Shadow Blizzard (5 page)

Count Balistan Pargaid, for those who don’t know him, was a servant of the Master, and it was from his house in Ranneng that I stole the Key that we hoped to use to reach the very heart of Hrad Spein. Lafresa was supposed to deliver the Key to the Master in person, but I stole the Key, and then Balistan Pargaid and Lafresa set off after us in hot pursuit.

So far we had somehow managed to get the better of them, and not even a trial by combat had done them any good. Mumr had carved up his lordship’s prize warrior, and then everything had suddenly gone quiet. Balistan Pargaid and his retinue had disappeared. We had been wondering where he could have gotten to. Lafresa had already disappeared sometime during the trial by combat, and now it seemed likely that she had set out for Hrad Spein, and the count had caught up with her along the way. It was clear enough why Lafresa wasn’t afraid of entering Zagraba—she hoped that her shamanic skills would keep her safe. And she had no other choice anyway: The artifact had been lost, and the Messenger, who had instructed her to deliver the Key, would be very upset, not to mention the Master himself.

“What is the second piece of news?” Egrassa asked, looking at the flinny.

“The price of the second piece of news is a pinch of sugar.”

“We don’t have any sugar,” Hallas said spitefully. “We’re not confectioners, you know. Maybe I should do another dance for you?”

The gnome’s words sounded like a challenge.

“Oh, no! My heart couldn’t stand another spectacle like that! What do you have instead?”

We looked at each other. Darkness only knew what might interest this dealer in news.

“I have a sweet!” Kli-Kli suddenly announced.

“Show me it,” said Aarroo, leaning forward.

Kli-Kli hastily rummaged through the many pockets of his outfit and took out a battered-looking sweet, still wrapped in its bright golden paper. He must have been saving it since Avendoom.

The flinny studied it closely and then, with a bored expression on his face, as if he was doing us a humongous favor, declared, “Garbage, of course, but it’ll do. Throw it on the ground.”

I thought it was all an act, and the flinny actually liked the sweet. He lowered his dragoatfly right onto the sweet and started tying it to the belly of his mount.

“News. A man has been seen in the Golden Forest. Wearing a gray cloak, his face was not visible. Armed with a spear. Walking quickly, almost without stopping at all. Four hours’ flying away from you. Coming straight here. Seems like the Golden Forest has been smeared with honey; I haven’t seen so many outsiders in a long time. Ah, yes! I advise you not to interfere with him—the forest spirits say he’s a warrior.”

“We’re not exactly cobblers,” Deler protested.

“When the forest spirits say that someone’s a warrior, we usually take notice, but that’s up to you. The price of the third piece of news is the ring of that beanpole over there with the long mustache,” said the flinny, with a nod toward Alistan Markauz.

“Which one?” the count asked.

“Well, certainly not the silver one with your crest,” the little extortionist quipped. “You people are too sensitive about those little family knickknacks. It’s stupid to ask for them—you won’t give them up anyway. I like that one, with the red ruby.”

Alistan took the ring off his finger without the slightest objection and put it on the ground. The flinny smiled contentedly and the ring joined the sweet under his dragoatfly’s belly.

“Is your news worth it?” I asked.

“That’s for you to decide, not me. News. There are orcs nearby.”

“Where?” asked Egrassa, reaching for his bow.

“In the ruins of the city of Chu. Six of them. Ordinary scouts. They’re not waiting for you. They’ll stay there for another five days.”

“How do you know that?”

“I heard,” the flinny said with a grin. “One of them fell into a trap and broke his leg, and now he’s delirious, so only five of them are fit to fight. You can finish them off, or you can just avoid them.”

“We shall take note of your information. Is that all?”

“Yes. There is no more news, good-bye.”

The dragoatfly hummed as it rose up into the air and flew off toward the forest with its belly touching the tops of the daisies. The little beast was well loaded, and I was surprised it could get off the ground at all carrying that weight.

“Flinnies are very fond of all sorts of rings,” Kli-Kli enlightened me.

“I’ll remember that.”

“Rotten skunk!” Hallas exclaimed, watching with anger in his eyes as the flinny flew away.

“What can you expect from a flinny?” Kli-Kli asked with mock surprise. “They earn their living by peddling the news.”

“So won’t he sell us to that group of orcs? I think the Firstborn could find something to pay for information on our whereabouts. I don’t trust those little runts.”

“He would do that, if the Firstborn would bother to talk to him. But they have no respect for flinnies, and the flinnies are too proud to put up with that kind of treatment.”

“Pack up your things!” said Egrassa, getting up off the ground. “We have the whole day until it gets dark, and then the night in reserve. We have to cover as much distance as possible today.”

“What are we going to do about the orcs?”

This was no idle question from Mumr—there were Firstborn up ahead, even if they weren’t expecting us.

“We’ll kill them,” said Egrassa, glancing at Miralissa, who nodded. “We could just avoid them, of course, but it’s never a good idea to leave enemies behind you.”

“And what do we do about this fellow who’s coming up behind us? Why don’t Deler and I stay behind and ask him a few questions?”

“Hallas, you have no brains and no imagination!” said Deler—the dwarf never pulled any punches talking to his partner. “All you ever want to do is to wave that mattock about. The flinny told us this fellow is dangerous and we should stay well clear of him! And even if we beat him, then how are we going to find the group afterward, have you thought about that? Or since this morning have gnomes learned how to wander through forests without getting lost?”

“It’s no more difficult than walking through the mine galleries,” Hallas muttered.

“But I don’t want to get lost in the forest and then one fine day discover that I’ve wandered into an orcs’ nest,” Deler snapped.

“No one’s staying here,” said Milord Alistan, putting a swift end to the argument between the gnome and the dwarf. “If that man wants to follow us, let him. If he catches up and attacks us, then we’ll fight him. I’m more concerned about Pargaid and his dogs waiting for us up ahead, and this Spinney.”

“We’ll deal with Pargaid when we reach him, milord,” said Eel, who had already packed his sack.

“There’s no reason to be so concerned about the Spinney, either,” said Miralissa, throwing her s’kash behind her shoulder. “The forest spirits could have left it for a hundred different reasons. We’ll hope for the best.”

“And expect the worst,” I muttered quietly, but I think the elfess heard me anyway.

“Kli-Kli.” The dwarf’s voice was very soft, but it sounded rather ominous for the goblin. “What did you do with my hat?”

The goblin decided the best thing to do was hide behind my back. That’s always the way—he plays his pranks and Harold’s left holding the baby.

2

THE RED SPINNEY

“What used to be here before, Kli-Kli?”

“Can’t you see for yourself, from the ruins? A city, of course!”

The goblin and I were lying on a heap of gray stones with a thick covering of moss. Standing beside us was a tall fluted column of the same stone, also overgrown with dark, dense moss, like the entire city of Chu.

The ruins of the ancient city stood in between the trunks of golden-leafs and larches. A column here, a wall there, a little farther off an arch beside some wolfberry bushes, and beyond that, a huge building with a dome that had collapsed. And so on in the same way for as far as the eye could see. The ruins rose straight out of the soft carpet of moss, they were drowning in it, choking in the undergrowth of ferns and thistles, crushed beneath the roots of the mighty golden-leafs. This city had probably been great and beautiful once, and now there was nothing left of its past glory but phantoms. Now it was nothing more than dead stone, eaten away by the hungry moths of time.

“I can see it wasn’t a country village. Who used to live here?”

“How should I know?” the jester asked with a shrug. “These ruins can remember the retreat of the ogres into the Desolate Lands and the arrival of orcs and elves in Siala. There’s no way I could know who lived here in those days. But believe me, Chu is very beautiful. Or it was very beautiful.”

“Have you been here before, too?”

“Of course not. It’s just that Chu isn’t the only abandoned city in Zagraba. There’s another one, a lot like this, near the area where my tribe lives. We used to call it Bu. It’s a lot better preserved than Chu.”

The evening was drawing in as the sun sank behind the horizon, and only a few of its bright rays could penetrate the branches of the trees. Twilight was advancing in the forest. I moved my miniature crossbow closer and checked for the hundredth time that it was loaded.

To my great joy and Kli-Kli’s intense annoyance, Alistan Markauz had left us here while the others went to deal with the orcs.

Well, it was the right thing to do! A thief and a jester aren’t made for waging war and doing battle. The goblin, of course, thought differently, but after grumbling for a while he had finally decided to stay with me.

Cra-a-a! Cra-a-a! Cur-a-a-a!

The bird’s call soared above the ruins like a mournful ghost, echoing off walls and shattering the peace of this deserted spot. For a brief instant the top of the tall skewed column and the trunks of the trees glinted with the blue flash of a spell worked about two hundred yards away. Then the usual calm of the dead city returned.

“It’s started,” said Kli-Kli, sitting up. “That’s Miralissa at work.”

“I can’t hear anything.”

“So much the better. It means no one else can hear anything, either. Let’s wait.”

So we waited. The minutes seemed to drag on for an eternity.

The thick carpet of moss deadened our footsteps, and we first saw the runner when he was just ten yards away. Kli-Kli pinched me very painfully on the arm and nodded toward the column. At first I thought the runner was Egrassa. But then why was the elf holding a yataghan instead of his usual s’kash?

Of course, it wasn’t an elf, but an orc. The two races were too much alike for me to be able to tell the difference in the first few seconds. Sagot be praised, at least we were lying behind the stones and the orc couldn’t see us.

“What are you waiting for? He’ll get away!” Kli-Kli hissed, taking the first pair of throwing knives off his belt.

The fool was right. If the orc managed to get away alive, he would warn his tribe, and we would pay with our heads. The enemy was so close to me I would have had to try really hard to miss.

Twang!

The bolt easily pierced the light chain mail and stuck in the orc’s back. He stumbled and fell facedown in the moss. I didn’t feel any pangs of conscience about shooting a running enemy from behind. If he’d had a chance, he wouldn’t have thought twice about trying to finish off me and Kli-Kli.

“Did you kill him?” Kli-Kli asked, pressing himself against me in fright.

“Looks like I did,” I said uncertainly, keeping the crossbow out for the time being.

“That’s just the point—it looks like you did. Maybe he’s got enough wits to play dead!” said the goblin, also in no great hurry to go near the body.

“Kli-Kli, he’s got a bolt stuck in his back almost right up to the flight. How could he possibly be alive?”

“I still wouldn’t go anywhere near him,” the jester warned me.

Fear and doubt are always infectious. I started watching the motionless orc apprehensively. What if the goblin was right and the Firstborn was only pretending to be a corpse? In any case, he was still clutching the yataghan in his hand.

“All right,” I sighed. “Just remember, I’m only doing this for your peace of mind.”

I had to walk a few steps closer to the body to put another bolt in the orc’s back. But the lad didn’t even twitch in response to this act of sadism.

“Well, now are you convinced he’s as dead as stone?”

“Almost.” The jester walked cautiously up to the body and prodded the dead orc with the toe of his boot. “The gods be praised, you finished him.”

“They’re not so very frightening, and they die just like men.”

“If you take them by surprise.”

I swung round sharply at the sound of Egrassa’s voice and raised the crossbow.

“Harold, if it had been an orc in my place, you’d be dead already. And anyway, your crossbow’s not loaded. What happened here?”

“An orc, one of the Firstborn you were supposed to kill. Harold shot him, but I spotted him first,” Kli-Kli babbled, determined not to let me take the credit for his victory.

“No, Kli-Kli, he’s not one of ours.” The elf tugged the body onto its back and leaned down over the orc, studying his face dispassionately. “Miralissa bound them with the Net of Immobility and we finished them all off, they never even saw it coming. Four sitting round a campfire, another one nearby with the wounded soldier, six altogether. We killed them all.”

“Then where did this one come from? Or is this orc just the product of my morbid imagination?” the goblin muttered peevishly.

“It’s just that your lousy flinny didn’t bother to tell us about the seventh one,” said Hallas, appearing from behind a wall. “From the very beginning I said we shouldn’t trust that little flying bastard.”

“Where there was a seventh, there could be an eighth,” Egrassa said thoughtfully.

“Or even a ninth and a tenth,” said the goblin, deliberately rubbing salt into the wound.

“Let’s go and join the others, then decide what to do.”

We set off after the elf, with Hallas panting along behind us. Egrassa confidently led us through the labyrinth of overgrown buildings. There was ruin and decay on all sides, but at the same time the place was … well, beautiful. With the strange, mysterious beauty of thousands of years of time.