The Night of the Swarm

I did, when the Great Ship lay smashed on the beach?’

Pazel thought about it. ‘No, I don’t.’

‘I drank the blood of the keel. They brought me to shore on a raft, and while the others were boarding I caught a strange, warm, resinous smell, and then I saw it dripping, dripping from a crack in the good ship’s spine, where it arched overhead. I licked the spot. It tasted like nothing I have ever experienced. And the next day the memories began.’

‘Memories?’

‘Of everything, my lad. I can summon the memories of everyone who made that voyage with us. The cook. The tarboys. The anchor-lifters. The ixchel. Erithusme’s ship had a soul, Pazel Pathkendle, but the difference is this: it was a composite soul. All of us together made up that soul, and now it speaks to me. And I must listen and remember. That is the least I can do.’

‘Felthrup?’

‘Yes, lad?’

‘You just used my last name. But I never told it to you. Did I?’

Felthrup nibbled his fritter, thinking. ‘No, it was Diadrelu who told me. Before you and I ever met.’

‘Felthrup!’

‘Yes, lad!’

‘You remember me! I mean, you just started to remember me. When I walked in here you didn’t know who I was!’

The rat looked at him blankly. Then he squealed so loudly that he stopped all conversation, and even the piano player. He leaped over the table into Pazel’s lap. He began to hop up and down.

‘I forgot you! I forgot you! And then I remembered, and forgot that I had forgotten!

Oh, Pazel Pazel Pazel-’

The lamentable truth is that he wet himself, and Pazel in the process. Pazel could not have cared less. He held the lame rat against his cheek and tried not to cry. Nearly four years had passed since anyone had looked at him with recognition.

Of course Felthrup at once shared all he knew of their friends. Bolutu had remained in Simja, and with the King’s blessing — and the help of one particularly talented dog — opened the Royal Inter-Species Institute. ‘He sent a letter not two months ago. They’ve purchased a villa with extensive grounds. The humans who come there will learn from woken animals, and vice versa, and both will take their understanding out into the world. I dare say the work is needed. Many a dog, horse, hare and raven still lives in fear of opening their mouths.’

‘But you’re not afraid. You’re right here in the middle of the pub, playing chess.’

‘That’s because he’s Felthrup Stargraven,’ boomed Fiffengurt suddenly. ‘Where’ve you been the last few years, lad? This rat’s a hero of Alifros. He’s battled sorcerers and pudgy devils, and an ugly, nasty daddy-rat, GRAAAA-’

He dropped to all fours and did an impression of Master Mugstur, to the other patrons’ delight.

‘Never mind him,’ said Felthrup. ‘I have news of your sister.’

Neda! Tell me, for Rin’s sake!’

‘She and Hercol are together, and deeply in love. They would They are Empress Maisa’s special envoys to the Mzithrin, and have done a great deal to ensure that the peace will never again be broken, so long as Maisa is a power in this world.’

‘They’re married, are they?’

‘Alas, no,’ said Felthrup. ‘In his last letter, Hercol said he dared not ask your sister for her hand, ‘while so many enemies remain to contend with, and so much evil flourishes in the dark.’ I fear for them, Pazel. I am very much afraid they will undertake a mission into the heart of Gurishal, to confront the Shaggat Malabron, and Sandor Ott. Both of them feel bound to the task.

‘But enough! It is late. You must stay with us tonight, my boy. And change those smelly breeches, for shame!’

Felthrup and Fiffengurt shared rooms above the tavern. Pazel set the rat on his shoulder, passed through the kitchen and up a darkened stair. The rooms, when they entered, surprised him pleasantly. They were spacious and fine.

‘We do not go hungry,’ admitted Felthrup. ‘Sergeant Haddismal divided up the Chathrand treasure among all the survivors, and Admiral Isiq gave us more ere we separated. Fiffengurt handed his share over to Miss Annabel, saying that he had gone to sea for the sake of her family’s debts, and wouldn’t neglect them now. Anni used it to purchase this house, and from that day she has considered Fiffengurt a business partner. Now change. You’ll find clean things in that dresser, beneath the clock.’

Pazel smiled as he stepped into Fiffengurt’s pants: the wiry sailor had grown rather stout. Then he froze. The clock on the dresser was unmistakable. It was Thasha’s, the beautiful mariner’s clock, with its face shaped like a gibbous, mother-of-pearl moon.

‘Ah yes,’ said Felthrup. ‘Ramachni left that in our keeping. He has long since departed for his own world. And he says that I must join him there, one day.’

‘What? You? Why you, Felthrup?’

Pazel, the Waking Spell has been the cruelest sort of blessing. I am a rat, in a rat’s frail form. I have plans and hopes that far exceed my body’s limitations, and its life span. When I depart down the tunnel in that clock, Ramachni tells me that I will find myself in another body, human or dlomic or some other long-lived race, on the other side. And he will present me to a certain learned academy, and even vouch for my studious nature.’

‘Felthrup! That’s wonderful! But. . how long do you have?’

‘Before I leave? This body’s aches will tell me that. A few years, I hope. But there is something more astonishing, my boy. That other world, Ramachni’s? It is our future. Or rather, a future that might be ours.’

‘Might be.’ Pazel rested a hand on the clock, feeling sudden loneliness. ‘You mean the way the Chathrand might have ended up on that empty island, where Lord Talag hid his clan?’

‘Correct,’ said Felthrup. ‘Ramachni’s Alifros is linked to our own by a thin footpath, winding through endless mountain-chains of years. But in the actual walking we find that the path divides almost endlessly. Some paths lead down into fertile valleys, others to ice and fear. There is no telling, deep in the mountains, whether you have strayed or not.’

Pazel stayed on in Ballytween, and thanked the Gods for Felthrup Stargraven. He took a room in the port district with a view of the sea. He tutored children in many languages, and became a celebrity at Annabel’s. On free days he went with Felthrup to the city archives, and learned many things about the world they had saved.

Fiffengurt still did not know him, and when Coote and Fegin paid their old captain a visit they did not know him either. Nor did the half dozen other survivors of the Chathrand who passed through Ballytween that year. If the Master-Word’s effects were waning, they were taking their time.

He was twenty-one and considered handsome. The serving-girls fought bitterly over the right to bring him beer. Some of them were beautiful, many of them were kind. Now and then he found he could kiss them, or even go through the motions of love. But he could not court them seriously. The kindest and the loveliest he avoided: they stirred a pain in him he could not bear.

His drinking grew worse. A morning came when he woke up knowing that he had spent the whole night at Annabel’s, buying rounds for the house, switching languages as often as he switched tables, slapping the backs of strangers, avoiding Felthrup’s worried eye. He had an idea that several tarboys from the Chathrand had shown up that night, some of them with sweethearts, and it frightened him to realise that he might just as easily have imagined them in his stupor. He threw up into a basin. He lay back thinking of death.

Then his hand went to his collarbone. There was a warmth there that had nothing to do with alcohol. He had almost forgotten the sensation, golden sunlight in his veins, a thing so beautiful that no one who felt it should ever speak of sorrow again.

Land-boy, land-boy, can you still hear me? Do you think I have forgotten you?

It was dawn. He pulled on his shoes and stumbled out through the dirty city and along the coast road until he