The Book of Taltos (19 page)

“The chain? No. What’s a good name?”

“What does it do?”

“When I used it before, it worked like a shield against whatever that wizard was throwing at me. How about Spellbreaker?”

Morrolan shrugged and didn’t answer.

“I like it, boss.”

“Okay. I’ll stick with it. I have trouble being all that serious about giving a name to a piece of chain.”

Morrolan said, “Let’s be about it, then.”

I nodded, put Spellbreaker back around my wrist, and stood up. We walked back to the falls, our voices once again drowned by proximity to the falls. I noticed there was a pedestal quite close to the edge, and saw an athyra
carved on it. Morrolan tied one end of his rope around this pedestal which some might think in poor taste, I don’t know.

The rope seemed thin and was very long. He threw the other end down the cliff. My mouth was dry. I said, “Is the rope going to be strong enough?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll go first,” said Morrolan.

“Yeah. You go down and hold ’em off while I set up the ballista.”

He turned his back to the falls, wrapped his hands around the rope, and began to lower himself. I had this momentary urge to cut the rope and run, but instead I gripped the rope tightly and got ready to go over. I turned and yelled down over the roar of the falls, “Any last-minute advice on this, Morrolan?”

His voice was barely audible, but I think he said, “Be careful, it’s wet here.”

I
LEFT MY PAYMENT
for the work in my flat and wandered toward Gruff’s. On the way over, I wondered what I’d do there. My first thought had been to find him there, wait for him to leave, and kill him. In retrospect, this wouldn’t have been that bad a plan, as the sight of death tends to make witnesses confused about those who cause it. But I was worried that, as an Easterner, I was likely to stand out in the crowd, which meant he’d notice me, which I knew wasn’t good. By the time I got there, I still hadn’t figured out what to do, so I stood in the shadow of a building across the street from it, thinking.

I hadn’t come up with anything two hours or so later, when I saw him leave in the company of another Dragaeran in Jhereg colors. Just because it seemed like the thing to do, I concentrated on my link to the Imperial Orb and noted the time. I waited for them to get a block ahead of me, then set out after them. I followed them to a building which I assumed was the home of my target’s friend.

My target.

The words had peculiar echo in my head.

I shook off the thought and noted that Kynn and his friend seemed to be
saying good-bye. Then the friend went upstairs, leaving Kynn alone on the street. This could be good luck for me, because now Kynn had to walk back to his own place alone, which gave me several blocks to come up behind him and kill him.

I fingered the dagger next to my rapier. Kynn seemed to waver for a moment, then he became transparent and vanished.

He teleported, of course. Now that was just plain rude.

Teleports can be traced, but I’m not a good enough sorcerer to do so. Hire someone to do it? Who? The Left Hand of the Jhereg had sorcerers good enough, but they charged high, and Kiera’s warning about them still echoed in my ears. And it would involve standing out there waiting for him on another occasion, as no sorcerer can work from a trail that cold.

I settled on cursing as the appropriate action, and did so silently for a moment. I’d wanted to get it done today, which on reflection was stupid, but I had the feeling that the money wasn’t really mine until I’d done the work, and I could use that money. I could move to a nicer flat, I could pay for fencing lessons from an Eastern master, and sorcery lessons from a Dragaeran, which never came cheap, and—

No, not now. Now I had to think about how to earn it, not how to spend it. I returned to my flat and considered the matter.

T
HE NEXT TIME
I climb down from somewhere on a rope I think I’m going to try to arrange for it to be somewhere dry. I also want to be able to see the bottom.

Come to think of it, I’d rather not do it at all.

I don’t care to guess how long the way down was. I suspect it was different for Morrolan than for me, and I don’t want to know that. I’ll admit I’m curious about what would have happened if we’d marked the rope, but we didn’t.

The climb down was no fun at all. I tended to slip on the wet rope, and I was afraid I’d land on Morrolan, sending us both crashing down. First my hands stung from gripping the thing, then they ached, then I couldn’t feel them, which scared me. Then I noticed that my arms were getting sore. We won’t even mention the bruises and contusions my legs and body were sustaining
from hitting the rocks on the side. I managed not to bang my head too hard or too often, which I think was quite an accomplishment.

Crap. Let’s just say I survived.

The thing is, it was impossible to really determine where the bottom was, because not only was the first place my feet landed slippery, it seemed to be the point of a massive slab of rock tilted sideways, so I kept going.

It was a bit easier after that, though, and eventually I found myself in water, and Morrolan was next to me. The water was very cold. My teeth started chattering, and I saw that Morrolan’s were, too, but I was too cold to be pleased about it. Loiosh angrily climbed onto my shoulder. The noise was still deafening, every inch of me was soaked, and my hands hurt like blazes from gripping the rope.

I put my mouth next to Morrolan’s ear and yelled, “What now?”

He gestured a direction with his head and we struck out for it. After having developed a symbiotic relationship with that rope, it was hard to let go of it, but I did and started splashing after him. Loiosh took wing and flew just over my head. The mist kicked up by the waterfall made it impossible to see more than a couple of feet ahead of me. The current was strong, though, and tended somehow to keep Morrolan and me together, so I never lost sight of him.

I was too busy fighting the current and keeping track of Morrolan to be as scared as I ought to have been, but it wasn’t actually all that long before my feet felt the bottom of the river, and then we were crawling up onto the bank, and then we collapsed, side by side.

My left hand froze, and some part of me was aware that it hovered over the rune. My right hand continued to drift without direction; then it, too, stopped. It was directly over the vibrating knife.

Time for one deep breath, which I let out slowly.

I
DON’T THINK
I’
LL
ever again see so many corpses in one place. I don’t especially want to, either. And they were all in different and interesting stages of decomposition. I’ll forego the details, if you don’t mind. I’d seen bodies before, and sheer number and variety makes them no more pleasant to look at.

I should mention one odd thing, though: there was no odor of decay. In fact, as I thought about it, I realized that the only smell I could detect was faint and sulfurous and seemed to come from the river, which was now fast and white-capped. The river also provided the only sounds I could hear as it sloshed its way over greyish rocks and up onto sandy banks, doing carvings in slate.

I felt Loiosh shivering inside of my cloak.

“You okay?”

“I’ll live, boss.”

I sat up and looked at Morrolan; he seemed even more exhausted than I. He was also very wet, as I was, and he was shivering as much as I, which I took a perverse pleasure in noting.

Presently he caught me looking at him. I suppose he guessed some of my thoughts, because he scowled at me. He sat up and I noticed his hands twitching as another scowl crossed his features. “Sorcery doesn’t work here,” he remarked. His voice sounded a bit odd, as if he was speaking through a very thin glass. Not really distant, yet not really close either. He said, “It would be nice to dry off.”

“Not much wind, either,” I said. “I guess we stay wet for a while.” My voice sounded the same way, which I liked even less. I still felt cold, but it was warmer here than in the river.

“Let us proceed,” said Morrolan.

“After you,” I said.

We worked our way to our respective feet and looked around. The river behind us, corpses to the sides, and mists ahead.

“This place is weird, boss.”

“I’ve noticed.”

“Have you noticed that the corpses don’t stink?”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe it’s the soul that gives off the stink, and since these guys don’t have any soul, there isn’t any smell.”

I didn’t ask Loiosh if he was serious, because I didn’t want to know. Morrolan touched the hilt of his sword and checked to be sure the staff was still with him, reminding me of why we were here. He nodded to a direction off to his right. I girded my loins, so speak, and we set off.

I
SAT IN MY
favorite slouch-chair at home and considered how I was going to kill Kynn. What I wanted to do was just walk up and nail him, wherever he was; whoever was around. As I’ve said, this is not, in general, a bad policy. The trouble was that he knew there was a war going on, so he was being careful not to be alone.

I don’t know how I got so fixed on Gruff’s as the place to nail him, and
in thinking about the whole thing later I decided that had been a mistake and made sure to avoid such preconceptions. I knew I could take him in a public setting if I wanted to, because when I was a kid I’d seen someone assassinated in a public place—my father’s restaurant. That was how I first met Kiera, too, but never mind that now.

I chewed the whole thing over for a while, until Loiosh said,
“Look, boss, if it’s just a distraction you want, I can help.”

I said,
“Like hell you can.”