by Alexey Pehov
Acknowledgments
I would like to say thank you to Robert Gottlieb, Trident Media Group, LLC, Olga Gottlieb, and Patrick LoBrutto for their invaluable help.
Contents
Title Page
Acknowledgments
Map
1. Ranneng
2. The Gnome’s Tooth
3. The Trouble Begins
4. The Trouble Continues …
5. Conversations in the Dark
6. Friends and Enemies
7. Bright Ideas from a Goblin
8. Duke Ganet Shagor’s Dralan
9. And the Key Will Decide Who to Help
10. The Black River
11. The Soulless One
12. The Judgment of Sagra
13. Crossroads
14. On the Border
Glossary
Tor Books by Alexey Pehov
Copyright
1
RANNENG
In the fifteen hundred years of its existence, the city of Ranneng has survived a hundred rulers, six fires that wiped it clean off the face of the earth, a number of coups, rebellions, epidemics, and, naturally, wars. For those who don’t know, Ranneng is the former capital of the kingdom of Valiostr, and it lost that noble title during the Spring War, when an armada of orcs came flooding in from the Forests of Zagraba.
Almost obliterated by the orcs and then rebuilt, Ranneng is rightly considered the most beautiful city in the kingdom. The old architecture; the numerous statues of the gods; the broad streets and fountains; the high, pointed spires of the watchtowers; and the swing bridges on the banks of the rivers—all of these attract large numbers of travelers, idle gawkers, merchants, and traders.
Inhabitants of the south of Valiostr who have never seen Avendoom are inclined to think that Ranneng is a very big city. Well, it certainly isn’t small, but it’s still nowhere near as big as Avendoom.
* * *
At the very beginning of the rule of the Stalkon Dynasty, the king founded the University of Sciences by royal decree, and now people come here to study from almost all the northern kingdoms. Opposite the venerable university there is a huge park, and a walk through this small forest that thrives within the city limits to the Upper District of the city will bring you face to face with the massive bronze gates of the school of the Order of Magicians.
This is where future sorcerers master the fundamentals of their trade, and only then, after five years of rigorous training, do they set out for the school in Avendoom to further refine and improve their magic art. Thanks to the magicians’ school and the university, the old capital is known as the City of Learning.
It would be impossible to find a better site for founding a city—Ranneng is conveniently located on five hills at the precise intersection of the major trade routes in the south of the kingdom.
Poets love to sing the city’s praises for its beauty, but Ranneng has one substantial shortcoming: It is much closer to the Forests of Zagraba than Avendoom and therefore much closer to the orcs—if they should suddenly have the morbid desire to go back to war, they can get here much more easily than they can to the Cold Sea. And that’s why five hundred years ago we acquired a new capital. The orcs had taught men to be cautious.
The Stalkon Dynasty was certainly determined not to be taken by surprise again, and the king and his entire court moved north to Avendoom, farther away from the land of forests and the potential dangers lurking in them.
But, with your permission, I will end my brief historical and geographical excursion, since we have finally reached the gates of the city.
* * *
It was late morning and the people from the surrounding villages and towns were heading for the gates in order to buy, sell, steal, find work, go to college, visit relatives, listen to gossip, or simply gape for lack of anything better to do. The crush was so bad that I wasn’t hoping to get into the old capital before evening.
The din of the crowd was absolutely indescribable. There were hundreds of people talking, shouting, bellowing, and arguing, foaming at the mouth as they claimed the right to push their way through to the entrance ahead of everyone else. A fight sprang up over a disputed place in the queue beside a cart loaded with turnips. The Ranneng guard tried to restore order, but they only made things worse and only served to focus the crowd’s hostile attention on the hapless guardsmen.
A serious scrimmage was brewing, and the air had a distinct smell of burnt Garrak pepper. The small group of soldiers regretted ever getting involved in the brawl.
“What’s all this nonsense?” the moody-looking character who answered to the name of Loudmouth asked irritably. “I can’t remember seeing a jam like this at the Northern Gates. Everybody always piles in through the Gates of Triumph.”
“Then what are we doing stuck here?” Hallas hissed angrily, holding one hand against his cheek.
What could be worse than a sullen, cantankerous gnome who’s angry with the whole wide world? Only a sullen, cantankerous gnome who’s angry with the whole wide world and also happens to have a toothache. Hallas’s tooth had started aching the evening before and it was causing him dire agony. But the insufferable gnome had dug his heels in and refused to let anyone pull out the lousy tooth, saying he wanted to have it done by a respectable barber and not horse doctors, in which category he included Deler and Kli-Kli, who had offered their services as healers.
“These gates are closer to the highway!” Loudmouth exclaimed.
“They may be closer,” Hallas said gloomily, plucking at the tangles in his beard, “but did it never enter your thick head that I’m about to expire from pain here?”
“Stop whining,” Deler muttered. “Hold on for a bit longer.”
The gnome gave the broad-shouldered dwarf a dark look, with the clear intention of thumping him on the nose, but instead he muttered: “Why’s it taking so long?”
He watched as the guard allowed a cart loaded high with cages of chickens in through the gates.
“They have to inspect everyone, tax them, find out what they’ve come for,” Kli-Kli squeaked.
“What incredible zeal from the municipal guard. Why now?”
“Who can say,” the little green goblin said with a shrug.
“Perhaps we could try the other gates, Milord Alistan?” Honeycomb asked hesitantly, with a sideways glance at the leader of our party.
The knight pondered the suggestion for a few seconds and then shook his head: “They’re more than an hour away.”
Hallas’s face turned crimson and I was suddenly afraid that he was about to have a stroke.
“An hour!” he snarled. “I can’t hold out that long.”
And the gnome started riding determinedly toward the gates.
“Where’s he going?” Loudmouth asked, but Alistan only laughed and set his own horse moving after Hallas. There was nothing else we could do but stay with them.
At first the people gaped at us in fascination, but then, realizing that we were jumping the queue, they started murmuring.
“They’ll kill us! I swear by Sagra, they’ll kill us!” Marmot muttered.
But the gnome drove on heedlessly through the indignant crowd, yelling like an old-time cobbler for them to make way.
“Halt, gnome! Ha-alt!” cried a guardsman with a halberd. “Where do you think you’re going? Don’t you see the queue?”
The gnome opened his mouth to let the soldier know what he thought about him and his family back to the seventh generation, but in some miraculous fashion Miralissa was suddenly there beside him and she edged him out of the way.
“Good morning, honorable sir. Why the delay?” the ashen-haired elfess asked with a smile.
The guardsman immediately lowered his voice and even tried to st
raighten his uniform tunic. Like all the rest of us he knew—because his mother had told him when he was a little baby—that you always had to be polite to elves; light or dark, it makes no difference. If, that is, you don’t want to end up with a dagger under your ribs when some denizen of the forest decides that you just happen to have insulted him—or her.
“What’s so good about it, milady? Just look at what’s going on. We have to check and recheck everyone. And all because the Nameless One’s been up to his tricks again. They say a few weeks ago he attacked the king’s palace!”
“You don’t say! The Nameless One?” Uncle chortled incredulously into his thick gray beard.
“The Nameless One, as large as life! And five thousand of his followers. If it wasn’t for the guard and Alistan Markauz, they’d have killed His Majesty!”
“Five thousand, you say?” Uncle chortled incredulously again and scratched his bald head.
“Folks is saying as it was five,” the talkative soldier said, slightly embarrassed—apparently he’d only just realized that five thousand was quite a large number.
“My, my,” chuckled Uncle. Like all the rest of us, he had been in the palace on that memorable night when the Nameless One’s supporters decided to test the resolve of the Royal Guard.
“But what’s that got to do with the queue at the gates? The attack was in Avendoom, but the gates are in Ranneng!” Hallas exclaimed in exasperation.
“The king, may he reign for a hundred years, has given orders to increase our vigilance. So we’re doing our best.”
“If an army of orcs went tramping past them, they wouldn’t even notice,” Kli-Kli whispered quietly in my ear.
The goblin was right, because it was highly doubtful that your average guardsman would be able to recognize a supporter of the Nameless One even if he walked right under his nose. As yet, the traitors who sympathized with Valiostr’s main enemy didn’t actually look any different from perfectly peaceable citizens.
The crowd at our backs started murmuring more loudly.
“What is all this?”
A dour-looking soldier wearing a corporal’s stripes came toward us from the gates. He was obviously not in the mood for pleasant conversation.
“Hang on there, Mis,” the talkative guardsman said, ignoring the corporal’s rank. “Can’t you see the lady elfess is inquiring after the news?”
The corporal almost fell over when he got a good look at our motley group. A green goblin with blue eyes; three dark elves; a dour knight; nine warriors, one of whom appeared to be an angry gnome; and a dwarf in an absurd bowler hat. Plus a skinny rogue. Not the kind of company you meet in the city every day of the week.
“A-ah…,” the corporal drawled, trying to choose the right words. “Well, if that’s how it is…”
“We don’t wish to detain you,” said Miralissa, with another smile. “May we pass?”
An elf’s smile can put a man who isn’t prepared for it into a prolonged stupor, especially if it’s the first time he has seen those two sharp white blades protruding from over the lower lip.
“Of c-course you can p-pass,” said the corporal, gesturing toward the gates so the guards would let us through. “But remember, only the municipal guard and elves have the right to carry weapons within city limits.”
“But what about nobles and soldiers?” asked Eel, raising his eyebrows in surprise as he broke his silence for the first time.
“Daggers and knives of an acceptable size—that’s the only exception.”
“But we are in the king’s service! We’re not a detachment of mercenaries.”
“I’m sorry, but the law’s the same for everyone,” the corporal responded.
I’d heard about this law. It had appeared about three hundred years earlier, when brawls used to flare up in Ranneng with the speed of forest fires. Those were troubled times, with three noble houses squabbling over power; when the king set aside his important affairs to intervene in the fracas, there were more bodies in the streets than on the Field of Sorna after the battle between the gnomes and the dwarves.
Half of the counts, barons, marquises, and other riffraff with royal blood running in their veins expired right there in the streets. Unfortunately the other half were left alive, and the houses known as the Boars, Oburs, Nightingales, and their supporters still nursed their grudges against each other to this very day.
And so anyone who walks round town carrying a blade the length of a man’s palm or, Sagot forbid, a crossbow, risks a large fine and a couple of days’ rest in an uncomfortable prison cell. This has had quite a remarkably sobering effect on noble gentlemen. After spending a little time in places that were damp and unbearably bleak, their lordships became as meek and mild as lambs … for a while.
“But that can’t be right,” Lamplighter exclaimed: His very heart and soul protested against the idea of such a law.
Mumr, our beloved Lamplighter, was never parted from his immense bidenhander, and now it seemed that in Ranneng the master of the long sword would have to hide his fearsome weapon and make do with a short-bladed knife.
“I’m not asking what business has brought you to our city and which house you intend to serve here,” the guardsman said, giving us a suggestive look.
“We have no intention of entering service with the noble houses,” Milord Alistan snapped.
“It’s all the same to me, milord knight,” said the corporal, raising his hands in a conciliatory gesture. “If you choose not to serve, then don’t. That’s your right. It’s just that the first thought that comes into my head when I see a band of people bearing arms in the city is that one of the houses has hired itself a few more cutthroats.”
“Is there unrest in Ranneng again?” Miralissa asked, tossing her thick ash-gray braid behind her shoulder.
“Just a bit,” the soldier said with a nod. “The Nightingales and the Wild Boars had a set-to just recently in the Upper City. There were two barons slit open from neck to navel. Mmmm … I beg your pardon if I have affronted you, lady elfess.”
“No, indeed, and thank you for answering my questions, kind sir. So, may we pass?”
“Yes, milady. Here’s a paper for you, it will help you to avoid questioning by the patrols.” The corporal took a rolled-up document out of a wooden case hanging at his hip and handed it to the elfess. “It says that you are newly arrived in our glorious city. Welcome!”
“This is for you. For services rendered,” said Egrassa, leaning down from his horse and putting a coin in the corporal’s hand.
“Why, thank you, kind—,” the guardsman began, but when he saw what coin the elf had given him, he broke off and froze, like a statue in the royal park.
It’s not every day that a corporal got to hold a full gold piece in his hand. I had a feeling there would be a party in the guardhouse that evening, and not a single guardsman would be left standing at midnight.
We left the delighted guards and rode in through the gates … with our weapons, though we would have to be careful about carrying them around.
From the lane that began at the city gates, we turned onto a broad street leading into the very heart of the city. The inn to which Miralissa was taking us was located on one of the hills, and as we made our way there I turned my head this way and that, studying the surroundings.
On a small street that began with a monument to the defenders of Ranneng who fell in the Spring War, we were stopped by a patrol of guards, but they left us in peace when they saw the paper that the corporal had given us.
“All right,” said Loudmouth. “I have to go and see how my relatives are getting on. See you at the inn!”
“Greetings to the girlfriend!” Arnkh shouted, not believing his story about relatives, but Loudmouth had already melted into the crowd, leaving his horse in the care of Lamplighter, who was rather annoyed to be given this gift.
The people were as thick on the ground as gkhols in an abandoned graveyard.
“Is this some kind of holiday?�
�� Lamplighter muttered, surveying the crowd with a not entirely friendly glance.
“Certainly is!” replied that know-it-all Kli-Kli. “Exam week at the university. The whole city’s making merry.”
“Very clever of us,” I said drearily. “I can’t stand crowds.”
“I thought you were a thief,” the goblin said.
“Well, so I am,” I replied, not quite understanding what he was getting at.
“I thought thieves loved a crowd.”
“And just why should I love a crowd?”
“I thought a crush was handier for stealing purses,” Kli-Kli said with a shrug.
“That’s a bit below my level,” I snorted. “I don’t deal in purses, my dear fool.”
“Right, you deal in Commissions,” the detestable goblin giggled. “But you know, Harold-Barold, I reckon that pilfering purses with coppers in them from the pockets of halfwits is better than the Commission you have now.”
“Go and annoy Hallas,” I snarled.
Kli-Kli had pricked me in a sore spot. Okay, there was no point in crying over spilt milk. I’d accepted the Commission—I must have been slightly insane at the time—and now there was no way back.
“Harold!” Lamplighter shouted, jerking me out of my moody reverie. “What’s got you so miserable?”
“That’s just his usual state of mind,” the king’s jester interrupted arrogantly. “Our Dancer in the Shadows has been far too glum and gloomy recently.”
“But then, someone else has been far too cheerful and chatty,” I muttered. “Make sure you don’t regret your blathering later.”
“Loudmouth’s the one who blathers,” Kli-Kli retorted. “All I ever do is speak the truth.”
“And you also quote the prophecies of goblin shamans who guzzled magic mushrooms,” I teased the jester. “All their prophecies about a Dancer in the Shadows aren’t worth a rotten sparrow’s egg.”
“Too late to get stubborn now. You accepted the title of Dancer in the Shadows, just like in the prophecy. The Bruk-Gruk has never lied!” Kli-Kli began testily, but then he realized I was only teasing him and lapsed into offended silence.
