The Seekers of Shar-Nuhn. Ardath Mayhar
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And when, under a red and raddled moon of the next night, the house of Tro-Ven sank upon its crumbled buttresses and heaved, amid a shower of strange lights, into the sea, they watched from afar, sitting upon their terrace. When the grinding crash had ended, they reached out their hands to each other and clasped them tightly.
“May the gods grant,” said Kla-Noh, “that the lady has found her way home.”
Chapter Three
The Man Who Thought Batwise
Si-Lun and Kla-Noh sat upon their terrace, gazing across the Purple Waters at the far side of the Bay of Shar-Nuhn. Just visible in the evening light was a jumble of fallen stone that marred the neat shoreline.
“And there stood the house of Tro-Ven, merchant lord and warlock,” said Kla-Noh sardonically.
“Such seems the fate of those who seek to overcome the limitations of mankind,” answered Si-Lun. “One other such have I known, and his fate was stranger—though not, perhaps, more unexpected—than that of yonder departed wizard.”
Kla-Noh’s eyebrows rose in an arc of surprise. “Never before have you spoken of your past,” he said. “And though I am a Seeker After Secrets I have never sought beyond your willingness to reveal. But surely, now, you have a tale to tell me, and I am anxious to hear.”
And this is the story told by Si-Lun:
* * * *
Across the Purple Waters, many months’ voyage beyond the Far Islands, lies a vast continent whose forbidding mountains, clothed in forests of fir and pine, hide valleys of the utmost fertility and cities of amazing splendor. In the deeps of those mountains I was born and grew to be a youth. And when the time had come for me to learn a trade, my father sought in the greatest city for a master who might appreciate and bring to fruition the talents of Si-Lun, his only son, for even then I was adept at ferreting out things hidden and things forgotten.
Though I longed for the life of a seafarer, my father was adamant. My fortune would be made, did I but apply myself and please the master he chose. So he apprenticed me to Lo-Vahr, Doctor of the Sciences and Investigator of the Unknown, and I was sent to live in his tall house which, though of utmost luxury, was placed most strangely in the narrow streets of the oldest part of the city of Am-Brak.
Seldom, I should surmise, was there an apprentice who loved his master. Never, I’d wager, was there one who more heartily despised his than did I. Lo-Vahr was a narrow man—in body, face, eyes, and mind. For though he sought to know that which was unknown, he had no real interest in what he learned. Only for the furtherance of his plots and machinations did he seek, not for the discovery of the truth and the straightening of tangled lives and purposes.
I was young, very young, and Truth was the goddess I worshiped. How I despised that one-dimensioned man who would not respect her, but used her as he would a trull!
The missions upon which I was sent did not increase my liking for him. Into squalid tenements I went, seeking filthy crones who bartered stinking bundles for my master’s coin. Only once did I investigate such a burden, and never again for years. The hag who provided it had bitten the good gold coin that my master had sent to her, then had looked me in the eyes with such a mocking and leering glint in her own that, as soon as I was out of sight in the higgledy-piggledy alleys, I opened the wrapping and peered into the box I carried. It contained a newborn child; I think it had been strangled. I left the good meal I had eaten in that alley, and never again, until I had learned a purpose of my own, did I seek to know what it was I was transporting.
Necromancy was some part of what Lo-Vahr practiced, though I doubt that he was an adept at that, or at anything. Alchemy he dabbled in, without success. I found, indeed, that his reputation was based upon his mysterious demeanor and great wealth, which he had had from his fathers, and not from any effort that he put forth. He needed no apprentice, for he had nothing to teach. Only for a messenger did he have need.
So for three years I trudged through slimy alleys and into night-bound burial grounds, seeking for things I would not think of for purposes I did not wish to know.
The familiarity of daily contact dulls perception. For how many months a gradual change in my master had been taking place, I cannot tell, but one evening it was brought forcibly to my attention.
It was my duty to stand behind his chair at the evening meal and to keep his glass filled and his needs satisfied. Upon the evening in question, I was more alert than usual, for Lo-Vahr had guests, one a lovely young girl who was the daughter of an agent whom he was entertaining.
During the meal he flattered the father and watched the girl, and I watched him, thinking, “How strangely bent he has grown, and how pointed his ears. Hunching his thick shoulders forward and bending his head as he speaks, he looks like nothing so much as a bat.”
And as I thought this, he turned his head and looked me in the eyes, gesturing for me to fill his glass, which was by no means empty. The glance he gave me was like a hot needle through all my nerves, bringing me to full alertness. Though I hurried to do his bidding, my faculties were focused upon the meaning that those slitted black eyes had conveyed.
Narrowly I observed him then, noticing the accumulation of oddities that had settled upon him like a pall of dust. As he escorted his guests from the hall, he took the arm of the young girl, and in his black cloak, with his thin arm crooked and his stooping shape turned to her, I could see nothing save an enormous bat. The girl felt something of the same aura, for she shuddered from head to foot and then apologized in a frightened manner.
When it grew late and the guests took their leave, I went about lighting the night lamps and checking the bolts of the house doors. As I drew near the chamber of Lo-Vahr, a strange compulsion came upon me. I moved noisily past his door and down the curving stair. Then I crept back up, slipped behind the heavy garnet curtains that covered the windows at the stair head, and stepped out onto the ledge that circled the second floor of the house.
His window was faintly lighted. Crouching on the narrow ledge, I peered cautiously in, risking only one eye’s width past the window edge. Then I froze in the darkness, attempting to melt into the chilly stone of the wall. Lo-Vahr stood at the window, arms spread wide to grip the frame, head tilted back, as if he watched the sky. But his room was firelit and the sky was dark—what could he have seen?
To me he was a dark shape against the orange glow. It was then I noted that he had taken to having his cloak cut out into points at the hem, like to the wings of a bat.
And then, above me in the night sky, I heard a chittering of many shrill cries and felt about my back the swift brushing of passing wings.
Abandoning caution, I retreated along the ledge and into the window from which I had come. But I was not seen. He was communing with his familiars.
Then did I watch him indeed! So used was he to my presence that he seldom noticed me. It was possible for me to observe his comings and goings, his visitors, and his expeditions into the old city. And I found ways to watch him even when he locked himself away into his chambers. For the attics above were untenanted and capacious, and it was simple work for a youngling to find the way to those above his apartments and to make peepholes in well chosen places.
Of his disgusting rites I will not speak. The thought that I had carried the...ingredients...for them through the streets in my hands made me quease. But there was a dreadful consistency in his incantations, and a sort of diverse similarity in the things he used in his spells, that spoke of a single, focused purpose.
Being young, I was without strong moral scruples in things of this kind. I knew, certainly, that the Initiates in the Towers of Truth taught that this work was all that was evil and corrupting. I watched, nonetheless, with no thought of thwarting him, but my old affinity for secrets led me to learn what I could.
More of my time was now taken up with his odious errands, but I examined the things I bore and noted them upon a tablet, which I kept faithfully. Also did I note his words and motions, as he made his private magics, to puzzle over their possible purpose