The River of Shadows (59 page)

It was because of this fugitive memory that he spotted the killer. A big fellow leaning in a doorway, too relaxed for the circumstances, and far too focused in the look he trained on Isiq. Twenty or twenty-five, and ox-strong to boot. Not one of Ott’s men—he was far too obvious, too large and surly—but that did not mean he was harmless.

The man stepped out of the doorway, grinning a whiplash grin. Oh no, he was not harmless. He took a last long drag on a cigarette, flicked the butt into the street. Deathsmoke! Isiq could smell it ten yards off. He felt the ghost of his own addiction, like jaws closing on his brain. The big man stepped into his path.

“Sir—” began Isiq.

“You shout, and I’ll cut a hole in you big enough to slide in a skillet,” said the man. “What’s in that pouch, eh? Nah, don’t tell: just give it to me, give it here.”

Isiq put a hand on the pouch. A cry for help would make him the center of attention, and that could prove as deadly as anything this man had in mind. The steel knuckles, he thought. Use them. Right now. But what he said was, “You’re bigger than me.”

“Bigger? Mucking right I am, you rotten-arsed old dog.” The man took a firm hold on Isiq’s shirt. “You’re about to bleed,” he said.

The reek of deathsmoke on the man! Isiq could almost taste it. He felt his blood responding, the sick happiness rising in his soul. “Let go of my shirt,” he said.

The man must have heard the intended threat. He backhanded Isiq with casual brutality, looking almost bored. Then he put a hand on his own belt. A glint of metal there, below a well-worn handle.

Isiq squirmed, an old man’s feeble struggle against the certainty of death. Then his elbow slashed up at the man’s neck and the stiletto did its work, burying itself to the hilt in the soft flesh below the jaw, and the man fell forward, eyes staring, lifeless. He kicked the corpse away, furious beyond reason. “You bastard, you bastard. You didn’t have to die.”

Then, like a bursting boil, the thought:
He might have more cigarettes
.

Isiq ran, fleeing the temptation more than the evidence of his deed. His elbow warm and sticky, his fingers cut trying to close the stiletto, his knee wrenched anew. Behind him, someone began to scream.

Go back. There’s still time. Go back and search his pockets
.

Where was that mucking theater? Had they taken down the sign? He blundered on, limping, trying to keep to the shadows. People everywhere. The nearest recoiled, murmuring at his back. Already winded, he forced himself to run on. A second turn, a third. Why were there no empty streets?

Deathsmoke.

Put it out of your—

Deathsmoke.

He stopped, weak and wheezing, soaked with frigid sweat. If another addict passed him he would fight for the drug. Eyes on him everywhere. A shadow in a window, a mongrel dog across the street.

Isiq shuffled backward, collided with a rubbish bin. There were rats, probably, rats before him and behind. They would remember him from the dungeon. They would smell the blood.

Look, look! the street was sighing. The decorated soldier! The leader of men! The one who thinks he can stop the war!

“Admiral?”

The voice was soft and circumspect.

“This way, sir, quickly.”

Precious Pitfire, it was the dog.

Isiq stumbled across the street. “Don’t stare, please,” said the dirty, shaggy creature.

“You’re real?”

“Very much so. And we have a mutual friend.”

“I know you. Of course. You’re the dog.”

“I suppose I can’t argue with that.” The dog was looking left and right. “The bird lost you in that tunnel; someone should have told him what to expect. Well, we can’t stay here. Follow now, but not too close. And whatever you do, don’t stare. It’s your eyes that give us away to other men.”

He darted off down the street. The admiral drew a deep breath. Somehow the craving was gone. Strange allies, he thought. A street dog, a little tailor bird, a King. And one other, the strangest of all, perhaps, if only he made it to her door.

The dog, fortunately, had no wish to be discovered. He led Isiq through abandoned buildings, gaps in fences, grassy lots. The admiral’s knee was on fire, but he kept moving, and the woken animal never left his sight. The row houses gave way to old, careworn cottages, and the sea-smell grew. Then suddenly they were passing through a gate into a dusty garden. Facing him was a little shoe box of a cottage with peeling paint. The door was shut and the window curtained, but from between them a spear of lamplight stabbed at the yard.

“Eberzam Isiq.”

The witch! He hadn’t seen her, standing there in the darkness by the garden wall. Now she came toward him, until the spear of light touched her face. The bird was perfectly right: she was not ugly, not bent and shriveled like Lady Oggosk. She was tall, and her eyes were dark and wild, and her voice had a resonance that tickled the ear. Dark hair cascaded to her elbows. A pretty witch: imagine that. All the same he knew the moment was terribly fragile. She had spoken his name with fury.

“If we have met before you must forgive me,” he said. “I have been ill. My memories were lost for months, and they are only slowly returning.”

“You would remember me,” said the woman. “And never, ever tell me what I
must forgive.
”

“Very well,” said Isiq, standing his ground. “All the same, I’ve heard the name
Suthinia
before, somewhere. And your face is vaguely familiar.”

The woman stared at him, unblinking. He could feel her rage like a flameless fire, a pit of live coals. Then she moved closer and he saw that she too carried a knife. It was naked in her hand.

“The face you know is my son’s,” she said.

“Your son, madam? Did he serve in the navy?”

She took another step, and now he knew she was in striking range. “He served your bloodsucking Empire,” she said, “after your marines burned our city to the ground. My son’s an Ormali. So was I, for two decades.”

“No you weren’t, my dear.”

Isiq whirled. A man ten years his junior stood behind him, just inside the gate. His face in shadow. His hand twirling a club.

“You tried, Suthee. Rin knows, you did try. Pitfire, one year you even canned fruit with the neighbors! But they never did let you forget you were foreign.”

“It wasn’t the neighbors who ruined us,” said the woman. “It was this one. Because of him, and his damn Dr. Chadfallow, my boy and my daughter are on the far side of the world. They’re doing my job, hunting the sorcerer I was sent here to kill. They’ve gone to my home, and I’m stranded here in what’s left of theirs. My name is Suthinia Sadralin Pathkendle.”

“Oh, come now, darlin’.” The man laughed softly. “You don’t have to keep the family name for
my
sake.”

“Gods below,” said Isiq. “Pathkendle! It’s you! Captain Gregory Path—”

The club moved so fast he never saw it. Isiq was down, flat, deafened in one ear. And the woman was kneeling, pinning his head between her knees, pressing the knife-point to his chest.

The dog gave a furious bark. “Stop, stop!” it cried. “You didn’t mucking tell me you planned to kill him!”

“War’s a dirty business, dog,” said Captain Gregory Pathkendle.

“You cut him, witch, and I’ll bring every spy in Simjalla to your door. I’m not a killer, damn you!”

“I understand,” said the woman to the admiral, “that you had Pazel flogged for his cheekiness. For calling the invasion an invasion, to your face. I hear his back was torn to ribbons.”

“Yes,” said Isiq.

“He admits it,” said Captain Gregory. “Incredible.”

“I didn’t order the flogging,” said Isiq. “You’re wrong about that. But I could have stopped it, yes. Rose would have done me that favor.”

“And Pazel’s ejection from the ship?”

“My fault. My fault.”

“You sat in your stateroom, and let him be sold to the Flikkermen.”

“That’s right.”

“You never thought about it.”

“My best friend was dying. And I was drugged.”

“Oh, drugged,” laughed Captain Gregory. “With what, old man? Platinum brandy from the Westfirth?”

“With deathsmoke!” said the dog, padding in circles around the three of them. “The Syrarys woman put it in his tea. The bird told me all about it.”

“Deathsmoke, is it?” said Gregory. He marched out of Isiq’s sight and returned bearing a lamp, which he placed painfully close to Isiq’s face. Then he took hold of Isiq’s lower lip and pinched it outward, beneath a callused thumb. He squinted; then his face grew very still.

“He’s an addict, Suthee, it’s no lie.” He released Isiq’s lip and stood up. “The note said so, too. Perhaps it really did come from King Oshiram.”

“Of course it did, you clown,” snapped the woman. But the knife was still pressed to Isiq’s chest. “We are safer without him, no matter what he means to the monarch of Simja.”

“Safer, but weaker,” said Captain Gregory. “We need him on that boat tomorrow. You know that.”

“How many Arquali betrayals do you have to see?” hissed Suthinia. “Why wouldn’t they use Isiq? How else could they ever dream of getting close to her?”

“To whom?” said Isiq.

“Shut up,” said the witch. “Trust Admiral Isiq? Six years after the invasion, and still dripping blood? He could doom us in a heartbeat. He could be working for Sandor Ott.”

At the sound of Ott’s name Isiq lost all control. He lashed out, one steel-knuckled hand smacking the knife away from his chest, the other catching Gregory Pathkendle in the jaw. The woman fought him but he was not to be stopped. Before he knew it he was on his feet again, standing over them, his own knife drawn and raised.

“You dare,” he said, “after that man killed my two angels, my darling Thasha, my wife.”

Suthinia and Gregory looked up at him sharply.

“I know it was Arunis!” roared Isiq. “But it was Ott who built the trap called the Great Peace—built it around them, required them to die! And you
dare
suggest I serve him! I would sooner serve the maggot-haired hags in the Ninth Pit of Damnation! As for you two—”

“Isiq, Isiq!” cried Captain Gregory, his tone suddenly changed. They were both gesturing, pleading. “We had to know,” said Suthinia.

“Know what, damn you? That I did not serve that fiend of a spymaster, that creature who calls himself a patriot?”

“You were a patriot, too,” said Gregory, “a famous one, same as I used to be. That’s right, man, we
had
to be sure, before we told you they’re alive.”

Isiq looked from one to the other. “Who?” he whispered. “Who are
they
?”

Suddenly the tailor bird appeared. He whirled about them, shrilling: “Get inside, inside! A posse of men is approaching! They’re at the corner of the street!”

Seconds later Isiq found himself crouched in the cottage, the door barred and the lamp extinguished, the bird hopping ecstatically about on his shoulders, the dog still as stone beside his boots. Footsteps rang in the alley; gruff voices murmured. Isiq’s knee was in agony but he did not make a sound.

Then he felt the witch’s hand. Gently, it found his throbbing knee and remained there, cool and almost weightless. And to Isiq’s amazement the pain began to subside.

The footsteps faded, the voices trailed away. Finally a match flared in the darkness. Captain Gregory was lighting a pipe.

“Have a pull, Admiral?”

Isiq shook his head firmly.

“Relax, man, it’s only tobacco. Etherhorde greenleaf, the smuggler’s friend.”

“Do be quiet, Gregory,” said Suthinia. Isiq looked up and met her great dark eyes.

“They,”
she said, “are two women who will change this world. The first is your Empress, Maisa of Arqual, the one to whom you swore allegiance long before Ott put the usurper Magad the Fifth upon the throne. We will go to her tomorrow, and together we will try to stop this idiot’s war.”

“Maisa? Maisa
lives
? Gods below, where is she?”

“A place no Empress should be caught dead in,” chuckled Gregory.

“The other woman,” said Suthinia, “is the one I’ve been waiting for, all these years. When she came at last I did not know her, but I know her now. She is the hope of Alifros, and the one my boy, it seems, can’t live without. I’m speaking of your daughter, Admiral. Thasha Isiq is alive.”

The tears struck faster than Gregory’s club. He choked, and sat down hard, and the witch’s arm went around his shoulders. They were arguing (husband, wife, dog) about how Suthinia had broken the news, how she might have done it better. Isiq scarcely noticed. Before his eyes the tailor bird was flitting in the darkness, Don’t cry Isiq, she’ll find you, she’ll fly home somehow, the young are very strong. He wept, and felt the call to arms within him, and the warmth of a woman’s touch, and the swish, swish of angels’ wings against his face.

On the Hunt

6 Modobrin 941
235th day from Etherhorde

The terrible choice, stay or go, haunted many in what remained of the night. For some, deciding was the whole struggle; others reached a decision but had to argue, plead, even fight with their fists to defend it. There were the needs of the
Chathrand
to consider, the calculations of her officers and spies, the doubt as to whether anyone who left the ship would ever see her again and the ability of a panicked Masalym to find steeds, saddles, boots. Against all of that, a mystery: the threat to the world posed by one mage and one small black sphere. When the Upper Gate of the city opened at last and the party rode out upon the still-dark plain, its composition was a surprise to just about everyone.

Lord Taliktrum was no exception. From atop the gate’s stone arch he watched them emerging: three Turachs, eight dlömic warriors, the latter on the cat-like
sicuñas
rather than horses. Lean, swift dogs spilling about them, visibly eager for the hunt to begin. Next came the allies: Pazel and Neeps sharing one horse, Thasha and Hercól on mounts of their own. The youths looked exhausted already, as though they had never gone to sleep. Big Skip Sunderling bounced along awkwardly behind them, a sailor on horseback. The shock on his face made it clear that no one had foreseen his inclusion less than Big Skip himself.

Two pack horses, then Ibjen and Bolutu. And what was this? The
sfvantskor
s, Pazel’s sister and her two comrades—prisoners no longer, but still under the Arqualis’ watchful gaze.

The young lord tasted bile at the sight of the next rider: Alyash. He wore a look of foul displeasure. Sandor Ott’s curious weapon, the thing called a pistol, was strapped to his leg. Beside him rode the elder tarboy, Dastu.
Ott’s servants, both
, mused Taliktrum.
He didn’t dare leave the
Chathrand,
but he’s wise enough to realize that the Nilstone, even from here, could threaten his beloved Arqual. He’s forced them to go in his stead. They’ll hate him for that, if they’ve any wisdom of their own
.

There were yet two more in the party, though they might easily have been overlooked. They rode on the withers of the pack animals, holding tight, facing forward: Ensyl—Taliktrum should have expected to see her among the giants, but also—

“Skies of fire!”

Myett. Taliktrum’s hands tightened to fists. What possible excuse? Had
she
been hounded out by worshippers, by vicious expectation?

An outrage, that’s what it was. Ride away with the humans, to the Pits with the clan. And he could only watch them go. The woman who had loved his aunt, and the woman who had loved him. Indeed the
only
such woman, apart from the mother who had died in his infancy—and the aunt herself.

They were forty feet gone, then sixty, then as far as a giant could throw a stone. Something overcame him, and he dived on his swallow-wings and flew with all his strength, needing to touch her, command her, speak some word of fury or desire.

With five yards to go he swerved away. Coward, weakling! Who was he to question Myett? On what authority? Moral, rational, the law of the clan? He was nothing, he was far less than nothing. He was an ixchel alone.

“No sign of the great Captain Rose,” grumbled Neeps. “After all his rage and noise and don’t-you-be-lates. I wonder if he meant a single word.”

Pazel answered with stuporous grunt.

“Even this morning he acted like he was getting ready to come with us,” Neeps went on. “And it didn’t seem like a lie. Maybe he couldn’t bear to leave Oggosk, in the end. Do you think she really could be his mother?”

Pazel shrugged.

“You’re not going to speak to me all the way to the mountain, are you?” said Neeps.

“Doubt it,” muttered Pazel.

They were still in darkness, though the tops of the mountains had begun to glow. The “highway” that ran through Masalym’s Inner Dominion, from the city to the mountain pass, was really no more than a wide footpath, hugging the left bank of the meandering Maî. Fog blanketed the river, snagged on the reeds where birds were chattering, spilled here and there over the path, so that the horse’s legs became stirring spoons. Already the city lay an hour behind.

“You heard what I told Marila,” said Neeps. “I said I’d stay behind.
Credek
, Pazel, I tried all night to convince her.”

Pazel waved a beetle from the horse’s neck. He was glad he was riding in front, where there was no need to look Neeps in the eye.

“She wouldn’t let me stay,” Neeps pleaded.

“Did you ever make her believe you
wanted
to?”

That shut him up. Pazel felt a twinge of guilt for not wanting to hear Neeps talk anymore. But why should he, after a whole night lying awake, suffering for both of them, furious that they’d let it happen
now
.

“When was it, Neeps?” he said at last, trying and failing to keep the bitterness from his voice. “That night you almost killed Thasha, while I was on Bramian?”

“Yes,” said Neeps. “That was the first time.”

“The first time. Pitfire. Were there many?”

“We tried to be careful,” said Neeps.

Pazel bit his tongue. He was thinking how easily a jab with either elbow would knock his friend to the ground.

“Those storms on the Ruling Sea,” Neeps was saying. “We really thought we were going to die. And the mutiny, the rats … and then we woke up in the ixchel’s blary pen.”

“Why didn’t you just tell me?”

“What, from in there? Shouting through the window? Or afterward, you mean? ‘Listen, mate, I’m sorry Thasha’s taken up with that grinning bastard Fulbreech, but you’ll be glad to know that I’m—’ No, we couldn’t have done that to you. And by then it was too late. Probably.”

“But Gods
damn
it, you’re stupid! Both of you.”

He’d spoken too loudly; Thasha’s glance shamed them both into silence. For at least half a minute.

“You know what I think?” said Neeps.

“I never have yet.”

“I think it could have happened to you and Thasha.”

Half a dozen retorts occurred to Pazel instantly—and melted on his tongue, one after another. “Let’s say that were true,” he managed at last. “So what?”

“So try thanking your stars,” said Neeps, “instead of going on like Mother Modesty about the two of us.”

This time the silence lasted a good mile as they trotted down the dusty trail, past the fisherfolk’s mud huts, the trees with their limbs dangling low over the water. Pazel thought he smelled lemon trees. But he had yet to see a lemon or anything like it in the South.

“Neeps,” he said at last, “I’m sorry. You’re right.”

After a moment, Neeps said, “So are you.”

“What did you say to Marila, just before we left the ship? When you took her hand and ran off toward the Silver Stair?”

“You mean Thasha hasn’t told you?”

“Told me what?”

Neeps actually managed a laugh. “Pazel, Marila and I had already talked right through the blary night. We didn’t leave the stateroom to talk. We went straight to Captain Rose and asked him to marry us. And he did.”

An hour later the whole western range was bathed in sunlight. There were vineyards here, and pear trees, and herds of sheep and goats and
birthigs
that scattered at their approach. Lamps passed from window to window in the waking farmhouses. Dogs appeared out of nowhere, challenged the hunting dogs briefly, changed their minds. The land was as peaceful as Masalym had been chaotic.

Suddenly Cayer Vispek cried out a warning: dust clouds behind them, and faintly, the pounding of hooves. Someone was giving chase.

The soldiers raised spears and halberds. Pazel’s hand went instinctively to the sword at his belt, though he knew nothing about fighting on horseback. Ensyl stood up on her horse and studied the road through the monocular scope that had belonged to her dead mistress. “It is just one rider,” she said. “A dlömu, coming fast.” Then she lowered the scope and looked at them, amazed. “It’s Counselor Vadu,” she said.

He was dressed in the same fine armor he had worn at the welcome ceremony, the gold breastplate gleaming in the early sun. He rode with a great battle-axe lashed sidelong across his back, and on his belt hung the shattered Plazic Blade. He galloped right up to the travelers, then reined in his horse.

“If you think to turn us back,” said Hercól by way of greeting, “you have made a worthless trip. Unless it be that the sorcerer is found.”

Vadu glared at Hercól as he caught his breath. “The mage is not found,” he said at last, “but the city is calming under Olik’s stewardship. And I … I will not sit and wait for death at the hands of the White Raven.”

“She will forgive nothing short of the Nilstone’s return,” said Bolutu, “and that you cannot provide. We are not setting out to wrest the Stone from one sorcerer only to hand it over to his ally. Go your own way, Vadu. Or ride with us to Garal Crossing, and then turn east on the Coast Road and follow the Issár into exile. But do not seek to thwart our mission.”

The soldiers began to grumble ominously: whatever the chaos in Masalym, Vadu had been their commander for years, and now this strange dlömu, who had come on the ship with the mutant
tol-chenni
, was trying to dismiss him like a page.

“I say he’s
more
than just welcome,” said one
sicuña
-rider. “I say that if anyone’s to lead this expedition, it’s Counselor Vadu.”

The other soldiers shouted, “Hear, hear! Vadu!”

A sword whistled from its sheath. Hercól raised Ildraquin before him, sidelong, and the men stopped their cheering at the sight of the black blade. “Olik entrusted this mission to me,” said Hercól, “and my oath binds me to the cause as well. I cannot follow this man, who ordered regicide, and helped Arunis gain the Nilstone to begin with.”

Everyone went sharply rigid. The Turachs nudged their mounts away from the dlömu; the
sfvantskor
s watched the others like wolves tensed to spring. But the dlömic soldiers were all looking at Vadu’s Plazic Knife, still sheathed upon his belt. “You
can’t
fight him,” muttered one. “Don’t try, if this mission means anything to you at all.”

“Counselor,” said Hercól, “will you depart in peace?”

Vadu’s face contorted. His head began to bob, more violently than Pazel had ever seen, and suddenly he realized that it was not a mere habit but an affliction, involuntary, perhaps even painful. The counselor’s eyes filled with rage; his limbs shook, and his hand went slowly to the Plazic Blade. Muscles straining, he drew the blade a fraction of an inch from its sheath. The
sicuñas
crouched, hissing, and the horses of several warriors bolted in fear, deaf to their riders’ cries. Pazel gasped and clutched at his chest. That poisonous feeling. That black energy that poured like heat from the body of the demonic reptile, the eguar: it was there, alive in Vadu’s blade. He could almost hear the creature’s agonizing language, which his Gift had forced him to learn.

With a smooth motion Hercól dismounted, never lowering Ildraquin, and walked toward Vadu’s prancing steed. The counselor drew his weapon fully, and Pazel saw that it was no more than a stump upon the hilt. But was there something else there? A pale ghost of a knife, maybe, where the old blade had been?

“I can kill you with a word,” snarled Vadu, his head bobbing, snapping, his face twitching like an addict deprived of his deathsmoke.

Hercól stood at his knee. Slowly he lowered Ildraquin toward the man—and then, with blinding speed, turned the blade about and offered its hilt to the counselor.

“No!”
shouted the youths together. But it was done: Vadu snatched the sword from Hercól with his free hand. And cried aloud.

It was a different sort of cry: not tortured, but rather the cry of one suddenly released from torture. He sheathed the ghostly knife and took his hand from the hilt. Then he pressed the blade of Ildraquin to his forehead and held it there, eyes closed. Slowly his jerking and twitching ceased. The sword slipped from his grasp, and Hercól caught it as it fell.

Vadu looked down at him, and his face was serene, almost aglow, like the face of one clinging to a marvelous dream. But even as they watched him the glow faded, and something of his strained, proud look came back to him.

“Mercy of the stars,” he said. “I was rid of it. For a moment I was free. That is a sword from Kingdom Dafvniana.”

Hercól polished the blade on his arm. “The smiths who made her named her Ildraquin, ‘Earthblood,’ for it is said that she was forged in a cavern deep in the heart of the world. But King Bectur, delivered from enchantment by her touch, called her Curse-Cleaver, and that name too is well deserved.”

“My curse is too strong, however,” said Vadu. “The sword cannot free me from the curse of my own Plazic Blade—but time will, if only I can remain alive. Listen to me, before the knife seals my tongue again! The Blades have made monsters of us, and a nightmare of Bali Adro. Through all my life I’ve watched them poison us with power. Olik told you that they are rotting away. Did he tell you that we who carry them rejoice in our hearts? For we
are
slaves to them, though they make us masters of other men. They whisper to our savage minds, even as they break our bodies. What happens to the Blades, you see, happens also to those who carry them. When they wither, we scream in pain. When they shatter, we die. Many have died this way already: my commander in Orbilesc swept an army of Thüls over a cliff with a sweep of his arm, and we all heard the knife break, and he fell down dead. That is how the knife came to me—a last, loathsome inch. I am a small man to own such a thing, or be owned by it. But I mean to survive it. When only the hilt remains, I shall be able to toss it away. Until then I must resist the urge to use it, for any but the smallest deeds.”

“Better no deeds at all,” said Cayer Vispek. “That is a devil’s tool.”

Vadu’s eyes flashed at the elder
sfvantskor
. But there was struggle in them still, and when they turned to Hercól they were beseeching.