"Do you mean to say that while you can survive the touch of the Stone, you're unable to use it at all?" asked Taliktrum.

"I don't know how long I'd survive, if I took it from him," said Thasha. "I have a feeling it would kill me too, just a bit more slowly."

"You see?" said Taliktrum, glancing quickly around the chamber. "She is in some sense mightier than Arunis, who fears to touch it at all. Why haven't you applied yourself to its mastery? Have you no desire to help us?"

Thasha gave him a long, poisonous look. "If I survived the attempt," she said, "I still couldn't do anything with the Stone that isn't ugly."

"Ugly," said Taliktrum. "What does that mean? War is ugly, girl. Killing, hunger, disease are ugly. You must risk it. We must be prepared to use every tool in our a.r.s.enal."

Thasha turned and walked back to her friends. "Not this one," she said.

"Taliktrum," said Fiffengurt suddenly, "you want to play captain? Try acting the part. You said this meeting would be 'brief and decisive,' as I recall. Well, it ain't been brief, and we've not decided a blessed thing."

"That's about to change," said Haddismal.

Drawing his Turach broadsword, he stepped forward and thrust it at Taliktrum, the blade horizontal, in the ritual challenge of the Arquali military. "We can have this out right now," he said. "You're holdin' hostages, our true captain among them. But there ain't a man on this ship-or a woman either-who hasn't stared down death these past few months. And whether you kill them or not, you'll have doomed yourselves. We'll smoke you out of your holes and deal with you the Arquali way, and your people will die cursing the day they ever heard the name Tliktrum-Talakitrim-"

"Taliktrum, you great oaf," muttered Bolutu.

"Withhold the berries, my lord," said Myett. "See how fierce they are when their people feel the claws of the poison ripping at their lungs."

Alyash drew his sword in turn. "You think you've got us by the gills, don't you?" he said.

Taliktrum nodded. "Exactly right, Bosun: we have you by the gills. My father, Lord Talag, is never careless with detail, and he planned this campaign for twelve years."

"And the Secret Fist planned for forty," said Haddismal. "You have no muckin' idea who you're dealin' with. The water emergency's over, crawly, and so's your little game. We'll drop this ship to the seabed before we let ourselves be run by ship lice."

"Leave bigotry to one side, all of you," said Hercol. "It will not achieve the ends you want. We are all thinking creatures, and each of us bears a soul." His voice was strained, as though he was making a great effort to heed his own words. Facing Taliktrum, he said, "I will never address you as 'captain' or 'commander,' for you have no right to either t.i.tle. But your own people count you a lord, and so shall I for the present.

"Lord Taliktrum, your prisoners are in squalor. Thirty days they have been crammed in that s.p.a.ce. They are filthy, sore and maddened by inactivity. They sleep poorly and eat little better. You showed a moment's kindness when we first spotted land: you gave a temporary antidote to the captain, and let him walk free an hour upon the quarterdeck. Will you not extend that kindness to the others? Let one or two out at a time, to breathe the free air, wash themselves, regain their dignity, if only for an hour."

Shouts of agreement from the humans. Taliktrum crossed his arms and waited for silence.

"Cages are abhorrent to our people," he said. "You giants made sure we learned to hate them to our core. And unlike you we are not needlessly cruel. Besides, the antidote is flawless. What have we to lose? Three, yes, three hostages at a time will have their hour's freedom. The women first, and the youngest."

Pazel felt his heart lift. He caught Thasha's eye and saw the same excitement. The youngest hostages were Neeps and Marila.

Hercol bowed ever so slightly to Taliktrum. "Now to another matter," he said. "We cannot stay here, Lord Taliktrum. The Chathrand Chathrand is hidden behind a rocky islet barely taller than her mainmast, and that is not safety enough. If the armada had pa.s.sed a few miles closer to the village, we might all be in prison now, or worse." is hidden behind a rocky islet barely taller than her mainmast, and that is not safety enough. If the armada had pa.s.sed a few miles closer to the village, we might all be in prison now, or worse."

"I know that," said Taliktrum. "Of course we must sail. The question is, where?"

"And before that, the question's how, how," said Fiffengurt. "As in, how far can we get? We have water but precious little food. The rats fouled most of the grain in the hold, and devoured everything in the smokehouse, and ate through the tin walls of the bread room. And all the animals are dead."

"You lie," shouted a voice from among the ixchel standing on the hay bales. "I heard a goat bleating on the orlop deck this morning, m'lord, as plain as I hear you now."

"Can't be," said Big Skip, shaking his head. "Teggatz and I did the inventory. There are carca.s.ses we couldn't account for, true enough. But they must have been burned to cinders, or else hurled themselves over the sides. There's no blessed way we missed a goat."

"Goat or no goat, we'll soon be hungry," said Pazel.

"That's right, Muketch, Muketch," said Haddismal, "and without decent food the men won't be fit to fight, should it come to that."

"We lack medical supplies as well," said Fulbreech.

"And the ship needs repairs," said Fiffengurt. "That foremast is only a jury-rig-one more hard blow and she'll fall. And probably take the kevels and the chase-beams with her. The gun carriages want attention, too."

Suddenly Uskins giggled, loud and shrill. "Fit to fight!" he said. "Who do you think to fight, Sergeant Haddismal? That armada, maybe? What odds would you give them, eh, crawlies? Let's wager, let's have a little fun-"

Taliktrum's finger stabbed down at Uskins. "That buffoon should not have been admitted. Who brought him?"

Uskins lowered his voice. "No one brought me, Lord Taliktrum. I merely followed my friends."

Now it was Alyash's turn to laugh. "What blary friends?"

Uskins' mouth twisted, but he made no reply.

"Quarreling imbeciles!" said Taliktrum. "Your race truly is a misstep on the part of nature. By the sun and stars, act like men! Where is the sorcerer? When can we expect his next attack?"

The argument exploded again. Haddismal pointed out that Arunis' last attack had only occurred after the ixchel drugged every human aboard. The ixchel fired back that drugged sleep was kinder than what giants had meted out to their people for five hundred years. Jeers and insults flew. When order at last returned, however, it was clear that no one knew where Arunis was hiding.

"I will say this," said Bolutu. "He will not wait long. The South is changed, and powers have arisen that were not here...before. Arunis will not risk his prize being s.n.a.t.c.hed by some mage or ruler mightier than himself."

"What can he do, though?" asked Big Skip. "If he could use the Stone, he'd have come for it already, wouldn't he?"

"Let him try," said Haddismal, and his men rumbled in agreement.

"You speak in ignorance," said Hercol. "The mage is three thousand years old. He has survived cataclysms beyond anything we have experienced. Do you think he will let himself be thwarted by a small company of marines? No, it is the Nilstone itself that thwarts him, for the present. And it is these two"-he indicated Pazel and Thasha-"who have best understood his tactics. How does one handle a poker heated in the furnace? With a glove, of course. That simple insight, when Thasha brought it to me, explained so much of the sorcerer's efforts and schemes. This creature"-Hercol gestured at the s.h.a.ggat-"is his chosen glove. Arunis cares nothing for him or his deformed version of the Old Faith. He merely believes the s.h.a.ggat will serve his purpose."

"Arqual's purpose, too," hissed Myett.

"Now, that just ain't so," said Haddismal. "The Emperor wants the downfall of the Mzithrin Kings, and he planned to use the s.h.a.ggat against them. That's true, and well deserved, after all their crimes. But His Supremacy knew nothing about the Nilstone, or Arunis for that matter. He never meant things to come to such a pa.s.s."

"Tell that to the survivors."

Everyone turned. It was Lord Talag, Taliktrum's father. He stood in the midst of the ixchel on the hay bales, leaning on the shoulder of a younger man. His thick gray hair was tied back in the style of elder ixchel, and his eyes blazed with fury. "Tell them!" he spat again. "The limbless, the eyeless, the orphaned, the mad. 'Don't blame Arqual. We never meant the s.h.a.ggat to do so well. We thought he would only sack a few cities, burn a few regions, exterminate a people or two. A brief civil war is all we had in mind-a war to break your will to fight us us, when our fleets came in turn.' Give them comfort, giant. Tell them how much better their lives will be under the Arquali heel."

Pazel was alarmed. Since his abuse by the rats, Talag had been quiet and withdrawn. But here he was again in all his ferocity, Talag the mastermind, who had swept all his people up in his dream of a homecoming, who had exploited Ott's war conspiracy as deftly as Arunis had. Here was the genius, the human-hater, Diadrelu's brother and her twisted reflection. As much as anyone aboard, Talag had brought them to this moment. Was he recovered enough to lead the clan once more? And which was worse, the clear-eyed hatred of the father, or the hazy delusions of the son?

Talag began to cough; perhaps he was not so recovered after all. When the fit finally ended he shook his head. "In any case, your plans for the mad king have failed. The soul entombed in that statue will never breathe again, let alone reach his fanatics on Gurishal to lead them in a new holy war. The sorcerer may do all that you fear, if and when he comes for the Stone-but not with the aid of the s.h.a.ggat. My son has foreseen this, and much else that he has yet to reveal."

Thasha looked at Pazel and rolled her eyes.

"Go to your rest, Father," said Taliktrum. "Lehdra, Nasonnok, escort him." Turning to the humans, he drew a deep breath. "In sum: you cannot locate Arunis, you have no idea what to do with the Nilstone, you do not know the first thing about the surrounding country or the armada that pa.s.sed us, and you do not have a plan. Am I leaving anything out?"

"We've gold enough to buy a fair-sized realm," said Haddismal. "We can hire the best curse-breakers this South has to offer. They'll fix the s.h.a.ggat, if he can be fixed. And if we can pop that stone out of his hand without killing him."

"Or yourselves," said Taliktrum.

"And meanwhile," put in Alyash, "we look for a place called Stath Balfyr. We have course headings from there, as you probably know. Headings for a safer, western return across the Nelluroq, behind the Mzithrini defenses, to the s.h.a.ggat's homeland of Gurishal."

"Y-ess," said Taliktrum. "From Stath Balfyr. So I've been told."

Pazel saw the sudden alertness in every ixchel's face, and knew its source. Diadrelu had told Hercol everything, a few hours before her death. The ixchel had deceived the deceivers. The course headings were a fiction, the old doc.u.ments that contained them forgeries. Stath Balfyr was real, but it was no starting point for a run across the Ruling Sea. It was the ixchel homeland, a country ruled by the little people, the land Talag had sworn they would return to and reclaim.

He's not going to tell them, Pazel realized. He's no fool: better that they should want to find Stath Balfyr than that he should have to drive them there with threats. Of course it may come to that in the end He's no fool: better that they should want to find Stath Balfyr than that he should have to drive them there with threats. Of course it may come to that in the end.

"Sirs?" said a thin voice from the edge of the chamber.

It was Ibjen, the dlomic boy.

Taliktrum looked at him dubiously. "You have something to add?"

"The armada, sirs," said Ibjen, his voice shaking. "There was talk of it in the village. Just talk, you understand. We are simple folk-"

"You don't have to convince us of that," said Taliktrum. "Speak quickly, and be done."

"Out here we have little to do with the Empire, sir," said Ibjen, "and the news we do have comes by way of Masalym. When my father came out to the Sandwall, boats still made the crossing from the city every day or two, and soldiers would be billeted with the townsfolk, and speak of the Platazcra Platazcra, the Infinite Conquest. But that was years ago. For a long time now we have been abandoned-that is why my mother chose to send me here."

"You ramble, boy."

Ibjen made an apologetic nod. "Sir, before your ship we had had no visitors in half a year. And the last visitor died of fever in just three days. We have no doctor, so my father and I tended him as best we could. He was not a man of Masalym. Some guessed that he came from Orbilesc, others from Calambri."

"These names mean nothing to us," said Taliktrum. "If you cannot get to the point-"

"Listen to him!" said Thasha. "He's doing us a favor, being here."

"And those words blary well do do mean something-one of 'em at least," added Fiffengurt. " mean something-one of 'em at least," added Fiffengurt. "ORBILESC is engraved on our blary sheet anchors, though the letters are faded now. I always wondered if it referred to her home port." He gestured at Ibjen. "You carry on, lad. I say you're mighty brave, to step aboard this ship." is engraved on our blary sheet anchors, though the letters are faded now. I always wondered if it referred to her home port." He gestured at Ibjen. "You carry on, lad. I say you're mighty brave, to step aboard this ship."

Ibjen did not look brave at that moment. "Orbilesc and Calambri are cities far to the west, in the heart of Bali Adro," he said. "And it is true that the Empire's greatest shipyards are there." He looked at Thasha and swallowed. "My father sent me to the neighbors' house when the stranger began to die. But last night he told me something he had never mentioned before. That the dying man had broken his silence before the end. That he'd said he came from a village on the banks of the River Sundral, near Orbilesc. He said that the whole of the city had been caught up in some huge, secret effort, for years. That Imperial warships turned away all private vessels at a distance of fifty miles, and that a strange glow hung over Orbilesc by night. Later the mountains began to shake, and boulders crashed down upon his village. The fell light grew stronger. And finally the river gushed with boiling water that killed every fish, every frog and snake and wading bird-even the trees whose roots drank from the stream. That, the man had claimed, was when he fled east."

Ibjen gazed beseechingly at his listeners. "My father thought it but the ravings of a dying man. Until yesterday, that is. Now he believes that Orbilesc was building ships for the Emperor. The same ships that pa.s.sed in the gulf, Thashiziq. The ships of the armada."

There was a long pause; the men were too unsettled to speak. To Pazel's surprise it was Big Skip who broke the silence.

"Right," he said. "Fleet or no fleet, we have to sail before we starve. And it can't be north across the Nelluroq, even if we wished to-"

"Which we do not, not," said Haddismal, "until we reach Stath Balfyr, wherever that may be. This is an Arquali ship, and Magad's word is law, even here on the far side of Alifros."

"Glory to the Ametrine Throne," said Alyash drily, "and if that ain't motivation enough, there's the small matter of him crucifying us, with our families, if we return to Arqual without completing the mission."

Pazel kept his face expressionless. Magad's done all the punishing he's going to do Magad's done all the punishing he's going to do, he thought.

"So," said Big Skip, "turn east and we might catch up with that h.e.l.lish armada; turn west and we might find the h.e.l.lish place it came from. And either way we won't get far before we're too hungry to do our jobs. Ain't it simple, then? We head due south-to this Masalym, thirty miles across the bay."

No one seconded the motion. Big Skip raised his bushy eyebrows. "It's a city," he insisted. "They'll feed us, just as these good village folk gave us water. What about it, mates? Thirty miles to the butcher's shop, says I."

But Bolutu shook his head. "The Masalym of my day would have been a good choice," he said. "It was a trading city, and so used to visitors-either by sea, or out of the strange mountains of the Efaroc Peninsula at its back. Yet if Masalym today is ruled by the same power that launched those ships, then I for one would rather keep my distance from the butcher's shop."

"Ha!" blurted Uskins. "The butcher's shop!"

His laugh was jarring, almost a scream, and nearly everyone looked at him in anger. Uskins flinched, as though expecting a blow. Whether or not his fear was justified Pazel never learned, however, for at that moment the ship's drums erupted in pandemonium.

"Beat to quarters! Beat to quarters!" Already the cries resounded through the ship.

"d.a.m.nation, we're still at anchor!" shouted Fiffengurt. "Alyash, get to the starboard battery! Sunderling, on deck! Set Fegin and his men to bracing that foremast! Go!"

"Are we under attack?" Taliktrum shouted. "Fiffengurt, how can this be?"

"It can't!" snapped Fiffengurt. "There's no way in Alifros a ship's crept up on us! But who knows, who knows, in this mad country?" He turned wildly about. "Pathkendle! Wake the anchor-lifters! We can't afford to leave more iron on the seafloor! Run, by the Sweet Tree, run!"

A Hasty Departure

22 Ilbrin 941

Pazel sprinted from the manger. He heard Thasha shouting his name but did not look back. Foreign-born, mutinous, expelled from the service, sentenced to death-amazing how it all disappeared. In emergencies he was simply a tarboy.

Refeg and Rer, the anchor-lifters, slept in a kind of stall behind the portside cable tiers. They almost never moved quickly. Pazel flew across the orlop with all the speed he dared, leaping the broken floor planks, flinging open doors.

He heard their breath, deep organ wheezes, before his eyes discerned their shapes. The brothers slept side by side, curled in beds of straw, their six-foot-long arms folded against their mammoth chests. Their skin was yellow-brown and rough as rhino hide, and festooned here and there with clumps of fur, green-black, like moss on stone. They were augrongs, survivors of a race that had all but disappeared from Alifros, dwellers in an Etherhorde slum when not serving on some Arquali ship. They spent nearly all their time asleep, harboring their t.i.tanic strength, rising for just one meal a week or to perform some labor that would have required scores of men. Their language was so rich in metaphor it seemed almost the language of dreams, and Pazel was the only person aboard who spoke it.

Left to themselves, augrongs could take a quarter hour to wake, and another quarter hour to get to their feet. Shouting, pleading, beating on cans did nothing to speed the process, and no one in their right mind would nudge them with pole or pitchfork. But a faster method had occurred to Pazel. Bending close (but not too close) to their sleeping heads, he summoned his memory of the Augronga tongue and boomed in an inhuman voice: "Music in the forest: tomorrow calls me, I answer with my feet." "Music in the forest: tomorrow calls me, I answer with my feet."

Two pairs of fist-sized yellow eyes snapped open. The creatures surged upright, grunting like startled elephants. Pazel smiled. It worked every time: he had recited a phrase reserved for the saddest farewells. Each augrong thought that he was hearing the other's voice, and after countless years cut off from their people, the brothers' deepest fear was separation.

When they caught sight of Pazel they heaved irritated sighs. "Always the same one, the babbler, the noisy goose," rumbled Rer, his huge eyelids drooping like batwings.

"Noisy till he's plucked," said Refeg, making a halfhearted swipe at Pazel.

Pazel jumped backward. "Emergency, emergency!" he cried, stripping the finesse from his Augronga. "Beat to quarters! Hear the drums!"

With impressive haste (for augrongs) the brothers stumbled out of their bedding and made for the No. 3 ladderway. They knew where they were wanted: at the main capstan, where each could do the work of fifty men in the arduous job of lifting anchor. Pazel slipped around them carefully, watching those vast flat hands. The augrongs had never hurt him; in fact he thought they appreciated his occasional service as a translator. But despite his grasp of their language, their minds remained a mystery. And Pazel could never forget that they had helped Arunis extract the Nilstone from the Red Wolf. From that day forward Pazel wondered just what kind of power Arunis had gained over the creatures, and if he could count on it still. But any mention of the sorcerer brought warning growls from the augrongs.

Pazel sprinted ahead, and in short order he was climbing the No. 3 ladderway. Five steep flights of stairs, each more crowded than the last, and the drums still sounding overhead. When he burst onto the topdeck at last he found himself in a crowd of men and tarboys, soldiers and steerage pa.s.sengers, all making for the starboard rail. It was late afternoon; the sun was low and orange in the west. Pazel ran toward the bow. He could see Mr. Fiffengurt ahead, hobble-running, with an ixchel riding his shoulder.

When Pazel caught up with Fiffengurt he found that the ixchel was Ensyl. She was a wispy, earnest young woman with eyes that darted restlessly, until they suddenly fixed on you, and drilled. Catching sight of Pazel, she leaped from Fiffengurt's shoulder to his own, landing lightly as a bird.