Part 64 (2/2)

There was no hope, none at all. I was gazing into the mouth of a demon, and the mouth was a mile wide and deep as thought. Were I not your son I should have released my breath then and there. But I would not be swept from the s.h.i.+p, I would perish aboard her as befits her captain. I struggled back to the forecastle house.

Faint screams above the cacophony: I raised my eyes to the window and saw two men at topgallant-height, clinging to a forestay. The rope was straining towards the Vortex, and when it snapped an instant later the men did not so much fall as fly, like two weird, ungainly birds, grey on one side and glowing red on the other.

'Well, Ott,' I said, catching the spymaster's eye, 'you can keep the bonus pay we discussed. But then a third of Magad 's treasury's going into that d.a.m.ned hole, along with the Nilstone and the s.h.a.ggat and the lot of us.'

'Is that all you wish to say, at the end of a life?' said Ott, smiling acidly.

I shook my head. 'One thing more. I p.i.s.s on your Emperor.'

He uncrossed his legs and stood, and would have done something painful to me had I not placed my hand on the doork.n.o.b. For once I had a way to kill faster than Ott, and more democratically.

Then, to my astonishment, the door was wrenched open from the outside, and who should fly in under my hand but Neeps Undrabust. We all reeled from the burst of fresh air, and I, closest to the door, nearly collapsed with the pain. When I recovered I saw Undrabust struggling with the stowaway girl. He was trying to embrace her; she was striking and shoving him back towards the door. 'What are you doing!' she shrieked. 'Get out of here! Don't breathe! You'll be trapped like the rest of us!'

There came a thump at the door - but this time I held the k.n.o.b fast. Pathkendle and Thasha Isiq were out there, shouting much the same thing as Marila. But Undrabust stood his ground, trying to calm and hold her, telling her he had nowhere else to be. 'Stop it, Marila. There's just minutes left, you hear me? Keep still. You don't have to fight any more.'

I pressed my face to the window, and saw a gruesome sight: the watery horizon was higher than the rail. We were below the rim, descending, speeding up. We had entered the demon's mouth. Pathkendle and the girl were the only figures anywhere close to the forecastle. They must have been pursuing Undrabust, guessing what he meant to do. The lad was right, of course: it no longer mattered. I watched Pathkendle draw the girl down beside him in the biting spray. They crouched with their backs to the door, holding each other, like a pair of orphans in a picture book, and the outlandish notion came to me that perhaps these four youths were the sanest of us all, for in the midst of insanity they were caring for one another, which I might a.s.sert, Father, is an aspect of the healthy mind.

Suddenly Thasha Isiq raised her head, tensing like a deer. Pathkendle was staring at her, mouthing some question. Very firmly and quickly, she freed herself from his arms. She stood. He tried to grab hold of her again, but she fended him off with great force, her eyes still looking skyward. Then like a woman in a trance she stepped forwards, oblivious to the death she was courting, and stretched her arms high above her head. The wind surged, lifting her like a doll. Pathkendle threw himself on her legs; she did not know he was there. And then the Red Storm swept over the deck.

It was like the glow from some unthinkably colossal fire, but there was no heat. The rain and spray turned to red gold, the deck red amber; the rigging was like wire heated nearly to melting. We had completed another circuit of the Vortex, and ploughed into the red cloud at last. Cloud, I say - but it was neither cloud nor aurora, neither rainbow nor reflection. It was just what the Bolutu-thing called it: a storm of light. Liquid light, and vaporous, and edged like whirling snowflakes. It snagged on the gunnels and dripped from the spars. It burned through the outstretched fingers of Thasha Isiq.

As we plunged deeper, several things happened. The first was the cessation of all noise. The grinding of the Vortex faded swiftly, like the noise of a foundry when you walk away from it, shutting door after door behind you. That led me to a second, absolutely wondrous and blessed discovery: the Vortex itself was gone.

Not dispersed, not disrupted. Gone, as if it had been no more than a soap bubble on the waves. Men crept from the hatches, stark wonder in their eyes. We were no longer heeled over, no longer caught in a death spiral on a b.u.t.ter-smooth sea. There were waves again, and we were pitching on them, the wind from starboard abeam.

Then I saw that the clouds too had vanished: I mean the thunderheads beyond the Red Storm. The sky was swept clean of them, and in their place I could glimpse only shreds of cloud burning like embers in the south. The whole sky beyond the storm was new - and though I could not be sure from within that bright madness, it seemed to me that the sun itself had changed position.

Thasha Isiq was staggering towards the forecastle, red light splas.h.i.+ng about her ankles. Pazel was still kneeling on the deck where he had held her. In the sudden quiet, he shouted: 'What in the Nine Pits is happening to you, Thasha? What did you do?'

She turned unsteadily. 'I didn't do anything. It was the storm.'

'The storm destroyed the Vortex?'

The girl shook her head. 'Nothing happened to the Vortex. The storm did something to us. Can't you feel it?'

She walked up to the window, so that we stood face to face. Light was actually dripping from her chin, from her eyelashes. She shook her head: light sprayed in droplets against the gla.s.s. 'Would you really have strangled him?' she asked me.

She was speaking of Pathkendle, naturally. But before I found words to answer her the d.u.c.h.ess gave a scream. I whirled - and beheld a creature where Bolutu had stood a moment ago. The thing wore the veterinarian's clothes, and his smile, but it was not a human being. At the same time it was more like a human than any flikker or nunekkam, or even the sedge-men one sees in the Etherhorde Natural History Museum. This thing before me had a human body and face. It was svelte, and cinder-black, with silver hair and eyelashes, and large silver eyes. Those eyes were its strangest aspect. They had catlike slits instead of pupils, and a double set of lids. The inner lids were clear as gla.s.s; I do not know what purpose they can serve.

The creature raised a hand to calm us, then thought better of it and hid the hand in his pocket. But we had all seen it, the black batskin stretched between his fingers as high as the middle joint. Then he laughed, a little nervously, and brought out his hands for all to see.

'I play the flute, you know. In the past twenty years I grew quite good at the human sort. I will have to go back to dlomic flutes now - the holes are farther apart, to accommodate our webbing.'

It was still Bolutu: his voice was unchanged, and his taste for odd little confessions. 'Dastu has already told you about me,' he went on. ' You see now that I spoke the simple truth. The truth about myself, and also, incidentally, about this blizzard of light. For it is the same manifestation that struck us twenty years ago, heading north. Clearly it has magic-cancelling properties. It nullified the flesh-disguises of some of my comrades; now it has erased my own.'

' You look a bit like a giant crawly,' said Haddismal. 'Are you in league with them?'

Bolutu stared at the Turach in disbelief. 'No,' said Dastu. 'More likely he's with the Mzithrinis. Right, Master Ott? I'll bet he signalled the Jistrolloq Jistrolloq somehow, as we neared Bramian.' somehow, as we neared Bramian.'

The lad took a step towards Bolutu, as if he intended some violence, but was unsure of the creature's abilities. Bolutu backed towards the door. From his corner, Ott shook his head. 'If the Black Rags had creatures from distant countries working for them, I'd have heard about it. My guess is that we are looking at Arunis' lieutenant. Where has he gone, creature? Did he double-cross you, leave you here among your enemies when the rats attacked?'

Oggosk caught my eye and cackled, and for once I felt I understood the source of her mirth. Just minutes ago we had escaped a horrible death, and yet like performing monkeys these three had snapped back into their routines, to suspicion and intrigue and lies.

Bolutu looked from face to face. 'Incredible,' he said. ' You haven't listened to a word I've said. Why do you bother to spy on us, when your own theories are so much more attractive? For what it's worth I have but one enemy on this s.h.i.+p: Arunis himself. You people, you humans of the north, should have been my natural allies, but most of you have lacked the sense to see it. And now I think I shall go. I have known twenty years of interrogations by angry, frowning persons like yourselves. I find the questions as sad and stunted as the questioners. Goodbye.'

And with that he threw open the door and walked out, breathing freely. Like the others I held my breath against the outdoor air, feeling it bite at the edge of my nostrils. But Bolutu was obviously, utterly immune. A result of his transformation, I presume. He strolled away through the Red Storm, past men and crawlies alike. When he caught up with Pathkendle and Thasha Isiq (she looked spent and fragile, now, and the Ormali held her tight in his arms) the creature greeted them like old friends.

You will be wondering how I can speak of pride, when still caged by crawlies? I shall tell you briefly, and then let Oggosk do her witching best to deliver this letter. She a.s.sures me she can do so even here, locked out of her cabin, provided we wait until dark.

Like a soundless, strengthening gale, the Red Storm grew brighter and brighter. Men deserted the topdeck - I could not even see a man at the wheel, though I could not be sure: looking down the length of the glowing s.h.i.+p was like staring into the heart of a bonfire. The other prisoners urged me to cover the window, and there was no good reason to refuse. We tacked up another s.h.i.+rt, but the light crept in somehow: through the crawlies' bolt-hole, maybe, or the seams in the walls. All I know is that within a quarter-hour we were s.h.i.+elding our eyes from each other, and from the room itself. Another five minutes, and it was penetrating our eyelids. Sometime after that - how else can I put this? - it had filled our brains. We stood s.h.i.+vering, as if our eyes had been skinned and our heads surrounded by row upon row of scarlet lamps. We did not move or speak or moan. There was no pain, but there was no place to hide.

And then it was gone. Normal vision returned. And when I dared look out again, I saw the red light in pools upon the deck, running here and there as the Great s.h.i.+p rolled, and pouring like rain through the scuppers. We were on a natural sea, among stout forty-foot swells. When the crawlies came to rebuild the fire they ventured to inform us that the storm was visible behind us - to the north - still stretching from horizon to horizon. To this day I do no know how long we spent in that scouring light. Minutes, hours? The better part of a day?

The work that had begun in terror now resumed with sanity and calm. Or at least without panic. There was soon a new emergency: fresh water. To ensure that we all collapsed together, the d.a.m.nable crawlies had poisoned every last reserve of water, from the big casks in the hold to the hogsheads used for cooking purposes in the galley. The stateroom's private supply was beyond their reach, but Uskins (I soon discovered) had stopped delivery of water to the stateroom some months ago, thinking it a smart blow against Pathkendle & Co. to force them to lug buckets from the berth deck. There were a few flagons and skins that the crawlies had missed, and some ash-polluted rainwater caught in the furled sails. The live animals compartment had a reserve, but it was smashed open at the top, and full of rat blood. Most of the animals themselves were dead: throats torn open, flesh burned black. Yet a surprising number, including Oggosk's wretched cat and the Red River hog, had simply disappeared. Those that remained (a goose, two swine, three chickens) were slaughtered at once. Mzithrinis are not the only ones capable of drinking blood.

We could, of course, still drink from the casks that had survived the fire. And quite a few men did, in days ahead, as the sun beat down mercilessly, and our thirst grew and grew. We would find them sprawled about the taps, well hydrated, asleep. We tried working in s.h.i.+fts, letting some men drink and sleep, while others waited their turn. No use: a pint of water would knock a man out for two days, and by the time he woke he'd be thirstier than before. And of course the work slowed with every man we lost.

So the crew lived, and in some cases died, with thirst. In the forecastle house, we prisoners sat around dry-lipped, trying not to sweat in that room where a fire always burned, and fresh air could kill us. Meanwhile Fiffengurt and his new crawly 'commander' oversaw the repairs. In just two days (the men were strongest at the beginning), they had the foremast and spankermast rigged anew, and we were able to aim the s.h.i.+p south once again. The augrongs (we found them by following a trail of rats torn like rag dolls to the orlop forepeak, where they had barricaded themselves) helped greatly with the larger timbers, once Pathkendle convinced them that the rodents were dead. We picked up speed. There were accidents, broken shrouds, a broken arm from a falling wheelblock. All told, however, the quartermaster proved his worth. And the crawlies? They cared not what we thought of them, so long as the s.h.i.+p ran south.

Eighteen days like this. It was winter in Arqual, here it was sweltering and cloudless. The men were going mad for rum, but Fiffengurt knew enough to post the Turachs about the liquor compartments with orders to kill: spirits, of course, only make one pa.s.s more water than one has swallowed. Men sucked lemons, drank up the vinegar and syrups. The crawlies began to fight among themselves. Was it their messiah, I wondered, who had ordered them to spring this trap, which had now caught them as well?

He came to see me, at last, and begged my advice. 'Your men are choosing death, Captain [suddenly I was Captain again] - drinking their fill and crawling into their hammocks, as if someone else were about to appear and sail the s.h.i.+p for them. Won't you tell your man to give them rum?'

'Is that what you were counting on?' I said. He did not understand the effects of alcohol, and paled when I told him that it increased thirst. 'What are they to drink, then?' he shrilled, as if I were being unreasonable.

I had him bring me Teggatz, and told the cook how he might fas.h.i.+on a boiler-condenser, to distil fresh water from salt. 'Use bilgewater; it will have less salt than the sea itself. Meanwhile, boil the rum in an open cauldron; the alchohol will go up in fumes.' Teggatz a.s.sembled the device, and stoked the galley stove until the whole deck felt the heat. But the machine and the flat rum together only yielded another forty gallons a day, and the men tending the stove had to drink a quarter of that just to keep from pa.s.sing out in the heat.

Perhaps those forty gallons made the difference, however. For a morning came when, parched and gritty-eyed, I woke to find the little lordling's girl (Myett, she is called) standing before me with a white pill in her hand. 'Eat it, Captain, and go to the quarterdeck. Our lord wishes you to see something.'

I gulped the pill (before Ott or Haddismal chose to wrestle me for it) and staggered to my feet. Outside on the deck, I felt no pain in my lungs at all. She ran ahead of me, and I walked stiff and angry towards the bow, taking in the damage to my s.h.i.+p. At last I pulled myself up the quarterdeck ladder. The lordling was there, on a man's shoulder, having my own telescope held up for him. It was aimed - like six or eight others in various hands - at something two points off the port bow. Thasha Isiq saw me before the little tyrant did, and brought me Admiral Isiq's instrument to gaze through. I raised and focused it, guessing already what I would see.

'Congratulations, Captain,' she said. ' You brought us across, alive.'

I lowered the scope; was she mocking me? The choices I'd made, the alliances I'd condoned! The s.h.i.+p still reeked of fire, the boards beneath our feet were black. My men were lifting carca.s.ses of rats and wondering if they dared drink from their veins.

Then I saw the ghosts cl.u.s.tered behind her, scores of them, the complete repertoire of former captains, six centuries strong. They were toasting me with brandy. They were shouting the name of Nilus Rose.

Only the girl and I were aware of them, of course. But as they cheered, Pathkendle came up beside her and offered me his hand. You crafty little b.a.s.t.a.r.d, I thought, but I shook it all the same. If they were recruiting me for something it was handsomely done.

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