The River of Shadows cv-3

by Robert V. S. Redick

  “First, because you’re an irritating brat and a mutineer,” said Rose. “Second, because you’d never have believed it. You’d have run straight back into the chamber, just to be on the safe side.” He took a small key from his pocket and unlatched the cuff on his wrist. Then he held out the key to Neeps. “Admit it, Undrabust. You owe me for this. You may even owe me your life.”

  Neeps snatched the key from his hand. When he and Marila had shed their cuffs, he turned to Big Skip and the others. “I thank you,” he said pointedly. Then he turned to Rose again. He was about to lacerate the man with every choice Sollochi insult he could summon when Marila laid a hand on his arm. Her face was anxious, and Neeps understood at once. Rose was free; he would be taking charge again; there would be consequences for every word that escaped their mouths. And if he really knew that neither he nor Marila was the spell-keeper, he could even carry out the suspended executions.

  Marila took his hand and pulled. “Let’s just get out of here,” she whispered.

  Neeps let himself be persuaded. But he would not go back to the stateroom: his anger at Thasha burned too bright. Hercol, he thought. Alone. The swordsman had some answering to do. He knew better than to trust Greysan Fulbreech. How could he have stood by as the older youth swept Thasha off her feet?

  He followed Marila to the topdeck. The moment they emerged a great cheer went up from the assembled sailors. Cries and rumors had preceded them. Now here was the proof: two of their number had beaten the ixchel at their own game. Men crowded forward, clapping their backs and almost hugging them, bellowing good wishes, howling derision at the ineptitude of crawlies. The ixchel on deck merely watched. They were furious, but little had really changed. They still had twelve hostages to bargain with.

  Neeps caught a glimpse of the forecastle window. Half a dozen faces were pressed to the glass-Ott, Saroo, Chadfallow, Elkstem-even Lady Oggosk had claimed a spot. Our good luck is their bad, he realized. The ixchel will never hand out any more pills.

  Thasha appeared in the crowd. She was making her way toward him, and her eyes were beseeching. She shouted over the din.

  “-tell you something-what you think-believe me-”

  Neeps began to turn away, but Marila caught his arm. “Listen to her,” she shouted in his ear. “Just once. You owe her that much.”

  Thasha reached them. She was alone; there was pain in her eyes. Neeps stood his ground, fuming, gazing furiously at her. “Well?” he said at last.

  Thasha had no time to answer, for at that moment Rose climbed out from the hatch, and the cheering doubled. Hysteria, thought Neeps. Most of them don’t even like him. Rose twitched irritably at the commotion, but no one quite believed he was angry. The men chanted his name, brandishing weapons and tools above their heads. Plapps and Burnscoves cheered shoulder to shoulder. Somewhere the stomp-stomp-clap, stomp-stomp-hey! of an Etherhorde flagball game began, and soon nearly everyone on deck had joined in. The men wanted something to celebrate, some victory of will over reason. For the moment Rose was it.

  They would have lifted him onto their shoulders if he had not suddenly lurched forward. His face changed; all at once his outrage was very sincere indeed. Shoving his way through a dozen men, Rose pointed at a figure some thirty yards away by the No. 2 hatch.

  “Who in the entrails of the blackest blary fiend is that?” he exploded.

  “Him, Captain?” laughed a joyful Mr. Fegin. “Why that’s just Mr. Bolutu, he-Oh Pitfire!”

  It was not Bolutu. The cheers turned to roars of challenge. The figure was quite obviously a dlomu, as tall and strong as any of those who had attacked the ship. He stood straight and proud, although he wore only tattered breeches, a white shirt missing all its buttons and a fortnight’s beard. His thick hair hung in tangles to his elbows. He had a lean face and a hawk-like nose, and his eyes were full of bright intelligence. As the sailors charged he raised his hands in surrender.

  The men were less than calm. They fell on him, howling threats and curses, and dragged him all the way to the gunwale. There they lifted him half over the rail, so that his torso dangled above the sea.

  “Hold!” shouted Rose, lumbering forward.

  “On your guard, Captain, there may be more!” cried Alyash.

  “There are,” said the strange dlomu.

  “Knew it!” said Alyash. “They’re on the lower decks with the crawlies! They must be!”

  “Your knife, Mr. Fegin.” Rose squeezed in among his men. Burying his hand in the stranger’s hair, he pulled downward, until the man was looking right at the sun. The dlomu winced and closed his eyes. Rose laid the edge of Fegin’s knife against his throat.

  “How many?” he said.

  “Six or eight, I should say.”

  “You should say exactly. You should give me a reason to spare your life.”

  “They are not my comrades,” said the stranger. “Indeed, they wish to kill me. I have been running from them this last month and more.”

  “You’re the fugitive? The one those madmen attacked us for?”

  “I fear so.”

  “Aye, you fear it-because for that alone I should slit your throat. How in blazes did you get aboard?”

  “You’re human beings, aren’t you?” said the stranger. “Amazing. I never thought I’d live to see this day.”

  His words sent a ripple of alarm through the sailors: He’s never seen a human, did ye hear? We’re alone, marooned with them monsters, alone!

  Taliktrum appeared on the shoulder of a reluctant main-topman. He urged the sailor forward impatiently. Then Neeps saw Bolutu and Ibjen at the back of the crowd. The young dlomu stared at the newcomer, and Neeps saw recognition in the look.

  Bolutu cried out: “By the Dawn Star, brother, don’t provoke him!”

  “Provoke him?” said the stranger. “In this position? Why, I haven’t even learned his name. Nor he mine.”

  “The captain asked you a question, blacky!” snapped Alyash.

  “Did he? Would you kindly repeat it, sir?”

  Neeps caught his breath. He had never heard anyone but Lady Oggosk take a tone of levity with Nilus Rose, the man who flogged tarboys for hiccups. The stranger did not know the peril he was in.

  Captain Rose slid his hand to the knife-blade, pinched it between two fingers and a thumb. A few sailors winced, as if from bitter memory.

  “I’ll repeat it,” said Rose.

  He set the point of the knife on the man’s chest, directly over the heart. With a slow and merciless movement, he began to cut, scoring the flesh in a semicircular pattern. The man twisted and writhed in the sailors’ grasp. He bit his lips, tears starting from his eyes.

  “Stop, stop!” cried Ibjen in distress. “Captain Rose, you’re in Bali Adro! You can’t draw his blood!”

  “You mucking animal!” shouted Neeps at the captain’s back. “Taliktrum, make him stop!”

  “Why should I?” said Taliktrum. “Those savages tried to sink us. Proceed, Rose-go further, if you must.”

  Rose glared at Taliktrum over his shoulder: Give me permission, will you? Then he turned back to his torture. The cut was now some eight inches long. Suddenly Neeps realized that Rose was carving a symbol in the man’s flesh. A question mark. He finished it with a deep prick that made the stranger gasp.

  “You nearly took my ship,” he said. “And in fleeing you, we damaged her, fatally for all I can tell. Now you dare to make sport of her commander. I wish you to understand that to do so again will be fatal.”

  “I make no sport of you,” said the stranger, as his blood trickled into the sea. “It’s just that I should have died so long ago that I find humor in my own survival.”

  “The joke may have run its course,” said Taliktrum.

  “I came aboard in a water cask,” said the stranger. “I kicked it open just minutes ago, to warn you about the others. I waited on the lower decks until the stair was clear.”

  Rose was outraged anew. “Are you saying we smuggled you aboard ourse
lves?”

  “You did, Captain. The villagers were rather clever-I think smuggling is not an infrequent practice in Narybir. They secured stones and water-sacks inside the cask with me, so that you should detect no difference by weight or sound.”

  “I was pledged to help him, Captain!” shouted Ibjen suddenly. “To be certain he reached the mainland. I gave my word.”

  Taliktrum laughed. “And then tried to jump ship on two occasions,” he said.

  The stranger looked at Ibjen sharply, and the boy dropped his head in shame.

  “Why would the villagers help you in this way?” asked Rose.

  “Because I was in great need, sir. Your scratch is nothing compared with what the Karysk Expeditionaries would have done, if they had laid hands on me.”

  “Karyskans!” cried Bolutu. “Is it true, then-there is war between the Empires, that were once fast friends?”

  “War is too glorious a name for it,” said the stranger, “but there is a great deal of mindless killing. I was in Karysk to warn them of the impending attack.”

  “Warn them?” said Rose. “If you were delivering such a helpful message, why did they pursue you like their most hated enemy?”

  “Because,” gasped the stranger, “I bear a striking resemblance to their most hated enemy-the man who pushed hardest for the attack.”

  “Mistaken identity on such a gigantic scale?” said Taliktrum. “That is hard to credit.”

  “We are of the same family, he and I,” said the stranger. He paused, then added, “The Karyskans, I think, are hiding among your cattle.”

  Rose’s hand moved with startling speed. The knife cut a short gash in the stranger’s cheek. Ibjen stifled another cry.

  Ibjen was wailing: “Captain Rose! Captain Rose! Make him stop, Thashiziq, for your own sake, for the ship’s!”

  Thasha started forward, and Neeps and Marila with her, but the mob of frightened sailors stood with Rose now, and held them back. Thasha put a hand on each friend’s arm and shook her head: Not this way.

  “We have no cattle,” said the captain. “Our livestock are dead. And you will be next, for your mouth is full of lies.”

  “No livestock at all?” said the man, sounding genuinely perplexed.

  Rose leaned close over his captive. “We will proceed to fingers,” he said, “and since your kind can grow back fingers and tongues and other parts, I’ll take two for every falsehood.”

  “All these years,” sighed the stranger, “and this is how our races come together again. Captain Rose, I see that I must explain a few points. You are drifting toward the Karysk frontier. You have sailed into an artificial current, summoned to carry the Last Armada of Bali Adro at great speed into enemy waters. If you continue east you will soon reach Nandirag, the first great city of Karysk, and a conflict more horrible than words can express. You must sail out of the current at once, and turn west while the good wind holds. You might find you could repair your ship in Masalym, and I could perhaps do you a favor in that regard.

  “But the city of Masalym is part of the Empire of Bali Adro, and so is all the coastline beyond it for a thousand miles. It is cursed, my beloved Tarum Adrofynd, and quite possibly dying. But it is not dead yet. And there is one law that shall endure a great while: that no one but my kin may draw the blood of my kin. All other offenders must be executed.”

  Rose stood as if turned to stone. Neeps felt cold at the back of his neck. “Captain,” he said, “be careful, sir. I think he’s telling the truth.”

  “Of course he is!” said Ibjen. “His face-”

  “Ah yes, my face,” said the newcomer. “I can hide my chest under a shirt, but my cheek is another matter.”

  “You’re speaking of a race law, then?” said Rose. “Only a dlomu may harm another dlomu, is that it?”

  The stranger laughed, wincing as he did so. “Even in our glory years we were not that kind to one another,” he said. “No, Captain, by kin I mean my extended family, nothing more.”

  As if in explanation, he showed them his left hand. On the thumb shone a rough, heavy ring, like a nugget of solid silver. Rose frowned at it, hesitating, then gestured for the sailors to lower the man to his feet. “What in the Nine Pits do they call you?” he said at last.

  “I am Olik,” said the stranger, wincing as his feet touched the boards.

  “Just Olik?”

  The stranger probed the wounds on his face and chest. He took a deep breath and straightened to his full height, which was considerable. He gazed steadily at Rose.

  “My full name,” he said, “is Prince Olik Ipandracon Tastandru Bali Adro.”

  He raised a hand as if to address them further, but before he could say another word, he collapsed.

  The Rule of the House

  24 Ilbrin 941

  The thin man in the golden spectacles fled the stateroom in a rush. He was off-balance from the first, but there was no turning back. Oh, he had botched things, he was in danger-he would never again be ruled by fear. But the ship was not his. He could taste the change. A spectacular dreamer he might be, but not a practiced one, like the enemy he faced.

  For ten yards the passage was silent, warm, and he sensed the life all around him. Hercol in a meditative trance. Neeps unconscious but restless in his hammock, his dream-self raising head and shoulders to gaze through wooden walls in the direction of the man in glasses. Marila awake, rigid, listening for Thasha and Fulbreech, barely allowing herself to breathe. Thasha herself far behind him in the stateroom, by the windows, hoping there would be no knock on the door. Bolutu asleep and very distant, running through dream-lands of his own.

  Then the man stepped over the red line, through the magic wall, and the chaos of his dream engulfed him. The ship tilted-or was it the pull of the earth that changed-and he stumbled against the bulkhead. There was a background rumble, a groaning, in the very air, and the light was fugitive and dim. No matter, he would not be here long. He turned down the portside passage and reached for a doorknob (vaguely aware that it was the entrance to the old first-class powder room) and flung it open to see-the bakery, his own beloved bakery in Noonfirth! The humble shop where he had become a woken animal! He could smell the bread, see the black woman bent over her mixing-bowl. Couldn’t he go to her for a moment, fall on his knees, inform her of the miracle she had worked? Madam! I was a thief in your shadows, a rat. You cried one morning, your husband had run away with the butter-churn girl. I heard, and I woke: yours was the spark to the tinder that burns inside me yet.

  No, he could not do that. He was looking not for comfort but for allies, and he had not a moment to spare.

  Another turn, another passage. There were ghost-sailors fighting in the adjoining rooms. Translucent flashes, limbs and weapons and faces and shields, flowed by at the intersection ahead. Pirates or Volpek mercenaries, battling Chathrand’s sailors; a fight to the death among the dead. Echoes of war cries, faint sounds of steel on steel. Was it the past he was seeing? Or the disordered nightmare of another dreamer, just out of sight?

  There was the door he sought. No question. He could feel eternities throbbing beyond the fragile wood. Bounding up to it (fear would not stop him) he seized the knob, turned it and pulled.

  An abyss. A maelstrom. Wind tore at his cloak like a hurricane through tattered trees. All as it should be. He was better at this than he’d thought.

  He forced himself to lean forward until his face crossed the threshold. The wind like a boot to the underside of his chin. He nearly lost his balance; his glasses were torn from his head and flew upward, out of sight. No matter. You don’t need them. You’ll be blind until you will yourself to see.

  But he was blind for now-blind and, yes, afraid. Was it his fault if there was only darkness before him? What should he expect-warm windows, vines, music and laughter spilling onto the terrace? True, he had managed to see all that once before, and to hear a great deal. But that night he had been a stowaway in another’s dream, not the architect of his own.


  Then he sensed the sorcerer.

  It was true: Arunis was walking the dream-ship once again, sure enough of himself to call out with his mind: Ah, Felthrup. I wondered when you’d come back to me. Are you ready to bargain, rat?

  Felthrup turned away from the door, anger crackling through his dream-body. He turned his mind in the mage’s direction. You think nothing has changed. You think you can torture me as before, use me against them, make me your fool.

  I think I would know if Ramachni were guarding you, as he did last time.

  Come, then. Come and talk to this rat. He is waiting for you.

  He felt his dream-voice betray him. No control, no control. Somewhere Arunis was indeed rushing toward him, laughing at his forced bravado.

  We have an account to settle, don’t we, vermin?

  Felthrup closed the door. He turned in the direction of the mage’s voice. We most certainly do, Arunis.

  He felt his slim scholar’s body throb with sudden power, hideous and sublime, the strength of a thousand-pound animal, and he spread his jaws and roared through five decks, a bear’s furious battle roar, and Arunis stopped dead in his tracks.

  That’s better.

  No taunting reply from the mage. Felthrup was satisfied. Within this ship, within his dream, he was his own master, and would bow to no one again.

  Felthrup reopened the door. The black abyss loomed before him, unchanged; the wind made him stagger.

  Where can you be going, Felthrup? said the mage, his voice suddenly affable. Come now, you don’t want to step through any… unusual doors. I know all about them, you’ll want to talk to me first.

  He let go of the door frame.

  Don’t you do it! You have no idea what you’re in for if you stray from this ship!

  No more tricks. No more words of poison. He leaped.

  As a rat he had once plunged from a moving ship into the sea. This was infinitely worse: the air current blasted him straight upward, head over heels; the door became a dim rectangle that shrank to nothing in the darkness. He rose like a cannonball fired at a midnight moon-and then the current vanished, and he became weightless, and started to fall Only for an instant. The next blast shot him faster, farther upward. Do not wake. Do not panic. Now there were windows, and cave mouths, and luminous insects somehow surviving the wind. Felthrup had lost all control of his dream. He perceived the wall of this great black tunnel, ten times the width of any mineshaft, and no sooner had he seen it than he collided, scraping along the wall shaggy with vines, while somewhere within the leaves tiny voices cursed him, You great oaf, that’s my property, you’ve knocked my mailbox into the River.