The River of Shadows (66 page)

He watched her gruffly as she dried his hair. “You
lunatic,
” she said, her voice shrill with concern. “You’re cold as a blary fish. How did you get soaked like that?”

Pazel closed his eyes.

“Get nearer to the fire. Take off that mucking shirt!”

He obeyed. Neeps made a joke about him needing a bath anyway, but fell silent when he glared. Thasha was looking at him strangely.

“A novice came from the temple,” she said. “He gave me something gorgeous, in a tiny wooden box. He said it came from you.”

Pazel wished she would just stop talking. He was clutching at memories, like fragments of a story heard once in childhood, and never again. A strange woman, a shining globe.

“We’re crossing the lake tonight,” said Thasha, drying him vigorously, “in three boats. If Hercól can make himself understood, that is. You should go and talk to the fisherfolk, Pazel. They’re mizralds, and we just can’t tell what they’re trying to say. I think they’re afraid of the north shore, but Hercól—”

“Ouch!” he snapped. “Not so hard, damn it!”

Thasha lowered the towel. “Baby.”

“Savage.”

Their eyes met. He touched his scalp, brought away a bloody finger. He was quite annoyed with her, and wondered at the months of agony he’d let her cause. Then Thasha reached into his hair, and brought away something small and hard. It gleamed in the firelight: a shard of crystal, which even as he reached out a finger melted like ice and was gone.

The Black Tongue

8 Modobrin 941
237th day from Etherhorde

When the keel of the fishing-boat dug into the sandy shore, Ibjen was first out: the journey had turned his stomach. And it had been bad, Pazel thought: the open boat with its one spindly mast and weird ribbed sail flapping about like a fin, no lamps on it anywhere, cutting through all that darkness with the wind howling over the peaks, the bright stars wheeling as they pitched and heaved, ice floes looming up suddenly, sometimes even grinding against their sides … He shuddered, and leaped out himself, and winced as his feet sank to the ankles in the watery sand.
Freezing, even at midsummer
. How did they manage, those fisherfolk, year after icebound year?

At least the moon had sailed above the peaks: a full moon, by which the snowcaps dimly glowed. The second boat drew up beside the first, and the fisherman’s uncle leaped barefoot into the water and pulled it in.

“And to think I’d hoped to
sleep
a little,” growled Big Skip, wading ashore as the dogs leaped out around him. He cursed as the nearest one shook its wet coat vigorously, then opened the front of his coat. “Are you well, my ladies?” he asked.

“Alive, anyway,” said Ensyl as she and Myett crawled groggily to his shoulders.

The mizralds kept looking at the shore, as though anxious to be gone from it. Hercól counted coins into the fisherman’s hand. The man’s wife took one and studied the strange Arquali designs. “It’s a fake,” she announced. “There’s a
tol-chenni
on this coin.”

“It’s real gold, I bit one,” said the fisherman’s brother.

“That’s the face of His Supremacy Magad the Fifth you just gnashed,” said Dastu coldly. “You understand? He’s our Emperor, our King.”

The fisherman’s son laughed. “King of the
tol-chenni
. King of the monkeys, the beasts!” He hooted and beat his chest. His uncle laughed, but his father scowled at him, embarrassed. Pazel looked at the wrinkled, wind-chapped creature. Was he, like Ibjen’s father, just old enough to recall the days before the plague?

Soon all the chilly passengers were ashore. Hercól placed the twentieth coin in the man’s palm, then smiled and added another fistful. “Ask them not to speak of us to strangers, Pazel,” he said. “There is still a chance we might be pursued.”

The family waved goodbye, delight beginning to show on their faces as they realized there was no trick.

“Come,” urged Hercól. “We have gained a few miles on Arunis, I think. Let us gain a few more.”

He started at once up the gray, wind-sculpted beach. As the others straggled after him, Pazel heard a shout from the old fisherman. He turned: the mizrald was splashing up to him.

“You will go down the Ansyndra, and across the burn? What you call
Black Tongue
?”

“Well, yes,” said Pazel. “There’s no other way, is there?”

The mizrald shook his head. “No other way. No other way except with wings.”

“Wings would be dandy,” said Pazel.

The fisherman nodded solemnly.

“Well,” said Pazel, “goodbye.”

“You go at night, eh? Only at night across the burn. Darkly, quietly: that’s how it’s done. Tell your friends. Because by daylight—no, no.”

“No?”

The mizrald drew his finger across his throat. “No, no and no.”

He stared at Pazel with concern, and looked as though he wished to say more. Then (as his family howled in protest) he pulled the youth down and planted a kiss upon his forehead. Then he turned and pushed his boat offshore.

Stunned, Pazel hurried after the others. They were trudging west along the rim of the lake, toward the spot the mizralds had said was the only way down. Pazel could hear a rushing of water, and the now very familiar slushing roar of a waterfall. He ran, catching up with Neeps and Thasha. Neeps was gazing back across the lake.

“How are we supposed to return?” he said. “The fisherwoman herself said they almost never come down here. And half the time there’s no shore to walk along, just blary cliffs. How are we supposed to get back?”

“There must be trails through the mountains,” said Pazel, trying to sound as though he believed it. “Hercól and Olik must have thought about it, mate. Don’t worry.”

Thasha’s gaze swept darkly over the peaks. “They thought about it, all right,” she said.

Their destination, as it happened, was similar to the Chalice of the Maî: a river outlet above a sharp descent. But then Pazel swayed and stepped back, dizzied by what he saw. Where the Maî had begun as no more than a stream, this was a thrashing watercourse, descending almost vertically within a deep, twisting crack down the mountainside. In many spots the water vanished under boulders; in others it surged forth in a chaos of white spray. There were outright cliffs beneath them too, where the river became falls. And very close to the river, bolted fast to the rock, was a heavy iron ladder. It descended some forty feet and met up with a wet, steep trail that snaked back and forth down the mountain to another ladder, which in turn met another trail, and so on for some distance. Even by moonlight Pazel could see how far and fast the Ansyndra descended, falls beneath falls beneath falls …

“The ladders will take us only so far,” Vadu was explaining. “There, at that widest shelf, you can see where the Black Tongue begins.”

Pazel could not see it, in fact, for the men were all crowding hazardously for a view. Quickly he told the others what the mizrald had said.

“By night alone,” mused Hercól. “Prince Olik too had heard rumors to that effect.”

“Nonsense,” said Vadu. “Day or night makes no difference. Look there: you will see what does.”

This time Pazel managed to catch a glimpse. Far down the black ridge a faint light shone. Something was burning, with flames that danced and guttered in the wind, throwing sparks into the night. Then all at once it was gone. Utter darkness wrapped the slopes again.

“A fumarole,” said Vadu, “a tunnel into the depths, formed as the lava cooled. The gases that erupt from those horrid pipes are flammable, and sudden in their emergence. But something worse dwells in them: the flame-trolls. Idlers who never leave the Upper City will tell you that they are mere legends, but we who carry the Plazic Blades know better. They are real, and deadly. When they emerge, no living thing can cross the Tongue.”

“And when is that, Counselor?” asked Myett, from Big Skip’s shoulder.

“When they hear footsteps on their roof,” he said. “Or loud voices, possibly. Many parts of the Tongue are but a hollow crust.”

“How did ye learn so much about the place?” asked Alyash.

Vadu gave him a rather hostile glance.

“The answer to that can wait,” said Cayer Vispek. “The crossing cannot, if we are to go by night as Pathkendle says.”

“I tell you silence is all that matters,” said Vadu.

Nonetheless they began the descent without delay. It was not the longest leg of their journey but certainly the most terrifying. Some of the ladders shifted on the rusted iron pins that held them to the cliffs; one had been reduced to a single bolt and three wooden splints. The rungs were corroded, and bit into their hands. But to Pazel the spaces between the ladders were worse: slick ledges, barely flat enough to balance on even when motionless, too narrow for crawling (which would have been far safer than walking upright) and devoid of any handholds whatsoever.

Only the ixchel were at ease, and even they crouched low when the wind surged suddenly. Pazel, at home on masts and rigging, had to fight down panic at every turn. They crept down the cliffs, barely speaking. The four hunting dogs, slung in harnesses on the backs of the Masalym soldiers, held absolutely still. One particularly long ladder spanned a pair of rocks jutting well out from the cliff, so that for a good seventy feet there was no cliff to see or touch, just rung after iron rung, lost in the clawing wind.

How many more?
thought Pazel desperately, after the eighth or ninth descent. He glimpsed his sister in the moonlight and was amazed at her poise. The other
sfvantskor
s were the same, and so was Hercól: masterfully aware. Did such awareness free one from terror or increase it, he wondered, when each step might be your last?

At last, after fourteen ladders, they reached a broad, rocky shelf. Pazel was shaking, and feared he might be sick. But the air was warm: they had dropped right out of the icy wastes of Ilvaspar, and into a gentler place. But there was also a strange, biting smell that for some reason made Pazel think of rats.

It was very dark. He moved away from the ladders and at once bumped into Neda—and Neeps. The small boy was holding his sister, rigid with indignation, in a tight embrace.

“Is all right,” said Neda, squirming, her Arquali rougher than usual. “Let go now! You do same for me, same situation.”

Neeps did not seem able to let go. Pazel touched his shoulder; he started, and abruptly dropped his arms. There was mud on his face but he did not seem aware of it.

“I should be dead,” he whispered, staring at Pazel. “I mucking
fell
, mate. On that path with the ice underfoot, that terrible spot. Your sister caught me by the belt and dragged me back. She could have fallen herself. I should be dead.”

Neda looked at Pazel. Switching tongues, she said, “Your friend is in shock. But when he’s able to listen, tell him I’ll break his arms if he tries to grab me again.”

“I don’t think it’s likely,” said Pazel. “He’s a married man.”

Neda’s face was blank. She looked the small tarboy up and down, and when her eye flicked back to Pazel she began suddenly to laugh. She turned away, fighting it, but Neeps’ baffled look made matters worse, and she spun back helplessly to Pazel and pressed her face hard against his shoulder. Reckless, wondering if she would break
his
arms, Pazel held her a moment and gave way to silent laughter. That old, choked guffaw. She still existed, she was still Neda somewhere inside. He could have held her for an hour, but when she lurched away he let her go.

Cayer Vispek looked stern, and Jalantri glared at him with something like fury. But Pazel found he no longer cared what they thought. Something
had
changed in Vasparhaven. He was older; he knew something that they did not. Rin’s eyes, he thought, sometimes even a blary
sfvantskor
needs to let go.

As if he’d just given the idea to the mountain, there came a deafening
clang
that reverberated in the rocks, and for the first time ever a yelp from one of the dogs. An entire ladder had parted from the cliff, fallen soundless, and shattered just inches from the animal. The stone cracked; bits of iron flew among them; the bulk of the ladder pinwheeled over a big boulder and lay still.

The dog crept whimpering among them, pleading innocence with its eyes. Hercól glanced up at the cliff. “One bolt,” he said, “and three wooden splints.”

For a time the night grew even brighter: the old moon still shone down on them, and the Polar Candle, its small blue sister, joined it in the sky. By this double illumination they saw the strange new place they had reached.

The shelf was the size of an ample courtyard. On the right-hand side the Ansyndra poured into a kind of natural funnel in the rock and disappeared, bubbling and gurgling. Behind them and to their left rose the high cliff wall, up which they would never climb again. Straight ahead, growing from cliff to cliff, there rose a stand of willows, straight and lovely, and utterly startling after so much barren rock. Ferns grew among them, and streamers of moss dangled from their limbs. A long-disused trail led away through the trees.

They gathered their belongings and followed it. For a gentle mile it ran, only gradually descending. The gorge did not widen much, and they were never more than a stone’s throw from one cliff or the other. Then, like something lopped off with an axe, the forest ended, and they saw the Black Tongue.

It was old lava: a deep, smooth expanse of it, like a hardened river of mud. It began at their feet and swept down a long, gradual decline, widening ever, for several miles or more. Nothing grew upon its surface; nothing could. There were smooth, mouth-like holes in the lava, some no bigger than peaches, others wide as caves. There were cracks and fissures, and small puffs of fire like the one they had seen from atop the mountain.

“Not a troll to be had,” said Alyash. “Pity.”

“Keep your voices low,” replied Hercól.

The smell Pazel had noticed before was far stronger here, and now he recognized it: sulphur.

“That’s why I thought of rats,” he said to Thasha. “We almost used sulphur on the rats, to smoke them out of the hold, remember? And we used it all the time back on the
Anju.
”

“It must work like a charm,” she said, grimacing.

“Oh, it does,” said Myett suddenly, “and on
crawlies
as well.”

“Blary right it does,” said Alyash.

“Enough of that!” said Hercól, who had not taken his eyes from the scene before them. Then he growled low in his throat. “The descent took longer than I hoped. There is not enough darkness left for us to make it safely across that dismal field. We shall retreat into the forest until this evening.”

“That is sheer folly!” said Vadu. “Weren’t you listening to me above?”

“I listened to you,” said Hercól, “but also to what Pazel heard from the fisherman, and to what Olik knew, and to my own counsel above all. You may be sure that I am making no light choices. We have abandoned our ship for this cause. And our people.”

“Then let it be worth your sacrifice!” said Vadu, his head starting to bob. “You are said to be a warrior, but this tactic is more suited to a counting-clerk. Show some courage. Let us go now, and quickly—and if we must run the last mile, so be it. Come, our goal is the same.”

“It is,” said Hercól, “but we are not agreed on how to reach it. For I
am
thinking like a counting-clerk. I am counting every person in this expedition, and intending to send none of them heedlessly to their deaths.”

“Heedless?” The counselor’s voice rose in anger. “You claim that death awaits all of us, if Arunis masters the Nilstone. Do you not understand where he is going? The River of Shadows, the River of Shadows enters Alifros just downstream from the Tongue, in the heart of the Infernal Forest. Throughout the ages of this world it has been a pilgrimage site for wizards good and evil. Whatever advantage Arunis thinks to find is surely there. He does not have far to go, Stanapeth, and neither do we.”