Robert Redick - The Rats and the Ruling sea

'You may proceed,' he said to the spymaster.

'So soon?'

'It will have happened already, if it is going to happen at all.'

Sandor Ott moved in front of Pazel, who was coughing and shaking. 'Calm yourself,' he said. 'It is no poison. Where that's concerned I scarcely need a doctor's help. Now listen to me carefully, Pathkendle. Urtale preda nusali ch'ulthanon.'

The words were like a kick to the stomach. Pazel stared up into Ott's cold eyes. The spymaster nodded. And Pazel slammed his head back against the stanchion with a wail of grief that wracked his body more terribly than the pain of a few minutes before.

'Great Rin above!' said Drellarek. 'He understood!'

'Peace, boy!' laughed Ott. 'I was citing ancient literature, not telling you of my actual deeds. Urtale preda nusali ch'ulthanon: 'I sent your mother to an early death.' The confession of the doomed hero of the Song of Itash, written nineteen centuries ago by an anonymous whore in the court of the Amber Kings.'

Pazel's heart was hammering. His eyes were wide with terror and confusion.

'And yet you scarcely noticed me switching tongues,' Ott went on. 'Your Gift is working, lad. Chadfallow's drug has just induced it. And to you, Doctor, my hearty congratulations. If we can truly access his Gift whenever the need arises, Mr Pathkendle may yet prove as beneficial as once you claimed.'

Pazel twisted around to look at the doctor. Whatever mix of emotions he had felt before was gone. There was nothing in his eyes but hate.

Chadfallow did not meet his gaze. 'The drug is not perfect,' he said. 'The boy may suffer some disorientation, some loss of bearings, until the process ends in the normal manner.'

'Normal,' said Drellarek with a smirk. 'You mean with jabbering fits.'

'Just look at that face!' laughed Uskins. 'It's the muketch you should be afraid of, Doctor. He hates you. Give him half a chance and he'll put a knife in your belly.'

'Mr Uskins,' said Rose, 'you will escort Pathkendle to the brig. Have his dinner brought there, and his foul-weather clothes. And instruct the cobbler to make him a pair of shoes by evening. Shoes, not sandals.'

'Oppo, Captain, shoes it is.'

Oggosk squinted at Pazel. 'What are you staring at, boy?'

Pazel started. He felt as if they had beaten him with clubs. But it was true, he had been staring, mute and amazed — at Captain Rose. The man's sleeve had ridden up towards the elbow. Seeing it now, Rose hastily pulled the sleeve down again. But it was too late, and he knew it. Pazel had seen what Rose wished no one to see: a wolf-shaped scar above his wrist.

'Get the boy out of here,' said Rose. 'And let us conclude our business swiftly. The day is waning, and tomorrow we shall all be tested.'

'The tarboy's passed a test already,' said Drellarek, smirking again.

'Just one,' said Sandor Ott, 'the easiest.'

21 Freala 941

130th day from Etherhorde

Her heart is a throbbing beast, her body a wilderness, her shores a stone wall and her few harbours held by savages who roast their foes on spits. Great teams of explorers set off for her interior; months later broken men straggle out with tales of whip scorpions and swarms of carnivorous bats, and great monsters that bask on riverbanks or blend with the trees. There are also stories of lost races of thinking beings, whole cities perhaps, in the valleys of her central range.

Whatever the truth of such tales, on this you may rely: Bramian is merciless. If you contemplate some exploitation of her riches, be warned: only the very wealthy, and very disciplined, have succeeded in turning a profit on this island twice the size of the Westfirth. 'Above all,' writes one old survivor, 'let your stay be brief. Cut a swathe of jungle, mine a little ore, take a few hundred hides — and be gone. If you do this you may live to enjoy your takings, however smaller than your appetite they prove.'

— The Merchant's Polylex, 18th Edition (959), p. 4186.

He passed a night of dark dreams in which he crept over canyons on bridges of scrapwood and straw. Every step caused the bridges to groan and bend, and yet he had no choice but to cross the dismal gorges. Now and then he would half-wake and find himself curled against the wall of the brig, intensely grateful for its solidity, for the absence of an abyss, but then the drug's haze would claim him again.

At dawn the spymaster came for him. Pazel leaped up with raised fists, light on his feet if nearly out of his mind, striking the stance Hercol had taught him at their first lesson in the stateroom. It seemed necessary to demonstrate his hatred of the spymaster, of his whole clan of murdering liars. But Ott just laughed and sidled towards him without making eye contact and felled him with three blows. Pazel never saw Ott's hands at all, until they lifted him by the shirt.

Minutes later he was on the floor of a skiff, descending the dark wall of the Chathrand to the rhythmic clanging of the davit-chains. Ott and Drellarek were seated near him, and ahead of them sat the tarboy brothers Swift and Saroo. Neither of the Jockeys glanced at him as the boat rattled seaward. He could hear the murmur of other men, the rasp of Turach armour. A man's voice chattered indignantly from the stern. You should treat me as an equal, Warden. And even that is a great concession. Remove these straps! You are a mortal man. I am the son of the divine.

They struck the waves with a smack. Pazel bolted upright, only to feel Drellarek's stone-hard hand on his shoulder. Men were fighting the chains, fending them off the Chathrand with oars, while the twenty-foot skiff pitched like a rocking horse. Even in his delirium Pazel knew he must keep still.

At last they were clear. The sail shot up. Elkstem held the wheel, Rose the gaff, and together they calmed the boat and took her out of the cove.

Pazel ground his teeth. Chadfallow had a drug that could force his mind open to languages, force his Gift to start performing on command. That, Pazel thought, was the missing piece of the puzzle. The doctor had not brought Pazel along as some sort of favour. He did not mean to reunite him with his family at all, because Pazel's family reunited was the last thing he wanted. No, he had brought Pazel along as a tool: one that could help him regain Suthinia, wherever she was; and one that could keep Chadfallow himself in the good graces of Rose and Sandor Ott. Whoever or whatever they met with on this voyage, Pazel would be there to offer his special services. You haven't stopped the conspiracy, you've become a part of it.

Bramian groped towards them, a giant on hands and knees. The sound of waves shattering against her cliffs grew to awesome proportions, as if Bakru's lions were indeed prowling the breakers, hurling their wrath against the land. Pazel knelt in the cold bilgewater, nauseous and dizzy. He put his fingers in his ears, but there was another kind of roaring inside.

The shore birds found them, and began to wheel and shriek. There was no shore: just the stone cliffs, and a number of titanic rocks half-submerged in the swell. Where were they to land? Elkstem kept them running straight for Bramian, while Ott stood watching at the bow. They're all mad, Pazel thought, shutting his eyes, unless I am.

When he looked again time seemed to have leaped forwards. They were in the island's shadow, right among the rocks. The sail was furled and the mast struck down, and straight ahead of them was a round black hole in the cliff.

'Pathkendle!' roared Elkstem. 'Take your blary oar!'

He stumbled to an oar-seat. The cave mouth, which all but vanished with each swell, was the width of a minor temple's doorway. On either side the waves exploded against the cliffs, vaulting skyward in spray and foam. But at the cave itself the sea raced into the dark, only to flow out again with a vast obscene slurp. 'Row!' Elkstem was screaming. Everyone but he and the Shaggat's son had taken up oars.