Shadowkings

by Michael Cobley

  She thought for a moment. In these uncertain times, with Mogaun chieftains, merchants and even cities hiring mercenaries, it was a tempting offer. But she knew she could not break the promise she had given to the Lord Commander to protect Shin Hantika. It was a duty, a path of honour she was suddenly determined to follow.

  "It is a generous proposal, General, but I have other obligations to fulfill. Sadly, I must decline."

  The General looked thoughtful, fingers rubbing the plain, use-darkened leather of the dagger scabbard. "We live in a dangerous age, Keren. This would be your chance to ensure that you're always on the winning side."

  "My thanks, sir, but my decision stands."

  "As you wish. Domas will guide you to the healers' tents."

  * * *

  Once Domas and the woman were gone, a short man in a long tattered townsman's cloak stepped from behind a flap at the rear of the tent and moved to stand beside the General. "Well?"

  The General said nothing as he reached down into a knapsack at his feet and pulled out a notched, rusty dagger. He slid it into the sheath and held it out. Smiling, the tattered man took it from his hand, replacing it with a small bag that chinked softly. As he hid the sheathed dagger within his cloak, there was a flash of red cloth from beneath the sleeve at his wrist. Then it was gone and he left without another word. The General turned back to the table, took up a quill pen and began to write out a set of orders..

  * * *

  The healers' tents were pitched well away from the mass of refugees, among trees by a stream which originated somewhere in the mountainside ravines north of Alvergost. As Domas escorted her there, he related something of his own experiences since the night she had escaped with Tauric. It seemed that her harsh words to him away from the camp that night had forced him to reconsider any plan of deposing Byrnak. Then later, when the guards discovered what she had done, he was spurred into decisive action.

  "I told my rider sergeants I was leaving, and asked who was with me?" He laughed. "All three voted to join me, and a handful of the men, the most trustworthy ones. Once Byrnak and his company left in pursuit of you, we deserters mounted up and rode off, 'hunting boar' we told the rest."

  "Then?"

  "We thought of riding north to Casall or Rauthaz, but we were low on provisions so we headed east through one of the mountain passes, thinking to try our luck in Tobrosa. On the other side we met the General and his men - they were part of a host of refugees fleeing the sack of Tobrosa, and when he invited us to join the company we accepted. That was a week ago and we've been here these last five days."

  He paused. "The General is a canny soldier, Keren. You could do a lot worse than take him up on his offer."

  "I can't, Domas. I have other tasks to carry out."

  "Know what I think? I think that you've joined one of those rebel bands we've been hearing about. There's supposedly a big one holed up in the Bachruz Mountains." He stroked his chin. "Would it take about a week to travel there, then turn around and ride here, do you reckon?"

  Keren's felt unease at his speculation and the shadowy dimness of the trees where they stood, away from the light of campfires and torches, took on an air of menace. She loosened her sabre in its scabbard and forced a quiet laugh.

  "I think that you're building castles out of grass, Domas," she said. "You've been listening to too much refugee ragtalk."

  Domas regarded her calmly for a brief moment, then shook his head, grinning.

  "Ah, Keren, Keren - whatever your secret is, it's safe with me." He pointed out a long, low tent through the trees. "That's were the sick are tended so your friend should be thereabouts. When you're ready to leave, seek me out near the General's tent, but I recommend you wait till morning."

  She nodded, letting herself relax a little. "Thankyou, Domas."

  He made a batting motion with his hand. "Nothing." He turned to leave, then said; "And Keren - try to come up with a convincingly detailed story next time, eh?"

  Chuckling, he strode off back the way they had come.

  Keren was self-reproachful as she threaded a way through the trees. Domas was right. She should have thought of a plausible explanation, some string of falsehoods to counter any scrutiny. She sighed. For some, like Gilly, concocting deceits and petty tales out of nothing was an effortless, natural ability. Had he been in her shoes, he would doubtless have fabricated a heart-rending story of destitute refugees, complete with names, ages and family histories, looking to him for succour, ending with Domas and the General drying tears from their eyes and sending him on his way with gold and food. The image amused her as she approached the tent.

  Her smile faded when she saw a woman sitting weeping by the tent entrance. With a shock she realised it was Suviel. Keren hurried over, crouched beside the mage and murmured her name. Suviel raised her head and Keren saw utter exhaustion etched in her features, her eyes red-rimmed, her face pale, almost grey in the light from a nearby campfire.

  "They die and I can't save them," she said hoarsely. "Some don't want to live, they're so weak and sick and empty...Empty of hope." She coughed. "I've spent myself, Keren, and I'm all used up. Raal sent me out here to rest."

  Keren reached out to steady her but Suviel caught her hand in a trembling grip and stared at her.

  "Listen, this Raal Haidar is a sorcerer. He uses a power I've not seen before, like ghostly braids and nets - "

  "You should rest, try and sleep."

  Suviel went on. "He says he is from an island kingdom far to the west of Keremenchool. If only we can persuade him to join us. I've asked him but he insists he cannot...I must go back inside and help."

  She tried to stand but fell to her knees and began to weep again. Appalled and shaken, Keren half-carried her over to the fire and made her lie down, ignoring her protestations as she wrapped the mage in blankets and folded one for her head. In a short while, she was sleeping deeply. Keren gently brushed strands of grey and brown hair away from Suviel' face, then rose to go to the tent. But she stopped, startled to see a tall man in a dark green robe standing a few feet away, methodically wiping long-fingered hands on a blood-stained cloth.

  "Are you - " she began.

  "I am Raal Haidar." His voice was deep, melodious, and rang with authority. "You are Keren Asherol, the swordswoman. Where is your companion, the trader?"

  He had a narrow face and a high forehead, an imperious blade of a nose and eyes that were dark and powerful and cold.

  "He is with our horses, camped on the topmost level."

  "That is unfortunate. There is much danger abroad tonight." He turned back to the tent. "Come - I require your assistance."

  "You require?..." She bit back on the angry retort that rose to her lips and followed. Inside, small hanging lamps cast light on three rows of cots. Iron burners on pedestals filled the air with incense, an attempt to keep away insects and mask the smells of illness. But beneath the perfume she could still detect a fetid bitterness and the pungency of stale sweat. There were another two people ministering to the sick, a man and a woman, both of whom appeared weighed down by weariness.

  The man called Raal Haidar indicated a crude table crowded with bowls, sacks and torn cloth.

  "Wash your hands then bring me bandages," he said, then walked up one of the rows and stopped by one cot. Keren glanced back out at the slumbering form by the fire, sighed and went over to the table. Some of the sacks there she recognised as Suviel', most lying open, their contents laid out in neat groups around a mortar and pestle and other scholarly implements. Hands washed, she sorted through the scraps of cloth for long strips, tore up some clean-looking rags into more and took a good bundle over to Raal Haidar.

  The tall man was examining a young boy whose arm, bare of its dressings, was a mass of sores. As Keren saw him, a panicky tremor passed through her.

  "That's...that's the black yaws," she said.

  "Hmm. It is usually completely fatal."

  "Usually? But there's no cure! By the Mother, we'
re all at risk - "

  He straightened and fixed her with a withering look. "The dressings, if you please."

  Wordlessly, she gave him a handful of bandages and watched him take a small blueglass jar from his robe which he uncorked to reveal a rosy paste. Three bandages were smeared with the paste, then more were wound on to hold them in place. When he was finished, Raal Haidar washed his hands and went on to the next patient, gesturing Keren to attend him.

  They worked on for at least an hour by Keren's reckoning, and throughout the tall sorcerer - which was how she thought of him - never once showed a glimmering of sympathy or pity for those he tended. His gaze was cold, his every motion efficient and full of certainty and Keren began to wonder if he saw the sick and injured as people at all. Only once had she attempted conversation with him and that he had cut short with a small gesture without even looking her way. Yet when he finally straightened and said - "Enough." - she wanted to continue.

  "Why?" she demanded as he strode over to wash his hands at the table.

  He shook water from his long pale hands, dried them and said; "Because our time here is at an end."

  Almost at once she heard voices from outside, among them that of Suviel. Keren tossed the last of the bandages on the table and dashed past the impassive Raal.

  Two mercenaries with drawn swords held a dazed, half-awake Suviel between them while another four approached the sick tent. With them was the General and an uncomfortable-looking Domas. Keren glared at him as the General halted a few feet away.

  "Give up your weapons and you will come to no harm," he said.

  She ignored the command and grinned wolfishly, hand resting on the hilt of her sword. "Release my companion and you will likewise be unharmed."

  The General responded with a smile of his own. "Surely you can see the futility of pitting yourself against us, woman. The terms of my compact require only that I deliver the herbwoman. If we have to kill you, it is no matter."

  "Keren," said Suviel. "Don't fight. There are other ways - "

  Keren's gaze never left the General's face. "Who have you sold us to, mercenary?" She put venom into the word. "Those priests, yes? Then come, for I will not surrender to them or you."

  Her sword sang a metallic hiss as she drew it forth. The General shook his head.

  "Impetuous, yet spirited. You could have been a valuable asset to my company, Keren Asherol. That can still be so, if you exercise a little prudence. Give me your sword and you will be safe, I swear it."

  Keren spat on the ground. "Come and take it, lackey."

  The General's composure dissolved into anger. "Take them," he told his men.

  Before they could move, a voice spoke from behind Keren.

  "Halt! There will be no fighting."

  Raal Haidar was standing to her right, hands linked across his chest and concealed by the sleeves of his dark green robe.

  "Unless you have a weapon, stay out of this," Keren muttered.

  The tall man ignored her and said to the General, "You have made a grave mistake, for I fear you will have to return your fee."

  The General unsheathed his own blade, a plain broadsword with a battered basket hilt. "And why would that be?"

  "Because you will have no-one to deliver, foolish warrior." Haidar's hands parted and he raised one of them, forefinger pointing up, thumbtip pressed against the others. He paused for an instant, staring straight at the General who seemed to shrink slightly under the impact of that regard. "Be fortunate in your journey."

  Then he spoke a long, single word and the world changed.

  The word reverberated through her. Her skin crawled and her bones rang and the air in her lungs buzzed like a thing alive. One arm she wrapped across her chest, while the other quivered to the brazen sound of her sword, tightly grasped yet still somehow slowly slipping out of her fist. She could feel her hair writhing on her scalp and her eyes vibrating in their sockets. Then, with a fading undertone, the word ended and Keren straightened to look about her.

  The General, Domas and their men were still visible, but only as horror-struck, tenuous wraiths searching in and around the tent. Night's darkness was gone, replaced by an all-pervasive white radiance that leached the colour from their surroundings, the tent, the trees, the grass, the flickering flames of the campfire. To Keren's eyes everything was in shades of crystalline white and grey, except for her companions.

  Suviel stumbled across to Raal Haidar. "What have you done?" she said in amazement. "Where are we?"

  Haidar, hand still upraised, looked around him as if in scrutiny for a brief moment before answering. "This place is known to the arcana of my masters as Kekrahan. It is one of several spectral domains which closely overlap our own plane of existence."

  "We call them the Realms," said Suviel.

  Haidar shrugged. "I do not know if we are speaking of the same thing. As I understand it, the Realms are seperate planes of existence in their own right. This - " He gestured about him, " - is but a ghosty half-world."

  "And how long can you keep us here?" Keren said impatiently.

  "Not indefinitely, so it would be wise if we set out to find your other fellow-traveller who, I believe, is keeping watch over your remaining horses up on the topmost level."

  "How did you know that?"

  "When we were tending the sick, your mind continually returned to this man, Gilly. My people are sensitive to fleeting thought-emanations and with you it was akin to hearing someone muttering under their breath."

  "Shall we go?" said Suviel. "I have no desire to find myself back in our erstwhile captors' hands."

  Together they made their way through the trees to the pathway that led up the mountainside. It was like walking through a community of apparitions; although it was the middle of the night, there were still many refugees awake, huddled round fires or stealing among the tents and lean-tos on obscure errands. As they came to the earthslide and masonry barrier, where Barew and his fellows tossed dice by torchlight, a scrawny dog leaped to its feet and began barking madly at their passing. One of the guards hurled stones at it and the poor animal ran off yelping.

  The same thing happened twice more, once with a bony cat which abandoned its meal of dead rat and scurried away, and again with a tethered goat which ran in a panicky circle till they had passed by.

  Gilly and Keren had pitched their tent under a jutting rock. The trader was sitting on a boulder when they arrived, feeding a fire with scraps of tinder. Keren smiled at the moody look on his face and turned to the sorcerer.

  "You can bring us back now."

  "Not here," Suviel said. "We might be seen."

  Keren pointed to a gap between the overhanging rock and the side of the tent and right behind Gilly. "There?"

  The mage gave her a reproachful look. "Trying to exact some petty revenge, Keren?"

  "He deserves it," Keren said.

  Raal Haidar drew himself straighter. "This is quite tiresome." He uttered two quick, harsh syllables, and Keren felt an icy wave pass through her, leaving her shivering cold in its wake with shadowy night once more shrouding all she saw.

  Before them, Gilly had jumped to his feet and had half-drawn his blade when recognition stayed his hand. Suviel hurried over to rub her hands in the heat of the fire and was quickly joined by Keren. The trader quickly assumed an air of relaxed ease and sat back down.

  "It would appear that I've missed all the excitement," he said.

  "There is no time for explanations, Gilly," said Suviel. "We had best break camp immediately before anyone comes looking for us. And we've only two horses between the three of us so the sooner we leave the safer I'll feel."

  "There will be four of us."

  Keren turned with Suviel to regard Raal Haidar. The tall man met the mage's cool gaze for a moment before a ghost of a smile crossed his face.

  "Fate decrees that we be fellow travellers, Shin Hantika," he said. "Like you, my destination lies to the north, in Prekine." He bowed his head very slightly, a
s if acknowledging her authority. "I am sure that I can be of service to you."

  Suviel was silent and Keren felt a haze of unease at the suspicion, the certainty that the only way Raal Haidar could know of their travel plans would be if he had picked it from among Suviel's own thoughts.

  Then the mage nodded. "Very well. We would be glad to have you journey with us."

  "And will we be travelling from here to there in the blinking of an eye?" said Gilly as he stood. "Or can I look forward to days spent traversing mountains and fording rushing streams?"

  "I fear we shall be confined to this plane of existence," said Haidar.

  Gilly frowned. "I can scarcely contain my joy."

  Chapter Eleven

  Whilst a half-truth and a half-lie,

  Are perilous horrors to the unwary eye,

  The unvarnished truth,

  Is more terrible still.

  —Contemplations, 27.

  Incomplete, the spell hovered a foot above Bardow's table, a glittering, twisting knot of broken colours. A couple of thin-wicked candles in niches by the door gave off yellow halos of light, but the spell's luminescence was quite different. It sent weak rainbow flickers over the table's dusty clutter of books, withered plant stalks, grotesque figurines, pincers, files, quills and empty inkpots, and a couple of plates bearing the quarter-eaten, dried-out remnants of food. The mage sat in a tall chair, elbow resting on the chair arm, chin cupped in hand, his face looking tired and lined in the spell's radiance.

  Bardow felt tired. If he had been shaping an ordinary scrying spell, it would have taken him a matter of minutes and demanded only a modicum of concentration and alertness. This scrying spell, however, was different. In effect, he was trying to recreate the farseeing aspect of the Crystal Eye by pitting several Lesser Power thought-cantos against each other. Already his head was ringing with the effort of maintaining the cantos of Behold and Veil, and Impel and Lure, balancing their open forces, keeping them focussed on the same point.