The Night of the Swarm

theatrics. Today I had to write a difficult letter to my patrons about the state of The Chathrand Voyage. The bedclothes needed laundering, too, and my skin was itchy, aflame. My bones ached as they do all the time; walking soothes this misery, and others.

The man chuckled, but the sound died when he saw how swiftly I was leaving him behind. I may rely on the cane but I am a champion hobbler.

‘Professor, wait!’ He caught up to me and blocked my path. ‘You haven’t seen what I brought you.’

With a sly grin he drew some pages from his vest pocket and waved them at me, like a treat for which I could reasonably be expected to beg. Angry now, I sidled past him again, and he pouted.

‘Can’t you spare me a moment, sir? I waited hours in that hedge.’

‘Hedge!’

I stopped short. Then I bit my tongue and looked at him, smouldering. He had tricked me into granting him my full attention. Such a low tactic. To refer to a single, fruit-bearing, once-potted, certainly solitary plant as a hedge: intolerable, intolerable.

‘If this is about demonology class, you’ve waited in vain. Professor Holub has taken over my teaching chair. Holub, with the dimples. The one the girls follow about.’

‘I don’t want demonology, Professor. I know exactly who you are, and-’ his voice dropped to reverential tones ‘-who you were. In the Old World. In the beginning.’

Then I knew. He was one of the crazies, the fanatics who had decided (out of boredom, out of hope?) that The Chathrand Voyage was a sort of key to Creation, a guide to the universe and all it contained. One of my ‘assistants’ (a famished schemer with garlic breath) had planted the idea among the younger students, and like a virile weed it had proven impossible to kill.

‘Listen,’ I said, ‘the Voyage is just a history. Old, long-winded, violent and obscure. There are others. The library is stuffed with them.’

‘They told me you were modest,’ he said. ‘How could you be otherwise, when you knew them? The Heroes. In the flesh.’

‘You refer to my shipmates?’

He nodded, awestruck.

‘Dead,’ I told him. ‘All dead, every last one of them. Dead for centuries.’

‘Not all,’ he said, gazing on me as one might a relic in a tomb. Suddenly I was afraid he wanted to touch me, and backed away a step.

‘I’ll join them soon enough,’ I said. ‘Anyway, why can’t you take a history for what it is, instead of whipping it up like a blary custard-’

‘A whatty custard?’

‘-into a religion, a myth? You lot amaze me. These were real people; they lived and breathed. They’re not symbols, not lessons for your moral improvement. You make me wonder if the chancellor isn’t right to want the whole manuscript tossed on the fire.’

‘Of course he’s not right!’ cried the young man, trembling. ‘So it’s true, then, you’re fighting with the chancellor? Has he really tried to censor parts of the Voyage? Why, why would he do such a thing?’

To the first question I replied that the chancellor and I never fought. To the second: yes, he tried. To the third: because he is a spineless man who does not wish this hallowed school to be engulfed in scandal, or even controversy. A coward, that is. A glad-hander, with everything to lose but self-respect, which was lost beyond retrieval before he ascended to his current post.

‘And now, good day.’ I moved to tip my hat, then recalled that I had left it behind, since the changing shape of my skull had made it uncomfortable. I walked on, but the young man pranced beside me, brandishing those grubby sheets.

‘You must protect it from him,’ he said. ‘No other tale contains such wisdom, such meaning, such burning truths about the world gone by. Professor, admit it, won’t you? My friends and I have guessed the truth anyway. You’re telling the lost history of our race. The Heroes, they’re our ancestors, the ones who founded our nation and our people, the blessed seed from which we sprang!’

I shook my head, but he ignored me, rhapsodising. ‘Let it all be told! Let the world drink of their wisdom — drink deep, and feel the menace of the Swarm, the black fire of the eguar, the thousand beauties of Ularamyth! The tale must be published in all its glory! It must see the light of day!’

‘If it’s as dear to you as all that,’ I said, ‘why are you robbing me? The Ularamyth chapter isn’t even finished yet. You’ve seen a stolen copy, you atrocious little grub.’

His mouth opened wide. My accusation had caught him off guard.

‘I am not a grub,’ he said, ‘and if you’ll permit me, it is only thanks to a so-called stolen copy — and what is stealing, Professor, really? — that I am here today. I’ve brought you a warning. You’ve made a terrible mistake.’

‘Mistake?’ I said. ‘How could you possibly know if I made a mistake? Who the devil are you?’

‘I speak,’ he said, placing a hand on his chest, ‘on behalf of the Greysan Fulbreech Self-Improvement Society.’

I blinked at him. ‘A student club? A joke fraternity of some sort?’

‘I am the Society’s president.’

‘You’re a cuckoo bird.’

‘We are the Sons of Fulbreech,’ he said. ‘He is the true and rightful Hero, and we knew it from the start. Of all your shipmates, only Fulbreech never slumbered, never waited for things to happen to him. He made history. He took matters in his own hands. When Thasha warmed to him and discarded Passive Pathkendle, we cheered. We knew that she and Fulbreech were destined to be father and mother to us all.’

I pushed by him, wincing as our shoulders bumped. There was no hope whatsoever in words.

He kept pace with me easily. ‘Have you read the epic called The Choices of Yung Fulbrych?’

Idiotic question. My first published manuscript was, and remains, the definitive refutation of the Choices. ‘That thing,’ I hissed, walking faster, ‘was written two centuries ago, to flatter a despot. Fulbreech died two thousand years ago. The author had no notion of what that boy’s life and death amounted to — nor much curiosity, either. It is no record of our time on the Chathrand. It is a heap of bad verse, penned in the service of bigoted power and bamboozeldry, not revelation or learning.’

He was visibly mortified. I clicked my tongue. ‘You object — to what? The notion that I was a witness, that I’ve been displaced in time?’

‘Oh, no.’

‘That your hero died? Pitfire, man, what do you think Fulbreech was? A visiting demigod? The angel of Rin?’

The lunatic shook his head. ‘It is all right that you kill him, in your tale. We know he was mortal, though his aura, his essence — never mind, sir, that can wait. But the death you paint in Book Three! Unworthy, sir, unworthy. Greysan Fulbreech could not meet such an end. Have you never once reconsidered?’

‘Reconsidered? I can’t even follow you. That statement makes no sense.’

‘Or perhaps,’ said the man with a sudden twinkle, ‘you’re planning to bring him back? Perhaps his death was an illusion?’

I was starting to feel like a drowning man.

‘So you stole a copy of the fourth volume,’ I said slowly, assembling the pieces, ‘hoping to read that Fulbreech had. . come back?’

‘Or never died, never died! The Infernal Forest was a place of illusions, wasn’t it? Say it, Professor! You can trust me; I won’t breathe a word.’

‘Arunis broke his back, and left him in a tank of fungal acid. Then a dlomic boy drove Hercol’s sword straight through his gut. He died.’

The man wilted where he stood. He stared unfocused at my chest. Almost inaudibly, he murmured, ‘Those last words you say he spoke. They’re false too, of course. They make him sound weak and mean and