The River of Shadows

by Robert V. S. Redick

  “You are—” Ibjen stammered, embarrassed. “They are dying out in the wild, I understand. Winter kills so many. They get sick, they can’t find food, and people—dlömu, I mean—aren’t allowed to set up feeding stations like they used to. The war shortages, you see.”

  Feeding stations. Human beings who scavenged along the edges of woods, the outskirts of towns. Humans who ran like deer when the dlömu approached, or waited, blinking and terrified, for a handout. Humans without human minds.

  “We call them tol-chenni. That’s a foreign word, I forget what it means—”

  “It means ‘sleepwalkers,’ ” said Pazel.

  “In Nemmocian,” added Bolutu. “How very … evocative.”

  “We’re breaking Imperial law by feeding them,” said Ibjen. “The Grain Edict, dlömic labor for dlömic mouths. Some of the men want to drive the tol-chenni off into the woods, but they won’t cross my father. Besides, there aren’t any laws these days. Not really. Not out here.”

  Thasha sat down with her back to the tree. Out here was the Northern Sandwall: a ribbon of dunes stretching east to west, horizon to horizon. On one side, the Nelluroq: the vast, vindictive Ruling Sea. On the other, this Gulf of Masal: warmer, infinitely calmer, and such a brilliant blue that it was like the sea a child paints who has never beheld one. Yesterday, quite literally dying of thirst, they had limped into this gulf around a sandy knob six miles to the east, a place that Mr. Bolutu had recognized with cries of joy as Cape Lasung.

  They had reached the very margins of his homeland, he declared: Bali Adro, an empire greater by far than the Empire of Arqual, which was Thasha’s own country, and one of the two great powers of the Northern world. Bolutu had lived for twenty years in Arqual. Twenty years magically disguised as a human; twenty years with no hope of returning, until he joined the crew of the Chathrand. Still it was not surprising that he knew Lasung at a glance, for a singular landmark stood upon the cape: Narybir, the Guardian Tower, a weird, wax-like spire of red stone. The tower graced coins, he said; it appeared in murals and paintings and books of architecture. No citizen of his beloved Empire could fail to recognize Narybir, even if, like Bolutu, he had never come near it.

  But once ashore they had found the tower abandoned, its doors barred and padlocked, its great stair plunged beneath a drift of sand. A few minutes later they had met the dlömu villagers: coal-black figures like Mr. Bolutu, skin slick as eels, fingers webbed to the first knuckle, hair of a metallic sheen and those hypnotic eyes in which it was difficult to spot the pupil. Ten or twelve families in all: refugees, gaunt and fearful, hiding from the war. By day they scanned the gulf for danger, tended their meager gardens, snared birds and rodents in the stunted forest of the cape. By night they huddled in the old stone houses, plugging holes against the wind.

  Sergeant Haddismal was shouting: “—ask us to believe that? I don’t believe it! And why not? Because it’s monstrous and impossible. You’re trying to play us for fools.”

  “Rubbish, Sergeant!” said Fiffengurt, shouting rapidly and with unnatural excitement. “There’s no bad faith here. A mistake is what it is. Humankind wiped out? It doesn’t square. We saw a group of men just yesterday, soon as we landed.”

  “But we saw them up close,” said Pazel. “Hercól and Thasha and I, and Bolutu as well. It’s true, Mr. Fiffengurt. They’re … animals.”

  “They are tol-chenni,” said Ibjen.

  “Come come.” said Fiffengurt. “Yesterday a whole devilish armada passed by in the gulf—you can’t have forgotten that, Mr. Hercól.”

  “I fear I never shall,” said Hercól.

  “Right,” said Haddismal, turning on Ibjen. “We’re done playin’ this little game. Or are you going to tell us those ships were crewed by your kind alone—dlömu to the lowliest swab? That there were no humans aboard?”

  Ibjen was at a loss. “In cages, you mean?”

  “Gentlemen!” said Fiffengurt. “This is a mix-up, I tell you. A tiz-woz, a garble-box, you follow, Ibjen my lad? Maybe you don’t. Or maybe I’m still not following you. Don’t take it unkindly, but you’re not exactly speaking proper Arquali. Your words start all wrong. Puh is puh and buh is buh, and they ain’t the same thing—”

  “He is not speaking Arquali at all,” said Bolutu. “I told you yesterday, Fiffengurt: your tongue is an offshoot of our Imperial Common. You Northerners are the children of Bali Adro emigrants, whether you like it or not.”

  “Well then!” said the quartermaster, pouncing. “If humans from your Belly-whatsit Empire crossed the Ruling Sea and founded our own, they couldn’t very well have been animals, now could they?”

  “That was before—many centuries before the change.”

  “No, no, no!” shouted Fiffengurt. “Hush, listen! I’ve sailed more than any of you; I know how strange tribal folk can seem—why, some of them brutes back in the Jitril Isles—”

  Thasha sank her hands into her golden hair and pulled, pulled, until she felt the roots close to tearing, until she knew for certain the pain was real. They wouldn’t believe even this much. How could they possibly face the rest? How was she going to face it?

  The first part, what had become of human beings: she might still have been denying that, if she hadn’t seen them yesterday, in the little square at the village center. But oh, how she’d seen them. Slack-jawed, fly-mobbed, stinking. Half the women pregnant. The men with coarse, matted beards. Out they had come at the old dlömu’s call, shuffling, whimpering, and then—

  Something had happened to Thasha then. Something frightful and very personal, like those nightmares that erupt in silence and last just an instant, waking one with an urge to scream. But Thasha could not for the life of her say what it had been. She had not fainted. Several minutes were simply gone.

  When memory returned, no one was standing quite where they had been. Hercól was blocking the gate that let onto the square, forbidding entry to the rest of the landing party. Mr. Bolutu was staring at his hands. Pazel was beside her, pressing a cup of water to her lips, the first long drink she’d had in a fortnight and the most delicious in her life. Pazel told her she’d suffered an attack. He spoke with tenderness, but his eyes betrayed another feeling: for a moment, before he checked himself, they had blazed with accusation.

  She had seen Pazel angry, furious, fighting for his life. But she had never seen him turn anyone that sort of look. What could she possibly have done to deserve it?

  A distant boom wrenched her back to the present. The serpent had risen again, this time across the inlet beside one of the rocky isles, and with a thundering roar smashed its jaw against the cliff. An echo of steel on stone rolled across the inlet; from the island birds rose in clouds. Again the monster struck, and again.

  It was trying to break free of its bridle, the remains of some entangling war-tack. She winced; even from here she could see the fresh blood, scarlet over turquoise. Great shelvings of stone collapsed into the waves; miles away the Chathrand was rocking like a hobby horse. Pain, she thought. Pain and death and madness, and enough fresh water to keep us alive. That was all they had found so far in this new world, this great South they’d reached after months without landfall, half of it in storm, a passage through lunacy in its own right, a nightmare. Hercól was right: the truth might trigger almost any sort of panic once it reached the ship.

  They collected driftwood and desiccated grass. Pazel and Fiffengurt, with much swearing and arguing and rasping of twigs, coaxed the brush into flames just minutes before it grew too dark to see. There was plenty to burn: the weather, as they knew too well, had been mercilessly dry.

  Hercól had gone away into the dunes “to be sure they were quite alone.” Thasha went on collecting firewood until the light failed altogether, now and then glancing across the water at the Chathrand. They had waved to the Great Ship from the mouth of the inlet, and received a signal in return: Are you safe till morning? A reasonable if disappointing question. The serpent might be gone (it had slipped the bridle at la
st, flung it high as the tip of Narybir Tower, and shot away into the Ruling Sea) but what else might be lurking in this alien gulf? No, there was no justifying a rescue by night. They had answered in the affirmative and trudged back resentfully to the beach where they’d swum ashore.

  In the darkness a small miracle occurred. The beach was etched with faint, zigzag ribbons of light. Scarlet, emerald, shimmering blue: each line no thicker than a shoelace, and fading even as they stared. Thasha walked down to the water, entranced. It was the surf lines that were glowing. Each charge of foam reached its highest point, and there disgorged a boiling mass of shelled creatures, smaller than termites, which somehow gripped the sand and began to glow. For a few wild seconds they crawled and squirmed. Were they spawning, seeking mates? Thasha found she could not touch them: at the approach of her hand their light vanished without a trace.

  It grew cold. The men were still embarrassed, but they could hardly deny Thasha a spot by the fire. They held bunches of dried grass against their loins: grass that crackled and poked them and blew about in the wind, and the more the wind blew the closer to the fire they edged, until Thasha feared that someone would go up in flames. Only the dlömu, dignified by their trousers, sat calmly, warming their webbed hands. Pazel was as foolish as anyone, hiding behind the marines.

  Thasha found them ridiculous. Hours ago they’d been told that their race was dead or dying across the entire Southern world. What were they thinking, how could they care? And yet she herself was glad to be covered. They made for something normal, these motions of modesty. Something that had yet to collapse.

  Hercól reappeared, startling them, for none had heard his approach. “I have walked along the north beach,” he said, kneeling, “and I found the memorial: it was not in the dunes at all, but on a black rock facing the Ruling Sea. That is what we were looking for, Sergeant: a war memorial, one we hoped might tell us something about the catastrophe. Alas, I could not read a word of the inscription.”

  “We shouldn’t have come!” blurted Ibjen suddenly. “We told you: even if you could find the memorial, and read it, you’d learn no more from it than you would from us. Is that truly why we crossed the inlet? Is that why we almost died?”

  “Yes,” said Hercól.

  Overwhelmed, Ibjen turned away and bit his lips.

  Haddismal laughed. “What you means is, I shouldn’t have come. What are you doing with us anyway, boy? Your old dad punishing you for something?”

  Ibjen looked down at his hands. “I was told there were great ones among you,” he said, “trying to do something fine.”

  “Fine?”

  “Something to redeem the world.”

  “Who told you that?” asked Thasha. “Who could possibly have told you that?”

  But Ibjen just shook his head. “We shouldn’t be here, Thashiziq. We explained everything back in the village.”

  Haddismal’s lips curled in a sneer. He said, “You still don’t see it. Ain’t there a brain behind those fishy eyes?”

  Ibjen looked from face to face. “I don’t understand,” he said.

  “We needed some proof of your story,” said Pazel. “We wanted to know if you were mad.”

  The dlömic youth was shocked, then furious. He leaped to his feet and started toward Pazel, hands in fists, only to turn on his heel and stalk away into the darkness. Bolutu went after him, shooting an angry look of his own back over a shoulder.

  In a short time both dlömu returned. Ibjen, eyes locked on the fire, apologized to the humans. “I assumed you were like us,” he murmured. “That was foolish of me.”

  “Like you how?” said Thasha.

  “I thought you would know how vicious a thing it is to call a person mad. But Mr. Bolutu tells me it is no grave insult in your country.”

  “Nor was it here, when I departed,” said Bolutu. “And I’ve no doubt it became an insult because of the catastrophe. By all the Gods, a third of the Imperial population was human! No one could have been unmoved. We were one people—dlömu, human, Nemmocian, k’urin, mizrald, selk. There were even marriages, occasionally. My cousin Daranta took a human wife.”

  Ibjen gave a twitch of disgust, clearly involuntary. The wounded Turach laughed, and everyone looked at him. He flinched at this concentrated scrutiny, pressed his bunch of grass tighter against his waist. “My sister married a bloke from Noonfirth,” he said.

  Haddismal looked at him with vague distaste. Noonfirthers were jet-black. Worse, their kingdom, though small by Arquali standards, was peaceful, fashionable, educated and rich. “You’ll keep that to yourself if you know what’s good for you,” he said.

  Night brought no rescue, but it brought other visitors. Eyes gleamed from the dune grass. Some low swift creatures loped by in the surf, panting like wolves. And when the wind ebbed they heard a rustling all about them, accompanied by a noise like the breaking of small sticks. The sound was persistent and strangely unsettling, and in time Thasha realized that the creatures, whatever they might be, were moving about them in a closing spiral. At last Pazel tossed a burning branch out of their circle, and half a dozen crabs the size of sunflowers, with translucent eyestalks and the delicate legs of spiders, recoiled into the night.

  “Irraketch,” said Bolutu. “Lucky crabs. Don’t hurt them. They can be taught to mimic human speech, like parrots. Some part of them, legs or back or claw, is deadly poison.”

  Ibjen professed to know nothing of these creatures. He did not leave the village at night, he said. A bit later, as though reaching some difficult threshold of trust, he stated that he had come to live with his father just the year before. All his life his parents had been estranged, he said, and he had spent most of those years with his mother in the City of Masalym across the gulf. But the previous winter she had sent him to his father’s dying village on the Northern Sandwall, to hide him from the military press gangs that robbed the mainland of its children.

  “Don’t tell,” Ibjen pleaded. “None of the villagers know. They’d set me adrift in the gulf, or kill me outright. They’re afraid to harbor runaways.”

  “What’s the fighting about?” said Haddismal. “A threat to Imperial territory, is it?”

  Ibjen shook his head. “The enemy is the realm of Karysk, in the east. Not long ago they were our friends—but we are not supposed to say that. In any case I know nothing of the recent war.”

  “Recent,” said Pazel, in a hollow voice.

  The Turach commander glanced at Hercól. “I assume,” he said, indicating Pazel with his chin, “that you’ll be taking our genius here off to read that inscription at sunrise.”

  “Perhaps,” said Hercól.

  “Perhaps?” cried Haddismal. “Damn your eyes, ain’t that what we came for?”

  “He won’t be able to read it either,” said Ibjen.

  “ ’Course he will!” said Haddismal. “Translating’s all our Muketch is good for. That runt can speak, read and write every language under Heaven’s Tree.”

  Hercól said nothing, and Thasha waited, perplexed. The Turach was exaggerating Pazel’s Gift: it only let him learn new languages a few times a year, during a few days of magical insight, though he never forgot them afterward. He had acquired some twenty-five languages during these interludes. But they ended in such violent fits that he’d thrown away his savings from five years as a tarboy (an amount Thasha had seen her cook spend preparing for a dinner party) on a cure that had failed. Still, Haddismal’s question was a good one. They’d come here to learn something. Why not show Pazel the memorial?

  Haddismal clearly thought his question more than good. “You answer me, Stanapeth. Don’t you dare sit there mute.”

  “My silence is not meant to insult you,” said Hercól.

  “Your blary existence insults me. You’re under sentence of death, you and these two brats and the rest of your gang. A delayed sentence, but not rescinded. It’s beyond everything that you’re still at liberty, defying the ship’s commander.”

  “Who?” said
Pazel.

  Thasha could have hugged him. Even Haddismal looked caught between amusement and rage. Nothing was less clear than who was in charge on the Chathrand.

  The Turach threw up his hands. “I can’t talk to you people. You’re all cracked—not you, Mr. Ibjen, don’t get sore, you’re quite sensible for a fish-eyed freak. Keep the fire burning, for Rin’s sake. Long live His Supremacy.”

  He dropped on his side. The junior Turach echoed his praise of the Emperor, then his example, and in scant minutes both men were breathing deep. The others sat up a long time, listening to the scuttling crabs, the wail of nightbirds, the surf. Their whispered conversations went nowhere; they were, like Haddismal, too bewildered for words.

  Thasha would remember their smiles. Bitter, perhaps even unhinged. But none of them cruel—not even Haddismal, at the last, though she had seen terrible cruelty from the man. She thought: It’s the world that’s cruel, not its poor stupid creatures. It’s the world that stabs a wall of gorgeous scales until they bleed. The world that makes you monstrous, holds you by the neck, tightens and tightens its jaws till something snaps.

  She looked Pazel over when she was sure his head was turned. He would always be thin, light, something less than a deadly fighter. But he was growing, and he’d embraced the lessons she and Hercól had thrust on him. They were brutal, those lessons: every one involved pain; and Pazel had few natural gifts as a fighter. But he wanted it, now, and that made all the difference. “One day I’ll protect you,” he’d told her, “instead of being protected.” From the far end of the stateroom Felthrup had called: “You protect us already with your mind, your scholar’s mind! You’re a genius, Pazel Pathkendle.” Thasha had stabbed at him with the practice sword, because he’d dropped his guard to answer Felthrup. She could see the scar on his hip even now, above his clutch of weeds.