Robert Redick - The River of Shadows

“You are friends of Olik?” he said, his feathered eyebrows knitting. “How close? Did the prince give you no token of that friendship to prove your claim?”

Pazel could only shake his head. “Nothing, as far as I know,” he said.

“Then you are his friend indeed,” said Kirishgan, delighted. “Olik hands gems to those he wishes others to be wary of. Had you produced one I should have told you nothing more. But this changes matters. Olik Ipandracon! Years have passed since I saw his noble face. Where does he wander now?”

Pazel told him what he understood of Olik’s fight against the Ravens and Arunis. Kirishgan was dismayed. “Let him not fall into the hands of Macadra!” he said. “She would find a way to kill even a Bali Adro prince, if it suited her. But more likely she would alter his face by magic or mutilation, and hide him in one of the royal ‘hospitals’ in the west, where those she fears to kill outright are locked away.”

“Your Empire seems fond of such places,” said Pazel. “We were locked in one ourselves. Oh, Pitfire, we should have begged Olik to come with us.”

“Do not despair for him yet,” said the selk. “The prince has a knack for survival, as any must who fall afoul of the Ravens. But Bali Adro is not my Empire, Pazel. Indeed, we selk refuse all citizenship save that of Alifros itself. When I first woke into life, Bali Adro was a little territory on the Nemmocian frontier, and this temple was yet to be built, and the waters of Ilvaspar remained frozen even in summer. Lake and mountain claim no citizenship, nor do the eagles drifting above them. So it is with the selk. By ancient practice most countries grant us freedom of movement, and we joke with border guards that we permit them the same. In any case there are few who could prevent our coming and going.”

“But don’t you have a home?” asked Pazel. “The place you were born, a place you dream of going back to?”

Kirishgan’s eyes grew briefly wary. “That is one secret I am sworn to keep,” he said.

There was an awkward silence. Then Kirishgan seemed to reach some decision, and gestured for Pazel to lean close. In a softer voice, he said, “Hear me, lad. For as long as the Ravens have existed there have been those who fought them. I am one of that number: I resolved long ago to resist them until the day I breathe no more. Olik has made a similar choice, and so have many across Bali Adro and even beyond it. Once, the dlomic Emperors stood with us. But for well over a century now the throne of Bali Adro has been merely a tool of the Ravens, the figurehead behind which they marshaled the Platazcra.”

“I thought those Blades were the whole cause of this Platazcra,” said Pazel.

“By no means,” said Kirishgan. “The Blades and their power are an awful drug, but more awful still is the idea. The hideous idea! Dlomu Irrimatak! Dlomu atop the hill, all others at their feet! It is the founding lie of the Platazcra that such is the natural order, the right path for the universe. How else to sustain a cult of infinite conquest? Without a belief that dlomic supremacy was ordained by heaven, there would be no Platazcra, only frenzied warfare among the various keepers of the Blades. The Ravens rule the South, Pazel, because they gave the dlomu a sick, sweet lie to believe in. And now, through that lie, the dlomu are destroying themselves.”

“Everyone believes in that lie,” said Pazel.

Kirishgan sat back, startled.

“I mean, it’s no different in the North,” Pazel went on. “The Shaggat’s cult on Gurishal-that’s infinite conquest, too. And the Secret Fist, Arqual’s network of spies-why, they’re selling the same blary story to the Arquali people: that they should rule everyone, everywhere, because they’re naturally better and Rin wants it that way.”

His voice tightened. “Do you know how many Arqualis have told me I ought to feel grateful, Kirishgan? Told me how lucky I am that Arqual came along and noticed me, lifted me up? Rin’s eyes, half the Arqualis I’ve met think they ought to be in charge of the world. Not consciously, I don’t mean that. It’s half buried, but it’s there.”

The selk’s eyes were suddenly far away. For a moment Pazel was afraid that he had given offense. Then Kirishgan blinked and looked at him again, and his gentle smile returned.

“Your words touch me,” he said. “The old prejudices, the cleaving to the tribe: half buried, you call them. But if you were a selk you might take hope from that assertion. To bury them halfway is a great achievement. When at last they are fully buried, they can decay into the primal soil from whence they came.”

Pazel looked down at his tea. Years of insults, abuses, slurs flowed like a phantom river through his mind. “I understand your words,” he said at last, “but I don’t think you’d see it that way if you were in my shoes.”

“Perhaps not,” said Kirishgan. “But I am not in your shoes. And when I looked at your party from the balcony I saw a miracle: humans and dlomu riding out together, side by side. That is something I have not witnessed since before the days of slavery and plague.”

Pazel was abashed. He was sharing tea with a being whose memory spanned centuries. And lecturing him, with the deep wisdom of his years.

“Kirishgan,” he said, “my hand’s getting colder.”

“That is expected,” said the other.

“Am I really going to go blind?”

The selk was quiet a moment, and closed his feathered eyes. “There is darkness ahead of you,” he said at last, “but of what sort I cannot fathom. Despite my great age I am new to Spider Telling. And even the Master has his limits. ‘We pan for gold, like peasants along the Mai,’ he says, ‘but the river is dark, and the sun shrouded, and the gold we call the future is more often dust than bright stones.’ ”

“I’ve been scared so many times,” said Pazel. “From the first few days on the Chathrand. Out of my wits, if you care to know. But blindness?” He drew a shuddering breath. “I don’t think I can face that, Kirishgan.”

The selk looked at Pazel a moment longer, then drank off his tea abruptly and rose. “The time approaches,” he said. “Let us go.”

Pazel got to his feet, and Kirishgan took a candle from the window and led him quickly through the chambers of wood and glass, the varied people of Vasparhaven bowing and smiling as they went. Finally they reached a spiral stair and began to climb. Three floors they ascended, emerging at last into a small, unlit chamber. It was cold here; the walls were ancient, moss-covered stone. There was a single door, and a round stone table of about elbow height in the center of the room, on which rested a box.

Kirishgan set the candle on the table. Opening the box, he withdrew a small square of parchment, a writing quill and a bottle of ink. Pazel looked upward: he could not make out the ceiling. “What is this place, Kirishgan?” he asked.

“A medetoman, a spider-telling chamber,” said the selk. “Now, let me think-”

He primed the quill with ink, gazed distractedly at the crumbling walls for a moment and then wrote a few neat, swift words on the parchment scrap. He raised the scrap close to the candleflame, drying the ink. As he did so he looked up thoughtfully at Pazel.

“Your country was seized and savaged. It is true that I cannot know what that is like, having no country to lose. Still, I do know something of loss, Pazel Pathkendle. The selk have been killed in great numbers by the Platazcra. We are loath to bow before those we do not love, and our failure to grovel at the bloodstained feet of the Emperor has made us suspect. This was bad enough when the Plazic Blades granted Bali Adro victory after victory. Now that triumph has turned to chaos and defeat, it has grown much worse. Among other things, we are blamed for the decay of the Blades themselves. We talk to eguar, you see.”