Darkened blade, p.24
Darkened Blade, page 24
Why? I glanced to my right but didn’t see anything special.
It has two wakes.
What? I looked again, and this time I saw what Triss meant. In addition to the faint white line the keel of the little boat was drawing through the water, there was a thick silvery thread following along behind and beneath.
I noticed it because it changes the way the light comes off the water, and . . . Triss trailed off as the silver line suddenly vanished. I suspect that we are about to find out what is going on.
You are indeed, Dragonshadow. The mental voice was strong and sharp, like an axe blade, yet distinctly feminine. Kumi startled in the other boat when it began to speak, which made it clear that whoever was talking, she wanted all of us to hear her.
A moment later, an enormous whiskered head broke the surface silently between the two boats. I am Shallowshunter. Mudlight asked me to look after you while you travel across our waters.
I blinked a couple of times. Thank you, Shallowshunter. I had no idea that your people could speak lake to lake, or that Mudlight even knew we were coming this way.
Shallowshunter flicked the short barbels on her upper lip and sent a little mental chuckle our way. Lake to lake would be a long reach indeed, but an unnecessary one. Mudlight swam beneath you on the water-road as you traveled from his lake to ours. He sent for me as you neared our waters, and only turned back for home once I had arrived to keep an eye on you.
Mudlight followed us all the way out here? asked Triss. And we didn’t notice him?
No, and yes. Or, the other way round, really. He followed you only as far as the end of the water-road, but he did not cross into the broader realm because that would have forced him to make a formal visit of it. And, obviously, he kept out of your sight if you had to ask about it.
Obviously, Triss sent my way dryly.
If Shallowshunter heard, she ignored him. Mudlight told me little of your purpose beyond who and what you are and that you travel by night to avoid unfriendly observers. Given whom you once served, I can do a bit more than keep an eye out for you. If you like, I can arrange to bring you across to the dirtplace of the Lady. None will bother you in the waters there.
That would be appreciated, I sent. Perhaps a few nights from now? Even the nearer shore of the island would make an impossibly long paddle for us in one go. It was well over a hundred miles from the river’s mouth to the nearest point of the Lady’s island and out here in the lake we wouldn’t have the current to help us.
Tonight, sent Shallowshunter. Then, without another word, she sank beneath the waters.
“I wish they wouldn’t just vanish like that without saying good-bye,” said Faran. “It’s disconcerting.”
Several minutes passed and Shallowshunter didn’t return, so we began to travel again. After perhaps a half hour, I felt the boat suddenly surge forward beneath me. What the fuck is that . . . ?
Tonight I said, and tonight I meant, the reply came from below, alerting me to the fact that I had done the mental equivalent of speaking my question aloud. I have acquired some help, continued Shallowshunter. We take you to the island now.
We were soon moving at such a clip that water foamed along our bows, and putting a paddle in was nothing more than an invitation to have it yanked from your hands—at least as fast as a cantering horse, if not faster. The eels went on and on at that pace without flagging. I don’t know how many of her fellows Shallowshunter had summoned to help out, but our speed dropped only briefly and occasionally when one of the Storm Eels passed off the job of towing to another.
The sun was just beginning to spill blood into the sky when we finally spied the nearer shore of the vast island that belonged to the Lady of Leivas.
Do you wish to rest here on the shore, now? sent Shallowshunter. The sun is not yet up, though it soon will be. The slopes are very steep here and we have only another few hours’ travel if you wish to reach better accommodation for your kind.
We should probably put in, I sent. It’s far more important that no one see us than that we have a comfortable place to bed down.
The decision is yours, of course, but there are no hostile eyes here to see you. Boats do not approach within five hundred lengths of the Lady’s isle uninvited, and she is not currently receiving. If we stay close to shore we can take you many thousands of lengths yet without any danger of detection.
Lengths? asked Triss. Lengths of what?
Of an adult of my kind, replied Shallowshunter.
So, a three- or four-mile exclusion zone, I sent once I’d done the rough math to sort out five hundred eel lengths in my head. There’s not many who could see us at that distance, especially against the dark backdrop of the island. All right. Take us where you will.
Done.
The eels towed us north and east, hugging the coastline all the way. The island was tall and steep sided—a pair of low mountains really, rising sharply from the lake bottom a couple of hundred feet below. The underlying stone was a color near black, showing through the lush green forest in ragged stripes and scars where rockfalls had ripped away the growth. Perhaps three hours after dawn we arrived at a point due east of the larger peak and the boats suddenly slowed, turning sharply to the left.
For a moment it seemed as if the eels were about to drag us into the rocky cliffs, but then we turned left again and I realized there was a hidden opening there. A narrow channel of water ran north to south between two vast curtains of stone—all but invisible from the broader lake. After perhaps seventy feet we turned right into a tiny bay cradled between the arms of the mountain. The eels left us then with their usual lack of ceremony and we paddled in to a narrow, black sand beach that provided us a place to pull the boats up out of the water.
“Now what?” asked Maryam. “Set up tents and collapse?”
“I think not,” replied Faran from farther up the beach. “Shallowshunter said we would have better accommodation, and there it is.”
She pointed toward what looked at first glance like a darker patch of rock. It was actually a rounded stone arch, likely the top of an old lava tube. Sand filled the lower half and had been neatly raked flat. A cursory examination suggested that someone or something had brought the sand in intentionally.
Perhaps thirty feet back from the cave mouth we found a neat stone hearth beneath a chimney in the rock. Cord hammocks hung from pitons driven deep into the stone of the arched ceiling, and sealed amphorae sunk, point down, in the sand held water and a selection of preserved foods.
Roric held up a strip of salted pork. “Do we make ourselves at home?”
I nodded. “I don’t think the eels would have brought us here to go hungry in sight of a good meal.”
Once we had finished with our early morning dinner, we climbed into the hammocks. Even with light coming in from the entrance and down the smoke hole, it was dark enough in the cave to leave watch duty to the Shades, which we gratefully did.
* * *
I woke from a deep sleep suddenly and gently, as though a beloved voice had called my name. When I sat up, I saw that no one else was awake yet. The light from the entrance told me it was late afternoon.
Triss?
Here, nothing to report.
You didn’t hear anything?
Nothing but insects and sleeping Blades.
Thanks. I rolled out of my hammock and grabbed my sword rig from where I’d hung it in easy reach.
Something wrong?
No. I could still hear the dream echo of the voice that had called me, but I didn’t want to try to explain. I’m slept out and I want a walk. I thought I’d check out the deeps of the cave. The direction of that echo.
Fair enough. I’ll let Kyrissa know we’re going.
The lava tube ran up and back at a gentle angle, curving this way and that as it went. It was lit by round shafts that had been bored through to the surface above every fifty feet or so. Maybe a hundred yards up from the place where I left the others, the sand ended, and I continued from there along a floor that looked as though someone had carefully smoothed it. I walked for perhaps an hour before I saw a much brighter light ahead.
The lava tube ended partway up the wall of a high-walled circular crater—one of the secondary peaks of the larger mountain perhaps. A steep trail led down to a deep pool that filled the floor of the crater. The water was an intense impossible blue with no visible bottom. A floating wooden pier continued on from the trail out to something that looked like a miniature version of one of those round, open-roofed theaters that were so popular in Dan Eyre. Only, where the groundlings would normally have stood, the floor was open to the deep water below.
I climbed down the path to the pier, feeling all the while as though I were following directions I had heard in a dream I couldn’t otherwise remember. The theater-like structure was a sort of cross between a raft and a reception hall, with tables and chairs placed on the broad plank circle around the pool at its heart. One table, just to the right of the entrance, held a pitcher of clear water, a rock-crystal goblet, a plate of finely sliced raw fish and freshwater seaweed, and a pair of Zhani-style chopsticks. A lone chair sat at the table facing the pool.
I take it we’re expected, sent Triss.
I believe that we are, though I couldn’t begin to tell you how I know that. I followed a forgotten dream to get here.
My, but doesn’t that just fill me with confidence and hope.
Have I ever mentioned that you have a sarcastic streak? I asked.
Not that I can remember.
Remind me to correct that later. For now, I think it best if I do the expected.
I sat and filled the goblet, taking a sip. The water felt cold and light on my tongue, and . . . like so much more than water. Drinking it reminded me of listening to someone reading a fine poem. It was as exhilarating as an exceptional vintage of the sweetest white wine, without any of the blurring of intoxication. I knew that I could drink down the whole pitcher without worrying about any loss of control.
For someone like me, who has to fight each day not to go back to the bottle again, it was a remarkable gift. After a few minutes slid past with no change in my surroundings, I picked up the chopsticks and took some of the fish and a bit of seaweed. It was fresh and quite as good as anything I could have found at one of the fancier dockside restaurants in Tien, but almost a disappointment after the revelation of the water.
When I had finished with the meal, I pushed my plate aside and poured the last of the water into my goblet. At that precise instant, a ripple began at the center of the enclosed pool, and something like an enormous pearl rose up from the deeps below. I nodded as though I had been expecting it all along. Somewhere, down deep, where dreams live, I knew that I had.
The pearl, if that was what it was, must have been a good ten feet through the center, and as perfect in color and luster as anything I’d ever seen gracing a great lady’s jewelry chest. It rose up until only the bottom third of it remained in the water, and then it opened like the oyster that might have birthed it. Inside sat an absolutely ancient woman on a nacreous throne that faced me. The Lady of Leivas, whom some called more than half a goddess.
Her hair was long and silver, brighter than the finest chain made by any Durkoth smith and dense with curls. It rolled down over her right shoulder and across the arm of her throne, spilling to almost touch the floor. She wore a deep green gown that covered her from throat to wrists and hid her feet completely. The fabric looked like living seaweed. Her skin was dark as old mahogany, and the intricate wrinkles on her face could have mapped a hundred labyrinths. Her eyes were black from lid to lid like a bird’s—a sharp contrast to the blinding whiteness of her teeth when she smiled at me.
“I see that you received my invitation,” she said.
“I did, though I’ve no idea how you delivered it,” I responded.
“And, somehow, I missed it completely.” Triss reshaped my shadow into his own dragon form as he spoke.
“That’s because you have no water in you, shadowkin. The lake can no more speak in your heart than a stone could. Whereas Aral here is more than half water, red though it runs.”
“You know my name, then,” I said. “I take it Shallowshunter announced us?”
She laughed lightly. “You were born in Emain Tarn on the shores of my domain. I have known your name longer than you have, child. When your mother first whispered it to herself in the quiet darkness one morning in the sixth month of her pregnancy, I heard. I knew you before you were you, and in ways that no one other than your goddess ever did. The tides that turn in your blood were born of the rhythms of my lake of Leivas.”
“Uh . . .” I had no idea how to answer that. “The stories paint you aloof to the concerns of mortals. I had no idea that you paid that much attention to the comings and goings of those who live beside the lake.”
“How could I not?” she asked. “I am no immortal, and the water of your life is the water of mine. Leivas is the living heart of everything that lies between the mountains and the deep wastes. The lake is the center of her soul, but her awareness extends throughout the whole of the watershed. Her power is greatest in deep water and still, and weakest at the little springs high in the mountains or the dying, magic-slicked pools of the great western reach. You were born here, and became the Kingslayer on shores hardly a day away. Though I had nothing to do with the shaping of you, you are a child of my soul’s sister.”
“What is Leivas?” Triss asked suddenly. “As we crossed the water on our way here, I sensed nothing like what I would expect from one of the greater elementals. But you speak of the lake as a sorcerer speaks of her familiar, and you feel . . . both human and . . . not. I don’t understand.”
“That is because I am human and not. Once, long ago, in the years when our kind first walked under the blue sky, I was not so very different from your Aral. More naturally gifted than most sorcerers perhaps, but fundamentally a creature not unlike what you call human, though I am of the founding generation and I had no parents other than the will of the gods. Then I met Leivas and she made me her own, and we became one.”
“I have never heard any of that before,” I said. “The people of Varya speak of the Lady of Leivas and think of you as something more akin to the divine than one of us.”
“The story was once widely known,” said the Lady. “But it is not, I think, sufficiently grand to suit the standards of the tellers of tales. And so, they embroider here and there, each adding their own bits, ultimately making of me more than I am.”
“I’ve some familiarity with that particular effect,” I said, wryly.
Again, the Lady laughed. “I imagine that you do, Slayer of Kings.” Then she turned her gaze back to Triss. “But I still haven’t answered your original question, little shadow. Leivas IS.”
“Uh . . .” Triss made a throat clearing noise, though he no more had a throat to clear than he had bone or blood or water in his substance—a bit of non-verbal communication learned from the humans who surrounded him.
“That is the fundamental truth,” said the Lady. “Leivas IS. But she is also a lake, and a mighty queen, and the mother of all freshwater dragons, though she has not taken that latter shape in half a millennia. This pearl that houses my throne is a cast-off jewel from her forehead, a token of her third eye.”
“Oh.” Triss’s voice sounded very small. “I . . . oh.”
I had to agree. I felt utterly overwhelmed at the thought of that, of the Lady and her companion, and well, everything about the experience.
“Why did you call us here?” I finally asked, though I managed not to add, “What could we possibly have or do that you would care about?”
“Your goddess was dear to me. You were dear to her. I see her through you, and that pleases me.”
“Nothing more than that?” I asked, confused.
“Oh, child.” She shook her head. “You say that like the sight of a departed friend is a slight thing. I hope that you live long enough to understand that it is one of the true graces, even if, as in my case with you, you only have the chance to see your departed in reflection. There are few indeed who remember me in my youth—the Master of White Fang, some small number among the Sylvani and other First kindreds, the distant and detached gods. . . . None of them were friends to me in the same way that your Namara was. To see her as she is in your heart . . . it eases my old soul.”
“And?” I said.
“And what?” she asked.
“Exactly. We both know there’s more to it than that. Do you intend to tell me about it, or do I have to guess?”
Triss sat back on his haunches. Aral, tread lightly. Her power here in the heart of the lake is as great as one of the buried gods.
I won’t be lied to.
Sigh. He flicked his wings in a so-be-it sort of gesture.
“You doubt,” said the Lady.
“What?” I blinked. “I’m not sure I follow you.”
“You doubt your course and yourself,” she said. “I do not know what it is that you have set out to do, but I know that you do not know whether you can achieve it, or even if you should.”
“You read minds,” I said.
“No. I read hearts in the rhythms of the blood they pump. Yours is as troubled as any I’ve ever touched. You anticipate something that you cannot see your way through or around.”
Is that true? asked Triss. I thought that you had decided you must slay the Son of Heaven.
“It’s true,” I said, answering both the Lady and Triss. “There is a thing I believe that I must attempt, and yet, I believe the doing of it will destroy me.”
Oh, my friend . . .
“If you will unburden your soul to me, perhaps I can help you,” said the Lady. “I am as old as humanity itself and have learned at least a little of wisdom in those years.”
