Shards

by James Duvall

  “See to it that no one slips on the bank,” Timothy warned as Torvald joined him. Aebyn made a point of hurrying to help the second mate out of the mud as well, to Timothy's approval.

  “Aye, captain. Come on you lot, lets get across!” Torvald called, his voice half drowned beneath the rapids. “Paulson, Garret, and Hilam stay behind and strike the camp. Keep it out of sight and don't forget your watch assignments.”

  Torvald continued to shout orders as Timothy and Aebyn made their way up the well-sodden road. Soon the river was quiet murmur behind them. The constant patter of rain and dull, distant thunder accompanied them the rest of the way up to the enchanter's workshop.

  Going was slow across a road thick with lightning-felled trees. Timothy scrambled over the charred remnants of tall aspens while Aebyn hopped along them like a child crossing a slow-flowing creek. Every few leaps he would pause and wait with strained patience for Timothy to catch up, remarking now and then on the usefulness of wings and how it was a pity he had none.

  Outside of the enchanter's workshop a pair of stone gryphons stood guard, their ancient and restless eyes fixed forever on the path as it crested the hill. Beneath the shelter of the awning, the features were still sharp and fine. Sky sapphires sparkled in their skulls like a lighthound's eyes. Aebyn paused at one, peering into the lifeless crystal as though expecting the stone creature to surge to life.

  A bolt of lightning lanced down nearby, blinding the both of them for a few seconds. The sound of it seemed to swell out of the ground and through Timothy's own body, leaving him rattled and gasping for air.

  “Let's get inside,” Timothy urged. Aebyn hurried in at his side. The doorway was wide enough for both of them and the door had long ago rotted away. Frail, rusted hinges still clung to their anchors in the stonework.

  “Willoughby?” Timothy called. They were in a small antechamber, rounded with alcoves set with windows so covered in mud and grime that no light came through the glass. Further in a doorway glowed with iridescent light. White light pooled on the floor, swimming with blues, reds, greens, and yellows.

  Passing through the door they came into the center workshop. Like the antechamber it was round, though it dwarfed its predecessor in size. The ceiling was high and vaulted. Crystals glowed like colorful flames in the domed ceiling, arranged in rings of like colors. At the center was an opening, through which sunlight fell unblemished. A dais, raised in the room's center, had become overgrown with grass and wildflowers. Dark, tangling vines poured out from it and reached toward the room's perimeter. A fixture made of steel hung above the dais, reaching down from the ceiling like the claws of a great beast.

  A shadow fell through the opening, briefly casting the room into blackness, the gemmed ceiling glowing as though set with a thousand fiery stars. Shadowy wings flared, slowing the gryphon's descent. It was brown and black of fur with red-tipped ears and streaks of red upon its legs.

  “You!” Aebyn hissed.

  “Yes, me,” Aelengy crooned. His gaze swept between the two of them like a predator surveying its prey.

  “Why are you here?” Aebyn asked. His eyes had begun to glow with a soft blue light and he approached with deliberate strides, wings partly stretched.

  “The same reason you are,” Aelengy said, grinning at him. “I am here to watch Timothy Binks die.”

  Timothy's pistol was already in his hand. Aelengy was only a few feet away. In a flash he raised the pistol to Aelengy's head and squeezed the trigger. Through the sparks and smoke he could see Aelengy weave to the side just in time for the bullet to go past, the wind behind it ruffling his fur. The crack of the shot bounced all around the cavernous room, lasting an eternity.

  An instant later Timothy's sword swept through the air. Aelengy retreated a half step, the sword cutting the air a few inches before his throat. Timothy lunged. Aelengy swung to the side, letting the blade push past and carry Timothy forward with the momentum of his attack. His claws followed in their wake. Timothy ducked beneath them, sliding forward so that he came up beneath the dusk tracer's belly, slashing wild and desperate as the gryphon lunged away. Aelengy screeched in pain as the wild blow missed his vulnerable belly and instead carved a crimson line across a leg, spattering blood across Timothy's jacket and face.

  Aelengy circled wide around the workshop's high-domed roof. Timothy looked on in satisfaction as he could see drops of blood falling against the stonework. He raised a pistol and waited until Aelengy was coming directly toward him, presenting a stable target. All at once Aebyn rose from the ground, wingtips trailing hot white light. He struck Aelengy from beneath. Tangled together, the two arched upward and came down hard. Through the dust it was hard to make out which was on top. Shadowy beasts did battle, roaring and shrieking with the angry cries of birds of prey. The larger tossed the smaller aside and came galloping out of the haze with death dark in his eyes. Timothy fired. His bullet found the gryphon's chest but did not arrest its momentum. He braced himself for an impact that did not come. The wounded gryphon simply washed over him like a cool breeze, its form turning to dust and mist, burning away in seconds. Timothy was alone.

  “Aebyn!” Timothy called. “Aebyn!”

  The injured lighthound came limping into the light, favoring a forepaw trickling blood.

  “Timothy!” Aebyn's voice cried out desperately from far away. Confused, Timothy looked up to the source of the sound and saw another Aebyn circling back. “Timothy!”

  The first took a position at his side, the other coming close and watching both with wary eyes. Both limped on wounded legs.

  “What happened to your leg?” he demanded of each of them.

  “He bit me!” the first retorted.

  “He stabbed you!” the other accused. “So you bit me!”

  This Aebyn took a position on Timothy's right at a respectable distance given the situation. It glowered at the other.

  “Wretched monster!” the first Aebyn screeched. Deep blue flames flickered in his eyes.

  “Leave!” The other said.” Leave before Timothy shoots you. If you take another step closer...”

  The two quarreled. Timothy kept his pistol up, sweeping back and forth between them lest he let his arm tighten and give the false Aebyn an opportunity to strike. The gryphon directly across from him shortly began to present a strange behavior. Confusion would cross his face whenever the other gryphon would speak. His ears would twitch, each time to the right and his head would be drawn to follow them, but then he would look back at his opponent and begin shouting again, pacing like a caged lion.

  Timothy closed his eyes. The gryphon across from him was shouting. He stopped. The gryphon at his right... the voice came from behind him. He spun and fired into the shadowy nothing behind him. Aelengy's pained screech of rage shook dust from the walls and forced Timothy to cover his ears, dropping the pistol. Aelengy surged forth from the darkness, crashing into Timothy and carrying him into the ground with the force of a coursing mountain river. Three white hot points of pain curled into Timothy's flesh like a butcher's hooks. He screamed, trying to will his arm to lift his sword.

  The world rolled in a sickening blur as Aebyn lunged onto Aelengy's back with white light trailing from his wings. The dusk tracer screeched in pain and fury, turning to throw the much smaller gryphon off.

  “There is nowhere to run, little lighthound,” Aelengy taunted, stalking toward Aebyn.

  “That's enough,” a familiar voice commanded.

  From the floor Timothy groaned, calling out Kanes' name. “Kanes... Kanes! Don't let... don't let him kill Aebyn...”

  The detective stood over him, weapon drawn. “You're under arrest for the murder of Samuel Raimes.”

  Timothy let his sword slip from his hand. It landed beside him with a clatter against stone. Kanes kicked it away and looked up, his pistol still trained on Timothy.

  “Get off him,” he commanded to someone on the other side of the room.

  Through blurry eyes, Timothy could see D
onovan Skalde coming in from the antechamber, accompanied by several men. Their voices came dull and distant and he could not make out what they were saying.

  “They shot me!” Aelengy hissed, his voice wild with indignation.

  “I'll shoot you again if you don't get off that thing!” Kanes barked. “He's a witness and I won't have him harmed.”

  “Don't let... Skalde... kill Willoughby...” Timothy said, trembling all over. He felt like he was sinking into the stone beneath him. The world was going dark around the edges. “They have Willoughby... Kanes... they have him...”

  Timothy mumbled his warning in the vain hope that the detective could hear and understand. Everything was dark. He felt cold. So cold...

  Chapter 30

  The Soldiers of the Last Watch

  The Court of Miracles, Alsimor, Shard Uncharted

  The creature carried a lantern, picking her way through the streets like a scavenger. Then she came across a much smaller dragon, sickly and huddled up in the cold. It cried out when she reached it and I thought at first it had slain the miserable thing, but instead it had lifted it out of the snow and held it close to her chest. The lantern glowed with a strange light and when she left the dragon was restored from its sickness.

  Statement collected from an accountant watching the snowfall with his wife.

  The dark hour had come clear and cold. Sapphire's breath came in thin puffs of steam as she trudged along between her jailers. Leading her was the injured one, Blaze, his compass chain clinking quietly in rhythm to the clicking of his claws against the smooth stone path. Another warp singer followed behind her, bulky and even taller than Blaze. This one carried a heavy sword across his back that tempted Sapphire to question whether he could ever hope to fly and still carry it, but she warded her heart against this hope. He would simply the drop the sword and be more than enough on his own to wrest her from the sky.

  They led her quietly through the courtyard, the white tower looming above, rising into an impenetrable veil of shadow. The top she could only see in faint outline beneath a soft purple hue that flowed, faint and true at the pinnacle. All around were the gardens, lit here and there by brightstone lamps that twinkled like starlight. Colorful flowers had been meticulously arranged in swirling patterns all around the base of stalwart fruit trees. Sapphire struggled to imagine her captors bothering with such frivolities. At least, not the one behind her. She stole a glance back at him meeting his stony violet eyes.

  “Eyes forward,” he said. His words came with the authority of the mountain speaking to the river and telling it where it might flow. Sapphire snapped her attention forward, feeling her heart racing anew. Blaze looked back at her, worry flashing through his eyes for just a moment. Had Sapphire not turned back so quickly, she would have missed it, seeing only the stern look of concern he now wore.

  “It is not much further,” Blaze said.

  “She does not need to know that,” Sword answered.

  “What she needs to know and does not need to know is not your concern,” Blaze answered with a cold edge.

  Sword grumbled discontent and said nothing more.

  Beyond the gardens was utter blackness. Sapphire used what little magic the focus had not drawn away to see through the dark. A white stone building lay before them. It was two stories high with a balcony over the first floor and a fountain upon it that babbled quietly. Violet eyes watched from beside the balcony fountain. Brightstones flared to life as they approached, illuminating a flight of white marble stairs that ascended onto the elevated courtyard. As they reached the top of the stairs the rest of the palace came into view, rising back into the dark alcoves of the craggy hills of the mountainous foothills surrounding Alsimor.

  “You are standing in the Court of Miracles,” Blaze informed.

  “Yes...?” Sapphire asked quietly. She was unfamiliar with this particular aspect of Alsimor's legend. Granted, she had not expected to find warp singers living in Alsimor either. Most assumed they lived in dark caves in high and lofty mountains, or had somehow found their way into the lost homeland of the luminarians, the Ascended Valley. For her own part, Sapphire had always believed they did not really exist, but that if they had, they would surely have holed up in some forgotten ruin of the first age, much as she had in Havek with Dawn.

  “Wait here,” Sword instructed, and Sapphire did. Blaze went on ahead for a moment, disappearing into a cloak of darkness so thick that Sapphire found her magic-enhanced vision could not pierce it. She tried harder, the white stonework taking on a hazy glow, but the veil would not draw back. Perplexed, she lifted her paw and summoned a small orb of white light into her waiting claws. It was the simplest of luminarian spells, one of the few that nearly ever dragon could call their own. The soft white aura glowed bright enough to cast light across the terrace, across the fountain where Compass quietly conversed with three others. The first was Lantern, whom Rain had called Tempest. Her light shone back like a distant lighthouse flame, nearly smothered by whatever power had interfered with Sapphire's own inner light. The second, Sapphire barely glimpsed. Female, dark-colored, tall as Tempest but sinewy and lithe and then there was darkness again, pain shooting through her as Sword scooped her up easily with a single paw and flung her hard into the ground. She coughed, the little light going out and dropping the world into darkness. Metal sang as Sword drew his weapon. Sapphire could only hear as it swept through the air.

  “Wait! WAIT!” Blaze called, his voice getting louder, claws scraping frantically along the stonework.

  Wind washed over them in a wave as Blaze intervened. Sapphire could feel his feathers brush across her face as he slid between her and her would-be executioner.

  “This has gone too far,” Sword said gravely. “You should not have brought her here.”

  “She came to us,” Blaze hissed back. “She came to us.”

  “Do not delude yourself into believing this to be providence's hand,” Sword said. “Madness does not suit you.”

  “Providence or not, I will not pass up this opportunity. I do not care what Brazen thinks of it. If it suits your desire you may go and tell him what I have done. I shall proceed because it is what is right for all of us.”

  Sword growled lowly. Brightstone and candles flickered to life all around the court. Sapphire slowly pushed herself up off the ground, casting an apologetic look in Blaze's direction. He looked relieved until he met her eyes, which then furrowed into frustration and anger. He stepped over to her and whispered into her ear. “Do not do that again.”

  “What is going on here?” Sapphire asked. “What do you want with me?”

  The others had arrived from the back by then: two females and an older-looking male with a bearded chin. Aside from the already familiar Lantern was the thin, lithe female with much darker violet marks than Lantern. Her pelt too seemed a darker shade of white, tinged with the dark purples that marked them all. A jar of blue fire hung in amulet form around her neck. Like Blaze, the females each wore a piece of broken songshard. Sword too likely had one, Sapphire assumed, but found her neck felt stiff when she thought to look his direction.

  I am not a coward.

  She forced herself to look his direction and saw that he too wore a jagged songshard across his broad chest. He sat near the stairs, resting against his sword with the tip buried in the soft earth. His eyes darkened but he said nothing. Sapphire felt her own eyes narrow as fur stood along her spine. She turned her focus back to the others, lest she give him excuse to attack her once again.

  Fire Jar was talking to the older warp singer in holharren. He gave her a confused look and she switched to pendrian for a few moments, saying “Are you sure that is where you hid them?”

  The old drake nodded and she switched back, making it hard for Sapphire to follow. She picked out a few words here and there, something about 'place of safe-keeping' and a woman, a human woman in particular. The old drake finished answering her questions, then hanged his head with a melancholy look and a s
igh that heaved through his entire body.

  “Are we prepared?” Blaze asked.

  In answer, Tempest approached the brazier and opened her lantern. At the whim of her hand, fire flowed out of the lantern in a stream and cascaded over a pile of dark coals like a waterfall crashing into the boulders below until the coals came to life, glowing soft red and orange. The light caught the old drake's attention and he looked up from his unvoiced regrets, sighing wistfully at the dancing flames. Fire Jar rested a comforting paw on his shoulder. For a moment their eyes met and then he returned to his quiet contemplation of the floor. Fire Jar watched him with pity in her eyes.

  Blaze crossed in front of Sapphire, whispering quietly to Fire Jar.

  “Is he going to be able to handle this?” Blaze asked in quiet tones. His voice was strong but compassionate and he gave the older dragon a look more sympathetic than angry. Fire Jar's answer was too quiet and quick for Sapphire to discern meaning other than that the words were in holharren.

  Eventually the older dragon shrugged his wings and harumphed loudly enough to gain everyone's attention.

  “I am fine,” he insisted. “I can handle my own affairs.”

  “Jasper...” Blaze started, but the old dragon waved him off.

  “No, no,” he said. “I've known this day was coming. God knows it. I never should have left all that behind. I'll speak to her.”

  Sapphire watched the exchange in silence, her curiosity enough to silence her quick tongue. The old warp singer struggled with his satchel until Fire Jar helped him open and it lift out a carved white stone, polished to such a fine finish that the firelight's reflection danced across it. Blaze motioned for him to wait.

  “What is your name?” Blaze asked. Suddenly Sapphire found herself the center of attention again. She struggled between answering in falfarren or if she should make a try for holharren and risk sounding a simpleton. All eyes were expectant of her answer.

  “I am Sapphire Nightsong,” she said, trying to sound braver than she felt.