Gregar couldn’t believe it. He wiped his hands clean on his sodden yellow surcoat. ‘Just when you think things couldn’t be any more insulting …’
Leah gave him a wink and headed off back to the bivouac grounds.
Not much later Teigan himself appeared. The sergeant looked surprised to find him still standing, then sullenly waved him off. ‘Get some sleep,’ he growled.
Gregar saluted and headed for his group’s tent; he walked stiffly, his legs numb and tingling.
* * *
Tarel, king of the Napan Isles, walked alone through the empty night-time halls of the harbour fortress that served traditionally as the ruler’s palace. He always walked alone as he did not wholly trust his bodyguard, many of whom he suspected would have much preferred seeing his sister upon the throne.
In fact, he was quite certain of it.
And so this night he hurried through the damp and bare stone halls, his pace ever quickening despite his efforts to remain calm, until he reached a certain door that he yanked open and flung himself within.
He turned, blinking in the dim yellow lamplight, to face his closest allies among the ruling council of Nap. Or rather, his most browbeaten, blackmailed, foolish and servile cronies among the Napan Council of Elders. Lady Elaina of the Ravanna line, as desperate to retain the prerogatives and privileges of her aristocratic class as she was determined to retain her line’s riches. Torlo of the Torlo Trading House, as bought and paid for as any of his illicit goods. Lord Kobay of the Medalla line, whose unsavoury habits had placed him under Tarel’s heel. And High Admiral Karesh, lord of all the Napan fleets, a deluded pontificating fool who owed his rank, estate and riches entirely to Tarel’s patronage.
Lady Elaina rounded upon him, pointing an age-spotted hand. ‘What now, Tarel? You have thrown away good troops for nothing!’
‘Commander Clementh has assumed all responsibility for the debacle. She is imprisoned now in the cells below.’
‘She is from a noble family …’ Lord Kobay warned, his barrel stomach making his voice a low rumble, and he making the most of that.
‘Oh, shut up, you idiot!’ Lady Elaina snapped.
Torlo, the eldest of the Council of Elders by far, raised a frail thin hand for silence. ‘Perhaps this dark mage she has enlisted with can be bought …’
‘I doubt it,’ Tarel answered. ‘From all reports all he desires is power. But you are not too far from the mark, I think, Torlo.’
‘Meaning what?’ High Admiral Karesh asked.
‘That this mage may be a weakness.’
Lady Elaina waved her disbelief. ‘How so? Everyone agrees he is fearsome.’
Tarel nodded his agreement. ‘Exactly. And mages are a notoriously envious and jealous breed. Many suffer no rivals. His growing repute has won him enemies.’ He crossed his arms, peering right and left – no turning back now. ‘And one has contacted me to let me know her willingness to confront the fellow.’
Torlo’s already narrow gaze slit even more, making his resemblance to a carrion bird even greater. ‘Who? And how much?’
Tarel crooked a smile; of course Torlo, the canny merchant, would immediately turn to money. He raised a hand in reassurance. ‘I will get to that. As to costs, no cost at all. Just permission to meet him here.’
Lady Elaina clutched her wrinkled neck. ‘Here! He is here?’
Tarel worked hard to keep his annoyance from his face – he wanted to bark at the old aristocrat: Not now, you stupid hag! Instead, he said through tight lips, ‘When the time comes.’
‘And that time?’ the admiral asked.
Tarel nodded his gratitude for the question. The one to bring him to the issue of the night. He cleared his throat. ‘When my sister invades.’
All four co-conspirators displayed their disbelief.
‘All the admirals agree the Malazans are far from ready,’ said Admiral Karesh. ‘And wouldn’t invade in any case. Everyone agrees they are much more likely to raid the mainland for funds and materiel.’
‘My agents on the island report those pirates are busy doing just that,’ supplied Lord Kobay.
Tarel waited for them to quieten then shook his head. ‘You do not know my sister. She is utterly pitiless. She will come for me – I know this. And …’ he pointed to all four, ‘she will come for those who conspired against her as well.’
Lady Elaina regarded him and sighed. ‘It is time to let her go, my king. She is nothing now. She has sold herself to these evil allies – imagine, an assassin and a dark mage! She is their creature now. A slave, no doubt.’
But Tarel knew he could not ‘let her go’. Nor could he possibly convince these four of what he knew of her. None of them grew up in the royal household. None of them knew that the old king, his father, would lean to Sureth and murmur a name and later that man or woman would disappear, or suffer an accident, or be waylaid and murdered by brigands.
She had been his assassin from the start. The dagger in his right hand.
Yet no one ever saw it. Only he. Only watchful Tarel. He’d seen through her all along.
Which was why he struck first to take the throne. He had to. It was a question of self-preservation. So long as she lived, his life was worth a basket of rotting fish.
None of these gaping fools could possibly understand any of this.
He swept a hand before him. ‘She is coming, and that is that. We must prepare. Therefore … with your permission …’ He clapped his hands lightly, twice, and faced a corner of the murky room. ‘A visitor.’
The darkness thickened to the blackness of wet ink. Lady Elaina gasped her dread of sorcery. Lord Kobay rumbled his unease. A burst of air came then, like a gust through a window. Dust blew about the room and the glasses on the table rattled.
Out of the murk stepped an aged woman in long loose robes. Her hair was a dramatic mane of greyish silver, her lined features sun-darkened to the hue of ancient wood. Her most striking feature, however, was her eyes. They flashed a silver light as if dusted in that precious metal.
Tarel held out a hand in invitation. ‘Lords and ladies, may I introduce the Witch Jadeen, terror of south Itko Kan.’
The smile the witch gave in answer to that introduction could only be described as hungry.
* * *
Dancer did not mind the actual physical walk across the central plains; the gentle hills, small copses and tall grasses were pretty, as was the enormous sky with its horizon-to-horizon fronts of massed clouds passing overhead like the fabled sky-castles of the ancients.
Fabled no more, he reflected, as they’d found the shattered remains of one such in Shadow.
No, it was the uncertainty surrounding the errand that bothered him. Were they wasting their time? Could they simply wander for ever, pursuing a will-o’-the-wisp? Had Kellanved finally slipped over the edge into obsession and madness?
How could he discover the answers to any of these questions? Whom could he ask? Certainly not Kellanved.
So for three days they walked in relative silence on a roughly northward path, tracing the ever diminishing escarpment until it lay across the landscape as nothing more than a particularly steep hill. At nights he lay back to study the starred night sky – so much brighter here, far from the lights of any city. There was a delicacy and an intricacy in their arrangements he never would have guessed at before. Perhaps there was some credence after all to the astrologers’ assertion that secrets lie hidden there among such complexity.
That third night he could restrain his unease no longer, and he cleared his throat, turning his head to regard his partner who sat now, hands atop his walking stick, studying the flames of their meagre fire. ‘Do you even know what you are looking for?’ he asked.
Kellanved did not stir – he might have been asleep for all Dancer knew – yet he answered readily enough, ‘I’ll know it when I see it.’
Such unhelpful answers were the main reason for Dancer’s unwillingness to ask the maddening fellow any questions.
‘We really should be heading back. We have no idea how far—’
‘It is close,’ the hunched mock-elder snapped. ‘Close. I feel it.’
Dancer raised a brow; the man was rarely so touchy. Clearly he must be sharing something of his own disquiet. So Dancer relented; he would push no further – for now.
As winter was coming on, morning revealed a thick misty ground fog. The blanket Dancer slept wrapped up in carried a silvery lacing of frost. He rose to see Kellanved still sitting hunched, hands atop the short walking stick. ‘Kellanved?’ he asked.
The lad’s head jerked as he came awake, blinking. ‘What?’ Then his gaze slid aside, probing the rolling fog, and he faced the east, standing. Now Dancer felt it too; though no mage, his training had raised his senses to a point where active Warren magics played upon his nerves.
The fog was not entirely natural.
As if now aware of their regard, whoever lay behind the deception let it slip away and the roiling banks parted, fading, to reveal a band of Seti horsemen and women, some twenty or so.
Their leathers and regalia were impressive. Wolf-tails swung from the tops of raised spears; necklaces of wolf and cat teeth hung at their necks. The foremost, the oldest, rode a dappled grey mount. A thick cloak of white fur draped his shoulders, and the tails of grey-white animals adorned a stone-headed mace cradled in his arms.
‘Shadow mage,’ this Seti elder called to them, ‘did you think your crossing of our lands would go unnoticed?’
Kellanved thoughtfully scratched his chin. ‘Actually, no – I didn’t.’
‘Then you are even more the fool than you appear. You know you are not welcome here.’
Kellanved opened his arms wide. ‘We are merely passing through. That is all.’
‘Passing through?’ the elder repeated, doubtingly. ‘Passing through to what? There is nothing here for you outlanders. No town or settlement. Only our plains, which only we seem to value.’ He pointed the mace to the north. ‘But perhaps you mean to travel to the mountains yonder and the fields of ice beyond. In which case, you are welcome to continue onward and good riddance to you.’
Kellanved tapped his walking stick to the ground, tilting his head. ‘In truth, we are searching for something …’
Now the lean elder frowned suspiciously beneath his long grey moustaches. ‘Searching for something? For what? A quick death?’ He motioned with the mace and the war band spread out to either side, beginning to encircle them, spears lowered. ‘You are not intending to meddle here with the resting place of the Great Goddess, are you? In which case you have earned your deaths.’
Dancer set his back to Kellanved and rested his hands on his heaviest parrying blades.
‘And who will have given us our deaths?’ Kellanved asked.
The elder nodded at the justice of the question. He pointed the mace to his chest. ‘It is I, Imotan, shaman of the White Jackal, who judges. You outlanders push in upon us with impunity. And though we do all that we can to drive you from our lands, game becomes scarce. Hunger stalks our encampments. It is not how things used to be in my forefathers’ time.’ He extended the mace, pointing to Kellanved. ‘Push us no longer, outlander. You may not like where we go.’
Kellanved raised his arms, walking stick in one hand. ‘We are not here to trouble your lands, Imotan. But we are here searching for something.’
‘And what might that be?’
‘This.’ Kellanved flicked his raised hand and the brown flint spear-point appeared between thumb and forefinger.
The elder shaman stared for a moment, squinting, then he did something that made Dancer thoroughly uneasy. The man threw back his head and roared with laughter. And it did not end there; he continued laughing, even pressing the mace to his side as if in pain from his mirth. The rest of the troop joined in then, adding their scorn-tinged merriment.
Dancer and Kellanved shared a bemused look.
‘I’m sorry,’ Kellanved began, ‘but perhaps you would care to enlighten us …?’
Wiping his eyes, and still chuckling, Imotan waved an invitation for them to continue onward. ‘Be our guests, little ones. Do quest onwards. Your efforts will be rewarded – I am certain of that.’ He circled his mace in the air and the troop pulled away as one, cantering off. Imotan followed.
‘But wait!’ Kellanved called after them. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I guess he means us to find out,’ Dancer mused as they watched the Seti riders diminish across the hillside.
‘Yes. But find out what, hey?’
‘That’s what’s worrying me.’
Kellanved eyed the spear-point. ‘Well, it can’t be too far. I’m fairly certain of that.’
‘I like this even less now.’
The mage stabbed his walking stick to the ground, impatient. ‘Yes, yes. We’ll be careful.’
You mean I’ll be careful, Dancer answered silently.
Kellanved set off, grumbling to himself. Dancer followed, now even more vigilant – scanning the surroundings, hands on his weapons. As the afternoon waned, he warned, ‘Not much light left. We should halt for the day.’
Kellanved rolled his eyes in exaggerated vexation. ‘Here? But we are close! I’m certain.’
‘All the more reason to wait till morning.’
‘Really?’
Dancer gave a slow stern nod. The mage’s skinny shoulders slumped.
‘Oh – very well.’ He sat unceremoniously in the grass.
‘No fire tonight,’ Dancer warned.
Kellanved slanted his walking stick so that he could set his chin upon it, and regarded Dancer through one cocked eye. ‘There is no one nearby. I would sense it.’
‘None the less.’
The mage snorted, glaring. Dancer ignored him, and scanned a full circle of the nearby hillsides. Perhaps there was no threat. Yet why the laughter? What did Imotan know that he and Kellanved did not? It was worrying.
A chill wind buffeted him and lashed the tall dry grasses. He reflected that for all its starkness, the land did hold a certain sort of harsh beauty. It was immense, seeming to stretch on for ever. Yet he did not feel diminished by it. In fact he rather felt at home. Which was strange, as he was city bred and born.
That night he slept poorly, jerking awake to see Kellanved still sitting, seemingly staring off into the distance – or fast asleep upright. At dawn’s first light he rose, stretching and circling his arms for warmth. The two of them ate a cold meal of salted meat, dried bread and watered wine, then set off once more, the mage leading the way.
Their route took them to a broad crested hill and here Kellanved paused. ‘The other side, I believe,’ he whispered. Dancer nodded and the pair climbed. Before reaching the top they crouched among the tall windswept grasses to shimmy forward until they could see what lay beyond.
It was a broad valley that ran more or less east–west. A dried riverbed of pale gravel and stone wended its way down the centre.
‘I see no one,’ Dancer said.
Kellanved grunted his agreement. ‘But it’s there – whatever it is.’
‘There’s nothing there.’
The mage waved for silence. ‘I tell you it’s there. I can sense it.’
Dancer eyed his partner dubiously. He wondered once again whether something was wrong with the lad – that is, beyond all the wrongness he knew about already.
Kellanved’s beady eyes slid to him and narrowed. ‘Don’t look at me that way.’ And he rose, brushed the dust from his travel-worn jacket and trousers, and set off down the hillside.
Dancer followed, heavy daggers drawn, circling warily.
They reached the valley floor and still nothing had risen from the rocks or bushes to attack them; nor was there any structure or ruin in evidence. Clouds of dragonflies did arise, though, as they pushed through the grasses. Dancer mused that they must be the last of the season.
He kicked up against rocks hidden by the thick brush and stands of grass. Looking down, he noticed somethi
ng else lying among the stones and picked it up.
It was a small stone arrowhead, knapped of dark flint.
He was incredulous. What might be the odds? On impulse, he showed it to Kellanved and was about to speak when the mage himself bent and lifted an object from the ground: it was a leaf-shaped spearhead as wide across as his hand.
Dancer halted in wonder, his words forgotten. Kellanved’s gaze rose to his, wide and brimming with not only a similar wonder, but a strong colouring of dread. The mage staggered off as if drunk. He stooped now and then, scooping up objects as he went, and his sputtering reached Dancer: ‘How … No! … What is this? … What …?’
Dancer let his arrowhead fall. It clattered among a litter of similar weapons and tools that lay among the larger rocks like a layer of fallen leaves that carried on even to the dried riverbed, and here he wandered, picking up a scraper, or a gouge, or what might be an awl. It was appalling, but it also struck him as strangely funny.
Somewhere out of sight Kellanved screamed his frustration and rage.
Dancer sat on a particularly large rock in the ancient riverbed and kicked at the clutter of knapped objects at his feet. Most were manufactured from some sort of native flint, but others shone a creamy white, like chalcedony, while a few gleamed blue-grey.
Eventually, the crunch of footsteps announced Kellanved’s approach. Dancer looked up, not daring to speak; even the smallest hint of smugness or self-satisfaction from him would arouse an explosion of resentment from the fellow.
Kellanved held his walking stick behind his back in both hands. He was staring off into the distance as if unable to look at him. After a time he dipped his head and, taking a deep breath, announced, ‘Very well. You were right. Let us return.’
Dancer couldn’t imagine how much that admission must have cost the man. He nodded, gestured to the trove of countless tools surrounding them. ‘It seems it just wanted to join its brethren here.’
But the mage was shaking his head. ‘No, Dancer. You do not understand. Every one of these arrowheads and spear-points, scrapers and gouges – all were brought here by someone like us. All like us searching for something that is here – but isn’t.’ He continued shaking his head. ‘It is a mystery. And whatever it is isn’t in Shadow, either. I know, I checked.’
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