Shadow Chaser (24 page)

Apparently Bass had been on the street when we rode down on the cart, and had seen me and the unconscious Eel being loaded into the carriage. He hadn’t tried to interfere (which was absolutely right—one man against a dozen is no kind of odds) but he had managed to follow the carriage outside the city all the way to the private country estate that was owned by the Nameless One’s followers. Remembering his childhood nickname of Snoop I was not surprised.

After finding out where we were being held, Bass had set off back to Ranneng, but the gates were already closed, and he had been forced to while the night away outside the city walls. But in the morning Snoop had hurried straight to the Learned Owl Inn.

“And how did you know about the inn?” I asked, although I already knew the answer.

That day when we met him for the first time at the Large Market, he had simply followed our group. First to the Sundrop, and then to the Learned Owl. So he had known where to go for help. Although, of course, he didn’t know that he would run into a practical, and deadly, elf.

Ell’s first inclination was to let Bass’s blood, in line with the old folk wisdom that says if you trust everyone who comes along, sooner or later you’ll end up in the graveyard. But first Hallas and Deler, and then Kli-Kli—when he came back from his fruitless search for my own humble person—confirmed that they had seen this slob talking with Harold, who was now missing. So Ell had put away his knife, and Miralissa and Alistan subjected the informant to intensive interrogation.

I have to give the elfess her due—she suspected Snoop right up to the final moment, quite reasonably assuming that the person in front of her was either a top-notch swindler, or a follower of the Nameless One, or a servant of the Master, or darkness only knows who else. And so Bass was promised that, if he was lying, his eyes would be gouged out and every protruding part of his body would be sliced off in the most painful way possible.

Ell, Egrassa, and Honeycomb set off to reconnoiter the address given by Bass, and discovered that the house was absolutely teeming with characters of distinctly dubious appearance. And then the cavalry had arrived, in the person of almost all the rest of the group—Uncle had stayed behind to keep an eye on Bass and nurse his wound, which still hadn’t knitted together, even after Miralissa’s best efforts.

“Thank you.” It cost me a certain effort to say that to him. “If not for your help…” There was no need to say any more.

“Peace?” he said, holding out his narrow hand and smiling uncertainly.

“Okay.” I shook his hand. “But I need to have a serious talk with you.”

I was still angry with him for all those years when he hadn’t let me and For know that he was alive and well.

“All right, but a little later on. You look like you need a couple of days’ sleep. We’ll see each other again.”

Snoop set off toward the gates of the inn, but Ell sprang up in his way like an apparition of doom: “Where are you going, man?”

“You will have to stay, Master Bass,” said Miralissa, who had appeared beside Ell.

“But why, in the name of a thousand dead goblins?”

Kli-Kli choked on his carrot in surprise and looked at my old friend reproachfully.

“Our business in Ranneng requires absolute confidentiality and I’m sorry, but we can’t trust you, even though you have helped us.”

“Are you going to keep me under lock and key?” asked Bass, his eyebrows rising in surprise.

“No, no need for that,” Alistan Markauz put in. “We’ll provide you with every possible comfort until our group leaves the city. There’s food here in plenty, and we can find you a bed, so do stay.”

“And what if I don’t agree?” Snoop always was a stubborn one.

A crooked grin appeared on Ell’s face.

“I advise you to agree,” he said.

“But I can hope that when all your ‘business’ is over, you will let me go?”

“Of course,” said Ell, without batting an eyelid.

Somehow, I wasn’t entirely convinced. Elves are a practical race, and it would be simpler for them to slit Bass’s throat out of genuine concern for the fate of our mission than to set a witness free to go wandering wherever his fancy might take him. I’d have to have a word with Miralissa when the time came, or her k’lissang could quite easily dispatch the rogue to the light. Ell was rather hot-tempered, and he had a short fuse when it came to things like that.

“Harold, my old friend, I’m so glad that you’re alive!” said Hallas, putting his arm round my shoulder (the short little gnome could only do that because I was sitting on the ground). “Come on, I’ll pour you a beer.”

“All right, old friend,” I said with a smile, getting up off the ground.

As I walked toward the door of the inn, I found myself thinking in surprise that I was changing despite myself. Shadow Harold, the master thief, the most skillful rifler of treasure chests in the whole of Avendoom, that solitary, morose character who never had any real friends and never showed his feelings to anyone, was changing. But for better or for worse?

Would I have called anyone my friend two months ago?

No.

I didn’t have any friends, except for my mentor, teacher, and second father, For. And as for taking a friendly drink with anyone … That was something I’d never done.

A thief, if he is a good thief, has to be alone. No family, no attachments, nothing that would affect his work or his safety. And that was how it had been until just recently. I was astonished to realize that now I could call those constant squabblers Deler and Hallas, that tiresome pest Kli-Kli, Miralissa, Lamplighter, and all the others my friends, and without the slightest hesitation.

*   *   *

As Eel and I quenched our thirst, we took turns in telling everyone (with the exception of Bass, who had been sent upstairs) what had happened to us. Naturally, without mentioning Loudmouth.

“At least there’s one thing we can be happy about in all this, Harold,” Arnkh said with a sigh. “The Nameless One’s followers will leave us in peace now.”

“We won’t have any peace. There’s still that Master of yours,” Honeycomb boomed in his deep voice.

“But you must agree it’s a completely different matter fighting on one front instead of two.”

“Oh, for sure.”

While they were talking I plucked up my courage and, when there was a pause, I said: “I had a dream…”

Alistan snorted suspiciously. He didn’t take my “visions” very seriously. Kli-Kli groaned dolefully and grabbed hold of his head. But Miralissa nodded approvingly. I told them about the Master’s prison and the Messenger’s conversation with the mysterious woman.

“Interesting,” the elfess said after a short pause. “You seem to have some special affinity for the Master. I must tell the chroniclers of the House of the Black Moon about this—perhaps they’ll be able to learn something from it. But if your dream really is prophetic, then this Lafresa is dangerous for us. If she should manage to get hold of the Key first, all is lost. Somehow I have no doubt that this woman would be able to break the knots that bind the artifact.”

I chose my words carefully. “Lady Miralissa, why can’t the Master’s servants simply deliver the artifact to their lord without waiting for this woman?”

“Yes, indeed,” said Alistan, supporting me. “What could be easier than to deliver the glass bauble to where it’s needed without having to rely on the witch?”

“The Key is attuned to Harold, and if it is delivered to the place where the Master lives without those bonds being broken, it could be too dangerous for our enemy.”

“Wait!” The impassive Eel looked up from his food and stared at the elfess in amazement. “You know where the Master lives?”

“I can guess,” the elfin princess replied reluctantly. “The Master, if he controls beings like the Messenger and endows his servants with such powerful magic, must be in a place where there is a concentration of immense power. And in a place like that, an artifact attuned to someone else would create such powerful turbulence in the flow of magic that the Master would be deprived of his powers and abilities for a long time. Therefore they have to destroy the bonds first, and only a highly experienced shaman can do that.”

“A place of power, the House of Power,” I muttered to myself, recalling the phrase that the messenger had spoken to Lafresa.

“What did you say?” Miralissa asked sharply.

I raised my eyes from my plate and looked at the elfess in surprise. She was gripping the edge of the table so hard that her knuckles had turned white.

“I said ‘the House of Power’… do you know something about it?”

I spotted the swift glance that Miralissa exchanged with Kli-Kli.

“The question is: Where did
you
hear about it?” she answered.

“In my dream,” I said with a shrug, and then recited the list: “House of Power, House of Pain, House of Love. House of Fear…”

The swarthy elfess’s skin turned paler and paler with every name. Kli-Kli choked on his custard pie and started coughing. Deler thumped the goblin on the back with all the generosity that his dwarf heart could muster.

“I do not like your dreams, Harold! What else have you discovered?”

“Well … nothing,” I said, rather surprised at the fervent insistence of this lady who was always so calm.

“Are you sure?” The amber eyes drilled into me, trying to draw out the innermost secrets of my soul.

“Yes,” I replied quite honestly, without turning my eyes away.

She suddenly went limp and seemed to age. Wrinkles of fatigue appeared on her forehead and in the corners of her mouth; the fingers with the black nails reluctantly released their grip on the tabletop.

“What did I say?”

“That would take too long to explain, Harold. We don’t have time for it just at the moment,” Kli-Kli said hastily.

Was that a note of nervous tension I heard in the little goblin’s voice?

I cleared my throat and stared down at my plate, still mechanically stirring my soup with the spoon and thinking that the jester and Miralissa had far more business and secrets in common than they showed.

Secrets.

Nothing but secrets. They were dancing and prancing around me like the shadows from a flaming torch, but there was no way I could get a grip on them. More and more secrets, so many that soon I would drown in the murky stream. Who is the Master? Who is Influential, or Player? Why does the Master want the Horn? Is he the Nameless One’s enemy, too? Why does the Master take such pleasure in playing cat and mouse with us? Who is the Messenger? What is that world of Chaos that I entered in my dream? What kind of strange dreams are these? What are the Houses of Power, Pain, Love, and Fear? And a thousand and one other questions that I don’t know the answers to.

I didn’t ask the elfess and the goblin any questions—Miralissa would only have fobbed me off with a seductive smile, and Kli-Kli would have pretended to be a total fool.

I had lost my appetite, but I stoically finished my soup, feeling the elfess’s searching glance on me as I ate.…

*   *   *

“We need to have a talk, thief,” Alistan Markauz said drily when I got up from the table.

“Of course, milord.”

“Follow me.”

He started up the stairs to the second floor of the inn, without even looking to make sure I was following. I walked up after him. Egrassa and Miralissa were already waiting for us in the room. Ell wasn’t there; he had taken on the job of keeping an eye on Bass, who at that moment was dining in the hall and trying to teach Lamplighter how to play some card game or other.

“Have a seat, Harold,” said Egrassa, pointing to a chair. “A glass of wine?”

“Yes, thank you.”

I was immediately on my guard. The dark elves had never offered me a drink in their company before. Miralissa’s cousin was exceptionally courteous today. And they say that elves are spiteful, wicked creatures.

But then, so they are.

Men have never really lived at peace with the dark elves of Zagraba or the light elves of the Forests of I’alyala. There has always been friction, through all the thousands of years that our two races have known each other. Fortunately, things have never gone as far as open war, but border skirmishes have been common, especially during the period after men first appeared in Siala.

The dark elves had concluded a treaty of peace and friendship with our kingdom, but before that the yellow-eyed race had never shown any great fondness for the inhabitants of Valiostr. And even now the elves were not helping us to resist the Nameless One out of the sheer kindness of their hearts. Elves have about as much kindness in their hearts as their closest relatives, the orcs.

That is, none.

The silence in the room dragged on. I eventually cleared my throat and asked:

“What did you want to see me about?”

The question sounded a little impolite, but what can they expect from a thief? Fine manners? I don’t have them.… Or, rather, I do (thanks to For), but I didn’t want to use them at that moment. They’re going to ask me again what it was that saved me in Hargan’s Wasteland or how I found out about the houses.