The River of Shadows cv-3

by Robert V. S. Redick

  That remains to be seen, I think.

  “Master?”

  He was gone. A normal person would already be deciding that he’d never been there, that the voice was only the wind’s, moaning under the eaves, sighing through the cracks she’d never bothered to fill. But Suthinia would never again be normal. She’d become herself at last, a true mage, and she knew a specter’s voice when she heard it.

  After midnight the fire always died; the house grew bitterly cold. Suthinia lit a candle, pulled her tattered coat over her nightgown. She crossed the freezing floor into the main room. Yes, the curtains were drawn; the night patrols, the tramps and prostitutes, would see nothing. She took the vials of dream-essence from their hiding place within the brick wall. She studied them, red smoke, blue smoke, cherished links to two souls. Then she held them to her cheeks. The blue vial was cold. It usually was. Neda’s training as a sfvantskor had raised walls inside her; only in the deepest sleep did they come down.

  But there was an answering warmth from the red vial. She moved it from her cheek to her neck, wrapped her coat over it, and her arms over the coat. As the vial warmed she could sense his nearness, the soft sound of his breathing, the beat of his heart. For the thousandth time in the last six years she found herself aching with the need to touch him, hold him as she was holding this hard thing of glass. She felt a violent tearing, a rending inside her and she knew the feeling was guilt. Son of mine, son of mine. How did my fight become yours?

  “It wasn’t your fault,” said Pazel to the woman who walked at his side. “It was Chadfallow’s, wasn’t it?”

  They were in the tall grass over the headlands in Ormael. Below stretched the Nelu Peren, sparkling at midday, threshing against the rocks. Gulls cried, and curlews. The sea-wind moved over the grass like the bellies of invisible ships, racing one after another into the plum orchard beyond. The woman was holding his hand.

  “The more I learn of what has happened,” she said, “the less I dare to speak of fault. Except my own, that is. I know well enough what I might have done, had I thought more of you and Neda, and less of myself.”

  The plum trees were suddenly all around them. The white blossoms had opened; bees moved from branch to branch, pollen-dusted. It was spring.

  “Yourself?” said Pazel. “Come on, Mother. You thought of yourself even less.”

  She looked at him sharply.

  “I always knew you had something on your mind,” Pazel went on, “but I never for a minute thought it was anything selfish. Neither did Neda. We could tell, you know. You had awful tasks, awful secrets you didn’t want to burden us with. But you should have told us. We were jealous of those secrets. That’s why Neda was angry all those years. Because she missed you so badly, wanted you back.”

  They were leaving the orchard for the ragged woods beyond, looking up at the Highlands, the land he had always thought she came from. He knew better now. His mother had come from the South; he himself was but half Ormali; he had cousins in Istolym-tol-chenni cousins, if any were still alive. She hadn’t told him in words, exactly; she had simply decided it was time he knew.

  “I could have handled the truth,” he said.

  “Yes,” she said, “you could have. You always had idrolos, that special courage that let you look at things squarely. Neda had far less of it, and so did I. Don’t you understand, Pazel? I couldn’t tell you the truth without facing it myself. And the truth was that I’d failed everyone-Doldur, Ramachni, my murdered friends. I’d failed Bali Adro, failed Alifros itself.”

  “The fight wasn’t over, Mother. Arunis still didn’t have the Nilstone.”

  “It was over for me. I gave it up the day I married Gregory. My friends from the expedition had all been found and slain, by Arunis or the men he hired for the job. One was poisoned at a meal I was late for. I’d have died that evening if I hadn’t gotten lost in the back streets of Ormael. Another was killed in Eberzam Isiq’s garden. He traveled all the way from the Mzithrin to the heart of Arqual, a miracle, and only managed to croak a few words of warning to Isiq’s daughter. She’s the one, isn’t she? The one your rat-friend believes you care for.”

  Pazel looked down, suddenly shy. “Why did he mention that?” he asked.

  “I wonder if he knew why himself,” said his mother. “The rat is not a mage, by any chance?”

  “No,” said Pazel, worried now. His mother looked so grave. “You’re upset because she’s Admiral Isiq’s daughter, aren’t you?”

  Suthinia shook her head. “That sort of thing doesn’t matter now. Pazel, does she love you too?”

  “Yes. I mean, Rin’s eyes, I think so. She’s… alluded to it. Mother, why do you look so blary morbid?”

  “I wish you happiness,” said Suthinia. “You know I always have.”

  “Well,” he said uncertainly, “thanks.”

  “We should not love,” she said with sudden fierceness. “The dlomu do a better job of it, or used to. Ask them about dlomic love, if you find someone who remembers the old days. But our own kind, human love: we never can make that work. It’s like the milk I used to send you for, from the Brickpath Dairy. Always souring, sometimes even before you reached home. Souring into fear, or dumb greed, or shame. It was shame that kept me silent, Pazel. I wanted to live, to love Gregory, sail with him maybe, raise children at his side. What could I have said to you? ‘I come from a proud, fine kingdom. They sent me here to fight a monster, but I stopped fighting him, I fled.’ How could I have looked you in the eye? People always say that our children want our approval, but what about the reverse?”

  “You told Captain Gregory.”

  “And lost him. Forget what they said in Ormael, Pazel. Gregory was never a traitor.”

  “I know that,” he said. “I’ve always known that. He was honorable.”

  The woman laughed. “So honorable he couldn’t bear to stand in my way. I swore that he was doing nothing of the kind, that I’d made my choice freely, with no regrets. But he was too clever. He listened close, the few times Doldur or Machal or one of the other survivors stayed under our roof. He put the pieces together. ‘You’ve shaped your life around this, Suthee,’ he said at last. ‘You studied magic, crossed the blary Ruling Sea, tossed away your world. Not to keep house for a sailing man. To fight for your people. All people. And we both know why you’re not doing it.’

  “That was the last real talk we ever had. He was outbound the next morning, on a voyage of less than a month. The voyage he never returned from.”

  They had reached the black oaks beyond the orchard. Pazel looked at his mother. Deep sadness in her eyes. But something was missing; she was leaving the best part out. It was a familiar tactic. This time he wouldn’t stand for it.

  “Go on,” he said, “tell me the rest.”

  When he upset her the landscape shimmered, quaked. It was quaking now. “I’ll tell you this,” she said. “I’ve guarded your dream-essence all these years, and haven’t dared use it, because I knew it would hurt you when I did. You’ve changed, you know. You’ve developed an oversensitive mind.”

  “I can’t imagine why,” he said.

  “The language-spell made it harder, yes,” she said. “But tell me the truth, will you, please? Hasn’t it been worth it, after all? Worth the fits, the pain, even the danger?”

  No hiding here: whether he said it or not she was going to know. Which meant he too had to face the question, choose an answer, once and for all.

  “Yes,” he said at last, “barely. I don’t know who I’d have been without the Gift. Happier, maybe, or just as likely dead. It’s all right. I like who I am.”

  Suthinia touched his cheek. “My son,” she said, “who has sparred with eguar and Leopard People, and chatted with the murths of the sea.”

  Her smile contained a hint of triumph. He did not much care for it. “What else?” he demanded, for he could sense that a great deal remained to be said.

  “I’ve been taking out the dream-vials for two months now,” she
said, “and I’ve looked a little into your dreams. Not because I wanted to spy on you. It was simply the only way to make contact.”

  So that was how she knew about Thasha. “What else?” he said again, impatient.

  “You… react, each time I look,” she told him. “That’s probably why your fits have come more often. And now that I’ve finally stepped into your dream I expect it will be even worse. You might have another fit anytime.”

  Pazel took a deep breath. “All right,” he forced himself to say. “I understand, and I’m not angry. But you have to stop. Maybe I could put up with more fits, to be able to talk with you now and then, even in this strange way-but not until all this is over. It’s too mucking dangerous. The last fit I had is part of why they locked us up. The dlomu are weird about madness; it scares them silly. Promise, Mother. Promise you won’t look into my dreams anymore, unless it’s a matter of life and death.”

  Suthinia tossed her hair, resentful. “Fine,” she said. “I promise. Of course.”

  She was angry, biting something back. He took her hand, hoping to soothe her, and they walked on for a time. He tried to find a way out of the silence, but every path seemed choked with thorns.

  “So that’s why Papa left us?” he said at last. “So that you’d be less bound to Ormael? To help you return to the fight you came for?”

  “Yes,” she said, “that’s why.”

  “Then it wasn’t about Chadfallow?”

  Suthinia jerked her hand away. Suddenly the world was fluid, a blur. The sunlight lanced through the oak limbs, blinding; down was up, and though his mother remained close by he somehow could not look at her directly.

  “Ignus?” she said. “Ignus. Yes, he may have had something to do with it.”

  “You weren’t going to tell me, were you?”

  “I’ve tried to respect his wishes,” she said.

  “Whose wishes? My father’s? Chadfallow’s? Rin’s eyes, Mother, why are you still hiding things? What did Papa carve in that tree?”

  For they had come to the very oak his father had climbed to impress him, the one he had carved a message in at eighty feet. The one Pazel had been too young to climb, and later hadn’t bothered to go looking for again.

  “What tree?” she said. “Pazel, you’re woolgathering.” She grabbed his elbow, started marching away. “Listen, I’ve been waiting to tell you what’s most important. Waiting until I knew you were all here, so that you’d remember it when you woke. It’s a warning, Pazel, a warning from your rat-friend. But you distracted me with questions. Credek, did I wait too long again?”

  “I’m already awake,” he said.

  “Oh, skies! You’re not. Listen close, Pazel. I’m not fooling anymore.”

  No, she was just avoiding his questions, ordering him about like a child. Suddenly he knew what he wanted, broke free, ran back to the oak with the lightning swiftness of dream-legs. He could climb that tree today, all right. It would be as easy as a flight of stairs beside the masts he’d climbed in Nelluroq storms.

  Except, of course, that Mother had to try and stop him. Screaming, howling for an audience, demanding that he hear. She hadn’t changed that much. “Go away, I’m not listening,” he shouted. He was already halfway up the tree.

  But so was Suthinia. Like a weasel, she sank her nails into the bark, and his trouser leg, begging, weeping, threatening, so very familiar. He climbed on. He was going to reach that branch, read his father’s message, find out whatever it was she didn’t want him to know. Meanwhile Suthinia was throwing everything she could at him. Felthrup. Arunis. Isiq in a tower, historians in a bar.

  “Not listening!” he shouted. “Ya ya ya!”

  It’s not for my sake, she was saying (YA YA GO AWAY) listen for your own, for Alifros (I HAD A DOG AND HER NAME WAS JILL) for that oath you swore in Simja (WHEN SHE RAN SHE DIDN’T STAND STILL) blame me all you want, but after you hear what I (SHE RAN AWAY) they’re coming, Pazel (ONE DAY) sending a ship to take the Chathrand (AND ALSO I RAN WITH HER) and the mucking Gods-damned Stone, they’ve never given up, Arunis, Macadra, all those carrion birds, they’re flocking toward you, don’t make my mistake, darling, don’t hide when the world needs you most.

  “Shhhhh.”

  He tried to kick his mother’s hand. But the claws had retracted, or vanished; her touch was light, her voice a gentle whisper. “Easy, easy. You’re going to wake up Neeps.”

  He was hugging the tree; it was hugging him back, and kissing him, begging him for silence.

  “Mother?”

  The lips froze against his cheek. Then came a voiceless, delicious laugh. It was Thasha, lying in the darkness beside him, while Neeps (five feet away) snored on like a mooring-line chafing against a dock. Her laughter faded back into kisses, dry quick kisses that barely required her to move.

  “Rin’s eyes,” he said, “I’m half Bali Adron.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I wonder if I have citizenship.”

  She paused, and he reached for her. She was fully dressed; indeed she had on her boots. “Goodbye,” she mumbled, kissing his hand. “I came to say goodbye.”

  “Goodbye?”

  “Hercol and I are going over the wall. Shhh!” Thasha touched his lips with a finger. “We’re all going to break out of here, Pazel. But it’s going to take some time to do it right.”

  “No,” he murmured, “wait.”

  “Listen before you say no. We’re not going to live here, are we? But what good will it do us to break out, into a city where we’re the only humans? We can’t do anything by day. Our only chance is to learn as much as we can about the city after sundown-on the darkest nights, like this one, cloudy nights with no moon-and then get out, somehow, to the mountains, or in a smaller boat.”

  “How are you getting out of the building?”

  “Don’t ask me that. Hercol wants you to be able to say you have no idea, in case anything goes wrong. It won’t, though. His plan’s a good one. It may take a few nights of doing this before we find a safe place to hide.”

  “Don’t go,” he said.

  She sighed deeply, and nuzzled against his cheek, and he knew she’d misunderstood. “No,” he said, “Thasha, something’s happened. I talked to my mother.”

  “You were dreaming.”

  “Yes, yes, of course I was dreaming. Oh, Gods, it’s still coming back. Felthrup, the Ravens, Pitfire! Thasha, we don’t have a few nights. We’ve got to get out of here now.”

  Suddenly Neeps woke with a start. “Thasha! Pazel! What’s the matter?” he whispered.

  “Everything, that’s what,” said Pazel. “Thasha, I need to talk to Hercol before you go anywhere.”

  Thasha was in no position to refuse, trying as she was to keep from waking still more sleepers. The three youths groped as quietly as they could from the bedchamber to the dining area, where Hercol was crouched in silence. He was not happy to see the tarboys emerge. But he listened as Pazel whispered the fantastic story of his dream.

  “It’s so weird that it has to be true,” he said. “Felthrup trailing Arunis to some sort of tavern, overhearing his plans, going back night after night, telling his story to a blary ghost, who tells my mother, who tells me? I couldn’t dream that up.”

  “It does have a certain mad air of truth,” said Hercol. “Something, after all, drove Felthrup to spend so long in that closet. But if it is a true message, then all the more reason for us to go as planned, Thasha. We cannot leave the others here to rot in this asylum, but we cannot just set them loose in a city of unknown dangers. Come, girl, it is barely two hours before dawn. Pazel, Neeps, go back to your beds and do not watch what happens next.”

  “Ha!” scoffed Neeps. “You take us with you.”

  “I will do nothing of the kind,” said Hercol, “and if you think a moment, you will realize how right I am to refuse. If something should happen to me and Thasha, who else stands any chance of finding a way forward? Chadfallow? Possibly, but we all know his limits. No, the burden w
ill fall on you two, and Marila.”

  Suddenly Thasha started. “I heard wings, wings flapping!” she said. “Didn’t you hear them?”

  “No,” said the Tholjassan firmly.

  “What exactly are you looking for?” said Pazel to Hercol. “A way out of the city? And just for us, or for the whole crew?”

  “If we don’t go now,” said Hercol, “it won’t matter what I’m looking for.”

  “You’re lying,” said Neeps.

  Pazel heard the ring of conviction in his voice, and something inside him clicked. Neeps wasn’t always right when he thought he smelled a fib, but he was better at it than anyone else Pazel knew.

  “The Stone,” he said, looking at Hercol. “You’re going to try to sneak aboard, and take the Nilstone yourselves, tonight. Break it out of the Shaggat’s hand before someone else does. Hide it somewhere. Take it… take it-”

  “Beyond the reach of evil,” said Thasha, looking at her mentor. “He’s right, isn’t he? That’s what all this is about.”

  Hercol stared hard at Pazel. “Of all the irksome, interfering tarboys,” he whispered at last. “Yes, I mean to fulfill the oath I took upon the wolf-scar, and that means taking the Nilstone. But I had never meant to do so tonight. First I meant to scout the Lower City, and especially the quay: a failed attempt would only signal to Counselor Vadu that the Stone is worth guarding to the hilt. Of course he may already be doing so, but Fulbreech’s slip of the tongue suggests that Arunis has lied about the Stone, convinced Vadu that it is no more than a trifle. In such tiny errors lies our hope. We must pray that there is more jealousy among our foes: between Arunis and the sorceress, Macadra; among those who call themselves Ravens; among any of the warlords who appear to rule this once-great land.”

  “So what do you mean to do now?” asked Neeps.