Shadow Prowler (23 page)

“Dashing through the same room, reflected a thousand times in reality.” Again that quiet, weary voice.

“Who are you?” I whispered in fright, listening closely to what was inside me and already guessing what the answer would be.

“I don’t know . . .” I heard after a while. “I am I. And I am alive, thanks to you. But not all of me, only a part of my consciousness.”

“You’re inside my head!” I shouted.

“Don’t be afraid, I’ll go as soon as you leave this place cursed by magic. Allow me to live. Just for a little . . . ,” the voice implored, and for a moment I hesitated, but then immediately felt scared.

“No! Get out of my head!”

“You know me. You were me when all this happened. You must know that I won’t do you any harm. On the contrary, I will help you.”

I couldn’t give a damn for his help. He had installed himself in my head without my permission! What I wanted was to scrape the voice of that accursed archmagician out of my ears altogether.

“I will help you to get out of here and complete your job.” He spoke in a low voice; I had to listen closely to make out the words.

“You were me, and I became you. You knew my life, and now I know yours. All your concerns, all your goals. We are one whole.”

“We are not one whole!” I angrily kicked the dead man’s skull and it went rolling across to the wall. “This is my body.”

“Let it be so.” Valder had no intention of arguing. “Simply allow me to fall asleep when all this is over, and I will help you to get out of here.”

“Fall asleep? What do you mean, fall asleep? Inside my head?”

“Yes . . . I want peace. I have waited for you too long. To fulfill my promise.”

“Waited? A promise? To whom?”

No reply.

“No, a thousand times no, may a h’san’kor devour me! This is my head, only mine. Get out of it!”

“Very well,” Valder replied after a long silence. “I’ll help you in any case, and then go away. You have wandered into a time mirror. Go out through the window. Just jump and do not think about anything.”

Should I do as he said and end up in the winter world? What would I do if I suddenly found myself two hundred years in the past? Would I be able to get back, or would I have to spend the rest of my life in a place that was completely strange to me?

The archmagician said nothing, and basically there was nothing else I could do except follow his advice and climb out of that accursed room through that equally accursed window. Time was passing imperceptibly—another two or three hours and dawn would begin. I had to get out of that lousy place before the first rays of sunlight broke over the line of the horizon.

I walked up to the broken window and looked outside. A light, frosty breeze chilled my face. What was that the archmagician had
said? Assuming, of course, that he had said it, and it wasn’t my insane imagination.

“Just jump and do not think about anything.”

Easily said! Take a run up and leap, like a circus tiger jumping through a hoop of fire. Only here, instead of flames, there were sharp shards of broken glass round the frame. But then it wouldn’t be the first time. I had left several rich men’s houses in the same way after visiting them.

I put the magical trinket away—there was more than enough moonlight. After a moment’s thought I picked up the vase and flung it out into the street. It spun through the air and disappeared, without hitting the ground.

“May the demon of the abyss gnaw on my liver!” I exclaimed, and spat, then took a run and jumped into the unknown.

A glimpse of the room, a white roadway, the moon slowly drifting across the sky, snowflakes falling. I landed on my feet, couldn’t keep my balance and started falling sideways, so I rolled over across my right shoulder.

The illusion disappeared. It evaporated, borne away by the wind of time. No snow, no new houses with windows lit in bright invitation, no people hurrying about their business. Just the dead Street of the Sleepy Cat. Dead houses with dead windows. And summer. So I was where I needed to be.

Valder had showed me the right way out after all. Overcome by curiosity, I looked round at the judge’s house. I went back and looked in through the window at the room where I had just been. A table, flower stems thrown out of a vase, a skeleton. A door. And beyond it a dark, narrow corridor, leading off somewhere into the gloomy interior of the dark building.

“I’m getting away from here!” I muttered, swinging the crossbow behind my shoulder.

The Street of the Sleepy Cat was no different from the Street of Men. The same desolation, the same thousands of imaginary eyes observing me from the ragged wounds of the windows. Except that here the street was a bit narrower and darker, and the buildings were poorer.

I was making rapid progress, but that didn’t prevent me from sticking to the shadows and the semidarkness, as well as listening cautiously
to the silence of the night and the dreary song of the wind. Once or twice it brought me the sound of a child’s cry, distorted by distance, but it was so far away that I tried not to take any notice.

There was a huge gaping hole in one of the houses on my right, and I hastily crossed over to the other side of the street—there was no point in tempting fate. After all, I knew what kind of ugly creature could be lurking in there on this fine night.

A strange white blob took shape in the air ahead of me. I crept up close and studied it curiously. My way past a well-ruined wooden inn with a fancy sign in the form of a fat cat was blocked by a cloud of semitransparent, silvery white mist.

Round and fluffy, looking like a harmless little sheep, it was hanging right in the middle of the street, with its edges not touching the surrounding houses.

I don’t know why, but I got the distinct feeling that some gigantic, fat spider had abandoned a half-finished web. The edges of the substance swayed and trembled, creating an impression of sluggish life. This mist was nothing at all like the June mist of Avendoom, which was yellow and too thick to see through, but this . . .

It was strange, somehow.

I halted about ten yards from this unexpected obstacle, trying to decide what to do next. For had advised me to go across the roofs, but who knew if they would support the weight of a man after all these years? Should I try to slip through? Under the cover of the shadow, pressing close against the wall?

Beyond the silver haze of this strange substance I could see the outline of a human figure. From the height of him, he had to be a giant. His head was level with the roofs of the single-story houses.

As far as I could tell, what I could see up ahead had to be the statue of Sagot.

I had already lifted one foot in order to go over to the wall and slip past the little cloud when I was stopped by that sharp voice ringing out in my head again:

“Stop! Don’t move, if you value your life!”

Harold is an obedient lad, and I froze as still as a scarecrow in a village vegetable garden. It was only a few agonized heartbeats later that I realized the archmagician had come back again and it was his voice.
I was about to tell Valder exactly what I thought of him, but before I could, he barked: “Quiet! Not a sound! That rabid beast is blind, but there’s nothing wrong with its hearing! Speak in thoughts, I can hear you perfectly well.”

“You promised to leave me alone!”

“Then where would you have been? In the jaws of the irilla?”

“I don’t understand.”

“That’s what you’re looking at.”

I stared hard at the cloud.

“I read about this creature spawned by the Kronk-a-Mor in the ancient tomes when . . .”—the voice hesitated—“. . . when I was still alive. Irillas are blind, they like deserted places.”

“How do they hunt?” I asked doubtfully. “A blind hunter—that’s something new.”

“I already told you. They have excellent hearing.”

“I think it would have grabbed me ages ago, if everything you say is true,” I thought.

“Don’t deceive yourself. The irilla heard you two hundred yards away. It’s still waiting for you to approach it.”

“It’ll have a long wait. What kind of fool does it take me for? I’ll have to find another way round.”

“As soon as you take a step back, it will attack. You have to deceive it.”

“I wonder how?” I snorted, keeping my eyes fixed on the calmly quivering clump of mist. “And what do you care if it eats me?”

Valder was silent for a long time. “I have been given life again after a long wait in oblivion. Life, and not a gray nothingness from which it is impossible to move into either the darkness or the light. Although I exist in another’s body, where I am regarded as an uninvited guest, that is still better than nothing. Let me fall asleep, I will not hinder you, and perhaps sometimes I will be able to help. Do not drive me out . . .”

“Okay, it’s a deal. You can stay for the time being.” I had come to the conclusion that the archmagician’s help could come in useful after all. “But only until I leave the Forbidden Territory. Agreed?”

“Yes! Thank you.”

“So how do I deceive this blind beast with big ears?”

“Try to pick up a stone and throw it as far away from yourself as you can. And then run.”

Remarkable, a brilliant plan. And I was foolish enough to think I would get really useful advice. Although I supposed I could try it. If I ran fast, I could end up beside the statue of Sagot, and For told me it was absolutely safe there, no evil beast would dare to touch me.

I picked up a small round stone and threw it into the window closest to the mist. The stone flew into the darkness and bounced off the wall, and then the mousetrap snapped shut. The cloud hurtled toward the sudden sound as fast as an arrow fired from an elfin bow and disappeared into the house, and I darted past the dangerous spot as fast as I could run. Out of the corner of my eye I saw that my trick hadn’t been a complete success. The white bundle of mist, looking more like a worm now, was rapidly pouring back out into the street.

And it was clearly intending to play tag with my own humble and frightened personage. I concentrated all my energy into a wild gallop.

“Faster!” Valder advised me, entirely unnecessarily.

I collapsed beside the granite pedestal and watched as the worm that was pursuing me, as crazed with hunger as a starving gkhol, gave out a melodic crystalline note and shattered into a thousand tiny shreds that burned up in the air with a crimson flame.

Well now, my teacher For was right, as always. Sagot’s statue really is a safe spot.

I got up off the ground, brushed the dust and small pieces of rubbish off my jacket and trousers, and turned round to see the face of my god at long last.

I gasped in amazement.

The ancient artist had done a really good job in depicting the patron god of thieves. Sagot was sitting on a granite pedestal with his legs crossed, wearing boots on his feet. He looked very slightly tired, like a traveler who has finally completed a long journey. He had elegant hands with slim fingers—they looked too young for a forty-year-old man.

The pointed nose, high forehead, slight stubble on the cheeks, cunning eyes and smile were equally suitable for an old man made wise by experience, or a mischievous boy.

I had seen this man before. And even paid a gold coin for his absurd advice.

Sitting before me was the beggar from the empty pedestal at the cathedral.

I had heard several legends from the brothers of the night about Sagot supposedly liking to wander the earth occasionally and talk to those who appealed to him at difficult moments: to help them, advise them, punish them, or play jokes on them. But I’d never thought that anything like that would ever happen to me.

“You see, I am carrying out the Commission,” I said, addressing the statue. “But I still don’t understand your advice about Selena. Keep laughing—you bamboozled me out of a whole gold piece.”

But the god said nothing and merely continued to look down mockingly. Why should he bother to reply to the cheeky comments of some little insect by the name of Harold? I sighed. Sagot had protected me from the irilla, but it was time to be moving on.

“Good-bye, Sagot.” I controlled my insolence and bowed. “I’ll try to get that Horn.”

I turned round and walked toward the Street of the Sleepy Cat, sunk deep in the darkness of night, and left the statue of the god behind me. After spending just a little while beside it, I had a confident, calm feeling. I was going to complete this Commission.

I felt as if I had just been granted the god’s approval, although he hadn’t said a single word to me.

The street was as endless as the hatred between elves and orcs. I had already been walking along it for twenty minutes. I wanted to get the job over and done with and get out of this place.

But clearly that was not to be just yet.

First I caught that smell that cannot possibly be confused with anything else. That stench can drive a hungry gkhol insane—the stink of decomposing corpses. I started breathing through my mouth, trying to ignore the unbearable aroma.

A couple of moments later I heard the crackling and chomping—sounds very familiar to those who engage in robbing ancient graves. They were what always gave the vile creatures away.