Pen, Pen, be careful of this bastard. Terrell thought desperately. Don’t let him get behind you! Would his best friend recognize the man’s treachery in time? Father-Seraph Haroun, he prayed, Alert Irreneetha to his evil intentions. Don’t let Pen be taken by surprise.
Terrell added many more prayers while the day waned, and the Two Suns’ light made its monotonous journey up the inside of the dome. Fenman returned at the usual time to feed and water him, and even took a little extra time to clean him off before dumping the bucket over him. The aide did not talk and his eyes refused to meet Terrell’s.
“Will you watch while he tortures me to death?” Terrell asked Fenman quietly.
The aide flinched, kept his gaze turned doggedly aside. “Not unless I must.” Soon he finished and left, moving faster than usual.
Terrell sighed when Fenman had gone. The aide might feel guilty or even ashamed of his role in this treason. But it’s clear that he thinks he is too committed now to do anything else. I wonder. If I promised him a Royal Pardon and money in return for setting me free, would he do it?
Probably not. He knows I can’t ever trust him after this.
Then, darkly, he wondered if he could make such a promise and never intend to keep it.
Father-Seraph Haroun, save me from ever having to follow that road. If I can’t trust and be trusted by people, there’s only madness ahead of me.
But if he had no other route to getting his freedom back? Or to keep his life?
His head hurt from thinking about it.
He lay awake on the floor for hours while every muscle in his body ached, and tried to think about Chisaad’s scheme, or anything else but the horrors Darnaud had showed him. The memory of cold steel touching his crotch burned. Hardly had time to learn to use my manhood right, and now Darnaud—He cut that thought off savagely. No. I won’t let him haunt my thoughts. Those, at least, are my own, and he shall not own me that way!
Fenman said ‘golem’. He must mean Chisaad has made a golem that looks like me and it’s taken my place. I wouldn’t have believed that possible. Anyone can see that his other golems are not people, only things. This spider must be empowering it to fool everybody, even Fantillin and Dona Seraphina. Otherwise there’d be a huge search going on for me by now, and I don’t think Darnaud or Fenman could keep quiet about that; they’d boast how safe they were from being found.
I wonder if that mage who kidnapped me is responsible for this spider-spell? It doesn’t feel anything like that mind-swapping he did to me, but it involves my thoughts. He might be skilled in some esoteric forms of mental magic, though I’ve never heard of anything like this before. Is it a good thing that I never asked Chisaad about that first mind-swap episode? Could the kidnapper have already been working for Chisaad, maybe practicing the spell that runs this metal spider? Chisaad had to have been planning this for seasons, maybe even years.
He thought about trying to break the spider, but he had no idea how sturdy the device might be. An experimental shake brought the blinding pain back again, but no sensation of the thing moving. Shaking it loose might well require more endurance than he still could claim. If Fenman spoke true, the thing had already gained enough from him to continue its masquerade indefinitely.
Yet it still rifles my mind now and then, he remembered, loathing the sensations. It must sometimes meet people or situations that it doesn’t know how to deal with, and that’s when it digs into me again. If I wreck it, then maybe someone will realize Chisaad’s creature is not me.
But he still had a hole in his skull. If the spider fell out, his brains, or at least his blood, might follow.
And even if I succeed and somehow don’t die, that just removes any value I still have. They’ll likely kill me immediately and feed my body to those monsters in the lake.
Or remove the ward spell and simply let the night-visitor eat me.
That triggered a still-more-unpleasant chain of imaginings. Between being cut apart by Darnaud and being torn apart by the monster, he saw little to choose.
No. I am not totally helpless. I can still hear that thing that wears my face. I can hear everybody it talks to. I’m learning at least some of what they’re up to, though I still don’t see how Chisaad gains from any of it. I may yet be able to stymie them.
I won’t despair. Not yet.
He settled down to wait for the monster’s nightly return. Madness rose and sent its wan light shining through the ocular onto the old temple’s exit. He strengthened the ward-spell again to protect himself, knowing that as he did he also protected Fenman and his cohort. The accumulating Light inside him made him feel fevered, but he dared not discharge more than a fraction into the ward spells lest he break them. Eventually, despite his worries, he drifted into sleep.
CHAPTER 42: KIRIN
The hyenas’ hunting cry jolted Kirin awake. He threw off his blanket and ran to the window. A pack of the beasts poured into the ruined temple and sniffed at his trail. One looked up, spied him, and raised the laughing howl again. It sounded like some damned soul wailing from the Pit.
Kirin jerked back into hiding. Idiot! Now they know I’m up here.
He doubted they could climb the broken stairs, but they might be able to jump high enough to get to the second floor. From there they could easily climb the stairway up to his level.
Hastily he packed, listening to the beasts scratching back and forth below. He heard a thump as one tried to leap and fell back. He might not have long before the pack swarmed up the steps into his aerie, and he had only his knife.
Could he kill the whole pack with his Shadow? They were sort of like large fleas, in a way. Very large and vicious fleas. He remembered the taste of Darnaud’s soldier and shuddered. A whole pack of man-sized beasts—what would eating their lives with the Shadow do to him? Would all those memories of being a wild beast overwhelm his mind and turn him into something less than human?
Then it dawned on him that he had another choice.
I can run. Run wrapped in my Shadow. They won’t be able to see me. I can run to the lake and wade out deeper than they can go; their legs are short.
Another scrabbling thump decided him. He ran to the east window and looked out. The top of the exterior wall loomed only a few feet away and a little lower. He tightened his pack so it wouldn’t bounce, gauged the distance to a solid-looking part of the wall, then vaulted over the windowsill. He landed with barely a sound, ran lightly along it to where debris had collected and lowered himself down the outside. Shadow wrapped him and the rising Suns faded to gibbous disks. The land took on an eerie clarity when he used his Shadow’s sight in daylight.
He fled down the road that led to Ibis Lake, three miles away.
After half a mile the hunting cry grew muddled. They had made it into the tower and discovered him gone. Too soon the cry rose again, clearer now, as the pack issued from the ruined entry and pelted after him. Either they heard or scented him, or his Shadow attracted them.
Kirin tried to increase his speed, but the cracked and uneven road forbid it. The pack slowly gained on him, while his feet ate one mile, then two. By the time the sandy shoreline loomed ahead the vanguard of the pack snapped at his heels. He spread his Shadow wider to fend them off and won a brief reprieve. Dried mud crackled under his feet. An instant later water dragged at his steps. The risk of falling forced him to slow.
One of the beasts leaped in big hops that took it in and out of the water and right at him. He slapped at it with the densest part of the Darkness, his Shadow forming fangs. The hyena dodged and found itself in deeper water, had to swim.
They can swim? He almost panicked as his hoped-for refuge turned out to be an illusion.
Kirin waded deeper to stay ahead of the swimming one. But the pack splashed in after it while howling their demented laughter. He slogged waist deep along the flooded road. Some of the hyenas gave up, but three of the biggest paddled toward him with their fangs a-gape. He had heard that once a hyena locked its jaws in it
s prey, only cutting its throat could make it let go. He drew his belt-knife to wave it.
I have a tooth too!
They paddled closer, snarling. One knife against three sets of fangs.
He did what he had to do.
The Shadow sank teeth of black mist into the nearest and largest of the beasts. A startled yip, a jerk, and the swimmer went limp in the water. Savagery coursed through Kirin’s mind, a primal empty-belly hunger raging for the taste of fresh blood. Food for the pack, food to fill the cubs’ empty bellies and feed the nursing mothers. Food!
The other two hesitated at the leader’s sudden stillness and their ghoulish howls stilled. Sick with the primal hunger raging through his veins, Kirin stabbed the floating carcass and flung drops of blood in their faces. One recoiled at the taste of its own kind’s blood and turned back to shore. The other swam back and forth looking for a way at him. He countered its every motion with blade and Shadow, until finally it too gave up and paddled away.
The Shadow tried to follow it. Kirin shuddered as he struggled to reel back the darkness. The Shadow fought him in tandem with the raging desire of the beast burning inside him. For a long moment the struggle balanced on a knife-edge before Kirin forced his darkness to heel. For a while he stood there panting, watching the pack shake lake-water out of their fur and pace back and forth on the shore, watching him.
He’d survived the pack, but he couldn’t swim the length of the lake to reach the sunken city. He needed another way. He stared around the sunlit water and discovered he wasn’t the only thing poking out of its calm surface.
Fleeing the hyenas had brought him to double line of stones that appeared on either side of him parallel to the lake shore. He felt along the submerged road with his feet, found the edges, and traced a T intersection. He could go north or south, and it looked from the stones like he would stay away from the shore and the hungry pack.
The stones were pillars thicker than his leg and almost flat on top, they projected a foot or so out of the lake. He put his knife away and then heaved himself up on one pillar. He managed to balance and then stand on it and looked around. The suns were still close enough to the eastern horizon to make it painful to gaze that way for long, and the pack prowled to his west.
North lay the ruined city miles away across the water. Between him and there the shore had been cut by the sharp trench that drained the lake. He stood barely sixty feet south of it. Ripples pointed into the cut like watery arrows. Even from here he could feel the current.
If I try to swim across that, it’ll suck me in. A roar echoing out of the stone trench warned of rapids at least, maybe a waterfall.
South looked more promising. A ruined building rose from the lake, far enough from land to confound the hyenas. He climbed down from the pillar and began slogging toward it.
For a little while the pack paralleled him along the shore, but well before he reached the swamped building they gave up and loped away. That heartened him; clearly, they didn’t regard his destination as something accessible to them.
The ruin turned out to be a small palace built of white-and-red stone. Lacy terra-cotta wall-screens and big windows made the ruin airy and inviting despite the water flooding it. He stumbled up the stairs of the ruined building to a gaping entry bereft of doors.
Inside the floor lay under ankle-deep water. He nearly stepped in a hole where part had collapsed into a flooded lower level. The floors were slick with drifted silt and the parts close to the windows boasted luxuriant beds of green water-weeds. He picked his way to a flooded courtyard at the back of the building.
The courtyard had possessed several raised flowerbeds, only two still jutted above the surface. An enormous fig tree grew from one and the second hosted a maze of trumpet-flower vines that had clambered over much of the ruin’s roof. Their sweet scent contrasted with the stagnant odor of the water and the pungent lime from generations of birds nesting on the roof. Cooing and occasional raucous cries filled the air as ibis and ducks paddled or took wing.
Kirin’s gaze narrowed in on the vine. Its several trunks were thicker than the ropes his troupe used. Moments later he had made it up the living cable and reached a dry floor.
The upper level looked as empty as the lower. A few patches of sparse grass grew in the thin drifts of sand and dust that had blown in. The only furnishings left were made of bronze and marble, and so massive that he marveled how the floor still held the weight. Then he found a closet with an intact door, the first door he’d seen. Only then did he realize that the building had been stripped of all other doors and windows. Somehow this one had been overlooked or ignored.
The bronze panel had badly corroded in its frame, impossible to open. But by tugging it he managed to drag the whole door, frame and all, out of the wall until it toppled forward with a clang that must surely be audible from shore. For a moment he feared the floor might collapse.
That exposed a closet as big as the room he had shared with Maia in the Sulfur Serpent Inn. Dust motes billowed, and he sneezed. But the tears in his eyes came from thinking of her, the lilt of her voice, her sweet touch, the bone-deep pain of missing her. For a while he sagged to the floor, huddled against a wall, and wept.
But grief couldn’t hold forever. After a time, he knuckled tears from his eyes and got back to work.
The closet held several rotted wooden boxes with unidentifiable contents, a couple bronze-and-gold fan-clasps holding the shriveled stumps of ostrich feathers mounted on five-foot-long handles, and a huge clothes-chest with a rounded lid. The lid had been decorated with inlaid silver and gems that still glowed weakly with a preservation spell. The spell died when he touched it.
Clumsy fool! he scolded himself as the last dregs of power ran away through his Shadow.
Gingerly he opened the lid; it had neither lock nor latch. A baron’s ransom of silk garments filled the inside with a stunning variety of colors and cuts. He held one up and recognized nobleman’s clothes. He pulled garment after garment out and tossed them on the floor outside the closet, hoping something more useful might lie at the bottom, but the chest held nothing else.
He remembered then that the Prince had been naked. He doubted Chisaad had clothed him since. He chose a couple of the bigger garments in hope that they’d fit and stuffed them into his pack. The round-topped chest, longer than his height and more than a yard wide, offered a way to cross the lake. If he could detatch the lid from the ponderous bottom.
He worked at the hinges for hours before they gave way, then spent more time cutting up silk to braid a rope and jury-rigging a paddle from a fan. Some wrestling got it into the lake, where it floated well. A few more minutes to stock his craft with his pack, paddle, and rope, and he pushed off.
The last light of the two suns slipped behind the peaks as he paddled his makeshift boat through the ruined palace. Ibis were flocking back to their nests on the roof, sending shrill calls into the sky to greet the appearing stars. Old memories of childhood in the islands, in the time before he came to Aretzo, rose unbidden as his body remembered the rhythm of paddling.
The growl of rapids warned him to stay well out in the lake to avoid the current draining into the trench. Once past the danger he made for the ragged bays of the western shore. The east and south shores were one smooth crescent that felt hideously exposed. Gliding a few feet from the reeds seemed safer, close enough to hide among them if he had to but far enough out that his paddle didn’t dig into the mud. The birds had mostly settled for the night, save for an owl silently gliding overhead. It circled him once, then arrowed away toward the ruined city. An omen or a warning? He wished the Seraphs would be less obscure.
A sinuous shape glided out of the reeds. Yards of serrated backbone cleaved the water. The crocodile stretched more than twice as long as his makeshift boat. He froze, staring at its bulbous eyes. As it approached, huge jaws parted to reveal many teeth.
I am going to die, a calm corner of his mind proclaimed. The rest gibbered in primal
fear. He raised the heavy fan like a spear. He wasn’t going to get eaten without a fight.
Then the beast closed its jaws and sank beneath the opaque water. A moment later a thrumming vibration shook his makeshift hull as its jagged back slid beneath. He almost stabbed blindly with the crescent edge of the fan but held back. It hadn’t done anything to him yet, and he didn’t want to break his paddle.
The ripples quieted and vanished. His arm muscles began to cramp from holding the heavy bronze fan over his head. At any moment he expected the monster to erupt from the water and go for his throat. But nothing happened.
Finally, he lowered the fan and, tentatively, began to paddle again, as quietly as he could. He didn’t relax until he’d put two hundred yards between himself and that bit of marsh.
A spell gradually intruded on his awareness as he approached the city. Something old and powerful, tied to the node under the deepest foundations. It curved out of sight around the ruined city like an invisible fence. His Shadow tried to eat it as he paddled through, but he forbade it. The One God alone knew what it did, and he had no wish to attract attention.
Ruins rose from the water around him. Several times collapsed walls or patches of reeds blocked the way. Twice he had to back up and seek another route. Eventually he found a broad boulevard and followed it until its muddy pavement rose from the shallowing water.
A ruined building with a big stair walled one side of the street, complete with a line of bollards to separate traffic from steps. He tied his craft to one by looping some torn strips of silk through a broken hinge and around the bollard, and then waded up the steps to dry stone. Leaving his escape method so exposed worried him, but he had no place to hide it. He shouldered his pack, thickened his Shadow, and headed for the soaring dome and its beckoning spells.
He clung to the edges of the street, sometimes cutting through buildings or rubble when collapsed facades blocked the route. The ruins were alive with insect chirps and lizards slithering, while the night sky hosted fluttering bats. Occasional whiffs of wood smoke leavened the pervasive swamp-reek of mud and rotting plants; somewhere there were people in the ruins. The ward-spells on the temple dome drew him like a beacon.
Shadow and Light Page 42