The Sword of Shadows

by Adrian Cole

  “And yet,” mused the Voidal, “the Dark Gods have sent me here. For what reason, do you suppose?”

  “I have been alone with my universe for timeless ages. Your identity, your past, are unknown to me. If I knew these secrets, I would impart them to you, even though that would seem to be angering these Dark Gods. Yet I do sense that you are here to aid me, rather than to contribute to my undoing.”

  The Voidal nodded. “The Dark Gods seem cruel and unwavering in their purpose. Yet my fractured memory suggests that those they destroy work for evil ends. Perhaps they seek to undo Ubeggi.”

  “All gods curse him and seek to destroy him, for he seeks to destroy them.”

  The dark man mused on that. The riddle would not be answered until the battle began. Below him now he could see movement on the plain. Like a mighty column of ants, the vast host of Mitsujin was approaching.

  “I will begin it,” said Verdanniel. “If I attack them before they reach me, surprise may yet unseat their initiative.”

  The Voidal studied his right hand. It had remained as it was when he had first opened his eyes here, his own hand. He lowered it, instinctively fitting his palm to the grip of his sword. He looked down at the weapon, noticing it for the first time. He knew that the Dark Gods possessed thirteen blades, each with a powerful property. Often when he woke in one of the many dimensions, he wore one of them at his side. And this blade? His hand tightened on the haft, which was cold. With a certainty, he knew that this was the Sword of Ice, though why it should be so was yet another riddle.

  Down on the plain, Mitsujin rode proudly at the head of his army, his confidence ablaze like a sun, his destiny assured. Verdanniel was a peaceful god who had done no more than sleep for millennia. What could such a bloated vegetable offer in the way of resistance to such an oncoming army of fanatics? Mitsujin was soon to know.

  The Voidal saw the van of the army clearly now. At the feet of the Tree Citadel something strange was happening. The land was flat, but odd hummocks were moving across it like ripples on a pond, very slowly. These grew in number to become a procession of barrow-like humps, spreading outward to meet the front ranks of the army. Verdanniel was defending himself.

  Mitsujin was the first to see the green waves approaching. His horse reared up as though sensing some awesome, primal force at work. It looked as though huge burrowing creatures were coming upon the army. Mitsujin drew his gleaming blade and whirled it defiantly. The first hummock shook the earth and then its crest split open like a ripe fruit. From out of it shot a curling root, three times thicker in the middle than a man’s waist. It flicked across the heads of the warriors and lashed down at them. From a score more of these undulating hummocks, tendrils burst, lashing at the army with their slender whip— tails. The warriors cut into them wildly, relieved to be in a battle, thriving on the confusion.

  Only the savage ferocity of the fanatics saved them from a terrible mauling by these whiplash roots. Men tumbled from their steeds as the ground heaved like a sea swell. Mitsujin sought a high place on which to rally his men, but the ground kept altering. He was forced to defend himself. The roots, however, cut up easily in spite of their girth. Verdanniel strove to keep as many of the tendrils attacking as he could, but they were being systematically hacked apart, Mitsujin’s army organising itself efficiently under its many chiefs.

  The Voidal sensed the agony coursing through the entire Tree Citadel as it sent out these roots to defend itself. Presently he noticed two new factors in the battle. Firstly, a dark cloud scudding quickly across the battlefield, fanned by an astral wind. From out of this pall dropped scores of figures. Secondly, the Voidal saw what looked like a small moon hovering high up in the blue, a silent observer.

  The leaves around the Voidal trembled with fear and the bough on which he stood shivered. “Fire elementals!” said Verdanniel, horrified. “And above us, Ubeggi watches like a hawk preparing to dive. There is nothing more destructive to me than fire!”

  “I must join the battle,” said the Voidal. “Can your creatures set me down amongst the fray?”

  Verdanniel marshalled a number of his floating creatures and the Voidal caught hold of the tendrils that hung beneath them. He clung on as they drifted out over the great drop, spiralling down with their human load.

  Mitsujin gave a hoarse shout of joy when he saw the terrible allies that Ubeggi had sent him. Taller and thinner than men, the fire elementals sliced about them with blazing rods that charred and burned the roots that were still bursting up from the earth. The elementals took a frightful delight in setting ablaze the roots, driving them back into their burrows. The earth was scorched and fires began to lap forward in a yellow tide towards the Tree Citadel, the base of which was now no more than a mile away.

  The Voidal dropped down in the thick of the battle, pulling out the Sword of Ice. It was evident now how he must use it. The warriors around him were too busy defending themselves to question him, thinking him another of the allies sent by Ubeggi, for they expected no men in this world, only Verdanniel’s creatures. The dark man made his way through the dead and the struggling to one of the fire elementals. It stood a head taller than him and its scaled armour steamed.

  The Sword of Ice hissed through the air and cut deep into the trunk of the snarling being, drinking deep of the elemental energy. The fire fiend screamed in a terrible fashion as it felt all the heat sucked out of it by the blasting fury of a frost colder than the void between universes. It turned a look of concentrated agony on the man who had seared it.

  “Voidal!” it spat, collapsing. The dark man rushed forward to the next of the fire elementals, but already they were wary of him and the devastating weapon he bore. Verdanniel’s roots were all slithering away in retreat, crippled by the fires, but from the skies there now fell countless numbers of the tree creatures. From small sacs beneath them there burst clouds of poison seeds. Choking cries of alarm went up from the warriors beneath. Fire elementals tossed blazing balls up at the clouds and sheets of flame engulfed many of the creatures.

  Several of the fire fiends converged on the Voidal, their glowing rods thirsting for him. He cut at them with the Sword of Ice and they drew back in mad-eyed horror, knowing its colossal power. Two more of them died in shrieking agony as they felt the killing bite of the ice weapon. But one of them ran in behind the dark man in triumph and crashed his rod down on the Voidal’s shoulders. Flames licked upwards at once and in a moment the Voidal had become a human torch. Yet still he attacked. Astounded, the fire elementals pulled away. Mitsujin’s warriors fled from the burning man, waiting for him to fall, but he did not. He could not.

  Holding his weapon before him, he let it suck into it the flames that formed the blaze about him, and like a candle snuffed by a breeze, the fires disappeared. In the vacuum, it was clear that the Voidal was unmarked. It was not to be his fate to perish here, just as he had known. He looked up. Many of the fire elementals had taken to the air, buzzing like angered hornets. They vented their anger and frustration on the clouds of plant creatures, frying many of them, sending the scalded vanguard back to the Tree Citadel in a second defeat. Beyond the elementals, the Voidal could see yet more clouds of them bursting in from the astral, fanned by the anger of the Weaver. The Voidal could never hope to stem the flow. Verdanniel needed far more help than he could provide.

  From the ranks of the warriors, Mitsujin came into view, swords a-gleam. He stared at the Voidal, his face a malign war mask, emblazoned with killing fury. “Who are you that opposes us?” he snarled.

  “Go back through your gate to Oshotogi and ask forgiveness of the gods you have deserted,” the Voidal answered.

  Mitsujin sneered derisively. “Go back! When we stand on the brink of victory? Ubeggi favours us now. See, his eye watches us. You go back to your Tree lord, man of shadows. Tell him that when we have drained him, we will make of him the greatest pyre in history!”

  The Voidal shook his head, stepping toward the warlord. To kill him migh
t end this war, for the warriors would almost certainly disperse like a serpent with no head. But as he moved, he recalled a part of the Dark Gods’ decree: he could not die, neither could he kill. He had destroyed the fire elementals with the Sword of Ice, it was true, but could he kill a man? On his bizarre wanderings, he had struck down other creatures, but never a man. Did Mitsujin know this?

  The warlord met the Voidal’s attack with a grim smile. The Sword of Ice and the curved blades of the former met and clanged. Both swordsmen fought for supremacy, but they were too well matched. Around them the warriors watched, agog at the ferocity of the combatants, none daring to interfere. Although Mitsujin cut at the Voidal many times in that tireless contest, he could not make a killing blow, though five times he was certain that he had done enough to kill him. He drew blood, but the black cloak of the dark man flapped about him, obscuring the view of any damage inflicted. Likewise, the Voidal bettered the guard of his opponent more than once, but somehow his weapon never found its mark. What devious game were the Dark Gods playing?

  As the fight dragged on, its pace still furious, the warriors were not prepared to lose the initiative given them by the fire elementals. They continued their drive on Verdanniel. The Voidal realised his error, for he would remain deadlocked with Mitsujin and thus be unable to protect the Tree god from the elementals, who were closing in. Ubeggi must be smiling. Mitsujin realised too, and it suited him well, for he was glad to keep this stranger at bay while the siege began.

  Again the skies opened to disgorge another force, but this was very unlike the first. Great ghostly shapes towered up like spilling waves after an earthquake. In their aerial foam, frightful visages glared down upon the army, visages that were huge celestial mirrors of the war masks worn by the warriors. And the warriors saw in those baleful glares the familiar anger of the gods of Oshotogi. They had come to exact their revenge on those who had discarded them. The warriors looked to Mitsujin, but he was deadlocked impotently in the struggle with the dark man.

  From the mouths of the gods came great shrieks of howling wind, which took the fire elementals and hurled them back across the plain for miles, shredding them into no more than wisps of smoke. Many more of them burst out of this world and back on to the astral, as much afraid of these gods as of Ubeggi’s wrath. On the plain now, all was chaos. When the warriors of Mitsujin saw their vengeful gods blast aside the aid sent by Ubeggi, they broke their ranks and fled in every direction, most of them rushing back the way they had come. Verdanniel, still smarting from the fires that had threatened to engulf his outer ramparts, withdrew the last of his plant creatures. The army was breaking up before Ubeggi could send reinforcements, if he wished to. No one could know his mind.

  Mitsujin cursed his erstwhile gods aloud.

  The Voidal watched as they descended as hurricane winds upon the disorganised rabble that had been the army. Why did Ubeggi not act? Surely he would send forth some final horror to attack these gods. But the gods of Oshotogi went unchecked in their rage. Mitsujin’s forces were totally demoralised, hundreds of them trampled to death by their companions. Mitsujin’s name was screamed aloud as a curse. In the sky, the false moon that was the Palace of Pain disappeared.

  Mitsujin turned to the Voidal. Now only the dead and dying surrounded them, for the army had already drained away like water into the earth. “Ubeggi has lied! Where is the honour in that! The Weaver of Wars is a false god to desert his servants like this! See, the gods of Oshotogi are jealous masters. They have won back their flock!” the warlord shouted above the scream of the winds.

  The Voidal said nothing, watching the return of the towering cloud masses. Each of the six god-figures, sculpted in thunderheads, pointed down at Mitsujin. “You have chosen another god, Mitsujin,” rolled a voice like thunder. “You perverted our children, and we will chastise them for their faithlessness. They will serve us anew, with more humility. But know this — you, we abjure. We leave you to your new master.”

  They said no more, but simply wafted apart, broken up by the breeze that replaced the dreadful hurricane blasts. Mitsujin watched them dissipate and laughed. “Hah! So they abjure me. And I them.” He spun to face the Voidal. “I have failed. And you have triumphed. You drew me away from my purpose so that my warriors would founder on doubt. Who is your master, dark man?”

  “I serve no man. I am the Voidal.”

  Mitsujin’s voice changed on hearing the name. “Voidal?” he breathed, the word almost inaudible. Terror fought to grip him, but his self-control was remarkable. He kept his face still. “Then I could never have killed you. I should have know that when the fire failed to devour you.”

  “Nor could I have killed you,” returned the dark man.

  “Has Ubeggi the deceitful sent you, then, to shatter my army? Was this all a trick to wipe away my ambitions?”

  “I fought for Verdanniel. Ubeggi did not betray you.”

  Mitsujin turned and looked up at the enormous mass of the Tree Citadel. “Then I will enter that place and take what I sought. Or will you stay me?”

  The Voidal would have answered, but the air fizzed with sudden life. A group of figures stepped into view as though from nowhere. They were astral travellers. Blue Gelders. Orgoom was with them, skulking at the back.

  They walked in silence to Mitsujin, enclosing him in a half circle.

  “Mitsujin!” growled their leader.

  The warlord held up his blades and faced the Gelders as though preparing to engage. “Why has your master failed me? Why did he not smite asunder the gods of Oshotogi? They are nothing beside his powers!”

  Sickle fingers flexed and gleamed.

  “Ubeggi does not manipulate his servants like pieces of wood,” said the spokesman. “He merely sets the board. The pieces must move themselves if they are to amuse Ubeggi. Those who win honours, receive even greater from him. It is not Ubeggi who has failed, but you, Mitsujin.”

  “I?”

  “Your minions fled. If they had truly renounced the gods of Oshotogi and sworn loyalty to Ubeggi, they would have mocked the winds of your old gods, as you did. But they were fickle. True to their old gods when challenged. Such are not for Ubeggi. Why should he aid them? They had their chance.”

  “I remain loyal, willing to serve.”

  “Ubeggi knows this. You are to come with us.”

  The warlord’s face was blank, though his mind worked furiously. Could this be further deceit?

  It was the dark man who supplied the answer. “Forget your dreams of conquest, Mitsujin. Go with these and you will become a pawn for all their words. They say Ubeggi does not manipulate his servants, Look at them! They serve him and pander to his every whim. They are no more in command of their fate than am I.”

  Mitsujin scowled deeply. “Is this so?” he snapped at the Gelders.

  “We are highly placed among Ubeggi’s servants,” said their leader. “To become a Gelder is to become one with Ubeggi.”

  “To become — I am to become like you?” gasped Mitsujin. “I am a warrior! A man! Am I to be emasculated, mutated!”

  “It is an honour to be a Gelder.”

  Mitsujin spat contemptuously.

  Orgoom, who had been silent, gave an involuntary grunt. The others turned to him. “Honour!” he said under his breath. “Curse, more like.”

  “It would seem you have a turncoat in your midst,” the Voidal told the Gelders.

  They glared at Orgoom, flexing their sickles. “Be silent, scum!” hissed their leader.

  “Silent too long. Let me be a worm, or a beetle, or a clod of earth. Not Gelder,” Orgoom went on, muttering to himself.

  “Well spoken,” the Voidal told him. “What say you to this, Mitsujin? Are you still eager to rush to the glory that awaits you?”

  Orgoom shuffled close to the towering warlord. “Want to spend eternity skulking in dark places, feeding on offal and the curses of the omniverse? Want to be loathed more than vermin? Want to be a puppet, not even finding the comfort
of death?”

  “You’ve said enough!” snarled the leader of the Gelders and he jumped forward, tiny blades reaching out to punish. But one of Mitsujin’s blades flashed up and met the sickles. Sparks danced.

  “I’ll answer you with steel,” Mitsujin told the Gelders.

  Orgoom seemed to be mumbling to himself. “I was a man once. Greedy. Thought I’d snatch power. Made me a Gelder. Gave me these blades. Made me do foul things —”

  The Gelders began to laugh, but the sound was a disturbing gurgle in their throats. “Since you spurn us, warlord, we’ll deal with you here.” Their sickles opened and closed as they prepared to cut Mitsujin to pieces. Orgoom drew back, wanting no part of this.

  Mitsujin answered the ugly laughter with a laugh of his own. His weapons were ready. He expected no quarter and no help from the Voidal. The dark man and Orgoom watched, for this was Mitsujin’s fate, not theirs.

  “We will not kill you, warrior, but cut away your manhood and leave you for the worms.” More of the Gelders were appearing, as though Ubeggi had sent them from an invisible vantage point. A score of them closed in on Mitsujin and set upon him, but he attacked them with astonishing speed, slicing off hands and heads with either sword, howling with defiant joy at the contest.

  Orgoom and the Voidal were not to remain onlookers, for another group of Gelders approached them.

  “You cannot die, Voidal, until your appointed time. But we are assigned to meet out a punishment for your part in this abortive war. We will take from you that which the Dark Gods did not.” They laughed, making crude gestures. The Sword of Ice readied, and in a moment he, too, fought furiously. Orgoom stood beside him, suddenly committed himself, for he had rejected the abysmal life he had led.

  The three of them fought bitterly against terrible odds. Mitsujin hewed down innumerable Gelders, but was badly sliced by the slashing sickles that cut the air in efforts to hamstring him. The Voidal was also badly cut, his blood soaking the earth where he fought. Orgoom was nimble and fought well, skipping away from death, cheating it at every wild swipe. But he was not a prime target. The Voidal knew that he, himself, could not be maimed, but Mitsujin’s life did hang in the balance. The warrior was glad of that, though, preferring death to the frightful punishment of the Gelders.