The Red Wolf Conspiracy (66 page)

“Seal your lips, snake!” shouted Eberzam Isiq.

“Better to command your daughter thus,” laughed Arunis. “But it will make no difference. She marries tomorrow.”

“Thasha—” Pazel stammered.

She turned to him.

But then Dri spoke for his ears alone.
“Forget her, if you would save her. Get closer to the mage.”

“Never mind,” he said. Thasha gave him a look of perfect exasperation.

Pazel squeezed through the crowd to the circle's edge, with Neeps just behind him. Inside the forge, the Wolf's body was so hot it quivered like a pudding. Its ruby eyes glowed brighter than ever.

“If you kill the mage, the voyage will go on,”
whispered Dri.
“Rose and Drellarek will see to that.”

“I know!” said Pazel.

“Pazel, who—” Neeps began.

“Don't talk to me!”

Pazel covered his ears. He was going mad.
Think, think, think!
Neeps fell silent, and for a time, so did everyone else. All eyes were on the Wolf, the mage, the twitching hands of the Shaggat. The heat was staggering. Then a howl tore the air—a wolf's howl, enormous and urgent—as the whole creature turned to liquid before their eyes. The howl raced down the length of the
Chathrand
, stirring the limp sails, and vanished with a last whine over the bows.

But in the pool of bubbling metal one object remained. It was a crystal sphere about the size of a melon. The sphere glistened in the firelight—but at its heart was something impenetrably black.

Dri hissed in her throat.
“Oh no, no. Rin forbid.”

“There it is!” cried Arunis. “Take it out! Cool it with seawater!
Findre ble sondortha
, Rer
!
”

Dutifully Rer put his tongs into the forge and removed the sphere. Great clouds of steam rose when he plunged it into a waiting bucket. The steam drenched them all: from a distance men would have thought the
Chathrand
ablaze. Finally it subsided, and Rer lifted the sphere again and placed it in the center of the anvil. It sparkled in the sun, but the core was darker than ever. Thasha had a sudden feeling that she had seen it before.

“Now, Refeg,” said Arunis.

Refeg set the tip of his chisel on the sphere.

“Arunis!” said Hercól suddenly. “Do not commit this atrocity! It will destroy you as well!”

“Break the sphere,” said Arunis.

Refeg lifted his stone mallet, but before he could swing another voice thundered:
“No!”

It was Captain Rose. He was on his feet and barreling toward the ash circle, as savagely excited as he had been numb moments before. “Don't break it!
Chabak! Chabak
, Refeg, you fool! Get it away from the fire!”

“Stop, Captain!” shouted Drellarek.

Rose did not stop. At his first step within the circle the Turachs raised their swords. But Drellarek intercepted Rose before they could pounce. He dealt Rose a blow to the head that could be heard ten yards away. Rose's body stiffened, and his eyes rolled back in his head.

“My apologies, sir,” said Drellarek.

Rose staggered a last step—and fell against the mouth of the forge. There was an awful sizzling noise and a stench of burning flesh. Drellarek seized him by the shirt and pulled him backward—but not before Rose's shoulder knocked the crucible to the deck.

Screams of fear and agony. Like quicksilver, the Wolf's molten iron flashed across the deck. Everywhere, men leaped for rails and rigging—they worked barefoot, after all. The boots of the Turach soldiers burst one after another into flame; Drellarek screamed at them to hold their ground. Mr. Fiffengurt, weeping for his ship, kicked over the cask of seawater, which vaporized instantly on contact with the iron and scalded men worse than the metal itself.

Through all the chaos Arunis kept perfectly still, gripping the Shaggat's arm.

The cloud of steam lifted. Slags of iron bubbled on the deck, and Fiffengurt gave orders for them to be scooped and tossed overboard. Dr. Chadfallow ran from sailor to sailor, shouting,
“Don't walk on your burns, man!”

Climbing down from a forestay, Pazel winced. In the frenzy a sailor had knocked him over, and his left palm had come down on a coin-sized splash of iron. With a cry he had torn it off—along with a patch of burned skin. In fact he had been lucky—the scalding steam had passed over his head—but what agony in his hand! The spot on his palm felt like hard leather, and somehow he knew it always would.

At the forge, Arunis had redrawn the circle and Drellarek's men ringed it as before. Rose lay groaning against the starboard rail, letting Oggosk wrap his burned arm in gauze. The crystal sphere had not moved from its place on the anvil. The sorcerer gestured again to Refeg.

“Break it, now.”

But the augrong had flung its mallet halfway to the bow. Arunis pointed at a trembling Jervik and ordered him to fetch it. While they waited, Thasha studied the sphere. Why was it so familiar?

Then she had it: the
Polylex
, again. She had seen a drawing of just such a sphere, being rolled into a cannon's mouth.

“Oh skies,” she whispered. “It's one of
those!”

She was on the point of shouting—they were in immediate and terrible danger—when a hand closed on her shoulder, and a voice hissed:
“Shhhh.”

It was the veterinarian, Bolutu. “You're right of course, Bride-to-Be,” he whispered (and his accent was very different from his normal voice—and somehow more true). “Rose guessed it also. But you must not interfere. How else will the sorcerer be defeated?”

“But we can't … all these people!”

Jervik had retrieved the mallet. The augrong took it and stepped up to the sphere once more.

“All these people are not a drop beside the sea of deaths he has in mind, Lady. You know I speak the truth. Let the dragon's-egg shot burst, even though we sink. Only then will Arunis—”

“Yip! Yip! Yip! Yip!”

Out of nowhere, snapping at Bolutu's heels, was the small, furious white dog. Arunis raised his hand, and Refeg paused.

“You. Black man!”

The sorcerer's arm shot out. He crooked a finger, and Bolutu stiffened and stumbled forward.

“You're keeping a secret from me,” said Arunis, with a perfectly hideous smile. “Oh, there's no need to speak. You're thinking about it, that will do … Ah!”

His eyes grew wide with fury. He waved sharply and Bolutu fell to his knees with a cry.

“A dragon's-egg shot! So you would let me shatter it here, where its deadly yolk would splash into the flames and explode? You knew, and said nothing? Well, since you are so fond of silence—”

What happened next gave Thasha nightmares for the rest of her life. Arunis spread his fingers. Bolutu's head jerked up, his mouth wide open. With his other hand Arunis pointed at the fire—and a coal rose and flew like a wasp of flame into Bolutu's mouth.

Bolutu gave a rending scream, then fell forward, unconscious. Beside her, Thasha saw that Ramachni
too
had crumpled, shivering in Hercól's arms.

The Shaggat Ness stepped forward and kicked Bolutu in the head. He toppled backward out of the circle. Dr. Chadfallow leaped forward and dragged him away.

Arunis watched the shivering Ramachni. “You put out the coal, Ramachni?” He laughed. “A final gasp of magical mercy? Why am I not surprised? As you will—Bolutu may live, but he will never speak again. Fiffengurt! Close the forge, let the fire die. You, Rer: drag it away.”

A chain was found; Rer looped it around the iron forge and hauled the smoldering thing up the deck. Arunis watched, then gestured again at Refeg.

“Now,” he said.

The augrong raised his mallet and dealt the sphere a crushing blow. The very deck of the
Chathrand
seemed to quake, but the crystal survived. Three times Refeg swung, and on the third blow the crystal shattered. From the pieces oozed a clear liquid like the white of an egg. And resting on the anvil was the oddest thing Pazel had ever seen.

It was another sphere, orange-sized or smaller, but impossible to look at directly. It seemed to be made of night. It had no surface features—no surface at all, as far as he could tell. It was merely black and cold.
And wrong
. Something in Pazel's mind and bones and blood rejected the sphere. It was a flaw, a wound in the world. Across the ship men's faces paled.

“Master,” said Arunis to the Shaggat, “I keep my promises.”

“No,” said the Shaggat. “I take what is mine.”

Suddenly his voice rose in a thunderous roar. Spittle flew from his mouth as he turned, gesturing wildly. “Bow down, sorcerer! Bow, kings, generals, all lesser princes of this world! The Shaggat is come, the Shaggat, to cleanse and claim it! Behold, I wield the Nil-stone!”

Dozens of ixchel voices began to scream.
“It's true! By the hallowed names, it's true! Kill him, kill him, Pazel Pathkendle! Kill him now!”

The little people must have been hiding everywhere. But one voice—the voice of Dri in Pazel's shirt—hissed,
“Not yet!”

A wall of Turachs stood between Pazel and the forge, terribly nervous, ready to stab anything that moved. Even if he wanted to, Pazel doubted he could ever reach the two men.

“Bow your heads!” screamed the Shaggat Ness.

Arunis bowed. The Shaggat's sons groveled on their bellies. Everyone else merely gaped. The Shaggat put out his hand and grasped the Nilstone. For a moment all eyes were on him.

“Now!”
said Dri.
“Do it! Run!”

Pazel burst into the circle, running full tilt, and dived beneath the legs of the nearest Turach. The man stabbed at him, but too late. Pazel crashed forward, stopping inches from the Shaggat's heels.

The mad king was raising the Nilstone to the sun. A roar of triumph came from his throat. Pazel reached up—and Arunis, catching sight of him, drew his knife. But before either could act the Shaggat's roar became a wail of pain.

The hand that gripped the Nilstone was dead. Hideously dead, the fingers rotted, the bones erupting through the skin. And death was running like flame up the Shaggat's arm.

Howling, the Shaggat whirled. “Betrayed! Betrayed! Kill the sorcerer, kill every—”

He broke off. A tarboy was looking him in the eye. And Pazel touched him and spoke the Master-Word.

It was like an earthquake beneath the sea. Pazel felt that it was not him but the entire world that had spoken, every part of it at once. The sun turned black, or else too bright for human eyes. Clouds in the distance were torn to shreds. But there was no wind, no waves—and already the Word was gone from his mind.

All about the deck, men stumbled in a daze. What had just happened? What had changed?

Pazel lowered his hand. Before him stood a statue of a king with one dead arm, raising his withered fist in the air. Within that fist lay the Nilstone, unchanged. But the Shaggat was no more.

Arunis looked at the statue and then whirled to face Pazel, his eyes bewildered and lost. It was as if he were seeing the tarboy for the first time—and seeing too his own impossible defeat.

“A child,” he said, his voice deadly quiet. “A lowborn brat. What madness moves you, boy?”

Then Diadrelu spoke, for Pazel's ears alone.
“Hold your ground. Have no fear of him. If his knife-hand moves I shall slit his throat.”

Not a man stirred on the Great Ship. But one creature did: Ramachni. Moving gingerly, the black mink walked into the circle and looked up at the mage.

“The dragonlords of old had a saying, Arunis,” he said.
“No one fondles fire and escapes unburned
. How careless you have been! You raided libraries, stole many books. You knew the Nilstone could make your Shaggat invincible. But had you read further, you would have learned that every mortal man who has touched it since the time of Erithusmé has died on the spot. For what is the Nilstone, Arunis? You have spent your life craving it. Surely you know?”

“It is the greatest weapon on earth,” said Arunis.

“No,” said Thasha from behind them. “It's death.”

No one had heard her approach. Ramachni looked at her and nodded.

“Death given form,” he said. “And none who fear death in any corner of their heart may wield it. The Fell Princes drank an enchanted wine from Agaroth, the twilit land that borders death's kingdom, before they touched the Nilstone. Drinking, they knew no fear, and so they took the stone and used it for unspeakable evil. But they had only so much wine. And you have none at all.”

Ramachni shook his head. “Arunis! All your will has been bent to the unleashing of violence—a war, a warlord, this evil Nilstone. You thought to control it, as you controlled the Shaggat Ness. But we are never long the masters of the violence we unleash. In the end it always masters us.”

“Reverse the spell,” hissed Arunis. “Make the Shaggat flesh again. Remember that Thasha Isiq is mine to kill.”

“But you will not kill her,” said Ramachni.

“Will I not?” screamed the mage suddenly. “How is that? Will you stop me, weasel?”

“I already have,” said Ramachni. “You see, Arunis, I did not spend my power fighting the fleshancs, as you wished me to. I spent it long before. A great deal went into teaching Pazel his Master-Words. Very much worth the trouble, as it turns out.”

Pazel smiled despite himself.

“Yet two problems remained,” Ramachni continued. “One was the curse on Thasha's necklace, which I could not break. Tell me, did Syrarys know that she was condemning Thasha to death when she used your silver polish?”

Arunis made no answer. Pazel saw Thasha glance suddenly across the deck, to where Lady Oggosk stood beside the captain.
Pit-fire
, he thought.
Was the old woman trying to save Thasha when she sent her cat to steal the necklace? What's her blary game?

“The second problem,” Ramachni went on, “was that so many people were willing to murder the innocent, should the Shaggat die. Not just you, but Sandor Ott, Drellarek, the Emperor himself. So I dared not kill the Shaggat, or even allow him to die.”