The Night of the Swarm

For Neda, however, it remained the most lucid dream of her life. ‘Are you still able to listen?’ she said aloud, thinking of her mother with her dream-vials. ‘If I talk to you, can you hear?’

She started walking — her mother was right, you had to move or bad things would happen, Neda could somehow feel it in her bones. She entered by the gate and walked the upper city, past Pazel’s school, the textile mill, the humble museum closed for lack of funds.

She told her mother about the Swarm of Night. When she spoke the name all twenty or thirty people around her fell silent and glanced upwards, but nothing passed in the sky except a crow.

Neda left the city by the same gate and started the climb back to their house. Something kept forcing her to the right, however, and as the light faded (too quick for any sunset) Neda decided she knew what it was. Something had to explain why she still carried one of their purchases.

The barn belonged to a neighbour called Cranz. One of many who hadn’t helped her. Not that she could truly blame them: if any had tried to free a girl from the hands of the Arquali marines they would simply have been killed. She understood that now, but she hadn’t at the time. The absence of those people who had always smiled at her, of Farmer Cranz with his big square fists and his son who used to carve wooden figurines and the strapping farmhands who made eyes at her when no one was watching: it had been part of the horror of that day, Invasion Day, when she was just sixteen.

Neda slid open the door. There had been horses. She went forward until she found them: two old plough- pullers, grey and brown, their long tails swishing flies. Neda led them outside and well away from the barn, then stepped back inside. She walked the length of the building, tall and straight, a sfvantskor disbeliever, a new creature on the face of Alifros. A native come home.

The last time she had passed this way they had been dragging her, screaming.

She stood a while looking at the hay mound, which was broad and tall and dry. She dropped her cloak and stood naked, then stepped into it, wading, until the hay reached her thighs.

‘No,’ she told her mother, ‘my first life didn’t end with my vows. I believed that when I said it, but I was wrong. I hope you’re listening. I never did blame you.’

She took a match from the box in her hand and struck it, and tossed it burning into the hay.

‘It ended here,’ she said.

An eager crackling began at her feet. She struck another match, and another. Nine in all, one for each of the soldiers. Thanks to her Gift she could remember them quite well. She had never lain with a man before that day. Afterwards it was unthinkable. The sfvantskor order with its law of total abstinence had brought her a welcome safety. But the Book also warned the faithful that to live was to hazard something, ‘for only the dead are safe from all harm’.

The flames raged, tall as men. She lifted her arms above her head and dared them to touch her.

Time accelerated, as it had been wanting to, and the barn became a torch, and all Ormael saw it blazing over the city, and even a few eyes on boats in the Straits of Simja caught the glow.

The roof collapsed, and the walls followed, and then she walked forward naked among her people, common Ormalis come to gawk and stare, and wonder at this apparition stepping unharmed from the fire.

‘Don’t be afraid,’ she told them. ‘I’m one of you. My name is Neda Pathkendle, and now I think I can wake up.’

17

At the Temple of the Wolves

On their last day in Ularamyth the summer warmth still held.

At least it did here, low in the crater on a sunny morning. Clover and phlox and mistflower were blooming; a dragonfly landed on Thasha’s arm. But when she raised her eyes to the mountains she saw fresh snow on the peaks. Autumn was advancing; the Swarm was loose and growing by the day; and the Chathrand was still sailing northwards, leaving them ever further behind.

For several days Lord Arim’s scouts had been returning to Ularamyth, and all their talk was of enemies: hrathmogs, Plazic soldiers, worse creatures they were reluctant to name. Thasha had a feeling that the path to the sea would be hacked through the bodies of many foes.

Hercol had asked Corporal Mandric to oversee their physical readiness, and he’d been at it as only a Turach could: inspecting their limbs, the digits of their hands, the soles of their feet. He’d made them get haircuts and start the day with sprints. He’d forced them to double their meal size and sleep ten hours a night and climb the crater walls twice daily with heavy packs. Whatever lay ahead they would face it strong.

But Thasha had a more immediate concern. She was in the northeast quarter of Ularamyth, a mile or two from the shores of Osir Delhin. She had climbed a little ridge overlooking a forest of bamboo, which seethed in the wind like an emerald surf. From where she stood, the path snaked down the ridge to a shady clearing. There on the moist grass lay Neeps and Sergeant Lunja, asleep.

The small boy was curled like a child. Shirtless, he lay with his back to Lunja and his head on her arm. His face serene, his skin unearthly pale against her midnight black. Lunja’s other arm held him close, her half-webbed hand spread open on his chest. She was a magnificent soldier, muscled like Neda, tall as Hercol.

Thasha had been sent to find them. She’d been warned what to expect. This was the heart of the treatment, Neeps’ only chance. To hold off the mind-plague he had to pass into nuhzat at least once. Mr Bolutu said that only one human in a thousand had been able to enter nuhzat in the old days. The selk doctors agreed. ‘It was not the yearnings of the body that mattered,’ one of them had explained. ‘Dlomic prostitutes never brought their human clients to nuhzat, however much they pleased them otherwise. Bali Adro investigations of the plague made that much very clear. Only trust could occasion the nuhzat. The deepest trust, the most intimate.’

He’d meant love, of course. Neeps had to feel love for a dlomu. And how could anyone make that happen? Spells and potions were useless, Ramachni had told them: infatuation could be generated, and certainly lust. But the nuhzat was mysterious and very personal. It could not be induced like a reaction of the nerves. If it came at all, it came with sincere emotion, a thing no spell could force.

Pazel had objected. ‘I happen to know that love can be. . induced. By magic. I’ve seen it happen.’

‘You are speaking of murths,’ said Ramachni, ‘but the divers enchanted by murth-girls are not really in love, only confused long enough for the murths to kill them.’

Pazel had shaken his head, blushing, and Thasha had come to his aid. ‘He’s not talking about the divers, Ramachni. He means Klyst, the murth-girl whose spell backfired, so that she fell in love with him.’

Ramachni had looked at Pazel in fascinated surprise. ‘It lasted,’ sputtered Pazel, ‘a long, long time. She followed me, followed the Chathrand.’ He raised his hand to touch his collarbone, where Klyst’s tiny shell lay beneath his skin.

Ramachni gazed at him another moment, then shook his head. ‘The murth-world is a place beyond your knowledge, or mine. But I know this much, Pazel Pathkendle: a facade can sometimes grow into true feelings, if the potential was there all along.’

Neeps turned over, reached for Lunja without opening his eyes, lay still again with a hand in her hair. It was hard for Thasha to accept that no magic had brought them to this point. Lunja had agreed that day when she rose up from the stream, and set to work, and the work had led here. They’re lovers, probably. What does it matter. I hope they are. Even Marila would want it if she knew.

She walked down the ridge the way she had come, then called out for Neeps as though trying to locate him. After a moment Neeps replied with a befuddled shout.

Thasha walked to the clearing. Lunja was gone; Neeps was pulling on his shirt. No one would question them; no one would ask them to explain. But when Neeps approached her his eyes were not hiding a thing.

‘You know,’ he said, scowling. ‘Don’t pretend, for Rin’s sake. You know.’

What was she to say? ‘They told me you’d be here. The two of you, I mean.’

He was very angry. Did he think she was laughing at him?