by D. T. Kane
Bladesorrow had ridden east from Doom’s Keep to Riverdale South with a small, mixed force of Parents and Keepers, then continued north with a much smaller contingent to Glofar. He intended to broker a truce between the North and South so that a proper, joint investigation into Rikar’s murder could be made, the true felons discovered. Allegedly, Bladesorrow had always thought the theory of a Northern plot absurd and was troubled that a far darker force was at work, that the war effort was just an elaborate diversion, though from what he wouldn’t, or couldn’t, say.
Nellis had initially scoffed at the Grand Master’s proposition. But the more he listened to the man’s arguments.... The declaration of war had been inevitable—the Parents’ propaganda had been rampant, ordinary citizens rabid for action. Moving to block it would only have weakened what little political capital Bladesorrow held. The Keepers may have backed such a measure. Maybe. But no Parents would have, and neither would many of the sitting members of the Commons after the Parents’ mongering. There were equally flabbergasting rumors that Bladesorrow himself had been Rikar’s murderer, rumors Nellis would never believe. The man had loved Rikar like a father. But reality had been that Bladesorrow needed his influence fully intact if he was to do anything to prevent the North and South from tearing one another apart.
And indeed—as Bladesorrow had taken great lengths to remind Nellis—as Grand Master Keeper he was leader of the South’s armed forces, which had made no effort at large-scale assault of the North. That had been no accident, or so Bladesorrow alleged anyway. In the three years since Rikar’s death and subsequent declaration of war, he’d conducted mass war drills and stationed battalions at Doom’s Keep and Riverdale to appease the hawks in the Senate. In fact, the only harmful action—the cessation of trade—had been a measure he’d voted against before war had been declared.
This was all well and good, Nellis had begrudgingly acknowledged, but it still didn’t explain how Bladesorrow figured to pursue peace talks as representative of all the South, when the majority of the Senate was still in favor of the war.
To that, Bladesorrow had explained he’d recently gained a new ally amongst the Parents: The Grand Father himself. Convinced him peace was the best option for both North and South. From there, it’d been a simple thing for the Grand Father to influence a handful of his comrades to participate in at least some initial talks with representatives of the North, his only condition being that the talks remain secret unless material progress was made.
This had hardly motivated Nellis to action. He’d no reason to trust the Parents. They were always scheming, even when their intentions seemed noble, and he knew their intentions were never noble when it came to relations with the North. They twisted the great Tragnè’s teachings of acceptance and equality to support their anti-shadow rhetoric. And while he’d seen Bladesorrow make some convincing arguments in the past, he was also young and naïve. Surely the Grand Father hadn’t been so easily convinced?
But matters in the North were dire and he owed it to his people to at least try and end the conflict, no matter how unlikely it seemed. So he’d reluctantly agreed to take a delegation south to Riverdale.
And that was how he’d come to be standing on the southern edge of Riverdale North, looking on as Grand Master Keeper Taul Bladesorrow crossed the Unity Bridge flanked by a small honor guard. The causeway was crafted from polished black and white jasper mined in the foothills of the Raging Mountains. Lady Tragnè and Grand Master Keeper Trimale had been sincere when they’d named the bridge almost 1,000 years ago, but North and South had done little to live up to the bridge’s symbolism since that time.
Bladesorrow had instructed Nellis to wait on the northern side while he went to inform the remaining Southerners of his party’s arrival. Nellis had actually begun to think it’d be pleasant to see some of the southern Keepers again. Despite the ill treatment he’d received, he’d also left behind some friends at the Symposium. Suzahne, one of the Keepers in the Grand Master’s retinue, had been a particularly dear friend during his time in Tragnè City.
But it had now been some time and his patience wore thin. What was taking the Grand Master Keeper? Nellis understood the man’s desire to go ahead and announce his delegation. But they also should have been expected. In fact, once he’d thought on it, it seemed strange there’d been no welcoming party, or at least a lookout who could have been sent on ahead to announce their coming. Even his dwarfs’ mounts were beginning to grow restless. The great shadow panthers were pawing the ground and growling, baring their teeth in the direction Bladesorrow had gone. His stomach began to churn. The beasts rarely made any sound at all except during the heat of battle.
“High Em’sary, look,” one of the dwarfs in Nellis’s party grunted.
His eyes followed his companion’s outstretched hand. It took a moment to grasp what he was seeing, but once he had, he didn’t like it. Not at all. A plume of violet-tinted smoke rose from a group of buildings across the river, not far from where the Unity Bridge emptied into Riverdale South.
“Scorched earth,” he cursed. Only a powerful shadow hex could cause a plume such as that. Perhaps even a dread hex. A Maleficium in the old tongue.
“Form up dwarfs. Prepare te fall back. Start turnin’ those wagons ’round. And—”
Nellis’s words were drowned out by an ear-rupturing boom. A building on the other side of the river exploded in a shower of splinters. Men screamed and continued wailing even after the vibrations of the explosion ebbed.
Then, as the dust from the explosion settled, Nellis saw. He couldn’t bear to look yet lacked will to turn away. Towering over a group of Parents stood a dark, robed figure. It was twice as tall as a man—two heights at least. Its cavernous, cowled visage considered the group with the same dispassion a butcher might bestow upon a pig strung up for the slaughter. The world seemed to drain of all color in the thing’s presence; Nellis’s sight produced nothing but muted grays. The shouts from the other side of the bridge that had sounded so painfully loud only moments before now seemed muffled and distant, as if someone were squeezing their palms over his ears. If he could have mustered the will to say anything to his companions, he felt as though he’d need to shout for them to hear, though they stood right beside him.
The creature’s movements were terrible to look upon. Jerky and angular, as if its joints had but two positions—total flexion or grotesque hyperextension. Grasped in each of the thing’s impossibly long, ashen fingers were sickles of equally impossible size. It raised one of the weapons as if to strike the group of Parents over which it towered. Then, the weapon was suddenly on the other side of the group, as if the monster had swung it, but it had just gone from alpha to zed without traversing any of the points between. The men who’d been in the blade’s non-path all sagged, heads lolling, as if they’d collapsed, yet somehow not fallen to the ground. Their skin began to turn the same ashen color of the towering monster’s bony fingers. Nellis had never thought to feel pity for a Parent, but he did so in that moment.
Then the thing turned towards Nellis and his onlooking group. He knew they needed to run.
Aldur save us, he thought. But despite absolute knowledge that the thing could kill them all with little more than a glare, he could not summon the will to move his legs. His eyes remained transfixed on the hooded giant as it began to stutter towards the bridge in its unnatural way. Full of angles. Absent of smooth movements. At that moment he knew he would die where he stood. Or worse. What had the thing done to those Parents?
But just as he’d accepted the fate about to befall him and his dwarfs, a beacon of light burst forth from behind the approaching nightmare. It was the Grand Master Keeper, a blinding shell enveloping his form. He was shouting, but Nellis could barely hear.
“Run! Run you fools! Run!” His voice sounded as if it came from spans away. But the urgency of it snapped Nellis from his stupor like the slap of an enraged lover.
“Dwarfs! Dwarfs! To ye’ mounts. Retreat!” He
shook the nearest of his dwarfs by the shoulders. The glazed look that had overcome them all faded and, after looking from Nellis to the shouting Grand Master as if they’d just woken from a bad dream, they jumped into action.
Nellis continued to watch the Grand Master as his dwarfs scurried about. He couldn’t see any other men moving about on the other side of the bridge, though the group of Parents the creature had slashed continued to slump upright, like marionette puppets awaiting the puppeteer. He remembered in that instant Taul saying he’d brought over three-dozen men with him. Were they all dead?
The monster swung one of its sickles at the Grand Master, seeming certain to condemn the man to the same fate as those unfortunate Parents. But Taul met it with his own blade, turning it aside. The creature actually staggered backward, sparks flying from where its weapon had impacted the Grand Master’s sword. The inhuman cry that emanated from the beast shook Nellis to his very core and he nearly lost his bladder.
As the creature reeled, Taul turned and rushed for the bridge, though he seemed hampered by something in his right side. He was about halfway across when the monster recovered and belched a stream of black filth from its hood. The dread hex crashed into the aura of light around the Grand Master and it flicked like a candle sputtering against a strong wind.
Taul stumbled.
Nellis reached out in a futile gesture to aid the man, who was now doubled over, clutching at a dark object protruding from his side. He’d just begun moving towards them again when the creature spewed another stream of its midnight malice at the Grand Master.
This time the man’s elemental shield failed completely and the hex crashed into his side like a raging wave against the Senate cliffs. The force of the impact sent Taul off his feet, the momentum of the blow causing his body to skid almost entirely across the remaining portion of bridge.
Without any conscious thought, Nellis reached into the murk of the afternoon shadows about him and flung a wave of his own shadow fury over the Grand Master’s head, into the center of the bridge. The ferocity of the impact sent tremors through the ground. Part of the bridge collapsed. Nellis dropped to one knee and several dwarfs around him lost their balance completely. But he was up again in a heartbeat, rushing forward to the fallen Grand Master. A cloud of dust and debris obscured his view of the creature hovering at the end of the now-severed pathway.
They hadn’t waited for the view to clear. With the help of his comrades, Nellis dragged the Grand Master Keeper back to their waiting mounts and wagons. It wouldn’t be until they’d retreated out of sight of the Dales that Nellis’s healers would more closely examine the Grand Master and discover the seeming death sentence protruding from his side.
“AND WE WERE STILL RETREATIN’ when ye came upon us,” Nellis said before resuming his contemplative stare into the flames.
Devan resisted the urge to rub at his temples with both hands. By the year he was currently in—1015 A.A.—the North and South ought to have been in peace negotiations at Riverdale, a monumental event chaired by Taul Lightsblade himself, a year after Rikar Bladesong had retired, passing on the mantle of Grand Master Keeper to him. It was Lightsblade’s Landmark, the occasion that had cemented his place as one of the Agarian Constants.
Instead, Bladesong was dead, his murder having instigated a war between North and South that had been ongoing for several years with no possibility of peace in sight. And somehow, Lightsblade was now Bladesorrow. Perhaps the Path had been attempting to self-correct when Bladesorrow had sought to arrange the truce of which Nellis had just spoken, but Val had put a stop to that.
I wish the Path would self-correct by sending me another Aldur or three, Devan thought. Problems on top of problems. Even after solving this Bladesorrow paradox, there’d remain the fact of Rikar Bladesong’s murder.
“Tha’ creature,” Nellis murmured. “What caused it to move in such unnat’ral ways?”
Devan considered ignoring the question; he had far more important matters to consider. But the dwarf had at least earned the modicum of relief his response would bring.
“It was not a being of this world; at least, not anymore,” Devan replied to Nellis. Then, realizing that Nellis took this as tacit confirmation of his theory that the thing was a Greater Terror, added, “It was a Minna Hraeda. A Lesser Terror, not one of the Seven.”
Nellis and the other dwarfs let out a collective sigh. Devan rolled his eyes. No doubt it had been horrifying to them, but a Lessor Terror was to one of the Seven as a wasp was to a wyvern.
“The thing came from the Elsewhere,” he continued, “where the normal constraints of time don’t apply.”
Nellis nodded. “Why didn’t it just kill us as well?”
Devan frowned. “Most likely, it was simply drawn back into the Elsewhere. Such beasts rarely remain on this plane for long. They can’t harmonize with the laws of time here, forcing them to retreat or collapse under the weight of their own place-time violations.”
The dwarfs accepted this explanation without question. Which was good, because Devan would never admit that he’d no idea why the fiend had stopped. According to the dwarf’s tale—which he’d found passably credible, though eyewitness accounts always held inaccuracy—the Terror had shown no signs of time creep. It had killed as many as three-dozen men and women—trained Keepers and Parents all—and even channeled at the Grand Master. It had exhibited no signs of struggling to sync with the constraints of the True Path. Which meant...
Devan scowled and several of the dwarfs backed further away from him, the temporary relief his words had brought them already forgotten. It meant something on the Path must have been sustaining it. No, that wasn’t right. Not something. Someone.
Val.
He’d figured out how to control one of the fiends; meddled with the Elsewhere. A blatant violation of the Second Lesson. Not that Devan was surprised. His old friend had clearly abandoned the ways of their people.
And then a thought struck him, so awful he was doubly glad he’d declined the dwarfs’ offers of food. If Val was willing to call upon creatures of the Elsewhere to aid his misdeeds, what else might he be willing to bring back from beyond the Path?
“High Emissary Nellis,” he said, shooting to his feet, unwilling to pursue that line of thinking any further. “I thank you for your hospitality and information. I must leave you for a time now. There are people I must find. Answers I must seek. And items I must acquire to help our friend. I’ll return soon as I’m able.”
Nellis nodded, his eyes glinting in the purple glow of the fire. His comrades, muscles having momentarily relaxed when Devan had said he was leaving, slumped once more at the revelation that he’d be back. Indeed, “chagrin” came to mind to describe the looks on their faces. But their stout leader seemed resolute. That would have to do for now.
Ignoring the reticence of his peers, Nellis crossed the divide that had formed between them and spoke in a low tone.
“I’ve a strong face for me comrades, Angel. But what am I te do with the Grand Master?”
“You’re to keep him safe, High Emissary Nellis. He remains in great danger; a paradox of the Path threatens him.”
Nellis’s eyebrows rose. “A dire tiding,” he muttered. “Wha’ sort of paradox?”
Devan considered telling the dwarf. That the Grand Master had both died and lived. That the True Path was barely still drawing breath. He decided against it. The dwarf was already overwhelmed. And he also didn’t think the Grand Master Keeper needed to know the truth yet. Better if the dwarf didn’t know rather than require him to conceal the truth.
“It’s not important now,” he responded.
Devan sensed that Nellis saw through that lie, but the dwarf didn’t push. Instead he asked something far worse.
“Have ye ever saved someone from such before?”
“Of course I have,” Devan snorted.
But the confidence in his tone didn’t remove the doubt from the dwarf’s eyes. “Have ye ever failed to save some
one from such?”
He gave the dwarf a long, hard look before answering. The eye with the scar at its edge twitched and he brushed at it with the back of his hand.
“From a paradox? No.” He turned slightly from the dwarf, lowering his voice to little more than a murmur. “But I did fail to save someone once. I don’t intend to let it happen again.”
There was time yet. If he didn’t find an answer soon, he’d have to take further measures to slow the damage this remnant half of the Bladesorrow paradox was causing. But for now, the man could simply rest with the dwarfs, perhaps learn something from them.
“Wha’ if the Lesser Terror returns?”
“It won’t,” Devan lied, perhaps a little too quickly. That was why he never allowed himself to get close to Linears. He never knew when he’d have to kill one, or set one on an equally grim trail, in the interest of the Path. He didn’t always like it, and often he created more work than was strictly necessary to keep a Linear alive. But in the end, the needs of the Path always outweighed the needs of a single Linear. Or even many of them.
But perhaps there was also some truth in his reply. If Val was controlling the beast, he must have thought the Grand Master dead. Otherwise he would have sent it to finish the deed back at the Dales.
“You’ll need to teach him the way of the shadow. Coping with a new attunement won’t be easy. There’s little precedent for such.”
“None as far as I know,” the dwarf replied. “But aye. I’ll help ’im. Keep ’im safe. Show ’im what the shadow can do. We’ll bring ’im to Tragnè City. Mayhap seein’ Second Symposium will do ’im good.”
Devan clapped the dwarf on the shoulder, nearly knocking him into the fire.
“Good man. Er, dwarf.”