The Book of Taltos

by Steven Brust

  The purple robes we asked to lead us out just looked at us blankly. Aliera had buckled Kieron’s greatsword onto her back and was grimly not feeling the weight. Morrolan was equally grim about not feeling anything. Neither Loiosh nor I felt like talking. No one else had any good suggestions, either. I was getting tired.

  We stopped and rested, leaning against a wall. Aliera tried to sit down on the floor and discovered that the greatsword on her back made this impossible. She looked disgusted. I think she was close to tears. So was I for that matter.

  We talked quietly for a while, mostly complaining. Then Morrolan said, “All right. This isn’t working. We are going to have to find the gods and convince them to let us go.”

  “No,” said Aliera. “The gods will prevent you from leaving.”

  “The gods do not have to prevent me from leaving; these halls are doing a quite sufficient job of that.”

  Aliera didn’t answer.

  Morrolan said, “I suspect we could wander these halls forever without finding a way out. We need to ask someone, and I, for one, can think of no better expert than Verra.”

  “No,” said Aliera.

  “Are you lost, then?” came a new voice. We turned, and there was Baritt once again. He seemed pleased. I scowled but kept my mouth shut.

  “Who are you?” asked Aliera.

  Morrolan said, “This is Baritt.”

  Baritt said, “And you?”

  “I am Aliera.”

  His eyes widened. “Indeed? Well, this is, indeed, droll. And you are trying to return to living lands, are you not? Well then, I crave a favor. If you succeed, and I am still alive, don’t visit me. I don’t think I could stand it.”

  Aliera said, “My Lord, we are—”

  “Yes, I know. I cannot help you. There is no way out except the one you know. Any purple robe can guide you back there. I am sorry.”

  And he did actually seem to be sorry, too, but he was looking at Aliera as he said it.

  Aliera scowled and her nostrils flared. She said, “Very well, then,” and we left Baritt standing there.

  Finding a purple robe in that place was about as difficult as finding a Teckla in the market. And, yes, the purple robe was willing to escort us back to see the gods. She seemed to have no trouble finding the large passage. The thought crossed my mind that we could just turn around and take this passage out the way we’d come. I didn’t suggest it because I had the feeling it wouldn’t work.

  We passed through the gate once more, the purple robe leaving us there, and we came once more before the throne of Verra, the Demon Goddess. She was smiling.

  The bitch.

  I COULD HAVE DONE most of my planning without ever leaving my flat, and I almost decided to. But I was getting more and more nervous about this whole Morganti business, so I decided to take the precaution of verifying some of the information on the fact sheets.

  I’ll make a long, dull story short and say it all checked out, but I was happier seeing it myself. His imperially assigned protection consisted of three Dragonlords who were always with him, all of whom were very good. None of them spotted me while I was following them around, but they made me nervous. I eventually sent Loiosh to trail him while I studied the information, looking for a weakness.

  The problem was the fact that the bodyguards were of the House of Dragon. Otherwise, I could probably bribe them to step out of the way at the crucial time. I wondered if the Dragons might have other weaknesses.

  Well, for the moment, assume they did. Was there a good, obvious place to take him? Sure. There was a lady he liked to visit in the west of Adrilankha, past the river. If there is a better time and place to nail someone than his mistress’s, I don’t know what it is. Loiosh checked the area out for me and it was perfect—rarely traveled in the early morning hours when he left her place, yet with a fair share of structures to hide near. All right, if I were going to take him there, what would I do? Replace the cabman who picked him up? That would involve bribing the cabman, who’d then know about the assassination, or else killing or disabling him, which I didn’t like.

  No, there had to be a better way.

  And there was, and I found it.

  SHE SAID, “I GREET you again, mortals. And you, Aliera, I give you welcome. You may leave this place, and the Easterner may accompany you, on the condition that he never return. The Lord Morrolan will remain.”

  “No,” said Aliera. “He returns with us.”

  The goddess continued to smile.

  “All right,” said Aliera. “Explain to me why he has to stay here.”

  “It is the nature of this place. The living are simply unable to return. Perhaps he can become undead, and leave that way. There are those who have managed this. I believe you know Sethra Lavode, for instance.”

  “That is not acceptable,” said Aliera.

  Verra smiled, saying nothing.

  Morrolan said, “Let it lie, Aliera.”

  Aliera’s face was hard and grim. “That’s nonsense. What about Vlad, then? If it was the nature of the place, he couldn’t leave either. And don’t tell me it’s because he’s an Easterner—you know and I know there’s no difference between the soul of an Easterner and the soul of a Dragaeran.” Indeed? Then why weren’t Easterners allowed into the Paths of the Dead, assuming we’d want to be? But this wasn’t the time to ask.

  Aliera continued, “I couldn’t leave either, for that matter. And didn’t the Empress Zerika manage? And for that matter, what about you? I know what being a Lord of Judgment means, and there’s nothing that makes you so special that you should be immune to these effects. You’re lying.”

  Verra’s face lost its smile, and her multijointed hands twitched—an odd, inhuman gesture that scared me more than her presence. I expected Aliera to be destroyed on the spot, but Verra only said, “I owe you no explanation, little Dragon.”

  Aliera said, “Yes, you do,” and Verra flushed. I wondered what it was that had passed between them.

  Then Verra smiled, just a little, and said, “Yes, perhaps I do owe you an explanation. First of all, you are simply wrong. You don’t know as much about being a god as you think you do. Easterners hold gods in awe, denying us any humanity. Dragaerans have the attitude that godhood is a skill, like sorcery, and there’s nothing more to it than that. Neither is correct. It is a combination of many skills, and many natural forces, and involves changes in every aspect of the personality. I was never human, but if I had been, I wouldn’t be now. I am a god. My blood is the blood of a god. It is for this reason that the Halls of Judgment cannot hold me.

  “In the case of Zerika, she was able to leave because the Imperial Orb has power even here. Still, we could have stopped her, and we nearly did. It is no small thing to allow the living to leave this place, even those few who are capable.

  “Your Easterner friend could never have come here without a living body to carry him. No, the soul doesn’t matter, but it’s more complicated than that. It is the blood. As a living man he could bring himself here, and as a living man he can leave.” She suddenly looked at me. “Once. Don’t come back, Fenarian.” I tried not to look as if I were shaking.

  Verra went on, “And as for you, Aliera . . .” Her voice trailed off and she smiled.

  Aliera flushed and looked down. “I see.”

  “Yes. In your case, as perhaps your friends told you, I had some difficulty in persuading certain parties to allow you to leave. If you weren’t the heir to the throne, we would have required you to stay, and your companion with you. Are you answered?”

  Aliera nodded without looking up.

  “What about me, boss?”

  Shit. I hadn’t thought of that. I screwed up my courage and said, “Goddess, I need to know—”

  “Your familiar shares your fate, of course.”

  “Oh. Yes. Thank you.”

  “Thanks, boss. I feel better.”

  “You do?”

  Verra said, “Are you ready to leave, then? You should de
part soon, because if you sleep, none of you will live again, and there are imperial rules against the undead holding official imperial positions.”

  Aliera said, “I will not leave without my cousin.”

  “So be it,” snapped Verra. “Then you will stay. Should you change your mind, however, the path out of here is through the arch your friends know, and to the left, past the Cycle, and onward. You may take it if you can. The Lord Morrolan will find his life seeping away from him as he walks, but he can try. Perhaps you will succeed in bringing a corpse out of this land, and denying him the repose of the Paths as well as the life which is already forfeit. Now leave me.”

  We looked at each other. I was feeling very tired indeed.

  For lack of anywhere else to go, we went past the throne until we found the archway beneath which we’d first met Kieron the Conqueror. To the right was the path to the well, which was still tempting, but I still knew better. To the left was the way out, for Aliera and me.

  I discovered, to my disgust, that I really didn’t want to leave Morrolan there. If it had been Aliera who had to stay, I might have felt differently, but that wasn’t one of my options. We stood beneath the arch, no one moving.

  I OPENED THE BOX. The sensation I’d felt upon touching it became stronger. It contained a sheathed dagger. Touching the sheath was very difficult for me. Touching the hilt was even more difficult.

  “I don’t like this thing, boss.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “Do you have to draw it before—”

  “Yes. I need to know I can use it. Now shut up, Loiosh. You aren’t making this any easier.”

  I drew the dagger and it assaulted my mind. I found my hand was trembling, and forced my grip to relax. I tried to study the thing as if it were just any weapon. The blade was thirteen inches, sharp on one side. It had enough of a point to be useful, but the edge was better. It had a good handguard and it balanced well. The hilt was nonreflective black, and—

  Morganti.

  I held it until I stopped shaking. I had never touched one of these before. I almost made a vow never to touch one again, but careless vows are stupid, so I didn’t.

  But it was a horrible thing to hold, and I never did get used to it. I knew there were those who regularly carried them, and I wondered if they were sick, or merely made of better stuff than I.

  I forced myself to take a few cuts and thrusts with it. I set up a pine board so I could practice thrusting it into something. I held it the whole time, using my left hand to put the board against a wall on top of a dresser. I held my right hand, with the knife, rigidly out to the side away from my left hand. I must have looked absurd, but Loiosh didn’t laugh. I could tell he was exercising great courage in not flying from the room.

  Well, so was I, for that matter.

  I thrust it into the board about two dozen times, forcing myself to keep striking until I relaxed a bit, until I could treat it as just a weapon. I never fully succeeded, but I got closer. When I finally resheathed the thing, I was drenched with sweat and my arm was stiff and sore.

  I put it back in its box.

  “Thanks, boss. I feel better.”

  “Me, too. Okay. Everything is set for tomorrow. Let’s get some rest.”

  AS WE STOOD, I said to Aliera, “So tell me, what’s so special about you that you can leave here and Morrolan can’t?”

  “It’s in the blood,” she said.

  “Do you mean that, or is it a figure of speech?”

  She looked at me scornfully. “Take it however you will.”

  “Ummm, would you like to be more specific?”

  “No,” said Aliera.

  I shrugged. At least she hadn’t told me she owed me no explanation. I was getting tired of that particular phrase. Before us was a wall, and paths stretched out to the right and to the left. I looked to the right.

  I said, “Morrolan, do you know anything about that water Verra drank and fed to Aliera?”

  “Very little,” he said.

  “Do you think it might allow us to—”

  “No,” said Aliera and Morrolan in one voice. I guess they knew more about it than I did, which wasn’t difficult. They didn’t offer any explanations and I didn’t press the issue. We just stood for a long moment, then Morrolan said, “I think there is no choice. You must go. Leave me here.”

  “No,” said Aliera.

  I chewed on my lower lip. I couldn’t think of anything to say. Then Morrolan said, “Come. Whatever we decide, I wish to look upon the Cycle.”

  Aliera nodded. I had no objection.

  We took the path to the left.

  16

  The horizon jumped and twisted, the candle exploded, the knife vibrated apart, and the humming became, in an instant, a roar that deafened me.

  On the ground before me, the rune glowed like to blind me, and I realized that I was feeling very sleepy. I knew what that meant, too. I had no energy left to even keep me awake. I was going to lose consciousness, and I might or might not ever regain it, and I might or not be mad if I did.

  My vision wavered, and the roar in my ears became a single monotone that was, strangely, the same as silence. In the last blur before I slipped away, I saw on the ground, in the center of the rune, the object of my desire—that which I’d done all of this to summon—sitting placidly, as if it had been there all along.

  I wondered, for an instant, why I was taking no joy in my success; then I decided that it probably had something to do with not knowing if I’d live to use it. But there was still somewhere the sense of triumph for having done something no witch had ever done before, and a certain serene pleasure in having succeeded. I decided I’d feel pretty good if it didn’t kill me.

  Dying, I’ve found, always puts a crimp in my enjoyment of an event.

  I’D LOVE TO SEE a map of the Paths of the Dead.

  Ha.

  We followed the wall to the left, and it kept circling around until we ought to have been near the thrones, but we were still in a hallway with no ceiling. The stars vanished sometime in thee, leaving a grey overcast, yet there was no lessening in the amount of light I thought had been provided by the stars. I dunno.

  The wall ended and we seemed to be on a cliff overlooking a sea. There was no sea closer than a thousand miles to Deathgate Falls, but I suppose I ought to have stopped expecting geographical consistency some time before.

  We stared out at the dark, gloomy sea for a while and listened to its roar. It stretched out forever, in distance and in time. I can’t look at a sea, even the one at home, without wondering about who lives beyond it. What sorts of lives do they have? Better than ours? Worse? So similar I couldn’t tell the difference? So different I couldn’t survive there? What would it be like? How did they live? What sorts of beds did they have? Were they soft and warm, like mine, safe and—

  “Vlad!”

  “Uh, what?”

  “We want to get moving,” said Morrolan.

  “Oh. Sorry. I’m getting tired.”

  “I know.”

  “Okay, let’s—Wait a minute.”

  I reached around and opened my pack, dug around amid the useless witchcraft supplies I’d carried all this way, and found some kelsch leaves. I passed them around. “Chew on these,” I said.

  We all did so, and, while nothing remarkable or exciting happened, I realized that I was more awake. Morrolan smiled. “Thanks, Vlad.”

  “I should have thought of it sooner.”

  “I should have thought of it, boss. That’s my job. Sorry.”

  “You’re tired, too. Want a leaf? I’ve got another.”

  “No, thanks. I’ll get by.”

  We looked around, and far off to our right was what seemed to be a large rectangle. We headed toward it. As we got closer, it resolved itself into a single wall about forty feet high and sixty feet across. As we came still closer, we could see there was a large circular object mounted on its face. My pulse quickened.

  Moments later the thre
e of us stood contemplating the Cycle of the Dragaeran Empire.

  RAIET PICKED UP A carriage at the Imperial Palace the next day and went straight to the home of his mistress. A Dragonlord rode with him, another rode next to the driver, and a third, on horseback, rode next to the carriage, or in front of it, or behind it. Loiosh flew above it, but that wasn’t part of their arrangements.

  Watching them through my familiar’s eyes, I had to admire their precision, futile though it was. The one on top of the coach got down first, checked out the area, and went straight into the building and up to the flat, which was on the second floor of the three-story brick building.

  If you’d been there watching, you would have seen the rider dismount smartly as the driver got down and held the door for the two inside while looking up and down the street, and up at the rooftops as well. Raiet and the two Dragons walked into the building together. The first one was already inside the flat and had checked it over. Raiet’s mistress, who name was Treffa, nodded to the Dragon and continued setting out chilled wine. She seemed a bit nervous as she went about this, but she’d been growing more and more nervous as this testimony business continued.

  As he finished checking the apartment, the other two Dragons delivered Raiet. Treffa smiled briefly and brought the wine into the bedchamber. He turned to one of the Dragons and shook his head. “I think she’s getting tired of this.”

  The Dragon probably shrugged; he’d been assigned to protect a Jhereg, but he didn’t have to like it, or him, and I assume he didn’t. Raiet walked into the bedchamber and closed the door. Treffa walked over to the door and did something to it.

  “What’s that, babe?”

  “A soundproofing spell. I just bought it.”