Shadow Prowler

by Alexey Pehov

  The warm weather had obliged me to abandon my cloak and put on a black jacket with a hood. I could feel in my bones that I’d be doing plenty of running that night, and a cloak hampers your movements too much. You can’t go jumping across the roofs when it keeps trying to wind itself round your legs.

  The new crossbow was hanging behind my back, together with the thin traveling companion string. I’d only brought some of my purchases from Honchel with me, and asked him to deliver the remainder of the goods directly to the king at his palace.

  The trembling passed, simply disappeared like the cold wind from the Desolate Lands. I adjusted my broad belt with the pockets in which the crossbow bolts were drowsing snugly. A little bag containing several of Honchel’s glass vials and a knife hanging on my right hip added to my weight, but after doing my job for so many years, I no longer paid any attention to these minor hindrances.

  Lying at my feet was an impressive lump of beefsteak. I’d barely got to the butcher’s shop in time, just as he was shutting up his shop for the night. I’d wrapped the meat in a piece of elfin drokr.

  Boommmm! A single chime of the cathedral’s magic bell rang out in the night.

  That boom could be heard in every corner of Avendoom, announcing the arrival of midnight.

  It was time.

  I picked the piece of meat up off the ground, broke cover, and set off at a quick run toward the magic wall. But before I had covered even half the distance, I heard the clatter of feet from behind a crooked little old house with a broken-down porch and a sagging roof. I swore and dashed back into the safe gloom of the abandoned stables.

  A lone Doralissian appeared at the beginning of the alley. In his hand he was clutching a club. As it happened, I recognized this particular goat. Doralissians’ faces, of course, are all alike, and it’s hard for the human eye to tell them apart, but a specimen with only one horn on his head, and a crooked one at that, is not something you come across very often, and that makes him very hard to forget. This bastard had been involved in the memorable run that time when I called Vukhdjaaz down to torment me.

  The Doralissian stopped no more than a yard away from me and snorted loudly. My patience finally gave out and I decided to help the stinking beast’s mental processes move a bit faster.

  “Be-e-e,” One-Horn bleated in fright when I set the knife to his throat.

  “Drop the club, little billy goat,” I whispered politely from behind his back.

  Wonder of wonders! Without reacting at all to the words “billy goat,” the Doralissian opened his fingers. The club clattered on the surface of the road.

  “Good boy!” I tried to breathe through my mouth.

  Of course, One-Horn was not Vukhdjaaz, but the smell of musk was still not very pleasant.

  “Do you know who I am?”

  He was about to bleat something, but wisely remained silent. I had the knife pressed too tightly against his neck. Those beasts are as strong as trolls with a belly full of magic mushrooms; give One-Horn a chance and he’d be perfectly capable of snapping me in two with his bare hands. But I didn’t want to give him that chance.

  “You’ll be able to speak now. But I advise you not to do anything stupid, otherwise I’ll start getting nervous, and blood will flow. Do we understand each other, my friend?”

  The Doralissian gave a sound like a hiccup, which I decided, by way of exception, to interpret as agreement to behave.

  “All right, we’ll try the question again. Do you know who I am?”

  “No-o-o.”

  “I’m Harold.”

  One-Horn tensed up, but I immediately pressed my knife harder against his neck.

  “Whoa there! No stupid tricks.”

  “You-ou’ve got our Horse! Give it ba-a-ack!” the goat bleated, after which I decided to give him just one more chance.

  “Who said that I have the Horse?” I asked quickly.

  “A ma-a-a-an.”

  “Naturally, not a dragon. Who exactly?”

  “A ma-a-a-an. Very whi-i-i-ite.”

  “White?” I asked.

  “Er-er-er-er . . .” The Doralissian clicked his fingers, trying to find the word. “Pa-a-a-ale.”

  I wonder why I’m not surprised? All roads lead to my friend Paleface—wounded, scorched, but still clinging to life. And, consequently, to the guild of thieves of Avendoom, and Markun in particular. They must have lifted the Stone in order to pin the job on me. Not what I’d call an elegant move, but effective.

  And then my humble personage conceived a brilliantly insane idea.

  “I’ll give you back the Horse. In a little while.”

  “When?”

  “In two nights’ time.”

  “Tomo-o-o-rrow night?”

  The beast is just too stupid after all. Tell me, if you can, how I can conduct serious diplomatic negotiations with it? It will get everything confused, the halfwit. I rolled my eyes up, imploring Sagot to grant me patience, and said, slowly and deliberately, “This night. Then another one, and then the night when you’ll get your relic back. On Wednesday. Do you know what Wednesday is?”

  “Yes.”

  “There, see how simple it all is!” I said delightedly, proud of my talent for explaining everything in a way that even those who have absolutely no brain at all can understand. “Do you happen to know where the Knife and Ax is?”

  “Yes.”

  “Great! You make my heart rejoice, my lad. Right then, in two nights’ time. Precisely at midnight. You and your friends come to the inn. You’ll get your Horse there. Remember, precisely at midnight, not a minute earlier and not a minute later, or you’ll never see the Stone. Got that? Or should I say it one more time?”

  “Glok understands.”

  “Wonderful, my dear fellow. Now, I’m going to take away the knife, and you’re going to walk off. If you so much as twitch, you’ll get a crossbow bolt in your back. And you’ll never lay eyes on your Horse. Do we understand each other?”

  “We do, man. Let me go.”

  I removed the knife and quickly moved back several steps, at the same time taking the loaded crossbow out from behind my back. The Doralissian didn’t move a muscle.

  “You’re free to go, tell your leader what I told you.”

  The goat looked round cautiously, saw the weapon, and nodded sourly. His expression really didn’t look all that pleased.

  “We’ll wai-ai-ait, Ha-a-arold. Don’t trick us, or you’re a dead man.”

  The Doralissian melted away into the night. I listened to his receding steps, picked up the meat for the third time that night, hurriedly tied it to my belt with its tapes, and ran across to the wall.

  The rest was a simple matter of technique. Jump up, grab the edge with my hands, pull myself up, throw a leg over, jump down onto the ground. That was the simple, banal way I found myself in the Forbidden Territory.

  10

  A BLIZZARD BLOWS UP

  T here was a cold wind sweeping down the street and Valder breathed on his hands in their thin gloves in an attempt to warm his fingers.

  Immediately after returning to Avendoom after a long journey to the Lakeside Empire, he hadn’t even been given time to take his boots off before he was summoned to an urgent session of the Council of the Archmagicians of the Order. And so he had set out for the tower with a perfectly clear conscience, still wearing the clothes in which he had returned to the capital, and disregarding official formality.

  Valder was the youngest archmagician in the entire history of the Order of Valiostr. He had received his staff with four rings of rank at the age of only thirty, far outstripping even the present master of the Order, Panarik, who had become an archmagician at the age of forty-five. Both his friends and his enemies predicted that Valder would receive the master’s staff in the none-too-distant future. He himself, however, loathed the intrigues that accompanied the struggle for power, preferring work and the special assignments that Panarik gave him. This had earned Valder the nickname of the Sullen A
rchmagician, since he was absent from most of the Councils of the Order.

  The sky was darkening rapidly, and twilight had advanced. It had grown colder. The crust of snow crunched sharply under the soles of his boots. His nose was beginning to tingle unpleasantly.

  Winter had come early this year. From the beginning of November, the clouds arriving from the Desolate Lands had brought snow, and the winds arriving from beyond the Needles of Ice had brought cold. But by mid-January Old Man Winter had grown tired of raging and decided to take a break, freeing Avendoom for several days from the heavy icy shackles of unrelenting frost. And now, in comparison with what it had been like at the beginning of December, the weather in the capital could actually be called warm.

  The magician turned onto the Street of the Magicians, and then someone called his name.

  “Master Valder! Master Valder! Wait!”

  He looked round unhurriedly toward the sound and saw a teenaged boy hurrying after him. It was Gani, the archmagician’s pupil, his face bright red from running.

  The magician had found the boy in one of the poor villages of Miranueh, when he was on his way back to Valiostr from the Empire. The orphan had proved to have a gift. He had magic sleeping inside him, glittering faintly, like the spark in a drowsy campfire. But if good kindling was thrown onto that spark, it would turn into a conflagration. And Valder was intending to awaken that flame in Gani in the near future.

  The archmagician of the Order had not previously had any pupils, but so far the youth had entirely justified all the hopes placed in him. Bright and diligent, he easily remembered the initial spells for working with Air—the most inconstant, complex, and capricious of the elements. Yes indeed—he began with Air—although all the pupils in the order usually started with the stable element of Earth.

  “Master, you forgot this!” said the youth, holding out a long, white bundle.

  “What is it?” the archmagician asked with a frown of surprise.

  “Your staff, of course. You forgot it. I thought you might need it.”

  Valder laughed. He had deliberately not taken the symbol of magical power with him, but evidently the gods were against it and had found someone to return it to the hands of the “forgetful” magician.

  All right. It would be useful. At least the old fogies wouldn’t whine that he didn’t respect the traditions of the Order. Besides, the staff was merely a concession to tradition and nothing more. It carried no power within itself. When he was traveling, the “sullen” archmagician usually left it at the very bottom of his luggage.

  “But why did you wrap it in a cloth?” Valder asked peevishly as he took the bundle.

  “So the guards wouldn’t stop me,” said Gani, sniffing with his frozen nose. “They’re blind, of course, but they probably wouldn’t let through a boy with an archmagician’s staff.”

  “Thank you, Gani. That’s very helpful.”

  “Great. But can I go with you, Master Valder? I’d really like to get a look at the tower.”

  “You’ll have plenty of time to look as much as you like. I’m going to the Council, and that’s only for archmagicians. Off you go home. It’s getting dark already. Will you find the way back?”

  “Of course!” the lad said, nodding and casting a regretful glance at the Tower of the Order soaring up above the roofs of the houses.

  Valder tucked the bundle under his arm and strode off rapidly along the Street of the Magicians toward the tower. Avendoom was slowly sinking into the sleep of a long winter night. The radiance of the Northern Crown lit up the velvet sky. Its brightest star glowed with a cold, ominous light.

  The archmagician could watch the stars for hours at a time. He felt that they made Siala seem a lot more beautiful and pure than it really was.

  A minute later the street led the magician out onto the square where the old Tower of the Order soared upward in solitary splendor. The wind seemed to have gone wild and now it was running riot, picking snow up off the roadway and setting it swirling around in a frenzied white dance. And in addition, hordes of clouds had crept across the sky, concealing the stars, and snow had started falling heavily. He could no longer see the houses on the other side of the street; the wall of white was absolutely impenetrable. That sort of thing often happened in Avendoom. In the blink of an eye beautiful weather was transformed into a genuine nightmare.

  However Valder, securely protected by his magic shield, took no notice of this snowy insanity. Quite soon he found himself outside the bronze door and it opened of its own accord, confirming his right to enter the Order’s holy of holies.

  “Valder, my old friend!” said an archmagician descending the staircase. “It’s ages since I last saw you.”

  The man was leaning on a staff exactly like Valder’s.

  “Hello there, Ilio.”

  “What have you got in that bundle?”

  “Damnation! I completely forgot!” The magician hastily extracted his staff and tossed the piece of cloth on the floor.

  Ilio laughed.

  “Well, look at you! Zemmel would have a fit if he saw the way you drag the symbol of the Order around. All right, let’s go. The Council’s waiting.”

  “What’s happened? I was summoned the moment I got back,” Valder said, climbing up the staircase after his massive friend.

  “Panarik and Zemmel have got an idiotic idea into their heads, and we have to put it into practice tonight.”

  “An idiotic idea?”

  Until that day he had never thought of the two most powerful magicians in the country as idiots.

  “Exactly so,” Ilio replied morosely. “Precisely the right word for it. Zemmel’s been digging through the ogres’ old books again—you know yourself that he’s the only one who understands any of their gobbledegook. Well, he’s found a way to stop the Nameless One forever.”

  “How?”

  “He’s decided to destroy the Kronk-a-Mor that protects the wizard. In my opinion the whole idea’s a load of nonsense. The magic of the ogres is stronger than steel.”

  “But—”

  “But,” interrupted Ilio, continuing his progress along the winding stairway, “Zemmel has managed to pull the wool over Panarik’s eyes, and even over Elo’s, and that really takes some doing, doesn’t it? So today we have the night of the fools. Get ready for it.”

  Valder bit his lip thoughtfully. Persuading the light elf, who was far from fond of Zemmel, would not have been easy. Almost impossible, in fact. But this time the lover of the ogres’ magic had indeed managed the impossible.

  “What exactly do you mean?”

  “The Order has taken the Horn out of its dusty trunk and decided to work a miracle.”

  “I see,” Valder said, chuckling skeptically. “But what has all this to do with me?”

  “Oh, come now!” said Ilio, genuinely surprised. “You and I will act as reservoirs of power. Panarik and Zemmel have to draw their energy from somewhere, don’t they? We are the two fools that the Council needed to complete its blissful happiness.”

  “Are we the only ones who have been summoned?”

  “No,” said Ilio, stopping beside a door encrusted with bluish ogre bone. “Not the only ones. Elo and O’Kart, too.”

  “What about Singalus, Artsis, and Didra? Is the performance going to take place without their participation?” Valder asked in amazement.

  That would mean that only six out of nine archmagicians of the Order would be involved in this absurd attempt to restrain the Nameless One.

  “Singalus is in Isilia. As for Artsis—well, you know how Zemmel feels about our friend . . .”

  “The way an orc feels about a goblin,” Valder said with a dour nod. “That’s a pity; Artsis would have been useful.”

  “Who are you telling? I know that. But he ‘could not be found.’ Didra’s in Zagraba, with the dark elves.”

  “So six archmagicians are going to destroy the Nameless One?” Valder whispered. “Doubtful, very doubtful. Didn’t Panarik think ab
out calling in the higher-order magicians? Or even the entire Order?”

  “He did, but Zemmel convinced him that the six of us could cope.”

  “The cretin!”

  “Worse than that. You’ve been away for a year and a half, right?”

  “Two years.”

  “Well, Zemmel spent all that time poring over the books of the ogres. If you ask me, it would be a better idea to stick your head into a giant’s mouth than to read those ancient tomes. He must have completely lost his reason, if he’s decided to mess about with the prohibited shamanism of the ogres.

  “By the way,” Ilio said with a smile, “before we go in, would you care to dispose of your shield? That is what I can see glittering, isn’t it?”

  Valder had completely forgotten that he was still maintaining the energy of the spell that had protected him against the bad weather.

  “Perhaps you ought to remove it,” Ilio suggested good-naturedly. “You know how twitchy O’Kart gets when there are inexplicable energy surges. He’s so paranoid.”

  “He’s too suspicious altogether. It’s bad for the health.” Valder snorted, but he removed his defensive shield. At least, as far as Ilio could see, that was what he did. In actual fact, the magician merely “dimmed” the spell by feeding it with a subtle stream of power that only Panarik would be able to detect, and only if he deliberately searched for it. Some strange, childish caprice prompted him to resist Ilio’s friendly suggestion.

  The archmagicians entered a spacious round hall illuminated by ordinary torches, in accordance with the prescriptions of the ancient statutes, reinforced by Panarik’s dislike of magical illumination, which made the master’s eyes sting and water.

  The flames were burning steadily, and the pale shadows stood on the walls as still as sentries. Imperturbable. Self-assured.

  Valder did not like this place—it was always too cold and unwelcoming. Emphatically official.

  The walls were patterned with a large number of small lancet windows, glazed with the greenish purplish glass of the dwarves. They offered a fine view of Avendoom at night, since the tower was the highest point in the whole city, even higher than the royal palace. The immense flat mirror fused into the floor in the center of this space reflected imaginary stars and a double moon, even during the daytime. There were nine armchairs with tall backs standing around the mirror. Five of them were empty, four were occupied by archmagicians waiting with patient dignity for the late arrivals.