Shadow Prowler

The one without a glove had come off worse—there was a ragged red line ru

The houses on the Street of the Magicians had been built more recently. Or at least the coverings of the roofs didn’t groan under my weight in weary old age, threatening to collapse suddenly at any moment. I moved on, making haste—morning was very close now.

Winding and weaving like a drunken snake, the Street of the Magicians was nothing like the ideally straight Street of the Sleepy Cat, Street of Men, and Graveyard Street, which the dwarves might have laid out with a ruler.

And although this wasn’t the most prestigious area of town, the little houses looked far richer. There were elegant weather vanes in the form of various magical creatures standing on every second roof. On a couple of façades I even spotted statues decorating the walls. But of course, I didn’t look too closely at them; all my attention was focused on not falling off the sloping roof I happened to be on at the time.

Up. Down. Leap. Land. Up. Down. Leap. Land. I moved along like I was controlled by one of the dwarves’ mechanisms—precisely, accurately, expending no excess energy. I jumped in the absolute certainty that nothing untoward was going to happen now.

That certainty was my undoing. As I landed one more time, I stopped to catch my breath and look up at the stars. I’m ru

And then there was a mournful creaking sound under my feet. The kind of creak old doors make in abandoned houses. The roof started to shift under me, I flung my arms out, trying to keep my balance and not go tumbling down from the third floor onto the stone surface of the street, and at the same time I tried to jump away from the collapsing section of roof.

But I was too late.

The support fell away from under my feet, and I went flying down after it. There were glimpses of walls, dust rising from the collapsing roof, the starry sky.

And then there was darkness.

12 IN THE DARK

I don’t think I lay there unconscious for very long. When I opened my eyes and looked up at the sky, the stars had hardly moved at all and the moon was still bright, not yet pale in anticipation of morning.

I groaned and tried to sit up. Surprisingly enough, none of my bones seemed to be broken. Naturally, I was highly delighted. If I’d broken my leg or—Sagot forbid—my back, I’d have been lying there waiting for the dawn to come.

I hadn’t fallen very far. The ceiling was very close—if I just stood up, reached out my hand, and jumped, I could reach it with my fingers. I seemed to be in some room on the third floor. The floor was supporting both me and the collapsed section of the roof, on the rubble of which I had made such a successful landing. If I’d gone on down through all the floors to the ground, the king would have been unlikely ever to see me again.

I got to my feet and cautiously moved my arms, still not believing that I wasn’t hurt. I had to get out of there; that child’s crying was having a bad effect on my nerves.

Stop!

What crying?

It felt like I was suddenly fastened to the floor with a single gigantic nail. I started feverishly trying to understand where the thought about a child’s cry had come from.

Yes, there was something there. Something on the very borderline of my consciousness as I was falling into the darkness. Something that had woken me, called me back from oblivion.

Crying. That familiar child’s crying.

As if in reply, and in confirmation of all the laws of universal beastliness and my own anxious fears, I heard a quiet sobbing in the dark corner of the room. Feeling rather far from my best, I nervously took out the magical trinket and held it out in front of me at arm’s length.

The old room had walls with peeling wallpaper, a scraped and battered wooden floor, and a little girl standing in the far corner, gazing at me with her green eyes.

She was no more than five years old. Golden hair in unruly curls, plump rosy cheeks with the traces of tears, rosebud lips, a dirty, torn little dress, bare feet, and a tattered plush toy—either a dog or a mouse—in her hands. A charming little child who could model for the frescoes in holy shrines.

Except that her still eyes were filled with the anticipation of a snake, the hatred of a wolf, and hunger of an ogre. And lying beside her was my glove, the one I had abandoned in the judge’s house.

The little girl sobbed.

Moving very, very slowly, I bent down to pick up my crossbow from where it was lying on the floor. At the precise moment when my fingers closed on the weapon, the little girl sobbed for the last time and then gave a quiet, malevolent laugh.

I froze. So we had met at last. This was the Jolly Weeper in person.

The eyes of the creature—I can’t carry on calling it a child—glinted, a wall of rotten air struck me in the face, and I went flying back against the opposite wall. The magical light started blinking and fading rapidly. It was swiftly getting dark in the room, with only those green eyes radiating light, hypnotizing me and suppressing my will, flooding my brain with a sticky mist of calmness.

“Don’t sleep! Shoot!” someone’s cool, imperious voice ordered, and the mist in my head began dissipating rapidly.

My ears were assaulted by a shriek of protest. The creature could feel that it was losing control over me. I could move again now and, taking my aim at those poisonous green eyes, I pressed both triggers of the crossbow almost simultaneously. The first, ordinary bolt stuck the laughing creature in the shoulder, spi

The magical bolt of fire followed its ordinary brother home and struck the creature in the chest.

A bright flash of fire liberated from its magical captivity, a rumbling sound, and a squeal of protest.

One . . . two . . . three . . . I took my hands away from my face and cautiously opened my eyes. The room was empty. The light from the magical trinket was gradually growing stronger, timidly illuminating the old room and the carnage that had been wrought in it.

The Jolly Weeper had disappeared; there wasn’t even any ash left behind. Either the fire had really destroyed it, or the vile creature had cleared off to somewhere a bit less hot. To be quite honest, it was all the same to me, as long as it was nowhere near me any longer.

“Thank you, Valder. You popped up at just the right moment,” I mumbled, but there was no reply.

Walking out of the room, I saw a wooden stairway leading downward. I had no more desire to travel across the ancient roofs. I had enough bruises already and I didn’t feel like tempting fate yet again.