Alexey Pehov - Shadow Prowler

In only a few minutes the Evil would reach the spot where Valder was lying, and then the Horn would stay there forever.

This thought forced the archmagician to turn over onto his back. He held his snow-covered face up to the falling snowflakes, catching them greedily with his bloody mouth. The wind died down. The world froze in horror at the advancing disaster, anticipating the most terrible blizzard in the city’s entire history. With a superhuman effort, in danger of losing consciousness at any moment, Valder got up off the road and looked in the direction of the tower.

Now, instead of solid ground there was a rapidly swirling black whirlwind. Ordinary people would never have seen it, but Valder’s magical vision, even though it was weakened by his injury, could clearly distinguish the black vortex reaching up into the night sky.

The magician managed to walk a little farther, and then he collapsed at the foot of the statue of Sagot and could not rise again.

The upper part of the god’s face was covered by a layer of fresh snow and Valder could only see the lips. The mentor of thieves was looking at the archmagician with a frank smile of approval.

“I have to save the Horn. Do you hear? I have to. Help me, and I’ll do anything you want.”

Sagot didn’t answer.

Valder felt as if he was engulfed by the delirious visions of fever. He saw dark shadows circling above Avendoom, he imagined he saw a man in a jacket with a hood, running across ruined roofs and hiding. In his agony he no longer understood where he was or who he was. The archmagician was falling asleep… Life was abandoning his body with every beat of his heart, and his reason was already poised above the abyss from which there is no return.

“Master Valder! Wake up! Wake up, teacher!” Someone was shaking the magician relentlessly.

He wanted to brush off this annoying fly. He was enjoying dozing, and quietly humming the children’s song that his mother used to sing to him. But through the drowsiness of approaching death he could hear someone crying.

“Teacher, it’s me. Come back…”

With a struggle, Valder parted his leaden eyelids and saw Gani’s wet face.

“Wh-what are you doing here?” the archmagician gasped with a great effort.

“I felt worried. And I came running to find you.”

“You felt…” The magician looked up at the statue of Sagot, listened, and nodded. He was suddenly swamped by a new wave of pain and had to grit his teeth to avoid crying out loud. “Here, take this. It’s the Horn. Take it to Artsis. Quickly… He can stop this.”

“I won’t go without you!”

“Take it! This is my last order to you, my pupil. Find Artsis and give him the artifact. Tell him that I ask him to take you as his pupil. T-tell… tell him that everything went wrong. Tell him we awoke something that is beyond our understanding. A blizzard…” The exhausted magician collapsed back onto the snow. “Go on now. Run. Or it will be too late. Save what can still be saved.”

Gani hesitated, then nodded decisively and dashed off, clutching the Horn tightly against himself.

“Run, kid, run,” Valder whispered.

The snow circled gently as it fell on the dead archmagician, covering him in a white blanket of warmth and peace. The snow whispered and sang its song, knowing that soon its most frenzied dance of all would begin.

There was a black blizzard gathering over Avendoom.

I pressed myself back against a dirty wall covered with lichen on the Street of Men and groaned. The pain had appeared somewhere in my chest and now it was slowly receding, taking my terrible dream with it.

I still seemed to be there-on the snow-carpeted Street of the Sleepy Cat, beside the statue of Sagot. And I still could not believe that I was not lying dead in the snow on the street in old Avendooom.

“I am only Harold,” I whispered, “who is known in Avendoom as the Shadow, and not the archmagician Valder, who died centuries ago…”

The immersion in the ghastly web of the cloudy nightmare that had snared me had been instantaneous. It happened as I was walking quickly along the Street of Men and suddenly…

I remained myself, but in some strange way I was transformed into Valder at the same time. My consciousness was broken and fragmented like the delicate covering of the young November ice on the river. While still himself, Harold the thief slumped helplessly against a wall in the Forbidden Territory and lived a new life, or rather, a section of someone else’s life that was incredibly real.

With a trembling hand I wiped away the sweat that had sprung out on my forehead and shook my head in an attempt to force out of it the final leaden grains of my nightmare.

It was an unpleasant feeling, but at least now I knew what had actually happened on that terrible night in the old Tower of the Order and how the legendary curse of Avendoom, the Forbidden Territory, had come to be.

The blame for the appearance of this city of the dead lay with the Master, who had seduced Zemmel with promises of immortality and power.

Who was he? I had heard that title several times already during the last week. This individual was a mystery and a great riddle not only for me, but also for Artsivus, which meant for the Order, too. Although at least I now knew for certain that this Master and the Nameless One were completely different persons.

But right then I wasn’t really concerned with either of them. I had fallen behind schedule again, so I stopped pondering all sorts of unnecessary nonsense and set off on my way.

The Forbidden Territory was certainly strange enough, but nonetheless I must say that I was pleasantly disappointed. There were so many terrible rumors circulating about it in Avendoom, but everything here turned out to be quiet and peaceful. The plans of the old part of the city that had been made by the diligent dwarves and which I obtained in the library had proved to be ideally precise. On clambering over the wall, I had indeed found myself on the broad, twilit Street of Men, beside a low building with its door rotted away. Either a shop or a barber’s salon-it was hard to tell from the rusty, faded sign.

I gathered my courage and appealed to Sagot, just to be on the safe side, and set off, constantly checking with the map in my head.

The street was deserted, just as I had dreamed it. Deserted and it felt… absolutely unreal somehow.

Yes, in the faceless breaches of the windows there was a spring breeze snuffling gently in its sleep. Sometimes a sign that was almost rusted right through would squeak and sway on one of the half-ruined shops. There was a rotten winter sled standing in front of one of the houses. The streets were cluttered with heaps of rubbish-mostly from buildings and roofs, which had collapsed with the passage of time. But there were no human remains.

Not a soul, not even the scattered bones of the skeleton of a horse or a dog, let alone a human being. The dull gray light of the streets and the pale silver glow of the full moon created a picture of a dead world, abandoned long ago. And another strange thing was the absence of the mist to which I had become accustomed over the last three weeks.

I was unpleasantly surprised to discover that my magical vision completely stopped working as soon as I had walked about twenty yards along the Street of Men. The colors faded, the world blinked and collapsed into shadows and darkness.

No point in panicking before there was any real need.

I hoped that wouldn’t happen to me in Hrad Spein, or I was a dead man. The most terrible thing that could happen to anyone was to find himself lost in the impenetrable bleakness of those deep underground halls, although I wasn’t exactly delighted with this place, either.