The Silver Thief

by Edward W. Robertson

  "You're sure you can trust her?"

  "Why wouldn't I?"

  "She lives in a hole in the ground with no contact with the outside world. For all we know, she believes she's some kind of talking mole."

  "She sounds more like a bullfrog," Dante said. "I'll stay wary for tricks. But I think we'd be foolish to walk away from this."

  "I wouldn't mind a few more days here. Cord dropped by to invite me to train with her at her shrine."

  "Is there anything we can do to help?" Naran said.

  Dante ran his fingers through his hair, which had grown excessively greasy during their jaunt into the desert to destroy the shaden. "Be prepared. If the Keeper knows how to kill Gladdic, we'll want to move before he has the chance to cause any more trouble. Which reminds me." He touched his loon, activating it. "Jona? Did you try to reach me earlier?"

  Fumbling noises came through the loon. "Ahoy? Dante? Just wanted you to know Gladdic's returned to Bressel. Two days ago, by the rumor I heard."

  "Know where he was? Or what he's planning next?"

  "The crown's been right miserly about publishing his schedule. But if I hear anything about it, I'll let you know."

  Dante shut down the loon. "According to Jona, Gladdic's back in Bressel. Stay ready to move. We may be ready to go after him as early as tomorrow."

  Blays had earned a few coins pawning his knives, but they were still hurting for money. In the morning, Dante killed time by treating the wounds and maladies of the inn's lodgers in exchange for a modest handful of iron clinks and silver chucks. His healing involved the open use of the nether, something he wouldn't have done prior to the trial, but the cat was out of the bag. Trying to stuff it back in wouldn't earn him anything but scratched-up arms.

  As noon neared, he walked to the shrine. Hodd was out front greeting a group of pilgrims.

  Seeing Dante, he handed the pilgrims off to another monk and jogged over. "Did, ah…did you…"

  "Did I what? Make it home last night? It was touch and go at first, but then I remembered that I own working legs."

  Hodd dropped his voice, glancing to all sides. "Did you speak to the Keeper?"

  Dante nodded. "Have you ever met him?"

  "Sometimes we receive notes. For supplies and things. But meeting him is forbidden. That way, we can never betray him, even if the Mallish put out our eyes and slice off our testicles."

  "Sounds like an enlightened policy."

  "May I ask what he's like?"

  "Wizened," Dante said. "And tough. Like chewing old leather. You're in good hands."

  He returned to the chamber where he'd first met her. After a short delay, the side door opened. Treader brought him down the stairs to the library concealed in the belly of the shrine. The day before, the library had had very little in the way of furniture, but in Dante's absence, someone—Treader, presumably—had been put to work. A redoubt of desks now occupied the largest alcove. Towers of books soared from the desks. A large torchstone hung within a glass bowl suspended from the ceiling, shedding ample, moon-like light over the tomes. Somewhere in the center of the castle of books, a page flipped. Dante circled around the ramparts of parchment, paper and leather until the Keeper became visible, her knobby back bent over a volume that looked as heavy as she was and twice as old.

  "So." He sat in the nearest chair. "Have you had time to digest?"

  "And to consume even more," the Keeper said. "Be careful you don't step in any of the resulting excrement."

  "It looks like you've pulled half your library out. I hope that's the result of a wealth of sources rather than a desperate search for anything remotely close."

  "Do you know of the Second Scour?"

  "The Two-Part War," Dante said. "Four hundred years back, King Sarl of Mallon led a crusade against Gask, looking to stamp out Arawn's influence there. But the Gaskan winters killed more of his troops than any battle. It left his forces in such a shambles that Gask was able to push Sarl back through town after town. The Gaskans marched halfway to Bressel before agreeing to peace—in exchange for Sarl's promise that the Mallish people would be allowed to worship Arawn as they pleased."

  "A promise that lasted eight whole years. But this is not that story. This is the story that explains why Mallon's testicles had swollen to the point that it was convinced it could conquer Gask in the first place."

  Her voice was even froggier than the day before, but as she went on, it began to warm up. "Eighty years before the Two-Part War, Kon the White-Haired, greatest nethermancer in the land, was elected absolute despot of Collen. By the end of his second year, he announced the end of Mallish rule in the Basin. By the end of his fifth year, he had made it so.

  "The Mallish responded as they always had. But each force they marched into Collen was met by Kon, who commanded at the front of his lines, beating back each charge, smelling out each feint, laying ruin to his foes with hellstorms of nether." Here, she described a number of battles and flashpoints, noting that she was summarizing blow-by-blow accounts that would be tedious to anyone who wasn't a very young or a very old general. "For seventeen years, Kon held them back. Children were born and came of martial age knowing nothing but that Collen was free."

  She paused, whispering something Dante couldn't catch. Her eyes went distant in the way he'd recently felt when thinking about whether he'd ever make it back to Narashtovik.

  The Keeper glanced at him, then away. She grunted. "Two years of quiet passed since the last army had crossed into Collen and soaked the dust with the blood of its own soldiers. Then came Franric, Eldor of the priesthood, master of ether, who had survived the assassination attempts of Orell, his predecessor, and then supplanted him. Franric marched on the Basin. With one victory after another, he pushed the defenders back to the city of Collen itself. But this was not the first time the Colleners had defended their city, and they dug in on the road through the cliffs, and set archers above, who rained arrows down on the Mallish as the bluecoats made their assault.

  "The Mallish stalled on the slopes. With their dead littering the cliffs, they began to withdraw. A cheer erupted from those who defended their land. Then the Mallish drove their engines of war forward. Covered and armored, their wagons took the road, pressing to the gates. There, Kon ordered his nethermancers to the defense. The first siege wagons fell, but Franric and his priests rallied forth. Light and dark formed a storm in the skies. Soldiers and sorcerers fell, never to rise again. And Mallon advanced to the gates.

  "The fighting was too ferocious to say where the dark ones came from. The Mallish blamed the Colleners; the Colleners blamed the Mallish. As the creatures stepped forth, both sides withdrew. These things looked like shadows, but they were attached to no men. Their eyes glowed silver. And when they opened their mouths to scream, their throats burned as if they'd swallowed the stars."

  "That's them," Dante broke in. "The Star-Eaters."

  "As it says in the history," the Keeper said. "At first, the Star-Eaters attacked all they saw. Swords couldn't cut them. The nether couldn't harm them. It couldn't so much as slow them. But the ether stalled them, and in this way, the Mallish pushed the Star-Eaters into the city. While Kon's soldiers fought the Mallish troops, Kon fought the demons with every ounce of his strength. For three days, it could not be said who would prevail. Yet one by one, Kon's sorcerers fell, and block by block, so did the city.

  "With his people on the verge of retreat, White-Haired Kon told them that he thought he knew how the Star-Eaters could be defeated. He entered the Reborn Shrine. And then he disappeared, never to be seen again. With Kon gone, the Star-Eaters tore through the city in a matter of hours. Collen fell. The Mallish razed the shrine down to its second basement."

  Through this point, it had sounded as if the Keeper had been reciting a passage from a history book. Now, she chuckled, pointing to the ceiling. "That's right above our heads. It's the closest this shrine has ever come to total destruction. Collen was pacified for decades afterwards. Freed of the need to fi
ght us, Mallon soon turned its sights on Gask and the Second Scour."

  "Is there anything more? How were Kon and the Colleners able to fight them?"

  She nudged a thick book across the table. "Read for yourself. But nothing more is said."

  Dante dived into the book to pore over the relevant section for himself, but the Keeper had quoted it nearly verbatim.

  "Are there any other works that discuss them?"

  "One." She handed him a blue-bound book. "But the reference is thin."

  She wasn't kidding. It was contained to two pages, most of that involving the author's speculation that Mallish priests had summoned the Star-Eaters—or "Andrac," as this author called them, using a word from an older Mallish tongue—as the means to finally break Kon's defenses.

  Dante swore and slapped the book closed. "Would it have killed them to talk about where the Andrac came from?"

  The old woman chuckled throatily. "You've already found the answer to that."

  He reopened the book, thinking he'd skipped something. The Keeper sat in silence as he reread the passage.

  "If there's some secret here," he said, setting the history in front of her, "it's too subtle for me."

  "You expect this information can only be found in a carefully preserved book. But you've already seen it with your own eyes."

  "Is this a test?" Then he snapped back his head. "The bones."

  "It's no more than a guess. But it feels right. The bones are objects of summoning."

  "You think Gladdic is using them to draw forth the Andrac. From where?"

  "There's a realm like this one. But in it, it isn't these tables and books that are most real." She knocked the desk and one of the stacks, wobbling it. "It's the shadows."

  "If this is the same realm I'm thinking of, I have a friend who can enter it. But as far as I know, he's never seen any demons there."

  "You think your friend can enter the Shade? What does he see there?"

  Dante gestured vaguely. "He says it's like here, but everything's cast in moonlight and shadows. Dark places are often far brighter than we see them. And the nether seems to glow."

  "That sounds like a place between. The place I mean, the Shade, looks no more like our world than I look like the girl I was ninety years ago."

  "And the bones are a way to reach this Shade."

  "The bones act as both signposts and doorway. They open a way out of the Shade and show the things that live there how to take it."

  "Can that work in reverse?" Dante said. "The story says Kon knew how to defeat the Andrac—and then he disappeared. Maybe he went into the Shade to fight them there. And died in the attempt."

  "That has the smell of possibility."

  "Well, there's one thing that I know for sure: Gladdic's rediscovered how to command the Andrac. Do you know how to dismiss them? Or how I can fight them?"

  "Fight them?" The Keeper hooted. "Before I read the accounts in these books, I didn't know they existed."

  "Is there anything else like them? What more do you know about the bones and the Shade?"

  Her mirth dried up. She craned back her head to take in the towering shelves of books. "There may be more answers. But it'll take more time to find them. Come back at noon in two days."

  "This is the most important thing in my life right now. I can help you search."

  "Do you know how these books are shelved?"

  "By author? Or chronologically? How many ways can a library be shelved?"

  The Keeper hooted again. This time, she was joined by Treader's high-pitched laughter; he seemed to have a second sense for when the old woman wished her guests to be taken away.

  "Your help would only slow us down," she said. "Two days, boy."

  It was still early afternoon when he came back to the inn. Blays and Naran were out. Dante closed the shutters and sat at the darkened table. The histories claimed that, while ether hadn't been able to harm the Andrac, it had slowed the demons down. He reached into the air and reeled the light to him. A teardrop of ether hung above the table. He fed more and more light into it, expanding it to the size of an apple.

  The surface of the ether began to quiver. Dante reached for more, but it bent back from his grasp. The ball collapsed on itself, leaving him in darkness.

  He stared across the table. The nether had come to him so easily he hadn't even realized he was learning it. One day he'd been reading The Cycle of Arawn, and the next day, he'd conjured a ball of shadows around himself. From there, his progress had been like advancing up a stairwell. The steps were all right there in front of him; all he had to do was climb them.

  His experience with the ether was the complete opposite. He'd been so bad with it that Cally, his master, had quit bothering to teach him after a handful of lessons. From there, it had made sense for Dante to align his efforts with his talents rather than pouring energy into a skill he found so hard to hone. Too many causes called for his attention. That was the core of it. He'd focused on the nether because he had a single life to live—and the drive to become the kind of sorcerer he'd only read about in the Cycle. Every day he squandered with the ether lowered the ceiling of what he could achieve with the nether.

  At the same time, he'd been utterly convinced of his skill with the nether. That conviction had carried him through challenges that could have killed him. His belief in his ability caused it to come true.

  Then shouldn't the same factor be true of his doubts about the ether? What if he was awful with the light because he believed he'd always be awful with it?

  He was still in pursuit of this thought when the door swung open. Naran and Blays spilled through, laughing hilariously. Their hair hung in sweaty strands. Dust streaked their faces. Their forearms were spangled with fresh bruises.

  "What have you two been doing?" Dante said. "Cliff diving? You understand you're supposed to do that into water?"

  "We were beating the hell out of each other," Blays said. "What does it look like?"

  Naran fanned his perspiring face. "Cord was showing us how to use and defend against the wheel. Invigorating experience."

  "I have good news," Dante said. "The thing we fought in the temple in Bressel—it wasn't Gladdic."

  Blays clucked his tongue. "Really? It sure looked like him."

  "It was an illusion. What we fought was a demon known as an Andrac."

  Naran scowled. "A demon? This doesn't sound like good news at all!"

  "Don't you see?" Dante reopened the shutters; the room was growing stuffy and the two of them stank. "Gladdic's perfectly mortal. We may not know how to kill the demons, but a knife in Gladdic's throat will put him in the ground like anyone else."

  Blays got a rag from his pack, toweling off his sweat. "And as soon as Gladdic's dead, we can go home?"

  "Are you addressing me?" Naran said. "I agreed to help you in the islands in exchange for your help avenging Captain Twill. If Gladdic's dead, that debt is satisfied."

  Blays fell into a chair. "Jona said he's back in Bressel, right? Should we wander over and slit his throat?"

  Dante shook his head. "The person I've been speaking to might have some ideas about how to fight the Star-Eaters. I'd prefer to add that arrow to our quiver before we face Gladdic again."

  "You sound like you know nothing about these things."

  "I don't. I'm not sure if my source is going to have anything for me, either. But it's worth checking."

  Naran stood with his hands folded in front of him, gazing at the floor. "When I asked you to vow to kill him, I knew he was a sorcerer. But I had no idea he had command of demons. We've already crippled his plans with the shaden. Perhaps we should consider your honor satisfied."

  Dante and Blays looked at each other and laughed.

  "Have I said something amusing?" Naran said.

  Blays tossed his sweat rag in the corner. "If this was just about our honor, we'd have weaseled out of this weeks ago."

  "Then why are you still here?"

  "Because Gladdic's a
n asshole. As long as we're down here, we'll plant him in the ground and pray his successor isn't so awful."

  Dante turned his back to the window. "My father spent his life fighting Mallon's efforts to take over the Plagued Islands. He died before I had the chance to see him again. Gladdic took that from me. I aim to pay him back."

  When the conversation concluded, Dante interrogated Blays about what he'd seen while shadowalking, but the talk went nowhere. Blays had never noticed anything remotely resembling the Andrac in the netherworld.

  With nothing scheduled for the next day, Dante let himself sleep late. A hand shook him roughly awake.

  Blays stood over him. "I just spoke to Cord. She says the Mallish soldiers have decamped from the butte to the northeast. They look to be on their way here. Could be here as early as tonight."

  Dante sat up, rubbing his eyes. "How many?"

  "Eighty, maybe."

  "Are they hostile?"

  "You know, I'm not sure," Blays said. "Would you like me to run out and ask them?"

  "Whatever they're up to, they don't have the numbers to threaten the city. Keep your ears open. They might be coming here to find us."

  As soon as he was awake enough to form coherent thoughts, Dante called up what little ether he could. It could have been his imagination, but the drop of light looked larger than the day before.

  After that, he went around to a butcher shop, where he spent some of the pennies he'd earned healing travelers to buy a bag of goat bones that had already had the marrow scraped from them. Back in his room, he laid the bones out on the floor and closed his eyes. In his earliest days in Narashtovik, when he'd been no more than the monks' errand boy, he'd been assigned to prepare bones in the way he'd seen done at the Mallish dig across the desert. But they'd been used to attempt to summon Arawn himself, and when that effort failed, Dante had considered the bones to be a pointless trapping. He hadn't used them since. To his annoyance, he couldn't remember how the process was done.