Shadowplay

“I was merciful, it’s true. Instead, what I did was induce each of them to swallow a certain...creature. A tiny beast, at least in its infant form, which had long been thought lost to our modern knowledge. But I found it!” He smirked. “And you did swallow it, didn’t you, Febis?”

“So I was told, Golden One.” The autarch’s cousin was sweating heavily, droplets dangling like glass beads from his chin and nose before splashing to the floor. “It was too small for me to see.”

“Ah, yes, yes.” The autarch laughed again, this time with all the pleasure of a young child. “You see, the creature is so small at first that the naked eye cannot see it. It can be swallowed in a glass of wine without the recipient even knowing.” He turned to Daikonas Vo. “As you received it when you first drank.”

Vo put down his goblet. “Ah,” he said.

“As to what it does, it grows. Not hugely, mind you, but enough that when it lodges at last in the body of its host, it cannot be dislodged no matter what. But that does not matter, because the host will never be aware of it. Unless I wish it to be so.” The autarch nodded. “Yes, let us say for the sake of argument that its host fails to carry out a task I have given him in the specified time, or in some other way incurs my anger...” He turned to burly, sweating Febis. “As, for instance, telling his wife that his master the autarch is mad and will not live long...”

“Did she say that?” shrieked Febis. “The whore! She lies!”

“Whatever the crime,” the autarch went on evenly, “and no matter how far away its perpetrator, when I know of it, things will begin to happen.” He gestured. “Panhyssir, call for the the xol- priest.”

Febis shrieked again, a bleat of despair so shrill it made Pinimmon Vash’s toes curl. “No! You must know I would never say such a thing, Golden One—never, please, no-oo-o!” Weeping and burbling, Febis lurched toward the stone bed. Two burly Leopard guards stepped forward and restrained him, using no little force. His cries lost their words, became a sobbing moan.

The xol-priest came in a few moments later, a thin, dark, knife-nosed man with the look of the southern deserts about him. He bowed to the autarch and then sat cross-legged on the floor, opening a flat wooden box as though preparing to play a game of shanat. He spread a piece of fabric like a tiny blanket, then took several grayish shapes which might have been lumps of lead out of the box and arranged them with exacting care. When he had finished he looked up at the autarch, who nodded.

The man’s spidery fingers picked up and moved two of the gray shapes and Febis, who had been twitching and sobbing obliviously in the grip of the guards, suddenly went rigid. When they let him go he tumbled to the floor like a stone. Another movement of the shapes on the little carpet and Febis began to writhe and gasp for breath, his arms and legs thrashing like a man about to sink beneath the water and drown. One more and he suddenly vomited up a terrible quantity of blood, then lay still in the spreading red puddle, unseeing eyes wide with horror. The xol-priest boxed up his gray shapes, bowed, and went out.

“Of course, the pain can be made to last much longer before the end comes,” the autarch said. “Much longer. Once the creature is awakened it can be restrained for days before it begins to feed in earnest, and each hour is an eternity. But I made Febis’end swift out of respect for his mother, who was my own father’s sister. It is a shame he should have wasted that precious blood so.” Sulepis looked a moment longer at the gleaming pool, then nodded, allowing the servants to rush forward and begin the removal of both the puddle and Febis’ body. The autarch then turned to Daikonas Vo.

“Distance is no object, by the way. Should Febis have gone to Zan-Kartuum, or even the northernmost wastes of Eion where the imps live, still I could have struck him down. I trust the lesson is not lost on you, Vo. Go now. You will be a hound no longer, but my hunting falcon—the autarch’s falcon. You could ask for no higher honor.”

“No, Golden One.”

“All else you need to know you will learn from Paramount Minister Vash.” Sulepis started to turn away, but the soldier still had not moved. The autarch’s eyes narrowed. “What is it? If you succeed you will be rewarded, of course. I am as good to my faithful servants as I am stern with those who are less so.”

“I do not doubt it, Golden One. I only wondered if such a... creature...had been introduced to the girl, Qinnitan, and if so why you would not use so certain a method to bring her back to Great Xis.”

“Whether such a thing has been done to her or not,” the autarch said, “is beside the point. It is a clumsy and dangerous method if you wish your subject to survive. I wish the girl returned alive and well—do you understand? I still have plans for her. Now go. You sail for Hierosol tonight. I want her in my hands by the time Midsummer’s Day arrives or you will be the most sorrowful of men. For a little while.” The autarch stared. “Yet another question? I am minded to wake the xol-beast now and find someone less annoying.”

“Please, I live to serve you, Golden One. I only wish to ask permission to wait until tomorrow to set out.”

“Why? I have seen your records, man. You have no family, no friends. Surely you have no farewells to make.”

“No, Golden One. It is only that I suspect I have broken my elbow fighting the bearded one.” He held up the arm he had smashed against the tile floor, using his other arm to support it. The sleeve was a lumpy bag of blood. “That will give me time to have it set and bandaged, first, so I can better serve you.”

The autarch threw back his head and laughed. “Ah, I like you, man. You are a cold-blooded fellow, indeed. Yes, go now and have it seen to. If you succeed in this task, who knows? Perhaps I will give you old Vash’s job.” Sulepis grinned, eyes as bright as if he were fevered. That must be the explanation, thought Pinimmon Vash: this man—or rather this god-on-earth—was in a perpetual fever, as though the sun’s fiery blood really did run in his veins. It made him mad and it made him as dangerous as a wounded viper. “What do you think, old man?” the autarch prodded. “Would you like to train him as your replacement?”

Vash bowed, keeping his terrified, murderous thoughts off his face. “I will do whatever you wish, Golden One, of course. Whatever you wish.”

9. In Lonely Deeps

Tso and Zha had many sons, of whom the greatest was Zhafaris, the Prince of Evening. On his great black falcon he would ride through the sky and when he saw beasts or demons that might threaten the gods’ tents he slew them with his ax of volcano stone, which was called Thunderclap—the mightiest weapon, O My Children, that was ever seen.

—from The Revelations of Nushash, Book One

“I know you think it is...because I am stout,” said Chaven as he sagged against the corridor wall and fanned himself with his bandaged hand. “But it is not. That is to say, I am, but...”

“Nonsense,” Chert told him. “You are not so fat, especially after the past tennight spent starving and hiding. If you need to rest, you need to rest. There is no shame in it.”

“But that isn’t it! I am...I am afraid of these tunnels.” Even by the glow of the stonelights, which made everyone seem pale as mushroom flesh, his pallor was noticeable.

Chert wondered if it wasn’t the dark itself that was unnerving the physician: even to Funderling eyes, the light was very dim here on the outer edge of the town, where Lower Ore Street began to touch the unnamed passages still being built or begun and then abandoned when Guild plans changed. “Is it the darkness you fear, or...something else?” Chert remembered the mysterious man Gil, who had taken him to the city to meet the Qar folk. Gil too had been wary, not of the tunnels themselves it had seemed, but of something that lurked in the depths below them. “Do I trespass by asking?”

“Trespass?” Chaven shook his head. “After saving my life and...taking me into your home, kind friend, you ask that? No, let me...catch my wind again...and I will tell you.” After a few moments of labored breath he began. “You know I come from Ulos in the south. Did you know my family, the Makari, were rich?”

“I know only what you’ve told me.” Chert tried to look patient, but he could not help thinking of Opal waiting at home, saddled with the painful burden of a child who had become a stranger. Already much of this morning had