Robert Redick - The River of Shadows

Myett. Taliktrum’s hands tightened to fists. What possible excuse? Had she been hounded out by worshippers, by vicious expectation?

An outrage, that’s what it was. Ride away with the humans, to the Pits with the clan. And he could only watch them go. The woman who had loved his aunt, and the woman who had loved him. Indeed the only such woman, apart from the mother who had died in his infancy-and the aunt herself.

They were forty feet gone, then sixty, then as far as a giant could throw a stone. Something overcame him, and he dived on his swallow-wings and flew with all his strength, needing to touch her, command her, speak some word of fury or desire.

With five yards to go he swerved away. Coward, weakling! Who was he to question Myett? On what authority? Moral, rational, the law of the clan? He was nothing, he was far less than nothing. He was an ixchel alone.

“No sign of the great Captain Rose,” grumbled Neeps. “After all his rage and noise and don’t-you-be-lates. I wonder if he meant a single word.”

Pazel answered with stuporous grunt.

“Even this morning he acted like he was getting ready to come with us,” Neeps went on. “And it didn’t seem like a lie. Maybe he couldn’t bear to leave Oggosk, in the end. Do you think she really could be his mother?”

Pazel shrugged.

“You’re not going to speak to me all the way to the mountain, are you?” said Neeps.

“Doubt it,” muttered Pazel.

They were still in darkness, though the tops of the mountains had begun to glow. The “highway” that ran through Masalym’s Inner Dominion, from the city to the mountain pass, was really no more than a wide footpath, hugging the left bank of the meandering Mai. Fog blanketed the river, snagged on the reeds where birds were chattering, spilled here and there over the path, so that the horse’s legs became stirring spoons. Already the city lay an hour behind.

“You heard what I told Marila,” said Neeps. “I said I’d stay behind. Credek, Pazel, I tried all night to convince her.”

Pazel waved a beetle from the horse’s neck. He was glad he was riding in front, where there was no need to look Neeps in the eye.

“She wouldn’t let me stay,” Neeps pleaded.

“Did you ever make her believe you wanted to?”

That shut him up. Pazel felt a twinge of guilt for not wanting to hear Neeps talk anymore. But why should he, after a whole night lying awake, suffering for both of them, furious that they’d let it happen now.

“When was it, Neeps?” he said at last, trying and failing to keep the bitterness from his voice. “That night you almost killed Thasha, while I was on Bramian?”

“Yes,” said Neeps. “That was the first time.”

“The first time. Pitfire. Were there many?”

“We tried to be careful,” said Neeps.

Pazel bit his tongue. He was thinking how easily a jab with either elbow would knock his friend to the ground.

“Those storms on the Ruling Sea,” Neeps was saying. “We really thought we were going to die. And the mutiny, the rats… and then we woke up in the ixchel’s blary pen.”

“Why didn’t you just tell me?”

“What, from in there? Shouting through the window? Or afterward, you mean? ‘Listen, mate, I’m sorry Thasha’s taken up with that grinning bastard Fulbreech, but you’ll be glad to know that I’m-’ No, we couldn’t have done that to you. And by then it was too late. Probably.”

“But Gods damn it, you’re stupid! Both of you.”

He’d spoken too loudly; Thasha’s glance shamed them both into silence. For at least half a minute.

“You know what I think?” said Neeps.

“I never have yet.”

“I think it could have happened to you and Thasha.”

Half a dozen retorts occurred to Pazel instantly-and melted on his tongue, one after another. “Let’s say that were true,” he managed at last. “So what?”

“So try thanking your stars,” said Neeps, “instead of going on like Mother Modesty about the two of us.”

This time the silence lasted a good mile as they trotted down the dusty trail, past the fisherfolk’s mud huts, the trees with their limbs dangling low over the water. Pazel thought he smelled lemon trees. But he had yet to see a lemon or anything like it in the South.

“Neeps,” he said at last, “I’m sorry. You’re right.”

After a moment, Neeps said, “So are you.”

“What did you say to Marila, just before we left the ship? When you took her hand and ran off toward the Silver Stair?”

“You mean Thasha hasn’t told you?”

“Told me what?”

Neeps actually managed a laugh. “Pazel, Marila and I had already talked right through the blary night. We didn’t leave the stateroom to talk. We went straight to Captain Rose and asked him to marry us. And he did.”

An hour later the whole western range was bathed in sunlight. There were vineyards here, and pear trees, and herds of sheep and goats and birthigs that scattered at their approach. Lamps passed from window to window in the waking farmhouses. Dogs appeared out of nowhere, challenged the hunting dogs briefly, changed their minds. The land was as peaceful as Masalym had been chaotic.

Suddenly Cayer Vispek cried out a warning: dust clouds behind them, and faintly, the pounding of hooves. Someone was giving chase.

The soldiers raised spears and halberds. Pazel’s hand went instinctively to the sword at his belt, though he knew nothing about fighting on horseback. Ensyl stood up on her horse and studied the road through the monocular scope that had belonged to her dead mistress. “It is just one rider,” she said. “A dlomu, coming fast.” Then she lowered the scope and looked at them, amazed. “It’s Counselor Vadu,” she said.

He was dressed in the same fine armor he had worn at the welcome ceremony, the gold breastplate gleaming in the early sun. He rode with a great battle-axe lashed sidelong across his back, and on his belt hung the shattered Plazic Blade. He galloped right up to the travelers, then reined in his horse.

“If you think to turn us back,” said Hercol by way of greeting, “you have made a worthless trip. Unless it be that the sorcerer is found.”

Vadu glared at Hercol as he caught his breath. “The mage is not found,” he said at last, “but the city is calming under Olik’s stewardship. And I… I will not sit and wait for death at the hands of the White Raven.”

“She will forgive nothing short of the Nilstone’s return,” said Bolutu, “and that you cannot provide. We are not setting out to wrest the Stone from one sorcerer only to hand it over to his ally. Go your own way, Vadu. Or ride with us to Garal Crossing, and then turn east on the Coast Road and follow the Issar into exile. But do not seek to thwart our mission.”

The soldiers began to grumble ominously: whatever the chaos in Masalym, Vadu had been their commander for years, and now this strange dlomu, who had come on the ship with the mutant tol-chenni, was trying to dismiss him like a page.

“I say he’s more than just welcome,” said one sicuna-rider. “I say that if anyone’s to lead this expedition, it’s Counselor Vadu.”

The other soldiers shouted, “Hear, hear! Vadu!”

A sword whistled from its sheath. Hercol raised Ildraquin before him, sidelong, and the men stopped their cheering at the sight of the black blade. “Olik entrusted this mission to me,” said Hercol, “and my oath binds me to the cause as well. I cannot follow this man, who ordered regicide, and helped Arunis gain the Nilstone to begin with.”

Everyone went sharply rigid. The Turachs nudged their mounts away from the dlomu; the sfvantskors watched the others like wolves tensed to spring. But the dlomic soldiers were all looking at Vadu’s Plazic Knife, still sheathed upon his belt. “You can’t fight him,” muttered one. “Don’t try, if this mission means anything to you at all.”