Shadow Blizzard

11 The Rainbow Horn

I found myself in a small room that smelled of age, dust, and candles. Whatever else might be lacking, there were certainly plenty of candles—the entire room was crammed with candlesticks.

A hefty metal table piled high with books and scrolls, heavy drapes of dark claret velvet on the walls, a faded Sultanate carpet on the floor—it almost came unraveled under my feet. In the far corner, beside the way out, a small cupboard with shelves packed with jars and flasks. A picture in a heavy, ornate, gilded frame on one of the walls. It was impossible now to tell what the unknown artist had originally painted—all the colors had faded. Two bronze-bound chests standing beside the table.

I looked back, but the door I had come through to enter the room was gone. There was no way I could get back to the Level Between Levels now.

I walked over to the table and lifted the lid of the nearest chest out of curiosity. No, there wasn’t any treasure inside. The trunk was filled right up to the top with fine quality wheat. A very strange choice. Who on earth could have got the idea of bringing something so useless down from the first level? The second trunk was filled halfway up with wheat berries.

I slammed the lid down in annoyance and turned my attention to the table, with its books and yellowed scrolls, covered with an immensely thick layer of dust. I had no intention of touching them, but for some reason Valder decided to say something.

“Wait. Go back to them.”

I walked back to the table and picked up the first book that came to hand.

“I can’t read these squiggles,” I said, looking at the book without the slightest interest.

“I can. It’s old orcish. A magical book. It’s priceless.”

Well, maybe it was priceless, but I wasn’t going to lug it back up to the surface. The book was as heavy as Kli-Kli after a binge on cherries.

“Pick up that one, with the yellow cover.”

I raked aside the scrolls, raising a thick cloud of dust, and fished out the book that Valder wanted. It was a bit larger than my palm and about two fingers thick. There was gnomish writing on the cover.

“The Little Book of Gnomish Spells.”

Was that a note of awe I heard in Valder’s voice? Well, I supposed that wasn’t so very surprising. All the gnomes’ books were hidden away in the Zam-da-Mort and neither the gnomes nor the dwarves could get at them. The dwarves wouldn’t let their closest relatives within a cannon-shot of their mountains, but they couldn’t figure out how to open the magical depository without them.

That was why what I was holding in my hands was immensely valuable to both the races. I twirled the book this way and that, then carefully put it back in its place. I certainly wasn’t going to take it with me, or even tell Hallas and Deler about my find. There was no point. The little book in the yellow cover could easily ignite a conflagration that would end in a new Battle of the Field of Sorna. I certainly wasn’t going to be the one who unleashed another round of slaughter between the dwarves and the gnomes.

“Is there anything else that interests you, Valder?”

No reply.

I shrugged and walked toward the door. It was time to grab the Rainbow Horn and get out of this inhospitable place … fast.

Now that was talking big! “Grab the Rainbow Horn”! I had to get to the lousy tin whistle first! And getting to it turned out not to be so simple.

When I stepped out of the library room, I stepped into a wide corridor or hall. It was shrouded in shadows and semidarkness, just like the sixth level. Wax torches spluttered in an attempt to illuminate the underground Palaces, but unfortunately they didn’t have the power for it. Everything seemed to be quiet, but I stayed alert and kept stopping to listen. Thank Sagot, there was nothing terrible or mysterious. The eighth level was cold, though, and the constant drafts blowing out of the side corridors cut straight through me.

I didn’t have any maps, but, remembering what the Messenger said, I kept walking straight on without turning off. Of course, it was stupid to trust a servant of the Master, but so far everything he said had been true, and I thought that improvising was probably not the best way out of the difficult situation I was in.

After I’d walked for half an hour, the torches on the walls were spaced wider apart and I had to take my mushroom lamp out again. Then came a series of halls with rows of massive, squat columns along the walls, vaulted ceilings, and buttresses. The architectural style was quite crude and careless, very hasty, although I was certain that the halls had been created by orcs and elves. This was the slapdash way all the Young Races had done things when they were desperate to get out of here. But, strictly speaking, that was a perfectly sane desire for any rational being—although I only started to understand what the reason was forty minutes after I left the last torch behind me.

The light of my mushroom lamp picked a rather interesting picture out of the darkness of the immense hall. Something that not even a madman from the Hospital of the Ten Martyrs could have drawn—he could never even have imagined that such a thing could exist.

I admit quite honestly that cold shivers ran down my spine, my throat went dry, and my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. It’s not every day I have the “good luck” to see a scene from the play that the priests used to frighten us so often (I mean the story of the arrival of the darkness in Siala and similar fairy tales). Anyway, right there in front of me was a wall nine yards high. Nothing so very special about that, except that in this case, instead of bricks, the builders had used human skulls.

Thousands of thousands of them staring out at me with the dark holes of their eye sockets, thousands of thousands of them grinning at me sardonically with their bare teeth, thousands of thousands of them gleaming blinding white.

Thousands of thousands? More than that! How many skulls had it taken to make a wall like this? It was an appalling and yet fascinating scene. A scene of unreal and macabre beauty. Who had created this and how? What for? And where had they got such a massive number of human skulls? And was my own head likely to end up as one more brick in this terrible wall?

The wall completely blocked off my path. I walked along it, but ran up against the wall of the hall. I set off in the opposite direction and discovered a way through in the form of an archway with its vault made of ribs. I slipped through the archway and …

Yes indeed, and … Now I was certain that the Palaces of Bone had got their name thanks to this place. There before me lay a depository, a collection, a veritable treasurehouse of bones and remains that had once been people.

Nobody could ever have dreamed this, even in their most terrible nightmare. The walls of the hall were faced with skulls, the ceiling was covered with crossed ribs and shoulder blades, the huge chandeliers were made of yards and yards of spinal columns, rib cages, and skulls with magical lamps burning inside them and lighting up the Halls of Bone.

As I walked past these remains, I glanced at the bones and shuddered. It wasn’t very pleasant walking through a gigantic open warehouse of human death. The breath of dread and horror was palpable. It was as if the souls of everyone who had not been properly buried in all the centuries gone by were staring out at me through those dark eye sockets.

In these vast deposits of bones there wasn’t a single complete skeleton. Whoever put together this huge, macabre museum had taken the time to pull the skeletons apart and sort out the bones. There were heaps of different kinds of bones clustering, crowding, towering up along the wall. The vertebrae were in one place, the ribs in another, there were pelvises, lower jaws, large and small shinbones, upper arm bones, ulnas and radiuses, finger bones and toe bones, there were even piles of teeth.

Winding through the hills of bones (some of them were over six yards high) was a perfectly decent path. I walked along, trying to keep my wits about me and especially not to look at the skulls. The stares of thousands of thousands of eye sockets drilled straight through me. I felt a childish terror seething inside me. Walking through mountains of human remains silently contemplating eternity and all living things—this is truly cosmic horror.

And then the pyramids started. As was only to be expected, the skulls of the unfortunate dead had been used in their construction, too. Every one of these structures rose up to a height of more than ten yards. The skulls were laid with geometrical precision and fitted perfectly against each other. I think several thousand dead men’s heads must have been used in each pyramid. And in every pyramid there was a dark triangular opening or niche. I didn’t know why in the name of darkness they were put there, but I certainly was never going to climb into them.

I heard the ringing sounds in the distance soon after I passed the eighth pyramid.

Clink, clink. Clink, clink.

The sound was coming closer, and I started looking for a place to hide. I ought to have known—you should never say never. Sagot had obviously heard me and decided to have a joke, because the only place where I could hide now was in a niche in a pyramid. There was no time to think about it, the unknown Chimer would be with me any moment now, and then darkness only knew what might happen. I only had a knife—and not too much confidence in my ability to fight whatever it might be.

The niche proved to be quite roomy, and I fitted into it without any difficulty. I had to put the mushroom away in my bag, or the light would have given me away. The world around me was plunged into darkness.

Clink, clink—the steps were getting closer. Suddenly the walls of the pyramid directly opposite me emerged from the darkness. The unknown Chimer was carrying a torch. And then I saw the lad himself. Every step it took produced a ringing sound. The Chimer turned out to be a member of the numerous tribe of the restless dead. At least, its face was mummified, as dry and wrinkled as a raisin, it had no nose at all, its cheeks were ripped open, and the teeth were visible through the holes. The eyes were as black as agate and dead. Like Bass’s eyes.

The creature was wearing a court jester’s cap, with little miniature skulls on it instead of bells. In its left hand the creature was holding a torch, and in its right—a stick with an iron ball on a chain. The Chimer’s appearance was terrifying and impossibly absurd at the same time.

I sat in my refuge, as quiet as a mouse. The Chimer walked through the territory entrusted to its care and disappeared into the darkness. I waited until its steps faded away and climbed out of the pyramid. I had to get through the Halls of Bone as quickly as possible, or I could be in for trouble. A knife isn’t the most effective weapon against a ball and chain.

When I heard the ringing sound again, I dived into the next pyramid without thinking twice, and once again the dead man didn’t notice me. I had to hide another four times from the creatures patrolling the Halls of Bones.

The bones piled up in heaps along the walls somehow didn’t bother or frighten me anymore. Right then, Shadow Harold had only one thing on his mind—making sure he didn’t run into any Chimers.

The pyramids of bone parted and I found myself in … Well, probably you could call it a square. An entirely open space without a trace of bones. The mushroom lamp wasn’t giving much light, so I just had to walk forward, hoping there was no one anywhere nearby. Standing right in the center of the square was a statue.

I beheld the figure of Death. She seemed to be carved out of a single piece of bone with a texture and blinding pearly whiteness that were reminiscent of a mammoth’s tusk.

Death was sitting on a massive throne built of human bones with her bare feet resting on a huge skull that was an integral part of this monumental sculpture.

Death was wearing a plain sleeveless dress, more appropriate for a simple peasant woman on her way to the local harvest fair than the Queen of Lives and Fates. She was wearing a skull half-mask, so all that could be seen of her face were the plump lips (pressed tightly together) and her perfectly formed chin. Her luxuriant white hair tumbled down onto her naked shoulders.

The sculptor’s skill was beyond all doubt. The hair seemed real, the figure was almost alive. In the shrines, Sagra’s servant Death is always shown with a weapon (a scythe, or a sickle on a long staff), but there was nothing like that here. The woman had a bouquet in her hands. Her long elegant fingers held the flowers carefully—white narcissi, the symbol of death and oblivion. But what struck me most of all were her eyes, or rather, the lack of them (everyone knows that Death is blind, but she never errs in her choice).

The two dark gaps in the skull-mask seemed to be fixed on me, as if they were telling me that the time was not far off when my sorted bones would also be lying in the halls of the eighth level. I can’t say that I really felt afraid. Death never frightens those she comes for. Why would she? Ultimately we will all be her prize, in any case. No matter how long we live, the end is the same for all of us—she comes. With narcissi or a scythe—that’s not so very important. Even the immortals, even the gods, will be hers in the end, it’s only a matter of time, and Death knows how to wait.

Oh, those eye sockets! I didn’t know who had dared to create this statue, who had managed to make her look so alive, but it must have been one of the very greatest Masters of Siala. The black gaps in the skull really were all-seeing. Whichever way I moved, I could feel them watching me. Not in menace, but with a certain restrained curiosity.

I heard the ringing footsteps approaching again and, with a farewell glance at Death, I dashed away, hoping very much that my path and the path of the Mistress of Lives would not cross soon, that we would meet at the final crossroads.

The Mistress of Lives? The final crossroads? Where did I know those phrases from? Was this Valder’s memory playing tricks, or was it the knowledge of a Dancer in the Shadows?

I plodded on until I came to a wall of skulls, found an archway, ducked through it, and I was back in the usual underground burial halls.

The dream is flooded as full of nightmares as an Isilian loaf is stuffed with raisins. I am dreaming. In the dream Death stands over me, with the wind of Chaos fluttering her white hair and her linen dress, as if it wants to tear it off. In the dream she leans down, preparing to lay a bouquet of pale narcissi at my feet, as if to say that I belong only to her. In the dream a blizzard wind—a fiery vortex of blazing crimson snowflakes—grabs the flowers out of the hands of Death and bears them away, then tears the skull half-mask off her face. But she covers her face with her hands and turns away before I can glimpse her face.

“It’s not time yet,” the wind of Chaos whispers, fluttering her incomparably beautiful flowing hair.

“It’s not time yet,” murmur the fiery snowflakes, swirling around Death in a sparkling dance.

“Go, our world needs him,” the scarlet flame that has appeared out of nowhere tells the intransigent Queen.

“Everything has its price. Do you agree?” Her voice is extraordinarily young and clear.

“He is ours,” the three shadows reply in chorus. “We will pay.”

She nods and steps aside to let the shadows pass, then disappears. Death is patient. She knows how to wait.

I woke up and stared into the darkness for a long time, looking toward my feet, afraid of seeing a bunch of pale narcissi flattened by a stormy wind. Afraid of hearing the roar of the crimson flame and the wind of the world of Chaos. Terrified of meeting the shadows.

A dream. It was only a dream, a sequence of meaningless nightmare images. But, by Sagot, how real it was! I got up, stuffing one of the fruits from the Cave of the Ants into my mouth. I took two steps and then froze, with icy shivers dancing a jolly jig up and down my spine.

Lying there on the floor, glittering forlornly in the light of the mushroom lamp, was a tiny little golden skull. A bell from a Chimer’s cap. While I was asleep, the creature had stood only two paces away from me, but he hadn’t killed me. Why would he have left this elegant little trinket on the floor? A hint? A warning that Death had not forgotten me? That the dream was not just a dream, and everything I had seen in my latest nightmare was nothing but the simple truth?

A h’san’kor only knows! I couldn’t even imagine why the skull had been left for me, but I certainly wasn’t going to pick it up. I skirted round the trinket lying on the floor and walked on into the tangled halls of the eighth level.

I traveled for three and a half hours, still following the Messenger’s advice and walking straight on along the central vestibule of the level, without turning left or right. Soon torches appeared in the halls again and there was no need for the mushroom lamp, so I put it away in my bag.

The architecture of the halls on the eighth level changed fundamentally once again. The crude, careless granite gave way to the amazing elegance and precision of silver and the gloomy tranquillity of black marble. Every hall was a treasure house, there was enough silver here to make five castles.

Beautiful silver inserts in the black marble of the columns, incredibly elegant brackets for the torches, balconies built from thin slabs of marble entwined with silver threads, doors from one hall to the next standing open, made of the finest timber in Siala—Zagraban oak and golden-leaf—with massive hinges of precious metal and elegant handles in the forms of animals that I didn’t recognize. Pictures in silver paint on every door, for the most part depicting trees and also—rather strangely for the culture of the orcs and the elves—the gods. But these gods looked very much like people and didn’t inspire the reverential awe that some philistines feel when they visit the shrines or the Cathedral in Avendoom.

The Silver Halls were probably every bit as beautiful as the scarlet-and-black Palaces of the fourth level.

The central vestibule took a right-angled turn to the left. That wasn’t really so very alarming, except that the Messenger had told me to keep going straight on without turning left or right.

Following simple logic, I ought to go on along the corridor and not get any other silly ideas into my head, but if I did as I had done so far, then … then I ought to go through that little silver door over there, hidden between those two projecting blocks of marble.

I couldn’t see any keyholes or other similar human nonsense. If the door had a secret lock and it had been made by elves and orcs, I’d be struggling with it for a long time—without much hope of ever actually opening it.

I examined it from a safe distance. Never fiddle with anything that makes you feel vaguely anxious—that’s one of the most important rules of a master thief. Study the situation thoroughly before you go jumping feet-first into the gnome’s fiery furnace.

I spotted a gap no thicker than a hair between the marble wall and the door. In short, I only had to push the door with my finger and it promptly opened.

Immediately behind it was a narrow corridor with a low ceiling. The flames in the small lamps standing in equally small niches in the wall fluttered like wounded moths. I had to walk along hunched over, with the ceiling just above my head. And I had the impression that this passage must have been made for short dwarves, gnomes, and goblins, not for men, orcs, and elves.

Fortunately for me, the corridor wasn’t too long, and after walking a few dozen paces I came to another silver door. This one wasn’t locked, either. I opened it, forgetting all about caution, walked through, and froze.

What was it the verse guide said?

In serried ranks, embracing the shadows,

The long-deceased knights stand in silence.

And only one man will not die ’neath their swords,

He who is the shadows’ own twin brother.

Well, those four lines were a pretty good description of what I saw in the hall. The orcs and elves stood facing each other in broken ranks, pressing back against the walls in the shadows cast by the square columns. But Kli-Kli claimed that the lines had been changed and in the famous Book of Prophecies, the Bruk-Gruk, they went like this:

Tormented by thirst and cursed by darkness,

The undead sinners bear their punishment

And only one will not die in their fangs,

He who dances with the shadows like a brother.

I didn’t know which of the gentlemen verse-mongers was right and whose verse was more accurate. In any case, the first and the second versions both warned quite openly that if you forgot to be cautious here, you could say good-bye to your ears.

The orcs and the elves stood along the walls and glared at each other. I ventured into the hall and started studying the figures from a safe distance. They turned out to be sculptures of warriors. Life-size figures, all in armor and all with weapons. I had the impression that any second now the statues would come to life and throw themselves at each other.

The columns running through the center of the hall gave out a silvery light, but there were thick shadows along the walls, and that gave most of the shadows an ominous look. Remembering that in Hrad Spein things sometimes came to life when they really shouldn’t, I walked through the hall very cautiously indeed.

There were several thousand statues in the immense hall. Some overzealous individual had managed to put together an entire army. And do I even have to mention that the statues were not identical, in fact, they were all completely different?

Every elf had his own face and bearing, his own armor and weapon. At first I thought the sculptures were standing about at random, and it took me a while to realize that this was a formation. A complex and highly effective formation.

At the front were elves in heavy armor, with very broad s’kashes set on long poles; behind them came bowmen in light chain mail; and behind the bowmen were three rows of swordsmen, standing with spaces between them, so that the bowmen would be able to pull back.

The orcs were frozen facing the elves. Their spears were raised and they were protecting their bodies with long, heavy shields. They also had bowmen, swordsmen, and some lads with mighty two-handed axes. Like I said—an entire army.

I walked past the ranks of this stone army and into the next hall.… I stopped and caught my breath.

It looked as if the gods had clapped their hands and stopped time right in the middle of a furious battle. The jagged formation had fallen apart, and now the statues of the orcs and the elves were all jumbled together. There were Firstborn and Secondborn fighting all the way across the hall, and the sculptural composition was simply breathtaking.

Most of the elves and orcs were lying on the floor. Some with arrows stuck in the eye slots of their helmets or the joints of their armor. Some with their chain mail hacked apart, some with spears stuck into their stomachs, some were missing arms that had been chopped off, some had lost their heads.

Right in front of me an orc was frozen in the act of thrusting a spear into an elf who was trying to get up off the ground. A little farther on, the yataghans and s’kashes of dozens of irreconcilable enemies were locked in bloody combat. I walked past the frozen battle, looking at the warriors as I skirted round them.

There was a grinning orc protecting a fallen comrade with his shield, but he hadn’t noticed the elf armed with an orcish ax standing behind him. There was a Secondborn struggling to stay in the saddle, and a Firstborn had grabbed his horse’s bridle and was just about to hack off the elf’s leg with his yataghan. There were an elf and an orc, twined together in a knot of death, each struggling to hold back the other’s arm and at the same time reach him with his dagger.

I forgot all about being cautious and looked at the statues as if I was spellbound. Waiting for frozen time to thaw out again, for the underground hall to resound with the clash of weapons and roaring of the warriors.

There, at the very center of the hall, was a small brigade of Firstborn with spears, drawn up into a circle to form a round “hedgehog” and trying to hold off elves on horseback. Over there a group of elves had fired arrows into ten orcs who were attacking them, and now they were reaching to take more deaths out of their quivers. Six Firstborn were already lying on the floor, despite their chain mail, but the other four—one of them was wounded in the leg—were still running toward their enemies. I wondered whether, if this was a real battle, they would manage to reach the Secondborn before the bowmen could fire another volley.

I walked on.

There was an elf desperately trying to protect himself with his arm against an ax that was being swung down on him by a brutal orc wearing the clan badges of the Grun Ear-Cutters.

I walked on.

An elf with his arms raised, and his open palms upward. But he wasn’t thinking of surrendering. There were heaps of orcs lying around the elf, like trees felled by a fierce hurricane. The elfin shaman had swept away a whole detachment of Firstborn, like a vicious dog that has come across a litter of blind kittens.

I walked on.

An orc was protecting himself with a shield that had a picture of some mythical bird as he tried to repulse an attack from three very young and very eager elves. Four of the Secondborn had already lost their lives, and a fifth was grimacing in pain as he tried to bind up the stump of his right arm.

I walked on.

An elf sinking his fangs into an orc’s throat.

Farther …

An elf trying to hold in the entrails tumbling out of his gashed stomach.

Farther …

An orc smashing an elf’s head with a spiked club.

Farther …

An elf firing an arrow at point-blank range into an orc who was looking the wrong way.

A new scene …

The commanders of the Firstborn and the Secondborn have launched into a duel with spears; orcs and elves have forgotten their own mutual hostility and are standing around together, watching the fight.

An elf holding a Firstborn by his braid and raising his s’kash to hack off his enemy’s head.

An elf lying crushed under his own horse, with his arm twisted at an unnatural angle.

An orc standing alone in the shadow, aiming his bow at the commander of one of the elfin detachments.

I walked on.

Like a weightless shadow, I slipped between the figures, under the spears poised to thrust and swords suspended in the air.

I looked at the elves and the orcs trying to deal with an ogre that had appeared out of nowhere, clutching a stone hammer.

My gaze fell on an orcess. It was the first time I’d seen a woman from the race of the Firstborn. She looked a lot like Miralissa, except that her hair wasn’t gathered into a braid, but a long tail. The orcess was armed with two crooked swords and the sculptor had caught her as she was spinning round. One crooked sword had slit an elf’s throat and the other was thrusting forward toward another enemy.

I walked right up to the orcess and gazed into that smooth face with its imprint of wild beauty and desperation. I couldn’t resist touching her cheek with my finger. For a second nothing happened, and then a series of thin, winding cracks ran across the statue’s cheek. The cracks ran across the entire face, branching and spreading, and small pieces of stone started to fall away, revealing the true face of this female warrior.

Staring out at me through empty eye sockets was a skull bearing the remains of rotted flesh. The orcess’s wild beauty had disappeared in an instant.

And then I realized that it wasn’t stone, but only a thin glaze, covering bodies that had once been alive. I realized that the figures in the halls were not statues, but orcs and elves who had once been alive and had been frozen instantly in eternal sleep. Someone had played a vicious joke, forcing the dead soldiers to continue with a never-ending war that had been going on for thousands of years now. I stopped admiring the battle and tried to get out of the halls of “toy soldiers” as quickly as possible. I made my way through the ranks of elves, trying not to touch anyone, in order not to break the dead warriors’ covering.

But I still wondered if there really had been a battle here. If there had, then what power and what magic could have instantly transformed all the soldiers into statues that had stood there for thousands of years? Of course, I couldn’t come up with an answer to that question, so I simply walked faster, quite reasonably assuming that the foulest surprises happen at the most unexpected moments, and I could easily get caught by some nasty magical trap, too. It wasn’t very pleasant to think of somebody seeing me in a thousand years’ time as a statue entitled Harold, who tried to reach the Rainbow Horn but never got there.

The Halls of the Warriors ended as suddenly they had started. There were no more statues ahead. Well now, it was the first time I could remember when not a single line of a verse had come true. Nobody had tried to stick a knife or a pair of fangs into me. And I didn’t understand those phrases “tormented by thirst” and “undead sinners,” either. I wasn’t particularly upset that nothing genuinely unpleasant had happened, but … the verses had never been wrong before, and then suddenly here was this surprising discrepancy between the word and the fact. Maybe I’d just walked through at a safe time?

“More likely someone walked through before you and made the path safe,” Valder whispered, and I shuddered in surprise.

“Valder!” I whispered. “You want to stay inside my head for a bit longer, don’t you? Then please don’t frighten me like that again, or I’ll die of a heart attack, and you’ll have to look for a new refuge!”

No reply.

It was only then that I realized what the archmagician had been talking about.… Who could have walked through ahead of me and made the path safe? The answer was obvious.

“How would I know?” the archmagician said, and fell silent.

Well, that was the worst possible news. The very last thing I needed was that sorceress right in front of me! Even if the Messenger did say that the Master had abandoned his grudge against me, I wasn’t stupid. I didn’t want to come face-to-face with a witch who had risked entering Hrad Spein to get the Key from me. And, of course, there was no reason to believe that Lady Iena felt any particular love for me, so I really ought to keep as far away from her as possible.

A sequence of faceless, dimly lit halls with stairways leading down into the depths of the Palaces of Bone. I walked through a gallery, then came to another hall. As I walked into it I quietly flipped my lid, as Kli-Kli would have said. A round hall about sixteen yards across. Mirror walls, a mirror ceiling, a floor concealed from my eyes by a thin layer of dense white mist. Strange. Very strange.

The world blinked and I felt the pressure of the air against my eyes. An instant later, the strange sensations had disappeared. And so had the way out. Where it had been there was an unbroken mirror wall. I turned round. The way in had gone, too. Someone had decided to seal me in the round hall.

Trying not to panic, I walked over to the place where the way out had been, put my hand on the mirror, and tried in vain to push it aside and open up the passage to freedom. On closer inspection it turned out that the walls of the hall weren’t made of mirrors, but of silver.

They were built of massive slabs of pure silver that had been polished for a long, long time with river sand so they gleamed like a mirror. But the most interesting thing was that the ideal mirrors of the walls reflected everything else in the hall, but for some reason they had forgotten to show my own thievish personage.

I moved along the wall, walking round the circle and trying to guess the hall’s secret, trying to find the way out. One full circle. Two. Three. No clues. Something in the hall had changed, but I couldn’t understand what. Then I noticed that the mist had disappeared, and now the floor was covered with the small pieces of a red and yellow mosaic.

I walked on round like a man under a spell. After another circle, the mosaic was yellow and blue. Another round—and it was black and white.

What sort of nonsense was this? Either the floor had decided to change color, or … Oh no, that was nonsense! Although … although it could be the right answer—by walking on and on round the circle in the little mirror hall of Hrad Spein, I was also moving forward. Did that mean I could reach the way out like this? I had nothing better to do.

A few more times round the circle, and a man appeared out of thin air in front of me. I grabbed my knife, because my walking had led me to Paleface. The Master’s hired killer and running dog wasn’t moving, and his attention was focused entirely on the mirror he was facing. I called his name. No response. But what if my dear old friend Rolio, who had been hunting my carcass ever since Avendoom, was only pretending and waiting for his chance? No, it didn’t look that way.

Holding the knife at the ready, I walked up to my sworn enemy. I was right beside him, but he didn’t move. I only had to reach out my hand, and Paleface was a dead man. I’d been wanting to do it for so long, but I didn’t hurry, I just stared at his face in amazement.

He was gazing into the mirror, mesmerized. Out of curiosity, I tried doing the same thing, but I didn’t see anything special. Just Paleface and the hall. Still no reflection of me. A strange mirror in one more strange and mysterious place in Hrad Spein.

Rolio’s clothes were tattered and torn in places, and he had several bruises on his face. The only weapons he had were a dagger and a few throwing stars on his belt. After thinking for a moment, I took the stars for myself. I wasn’t very familiar with this kind of weapon, but if your pockets were empty, it was a sin to complain when you found a copper coin. I clicked my tongue in disappointment when I saw the assassin didn’t have any food or personal belongings on him.

I didn’t kill him. I don’t know what stopped me, but … I just couldn’t do it! Rolio was absolutely no threat now. His mind was wandering somewhere far, far away, and I’d never been trained to slit a defenseless man’s throat. So I just left Paleface there in his world of dreams with the mirror. But, naturally, I didn’t turn my back as I walked away from him.

When I finally did turn away from the assassin and walked on for another three steps, I suddenly heard someone gurgling and wheezing. Paleface was lying on the floor and scarlet blood was gushing out of his mouth. Reason had returned to Rolio’s eyes, together with horror at the realization that death was near. He noticed me, tried to twist his lips into that eternal sneer of his, and died.

His eyes glazed over and rolled up, the blood stopped pouring out of his mouth onto his clothes and the floor. I looked calmly at the body of the man who had been trying to dispatch me into the darkness, and walked on.

As was only to be expected, on the next circuit, Rolio and his blood had simply disappeared. I cast a glance of annoyance at the mirror and froze in absolute amazement. This was the very last thing I was expecting the mirror to show me.…

A familiar room. A massive table, chairs with ornate backs, and a deep armchair by a window covered with a fancy wooden grille. A picture on some spiritual theme painted onto the nearest wall. The table was groaning under plates of food and bottles of wine. The man sitting there was gobbling a whole chicken. He looked up from his plate, reached out a huge, fat hand for his glass of wine, and noticed me.

“Hey kid! What’s been taking so long?” asked For with a friendly wave. “Come on in, before the food gets cold, don’t just stand in the doorway!”

I stared at him in astonishment.

“Well, how are you, Harold? How did it all go? Don’t just stand there, I wanted to tell you it seems like our little deal is going to be quite profitable, and we ought to—”

I leapt back from the mirror as if it was a man with the copper plague. I was shaking. A h’san’kor! I’d really been taken in! Almost fallen for it completely! But that really was For! My old teacher! Only he wasn’t in Avendoom any longer. He’d taken off to Garrak just as soon as I left with my group. It was a lot safer in Garrak than in our capital city. I looked hard into the mirror, but I couldn’t see the room or For in it anymore. The mirage had disappeared, and once again the silver reflected nothing but the hall.

I walked on.

The sunset on a clear summer evening is always beautiful, especially when you’re up on top of a high hill, and you can see the area all around. There was a broad river running past below, and the rays of the setting sun had turned its water the color of molten copper. On the opposite bank there was a settlement—either a big village or a small town. The gentle evening breeze was blowing in my face, bringing with it a scent of water, clover, and the smoke of a small campfire. I could hear a herd of cows lowing in the distance as the cowherd drove them home.

There was a large tree with spreading branches growing on the hill. The campfire was burning under the tree, and there was a cooking pot in it, bubbling away merrily and giving off an incredible aroma of fish soup. There were three men sitting round the fire. The oldest, who had a thick gray beard that looked like matted sheep’s wool, was solemnly stirring the food with a wooden spoon. The other two—a tall, bald soldier with a scar right across his forehead and a small plump man with a funny mustache—were playing dice and swearing at each other good-naturedly. A fourth man appeared from behind the tree. He had a net in one hand and a pike in the other.

“A fine catch, Marmot,” Arnkh said with a nod of approval as he tossed the dice.

“Ah, Sagra! You win again!” Tomcat exclaimed, shaking his head in disappointment. “What rotten lousy luck! Uncle, when are we going to eat?”

“When everyone’s here,” the sergeant of the Wild Hearts growled into his beard.

“A-a-ah, that’s no good!” Marmot drawled, dropping the pike and the net on the grass. “We’ll be waiting forever!”

“Look, Harold’s already here,” Arnkh announced, getting up off the grass. “Are you here to stay or just dropping by?”

“Just dropping by,” I mumbled stupidly.

“Like some fish soup, Harold?” asked Uncle, trying the broth with his spoon and grunting in delight as he took the pot off the fire.

“But you’re all dead,” I said stupidly.

“Really?” Marmot and Tomcat glanced at each other in surprise.

“I’m more alive than all the living, and I’m very hungry,” Tomcat eventually replied. “Are you joining us?”

I shook my head and backed away from the fire.

“Well then, if you’re not hungry, we’ll get started, and you go down to the water to get the others; we can’t wait for them forever!”

I nodded, but kept on backing away. This wasn’t where I belonged! This was only a dream! It was a different world! A different reality! Where my friends were still alive and had no intention of dying.

“Hey, Harold! Tell Hallas I wasn’t supposed to be cooking today!” Uncle’s shout reached me just as the picture in the mirror started to disappear.

I walked on and saw Lafresa. She was staring into the mirror about ten yards ahead of me.

Lafresa tore her gaze away from the mirror, noticed me, and narrowed her eyes. Then she took a step away from me and froze in front of the mirror wall. I followed her example and found myself …

A forest meadow, surrounded by a stockade of tall fir trees. The grass was completely covered with the bodies of elves. Only two of them were still alive, standing there without speaking, looking at the prostrate body of a h’san’kor. I couldn’t make out who these two were, I could only see that they were an elf and an elfess. Then I understood.…

I involuntarily took a step toward them. They both heard the rustling of the grass and turned round. The elf drew his bow, and the arrow pointed straight into my face. The elf’s one golden eye carefully followed every movement I made. The other eye was missing—an old injury from an orcish arrow.

Ell.

“What do you want here, man?” Miralissa asked in a hoarse voice.

“I…”

“Get out, this is our forest!” said the k’lissang, and his one eye glinted brightly.

“Why have you come here?” asked Miralissa, wiping away the blood streaming out of her ear.

“For the Rainbow Horn.”

“The Rainbow Horn?” she asked, shaking her head sadly. “Too late. The Firstborn have the Horn now, and even we can do nothing. The elves lost the battle, and Greenwood is destroyed. This is no place for you.”

“Very well,” I said, and stepped back.

The elves in front of me were not the ones I had known. They were quite different. Alien.

Ell kept his one eye firmly fixed on me and said something in orcish. His words sounded like a question.

“Dulleh,” Miralissa answered, and turned away, no longer interested in me.

Dulleh. I thought I’d heard that word before. I jumped at the very same moment as the elf shot his arrow at me.…

I fell on the floor and looked at the empty mirror in horror. In orcish dulleh means “shoot.” If I hadn’t remembered the word that Miralissa once said to Egrassa, I would have been lying dead with an arrow in my head. I walked on, hurrying after Lafresa, who always managed to be ahead of me, waiting to see what surprises the mirrors had in store.…

The mirrors called to me with offers, requests, entreaties, demands, and threats, trying to draw me into themselves forever. Faces passed before me in a series of bright pictures—the faces of those I had known, the faces of those I would know in the future, the faces of those I would never see.

“Harold! Come here!”

“Die!”

“Why can’t you just stop?”

“Come in, you’re one of us now.”

“Hey, Harold, can you see me?”

“Please, kind gentleman, please!”

I took no notice of them, I just pushed them away and tried to break free of the mirrors’ sticky cobweb, now that I’d learned to tell reality from illusion. I didn’t always manage to do it straightaway, sometimes the pictures were so bright and powerful that it cost me a great effort to reject the hallucination.

Lafresa was walking on ahead of me, and she was having difficulty. Sometimes I started to catch up, and then I fell behind again when I froze in front of one of the mirrors. And then Lafresa would disappear, and I was left completely alone. A step, another step, another …

“Hey, Harold!” Loudmouth called to me with his monstrously gnawed face. “Come here, let’s talk!”

I just shook my head and walked past the mirror.

“In the name of the king, thief!” Baron Frago Lanten and ten guardsmen tried to block my way. “Come here, or it’s the Gray Stones for you!”

I took no notice of them at all.

“Do you want gold, Harold?” asked Markun, shaking a whole sack of gold under my nose. “All you have to do is stop!”

I just laughed, and he shouted shrill obscenities at my back.

“Who’s going to pay for my inn?” asked Gozmo, wringing his hands in despair.

I shrugged.

“Hey, Harold!” a familiar voice called to me. “Come here!”

I stopped, stared at the reflection for a long time, and took a step toward the mirror.…

I looked at him, and he looked at me. We had time to study each other. We had an entire eternity of time in our hands; there was no need to hurry.

“Well, how do you like the look of me?” he asked, genuinely curious.

“To be honest, not very much.”

“That’s not surprising, I had a bad example to follow.” He grinned, and his grin turned out ugly and repulsive. Was my grin really like that, too?

I carried on looking at my double—a perfect copy of the master thief, Shadow Harold. A pale face; black circles under tired, sunken eyes; a back stubbly beard; clothes that were dirty, crumpled, and torn. A fine sight. Some dead men, not to mention beggars, looked better.

“Who are you?”

A rather timely question, wasn’t it?

“I’m just me. Or you. It all depends what side you look at us from and what you really want to see in the end.”

“You called me, didn’t you? So tell me what you want, I’ve got plenty of my own business to deal with, without making conversation with my own reflection.”

“Which of us is the reflection, that’s the question, Harold,” he said, and his eyes narrowed maliciously.

“Are we going to have a battle of words, double?”

“Do you have something against battles of words, double?”

“Yes.”

“That’s the first difference between us; you’re not very fond of talking, Harold.”

“What do you want?” His face (my face) was beginning to infuriate me.

“Come on, take it easy!” he said, with a glint of mockery in his eyes. “Take a more cheerful view of the world, reflection! There are lots of fine and beautiful things in it; you just don’t know how to take advantage of them.”

I said nothing, waiting.

“Well, all right,” he said with a sigh. “What do you want all this for?”

“All what?”

“You don’t understand?”

“No,” I told him quite sincerely.

“All this stress and strain trying to save someone or something, all these friends, all these moral complexes and other unprofitable garbage. Why did you get involved in this crazy adventure? You were never like this before. You used to be more like me.”

“I’m glad we have nothing in common any longer.”

“Oh, come off it, Harold! All this scurrying about has turned you into a namby-pamby, a wimp who depends on other people. Remember the golden days when there was just you and the night, when you relied on no one but yourself and didn’t drag all these friends, obligations, and rules around with you? Didn’t we have good times then? Remember the times when you used to break into some fat-assed goon’s house just for fun and completely clean him out! Remember the times when you used to plant a crossbow bolt in anyone who got in your way without thinking twice. You used to kill easily, you wouldn’t have left Paleface alive before.”

“I never killed anyone who simply got in my way, reflection! That way I’d have put half of Avendoom in the graveyard. I always defended myself to save my own life. Don’t confuse me with you. I don’t take any pleasure in killing! If this is just a friendly chat about old times, I’d better be going. This conversation’s not going to get us anywhere.”

I stepped back and ran into the cold silver surface of a mirror. He laughed, and I didn’t like the sound of it. He and I were not at all alike now, we were completely different people.

“You can only leave here with me, Harold.”

“Who are you?” I asked him again.

“I already told you who I am.”

“You didn’t call me over just for idle conversation, did you? You’re always looking for your own advantage, aren’t you, double?”

“Advantage? Well, you’re not completely hopeless, reflection.” A faint gleam of interest appeared in his eyes. “Yes, there’s a very profitable deal in the offing, and for old friendship’s sake, I want to offer you a share in this little business.”

I decided to play by his rules.

“A little business means small profits,” I said with a grin, trying to copy his leer.

He laughed again.

“Good old Harold! And I thought I’d lost you completely! Don’t worry, there’s a great big profit to be made from this paltry little business.”

“What do we have to do?”

“We? I swear by the darkness, but I like that! Strictly speaking, nothing. How do you like those odds? A heap of gold for doing nothing at all?”

“I’m always ready to take part in that kind of difficult business.” This time it was much easier to copy his leer.

“Excellent! All you have to do is not drag that cursed tin whistle out of the Palaces of Bone, and we’ll collect a whole sackful of gold.”

“A whole sackful?” I asked, making a surprised and doubtful face. “Are you sure about that?”

“Don’t worry, my old friend, I’ve already agreed to everything.”

“And who’s the client?”

“Let’s just say, an outside observer. His name wouldn’t mean anything to you.”

“I’ve got nothing against it in principle, but there’s just the previous Commission.…”

“Oh drop that. I don’t believe in stupid signs and the wrath of the gods. Well then, do you agree?”

“I think so,” I said with a nod, and the reflection relaxed. “But I do have just one small thing to add to what I said before.”

“What’s that?” he asked, moving closer to me.

“Remember I said I didn’t take any pleasure in killing?”

“Well?” my double asked, with a puzzled look in his eyes.

“I lied,” I said, pulling out my knife and stabbing at my reflection’s chest. He either knew what was coming or he sensed something and managed to jump out of the way. I only tore his clothes. And an instant later there was a knife in his hand, too.

“Fool!” he spat out, and flung himself on me.

It’s very difficult fighting yourself. I always knew where I was going to strike, and if I knew, then he knew, too. We were equally good with our knives, and after a minute circling between the mirrors we only had a few shallow cuts each.

Now he was going to strike at my throat, and when I stepped forward and to the left, he would try to get me on the shoulder with the backswing.

He struck at my throat, I stepped forward and to the left, and the reflection immediately tried to strike me in the right shoulder. I knew it was coming and parried his knife with mine. Then I moved straight into the attack, aiming for his face, grabbed him by the chest with my free hand, pulled him toward me, and immediately got a knee in the belly. I jumped back and ducked to avoid a slashing blow, put some distance between us, and tried to get my breath back.

“You’re getting old,” he chuckled, blowing a tuft of hair from my head off the blade of his knife.

I didn’t say anything, and he came at me again. Whirling and spinning, knife clanging against knife, hissing through teeth when one of us got another scratch. Neither of us could win; all my efforts to reach my double ran up against my own (or his?) defense. Finally we stopped, facing each other and breathing heavily.

“It’s tough fighting someone who can read your mind, isn’t it, reflection?” he asked, licking his bloody wrist.

“It’s easy,” I said, and threw the handful of the metal stars I’d taken from Paleface at my double.

Of course, he read what I was going to do and tried to dodge out of the way, but this time he couldn’t. I threw the stars without aiming, and with my left hand, and he didn’t know which way to jump. After I flung them, each of the five stars followed its own absolutely random trajectory (I told you already that I’m not much of a thrower).

Three missed, but two struck home. The first hit my double precisely on his right wrist and he dropped his knife and jerked out of the way of another two stars flying at him, but ran into a third that stuck in his left leg. My double cursed and collapsed on the floor. In two bounds I was there beside him, then I moved behind his back and held my knife against his throat.

“What a stupid way to get caught,” my reflection said in a wooden voice. “I don’t think you’ll do this.”

“Why not?”

“It’s rather hard to kill yourself. Did you know there’s a superstition that if you kill your double, you follow him into the darkness?”

A single drop of sweat slid down his temple.

“Wasn’t it you who said you don’t believe in stupid signs?” I asked the reflection, and slit his throat.

The mirrors around me broke and I was back in the hall, only now there was a door where one of the mirrors had been. The body of my double trembled and spread across the floor as white mist.

I’d passed the test of my own self, and now the way ahead was open. I stepped out of the mirror hall.

At first I didn’t even know where I’d got to. It was a perfectly ordinary, entirely undistinguished space without any exit. I walked forward uncertainly, not understanding where I had gone wrong, and what could have brought me into a dead end. And then it happened. The hall changed.

It gave me such a fright I almost wet myself. At least, my stomach dove down into my boots, and I thought I was falling off a precipice. A perfectly understandable reaction from anyone who suddenly found himself suspended somewhere between heaven and earth. I had to try really hard not to panic, and understand that I was still standing on the floor and not dangling darkness only knew where.

I don’t know if it was magic or some other kind of secret, but it was as if the walls, the floor, and the ceiling didn’t exist anymore. I had the impression that I was somewhere up in the night sky.

There were stars twinkling all around me. Thousands and thousands of bright stars. An enchanting fairy-tale spectacle. The stars were on the walls, on the floor, and on the ceiling, and the pale circle of a moon was shining steadily in the center of the hall. The purple moon by the name of Selena. And if Selena was here, then the Rainbow Horn couldn’t be far away.

As I walked toward the moon, my heart was pounding hollowly. I’d almost done it! Done what I didn’t believe I could do until today!

Roo-oo-oo-oo-oo-aa-aa-aa-aa!

The pure, deep, melancholy call spread out across the stars. Somewhere up there above me, the wind was blowing in Grok’s grave, and the Rainbow Horn was echoing its eternal call.

Roo-oo-oo-oo-oo-aa-aa-aa-aa! Oo-oo-oo-oo-aa-aa-aa-rr-rr-rr-oo-oo-oo-oo!

The sound sent shivers running up and down my spine. It was calling. The melancholy song of the wind and the Horn cut me to the quick.

But I never reached Selena. A blinding bolt of lightning struck the floor under my feet and I jumped aside and squeezed my eyes shut, desperately trying to recover my vision after the bright flash.

There was a smell of thunder and magic in the air.

When I was able to see again, I saw Lafresa in the starry sky on the other side of Selena. She wasn’t trying to attack me again, just waiting until I recovered my wits.

Even now she could have been at a ball somewhere, and not in the heart of the Palaces of Bone. At least, the young woman didn’t look at all like someone who had spent two whole weeks in the catacombs. Her traveling clothes were perfectly clean and not even crumpled, she still had the silver earrings in the form of spiders and a broad-bladed dagger on her belt. Lady Iena hadn’t changed at all since the first time I’d seen her at Balistan Pargaid’s reception.

Average height, light brown hair gathered into a short ponytail, with the purple light of the moon playing on her broad cheekbones. Her blue eyes were no longer thoughtful, but wary, she was watching every gesture I made, every movement. There was a small crimson sphere glittering on her open palm. I knew what it was, and it cost me a great effort to tear my eyes away from it and look Lafresa in the eyes again.

“Lady Iena.”

“I’m glad to see you remember me, thief.”

Her plump lips twisted into a wry smile. The woman’s voice was in sharp contrast with her appearance. It was tired, very tired.

“You are planning to live to a ripe old age, I suppose,” she asked out of the blue.

“I was certainly thinking of it.”

“Then I advise you to move away from Selena and not get in my way, otherwise I shall have to stop you.”

“I thought your Master had told you not to touch me.”

“If you don’t get under my feet. You don’t want to end up feeding the worms, do you?”

“But the Messenger gave me some hope of being immortal.”

I was just playing for time.

“All who belong to the houses are immortal. Except, that is, in the houses themselves. This hall is an antechamber to the House of Pain and you and I are both mortal here. So step aside, thief!”

“As you say, Lady Iena.”

I’d heard everything I needed to hear, so I started slowly moving toward the wall. I’m not stupid enough to fight with one of the most powerful sorceresses alive.

She watched every movement I made. And I prayed to Sagot that everything would work out and Lady Iena wasn’t planning to fling a ball of crimson fire at me against the wishes of the Master.

Lafresa waited until I had my back against the wall, and only then started moving toward Selena. She still seemed to be wary of the Dancer in the Shadows. (That’s just me flattering myself.) Just before she reached the purple moon she hesitated for a moment, and then she stepped onto Selena. Lady Iena was immediately enfolded in a gentle velvety glow. And then, surrounded by the light of the moon, she began slowly rising off the floor toward the stars.

She laughed; her exultant, sincere, childish laughter wound around the stars, and they replied to Lafresa as they swirled around the violet radiance in a merry dance. I must admit it was all very beautiful.

Lady Iena had completely forgotten about me, but I didn’t move from the spot. I watched her rise up to the stars and waited. Of course, I would have liked to say that she laughed in my face in farewell or said something like “Now the Rainbow Horn is mine!”—but nothing of the kind happened.

The stars and the column of light growing straight up out of Selena carried Lady Iena to the Rainbow Horn, which was calling to her: Oo-oo-oo-oo-aa-aa-aa-aa.

Then what I was waiting for happened.

Selena’s color turned from purple to black and her light died. The stars dancing with Lafresa flashed into crimson streaks and started falling from the sky, leaving sparkling trails behind them, but not one reached the floor, they all melted away in the air. With no light to support her, the Master’s servant fell, without making a sound, into the very center of the moon.

A fall from a height of darkness only knows how many yards is always fatal, and in this case it was fatal in a double sense. Death in one of the Great Houses is final even for those who used to be immortal and have been reborn in the House of Love.

Lafresa herself had told me where we were and, remembering Sagot’s warning not to stand on Selena, I felt no compunction about letting her try out one of the traps of the Palaces of Bone. The gods be praised, everything had gone well. The gold piece paid for the old beggar’s advice had been well spent. If that scrounger who answered to the name of Sagot hadn’t warned me not to step on Selena, there was no telling how things would have ended.

I watched as a dark patch of blood spread out under the body that was twisted and broken by the fall. Until the very last moment I still hadn’t believed that I could outwit the woman who had once been called Lia.

Oo-oo-oo-oo-aa-aa-aa-aa! The melancholy song of the Horn from somewhere up above me brought me back to reality.

I looked up at the ceiling, trying to spot where the Horn was lying but, of course, I couldn’t see anything. It was too high.

While I was vainly gazing upward, Lafresa’s body started slowly sinking into Selena, as if it wasn’t a firm floor, but some kind of sticky slime or mud. A few seconds later Lady Iena, who had caused our group so much trouble, disappeared forever into the dark moon, and a moment after that Selena turned purple again, and thousands of stars and constellations sprang to life in the “sky.” It was just as if nothing had happened.

Something glinted brightly in the center of Selena. I screwed up my eyes, trying to make out what it was, but unfortunately I couldn’t. After Lady Iena’s death I didn’t feel too keen to approach that dangerous spot, but on the reasonable assumption that I wasn’t in any danger until I actually stood on the magical moon, I walked right up to it—and there was the Key lying in the middle. Either the magic of the dwarves and the Kronk-a-Mor were inimical to the magic used to create this hall, or I was simply lucky, but the artifact was there, I could simply reach out and take it. At least now Egrassa wouldn’t wring my neck for losing the elfin relic. I hung the Key round my neck, since Lafresa hadn’t taken it off the chain.

R-r-oo-oo-oo-aa-aa-aa!

It was time to be going. There had to be another way up. At least, that was what Sagot had said, and he had advised me to use my legs. I just had to find the path.

I strode across the starry sky, looking for a stairway leading upward.

R-r-r-oo-oo-oo-too-doo-oo-oo!

“I hear you, I hear you,” I muttered, walking along the wall.

I couldn’t really call that a stairway. It was nothing but a series of square stone steps set into the sky between the masses of stars. And very awkward steps, too. Climbing them would be sweaty work. But there was nothing to be done about that; the Rainbow Horn wasn’t going to come down to me.

I stood on the first step, jumped, grabbed hold of the second, and pulled myself up. I stood up again, jumped, and pulled myself up. The world blinked and the magic of the starry sky disappeared. The space below me was once again a perfectly ordinary, unremarkable eighth-level hall, brightly illuminated by the light streaming from its walls.

I had to climb for a long time and I was puffing and panting. Balancing on narrow steps where there was barely enough space to set my feet was very difficult. I tried not to look down. I’d climbed so high now that if—Sagot forbid—I started feeling dizzy, I would fall just like Lafresa. When my arms were just about ready to fall off, I found metal brackets hammered into the wall. That made climbing a lot easier, and after a while I reached a wide stone platform.

There was quite a substantial wind blowing up there.

Oo-oo-oo-oo-aa-aa-aa-aa!

At this level the call of the Horn sounded a lot deeper and clearer. That damned tin whistle was somewhere close now. The world blinked again, and once again I seemed to be in the center of a starry sky. Somewhere below me I could just make out the purple spark of Selena, barely visible among the scattered stars. I hadn’t realized just how high I’d climbed.

Right. Which way now? There were no more brackets. The wall above me was smooth, and I could barely even see it because of the magical stars. The ladder leading upward turned out to be where I was least expecting to see it—it was hanging in midair three yards away from the platform I was standing on. And for the thousandth time during my tour of the Palaces of Bone I regretted having lost the cobweb rope.

Now I had just one try at it, a single chance to make the leap.

I studied the stairway leading up into the starry sky carefully again. I could certainly give it a try—and I had no other option in any case. Sagot preserve me!

The stars flickered past below my feet, the ladder grew larger and seemed to go rushing upward, and I just managed to grab hold of the very bottom rung. It turned out to be terribly slippery and it was only by the will of the gods that my fingers held their grip and I wasn’t launched into my final flight to a meeting with Selena.

I jerked my arms, wriggling like a grass snake and gritting my teeth, pulled myself up, threw my left arm over the next rung, then heaved myself up again, swung my feet onto the bottom rung, and started climbing.

Oo-oo-oo-oo-aa-aa-aa-aa!

The wind started getting frisky and the Horn was singing all the time now, filling the Hall of Stars with its mighty battle roar. I tumbled into a brightly lit corridor, leaving the stars behind me.

Oo-oo-oo-oo-aa-aa-aa-aa-r-aa!

The Horn’s roaring made the floor tremble, but I was in no hurry now. Nothing would happen to it, it could wait for me to get my breath back. After twenty yards of corridor, a new starry sky spread its canopy out over my head. Hanging among the lights of the stars was a pearly bridge. I walked across it and came to Grok’s grave.

It was a beautiful structure of amethyst. Something between a summer arbor and a memorial chapel. Four slim, elegant columns supported a dome of delicate blue. Below the dome was a gravestone with the following words carved into it: To Grok, the great warrior, from a grateful country.

“I made it,” I sighed, still not able to believe that I had reached my goal.

I was standing at the grave of the famous military leader and the brother of the Nameless One. But I felt no sacramental tremor, or anything of the kind. So he was a great general, a legend, and he saved the country from the orcs during the Spring War.

So what?

I’d almost saved the country, too, and from the patchy information I had, Grok wasn’t such a great hero, since he was responsible for the appearance of the Nameless One.

The goal of my quest was lying in full view on the grave. The Rainbow Horn. It hadn’t changed at all since the first time I saw it in my waking dream in the Forbidden Territory. A large twisting horn gleaming with a shimmer of bronze, encrusted with mother-of-pearl and bluish ogre bone. A beautiful, skillfully made object. A genuine battle horn that any king would be proud to own.

“May I?” There was a note of pleading in Valder’s voice.

“Go ahead,” I said, opening up and giving him complete freedom.

And now I saw a completely different Horn, surrounded with a rainbow halo that glimmered faintly in the power emanating from the artifact. The power that held the Nameless One in the Desolate Lands. The power that held the Fallen Ones in the depths of Hrad Spein and prevented them from returning to Siala. The power created by the ogres. The power that had destroyed that race and saved others.

It was failing, disappearing, like water draining away into sand. The hours of the magic that filled the Horn were numbered.

“Can you bring back its magic?” I asked the archmagician, keeping my eyes fixed on the treasure.

“No, that would require the power of the entire Council. I’m sorry.”

“Never mind,” I said, although in my heart I had been nursing a vague hope that Valder could do it and I wouldn’t have to carry this dangerous toy with me. “Can you leave now?”

“No.… It’s too weak. Perhaps later, when they fill it with power. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. Your company’s beginning to grow on me. It’s better than talking to myself.”

The reply was a quiet little laugh. And then:

“Take it, Harold, and let’s go home.”

Valder was right, there was no time to waste on thinking things over. I licked my lips, which had suddenly gone dry, and approached the grave with my heart pounding in my chest.

There it was. Lying right in front of me. The salvation and the destruction of this world. The trump card in the stupid games of the Masters. What would happen if I dared to carry it out of Hrad Spein? Would that save anyone, or just cause more grief and woe? What should I do? The choice was such a terrible one! To decide the fate of the world and hold power in your own hands. To know that what you do could tip the scales completely and everything could go straight down the ogre’s throat.

Should I really take this thing? Was it worth the lads from our group giving their lives for it?

I stood there, not knowing what I ought to do. I was in some kind of stupor. I couldn’t move a hand or a foot, as if I was spellbound. I stood there looking at the artifact, and it lay there, waiting for the man who had come to Grok’s grave to make up his mind.

“With no doubt or hesitation,” I said, repeating the promise I’d made to Egrassa as if it was an incantation, then I sent the world and its brother to the darkness, stepped forward, and picked the Horn up off the grave.

The last thing I remembered was the sky flashing and weeping a fiery rain of falling stars for the second time that day.