The River of Shadows Read Online Free PDF

because a slight shoreward turn by any part of it would have revealed the Chathrand , still as death behind her island. Hours passed; the line of nightmarish ships stretched on, and so did the silence. It was only toward evening, when a breeze off the Nelluroq began to cool the village, that the last of the vessels swept by, and the drums and horns began to fade.
    Thasha and Pazel left the village by the same gate as before. There sat Bolutu, as he had for five hours, digging his black fingers into the sand. When they approached him, he did not look up.
    His voice, however, was soft and reasonable. “The pennants are ours,” he said.
    “The pennants?” said Thasha. “On those ships, you mean?”
    “The pennants on those ships. The leopard, leaping the red Bali Adro sun. It is the Imperial standard. And the armada came from the west, out of the Bali Adro heartland.”
    Pazel felt sickened—and betrayed. “These are your friends?” he demanded. “The good wizards who sent you north to fight Arunis, the ones who can see through your eyes? The ones you said would come running to our aid, as soon as we made landfall?”
    “Oh, Pazel, of course not,” said Thasha. “They’re impostors, aren’t they, Bolutu? Flying Bali Adro colors in order to fool someone?”
    Now Bolutu did raise his eyes. “I do not know who they are—madmen, I would guess. Madmen can fly any flag, usurp any legacy, squat on any throne. But listen to me, both of you: this is not my world . This wreckage, these illiterate peasants, this plague on the minds of humans. It is not mine, I tell you.”
    “You’ve been gone twenty years,” said Pazel.
    “Two decades could never work such a change,” said Bolutu. “Bali Adro was a just Empire, an enlightened one. The years of famine were behind us. The maukslar , the arch-demons, were all dead or defeated; the Circle of the Scorm was broken. Our neighbors posed no threat, and our internal enemies, the Ravens I spoke of—they were imprisoned, or scattered to distant lands. We were safe here, safe and at peace.”
    “Sometimes things do happen fast,” said Pazel. “Six years ago Ormael was still a country. Now it’s just another territory of Arqual.”
    “Pazel,” said Bolutu, “it is not remotely the same. This world is ancient beyond anything that survives in the North. The Codex of the dlömu, from which our laws derive—it was written before the first tree was felled on your Chereste Peninsula. And though your rulers were unseated and your city torched, your people did not devolve into beasts.”
    “Well it’s blary plain that we will, if we stay around here,” said Pazel. “It may be too late already. We all drank from that well.”
    Bolutu shook his head. “The disease is not contagious. It was the first question I put to Ibjen’s father. There he is now, by the way.”
    The old dlömu, Mr. Isul, was creeping toward them along the road from the forest, carrying a bundle of sticks and a woolen sack. Age had dulled his silver hair, but not his eyes. They were troubled, however, and not just by the hunt for footing on the rutted track.
    “How does he know it’s not contagious?” asked Thasha.
    Bolutu kept his eyes on the old man. “There were experiments, he says. When it was clear the plague was out of control. They locked unaffected humans and tol-chenni together, forced them to share food, water, latrines. But those humans corralled with the tol-chenni degenerated no faster than those who had no contact at all.”
    “I thought every human south of the Ruling Sea had caught the disease,” said Thasha.
    “They have. But not from one another.”
    Pazel was losing patience. “I don’t care if they caught it from earthworms,” he said. “Something in this land of yours gave it to human beings, and made it spread like wildfire.”
    The old man was just reaching them; he nodded cordially, but with obvious unease. He put down his bundle of sticks but kept the sack in his hands.