“No need,” said Hercol. “I told a lie back there, lad. I could read the inscription well enough. It is in their Imperial Common, and even in written form it resembles Arquali. But the message is somewhat terrible.”
“What does it say?”
Hercol paused in his march. He spoke without looking back at Pazel. Here two hundred traitors were thrown chained into the sea. Here the Chaldryl Resistance met its demise. We are Bali Adro, the Limitless; in time we will conquer the sun.
Pazel felt the words like a blow to the chest. “Oh Rin,” was all he could say.
“I thought it best to spare the others,” said Hercol. “They have heard enough bad news tonight. Come on, then, lad.”
With that he stepped out of the surf and began to climb the beach again.
“But where are we going?” asked Pazel, hurrying after him. “Did you find a village, like the one across the inlet?”
“Nothing of the kind. Ibjen spoke the truth: this place is abandoned.”
“Then what are we doing out here?”
“Spying,” said Hercol. “Now hold your tongue.”
They crossed the beach and mounted to the dunes, which were tall and crowned with brush and cast black shadows. It was perhaps the strangest walk of Pazel’s life: naked, freezing, the enormous crabs darting suddenly across their path, lifting armored claws. Spying on whom? Bolutu had claimed that there were still other peoples, neither dlomic nor human, in his beloved South. Was that what lay ahead?
They threaded a path through the dunes, Hercol now and then bending to pluck some small twig or shell from the ground, which he would examine and then toss aside. In this way they slogged a mile or more. It was hard going, but the exertion lessened the cold.
“Hercol,” Pazel asked, “what’s the matter with Thasha? Do you know?”
Hercol stopped long enough to take a single breath. “I cannot say,” he answered at last, “nor have I ever known just what ails her, since the day Empress Maisa sent me to Etherhorde, to keep watch over her family. But I think we must expect her condition to grow worse before it improves. Worse, or at the very least more intense. Ramachni, Oggosk, Arunis himself-every practitioner of magic she has ever encountered-has taken an interest in Thasha, and that cannot be coincidental. And now, when we face a deluge of magic, Thasha herself has begun to change.”
“She’s changing, all right. But into what?”
“I will not voice my guesses until I can trust them further,” said Hercol. “Yet of one thing I am certain: Thasha faces a trial that will demand all her strength. And as her friend, Pazel-her irreplaceable friend-it may demand just as much from you.”
He marched on, and Pazel, brooding grimly on his words, struggled to keep up. At last they came to a point where they could hear the Nelluroq booming distantly on their right. Before them stood the tallest dune they had yet seen, a great hill of sand crowned with sea oats and brush.
“When we reach the summit you must move only as I do,” said Hercol. “Flat as snakes we must crawl, and slowly, slowly through the underbrush.”
It was a long, awkward climb. Halfway to the top, Hercol stopped for a moment and pointed silently to the south. Pazel turned, and felt a thrill of wonder: low on the horizon hung a pale blue light, smaller than the moon, but larger than any star.
“What is it?” he whispered.
“A legend of the South proved true,” said Hercol. “The Polar Candle, the Little Moon of Alifros. North of the Ruling Sea it cannot be glimpsed, not ever. Bolutu tells me that many in the South think it has power over their lives and fates. Come, we are almost there.”
At the dune’s flat summit, the roots of shrubs and sea oats bound the sand into a fibrous mat. Hercol wriggled forward, keeping his head well below the height of the grass. Pazel imitated him, cursing inwardly as burrs and thorns began to pierce his skin. There were crawling, biting insects too, and many small burrows from which came scurrying sounds. He would have been miserable, Pazel thought, even fully clothed.
The dune was wide, but they crossed it at last. And suddenly they were lying, side by side, looking down upon a wide sand basin. It was about the size of the village square across the inlet, and ringed on all sides by dunes, except for a narrow gap on the north side leading down to the sea.
In the center of the basin a fire was crackling, somewhat larger and brighter than their own. And beside the fire three figures crouched.
“They’re human!” Pazel whispered.
“Yes,” said Hercol.
“Not, not the-”
“Not tol-chenni, no. Be very still, Pazel, and watch.”
They were roasting a small animal on a spit. They wore tattered clothes-but they were clothes, not scraps and rags like the tol-chenni. Indeed the three figures had an encampment of sorts: crates stacked up like building blocks, a makeshift tent of rough fabric, jugs and amphorae squatting in the sand. And the figures were armed: swords, daggers, some kind of club. All three looked strong and capable.
Two were men. The figure on the left, turning the spit, might have been forty: he had a severe face and black hair streaked with gray that fell in curls to his shoulders. Across from him crouched a younger and much larger man, big as any Turach. His eyes were shut and his hands folded before him; he might well have been speaking a prayer. The third figure, whose back was to them, was a young woman.
“Then it’s not true,” Pazel hissed. “The mind-plague, it hasn’t wiped everyone out! Hercol, maybe it never struck anywhere but the village. And if they’re wrong about the plague, they could be wrong about the two hundred years!”
“Gently, lad,” said Hercol.
But Pazel, clutching suddenly at hope, was not to be calmed. “Maybe the village was quarantined-way off the mainland, see? — because everyone there went mad together, dlomu and humans alike.”
“Come,” said Hercol. “The humans become idiots, and the dlomu at the same time fall victim to a shared delusion about the cause?”
“Why not? It’s more likely than what they claim, isn’t it?”
“Watch the girl, Pazel.”
Pazel looked: she was lifting a blackened kettle from the embers. Turning, she filled three cups beside her with steaming drink. Pazel saw her silhouette against the fire, and thought his heart would stop.
“Neda,” he said.
“Ah,” said Hercol.
“Aya Rin,” said Pazel. “Hercol, she looks exactly like my sister Neda.”
“Perhaps she is.”
Pazel gazed helplessly at the swordsman. He could not speak for fear. It wasn’t the villagers, or Thasha, or half the human race who had gone mad. It was just him, Pazel. Actually mad: he would shut his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them again he’d be in sickbay, feverish, his tenth day without water; or still tied up in that cave on Bramian. That was the only explanation.
“When one of the men turns away,” said Hercol, “try to catch a glimpse of his neck.”
“You never met my sister. You couldn’t know what she looks like. I think I’m crazy, Hercol.”
“Enough of that. I’ve looked at her portrait a hundred times. It hung for years in Dr. Chadfallow’s study in Etherhorde, alongside your mother’s and your own. It hangs in his cabin now. But that portrait must be ten years old. I could not be sure it was her, until you saw for yourself.”
“But how in the blary howling Pits could she be here?”
“Look! There’s an answer for you, or the beginning of one.”
The older man was reaching for something on his right. He leaned forward, and his long hair fell away from his neck. The firelight showed a black tattoo, a pattern of strokes and diamonds.
“Lord Rin above,” said Pazel. “They’re Mzithrinis.”
So they were: three citizens of the Mzithrin Pentarchy, the enemy state, the rival power that had fought the Empire of Arqual to one blood-soaked draw after another, for centuries. Dr. Chadfallow had always claimed that he’d placed Neda in the hands of a Mzithrini diplomat, to save her from becoming a slave or concubine of the invading Arqualis. It could have happened, Pazel thought: she might have taken on their customs, their beliefs. In five years she might have become almost anyone.