The River of Shadows

by Robert V. S. Redick

  “To judge by Bolutu’s despair,” said Hercól, “all such warnings must be in vain, if the Ravens have truly seized control of Bali Adro. They were, you recall, the very ‘gang of criminals’ who opposed the old, just regime he so proudly served—the gang who sent Arunis to the North in the first place, to seek the Nilstone.”

  “If Olik is with the Ravens,” said Neeps, “then we can’t trust what he said about the Red Storm, either. He may just have wanted to keep us off-balance, by giving us hope that we might return to our own time one day, or something close to it. So that we’d spend our time pondering that, instead of ways to fight him.”

  Hercól shook his head. “I think he spoke the truth about the Red Storm, at least. Think of Arunis. If we cannot return to the North without leaping centuries into the future, what sense is there in his plans? Either he has always been ignorant of the Storm’s nature, or he is counting on the Shaggat cult remaining powerful enough to trigger open warfare hundreds of years after his first rise to power. Neither is likely. Therefore Arunis, too, must be counting on a weakened Storm.”

  Neeps gave them a stubborn look. “I still say Olik’s lying big about something,” he said. “You know I can tell when people lie.”

  “Oh please,” said Marila.

  “There was something wrong about his whole visit,” said Pazel. “Neeps is right, it doesn’t add up. And every other time a mystery like this has surfaced, we’ve eventually traced it back to Arunis. Credek, we may have just let one of his servants walk around in the stateroom.”

  “Why is Arunis doing all this killing lately, anyway?” said Thasha. “Obviously he’s not afraid anymore of what will happen if he kills the spell-keeper, and the Shaggat comes back to life.”

  “Or rather,” said Hercól, “he is no longer constrained by the fear of chancing upon the spell-keeper, when he kills. And that can only mean that he has found a way to rule certain people out. And that can only be because he has learned who the spell-keeper is. Either that, or he has despaired of the Shaggat altogether, and no longer minds the risk. He had his own copy of the thirteenth Polylex for a short time, before Pazel destroyed it. Perhaps in that time he glimpsed some other method of using the Nilstone. Some more remote chance, but one that he never forgot. Maybe he is groping toward it even now.”

  “You think he’s doing some kind of experiment?” said Neeps. “Sending one person after another to touch the Nilstone, and watching what happens?”

  “But the same thing happens with each of them,” said Pazel. “They shrivel up and die. And anyway he’s not there watching, unless he’s turned into an ant or a flea.”

  “Maybe he’s watching their minds, not their bodies,” said Thasha.

  They worked in silence for several minutes, and then Pazel spoke again. “I’m going to have a fit.”

  All the others stopped work and looked at him. They knew what “a fit” meant in Pazel’s case. Thasha reached out as if to touch his arm, but hesitated. “Soon?” she said.

  Pazel shrugged, applying his sanding-stone with force. “Maybe two days from now. Four at the most. The taste in my mouth started this morning. And the purring sound.”

  “No fear, mate,” said Neeps. “We know what to do. You just run for the stateroom, bury your head in pillows. You won’t hear much in—well, in the admiral’s old room.”

  The last time Pazel’s fits had come, he had fled to the reading cabin—that tiny, beautiful, glassed-in chamber off the stateroom. But the reading cabin was adjacent to Thasha’s own. For days now she and Fulbreech had passed an hour or two each evening in her cabin, laughing and murmuring. They kept their voices low, but it pierced the walls nonetheless. During his fits any voices at all were a torture to Pazel. Thasha and Fulbreech’s would be unbearable.

  “Those signs, the purring and the evil taste,” said Hercól, “mean that your Gift is at work even now?”

  “This very minute,” said Pazel, “for all the good that does us.”

  “And your hearing’s sharper too?” asked Marila.

  “I don’t know yet,” said Pazel. “It used to work only with translated voices—as if my mind was reaching for them, you understand? But the last time, when Chadfallow gave me that drug, I could hear almost everything. Birds, breathing, whispers fifty feet away. That was on Bramian. A lot of things changed on Bramian.”

  Thasha was looking at him, pensive. “That thing you spoke with. The eguar.”

  Pazel’s encounter with the deadly, magic-steeped eguar was one of the worst moments of his life. “What about it?” he said.

  “It mentioned the South, didn’t it?”

  “Yes,” said Pazel. “I told you. It called the South the world my brethren made.”

  Thasha nodded. “Last night I was reading—”

  Pazel bit his lips. With your darling Fulbreech.

  “—and I learned something about eguar. Not under ‘Eguar’ of course; the Polylex doesn’t make anything that easy. But there was a little paragraph under Longevity. It says that eguar live an extraordinarily long time—longer than the oldest trees. Some of the oldest were born before the Dawn War, in the time when demons ruled Alifros. They can spend a year without moving, a decade between meals. And the book said, This near-immortality, along with the terrible black magic concentrated in their blood and bone, has long fascinated the wizarding folk of the South.”

  “Ah! That is telling,” said Hercól. “Bolutu studied magic at Ramachni’s knee, though he says he never succeeded in becoming a mage. And he reacted strongly when you mentioned the eguar, I believe.”

  “Strongly!” said Pazel. “He acted as though I’d met the prince of all devils, and caught the talking fever to boot. And Chadfallow wasn’t much better. He said Ramachni had spoken to him about eguar. He made us bathe in the first river we came to. When we got back to the camp he burned all our clothes, and made Ott’s men scrub the horses down with gloves on.”

  “Well then,” said Neeps, “those Ravens wanted the Nilstone, but they haven’t got it. Maybe they found some other way to make themselves mighty—something involving the eguar.”

  “Gods,” said Pazel, suddenly shaken, “that’s right, I’m sure it is. That shimmer over the armada—that weird, bright haze, you remember? It was how the air looked around the eguar, from a distance, when we first saw it basking in the sun. And the leader of the swimmers who attacked us—there was something of it around him as well. Just a touch. I could barely see it through the telescope.”

  “I will speak to Bolutu about these eguar,” said Hercól. “In any case, Pazel, I am glad the creature never touched you.”

  “It didn’t have to touch me,” said Pazel, flinching at the memory. He began to sand again, quickly, needing to move. Once more Thasha reached for him, and once more she stopped her hand.

  “When you came back,” she said, “you were so different, for a while. So strange.”

  “Must have been hard for you,” said Marila, “Pazel changing like that.”

  Thasha turned to her as if she’d been slapped. Marila picked up her stone and began to work again. But she added quietly, “You let Fulbreech see the book whenever he wants. Handle it, too. He knows you have a thirteenth Polylex.”

  “You’re a damned little spy.”

  “Thasha,” said Marila, “you came out of your cabin last night with the Polylex under your arm. He took it before he … greeted you.”

  Pazel sanded harder, faster.

  Then Hercól straightened his back and glanced at the darkening sky. “We should leave off until the morning. Teggatz will be calling us to our meal.”

  “Think I’ll work a little longer,” said Neeps, his voice as cold as Marila’s.

  Thasha laughed bitterly. “I’ll go,” she said. “Then you’ll all be happier.”

  She pushed past them, walked to the end of the scaffold and stepped over the rail onto the topdeck. Then she turned and looked back at them.

  “I’m ending this tonight,” she said. �
�Do you hear me? I won’t play your game anymore.”

  “For some of us it never was a game,” said Neeps.

  But Pazel thought, Who is she talking to?

  Thasha marched to the Holy Stair and descended. Toward sickbay, Pazel realized, where Fulbreech worked.

  “She’s right,” said Neeps. “I do feel better.”

  Hercól looked at him with quiet regret. “You speak proudly, both of you,” he said. “Well and good: but if shame should follow, remember what you said to that girl.”

  Then he departed as well. Pazel, Neeps and Marila sanded wordlessly in the gathering dark. But despite the shadows Pazel saw his two friends exchanging glances. “All right,” he said at last, “spill it. What is it you want to tell me?”

  “Listen,” said Marila. “You know I tried to take her side at first. I was wrong. She’s lost her mind over him, and it’s ruining everything, and it has to stop. We should push him down a hatch.”

  “Marila!” cried both boys.

  “I mean it. Something terrible is going to happen—and Thasha’s helping it happen, damn it. We bumped into each other last night—really bumped, in the stateroom, it was pitch dark. I started to fall and she caught me, helped me up. But then she wouldn’t let go of my arm. ‘Let me do what I have to do,’ she said, ‘with him.’ ”

  “Thasha said that?”

  “There’s worse, Pazel. I said she was becoming another person, and she said, yes, she was. Then I said I liked the old one better, and she said, ‘What you like makes no difference. Just stay out of my way.’ Then I said what we’re all thinking. ‘Arunis. He’s gotten hold of you, hasn’t he?’ And Thasha laughed and said, ‘Arunis is scared to death of me. He always has been. And you should be too.’ Then she shoved me aside and I did fall, blary hard, and she walked right out of the room.”

  Marila blew away more sawdust, felt the smoothness of the pine with her fingertips.

  “She’s going bad, I tell you. I don’t want to believe it, but all you have to do is look at her when he walks in the room. She forgets everything else, and goes all dreamy and warm. I think she’s going to end up—you know—knitting little boots.” Pazel dropped his sanding-stone.

  He swore, and they all screamed warnings down the tonnage shaft, where men were still working by lamplight. There came a loud thud and a barrage of curses. You careless Gods-damned tarboy dog! That was two feet from my head!

  Time to quit, they decided. Fleeing guiltily along the starboard rail, they saw the “birdwatchers” gathered together on the quay. They were arguing, waving their hands, now and then gesturing at the Chathrand as if to emphasize a point. Tomorrow, Pazel thought. What’s going to happen to us tomorrow?

  “She’s probably in the stateroom with him right now,” said Marila. “He likes to see her right after his shift.”

  “There’s the dinner bell,” said Neeps.

  “And Hercól,” added Marila furiously, “does nothing but defend her.”

  Pazel stopped walking. Defend her. That was what he had promised himself he would always do. No matter what it took. No matter what Thasha said or did. How could he ever have allowed himself to be confused on that point? He turned and looked at his friends.

  “Is there any doubt at all,” he said, “that Fulbreech is a liar?”

  “No,” said Neeps.

  Both boys looked at Marila. She closed her eyes a moment, thoughtful. “No,” she said at last. “Not if he really said ‘error corrected’ after you punched him in the eye.”

  “I’m going to see her,” said Pazel.

  “Oh, stop it, mate,” said Neeps. “You’ve tried. She doesn’t want to hear you. She doesn’t want to believe.”

  “I don’t care.”

  He would make her hear. He would explain word for word, and Thasha would see at last that he wasn’t simply jealous. And he would explain about the antidote, how even though Fulbreech had appeared to be chasing Alyash, as they were, he was really on the bosun’s side. No one else could have slipped the antidote through the doorway at the bitter end. It was Fulbreech who had freed the hostages, paving the way for Rose’s bloodbath.

  He reached the Silver Stair and plunged down, among the crowd of hungry sailors making for the dining compartment.

  “You can’t just walk in on them!” Marila shouted.

  “Bet I can,” he shot back.

  The sailors grinned and winked. Pazel could not have cared less. Walking in on Thasha and Fulbreech was exactly what he planned to do. Let her choose who to believe, once and for all, face to face with both of them. At least she wouldn’t be able to feign a need to be elsewhere.

  Neeps’ hand closed on his elbow. “At least let Marila go first, Pazel. She’ll tell you if it’s all right to go in there.”

  “Damn it all, leave me alone!”

  Pazel wrenched his arm away. But as he turned he found the passage blocked by Mr. Fiffengurt. “Pathkendle!” he said. “And Undrabust too. What luck. I have a little job I need your help with.”

  “Now?” said Pazel.

  “Right now,” said Fiffengurt, strangely anxious. He bent closer, and spoke in an ominous whisper. “Urgent business. The hag’s cat, Sniraga. She’s alive.”

  “I’ve heard. I’m sorry.” Pazel began to slip by, but Fiffengurt lurched in front of him.

  “You don’t understand. She’s in the bread room. She’s slipped inside, the little monster.”

  “So what?” said Neeps, briefly forgetting his own efforts to stop Pazel cold. “Best place to put her if you ask me. That’s no blary emergency.”

  “We don’t even have any bread,” said Pazel.

  Fiffengurt turned his gaze from one to the other. He looked confounded by their response. “Why! Anyone could tell you—a cat, loose in the—Oh, blast you both, come along! That’s an order!”

  Fulbreech sat in the chair by Thasha’s writing desk, hands on his knees, his pale face troubled. “All of them,” he said, “believe that my intentions toward you are … dishonorable?”

  “Yes,” said Thasha, “entirely.”

  She sat cross-legged on her bed, in an old pair of red trousers and a loose white shirt of Admiral Isiq’s. “I don’t care, Greysan. I don’t care what they imagine.”

  He shook his head. “You should care. They love you dearly, Thasha.”

  They were sharing a glass of water and some dlömic biscuits. They had not touched since she led him into the room. The desk was cluttered: jewelry, creams, pencils, knives, a whetstone, the admiral’s flask, the Merchant’s Polylex. Behind all these, the softly ticking mariner’s clock, Ramachni’s doorway from his own world into Alifros.

  The wind had risen. The night would be cool. Against the hanging oil lamp a weird Southern moth tapped hairy antennae; its huge shadow wriggled on the bedspread. Thasha was looking down at her hands.

  “Not like this,” she whispered.

  They were both very still. “Of course,” he said, “what I feel for you is different.”

  Thasha smiled.

  “But I have been blind—blind, and selfish. These evenings with you, learning of your life, hearing your dreams: Thasha, I’ve been drunk on them. But now I fear your friends are talking about us, and not just among themselves.”

  “Let them.”

  “No,” he said, “that won’t help, making enemies. Your good name is priceless, even though our society is reduced to one mad ship, hung out to dry in an alien port.”

  “You say all that because you think you have to.” Thasha touched a hole in her trouser knee. “But I know what you’re feeling.”

  “Do you really think so?”

  Thasha nodded. “I know you’re … impatient.” She laughed, trying to make a joke of it, then blushed and had to look away. He smiled too, generously.

  “Are you afraid of something, Thasha?” he asked.

  She looked at him shyly, then glanced at the Polylex. “In Etherhorde, in Dr. Chadfallow’s house—you know he was a family friend—there was
a book about Mzithrini art. Did you know that the Old Faith has nothing against showing … men and women?”

  “Lovers, you mean?” Fulbreech squirmed a little. “I may have heard something about that.”

  Thasha paused as if to steady her nerves. “I used to take out that book whenever we visited. There was a painting of a sculpture in a Babqri square. Three women on their knees, reaching desperately for a man being lifted away by angels. He’s beautiful, naked of course … and he’s forgotten the women; his eyes are on the place the angels are taking him, some other world, I suppose. But when you look closer you see that the three women are really just one, at three moments in life. Young, and older, and very old, shriveled. And the name of the sculpture is If You Wait He Will Escape You.”

  Thasha looked at him, blinking nervously. “I’ve been dreaming of their faces. Greysan, you must think I’m crazy—”

  “Nonsense.”

  “I’m afraid you’ll escape me.”

  She sat there, trembling, and then his hand closed over hers. Neither of them speaking. His fingers rough and warm between her own.

  “Impatient.” Fulbreech gave her an awkward smile. “Perhaps that is your delicate way of saying vulgar. Listen, darling: I would sooner die than insult you. Only it seems I can hide nothing in your presence. Not my dreams for our future, certainly. And not even”—he took a deep breath—“dreams of another kind.”

  He flinched; surely he had gone too far. But Thasha’s gaze only softened, as though she had known this was coming and was glad the wait was over. She reached out and gently touched his face.

  In the torchlight from the quay she saw struggle in his eyes. They were traveling her body, but now and then they stopped, uncertain. Some idea, some duty maybe, giving him pause.

  “Later the others will be here,” he said.

  Thasha stood in one smooth motion. She raised the water glass and drank it dry. Then she set the glass beside the Polylex and blew out the lantern.