Shadow Born

by Martin Frowd

  “Aye lassie, and ye ken right well as how if ye drop this here veil, yon Druids and their beasties’ll see us too, and then where’ll Himself and Furiosa be, eh? Nae good fer them if yon Druids scuttle us or set us bluidy afire, nae good fer us neither!”

  “But the Master-”

  “Lassie,” Rathgar cut her off firmly but not unkindly, “I’ve kenned Himself since afore ye were birthed, and a wee while longer’n any other aboard this here ship, aye? I’ll grant ye it looks right bad up yonder, I’ll nae deny that, but ye ken as how Himself’s got out o’ tight scrapes afore now, aye? Right now, we sit tight and wait fer Himself tae pull off another bluidy miracle. And keep bluidy baling, ye lazy layabouts!” he roared at the sailors. “Put yer backs intae it, aye? Ach, if only we’d a bluidy water mage as well as a weather mage…”

  ◆◆◆

  In the sky above, Zarynn gaped at the horrific sight bearing down on them. The six monsters were hideous beasts, certainly, but the six Druids riding them – six more! When they were so close! – were surely an even greater threat. And one of them in black, he noted. He recalled the black-robed Druid in the silent vale and how Glaraz had spoken ominously of the dark powers wielded by such Black Druids, compared to the Brown Druids whom they had fought so far. The one in the silent vale had never truly displayed his power, but Zarynn did recall that Glaraz had seemed concerned, even worried, about it.

  “Chimerae,” Glaraz grimaced, answering Zarynn’s unspoken question before he could even voice it. “Demon-wrought creatures, like doomwolves and doomhawks – and other beasts besides, yes? Druids have bred them, ever since, like other hell-beasts. Fast and fearsome mounts they are. Their tails are sharp – point and edge both, yes? Their teeth are vicious and poisoned also. This will be no easy fight, young Zarynn. And no fight at all, if you do not cut me free in time! Swiftly now. I must be free!”

  Zarynn sawed with the knife at the webs holding Glaraz prisoner, the approaching nightmare creatures giving renewed urgency to his knife hand. He trembled at the thought of falling back into Druid hands once again, but rather than freeze him, his fear spurred him on to slice the webs more swiftly. He wondered, even if he freed Glaraz in time, could the necromancer – especially wounded and weakened by the poison web as he was – possibly prevail against such odds? Tears ran unbidden down his cheeks even as he kept sawing.

  Zarynn blinked in an effort to clear the tears from his face before they could impair his vision to the point where he could not cut safely. Instantly, he was back on the rocky, orange plateau, beneath the storm-wracked green sky. As before, his senses of smell and touch warred with his sight, the latter telling him he was in a dry and alien place under an impossible sky, while the former told him he remained on Furiosa’s rain-soaked scaly back, battered by wind and rain, in a sky charged with lightning and over a salt-scented sea.

  Fledgling. Zarynn. The booming voice was back, emanating from all around him without a single point of reference. Your foes are near and closing fast. Cease your pointless task. You cannot free your custodian in time, before you are undone.

  “Then help me!” Zarynn yelled at the lightning-streaked green sky. “You said – you said my story didn’t end here,” he recalled. “So, help meeee!”

  Must I do everything myself? The voice roared all around him. Very well, fledgling. To safeguard your destiny. For the sake of the future, and vengeance. I come.

  Zarynn’s eyes snapped open, just as a crackle of lightning flashed past his cheek. The chimerae were no more than a score of feet away now – certainly less than a Furiosa-length behind Furiosa and her riders. Their tails whipped the air, thrashing with anticipation. Their jaws opened and closed, crocodilian maws revealing forked black tongues. He saw one of the Brown Druids gather lightning in his hands, preparing to throw it again. His gaze flicked to the one Black Druid, whose hands were wreathed in scarlet flame shot through with orange and black. Hellfire, he remembered Glaraz saying. That must be what hellfire looked like.

  Thunder boomed. Out of the clouds, a vast black form stooped toward the chimerae and their riders. Zarynn gaped at enormous black scales, wings that spanned the clouds, and a vast maw filled with teeth, surely large enough to swallow even Furiosa whole.

  A stream of dark iron-grey shadowfire erupted from the monster’s jaws, spreading out in a cone, long and wide enough to engulf all six chimerae and the Druids who rode them. The shadowy flames blazed through man and beast alike, reducing them to blackened ashes that drifted slowly down to the churning sea. Furiosa, diving lower, was entirely unharmed.

  Abruptly, the storm ended. The dark clouds rippled and vanished, taking the vast monster with them. The sun shone anew in a clear blue sky, the wind and rain were gone in an instant, and the sea below was suddenly calm again.

  ◆◆◆

  Aboard the invisible ship, Anjali gaped up at the sky.

  “That – that was a dragon,” she managed, her usual composure gone for a moment.

  “Was,” Kitithraza agreed casually. “Big teeth. Big scales. Strong scales. Make fine cloak for my mate.”

  Anjali stared at her lover for a moment, and then burst out laughing.

  “Never change, my Kitiyeh,” she chuckled, regaining her usual confident attitude, amused at the felis’ irreverence. “Never change.”

  “Alright, ye lazy layabouts, there’s nae more rain falling, so get yer backs intae it and finish clearing deck, aye?” Rathgar roared at the crew. Sailors baled the remaining rainwater overboard as swiftly as they could manage, bolstered by the fact that, as the dwarf had pointed out, the storm had ended

  “Cap’n, reckon as how we’re right shipshape again,” Rathgar reported to Captain Maarek, as the captain emerged from below deck, “and cannae see nae threat in yon sky now, aye? Wi’ yer permission, reckon it were time tae get Himself back aboard and haul anchor?”

  “Granted,” Maarek agreed. “Highn – I mean, Apprentice Anjali?”

  “Gladly, Captain,” Anjali flashed him a quick smile. “We’d best get Farouk on deck. When I drop the veil, the zombies will notice us, and we’ll want him to distract them long enough for Furiosa to land and us to get away clear.”

  “I fetch,” Kitithraza said with a shrug. She disappeared below deck with blurring speed and returned dragging the apprentice necromancer by one arm.

  “I was studying,” he said petulantly, taking in the captain’s and first mate’s eyes on him as well as Anjali’s. “Is there no peace and quiet to be found here?”

  “Reckon we’re making ready tae cast off fer home, lad,” Rathgar told him bluntly, “and Anjali reckons as how yer magic might be helpful tae gi’ them dead lads yonder a thing or twain tae focus on, so’s they dinnae come fer us while Himself’s landing aboard, aye? Ye see Furiosa up aloft there, aye?”

  “Well, finally,” Farouk huffed, “and not before time.” He nodded to Anjali, petulance gone in an instant behind a veneer of professionalism. “I can hold the zombies just long enough for the Master to return safely to us. Be ready to end your veil of illusion when they are distracted. You will know when.”

  Farouk drew himself up to his full height, smoothed down his black robe, and adopted an air of fierce concentration. Anjali felt a slight tingle in the air as her fellow apprentice gathered and focused his will before speaking the words of the Tongue Arcane that would actualise it.

  “Bu’shuz’muarim, nehauv. Bu’shuz’muarim, nehuu!”

  Anjali felt Farouk’s magic ripple outward, like a stone cast into a pond. The magic washed over the zombies shambling aimlessly on the sandy shore. As it touched each in turn, each zombie stopped moving, coming jerkily to a halt, then awkwardly knelt on the beach, staring vacantly down at the sand underfoot.

  Anjali’s magic, or at least this expression of it, needed no words. Silently, she gathered her power and her concentration, not to raise a spell as her fellow apprentice had done, but to lower one that was already raised. Although to her sight, nothing looked different o
r out of place, she could feel it inside as soon as the illusion dropped, evaporating like a soap bubble, and the ship was revealed.

  In the sky, Furiosa roared triumphantly. Sailors scrambled out of the way as she came in to land on the deck. The ship rocked for a moment under the excess weight, timbers flexing as Furiosa furled her wings and settled her body.

  Anjali was dimly conscious of Rathgar roaring at the crew to raise anchor, and to be quick about it, while she was already running across the deck to where Furiosa had settled and was stretched out, crooning contentedly.

  “Furiosa!” Anjali reached her and greeted her, patting her rain-slicked flank fondly, hugging her, heedless of the dampness of her scales. “Oh, you good girl! You kept the Master safe. Welcome back. Welcome back, you good girl!”

  After a moment, Anjali disengaged herself from the happily crooning Furiosa, to take in the tableau atop the wyvern’s back. Master Glaraz lay on his back, almost naked, his robes gone and a strange scrap of shimmering grey barely covering his loins. The Master’s arms were underneath him, and both arms and legs were wrapped in webs that pulsated with a subtle wrongness to them. Poison webs? She knew the favoured Druidic final revenge well enough. A young boy with the distinctive look of the Blirian tribesfolk, like the foundlings they had already rescued, was sawing carefully at the webs with what Anjali recognised as the Master’s own knife. Feeling her gaze on him, the boy looked up, knife raised defiantly, as if to protect the Master from her.

  “Anjali,” the Master greeted her, not without some effort. She could hear the pain and stress in her mentor’s voice, though he was clearly putting a brave face on it. He spoke next in the language of the Blirian tribes, presumably for the sake of the boy, and in short, choppy sentences that betrayed his fatigue and discomfort. “Meet Zarynn son of Zaryth. Shadow-Gifted. Saved me.”

  Somewhere behind her, as she focused on the Master and this boy Zarynn, she dimly heard Farouk warning that he could not hold the zombies much longer. She heard Aldrek incanting words in the Tongue Arcane to blow wind into the sails. She felt the ship begin to move away from the beach where it had sat at anchor for many days, putting distance between them and the Isle of Crows. She heard and felt Farouk release his control of the zombies on the receding beach, his sigh reaching her ears as the tingle of spent power informed her mystical senses. Her attention remained focused on the Master, and the boy who was still, misguidedly, attempting to defend him from her.

  ◆◆◆

  Zarynn’s senses were almost overwhelmed by so much taking place in rapid succession. The monster appearing in the sky to destroy the chimerae and their Druid riders; the abrupt end of the Druid storm and return to clear, sunny weather; the zombies on the beach all stopping and kneeling; the manifestation of the ship, suddenly becoming solid and colourful where it had been a misty grey outline to his eyes before; and Furiosa bringing them down to land on the ship. There were so many strange people all around, dressed in unusual colours, speaking words he did not understand, bustling with activity. He stopped sawing at Glaraz’s webs for a moment to look around. His knuckles were almost white with the fierceness of his grip on the hilt of the knife.

  A vision of beauty, clad in a long purple robe, came running across the black wood of the ship – Zarynn had no idea what the surface was called – to hug and pat Furiosa. Words in a language he did not understand spilled out of her as she petted the great beast, who crooned happily in response, obviously pleased. The colour of her skin jarred Zarynn for a moment – brown like a pale nut, rather than black like Glaraz or beige like Zarynn himself. Her hair was long, black and shiny, and mesmerised him for a moment as it swayed while she petted Furiosa. Her eyes were a colour that he had never seen before in nature, neither purple nor yet blue, but somewhere in between. Rings of shining metal dangled from both her ears, jingling lightly with every movement of her head, adding to the mesmerising effect, and a coloured stud in her nose glinted red in the restored sunshine. His hand came up, almost involuntarily, and he realised that he still gripped the knife in it.

  Then Glaraz spoke, clearly not without some effort, in the tongue of the Twelve Tribes of the People to introduce Zarynn, and the moment was broken. The woman smiled, dazzlingly, and Zarynn relaxed, lowering the knife.

  “Welcome, Zarynn son of Zaryth,” she said – in the tongue of his own people, for otherwise he would have understood nothing but his name – with a musical lilt to each word that threatened to mesmerise him all over again, and a perfectly fluent command of his people’s language, unlike Glaraz’s sometimes disjointed efforts and strange intonation. “I am called Anjali, apprentice to Master Glaraz. I bid you welcome to our ship, and you are safe now.”

  Exhaustion caught up at last with Zarynn. He sagged, still on Furiosa’s back, and felt himself begin to slide forward, downward, toppling. His vision first blurred and then dimmed, and there was a roaring in his ears. He slid, and felt arms catching him, softness holding him. As everything darkened, he heard, as if from a great distance, Anjali’s voice asking Glaraz something. He made out the word knife, and some indistinct murmur, and then Glaraz’s voice, clear for a moment through the fog in his head.

  “Saved me. Blooded now. A boy and his knife should not be parted.”

  Then he blacked out.

  Zarynn’s journey will continue in Book 2 of the Karnos Chronicles, SKULL IN SHADOW.

  APPENDICES

  APPENDIX A: A GLOSSARY OF THE TONGUE ARCANE

  As described by Glaraz to Zarynn, the Tongue Arcane is a tool to aid in focusing one’s will to actualise a desired magical effect. First spoken by dragons and later handed down to other races, the Tongue does not, in and of itself, grant magical power, but helps those who have a magical Gift to wield their power effectively.

  As the Tongue Arcane does not itself confer magical powers, it can be written or spoken like any other ordinary language, as long as the writer or speaker is not concentrating on casting a spell that corresponds to the words written or spoken at that moment.

  Druids and other priests make no use of the Tongue Arcane as they have other ritual words and gestures to invoke their divinely-granted magic. Some magical races, such as the shades, do not require a specific language to focus their will but can cast spells using mundane speech. Some types of magic, such as charms and illusions, can be cast silently. And some mages, even humans, can learn to cast specific spells or types of magic silently where they would normally require the use of the Tongue Arcane.

  Vocabulary of the Tongue Arcane used in this book is set out below. More will be revealed in future books in the series.

  Prefixes and suffixes

  ne-: no, not, negative; inverts meaning of next word

  -im: plural form

  -om: all, totality

  Prepositions

  na: to

  te: of

  Numbers

  du: two

  ku: four

  bu: many, much

  Other common words and their roots

  ach: speech

  arv: master

  avi: bird

  azh: speak

  cal: light, purity, pure

  calach: truth (“light speech” or “pure speech”)

  calba: shadow

  ghri: ward

  graa: earth

  graat: stone

  graatak: iron

  hau: go

  hauth: gush, flow (liquid only)

  hauv: march

  hul: come

  hulvid: return (“come again”)

  huu: rise

  muar: man

  orth: bone

  rallan: circle

  ruk: necromancer

  sang: blood

  sel: life, living

  shish: water

  shuch: death, die

  shul: end, finish, stop

  shur: kill

  shuz: dead

  vid: again, repeat

  vish: bolt

  zak: sword

  znak:
snake

  Spells cast in the course of this book, in chronological order of first use (excluding repeated uses of spells previously seen)

  Chapter 1:

  Shuch (“Death”)

  NeGraatak (“No iron”) – shattering iron chains

  NeOrth (“No bone”) – fracture

  Rallan’te’NeOrthim (“Circle of no bones”) – circle of fracturing

  Rallan’te’orthim’te’graa (“Circle of bones of the earth”)

  Chapter 2:

  Rallan’te’shuch’te’arvruk (“Circle of death of the master necromancer”)

  Chapter 4:

  Orthim’na’graa (“Bones to the earth”) – undoing bones of the earth

  Graa’orth’ghri (“Earthbone ward”)

  Buvishim’te’calba (“Many bolts of shadow”)

  Shuz’muar, hulvid (“Dead man, return”)

  Shuz’muar, azh calach (“Dead man, speak truth/truly”)

  Shuz’muar, hau (“Dead man, go”)

  Bu’shuz’muarim, huu (“Many dead men, rise”)

  Bu’shuz’muarim, hauv (“Many dead men, march”)

  Bu’NeOrthim (“Many no bones”) – many fractures

  Chapter 6:

  Buvishim’te’shuch (“Many bolts of death”)

  Chapter 7:

  Kuvishim’te’NeOrthom “Four bolts of no bones at all”) – four bolts of rupturing

  Bu’shuzim, huu (“Many dead, rise”)

  Bu’shuzim, shur (“Many dead, kill”)

  Vish’te’calba (“Bolt of shadow”)

  Bu’shuz’muarim, shur (“Many dead men, kill”)

  Orthim’na’zakim (“Bones to swords”)

  Sang’ne’shul (“Blood not end”) – bleeding wounds do not clot

  NeOrthom (“No bones at all”) – rupturing

  NeGraa (“No earth”) – to remove solidity from mud, transforming it to water

  Muar’na’graat (“Man to stone”) – petrification