Dancer's Lament: Path to Ascendancy Book 1 (36 page)

The woman flinched back as if struck. Amazement suffused her harsh features. ‘By the Elder Powers,’ she breathed. ‘How . . . how did he . . .’

Her dark gaze narrowed now on the tomb-like structure and she brought a finger to her lips. ‘Greetings, cousins,’ she murmured aloud. ‘After all this time. What have you been up to?’

DORIN ALMOST DRAGGED
himself to Ullara’s garret to rest and recover. But Rheena’s warning against bringing any more attention to the girl came to mind and so he did not head that way. He stole a cloak and threw it over his shoulders and made his way to his last rented room, where he fell on to the straw pallet and slept.

He awoke to noon sunlight shining in from the one small window high in the wall. Groaning against the intrusion, he draped an arm across his eyes and lay considering his rather bleak-looking future. It now seemed quite clear to him that he did not have the proper qualities for rising within any organization.

Attempting to murder the boss was not a recommendation for promotion.

Freelance, then. But he’d tried that from here to Tali with nothing to show for it. In his line of work one did not simply hang out a shingle and wait for the clients to walk in. Lines of communication were needed. Contacts. Words to the right people and coins crossing the right palms. The unspoken trust that comes from years of deals and exchanges. As a newcomer, he had none of that established history. Nor, it seemed, was anyone willing to take him seriously enough to start.

What he needed, he decided, as he lay wincing from the stings and aches of all the cuts and bruises across his body, was some sort of impressive, undeniable, extraordinary achievement that would bring everyone round. What he needed, he realized, was a reputation.

But how could he take credit without letting anyone know it was him? He pressed his hands to his face, covering his eyes, and felt a crust of dried blood and the sticky accumulation of old sweat and grime. It was a godsdamned puzzle worthy of Oponn, that’s what it was.

There came a knock at his door.

He froze. No one should know he was here; he’d been damned careful about that. Was he behind in payment? Maybe it was that drunk who worked as the concierge. He rose from the pallet as silently as he could, reached under, and withdrew the military crossbow he kept there, set its blunt nose against the floor and straightened, cocking it.

The cheap room was so small that a mere two steps brought him to the door off the hallway. He raised the crossbow to chest height. ‘Yes?’

‘Lunch!’ came the answer. ‘I have satay of rat wrapped in boiled cabbage leaves. Delightful.’

Dorin let the weapon fall, unlatched the door. ‘What in the Abyss do you want?’

Wu came bustling into the narrow room, shut the door behind him. He offered one leaf-wrapped package to Dorin, who declined. The Dal Hon mage took a bite of his rat on a stick. He held out the other once more: ‘You’re sure?’

Dorin limped to the pallet, sat. ‘I’m not hungry.’

Wu leaned back against the shut door. He nibbled on the rat while he studied his host. ‘You look awful.’

‘Thanks.’ With a heavy sigh Dorin rose to stand before the tiny table that supported a chipped ceramic basin and a jug of water.

He poured water into the basin and washed his face while Wu spoke. ‘It’s the talk of the town. Pung the child-stealer’s compound collapsing. Pung himself nearly killed. Of course I had the lads spread word that he’d turned on his mage, who, enraged, had blasted the very ground beneath him.’

Dorin slammed his hands to the tabletop and Wu jumped, nearly dropping his rat. He blinked. ‘Did I say something?’

Dorin, his head hanging, forced through clenched teeth, ‘Nothing.’

The Dal Hon shrugged. ‘Well, I didn’t mean
quite
that large an effect. The lads and lasses a wee bit too eager in their undermining there. At least we didn’t lose the main house.’

Dorin sat. He pulled his torn and bloodstained shirt over his head and used it to daub dry his face. He frowned at his baffling visitor. ‘How did you find me?’

‘I sought your shadow.’

‘Very funny. Look . . . what do you want? Whatever your name is.’

The mage looked surprised. His greying brows rose on his wrinkled forehead. Dorin had to remind himself that he was in fact no older than he. ‘Why – we should strike now. While they are disorganized and undermanned.’

‘Strike? Strike who?’ He started unlacing the stripped bone and boiled leather vest he wore beneath his outer garments.

‘Who? Why, the child-stealer himself, of course!’ Wu pointed the rat. ‘Now is the time for us to make our move.’

Dorin stared, then laughed. He laughed so hard it hurt the cut at his neck. Make our move? What was this fool going on about? He hardly knew where to start. He gingerly peeled the vest from his sweaty torso, started daubing at the dried blood. ‘There’s no move to make. And anyway, we have no men – unless you mean those kids.’

Wu waved a negative. ‘No, no. I mean our property. The box Pung stole from us.’ He made walking motions with his fingers. ‘Quick in and out. None the wiser. Quiet as mice.’

Dorin stared afresh. He thought of the odd way this mage always managed to disappear. He leaned back against the wall. ‘You could get us in and out of Pung’s quarters?’

‘Absolutely. I can get us anywhere. Even the palace.’

‘Prove it.’

The mage led him on a roundabout route to an apparently abandoned tenement, siege damaged, its roof fallen in. He appeared to be trying for a jaunty walk, with his stick once more tapping the cobbles, but to Dorin the fellow’s posture was more reminiscent of the cramped crab-like scuttle of someone who surely must be up to no good.

Dorin also noted Pung’s former lads and lasses themselves, keeping watch from rooftops and alleyways. Within the tenement they descended to a basement and here seemed to be the main base of operations for these runaways, with kitchens and rooms floored with blankets and strewn with bundles. However, the youths here were all the older boys and girls, some even approaching his age. Of the many younger ones there was no sign.

‘Where’s the rest of your crew?’ Dorin asked, even as a sudden new suspicion struck him and he froze in the dirt hallway. ‘Not the . . .’

The mage waved his little stick. ‘No, no. I sent most of them off to dig at the escarpment.’ Continuing on, he asked over his shoulder, ‘You have heard of the gem fields?’

Dorin nodded. They lay to the west. A free-for-all of pits and caves along the base of the escarpment. Youths were preferred because the tunnels could be smaller. ‘Who will they be working for? Surely not—’

‘No, no. Of course not.’

They entered a large cellar and Dorin had to duck beneath its low roof of dusty timber joists. Perched snug on one support was the nacht. It bared its fangs at Dorin, who waved it off.

Sighing his relief, Wu sat on the bare beaten-earth floor before a small banked fire of glowing embers. A hole in the roof above allowed the thin tendrils of smoke to escape. He motioned an invitation to sit, but Dorin frowned down at the preparations. ‘What’s this? Smoke and mesmerism? Going to tell my future?’

The mage was unconcerned: he poked the stick at the embers. He waved the remaining lads, armed with crossbows, from the room. They shut the flimsy door behind them.

Wu waved again. ‘Sit, sit. Please. You are no doubt tired and stiff from your fight.’

Dorin remained standing. ‘That was yesterday.’

The mage eyed him critically. ‘Then you are fighting fit? Armed?’

Now Dorin’s gaze narrowed, and he crouched down across the fire, opposite his host. ‘Of course. Why?’

Wu fanned the embers to glowing life. ‘Oh, just that there’s a chance something might be . . . summoned.’

Dorin rested his knees on the dirt, then snorted a laugh and shook his head. ‘You almost had me going there. Your beastie! Ha. More illusion and suggestion.’

The mage was pressing the stick into the ground so that it stood upright. ‘Oh, it’s not illusion. It’s real. Well . . . half real. Half of this world.’

Dorin cut a hand through the tendrils of white smoke. ‘Save it for the gullible ones. I saw the door to your cell. It was hacked by blades.’

Wu’s grey brows wrinkled in a wince. ‘Ah, I see. Well, the, ah,
thing
was there. It just didn’t leave by the door.’

‘Anyway.’ Dorin rested his hands at his belt, feeling quite disappointed – and rather cross with himself for the feeling. ‘I think we’re done here.’

The Dal Hon mage raised a finger. ‘One last minute, please.’ He motioned to the dirt wall where the shadow of the stick stood tall and narrow in the umber ruddiness of the embers. ‘See the shadow?’

Dorin grunted his agreement.

‘Imagine, if you would, that that thin shadow was in fact a slit. A narrow opening on to another place . . .’

Dorin grunted again, this time dubious. ‘Hunh. Shadow play and finger-waving. Don’t try your tricks on me.’

‘But it is open now,’ the mage said, his voice now hoarse and clipped. ‘Look within.’ Dorin glanced to him, saw his fists white on his lap, his dark face clenched, and sweat dripping down his furrowed brow. Whatever the mage was doing, it was costing him an immense degree of strain.

He turned to the wall, and started, rather alarmed: the shadow had widened, or appeared to have widened. It was textured now, shifting and rippling. He edged closer, yet remained poised on his toes, ready to flee.
Something
seemed to be moving within the murk, and, closer now, he could make out the flat, gently undulating lines of a barren landscape. It resembled a near desert bathed in moonlit monochrome. He heard the distant moaning of a weak wind, heard the sands hissing as they shifted. Heated dry air brushed his face – blowing from . . .
where
?

The shadow was now a good arm’s width: a painting – or a window – into another place. He reached out to touch the wall and his hand pushed in beyond it, encountering nothing. He yanked it back and turned to the mage, wonder in his voice. ‘Is this a dream?’

‘It is a portal to a new Warren,’ the mage said through lips clenched in effort. ‘
My
Warren. My—’ He broke off as both their gazes snapped to the door.

Dorin thought he’d heard a sound. A muffled call? Yet all was now quiet. Both listened for a moment longer, each remaining completely still. Then the door burst inward in a rain of slivers and black-clad Nightblades came pouring into the cellar.

Dorin had time for only an instant’s evaluation –
too many
– then, as blades and crossbow bolts came lancing through the smoky air, he made his decision. He grasped the mage’s shoulders and threw himself backwards towards the wall.

They fell tumbling over and over, far beyond the distance of the cellar wall. The mage was shouting, ‘No!
No! Not yet!
’ Dorin’s last image of the cellar was of the nacht launching itself, snarling, claws extended, upon the Nightblades. He spun head over heels through twilight, then his back impacted on a yielding, hissing slope and he lost his grip and he and Wu rolled over and over each other, entangling and sliding, until he struck something hard and had the breath punched from him.

He came to lying on his side on a rocky barren slope. He turned over and peered at the sky: a dimness like heavy clouds, yet not clouds; the sky itself the hue of churning pewter and onyx.

Someone groaned nearby and Dorin sprang to his feet, blades out. It was Wu. He sheathed the daggers and pulled the lad over. The fellow groaned even louder.

‘Where are we? What happened?’

The mage was holding his side. ‘I’m hit. Done for. Gods, what a waste! What a terrible waste!’

Dorin drew his smallest and sharpest blade and slit the man’s jacket and shirt, yanked them open. He was mildly surprised to see dark brown flesh beneath – the fellow really was from Dal Hon. He’d been hit by a crossbow bolt – grazed, really, beneath his ribs. The bolt appeared to have passed right through. Dorin set to tearing up his cloak as a dressing. ‘It’s a flesh wound.’

The mage clutched at his side. ‘No! I’m dying. I feel the cold breath of Hood coming for me!’

He slapped the man’s hands away. ‘You’ll survive. Unless you take a fever; then you’ll die.’

The mage now pressed the back of a hand to his brow. ‘I’m burning up! I swear!’

‘Oh, shut up. Now, where are we?’

‘For the love of the gods, man . . . let me die in peace!’

Dorin shook him. ‘Where . . . are . . . we?’

The fellow slipped into unconsciousness. Feigned, or not. Dorin threw him down. Wonderful! Just wonderful. He straightened and peered round. Plain rocky desert extended in all directions. And just how far he could see was uncertain, the light being so strange and eerie – more a diffuse suggestion of light. It tricked the eyes and made the judging of distances nearly impossible.

One direction, however, appeared different. He thought he saw there the suggestion of angular shapes amid the desert plain. He hitched up the unconscious mage, set him over his shoulder, and started walking.

After a time, an unknown amount of time, it occurred to Dorin that the plain was one huge rubbish midden. He was constantly kicking aside bits of broken bone, glazed ceramics, and stone chips. He stepped over or around larger fragments of worked stone – what looked like the friezes and pillars of demolished buildings.

He had no idea how much time had passed. The murky sky did not brighten or dim in the usual manner: rather, it flickered, sometimes lightening only to darken once more. It was as if unseen things were drifting about, occulting whatever diffuse light there was.

In time, however, he became certain that he was approaching the ruins of a city. But no city such as he’d ever known. Hollow metal frameworks rose like statues to the sky. Toothed gears as tall as him lay all about. Broken rusted metal littered the sands. He hitched up the unconscious mage, uneasy in the face of such alien machinery. Yet he felt the need for shelter, and open doorways beckoned. He selected the smallest of the surviving buildings and entered.

He laid the mage down amid the wind-blown dust within then selected a gaping window from which to keep an eye upon the approach. He wondered idly as he stood watch who had built the bizarre structures, and whether they were even human. The entrances, for example, were far too low and wide. As were the windows. They did not seem built for ordinary men and women.