The River of Shadows

by Robert V. S. Redick

  Pazel was distressed by his statement. How much could the old man sense about the world to come? Then, from above, he heard the sound of many voices raised in song—a low, lovely music, and the dread in his heart melted away.

  “It is the hour of Evensong,” said the Master Teller. “The hour when we often welcomed guests, in happier years.”

  The climb ended on a landing before two large and ornate doors, finished with padded leather of a deep, lustrous red. The novices stepped forward and pulled. Hinges groaned, and the doors swung slowly outward.

  A blaze of candlelight met Pazel’s eyes, and a wave of sweet smells—apple blossom, cedar, cinnamon, fresh bread—flooded his nostrils. They were stepping into a grand hall: not vaulted and soaring like that of a Northern palace, but deep and intricate, with several levels to the floor, and pillars carved from the living rock, and many alcoves and niches filled with candles in iron stands. Tapestries adorned the walls, and censers burned on iron stands, gray cat-tails of smoke rising from them to mingle at the ceiling. The hall was full of people. They were dressed humbly, and busy with a variety of tasks, but as the Master and his guests came forward they stopped and bowed as one. Not all were dlömu. The other races of the South were all represented here, in greater proportions than in Masalym. And there were new beings, too, like nothing Pazel had seen before. A hulking figure nearly the size of an augrong, with a barrel under each arm. A pair of lean, wolfish beings who rose from all fours when they bowed. A gray fox watching them from a corner, its tail twitching like a snake. “Welcome, human,” it said in a voice like satin.

  “Where is Kirishgán?” said the Master Teller. “I would he met our visitor.”

  “I will find him, Father,” said the fox, and darted away into the chamber.

  They walked deeper into the room. A young novice handed Pazel a cup and bade him drink. It was wine, pale but very strong, and when Pazel swallowed he felt warmer still. “We dlömu drink more beer than wine,” said the Master, smiling. “But humans always preferred our wine, in the old days when we lived as brothers. Drink it all, child: it is the first part of your cure.”

  Pazel finished the wine. As he lowered the cup he wondered if the drink could already be going to his head: for coming toward them was a man-like figure with olive skin and fine black feathers where his eyebrows should have been. They jutted out to either side of his temples, as if a pair of black wings were about to emerge from the skin of his forehead. The eyes beneath these oddest of brows were youthful; but the man himself was not exactly young. He was tall and straight-backed, but there was a subtle, knowing quality to his expression that made Pazel think of the wisdom of great age. The figure greeted him with a bow.

  “Welcome, spider’s favorite,” he said.

  “I’m glad you’re not afraid of humans,” said Pazel. “In Masalym no one wanted to speak to us.”

  “Your murth-cry gave us a start,” said the newcomer, as the corners of his lips curled wryly, “but as for human beings—well, there are stranger things within these walls.”

  “Vasparhaven is home to many beings, not all of them native to this world,” said the Teller. “Some were castaways on the River of Shadows, who, unable to return to their own world, climbed to the temple and dwell here yet. Others, especially dlömu, come as war refugees, fleeing the Platazcra. There are woken animals, whom we shelter until their persecution ends. And a few, like Kirishgán here, come as pilgrims did for centuries, before the current darkness: to learn, to study, to bring us new wisdom and carry something of us away with them to distant lands.”

  “By his face, Spider Father, I guess that he has never met with a selk.” The olive-skinned figure smiled warmly. “Of course that is no surprise. We are rare enough on this side of the Ruling Sea. In the North we are rare as lilies on a glacier.”

  “And yet older than glaciers—old as the mountains themselves,” said the dlömu. “I am glad of this encounter: the young and the ancient of Alifros, met here at the crossroads of our common fate.”

  “A crossroads surely,” said the other, “but which road is the world about to choose, I should like to know?”

  “So should we all,” said the Master Teller, “for one is sunlit yet, but the other descends into shadow and fear: to what depths none can say.” He took the empty cup from Pazel’s hand. “Our guest would be welcome for a year, Kirishgán, but he has only hours. You know what the second part of the cure entails. The third and final will be given on the Floor of Echoes.” His old eyes focused on the selk. “You will visit the Floor yourself on the morrow, I think.”

  “Spider Father!” exclaimed the other, suddenly excited.

  “Stay here in the Great Hall for now,” said the Teller, “and when Evensong concludes, be so good as to show him to the door. I will alert the Actors myself.” The old dlömu moved away without another word, flanked by his two attendants.

  “So the day has come!” said the one called Kirishgán. “I thought it might have, as soon as I saw your face.”

  “What do you mean?” said Pazel. “I thought all I needed to do was drink three gulps of that wine, over three hours.”

  “There is a bit more to it than that,” said Kirishgán, smiling again. “Come, and I will try explain.”

  He threaded a path through the Great Hall. The people watched, quietly fascinated, and some murmured soft words of welcome. Tapestries gave way to windows, and Pazel realized that they were no longer within the mountain but in the part of the temple that projected over the lakeshore, suspended on those titanic beams. They climbed a short stair, passed a fire dancing in a brass vessel and sat upon a rug in a little glassed-in alcove, with the stormy lake spread beneath them. The wind moaned and rattled the windows, and despite the fire the glass was rimmed with frost.

  “The bite of the medet is rare,” said the selk abruptly, “because it never occurs by accident. There are two possibilities. The spider bit you that you might go blind, and stay among us for the rest of your days. Or the spider bit you that you might visit us, and be cured, and perhaps gain something else in the bargain.

  “Vasparhaven is larger than it appears from outside, and while most of its halls are open to the whole community, some are closed and sacrosanct. Of these, the most sacred of all is the Floor of Echoes. None go there save the Master Teller, and a special group we call the Actors—and very rarely, travelers in need. The Actors dwell on the Floor for nine months—never exiting, never even speaking to their brethren outside. For those pledged to the Order it is a privilege extended only once in a lifetime.”

  “And your Master is sending me there?” Pazel exclaimed. “Whatever for?”

  “I cannot tell you,” said the selk, “but I am glad you have come. Three years have I dwelled in Vasparhaven. When I came, weary and cold, I thought only to spend the night, but the Master bade me remain until the deeper purpose of my visit should reveal itself.”

  “Has it, then?”

  “We shall see,” said Kirishgán. “There is an old rule concerning the Floor of Echoes: that anyone who sets foot in it must leave it by a passage that exits Vasparhaven, and not return for nine years at the earliest. I am to visit the Floor myself, the Master has declared; therefore my time here is at an end.”

  A novice brought a tray with a steaming kettle and two cups, and Kirishgán served them each a cup of fragrant tea. Pazel seized it gladly: it was good to have something to warm his hands. “Don’t you mind being sent away?” he asked.

  “Mind?” laughed Kirishgán. “On the contrary. Life is rich here, in ways I cannot hope to describe. But I have grown restless. Friends await me far across the Empire, and beyond it too. I doubt I shall ever again know the peace I have found in Vasparhaven. Yet I came here to heal and to learn, not to escape. The arts I have studied here tell me of the doom that is building over Alifros, gathering like a second Worldstorm. I would fight that storm, and those who are brewing it with their hate. I am eager to resume my journeys.”

  “A
nd we’re not eager at all,” said Pazel, “but we have to go, as quickly as we can.”

  “You are close to the heart of that doom,” said Kirishgán. “You, and your party, and those ill-favored three who came before. And above all the one you call Thasha. I have never felt a stronger tremor from a passing soul! Who is she, Pazel?”

  Pazel looked at him uneasily. He had taken an immediate liking to this Kirishgán, but what of it? They’d been betrayed so many times, and the circumstances of his visit to this temple were odd to say the least.

  He was groping for some evasive reply when he noticed with a start that his right arm was colder than the rest of him. He placed his hand on the kettle, but only dimly sensed its warmth. “Please,” he said, “what about the cure?”

  “The second part will be given to you soon,” said Kirishgán. “The third you must seek on the Floor of Echoes. But it is no good counting the minutes, Pazel. Tell me of yourself! For sixty summers have come and gone since last I met a woken human—and ten times that since I met a human from the North. Let us share what we can while the music lasts.”

  Pazel sighed: there was clearly no way to hurry anyone here along. Kirishgán for his part was insatiably curious. Pazel told him of the Northern Empires, the cities he’d visited on the Chathrand and his earlier ships. He described the great market on Opalt, the splendid mansions of Etherhorde, the jungles of Bramian and the warm white sands of the Outer Isles. But when he spoke of Ormael and the life he had lost there, he felt a strange emptiness, almost an indifference, in himself. And that was a new sort of loss. I could tell him anything. I could say that Ormalis worship ducks. It’s unreal to him and always will be. And what if they never caught up with the Chathrand, never found a way home? Would the North become just a story for them as well—a yarn that unraveled with each telling, a fable about the lives of people they no longer knew?

  “Tell me of the crossing,” said Kirishgán.

  Pazel spoke of the awful storms, the lives lost on the Ruling Sea, the Vortex that had almost swallowed the ship. He moved on to their landfall at Narybir, the attack of the Karyskan swimmers, their confused reception in Masalym. Kirishgán listened in silence, but when Pazel mentioned Prince Olik he looked up sharply.

  “You are friends of Olik?” he said, his feathered eyebrows knitting. “How close? Did the prince give you no token of that friendship to prove your claim?”

  Pazel could only shake his head. “Nothing, as far as I know,” he said.

  “Then you are his friend indeed,” said Kirishgán, delighted. “Olik hands gems to those he wishes others to be wary of. Had you produced one I should have told you nothing more. But this changes matters. Olik Ipandracon! Years have passed since I saw his noble face. Where does he wander now?”

  Pazel told him what he understood of Olik’s fight against the Ravens and Arunis. Kirishgán was dismayed. “Let him not fall into the hands of Macadra!” he said. “She would find a way to kill even a Bali Adro prince, if it suited her. But more likely she would alter his face by magic or mutilation, and hide him in one of the royal ‘hospitals’ in the west, where those she fears to kill outright are locked away.”

  “Your Empire seems fond of such places,” said Pazel. “We were locked in one ourselves. Oh, Pitfire, we should have begged Olik to come with us.”

  “Do not despair for him yet,” said the selk. “The prince has a knack for survival, as any must who fall afoul of the Ravens. But Bali Adro is not my Empire, Pazel. Indeed, we selk refuse all citizenship save that of Alifros itself. When I first woke into life, Bali Adro was a little territory on the Nemmocian frontier, and this temple was yet to be built, and the waters of Ilvaspar remained frozen even in summer. Lake and mountain claim no citizenship, nor do the eagles drifting above them. So it is with the selk. By ancient practice most countries grant us freedom of movement, and we joke with border guards that we permit them the same. In any case there are few who could prevent our coming and going.”

  “But don’t you have a home?” asked Pazel. “The place you were born, a place you dream of going back to?”

  Kirishgán’s eyes grew briefly wary. “That is one secret I am sworn to keep,” he said.

  There was an awkward silence. Then Kirishgán seemed to reach some decision, and gestured for Pazel to lean close. In a softer voice, he said, “Hear me, lad. For as long as the Ravens have existed there have been those who fought them. I am one of that number: I resolved long ago to resist them until the day I breathe no more. Olik has made a similar choice, and so have many across Bali Adro and even beyond it. Once, the dlömic Emperors stood with us. But for well over a century now the throne of Bali Adro has been merely a tool of the Ravens, the figurehead behind which they marshaled the Platazcra.”

  “I thought those Blades were the whole cause of this Platazcra,” said Pazel.

  “By no means,” said Kirishgán. “The Blades and their power are an awful drug, but more awful still is the idea. The hideous idea! Dlömu Irrimatak! Dlömu atop the hill, all others at their feet! It is the founding lie of the Platazcra that such is the natural order, the right path for the universe. How else to sustain a cult of infinite conquest? Without a belief that dlömic supremacy was ordained by heaven, there would be no Platazcra, only frenzied warfare among the various keepers of the Blades. The Ravens rule the South, Pazel, because they gave the dlömu a sick, sweet lie to believe in. And now, through that lie, the dlömu are destroying themselves.”

  “Everyone believes in that lie,” said Pazel.

  Kirishgán sat back, startled.

  “I mean, it’s no different in the North,” Pazel went on. “The Shaggat’s cult on Gurishal—that’s infinite conquest, too. And the Secret Fist, Arqual’s network of spies—why, they’re selling the same blary story to the Arquali people: that they should rule everyone, everywhere, because they’re naturally better and Rin wants it that way.”

  His voice tightened. “Do you know how many Arqualis have told me I ought to feel grateful, Kirishgán? Told me how lucky I am that Arqual came along and noticed me, lifted me up? Rin’s eyes, half the Arqualis I’ve met think they ought to be in charge of the world. Not consciously, I don’t mean that. It’s half buried, but it’s there.”

  The selk’s eyes were suddenly far away. For a moment Pazel was afraid that he had given offense. Then Kirishgán blinked and looked at him again, and his gentle smile returned.

  “Your words touch me,” he said. “The old prejudices, the cleaving to the tribe: half buried, you call them. But if you were a selk you might take hope from that assertion. To bury them halfway is a great achievement. When at last they are fully buried, they can decay into the primal soil from whence they came.”

  Pazel looked down at his tea. Years of insults, abuses, slurs flowed like a phantom river through his mind. “I understand your words,” he said at last, “but I don’t think you’d see it that way if you were in my shoes.”

  “Perhaps not,” said Kirishgán. “But I am not in your shoes. And when I looked at your party from the balcony I saw a miracle: humans and dlömu riding out together, side by side. That is something I have not witnessed since before the days of slavery and plague.”

  Pazel was abashed. He was sharing tea with a being whose memory spanned centuries. And lecturing him, with the deep wisdom of his years.

  “Kirishgán,” he said, “my hand’s getting colder.”

  “That is expected,” said the other.

  “Am I really going to go blind?”

  The selk was quiet a moment, and closed his feathered eyes. “There is darkness ahead of you,” he said at last, “but of what sort I cannot fathom. Despite my great age I am new to Spider Telling. And even the Master has his limits. ‘We pan for gold, like peasants along the Maî,’ he says, ‘but the river is dark, and the sun shrouded, and the gold we call the future is more often dust than bright stones.’ ”

  “I’ve been scared so many times,” said Pazel. “From the first few days on the Chathr
and. Out of my wits, if you care to know. But blindness?” He drew a shuddering breath. “I don’t think I can face that, Kirishgán.”

  The selk looked at Pazel a moment longer, then drank off his tea abruptly and rose. “The time approaches,” he said. “Let us go.”

  Pazel got to his feet, and Kirishgán took a candle from the window and led him quickly through the chambers of wood and glass, the varied people of Vasparhaven bowing and smiling as they went. Finally they reached a spiral stair and began to climb. Three floors they ascended, emerging at last into a small, unlit chamber. It was cold here; the walls were ancient, moss-covered stone. There was a single door, and a round stone table of about elbow height in the center of the room, on which rested a box.

  Kirishgán set the candle on the table. Opening the box, he withdrew a small square of parchment, a writing quill and a bottle of ink. Pazel looked upward: he could not make out the ceiling. “What is this place, Kirishgán?” he asked.

  “A medetoman, a spider-telling chamber,” said the selk. “Now, let me think—”

  He primed the quill with ink, gazed distractedly at the crumbling walls for a moment and then wrote a few neat, swift words on the parchment scrap. He raised the scrap close to the candleflame, drying the ink. As he did so he looked up thoughtfully at Pazel.

  “Your country was seized and savaged. It is true that I cannot know what that is like, having no country to lose. Still, I do know something of loss, Pazel Pathkendle. The selk have been killed in great numbers by the Platazcra. We are loath to bow before those we do not love, and our failure to grovel at the bloodstained feet of the Emperor has made us suspect. This was bad enough when the Plazic Blades granted Bali Adro victory after victory. Now that triumph has turned to chaos and defeat, it has grown much worse. Among other things, we are blamed for the decay of the Blades themselves. We talk to eguar, you see.”