The River of Shadows (26 page)

Isiq raised an eyebrow. “Smoke.”

“Very good, Isiq! Smoke it was: a pale blue smoke that shone with a faint light, and swirled like liquid in the glass. A moment later she brought out another, and this smoke was red. The dog asked her what they might be. ‘Dream-essence,’ she said. ‘The purest nectar of intelligence, formed in the soul before a dream begins. When the dream breaks it leaves us forever, and empties into that dark flood called the River of Shadows. But if you extract it at that precise moment,
before
the dream, you have a connection to the dreamer’s mind. You can look into the smoke and see his dream, on that night or any other. And should you have the skill you can give him new dreams,
specific
dreams, the dreams you choose. There are few in Alifros with that skill, but I am one.’

“ ‘Whose
dream-essence
do you have there?’ the dog asked, starting to be frightened of her again.

“ ‘My children’s,’ said the woman. ‘Long years ago, I took it. I did not harm them in the taking, but I harmed them in other ways.’ She was somber and quiet for a moment, then held up a vial in each hand. ‘These are the only possessions I care for in all the world. I live in fear of their loss, and have never dared to give my children dreams, lest I make the existence of these vials known to our enemies. They can sniff out magic, even better than you can sniff out a meal. But I cannot wait any longer.’

“She asked the dog to lie in the courtyard and bark if anyone drew near. He did so, and heard her whispering within. At one point his curiosity overpowered him, though, so he put his paws up on the windowsill and gazed into the room. The woman was holding the red vial against her cheek. She caressed it, moved it to the other cheek, then closed her eyes and breathed on the glass. Then she set it on the table and knelt as if to pray.

“The dog saw nothing else at first. Then the smoke seemed to pass right through the vial, just as the woman’s hand had passed through the wall. It formed a cloud over the table, and within it the dog saw a boy in a coffin—alive, you understand, and battling to escape. The dog was so appalled that he turned away, and lay shivering in the bright sun of the courtyard, until the woman came and told him he could go.”

The next morning the King swept into the chamber, with gifts of walnuts and macaroons.

“Your Highness,” said Isiq. At the sound of Isiq’s voice the King put down the gifts and seized his arms.

“Splendid, man, splendid! Try something else!”

Isiq smiled, squirmed, cleared his throat.

“Come on, nothing long-winded. What would you like for breakfast?”

“Your woman.”

“Eh?”

Isiq’s mouth worked, and he made a beckoning gesture with both hands. After a moment the King’s face relaxed into a smile. He had become quite good at interpreting the admiral.

“Bring her here, to meet you? What a funny idea. She’d do you a world of good, too, with her gentle ways. But you know it can’t happen, Admiral. I’ve explained all that to you.”

Isiq tilted his head. There was a question in his eyes.

“Oh, I trust her,” said the King. “More than I reasonably should. I’d put a dagger in her hands and sleep like a babe, with her beside me, if you care to know. Yes, I’d even trust her with the secret of
you
. But why burden her? She’s had a hard life already. This is her refuge, now, just as it’s yours. When both of you have healed a little more, then we’ll see.”

He clapped Isiq on the shoulder. “You’re talking. That’s exquisite progress, and quite enough for today.”

Isiq’s expression was thoughtful, as though he might venture to disagree. Oshiram looked encouraged by the alertness in the face before him.

“It’s a real pleasure, watching you heal,” he said. “By the Tree, I think I
shall
bring her to see you after all. I’ll tell her your story this evening. We must tell someone about you, mustn’t we, if you’re ever to resume a normal life?

“I do hope you take to her, Isiq. She’s the best thing to happen to me in years. I was beginning to think my reign was cursed, you know. After your brave Thasha’s death and the collapse of the Peace, some of the other lords of the Crownless Lands turned their backs, called me Arqual’s fool. Then came the death of Pacu Lapadolma, those furious letters from the Mzithrin Kings, that Gods-awful plague of rats. I should have gone mad without my darling girl. Watching her dance, one can believe that beauty still has a place in Alifros.”

Isiq nodded, smiling to please the King. “B-beauty,” he made himself say.

“Ha!” laughed Oshiram. “Carry on, Isiq. Perhaps in a day or two we shall be watching her dance together—or just listening to her sing. Did I mention that she sings?”

An enraptured look came over the King’s face. He raised his eyebrows, the corners of his lips, and was suddenly womanish, crooning in soft falsetto:

Look for me by starlight, lover, seek me in that glade
.

I’ll bring you all the treasures of the world our love has made—

He broke off. Isiq was lurching backward, mouth wide open, flailing. Before the King could reach him the big man fell hard upon the chest of drawers, knocking it back against the mirror, which jumped from its peg and shattered on Isiq’s bald head.

“Rin’s eyes, Admiral!” The King experienced a rare kind of panic: Isiq was bleeding, the doctor was elsewhere, he could not shout for aid. He went down on his knees and plucked sickles of glass from the admiral’s clothes. No danger, no danger, only scratches on that bedknob cranium of his. “What in Pitfire happened to you?” he demanded. “Oh, keep still, shut your mouth before you get glass in it.”

Isiq thought his mind would burst. The song was
hers
. She had sung it to him countless times, early in the mornings, in the garden cottage, bringing him his cigar—aboard the
Chathrand
, in bed, with Thasha in the outer stateroom practicing her wedding vows. Oshiram had even managed a fair imitation of her voice.

The King was scolding, but Isiq could barely hear. Time slowed to a crawl. There were shards of mirror in his hands and lap. In every sliver, a memory, bright and perfect. There was his daughter, murdered in her bridal dress. There were the four men bearing her body to the
Chathrand
. And Sandor Ott. And the Nilstone, throbbing.

“Don’t handle them, you daft old—”

And here in this largest shard, so cruelly, cleverly shaped (the King tried to remove it; the admiral fiercely gripped his hand) was that unequaled beauty, his Syrarys, with her arms around a lover—not Isiq, of course, and not the spymaster, nor even this good, deluded King. Mesmerizing, this clarity, after so much blindness. And yet Isiq was certain. No one else could have made his consort so dangerous. The one in her arms was the one who had always been there, invisibly. The one who’d slain Thasha, and cheated death. The one whose hands moved all the strings—

“Arunis.”

The King froze.
“What did you just say?”

Isiq’s gaze had wandered for months; now it focused sharp as daggers on the King. “You’re in danger, Oshiram,” he whispered.

“A complete sentence!” cried the bird suddenly from the window, forgetting himself entirely.

The King whirled, gaping; the bird was already gone. “What is happening here, Isiq? Have you been feigning this illness? Where did that bird come from? And why in Rin’s name did you mention the sorcerer?”

Isiq stared up at him: glass in his eyebrows, rivulets of blood on his cheeks. “We must trust each other, Majesty,” he whispered, “and somehow we must be cleverer than they. By the Night Gods, I remember it all.”

FROM THE NEW
JOURNAL OF
G. STARLING
FIFFENGURT,
QUARTERMASTER

Thursday, 26 Ilbrin 941

Where, by the Blessed Tree, to begin? With the dead men? With the blessing of the goat? Or with the fact that Heaven’s Tree doesn’t even hang over us here, so help me Rin?
⁷

No: I shall start with Pathkendle, since I have just seen him & the lad’s misery is fresh in my mind. I had just taken my turn in the rigging, same as nearly everyone aboard. The dlömu were still staring at us, but their numbers were dwindling. Perhaps they were moved by the doomsday-babble of that screaming hag. Perhaps we misspoke, somehow, hurt their feelings. However that may be, we soon concluded that we weren’t to be fed, or even greeted with more than fear & superstition, before daybreak. They hemmed us in with cables to stop our drift & placed guards at the ends of the walkway & left us to stew in our own sinking ship.

A few men exploded, cursing them. Others begged loudly for food. The dlömu, however, did not look back & when they were gone from sight even the timid hands joined in until the whole topdeck was bellowing insults, fish-eyes, black bastards, cold-hearted freaks & then someone gave an embarrassed little, “Ahh, umm,” & we saw that one of the cables was moving like a trawling-line & dangling upon it were bundle after canvas bundle. Wisps of steam escaped them & the smell when we hauled them in brought a low moan of ecstasy from the nearest men. Ibjen had shamed them, apparently. Ghosts or no ghosts, we wouldn’t be starved.

Inside were warm rolls & slabs of fresh cheese & smoked fish, the river clams Bolutu had gone on about for days, and cloth packages filled with strange little pyramid-shaped confections, a bit smaller than oranges & coated with sugar and hard little seeds. We nibbled: they were salty-sweet & chewy as whale blubber.
“Mül!”
Bolutu cried at the sight of them. “Ah, Fiffengurt, you’ll find nothing more authentically dlömic than
mül
! They’ve been the salvation of many a sea-voyage, or forced march through the mountains.” But what were they? “Nutritious!” said Bolutu, & quickly changed the subject.

There was dark bread, too; & as I live & breathe, many bundles of what we took for fat white worms. A dozen of these fell to the deck when we tore open the first basket & wriggled away like lightning for fifty feet or so & then lay still. Bolutu snatched one up, peeled off its skin like a blary banana & ate it: the things are fruits—
pirithas
, he calls ’em: “snake-beans.” They fall from a parent tree & squirm away, seeking new places to grow. “If it doesn’t wriggle it’s not worth eating,” he said.

I was about to brave one of these dainties myself (having already wolfed down bread & cheese & fish & clams; the latter stained green whatever they touched & made us all look frightfully murthish about the mouth) when Lady Thasha appeared with a platter heaped with all the aforementioned. “Will you take this to Pazel?” she asked me.

“We can do better than that,” I told her. “It’s well past midnight, ain’t it? That’s three days. Let’s get ’im out of the brig, my dear! You come along.”

But Thasha shook her head. “You do it, Mr. Fiffengurt. And see that he eats, will you? There’s enough food for the
sfvantskor
s, too.”

Considerate, that was: the food would be gone in minutes. But the compliment I thought to pay her died on my lips when she turned & walked back to Greysan Fulbreech. Old Smiley fed her a piece of bread & she grinned through the mouthful at him & suddenly I was enraged. A nonsense reaction, of course: young hearts are fickle & Thasha’s has clearly left Pathkendle in favor of this youth from Simja. Why does the sight of them fill me with such indignation? Perhaps I merely hoped the girl had better taste.

I ducked down the Holy Stair, bickered with the crawlies at the checkpoint & was finally
escorted
(how the word sticks in my throat) onto the mercy deck & aft to the brig. The four Turachs (two for each
sfvantskor
, none for Pathkendle) were licking clean plates of their own; they turned spiteful when they realized I wasn’t bringing second helpings. At the far end of the row of cells the two
sfvantskor
s watched me with bright wolf eyes.

I unlocked Pathkendle’s cell; he walked out, slow & dignified & hurt. Some spark in his eye was gone. I might never have become of aware of its existence, that lad’s blary spark (what do I mean, spark? Here’s my old dad’s answer:
If you have to ask you ain’t never goin’ to know
) but for its absence then.

“Chin up, Pathkendle,” says I, much heartier than I feel. “The ship’s out of danger & you’re out of jail. Try a wiggler. I happen to know they’re fresh.”

“Go on,” said a grinning, green-lipped Turach, “they only
look
like big maggots.”

Pazel stared insolently at him & bit into a piece of bread. “I want,” he said, chewing, “to finish telling Neda my dream.”

Under the soldiers’ eyes we took food to the
sfvantskor
s. Pazel sat facing them, cross-legged on the floor. They ate. To fill the silence I talked about the waterfalls, the incredible way we rose into the city. Pazel sat there slipping snake-beans into his mouth & gazing at his sister through the iron bars. His sister, a Black Rag priestess: the thought chilled my blood. This was the girl they’d been looking for, those countrymen of mine, during the Ormali siege. They’d beaten Pazel himself into a coma, that day, when he refused to guide them to his sister’s hiding place. He’d lain there ready to die for her. Could anything—time, training, religion—challenge a bond like that?

“Thasha painted me with mud,” Pathkendle was saying. “Head to toe. Bright red mud that she’d heated in a pot. It felt”—he glanced at me, coloring a little—“really good. The beach was windy; the mud was smooth & warm. I told you already what happened next.”

“She pushing you,” said Neda. Her attempt at Arquali was for my benefit, I suppose.

“Into a coffin,” said Pazel. “A fancy coffin, trimmed with gold. She slammed the lid & nailed it shut & I kicked & pounded from the inside. When she was done she dragged the coffin into the surf.”

“And pushed you out to sea,” said the older one, Vispek. He raised his head & looked at me. “The mud, the gilded coffin in the waves. Those are Arquali funeral rites, are they not?”

“Only for kings & nobles, these days,” I said, startled at his knowledge of us. “It’s a high honor, that sort of burial.”

“And the one who paints the body?”

“The King’s favorite girly. His whatsit, his courtesan.”

“Neda thinks the dream’s important,” said Pazel.

Her eyes flickered over me coldly. “Dreams are warning,” she said. “We not listen, then we getting die.”

“Is that a fact.”

She said something quick & cross in the Sizzy tongue & her master grunted in agreement. “The Isiq girl wants to be rid of him,” he said, “although once she pretended to love him. Like an expensive whore.”

“Now just you shut your mouth,” I said, rising to my feet. But Vispek went right on talking.

“She wished to seem as though she revered him, saw him as her equal. Never mind that she’s from one of the most powerful families in Arqual, and the boy is nothing: a peasant from a country her father destroyed. So she honors him, buries him like a king.”

“But is lie,” said Neda, wolfing cheese. “No honor if he put in water alive. Only after he getting die.”

“The girl’s touch was pleasurable, in this dream?” asked Vispek.

Pazel nodded uncomfortably. “Well then,” said Vispek, “all the better to catch you off-guard in the moment of betrayal.”

“That’s enough,” I said. “You’re a slimy beast, Vispek. You’re trying to divide us, and using Pazel’s sister to do it. By the Tree, you’re carrying on the old war, ain’t you? Right here in
Chathrand
’s brig, ten thousand miles from home.”

Vispek kept his eyes on Pazel. “Neda is correct,” he said. “Dreams
are
warnings, and must not be ignored. The next time you feel that caressing hand, you can be sure a knife will follow. Watch your step.”

“I will, Cayer Vispek,” said Pazel.

“Damn it, Pathkendle!” I sputtered. “This is Thasha you’re talking about!”

The tarboy looked up at me, chewing. “Thasha,” he said. “Thasha
Isiq.
” As if the last name changed something for him.

A few minutes later we left the brig, with ixchel scurrying ahead & behind. I was aghast at the whole exchange. What kind of horrid nonsense had Pazel been listening to, in that black cell for three hopeless days? What ideas had those Sizzies stuffed him with? I grew frantic, & as soon as we cleared the checkpoint I dragged him from the ladderway & pressed him up against a wall.

“Flimflam!” I said. “Mule dung! A man will dream
anything
when his heart’s broken. That don’t make it true!”

“You don’t understand,” he said. “My sister’s special. Wise. They both are, as a matter of fact.”

It was worse than I feared. “Pathkendle,” I implored. “My dear, sarcastic, sharp-tongued tarboy. Religion’s a fine thing, a truly noble thing—except for the
believing
part. Trust me, please. It’s worse than what a girl can do to you.”

“Nothing is.”

I groaned aloud. “Pitfire, that’s true, of course. But so is what I’m telling you. Listen to me, for the love of Rin—”

He met my eyes at that. “For the love of
who
, Mr. Fiffengurt?”

I stood up straight. “That’s a different matter, the Rinfaith. It’s part of society. And it ain’t so extreme, like. You know what I’m saying. Barbaric.”

He frowned a little at that. “I just wanted to talk to my sister,” he said, “and that Vispek bloke won’t let her talk except about grim and serious things.” Then he smiled at me, with his old sly look. “Maybe he hoped she’d win me over to the Old Faith. Not a chance. Neda’s never been able to talk me into anything.” He laughed. “But it sure kept them talking. And I must have done a good enough job, if I fooled you too.”

I could have smacked the little bastard. Or kissed him. I was that relieved.

“What was all that about her being
special
?” I asked.

“Oh, she is,” he said. “Mother cast a spell on Neda, too. All these years I thought it hadn’t worked, hadn’t done anything to her, but it did. It gave her perfect memory. You wouldn’t believe it, Mr. Fiffengurt. I wrote a six-foot string of numbers in the dust & read them to her aloud. She recited them all back to me in perfect order. She didn’t even have to
try
.”

I just stared at him. What could I possibly say? “You’re from a witching family,” I managed at last. “But does she have mind-fits, like you?”

“Sort of,” he replied. “She told me her memory can be like a horse that runs away with its rider. It just gallops off & she’s trapped, remembering more & more, faster & faster, even if what she’s remembering is terrible. I told her that sort of thing happened to me on Bramian, when the eguar made me look into Sandor Ott’s mind, and learn about his life. Neda said, ‘Imagine if at the end of that vision you couldn’t escape, because the mind you were looking into was your own.’ ”

The eguar. He’d never spoken to me of it before, but I’d heard him telling Undrabust about the creature. Like a crocodile, but demonic & huge, & surrounded by a burning haze. “What did that monster do to you, Pathkendle?” I asked him now.

Before he could make any answer, we heard the scream. It came from away aft, one or two decks below. A blood-curdler, if ever I heard one: a great man’s howl of pain, a warrior’s howl that twisted for an instant into a high womanish screech & was then cut off as if the throat that uttered it had just ceased to exist.

We ran back to the Silver Stair. The ixchel shrilled & threatened but we barreled past ’em. I already had an idea where we were going. Turach voices were exclaiming: “Oh no,
no
! Ruthane, you mad mucking—”

Seconds later we were there, in the manger. There was an unspeakable stench. The Turachs were clumped around the Shaggat, moaning; one of them had staggered away & vomited all the food he’d been allotted. But I knew that wasn’t what I’d smelled. It had happened again. Someone had touched the Nilstone.

I made myself draw nearer. There he was. Or wasn’t. Then I saw the armor, lying in that heap of bone-dust. Sweet Rin above, he was a Turach.

“He cut the sack with his knife,” said another of the marines. “He just reached up & cut a hole & put in his hand. What for, what for?”

Turachs do not cry, but this one was as close as I ever hope to see. Then he noticed Pathkendle. “You! Witch-boy! Was this another of your tricks? If you made him do it I’ll muckin’ break you in half!”

“I didn’t,” said Pazel, looking a bit ill himself, “and I couldn’t anyway, I swear it.”

“And he ain’t a killer, either,” I said.

“No, he ain’t,” said another. “He’s a good lad, even if he is a witch-boy. He’s proved that much.”

The soldier who’d snapped at Pazel looked at him now & nodded curtly. But his face was in a crazy rage. He looked down at the jumble of metal, teeth & bones that had been his friend. “Aw, Ruthane,” he said. Then his hands became fists. “By the Nine Pits, we
know
who can do this sort of devilry. Arunis! That’s right,
Muketch
, ain’t it?”

Pazel nodded. “Yes, sir. I believe it is.”

“Arunis!” howled the Turach at the top of his lungs. He drew his sword & held it on high. “You’re dead! You’re a Turach trophy! Can you hear me, you burst boil on the arse of a graveyard bitch? We’re going to snap your bones & suck the marrow. We’ll pull out your guts with our teeth, do you hear me? You’re mucking dead!”

And then, as if a startling thought had just occurred to him, the man spun around & thrust his hand into the hole in the sack his friend Ruthane had opened—and the Nilstone’s killing power ran down his body, fast as a flame takes a scrap of paper, and he was gone.

The pandemonium, the terror, the mourning beside those piles of ghastly remains: it went on through the night. I am at last back in my cabin, scribbling, unable to sleep. This is how Thursday begins.