The Ruling Sea by Robert V S Redick Page A

waist-high on either side of the road, and the palace guard saw to it that the crowd stayed on the outside. But there were exceptions. Those especially favored by King Oshiram had the freedom of the road. So did certain musicians, city elders, the rich and their voluminous families, children in school uniform, and a few dozen others whose form of distinction no one could recall.
    In the last category was the same pale young man who had conducted Hercól to his meeting with the woman behind the fence. He was alone as before, although he greeted certain of the wealthier citizens with a bow. He trotted along quite close to Thasha’s inner circle, hands in pockets, and now and then glanced at them sharply with a bright, knowing smile. His expression suggested a great desire to please. But he unsettled the wedding party, for none of them knew why he was there.
    “If he smiles at me again, I’ll throw a rock at him,” growled Neeps.
    “You do that,” said Pazel.
    “Don’t you dare, Undrabust!” said Fiffengurt. “You stand for your birth-country, and must do proud by her. But what do you suppose that hoppity-smiley fellow wants? It’s blary plain he wants something. Each time I think he’s about to speak he runs off again. And now there’s a dog!”
    For there was a dog: a little white creature with a corkscrew tail, dashing through the legs of the guard (to the king’s great amusement), darting ahead of the monks, spinning on its hind legs before them all, yipping once, and vanishing into the throng.
    The guests roared. “Jolly old Simja! What next?” cried an Ipulian count.
    Thasha and her friends did not laugh. They all knew the dog. It belonged to the sorcerer, Arunis.
    “That cur’s woken, I’d bet my beard,” hissed Fiffengurt. “I reckon Arunis sent it to remind us that he’s watching our every move.”
    “It never speaks, though,” said Pazel. “Arunis said it hadn’t woken yet —as if he expected it to, one day. But it’s a nasty little brute, woken or not. We’d never have been taken prisoner back in the Crab Fens if it weren’t for that dog.”
    “There are woken beasts cropping up everywhere,” said Neeps. “Do you know what the tailors who dressed us this morning were gossiping about, Mr. Fiffengurt? A rabbit. A little brown hare who screamed ‘Mercy! Mama! Mercy!’ as it ran, until the hounds caught up and killed it. And I swear I heard one of those messenger birds talking back to his rider.”
    “And two woken rats on the Chathrand,” said Pazel. “And Ott’s falcon, Niriviel. Five animals in three months. Five more than I’d met in my lifetime to this point.”
    “Or I in mine,” said Hercól, “except for Ott’s bird. That poor creature I have known for years.”
    “Something’s happening to the world,” said Thasha with conviction, “and all these wakings are a part of it. And so is Arunis.”
    Pazel looked at Hercól with alarm. “Could he literally be causing it all?”
    “No,” said Hercól. “He is mighty, but not so mighty that he can light the flame of reason in creatures from one end of Alifros to another. If that were the case, he should hardly need such servants as a prancing dog, or a washed-up smuggler like Mr. Druffle. Besides, why should he wish for beasts to wake? Arunis dreams of enslaving this world, and nothing is so inimical to slavery as a thinking mind.”
    “I’m a part of it too,” said Thasha, “and the Nilstone is a part of me.”
    “You’re drunk,” said Neeps.
    Thasha shook her head, then turned and glanced over her shoulder. “He’s close, you know.”
    The others were startled. Neeps, feigning a stone in his shoe, stepped to one side of the procession and bent down. A moment later he caught up with them. “She’s right,” he said. “Arunis is very close. Uskins is with him, looking scared out of his mind. And Dr. Chadfallow’s between them, talking.”
    “Damn him,” whispered Pazel.
    The remark did not escape Hercól.