Shadow Prowler (5 page)

S
tanding outside the inn, engulfed by the twilight as thick as cream, was a large carriage, harnessed to a foursome of ash-gray horses of the Doralissian breed. The horses were squinting sideways at the guardsmen and snorting nervously. Humans weren’t the only ones who wanted to spend the night behind the protection of secure walls.

I suddenly noticed that the windows of the carriage were blocked off with thick planks of wood.

An expensive carriage. Not the kind everyone can afford. And a four-in-hand of Doralissian horses cost an incredible amount of money.

We set off along the dark streets, and the only time I bounced was when the wheel ran over a cobblestone jutting out especially high from the surface of the road. The baron didn’t say anything, merely casting occasional gloomy glances in my direction, and I was left with nothing to do but listen to the clip-clopping of hooves from the mounted guardsmen escorting us and try to guess where they were taking me.

Who is it that wants to meet me? It’s obvious straightaway that whoever the lad might be, he must have plenty of influence—since he sent Frago Lanten himself to fetch me. I wonder what this unidentified individual wants from me? Payment for some inconvenience that I’ve caused him? I just hope he isn’t one of the magicians. I don’t want to spend the rest of my days in the skin of a toad or a Doralissian.

I chuckled quietly to myself, attracting the baron’s surly glance. It was hard to say which was worse, the body of a toad or the body of a goat-man. I would probably have chosen the former, because in Avendoom they were less fond of Doralissians than they were of toads. Suddenly
the driver stopped the carriage and a pair of zealous guards swung the door open. The cool breath of night struck me in the face. Even in summer it is rather cool in Avendoom—since it is quite close to the Desolate Lands, the blessed heat only visits the city in August, and even then only for a couple of weeks, until the wind from the Cold Sea brings the rains. Valiostr is the most northerly kingdom of Siala, so the weather here leaves a lot to be desired.

“What’s this, then? A brief recreational stroll?” I asked the baron, trying to maintain my presence of mind.

“Stop wrangling with me, Harold. Just do as you’re told and all will be love and affection between us.”

I shrugged and jumped down onto the stone road and surveyed the surroundings. The little street was empty and the dark houses on one side hung over us like the Zam-da-Mort. There was a high wall running along the other side of the street. Right then. That meant we were somewhere on the edge of the Inner City.

Thin, tentative tongues of grayish yellow mist were already creeping out of the municipal drainage system. It was still timid, pressing low against the surface of the street, not yet daring to rise higher. But in a few hours’ time a thick blanket of the mist would cover the city, just as it did every night in June, and hang there until the morning.

On this occasion the darkness in the street was impenetrable, clouds covered the sky with their heavy carcasses, and the only light radiated from the guards’ torches and the oil lamps hanging on the carriage. The guards were peering hard into the darkness, holding their crossbows at the ready.

“Is he clean? No weapons?” Frago asked.

The guards hastily patted me down once again, took the lock picks out of the secret pocket on my belt, then extracted a slim razor from the top of my boot and nodded.

“Clean, Your Grace. Clean as a Doralissian on his way home after a business meeting with a dwarf. Yargi knows the thieves’ tricks.”

The guards on the horses burst into laughter. “Enough of that!” Lanten barked irritably. “Blindfold him and let’s get going.”

The guard who called himself Yargi took a strip of heavy, dark cloth out of his pocket and blindfolded me with it. Hands took hold of me by
the arms, shoved me into the carriage, slammed the door shut, and the carriage set off again. I raised my hands to ease the pressure of the cloth against my eyes.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Harold,” the baron said straight into my ear, speaking very politely.

“Where are you taking me, Your Grace? Or is it a secret?”

“A state secret, you could say. But for now keep quiet and be patient. Don’t make me angry.”

“I beg your pardon, Your Grace, but what will happen if I make you angry?”

The darkness had made me talkative and sharpened my tongue.

“If you don’t come to an agreement with the man we’re going to see, then you’ll find yourself in my hands. . . . And I’ll be angry.”

I decided it was better to be patient and say nothing for a while. It would be no problem for me to jump out of the carriage that was dashing through the streets and try to escape. I would have a few precious moments before the guards realized what had happened. But I didn’t really want to risk playing tag with crossbow bolts.

Meanwhile the carriage was bowling through the city at an excellent speed. The driver was evidently very skillful and he did not wish to spare the carriage, the horses, or the passengers. Now my entire backside took a battering on the potholes. But the baron wasn’t complaining. That must mean there was a good reason for all the hurry, and I gritted my teeth and tried to sit up straight when we heeled over on the bends. Actually, just once I did allow myself the pleasure of giving way, allowing inertia to throw me against Frago, and lifting the purse off his belt. I must say there wasn’t much in it, though.

Eventually we arrived. I was taken out and handed over to some men who took a tight grip on my elbows. Then they led me off somewhere. There was nothing I could do but move my feet, stumbling every time there were steps up or down.

All the time the baron was snorting behind me. Corridors, stairways, rooms, halls. Sounds. My feet walked across a bare stone floor, raising a hollow, resonant echo from the slabs of Isilian marble; they stamped across squeaking wooden floorboards. I had long ago lost count of the number of steps and stairways and bends in the countless corridors of the huge building through which I was being led. Torches hissed and
sputtered close to my ear; sometimes we met someone as we walked along, but I could hear them hastily move aside, making way for us.

Finally a door opened and I felt the dense pile of a carpet under my feet. Without seeing it, I couldn’t say how much it was worth, but it had probably been made in the Sultanate, and that certainly meant a fair amount of money.

“Remove his blindfold.”

Frago, who was standing behind me, removed the damned rag from my eyes. For a brief moment I squeezed them shut against the bright light coming from a fireplace and dozens of candles and torches burning in the small room.

Then I studied the room critically, evaluating at a glance the Sultanate carpets, the candlesticks, the costly furniture made of timber found in the Forests of I’alyala, right beside the Crest of the World, the complete set of knight’s armor made by dwarf master craftsmen, which was standing in the farthest corner of the room. Not to mention the goblets and the tableware, which I think were all made of gold. Mmm. I could really cut loose if only I could have this place to myself for just a few minutes.

Only instead of one person, I saw several.

The little old man sitting in an armchair beside the hearth, muffled in a thick woolen blanket, was clutching a silvery staff encrusted with ivory in his right hand. A magician, as far as I could judge. An archmagician, in fact, bearing in mind that his staff bore four silver rings of rank. Or even more precisely, a master, since he had a small black bird sitting on the top of his staff instead of the usual stone.

The old man appeared small and puny. He looked like an old, fragile hazelnut, and he was shuddering in annoyance, as if the heat from the fireplace right beside him could not warm his ancient bones. It seemed that if you just prodded the magician with your finger, or a strong wind blew on him, he would simply fall to pieces.

A deceptive impression. A none-too-pleasant end lay in store for anyone who prodded Artsivus, archmagician and master, the head of the Order of Magicians. This man was one of the most influential figures in the kingdom and the king’s first adviser, although many, seeing the puny old man for the first time, might have doubts about the soundness of his reason.

The person sitting in the armchair opposite Artsivus and elegantly cradling a goblet of white wine was a woman, wearing the very expensive, magnificent, lightblue dress of a female inhabitant of Mirangrad. A rather risky choice of garment in our kingdom, especially since the war with Miranueh had not actually ended, but was only lying dormant for the time being while the two sides recovered from the bloody battles that had broken off five years earlier. Miranuehans are liked no better than the Nameless One in Avendoom, but I could see that the lady was not concerned about that.

The female stranger’s face was covered by a veil that completely concealed it from my curious gaze. And those golden eyes, though covered by the veil, still sparkled. Amazing. I had encountered this unknown noblewoman two days earlier, on that memorable night when I had a little job to do in Duke Patin’s town house. Judging from her jewelry, she must be the same woman who had ridden along the narrow street, surrounded by the king’s personal guards.

Standing by the wall was a man armed with a sword of Canian forge-work. This gentleman examined my humble person with disdainful curiosity, as if what he was looking at were, in the very best case, a rat. Although it was he who was the Rat. That was what his foes called him. Count Alistan Markauz, captain of the king’s personal guards, who had chosen a gray rat as his crest. He could always be recognized from his heavy knightly armor with the rodent’s head engraved on the breastplates and the helmet, which itself was in the form of a rat’s head. Vicious tongues had it that the Rat even slept and washed in his armor, but I believe this assertion was not entirely correct.

Alistan was the finest swordsman of the kingdom, the rock on which our most dear king relied. He was the head of the security service and a man of honor, defined in terms that only he understood, who hated and exterminated all who plotted evil against his glorious lord. His whole life was military routine, skirmishes with ogres and giants beside the Lonely Giant fortress, war with the orcs of Zagraba, and a couple of border wars with Miranueh when their king felt like moving on to bigger things after a few skirmishes with the western clans of the Zagraban orcs.

Having survived all these battles, Alistan Markauz had become the man he was at that moment—the king’s right arm and a bulwark of the throne. The soldier looked at me with his steely gray eyes, chewing on
his luxuriant, dangling mustache, styled in the manner of the inhabitants of Lowland. I responded to his narrow-eyed gaze with a sour look and transferred my attention to the fourth person in the room.

Well, of course, when I say “person,” that’s something of an exaggeration. There, staring at me with arctic blue eyes, was a green-skinned goblin. The genuine article. One of those who live somewhere in the Forests of Zagraba, side by side with orcs and elves.

The goblins are an unfortunate and downtrodden race. They are no taller than the smallest of gnomes. That is, they come up to about my navel, no higher than that. From the dawn of time men, confusing things in the way they always do, believed that goblins were the orcs’ allies, and for century after century attempted to exterminate this universally persecuted tribe of Siala.

The systematic extermination of the race of goblins was so successful that this once multitudinous, peaceful race, which had suffered from the scimitars of the orcs as well as the swords and pikes of men, was almost completely wiped out. And when men finally realized the truth (that is, when they swallowed their pride and asked the elves), there were only a few small tribes left, hiding in the remotest thickets of Zagraba with the help of their shamans’ magic.

And so, we had even begun taking them into service. They proved to be very intelligent and resourceful, their little claret-colored tongues could be very sharp, and they were adroit and nimble, therefore perfectly suited for service as messengers and spies.

And in addition, the Order of Magicians was very interested in goblin shamanism, which derived from the rites of the orcs and the dark elves.

Shamanism, for anyone who doesn’t know, is the most ancient form of wizardry in this world. It appeared in Siala together with the ogres, the most ancient race. And therefore the magicians of men are tremendously curious about the primordial source, which was borrowed from the ogres by the orcs, then the elves, and then the goblins.

By the way, the little green-skinned lad on the carpet in front of me happened to be a jester. That was clear from his cap with little bells, his jester’s leotard in red and blue squares, and the jester’s mace that he was clutching in his green hand. The goblin was sitting there with his funny little legs crossed, occasionally turning his head, so that his little bells tinkled in a gay melody.

Noticing me studying him in astonishment, he laughed, with a bright flash of teeth as sharp as needles. He sniffed through his long, hooked nose, winked his blue eye, and showed me his claret-colored tongue. Magnificent! That was all I needed to really make my day!

I transferred my gaze to the final stranger in the room, sitting in the armchair in front of which the goblin had positioned himself. To look at, this man was very much like a prosperous innkeeper. Fat and short, with a bald head and neat, tidy hands. And his clothes were more than modest: the spacious brown trousers worn by ordinary guardsmen, and simple thick sweater of sheep’s wool, very suitable for the frosts of January—the kind knitted by the peasants who live beside the Lonely Giant fortress. I wondered if he felt hot in it.