He felt eyes on him then, steady and level. He glanced over to see two of the long-standing regulars here, one a wiry drunkard named Faro and the other a giant of a fellow who sometimes served as a sort of unofficial bouncer when he was sober enough. He gave them a nod, which Faro answered in a strangely measured way.
Shrugging off the fellow’s gaze, Nedurian ambled out on to the wet night-time street. He was in no hurry; after all, he knew where the Napans were headed. When he reached the block containing Smiley’s he was rewarded by the noise of a scuffle and the crash of a door. He paused, leaning against a neighbour’s shop-front, and watched while street-toughs came rocketing out of the door one by one to crash to the gleaming cobbles. Groaning, they picked themselves up, dragged their compatriots up off the ground, and limped away.
Nedurian smiled to himself in the dark and gave them a while, then pushed off, thinking, Well … nothing has ever been gained by timidity.
He pushed open the door to find himself facing one of the Napan crew, the tallest, Tocaras, longsword bared. ‘Not now,’ the fellow said, his face grim. Nedurian peered in past him to see another of the crew, Grinner, cleaning the counter.
‘You’re closed?’
Tocaras nodded, almost as if he couldn’t trust himself to speak. ‘Aye. Closed.’
The servitor and Urko emerged from the rear, the giant fellow still half supporting her. ‘Who is it?’ she called.
‘That mage, Nedurian,’ Tocaras answered over his shoulder.
‘Let him in.’
Grinner and Shrift were slowly righting chairs and sweeping up broken crockery. They eyed him, suddenly rather hostile. He sat at the table nearest the door. Surly herself sat on a high stool at the bar, still wrapped in a cloak. She nodded the big one, Urko, to him. The fellow lumbered over, frowning. ‘Uh … what d’you want?’
‘Like I said. Employment.’
Urko glanced back to Surly. She tilted her head, her gaze hardening. ‘You know who runs this place?’
A loaded question: he was tempted to say ‘you’ but decided she was testing his honesty and so he nodded. ‘Yeah. Some Dal Hon mage, and a fellow who looks handy with a knife. But I haven’t seen them lately.’
She nodded in turn, satisfied. ‘Well, they’re abroad. Could be back any time, though. So remember that.’
‘All right.’ Interesting – she’s using them as a threat to keep the hirelings in line. Are they really so scary? Well, that’s what I’m here to find out. ‘I consider myself forewarned.’
‘Do so. Now, why us? Why not the other lot? We’re outnumbered, you know.’
He inclined his head at the justness of the question. ‘Been watching for some time now. The other lot, they’re a gang. But you’re a crew.’ He raised a finger. ‘That’s a very important difference.’
She was eyeing him steadily. After a few moments she pursed her thin hard lips as if to say, Good enough. Her gaze fell to the bar’s counter then seemed to shy away; she regarded him anew. ‘Can you heal?’
He shrugged. ‘I know the basics. Both mundane and magical.’
She leaned back and waved to Grinner, who was standing as if quivering with some sort of rage – as if he wanted to knife someone, anyone, and even he’d do. ‘Let’s go upstairs. Mage, you have yourself a patient.’
*
Dancer squinted through a hanging haze of dust to a horizon of jagged canyons and flat isolated buttes and despaired. He stood at the crumbling edge of a ridge and resolved not to continue any further in this ridiculous exploration of Shadow. He crossed his arms as Kellanved came puffing up behind.
‘We could wander like this for ever,’ he announced, not turning round.
‘Indeed, the Realm is ours to discover,’ Kellanved answered, sounding very pleased with himself.
Dancer resisted looking to the pewter sky. ‘I mean this is useless. We should return.’
‘Useless? When every turn reveals new knowledge? Every vista a revelation of discovery?’
This time Dancer did look up.
The walking stick appeared, thrusting out past Dancer’s side. ‘What is that?’ Dancer narrowed his gaze to the right. A tall mount? ‘There is a strange light there – we should investigate.’
Dancer uncrossed his arms, let out a long-suffering breath. ‘Very well. But after that we return, yes?’
Kellanved brushed past him, waving a hand. ‘Yes, yes.’ He shuffled down the slope rather awkwardly to the ravine below, setting off great rattling slides of rocks and shale.
Dancer followed, his gaze on the ridge-lines and the deeper murk of the boulders littering the valley below. He knew that the hounds would find them again anyway and that Kellanved would be forced to shift them like wind-blown leaves across Shadow regardless of their plans.
*
After meandering through a maze of steep and narrow canyons they glimpsed a horizon ahead, seemingly oddly close. It hung like a sky-to-ground curtain of shifting silvery grey, shot through by glimmerings of light, like sparks or motes.
Kellanved halted, planting the walking stick in front of him, hands atop it. As Dancer closed, his companion gestured to a turn in the canyon, and announced, as if he’d just created the panorama, ‘Behold…’
Dancer peered over and grunted, astonished. The canyon allowed a direct approach to their objective, revealed now through the thinning dust not as a dark mount or pinnacle, but as a hulking construction like a fortress of dark rock, tilted near sideways along the slope of a butte, and apparently half sunk in the curtain of hanging silver light.
Of all the sights Shadow had revealed as yet, Dancer had to admit this was the most impressive. ‘What is it?’ he breathed aloud.
‘I do not know,’ Kellanved answered. ‘But I must find out.’ And he set off at a quick scuttle.
Cursing, Dancer hurried after the little fellow, who could move quite fast when he wished to. He drew his blades, hissing, ‘We can’t just march right up.’
‘And why ever not?’
‘There might be guards, occupants.’
‘Nonsense. It is long abandoned.’
‘You don’t know that. How do you know that?’
The wiry mage started climbing the fan of broken rock and detritus that spread down from the nearest leaning walls of the immense structure. He threw a finger into the air, saying, ‘I surmised.’
Dancer was tiring of the fellow’s posturing. ‘Surmised? From what? There is no evidence.’
Halting, Kellanved gestured ahead to the great hulking construct, then opened his arms wide. ‘As I thought,’ he announced, ‘a Sky Fortress of the K’Chain Che’Malle.’
Dancer was not surprised; he’d already suspected as much. Studying the great broken edifice, its exposed galleries, floors, and cracked walls, he imagined in his mind’s eye the enormous object crashing into the hillside to break apart and slide to its present tilted resting place. Yet what of this strange glittering curtain that blocked their view of half the remains? ‘And this barrier?’ he asked Kellanved.
The hunched, falsely old mage was already scrambling up the slope of shattered rock and gravel. He waved his walking stick as he held forth. ‘As we know, Kurald Emurlahn – the Elder Warren of Shadow – was broken apart in great wars. That barrier must be one such border – an edge of this shard of Emurlahn.’
Dancer nodded to himself. ‘So … we could pass through there into another Realm?’