The River of Shadows

by Robert V. S. Redick

  Bolutu nodded and said, “I know.”

  “What is it you know?” Rose exploded. “Damn you, what is it you haven’t told me? Speak! I’m the captain of this ship!”

  “What’s this all about, Mr. Bolutu?” asked Fiffengurt, cocking his head.

  Bolutu looked to the others for support. Hercól nodded. “It is time we did speak, at that. You had best sit down, Captain Rose. And you as well, Mr. Fiffengurt.”

  “Sit down?” shouted Rose. “To the Pits with that! Tell me!”

  “This is the little something you wouldn’t talk about, ain’t it?” said Fiffengurt, angry himself. “That night by the fire on the Sandwall, when I asked if there was more, and you all played dead-to-the-world. From me, Pathkendle, Undrabust! You kept secrets from me, from old Fiffengurt, your friend through every spot of nastiness since we sailed out of Sorrophran! No I won’t sit down either!” Fiffengurt stamped his foot. “I’m hurt, Miss Thasha, that’s what I am.”

  “You won’t care about that in a moment,” said Thasha.

  Her hollow voice scared Mr. Fiffengurt sober. He sat down. Rose would not, at least at first, but as Thasha began to speak of the time-skip he groped for a chair. Pazel found that watching the emotions (denial, outrage, terror, wonder, loss) surfacing on Rose’s craggy face brought his own agony back to him. Gone, everything gone. It was one thing to imagine death at sea, quite another to survive a terrible ordeal and know that your world—the world that made you, the people you loved—had not. He thought of Maisa, Hercól’s beloved deposed Empress, whom he had fought for years to restore to the throne. He thought of his mother, whom he had dreamed of so strangely for several nights, and of Eberzam Isiq. Their old age, their final years, their deaths with no family beside them. He thought of Mr. Fiffengurt’s Annabel, raising their child, never knowing what had become of the father. Mother and child were dead and gone, their very names forgotten, and the Chathrand reduced to a few lines in the latest Polylex. The Great Ship, the one that vanished two centuries ago.

  He could see that Rose did not believe a word.

  Fiffengurt, for his part, was turning from one face to the next. Begging someone to laugh. Pazel’s eyes grew bright. Stupid, he accused himself, even you don’t quite believe it yet. How can you ask them to accept it, if you’re too frightened yourself?

  With a great effort he summoned one of Hercól’s teachings from fighting-class, a phrase from the Thojmélé Code: You will fail in proportion to your resistance to change. Fluidity is universal, stasis a phantom of the mind.

  “Two centuries,” said the prince. “That is much worse than my own case. I set sail just after my twenty-seventh birthday, aboard the great Segral-class ship Leurad. There were five ships in that expedition: all bound for the North, to your own lands. It would have been historic, the rekindling of contact between two worlds, and it might have brought a measure of safety and peace to both, for there were warnings we meant to give, and facts we sought to learn. But the moment our ships entered the Red Storm we lost sight of one another, and when the Leurad emerged on the Northern side, she was alone. Worse still, a horrid gale bore down on us not two days later, and we were almost sunk. We limped home again, passing once more through the blaze of light—only to find some eight decades had elapsed. That was twenty years ago. I have become a creature of this latter-day world, but I still mourn the one I lost.”

  Rose leaned on his elbows, his hands folded before his face. “No,” he said, “this is absurd. This is the stuff of madness, nothing more.”

  Pazel had never seen him so shaken. “It’s true, Captain,” he said. “Everyone we left behind is dead.”

  “Oh no,” said the prince, startling him.

  The others turned him a mystified look. “What do you mean, no?” said Thasha.

  “I mean,” said Olik, “that you have misunderstood the Storm. Not surprisingly—I did as well. But I have made a study of the phenomenon since my return, and have established a few points beyond question. First of all, the time-skip occurs only when sailing northward. Your two centuries vanished, Mr. Bolutu, when you first sailed north. It is a matter of how totally estranged North and South have become that you were not even aware of it, during the twenty further years you dwelled in those lands.”

  Pazel felt light-headed. He saw Thasha gripping the edge of the table as though some wild force might try to snatch it, or her, away. She said, “When we passed through the Storm on the Chathrand, then, heading south—”

  “No time-skip occurred at all,” said Olik. “I guarantee it, my dear.”

  Everyone but Rose and Fiffengurt cried aloud, their feelings irrepressible. Even Hercól’s face was transformed by a sudden, unbearable change in his understanding of the world. Thasha dropped her eyes, and Pazel knew it was taking all her effort not to weep. Her father’s alive. Somewhere, ten thousand miles from here, he’s alive and waiting. And my mother, too. And we can never, ever go back.

  Bolutu rose and walked stiffly to the corner by the washroom. Pazel’s mind was flooded, the thoughts almost too sharp to bear. That man just learned that his world died twenty years ago. Twenty years in exile, never dreaming that every friend, cousin, brother, sister was dead and gone. He lived a lie for two decades. Aya Rin.

  “My second observation,” said the prince, speaking over their oaths and laments, “is that the Red Storm is weakening. It has always fluctuated in intensity—and thus in its power as both a time-interrupter and a barrier to the flow of magic across the hemispheres. But there can be no doubt that it is in swift decline. I would not be surprised if it vanished altogether within another decade or two. Already there are periods when it is very weak.”

  “Meaning what?” Pazel demanded, utterly forgetting that he was speaking to royalty. “Meaning that there are times when it wouldn’t toss us centuries into the future, even when we’re sailing north?”

  “That is correct,” said Olik.

  Now they were surrounding his chair, mobbing him. “How many years forward would it propel us?” asked Hercól.

  Olik shrugged. “Forty or fifty? Perhaps fewer at the weakest times. My estimates are quite rough. It’s a difficult matter to put to the test.”

  “And every year,” said Thasha, “it weakens?”

  The prince nodded gravely.

  “Then,” cried Marila, “say, in four or five years, even, those fluctuations, if we hit them just right—”

  “Could mean that your time-displacement would be small indeed, on your return—if, as you say, your timing was perfect.”

  Suddenly Hercól lifted Thasha right off her feet and into his arms. They had eyes only for each other, then—streaming eyes, and a look of understanding that left Pazel mystified.

  “Did I not say it, girl?” said Hercól, looking almost furious. “Tell me, did I not say it?”

  “You did,” she said, embracing him with arms and legs.

  “Now say it yourself,” he growled. “Say it now and believe it forever. Claim it, Thasha Isiq.”

  “Eyacaulgra,” she said. And as she kissed him, and Hercól lowered her to her feet, Pazel’s bewildered mind did the translating. The language was Hercól’s native Tholjassan, but the sentiment was her father’s maxim, his signature: Unvanquished.

  A few minutes later Prince Olik rose to leave. He was glad to have given them new hope, he said, but he warned them that the immediate peril was real.

  “I will leave you with three suggestions,” he said. “First, you should each pack a visiting bag—clothes and toothbrushes, sleepwear and such—to last you several days. Masalym hospitality is a ferocious business, and once he sees for himself that you’re not demons or dangerous lunatics, the Issár may very well insist on parading you through all the finer homes of the Upper City. You would cause great offense if you had to come back here for a change of socks.

  “Second, ask for nothing in the Upper City. As a rule we dlömu take pride in our generosity, but in Masalym that pride is an obsession, and among
the well-to-do of Masalym it must be experienced to be believed. If you want water, you mention in passing that the weather tends to dry one’s throat. To make a direct request is to insult your host for not having provided it already.”

  “But all we did was ask, when we showed up in port,” said Marila. “Food, food. We practically begged on our knees.”

  “Yes,” said Olik, “and that made it terribly difficult to feed you. Vadu was preparing a grand feast, but when you begged, he was so offended that he ordered the cooks not to deliver it to the port. I was unable to change his mind until the following day.”

  “What about that first meal, the one that came by pulleys in the dark?”

  “You can thank Ibjen for that,” said the prince. “He was clever to mention those nursery rhymes about the feeling of hunger. The poor of the Lower City know the feeling well, and it was the poor who fed you. I doubt if the meal seemed excessive to you, starving as you were. But it would have fed ten times as many dlömic mouths. They gave you everything they could put their hands on—even though many of them believed you were ghosts. In our stories even ghosts need to eat.”

  “Perfect lunacy,” said Fiffengurt.

  “That too is forbidden!” Olik laughed. “A grave insult it is—a fighting insult—to call another mad.”

  “Ibjen explained already, Prince,” said Bolutu, “but even I have trouble remembering.”

  “See that you remember tomorrow,” said Olik. “Well, goodbye, my new friends. Rest today; you will soon need all your strength.”

  He rose then and bowed to Thasha and Marila—and then, catching himself, Ensyl. The captain led him to the door and opened it, and the prince was already in the passage when Pazel said, “Wait, Sire. What about your third suggestion? It wasn’t about madness, was it?”

  Olik turned in the doorway. He rested both hands on the frame. “No, it wasn’t, Mr. Pathkendle,” he said. “My third suggestion I nearly decided to keep to myself. But now I think I will speak after all.”

  His voice had a sudden, utterly chilling edge. “My third suggestion is that you be far more careful in whom you confide. As you say, you know little about me. I could well be an enemy—perhaps an ally of Arunis, or of Lady Macadra and the Raven Society. But you assumed I was a friend, and lavished information on me. You confirmed that the Nilstone and Arunis are aboard this ship—I was, in fact, guessing about both. You, Undrabust, named those who bear the mark of Erithusmé: I did not know that you and Hercól were among them. You, Master Felthrup, revealed that you’re a woken animal—to a prince of the Imperium that labels such creatures maukslarets, little demons, and has hunted them to the edge of extinction.”

  Heart racing, Pazel moved in front of Felthrup and Marila. Thasha stepped up beside him. The prince’s smile was impenetrable. Then he turned and looked coldly at Bolutu.

  “And you, brother: you were the worst by far. You barely spoke, but when you did, you revealed your passionate hatred for the Ravens. You let me know that you would consider it a dark day if Bali Adro should ever be ruled by that noble Society, which counts both Arunis and Macadra among its founders. But you have been gone a long time, Bolutu, and that day has come. When I leave here I shall endeavor to forget that you spoke those words. I most earnestly advise you to do the same.”

  Springing the Trap

  1 Modobrin 941

  Later that morning Arunis killed again.

  This time the one who came for the Nilstone was Latzlo, the animal dealer and one of the “illustrious passengers” referred to in Old Gangrüne’s report. He had once been illustrious enough, or at least very rich. To this day he still wore the same broad snakeskin belt, although he had lost so much weight that it could have gone twice around his middle, and the black scales were falling out. The journey had not been kind to Latzlo: he had come aboard to woo Pacu Lapadolma, a young woman who despised him, only to watch her marry the Mzithrini prince in Thasha’s stead. After Simja, like many others, he had been kept aboard at spear-point. During the crossing of the Nelluroq he had watched his fortune in exotic animals disappear one by one, sometimes into the galley, and thence the ever-hungrier mouths around Rose’s table. A great number had literally disappeared, during the battle with the rats. The animal-seller had grown steadily more ill-tempered and withdrawn.

  He was not universally despised, however. Mr. Thyne, the other “illustrious passenger” trapped against his will aboard the Great Ship, had kept up a friendship of sorts with Latzlo. When the disaster came the two men, along with a young midshipman by the name of Boone, were playing a fitful game of spenk on the topdeck.

  They were playing for sugar cubes. Latzlo was winning handily, though his face showed no joy. Thyne was down to six cubes when he executed a particularly daring bluff, and won a round.

  “Back in the game, Ernom!” He laughed, slapping Latzlo’s knee.

  “Ouch,” said Latzlo.

  “Never say die!” added Boone, who had a gold earring and a voice that sounded too deep for his skinny frame. “Bet you thought you had him, didn’t you, Mr. Latzlo?”

  Latzlo rubbed his knee, scowling. “I quit,” he said.

  “Oh, come now, that isn’t sporting,” said Thyne. “You’ve still got three-quarters of the cubes.”

  “Do you think it tickles, when you slap a man?”

  Startled, Thyne glanced at Latzlo’s knee. “What, have you got a rash there? I didn’t know.”

  Latzlo rose to his feet. “Keep the sugar,” he said. “I know where there’s something sweeter by half.”

  “Do you now?” said Thyne as Boone began to scoop up Latzlo’s cubes. “Where’s that, I should like to know?”

  “Where it’s always been,” said Latzlo. “Right there in his hand.”

  He turned to portside and walked quickly away, like a man with an urgent errand to perform. Thyne watched him a moment, frowning. Then he noticed Boone’s sugar-grab and forgot Latzlo for a moment. The men scuffled, scattering cards and sugar, until Thyne froze with horror in his eyes.

  “Rin’s Angel, he’s talking about the Shaggat Ness!”

  They bolted after the animal-seller. By now Latzlo was halfway down the No. 4 ladderway. When he heard them coming he too began to run. They caught up with him only as he reached the doors to the manger—unlocked, by the strangest coincidence, for the changing of the Turach guard.

  “Stop him, stop him! He’s going for the blary stone!”

  The replacement guards were due any minute. Of course the men of the earlier shift were still at their posts. Never for one minute would the Shaggat be left unattended.

  “Don’t hurt him!” cried Thyne.

  There were six Turachs in all, wielding maces and clubs. They had waited for such a moment since the deaths of their comrades, and they formed a deadly line in front of the Shaggat. Latzlo went into a frenzy. He lunged for the Shaggat—and the soldiers slammed him to the ground. He had never been strong, and not even possession by Arunis could give him the strength to overpower half a dozen marines. Still, he writhed and kicked and spat and howled. He bit his tongue; blood oozed from his lips. Then suddenly he began to scream: “Thyne! Thyne! Help! My knee!”

  The soldiers dragged him to a corner. “His blary knee again,” said Boone. “Look, he’s hurting something awful!”

  A Turach poked Latzlo’s knee. The animal-seller howled in agony: “Get it off, Thyne! Cut it off! It’s burning straight through my leg!”

  “That snakeskin belt’s all in knots,” said a Turach.

  “Cut it away, there, something’s wrong!” shouted Thyne. “Hurry, you louts! It’s killing him!”

  “Nothing to cut with,” said the Turach in command. “No blades allowed in the same room with the Nilstone, after—!”

  “I have one! Take mine!” said Boone, unfolding his stockman’s knife.

  Latzlo twisted, screaming louder than ever. “Just cut the mucking trousers!” shouted Thyne.

  Boone leaned in and slashed. The knife was sharp
; the cloth parted, and a soldier ripped the trouser leg open to Latzlo’s hip.

  There was no visible wound. But there was something. Words, in fact, scrawled in ink above the knee. Thyne leaned closer, morbidly curious, and read aloud:

  “ALL … OF … YOU …… IN …… TIME.”

  Latzlo stopped screaming. The chilling words hung in the air. Then came a dull thump: an object falling to the deck from a height of some six feet. It was the midshipman’s knife.

  Boone himself was nowhere to be seen. Once again, however, there was a small incision in the canvas hiding the Nilstone. And beneath the Shaggat’s upraised arm, several buttons, a gold earring and a few withered ounces of mortal remains.

  “It’s almost as though he planned it that way,” said Neeps.

  “Arunis, you mean?” said Pazel, blowing the sawdust from his sanding-stone.

  Neeps shook his head. “Olik. As though he’d warned us that he was with Arunis, and then had to prove it by nudging him to kill again.”

  They were on a scaffold over the tonnage hatch, along with Thasha, Marila and Hercól. They were sanding a part of the enormous pine trunk that would replace the makeshift foremast. The pine was their one spare mast-trunk, the other having been lost to fire. It was propped at a diagonal, one end jutting out over the quay, the other six decks below, where men were still ripping away the bark with drawknives, tackling knots with chisels and planes. The dlömu had taken charge of the Chathrand’s exterior—their own scaffolding rose on either side of her damaged hull—but they had so far left all other repairs to the crew.

  “He didn’t quite say he was with Arunis,” said Thasha. “I mean, yes, he said Arunis was with the Ravens, and he called them a ‘noble Society.’ But he never claimed to be part of that Society himself. And even when he stopped pretending to like us—stopped saying ‘my friends’ and all that, and told us how reckless we’d been—even then he never praised Arunis. It would have been easy to say ‘the Great Mage’ or ‘my master’ or anything of that kind. But he wasn’t gloating, the way Arunis does himself. He really did seem to be warning us.”