The Night of the Swarm

The mist had disappeared. Pazel saw they had carried him right out of the canyon, up some narrow crevasse. He was stiff and cold, but immensely relieved. Everyone had survived, and who had come to their aid but the selk. The selk! Pazel had reason to think that they were both wise and good: certainly Kirishgan, the selk friend he had made in Vasparhaven, had treated him with kindness. Theirs was an ancient people, Kirishgan had claimed: nomads, wanderers, philosophers of a sort. And they had suffered terribly in Bali Adro, whose maddened warlords had blamed them for the decay of their enchanted Plazic weaponry, and tried to exterminate the race. They had come harrowingly close to success.

Where had these selk come from? Were they the ‘hope’ of which Kirishgan had written, in his cryptic message? He had been strangely elusive on certain questions, saying that there were subjects he was forbidden to discuss. Still, Pazel found it hard to imagine that Kirishgan’s people could mean them anything but good.

Pazel’s head began to clear. He remembered selk hands raising him from the river’s depths. He’d seen Thasha vanishing below, lost his head, tried to shout, and nearly swallowed the hrathmog’s bloody ear.

He touched his jaw, found it tender and swollen. I tore off its ear with my teeth. Like an animal. And he wondered if the scent of lemons was in his sweat.

What had happened next was a blur in his memory, though he recalled a fist thumping his back, and crawling from the river onto a warm, flat rock — and Ensyl appearing from somewhere, pulling his eyelid open with her hands, sighing with relief when he managed to focus.

There came a sudden pop, and his hearing returned. He swallowed: his ears hurt, but the ringing noise was gone. And at the same moment Pazel’s Gift surged to life. The selk were conversing quietly, and their tongue had a soft, swift music like rain on leaves. Sabdel, he thought. Their native tongue. Pazel had never heard the language before, but his Gift pounced, and in a heartbeat it was his.

‘They really are human beings,’ said the one who carried him. ‘Surely that proves they came out of the River? What else could they be but castaways?’

‘With two dlomu for travelling companions?’ said the other. ‘And an ixchel woman, and a mink?’

‘All very strange,’ agreed the selk bearing Pazel. ‘Their wounds are recent, also, and not the work of hrathmogs. And this boy has a spell under his tongue.’

‘The girl has another sort of wound, Nolcindar. Could you feel it? A fracture, a broken soul.’

‘I did not touch her,’ said the first selk. ‘But the smallest — he is far along with the mind-plague. Poor boy! I wonder if he knows.’

‘I wonder if the others have it. And what about that bundle, that the tall one feared so much to lose? No, they are not simple castaways. Something about them troubles me.’

Pazel coughed. The selk looked back over her shoulder. Switching to Imperial Common, she said, ‘How is it with you, friend human?’

‘I’m just fine,’ said Pazel. ‘I can walk.’

The selk lowered him gently to his feet. ‘Walk this last stretch, then,’ she said, ‘but tell my brothers and sisters how Nolcindar carried you, or they will think me lazy.’

She sounded youthful, but Pazel knew better than to trust impressions. Kirishgan had sounded youthful too — even when remembering a time before the founding of Bali Adro itself. Pazel looked up and down the trail. ‘Thasha — the girl, did you see what happened to the girl?’

‘The golden-haired one is alive and well,’ said the selk who had carried him. ‘And far more precious to you than gold, to judge by how often you have called her name.’

‘And the others?’

‘They await you. Come, we are almost there.’

As soon as he began to climb, Pazel felt the weakness in his leg. The pain that Ramachni’s spell had eased was returning, creeping outward from the wound. It had not been wise to blunder about on that foggy island, either. But soon the slope grew gentler, the trees taller and further apart. Voices reached him: the voices of his friends. Pazel almost broke into a run. There sat all his party, save Thasha and Ramachni, along with many selk. They were drinking from small silver cups, among the ruins of some ancient structure, now overgrown with trees. Big Skip saw Pazel first: ‘There he is, the boy who wouldn’t sink!’

They all greeted him warmly — even Dastu gave him an uncertain smile. But Neeps stared anxiously down the trail. ‘Where is she, mate?’ he said. ‘How could you leave her behind?’

Before Pazel could answer, a selk called out from deeper among the trees. ‘Patience, Mr Undrabust,’ he said. ‘She will be here, as I promised. She has only made a kind of. . detour.’

The selk who had spoken came nearer. He was not the tallest of the group, but there was a firmness to his voice and a fluid ease to his movements that made one think of great strength. He looked at Pazel for a moment in silence, but with a lively warmth.

‘You are a fighter to be reckoned with,’ he said, ‘even weaponless and drowning. I have seen nine thousand years of bloodshed, alas. But never have I seen a human bite the ear from a hrathmog.’

The others turned to stare at him. ‘You did. . what?’ said Neeps.

Pazel nodded, feeling his jaw.

‘He has been cruelly tested,’ said Hercol. ‘All of us have been, on this journey.’

‘Few come this way of whom that could not be said,’ replied the selk. ‘But where has your weasel gone? Did it run away?’

‘It is a mink,’ said Hercol.

Pazel looked at him, baffled. It? Then Cayer Vispek, standing near him, gave his arm a surreptitious squeeze. All at once he understood: Ramachni had not announced himself. He was pretending to be a mascot, a normal animal tagging along in their wake. Pazel was abruptly on his guard. Did the selk threaten them after all?

‘The creature is not quite tame,’ said Bolutu, ‘but it will not stray far from us.’

The selk leader smiled. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘here is a companion of yours who did stray, though I doubt that will happen again.’

He clapped his hands, and a dog raced out from among the selk. The travellers shouted with astonished joy: it was the same white hunting-hound that had journeyed with them from Masalym, one of three that had followed them into the Infernal Forest. Lunja fell on her knees and embraced the animal: Pazel had never seen the stoic warrior closer to tears. Bali Adrons and their dogs, he thought, but there was a lump in his own throat as well. He bent, and the dog licked his hand. The animal had followed him and Thasha to the riverside where they had first made love.

‘He swam out of the Forest, close to death,’ said the selk. ‘Tooth-fishes were gnawing at a wound in his side. But he is a sturdy animal with a great will to live.’

‘He was Commander Vadu’s favourite,’ said Lunja. ‘I never learned his name, but from now on I will call him Shilu, Survivor.’

Bolutu turned and bowed deeply to the selk leader. ‘We are in your debt, alpurbehn,’ he said.

Once more Pazel’s Gift went to work: alpurbehn was elder brother in Nemmocian, another graceful Southern tongue. Bolutu had used the word as an honorific, a formal endearment.

The gesture was not lost on the selk. Their leader nodded cordially to Bolutu. ‘I am Thaulinin, of the line of Tul,’ he said. ‘I have led these walkers since the fall of the Mountain Kings. However cruel your trials, they have not robbed you of courtesy — nor of all good luck. We were making to ford the Ansyndra not far from the island where we found you. If we had chosen any other crossing we would never have seen you at all. We knew there were hrathmogs afoot, but we sought no fight with them.’

‘I still don’t understand how you rescued me,’ said Pazel.

‘We are strong swimmers,’ said Thaulinin, ‘almost the equal of dlomu, in fact. You were choking; we drew the water from your chest and pulled you to safety. Your companions we helped away before the hrathmogs sent their scouts to the island. And we destroyed your raft, fascinating vessel though it was. You could have ridden it no further in any case: the hrathmogs have a camp on the riverbanks, two miles downstream. Come and rest now, Pazel Pathkendle. Our wine is somewhat fairer than river water, as you will learn.’

Something in the selk’s account of their rescue struck Pazel as incomplete. He could not quite put his finger