Dancer's Lament: Path to Ascendancy Book 1 by Ian C. Esslemont Page B

way to Cawn and the Bay of Nap. After tracing the flats among the shadows beneath the wharves high overhead, he spotted a hunched shape seated on a rock amid the mud, bare feet caked in the green-grey muck, hair a frighteningly tangled mass. The shape was hardly recognizable as female, but he knew her. She was holding up one of the exceptionally large Idryn crayfish by one claw.
    ‘Ho! Liss!’ he called.
    The old woman peered up, squinting. ‘Who’s there? Is that that slick and smarmy fellow?’
    Silk raised his eyes to the wood decking above. ‘Must we, Liss?’
    She made a show of addressing the crayfish. ‘Why does he wear that hollow pretty mask?’ She held the creature to her ear. ‘No! Not that monstrous, surely!’
    ‘Thank you, Liss. I’m sure the crayfish are full of insights.’
    ‘They are full of Hengan citizens – I’ll tell you that!’
    He rubbed his chin. ‘Well . . . I’ll have to give you that one.’
    ‘Come to drop the mask, Silk?’
    Smiling, he shook his head. ‘Just a greeting. On my way to see Ho.’
    She shook the crayfish like a warning finger. ‘Watch out for Hothalar, my friend. He is a haunted man.’
    Silk bowed in answer to the warning. Liss, he knew, went far back here in Heng. The sluggish current dragged him onward.
    ‘Have a care,’ she shouted. ‘I see trouble ahead.’
    ‘What? The Kanese?’
    ‘No. Send King Chulalorn my way and I’ll squeeze the ambition out of him – along with all his seed! No, something else.’
    ‘What?’
    She called back, ‘Don’t know. Something sly, hidden. I see it in the corner of my eye.’ Silk bowed again in answer to the warning as the figure disappeared among the forest of pilings.
    Later that afternoon he found the gated access, magically disguised in the dark under the decking and raised walkways. He drew up his dugout, and, with extreme distaste, squelched his way through the muck to the entrance, and unlatched the iron grating.
    Many tunnels and rickety ladders later, he was within the stonewalled catacombs. In the utter dark, he summoned his Warren and a tiny flame flickered to life upon his upturned palm. It gave no heat, of course, just illumination, as Thyr was his Warren. Many, he knew, assumed that he was a mage of Mockra – one specializing in what some named the art of glamour. But in fact his allure came naturally rather than deliberately. Or perhaps he did somehow innately draw upon Mockra. He didn’t know. What he could do, however, through his years of discipline and study, was touch this one Warren of Thyr and even, in moments of his greatest inspiration, catch glimpses of a wellspring of might that lay beyond it.
    The tunnel was a narrow semicircle of crudely dressed sandstone blocks. Narrow, but tall. Rats scampered from his light. He stilled, listening. All he heard was his heartbeat and water dripping. He picked a direction and followed it.
    Beams of light streamed down here and there, illuminating short stretches of the anonymous stone tunnels. A stream of cascading water flooded one intersection. He stepped carefully through puddles for some time after that. At one point he thought he glimpsed a human figure moving among the shifting shadows and would have dismissed it as just such another but for a faint tapping that seemed to accompany the blurry disturbance.
    ‘Hello?’
    The rippling, shifting darkness that might or might not be an actual person turned at a corner. Silk found the junction and cast his sorcerous light beyond. The tunnel lay completely empty and utterly quiet. He snorted at his overworked imagination and moved on, coming at last to a gate of very thick iron bars. It was locked and there was no way he could open it. However, the bars were quite far apart and he was very slim. He almost tore an ear off, but he made it through. His shirt was now frankly ruined, as were his trousers of fine imported Darujhistani silk. He brushed at his clothes, cursing Ho, then carried on. A few turns