Shadow Born

by Martin Frowd

  Glowing red eyes appeared to his right, further down the slope. Again, the necromancer discharged the bone wand, this time angled across his body, hurling the bonebreaker curse at his enemy. Again, the red eyes blinked out. Did the beast pass me by? He asked himself. Or do I face two and not one? If it were truly a pair of doomwolves and not just one, the equation changed, and not in his favour. Must not be wasteful. The wand holds only so many charges. Glaraz grimaced at his profligate use of the wand without obvious results. If the doomwolf – or doomwolves – were playing with him, trying to goad him into expending the wand’s power prematurely, it would not do to fall into the trap of doing exactly what they wanted him to. The demon-bred predators were more intelligent than common wolves and more than capable of such tactics, especially if there were indeed two of them in here with him. And the Black Druid remained yet unaccounted for.

  Glaraz edged further to his right and felt air at his back in place of rock. Reaching behind him, probing the air to find the cave wall again, he discovered a sharp bend in the cave as it continued to slope downward. The air below felt distinctly chillier. His mystical senses told him the boy Zarynn was close.

  Glaraz turned to his right, seeking to put the cave wall at his back again, and instead felt the warmth of fur and the flexing of muscles against the backs of his legs. The doomwolf had managed to circle behind him! Acting on instinct rather than cold logic, the necromancer spun out away from the cave wall and turned in place to face the beast, both wands raised and pointing, triggering them both with a single thought. Lightning erupted from the wand in his right hand, actinic blue-white, illuminating the huge black doomwolf even as it blasted the beast broadside. In the momentary flash of the lightning, the necromancer saw the effect of the bonebreaker curse from the wand in his left hand hit home, snapping the vast creature’s hind legs into a shattered ruin. The doomwolf opened its huge jaws to roar but of course no sound emerged.

  A massive weight crashed into him from behind, knocking him from his feet and sending him rolling downslope, end over end, to sprawl awkwardly on the ground. Loose gravel dug into his back. The force of the impact numbed his left arm from the shoulder down. The bone wand fell from suddenly senseless fingers. Looking upslope, Glaraz saw two pairs of glowing red eyes regard him unblinkingly. There are two of the beasts, he realised, taking no joy in confirming that fact.

  Coldly, clinically, the necromancer took stock of his situation. His left arm hung limp at his side. It did not feel broken, nor was it indeed painful, but neither was it responsive. The bone wand was lost to him. Between the darkness and his useless left arm, it was beyond his reach as surely as had it been transported to one of the moons. The other wand remained, fortuitously, in his grasp. A pair of doomwolves waited upslope, blocking the way out, and his Gift for sensing other Gifted told him that the boy Zarynn was close downslope. He had seen one of the doomwolves maimed by the bonebreaker curse from the now-lost bone wand and the lightning bolt from the wand he yet retained, but the other one was, presumably, at full fighting fitness.

  Curiously, the unharmed doomwolf did not immediately charge Glaraz again, now that he was facing them. The necromancer clambered awkwardly to his feet, never taking his gaze off the two pairs of glowing red eyes, and keeping the wand levelled in their direction. He could see but little in the smothering dark of the cave, but he was well aware that the doomwolves could see perfectly in it, and perhaps seeing the wand pointing their way would serve as some deterrent. Or, perhaps, the doomwolves were instead seeking to lull him into a false sense of security. If a Black Druid waits below, with the boy, perhaps the beasts mean to spring while I am facing him – the hammer to his anvil? This must not be.

  His mind made up, Glaraz triggered the wand. A flash of blue-white lightning erupted from its tip, forking toward the two doomwolves. Framed in the momentary glare of the discharge, the necromancer saw the unhurt doomwolf spring even as the lightning bolt shot through the chilly air. The maimed beast was struck full in the face, and the smell of seared flesh filled the cave. But the other twisted in mid-air, barely clipped by the blast, and slammed into Glaraz.

  The necromancer crashed to the ground again, landing on his back with several hundred pounds of angry doomwolf on top of him. The wand remained in his grip, but his right arm was trapped beneath the furious beast. This close, he could smell the sulphurous reek of its breath, more pungent than the merely fetid breath of the lion-Druid had been. The beast’s jaws closed on his throat and long fangs scraped across his skin, unable to penetrate it while his magical protection lasted. Paws slapped down on his shoulders, shaking him roughly, even as the doomwolf’s jaws held him fast. The pain was excruciating, even for one as used to it as he, and he began to see stars on the edge of his vision.

  Summoning his concentration as best he could, Glaraz invoked one of the few magics he could wield silently. The doomwolf promptly faltered and lost its grip on him, as his spell weakened its muscles. Glaraz scrabbled backward, trying to slide out from under the temporarily weakened beast, while regretting that unlike the spectral shield, this spell did not transfer the stolen strength to him but simply robbed it, briefly, from its target.

  As he tried to drag himself away from the doomwolf, he invoked another of his small repertoire of silent magics. Although he could not see the result, he felt it soon enough as the doomwolf reared up, thrashing from side to side, and hot stinking liquid spattered down on him, magnifying the already foul reek of sulphur that filled the air. Blood magic has its uses. He began to form his thoughts into a silent clotlessness curse to further enhance the effect of the spell he had just cast, which should have opened dozens of tiny bleeding wounds on the doomwolf’s hide. Doomwolves healed swiftly, and the blood call would be only a minor annoyance without the curse to make the wounds continue to bleed.

  The silent spell of weakness was short-lived and the doomwolf recovered too swiftly. Glaraz was nearly out from under it when he felt the beast hurl itself forward again. The impact broke his concentration, and the clotlessness curse failed. He rolled awkwardly downslope, attempting to lessen the force of the doomwolf’s impact atop him, his left arm still hanging uselessly. His right arm was free of the creature’s bulk, at least, and he pushed up with it. A jarring impact ran all along his arm, up to the shoulder, as he connected with the doomwolf. Fangs slid along his forearm, past his inner elbow, as the monster attempted again in the darkness to get a grip on his throat. Glaraz twisted as best he could, with the beast half-atop him, trying to shield his throat with his arm and shoulder, as his other arm remained still unresponsive. He felt jaws closing on his elbow, and yanked his arm backward, tearing the last few scraps of the sleeve of his robes away. Instead, the jaws closed like a grip of crushing iron over his right wrist, trapping his right hand inside the doomwolf’s maw.

  The hand that still held the wand of wood and copper.

  Glaraz fancied that the glaring, glowing red eyes staring down into his own flickered with understanding, too late, of the beast’s predicament. He felt the doomwolf bite down, hard, just as he formed the mental command that triggered the wand.

  Blue-white light flared in the dark. Glaraz twisted his head to the side and clenched his eyes tightly shut to protect them from the dazzling light, but he still felt the doomwolf’s head explode around his hand, even as the wand snapped in two pieces. The headless doomwolf sagged and went limp, partially on top of him. Glaraz began to squirm out from under the felled beast, each inch a struggle. At last, the necromancer was free, and scrambled awkwardly to his feet to take stock once again of his situation.

  Both doomwolves were dead, slain by the lightning wand. Both wands were lost to him – one broken, and the other somewhere in the dark of the cave, beyond finding, if not under the carcass of the second doomwolf. Sensation was returning to his left arm and with it came a dull ache. His neck ached, and his right arm too, all the way from shoulder to wrist. His body was battered and bruised all over, even more so now tha
n after his fight with the lion-Druid atop the burial mound. His robes were a ruin; already caked with now-dried mud, they were ripped and tattered and he could feel scraps of cloth flapping about him.

  Flapping. There is a breeze, he realised, from below. There is another way out, perhaps? Or is it Druid magic? The Black Druid remains unaccounted for and may be below, with the boy.

  Glaraz rapidly considered the spells he could cast silently and their potential effectiveness against a Druid, now that the wands would no longer avail him. Limited offensive capacity remaining. If another Druid is indeed below, I must make each spell count. I have come too far to fail now.

  In that moment, Glaraz felt a familiar tingle through his body as the earthbone ward expired, his protection against tooth, claw, spear and blade lapsing at last. He shook with silent relief that the spell had not fallen even a few moments earlier, while the last doomwolf yet lived, and took a deep breath.

  Grimly, each step jarring his bruised body again, the necromancer strode downslope, feeling in front of him with both hands to avoid obstacles in the darkness. None presented themselves as he advanced. Ahead, he glimpsed a faint glow of light, the golden of a fair sunrise, offering a striking contrast to the darkness. The glow appeared to emanate from the ground further below, and from the far cave wall – no. Not cave wall, he realised as the golden light flared brightly, and he quickened his pace in response to the tableau highlighted before him by the sudden illumination.

  Had he not been used to strange sights, Glaraz might have considered the scene before him alarming – even surreal. The rear of the cave gave way to a square chamber, with walls, floor and ceiling all shaped from smooth, polished black stone – he hesitated to say cut, as he could see no seam nor join to indicate mundane masonry. The stone was shot through with a few golden veins, and it was from these that the golden light blazed, illuminating the room with the intensity of daylight.

  In the exact centre of the room stood a chair of gleaming black metal, with a seat and back upholstered in leathery black scales. Basilisk scales, by the size of the individual pieces, Glaraz was sure. On the chair, curled up as if asleep, his chest rising and falling as Glaraz laid eyes on him, was the boy Zarynn.

  ELEVEN: THE WILL OF THE ANCIENTS

  Glaraz quickened his pace again, toward the boy whose Gift he had followed across the sea, through grasslands and hills and finally to this subterranean place. As he approached, coming fully into the golden illumination that pervaded the square chamber, he saw that he and Zarynn were not alone.

  Looming over the boy stood the robed, hooded, and barefoot figure of a Druid, clad all in black. One hand was stretched out toward the sleeping boy as if to disturb his slumber. As Glaraz accelerated his stride downslope, toward the tableau before him, he realised that the Druid had only one foot on the ground. The other was raised, as if he were frozen in mid-step, and he was not reacting in word or deed to Glaraz’s approach.

  As Glaraz’s booted feet cleared the rough rock of the cave and set down on the smooth, polished stone floor of the chamber, the sensation of wrongness that had plagued him since he entered the valley abruptly lifted. In the same instant, he realised that his footsteps on the stone were audible, as were the boy Zarynn’s soft snores. He was clear of the null zone!

  The necromancer surveyed the chamber again. Zarynn appeared indeed to be asleep and looked to be in much better condition than the privations of the last few days would suggest, with neither a scratch nor a bruise visible upon him, a far cry from the necromancer’s own filthy and battered state. The Druid still had not reacted to Glaraz, and remained silent and unmoving, as if frozen, even though Glaraz now stood only paces away from him. In the golden light blazing from the veins in the black stone, the Druid cast a long shadow across the boy and the chair in which he slept, one long-fingered shadowy hand inscribing an intricate symbol slowly, almost lazily, in the air.

  Inscribing. Glaraz stiffened as the shadowy hand started to move, and instinctively began to intone the words of a spell, no longer hindered by the null zone outside this sunken chamber. The necromancer abruptly stopped, choking back the syllables of the Tongue Arcane, as he realised that the shadow was moving, but the Druid was not. As he watched, the shadow glided silently free of the motionless Druid and turned toward him, growing nearly a foot taller, inclining its head slightly to him. Shadowy black hands lifted high and pulled back the shadow of a hood, revealing an almost featureless black head, little more than an oval, crowned by a circlet of spitting and crackling iron-grey shadowfire. Crimson eyes, like sunken pits of fire, opened in an otherwise shadowed face and gazed unblinkingly at Glaraz, as the necromancer in turn froze.

  “Do you know me, necromancer?” a hollow voice issued from the shadowy apparition towering over him, though neither lips nor teeth were visible to Glaraz. The necromancer noted that the apparition had chosen to speak not in the local primitive tongue, nor in the language of his adopted homeland, where stood the School of the Black Skull, but the tongue of the land of his birth, and although the voice reverberated inhumanly, as if the speaker were standing at the bottom of a well, the accent and pronunciation were flawless.

  “I know of your kind, lord of shades,” Glaraz answered carefully, likewise in the language of his birthplace, “but I regret profoundly that I have not the honour of your name.” He inclined his head in a small but respectful bow, wary as he had never previously been on this mission to the primitive lands of doing anything that might cause offence. Here was a being with whom the master necromancer most assuredly did not wish to fight, if it could be avoided.

  “Hm. My true name would be difficult for your limited vocal cords to utter. You may address me as Vrnx, which is but the first part of my true name. Or, of course, you may address me as lord.”

  “You honour me, Lord Vrnx,” Glaraz pronounced the inhuman name with as much care as he could. “I am Glaraz Vordakan.”

  “Yes, your name is known to us,” was the shade’s hollow-voiced reply, echoing oddly as if from a great distance away although barely an arm’s length separated them. “You fascinate us, necromancer. Ever since we first noticed you making use of our old portals, a score or so of years ago, we have observed you from afar. And now you have come into our domain.”

  Glaraz froze for a long moment, considering his next words carefully.

  “I assure you, my Lord Vrnx, I meant neither trespass nor offence against you or your people. I had assumed – it is assumed, by those who have studied the histories – that your people had long since left this world, for it has been thousands of years since the last record of your people in our ancient texts and the journals of the wise. In the Whisperer’s name, I assure you that I am here only to retrieve this boy, and then, with your permission, we shall be gone.”

  A muffled hissing sound came to Glaraz’s ears. After a moment, the necromancer realised the shade was laughing.

  “Ah, necromancer, you know so much and yet so little. It is true that my kind stepped sideways from this world a long time ago, to make a world of our own. After our last great war with our ancient foe, those whom you call titans, it was. Long before your kind ever came to these lands – to this world. And yet still we watch, and occasionally we bestir to take a hand in events, though ever more rarely. The betrayers taught us not to trust your kind too well,” the shade pointed at the still-unmoving Druid. “Fear not, necromancer, this one is out of phase with time and can neither hear, nor hinder you. He sought to interfere with the boy, and that could not be permitted. He, I will take back with me, back beyond the veil between the worlds and into shadows. It has been some time since we last – studied – one of the betrayers in person.

  “Once, the proud city of Shadzarath stood in this place, crowning these hills. Once, the greatest shadowmancers and sorcerers from all across Bliria gathered here to study the deep mysteries of the Arcane. But now Shadzarath exists beyond the veil, as do most of the cities of our kind, but for poor ruined Shadra alone, by
the Cursed Lake, and only this chamber stands in both worlds.

  “You did well to invoke the Whisperer’s holy name, and yet also you were foolish. Had I been one of those who cleave to His father the Tyrant, He whom the betrayers serve, or to the Mother of Devils, you would have been unmade in an instant. But fortunately for you, I too revere He Who Whispers in Shadows.

  “As for the boy,” the shade lord continued in his hollow tones, “he bears the mark of the Shadowborn. He has a foot in our world as well as in yours, as you do not. What is he to you? What design have you for him?”

  “If you have observed me before, my Lord Vrnx, then perhaps you have seen the purpose for my visits to these eastern lands,” Glaraz replied carefully. “I am a master of a school of the Arcane, the Black Skull by name, far away across the sea. Among my duties thereto is the charge to seek out natural-born Gifted, in lands not my own; to rescue them, should there be need, and recruit them to become novices of my school, to teach them to control their Gifts and let them flourish in the Arcane, where some would otherwise perish. This boy is one such. His natural Gift is formidable, and I believe he will be capable of much more when he is properly trained. By your leave, Lord, we will depart and trouble your hospitality no further.”

  “Hrm. And if I instead say, necromancer, that I will take the boy sideways from this world and teach him myself? If I will cultivate his Gifts among my own kind? What then?”

  “If you have your own interest in the boy, Lord, I cannot and will not stop you,” Glaraz answered cautiously, though his instincts were screaming at him to flee. “But if your will be that he should one day reside again within this world, I respectfully submit that he will learn the ways, customs and tongues of mortal kind better among us, as one of us, than he would among you.”