Robert Redick - The Rats and the Ruling sea

He looked at them, angry and beseeching. 'My older brother, Raffa, asked 'em how much it would cost for them to let me go, while they were still lounging around the village, drinking. Three pounds of pearls, they said. And Raffa haggled. Right there in front of me, wheedling like, until finally they caved in. "Two pounds, since he's so small, and you're such a nuisance." Raffa told 'em he'd see what he could find. The Arqualis said they'd only wait an hour. But in fact they waited all afternoon. They wanted those pearls more than they wanted me.

'Trouble was, so did Raffa. He was the best pearl diver in the village. He had boxes of 'em hidden in the smokehouse. He was saving up for a ticket to Opalt. A cousin had come back from there years before and told Raffa our palm roof was embarrassing. He said Sollochis lived like animals. That Ballytween City was the place for a man to get ahead.'

Neeps fell silent. Thasha wanted to say something, but was afraid to; all at once she felt like a fraud. She'd grown up in a mansion on Maj Hill, in the heart of the world's greatest city. She remembered Syrarys combing her hair, telling her that they lived in the only place in Alifros that nobody could look down on. Why don't they hate me? she thought. Why doesn't Pazel hate me?

'Raffa never came back that day,' said Neeps. 'I guess the price was too high.'

Marila silently touched his arm. They stayed there, motionless, listening to the thumping and bellowing of men on other decks. Fiffengurt had said the work might go on all night, but to Thasha the noise was soothing; the warm stateroom felt like the centre of a hive. As she closed her eyes she heard a wet sound that was either kissing or one of her dogs flopping down with a contented slobber. Then she realised Marila had her arms around Neeps. That blary vixen, she thought, and fell asleep.

Felthrup slunk away from the divan when Neeps and Marila began to kiss. He was not quite clear why humans did such things — the written accounts varied wildly — but he knew they did not much care to be watched in the act. He crept over to Suzyt, who lay beside the washroom door.

'I won't go to sleep,' he told her.

The mastiff 's tongue enveloped him like a warm, wet towel. Felthrup curled tight against her chest, looking out at the darkened stateroom. He had fought to remember the dreams until his brain ached, and had come up with almost nothing: a pair of glasses, a taste of candy and the words 'peppermint oil'. He was a nervous idiot. What could be so terrible about dreams he did not even remember? There were a million rats in Alifros who would kill for the kind of safety he enjoyed.

'Master Stargraven,' said a gently mocking voice.

Felthrup gave a start. The dog slept on beside him, but how she had shrunk! No, she was the same — but he had done it, he had fallen asleep at last, and now everyone would pay for his weakness.

He stood up and adjusted his spectacles.

The three youths slept like the dead. He walked to the divan and looked down at them. So peaceful: Neeps' head lay pillowed on Marila's lap. He saw the damage his own teeth had done to the boy's ear, and winced. But he had saved Thasha's life.

Surely it was Arunis who had called his name? There was no sign of anyone else in the room, but that would not keep him safe for long. In every dream he felt a compulsion to walk, to leave the shelter of the stateroom and wander, until the sorcerer found him and the torture began.

Tonight was no exception: his feet were already guiding him towards the stateroom door. Twice he swerved and teetered clown-like back into the centre of the room. But he could not hold still. I will betray them again. Every time it grows worse. I will be the reason they perish, the reason Arunis comes to rule the world.

Suddenly he knew what to do. He could end the dreams as quickly as they began. But how? A sword? A mouthful of broken glass? No, no — that was the sort of thing Arunis did to him anyway. He would be swifter. He looked at the gallery windows, gave a pitiful squeal, and ran straight for them.

He never arrived. Between one footfall and the next the ship spun about like a carousel, and instead of crashing through the window he found himself throwing open the stateroom door.

Lamplight: the Turach soldiers were still at their post. Behind them, and as invisible to humans as Felthrup himself was during their dream-walks, stood Arunis. The mage's eyes fixed him like spearpoints. He crooked a finger.

Get out here, you feeble, vacillating, sewer-pipe sniveller.

The call was terribly powerful, but Felthrup, with a last mind-cracking effort, slammed the stateroom door and leaned against it. Help, he thought, help. This time I really will go mad.

Then, very faintly, he heard the voice again. The first voice, the one by which he had woken into the dream. It was not the sorcerer's. It was coming from Admiral Isiq's sleeping cabin.

Felthrup broke away from the door and ran towards the bedchamber, crashing against a shifted chair. Anything was better than what awaited him in the passage. He kicked the bearskin rug away from the door, reached for the knob — and froze. Surely this was another trick? What if Arunis had somehow penetrated the magic wall this far? What if the very act of opening the door was all he needed to breach their last defence? Felthrup cringed. He suddenly felt very ratlike indeed.

'Turn the knob,' said the voice, almost too softly to be heard.

Felthrup turned the knob, half-expecting some horror to burst from the chamber, savage his sleeping friends, end their months of struggle in a heartbeat. Nothing of the kind occurred: the room held only dust, and the furniture Isiq had left behind. A large bed, two chests of drawers, Syrarys' jewellery table, a dressing mirror, a mannequin draped in an elaborate gown: what the vicious woman had planned to wear on Simja, perhaps.

'Over here, lad, hurry now.'

The voice was louder, and suddenly Felthrup knew it, and gave a squeal of joy. He dashed into the room, afraid now only of waking, and cried, 'Where are you, where are you?'

'The mirror, Felthrup. Dust it off.'

Felthrup looked at the mirror. It was tilted towards the ceiling, and the dust lay like a grey pelt upon the glass. He put his silk sleeve against the mirror and swept it clean.

Within the mirror there was no reflection. Instead he found himself looking into a dark and cluttered chamber of stone. He had an impression of clocks and telescopes, astrolabes and smoked-glass spheres, an icy window, lamps that threw clots of whirling colour on the floor.

But all this he saw with but a corner of his mind, for directly before him stood a tall man in a sea-green cloak. The man was perfectly bald, but he had a thick white beard and enormous bottle-brush eyebrows, and beneath them, eyes that were bottomless and dark.

'It's you, isn't it?' said Felthrup, feeling a lump rise in his throat. 'It's how you really are.'

'Right in the first count, wrong in the second,' the man replied. 'Indeed I'm surprised one as afflicted with imagination as you still clings to the notion of real. Now step to one side — that's it.'

The old man turned and walked away, deeper into the stone chamber. When twenty feet separated him from Felthrup he turned again, and then ran, with the ease of a much younger man, straight at the surface of the mirror. At the last instant he leaped, head first-and the black mink, Ramachni Fremken, sailed into the chamber as through an open door. This was the mage as Felthrup knew him: the one who had rescued him from drowning, slain fleshancs, taught Pazel the Master-Word that changed the Shaggat to stone. The one whose very name brought a look of fear into Arunis' eyes, no matter how the sorcerer tried to conceal it. He landed in a cloud of dust on Isiq's bed. Felthrup knelt beside him, sneezed, and burst into tears.