The Sword of Shadows

by Adrian Cole

  “Yet such was the nature of the dark one that he has ever sought to regain his lost powers. There have been times when this unremitting drive has caused mighty conflagrations amongst the unwitting gods of the omniverse, both light and dark. It has always been through darkness that he has sought to regain his powers, seeking to overthrow light and plunge the omniverse into chaos. There were times when that darkness almost triumphed. At the War of the Falling Gods, the balance almost broke and only after the most violent upheaval was peace restored.

  “And how often Man, puniest of all creations, has played a crucial role in the ebb and flow of power! How the gods of the omniverse use Man, fodder for their own struggles! Even now, it goes on. How many were sacrificed among the dead gods to feed the ship that brought you here? Who will mourn them?

  “In the omniverse of late, darkness has indeed been gathering, amassing its energy. It is the irrepressible will of the renegade God, unifying all the evil that is in the orb to one purpose, uniting itself against the light that binds it.”

  “Yes, I have realised that much,” said the Voidal, his voice resonant with a dreadful will. “I am that broken power, regenerating. I am here, in spite of any decree, with the powers I have won back, the allies that serve me yet.”

  Elfloq gaped. “Master! You are what mends itself —?”

  Darquementi answered for the dark man. “He is. But evil begets evil. When the renegade was banished into darkness, his thirteen principal servants were subjugated. For their part in the perfidy of creation, they were made to serve the Dark Gods. They became the keepers of the Swords that locked up the soul of the dark one. The Thirteen Seneschals were your own servants, Voidal, that you had once set to oversee your creation for you. When you summoned them that last time and destroyed them, you were tearing apart your own powers, not those of the Dark Gods.”

  The Voidal stared at the Asker coldly. “Deceit was ever your tool.”

  “Your hand was ever the hand of destruction,” Darquementi replied.

  “What of the hand I was once forced to bear?”

  “The Oblivion Hand, the hand of justice. Only you could have wielded it so brutally, yet so effectively.”

  “It was never me that used it. I had no control over it. Your Prime God knows that. And did he revel in its excesses?”

  A deep silence followed. The companions were close to the edge of panic, sensing ultimate defeat for the dark man, and thus their own downfall.

  The Voidal spoke at last. “I recall it all, now that you have said it. All that I did as the so-called renegade. All that I created and every step that I was forced to take in darkness as a result.”

  “And what have you learned?”

  The Voidal thought for a moment, then laughed harshly. “That I was wrong? That I should have kept my place and never tested my powers to their full?”

  “It is not for me to answer.”

  “No. You don’t have the ability to think for yourself. You are greater pawns than I have been.”

  “We must all answer for the consequences of our actions.”

  “Why am I here?” the dark man suddenly snapped. “I did not win my way here. Evergreed did not fight off the terrors beyond the Crimson Gate and rupture a way through. It was made to look that way. The truth is, I was brought here.”

  Darquementi’s cool resolve seemed shaken. “To learn the truths that you have sought. It was time.”

  “I had won that much back.”

  “Yes.”

  There came a sudden roar from beyond the pillars and they whirled as one to see flames lick out from the portal like writhing tongues. Standing in them was a figure. It stepped out of the furnace and climbed the steps that led up to the watchers, smouldering, white as an ember. In unified amazement they saw that it was Vulparoon, bleached and dead as stone. He moved like a machine, his eyes completely white, his face slack and expressionless. In his hands he carried a sword and crawling out of the flames beyond him was an even more frightful spectre.

  Xatrovul. His body was almost completely wasted, rotting as the onlookers watched. Somehow the disintegrating Seneschal raised an arm and in a pathetic movement pushed Vulparoon forward, croaking out one word. “Master.”

  The Voidal was beside his dying servant before Darquementi could react. The others hung back in revulsion.

  “Sword of Oblivion,” hissed the Seneschal. “They didn’t expect this. Took Vulparoon into the furnace with me to retrieve it.”

  The Voidal took the weapon from Vulparoon’s limp fingers.

  “When you destroyed them all, master,” Xatrovul hissed, “I gathered up the dust of their remains. Enough to imbue me with the power to do this. Their will forced Vulparoon to act. Now you have all the Thirteen. The Sword of Shadows is within your grasp.” He could say no more, for his body writhed a final time, crumbled and fell apart.

  Darquementi’s voice cut through the silence. “Faithful to the last. But returned to the primeval slime of the omniverse from which you raised him.”

  The Voidal held up the Sword of Oblivion in one hand and the twelve that were one in the other. Slowly he put them together. There was a bright flash, a sound like red hot metal being plunged into water. And then the Thirteen were one, the Sword of Shadows. Vulparoon’s body collapsed in on itself like an empty shell, returned to ash in moments.

  “My soul,” the Voidal whispered, studying the blade. Yet the light had gone from it: it was dull, a seemingly lifeless blade like any other.

  Darquementi, who had drawn back in fear as the blades met, stepped forward again. “The Sword of Shadows does not appear to be whole —” he began.

  The Voidal scowled at him, but slowly a grim smile played on his face. He reached into his shirt and pulled out the sliver of madness, the fragment from the Sword of Madness that had been lodged in Orgoom. Like a magnet, the sword drew the piece of metal to itself in another flare of light. The Voidal could feel the blade, alive now. Alive and eager to do the work of such a weapon.

  “The Sword of Shadows,” said the dark man. “It is whole.”

  Darquementi nodded. If he was taken aback, he masked his feelings. “Now you, yourself, will be complete. So what will you do then?”

  The Voidal scowled at him. “The Dark Gods have deceived me many times. I think your Prime God goes in fear of me. Perhaps he is jealous. And he could not prevent me from regaining my powers.”

  “That is in your hands, in the Sword of Shadows.”

  “My trapped soul? How am I to release it?” the Voidal demanded.

  “Your coming here was as much the will of the Dark Gods as it was yours. As you have surmised, it was planned. You came here for the truth and you shall have it. Put the Sword into the stone at your feet and let the light from the portal bathe it.”

  The Voidal hesitated, but then did as the Asker told him. He found that the flagstone permitted the Sword of Shadows to slide into it like soft earth. He stepped aside and the light from beyond struck the weapon. It cast not one shadow, but three. Each of them spilled across the stone, singling out Scyllarza, Elfloq and Orgoom. As a shadow touched each of them, they froze like statues, their expressions of shock held like solid masks.

  “You have suffered for your sins,” Darquementi told the Voidal. He pointed at each of the three trapped figures. “You were broken and scattered. In Scyllarza, you have found a part of yourself, the demon essence, which you have already shared again with her. And in the Gelder, who was once a man, lies the human part of you.”

  The Voidal’s face clouded with a terrible apprehension.

  “Without these things you are incomplete. And in this familiar,” Darquementi went on, slowly walking towards the hunched figure of Elfloq, rigid as a gargoyle now, “is the last vital part of you. Your soul, Voidal.”

  The dark man gasped, too stunned to act.

  “If you wish to be fully as you were, you must take back what is yours. From these three. Use the Sword of Shadows. Kill them and what they hold
will be released into you once more.”

  “Do they know?” He studied their faces, the frozen looks of surprise.

  Darquementi shook his head. “They cannot hear us.”

  The Voidal looked at the Sword of Shadows, his hands clenching.

  “You hesitate, Voidal. You do not believe?”

  The dark man shook his head. “I am certain that you do not lie. I have lived with the perfidy of your masters for long enough to know that.”

  “While you wandered the omniverse, you were used as a pawn to destroy evil. Yet there were many times when you opposed evil in all its forms without the prompting of the Dark Gods. You performed acts of justice and compassion and you turned the hands of others away from vile deeds. Your sojourn in darkness has not been wasted if it has taught you compassion. This is recognised. And because of this, you are given this opportunity to regain what is yours.”

  The Voidal was silent for a moment, considering the words of the Asker. Then he took the haft of the Sword of Shadows and slid it from the stone. He considered his companions and what they had come to mean to him. Scyllarza, who had revived the power of love within him and who had placed in him a deep trust that had overcome her own terror of darkness, her deep seated killing hatred. Orgoom, abused and betrayed by the evil god who had chained him, denied his own lost humanity, despairing of life, yet clinging to a last hope that the dark man would reward his service with protection.

  Elfloq. Grasping, cunning, as deceitful as any of the gods who toyed with the dark man. If you knew what you held, the Voidal thought. What would you do with it, little familiar? Bargain with me? Or give it freely? I see now why you have so tied yourself to me, though you could never have known why. You have been cheated and deceived, as I have. All of you!

  In a few swift steps, he was beside Darquementi, who had time only to gasp, for the blade hissed in an arc. But it did not suck in the lives of the three companions. Instead it sheared the Asker’s head clean from its shoulders. It bounced over the flagstones and out into the sea of light, leaving a thin trail of blood behind it. There were cries from the pillars, where the other Askers waited, but in a moment they had fled.

  As Scyllarza, Elfloq and Orgoom broke free of the spell that had gripped them, they looked in shock at the fallen Asker, the pooling blood beside his decapitated corpse.

  “We did not come here to be cheated!” the Voidal told them. “Grieve not for him. He has paid for all the deceits practised upon me. Stand with me now.”

  “Master,” said Elfloq, ready to take to the air in an instant, certain that there would be a ghastly retribution for Darquementi’s death. “What happened? You put the sword into the flagstones —”

  “Have you won back what you desired?” said Scyllarza, as dazed as Elfloq.

  The Voidal held up his bloody sword. They will never have the truth from me. “Yes.”

  “Where are we to go now?” Scyllarza asked him. Her own sword was poised, as if for any attack. But the air around them was utterly silent.

  The Voidal pointed to the great portals, the blazing light. “I think we must face whatever lies through there. The Prime God, I suspect.”

  They began the climb up to the light, its heat intensifying, its roar growing. The Voidal alone was not dismayed by it, but as they reached the final steps, the others drew back in fear. As they stood on the threshold, a voice challenged them from behind. They saw nothing, but recognised the voice as that of Darquementi.

  “Wait! Beyond the portal there is only the Prime God, nothing else.”

  “Why should I believe you?” cried the Voidal. “I have been tricked since the first day of my banishment. Where was your Prime God when I cut you down?”

  “He felt that it was a just ending for the Divine Askers. For all the torment we have given you. We have served our purpose.” The voice said no more.

  Elfloq had flown back from the portal. The Voidal drew Scyllarza to him. “If the Asker spoke the truth, we cannot go through. It is not the gateway to freedom, only to a oneness that would be a prison of a different kind.”

  “You are right, master!” Elfloq called. “Do not be tempted!”

  The Voidal turned away from the blazing portal and looked at his three companions, the three elements that would make him complete. He could let the Sword of Shadows do its bloody work at any time and he would be restored. A burden of a different kind. And no easier to bear.

  “Then we were not brought here to be destroyed, or punished?” said Scyllarza, mystified.

  “Not destroyed, no. I have been shown the truth and given a choice. But it is what I have always desired, to be able to choose my own destiny.”

  She sensed that there had been some inner struggle within him, though he seemed to have reached a calmness, a resolution. “What will you do?”

  He walked down the steps and out to the ledge that overlooked the sea of light. At its heart, the immense hand still held up the gleaming orb that was the omniverse. “My sin was to create that and to allow evil its sway therein. I gave life to my wildest dreams and let them run freely. I understand now, through the paths I have been made to walk, the extent of that darkness.

  “I could simply destroy that omniverse. Oh yes, I know that I have the power to do that. But there are thousands of universes and gods and creatures there. We know that they are not all deserving of such an end. Perhaps I should return and begin to put right the injustices, the cruelty, the evil practices. Ironically, I would be doing the work of the Dark Gods.”

  Elfloq had eased close to him. “It would take an eternity, master.”

  “Indeed. But we have eternity, do we not?”

  “Then are we — immortal?” the familiar gasped. Somehow, the word did not appeal to him.

  “Perhaps. Would you want to put it to the test?”

  Elfloq drew back. “No, no. It’s just — well, it’s rather a complex concept —”

  “I suggest that this is not the place to dwell on that. Take Orgoom and go down to Evergreed. Tell him to prepare for a new voyage. If he grumbles about payment, tell him I can always leave him here and find other ways of returning to the omniverse. Whereas he would not find it easy. I suspect he’ll capitulate.”

  Only too relieved to leave this place, the familiar and the Gelder hopped across the ledge to the waiting ship. The Voidal grinned at their going. It would have been so easy to take back everything. As you believed I would, he thought, looking up at the light in the portal. And then you would simply have dispersed me once more. But not this way. And he knew, without an answer from the light, that he was right.

  “Where in the omniverse will we go?” Scyllarza asked him. “Must we always be embroiled in conflict?”

  He kissed her and smiled again. “We will find somewhere to rest for a while. Eventually I will be happy to let chance decide. I have been a prisoner of the gods for too long. Let there be a true randomness to our wandering.”

  “Is there such a thing?”

  He indicated the vast ship below them. “Let us see.”

  …And so it ended.

  The dark man, the enigmatic wanderer from the void between universes, learned the truth of his identity and the extent of his crimes. In considering these revelations, he would have time to reflect on his own nature and what it had brought to life in the rogue omniverse.

  Should we pity him? Was the uncovering of these truths the cruellest act of the Dark Gods? Was this bitter knowledge the unkindest cut of all?

  For myself, I envy the dark man! Unlike me, he is not shackled to inactivity, walled up with his thoughts and regrets. He was released, with the freedom to choose his own destiny, light or dark. Such possibilities! Such endless potential!

  When he left Holy Hedrazee in Evergreed, with his companions, the future was spread before him like a grimoire with blank pages, nay a library. His acts would be the ink to inscribe them and from which would spring a thousand new legends.

  And so it began…

  —SA
LECCO, recorder of the Forbidden Histories, seeker after truth, absolution and egress.

  Table of Contents

  THE VOIDAL SERIES

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  DEDICATION

  EXORDIUM

  PART ONE: THE WEAVER OF WARS

  PART TWO: AT THE COUNCIL OF GOSSIPERS

  PART THREE: ADRIFT IN DELIRIUM

  PART FOUR: DARK DESTROYER

  PART FIVE: THE SLIVER OF MADNESS

  PART SIX: AMONG THE BONES OF GIANTS

  PART SEVEN: GATE AT THE EDGE OF REASON

  PART EIGHT: IN HOLY HEDRAZEE