Shadow Born

by Martin Frowd

  “Highlord is same again. Like duke, like lord-commander. So, depend who senior is. But Tanvari likely senior, because elf live longer than human.

  “Bettkessen no such word in Elaria is. Am think you mean bettkissen, bed slave. Or bettkussen, bed cushion.” She smirked as the ship’s officers roared with laughter. “If bed slave, not have at banquet. Unless your sire stupid like you, or he want Kyrilian Elendran Tanvari get mad walk out.” Farouk’s face twisted with fury at the insult, but Kitithraza kept going. “If bed cushion, and only have one, sire not have much coin? Is much sad. Put on Tanvari chair. Elf have boniest rump.”

  Farouk surged to his feet, slapping both hands down on the table to steady himself as he glared venomously at Kitithraza.

  “If you were a man, I would challenge you,” he grated at her.

  “If you were man, would accept.” The felis shrugged, clearly unconcerned. Rathgar winced as the other officers guffawed. The apprentice necromancer opened and closed his mouth a few times but was lost for words, and ultimately stormed out of the mess without another word, fists clenching and unclenching as he went.

  “Puppy gone back to kennel with sore nose,” Kitithraza observed with another shrug, knocking back another shot of whisky and stealing a last drag on Anjali’s cigarette before stubbing it out.

  “Ach, there’s a laddie wi’ a heid full o’ anger, fer sure,” Rathgar observed.

  “Much anger. Much stupid.” Kitithraza yawned exaggeratedly, showing a hint of fangs. “What did expect? To him, Elaria foreign land is. Far away across seas, as far as this place, but other way. Foreign tongue, foreign people, much mystery. To me, birth land is. Is no surprise, know it better than stupid two-leg puppy.”

  Most of the ship’s officers sniggered at Kitithraza’s observation. Rathgar stroked his beard.

  “Still, lassies, if he werenae also best young death mage prentice as Himself kens, mebbe he’d nae’ve been brought out here tae begin wi’, ye ken?”

  “Second best,” Anjali said firmly. “Farouk’s talented, I’ll grant you, Rathgar, but did you never hear the Master mention his other apprentice, Fariz? Now there’s a talented necromancer.”

  “Still, lassie, Himself dinnae bring this here Fariz along?”

  “He worships Kelnaaros, Rathgar,” Anjali grimaced. “That would be fine, if we’d sailed to the northlands rather than the east, but it’s a liability out here in Bliria, in Druid land. For all that the Church of the Tyrant and the Druid Order consider themselves rivals rather than allies, when all’s said and done, they both serve the same God. And the Master won’t put one of his own in a position where he has to choose between his God and his country – or his School.”

  “Anyways, reckon ye’ve nae heard end o’ this,” Rathgar grimaced. “Ye maybe might want tae lock yer door tonight, lassies, aye? Yon Farouk laddie’s nae one tae cool down swiftly, ye ken?”

  “He brought it on himself, Rathgar dear,” Anjali smiled reassuringly at the dwarf. “But yes, maybe we should, just to avoid any continuing unpleasantness.” Master, please come back soon. Please.

  TEN: THE NULL ZONE

  Glaraz Vordakan strode onto the path that led down into the null zone where the primitives had taken the boy, Zarynn. Battered, bruised and weary after the fight with the lion-Druid and his minions, the necromancer limped as he moved but his determination pushed him onward. Soaked to the skin by the Druid’s weather magic, he squelched with every step, which did nothing to improve his sour mood. Though the rain was gone and the silver moon had reappeared from behind the cloud cover, providing a glimmer of illumination in the dark night sky to light his way, he was still waterlogged and covered in mud. His robes and boots alike felt unusually stiff and heavy, encumbering him as he moved. The Druid’s summoned storm had evidently been confined to the burial mound on which they had battled, for the path was still dry dirt and gravel. This small mercy at least meant he was no longer slipping and sliding in mud as he had been on the slope above.

  As he walked, the necromancer took a quick inventory of himself. Though he would likely be bruised and sore for some days to come, his earthbone wards had largely protected him from the most serious harm, making him impervious to spears, claws and teeth during his recent battle and the several skirmishes that had preceded it as he tracked the boy Zarynn. The Druid’s conjured lightning strikes, which had served so effectively against Glaraz’s skeleton and zombie minions, had left the necromancer himself untouched. Was it coincidence, or design? Perhaps the Druid had intended, or hoped, to take him alive.

  Patting himself down carefully as he advanced, Glaraz concluded with relief that although his robes were a sodden, mud-streaked mess, all of his pockets remained securely fastened, their contents remarkably undisturbed. The thin iron plates of his belt appeared dented, no doubt from the impact with the Druid in his lion form, but his pouches and flasks remained attached and intact.

  Selecting and detaching one metal flask from his belt, the necromancer used his already filthy robe to wipe away the mud, checking the runic symbol on one side of the flask to confirm that it was the correct one before removing the stopper and downing the contents. The alchemical potion blended into a double measure of Rathgar’s dwarven whisky burned like liquid fire as it went down, but the effect was swift and potent. Not a healing draught, as such, but the potion inured him to further pain and fatigue, and granted him a temporary boost to his stamina, speed and reaction times, although he knew he would pay later.

  Delving into the pockets of his mud-covered robe, Glaraz extracted a pair of wands. One appeared, to the mundane eye, to be simply a large bone, the length of his forearm. The other one shared the same size, but was a smooth, polished cylinder of pale brown wood, chased with copper wire. Both appeared, to the necromancer’s relief, to be undamaged following his earlier fights. Glaraz reflected that they might have proven useful during the confrontation with the lion-Druid but given the warning that the dead spirit had imparted – was it really only hours ago? – he felt it had surely made more sense to keep them for the null zone, for wands could be invoked without need for speech.

  Glaraz strode forward, to where the path passed between the wrecked burial mound where he had fought the lion-Druid and the still intact mound. He glanced for a moment toward the second burial mound, considering, calculating, then put it out of his thoughts and hastened his pace. While additional unliving minions might be of some use to him in the null zone, he concluded that speed would better serve him than numbers, especially if a Druid remained to face.

  The necromancer marked the instant he entered the null zone proper, as he passed between the two burial mounds and began the descent toward the valley below. From one moment to another, his squelching footfalls on the path of dirt and gravel no longer made a sound, swallowed by the place the primitives knew as the silent vale. As the path sloped more steeply downward, Glaraz felt an icy chill pass down his spine as his mystical senses reacted to the null zone. To his mundane senses, the valley beneath him seemed normal enough, apart from the obvious lack of any sound, but his innate magical discernment made the area feel different, eerie, wrong. It was difficult to quantify, like an itch that constantly migrated, but unsettling, even to a trained master necromancer, and even though he had a good idea of what to expect from previous null zones that he had encountered.

  His earthbone ward remained active, although for how much longer, the necromancer could not be sure. Such things were not entirely precise at the best of times, and he was unsure how much time the fight on the burial mound had cost him. In any case, his bruises and aches were testament to the limitations of that particular defensive magic, though he was still glad of it. Without the benefit of its protection, he would likely not have survived the battle on the mound.

  Glaraz’s mystical ability to track the Gifted was unaffected by the magic-dampening nature of the null zone, as he had expected and hoped, and to his senses the boy Zarynn stood out like a beacon fire in the darkness. The
boy was somewhere at the far end of the valley, and did not seem to be moving, but was clearly still alive. Glaraz quickened his pace, concerned that enemies as yet still undefeated remained between him and his target, but did not allow haste to banish alertness. The utter silence of the null zone, coupled with the scant illumination provided by the silvery moon overhead, made attention to every detail all the more important, to forestall any attempt at an ambush by man or beast. He gripped the two wands, one ready in each hand, as he advanced.

  The lack of immediate challenge to his advance was the first hint to the necromancer that something had befallen the primitives here. Knowing already that the boy was alive and further ahead, he did not break pace, but his gaze – and the wands gripped in mud-dirtied gloved hands – panned from left to right and back again as he reached the base of the gravel slope and set foot in the silent vale proper, expecting a prompt ambush but finding none. His silent footsteps disturbed a surprisingly large pile of dust on the ground, sending fine particles up to swirl in the moonlight. Not dust. Ash. He realised swiftly that he was walking through the remains of the primitives who had occupied the valley. As he drew closer, the moonlight illuminated corpses scattered on the ground, charred black and twisted into hideous ruin. Not all of the corpses were human; here and there he spotted the blackened remains of great four-legged beasts, nearly as large as the lion-Druid whom he had fought on the slope above. Doomwolves. Did the boy do this? If Zarynn had caused this level of devastation, his Gift must be manifesting more strongly, and more rapidly, than Glaraz had anticipated, fuelled by the strength of his fear, anger or hate. All the more important to retrieve him swiftly and leave this wretched land, before anything else goes wrong.

  Glaraz proceeded further into the valley, gripping his two wands tightly as he advanced. The moonlight was fainter here, but still enough shone down on him to pick out what must be the mouths of caves along both sides of the silent vale and at its far end. More blasted, charred corpses littered the valley floor, human and doomwolf alike, strewn in a wide array of devastation. Shadowfire caused this, he concluded swiftly. No other arcane power would burn men and beasts to black ruin – or to ash – yet give off no heat, no smell, and leave the ground itself undamaged. He considered the scale of the destruction. One blast, encompassing all this area at once? No. His trained senses, both magical and mundane, suggested another solution. One small blast, where the valley begins, then a larger one that engulfed the rest. Hundreds of feet across! The boy’s Gift grows rapidly in strength. If it were he. And if it were not, then who?

  The glint of red eyes, peering from the mouth of one of the caves, alerted the necromancer in time that he was no longer alone. Two pairs – no, three – no, four pairs of red eyes focused on him. Dark shapes slunk from one of the caves to his left, emerging silently into the moonlight. Doomwolves, black as night and nearly as large as the lion, snarling soundlessly to show off their long ivory fangs. As they prowled toward him, they spread out, forming a semi-circle. Hatred burned in their eyes as they began loping forward, covering the ground between them and Glaraz at a pace faster than any the lion-Druid had managed, though not as fast as the smaller hunting cats.

  Glaraz knew he had little time to waste. The earthbone ward endured thus far, but it could expire at any time, and while within the confines of the null zone, he could not renew it, leaving him vulnerable to claws and fangs. The pulse of fear that he had invoked silently to such effect against the primitives – albeit not without consequences, as it had led directly to the boy Zarynn running off and being recaptured, thus necessitating this detour in the first place – would likely prove useless against fearless beasts such as these. He had only a few other magics that could be invoked silently – and, of course, the two wands.

  As the nearest doomwolf accelerated its pace and leapt through the air, Glaraz levelled the bone wand in his left hand at the beast and focused his will to activate it. An invisible magic was unleashed, and the doomwolf bared its jaws to roar silently as bones snapped, showing white through its thick black hide. The beast crashed to the ground, like a puppet with its strings cut, thrashing in silence from the virulence of the bonebreaker curse discharged from the wand.

  The other three doomwolves paused, seeing what had befallen the first, but did not slink back to their cave. Glaraz had not truly expected that they would, demon-wrought beasts that they were, and was unsurprised when they renewed their approach but swung to his right flank, evidencing enough bestial intelligence to seek to avoid the bone wand. The necromancer turned with them, keeping both wands trained on the remaining trio, who bared their jaws at him and sprang forward. This time Glaraz triggered both wands at once, selecting a different target with each. The second doomwolf twisted in mid-air, evading the full force of the curse, but was still struck with enough potency to shatter its rear legs and collapsed on the ground, scrabbling and trying to drag itself forward with just its front legs. The third doomwolf was less fortunate. An eye-searingly bright bolt of lightning blasted from the copper-chased wooden wand to strike the beast in its centre of mass, and it dropped like a stone, smoke rising from its charred breast, and did not move again.

  The last doomwolf snarled soundlessly at Glaraz, baring enormous fangs, as it marked what had happened to its fellows. Its red eyes blazed with hatred for the necromancer. It landed lightly on its front paws, spun around, and darted deeper into the valley, toward where Glaraz’s mystical senses told him he would find the boy Zarynn. In a moment, it was lost from sight in the shadows.

  Glaraz appraised the situation before him. One dead, two badly injured. The two doomwolves with broken bones would be little threat right now, but the demons who first bred them had designed them to heal rapidly, and Glaraz was reluctant to leave the beasts alive behind him, potentially to pose an ambush risk on his way back out of this wretched null zone with the boy. He raised the bone wand again, this time with the luxury of precise targeting from a safe distance, as the wounded beasts could not easily evade the bonebreaker curses. Moments later, the two doomwolves sagged, necks broken, the furious light going out of their eyes. The necromancer watched to make sure they were truly dead, before resuming his march down-valley. His battered body ached as he proceeded, but he pushed himself, setting the most vigorous pace he could manage, doing his best to endure the underlying feeling of wrongness as he pressed on. Both wands remained gripped in his hands as he advanced, and his eyes continually tracked from side to side, alert for any flicker of movement. One doomwolf, at the least, was still unaccounted for, and where there had been four survivors of the devastation wrought by shadowfire, there might yet be more, given the number of caves that pockmarked the sides of the valley.

  By the time the necromancer reached the far end of the valley, picking his way carefully over more charred corpses, he had seen no sign of the doomwolf he knew to be at large, nor any other indication of life or movement. The corpses of the primitives were blackened beyond individual identification, but Glaraz had found none wearing robes, where his interrogation of the dead primitive’s spirit so many hours before had led him to expect a Black Druid. It was inconceivable that men and doomwolves could have existed in close quarters without the beasts turning on and devouring the tribesmen, absent a Druid’s control. The Druid must be in one of the caves. With the boy? More than likely. Grimly, the necromancer approached the cave that, so his mystical senses told him, would lead him to the subject of his search.

  Glaraz stopped just short of the cave, wands at the ready. His irritation at the null zone grew, as neither hearing nor most of his magics would avail him while he remained within it, and once within the cave, his vision would be greatly restricted also. If the doomwolf – or the Druid, or both – were already within, he would have little time to react, with what limited magics he could call upon silently, or with the wands, which could be used only a few more times before their power was expended. He had little chance of smelling the doomwolf over his own stench, covered in drying
mud as he was, and the beast would surely smell him easily if it were indeed in his path. The sensible course of action would be to abandon the boy and make for the rendezvous point, he told himself. But if the boy is truly so powerful, he would be a first-rate asset for the School, one that must not go to waste in this wretched land!

  Grimly, the necromancer stepped forward into the cave.

  It was dark within, as Glaraz had expected. The necromancer edged forward, trying to give his eyes time to adjust to the deeper darkness, while wishing irritably for some better form of illumination – ideally, one that would still leave both hands free for the wands. The gravel was loose underfoot and he stepped carefully, glad that any enemy waiting in the darkness ahead would at least be as deaf as he within the effect of the null zone. Feeling carefully forward with one booted foot, he concluded that the ground was sloping gently downward ahead of him.

  Something brushed against his right leg as he edged forward. He felt a brief sensation of fur covering powerful, bunched muscle, and then the contact was gone. Glaraz spun on the spot, wands levelled in front of him, squinting through the darkness of the cave, but could see no foe before him.

  Fangs longer than his hand scraped across the back of his left leg, tearing through his robes, but failed to break skin, due to the protection of his earthbone ward. He jerked forward just in time, feeling jaws clashing shut on empty air just behind him. Feeling half-blindly for the cave wall, he located it and spun again to place the rocky wall solidly at his back. With the security of the cave wall behind him, he began to edge downslope again, along the side of the cave, right foot forward, probing each step before placing his weight on it.

  Red eyes gleamed in the darkness to his left, back upslope. Reflexively, he brought up the bone wand in his left hand, pointing outward, triggering it with a thought. The red eyes blinked out and he felt gravel spray against his legs, dislodged from further upslope. Had the doomwolf fallen to the wand’s bonebreaker curse and collapsed? Glaraz could not be sure, hindered as he was by darkness and silence.