Shadow Born

by Martin Frowd

  Corpses. Glaraz smiled grimly as an opportunity presented itself and drew in his necromantic power before speaking the words that expelled it.

  “Bu’shuzim, huu! Bu’shuzim, shur!”

  The robed Druid smirked at the foreign-born necromancer and began a new set of ritual gestures. Gestures that were almost immediately interrupted, as the school of dead fish, reanimated by Glaraz’s magic, attacked the Druid from all sides. The eyes of the zombie fish glowed an ugly red as they darted at the Druid from every angle, jaws biting and tail fins whipping at him. The arrogant smirk was wiped from the Druid’s face, replaced by shock, then fury, and then pain as the teeth of the zombie fish began to draw blood.

  “Sang’ne’shul,” Glaraz intoned next, the zombie fish having given him a brief respite to call upon his next feat of magic uninterrupted. In the flare of the next lightning flash in the sky, he saw the sea around the embattled Druid grow darker with blood, as the same magic he had used on another Druid, in the fight on the burial mound, kept each wound bleeding freely. The Druid thrashed in the water, under the relentless assault of the zombie fish which, as Glaraz had hoped, was keeping him too distracted to carry out a magical counterattack.

  Must finish it quickly. Glaraz knew the blood was likely to bring other denizens of the sea to the surface of the bay and living sea creatures might well be more inclined to aid the Druid – or at least, vulnerable to the Druid’s compulsion. And there was still another Druid unaccounted for – the man whom Glaraz had turned to stone, and who had plummeted from Furiosa’s back into the depths of the sea, would likely be returning to the fray any moment now, and the last thing the necromancer wanted was to have to fight both of them at once.

  Glaraz saw the Druid yell in pain, though the man’s voice was drowned by the thunder, the rain and the crash of the waves. The Druid was beset from all sides by Glaraz’s animated minions but managed to complete another ritual gesture. The sea around him began to bubble and boil. Steam rose in blood-tinged clouds, further limiting the already scant visibility. Through the steam, Glaraz caught glimpses of his zombie fish coming apart, disintegrating in the suddenly boiling water immediately around the Druid. But perhaps they had served their purpose long and well enough. He brought his will and his blood magic to bear once more on his enemy.

  “Bu’sang’hauth,” Glaraz intoned forcefully in the Tongue Arcane.

  The result was immediate and final. The Druid, already bleeding heavily from numerous wounds inflicted by the zombie fish – wounds that would not clot, thanks to Glaraz’s previous casting – shuddered as blood gushed from every open wound, promptly boiling away to bloody steam as it came into contact with the enchanted seawater around him. He tried to lift his arms to form another ritual gesture, but the haemorrhaging curse left him too weak to complete the motion. He fell backward in the water, seeming to crumple in upon himself as the last of his blood left his body, and was still. The bubbling and boiling of the water ceased as the life left him, and the clouds of steam dissipated into the stormy air.

  The water rippled, then churned briefly. Glaraz caught a momentary glimpse of something huge, black, smooth and slippery breaking the surface of the bay, of powerful flippers cutting through the water, and a huge maw lined with many circular rows of teeth. The creature swallowed the exsanguinated corpse of the Druid in a single great gulp, submerged and was gone again.

  Two down.

  Wings passed close by overhead, skimming over the surface of the sea, banking and coming about for another pass. Glaraz tensed for a new enemy, expecting another Druid in doomhawk form, or worse, but when he looked up he realised the wings were scaled, not feathered.

  Before he could issue orders to the contrary, Furiosa reached down with one stubby but powerfully muscled claw, caught hold of his shoulder and yanked him up out of the churning sea.

  Water cascaded from him as Furiosa lifted him clear of the water. As the necromancer took stock of the situation, his winged mount was already beginning to gain altitude again, rising up into the storm-darkened sky. Zarynn was still on her back, he saw with relief, clinging on tightly to her neck ridge as she beat her wings and rose higher above the sea.

  Glaraz looked all around as another flare of lightning struck the sea from whence he had just been plucked, far too close for comfort. In the distance, half shrouded by the storm, he could dimly make out a landmass rising out of the sea. They had flown much too far, before the Druid ambush, for it to be the mainland they had left behind. It could only be the Isle of Crows, where the ship waited.

  Revitalised by the sight, Glaraz began pulling himself hand over hand along Furiosa’s scaled, muscled leg, climbing toward her sinuous, serpentine back even as she continued to fly through the stormy sky. It was slow going, as the wind battered at him from every angle and the pouring rain threatened his grip on her scaled form. Every muscle in his body, already aching from assorted recent exertions, burned with the strain of it. But he forced himself to keep going, one hand over the other in constant repetition. The last thing the necromancer wanted was to be caught out, still dangling from Furiosa’s leg, if the third Druid returned to the fray before they were safely out into the open ocean.

  No sooner had the grim thought crossed Glaraz’s mind than he saw Zarynn pointing desperately toward the sea behind them. Daring a sideways glance in the direction of the pointing finger, as he continued his gruelling climb back up onto Furiosa’s back, Glaraz spied a scaly, fishy form erupting from the surface of the water, darkening and dulling as it grew into the form of a brown-robed human, then immediately blurring, shrinking again and sprouting feathers. Before he could fully take in the Druid’s transformation from fish to human form, the Druid had once again taken on his flying form, and the doomhawk was arrowing up from the surface of the sea at great rapidity to intercept Furiosa.

  Glaraz pulled himself fully onto Furiosa’s back, dripping, gasping and panting from the exertion, even as the doomhawk soared closer, black wings spread wide. The Druid in hell-bird form rose up above Furiosa’s altitude and seemed to hang for a moment in the stormy sky, before stooping into a dive. Glaraz rolled sideways and sat up, still panting and coughing, as talons struck and skittered along Furiosa’s scales, narrowly missing him. He heard Zarynn cry out and saw the boy duck and curl himself into a ball, pressed tightly into Furiosa’s neck, as the doomhawk overshot, executed a tight turn in the air and came about for another attack.

  Furiosa rolled sideways in the air as the doomhawk shot past again. Zarynn screamed, but managed to hold on, wrapped as best he could around her neck. Glaraz slid from side to side across Furiosa’s rain-slicked scales, his legs dangling off over the churning sea, but narrowly kept from plunging back into the water. Furiosa’s tail lashed out, its long, sharp stinger almost catching the doomhawk-Druid, but the blue-banded avian was too quick, evading with a roll of his own. The pair of winged adversaries, one feathered and one scaled, righted themselves again, each glaring at the other. Glaraz managed to hook his legs properly over Furiosa at last, and sat straddling her neck as he had before, close behind the boy Zarynn, watching for the doomhawk’s next move.

  He did not have to wait long. The doomhawk streaked across the stormy sky toward them. In the poor visibility of the storm, punctuated still by brilliant lightning flashes, it seemed almost as if the bird-Druid was skipping in and out of reality rather than flying a straight course, each second bringing him closer. Even as Glaraz mentally ran through the magical options still available to him, his avian foe bore down on him head-on, like an aerial jouster, talons already extended to rake or, worse, to grab.

  Furiosa roared. Her voice drowned out even the fury of the storm for a moment and would surely have deterred any normal bird. But doomhawks were not natural birds, Glaraz knew well, even when they were indeed “ordinary” doomhawks, if such a thing could be said of the hell-wrought birds, and not a Druid wearing doomhawk’s shape. The roar did nothing to dissuade the Druid in his avian form from executing
his attack dive.

  Furiosa struck with the speed of a snake, or a crocodile, had such beasts been gifted with wings. Her head flicked to the right to intercept the doomhawk. Enormous ebon jaws, big enough to swallow the malevolent bird whole, snapped and gnashed. For a moment, Glaraz dared hope that the Druid in avian form had misjudged his distance, and would be swallowed whole, or bitten in two. But it was not to be. Although dozens of black and blue feathers were torn free, to drift toward the surface of the sea below, the doomhawk evaded the full force of Furiosa’s bite. In the normal run of things, Furiosa was far faster on the wing than any bird, but it had been apparent since the start of the ambush that these three Druids had used magic to greatly enhance their speed. And even without such magical assistance, a doomhawk was still more agile, more manoeuvrable, than the much larger Furiosa.

  As the doomhawk shot past and executed another tight turn, coming about again to attack from Furiosa’s rear, Glaraz twisted around to keep his attention on him, concentrated his will and called upon his necromantic magic, falling back again on the most powerful rupturing curse he could deploy.

  “NeOrthom!”

  The doomhawk-Druid furled his wings and dropped like a stone to evade, as if he could see the invisible curse Glaraz had hurled and knew that he could not turn aside in time but could drop under it. The Druid did not get entirely clear of Glaraz’s magic, and an involuntary caw of pain erupted from his beak as every bone in his legs, and every pinion in his wings, shattered into fragments. Truly falling like a stone now, the bird-Druid slammed into the scales of Furiosa’s back with a loud crunch. But even as Glaraz swung his legs around, over Furiosa’s neck, to stand and finish off his adversary, the wrecked, ruined bird was already shifting, growing and filling out. Before Glaraz could call forth a killing spell, a brown-robed Druid sprawled on Furiosa’s back in place of the bird, and by the way he scrambled to his feet, there was nothing wrong with his bones.

  ◆◆◆

  Zarynn recoiled from the Druid as he scrambled to his feet and stood upright once again on Furiosa’s back. Glaraz stood between them, interposing himself to protect Zarynn from danger, but Zarynn recalled only too well how the necromancer had been knocked into the sea before. Granted, this Druid was the last – or, at least, the last one they could see right now – but what if he turned into a bear again? Or something even worse? He tried to remember all that his parents had ever said about Druids, but he could not recall them ever mentioning whether there was a limit to how often a Druid could change his form, or how many different forms a Druid could take on. Perhaps there was no limit. Or perhaps his parents had simply not known.

  Zarynn watched as the Druid crossed both arms and called out to the noisy, stormy sky. He guessed he must be praying to the Dark King, but he could not make out the words over the roar of the storm. Thunder crashed, and a fork of lightning split the sky, jagged bolts hurtling toward them. Furiosa rolled in the air again, and Zarynn clung on desperately as the lightning flashed past. Holding on tight as the winged beast beneath them righted herself, he saw Glaraz and the Druid clambering back to their feet, still facing one another.

  Zarynn saw both men point at each other almost in unison. Glaraz spoke words that Zarynn could not hear, and which in any case he assumed must be in the magic language he had talked about previously. The Tongue of Canes, or something like that. The Druid did not appear to speak this time, but he made an odd gesture with his other hand.

  A giant web, like that of a spider enlarged to the size of a man, shot forth from the Druid’s pointing hand to wrap around Glaraz. Sticky silvery-grey web strands longer and thicker than Zarynn’s arms yanked the necromancer off his feet, sending him sprawling on his back again, and formed a cocoon around him.

  At the same moment, the Druid staggered. His left leg bent in a way that Zarynn was sure legs were not supposed to bend, then snapped with a crack that was audible even over the wind and rain. Gouts of blood sprayed Furiosa’s scaly back, before being washed away by the ongoing downpour. Zarynn could see white bone sticking through the Druid’s robes, and immediately wished he had not, as the gorge rose in his throat. Unable to hold it in, Zarynn managed to bend over the side of Furiosa’s neck and vomit into the churning sea below. The battering wind and the salt smell of the sea did nothing to help rein in the nausea, and he screwed his eyes shut, clinging onto Furiosa’s neck and trying with little success to blot out the disgusting taste in his mouth and smell in his nostrils.

  The moment he closed his eyes, he was elsewhere. He could see the orange rocky plateau stretching out to the horizon in all directions, yet with his hand on what appeared to be rock, he could feel the wet, rain-slick smoothness of Furiosa’s scales. The flashes of dark green lightning in the pale grass-green sky were more frequent than ever before, and although no wind nor rain could be seen on the plateau, he could still feel the fury of the wind and the torrential rain that continued to fall in the real world.

  Fledgling. Zarynn. The booming voice echoed from all around him, just as he had expected from the moment the vision manifested again behind his closed eyelids. Your foe comes for you, and your custodian is laid low. Now is no time for self-pity. Fight, fledgling. Fight for your life!

  Zarynn’s eyes sprang open just in time to see the Druid crawling – there was no better word for it – toward him, dragging his broken and useless left leg behind him. Glaraz was wrapped up in the web, thrashing and squirming, trying to free himself from its sticky strands. Zarynn feared that the voice in his head had spoken truly, and the necromancer could not help him in time. The Druid was almost upon him, leering wickedly, reaching for him.

  Zarynn wondered for a moment why the Druid had not changed his shape again, when it would have healed his broken bones. Maybe he had run out of shape changes for the day? Which did not necessarily make Zarynn’s situation any less precarious, as more Druids might well be on their way. Where there had been three, there could certainly be more. Or perhaps the Druid had one change left in him and was holding out until he had Zarynn in his grasp, to then turn into a big bird and fly away with him, before Glaraz could free himself from the sticky web. To take him back to his old clan, back to the place of sacrifice, the fate from which Glaraz had rescued him only days ago, though it felt like so much longer already. To take him to his certain death, to be murdered by his old clan, just as they had murdered his parents.

  The memory of his parents, cut down before their time, jolted the fear from Zarynn’s mind. In its place, anger surged.

  “I’m not going back!” he screamed at the Druid, barely a foot away now. “I’m not going back, and you can’t take me!”

  The Druid laughed, despite the pain he must have felt from his ruined leg. An ugly, sneering laugh, full of the arrogance of his Order. Confidently, he reached out and grabbed Zarynn with both hands, yanking him forward, shaking him roughly, as Zarynn screamed a wordless cry of defiance.

  Anger blazed to new heights in Zarynn’s mind. His head swam and his eyes watered. The buzzing began in his head, loud enough to drown out the storm and the Druid’s laughter alike. He blinked away tears. As his eyes closed for a moment, he saw again the orange plateau, under the green sky, and heard the voice booming from all around him.

  Strike, young fledgling. There is no more time to waste. Strike now!

  Zarynn’s eyes snapped open, even as the sneering Druid’s grip tightened on both his shoulders. His head pounded, but his hands came up, acting purely on instinct, grabbing the Druid in turn, digging fingers deep into the man’s ribs.

  Fingers that blazed suddenly with deep grey shadowfire.

  The cold flames erupted from Zarynn’s hands, engulfing the Druid. Zarynn screamed, a loud but wordless cry of rage and grief and desperation, and shadowfire spilled forth from his lips, and lanced in twin rays from his eyes, striking the Druid full in the face with its searing power. The Druid was engulfed in the cold dark grey flames and opened his mouth to yell but succeeded only in hastening h
is end as the shadowfire poured into his mouth and down his throat.

  The Druid exploded, seared by shadowfire from within and without, burned in mere seconds by the cold flames. Between one moment and the next, the man was replaced by a column of blackened ashes in the loose shape of a man. Seconds later, the ashes dissipated into the wind, and the pouring rain washed any trace of them off Furiosa’s back.

  SEVENTEEN: A BOY AND HIS KNIFE

  Zarynn’s head was thundering to match the weather. Nausea rose and fell in his throat, and he felt alternately hot and cold despite the pouring rain. Black dots danced at the edge of his vision, and it came to him that it would be so easy to give in. To close his eyes, relinquish his grip on Furiosa – and on life itself – and let the wind and the waves take him. To fall asleep, never to wake.

  For a moment, unbidden, the image of his mother came to him. Smiling, amid tall grasses under a summer sun, beckoning him close. He remembered his hope that he might learn to contact the spirits of his parents, and even rescue them if they were in torment. For that, he needed to live, and he needed Glaraz.

  Forcing his eyes to stay open despite the pain and nausea, he began to slide carefully along Furiosa’s rain-soaked back, against the wind and the rain, toward where Glaraz lay. As he came closer, he saw that the necromancer was not as fully cocooned as he had initially thought. Thick, sticky strands of web were wrapped tightly around Glaraz’s arms from wrist to elbow, and around his legs from ankle to thigh. The outlander lay on his back, with his webbed arms trapped beneath him, and the webbing around his arms and legs securing him to Furiosa’s scaly back. His head and chest were bare, however – of both webbing and garment. Tiny specks of grey flapped in the wind and blew away as Zarynn approached. It was almost as if the Druid’s magic web and the shadowstuff garment granted to Glaraz by the First People lord, Vrnx, had somehow destroyed each other wherever they touched.