into what always got him through the day: watching the sea.
Down below, the bay glimmered calmly. The Strait seemed to be holding its breath. In the shimmering distance a few warships were passing. Closer in, anchored in the bay, merchant caravels and barks rocked gently in the harbour’s lee. The message cutter caught Temper’s eye. Sails up, it was on its way out of the bay with good speed — even in this relative calm. He’d seen it arrive just before dusk yesterday, and now today towards the noon bell it was again on its way. Message delivered, Temper supposed.
What a night to have lain over! Idly, he speculated on the coincidence. Could that be Surly or another, on their way back to Unta or beyond? Probably not. Too mundane. Surly and the others would have left already by way of the Warrens. In either case, he bid them all a warm farewell and added the heartfelt wish that none should ever again set foot on the island.
He tossed back a swig from the flask to salute the thought.
EPILOGUE
At his cripple’s pace Edgewalker struggled across the chamber of slanted walls dark as vitrified night. He followed a path smeared through a finger-bone’s thickness of otherwise undisturbed dust. The trail ended at two prone men, motionless as the dust itself. He paused, stared down at them for the longest time as if searching for signs of life.
‘What in the Word of the Nameless Ones do you want?’ croaked one.
Edgewalker inclined his head in a shallow bow. ‘Greetings and welcome, Lord, to Shadow House.’
The one who had spoken sat up. Aside, as if to a third party, he offered the tired flick of two fingers of his left hand. Edgewalker turned to his rear where a twin to the other man now stood with barred blades. As he shifted to study the shape on the floor, it shimmered from sight.
The sitting one giggled. ‘My apologies. Old habits. You are?’
‘Edgewalker.’
The man nodded thoughtfully. ‘Ah yes. I recall the name. You are mentioned… here and there.’
The man raised an arm. ‘Help me up… ah, that is… Cotillion.’
The weapons in Cotillion’s hands disappeared and Edgewalker saw that in fact they had not been true weapons at all but the shadows of weapons, and that from now on these two might create whatever they wished from the raw stuff at their disposal.
Standing, the man hardly reached Edgwalker’s breast. Hunched and grizzled, he gave the appearance of an old man, yet his movements betrayed no hesitancy. He glanced about at the slanted angular dimensions of the chamber and grimaced his distaste. ‘No,’ he decided. ‘Not to my liking at all.’ He waved and the chamber blurred, shifting. Edgewalker now found himself standing in a keep’s main hall. Stone flags lay beneath his bare feet and a stone hearth flamed at one wall. Above, blackened timbers spanned the darkness. The man cast a sharp eye right and left then nodded, pleased with himself. ‘That will do. For the nonce. Now, Cotillion, care to make a turn about the Realm?’
‘What of this one?’
‘Ah. Edgewalker. You may be our guide.’
‘I think not.’
The old man paused, blinking. ‘I’m sorry. You said…?’
‘I do not take your orders.’
A walking stick poked Edgewalker at his chest. He could not quite recall exactly when it appeared in the old man’s hand. ‘Perhaps I should summon the Hounds to tear you limb from limb.’
‘They would not do so.’
‘Truly? Why?’
‘Because we are all kin. Slaves to Shadow.’
The old man peered closely at him, raised his brows. ‘Ah, I see. You have been taken by Shadow. You are a slave to the House. Very well. I shall allow you your small impertinences. But remember, while you are slave to Shadow, I
Edgewalker said nothing.
The old man leant both his hands on the silver hound’s head of his walking stick. He and his companion Cotillion faded from view, like proverbial shadows under gathering moonlight, until they disappeared, eventually, from sight.
Edgewalker turned and limped from the House. Out upon the open plain he struck a direction towards the featureless horizon. Dust-devils dogged his heels. How many times, he wondered, had he heard that very same conceit from a claimant to the Throne? Would they never learn? How long, he wondered, would this one last? Why was it none of the long chain of hopefuls ever bothered to ask why the Throne should be empty in the first place? After all, perhaps there was a reason.
Still, this one’s residence should bode new and interesting times for Shadow. He should be thankful to these men, for in the end the one thing their presence might bring to the enduring eternity of the Realm was the potential for change and thus, the continuing possibility of…
The strange thing looked like nothing the boy or his sister had ever seen or heard of before. Out crabbing during the evening low tide they came across it wedged between limpet-encrusted rocks, half buried in sand. Against his sister’s silent urgings to move away, the boy used a stick to prod the pale shape.
‘It’s a man drowned,’ whispered the girl, hushed.
‘No,’ the boy answered, scornful of his sister’s knowledge of fishing, or anything else for that matter. ‘It’s scaled. It’s a fish.’
The girl peered down to where her brother knelt, and the pale shadowed length at his feet. Its glimmer in the fading light reminded her of the glow she sometimes saw at night along the edge of waves. To tease her brother, she asked, ‘Oh? What kind of a fish is it then?’
The boy’s face puckered with vexation at the silliness of girls’ questions. ‘I don’t know. A big one. It sure stinks like a fish.’
The smell was undeniable. Yet the girl remained uneasy. She thought she saw the glint of an eye, watching them from behind a tangle of seaweed at one end of the body. Hoping to scare her younger brother away from the thing, she whispered, ‘It’s a corpse. A drowned man. Come away or his ghost will haunt you.’
The boy glared back. ‘I’m not afraid.’
The girl did not answer, for behind her brother the pale shape moved. An arm, lustrous in the dark, slipped from under it. The seaweed fell back from a face of angular, knife-like lines holding molten golden eyes.
The girl screamed. The boy shrieked as a cold hand clasped his ankle. Both screamed into the empty twilight while the thing’s mouth moved, its message obliterated beneath their combined cries. Then the thing released the boy’s ankle.
Sobbing, the boy scrambled away on all fours, his sister tugging upon his tunic, urging him on, as if he were yet held back. Behind them the shape collapsed among the shadows of the rocks.
After sunset a single torch approached the rocks. The incoming tide slapped and splashed among their black, glistening teeth. Torch held high, an old man eased his way through the pools and gaps. His long hair and beard shone white, whipped in the contrary winds. At the shore, a glowing lantern revealed brother and sister, hands clasped together.
Methodically, the old man advanced. He swept the torch before him, down into crevasses between boulders and low over the rising water. He turned back to the children and called, ‘Here?’
‘Farther out,’ the girl answered in a near gasp.
The old man drew a knife from his belt. Its blade was thin, honed down to a sickle moon. He exchanged torch and knife from hand to hand, then edged farther into the tide. Standing waist-deep in the frigid water he decided that he had gone out quite far enough. He would step up onto the last remaining tall rocks standing like a bastion before the waves, then return to tell his grandchildren that the ghost had fled back to its salty rest.
