Robert Redick - The Rats and the Ruling sea

'Stop that at once,' said Ramachni. 'What on earth is the matter, Felthrup? Surely we meet in better circumstances than before?'

'Oh no, Master, not at all.'

Ramachni sprang from the bed and vanished into the stateroom. Felthrup rushed after him, still crying, though he could not have said exactly why. He found the mage on the arm of the divan, looking down at the three sleeping youths.

'How untroubled they look,' said Ramachni, echoing Felthrup's earlier thought. 'And how fortunate that your dream-life is so splendid. But look what you have done to yourself tonight, my dear rat! Some turn themselves into warriors, angels, kings. You've become a librarian.'

'Not just tonight, m'lord. This is the form I take in every dream.'

'Every single dream?' said Ramachni, turning to him with surprise. 'That is something to ponder, when I have a moment. But can't you hold still, Felthrup? Why do you keep starting for the door?'

Felthrup checked himself, and dropped his head in shame. 'Arunis is calling me. He never stops. He has a terrible power over me, and he is using me against our friends.'

'We shall see about that,' said Ramachni with a hint of temper.

'My lord!' said Felthrup, rubbing his chin with both hands in a most ratlike gesture. 'Did you not say that Arunis was the stronger in this world, that when you travel here you leave a great part of your strength behind?'

'I did,' said Ramachni, 'although when next I come to Alifros it shall be with a strength you have never seen. But tonight, Felthrup, the only traveller is you. When your dream began you departed the Alifros you know and came here, to a dream-Alifros, only a small part of which was created by your mind. Arunis and I were here already, for dreams exist in a territory that the mage never entirely ceases to inhabit.'

'He is standing just outside your magic wall.'

Ramachni shook his head. 'That wall is not of my making.'

'Not of your making!' cried Felthrup. 'Then there is some other mage aboard, who wishes us well?'

'Perhaps,' said Ramachni, glancing curiously around the stateroom. 'But this I can tell you for certain: the spell that made the magic wall was cast long before the Chathrand left Etherhorde — years before, in fact. How cunningly hidden it must have been, to keep me from detecting it! I wonder if there are more such surprises, and if they will all prove so helpful.'

Suddenly he turned and sniffed the air. Then he bounded across the room and onto the table, where he peered suspiciously at the pigsfoot casserole.

'Do not eat this,' he said. 'Someone besides Mr Teggatz had a hand in its preparation. There is a whiff of magic about it — dark magic, you understand. It is only a distant aftertaste, nothing so obvious as a curse or a potion. But we must take no chances.'

Felthrup clenched his hands in fists, and stared at them as if he had never seen anything more impressive. Then he picked up the casserole, crossed the room to the window and flung the dish overboard.

No sooner had he closed the window, however, than doubt returned to his face. 'In my first dream Arunis flung Sniraga into the sea,' he said, 'but the cat is still aboard. My dreams change nothing, do they? When I wake that dish will again be on the table. And my waking self remembers nothing of what passes in these dreams. I shall not be able to warn them, Ramachni.'

'Do not be so certain, lad. Your dreams certainly change you. I hear the exhaustion in your voice: you've been fighting for your very soul. In any case, you must try. Whatever is in that food was put there with malice of the blackest sort.'

Felthrup jumped, remembering. 'Neeps took a bite!' he said. 'And a short time later he went mad and tried to kill Lady Thasha. He almost succeeded.'

Ramachni looked up from the table. Now the anger in his eyes was terrible to behold. 'It is time, Felthrup. You called out for help, and I am here to give it. Let us go and see the sorcerer.'

Felthrup swallowed, and pushed his spectacles up his nose. Ramachni jumped to the floor, crossed once more to the divan, and crawled up beside Thasha's shoulder. His pink tongue dabbed once at her forehead; then he turned and studied the chamber again. His eyes settled on the bearskin rug. A look of satisfaction crept over his face.

'How dare you keep me waiting.'

The sorcerer waited just beyond the red stripe, his mouth twisted with anger. The four Turachs leaned against the walls. Arunis watched the thin, bespectacled man leave the stateroom without closing the door.

'So you can fight my summons now? Well after tonight you'll wish you'd never tried, you mangled, three-legged misery of a rat. Get out here!'

The thin man took his time, but at last he reached the magic wall. He did not immediately step through it, however. Instead he paused with his face just inches from the sorcerer's own.

'After tonight,' he said quietly, 'you will wish you'd never invaded his dreams.'

'Whose dreams?'

'Felthrup's, you fool.'

With that the man in spectacles reached through the wall and seized Arunis by his scarf. At his touch the mage gasped aloud and tried to pull away. But the thin man held him fast, and began to chant:

Light is the purse that brimmed with deceit

Fierce are the hunters, and swift their feet

And the night so late and lonely.

Bribe them you might, but what can you offer?

A curse, and a kick, and a black barren coffer,

And the taste of treason only.

Dear have you cost us, but never so dear

That we'll tender our souls to a peddler of fear.

Pride may be costly, but pain is free:

For thee, old deceiver, it comes for thee.

On the last word he let go of the scarf, dropped to the deck, and became once more a mink. Arunis leaped back in terror. But the mink did not attack him. It fled.

'What's this?' roared Arunis. 'The great Ramachni, turning tail? Have you nothing but rhymes to fight with?'

A deafening roar filled the passage behind him.

Arunis whirled, and for one second he gaped at the bear, a huge brown boulder of an creature, looming over him, so tall its shoulder touched the roof of the passage.

'Stop, Felthrup!' he shrieked. 'I order you-'

Then its weight was upon him, and its claws like mallet-driven spikes, and its teeth that ripped his dream-flesh like so much tissue paper, like the wrapping on a box that held no gift, nothing but emptiness and a voice that cursed and was gone.

24 Freala 941

133rd day from Etherhorde

By the time they reached the hill overlooking the Chathrand, Diadrelu was winded, and the man beside her was panting like a hound. Even at nine in the morning the heat was fierce — particularly at eight inches above the barren ground. Seabirds whirled over them, innumerable: the dry side of Sandplume was one great eyrie, where gull and plover and albatross and tern vied for every available inch of nesting space. The birds had no real stomach for fighting creatures who could take off one of their wings with the swipe of a blade, but their pecking and diving made it hard to attend to other matters. Their noises — outraged wails, honks, brays, screeches — made Diadrelu think of the torments of the damned.

'A fool's errand,' grunted the man, whose name was Steldak.

Diadrelu shaded her eyes. Three hundred feet below them, the Chathrand and Sandor Ott's single-masted ship lay at anchor, hidden on three sides by the horseshoe-shaped isle.

'Look there.'

She pointed. From behind the cutter the Chathrand 's skiff was gliding into view. Her sail was down already. Aboard the Great Ship men were running out the davit-chains to receive the little craft.

Diadrelu took a short monocular telescope from her pocket and raised it to her eye. There was Pazel. She heaved a great sigh of relief. The boy had survived another misadventure ashore. Rin only knew what they had done to him this time.