by Alexey Pehov
Cold-cold-cold-cold-cold …
After a while I had the feeling that a tangle of gluttonous leeches had invaded my stomach, inflicting a pain more appalling than anything I could have imagined. If not for the cold swirling of the sharp, prickly snowflakes, constantly distracting me from the hot coals blazing in my belly, the pain would have driven me out of my mind. There was no question of actually looking at what the Messenger’s talons had done to my stomach: I was afraid I would pass out if I even caught a glimpse of it.
The pain pulsated and increased, doubling and multiplying inside me, like the infinite reflections in the mirror maze of a dream. It unfolded its sharp petals all the way through my body, driving me to the brink of insanity. Now I knew what the most terrible torture of all is.
Through the silent swirling dance of the fiery snowflakes I could hear a regular tapping sound, but it took me a while to realize that it was my teeth beating out a tattoo in honor of the master of this world—the fiery snow, bringer of an icy death.
The wind of the darkness, the wind that had once brought me dreams of the past, dreams of those who were long dead—men, elves, gnomes, orcs, and many other creatures—sprang to life, flinging sharp crystals of icy fire into my face.
I tried to dodge away, or at least protect my face against the snowflakes with my hands, but my pitiful efforts only infuriated the leeches of pain in my stomach. The moment they sensed that I was busy with something else, that I had stopped trying to control them, they started gnawing into my guts, and I howled out in pain and horror.
They pulsated in unison, breathing together, but if you knew that they are not all-powerful, they could be defeated.
But the cold was pitiless, heartless, and indifferent to everything alive. This thing was trying to put me to sleep, to bring me false warmth and peace, to carry my mind off into the river of eternal forgetfulness and dreams that flowed into the sea of Death.
I’m cold! Sagot, I’m so cold!
In the darkness the fiery snowflakes swirled together into a gigantic pillar of flame, falling on my hands and melting, turning into crimson steam.
The black Nothing of magic, the world of dreams and phantoms of the past, has its own, different, laws.
“Greetings, Dancer!”
Just like the last time, I had missed the brief instant when they appeared in front of me. They glided toward me—my old friends, the living shadows, the mistresses of Nothing. I thought of them as First, Second, and Third. Three shadows, three friends, three sisters, three lovers … They hadn’t changed at all since our last meeting and our last dance, which had helped me get out of here the last time. Perhaps I might be able to escape with their help this time, too?
“Hel-lo, la-dies.” My teeth were chattering and words were hard to pronounce.
“Do you not know, Dancer, that some dreams are as dangerous as reality?” There was a note of sadness in Second’s voice.
“D-dreams are d-dangerous?” I recalled all the nightmares about the past that I had seen in the last month. “Yes, I sup-pose I kn-now that…”
“Then why do you summon them to yourself, Dancer? Prophecies and destiny cannot protect you forever.”
First and Third did not say anything.
“I did not wish to ap-pear in your d-dream world,” I said, trying to make excuses. “I d-don’t even know how I ended up here in this cr-cr-crimson snow.”
“You think our world is a dream?” First asked in amazement. “That is a mistake, Dancer. Our world is far more real than yours—it was the first of all to appear. The world of Chaos had served as the basis for thousands of others when your kind started creating and destroying shadows. It is not a dream, and we are not a dream, and you are not in a dream now.…”
“And you are dying, Dancer,” said Third, joining in the conversation. “You are dying because you wander too often through dreams that are too dangerous for you as yet.”
“I d-don’t und-derstand what you…” The cold was lulling my mind to sleep.
“Dreams can kill,” First murmured. “Once you believe a dream is reality, you don’t just see it, you start living in it. And then how dangerous it becomes! The one who did this to you was in your dream—”
“Or you were in his,” said Second, interrupting First.
“That’s not important now. You believed and so you received this wound…”
The Master’s prison is a dream?
The reminder of the wound and the sincere sympathy I could hear in the shadow’s voice made me take a look at my stomach.
I really shouldn’t have done that. I didn’t know why I was still alive. Wounds like that guarantee a quick passage into the light with no chance of ever coming back to see the blue sky.
The leeches of pain started gnawing on me twice as viciously, and I was unable to hold back my scream.
“There, Dancer, now you see how dangerous uncontrolled dreams can be?”
“How d-did … How did I g-get here?”
“We should ask you that—you entered our house of your own free will.”
“I d-didn’t want to come here! I wanted to g-go home!”
“Now our world will be your home forever. In Siala you would have drawn your last breath ages ago. You can only stay alive here.”
“I n-need my world!”
“Your world?” Third began swirling round me, scattering a shimmering curtain of crimson snowflakes. “Why is it better than this one? Can you do this there?”
Third moved close, until she was almost touching me, and I caught a brief glimpse of a woman’s face. Then she merged into me, and I felt a wave of warmth run through my body, and the leeches of pain unclamped their suckers with a rasping groan of disappointment and drifted away into the black night to find a weaker and more accommodating victim.
In an instant Third was beside her sisters again, and I stared in astonishment at the spot where only a second ago there was a terrible, gaping wound.
Nothing. No wound at all. My torn and bloody shirt was the only reminder of the Messenger’s blow.
“Is your world capable of that, Dancer?”
I shook my head in bewilderment. Nobody, not even the Order, can make healthy, unbroken skin appear where there was a hole the size of a man’s fist, gushing blood, with guts spilling out of it. In Siala only the gods can pull off tricks like that.
“Then why are you so eager to go back there?”
“I have b-business to finish,” I blurted out. “And ap-part from that, it’s t-too cold here.”
First laughed, and the snowflakes responded to her laugh by bursting and turning into little sparks. Then they fused together into the ravenous beast whose name is fire, and in an instant it had devoured the black night and surrounded us with a dense cocoon of heat.
The shadows remained as impenetrably black as ever.
“Well then, Dancer, is that warmer?” First asked mockingly.
“Yes…” I didn’t have the strength to feel surprised. Just how omnipotent were these three? And why were they so interested in my humble person?
“Are you staying with us?”
“What d-do you want with me?” I asked, playing for time as I warmed up.
“You are the Shadow Dancer. The first Dancer who has appeared in more than ten thousand years! And you can do things that other people cannot. You still don’t know what you are capable of. We need you, this world needs you, and you will breathe into it the life that has gone to other worlds, thanks to your kind. Without you our home will die!”
“Without me my world will die,” I tried to shout above the vicious roar of the flame. “It’s my duty…”
“Your duty?” Second said sarcastically. “A thief talking about duty.”
“I have to go back and finish a job,” I insisted stubbornly. “I accepted a Commission, and until I carry it out, I am not free to follow my own wishes.”
The shadows put their heads together and started talking quietly. Had I really managed to persuade
them? My place was not in this world, a world of emptiness filled with fiery snow or hot flame. Surely they could understand that?
“All right, you can leave,” Second announced. “We have waited for thousands of years, we will wait a little longer. You will come back to us in any case. He who has found the way to the primary world always returns. Now go!”
“Which way?”
“Forward.”
I cast a wary glance at the wall of fire.
“You know that I cannot pass through the fire without you.”
“True. But this time you must pass through without our help. We shall not always be beside you. A djanga with shadows will not always lead you through the traps of the House of Power. The time will come when you will have to fight it singlehanded.”
“The House of Power?” I exclaimed. “You said ‘the House of Power’! And do you know about the Houses of Love, Pain, and Fear as well?”
“Yes, we know.”
“And the Master? Who or what he is? You know about—”
“Yes, we know,” Third interrupted.
“Then tell me. It’s very important!”
“A moment ago you were in a hurry to get away, Dancer, and now you are hungry for information,” First answered my question coldly. “Information must be paid for, are you ready for that?”
“That depends on what you want for it,” I said cautiously. You should never agree to anything until you know what price you’d be asked to pay in return.
“You will have to stay with us.”
“Then your knowledge is not worth a bent penny. I won’t have any use for it here.”
“I’m sorry, but it will be a long time before your world is ready for this knowledge,” Second answered regretfully. “Forward, Dancer, the fire is waiting for you.”
“Good-bye!”
“No, until we meet again, and soon, Dancer! Remember that a djanga with shadows does not always lead along the right road.”
“Remember!”
“Beware!”
They shouted something else as well from behind me, but I could no longer hear what they said. The fire flicked its hissing tongues of flame at me, menacing me.
“You’re mine!” roared the crimson fire.
“You’re ours!” its ravenous tongues echoed.
I’m not much inclined to acting in a crazy, irrational fashion, but the time for it had clearly come now. So it’s not always possible to pass through the flame by dancing with shadows? Well, some other way, then …
The fire scorched my face and my hair started crackling menacingly. The skin started to crack on the hands covering my eyes.
The last time only the djanga, the wild, crazy dance that I’d been whirled into by the three shadows, had allowed me to pass through the flames of this inhospitable world and get back to Siala.
This time I was on my own, face-to-face with the ravenous fire.
“You’re mine!” the wall of heat droned.
“You’re mine!” I barked back.
And without thinking about it anymore, I jumped straight into the oven. The wall roared triumphantly as it embraced me. The pain from the burning unfolded into a crimson blossom, but my clothes and my hair didn’t flare up. The flame was left howling in disappointment behind me. Before the silence came crashing down on me, I had time to realize that I had managed to break through the boundary between worlds without the help of any djanga with shadows.…
* * *
My head was buzzing, a herd of hedgehogs had settled in my mouth, the back of my head was throbbing. I hissed louder than a boiling kettle and forced myself to open my eyes. Everything was swimming about, so it cost me a serious effort to understand where I was.
“Good morning!” said a loud voice, and I started.
“Is this what you call a good morning, Eel?” I asked with a wry chuckle.
“At least we’re still alive.”
“How long have we been here?”
“We’ve been stuck in here all yesterday and all night. How’s your head?”
“Don’t even mention it,” I told the Garrakian with a groan. “It’s buzzing like an angry nest of hornets. They belted me pretty hard in the cart.”
“I was starting to get worried. You had a fever and you were talking, but you didn’t come round.”
“I was having bad dreams,” I muttered, recalling the walk along the gloomy corridors of the Master’s prison and the mysterious fiery snow of the primary world of Chaos, which the shadows had said was on the point of death.
A dream! It was only the latest dream in a never-ending sequence of nightmares.
“How are you? You came off worse than I did,” I asked Eel.
“I’ll survive,” he answered laconically.
Well, if a Garrakian says he’ll survive, then he will.
I tried to move my arms, but nothing came of it—some rotten lout had tied them good and tight behind my back.
“Don’t bother,” Eel chuckled, noticing me trying to test the strength of the ropes wrapped around my wrists. “It’s art fiber rope, not that easy to get out of. I fiddled with it for an hour, but it didn’t get me anywhere.”
Art is a kind of tree—stunted, twisted, and nothing remarkable to look at. But when its fibers have been properly processed, they make magnificently strong ropes. You can cut through them or gnaw through them, but you have to be extremely strong or extremely supple to snap them or twist your way out of them.
“Have they stuck us in a cell, then?” I mumbled rather dimwittedly.
I just couldn’t shake off the visions of my dreams. I couldn’t believe that the long walk through those underground corridors and the conversation with the shadows were just a nightmare.
“That’s right. The Nameless One’s supporters don’t seem very keen to invite us to a formal banquet.”
I looked round, trying to get a clearer idea of our place of confinement.
It had gray walls and a little window with bars up near the ceiling, dirty straw on the floor, and a solitary torch on the wall. At first sight it was a perfectly ordinary cell, not a very attractive place for a permanent residence. But there was one thing about it that was strange—in all my life, no one who had been in jail had ever told me that a cell needed to have two doors.
“Is the second a spare? In case the jailers lose the key to the first one?” I asked, trying to joke, despite the roaring that still filled my head.
The first door, which was wooden, and bound with narrow strips of steel, was directly opposite us. The second, which was completely made of metal, was on the left-hand wall of the cell and, unlike the first, it had a bolt here on the inside, not on the outside like any self-respecting prison door.
“What kind of nonsense is that?”
He followed my glance and shrugged his shoulders awkwardly.
“I haven’t got a clue. Better pray to that Sagot of yours, ask him to help us get out of here.”
“I think we’ll be getting out of here soon enough, probably feet first.” I was in a grimly talkative mood. “What are the chances of the squad finding us before the Nameless One’s lads offload their surplus baggage?”
“If we were surplus baggage, they wouldn’t have bothered to snatch us, they’d have finished us off right there in the street.”
“True enough. They need us for something, but how long will that last? Kli-Kli got away, Sagot be praised, and I think enough time has gone by for Alistan and Miralissa to start doing something.”
We heard a cock crowing loudly outside the little window.
“We’re not in Ranneng,” said Eel, “we’re in the country, and Alistan is hardly likely to guess that he should look for us so far away from the walls.”
“What makes you think we’re in the country? Do you think there are no cocks in Ranneng?”
“Of course not, there are plenty, but I came round in the carriage, and before they knocked me out again, I managed to look out the window, and the landscape I saw was definitel
y not in a city.”
Aha. That’s nice to hear. Now we know for sure that the chances of finding us, in a cellar so far away from the inn, are nonexistent.
“You certainly know how to keep a man’s hopes up,” I sighed miserably.
All we could do was wait, hope for a miracle, and trust in Sagot and any other individuals who might be willing to help us. But the miracle was avoiding us, Sagot apparently couldn’t hear us, and those other individuals didn’t exist (at least, they were nowhere within a league of us). As the sailors from the Port City say, we had run firmly aground.
A bolt clattered and two men came in. The first was a short bald man of about fifty with broad shoulders, a purple nose, and icy blue eyes. He was wearing crumpled, grease-spattered clothes and a crooked grin plastered right across his repulsive face. The second visitor was … Loudmouth.
Alive and absolutely well.
For a second I couldn’t believe it was him, I thought it was some kind of apparition or ghost risen from the grave.
When Eel saw who had come to visit us, his face never even quivered. But his dark eyes narrowed.
“I’ll tear your heart out,” he hissed through his teeth.
“I shall try to be careful and not fall into your hands,” Loudmouth replied very seriously. “My apologies for the inconvenience that you have suffered.”
Still speaking in the same icy voice, Eel told Loudmouth to take his inconvenience and stuff it you-know-where.
“A pity,” the traitor said sadly. “I genuinely regret everything that has happened, but no one can choose his destiny. You have chosen your side and I have chosen mine.”
“And did you make your choice a long time ago?” I asked gloomily, finally spotting what Eel had noticed straightaway—a little ring on Loudmouth’s finger in the form of a branch of poison ivy.
Everything suddenly fell into place. He was the one who told the followers of the Nameless One where we were staying and where the Key was! And he must have helped them to track us down at the Nightingales’ house.
How cunningly this bastard had worked everything! Right under our very noses, and nobody had suspected a thing! How could anyone ever think that a Wild Heart would be a servant of the Nameless One? It would be like saying the sun was green and ogres were charming creatures.
