The Night of the Swarm

bile, no blood. What is it, Thasha? Who did this, my dearest darling girl?’

‘I can’t feel you,’ she said. ‘Felthrup, why can’t I feel you with my hands?’

Marila brought a moist cloth and Pazel drew it over her face. If only he would drop it, caress her with his hands alone. He was talking to the others: ‘. . just fine when I went topside. . weaker by the minute. . doesn’t know where she is.’

Thasha screamed. Some organ inside her had turned to glass, then shattered, exploded. Or else it was fire, or acid, or teeth.

‘She’s too cold!’

‘Her shirt’s blary dripping, mate.’

‘Get some dry clothes. Get a towel-’

Time blurred. People spoke and then disappeared. Hercol and Bolutu were on either side of her; Bolutu’s webbed fingers probed her stomach, her abdomen.

‘There is no hard mass, and no swelling. Thasha, did you eat something strange?’

‘Not me,’ she said. ‘It was still breathing. I couldn’t just eat it alive.’

‘Delirious,’ said Bolutu.

She could have told them that.

They were fighting panic. Thasha watched them tearing through books, fumbling pills, arguing, turning away when their eyes grew moist. The cold advanced into her chest. She saw Ramachni by her shoulder, felt his paw touch her cheek. Dimly, she was aware that he was shocked.

At a distance, in the shadows, an ixchel woman stood watching her. ‘Diadrelu?’ she said.

But no, Dri was dead. The woman had to be Ensyl, or Myett.

Pazel was looking at Ramachni with a rage she’d never known was in him. ‘I didn’t hear you say that. You didn’t just say that. Erithusme’s own Gods-damned spell?’

A blackness descended, and when it lifted there was daylight through the porthole, but the cold was even worse. Her friends were fighting. Pazel was kneeling by the bed. Thasha tried to reach for him but could barely lift her hand.

‘Then she is our enemy, and has betrayed us from the start,’ said Hercol.

‘No,’ said Ramachni.

‘Yes,’ said Pazel. ‘Credek, Ramachni, if the wine’s to blame, and she poisoned it-’

‘Then it needed to be poisoned.’

‘How do you mucking know?’ Neeps had joined the shouting match; that was bad. ‘You haven’t seen Erithusme in what, seventeen years! Pazel talked with her five weeks ago! People change.’

‘She did not change the wine of Agaroth from her hiding place in Thasha’s mind,’ said Ramachni. ‘That was done long ago, and for a good purpose, even if we cannot now guess what it was.’

Pazel was seething. ‘Erithusme told me to give Thasha the wine.’

‘As a last resort. And she warned you that the consequences would be dire.’

‘She hinted. Why did she hint? Why couldn’t she just say, “Give her the wine if the world’s ending. Marvel at my cleverness. Let Thasha save you one last time, and then watch her-” ’

‘Pazel, be quiet!’ Marila shouted.

Tears, and more darkness. This time it did not lift when Thasha opened her eyes. Her legs were useless, two frozen logs. She swung her eyes left and right. The porthole still glowed dimly. The opposite wall, behind Hercol and Mr Fiffengurt, was simply gone. Black shapes rose in the distance: barren trees. Above them, the birds, that endless flock racing east. Her friends’ voices faded. Neeps had pulled Pazel lower, wrapped his arms about his head. They were waiting, weren’t they? They had tried everything they knew.

‘Keep fighting, Thasha,’ Myett whispered in her ear. ‘Don’t go, don’t let it take you. I almost did. I was wrong.’

Now the bed lay in a forest. A terrible place: the forest she’d seen in blane-sleep. The trees with eyes, oily and cruel. The steam and whispers from holes in the earth, the cold that hurt her lungs. She could see her own breath, but not that of her friends. They were becoming shadows, and she was leaving them, leaving with her work undone.

‘The wine,’ said Myett. ‘Do you hear me, Thasha? The wine.’

Thasha wished she would be quiet. She knew it was the wine. But Myett was still there beside her pillow. Dimly, Thasha felt the touch of her hand.

‘Look at me.’

She looked. The ixchel woman beside her was not Myett but Diadrelu, their murdered friend. She was clearer than the others. Her face brightened when Thasha turned.

‘Mother Sky, I thought you’d never hear me! Thasha, the wine is the poison and the cure. You must drink it again, immediately. Where is it, girl? Where is the wine of Agaroth?’

‘Too late,’ whispered Thasha.

A voice laughed, high with delight. There he was, Arunis. Crouched on the limb of a tree, sharply visible like Diadrelu, and leering.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘far too late. Never mind the crawly, little whore: your battle is done. Agaroth surrounds you, and Death’s border is but a short walk from where you lie. But we must settle our accounts first.’

He sat back on the limb. Grinning, he opened his robe at the collar and showed Thasha his neck. A thin diagonal gash ran all the way across it. No, all the way through it. The gash was the one she herself had cut, with Ildraquin, when she beheaded him by the ruined tower.

‘I scarred you with a necklace, once,’ said Arunis. ‘You returned the favour with a sword. But it is my turn again, and three is the charm.’

Thasha tried to move, but only managed to roll her face skyward. They were not birds, those shapes overhead. They were the souls of the fallen, racing above this Border-Kingdom and into death’s own country. As every soul flew in time. As she would, at any moment: a little death among the millions, a leaf in a hurricane, a speck.

‘No!’

Diadrelu slapped her with the full force of her arm. ‘Thasha Isiq! Warrior! Raise yourself, raise yourself and call to your friends before they vanish! The wine, girl, the wine!’

Nothing she had ever attempted was half so difficult. Her lips were all but dead, her voice was a fingernail rasping on a door. No one turned; they were weeping. She tried again. They didn’t hear a thing.

But Arunis did, and the fact that she could manage even this much scared him, evidently. He leaped down from the tree and advanced — and Diadrelu whirled like a tiger to face him, drawing her ixchel sword.

‘Now we come to it! Can you hurl death-spells in Death’s antechamber, mage? Is your soul stronger than mine? Take her from me, then! Come, come and take her!’

With that Diadrelu leaped from the bed, and when her feet touched the forest floor she was suddenly the size of Arunis, raging and deadly. Thasha gasped — and in that other world, the shadow that was Ramachni heard her.

‘Silence, everyone!’ he roared. ‘Thasha, did you speak?’

Arunis began to circle the bed, hunched low, a shadow among the trees. Diadrelu matched him step for step, keeping herself between Thasha and the mage. She taunted him, whirling her sword.

‘You could not defeat them in life. You will never do so in death. You will not touch this girl.’

Thasha forced the last of her energy into her voice. She found it, wheezed a single, barely intelligible word. Again and again.

‘Wine!’ cried the shadow-Felthrup. ‘She is asking for the wine! Run, run and fetch it!’

A figure turned and vanished into the dark.

Suddenly Arunis dropped to his knees and plunged his arm into one of the steaming holes. A voice from underground gave a cry. Arunis jerked his arm free. In his hand was a war-axe, double-bladed and cruel, but a skeleton-arm came with it. The arm was moving, fighting him for the weapon. Arunis tore the arm away and flung it into the trees.

Then he charged, and the battle joined. It seemed that Diadrelu was right: Arunis could not attack with