Алексей Пехов - Shadow Chaser

The old man stopped trying to turn the key and sniffed the air rapidly, like a hunting dog that has caught the scent of a fox. But right then I wasn’t concerned about the old man’s eccentricities. I almost jumped straight back out into the corridor, because the empty cell stank as if an army of gnomes had been puking in it for the last ten years.

I covered my nose with the sleeve of my jacket and tried to breathe through my mouth. It wasn’t easy, because the smell was so bad that my eyes started watering. And while I stoically struggled against the stench, the old man stood as still as a statue beside the door that he was trying to unlock.

Eventually the jailer took another long sniff at the air and shook his head as if he was driving away some delusion. Oh, come on, granddad! There’s no way you can smell me through this stench! Not even if you have the nose of an imperial dog!

The old man started struggling with the stubborn lock again. Meanwhile I tried to keep the remains of my breakfast in my stomach. If I ever got out of these subterranean vaults, I’d have to throw away my stinking clothes and climb into a hot bath for a month.

The lock finally surrendered with a clang and the old man gave a triumphant laugh. There was a creak of rusty, unoiled hinges. He picked up the bowl and walked into the cell, lighting his way with the lantern.

I heard a faint clanking of chains.

“Woken up, have you?” the old man wheezed in a hoarse voice. “I expect you’re hungry after three days, eh?”

The answer was silence. A chain clanked again, as if the prisoner had moved.

“Ah, you’re so proud!” The old man laughed. “Well, well! Here’s some water for you. I’m sorry, I forgot the bread, left it in the watch house. But don’t you worry, my beauties, I will definitely bring it on my next round. In a couple of days.”

He gave an evil laugh.

I glanced out of my hiding place, hoping to see what was happening in the opposite cell, but all I could make out was the dim glow of the lantern and the old man’s back.

“Well, I’m off. Enjoy your stay. And drink your water. Of course, it’s not peacock in mushroom sauce or strawberries and cream, but it’s very tasty all the same!”

The old man walked out of the cell and the door creaked as it started to close.

“Stop!” Ah, so one of the prisoners was a woman. It was a clear, resonant voice, one used to giving orders.

“Well, I never!” the old man exclaimed in surprise, and stopped. “She spoke. What do you want?”

“Take off the chain.”

“And is there anything else you’d like?”

“Do as I say and you’ll get a thousand gold pieces.”

“Don’t abase yourself in front of him, Leta!” another woman said in a harsh voice.

“A thousand? Oho, that’s a lot!” the old man croaked, and the door of the cell started creaking again.

“Five thousand!” I could hear a note of despair in Leta’s voice.

The door kept on closing.

“Ten! Ten thousand!”

The door slammed with a crash, and I shuddered. That crash seemed to bring the sky tumbling down onto the earth. The bunch of keys jangled again, and I moved away from the wall beside the doorway, where I had been all this time, and retreated deeper into the cell, away from the light.

From my new position I would be able to see the old man’s face—and I simply had to see the face of a man who could refuse ten thousand gold pieces in such a simple, offhand manner.

The key grated in the lock and the old man hung the bunch on his belt and turned toward me. What I saw frightened me.

Very badly.

The last time I had been so frightened was that night when I climbed into the Forbidden Territory and met the charming and hungry jolly weeper.

The old man had parchment-yellow skin, a straight, sharp nose, bloodless blue lips, a dirty, unkempt beard, and his eyes … His eyes terrified me so much that my knees started shaking. The old fogey had cold, agate eyes without any sign of pupils or an iris. How can you call two opaque pits of darkness eyes?

They were deader than stone, colder than ice, more indifferent than eternity.

Such things simply shouldn’t exist in our world.

I couldn’t withstand that gaze, and I staggered backward.

All the universal laws of misery united to place a piece of rubbish under my feet. And you don’t need to be a genius to guess that the garbage made a deafening clang. To me it sounded loud enough to be heard on the other side of Siala.

The old man, as was only to be expected, froze on the spot and stared with those dead black eyes straight at the spot where I was hiding.

I couldn’t think of anything better to do than to pretend I was a log or a lump of stone. In other words, I tried not to move, or even to breathe.

The old man drew in air through his nose and I prayed to Sagot that he wouldn’t catch my scent. This jailer with two pools of blackness instead of eyes frightened me so badly, I could have wet my drawers.

The old man shifted the lantern from his right hand to his left and took out a weapon. What it resembled most of all was … Well, what can a large human shinbone sharpened at one end resemble? Only a sharpened bone, nothing else.

In the light of the lantern the bone looked yellow, except that its sharp end, which was shaped just like the point of a spear, was a dirty, rusty color—the color of dried blood. The old man grinned and I caught a glimpse of yellow stumps of rotten teeth. He took a firmer grip on his strange weapon, raised his lantern, and moved in my direction.

Don’t believe anyone who tells you that in the final few seconds before death a man’s entire past life flashes in front of his eyes like a galloping herd of Doralissian horses.

It’s a lie. A deliberate, barefaced, godless lie.

I didn’t notice any visions passing through my mind in those few seconds. Who can pay attention to visions when his knees are knocking in sheer terror? The hideous old man had decided to do away with me, there could be no doubt about it.

Either the god of all thieves heard my prayer, or the smell, which I had almost managed to get used to, offended the jailer’s sensitive nose, but either way, he stopped three steps outside the doorway of my refuge. The old man was looking straight at me, and the light cast by his lantern ended just five yards away from my feet. If the monstrous freak had taken just a few more steps forward, the light would have reached me.

I cursed my own careless curiosity. If I’d used my head, I would have pressed myself back against the wall and not just stood there like a statue in the middle of the cell, facing the doorway and hoping that the darkness would protect me from the old man’s eyes.

Those black eyes gazed in my direction without blinking, and my heart pounded thunderously in my chest, louder than a blacksmith’s hammer. I was amazed that the old man couldn’t hear it. He stared for a long time. For a very long time, at least a minute, which felt to me like a year, during which I aged an entire century.

“Damned rats,” the old man wheezed eventually. “Still breeding, the lousy creatures. What do they eat down here, anyway?”

He stuck his spear-bone away somewhere under his rags, shifted the lantern from his left hand to his right, and shuffled off down the corridor toward the stairway. Once he was gone, all I could see was a small piece of the corridor and the door of the cell in which the two female prisoners were languishing. The farther away the old man moved, the dimmer the light in the corridor became.

I didn’t do anything insanely stupid like trying to creep along behind the jailer. Any desire to leave my stinking cell had evaporated the moment I saw his eyes. It would be better to wait and then make my way slowly and quietly to the stairs, even if they did lead into pitch-darkness.