Алексей Пехов - Shadow Chaser

They put him on a cart with shackles on his feet and drove him out of Ranneng.

For Djok the journey to Zagraba was a single, unbroken thread of squeaking wheels, the sky above his head, the guttural voices of elves, and pain. It came every day, biting into his flesh like red-hot pincers, as soon as evening arrived and the elves halted for the night.

This was when Eroch came to the prisoner and took out a little box of steel needles. The elf never spoke, but every time after the torture, Djok thought that his time had come and he was about to die at any moment. And he waited for his death to come with joyful anticipation.

But the elves were too careful to lose their prisoner as a result of torture. When the pain became absolutely unbearable, when it threatened to expand and shatter his head open, an elfin shaman appeared and relieved his suffering. And the next evening it was repeated all over again. Day after day Djok suffered absolutely unbearable torment, dying, cursing the gods, coming back to life, weeping, and dying again. There was no end to this terrible dream. …

He did not remember much about Zagraba … green leaves, tinkling brooks, cold, and pain.… They took him somewhere, showed him to someone, hundreds of elfin faces with fangs, an old elf with a black coronet on his head, silence, and more pain. …

For some reason all the trees here grew upside down. So did the grass. And the sun set upward. The elves walked upside down on the ground with their heads downward.

For a long time he couldn’t understand what was happening. He only realized the truth when he noticed that the blood oozing feebly from a cut on his cheek was falling on his forehead instead of his chin, and then dripping off onto the ground that was above his head.

It was very simple; he was hanging head down on a tree with his feet securely tied to a thick branch. How long had he been there like this? An hour? A day?

It turned dark and night came to the forest, and stars began shining through the crowns of the trees down below.

There was nobody guarding him. There was no need. He could never escape from the elfin spider web rope, and how far could a man half dead from torture run through a strange forest?

The archer plunged back into oblivion, trying to overcome the pain. He was woken by a quiet rustling in the grass, and when he opened his eyes he saw a dark female silhouette.

An elfess, he thought.

The person standing there said nothing, and neither did he. He was indifferent; he had already grown used to the fact that many elves came just to look at him. Let her look, as long as she didn’t beat him. Suddenly she laughed.

“Who … are you?”

It was hard for him to form the words; he hadn’t spoken for a long time. Most of the time he simply howled in pain.

“You poor thing,” the woman sighed.

“Lia? Is that really you?” he gasped, unable to believe his ears.

“Lia? Well, you can call me that if you like,” she said, walking out of the shadow into the moonlight.

She was just as beautiful as she had been in the garden, on that cursed day when the elfin prince was killed. Light brown hair, blue eyes, high cheekbones, full lips.

Lia. His Lia. The one who betrayed him.

“But … How?”

How could this girl be here, so far away from home, in the heart of the country of the elves?

“The servants of the Master can do much more than that.”

“The Master? I’m not guilty! I couldn’t possibly have done it!”

“I know,” she said with a smile.

“You know. Then why didn’t you say anything? You have to tell the elves, you have to explain to them—”

“It’s too late. The elves won’t listen to anyone, they’re thirsting for vengeance. They won’t try to find out if you’re really guilty or not for at least a few months. But unfortunately you don’t have that much time. The elves have decided to make an exception—tomorrow the Green Leaf is waiting for you.”

Djok squirmed on his rope and started swaying like a pendulum. He sobbed in terror. He did not want to die like that.

“But you have a choice, you fool.” Lia walked up close to him, and he caught the scent of her strawberry perfume. “Either the dark elves will make an example of you with a form of execution that they have only ever used on the orcs before or…”

“Or?” Djok repeated like an echo.

“… or you will become a faithful servant of the Master.”

She spoke for a very long time, and when she finished, Djok said only a single word.

“Yes.”

Hatred blazed up in his eyes.

The girl took a crooked elfin knife out of the folds of her dress, stood up on tiptoe, and slit the man’s throat with a gentle movement.

The hot cataract poured down onto her hair, face, neck, and dress. She stood there, accepting this terrible baptism in bloody dew … smiling. When it was all over, the girl looked at the body hanging in front of her and said:

“You will be born again, born in the House of Love, and become the very first, the most devoted servant. You will be Djok the Winter-Bringer.”

A moment later the forest glade was empty, apart from a dead man swaying slowly on a rope.

“You slept badly last night. More nightmares?” Kli-Kli asked me as he wrapped himself in his cloak against the chilly morning air.

“Yeah,” I replied morosely, rolling up my blanket.

“What about this time?”

“Djok the Winter-Bringer.”

“Oho! Tell me about it!” the goblin said eagerly.

“Leave me alone, Kli-Kli, I’ve no time for you now.” After the previous day’s conversation round the campfire and my new dream, I had plenty to think about.

Kli-Kli grunted in disappointment and wandered off to pester Lamplighter, who was saddling our horses.

That morning the weather turned bad again and there was a light drizzle. The drops were so fine that I could barely even see them.

At least it wasn’t the kind of downpour we had had before. We were all thoroughly sick of that cursed rain. It’s hard to say which is worse—stupefying heat or this kind of dank misery.

The fire had burnt out completely overnight and the fine rain had extinguished the coals left behind. There was no point in lighting a new one, it would take up far too much time. We ate a bite of the cold meat from some partridges that Ell had shot the day before and set off on our way.

The dreary plain with its low hills stretched on and on with no end in sight. The clouds and the semidarkness made us all feel very depressed. After an hour and a half of galloping, Alistan led our group out onto an old road, half washed away and barely visible under the puddles.

“There will be a village about three leagues ahead,” said Ell.

“We need to lay in some stores and buy horses,” Alistan Markauz said with a nod.

“If they will sell any,” Ell said in a doubtful tone of voice.

“The peasants need every animal they have,” Honeycomb put in.

“We’ll see when we get there,” said Alistan, and led the group on along the road.

We started moving more slowly, the horses’ hooves slid in the mud and the puddles that were seething with rain. There was a shroud hanging over the world, and we could only see a hundred or a hundred and fifty yards ahead.

The road started going down the slope of yet another hill. Streams of water ran down past us, flowing into an immense puddle, where it looked as if we might have to swim again—the horses were up to their knees in water. We lost our way because we couldn’t see the road and found ourselves at an old, flooded graveyard.