The River of Shadows cv-3

by Robert V. S. Redick

  “Take your hands from me,” said Taliktrum. As Myett recoiled, wounded, he added, “Carry on, Saturyk. What awkward questions?”

  Saturyk crossed his powerful arms. “In point of fact, Ensyl was within her rights to stand by her mistress, even against your orders. She may not be certain of that herself, but the House Elders know the law perfectly well-and they know, by the same token, that Ludunte is the oath-breaker, not Ensyl. He vowed to serve the Lady Diadrelu in all things, until released by her consent, or by the will of the clan in full council. Not even a clan leader may sever that bond.”

  “But a prophet might,” said a voice from behind him.

  It was Lord Talag. The others started; he had come down from his high seat without assistance, and now stood straight and proud in the doorway. Maimed by Sniraga, then held for weeks by the rat-king, Master Mugstur, he had suffered unimaginable abuses. Few had thought that he would live to see the far side of the Nelluroq, let alone the fabled shores of Stath Balfyr, the beloved Sanctuary he had lived for. But Talag was growing stronger all the time. Clan rumor held that he was in constant pain, but there was little sign of it about his person.

  “I would speak to my son alone,” he said, moving to a seat at the table.

  Myett and Saturyk left the chamber, the young woman trailing a hand up Taliktrum’s arm as she went. When the door closed behind them, Taliktrum rose and poured his father a tall glass of wine.

  “How is it with you, sir?”

  “You can see that I am healing,” said Talag curtly. “Taliktrum, you have a traitor in your midst.”

  “Apparently,” sighed the young lord.

  “What do you mean, ‘apparently’? You cannot believe this was an accident!”

  “No, Father.”

  “Well, then a traitor’s at work. Have you considered that it may be Myett?”

  Taliktrum vehemently shook his head. “Forgive me, sir, but that makes no sense.”

  “To sane men the actions of lunatics are senseless by definition,” said Talag. “Senseless-not impossible. The girl has a vague and fearful mind. She trails behind you like a shadow. And she shares your bed. She could well have borrowed your key to the strongbox.”

  “But she has no motive whatsoever. She detests the giants.”

  “And worships you-apparently. Taliktrum, a perfect cover is reason in itself to be suspicious. Don’t exempt her from scrutiny because of the pleasures of her touch. You should devise some way to test her.”

  Taliktrum moved away across the room. He stared at a portrait of Alighri Ixphir, third commander of the House that bore his name. “I will destroy the remaining antidote,” he said. “Isn’t that what you’d do, in my place?”

  “And condemn all the prisoners to eventual death?” said Talag. “You are not thinking clearly. What if the traitor simply informs the humans of your act? What will you bargain with, once their death is assured?”

  “Besides, we are not savages. That is what Dri would say, in such a pass.”

  Talag glowered. “Find the traitor. That is what your father says.”

  Taliktrum started to pace. “I will test Myett. I’ll take another woman. We’ll see what jealousy looks like on her pretty face.”

  “You’re a fool if you do,” said Talag, sniffing his wine. “It’s the jealousy of the clan you’ll soon be confronted with-the men’s, at any rate.”

  “How am I to play the part of a prophet without a prophet’s grandeur?”

  Talag thumped the table with his hand. “By not confusing your people’s history with the enemy’s!” he growled. “Arquali mystics were epicures, gluttons. Our own knew restraint. How did you ever get the idea that luxury and wealth would inspire awe? These extra rooms, this feasting, this wallowing in bed with your concubine. No one thinks you more powerful for such displays.”

  “The younger folk do. They’re not the same sort of warriors as your generation, Father-the sort you raised me to be. They’ve known more safety in your house than any clan in memory. They like comforts. They like to see someone enjoying them.”

  Talag allowed himself a wolfish smile. “Utter rot,” he said. “They believe in you despite your taste for comforts, not because of them. It’s their need for a prophet we’re exploiting here. Fortunately that need is profound. Be a warrior again, Taliktrum, and they’ll follow you to the bottommost Pit.”

  Taliktrum smiled in turn. “Perhaps I don’t want to visit the Pits just yet.”

  Talag’s face darkened. Taliktrum watched him, hands writhing. He drew closer to Talag and lowered his voice to a whisper.

  “Skies aflame but it’s bad, Father. Rose is the very last person we should ever wish to set free. He’s maniacal about his command. We don’t dare pick a fight with him openly now-he’s capable of anything, even sacrificing the other prisoners. All of them. Who does he care for among them? Oggosk? We know that she adores him for some reason, but is the feeling reciprocated? And even if it is, I think he might sacrifice her, unnatural beast that he is.”

  Talag was very still. “To sacrifice a loved one for a greater cause-you call that unnatural, do you?”

  Something in his voice made Taliktrum feel cold in the pit of his stomach. “Not for us, perhaps,” he said. “We understand these things differently. But Rose has no clan to fight for. He’s demonically selfish, and no more. Yet somehow the crew is elated to have him back. Why do they trust him? It proves the giants are half-wits, that’s all I can say.”

  “You saw how Rose decimated the Jistrolloq, twice the fighting ship Chathrand is. You saw how he kept us alive through the Nelluroq storms.”

  “He’s a fine mariner, of course.”

  “He is more than that,” said Talag, motionless. “Some men know exactly what they’re capable of, and set out to achieve it. They have no pretense, because they need none. They choose, and they act. Other men detect this quality in them and want to take shelter in its certainty, its safety. Naturally they find themselves following such men, obeying them willingly. It is the same instinct that makes one hurry to leave a bog for solid ground.”

  Taliktrum gave him a sharp look. “Those who believe in me-and it is most of them, you know-believe in me totally. Saturyk has observed them. They stay up late in the night, discussing my chance utterances, trying to catch glimpses of our destiny. It is almost frightening.”

  “It is that,” agreed Talag. “And here is something worse. Those who do not believe in you, like Ensyl-they dismiss you utterly, as a weakling and a fraud.”

  “I do not like the way they look at me,” said Taliktrum.

  “To like or dislike-what is that?” snapped Talag. “Pay less attention to your likes, and more to the content of those looks. Tell me, prophet, what is behind them?”

  Taliktrum looked at his hands. “Need,” he said at last.

  “That is correct,” said Talag, “need. They believe in He-Who-Sees because they are afraid of their own blindness. Afraid of what may be coming for the clan, in that future they cannot see.”

  “Father,” said Taliktrum suddenly, “the hostages are not our only security, are they?”

  Talag had been lifting his glass; now he set it slowly on the table.

  “If the worst should happen-if we should lose them all-you have another plan, do you not? Something to fall back on as a last resort?”

  The old man looked at his son in silence. At last he said, “Would you follow any fool this long if he did not have such a plan?”

  “Then why haven’t you shared it with me? You nearly took the secret to your grave!”

  Talag just stared at him, unsmiling.

  “Do the elders know?” asked Taliktrum.

  “Several,” said Talag, nodding, “and chosen others. Ten in all.”

  “But I should know as well!”

  “Taliktrum,” said his father, “has it occurred to you that if we lose the hostages, the first result may well be your torture? Rose will take you to the galley and jam your leg into Teggatz’s me
at grinder, and ask you questions designed to make it easier to kill us all. There are some answers it is better for a commander to be unable to provide. Do not concern yourself with our move of last resort. Devote your energies to seeing that we never need to make it.”

  Taliktrum stared at his father, struggling to be still. At last with an anxious twitch he rushed to Talag and leaned close to him, gripping his chair.

  “I would follow you again,” he said. “Resume your command, my lord! You need not go out scouting as before. We can do that. You can lead us from right here, until you’re fully yourself again. Just think how the people would rally to you! Their divisions would vanish like a puff of smoke.”

  Talag sipped his wine. Then he rose, forcing his son back a step. He stood almost a head taller than Taliktrum. His eyes shone with anger and disgust.

  “Would they?” he said. “After I endorsed this ugly cult you’ve built around yourself? Though it profanes the creed that has preserved us for centuries, that no one life must ever be exalted above the needs of the clan? I escape the rats and find my house in ruins, my people so frightened and confused that they would believe in anything-would have ended up kneeling before Mugstur himself, if matters had gone much further. You think I can lead, having declared that I subscribe to this rubbish, that your vision is my own? ‘Ah, but that was yesterday, men of Ixphir House. Today it is not the prophet’s word but Lord Talag’s you must accept. Or some muddled combination of the two.’ No, Taliktrum. You wanted command. You ached for it like a drunkard for his wine. Now it is yours, and you must keep it.”

  “I did not always want it,” said Taliktrum, almost pleading. “There was a time before all this, before you and Dri began my training. My flutes, Father, do you recall how well I-”

  Talag dashed wine in the face of his son.

  “Find the traitor and punish him,” he said. “There was a childhood for each of us. It’s dead and gone, and I will speak of it no further.”

  In the Jaws of Masalym

  24 Ilbrin 941

  Hunger, thirst, loss of blood: such was Dr. Rain’s diagnosis. Fortunately the bleeding proved easy to control; the prince’s wounds were ugly but not deep. A cabin was readied with lightning speed, the bed salvaged from the ample store of first-class wreckage, a new mattress stitched and stuffed, a coal stove mounted on the floor and its chimney pipe routed out through the porthole. “I’m not cold,” the prince mumbled, waking briefly, but Rose took no more chances. He brought his own feather pillows for the invalid, and plumped them as the prince was carried in. Thasha watched his efforts with grim amusement. The captain didn’t mean to be executed at their first port of call.

  But was the man truly who he claimed? The other two dlomu certainly thought so. Ibjen said he knew the prince’s face from coins, and even Bolutu declared that he recognized the features of the ruling family.

  Olik did wake again, heavy-lidded and weak, but only long enough to seize the captain’s arm and speak a warning. “Hug the shore, as tightly as you dare. That will keep you out of the rip tide. And you must also manufacture a flag in great haste-a leopard leaping a red sun, both on black-or the Masalym cliff batteries will rain down enough iron to sink this ship by weight alone.”

  “That is your banner… Sire?” asked Rose.

  Olik nodded wearily. “And when you pass safe under those guns, perhaps you will consider yourself repaid for the Karyskans’ assault. Go to Masalym, Captain. Only there can you safely repair your ship. Now, I think-”

  He plummeted again into sleep. This time it was profound, and Rose ordered the cabin off-limits to all save Fulbreech and Rain.

  About the time of the prince’s collapse a great smoke began to rise in the south. It spread quickly (or they were swept quickly toward it), low and black and boiling over land and water. Beneath the lid of smoke the dark hulks, the weird shimmer of the armada came and went, licked now and then by flashes of fire. Thasha aimed her father’s telescope at the melee. It was still too distant-fortunately-for her to make out individual ships, but even blurred and indistinct the scene was terrifying. Wood and stone, steel and serpent-flesh, water and city and ships: they were all in collision, blending and bleeding together in a haze of fire. Nandirag: that was what Prince Olik had called the city. What would it be called after today, and who would be left to name it?

  By nightfall the Chathrand had drawn within a league of the shore. From this distance one could see the effects of the rip tide with the naked eye: a powerful leeway, a slippage, as though the ship were a man walking across a rug while a dozen hands pulled it sideways. How far did it carry us? wondered Thasha, studying the shore through her father’s telescope. How long before it sweeps us right into the fray?

  Nearer to the Chathrand, the coast was a line of high, rocky hills, silver-gray and crevassed like the hide of an elephant, crowned with shaggy meadowlands. In the last minutes of daylight Thasha saw dark boulders and sharp solitary trees, a wall of fieldstones that might have marked some pasture’s edge, and here and there an immense clinging vine dangling garlands of fire-red flowers over the sea. Among the flowers, winged creatures, tiny birds or great insects or something else altogether, rose and settled in clouds.

  Darkness was falling when they cleared the rip tide. It was unmistakable: a line of churning water and disordered waves, a sudden heaving swell to starboard, a rise in the apparent wind. A scramble ensued: Rose actually spread sail, driving them another half-league shoreward in a matter of minutes. Then he brought the ship about to the north and ordered nearly all the canvas taken in. Until dawn they would creep northward, following a narrow, safe path between the current and the cliffs.

  Thasha watched the ship wheel northward and felt a chill. It was happening. They were doing exactly what they had said they must never do: taking the Nilstone straight to evil hands. Was there any doubt that Masalym was evil? It was a part of Bali Adro, the Empire that was even now destroying the city at their backs, that Nandirag. But was there any other choice? The ship was sinking. Without repairs she could neither run nor fight well enough to keep the Nilstone safe much longer. And there was the small matter of food.

  Neeps and Marila had gone to sleep on the floor of the brig, next to Pazel’s cell. Thasha wanted to go to them, ached to do so, could not. She went to Fulbreech and kissed him long and deep, her arms over his shoulders, her back against the doorway of his cabinette. His hands gripping her hips, two fingers grazing her skin beneath the shirt. He tried to coax her into his chamber but she shook her head, breathless and shivering; it was not yet time. She left him, ran blind across the lower gun deck, pounded up the Silver Stair and through the magic wall. She flung open Hercol’s cabin door and flew at him and struck him with both fists in the chest. Hercol kicked the door shut. In the room adjacent Bolutu heard her curses and her sobs, and the warrior’s answering voice, low and intimate and stern.

  Sergeant Haddismal tossed and turned in his cabin. When he managed to sleep, the same object rose persistently in his dreams. An arm, pulsating, yellow-gray, somehow both dead and alive, groping through the ship on a mission of its own.

  It was the Shaggat’s arm, and his dream was hardly stranger than the reality that had prompted it. He had inspected the Shaggat that very evening: first with his naked eye, then with a tape measure. Impossibly, the cracks that were threatening the statue had stopped growing, and even-very slightly, but unmistakably, for Haddismal was a meticulous record keeper-shortened. The mad king was not just alive inside his stone curse. He was healing.

  Many others shared the Turach’s restlessness. All night Lady Oggosk sat awake in the forecastle house, irritating the other prisoners, mumbling Thasha’s name. All night Rose paced the quarterdeck, listening to his ship, pretending not to heed the taunts and whispers of the ghosts who walked at his side. All night the chain-pumps clattered, and the men sang songs from the far side of Alifros, pouring out the sea as it poured in through the ship’s hidden wound.

  The cliffs wer
e higher at daybreak, the vegetation atop them more lush and green. Now Rose took the prince’s advice and brought them closer, barely a mile off the rocks. There were grazing animals (not quite goats, not quite sheep) upon a windy hillside, and a dlomic herdsman with two dogs that sprinted in circles around the beasts. When he saw the Chathrand the dlomu goaded his animals into a run. They swept over the hill and disappeared.

  The day was bright, the water clear to eight fathoms. Nonetheless it was tricky sailing, for the winds were erratic, and for all Rose’s fury his men were clumsy and slow. They were weakening with hunger, distracted by fear. Rumors passed like foul vapors through the ship: the ixchel were planning executions. Dlomic attackers were still at large in the hold. Arunis was stalking the topdeck by moonlight. Pazel and his friends were fighting because one of them had gone over to the sorcerer’s side.

  Late morning they came suddenly upon a tiny cove, high-walled and round as a saucer. The remains of a few stone buildings crouched just above the waves, roofless and forlorn. And there were stairs-long, steep flights of them carved into the rock, beginning at the ruins and snaking back and forth up a cleft in the wall. Five hundred feet overhead they reached the sunny clifftops. There the sailors saw with delight the shapes of fruit trees-three fruit trees, their branches laden with bright yellow globes.

  “Apples!” declared someone, starting excited chatter.

  “I wonder,” said Hercol.

  Thasha glanced briefly at her tutor. He was right to be doubtful, she thought. Hercol was always right; you could almost hate him for the trait. But Thasha quickly rejected the thought, and flushed with shame.

  Bolutu appeared on deck and warned aloud that there were many fruits in Bali Adro, some fit only for wild creatures. But the men were not listening. They had found an orchard, and the trees were groaning with apples. Their days of hunger were at an end.