Steven Erikson: Blood follows

Guld had used the tower for three years now. He’d seen a few shades, all of whom vowed service to a lich who dwelt under the tower’s foundations, but apart from proferring this tidbit of information, they’d said little and had never threatened him, and the nature of their service to the lich remained a mystery.

It had been Guld who’d asked them to moan and howl occasionally, keeping the plunderers and explorers at bay. They’d complied with tireless dedication.

The clouds felt heavy overhead as Guld waited-as if bloated with blood. The sergeant stood unmoving, expecting at any moment the first drops of something to come spattering against his face.

After a while, he sensed a presence beside him and slowly turned to find a shade hovering near the trapdoor.

Clothed in wispy rags, ghostly limbs sporting knotted strips of sailcloth, twine and faded silk-all that held it to this mortal world-its black-pit eyes, set in a pallid face, were fixed on the sergeant.

Guld sensed, with sudden alarm, that the shade had been but moments from launching itself at his back. One shove, and over I’d go…

Discovered, the ghostly figure now slumped, grumbling to itself.

“Pleased with the weather?” Guld asked, fighting down a chill shiver.

“An air,” the shade rasped, “to smother sound and scent. Dull the vision. Yet it dances unseen.”

“How so?”

“Among the Warrens, this air dances bright. My master, my lord, lich of liches, supreme ruler, He Who Awakened All Groggy after centuries of slumber but is now Bursting With Wit, my master, then, sends me-me, humourless serf, humble savant of social injustices, injustices that persist no doubt to this day, me, then, I come with a warning by his insistent command.”

“A warning? Is this weather fed by sorcery?”

“A hunter stalks the dark.”

“I know,” Guld growled. “What else,” he asked without expecting a comprehensible answer, “do you sense about him?”

“My master, my lord, lich of-”

“Your master,” Guld interrupted, “what of him?”

“-liches, supreme ruler, He Who-”

“Enough of the titles!”

“-Awakened All Groggy after-”

“Shall I call on an exorcist, shade?”

“If you’d not so rudely interrupted I’d be done by now!” the ghost snapped. “My master, then, has no desire to be among the hunted. There.”

Guld scowled. “Just how nasty is this killer? Never mind, you’ve answered me, haven’t you? At the moment, I can’t stop him, whoever he is. If he chooses to ferret out your master, well, I can only wish the lich luck.”

“Amusing,” the shade grumbled, then slowly vanished.

Amusing? The shades of this tower are damned odd, even for shades. In any case, keeping mulling, Guld. Lamentable Moll’s known for its sorcerors, its diviners and readers, its warlocks and well-sounders, seers and the like, but it’s mostly small fish-nobody’s ever claimed Theft to be an island of high civilisation. In Korel it’s said a demon prince runs a merchant company, and in the old city-swamps of the lowbeds the undead are as common as midges. Glad I don’t live in Korel. What was I thinking about? Oh, yes, suspects…

Nothing else of note marked the next hour. The fourth bell after midnight came and went. Even so, Guld was not surprised a short time later when three wavering lights rose in panicked haste above the dark buildings in a nearby quarter. The twelfth. Unending, each night…. Maybe Stul Ophan had been right-the beacons rose from the estate district, from the nobility’s pinched, bloodless heart.

He spun from the merlon and took a step to the trapdoor, then stopped, the shock of rain against his brow sending a superstitious chill through his bones. A moment later he shook himself. Not blood. Just water, nothing more. Nothing more. He pulled up the heavy wooden door with an angry wrench, and quickly plunged down into the darkness below.

The shades set up a howl all the way down, and this time, Guld knew that their gelid moans, ringing from the stone walls on all sides, had nothing to do with keeping thieves and adventurers at bay.

An hour before dawn, Bauchelain instructed Emancipor to ready his bed. Of the other man-Korbal Broach-there’d been no sign, which did not seem to perturb Bauchelain, who’d spent the night inscribing sigils and signs on the piece of slate. Bells, bells on end at the desk, the man hunched over the grey stone. Etching and scribing, muttering under his breath, and consulting from a half-dozen leather-bound books-each worth a year’s wage in paper alone.

Emancipor, hungover and dead tired, puttered here and there in the room, once he’d had the remains of the supper removed, tidying up as best he could. He found in Bauchelain’s travel chest a finely made hauberk of black-iron chain, long-sleeved and knee-length, which he oiled from a kit, using spare wire to repair old damage-cut and crushed links-the coat had known battle, and so too the man who owned it. And yet to look at him, as Emancipor often did from the corner of his eye, it was hard to believe Bauchelain had ever been a soldier. He scribed and mumbled and squinted and occasionally poked out his tongue as he worked over the slate. Like an artist, or an alchemist, or a sorceror.

A damned strange way to pass the night, Emancipor concluded. He bit back on his curiosity, which grew more tempered with his suspicions that the man indeed was a practitioner in the dark arts. The less gleaned the better, I always say.

He finished with the mail coat and, grunting under its slippery weight, returned it to its perch. As he adjusted the inside-padded shoulders on the heavy hanger, he noticed a long, flat box positioned below the coat-hooks. It had a latch, but was otherwise unlocked. He removed it, grunting again at its weight, and set it on the spare bed. A glance over at Bauchelain assured him that his master was taking no heed, so Emancipor unlatched the lid and lifted it away, to reveal a dismantled crossbow, a dozen iron-shod quarrels, and a pair of mail gauntlets open at the palm and the finger-tips.

His memory swept him back to his youth, on the battlefield that would in legend be known as Estbanor’s Grief, where the rag-tag militias of Theft-before each city found its own king-had thrown back an invading army from Korel. Among the Korelri legions were soldiers who carried Mell’zan weapons-each superbly made and superior to anything local. This was such a weapon, made by a master smith, constructed entirely of hardened, tempered iron-maybe even the famous D’Avorian Steel-even the stock was metal. “Hood’s Breath,” Emancipor whispered, running his fingers over the pieces.

“ ’Ware the heads,” Bauchelain murmured, having come up to stand behind Emancipor. “They kill at a touch, if blood be drawn.”

Emancipor’s hand recoiled. “Poison?”

“You think me an assassin, Mister Reese?”

Emancipor turned and met the man’s amused gaze.

“In my days,” Bauchelain said, “I’ve been many things… but poisoner is not among them. They are invested.”

“You’re a sorceror?”

Bauchelain’s lips quirked into a smile. “Many people call themselves that. Do you follow a god, Mister Reese?”

“My wife swears by ’em-I mean, uh, she prays to a few, Master.”

“And you?”

Emancipor shrugged. “The devout die too, don’t they? Clove to an ascendant just doubles the funeral costs, ’sfar as I can see, and that’s all. Mind, I’ve prayed fierce on occasion-maybe it saved my skin, but maybe it was just my cast to slip Hood’s shadow so far…”

Bauchelain’s gaze softened slightly, lost its focus. “So far…” he said, as if the words were profound. Then he clapped his manservant on the shoulder and returned to his desk. “A long life is yours, Mister Reese. I see no shadow’s shadow, and the face of your death is a distant one.”