Robert Redick - The River of Shadows

“No I don’t! What in the Nine Pits are you saying? I’m not Erithusme, I’m Thasha Isiq!”

“Yes,” said Ramachni quietly, “for as long as you wish to be.”

“What did he say to her?” whispered Neeps as he helped Pazel limp along. “Look at her, she’s crying.”

Pazel did not look; he was afraid his own face would be too revealing. What was wrong with Ramachni? Why would he shock her now? He felt furious at the mage, though a part of him knew there must be a reason. There were always mucking reasons. Vital, and cruel.

“Your leg’s worse, eh?” said Neeps.

“Doesn’t matter,” said Pazel. “Don’t say anything about it.”

Suddenly Lunja raised her hand. “Listen!” she said.

A sound was reverberating through the forest: a huge, muffled thump… thump. “A heartbeat,” said Ibjen. The sound rose very quickly, until the giant trees themselves seemed to shake with it, and the more delicate mushrooms trembled with each thump.

“We are nearly there,” shouted Ramachni above the din. “Fear nothing. You are stronger than you know, and Arunis has achieved too much by terror already.”

“That he has,” said Hercol. “Lead on, Ramachni. We will give him no more easy victories.”

On they went, but not three minutes had passed when Pazel realized that Neeps had begun to sob.

“Mate? What’s happened, what’s wrong?”

“Bastard,” spat Neeps. “He’s doing this to me.”

“Doing what?”

Neeps drew a hand over his eyes. “Showing me Marila,” he said. “Captured, hurt… hurt by men.”

“It’s a lie,” said Pazel, gripping him tightly by the arms. “Keep your eyes open. Look at us, look at the trees, anything but what he shows you.”

“I’m trying, damn it!”

Pazel was about to say more, but then, without a moment’s warning, he learned how hard it was to take his own advice. A picture sprang open in his mind, like a child’s pop-up storybook, but utterly real. He saw Arunis cowering, and Thasha taking the Nilstone from his weakened hand-and death consuming her like some ghastly, wildfire mold…

Enraged, he looked at his companions. All save Ramachni were clearly suffering, their faces twisted with anguish and fear. Between the pulses of the unseen heart, Pazel heard Cayer Vispek and his sister, fighting in Mzithrini. Neda sounded almost out of her mind. “She will use it to destroy us, destroy the Pentarchy, to finish her father’s wars! I see Babqri burning, Cayer! I see our people thrown alive onto bonfires!”

“You see what he shows you, not what is. They are not our enemies, Neda Ygrael. We are none of us the people we were-”

“But the girl! She is not what she pretends to be! She has hidden her face from us all along! So many times we’ve been lied to, deceived-”

Letting go of Neeps, Pazel rushed forward and grabbed Neda by the elbow. She whirled, raising her fist. Perhaps in that moment she would have struck at any face but his.

“Trust me,” he begged. “Thasha won’t do anything like that. I promise.”

Neda looked at him, torn by fury and pain. “One Arquali defends the other,” she said.

Pazel was furious in turn. Not that again. He wanted to spit half a dozen retorts in her face, and was struggling against them all, when Bolutu cried, “There, look there! Do you see it?”

Ahead of them, far above the fireflies, a light was shining down. It was the moon, the old yellow moon, and around it Pazel saw a few faint stars. “A rip!” said Lunja. “A hole in the tree-cover!” And so it was: a jagged triangular gap, all the way to the open sky. As they stepped nearer, Pazel saw that something truly monstrous stood in that gap, pointing upward like a great jagged stump.

The moonlight flooded the land below. After so much darkness it felt almost like emerging into sunshine. There was the river, the mighty Ansyndra, sweeping through a glittering curve. There were broad, grassy banks where no mushrooms grew. And on both sides of the river, and even within it, lay gargantuan carved stones. They were bricks, Pazel saw with astonishment: stone bricks the size of houses, grass and turf sprouting atop them, scattered like a child’s building-blocks across the land.

Now Pazel could see the thing piercing the tree-cover. It was what they had taken for a hill, when they looked out across the forest from the crater’s rim. But it was the remains of a circular tower, huge beyond reason, the curve so gradual that at first he took it for a flat wall. Very little of it remained: just a shattered ring of cut stones that had formed its base. For most of the circumference the ring was but sixty or seventy feet tall. But on one side it still rose to dizzying heights, cutting through all four layers of the trees, and rising above the topmost by several hundred feet. The tower projected somewhat into the Ansyndra, so that the current broke and quickened around the wall. And there was, Pazel saw now, one more feature that had survived: a great stone staircase, dead ahead, leading up to a flat surface that must once have been a landing by the tower door.

At the top of those stairs stood Arunis and his madman.

Their backs were turned; they were facing the river. The idiot was hunched, knees slightly bent, arms crossed over his chest. Arunis stood with one hand clenched upon the idiot’s scalp.

Ramachni glanced left and right at the fireflies. Silent as mist, they drifted away, and the wind wrapped around them again: deliciously, then worryingly, cool.

Suddenly Arunis bellowed, shaking the idiot with great violence. “It is there, animal! Call to it, call to it now!”

The heartbeat grew louder, faster. The idiot convulsed, like one in pain-and suddenly the river rose, churning, frothing around the base of the tower. Waves crashed against the ruin and the banks, and a dark hole opened in the river’s surface. Then, just as suddenly, the water fell back into its normal course. Arunis struck the idiot on the head.

Ramachni’s gaze was fixed on the sorcerer. His dark eyes gleamed in the moonlight, and his white fangs showed. “Put me down, Thasha,” he said. She obeyed, and Pazel knew they could all feel it, the power compressed in that tiny form. Ramachni tossed his head about, slowly, like a much larger creature, and those nearest him stepped sideways, making room.

Pazel did not know what Ramachni was up to: something deadly, he hoped. He looked down at the branch Big Skip had provided: solid, but crooked and awkwardly long. A stick, he thought. After all this, I’m going to rush Arunis with a stick.

“Fight now, as never before!” cried Ramachni suddenly. Then he leaped into the air, and something about him changed, and he did not fall to earth again but ran above it, and about him Pazel saw a ghost-body forming. It was a monstrous bear, thundering through the grass and scattered trees, and before he knew it he and all the others were racing after him, their foes cornered at last.

The bear grew more solid and heavy as they ran, but Ramachni’s tiny form was still visible within it, running and leaping with the same motions as the huge animal that surrounded him. Pazel lost ground, as he knew he would. He could try to ignore the pain in his leg, but that did not make it work any better.

As soon as Ramachni bounded onto the stone staircase, Arunis whirled. He seized the idiot by the back of the neck. “Slay them!” he howled. “Kill them all!”

The idiot turned, looking at them blankly-and there it was, cradled against his chest: the black sphere of the Nilstone. All at once he screamed like a furious infant, and four tall, gaunt creatures rose out of the stone before him and flew down the stairs. They were vaguely human, with great mats of wiry hair and the fangs of jungle cats. But in a moment of sickening insight Pazel saw that their faces were identical: all four had the face of one of the birdwatchers in the Conservatory, the one who had objected the loudest when Arunis claimed the idiot for his own.