Stalking Darkness

by Lynn Flewelling

  Seregil looked back to Rhal. “And you, Captain—I’d think it would be difficult to serve after having a vessel of your own.”

  Alec began to suspect where this conversation was headed.

  “Of course, I’d be the last person to discourage anyone from fighting the Plenimarans,” Seregil drawled, “but it seems to me there are more rewarding ways of going about it. Have you considered privateering?”

  “I’ve considered it.” Rhal shrugged, studying the other man’s face with a sharp trader’s crafty interest, “but that takes a strong, swift ship and more gold than I’m ever likely to see.”

  “What it takes,” Seregil said, reaching into his belt pouch, “is the proper investors. Would this get you started?”

  Opening his hand, Seregil showed them an emerald the size of a walnut glowing in the hollow of his palm. It was one of many such stones Seregil kept handy as a conveniently portable form of wealth.

  “By the Sailor, Captain, did you ever see the like of that!” Nettles gasped.

  Rhal glanced down at the stone, then back at Seregil. “Why?”

  Seregil placed the stone in the center of the table. “Perhaps I appreciate a man with a sense of humor.”

  “Skywake, Nettles, wait outside,” Rhal said quietly. As they left, Rhal made a questioning gesture in Alec’s direction.

  Seregil shook his head. “He stays. So, what do you think of my offer. It won’t be repeated once we leave this room.”

  “Tell me why,” Rhal repeated, picking up the gem. “You’ve heard my story and told me nothing, yet you offer me this. What’s it really paying for?”

  Seregil chuckled softly. “You’re a clever man, away from the ladies. Let’s understand one another. I’ve got secrets I prefer to keep, but there are surer ways than this to protect them, if you take my meaning. What I’m offering you, all I’m offering you, is a mutually beneficial business proposition. You find a ship, see to the crew, the provisioning, everything. I provide capital, in return for which I receive twenty percent of the take and passage wherever I say, whenever I require it, which will most likely be never. The rest of the profits are yours to be divided in whatever fashion you see fit.”

  “And?” Still skeptical, Rhal put the stone back on the table.

  “Information. Any document confiscated, any rumors from prisoners, any encounter that seems out of the ordinary—it all comes to me directly and not a word to anyone else.”

  Rhal nodded, satisfied. “So you’re nosers, after all. Who for?”

  “Let’s just say we consider Skalan interests to be our own.”

  “I don’t suppose you have any proof of that?”

  “None whatsoever.”

  Rhal drummed his fingers lightly on the tabletop for a minute, calculating. “Ship’s papers in my name alone, and I run my vessel as I see fit?”

  “All right.”

  Rhal tapped the emerald. “This is a good start, but it won’t pay for a ship, nor get one built before midsummer.”

  “As it happens, I know of a vessel being refitted at a boatyard in Macar. The principal backer’s been having second thoughts.” Seregil produced a stone identical to the first. “These should be ample evidence of good faith. I’ll make arrangements to have all further funds paid out to you in gold.”

  “And what if I just slip the cable tonight with these?”

  Seregil shrugged. “Then you’ll be a relatively wealthy man. Are we to say done to it or not?”

  Rhal shook his head, looking less than satisfied. “You’re an odd one, and no mistake. I’ve one last condition of my own, or it’s no deal.”

  “And that is?”

  “If I’m to keep faith with you, then I want your names, your true names.”

  “If you’ve tracked me to Wheel Street, then you’ve already heard it; Seregil í Korit Solun Meringil Bôkthersa.”

  “That’s a mouthful by half. And you, boy. You got a fancy long hook, too?”

  Alec hesitated, and felt Seregil’s foot nudge his own beneath the table. “You’ll have heard mine, too. Alec, Alec of Ivywell.”

  “All right, then, I’m satisfied.” Pocketing the gems, Rhal spit in his palm and extended his hand to Seregil. “I say done to it, Seregil whoever-you-are.”

  Seregil clasped hands. “Done it is, Captain.”

  Alec was very silent as they rode back to Wheel Street. Passing through the glow of a lone street lantern, Seregil saw that he was looking thoroughly miserable.

  “It’s not as bad as all that,” he assured him. “Anyone looking for Lord Seregil knows where to find him.”

  “Sure, but what if it hadn’t been Wheel Street he followed us to?” Alec shot back bitterly.

  “We’re much more careful about that. No one’s ever tracked me there.”

  “Probably because you were never stupid enough to give them the damn directions!”

  “Still, considering the circumstances—me too sick to think straight, you not knowing the country—I don’t know what else you could have done, except maybe have waited until we were off the ship to ask the way. You didn’t know any better then. You do now.”

  “A fat lot of comfort that’ll be when some other old mistake of mine catches up with us,” Alec persisted, looking only slightly less miserable. “What if the next one who shows up is Mardus?”

  “Even if those were his men that boarded Rhal’s ship—and I admit, it sure sounded like them—he didn’t tell them anything.”

  “Then you think we’re safe?”

  Seregil grinned darkly. “We’re never safe. But I do think if Mardus had tracked us down, we’d have heard from him by now. I mean, he’d have to be insane to hang about in Rhíminee for any length of time the way things are now.”

  10

  THE BURDEN OF TRUTH

  Sarisin wore into Dostin, tightening winter’s embrace on the city. Snow gusted down out of the mountains, only to be followed by icy rain off the sea that reduced it all to thick, dirty slush and churned ice, treacherous underfoot. Smoke from thousands of chimneys mingled with the fog and hung in a grey haze over the rooftops for days at a stretch.

  Preparations for war continued amid a constant stream of rumor and minor alarms. Skalan merchants were harassed in Mycenian towns, warehouses were rifled or burned. Plenimaran press gangs were reported on the prowl in ports as far west as Isil. Word circulated that more than a hundred keels had been laid down in Plenimaran shipyards.

  No major host could be raised before spring, but the forces already billeted in Rhíminee were more visible than usual as they worked on the city’s defenses and drilled outside the walls. Seregil and Alec often rode over to view the Queen’s Horse at their maneuvers, but their friends there seldom had time for more than a brief hello.

  At Macar, Rhal’s ship was progressing rapidly under the captain’s sharp eye. As Seregil had anticipated, once assured of the good faith between them, Rhal looked out for his silent backer’s interests as if they were his own.

  It would be another two months before the vessel could be launched, but he already had Skywake and Nettles combing seaports up and down the coast for sailors. The one subject he kept silent on was the vessel’s name. When Alec asked, Rhal only winked, telling him it was bad luck to say before she was launched.

  Though by no means oblivious to the import of the events unfolding around him, Alec moved through the grey midwinter days in a state of increasing contentment. He’d gradually settled into the role of Sir Alec and had lost most of his awkwardness around the nobles. He was happiest, though, honing his more illicit skills as he worked side by side with Seregil as the Rhíminee Cat or on Watcher business for Nysander.

  He also came to appreciate the amenities of life at Wheel Street. In his former life, wandering the northlands with his father, winter had always meant hardship—slogging up and down trap lines, sheltering in brushwood huts, and the snowy solitude of the forest.

  Here, fires burned at all hours against the ever-present damp an
d cold. Thick carpets covered the floors, food and wine were there for the asking, and warm baths—for which he had finally acquired a taste—could be had at any hour in a special room just down the hall. Some of his fondest memories of those days would be sitting by a snug fire on a stormy day, enjoying the sound of the rain lashing against the shutters.

  As always, life with Seregil had a charmed quality; his enthusiasm and irreverent good humor buoyed Alec along as a seemingly endless progression of lessons were placed before him. The more Alec learned, the more he found he felt like a man who’d thirsted for years unknowing, only discovering his need when it finally began to be slaked. In return, Alec tried to teach Seregil archery and, despite all evidence to the contrary, stubbornly refused to give him up as a hopeless cause.

  One stormy afternoon Seregil discovered Alec in the library, frowning pensively as he scanned the shelves.

  “Looking for something in particular?”

  “Histories,” Alec replied, fingering the spine of a thick volume. “Last night at Lord Kallien’s salon, someone was saying how this war may be as bad as the Great War. I got to wondering what that one was like. You’ve told me a bit about it, but I thought it would be interesting to do some reading on it. Do you have anything?”

  “Nothing much, but the Orëska library does,” Seregil replied, inwardly delighted at this show of scholarly initiative. Alec generally preferred more active pursuits. “We could ride over if you’d like, and see Nysander, too. It’s been days since we’ve heard from him.”

  Sleet pelted wetly down on them as they galloped through the streets of the Noble Quarter to the Orëska House. As soon as they entered the enchanted gardens surrounding it the sleet turned to warm, gentle rain.

  Turning his face up to it, Seregil wondered if any of the wizards ever got bored with the perpetual summer that surrounded the place.

  Crossing the second-floor mezzanine on their way to Nysander’s tower, Alec nudged Seregil and pointed to the walkway across the atrium.

  “Look there,” he murmured with a slight grin.

  Following his nod, Seregil saw Thero and Ylinestra walking along arm and arm. As they watched, Thero threw his head back and let out a genuine laugh.

  “Thero laughing?” Seregil whispered in amazement.

  Alec watched as the pair disappeared down a corridor. “Do you think he’s in love with her?”

  “He probably is, the poor idiot. Or maybe she’s magicked him.”

  He’d meant it as a joke on Thero, but Alec’s sudden blush made him wish he’d kept it to himself. The boy never spoke of his own apparently cataclysmic tryst with the sorceress, or betrayed any sign of jealousy when speculating on her other attachments, but he was rather brittle about the circumstances.

  Magyana answered their knock at the tower door. She had a few willow leaves caught in her silvery braid and a smudge of damp earth on her chin.

  “Hello, you two!” She exclaimed, letting them in. “I just dug some lovely orris root in the garden and brought some up to Nysander, but he’s not here. Wethis says he’s off visiting Leiteus í Marineus again.”

  Seregil raised a questioning eyebrow. “The astrologer?”

  “Yes, he’s been spending quite a lot of time with him these last few weeks. Evidently there’s some sort of conjunction they’re both interested in. I’ve got a potion on the boil back at my workshop so I can’t linger, but you can come in and wait for him.”

  “No, we’ve got other business while we’re here. Maybe we’ll catch up with him later.”

  “I see.” She paused, studying his face for a moment in the most unsettling way. “You haven’t seen him lately, have you?”

  “Not for a week or more,” Alec told her. “We’ve been pretty busy.”

  There was something hovering behind the old wizard’s eyes that looked very much like concern, though she seemed to be masking it. “Is something wrong?” asked Seregil.

  Magyana sighed. “I don’t know. He just looks so worn-out all of a sudden. I haven’t seen him look this tired in decades. He won’t talk of it, of course. I wondered if he’d said anything to you?”

  “No. As Alec said, we’ve hardly seen him since the Festival except over a few quick jobs. Maybe it’s this business with Leiteus. You know how he drives himself when he’s working on something.”

  “No doubt,” she said, though without much conviction. “Do look in on him when you can, though.” She hesitated again. “You two aren’t angry with one another, are you?”

  A sudden image leapt in Seregil’s mind; the night they’d unraveled the palimpsest together, and Nysander suddenly looking at him with a stranger’s eyes as he warned—if you let slip the slightest detail of what I am about to tell you, I shall have to kill all of you.

  He pushed the memory away before it could show in his face. “No, of course not. What would I be angry about?”

  Leaving Nysander’s chambers, Alec followed Seregil back down through the warren of stairways and corridors to the ground floor.

  “The Orëska library is actually scattered all over the building,” Seregil explained as they went. “Chambers, vaults, closets, forgotten cupboards, too, probably. Thalonia has been the librarian for a century and I doubt even she knows where everything is. Some books are available to anyone, others are locked away.”

  “Why, are they valuable?” asked Alec, thinking of the beautifully decorated scrolls Nysander had lent him.

  “All books are valuable. Some are dangerous.”

  “Books of spells, you mean?”

  Seregil grinned. “Those, too, but I was thinking more of ideas. Those can be far more dangerous than any magic.”

  Crossing the atrium court, Seregil swung open the heavy door to the museum. They hadn’t been in here since Alec’s first visit during Seregil’s illness. As they passed the case containing the hands of the dyrmagnos, Tikárie Megraesh, Alec paused, unable to resist peering in at them in spite of his revulsion. Recalling the trick Seregil had played on him last time, he kept his friend carefully in sight.

  The wizened fingers were motionless, but he could see freshly scored marks in the oak boards lining the bottom of the case beneath the cruel nails.

  “They look quiet enough—” he began, but just then one of the hands clenched spasmodically.

  “Bilairy’s Balls, I hate those things!” He shuddered, backing hurriedly away. “Why do they move like that? Aren’t they and all the other pieces of him supposed to be dying?”

  “Yes.” Seregil looked down at the hands with a puzzled frown. “Yes, they are.”

  Alec followed Seregil through a stout door at the back of the museum and down two sets of stairs to a series of corridors below the building.

  “It’s this one here,” said Seregil, stopping before an unremarkable door halfway down the passage. “Stay here, I’ll go find a custodian to let us in.”

  Alec leaned against the door and looked about. The walls and floors were made of stone slabs, laid smooth and tight together. Ornate lamps were fastened in brackets at intervals, giving enough light to see clearly from one end of the corridor to the other. He was just wondering whose job it was to keep all those lamps full when Seregil came back with a stooped old man in tow.

  The custodian rattled the door open with a huge iron key and then handed Alec a leather sack. Inside were half a dozen large lightstones.

  “No flames,” the old man warned before creaking off again about his business. “Just leave them outside the door when you’ve finished.”

  The chamber was a large one, and filled with closely spaced shelves of books and scrolls.

  Holding one of the stones aloft, Alec looked around and groaned. “It’ll take us hours to find anything here!”

  “It’s all very logically arranged and docketed,” Seregil assured him, pointing out little cards tacked to the shelves here and there. On each, a few words in faded script indicated general subject areas. “Histories of the Great War” took up several bookcases at
the back of the room. Judging by the undisturbed layers of dust on most of them, there had been little interest of late in the subject.

  Seregil clucked his tongue disapprovingly. “People ought to make more use of these. The past always sets the stage for the future; any Aurënfaie knows that.”

  Alec looked at the closely packed tiers in dismay. “Maker’s Mercy, Seregil. I can’t read all these!”

  “Of course not,” said Seregil, climbing a small ladder to inspect the contents of an upper shelf. “Half of them aren’t even in your language and most of the others are ponderously boring. But there are one or two that are fairly readable, if I can just remember where to look. You browse around down there; stick to things less than two inches thick to begin with and see if you can read them.”

  If there was a system to the arrangement of the books, it eluded Alec. Books in Skalan stood check by jowl with those in Aurënfaie and half a dozen other languages he couldn’t begin to guess at.

  Seregil appeared to be right at home, though. Alec watched as his companion went busily to and fro with his ladder, muttering under his breath as he went, or exclaiming happily over old favorites.

  Alec had already extracted half a dozen suitably slim volumes when the ornate binding of a thicker one caught his eye. Wondering if it had illustrations, he pulled it out. Unfortunately, this one served as a sort of keystone, for the ones on either side of it let go and most of the shelf cascaded to the floor at Alec’s feet.

  “Oh, well done!” Seregil snickered from somewhere beyond the next shelves.

  Alec set his books aside with an exasperated sigh and began replacing the others. He hadn’t been all that interested in the war in the first place; his simple query was turning out to be considerably more trouble than it was worth. As he slid a handful of books back into place, however, he noticed something sticking out from behind some others. Curious, he carefully pulled it free and found that it was a slim, plainly bound book held shut with a latched strap. Encouraged by its size more than anything else, he tried to open it, but the catch wouldn’t give.