The Night of the Swarm

‘If what you say is true,’ he asked, ‘if Thasha wants to go into hiding, and let you return, if she’s begging for it — then why in Pitfire hasn’t it happened?’

The mage leaned forward, eyes bright with rage. ‘Because,’ she said, ‘someone or something has walled off Thasha’s chamber, with her soul inside it, and that wall is harder than this demon’s rock under our feet. I cannot get in. Thasha cannot get out. And it is entirely possible that the girl herself has raised that wall, to enclose herself like a nautilus or a snail.’

Pazel felt a surge of panic. He knew suddenly what would come next. She was going to ask him to help her break down that wall. To overpower Thasha. She would say that it all came down to him, that their quest would fail if he refused. This was why she had asked for him — for ‘the one who keeps trying to get her britches down’.

Because Thasha would trust him with her soul.

He went to the cauldron: only embers remained. He lowered his hand and felt no heat. Their time was almost up.

‘I can’t do it,’ he whispered.

‘I dare say,’ sighed the mage.

He blinked. ‘Weren’t you — that is, don’t you want me to convince her?’

‘Are you thick, Mr Pathkendle? She is already convinced. She wants me to return. The trouble is that none of us know quite what is preventing me. Learn the nature of that wall — that is what I am asking. Between you and Thasha and Ramachni and the selk, you must learn how it formed, and how in Rin’s name we can destroy it.’

A thought struck Pazel suddenly. ‘I have one Master-Word left.’

‘And a great one; I can feel it from here. A word that “blinds to give new sight”. There might be something in that. When the wall crumbles, Thasha will feel some pain, and your word could blind her to it. But fear of pain alone could not have made the wall so infernally strong.’

‘What if it wasn’t Thasha? What if that wall was put there by an enemy — by Arunis, before he died?’

‘Then we must find the flaw in the spell that made it. There is always a flaw, be it only a hairline crack.’

She patted the bench beside her. Pazel shook his head. ‘I still don’t trust you,’ he said.

‘Heavens, what a surprise.’

‘You used the Nilstone for all sorts of spells. And made a right blary mess of things too.’

She waited.

‘You cast the Waking Spell,’ said Pazel. ‘You made creatures like Felthrup and Master Mugstur.’

‘I tapped the potential in their souls, to be precise.’

‘And killed every human in Bali Adro through the mind-plague. To be precise.’

‘That is true. Sit down.’

‘I’ll be damned if I will. You’re a monster. That spell is killing my best friend, right now. It’s done more harm than all the blary atrocities Arunis managed to pull off in two thousand years.’

She pursed her lips, considering. ‘Hard to say.’

Her calm was hideous. This, he thought, is the mage who lives in Thasha’s head.

‘You should know one thing, however,’ she went on. ‘The Waking Spell was not some idle joke I chose to play on Alifros. It was a final tactic in a long war between mages. Perhaps you’ve heard of Sathek?’

‘Yes,’ said Pazel. ‘The one who built that sceptre. The founder of the Mzithrin, although they hate him now. Arunis called up his spirit when we were docked in Simja Bay.’

Her eyes widened. ‘Did he indeed? That is interesting. . But what you may not know is that Sathek and Arunis were after the same prize.’

‘Godhood,’ said Pazel.

Erithusme nodded. ‘So Ramachni has told you something. Godhood, yes. And it is our great misfortune that the Night Gods, the high lords of annihilation, long ago chose Alifros as a kind of proving ground for their students.’

‘Then that part’s true as well,’ said Pazel. ‘Arunis was a student. He didn’t care about Alifros, he just had to destroy it-’

‘As an examination, a test. Sathek too tried to pass that test. It is the Night Gods’ standing challenge: scour Alifros of life, and we will make you one of us, deathless and divine. But after Sathek’s failure they made a concession. If one of their students sets the holocaust in motion but dies before it is complete, he may linger in Agaroth, death’s Border-Kingdom, and still take the prize if the world perishes within a century. That is what Arunis is doing: sitting in escrow, watching the growth of the Swarm he unleashed, praying that it kills us all.

‘Sathek’s approach was somewhat less efficient: he thought to start by eliminating animal life — all animal life, including rational beasts like humans and dlomu. To that end he launched a series of Plague Ships from his fastness in the Mang-Mzn. The Book of the Old Faith tells the story well: how those vessels dispersed across Alifros, loaded with hides and woollen goods and cured meat and grains; and how embedded like a tasteless venom in each of them was the germ of a pestilence. Each of those ships was a kind of black-powder bomb of disease, and many did their work quite well. Some lands have never recovered. But the most insidious cargo of the Plague Ships was its living animals. Rats, bats, birds, feral dogs. These were simply released in port after port — and Sathek in his cunning had crafted their disease not to start killing its hosts for several years — not until they had multiplied, and passed the dormant seed of the plague down to their offspring. Had that seed ever sprouted, it would have spread like a lethal, wildfire rabies — and no creature would have been immune. The whole web of life in Alifros could have been destroyed in a summer. Indeed it almost was.

‘By providence, I detected the plague in time — barely in time. There was no hope of a medical response. I had to fight it magically, with a single, monstrous spell: the greatest I ever attempted.’

‘The Waking Spell?’

‘Of course. Sathek’s disease attacked the mind, so my spell had to reach those minds first — thousands of them, across the whole of Alifros, without a single exception.’ She looked at him with sudden ferocity. ‘I am a great mage in my own right — greater than Arunis, greater than Macadra — but such a spell was beyond me. Or would have been, without the Nilstone. I had to use it, though I knew better than anyone how it twists all good intentions. That is just what happened, of course. Every infected animal was changed. Total ruin was averted, and the birth of woken animals was a side effect. So was the destruction of every human mind in the South.’

‘And it’s still going on.’

‘Obviously. The spell does not answer to me. Until someone casts the Nilstone from Alifros, it will continue.’

Pazel sat down on the bench. It was a struggle to find his voice. ‘You saved the world. . and killed half the human beings in the world.’

Erithusme nodded. ‘It was a single act.’

Wonder, horror, vertigo. Pazel thought of the tol-chenni in their cages in Masalym, their huddled forest packs, the stinking mob in the village by the sea. The last Southern humans, mindless and doomed. How could he be talking to the woman responsible for that?

How could he possibly condemn her?

‘I thought you were just mucking about,’ he said. ‘Experimenting. Ramachni could have blary mentioned why you cast the spell.’

‘Not without breaking his promise. I swore him to secrecy on that point.’

‘Well what in Pitfire did you do that for?’

She ignored his tone, this time. A strangely gentle look had come over her. ‘I got to know a few of them, the woken animals I’d created. I called a falcon down from the clouds once, sensing the mind awake in him, and he befriended me, and travelled with me until he died. There were others, too: a spiny anteater, a snake.’ She looked at him sharply. ‘I was almost perfectly fearless: a freak of nature in my own way, like them. But they lived with a vast, gnawing fear, a fear in the souls. Who had made them? Why were they here, scattered minds in random bodies, hunted and abused and exhibited in circuses by the humans and the dlomu who surrounded them? It was hard enough for them to stay alive, and stay sane. They needed to believe there might be a purpose behind it, a grand design. I couldn’t give them that purpose, but I let them hope. I wasn’t about to steal that away.’