The Night of the Swarm

His eyes, or the black humour in his voice, reminded Pazel powerfully of something, but he could not say what. They filed back to the entrance hall, and found Thaulinin’s people ready. One selk approached each traveller, holding a piece of something fleshy and brown. ‘We must watch you swallow,’ said Thaulinin. ‘Fear not; we will catch you if you fall.’

Pazel’s heart was racing. The selk who had carried him up the hill stepped forward with a peculiar smile, and immediately pressed the fleshy thing between his lips. It was tart and slimy. The selk looked at him, waiting. Pazel chewed.

The rain froze motionless in the sky.

‘Swallow,’ said the selk. But his voice was odd, and Pazel saw with a jolt that his upper and lower teeth were fused together, and stretching like toffee with the movement of his jaw.

‘Ramach- Ramachni,’ Pazel sputtered, fearing suddenly for his own teeth.

‘Mushrooms!’ howled Big Skip. ‘Rin’s eyes, these are straight from the Infernal Forest, ain’t they?’

The air was gelatinous. The selk’s smile was a blur. Pazel dropped to his knees. Beside him, Dastu was laughing again, loud and bitter, and suddenly Pazel knew what he was reminded of. Dastu had never sounded so much like his master, Sandor Ott.

8

The Hidden and the Dead

A man cannot hide from the truth, outlaw the truth, spit in the face of truth, and then in good conscience punish those whom he discovers have given up trying to tell him the truth. Such behaviour is indefensible in a king. He would do better to probe the reasons for their secrecy, which are most often grounded in despair at his rule. The wise king will reward these truth-tellers, as he would the doctor who arrests his blindness before it is complete.

— Preface to the Life of Valridith by Thaulinin Tul Ambrimar

4 Halar 942

263rd day from Etherhorde

‘What happens if they separate?’

Felthrup glanced up from the Merchant’s Polylex. Marila’s voice was trembling, although her face, as usual, remained impassive. She had paused with a Masalym fig halfway to her mouth.

‘Separate, my dear?’

They were both on Thasha’s bed, Marila with her feet up, shoulders propped against the wall. Amber evening light fell on her round face and dark, salt-brittle hair. She bit down on the fruit and it ruptured with a squeak.

‘They’re all right together,’ she said as she chewed. ‘Pazel has his fits, but the others protect him until they’re over. Thasha goes blank, like she’s sleepwalking, or very far away — but Pazel and Neeps coax her out of it. Neeps-’ she drew a sharp breath ‘-is a fool, of course, but the others can keep him from exploding. Sometimes. What if they get separated, though? Who will look after them?’

Felthrup could smell the fear on her skin. Humans could not detect that smell, did not know they produced it; but rats knew. Many a colony owed its life to that particular scent. Humans had warning bells, drums, criers who ran through the streets. Rats had their noses. When enough humans began to exude the smell of fear, rats ceased their scavenging and dashed for the warren, and did not move until it faded.

Marila shook her head. ‘Forget it,’ she said. ‘I just can’t seem to quit imagining things. Blary waste of time.’

This is how she asks for comfort, he thought.

‘It was a great company that set out from Masalym,’ he said. ‘Humans, dlomu, ixchel, horses, dogs. We must have faith in them, as they did in one another.’

Marila turned her gaze to the window. They had left the Sparrows Islands behind and were skirting the edge of a bigger land mass called Vilgur or Vulgir — ‘Peaceful’ was the translation the dlomu had offered, and that was accurate enough. A broken black mound rising whale-like from the glaucous sea. Cubes and polygons, wave-tortured, algae-crowned. Yes, it was peaceful in its lifelessness.

‘I don’t want to visit Oggosk,’ said Marila.

‘The duchess is peculiar,’ said Felthrup, ‘and I will never trust her fully — certainly to the ixchel she is a merciless foe. But she is equally a foe of Arunis — or was, if he is truly dead. And she has taken a strong interest in Thasha from the start.’

‘A nasty interest. She threatened to punish Pazel terribly if he didn’t stop loving Thasha. She might as well have ordered him to stop eating, breathing. Having a heart.’

‘That is why we must go and see her,’ said Felthrup. He tapped the Polylex. ‘She wishes to consult this book. She wishes for it with unspeakable intensity, though she tries to hide the fact. We are in a position to name our price, my dear Marila. And we may begin by demanding that she tell us everything she knows about Lady Thasha.’

‘Mr Fiffengurt dreamed he saw Lord Talag.’

‘How you do jump from thought to thought,’ said Felthrup admiringly. ‘Some of us only creep, meandering, myopic, dragging our bellies in the dust. You leap with the freedom of a gazelle.’

She gave him an odd look. ‘My belly will be dragging soon enough.’

Should he laugh, should he sympathise? What if the child had the father’s temper, the mother’s gift for stuffing feelings in a closet, leaning hard against the door?

‘Listen to what I’ve found in the Polylex,’ he said, playing it safe. He cocked an eye at the tiny print. ‘“Within the cave all was ice-sheathed, and the corpses were as figures under glass. But when she reached the chamber where Droth’s Eye had fallen it was warm as a summer’s eve, and a light that was not her torchlight shone about her, pale and deathly.” ’

‘You’ve found it!’ said Marila. ‘Erithusme’s story! So that old Mother Prohibitor told the truth, it is written down! But we’ve searched and searched, Felthrup. Where was it hidden?’

‘Under Raptors.’

‘Raptors?’

‘Birds of prey, my dear. The great hunters of the air. Eagles, falcons, hawks, marapets, osprey, kunalars, the rare nocturnal-’

‘All right!’ said Marila. ‘Raptors, naturally. It makes no sense at all.’

‘On the contrary, it makes perfect sense, if your goal is to conceal forbidden histories in wild thickets of words.’

‘I suppose Droth’s Eye is the Nilstone,’ said Marila, ‘since that’s what she’s supposed to have found in the ice cave. Go on, read me the rest.’

Felthrup found his place and continued:

All about her lay death’s monuments, testimony to the killing power of the Orb. Yet Erithusme did not fear, and that was ever her salvation. She went straight to the Eye and clasped it in her hand, and felt only a little prick, as of a dull needle scraping. The Eye was far too heavy for its size, and the girl thought at first that she would never lift it. At last, with both hands, she raised it to her chest, and thereupon her very desire to bear its weight did change her, strengthening her body, and that was the first deed of magic the great wizardess ever performed. And the second was to shape the ice into stairs and level passages for her return to the surface. Little control did she have of this sudden power: the ice melted and soaked her, and the stairs were cracked, and once the very mountain shook, and rocks fell crashing about her. She never quailed, however, and came at last into the