The River of Shadows

by Robert V. S. Redick

  Orfuin took a rag from his pocket and walked to one of the windows looking out onto the terrace. He breathed on a small square pane and rubbed it clean.

  “Macadra Hyndrascorm,” he said with distaste, “is a very old sorceress. Like Arunis, a cheater of death. All mages tend to be long-lived, but some are satisfied with nothing less than immortality. None truly attain it. Some, like Macadra and her servants in the Raven Society, deploy all their magical skills in its pursuit. They may indeed live a very long time—but not without becoming sick and bleached and repellent to natural beings. Others, like your master Ramachni, are granted a kind of extended lease: the powers outside of time stretch their lives into hundreds or even thousands of years, but only in pursuit of a very great deed.”

  Felthrup jerked upright with a squeak, almost upsetting the little table. “Do you mean that once Ramachni completes his allotted task he will die?” he cried.

  “Death is the standard conclusion, yes,” said Orfuin. “But Felthrup, you must hasten to tell me what you came here for. I have a roast in the oven. Besides, my dear fellow, you might wake at any time.”

  “That is precisely why I have come!” said Felthrup. “Master Orfuin, my Polylex tells me that the wall between two dreamers is not the only sort of wall. There is also, of course, the wall between dream and waking. But by one of the most ancient of laws, most of what we learn, and all that we collect or are given, must be left on the far side of the gate when we return to waking life.”

  Orfuin chuckled again. Then, with an air of scholarly formality, he recited:

  Never night’s mysteries are exposed

  To the weak mortal eye unclosed.

  So wills its King, that hath forbid

  The uplifting of the fringéd lid.

  “Or something to that effect. Have you read Poe, Mr. Felthrup? A dlömic writer of some interest; there’s a book of his in the club.6 Yes, it is a balm to the soul, to travel and converse and gain wisdom in the land of dreams. But only mages can carry that wisdom out into the daylight. The rest of us must leave everything but a few stray memories on the far side of the wall.”

  “But Master Orfuin, I am denied even those!” cried Felthrup, hopping in place. “If I saw Arunis’ face looming over me, or held on to some brief snatches of his words, then perhaps I could fight him. But he has placed a forgetting-charm upon me. Ramachni told Pazel Pathkendle of this charm, and Pazel told me. But Ramachni cannot dispel it, he said, until he returns in the flesh.

  “And that will not do. Here as a dreamer I know all that has happened to me, in waking life and in dreams. But my waking self knows nothing of those dreams, and so I cannot warn my friends. I cannot tell them what I overheard, here on your terrace. That this Macadra and her Ravens are sending a replacement crew—isn’t that how she put it?—to seize the Chathrand. That all the wars, feuds and battles of the North are watched with pleasure, and even encouraged, by forces in the South bent on conquest. I know the most terrible secrets in Alifros! But what good is this knowledge if it vanishes each night at the end of my dream?”

  “And you imagine that this old tavern-keeper can help you break what you yourself have just referred to as one of ‘the most ancient of laws’?” Orfuin sat back in his chair with a sigh. “Finish your tea, Felthrup. Come inside and eat gingerbread, listen to the music, be my guest. No matter how many years we’re allotted, we should never squander life in pursuit of the impossible.”

  “Forgive me, sir, but I cannot accept your answer.”

  Orfuin’s eyes grew wide. Felthrup, however, was possessed of a sudden absolute conviction. “I must take the warning back with me, somehow. I cannot possibly sit down and enjoy your hospitality if that means pretending I don’t know the fate Arunis has in mind for half the people of Alifros. If you will not help me, I must thank you for the tea and the delightful conversation, and go in search of other allies.”

  “In your dreams?”

  “Where else, sir? Perhaps one of the ghosts aboard Chathrand will help me, since you find yourself unable to do so.”

  “There is something you must understand,” said Orfuin. “I am no one’s ally, though I try to be everyone’s friend. This club survives only because it has, since time unfathomable, stood outside the feuds and factions that plague so many worlds. No one is barred who comes here peaceably. Whether the words they exchange are words of peace or barbarism I rarely know. Wars have been plotted here, no doubt—but how many more have been averted, because leaders of vision and power had a place to sit down together, and talk at their ease? It is my faith that the universe is better off for having a place where no one fears to talk. Arunis was right, Felthrup: when I closed the club and threw them out into the River, I was doing something I had never done before, and will not hasten to do again. I was breaking the promise of this house.”

  “Because you heard them plotting the murder of millions of human beings!” said Felthrup. “What else could you do at such a pass?”

  “Oh, many things,” said Orfuin, rising again from his chair. “I could sell this club, and purchase a home in the Sunken Kingdom, or an apartment in orbit around Cbalu, or an entire island in your world of Alifros, complete with port and palace and villages and farms. I could break my house rule again, and then again, and soon be one more partisan in the endless wars beggaring the universe. Or I could contemplate my tea, and pretend not to have heard anything my guests were discussing.”

  Felthrup rubbed his face with his paws. “I will wake soon; I can feel it. I will forget all of this, and have no way of helping my friends. I should not have come.”

  Orfuin stepped close to the table and put his hands under Felthrup’s chin, lifting it gently. “You may sleep a little longer, I think.”

  And suddenly Felthrup sensed that it was true: the flickering, stirring feeling, the teasing scent of Admiral Isiq’s cigars still clinging to his uniforms, had quite faded away.

  “Most visitors to a tavern,” said Orfuin, “don’t come to speak to the barman.”

  Felthrup glanced quickly at the inviting doorway. You cannot help me, he thought suddenly, but you spelled it out, didn’t you? What your guests speak of is none of your concern.

  “Do you mean, I might yet find—?”

  Orfuin released his chin. “Go inside, Felthrup. You’re a talking rat; someone’s certain to buy you a drink.”

  6. Orfuin here slightly amends the original, though not perhaps for the worse. He is also mistaken about the artist’s race. Falargrin (in The Universal Macabre) presents conclusive evidence that Mr. Poe was a transplanted selk. —EDITOR.

  Confessions

  24 Ilbrin 941

  “How did it happen, Ludunte?”

  The young ixchel man stood with his back to the bulkhead, sweating. “My lord Taliktrum,” he said, “I swear to you I don’t know.”

  “Three of our prisoners walk free,” Taliktrum continued, pacing back and forth in the lamplight, his Dawn Soldiers lounging behind him, predators at rest. “Two are allies of my treacherous aunt. The third—tell me, Ludunte, who is the third?”

  “C-captain Rose, my lord,” stammered Ludunte.

  “Captain Rose,” echoed Taliktrum furiously. “The sadist who kept an ixchel locked in his desk for years. In a birdcage. The only man aboard to oversee an actual extermination—did you know he once killed an entire clan of our people, aboard an Auxlei grain ship? We just gave him his freedom on a satin pillow, Ludunte. And the blanë antidote was in your keeping.”

  From a far corner, Ensyl looked on with unease. It was not going well for Ludunte. Taliktrum wanted someone to fall on his sword, to accept the blame for the disaster quickly and fully, sparing the Visionary Leader (yet another ridiculous title) any further embarrassment. But Ludunte was not playing along. Taliktrum, never one to endure much contradiction, was furious.

  They were in the ixchel stronghold on the mercy deck: a series of crates boxed in particularly deep by other cargo, all but unreachable by the crew that had
stowed them. Of course there had always been the danger that the humans would abruptly want something from the crates: ixchel clans lived in perpetual readiness to evacuate their homes. But Taliktrum’s decision to seize hostages had changed all that. No humans walked the lower half of the ship unescorted. They were, in a certain respect, safer than most members of the clan had ever been in their lifetime. But that safety had just been shaken to the core.

  “You’re Treasure Keeper to the clan,” said Taliktrum, glowering at Ludunte. “You had a key to the strongbox, and changed its location each month, for the sake of security.”

  “I do not choose the locations, my lord.”

  “I choose them,” Taliktrum snapped. “And you went alone to collect the pills when we decided on this furlough, this hour’s charity. How could you possibly confuse the temporary antidote with the permanent? It’s inexcusable.”

  Atop the hunting cabinet that had become his solitary refuge, Lord Talag nodded in agreement. The cabinet was one of some twenty furnishings from the Isiq mansion back in Etherhorde that had passed, in effect, to the ixchel: old Admiral Isiq had never come for his belongings—some whispered that he’d been quietly killed after the fiasco of Thasha’s wedding—and Thasha herself had forgotten about the crates, or else never realized that any of her family’s goods remained in storage. Or perhaps, thought Ensyl, she knows perfectly well, but wants no reminders of the father she lost in Simja.

  “You’d be wiser to come clean, Ludunte,” said Taliktrum.

  “But my good lord! I’ve done nothing wrong!”

  “You cannot keep secrets from me,” said Taliktrum, raising his voice suddenly. “I have been given a fate. I see further, deeper than you. I see our final triumph as a people—and every selfish, stupid act that impedes that triumph.”

  “Then you know I speak the truth,” said Ludunte.

  “I know all the truth you speak, and all the falsehood.” Suddenly Taliktrum whirled and seized Ludunte by the jaw. “I must make you see it as well,” he purred. “I must hear it from your lips, know that your mind has accepted the truth, if you are to go on serving me—serving the clan, the clan of course, through me, its rightful leader.”

  Ludunte made a grave error, then. His head could not move, but at the words rightful leader his eyes flickered briefly to Lord Talag on his sullen perch. The look did not escape Taliktrum. His mouth twisted with rage. “I will drown you,” he said. “I will call on the clan to sanction your punishment, and they will do so.”

  Ludunte closed his eyes, trembling. But he said what honor demanded, and with an air of certainty at that. “If the clan requires my death, I give it gladly. My life is in its keeping.”

  “No less than our own,” came ritual response from every mouth. Ensyl spoke too, though the Dawn Soldiers shot her hateful looks. To those fanatics she was as much a traitor as her former mistress. Diadrelu had trusted the giants, and taken one as a lover. Ensyl’s sin was loving Diadrelu—adoring her, believing in her to the point of rebellion. She had defied Taliktrum, taken Dri’s body from him, delivered it to Hercól. Yes, she was a hypocrite to speak those words. She had broken the clan-bond in favor of her mistress. But Ludunte had also sworn service to Dri for the entire length of his training, and yet he had led her into the trap in which she died. Wasn’t that the greater crime? Not by ixchel law, of course. Yet somewhere, surely, there was a law of the heart?

  “There are three possibilities,” said Taliktrum. “One, you confused the pills, mistaking the permanent antidote for the temporary.”

  “Never,” said Ludunte.

  “Two, you deliberately brought the wrong pills to the forecastle house, because you wished, for some reason, for the giants to be free.”

  “My lord—nonsense!”

  “Three, you told someone of the location of the pills, and they—or someone they told in turn—tampered with the vials themselves.”

  “I told no one!” cried Ludunte, with rising desperation. “Lord Taliktrum, why don’t you trust me? Have I not been your faithful servant in all things?”

  Taliktrum looked at him piercingly. “Leave us,” he said. “I will speak with my private council, of your faith and other matters.”

  He turned, dismissing Ludunte with an imperious toss of his hand. Ludunte’s eyes swept the room in great distress, settling at last on Ensyl. She returned him all the sympathy she could manage, which was next to none. Stiffly, Ludunte walked to the door. Taliktrum’s Dawn Soldiers hissed and spat at him as he departed.

  Taliktrum’s gaze fell on Ensyl. “You” was all he said.

  She rose and followed him past the file of soldiers. They were silenced by the nearness of Taliktrum, but their eyes told her what they would do if given the chance. Some studied her body, others fingered their spears. He’s destroying them, destroying their minds, Ensyl thought. They’re cut off from every tradition of the clan save obedience and bloodshed. Dri had always warned her that courage without reason was worse than no courage at all. Skies above, he’s a greater threat to us than Rose.

  They entered what Taliktrum called his “meditation chamber,” where a single lamp burned upon a table fashioned from the lid of a pickle barrel. Myett was there, of course, watching Ensyl like a nervous cat. So was Saturyk: tight-mouthed, quick-fingered, Taliktrum’s all-purpose spy. More startling was the presence of the Pachet Ghali, Myett’s stern, silver-haired grandfather. The title Pachet was given to few: it was the highest state of learning to which an ixchel could aspire. Ghali was a master musician: so great a master that the old, lost lore of ixchel-magic was said to live on in the song of his flute. Diadrelu had seen the proof. The man’s playing had called swallows from their nests on a cliff near Bramian, and Taliktrum, wearing one of the clan’s two priceless swallow-suits, had been able to command them like a small winged army.

  “Close the door behind you, girl.”

  Ensyl obeyed, masking her feelings with effort. I’m the same age as you.

  “A look passed between you and Ludunte just now, did it not?” began Taliktrum, pouring himself a goblet of wine.

  “He looked at me,” said Ensyl, “and I looked back.”

  “You will address our leader by his title,” growled Saturyk.

  “Which one?” said Ensyl.

  “Ludunte was Dri’s other sophister,” cut in Taliktrum. “The two of you were closest to her of all the clan. Do you remain close now, you and he?”

  “We never were especially close, Lord Taliktrum.”

  “How is that possible? She chose the two of you out of many hundreds who wished to study at her knee. You trained together in Etherhorde. You were partners in the Nine Trials, the Midwinter March. You were in the same watch for three years.”

  “One can share many things, Lord, and not grow close.”

  “Very true,” said Myett in her satiny voice. “Ixchel blood, for example.”

  The two women locked eyes for a moment. Ensyl fought down her anger. Nothing to be gained by sparring with his mistress.

  “You truly suspect Ludunte of switching the pills?” she said.

  “Hold your tongue until His Lordship addresses you!” said Saturyk.

  Ensyl bristled. “Are we slaves, now, to grovel before him? Or am I expelled from Ixphir House? Even then I am no chattel. He has the right as clan leader to call for my silence. You, Saturyk, have no right at all.”

  “Careless,” hissed Myett, “so like another woman who thought herself clever. What became of her, Ensyl of Sorrophran? Tell us that. As you say, you’ve every right to speak.”

  “And I have the right to scold you, daughter’s daughter, though it pains my heart,” said the Pachet Ghali. “Where did you learn such spite?”

  “You should be proud of her, Pachet,” said Taliktrum absently. Myett looked at him as though hoping he had more to say. But Taliktrum’s thoughts were elsewhere. “All of you, be still. Ensyl, I do not ask you if Ludunte is innocent or guilty. I merely ask if you think him capable of treason.”


  A black irony entered Ensyl’s voice. “Of course, my lord. I have seen treason done by his hand. The day he helped you murder Lady Diadrelu.”

  She had gone too far. Myett’s eyes blazed with outrage; even the Pachet Ghali looked shocked. But Ensyl felt no remorse, only the wound, the outrageous loss, as sharp now as on that horrific night on the Ruling Sea. Taliktrum had killed her mistress, even if another hand had delivered the blow.

  Saturyk moved forward, as though to eject her from the room by force, but Taliktrum waved him off. He looked a long time at the slender woman before him.

  “I am sorry for you,” he said at last. “However poorly you were schooled in Sorrophran, there are some childhood maxims you cannot have avoided. We are the rose that prunes itself, remember? A clan of ixchel must know when a limb is diseased. And my aunt was diseased, Ensyl. Also gifted, certainly; no one would deny that she was gifted. But her vision was unsound. She loved giants. As a pathology it’s nothing new—men and women both have suffered from it, though most grow out of the delusion. Not Dri. She grew worse, and finally obscene.”

  “We watched them,” said Myett, as though the memory turned her stomach.

  “And saw nothing,” said Ensyl, blinking fast. “Nothing of the truth, that is. Nothing that mattered.”

  Taliktrum’s face was carefully blank. “You revered her, but that does not oblige you to defend what is unnatural. Dri herself would not have done so, before her sickness advanced.”

  “She had no sickness!”

  Taliktrum dropped his eyes, as though pondering an unwelcome thought. “I recall a dinner conversation,” he said at last, “shortly after you arrived in the capital. She hadn’t yet decided to take you on. I argued that she should—argued against my father, I’ll have you know.” He smiled strangely. “My aunt called you the gentlest flower in the field.” He paused, weighing his words. “Nytikyn spoke of it too: your gentleness. When the others asked him about you, in the barracks, and on patrol.”