'You don't think, Curdle. You never think. I can't remember any throne. What throne? There must be some mistake. Not-Apsalar heard wrong, that much is obvious. Completely wrong, an absolute error.
Besides, someone's sitting in it.'
'Deliciously.'
'I told you, there was no throne-'
The conversation had been going on for half the night, as they travelled the strange paths of Shadow, winding across a ghostly landscape that constantly shifted between two worlds, although both were equally ravaged and desolate. Apsalar wondered at the sheer extent of this fragment of the Shadow Realm. If her recollection of Cotillion's memories was accurate, the realm wandered untethered to the world Apsalar called her own, and neither the Rope nor Shadowthrone possessed any control over its seemingly random peregrinations. Even stranger, it was clear that roads of a sort stretched out from the fragment, twisting and wending vast distances, like roots, or tentacles, and sometimes their motions proved independent of the larger fragment.
As with the one they now traversed. More or less following the eastern road leading out from Ehrlitan, skirting the thin ribbon of cedars on their left, beyond which was the sea. And as the traders' track began to curve northward to meet the coastline, the Shadow Road joined with it, narrowing until it was barely the width of the track itself.
Ignoring the ceaseless nattering from the two ghosts flitting behind her, Apsalar pushed on, fighting the lack of sleep and eager to cover as much ground as possible before the sun's rise. Her control of the Shadow Road was growing more tenuous – it vanished with every slip of her concentration. Finally, she halted.
The warren crumbled around them. The sky to the east was lightening.
They stood on the traders' track at the base of a winding climb to the coastal ridge, rhizan darting through the air around them.
'The sun returns! Not again! Telorast, we need to hide! Somewhere!'
'No we don't, you idiot. We just get harder to see, that's all, unless you're not mindful. Of course, Curdle, you are incapable of being mindful, so I look forward to your wailing dissolution. Peace, at last. For a while, at least-'
'You are evil, Telorast! I've always known it, even before you went and used that knife on-'
'Be quiet! I never used that knife on anyone.'
'And you're a liar!'
'Say that again and I'll stick you!'
'You can't! I'm dissolving!'
Apsalar ran a hand across her brow. It came away glistening with sweat. 'That thread of Shadow felt… wrong,' she said.
'Oh yes,' Telorast replied, slipping round to crouch before her in a miasma of swirling grey. 'It's sickly. All the outer reaches are.
Poisoned, rotting with chaos. We blame Shadowthrone.'
'Shadowthrone? Why?'
'Why not? We hate him.'
'And that is sufficient reason?'
'The sufficientest reason of all.'
Apsalar studied the climbing track. 'I think we're close.'
'Good. Excellent. I'm frightened. Let's stop here. Let's go back, now.'
Stepping through the ghost, Apsalar began the ascent.
'That was a vicious thing to do,' Telorast hissed behind her. 'If I possessed you I wouldn't do that to me. Not even to Curdle, I wouldn' t. Well, maybe, if I was mad. You're not mad at me, are you? Please don't be mad at me. I'll do anything you ask, until you're dead. Then I'll dance on your stinking, bloated corpse, because that's what you would want me to do, isn't it? I would if I was you and you were dead and I lingered long enough to dance on you, which I would do.'
Reaching the crest, Apsalar saw that the track continued along the ridge another two hundred paces before twisting back down onto the lee side. Cool morning wind plucked the sweat from her face, sighing in from the vast, dark cape that was the sea on her left. She looked down to see a narrow strand of beach fifteen or so man-heights below, cluttered with driftwood. Along the track to her right, near the far end, a stand of stunted trees rose from a niche in the cliff-side, and in their midst stood a stone tower. White plaster covered its surface for most of its height, barring the uppermost third, where the roughcut stones were still exposed.
She walked towards it as the first spears of sunlight shot over the horizon.
Heaps of slate filled the modest enclosure surrounding the tower. Noone was visible, and Apsalar could hear nothing from within as she strode across to halt in front of the door.
Telorast's faint whisper came to her: 'This isn't good. A stranger lives here. Must be a stranger, since we've never met. And if not a stranger then somebody I know, which would be even worse-'
'Be quiet,' Apsalar said, reaching up to pound on the door – then stopped, and stepping back, stared up at the enormous reptilian skull set in the wall above the doorway. 'Hood's breath!' She hesitated, Telorast voicing minute squeals and gasps behind her, then thumped on the weathered wood with a gloved fist.
The sounds of something falling over, then of boots crunching on grit and gravel. A bolt was tugged aside, and the door swung open in a cloud of dust.
The man standing within filled the doorway. Napan, massive muscles, blunt face, small eyes. His scalp shaved and white with dust, through which a few streaks of sweat ran down to glisten in his thick, wiry eyebrows.
Apsalar smiled. 'Hello, Urko.'
The man grunted, then said, 'Urko drowned. They all drowned.'
'It's that lack of imagination that gave you away,' she replied.
'Who are you?'
'Apsalar-'
'No you're not. Apsalar was an Imass-'
'Not the Mistress of Thieves. It is simply the name I chose-'
'Damned arrogant of you, too.'
'Perhaps. In any case, I bring greetings from Dancer.'
The door slammed in her face.
Coughing in the dust gusting over her, Apsalar stepped back and wiped grit from her eyes.
'Hee hee,' said Telorast behind her. 'Can we go now?'
She pounded on the door again.
After a long moment, it opened once more. He was scowling. 'I once tried to drown him, you know.'
'No, yes, I recall. You were drunk.'
'You couldn't have recalled anything – you weren't there. Besides, I wasn't drunk.'
'Oh. Then… why?'
'Because he irritated me, that's why. Just like you're doing right now.'
'I need to talk to you.'
'What for?'
She suddenly had no answer to give him.
His eyes narrowed. 'He really thought I was drunk? What an idiot.'
'Well, I suppose the alternative was too depressing.'
'I never knew he was such a sensitive soul. Are you his daughter?
Something… in the way you stand…'
'May I come in?'
He moved away from the door. Apsalar entered, then halted once more, her eyes on the enormous headless skeleton commanding the interior, reaching all the way up to the tower's ceiling. Bipedal, long-tailed, the bones a burnished brown colour. 'What is this?'
Urko said, 'Whatever it was, it could swallow a bhederin in one bite.'
'How?' Telorast asked Apsalar in a whisper. 'It has no head.'
The man heard the question, and he now scowled. 'You have company.
What is it, a familiar or something? I can't see it, and that I don't like. Not at all.'
