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

by Frances Mason

  He had spent hours since sunset combing the rubbish plateau, and had found more than one human body part. But each time it turned out not to be Rose. He knew, however, that she could have been buried. The city produced so much waste that the rubbish carts and rubbish barges worked day and night, the carts collecting it from the streets, the boats delivering it to the tip. She might already be under a mountain of rubbish. Perhaps she had gone over the edge with the avalanche.

  Several scavengers had hurled abuse at him earlier, complaining he was in their territory at their time. Whatever the apparent disorder of their behaviour, they clearly had some system of governance, a roster of scavenging rights. But when they had understood what he was looking for they had left him in peace, though they kept sharp eyes on him in case he should try to steal anything of value.

  Each time a new scavenger arrived, after he had explained what he searched for, he asked them if they had seen the body of a beautiful young woman, and described Rose in detail. Each time they had said no, though one hesitated, causing his heart to skip a beat. Then the old woman, with hair that might have been white if washed, or yellow in the light of her lamp, but was brown with matted dirt, turned her eyes inward while she thought. Yes, she had told him, she did not have the features he had described though, and she had been perhaps thirty years old. “Are you sure?” he had asked. She had crinkled her brow, then not answered his question: “That was two cycles ago, more than eight weeks.” Far too long ago. Rose had only been missing for a few days.

  He picked up the child’s arm. He would take it to the lepers, and offer them a gift. The Well of Lost Souls would receive the child’s bones, and the lepers would pray for the child’s soul. No murdered child should be forgotten, he thought. As he secreted the small arm in his coat sleeve, the scavenger woman he had followed to escape the avalanche shouted at him.

  “That’s mine.” She hurried over, more quickly than Alex would have thought possible, had he not seen her quick escape from the avalanche. He supposed the scavengers had to be quick to avoid being killed by rubbish avalanches. Surely many of them died that way.

  He showed her what he had found, and she looked at him strangely. “What do you want with that?”

  “Do you think a child should be forgotten?”

  “But what are you going to do with that?”

  “The lepers,” he said, expecting that for a Thedran that was sufficient explanation.

  She stared at him uncomprehending. Perhaps she did not care about the forgotten. Perhaps she did not even care about the ancestors.

  “The Well of Lost Souls,” he said.

  She blinked, and ran a hand over her face, as if to clean away the grime, but given where her hands had been poking it was an exercise in futility. “The Well?”

  He nodded.

  “In the leper village?”

  Again he nodded.

  “My child…,” she started.

  He waited.

  “They never found her. I couldn’t…say goodbye.”

  “Perhaps someone found her, and took her to the lepers.”

  “No,” she said angrily, but her eyes were not focussed on him, “no, no, she isn’t dead. She’s hiding. She likes to play. I waited too long before I started searching. She’s hidden herself too well. It’s not fair on a mother. She should come out. She shouldn’t break her mother’s heart.”

  “I’m sure she didn’t mean to.”

  “No,” the anger washed out of her face, but she would not look into Alex’s eyes, as if she might see too clearly the truth that she was desperately trying to avoid, perhaps had avoided for many years now, “no, you’re right. She’s a good girl. She wouldn’t do that to me.” She returned to her scavenging, muttering to herself.

  Alex gave up on finding Rose in the rubbish then. He climbed to the top of the slope, then down into the caldera. At the quay where the barges brought in their loads he looked out over the lake. Was she down there? In the depths? He dived in, and swam around, not searching for Rose, but washing the smell of the rubbish tip off himself. The rubbish bargers looked on with curiosity. When he climbed back out he smelled death, and the smell was on him. It was the child’s arm, and the moisture seemed only to make it worse. He would have to wash again after he had delivered that fragment of an innocent life to the lepers. Was Rose dead too, rotting in rubbish or in the waters of the lake? He could not kick the thought, but he knew he would never find her. Not here; not this way.

  Even though it was night a leper sat just inside the gate to the leper village. A brazier burned beside him. He sat cross legged, looking up to the city. In the flickering light Alex could not tell whether his expression was of longing, or hate, or indifference. Unsurprisingly, the carts of the merchants were not there. Alex realised he could not give the customary gifts until dawn. Neither could he simply leave gold or silver, since the merchants would not accept it once it had been touched by a leper. Only the bimateya carvers would touch something touched by the lepers, the bones of the dead, and then only after a ceremony of purification. He could not carry around this rotting little arm anymore though. He stank of death, which only reminded him of Rose’s probable fate. He took out the arm.

  “A child should not be forgotten. But I have no offering.” He looked around to where the merchant carts usually were placed to communicate his reasons.

  A flap of rotting skin hung down over one of the leper’s eyes. Alex placed the small arm in front of him. The leper did not recoil, as most people would have. Living among those afflicted like himself, perhaps nothing could shock him. And it struck Alex then, how strange these practices were that he had always taken for granted. Lepers carved flesh off the bones of the dead. He carried the bones of his father and foster mother, carved into tiny statuettes that precisely represented their living forms.

  “The forgotten will be remembered. Remember the forgotten,” the leper intoned. Alex understood that the leper was one of the forgotten too. Whoever his family were, whether high born or base, they would not visit him; they would deny his existence, ashamed by it, assuming his affliction was a punishment of the gods, and that they must appease the gods by ostracising him.

  “I will remember,” Alex said.

  The leper nodded, and picked up the child’s arm, disappearing into the village. Alex would return when the merchants were here and leave a gift. Without the gifts the lepers could not survive. He would not forget them, as they would not forget the child in their prayers, when they gathered around the Well of Lost Souls.

  As he returned to North Bank he observed the House of Delights, leaning against Ilsa’s Inn. In particular he noted the shuttered windows of the highest storey, and of those especially the one at the end. No light came through the crack between the shutters. No sign of Rose. No sign of life.

  Three nights before, the night of the day that he had spoken to Rob about the sword in the gallery of the bear baiting pit, and heard that Rose was missing, he had gone to the brothel. He had wanted to search through her room, to find some clue of where she had gone. He had tried to enter the usual way, but had found the place was crawling with manglers, and not a few real thieves with alert senses too. Something was wrong, of that he was sure, and his imagination had suggested the worst possibility: she had been murdered by the guild, or by a violent, wealthy customer. He had thought of getting around the thieves and manglers by climbing to the roof, entering through the window.

  He had slipped through the shadows in the street outside, but his senses had tingled. Something had not been right. Scanning the area he had quickly discovered the source of his unease. On the roof opposite Ilsa’s Inn had been a shadow not quite like the others around it. The sentry-thief had been facing the façade of the brothel and its roof, as well as the thatch of Ilsa’s Inn that overhung the brothel. It was not like the guild to place a watchout there. Everyone knew where the guild was. Its protection relied on corruption, not secrecy. So why had he been there? Alex had decided he would hav
e to return later. He had cautiously passed by every night since then. But the sentry thief had still been there. He was there now. It was almost as if the guild were waiting for Alex.

  He returned to his present haunt by twisting ways with cautious tactics to deceive any spying eyes: doubling back, leading through hidden alleys, down into the sewers, up to the roofs, round and round in dizzying spirals, checking and rechecking in such a way he seemed not to care whether he were observed.

  Eventually he reached his destination. Outside, the worn sign proclaimed the Ox and Cart Inn, though you would have been hard pressed to distinguish it from any of the slum hovels alongside it. Inside was a dimly lit common room, not much larger than a bedroom, where hooded customers paid as little attention as they expected. His own hood hiding him from any wandering eyes, he ordered in a whisper a bath from the innkeeper, handing over a silver coin for the luxury of clean water. In his room, when the water arrived, he peeled off his cloak and doublet and tunic and washed the smell of death off himself. Then he tipped the water into the street, and lay down on the bed.

  He dozed, dreaming of rubbish and death. A face peered at him from the rubbish of his dreams, young, beautiful. He knew her face but could not name her. How could he forget? And her eyes accused him. He told her it wasn’t his fault. He would never forget her. But she asked, forget who? and he could not answer. She turned and ran, and he chased her, down alleys which turned back on themselves, where eyes always followed him. They had no bodies but they watched. They always saw where he was going. She disappeared down an alley and he followed, running, wanting to call out her name. And the piss and shit which stained the cobblestones smelled of death and roses. She ran into shadow and he followed. But the cobblestones were rubbish and the rubbish flowed down a hillside in an avalanche and he was falling, down into the darkness, and the smell followed him like the eyes.

  Alex awoke suddenly, aware of something out of place. The faint light of a lantern at the end of the hall filtered through the doorway. The inn was a ramshackle place with poor hygiene, but a proprietor who would be tight lipped with guards and guild manglers alike. Alex listened for its endemic sounds: a sneeze, the snoring of a fat man, the moaning with fake pleasure of a whore, the creak of floorboards and rush of piss into a chamber pot. Outside, the scuffling of feet and slurred challenges and insults as two patrons staggered about or into each other. A thump against the wall, as one was shoved or fell into it. A chain clinked below the open window, then a dog barked, and another answered it in the distance, another answered that, and the sound continued like echoes across North Bank. One of the drunks cried out, piteously, “why disha do at?” The other answered, “coshu fut me fife.” “I din’t. I din’t fut me fife in sevn yaars.” “No yur fife. Me fife.” “I shwear I nev…nev…er…yur nozhe ish fummy.” “Tish not.” “Not not, tish red. Tish.” “You fummy…meam…vunny…I luvu bubby.” “I luvu too.” “No me fife?” “Fut yur fife.” “No, don.” Uproarious laughter followed along with drunken singing and staggering footsteps fading down the street. The sounds were all as you would expect on any night in North Bank.

  But nearer there was a subtle difference in the sound. It was not something that could be easily defined. No specific absence or presence of sounds that could be enumerated, but a shape of absence, as if any sound which passed through the shape disappeared into it, like a struggling body wrapped in chains thrown into the depths of the caldera lake, never to reappear. So Alex was certain there was someone else in the room, someone who knew and loved silence.

  Alex’s eyes were only opened in narrow slits, allowing a small amount of light in. His preternaturally sharp thief senses and reflexes had ensured he did not simply start awake and sit up open eyed. His eyes also sensed it now, but as a presence, not an absence. Instead of an absence of light, there was an unusual depth of shadow, as if the darkest shadows of the room had been gathered like a cloak. He could not see the darkness clearly, because it was only at the periphery of his vision, but he knew, as all creatures of the night know, that at the periphery of vision, as at the far edge of all senses, strained beyond reason, reaching beyond clarity, that space of uncertainty held secrets for those who were aware. He was not looking at it, and so he knew it.

  Alex thought, whoever they are they must be good. Who but a thief would be so good? His mind raced. Perhaps the blacksmiths had paid the guild to send a thief to steal the sword back. If they had realized who had taken it. Avoiding the guild was why he had to hide out in places like this, where the innocuous looking proprietor would not share information for gold, or even for the threats of the guild, instead, with cunning skill, pretending stupidity at every question. So how had they found him, whoever they were? He would have sworn before he had slept that he had not been followed. This was not out of overconfidence either. While he looked on most manglers with contempt, he never underestimated the skills of a fellow thief. So he did not saunter casually into his hideouts, however reliable their proprietor’s silence. He knew all the tricks of the trade, having carefully observed the work of thieves of all ages and abilities since he had been a small boy, and practiced them for years already, both in play and for serious business. Few could throw a tail like Alex. And even if a guild thief had managed to outwit him, he would not have come into his room. He would have reported back to the guild. The manglers would then have come, made a racket, and found the room empty by the time they reached it.

  There was another possibility though, and if he had not carefully supressed his body’s natural responses, he would have shuddered at the thought. The Dark Monks! Perhaps sent by the blacksmiths, or maybe even by the Lord of Law himself, tired of Alex’s intransigent refusal to join the guild. If it were a Dark Monk, the purchaser of his deadly skills was irrelevant. Nethra, god of death, would not care who made the offering at the Temple of the Harvest. If the offering were large enough, a death would be granted to the supplicant.

  Alex had heard many rumours about the Dark Monks, but one struck him now. None know the shadows as well as the city’s assassins, those monks consecrated to the service of Death. Even talented thieves echoed this truism. Perhaps there was one who knew shadows better though. Alex supressed the cocky grin he would have loved to wear. This was no time for self-congratulation. His very life might be at stake.

  What was he going to do?

  Thinking of the blacksmiths had reminded him of the sword. It leaned against the bed. He could reach for it, but the assassin must have his knife out already. There was no hint of a glint of steel extending from the denser darkness. But a professional would not make that mistake. The knife would remain hidden until the final moment, in the folds of a cloak, within the extent of the shadows. Perhaps the knife would be coated with some dark unreflective substance, only the very edges capable of reflecting the light, and then in only a tiny sliver, as narrow as the moment before death was brief. A chance to anticipate and react and deflect death, perhaps, but a slim one. And it was said that the Monks of Death used unholy magic to embrace the darkness with supernatural facility, so perhaps they could prevent even that slim hope from being seen.

  Knowing he could not clearly see, or hear, his foe, he extended all his senses, blended them, felt with them beyond their individual limits, to a perception greater than their sum. He could sense the position of his foe more clearly, in the shape of the subtle absence of light and sound. And then there was the faint smell and taste of the air, layered over the urine in his chamber pot and the wafting of shit and rot from the street. It was the smell and taste of ash that tainted the air of North Bank when the lepers burned the dead on the plateau below and a wind blew from the west. Together all these sensations made clear to Alex the position, the trajectory, the velocity, and even the intention of the assassin.

  And with his senses and mind so conjoined and extended he now sensed something else. Faintly at first. He heard a voice calling to him. It was a voice uncomfortably familiar by now. It whispered of blood, like
a lover whispering of forever. And it moaned of its need, like a whore to her rutting customer among the smells of stale semen and acrid sweat. And its call became more urgent, his mind more attuned to it, its voice louder. It screamed in his head with a burning rage, that tasted of blood and demanded it. He was not sure whom he feared more, the assassin or the sword. Perhaps the sword would take the blood it wanted, with or without his hand. And though he feared its unsavoury lust he feared more his own impending death. He had seen much death, but he would not greet it so young. He stretched his senses further out, trying to sense beyond the call for blood. The void was moving closer, across the room, oozing as slowly as molasses in the cold. Soon the assassin would be within striking range. And the molasses slowed, as if with an icy wind from the mountain passes, as if the assassin also heard the voice of the sword. As a creature of death perhaps he sensed its greater instrument, one that would outlast both the petty mortals in this room, one that spoke with a voice as ancient as the gods, as ancient as Death himself, and would only die with the world. But though he slowed in his progress toward Alex, cautious and aware, he did not stop.

  Alex could actually see the shadow now, extending beyond the periphery of his vision, just a hint of difference in the light from the hall, as if a breeze had delicately caressed the flame of the lantern at the far end. But still there was no sound, only an impression that sound was disappearing, and that the locus of that disappearance moved toward him with the shadow. And there was a tiny difference in the echo of his breath in the room. It was the other’s breath, masked by carefully synchronising it to that of his intended victim. He was good, incredibly good. Perhaps as good as Alex, but more deadly. His intent was clear enough. There was murder in it. But most of all there was fanaticism, a devotion to Death that Alex could smell as a hint of ashes. Whatever the precise nature of the murder he intended, he intended it to be an act of religious devotion. And in that devotion too much of his intention was revealed. Whatever his skills he had not learned to disguise his intention at the deepest level, anticipating too much, not so much his end as his means, revealing himself in the manner of his concealing and the fervour with which he achieved it. It was supernatural. It was magical. And so it radiated in the darkness and silence, like a brazier’s fiery warmth in the cold winter air, but infinitely more subtle.