Dancer's Lament

Chapter 13

DORIN ALMOST DRAGGED himself to Ullara’s garret to rest and recover. But Rheena’s warning against bringing any more attention to the girl came to mind and so he did not head that way. He stole a cloak and threw it over his shoulders and made his way to his last rented room, where he fell on to the straw pallet and slept.

He awoke to noon sunlight shining in from the one small window high in the wall. Groaning against the intrusion, he draped an arm across his eyes and lay considering his rather bleak-looking future. It now seemed quite clear to him that he did not have the proper qualities for rising within any organization.

Attempting to murder the boss was not a recommendation for promotion.

Freelance, then. But he’d tried that from here to Tali with nothing to show for it. In his line of work one did not simply hang out a shingle and wait for the clients to walk in. Lines of communication were needed. Contacts. Words to the right people and coins crossing the right palms. The unspoken trust that comes from years of deals and exchanges. As a newcomer, he had none of that established history. Nor, it seemed, was anyone willing to take him seriously enough to start.

What he needed, he decided, as he lay wincing from the stings and aches of all the cuts and bruises across his body, was some sort of impressive, undeniable, extraordinary achievement that would bring everyone round. What he needed, he realized, was a reputation.

But how could he take credit without letting anyone know it was him? He pressed his hands to his face, covering his eyes, and felt a crust of dried blood and the sticky accumulation of old sweat and grime. It was a godsdamned puzzle worthy of Oponn, that’s what it was.

There came a knock at his door.

He froze. No one should know he was here; he’d been damned careful about that. Was he behind in payment? Maybe it was that drunk who worked as the concierge. He rose from the pallet as silently as he could, reached under, and withdrew the military crossbow he kept there, set its blunt nose against the floor and straightened, cocking it.

The cheap room was so small that a mere two steps brought him to the door off the hallway. He raised the crossbow to chest height. ‘Yes?’

‘Lunch!’ came the answer. ‘I have satay of rat wrapped in boiled cabbage leaves. Delightful.’

Dorin let the weapon fall, unlatched the door. ‘What in the Abyss do you want?’

Wu came bustling into the narrow room, shut the door behind him. He offered one leaf-wrapped package to Dorin, who declined. The Dal Hon mage took a bite of his rat on a stick. He held out the other once more: ‘You’re sure?’

Dorin limped to the pallet, sat. ‘I’m not hungry.’

Wu leaned back against the shut door. He nibbled on the rat while he studied his host. ‘You look awful.’

‘Thanks.’ With a heavy sigh Dorin rose to stand before the tiny table that supported a chipped ceramic basin and a jug of water.

He poured water into the basin and washed his face while Wu spoke. ‘It’s the talk of the town. Pung the child-stealer’s compound collapsing. Pung himself nearly killed. Of course I had the lads spread word that he’d turned on his mage, who, enraged, had blasted the very ground beneath him.’

Dorin slammed his hands to the tabletop and Wu jumped, nearly dropping his rat. He blinked. ‘Did I say something?’

Dorin, his head hanging, forced through clenched teeth, ‘Nothing.’

The Dal Hon shrugged. ‘Well, I didn’t mean quite that large an effect. The lads and lasses a wee bit too eager in their undermining there. At least we didn’t lose the main house.’

Dorin sat. He pulled his torn and bloodstained shirt over his head and used it to daub dry his face. He frowned at his baffling visitor. ‘How did you find me?’

‘I sought your shadow.’

‘Very funny. Look . . . what do you want? Whatever your name is.’

The mage looked surprised. His greying brows rose on his wrinkled forehead. Dorin had to remind himself that he was in fact no older than he. ‘Why – we should strike now. While they are disorganized and undermanned.’

‘Strike? Strike who?’ He started unlacing the stripped bone and boiled leather vest he wore beneath his outer garments.

‘Who? Why, the child-stealer himself, of course!’ Wu pointed the rat. ‘Now is the time for us to make our move.’

Dorin stared, then laughed. He laughed so hard it hurt the cut at his neck. Make our move? What was this fool going on about? He hardly knew where to start. He gingerly peeled the vest from his sweaty torso, started daubing at the dried blood. ‘There’s no move to make. And anyway, we have no men – unless you mean those kids.’

Wu waved a negative. ‘No, no. I mean our property. The box Pung stole from us.’ He made walking motions with his fingers. ‘Quick in and out. None the wiser. Quiet as mice.’

Dorin stared afresh. He thought of the odd way this mage always managed to disappear. He leaned back against the wall. ‘You could get us in and out of Pung’s quarters?’

‘Absolutely. I can get us anywhere. Even the palace.’

‘Prove it.’

The mage led him on a roundabout route to an apparently abandoned tenement, siege damaged, its roof fallen in. He appeared to be trying for a jaunty walk, with his stick once more tapping the cobbles, but to Dorin the fellow’s posture was more reminiscent of the cramped crab-like scuttle of someone who surely must be up to no good.

Dorin also noted Pung’s former lads and lasses themselves, keeping watch from rooftops and alleyways. Within the tenement they descended to a basement and here seemed to be the main base of operations for these runaways, with kitchens and rooms floored with blankets and strewn with bundles. However, the youths here were all the older boys and girls, some even approaching his age. Of the many younger ones there was no sign.

‘Where’s the rest of your crew?’ Dorin asked, even as a sudden new suspicion struck him and he froze in the dirt hallway. ‘Not the . . .’

The mage waved his little stick. ‘No, no. I sent most of them off to dig at the escarpment.’ Continuing on, he asked over his shoulder, ‘You have heard of the gem fields?’

Dorin nodded. They lay to the west. A free-for-all of pits and caves along the base of the escarpment. Youths were preferred because the tunnels could be smaller. ‘Who will they be working for? Surely not—’

‘No, no. Of course not.’

They entered a large cellar and Dorin had to duck beneath its low roof of dusty timber joists. Perched snug on one support was the nacht. It bared its fangs at Dorin, who waved it off.

Sighing his relief, Wu sat on the bare beaten-earth floor before a small banked fire of glowing embers. A hole in the roof above allowed the thin tendrils of smoke to escape. He motioned an invitation to sit, but Dorin frowned down at the preparations. ‘What’s this? Smoke and mesmerism? Going to tell my future?’

The mage was unconcerned: he poked the stick at the embers. He waved the remaining lads, armed with crossbows, from the room. They shut the flimsy door behind them.

Wu waved again. ‘Sit, sit. Please. You are no doubt tired and stiff from your fight.’

Dorin remained standing. ‘That was yesterday.’

The mage eyed him critically. ‘Then you are fighting fit? Armed?’

Now Dorin’s gaze narrowed, and he crouched down across the fire, opposite his host. ‘Of course. Why?’

Wu fanned the embers to glowing life. ‘Oh, just that there’s a chance something might be . . . summoned.’

Dorin rested his knees on the dirt, then snorted a laugh and shook his head. ‘You almost had me going there. Your beastie! Ha. More illusion and suggestion.’

The mage was pressing the stick into the ground so that it stood upright. ‘Oh, it’s not illusion. It’s real. Well . . . half real. Half of this world.’

Dorin cut a hand through the tendrils of white smoke. ‘Save it for the gullible ones. I saw the door to your cell. It was hacked by blades.’

Wu’s grey brows wrinkled in a wince. ‘Ah, I see. Well, the, ah, thing was there. It just didn’t leave by the door.’

‘Anyway.’ Dorin rested his hands at his belt, feeling quite disappointed – and rather cross with himself for the feeling. ‘I think we’re done here.’

The Dal Hon mage raised a finger. ‘One last minute, please.’ He motioned to the dirt wall where the shadow of the stick stood tall and narrow in the umber ruddiness of the embers. ‘See the shadow?’

Dorin grunted his agreement.

‘Imagine, if you would, that that thin shadow was in fact a slit. A narrow opening on to another place . . .’

Dorin grunted again, this time dubious. ‘Hunh. Shadow play and finger-waving. Don’t try your tricks on me.’

‘But it is open now,’ the mage said, his voice now hoarse and clipped. ‘Look within.’ Dorin glanced to him, saw his fists white on his lap, his dark face clenched, and sweat dripping down his furrowed brow. Whatever the mage was doing, it was costing him an immense degree of strain.

He turned to the wall, and started, rather alarmed: the shadow had widened, or appeared to have widened. It was textured now, shifting and rippling. He edged closer, yet remained poised on his toes, ready to flee. Something seemed to be moving within the murk, and, closer now, he could make out the flat, gently undulating lines of a barren landscape. It resembled a near desert bathed in moonlit monochrome. He heard the distant moaning of a weak wind, heard the sands hissing as they shifted. Heated dry air brushed his face – blowing from . . . where?

The shadow was now a good arm’s width: a painting – or a window – into another place. He reached out to touch the wall and his hand pushed in beyond it, encountering nothing. He yanked it back and turned to the mage, wonder in his voice. ‘Is this a dream?’

‘It is a portal to a new Warren,’ the mage said through lips clenched in effort. ‘My Warren. My—’ He broke off as both their gazes snapped to the door.

Dorin thought he’d heard a sound. A muffled call? Yet all was now quiet. Both listened for a moment longer, each remaining completely still. Then the door burst inward in a rain of slivers and black-clad Nightblades came pouring into the cellar.

Dorin had time for only an instant’s evaluation – too many – then, as blades and crossbow bolts came lancing through the smoky air, he made his decision. He grasped the mage’s shoulders and threw himself backwards towards the wall.

They fell tumbling over and over, far beyond the distance of the cellar wall. The mage was shouting, ‘No! No! Not yet!’ Dorin’s last image of the cellar was of the nacht launching itself, snarling, claws extended, upon the Nightblades. He spun head over heels through twilight, then his back impacted on a yielding, hissing slope and he lost his grip and he and Wu rolled over and over each other, entangling and sliding, until he struck something hard and had the breath punched from him.

He came to lying on his side on a rocky barren slope. He turned over and peered at the sky: a dimness like heavy clouds, yet not clouds; the sky itself the hue of churning pewter and onyx.

Someone groaned nearby and Dorin sprang to his feet, blades out. It was Wu. He sheathed the daggers and pulled the lad over. The fellow groaned even louder.

‘Where are we? What happened?’

The mage was holding his side. ‘I’m hit. Done for. Gods, what a waste! What a terrible waste!’

Dorin drew his smallest and sharpest blade and slit the man’s jacket and shirt, yanked them open. He was mildly surprised to see dark brown flesh beneath – the fellow really was from Dal Hon. He’d been hit by a crossbow bolt – grazed, really, beneath his ribs. The bolt appeared to have passed right through. Dorin set to tearing up his cloak as a dressing. ‘It’s a flesh wound.’

The mage clutched at his side. ‘No! I’m dying. I feel the cold breath of Hood coming for me!’

He slapped the man’s hands away. ‘You’ll survive. Unless you take a fever; then you’ll die.’

The mage now pressed the back of a hand to his brow. ‘I’m burning up! I swear!’

‘Oh, shut up. Now, where are we?’

‘For the love of the gods, man . . . let me die in peace!’

Dorin shook him. ‘Where . . . are . . . we?’

The fellow slipped into unconsciousness. Feigned, or not. Dorin threw him down. Wonderful! Just wonderful. He straightened and peered round. Plain rocky desert extended in all directions. And just how far he could see was uncertain, the light being so strange and eerie – more a diffuse suggestion of light. It tricked the eyes and made the judging of distances nearly impossible.

One direction, however, appeared different. He thought he saw there the suggestion of angular shapes amid the desert plain. He hitched up the unconscious mage, set him over his shoulder, and started walking.

After a time, an unknown amount of time, it occurred to Dorin that the plain was one huge rubbish midden. He was constantly kicking aside bits of broken bone, glazed ceramics, and stone chips. He stepped over or around larger fragments of worked stone – what looked like the friezes and pillars of demolished buildings.

He had no idea how much time had passed. The murky sky did not brighten or dim in the usual manner: rather, it flickered, sometimes lightening only to darken once more. It was as if unseen things were drifting about, occulting whatever diffuse light there was.

In time, however, he became certain that he was approaching the ruins of a city. But no city such as he’d ever known. Hollow metal frameworks rose like statues to the sky. Toothed gears as tall as him lay all about. Broken rusted metal littered the sands. He hitched up the unconscious mage, uneasy in the face of such alien machinery. Yet he felt the need for shelter, and open doorways beckoned. He selected the smallest of the surviving buildings and entered.

He laid the mage down amid the wind-blown dust within then selected a gaping window from which to keep an eye upon the approach. He wondered idly as he stood watch who had built the bizarre structures, and whether they were even human. The entrances, for example, were far too low and wide. As were the windows. They did not seem built for ordinary men and women.

A groan brought his head round. Wu was stirring. The mage clutched at his side, groaned anew. ‘Dying,’ he moaned.

‘No you’re not. You’ll survive.’

The greying head rose. ‘It was touch and go, then. A near thing.’

‘I’ve had worse and kept fighting,’ Dorin muttered, eyeing the plain again. He thought he’d glimpsed a thin shape walking in the far distance – a ragged limping figure, now crouched, as if it were . . . watching.

Without taking his eyes from the rock-pavement desert and its rippling, twisting scarves of sand, he asked once more, ‘Where in the Abyss are we?’

‘Our tomb,’ the mage groaned.

Dorin raised his eyes to the ash-hued sky. Dark shapes were crossing it, their wings huge and rigid. Giant bats? ‘No. Really. Where?’

‘My realm.’

Dorin turned to him, his brows high. ‘Your realm?’

The fellow was staring off into the distance. ‘Fitting that I should die here, I suppose. One more beguiling mystery among so many for later travellers to puzzle over. One more set of bleached bones for history to gnaw upon. One more—’

‘The wound’s not mortal.’

This roused the fellow enough to lever himself up upon his elbows. ‘Not this wound!’ Then he moaned and pressed a hand to the side of his wrapped torso.

‘Then what?’

‘You’ll see soon enough.’

Dorin clenched his teeth. He crossed his arms over his chest and grasped hold of the grips of the medium-sized daggers sheathed high in his two baldrics. Movement far down the main way caught his eyes and he leaned out for a better glimpse.

He had to stare silently for a time in order to comprehend what he was looking at. Then, without taking his eyes from the apparition, he asked, ‘You mean something like a giant floating house?’

In an instant the mage was at his side. His hands, caked in dried blood and sand, clutched the window sill. Dorin had no idea what the thing was, other than how he’d described it. It was a blockish structure, a dwelling perhaps, hanging, seemingly unsupported, at the end of the main way. And he was certain it hadn’t been there before.

‘By the gods!’ Wu breathed, awed. ‘It’s true!’ He was out the doorway before Dorin could grab his fluttering jacket where it hung slit and unbuttoned down his back.

‘Don’t . . . we don’t know how many—’ But the Dal Hon was off, limping as quickly as he could down the way. Cursing, Dorin followed, blades drawn. When he caught up to the mage he kept his eyes scanning the crumbling building fronts and asked, his voice low, ‘What is it?’

‘I believe it may be something like the Moon’s Child.’

‘Bullshit.’

‘You know the tales?’ Wu asked.

‘Of course! The song of Gemnal and Astodil – the doomed lovers whose souls fly to the Moon’s Child. Apsalar’s quest for the impossible night-blooming rose. Yes, yes. All the fantasy tales.’

‘Not so fantastic,’ the mage puffed, limping along, holding his side. ‘I have read eye-witness accounts of the floating mountain. Seen sketches.’

‘I’ll believe it when I see it. And that’s not it.’

‘No, no. Something like it.’

Dorin could now see that the thing had in fact been part of a larger structure. It was as if a room in a building had torn itself free and floated away. A large ramp climbed to end over nothing; a half-wall of stone rose behind a section of stone floor that was no more than a jagged broken surface. And from this ruin hung a wide ladder of rope and wood slats that brushed the ground.

‘What I want to know,’ Wu murmured, ‘is what is the damned thing doing in my realm?’

‘This isn’t your realm.’

The mage jabbed a finger at him. ‘I found it. It’s mine. Finders keepers. Mine! Well . . . there was this scholar whom I, ah, took some papers from. He’d done some pioneering research – but he’d never seen it!’

Dorin raised his hands open-palmed. ‘Okay, okay. I’m just saying that there might be—’ He broke off because someone – or thing – had just emerged from a building ahead, about mid-way towards the floating house. The thing froze and studied them as they in turn studied it.

It suggested to Dorin an upright lizard. It possessed a blunt lizard-like snout, now turned their way. Its legs were thick and powerful-looking, while its arms were thin and frail. It wore a vest of some sort of hide, and baldrics from which hung numerous bits of metal. It was holding one such piece of equipment in its long-fingered hands as it stared at them with unblinking black and amber eyes.

A long tongue emerged and flicked the air. The blunt snout turned to the floating house, then back in their direction as if the creature were gauging the distance.

The tableau held, frozen, until out of the distance beyond the broken ruins, rising and falling across the rocky desert slopes, there came the brassy howl of a hound.

All of them broke into a run. The creature dropped the piece of metal, its gait half waddling, half hopping. Wu fell far behind as he puffed and gasped. Dorin was much faster than the thing, but it was far closer to its goal. It reached the ladder and clambered up, drawing the bottom slat up with it as it went. Dorin arrived, jumping. His fingers brushed the lowest wooden slat even as it was whipped up and out of sight. ‘Let us up, damn you!’ he called.

The saurian head peered down for a moment, the tongue flickering, then withdrew. The structure, which listed severely to one side, now began to edge away on a path that would take it just over the broken tops of the buildings on the right. Wu arrived, panting and wincing. He waved at the artefact. ‘Come back!’ Aside, to Dorin, he whispered, ‘Why didn’t you kill it?’

The suggestion annoyed Dorin immensely. ‘Kill it? We don’t even know what it is.’

The hunting cry renewed, measurably louder now.

‘We are dead,’ Wu stated flatly. He let his hands fall loose at his sides.

Dorin was eyeing the distance between the tallest of the ruins and the course of the broken canted fragment. He waved Wu onwards. ‘Come! Run!’ He started off without waiting or checking to see if his companion followed. He traced a route to a jagged multistorey edifice whose tallest thrusting point would intersect with the artefact’s path if it did not alter. He heard Wu clattering after him through the broken rock and rusted metal litter.

The howl burst upon them once more. So loud was it that its bass impact shook the stone walls raising drifting scarves of dust. Dorin could not even imagine such a beast, and certainly did not want to face it armed only with close-quarter weapons. He entered the building’s ground floor through one of the low wide windows, and was confronted by a maze of rusted mystifying machinery. He spotted a ramp rising to the first floor and made for it – Wu could easily follow his footsteps through the ages-old layer of dust and sand that covered the floor.

The ramp rose in a curve to the first floor and a second one started up leading to the next. These floors lay emptier than the ground; broad hallways led off to rooms accessed by large oval openings. The roof of the second had collapsed in places, and through the jagged gaps Dorin glimpsed standing remnants of the main supporting elements of the third. These were his goal. He clambered up a nearby slope of the broken rock and made the roof – such as it was.

The bottom of the floating fragment loomed overhead, drifting lazily. Dorin ran, picking his way carefully along the edge of a narrow standing wall. As he went he unwound a thin line from his waist. His path took him to a tall jutting angle of wall and he climbed this just as the artefact brushed over. Its shadow, as it fell across him, only slightly darkened the strange diffuse light that pervaded everything.

He released the grapnel’s tangs and they locked, extended, even as he let it go to start whirling, spinning, as he let out more line. He threw. The grapnel arced up and outwards, reaching, only to strike the flat face of a stone wall and bounce away, falling to the street below.

He let his arm drop. The floating platform coasted onward. He heard the mage struggling among the wreckage of the slope behind. He started slowly re-looping the line.

Wu arrived, panting. ‘I’m impressed,’ he gasped. ‘Nearly reached it.’

‘I need a longer rope,’ Dorin murmured. Watching the thing coast away it occurred to him that the unearthly construction, though ragged and broken, still possessed a strange sort of beauty as it silently floated off. He wondered whether it really was a fragment of that giant mountain many named the Moon’s Spawn.

Wu peered round and clapped his hands together. ‘Well. We can perch here like birds and hope they don’t reach us.’

Dorin’s gaze snapped to him.

‘They? There’s more than one?’ The mage’s expression became pained and he wove his fingers together. ‘Er, well, yes.’

‘Wonderful.’

A new howl burst through the streets below and Dorin flinched despite his efforts to contain the reaction. He searched about, frantic for an escape, and his gaze fell on the structure next to them. Shorter than this one, it was in far worse shape; much of its interior flooring had collapsed. In fact, it looked as if all of the ramps to the higher floors were gone.

‘We have to jump.’ He pointed to the roof below.

The mage shrank from the edge. ‘No. There is no way I can do that. I’ll just sit here and think, thank you.’

‘They can’t reach us there. Come on.’ He grasped a fistful of the mage’s clothes at the shoulder and marched him along to where a section of roofing allowed for a run at the gap.

Wu batted at his grip. ‘This is absurd. It matters not where we die!’

‘Do you want me to fight or not?’ Dorin snarled, shaking him.

The fellow threw out his arms to indicate their surroundings. ‘Well, yes. I had hoped we could come to an arrangement. But that was before this! Thanks to you we’re stranded in another realm and dead!’

‘Thanks to me we’re still alive,’ Dorin muttered. He faced the neighbouring structure, renewed his grip on the man. ‘We’re going to run and jump, you hear? The gap is narrow. Not a street. It can be done.’

The mage suddenly clutched at his leg, hopping. ‘Oh, a cramp! In my leg. An awful cramp. I get them, you know – damned inconvenient.’

Dorin fought to keep him upright. ‘Would you stop—’

Both stilled then, as each heard it from below: the flinty scrabbling of huge nails or claws on stone, and a titanic beast’s great bellows-like breathing and snuffling.

The mage broke free of Dorin’s grip and took off for the ledge, yelling in wordless terror, his arms thrown wide. He disappeared from sight over the lip, his torn jacket flapping like failed wings. Dorin ran as well, not even daring to glance back to the open floor behind where even now a great shaggy monstrosity might be loping to close its jaws upon him. He flung himself out kicking as hard as he could.

He landed in a bone-rattling impact, tumbling and rolling, his breath punched from him. Shaken, he leaped up immediately to stagger to the edge where he’d glimpsed the mage lying prone, half dangling. He yanked the man away from the lip just as both legs slid over.

‘You have to roll when you hit,’ he explained. ‘Roll. Don’t just land like a sack of flour.’

From the building behind came a great howling bellow of rage that shook the air and they both flinched, hunching. A blow like a sledgehammer struck the wall where they’d been standing and loose stones fell to the alley below.

Covered in stone dust the mage stood blinking, dazed, blood running from his mouth. ‘What? Roll . . . what?’ Dorin led him to the middle of the tiny section of roof they now possessed and sat him down.

‘Think here.’

Nodding, still quite shaken, the fellow sat. He pressed a hand to his side where fresh blood gleamed. Dorin drew his middle-weight blades, thin long-knives, and crossed to the nearest broken edge of roof. Cautiously, he peered over; a pile of rubble here. Tall enough? He hoped not.

He continued his investigation of their perimeter. What now? An anonymous death in some alien desert? Not what he’d imagined for himself. Not at all. He glanced back to the ridiculous mage: the fellow sat cross-legged. Thinking of a way out, he hoped. Still, if he got them in, why shouldn’t he be able to get them out? He went to him, peering down. ‘Do your magery, or whatever it was that you did before. Get us out of here.’

The fellow raised his gaze and offered a sad sort of lost smile. ‘Yes. That’s the idea, isn’t it? Just not that easy. What a shame. I had such plans . . .’

Rocks clattered below. A grating rumble that might have been the growling of a giant vibrated the stones beneath their feet. Dorin went to the ledge to scan the clutter of the collapsed sections. A shape padded into view, a tawny, shaggy pelt of sandy brown. So huge was it Dorin thought for a moment it was a horse. That was until it raised its blunt muzzle, its pointed ears pricking up, and fixed bright amber eyes upon him.

The eyes captured him, and he stared fascinated and horrified, his blood congealing. What he glimpsed was not malevolence or evil, but hunger. A savage primal hunger that allowed no barrier or obstacle to stand between it and its goal. What shook Dorin was the sudden reversal of roles: prior to being caught by those eyes he’d always considered himself the hunter. Now he was prey – and it shook him to his core.

He blinked and shook his head as if coming out of a trance or a dream. Now he knew how the mouse felt, he realized.

The beast let go a great challenging roar and leaped. Its forepaws scrabbled at the lip of the roof and Dorin sliced at them in a sudden panic. Stones were torn away as the beast fell back. He retreated from the edge, his heart hammering. Gods! What a brute.

A howl of frustration went up from below, the roof shaking beneath Dorin’s feet. In its colossal rage and frustration the beast threw itself against a wall and the entire structure rocked, weaving. Another section of wall fell in a crash of stones.

‘Do something!’ Dorin yelled as he fought to keep his balance.

‘No point,’ the mage answered. ‘Look.’ Dorin shot him a desperate glance. The fellow was wiggling his fingers over the stones of the roof. ‘No hard shadows here. None. Nothing to catch hold of.’

The beast battered the standing wall. Another section of roofing fell away. Stones clattered to the alleyway below and a great cloud of dust billowed up. Dorin backed up nearly to the mage. ‘But I thought we were in shadow. Isn’t that what this place is called?’

He gripped and re-gripped his knives. If he could leap on to the thing’s back . . . More howls rose then, brassy and eager, from the twisted ways of the surrounding city. Dorin raised his eyes to the smoky opalescent sky. Wonderful. More of them.

‘I didn’t call it that,’ Wu answered, sounding maddeningly calm. Then he jerked to his feet, suddenly animated. ‘Shadow. Could that be the answer? It is broken, shattered. But it is all shadow? One aspect?’

Both almost fell, tottering, as the beast threw itself against another wall and the roof canted. Stones crashed and tumbled. They were left with hardly enough room to stand.

‘Do whatever you must now!’ Dorin yelled.

‘Very well. I will open a way but we must jump blind. I have no idea if it will work or not . . .’

Dorin scuttled up the slope of the roof on his hands and knees. ‘Never mind! Do it.’

‘It is done.’ Dorin turned; the mage was standing on the very lip of the roof, pointing out to the gap beyond. Peering past Dorin’s shoulder, his eyes suddenly widened in terrified amazement. Dorin spared one glance back to see the monstrous hound’s glaring eyes and slathering muzzle levered up above the roof, its forepaws scrabbling. The roof rocked even more steeply beneath its massive weight. Stones cracked and gave under their feet in a series of explosions. Dorin launched himself forward, taking hold of the mage’s loose flapping shirting and jacket as he went.

The two arced outwards over nothing as with a buckling roar the remaining walls and ledge of roof collapsed completely. Dorin landed with a grunt and felt the sharp blows of falling broken stones. He held his head, stars in his eyes, and bit his lip to keep from bellowing out his pain.

Blinking back tears, he peered about. He almost stood in astonishment but caught himself in time: it was night and he was back – but not in the city. Outside its walls. He sat in a dried pigsty, covered in dust and caked mud, amid the litter of fallen stone. A groan and a stirring amid the mud betrayed that he was not alone.

‘Where—’ Wu began, before Dorin clamped a hand to his mouth.

‘South of the city,’ he hissed. ‘In the Kanese lines.’

The mage’s greying brows rose above Dorin’s hand, and he nodded his understanding. Dorin removed his hand. ‘Told you I could do it,’ the mage whispered. Dorin just shot him a look of disbelief. He helped the wounded mage to his feet and together they limped to the cover of a hedgerow. Dorin led them northeast.

They passed by encampments of the besieging Kanese soldiery. They stilled as patrols marched past, then continued on. Dorin was puzzled by the ease with which they eluded detection until he noticed how the shadows seemed to cluster so very thickly about them; how the night appeared more monochromatic and dulled to his vision than ever before. It was as if he were peering out at the world through thick cloth. Then he noticed that while the mage clutched at him for support, his other hand was weaving and curling as if manipulating some unseen matter, and his lips moved silently in constant incantation.

One hilltop stood between them and the river. The burned ruins of a collapsed tower topped it. Pickets occupied the position, but they snaked between them. Here Dorin paused as the modest highland offered a view of the plains to the west. Campfires dotted the dark fields, along with countless tents. One gigantic multi-poled tent dominated the ground south of the lines. It glowed golden with many inner lights. The field command and residence of King Chulalorn the Third, he assumed.

On an impulse, he whispered to the mage, ‘Could you get us in there – into Chulalorn’s quarters?’

Wu did not even glance in that direction. ‘Of course,’ he answered, waving a hand dismissively. ‘I have already done it.’ He motioned to Heng’s gigantic walls which cut off the view to the north in a great broad swath of darkness. ‘What worries me is how we can possibly get into the city.’

Dorin did not answer. He continued to study the king’s pavilion and its satellites of surrounding lesser tents – quarters for functionaries, bureaucrats, officers and guards, he assumed. It was like an entire mobile city, ringed and guarded by hundreds, no doubt.

An indisputable prize.

Wu was tugging at him. ‘I said,’ he hissed, ‘how will we get into the city?’

‘Can’t you just magic us in?’

The mage rolled his eyes in exasperation. ‘I can’t walk through walls.’

‘But we’re outside the walls now . . .’

‘We travelled through that other realm, didn’t we? Through . . . Shadow itself. Do you wish to return?’

Dorin shuddered at the thought of confronting those beasts again. ‘No.’

Wu nodded, fierce. ‘Wise decision. So?’

Dorin motioned him onward and down to the riverbank. ‘Tell me, son of the hot Dal Hon plains . . . can you swim?’