Shadow Prowler (26 page)

“We understand everything now, Your Grace,” Nightingale confirmed. Shnyg was still coughing. “We’ll tell him everything you said.”

“Wonderful, and now set about it! Surely you don’t think I would need your help if I could enter the tower?”

The emissary didn’t bother to wait for an answer to his question. Something even darker moved across the dark gap of the house. There was another glint of gold. The emissary slowly ran his gaze along the dark street and as it slipped over the spot where I was standing, it hesitated for an instant, but moved on before I even had time to feel frightened. With a clap of his black wings, he melted away into the night.

Silence descended on the street, only occasionally interrupted by Shnyg’s desperate coughing.

“Damn . . .
kha-kha!
Damned bloody beast.
Kha-kha!
He almost . . .
kha-kha!
. . . choked me!”

“What did you expect?” Nightingale snarled. “Spouting nonsense like that to him? Be grateful you’re still alive!”

“The Darkness take that damned creature! And the Darkness take you, too! And the Darkness take me, fool that I am, for listening to Markun, who’s bound us hand and foot to this Master of his. The Darkness take this client, and his damned papers!”

Shnyg was overwhelmed by a new fit of coughing. But just at that moment something looking very much like a human figure made its appearance on the stage of this ongoing spectacle. It was approaching slowly from the direction of the Street of the Roofers and its direction made me feel uneasy, because it was moving straight toward us.

Even worse than that, I was almost directly in its path! I had to dash across the street, to the house where the two thieves were: The darkness was thicker there, and so it would be much easier for a scoundrel like me to hide.

But I wasn’t able to skip in through the door, since the thieves were coming out of it at that very moment. I managed to dart to one side and press myself back against a wall. But master thieves are masters because they can hear the very slightest rustle.

“There’s someone here,” Shnyg whispered, and I drew my dagger out of its scabbard with a quiet rustling sound.

Nightingale and Shnyg started listening, but then they noticed the approaching stranger whom I had already seen. “Shhh. Look,” Nightingale whispered.

There was certainly something to look at. The figure approaching us was a man. A perfectly normal one. Except that he was semitransparent—the tower and the stones of the roadway were quite clearly visible through him. He was wearing a magician’s robes and leaning on a magic staff. . . .

“Look at this,” the phantom muttered to itself. Its voice sounded twice or even three times, creating a strange echo. “They’ve all abandoned me. The traitors. Where are they? Where? I wander and wander, searching for them. I’ll find them.”

The phantom repeated this little jingle over and over, turning its
head from side to side and examining the area, evidently hoping to find the aforementioned traitors. It had a blurred spot instead of a face, but I didn’t have the slightest doubt that this magician could see everything perfectly well. I was scarcely even breathing. And neither were Shnyg and Nightingale, standing a little farther away.

The phantom halted a few yards away from us and began turning its semitransparent head again.

“I wander and wander. I’ll find them. I’ll find them.” It paused for a moment and then said in a very perplexed voice: “I’ll find them. Aha! That’s where they are! They’re hiding! I know you’re there! I’ll find you. I’ll find you.”

He held out his staff and started waving it from side to side, like a blind man, and slowly moving closer. That was when I realized that if I didn’t do something quick, the crayfish sleigh would be coming for me. In another ten seconds he would reach me, and that would be the end. I had just one chance, an incredibly stupid one, but I decided to take it, especially since it was time to get rid of my unwanted competition in the shape of Shnyg and Nightingale. I stepped forward out of the darkness onto the moonlit street so that the thieves were behind my back, and I heard one of them swear in amazement.

“Fire!” I yelled, and then dropped onto the surface of the road, putting my hands over my head.

Without even pausing to think, the magician fired a spell at the spot where I had just been standing. Something went screeching through the air above me. A intense impact, screams of terror and pain from the unfortunate thieves. The phantom had hit the target—which was not me. I didn’t wait to see what had happened to the servants of the Master, and there was certainly no point in loitering in the street in front of this new danger. I leapt up, darted round the muttering magician, and set off across the square toward the tower, zigzagging and hopping like a hare driven insane by the spring sunshine.

The screaming stopped: I don’t know whether the thieves were dead or they had enough sense to stop making noise, but I personally didn’t feel the slightest pity for them. It was them or me. Or that damned mumbling phantom would have done for all of us.

Oh yes, about him. The mumbling behind my back stopped, the air howled again, I leapt to one side and saw a sphere of mist go flying across
the square, leaving a smoking tail in its wake, hit the surface of the street and bounce like a child’s ball, then explode with a boom against a house in the distance, leaving a fair-sized hole in its wall.

I changed tactics: forward, hop, sharp left, forward, hop, sharp right, hop, a sudden stop, sharp right, forward again. Like a flea on a frying pan.

Surprisingly enough, this tactic worked. Another three balls of smoke went hurtling across the square and exploded far away from where I was. Once I had to flop down on my belly again in a most inelegant fashion, when a magical charge struck the Tower of the Order, but didn’t explode, and then bounced back on a changed course directly toward me.

I saw the misty charge growing bigger as it flew straight at my face. There was no time to jump aside, so I dropped, and as soon as the sphere flew over my head, I jumped up again, because the tower was already very close.

The damned phantom, may the gkhols gnaw on his bones, was howling over by the Street of the Magicians, while I feverishly searched for the door. I had to run along the wall illuminated by the moonlight, and expose myself in full view to the raging specter. It was closing rather rapidly, muttering malevolently, intent on finishing Harold off.

Yet another charge flew into the building just above my head but, like the previous one, it bounced off and flew back in the opposite direction. Evidently the tower had retained some of its magic even after the cataclysm that had overtaken it, and nobody could knock down its walls simply by flinging spells at them.

Sagot be praised, I finally found the door! I tugged feverishly at the bronze ring. . . . But the door wouldn’t budge. There weren’t any locks at all, so lock picks were no good here, and that cursed phantom, who was hidden from me behind the wall, would soon appear again and continue his wild bombardment.

I tugged at the door again, then kicked it and swore angrily. Time was running out. On one hand there was the phantom, and on the other, morning was already treading on my heels. I cast a quick glance at the stars. Only the Northern Crown and the Summer Bouquet were still bright in the sky, the other constellations had faded and were barely visible. The moon was growing paler, literally before my eyes, and a few moments later the light illuminating the square became diffuse and pale.

In twenty minutes it would be dawn.

It was the end. Without some kind of miracle, I would never leave the territory, that was certain. I could already consider myself a dead man! If that insane phantom didn’t finish me off first. The magician’s muttering was very close now.

Could I hide in the tower? Perhaps I would be able to hold out there until the next night! I clutched at a final slim straw of hope and strained every last muscle in a desperate attempt to open that damned door at least a crack.

Hopeless. No, I couldn’t get in there; all my efforts had been in vain. I was just about to run for the shelter of the houses when Valder’s voice suddenly said: “Open, it is I.”

The door swung open smoothly, graciously inviting me into the dark interior of the dead building.

“Soo, that’s where you are!” a triumphant voice echoed right in my ear. I jumped forward into the safety of the building and the door slammed shut, leaving me in total darkness.

“Don’t worry,” Valder replied to my thoughts. “He can’t get in, the door won’t let him.”

“Who is he?” I asked, taking out the magical light.

“I don’t know, I’ve never seen him before.”

“Can I wait out the day here? Is it safe in the tower?”

“Alas, my friend. In this part of Avendoom nowhere is safe.”

Sagot! So in twenty minutes it will all be over.

Holding the bright trinket out in front of me, I inspected the interior that I already knew from my dream. Nothing had changed, except that the walls were covered with soot, and there was a human skeleton lying on the floor.

“An old friend,” Valder whispered sadly.

A friend? Ah, yes! The archmagician. What was his name? Ilai? No . . . Ilio.

I had to go up. To where Artsivus had said the archive was kept. Grab the plans of Hrad Spein and run—and I had just had another one of my crazy little ideas. Valder chuckled inside my head in approval of my plan.

I flew up the black marble staircase that wound round the central column like a gigantic snake. The light of the magical trinket picked images out of the darkness—frescoes that told the history of the Order.
Now the second floor and the door leading to the archive. I happened to raise my head, and saw the broken end of the serpentine stairway pointing up into the predawn sky. This was all that was left of the mighty Tower of the Order.

Bursting in through the door, I found myself in a long, wide corridor. The light picked out decayed Sultanate carpets under my feet, elegant carved furniture, tapestries on the walls, and hundreds of doors.

May the Nameless One take me! Which one is it?

“Go on! The archive hall is farther along!”

I broke into a run. The corridor seemed endless; the magicians of the Order had obviously done something with the space in order to expand the inner premises of the tower a little.

“Stop!”

I had almost rushed past it. The wooden doors were standing slightly open, as if someone had left the archive in a hurry. Perhaps that was what had actually happened, and the magician who had returned from Hrad Spein and carried the maps through the Forbidden Territory had never got as far as the Order. Wouldn’t it be funny if he had never got as far as the tower, and there were no maps here?

The magic light began to fade.

“What’s happening?”

“The magic of the tower’s smothering it. It won’t be any more help to you. Hurry!”

I entered the huge room. There was almost no time left now.

Hmm. Not bad. The Royal Library would be green with envy. Even it didn’t have this many magic books and ancient tomes. Shelves upon shelves upon shelves. Books upon books upon books. And it was all permeated with magic. A stranger could wander about in here for hours and still not find what he was looking for. May a h’san’kor devour my dear departed granny.

“Straight on!” Valder barked. “Left! Follow these shelves, turn left again at the end! Straight on. Farther, farther, farther . . . Stop! Turn round! There it is!”

Panting hard, I looked down at the elegant crystal table with nothing standing on it except a large black casket, decorated with silver deer. Its lid was raised slightly and I could see a bundle of papers. There it was, my goal!

I grabbed the treasure with trembling hands and stuffed it into my bag. Now it was time to get out of there.

“Vukhdjaaz!” I howled as loud as I could. “Vukhdjaaz, it’s me!”

For a few moments nothing happened, and I started getting very nervous, afraid that my plan wouldn’t work. And then my old acquaintance appeared straight out of the bookshelves. A real little charmer. And I must confess that if anyone had told me only a few hours earlier that I would be glad to see him, I would have twirled one finger at the side of my head and told the madman where he could go.

“Well? Have you got the Horse?” he asked, his green eyes glittering furiously.

“Take me to the edge of the Forbidden Territory, please, to the start of the Street of the Roofers,” I said in a rather polite and cultured manner.

But demons are obviously not taught to be polite and cultured.

“Have you lost your mind, manling?” Vukhdjaaz hissed, grabbing me by the sides of my chest. “Or drunk a drop too much? Do I look like a carriage driver?”

“I have to get out of here!” I had no time for arguing with this creature. “Take me where I ask, and you’ll find out where to get the Horse!”

The demon gave me an angry and suspicious look, obviously wondering which way to devour me, then suddenly opened his fingers and let me go.

“All right, I’ll take you where you want to go, but if you trick me I’ll suck the marrow out of your bones.”

“A deal.” I took a deep breath.

“Are you ready, manling?”