With the sun beating down it was now damned hot. Water was their main worry. Sour had them sucking on stems and fruits for moisture. Still, Murk was feeling the heat, and he knew the signs of water-starvation; he’d seen enough of it in the army. The night rains vanished instantly. Yusen had everyone capturing what they could in any remaining containers, while Sour showed them how to use big leaves to do the same.
As it was wont to do these last few days, Murk’s gaze drifted down to the litter with its rags and the burden wrapped within. Was he doing the right thing? She’d expressed her will and he chose to respect that. Though doubts harried and bit at him like these damned bugs, he was still of the opinion that he was right to do so. It was a question not of right or wrong, but of respect. He had to respect this thing as a separate entity fully capable of making up its own mind. Even if it looked and sounded like a child.
Mercenaries running past shook him from his reverie. They were headed pell-mell for the front. Burastan came jogging to his side. ‘A problem?’ he demanded.
She jerked a hand to the rear. ‘Our guest the sorceress says we’ve entered Jakal Viharn already.’
He scowled his puzzlement. ‘What? That can’t be right.’ He waved to the surrounding jungle. ‘There’s nothing here.’
‘All the same, Captain’s ordered a halt. Call your partner.’
Murk nodded. He reached out to give his Warren the barest touch — just enough to send a message to Sour: recall. He motioned for Dee and Ostler to rest. The two big swordsmen eyed one another then shrugged and set down the litter.
Murk returned with Burastan to the rear. Here he found Yusen with the sorceress and her bodyguard. They were eyeing some sort of much weathered stone marker, or stela. Murk studied the flat, worn standing stone. The carving on its face had been reduced to nothing more than suggestions of lines and depressions. He turned to Rissan. ‘You can read that?’
‘I do not need to read it,’ she answered. ‘Its message is impregnated into it in many different ways.’
Murk gave it a one-eyed squint through his Warren. There was something there … but so faint, so damnably ancient. ‘And what does it say?’
‘It marks the boundary of Jakal Viharn.’
Murk snorted. ‘There ain’t nothing here. There’s supposed to be a huge city. Temple towers, streets paved in gold. You know … fabled Jakal Viharn and such.’
The sorceress was unmoved. ‘There was such a place here, once. Long ago. A large ceremonial centre servicing millions. But to call it a city … well …’ She tilted her head. ‘Those who saw it could only interpret it through their own experience … if you see what I mean.’
Yusen nodded, though Burastan was frowning, uncertain.
‘We know cities,’ Murk said, explaining, ‘so that’s what we called it.’
‘Indeed.’
Sour and the scouts arrived. Yusen motioned them to him. ‘We sit tight for the meantime. I want a careful look round first.’
Sour cocked one goggling bug-eye to Murk. ‘You’re up, partner.’
Murk scowled. Great. Guess what? You get to go spy on the Witch-Queen Ardata. He squinted up at the bright blue sky. ‘Not in full on daylight. I want to wait for dusk.’
Yusen was rubbing a thumb over his chin. He nodded. ‘Accepted.’
When dusk gathered under the trees and a deep purple took the eastern sky, Murk entered Jakal Viharn. He kept to the shadows, naturally enough. He’d been warned not to have Meanas raised fully as Ardata would take it as a challenge; mild disguising of his presence, well, that was apparently acceptable.
He remembered his briefing — that was the only word he could think of for it — when their guest sorceress Rissan took him aside for ‘a few words’.
‘Do not go in with your Warren blazing,’ she’d told him, rather imperiously.
‘Hey,’ he objected, ‘I follow the spirit of Meanas.’
‘Not entirely, I should hope,’ she remarked coolly. She crossed her arms and regarded him critically. ‘Now … if you should meet her or see her watching you, don’t overtly respond. Don’t run off, or duck away. Just lower your gaze and bow. Then go on your way. She’s been treated like a goddess for ages here and she’s become, how shall I put it … accustomed to it.’
‘Any wards or protections I should know about?’
‘I do not believe so.’
‘Guards?’
‘None that should accost you.’
He shrugged. ‘Fine then. No problem. I’ll just have a quick look round then report back.’
‘I doubt you will see anything,’ she answered. ‘Jakal Viharn covers many square leagues.’ She waved him on his way.
The woman’s haughtiness had quite annoyed him at the time. Must be some high muckety-muck back home. Now, however, walking the treed grounds, he wondered how she came to such intimate knowledge of Ardata and her ways. Well, perhaps it was her particular area of expertise.
Even though he cloaked himself in the shifting shadows of Meanas, he kept to the verges and the gloom of trees. The sky was unusually clear this night; perhaps the rainy season was on the wane. The Visitor blazed like a literal vengeful eye of some falling god. It cast shadows as dense as spilled ink. Next to it the moon was a pale weak smear.
He walked and walked, and then he found he had to walk even more. Jakal Viharn, he realized, was just as their guest sorceress had asserted: an immense sprawling complex of countless temples, shrines, monasteries and plain enigmatic ruins. He even caught sight of the curve of a river where it glimmered in the dusk like a crimson snake. He realized he could wander for days without discovering anything. He might as well turn back now.
What to do. He idled within a grove of bamboo. The grove crowded round a diminutive altar of ancient brick. Placed on the altar and before it lay countless carved stone heads — doubtless taken from the many statues he’d passed lying about half buried. It was a grisly collection of decapitated staring trophies. And he would have been most disturbed if he’d been the least bit superstitious and taken it as an omen.
Rissan, he reflected, had warned against any overt use of his Warren. And if it could ever be said that Shadow was not something, that would most certainly be overt. Therefore, he decided, a little oblique probing shouldn’t go amiss. He eased his sensitivity outwards, passively, receiving impressions of movement among the infinite shadows flitting and dancing about Jakal Viharn. Scanning in an ever-broadening circle, he at last came to a concentration of moving shadows. Ambulatory. Could be anything: a group of night-foraging animals, a herd of restless water buffalo, who knew? But it was a lead, and so he started that way, jogging, his senses raised and now actively probing.
It was a good thing he had his Warren up for otherwise he would’ve walked right into the trap. It was masterfully laid; an ambush he never would’ve expected. His sensitivity warned him of it in good time and so he halted and began edging round, shadow-wrapped, disguised in the lineaments of night itself.
From the deep shade of a tree, he watched them. Three foreign soldiers keeping an eye on this obvious approach through the woods — the one he’d naturally almost taken. Two men and one woman. They still had their armour, albeit leathers. In all, they appeared to have weathered the entrance into Himatan better than his troop. He couldn’t be certain where they hailed from, though they had the look of Quon types, tall and broad, with curly black hair on one. None had spoken yet, which troubled Murk: very professional. Too professional for out here in the middle of Himatan. What were they doing here? Who were they?