“Ildraquin isn’t cursed,” said Pazel, “and Hercol is strong without help from any blade.”
“Pazel,” said Ibjen, “is it true that you can cast spells?”
“What?” said Pazel, startled. “No, it isn’t. Or… just one. And Ramachni says it’s not even right to call it a spell. It’s a Master-Word. He gave me three of them, but I’ve spoken the other two, used them, and that erases them from my mind.”
“How are they different from spells?”
Pazel thought back. “He said that a Master-Word is like black powder-gunpowder, you understand? — without the cannon to control the explosion. He said the key thing about spells is that control. Otherwise you can’t stop them from doing what you don’t want to do.”
“Like turning men into dumb animals,” said Ibjen, “when your goal is to make animals think like men.”
Pazel sighed. “I suppose Erithusme didn’t have much control either, when she cast the Waking Spell. But that spell drew its power from the Nilstone, and it ruins everything it touches, I think. And I wonder, Ibjen: what’s going to happen to woken animals, if we succeed? I’m afraid for Felthrup. For all of them, really.”
He gazed out at the Tongue, the sudden plumes of flame that came and went like harbor-signals. Ibjen was quiet so long that Pazel glanced at him, wondering if he’d nodded off. But the silver eyes were wide, and staring at him with concern.
“I must add to your fears, Pazel,” he said. “I’m sorry. It’s Neeps.”
Pazel gave a violent start. “Neeps? What about him? What’s the blary fool done this time?”
“I wasn’t sure at first, because the stench from the Black Tongue was so strong. But it’s there, all right.”
“What’s there?”
“The smell of lemons. I know that smell, Pazeclass="underline" my father tamed tol-chenni on the Sandwall, you know. Once you’re used to it there’s no mistaking it for anything else.”
When he finally understood, Pazel felt as though his own death had just been handed to him, as if he’d thrown back a drink only to learn it was poison. “No,” he muttered, shaking his head, looking away from the dlomic boy.
“Father always claimed it was the sure sign,” said Ibjen gently, “back in the days when humans were changing.”
“It isn’t true, Ibjen, it’s not happening, you’re crazy.”
But even as he spoke Pazel remembered Olik’s words in the stateroom. Rage was one warning sign, he’d told them, along with a sharp smell of lemon in one’s sweat. And what had Neeps said, when they were sitting beside the signal-fire? There are times when my mind just seems to vanish. Panic, deep terror, welled up inside him. Ibjen’s hand was on his arm. “How long does it take?” Pazel heard himself ask.
“Five or six weeks,” said Ibjen. “I think that’s what Father used to say. Pazel, are you crying?”
Pazel pinched his eyes shut. Images from the Conservatory assaulted him. The mindlessness, the filth. He would not let Neeps become a tol-chenni. He turned to Ibjen and gripped his hand in turn. “Don’t say a word about this,” he begged. “The plague doesn’t spread from person to person anyway. Your father told us that.”
“I know,” said Ibjen, “and I won’t tell anyone. You’re right, it would only make things worse. The others might drive him away.”
“We’re going to stop it,” whispered Pazel, “before he changes. We will, Ibjen. We have to.”
Ibjen said nothing for a time. Then he asked, “What does it do, your Master-Word? The one you haven’t spoken yet?”
“I don’t know,” said Pazel. “Ramachni told me it would blind to give new sight. What that means even he couldn’t guess.”
“Blindness?” said Ibjen. “Blindness, from a kind of magic that you say runs out of control?” The dlomic boy looked terrified. “You must never speak that word, Pazel. Try to forget it, and soon, before you utter it one day in your sleep.”
Pazel shook his head. He trusted Ramachni. His two previous words had shaken the fabric of the world around him, but done no lasting damage. Ramachni had assured him of that, just before repeating his promise to return. But in his mind Pazel still heard Arunis back at Bramian, gloating, saying that the mage had abandoned them, vanished into the safety of his own world. And now Neeps “Look there!” whispered Ibjen, pointing. “Something does live on the Tongue. Or dares to crawl on it, anyway.” Far down the black slope, Pazel caught a glimpse of reddish fur, vanishing behind a bulge in the lava. “A marmot, or a weasel,” said Ibjen. “I suppose trolls don’t bother with weasels.”
Their hour was over. They crept away from the edge of the lava flow, then stood and walked back toward the clearing. But as they drew near Pazel felt a sudden, horrible sensation in his mind: the same sensation, in fact, as two days before: the power of the eguar was being summoned again.
He dashed to the clearing. Everyone was awake, afoot, rigid with alarm. Counselor Vadu had drawn his knife. His head was twitching almost uncontrollably; his soldiers had massed behind him, steeled for a fight. Ildraquin in hand, Hercol glared at the counselor. Vadu’s own face was screwed up in a strange mixture of bravado and pain.
Floating in the air before him were Ensyl and Myett. The two women’s backs were together; they revolved slowly as though hanging from a thread. Vadu’s free hand was raised, his fingers cupped as though squeezing something tight between them.
“No!” Pazel cried.
Vadu whirled and the women cried out in pain, in the ixchel voices only Pazel himself could hear. “Stay where you are, Pathkendle!” cried the counselor. “And you, Hercol Stanapeth: where are your lectures now? Have you realized that you should have left them on the far side of the Nelluroq? Or will you try again to order us about in our own country?”
Hercol gestured for Pazel to be still.
“You should have taken this Blade when you mastered me on the plain,” said Vadu, his voice made staccato by the twitches of his head. “It called out to you; it would have abandoned me, and served you in my stead.”
“That Blade serves no one,” said Hercol, “except perhaps the beast from whose corpse it was fashioned.”
“Be that as it may, I am now in command,” said Vadu, “and I will not let this mission fail through cowardice. Don’t you realize that I can fight off the trolls, if they should come?”
“Are you sure?” asked Cayer Vispek. “There is almost nothing left of that knife. Look at it, Counselor: it has shrunk in a matter of days.”
“We will cross the Black Tongue now,” said Vadu, as though the other had not said a word, “and overtake the mage before he reaches his goal, and slay him, and then the Nilstone shall be ours.”
“Ours,” said Bolutu, “or yours? Vadu, Vadu, you are not the man who came to us on the plain! That man understood the very dangers you are surrendering to!”
“The only danger is inaction,” said Vadu. “We will go, in prudent silence. These two I will hold until we reach the shores of the Ansyndra; and then we shall see.”
“Fight him!”
The voice was Ensyl’s, and it was torn from her throat. Vadu bared his teeth and the ixchel women cried out again. Pazel saw that Neda was looking Hercol in the eye.
“We can kill this fool,” she said in Mzithrini. “We have him on three sides, and those little seizures will not help his fighting. Whatever his power, we will be too quick for him to stop.”
“Do nothing, I beg you,” replied Hercol in the same tongue. “We could kill him, yes, but not before he kills his prisoners.”
“There’s no other way,” said Jalantri. “They’re warriors. They’re prepared.”
“I am not prepared!” shouted Hercol. And looking at his tortured face Pazel knew he was remembering another moment, another ixchel woman facing death and urging him not to give in.
Staring hard at Vadu, Hercol sheathed his sword. “I would pity you, if you would but speak the truth, as you did when I briefly set you free. Indeed, I should have taken the knife-for your sake. Lead on, man of the Platazcra. But harm those women and no blade will protect you.”