The River of Shadows

by Robert V. S. Redick

  “Pitfire,” he said, “I’ve got it, I understand. Neeps, what’s wrong with us?” He spurred the horse faster, catching up with Thasha and Hercól. “The idiot,” he said. “Arunis’ tol-chenni, the one he took from the lab. He’s going to use the idiot to control the Stone.”

  They all looked at him, startled. “Why do you say so?” asked Myett, who was riding on Hercól’s shoulder.

  “The birdwatchers—the physicians in the asylum—they were upset when he took that particular tol-chenni. They said he was special—”

  “By the Night Gods!” Hercól exploded. “I am the fool in question! I should wear motley in a circus tent! The technicians said he was blind to danger. That he would swallow nails, walk off a cliff or into a fireplace.”

  Thasha raised a hand to her cheek. “Aya Rin. He’s fearless. Unnaturally fearless.”

  “And the Nilstone kills through fear,” said Pazel, “but it won’t kill that tol-chenni, will it? Arunis doesn’t have to control the Nilstone anymore. He’s found a puppet to do it for him. That’s what he was trying to do all along, with those men he drove to suicide. Once he gets control of the idiot’s mind—”

  “He’s won,” said Ensyl.

  Hercól’s face darkened. “He will have won only when all those who oppose him lie dead and cold.”

  And Pazel thought: Arunis would agree with you there.

  On they went into the darkness—slowly, with no lamps lit. Then the moon began to shine over the eastern hills, and by its light they quickened their pace. They moved through smaller woods, crossed other streams, passed the wreckage of country homes looted and abandoned. The night remained warm and hazy at first, but some three hours beyond the Ragwood they climbed the first foothill onto a plateau of leathery grass and small wizened conifers, and here a chill wind was blowing. They broke out heavier coats. Off to their left the Maî rumbled softly in its gorge.

  “There’s shelter ahead, Stanapeth,” said Alyash, drawing up beside Hercól. He was pointing to a spot a few miles above them: a bluff where three buildings shone in the moonlight. Two were ruined, but the third, a barn maybe, appeared intact.

  Hercól nodded. “If they are empty, we might sleep there,” he said. “Let us go and find out.”

  Up they climbed, the horses stumbling over the ruts and stones. The buildings were all that was left of yet another farm: the buildings, and many acres of hacked-off stumps the remains of an orchard or a woodlot. The soldiers fanned cautiously through the farmyard, stalked through the ruined home and storehouse with halberds leveled. They met with no worse than bats and a pair of foxes, but they posted watches at the perimeter all the same.

  The floor of the barn was dry, and its doors were still on their hinges. It was an ample structure, and the beams were solid enough to serve as hitching-posts for the animals. The horses applied themselves to their feed-bags, but the sicuñas were turned out into the night and slinked away noiselessly, looking more like giant cats than ever.

  “It’s cold already,” said Big Skip. “Let’s sweep a spot clear in the barn and have a fire. In that old shell the smoke won’t bother us. And some hot food would see us quicker up that mountain tomorrow.”

  Hercól looked uneasy. “A small fire, then,” he said at last, “but well inside, away from the doors and windows.”

  There was plenty to burn scattered about the farmyard, and soon a cheerful blaze was crackling on the earthen floor. They cooked yams and onions and salted beef, a hasty stew. The dlömu wanted to add dried pori fish to the pot but Vadu forbade it. “You men know as well as I that the smell of pori, fresh or dried, can carry twenty miles,” he said sternly. “And hrathmogs have sharp noses, and sharper teeth.”

  Pazel found himself caught between hunger and exhaustion. Hunger prevailed, barely, but he was nodding over his bowl before he could empty it. Thasha put a finger under his chin and lifted.

  “When we find Fulbreech,” she said, “don’t attack him. Don’t do anything.”

  “I can’t promise that,” mumbled Pazel.

  “You mean you won’t,” she said. “For Rin’s sake, he was Ott’s man, and Ott doesn’t use anyone who isn’t trained. Fulbreech could cut you wide open, and you’d never see the knife. He let you hit him on the quarterdeck because he thought a black eye would make me take his side against you.” She put her hand on his ankle. “Promise me you won’t be a fool.”

  When Pazel shrugged, her hand squeezed like a tourniquet. “I’m not joking,” she said.

  “What about you?” he said, pretending his foot wasn’t going numb. “What will you do when you see him?”

  Thasha looked at him steadily. “I don’t care about Fulbreech anymore. But when we find Arunis, I’m going to be the one.”

  “The one?”

  “To kill him. Don’t try to stop me.”

  “I’m blary fortunate,” he said, “that you’re around to keep me from being a fool.”

  Thasha’s eyes were wild in the firelight, and her face grew hard and angry. Pazel met her gaze, hoping his own face looked merely bemused. Then all at once Thasha laughed and relaxed her grip. “You’re insufferable,” she said.

  But they both knew he’d won again. Not the argument, but the struggle to keep her from vanishing into that transformed state, that furious intensity where her visions came and he ceased to know her. Late in the night he woke to find her snuggled against him, feet icy, lips warm, the blanket that had felt too small for him alone somehow stretched to encompass them both.

  It felt like mere minutes later when someone began prodding his stomach. “Get up, get up now, we’re leaving.”

  Pazel started; Thasha was still in his arms. “Leaving?” he said. “It’s pitch dark.”

  Thasha groaned and clung to him. Then an oil lamp sputtered to life, and he snapped fully awake.

  “Sorry, turtle doves,” said Neda, turning her back.

  Pazel and Thasha sat up, blinking. From across the barn Pazel caught Jalantri staring at them with a strange look of outrage. Then he and Neda moved out of the barn.

  Pazel and Thasha followed, and found the others already outside. At the edge of the yard some commotion was under way. Pazel heard a soft clink-clink. Moving closer, he saw that everyone was looking at one of the sicuñas, twenty feet away beside a mound of dry brush, eating something. When Neda took a step in the creature’s direction, it growled.

  Then Vadu took the lamp and approached the sicuña, whispering to it softly. When the light reached it Pazel’s stomach lurched. The sicuña was devouring a man-like creature. It was fur-covered and enormously muscled; its face was broad and flat like a bulldog’s, and a shield still hung from one limp arm. The sicuña had clearly caught it by the neck, which was torn wide open. The sound Pazel had heard was the creature’s shirt of mail, lifting as the sicuña ate.

  “Hrathmog,” said Vadu. “That fire was a mistake, and we must leave at once. Sicuñas kill in silence, but the creature will be missed by the rest of its band, and then they will come in force.”

  “Even without this danger I should have been obliged to wake you,” said Hercól. “Ildraquin has just spoken to me: Fulbreech is moving. Indeed he is rushing away, more quickly than we can climb the mountain, at least until dawn.”

  They packed swiftly, fumbling with bags and bridles. No one talked, everyone was cold, dawn was still far off. All the while Pazel’s ears strained for the first sound of attackers swarming out of the night.

  The next hours were miserable. Summer might be at her peak in the city they had left behind but here frost slicked the trail, and the cold wind gnawed at them. The horses were skittish but could move no faster than a walk. The sicuñas fared better, gliding on their broad, soft feet, growling low as their great cat eyes probed the darkness. Jackals, or wild dogs perhaps, bayed in the north, and from somewhere on the black ridges Pazel caught the echo of drums.

  The narrowed Maî gushed close at hand, invisibly. At one switchback they had to pass very near a waterfall
, and the horse Pazel and Neeps rode lost its footing, dashing both boys into the frigid spray. They shed their wet coats for dry blankets, but Pazel’s teeth chattered for the rest of the night.

  With the first glimmer of morning, Neeps suddenly whispered, “Ouch! Credek, Pazel, I keep meaning to ask you: what’s that thing in your pocket? Every time we hit a bump it whacks me like a piece of lead.”

  “Oh, that,” said Pazel, “it is lead. Sorry, mate.” He reached back with one hand and pulled out a two-inch metal disc, sewn into a soft tube of buckskin leather. Carefully he passed it to Neeps.

  “Fiffengurt’s blackjack,” said Neeps, amazed.

  “He gave it to me while you and Marila were off getting married,” said Pazel. “ ‘Saved my life a dozen times, that wicked thing,’ he told me. ‘Clip a man smartly with it, and you can bring him down no matter what sort of brute he is. And you can hide it better than any knife. Never let it out of your reach, Pathkendle. It’s worth the headache, you’ll see.’ And do you know what he did, to be sure I obeyed? He sat down and stitched, by Rin. An extra pocket, just this size, in my two best breeches. How do you like that?”

  “Fiffengurt’s our man,” said Neeps, returning the weapon, “but I’ll thank you to put it in your blary coat until we’re back on our feet.”

  With sunrise came a little warmth. Their destination, that notch in the mountains where the river began, was suddenly much closer. All the same Hercól quickened the pace. There was no longer any hope of remaining hidden, should anyone be watching from above: near dawn they had cleared the tree line, and the wind-tortured scrub around them now barely reached their stirrups. Cables of ice braided the rocks along the river. Higher and higher they climbed, the road deserted, and all the land empty but for small, scurrying creatures in the underbrush, and here and there a ruined keep or watchtower, older than anything in the valley below.

  “The thin air may go to your head,” warned Vadu. “Take care above all near a precipice.” And there were many of these: sheer falls of hundreds of feet, with the road narrowed and crumbling, and at times great rocks to weave around. Pazel had thought that nothing could compare to the terror of being aloft in a Nelluroq storm. But this fear was sharpened by helplessness: no matter how true his grip, one false step by the horse and they would die.

  The horse clearly appreciated this fact as well. But alone of their animals, the poor creature seemed unused to mountains, and stamped and skittered and threw its head about, eyes wide with fear. At last the boys could stand it no longer. When the chance came they slid to the ground and led the horse by the reins.

  “He’s loads better now that we’re off his back,” said Neeps.

  “So am I,” said Pazel. The path was bad enough on foot, however, and around the next bend chuckled one more ice-fringed stream. The riders crossed easily, but their horse balked at the water’s edge, backing and snorting.

  “Silly ass.” Pazel moved behind the horse, clapping and nudging its rump, while Neeps, already across, tugged the reins with all his might. At last the beast lunged forward. Pazel gritted his teeth and waded in himself, using his hands for balance on the rocks.

  “Aya!”

  Something had stabbed his arm. He jerked it from the water, then shouted again in amazement. Among the stones where his hand had rested, a huge spider was wriggling away. It was nearly the size of his head, and more amazing still, perfectly transparent. Indeed he had taken it for a lump of ice, and its folded legs for icicles. The spider vanished among the rocks, and Pazel, clutching his arm, stumbled out of the water.

  The pain, as it happened, was not as bad as the shock. By the time Hercól reached him, the bite on his arm felt no worse than a scratch. “But did you see it?” he said. “It was huge. It must have just nicked me, or I’d be a goner.”

  The path was far too narrow for the others to approach, though Neda and Thasha looked back in alarm. Hercól studied his arm, frowning. “There is a bruise already,” he said. “I wish I had seen the creature.”

  “It was a medet,” said Vadu. “A glass spider—if the boy is telling the truth, that is.”

  “Of course I am!” Pazel shot back. “Do you think I could make up something like that?”

  “The spiders are kept in temples across the Empire,” said Vadu, “and Spider Tellers handle them daily. I have never heard of them biting anyone.”

  “That is true, Pazel,” said Bolutu. “Some new mothers even visit the temples and allow the glass spiders to crawl on their newborns. It brings good luck, and they’re never bitten, never.”

  “This one bites,” said Pazel, “but it can’t have been very deep, because it doesn’t hurt much.”

  Neda, turning her horse, gave Thasha an accusing look. “Can’t you make him be more careful?” she said. Thasha just stared at her, too amazed to reply.

  Hercól wound a bandage about Pazel’s arm. “We will keep an eye on you,” he said. “Some poisons are quick, and others slow.”

  On they stumbled, Neeps and Pazel still leading the frightened horse, and the wind stronger and colder by the minute. Pazel’s heart was racing. Hercól’s warning had unsettled him, though at the moment his arm felt almost normal.

  Then they turned a final switchback and found themselves at the pass. Smoke was rising from a point just out of sight beyond the ridge; bells or windchimes sounded somewhere; and a rooster, of all things, was crowing above the wind.

  A last scramble brought them to the top of the ridge. Pazel caught his breath. Straight ahead of them ran file upon file of mountain peaks, towering over the pass, their sharp summits wrapped in capes of snow. These were the mountains that had loomed like distant ghosts, that first day he’d glimpsed the mainland. They were cold and forbidding. And winding among them was an immense, dark lake.

  It was crescent-shaped; they stood near one tip of the crescent, and the other, presumably, was hidden somewhere far off among the mountains. The lake was the heavy blue of a calf’s tongue. Waves tossed on its surface, breaking against the sides of the mountains, which appeared to descend into its depths; and on the narrow, pebbly shores between. Scattered along these shores were humble dwellings of mud and thatch, and docks so frail they might have been made out of the wingbones of birds. Miles offshore, boats with strange ribbed sails plied the lake.

  Almost at their feet, the lake narrowed into a deep defile that looked as if it had been cut by a plow. Of course that plow was the Maî, shrunken here to a swift stream, but still managing to pierce the wall of the lake to start its journey to the sea.

  “Ilvaspar, the lifeblood of Masalym,” said Vadu. “It is more than a decade since I beheld her shores.”

  “It’s mucking enormous,” said Alyash.

  “Twenty miles to the southwest point, where the great Ansyndra is born,” said Vadu. “Some say that a demon prince lies chained in its depths, others that it was cut by the fang of Suovala the Elderdrake. I know not. But I am glad to see that Vasparhaven survives.”

  He pointed, and looking up Pazel saw an extraordinary sight. Built into the side of the cliff on the lake’s southern shore, at least a hundred feet above the surface, hung a stunning mansion. It was all of wood, painted a dark, weathered green, and there was no foundation beneath it; the whole structure rested on five massive beams jutting out from sockets in the cliff wall. One could almost imagine that it was half a mansion, and that the other half lay within the cliff: the tiled roof slanted upward to meet the stone, and ended there. Many balconies and scores of windows looked out upon the lake. From its chimneys rose the smoke Pazel had seen from below.

  “They’re the ones to ask about that bite of yours,” said Vadu.

  “Who are they?” asked Pazel.

  “Didn’t Olik tell you?” said Ibjen. “They’re Spider Tellers, like the prince himself. Vasparhaven is the oldest temple on the peninsula.”

  Hercól was gazing across the lake. “Fulbreech has reached the far shore,” he said, “and begun to descend the other side of the
mountain. But he has not gone far; something has impeded his progress.” He turned to the soldiers. “Gather brush here and set it aside—enough for a large bonfire. Tonight I must signal Prince Olik.”

  “What will you tell him?” asked Ibjen.

  “That will depend on what we learn here, and what we choose to do about it. Lead on, Counselor; another day is waning.”

  They rode along the southern shore, past boulders fallen from the slopes and chunks of ice ten feet thick: shards, perhaps, of the lid that sealed the lake in winter. As Vasparhaven loomed nearer Pazel saw a pair of massive green doors at ground level, just beneath the temple.

  More bells began to ring. Pazel saw faces leaning down from the balconies. Strange faces, belonging to many peoples: dlömu, mizralds, Nemmocians … and then a face peered down at him that set his mind suddenly a-whirl. It was a girl’s face, thrust through the rail of the balcony, staring right at him with joy and fascination. But that mouth, those eyes! All at once he could not stand it, and cried out, “I’m here! It’s me!”

  He succeeded in drawing her attention—and everyone else’s. Three horses shied, including his own, and the rooster they had heard before launched itself from one balcony to another, and came near to falling to its death. Pazel had not shouted I’m here, at least not in any familiar tongue. The sound he made was a wailed, inhuman skrreeee, followed by four emphatic clicks of his tongue.

  “Rin’s mercy,” said Neeps, shaken. “Pazel, you’ve got to stop that right now.”

  “I know,” said Pazel, heart thumping. He had shouted in Sea-Murthish, a tongue no human should be able to pronounce, but one his Gift had forced on him. The face that had looked down at him was that of the murth-girl, Klyst.

  Only it wasn’t, of course; it couldn’t be. The girl in any case had disappeared from the balcony, and those who had not withdrawn stared down in fright. Some of the soldiers in his own party were doing the same.