The Shadow Age (The Age of Dawn Book 7)

by Everet Martins

  She thought of the day the Shadow Princess escaped the Shadow realm, giant leathery wings carrying her over the currents of the Far Sea. She would fix her mistake and make it right. The Shadow would be obliterated from the future histories.

  Nyset knew what would come next as she let the powers go. She panted, and sweat trickled down her neck, tickling her back. She hadn’t felt it until now, but her face was spattered in globs of stinking blood. If there had been any Death Spawn remaining in that cavern, they would’ve finally understood the meaning of terror. They wouldn’t have approached for it would’ve only meant ruin.

  Grimbald, Isa, and Senka stared at her, all mouths agape. Isa was the first to close his, giving his head a quick shake. He cleaned the blood from his sword on a rag, dropped it, then sheathed his weapon. “Well done,” he muttered.

  Grimbald frowned. “You couldn’t have saved some for the rest of us?” He heaved out a great sigh, setting his axe to rest across his back. “Was just starting to enjoy myself.”

  “Impressive, Arch Wizard,” Isa said in an appreciative tone. “Your control… is remarkable.”

  “Mis… um, Nyset. You’re incredible!” Senka beamed, sheathing her daggers, and running over to her. Before Nyset could react, Senka had her wrapped in a hug, released before Nyset could hug her back. Her body felt like a piece of hardened wood, hardly a strip of fat on her figure.

  Senka grasped one of her hands in both of hers, slicked with blood, giving it a gentle squeeze. “Thank you, Mistress. I’m sorry, Nyset just feels far too improper for me.”

  “That’s fine, Senka. Say what makes you comfortable then,” Nyset said with an approving nod.

  Senka smiled, releasing her hand, eyes going wide at seeing she had covered Nyset’s hand in blood. “Oh no, I’m sorry!” She produced a small cloth from her pocket and started vigorously rubbing at the stain.

  Nyset let her, not overly pleased with the tacky feeling between her fingers. “That’s alright, Senka. Let’s see to the Black Furnaces.”

  Senka bit her lip, stuffed the soiled cloth back in her pocket, and nodded as she turned to face the stairs.

  “Lead the way,” Nyset offered.

  “Right.” Senka froze for a moment, steeling herself for what may lay in the depths.

  Beside Senka, Grimbald peered about, scanning the tops of dunes and shimmering shadows. Isa rubbed the back of his neck, staring down at a Death Spawn corpse.

  She saw there were maybe fifty corpses strewn about the wastes. Narrow plumes of dark smoke curled from the bodies slain by Nyset’s chain lightning, filling the air with the stink of bad meat. Some had been thrown farther than she could’ve imagined. A few were almost at the peaks of the surrounding dunes. Scores were missing limbs. Many were heaped upon each other. They were twisted wrecks, once men before being converted by the Shadow’s curse.

  Senka started onward toward the stairs. She stretched her arms out to her sides and traced the walls of the sandstone entrance with her splayed fingers. As she traveled farther into the Black Furnaces, she held her fingers there, caressing the rough-hewn walls. Senka faded to a shadow, and Nyset came in after her, the soft hiss of her finger meeting her ears.

  The wind was lost in the darkness and trapped in the world of the sun. Her boots crunched through ancient stones, turning them into dust. Nyset summoned an orb of fire to float by her shoulder, casting the narrow stairway in a flickering glow. She saw the stone was a beautiful pattern of alternating reds and whites, forged from countless millennia of sand and water cementing together.

  Isa followed after her, and Grimbald took the back, grunting as he compressed his form to fit through the narrow space. The edge of Corpsemaker squealed against rock. “This place is fit for no man. I am curious to see the furnaces… but that smell, by the Dragon it could kill a hog.”

  “You can wait outside if you’d like,” she threw over her shoulder. Nyset had successfully ignored it until then. The stench of Death Spawn became a weight on the air, so thick it felt as if she should’ve been able to see some evidence of its presence. Her stomach spasmed with the urge to gag. It took all of her focus to press it down.

  Isa snorted. “Smells like they’ve been shitting down here for years.”

  “Likely have, though how they survive this long with nothing to eat is a wonder,” Grimbald replied.

  Senka reached the bottom of the stairs, slowly raising her hand to peel off her mask. “They found things to eat.”

  “They did?” Nyset reached the bottom of the stairs, eyes following Senka’s gaze to find weapon racks not filled with weapons but scores of writhing Death Spawn. “Each other,” Nyset breathed. They were secured in a haphazard manner, some properly bound with rope at the wrists and ankles to the racks, others pinned through the wrists with daggers and swords. All bore some manner of bites, most with gangrenous limbs chewed to the bone. How they didn’t bleed out or die of infection was a mystery. A few started moaning, one shrieked with the Dragon’s rage, teeth thick with slime, the others wordlessly slumping in their bonds.

  Grimbald and Isa fanned out from the stairway, taking the flanks around Nyset and Senka.

  “It seems men and beast are not unalike when it comes to survival,” Isa said, sheathing the sword he had apparently drawn.

  Grimbald shook his head and spat out the corner of his mouth. “We should put them out of their misery. Care to do the honors, Ny? Could use a bit more light in here.”

  “No. If you think it smells now, it’ll be far worse with their flesh roasting in this oven. Isa, Grim, make it quick.” She flicked her fingers towards the racks. “They’ve suffered long enough.”

  Grimbald grunted in annoyance while Isa sighed.

  Nyset drew on a bit more of the Dragon, conjuring four more balls of fire. She set them to float a few feet above everyone’s heads in the shape of a pentagram, dispelling some shadows and darkening others.

  The floor was all interlocking stones littered in towers of feces, refuse, discarded weapons, and bones picked clean. There were mouldering rags, broken swords, pitted spears, and ruined heaps of armor. The Black Furnaces formed an expansive cavern, roof stretching beyond the reach of light. The yawning mouths of the sputtering furnaces dimly lit the room, twelve in all, two columns of six. They crackled and burned with white hypnotic Dragon fire. The fires were cast by a group of twenty wizards working in tandem, long before the Age of Dawn and at the end of the Age of War. The fires exhausted into iron piping reaching into the darkened ceiling, and out the sands high above. Their thin plumes of smoke were quickly dissipated by the desert’s winds and thus invisible to the untrained eye.

  “At last, the famed Black Furnaces. Remind me again why the wizards thought it was a good idea to put a bunch of forges below a mountain of sand? Not exactly a robust structure,” Grimbald mused. He sauntered around the glow of a forge’s mouth, kicked a bone, and sent it skittering into undulating shadows.

  Nyset opened her mouth to respond, but Senka beat her to it. “You do recall the manner of weapons which can be forged here?” The warrior’s hands were planted on her hips, sounding as if she were trying to mute her anger.

  “Magical weapons and armor, I know. But all that sand…” Grimbald pointed at the ceiling with the pick side of his axe. “What if it clogged the ventilation pipes? The whole of the chamber would be filled with smoke, and you’d never find the stairs. Not to mention any invading force could easily block the only exit. If they had the numbers, and well… that’d be a bad day for you.”

  Nyset watched as Senka’s throat started to work in response, mouth opening and closing, lips pressed into a line. For the briefest moment, her eyes bulged, glassy in the firelight. Her expression went limp, and finally, her posture sagged with a sigh. Wearing a half-smile, she bent down and snatched up a length of wood, setting it ablaze on the edge of one of Nyset’s crackling fireballs. Senka met her eyes, cheeks wet with tears, and turned away, marching into the shadows.

  The men pr
edictably missed all of it. Nyset frowned at her back, thinking it prudent to give her some time alone.

  Isa was scowling down at a pile of bones intertwined with a shredded shirt. “I think this was a man once,” he said to himself. He raised his head to regard Grimbald. “Swords are safe in their scabbards, but that’s not what swords are made for.” Somewhere, a stone fell from the ceiling, tumbled across the floor in an echo that stretched for too long. He made to follow Senka’s fading figure when Nyset laid a hand on his arm to stop him. Lowering her voice, she said, “Give her a moment alone, would you? Her father. You remember, don’t you?”

  “I… of course.” Isa nodded at her, brow creased. She thought if he could’ve blushed he would be scarlet. She released his arm and mouthed ‘thank you,’ but he didn’t see it, turning back to face the towering furnaces. A long breath hissed through his nose. “I need to go to her.” And before Nyset could respond, he was marching into the shadows.

  “Did you understand his meaning? About swords in scabbards?” Grimbald asked with a grunt, one hand rummaging in a belt pouch. He produced a golden honey cake, stuffed half into this mouth and offered Nyset the other half. She shook her head, but less at the food and more in disgust at eating with hands soiled with Death Spawn juices.

  Nyset popped the cork on her waterskin and gulped. “What Isa was trying to say, Grim, is that sure, there are great risks to working these furnaces, but they needed to stay hidden because of the quality of weapons they can produce. Given the state of things here, it doesn’t seem this group of Death Spawn had any penchant for working the forges.”

  Grimbald pressed the other half of his honey cake into his bulging cheeks, speaking around the bolus. “Got lucky, Ny. The fight might’ve been worse had they waited here. As the Captain of the Armsman.” He swallowed, then started speaking while he chewed. “I said it before, and I have to say it again. This was an unnecessary risk. The Tower needs you, now more than ever. You going to tell me why I couldn’t send the Armsman to do this?”

  “I have my reasons,” she said with more bite than she’d wished. She crossed her arms, squinting at all those flickering eyes of white flame in the forges. A frown touched her lips. She sighed, regarding him as he brushed golden crumbs from his beard.

  “Grim. I’m sorry. There would be no talking me out of this. I owed Senka, and it’s the least I could’ve done for all she’s done for me— for the Tower. All her sacrifices, her time in Tigeria… I’m sure you understand that she needs closure.” She bit her upper lip. “She hasn’t been back since she fled from here, her home. If you didn’t know, her father gave up his life so that she could live, gave her the time she’d need to escape this very room.” Nyset trailed off and thought of her own parents, their lives rent too early by Death Spawn. But this wasn’t about her.

  Grimbald grunted with a nod. He stared into the fires, stroking his beard, eyes growing distant. The waving light marked the deep scars and pocks lining his face. She remembered when she first met him in the Hissing Gooseberry in Shipton. His skin was as flawless as a new babe’s, confidence always wavering. How he had changed. She wondered then how his life would have been if she, Walter, and Baylan had stopped in a different tavern. Would he still have his Pa? Would Juzo still have converted half of the village into Blood Eaters, forcing Grimbald to slaughter his own? These were paths that led to nowhere.

  “There are other reasons too.” Nyset cleared her throat, irritated from smoke that hadn’t found its way up the ventilation shafts. “I want to avoid unrest in New Breden and the realm at large. If an adventurer made his way here and survived the encounter, returning to tell of what he saw. If the denizens knew there were Death Spawn in the world after they thought it safe… well, for now, I see no reason to dispel the illusion of safety. People are still healing. All that tragedy from the Shadow War has left a scar on the world. It’s hard to believe four years have passed since the Shadow God’s fall, but it feels like only months.”

  Senka identified the remains of her father by a notable dent in his skull and by the length of his figure. They were mostly intact, the only bones missing were the ribs where Dressna had driven her hand through his torso. Senka asked for solitude while she collected his remains and had sent Isa back to the group. She worked his bones into a large leather sack for what was apparently a ritual of respect for the deceased. She said no one but her should see his body, ensuring his spirit was peaceful in the Shadow Realm.

  While his remains were collected, the others trudged their way to the surface. The desert had already reclaimed the majority of the dead. Small dunes formed over their withered bodies and the occasional limb rebelliously stood against the mounting sand. It wouldn’t be more than another hour before all evidence of their passing would be erased. The Nether was life accelerated.

  Nyset traveled via a portal to the Tower and back to the Nether, retrieving a sun shelter in the Tower’s stores to shield them from the weather. Isa and Grimbald pitched it, beige and constructed with a heavy canvas weave. Nyset drew on the Dragon and channeled wind to carve a hole in the sands large enough to accommodate Senka’s father. She did her best to make it symmetrical but gave up as the sands continuously collapsed inward.

  Nyset, Isa, and Grimbald gathered under the shelter, silently waiting for Senka to emerge from the Black Furnaces. Grimbald gave the shelter an appraising glance, adjusting one of the support poles. The shelter looked like a curved dome that had been sliced in half, its walled side flapping against the wind.

  Some time passed, maybe twenty minutes by Nyset’s guess, when Senka finally emerged from the Black Furnaces a moment before Nyset was going to go in after her, wondering if she was well. She stopped where the threshold of stone met the spiraling sands, one arm clutching the leather bag and the other grasping her collar. Her eyes were downcast, cheeks red as if she’d been rubbing them.

  “Mistress,” Senka said, voice a whisper in the wind. She raised her eyes to meet Nyset’s, her tears dry now. The wind sliced fire from the east and sun burned crimson, filling the air with heat. Nyset felt her own eyes pooling with wet. She could only stand there, rooted to the shelter. The piece of her that would’ve known what to do to comfort Senka had been lost with Walter’s death, replaced by a glacial wall. To endure that pain again, having her heart torn beating from her chest, was something she could not bear. Sealing away that part of herself, it seemed, had unintended repercussions.

  Nyset got herself to leave the shelter and embraced Senka. She knew the action but did it without heart. She knew that she should say some consoling words, but couldn’t settle on the right ones. Perhaps they had gone with Walter too. So, she said nothing and held her.

  Senka didn’t move to hug her back but made no effort at getting away either. Nyset felt arms on her shoulders, the scent of cedar. Grimbald wrapped them both in a great bear hug. “We’re all so very sorry for your loss, Senka,” Grimbald said soberly. “I know I can’t say exactly how you feel, but I know it hurts.”

  Senka sniffed back new tears. “No. I thought… I didn’t know what I would think. I’m sorry— I can’t.” She shook her head, pulling away. “Let’s be done with it.” She adjusted the bag on her shoulder, clattering the bones within. She marched from Nyset and Grimbald, unceremoniously dropping the bag of bones into the hole. She gazed down with a few nods, licking her lips.

  Isa remained back in the shelter, massaging his temples as if this was delaying him from an important meeting.

  For a reason Nyset couldn’t place, this scene brought back the day of Walter’s funeral. She’d watched countless funerals since then. Why was this one any different? Nyset numbly watched as Senka proceeded to sprinkle vial after vial of poison into Sinred’s grave, mumbling words she couldn’t discern. Nyset was paralyzed by grief, breaths only coming in with conscious effort. Her stomach hurt. Her lips contorted into a fierce grimace. There was something about seeing her friend in so much pain that reached deep inside of her and wrenched at somethin
g crucial.

  Senka drew a dagger, bringing it high to catch the light, then drove it down into her own arm. Senka winced, and Nyset reached, mouth falling open. Senka dragged the blade onward, carving a line of red from her wrist to her elbow.

  “Senka!” Grimbald shouted.

  Isa raced toward her. “No! Senka! What are you—”

  “Don’t. Please, Isa. I must do this, the ways of the Scorpions.” Senka’s face was streaked with tears, bloody palm raised to stop him.

  Isa’s fingers fluttered at his sides, neck muscles twitching. He complied with her wishes and then rubbed at something that had apparently landed in both of his eyes. Grimbald tried to stride past him, but Isa caught him by the wrist. “Let her be,” Isa growled through clenched teeth.

  “You’re going to stand here and let her die?” Grimbald circled his wrist to break Isa’s grip, a scowl showing behind his beard.

  With the speed of a viper, Isa re-gripped Grimbald’s wrist as he marched for her. “Grim. She needs this. We have to respect her wishes.”

  Grimbald’s mouth opened to protest but then closed with a reluctant nod. “Why? This is mad,” he breathed, lowering his head.

  Senka watched Isa as her gushing blood spattered onto the bag. She walked around the grave, drawing a ring with her blood on its perimeter.

  Through blurred eyes, Nyset watched Senka complete the ritual, a part of her knowing her friend must carry on her culture’s tradition, despite the risks. It was enough to make her heart burst. The pallor of Senka’s cheeks went ashen as the thirsty sands swallowed her blood.

  Senka openly wept as she started on her third revolution. Ruby beads of red fell from her wound, catching the sun with an ethereal brightness. Fat tears fell from her jaw. Once the ring of blood was thrice completed, she collapsed on her side with a sickening thump.