The River of Shadows

Strange Couriers

5 Modobrin 941

234th day from Etherhorde

PROFESSOR J. L. GARAPAT

Odesh Hened Hulai

Entreats Your Participation in a Gathering of

Extraordinary Consequence for the Several Worlds

Guest of Honor:

Felthrup Stargraven of Pol Warren, Noonfirth, NW Alifros

Tomorrow nightfall

The old tap room, The Orfuin Club

Admission by This Card Only

Your Absolute Discretion Is Assumed

The historians passed the card from hand to hand. They were sharp-eyed and earnest, and ready for a confrontation. It was not right for them to have been stopped at the door. “Extraordinary consequence be damned,” muttered the first of them. “How consequential can it be, Garapat, if your guest of honor never bothered to show?”

“But of course Mr. Stargraven is here!” said Garapat, a tall, frail human with a serious voice and colossally thick glasses in bone frames dangling from his nose. He waved at the round table, which was cluttered with pipe-stands, cakes, gingerbread, mugs of cider and ale, someone’s fiddle, countless books, one black rat. The old leather chairs outnumbered their occupants, but the half dozen seated guests had the look of determined squatters, prepared to resist their eviction.

“Where?” said the historians, jostling. “That animal, that rat? Felthrup Stargraven is the rat?”

“Hello,” said Felthrup miserably.

The historians wanted to squeeze into the room, but could not manage to do so without overtly shoving the old professor from the doorway. Most of the newcomers were humans or dlomu, but there was also a translucent Flikkerman; and the first historian, their leader, had the dusky olive skin and feathered eyes of a selk. It was to the latter that Garapat addressed himself.

“He’s come with a ghastly dilemma,” whispered the professor, indicating Felthrup. “Night after night he’s braved the River of Shadows. He’s no mage, and has no travel allowance. He’s just leaped in and dreamed his way here, by grit and courage. And he’s up against-” The professor leaned close, and whispered in the first historian’s ear. The listener started, jerking his head back to look the professor in the eye.

“A little rat,” he said, “has pitted himself against them?”

“There are worlds at stake,” said Garapat. “Someone has to help him.”

“And naturally that someone is you,” said another historian, who had blue ink-stains on the hand that gripped the door frame. “What’s the matter with you, Garapat? Why do you spend so much time in this club, picking up strays?”

“Garapat’s a fool,” said someone at the back of the crowd.

“He’s from a hell-planet,” said another. “It’s called Argentina. He leaves every chance he gets.”

“Listen,” said Garapat, unperturbed by their slander, “this was terribly hard for me to arrange, and it’s been a washout, and the poor rat’s spirits are so low. Cibranath couldn’t travel, Ramachni’s nowhere to be found. And Felthrup can’t keep making this journey-indeed he doubts he will ever be able to come here again. Leave us a while longer, won’t you?”

“You were supposed to vacate an hour ago,” said the first historian. He had managed to wedge his foot into the meeting room. “And you know perfectly well we can’t work in the common chamber. The tables are far too small. Besides, this is the only summoning room in the Orfuin Club. We can’t finish our work without Ziad, and we can only summon him here. Now, if you please-”

Garapat made one more attempt, reminding them that Alifros was a magnificent world, that a number of their mutual friends called it home, and asking if they were truly willing to contribute to its destruction merely for the sake of a prearranged meeting to discuss the editing of a history text? But the last question doomed his case. Was the study of history some esoteric pastime, rather than a vital tool for understanding the present? The historians bristled at the notion. “I’m going to fetch the innkeeper,” said someone. “Rules are rules.”

Garapat sighed and looked back toward the table. Felthrup had overheard the debate.

“Let them in!” he squeaked, waving his paws. “You’ve done everything I could have hoped for, dear professor. The failure is mine. Enter, sirs, the room is yours of course. Do not trouble Master Orfuin. We will vacate now, and I will return to the ship in disgrace.”

With a shake of his head, Garapat stepped aside, and the crowded room grew quickly more so. The professor’s invited guests-a hypnotist from Cbalu, the high priestess of Rappopolni, a world-skipping baron who had misplaced his physical body decades ago only to become far more contented as a shade, a radical Mzithrini philosopher-cursed and grumbled, and looked at Felthrup shamefaced. “We have done you no service,” said the priestess. “We have wasted your time.”

“And ours,” said the historian with the ink-stains, dropping his own stack of books onto the table.

“You are worse off than before,” the baron agreed sadly. “I felt certain more people would come tonight, Garapat. Mr. Stargraven’s cause is the best you’ve ever championed.”

“They may still be trying to get here,” said the Mzithrini. “The astral paths are dark tonight, and the River turbulent.”

“We managed, somehow,” said the first historian.

“No squabbling!” Felthrup turned in circles on the table. “Scholars, friends. If I reduced you noble souls to fractiousness I should never forgive myself. I will go. I am beaten. I must serve my friends in this small rat’s body, since my mind has done them no good.”

“Now he tries to play on our sympathies,” said the ink-stained man. “Very good: you have them, like the Kidnapped Souls’ Collective that was in here last month. Tragic, but the room’s still ours. Ask Orfuin to send a boy to clean the table, will you?”

“That’s enough, Rusar,” said the selk. “Mr. Stargraven, if it is not safe for you to linger in the common room-”

“It is not safe,” broke in Garapat. “The Raven Society sends members here almost nightly.”

“-then you must trust these new friends of yours to carry on with the effort.”

“Just so, kind stranger.” Felthrup sniffed as Garapat prepared to lift him from the table. “And may I say in passing that it is an honor to meet with members of the Tribe of Odesh, however briefly.”

“You know something of Odesh, do you?” said the Flikkerman dubiously, as he settled into his chair.

“I know you are pledged to defend knowledge above all else,” said Felthrup, “and that you have paid a great price for that dedication, through the centuries-not least when the Emerald King burned the archive at Valkenreed, and threw the librarians into the flames. I know how heroically you have labored since then-labored against forgetting, as your motto proclaims. It is a mission to which I aspire in my dreams, though I know full well that I am unsuitable. Why, I cannot even grasp a pen.”

The bustling scholars had grown still as Felthrup spoke. Now all eyes were on him. “You’ve been telling him about us, then, Garapat?” said the selk.

“Not a word,” said the professor.

“Then where, Mr. Stargraven, did you learn about the Tribe of Odesh?”

“By reading, sir,” said Felthrup. “I have no library of my own, but in the course of my journey I have read certain small selections from a book by Pazel Doldur.”

“Pazel Doldur!” shouted all the scholars at once.

Suddenly the lamplight flickered. Paintings on the walls rattled in their frames, and a number of the items on the table danced in place for an instant.

“There, now we’ve gone and summoned him by accident!” said the first historian. “Welcome to an increasingly chaotic evening, Doldur. No, we didn’t mean to bring you here. We’re with Ziad, if you care to know. We’re your competition.”

“Felthrup,” said Professor Garapat, “are we to understand that when you spoke of the Merchant’s Polylex you meant the thirteenth edition? Are you really in possession of a copy?”

“Of course,” said Felthrup. “But who were you speaking to?”

All at once he squealed, and jumped three feet straight up from the table. Something had stroked his back, though no one in the chamber had moved.

“They were speaking to the editor-in-chief of your Polylex, Felthrup,” said Garapat, “and a man whose second great work, Dafvniana: A Critical History, is, dare I say, nearing completion?”

“All in good time, Jorge Luis,” said an old man’s rasping voice. The rat’s fur stood on end: the voice was coming from an empty chair. Felthrup backed away in instinctive terror, until he stepped onto a fork and scared himself anew.

Garapat nodded at the chair. “Mr. Doldur has not gone to his final rest. He is a dweller in Agaroth, death’s twilight borderland, while he waits for his own subeditors to finish their work.”

“I want to have a look at the last book that will ever bear my name,” said the voice. “Is that so very odd?”

“Most understandable, I should say,” continued Garapat, “especially as A Critical History will serve as the cornerstone of Dafvni studies for decades to come.”

The other scholars hissed: “Not true! Our book will do so. Ours will be finished first.”

“These gentlemen are writing a similar book,” said Garapat, “but both teams were hobbled, tragically, by the early deaths of their editors. The difference is that Ziad would happily retire to his grave, and leave these worthies to complete the book alone. But they still long for, indeed demand, his help. Consequently they have… delayed the natural course of things.”

“What is ‘natural’?” scoffed one historian. “ ‘Natural’ is an abstraction, a will-o’-the-wisp. Besides, he signed a contract.”

“I will be off,” said the voice from the chair. “My compliments to Ziad. And I will thank you to be more careful what you chant in Orfuin’s summoning room, henceforth. Next time you bring me here in error I shall scatter your documents, and your ale.”

“But Doldur!” said the time-skipping baron, who appeared to be the only one who could see him, “you simply must meet Stargraven before you go.”

“I am dead, sir. And a full professor, too. I must do very little.”

“He knows your protegee’s son, your namesake.”

The chair squeaked, and a pile of books slid sideways. Felthrup had the impression that someone was leaning toward him over the table. “You know Pathkendle? Pazel Pathkendle, Suthinia’s boy?”

“Of course,” said Felthrup. “We are allies, and fond friends. Shipmates, too-or so we have been.” Felthrup’s cheek began to twitch. “But Arunis and Macadra are going to steal our ship, steal it and sail away. What they will do with the human beings I cannot imagine. But the Nilstone! It will pass into their hands, and that will bring disaster on us all. Macadra’s Ravens are already the power behind the Bali Adro throne; I heard that much in this club, before Prince Olik said a word. Her dream is to bind all Alifros within that Empire, with her at its ugly center. And that plan is sweet-tender, modest, benevolently restrained-compared with Arunis’ own. He would use the Stone not to rule Alifros, but to destroy it. He told Macadra how it was to be done, and it even shocked her. Orfuin heard them and closed the club!”

“He didn’t,” said Doldur.

“He did, in fact,” said Garapat, as heads nodded around the table.

“He did! Oh, he did!” Felthrup was rubbing his paws together before his face. “I was hiding under the stool in the form of a small wriggly thing, an yddek, and Orfuin called them devils and announced that the bar was closing, that they could not plot holocausts here, and Macadra’s servants were so angry that one of them stomped a little sweeper to death, and would have done the same to me if I had moved from hiding, and then vines closed over the doors and the terrace vanished, and the River of Shadows took us all. But Master Doldur! I cannot warn my friends! Arunis has placed a lock on my dream-memories! I thought someone here might carry the message for me, but all these nights of asking, pleading, have been in vain. No one goes to Masalym, or comes from there.”

“It is a dark place on dreamers’ maps,” said the baron. “No roads lead there. One could take to the River, of course. There was an entrance under the pool in the Temple of Vasparhaven, but no one speaks of it anymore. I think it has been sealed.”

“I beg your pardon,” said the selk historian, “but the very source of the River of Shadows in Alifros is not far from Masalym.”

“And it’s our research site, not theirs,” grumbled the ink-stained man.

“Not far on the scale of the world,” said the baron, nodding. “The River does indeed surface deep in the Efaroc Peninsula. But it would be no swift journey after that: out of the Infernal Forest, up the winding river, across the lava fields with their horrid guardians, over the glacier lake. Then down again, by a long path to the city of waterfalls. Many days it would take, even if no storms impede the passage of the mountains.”

“We have no time for such adventures,” said Felthrup. “Oh why, why does he want to do it? Ramachni says that Arunis is a native of Alifros, that he belongs there. Where does he mean to live when it is gone?”

“You mustn’t grow hysterical,” said Doldur.

“I mustn’t,” Felthrup agreed, dropping violently into a squat.

“They may hear you in the common room,” said Garapat.

“Worse,” said Felthrup. “If I grow hysterical I shall wake, and it will be over, finished. I am alone on the Chathrand already! The dlomu have evacuated the ship, and a new crew is coming. I fear I will soon wake no matter how I behave. It is not easy to sleep so long. My stomach is empty and growling like a wildcat.”

“Eat some cake,” said the ink-stained scholar.

“It won’t help, he’s a dreamer, you’re not listening!” hissed the others.

“Do you mean,” said the voice of Pazel Doldur, now hushed and astonished, “that the Nilstone, Droth’s Eye, the Scourge of Erithusme, is back aboard the Chathrand?”

“Back?” said Felthrup.

“Of course, back. The great wizardess herself conveyed the Stone through Alifros upon that ship, in her quest to banish it from the world. She had a hidden safe built right into the wall of her cabin, lined with all the spell-dampening materials she could lay her hands on, and yet the Nilstone still caused terrible things to happen aboard the Chathrand-altered it, too, by drawing ghosts and spell-shards and residue of old charms into that vessel like iron filings to the lodestone. Felthrup, sir: you must tell me more of this. I am very fond of Suthinia, you know. She named her son after me.”

Then the scholars, and Professor Garapat, and his five invited guests, began to talk in great excitement, spouting names, grabbing books, completing one another’s sentences. Felthrup twisted and turned, his stumpy tail knocking against the tankards and plates. Then the Flikkerman raised his arms and flashed so brightly that everyone was briefly dazzled.

“We’re going to wake him ourselves at this rate,” he said.

“Quite right,” said Doldur. “Now do tell your story, Felthrup-but briefly and calmly, pray.”

Felthrup did not manage to respect either condition. His nerves were all but destroyed, and the gleam of hope in this eleventh hour had gone straight to his heart. But with the aid of Garapat and the other invited guests, who had heard it once already, he got the essence of the tale across. “I can’t imagine what will happen to the human crew,” he said in closing. “Will they be killed, or taken away as curiosities to Bali Adro City? Will they be enslaved?”

“It will not long matter what becomes of them if you lose the Nilstone,” said Doldur. “No, this is truly frightful. To think that my book has done so little good! That it has even come close to informing Arunis how to master the Nilstone! And this travesty involving the Shaggat! It seems that Arqual has only sunk deeper into corruption since my death.”

“There is hope for Arqual,” said Felthrup, “if Empress Maisa should somehow regain her throne. As for your book, it had little chance to do good, for the Magad dynasty has sought out and destroyed nearly every copy-along with their owners. When mere possession of a book can see one burned at the stake or tossed into the sea, the natural inclination is surely to get rid of it.

“But Master Doldur, there is something I do not understand at all. The thirteenth Polylex was written a century before my time. How is it possible that you know Suthinia Pathkendle? Is she ancient? Did she marry Captain Gregory and give birth to Pazel as an old, old witch?”

“Nothing of the kind,” laughed Doldur. “Indeed, I believe in your time she is barely fifty. It is a long story, Felthrup. The creation of the thirteenth Polylex was an adventure in its own right. But here is an answer to your question, in brief: I was orphaned by Magad the Second. His wars of greed and conquest took my father and my elder brother-soldiers, both of them. And his royal cousins, flatterers, bootlicks-they took the life of my mother. Not with a spear but with a disease of the bedchamber. She’d given herself into their foul hands for years, in exchange for my school money. Right there in Etherhorde, right under my nose. Astonishing what a love of books can blind one to. You know the revenge I sought, don’t you?”

“To expose his crimes,” said Felthrup.

“His crimes, and all the crimes, lies, venality of Arqual. In pursuit of that end I was a driven soul, a maniac. But only a mortal maniac, and an impoverished one at that. I needed help, and in good time I found help, from the one being in Alifros who could make my impossible dream a reality. I mean, of course, the wizardess Erithusme.”

“Aha!” said the rival historians. “Magical help from the start! That’s cheating!”

“I earned my reputation as a historian with no aid from any charm,” Doldur continued, “but Erithusme saw the kernel of a mage within me, too. She warned me of the consequences if it should germinate-no normal existence, no wife or family, no rest-and I accepted them, dreaming only of my book, my book of revenge. So it was with her help that the Polylex came to be. I poured all the spellcraft I learned into research, research. I plucked secrets from the Empire like grapes from the vine, and gave them in bushel-baskets to my assistants. The book grew like a vine as well: mad, unruly, heavy with forbidden fruit.

“One warning, however, Erithusme never gave me-that Magad would tear all Alifros apart in his desire to find and punish me. I became the most wanted man north of the Nelluroq. The wizardess could protect me only so well: she had other, grander fights than mine, and was breaking under the strain. Nor was there anyplace to hide me in the North. Arqual was impossible; the Crownless Lands were thick with Magad’s forces and spies; the Mzithrin was closed to nonbelievers. So the wizardess did what she could: she smuggled me away, to a distant time and place.

“It was a fair city called Istolym, part of the Empire of Bali Adro. A gentle and a wisely governed land, then. In time I learned that I was on the far side of the Nelluroq, living in the century previous to my own. Why she chose that place, I suppose I’ll never know. But I think now that she sent me back in time in case I should ever make the journey home-in the rough hope that the Red Storm would bring me forward about as far as I’d been sent back, so that I might return to an Arqual I recognized.

“I never heard from the wizardess again. But I dwelled in Istolym happily enough, growing as a mage, though lonely for my own time and country, and anxious about the fate of my book. Nine good years I spent there, until the day when another mage, Ramachni Fremken, came to me and said that Erithusme was lost and feared dead. He told me also that a foul sorcerer had gone north to steal the Nilstone, and that an expedition was being launched to track him down.”

“Mr. Bolutu’s expedition?” said Felthrup.

“Yes, Belesar came with us,” said Doldur. “And so did a student of mine, a human woman of no great magical promise, truth be told-but such intensity, such a will to work for others! She had studied with me for one year, and we did not yet know if she would ever develop the powers of a mage. But she would not give up. She’d come from a hard, cold place in the Fastness of Ihaban, lost her family to an avalanche; she was as ready as anyone could be to leave the world she knew behind. Her name was Suthinia Sadralin. In time she would marry a Northerner, one Captain Gregory Pathkendle, and give up magecraft for years.”

“Pazel’s mother! Then she was not from the Chereste Highlands at all?”

“No, Felthrup. She was a Bali Adro citizen, and proud of it. She went north like a volunteer soldier, to fight a threat to her homeland.”

“And when you sailed north, the Red Storm caught you,” said Felthrup, “and propelled you forward again in time.”

“Yes,” said Doldur, “but we had ill luck with the Storm, and it hurled us two centuries forward. Arunis had decades to himself in the North-and when we arrived he was waiting for us. An ambush. We were massacred. The survivors scattered, lived for years in hiding, wanting to fulfill our mission but reduced to the effort to stay alive. Suthinia and Bolutu were the only ones who managed it, in the end. And all that protected them, truth be told, was their failure to blossom into mages. We learned later that Arunis could follow the scent of our Southern magic, like a hound follows blood.”

“But Suthinia did at last become a mage, didn’t she?” said Garapat.

“Years later. When the scent had grown cold. And when Captain Gregory abandoned her. She knew, you see, that she could not have both a family and a mage’s calling. The two simply cannot be combined. I think she was torn for years. When he ran away it must have become easier for her-though not necessarily for her children.”

“And see here, Doldur, wasn’t she rather good with dreams herself?”

“A fair hand, yes,” said Doldur.

“And if I recall, her favorite experimental subjects were her children?”

“That’s rather a brutal way to put it,” said the ghost. “What are you driving at, Professor?”

“Well, it’s plain as day,” said Garapat. “Felthrup can’t warn anyone back in Masalym, because he forgets everything the moment he wakes. But he’s told you, here and now. And you might just be able to tell Suthinia-”

“Ah!” said Doldur. “You startle me sometimes, Jorge Luis. Yes, yes, I could do that.”

Felthrup ran to the edge of the table. “Could you? Could you truly?”

“I don’t see why not. I did it once before, after the Arquali invasion. She heard me perfectly-though I was not able to offer her much comfort. She had just lost her children. This time, perhaps, I’ll be able to do more than wish her well.”

“O splendid man!” squealed Felthrup. “Greatest of dead scholars! Oh, brilliance, brilliance, joy and song!”

“Least I can do for someone who’s dared to read the thirteenth Polylex.” The ghost chuckled. “Of course, we don’t know if our efforts will go any further than that. It would be far better if I could visit young Pathkendle directly-but it is far harder for the dead to visit one they never knew in life. I would spend weeks merely trying to claw my way to Masalym in the darkness: your light is our darkness, you know, and the Little Moon in Southern Alifros is particularly hostile to the restless dead. I say, rat-friend: whatever’s the matter?”

Felthrup had gone suddenly rigid, head to toe. “The hatbox,” he said, through clamped teeth.

“Hatbox! What hatbox?”

“I am asleep within a hatbox. And I have become aware of it. My head is pressed against the wall of the box; I can feel the pressure. I am waking, waking. I cannot fight it much longer.”

The inky man stared at Felthrup as though tempted to poke him.

“Don’t you dare,” said Pazel Doldur. “Listen to me, Felthrup, my boy. I think it’s high time I paid my old apprentice a call. So tell me quickly: is there anything else you would like me to say to her, besides the fact that forces are coming from Bali Adro’s capital to seize your ship?”

“And the Nilstone, Master Doldur,” said Felthrup, not moving a whisker.

“Of course, of course.”

“And tell her that her son, your namesake-please, could you tell her that he is brave and kindhearted, and that the tongues he speaks number twenty-five at least? Oh, and that Dr. Chadfallow is aboard as well. Oh! And this is desperately important-that the destination of the ship is Gurishal, the island of Gurishal, is this too much to remember, sir?”

“My dear boy, I’m a historian. Come, what else?”

“Wise, quick-witted, mentally capacious ghost! Nothing else, unless… yes, oh yes!”

Felthrup forgot himself, turned his head, knocked it against something no one else in the room could see. It was done: the black rat faded like a mirage. His last words seemed to hang in the air when he himself was gone:

“Tell her that Pazel is in love.”

One hour later, at an unthinkable distance from the cluttered room in the lively tavern, Suthinia Pathkendle awoke with a start, in her hard bed in the rented cottage on the poor side of Simjalla City. The voice that had begun in her dream was still speaking, though she knew she was awake. It was a beloved voice, her old master’s; it filled her with the near-irresistible urge to put her hand out and grasp his own. But she could see no hand. And the message, when she fully woke and understood it, terrified her with the certainty that she had waited too long.

That remains to be seen, I think.

“Master?”

He was gone. A normal person would already be deciding that he’d never been there, that the voice was only the wind’s, moaning under the eaves, sighing through the cracks she’d never bothered to fill. But Suthinia would never again be normal. She’d become herself at last, a true mage, and she knew a specter’s voice when she heard it.

After midnight the fire always died; the house grew bitterly cold. Suthinia lit a candle, pulled her tattered coat over her nightgown. She crossed the freezing floor into the main room. Yes, the curtains were drawn; the night patrols, the tramps and prostitutes, would see nothing. She took the vials of dream-essence from their hiding place within the brick wall. She studied them, red smoke, blue smoke, cherished links to two souls. Then she held them to her cheeks. The blue vial was cold. It usually was. Neda’s training as a sfvantskor had raised walls inside her; only in the deepest sleep did they come down.

But there was an answering warmth from the red vial. She moved it from her cheek to her neck, wrapped her coat over it, and her arms over the coat. As the vial warmed she could sense his nearness, the soft sound of his breathing, the beat of his heart. For the thousandth time in the last six years she found herself aching with the need to touch him, hold him as she was holding this hard thing of glass. She felt a violent tearing, a rending inside her and she knew the feeling was guilt. Son of mine, son of mine. How did my fight become yours?

“It wasn’t your fault,” said Pazel to the woman who walked at his side. “It was Chadfallow’s, wasn’t it?”

They were in the tall grass over the headlands in Ormael. Below stretched the Nelu Peren, sparkling at midday, threshing against the rocks. Gulls cried, and curlews. The sea-wind moved over the grass like the bellies of invisible ships, racing one after another into the plum orchard beyond. The woman was holding his hand.

“The more I learn of what has happened,” she said, “the less I dare to speak of fault. Except my own, that is. I know well enough what I might have done, had I thought more of you and Neda, and less of myself.”

The plum trees were suddenly all around them. The white blossoms had opened; bees moved from branch to branch, pollen-dusted. It was spring.

“Yourself?” said Pazel. “Come on, Mother. You thought of yourself even less.”

She looked at him sharply.

“I always knew you had something on your mind,” Pazel went on, “but I never for a minute thought it was anything selfish. Neither did Neda. We could tell, you know. You had awful tasks, awful secrets you didn’t want to burden us with. But you should have told us. We were jealous of those secrets. That’s why Neda was angry all those years. Because she missed you so badly, wanted you back.”

They were leaving the orchard for the ragged woods beyond, looking up at the Highlands, the land he had always thought she came from. He knew better now. His mother had come from the South; he himself was but half Ormali; he had cousins in Istolym-tol-chenni cousins, if any were still alive. She hadn’t told him in words, exactly; she had simply decided it was time he knew.

“I could have handled the truth,” he said.

“Yes,” she said, “you could have. You always had idrolos, that special courage that let you look at things squarely. Neda had far less of it, and so did I. Don’t you understand, Pazel? I couldn’t tell you the truth without facing it myself. And the truth was that I’d failed everyone-Doldur, Ramachni, my murdered friends. I’d failed Bali Adro, failed Alifros itself.”

“The fight wasn’t over, Mother. Arunis still didn’t have the Nilstone.”

“It was over for me. I gave it up the day I married Gregory. My friends from the expedition had all been found and slain, by Arunis or the men he hired for the job. One was poisoned at a meal I was late for. I’d have died that evening if I hadn’t gotten lost in the back streets of Ormael. Another was killed in Eberzam Isiq’s garden. He traveled all the way from the Mzithrin to the heart of Arqual, a miracle, and only managed to croak a few words of warning to Isiq’s daughter. She’s the one, isn’t she? The one your rat-friend believes you care for.”

Pazel looked down, suddenly shy. “Why did he mention that?” he asked.

“I wonder if he knew why himself,” said his mother. “The rat is not a mage, by any chance?”

“No,” said Pazel, worried now. His mother looked so grave. “You’re upset because she’s Admiral Isiq’s daughter, aren’t you?”

Suthinia shook her head. “That sort of thing doesn’t matter now. Pazel, does she love you too?”

“Yes. I mean, Rin’s eyes, I think so. She’s… alluded to it. Mother, why do you look so blary morbid?”

“I wish you happiness,” said Suthinia. “You know I always have.”

“Well,” he said uncertainly, “thanks.”

“We should not love,” she said with sudden fierceness. “The dlomu do a better job of it, or used to. Ask them about dlomic love, if you find someone who remembers the old days. But our own kind, human love: we never can make that work. It’s like the milk I used to send you for, from the Brickpath Dairy. Always souring, sometimes even before you reached home. Souring into fear, or dumb greed, or shame. It was shame that kept me silent, Pazel. I wanted to live, to love Gregory, sail with him maybe, raise children at his side. What could I have said to you? ‘I come from a proud, fine kingdom. They sent me here to fight a monster, but I stopped fighting him, I fled.’ How could I have looked you in the eye? People always say that our children want our approval, but what about the reverse?”

“You told Captain Gregory.”

“And lost him. Forget what they said in Ormael, Pazel. Gregory was never a traitor.”

“I know that,” he said. “I’ve always known that. He was honorable.”

The woman laughed. “So honorable he couldn’t bear to stand in my way. I swore that he was doing nothing of the kind, that I’d made my choice freely, with no regrets. But he was too clever. He listened close, the few times Doldur or Machal or one of the other survivors stayed under our roof. He put the pieces together. ‘You’ve shaped your life around this, Suthee,’ he said at last. ‘You studied magic, crossed the blary Ruling Sea, tossed away your world. Not to keep house for a sailing man. To fight for your people. All people. And we both know why you’re not doing it.’

“That was the last real talk we ever had. He was outbound the next morning, on a voyage of less than a month. The voyage he never returned from.”

They had reached the black oaks beyond the orchard. Pazel looked at his mother. Deep sadness in her eyes. But something was missing; she was leaving the best part out. It was a familiar tactic. This time he wouldn’t stand for it.

“Go on,” he said, “tell me the rest.”

When he upset her the landscape shimmered, quaked. It was quaking now. “I’ll tell you this,” she said. “I’ve guarded your dream-essence all these years, and haven’t dared use it, because I knew it would hurt you when I did. You’ve changed, you know. You’ve developed an oversensitive mind.”

“I can’t imagine why,” he said.

“The language-spell made it harder, yes,” she said. “But tell me the truth, will you, please? Hasn’t it been worth it, after all? Worth the fits, the pain, even the danger?”

No hiding here: whether he said it or not she was going to know. Which meant he too had to face the question, choose an answer, once and for all.

“Yes,” he said at last, “barely. I don’t know who I’d have been without the Gift. Happier, maybe, or just as likely dead. It’s all right. I like who I am.”

Suthinia touched his cheek. “My son,” she said, “who has sparred with eguar and Leopard People, and chatted with the murths of the sea.”

Her smile contained a hint of triumph. He did not much care for it. “What else?” he demanded, for he could sense that a great deal remained to be said.

“I’ve been taking out the dream-vials for two months now,” she said, “and I’ve looked a little into your dreams. Not because I wanted to spy on you. It was simply the only way to make contact.”

So that was how she knew about Thasha. “What else?” he said again, impatient.

“You… react, each time I look,” she told him. “That’s probably why your fits have come more often. And now that I’ve finally stepped into your dream I expect it will be even worse. You might have another fit anytime.”

Pazel took a deep breath. “All right,” he forced himself to say. “I understand, and I’m not angry. But you have to stop. Maybe I could put up with more fits, to be able to talk with you now and then, even in this strange way-but not until all this is over. It’s too mucking dangerous. The last fit I had is part of why they locked us up. The dlomu are weird about madness; it scares them silly. Promise, Mother. Promise you won’t look into my dreams anymore, unless it’s a matter of life and death.”

Suthinia tossed her hair, resentful. “Fine,” she said. “I promise. Of course.”

She was angry, biting something back. He took her hand, hoping to soothe her, and they walked on for a time. He tried to find a way out of the silence, but every path seemed choked with thorns.

“So that’s why Papa left us?” he said at last. “So that you’d be less bound to Ormael? To help you return to the fight you came for?”

“Yes,” she said, “that’s why.”

“Then it wasn’t about Chadfallow?”

Suthinia jerked her hand away. Suddenly the world was fluid, a blur. The sunlight lanced through the oak limbs, blinding; down was up, and though his mother remained close by he somehow could not look at her directly.

“Ignus?” she said. “Ignus. Yes, he may have had something to do with it.”

“You weren’t going to tell me, were you?”

“I’ve tried to respect his wishes,” she said.

“Whose wishes? My father’s? Chadfallow’s? Rin’s eyes, Mother, why are you still hiding things? What did Papa carve in that tree?”

For they had come to the very oak his father had climbed to impress him, the one he had carved a message in at eighty feet. The one Pazel had been too young to climb, and later hadn’t bothered to go looking for again.

“What tree?” she said. “Pazel, you’re woolgathering.” She grabbed his elbow, started marching away. “Listen, I’ve been waiting to tell you what’s most important. Waiting until I knew you were all here, so that you’d remember it when you woke. It’s a warning, Pazel, a warning from your rat-friend. But you distracted me with questions. Credek, did I wait too long again?”

“I’m already awake,” he said.

“Oh, skies! You’re not. Listen close, Pazel. I’m not fooling anymore.”

No, she was just avoiding his questions, ordering him about like a child. Suddenly he knew what he wanted, broke free, ran back to the oak with the lightning swiftness of dream-legs. He could climb that tree today, all right. It would be as easy as a flight of stairs beside the masts he’d climbed in Nelluroq storms.

Except, of course, that Mother had to try and stop him. Screaming, howling for an audience, demanding that he hear. She hadn’t changed that much. “Go away, I’m not listening,” he shouted. He was already halfway up the tree.

But so was Suthinia. Like a weasel, she sank her nails into the bark, and his trouser leg, begging, weeping, threatening, so very familiar. He climbed on. He was going to reach that branch, read his father’s message, find out whatever it was she didn’t want him to know. Meanwhile Suthinia was throwing everything she could at him. Felthrup. Arunis. Isiq in a tower, historians in a bar.

“Not listening!” he shouted. “Ya ya ya!”

It’s not for my sake, she was saying (YA YA GO AWAY) listen for your own, for Alifros (I HAD A DOG AND HER NAME WAS JILL) for that oath you swore in Simja (WHEN SHE RAN SHE DIDN’T STAND STILL) blame me all you want, but after you hear what I (SHE RAN AWAY) they’re coming, Pazel (ONE DAY) sending a ship to take the Chathrand (AND ALSO I RAN WITH HER) and the mucking Gods-damned Stone, they’ve never given up, Arunis, Macadra, all those carrion birds, they’re flocking toward you, don’t make my mistake, darling, don’t hide when the world needs you most.

“Shhhhh.”

He tried to kick his mother’s hand. But the claws had retracted, or vanished; her touch was light, her voice a gentle whisper. “Easy, easy. You’re going to wake up Neeps.”

He was hugging the tree; it was hugging him back, and kissing him, begging him for silence.

“Mother?”

The lips froze against his cheek. Then came a voiceless, delicious laugh. It was Thasha, lying in the darkness beside him, while Neeps (five feet away) snored on like a mooring-line chafing against a dock. Her laughter faded back into kisses, dry quick kisses that barely required her to move.

“Rin’s eyes,” he said, “I’m half Bali Adron.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I wonder if I have citizenship.”

She paused, and he reached for her. She was fully dressed; indeed she had on her boots. “Goodbye,” she mumbled, kissing his hand. “I came to say goodbye.”

“Goodbye?”

“Hercol and I are going over the wall. Shhh!” Thasha touched his lips with a finger. “We’re all going to break out of here, Pazel. But it’s going to take some time to do it right.”

“No,” he murmured, “wait.”

“Listen before you say no. We’re not going to live here, are we? But what good will it do us to break out, into a city where we’re the only humans? We can’t do anything by day. Our only chance is to learn as much as we can about the city after sundown-on the darkest nights, like this one, cloudy nights with no moon-and then get out, somehow, to the mountains, or in a smaller boat.”

“How are you getting out of the building?”

“Don’t ask me that. Hercol wants you to be able to say you have no idea, in case anything goes wrong. It won’t, though. His plan’s a good one. It may take a few nights of doing this before we find a safe place to hide.”

“Don’t go,” he said.

She sighed deeply, and nuzzled against his cheek, and he knew she’d misunderstood. “No,” he said, “Thasha, something’s happened. I talked to my mother.”

“You were dreaming.”

“Yes, yes, of course I was dreaming. Oh, Gods, it’s still coming back. Felthrup, the Ravens, Pitfire! Thasha, we don’t have a few nights. We’ve got to get out of here now.”

Suddenly Neeps woke with a start. “Thasha! Pazel! What’s the matter?” he whispered.

“Everything, that’s what,” said Pazel. “Thasha, I need to talk to Hercol before you go anywhere.”

Thasha was in no position to refuse, trying as she was to keep from waking still more sleepers. The three youths groped as quietly as they could from the bedchamber to the dining area, where Hercol was crouched in silence. He was not happy to see the tarboys emerge. But he listened as Pazel whispered the fantastic story of his dream.

“It’s so weird that it has to be true,” he said. “Felthrup trailing Arunis to some sort of tavern, overhearing his plans, going back night after night, telling his story to a blary ghost, who tells my mother, who tells me? I couldn’t dream that up.”

“It does have a certain mad air of truth,” said Hercol. “Something, after all, drove Felthrup to spend so long in that closet. But if it is a true message, then all the more reason for us to go as planned, Thasha. We cannot leave the others here to rot in this asylum, but we cannot just set them loose in a city of unknown dangers. Come, girl, it is barely two hours before dawn. Pazel, Neeps, go back to your beds and do not watch what happens next.”

“Ha!” scoffed Neeps. “You take us with you.”

“I will do nothing of the kind,” said Hercol, “and if you think a moment, you will realize how right I am to refuse. If something should happen to me and Thasha, who else stands any chance of finding a way forward? Chadfallow? Possibly, but we all know his limits. No, the burden will fall on you two, and Marila.”

Suddenly Thasha started. “I heard wings, wings flapping!” she said. “Didn’t you hear them?”

“No,” said the Tholjassan firmly.

“What exactly are you looking for?” said Pazel to Hercol. “A way out of the city? And just for us, or for the whole crew?”

“If we don’t go now,” said Hercol, “it won’t matter what I’m looking for.”

“You’re lying,” said Neeps.

Pazel heard the ring of conviction in his voice, and something inside him clicked. Neeps wasn’t always right when he thought he smelled a fib, but he was better at it than anyone else Pazel knew.

“The Stone,” he said, looking at Hercol. “You’re going to try to sneak aboard, and take the Nilstone yourselves, tonight. Break it out of the Shaggat’s hand before someone else does. Hide it somewhere. Take it… take it-”

“Beyond the reach of evil,” said Thasha, looking at her mentor. “He’s right, isn’t he? That’s what all this is about.”

Hercol stared hard at Pazel. “Of all the irksome, interfering tarboys,” he whispered at last. “Yes, I mean to fulfill the oath I took upon the wolf-scar, and that means taking the Nilstone. But I had never meant to do so tonight. First I meant to scout the Lower City, and especially the quay: a failed attempt would only signal to Counselor Vadu that the Stone is worth guarding to the hilt. Of course he may already be doing so, but Fulbreech’s slip of the tongue suggests that Arunis has lied about the Stone, convinced Vadu that it is no more than a trifle. In such tiny errors lies our hope. We must pray that there is more jealousy among our foes: between Arunis and the sorceress, Macadra; among those who call themselves Ravens; among any of the warlords who appear to rule this once-great land.”

“So what do you mean to do now?” asked Neeps.

“Throttle you to start with, Undrabust, if you can’t lower your voice! Be silent, let me think!” Hercol shut his eyes, frowning with concentration. “In light of this… message,” he said at last, “I will seek the Stone tonight. But you, Thasha, will not be going anywhere near the ship. You are to do exactly as we discussed: locate the safest, surest exit from Masalym. If we must run with the Stone to fulfill our oath, so be it.”

“What sort of rubbishy plan is that?” hissed Pazel. “You’re going to send her off into this blary city alone? And try to storm the manger, unarmed, steal the Nilstone and make off with it by yourself?”

“I will not be unarmed for long,” said Hercol. “Ildraquin lies just inside the magic wall, waiting for me. And neither of us will be going alone. Vadu’s seizure of the Chathrand did not catch quite everyone unprepared. It did not, for example, catch me. Or those with my training.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Thasha.

Hercol looked up sharply. Pazel followed his gaze: twenty feet above them, on the roof of the main building, a figure crouched, one arm held out straight before him. A large, powerful bird was just lifting from his arm.

“Oh, Pazel!” said Thasha. “That’s him! That’s Niriviel!”

So it was: Niriviel, the beautiful, woken moon falcon, who had disappeared on the eve of the Chathrand’s plunge into the Nelluroq. A miracle, Pazel thought: that the bird had survived, and that it had found them. For a moment he did not care that the bird was a fanatical Arquali, and had always called them traitors.

The falcon was gone in an instant. On the roof, the figure moved with cat-like silence to the corner. Suddenly its arm snapped toward them, and Hercol, standing straight, caught the end of a rope.

“Time to kill,” whispered Sandor Ott from above.