Alexey Pehov - Shadow Prowler

“I’ll ask Miralissa,” I said. All this riddle-me-ree verse was beginning to give me a splitting headache.

“And then the Giants who burn all to ash… yet another riddle. Although at least the burial chambers of the Great Ones who died in battle are very well known. There are entire halls of warriors buried on the sixth level over a period of a little more than five centuries. A huge cemetery, where everyone in every grave was a legend when he was alive. And then we have these long-deceased knights with swords, and Selena, who will show you the way to the Horn, and finally a warning that the Horn won’t allow itself to be taken all that easily.”

“Let’s think about all this later!” I implored him. “Otherwise my head will burst! Why couldn’t they have just written all this in a normal, straightforward fashion? Here’s a beast with big fangs, here’s a beast with big claws, and here they’ll roast you alive or turn you into a toad! But oh no, they had to practice their poetry-writing skills!”

“What else can you expect?” For asked with a sigh and a shrug. “The Order loves puzzles; magicians’ brains are arranged a bit differently from ours. I think I’ll do a bit more thinking about this text. And you do what you were going to do. It’s already night.”

While I was talking with For, the bird of night had indeed furtively spread its black wings over Avendoom. It was time to go to work.

“You’re right. It’s time I was off.”

“Don’t forget to question Bolt,” For shouted after me.

“I remember, I remember,” I replied, already walking out into the corridor.

That night I had to put a final end to the affair of the Horse of Shadows.

Darkness was well advanced in the city, but this time around no one was hiding away at home. There were quite a lot of people on the square and I even spotted five guards parading up and down in front of Grok’s statue with an important air, evidently concerned that the good citizens, intoxicated by their new-found freedom, might steal the immensely heavy sculpture.

I glanced in passing at the deceased duke’s house. There was no light in the windows, as was only to be expected. I walked round the building of the library into the dark side street and then…

I was just about to hammer on the iron door loud enough to wake Bolt and the entire neighborhood with him when I suddenly noticed a thin strip of light seeping out from underneath it. Strange. Very Strange. Bolt must have got drunk and forgotten to close up the library for the night.

And what if it hadn’t been an honest and highly respectable person like me who spotted the light and decided to pay him a call, but some light-fingered petty thief? In that case half of the rare books would simply have disappeared off all those shelves as if by magic. I chuckled and pushed the door. It swung back smartly, revealing the dark tunnel of the service corridor.

There was light only beside the door; beyond that was complete darkness. I swore good-naturedly about people who can’t be bothered to make proper lighting arrangements, took the torch down off the wall, and set off along the familiar corridor, ignoring the branches to the right and the left.

I’d been here once before already, and that was quite enough to know the way. The journey to the halls with the books only took a couple of minutes. My magical vision had not returned after the Forbidden Territory, and so I had to rely on the source of light in my hand and curses directed at Honchel’s head. The light from the lanterns, securely covered with gnome glass to make sure that the flames would not, Sagot forbid, escape from captivity, was quite adequate. It was only way up high, close to the very ceiling that the bookcases and shelves were wreathed in a cloak of darkness.

I went back along the corridor a bit and left the torch on an empty bracket. No point in annoying Bolt; it would give him a stroke if he saw I’d brought a naked flame near his precious books.

“Hey, Bolt! This is Harold!” I shouted, and my voice echoed off the vaulted ceiling, bounced round the walls, and dissolved in the maze of books and bookcases.

Silence. Not a sound. The old man was dozing under a table somewhere. Or it could be that he was simply hard of hearing and couldn’t hear my howls of greeting.

“Bolt! Are you here?”

I walked slowly forward, searching for the familiar stooped figure. But as I said before, in this huge building you could wander for thousands of years and not meet a single living soul. I turned sharply to the right and moved in the direction of the tables where I had studied the books the last time. There was a spot there where you could easily drink a bottle of wine without having to worry that anyone might disturb you. If the old man wasn’t there, I’d have to turn the whole place upside down. I saw a gleam of light ahead.

“Bolt!” I roared before I even entered the reading hall.

I was right! There was a lantern on the table, and beside it a bottle of wine, a half-eaten crust of bread, and a bunch of spring onions.

The bottle was almost empty, with just a little wine left in the bottom. The old man was stretched out on the floor in a puddle of red wine. Just look at the state of him!

I walked toward the sleeping drunk, muttering something uncomplimentary under my breath about people who like to guzzle wine at the most inappropriate times, feverishly trying to work out the quickest way to bring him back to a state of awareness and question him.

“Bolt! Wake up now! Get up. You look like a pig. It’s disgusting!” I leaned down and shook him by the shoulder. “How long can you go on…”

I didn’t finish the phrase, because I noticed something rather upsetting-Bolt didn’t seem to be breathing. And he wasn’t lying in a puddle of wine, as I’d thought at first, but in a puddle of his own blood. I cautiously turned the old man over onto his back.

I was right. Some bastard had slit the poor old man’s throat from ear to ear. The body was still warm, and not very much blood had escaped yet. That meant the murderer or murderers had only finished Bolt off very recently. And that meant it was very likely they hadn’t got very far yet and I could easily catch up with them on a nearby street.

I almost gave way to this momentary impulse, but the voice of reason cooled my ardor. This time the Master had got here before me, and now I would never learn whose ring Rostgish and Shnyg had shown to Bolt. And it made no sense to go chasing after unknown killers who might well turn out not even to be human. There was no way I could help the poor fellow now.

It was a pity; I’d grown quite attached to the crazy, grouchy old-timer.

There was a trail of blood leading away from the body and winding between the tables into the depths of the hall. I took the lantern off the table to light the way and followed the traces of blood. Before I had even gone twenty paces I came across a second body.

I knew this overgrown lout. He was one of the characters who had gone running out of the alley where Roderick and I were ambushed. This time his luck had run out and he hadn’t managed to get away. There was a knife protruding from the stiff’s chest. The last time I’d seen it, Bolt had it on his belt. So the old man had managed to sell his life dearly after all-it was true that the Wild Hearts didn’t leave this life quietly; one of the killers had paid for his…

Three shadows sprang into the circle of light from somewhere behind the dark bookcases, preventing me from completing my thought. I noticed a glint of metal and leapt to one side.

Putrid Darkness! Why had I decided that the killers had already left? I jumped back, pressing up against a bookcase. The three figures were coming closer. As ill luck would have it, my crossbow wasn’t loaded, which made it useless. My only hope was my knife. I took the weapon out without speaking, held it out in front of me, and waited for them to attack, somehow certain that we wouldn’t part in peace. Lads like these would kill their own grandmother, and the rest of the family into the bargain. I could tell, because I’d seen two of the killers before, and not exactly in the best of circumstances.