The Shadow Realm (The Age of Dawn Book 4)

by Everet Martins

  “Don’t go running on me, alright?” she said to the gelding.

  The gelding snorted and dropped its head to munch on a bright blue weed. She stepped away from it and released its reigns. She squatted down and sat on her knees. She placed her hands on her belly and took a deep breath, concentrating on the feeling of the air filling her up. “How I wish you were here, Walter.”

  A crack split the air like thunder. Her eyes snapped open and the ground rumbled under her knees. “Now what,” she said with an annoyed breath. She rose up, taking tentative steps away from the headstone as the rumbling grew louder, intense as a volcano blowing. She looked up at it in the distance, a steady line of smoke puffing out from its great mouth. Couldn’t be that, could it?

  Her horse whinnied and backed off, its eyes frantically wheeling around. “Shh” she placed a comforting hand on its neck and seized its reigns. She wished someone was there to comfort her. How long had it been since she felt the tender touch of another human? The Dragon was faithfully within and she gladly embraced it, her eyes growing warm from its internal glow.

  The soil over Walter rumbled and cakes of dirt slid free from the mound. “What’s happening?” She stared at the dirt. There was a roar as if from a cave and the top of the mound exploded. She closed her eyes and dirt rained on her head, under her silks, down her chest and into her boots. She opened her eyes, straining to see, brushing dust from her brows and pebbles rolled from her hair.

  There was a hand, a human hand weakly clawing at the air. It was matted with clumps of earth, sticking to what might have been blood. Undead? Here? No. It was Walter’s hand. She felt sweat prickle out from her eyebrows and upper lip. Hundreds of possibilities tore through her mind. Was it a trap? Had he been buried alive and just came to now?

  She scrambled over the mound, straddling it. “Walter?” She peered around the graveyard, wondering if this was some sort of rouse by an unknown Death Spawn. Empty. Just her, the gelding, and weeds. She tentatively reached out, fingers trembling. Her hand stopped a finger’s width away. This was madness. A trick of her tired mind.

  “Do it!” she snapped at herself. Her clammy hand wouldn’t bridge the final gap to his.

  A muffled groan came from within and her eyes widened, her jaw falling slack. She snatched the hand in both of hers. It was Walter’s. By the gods, it was warm. His fingers clamped like a vice around her palm.

  “By the Dragon, you’re alive.” She planted her boots and tugged, earth hardly shifting. She rose up, her torso bent over and clinging onto Walter’s hand. She jerked her head up to the sky, the sun blurring in her wet eyes. Air, she could free him with air.

  She closed her eyes and directed the rage of the Dragon into the breeze. Gale-force winds abruptly cut through her silks, stung her eyes, and threw her tears across her cheeks. She closed her grimacing mouth as grit speckled her tongue. The gelding let out a nervy snort.

  A tornado of dirt and weeds whirled around her, throwing great clods of earth around the graveyard. The gelding rose onto its hindquarters, whinnied, and vaulted into a gallop. She could find another horse. She forced more of the Dragon’s fury into the cone of air, directing it to dig into Walter’s grave.

  Clods of earth the size of plates whirled up into the air, reaching up at least thirty feet. They were hurled from the apex of the twisting wind, crashing down onto graves and covering them like blankets. Heavy clods wrapped around tree branches, smothered proud weeds, tightly bound by a sea of roots.

  She could see his head, his face, but it was all wrong. She let the Dragon go and it tried to bury her under its pressing exhaustion. She would not sleep now, could not. The whirling air faded, dropping its earthen payloads like a child who had grown bored of playing with the same toy.

  There was blood all over him mixing with the dirt. But how? So much blood. Why was there so much blood?

  She staggered over to him, sobbing, reaching under his arms and dragging him out from the collapsing hole. “Walter! Is it you?” One of her hands slipped on his arm, slicked with blood and grit. She gritted her teeth, pulled with all her strength and yanked him out of the hole. There was a long pause, horribly uncomfortable. She wanted him to say something, anything. There was a chasm between her mind and mouth that she could not see how to cross. “Please,” she whispered.

  He groaned and rolled over onto his side, body convulsing. Blood trickled out from under the muddy bandage over his eye, crossed the bridge of his nose, and pattered into the dirt. There was too much blood for it to all be his. His right arm was poorly bandaged, soddened with scarlet and mud. His back was a canvas of long wound channels, clumps of mud sticking on oozing blood. It looked like he had been tortured by the vilest enemy. Maybe he had been punished by a public lashing. Maybe she just didn’t understand. Maybe she never would. It didn’t matter now.

  “What happened? Is it really you? Shit!” She wiped a dusty hand down her lips.

  “Nyset,” he whispered.

  She hurriedly tried to get the waterskin off her shoulder, getting snagged in her ridiculous silks. She cursed, finally getting it untangled and popping the cork. She lowered it to his mouth and he started drinking. Down went the water, emptying all of it into his mouth.

  “That’s all I have.” What to do? She wanted to hug him, protect him from everything, but she was afraid of hurting him. Afraid of further driving the dirt into his wounds. “We have to get you back. Have to find someone who can heal you.”

  He grunted and a convulsion ran through his body as if assaulted by icy winds. Blood spurted out from his bandaged arm in a thin jet.

  “No, Walter. No,” she breathed. She wanted to run, to wake up in her bed in Breden. She blinked and rubbed her eyes. Another rivulet of blood pulsed out from his mangled arm. She tore a length of silk free from her dress and wrapped it tightly around his arm to staunch the blood. It wasn’t just a wound. A great piece of his arm was gone, starting from the middle of his forearm

  “Damn it, Walter. Why aren’t you healing?” she yelled at him. “What to do? What to do?” She stared at him and swallowed. Her body froze in place as her mind ran through possible ways of getting him to a surgeon.

  His luminous eye stared up at her wide with panic. “Ny. Nyset. Father? Mother, no don’t make me go. Baylan, why? Oh, why?” He stammered before his voice settled into whisper. “I’ll kill you. You will all taste my vengeance,” he said to her, his eye slitting and then closing. His whisper became a sob, and tears welled through his blood and dirt matted eye.

  Claw. Claw would be around. “Claw!” she screamed. “Claw, I need you!” The wind sighed and clouds tore across the sky. They hid the sun and painted the graveyard in shadows.

  “Alright. I’ll get you out here.” She rolled Walter onto his back, his body limp as a scarecrow. She slid her arms under his armpits up to the crook of her elbow. She closed her eyes and infused her body with the fire of the Dragon. It filled her legs with vigor and the strength of a good night’s rest. “You can do this,” she told herself.

  She started pulling and the muscles in her upper back strained to keep him up. His flaccid legs created twin furrows through the graveled path. The clouds parted and hammered her back with the sun’s radiance. On any other day, it would have been welcome, but not today. Her silks were a choking coffin, trapping every shred of heat seeking escape. She pulled and pulled, taking heaving breaths with each step. Her leg muscles felt like frayed bowstrings, muscles twanging with each pull and feeling that the next would leave her broken. She looked back towards his grave. She was making progress, just a few more steps from the main path.

  Where was Claw? He was her shadow when he wasn’t wanted and nowhere to be found when she really needed him. It seemed she could only get through the most trying of times alone. She groaned and took another lurching step backwards. A root snared her heel and sent her sprawling onto her back. Now would be a fine time for a break. She stared up into the blinding sun. Sweat streamed down her temples and wound
around the outside of her ear. Some sweat made its way into her ear canal and tickled it. She shook her head and extracted her feet from under Walter’s back.

  “Walt? Are you still with me?”

  He moaned, a horrible sound in her ears. It reminded her of her childhood pet cat, Bilbo before he died. He moaned for weeks before making his way to the garden and laying under a small table there. Nyset went to check on him after an hour to find he had passed. She wouldn’t let Walter die. She was the Arch Wizard, damn it.

  “Get up,” she snarled at herself. She should have spent more time on physical conditioning. She had always thought her intelligence would be enough to fix any situation. She vowed to train with Juzo and Grimbald when she got back.

  She got him moving again. She saw a smear of scarlet on her creamy silks and a gleaming jewel of blood in the dirt where she had stopped. “Damn it.” Where was everyone? Busy, like they should be, she answered herself. A pair of crows screamed at each other from a vine-infested tree. She looked up and met an obsidian eye, curiously staring at her.

  Something caught her eye at the tree’s base. A face had edged from behind the trunk and eyes shrouded under a hood studied her. She gently lowered Walter and then flames sparked and burned in her hands. “Show yourself or I’ll turn you and this whole damn graveyard to ashes!” she shouted. The threat felt empty in her ears. She would die before someone would stop her from getting Walter back. She didn’t have time for this. She looked at Walter, took a shallow breath, then glanced back at the pale faced man.

  “You’re the Arch Wizard?” he asked, his voice crisp. His eyes narrowed to lethal slits.

  “I am. Who are you?” Her nails dug into her palms, the flames growing brighter.

  The man took a deft step out from behind the wide trunk. Fiery discs materialized behind Nyset, hovering and awaiting her direction. He held up his hands and exposed his palms, dirt marking the creases. He opened his cloak in a gesture of innocence. Along his belt was a variety of grim weapons. He had a well-used hatchet, a dagger, and a short sword all painted in a flat black. She thought there was a sword or a bow over his shoulder under his cloak. He could’ve ambushed her, she told herself. He didn’t.

  “How can you assure me you are who you say you are?” he asked. “These are tumultuous times.” He let out a breath of air, his arms slowly falling to his sides.

  “I can’t. Still haven’t told me who you are. It’s common news now that the former Arch Wizard is presumed dead. I took her place… as one of the few survivors of the Tower’s siege.”

  “The whispers are true then. My sword is yours.” The man kneeled and bowed his head.

  “What… who are you?” Nyset should have expected something like this eventually.

  The man rolled up his sleeve, exposing a black tattoo on his white forearm. It was the same symbol the armsman wore on their tabards, a faint outline of the Tower and its many spires.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t recognize the meaning.” She slowly shook her head and her lip pulled up on one side.

  The man lunged up to a standing position with feline grace. He tugged his gray sleeve down over the tattoo. “My sect executes the Tower’s command. We are its edge in the night.”

  She stared at him, fighting to keep the fingers that wanted to tap on her lip at her side. She knew what he meant now. They were the Tower’s assassins. The same group that sent Baylan and Lillian fleeing for their lives across the realm.

  “Assassins?”

  The man’s cheeks seemed to redden. “Even the graveyard has ears, Mistress.”

  “Right.” She wanted to peer over her shoulder, but thought it unwise to take her eyes off this man. “Your name?”

  “Isa,” he said with a partial bow, his back rigid as a block of granite. The wind kicked up a coil of dust between them and her silks hugged her legs.

  “Help me with him.” She nodded to Walter. “We need to get him to the surgeon.”

  Isa nodded sharply, then hauled Walter up and hoisted him over his shoulders. He was much stronger than she’d expected. He was lean as the vagrants they had removed from her plot a couple days ago.

  They started towards the city, not more than a mile off, shimmering like a body of water in the mounting heat. For a while, they didn’t speak.

  “Isa, are there any others with you?”

  “My partner perished in the west. We were sent by Bezda Lightwalker to keep our eyes on a small town, raided by Death Spawn four, maybe six months ago. I’ve lost track.”

  “What small town?” She already knew the answer. He flicked his head back, pushed his dark hood off, unveiling a milk white scalp. There was something off about his appearance. Something she couldn’t pinpoint.

  “Breden.” He seemed to wince, but it was subtle. Was he struggling? There was a tightness around the corners of his eyes. Not only was his head hairless, which wasn’t what left her unsettled. It was the utter lack of eyebrows that gave him the look of an unearthly creature.

  Walter softly groaned and his arm started twitching.

  “Something to relax you.” Nyset whispered into Walter’s ear, crusted with blood. She placed a scarlet leaf in the shape of a cross into his mouth. “Almost there.”

  “Sorry for your loss. How did you lose your partner?”

  “When Breden fell. You—” Isa grunted, paused, and re-adjusted Walter. “You didn’t hear?”

  They were passing by a field of barley. Towering clouds cast clumsy shadows over the drying earth. A rush of wind was welcome at her back. It made waves course through the barley and they made shadows glitter. An enormous flag high in the center of Helm’s Reach rode the wind.

  “Hear what?” She needed to hear it again to believe it. It had been too long since she thought of her home.

  “The west has been ravaged, torn apart and ripped asunder. There is little left to be razed. I am unsurprised messengers have not arrived, but no birds? The Death Spawn have taken most of the coast. They were marching to the Great Retreat when I left.”

  Nyset’s legs stopped working. She slowly brought her back leg beside the front. Isa carried on for a few strides before turning to face her, his face impassive. “Mistress? Something wrong?”

  “Breden. You said you were there?”

  He looked at her like she’d just lost her faculties. Perhaps she had. Rivulets of sweat crawled around his chin and a glimmering drop fell towards the ground. It rolled, tumbled, and warped in the air, twinkling with rays of the piercing sun. It fell upon a jagged rock, dashed apart like her heart felt.

  “Burned. There isn’t anything left there, I’m afraid. The bastards even went as far as burning the elixir farms. Going to miss those beans.” He might as well have been a corpse for the lack of empathy on his face. There was no way he could have known she grew up there, left her parents there.

  “Burned,” she repeated, her eyebrows drawing down. “Were there any survivors?” She was speaking she knew, but it felt like someone else’s doing.

  “Myself,” he said. His grin was as murderous as his eyes. “Not too sure about anyone else. I didn’t stick around long enough to find out. They left me a little mark though.” He wrapped one arm tightly over Walter’s back and lifted his shirt with the other, loosening it from his trousers. Nyset’s eyes immediately went to his wound, a poorly stitched gash that ran up from his hip to the bottom of his ribs. The flesh around the wound was an artist’s palette of purples, reds and yellows.

  “It’s all burned then?” she croaked. She didn’t feel like the Arch Wizard anymore. She wanted to run to her mother, bury her face in her soft shirt, inhale the smell of the cows lingering there, and wail out all of her pain. She wouldn’t be there to cleanse her anymore. She knew it in her bones.

  “Mostly. Someone you knew there?”

  “Someone from long ago,” she said softly. Her parents were still there when they left. They were waiting for her. She and Juzo had just spoken of returning to them once things stabilized here. I
sa said other things, what, she wasn’t sure. She felt cold, like the clouds had just dumped their icy payload over her skin and into her soul.

  Nyset closed her eyes and inhaled slowly, ears ringing and drowning out the world. She was the Arch Wizard now, and there was no time for self-pity. How many mothers, fathers, and children would never see each other again because of the Death Spawn? How many wives waited for the return of fallen armsman, never to see the babes still kicking in their aching wombs? Death comes for us all and we were never the least bit ready. She rubbed her eyes, trying to rub away the crushing news. She had to fight for the living and get herself together. Now was not the time for mourning.

  She opened her eyes.

  “Mistress?” Isa was a hand span away from her.

  “Oh!” Her eyes widened, backpedaled, much too close for comfort.

  “Are you well?” he inquired.

  “Fine.” She nodded, catching her breath and holding an arm out to keep at least that distance between them. “Keep going. Did I say to stop?” It was too harsh. She really didn’t want to direct with an iron fist. One thing all the books on leadership said and agreed upon was that ‘leadership changed you.’ She was starting to see how.

  He raised the lump of skin above his eye where eyebrows should have been. “Alright then.” He started moving again, faster now. Maybe being firm was what people needed to take you seriously.

  You’re alive, you’re alive, she thought over and over, unable to take her eyes from Walter’s broken body.

  Chapter Seven

  Unlikely Swords

  “Phoenix Healing: When you place your hand on a wound and a blue-silver radiance manifests from it as you channel Phoenix power. Wounds of the most horrific sort will be miraculously healed. Skin will self-suture, bones will mend and infections will heal. It currently appears that limbs and organs too badly damaged do not heal. Phoenix healing cannot restore life to the dead nor save a man who has lost too much blood.” - The Lost Spells of Zoria