Shadowkings

by Michael Cobley

  Then the vision drew further back to show her, as if through mist, the flat-roofed, two-storey house and its drab neighbours, the tiny yards, one with a scrawny dog gnawing on a bone, and the dark, cobbled street littered with rubbish and the still body of a man lying near an alleyway, death grimace on his face, bloody tear in his ear from which some bauble had been torn...

  At some point she was vaguely aware of being helped from the room by one of the old women, who whispered trembling thanks and comfort. The child - a boy - had been born safe and well and his mother still lived. The husband came up to her as she sat before a low fire, stammering out a gratitude she could only accept with a tired nod. The fire's heat soaked into her, wrapped her in a soft warmth which somehow became thick, heavy blankets and a quilted down mattress and a cotton-covered pillow smelling of herbs. Weary through and through, she caught the faint sweetness of melodyleaf and a hint of musky rainbark and was swept off into slumber.

  Daybreak's pale and haggard light seeped into her room, filling it with greyness, dissolving the last threads of sleep. Once dressed in the plain green dress and patched brown cloak of her herbwoman disguise, she left the little bedroom and found steps leading up to the roof. There had been rain during the night. The air was cold and clean and the roof's crudely mortared planks were still dark and wet. She found a fairly robust crate and sat down to look across the city, letting thoughts come to her as she watched the dawn grow.

  Before the fall of the Empire, Choroya had been a prosperous, lively cityport famed as much for its acting troupes as for its merchant princes. Now the theatres were burnt-out shells and the exchange halls were sullen, half-deserted places where the poor produce of the northern farmlands fetched exorbitant prices.

  Suviel peered into the hazy northern distance, to the spreading patchwork of fields and smallholdings that stretched away to the far-off foothills. She could make out the dark stretches of encroaching marsh and several dull grey areas where nothing grew, ground that had been poisoned by Mogaun shamen during the invasion. Once, this land had fed fully half of Honjir but the recent harvest of inferior grain and feeble livestock would be scarcely enough to keep Choroya and its stinking shanty towns from starvation through the winter months.

  This is the bane that lies across the land, she thought bitterly. Warlords and bandit kings who pursue their skirmishes and petty wars amid the ruins of our greatness while the people suffer and weep and bleed.

  Suviel raised a fold of her cloak to dry tears from her eyes. Then she looked into the further distance beyond the mountains and saw in her mind all the lands of Khatrimantine as they were in her youth, from the lush woods of Kejana to the vineyards and orchards of Ebro'Heth, from the singing cave-cliffs of Yularia to the windswept isles of Ogucharn. She remembered riding with the witch-horses of Jefren, sailing into the teeth of a summer storm aboard a Dalbari fishing boat, and undergoing the dreamrites of magehood on a cold mountaintop in Prekine.

  Now only the foul Acolytes of Twilight trod the hallowed halls of Trevada where once mages had taught and studied, and abominations moaned in the chambers of the High Basilica.

  There was a footfall behind her. Cursing herself for wallowing in memories, she dried her eyes once more and turned to see the midwife waiting, hands wringing a neckerchief, face full of uncertainty. Then she stepped forward.

  "Shin Hantika," she said tearfully, starting to kneel.

  Alarmed at this use of the forbidden mage title, Suviel rose and quickly grasped her by the arms, forcing her to remain standing.

  "No, Lilia," she said. "Not here, not out in the open. Anyone could be watching."

  The midwife began to apologise but Suviel laid a hand on her shoulder and hushed her. Lilia Maraj, she recalled, was a daughter of one of the Roharka nobles and had been a children's tutor at the palace.

  "Don't worry," she said calmingly. "Tell me - how soon did you know who I was?"

  "It was not until you used the healing lore for the second time - I remembered you from when I used to bring children to the mage halls to tend to their cuts and bruises." Her voice grew wistful. "They were so alive, so full of curiosity. Always getting into bother..."

  "How are mother and child?" Suviel said.

  Lilia sighed. "Weak, but recovering. I doubt that she will be able to give birth again. Her baby is very well, though. A robust little soul he is, too."

  "Good. I'm glad," Suviel said sincerely, then laughed softly. "Few things these last few years have pleased me as much as helping to bring new life into the world."

  Lilia was silent a moment, a deep weariness showing in her faintly lined features. "It's an awful world to be born into," she said quietly, then looked up, suddenly animated. "Why must it go on like this, lady, why? Surely the warlords and the chieftains cannot last forever."

  Suviel sighed. "The clans of the Mogaun have strength and a kind of unity, and their shamen have great and terrible powers, Lilia. All the things which were taken from us."

  Lilia shook her head. "I believe that the time must come when we can regain our freedom."

  "Gunderlek thought the time was now," Suviel murmured.

  They were both silent for a few sombre moments.

  "Shin Hantika, you escaped the fall of Besh-Darok," Lilia went on. "Did no-one else survive, none of the other mages and loreweavers, none of the temple knights? Is there truly no way of bringing back the light into our lives? Is there no-one to help us?"

  Suviel heard the despair in her voice and for one pitying moment wanted to say, Yes, some of us did escape and have these sixteen long, black years remained in hiding or disguise, working selflessly towards the very end you've wished for.

  But the potential dangers were too great: If even just a rumour of still-living mages reached agents of the Acolytes, nighthunters and other sorcerous beasts would be loosed across Khatrimantine to hunt down any user of the Lesser Power. She and her colleagues would have to flee, perhaps even across the Wilderan Sea to Keremenchool. No, the risk was unacceptable.

  She steeled herself. "Lilia...I was near the river when the firehawks descended on the mage halls. No-one could have survived that inferno. I'm sorry..."

  Suviel saw the desperate hope in her eyes die. They both stood in silence for several moments. Suviel was about to offer words of comfort when Lilia spoke, head bowed.

  "It is not you who should apologise, lady. I was wrong to burden you with my fears and longings when you have to make your way in this world without the rootpower. I can't begin to imagine how you've coped with such a loss."

  Yes, Suviel agreed silently. You cannot.

  "With nearly all the mages and loreweavers dead," she continued, "the responsibility for ridding the empire of the foul Mogaun must lie with the people themselves. We only have to find the strength."

  Suviel heard the seed of anger in her voice and shivered. Gunderlek had voiced similar sentiments while gathering his ill-fated, ragtag army.

  "Lilia," she said. "I have to go."

  "I understand. It's dangerous for you here." She took a deep breath. "Don't worry about the others speaking of you - as far as we know, you were just an old herbwoman passing through."

  "Thank you," Suviel said and turned to leave. Half way down the steps she looked back. Lilia was sitting on the crate, hugging herself tightly while staring past Suviel at the grey reaches of the sea.

  * * *

  An hour later, Suviel was riding at a steady canter along the muddy road leading north from Choroya, through one of the shanty towns that hugged the city's outer walls. All along the track was the evidence of the most recent siege. Wrecked carts, broken shields and spears, the splintered remains of kegs and crates, burst wicker baskets, remnants of food and grain ground into the mire, and scorched and torn rags of clothing. A scattering of debris now being raked through and squabbled over by the desperate and the dispossessed.

  Nothing she saw here, no scene of squalor or brutality, was new to her, but it could not fail to rouse her sorrow
and anger. Azurech was a Mogaun chieftain, leader of the Whiteclaw clan whose savagery had struck terror into most of Honjir since their trek across the mountains from Khatris just a few years ago. An uneasy league of minor Mogaun chiefs and local warlords had kept a kind of order back then, but month by month Azurech had systematically defeated each one, absorbing their warriors into his own host. Choroya, with its encircling shanties of desperate, starving people, had been the last significant stronghold. Now it was his.

  While passing through the crowded lean-toes and filthy tents, she was struck by the silence. No songs, no elders recounting the ancient stories, no chatter, only a deadening hush and resentful eyes following her. But then, the order of their lives had been shattered. Once, it had all been so faultless and clear – the spirit of the Fathertree was the overarching principle, connecting all things and all peoples through not just the priests but also the visible, tangible benefits of the Rootpower itself. In contrast, the Earthmother was the bedrock, the unseen principle of stability, both a source of life's blessings and the resting place for the spirit at life's end. Twin forces in harmony with each other, with the people and with the world and its seasons.

  Now it was all no more, and for the sixteen years since the Mogaun invasion existence had been a hollow mockery of what had gone before. As Suviel rode past hollow-eyed children and old women sobbing over still, covered forms, her eyes stung with tears and she muttered bitter curses under her breath. Yet her pity was tempered by a weary sense of self-preservation that kept her riding till the shanties were behind her.

  The grey sky was turning ashen by the time she reached a stretch of woods that marked the beginning of the farm holdings. Once under cover of the trees she turned off the road, carefully guiding her horse among the moss-covered roots and slippery mire till she found a westward winding path. After a two-hour ride through the rain-swept trees, she came at last to where an overgrown cart track led up into dark, bracken-cloaked foothills. Despite her sodden clothes and chilled flesh, she smiled - her memories had not misled her. Beyond the hills reared the southern spur of the Rukang Mountains, a cluster of craggy peaks riven by rocky gullies and sheer gorges. Up there lay her destination, an ancient Rootpower shrine called Wujad's Pool.

  Suviel dismounted and led her horse up the track, all the while keeping alert for any sound or sign of beasts. Mountain paths like this had become dangerous since the invasion. Where merchant caravans and bands of pilgrims had once trod, now predators prowled and preyed and clumps of thorny growth blocked the route. Often she had to pause to hack a way through.

  The rest of the day was spent thus, with the ceaseless rain alternating between drizzle and lashing torrents. Beneath a rocky overhang bearded with dripping moss she made brief camp to rest and feed her horse, then again stopped later under an eyeleaf tree, feeding herself and wringing out her cloak.

  Night was falling but she pressed on, determined to reach the shrine before surrendering to sleep. At last she came to the opening of a ravine just visible in the poor light and after a moment's pause led her horse in.

  The walls were sheer, lichen-streaked rock. When the last radiance of dusk was gone she unwrapped a tar-soaked torch, lit it and continued. The ravine floor sloped down, becoming grassy and increasingly covered in stunted trees and spiny bushes that looked black in the torchlight. The vegetation grew dense and the air took on a cold edge and an ominous musty taint. Then the path opened out and she halted, shivering in the sudden iciness, staring with deep unease at what had become of Wujad's Pool.

  It was over five years since she had last visited the shrine, since when some dreadful change had taken place. Frozen grass and flowers crunched under her feet. Icicles hung from the trees and hoarfrost glittered on the shattered remnants of the small, four-pillared fane which worshippers had built on the rock out in the pool generations ago. The pool itself was an opaque mass of ice, but it appeared to have been in some kind of violent, turbulent motion at the very moment of its freezing. The wavering glow of her torch struck gleaming points of light from the solidified ripples and wavelets which radiated from a dark depression near the rock.

  She hitched her horse's leads to a low branch and ventured out onto the pool, gingerly approaching the rock of the fane. There she saw a great hole in the surface of the pool, its inside full of ragged spikes and blades of ice, its edges fringed with frozen splashes and foam. An awful sense of malevolence hung over it and the coldness was so raw that she had to move back a few paces.

  Appalled and shivering, Suviel wrapped her cloak tighter. Something evil had emerged from the water and in so doing had cursed the pool and its surroundings. But what, and when? The odour of musty decay, a sure sign of Wellsource sorcery, was strongest here and made her even more edgily alert for any disturbance nearby.

  She came to a decision. Retracing her steps she halted at the bank, rested the torch against a small boulder, then straightened and commenced the thought-canto of Purification. The Lesser Power unfolded within her and the chill faded from her fingers and toes. At her feet, frost melted on leaves of grass and the edge of the pool began to gleam and puddle. Tiny fish became visible in the spreading patch of melting water, jerking into life, tails flapping. Then a small shape struggled free of the dissolving ice and in a flurry of wings and spray launched itself into the air. Suviel smiled as the bird, a greenwing, flew once around the glade before alighting on a branch.

  But the lesser power canto was beginning to fail. She could feel the pressure of the Wellsource curse inexorably pushing back, freezing the waters she had freed. Mere seconds later all was as it had been, apart from the greenwing on its frosty perch. Then without warning, the bird took off and darted away among the branches. Suviel immediately felt a change in the air and across the glade saw the glow of torches approaching through the trees. Quickly she snatched up her own torch, extinguishing it in the wet grass, then went over to her horse and loosed the reins. She led the animal back along the trail and hitched it to a strong bush near the ravine entrance before creeping back to the glade to watch from behind some foliage.

  Seven figures emerged from the trees opposite, one of them leading a solitary horse burdened with several bags. All were garbed in brown furs and black cloaks, the livery of Yularian merchants, but Suviel knew that these were no traders. There was an air of disciplined purpose to their movements that marked them for warriors. Five of them walked out onto the pool and positioned themselves at equal intervals around the hole in the ice. A sixth removed a number of items from the horse's baggage then took them over to the hole where the seventh stood. This man was taller than the rest, his hair was silver and his narrow face was as lean and pitiless as a bird of prey. Suviel began to shiver again, sure that she was looking at an Acolyte of the Wellsource.

  Common sense told her that she should slip away while still undiscovered, but something crucial was unfolding here and she had to witness it. The Acolyte began to construct the foundations of a ritual, scattering drops from vials and powder from tiny caskets in and around the hole while muttering a continuous litany of sibilant words unintelligible to Suviel. Then he waved his assistant away, lowered his head and spread his arms, and started to speak in a guttural, droning voice. Suviel could sense the power that was gathering around the Acolyte as the musty decay became a stench that filled her nostrils and tainted her tongue.

  And there was light, a pallid, greenish glow that pulsed up from the hole in the ice until it was a swirling column of nebulous skeins and hazy eddies. Within it Suviel could make out a confusion of images, a man asleep in a tent, three riders galloping across a burning desert, a skeleton clambering out of its grave...

  The Acolyte stepped back from the column of light and a misty wave rolled out from it in all directions, coming to a halt where ice met ground, so that the pool appeared to be enclosed by an opaque wall. But when the pale wave reached the patch of water Suviel had melted, the Acolyte swung round to stare at it. An instant later his furious gaze sw
ept unerringly to where she was crouched behind the foliage, piercing her to the soul. His eyes were dead white orbs. She gasped in fear and lost her balance, breaking that terrible link. As she regained her feet and scrambled towards the trail back out, she heard him say:

  "Take her!"

  Chapter Three

  Who taught you the way of cruelty, and how to scar the souls of men? Who hammered you out and tempered your harsh edge?

  —The Book Of Fire And Iron

  Keren sat by the camp fire, letting the heat sink into her face and arms. Gasping sounds of pain were coming from the torturer's tent down by the stream but she was working on her sabre, running the rougher of her two wetstones along the blade for the fifth time that night. Outwardly she seemed absorbed in the matter of her notched blade; inwardly her mood swayed between numbness and anger.

  Byrnak was down there, personally applying the instruments of torment. His catamite, Falin, was with him and there was something significant about that but for now it escaped Keren's thoughts. Only the young priest's cries filled her mind, stirring up old doubts and the memory of honour. Hadn't there been a time when she would have put a stop to such brutality? Why was she able to just sit here while it continued, and how had she come to be this way?

  Shadows, she thought. I've been living the last sixteen years the shadows.

  After the disastrous Battle of Wolf's Gate, she had fled with a handful of soldiers south through the Rukang Mountains to find refuge in the high valleys of Kejana. A short time later, on hearing of the Emperor's death, she went through her equipment and buried anything that bore the Imperial sigil. Then she rode north to Anghatan in search of relatives, a long journey fraught with perils, its days a charnel display of horrors, its nights full of screams and burning fields. And everywhere, monstrous beasts commanded by the hooded, white-eyed Acolytes of Twilight.