Horn of the River God: Book I of The Song of Agmar

by Frances Mason

  It was then he realised where he was. He had reached Wizard’s Way. You might think that there would be wizards galore in a street with that name, but you would be wrong. There was only one, or at least only one tower. Along either side of the street, between where Alex crouched and the tower, stretched a row of dilapidated houses, clearly not lived in for many years. The tower rose at the end of the street, above a formidable surrounding wall, beyond which flourished a tangle of unkempt vegetation that somehow was not lit by the full moon. The tower itself soared higher than the battlements that ringed the city. And those battlements were high. From the tower window the strange light oozed, polluting further an already notoriously corrupt and filthy city.

  Alex anxiously observed that high window and its unnatural light. In his brain and in his gut he knew he should turn back, but the voice called to him, and its urgency was such that he could no longer resist. The wizard’s tower rose from its tangled garden enclosed by high walls and an iron gate beneath an arch from which gargoyles leered. Though the walls were high, they would stop no serious thief, but what thief would be so foolhardy to dare the wrath of a great wizard? And this wizard was great, if the rumours were to be believed. Since many Thedran rumours were nine parts horseshit to one part imagination he was not sure he should put much store in it, but as he quickly scaled the wall, his fingers unerringly finding the best foot and finger holds, he felt the hair on the nape of his neck prickle. Better safe than too dead to be sorry, he thought, but the voice was too urgent to ignore. Again it seemed to scream.

  He sat on the ledge for a moment, while scanning the grounds within. The place was completely overgrown, the path that must lead from the gate to the tower barely visible, trees and bushes and creeping vines growing together; a thick undifferentiated tangle of wood and leaves and ivy and weeds and fallen, rotting leaves and twigs and branches. Usually that kind of riotous vegetation would be alive with the sounds of wildlife, owls and possums and nocturnal insects, but it seemed devoid of sentient life, and even the plants were stone-like, without a rustle, merely the ingredients for a creeping decay. He knew he should have turned back, but he could not. He searched for a way down through the bracken. The growth was all the way to the wall, so that he could not simply climb down the wall or drop. He saw a thick branch from an olive tree, extending over the path from the gate, tested it with his foot, and it snapped, rotten. He tried another with the same result.

  The top of the wall was more than a foot wide, so he could easily walk along it. He walked away from the gate, peering into the tangled vegetation, but it only grew thicker the further he moved from the path. He went back to the gate arch. He took out a rope and grappling hook and fastened the hook to the highest crossbar on the gate from outside, took the rope over the top and dropped it into the darkness inside the gate. Then he climbed down. There were more branches closer to the gate than he had noticed when looking in from outside. They seemed to close in on him as he descended, at first they were gentle like the fingers of the diseased trying to touch a holy man, but as he climbed lower they seemed more like the hangman’s hands, touching his neck as if to check that the noose was tight enough. He struck out and branches broke off, kicked and others followed. He would have liked to have a sword to cut them all away. It was darker down here than he had expected too, and as he looked through the grille of the gate his vision seemed to blur and darken, the houses lining Wizard’s Way losing shape and shifting like shadows in firelight, as if any light from the street was strangled by the bars of the gate. When he reached the ground he could see nothing at all. He looked up the way he had come but could not see the stars.

  “That can’t be a good sign,” he said to himself, “but at least it can’t be a bad sign if there’s no sign.”

  More strangely, he could not even see the contours of the gate or lines of greater darkness where the bars of the gate should be. He felt around but could not find it that way. “You’ve got yourself into worse fixes than this before, Alex, if only you could remember when.” He usually had an excellent sense of direction, but here he was totally lost. He reached out in random directions and was surprised that no branches blocked his way. He decided he would just have to trust to the vegetation being thicker away from the path. He took one step in a direction he thought was away from the gate, reaching in front of himself. Another. And so by careful single steps he made his way, whether along the path to the tower or in an arc into the depths of the sinister garden he did not know.

  The darkness seemed to become substantial as he progressed, at first like a stifling air, soon like liquid, and it became more viscous with every step. It did not choke his lungs, but he tasted a terrible despair in the air. Why had he come here? He was sure to die. He was dying now. He knew it. He knew there was no hope. Why did he go on? He had forgotten why he was here. Why not lie down here and die? The darkness closed about him, holding him immobile, pressing into his flesh. Fingers of it brushed his face, reached for his eyes, scratched like branches at his cheeks. Ivy reached out in thick fingers, which extended from all directions, knotted about his waist and dragged him down, but more forceful than this was the despair, which urged him to give up and to lie down and die.

  Then the voice he had heard before called to him, washed over him, washing away the despair. It was a voice of power. He did not know whose voice it was, but it almost seemed his own, reassuring him. And he had always been more amused by the probability of death than terrified. He was a thief, born to a beggar and a whore, fostered by whores, befriended by scoundrels. It was a cruel but entertaining world. Laugh at it. Laugh all the way to the gallows, then dance. He laughed now, and every guffaw drove more of the fear away. The pressure around his waist grew less, the tendrils of ivy loosening. The darkness seemed to shift and shudder too, colours shimmering at the edge of vision, constantly shifting, like moonlight when the moon was full and its swirling colours most vivid. On nights like this night. He knew why he was here. He was going to steal from a powerful wizard. He would become a legend among thieves. The thief who stole from a wizard and survived. That wizard didn’t know what was coming and by the time he did it would be gone, along with everything of value in his tower, forsaken by all the gods, except Ilsa, god of thieves, who waited at the door to invite in his favourite son, the greatest thief in Thedra, Alex Quickfingers.

  But the darkness closed in again, and the branches reached for him and held him back. Soon they would close about his neck. Here there would be no gallows dance. Here he would choke and no one would see. Here there was no laughing, not even a crowd to jeer at him as he drove away their own fear of death with his own, making light entertainment of that most terrifying of mysteries that all men great and small would one day face. And was not that the point of a hanging? It would not be him laughing. He would be laughed at as he died. But even that would be better than this, dying here alone. No one would know. Rose would not know. Rob would not know. They would probably just think the guild had finally caught up with him, stuck a knife in his back, tied a stone to a rope and the rope about his ankles and chucked him in the lake, or maybe thrown his corpse on the refuse plateau to rot and have his eyes pecked out by hungry kites. He dropped to his hands and knees, but he could not go on, not like this.

  And again the voice came, as bright as the despair was dark, washing it away, speaking with a power greater than any he had known. This was greater than any wizard. A wizard was but an insect to this. And it was Alex’s own voice, lifting him, lifting him from his hands and knees to his knees, from his knees to his feet. He knew where he was going now. The voice told him what he could not see. It reassured him. It was himself. Who else could it be? He always talked to himself. That was what it was, he was sure. “You’re a great talker, when no one’s about.” And he had talked his way out of trickier situations than this. After all, here he only had to convince himself, and that was easy.

  But it was not as easy as it sounded, and he collapsed again, this time to hi
s belly, the darkness wrapping itself around him, suffocating him. There was no life here. No animal, no insect. He strained his ears listening but could hear nothing. Though much of the city was asleep, always there was some sound in Thedra, dirty jewel of Ropeua, where the king ruled and merchants traded and guild masters paraded down streets with their overdressed wives to their guild halls, and manglers and thieves made threats against freelancers, while chandlers slept and snored and dogs barked to one another and howled at the prismatic moon. But here none of that kind of sound reached. Here there was nothing but silence. And it was not a peaceful silence. There was nothing relaxing or reassuring about it. It was a disturbed silence, a silence that told of darkness and despair, of the pointlessness of all life, of the falsehood of all vitality. No such falsehood could survive here. He was dying of a lie and the lie was life, that disease with the most certain end.

  Truth is not so simple said the familiar voice then, and he knew in that moment that he agreed. Yes life was a road to death, but what a road, what views, what passions and pleasures, what adventures, what hopes, and not all were pointless. Yes there were times when the way seemed hard and steep, but the view at the end of the climb was the more satisfying for it. Yes there were frustrations but disappointment was the most certain evidence of passion. Yes there was pain, but didn’t that make the pleasures all the more exquisite? Yes there was dullness, so much dullness, so many boring rules and interfering guilds and laws designed to make a thief’s life more dangerous, but you didn’t sit still and moan, you got up and went out and looked for adventure. You didn’t avoid trouble you invited it. You made your own way. You broke every rule you could get away with and robbed blind every man you could outsmart. There was always hope, and it burned brightest in the darkest places. And now, in Alex’s breast, it blazed with incredible brilliance, a light within that fought the darkness without.

  He could see the door. He crawled like a snake, on his belly. It was all he had strength for, but it was enough. Nothing would stop him. Nothing could. He was Alex Quickfingers. He reached into his pocket and with his quick fingers felt the tiny statuette of his long dead father, next to that of his adoptive mother, the beggar and the whore. He carried them everywhere with him, as every common Thedran without hearth and home to place them carried their ancestral statuettes, carved from the bones of those who had gone before them, fathers and mothers and their fathers and mothers, as many as could be held onto and remembered. His own father only spoke to him in dreams, but he would often speak to his father in times of need. He gripped the tiny figurine now and spoke to him.

  “Father, I’m not going to try to trick you. I’m not going to use any of the beggar’s tricks you taught me. You taught me everything I know that I didn’t steal from someone else’s brain. You know all the tricks of the beggars trade, so I couldn’t trick you out of anything. I’m just a simple thief, with simple needs, like living. If I do beg you for anything I know you’ll respect me the more for it, but I wouldn’t want you to think I thought I could beg better than you. I understand professional pride. No better thief in the whole of this city, except maybe Rob, and maybe…well, you understand.”

  He felt a sudden surge of strength. Perhaps, he thought, the voice had been of his father. He had thought it was female but he could not be sure. He still could see clearly his father’s face, though he had died six years before. It was carved with great precision into the bimateya statuette in his pocket. His thumb was pressed against it, and was familiar with its every contour. But try as he might he could not remember his father’s voice. He remembered being told to beg for both of them. “They’re kinder to children,” his father had said. And they had been. But that was long ago. He was not a child anymore.

  He was not far from the door now. He got to his hands and knees, then to his feet. He looked up. At this end of the garden there was a gap in the vegetation. Through it he could see the stars, and the tower, iridescent in the spectral light of the moon.

  A short stairway of slate led up to the door. Now he had to pick the door’s lock. He examined it, then checked all the edges of the iron bound oaken door. He could not find any hidden triggers, and it did not seem to be locked. He checked again, this time for traps. Nothing. He turned the handle. As he did his thief sharp senses tingled. He stepped sideways instinctively, more quickly than he could think, and there was a flash, and an impact as if someone huge had shoved him hard. He landed in something prickly. He was blind. But it was only momentary. His vision cleared, and he was looking up at the same stars, reassuring in their twinkling normality, and the wall of the tower, with its evenly mortared stones, rising toward the conical cap of its roof far above. He climbed out of the prickly bush he had landed on, something like a blackberry bush but without any fruit. He cautiously went up to the door again. Looking to where he had stood a moment before he saw the slate of the top stair had been cracked, as if a giant hammer had struck there. He had discovered no trap with his examination of the door. It had to have been a magical trap. Sneaky of a wizard to use magic. There had been no sound, despite the damage done. Perhaps the wizard did not want his meditations disturbed by the killing of pesky intruders. And Alex did not want his life finished by the nasty spells of a vindictive wizard. He would have to be more careful.

  More interesting than the damage of the trap was that the door had disappeared. He peered into the space where it had been. He could see nothing there. Perhaps, he thought, it was like the darkness behind him. Enter, the familiar voice said, softly, seductively. But he would be careful about what voices he trusted now, even if they were in his own head. He looked back toward the gate, but he saw no path, and it occurred to him that going back would now be harder than reaching this point. He decided he must go forward. He took a deep breath, and stepped across the threshold. The unnatural darkness dissolved. He was in a stairwell, with only natural shadows. Natural shadows were a thief’s friends. They were a comforting presence after the horror of the garden path and the uncertainty of the doorway. He stepped into the deepest of them for a moment, wrapping himself in darkness, natural darkness in an unnatural place.

  The stairwell spiralled up around a central column of stone, like a tower within the tower. The stone of both of the inner walls and the steps between them was as smooth as marble, with no joins or mortar, unlike the outside of the tower, as if the whole edifice had been sculpted from a single piece of marble then polished. It seemed, further up, where a lantern glowed, to be the colour of sun bleached bone. Only that lantern, on the outer wall, opposite the point where the curve cut off sight, interrupted the monotony of the surface. The light did not flicker like a flame, but glowed evenly, softly. He strained his ears, hoping to hear the familiar voice, but the tower was completely silent, and so was his head. No sound of life of even the smallest kind was here, not a pattering of rat’s feet, nor a scratching of scuttling cockroaches. There were no cobwebs in the stairwell, though the ceiling, being the next turn of the stairs, was too far above for any broom to reach, at least if human hands were doing the sweeping.

  He moved carefully up the stairs, scanning each step and the wall to either side in case of traps but he did not know that he would be able to spot a magical trap. The one outside, on the door, had been the first he had ever encountered. He hoped that trap was the last, but a thief’s natural caution made him wary. He had not spotted that trap though he had evaded most of its damage. He did not like to think what would have happened if he had not moved, since that might be the result of the next trap he missed. As he reached the lantern set in the wall he saw another up above, just within sight at edge of the tower’s curvature. Examining the lamp he could not see what fuelled it. Its light did not dance, even when he blew through vents in the bottom. Not the tiniest flicker. The wizard must save a lot on candles and torches, he thought. If Alex had had some magic of his own he would probably have made the shadows deeper, or made himself invisible. An invisible thief with quick light fingers and a quick
light step, he thought; he would be a legend in his own time. He continued up, each breath carefully controlled to silence it, each step carefully placed, lighter than a cat, yet what to most ears would usually be imperceptible, in this place, to Alex’s own ears at least, sounded loud. His breath seemed to rasp in his throat, his feet seemed to thump on the stone.

  He felt the trap before triggering it this time. As he stopped he noticed a barely visible rune that he was sure had not been there a moment before. He barely dared to move his eyes or to breathe, then he carefully stepped back, prepared to leap away if necessary. There was no mechanism to observe or disable as with a mechanical trap, only a slight difference in the air. Alex could feel that difference, and suspected that if he disturbed that air above the rune it would disturb the organization of the organs in his body, perhaps by splattering them all over the walls. That would be a shame, he thought; they were such pretty marble walls. He decided he had to test the trap, despite the danger involved. The only other option would be to return the way he had come, and he dreaded stepping again on that garden path. He tried to put out of his mind that he would have to traverse it again, somehow, when he had finished his thieving. He moved carefully closer to and further from the threatening air of the trap, delicately probing its limits. He tried to find space enough to squeeze past it, but saw the rune begin to glow and quickly backed away. The rune pulsed slowly then faded to its earlier imperceptible form.