Katherine and Rion shared another glance at that, and the guardsman slapped him on the back, grinning wider still. “Well, come on then—hang around here much longer’n I expect the council will start chargin’ you rent.”
He started away then, and Rion turned to Katherine. “I hate plums,” he muttered.
If she saw the humor in it, she didn’t show it, instead still wearing the curious, slightly-worried expression she’d had in the wagon. “Come on,” she said. “It’s late, and I’m tired. It’ll be good to get some dinner and sleep in a real bed for a change.”
He glanced around him at several people who had stopped in the street, watching him the same way a pack of feral dogs might when deciding if they’d found their next meal. “Just as long as that dinner isn’t us,” Rion muttered, then he heaved a sigh and hurried after.
The guard had to knock three times, shouting for Shek, before finally the door eased open with an ominous creak that Rion thought would have been more at home in a graveyard than a town where people lived. Or, at least, lived after a fashion. It didn’t seem to him that the townspeople of Strellia had done much living, not in some time.
A wizened, craggy face poked through the shadowed opening of the door, eyeing the guardsman, then Katherine and Rion where they stood behind him with a suspicious, critical glare. “What’s that then?” he said.
“I said,” the guard answered in a voice loud enough to make Rion wince, “that you’ve got visitors. Customers, even. You remember customers, don’t you, Shek?” He turned back to Rion and Katherine, giving them a wink and speaking in a voice that, while lower than the one he’d used before, was only normal volume. “Man’s ears hadn’t worked right since I was a kid, too much dust in ‘em, I reckon.” He grinned.
“I can hear well enough, Barrel. Now, who are these folks you bring to my door?”
“Barrel ain’t my real name,” the guardsman said to the two of them, “just what folks took to callin’ me. Never really understood it myself.”
Rion glanced at the man’s prodigious stomach, then back up to his face quickly. “I can’t imagine.”
The guardsman gave his meaty shoulders a shrug, turning back to the old man. “What matter where they come from, Shek? They ain’t goin’ to steal none of your stuff, alright? Look, they’s just newlyweds, out of towners passin’ through on their way to the girl’s parents.”
“That right?” the innkeeper said. “And just whereabouts are your parents located, girly?”
Rion waited impatiently while Katherine told the story again, but found himself surprised by how smoothly the lie left her mouth, so much so that by the time she was finished he was of half a mind to believe her himself.
In the silence that followed her explanation, the innkeeper, Shek, nodded slowly, his tongue working at a loose tooth in his mouth, the action making wet, squelching sounds that made Rion’s stomach turn dangerously. “Well,” he said finally. “S’pose I can’t say no to a married couple now can I?” He grinned then, and there was something decidedly unpleasant about the expression, reminding Rion of a vulture or some other bird of prey.
That, he thought, is the way a rat would grin on finding something dead and tasty. If rats could grin, anyway.
“You two’ll just be needin’ the one room, eh? The one bed?” the old man asked in a decidedly lecherous voice.
“Yes. One room will be fine,” Katherine said.
“Uh-huh,” the old man said, his tongue still working at the loose tooth, around which Rion could see his gum was black as if diseased. “Just the one. Sure, sure. Will the lady be wantin’ a bath, too?”
Katherine hesitated, glancing at Rion. “I…I think I’ll be fine without. Just a room. Thanks anyway, though.”
“Ah, she don’t mind a little dirt then, eh?” he asked, giving Rion a knowing wink. “Well, come on in, and old Shek’ll set you right.” He finally pushed the door open, and they followed the innkeeper and guardsman through.
The inside of the inn was much as Rion had expected—dusty, unwelcoming, and empty. At least, that was, except for the single man who sat in the corner of the common room. A full mug of ale waited in front of him, but he made no move to drink it, instead staring at Katherine and Rion with dead, somehow vacant eyes, so still that he might have been a piece of the furniture if not for the creepy stare. “It’s a uh…nice place you have here, Shek,” Rion ventured.
“Sure it is,” the guardsman, Barrel, agreed, “just so long as you don’t mind all the rats and spiders and such. And the smell, o’course. There’s that too.”
“Ain’t no smell,” Shek snapped, but Rion noticed he ventured no argument about the rats and spiders. “Anyway, I’ve had just about enough of your sass for one day, Guardsman Barrel.” He leaned toward the guardsman who stood his ground but looked uncomfortable. “You reckon they would like you talkin’ so, particularly around newcomers?”
The guard grew very serious then, an apologetic expression twisting his features, one that was so overdone that it would have been comical under other circumstances. “I didn’t mean nothin’ by it, Shek. Honestly,” he said in a weak, tremulous voice. “Was just foolin’ about, that’s all.”
“Foolin’ about, is it?” Shek asked. “Well, I s’pose that’s true enough. You bein’ a fool and all, you can’t rightly help it.” He gave a piercing cackle, and it was all Rion could do to keep from covering his ears at the terrible sound of it. “Now,” he continued, turning back to Rion and Katherine, “I suppose you’ll both be wantin’ food too, no doubt.”
He said the words in such a way that implied they were putting him out. “That would be…good,” Katherine ventured.
The man only continued to stare at her, the gaze somewhere between hostile and lecherous. “We’ll pay, of course,” Rion added.
“Oh, sure you will, lad,” the innkeeper said, giving him that vulpine grin again. “Sure you will.” Several seconds of awkward silence passed, then he finally gave his bony shoulders a shrug. “It’ll be two dawns for each of ya,” he said, a challenge in his voice.
The price was outrageous, more than Rion would have paid to stay at even the finest inn in Valeria, and he was just opening his mouth to say as much when Katherine grabbed him by the arm with a surprisingly strong grip. “That’ll be fine, master,” she said.
The old man grunted sourly, as if disappointed she hadn’t argued. “Well. I’ll go see what the old bag has to cook.” With that, he turned and walked through a door at the side of the room. Before it closed all the way, Rion heard a voice from within.
“Old bag, is it? I’ll show you—” The rest was cut off by the door’s closing. He’d been just about to ask who the man had meant by “old bag,” but it seemed clear enough, and judging by the sounds of things getting knocked around coming from the other room, it looked like he was paying for the comment.
Rion glanced at the guardsman, raising an eyebrow.
Barrel shrugged, his face still pale as if with fright. “They go on like that, sometimes. I wouldn’t worry about it. Anyway,” he said, forcing a smile he clearly didn’t feel, “they’ll treat you alright. I’ll make sure of that much, the least I can do for the song.”
“Barrel,” Katherine said, “what did Shek mean by ‘they’?”
“What’s that?” the guardsman asked, and an almost hunted expression came on his face for an instant before he forced the smile once more. “Ah, nothin’. He was just…my parents. Sure, he just meant my parents, that’s all.”
“Your parents,” Rion said flatly.
“That’s right,” Barrel said, nodding his head far too vigorously. “Well. I’d best be off—if I don’t get back to sittin’ on that gate soon, I imagine it’ll up and float off.” With that, he turned and walked away. He did his best to look calm, but Rion couldn’t help feeling that the man wasn’t walking so much as he was fleeing.
“Not his parents,” Katherine said quietly.
Rion shook his head. “No. Anybody old eno
ugh to dress themselves isn’t that scared of his parents.”
“Who then? Or do you think it matters?”
Rion spared a glance over to the side of the room and noted that the man sitting there hadn’t moved at all, still sat watching them with that cold, vacant gaze. Oh, it might matter, he thought. It might just matter a great deal. “I’m sure it’s nothing.”
“Right,” she said slowly. “Me too.”
“What’s nothing?”
They turned around to see that Shek had returned, though there was an unmistakable battered look to his appearance, one not wholly tied to the new black-eye he appeared to be sporting.
“What?” Rion said.
And Katherine spoke a second later, “Nothing.”
The two looked at each other, their eyes wide, then back at Shek, who was watching them with a frown, some of the suspicion back in his gaze. “I don’t much like whispers,” he said.
“Then maybe don’t have an inn that feels like a tomb,” Rion said, scared for a reason he couldn’t explain, and his fear making him angry. “People might be more likely to talk normally if they didn’t feel like they were attending their own funeral.”
The old man’s bushy eyebrows turned down in a frown to match the one on his lips. “What are you tryin’ to say?”
“Forgive me,” Katherine said, scowling at Rion and stepping in front of him. “Please, pardon my husband. It has been a long journey, and he is tired—we both are. He didn’t mean any disrespect, neither of us did. But please, if you don’t mind, could we be shown to our room?”
The old man studied her up and down, the lecherous grin slowly eclipsing the anger on his face. “Want to get right to it, eh?” he said. “Well, sure, and why not? Now, you listen, young miss. If this one here doesn’t give you what you need…” He trailed off, glancing behind him at the door he’d come out of, a worried expression on his face that slowly turned to a scowl. “Never mind. This way—I’ll show you to your room.”
Katherine started after him then turned back to look at Rion, still standing where he had been. “It’ll be okay,” she said quietly.
“Sure,” Rion mumbled. “I imagine there’s some flies out there that thought the same before the spider had its meal.” But when she started forward again, he followed, feeling the eyes of the stranger in the corner track him across the room.
***
She stood in the middle of a deserted city street. She did not remember how she had come to be there. Buildings rose up on either side of her, tall and regal. There was something about them that struck her as odd, and it took Katherine several seconds to realize what it was. The buildings were shaped differently than any she had ever seen before, all round, curved edges where those she were used to were angular and cornered. The doors were also different, taller, standing nearly twice as high as the top of her head, and wider than any she had seen. It was as if it was a city made for giants. But where those giants were was anybody’s guess, for no one shared the street with her. She was alone.
She took a furtive step, not sure where she was going, and froze at the sound of her footstep echoing in the stillness. A stillness that beggared her imagination. No merchants called out their wares, no street walkers shouted out dark, sweet promises. No priests sold absolution and holiness for a few coins. There was only the silence. The stillness. Not even so much as a gentle breeze stirred the air. It was as if she was in a dead place, a place that had been created by ghosts, for ghosts, and then even they had abandoned it.
Slowly, she became aware of a distant sound, almost too low to hear. She concentrated, focusing on that sound, trying to draw the thread of it out from that terrible silence, suddenly desperate for some proof that she was not alone in this dead place. After a time, she realized that it was the sound of a woman’s voice, singing. And even though she could not make out the words of that song, that voice, Katherine knew at once who it must belong to, for no other save the Goddess herself could have such a perfect voice.
As soon as the realization came to her that it must be Deitra, Katherine could hear the song more clearly. She couldn’t make out the words, but her heart ached at the sadness buried in the melody, and she thought she had some sense of the direction from which they came. She started down the street, feeling like a trespasser in a place of silence and stillness that was at once sacred and, somehow profane. As was often the case with dreams, the journey toward her destination seemed to take no time at all even though she had a vague idea that she had spent minutes, maybe even hours, walking through that dead city, her footfalls ringing in the silence like clarion bells.
But the next thing she knew, she was standing in front of a door, could hear the muffled sound of the goddess’s song coming from somewhere within. No wooden sign hung over the giant door to mark it as a shop or tavern, but there was some symbol carved deep into the stone wall beside it, though what it was or what it meant was lost to her.
Katherine reached out with both hands to push on the stone slab that served as a door, expecting it to be difficult to move. Instead, the barest touch sent the door pivoting soundlessly inward, the stone slab, that surely must have been hundreds of pounds, moving as if it weighed nothing. Katherine stepped into the room and breathed a sigh of relief. Deitra sat on a small stage that appeared to be carved from stone in a chair so tall that an average person would have had to climb to get into it. One of the goddess’s legs was crossed over the other, and she sat almost demurely, her hands folded in her lap, as she hummed.
“Ah,” she said, turning and giving Katherine a slow, sad smile. “You have come, my Chosen.”
My Chosen. It was the first time she had heard the words spoken from the goddess’s mouth, and the casualness of it almost stole her breath. I do not deserve this, she thought. Gods, but there must be some other…some better.
“There is not,” the goddess said, as if she’d spoken aloud. “And there need not be. You are more than adequate for what is coming.”
“Forgive me, Goddess,” Katherine said, “but…this is a dream. Isn’t it?”
“Yes, Katherine Elar, it is a dream, and we its dreamers. Tell me, what do you think of this place?”
“It’s incredible,” Katherine answered honestly. “I’ve never seen a city like it. But it’s also…” She hesitated.
“Speak, Chosen. It is never wrong to tell truth.”
“Well, Goddess,” she said, wincing. “It’s…sad. Maybe even terrible.”
Deitra nodded as if she’d expected such an answer, running a hand through her long, thick hair. “Yes, Katherine Elar. This place, and those who once lived here, were both sad and terrible.”
“But is it real?” Katherine asked. “Or only another part of the dream?”
“Oh, it is real,” Deitra assured her. Then, slowly, an anguished look came over her face. “Or, at least, it was. It and its people fell, Chosen. Many, many years ago, long before your own kind walked the earth. What you stand in now is a memory of it, at its greatness. I cannot say for sure that I got all of it right. Time passes, after all, and its greatest sin is not its moving—like some great beast that sweeps all before it—but the eventual erasure of all that came before. The forgetting, Katherine. For time is the ruler of us all, mortals and god alike, and there is no defeating it, no slowing its journey.”
Katherine frowned thoughtfully. “But where does it journey to, Mistress?”
“Oblivion,” Deitra said simply. “Oblivion was its home, and it journeys ever onward, seeking it again. Still, the faults of the world cannot be laid at its monstrous feet, for though time ever continues its onward march, there is no cruelty in it, just as there is no kindness, for it is unaware of that it destroys in its passage. Time, Katherine, is a great, blind beast, lumbering ever onward through a world in which it can see nothing, feel nothing, searching only for an end.”
“Mistress, that strikes me as very sad.”
“Yes.”
The goddess offered nothing more, and K
atherine glanced around, noting the many alien features of the room. The tall, thick chairs were only the start of it. There was also the floor, rising as it reached the center of the room and dropping off toward the corners. And there were the markings etched into the stone here and there, ones she did not understand. Katherine thought how sad it was that they would never be understood again.
“Why do you show me this, Mistress?” she said, struggling to get the words out past the sudden lump in her throat.
“Remember, Katherine—truth is never wrong. It only is. And though time passes, all of histories lessons need not be forgotten, must not be forgotten. For these ones who lived here were once as your people are now. They possessed hopes and dreams, and they are gone. I played here once,” she continued in a voice barely loud enough to hear, “many years ago…” The goddess hummed a single note and suddenly the world around Katherine came apart, the edges of the stone room crumbling and peeling away in clouds of dust as if struck by some great storm, and she was buffeted by a wind that seemed to come from nowhere.
The walls flew apart, not with great, terrible violence but slowly, carried away like fallen leaves on a breeze, and soon, Katherine and the goddess stood in the wreckage of the tavern. Little was left save the crumbled foundation stones, and here and there a small piece of wall that had somehow escaped the devastation. Katherine gazed around her, shocked, then saw that it was not just the building in which she stood that had been affected, but the entire city. The once tall, stone buildings, stout and regal and alien, were now destroyed, crumbled into dust, a few scattered stones the only evidence that people had once lived here. Tears came to her eyes then, and she turned back to Deitra, saw the goddess watching her with a profound sadness in her own gaze.
The Truth of Shadows Page 23