Robert Redick - The Rats and the Ruling sea

One day, nibbling soda bread with a blanket across his knees, staring at a page of Arquali poetry as the bird pecked crumbs from the floor, he heard the king beneath him, laughing deep in his throat. The monarch raised his voice to a shout: 'Yes, yes, darling, you win, by all the gods! Your wish is my own!' And then, very faintly, Isiq heard a woman's musical laugh.

He shot to his feet, scaring the bird back to the window. Book and blanket and cake fell to the floor. He took a step forwards, lips trembling, possessed by yearnings the very existence of which he had forgotten.

'Syrarys?' he whispered.

'Isiq!' screeched the tailor bird, beside himself. 'Isiq, best friend, only friend, you can talk!'

20 Ilbrin 941

219th day from Etherhorde

With the lookout's cry at dawn, grown men wept with relief.

'Tower ashore! Tower ashore!'

Felthrup's eyes snapped open. Had he heard correctly?

He was in the doorway of the wedding cupboard, under Hercol's chair. Hercol was already on his feet. 'A tower!' he cried softly. 'Thank the sweet star of Rin!'

'We are saved!' said Felthrup. 'Any settlement will have water! They cannot refuse us enough to stay alive!'

'To me, little brother,' said Hercol, and lifted the rat to his shoulder. Felthrup clung tight, revelling in the strength of his three good legs. Just like Master Mugstur, he had seen his battle-wounds healed when he took monstrous shape. Then (a far greater blessing) the Red Storm had nullified the hideous change, restoring him to his true body, just as it had done to Belesar Bolutu. Even with his burning thirst, Felthrup had not felt so strong in years.

The door to Pacu Lapadolma's cabin opened, and Bolutu himself stepped out, his silver eyes shining with anticipation. The dlomic man had lately moved into Pacu's cabin, which like Hercol's cupboard stood inside the magic wall. He wore an amulet about his neck: a lovely sea-green stone, inlaid with gold likenesses of tiger and snake. It was a sacred emblem, he'd explained vaguely: and this was the first time he'd dared display it in twenty years.

He had also taken to wearing a broadsword. Felthrup didn't know where the sword had come from, but he knew why Bolutu kept it at hand, and why he had changed his quarters. The mood on the Chathrand was explosive; men were almost as thirsty for a scapegoat as they were for water. Felthrup himself went nowhere without a guardian. The only thing worse than being the sole dlomu aboard the Great Ship was being its last surviving rat.

Scores of men were already rushing up the Silver Stair, with ixchel flowing past them left and right.. Hercol threw open the stateroom door. 'Thasha! Pathkendle!'

Pazel and Thasha stumbled into the passage, blinking. Ensyl was there as well, riding on Pazel's shoulder. Felthrup leaped into Thasha's arms. 'Wake up, my lady!' he said, wriggling with excitement. Thasha nodded vaguely; she did not seem to know quite where she was.

Bolutu was first up the Silver Stair. As soon as he reached the topdeck a cry of joy burst from his lips.

'Narybir! Ay dorin Alifros, beloved home! That is the Tower of Narybir, Guardian of the East! We have reached Cape Lasung! There is a village beside the tower, and fresh water to spare! And see, there is the inlet we were hunting for!'

The others rushed up the ladderway. A joyful clamour was breaking out above: A village! A village with water to spare!

On the topdeck, Bolutu stood with his half-webbed hands spread wide above his head. Men crowded around him, suddenly indifferent to his strangeness, hanging on his every word. Others gazed with longing from the portside rail.

Felthrup sniffed the wind and shivered with excitement. Forest! He could smell wet bark and pine sap, and a boggy smell like an inland swamp. Then Thasha moved forwards, and Felthrup saw the tower.

'Rin's eyes,' said Hercol beside them.

It stood at the end of the Cape: a magnificent spire of rust-red stone. The surface was irregular and deeply grooved. The tower was broad at its foot, with curving butresses that vanished, rootlike, into the sand. As it rose the structure leaned and twisted, so that from afar it resembled some ancient, wind-guttered candle. A little wall ran along the shore at its base. Inland from the wall stood a grove of rugged pines, and then, perhaps a mile from the tower, a village of low stone houses.

Eastward, the island tapered to a sandy point. Then came a mile of open sea, and beyond it the Northern Sandwall resumed, a ribbon of dunes curving away into the distance.

'Did I not promise you?' said Bolutu, turning to Pazel and Thasha. 'Did I not say that the worst lay behind us?'

'You told us,' said Thasha uncertainly. Pazel stood hugging his coat tight about him, watchful and uneasy. Felthrup caught his eye, and felt a spark of worry ignite in his heart.

'Bolutu!' shouted Taliktrum, looking down from the quarterdeck, where he perched on Elkstem's shoulder. 'Is that a naval installation? Will they confront us with warships if we enter the Gulf?'

'There is a small detachment of Asp warriors, if I recall, sir. But it was never a great fighting base. Narybir is a watchtower; her ships are meant to carry warnings with all possible speed to the City of Masalym, thirty miles across the Gulf, where no doubt an Imperial warship or two lies at anchor. Her signal-lights also send messages to the ships themselves, and keep them from wrecking on the Sandwall.'

Another whisper of joy swept the deck. Thirty miles to the mainland — to a city, a city, did you hear him?

'Can we have washed up right in the heart of your blary Empire?' demanded Taliktrum.

'No indeed,' said Bolutu. 'Masalym is the easternmost of the Five Pillars of the Bali Adro Coast. Sail east another hundred miles and you leave the Empire for the Dominion of Karysk and the Ghired Vale, and beyond that I cannot say. Our capital lies in the other direction, two thousand miles to the south-west. Farther still lies my birth city: beautiful Istolym, westernmost of all.'

'Have you ever set foot in this Masalym then?' demanded Elkstem.

The dlomu shook his head. 'Our ship set sail from Bali Adro City. I know the tower before us from paintings only, but it is unmistakable. Trust me, Sailmaster! I know exactly where we are.'

As he spoke these last words he glanced quickly at Pazel and Thasha, and touched the corner of one silvery eye. To the others it looked like a thoughtless gesture, but Pazel understood at once. His masters, the mages of the South. They know where we are too, now. He's just shown them.

'Trust me, all of you!' Bolutu went on joyfully. 'My mission was a famous one, and even if the name of Bolutu Urstorch has been forgotten after twenty years, that of my ship Sofima Rega never shall be. The men of Narybir will welcome us with open arms.'

'And flash a message to that city in an instant, maybe,' said Taliktrum, 'from which one or two — or twenty — gunships will be launched.'

'Aye,' grunted Alyash, who had appeared at the rail. 'A Segral from across the Nelluroq won't be greeted with a shrug, now, will it? They'll want to stop us cold. They'll never let us go on our merry way, traipsin' east to west through their waters. At the very least they'll board us and inspect every last corner of the ship. And what d'ye suppose they'll make of the Nilstone?'

'Better if we had struck land in a wilderness,' said Taliktrum, 'for your purposes, and ours.'

For a moment no one spoke. On Thasha's shoulder, Felthrup began to fidget. He sniffed the air again. 'Don't like it, don't like it,' he murmured.

'You say men live in that village by the tower,' said a sceptical voice in the crowd. 'Do you mean real men, or your sort of thing?'