Shadowrealm

by Paul S. Kemp

  My suggestion worms its way into the regimented construct of Vyrhas’s will. I feel him resist, feel the reinforcement of his training bolstering the mental walls. He is strong. I fear my plan may die stillborn.

  All at once my power pierces his resistance and he is mine.

  Act as though you will leave for Cale’s side with the others, but instead meet me in the dining hall.

  On the way to the dining hall, I retrieve my bow, my blade, my leather armor. When I reach the large dining chamber, I see no one.

  “Vyrhas?” I say to the darkness.

  The shadowwalker steps from the darkness along the far wall. He is taller than Nayan, leaner. His long black hair is tied into a rope that falls halfway down his back. Shadows curl around his hands, his head.

  “Mindmage. The Right and Left have called. I remained only out of respect for our friendship.”

  My power has so scrambled Vyrhas’s mind that he regards us as longtime friends, though we have rarely spoken before this moment. Still, his will is slippery. I must trod softly over his mindscape so as not to dislodge the compulsion.

  “Cale and Riven called me, too,” I lie. “They need you to take me somewhere.”

  Vyrhas looks relieved at the revelation. “Where?”

  “I will show you. Open your mind.”

  Vyrhas opens his mind to me without hesitation. I picture in my mind the vaulted, hemispherical chamber deep within the floating mountaintop on which Sakkors stands. I picture the faceted stone walls, designed to reflect and amplify the Source’s power. And floating in the center of the vault, slowly turning about its lengthwise axis, I picture the giant, crystalline form of the Source.

  I push the image into Vyrhas’s mind.

  “There,” I say. “I am to go there.”

  Behind him, Cale heard the Lathanderians assembling. Armor chinked, shields rung, and orders carried through the still air. Cale held his mask and continued his spell.

  The shadows swarming the air behind and around Kesson began to keen, the discordant whine of doomed souls. The shadow giants, darkness bleeding from their forms, beat their swords on their shields, the sound like the heartbeat of the world.

  Cale continued the spell, felt the power gathering, the borders between worlds weakening.

  Above, Furlinastis completed his turn, roared his rage at the theurge who had forced him into service thousands of years before.

  “Whatever you’re doing, Cale,” Riven said. “Do it now.”

  Kesson Rel rose into the air, raised his hands.

  The keen of the shadows reached a pitch that hurt Cale’s ears. The beat of sword and shield by the giants grew more rapid.

  Kesson lowered his hand and thunder boomed. Hundreds of lightning bolts formed a green net in the sky. The rain resumed, poured from the black clouds. And Kesson’s servants swarmed forward The shadows formed a black cloud that swirled, parted in two. One half sped toward Furlinastis, one half toward Cale, Riven, and Rivalen. The shadow giants rushed forward, blades bare.

  A clear, piercing note on a clarion sounded from the line of Lathanderians.

  “The light!” they shouted as one.

  Cale completed his spell, used Weaveshear to slice a gash in the veil between planes. He widened it and darkness streamed from the wound in reality. Beyond, he saw the Plane of Shadow and the haunted ruins of Elgrin Fau, once the City of Silver on Ephyras, now a wraith-haunted ruin. He saw the necropolis in its center, the dead core of a dead city.

  Kesson Rel had bound Elgrin Fau’s dead to the city’s locale, but Cale knew the shadows of Elgrin Fau were the same as those of the Adumbral Calyx, and that those of the Calyx were the same as those of the Shadowstorm.

  “You are unbound!” Cale shouted. “Emerge to face Kesson Rel!”

  His words summoned moans through the rift. Black forms rose up from ancient graves, hundreds, thousands, the denizens of an entire city. Cold poured through the gash torn between planes. The wraiths’ red eyes, so like those of the shadows’, focused on Cale. He saw numbers to match those of Kesson’s army of shadows.

  “Come forth!” he shouted, and they did.

  Thousands upon thousands of wraiths flew like arrows for the planar rift, poured through it like a black river. Their moans answered the keening of the shadows as they took to the air.

  “It is for us and only us to slay Kesson Rel!” Cale shouted. “You must kill his army. Hear me, Lords of Silver!”

  One of the wraiths peeled off, larger than the rest, its form twice the height of a man. Cold and power went forth from it.

  “You are heard, First of Five,” it said, and inclined his head. “Do what you promised.”

  Before Cale could answer, the wraith darted away and joined his fellows. Two hordes of undead flew toward each other, two clouds of darkness, a city of Kesson Rel’s servants and a city of Kesson Rel’s victims. Moaning and keening filled the air as the two forces clashed, intermixed, wheeled and swirled like enormous flocks of birds, dueling cyclones of shadow. Cale could not see the sky through the black cloud of their battle.

  The ground vibrated with the charge of the giants. Hundreds of the huge creatures tore across the plains, their footsteps the drumbeat of war. The Lathanderians rushed forward to face them, broke around Cale, Riven, and Rivalen.

  “Fight well,” Regg shouted as he passed.

  Shadows coalesced in the Lathanderians’ wake and Nayan and the shadowwalkers emerged from the darkness to stand before Cale. All of them fell into a crouch at the sound of battle. Their impassive faces surveyed the scene at a glance, took in the undead armies warring in the sky, the shadow dragon wheeling through a cloud of still more undead, and the line of Lathanderians forming up to receive the charge of the giants.

  “We are come,” Nayan said to Cale.

  Cale surveyed the field, watched Kesson rise into the sky behind his army. Other than Kesson himself, the shadow giants were the most mobile of their enemies.

  “Assist them,” he said, nodding at the Lathanderians, who had formed a line of flesh and metal to meet the charge of the giants. “Keep the giants occupied. Kesson is ours.”

  Nayan’s face tightened but he nodded, turned to his fellows, and spoke hurried orders in his language. The shadowwalkers bowed to Cale and Riven, turned, and shadowstepped into battle, joining the line of the Lathanderians.

  Cale looked up into the sky, trying to formulate a plan. He saw Kesson complete a spell and gesture with his right hand.

  “Cover!” he shouted.

  He and Riven dived and rolled as a column of flame engulfed the plains where they had been standing. Flame and heat soaked Rivalen but the Shadovar emerged unscathed. Cale assumed he had a ring or cloak or some other magical device that protected him.

  Rivalen scowled, the shadows around him whirling, and answered with a spell of his own. He pointed a hand at Kesson and a black beam shot from his palm, through the undead warring in the skies, and struck Kesson in the chest. It was deflected harmlessly away.

  “Spells are shite, Shadovar!” Riven shouted. “It’s blades or nothing!”

  Cale agreed, and both he and Riven leaped to their feet. Cale intoned the words to a spell that would empower his weapon, strengthening Weaveshear’s already puissant enchantments.

  Meanwhile, Kesson surveyed the field and gestured with his left hand not at Cale, Riven, or Rivalen, but at the ground near the Lathanderians who scrambled to meet the charging giants.

  A twisting spiral of energy left Kesson Rel’s hand, struck the earth near Regg’s company, and caused the ground to ripple, rumble, shake, and knock Regg off his feet. Shouts went up all around him as other members of his company fell to the ground.

  Meanwhile, the giants were closing.

  The tremors gained intensity, rattled the plains, and the ground beneath Regg groaned, shifted, cracked. Chasms opened in the plains, hungry maws of stone and soil.

  “’Ware!” Regg shouted.

  Men and women, already prone
or off-balance from the tremors, fell into the holes by the dozen, screaming as the ground swallowed them. Regg, pulling Trewe with him, rolled away from a chasm that opened beside them.

  “Get them out!” Regg shouted, and climbed to his feet on the unstable earth.

  The men and women of his company climbed to their feet, extended hands down the gashes in the earth, or uncoiled rope. Shouts from the chasms told Regg that many of those who had fallen in still lived.

  A great battle cry went up from the charging giants. Regg looked up to see hundreds of the huge creatures bearing down on them, bleeding shadows as they ran.

  “Roen and the priests, get them out! The rest form up! Form up!”

  The company scrambled to get back into line as the giants closed. The ground went still for a moment, then the chasms started to close.

  The Lathanderians trapped within screamed—panicked sounds that dug a pit in Regg’s stomach.

  Furlinastis beat his wings, his rage growing with each stroke. Darkness boiled around him, its agitated swirl a reflection of his rage. A cloud of Kesson Rel’s shadows harried his flight, keened in his ears, and tried to take his vigor with their life draining touch.

  Too slow to match his speed in flight, they swarmed the air before, below, and around him, trying to intercept him as he passed.

  He snapped them up in his jaws by the half-dozen, shredded others with his claws. The beat of his wings dispersed the vapor of their remains into the wind. But some flew through his body as he passed, reached through his scales. The cold of their touch slowed his heart, coarsened his breathing.

  Kesson Rel hovered in the air before him, facing away, his hands gesturing as he began to cast yet more spells.

  Rivalen watched the energy of Kesson’s spell evoke a localized earthquake. The Lathanderians screamed and fell as the ground shook but the tremors did not reach the ground under Rivalen’s feet. He held onto Shar’s symbol and shouted the words to another spell, a powerful evocation that caused the target to implode. He charged the spell with additional power, stretching its range, made a hammerfist with his two hands, and shot a pulse of the black energy at Kesson.

  Kesson saw it coming, and deflected it with a casual wave of his right hand. Rivalen knew then that Riven was correct, that his spells would be useless against Kesson. He would have to engage the heretic face to face.

  Irritated, he directed another blast of the implosive energy across the battle at one of the giants charging toward the Lathanderians. The wave of force hit the huge creature and it screamed as bones shattered and blood sprayed, the magic causing its body to fold in on itself again, again, again, again. …

  Cale started to run toward Regg and the company, but Riven grabbed him by the arm.

  “Let the shadowwalkers help them,” the assassin said. “Kesson is our goal. Get us up there.”

  Cale nodded, looked through the storm of wraiths and shadows wheeling through the sky to Kesson, who had already begun another spell, and drew the shadows around him.

  As he did, a huge form loomed out of the dark sky behind Kesson, a black cloud of teeth, claws, wings, and black scales. Hundreds of shadows flitted about Furlinastis’s form but the dragon seemed not to care. The empty harness on Furlinastis caused Cale to think of Abelar. Cale hoped he had died at peace.

  Furlinastis opened his mouth in a roar and Kesson whirled to face him.

  Cale saw his opportunity. Gathering Riven within his shroud of shadows, he stepped through the darkness and into the sky behind Kesson.

  Nayan would have preferred to have stood beside the Right and Left Hands but they had instructed him to do otherwise and he and his initiates would obey.

  As one, they sprinted toward the line of the Lathanderians, their strides preternaturally fast. They kept their feet as the ground shook, and shadowstepped away from the chasms that opened in the earth to swallow the Lathanderians by the dozen. He was not even certain the Lathanderians had noticed him and his men.

  “Free them,” he shouted to his men in their language.

  A roar went up from the line of charging shadow giants and the shouted orders from the Lathanderian’s leader had most of them rushing to meet the onslaught.

  The chasms started to close, the ground groaning, screeching, rumbling. The men and women trapped underground screamed in panicked terror.

  “Quickly,” he said, and stepped through the shadows to the bottom of a closing chasm. He materialized in the darkness of the hole, behind a Lathanderian shouting and trying to scramble up closing walls that offered scant purchase. Nayan’s eyes, blessed by the Shadowlord, saw in darkness as though it were noon.

  “Be still,” he said to the woman.

  The woman turned to face him and her brown eyes went wide. Sweat and rain smoothed her black hair to her scalp.

  “Are you … Erevis Cale?”

  Nayan shook his head and started to draw the darkness around them as the walls continued to groan closed. “His servant.”

  He shadowstepped back to the surface with the woman in tow. His fellows appeared at the same time, each beside a Lathanderian they had pulled from a chasm.

  “Look!” said Trewe, and pulled Regg around.

  Behind them, the shadowwalkers in service to Erevis Cale appeared on the torn, vibrating earth, each of them with one of the company in tow. Immediately they disappeared again into the shadows, reappeared in a heartbeat with another of Regg’s company. They repeated the process again and again, appearing and disappearing as the chasms sealed, pulling dozens of the company from the closing mouths of the hungry earth.

  Regg raised his blade in triumph. “There are no ordinary men on this field!”

  Trewe sounded a blast as the line cheered and formed up.

  The ground vibrated under the thudding tread of hundreds of giants. They loomed ever larger in Regg’s sight. Their blades were as long as Regg was tall, their arms as thick as his legs, their legs like the trunks of oaks. But at least he would feel the bite of his blade into their flesh, and its edge would draw blood instead of shadows.

  “At the ready!” he shouted as the creatures bore down on them.

  Nayan repeated the process again and again, as did his fellow shadowwalkers. They pulled many from the closing chasms, but not all, and the grinding earth swallowed the screams of some. He winced as the screams died.

  He did a quick headcount of his men, and realized that he was missing Vyrhas.

  Vyrhas pulls shadows around us and I feel the lurch in my stomach that accompanies magical travel. The moment we reappear I notice the warm, rhythmic mental pulses of the Source’s power, the gentle surf of my addiction.

  The shadows dissipate from around us. We stand in the huge vault at Sakkor’s core, the magical heart of the city. Light the color of blood bathes the chamber. No doors or archways offer ingress or egress. I remember that the Source’s chamber is a cyst in the floating mountain, an abcess accessible only by magical transport.

  The Source, its facets humming with power, hangs unsupported in the air, perpendicular to the floor, suspended only by its own power. It flares and pulses with the regularity of a heartbeat. I hold out my arms and let the power wash over me, into me, through me. My power is doubled in a moment. I find it hard to breathe, as if the air is too thick to squeeze into my lungs.

  The polished planes fashioned into the walls and ceiling reflect the image of the Source a thousand times over, amplifying its power. The facets show my image over and over again, too, and I am struck with the thought that I do not look more numerous; I look shattered.

  The shadows around Vyrhas coil protectively about him. He winces, as if the room itself were about to strike him. He clutches his brow, staggers. When he looks up at me, I see a trickle of blood leaking from his nose. He does not have the capacity to shield his mind from the incidental onslaught of the Source’s mental energies.

  “What is this place?” he says, and his speech is slurred.

  “Go,” I say to him, and my c
ontrol over his will makes it an order. “There is nothing more for you to do here. Go to your comrades. Tell no one where you took me.”

  “Are you certain, my friend?” he says, as his other nostril starts to leak blood. “I could remain.”

  I admire his loyalty. “Leave. I will be all right.”

  Like many addicts, I prefer to engage in my vice in private.

  Vyrhas nods, the shadows around him swirl, and he disappears into the black. I am alone with the Source.

  The moment Cale and Riven materialized in the air behind Kesson, both drove their empowered blades through the shadows that shrouded him and into his flesh. Cale felt as if he were driving Weaveshear through dwarven plate armor, but the enspelled blade penetrated somewhat. Riven’s blades, too, sank into Kesson’s flesh.

  Shadows boiled from all three men, intermingled, churned, the battle of Elgrin Fau’s wraiths and Ordulin’s shadows in miniature. Furlinastis’s roar filled their ears. His body, streaking toward them, mouth open, filled their field of vision.

  Kesson arched his back in pain, flapped his wings, but completed the final words of his incantation through gritted teeth.

  His body turned incorporeal as Furlinastsis closed his jaws over him, narrowly missing Cale and Riven with his teeth. But the dragon’s momentum carried him foward and he plowed into Cale and Riven like a falling wall of rock.

  Cale managed to get a hold of Riven’s cloak as the impact shattered bone and sent them both careening through the air.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  7 Nightal, the Year of Lightning Storms

  The Source’s power starts to fill the hole in my mind, rounds the sharp edges of my jagged mindscape, bridges the cognitive chasms. The jolt of power sends a thrill of pleasure through me.

  I sense recognition from the Source. It knows me, and I it. We are old friends.

  Shadows clot the air on the far side of the hemisphere, expand, and expel four Shadovar warriors cloaked in darkness and bristling with steel. They shout at me, point at me with their crystalline blades, and charge across the chamber.