Robert Redick - The Rats and the Ruling sea

'Land-boy,' she said.

It was Klyst, the sea murth who had tried to kill him on the Haunted Coast, only to fall magically in love with her intended victim. Klyst, who had begged him to stay with her, to live enchanted in her people's kingdom in the Gulf of Thol.

She looked strange and unhealthy. Her impossibly thick hair hung like a great mat of seaweed on her head, the hundreds of braided kulri shells merely a limp bead curtain tangled up in the mess. Her gown, which had once seemed a net of lights, was now a threadbare rag that clung like soggy tissue to her body.

But her eyes were unchanged. The love-spell had not broken, though she had never meant to cast it on herself.

'It's really you, isn't it?' he said. 'You're not a phantom, not a trick.'

The murth-girl nodded. She took an uncertain step in his direction. As though he might be the phantom, an apparition that could vanish with a word.

'Klyst, look at you,' he said. 'You're not well. What's happened to you?'

'Nothing,' she said, recoiling slightly. 'It's the waters of this place. They're unhappy. I'll be… pretty again, once I'm back in the sea.'

'You followed me in here,' he said, aghast. 'You've been following us all along, haven't you?'

She nodded again, and flashed him the briefest smile — just long enough to show her glistening, razor-sharp teeth. She put her arms around his neck. 'I followed,' she said, 'because you called.'

Pazel was sure he had done no such thing. He struggled to think — there was no time for this, no time to talk gently, as he'd have to if she was ever going to understand. No time to remember how he'd made her cry.

'You don't come aboard the Chathrand,' he said.

Klyst shook her head. 'Not allowed. Not on the Wind Palace. I'd be trapped there, forever.'

Then she opened her mouth against his shivering chest. For a moment he feared she was about to use those teeth. But no, it was a kiss, right on his collar bone, and he felt the tiny rose-coloured shell — her heart, she'd called it, when she placed it beneath his skin — begin to warm.

You're still pretty, he thought.

Suddenly the sibyl cried out again — in rage or pain, and very near. The wail came from a waist-high tunnel on his left.

Klyst turned and looked down the tunnel. Suddenly she clutched him tight. 'You'll die if you stay here,' she said.

'That occurred to me already,' he said. 'But there's something I have to do first. Can you come with me?'

He led her, crouching, down the low tunnel, in the direction of the scream. It was very hot; and once more the steam thickened around them. He could hear a waterfall, of all things, growing louder as they went. He tried to explain, in whispers, what Arunis was seeking, and why they had to stop him. Klyst listened, anger flashing in her enormous eyes. It was Arunis who had brought evil to her country to begin with.

The tunnel curved. Suddenly a pale blue light glimmered ahead of them. Pazel put a finger to his lips, and set the torch carefully against the wall. They crept nearer. There was the waterfall: steaming, boiling, a lethal curtain of water capping the tunnel. And through it Pazel saw Arunis, distorted but unmistakable. Beside him lay a book that could only be the Polylex.

The sorcerer was in a large cave. It was lit by the same blue flame as the main temple chamber, but here the burning oil ran in rivulets across the floor. Arunis had placed the book on a flat, table-like rock, some ten feet from the waterfall. It lay open. He was studying a page.

As they watched, Arunis suddenly left the Polylex and ran to a spot across the cave, skipping over the little streams of fire. Pazel nearly gasped: there at the far side of the cave stood the glowing figure of a woman. She twisted and struggled, as though trying to free herself from invisible bonds. Arunis was circling her. He held a lump of charcoal, and was drawing an elaborate pattern of words and symbols on the floor.

'A cage,' said Klyst, with hatred in her voice. 'He is drawing a cage for Dhola. A cage of twisted ripestry — what an ugly, ugly, thing!'

'We're too late, aren't we?'

'No,' said Klyst. 'But almost. He hasn't finished the drawing; she can still break free. And he has to draw carefully. One little mistake and the cage will break.'

Arunis returned to the book, placed his finger on the open page. Then once more he left it on the rock, hurried back to the captured sibyl, and started to draw.

Pazel struck the wall with a fist. 'Pitfire! It's right there!' He put out his hand, cautiously, until a fingertip just grazed the waterfall, then jerked it back with a silent curse. The water was scalding.

'I'm going to have to find another entrance,' he said. 'The one he used. Somehow.'

'Leave him,' said Klyst. 'Leave with me. I can make you like you were in the Nelu Peren, when we met.'

Her voice was miserable with longing. Pazel took a deep breath, remembering what it felt like to breathe water, to hear her laughter echoing in the deeps. 'Listen, Klyst, I've never lied to you, do you hear? Not once.'

'You couldn't. You don't know how.'

'You only love me because your ripestry went wrong.'

She stared at him, bewildered. 'What do you mean? Bad ripestry goes wrong. Good ripestry goes right.'

'I'm not a murth!' he said desperately. 'And I don't know what to do about this.' He touched the shell, and she shivered as though he'd just caressed her.

'You know,' she said. 'Cut it out, destroy it. Then I'll be gone.'

'Is that what you want?'

But Klyst just looked at him. That was one question she would never answer. In the cave beyond the waterfall Arunis was again bent over the book. Pazel saw him from the corner of his eye; he could not turn his gaze from the murth-girl. His heart was hammering; she was smiling again, and her eyes seemed to have grown. Damn you, are you weaving another spell?

He forced himself to speak, forming each word with slow concentration. 'Arunis took a stone from the Red Wolf your people used to guard. An evil stone, made of the worst ripestry in the world. If he makes that sibyl tell him how to use it, he's going to become so powerful that no one will be able to stop him. He wants to kill all of us — Rin knows why — and when he's through with humans, you can bet he'll move on to murths.'

Before he had finished Klyst had put her head on his shoulder and started to cry — soft little Hoo's, as if she had already known what he would say, and hoped unreasonably that she was mistaken. He tried to raise her head, but she looked away.

'Go get your book,' she said.

Arunis at that moment was rushing back to the sibyl. And Klyst, releasing Pazel, jumped into the scalding waterfall and disappeared.

It was all Pazel could do not to scream. He lunged forward, reaching out with both hands as close as he dared. She was simply gone. And then a tingling of his palms told him that something had changed. The waterfall had cooled. The edges steamed hot as ever, but there was a band of tepid water directly ahead.

He touched it. She was there, she was standing disembodied in the water. He seemed to hear her voice, shouting Go go it hurts me! And then he plunged through her, and emerged into the cave.

Arunis' back was still turned; he was drawing feverishly. In three bounds Pazel crossed to the flat rock, leaping over the flames. He swept up the book and rushed back, dived again through the waterfall, and for a strange thrilling moment he felt Klyst's body surround him once more. Then he was back in the tunnel. The Polylex was sopping, ruined. He turned to look at the waterfall and spoke her name. But the water was scalding again, and the murth-girl was gone.

Arunis had never lain eyes on him. But as Pazel emerged from the tunnel the sorcerer began to howl. The cries grew quickly fainter, however: Arunis was searching in the wrong direction. Either he had overlooked the dark tunnel, or could not believe that anyone had passed through the waterfall alive.