Shadow of the Raven (The Reckoning Book 1)

by Ward, Matthew

  "What are you doing?" I demanded.

  "We can't fight if we can't see." She sounded far calmer than she'd any right to.

  Behind us, the crackling sound grew louder. "Just run!"

  I pushed Arianwyn onwards, and glanced over my shoulder. Our assailant had regained his feet. Heavy, scraping footfalls reverberated along the alley as he lurched after us.

  Two dozen breathless strides later, Arianwyn finally lit the lantern. I looked at the path ahead, illuminated clearly for the first time, and cheered inwardly. The alleyway's end lay a short distance away, and the waters of the Silverway glimmered just beyond. I even heard the angry roar of a weir. With luck, there'd be constables on patrol. Gods, I'd even take a chance with praetorians.

  Then our attacker, who was far closer behind than I had thought, struck. He slammed into Arianwyn, jarring the lantern from her grasp. Miraculously, it didn't shatter, but fell at our assailant's feet, the flickering glow granting the first clear look at him – or rather, it.

  As I'd suspected, our assailant wasn't a man, nor even a being of flesh and blood. It was tall – a good head taller than I – with gangling limbs and long, grasping fingers. Its body and limbs were a tangle of roots and branches arranged in some mockery of a human form. When the creature moved, those roots flexed, revealing worm-eaten bones. Yet the face was perhaps the most terrifying aspect; a jagged slash of a mouth framed by thorns, and eye sockets alive with green fire. As the creature advanced, that nightmarish maw creaked open, and the crackling, rustling hiss grew louder still.

  The creature reached for Arianwyn. She ducked under the grasping hands and doubled back along the alley. I hacked at the creature's back as it made to follow. Green sap gushed free as the steel bit into gnarled skin. Shouting a wild cry of triumph, I struck again. The second blow never landed – a thorny fist lashed out, and sent me reeling against the alley wall.

  Our attacker rounded on Arianwyn. Whip-like branches burst from the ends of its fingers. They thrashed madly in the air, and lashed around her neck. The creature jerked its arm, and Arianwyn was yanked backwards with a choked-off cry, her heels skittering across the cobbles. Her fingers tugged impotently at the branches around her throat, her feet kicking in useless resistance.

  Pushing off from the wall, I hacked at the creature again. Once more, it lashed out. This time I was ready. Ducking beneath the gnarled fist, I lunged. My blade slid between the knotted branches and deep into the creature's chest. It issued a curiously high-pitched crackle of pain and lurched away – this time I'd managed to hurt it. Unfortunately, the motion also ripped the sword from my grasp. The creature lurched away, blade still trapped in its woody flesh.

  Weaponless now, I watched helplessly as Arianwyn dangled like a puppet, her struggles weakening as the creature choked the life from her. I twice tried to retrieve my sword, but the creature was wise to me now, and each time kept me at a distance with a sweep of its unencumbered arm.

  On the third try, I managed to lock my fingers around the sword's grip just as I was swept aside once more. The impact of the blow knocked me back, but also freed the trapped blade.

  The creature spun to face me with another crackling hiss. I charged at it again, my sword aimed not at the body this time, but at the fingers holding Arianwyn. The creature twisted away, but too slowly. Steel slashed through gangling fingers, and the creature flinched away, crackling in pain.

  The branches around Arianwyn's neck slithered away. She dropped to the floor, gasping for breath. As she did so, the fragment tumbled from beneath her cloak. Sheathing my sword, I scooped the rock and the lantern into one of my coat's cavernous pockets, threw the semi-conscious woman – who still had a death-grip on the book – over my shoulder.

  Turning my back on the creature, I ran for the end of the alley.

  The creature crackled with rage. Footfalls scraped on the cobbles behind me. But I didn't care. With a final effort, I shot out of the alleyway, only to find there wasn't a soul around to help me.

  Cursing, I urged my rubbery legs onwards – if I headed left or right down the riverbank I knew it'd catch me in seconds, but a slender bridge spanned the weir. Beyond lay the narrow going of a lock gate. A dozen yards further, the lights of the Silverway tavern blazed merrily against the night. I'd find help there, even at this hour.

  I doubt anyone ever crossed that bridge as quickly as I did that night. However, as I reached the artificial island between the weir and the lock, my legs gave out, pitching us both to the ground.

  The creature had reached the far side of the bridge. It advanced slowly. The bridge was barely wide enough for a man, and the creature was plainly concerned about missing its footing.

  I shook Arianwyn as roughly as I dared. "Wake up!"

  She mumbled something incomprehensible. I shook her again. She surfaced for a moment and looked at me blankly.

  "Cross the lock gate and get help. I'll hold it here as long as I can, but you have to go, and you have to go now."

  She didn't move; quite possibly she couldn't.

  The creature was already halfway across the bridge. Six more steps, maybe seven, and it'd be on me again. I couldn't stop it with a sword, I knew that, but what else could I do?

  Wearily, trying to ignore my aching bones, I stood up, drew my sword and walked to the near end of the bridge. Behind me, Arianwyn muttered again, more insistently this time, but I barely heard her over the rushing waters of the weir.

  Four steps to go.

  Arianwyn spoke again, angrier and clearer than before. "Throw the lantern at it!"

  The lantern? What good could that possibly do? It wasn't heavy enough to stun the creature, and the flame would go out before setting light to its rain-sodden flesh. Then I realised it didn't matter. I'd be dead inside a minute, so why not?

  Shifting my sword to my left hand, I fished the lantern out of my pocket, wondering idly why it wasn't warm to the touch.

  Two steps.

  With one last prayer to Ashana, I hurled the lantern with all my strength, and watched its dim light arc out over the boiling weir. Then, in the moment it hit home, Arianwyn cried out in a tongue I'd never heard before, and the dim light blossomed into roaring flame.

  The thunderclap of air struck me from my feet, all but hurling me into the waters of the lock. The creature faired far worse. I caught a glimpse of its blazing form hurtling over the edge of the bridge and into the seething weir.

  I crawled on hands and knees to Arianwyn's side. She'd collapsed again, but her chest rose and fell evenly enough. I decided not to move her. I could hear voices of confused citizens roused by the explosion. The doors the Silverway tavern crashed open, my erstwhile drinking companions of the early evening flooding forth to discover the source of the commotion. Help would be here soon.

  I was about to have yet more explaining to do, I realised tiredly. At least I was alive to think up some clever answers.

  Seven

  I quickly decided that the best way to deal with questions was with the unvarnished truth – at least for the most part.

  Yes, I told the crowd that gathered around me, we'd been attacked by some kind of creature. No, I didn't know what the explosion had been. No, I didn't know why the creature had attacked us. I must have repeated myself a dozen times before I got the still-unconscious Arianwyn from the weir to the shelter of the Silverway tavern.

  In this, at least, I had plenty of assistance. The sailors who had treated me with such hostility a few hours earlier were now civility itself. A group of them carried Arianwyn across the river with surprising care.

  For myself, I retrieved the book from Arianwyn's grasp before she was moved, and then followed the impromptu procession at a distance. Twice I had to refuse offers of assistance – I was obviously more unsteady on my feet than I realised – and it occurred to me I might have misjudged the character of these men.

  By the time I entered the tavern, one of the long tables had been cleared and Arianwyn laid out upon it, a sailo
r's coat bundled beneath her head. Elva had appeared from her usual station in the kitchens and was organising proceedings with terrifying thoroughness. Sailors were shooed away if they came too close, water and towels were fetched, and the bloody gash on the side of Arianwyn's head – which I'd completely missed in the dark – was cleaned by one of Elva's daughters.

  Through it all, Arianwyn didn't stir, and I couldn't be sure how long she'd stay dead to the world. Quintus, on the other hand, would arrive disturbingly quickly, and behave all the more charmingly for another sleepless night. I really didn't want him to arrive whilst I was laden with a stolen book, and I'd also prefer he didn't have the opportunity to talk to Arianwyn before she'd recovered her wits. I liked to think that Quintus had lines he wouldn't cross in his search for the truth, but with Lord Solomon involved, things were a little more uncertain.

  I sought out what I judged to be the least inebriated of the sailors, a stocky man with a broken-toothed smile, gave him Arianwyn's address, and asked him to tell Constans where his mistress could be found. I tried to pay the fellow for his help, but he firmly refused the coins, gave a slightly staggered bow and left at a brisk – if uneven – pace.

  I stared after him, re-examining my assumptions about my neighbours. I'd always had a distrustful personality, or so I'd been told, and that trait had only deepened since I'd come to Tressia. I had the nagging feeling I'd recently been overshooting caution and arriving at paranoia. Still, I told myself, it was better to be a living paranoiac than a dead fool. Nonetheless, something about that assertion rang hollow.

  My prejudices suffered another battering moments later, when Elva, apologising profusely and needlessly for having neglected me for too long, insisted I eat something. Realising there was nothing more I could usefully do until either Constans or Quintus arrived – Elva's daughter was doing a far better job of caring for Arianwyn than I'd manage – I took a seat in front of another plate of jakiri that had magically appeared from the kitchen. As I piled forkfuls into my mouth, I opened Stefan's book, and started to read.

  I found the worn pages heavy going. Not only were they written in a particularly obnoxious handwriting, the language of the script was formal Tressian – a tongue I could read, but only with some difficulty. It didn't help that Stefan ranged far and wide over his chosen subject, covering everything from Darkmere to council politics in the span of a few pages.

  I made it about as far as some incredibly oblique references to Malgyne, and to Malatriant, the tyrant queen of Darkmere, before I gave up – it was all too much after the day I'd had. Accordingly, when Constans burst into the tavern a little while later, a long black scarf wrapped about his neck and a dark cloak streaming behind him, I set the book aside and rose to meet him.

  Constans ignored me and headed straight to the table where Arianwyn lay. He placed a hand upon her brow, then let out a heavy sigh. "What happened?"

  I'd expected anxiety, and was slightly indignant to discover no such thing in his manner. His voice remained calm and level, and I wondered what effort it cost him to keep it so.

  "We were attacked."

  "By the guards? I don't believe it."

  "No. By something else."

  "What? Tell me."

  I shook my head. "There isn't time. It's only by good fortune that you've arrived before Quintus. I don't think we want him to encounter Arianwyn in this state, nor do I believe that he'd turn a blind eye to all this."

  With that, I placed the book on the table beside Arianwyn. Constans glanced down at it. "Something useful?"

  "Arianwyn seemed to think so."

  "Then we'd best make it vanish before Quintus arrives, hadn't we?" He smiled. "Give me a hand with her, will you? I've a carriage outside, but I don't fancy lugging her there by myself."

  With only a small amount of difficulty, Constans and I moved the unconscious woman from her impromptu bed, he with his forearms looped under her armpits, me with a firm grip on her heels. The book we balanced precariously across her midsection, having no hands free and not wanting to entrust it to one of the onlookers.

  It wasn't the best way to transport an injured person. Elva seemed to be of the same opinion. The look she gave us had the studious lack of expression practised by a woman patiently waiting for the moment at which she can justifiably reprimand careless behaviour. But time was of the essence, and it would have to do.

  Halfway to the door, I realised Arianwyn was considerably heavier than she looked. Or perhaps I was just worn out. In either case, I had to shift my hold as a precaution against dropping her entirely. As I did so, she mumbled something unintelligible in her sleep, which provoked a triumphant glance from Elva and a wry smile from Constans.

  "See, there's nothing wrong with her at all," he declared. "In fact, that's the most intelligent thing she's said for days."

  I assumed Constans was using humour to mask concern, but still it angered me in a way I couldn't identify. Perhaps it was just guilt, I thought, guilt that I was still walking around whilst Arianwyn was not.

  Negotiating the outer door with only a little difficulty, we got Arianwyn outside and into a sitting position inside the carriage. He placed the book on the seat opposite her, then wrinkled his brow. "You don't have to wait here for Quintus. I can take you back with us, or up to the embassy."

  I shook my head. "No, I'd better wait here. I seem to have Quintus' conditional trust. Avoiding him will only squander that precious resource. It's not worth angering him."

  Constans hauled himself onto the driver's box. "The good humour of our guard captain doesn't concern me. I'm not sure it should concern you, either. Quintus is formidable, but there are more ways to thrive in this city than by staying in his good graces."

  On that cryptic note, and without so much as a word of farewell, the carriage clattered off into the night.

  I watched it go, striving for a clearer mental picture of who and what Constans was. He was no butler, I was increasingly sure. As he'd packed Arianwyn into the back of the carriage, his cloak had fallen open, and I'd glimpsed four long daggers and three squat black canisters buckled at his waist. A manservant might carry a single dagger as a defence against footpads, but not four. And if the canisters contained what I thought they did, it seemed quite likely that Constans had arrived at the Silverway tavern prepared to fight a battle of small to moderate size.

  However, if he wasn't a servant, what was the connection? From his cavalier attitude to Arianwyn's health, I wouldn't have put money on a more intimate relationship. There was a distance too, a lack of immediacy in his nature that I couldn't reconcile.

  And what sort of a name was Constans anyway? I'd not heard one like it during all my time fighting against and living amongst Tressians. They were a formal people who put great store in the traditions of given names and tended to pass the same ones down, if a generation or two removed. Perhaps Constans was just an old name resurfaced from the tomb of some long forgotten patriarch, and I was using irrelevant details to distract myself from the dangerous web I seemed determined to entangle myself in.

  At least with Arianwyn out of the way I had one problem fewer. Two, if you counted the book. Toying with the stone fragment in my pocket, I passed through the Silverway's front door for the fifth time that night, wondering when my third problem would arrive.

  As it happened, Quintus entered the tavern scarcely a minute after I did, a pair of constables on his heels. The timing was so fine that I suspected he'd been waiting nearby all along. Only now, when he was sure I'd removed everything he'd have to look at a little too closely, had the guard captain made himself known.

  With Quintus' arrival, the evening's revelry was officially over. The Silverway's clientele vanished into the darkness, leaving the place looking strangely desolate. Possibly they'd intended to call it a night before Arianwyn and I had made our spectacular entrance. More likely they didn't want to allow Quintus the opportunity to recognise them.

  Kiel offered the use of one of the back rooms,
but rather than put him to any more trouble, I asked Quintus to meet me outside. Before I joined him, I thanked Elva and her daughter for their kindnesses, and once again failed to repay Tressian assistance with coin. Elva admonished me to look after the 'young lady', and flatly refused anything other than my sincere thanks. Kiel said nothing. He'd a tendency to do that when his wife was around.

  I found Quintus sitting on a mooring post, smoking his pipe. The constables were lurking a polite distance away, presumably banished so they wouldn't overhear.

  "Though it may have escaped your notice, my lord, I have better things to do than chase you around the city."

  "This isn't what I'd had in mind tonight, I can assure you." The wind twitched the dissipating cloud of pipe smoke towards me. Coughing, I fanned my hand to clear the air.

  Quintus grunted. "Are you going to tell me what happened?"

  No, I decided, I wasn't – not all of it. He was probably better off not knowing about the early portion of the night, so I picked up the story in the palace square. Some of the finer points were even now slipping away from me, but I took him through the attack in as much detail as I could remember. Quintus hung on my every word and, unusually for him, didn't speak until I'd finished.

  "I don't believe you." But he did, at least for the most part. I saw as much in his troubled eyes.

  "It's easier to believe when you see those wooden fingers around a friend's throat."

  "Oh, so you're friends now, thee and she?"

  "Yes... No... I don't know." I said, momentarily wrong-footed.

  Quintus smiled at my discomfort, took another drag on his pipe, and generously allowed his gaffed fish to swim away. "You reckon this creature killed Dalrand?"

  I thought back to the branch Quintus had shown me in his office. Arianwyn had very nearly died the same way as her uncle.

  "It would seem that way."

  "Do you know why?"