Steven Brust - Taltos

But it was a horrible thing to hold, and I never did get used to it. I knew there were those who regularly carried them, and I wondered if they were sick, or merely made of better stuff than I.

I forced myself to take a few cuts and thrusts with it. I set up a pine board so I could practice thrusting it into something. I held it the whole time, using my left hand to put the board against a wall on top of a dresser. I held my right hand, with the knife, rigidly out to the side away from my left hand. I must have looked absurd, but Loiosh didn’t laugh. I could tell he was exercising great courage in not flying from the room.

Well, so was I, for that matter.

I thrust it into the board about two dozen times, forcing myself to keep striking until I relaxed a bit, until I could treat it as just a weapon. I never fully succeeded, but I got closer. When I finally resheathed the thing, I was drenched with sweat and my arm was stiff and sore.

I put it back in its box.

“Thanks, boss. I feel better.”

“Me, too. Okay. Everything is set for tomorrow. Let’s get some rest.”

As we stood, I said to Aliera, “So tell me, what’s so special about you that you can leave here and Morrolan can’t?”

“It’s in the blood,” she said.

“Do you mean that, or is it a figure of speech?”

She looked at me scornfully. “Take it however you will.”

“Ummm, would you like to be more specific?”

“No,” said Aliera.

I shrugged. At least she hadn’t told me she owed me no explanation. I was getting tired of that particular phrase. Before us was a wall, and paths stretched out to the right and to the left. I looked to the right.

I said, “Morrolan, do you know anything about that water Verra drank and fed to Aliera?”

“Very little,” he said.

“Do you think it might allow us to—”

“No,” said Aliera and Morrolan in one voice. I guess they knew more about it than I did, which wasn’t difficult. They didn’t offer any explanations and I didn’t press the issue. We just stood for a long moment, then Morrolan said, “I think there is no choice. You must go. Leave me here.”

“No,” said Aliera.

I chewed on my lower lip. I couldn’t think of anything to say. Then Morrolan said, “Come. Whatever we decide, I wish to look upon the Cycle.”

Aliera nodded. I had no objection.

We took the path to the left.

The horizon jumped and misted, the candle exploded, the knife vibrated apart, and the humming became, in an instant, a roar that deafened me.

On the ground before me, the rune glowed like to blind me, and I realized that I was feeling very sleepy. I knew what that meant, too. I had no energy left to even keep me awake. I was going to lose consciousness, and I might or might not ever regain it, and I might or not be mad if I did.

My vision wavered, and the roar in my ears became a single monotone that was, strangely, the same as silence. In the last blur before I slipped away, I saw on the ground, in the center of the rune, the object of my desire—that which I’d done all of this to summon—sitting placidly, as if it had been there all along.

I wondered, for an instant, why I was taking no joy in my success; then I decided that it probably had something to do with not knowing if I’d live to use it. But there was still somewhere the sense of triumph for having done something no witch had ever done before, and a certain serene pleasure in having succeeded. I decided I’d feel pretty good if it didn’t kill me.

Dying, I’ve found, always puts a crimp in my enjoyment of an event.

I’d love to see a map of the Paths of the Dead.

Ha.

We followed the wall to the left, and it kept circling around until we ought to have been near the thrones, but we were still in a hallway with no ceiling. The stars vanished sometime in thee, leaving a grey overcast, yet there was no lessening in the amount of light I thought had been provided by the stars. I dunno.

The wall ended and we seemed to be on a cliff overlooking a sea. There was no sea closer than a thousand miles to Deathgate Falls, but I suppose I ought to have stopped expecting geographical consistency some time before.

We stared out at the dark, gloomy sea for a while and listened to its roar. It stretched out forever, in distance and in time. I can’t look at a sea, even the one at home, without wondering about who lives beyond it. What sorts of lives do they have? Better than ours? Worse? So similar I couldn’t tell the difference? So different I couldn’t survive there? What would it be like? How did they live? What sorts of beds did they have? Were they soft and warm, like mine, safe and—

“Vlad!”

“Uh, what?”

“We want to get moving,” said Morrolan.

“Oh. Sorry. I’m getting tired.”

“I know.”

“Okay, let’s—Wait a minute.”

I reached around and opened my pack, dug around amid the useless witchcraft supplies I’d carried all this way, and found some kelsch leaves. I passed them around. “Chew on these,” I said.

We all did so, and, while nothing remarkable or exciting happened, I realized that I was more awake. Morrolan smiled. “Thanks, Vlad.”

“I should have thought of it sooner.”

“I should have thought of it, boss. That’s my job. Sorry.”

“You’re tired, too. Want a leaf? I’ve got another.”

“No, thanks. I’ll get by.”

We looked around, and far off to our right was what seemed to be a large rectangle. We headed toward it. As we got closer, it resolved itself into a single wall about forty feet high and sixty feet across. As we came still closer, we could see there was a large circular object mounted on its face. My pulse quickened.

Moments later the three of us stood contemplating the Cycle of the Dragaeran Empire.

Raiet picked up a carriage at the Imperial Palace the next day and went straight to the home of his mistress. A Dragon-lord rode with him, another rode next to the driver, and a third, on horseback, rode next to the carriage, or in front of it, or behind it. Loiosh flew above it, but that wasn’t part of their arrangements.

Watching them through my familiar’s eyes, I had to admire their precision, futile though it was. The one on top of the coach got down first, checked out the area, and went straight into the building and up to the flat, which was on the second floor of the three-story brick building.

If you’d been there watching, you would have seen the rider dismount smartly as the driver got down and held the door for the two inside while looking up and down the street, and up at the rooftops as well. Raiet and the two Dragons walked into the building together. The first one was already inside the flat and had checked it over. Raiet’s mistress, who name was Treffa, nodded to the Dragon and continued setting out chilled wine. She seemed a bit nervous as she went about this, but she’d been growing more and more nervous as this testimony business continued.

As he finished checking the apartment, the other two Dragons delivered Raiet. Treffa smiled briefly and brought the wine into the bedchamber. He turned to one of the Dragons and shook his head. “I think she’s getting tired of this.”

The Dragon probably shrugged; he’d been assigned to protect a Jhereg, but he didn’t have to like it, or him, and I assume he didn’t. Raiet walked into the bedchamber and closed the door. Treffa walked over to the door and did something to it.

“What’s that, babe?”

“A soundproofing spell. I just bought it.”

He chuckled. “They making you nervous?”

She nodded.

“I suppose it’s starting to wear on you.”

She nodded again and poured them each a glass of wine.

When he hadn’t appeared after his usual few hours, the Dragons knocked on the door. When no one answered, they broke the door down. They found his lifeless and soulless body on the bed, a Morganti knife buried in his chest. They wondered why they hadn’t heard him scream, or the window opening. Treffa lay next to him, drugged and unconscious. They couldn’t figure out how the drugs had gotten into the wine, and Treffa was no help with any of it.