Robert Redick - The River of Shadows

Thasha stared into the blackness of the Stone. She was dimly aware that Neeps was beside her. His bruised hand on her shoulder, his lemon-smell, his appalled face turned to Ramachni. She saw Neda come and bend down beside her and whisper a short prayer. She felt Pazel’s eyes on her again.

“What was your part in this accord?” Hercol asked Ramachni.

“I pledged to watch over the girl as best I could,” said the mage, “and to help when the time came for her to learn the truth. Yet even as I spoke my promise, Arunis attacked, and our spell of protection around the house buckled at his first assault. The timbers shook; the fire died in the hearth. We could wait no longer. Your eyes, Mistress, fell on Isiq’s old mariner’s clock, and in a matter of seconds you cast a flawless spell. When you opened the clock face, I saw my escape path: a tunnel back to the world I’d left so long ago, to become your student. That clock has ever since been my secret door into Alifros.

“The house shook again, and you turned to me for the last time. ‘Ramachni Fremken, the path to the future is dark, but I think I see you waiting for me upon it, far ahead through war and ruin, in a glade that is sunlit yet.’

“Then you vanished, and Clorisuela gasped and placed a hand upon her stomach. ‘It is done,’ she said, ‘there is a child within me.’ Hearing that, I took my leave.”

“Then it’s true,” said Neeps, putting his arms around her. “Clorisuela was your mother. Do you hear me? Thasha?”

She leaned against him in silence. Her hand was still tight on Ildraquin. The sorcerer’s blood was still drying on its blade.

“Why is the girl so solemn?” murmured Neda, stanching a wound on the Turach’s arm. “We have recovered the Nilstone, and killed the greatest enemy of North and South alike. This is victory, is it not?”

Lunja glanced at Thasha. One of her silver eyes was bruised and bloodshot. “It is a victory,” she said, “but not the last one, I think.”

“There ain’t never a final victory,” said the old Turach with feeling. “Not till you hang your sword over the mantel, anyway, and settle down to fat. And even then the fight can come looking for you. Remember the Great Peace, Miss Neda?”

The sworn enemies looked at each other. It seemed that either might have laughed, but neither did. “Anyway,” said the Turach, “don’t mind the Isiq girl. She’s just snipped a hairy daisy. The first one’s always a shock.”

Cayer Vispek sat on the grass nearby, bare to the waist. Myett, behind him, was digging splinters from his wounded back. “No,” she said, “it is not yet time to celebrate. Arunis lies dead, but he has left us with the burden of the Stone. And from what I have seen, the wicked are drawn to it, like flies to a feast.”

“There is something else,” said Cayer Vispek. “The dark thing that jumped from the river, and shot away into the sky. What was it? Arunis was looking that way even as he fell-even in the moment of his death. I have an idea that he was smiling.”

The old Turach bent over, spat blood into the grass. “He ain’t smiling now,” he said.

“I kept my promise,” said Ramachni. “I guarded you in secret. But when Sandor Ott killed Clorisuela, I realized that the Isiqs were entangled far more deeply in the fate of Alifros than I had suspected. I was a fool not to have seen it: your choice of them, Mistress, had not been random at all. We knew Arunis wanted the Nilstone, but you saw so much further. How he was using the Shaggat, using Sandor Ott, using the very Empire of Arqual. And given such an enemy, you saw that no fortress in Alifros would ever be sufficient to guard the Nilstone. When you returned you would have to finish the great task of your life. You would have to take the Nilstone beyond this world.

“I did not know all that you intended, or how it was to be done. The Chathrand was a part of it: your old vessel, delivered with great reluctance into the hands of that Trading Family, so long ago. And of course this new being, this Thasha Isiq, would prove essential. So I sought help from the few I trusted: the Mother Prohibitor of the Lorg School; and the deposed Empress of Arqual, valiant Maisa, whose strength and goodness reminded me so much of your own.”

“And Maisa,” added Hercol, “gave me into your service, Ramachni. At last! At last I know whom I have been guarding, teaching, scolding all these years.” He looked at Thasha, and though his voice held love and even humor, there was caution as well. “I might have sparred with you more gently, mage, if I had known my peril.”

Ramachni sighed and bowed his head. “That, Mistress, is the story of your birth. By which I mean your rebirth, of course.” He looked up at her with his piercing eyes. “But I think I am only confirming what you know. For surely you have called your memories back? Are you not yourself once more, Erithusme?”

He did not see it; perhaps he did not dare. But Hercol should have understood, if he had seen her strike Arunis down. It was no magic, no wizard’s spell. The calm, the focus, the timing of her sprint and swing. Not a step but as he’d taught her. No tools at her command but his own.

They were patient with her-she still had not moved or spoken-and she knew that for a time she must be patient with their unseeing. Cayer Vispek lugged the body of the sorcerer from her sight. Neda carried off the gory head. Hercol took Ildraquin from her hand and carefully rolled the Nilstone away. It left behind a trail of scalded grass.

Neeps scrambled up to the top of the wall. “Come on, you,” he said. “No more larking about up here.”

“I’m dizzy,” said Pazel.

“Then slide on your bum, one step at a time.” Neeps glanced down at Thasha and lowered his voice. “You need to talk with her, mate. She’s not doing well. In fact I’m not sure she’s all there.”

Pazel looked at Thasha for a long time. “I wonder,” he said at last.

Neeps extended a hand to help Pazel up. But just then Ramachni appeared, scurrying up the last steps, nimble again. He sat down on the stone before the tarboys and bared his teeth.

“A fine night’s work,” he said. “Thanks to you we are still on the path we chose together, so long ago. And it is clear to me now that you will let no fear or pain turn you from it. Hold your heads high, dearest friends.”

“Ramachni,” said Ensyl, “what was the thing that leaped from the river? Was it what Arunis was seeking before we attacked?”

“Yes,” said Pazel, before Ramachni could answer. “It was the Swarm. All along he’s wanted to release it. And he managed to, with the help of the Nilstone, just before he died.”

Ramachni’s black eyes closed a moment. “I thought,” he said, “to give you some time to savor this victory, to regain your feet, as it were. But I will not deceive you. Pazel is quite correct. The Swarm of Night has entered Alifros. Only a tiny piece of it, a little clot of darkness. But it does not belong in this world. It exists to guard the borders of the world of the dead, to stop the deceased from returning. Death makes it grow stronger, larger, and to death it will be drawn. But it was never meant to enter the living world, and I fear it will destroy any life it touches. Plants, or animals, or woken souls.”

“Like the Nilstone?” said Ensyl.

“More or less,” said Ramachni. “But don’t you see the danger? The Swarm both kills and feeds on death. The more it kills, the larger it will grow; the larger it grows, the more it will be able to kill, until at last it becomes a black wildfire no power can contain. Arunis may have perished, but his dream of a dead world is closer than ever to coming true.”

The others just looked at him, too exhausted to respond. Pazel was only dimly aware of his aching bruises, his trickling wounds. And the deeper aching of his mind: that he was numb to as well. Neeps sank to his knees with a deep sigh. Ensyl placed her palms on Pazel’s leg and leaned into them, arms outstretched, like a runner propping herself up at the end of a race. But it wasn’t the end, not yet.