The Dark Shore (The Dominions of Irth Book 1)

by A. A. Attanasio

The predators dragged two other troopers from under rock shelves, and ravening fangs consumed them alive. For several hours, cacodemons circled overhead, searching for others who might have eluded their voracity. Then, obeying alien instincts, they drifted away across the shimmering sky and vanished altogether into the heat of the empty day.

  What Lives After

  Ripcat ran steadily, weaving among old brick lanes between the factories and hangars of Saxar. Under each arm, he carried a bolt of textile—the trance wrap that Whipcrow and Dogbrick had sent him to steal. He forced his aching muscles to climb stairs of ill-joined cobbles until he reached a trolley station high above the industrial canyons of the city.

  He dropped the bolts of trance wrap. Clutching heaving lung-sore ribs, he peered down at an ink wash of midnight shadows. He felt glad to have made his escape from those jammed factory yards undetected.

  No security officers patrolled anywhere. He raised his weary face gratefully to the star-blown darkness. This was Hiphigh Street, a small avenue of fishmonger stalls and vegetable stands, shut for the night. He picked up the two bolts and shuffled down the street several long blocks. He passed empty auction platforms and tiers of vacant market bins.

  A clay gully path between a meat mart and a vegetable stall, both shuttered for the night, invited him. He hobbled into the dark, pressed his back against a stone wall, and sidled to the ground, exhausted. He peered with satisfaction at the two bolts of fabric.

  Even in the dark, the agate cloth gleamed with citrine swirls like a prismatic gold liquid. Its Charm remained sealed within as long as the crimson binding cord securing each bolt remained in place.

  The thief knew this, yet he thought he sensed chimerical images within the gaudy luster of the cloth—spectral forms of his own dangerous dreams: a sable-haired young woman with languorous eyes … quicksilver glimpses of an autumn forest riddled with daylight and elvish shadows...

  Clutching the bolts of trance wrap to his chest to keep from floating away in the nocturnal tide, he nodded to sleep and dreamt of her again.

  He met her in the deep violet haze of autumn woods. She stood in a fairy ring of mushrooms, the fungi like a talismanic circle of bone shards. And she was laughing with a child’s glee.

  He woke with a salty taste of sorrow in his mouth. Morning's auburn seeped into the alley, and he heard boisterous noises: the markets setting up for another day. From a stack of emptied fruit crates, he extracted a burlap liner and wrapped the bolts.

  A newt's-eye bought him a honey peach and two blue bananas, and he ate breakfast as he slowly made his way along the street listening to the day's fervid gossip about the fall of Arwar Odawl and the terror of the Dark Lord. Business slowed almost to a standstill as the populace awaited dire events.

  At the corner of Hiphigh and Dark Meander, he came to a station with an empty trolley. Soon as he entered, it continued its route, and he sat in the back eating his fruit and watching the city trundle by.

  Young students on their way to lyceum boarded, yammering about cacodemons. They hushed when they saw him. A charmwright and her two apprentices got on, glanced darkly at him, and continued muttering about Saxar's vulnerability, wedged as it was between the Qaf and the Gulf.

  At Everyland Street, Ripcat disembarked and caught an uptown carriage so crowded he had to stand on the runner and hang from the side. He changed again at Cold Niobe and rode that trolley up Dreamborne Boulevard. At the summit park, Dogbrick and Whipcrow awaited him in a grove of jigsaw trees.

  "That's it?" Whipcrow griped when Ripcat removed the two bolts of trance wrap. The factory manager pulled back the cowl of his cloak and released the sticky spikes of his black hair. "Just two bolts? There must have been two dozen in that warehouse."

  "Security was everywhere,” Ripcat explained. "I only took what I could easily carry."

  Whipcrow's dark, narrow face squinted with distrust. "You're holding the rest, aren't you? That would not be smart. We have a deal."

  Ripcat frowned and gave the bolts to Dogbrick.

  "Ah, Whipcrow"—Dogbrick shook his maned head—"that is a dangerous accusation."

  Whipcrow stared hard into the tapered eyes of Ripcat, recognized the taut promise of violence, and backed a step. His thin blue lips sneered. "You can't cheat me anyway. I'll find out from the factory report what was stolen."

  Ripcat strode off in disgust and left Dogbrick to haggle with the informer. The Cat walked through the grove to a grassy slope of flowering hedges. Across the tops of the blossom shrubs, he cast a slow gaze.

  Fields shelving a blue stream irrigated sprawling estates of pitched farmland. The city ended here in a district of granaries and grange halls called the Millgates. A crowd thronged on a terrace above the canal, where the silver figure of 100 Wheels addressed them.

  The thief raised his line of sight above the Millgates and its enclosure of opulent estates and fixed on a flock of black dirigibles afloat over the city skyline. He had often watched trade vessels come in but had never seen so many at one time. They will be filled with refugees, he reasoned. The Dark Lord terrorized the south and people from every city would flee to remote Saxar.

  A growl from Dogbrick turned Ripcat to face his partner and Whipcrow tussling and tearing the burlap sack that contained the trance wrap. He slouched toward them.

  "The diligent Crow insists on delivering our trance wrap to a charmwright forthwith, to be cut into three equal segments," Dogbrick explained. "I say we go together."

  "Then let's go," Whipcrow insisted and tugged at the sack, ripping it further.

  "I thought we had met here so we could watch the festivities below," Dogbrick said. "We will go later."

  "Not later," Whipcrow scolded. "Now. I want to reach this charmwright while she is still in her shop."

  "Don't make me angry.” Dogbrick snarled. “I want to see the surgeons stir up the rabble. That's why we're here. We'll go later."

  "I'm going now. I will deliver your shares here tomorrow morning."

  "Anything can happen in a day." Dogbrick firmly took back the bolts of fabric. "We go together or not at all."

  "You don't trust me, Dogbrick?" Whipcrow's thin face axed forward irately. "These two bolts would not be ours to share if I hadn't told you where to find them."

  "So what?" Dogbrick pulled the bolts against his massive chest, covering his amulet harness. "Getting it took all the risk."

  "And what did you have to do with getting it?" Whipcrow's sharp features twisted derisively. "You did nothing. This prize should be shared between me and Cat alone."

  "How would you even know of Cat if it weren't for me?" Dogbrick showed his fangs.

  "Enough!" Ripcat seized from Dogbrick the trance wrap in its shredded burlap. "I don't want any of it. Split it in two." He shoved one bolt at an amazed Whipcrow and slapped the other into his partner's hands. “That's all there is," he said to Whipcrow, fixing him with a green stare dark as coming nightfall. "I didn't hide any of it."

  "I'll know if you did." Whipcrow slid the bolt of trance wrap under his cloak and glided away. "I'll know. And I'll make you pay."

  The thin man hurried off and soon disappeared among the crazy-quilt shadows thrown by the jigsaw trees.

  "You gave that parasite a small fortune," Dogbrick groused. Then his heavy features recomposed to a sly smile. "Did you put a few bolts aside?"

  Ripcat flung a hot stare at him and turned his back. He ambled to the slope and sat atop a boulder overlooking the Millgates.

  Dogbrick joined him and leaned against the rock. "I will share my trance wrap with you. Even though I think giving half to clever Crow was foolish."

  Ripcat shook his pug head. "I don't want it."

  The large man scowled with disbelief. "You earned it, and more."

  Ripcat shushed him. "Use your eye charms so we can listen to what 100 Wheels is saying down there." He pointed with his chin to the Millgates, where a bright platinum figure paced on a natural stage of shale before an attentive crowd.
>
  Dogbrick obligingly unsnapped a black-amber power wand from a side panel of his harness and the niello eye charms from the shoulders. Before he set them down, he tried once more to understand his partner. "Stop evading me, Cat, and tell me why you won't take your share of the trance wrap. Is it perhaps warped or stained?"

  Ripcat regarded him coolly. "It makes me dream."

  Dogbrick huffed, perplexed at this answer. "Of course. We all know that. But you don't have to use it, you silly beast. Sell it. You could get many incredible amulets with one of these bolts."

  "I have all the amulets I need in my trove," Ripcat replied indifferently. "I've already a bag of hex-gems, sharp-eyes, and rat-stars. And in my time I've stolen whole crates of power wands. More loot than I could ever have used. I don't want any more."

  "Then why did you dance with the shriekers?" Dogbrick persisted. "My stars, Cat, they could have ripped you to pieces."

  "It was a last dance. I did it for you."

  "For me? What do you mean?"

  "Don't you see? No festival last night. 100 Wheels is down there recruiting factory laborers and thieves. And all everybody's talking about is the Dark Lord. Look—" He gestured to the sunny towers of the city and the long line of black dirigibles stacked in the clear sky around the sky bund. "The refineries are shut down. When was the last time that happened?"

  "They smell doom," Dogbrick moaned. "The Dark Lord comes. I keep thinking it's all a bad dream."

  "Would it were," Ripcat mumbled. "So I wanted to score big this last time for you. I wanted to repay you for making a place for me in Saxar."

  Dogbrick waved aside his gratitude. "You didn't really need me. You would have made your own way."

  "Perhaps." He shook his head in grim remembrance. "But when you found me in the Qaf, I remembered nothing. I still don't. At least you helped me make a life for myself. You showed me how I could steal what I needed from those who had more than they need."

  "Ah," Dogbrick acknowledged airily with an upraised finger thick with callus and hooked with a yellow nail. "More important, I showed you the folly of giving your loot away to the impoverished, did I not? You thought you could help. Ha! You thought you could change their lives with your anonymous gifts. How many amulets, prisms, and quoins did you foolishly leave on the doorsteps of the indigent? You were most benighted, almost as a child, in those early days. You did not then realize that when a life has not succeeded, it is not because of lack but because there has been a misjudgment between what is righteous and what is merely so. No amount of amulets can correct such a misjudgment."

  "You have taught me a great deal," Ripcat agreed tersely. “With this trance wrap, I have tried to repay you. I wish there were more."

  "It is a handsome payment, indeed." Dogbrick patted the bolt appreciatively. "I am grateful. And yet I do not miss your wider meaning. You think there will be no further opportunity for thieving. Am I right? Worse, you believe that Charm itself will have less significance in the days to come. Yes?"

  "Shh. Listen, 100 Wheels has started." Ripcat peered down at the Millgates.

  From the waist pouch of his harness, Dogbrick removed two metal clasps, which he used to attach the niello eye charms to either end of the power wand. "This cannot compare to an aviso, yet it will serve," Dogbrick said agreeably and adjusted the couplings until static sizzled from the wands.

  He climbed onto the boulder beside Ripcat and pointed the assemblage at the gathering below. Crowd noise packed the air. Grumbling to himself, he aimed the binocular eye charms at the slate ridge where Crabhat had joined 100 Wheels. The two security officers paced before the gathering, arms waving.

  "...from the streets and alleys." 100 Wheels spoke, her stern voice so close that it made the small hairs rise on the thieves' necks. "If we cannot use Charm, then we will use subterfuge. We will resist by shutting down the factories, the refineries, and the shops."

  The crowd roared its approval.

  "The Dark Lord will get nothing from us!" Crabhat shouted, his squat, burly body hopping, his famous spiked helmet scattering rainbow glints. "In time, he will have to capitulate. Only we can make Saxar work. He needs us! Don't ever forget that."

  The throngs cheered, and Dogbrick lowered his improvised ear charm. "That it has come to this," he moaned, shaking his head sadly. "The very surgeons loathed and feared by all, now cheered!"

  Ripcat lay back on the boulder and studied the arguments of light in the clouds while Dogbrick wandered off to find a meat-stick vendor at the park's streetside. Later, with a carafe of iced blue tea and a basket of twist bread and meat-sticks to share, they listened to the pipers and chorale singers hired by the factories to calm the crowd.

  Afternoon cast its diamonds on the canal by the time 100 Wheels and Crabhat stood atop the shale ledge again. Ripcat had wearied of their exhortations and stood to depart when he noticed the dark line to the south. Initially, he thought he spotted more black dirigibles fleeing to Saxar's remote haven. But the cold wail of sirens from the factory cliffs made him look closer.

  "Churl's bane! It's cacodemons!" Dogbrick shouted, standing. He observed them in his niello eye charms, a black, particulate line dissolving into individual flyers as they neared. His first view of a cacodemon fluffed the bronze hair all over his body and loosened his ponderous jaw. In the eye charms, he observed with distinct horror their mallet heads with spider eyes under bulbous brows, the snaggled rows of hooked fangs in their black snouts, and the reptile faces embedded in their torsos, blistered with drool.

  Dogbrick sat down heavily, his face frozen in shock. With much coaxing, Ripcat finally budged him, and they sought cover under the root coils of the jigsaw trees at the mossy edge of Mirage Climb. From there, they watched the formation of flying demons dissolve. Flocks dropped into the factory district. Others spiraled down onto residential terraces. A dozen descended on the Millgates, attracted by the crowd.

  Gaudy screams flitted from below as the cacodemons set to their slaughtering. With evil design, the monsters began at the outer flanks of the multitude, lopping heads from the shoulders of runners and flaying open the backs of those who cowered.

  Firelocks flared blue from the shale ledge, where the security officers had determined to test the invulnerability of the invaders. A cacodemon arced toward them, splashing flames from continuous direct strikes. In one movement, its serried whip tail sliced through Crabhat, and his head flew high into the air, blood sparkling with the rainbows from his helmet spikes.

  100 Wheels used her fabled speed to flee. In a silver blur, she reached the gravel path above the ledge before a cacodemon swooped over her and plucked her off the ground. Above the screaming crowd, the evil beast tore her to pieces—ripped her apart with her chrome cladding and dropped the bloody gobbets of her carcass and armor like chunks of an exploded star.

  The trapped people below writhed under the furious assault of the cacodemons. And there was no escape. The alien creatures circled the crowd and hacked with furious abandon, chopping at everyone who moved and seizing in their talons the dead and the living alike. The monsters rolled in the bloody mire and came up with entrails dangling from the hideous faces in their abdomens.

  Terrified by what they witnessed and afraid to be seen, the thieves hidden in the root coils atop Mirage Climb did not move. Dogbrick pressed his face into the loam and moaned. Ripcat watched keenly, searching for some weakness in the enemy, and finding none, he tapped his friend's shoulder and whispered, "We must go."

  "Where?" Dogbrick asked, his big features woeful with fear.

  "Away from Saxar." Ripcat squirmed out from under the jigsaw trees.

  "Into the Qaf?" Dogbrick scrambled after him. "There are trolls out there!"

  "Charm can kill trolls." Ripcat moved quickly through the grove, and his large partner took heavy strides to keep up.

  "But the Qaf kills everything."

  "Would you rather die here?" Ripcat looked sideways through the trees down to the Millgates where the cac
odemons picked vigorously among the dead. "Saxar belongs now to the Dark Lord."

  They kept off the main paths and traversed Mirage Climb. Through shrubbery lanes and dusky tunnels of interlocking trees, they eventually made their surreptitious way into rubble gullies. They crossed junk lots strewn with broken hulks of machinery from the factories, all devoid of Charm and rusting in the weeds.

  They climbed a scarp wall streaked bright with oxides, and that led them to a hard-pan waste of ghostly salt hills. This was Sky Edge, the desolate aerie limits of the cliff city, where the thieves kept their trove of stolen treasure.

  Ripcat crossed the raw landscape to one chalky sinkwell among thousands, reached in, and came out with an old red leather pouch. He fastened the stuffed pouch to a loop in the waistband of his black cord trousers and walked over the caked salts to help his partner.

  Unlike Ripcat, who had given away most of what he had stolen, Dogbrick had hoarded all his loot for this very day, though he could never have foreseen as dire a time as this. In a daze, he cleared out bricks and cobbles from a rime-toothed cave and pulled into the light two brass-cornered trunks, both fitted with deadware locks.

  From beneath his brindled beard, he removed a rat-star gem, swiped it over the skull grin of one lock, and opened the trunk. Inside, a neat array of hex-gems, theriacal opals, witch-glass, conjure-metal, power wands, prisms, quoins, and newt's-eyes smashed daylight to rainbow chips. He placed atop this lucre the bolt of trance wrap he had been hugging during their flight from Mirage Climb. Mournfully he closed the lid and locked it with another pass of the rat-star.

  He announced with a sad shake of his head, "A lifetime's labor, and all of it worthless in a world of cacodemons."

  "Not all worthless," Ripcat retorted. "Theriacal opals will still heal wounds and rat-stars sharpen minds."

  "Ah, friend, again you succumb to the useful and disregard the true," Dogbrick groused. "Don't you see? I could have retired years ago if all I wanted was a hoard of useful amulets. I've striven all my life for something else, something far more precious."