The River of Shadows cv-3

by Robert V. S. Redick

  Chadfallow looked at the green door. “He told me about that one. It is unlike any other magical portal on this ship. It is part of a relic spell, I think, laid down even before Erithusme’s time, by the mage-shipwrights who built this ship for war.”

  “Ramachni warned Thasha not to open that door,” said Pazel.

  “Hercol informed me,” said Chadfallow, “but I am not Thasha, am I?”

  He put his hand on the corroded knob. And Pazel was suddenly flooded with apprehension, with outright fear. “Don’t do it!” he shouted, seizing the doctor’s arm.

  Chadfallow gave him an unpleasant smile. “What awful thing do you imagine lying in wait?”

  “Pitfire, Ignus, do we have to find out? If Ramachni said to avoid it that’s blary well good enough!”

  “Normally, yes,” said Chadfallow, “but I have an equally valid reason to want to proceed. I was told that finding this door might prove the key to our success. To ridding the world of the Nilstone, that is, and perhaps Arunis as well.”

  “Told, were you? By whom?”

  “By Ramachni,” said Chadfallow. When Pazel gaped at him, he added, “It was a dream, some months back, as we drew close to Bramian.”

  Pazel quickly averted his gaze. “You can’t trust dreams,” he said.

  “Ah, but can we afford to ignore them?”

  “You’re absolutely cracked,” Pazel heard himself say. “That dream could have come from Arunis. We know he’s been getting inside people’s minds.”

  “The minds of the weak and the ill,” said Chadfallow, “or do you count me one of those?”

  Pazel turned away, a string of florid Ormali curses on the tip of his tongue. “Damn it all, I don’t feel like arguing,” he said at last. “Just stay away from that door, wherever it turns up. Ramachni didn’t warn Thasha through any blary dream.”

  “True,” said Chadfallow thoughtfully, “it was a message in an onion-skin, wasn’t it?”

  Not waiting for an answer, he walked on. After a minute Pazel hurried after him. Soon they reached the entrance to sickbay. Pazel could hear someone groaning within.

  The doctor opened the door but did not enter. Pazel looked in and saw that the beds were almost full. Men and tarboys glanced up miserably, holding their stomachs, leaning over buckets and pans. Two or three called out to Chadfallow.

  “I will attend you presently,” said the doctor to the room at large. Then he closed the door and looked at Pazel. “Thirty patients,” he said. “The water at the Tournament Grounds was unclean. Some sort of parasite, I expect.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” said Pazel, wondering if they were finished.

  Chadfallow leaned against the passage wall. He looked at Pazel with great melancholy. “I am still a hostage, you see: this time to the well-being of the ship. Rain is no use. I am the only reliable doctor this side of the Ruling Sea. The only human doctor, I mean.”

  “And you sure are reliable,” said Pazel, looking away.

  Chadfallow’s voice grew hard. “I know what you’re thinking: that unless Arunis is stopped and the Nilstone recovered it will not make any difference whether or not these people live or die. That is true. But my own choice is not between defeating Arunis and saving these souls. It is between the certainty of saving lives here, and the small chance that I will be of decisive use on the expedition.”

  “Glad to know how carefully you’ve weighed all this.”

  A spasm of irritation passed over Chadfallow’s face; then his look became resigned. “You will believe what you wish of me,” he said. “I could change your mind, perhaps-but I would prefer you reached your own conclusions. That has always been my aim: to give you the freedom to think for yourself, and all the tools I could to make that thinking fine.”

  “Ignus,” said Pazel. “We’re not going on that expedition, either.”

  The doctor stared at him, taken aback. “None of you?”

  “How could we, damn it?” said Pazel. “We cause a panic everywhere we go. It will be a hundred times better if the dlomu go by themselves.”

  “You were chosen by the Red Wolf.”

  “So was Diadrelu,” said Pazel, “and look where that got her. And credek, you just finished talking about choosing for oneself. Did you mean a single word? Because it seems to me I do just fine when I make choices alone. The trouble is when all of you try to choose for me. If it’s not the Wolf it’s Ramachni, or Ott, or Captain Rose. Or you.” Then Pazel added wildly, “Neeps and Thasha feel the same way I do. We’re humans. We belong on this ship. It’s not as if we brought the Nilstone into this world.”

  “What does Hercol say to this?”

  “You’d better ask him.”

  Chadfallow straightened his back. He looked down at Pazel and nodded. “I understand your reasoning perfectly,” he said. “Your decision mirrors my own, after all.”

  No words could have been less welcome to Pazel’s ear. “I think I’ll go back to the stateroom now,” he said.

  “May I walk with you?” asked the doctor.

  Pazel shrugged. He set off, retracing their steps, and Chadfallow walked at his side. Pazel had the grating feeling that he’d just been outmaneuvered once more by a man who’d made a lifetime game of needling him. Had someone told the doctor about his own dream of Suthinia? Was this his way of gloating over how wrong Pazel had been?

  “Ignus,” he said through his teeth, “I’m going to ask you a question. And if you answer with anything but yes or no, I’m not sure I’ll ever speak to you again.”

  “Mercy me,” said Chadfallow.

  “Are you the reason my father abandoned us?”

  Chadfallow stopped in his tracks. He looked like a man who has suddenly been hurled a great distance, and is surprised to find himself on his feet. He opened his mouth and closed it again, never breaking eye contact with Pazel.

  Then he said, “Yes, I am.”

  Something exploded in Pazel at those words. He flew at the doctor, aiming for the nose he had broken once before. Chadfallow jerked back his head just in time.

  “Son of a whore!” Pazel shouted, lunging again. “He never mucking spoke to me again! Did you do it in his Gods-damned bed? Did he think I was your brat, your bastard child? Did he? Am I?”

  “No.”

  “No to what, you blary pig?”

  “No, you’re not my son.”

  Pazel stood frozen, his hands still in fists. He had seen Chadfallow enraged, pompous, indignant, even suicidal. But he had never heard such sadness in his voice.

  “You’re sure?” he said. “How can you be sure?”

  Chadfallow blinked at him slowly. “Your father,” he said, “is Captain Gregory Pathkendle.”

  Men were staring. Pazel looked at them until they turned back to their work. Chadfallow stepped forward and placed a nervous hand on his shoulder.

  “Captain Gregory doesn’t give a damn about me,” said Pazel.

  Words he’d never meant to speak. Words too plain and factual, a truth too obvious to bear.

  “Some men are not born to be fathers,” said Chadfallow. “Very few rise to all the challenges of the task.”

  “Some men try.”

  Pazel felt hot tears on his face. Now that they had started what could ever make them stop?

  “Why… do you say you’re the reason he left?”

  Chadfallow gazed into their sputtering lamp. “Because I shamed him, once. Before your mother, whom he revered even more than he loved. You know what your mother is, now, Pazel: a warrior in the fight for the soul of Alifros. That is what made me fall in love with her, by the way-not her beauty, not at first. I was swept off my feet by her goodness, the mission that had brought her over the sea. It was all I could think about. It exposed my diplomatic charades for the petty game they were. And there she was, giving it up for a commoner, a sailing captain! What was worse, she wanted Gregory, and he her. So I shamed him, purposefully. It was the lowest act of my life.”

  “Tell me,” said Paz
el, nails biting into his palms.

  The doctor’s hand trembled on his shoulder. “I thought the three of us were alone. You were at school. Gregory was perhaps a little tipsy-he was not above a glass of wine at midday, when he was home in Ormael. And on that day he told his wife that he wished her to have no more to do with Ramachni or Bolutu, or the other survivors of the expedition, the ones Arunis had not yet killed. That he would shred their letters if they came, and stop her from attending their clandestine meetings. He was merely letting off steam, I think-and voicing a most reasonable fear for her safety. Suthinia just laughed at him. No man alive ever ordered her about, or ever will.

  “But I chose to take his words seriously. Out of spite and jealousy. I said he was a fool to stand in her way. That his wife had been chosen for the greatest task imaginable and should not be thwarted by a man whose highest ambition was to corner the barley trade with Sorhn. He rose in a fury, and soon we were shouting at each other like Plapps and Burnscovers. I called him a small-minded smuggler. He answered that it was high time I stopped sticking my great Etherhorde nose into his family’s affairs.”

  Chadfallow drew a sharp breath. “Things might have gone differently if Neda had not been listening at the top of the stairs. She chose that moment to remark that my nose wasn’t all I was sticking in.”

  Pazel’s mouth fell open, but Chadfallow gave a dismissive wave. “It was nonsense, girlish babble. And looking back I think Neda meant only to take her father’s side, to drive the interfering Arquali from your home. Even if she had to lie.”

  Pazel felt hollow inside, and cold. “She didn’t manage to drive you out,” said Pazel. “She drove Gregory away. Oh, Neda.”

  “I told him it was rubbish,” said the doctor, “and he professed to take my word. We shook hands that day, affirmed our friendship. But it was never the same-and two months later, he was gone. Yes, I think he must have believed Neda in his heart. As for Suthinia, I doubt if he ever dared ask her. They are perfectly matched in one way, your parents. They are both quite terribly proud.”

  Pazel slid down against the wall. He dragged a grimy arm across his eyes. “He wanted it to be true that you were sleeping with her. He was looking for an excuse to leave us. That’s what I think.”

  Chadfallow sat down next to him, shaking his head. “I can’t tell you, Pazel. But I hope you won’t torture yourself with what-ifs, as I have done these many years. The past is gone; the future is wailing for its breakfast. That is what my father used to say.”

  Pazel stared at him blankly. “Ignus,” he said, “we can’t go hunting Arunis. We can’t.”

  “I will question you no further about the expedition.”

  “But if we did,” said Pazel, “I’d understand you having to stay here. I’d… be proud of you. For seeing clearly. For knowing how to choose.”

  Chadfallow dropped his eyes. He was struggling for composure, and then the struggle ended, and his shoulders shook. Pazel embraced him, for the first time in more than six years, and the Imperial Surgeon wept and said, “My lad, my excellent boy,” and the sailors passing in the corridor had the grace to look away.

  Thasha entered her father’s cabin with a tin of sweetpine and placed a little in the pocket of each of his coats, to keep the moths at bay. She took down the portrait of some nameless uncle holding a cat and wrapped it in a sheet.^ 11

  “I despise those creatures,” said Felthrup, startling her from behind. “Oggosk’s monster Sniraga has already been sniffing at the hole in the magic wall. Can you not repair it, Thasha?”

  “Don’t you think I’d have done so by now?” answered Thasha. “For some reason I was given the power to decide who passes through the wall, and who doesn’t-but that’s as far as it goes.”

  “Of course, of course.” With a sigh Felthrup leaped onto the bed, where he gazed deeply into Syrarys’ dressing mirror. When he caught Thasha looking at him, he gave a small, embarrassed squeak. “I am not vain,” he said. “There is something odd about that mirror. Whenever I look into it, I see only myself, and yet always-for no reason I can discover-I expect to see someone else.”

  “Someone in particular?” asked Thasha.

  “Yes,” said Felthrup. “Ramachni. I expect to see Ramachni, looking out at me. And I feel his presence in other places, Lady: standing before the magic wall, or napping on the bearskin.”

  Startled anew, Thasha gazed into the mirror herself. She saw nothing strange, except her own face: eyes that were hers, but not quite hers, eyes more wary and knowing than the last time she’d studied herself in a glass. She did not much like that look of hers, and wondered how long she had worn it.

  “My lady,” said Felthrup, “I will go with you to the mountains.”

  Thasha turned to him, overwhelmed. The courage of the little creature, the loyalty. “If we go,” she said, “you must stay behind, darling rat.”

  “No!” Felthrup whirled in a circle. “I don’t want to stay here alone! I can’t face it, this great mean ship, without you and the others beside me!”

  “You wouldn’t be alone,” said Thasha. “You’d have Fiffengurt, and Jorl and Suzyt. And whether we go or stay you’ll have work to do. Someone has to find the ixchel, and make peace. And there’s something else, too: you have to dream for us, Felthrup. That is how you’ll do your traveling, from now on. Who knows? Maybe you’ll find Ramachni that way, and bring him to us.”

  “Ramachni has always done the finding,” said Felthrup.

  “You found Pazel Doldur,” said Thasha.

  A light shone in Felthrup’s black eyes. “It was wonderful there, in the Orfuin Club, among the scholars. I felt at home with them, somehow, even the one who told me to go away and eat cake.”

  Suddenly the floor heaved. The Chathrand was tilting over: a slow, scraping list to portside, accompanied by groaning timbers, creaking screws, curses from above and below. Thasha and Felthrup scrambled into the outer stateroom.

  “We’re afloat,” said Neeps, mopping beer from the floor. “Credek, they’ve got a lot of rebalancing to do.”

  “Let’s go up there,” said Marila.

  The three youths left the stateroom. They met Pazel on the Silver Stair, and together they climbed to the topdeck. It was very dark, but even by the dim lamplight they could see how much had changed. The inner wall of the berth had been retracted, and the locks opened wide. The river had been allowed to pour back into the great basin, and the Chathrand, as Neeps said, was at last afloat. The mooring-lines creaked, the gangways rocked on their hinges.

  Suddenly Thasha stifled a cry. Two beings were sweeping toward them from amidships. They were dressed in rags, which they clutched tight against the evening wind; their hands were bone-thin and colorless. One was hooded, and the other wore an ancient Merchant Service cap. But neither figure possessed a face. It was appalling: the fronts of their heads simply blurred to nothingness. She grabbed Pazel by the arm.

  “You don’t see them, do you?”

  “See what, Thasha?”

  She knew quite well that they were ghosts. She had seen them by daylight, these shades of the former captains of the Great Ship. But by daylight they looked human-old, strange, crazed maybe, but human. Only drugged with blane, close to death herself, had she seen them in this form. A vision she had tried for months to forget.

  The two figures came right for her. Thasha stepped backward, feeling the cold in them from yards away. “Duchess!” sighed the figure in the cap.

  “I’m not,” said Thasha.

  “Blind fool,” hissed the hooded figure to its companion. “The hag is in the cabin with her child. You’re standing before our mistress now, so keep a civil tongue.”

  Her friends were talking, their voices far away. “I’m not your mistress, either,” she said. Then, a bit more bravely: “I don’t want you near me. Go to your rest, or wherever you belong.”

  “We belong in the stomach of the night,” said the hooded spirit, thrusting its non-face closer to hers. “We are the b
read of the unborn, the milk they will drink in their first hours. You keep us here, Mistress-you and the Red Beast. How can you order us hence, while you hold our chains in your hand?”

  “Go to him!” cried the figure in the cap. “Go to Rose and help him face his doom! Go now, girl, before it’s too late!”

  The hooded figure turned on its companion, outraged that it had taken such a tone with “our mistress.” They began to bicker, a sound like driving rain. Thasha turned and fled to starboard, dragging her friends with her. Suddenly another ghost rose through a glass plank on their left and began shuffling toward her purposefully. She was not going to be able to ignore them. And perhaps she shouldn’t: Oggosk too had been trying to tell them something about Rose, when she shared that letter.

  “Come with me,” said Thasha to the others, and headed straight for the captain’s door beneath the quarterdeck. But as they neared it Sergeant Haddismal emerged, frowning at some inner thought. At the sight of them he was at once suspicious. He stopped in the doorway, blocking their path.

  “Where d’ye imagine you’re going?” he said. “The captain’s too busy to breathe. He don’t need to hear from four lunatics on top of everything else.”

  “Haven’t you learned how insulting that is?” said Marila, with such vehemence that even her friends looked at her in surprise.

  “Insulting?” said Haddismal. “You taking after the fish-eyes, now?”

  “Could be worse folk to take after,” said Neeps. “Right, Marila?”

  “Just be quiet,” she said.

  “Sergeant,” said Thasha with rising impatience, “we were told to see the captain, right now.”

  “Told, eh? By whom?”

  Thasha said nothing, and Haddismal’s mouth curled in anger. “Don’t muck around with me,” he said. “You know what strange fancy’s grabbed hold of him, don’t you? You’re here to take advantage. Do you know that he’s been marked for execution, just because he bled that fishy prince a little? I suppose you want him to go back ashore and walk among them. Throw himself on their mercy. Not likely, girl.”