The Sword of Shadows

by Adrian Cole

  Ahead of them was only a heat haze of distance, impenetrable. Elfloq flew on but came back some time later, exhausted. “Need rest,” he muttered. “This filthy sea goes on and on.” Within moments he was asleep.

  The day passed monotonously into afternoon, the crew lulled into torpor. Even the Voidal felt himself drifting close to the edge of sleep, though he was unwilling to succumb. He felt a tug at his arm. It was Orgoom, who had taken a spell at the prow and who had now come back, agitated by something.

  “Master. The waters ahead are alive.”

  At once the Voidal went to the prow himself. Orgoom was right, for there was a disturbance in the waters some distance ahead, the dark surface churning, thick bubbles breaking surface as if gases were being emitted from below. Evergreed must have sensed the change, for the ship began to rise.

  “What is it?” the Voidal asked Vulparoon.

  “I don’t know. But there is danger here.”

  Hardly had he spoken, than the waters burst upward in a shower of filth as something came up from under the sea. All that could be seen through the murky spray at first was a gaping mouth and row upon row of teeth. Evergreed rose sharply, swerving aside as the sea monster wriggled on to the surface, itself like a huge craft, though half the size of Evergreed. Twin eyes blazed, focussing on the ship above it with feral intensity. Its enormous fins slapped at the waters around it, its stiff tail whipping from side to side, an elastic rudder.

  Evergreed surged past the monster, but as the Voidal looked back, he saw the thing turn and lift itself out of the water. Just as Evergreed could glide, so could this creature. In moments it was in the air, long fins flapping, tendrils streaming out behind it like pennants. The bloated body of the creature puffed out, sickly green shot through with purple. The wide mouth opened wider.

  Others were breaking surface, like hounds gathering to the scent, and soon there were a dozen of the gaping aerial fish snapping at Evergreed, trying to keep pace and drive him down to the black waters below. But he increased his speed, managing to stay ahead of the rapacious pack. The Voidal and Scyllarza had drawn their swords, but the monster fish seemed intent on attacking the hull and the fins of their craft. Evergreed had only his speed and manoeuvrability with which to outwit them. Or so they thought.

  One of the fish monsters positioned itself for a head-on attack. The Voidal was in the prow, but drew back as he realised what was happening, knowing that the impact would be tremendous. He felt a movement under the deck, but could not see what Evergreed had done. But the ship made no attempt to swerve aside, as if welcoming the suicidal onslaught of the fish monster.

  The Voidal had reached Vulparoon, who even now held on to the helm. “What is happening?”

  “These nightmares have shown their teeth. Now Evergreed shows his.”

  “Teeth?” the Voidal repeated. There was no further time to deliberate, for Evergreed met the oncoming monster, lifting his prow and ramming it. The whole ship shuddered violently, throwing its crew to the deck, but they scrambled up in moments. The Voidal could see beyond the prow to where the huge fish monster was writhing and shaking frantically as if it had been speared on an invisible length of steel. But, looking over the prow, the Voidal realised that Vulparoon had not exaggerated, for Evergreed had opened a hitherto unseen mouth of his own and fixed long fangs in the head of his assailant. The ship shook the beast as a dog shakes a rat, flesh and scales flying in all directions in a mist of blood.

  Evergreed released his victim and the Voidal watched the mangled creature toppling toward the murky waters below. But long before it could hit, a group of the aerial fish swooped down, fastening their jaws on to their stricken companion and the most ferocious struggle ensued as half a dozen of them sought to tear it apart. The dark man and his companions craned their necks to watch the frightful affray, but Vulparoon called their attention to a new danger ahead of them.

  Gliding down out of the clouds, high above, other shapes had appeared, and at first the Voidal took them to be more aerial predators, though unlike the fish monsters. The latter had broken off their attack, as Evergreed had proved too fast for them and had moved up beyond a height at which they would follow. These newcomers were not, the dark man now saw, living creatures, but flying craft, their huge sails billowing in the wind as they dropped ever lower. Their decks were lined with armoured archers and as soon as they came within striking distance, the first of them unleashed a rain of arrows at Evergreed’s crew.

  “Shelter below!” called Vulparoon. “The ship will deal with them.” He still gripped the helm, ducking down, shielding himself as the first arrows zipped by.

  The Voidal called his companions to him, including the slow-moving form of Xatrovul, and they did as the Asker had bidden them. As they went below, the dark man realised that Evergreed had dropped down towards the sea once more, within range of the fish monsters. But his purpose was clear, for in coming this low again, he had brought the new assailants into range of the aerial horrors.

  While the crew sheltered belowdecks, Vulparoon watched the battle around him, which quickly became a furore. There were a dozen of the sky ships, trying to circle Evergreed, but their formation was broken up by the ferocious attack of the fish monsters. There seemed to be scores of them and they had no regard for danger, hurtling themselves into the sides of the ships, smashing through sail and rigging, crashing on to the decks and snapping at anything within range. Three ships had been brought down in minutes, their crews spilling from them as they plummeted. Again the fish monsters dived, jaws clamping on victims before the sea could claim them.

  Evergreed powered his way through the ships, his sides smashing through the smaller craft on either side, himself impervious to their own teeth, for like him, they had mouths at the prow, filled with teeth. Those that tried to tear at him found his hide impenetrable. Once he was through their barrier, they had far too much to do to contend with the fish monsters to be able to delay him. Vulparoon kept his course, rising once more, leaving the mayhem and carnage of the frightful conflict raging below.

  The Voidal returned to the deck. “What are those ships?” he asked Vulparoon.

  “Cannibal Ships. They are from the Crimson Gate. There will be more of them and other guardians there, too. The Dark Gods know you have twelve of the swords. They would recover them.”

  “Further evidence of their fear.”

  Vulparoon said nothing of his own deepening fears.

  “Those who have freed themselves from the fish creatures are pursuing us,” the Voidal told him.

  “We will outdistance them,” said Vulparoon. “But I warn you, worse is to come.”

  The Voidal ignored him and went again to the prow, watching the misted horizon beyond. The sea was falling away below them, but they had almost reached its far shores, which rose up steeply in banks of tangled, dark weed, bank upon bank. Through the seeping mists, which rose like poisonous vapours from the weed, vast clumps of vegetation towered, massing like piled clouds, becoming an impregnable green wall. Evergreed slowed his forward progress, stopping altogether and instead beginning to rise like a leaf on a thermal current. Ahead of him the sky became a wall of white mist.

  As the ship rose and rose, the climb seemingly endless, the Voidal got glimpses through the mist of a dark mass. This eventually revealed itself as a cliff wall of monstrous proportions. It stretched as far to the left and right as the eye could see and reached up endlessly to the sky as if it would topple over like a mountainous tidal wave. It seemed like a mirror of the awesome Worldfall at the other extreme of the seabed. But the nature of the wall was even more stunning. For it was alive with vegetation. The Voidal estimated that the ship must be several score miles from the cliff’s surface, but even from this distance, he could see the bizarre nature of its make-up.

  Up from the abysmal depths, incalculable large growths reached ever skywards, tangling together, vines and tendrils of unimaginable magnitude clinging to the wall’s surface, interwoven li
ke countless nests of gargantuan serpents. Their clustered leaves shook, though not with the winds, but with the sheer energy that flooded through the plants. Their growth rate had accelerated abnormally, their burgeoning tendrils writhing like tentacles.

  As the Voidal watched, he saw high up towards the crest of the cliffs, countless miles above, other growths there, as thickly matted and tangled as those below, spilled over the wall and trailed their own fronds and tendrils downward. These, too, were rampant with life, their thriving growths matching the groping horrors of the lower ones. Where the upper growths met the lower ones, an insane conflict raged. The two masses of growth were attacking each other on a front that stretched all along the mid-section of the wall. Slowly, as Evergreed nosed forward, the dimensions of this perpetual war became clearer and the Voidal was forced to step back in utter amazement. The largest of the tendrils was miles in girth.

  Beside him, he could feel Scyllarza’s astonishment as she leaned against him. “Are we to fly over this lunacy?” she said softly. “It seems as if Evergreed quickens his movement forward.”

  They could hear the astounding sounds of the plant war now, for the ship was indeed moving ever closer to the wall, deeper into its shadow. Ahead, they could pick out more details of the face of the wall itself, for there were some bare areas between the upper and lower plant fronts, though the whipping and lashing of the tendrils and roots blurred them. Where the two forces tangled together, colossal powers pulled and tugged, each trying to rip the other free of its grip on the wall, and where one triumphed over the other, huge chunks of rock crumbled, tumbling down into the green abyss.

  “Vulparoon!” the Voidal called back to the pilot. “If you take us in to the wall, we will be caught up in this hellish plant war! Get us up to the rim!”

  Whatever the Asker shouted back in reply was lost in the growing noise from the cliff face, though it was still miles ahead of them. But the Voidal was looking beyond the pilot, to the stern of the ship. Out of the mists behind it came the remnants of the ships that had attacked. They had formed a line and had been joined by others, prows opening, revealing shark-like mouths: they meant to drive Evergreed forward to the very cliff face. The Voidal pulled out the sword wherein the twelve had combined. If the dark Gods mean to wrest it back from him, he would sell it dearly.

  “Master,” said Elfloq, bracing himself unsteadily on the deck. “Unless the ship goes up instead of forward, we will strike that wall.”

  The Voidal nodded. “You and Orgoom, take to the astral if that becomes inevitable. Scyllarza, you, too. Xatrovul stays with me. As does Vulparoon. He pilots this ship, to Hell itself, if he must.”

  Scyllarza had pulled out her own blade, her eyes flashing with demon fire. “I stand with you. The Dark Gods will have to deal with both of us.” She laughed at his scowl.

  He was about to reply, but a shout from Vulparoon made him spin to face the wall.

  “The Crimson Gate!” cried the Asker. “Tell me now, do you still desire to enter?” He was indicating an area of the wall that was not obscured by the thrashing tendrils of the immense plants. A gigantic carving had been etched deeply into the stone surface, miles across. It was partly a face, partly a mass of sigils, woven together in patterns that shifted and changed, suggestive of many things, constantly altering their dimensions as though the stone breathed. At the lower part of the carving was an opening, a long, wide gash, and on the lower lip of this a city had been cut from the bare rock.

  As Evergreed drew ever nearer, a fleet of sky ships rose up from this city, distance making them as small as flies, but they grew as they came on. Behind them, the black orifice that was the mouth of the carving opened, the stone elastic as flesh. In the carving, eyes like moons stared, their baleful gaze fixed upon the incoming ship.

  “The Crimson Gate,” Vulparoon said again. “Beyond the city and down into that vortex. If you dare enter.”

  The Voidal could see beyond the city on the lip of the huge gate and in the restless darkness there, huge shapes writhed, a dozen tongues, flicking from side to side, lashing the inner walls of the mouth, eager to draw their prey into them.

  “Master!” cried Elfloq, hopping from one foot to the other in terror. “There can be no more terrible a place in all of the omniverse! Nightmares scream at us from every side! And they say, leave this domain!”

  The Voidal nodded slowly, sensing the incoming Cannibal Ships as they closed their circle, the horrors of the Gate, the lunatic struggles of the monstrous vegetation above and below them. “The Dark Gods protect their haven in desperation. Madness and abomination have dogged my footsteps through every awakening I have suffered. Get below, all of you. Evergreed has been paid! He is chartered to take us to Holy Hedrazee, and he must do so. Get below!”

  Elfloq decided that it would not be diplomatic to remind his master that a short while ago he had told him to take Orgoom and get on to the astral. He also decided that it might not be the best of moves to go there now. In this place, the astral would likely spawn horrors even more ghastly than those around the ship. So with no more ado, Elfloq hopped away, Orgoom a few paces behind him.

  “I must speak with Evergreed,” the Voidal told Scyllarza and they, too went down to the hold.

  They again stood before the strange being that was the heart of the ship, sensing at first that he was dormant, unreachable as he continued to digest the meal that had fuelled his trip to this forbidden region. But after a while, the huge eye opened lazily and observed them.

  “Ah, Voidal. You have interrupted my sleep prematurely. Holy Hedrazee is a long way off yet.”

  “We are approaching the Crimson Gate.”

  “Yes. Have you changed your mind? Do you wish to go to some other destination? I can change course, though there will be a reckoning when we get there.”

  “We are beset on all sides —”

  “The Cannibal Ships? I’m not bothered by them. They may test the sanity of your companions, but they are no barrier to me.”

  “What lies within the Crimson Gate?”

  “Ah, you have seen its many tongues? Particularly horrible experience, negotiating them. But let Vulparoon worry about that. I simply need to sleep on. I’ll get you to Holy Hedrazee, if you still wish to go there.”

  “Then do so.”

  “Very well. Please excuse me. I would rather be dormant as we pass through the gate. If I were you, I’d stay below decks.”

  Above them, Vulparoon’s eyes widened as the city drew closer, its strange architecture bathed in the unnatural glow from behind it. Cannibal Ships swarmed in from all sides, snapping and battering at Evergreed, but the ship was unharmed, a shark swimming through a shoal of sprats. The Crimson Gate grew wider, ever wider, the things within it belching forth clouds of foul gas in which smaller things flitted and flapped.

  They know, the Asker told himself. The Dark Gods know that he is coming to them. They cannot prevent him. Nor do they wish to.

  He felt the shadows closing around the ship as it flew above the city. The Crimson Gate was aptly named, for all within it was daubed in a crimson radiance, as though its walls and the writhing tongues were engorged with blood. The grotesque buildings below seemed bathed in fire and such shapes as slithered about within them or on their angled battlements bore no resemblance to anything human. If eyes watched from below, they watched from hidden recesses, deep down in the leaning canyons.

  Vulparoon closed his mind to the hideous things ahead of him as the gate yawned. He had been a Divine Asker. He knew this Gate and why it had been set here and made so monstrous. He knew also that Evergreed was meant to pass through it. As if he had shouted aloud this thought, the Cannibal Ships that swarmed about the ship now pulled away, as if they, at least, feared the horrors within the Gate. The tongues parted to reveal an inner mouth, an enormous entry to the maw of a deep dwelling creature, but Evergreed flew on, never diverging for a moment. Deeper reds suffused the air as the ship went into the inner gate.

&nb
sp; The darkness of infinity closed around it. Below, in the hold, the crew waited like creatures entombed, as though doomed to walk the vaults of the dead thereafter.

  PART EIGHT: IN HOLY HEDRAZEE

  There are those, among gods as well as men, who insist that some secrets should not be disturbed. Some truths, they aver, are best not known, or faced.

  Others stop at nothing to reveal all. They insist that there should be no darkness.

  It is an intriguing theory. After all, how does one define Light without reference to Darkness?

  —Salecco, upon whom Light rarely shines in his isolation.

  Across new wastes of time and space Evergreed journeyed, the huge creature yet somnolent as he dreamed his private dreams, digesting his outrageous repast. His unique crew had come up on deck, watching the emptiness around them with more than a degree of trepidation.

  Vulparoon remained at the helm, silent and filled now with despair, for he had resigned himself to the madness that would come at this voyage’s end, in which he saw nothing but pain for himself. He had transgressed and he would be made to pay. But he had nothing with which to contest this law. Elfloq and Orgoom huddled together like children, their fears obvious, knowing that their own chances of escaping the wrath of whatever gods they were about to offend were slender. Yet they were committed to their master, who alone seemed confident of success. Elfloq had shared this belief until this last voyage had begun. The horrors that Evergreed had passed through had finally made the familiar wonder about his master’s sanity, his judgement. Orgoom said nothing, inwardly trying to convince himself that this was not a trap and that he was not one of the principal flies.