The Night of the Swarm

showed them places Thasha and Neeps had yet to discover. An amphitheatre, a gold smithy, a stone table where gems lay unguarded among scattered leaves, a glasshouse full of silkworms, an archery range where Nolcindar was practising, landing arrows in a spiral shape upon her target, neat as a tailor stitching a sleeve.

‘You’re getting tired,’ said Thasha, watching Pazel’s laboured breath. ‘One more stop, then it’s back to bed with you.’

The last stop was a little hill on the edge of the township. It was round and solitary, and a steep staircase led to its peak. At the summit, benches formed a circle about a strange hole fringed with ashes, from which steam puffed like a handkerchief shaken in the wind. It was a fumarole, a volcanic steam vent, like the ones they had seen on the lava field called the Black Tongue.

‘No flame-trolls,’ said Thasha, ‘but plenty of fire underground. You can find these all over Ularamyth. Nolcindar brought us here yesterday, and showed us a thing or two.’

They turned Pazel this way and that. To the west, high on the crater’s rim, stood the landing with the willow trees where they had arrived. On the north rim, higher still, a dark triangular doorway opened in the rock: that led to the Nine Peaks Road, an ancient trail over the mountaintops, by which no one journeyed any more. To the south the floor of the crater was all forest, moist and dark, with white mists drifting over the trees. And a mile east lay the great lake they had spotted from the landing, with its tall and solitary island.

‘We’re not allowed there,’ said Thasha. ‘In fact we’re barred from three places in Ularamyth: the tunnels leading out of the city, a certain temple guarded by wolves like Valgrif — and that lake, which they call Osir Delhin.’

Pazel started. ‘Do you know what that name means?’

‘ “Lake of Death”,’ said Thasha. ‘Ramachni told us. But the selk won’t talk about it at all.’

They sat down together on the turf, outside the ring of benches; the dog dropped down beside them with a contented whine.

‘I don’t understand the selk yet,’ said Pazel. ‘There’s something different — really different — about them. Something you can’t just see, like the strangeness of their eyebrows.’

‘I feel it too,’ said Neeps, ‘every time they glance at me. And here’s something else you can’t tell by looking: Ramachni says there are just five thousand of them.’

‘Five thousand in Ularamyth?’

‘Five thousand in all the world.’

Pazel froze.

‘A lot of them are here, in Ularamyth and the surrounding mountains,’ said Thasha. ‘The rest are scattered over Alifros. In the Northern world there are hardly any — maybe a few dozen all told.’

‘Five thousand,’ said Pazel again. The idea shocked him profoundly. There were more humans in little Ormael City than selk in the whole of Alifros. ‘Where are their children?’ he said. ‘I haven’t seen a single one.’

‘I’ve seen a few,’ said Thasha. ‘But they’re very quiet about their children, and seem to want to keep them out of sight.’

‘Who knows when they stop being children,’ said Neeps. ‘At age twenty, or two hundred?’ He looked out wistfully at the green landscape. ‘I wish Marila were here. She would love this. I don’t think she’s ever known much peace.’

A silence fell. Pazel wished he’d never mentioned children. ‘You shouldn’t have clung to my bedside, you two,’ he said at last.

Neeps and Thasha exchanged an awkward glance. ‘It wasn’t just for you, mate,’ said Neeps. ‘The doctors have been poking and prodding me around the clock. Weird treatments. They gave me mare’s milk. And they asked Lunja to sit and stare into my eyes — which she did very reluctantly, I might add. None of those tricks changed anything, as far as I can tell. But Ularamyth has. The truth is, I felt my head clearing as soon as we stepped out of that tunnel. It’s no cure; I can still feel something’s wrong up here-’ he rapped on his forehead ‘-but I think it may be buying me some time.’

Pazel could find no words for his friend. He was trying to imagine Neeps staying here, safe in Ularamyth but cut off from everyone he knew, from Marila, from their child. .

He glanced nervously at Thasha. What about you? he thought. But he could not bring himself to ask, not yet. Instead he linked arms with both of them.

‘Do you know why I wouldn’t let them carry me?’ he said. ‘Because if we live — if some of us do — I want us to have this. A memory of seeing this place for the first time, together. Because right now we’re alive, and I’m blary grateful for that — and, well, that’s all, really-’

Thasha squeezed his hand. Neeps looked him up and down. ‘Pitfire, now he’s going to start with the blary kissing.’

Pazel tackled him, and Thasha joined in, besting them both, and they were still laughing and rolling when they heard a sharp canine woof.

Valgrif stood over them, looking amused, if that were possible in a gigantic white wolf. ‘You look as healthy as cubs,’ he said, ‘but come quickly, Master Undrabust, for the doctors have been waiting to see you this hour and more.’

Neeps jumped up. ‘Credek, is it time already?’

‘We’ll come with you,’ said Pazel, rising.

Neeps shook his head. ‘Don’t bother, mate. No others allowed when I’m being tested. No other humans, at least. Bolutu’s often there, and Lunja. Devil take these tests, anyway! What good are they doing?’

‘Go on,’ said Thasha firmly. ‘You told me this morning that they were almost finished. Don’t quit now.’

Still grumbling, Neeps followed the wolf down the stairs. When he was gone Pazel looked at Thasha quickly. ‘Have they said anything else to you? Privately, I mean?’

Thasha nodded. ‘That there’s hope. Real hope, but nothing certain.’ She leaned into him, looking stunned. ‘We were sitting here yesterday at this time, and a dozen tol-chenni shuffled by. They live here safely, like the birds and the deer. Some of them were chewing bones. The selk feed them, Ramachni says. And Neeps made a joke about how if he became one of them at least he’d never have to mend his socks.’

She gazed at him, as if asking how the world had ever produced so singular a creature as his friend. Pazel found himself laughing, and soon Thasha was laughing too, and it went on until she was limp and winded in his arms. ‘We’re supposed to keep him happy and relaxed,’ she said. ‘Of course the second part’s impossible, since it’s Neeps we’re talking about. Still, that’s our job.’

‘Could be worse,’ he said, and kissed her. It was an impulsive kiss more than a passionate one, but Thasha returned it desperately, clutching him about the neck. When he stopped to breathe she whispered I found a place, and he let her help him down the stairs, giggling at his clumsy urgency. She led him south, by footpaths and alleys, through the scattered buildings at the town’s edge, across a meadow, over a stile, and at last deep into a field of green grass that rose higher than their shoulders. On they went for hundreds of yards, and the warm grass smell was shot through with richer scents, lavender and sage, and Thasha turned to him with burrs clinging to her hair and put a hand under his shirt. He felt the edge of her nails, a warning.

‘You keep it away from me this time, or it’s going to bleed.’

‘Right,’ he said at once, repressing a gesture of self-protection.

‘You think I’m kidding. That I’m going to let you, no matter what I say.’

‘Actually, I don’t.’

‘You’d better not. Because later we won’t be able to do even this much. It’s what I told you before. Later we’ll have to think of other things.’

‘I know that. And Thasha, listen: what I said on that island, in the river-’

Thasha shook her head. Beneath his shirt her hand began to move. He touched her cheek; she was trembling. There were tears at the corners of her eyes.

Time passed like a dream in Ularamyth: a dream of peace and healing. It was the very end of summer, here in the Southern world, but the cold of the coming season had yet to arrive. Even at midnight (and Pazel was often awake at midnight, listening to selk music, or trading tales with them, or simply walking under the stars) there was as yet no chill, and by day the sun filled the crater-realm like liquid amber.

He thought: The Swarm is out there, growing, gorging on death. He knew that was