Alexey Pehov - Shadow Prowler

“Of course, what do I have to do?”

“Soon I’ll be drawn into the Darkness. No matter how well I hide.”

The sooner the better, I thought, putting on the polite expression of an attentive listener.

“But if I can find something first, I’ll stay here for a long time. I can sense the thing. It’s here in the city. Vukhdjaaz is clever,” the demon reminded me yet again.

“What is this thing?”

“A horse.”

Well, naturally. There’s more meat on a horse than on a man. And this demon’s so big. And so hungry.

“All right.” It wasn’t really a very tricky job. “Tomorrow I’ll get you a horse. Which breed do you prefer?”

“You’re stupid,” the demon hissed, prodding me with a clawed finger. The prod sent me staggering back several steps. “Not a live horse, the Horse.”

“Aaah. That horse, why didn’t you explain straightaway?” I decided that stupidity was the quickest way into Vukhdjaaz’s stomach, and it was much safer to be clever, even if I didn’t understand a thing.

“I give you four days. Vukhdjaaz is clever. Get me the Horse.” The demon looked at me, waiting for an answer.

“Of course, of course. I’ll do everything.” I still hadn’t understood the point of the conversation, but I was really keen to get rid of this creature that found it so easy to appear out of walls and hide inside them.

“I’ll be watching.” The demon impaled me with its scarlet eyes. “Do as I order, or I’ll suck the marrow out of your bones. Vukhdjaaz is clever. You can’t trick him.”

The demon took a step toward the gray wall and dissolved into it. I stood there for a while, trying to calm the rapid pounding of my heart, which was about to tear itself out of my chest.

What do I make of all this? First a group of crazed Doralissians pursues me, demanding that I give back their horse, then I chant a spell that has been lying in the depository at the library for Sagot only knows how many centuries, and do what the entire Order was unable to do: I drive all the demons back into the Darkness. Or almost all. Then a ravenously hungry demon, the most stupid in the entire world, picks me up like a little kitten and also demands a horse. I wonder if Vukhdjaaz and the Doralissians are looking for different horses or the same one? Maybe I should introduce them to each other, and they can make their own deal about horses? Maybe horse-breeding was coming into fashion in a big way?

I walked home-and got my cloak-without making any attempt to hide, in the complete certainty that not a single creature of the night could get me, apart from the extremely clever Vukhdjaaz. I didn’t bother to change my lair, just set all my troubles aside until the morning, dropped onto the bed, and instantly fell asleep.

There were exactly six days left until the expedition to Hrad Spein.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

The unceremonious hammering on the door made me leap up off the old cracked wooden bedstead and start fumbling around for my weapon. “Harold? Are you there? Open up! In the name of the Order!” a loud, deep voice shouted.

What could the Order want with me at this early hour? I glanced out through the dirty windowpane. The sun was already quite high.

“Harold! Open the door, or I’ll break it in!”

Okay, try. Although, if he really is a magician of the Order, he won’t need to try very hard. He’ll only need to spit and half the house will be reduced to splinters. I began thinking seriously about taking a stroll through the window.

“Harold, His Magicness Artsivus requests you to come. Urgently!”

Artsivus? Why didn’t he say straightaway that he was from Artsivus, instead of threatening to shatter the door?

“Just a moment. Wait,” I shouted, feeling at my cloak. It was a little dirty and there were hoofprints on it, but it was perfectly wearable.

I opened the lock, drew the bolt, and took a step back. But I didn’t put the crossbow away-after all, anyone could be hiding behind the name of an archmagician of the Order.

“Come in.”

The door opened and there in front of me was a harmless-looking young man in a blue robe that dangled like a sack from his narrow shoulders. I would never have thought this young lad could hammer on the door so hard.

“Are you Harold? On the-” My visitor spotted the crossbow trained on him, turned gray in the face, and stopped talking.

I put the weapon away behind my back-there’s no point in frightening children.

“Yes, I’m Harold.”

“Master Harold. His Magicship, the head of the Order, Master Artsivus, asks you to come to him without delay.”

“I see. What’s happened?”

“I don’t know.”

“All right. Wait.”

Without hurrying, I took the bag containing the magic ingredients and the gold I had received from the king out of its secret hiding place. I’m not usually so stupid as to keep my money all in one heap, especially at home. It’s simpler to pass it on to a few reliable people and make the gold work for you. In a gnome bank, for instance. The money’s always reliably protected by traps, locks, magic, and furious mattockmen. But I was going to need the king’s gold pieces today.

“Where’s the carriage?”

“Eeeh…,” said the apprentice, embarrassed. “I’m on foot.”

“Magnificent! Then tell me, apprentice, how come you’re still alive after walking all the way through the Port City to reach me? Round here they leave naïve children like you floating under the pier. Or maybe you weren’t lying when you said you would break in the door, and you know how to shoot fireballs?”

The lad became even more embarrassed, and blushed.

“Well,” he mumbled, “just a little.”

“Okay, lead on,” I sighed.

Why on earth Artsivus would take on such an awkward child as an apprentice was beyond me.

Noon. The central street of the Port City was packed solid with people. There was everybody here-from idly wandering revelers to traders in all sorts of everything.

I spotted an elderly pickpocket with two of his apprentices training under his supervision right there in the crowd. They were cutting the strings of the idle onlookers’ purses. One apprentice evidently felt my gaze on him, and gave me a tense look, but then, realizing that I was on no closer terms with the law than himself, he winked gaily. I winked back.

In wonderful times of long ago I also began my career with the pockets of the idle public on the Market Square. Many years have passed since then. Nowadays no one remembers Harold the Flea, a skinny, eternally hungry young lad roaming round the squares and streets of the city in search of nourishment and a place to spend the night in a dirty alley or a barracks. Those times came to an end, Harold the Flea disappeared, and Shadow Harold appeared in Avendoom.

“Oi!” my guide shouted when someone in the crowd stepped on his foot.

“Wake up,” I whispered in his ear. “We have to get out of this crush. Keep left, along the wall.”

The torrent of people was thinner here, and we could stop jostling with our elbows.

The crowd of humans and nonhumans was seething with gossip. Groups of gossipmongers sprang up spontaneously first in one spot, then another.

Rumors, rumors, rumors.

“Did you know the Nameless One is already on the march?”

“What’s the king doing?”

“No, that’s rubbish. There is no Nameless One!”

“Oh yes, there is! My granny told me about him, may she live in the light!”

“What’s the king doing? He’s gathering an army. Taxes will go shooting up again, and the poor people will suffer.”

“Hey!” I called to Artsivus’s apprentice.