coral, with a dull thump that carried a little distance, but not far enough.

In the boat, Thasha crouched between Ramachni and Hercol. Neeps and Pazel were behind them, and last of all came Bolutu, who had insisted. ‘You heard Niriviel,’ he’d told them. ‘Ignus Chadfallow is being run off his feet. I may be an animal doctor, but I’m a blary good one. And the sooner I get aboard, the sooner I can help.’

He and Ramachni were the only ones Hercol had not smeared with soot. The boat too he had blackened, right down to the waterline. That line would have been higher but for the last item in the boat: the Nilstone, still safe within Big Skip’s protective shells of glass and steel. Today the Stone felt heavier than lead. Wherever they moved it became the low spot in the boat.

The half-mile inlet felt excruciatingly long. Some reefs were shaped like walls, others like rocky hilltops. The dlomu had to Rounder among them, feeling their way in the darkness, keeping the boat from any knobs or protrusions of coral, and never turning in the direction of the cliffs.