The River of Shadows

by Robert V. S. Redick

  Pazel knew now what he must do. Watching her, he raised his hands and laid them very carefully upon the sphere.

  It trembled at his touch. The woman stared at him, cautious as a deer, and Pazel found he could barely breathe. He had been missing her before he knew she existed. Or had been a part of her before he ever fully became himself.

  Mother?

  He moved toward her slowly, keeping his hands upon the sphere. He knew somehow that she was alarmed, but this time she did not step away. The sphere so unthinkably delicate. Perhaps she did not dare to move.

  Neda?

  Islands formed between his fingers; continents turned before his eyes. Their hands were on the surface of the world. They were lifting countries, moving seas. She was frightened, yet she laughed silently, and so did he.

  Thasha?

  He could feel the world’s winds across his knuckles; the ocean currents tickling his palms. It was like the best moments of his Gift, when the joy of an exquisite language, a language not of suffering but of song, burst open like a rose in his mind. He could look wide across the sphere and see whole coastlines; he could peer close and see the smallest details. A crumbling glacier, a forest draped with sleeping butterflies, a tiny houseboat in a river delta, a diving bell abandoned on a beach.

  Klyst?

  There was Etherhorde, smoking, bustling; there were her fleets on the prowl. And Aya Rin, there was Ormael, her flat little houses, her cobbled streets, her rubbishy port. The orchard settlements, his houserow, his house. The very window of the room he’d crawled out of years before, clutching a knife and an ivory whale.

  Pazel blinked, startled, and found his gaze had flown westward thousands of miles. Now he was following a real whale as it hurled itself, suicidally, upon a beach. It wallowed in the surf, exhausted, possibly dying. Then an armed mob rushed down the beach and surrounded it. One of them, the bravest, put his hand in the whale’s mouth and extracted a golden scepter, and when he held it high the other men fell to their knees in prayer. And suddenly the whale was no longer a whale but a young man, or possibly the corpse of one.

  But that scepter: solid gold, but crowned with a black shard of crystal. It was Sathek’s Scepter, the Mzithrini relic, and that meant the island must be—

  Pazel blinked again: the scene was gone. He was only an arm’s length from the woman, and more desperate than ever to know who she was. But now upon the world-sphere there moved a teeming darkness, a boiling cloud. It passed over towns and cities and left them blackened; it moved over the land and left blight. The woman saw it too, and he felt her calling to him silently: Fight it, stop it, stop the Swarm! The Swarm! How could she expect him to fight it? How could anyone fight for a world plagued by that?

  And yet (Pazel met the woman’s eyes again) it was no greater than what they shared, the bond between them, the growing trust. He felt suddenly that this was the knowledge he had taken with those gulps of water: the absurdly simple gift of trust and peacefulness. For a moment he did not care if she were human or dlömu or something drastically different. He knew the joy of being close to her, and that was enough.

  The darkness began to retreat. Light shone again from the sphere, and once more the winds flowed clean over his hands. They stood like twin statues, and Pazel sensed the woman’s fear ebbing away. Such peace! Could you still want conquests, power over others, worship and dominion and treasure, once you’d felt such peace?

  To notice peace when you had it. That was treasure. That was what waking was for.

  Through the glass he saw her wide adoring smile. She closed her eyes, and in repose she was so lovely that he could not help it, he lifted a hand and reached to touch her, and the glass sphere burst and rained in a million shards into the pool.

  He was alone.

  Pazel whirled: one small glass spider crawled from the water and vanished across the floor. He raced around the pool. Gone, gone: he should have been howling with loss. But he could not. He had loved her (loved what?), but her loss was suddenly distant and elusive, as though they had parted years ago.

  No, not years. Centuries.

  He stared at the empty chamber, shaking, convulsing. There was no source of warmth; he had to move or die. He groped for the exit, dripping, sensing already the deeper cold that lay ahead.

  The stairway spat him out upon the lakeshore, half a mile from Vasparhaven, among tall rocks sheathed in ice. The first thing he saw was Hercól and Alyash and Counselor Vadu, talking to a squat figure beside a long wooden boat.

  Pazel staggered from the doorway, and the wind went through him like knives. But a bit farther on a great fire blazed, and Ibjen stood warming his shoes. Thasha and Neeps were there as well. They raced to his side, and Thasha wrapped a woolen towel about his shoulders and dragged him to the fire, swearing like a Volpek.

  He watched her gruffly as she dried his hair. “You lunatic,” she said, her voice shrill with concern. “You’re cold as a blary fish. How did you get soaked like that?”

  Pazel closed his eyes.

  “Get nearer to the fire. Take off that mucking shirt!”

  He obeyed. Neeps made a joke about him needing a bath anyway, but fell silent when he glared. Thasha was looking at him strangely.

  “A novice came from the temple,” she said. “He gave me something gorgeous, in a tiny wooden box. He said it came from you.”

  Pazel wished she would just stop talking. He was clutching at memories, like fragments of a story heard once in childhood, and never again. A strange woman, a shining globe.

  “We’re crossing the lake tonight,” said Thasha, drying him vigorously, “in three boats. If Hercól can make himself understood, that is. You should go and talk to the fisherfolk, Pazel. They’re mizralds, and we just can’t tell what they’re trying to say. I think they’re afraid of the north shore, but Hercól—”

  “Ouch!” he snapped. “Not so hard, damn it!”

  Thasha lowered the towel. “Baby.”

  “Savage.”

  Their eyes met. He touched his scalp, brought away a bloody finger. He was quite annoyed with her, and wondered at the months of agony he’d let her cause. Then Thasha reached into his hair, and brought away something small and hard. It gleamed in the firelight: a shard of crystal, which even as he reached out a finger melted like ice and was gone.

  The Black Tongue

  8 Modobrin 941

  237th day from Etherhorde

  When the keel of the fishing-boat dug into the sandy shore, Ibjen was first out: the journey had turned his stomach. And it had been bad, Pazel thought: the open boat with its one spindly mast and weird ribbed sail flapping about like a fin, no lamps on it anywhere, cutting through all that darkness with the wind howling over the peaks, the bright stars wheeling as they pitched and heaved, ice floes looming up suddenly, sometimes even grinding against their sides … He shuddered, and leaped out himself, and winced as his feet sank to the ankles in the watery sand. Freezing, even at midsummer. How did they manage, those fisherfolk, year after icebound year?

  At least the moon had sailed above the peaks: a full moon, by which the snowcaps dimly glowed. The second boat drew up beside the first, and the fisherman’s uncle leaped barefoot into the water and pulled it in.

  “And to think I’d hoped to sleep a little,” growled Big Skip, wading ashore as the dogs leaped out around him. He cursed as the nearest one shook its wet coat vigorously, then opened the front of his coat. “Are you well, my ladies?” he asked.

  “Alive, anyway,” said Ensyl as she and Myett crawled groggily to his shoulders.

  The mizralds kept looking at the shore, as though anxious to be gone from it. Hercól counted coins into the fisherman’s hand. The man’s wife took one and studied the strange Arquali designs. “It’s a fake,” she announced. “There’s a tol-chenni on this coin.”

  “It’s real gold, I bit one,” said the fisherman’s brother.

  “That’s the face of His Supremacy Magad the Fifth you just gnashed,” said Dastu
coldly. “You understand? He’s our Emperor, our King.”

  The fisherman’s son laughed. “King of the tol-chenni. King of the monkeys, the beasts!” He hooted and beat his chest. His uncle laughed, but his father scowled at him, embarrassed. Pazel looked at the wrinkled, wind-chapped creature. Was he, like Ibjen’s father, just old enough to recall the days before the plague?

  Soon all the chilly passengers were ashore. Hercól placed the twentieth coin in the man’s palm, then smiled and added another fistful. “Ask them not to speak of us to strangers, Pazel,” he said. “There is still a chance we might be pursued.”

  The family waved goodbye, delight beginning to show on their faces as they realized there was no trick.

  “Come,” urged Hercól. “We have gained a few miles on Arunis, I think. Let us gain a few more.”

  He started at once up the gray, wind-sculpted beach. As the others straggled after him, Pazel heard a shout from the old fisherman. He turned: the mizrald was splashing up to him.

  “You will go down the Ansyndra, and across the burn? What you call Black Tongue?”

  “Well, yes,” said Pazel. “There’s no other way, is there?”

  The mizrald shook his head. “No other way. No other way except with wings.”

  “Wings would be dandy,” said Pazel.

  The fisherman nodded solemnly.

  “Well,” said Pazel, “goodbye.”

  “You go at night, eh? Only at night across the burn. Darkly, quietly: that’s how it’s done. Tell your friends. Because by daylight—no, no.”

  “No?”

  The mizrald drew his finger across his throat. “No, no and no.”

  He stared at Pazel with concern, and looked as though he wished to say more. Then (as his family howled in protest) he pulled the youth down and planted a kiss upon his forehead. Then he turned and pushed his boat offshore.

  Stunned, Pazel hurried after the others. They were trudging west along the rim of the lake, toward the spot the mizralds had said was the only way down. Pazel could hear a rushing of water, and the now very familiar slushing roar of a waterfall. He ran, catching up with Neeps and Thasha. Neeps was gazing back across the lake.

  “How are we supposed to return?” he said. “The fisherwoman herself said they almost never come down here. And half the time there’s no shore to walk along, just blary cliffs. How are we supposed to get back?”

  “There must be trails through the mountains,” said Pazel, trying to sound as though he believed it. “Hercól and Olik must have thought about it, mate. Don’t worry.”

  Thasha’s gaze swept darkly over the peaks. “They thought about it, all right,” she said.

  Their destination, as it happened, was similar to the Chalice of the Maî: a river outlet above a sharp descent. But then Pazel swayed and stepped back, dizzied by what he saw. Where the Maî had begun as no more than a stream, this was a thrashing watercourse, descending almost vertically within a deep, twisting crack down the mountainside. In many spots the water vanished under boulders; in others it surged forth in a chaos of white spray. There were outright cliffs beneath them too, where the river became falls. And very close to the river, bolted fast to the rock, was a heavy iron ladder. It descended some forty feet and met up with a wet, steep trail that snaked back and forth down the mountain to another ladder, which in turn met another trail, and so on for some distance. Even by moonlight Pazel could see how far and fast the Ansyndra descended, falls beneath falls beneath falls …

  “The ladders will take us only so far,” Vadu was explaining. “There, at that widest shelf, you can see where the Black Tongue begins.”

  Pazel could not see it, in fact, for the men were all crowding hazardously for a view. Quickly he told the others what the mizrald had said.

  “By night alone,” mused Hercól. “Prince Olik too had heard rumors to that effect.”

  “Nonsense,” said Vadu. “Day or night makes no difference. Look there: you will see what does.”

  This time Pazel managed to catch a glimpse. Far down the black ridge a faint light shone. Something was burning, with flames that danced and guttered in the wind, throwing sparks into the night. Then all at once it was gone. Utter darkness wrapped the slopes again.

  “A fumarole,” said Vadu, “a tunnel into the depths, formed as the lava cooled. The gases that erupt from those horrid pipes are flammable, and sudden in their emergence. But something worse dwells in them: the flame-trolls. Idlers who never leave the Upper City will tell you that they are mere legends, but we who carry the Plazic Blades know better. They are real, and deadly. When they emerge, no living thing can cross the Tongue.”

  “And when is that, Counselor?” asked Myett, from Big Skip’s shoulder.

  “When they hear footsteps on their roof,” he said. “Or loud voices, possibly. Many parts of the Tongue are but a hollow crust.”

  “How did ye learn so much about the place?” asked Alyash.

  Vadu gave him a rather hostile glance.

  “The answer to that can wait,” said Cayer Vispek. “The crossing cannot, if we are to go by night as Pathkendle says.”

  “I tell you silence is all that matters,” said Vadu.

  Nonetheless they began the descent without delay. It was not the longest leg of their journey but certainly the most terrifying. Some of the ladders shifted on the rusted iron pins that held them to the cliffs; one had been reduced to a single bolt and three wooden splints. The rungs were corroded, and bit into their hands. But to Pazel the spaces between the ladders were worse: slick ledges, barely flat enough to balance on even when motionless, too narrow for crawling (which would have been far safer than walking upright) and devoid of any handholds whatsoever.

  Only the ixchel were at ease, and even they crouched low when the wind surged suddenly. Pazel, at home on masts and rigging, had to fight down panic at every turn. They crept down the cliffs, barely speaking. The four hunting dogs, slung in harnesses on the backs of the Masalym soldiers, held absolutely still. One particularly long ladder spanned a pair of rocks jutting well out from the cliff, so that for a good seventy feet there was no cliff to see or touch, just rung after iron rung, lost in the clawing wind.

  How many more? thought Pazel desperately, after the eighth or ninth descent. He glimpsed his sister in the moonlight and was amazed at her poise. The other sfvantskors were the same, and so was Hercól: masterfully aware. Did such awareness free one from terror or increase it, he wondered, when each step might be your last?

  At last, after fourteen ladders, they reached a broad, rocky shelf. Pazel was shaking, and feared he might be sick. But the air was warm: they had dropped right out of the icy wastes of Ilvaspar, and into a gentler place. But there was also a strange, biting smell that for some reason made Pazel think of rats.

  It was very dark. He moved away from the ladders and at once bumped into Neda—and Neeps. The small boy was holding his sister, rigid with indignation, in a tight embrace.

  “Is all right,” said Neda, squirming, her Arquali rougher than usual. “Let go now! You do same for me, same situation.”

  Neeps did not seem able to let go. Pazel touched his shoulder; he started, and abruptly dropped his arms. There was mud on his face but he did not seem aware of it.

  “I should be dead,” he whispered, staring at Pazel. “I mucking fell, mate. On that path with the ice underfoot, that terrible spot. Your sister caught me by the belt and dragged me back. She could have fallen herself. I should be dead.”

  Neda looked at Pazel. Switching tongues, she said, “Your friend is in shock. But when he’s able to listen, tell him I’ll break his arms if he tries to grab me again.”

  “I don’t think it’s likely,” said Pazel. “He’s a married man.”

  Neda’s face was blank. She looked the small tarboy up and down, and when her eye flicked back to Pazel she began suddenly to laugh. She turned away, fighting it, but Neeps’ baffled look made matters worse, and she spun back helplessly to Pazel and pressed her
face hard against his shoulder. Reckless, wondering if she would break his arms, Pazel held her a moment and gave way to silent laughter. That old, choked guffaw. She still existed, she was still Neda somewhere inside. He could have held her for an hour, but when she lurched away he let her go.

  Cayer Vispek looked stern, and Jalantri glared at him with something like fury. But Pazel found he no longer cared what they thought. Something had changed in Vasparhaven. He was older; he knew something that they did not. Rin’s eyes, he thought, sometimes even a blary sfvantskor needs to let go.

  As if he’d just given the idea to the mountain, there came a deafening clang that reverberated in the rocks, and for the first time ever a yelp from one of the dogs. An entire ladder had parted from the cliff, fallen soundless, and shattered just inches from the animal. The stone cracked; bits of iron flew among them; the bulk of the ladder pinwheeled over a big boulder and lay still.

  The dog crept whimpering among them, pleading innocence with its eyes. Hercól glanced up at the cliff. “One bolt,” he said, “and three wooden splints.”

  For a time the night grew even brighter: the old moon still shone down on them, and the Polar Candle, its small blue sister, joined it in the sky. By this double illumination they saw the strange new place they had reached.

  The shelf was the size of an ample courtyard. On the right-hand side the Ansyndra poured into a kind of natural funnel in the rock and disappeared, bubbling and gurgling. Behind them and to their left rose the high cliff wall, up which they would never climb again. Straight ahead, growing from cliff to cliff, there rose a stand of willows, straight and lovely, and utterly startling after so much barren rock. Ferns grew among them, and streamers of moss dangled from their limbs. A long-disused trail led away through the trees.