Out amid the waves, riders broached the surface. Their opalescent armour shone silver and sapphire. They leant back then heaved jagged ice-lances. The gleaming weapons darted across the waves. As they entered the eye of calm surrounding the skiff, they burst into mist.
From the distant south, parting a curtain of driving sleet as it came, reared a crag of deepest aquamarine and hoarfrost silver. It advanced upon the skiff with the irresistible majesty of a glacier, but the fisherman heaved upon his oars. In front of him the brazier glowed like a crimson sun. Pennants of vapour shot from the iceberg’s leading face. Shards calved away, throwing up clouds of spray.
At the iceberg’s skirts the waves churned into a boiling froth as it drove on towards the skiff. But before it came close it sank down, sucked into the depths. The remaining emerald slick of sizzling water disappeared under a slurried web of ice.
New figures now broached the ice-mulched sea. Deepest indigo, their scaled helms revealed only darkness within. Instead of a long lance of barbed ice, each bore short blunt wands of amethyst and olivine. These they levelled at the distant skiff. From their tips cyan lightning leaped, splitting the air, only to dissipate into nothing before the skiff’s prow. One by one the figures dived, wands held high.
For a time the skiff was alone on the waves, rising and falling like a piece of flotsam as the fisherman rowed on. But soon more shapes appeared, pale, opalescent, diving in circles around the skiff. Then, from out of the fog, came another ice mountain. Driving sleet tore into the waves all around, but still the fisherman heaved on the oars, back hunched, pipe jutting from between his teeth. He chanted…
Kiska jogged down Riverwalk. To one side the Malaz River flowed dark and gelid within its stone banks. Her leather slippers padded silently on the wet cobbles. She’d seen nothing of her target since leaving the Lightings. A low swirling ground-fog obscured the distance and brushed cold fingers across her face and shoulders. Black clouds rushed overhead; it was as if the stars themselves were snuffed out. Only the moon, low on the horizon, cast a tattered pallid glow over the glistening streets. Kiska hoped to check on her quarry closer to the centre of town, yet she’d seen nothing of him thus far. Had he and his bodyguards come this way? Perhaps some errand had taken him elsewhere. But where else could he have gone?
She felt as if she were the last living soul on the island and she shuddered at the thought. On Stone Bridge she paused to glance up and down the river front. Thin rain, more like hanging vapour, softened the distances. Nothing moved — yet things seemed to be moving. She glanced back, squinted. Shadows. Shadows that flickered like soot-fouled flames.
As she watched, the wave of shadows came sweeping down the hillside. It engulfed the riverfront shacks on their stilts and swept on, swallowing the water like a wash of treacle. In a few heartbeats it would pass right over where she stood. Too late, she urged her legs to move. She was still on the bridge when it enveloped her. She ran blind, wiping at her eyes. As the cobbles of the bridge fell from under her feet she yelled and stumbled into ice-cold water.
At first she thought she had fallen into the river, then realized it was only a surface flow — a thin sheen over wet sand. She straightened, gasping for air, her heart hammering. Now that the shadows had dissolved the night brightened. Kiska saw that she stood among tall sand dunes, silver in the moonlight.
She was no longer in Malaz — she knew that — though she had a suspicion of where she might be. The sky was an angry pewter, streaked by high clouds that rippled as she watched. Steep dunes surrounded her like tall waves. She climbed one and turned to marvel at her new surroundings. Smooth, almost sensual, curved hills of sand stretched in every direction. The region resembled the place Oleg had just taken her — the Warren of Shadow.
One detail was jarring, however: the source of the silver-green glow that dominated one horizon. A glacier. Kiska had never seen one with her own eyes, but it resembled the descriptions she’d heard from travellers — a mountain of glowing ice, they’d called it. She’d discounted the stories herself, thought them exaggerated by booze- addled memories. But here was proof. Kiska reflected sourly on just how small her island was, just how bounded her own experience must be. She tried to imagine the crushing weight of all that ice, its dimensions. Just how far away was it? The rolling landscape gave no clue. She brushed the wet sand from her clothes and shivered in the cold wind.
A breathless voice spoke behind her: ‘I’d forgotten just how impressive it is at first sight.’
She spun, knives out, only to jump back and yelp her surprise.
Whatever it was, it was dead. Or rather, it was a corpse. Desiccated flesh, empty eye sockets, grinning yellowed teeth. Rags of clothing hung from its angular frame — what was once a thick layered cloak over age-worn leather and bronze armour. The hilt of a sword in a corroded scabbard jutted behind one shoulder. Cold horror stole over Kiska.
‘You’re from Malaz?’ the corpse asked in archaic Talian.
‘Yes,’ she stammered, ‘Malaz. Malaz Island.’
Its head, seemingly welded to its helm of corroded bronze, nodded slowly. ‘An island now, is it? I have walked that land many times.’
‘Who are you? Where am I?’
‘I am called Edgewalker. I walk the borders of Kurald Emurlahn. What you call Shadow. And this is part of that realm.’
Kiska pointed a knife to the far mountain of ice. ‘Then what is that?’
‘Something that belongs here no more than you.’
‘Oh.’ Kiska lowered her arm, shivered. ‘Well, I didn’t ask to come here.’
‘You were swept up by a Changing, a shadow storm. They will be frequent. I suggest you stay indoors.’
‘Indoors?’ Kiska barked a laugh.
‘Yes. I will. You do not belong here.’
‘Then I suppose I should give you my thanks.’ Kiska pushed back her hair, eyed the dunes. Was this really Malaz? Then she remembered. ‘Do you know a man named Oleg?’
‘No. I know of no one by that name.’
‘What of a ruler? If this is Shadow then does it have a throne?’
Edgewalker remained silent for a time, long enough for Kiska to lean closer. Had he died?
But at last he asked, ‘What of it?’
‘I was told someone would attempt to take it this night.’
‘Countless have tried. All have failed. Even those who succeeded for a time. Myself included, after a fashion. Now I walk its boundaries forever. And I fared better than most.’
Bizarrely, Kiska felt disappointed by the acknowledgement. She’d half-suspected, half-hoped, that Oleg had been insane. Now she tried to recall more of his babbling.
A low moaning raised the hairs at her neck. The creature raised one sinewy arm like the twisted branch of an oak and pointed back across the stream. Gold rings glinted on his withered fingers. ‘A Hound has found your scent. Run while you can, child.’
She needed no more convincing, yet she suddenly remembered. ‘What is entombment? What is that?’
‘The price of failure. Eternal enslavement to Shadow House.’
The baying returned, closer now, echoing from the distant wall of glittering ice. ‘You haven’t much time,’ said the being, its voice no more than the scratching of leaves. ‘Go to Obo’s tower. Beg his protection.’
‘Obo’s tower? But that’s an empty ruin. Obo’s just a myth.’
‘No doubt so were certain Hounds a mere hour ago.’
Kiska blinked her surprise. ‘But what of you? Will you be safe?’
