Shadow Chaser (17 page)

Was I asleep? It didn’t really feel like it. So I had to find Eel and set him free. He had to be somewhere around here. Poking my nose into every cell was pointless—there were too many of them. And I could easily run into serious trouble if I opened the wrong one. I couldn’t tell who might be waiting for me inside. The best idea was to steal into the watch house and take a look at the register of prisoners—there had to be one of those in a prison, even if the warders here were old men with black voids where their eyes ought to be.

I set off along the corridor in the direction of the stairway, but stopped before I had taken ten steps. The women prisoners! How could I have forgotten about them? The women must know what prison this was. And there was no way I could just leave them to the mercy of that cursed old man. Maybe I ought to try to let them out, since the Nameless One’s supporters hadn’t touched the lock picks in my pocket.

A blizzard of contradictory thoughts immediately started swirling around in my head.

“Harold, you’re not a knight on a white horse from some sickly sweet children’s fairy tale,” whispered a voice with a slightly cynical tone. “Take your arms and your legs and scram, get as far away from there as possible! You won’t save the women anyway.”

“Oh, yes I will!” retorted a different voice. “Could you just leave someone to rot in the dark if you had even the ghost of a chance of saving them?”

Oho! So I had not just one, but two inner voices! Plus my own voice, and Valder’s as well! Four in all! It was time to book a room with padded walls in the Hospital of the Ten Martyrs.

“Yes, I could,” the first voice replied. “Wandering around in the dark with two women who are half dead from starvation is sheer lunacy. We’d never make it.”

“Say what you like, but I’m at least going to try to save them.”

“All right,” the first voice said to the second after a pause. “But afterwards don’t say I didn’t warn you. But then … What if we can grab ourselves the ten thousand gold pieces that woman offered the old man? Ten here and fifty from the king when we deliver on the Commission…”

I went back to the cell where the female prisoners were languishing.

Very carefully, so that I wouldn’t make the slightest sound, I put the lock pick with the triangular notch into the keyhole and tried to turn it. It didn’t work. Hmm, let’s try the one with four prongs and the size zero-one-eight groove. Right, now … that was it! Or at least, something in the lock had given a quiet click.

This wasn’t a simple lock, though. It had at least nine springs and two secret ones. Catch one of those by accident and you had to start the job all over again. It must have been made by dwarves. The short folk had done their usual good job, and now it would cost me no end of effort to get the door open. I would have to work on a lock like that for anything from two to fifteen minutes.

“Don’t be in such a hurry. Think. These women weren’t afraid of the old man,” I suddenly heard a voice say inside my head.

I shuddered. It wasn’t one of my own “inner voices,” the sides of a stupid quarrel with myself, it was the voice of Valder, the archmagician who had died several centuries earlier and had now found a refuge inside my hospitable head, which welcomes anyone at all who wants to come in.

“Do you think so?” I thought in fright.

“Yes. Did that old man frighten you?”

“Do you really have to ask?”

“Me, too, although I saw it all with an entirely different vision, but while they were talking the women’s voices didn’t even tremble. So should we really…” Valder’s whisper inside my head stopped for a moment. “Should you really go barging into the spiders’ den?”

“What is this place where I’ve … where we’ve ended up?”

“I don’t know. I can’t remember.” It was the first time I could recall the magician not knowing something. “Suddenly we were here, that’s all.… As if someone had just dropped us here.…”

“Suddenly we were here? That is, some kind individual just snaps his fingers and bang!—here I am in prison?”

In my mind I wished away the zealous clicker’s fingers, together with the rest of his hand. That would teach him to go sending decent people off to Sagot only knew where!

“What should I do?” I asked Valder, just to be on the safe side.

“It’s your head,” the answer came back. “You decide what you should do.”

“Oh no, I beg your pardon! Thanks to you, it isn’t just my head anymore!” I snapped back at the archmagician. “You climbed into it without asking permission, and now, if you would be so kind, since you have no intention of disappearing from it, advise me. What should I do?”

This time the answer was silence. The damned archmagician had disappeared, just as he had done before. It was as if he didn’t even exist. But I wasn’t going to be fooled like that. Valder only pretended to be dumb until some genuine magical danger threatened my skin. He had already got me out of several really tight corners, and I had no doubt that he would do the same again.

Some people might say that the archmagician and I had a mutually advantageous collaboration going, with Valder saving me from dangerous situations and me offering his soul rest and temporary forgetfulness in a corner of my mind. Well, now, everyone who thinks that’s great can just shut his mouth and keep it shut! They just don’t know what it’s like sharing your own head with another person, even if he did die a long, long time ago and he doesn’t interfere in my business until things are looking really desperate.

It’s a very unpleasant feeling, being able to sense someone else inside yourself and remembering things that never happened in your life. Although I can’t deny that if the archmagician hadn’t been with me, my eyes would have been eaten away by death-worms long ago.

“All right, the darkness take you. You can keep your damn mouth shut until you turn blue!” I swore under my breath.

I had no time to make any decision about what to do, though. I suddenly heard the sound of footsteps approaching from the direction of the stairway. Whoever the newcomer was, he was walking with a firm, confident stride, and walking in my direction. I thought how strange it was that all the jailers were in the mood for wandering the corridors today. For had always taught me to be afraid of people who strolled blithely through places where you ought to tiptoe and avoid attracting any unnecessary attention. If he was so noisy, it meant he wasn’t afraid. If he wasn’t afraid, it meant he could be dangerous. If he could be dangerous, he was someone I ought to avoid if I possibly could.

I had always tried to follow my old teacher’s wise advice, which was why I was still alive and well. I had no intention of doing anything different this time around.

I ducked into the cell with the open doorway. It already felt like home—the stench crept up into my nose, but this time I was able to adjust to it much more quickly than before. I stood where I could see the door of the female prisoners’ cell, and listened to the approaching steps.

The footfalls were only about five yards away from my sanctuary. Three … two …

The newcomer had a dark-lantern and although I could see an orange crescent in the dark, I couldn’t make out anything else around it. There was just the outline of a shadow in the darkness that had scarcely paled at all.

The newcomer stopped and the door gave a pitiful creak. I stared as hard as I could, but it was impossible to see anything in the pitch-black darkness. All I could do was keep my ears open.

The newcomer walked into the cell and I heard a chain jangle again.

“Hello.”

This time it was the second woman who spoke first.

“The most important thing is always to be polite, is that right, Lafresa?” the unexpected visitor asked in a mocking tone. The moment I heard that voice, I wished I was a thousand leagues away!

Darkness! A h’san’kor and a thousand demons! May they roast the soles of my feet on a frying pan! May I be caught red-handed every time for the rest of my life! Now I was really in trouble.

I recognized him. I had only heard his voice twice before, but both times I really wished I wasn’t there. It was the Master’s faithful servant, the one they called the Messenger.

“And what else do I have, apart from politeness?” The woman’s voice sounded bitter. “Or did you expect me to start begging you to spare my life?”

“Only the Master can spare your life,” the creature replied bleakly. “I am merely the Messenger who carries out his will. And as for not begging me … you will. If I want you to. You certainly will, Lafresa.”

The woman didn’t answer.

“Well, now,” the Messenger chuckled, without waiting for an answer. He sounded quite human now. “I see Blag is keeping you on nothing but water.”

“I’ll rip his heart out!” Leta hissed furiously.

“I don’t think that would do him any harm,” the Messenger chuckled. “You ought to know how to deal with Soulless Ones. It’s simpler to cut Blag’s head off than try to tear out a useless organ.… Although I can offer you some hope—you may soon be able to carry out your threat, my dear Leta. I’ve been thinking more and more often about making you into the same kind of Soulless One as old Blag. Our mutual friend needs an assistant … for various kinds of … pleasures.”

“You were always fond of foul jokes, slave!” the woman replied contemptuously.

Now I felt delighted that I hadn’t tried to save their lives. Anyone who talked with the Messenger on equal terms was no companion for me.

“And for all your short life you have been distinguished by tremendous conceit,” the Messenger parried mockingly. “You took too much upon yourself, my dear Leta, as did the lovely Lafresa here, and you have paid for it.”

“I have always been faithful and carried out all the Master’s orders!” Leta retorted furiously.

“Always? Come now, Leta! Don’t try to deceive an old friend. There’s only you, me, and Lafresa here; you can feel free to tell me how you managed to bungle such a simple task.”

“We did everything just as the Master ordered! For the good of—”

“Don’t give me any speeches about the good of the cause! Leave that for the priests and those tawdry peacocks who call themselves noblemen. Come on, tell me why your purple cloud didn’t work!” the Messenger barked. “Why does the Master still not have the Key?”

A purple cloud! Was the Master’s faithful dog talking about the shamanic storm? It certainly sounded as if he meant the abomination that had almost wiped out our group in Hargan’s Wasteland.

“I don’t understand how it happened,” the woman said in a tired voice. “You know I did everything carefully and correctly, just as I was told. The servants killed all of the Nameless One’s shamans—they were hunting the travelers, too—then we used the brew they had prepared and concealed the spell with a storm so that, darkness forbid, the Order would not get wind of anything, and we sent the magic off on the right wind. Everything was carefully calculated, and no one should have survived. Neither the elves nor the elfess had enough knowledge to oppose me. They couldn’t have destroyed the cloud!”

“But they did!” the Messenger retorted implacably.

“It wasn’t them,” Leta argued. “You can smell the shamanism of the dark elves and the Firstborn a league away, and there was nothing.”

“Don’t make excuses!” Lafresa exclaimed shrilly. “He’s nothing but a servant.”

“It wasn’t them,” the other woman insisted stubbornly, taking no notice of what Lafresa had said.

“Not them? Then who? In the name of the Font of Bloody Dew, tell me who!” the Messenger hissed.

“I don’t know. Someone powerful. And probably a magician, because we couldn’t sense anything. Someone you didn’t take into account.”

And his name was Valder. It was my acquaintance who had shattered the purple cloud into a million tiny shreds and saved our group.

“Stop lying! You’re walking a knife edge as it is. Everything was taken into account. Everything! Or do you expect me to believe that there’s a magician hiding among those ants? Player from Avendoom didn’t say anything about any powerful magician. Nobody from the Order went with the group, he made sure of that!”

“I don’t trust Player,” Leta muttered. “He’s a fox who could mess up our plans at any moment.”

“Immortality and knowledge make a magnificent incentive for loyalty.”

“If he’s so loyal to our cause, then why is the thief still alive?”

“The plans have changed.”

“That’s stupid!”

This woman would have done better to follow Lafresa’s example and say nothing, if she wanted to live a bit longer.

“Just a little more and I’ll rip your tongue out, girl! It’s not for you to discuss the will of the Master.”

“No threats, please, Messenger! I knew you in another life, servant of the Master, so save your eloquence for the sheep. You’ll find them much easier to frighten than me!”

“Oh, yes, they’re much more compliant than you are. But you’re no different from them. You’re just as mortal, although you can remember all your previous lives. But we’re not talking about the servants, we’re talking about you and your friend here. You made a mistake, you failed to justify the Master’s trust, and that’s why you’re here, waiting to pay the penalty.”

“Is that why you came? How low the one they now call the Messenger has fallen! Well, I’m ready to die,” Lafresa declared proudly.