The Dark Shore (The Dominions of Irth Book 1)

by A. A. Attanasio

  He shook his head stiffly. "Myth."

  "Then it must be myth that devastates Sharna-Bambara at this hour." She waited until he raised his careworn face. "You have seen the reports. Hundreds have already died, savagely ripped to pieces."

  He let her go and stood. "The cacodemons are real enough. I do not doubt that any longer. But they are some mad wizard's evocation."

  "Sire, you are ignoring facts." She followed him up the wide steps toward the altar of golden stone. "No wizard has ever evoked more than three spirits at one time. There are already over a score of cacodemons, and others fall out of the sky each night. You would need a gang of wizards working full time. And even then, all their destructive spirits would scatter like mist before our Charm."

  The duke leveled a penetrating stare. "You are certain that there is no way to fight these creatures with Charm?"

  "They are not of Irth, sire." She stepped up alongside him. "Charm has no effect on them whatsoever."

  "Yet they are physical beings, Nette. They tear down buildings and slaughter people."

  "They are very real. Yet, they come from a different, colder level of reality." She lowered her voice sullenly. "Every test I conducted indicates that the cacodemons and their lord are impervious to Charm."

  "You only now said that the lord of the cacodemons is a man from Irth. Surely our Charm can seize him?"

  "The cacodemons protect him. He is ever in their shadow—even when they appear to be nowhere near him. He is invincible."

  "No assembled creature is invincible," the duke scoffed. "You, an assassin, know this." He clasped frustration in his fists and paced slowly around the altar. "There is a way to fight them, surely."

  "I could find no weakness susceptible to our amulets. The Dark Lord may come from Irth, but he is no longer of Irth."

  "Yet he has returned—if we are to believe him—from the Gulf itself." He stopped, framed by the ingots heaped atop the altar. "Do we know yet who he is?"

  "He was initially reluctant to reveal his identity to me. It is you, before all others, to whom he wishes to reveal himself. Finally, he let me draw close enough to confide something startling. He says you know him well. He carried the sword of Taran against you—"

  Lord Drev stopped pacing and looked down at himself as if this might all be a dream. "Wrat?" If any of the damned are to return, it would be him, he thought. That renegade had been crazy, lit madly from within, a hollowed gourd of a man shining with evil intelligence.

  "He calls himself now by his war name," Nette said cautiously, aware that this next utterance would provoke the duke's fury. “Hu'dre Vra.”

  "The battle lord who killed my sister is … Wrat? That weasel is lord of the cacodemons?"

  She moved toward him, and he blocked her with one shake of his head.

  "My lord—" She acquiesced and stepped back, thinking, Here stands the wealthiest man on Irth—and yet he cannot buy his way free of this absurd nightmare.

  The duke teetered before a chasm of grief, under a whirlwind of rage. To control himself, he closed his eyes and turned inward. He silenced his anger by opening himself to an ocean of emptiness wider than planets.

  In the thousand nights since Mevea had died, Drev had often sat for hours before the ceiling’s telescopic panels, watching islands of stars adrift on the black horizons. Recently he no longer needed to see the glimmering darkness. He could feel that cold and secret sea within, and he immersed himself there.

  The frosty ethers absorbed his rage, and he stepped back from that gulch of sorrow to face Nette. He spoke strongly. "Weapons master, you are certain that the Dark Lord is, in fact, the renegade leader Wrat?"

  She gave a fateful nod.

  The duke’s hard gaze flinched. He had thrown Wrat into the abyss with his own hands. He had vividly cherished the image of the scrawny upstart with his screaming weasel face dwindling, terrified, on the riptide darkness into the abyss.

  That horror had been poor balm for his wounded heart, yet that was all he had to counter the gruesome memory of his sister's death. Here, in this central court, Wrat had impaled her on the sword of Taran.

  With emotions in check, the duke saw clearly that if Wrat had truly returned from the Gulf, then he had come back as a god.

  No wonder none of my attempts to scry or far-see the so-called Dark Lord have revealed him. He has become immune to Charm!

  "Sire"—the weapons master dared. "There is more."

  “Of course.” He passed her a resigned look, a thin mask over seething anger. "The madman's demands. What are they?"

  The weapons master answered flatly, "At dawn in Elvre, the Dark Lord will descend upon Arwar Odawl and destroy it."

  The wizarduke held anger in check and received this news impassively. He knew what Wrat intended: Arwar Odawl, the smallest of the realms, would set a grisly example.

  "And his demands?"

  "No demands, sire. Cacodemons will attack Arwar Odawl at dawn and destroyed it entire. The Dark Lord intends to demonstrate that his cacodemons can devastate more than just villages and hamlets. Hu'dre Vra will display his might to all Irth by reducing a floating city to ruins."

  The duke glared, incredulous. "He is mad!"

  "Yes, I believe so," Nette replied ruefully. "His psychopathic traits are extensive: Delusions of self-reference have convinced him that all creation exists to serve him. And he entirely lacks conscience. People are things to him, sire."

  The wizarduke spoke bitterly. "What is to be done with this madman, Nette?"

  The weapons master shook her head slowly and direly. "Unless you surrender to him, sire, the Dark Lord threatens to savage every dominion on Irth and spare none his wrath."

  "So he means to turn the whole world against me?" He laughed without sound at the cruel obviousness of Wrat's stratagem. "Do you believe that if I give myself to him he will spare the other dominions?"

  Nette answered crisply, "No."

  The duke frowned at this confirmation of what he already knew. “Thank you, Nette."

  "My lord, will there be a reply?"

  "No." He faced away from her and began pacing again. "No reply. You have done a good job. I will see you receive a bonus with your discharge fee."

  "It would be prudent to retain my services, sire. You will need a worthy weapons master."

  Drev paused and spoke without facing her. "If all you say is true, then no number of weapons masters can protect me when the cacodemons come. From all others, my glory belt will guard me well enough. You may go now, Nette."

  "Thank you, sire," she acknowledged tersely, then added with more warmth, "and glad fortune be yours." She received her dismissal with an unexpected tinge of regret. Despite her prejudice, she had come to respect this sad and desperate duke, because he refused to act out of sadness or desperation and faced his doom gracefully.

  Once Nette departed, the wizarduke pointed to the groined celing, and the dark alcoves lit up in a wide rainbow circle of breathing light.

  "Send this last conversation with weapons master Nette to every city in every dominion on Irth," he commanded, and the colors began to parade clockwise through the alcoves. "Also, alert the Council of Seven and One at once and call an immediate emergency session!"

  Among the red shadows of his brood's gallery, he watched the agitated movements of his family: Mevea's children, two salamander skinny boys, both under five thousand days old; his cunningly ambitious brother-in-law, Baronet Fakel; and the baronet's new wife, the silent, veiled witch dancer, Lady Von—as well as all their flamboyant entourage of astrosophers, animal servants, and garish hangers-on.

  With the revelation that the wizarduke had become the Dark Lord's target, the people in the gallery began scrambling to distance themselves, and he had no need for the gate that kept them from getting closer. Yet he kept the invisible shield in place. He did not want even the appearance of favoring his personal interest or his family's in the hard decisions to come.

  The alcoves darkened, and the wet
shaft of gemlight at the center of the court widened to a glass table at which sat seven leaders, one from each of the other dominions: They occupied antechambers at palace cities in their own realms: the gem-star that Drev's grandmother had placed above Irth enabled them to hold conference as if at one site.

  The seven rulers did not hide their dismay as they had at earlier meetings, when there was yet ignorance enough to doubt the Dark Lord's threats. The mages wore frantic expressions. They had watched Nette's report.

  "Arwar Odawl stands at full alert," declared the lord of that capital in Elvre, the aristocratic margrave, Keon of Odawl. He rose, quivering with indignation, and his amulet tabard rattled. "I call upon the Council to send defenders at once to stand with us against the Dark Lord."

  The Council agreed unanimously—though that did not ease Margrave Keon, for he sat stiffly, the fine, disdainful features of his patrician face locked in furious determination.

  In that stony defiance, the wizarduke witnessed the triumph of the Dark Lord. No matter the Council's resolve to fight, they stood defenseless before the cacodemons.

  Earl Mac of Sharna-Bambara reminded them of that. He described further atrocities in his dominion, where the cacodemons continued to plunge out of the night sky. Orchard valleys had been ripped up by the roots, highways broken into cobbles, and whole villages butchered by the slaverous creatures.

  "You must hide!" Ladyship Rica urged. She and the other Council members had known Drev’s parents. Rica, the conjurer from the Reef Isles of Nhat, had been his mother's strongest ally and his sister's godmother. She wanted him to live, as did Ladyship Altha, the powerful sorceress of Zul.

  But others delighted in his horror, especially his family's enemies, the enigmatically beautiful witch queen Thylia from the Malpais Highlands and the wrinkled empty skin that hung from a stick and spoke with a blue tongue of flame in a shriveled face of green fungus: the warlock Ralli-Faj.

  "Yes-s-s!" The warlock's tongue sizzled in his mummified face. "Hide! S-step down! Resign the regency."

  Lyna, stout enchantress from the Falls of Mirdath, rose next and spoke with her usual serenity. "Ralli-Faj is correct, Lord Regent, though for the wrong reasons, of course. Your power should not devolve to your enemies, yet you must step down immediately, because your history with the Dark Lord endangers the entire Council."

  "S-step down!"

  Lord Drev flared a hot look at the warlock, then removed the glory belt of white crushed leather.

  "None has scryed this." He spoke with deliberate lack of emphasis, suppressing his welter of emotions so none would later say he acted in panic. "This is an unforeseen act—a pivot of history. Let it be known I act for the benefit of all."

  He passed a sober, steady look over the other members, held up the belt with its bulging pouches of talismanic power, and announced, "I am no longer regent."

  Lyna congratulated him with an awed nod, her tiny eyes, like the eyes of the others, fixed on the glory belt in his white-knuckled grasp.

  "Council rules require you to choose a successor from our bench to serve out the remainder of your regency. What is the remaining term, Thylia?"

  "Eleven thousand two hundred and sixty-nine days," the witch queen answered and displayed the recording abacus.

  A fractured laugh erupted from Earl Mac, the bald wizard from Sharna-Bambara. Despite his gruff manner, his tattooed face trembled. This is the Last Day! The regency is over. The Dark Lord has come to walk on our necks!"

  "No!" Margrave Keon of Odawl shouted. "We must fight!"

  "With what?" Thylia queried, puzzled at the stubborn ignorance of the others. "Charm is ineffective. Will you fight with sticks and stones?"

  "S-step down!"

  Lord Drev walked the length of the bench, holding the heavy belt before him. He had long ago decided who would get the glory belt if he had to abdicate. He stopped before Lady Rica. "You were the staunchest ally of my mother and sister. Your wisdom and effective governance have fully established your worthiness to fulfill my term." He held the white belt in both hands doubled over, pouches jigsawed together to form the falcon seal talisman, the most potent amulet on Irth.

  “The dire threat from Wrat the scavenger against our most venerable and vulnerable of realms requires me to defeat the choice of my heart. I have decided to pass the falcon seal to that one of us who needs its power most—the noble Keon, Margrave of Odawl."

  The haughty margrave gasped and rocked back in his seat as the falcon seal, emblem of the Abiding Star, Source of All, came through the sheets of gemlight toward him.

  "Will you stand apart and uphold the Council of Seven and One?" Lord Drev spoke the ritual words, transferring the ultimate authority of the regency to the startled margrave.

  Lord Keon, silent, stunned, leaned forward, arms straight, blue knuckles on the table top. He peered into Lord Drev's pale eyes and silent knowing passed between them. They understood that this grand gesture of hope rang hollow unless some other weapon than Charm could be found to stop the cacodemons.

  The margrave straightened proudly before the inevitable and spoke the traditional assent with conviction. "I will stand apart. I, Keon, Margrave of Odawl, will stand apart as regent and uphold all the rulings of the Council of Seven and One."

  The wizarduke placed the falcon seal amulet on the glass table before wide-eyed Keon and stepped out of the gemlight.

  In turn, the others pronounced their fealty oaths, and Lord Keon opened the falcon seal and donned the glory belt.

  Less than a day remained before dawn in Elvre and the threatened attack of the cacodemons. The new lord regent waived all further ceremony and, with a glittering look of gratitude to his predecessor, closed the session.

  The glass table with the seven sorcerers and witches vanished, and Lord Drev stood alone, ringing with emptiness. I have given up everything.

  He pointed to the gemstone at the canopy of the court's central vault and made a fist. That dulled the gem and shut out the incoming calls he expected from allies who would want to console and foes eager to taunt.

  With a wave, he opaqued the gallery and assured himself seclusion even from his family, though no one there would want to see him now. Baronet Fakel and Lady Von had surely fled Dorzen with his young nephews, intent on getting as far as possible from him and the vengeful Dark Lord.

  And there was no slip or sleight in the new regent, Lord Keon, failing to summon him to Arwar Odawl to stand at his side in the coming dawn battle. Drev had become a pariah. In their hearts, and even in his own, responsibility for the arrival of the cacodemons lay with him, for he had defeated Wrat the scavenger and yet had disdained slaying him outright.

  The wizarduke climbed the stairs to the altar and touched a long thin amethyst panel set in the pedestal. The panel opened a baize-cushioned drawer bearing a sword of white gold, with black scabbard and red belt.

  He took the sword by its metal haft, which was of one piece with the blade, and the gold shaped itself to his grip and widened its guard to protect his wrist. The strength of its Charm had not diminished in the thousand days that it had sat inert. It changed the light of air around it and made his arm feel bold.

  Gazing into its sensuous bright lines, he could hardly believe such loveliness could surrender to horror. Yet this blade had killed Mevea— and hundreds of others. Legend said it had been forged in Hellgate by the infamous blind smith Tars Kulkan, who first learned to capture Charm with metal and used that knowledge to make weapons.

  It was called the sword Taran, because the Liberator, the tailor Taran, had in the midst of battle plucked it from the dead hand of his master and turned the tide by slaying three kings that day. Whole realms had fallen to this sword long ago, and the tailor had become a lord. Over time his sword had been lost, only to be found tens of thousands of days later by a junk scavenger named Wrat.

  Lord Drev sheathed the weapon. This was no time for moody contemplations of the past. Wrat had returned.

  Hu’dre Vra! The
Dark Lord! The wizarduke guffawed at the puerility of his enemy—and his laugh in the hollow chamber echoed ominously.

  Already, he had lost his sister and now his very place in the brood to that weasel-faced scavenger. The Dark Lord would come next for his life.

  To stand and fight was hopeless, this he knew with certainty. As the target of evil, he owed it to the others to lead Hu'dre Vra away.

  Rica of course is right. Drev reviewed his decision as he strapped Taran over his brown work uniform. I must hide until I find my chance to strike.

  He removed the gold armorial star crests from his collar and laid them on the altar. At last, stripped of all talismanic power save the sword paid for by his sister's blood, he felt ready to begin his own way back to Dorzen, back to this very court and this altar of dominion.

  Cold fear gripped him, locked him into the dread realization that there was really no hope of return. He was going to his death. Not that he could scry his doom. Not yet.

  With his hand firmly on the sword's hilt, he had the Charm and skill to see he would not die this day. The near future undulated like a heat mirage before him, hazy, full of shimmery hues and sunshine—undimmed as yet by the shadow of death.

  Life is hope, Drev counseled himself, trying to thaw the frigid certainty of his doom. No matter the odds, we cannot panic. Else then, Wrat wins by default, without even a fight.

  The cramp of dread in his heart did not relent.

  He dismissed the liquid glimpse of the future, and his gaze returned to the altar. None of the treasure piled here belonged any longer to him. None of it ever had. He had always used the offerings for the benefit of Dorzen and Ux, and he felt proud that he could simply turn his back on his office at a moment's notice and know that he left behind no troubles for the clerks of the new leader.

  If there is a new leader, his fright scolded him.

  His gaze touched the amulet with the newt's-eye from Saxar. He picked it up and heard again the chime of longing for a future where love thrived.

  And the newt's-eye that the factory waif Tywi had spent for a loaf of nut bread became a pivot of destiny, a fulcrum of faith that struck the paralyzing ice of hopelessness and indecision like an ax.