The Paths of the Dead (Viscount of Adrilankha) by Steven Brust Read Free Book Online

the 229th year of the Interregnum, a woman could be seen to be picking flowers in a meadow near the banks of the river that the Easterners call the Naplemente, which name, we believe, translates to “the last of the light.” The name was given it by an Eastern explorer who, having traveled as far from his homeland as he was willing to go, saw it as the farthest western point he could discern; he therefore called it by his country’s name for the end of the day, or, perhaps, the place where the last of the daylight is seen. It still goes by this name among some, especially Easterners living within the Empire, but it is more often known as the Adrilankha River, for the simple reason that it passes through this city before finding its way to the ocean.
    The meadow to which we direct our attention, however, was nearly three hundred miles north of this city, and there were no cities nearby, though, to be sure, there were no small number of inns and tiny villages, as more than a few roads ran in diverse directions through the region.
    As to the woman picking flowers, we should say that she was eight or nine hundred years of age, with narrow eyes, a clear noble’s point beneath dark hair that curled around her ears, a small mouth, and a face that showed that she had lived no easy life. While she was unencumbered, she traveled with a mule, which held a heavy pack, and one item of especial
note: that being a staff of white wood, polished until it nearly gleamed, and featuring a small reddish marking on one end. Other than this staff, she appeared to have nothing more than what anyone might take for extended travel in the woodlands.
    Watching her as she made her slow, painstaking way through the meadow, one might suspect her of being a midwife or herbmaster, until the observer realized that she was not, in fact, picking the flowers, so much as searching through them—indeed, her concentration was so fixed upon the ground that she did not, at first, realize that she was not alone.
    When she at last became aware of it, she looked up with a sharply indrawn breath to find eight or nine horsemen watching her from a distance of only a few yards.
    “A good day to you, madam,” said one of them. “You appear to have lost something.”
    “And a good day to you, sir. I am called Orlaan, and, as you have deduced, I have, indeed, lost something.”
    The horseman looked at his companions and, with something like a smile, said, “Tell us what you are looking for, then, and, as we are all gentlemen here, we will help you find it.”
    “Will you, indeed? Why, I should be most glad for the assistance, and I will tell you at once.”
    “Well?”
    “I am searching for a soul.”
    The horseman stared, then, frowning, said, “I beg your pardon, madam, but I fail to understand what it is you do me the honor to tell me.”
    “But, what could be simpler? There is a soul somewhere hereabouts.”
    “I … that is to say, a soul?”
    “Exactly.”
    “Well, how did you come to lose it?”
    “Oh, I never had it.”
    “But … then, it is not your soul?”
    “No, it belongs to another.”
    “But, how is that possible?”
    “For another to have a soul?”
    “No, no. For there to be a disembodied soul. I have never heard of such a thing.”
    “It was a strange effect of Adron’s Disaster.”
    “But that was two hundreds of years ago!”
    “Oh, yes.”
    “Then you have been searching for it all this time?”
    “Oh, certainly not. It was scarcely a hundred years ago that I realized it was missing. It took me that long, you perceive, to train my skills to the point where had an awareness of such things, and to perform the divination that revealed that it existed.”
    “But now you know it exists?”
    “I have Seen it, yes.”
    “And it is here?”
    “As to that, I cannot say. I traced a line from Dragaera City—”
    “Dragaera City! That is a sea of amorphia, from all I have heard.”
    “Well, so be it, then. From the sea of amorphia