Shadowkings

by Michael Cobley

  Roaring whiteness filled his senses, then was gone. He lowered his hands from his face and looked up at the three masked riders on their motionless, dead-eyed horses.

  "No...I'm not, I won't..."

  "Oh yes, Byrnak. We are the shadows cast by a broken greatness. Shadowkings we are, but eventually you and we shall become one."

  It was true. Every bone and sinew and unvoiced thought said that he had been....a god? Something in him wanted to laugh and jeer, something savage and wary, but it was all he could do to stay upright and keep his head from bowing.

  "Tell him about the priest," said one of the other riders.

  The masked rider laughed softly. "Ah yes, your ex-lover has been in your little torture tent and when she saw what you had done to that priest, she freed him. They are both riding west."

  "I'll...kill them both...kill..." Byrnak gasped.

  "Yes, that is what you would like to do, isn't it?" The dense mist shifted, hazing his view of the three riders. "Do not forget, Byrnak - you and I and our brothers shall once more be that which has the entire world as its realm. That is your destiny - acknowledge it and be ready."

  The riders wheeled their horses and galloped away as the mist rose up in a solid white wall. Then Byrnak was awake and sliding off his bed of furs, half-aware of someone shaking him violently by the shoulder. Instinctively he struck out and in the next moment saw Falin stumble back with blood spurting from a burst lip. A figure nearby stepped back as he came to his feet. It was the captain of his personal guards.

  "My lord, we have been betrayed!"

  Byrnak gazed around him at the tent, the iron-bound chest, his armour and weapons, the plates with half-eaten food scattered across the dirt floor. Shadowkings we are... He looked at Falin, then snatched up a furred cloak to covered his naked form.

  "I know," he said with a savage grin. "Have the companies strike camp. We've a quarry to hunt."

  Chapter Four

  Fly on spirit, fly on, and stare not into Twilight's awful eye lest it stare deep into you.

  —The Book Of Iron And Sky

  Through the mountainous night Suviel fled her pursuers, three Acolyte guards who managed to keep track of her whatever ruse she employed. Up rocky slopes, along narrow gullies just wide enough to lead her horse, and across fast-running streams but all to no avail. On they came.

  Her limbs were tired and her back ached from the ride, but her head was clear. She began to wonder if the rumours were true, that the Acolyte guards were creatures of the hunt – dogs, wolves and others - warped by the Wellsource into human shape. They could not be following the odour trail left by her or her horse since she had masked both with the Lesser Power. Perhaps it was the Lesser Power itself that drew them after her. Or perhaps she was deluding herself about what she could actually achieve anymore. For while the Lesser Power was a fundamental quality of the world, like rain or grass or insects, it was a sweet valley breeze compared to the raging gale of the Wellsource, ripples on a pond to a mighty ocean wave. Straws for a drowning unfortunate to grasp.

  Suviel sighed and shook her head, trying to dispel her dismal frame of mind. After all, the Wellsource was the Lord of Twilight's power, intrinsically poisonous and corruptive while the Lesser Power was, among other things, a fount of gentle healing that could never taint the user. It was something worth fighting for, and with.

  A watery dawn was breaking through broken clouds as she topped the crest of a ridge. Below, the trail led down into a marshy, wooded vale still hazed by lingering veils of mist. She urged her mount into a canter then slowed when she entered the shadow of the trees. The faint sounds of frogs and insect were all around. The trail led among clumps of reeds and grassy hummocks and soon she came to a place where the trail narrowed to a thin strip of solid ground meandering through the mire. She slowed to a halt and sat listening, then nodded to herself. A dozen paces further on, past a huge, tangled heskel bush, she secured her horse to a tree and walked back to stand at the spot she had found.

  Suviel forced calmness upon herself and let the Lesser Power fill her as she swiftly but carefully brought two cantos together in her mind, 'Beckoning' and 'Constraint'. The frogs and insects fell silent, but another sound reached her ears, the drumming of hooves. Confident that all was ready, she retreated to behind the heskel bush, holding tight in her circling thoughts the tether of the spell she'd made.

  She did not have to wait long. The three Acolyte guards rode into view, galloping along in single file. She kept the spell in check until the first rider was just coming to the narrow strip of ground, then released it. The mire on either side rustled suddenly and scores of long wriggling shapes surged out to attack. The first horse whinnied in panic, reared as the snakes struck at its legs and threw its rider. Landing, the guard cried out, a high snarling sound, then leaped to his feet covered in writhing snakes. He tried to run, tearing them from his neck and struggling to pull off his leather harness to get at the ones burrowing beneath it. Then he uttered a single shriek and fell in the mud, convulsing for a few seconds before finally lying still.

  The other two riders had wheeled away from the trap. They backed off and stared impassively. Suviel watched with a grim satisfaction, but frowned as they looked at each other for several silent moments. Then in unison they turned their mounts about and rode back up the trail. Suviel sighed, hurried along to her own horse, climbed into the saddle and left the marshy vale at a canter.

  She followed the track on through the mountains, keeping to the cover of trees and shadowy gullies, scrutinising the surroundings before riding across any open ground. She knew it would not be long before the guards picked up her trail again. There was a place she had to reach, a deep, narrow gorge spanned by a huge fallen tree. Across the other side was an easier, more direct trail back to Krusivel. She just hoped that in the half-decade since she was last there, no-one had taken it into their mind to destroy it.

  The morning steadily brightened and although great rafts of threatening cloud passed overhead, the rain held off. Yet Suviel felt no warmth as she passed along defiles and passes which had never been touched by the sun's rays and where tough, spiny bushes grew.

  As she rode she noticed the crumbling remains of buildings, even the collapsed, pillared entrance of a temple worked into a cliff half-way up its face. She could just make out the weathered contours of steps leading up the sheer rock, impossible to scale. These were age-old ruins, decrepit fragments of some ancient kingdom from the semi-legendary Age of Wars, whose name was lost in the fog of years. She grimaced - in another three thousand years who would even remember the name of Khatrimantine?

  If we fail, no-one.

  The path, little more than an old goat trail, led across a steep hillside, through patches of gorse and mistwrack till it dipped to join the rocky bed of a dried-up stream. Here she dismounted and continued, eyes glancing to either side, ears alert to the faintest disturbance. Except for the sound of some small creature scratching in the undergrowth, all was peace, a soothing tranquility, but she had long since learned to distrust the quiet. For a moment she yearned for the safety of Krusivel, the hidden refuge in Kejana, then she quelled it. Too much danger lay ahead for futile longing.

  On either side trees leaned over, branches intertwining above her in a dense arch of leaf and bough that fitered the morning's sombre light to a shadowy dimness. After a while the cover thinned and she followed a barely distinguishable path up a grassy bank, pausing at the crest to take in the sight.Uneven ground sloped down, widening towards the edge of a wide chasm, a dark crack in the world. Steep mountain flanks rose on both sides, daunting walls of wind-scoured stone broken by patches of dark green and grey where notches trapped moisture and gave meagre shelter to weeds and bines. A few stunted bushes grew along the edge of the rocky incline and down near the dried-up stream. Only one tree had ever grown here, a giant agathon, once rooted near the brink of the chasm till some storm toppled it across the divide. Down the centuries travellers and merc
hants' artificers had worked on it and added to it until the great tree became a true bridge with a high-sided channel wide enough for wagons hewn along its length, and cobbled ramps at either end.

  Suviel looked warily about her. Several paths and gully brooks met here, making it the perfect place for an ambush. She wished she could mount up and ride quickly down to the bridge, but her horse was near exhaustion and might stumble on the uneven slope. So she wound the traces once about her left hand and started down to the chasm.

  There was a glow of sunlight from high, high above, but rags of mist hung stubbornly in this rift between the mountains. Suviel glanced from side to side, eyes missing no detail of foliage or shadow, imagination filling her with fearful images of those beast guards coming for her with whips and chains, or the Acolyte priest waiting to sear her with foul sorcery…

  Her horse noticed the Acolyte guard first. As it tugged at the traces, Suviel heard a flicking sound and the animal whinnied and reared. Suviel released the reins and staggered away from the panicking horse, just as a leather-masked guard emerged from the bushes. From somewhere behind her came the sound of an approaching rider, and when the guard lunged towards her without drawing a weapon she knew they wanted her alive.

  There was no time to plan. She took a step back as the guard reached her and grabbed handfulls of her cloak and jerkin. Beneath the mask a slit mouth grinned and she caught the stench of his breath in her nostrils. She bunched the knuckles of her right hand together just as she had been taught, and when the guard made to throw her on the ground she hammered her fist into his unprotected armpit. He grunted in pain and bent double, one hand going reflexively to his side. Suviel brought her knee up to connect with his chin and he went down like a sack of vegetables. Then she turned and ran. Suviel was almost at the bridge when the mounted guard rode up to her, trying to strike her with the flat of his sword. She ducked the blow but was knocked off her feet by the horse's hindquarters. Scrambling upright, she found herself being herded away from the tree-bridge by the rider who transferred the reins to his sword hand and fumbled in a saddlebag. Suviel saw him draw out the corner of a dirty trapnet and dived to the side. She heard him bark several angry syllables, and she managed almost a dozen running paces before a booted foot caught her between the shoulderblades and she sprawled, hands outstretched to break her fall. Panic seized her. She rolled clear of the horse's hooves, scrambled away on hands and knees, expecting any second a weighted mesh to land on her and tangle her limbs.

  Instead she heard the clash of steel on steel and turned to see the Acolyte guard trading blows with a second rider, a lean-faced woman in quilted leather armour. A short distance away was an another on horseback, a man sitting slumped over in the saddle. The mounted guard tried to tangle the newcomer in his trapnet, but she released her reins and snatched the weighted mesh out of the air. She then swung it once about her head, leaned closer and lashed out at her enemy's sword-arm, entangling it. Then hauled on it while making a single, deadly thrust with her own blade into his throat. She wrenched her bloody weapon free as the guard slid off his horse and landed heavily, choking his life out on the ground. Panting, the warrior turned her attention to Suviel, taking in her manner of dress and age in a moment. "You're a herbwoman, yes?" Silent, Suviel nodded.

  "Good. My friend is...very badly wounded. You must help him. Get your horse and come with me."

  "Who are you - "

  "In the Mother's name, there isn't time for this!" the woman snapped. "There's a pack of killers chasing us, and they are not far behind. We must get across the chasm so get your mount - now."

  Suviel stared at the bloody sword's point which hovered inches away from her face. "I'll do what I can," she said levelly, looking the woman straight in the eye. The warrior bit her lip, and the sword lowered. Suviel nodded and hurried over to where her horse stood cropping the meagre grass. Astride the saddle, she followed the warrior and her companion across the great tree-bridge. The man, a youth, really, was semi-conscious, his eyes hardly open, his right hand limply holding the reins while the entire left arm was hidden beneath his cloak.

  Once they were on the other side, the warrior dismounted and unlashed a wood axe and a long hammer.

  "Here," she said, handing Suviel the hammer. "We'll have to wreck the bridge - it's our only chance."

  "Chance? What do you mean?"

  The woman gave her a hard look, but there was something hunted at the back of it. "The ones following after us are without pity, and would see us both killed slowly – after they had taken every pleasure they could imagine."

  Without another word the woman turned to the treebridge and chopped at the ground near the brink while Suviel tried to find good leverage places. The hammer was a use-blackened, slightly curved piece of seasoned torwood the length of her arm with a battered, gouged wedge of iron for a head, but it soon became clear that the bridge's weight was more than a match for it and her. Then she heard the woman curse, and looked up. A large group of riders, thirty or more, had appeared round a mountain track on the other side and were heading down the slope towards the bridge.

  The female warrior spat an oath and in frustration hacked a chunk of wood out of the bridge which had stubbornly refused to shift.

  "Come on," she said to Suviel. "We'll have to ride..."

  Suviel could hear the exhaustion in her voice, as well as the rage that drove her. Faint pain-filled murmurs came from the youth who was over by the horses, head lolling weakly as he lay on his side. Two desperate fugitives, a female soldier and a wounded man. Without quite believing it, Suviel knew what she was going to do, what she had to do. It's rank folly to use the Lesser Power openly, she thought. I could be risking everything. Yet I can't walk away from these two...

  "I'll take care of the bridge," she said. "You stay back there with your friend."

  The woman shook her head. "...in the Mother's name..." she muttered before reaching out to grab Suviel. "Just come along, before we all get..."

  Suviel caught the outstretched arm and pulled the warrior off-balance, pushing her onto her back.

  "Tend to your friend, and leave this to me."

  The woman gave her a look of fury mingled with a new respect. Then she glanced at the approaching danger, came easily to her feet and loped over to the youth. Suviel turned to face the oncoming riders and coaxed forth her inner serenity, a soothing of panic, a hush in the turmoil. Almost unbidden, the Lesser Power rose to fill the calm void she had made, a sweet richness of potential which she could shape to her needs.

  Quickly she envisioned the thought-canto of Cadence. As it began to coil and grow, she could feel wavelets of sound radiating from her, touching the ground, the tree-bridge, and reflecting back to her. Suddenly, she was intensely aware of the soil beneath her feet, its moist grains of earth and stones and the roots of grass and plants, a dense layer that thinned away towards the edge of the chasm. She focussed the transformed Lesser Power on the brink where the treebridge rested, letting the ripples of sound sink into the solid rock, finding the exact pitch, the exact intensity at which the rock began to sing.

  The galloping riders were moments from reaching the bridge when there was a brittle cracking sound. Suviel stepped back as the nearby lip of the chasm crumbled. The treebridge dropped a foot or two then, with a deep groan, it slipped off the edge, swinging down to strike the opposite face of the chasm with a shattering crash. For a second it hung there before its immense weight tore it free from the other side and sent it tumbling in a cascade of soil and rock into the depths.

  On the other side most of the riders were fighting to control their panicking horses apart from one, a tall burly man, who dismounted and uttered a wordless bellow of rage. Then to Suviel' dismay, she saw the air around him shimmer as he stretched out one cupped hand which was suddenly filled with flame. He drew back his arm and hurled the fire, not at Suviel but at her warrior companion. In an instant Suviel redirected the Lesser Power's focus and the fireball burst against th
e shield she had made, tendrils and sparks of flame falling to scorch the ground.

  Suviel felt her limbs tremble with the strain but she held the barrier in anticipation of a second attack. The man did nothing, just stood staring across at them, dark eyes never blinking, fists clenched at his sides. Then he turned to the riders and beckoned, and a slender cloaked youth dismounted and went over to join him. The burly man put his hand on the youth's shoulder near the neck then turned.

  "Keren!" he cried.

  Confused, Suviel glanced round to see the female warrior sitting next to her wounded companion, her shoulders slumped, her eyes glazed. Across the chasm, the man held fast the youth who began to shake violently, face contorted in pain, mouth wide with silent screams as the air rippled and twisted around him.

  Suviel was seized by panic and horror. This was no rogue outburst of Lesser Power, but an open display of the Wellsource. Heedless of her own safety she ran over to the woman, letting the Cadence thought-canto fade away and beginning the canto of Clarity, knowing with awful certainty that she would be too late. Suviel had just fallen to her knees when the woman's eyes showed their whites and she sprawled to one side.

  "Rouse her, hedge-witch," said the man's voice. "Rouse my Keren so she may see what I have made for her."

  Suviel turned in slow dread and gasped. The figure that stood swaying beside the man was different, shorter in height, altered in proportions, and had lighter hair and a smaller, rounder face. The figure was female and was identical to the warrior who lay beside her. A word came into Suviel' thoughts, a word out of dark legend - mirrorchild.

  "Or perhaps you should let her sleep," he went on. "Leave her in ignorance of the doom that will find her." He gave a feral smile. "And you, hedge-witch. I will not forget you."Throat dry with fear, Suviel had to swallow before speaking: "Who are you?"