Tivi's Dagger (18 page)

I confessed I had not, although my heart
began to beat harder with apprehension now that I was finally
staring into the darkness of the caverns. “My magic is weak and
little used, Kari. Let’s hope it’s not enough for the fae creatures
to desire.”

We looked at the maw of the cavern, and at
each other.

“
Well, we won’t get to Thar Mati by
standing here,” Lana said. “Come, let’s tiptoe through the halls of
the fae and hope our footsteps will be silent.”

We entered cautiously, eyes wide. As our
vision adjusted to the darkness I saw the spears and swords Kari
had spoken of, long clusters of pale stone beside and high above
us. There was a warmth around us that clung to my sweaty skin like
unpleasant oil. The rock beneath our feet was slippery, yet the
sounds made by our feet were somehow muffled. It was not cave dark,
and as we left the mouth of the cavern behind I wondered where the
light was coming from, an ethereal glow that bathed the walls in
shadows. The surfaces of the rocks were like nothing I’d ever seen
before. They looked like shelves of creamy waterfalls frozen in
time, and on the ground there seemed to be tiny cities of coned
dwellings. Everywhere my eye was caught by weathered figures, so
human they had surely been carved by a man’s hand, yet when I got
close they revealed themselves to be nothing more than lumpen
pillars of rock. Kel was chewing his braid, obviously trying not to
be spooked while Lana looked all around with an awe-struck
expression. The light grew stronger, illuminating us from below and
casting unflattering shadows across our faces.

I took regular breaths and tried to empty my
mind, squeezing Kari’s hand for comfort. It was almost as he’d
described, like being in the maw of a giant stone beast. My brother
forged ahead, leading the donkey, hands thrust in his pockets as if
he was strolling through nothing more threatening than a field of
sunflowers. The donkey seemed unperturbed by its creepy
surroundings and walked beside my brother as docile as ever,
twitching its tail as its burden jerked from side to side.

Something moved in the shadows, and the hair
rose at the back of my neck.

Then I saw that it was the shadows
themselves that were moving. The tiny cities I’d fancied seemed
suddenly real. In that instance the cavern seemed to give a yawn as
if the stone beast was waking up. I heard distant chattering as if
there was a market nearby and I was hearing its sounds from inside
a thick-walled dwelling. The air was stifling and stale, unbreathed
for thousands of years. The whispering and scuttling continued and
I began to tremble despite the sticky warmth.

Then I saw them. Tiny, twisted people with
claws for hands and pointed ears, scampering deep into the gaping
doors in the frozen pouring of layered cream-colored rock that
served as their home. “Don’t you see them?” I murmured, feeling my
limbs begin to petrify just like the swords and spears around us.
It felt as if a giant eye was opening in my mind, pushing me into a
dark space behind from where I could only observe. Strangely, I
felt no fear, but the sweat was thick on my back.

The cavern was suddenly bright with yellow
and orange light, and my skin felt oily to touch. I shivered,
longing to wash the taint away but then I saw the little people
again and they were no longer the gnarled, gray, scuttling things
I’d initially noticed, but tiny, slender beings of light and shade,
not scampering like rats but gliding gracefully over the stone
while light poured from pinprick windows all over their city. Their
voices were melodic and beautiful but it was like listening to an
orchestra while one off-tune instrument plucked a deep, discordant
tone.

Kill the intruders.

A cold hand clutched at my heart as I turned
my head and laid eyes upon the most fearsome and horrifying
creatures I’d ever seen. Four dark, lumpen figures with pinched
mouths and black holes for eyes lurched toward me, arms
outstretched much as those of the Night Walkers but much more
terrifying. The stench of them was overpowering, and what was
worse, no light reflected against their shapes. They were, I
realized with terror, the absence of light. And they were surely
intent on consuming me. They were uttering meaningless,
evil-sounding words I could not understand; a dire incantation I
had to stop before it was too late.

Power surged through my being and I saw my
hands bloom with radiant light. “You will die here,” I said, and my
voice boomed around the dazzling caverns, my words echoed in
deafening whispers from all the others who feared... The light
flashed and knocked one of the creatures away, but they moved
faster than I had imagined. I could not understand why they — and
all those who had come before them — would not simply leave us
alone. One of them emitted an unearthly shriek which chilled me to
the bones; it was the triumphant call of a carrion bird circling a
dying animal, but I knew if I dazzled them with all the light I
could muster, that these dire shadows would be obliterated once and
for all, just like all the others.

The light seemed to move across the cavern
floor, pooling at my feet, travelling up my body and wrapping
around my limbs like a creeping plant. It was on my skin, in my
blood, in my bones. I had never felt so alive. The power of it made
my head spin. Just as I was ready to discharge another blast of
light, a sharp pain hit me on the back of my head. I staggered for
a moment, then my consciousness dropped down into the darkness like
a stone down a bottomless well.

Chapter 6

When I finally came to, my head ached and my
eyelids felt heavy and slack. A crack of sunlight burned toward my
brain as the world came back into focus. It was not the ethereal
light I remembered from inside the caverns but good, old-fashioned
sunlight which warmed my skin and soothed my heart.

I struggled up into a sitting position, then
paused. Lana sat at my knees, white-faced and clutching a bloodied
rock while my brother and Kari interrupted their prayers with
excited exclamations. Caution tinged their expressions
nonetheless.

“
Is it you, Nedim? Are you yourself
once more?”

I nodded slowly. “What happened? Did you
kill the monsters?”

“
Monsters?” My brother wiped a tear
from his eye. “There were no monsters, brother. It was us you
attacked and would have sought to destroy, had Lana not had the wit
to knock you senseless. May the Thirteen have mercy on me for my
selfishness! Ah, brother! You scared me so.” He grabbed me into a
brief but firm hug and I froze for a moment, surprised.

Wiggling my toes, I stretched out my limbs.
I felt strangely well, like a snake that had shed a too-tight skin.
Like the creeping fingers of a nightmare passed, the memory of what
had happened in the caverns was beginning to fade from my mind. It
felt good to be myself again, and I rubbed the back of my head once
more, feeling the blood caked in my hair around an egg-sized lump.
There was a faint smell of something burnt, and I realized that Kel
was busy changing his clothes behind a bush.

“
You blasted him with something,” Lana
said, throwing the rock away. “But thankfully it was as you said;
your magic is weak and you did little but singe his
leathers.”

I shivered suddenly.
That was just a warning
. But then
that memory too folded in upon itself and I was left once more
puzzled and empty, as if I was indeed just a vessel from which
thoughts and experiences could be poured as well as added. It was a
depressing thought. Still, I was cheered to see my cousin smile
while his bare arse wiggled in the cooling breeze — thankfully, I
had done little harm.

I turned to my brother who regarded me still
with reddened eyes and a sorrowful expression, and sought to
reassure him. “Enough with this dreary visage, Brin. I believed
that you would not allow me to be possessed, and you did not.
You’re my brother. I trust you.”

It seemed like the right thing to say, given
the circumstances. I was beginning to harbor some hopes that my
brother did not despise me as much as he often appeared to. Perhaps
it would please him to see my obedience to the Rite and he would
stop instructing me and talk to me as he once had. But my words
seemed to upset him even more. He shook my shoulders with a
half-sob, half-laugh.

“
Oh Nedim, ever oblivious to danger
and trusting of the wrong people! If I was not so happy to see you
yourself once more I would strangle you with my own
hands!”

Puzzled once more, I stared at him. “Why do
you say such things when you’ve bound me to your every command? I
had no choice but to pass through the caverns, as well you
know.”

But Brin was lost on some path of thought
that had obviously been troubling him for some time, and was
oblivious to reason. “The Rite? To instruct, Ned! I did not mean to
cut out your tongue! Ah, my foolishness knows no bounds, but I
didn’t have any choice! I warned you time and time again how much
danger you were in back in Azmara, yet it brought you no fear nor
spurred you to change! It was only when Father reminded me of the
Rite that I saw the chance to get you out of that cursed tavern to
safety, for Sardar Pol intends not only to shut the taverns but to
burn them to the ground with the drunken sinners who frequent them
still inside!”

“
The Duck and Swan?” Lana said, her
eyes shining with sudden sorrow. “Surely Kaldar’s contacts will
warn him as they have always done. Don’t you think so,
Ned?”

My brother was weeping openly now, a sight
which distressed me more than anything. “Ah, Nedim!” he went on.
“You asked me before what happened to me in Azmara…Do you know why
my candidacy for leadership of the Protectors was refused, not once
but three times? Because my family has ever been my weakness, and
yet everything I’ve wrought was for your protection. Everything!
Including this Rite I’ve invoked to bind you to me, for it was the
only way to get you out of Azmara to safety. I told myself it was
better that you hated me than suffer such a fate at the swords of
Pol’s men. But your anger and resentment were so much easier to
bear than your trust and forgiveness. I do not deserve either. I am
nothing but a miserable failure as both a brother and a Protector,
and this apostate’s brand is as good a label as I’ve ever had!”

With that miserable proclamation, he hauled
himself to his feet and limped off round the corner of the
path.

Lana watched him go and a tear rolled down
her cheek. “Your poor brother, Ned. You must go to him, for I fear
we have both misjudged him terribly. He may have saved us both from
this terrible purge of Pol’s, may the Evil One consume him in the
black flames of the Ashen Plane.”

I slumped back to the ground with a groan as
all the pieces of the puzzle slotted into place inside my aching
head. Everything made a ghastly sense at last. I cast my mind back
to the fateful evening my brother had invoked the Rite. A
gilt-edged party invitation had just been delivered to our mansion
by a courier dressed in black and swathed in a purple cloak bearing
the insignia of our favorite tavern. There was to be wine and a
buffet, accompanied by a band of travelling musicians. Kaldar’s
buffets were the stuff of legends. Magnificent spreads of stuffed
game and bowls of lightly spiced vegetables, platters of aged
cheeses wrapped in thin bread with plump grapes and olives, and
bowls of fragrant jasmine rice beside silver tureens of curried
meats. It was ever my opinion that the Protectors should have
approved of such feasts, as they helped to control our baser
natures by ensuring that everyone was often too bloated and sleepy
to engage in carnal activities afterwards.

“
More gorging and fornication, Ned? By
the Gods, you shall not go to that party, nor any other.” Brin, who
had been in the foulest of moods since his excommunication, had
snatched the invitation from my hands and ripped it into tiny
pieces. Then he went on to tell me that all my social engagements
were to be cancelled for the foreseeable future, while our father
nodded in support of his every word. Finally, Brin invoked the Rite
while our father confirmed the threat of disinheritance it
entailed, before the old bastard fell asleep in his armchair beside
the fire, mouth agape and lips dabbled red with wine. I stared at
them both in mutinous fury but I could do nothing about this
appalling turn of events, and the horror of disinheritance reined
in my tongue until the taste of my acquiescence was bitter in my
throat.

Later that evening Lana had called upon us,
wondering why I had not shown up to meet her. I had little time to
tell her, for my brother had forced me to start filling a pack, so
I was obliged to send my best friend away. Brin had dragged me from
my bed before the sun had come up to beg forgiveness for my wicked
actions at the family shrine until my knees ached, and by lunchtime
the following day we were on our way out of Azmara with our cousin
in tow.

It had all happened so quickly.

Lana had been waiting for us beside the gate
to the Nobles’ Quarter, packed and ready with her daggers swinging
by her side and her mouth and cheeks smeared with grease from a
final rat kebab. I’d never been so grateful to see a friend in all
my life. If Brin hadn’t been in such a hurry I would have fallen to
my knees and kissed her boots. He had been less than pleased about
her appearance, but could not prevent her from accompanying us, as
his clumsy attempts to dissuade her were met by naught but cheery
rebuffs.

Everything I’ve done has been for your
protection.

How had my brother and I grown so far
apart?

Brin was sitting on a rock not far round the
corner, head in his hands. All my life he had been my polar
opposite — strong, devout, and selfless. It was a dreadful sight to
see him so wretched. When he heard my footfalls he looked up with a
sorry frown, and I felt a sudden rush of affection for him. I stood
in front of him and put my hands on his shoulders. “Look at me,
brother. I’m truly sorry for all I’ve done, all the trouble I’ve
caused for you.”