by Alexey Pehov
She was no more than five years old. Golden hair in unruly curls, plump rosy cheeks with the traces of tears, rosebud lips, a dirty, torn little dress, bare feet, and a tattered plush toy—either a dog or a mouse—in her hands. A charming little child who could model for the frescoes in holy shrines.
Except that her still eyes were filled with the anticipation of a snake, the hatred of a wolf, and hunger of an ogre. And lying beside her was my glove, the one I had abandoned in the judge’s house.
The little girl sobbed.
Moving very, very slowly, I bent down to pick up my crossbow from where it was lying on the floor. At the precise moment when my fingers closed on the weapon, the little girl sobbed for the last time and then gave a quiet, malevolent laugh.
I froze. So we had met at last. This was the Jolly Weeper in person.
The eyes of the creature—I can’t carry on calling it a child—glinted, a wall of rotten air struck me in the face, and I went flying back against the opposite wall. The magical light started blinking and fading rapidly. It was swiftly getting dark in the room, with only those green eyes radiating light, hypnotizing me and suppressing my will, flooding my brain with a sticky mist of calmness.
“Don’t sleep! Shoot!” someone’s cool, imperious voice ordered, and the mist in my head began dissipating rapidly.
My ears were assaulted by a shriek of protest. The creature could feel that it was losing control over me. I could move again now and, taking my aim at those poisonous green eyes, I pressed both triggers of the crossbow almost simultaneously. The first, ordinary bolt stuck the laughing creature in the shoulder, spinning it halfway round, but it only gave a triumphant little chuckle and continued moving toward me without even pausing.
The magical bolt of fire followed its ordinary brother home and struck the creature in the chest.
A bright flash of fire liberated from its magical captivity, a rumbling sound, and a squeal of protest.
One . . . two . . . three . . . I took my hands away from my face and cautiously opened my eyes. The room was empty. The light from the magical trinket was gradually growing stronger, timidly illuminating the old room and the carnage that had been wrought in it.
The Jolly Weeper had disappeared; there wasn’t even any ash left behind. Either the fire had really destroyed it, or the vile creature had cleared off to somewhere a bit less hot. To be quite honest, it was all the same to me, as long as it was nowhere near me any longer.
“Thank you, Valder. You popped up at just the right moment,” I mumbled, but there was no reply.
Walking out of the room, I saw a wooden stairway leading downward. I had no more desire to travel across the ancient roofs. I had enough bruises already and I didn’t feel like tempting fate yet again.
I slipped out onto the Street of the Magicians. The final drops of time were draining away into the sand. One hour, or even less, and the horizon that was still dark would flare up in the bright flash of an irrepressible summer dawn.
I started moving faster, slipping through the shadows, forward—to where the narrow street broadened out into a small square.
I didn’t even notice how I got there. I simply stopped, enveloped in the cloak of shadow cast by an old two-story house with no roof. Opposite me there was another house, the final beacon of human habitation before the empty square.
And there ahead of me the appalling two-story stump of the old Tower of the Order stood in mute, agonizing reproach, alone and dead. The power of the Kronk-a-Mor had not spared it; there was nothing left of the structure’s former grandeur and elegance. The black blizzard had made short work of the once-beautiful creation of the magicians of the Order.
“What have you done, Zemmel!” Valder groaned.
Yes, an appalling catastrophe had taken place here, and I certainly didn’t envy those who had been nearby when the raging elements had broken free of control. There wasn’t a single stone left on the square, it was absolutely bare, surrounded by the skeletons of houses and flooded by the light of the setting moon, like some meadow in a fairy tale.
The tower had once had not just three, but many floors, and when the explosion happened, the debris should have been scattered right across the square. But it wasn’t there. The square was clean and empty. As if the rubble had just evaporated.
“How long are we going to go on standing here? Time’s wasting.” The sudden sound of a voice from the dense darkness of the house across the road startled me out of my mournful thoughts. I stared across the road in amazement.
The words had obviously been spoken by a living man, not some insubstantial phantom.
“Calm down, Shnyg. Or do you want to end up like good old Rostgish?” a repulsive, squeaky voice replied.
“Calm down Shnyg, calm down Shnyg,” the first voice grumbled. “It was Rostgish’s own fault. He let his guard down and let a dead man get his teeth into him. Let’s get those plans then cut and run.”
“Just how do you suggest we get into that damned tower? We have to think the whole business through, or we won’t get out of this alive.”
“You do the thinking, Nightingale,” Shnyg said angrily. “Morning’s already on the way, it’s time to get out of here.”
“Shut up, will you! I’m thinking,” Nightingale barked, and Shnyg shut up.
Right. I know those names. The two master thieves Shnyg and Nightingale work for the guild, and that means they work for the slimebag Markun.
They’re not such bad lads, really, but their work’s a bit sloppy.
And I knew Rostgish, too, may he rest in the light. He appeared in Avendoom a couple of years ago and attached himself to this pair. Not a master thief. He drank too much. Those must have been his remains that I came across on the Street of the Sleepy Cat.
I wonder what in the name of Darkness they want in the Forbidden Territory?
“Have you got the plan?” Nightingale hissed.
His shrill, squeaky voice was painful to hear, but the thieves didn’t seem to think there was any need to hide, and they made enough noise for the whole street to hear. “The one we got from the Royal Library? Here it is. Light it up.”
“What with?” Nightingale muttered. “That damned Rostgish had all the lights.”
Aha! So they were the ones that the old man Bolt was talking about. “Gray and untalkative.” Shnyg and Rostgish must have gone to the library. The old man would have remembered Nightingale.
They’d stuck some important gent’s ring under Bolt’s nose, hadn’t they? Ah, I never thought to ask the old man about the ring, I thought it was all a senile old fool’s imaginings. I’ll have to go back and have a proper heart-to-heart talk with him. So who was it that sent them?
“We have to get those cursed maps or whatever else before that skunk gets there ahead of us.”
“What are you so nervous about?” asked Nightingale, as calm and rational as ever. “Harold won’t try sticking his nose in here any time soon.”
“That Harold has really got up everyone’s nose. Markun boils over at the very mention of his name, and the client said we should do away with him if it came to it. And the individual our client serves—which means that we do, too—is beginning to express his dissatisfaction.”
“Do away with him?” Nightingale said with a nasal snigger. “Have you completely lost your wits, Shnyg? That lad might look feeble and skinny, but I’ve no intention of tangling with Harold. We do the job, hand over the Commission, take the money, and clear off to warmer parts. For the high life beyond the mountains. No one will ever find us there. We don’t want to be hanging about with the Darkness.”
“Do you think it’s that easy to get away from the Master?” a mocking voice asked, and I shuddered.
I would have known that voice anywhere, out of a thousand. It had changed a lot, lost that lifeless, dead tone, but I still recognized it. It was the voice of the same being that had spoken with the duke and then killed him. That winged creature of the night.
“Don’t ev
en think about trying to run. You will only go when he lets you go, little man. You are faithful to the Master, aren’t you?”
“I am faithful.” Nightingale’s voice sounded hoarse and frightened. “We are faithful.”
“Yes, yes, Your Grace, we are faithful to the Master,” Shnyg confirmed in an ingratiating tone.
There was a quiet laugh of satisfaction in the darkness, and I thought I glimpsed a brief flash of golden eyes.
“Clever little men,” the creature drawled. “Get the maps and destroy them, and then you can clear out of here to anywhere you want.” There was a note of undisguised contempt in the emissary’s voice.
“B-b-but, Your Grace . . . ,” said Shnyg, clearly very surprised. “The client said to bring the papers to him. We can’t just—”
Shnyg broke off his tirade and started wheezing for some reason, and his partner gasped out loud in fright.
“The Master is not used to hearing ‘we can’t.’ He needs servants who can! Those who are incapable of carrying out an elementary assignment are not worthy to serve him; they are useless!”
Shnyg’s wheezing became a charming gurgling.
“May I be allowed to remark that Shnyg did not at all wish to seem to be useless!” Nightingale started keening. “We’ll go and get those papers right now!”
I heard the sound of a body hitting the ground and Shnyg wheezing in relief as he tried to force some air back into his lungs.
“You know that your client also serves the Master, and the Master says that the maps of Hrad Spein must be destroyed, otherwise they might fall into the hands of the king and his attendants. Tell that to the fool whom you call your client. He may be rich, but that does not mean he can think he is a link of Borg. Let him remember the deceased Duke Patin.”
“We understand everything now, Your Grace,” Nightingale confirmed. Shnyg was still coughing. “We’ll tell him everything you said.”
“Wonderful, and now set about it! Surely you don’t think I would need your help if I could enter the tower?”
The emissary didn’t bother to wait for an answer to his question. Something even darker moved across the dark gap of the house. There was another glint of gold. The emissary slowly ran his gaze along the dark street and as it slipped over the spot where I was standing, it hesitated for an instant, but moved on before I even had time to feel frightened. With a clap of his black wings, he melted away into the night.
Silence descended on the street, only occasionally interrupted by Shnyg’s desperate coughing.
“Damn . . . kha-kha! Damned bloody beast. Kha-kha! He almost . . . kha-kha! . . . choked me!”
“What did you expect?” Nightingale snarled. “Spouting nonsense like that to him? Be grateful you’re still alive!”
“The Darkness take that damned creature! And the Darkness take you, too! And the Darkness take me, fool that I am, for listening to Markun, who’s bound us hand and foot to this Master of his. The Darkness take this client, and his damned papers!”
Shnyg was overwhelmed by a new fit of coughing. But just at that moment something looking very much like a human figure made its appearance on the stage of this ongoing spectacle. It was approaching slowly from the direction of the Street of the Roofers and its direction made me feel uneasy, because it was moving straight toward us.
Even worse than that, I was almost directly in its path! I had to dash across the street, to the house where the two thieves were: The darkness was thicker there, and so it would be much easier for a scoundrel like me to hide.
But I wasn’t able to skip in through the door, since the thieves were coming out of it at that very moment. I managed to dart to one side and press myself back against a wall. But master thieves are masters because they can hear the very slightest rustle.
“There’s someone here,” Shnyg whispered, and I drew my dagger out of its scabbard with a quiet rustling sound.
Nightingale and Shnyg started listening, but then they noticed the approaching stranger whom I had already seen. “Shhh. Look,” Nightingale whispered.
There was certainly something to look at. The figure approaching us was a man. A perfectly normal one. Except that he was semitransparent—the tower and the stones of the roadway were quite clearly visible through him. He was wearing a magician’s robes and leaning on a magic staff. . . .
“Look at this,” the phantom muttered to itself. Its voice sounded twice or even three times, creating a strange echo. “They’ve all abandoned me. The traitors. Where are they? Where? I wander and wander, searching for them. I’ll find them.”
The phantom repeated this little jingle over and over, turning its head from side to side and examining the area, evidently hoping to find the aforementioned traitors. It had a blurred spot instead of a face, but I didn’t have the slightest doubt that this magician could see everything perfectly well. I was scarcely even breathing. And neither were Shnyg and Nightingale, standing a little farther away.
The phantom halted a few yards away from us and began turning its semitransparent head again.
“I wander and wander. I’ll find them. I’ll find them.” It paused for a moment and then said in a very perplexed voice: “I’ll find them. Aha! That’s where they are! They’re hiding! I know you’re there! I’ll find you. I’ll find you.”
He held out his staff and started waving it from side to side, like a blind man, and slowly moving closer. That was when I realized that if I didn’t do something quick, the crayfish sleigh would be coming for me. In another ten seconds he would reach me, and that would be the end. I had just one chance, an incredibly stupid one, but I decided to take it, especially since it was time to get rid of my unwanted competition in the shape of Shnyg and Nightingale. I stepped forward out of the darkness onto the moonlit street so that the thieves were behind my back, and I heard one of them swear in amazement.
“Fire!” I yelled, and then dropped onto the surface of the road, putting my hands over my head.
Without even pausing to think, the magician fired a spell at the spot where I had just been standing. Something went screeching through the air above me. A intense impact, screams of terror and pain from the unfortunate thieves. The phantom had hit the target—which was not me. I didn’t wait to see what had happened to the servants of the Master, and there was certainly no point in loitering in the street in front of this new danger. I leapt up, darted round the muttering magician, and set off across the square toward the tower, zigzagging and hopping like a hare driven insane by the spring sunshine.
The screaming stopped: I don’t know whether the thieves were dead or they had enough sense to stop making noise, but I personally didn’t feel the slightest pity for them. It was them or me. Or that damned mumbling phantom would have done for all of us.
Oh yes, about him. The mumbling behind my back stopped, the air howled again, I leapt to one side and saw a sphere of mist go flying across the square, leaving a smoking tail in its wake, hit the surface of the street and bounce like a child’s ball, then explode with a boom against a house in the distance, leaving a fair-sized hole in its wall.
I changed tactics: forward, hop, sharp left, forward, hop, sharp right, hop, a sudden stop, sharp right, forward again. Like a flea on a frying pan.
Surprisingly enough, this tactic worked. Another three balls of smoke went hurtling across the square and exploded far away from where I was. Once I had to flop down on my belly again in a most inelegant fashion, when a magical charge struck the Tower of the Order, but didn’t explode, and then bounced back on a changed course directly toward me.
I saw the misty charge growing bigger as it flew straight at my face. There was no time to jump aside, so I dropped, and as soon as the sphere flew over my head, I jumped up again, because the tower was already very close.
The damned phantom, may the gkhols gnaw on his bones, was howling over by the Street of the Magicians, while I feverishly searched for the door. I had to run along the wall illuminated by the moonlight, and expose m
yself in full view to the raging specter. It was closing rather rapidly, muttering malevolently, intent on finishing Harold off.
Yet another charge flew into the building just above my head but, like the previous one, it bounced off and flew back in the opposite direction. Evidently the tower had retained some of its magic even after the cataclysm that had overtaken it, and nobody could knock down its walls simply by flinging spells at them.
Sagot be praised, I finally found the door! I tugged feverishly at the bronze ring. . . . But the door wouldn’t budge. There weren’t any locks at all, so lock picks were no good here, and that cursed phantom, who was hidden from me behind the wall, would soon appear again and continue his wild bombardment.
I tugged at the door again, then kicked it and swore angrily. Time was running out. On one hand there was the phantom, and on the other, morning was already treading on my heels. I cast a quick glance at the stars. Only the Northern Crown and the Summer Bouquet were still bright in the sky, the other constellations had faded and were barely visible. The moon was growing paler, literally before my eyes, and a few moments later the light illuminating the square became diffuse and pale.
In twenty minutes it would be dawn.
It was the end. Without some kind of miracle, I would never leave the territory, that was certain. I could already consider myself a dead man! If that insane phantom didn’t finish me off first. The magician’s muttering was very close now.
Could I hide in the tower? Perhaps I would be able to hold out there until the next night! I clutched at a final slim straw of hope and strained every last muscle in a desperate attempt to open that damned door at least a crack.
Hopeless. No, I couldn’t get in there; all my efforts had been in vain. I was just about to run for the shelter of the houses when Valder’s voice suddenly said: “Open, it is I.”
The door swung open smoothly, graciously inviting me into the dark interior of the dead building.
“Soo, that’s where you are!” a triumphant voice echoed right in my ear. I jumped forward into the safety of the building and the door slammed shut, leaving me in total darkness.