The Night of the Swarm

frightened.’

He shook himself, then barked at me: ‘A villain, that’s what you’ve turned him into. And that is a lie! Passive Pathkendle — what is he? A lucky fool, a sap. Fulbreech is Will Incarnate. Redeem him, reward him!’ He waved the paper in my face. ‘Professor, we of the Society have written four possible endings to The Chathrand Voyage. We ranked them for your convenience, but any one of them would be acceptable, provided — Ouch!’

My cane was stout ironwood, and I had brought it down hard on his toe. He hopped around me, squeezing his foot. My anger was only stoked by the ridiculous sight.

‘I do not invent, sir. I was given access, nothing more. Access to the past, my own past, the one I shared with them. I write it, sort it, add the odd footnote when I must. I am not some wretched novelist, rubbing my hands together, spewing diversions for a penny a page! Believe what you like, worship whom you like. Just leave me in peace. My days are numbered, my hands are changing shape; my incisors bleed on the pillow at night.’ I snatched his pages, shredded them, tossed the bits over my shoulder. ‘Let me finish the story. After that you can do as you please. Forward, Jorl.’

I hobbled on. The man stood rooted to the spot. I turned the corner into the boulevard, saw the first bustle of students on the lawn — saw Holub himself, in his mob of nubile demonologists. I closed my eyes. Of all the weird marvels of this body, lust was the most pointless and intractable. I wondered if it would be the last to go.

Then Jorl snarled. I twisted, and the knife in the hand of the president of the Greysan Fulbreech Self- Improvement Society missed my cheek by a hair.

My nascent transformation has certain benefits, among them dexterity and strength. My leap amazed him, and hurt me terribly, but I landed squarely and had at him with the cane. He crumpled, all but falling into the dog’s mouth, and for a few priceless seconds little Jorl could have been a mastiff like his namesake. The fool dropped the knife. His head was unprotected; I could have cracked it like an egg. Instead I hauled him up and shook him.

‘Listen, fool. I write the truth as I knew it. Not what you prefer in your fever-dreams, nor the chancellor in his cowardice, nor the Young Scholars in their fashionable savagery, nor I in my pain. Fulbreech was a poisonous toad. You’ll sanctify him over my dead body. Get hence.’

I shoved him away. The man fled, stumbling and bleeding, and Jorl chased him all the way across the lawn.

Historians battle for the future, not the past. Our tales of who we were shape what we believe we can become. When I began to write, the story of the Chathrand was a collection of fragments and folk-tellings, yarns shared at bedtime or beer-time, or Rin spare us, to prove some moral point. It was a myth; and now as copies circulate it may become scripture, for a benighted few. The chancellor would gild it, peddle it with nine parts sugar to one part truth. Or else burn it and bury me. I must work faster, before I cease to have hands, before he calls a doctor or a dogcatcher and has me led away. I must finish the tale, lest they finish it for me. And that would be horrific, a mashed-together monster, a lord or lady with the head of a beast.

10

Sanctuary

15 Modobrin 941

244th day from Etherhorde

When they realised that the selk had fed them mushrooms, Lunja and the Turach began to fight. The selk were ready, however: blindingly fast, they pounced on the two soldiers, seized their limbs, heads, jaws. Neither managed to spit the fungus out.

Ensyl watched, appalled. Bolutu succumbed first: eyes wide, he raised both hands as though trying to pluck fruit from a tree; then his knees gave way and he toppled gracefully into the arms of a selk. Pazel followed, then Thasha and Big Skip. Dastu laughed viciously before he dropped.

The others had time to sit down. Before his eyes closed, Hercol turned to Ensyl and reached out suddenly, his face full of longing. Ensyl drew a sharp breath. She had rarely been so unsettled by a look.

It was done; only she and Ramachni were awake. Thaulinin looked at the mink. ‘I will not waste words on you, Arpathwin. You will sleep when you wish to, and not before.’ He turned to where Ensyl stood backed against the wall. ‘But for you it is time, lady.’

He beckoned, and a selk came forward holding a strange object. It was about the size of whisky jug, but made of hide stretched over a round wooden frame. At one end the leather thongs had yet to be tightened, leaving an opening like the mouth of a cave.

‘A palanquin?’ asked Ensyl dubiously.

‘But without windows, alas,’ said the selk. ‘We lined it with the fur of last night’s hare. You will find a water flask within, and food as well.’

‘How long will I be held?’

‘Not long,’ said Thaulinin, ‘and you will be most comfortable.’

Ensyl shook her head. You’re wrong there, giant. It was quite true what she had said about her people and cages. Yet she had argued for this choice, and would not be the only one of the party to back down. Taking a deep breath, she bent to squeeze through the opening.

‘I must ask for your sword,’ said Thaulinin.

His request was reasonable: Ensyl could gouge a spyhole with a single thrust. All the same it was hard, unbuckling the tattered baldric, repaired so many times since Etherhorde. She felt naked as she laid the sword on Thaulinin’s palm.

‘I think I will travel with you, Ensyl,’ said Ramachni.

‘There is no need, Arpathwin,’ said Thaulinin. ‘You are no stranger here.’

‘And yet I hardly resemble the Arpathwin of long ago,’ said Ramachni. ‘Nor do all your people know me, in any form. Besides, I also wish to be carried like a lump.’

Ensyl was delighted, even though the fit was rather tight when they had both crawled inside. Thaulinin bent to look through the opening.

‘Two warnings, then,’ he said. ‘You must use no magic of any kind until we release you. And do not call to us, unless one of you should be dying. That is vital. You would place yourselves and all your friends in danger if you forced us to release you early.’

He closed the aperture, and Ensyl felt him tie the leather thongs. Then they were lifted and placed inside a sack of some kind. All was dark and close. Their little fur-lined room swayed, and by its motion Ensyl sensed that they were now dangling from a sling. Ramachni chuckled in the darkness. ‘We shall make this journey like a pair of royals,’ he said.

Or a pair of grouse, Ensyl thought. Aloud, she said, ‘I am glad of your company.’

‘I hope you are still glad when my fleas discover you,’ said the mage.

They were already moving. Ensyl thought they must surely be descending the hill, but the selk carried them so smoothly that it was hard to be sure. The palanquin did not swing wildly about, or even tilt a great deal. She was comfortable, in fact.

‘I could almost sleep,’ she said aloud.

‘You must certainly sleep,’ said Ramachni. ‘After all, we shall be in here for days.’

‘Days!’

‘When Thaulinin said, “Not long,” he was speaking as a selk. Never mind; I shall do my best to entertain you. And don’t bother to bend your voice, by the way: these ears of mine can catch your ixchel-speech perfectly well.’

She could hear the muffled sound of selk voices, and even more faintly, their feet. They were running through that hardscrabble landscape — running with a burden of eleven humans and dlomu, presumably — and yet she felt as though the palanquin were drifting on an untroubled stream. Ensyl had no sense at all of how far they had gone,