“Hmmm. I think so.”
“Let’s do that, then.”
“Why?”
“Do you have a better idea?”
“I suppose not.”
As I stood, I was taken with a fleeting temptation to take a drink from the well. It’s probably fortunate that it was only fleeting. We helped Aliera to stand, and I discovered that she was quite short—hardly taller than me, as a matter of fact.
We began walking back the way we’d come, Morrolan and me each supporting one of Aliera’s arms. She looked very unhappy. Her teeth were clenched, perhaps from anger, perhaps from pain. Her eyes, which I’d first thought were green, seemed to be grey, and were set straight ahead.
We made it back to the archway and rested there for a moment.
Morrolan suggested that Aliera sit down and rest her legs. Aliera said, “Shut up.”
I saw that Morrolan’s patience was wearing thin. So was mine, for that matter. We bit our lips at the same moment, caught each other’s eyes, and smiled a little.
We took her arms and started moving again, in what Morrolan thought was the right direction. We took a few tentative steps and stopped again when Aliera gasped. She said, “I can’t . . .” and we let her sink to the ground.
Her breath came in gasps. She closed her eyes, her head up toward the sky; her brow was damp and her hair seemed soaked with sweat. Morrolan and I looked at each other, but no words came.
A minute or so later, as we were still standing there wondering if we would mortally insult Aliera if we offered to carry her, we saw a figure approach us out of the darkness and gradually become visible in the light of those incredible stars.
He was very tall and his shoulders were huge. There was a massive sword at his back, and his facial features were pure Dragon, as were the colors of his clothing, though their form—a peculiar formless jacket and baggy trousers tucked into darrskin boots—were rather strange. His hair was brown and curly, his eyes dark. He was—or, rather, had died at—late middle age. He had lines of thought on his forehead, lines of anger around his eyes, and the sort of jaw that made me think he kept his teeth clenched a lot.
He studied the three of us while we looked at him. I wondered what Morrolan thought of him, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the Dragonlord’s face to check Morrolan’s expression. I felt my pulse begin to race and my knees suddenly felt weak. I had to swallow several times in quick succession.
When he finally spoke, he was addressing Aliera. “I was told I’d find you here.”
She nodded but didn’t say anything. She looked miserable. Morrolan, who I guess wasn’t used to being ignored, said, “I greet you, lord. I am Morrolan e’Drien.”
He turned to Morrolan and nodded. “Good day,” he said. “I am Kieron.”
Kieron.
Kieron the Conqueror.
Father of the Dragaeran Empire, elder of the proudest of lines of the House of the Dragon, hero of myth and legend, first of the great Dragaeran butchers of Easterners, and, well, I could go on, but what’s the point? Here he was.
Morrolan stared at him and slowly dropped to one knee. I didn’t know where to look.
PEOPLE SHOULD KNOW BETTER.
I don’t know of any case of a Jhereg testifying to the Empire against the Jhereg and surviving, yet there are still fools who try. “I’m different,” they say. “I’ve got a plan. No one will be able to touch me; I’m protected.” Or maybe it isn’t even that well thought out, maybe it’s just that they’re unable to believe in their own mortality. Or else they figure that the amount of money the Empire is paying them makes it worth the risk.
But never mind, that isn’t my problem.
I was hired through about four layers, I think. I met with a guy in front of a grocer, and we talked as we strolled around the block. Loiosh rode on my left shoulder. It was early morning, and the area we were in was empty. The guy was called “Feet” for some reason or other. I knew who he was, and when he proposed an assassination I knew it had to be big, because he was placed pretty high in the Organization. That meant that whoever had told him to get this done must be really important.
I told him, “I know people who do that kind of thing. Would you like to tell me about it?”
He said, “There was a problem between two friends of ours.” This meant between two Jhereg. “It got serious, and things started getting very uncomfortable all around.” This meant that one or both of these individuals was very highly placed in the Organization. “One of them was afraid he’d get hurt, and he panicked and went to the Empire for protection.”
I whistled. “Is he giving official testimony?”
“He already has to an extent, and he’s going to give more.”
“Ouch. That’s going to hurt.”
“We’re working on burying it. We may be able to. If we can’t, things will get nasty all over for a while.”
“Yeah, I imagine.”
“We need serious work done. I mean, serious work. You understand?”
I swallowed. “I think so, but you’d better state it clearly.”
“Morganti.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“Your friend ever done that?”
“What’s the difference?”
“None, I suppose. Your friend will have the full backing of many people on this; all the support he needs.”
“Yeah, I’ll need some time to think about it.”
“Certainly. Take as much time as you need. The price is ten thousand imperials.”
“I see.”
“How much time do you need to think it over?”
I was silent for a few minutes as we walked. Then I said, “Tell me his name.”
“Raiet. Know him?”
“No.”
We walked for a while as I thought things over. The neighborhood did neighborhood things all around us. It was a peculiar, peaceful kind of walk. I said, “All right. I’ll do it.”
“Good,” he said. “Let’s walk over to my place. I’ll pay you and give you what information we have to start with. Let us know as you need more and we’ll do what we can.”
“Right,” I said.
I FOUND MYSELF TAKING a step backward from the father of the Dragaeran Empire, while conflicting thoughts and emotions buzzed around my brain faster than I could note them. Fear and anger fought for control of my mouth, but rationality won for a change.
We held these positions for a moment. Kieron continued to look down at Aliera. Something in how they looked at each other seemed to indicate they had met before. I don’t know how that could be, since Kieron was as old as the Empire and Aliera was less than a thousand years old, however you measured her age.
Kieron said, “Well, will you stand up?”
Her eyes flashed. She hissed, “No, I’m going to lie right here forever.” Yes, I know there are no sibilants in what she said. I don’t care; she hissed it.
Kieron chuckled. “Very well,” he said. “If you ever do decide to stand up, you may come and speak to me.” He started to turn away, stopped, looked right at me. For some reason I couldn’t meet his eyes. He said, “Have you anything to say to me?”
My tongue felt thick in my mouth. I could find no words. Kieron left.
Morrolan stood up. Aliera was quietly sobbing on the ground. Morrolan and I studied our belt buckles. Presently Aliera became silent; then she said in a small voice, “Please help me to rise.”
We did, Morrolan indicated a direction, and we set off on our slow, limping way. Loiosh was being strangely silent. I said, “Something bothering you, chum?”
“I just want to get out of here, boss.”
“Yeah. Me, too.”
I said to Aliera, “You seemed to recognize him.”
She said, “So did you.”
“I did?”
“Yes.”
I chewed that over for a moment, then decided not to pursue it. Presently a pair of what seemed to be monuments appeared before us. We passed between them an
d found ourselves back amid the thrones of the gods. We kept going without taking too close a look at the beings we’d just blithely stepped past.
A bit later Morrolan said, “Now what?”
I said, “You’re asking me? Wait a minute. I just thought of something.”
“Yes?”
I looked around and eventually spotted a purple robe passing by. I called out, “You. Come here.”
He did, quite humbly.
I spoke to him for a moment, and he nodded back at me without speaking, his eyes lifeless. He began leading us, adjusting himself to our pace. It was a long walk and we had to stop once or twice on the way while Aliera rested.
At last we came to a throne where was seated a female figure the color of marble, with eyes like diamonds. She held a spear. The purple robe bowed to us and turned away.
The goddess said, “The living are not allowed here.”
Her voice was like the ringing of chimes. It brought tears to my eyes just to hear it. It took me a moment to recover enough to say anything, in part because I’d expected Morrolan to jump in. But I said, “I am Vladimir Taltos. These are Morrolan and Aliera. You are Kelchor?”
“I am.”
Morrolan handed her the disk he’d been given by the cat-centaurs. She studied it for a moment, then said, “I see. Very well, then, what do you wish?”
“For one thing, to leave,” said Morrolan.
“Only the dead leave,” said Kelchor. “And that, rarely.”
“There is Zerika,” said Morrolan.
Kelchor shook her head. “I told them it was a dangerous precedent. In any case, that has nothing to do with you.”
Morrolan said, “Can you provide us with food and a place to rest while Aliera recovers her strength?”
“I can provide you with food and a place to rest,” she said. “But this is the land of the dead. She will not recover her strength here.”
“Even sleep would help,” said Aliera.
“Those who sleep here,” said Kelchor, “do not wake again as living beings. Even Easterners,” she added, giving me a look I couldn’t interpret.
I said, “Oh, fine,” and suddenly felt very tired.
Morrolan said, “Is there any way in which you can help us?” He sounded almost like he was begging, which in other circumstances I would have enjoyed.
Kelchor addressed Aliera, saying, “Touch this.” She held out her spear, just as Mist had done for me. Aliera touched it without hesitation.
I felt the pressure of holding her up ease. Kelchor raised the spear again, and Aliera said, “I thank you.”
Kelchor said, “Go now.”
I said, “Where?”
Kelchor opened her mouth to speak, but Aliera said, “To find Kieron.”
I wanted to say that he was the last thing I wanted to see just then, but the look on Aliera’s face stopped me. She let go of our support and, though she seemed a bit shaky, walked away on her own. Morrolan and I bowed low to Kelchor, who seemed amused, then we followed Aliera.
Aliera found a purple robe and said in a loud, clear voice, “Take us to Kieron.”
I hoped he’d be unable to, but he just bowed to her and began leading us off.
15
When I felt it, it was almost as if I heard Noish-pa’s voice saying, “Now, Vladimir.”
“Now, Vladimir.”
It is much too long a phrase for that instant of time in which I knew to act, but that is what I recall, and that is what I responded to. It burst.
There was no holding back, there were no regrets; doubts became abstract and distant. Everything had concentrated on building to this place in time, and I was alive as I am never alive except at such moments. The exhilaration, the release, the plunge into the unknown, it was all there. And, best of all, there was no longer any point in doubting. If I was to be destroyed, it was now too late to do anything about it. Everything I’d been saving and holding back rushed forth. I felt my energy flow away as if someone had pulled the plug. It spilled forth, and, for the moment, I was far too confused to know or, for that matter, to wonder if my timing had been right. Death and madness, or success. Here it was.
My eyes snapped open and I looked upon bedlam.
EVEN IF MY LIFE depended on it, I couldn’t tell you how we ended up there, but the purple robe somehow led us back to the white hallway through which we’d approached the gods. There was a side passage in it, though I’d noticed none before, and we took it, following its curves and twists until we came to a room that was white and empty save for many candles and Kieron the Conqueror.
He stood with his back to the door and his head bowed, doing I don’t know what before one of the candles. He turned as we entered and locked gazes with Aliera.
“You are standing on your own, I see.”
“Yes,” she said. “And now that I do so, I can explain how proud I am to be descended from one who mocks the injured.”
“I am glad you’re proud, Aliera e’Kieron.”
She drew herself up as best she could. “Don’t—”
“Do not think to instruct me,” he said. “You haven’t earned it.”
“Are you sure?” she said. “I know you, Kieron. And if you don’t know me, it’s only because you’re as blind as you always were.”
He stared at her but allowed no muscle in his face to change. Then he looked right at me and I felt my spine turn to water. I kept it off my face. He said, “Very well, then, Aliera; what about him?”
“He isn’t your concern,” said Aliera.
I leaned over to Morrolan and said, “I love being spoken of as if—”
“Shut up, Vlad.”
“Polite bastards, all of them.”
“I know, boss.”
Kieron said to Aliera, “Are you quite certain he isn’t my concern?”
“Yes,” said Aliera. I wished I knew what this was about.
Kieron said, “Well, then, perhaps not. Would you care to sit?”
“No,” she said.
“Then what would you like?”
Her legs were still a bit unsteady as she approached him. She stopped about six inches away from him and said, “You may escort us out of the Paths, to make up for your lack of courtesy.”
He started to smile, stopped. He said, “I do not choose to leave again. I have done—”
“Nothing for two hundred thousand years. Isn’t that long enough?”
“It is not your place to judge—”
“Keep still. If you’re determined to continue to allow history to pass you by, give me your sword. I’ll fight my own way out, and put it to the use for which it was intended. You may be finished with it, but I don’t think it has finished its task.”
Kieron’s teeth were clenched and the fires of Verra’s hell burned in his gaze.
He said, “Very well, Aliera e’Kieron. If you think you can wield it, you can take it.”
Now, if some of this conversation doesn’t make sense to you, I can only say that it doesn’t make sense to me, either. For that matter, judging from the occasional glances I took at Morrolan’s face, he wasn’t doing much better at understanding it than I. But I’m telling you as best I can remember it, and you’ll just have to be as satisfied with it as I am.
Aliera said, “I can wield it.”
“Then I charge you to use it well, and to return to this place rather than give it to another or let it be taken from you.”
“And if I don’t?” she said, I think just to be contrary.
“Then I’ll come and take it.”
“Perhaps,” said Aliera, “that’s what I want.”
They matched stares for a little longer, then Kieron unstrapped swordbelt and sword and scabbard and passed the whole thing over to Aliera. It was quite a bit taller than she was; I wondered how she’d even be able to carry it.
She took it into her hand without appearing to have difficulty, though. When she had it she didn’t even bow to Kieron, she merely turned on her heel and walked out
the door, a bit shakily, but without faltering. We followed her. “Come on,” she said. “We’re going home. All of us. Let him stop us who can.”
It didn’t sound practical, but it was still the best idea I’d heard that day.
THE INFORMATION FEET HAD “to start with” consisted of fourteen pages of parchment, all tightly written by, apparently, a professional scribe, though that seemed unlikely. It consisted of a list of Raiet’s friends and how often he visited them, his favorite places to eat out and what he liked to order at each, his history in the Organization (which made this an amazingly incriminating document itself), and more like that. There was much detail about his mistress and where she lived (there’s no custom against nailing someone at his mistress’s place, unlike his own home). I’d never had any interest in knowing so much about someone. Toward the end were several notes such as, “Not a sorcerer. Good in a knife fight; very quick. Hardly a swordsman.” This stuff ought not to matter but was good to know.
On the other hand, this made me wonder if, perhaps, this wasn’t the sort of thing I should be trying to find out about all of my targets. I mean, sure, killing someone with a Morganti weapon is as serious as it gets, but any assassination is, well, a matter of life and death.
In addition to the parchment, Feet gave me a large purse containing more money than I’d ever seen in my life, most of it in fifty-imperial coins.
And he gave me a box. As soon as I touched it, I felt for the first time, albeit distantly, that peculiar hollow humming echo within the mind. I shuddered and realized just what I’d gotten myself into.
It was, of course, far too late to back out.
TROMP TROMP TROMP. HEAR us march, ever onward, onward, doom uncertain, toward the unknown terrors of death, heads high, weapons ready . . .
What a load of crap.
We made our way through the corridors of the Halls of Judgment as well as we could, which wasn’t very. What had been a single straight, wide corridor had somehow turned into a twisty maze of little passages, all the same. We must have wandered those halls for two or three hours, getting more and more lost, with none of us willing to admit it. We tried marking the walls with the points of our swords, keeping to the left-hand paths, but nothing worked. And the really odd thing was that none of the passages led anywhere except to other passages. That is, there were no rooms, stairways, doors, or anything else.