Robert Redick - The Night of the Swarm

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.’