The River of Shadows (14 page)

THE EDITOR
RECOMMENDS
OTHER READING TO
THE FAINT OF HEART

TO MY THUS-FAR-LOYAL READERS:

Happiness is not nothing. One should embrace it. The world groans under the weight of serious minds bent miserably over their books, over their smithy’s bench, their ledger or their laundry or their weevil-withered crops. Happiness may vanish in an eyeblink, never to return. Why should anyone spend the length of a tea-sip on a story that does not guarantee—absolutely guarantee—the emotion’s increase?

My purpose here is simply a warning. If you are part of that infinitesimally small (and ever smaller) band of dissidents with the wealth, time and inclination to set your hands on the printed word, I suggest you consider the arguments
against
the current volume. To wit: the tale is morbid, the persons depicted are clumsy when they are not evil, the world is inconvenient to visit and quite changed from what is here described, the plot at this early juncture is already complex beyond all reason, the moral cannot be stated, and the editor is intrusive.
⁴

The story most obviously imperils the young. But certain others should weigh the benefits of persevering; these include the old, who after all will perish soon enough; the able-bodied, whose vigor may decline if they make a habit of reading at length; the unmarried, who had best cultivate more sociable pastimes; the married, who find the freedom to read only by neglecting commitments; those whose religious views are policed by employer, priest, king, grandmother or guilt internal; the nearsighted; the nervous; the gleefully patriotic.

But the first criticism—the sheer gray gloom of the tale—is the most damning. To that end, and conscious of my duties as a curator of this splendid archive, I have assembled a list of some seven hundred titles surpassing
The Chathrand Voyage
in both brevity and good cheer. Among them:

• Bissep, Mother K.,
  The Good Millipede of Wilber Meadow
  
• Tennyson, Virzel,
  Kh’iguar Mutis
  (“Great Scaly Things Defeated,” bilingual edition)
  
• Lace, Helium,
  And Then They Were Married
  
• Slabbe, Lord Cuprius,
  What I Eat
  
• Ungrok, Egar,
  Battle for Battle’s Sake: An Adventure for Boys
  

The complete list is available upon request. It is quite startling how much one has to choose from. I merely implore you to recall that life is fleeting, and that choices must be made.

4.
Do not misunderstand me:
The Chathrand Voyage
has merits aplenty. Why else would I dedicate this last effort of my life to its telling? Why else would the lord of this domain have granted me five (young, ambitious, “promising,” petty, cynical, rude) editorial assistants, and a meal allowance? Never mind that Holub’s
Curse of the Violet King
is better known. I know Mr. Holub. I wish him well and feel no envy, and incidentally he suffers miserably from ringworm.

Carried Away

22 Ilbrin 941

Night fell. The pool of fire dwindled behind them. Without chart or knowledge of the gulf they fled, east by southeast, pulling gradually away from the Sandwall. Ibjen wept; he had tried a second time to throw himself overboard, and had been seized again by the Turachs. Even when eight miles separated them from the northern shore he begged to be allowed to swim.

“Not on your life,” said Fiffengurt. “Besides, you told us you have family in the city.”

“I do,” said Ibjen. “But my father, those soldiers—”

“Would only grab you too, lad. You can’t help your father that way.”

“But I thought you were
avoiding
Masalym! Oh, where are you taking me? Why did I come aboard?”

Where indeed? Geography, at least, should not have changed in two centuries. Ibjen was too upset to be consulted, but Mr. Bolutu recalled from his schooldays that the city lay due south from Cape Lasung. “A wonder, they say: Masalym, the city above the falls. I should dearly love to see it.”

“You were the one who warned us
not
to pay ’em a visit,” snapped Fiffengurt. “Sorry to disappoint you, but we’re taking your first piece of advice. We need food, and a calm harbor for repairs. But most of all we need to stay away from bastards like the ones we just escaped.”

An hour later he turned the
Chathrand
hard to the southwest, a tack calculated to bring them in sight of land at least thirty miles west of the city. “We’ll put you ashore wherever it’s safe, Master Ibjen,” he assured the boy at last, “with a purse of gold for services rendered, and hardships endured.”

“Enough to buy a horse?”

“Enough for a blary brood stallion. Now go and eat, before Teggatz licks out the pots.”

It was a chilly night; the old moon absent, the strange little sapphire moon winking low and pale in the south. Far to the east, flashes of light could be seen, and low, deep rumblings followed, like the growls of giant dogs. Traces of a storm, the men told themselves. But Pazel recalled the armada that had sailed that way, and was not sure.

They shortened sail: even in these calm waters it would not do to come suddenly upon a lee shore, or a reef. At first light they would take in their surroundings, Fiffengurt declared: perhaps they would find another village, well away from the city, a humble settlement blessed with cove and croplands, where no army of marauders lay in wait.

Neither Pazel nor Thasha wanted to eat. They helped out in the surgery, cleaning and binding wounds, cutting cloth into bandages, rinsing blood from the floor with buckets of salt water and doing anything else Rain or Fulbreech asked. Hercól and Bolutu joined in as well: the swordsman knew a great deal of field medicine, and Bolutu was, after all, a veterinary surgeon. All the same, it was like a battle after the battle: they ran, cursed, held the bleeding men down, stabbed sutures into their wounds. If only Dr. Chadfallow—! They did not have to say it. He would have made it all look easy. He would have made them into a platoon.

Hours into the work, Pazel looked up from the pan of knives he was washing to see Fulbreech leaning exhausted over a surgical table, trembling; and Thasha supporting him, an arm over his shoulders, her chin against his cheek. Hercól noticed them too, and his eyes narrowed to slits. When he glanced at Pazel it seemed almost a warning.

Later, Pazel, Thasha and Hercól visited the forecastle house. Both moons were risen now, and their conjoined light spilled through the window, illuminating huddled sleepers, stacked dishes, Ott’s watchful eyes. Pazel’s hatred struggled in the chains of his fatigue. Did the man never sleep?

Chadfallow slept near the window, snoring through the nose Pazel had broken on Bramian. Lady Oggosk crouched by the smudge-pot, burning scraps of paper. And there in a corner lay Neeps and Marila, curled up like puppies, dead to the world. Someone might have nudged them awake, for Neeps had wanted to talk no matter the hour. But it wasn’t going to happen: Ott was already approaching, stepping over Chadfallow, demanding information. There was no defying him, not with Neeps and Marila there to punish as he liked. The damage? he asked Hercól. The course heading, the winds? And what about the Shaggat’s arm?

You’ve failed
, Pazel longed to tell him.
Your Emperor’s dead, and the Shaggat’s worshippers have been waiting for two hundred years
. But Hercól was right: Ott’s mind would only spin new evil from whatever knowledge it gained. The only winning move was to keep him in the dark as long as they could.

It was two in the morning when Pazel, Thasha and Hercól returned to the stateroom. They didn’t speak. They fed the dogs their evening ration of biscuit, and ate the same themselves, with a bit of rye porridge (several days old) for dessert. Felthrup ran back and forth upon the table, studying and sniffing them, begging them to eat. Pazel glanced often at Thasha, but her look was far away.

Hercól sat mechanically stroking Jorl’s blue head, and at last began to tell them of the horrible deeds he had done for years as a servant of the Secret Fist. Kidnappings, betrayals, false letters designed to set prince against prince, fires sparked in the temples where uncooperative monks shielded enemies of the Arquali state.

“I told myself it was for a cause,” he declared, watching them, unblinking. “What cause? Order in Alifros, the end of war, of fiefdom against small, stupid, tyrannical fiefdom. But that was only Ott’s credo, his manic religion. ‘Arqual, Arqual, just and true.’ I was a warrior-priest of that religion, as much as any
sfvantskor
is of the Old Faith. Indeed I wonder sometimes if Ott did not model us on the
sfvantskor
, even as we fought them in the shadows. When I met your sister and the other two, Pazel, I felt at once that I was meeting kin.”

Seeing their long faces and Felthrup’s anxious twitching, he smiled. “There are the kin we are born to, or find ourselves claimed by, as the Secret Fist claimed me. And then there are the kin we seek out, with clear minds and open hearts. You are the latter. Now go and sleep; tomorrow comes all too soon.”

He left the chamber, to walk the deck as he did each night. Felthrup chattered on awhile, glad of their company; then he too bade them good night and crawled away to his basket. Pazel and Thasha drifted about the stateroom, wide awake, not looking at each other.

Somehow (Pazel wondered later exactly who had moved when) they ended up side by side on the bearskin rug, staring up at the fengas chandelier that had not been lit since Uturphe, listening to the moan of the wind. For Pazel the sound raised a sudden memory. He had been sleeping at a friend’s house, very long ago when he still had friends, before his family’s disgrace. The wind had been cold, but he had been given a pair of sheepskins to sleep between, and felt that nothing could be warmer or more comfortable. In the night a small dust viper (perhaps of the same opinion) had slithered into the room and curled up behind his knee. It had bitten him when he sat up at dawn, and his calf had swollen to the size of a ham. The friend’s father had inexplicably beaten his son; the son had never spoken to Pazel again.

Pazel realized he had taken her hand.

It was warm in his own. She held on tightly, but kept her face turned away. “I read something about you,” she said.

“What?”

“You know what I mean.”

“In … the
Polylex
? Something about me in the
Merchant’s Polylex
?”

“ ‘Pazel Pathkendle, tarboy of Ormael, second child of Gregory and Suthinia Pathkendle.’ Isn’t that funny? Because you’re not from Ormael, and you’re not a Pathkendle, are you? Pitfire, you’re not even a tarboy anymore. The mucking author should have known better.”
⁵

He raised her hand to his cheek. He considered telling her that he had no idea what she was talking about, but the remark seemed unnecessary.

“It’s funny,” she said, “you’re not your father’s son. And I’m not my father’s daughter. Isn’t that strange?”

“Terribly,” he managed to say. She was breathing fast. Her hand moved against his cheek. He wanted to make love to her and thought it was possible, thought the moment was here and would never come again, and yet he was beset by a kind of vertigo. He feared his mind-fit was coming on, but the telltale purring was nowhere to be heard. Thasha was shaking slightly—nervous laughter, he thought. He was aware of every inch of her, every least movement. It was a kind of madness. He imagined the bearskin coming to life and charging from the stateroom, racing to some deep spot in the hold and digging Arunis from his hiding place, like a honeycomb from a stump. It was like that, the way he wanted her. But his thoughts were darting everywhere, uncontrollably. He thought:
Arunis is afraid of this rug. What happened, what does he fear?

He kissed the back of her hand, felt it trembling. When she exhaled there was a low moan in her voice that went through him like lightning. They hadn’t started, but it was as if they were already done. Everything was answered. He would be with her for the rest of his life.

“I have to ask you something,” she said.

“I do,” he said. “Of course I do. Obviously.”

She turned to face him, and suddenly he knew that what he had seen was not laughter, but tears. They were flowing still.

“I have to ask something
of
you,” she said. “
Have
to, not
want
to. I have to ask you to stop. Not just this. Stop everything. Will you do that for me? Oh, my dearest—”

Thasha had just said
my dearest
. The words were so strange on her tomboy tongue that for a moment they shielded him from the meaning. She closed her eyes and bit her lips and snorted and sobbed, and eventually he realized he hadn’t misunderstood.

“Everything?”

“I’m sorry,” she said, choking.

“It’s Fulbreech, isn’t it?”

Thasha nodded, pinching her eyes shut so tightly she might have been trying to make them disappear.

“You love him? Truly?”

Against great resistance, another nod.

Pazel took his hand away. He sat up, and she curled beside him and wept.

“I should have known,” she whispered. “I did know. When he first came aboard.”

Pazel sat hugging his knees. How many times? How many times could the world change, before there was nothing left that you could recognize?

“I suppose,” he said, trying (failing) to keep the bitterness from his voice, “that it would be easier if I didn’t stay here anymore?”

“Yes.”

Pazel swallowed. She had agreed so quickly. She’d thought it all through.

Then a dark notion came to him. “Hercól knows, doesn’t he? All those looks, even tonight in the surgery. When did he figure it out?”

After a pause, Thasha said, “Before I did.”

“But Thasha, Fulbreech? I don’t believe it, I can’t. Do you know something about him that I don’t?”

Her eyes drifted away from him, shining, and he wished he hadn’t asked.

“There’s a cabin for you,” she said. “Bolutu’s going to share Hercól’s room, and you can take his. You’ll be safe there. It’s still behind the magic wall.”

Pazel had heard enough. He rose and went to his corner and began putting his clothes into his hammock. Moving like a sleepwalker, like a
tol-chenni
. Bolutu’s cabin was far too close; he’d go back to the tarboys’ compartment and take his chances. He cast his eyes over the stateroom, thought of the day she’d first tried to bring him here, how some instinct had made him pause at the doorway, thinking,
You don’t belong in such a room
.

Not belonging. It was the story of his life.

Thasha was sitting up, motionless, waiting for him to go. He started for the door. But as he passed her she put a hand on his leg. He stiffened. In a cold voice, he said, “A snake once bit me there.”

Thasha looked up at him slowly. “It died,” she whispered.

“I beg your pardon?”

“The wind, Pazel. Listen: it’s completely dead.”

And so it was. The moaning had stopped. The oilcloth nailed over the broken windows hung limp. They rose and went to an undamaged window and flung it wide. The air was perfectly still. Below them, the
Chathrand
rocked motionless on the waves.

They went topside, and found the sailors gazing with wonder at the empty sails. Moths fluttered about the deck, unmolested by any breeze. The Sandwall was out of sight, and the southern shore, wherever it was, remained invisible as well. The Great Ship sat in darkness, with no points of reference beneath the alien stars. “Black sorcery,” said a few, whispering.

Ten minutes later the sails began to lift. Another ten, and the breeze was as strong as ever: no great blow, but enough to sail by, and shifted ever so slightly to their advantage. Men shook their heads, chuckling. On the quarterdeck, Mr. Bolutu stared into the darkness, his silver eyes wide and watchful.

The watch-captain struck two bells; it was an hour before sunrise. Pazel left Thasha standing alone on the topdeck (the thought came unbidden: she would not be alone for long) and descended by the Silver Stair to the berth deck. He moved slowly through the maze of sleeping men and boys. The door still creaked, the tarboy called Frowsy still snored like a bleating goat. He felt his way to the eight copper nails in the ancient stanchion that had always marked his place and began to tie his hammock.

It had all started between these two posts. He and Neeps whispering, becoming friends. His first meeting with Diadrelu, who had laughed when he said he didn’t trust her: “Wise boy. Don’t trust.” And his private decision to defy Dr. Chadfallow, who had begged him to jump ship before Thasha was even aboard.

Back in Ormael, when his mother’s madness reached its worst pitch, when she put spiders in her mouth or made the evening soup with bathwater, he had sometimes fled deep into the plum orchard and bunched his coat up against his face and screamed. It had helped. He had never told anyone. He wished he could scream like that now. His best friend was aboard, and his blary
sister
, and he could not talk to either of them. He shut his eyes.