Part 14 (1/2)
Cale casually surveyed the inn. He spotted the merchant's guards with little difficulty-two burly sellswords in chain mail vests on opposite sides of the common room, both trying too hard to avoid looking at Cale's table.
”No,” Cale said. ”But I will compensate you for your time. You headed a Three Diamond Coster out of Teziir?”
”Yes,” Grathan said, nodding.
”I am looking for the guide you used. Unusual eyes?”
The moment Cale described Magadon, Grathan wilted and sank into himself. Cale saw the fear behind his puffy eyes.
”You know who I mean,” Cale said softly. ”I can see it in your face. Where is he?”
Despite his efforts, shadows spiraled from Cale's flesh.
Grathan saw the shadows and his eyes went wide. He scooted back his chair and started to stand.
”I have nothing more to say to you-”
Cale jumped up, grabbed him by the s.h.i.+rt, and pulled him bodily across the table. More shadows spun from him.
”Unhand me, sir!”
Cale nodded at Grathan's guards, who were starting toward the table, hands on daggers. Other patrons stared at Cale in alarm, though none rose to intervene.
”Call them off or I will kill you right now,” Cale said, and left no doubt from his tone that he meant what he said. Darkness swirled around them both. ”No one can stop me and I will be gone from here before you finish bleeding.”
Grathan awkwardly signaled his guards to hold their ground.
They did, eyeing Cale coldly.
”I will ask only one more time. Where is my friend?”
The fear in Grathan's wide eyes turned to puzzlement. He looked into Cale's eyes as if looking for a lie. Apparently seeing none, his body went slack.
”Friend? You say you are his friend?”
Cale nodded but did not let the merchant go, though he did loosen his grip a bit.
”Release me,” Grathan said. ”Let me sit like a gentleman. I will tell you what I saw.”
Cale let him slip back into his chair and Grathan waved off his bodyguards. The rest of the patrons went back to their own business.
”My apologies for the rough treatment,” Cale said insincerely. He subdued his shadows once more.
Grathan adjusted his jacket, examined it for tears. ”Accepted. A man looking after his friend. I can understand that.”
”Where is he?” Cale asked.
”I do not know. Something happened on the road.”
Cale waited for the merchant to continue.
”We made camp one night as we always did. I'd gone to my wagon for sleep. I left your friend at the fire. I was awakened later by a noise.”
”Describe it.”
”Like a wind or somesuch, but there was no wind. I sensed something amiss and sneaked from my bed. That's when I saw it.”
Cale's fists clenched. ”Saw what?”
”Something had happened to the rest of the men. Not one of them stirred. They slept right through the noise. A spell or somesuch, I presume. But this,” he touched a silver clasp on his cloak, ”protects me from things of that sort, else I probably would have slept through it, too.”
Cale gestured impatiently for him to continue.
”Magadon was not affected, either. He rose and shouted challenges into the night. I do not know to whom he was speaking. He could see something that I could not. He fired his bow into the darkness. The arrows glowed red, like they were dripping magic or somesuch. Finally ...” Grathan shook his head. ”It was like ... the night itself opened up to take him. There was a cloud of darkness above the camp. Magadon looked up at it and dropped his weapons. It descended on him and when it lifted, he was gone. I told the men the next day that he had deserted us in the night. They remembered nothing and I did not want to alarm them.”
Cale studied Grathan's face, saw no lie there.
”That is everything? Why did you lie to your men? Why didn't you report it to the watch?”
Grathan looked away in shame. ”I want you to know that I asked after Magadon, but quietly. I liked him, for the short time I knew him. But I did not want news of the attack to be widely known. Bad for morale. Bad for trade.”
”Trade is no excuse for cowardice,” Cale said harshly.
Grathan's face contorted with angry denial but Cale's cold expression froze whatever words the fat merchant might have wanted to utter. Grathan looked away.
Cale stood. He did not bother to control the darkness leaking from his skin or the contempt leaking from his tone. ”My grat.i.tude for your time, merchant.” He tossed two platinum suns on the table.
Grathan ignored the coins, looked up at him, and said, ”I was afraid. So was Magadon. Any man would have been. But I hope you find him, and that he is all right.”
Cale heard sincerity in Grathan's voice. He nodded, turned, breezed past one of Grathan's bodyguards, and left the inn. When he found an isolated alley, he drew the shadows about him and rode them back to Varra and their cottage in Sembia, more worried than ever for his friend.
[image]
I stand in the doorway and a gentle wind carries the smell of pine to my nostrils. A stream babbles somewhere nearby. I step out of the cell and look about.
I am standing on a hillside, overlooking an unsullied landscape. Conifers blanket the terrain. Ideas, dripping with promise, hang from the branches. A clear stream cascades down the hill into the wooded dale below. Thoughts swim in its current, silver and quick.
I notice the sky and gasp.
A translucent red dome roofs the world and defines its borders. Sharp edges and smooth, flat planes recall the surface of something crystalline. I stand inside a hemisphere-a thought bubble. I recall the words someone said to me once around a campfire: All men keep a coffer of secrets in their soul All men keep a coffer of secrets in their soul. I realize that I am standing in my coffer.
Flashes of light intermittently flare within the crystal sky, bathing the whole landscape in red light. Whorls of orange and crimson slowly churn within the sky's depths. Dark, pulsing lines trace jagged paths across the gla.s.sy surface; they remind me of veins.
I look away, my head swimming. In the distance, I notice the wall.
On the far side of the hemisphere is a wall of black stone. It rises from the earth to the sky, and curves from one side of the hemisphere to the other. The stream flows toward it.