Shadow Prowler

I slipped out onto the Street of the Magicians. The final drops of time were draining away into the sand. One hour, or even less, and the horizon that was still dark would flare up in the bright flash of an irrepressible summer dawn.

I started moving faster, slipping through the shadows, forward—to where the narrow street broadened out into a small square.

I didn’t even notice how I got there. I simply stopped, enveloped in the cloak of shadow cast by an old two-story house with no roof. Opposite me there was another house, the final beacon of human habitation before the empty square.

And there ahead of me the appalling two-story stump of the old Tower of the Order stood in mute, agonizing reproach, alone and dead. The power of the Kronk-a-Mor had not spared it; there was nothing left of the structure’s former grandeur and elegance. The black blizzard had made short work of the once-beautiful creation of the magicians of the Order.

“What have you done, Zemmel!” Valder groaned.

Yes, an appalling catastrophe had taken place here, and I certainly didn’t envy those who had been nearby when the raging elements had broken free of control. There wasn’t a single stone left on the square, it was absolutely bare, surrounded by the skeletons of houses and flooded by the light of the setting moon, like some meadow in a fairy tale.

The tower had once had not just three, but many floors, and when the explosion happened, the debris should have been scattered right across the square. But it wasn’t there. The square was clean and empty. As if the rubble had just evaporated.

“How long are we going to go on standing here? Time’s wasting.” The sudden sound of a voice from the dense darkness of the house across the road startled me out of my mournful thoughts. I stared across the road in amazement.

The words had obviously been spoken by a living man, not some insubstantial phantom.

“Calm down, Shnyg. Or do you want to end up like good old Rostgish?” a repulsive, squeaky voice replied.

“Calm down Shnyg, calm down Shnyg,” the first voice grumbled. “It was Rostgish’s own fault. He let his guard down and let a dead man get his teeth into him. Let’s get those plans then cut and run.”

“Just how do you suggest we get into that damned tower? We have to think the whole business through, or we won’t get out of this alive.”

“You do the thinking, Nightingale,” Shnyg said angrily. “Morning’s already on the way, it’s time to get out of here.”

“Shut up, will you! I’m thinking,” Nightingale barked, and Shnyg shut up.

Right. I know those names. The two master thieves Shnyg and Nightingale work for the guild, and that means they work for the slimebag Markun.

They’re not such bad lads, really, but their work’s a bit sloppy.

And I knew Rostgish, too, may he rest in the light. He appeared in Avendoom a couple of years ago and attached himself to this pair. Not a master thief. He drank too much. Those must have been his remains that I came across on the Street of the Sleepy Cat.

I wonder what in the name of Darkness they want in the Forbidden Territory?

“Have you got the plan?” Nightingale hissed.

His shrill, squeaky voice was painful to hear, but the thieves didn’t seem to think there was any need to hide, and they made enough noise for the whole street to hear. “The one we got from the Royal Library? Here it is. Light it up.”

“What with?” Nightingale muttered. “That damned Rostgish had all the lights.”

Aha! So they were the ones that the old man Bolt was talking about. “Gray and untalkative.” Shnyg and Rostgish must have gone to the library. The old man would have remembered Nightingale.

They’d stuck some important gent’s ring under Bolt’s nose, hadn’t they? Ah, I never thought to ask the old man about the ring, I thought it was all a senile old fool’s imaginings. I’ll have to go back and have a proper heart-to-heart talk with him. So who was it that sent them?

“We have to get those cursed maps or whatever else before that skunk gets there ahead of us.”

“What are you so nervous about?” asked Nightingale, as calm and rational as ever. “Harold won’t try sticking his nose in here any time soon.”

“That Harold has really got up everyone’s nose. Markun boils over at the very mention of his name, and the client said we should do away with him if it came to it. And the individual our client serves—which means that we do, too—is begi

“Do away with him?” Nightingale said with a nasal snigger. “Have you completely lost your wits, Shnyg? That lad might look feeble and ski

“Do you think it’s that easy to get away from the Master?” a mocking voice asked, and I shuddered.

I would have known that voice anywhere, out of a thousand. It had changed a lot, lost that lifeless, dead tone, but I still recognized it. It was the voice of the same being that had spoken with the duke and then killed him. That winged creature of the night.

“Don’t even think about trying to run. You will only go when he lets you go, little man. You are faithful to the Master, aren’t you?”

“I am faithful.” Nightingale’s voice sounded hoarse and frightened. “We are faithful.”

“Yes, yes, Your Grace, we are faithful to the Master,” Shnyg confirmed in an ingratiating tone.

There was a quiet laugh of satisfaction in the darkness, and I thought I glimpsed a brief flash of golden eyes.

“Clever little men,” the creature drawled. “Get the maps and destroy them, and then you can clear out of here to anywhere you want.” There was a note of undisguised contempt in the emissary’s voice.

“B-b-but, Your Grace . . . ,” said Shnyg, clearly very surprised. “The client said to bring the papers to him. We can’t just—”

Shnyg broke off his tirade and started wheezing for some reason, and his partner gasped out loud in fright.

“The Master is not used to hearing ‘we can’t.’ He needs servants who can! Those who are incapable of carrying out an elementary assignment are not worthy to serve him; they are useless!”

Shnyg’s wheezing became a charming gurgling.

“May I be allowed to remark that Shnyg did not at all wish to seem to be useless!” Nightingale started keening. “We’ll go and get those papers right now!”