The River of Shadows

by Robert V. S. Redick

  Neda simply exploded. With a backward elbow-thrust she broke the man’s front teeth, then spun on the bench and delivered a lightning kick to the chest of a second Turach before he could bring his spear to bear. Suddenly everyone was moving. Cayer Vispek’s boot deflected another spear; then he leaped into the rigging as the startled Turachs stabbed at his legs. Jalantri whirled toward Neda, but Haddismal clubbed him savagely across the face, and three Turachs fell on the young sfvantskor like boulders, grappling, while a fourth kicked at his stomach.

  Neda instantly pulled her legs back against her chest, then snapped forward, rolling over the side of the skiff with a violent lurch. She came out of the roll with a twist of her upper body, and rose facing her would-be attackers. To the crew she seemed to have passed through the Turachs like a shadow—except that two lay senseless on the ground.

  The crowd drew back. Neda whirled, as though suddenly aware of the vast, empty deck surrounding her, the futility of flight. And now the Turachs had recovered. They did not have the grace of sfvantskors, but they were terrible fighters, and they could spear anything that moved.

  Neda almost became the proof of this, for eight soldiers had taken aim. But before they could let fly Thasha flung herself between them and their target.

  Her friends shouted in horror. But the Turachs froze. Neda seized Thasha brutally from behind, catching the younger woman’s throat in the crook of her elbow. Thasha gasped but did not fight back.

  Half out of his mind, Pazel rushed at them. “Neda, don’t! Thasha—”

  As Neda’s grip tightened, Hercól lunged forward and caught Pazel by the arm. “Hear me, all of you!” he shouted, raising his black sword high. “On Heaven’s Tree I swear it: the one who harms Thasha Isiq will answer to me!”

  “Hold, you dogs!” bellowed Haddismal. “Damn you, Stanapeth, what do you expect of us? The girl went mad!”

  “I am doing kill!” shrieked Neda, in rough Arquali.

  “Neda,” said Thasha, her voice constricted but wry, “I just saved your blary skin.”

  Then Cayer Vispek spoke from the rigging. “The Turach groped at her womanhood. Perhaps Arquali women brook such treatment, but ours do not. You gave your word she would suffer no man’s abuse—and yet it begins before she sets foot on the deck.”

  “All the more reason to get her safely to the brig,” snarled Haddismal. Then he looked down at his fallen soldier. “You muckin’ dullard, Vered! If you’d raised your eyes from her crotch to her blary tattoos you’d still have all your teeth! She’s a sfvantskor!”

  For an amazed moment the sailors even forgot their thirst. Sfvantskors! It’s true! Look at them tattooed necks! They’re the enemy, by Rin!

  “Muckin’ Sizzies!” bellowed someone. “Killers! Crazies!”

  “Animals, is what they are!” hissed another. “It’s one of them what hacked my old man’s arm off in the war!”

  “We shouldn’t have to share our water—”

  “We should gut ’em, here and now—”

  “You will place them in the brig!” cried Taliktrum suddenly. “You above there, come down, unless you would fight the whole ship’s company. Girl, I will appoint one of my own lieutenants to watch over you—and besides, that part of the ship is off-limits to humans, unless escorted by us. Have no fear! We ixchel determine the course of events on the Chathrand.”

  “The boy requires a doctor,” said Cayer Vispek, pointing at Jalantri.

  Taliktrum studied the moaning figure. “Let him go to the forecastle house. Dr. Chadfallow is already there. Now yield, sfvantskor girl. We are in dangerous waters, and this delay imperils us all.”

  Neda tightened her grip on Thasha’s neck. She looked quite capable of murder. Through her teeth, and still in Arquali, she spoke: “No … Turach … touching me … again.”

  “Right,” said Haddismal, waving off his men with a sigh. “I’d say you’ve made that blary clear.”

  But the other Turachs, and especially the friends of the wounded men, studied Neda with hatred, and their eyes seemed to mark her.

  1. It should now be abundantly clear that all such cited dates are open to question. —EDITOR.

  2. Sfvantskors may never conceal or fully cover these marks, which declare not only their tribe but their first master’s name, royal affiliation (pentarchrin) and stage of enlightenment. Facing execution, a sfvantskor will always ask to be stabbed or drowned rather than beheaded or hanged, so that his neck will remain intact, and his spirit pass with dignity through the regions of death. —EDITOR.

  The Debate in the Manger

  At first glance we saw animals in clothes. We recoiled; it was not proper to look at such things; it was not right to acknowledge their existence. But we could not help ourselves. Looking again we saw avenging demons, straight out of our past. We saw the bottomless fury of demons, the violence, the hatred even for themselves, when they slew one another on the deck of that immense ship, howling in an archaic language that was almost our own. That is when we clung to one another in greatest fear. We knew catastrophe was close; it had befallen nearly everyone else already. And heaven knows these human beings had much to avenge.

  —Masalym Before the Storm: Recollections,

  ULUJA THANTRAL

  22 Ilbrin 941

  “You don’t have to do this,” said Pazel.

  “Stop saying that,” said Thasha. “I told you Neda didn’t hurt me. You’re the one covered with bruises.”

  Thasha passed under a glass plank, and the afternoon sun touched her hair—brushed and tied but still brittle; she had not yet rinsed out the salt. They were in a passage on the main deck, heading for the Silver Stair. Jorl and Suzyt, Thasha’s enormous blue mastiffs, walked before her like a pair of guardian lions, too proud to tug at their leads. Overhead, boots clomped and clattered; men were laughing, almost giddy. Literally drunk on water. Men had wept at the cool mineral taste. The dogs had lapped two quarts apiece, and looked up hopefully for more.

  “It’s not bruises I’m worried about,” said Pazel.

  Thasha flicked Pazel a glance. “What is it, then?” she said.

  Pazel wished she would slow down. “Lady Oggosk, for starters,” he said.

  Thasha looked baffled. They were about to face some of their worst enemies, but Oggosk would not be among them. The witch remained imprisoned in the forecastle house, along with the captain she so fiercely adored.

  “They’re plotting something,” said Pazel. “Oggosk, and Rose, and maybe Ott for that matter. I went to see Neeps the minute the guards took Neda away. All three of them were at the window, talking to Alyash.”

  “Well, of course they were,” said Thasha. “He’s the bosun, you dolt. He’s Rose’s blary right-hand man, now that Uskins is falling apart.”

  At the ladderway a fungal stench met their nostrils. They started down into the warm gloom of the lower decks, the big dogs struggling for balance on the stairs. Men and tarboys shrank from the dogs, tipped their hats to Thasha, eyed Pazel with a confused mix of fascination and fear. Some still blamed him for the ship’s evil luck; others had heard that he was the only reason the Chathrand was still afloat.

  Pazel leaned closer to Thasha. “I heard Oggosk say, ‘The girl,’ ” he murmured.

  “For Rin’s sake,” cried Thasha, “is that all it takes to rattle you? Oggosk was probably talking about poor Marila. She’s the one locked in with them all.”

  Beneath the level of the gun decks they had the stairs to themselves. “Come off it,” said Pazel. “You know that hag is obsessed with you. And this time she sounded mean. Kind of desperate, like.”

  “I’d be desperate too, if I were stuck in that compartment with Sandor Ott.”

  Aware that his own desperation was mounting, Pazel thrust his arm across her path.

  “It’s not just Oggosk, damn it,” he sputtered. “It’s that we’re going … there. Where it happened to you. Where the rats went mad, and the Stone—where you … you—”

  “Where I to
uched it,” she said, touching him.

  Pazel flinched; but her fingers on his cheek were just her fingers; no lightning jumped from them but the kind he expected, the thrill and promise that tore him from sleep with thoughts of her. He closed his eyes. Stop shaking, Pazel, you’re not doing anything wrong. There had been months when her touch, her very nearness, had brought scalding pain, but that spell (laid on him by a murth-girl thousands of miles to the north) was broken or dormant. There had been threats from Lady Oggosk, who harbored some unfathomable plan for Thasha, a plan that required her to be unloved. But Oggosk had nothing to threaten them with anymore. Pazel took her hand, slid his fingers from her palm to her wrist. The Blessing-Band was still there.

  “I thought you’d lost this in the gulf,” he said.

  Thasha lowered her hand from his cheek to the blue silk ribbon, turned it until they could read the words embroidered in gold thread:

  Ye depart for a world unknown,

  and love alone shall keep thee

  “I left it behind in the stateroom,” she said, tracing the words with her fingers. “It’s not something I’m willing to lose.”

  The silk band was to have played a role in Thasha’s wedding back in Simja. Three nights ago, Pazel had at last performed the tiny part of the ceremony allotted to him, and tied it around her wrist. The meaning of the act, of course, had utterly changed, but those ambiguous words troubled him yet. Wasn’t she still departing? Not into life with a Mzithrini husband, but into some region of the mind where he could not follow?

  Nonsense. Nerves. Thasha was touched by magic, somehow—but not touched in the head. Pazel himself had been living for years under a potent charm and had managed to remain who he was. He put his arm around her, drew her closer, felt her breath tickling his chin.

  “You’re trembling,” she whispered. “Why are you afraid?”

  Why was he afraid? He had torn a cursed necklace away from her throat, dragged her up flaming stairwells; he had seen her naked and bleeding on a beach. He could kiss her here and now (so far she had planted the kisses, though not always on him) and no disaster would follow.

  Presumably.

  It was never supposed to happen. You believe me, don’t you?

  Rin’s teeth, he was sweating. And Thasha, impatient, was slipping under his arm and down the staircase, slipping away.

  “I’m stronger now,” she said. “I can face them. They can’t make me do anything I don’t want to do.”

  On they went, past the berth deck with its sound of snoring (some forty victims of the ixchel’s sleep-drug remained unconscious) and out into the rear compartment of the orlop deck. The darkness increased, and so did the stench. And flies—more flies with every step, droning like tormented ghosts.

  Then Pazel stopped, overcome with sudden disgust. Pitfire, they’ve still not cleaned the lower decks. He was smelling dead men, dead animals—above all, dead rats. Six weeks ago, every last rat on the Chathrand had suffered a hideous change, swollen to the size of Thasha’s dogs, and rampaged through the ship. Only their mass suicide had prevented the creatures from killing everyone aboard.

  “Pathkendle. Thasha.”

  Hercól was crossing the dim compartment. As he drew close, the swordsman noticed Pazel’s look of revulsion. “The bodies are gone,” he said, “but not the blood. Fiffengurt chose to risk disease rather than oblige the men to sweat away the last of their water scrubbing gore out of the planks.”

  He and Thasha regarded each other warily. They had exchanged many such looks recently, before and after their arrival at the cape. Pazel had no idea what those looks were about, but he knew that Thasha’s mood darkened whenever the swordsman approached, as though he reminded her of some unwelcome duty or predicament.

  “I hoped Pazel would convince you not to attend this council,” he said.

  “He failed,” said Thasha, “and so will you. Enough nonsense, Hercól. I want to get this over with.”

  Hercól gripped her shoulder, looking at them each in turn. “Let them wait a bit longer. Come with me first, won’t you?”

  He led them across the dim compartment, around a jagged hole in the floor (there were many such scars on the Chathrand, marks of the suicide-fire of the rats) and out through the bulkhead door in the north wall. They stepped into a small square cabin with two other doors, through one of which some light poured down from a shaft in the adjoining corridor. Dominating the room was a round porcelain washtub. This was the “silk knickers room” (as tarboys called it): the chamber where first-class servants scrubbed their employers’ socks and shirts and petticoats. The big tub had survived the crossing, but it was smeared with dried blood and fur, and the benches and washboards had been reduced to charcoal.

  Hercól closed the door by which they had entered. “Once we join the others we must watch our every word. It is well that we told Taliktrum of the mind-plague, but of the time-skip His Lordship knows nothing, and I do not think we should enlighten him today. Let us not speak of it.”

  “Let’s not speak to him at all,” said Pazel. “He’s not fit to lead his clan, let alone this ship.”

  Hercól looked at him severely, but made no rebuttal. “Even allies like Mr. Fiffengurt may not yet be ready to face the truth of it. One could almost wish that his dear Annabel’s final letter had never reached him, telling him that she was with child.”

  “You could wish it, maybe,” said Thasha. Pazel looked at her in shock. “I mean,” she added hastily, “that we can’t begin to guess what he feels like. They were going to be married; he’s been saving his pay ten years. I don’t think we should ever tell him. Let him think they’re alive, for as long as he can—Annabel and that little boy or girl. Let him hope. That’s not too much to ask, is it?”

  She was still watching Hercól with surprising ire. But if her old mentor understood her anger, he did not rise to the bait. “You’re right,” he said after a moment. “In time we may be forced to tell him, or he may find out some other way; but for now it can do little good. Yet we must not forget the truth for a minute, however much we long to, if we are to find a way out of this darkness.”

  “There is no way out,” said Pazel, and immediately wished he hadn’t spoken. The others turned to him, astonished—and then a voice rang out in the darkness.

  “I should bite you for that, Pazel Pathkendle! No way out, for shame.”

  “Felthrup!” cried Pazel. “Are you mad? What are you doing here?”

  His tiny figure emerged from the gloom: a black rat with half a tail and a mangled forepaw. Thasha’s dogs pounced, licking and snuffling; their adoration of Felthrup knew no bounds. With a quick leap the rat was astride Suzyt, balanced between her shoulder blades. His dark eyes glistened, and a sweet, resinous smell wafted from his fur.

  “Should I be content to hide forever behind the stateroom’s magic wall?” he asked. “Ashore they may have condemned all woken beasts, but not on the Chathrand. Not yet.”

  “The crew will not stop to talk to you,” said Hercól. “They will see a rat, and they will kill it.”

  “Only if they catch it,” said Felthrup. “But the men of Chathrand are not all ignorant brutes. They do not know what is happening—and I agree that you must not tell them, yet—but they know something is terribly amiss, and a few may recall that it was I who first said so, when I smelled the emptiness of the village. Surely they will realize the utility—is that the word I want, utility?—of having a rat’s olfactory prowess at their disposal. Utility, avail, expedience—”

  “No,” said Thasha, “they won’t. They’ll be afraid that you’re about to turn into a monster before their eyes.”

  “They should fear no such thing,” said Felthrup. “I am safe, thanks to Lady Syrarys.”

  “Syrarys?” said Pazel. “Felthrup, what are you talking about?”

  Syrarys, the consort of Thasha’s father Admiral Isiq, had been revealed to be in league with Sandor Ott. She had worked for Thasha’s death, and nearly killed the admi
ral by poisoning his tea.

  “How excitable you are!” said Felthrup. “I was only speaking of mysorwood oil. The wicked lady used to dab it on her neck, but Mr. Bolutu pointed out that it is better even than peppermint oil at deterring fleas. He applied it to my fur, and I am a new rat! Freed, emancipated, delivered from their masticatory assaults—and are we not agreed that those hungry vermin inflicted the mutation upon the rats, and not vice versa? Rats do not, you will allow, bite fleas. But this despair, Pazel! How unlike you, how unbecoming!”

  “Unbecoming.” Pazel stared at the rat. “Do you understand that our families are dead?”

  “Your sister is not dead,” said Felthrup. “And as for my family—it is aboard this ship. My rat-brethren back in Noonfirth cast me out, the very day I woke. They were terrified of my verbosity. They slew my mother’s second litter before her eyes, ten blind bleating things not a day old, and chased her off into the streets. When I fled they were trying to determine who had mated with her, so that they could kill or scatter those unlucky males as well.”

  Pazel closed his eyes. He was, in fact, intensely grateful for Felthrup’s presence, his grounding inanities and madcap wisdom. But you had to have patience, barrels of it, whenever the rat warmed to a theme.

  Thasha managed it better than anyone. “We’re late for the council, Felthrup dear,” she said. “What is it you wanted to tell us?”

  “That I have been eavesdropping,” he said. “Dr. Rain has lately been interrogated by several officers concerning one of his patients. Have you heard the rumors surrounding the topman, Mr. Duprís?”