The Night of the Swarm

Neda spoke with bitter sarcasm. Years ago their mother had changed them both with a great, flawed spell: the only one she had ever cast, to Pazel’s knowledge at least. It had nearly killed them, and had plagued them with side effects that persisted to this day. But it had also made Pazel a language savant, and given Neda a memory that appeared to have no bounds.

Pazel doubted that Neda could control her Gift any better than he could his own. But he was certain she recalled that night when they were at last reunited, and the violence that had erupted minutes later.

‘Did you expect my master to kill you?’ she asked suddenly.

‘I don’t know,’ said Pazel. ‘Yes, I suppose.’

‘Because we’re monsters?’

‘Oh, Neda-’

‘Heartless creatures with their barbaric language, barbaric ways. Your Arquali friends will tell you all about it.’

‘Next you’ll be calling me Arquali again,’ said Pazel.

To his surprise, Neda did not rise to the bait. She looked furtively at Thasha, as though ashamed of herself. ‘I have said too much already,’ she said. ‘We of the Faith do not speak against our betters, and this morning I swore kinship with her.’

‘That doesn’t make Thasha your better, does it?’

His question only made things worse. Neda flushed crimson. ‘I could not have struck that blow,’ she said.

Pazel’s anger vanished; he found himself wishing he could take her hand. They had left home barely six years ago, but at times it felt like sixty. Neda had gone to the Mzithrin Empire and become a warrior-priest: she was Neda Pathkendle no longer; they called her Neda Ygrael, Neda Phoenix-Flame. But Pazel had been captured by men of Arqual, the other great empire of the North, and the Mzithrin’s enemy. It was Arqual that had invaded their home country, broken up what remained of their family. Arqual that had made him a tarboy, the lowest kind of shipboard servant. Arqual that had sent the soldiers who dragged Neda, screaming, into a barn.

Becoming a tarboy had been merely the best of the awful choices before him. It was not clear whether Neda understood that choice, or could forgive it. But something had changed in the last few days. Her glances, even the sharpest ones, had a little less of the sfvantskor in them, and a little more the elder sister.

‘When do we march, Hercol?’ asked Neeps abruptly. ‘Tell me it won’t be sooner than tomorrow.’

‘When’s just one of the questions,’ added Big Skip Sunderling, the blacksmith’s mate from the Chathrand. ‘I’m more worried about how. Some of us ain’t fit to march.’

‘We will do as Ramachni commands,’ said Hercol. ‘You have followed me thus far, but make no mistake: he is our leader now.’

‘I would be a poor leader if I drove you on without rest,’ said Ramachni. ‘We need food as well, and Bolutu and I must do what we can for the wounded. And for all of us there remains one grim task before we depart.’

‘Do not speak of it just yet, pray,’ said a high, clear voice.

It was Ensyl, with Myett close behind her, scrambling down the broken staircase. At eight inches, neither ixchel woman stood as tall as a single step, but they descended with catlike grace, copper skin bright in the sun, eyes of the same colour gleaming like coals. Each carried a bulging sack, fashioned from bits of cloth, over her shoulder.

‘We have ventured high up the wall in search of breakfast,’ said Ensyl, lowering her burden with care. ‘The wind is ferocious above, though you cannot feel it here. But it was worth the struggle: these dainties, at least, did not come from the forest.’

The humans sighed: within the sacks lay twenty or thirty eggs. They were of several sizes and colours; the most striking were perfectly round and gleamed like polished turquoise.

‘There are strange birds aloft,’ said Myett. ‘Some have claws halfway down their wings, and hang by these from the rock face. Others are so small that at first we took them for insects. Atop the spire there are nests the size of lifeboats, made of moss and branches. We did not see the birds that built them.’

She looked sourly at the faces above her. ‘You giants won’t be happy until you boil these eggs into hard rubber, of course-’

Big Skip seized an egg. Tilting his head backwards, he cracked the shell against his lower teeth, emptied yolk and white into his mouth, and savoured both in silence a moment. Then he swallowed. A shiver passed through his big frame.

‘Tree of Heaven, that’s good,’ he said.

The remaining humans dived on the eggs. Pazel gulped his down in one swallow; Thasha licked the inside of her shell like a cat cleaning a dish. Ensyl grinned; Myett pressed her lips tightly shut.

Bolutu did not partake, however. Lunja took an egg and held it up before her eyes, as though considering. ‘No more,’ she said at last, returning it. ‘We have swallowed enough little suns, who served in the armies of the Platazcra.’

‘Little suns?’ said Pazel.

‘For our people,’ said Bolutu, ‘to eat an egg is an act of great pride — unhealthy pride, my father used to tell me.’

‘In Bali Adro today, only soldiers and royals may eats eggs,’ said Lunja. ‘We turn it into another bit of flattery for the Empire. “The sun itself we shall devour, in time.” If I were still in Masalym, I should have to eat this egg, and say those fatuous words, or be accused of disloyalty.’

‘That’s a blary shame,’ said Mandric, licking his fingers.

Ramachni neither ate nor spoke. His watchfulness soon gave the others to realise that the ‘grim task’ would not long be put off. They finished quickly, leaving a few eggs for later, and turned their attention to the mage.

‘Hercol,’ he said, ‘is the Nilstone safe?’

In answer the swordsman pointed gravely at a small mound of rocks, carefully arranged beside the tower wall. Through the spaces between the rocks Pazel could see the Nilstone’s inverse glow, its blacker-than-all- blackness, and felt a touch of that deep, flesh-chilling aversion the relic always produced in him.

‘We have one sturdy sack in which to bear it,’ said Hercol, ‘but I will wrap the Stone first in whatever spare cloth we can find. No one will die of an accidental touch.’

Ramachni nodded. ‘We will not leave this place before tomorrow,’ he said, ‘and I will confess to you that I am not sure how the deed is to be done. Walking would be terribly dangerous: there are few ways out of the crater at all, and most of the openings that do exist are traps, designed to lure prey down to the forest floor and keep them there. I had hoped that the river could carry us to freedom, for it does flow out of the forest at some point. But the river has dangers of its own, and it winds like a snake — and besides, we have no raft. The wood of the great trees is so dense that it sinks like stone.’

‘There are young pines by the forest’s edge,’ said Cayer Vispek, gesturing, ‘but they are few and small.’

‘We have a final problem, alas,’ said Ramachni. ‘The fireflies cannot go with us.’

Cries of dismay. ‘You can’t mean it!’ said Big Skip. ‘Go blind again into that mucking forest?’

‘I did not say blind,’ said Ramachni, ‘only without the fireflies. They are fragile creatures, and I can ask little more of them.’

‘Ramachni,’ said Bolutu, ‘can you induce the nuhzat?’

Lunja shot him an appalled glance. Pazel too was startled: the nuhzat was the ecstatic dream-state of the dlomic people, and when it struck they exhibited all sorts of odd behaviours and abilities. But it had become extremely rare — so rare indeed that most dlomu were afraid of it.

‘I have done so,’ said Ramachni, ‘in the distant past.’

‘Madness,’ said Lunja.

‘Or salvation,’ said Bolutu. ‘Sergeant Lunja, we were both in nuhzat in the Infernal Forest. I heard your singing, and I saw your eyes: black as midnight they were. When the torch went out, I found that the nuhzat had given me a kind of inverse sight. It was frightful and bewildering, but I could make out the shapes of trees, mushrooms, people. As a last resort we might link the party together with rope, and you and I could lead them.’

‘Only if the nuhzat gave you that exact gift again,’ said Ramachni, ‘and that no one