Stalking Darkness

by Lynn Flewelling

  Where in Bilairy’s name is he headed to? Seregil wondered.

  Ahead of him, Rythel passed out of sight around a corner. Seregil was hurrying to catch up when the quiet of the evening was shattered by the screams of maddened horses. Running to the corner, he saw Rythel some thirty feet away, standing frozen in the middle of the lane as a team of draft horses charged out of the mists at him, the heavy wagon they pulled fishtailing wildly behind them. The lane was desperately narrow; even if Rythel managed to dodge the horses, he would almost surely be crushed by the cart.

  With a nightmarish feeling of impotence, Seregil could not even shout as Rythel just stood there, hands raised as if he meant to halt the beasts.

  The lead horse struck him full on, cutting short his ragged scream and trampling him beneath its huge hooves. Then the cart jolted sideways and a leg spun out from beneath it, severed by one iron-rimmed wheel.

  Seregil leapt back to the safety of the corner and watched the wagon thunder by. Foam hung from the horses’ mouths; their eyes rolled in panic. There was no driver on the bench. One long rein whipped uselessly across their backs.

  As the wagon hurtled past, he saw several large hogsheads lashed in the back.

  A brewer’s wagon, out on the nightly rounds?

  Like a nightmare vision, it vanished again into the fog with a thunder of hooves and jangling harness.

  Crouched in the shadows, sword drawn, Seregil waited until the clamor had died away, watching to see if anyone would come. When no one did, he ran to where Rythel lay crushed against the wet cobbles.

  Bile stirred bitterly at the back of his throat. It was as bad a mess as he’d ever seen made of a man. The torso was smashed. Pressing the back of one hand over his mouth, he recognized a familiar sourness amid the horrid stench that rose from the mangled flesh.

  I bought you that wine, Seregil thought, averting his eyes from the contents revealed in the ruins of the ruptured stomach.

  Lips pressed in a thin line of anger and disgust, he dragged the severed leg back and laid it over the corpse, then took out Nysander’s magicked scroll, the one he’d meant to hand Rythel only moments before. Grasping it in one hand, Rythel’s sound right arm in the other, he pried the wax seal loose with his thumb. An instant later, the street was empty.

  “NYSANDER!”

  Seregil’s furious shout echoed up the prison corridor, jarring Nysander, Alec, and Thero from their patient vigil. Nysander was the first to recover. Rushing to the cell door, he cast a light spell and peered in through the grate. Inside, Seregil crouched over what appeared to be a tangled mass of clothing. The stink that hit the wizard’s nostrils told another story. The door swung open at his command and he stepped in.

  “By the Four! What happened?”

  “He was run down in the street,” Seregil hissed between clenched teeth. “I was practically within arm’s reach of him— He just stood there like a rabbit while a runaway brewer’s wagon rolled over him and I couldn’t do a thing to save him.”

  Nysander heard a gagging sound behind him and looked up in time to see Thero staggering blindly out, one hand clapped across his mouth. Grim-faced and pale, Alec remained at the open doorway, watching as Seregil stripped back the dead man’s blood-soaked garments with savage thoroughness, his fine clothing already smeared with foul-smelling muck.

  Seregil was pale as milk, too, but his eyes blazed with fury. Kneeling on the other side of the body, Nysander held his hands a few inches above Rythel’s ruined head.

  “Again, I sense nothing,” he sighed. “You must tell me everything. Was it an accident?”

  “I’m getting very leery of ‘accidents,’ ” growled Seregil.

  He turned the body over and a bloody purse fell into the straw with a sodden chink of coins. He turned out the purse, inspected the remains of the coat, and then flung the whole lot across the cell.

  “Damn it to hell!” he raged. “Damn it to hell! There was a note. Someone summoned him to that place, someone he knew. He sauntered off to his death whistling like a bridegroom! Alec, get the boot off that leg and check it.”

  Alec dutifully tugged at the boot on the severed leg. It was snugly fit and he had to brace his foot on the remains of the thigh to get it off. Pulling it free, he felt inside and shook his head. “Nothing here either.”

  “Or here.” Seregil tossed the other boot aside and yanked off the remains of the dead man’s trousers. After another careful inspection, he leapt up with a guttural cry and slammed one bloodstained hand against the cell wall.

  Just then Thero reappeared at the doorway. “Forgive my weakness, Nysander,” he mumbled, still looking green. “Is there anything I can do?”

  “Look well,” Nysander replied somberly. “Someday your vocation will take you from the shelter of the Orëska House; you must be strong enough to face such ugliness. This may have been an accident—”

  “An accident!” Seregil burst out, glaring down at the body. “Bilairy’s Balls, Nysander, the man was murdered, and so was Tym.”

  “Probably so. And we still do not know who was masterminding this man’s work.”

  “But the map—?” Seregil turned to Alec.

  “It wasn’t there,” Alec replied dully, staring at Rythel. “Nothing was there. Clothes, papers, chests, everything—gone. The room had been turned out. I don’t think he was planning to go back there again. The old woman who owns the house said everything had been taken away by cart this afternoon.”

  Nysander closed his eyes a moment, then sighed. “Thero and I will retrace your paths tonight using our own methods. Should we uncover anything, I shall inform you at once.”

  Slipping a hand beneath Alec’s arm, Nysander drew the boy from the cell. But Seregil remained, crouching gloomily over the body.

  “You clever son of a whore,” he whispered at it, barely loud enough for Nysander to overhear. “You were better than I thought.”

  28

  A GLIMPSE OF PROPHECY

  “Father! Father, where are you?”

  Gripping a handful of Valerius’ magical cal herbs, Alec ran headlong down the bare passageway. There were no doors, no windows, just endless walls of stone as he turned corner after corner, following the splashes of dark blood on the floor and the wracking sound of his father’s labored breathing. But no matter how fast he ran, Alec couldn’t catch up with him.

  “Father, wait,” he pleaded, blinded by tears of frustration. “I found a drysian. Let me help you. Why are you running away?”

  The hoarse wheezing changed as his father tried to speak, then fell deathly silent.

  In the awful stillness, Alec heard a new and ominous sound, the soft tread of footsteps behind him, echoing his pace. When he stopped the sound disappeared; when he went on, they dogged him.

  “Father?” he whispered, hesitating again.

  The sound of footsteps continued this time, and suddenly he was mortally afraid. Over his shoulder he saw only empty passageway behind him, stretching away until another bend cut off the line of vision. And still the footsteps came on, closer and louder.

  The flesh between Alec’s shoulder blades tightened as he fled, expecting any moment to be grabbed from behind. The sound of pursuit grew nearer, closed in behind him.

  Wresting his sword clumsily from its sheath, Alec whirled to fight. Instead of his sword, however, he found himself grasping a blunt arrow shaft.

  And facing a wall of darkness.

  Alec lurched up in bed and hugged his knees to his chest, shivering. His nightshirt was soaked with icy sweat and his cheeks were wet with tears. Outside, a storm had blown up. The wind made a lonely moaning in the chimney and lashed rain against the windows.

  His chest hurt as if he really had been running. Taking a few deep breaths to calm himself, he focused on the red glow of the hearth and tried to exorcise the nightmare’s bitter imagery. His heart had almost slowed to normal when he heard a floorboard creak across the room.

  “That’s the third time this week, isn
’t it?” Seregil asked, stepping into the glow of the hearth. His cloak looked sodden, and water dripped from his tangled hair.

  “Damn, you startled me!” Alec gasped, hastily wiping his eyes on a corner of the blanket. “I didn’t expect to see you back tonight.”

  It had been nearly a week since Rythel’s death and none of them, not even Nysander, had been able to find evidence tying the smith to anything other than the sewer sabotage and a few indiscretions at various gambling houses. Everyone had given up by now except Seregil, who’d grown increasingly short-tempered as he pursued one false scent after another. Lately Alec had found it wiser to keep out of his way when they weren’t working. He’d taken it as a hopeful sign this evening when Seregil slouched off to the Street of Lights in search of consolation; his untimely reappearance now didn’t bode well.

  But Alec saw nothing but genuine concern in his friend’s expression as Seregil fetched cups and the decanter of Zengati brandy from the mantel shelf. Sitting down on the foot of Alec’s bed, he poured out liberal doses for them both.

  “Bad dreams again, eh?” he asked.

  “You knew?”

  “You’ve been thrashing in your sleep all week. Drink up. You’re as pale as old ashes.”

  The brandy warmed Alec’s belly, but his nightshirt was clammy against his back. Tugging a blanket around his shoulders, he sipped in silence and listened to the wind sobbing under the eaves.

  “Want to talk about it?”

  Alec stared down into the shadows in his cup. “It’s just a dream I keep having.”

  “The same one?”

  He nodded. “Four or five times this week.”

  “You should have said something.”

  “You haven’t exactly been approachable lately,” Alec replied quietly.

  “Ah, well—” Seregil pushed his fingers back through his hair. “I never was very gracious in defeat.”

  “I’m sorry about the map.” The thought of it had plagued Alec through the long, unhappy week. “I should have taken it when I had the chance.”

  “No, you did the right thing at the time,” Seregil assured him. “We just seemed to have a lot of bad timing with this business. If I’d gone after Rythel sooner, or if he’d held off getting killed another half an hour, we’d have had him. There’s no changing what happened, though. Now tell me about this dream.”

  Alec took another sip of brandy, then set the half-finished cup aside and recounted all the details he could remember.

  “It doesn’t sound so bad, just telling it,” he said when he’d finished. “Especially that last part. But in the dream, it always feels like the worst part. Even worse than my father—”

  He broke off, surprised at the tightness in his throat. He sat staring down at his hands, hoping his hair veiled his face for the moment.

  After a while Seregil said gently, “You’ve had a lot to contend with lately, what with finding out the truth about your birth and then this. Seeing Rythel all mangled in that cell must have dredged up some unpleasant memories. Maybe this is your way of finally allowing yourself to mourn your father’s death.”

  Alec looked up sharply. “I’ve mourned him.”

  “Perhaps, talí, but in all the time we’ve been together you scarcely ever mention him or weep for him.”

  Alec rolled the edge of blanket between his fingers, surprised at the sudden bitterness he felt. “What’s the use? Crying doesn’t change anything.”

  “Maybe not, but—”

  “It wouldn’t change the fact that I couldn’t do anything for my own father but sit there watching him shrink like a burnt moth, listening to him drown in his own blood—” He swallowed hard. “Besides, that’s not even what the dream was about, really.”

  “No? What, then?”

  Alec shook his head miserably. “I don’t know, but it wasn’t that.”

  Seregil gave him a rough pat on the shin and stood up. “What do you say we scrounge breakfast with Nysander tomorrow? He’s good with dreams, and while we’re there, you could talk to him and Thero about this life span business. With all the uproar over Tym and Rythel, you haven’t had much time to absorb it all.”

  “It’s been easier, not thinking about it,” Alec said with a sigh. “But I guess I would like to talk to them.”

  In the darkness of his own bed, Seregil lay listening to Alec’s breathing soften back into sleep in the next room.

  “No more dreams, my friend,” he whispered in Aurënfaie, and it was more than a simple well-wishing. He could almost hear the Oracle’s mad whispering in the shadows, echoing over the weeks and months with increasing insistence and clarity. The Eater of Death gives birth to monsters. Guard you well the Guardian! Guard well the Vanguard and the Shaft!

  The shaft. An arrow shaft, like the one Alec clutched in his dreams night after night—useless, impotent, without its broadhead point.

  It could mean a thousand different things, that image, he told himself, struggling angrily against his own instant certainty that another fateful die had been irrevocably cast in a game he could not yet comprehend.

  The storm blew itself back out to sea before dawn. The soaring white walls, domes, and towers of the Orëska House sparkled against a flawless morning sky ahead of them as Seregil and Alec rode toward it. Inside the sheltering walls of the grounds, the scent of new herbs and growing things enveloped them in the promise of a spring not far behind in the outside world.

  Nysander and Thero had other guests breakfasting with them. The centaurs, Hwerlu and his mate Feeya, had somehow navigated the maze of stairways and corridors, not to mention doorways not designed to admit creatures the size of large draft horses. Magyana was there as well, sitting on the corner of the table with her feet propped on a chair next to Feeya.

  “What a pleasant surprise,” Nysander exclaimed, pushing another bench up to the impromptu breakfast spread out on a worktable. Most of the regular victuals were laid out—butter and cheese, honey, oat cakes, tea—together with a huge platter of fruit. The usual breakfast meats had evidently been banned for the occasion, in deference to the centaurs. Giving Seregil a meaningful stare from under his beetling brows, he added, “I do hope this is a social call.”

  “More or less,” Seregil said, piling a plate with bannocks and fruit. “Alec’s feeling a bit lost about living for a few extra centuries. I thought you wizards could give him some helpful guidance, since it takes your sort by surprise, too.”

  “So he finally told you,” said Magyana, giving Alec a hug. “And high time, too.”

  Hwerlu let out a snort of surprise. “Not until now does he know?” He said something to Feeya in their whistling language and she shook her head.

  Turning to Alec, Hwerlu smiled. “We saw it that first day you came here, but Seregil says not to tell you. Why?”

  “I guess he wanted me to get used to him first,” Alec said, shooting Seregil a wry look.

  “I suppose that would take a long while,” Thero threw in.

  “Yet, as things have turned out, I now believe Seregil may have been wise to wait,” said Nysander. “It is more than a sense of obligation or fear which keeps you with him, is it not, Alec?”

  “Of course. But the idea that I could be sitting here three or four hundred years from now—” He stared down at his plate, shaking his head. “I can’t imagine it.”

  “I sometimes still feel that way,” said Thero.

  Seregil looked at the younger wizard in surprise. In all the time he’d known him, he’d never heard Thero reveal a personal feeling.

  “I’d guessed it when I was a boy,” Thero continued. “But it was nonetheless overwhelming to have it confirmed when the wizards examined me. Yet, think of what we’ll experience in our lifetimes—the years of learning, the discoveries.”

  He’s almost human today, Seregil thought, studying his rival’s countenance with new interest.

  “I made a poor job of telling you,” he admitted to Alec. “I was feeling a bit shaky that night mys
elf, after seeing Adzriel and all, but what Thero says is true. It’s what has kept me sane after I left Aurënen. Long life is a gift for those with a sense of wonder and curiosity. And I don’t think you’ll ever have any shortage of those qualities.”

  Nysander chuckled. “Indeed not. You know, Alec, that for over two centuries I have studied and learned and walked in the world, and yet I still have the satisfaction of knowing that should I live another two hundred years there shall still be new things to delight me. Magyana and I have gone out into the world more than many wizards and so, like Seregil here, we have seen many friends age and die. It would not be truthful to tell you that it is not painful, yet each of those friendships, no matter how brief, was a gift none of us would sacrifice.”

  “It might sound hard-hearted, but once you have survived a generation or two, it becomes easier to detach yourself from such feelings,” added Magyana. “It isn’t that you love them any less, you just learn to respect the cycles of life. All the same, I thank Illior the two of you found each other the way you did.”

  “So do I,” Alec replied with surprising feeling. He colored slightly, perhaps embarrassed by his own admission. “I just wish I could have talked to my father about it, about my mother. Seregil’s spun out a good theory about what must have gone on between the two of them, but now I’ll never know the real story.”

  “Perhaps not,” said Nysander. “But you can honor them by respecting the life they gave you.”

  “Speaking of your parents, Alec, tell Nysander about that nightmare you’ve been having since Rythel got killed,” Seregil interjected, sensing the opening he’d been hoping for.

  “Indeed?” Nysander cocked an inquiring eyebrow at the boy.

  “Can you describe it?” asked Magyana. “Dreams are wondrous tools sometimes, and those that come to you more than once are almost always important.”

  Seregil kept a surreptitious eye on Nysander while Alec went through the details of the nightmare; he knew the old wizard too well not to see a definite spark of interest behind Nysander’s facade of thoughtful attentiveness.