Shadowrun - [Earthdawn 05] - Shroud of Madness

by Carl Sargent, Marc Gascoigne (v0. 9) (epub)

  Once back at the villa, Cassian realized he had clean forgotten to do anything about the missing servant boy. Thinking he would sink down onto his pillow and fall asleep within seconds, Cassian discovered that he was too wound up to sleep. He was desperately tired, but not sleepy. He knew that, in part, it was due to all the excitement of this night: the murdered body, the mystery, the books he'd taken from the coffer hidden in the secret alcove in the floor beneath Crielle's bed. But it was more than that too, and he knew what he should do about it. As he took his folded ceremonial robes from his bag, not having entrusted them to any servant, his heart beat still faster. He put them on, then reached down to swiftly detach the scarab from its setting and set it on the floor. Cassian then closed the door to his bedroom, wedged a chair against it, and sat on the edge of his bed, closing his eyes. Clad now in clean, dry clothes, he concentrated intently.

  He saw the pool chamber from floor level, his mind's eye moving slowly across the floor and the walls, past the marble and plaster busts and pedestals until he came to the mid-section of the eastern wall. His point of view stopped and fixed itself there until a warm, pale purple glow began to appear in an area the height and width of a human body, somewhat shorter than his own. The figure was slim, tall for a female, narrow-hipped and long-legged, but there was absolutely no detail to be perceived.

  Magically masked, of course, he thought as he opened his eyes and recovered the beetle, affixing it to its clasp once more. But whoever she was had walked out through the wall. The magic lingering was no illusion, of course; the scarab would not be deceived by such. Elemental magic, fairly powerful. Vivane was not likely to be knee-deep in talented young female elementalists, Cassian thought—and it must have still fewer tutors capable of imparting their skills to such a pupil. How interesting.

  He would not be able to ask questions about such matters openly or easily, of course. His magical snooping was, in one sense, illegal. Long-established Imperial law expressly forbade the use of magical divination against the persons, or properties, of nobility, even in such extreme circumstances. In the past, such laws had been needed to prevent the various Houses from sinking all their magical skills into investigating and then double-crossing one another. A strange double-standard existed now; a praetor was known to use magical devices and skills in his work, but was also expected to be wholly covert about it. Any evidence he gathered in such a manner would not be admissible in his reports, nor in any Imperial court, and could only be used to glean information he would then have to confirm and prove in other ways. The subtler points of law were often difficult, likewise the touchier aspects of protocol, but Cassian had swiftly learned how to be discreet and sparing in his use of divination.

  He took up the books he had recovered from Daralec's mansion and laid them on a table while he washed his face and arms in the bowl of cool water. After a moment's thought, he stripped himself and washed down the rest of his body with a wet towel, anointing himself with the clashing scents of oleanwood and clary sage, pine and myrawa-ter. Then he wrapped his mixed robes around his body, some tight around his skin, the final drape drifting loosely behind him as he took a step toward the door, his minor ritual dramatizing the dual moods he felt within. Having sent his coachman to his well-deserved resting-bed, Cassian walked out into the night, across the Grandwalk, through the Little Bowers, and on to the Floating Ziggurats.

  Under the now-rising moon, freed from the cloak of clouds that had obscured its early ascent into the heavens, the resting places floated around the massive steps of the pyramid in a way that reminded him of seeds drifting down, on a windless day, from a sykara tree, as if an instant of their descent had been frozen in time and preserved here. Though summer was already giving way to fall, graceful flowers dotted the margins of the steps and the hanging bowers themselves. He strode effortlessly up the pyramid, the enchantments laid upon it making the passage up as effortless as walking downhill, reached a point near to the top, and casually stepped off into mid-air, passing over invisible supports of elemental air until he found a resting spot. Oblivious to the nearby sounds of lovers disobeying the law that forbade their exertions here, he lit the little nightlight lantern he had brought with him and opened the first of the books from Daralec's house, laying it down in his lap.

  He folded his hands over the book and drifted away, his eyes still open, registering images and sights from the world around but increasingly inattentive to them. He began to wake-dream, letting images and thoughts well up from within him for a few minutes; then he scanned the first pages of the book. No human, ork, dwarf, or any other Namegiver bar another elven soul would have understood his actions. He took in the numbers and names, dates and descriptions more by empathy than by perception, though his eyes presented unto him what the books contained; and he alternated between his strange reverie and his reading, absorbed within himself and then outside himself, until the intuitions began to take concrete form and the pattern of the crime he was looking for began to appear to him.

  Jerenn was yanked off his feet as he tried to get up from his knees. Fortunately, the troll had him by the collar rather than by the hair, and he had kicked the door shut behind Jerenn. A furious pounding came from outside.

  In the room Jerenn had forced his way into, a dozen people sat in a circle; mostly human, but also two orks, a dwarf, and the troll who was manhandling him. The troll flung him against a side wall, and Jerenn was halfstunned, just able to register the fact that his pursuer had finally managed to force the door open himself.

  The troll took one look at the ork, then snatched his knife, gripped it in bloodied hands, and snapped it clean in two. The ork gawked for a split-second before the troll caught him with a jabbing blow of appalling ferocity, right in the face. Blood sprayed from the ork's shattered nose, and one of his tusk-teeth splintered in two. He staggered backward, falling over.

  Jerenn closed his eyes to the sight that followed and wished he could have shut out the sounds of the ork screaming until the troll grew bored with kicking him. He cowered wretchedly, hardly daring to look around at the others. Then an orkish hand, more like the paw of some predatory bear-like animal, gripped his jaw so hard he thought his teeth would pop out. The ork drew a knife with unmistakable intent, and for a ghastly instant Jerenn knew what it was like to be dead for sure, with no possibility of salvation. It had been long enough since the first time that had happened to him that he almost fainted, and wished that he could have, until a second ork face appeared behind the first and growled at the incipient killer.

  "'Old on! I know 'im. He runs for old Mother Grishin, 'e does. 'E's good to 'er. She won't like it if 'e comes to any (rubble."

  The first ork grunted, looking extremely reluctant to put down his knife. Jerenn's heart leapt wildly in his chest as he recognized the other; Taravail, the young ork with the distinctly un-orkish name that made him the butt of so many jokes from other orks. The fact that Jerenn had never mocked that name, nor even hinted at a jest about it, was something he suddenly was awfully glad about.

  "He's seen us. He's got to be dealt with," the first ork grumbled, licking his lips.

  "'E's not seen nuffink, no ways," Taravail asserted in a flurry of negatives. "Lerrim go."

  "I was only going to see Mother Grishin," the boy wailed plaintively.

  "Shut up," the ork with the knife yelled. "It ain't nothing to do with you, so keep yer trap shut." Jerenn was suddenly, ridiculously, offended. Nothing to do with him?

  "Look, just kick him out and if that ork gets him, that's just too bad," a weary woman's voice said from somewhere behind the orks who were blocking the rest of the dingy, foul-smelling room from Jerenn's vision. "She isn't here anyway. He's only seen a bunch of people in a house. He'll run away."

  "You bet I will," Jerenn said fervently.

  Very slowly, and with obvious disappointment, the ork lowered his knife and finally sheathed it at his belt. He grabbed the boy by the scruff of the neck and had the kindness to open the ra
mshackle door before he applied a heavy boot to Jerenn's backside and kicked him out through the doorway.

  Jerenn started to run and then slowed to a walk. He had, after all, fallen down once from running through this stone-strewn ruin, and another tumble could leave him with a badly sprained ankle or even a broken bone.

  Then something strange happened to him.

  Twice within a few minutes he had faced death at the hands of an ork with a knife, and the utter relief he felt from his dual escape filled him with a sense of crazed fearlessness. Very slowly, he turned back toward the house and began to sidle around it, looking for somewhere he might hide, wait, watch, and listen.

  Slowly but with purpose Cassian began to put words to his notions. Supplies of stone will be threatened; a wizard and an architect who worked with that stone, securing the city, have been slain as well as the importer of the stone and his son. An elementalist is involved. This is a pattern. I do not think this is sabotage, and indeed it looks to me more like a House rivalry. Someone will take unto themselves the functions that have been removed from others. There may be House feuds underlying this; Houses Carinci and Narlanth have each lost two important members. So I must delve into the politics of it all. The Arbiter-General's notes give me some starting points, but I will have to use my own skills to discover the rivalries. Most of all, I must find out who benefits most now. It may not be one person solely, either.

  He was almost disappointed. The solution was surely mundane, as it all too often turned out to be. Greedy families wanting more than their share, grasping for extra wealth for themselves, more power at the periphery, perhaps the hope of greater influence within the Conclave itself in the fullness of time. Though the Empire had evolved a myriad of rituals and procedures for minimizing House rivalries, they still floated to the surface like ordure in a watery cesspit.

  An image, rising unbidden to his mind, troubled him. Something from deep within him was telling him that something more sinister, corrupted, lay beneath the veil of appearances. Appearances might not be deceiving, but they were only part of the picture. He felt queasy, a literal and physical unease in his stomach.

  "Or is that just Crotias's beer?" he suddenly whispered aloud.

  Then he realized that he had been wholly oblivious to the presence of another beside him.

  11

  She was elegant and slender, her hair dark and lustrous, and even in the faint glow of lantern light which was all that illuminated them, the moon obscured now, her skin appeared dark to him. Enough of Cassian's altered perceptions remained for him to sense that she was older than she looked, though probably no more than some eleven decades old. As with all elves, her appearance did not reveal her age easily, not even to the casual gaze of another elf.

  "Forgive me," she said gently. "You were in reverie. That can be dangerous, even here. There are some people who will watch and wait for one such, and seek to kill for whatever they can take."

  "Is it so unsafe? There are regular patrols here," he said, genuinely surprised.

  "There are enough in the city with the skills to evade such patrols, and the night is dark now." She studied him briefly. "You must be new to Vivane and the Quarter."

  "I am," Cassian said, not wishing to reveal his ori-gins, but knowing he could hardly conceal it from her.

  "From the Great City, perhaps? Your robes suggest it," she said, a slight smile playing on her lips. His senses were still slightly unfocused, and he needed time to regain his composure. He could not yet trust himself to speak without giving too much away, still not knowing who she was. She sensed his hesitation.

  "I shouldn't take advantage," she said almost playfully. "You are in conflicting moods, I see."

  He looked at his robes. His apparel told any elf that his reverie was a divided one, needing to focus within and also to receive what was outside. He'd found the right balance point, but returning to the normal world took some time. Tension and excited nerves still clashed with the growing fatigue in his body, denying him relaxation and readiness for sleep.

  She took his hand and let it rest in one of hers, offering him a tiny silvered thimble of highly scented liqueur with the other. He took it gratefully and sipped the liquid. It was fiery in his mouth, but wonderfully mellow in the throat, and warm honey and spice swirled around his taste buds, tickling at his nose. He shook his head like a dog emerging from a pool of water.

  "I think I recognize this," he said appreciatively. "It isn't local, is it? Is it qualijarn?"

  For a moment she hesitated, then told him it was. He had never been sent to the far coastal land from which it came, but he knew the fiery reputation of that borderland people, and her dark skin suggested such an origin. He also sensed that she did not want him to know that, or at least not so easily.

  The sensations from the drink were so strong that they helped him return his focus to the world around him, the dream-like state sinking back down within. The sense of fatigue began to grow powerfully strong in his bones and muscles, and he half-groaned with weariness.

  "I am most grateful to you/' he said. "Thank you for watching over me." It was only what one of the People should have done for another, but that was no reason not to feel real gratitude, and he meant what he said. Rather gingerly, he got to his feet.

  "We have not even exchanged names," he said.

  "I think you are perhaps praetor Cassian," she said, after another brief pause that intrigued him. "I have not heard of any other visitor from Thera in recent days. At least, none of our kin."

  "Then you have an advantage over me." Though she was obviously reluctant, protocol demanded that she reveal herself.

  "I am Shusala," she told him. "You will have heard of me, I think." She rose also, and walked away from him.

  Indeed, he mused; indeed he had heard of her: wife to Ziraldesh, daughter of Daralec. He recalled the widow Karlanta saying that Crielle was her and Daralec's only child. Yet, he had also heard that Daralec was twice-mar-ried, and though elves did not feel the need to marry to bear and raise young, he sensed a feeling of rejection implicit in the phrase she'd used.

  He wondered why that might have been?

  Jerenn was aware that it was well after midnight and growing cool, with half a promise of a chill and the threat of rain hanging in the air. He clung to his perilous perch on the roof and pressed his ear even more firmly to it, close to a spot where the rafters were rotted and sound carried well but promised a bone-breaking fall if he crawled another yard forward.

  He could hear a girl's voice, or that of a young woman, a melodic voice. She was speaking of stone-breaking, tearing down the walls of the Theran-controlled portions of Vivane, of the people of the Undercity and Broken Quarter pouring into the Theran Quarter, looting and pillaging, of revenge and destruction. There were roars of approval from the others, but barely any interruption in the flow of her speech. At length, another woman's voice broke in, and he recognized it as that of the one who had interrupted the orks debating whether to skewer him or let him go. A voice with a slight edge to it, world-weary and skeptical.

  "There is the minor matter of the Eighth Legion, not to mention the Imperial navy at Sky Point. Let us say ten thousand trained troops. We can hardly bring down Vivane with such an enemy within it."

  "You can have Vivane and anything else you want in it," came the singsong voice. "All the wealth, the gold and jewels, everything the Therans have taken from you over the centuries." There was no mistaking the anger in that voice.

  "The people can hardly fight an army."

  "You don't seem to understand," the singsong voice shot back slightly ominously. "When a city falls into such disorder, the Theran instinct is always to withdraw back into the citadel. If there are no walls and no citadel to withdraw to, the Therans retreat. The alternative is to lose the lives of their soldiery, and that is something the Therans find acceptable only in war. You do not understand the way we think."

  We? Then she is a Theran?

  "The time
is coming. The celebration of Kypros's feast begins only ten days from now."

  There was a silence of a few minutes, and then a querulous dwarf voice piped up. "We would all like to see this Nighthand. To see that Nighthand really exists, I mean." A low growl around the room confirmed his words.

  "Nighthand exists. You've seen the work crafted by those hands. Haven't you all worked in the passages and catacombs we've restored together?"

  The growl turned into murmurs of agreement. Jerenn could hear the sounds of people rising to their feet as he became aware that the roof was growing increasingly slippery, rain drifting gently down onto the thin stone. He hunched himself up into an even tighter shape and clung on with all his will.

  Cassian woke only an hour after dawn, and to his surprise found that he was wide awake and alert. After the disturbances of the previous day, the drinking and the excitement, the late night, the deep reverie, he had expected to feel wretched this morning, but quite the reverse was true. He shouted for Jerenn, while leaping out of bed with unseemly alacrity.

  The boy took some time bringing hot water and freshly crafted soap for him. He was bleary-eyed, and his nose was reddened. It looked like a debilitating cold coming on, and the elf told him to sit. The boy looked anxious.

  "And so, where were you spying last night?"

  Jerenn looked as if he'd been shot with an arrow. Fear dilated his pupils. He clutched at his knees, curling up defensively into a ball, saying nothing.

  "It is very obvious, boy. You were missing last night when I sent a servant to call for you. It has rained during the night; the grass is wetter than any dew would make it. You have a cold, and you walked in here like an old man whose joints have seen many cold winters. Tell me where you've been."