The Night of the Swarm

Long ago. Too long. In a form that no one could extract from the bowels of the creature that had swallowed it, the corrupt thing that prayed and shambled and made war and hated happiness, the modern Old Faith, the beast she had tried so hard to love.

She had stared at the ceiling, wondering if this was madness, if she would presently start to scream. Why now? What had happened? Was it Cayer Vispek’s command four days ago — just that and nothing more?

Her master had caught her laughing and sharing a melon with two selk warriors in the village square. He had asked her coldly to return to the house. Later he made her tell everything, how she had run with them (for the joy of running, climbing, sweating in the midday sun) almost to the top of the crater wall, then lain back beside them on the snowdrift there, so hot her skin almost sizzled, wildly happy in a way that bewildered her, until she realised with a start that it was only because they were happy. Because beings thousands of years old could still exult in mere sun and tired muscles, and the cool shocking snow.

She told Vispek they had asked her to wait while they looked over the rim: like all the travellers she knew she was forbidden to gaze beyond Ularamyth, lest she gain some clue as to its location. She had waited for them, studying the tiny starburst flowers that grew between the rocks, wondering if today or tomorrow would be their last in this strange haven, or their last alive.

When the selk returned their faces had changed. ‘What is wrong?’ asked Neda. ‘Did you see Macadra’s forces? Are they near?’

‘We saw them, but they did not see us,’ said the selk. ‘Ularamyth remains hidden from all enemies, for now at least. But we also saw something much worse: a black cloud, racing. It was the Swarm of Night, Death’s hunting-cloud, and it chilled our souls to see it, even from afar.’

They descended in silence. At the bottom of the hill they went together to Lord Arim and Ramachni and explained what they saw. She stayed with her selk friends for a time after that, and slowly their spirits revived. While they were sharing the melon the selk performed silent impressions of her friends. A straight, serene posture and a piercing stare: that could only be Hercol. A wild-eyed figure grabbing at imaginary tools: Big Skip. The selk were clever mimes. Neda laughed until she ached.

Cayer Vispek had listened to all this without saying a word. Then he had gone away into his chamber awhile. When he returned he said that she must avoid the selk whenever possible, share nothing but brief pleasantries, excuse herself if they became familiar. ‘You were trained for a purpose, and that purpose is not to sit and laugh with men of any race.’

‘I was not beguiled by them, Cayer,’ she said. ‘I thought they might tell me something to our advantage.’

‘Then why did you look shamed when I chanced upon you?’

Before she could recover enough to answer he shook his head and went on: ‘I have been careless with you, Neda Ygrael. All my thought was of survival until we came here, but threats to the body are not the only kind. Your mind is growing distracted by pleasure, your instincts dulled by the ease of this place. As your elder and teacher I am to blame.’

‘But master, I have said my prayers, performed my meditations-’

‘You see?’ he broke in. ‘You feel a need to defend yourself. That feeling is your soul crying out for order, for a return to what is real.’

‘But what harm has befallen me?’

At that Vispek had become truly angry. One objection he had tolerated; two bordered on rebellion. He did not rage or shout. He merely dropped his eyes, as though he could not bear to look at her. Neda quailed. She felt unclothed. Vispek asked her in a distant voice if she might write some passages from the Book.

‘Which verses, master?’ she asked.

Vispek started for the door. ‘Anything you remember,’ he said.

She had taken him at his word. This morning she had written seven hundred and fifty verses from memory, filling sixty sheets. Her Gift was cooperating; it liked these manic feats of memory better than anything measured or practical. As long as she kept writing like a madwoman the Gift would no doubt carry on as well, feeding the holy text into her consciousness like coal into a stove.

When a band of sfvantskors became separated from the Book it was the task of the eldest student to speak or write long passages from memory, to be shared by all. That student had been her faith- brother Jalantri until he died in the Infernal Forest. Consequently Neda had never written any passages for Vispek’s approval. He knew she had a special memory, but did not begin to guess just how special it was. Neda’s transcriptions were more accurate than his own. Would he rejoice in her knowledge or consider it a mockery, a magical cheat? Was learning the Book by heart still a holy act if one did it by accident, if one had not even tried?

The twelve core chapters every aspirant had to memorise simply to become a sfvantskor. A much larger section, known as the Inner Path, might require decades, if it was learned at all. The whole of the Book’s ninety-seven chapters had been memorised only by certain heroes of the Faith, high priests and mystics scattered through its history. And Neda, of course.

In the seventh chapter the Book laid out the duties of a sfvantskor. They were many and complex. The sixth verse of the chapter was Neda’s favourite:

Recall as well that man’s wisdom is a fair crystal, but Fact the blade of diamond that cuts the crystal, a blade created by no man but hidden in the earth from the beginning. Shield not man’s certainties from the diamond knife, but know that with each cut their shape is lovelier and more true.

No command could be clearer. Use your mind. Use your eyes. Do not prop up old ideas like a shack in a windstorm. Accept what you see, even if it shatters what you’re told is true. Don’t substitute a story of Creation for Creation itself.

Of all the commandments in the Book it was the one least favoured by her masters, the one they never invoked, the one Neda suspected they would like all believers to forget. Most of them could only wish, of course. But the Father, her beloved teacher, had the power to make that desire come true, for he alone placed his chosen aspirants in trance.

Almost nightly, they had surrendered to his control. Trance was the only proper state in which to receive the holy mysteries. And while in trance the Father could order his sfvantskors to forget any inconvenient fact or notion, and they would forget. It was a terrible, tempting power, and he had held it alone for half a century.

But it had failed with Neda. Her Gift brought everything back. Usually it happened the instant he released her from the trance: she would wake in the full, scarlet shame of remembering. But at other times the forgetting would linger for days, or longer. She had once passed the burned-out shell of a mansion in Babqri City and suddenly remembered standing guard there a few nights before, at a great feast honouring one of the Five Kings of the Mzithrin. Halfway through the meal some terrible insult had been uttered or implied; the King had departed hastily, and late that night the elder sfvantskors had returned to the shrine with spots of blood upon their sleeves.

On another occasion she had gone to meditate in the Hall of Relics, before a small clay cup. Many centuries ago the angels had filled that cup with milk in the desert, thereby saving the life of the prophet Mathan, an early champion of the Faith. She had gazed at the humble cup and suddenly known that it was an imitation, a fake. The true cup had been stolen by the Shaggat Ness, in the same raid that took the Red Wolf and other wonders: she remembered the lecture clearly. But some weeks ago the Father had decided that the Faith still needed the cup. He commanded them to forget the lecture, and to recall instead that the cup had resided in the Hall of Relics for hundreds of years.

So many things she wasn’t supposed to remember. So many certainties protected from the diamond knife.

Neda raised her eyes from the sheet. Amber light filled the window, making the green leaves blaze. The Gods had left her. The Unseen was becoming unfelt. If she had felt its presence at all it had been in that moment of abandon, spreadeagled in the snow beside two gasping strangers.

She rose and carried the stack of pages to her master’s room. His door stood open, and in the centre of the room she saw him motionless, stripped to the waist, and balanced on one hand. Neda’s breath caught in her throat. His body was straight and rigid, his eyes gently shut, his skin aglow. The way of the