on it: the dense fog, the extraordinary coincidence of their discovery. . Thaulinin, meanwhile, was leading them deeper into the glade. Pazel saw that the fallen stones marked the outline of a small keep or fortress. Most of the walls had toppled to knee-height, and moss grew over them. But soon they reached a spot where the hillside opened in an arch of fine workmanship, bricks of red stones alternating with others cut from the blue-grey rock of the canyon walls, and the keystone was engraved with the figure of a running fox. At the threshold a fire danced within a ring of stones, and two selk were roasting a hare upon a spit. Torches shown deeper within the ruin.
‘Where have you brought us, elder?’ asked Lunja.
‘These are the remains of Sirafstoran Torr, where once stood a palace belonging to Valridith, a dlomic monarch, whose lands were easternmost of the Mountain Kingdoms of Efaroc. The outer walls enclosed the whole of the glade, but the keep was entered here, through the side of the hill. For most of his life Valridith governed this land with kindness, and wisdom enough. But in his last years he grew suspicious, obsessed with the power of neighbouring kingdoms, indignant at the smallest complaints brought by his people. ‘These are the hairline cracks in my kingdom,’ he used to say, ‘and through them I feel a wind blowing, the cold wind of the grave.’ His only comforts were his son and daughter, who were both fair and gentle. The young prince he sent west to Bali Adro, with orders to seek a marriage — any marriage — within the Imperial family. The lad never returned from the capital, and what happened there is a mystery to this day.
‘Whatever the truth, Valridith was heartbroken, and swore on the charnel-stone of his family that he would protect his daughter better, and choose a husband for her himself. It was a rash oath. For years he kept it merely by forbidding her to travel beyond his inner kingdom. Mitraya was her name, and she was full of love for her father, and all the people of the Torr. The joy of his autumn years, she was — until the day he promised her to a petty tyrant, whose aggressions he hoped to placate. But Mitraya would not oblige him, for she loved another. The king had never been crossed by one of his own, and he imprisoned her in this fortress, swearing he would not release her until she consented to the match. She took her own life, after four years of captivity.’
‘I recall her face in the window there,’ said another selk, gesturing at a heap of crumbled stone. ‘We would bring her wild grapes in autumn. She could smell them when the breeze was right.’
‘After she died, her father went mad with remorse,’ said Thaulinin. ‘He threw his crown into the Ansyndra, and ordered this palace destroyed. When the work was done he paid the labourers handsomely and cut his own throat.’
Dastu shrugged. ‘Old tales,’ he murmured.
But Thaulinin heard him, and shook his head. ‘Not very old. This spring it will be three hundred years. I came here the morning after; the king’s blood still stained the earth. About where you are standing, in fact.’
A slight commotion made Pazel turn. Thasha, escorted by two selk, was marching towards them, shivering. He ran to her; she threw her arms around his neck. She was soaked with river water, cold as a fish.
From the corner of his eye, Pazel saw Neeps, standing near them, his arms half-raised. He had been on the point of embracing her himself. Their eyes met; Neeps reddened suddenly and turned away.
Thaulinin called for a blanket. Neeps, his face still averted, spoke in anguish: ‘Where
Thasha winced. Letting go of Pazel, she went to Neeps and pulled him close, and whispered something consoling in his ear. Pazel felt his heart beating wildly.
The blanket came, and Neeps spread it over her shoulders. ‘I sank,’ said Thasha, ‘through the river, and down to. . the other river.’
‘Yes,’ said Thaulinin. ‘You fell into the undercurrent of Shadow — faster than your friend here, much faster. As if the River were calling you. But Nolcindar dived in after, and brought you back when the current ebbed. She is best of all of us at Shadow-swimming.’
‘I was falling,’ said Thasha. ‘The water beneath me disappeared. There was nothing I could catch hold of — just wind and darkness — and some vines, I think.’
‘She behaved strangely there, Thaulinin,’ said the woman, Nolcindar. ‘We took shelter in a moth-cave, out of the wind, while I waited for her strength to return. She recovered more quickly than I expected — indeed she jumped to her feet, and it was all I could do to prevent her leaping into the shaft. She was not afraid in the least. She looked at me and said, “Unhand me. I must visit the Orfuin Club.”’
Thaulinin glanced sternly at Hercol. ‘And yet you tell us you did not come here from the River of Shadows.’
‘I spoke the truth,’ said Hercol.
‘Nine humans, in a land where humans are extinct. An ixchel woman, thousands of miles from the nearest clan. And a package that reeks of sorcery. You do not wish to name this thing, but you tell us that if we so much as cut away the cloth, we may die. That Macadra craves it and will try to steal it. And that you carried it to Bali Adro in an ancient ship, over the Nelluroq, only to lose it to a thief in the city of Masalym. A thief who brought it here.
‘All this in good faith I have tried to believe. But many are they who come ashore in Alifros from the River of Shadows — some by accident, others by dark design. If you are strangers to the River, how is it that this girl longs to visit the Orfuin Club, that most celebrated tavern in its depths? Think well before you answer! I have patience with many things, but lies are not among them.’
‘Nor have we misled you, though we have not told all,’ said Hercol.
‘The evil thing you carry —
No one answered him. For a moment there was no sound but that of the crackling fire.
‘Perhaps I will not return it, until you choose to speak.’
The faces of the selk, which had been so friendly, were now quite cold. Some rose slowly to their feet. Still more had gathered, from within the keep and without.
‘I think it will be best for all of us if you disarm,’ said Thaulinin.
Indignant cries. Pazel’s company drew closer together. ‘We are most of us disarmed already,’ said Hercol, ‘but by misfortune, not threat. Before we surrender the few blades we still possess, I would ask for your word: to restore to us that which we carried, and let us go unhindered.’
‘I will make no promise before I see this thing,’ said the selk leader. ‘Why do you not tell us your mission plainly? That is a small courtesy to offer those who have just saved your lives.’
‘And if we cannot?’ asked Hercol.
‘Then I cannot return your parcel,’ said the other.
Very slowly, Hercol reached back over his shoulder and drew Ildraquin from its sheath. ‘You have lived a long time,’ he said, ‘and seen much that is in Alifros, but you will have met with few swords like this one, and no swordsman like the one before you. I would shed no blood today. But some of us are oath-bound to a certain task, and we are very far from its completion. We can afford no further errors,
‘We would make the same mistake,’ said Nolcindar, ‘if we let you take this thing and go your way. Perhaps you will use it to attack us from behind.’
‘Do we strike you as so depraved?’ asked Ensyl.
‘I do not think so,’ said Thaulinin, ‘but you are creatures of the moment; your whole lives are as a single week in the life of a selk. You did not live through the Lost Age, or the Worldstorm. You do not recall the War of Fire and Spells, when tools of great evil were scattered over Alifros, and scarred its very bones. I do not know what is in your package, but a force bleeds from it that burns my hands, and I have seen what such power can do.’
‘You must know also that such tools are beyond the use of simple beings like ourselves,’ said Bolutu.
‘Always before that was so,’ said Thaulinin, ‘but then you dlomu robbed the graves of the eguar, and fashioned blades from their bones. Into the hands of generals and warlords and petty royalty they went. Look now at the bonfire that was Bali Adro! The waste, the martial lunacy, the slaughter of peoples near and far.’
‘You make your case poorly,’ said Nolcindar. ‘If you are truly the simple folk you claim, then perhaps you cannot do great harm with this thing — but you are not the ones to guard it, either. Where you set it down, a stand of trees may die, a field wither, a trickle of rain become an acid that scars the land.’
‘Is that any of your concern?’ said Dastu. ‘I thought you were wanderers, just passing through.’
