Shadow Blizzard (33 page)

The mirrors around me broke and I was back in the hall, only now there was a door where one of the mirrors had been. The body of my double trembled and spread across the floor as white mist.

I’d passed the test of my own self, and now the way ahead was open. I stepped out of the mirror hall.

*   *   *

At first I didn’t even know where I’d got to. It was a perfectly ordinary, entirely undistinguished space without any exit. I walked forward uncertainly, not understanding where I had gone wrong, and what could have brought me into a dead end. And then it happened. The hall changed.

It gave me such a fright I almost wet myself. At least, my stomach dove down into my boots, and I thought I was falling off a precipice. A perfectly understandable reaction from anyone who suddenly found himself suspended somewhere between heaven and earth. I had to try really hard not to panic, and understand that I was still standing on the floor and not dangling darkness only knew where.

I don’t know if it was magic or some other kind of secret, but it was as if the walls, the floor, and the ceiling didn’t exist anymore. I had the impression that I was somewhere up in the night sky.

There were stars twinkling all around me. Thousands and thousands of bright stars. An enchanting fairy-tale spectacle. The stars were on the walls, on the floor, and on the ceiling, and the pale circle of a moon was shining steadily in the center of the hall. The purple moon by the name of Selena. And if Selena was here, then the Rainbow Horn couldn’t be far away.

As I walked toward the moon, my heart was pounding hollowly. I’d almost done it! Done what I didn’t believe I could do until today!

Roo-oo-oo-oo-oo-aa-aa-aa-aa!

The pure, deep, melancholy call spread out across the stars. Somewhere up there above me, the wind was blowing in Grok’s grave, and the Rainbow Horn was echoing its eternal call.

Roo-oo-oo-oo-oo-aa-aa-aa-aa! Oo-oo-oo-oo-aa-aa-aa-rr-rr-rr-oo-oo-oo-oo!

The sound sent shivers running up and down my spine. It was calling. The melancholy song of the wind and the Horn cut me to the quick.

But I never reached Selena. A blinding bolt of lightning struck the floor under my feet and I jumped aside and squeezed my eyes shut, desperately trying to recover my vision after the bright flash.

There was a smell of thunder and magic in the air.

When I was able to see again, I saw Lafresa in the starry sky on the other side of Selena. She wasn’t trying to attack me again, just waiting until I recovered my wits.

Even now she could have been at a ball somewhere, and not in the heart of the Palaces of Bone. At least, the young woman didn’t look at all like someone who had spent two whole weeks in the catacombs. Her traveling clothes were perfectly clean and not even crumpled, she still had the silver earrings in the form of spiders and a broad-bladed dagger on her belt. Lady Iena hadn’t changed at all since the first time I’d seen her at Balistan Pargaid’s reception.

Average height, light brown hair gathered into a short ponytail, with the purple light of the moon playing on her broad cheekbones. Her blue eyes were no longer thoughtful, but wary, she was watching every gesture I made, every movement. There was a small crimson sphere glittering on her open palm. I knew what it was, and it cost me a great effort to tear my eyes away from it and look Lafresa in the eyes again.

“Lady Iena.”

“I’m glad to see you remember me, thief.”

Her plump lips twisted into a wry smile. The woman’s voice was in sharp contrast with her appearance. It was tired, very tired.

“You are planning to live to a ripe old age, I suppose,” she asked out of the blue.

“I was certainly thinking of it.”

“Then I advise you to move away from Selena and not get in my way, otherwise I shall have to stop you.”

“I thought your Master had told you not to touch me.”

“If you don’t get under my feet. You don’t want to end up feeding the worms, do you?”

“But the Messenger gave me some hope of being immortal.”

I was just playing for time.

“All who belong to the houses are immortal. Except, that is, in the houses themselves. This hall is an antechamber to the House of Pain and you and I are both mortal here. So step aside, thief!”

“As you say, Lady Iena.”

I’d heard everything I needed to hear, so I started slowly moving toward the wall. I’m not stupid enough to fight with one of the most powerful sorceresses alive.

She watched every movement I made. And I prayed to Sagot that everything would work out and Lady Iena wasn’t planning to fling a ball of crimson fire at me against the wishes of the Master.

Lafresa waited until I had my back against the wall, and only then started moving toward Selena. She still seemed to be wary of the Dancer in the Shadows. (That’s just me flattering myself.) Just before she reached the purple moon she hesitated for a moment, and then she stepped onto Selena. Lady Iena was immediately enfolded in a gentle velvety glow. And then, surrounded by the light of the moon, she began slowly rising off the floor toward the stars.

She laughed; her exultant, sincere, childish laughter wound around the stars, and they replied to Lafresa as they swirled around the violet radiance in a merry dance. I must admit it was all very beautiful.

Lady Iena had completely forgotten about me, but I didn’t move from the spot. I watched her rise up to the stars and waited. Of course, I would have liked to say that she laughed in my face in farewell or said something like “Now the Rainbow Horn is mine!”—but nothing of the kind happened.

The stars and the column of light growing straight up out of Selena carried Lady Iena to the Rainbow Horn, which was calling to her:
Oo-oo-oo-oo-aa-aa-aa-aa.

Then what I was waiting for happened.

Selena’s color turned from purple to black and her light died. The stars dancing with Lafresa flashed into crimson streaks and started falling from the sky, leaving sparkling trails behind them, but not one reached the floor, they all melted away in the air. With no light to support her, the Master’s servant fell, without making a sound, into the very center of the moon.

A fall from a height of darkness only knows how many yards is always fatal, and in this case it was fatal in a double sense. Death in one of the Great Houses is final even for those who used to be immortal and have been reborn in the House of Love.

Lafresa herself had told me where we were and, remembering Sagot’s warning not to stand on Selena, I felt no compunction about letting her try out one of the traps of the Palaces of Bone. The gods be praised, everything had gone well. The gold piece paid for the old beggar’s advice had been well spent. If that scrounger who answered to the name of Sagot hadn’t warned me not to step on Selena, there was no telling how things would have ended.

I watched as a dark patch of blood spread out under the body that was twisted and broken by the fall. Until the very last moment I still hadn’t believed that I could outwit the woman who had once been called Lia.

Oo-oo-oo-oo-aa-aa-aa-aa!
The melancholy song of the Horn from somewhere up above me brought me back to reality.

I looked up at the ceiling, trying to spot where the Horn was lying but, of course, I couldn’t see anything. It was too high.

While I was vainly gazing upward, Lafresa’s body started slowly sinking into Selena, as if it wasn’t a firm floor, but some kind of sticky slime or mud. A few seconds later Lady Iena, who had caused our group so much trouble, disappeared forever into the dark moon, and a moment after that Selena turned purple again, and thousands of stars and constellations sprang to life in the “sky.” It was just as if nothing had happened.

Something glinted brightly in the center of Selena. I screwed up my eyes, trying to make out what it was, but unfortunately I couldn’t. After Lady Iena’s death I didn’t feel too keen to approach that dangerous spot, but on the reasonable assumption that I wasn’t in any danger until I actually stood on the magical moon, I walked right up to it—and there was the Key lying in the middle. Either the magic of the dwarves and the Kronk-a-Mor were inimical to the magic used to create this hall, or I was simply lucky, but the artifact was there, I could simply reach out and take it. At least now Egrassa wouldn’t wring my neck for losing the elfin relic. I hung the Key round my neck, since Lafresa hadn’t taken it off the chain.

R-r-oo-oo-oo-aa-aa-aa!

It was time to be going. There had to be another way up. At least, that was what Sagot had said, and he had advised me to use my legs. I just had to find the path.

I strode across the starry sky, looking for a stairway leading upward.

R-r-r-oo-oo-oo-too-doo-oo-oo!

“I hear you, I hear you,” I muttered, walking along the wall.

I couldn’t really call
that
a stairway. It was nothing but a series of square stone steps set into the sky between the masses of stars. And very awkward steps, too. Climbing them would be sweaty work. But there was nothing to be done about that; the Rainbow Horn wasn’t going to come down to me.

I stood on the first step, jumped, grabbed hold of the second, and pulled myself up. I stood up again, jumped, and pulled myself up. The world blinked and the magic of the starry sky disappeared. The space below me was once again a perfectly ordinary, unremarkable eighth-level hall, brightly illuminated by the light streaming from its walls.

I had to climb for a long time and I was puffing and panting. Balancing on narrow steps where there was barely enough space to set my feet was very difficult. I tried not to look down. I’d climbed so high now that if—Sagot forbid—I started feeling dizzy, I would fall just like Lafresa. When my arms were just about ready to fall off, I found metal brackets hammered into the wall. That made climbing a lot easier, and after a while I reached a wide stone platform.

There was quite a substantial wind blowing up there.

Oo-oo-oo-oo-aa-aa-aa-aa!

At this level the call of the Horn sounded a lot deeper and clearer. That damned tin whistle was somewhere close now. The world blinked again, and once again I seemed to be in the center of a starry sky. Somewhere below me I could just make out the purple spark of Selena, barely visible among the scattered stars. I hadn’t realized just how high I’d climbed.

Right. Which way now? There were no more brackets. The wall above me was smooth, and I could barely even see it because of the magical stars. The ladder leading upward turned out to be where I was least expecting to see it—it was hanging in midair three yards away from the platform I was standing on. And for the thousandth time during my tour of the Palaces of Bone I regretted having lost the cobweb rope.

Now I had just one try at it, a single chance to make the leap.

I studied the stairway leading up into the starry sky carefully again. I could certainly give it a try—and I had no other option in any case. Sagot preserve me!

The stars flickered past below my feet, the ladder grew larger and seemed to go rushing upward, and I just managed to grab hold of the very bottom rung. It turned out to be terribly slippery and it was only by the will of the gods that my fingers held their grip and I wasn’t launched into my final flight to a meeting with Selena.

I jerked my arms, wriggling like a grass snake and gritting my teeth, pulled myself up, threw my left arm over the next rung, then heaved myself up again, swung my feet onto the bottom rung, and started climbing.

Oo-oo-oo-oo-aa-aa-aa-aa!

The wind started getting frisky and the Horn was singing all the time now, filling the Hall of Stars with its mighty battle roar. I tumbled into a brightly lit corridor, leaving the stars behind me.

Oo-oo-oo-oo-aa-aa-aa-aa-r-aa!

The Horn’s roaring made the floor tremble, but I was in no hurry now. Nothing would happen to it, it could wait for me to get my breath back. After twenty yards of corridor, a new starry sky spread its canopy out over my head. Hanging among the lights of the stars was a pearly bridge. I walked across it and came to Grok’s grave.

It was a beautiful structure of amethyst. Something between a summer arbor and a memorial chapel. Four slim, elegant columns supported a dome of delicate blue. Below the dome was a gravestone with the following words carved into it:
To Grok, the great warrior, from a grateful country.

“I made it,” I sighed, still not able to believe that I had reached my goal.

I was standing at the grave of the famous military leader and the brother of the Nameless One. But I felt no sacramental tremor, or anything of the kind. So he was a great general, a legend, and he saved the country from the orcs during the Spring War.

So what?

I’d almost saved the country, too, and from the patchy information I had, Grok wasn’t such a great hero, since he was responsible for the appearance of the Nameless One.

The goal of my quest was lying in full view on the grave. The Rainbow Horn. It hadn’t changed at all since the first time I saw it in my waking dream in the Forbidden Territory. A large twisting horn gleaming with a shimmer of bronze, encrusted with mother-of-pearl and bluish ogre bone. A beautiful, skillfully made object. A genuine battle horn that any king would be proud to own.

“May I?” There was a note of pleading in Valder’s voice.

“Go ahead,” I said, opening up and giving him complete freedom.

And now I saw a completely different Horn, surrounded with a rainbow halo that glimmered faintly in the power emanating from the artifact. The power that held the Nameless One in the Desolate Lands. The power that held the Fallen Ones in the depths of Hrad Spein and prevented them from returning to Siala. The power created by the ogres. The power that had destroyed that race and saved others.

It was failing, disappearing, like water draining away into sand. The hours of the magic that filled the Horn were numbered.