by DD Barant
“Cross-universe cultural contamination,” she whispers back. “We’ve stumbled into a myth, but our presence—well, your presence, actually—is warping its presentation. The more we interact with it, the more anachronisms will pop up.”
“But that’s a good thing, right? It means we can disrupt whatever enchantment Asher’s trying to work.”
“Only the surface elements. It’s more dangerous for us—we run the risk of being assimilated into the myth, becoming part of it. That’s probably what’s happening to all the people who were in the Sands when it disappeared.”
Baron Greystar lifts his spear over his head, holding it in both hands. I notice it’s tipped with a multifaceted black rock, probably obsidian. “This shall be the place,” he intones. “Here, where the stormstalk roots converge, where the power of Life flows and protects. This shall become the Heart of the land, and all will be welcome here; and great joy will be our commerce, and song and laughter and drama our food and drink. This place will be a bright beacon in our eternal twilight, and no creature of the night will fear its warm and beckoning glow. All who live in Nightshadow will know this place … and it will be known as Night’s Shining Jewel!”
He plunges the spear into the moss. It goes deep, around half its length, and quivers with the force of the impact.
The baron steps back. The spear keeps vibrating—in fact, the tremors are getting worse.
And then the wooden shaft begins to sprout twigs, branches, leaves. Whatever’s in that moss must be the best plant food money can buy, because in a matter of seconds there’s a tree, its trunk getting thicker by the moment. Not a normal tree, though; it’s growing in a decidedly unnatural pattern, roots straight as arrows, branches forming right angles as neat as any carpenter’s work. A building is growing in front of my eyes.
“Amazing,” Azura murmurs. “The founding of Night’s Shining Jewel, the birth of the Palace Verdant.”
“So this is another creation myth?”
“I don’t think so. It’s just the prologue—the main event hasn’t started yet.”
We watch the castle take shape for a minute. It’s really amazing, both beautiful and uncanny, like watching one of those time-lapse films of a skyscraper being built or a plant growing. Or both.
“Splintertree?” I say.
“It’s a family name.”
“Splinter? Tree? You come from a family of lumberjacks or something?”
She gives me an annoyed look. “My father was a were rhino, all right?”
“Ah. That explains a lot.”
And then everything jumps like a bad edit in a movie, and suddenly we’re in the middle of a city. The Palace Verdant, now big as a castle, stands in front of us, the moss road running right up to its front gate. Structures line the thoroughfare, ranging from tents to huts to elaborate bamboo constructions like the one we encountered back in Vegas, and there are side streets branching off at regular intervals.
The people who stream along the road all seem the basic medieval peasant type—except that most of them are half human and half animal. I see weres of every kind, from elephant to badger, most of them roughly human-sized and shaped except for their heads. They pull carts, hawk wares from stands, eat at roadside stalls; some of them just stand around and stare like tourists. The glowing vines provide light in various shades and hues, giving the place more of a Christmassy than neon feel.
And then the wolves sweep in.
You don’t see thropes in full-on were form all that much, at least not in downtown Seattle. They stick to human or half were, which leaves them with hands and makes their clothes fit better. When they do go all-out hairy, the result is usually something around the size of a large timber wolf, massing around 180 pounds and standing maybe three and a half feet at the shoulder.
These are much, much bigger.
Their fur is black, their eyes a gleaming gold. They’re as big as small horses, massing at least double what the average thrope does. They’re wearing leather harnesses strapped across their backs, with pouches or loops of rawhide dangling from them, and they run in formation; I have the eerie feeling I’m looking at the world’s biggest dogsled team, and any second now the sled itself is going to come into view, being ridden by a crazed, fifty-foot-tall Paul Bunyan.
The street clears before them, everybody getting the hell out of the way. The furry horde races up to the palace and then cuts to the right, following the curving avenue that circles the building. When they’ve surrounded it entirely, they slow to a stop and then sit, facing outward.
“The arrival of the Wolf Nation,” Azura says softly. “Every wolf-were in Nightshadow.”
“Is it an invasion?”
“No. They were summoned by the king, Bloodsong the Second.”
Reality jumps again, and now we’re in what has to be the Royal Court, at the back of a cluster of nobles to one side of the royal carpet; the king sits on an ornately carved throne at its head. The carpet is the selfsame moss that runs up to the royal gates, and no doubt runs out the back gates of the palace as well.
A tall, bearded man, dressed only in a rough breechclout and a leather harness, stalks up the mossway and stops in front of the throne. The king, a pire with a definite resemblance to Baron Greystar, is dressed in vivid purple robes with elaborate fur trimmings, though his jeweled crown seems to be carved from wood.
“Your Highness,” says the bearded man. “The Wolf Nation stands ready.”
“My thanks, General. The people of Nightshadow respect and appreciate your loyalty.” He pauses, his brow furrowed. “What news of the enemy?”
“They have a terrible new weapon, Sire.” The general pulls an object layered in thick cloth from a pouch on his belt, and carefully unwraps it. It’s a short dagger, dull with tarnish. “They call it silver.”
“We’ve seen metal weapons before,” says the king. “Dangerous, yes, but obsidian or underdead-strengthened edges cut just as well—and the wounds of weres heal much faster than those of the invaders. Metal cannot even pierce the skin of the Lyrastoi.”
“This metal can, Sire. Observe.” The general runs one finger lightly along the edge of the blade, then holds up a bleeding hand. Smoke curls from the wound. “You see? Barely enough to draw blood, yet it bleeds still. Were-soldiers unlucky enough to take a serious blow die, even from wounds that crush instead of cut. The metal cuts Lyrastoi skin as easily as any other, with effects just as deadly.”
The king considers this gravely. “And the passes?”
“They hold, for the moment. They cannot burn them, and their weapons are not as effective in a siege. They loose the odd arrow with a silvered head, when they feel confident of taking down one of our sentries. But they are building something, something we fear will turn the tide in their favor.”
“Tell us.”
“A vast disk, silvered on one side and sand on the other. The sand has been melted with flame, so that when it cools and hardens, it is as clear as water. They call this a mirror.”
“For what purpose?”
“It creates a reflection, like that of a clear pool of water, only so sharp and clear it seems you are looking at a perfect duplicate of your own image. When light from the Poisoned Star strikes a mirror, the reflection is as bright as the Star itself, and can be directed by adjusting the mirror’s angle.”
“Surely our passes are deep enough in the mountains to be safe from such a device?”
“From one, yes. But they are constructing a series of these mirrors, from which they can direct sunlight the way a riverbed directs water. Such a river could reach the very walls of our passes.”
“And undo the underdead enchantments strengthening them,” the king murmurs. “Without those, they are merely bamboo and sporestalks, brittle and weak.”
“Yes, Your Highness. Our one chance is to launch an assault in the dead of the night, before these mirrors are finished. Our enemy has committed all their forces; we must do the same. They must be destroyed, so thor
oughly that it will be another generation before they can remount an attack. That will give us time to strengthen our fortifications so this will never happen again.”
“I see.” The king falls silent once more.
“Who’s invading?” I whisper to Azura.
“The Pharjee,” she whispers back. “They’re a small but aggressive country to the east of the Clawrock Mountains. Evil sun-worshippers.”
“They worship an evil sun?”
“It is to us. We’re not big fans of daytime, as you might have noticed.”
The king is speaking again. “—the ultimate commitment, then. Your people are prepared?”
The general lowers his head. “As I said when I entered, My King: Our lives are yours.”
“Then the order is given. Let it be known throughout the land of Nightshadow that the Wolf Nation is willing to give everything they have to defend their home—and that, as our mightiest warriors, they shall not give their lives alone, or in vain. Their king shall fight alongside them.”
The general raises his head in alarm. “Sire, is that wise? You are a ruler, not a soldier—you are versed in neither weapons or warcraft.”
“That is true. Indeed, I own neither bow, blade, nor armor; but my ancestors did, and they passed those things on to me in another form. That, I still own; and it is both my spear and my shield.”
“I know not of what you speak, Sire,” said the general.
“Then you do not see what is before your eyes. For behold, it is all around you…”
And the throne begins to tremble.
“Find something to hang on to!” Azura says with a grin on her face. She’s already grabbed some sort of ornamental bracket on the wall holding a shelf up. “This should be one hell of a ride!”
The floor lurches, like a ship in a rough sea. Nobles yelp and scramble for balance. The king grips the armrests of his throne tightly and lets out a loud, booming laugh. The general looks grim, but he manages to stay upright.
With a sound like a forest uprooting, the entire palace gets to its feet.
I’ve grabbed on to a window frame for stability, so I’ve got a pretty good view of what’s going on outside. Just as that spear decided it would rather be a castle, the castle has now decided it would really rather be a giant wooden octopus, its foundations sporting massive, tentacle-like roots now free of the ground and boosting the structure into the air. It celebrates its momentous career shift by going for a walk, wolf-weres scattering in its wake like a pack of confused dogs confronted by a moving bus they’d been assured was a pet food store. Some of them start to howl.
“Onward!” shouts the king. “You take the southern pass, I’ll take the northern! We will crush them like bones in our teeth!”
And abruptly, we’re someplace else—not the whole palace, just Azura and I. We’re perched on a rocky crag overlooking a narrow valley, with a tall bamboo wall stretching between the two cliffs on either side. A full moon rides low in the sky, providing the only light; and massed at the base of the wall is the same army of wolves I just saw surrounding the octo-castle. There’s a raised, empty platform in front of them, beside an immense, closed gate in the barricade.
“They made good time,” I say. “I guess this is the southern pass?”
“Yes.” Azura’s smile fades from her face. “At the northern pass, King Bloodsong catches them by surprise. The Palace Verdant is too large to pass through the gate, so he simply smashes through the wall. He’s stopped to pick up soldiers along the way; they drop down on the enemy’s head from above while the palace itself wreaks havoc.”
“Good times, very mythical. So why are we here instead of there?”
“Because,” a familiar voice says from just above us, “that was just a good story. What’s about to happen here is history.”
Azura and I spin around. Standing on a ledge around five feet above us is a man with a streak of gray running down the center of his skull.
Tair.
* * *
I have my gun out and aimed at his heart in a second.
He just grins. “Hey, take it easy, ladies. If I was looking for trouble I wouldn’t have announced myself, would I?”
“Who are you?” Azura asks.
“Depends on who you ask,” he answers. He leaps down from the ledge and lands beside us gracefully, but not so close as to be threatening. He’s dressed in black jeans and a black sweater, with a long tan coat over that. He looks even more like a young Harrison Ford than when I first met him. “These days I go by Tair—though Jace might slip up and call me something else if she’s … distracted.” He meets my eyes and smiles, two old friends sharing a private joke.
I keep my gun on him. “There’s all sorts of things I could call you, Tair. Don’t think you’d like most of them. And if you get too close, every single one will be a variation on deceased.”
He laughs. Hearing a close friend’s laugh come out of the mouth of a stone-cold killer feels like coming home and finding out you’ve been robbed. “Only most of them? I must be growing on you, Valchek. Told you I would.”
“If any part of you grows on me, I know where to get an excellent wart remover. Why are you here?”
“Same reason you are: to witness a legendary battle.”
“You know what’s about to happen?” Azura asks.
“I have a pretty good idea. It’s a story that pops up in lycanthrope folklore more than once. In Russia they call it the Slaughter of the Dark; in France it’s the Battle of Final Honor; in Germany, simply the Pact. All of them boil down to basically the same thing.”
“Which is?” I say.
“You don’t really want me to spoil it, do you?”
“It’s starting,” Azura says.
We shut up and pay attention to what’s going on below us. It’s not a conscious decision—we’re here to observe, and the power of the myth compels us to do exactly that.
The wolf-were general mounts the platform and regards his troops. “Warriors of the Wolf Nation,” he says, his booming voice echoing off the valley’s walls, “We are here today to prove what we have always boasted: that there are none so brave, none so fierce, none so loyal. We shall go forth as a mighty wave, sweeping all before us, and we shall be united as never before. Our very souls shall be as one, for our king has granted to us a powerful enchantment. Just as the stormstalk roots weave magic beneath our lands, so this spell will weave our spirits together; and for every one of us that falls, the rest shall grow stronger.”
The general begins to chant, words in a tongue I can’t identify; it sounds vaguely like Cherokee. He’s signing along with the chant, though I can’t really follow that, either—he’s too far away and signing too fast, though I catch a couple of basic concepts like share and brother.
The chanting becomes louder, more strident, until it turns into a scream—and then a howl as the general shifts into were form. All the wolves join in, a single rising voice that echoes back and forth between the rocks, the most unearthly sound I’ve ever heard. Okay, maybe the wail that Elder God let out when I banished it was a little worse, but not by much.
The howl rises to a single, piercing note that sounds like it could shatter a universe. Some of it is coming from right beside me; Tair has transformed and is howling along with the rest of them. If I were on the other side of that wall, I think right about now I’d be seriously reconsidering my invasion plans.
But it’s too late for that. The howl reaches its crescendo, holds it for a long yet timeless moment, and then just disappears. It doesn’t stop, exactly; it just seems to climb up into a range human ears can’t perceive.
In the ringing non-silence that follows, all the wolves lower their muzzles. Beside me, Tair does the same.
The gate in the wall swings slowly open.
Without another sound, or any apparent signal, the wolves surge forward.
I glance at Tair. He’s crouched in half-were form, every muscle in his body tensed to leap. It’s a good sixty
feet to the valley floor—he’d survive, but he wouldn’t be in any shape to chase after them. That’s exactly what he wants to do, though; it’s obvious in every trembling muscle in his body—
He jumps.
“Tair!” I blurt. I can’t believe it; I keep thinking that something else is going to happen, that he’s going to sprout wings or a parachute or just hang in midair like Wile E. Coyote. His plunge seems to last forever.
Nothing happens to stop his fall. Except the inevitable, of course.
He lies sprawled at the foot of the cliff, not moving. Unless he landed on a vein of silver he’s not dead, but who knows how many bones he’s broken. “We’ve got to get down there,” I say—
We vanish and reappear, but not at the foot of the cliff. We’re in another valley, not as narrow as the first one, with the remains of a shattered wall a little way down it. King Bloodsong the Second’s monster house is just ahead of us, kicking the snot out of the soldiers milling around its huge, rooty legs. Arrows pepper the mobile fortress from archers stationed on ledges on either side, but they just bounce off; His Majesty wasn’t kidding about his home being his armor.
“No! We have to get back!” I say.
“There’s nothing I can do about it,” Azura says. “We’re being shown what the myth wants us to see—”
And then we’re back, this time on the valley floor, on the other side of the gate. The Wolf Nation is attacking the Pharjee forces camped there, who despite their initial surprise are doing much better against an army of supernaturally pumped-up werewolves than their comrades are against an angry tourist attraction.
I turn around and sprint for the open gate. I don’t know how long I have before I blink back, but I have to try.
I make it all the way to the gate before I get yanked to the other battle. The Pharjee are trying to get a round mirror the size of a wagon wheel into position, but the palace kicks it into a thousand shards.
Blink. I’m back at the gate. I sprint for the unmoving, furry form lying on the ground. I get all the way there before disappearing again.
The king, not satisfied with merely destroying the enemy army, is stalking farther down the pass. He comes to another mirror installation and destroys it.