Alexey Pehov - Shadow Prowler

“But those who went during the day have never come back.”

“Where in the tower should I look for the information on Hrad Spein?”

“If it’s there, it’s on the second floor. In the archivist’s room.”

“Traps, locks, guards?”

“No need to worry about that,” the master sniffed. “It all happened too suddenly.”

The old man began coughing into his fist and Roderick came in again with a glass, but the archmagician frowned and waved it aside.

“I’m tired, Harold. The long years hang heavy on my bones. Relieve me of your presence, if you would be so kind.”

When I was already out in the corridor and the archmagician’s apprentice was closing the door, I heard the old man’s weary voice again:

“Hey, Harold.”

“Yes?”

“When are you planning to set out for the Forbidden Territory?”

“In about three days, when I’m fully prepared.”

“Good. Don’t forget that the king is expecting you. Now be on your way.”

I shrugged in irritation-I’d never had any trouble with my memory-and left Artsivus’s apartments without saying another word.

Now I had to see about finding a new place to live, and I knew someone prepared to provide me with one for an unlimited period of time, absolutely free of charge.

“We’re here, milord.” The coachman decked out in velvet livery politely opened the door of the carriage and bowed.

It was several seconds before I realized that my own humble personage had been referred to as “milord.” It felt strange, somehow-no one had ever called me that before.

Well, of course, I could understand the coachman. A man who had been visiting the sick archmagician couldn’t be some kind of low thief, could he? He was more likely some rich count in disguise, someone who had decided to take a ride around Avendoom incognito.

I got out of the carriage and set off toward the main gate of the Cathedral of the Gods on Cathedral Square, which was located at the meeting point of three parts of Avendoom: the Outer City, the Inner City, and the City of Artisans and Magicians.

The priests had managed to grab themselves a huge piece of the city, every bit as large as the grounds of the king’s palace. In fact, to be perfectly honest, Cathedral Square could quite easily have held two of Stalkon’s palaces.

The cathedral was the largest site in all the Northern Lands at which all the twelve gods of Siala were honored. So there was no need to tramp across half the city to find the particular shrine that you were interested in, the temporary residence of some individual god: You could simply come to the square, go in through the main gates that were open by day and night, and then choose the one to whom you wished to address your prayers.

The gods!

I smirked blasphemously.

The gods were not very generous when it came to gracing the world they had created with their own presence. In earlier times, when Siala was young, during the beginning of beginnings, when people had only just appeared, following the elves, the orcs, the ogres, the gnomes, and the dwarves, the gods still walked the roads, working wonders, punishing evildoers, and rewarding the righteous.

But eventually they tired of the vanity of earth, and they left to concern themselves with their own “important” affairs, as the priests called them, affairs incomprehensible to mere humans. I don’t know, maybe they are important, but I don’t have too much faith in the power of the gods. Nothing but stories for snot-nosed little kids, and the ravings of crazy fanatics. Well, naturally, I believe in Sagot and his power, but I don’t really think he was a god. Some say he was just a successful thief in the old times and many stories about his adventures are still preserved to this very day. But the sly priests were quick to promote him to the rank of a god, in order to increase the flow of gold into the coffers of their shrines. Because thieves and swindlers are a superstitious crowd, and they really need to believe in someone.

“Do you struggle with the Darkness within yourself?” one of the two priests standing at the main gates asked me.

“I annihilate the Darkness,” I replied, with the standard ritual phrase.

“Enter then, and address Them,” the second priest pronounced solemnly.

Naturally, I followed this brilliant recommendation from these two old men who had nothing else to do but roast themselves in the hot sun while greeting and seeing off every visitor.

Interestingly enough, there were no guards at the entrance of the cathedral. I’d heard the priests had forbidden it. And in principle they were right, since the plug-ugly faces of the servants of the law could very easily frighten away half of the city’s residents, depriving the cathedral of a substantial element of its income.

But there were guardsmen strolling about inside the grounds-around the flower beds and whispering fountains, the statues of the gods and their shrines-gradually going insane from the heat in their cuirasses and helmets. Of course, they were all as bad-tempered as orcs on the march. And the reason for their bad temper was no great secret, either. The guards sent to the cathedral were those colleagues of Frago Lanten’s who had committed some offense or been caught taking bribes and extorting money.

A pair of the poor souls in orange and white went parading past me. Their glances slid searchingly over my figure, probing for something to take objection to, an opportunity to stick the handle of a halberd in my side without a priest noticing. But I simply smiled amiably and couldn’t resist giving the dourly furious martyrs a cheery wave.

Ah! How I love teasing a giant in a cage!

The guards frowned darkly, took a firmer grip on their weapons, and started toward me, with the clear intention of battering my sides. But, just as I expected, they didn’t get very far.

A priest appeared in their path as if out of thin air and started reciting the divine moral teaching. The soldiers’ unshaven faces immediately assumed such a bored and weary expression that I very nearly shed a tear for them. The lads were strictly forbidden to argue back or to show any disrespect to the servants of the cathedral. On pain of losing their pensions. And so all they could do was listen, listen, and listen again for the thousandth time.

I walked along a neat pathway paved with square slabs of stone, rounded a sparkling and foaming fountain in the form of a knight running his lance through a massive ogre at full gallop, and came out into the cathedral yard, where the statues of the gods stood, with supplicants and visitors from the city and the neighboring regions constantly weaving around them.

There weren’t many pilgrims from other parts of the kingdom to be seen as yet. They usually came flooding in for the spring festival of the gods, and so right now the yard wasn’t very crowded. There were just a few men standing beside the statue of Sagra. From the way they were dressed I recognized them as soldiers.

I cast a casual glance over the eleven male and female statues, the gods and goddesses of Siala standing there before me. And then I looked at the empty pedestal where the twelfth statue ought to have stood, the statue of Sagot.

Somehow it had happened that in all the world there was only one image of the god of thieves. Evidently he didn’t really welcome close interest in his own person.

This statue of Sagot was in the Forbidden Territory of the city. When the fiasco with the Rainbow Horn happened, it had wound up on the other side of the wall. And no one had been able to re-create the image of the god of thieves. Even the priests didn’t know what Sagot was supposed to look like, and so they had decided not to take any risk of committing sacrilege, and for the time being the pedestal on which the god ought to stand had been left empty.