Robert Redick - The River of Shadows

Thasha blinked, and the shadows grew longer. Now the humans were pulling the carts: were chained to the carts, chained in work teams, chained to wooden posts in the square where the couple had sat a moment before. The dlomu’s faces were as hard as the leather whips they swung. A few humans were still well dressed: the ones carrying dlomic babies, or holding parasols over dlomic heads.

Another blink, and it was midnight. The city was on fire. The dlomu ranged the streets in rival bands, charging one another, stabbing, slashing, cutting throats. Mobs raced from broken doorways with armfuls of stolen goods, prisoners at sword-point, dlomic girls in nightdresses, wailing. The humans scurried in terror, bent low to the earth. They wore rags, when they wore anything at all.

Once more the scene changed. It was a bleak, ashen dawn. Masalym was a city nearly abandoned. The few dlomu to be seen were rebuilding as best they could. The human faces were gone entirely.

“Never to return,” said Thasha aloud.

“We might yet,” said Pazel, embracing her. “The ship’s nearly repaired. We might find a way.”

“Never,” Thasha repeated. “I won’t let her. She had her chance, and look what she did with it. Look at that city, by the Blessed Tree. Are you looking?”

“We see it,” said Hercol. “We’ve been looking at it for days.”

“I won’t let her, Pazel,” said Thasha, trying hard to feel his arms around her. “I want you to stay with me. She can try whatever she wants, but this is me, this is my life, and I will never, ever let her come back.”

5 Modobrin 941

234th day from Etherhorde

PROFESSOR J. L. GARAPAT

Odesh Hened Hulai

Entreats Your Participation in a Gathering of

Extraordinary Consequence for the Several Worlds

Guest of Honor:

Felthrup Stargraven of Pol Warren, Noonfirth, NW Alifros

Tomorrow nightfall

The old tap room, The Orfuin Club

Admission by This Card Only

Your Absolute Discretion Is Assumed

The historians passed the card from hand to hand. They were sharp-eyed and earnest, and ready for a confrontation. It was not right for them to have been stopped at the door. “Extraordinary consequence be damned,” muttered the first of them. “How consequential can it be, Garapat, if your guest of honor never bothered to show?”

“But of course Mr. Stargraven is here!” said Garapat, a tall, frail human with a serious voice and colossally thick glasses in bone frames dangling from his nose. He waved at the round table, which was cluttered with pipe-stands, cakes, gingerbread, mugs of cider and ale, someone’s fiddle, countless books, one black rat. The old leather chairs outnumbered their occupants, but the half dozen seated guests had the look of determined squatters, prepared to resist their eviction.

“Where?” said the historians, jostling. “That animal, that rat? Felthrup Stargraven is the rat?”

“Hello,” said Felthrup miserably.

The historians wanted to squeeze into the room, but could not manage to do so without overtly shoving the old professor from the doorway. Most of the newcomers were humans or dlomu, but there was also a translucent Flikkerman; and the first historian, their leader, had the dusky olive skin and feathered eyes of a selk. It was to the latter that Garapat addressed himself.

“He’s come with a ghastly dilemma,” whispered the professor, indicating Felthrup. “Night after night he’s braved the River of Shadows. He’s no mage, and has no travel allowance. He’s just leaped in and dreamed his way here, by grit and courage. And he’s up against-” The professor leaned close, and whispered in the first historian’s ear. The listener started, jerking his head back to look the professor in the eye.

“A little rat,” he said, “has pitted himself against them?”

“There are worlds at stake,” said Garapat. “Someone has to help him.”

“And naturally that someone is you,” said another historian, who had blue ink-stains on the hand that gripped the door frame. “What’s the matter with you, Garapat? Why do you spend so much time in this club, picking up strays?”

“Garapat’s a fool,” said someone at the back of the crowd.

“He’s from a hell-planet,” said another. “It’s called Argentina. He leaves every chance he gets.”

“Listen,” said Garapat, unperturbed by their slander, “this was terribly hard for me to arrange, and it’s been a washout, and the poor rat’s spirits are so low. Cibranath couldn’t travel, Ramachni’s nowhere to be found. And Felthrup can’t keep making this journey-indeed he doubts he will ever be able to come here again. Leave us a while longer, won’t you?”

“You were supposed to vacate an hour ago,” said the first historian. He had managed to wedge his foot into the meeting room. “And you know perfectly well we can’t work in the common chamber. The tables are far too small. Besides, this is the only summoning room in the Orfuin Club. We can’t finish our work without Ziad, and we can only summon him here. Now, if you please-”

Garapat made one more attempt, reminding them that Alifros was a magnificent world, that a number of their mutual friends called it home, and asking if they were truly willing to contribute to its destruction merely for the sake of a prearranged meeting to discuss the editing of a history text? But the last question doomed his case. Was the study of history some esoteric pastime, rather than a vital tool for understanding the present? The historians bristled at the notion. “I’m going to fetch the innkeeper,” said someone. “Rules are rules.”

Garapat sighed and looked back toward the table. Felthrup had overheard the debate.

“Let them in!” he squeaked, waving his paws. “You’ve done everything I could have hoped for, dear professor. The failure is mine. Enter, sirs, the room is yours of course. Do not trouble Master Orfuin. We will vacate now, and I will return to the ship in disgrace.”

With a shake of his head, Garapat stepped aside, and the crowded room grew quickly more so. The professor’s invited guests-a hypnotist from Cbalu, the high priestess of Rappopolni, a world-skipping baron who had misplaced his physical body decades ago only to become far more contented as a shade, a radical Mzithrini philosopher-cursed and grumbled, and looked at Felthrup shamefaced. “We have done you no service,” said the priestess. “We have wasted your time.”

“And ours,” said the historian with the ink-stains, dropping his own stack of books onto the table.

“You are worse off than before,” the baron agreed sadly. “I felt certain more people would come tonight, Garapat. Mr. Stargraven’s cause is the best you’ve ever championed.”

“They may still be trying to get here,” said the Mzithrini. “The astral paths are dark tonight, and the River turbulent.”

“We managed, somehow,” said the first historian.

“No squabbling!” Felthrup turned in circles on the table. “Scholars, friends. If I reduced you noble souls to fractiousness I should never forgive myself. I will go. I am beaten. I must serve my friends in this small rat’s body, since my mind has done them no good.”

“Now he tries to play on our sympathies,” said the ink-stained man. “Very good: you have them, like the Kidnapped Souls’ Collective that was in here last month. Tragic, but the room’s still ours. Ask Orfuin to send a boy to clean the table, will you?”

“That’s enough, Rusar,” said the selk. “Mr. Stargraven, if it is not safe for you to linger in the common room-”

“It is not safe,” broke in Garapat. “The Raven Society sends members here almost nightly.”

“-then you must trust these new friends of yours to carry on with the effort.”