Deadhouse Landing полностью

Dancer stilled, listening as well.

‘For what?’ Kellanved asked, and Dancer shot him a glare.

Each of the creature’s wide membranous wings held a tiny clawed hand and the beast pressed one now to its edged beak, hissing, ‘Shh!’

Dancer listened, motionless. He heard only the creaking of the countless trees about them. Kellanved cleared his throat. ‘Ah, there’s something…’

‘Quiet.’

‘Something’s got my—’

Dancer turned on him. ‘Will you be quiet!’

The mage pointed to his feet, hidden in the deep loam. ‘Something’s grabbed my foot.’

Dancer cursed; he moved to draw a blade but found he couldn’t – a vine had tightened itself about his forearm. ‘What in the name of…’

Kellanved was suddenly yanked down into the loam up to his knees. Yet he did not appear panicked, only embarrassed. He observed, ‘Well, this is depressingly familiar.’

Dancer tried to reach a blade with his other hand but found it too bound by vines. They pulled, yanking him tight up against a nearby tree trunk.

Above, the creature cawed its harsh laugh. ‘Here they come – your panicked screams! Ha, ha, ha.’

‘Are you panicked?’ Dancer asked Kellanved.

The mage threw his walking stick at the beast, missing widely. ‘Not yet.’

The creature paced back and forth on its high branch. ‘Well, they’re coming! I assure you! Once you find yourself— gahhh!’

The bat-thing now hung upside down, swinging wildly, one foot caught up by a vine. ‘Help! It has me! Look what you’ve done! You fools!’

It flapped its wings furiously, pulling and pulling; then, with a parting snap, the vine broke and the beast ricocheted off, bouncing from tree to tree. ‘You will scream!’ it squawked as it flapped away. ‘You’ll see! Entombed for ever! Absorbed! Becoming one with Shadow! Ha, ha!’

Dancer watched it go, then settled his attention upon Kellanved. ‘So. What now?’

The mage was tapping a free hand to his chin, his eyes narrowed. ‘Could it really be that simple?’ he mused aloud.

Thick woody limbs now closed upon Dancer’s chest, tightening. ‘Whatever it is you’d better hurry.’

A vine yanked Kellanved’s hand away and he was pulled down to his waist. ‘An idea,’ he explained. ‘All this time I’ve been trying to force Shadow. But perhaps that’s wrong. Perhaps I should ease into it. Become one with it, as the creature said. Perhaps that’s the secret.’

Dancer did not answer as he was holding his breath in outward pressure against the crushing embrace of the branches. He simply jerked a nod and fumed that he could no longer even curse the pontificating fool.

The mage was nodding as he slipped to his chest among the rotting leaves. ‘Very well. I will give it a try – though it will be difficult and we are far from Malaz.’

Dancer smiled a rictus of encouragement, his lips clenched.

‘So … here goes,’ the mage said as his head disappeared down beneath the loamy steaming surface.

His vision darkening, Dancer looked to the pewter-grey sky through the closing branches. Well … so much for that. The limbs tightened, crushing his chest, and his breath burst from him. He fought to inhale again and again, until nothingness took him.

*   *   *

The day of his execution Tayschrenn wore the clean linen shirt and trousers provided for him. Stubble now roughened his skull and chin, and though he’d no polished bronze or silver mirror to see in he knew he’d lost weight and must appear rather haggard. As anyone who’d spent weeks contemplating one’s imminent execution would. Especially when a fresh cup of poison is provided alongside each day’s portion of water.

That day, two of the cult Fangs appeared at his cell as escort. When the thick wooden door was pulled open they’d seemed a touch surprised to find him within, and still alive. In the past, many so sentenced had preferred to take their own life rather than face the horror to come. Which was precisely why the priesthood had allowed him to sit so long in solitary reflection on that poison.

And which was precisely why he refused the option. No convenient hidden disappearance that could easily be swept aside and forgotten for him. No, he would go out in full public display and do his best to rub their faces in it.

And so he rose from his meditation, dressed in the clean new clothes, and exited calmly and quietly.

One factor did penetrate his calm, however. It was plain from his cell window that it was the dead of night. As he walked the empty halls, the uneasy suspicion came to him that perhaps they intended to throw him into the Pits unannounced, in the dark, without any witnesses.

The way one might dispose of an embarrassing piece of evidence.

High Priestess Salleen, after all, hadn’t announced the exact time of his execution. Just the sort of oily bureaucratic solution a career functionary might favour.

The suspicion wormed through the wall of calm he’d so carefully built between his fears and his reason, and caused him to check his pace. What then?