Robert Redick - The Rats and the Ruling sea

'Go,' he said.

Peytr ran to the captain, hopping over the cracks with their whispering flames. Rose stepped forward and intercepted him, seizing a fistful of hair. 'Drellarek here thinks I should have left you to die,' he said.

Peytr's eyes pleaded for clemency. Thasha looked at him with a kind of disgusted fascination. There was nothing false about his fear.

'The sorcerer can kill no one, Mr Bourjon,' said Chadfallow. 'Have you forgotten that to do so would risk the death of his own king?' But Arunis, still watching them from the corner of his eye, smiled at the doctor's words.

The captain raised a fist high over his head. Then, gradually, he relaxed his grip on Peytr's hair. He pointed at the doorway they had come by. 'Stand there. Don't move and don't speak.' Peytr leaped to obey, shoving between Pazel and Thasha in his haste.

Arunis turned away once more. He placed one hand on the open Polylex, on a page with a large circular diagram. Drellarek looked sharply at Rose, drew his fingers across his neck. The mage was as vulnerable now as he would ever be. Hercol raised a cautioning hand, and Oggosk shook her head. Rose hesitated, eyes full of wrath and distance. Then he glanced up at Drellarek and nodded.

Drellarek moved with brutal swiftness. He glided softly down to the orange stone, unsheathing his Turach greatsword as he went. Nearing Arunis, he raised it for a single, killing blow.

'Can your witch detect a lie?' said Arunis, without moving.

Drellarek hesitated, looking back over his shoulder.

'She can,' said Rose, 'if her captain requires it.'

'Then ask her the truth of this, you spawn of a toad-faced polygamist: I, Arunis Wytterscorm, have the power to sink your ship whenever I choose, and will do so if you harm me.'

For a moment no one breathed. Oggosk put out her withered hand and took hold of Rose's coat, made him bend to her ear and whispered urgently. Rose's face hardened with repressed fury. He pulled irritably away from the old woman, and waved Drellarek off.

Arunis laughed, closing the Polylex. He tossed the end of his white scarf over his shoulder and rose slowly to his feet. Thasha saw that he had concealed a weapon beneath his cloak: a black mace, studded with cruel iron spikes. She had never seen it before.

'I told you in the Straits,' said the mage, looking them over, 'that I was the sole master of the Chathrand. What you did to my king only delayed the last reckoning. You are my instruments. You are small flutes and horns in the symphony of my triumph. What do I care if you manage the occasional squeak?'

'You monster,' said Pazel suddenly. 'We'll see who plays with whom when Ramachni comes back.'

'Ramachni?' said Arunis, as though trying to remember. 'Ah yes. The mage who enlists you to a deluded cause, then scurries away to safety like the rodent he is, leaving you to fight alone. The trickster who hides under the skirts of a girl, only to cast her off when it seems her life is forfeit. Would he return if you were writhing in pain again, girl? Not sure, hmm? Never fear, you will be.'

Pazel started forward, seething, and Thasha barely had time to grab his arm. Then she saw that Hercol too was moving towards Arunis. His sword was sheathed and his hands were empty; still Arunis took a hasty step backwards, raising his mace. Hercol drew a step closer, well within the weapon's reach. But now it was Arunis who looked uncertain.

'Do you know when a man speaks the truth?' Hercol said.

Arunis gave a nervous laugh. 'Better than the man himself.'

'I thought as much,' said Hercol, and turned away. But when he had taken two steps he moved with a speed not even Thasha had ever witnessed, and suddenly Ildraquin was in his hands, and its tip rested on the soft flesh beneath the mage's ear.

'This is Ildraquin, the Curse-Cleaver, the Tongue of the Hound of Fire,' he said. 'And this is my promise: Ildraquin will end your cursed life if you should ever again touch a hair on the head of Thasha Isiq.'

Arunis sneered, and pushed the tip of the blade away — but gingerly, as if he hated to touch it even with his fingertips. 'Only a fool makes promises he cannot keep,' he said.

'Quite so,' said Hercol.

'We are not here to kill one another,' said Drellarek awkwardly — it was an unusual statement from the Throatcutter. 'Captain, you have your tarboy back. Now let's say we forget that silly sibyl, and be on our way.'

'Save your breath,' said Oggosk. Then suddenly she raised her scrawny arms, so that her gold bangles clattered, and her milk-blue eyes were wide. 'Be still, Nilus! Be still, all of you! We have come in the right year, and the right season for divination. This, now, is the right hour — the only hour, for another nine years. Put out your torches! Quickly!'

'Do it!' snapped Rose.

With some difficulty Drellarek and Dastu extinguished the torches. The room was now lit only by the blue flames dancing in the cracks of the stone. Arunis turned in circles, like a wary cat. Oggosk groped for Rose's arm.

Then she pointed, high across the chamber. There, upon one of the ruined balconies, shone a tiny pool of light. It was daylight, a single focused beam. Tracing it with her eyes, Thasha saw that it had entered by a tiny hole in the domed ceiling. She realised that there were scores of such holes. All at once she remembered the odd little windows in the temple roof. They're not just windows, they're light-shafts. Just like those on the Chathrand that brought light to the lower decks, except that these must have run through immense tunnels of stone, and were so narrow that only a pencil-thin beam of light could pass through.

Suddenly both Oggosk and Arunis began to chant. The old woman's voice was loud and strong, but somehow humble, almost pleading:

Selu kandari, Selu majid, pandireth Dhola le kasparan mid.

But Arunis, though he chanted similar words, cried out in a harsh and threatening voice:

Sathek kandari, Sathek majid, ulberrik Dhola le mangroten mid!

At the same time he drew a grey powder from his sleeve and tossed a handful of it into one of the flaming cracks. It burned in a flash of blue sparks.

Witch and sorcerer were both watching the light on the balcony. The sounds of wind and seals blended into a weird, throbbing moan. Rose looked anxiously up and down the beam of light, from balcony to window and back again. His fists opened and closed; he looked like a man whose time was running out. Of course! Thasha realised. It can't last more than a few minutes. Once the sun moves at all it will be gone.

She felt Pazel's hand in her own — but no, it was Dastu's; the older boy thought she was frightened. She wasn't, or not severely; in fact her strongest feeling was curiosity. Was there a different light-shaft for every holy day in the old monks' religion? Was there a soul alive who knew what they had believed? She looked again at the light on the balcony — and cried aloud, and so did everyone else.

Later, no one could agree as to what had happened on that balcony. They all said that the light had changed, growing less like daylight and more like that of the moon, or fireflies, or something spectral. They agreed as well that someone had appeared. But no two of them saw the same figure.

Thasha saw her mother, waving to her (or to her husband?) with a smile of recognition; then the banister parting, and horror replacing joy as Clorisuela Isiq fell to her death. Sergeant Drellarek saw the woman he had killed six years ago while drunk on grebel, after she insulted his manhood in a brothel in Uturphe. Dastu saw the Etherhorde nurse who had saved him from consumption.

Dr Chadfallow saw Pazel's mother Suthinia, driving him from her door. Hercol saw a grey woman in a silver crown, with two dead boys at her feet, pointing an accusing finger. Lady Oggosk saw an enraged woman sixty years her junior, who nonetheless resembled her greatly, except for the sleek red tail that twitched behind her. Captain Rose saw almost the same figure, but tailless, and with larger, more heartbroken eyes.