The Silver Thief

by Edward W. Robertson

  Den's jaw worked like he was actually chewing on these ideas. "You said Narashtovik's to blame for the raising of the Horneds. Sounds like we ought to be enemies."

  "If you want," Dante said. "But I think our lands have much in common. Including frequent clashes with Mallon. Far from being Mallish spies, we came here to curtail their ability to wage war on others."

  "How d'you intend to stop them from that?"

  "Telling you that would compromise our ability to get it done."

  "Might convenient."

  "Even more conveniently, it's true."

  "So," Blays said. "Are you guys going to execute us or what?"

  Den and the justice exchanged a look. Den tugged at his vest. "We'll have to consider that. In the meantime, it's back to the jails with you."

  "Nonsense! I thought that was the mob's decision." Blays crossed the crunchy dirt toward the audience. "So what do you say, mob? Still want to pitch us off a cliff?"

  "Nay," a woman said. Her declaration was echoed by the man next to her. Then it poured forth from the throat of every witness, a river of sound in the stillness of the desert.

  * * *

  Half-dazed, the three of them returned to the butte-top inn where they'd stayed prior to their destruction of the shaden. They climbed the steps to their room and flopped in the chairs there, grateful to be out of the sun and away from the crowds.

  "Well, that wasn't so bad," Blays said.

  Dante eyed him. "Wasn't so bad? They almost executed us as spies!"

  "That's not what happened at all. They almost got cut into thousands of fluttery little bits to be thrown behind us like confetti as we galloped away from Collen as fast as our legs could carry us."

  "That might not be such a bad idea."

  "Killing a mob? Has all the sunshine boiled your brain?"

  "Leaving Collen. We've convinced them we're not spies, but we outed ourselves in the process. It might be best to get out of here before word gets back to Gladdic."

  Naran shifted on his chair. "What do you propose?"

  "We can hole up in Averoy with the rest of your crew. Once we're in contact with Narashtovik and have a handle on how to deal with the Star-Eaters, we'll return to Bressel and take down Gladdic."

  "One small problem," Blays said. "We're out of food. As well as the money to buy food."

  "We can forage on the way."

  "Forage? On our way through Collen? I hope you like roast lizard. With a seasoning of sand." Blays produced one of his knives, which had been returned to him following their acquittal. "I suppose I could pawn a couple of these."

  "That works," Dante said. "But don't sell any of your favorites. I'd hate for you to die of heartbreak along the road."

  Blays departed to buy food for their coming travels. Naran decided to catch a nap. Finding the room stuffy, Dante walked downstairs to one of the covered patios. As he waited outside, Hodd entered the square, neck craned.

  Seeing Dante, he trotted up to him and bowed low, one knee brushing the ground. "Milord."

  "For the last time, I'm not your lord," Dante said. "What can I do for you?"

  "Ah." Hodd rose. "I'm looking for you. But I'm not the only one."

  "Tell me Den hasn't decided to slap us with a new set of charges."

  The monk blushed. "I brought word of your discoveries to my order. The Keeper of the Reborn Shrine wishes to see you at once—and to repay you for what you've unearthed."

  12

  Dante tilted his head. "The Keeper of the Reborn Shrine?"

  Hodd dipped his head and bent at the knees. "Just so, milord."

  "Who is this Keeper and what does he want with me?"

  "He will answer all your questions. Please say you'll come with me, milord."

  "We were about to leave town," he said, then shook his head to clear it. "Let me tell the others there's going to be a delay."

  Dante jogged upstairs and left a note for Blays and Naran in their room. He returned to the plaza and walked beside Hodd on their way to the shrine, pressing the young monk for details. Hodd merely stammered that the Keeper would be much better qualified to tell Dante everything he wished to know.

  The shrine's multi-stoned dome hovered over the rooftops. Hodd took him into a room deep inside the main building.

  "Wait here," he said. "The Keeper will be with you soon."

  Hodd closed the oversized door behind him. Dante seated himself in a padded chair facing the entrance. Five minutes later, a low whoosh sounded from the side of the room. A door Dante hadn't noticed swung open. He stood. An incredibly old woman hobbled inside, supporting herself with a broom that was taller than she was. She eyed Dante with eyes so pale that he initially thought she was blinded by cataracts. Yet after she looked him up and down, he realized they were simply the lightest shade of blue he'd ever seen. She limped forward, sweeping monotonously.

  "Pardon the dust." Her voice was a deep croak, as strong as an oak or a glacier, jarringly cavernous compared to the narrow frame of her body. "The monks, they ask, 'What's the point? There'll just be more dust tomorrow.' They're used to it, I suppose. But what would happen if no one swept?"

  "Here in Collen? I imagine you'd drown in it." Dante watched her another moment, then returned to his chair.

  She crossed the room, the broom's bristles rasping on the stone, marshaling a growing pile of dust. Dante kept his eyes fixed on nothing. He'd grown up as a peasant, then an orphan in a monastery of far meaner status than this shrine. Despite his last decade in the grandeur of the Sealed Citadel, he'd never fully gotten used to ordering servants around as if they were pieces on a Nulladoon board.

  With inexorable patience, she swept past him. Her broom was as plain as her dress, but the end of its shaft was carved into a crude horseshoe.

  When she was behind his chair, she said, "So you're Dante Galand."

  He jolted to his feet, twisting to face her. "Are you..?"

  "I am."

  "Excuse me. Hodd led me to believe you were a man."

  The old woman laughed to herself. "That's because he thinks I am one. I would ask you not to disabuse him of his assumptions."

  "If that's what you'd prefer."

  "It helps me do my sweeping without being bothered." She stared into his eyes, reading them, then nodded and resumed working with her broom. "Why are you here?"

  "Hodd said you wished to see me."

  "Why are you here in Collen, you fool?"

  "That's a long and winding story. The short answer is that I've been following the trail of Mallish meddling."

  "You could follow that trail the rest of your life and still not find its head. Is this visit official?"

  "It's personal. And it will remain that way."

  The old woman chuckled, the deep rasps bouncing off the walls. "You are your country. When you indulge in a personal vendetta, that vendetta becomes your nation's as well." She came to the corner of the room, reached into a brass urn, and retrieved a small hand broom and pan, which she used to gather up the formidable pile of dirt she'd accrued. "You claimed the blights that ruined Collen weren't our fault. Is this true? Or something you told the mob to save yourself from a swift trip down the cliff?"

  "What would you do if it was a lie?"

  She straightened, one hand pressed to her back, and stared into his eyes again. "Be surprised."

  "When the people who came before me raised the Wodun Mountains, it altered the lands of Weslee forever. There, a region of verdant forest became sandy desert. I believe the same thing happened here."

  "And we forgot. Swallowing Mallish lies instead." The Keeper's wrinkled face burned with sudden wrath. "The one thing my line is here to prevent."

  "What is your line?"

  "When Mallon comes, the priests bring knives. Hooks. Fire. Acid. When they turn those tools on a man, there's nothing he can hide from them. The only sanctuary is ignorance. The Keepers know what the common folk can't afford to."

  "And how do the Keepers keep themselves
safe?" Dante said.

  "By making sure the common folk don't know we exist."

  "Then why am I allowed to meet you?"

  "You've only been here a brief while, but you've already given us knowledge of ourselves we'd lost centuries ago. I don't think your work is done yet. Even so, most times, I'd be content to let you hoe your own way through the weeds ahead of you."

  "I'm guessing there's a 'but' on its way."

  "Even the stories about you take the form of a storm," she said. "Where you go, chaos follows. Say I stand on a ledge looking at my enemies below. There is a rock that may be poised to set off a slide, but reaching for it would be dangerous. Do I pray that it tips over on its own? Or do I stretch across the abyss and give it a nudge?"

  "I have no interest in dragging my people into a conflict with Mallon. But if I succeed in my goal here, Mallon will be significantly less driven to a new conflict with your people."

  She did her eye-reading thing again. Dante was well used to staring people down, but he found her gaze uncomfortable. Like that of an alligator, or the deep-set eyes of the statues of gods.

  "I see vengeance," the Keeper said. "But not malice. Let's loose the arrow and see where it lands." She tapped her broom against the floor. "Before we go any further, I need to warn you. Do you know the prophecy of this shrine?"

  "It was one of the first things Hodd told me. When it's reborn for the twelfth time, Arawn will emerge to destroy the Mallish."

  She nodded once. "And when he comes, he'll consume all who betrayed the shrine—including its secrets."

  "By the time this temple is torn down twice more, chances are I'll be long dead."

  "Arawn's realm is death. Do you think being dead would save you from his wrath?"

  The Keeper turned to the wall she'd come in through. Its face was adorned with bas-relief carvings of expansive fields of flowers and crops. The old woman lifted her broom and fit its horseshoe-shaped tip into the petal of a flower. A muffled metal click sprung from inside the wall. A door swung into a darkened room.

  She shuffled inside and Dante followed. The room smelled like rust. A string of small white stones hung on a hook beside the open door. She picked up the string with a clatter, cupped one of the stones in her palm, and blew on it. Pale light pushed back the darkness. Two dozen torchstones hung from the string. Enough that, even if she had to use their light for an entire day, by the time she exhausted the last one, the first would be ready to use again.

  The Keeper touched the edge of the door, which closed of its own accord. The room was half filled with religious statuettes, braziers, and candlesticks, coated in cobwebs and grime. It had the appearance of a forgotten storage room, but Dante wasn't surprised when the old woman jabbed her broomstick into the corner of the room, springing open a hatch in the floor.

  Stairs spiraled down into the darkness. They were narrow and steep, but the Keeper descended them without hesitation, coming to a landing of solid stone. She kneeled in the corner, withdrew a metal pin from her gray hair, and inserted it into a hole in the floor, opening yet another hatch. The floor had been Mallish limestone, but the next curve of stairwell was white chalk. They came to another landing, where the Keeper opened a third hatch with the help of a small knife. The third leg of the stairwell was black basalt.

  "What's down here?" Dante said.

  "Me," the Keeper croaked. "My two apprentices. And the truths our people would be killed for keeping."

  At the next landing, she shuffled through a brass door. The light of her torchstone seemed to shrink. Dante followed her through, stopping short as he emerged onto a landing overlooking a twenty-foot drop.

  The old woman blew on two more of the stones. White light flared across the room, which was a dark mirror of the library upstairs. Thousands of books crowded the shelves, alternating with racks of scrolls. Dante had seen few libraries to match it.

  Something felt wrong, but it took him a moment to place it. "There are no desks."

  The old woman gave him a sneer. "Who would use them?"

  The library looked simultaneously ancient, yet also astoundingly recent, as if a great arm had reached into the past and drawn the shrine's underground into the present day. The Keeper moved along the railing, coming to a high-ceilinged alcove lined with shelves. This room held a desk as well. Before she sat, she pulled one of four cords dangling from the wall. A bell jangled distantly.

  "Sit down," she said. "And tell me what you wish to know."

  They took up chairs at either side of the desk. Dante glanced up at the walls. "Maybe it's best if you don't know too much. I don't want to cause any extra trouble for Collen. Gods know you have enough."

  "Does it look like we get out much?"

  "The monks upstairs have to deal with all kinds of travelers."

  "I allowed you down here. If you want to stay, you'll tell me why you came."

  He scratched his stubble, then leaned back, exhaling through his nose. "We came here for two reasons. The first was to deal with some powerful objects the Mallish have gotten their hands on. Essentially, they're nether storage devices a sorcerer can use to augment their strength."

  "You're talking about the shells."

  "You know of them?"

  "Farmers have been finding them in the fields for two years. We've had many questions about them. And not so many answers."

  "A few weeks ago, we cut off Mallon's supply," Dante said. "A few days ago, we destroyed everything they had here."

  The Keeper scowled. "What were they using them for?"

  "We don't know. Maybe you can help us figure that out." He explained about the digs the Mallish soldiers had been conducting on the butte. How they'd been disinterring Collenese bodies and painting the bones with nether.

  The Keeper looked as though she might spit flame. "I don't know why they want our dead. For all the crimes they accuse us of, their own are nine times worse."

  A man padded into the room bearing a small lantern. His face was so pale and soft he looked boyish, yet he was clearly at least a decade Dante's senior. "You called, Keeper?"

  "Tea," she said without looking over.

  "Yes, Keeper." He turned and exited.

  "You have tea down here?" Dante said.

  "Does your order forbid it?"

  "My order couldn't function without it. But when I last spent much time in Mallish lands, no one knew what tea was."

  "Things change, don't they."

  Sitting there in the ageless, sealed-off library, he wasn't sure if that was a wry comment or a truth so basic it existed everywhere. The Keeper seemed lost in her own thoughts. Dante's loon tingled—the one connected to Jona—but he ignored it.

  The boyish man returned with a tarnished silver tray and two sturdy mugs. The tea inside was cold, and weaker than Dante was used to, but he was grateful nonetheless.

  "Does someone bring this down to you?" he said. "Or do you keep it in storage?"

  The Keeper gave him one of her looks. "Storage. What's the other reason you came to Collen?"

  "Do you know of Gladdic? The ordon from Bressel?"

  She snorted. "Do you know of forest fires? Plagues? Less than ten years ago, things were as close to peace as we ever know. Then Gladdic arose from the monkhood. He said Arawn's lies had once more poured out of the north. He said we were as weak for these lies as a drunk for his wine. He asked for all who believed in Arawn's place in the Celeset to come with him to the desert, where he'd show them Taim's miracle. We never saw them again. Since then, Mallish bluebacks are rarely away from Collen."

  "Right," Dante said. "Well, I'm here to kill him."

  The Keeper grabbed the desk's edge for support as she got to her feet. "He's here?"

  "What would you do if he was? Sweep him off the edge of the butte?"

  "Never," she said. "I'd make his death much slower than that."

  "Too bad, then. Last I heard, he was somewhere north of Bressel."

  The wrath faded from the old woman's face. She l
owered herself to her chair. "Then if you intend to kill him, it seems to me you're in the wrong place."

  "A few weeks back, we made a run at him. However, when we infiltrated his temple, we ran into something…unexpected." He described how Gladdic had shrugged off all of Dante's strikes with the nether, and how, when he'd finally attacked the ordon with the ether, he'd seemed to turn into a shadow of himself—one with bright silver eyes. "I couldn't seem to hurt him at all. But my friends had learned that he'd taken his most recent batch of shaden to Collen. We decided to follow the shells and see if I could learn anything more about Gladdic's ability here, where people have never stopped their practice of the nether."

  The Keeper asked a bevy of questions regarding Gladdic's transformation and what exactly Dante had done to try to harm him. At last, she lapsed into silence.

  "Enough for now," she said. "Return to me at noon tomorrow. I'll have your books then."

  "We're done?" Dante glanced around for a window, but there were none. "It's not even dinner yet."

  "I have other things to do besides educate ignorant young men. Such as nap."

  "If you're too tired, I could start looking through the archives myself."

  "The consumption of knowledge is no different than food, boy. It needs time to digest. Treader will show you out."

  The pale man stepped out from the shadows as silently as a ghost. "With me, sir."

  He led Dante up the stairwell and through its hidden trapdoors. In the storage room on the ground floor, he peeped through a hole in the wall, then brought Dante to the chamber where he'd first met the Keeper.

  Dante exited the shrine and made haste for the inn. Blays and Naran were sitting around the room looking annoyed.

  "Where were you?" Blays said. "Saying goodbye to all those friendly locals who've spent the last week dueling, insulting, accusing, and imprisoning us?"

  "I left you a note. I was summoned to the shrine." Weary after the lengthy day, Dante dropped into a chair. "We're not leaving. We were right to come here. More than we knew." He explained his meeting with the Keeper. "I'm supposed to see her again at noon tomorrow. She may know more about what the Mallish were doing out there—and how we can deal with Gladdic."