The Night of the Swarm

sea.’

‘Twenty!’ said Corporal Mandric. ‘By your leave, Mr Ramachni, we’re in no shape for a forced march.’ He gestured at Lunja. ‘Otter here shed her boots in the Forest; she has thorns in her pretty webbed feet. So does Brother Bolutu. As for Pathkendle, he’ll drop before you can say field amputation. That mucking troll nearly chewed him like chicken bone.’

‘There is no other way,’ said Thaulinin. ‘I have told you already that hrathmogs hold the river. In earlier times I might have bargained with them to let you pass, but not today. They have learned the value of handing goods or captives to the Ravens, and Macadra pays particularly well for any curiosities fished out of the River of Shadows.

‘Even afoot, the way is perilous. All the ports and coastal townships from Masalym to Orbilesc are under strict Bali Adro control. Some are being torn apart by infighting, as the madness of the Plazic blade turns general upon general, prince against prince.’

‘Not here in the interior, then?’ asked Ensyl.

‘Not yet,’ said the selk. ‘These wildlands are still considered too troublesome to conquer — but that does not mean that they are safe. Far from it! Macadra is very powerful, but to summon a maukslar she must have given the blood of her own withered veins. If she lusts so deeply for your death-parcel, she will not stop there. Her agents will be groping inward from the coast, and they may take many forms. Plazic squadrons, mercenaries, hrathmog collaborators, murths: she has employed all of these in the past. The selk are adept at eluding such tentacles — and even hacking them off when they grope too far. But the sea belongs to Bali Adro. If with great care and fortune you should reach the coast, what then?’

‘We have a ship of our own,’ said Neeps.

‘Had, you mean,’ said Dastu. ‘They’ve abandoned us. Hercol proved that with his sword-trick, remember?’

‘I proved only that they are making for the Island Wilderness — currently,’ said Hercol. ‘But come, tonight is spent. Let us cast about no more for answers. By daylight we may find our path clearer than we think.’

No words could have been more welcome. Still Pazel felt that Hercol was merely putting the best face he could on terrible circumstances. The selk were kind to offer help, but for all their age and wisdom they were just twenty nomads, living by what they carried on their backs. And what about Neeps? If the selk could do nothing for him, Pazel would beg Ramachni to try deeper magic. He could not just watch and wait.

The selk led them into the ancient fort. The dim lamplight flickered over pale marble columns, and alcoves and doorways intricately carved with figures of men and beasts. The chambers were many and mostly dark, and Pazel thought an air of sadness hung about them. But the eyes of the selk gleamed in the lamplight, and their voices were bright and clear.

The ruin clearly served as a way station, not a permanent home. Still their hosts had made it clean and comfortable; in the room where the company was to sleep, deer skins had been spread over beds of pine needles. ‘Rest well, and fear nothing,’ said Thaulinin. ‘Tonight at least you will be as safe as ever you were aboard your ship.’

‘That is less comforting than you intend,’ said Hercol with a smile, ‘but we thank you all the same.’

‘I would speak with you a while longer, Thaulinin,’ said Ramachni.

‘Then go elsewhere, Rin love you,’ Big Skip implored. ‘Mages and selk may be able to do without sleep, but I’m staved through, and my hold’s filling fast.’

The selk leader laughed. ‘Come, wizard. You have many years to account for.’

He took a lamp from one of his men and led Ramachni from the chamber. The other selk departed, and the company settled down on the deerskins. Most slept like the dead, but Pazel tossed and turned, helplessly awake. Like feral cats, the dark possibilities of what lay ahead prowled through his mind, scratching, spitting, clawing him further from sleep.

The whole coast in the hands of the Ravens. No way out, tentacles closing in. And the Swarm of Night growing larger, like a tumour, like a shroud. Better to have stayed on the Chathrand. Better a hrathmog spear through the gut.

Someone in the room was whispering, praying; or had he dreamed that, just moments ago?

Arunis reached back into this world to frighten us, to try to break our nerve: You killed me but you didn’t; Thasha cut off my head but she failed. Erithusme is dying, dying inside her. And without Erithusme you have no hope.

Lies, hatred. Poison spewed from a dead man’s lips.

Try this one, then: Arunis would have died weeks ago on the Chathrand, if you hadn’t interfered. All your fault: his escape, this exile, the deaths in the Forest, the loosing of the Swarm.

This is what it felt like to go crazy, to be whittled down to madness by your guilt.

Pazel tried to turn his thoughts in a sunnier direction. Thasha. He could still feel her touch. It did not long cheer him to think of her, though. She’d wanted him to promise to keep his distance. Would she ever understand that he had refused out of fear for her? That it was their lovemaking, more than anything else he’d found, that drove the haunted look from her eyes?

Pazel rubbed his face in the darkness. He was haunted too, in an entirely different way. When Thasha kissed him, undressed him, nothing else mattered under Heaven’s Tree. But afterwards. . afterwards, he thought of Klyst, the murth-girl. Which was weird in the extreme.

Murths were a kind of half-spirit, as best Pazel could understand. Klyst, a sea-murth, had appeared to him twice in the flesh, and vanished both times with the suddenness of a candle flame. Since the crossing of the Ruling Sea he never saw her at all. But now and then he could feel her longing for him rise out of nowhere. It was an accident, that longing: her people used infatuation-charms to lure humans to their deaths, and killing Pazel was all she’d had in mind at first. But Pazel’s Gift had made her spell backfire. She thought she loved him. She tried to persuade him to abandon everything, humanity included, and live with her beneath the sea. And she had placed a tiny shell beneath the skin of his collarbone and called it her heart. He could feel the shell with his fingers, that unmistakable bulge. It was sleeping; Klyst could not find him at this distance, apparently. But why was it so hard not to think of her? Was it guilt, that she should be suffering for his sake? Was it fear for her and her people, if they should fail in their quest?

A shroud, a pall, a black smoke filling room after room. .

No good; he was more exhausted than when he first closed his eyes. He sat up and quietly pulled on his boots. He was longing for fresh air.

The passage outside the chamber was deserted and still. He moved left, feeling his way along the passage. Somewhere ahead there was a glimmer of light. As he walked it brightened, until at last the passage opened on a broad stone patio, built against the back of the hill. It overlooked a long valley, awash in the light of both moons, and rimmed on the far side by the jagged mountains he had glimpsed a week ago, before their descent into the Forest. He was high enough to see them again, and marvelled at their sheer number, and how their white peaks gleamed like mother-of-pearl.

Just beyond the patio, a narrow track wound down the side of the hill. And there with a start Pazel saw a lone figure, walking swiftly away. He was tall and moved with grace, despite a certain urgency to his step, and on his belt hung a long straight sword: one of the weapons of the selk.

Even as Pazel reached the balustrade, the figure slowed, as though sensing someone behind him. Without stopping he glanced over his shoulder.

‘Kirishgan!’

Pazel did not shout, but he called out loud enough for the other to hear. It was unmistakably Kirishgan, his friend from Vasparhaven, the only selk he had ever seen before that day. As he looked up at Pazel, Kirishgan did stop — but only for a moment, as though ceasing to move required some great effort on his part. Then he turned and hurried on, down into the shadow of the hill.

Pazel called out a second time. The selk was gone, but he had looked at Pazel, recognised him. Was he dreaming? No, impossible: he was perfectly wide awake. Then he turned and looked again at the rocky hill above the patio. Thaulinin’s troop was sleeping there, under the open sky, curled like deer in the high brittle grass. Some few slept together, limbs entwined, but whether for love or simple warmth he could not guess. As Pazel watched, a