Thief's Blade

by C. Greenwood

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  One of the horses reared directly in our path, so close its flailing hooves nearly struck Ferran down. I dragged my brother back, took hold of his wrist, and ran. The three of us darted around the rearing horse and made a run for the end of the street. But the other rider was blocking our exit, forcing us to break in another direction.

  “This way!” Ada cried, leading us down a passage so narrow my shoulders nearly touched the houses on either side.

  It was a good choice. Our pursuers couldn’t follow this path on horseback. We raced down the passage, turned at the end, and dashed down a second equally narrow way. When we broke out of the mouth of the second alley, I half expected to find our pursuers waiting for us at the other side. Instead, there was only an empty street.

  Ada hesitated, as if trying to decide where to go. She looked upward, and I followed her gaze. There was a barrel against the wall of the shed beside us. She clambered up this, then dragged herself onto the low roof of the shed.

  “Hurry,” she called down, offering her hand.

  I boosted Ferran onto the barrel. With Ada’s help, he scrambled onto the roof, with me right behind him. The shed leaned against a higher building, and we scaled this too until, finally, we were running along the rooftops of the shops and houses, jumping the narrow gaps between. Every time I looked down into the passages below, I feared I would see our enemies. But I never did. Eventually we reached a gap too wide for Ferran’s short legs to leap, and we had to scramble back down to street level. I only hoped our ploy had confused our pursuers.

  As Ada led us on, I noticed she was hesitating more often. We must be entering a part of the city she was unfamiliar with. I had the definite impression we had left the common district behind. The streets were cleaner, the houses no longer dingy, and there were sculpted shrubs lining the way. It dawned on me I had been here before. This was the way to the temple, where Ferran and I had recently met the would-be priest of the blade.

  I began to relax. It looked like we had escaped again. Even my bow no longer glowed hot against my back. A magnificent shape rose out of the mists ahead. I recognized the temple, but it looked different, almost sinister, shrouded in fog. Behind the temple was a large yard of flowering trees. We crossed the lawn, climbed a wall backing it, and found ourselves in an eerie place surrounded by high hedges.

  Here there was a big pond with ornate monuments of stone soaring up out of the water to mark what appeared to be graves below the surface. The place was made more unsettling by the heavy fog blanketing ground and water so that we could hardly tell where the pebbled path ended and the water cemetery began. Crossing one of the narrow bridges spanning the still surface, I felt it would be easy to put a foot wrong and stumble into one of those watery graves. I kept a careful eye on Ferran to make sure he didn’t do exactly that.

  My brother was looking pale.

  “Can we stop now,” he asked, clutching his side and panting as if out of breath. “My side hurts.”

  “I don’t see why not,” I said, scanning our surroundings.

  There was no sign of danger here. I held my breath and listened, but all was silent.

  “We’ll take a short rest,” Ada agreed. “And when we’ve gathered our strength, we’ll try again to get to the city gate near the market. I’m all turned around, but I have a feeling we’ve been running the wrong direction.”

  We were about to sink down on the pebbled ground to catch our breaths when I heard it. The distant ring of hooves on cobbles. At the same time, I felt the increasingly familiar blaze of heat along my back, as the bow glowed its warning.

  My heart sank.

  “They’re coming again,” I warned the others. “We can’t stop now.”

  Concealing ourselves behind a hedge along the back of the water cemetery, we peered out into a large open garden beyond. With our enemies behind us, this was the natural direction to run. At any other time the sprawling gardens would have been a beautiful place with flowering trees, splashing fountains, and winding walks lit by glimmer-stones. But now it just seemed like a lot of open ground to cover. Even the fog was thinner here, providing less protection.

  And Ferran was tired, gasping for breath.

  I realized what I had to do.

  “You and Ferran go on alone,” I told Ada. “It looks like there’s some sort of hedge maze in the distance. If you can get that far, lose yourselves in the maze. Stay there until it’s safe.”

  “Why? What are you going to do?” she asked.

  “I have to distract those men and draw them away to give you and Ferran more time to reach your hiding place.”

  Surprise and gratitude flashed in Ada’s eyes. “Be careful, Rideon,” she said simply.

  Ferran tugged at my arm, looking frightened. “Don’t leave us,” he begged.

  “There’s no choice,” I said, giving his shoulders a squeeze. “We’ll meet up again later. I promise.”

  “I’ll take care of him,” Ada assured me.

  There was no more time for talk. The noise of approaching horses behind us was growing louder. In another second, one vaulted over a hedge and into the grounds.

  “Go now!” I whispered to the others.

  Without waiting to see whether they obeyed, I rose up from my hiding place to face the first enemy. The second horseman appeared a moment later, blocking the cemetery gate. For the moment, I had their full attention.

  Running the way Ferran and Ada had gone wasn’t an option. I couldn’t lead our enemies after them. So I darted across one of the bridges over the water and made for the only other exit, a narrow opening in the wall.

  One horseman attempted to follow me. I heard a loud crash and a heavy splash as the delicate bridge collapsed beneath his animal’s weight.

  I dodged through the opening and into the temple grounds we had passed through earlier. As I ran, I wrestled with my cloak, uncovering the magic bow slung across my back. I let it blaze like a golden beacon through the fog. For once, I wanted to be seen.

  I ran past the temple and up a wide street that looked like one of the main streets of the city. There were a few other travelers on this road, silent, lonely figures moving through the fog. I passed an old man leading a donkey laden with goods, then a pair of children chasing chickens, as I dashed up the sloping path.

  Far ahead at the top of the hill, I glimpsed a massive edifice of stone and timber with round towers and high surrounding walls. It was an imposing but simple structure, not a beautiful castle like the one I had grown up in. But any castle made me think of home and awakened an ache in my chest. For no other reason than that, I found myself running toward it. I hadn’t gone far when I heard the sounds of pursuit. My enemies were gaining on me. In the open street, they would soon run me down.

  I was forced to break away from the main road. But the short lane I rushed down ended in a sturdy stone barrier. It wasn’t a small wall of the kind that might encircle a garden or yard. This was the high, defensive barrier encircling the outer portions of the island city. I knew if I could see over the other side of this wall I would look down on nothing but the lake and the far distant shoreline. I hesitated. But with the horsemen nearly upon me, there was nowhere else to go. Using outjutting rocks and fissures between the stones as hand and toeholds, I scaled the steep wall.

  It was a long climb, and I heard my enemies arrive below me long before I reached the top. I ignored the sounds of them dismounting and their grunts and noises as they began scrambling up after me. Sweat beaded on my skin, and my limbs were soon trembling with the effort of holding my weight. But I reached the top.

  There was no time to collect my breath or feel relief as I dragged myself over the edge. I knelt, looking down the side of the wall. Feeling like a trapped animal, I watched the first man getting closer and closer to the top. At least his companion struggled with the ascent and lagged behind.

  Carefully I backed a distance along the wall, away from them. But from my precarious perch, there
was nowhere left to go.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The ground I had left seemed a million miles away. The dizzying height kept me crouching, afraid to stand upright. At my back were the lapping waves of the lake far below. I could hear the water and the gulls, but most of the view was shrouded in rolling mist, concealing what lay directly beneath.

  The nearest man had reached the ledge, and now he hauled himself onto the wall. Showing no uneasiness at the height, he came confidently toward me. His eyes glittered darkly beneath the brim of his hat, and the scar on his chin stood out palely.

  “You’ve been a great deal of trouble, congrave’s son,” he said across the short distance between us. “I see now we were mistaken to think of destroying the sickly boy and bringing you to the master. It’s you we should rid ourselves of. Perhaps when you’re gone, the little one will be easier to handle.”

  Without really planning to, I found myself addressing him in return. “Who is this master?” I asked. “What is the name of the man who goes to such lengths to obtain my brother and me, purely to use us as his puppets?”

  But the scarred man must have had enough of conversation. Instead of answering my question, he unsheathed a knife with a long wicked-looking blade. Unable to look behind myself, I kept inching backward, away from him.

  Behind the scarred man, his red-bearded companion had now reached the end of his climb and arrived at the top of the wall. He too approached with a threatening stance.

  While my doom approached, the magic bow on my back flared hotter than ever, as if it would burn through my skin. I felt its whisperings of death and destruction at the back of my mind, urging me to action.

  I didn’t realize I was reaching over my shoulder for the weapon until I found it in my hands. My enemies seemed distracted by the glowing bow. Probably they had never seen anything like it before. But the scarred man recovered quickly and lunged at me.

  My hands seemed to have instincts of their own. One gripped the wooden limb of the bow while the other whipped back to grab an arrow from my quiver. In a split second I had notched the arrow to the string and released. The missile flew through the air.

  I had aimed for the scarred man but had forgotten the damaged string that weakened the tension and made it impossible to aim accurately. The arrow flew past my target and embedded itself in the neck of the enemy behind him.

  With the scarred man still coming at me, there was no time to draw another arrow. I could only leap aside to dodge his flashing blade. I stumbled, teetering on the edge of the wall. I caught a brief glimpse of green water beneath swirling fog far below. It was impossible to guess what rocks or other dangers the vapor hid.

  My enemy lunged at me again just as I lost my balance and plunged off the wall.

  For a few heart-stopping seconds, I dropped like a rock through a gray cloud of mist. Then I broke free of the fog, and emerald-colored water rushed up to meet me. I splashed into the icy lake. The shock of the cold water was numbing, as it closed over my head and rushed into my ears and nose. Then I was choking.

  Panicking, I paddled in the direction I hoped was up. It was difficult to swim because my fingers were still clutched around something. The limb of my bow. It didn’t occur to me to drop it, only to struggle harder.

  Amid my wild thrashing, my head collided with something solid—a rock. Pain exploded through my skull. Another kind of pain burned my lungs. A terrified voice screamed in the back of my mind that I was going to die. I tried to fight the dark current pulling me down, but I could no longer move my arms or legs. Shadows overtook me.

  * * *

  The first thing I saw again was light. At first a painful glare with the brilliance of the sun, it quickly dimmed and faded into a dreary gray. I was lying on my back, looking up into what seemed like the inside of a cloud. My mind was as foggy as the shifting vapor around me. My memory was strangely blank. Where was I? What had happened to me?

  I sat upright although the sudden movement was dizzying. I found myself sitting on a broad, square platform made of rough timbers bound together with rope. Over the near edge, I could see gently lapping waves of green water. My view of the water only extended a few feet in either direction, before it was cut off by the roiling gray mist that hung over and around the gently bobbing craft. How had I come to be on a raft?

  I looked down at myself. My clothing and hair were wet, making me shiver slightly in the breeze, but I appeared to be unharmed. I clutched a wooden bow in my hand, an unusual weapon with delicate carvings etched into the arm. I didn’t recognize the object, but I held it tightly, as if it was important to me. On the finger of the hand clutching the bow was a bulky ring, which also felt important, although I couldn’t remember why.

  As I examined these things, a small spot of red dripped down onto my tunic. I brought a hand to my forehead and discovered a shallow cut above my eyebrow. My fingers came away sticky.

  “The wound will heal. It is small.”

  I started at the unfamiliar voice. I had thought myself alone. Whirling around, I saw a strange old woman sitting on the raft behind me. She made a peculiar sight. Her lined face and the backs of her bony hands were patterned with swirls of red ink. Her gray hair was worn in a multitude of long braids strung with wooden beads and brightly painted shells. There was a dirty fishnet spread across her lap, which she seemed to be in the middle of mending.

  I asked the first question that popped into my head. “Who are you?”

  The bright eyes in the wrinkled old face were quick and missed nothing. “What good is my name to you, if you do not remember your own?” she asked.

  She spoke in the common tongue, but her words had an odd accent to them, as if she had spent most of her life speaking some other language.

  I considered the question.

  “I know who I am,” I said slowly. “I am Rideon.”

  I had a vague feeling there was some other name I used to wear, but this one felt more right.

  The old woman must have noticed my brief hesitation.

  “Your mind is confused,” she observed. “That is because you were dead but now live again. I found you floating in the lake like a lifeless fish and dragged you out. It is the magic of my people, the river people, that has brought you back.”

  It was a wild and ridiculous claim. The old one must be mad. And yet… This wouldn’t be the first time I was snatched back from death. A disjointed memory surfaced in my mind. Wasn’t it once said of me that I was born dead but returned to life? An heir of good fortune, a child who couldn’t be touched by evil. That was what they used to call me.

  But the recollection only confused me further. Who used to say such things? These dim memories seemed to come from another life, not my own.

  Even as I wrestled with my questions, a glint of reflected light caught my eye. I looked down and discovered something I hadn’t noticed before, a strange amulet dangling from a cord around my neck. I caught the pendant in my hand, and when I looked deep into the polished stone, its insides seemed to bubble and swirl with flashes of purple light. There was an unsettling aura around the stone, as if it seethed with some mysterious magic.

  The old river woman cut into my thoughts. “Do not fear the amulet. I put it around your neck when I drew you from the lake. It will keep you alive.”

  “Do you mean I have to wear it forever?” I asked.

  She lifted one of her bent old shoulders in a gesture that might have meant anything.

  I decided I’d better keep the amulet on since it was unclear whether removing it would dissolve the magic supposedly keeping me alive and kill me on the spot. I still wasn’t entirely sure whether I believed the old woman’s nonsense about having brought me back from the dead. Possibly she had simply found me unconscious and mistaken me for dead until I revived by natural means. But I was taking no chances.

  I decided to find out what else I didn’t know about myself. I discovered my soggy, purple cloak contained a hidden inner pocket. When I reached inside, I f
ound a map of the provinces, along with a damp leather-bound book that looked the worse for wear from its time in the water. Carefully I tried to flip through the pages, but they were flimsy and clung wetly together. There were smudged notes and scraps of poetry written across the pages. But the ink was so blurred it was hard to make much of it out. Still, the semifamiliar handwriting tugged at my memory again. Was it mine? Had I written these things? The book, like the bulky ring on my finger, was significant in some way.

  I laid both the map and the book out to dry. At the old river woman’s suggestion, I also removed my soggy cloak and tall boots and spread those out beside the other items.

  Then, shivering in the soft breeze coming off the water, I walked to the edge of the raft and peered into the distance. The fog was beginning to thin, and I could make out tall, dark shapes beyond it. The stark branches of trees broke like clawing fingers through the mist. Soon we were gliding along a muddy shoreline dotted with patches of green grass. The banks were narrowing on either side, I realized. If, as the old woman said, we had been on a lake before, we now floated along a little river flowing away from it.

  As I watched, the trees grew thicker and became a forest. The fog was pierced by warm sunshine, its dappled light playing through the leafy treetops.

  “Where are we?” I asked the river woman.

  “The stream carries us through Dimmingwood,” came the answer.

  “Dimmingwood,” I repeated softly, breathing in the rich scent that was a mixture of leaves, earth, new life, and growth. “So I am finally here. I have reached your ‘magic forest,’ Ferran.”

  The name “Ferran” stopped me short. Where had it come from? All at once a wave of memories came crashing over me. My father. My brother. Imprisonment in the tower. Escape. I reeled at the dizzying flood of information.