Shadow Blizzard

by Alexey Pehov

  * * *

  The mirrors called to me with offers, requests, entreaties, demands, and threats, trying to draw me into themselves forever. Faces passed before me in a series of bright pictures—the faces of those I had known, the faces of those I would know in the future, the faces of those I would never see.

  “Harold! Come here!”

  “Die!”

  “Why can’t you just stop?”

  “Come in, you’re one of us now.”

  “Hey, Harold, can you see me?”

  “Please, kind gentleman, please!”

  I took no notice of them, I just pushed them away and tried to break free of the mirrors’ sticky cobweb, now that I’d learned to tell reality from illusion. I didn’t always manage to do it straightaway, sometimes the pictures were so bright and powerful that it cost me a great effort to reject the hallucination.

  Lafresa was walking on ahead of me, and she was having difficulty. Sometimes I started to catch up, and then I fell behind again when I froze in front of one of the mirrors. And then Lafresa would disappear, and I was left completely alone. A step, another step, another …

  “Hey, Harold!” Loudmouth called to me with his monstrously gnawed face. “Come here, let’s talk!”

  I just shook my head and walked past the mirror.

  “In the name of the king, thief!” Baron Frago Lanten and ten guardsmen tried to block my way. “Come here, or it’s the Gray Stones for you!”

  I took no notice of them at all.

  “Do you want gold, Harold?” asked Markun, shaking a whole sack of gold under my nose. “All you have to do is stop!”

  I just laughed, and he shouted shrill obscenities at my back.

  “Who’s going to pay for my inn?” asked Gozmo, wringing his hands in despair.

  I shrugged.

  “Hey, Harold!” a familiar voice called to me. “Come here!”

  I stopped, stared at the reflection for a long time, and took a step toward the mirror.…

  * * *

  I looked at him, and he looked at me. We had time to study each other. We had an entire eternity of time in our hands; there was no need to hurry.

  “Well, how do you like the look of me?” he asked, genuinely curious.

  “To be honest, not very much.”

  “That’s not surprising, I had a bad example to follow.” He grinned, and his grin turned out ugly and repulsive. Was my grin really like that, too?

  I carried on looking at my double—a perfect copy of the master thief, Shadow Harold. A pale face; black circles under tired, sunken eyes; a back stubbly beard; clothes that were dirty, crumpled, and torn. A fine sight. Some dead men, not to mention beggars, looked better.

  “Who are you?”

  A rather timely question, wasn’t it?

  “I’m just me. Or you. It all depends what side you look at us from and what you really want to see in the end.”

  “You called me, didn’t you? So tell me what you want, I’ve got plenty of my own business to deal with, without making conversation with my own reflection.”

  “Which of us is the reflection, that’s the question, Harold,” he said, and his eyes narrowed maliciously.

  “Are we going to have a battle of words, double?”

  “Do you have something against battles of words, double?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s the first difference between us; you’re not very fond of talking, Harold.”

  “What do you want?” His face (my face) was beginning to infuriate me.

  “Come on, take it easy!” he said, with a glint of mockery in his eyes. “Take a more cheerful view of the world, reflection! There are lots of fine and beautiful things in it; you just don’t know how to take advantage of them.”

  I said nothing, waiting.

  “Well, all right,” he said with a sigh. “What do you want all this for?”

  “All what?”

  “You don’t understand?”

  “No,” I told him quite sincerely.

  “All this stress and strain trying to save someone or something, all these friends, all these moral complexes and other unprofitable garbage. Why did you get involved in this crazy adventure? You were never like this before. You used to be more like me.”

  “I’m glad we have nothing in common any longer.”

  “Oh, come off it, Harold! All this scurrying about has turned you into a namby-pamby, a wimp who depends on other people. Remember the golden days when there was just you and the night, when you relied on no one but yourself and didn’t drag all these friends, obligations, and rules around with you? Didn’t we have good times then? Remember the times when you used to break into some fat-assed goon’s house just for fun and completely clean him out! Remember the times when you used to plant a crossbow bolt in anyone who got in your way without thinking twice. You used to kill easily, you wouldn’t have left Paleface alive before.”

  “I never killed anyone who simply got in my way, reflection! That way I’d have put half of Avendoom in the graveyard. I always defended myself to save my own life. Don’t confuse me with you. I don’t take any pleasure in killing! If this is just a friendly chat about old times, I’d better be going. This conversation’s not going to get us anywhere.”

  I stepped back and ran into the cold silver surface of a mirror. He laughed, and I didn’t like the sound of it. He and I were not at all alike now, we were completely different people.

  “You can only leave here with me, Harold.”

  “Who are you?” I asked him again.

  “I already told you who I am.”

  “You didn’t call me over just for idle conversation, did you? You’re always looking for your own advantage, aren’t you, double?”

  “Advantage? Well, you’re not completely hopeless, reflection.” A faint gleam of interest appeared in his eyes. “Yes, there’s a very profitable deal in the offing, and for old friendship’s sake, I want to offer you a share in this little business.”

  I decided to play by his rules.

  “A little business means small profits,” I said with a grin, trying to copy his leer.

  He laughed again.

  “Good old Harold! And I thought I’d lost you completely! Don’t worry, there’s a great big profit to be made from this paltry little business.”

  “What do we have to do?”

  “We? I swear by the darkness, but I like that! Strictly speaking, nothing. How do you like those odds? A heap of gold for doing nothing at all?”

  “I’m always ready to take part in that kind of difficult business.” This time it was much easier to copy his leer.

  “Excellent! All you have to do is not drag that cursed tin whistle out of the Palaces of Bone, and we’ll collect a whole sackful of gold.”

  “A whole sackful?” I asked, making a surprised and doubtful face. “Are you sure about that?”

  “Don’t worry, my old friend, I’ve already agreed to everything.”

  “And who’s the client?”

  “Let’s just say, an outside observer. His name wouldn’t mean anything to you.”

  “I’ve got nothing against it in principle, but there’s just the previous Commission.…”

  “Oh drop that. I don’t believe in stupid signs and the wrath of the gods. Well then, do you agree?”

  “I think so,” I said with a nod, and the reflection relaxed. “But I do have just one small thing to add to what I said before.”

  “What’s that?” he asked, moving closer to me.

  “Remember I said I didn’t take any pleasure in killing?”

  “Well?” my double asked, with a puzzled look in his eyes.

  “I lied,” I said, pulling out my knife and stabbing at my reflection’s chest. He either knew what was coming or he sensed something and managed to jump out of the way. I only tore his clothes. And an instant later there was a knife in his hand, too.

  “Fool!” he spat out, and flung himself on me.

  It’s very
difficult fighting yourself. I always knew where I was going to strike, and if I knew, then he knew, too. We were equally good with our knives, and after a minute circling between the mirrors we only had a few shallow cuts each.

  Now he was going to strike at my throat, and when I stepped forward and to the left, he would try to get me on the shoulder with the backswing.

  He struck at my throat, I stepped forward and to the left, and the reflection immediately tried to strike me in the right shoulder. I knew it was coming and parried his knife with mine. Then I moved straight into the attack, aiming for his face, grabbed him by the chest with my free hand, pulled him toward me, and immediately got a knee in the belly. I jumped back and ducked to avoid a slashing blow, put some distance between us, and tried to get my breath back.

  “You’re getting old,” he chuckled, blowing a tuft of hair from my head off the blade of his knife.

  I didn’t say anything, and he came at me again. Whirling and spinning, knife clanging against knife, hissing through teeth when one of us got another scratch. Neither of us could win; all my efforts to reach my double ran up against my own (or his?) defense. Finally we stopped, facing each other and breathing heavily.

  “It’s tough fighting someone who can read your mind, isn’t it, reflection?” he asked, licking his bloody wrist.

  “It’s easy,” I said, and threw the handful of the metal stars I’d taken from Paleface at my double.

  Of course, he read what I was going to do and tried to dodge out of the way, but this time he couldn’t. I threw the stars without aiming, and with my left hand, and he didn’t know which way to jump. After I flung them, each of the five stars followed its own absolutely random trajectory (I told you already that I’m not much of a thrower).

  Three missed, but two struck home. The first hit my double precisely on his right wrist and he dropped his knife and jerked out of the way of another two stars flying at him, but ran into a third that stuck in his left leg. My double cursed and collapsed on the floor. In two bounds I was there beside him, then I moved behind his back and held my knife against his throat.

  “What a stupid way to get caught,” my reflection said in a wooden voice. “I don’t think you’ll do this.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s rather hard to kill yourself. Did you know there’s a superstition that if you kill your double, you follow him into the darkness?”

  A single drop of sweat slid down his temple.

  “Wasn’t it you who said you don’t believe in stupid signs?” I asked the reflection, and slit his throat.

  The mirrors around me broke and I was back in the hall, only now there was a door where one of the mirrors had been. The body of my double trembled and spread across the floor as white mist.

  I’d passed the test of my own self, and now the way ahead was open. I stepped out of the mirror hall.

  * * *

  At first I didn’t even know where I’d got to. It was a perfectly ordinary, entirely undistinguished space without any exit. I walked forward uncertainly, not understanding where I had gone wrong, and what could have brought me into a dead end. And then it happened. The hall changed.

  It gave me such a fright I almost wet myself. At least, my stomach dove down into my boots, and I thought I was falling off a precipice. A perfectly understandable reaction from anyone who suddenly found himself suspended somewhere between heaven and earth. I had to try really hard not to panic, and understand that I was still standing on the floor and not dangling darkness only knew where.

  I don’t know if it was magic or some other kind of secret, but it was as if the walls, the floor, and the ceiling didn’t exist anymore. I had the impression that I was somewhere up in the night sky.

  There were stars twinkling all around me. Thousands and thousands of bright stars. An enchanting fairy-tale spectacle. The stars were on the walls, on the floor, and on the ceiling, and the pale circle of a moon was shining steadily in the center of the hall. The purple moon by the name of Selena. And if Selena was here, then the Rainbow Horn couldn’t be far away.

  As I walked toward the moon, my heart was pounding hollowly. I’d almost done it! Done what I didn’t believe I could do until today!

  Roo-oo-oo-oo-oo-aa-aa-aa-aa!

  The pure, deep, melancholy call spread out across the stars. Somewhere up there above me, the wind was blowing in Grok’s grave, and the Rainbow Horn was echoing its eternal call.

  Roo-oo-oo-oo-oo-aa-aa-aa-aa! Oo-oo-oo-oo-aa-aa-aa-rr-rr-rr-oo-oo-oo-oo!

  The sound sent shivers running up and down my spine. It was calling. The melancholy song of the wind and the Horn cut me to the quick.

  But I never reached Selena. A blinding bolt of lightning struck the floor under my feet and I jumped aside and squeezed my eyes shut, desperately trying to recover my vision after the bright flash.

  There was a smell of thunder and magic in the air.

  When I was able to see again, I saw Lafresa in the starry sky on the other side of Selena. She wasn’t trying to attack me again, just waiting until I recovered my wits.

  Even now she could have been at a ball somewhere, and not in the heart of the Palaces of Bone. At least, the young woman didn’t look at all like someone who had spent two whole weeks in the catacombs. Her traveling clothes were perfectly clean and not even crumpled, she still had the silver earrings in the form of spiders and a broad-bladed dagger on her belt. Lady Iena hadn’t changed at all since the first time I’d seen her at Balistan Pargaid’s reception.

  Average height, light brown hair gathered into a short ponytail, with the purple light of the moon playing on her broad cheekbones. Her blue eyes were no longer thoughtful, but wary, she was watching every gesture I made, every movement. There was a small crimson sphere glittering on her open palm. I knew what it was, and it cost me a great effort to tear my eyes away from it and look Lafresa in the eyes again.

  “Lady Iena.”

  “I’m glad to see you remember me, thief.”

  Her plump lips twisted into a wry smile. The woman’s voice was in sharp contrast with her appearance. It was tired, very tired.

  “You are planning to live to a ripe old age, I suppose,” she asked out of the blue.

  “I was certainly thinking of it.”

  “Then I advise you to move away from Selena and not get in my way, otherwise I shall have to stop you.”

  “I thought your Master had told you not to touch me.”

  “If you don’t get under my feet. You don’t want to end up feeding the worms, do you?”

  “But the Messenger gave me some hope of being immortal.”

  I was just playing for time.

  “All who belong to the houses are immortal. Except, that is, in the houses themselves. This hall is an antechamber to the House of Pain and you and I are both mortal here. So step aside, thief!”

  “As you say, Lady Iena.”

  I’d heard everything I needed to hear, so I started slowly moving toward the wall. I’m not stupid enough to fight with one of the most powerful sorceresses alive.

  She watched every movement I made. And I prayed to Sagot that everything would work out and Lady Iena wasn’t planning to fling a ball of crimson fire at me against the wishes of the Master.

  Lafresa waited until I had my back against the wall, and only then started moving toward Selena. She still seemed to be wary of the Dancer in the Shadows. (That’s just me flattering myself.) Just before she reached the purple moon she hesitated for a moment, and then she stepped onto Selena. Lady Iena was immediately enfolded in a gentle velvety glow. And then, surrounded by the light of the moon, she began slowly rising off the floor toward the stars.

  She laughed; her exultant, sincere, childish laughter wound around the stars, and they replied to Lafresa as they swirled around the violet radiance in a merry dance. I must admit it was all very beautiful.

  Lady Iena had completely forgotten about me, but I didn’t move from the spot. I watched her rise up to the stars and
waited. Of course, I would have liked to say that she laughed in my face in farewell or said something like “Now the Rainbow Horn is mine!”—but nothing of the kind happened.

  The stars and the column of light growing straight up out of Selena carried Lady Iena to the Rainbow Horn, which was calling to her: Oo-oo-oo-oo-aa-aa-aa-aa.

  Then what I was waiting for happened.

  Selena’s color turned from purple to black and her light died. The stars dancing with Lafresa flashed into crimson streaks and started falling from the sky, leaving sparkling trails behind them, but not one reached the floor, they all melted away in the air. With no light to support her, the Master’s servant fell, without making a sound, into the very center of the moon.

  A fall from a height of darkness only knows how many yards is always fatal, and in this case it was fatal in a double sense. Death in one of the Great Houses is final even for those who used to be immortal and have been reborn in the House of Love.

  Lafresa herself had told me where we were and, remembering Sagot’s warning not to stand on Selena, I felt no compunction about letting her try out one of the traps of the Palaces of Bone. The gods be praised, everything had gone well. The gold piece paid for the old beggar’s advice had been well spent. If that scrounger who answered to the name of Sagot hadn’t warned me not to step on Selena, there was no telling how things would have ended.

  I watched as a dark patch of blood spread out under the body that was twisted and broken by the fall. Until the very last moment I still hadn’t believed that I could outwit the woman who had once been called Lia.

  Oo-oo-oo-oo-aa-aa-aa-aa! The melancholy song of the Horn from somewhere up above me brought me back to reality.

  I looked up at the ceiling, trying to spot where the Horn was lying but, of course, I couldn’t see anything. It was too high.

  While I was vainly gazing upward, Lafresa’s body started slowly sinking into Selena, as if it wasn’t a firm floor, but some kind of sticky slime or mud. A few seconds later Lady Iena, who had caused our group so much trouble, disappeared forever into the dark moon, and a moment after that Selena turned purple again, and thousands of stars and constellations sprang to life in the “sky.” It was just as if nothing had happened.