Robert Redick - The Night of the Swarm

‘We do not go hungry,’ admitted Felthrup. ‘Sergeant Haddismal divided up the Chathrand treasure among all the survivors, and Admiral Isiq gave us more ere we separated. Fiffengurt handed his share over to Miss Annabel, saying that he had gone to sea for the sake of her family’s debts, and wouldn’t neglect them now. Anni used it to purchase this house, and from that day she has considered Fiffengurt a business partner. Now change. You’ll find clean things in that dresser, beneath the clock.’

Pazel smiled as he stepped into Fiffengurt’s pants: the wiry sailor had grown rather stout. Then he froze. The clock on the dresser was unmistakable. It was Thasha’s, the beautiful mariner’s clock, with its face shaped like a gibbous, mother-of-pearl moon.

‘Ah yes,’ said Felthrup. ‘Ramachni left that in our keeping. He has long since departed for his own world. And he says that I must join him there, one day.’

‘What? You? Why you, Felthrup?’

Pazel, the Waking Spell has been the cruelest sort of blessing. I am a rat, in a rat’s frail form. I have plans and hopes that far exceed my body’s limitations, and its life span. When I depart down the tunnel in that clock, Ramachni tells me that I will find myself in another body, human or dlomic or some other long-lived race, on the other side. And he will present me to a certain learned academy, and even vouch for my studious nature.’

‘Felthrup! That’s wonderful! But. . how long do you have?’

‘Before I leave? This body’s aches will tell me that. A few years, I hope. But there is something more astonishing, my boy. That other world, Ramachni’s? It is our future. Or rather, a future that might be ours.’

‘Might be.’ Pazel rested a hand on the clock, feeling sudden loneliness. ‘You mean the way the Chathrand might have ended up on that empty island, where Lord Talag hid his clan?’

‘Correct,’ said Felthrup. ‘Ramachni’s Alifros is linked to our own by a thin footpath, winding through endless mountain-chains of years. But in the actual walking we find that the path divides almost endlessly. Some paths lead down into fertile valleys, others to ice and fear. There is no telling, deep in the mountains, whether you have strayed or not.’

Pazel stayed on in Ballytween, and thanked the Gods for Felthrup Stargraven. He took a room in the port district with a view of the sea. He tutored children in many languages, and became a celebrity at Annabel’s. On free days he went with Felthrup to the city archives, and learned many things about the world they had saved.

Fiffengurt still did not know him, and when Coote and Fegin paid their old captain a visit they did not know him either. Nor did the half dozen other survivors of the Chathrand who passed through Ballytween that year. If the Master-Word’s effects were waning, they were taking their time.

He was twenty-one and considered handsome. The serving-girls fought bitterly over the right to bring him beer. Some of them were beautiful, many of them were kind. Now and then he found he could kiss them, or even go through the motions of love. But he could not court them seriously. The kindest and the loveliest he avoided: they stirred a pain in him he could not bear.

His drinking grew worse. A morning came when he woke up knowing that he had spent the whole night at Annabel’s, buying rounds for the house, switching languages as often as he switched tables, slapping the backs of strangers, avoiding Felthrup’s worried eye. He had an idea that several tarboys from the Chathrand had shown up that night, some of them with sweethearts, and it frightened him to realise that he might just as easily have imagined them in his stupor. He threw up into a basin. He lay back thinking of death.

Then his hand went to his collarbone. There was a warmth there that had nothing to do with alcohol. He had almost forgotten the sensation, golden sunlight in his veins, a thing so beautiful that no one who felt it should ever speak of sorrow again.

Land-boy, land-boy, can you still hear me? Do you think I have forgotten you ?

It was dawn. He pulled on his shoes and stumbled out through the dirty city and along the coast road until he came to the beach. A sign warned of rip tides, and declared swimming forbidden. He undressed. He felt it was Thasha undressing him, her loving hands, her knowing smile.

He swam offshore with easy strokes. The current bore him swiftly out, and soon the land looked small and notional above the swells. When he tired, he let himself sink, and stayed there until he saw Klyst coming for him, her murth-beauty breathtaking, her teeth like a shark’s.

He would have to tell her of Thasha, that his heart had many chambers, that he dreamed of another’s return.

Serpentine arms went around him. He was still holding his breath. It’s not forever , he would have to say. But as he tried to form the words in her language, he found that ‘forever’ did not exist in the murthic tongue. There were words for now and later, for tomorrow, for tonight. But not forever. The effort tied him in knots.

‘Land-boy, do you love me?’ she asked. ‘Will you come with me today?’

Today. Iriritha . That was a lovely word, he thought.

He closed his eyes. Last chance. But then her lips brushed the shell beneath his collarbone, and there was no more waiting, no more doubt. He put his arms around her, buried his face in the kelp-forest of her hair. Klyst was laughing as he kissed her. ‘You can breathe again,’ she said.