Robert Redick - The Night of the Swarm

Twelve staircases behind him. Now he could look back over the sound, all the way to the Arrowhead, the stone that ought to fall. Thirteen staircases. On the beach, the Chathrand suddenly righted herself, slid into deeper water, turned her prow to face the wall.

Fourteen staircases. A tremor shook the earth.

Pitfire. Pitfire. I’m too late .

He could barely feel his legs, but they still served him, he still climbed. Not high enough. You can’t stop. Keep going . He was dizzy, falling and bouncing to his feet again, scraping his hands. Was this the fifteenth staircase? The sixteenth? He was no longer sure.

The wall still loomed above him. He was crawling. And that wouldn’t do.

Then the Arrowhead fell.

‘Oh credek , no!’

It toppled straight inland, like a tree. Millions of cubic feet of rock struck the water in an instant. And then the wave came, like a second mountain. Like an act of vengeance by the Gods.

He was seeing stars. The wave was big enough. That was all he could think of, all that mattered. It would lift the ship and everything else on that mile-long beach, and would not stop for anything, anyone, between here and death.

A monstrous roaring filled the canyon. As the canyon narrowed the wave grew taller and taller still. He crawled a few more steps. A wind rose that nearly knocked him flat.

Yes, it was big enough, and Erithusme was there with her hand on the Nilstone, holding her broken ship together by will and sorcery. That was enough. It would have to be enough. He had earned his rest.

‘Get up you damned fool!’

Neda. Neeps. They had come out of nowhere and seized his arms, one on each side, and all but carrying him they flew up the stairs, swearing in Sollochi and Ormali and Mzithrini, dashing and stumbling beside drops of five or six hundred feet, looking back with horror in their eyes. They were above the wall, now, and Pazel saw the long, dismal canyon, and a black funnel in the distance, a place even the Swarm could make no darker than it was.

The wave crested thirty feet above the wall, and twenty below the spot where Neeps and Neda ran out of strength and dropped beside him in the dirt. Then the wall collapsed, and stones the size of mansions blasted into the canyon beyond. Then the Chathrand came, pitching and rolling but beautifully afloat, and the Goose-Girl swept them with her wooden eyes.

The water swept like lightning down the canyon. The three of them lay there, spent, the wind still tearing at them, and watched the unfathomable torrent’s progression. By the time the wave reached the abyss they had lost sight of the Chathrand . But the abyss swallowed the wave, and surely everything it carried. And everyone.

Pazel waited. The Swarm felt almost close enough to touch. He was not going to flee it down the mountain again, into that flooded devastation. He was finished.

Nor did he have to flee. Before his eyes the great mass began to shrink, to implode. Faster and faster it shrunk, the sky brightening by the minute, and the withering shadow it had cast over land and sea contracting too. He stood up. The Swarm contracted to the size of the Arrowhead, then the size of the beach. At last it too began to race towards the abyss, as though it were tied by an invisible cord to the Nilstone, and the cord had at last run out. Pazel shielded his eyes and saw it falling, a black star, leaving Alifros for the land where its evil was no evil but the order of things. He watched it vanish. He felt the warmth of the sun.

For a time no one spoke. Pazel could hear Jorl and Suzyt barking hysterically in the meadows above.

‘Thank you,’ he said at last.

Neeps turned around and looked at him. ‘You’re a nutter,’ he said. ‘What in Pitfire were you doing down there?’

‘Woolgathering.’

‘Sense of humour, too. What are you, a tarboy?’

Pazel grinned at him. Neeps did not grin back. Slowly Pazel’s smile began to fade. Neda said, ‘You are on Chathrand , since Serpent’s Head?’

‘Neda!’

His sister jumped. So did Neeps. ‘Listen, mate: who are you? How do you know her name? We know you’re one of Darabik’s boys, but why’d you bother to come aboard, if you were just going to hide out below?’

‘I am seeing him before,’ said Neda. ‘I think so. Maybe.’

Pazel tried to speak again, and failed. At last Neeps shook his head.

‘Maybe he’s afraid of sfvantskor tattoos, Neda. After all we’ve just been through! Well, come up and join us, mystery boy, when you’re done quaking in your boots. We’re all on the same side, you know.’

They trudged wearily up the ridge, leaving him sitting there. Pazel put his head in his hands. The Master-Word had done its job, all right. But it had not stopped with erasing him from Thasha’s mind. It had reached up the mountain and touched his best friend, and his sister. And who knew how many more.

He climbed up to the meadows, among the hundreds of men and women with whom he’d crossed the world. Some were laughing with relief; others were crying, or just lying flat and spread-eagled, making love to the earth. A few looked at him with curiosity, or pity when they saw his distress. But not with recognition, none of them. Even Neda merely frowned at him, puzzled. Fiffengurt sat beside the travel case into which Thasha had packed her clock. Hercol offered him water. Marila stood up and brought him something wrapped in her kerchief.

‘It’s called mul ,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t look like food, but it is.’

He held the tiny package, dumbstruck, lost. ‘Thanks,’ he whispered at last.

Disconcerted, Marila went back and sat beside Neeps. They were talking about Thasha, speculating on her fate. Pazel moved past Bolutu and Prince Olik, who nodded at him distantly. When he crouched in front of Felthrup, the mastiffs growled.

‘Hush, you boisterous brutes!’ said Felthrup. ‘Never mind them, sir. They’re a bit uneasy around strangers, but they will do you no harm.’

‘Look what I found in my pocket,’ said Hercol. On his palm lay the ivory whale Pazel’s mother had given him so long ago. ‘Rin knows where it came from,’ said Hercol, ‘or why it especially caught my eye. You want it, Neda Phoenix-Flame?’

Pazel climbed a little higher and sat on a rock. They had their arms around each other. They were tending the wounded, wiping away tears, wondering aloud how soon the Nighthawk would come for them, and what would happen next. Even laughing, just a little. They were starting to allow themselves to imagine their lives going on. It was a conversation in which he played no part.

An hour passed, and the survivors of the voyage began a careful descent. ‘You there, lad!’ Hercol called to him. ‘I don’t know your story, or how you came to be aboard. But never mind that. You’re alive, and the world is new. Get up, come along with us. This is still a dangerous island. You don’t want to stay here alone.’

‘I’ll be right behind you,’ Pazel heard himself say.

It was a lie, of course. He wasn’t going to move. As for being alone, that was something he’d be getting used to.

A slight sound: he turned and saw Ramachni seated beside him, gazing as he was at the canyon, the water still draining backwards into the sea.

‘Not all forms of blindness endure, my lad,’ he said.

‘You know me?’

‘I know you, curiously enough. Perhaps because I was the one who gave you the Master-Words to begin with, or perhaps because I am a mage. But there is a certain flavour to permanent transformation, and another to the temporary sort. This is the latter. They will remember you, in time.’

‘How long? Days?’

‘Longer, I think.’