Robert Redick - The Rats and the Ruling sea

Twenty feet: they rose and plunged, and the sea broke over the stern. The foam atop each wave nearly brushed the roof of the cavern. Pazel saw Drellarek make a hasty sign of the Tree.

'Save me, Father!' wailed Erthalon Ness.

'Ship oars!' Rose bellowed. 'Heads down and hands inside!'

Pazel wrenched his oar into the skiff. He threw himself down, the daylight vanished, the gunnels scraped the top of the cave mouth, and then like a grape sucked through greedy lips they were through, blasting down a straight stone tunnel on the force of the wave. Pazel crouched in two feet of water, Alyash on one side and Drellarek on the other. It was impossible to guess how far the wave had borne them.

But just as it began to recede more shouts erupted — shouts from somewhere beyond the boat. A grinding noise echoed behind them, and instantly they slowed.

Pazel raised his head. The cave had widened into a circular chamber some sixty feet across. Around the perimeter stone ledges had been cut at various heights, and bright fengas lamps hung from wooden posts. Pazel looked back the way they had come, and saw men labouring on an iron platform, bolted to the rock near the tunnel mouth. They were turning a heavy wheel, connected by chains and pulleys to a half-submerged granite slab. The slab itself was mounted on rails, and it was sliding over the tunnel mouth. Even as Pazel watched it ground to a halt. The tunnel was sealed. 'Welcome to Bramian, Master,' said someone ashore.

The next thing Pazel remembered was climbing a stair. The way was steep and dark; far ahead someone carried a single bobbing lamp. 'Where is my brother?' Erthalon Ness was whimpering. 'You killed him, didn't you? Are you going to kill me?'

It was on the stair that Pazel noticed the sharpened hearing that sometimes accompanied his Gift. He could catch every whisper and echo: Alyash's soft curse in Mzithrini, Rose's wheeze as he lurched up each step.

How is it going to end? When will the mind-fit come?

At last they reached a broad wooden door. Ott stepped to the front and gave a sharp, four-note whistle. From the far side, startling everyone but Ott himself, came a woman's laugh.

Bolts slid free. The door swung outwards, forcing them to shuffle backwards. A brighter lamplight flooded the stair. And in the doorway stood Syrarys Isiq.

She put out her hand to the spymaster. Her beauty left the men abashed. She wore a white blouse embroidered with red coral beads and a necklace of cobalt-blue pearls. Her olive skin glowed in the lamplight, and her sumptuous lips curled with mirth, as if the men crowded below her on the steps were part of some great parlour-game whose rules she knew better than anyone. 'We beat you by a full day, darling,' she said.

Ott took her hand and kissed it. 'I have been here four,' he said, 'keeping watch by sea, until the Great Ship reached her hiding place.'

Syrarys spread the fingers of the hand Ott had kissed. Along with rings of gold and silver, diamond and bloodstone, she wore a simple, tarnished ring of brass. 'A little bird gave me that one,' she said.

Ott laughed, then took the ring from her finger and slipped it on his own. 'Come, Syrarys,' he said. 'You know what this day holds.'

He swept through the door and into a great stone chamber, and the woman who had raised Thasha from a child went with him. As he stepped into the chamber Pazel recalled the creaking bridges of his dreams. He felt as if he were upon one again. They told us she died in Ormael. They told us she leaped from a tower into the sea. We know nothing, we're toys in their hands.

They bound his wrists with metal cuffs and sat him in a corner, too far from the hearth to be warmed in that chilly underground. Unlike the chamber below this was not a natural cave; the room, and several others adjoining, were carved from the living rock. They gave him water and ship's biscuit, later a handful of berries that resembled coffee beans and tasted like sweet smoked grubs.

Syrarys came to look at him, with Ott beside her. Hatred shone in her eyes.

'Thasha's little friend,' she said. 'Do you know what her father did to me, bastard? Something much worse than rape or beatings. He bought me, like a dog. He groomed and bathed me and took me out in society on a leash, so that the Etherhorde nobles could admire my tricks.'

'That's not what I heard,' said Pazel. 'I heard Isiq never asked for a slave at all. That the Emperor sent you to him, and the old man didn't think he could refuse.' He looked at Ott. 'I wonder who gave His Supremacy that idea.'

Syrarys slapped him, hard. Pazel raised his shackled hands to his face. 'I believe the part about doing tricks, though,' he said.

She would have struck him again if Ott hadn't drawn her away. Pazel found himself wondering what Thasha would do if Syrarys returned to the Chathrand.

The drug-delirium came and went. Several hours in that windowless chamber simply vanished. When his memory returned it moved in leaps, like a stone skipping on a lake. Men around a table. Captain Rose brooding over a chart. Elkstem waving his hands, shouting, I can't blary say, Captain! You don't get that close to the Vortex and live to tell! Drellarek sharpening a hatchet. The Shaggat's son chained to the wall, asleep.

At another moment he woke with Syrarys' voice in his ears, and flinched, expecting pain. But she was nowhere near him. He raised his head and saw her with Ott on the far side of the chamber. They were kissing, and arguing between the kisses. Pazel's strange hearing brought it all to his ears.

Want to go with you.

No, dearest. The job in Simja only you can accomplish.

You said Isiq would be the last one!

I said I hoped, Syrarys. But there was madness when the girl collapsed.

You bastard. I'll make you pay. I'll sleep with your spies. The pretty ones, the youngest.

Don't try it. They fear me even more than they desire you.

Care to bet?

Pazel's head swam. He fought to stay awake, to hear more of their argument, but the darkness closed over him again.

Later they stood him up and walked him to the table. It was by now covered with books, scrolls, loose vellum sheets. Nearly everything was old; some of the books appeared positively ancient. Look, they said, and spread before him something that might have been a scrap of sailcloth with old grey stains. Look there. What is that?

'Your finger?' he said.

Rose seized his ear and twisted savagely, as if annoyed to find it so tightly fastened to his head.

'There's writing, Pathkendle. Lean closer.'

Tears of pain in his eyes, Pazel leaned over the canvas. The faces around the table watched him breathless. Rose was pointing at a symbol in pale blue ink. Was it a character, a word? The only thing Pazel was sure of was that he'd never seen its like before.

His vision blurred; he shut his eyes, and when he opened them again he read the word as easily as though it were his own name:

' "Port of Stath Balfyr." '

The men exclaimed: some relieved, others in doubt. 'I told you,' said Syrarys, her voice softly ardent. 'I told you it came from a chart.'

'What's that language, then, cub?' asked Drellarek, pointing at the canvas.

Pazel hesitated. 'N-Nemmocian,' he said at last. It was the truth, but he only discovered it by speaking the word aloud.

'Where is the tongue spoken, lad?' asked Sandor Ott.

'How in the Pits should I know?'

'The boy's Gift does not extend so far,' said Dr Chadfallow. 'He learns nothing of the culture of the languages he… acquires. Nothing but what one may deduce from the words themselves.'

'Then we're no better off than before!' huffed Alyash. 'Why, we could spend the rest of our lives looking for a place called Stath Balfyr, where they may or may not speak something called Nemmocian. And begging your pardon, Lady Syrarys, but we can't be certain this was torn from a chart.'