The River of Shadows

by Robert V. S. Redick

  The Simjan’s face looked drowned: not in the substance of the pool, but in a boundless immensity of terror. “I can’t feel my limbs,” he said.

  “That’s all right, boy,” said Alyash. “You won’t be needing ’em.”

  Fulbreech gazed helplessly at the bosun. “He will not harm you without my consent,” said Hercól, “and I will not give it, whether you help us or refuse. For I have done you a disservice, Fulbreech.”

  Thasha, and most of the others, looked at him in shock. “A grave disservice,” Hercól went on. “I have had some opportunity to reflect on my mistake, these last days of traveling. How you came to be Arunis’ creature I will never know. Were you madly ambitious as you seem? Or were you weak, like Mr. Druffle, seduced into lowering your defenses, until he made a puppet of you, colonized your mind? Do not speak yet! I will believe nothing you say. But the fact is that when I guessed whose work you did, I chose to leave you in his clutches, for weeks. It was the only way I could think of to locate Arunis’ hiding place on the Chathrand. But in so doing I treated you as a pawn, just as Arunis did. I might have struck a deal with Ott, had you safely confined, asked Chadfallow and Lady Oggosk to attempt the rescue of your soul.”

  “You don’t know that he needed any rescuing,” said Thasha, her rage boiling over. “You don’t know that he wanted any.”

  “And now I never shall,” said Hercól, “unless we escape this place. Then, Fulbreech, I will seek help for you—again, whether you aid us now, or not.”

  “Damn it, Hercól!” Pazel exploded. “Why don’t you make him your mucking heir and be done with it?”

  “Pazel’s right,” said Neeps. “You’re going too blary far.”

  “Thashiziq!” said Ibjen suddenly. “I hear voices. From the black water beneath the roots.”

  Hercól waved imperiously for silence. “What you must appreciate, Fulbreech,” he went on calmly, “is that if you do not help us, we cannot prevail. And then you will be doomed. Your body will perish here, and your soul—what did he say would become of it, lad? He had a promise for you, didn’t he?”

  “They’re calling me, calling me away,” whispered Ibjen.

  Bolutu shot him a quick, distracted look. “You’re in nuhzat, lad. Be still and it will pass.”

  Ibjen sank to the ground, hugging his knees. Thasha crouched down and held him, whispering, begging him to hush. Whatever Hercól was attempting she didn’t dare interrupt.

  Fulbreech’s tongue slid over bloodless lips. “I don’t know what you want, Master Hercól,” he said.

  “What I want is answers,” said Hercól, “although I know you cannot give them if you still serve the mage. If that is the case we must fail, and perish here together. But even then I will help you.”

  “How?”

  “With a clean death,” said Hercól, “and if I discover you in a lie I will do it instantly, for our time is very short.” Then, as if following a sudden impulse, he added, “I will also do so at a word from Mr. Undrabust. You may not be aware of it, Fulbreech, but he has a nose for lies. The best I have ever encountered.”

  Neeps stared at him, shocked silent in his turn. Pazel reached out and squeezed his shoulder. Courage, mate. Hercól rested the tip of Ildraquin on Fulbreech’s throat.

  “Speak a little truth,” he said.

  Fulbreech lay there, blinking and trembling. He licked his lips again. “Arunis can use the Stone,” the youth whispered. “He’s already doing it. Through the tol-chenni we brought from Masalym. He has terrible powers now, worse than anything you’ve seen.”

  “Then we’re too Gods-damned late,” hissed Big Skip. But Ensyl, on his shoulder, hushed him quickly.

  “He’s keeping the forest dark,” said Fulbreech. “He says it’s always full of light—made by creatures, and plants, and mushrooms—just not the kind our eyes can see. Only the fireflies make our sort of light, and he’s driven them into hiding. And he … created this place around me. As a trap, in case you made it this far.”

  “What is the danger here?” asked Hercól. “The bats? The pool itself?”

  Fulbreech shook his head slightly. “He said that if I didn’t know, I couldn’t tell you. That’s the truth, by all the Gods. But I know this: he has power from the Stone, but not control—not yet. The idiot really is mad—dangerously mad. And to use the Stone, Arunis has to reach into his mind and make him see what he wants.”

  “How much does he know of us, boy?” said Lunja suddenly. “Our numbers, our distance from him? Is he watching us even now?”

  “No,” said Fulbreech. “He has caught only glimpses of you, though they seemed to grow clearer with each day—as you grew closer, perhaps. When we stood on the shores of the glacier lake, he closed his eyes suddenly and cried, ‘Vadu! Vadu has drawn his knife, somewhere on the plain below! That buffoon is chasing us!’ Then again, a day later, he stopped and pressed a hand to his forehead. He was furious, and I heard him growl: ‘So you are bringing her, are you, Counselor?’ I thought he meant Macadra, the sorceress from Bali Adro City: after all, we fled when he learned that she was coming for the Stone. But now I think he meant you, Thasha darling.”

  “Enough of that talk,” snapped Hercól. “Where is Arunis now?”

  “Deeper inside the forest. Where the River of Shadows breaks through to the surface.”

  “That is no help,” said Cayer Vispek. “Which direction, and how far?”

  Fulbreech shook his head again. “I don’t know. He would not tell me.”

  Hercól and Neeps exchanged a glance. “Continue,” said the swordsman.

  Fulbreech coughed: it was like an old man’s rattling wheeze. Then he lay still, gazing strangely at Hercól. “Are you finished?” said the swordsman at last. “Have you nothing more to tell?”

  “You want to know how I came to be in his service?” said Fulbreech suddenly, and there was pride in his ruined voice. “Perhaps you think he seized on some weakness. Oh no, Stanapeth, not at all. I went to him. In all that multitude at Thasha’s wedding, I alone saw through his disguise, saw that he was the power behind the spectacle, the master of ceremonies, the one who would win.” He turned his head, gazing at them in defiance. “And when you know that, do you linger on the losing side? Not if you’ve been poor. Not if you mean to go places in your life, to be something better than a clerk in a backwater kingdom on a humdrum isle.”

  “You were already goin’ places, you little bastard,” snarled Alyash. “We’d seen to that.”

  “The Secret Fist,” said Fulbreech. “A priesthood of cutthroats, bowing to a crude stone idol named Sandor Ott. I would never have remained like you, Alyash, a cringing servant. When I guessed that Arunis was manipulating Ott’s conspiracy, I walked right up to him, right there at the procession. I told him I was Ott’s man, and would be his if the terms were better.”

  “Were they?” asked Bolutu.

  The Simjan’s eyes widened, but he was no longer focusing on what was before them. “Choosing sides,” he said. “That was my talent; that was my only gift. I told you, Thasha: I placed all my trust in that gift, and I have never been wrong.”

  “This time you were wrong, giant,” said Myett.

  Fulbreech kept his gaze on Thasha. “Cure me,” he said. “I know you have the power. Cure me, heal my limbs, and I will tell you about the River of Shadows.”

  “What about the River?” she asked.

  “Don’t listen to him, Thasha,” said Neeps. “I doubt he knows any more than we do.”

  “You know that it surfaces here, in this forest,” said Fulbreech, “and you know that it touches many worlds, that if you fall into its depths you might wash up anywhere. But what good does that do you? I know something Arunis wishes no one to know. Something priceless to your quest. I know where the River touches the world of the dead.”

  Bolutu turned him a sudden, piercing look. “Yes,” said Fulbreech, “I was there when Arunis discovered it; I saw his fury and disbelief. The world of the dead, Thasha. The one
place that can save you. The place where the Nilstone belongs.”

  “Where is this place?” demanded Hercól.

  A vein pulsed on the youth’s white forehead. “Cure me,” he said to Thasha. “It is a small deed for you.”

  “Greysan,” she said, “you’re wrong about me. Everyone is, by the Pits.”

  “Don’t lie,” he said. “Heal me, Thasha, let me walk. I can help you defeat him. With your power, and all I’ve learned—”

  “I am not a mage,” she said.

  There was steel in her voice. Fulbreech watched her a long time, and Pazel saw belief welling in his eyes, and then a new, colder look. “None of you stand a chance, then,” he whispered. “You’re the walking dead. He’s won.”

  “Not while one of us draws breath,” said Hercól.

  “You’re dead,” said Fulbreech again. “You’ve never known who you were fighting. You think he’s just a beast, a monster, someone who hates for no reason. But he’s not.”

  “What in Pitfire is he, then?” said Pazel.

  Fulbreech’s eyes swiveled until they locked on Pazel. A ghastly smile appeared on his face. “You should have guessed by now,” he said. “Why, he’s the same as you, Pathkendle. A natural scholar.”

  Pazel looked as though he might get suddenly ill. Fulbreech’s smile grew. “Thasha talked a lot on that bed, when I let her. She told me what you loved as a child. Books, school, good marks. Treats for cleverness from your betters. And who were your betters? Old Chadfallow, of course, and all those captains who let a dirty Ormali set foot on their boats. And of course, Thasha herself. Tell me, Pazel, was it worth it? Did you ever earn your treat?”

  Pazel leaped at him, quite out of his mind. It was all Neeps and Thasha could do to hold him back. Fulbreech watched them gleefully. “Arunis is no different,” he said. “He’s been a student for three thousand years.”

  “How many lies do you need, Hercól?” said Bolutu, furious. “Arunis has been torturing this world for three thousand years. The North. The South. Kingdom after kingdom, war after war. Tell me he does not hate Alifros, Mr. Fulbreech. Say that, if you dare.”

  “He does not hate Alifros,” said the Simjan. “He has no time for love or hate. He is a student, in the school where Gods are made. And those wars, those perished kingdoms, this last, total extermination—” Fulbreech’s body shook with mirth. “They’re his exams.”

  In the appalled silence that followed, Thasha knew suddenly that there were great regions within her where her mind dared not go. In one of them a woman was screaming. Thasha heard the scream like an echo from the depths of a cave.

  “He promised to take me with him,” said Fulbreech. “All the way out of Alifros, to the realm of the Gods. He lied, of course: that was the best way to ensure my services. There was never anything personal about it. How could a mind that old have feelings for the likes of us? A dead world. That’s his project. Nothing else will suffice. He has to offer it up for inspection by his betters, you see. He called it a difficult school.”

  Ildraquin slipped from Hercól’s fingers. No one moved but Fulbreech, giggling in his madness. Then Ibjen crawled forward on hands and knees, lifted the sword and stabbed down, through Fulbreech’s stomach, into the earth.

  Fulbreech gasped but did not scream. Thasha rushed forward to pull the blade free, but Hercól stayed her with a hand. Too late. Removing the blade would only speed the Simjan’s death.

  Of course the wound gushed all the same. Fulbreech tried and failed to lift his head. “I can’t feel a thing,” he croaked.

  “But you are dying, all the same,” said Hercól.

  “And your soul is damned,” said Jalantri.

  “Who knows?” said Fulbreech, drooling blood now, and yet somehow still amused. Then his eyes found Thasha’s once more. Through hideous expulsions of bile and blood, he said, “You’ll … fight?”

  “Fight Arunis?” said Thasha. “Of course we will.”

  Suddenly Fulbreech screamed. He convulsed, his paralysis ending with his life. But through the torment his eyes blazed with sudden defiance. With a terrible effort, choking on his own fluids, he spat out a last word.

  “What was that?” said Bolutu, starting forward. “Did you say Gurishal?”

  Fulbreech nodded. Then he raised a hand, shaking as with palsy, and Thasha took it, and held it as he died.

  No one else made a sound. When Fulbreech was still at last, Thasha turned and looked blankly at Hercól.

  “You asked for the truth,” she said.

  All of this had happened by the light from the pool alone. But the strange ooze was draining away, and the purple light was dying. “In a few minutes we’ll be blind again,” said Alyash, his voice shaking. “We need a plan, Stanapeth.”

  “The plan has not changed,” said Hercól. “Come, let us be off.”

  “But friends!” cried Bolutu, “didn’t you hear his last word? Gurishal! The River of Shadows touches death’s kingdom on Gurishal! Fulbreech has given us the key. Gurishal is where we can send the Nilstone out of Alifros forever.”

  “And before he came here, Arunis did not know,” said Dastu. Thasha and Pazel turned to face him, and for a moment there was no hatred between them, only wonder and amazement.

  “Gods,” said Pazel, “you must be right. He’s been doing everything he can to get the Shaggat there, with the Nilstone in hand. And yet it’s the one place in Alifros where we want the Stone to go.”

  “He was being used,” said Dastu. “Arunis the sorcerer was being used.”

  “No wonder he was furious,” said Thasha.

  Ibjen looked up at her, blinking back his tears. “Fulbreech may have helped you in the end,” he said, “but he betrayed you a moment before. He was calling out to Arunis, trying to get his attention, to tell him we stood by this pool. He started the moment you declared you could not heal him, Thashiziq. The voices told me: ‘Come away, come away, you’re doomed, you’re in the sorcerer’s trap.’ ”

  “You did well to kill him,” said Neda. “Don’t weep; there is no shame in your act.”

  Ibjen shook his head. “It’s not because of my oath,” he said. “It’s because I waited, hoping one of you would do it for me. That is worse. That is meaner.”

  Hercól looked up: the darkness was descending like a black fog. “No more delay,” he said. “We must get away from here, away from those bats, before we try again with the torch.”

  The elder Turach gazed at him heavily. “And then?” he said.

  “Then we backtrack to the trail we were marking,” said Hercól, “and resume the search.”

  “Resume!” laughed Alyash. “Begin it, you mean! Only this time we’ve got piss-all to go by. Stanapeth, it’s over. You can fool yourself that you might find a needle in a haystack—no, in a blary barn–if you’ve got a lodestone to drag around through the hay. But our lodestone was a cheat.”

  “We must find the place where the River of Shadows breaks the surface,” said Hercól. “What else would you counsel?”

  “To follow our own trail back to the vine, that’s what,” cried Alyash. “And the vine to blessed daylight.”

  Several of the soldiers, human and dlömic alike, nodded approvingly. Hercól looked at them in alarm. “You know that to concede the Nilstone to Arunis means death to us all,” he said. “Surely Fulbreech made that clear once again?”

  “Let’s just start walking,” pleaded Big Skip.

  A furtive movement caught Thasha’s eye: Jalantri was squeezing Neda’s hand in his. She pulled away. Jalantri whispered something in Mzithrini that unsettled her even more. But before he finished there came a loud pop, like a child’s toy cannon, and Jalantri howled in pain.

  Something black and amorphous had struck the back of his head. He stumbled, groping at it. The thing slipped through his fingers again and again, and yet one end of it seemed embedded in his skin. At last he ripped it away, leaving a coin-sized wound.

  Pop. Pop. Thasha felt a blow to her arm, and
a sharp stab. An identical creature was there, wriggling, burrowing into her flesh. “Leeches!” cried Dastu, as another struck his leg. “But they’re coming like cannon-shot!”

  Pop. Pop. Pop. “The globe mushrooms!” said Ensyl, pointing. “They’re bursting out of them! Great Mother, there could be thousands.”

  All at once the air was thick with the foul, biting creatures. Thasha felt them strike her again, in the shoulder, in the neck. “Out of here!” bellowed Hercól. “Get beyond the globes, beyond that ridge we descended! But then stop and regroup, for the love of Rin!”

  Humans and dlömu were bolting in all directions. Neeps tripped over Fulbreech; Jalantri, his chest thick with leeches, shouted for Neda as he ran. Alyash was waving his pistol, of all things. Then Pazel slipped in the slime from the pool, and cried out as his wounded leg was wrenched. Thasha dived for him, grabbed his arm and dragged him, leeches and all, out through the fern-fungi, and under the fallen tree, and then—

  “Cover your eyes!”

  —right up the slope, the wall of exploding fungi, and on among the towering trees until she was sure nothing else was striking them.

  Twenty feet from the pool, and it was nearly pitch black. “Tear them off, Pazel!” she shouted.

  “I am! I am!”

  Gods, but they hurt. Eight, nine of them—and another in the small of her back. She was still trying to get a grip on it when she felt Pazel’s fingers. He groped, squeezed, ripped: the leech was gone, along with a barbed mouthful of her skin. Then a match flared in the blackness, somewhere off to their left. It died, and Alyash bellowed in rage. Another match glowed, and this time Alyash managed to light the torch. “Here, here, to me!” he bellowed. “You heard Stanapeth! Regroup!”

  Thasha and Pazel stumbled toward him. Others, by the sound of it, were doing the same. Then Alyash screamed as a flickering, flapping darkness took his arm. The torchlight disappeared. Thasha caught the stink of burning flesh.

  “The bats!” cried Alyash. “They attacked the torch! Devils in the flesh, they’re suicidal!”

  “Light it again! Light it again!”