The Red Wolf Conspiracy (58 page)

Heirs to a promise that none recall
,

Prisoners of dawn-thwarted need
.

Oh never, never again to be

Of this wounded world, this wastrel sea
.

The current was lifting more and more sand from the seafloor, whirling it away through the tunnel. And slowly a figure appeared.

It was encrusted with old limpets and barnacles, clams, algae, knobs of withered coral. But it was unmistakably a wolf, and its color was a dark blood-red. It stood upright, iron muzzle raised in a silent howl. Pazel felt a great menace in it, although he could not have said why.

“It's no bigger than a real wolf,” he said.

“Heavy, though,” said Klyst.

Even as she spoke the blasting current died away. Klyst freed the ropes from the coral and at once began trussing up the wolf. She was good with knots—Pazel tried not to imagine what she practiced on. Two ropes she looped around the Wolf's head, another two about the midsection. The last she braided through its legs.

When she had finished, Pazel gave the ropes two stiff tugs. The Volpeks responded at once. The lines tightened, shifted, tightened again. But the Wolf did not budge. This was, Pazel knew, extremely weird: five ropes and pulleys should have allowed the men to lift an iron hippopotamus. He looked up: more Volpeks were leaping through the dive portal and entering the sphere. A moment later the ropes snapped tight again.

The Wolf slid forward an inch, then another. The ropes strained tight as bowstrings. At last, like a tree wrenched from the earth, it left the seabed. First it swung out of the arch; then, revolving slowly, it rose.

Pazel heaved a great sigh. “Your people can stay,” he said. “These men will be gone before you know it. They're all afraid of the Haunted Coast. They can't wait to get out of here.”

With many a jerk and stutter, the Wolf climbed inexorably toward the bathysphere.

“I know you do not lie,” said Klyst, taking his hand. “This is why you've come, why the Lord of the Sea gave you to us. This is why it is my fate to love you, a curse that is no curse.”

Pazel was glad it was taking so long to raise the Wolf, for he had no idea how he would convince Klyst to let him break the enchantment. Simple reasoning (that he didn't eat other humans, that his
ripestry
was just a spell gone wrong) would clearly get him nowhere. He would have to tell her the worst: that he did not feel what she felt, and didn't want to.

Then he would have to command her not to do herself harm.

Silent, they watched the Red Wolf enter the sphere. Then Klyst turned and led him beneath the arch, which now bore an unfortunate resemblance to a chapel doorway. They knelt. Pazel's stomach twisted in knots. He
had
to tell her the truth. But there she was, beaming at him, pulling his hands into her hair—strange, thick hair, with those braids of tiny kulri shells. He felt as if he was holding the sea itself

“Nine hundred shells in my hair,” she said. “All perfect, white, clean. That is the rule for murth-girls: a very strict rule of purity. But one shell I keep secret. It has a rose heart. Look.”

He took his hands away. And although he had not pulled or grasped at anything, there it lay on his palm. A shell like all the rest, but blood-red on the inside. She took it from him and held it for a long time, and he wondered if she was having second thoughts. Then she reached out and pressed it against his chest, just below his collarbone.

The shell vanished.

“Where did it go? Did you drop it?”

“Pinch your skin,” she said.

Pazel pinched a fold of his skin, just where she had placed the shell. “It's inside me,” he whispered.

She nodded. “A shell is a home that drifts. I have named you my secret home, given you my secret heart. If you want me to stop loving you, cut it from your flesh. Otherwise I am yours. Will you marry me, land-boy, and live on starfish and coral wine, and learn the songs of my grandfathers, and know the million wonders of the murth-world?”

She touched his cheek. His heart was beating so hard he thought he might faint. He no longer knew what he wanted. Images of Thasha and Neeps, of his family, of sorcerers and kings, passed before his eyes like drawings in a storybook, or a dream he was quickly forgetting. Nothing was real but her eyes.

On Klyst's face he saw the gentlest of smiles appear. He felt the beginnings of an answering smile on his own face, and a warmth where she touched him.

And at that precise moment, his mind-fit struck.

It came like a stampede of horses, thundering, trampling. Panic took him entirely. Klyst was shouting, but he heard only that dreaded noise. He knew he could not speak a word—but what was worse, silence or gibberish? Either way she would think he hated her.

“SQUALAFLAGRAPAGA! PAJ! NAG! ZELURAK!”

She was weeping and screaming. He fell back on the seafloor, covering his ears. But there was no shutting it out. And the next instant her voice was joined by others, much lower and angrier. A dozen sea-murth men were laying hands on him, biting, strangling, piercing him with their sharp nails and teeth. They must have been watching all along. Behind them Klyst wailed and pleaded.

Their argument was deafening. But Klyst won, and the murth-men let him go. Howling with sobs, she pulled him toward the surface, the raging men just behind. Pazel found himself crying, too. But his tears did not glow, and Klyst would never know he had shed them.

The bathysphere was rising from the waves. Klyst stopped him a yard beneath it and covered his hands with kisses. She looked at him and waited. He bent to do the same to her hands, but she shook her head. She wanted him to speak.

He bit his lips. He would not subject her to that noise.

Klyst saw his look of refusal and let out a final, agonizing scream. Then, with the sound still breaking from her throat, she faded. It happened suddenly. One moment she was there, solid as he was. The next he saw the kelp through her skin. And the next (the scream snuffed out like a candle) there was no murth-girl before him at all.

Spitting hatred, the murth-men turned and fled. Pazel gasped—and choked instantly. He could no longer breathe water.

Flailing, he surfaced. He was surrounded by boats. Clouds of white mist were racing toward them over the water. Twenty feet away, the bathysphere dangled over the deck of the sea barge. All about it the Volpeks stood gaping. And directly beneath the sphere, arms raised, stood Arunis.

The Volpeks in the sphere were lowering the Red Wolf down through the hole. The sorcerer reached for it, ecstatic. When his fingers brushed it at last, he let out a bellowing noise that even through the distortion of his mind-fit Pazel knew for laughter.

What have I done?

Pazel splashed toward the barge.
Knock him into the sea, drown him, drown with him
.

Saving Klyst's people had been his only thought. But in so doing he had aided a monster.

“I'll kill you!”

Arunis glanced around, trying to locate the source of the meaningless squawk. And then—

BOOM.

A violent wave. Pazel was hurled back and down. Volpeks tumbled from the deck. Arunis lost his grip on the Wolf and plunged into the sea.

Cannon fire!

Somehow Pazel rose. No one was motionless now. Men ran, oars churned; terror showed on every face.

BOOM. BOOM.

They were under attack.

On Pazel's right a skiff was blasted to splinters. The air was full of wood, water, blood. Pazel swam toward the nearest boat, screaming for help. It was overfull: Volpeks and their young prisoners, stuffed like worms in a baitbox. And it was drawing away, much faster than he could swim.

“Help! Help!” (“Kquak! Kquak!”)

He chased it, but his strength was gone. Another wave sank him, and when he struggled to the surface again he knew it was for the last time.

The drowned, like those who die of thirst, suffer visions: every sailor knows that. So Pazel was not too surprised when familiar faces appeared in the departing boat. There was Neeps, throwing punches. There was Thasha fighting like a champion. And there, dashing one Volpek after another into the sea, was Hercól of Tholjassa. A pretty dream, he thought, not believing in it for an instant.

BOOM.

The fighters ducked. Something whistled overhead. Then came pain, and darkness like sudden nightfall, and quiet at last.

A Betrayal Ended

5 Teala 941

83rd day from Etherhorde

Moonlight. No sound of a battle.

Was he sleeping on the bottom of the sea?

No, he could not breathe water anymore. If he were under the waves it meant he was dead, and that seemed likely enough. But if he had drowned his lips could not be parched, nor his scalp tickled by what felt suspiciously like a flea.

“Well,” said a man's deep voice, “the last time it was you who waited on me. Now I can return the favor. Care to sit up and drink something?”

Pazel's head ached terribly. He was in a small, neat cabin without lamp or candle. And seated on the corner of the bed was Ignus Chadfallow.

“You're here!”

“And so, more surprisingly, are you. Don't jump up! You took a flying plank to the back of the head—a blow that would have split a coconut. Fortunately your skull is rather harder.”

He smiled—the first smile Pazel had seen on his face in years. But Pazel found he could not return it: Chadfallow had played him one trick too many. The doctor's smile faded, and it was then that Pazel noticed how tired he looked. There were lines of care on his face that had not been there in Sorrophran, and his eyes were grim.

A memory suddenly blossomed in Pazel's head. “My father was here!” he said. “I heard him—was it just a few minutes ago? I heard him talking about me.”

Chadfallow lowered his eyes. “You have been asleep for twenty hours, Pazel.”

For a moment Pazel refused to believe it: the voice had been so real, so close. But of course it had been a dream; his father could not have been there. And yet—

“Where are we?”

“Two leagues from Ormael City, I should say. We'll be docking within the hour.”

“Ormael! How did we get here? What ship is this?”

“The brig
Hemeddrin
. A Volpek warship, but we have found her a better flag. Rise carefully, if you can rise at all, and put these on.” He handed Pazel a shirt and pair of breeches. “They are the smallest I could find. Volpeks do not keep tarboys.”

Pazel got to his feet, wincing. Every muscle in his body hurt. As he dressed, Chadfallow bent over a sack at his feet and withdrew a glass bottle. Pulling the stopper, he decanted a few ounces into a mug and held it out to Pazel.

“Drink.”

Pazel just looked at him. No other word could have done more to remind him of his distrust of Ignus Chadfallow. The doctor took in his expression and smiled sadly.

“It's medicine, my boy. A powerful but entirely unmagical sort, and the very thing for one in your condition. Go on, drink it down.”

Pazel shut his eyes. He drank. And retched. “It tastes like something
dead.”

“Oil of grubroot,” said Chadfallow. “The caviar of emetics. Here you are.” He handed Pazel a brass dish.

“What's this for?”

Chadfallow said nothing; he appeared to be counting seconds. All at once Pazel doubled over, vomiting copiously into the dish. Chad-fallow studied his expulsions with interest.

“No ulcranous pills!” he said. “You're lucky; but then Arunis didn't have you in his keeping long. The other divers coughed up a number of tiny pills, which were perhaps embedded in their biscuits. Awful weapons: they are coated with a lacquer that dissolves over the course of ten days. After that the beads shatter, filling the stomach with powdered glass. Death follows—slowly.”

“He was going to kill us!”

“After you brought him the Wolf. He wanted no one left alive to tell tales.”

“Have you given the others that grubroot stuff?”

“Of course. Now, can you walk? People are waiting to see you.”

Chadfallow opened the door, and they stepped out into a small wardroom.

“Pazel!”

Thasha jumped up so fast she nearly overturned the table where she was sitting with Neeps, Marila and Mintu. She had cut her hair as short as a tarboy's—hacked it off with a knife, by the look of it. She and Neeps ran to embrace him.

“You choose the worst times to have those fits,” Thasha laughed.

“There's no
good
time,” said Pazel, grinning too.

“You old dog!” said Neeps. “You really fixed Arunis! Last I saw he was floundering in the water, screaming about a scarlet ray. Did your murth-girl send that ray?”

Pazel's smile faded. His murth-girl. Why had she vanished? Was that how her people died? Or could murths only be seen when you were under their spell—or when they were under yours?