The Shadow Realm (The Age of Dawn Book 4)

by Everet Martins

  Grimbald groaned. He had felt a lot like he was rotting wood on the inside, ever since he had left his dad to man the Hissing Gooseberry alone. His Pa had sacrificed a lot to help him achieve his dreams. And he had, now a captain of the Midgaard Falcon. Now half-way across the realm, digging holes and cutting wood. Some things never changed. “Just a little deeper and we can start with the frame. We’ll build on the piles of wood, nail it and peg it, thick beams to keep it off the mud. Maybe use cedar planks for the floor if we can find some. It’ll give the place a nice smell.”

  “Anything but urine and shit sounds swell to me. Smells like I’m digging into a latrine over here.”

  “Maybe you are.”

  Juzo took a deep inhale through his nose and frowned.

  Nyset rode up on a jet-black gelding, its hair gleaming in the breaking sun. He’d been so lost in making measurements, he hadn’t noticed her approach. She nimbly dismounted, even with all those glowing silks. She looked tired, deep lines around her lips and eyes puffed with red. Her nose was still bloated and purple from yesterday’s incident in the Middle. She had denied healing, said the pain was a reminder for her to be less careless. Two armsman had followed behind on mounts of their own, their horses now grazing on the scrub.

  Maybe she had been crying, he wasn’t sure and wouldn’t dare ask. He needed a woman, one like her. Now that Walter wasn’t around anymore maybe… No! A ridiculous idea. He had a duty to his men and the future of the realm. He didn’t have time for luxury. Now was a time of survival.

  “Hey, Ny. Er… Arch Wizard.” Juzo bowed low and spread his arms wide, wolfish grin spreading over his lips.

  “Oh stop, you’re ridiculous.” She walked up to Juzo and punched him in the arm. She planted her hands on her hips and peered into the budding foundation. “Things seem to be coming along well. I can’t wait to move out of my room in the Worthless Fowl. I can’t get any rest with all the racket of a tavern.”

  “Shouldn’t be much longer. I can’t wait to get out of there too.” Grimbald sighed. There was something about people having a roaring good time, while demons were only half a day’s march away that left him mighty unsettled. They were numbing the pain of the inevitable. What use were marks if your soul went to the Shadow Realm?

  “We can clear the land over here for training,” Nyset gestured at the rest of the plot west of the construction. “I’ll see if the armsman and… Grim, think your men could help?”

  “They’ll help. If they give you any trouble.” He jabbed a finger into his chest. “Tell them I said so.”

  The two armsman looked at her for a moment, likely at their mentioning.

  “Let’s put a smith here, a workshop there, an office over here.” Nyset walked to the back of the pit directing with her arms. She tapped a finger on her lips. “We’ll have to find a mason to make a chimney and a stone forge. Start with one and expand as we get more recruits. We’ll have a balcony that runs along the perimeter in the Helm’s Reach fashion. Maybe decorate it with whores and drunks to fit in.”

  “It should have a well sloped roof to keep all this rain off. An attic for storing food would be useful, given we won’t have a ground room.” Juzo drew the shape of the roof in the air with a ghastly finger. He was looking in need of sustenance, hopefully not his blood.

  Grimbald could see the picture taking form in his mind “Think we can do that.” He scribbled their ideas on parchment resting on a wide board, noting rough dimensions. “Just an issue of having enough marks for the tasks, especially for the whores. How are our coffers looking?”

  A violet lizard emerged from a bush, tongue sucking a fly out of the air.

  “We’ve already blown through what little we cobbled together between us. Suppose marks weren’t particularly useful when running for our lives.”

  “No.” Grimbald said, sharpening his charcoal nub on the edge of Corpsemaker.

  Nyset walked over, examining his sketch. “You’re not only a carpenter. You’re an artist, an architect!”

  Grimbald paused before his next saw cut, frozen, blood flooding through his limbs and cheeks. He scratched the back of his neck, insatiably itchy.

  “Can you make my office a little larger? Room for a bookshelf would be great.” She pushed her finger into the square on the sketch that would be her office, dotting it with a smear of mud.

  “Uh, sure.”

  “I wish I had something to pay you with, Grim.”

  He thought a kiss would be acceptable, welcome even. What was wrong with him? He had to get control. Seeing her smile at him was a crushing delight. Where was this coming from? His skin prickled at seeing her eyes, his breath catching. She was Walter’s, but Walter was dead. She would have to move on eventually.

  “Grim?”

  He realized he had been staring at her, his jaw held stupidly open. He quickly averted his eyes. “Just glad to be here,” he managed. How long had he been staring?

  “So,” Juzo said between shoveling out globs of mud. “I might have come upon some marks.”

  “Oh yeah? How?” Nyset said.

  “I don’t think you want to know.”

  “Let’s hear it.” Nyset said, crossing her arms and smiling somewhat hesitantly.

  There might be trouble brewing here. Grimbald found himself wanting to make his way back into the city for more building materials. He had caught enough thieves in the Hissing Gooseberry to know the tone a man took when he was concealing something.

  Juzo shrugged. “Is it really important?”

  “Out with it then.” Nyset nodded pleasantly.

  Juzo soared from the trench in one powerful leap, landing a foot away from Nyset. He would’ve expected Ny to move to give him room. Grim noticed she had dug her feet in, rooted like an old Cypress. He licked his lips and popped the cork from a waterskin. The water was cool in his throat, assuaging the dry tickling.

  “I’m building us an army,” he said as casually as if pointing out that clouds had moved in.

  Nyset stared. “What?”

  “What?” Grimbald grunted, stowing the precious nub of charcoal into his pocket. Grim knew Juzo kept off hours, but this was news to him.

  “You said we needed soldiers, new recruits. Just thought I could help.” Nyset waited for a long minute for him to offer more, blinking. Juzo squirmed, knee bouncing and hands opening and closing.

  “I don’t understand.” Nyset planted a hand on her hip and the other on her narrow chin. “What army? Where? Can you help me understand what you’re saying?”

  “Uh.” Juzo scratched the back of his head.

  “I don’t have time for games, Juzo.”

  “Right.” He exhaled a long breath, seeming to be bracing himself. They were coming soon, the words he knew Ny didn’t want to hear. He could see it in Juzo’s mouth working out where to start. “I—” His mouth moved but words stopped following.

  “Juzo,” Nyset barked.

  “Alright, damn it.” He had the look of a kid caught taking more than his fair share of honey candies. “I’ve been creating surrogates.”

  “Shit, Juzo,” Nyset whispered.

  “What’s a surrogate?” Grim asked. The sun was pressing on him, could feel his hairless head already burning. When had he last had hair? Too long. His tunic felt too hot. He wanted to strip his shirt off. Crests of mud were drying into crumbly dirt, stratified against the sodden earth.

  “New Blood Eaters, under my control.” Juzo met his stare, challenging him with his sinister eye.

  “Shit,” Grimbald breathed, looking down at his boots and finding Juzo’s eye hard to hold. That meant he was murdering, or attacking people. He was making people like him. It wasn’t right.

  “How many, Juzo?” Nyset said quietly, tilting her head back and bathing it in sunlight.

  Juzo started counting on his fingers. “Six.”

  “Six,” Nyset echoed and returned her gaze to him. “Six Blood Eaters.”

  Juzo stammered. “They’ll make amazing fight
ers. They have my speed, strength… healing abilities.”

  “Your hunger for blood,” Nyset cut in.

  Juzo’s white cheeks pinked where his bones protruded. “Hadn’t thought of that, sort of.”

  “How do you plan on feeding them? Please tell me they’re not in the city.”

  “No, not in the city. Give me a little credit, Ny.” Juzo shuffled his feet. “I’ve sent them off to a cave to the west, not too far off. Left them with some, eh— food.”

  “I assume it’s not honey cakes?” Grimbald asked, frowning. He could sure go for a honey cake right about now. He thought plodding off for food at this moment probably wasn’t the wisest idea, given Nyset was a thunderhead. He thought he might’ve even felt the air crackle a little bit.

  “No, not honey cakes. Death Spawn.” Juzo forced an unsure smile.

  “Death Spawn!” Her eyes bulged. “Where are you finding Death Spawn?”

  “Uh, well. Around the remains of the Silver Tower. The forest north of the Tower, to be specific.”

  Grimbald wanted to pretend they weren’t there, not so close. He didn’t want to hear it. He had done a good deal of pretending so far, allowing him the ability to sleep most nights. He didn’t think he would be sleeping well tonight. Memories came back in a torrent, bloody faces and dismembered bodies of Falcon soldiers. Their bloody faces flashed and engulfed his vision. His great hands curled into fists.

  “You failed me!” An old face baring a helm topped with a red plume screamed at him, face split open down the side.

  “No, no,” he stammered, pressing his palms into his eyes. “Go away now. You can go now.”

  He tried to make himself think of a pleasant moment. He made himself remember camping at Eagle’s Edge with his parents, back when his mother was still alive. The grounds were flat, the boiling sea unobstructed by trees. A red hawk with gray, brown and black tail feathers soared over the smoking water. Her hand was on his neck, massaging it. He and his Pa had worked the axe hard that day, his neck muscles ached. She smiled at her Pa, then at him, her walnut eyes soft with caring. “I love you.” Her voice was a night’s breeze.

  He missed her, he realized. A pit in his chest was dropping into his guts. Pleasant memories were the worst form of self-flagellation. A time that would never be again. A wish for the way things were. The way we remembered things had always been like the edge of an axe from five feet away. A wondrous sight from afar. When you got close, you saw it was marred with imperfections, things you wanted to forget were ever there.

  She was frail now, laying in his parents’ bed. She was so tall the sheet fell short of her feet, leaving them unprotected from the harsh world. She writhed against the sheets clinging to her moist skin. The right side of her face was green and black with rot, a bog of yellow-green pus.

  She had cut herself on a thorn in the garden. Hadn’t thought anything of it. A day later, it was bright red, days after that, yellowed with pus. A week after it was hot as a teakettle and big as an elixir cherry. In two weeks, the infection had spread down into her jaw, up her nose, around her eyes. “This is your fault!” she screamed at him. Her eyes protruded from the sockets, red as fire at the edges. “I told you to trim the fucking roses!”

  Why hadn’t he listened? If only he listened.

  “What do you think, Grim? Grim? You still with us?” Nyset’s voice rang in his head, distant.

  Something rapped against his shoulder. He returned to the present, his eyes focusing down on Nyset’s raised eyebrows. They were fine lines of hair. Was she born like that or was she doing something to make them that way? Her hands were planted on her hips, a touch of scowl on her lips.

  “What do you think?” she repeated.

  “Huh?” He smiled sheepishly. “Well—”

  “Even Grim thinks it’s not a bad idea, right buddy?” Juzo clamped his powerful hand on his shoulder, squeezing too hard for Grimbald’s liking. “Ny, you said so yourself we need an army and we need one fast. Yeah, there are a lot of potential wizards here, but they all need training.”

  Nyset let out a long exhale, arms crossed. There was a pregnant silence. “I don’t know about this. I just don’t know. This… this is all too much.”

  Grimbald peered at Juzo, looking deep into his blood red eye. He wasn’t a bad person. He really did want to help, maybe a little misguided, maybe not. Grimbald had never felt so much perpetual doubt and uncertainty in his life until he had met Walter.

  He wasn’t good at making friends or keeping them, especially male friends. He always seemed to do something to ruin things. He had friends now and it felt nice, even in the midst of all this chaos. “I agree with Juzo,” he blurted out.

  “You do?” Juzo beamed up at him.

  He didn’t. “But I think six will be enough. If they’re like you, making seven, they’ll give us quite an edge.” Grimbald forced a nod at him. “And if you create more, it becomes harder to keep them, eh fed, right? So I think seven will do fine.”

  Nyset slowly shook her head. “It’s already done then. You can keep them under control? Now and in a battle? They’ll fight?” A lock of hair curled around her perfectly formed ear.

  “Of course, of course,” Juzo said more confidently than Grim thought he should have. “They’ll do whatever I order them to do.”

  “Just like you did with Terar?” Nyset said, her eyes sharp as a blade.

  Juzo swallowed. “That won’t happen. That was different.” His face grew white as bone.

  “Different.” Nyset scoffed. “They’re your responsibility.” She bobbed her brows at him, turned on her heels and slipped onto her gelding. “Regarding the marks, how many did you… acquire?”

  “Enough that we should have plenty to finish the main structure of the building.” He winced.

  “I appreciate the hard work you’ve put into the new Tower. I won’t forget it,” she said to Grimbald and then gave Juzo a cursory glance. She sat like an empress upon the horse, her back rigid and strong as a mountain. She had come into the role of Arch Wizard well, Grim thought. The two armsman followed behind, like dutiful bees protecting their queen.

  There were two other figures on horseback lurking in the distance and staring at them, a mirage in the rising heat. One looked like a vagrant they had to remove from their plot earlier, another an oddly dark skinned woman. He had heard there were dark skinned people to the far east, but had never seen one in person. They seemed to be following along Nyset’s flank. Should he be worried?

  “Thanks for backing me up, Grim. I wasn’t sure you would for a minute there.” Juzo said, climbing back into the trench and letting his coat fall from his shoulders.

  “Yeah,” he said distantly. “You know those two?” He nodded towards them, like big shrubs in the distance.

  “Nope. They seem to be friends from the looks of it.”

  “Shit, forgot how damn good your vision was.”

  “I can give you eagle-eyed vision, healing and strength. All it takes is a bite or two,” Juzo said, heaving a lump of mud from the trench.

  Grimbald’s answer was a weary grunt.

  Chapter Six

  Return

  “Burden of Bravery: Gritting your teeth and pulling your courage forth into the light of the Phoenix, you must sweep your arm over the group to be affected. You coat your allies in a gleaming mantle of strength that bolsters their spirits, making them unafraid of fearsome enemies.” -The Lost Spells of Zoria

  Nyset sent the armsman, Claw, and Senka away. She needed time to think, to be alone with her thoughts. A precious hour was all that she asked for. She knew Claw wouldn’t be far, but far enough that she couldn’t see him was acceptable. She sauntered on her gelding that she had yet to name, gently running a free hand through its mane. She felt an odd sense of calm pass over her chest, as it always did when she came here. Was this what death felt like?

  She was about a quarter mile west of Helm’s Reach. The graveyard was marked by a low dilapidated fence, its wood seeming o
lder than the oldest of bodies buried here. It stretched on for what seemed like miles.

  Headstones were packed in tight as rows of good teeth. Trees marked the start of each row. They were almost as old as the realm itself, stretching their twisted limbs to the heavens, tipped with wide octagonal leaves. Choking vines wrapped around tree limbs, using their height to reach the sun. A breeze carried the sobs of mourners beyond. Towards the end of the small fence was an elderly couple kneeling before a grave, their backs to the sun and their fingers interlocked. She found herself clenching and opening her fists, holding nothing but the dank air.

  She licked her dry lips. At what point did a graveyard decide to put a new body on top of an old? It had to eventually given the looks of this place. What did the poor do? She knew some cultures would burn the dead. It was a last resort in Breden, only done if there was a suspicion of transmissible disease. She owed a lot to the Earl. He’d helped her with securing a site for Walter after hearing of his valor at the Tower. She was none too pleased at all the personal debts that were starting to mount. All debts had to be paid eventually.

  She threw a leg off the horse and dismounted, leading it down a narrow graveled path. At its edges, weeds reigned, their domain everywhere but the worn paths and headstones. Someone really should be cleaning that up, she thought, eying the weeds vying for resources. It was disrespectful to the fallen. The gelding’s hooves clomped and hissed through the loose gravel, a strange yet soothing sound in her ears.

  She stopped, her breath catching at almost passing it. Upon the apex of a simple rectangular block of granite was a wreath of wilted, once scarlet, now pink flowers. The disturbed earth where Walter had been buried still hadn’t settled, an overfilled mound of dirt marking his remains. New weeds started sprouting and took advantage of the tilled earth. The headstone had been crudely engraved and read: Here lies Walter Glade of Breden. Fallen while defending the Silver Tower from Death Spawn. She’d have to get that fixed, maybe when marks were more plentiful.