House of Shadows(111)

Nemienne, who had never been able to summon fire into the peculiar heavy darkness of these caverns, found in her heart an understanding of shadows and darkness and black water that had never known the sun. She held in her mind the heavy smothering darkness, knelt on the stone, dipped a finger into the black pool, and drew quickly on the white stone the rune for summoning that she had seen on the hearthstone of Leilis’s fireplace. What she summoned was the patient darkness that lay beyond the reach of any light, the endless heavy shadows that could smother any fire.

Before her, Mage Ankennes’s magefire went out like a snuffed candle. All the light in the caverns vanished—all the light and fire that men had made or brought: not only Ankennes’s powerful fire but also the prisoning circles of light and all the torches the king’s men had carried with them. Through all the caverns, the only light that remained was the light that somehow wasn’t quite light at all: the odd greenish glimmer that seemed a part of the stone, that seemed to rise from the black pool without disturbing its blackness; the pale light that slid along the long elegant head and sinuous neck of the stone dragon and lit the pathway that Taudde had made—or found—with the music he drew from a dead king’s bone.

Mage Ankennes stopped, staring at his own empty hands and then, with an expression of furious amazement, at Nemienne. She couldn’t meet his eyes. The black-clad men caught him roughly by the arms. One of them forced the mage to his knees and another set a blade at his throat. Nemienne didn’t feel triumphant, but rather ill and near tears. She thought the king’s men might kill Ankennes right where he knelt, but they didn’t. She was glad of their restraint, but also wrenched by a guilty wish that they had killed the mage, because she was terrified of him now. But the wish seemed somehow worse than the fear. Nemienne lowered her gaze and stared into the black pool.

The music of the bone flute continued, untouched by any of this struggle. Each note fell into the air like a drop of water into the black pool. The melody slid down a haunting, uncomfortable scale where every note edged toward an unrecognizable minor key, then rose again in repetitive swoops where every phrase seemed to build toward something that could never be reached, that should not ever be reached… The Kalchesene sorcerer had closed his eyes and played by feel or instinct. Leilis stood behind him, her hands on his shoulders. Her eyes were open. She stared with calm intensity into the shifting path of light that the sorcerer had lain through the shadows.

Geriodde Nerenne ken Seriantes was returning along that path, following the melody. The silver kitten rode on his shoulder. Behind him he drew, evidently by sheer force of will, both Karah and his son.

But the king did not walk easily along the path of light. As he became more visible, it became evident that he was forcing his way through the shadows that tried to drown the trail he had left. He leaned hard forward as though he breasted a ferocious wind; he struggled to lift each foot as though he waded through sucking sands. His eyes were open, but his stare was fixed and blank. Nemienne thought he saw nothing of any of them, but only shadows and the desperately faint glimmering of the path.

“Help him!” one of the black-clad men snapped at the foreign sorcerer. He was their senior, a man with a seamed, experienced face, gray streaks through his short-cropped dark hair, and a harsh mouth. His voice cracked across the dragon’s chamber with authority.

“Can’t you see that he’s doing everything he can?” Leilis snapped back. “Are you fool enough to interfere with the only one who can help him?”

The man looked at the sorcerer and said nothing. It was perfectly clear that Leilis had spoken nothing but the truth. The Kalchesene sorcerer looked, indeed, almost as strained as the slowly approaching king. His face was as white as the stone that surrounded them all. The foreign stamp of his face stood out starkly in his drawn exhaustion. He had closed his eyes and now played blind, scattered notes that sometimes seemed random and sometimes resolved into a strange melodic line that never seemed to go in any expected direction. Each phrase he played coaxed the trail of light into brief clarity, and yet it would fade again between one moment and the next.

Geriodde Nerenne ken Seriantes now seemed in one way close at hand, his features clearly distinguishable; yet though he strove continually along his path, he grew no nearer. His attitude was one of set endurance. Shadows broke like water before the king and eddied behind him; currents of darkness tried to force him first one way and then the other, so that all his effort was bent on keeping to the path of music and light that lay before him, narrow and tenuous as a ribbon. Yet there was an air of solidity about the king as well. Nemienne could not imagine either his strength or his will failing. If anyone failed here, it would be the sorcerer and not the king. Nemienne thought the king might hold with unchanging force to that uncertain path for uncounted days or years, until everything but that strength and will had been burned away, and he would still in the end win free of the dark. And he would bring his son out with him, too, because he would never let himself fail.