Shallows of Night - 02 (17 page)

Through the beat of the rain he heard the boots and the echoing shouts; he kept his body low and the sounds were amplified. Then voices came to him on the wind: queries, shouts of anger. He risked some movement in order to get a visual fix. Led by T’ung, the Greens fanned out, searching for him. One was coming directly toward him.

In the end, the cart had saved him. It swerved out of a walkway blind to King Knife Street and he almost ran the owner down but there was just enough time and he missed it. It was now, however, directly in the path of his pursuers. The delay was brief but sufficient. Around the next turning, rows of houses and an explosive tangle of wild greenery, within which he promptly lost himself.

Still and calm, he remained behind his house of trees and tall ferns. Drip, drip. The rain beading and streaking the leaves. They quivered before his face. A bird fluttered in the branches above him. Crunch. The sound very close indeed and he felt the presence, separated only by the tenuous curtain of greenery. He held his breath. Perhaps—no, the branches low down swayed and began to part and he had no choice. Silently he put down his sword, then turned away from its mirrored surface, his reflection distorted by the moisture.

After a time, with Ronin’s forearm jammed against his windpipe, the Green’s eyes rolled up and he collapsed without a sound, his face white and pasty. Ronin crouched, listening. Still. The pinging of the rain. He dragged the Green behind a dense section of foliage, went back to where he had left his sword. He wiped it down and sheathed it, then crouched again behind the sheltering leaves until he was certain that they had gone back to the gate.

The rain had ceased by the time the shops of Sha’angh’sei built themselves around him once again on the cluttered level ground of the lower reaches of the city. Through the filth of the milling throng he pushed himself, his left arm soaked in blood and the pain a constant thing now that he attempted to clamp down on.

He passed a large group of people, wide straw hats, torn and uneven, feet bare and black with the muck of the streets, all carrying sacks and hurriedly tied bundles. Soldiers were directing them to a building farther along the street.

“Refugees,” said a soldier in response to Ronin’s question. “Refugees from the fighting in the north.”

“Is it worse?”

“I do not see how it could be,” the soldier sighed. “This way,” he called sharply to a straggling few, staggering in exhaustion. One of them, a frail figure, fell into a puddle of brackish water. No one paid the slightest attention.

Ronin moved toward the still form.

“He is beyond help,” said the soldier.

Ronin knelt and turned the body over, wiping the black mud from the gaunt face. The mouth was slack, the eyes closed. It was a woman, young and still beautiful despite the ravages of near starvation. Ronin pushed back her stiff wide-brimmed hat, felt along the side of her neck. He opened her mouth wide and breathed into it, slowly, deeply.

The soldier sauntered over. Most of the refugees had been herded inside now.

“Save it,” he said, taking a large bite out of a tightly rolled brown stick. “She is gone.”

“No,” said Ronin. “There is life within her still.”

The soldier laughed, a dark and evil sound. “She is less than worthless.” He hawked and spit. “Unless you lack the coppers for a woman. Still she seems a poor—”

But Ronin had risen, turned, hand on sword hilt. Jaw set, muscles rigid, staring into the soldier’s eyes. He said something, his voice like the whistle of a steel blade as it strikes.

There was a long moment when he saw the soldier weighing it in his mind. He looked for his comrades, found none.

“All right,” said the soldier. “Do whatever you wish. It is no concern of mine. Let the Greens handle it.” He turned away, heading toward the building into which the refugees had gone.

She was taking shallow breaths now but her eyes were still closed and clearly she was seriously hurt or ill, perhaps both. He could not leave her here and, since he had been on his way to the apothecary’s, he hoisted the frail form carefully onto his massive shoulder and disappeared into the hurrying masses of humanity.

The enormous jar hung suspended, creaking on its chains in the lowering light, the metal burnished. The dust seemed thicker in the shop, as if he were returning here after a century instead of merely a day.

“Ah,” exclaimed the old man without much surprise. “So you went through the alley after all.” His long chin whiskers trembled with the movement of his mouth.

Ronin went down the narrow aisle, put the woman onto a stool. The apothecary came around from behind his counter. He wore a wide-sleeved yellow silk robe and strange shoes which seemed but wooden platforms for his feet. He glanced at Ronin, then looked at the huddled figure.

“She is not from Sha’angh’sei—”

“Yes, I can see that.” The hands moved deftly.

“She is from the north, the soldier told me. Fleeing the fighting.”

The old head shook from side to side. He touched her face, then went behind the counter, reached out packets of powders, red, gray, gold, mixed them with a milky liquid. He pushed the contents across to Ronin.

“Get her to drink that.” He turned. “You will take her with you?”

“Yes, I cannot leave her. I am sure that they will take care of her at Tenchō.”

Something inexplicable came into the apothecary’s eyes and he nodded.

Ronin pressed the hinge of her jaw and the mouth gaped open. She was still unconscious. He cradled the back of her head, mindful of the angle, and let the thick liquid dribble into her lips. Half of it went down her neck and he had to depress her tongue to prevent her choking, but he got a fair amount in her.

The apothecary returned from the musty interior of the shop and began to work on Ronin’s arm, laying a square greasy pad along the wound, then wrapping it in white cloth. Over this he poured a clear liquid which seeped into the cloth and thence into the wound. For a moment the pain was exquisitely sharp. Then, almost immediately, it was gone.

There was time now, he thought.

“Tell me about the root.”

The apothecary poured more liquid, wiped at the seepage.

“It is said that it was found by a warrior.” The voice was dry and dusty like the wind of the ages. “The greatest warrior of a people now long dead. The warrior was out riding, for he was bored. His skill was so great that none could stand against him, so that that thing which he desired most—the conquest of a powerful foe—was denied him.” He wrapped the shoulder in dry bandages.

“As evening drew nigh,” the apothecary continued, “he came upon a glade in the high forest of his land. No other thing grew near it and a pale new moon, already lambent in the sky, illuminated the root. The glade was quite large and as he dismounted he found that cracked and weathered stone slabs were set in the earth, as if this place were an ancient burial place, but of what people he could not imagine, for time had long ago beaten the writing on the stones.”

Dust swirled in the shop, as if a wind from an unmentionable quarter had sprung up.

“The warrior went to the root and pulled it from the soil. He found that he was suddenly ravenous and he cut a piece of the root and ate it.” The apothecary was putting the last of the packets away.

Ronin stared at him.

“The warrior, so the tale goes, became more than man.”

“A god?”

“Perhaps.” The apothecary shrugged. “If you wish. It is but a myth.”

“Not a pleasant one, you told me.”

“Yes, that is true.” The old man’s eyes blinked, looked huge. “The warrior indeed became more than man but in so doing he became a danger to the old laws because now surely there was none to stand against him. So was unleashed upon him a terrible foe. The Dolman.”

The vertigo was so severe that he thought for an instant that the tiled floor of the shop had become a river. He worked to control his breathing. Somewhere the echo of laughter.

“What was The Dolman?” It sounded like someone else’s voice, faraway and indistinct.

“The ancient of ancients,” said the apothecary softly. “The primeval fears of man. The terrors of a child alone and afraid at night. Nightmare given free reign, embodied now, substantive.”

A dry wind at the core of his being, plucking.

“It does not seem possible.” Merely a whisper in the aged dust.

“It is a most monstrous creation.”

“Where did it come from?”

“Perhaps the root?”

“Then where is the root from?”

“The gods themselves cannot know—”

“She wishes to see you.”

“Good, she has returned then.”

“She asks for you to wait for her.”

He regarded Matsu in the tawny light. The slender face, with the planes and angles of a man-made structure. Small, wide-lipped mouth, large black eyes as soft as velvet dusk at the waterside. She wore a robe of pastel blue with brown cicadas embroidered across the body and wide sleeves. It was edged in deep gilt with a sash of the same color. He thought—

“Wait for her here, please.” She studied the floor at his feet.

“Will you stay with me tonight?”

“I cannot.” The voice barely a whisper. He tried to find her eyes. “Yung will see that you have wine.”

She bowed to him, a curiously formal gesture.

“Matsu?”

She went away from him, across the room of tawny light, through the buzzing conversations, the opulent silks, the exquisite bodies, the perfect faces.

These people are still a mystery to me, after all, he thought.

He found an empty chair and sat wearily. Almost immediately, tiny Yung in her pink quilted jacket appeared with a lacquered tray with a wine pot and cups. She knelt at his side and poured the wine, handed him the cup.

He sipped and she left. He savored its warmth down the length of his throat, tasting all the spices, and he was reminded that he had not had a full meal that day.

Afterward, the apothecary had returned to the woman while Ronin withdrew his sword. He removed the hilt and produced the scroll of dor-Sefrith. Once again he studied its glyph-covered face. So many times. It stared at him blankly.

He turned. Evidently the old man had found a wound on the woman. He had tied a poultice in place on the inside of her thigh.

“Do not change the bandages even if they should become dirty. There is medicine underneath.” Then he saw the scroll and began to shake his head.

“Do you know what this is?”

He looked away. “I cannot aid you in this.”

“You have not even looked at it.” Ronin thrust the scroll toward him.

“It does not matter.”

Ronin’s eyes blazed. “Chill take you, it does! You know of The Dolman, you alone of all the people I have met in Sha’angh’sei. You know that he exists so you must know that he is coming once again to the world of man.”

The old tired eyes stared at him without expression.

Desperately Ronin said, “His minions are even now prowling the streets of the city. The Makkon killed this morning.”

A faint tremor began at the corner of the old man’s mouth and he appeared about to crumble from misery and pain.

“Why do you speak to me of such things?” he asked in a cracked voice made thin by fear and something else. “There is not a day in my life that I have not suffered and I have seen many days; I wish now but an end to the suffering.”

“Do you wish the death of mankind?” Ronin cried, suddenly furious. “By not speaking of what you may know, you become an ally of The Dolman.”

“A new age is dawning. Man must look after himself.”

“Are you not a man?”

“I am unable to help you by reading that scroll.”

“Tell me then who can.”

“Perhaps no one, any more. But I can tell you this. The Dolman does in fact come and this time the world may be ground into the utter oblivion that is The Dolman’s victory. It is the destroyer of all life, warrior, wielding a power beyond imagining. Already its strengthening forces are marshaling themselves in the north. Ah, I see that you have suspected this. Good. Now go. Take the woman and care for her well. Remember what I have told you. I have done all that I may for now.”

Yet what was he to do now? The Council of Sha’angh’sei would not see him for many days and he could not now return to the walled city because the Greens would never allow him through the gate. Kiri was his only hope. She knew many people, a large number of them extremely influential, for through the saffron doors of Tenchō flowed nightly the cream of Sha’angh’sei society and business; Tenchō was for the wealthy and the powerful. Among these were, no doubt, several officials of the Council itself. There leverage could be applied, if she would consent to aid him. He had to ask her now. Time was fast growing short. With each passing day the chill shadow of The Dolman reached farther into the continent of man as his legions consolidated their strength.

Thus he waited for her, as she had bidden, sprawled in the plush chair, his scabbarded sword scraping the polished floor, drinking the clear wine—Yung had already come and gone twice more—his mind drifting, his eyes watching. The women passing were colored reeds, pastel and slender, bending, robes sweeping in perfect folds and rustling in the gentle wind, fans and long lashes fluttering like nervous insects in the oblique rays of the sun at day’s humid end as it dazzles the still water. Placid oval faces, helmets of flowing hair, the fabulous blossoms of impossible flowers, mysterious and erotic.

Two willowy girls in matching quilted jackets came for him then and led him off to be bathed and dressed and he knew that tonight would be special.

“Am I not worth the wait?” she said without coyness.

She was dressed in a formal robe of rich purple silk, like a plum sunset with threads of the palest dove gray woven into a pattern of opening flowers.

Her lips and long nails were purple and she wore an amethyst pin in the shape of a fantastic winged animal in her hair. Her extraordinary black eyes danced with diamond-point lights.

Still, she looked subtly different.

They had bathed him and dressed him in black silk pants and wide-sleeved shirt laced with platinum thread which glittered in the light. When he was ready, they had led him to a small room and she had come in.