The Night of the Swarm

1

11 Modobrin 941

240th day from Etherhorde

No sunrise in his life — and he has watched hundreds, being a tarboy — has ever made him sentimental, but now the tears flow fast and silent. He is standing in the river with the water to his knees. Voices from the clearing warn him not to take another step, and he knows the danger better than they. Still he cannot believe that anything will harm him now. The sun on his brown, bruised face declares him a survivor, one of the lucky ones, in fact so lucky it staggers the mind.

He can hear someone singing, haunted words about remembered mornings, fallen friends. He lifts a hand as though to touch the sun. Tears of gratitude, these. By rights they should be dead, all of them. Drowned in darkness, smothering darkness, the darkness of a tomb.

Footsteps in the shallows, then a hand touches his elbow. ‘That’s far enough, mate,’ says a beloved voice.

Pazel Pathkendle gives a silent nod.

‘Come on, will you? Ramachni has something to tell us. I don’t think it can wait.’

Pazel bends and splashes water on his face. Better not to show these tears. He is not ashamed; he could not care less about shame or valour or looking brave for Neeps Undrabust, as good a friend as he could ever hope for. But tears would make Neeps want to help, and Pazel the survivor is learning not to ask for help. Friends have just so much to give; when that is gone there’s no hand on your elbow, no one left to pull you ashore.

He turned to Neeps and forced a smile. ‘You’re a mess.’

‘Go to the Pits,’ said the smaller tarboy. ‘You didn’t come through this any better. You look like a drowned raccoon.’

‘Wish I felt that good.’

Neeps glanced down at Pazel’s leg. ‘Credek, it’s worse than ever, isn’t it?’

‘The cold water helps,’ said Pazel. But in fact his leg felt terrible. It wasn’t the burn; that pain he could tolerate, or at least understand. But the incisions from the flame troll’s fangs had begun to throb, and itch, and the skin around them was an unhealthy green.

‘Listen, mate, the fighting’s over,’ said Neeps. ‘You show that leg to Ramachni. Not in an hour or two. Now.’

‘Who’s that singing? Bolutu?’

Neeps sniffed; Pazel’s dodge had not escaped him. ‘Bolutu and Lunja both,’ he said. ‘A praise song to the daylight, they told us. I think the dlomu are all sun worshippers, deep down.’

‘I’m joining them,’ said Pazel, his smile now sincere.

‘Rin’s truth!’ said Neeps. ‘But right now I just wish I could thank the builders of the tower, whoever they were.’

Pazel looked again at the massive ruin, and struggled as before to picture it intact. He could not do it; what he imagined was just too big. The absurdly gradual curve of the wall, the fitted stones large as carriages, the seven-hundred-foot fragment jutting into the sky: the tower would have dwarfed the greatest palaces of Arqual in the Northern world, along with everything he had yet seen in the South. And Neeps was right: it was the tower, as much as Ramachni’s magic or Thasha’s brilliance with a sword, that had saved their lives.

For they were still within the tomb — a living tomb, a tomb made of trees. Days ago, hunting the sorcerer Arunis, they had found themselves standing above it: a crater so vast it would have taken them days to walk around, if they had not known that Arunis waited somewhere in its depths. A crater which they at first mistook for an enormous, weed-covered lake. But it was no lake. What they had at first taken for the scummed-over surface was in fact a lid of leaves: the huge, flat, rubbery leaves of the Infernal Forest. Pazel had been reminded of lily pads blanketing a mill pond, but these pads were fused, branch to branch, tree to tree, all the way to the crater’s edge.

The entire forest lay sealed beneath this skin. Beneath four such skins, as they had found on descending: for there were older leaf-layers beneath the topmost, all supported by the straight, stony pillars of the trees. Like the decks of a ship, each layer was darker than that above. Below the fourth level their descent had continued for several hundred feet, until at last they reached the forest floor.

Not a drop of rain or beam of sunlight could ever touch that floor. It was a hell of darkness they had wandered into. Seven of their party had fallen in that hot, dripping maze, where giant fungi exhaled mind-attacking spores, and bats smothered torches, and the trees themselves lowered tendrils, stealthy as pythons, strong enough to tear a man limb from limb.

The Infernal Forest. Did any place in Alifros better deserve its name?

But here in the forest’s very heart was a refuge, an oasis of light. The ruins held the trees at bay, and the standing wall cut through the leaf-layers to open sky. Moonlight had been dazzling enough after so much blindness. The sun was pure, exquisite joy.

‘Of course, there’s plenty of thanks to go around,’ said Neeps. ‘Old Fiffengurt, to start with, for giving you the blackjack. And Hercol for the fighting lessons.’

‘You fought like a tiger, mate,’ said Pazel.

‘Rubbish, I didn’t. I meant the lessons he gave Thasha, all those years. Did you see her, Pazel? The timing of it? The way she pivoted under Arunis, the way she swung?’

‘I didn’t see her kill him.’

‘It was beautiful,’ said Neeps. ‘That’s an ugly thing to say, maybe. But Pitfire! It was like she was born for that moment.’

‘She wasn’t, though, was she?’

Neeps shot him a dark look. ‘That’s enough about that, for Rin’s sake.’

They walked in silence to the foot of the broken stairs where the others were clustered, listening to the dlomu sing. Thasha, who had made love to him for the first time just days ago — a lifetime ago — stood before him in rags. Her skin a portrait of all they’d passed through. Bites and gashes from the summoned creatures they’d fought here at the tower’s foot. Scars where she’d torn off leeches as big around as his arm. Blisters from the touch of flame-trolls. And blood (dry, half-dry, oozing, rust-red, black) mixed with every foul substance imaginable, smeared and splattered from her feet to her golden hair. She caught his eye. She was smiling, happy. You’re beautiful, he thought, feeling a fool.

This was love, all right: wondrous, intoxicating. And at the same time harrowing, a torment more severe than any wound. For Pazel knew that Thasha, in a sense quite different from the others, should no longer be standing before him.

Fourteen left alive: just half of those who had set out from the city of Masalym and stormed into the heart of this deadly peninsula in a single furious week. Pazel looked at them, the victors, the sorcerer-slayers. It would have been hard to imagine a more crushed and beaten company. Split lips, bloodshot eyes. Ferocious grins bordering on the deranged. Most had lost their weapons; some had lost their shoes. Yet the victory was real; the great enemy lay dead. And given what the fight had taken from them, it was a wonder that madness only flickered in their smiles.

Hercol Stanapeth had almost literally been crushed, beneath an enormous stone hurled by Arunis. He was on his feet, though: crouching over a pile of tinder, whirling a stick in an effort to start a fire. Pazel’s sister Neda was helping, scraping bark and twigs together with her bloodied hands. Beside them, the two black-skinned, silver-eyed dlomu were bringing their song to an end.

Another hour, another day, let our unworthy kind

Feel Thy returning light and say that yet within the mind

We guard the long-remembered joys, too sudden then for song

The fire of youth that time destroys: in Thee it blazes on.

‘Well sung indeed,’ said Ramachni. ‘And fitting words for a day of healing.’

‘Is it to be such a day?’ asked Bolutu.

‘That is more than I can promise,’ said Ramachni, ‘but not more than I hope for.’

Ramachni was a mink. Slender, coal black, with very white fangs, and eyes that seemed to grow when they fixed on you. Like all of them he carried fresh wounds. A red welt crossed his chest like a sash, where the fur had been singed away.

It was a borrowed body: Ramachni was in fact a great mage from another world altogether, a world he declined to name. Arunis had been his mortal enemy, and yet it was Arunis who had clumsily opened the door between worlds that let Ramachni return, just hours ago, at the moment of their greatest need. He had taken bear-form during the fight, and matched Arunis spell for spell. But Arunis’ power, though crude, was also infinite, for he had had the Nilstone to draw upon. In the end Ramachni had been reduced to shielding them from the other’s attacks, and the shield had nearly broken. What was left of his strength? He had told them he would return more powerful than ever before, and so he clearly had. But he had not come to do battle with the Nilstone. Had this battle drained him, like the fight on the deck of the Chathrand? Would he have to leave them again?

‘There,’ said Hercol, as a wisp of smoke rose from the grass.

‘What good is a fire,’ said Lunja, the dlomic soldier, her face still turned to the sun, ‘unless we have something to cook on it?’

‘Don’t even mention food,’ said Neeps. ‘I’m so hungry I’m starting to fancy those mushrooms.’

‘We must eat nothing spawned in that forest,’ said the other dlomu, Mr Bolutu, ‘yet I do need flame, Lunja, to sterilise our knives.’ He looked pointedly at Pazel’s leg. Bolutu was a veterinarian: the only sort of doctor they had.

‘We will have something to cook,’ said Hercol. ‘Cayer Vispek will see to that.’

The sfvantskor warrior-priest smiled. Neda, his disciple sfvantskor, did the same. ‘We eating goose,’ she said.

‘There you go again,’ said the old Turach marine. He frowned at Neda, his wide mouth indignant. ‘You call that Arquali? “We eating”, indeed. How do you expect us to understand you?’

‘Enough, Corporal Mandric,’ said Bolutu. But the Turach paid no attention.

‘Listen, girl: We will eat, someday. We ate, long ago. We would eat, if we had a blary morsel. Which one do you mean? In a civilised language you’ve got to specify.’

‘Yes,’ said Neda, ‘we eating goose.’

She pointed at the river. On the far side, eight or ten plump grey birds were drifting in the shallows. Cayer Vispek’s eyes narrowed, studying them. Neda glanced at Pazel. Switching to Mzithrini, she said, ‘Cayer Vispek can hit anything with a stone. I have seen him kill birds on the wing.’

In the same tongue, Pazel said, ‘You saw him almost kill me with a stone, remember?’

She looked at him as only a sister could. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I’d forgotten all about it.’

Neda spoke with bitter sarcasm. Years ago their mother had changed them both with a great, flawed spell: the only one she had ever cast, to Pazel’s knowledge at least. It had nearly killed them, and had plagued them with side effects that persisted to this day. But it had also made Pazel a language savant, and given Neda a memory that appeared to have no bounds.

Pazel doubted that Neda could control her Gift any better than he could his own. But he was certain she recalled that night when they were at last reunited, and the violence that had erupted minutes later.

‘Did you expect my master to kill you?’ she asked suddenly.

‘I don’t know,’ said Pazel. ‘Yes, I suppose.’

‘Because we’re monsters?’

‘Oh, Neda-’

‘Heartless creatures with their barbaric language, barbaric ways. Your Arquali friends will tell you all about it.’

‘Next you’ll be calling me Arquali again,’ said Pazel.

To his surprise, Neda did not rise to the bait. She looked furtively at Thasha, as though ashamed of herself. ‘I have said too much already,’ she said. ‘We of the Faith do not speak against our betters, and this morning I swore kinship with her.’

‘That doesn’t make Thasha your better, does it?’

His question only made things worse. Neda flushed crimson. ‘I could not have struck that blow,’ she said.

Pazel’s anger vanished; he found himself wishing he could take her hand. They had left home barely six years ago, but at times it felt like sixty. Neda had gone to the Mzithrin Empire and become a warrior-priest: she was Neda Pathkendle no longer; they called her Neda Ygrael, Neda Phoenix-Flame. But Pazel had been captured by men of Arqual, the other great empire of the North, and the Mzithrin’s enemy. It was Arqual that had invaded their home country, broken up what remained of their family. Arqual that had made him a tarboy, the lowest kind of shipboard servant. Arqual that had sent the soldiers who dragged Neda, screaming, into a barn.

Becoming a tarboy had been merely the best of the awful choices before him. It was not clear whether Neda understood that choice, or could forgive it. But something had changed in the last few days. Her glances, even the sharpest ones, had a little less of the sfvantskor in them, and a little more the elder sister.

‘When do we march, Hercol?’ asked Neeps abruptly. ‘Tell me it won’t be sooner than tomorrow.’

‘When’s just one of the questions,’ added Big Skip Sunderling, the blacksmith’s mate from the Chathrand. ‘I’m more worried about how. Some of us ain’t fit to march.’

‘We will do as Ramachni commands,’ said Hercol. ‘You have followed me thus far, but make no mistake: he is our leader now.’

‘I would be a poor leader if I drove you on without rest,’ said Ramachni. ‘We need food as well, and Bolutu and I must do what we can for the wounded. And for all of us there remains one grim task before we depart.’

‘Do not speak of it just yet, pray,’ said a high, clear voice.

It was Ensyl, with Myett close behind her, scrambling down the broken staircase. At eight inches, neither ixchel woman stood as tall as a single step, but they descended with catlike grace, copper skin bright in the sun, eyes of the same colour gleaming like coals. Each carried a bulging sack, fashioned from bits of cloth, over her shoulder.

‘We have ventured high up the wall in search of breakfast,’ said Ensyl, lowering her burden with care. ‘The wind is ferocious above, though you cannot feel it here. But it was worth the struggle: these dainties, at least, did not come from the forest.’

The humans sighed: within the sacks lay twenty or thirty eggs. They were of several sizes and colours; the most striking were perfectly round and gleamed like polished turquoise.

‘There are strange birds aloft,’ said Myett. ‘Some have claws halfway down their wings, and hang by these from the rock face. Others are so small that at first we took them for insects. Atop the spire there are nests the size of lifeboats, made of moss and branches. We did not see the birds that built them.’

She looked sourly at the faces above her. ‘You giants won’t be happy until you boil these eggs into hard rubber, of course-’

Big Skip seized an egg. Tilting his head backwards, he cracked the shell against his lower teeth, emptied yolk and white into his mouth, and savoured both in silence a moment. Then he swallowed. A shiver passed through his big frame.

‘Tree of Heaven, that’s good,’ he said.

The remaining humans dived on the eggs. Pazel gulped his down in one swallow; Thasha licked the inside of her shell like a cat cleaning a dish. Ensyl grinned; Myett pressed her lips tightly shut.

Bolutu did not partake, however. Lunja took an egg and held it up before her eyes, as though considering. ‘No more,’ she said at last, returning it. ‘We have swallowed enough little suns, who served in the armies of the Platazcra.’

‘Little suns?’ said Pazel.

‘For our people,’ said Bolutu, ‘to eat an egg is an act of great pride — unhealthy pride, my father used to tell me.’

‘In Bali Adro today, only soldiers and royals may eats eggs,’ said Lunja. ‘We turn it into another bit of flattery for the Empire. “The sun itself we shall devour, in time.” If I were still in Masalym, I should have to eat this egg, and say those fatuous words, or be accused of disloyalty.’

‘That’s a blary shame,’ said Mandric, licking his fingers.

Ramachni neither ate nor spoke. His watchfulness soon gave the others to realise that the ‘grim task’ would not long be put off. They finished quickly, leaving a few eggs for later, and turned their attention to the mage.

‘Hercol,’ he said, ‘is the Nilstone safe?’

In answer the swordsman pointed gravely at a small mound of rocks, carefully arranged beside the tower wall. Through the spaces between the rocks Pazel could see the Nilstone’s inverse glow, its blacker-than-all-blackness, and felt a touch of that deep, flesh-chilling aversion the relic always produced in him.

‘We have one sturdy sack in which to bear it,’ said Hercol, ‘but I will wrap the Stone first in whatever spare cloth we can find. No one will die of an accidental touch.’

Ramachni nodded. ‘We will not leave this place before tomorrow,’ he said, ‘and I will confess to you that I am not sure how the deed is to be done. Walking would be terribly dangerous: there are few ways out of the crater at all, and most of the openings that do exist are traps, designed to lure prey down to the forest floor and keep them there. I had hoped that the river could carry us to freedom, for it does flow out of the forest at some point. But the river has dangers of its own, and it winds like a snake — and besides, we have no raft. The wood of the great trees is so dense that it sinks like stone.’

‘There are young pines by the forest’s edge,’ said Cayer Vispek, gesturing, ‘but they are few and small.’

‘We have a final problem, alas,’ said Ramachni. ‘The fireflies cannot go with us.’

Cries of dismay. ‘You can’t mean it!’ said Big Skip. ‘Go blind again into that mucking forest?’

‘I did not say blind,’ said Ramachni, ‘only without the fireflies. They are fragile creatures, and I can ask little more of them.’

‘Ramachni,’ said Bolutu, ‘can you induce the nuhzat?’

Lunja shot him an appalled glance. Pazel too was startled: the nuhzat was the ecstatic dream-state of the dlomic people, and when it struck they exhibited all sorts of odd behaviours and abilities. But it had become extremely rare — so rare indeed that most dlomu were afraid of it.

‘I have done so,’ said Ramachni, ‘in the distant past.’

‘Madness,’ said Lunja.

‘Or salvation,’ said Bolutu. ‘Sergeant Lunja, we were both in nuhzat in the Infernal Forest. I heard your singing, and I saw your eyes: black as midnight they were. When the torch went out, I found that the nuhzat had given me a kind of inverse sight. It was frightful and bewildering, but I could make out the shapes of trees, mushrooms, people. As a last resort we might link the party together with rope, and you and I could lead them.’

‘Only if the nuhzat gave you that exact gift again,’ said Ramachni, ‘and that no one can guarantee. There is a reason your dream-state was never harnessed as a tool of warriors or athletes, Bolutu. It is by nature a wild condition, a wayward grace. It liberates, but it does not willingly serve.’ He turned to Ensyl and Myett. ‘I wish we had spoken before you climbed the ruins. A bit higher, and you might have described the land downriver for us.’

‘We will climb again,’ said Ensyl.

Myett shot her a hard look: Speak for yourself.

‘A noble offer,’ said Ramachni, ‘but let us stop thinking of our escape for a while. The time has come: we must burn the sorcerer.’

He nodded at a giant cube of rock some twenty yards away: one of the structural stones of the broken tower. In the grass about it Pazel could see one withered arm, sticking out from behind the stone. The fingers were desiccated, curling like strips of parchment. The hand seemed almost to beckon him.

‘Arunis is slain,’ said Ramachni, ‘but his death opens the way to dangers that were absent before. To begin with, I expect he was using his arts to hide from Macadra.’

‘Macadra!’ cried Lunja. ‘The Emperor’s mage? What has she to do with Arunis?’

‘She may pose as a servant of your Emperor,’ said Ramachni, ‘but that sorceress has long since become the keeper, rather than the kept. In any case, Macadra Hyndrascorm covets the Nilstone as much as Arunis ever did, and will be seeking it with all her powers. Worse still, Macadra can draw upon the might of a whole empire in her hunt. Indeed she is the Empire of Bali Adro, at least for purposes of violence and intrigue. We are fortunate to be so far from any town or garrison. But this wilderness cannot protect us for long.’

‘That’s how it is, eh?’ said Mandric. ‘We were hunters, and now we’re prey?’

‘Let us hope it will not come to that, Corporal,’ said Ramachni. ‘I do not think that the Nilstone itself calls out to any mage; otherwise Arunis would have plucked it from the seabed off the Haunted Coast with far greater ease. But the corpse of a mage is very different. Magic leaks from it as well as blood, and by that magic it shines like a beacon-fire on a hilltop. We must snuff that beacon quickly, or she will know it for Arunis. It may already be too late.’

‘Why burn him?’ asked Dastu, the young Arquali spy. ‘Why not toss him into the river and be done?’

Pazel looked at Dastu with a calm, cold hate. Like Neeps and Thasha, he had once considered the older youth a friend — before he had revealed himself as a protege of Sandor Ott, the Imperial spymaster. Before his betrayal had exposed their resistance to Ott’s plans, and seen them all sentenced to death as mutineers. Captain Rose had suspended that sentence, but he had not pardoned them — and Pazel doubted any of them could pardon Dastu, either.

‘You know we can’t just toss the body in,’ said Thasha. ‘That’s no normal river. It’s a path between worlds.’

Dastu shrugged. ‘If you’re telling the truth-’

‘If?’ said Pazel. ‘Damn it all, Ibjen was right next to me. I saw him — taken. Like a leaf in a hurricane, carried off Rin-knows-where.’

‘That’s the idea, Pathkendle,’ said Dastu. ‘Arunis will just disappear.’ Then he jumped, as though struck by a sudden thought. ‘Gods of death, have we all gone simple? The Nilstone! We can throw the Nilstone into the River of Shadows as well! Right here, this very morning. No one will ever see it again.’

Utter silence. Dastu looked from face to face. ‘What’s the matter now?’ he demanded. ‘Isn’t this what you lot have been seeking? A way to toss the Nilstone out of Alifros?’

‘Yes,’ said Hercol, ‘but not this way.’

‘He has a point, though,’ said Mandric. ‘You’ve always said it can’t be destroyed.’

‘Nor can it,’ said Ramachni, ‘and indeed the Nilstone must be hurled into the River of Shadows — but where it exits this world, not here where it enters.’

‘Is that so crucial?’ asked Lunja doubtfully.

‘Utterly,’ said the little mage. ‘The stone belongs in the world of the dead. My mistress Erithusme tried with all her might and wisdom to send it back there. She failed — but she had a glimpse of how it might be done, in the last days before Arunis drove her into hiding.’

Pazel glanced at Thasha, but her eyes were far away.

‘We know the task before us. The River flows into death’s kingdom at the point where it leaves Alifros, and nowhere else. That is where we must take the Stone.’

‘And that place is the island of Gurishal,’ said Dastu. ‘But Ramachni, it can’t be done! Gurishal is on the western edge of the Mzithrin Empire. We’re standing by a river in a wasteland on the far side of the Ruling Sea, hurt and hungry and lost.’

‘While the hag who controls this whole blary Empire is out hunting for the Stone,’ put in Mandric, with a bitter laugh. ‘Us, take the Nilstone to Gurishal! It’s worse than ludicrous. It’s a deathsmoker’s dream.’

‘The cause is not hopeless yet,’ said Ramachni, ‘and whatever the odds, we must try.’

‘We’ve heard that one before, haven’t we?’ said Dastu. ‘Just before you led us into battle, and Arunis nearly skinned us alive. Only now the odds are even worse. There’s no ship waiting for us at the coast, Ramachni. Only enemies, with Plazic blades that make them itch for murder, and sea-weapons like nothing the North has ever dreamed of. And there’s still worse, by the Blessed Tree. Didn’t you say that the River of Shadows almost always flows deep underground?’

‘In this world, yes,’ said Ramachni.

‘Then what if that’s the case on Gurishal? Master Ott has studied the island for forty years. Alyash lived there. Neither of them ever spoke of any strange river, any doorway to a land of death. What if it’s buried, eh? What if we do get there — miracle of miracles — and find that the River’s under a mile of stone?’

‘Then we dig,’ said Ramachni, ‘but we will not cast either the Stone or the sorcerer’s corpse into the River here.’ The mage spoke quietly, but there was cold steel in his voice. ‘Would you throw poison into a stream, Dastu? That is a crime, even if it be a stream you yourself will never drink from. That, in fact, is how the Nilstone came to enter Alifros to begin with — a selfish and a careless act, by one who wished only to be rid of it quickly. That is how its long history of ruin here began. Impossible, you think our goal? Do not believe it. This night past we killed Arunis, and ended his thirty centuries of power and scheming. Today we work. Tomorrow we will do the impossible again.’

But even today’s task promised to be hard. The trees shed few branches, and the mushrooms, though plentiful, were too wet for burning. Hercol forbade anyone to venture into the forest beyond the nearest trees, and for once not even the sfvantskors were inclined to argue.

Still, the banks of the river yielded logs and sticks, and with persistence they achieved a respectable bonfire. Hercol and Cayer Vispek lifted the headless corpse and tossed it heavily atop the blaze.

‘Stand away!’ said Ramachni. ‘Do not breathe the smoke. Curses may linger anywhere about the corpse.’

The fire quavered; the flames licking the body turned a strange, dark red. Pazel worried for a moment that they had not gathered enough fuel for the task, but it was soon clear that no such danger existed. The flames grew tall and voracious, gobbling the corpse. Pazel glanced at Ramachni and saw that he was very still, facing the fire with his cut eyes tightly closed. You’re helping, aren’t you? Then you’re not entirely drained.

Thasha came up next to Pazel and leaned gently against his side. ‘Burn,’ she whispered, eyes locked on the corpse.

He understood how she felt. Arunis had started everything. All the scheming and most of the deaths traced back to him. Arunis had made the puppets dance, even those who never guessed they were puppets, even those with puppets of their own. Pazel knew that he hated Arunis, but right now he felt nothing but an overpowering desire to see the process through. Let the body become ash, the ash blow away, the world start to heal and forget this monster. .

A look of peace crept over the watching faces. If evil could die, perhaps good might grow. And now a great mage was leading them, not attacking. Why shouldn’t they prevail? For the first time in many days Pazel let himself think of his mother and father, the old life, the far side of the world. It no longer seemed quite so absurd to hope that one day, somewhere, they might all be-

‘The head,’ said Ramachni suddenly, opening his eyes. ‘What has become of the sorcerer’s head?’

‘I was about to fetch it,’ said Cayer Vispek. ‘It lies there behind the stone.’

‘Do so quickly,’ said Ramachni, ‘while the flame is at its height.’

‘I will go, Master,’ said Neda.

She ran behind the great carved stone. When she returned a moment later, Pazel knew that the horror was starting again.

The thing in Neda’s hands was not the mage’s head. It was a large yellow mushroom, one of the few that sprouted in the clearing. Neda held it at arm’s length, her lips curled in wary disgust. Already she was preparing to throw it in the fire.

Cayer Vispek snatched at her arm. ‘Are you mad, girl?’ He knocked the mushroom from her hands. Neda cried out, reaching for it, and Vispek slapped her across the face. ‘You’re charmed, you’re magicked!’ he shouted, and dashed behind the stone himself.

‘Have a care, Vispek, the same may befall you!’ cried Hercol, racing after him.

‘Rin’s eyes, it’s right there on the ground!’ cried Ensyl. She was pointing at the Turach’s helmet.

‘Be still, I have it!’ shouted Vispek, returning. In his hand was a fistful of grass.

Something close to panic seized the company. The world was off-balance; the fire was suddenly dying, and a noise like laughter echoed through the ruins. Pazel whirled, and saw the gory head a stone’s throw away. He rushed towards it, calling desperately to the others: but no, it was further off, almost under the trees. Neeps and Mandric were making for different parts of the forest, pointing and shouting; others were racing back to the burning corpse. Stones, mushrooms, clods of earth, weeds, eggs, boots, were hurled into the fire.

‘Hold!’

Ramachni’s voice cut through the mayhem like a scythe. The distant laughter ceased; the world rebalanced itself. The mage, looking very small, stood beside the mushroom Neda had brought in the first place.

The party reassembled. Ramachni’s white teeth flashed. ‘Come here, young sfvantskor, and finish your work. But this time, speak your prayer as if you mean it.’

Neda hesitated, one hand touching the cheek her master had slapped. ‘The prayer?’ she said.

‘Child,’ said Ramachni, ‘that hand is too close to your mouth.’

Neda’s hand fell like a stone. Thoroughly unsettled now, she knelt before Ramachni. She put out a hand towards the mushroom, made a fist, and shouted several words in Mzithrini, the language of her faith.

And suddenly they all saw it: the gaunt, cruel, mud-caked, goresplattered head. The eyes were closed and the mouth hung wide. Below the chin, Thasha’s cut was remarkably neat.

‘Old Faith prayers are rich in antidemonic patterns,’ said Ramachni, ‘and the oldest and most uncorrupted of them, the songs of Tzi-Haruk and Liseriden, were taken from the guardian-spells laid down in the Dawn War. They have almost gone cold, those ancient spells. But a few embers remain alight.’

‘Our prayers are not hexes, wizard,’ said Cayer Vispek sternly.

‘Nor is a bucket a well,’ said Ramachni, ‘although it serves to lift well-water.’

There came a sharp rasp of steel on steel. Hercol had drawn Ildraquin, his black and ancient sword. With great care he drove the tip of the blade into the severed neck, and lifted the head from the ground.

‘Antidemonics?’ he said. ‘Do you mean to say that Arunis counted demons among his servants?’

‘Perhaps,’ said Ramachni, ‘but Arunis never dedicated himself to the summoning arts: in that discipline Macadra was ever his superior. I think it more likely that he has coaxed a lesser fiend or two into serving him, in exchange for future rewards. Arunis, after all, sought nothing less than godhood, and in his fevered investigations of the several worlds, he found at last a kind of schooling that promised just that. He set out to end life on Alifros for one reason only: because that was the task assigned him, in his third millennium of studies. Those studies he had all but finished. The freeing of the Swarm of Night, and through it the destruction of the world, together comprised his last, horrid test.’

‘His exams,’ said Pazel. ‘Fulbreech called them his exams. It seemed too horrible to be true.’

‘Yet it is,’ said Ramachni. ‘Greysan Fulbreech could never have imagined such a depravity, any more than he could have imagined what would come of pledging himself to Arunis. What he witnessed in the depths of the Forest was too much for his weak soul. I think he saw the faces of that deathless circle Arunis hoped to join. The hand that killed Fulbreech was a merciful one.’

Ibjen’s hand, Pazel thought. The dlomic boy had sworn an oath before his mother: never to fight or even bear a weapon. Fear had not been enough to make him break that oath; but mercy had, in the end. Pazel glanced at the dark river. Was the boy still alive? Had he been swept already into some strange, forbidding world?

‘There should be a scarf,’ said Thasha suddenly. When the others looked at her, she said, ‘You can’t have forgotten. His white scarf. He was never without it on the Chathrand.’

Pazel remembered: that ratty, worn-out cloth. ‘Thasha’s right; he never took the blary thing off. But I don’t remember seeing it here. Does anyone?’

The others shook their heads. Pazel and Thasha looked at each other uneasily.

‘Hercol,’ said Ramachni, ‘take the head to the fire. We have laboured long for this day.’

‘Your labour is not done.’

Everyone cried out: it was the head itself which had spoken, in a voice like moaning wind. The dead eyes snapped open; the dead lips curled in a sneer. Hercol placed both hands on Ildraquin. At the sword’s tip, the knob of flesh and bone was moving, twisting, staring with hatred at them all.

‘Arunis!’ cried Ramachni. ‘We have sent you from this world! Death’s kingdom is your dwelling now. Go quietly; you know the agonies reserved for those who will not.’

‘Death’s kingdom cannot hold me,’ said Arunis. ‘Do you hear, ratmage? We of the High Circle are death’s masters, not its slaves. We brew death in our stomachs. We spit death where we will. Your own deaths I will prolong beyond the compass of your shabby minds, and every instant will be a symphony of pain.’

‘You have no other window on Alifros,’ said Ramachni. ‘Your body is burned already; this last foul tool will follow. Spit, viper! Spit your curses among the damned, for they are the kin you have chosen.’

The head’s pale eyes swivelled. ‘Has your mage called this victory?’ it asked the others. ‘He lies, then. For Erithusme is dying, dying in the body of that wanton girl.’ The eyes flicked in Thasha’s direction. ‘You have failed. She will never return. And I have done all that was asked of me. I have brought the Swarm of Night into Alifros, and it will sterilise this world, as a doctor does his hands before a surgery. Nothing will be left that walks or breathes or grows beneath the sun. Wait and see if I lie, maggots. You will not be waiting long.’

‘It is true that we are done with waiting,’ said Hercol, advancing to the fire. The head writhed and roared. Hercol drew Ildraquin back for the fling — and reeled, almost dropping his sword.

Where the head had dangled a moment before, the tiny body of an ixchel woman hung impaled. A beautiful woman, writhing in agony. Pazel could not help himself: he cried aloud, and so did several others. The woman was Diadrelu — Dri — Hercol’s lover and their cherished friend. She had perished months ago. They had given her body to the sea.

A tortured moan escaped Hercol’s chest. Ramachni was on his shoulder in an instant, whispering. Ensyl too raced up Hercol’s side, and out along the arm that held Ildraquin. ‘Put her down, put her down!’ she shouted through her tears.

‘Stop!’

It was Dri’s voice. She could see them. Desperately she waved for Ensyl to be still. Then her eyes moved back to Hercol. ‘Arunis. . being helped. . the demon-mage. . Sathek.’

‘Sathek!’ cried Neda and Cayer Vispek.

Dri’s face was almost mad with pain. She looked again at Ensyl and switched tongues, falling into the speech of ixchel, beyond the range of human ears. Ensyl nodded, weeping uncontrollably. Then Diadrelu placed a hand flat on either side of Ildraquin and swept them all with her eyes.

‘No quitting,’ she said, and pushed herself free.

The tiny body fell to earth. Hercol lunged, but Ramachni was faster. Pouncing on Diadrelu, he sank his fangs into her side, and with a sharp twist of his body, flung her into the fire. Hercol did not make a sound, but he shuddered, as from a death blow. Yet even as Diadrelu struck the flames, she vanished. In her place the sorcerer’s head reappeared, mouthing a last, voiceless curse.

Hercol walked out among the reeds by the river’s edge, with Ensyl on his shoulder. They sat there, half-hidden, and their sounds of grief floated softly over the clearing. Thasha pulled Pazel and Neeps into her arms and wept. The tarboys stood numb, holding her between them. Pazel could not say exactly where his own tears had gone. He only knew, as he had that morning in the river, that he couldn’t afford them. Your labour’s not done. Manifestly mucking true. Friends had died, he was still standing. Bring on the next thing, the next kick in the gut.

‘It was her,’ Thasha kept repeating. ‘It was really her.’

‘Yes,’ said Ramachni. ‘Arunis was using her, of course. But being fearless, she sought to turn his torture to our advantage. Even in death she has not given up the fight.’

Neda and Cayer Vispek stood gaping. Corporal Mandric shook his head in disbelief. Humans no more cried for ixchel than a dog did for its fleas.

As for Myett, she raced away from them all up the broken stairs. Eyes dry, thoughts black. She could not bear to think of them looking at her. With compassion, maybe, with forgiveness. She had watched Hercol broken once already, at the moment of Diadrelu’s death — her real death on the Chathrand, which Myett had helped bring about. She had taunted him, called him goat, satyr, sexual freak. All for Taliktrum. All to justify the extremes he was going to, the messianic make-believe, the killing of his rivals, the killing of his aunt.

Didn’t you know? The question chased her, nipped her heels. Didn’t you know it was false, the way Taliktrum excused his own brutality (I am your deliverer, the one to whom vision is given; I am my own reason why)? Couldn’t you see it in his violence, his fear? After each encounter with Diadrelu he would rage at Myett, or strip and straddle her like a rapist, or worst of all sit quivering alone. Didn’t you know it was a lie? Of course, of course. But she had managed not to know. She kept the knowledge hidden, a black stone in her stomach, until the day that Taliktrum himself could bear the lie no more.

She understood at last why he had cast her off. Taliktrum had shed family blood. And every glimpse of Myett had reminded him of the deed. It could never be otherwise. Even if he lived, and she found him, somewhere in this vast, vicious world — even then, it would lie between them. She climbed on, heedless of the growing wind, the slickness of the weathered stones.

Pazel sat staring into the fire. He could smell Arunis burning. It sickened him, and yet he craved the smell. There could never be enough proof that the mage was gone. Hercol and Ensyl were still crouched by the river. Neeps was walking up and down with Thasha, who was too distraught to hold still. Dastu sat a few yards from Pazel, likewise studying the fire.

‘Muketch,’ he said, ‘I’ve been meaning to thank you.’

Pazel turned to him, benumbed. ‘To thank me?’

‘For what you did on the tower. You saved us, every bit as much as Thasha did.’

Pazel swallowed. ‘I killed a man in the process.’

Dastu shook his head. ‘Not a man.’

Pazel sighed and nodded. True enough: the tol-chenni had never had a human mind. It had been born with animal intelligence, and its parents had been the same. But its grandparents, or great-grandparents: who had they been? Shopkeepers in Masalym? Teachers, maybe? Newlyweds, with dreams for their children?

Some questions (many questions) were better left unasked.

‘You’ve learned some fighting skills,’ said Dastu.

Pazel shook his head. ‘Only a little, from Thasha and Hercol. I’ll never be really good.’

Pazel recalled a time when the compliment would have felt like a gift. He had once thought of Dastu as his best friend among the tarboys, after Neeps. He had delighted, secretly, in the fact that Dastu was pure Arquali, and yet free of the contempt for conquered races that infected so many. He’d adored the older boy. Everyone had: even those who never looked at Pazel or Neeps without a sneer.

Then Dastu had turned them in for mutiny.

Of course they were mutineers, Pazel and his friends. They’d met in a lightless room in the bowels of the Chathrand, to plan their takeover. Their true enemy was Arunis, but there had been no way to fight him without defying Captain Rose.

Pazel looked pointedly at Dastu. ‘You still think we should be hanged?’ he asked.

Dastu looked away. ‘I’m loyal to Arqual. I swore an oath to my Emperor, and to the Service.’

‘That’s a yes, is it?’

The older youth shrugged. ‘Doesn’t matter what I think. Not to anyone. Pitfire, it hardly matters to me. Listen, Muketch: we have to toss the Nilstone in the river. Not on Gurishal. Right here. I know what Ramachni says about poisoning a well. But we have no choice, no other chance. And think of it this way.’

He scooped up two handfuls of dirt. ‘Suppose we set off for Gurishal — somehow.’ He let one handful sift through his fingers. ‘The Stone remains in Alifros. The Swarm grows, the world is destroyed. That will happen. We’ll struggle on awhile, then we’ll fail, and everything will go to pieces. Look around and tell me I’m wrong. Look at us, Muketch; look at your leg. Think of where we are.’

‘Denial is death,’ murmured Pazel.

The other boy looked up sharply. ‘Rin’s truth, that is.’ He opened his other hand, gazed at the sandy earth. ‘But in another world, who can say? Maybe they’re stronger, maybe they have great lords or wizards who’ll know what to do with the Nilstone. All we know is what happens if it stays here.’

‘That’s all we know,’ Pazel agreed.

Encouraged, Dastu leaned closer, lowering his voice. ‘Bolutu’s dead set against it, just like the mage. But there’s one good thing about being here, in this Godsforsaken wilderness. You know what I mean. We outnumber them. We humans outnumber the dlomu, and if we know what’s good for us we’ll stick together. Do you understand me, Muketch?’

Pazel looked at him a moment. ‘Yes, I think I do. And just now I was thinking of what you said that day, when I asked why you’d betrayed us. You told me to save my breath. That nothing I could say would make a difference to you, because you had your loyalties straight. Well, so do I, and they begin with Ramachni. Without him Arunis would have beaten us a long time ago.’

‘Arunis nearly killed us last night. Because of Ramachni.’

Pazel shook his head. ‘In spite of him. I won’t help you, Dastu. And you’re not getting near that mucking Stone by yourself. We’ll carry it to Gurishal, somehow. And you know what else? You’re here for a reason. Doesn’t Ott always boast about leaving nothing to chance? He sent you along to help us on this mission, not to hinder us. Are you going to obey him or not?’

Dastu let the second handful of earth dribble to the ground. When his hand was empty he looked up at Pazel. His eyes were bright and accusing.

‘You still don’t see it, do you? We’re trapped here. We’re going to die in this place. We nearly killed ourselves getting here and now we are mucking buried alive.’

Hercol and Ensyl came back to the group around the fire. ‘My mistress has not finished the dark journey,’ said Ensyl.

‘Not finished?’ said Big Skip. ‘What do you mean, by the Blessed Tree? Is she dead or not?’

‘Her body died,’ said Hercol, ‘but her spirit has yet to pass into death’s kingdom. She is holding herself back in order to help us. All this time she has lingered in some strange place between the lands of light and darkness.’

‘In Agaroth,’ said Ramachni. ‘The Border-Kingdom. I have walked those dark hills myself, long ago in my youth. Many linger in Agaroth, hoping to finish some deed in this world, or because they fear the next.’

‘Ensyl,’ said Thasha, ‘did Dri say anything more, in your tongue?’

‘Yes,’ said Ensyl. ‘She said he was furious that he’d been tricked by Erithusme.’ She glanced at Pazel. ‘You heard as well, didn’t you?’

Pazel nodded. ‘She said that Arunis had done everything he could to bring the Stone to Gurishal — until he learned that we could get rid of it there — and that now he’ll do everything he can to stop us from taking it to that island.’ Pazel looked at Ramachni, shaken. ‘He learned the truth here in the forest, didn’t he? Maybe with the Nilstone’s aid. And Fulbreech overheard. But what if he hadn’t? What if he’d died before we found him? We’d still have no idea where to take the Nilstone. Credek, we’d have no chance at all.’

‘What if Fulbreech lied?’ asked Lunja.

‘Excellent question!’ said Mandric. ‘That boy was more crooked than a back alley in Ulsprit. What if he decided to stick it to us one last time?’

‘I don’t think he lied about Gurishal,’ said Neeps.

The others looked at him. ‘Oh yes,’ said Dastu, ‘your famous hunches. Your nose for lies.’

Neeps glared at Dastu. ‘It’s not a blary hunch,’ he said. ‘Think it through. If you can’t reach the world of the dead from Gurishal, then what did Dri mean about Arunis being tricked?’

‘If, if, if!’ said Dastu. ‘If that was really your crawly friend who spoke to us. If she has any idea what Arunis is really up to. If the sorcerer didn’t tell Fulbreech exactly what to say when we found him.’

‘Mage,’ said Cayer Vispek, turning to Ramachni, ‘now that the sorcerer’s body is burned, how much power remains to him?’

‘In this world?’ said Ramachni. ‘Not much, I hope. But I am troubled by that missing scarf; we must search the ruins again before we leave.’

‘There’s one more thing,’ said Ensyl. ‘Dri said that Arunis spoke the truth about the Swarm.’

Ramachni’s eyes darkened. ‘This much is true: that the Swarm is drawn to death, and grows stronger when deaths are numerous. It belongs in the Border-Kingdom, patrolling that great and final Wall, beyond which stretches the land of the dead. Where the Wall crumbles, the Swarm holds back the dead, lest they flood into living lands and despoil them. That is its purpose: a vital purpose indeed. But it was never meant to be in the living world, or to encounter living beings, and here its work can only bring disaster. It will fall upon death, immobilizing the souls of the fallen. But when it falls upon the living, they too shall die — and feed the Swarm. The cycle can only accellerate, you see: with each death, the Swarm will grow stronger. Unless we rid the world of the Nilstone, the Swarm will come to blanket earth and sky, and smother every living thing beneath its pall.’

‘But Ramachni, this makes no sense!’ said Bolutu. ‘Why should the Swarm have such power here? I have read many treatises on magic, including your own. The Swarm should be weak here in Alifros, if its power comes from elsewhere.’

‘Not while the Nilstone remains in this world,’ said the mage. ‘You see a dark sphere, Belesar, but the Stone is also a puncture wound, and it is through that wound that the Swarm’s power floods into our own.’

‘Where has the Swarm gone, Ramachni?’ asked Hercol.

‘Away in search of death,’ said the mage. ‘Like water flowing downhill, it will go where death is strongest — to some unhappy corner of Alifros beset by plague or famine — or war.’

‘War,’ said Thasha. ‘It all fits, doesn’t it? Arunis did everything he could to start a war between Arqual and the Mzithrin. And we made it easy for him, both sides did, with all our greed and hate and holy nonsense.’

She looked pointedly at the sfvantskors. Silence fell. The North, the humans’ battered homeland, was briefly, painfully present.

‘I think war is getting now,’ said Neda.

‘There you go again,’ said the marine.

Pazel lay on his stomach on a wide, flat stone, and Ramachni jumped up beside him and licked his ankle. A cool painlessness flowed from the mage’s touch into his wounded leg; soon the whole limb felt heavy and remote. Then Bolutu came towards him with a knife, and they made him look away. Pazel could not feel the touch of the blade, but he heard a faint slicing sound as Bolutu cut out the dying flesh. Afraid he might be sick, he forced his thoughts elsewhere.

‘Where is Myett?’

Bolutu frowned and glanced upwards. ‘She has scaled the tower anew. Ensyl plans to go looking for her. Be still now, let me work.’

He bandaged Pazel’s leg with scraps of cloth washed clean in the river, and Ramachni set a paw on the wound and spoke a few soft words. The delightful coolness grew stronger, but Ramachni warned him that the pain would return. ‘I would fear for your leg if it did not,’ added Bolutu.

‘The bite will heal,’ said Ramachni, ‘but the damage may be of more than one kind. The jaws of the flame-trolls are ghastly pits, and just what foulness lurked in the one that gnawed you I cannot tell. Of course you were not the only one bitten — Mandric and Lunja both need tending — but the fang that pierced your leg went especially deep. You must keep your eye on that leg for years.’

‘If I live to have such problems I’ll be glad,’ said Pazel.

But his words touched a deeper fear, resting like a stone in the pit of his stomach. ‘Ramachni,’ he said, very low, ‘Neeps is the one I’m worried about.’

‘He fears for his Marila, and their child,’ said Bolutu.

‘It’s not just that, Bolutu,’ said Pazel, glancing nervously at the rest of the party. ‘It’s the mind-plague.’

Bolutu started. ‘Jathod, I smelled it! The sharp smell of his sweat, like lemon peel. I had forgotten what it was like.’

‘For Rin’s sake, don’t tell anyone,’ said Pazel. ‘Thasha knows, but no one else does. Not even Neeps has guessed.’

‘I know of his condition,’ said Ramachni. ‘We can discuss it further after you sleep.’

‘Can you cure him?’

Ramachni sighed. ‘Pazel, your friend is succumbing to one of the most powerful spells ever cast in Alifros. It has already destroyed the minds of every human south of the Ruling Sea. The spell’s caster herself proved powerless to stop it. Before I try to do what my mistress could not, I must have help. You know where I hope to find that help, I think.’

Pazel glanced at Thasha. He took a deep breath. ‘I know,’ he said, ‘but you’ve made a mistake. There isn’t going to be any help from Erithusme.’

‘We shall see,’ said Ramachni gently.

‘I don’t think you understand,’ said Pazel. ‘It didn’t work, she hasn’t come back. Thasha is still just Thasha.’

‘She was never just Thasha, my lad,’ said Ramachni. ‘And now I must insist that you sleep.’

The last word was like a finger snuffing a flame. Pazel barely had time to lay his head on the stone before sleep engulfed him, blissful and profound. In the stillness of the clearing he dreamed of a typhoon, and the Chathrand running north again, racing on madcap winds, chasing or giving chase. The whole crew was reunited, the dead and the living alike, and Captain Rose was on his quarterdeck, raging and gesturing, shouting orders, cursing ghosts. Pazel stood in the lashing rain, and Thasha was near him, her eyes bright as sparks, her pale skin luminous, as on the night when they had made love beneath the cedar. And somewhere in the darkness of the ship Pazel could feel the Nilstone, throbbing, pumping death through the ship and the storm and the world like a malignant spirit, like a great black heart.

Myett had climbed three hundred feet before she realised that she did not wish to die.

She knew the difference between flirting with death and hungering for it, wanting it with her soul. She had known the latter condition, and once, very nearly, succumbed. This was different. The impulse to destroy herself weakened with every yard she ascended.

She’d been in earnest that other time, however. Sealed in the Chathrand’s flooding hold, blind drunk, heartbroken. It was luck that had saved her: luck and the Masalym shipwrights. If the draining of the ship had been delayed another quarter-hour, they’d have found her body clogging the pumps.

Three hundred feet brought her to the level of the bottom-most leaf-layer, where the wind began. She held tight, feeling the still-pleasant burning in her muscles, the strength in arms, fingers, ankles no giant could ever attain. She was wedged in a crack that ran like inverse lightning up the tower wall. The strange birds wheeled around her, crying. Afraid she’d come for what was left of their brood.

The alternative to death had been this expedition, this crossing of battle-lines. She had spent most of the voyage fighting Ensyl and Diadrelu and their giant friends. Myett had been as committed as any ixchel to the hatred of human beings, and heaven knew there was reason for it. But loyalty to her lover had been the bedrock of that hate. She had cleaved to Taliktrum, Diadrelu’s nephew, before and after his rise to power. After he became a visionary, Myett had argued with the doubters, rabidly insistent that he was all that he claimed. Too funny. All along the debate had been with herself.

She could not pinpoint when the change had come. After the flame-trolls, surely, and before the catastrophe in the forest. Was it the night she dreamed her grandfather’s death, and woke sobbing, bewildered, unable to recall for nearly half a minute that she’d left him safe and sound on the Chathrand? Was it when the giants wept for their dead, and she had nowhere to be but right there beside them, witnessing grief that looked and sounded for all the world like ixchel grief? Or the night she saw Thasha and Pazel Pathkendle slip away to make love, and followed them, unseen of course, and vaguely disappointed to learn that this, too, was not a thing her people did better than giants.

Four hundred feet, and the rim of the crater was in sight. A tearing wind broke around her, trying her grip. The crack had narrowed, too: Myett found fewer places to wedge her body, rest her weight. She could see the large, shaggy nests atop the pinnacle, now, and one grey wing, spread wide to bask in the sun.

Whenever it had happened, the change was real. She stood with Ensyl, now — and heaven help her, the giants. The humans. She would have to remember to hate them, secretly, remind herself of what they were. Or else become one. That was Diadrelu’s choice, and Ensyl’s. Myett would never go that far, never risk becoming a mascot. But the quest was hers now, and she would give more than they did, more than they ever could. It had become a cause to live for, rather than a slower, grander way to die.

She stopped. Her muscles twitching, her fingers raw. She was a hundred feet above the highest leaf-layer, seeing the wider world for the first time in days. She knew that the descent would take all her strength, if indeed she had not gone too far already. The wind tore at her, but she would not retreat without the view she’d come for. Aching, she leaned out from the wall.

The ruins stood almost exactly at the Forest’s centre. To the south, dark hills pressed close to the crater’s rim. A shimmer of reflected sunlight marked the place where the mighty Angungra cut through the crater wall and swept away, into a deepening gorge. A mist hung over that gorge, and beyond it there were mountains, lower than the cold peaks they had passed through, but tight and forbidding all the same. And endless, too: if they somehow escaped this Forest they would have little choice but to brave those mountains — with no guide who had ever set foot there, no notion of what lay beyond.

Or almost none.

There is hope downriver, between the mountains and the sea. The strange message from Vasparhaven, the Spider Temple, came back to her with sudden irony. Hope. Maybe it was out there, somewhere, hidden in this great arbitrary maze of a world. But what of it? The notion seemed cruel, like showing a coin to a beggar, then tossing it away into a field.

Carefully, she turned to face the north. The snow-capped range through which they had come loomed dark and massive. Astonishing to think that a footpath snaked through those peaks, and down again, to the city where they’d left their ship, their one real hope of any life save the life of castaways. To say nothing of kinfolk, clan brothers and sisters, her grandfather. . and Taliktrum.

He was back there in Masalym. The only ixchel in that vast city of dlomu. Her lover, exiled by his own choosing. And by the impossible, the suffocating neediness of their clan.

I should be with you. I should have sought you out.

Nonsense, of course. Taliktrum had spurned her, called her an entertainment. If Myett had abandoned both the ship and this expedition, if she somehow found him in that huge dark hive of a city, Taliktrum would only have called her a fool. And been right in doing so. Myett was done with foolishness: she too had made decisions, chosen sides. It was a strange fate, to be fighting alongside giants, sworn enemies, for an abstraction called the world. But Myett knew what she and Ensyl could give them, how ixchel skills might help them all survive, and that certainty of being needed was what one felt in a clan.

It was not passion, not ‘starlight in the blood’ as the poets had it, not the bliss she had felt when Taliktrum was at his best, when he managed to be loving and kind. But it was good, they were good; even Hercol had forgiven and embraced her. She looked down, mapping out her descent.

Then her brow furrowed. What was blocking the sun?

Instinct came too late. Myett’s hand flew to her knife, but the hawk was already on her, grey wings filling her vision, shrill cry rending the air. Talons longer than her arm bit into her flesh.

She was crushed, barely able to breathe. But as the hawk wheeled away from the tower she managed to pass the knife from her half-pinned arm to her teeth. Her thoughts exploding. She would fall. She would die. She would work the arm free, stab the bird, master it, make it land. No quitting. No quitting. The talons moved. Her arm slid free.

At once she buried the knife in the bird’s leg. Its reaction was swift and violent, a sharp jerking stall, and Myett was thrown, whirling, falling, falling to her death. The sun whirled, the earth flashed in circles around her, the tower wall surged by faster and faster, she was dead, she was surely dead, a life of lust and bitterness and rage-

The hawk snatched her from the air. Myett felt its black beak tighten as it pulled out of the fall, straining, the tug of the earth so strong she thought her ears must be bleeding. Then they rose above the top leaf-layer and shot away to the south, and the hawk passed her back into his claw, slick now with the blood she had drawn. One eye, coral-red and brilliant, fixed upon her.

‘If you fight me,’ said the hawk distinctly, ‘I will pinch that arm until it dies.’