Robert Redick - The River of Shadows

“Just so, kind stranger.” Felthrup sniffed as Garapat prepared to lift him from the table. “And may I say in passing that it is an honor to meet with members of the Tribe of Odesh, however briefly.”

“You know something of Odesh, do you?” said the Flikkerman dubiously, as he settled into his chair.

“I know you are pledged to defend knowledge above all else,” said Felthrup, “and that you have paid a great price for that dedication, through the centuries-not least when the Emerald King burned the archive at Valkenreed, and threw the librarians into the flames. I know how heroically you have labored since then-labored against forgetting, as your motto proclaims. It is a mission to which I aspire in my dreams, though I know full well that I am unsuitable. Why, I cannot even grasp a pen.”

The bustling scholars had grown still as Felthrup spoke. Now all eyes were on him. “You’ve been telling him about us, then, Garapat?” said the selk.

“Not a word,” said the professor.

“Then where, Mr. Stargraven, did you learn about the Tribe of Odesh?”

“By reading, sir,” said Felthrup. “I have no library of my own, but in the course of my journey I have read certain small selections from a book by Pazel Doldur.”

“Pazel Doldur!” shouted all the scholars at once.

Suddenly the lamplight flickered. Paintings on the walls rattled in their frames, and a number of the items on the table danced in place for an instant.

“There, now we’ve gone and summoned him by accident!” said the first historian. “Welcome to an increasingly chaotic evening, Doldur. No, we didn’t mean to bring you here. We’re with Ziad, if you care to know. We’re your competition.”

“Felthrup,” said Professor Garapat, “are we to understand that when you spoke of the Merchant’s Polylex you meant the thirteenth edition? Are you really in possession of a copy?”

“Of course,” said Felthrup. “But who were you speaking to?”

All at once he squealed, and jumped three feet straight up from the table. Something had stroked his back, though no one in the chamber had moved.

“They were speaking to the editor-in-chief of your Polylex, Felthrup,” said Garapat, “and a man whose second great work, Dafvniana: A Critical History, is, dare I say, nearing completion?”

“All in good time, Jorge Luis,” said an old man’s rasping voice. The rat’s fur stood on end: the voice was coming from an empty chair. Felthrup backed away in instinctive terror, until he stepped onto a fork and scared himself anew.

Garapat nodded at the chair. “Mr. Doldur has not gone to his final rest. He is a dweller in Agaroth, death’s twilight borderland, while he waits for his own subeditors to finish their work.”

“I want to have a look at the last book that will ever bear my name,” said the voice. “Is that so very odd?”

“Most understandable, I should say,” continued Garapat, “especially as A Critical History will serve as the cornerstone of Dafvni studies for decades to come.”

The other scholars hissed: “Not true! Our book will do so. Ours will be finished first.”

“These gentlemen are writing a similar book,” said Garapat, “but both teams were hobbled, tragically, by the early deaths of their editors. The difference is that Ziad would happily retire to his grave, and leave these worthies to complete the book alone. But they still long for, indeed demand, his help. Consequently they have… delayed the natural course of things.”

“What is ‘natural’?” scoffed one historian. “ ‘Natural’ is an abstraction, a will-o’-the-wisp. Besides, he signed a contract.”

“I will be off,” said the voice from the chair. “My compliments to Ziad. And I will thank you to be more careful what you chant in Orfuin’s summoning room, henceforth. Next time you bring me here in error I shall scatter your documents, and your ale.”

“But Doldur!” said the time-skipping baron, who appeared to be the only one who could see him, “you simply must meet Stargraven before you go.”

“I am dead, sir. And a full professor, too. I must do very little.”

“He knows your protegee’s son, your namesake.”

The chair squeaked, and a pile of books slid sideways. Felthrup had the impression that someone was leaning toward him over the table. “You know Pathkendle? Pazel Pathkendle, Suthinia’s boy?”

“Of course,” said Felthrup. “We are allies, and fond friends. Shipmates, too-or so we have been.” Felthrup’s cheek began to twitch. “But Arunis and Macadra are going to steal our ship, steal it and sail away. What they will do with the human beings I cannot imagine. But the Nilstone! It will pass into their hands, and that will bring disaster on us all. Macadra’s Ravens are already the power behind the Bali Adro throne; I heard that much in this club, before Prince Olik said a word. Her dream is to bind all Alifros within that Empire, with her at its ugly center. And that plan is sweet-tender, modest, benevolently restrained-compared with Arunis’ own. He would use the Stone not to rule Alifros, but to destroy it. He told Macadra how it was to be done, and it even shocked her. Orfuin heard them and closed the club!”

“He didn’t,” said Doldur.

“He did, in fact,” said Garapat, as heads nodded around the table.

“He did! Oh, he did!” Felthrup was rubbing his paws together before his face. “I was hiding under the stool in the form of a small wriggly thing, an yddek, and Orfuin called them devils and announced that the bar was closing, that they could not plot holocausts here, and Macadra’s servants were so angry that one of them stomped a little sweeper to death, and would have done the same to me if I had moved from hiding, and then vines closed over the doors and the terrace vanished, and the River of Shadows took us all. But Master Doldur! I cannot warn my friends! Arunis has placed a lock on my dream-memories! I thought someone here might carry the message for me, but all these nights of asking, pleading, have been in vain. No one goes to Masalym, or comes from there.”

“It is a dark place on dreamers’ maps,” said the baron. “No roads lead there. One could take to the River, of course. There was an entrance under the pool in the Temple of Vasparhaven, but no one speaks of it anymore. I think it has been sealed.”

“I beg your pardon,” said the selk historian, “but the very source of the River of Shadows in Alifros is not far from Masalym.”

“And it’s our research site, not theirs,” grumbled the ink-stained man.

“Not far on the scale of the world,” said the baron, nodding. “The River does indeed surface deep in the Efaroc Peninsula. But it would be no swift journey after that: out of the Infernal Forest, up the winding river, across the lava fields with their horrid guardians, over the glacier lake. Then down again, by a long path to the city of waterfalls. Many days it would take, even if no storms impede the passage of the mountains.”

“We have no time for such adventures,” said Felthrup. “Oh why, why does he want to do it? Ramachni says that Arunis is a native of Alifros, that he belongs there. Where does he mean to live when it is gone?”

“You mustn’t grow hysterical,” said Doldur.

“I mustn’t,” Felthrup agreed, dropping violently into a squat.

“They may hear you in the common room,” said Garapat.

“Worse,” said Felthrup. “If I grow hysterical I shall wake, and it will be over, finished. I am alone on the Chathrand already! The dlomu have evacuated the ship, and a new crew is coming. I fear I will soon wake no matter how I behave. It is not easy to sleep so long. My stomach is empty and growling like a wildcat.”

“Eat some cake,” said the ink-stained scholar.