The Dark Shore (The Dominions of Irth Book 1)

by A. A. Attanasio

  Her tranquil smile widened. "I have no amulets."

  "I felt Charm."

  "So may have Ralli-Faj," Owl Oil said. "Now I cannot linger. I had to convince you we are allies. We share a destiny."

  "And what is that?"

  "To slay the Dark Lord and all his minions."

  "Slay?" A chill ran through him in the warm night, and he laughed unhappily. "If you had said flee, I would have thought you mad. Now I know you must be a powerful sorceress. The only escape from the Dark Lord is death. Our doom is more likely than his—unless you are a very powerful sorceress indeed. Are you the one visiting Tywi in a skin of light?"

  "That is no skin of light." Owl Oil turned Tywi's tunic on its driftwood prop. "It is a true shade. The shade of Lord Drev, wizarduke of Ux."

  "Drev? The regent?" Dogbrick blinked. "I think not. If Wrat's most-loathed foe is still alive, he must have crawled into a hole somewhere to hide from the cacodemons. And what would he want with a factory waif anyway?"

  Owl Oil lay a hand of blessing on Tywi's brow. "Destiny has joined them in this life."

  "I am a philosopher, Owl Oil," Dogbrick spoke dryly. "I believe every effect has its cause."

  "Then the cause is love."

  Dogbrick looked down with disbelief at the small woman in his arms. He did not find her attractive. She not only lacked beastmarks, she seemed too plain to elicit ardor in anyone. "How can the regent of Ux, once the most powerful person on Irth, love a factory worker he has never met?"

  Owl Oil clucked as if anyone had to ask. "They know each other from the Beginning."

  "Really?" Dogbrick rolled his eyes.

  "You do not believe in the Beginning."

  "I told you. I'm a philosopher. I believe only in what I experience."

  Her smile flourished. "Ah, but creation is so much larger than what we can experience."

  "I have my hands full dealing with what is at hand, Owl Oil." He shifted so he was more comfortable. "I don't need to be troubled with speculations about the unknowable."

  "The Beginning is unknown perhaps but not unknowable." Her head twisted, and her tawny eyes rolled sideways. "I must go. The warlock approaches."

  "Wait!" Dogbrick called, but she did not even glance back as she retreated into the hazy darkness beyond the firelight.

  In his arms, Tywi twitched at Owl Oil's departure and then lay still. Her shade floated free of her body. She realized at once what had happened when she beheld herself unconscious in the thief's embrace, her charmless body weightless, ready to drift away.

  She turned so as not to have to watch herself, which frightened her, and she fixed her attention on the fire scratching the darkness. The lit eyes of the scavengers gazed right through her when she passed in front of them, and she walked a slow circle about the big fire.

  An ogre swung toward her, and she flinched as it stepped through her and stood drying its hands at the fire. She moved on quickly, back to where she had begun. Dogbrick sat with his heels dug into the sand, his thick arms crossed over her inert body. His bestial face suffused with humanity studied the night and also the people and ogres the fire summoned.

  She felt safe in his care and stood for a moment admiring the way attentiveness shone from him like an inner radiance in which his gaze, turned low, noticed everything. Under the cascade of his mane, his long shoulders and muscular back shielded her from the night.

  The sight of herself, naked, bony, painted in red kelp and elemental fire shadows, rekindled fear. She approached her salamandrine body, wanting to feel her way back inside herself. Then she noticed him. He stood far behind Dogbrick at the edge of the fire circle, unmoving.

  Lord Drev urgently motioned for her to stay still. He turned to observe something in the darkness, one hand extended to restrain her. She made herself look hard at the man, trying to discern if this were an illusion—if his sleek, placid nakedness disguised a horrid being. He seemed whole—a tall and strong physique perfectly proportioned by a lifetime of Charm—and when he beckoned her, she hurried to his side.

  He led her under the scarp of a dune and pointed down the beach. The sky had cleared, and planets and stars blazed above fog feeling its way along the ground. Scavengers meandered legless through the low mist, obeying orders shouted by Whipcrow. Beside the manager, transparency glinted, inflecting the cloudless sky. It turned, and its reflections gathered and burst like a star.

  "Get down!" An electric iciness grabbed her arm where Drev touched her, and she crouched. "It's Ralli-Faj."

  She spied his transparent shade as it moved among the workers. "Has he seen us?"

  "No," Drev answered, watching the clear shadow glint with night's shining darkness as it moved away. "He is too intent on retrieving the fallen star. It would make a powerful amulet."

  Tywi stared at Drev’s profile. The harsh bone lines of his cheek, the ledged brow, bent nose, and long jaw lent him a fierce aspect. Yet, this close to him, she sensed his inward self, felt the resonance of warmth and friendship, and she realized, "You called me out here—out of my body."

  "Yes." His brow furrowed. “You were in pain. I saw what happened. I thought perhaps you would like to see the night out here for a while. With me." He nodded toward Dogbrick's sturdy silhouette against the pulsing shadows of the fire. “Your friend looks like he can be trusted to keep you Irthbound. Dogbrick is his name."

  "Yeah," she said with surprise. "How do you know him?"

  "I met his partner, Ripcat, in the woods of Bryse. We've become allies."

  "Ripcat—" Her features shifted quizzically. "He saved me from trolls in the Qaf."

  "Yes, he's told me about that." He sat with his back against the slip face of the dune, more relaxed as the warlock moved farther away. "He is concerned about his friend Dogbrick and will be glad to hear that he is alive."

  "Is it your Charm that brought us all together?" Tywi asked and sat beside him. The ground felt solid yet buzzed with tiny vibrations, and her own luminous form seemed stronger, vivid, pure.

  "No, Tywi." Softness touched his harsh lineaments briefly. "Something wider than Charm is at work here. Fate alone led me to Ripcat."

  "Dogbrick would be unhappy hearing that." She pointed her smile at where the thief sat like a boulder. "He don't much believe in fate."

  "Fate continues anyway."

  "You followed it to me." She lifted an inquisitive look at the wizarduke. "I ain't sure yet I understand why."

  "You and I are something else, Tywi." He smiled unevenly. "Destiny led me to you."

  She liked how his broken smile canceled the severity of his features, and she dared ask, "That ain't fate?"

  "Destiny is the fate we see coming. Fate is hidden destiny." His pale eyes widened, looking into her to see if she understood. "I saw you in my earliest days, when I first learned to scry. You were there in the time light. You have always been there, because we have been together since the Beginning."

  She frowned. "In the factories, ain't much talk of the Beginning."

  "I thought the Sisterhood had brought news of the Beginning to every dark corner on Irth, even the factories of Saxar."

  "The witches?" She shrugged. “They was busy enough in the factories talking about the Origins. But I was hungry and sleepy. I listened only because, when they finished, they gave food and small amulets to the homeless."

  "There is a Beginning." Drev spoke with conviction. "It is the source of all time and form. Everything we see has come from it." He scanned the night as if he might read meaning in the stars. The Abiding Star is the portal out of which pours all the energy of heaven. It radiates into the coldness of the void, where it chills and freezes to Charm—and light and matter."

  "And fate?"

  "It is the pattern in the energy that shapes all forms. All of time is woven in that pattern."

  "But what's this ‘will’ Dogbrick talks about so much?" She straightened earnestly. "What about our freedom?"

  "'No freedom from our freedom,' the Scrolls tell u
s. Each of us is free—within the scope of our lives. And out here, between birth and death, that scope is very small." He moved intimately closer. "That is why we need others, to widen our freedom. That is the destiny that brings us together. You are the path of my freedom."

  "We can do together what we never could apart." She echoed his sympathetic wisdom, yet pulled back from him, afraid of the feelings he stirred in her. "That's true for me. Look! Here I am talking to you—" She jumped when he put his hand atop hers. "Touching you—outside my body! You give me freedom. But what can I give to you?"

  He withdrew his hand, and the air sparkled softly between them. "Freedom is on the inside, too. I sensed you since I was a child, but I always turned away from you. I thought I had no time to find you. My youth was one continuous preparation for the regency that my forebears had created. I was kept at the ready in the event my sister, the primary heir, lost her life to war or treachery. And when I came of age, and Wrat slayed Mevea, there was the regency. I was busy with the concerns of seven dominions—of all Irth! I could not think of myself without feeling selfish. I didn’t have the freedom inside myself to seek you out."

  "But you're here."

  He lowered his face. "Now. I could have come to you many days ago, when you were in Saxar. In truth, I did eventually come to you—disguised as an old man—but I was called away before I could reveal myself. The cacodemons arrived, and I left without telling you who I was."

  "That was you?" Tywi squinted with remembrance. "The old coot with the gold amulet!"

  "Yes." He lifted his gaze contritely. "I should not have left you then. I should have stayed with you."

  "How could you with all you got to do, all your responsibilities?"

  "I was the regent." He met her searching gaze boldly. "I could have tracked you to Saxar much sooner than I did. I didn't, because I knew you were impoverished, nearly charmless. I could feel it even before I met you and saw for myself. And I was afraid that if I came to you, even secretly, I would demean you."

  "Demean me?" Her stare swelled. "I lived in trash bins."

  "I was afraid of demeaning your spirit," he explained. "I feel that, too. You are my other, my double-goer. We share a spirit. It is solitary and proud. I feared that if I came to you, our differences, which are so great, would break that spirit."

  Tywi lowered her voice sadly. "You mean, you thought I couldn't love you, because you're a Peer and I'm charmless."

  "I was as impoverished inside as you were outside." He held up his right hand, and it shone with frosty luminance. "The moment I lost the regency, I began my search for you. Now I can offer you what Charm I have left and the freedom of the outside—and, if you're still willing, you can give me my freedom inside."

  He offered his shining hand. When she took it, a current passed through her, and she shivered with bright clarity like a filament burning silently in its vacuum. Several precise moments lapsed in which she experienced the hard and familiar contours of her awareness before she realized she was not herself anymore. She was Drev.

  She knew his thoughts and silences. His consciousness flowed through her and into her own soulful depths, where she sensed him sensing her. Beings of light, they intermingled and shared the truth of each other.

  Flesh and thought make things small, they thought, enlarged in their oneness, floating toward star lanes above the watery layers of ocean ether.

  Far below, Ralli-Faj sensed Charm among the dunes and moved up the beach. Ogres followed him toward the fire.

  Drev and Tywi separated. Instantly, they found themselves again on Irth, human shapes of light. But they had changed. Tywi looked stronger, the cadaverous hollows of her skeletal frame had filled out, and Drev's stern countenance had gentled.

  Their minds still rolled and surged from the union, and they reached for each other and then quickly stepped back from the burning cool sensuality that wanted to pull them back into each other again.

  "You must go, quickly," Drev whispered and pointed at the dunes in their sapphire fleece of fog. The clear shadow of Ralli-Faj shimmered with liquid reflections as he climbed the shore. In a moment, he would cross out of sight behind the nearest dunes before he came full upon them.

  "I'd have loved you for yourself if you'd come to me in Saxar," Tywi informed him with a shamefast and steady look.

  Drev stared back with the same incandescent look, past sadness, healed of remorse by their a contact. "I know that now. That's why I had to risk everything to meet you like this, to know that. Now go!"

  Tywi ignored the compulsion to hurry. That was his concern for her. Even separate, she shared enough awareness with him to partake of what he saw and judged. She knew exactly how long she had before the warlock came around the dunes. She paused and waved, and Drev cocked his head impatiently telling her he would not move until she was safe.

  So hurry!

  His thought was palpable, a part of him that she took with her back to the fire. Her body received her shade easily, with a soft jolt like shrugging off a dream, and she opened her eyes and looked for him. Darkness swarmed through the star-bright fog.

  "So the crone was right after all," Dogbrick mumbled. "You're going to live. I wasn't sure. Your breathing got very thin."

  She unfolded from his lap, and he helped her stand. It was like stepping to solid ground after heaving days upon the sea. She staggered forward and down, and the thief held her upright while she retrieved her dried tunic and put it on over the peeling kelp.

  "You have a headache?" Dogbrick inquired. "Owl Oil said you would."

  Her head felt flawless, but when she tried to say so, her mouth lolled open mutely.

  "You need rest," Dogbrick concluded. "The seaworm toxin is still working in you."

  Before he could coax her to sit, Whipcrow strode into the fire circle clapping his hands. "Back to work! The fog has lifted. Everyone back to work!"

  A mask floated in the air behind him, an apparition of silvery green ectoplasm like an ancient vizard of beaten copper and tin. The ogres quailed at the sight of it.

  Whipcrow squinted at limp Tywi, appraising the numerous welts on her arms and legs. "She's badly stung," he observed coldly. "Send her back to camp." He would have taken her himself, but with Ralli-Faj following behind, searching for something, he dared not. Instead, he confronted Dogbrick with a baleful scowl. "Find your net. Get back into the waves. Dawn is hours away. Everyone back to work!"

  An ogre took Tywi from Dogbrick, and the thief stepped back as the hollow mask floated by, sniffing after her. It veered away and circled the fire, clearing everyone out. Whipcrow regrouped the work crews and, with the spectral mask bobbing alongside, led them among the tumescent dunes.

  Dogbrick followed the rest of the scavengers back to the sea. The flash of Charm from the falling star had worked a small but important magic in him, and he did not feel dismay but hope. Tywi correctly demanded that he save them all. He did not know how, but the answer would discover him. The philosopher in him knew this was true. Only the thief needed to be convinced.

  From that night on, he began talking with the others. Since his arrival, he had kept to himself, afraid of calling down Whipcrow's ire on anyone he befriended. Yet more than that, he had felt unworthy in the company of these particular scavengers. They had been rounded up by the ogres because the Dark Lord despised these leaders and workers of Irth’s society. These people had owned homes, had families, and had worked for their livelihoods. He thrived as a thief.

  These very people would have thrown him out of Saxar, exiled him to the Qaf if 100 Wheels or Crabhat had caught him. He did not belong among them. In this labor camp, fate had thrown him in with them and the falling star's music reminded him that he had something to offer. As a thief he had developed skills of deception and violence. And as a philosopher he had learned the patience to wait for the right time to use those skills.

  Dogbrick sought out the most weary and despondent of the scavengers and spoke to them about the largeness of the h
uman heart. He quoted the Gibbet Scrolls and added his own philosophy: "Life is worth losing your heart to," he counseled, "but don't lose heart."

  These platitudes he backed with action whenever he could, unobtrusively helping the weakest with their work, stealing more food for them, and assisting the healers with the sick.

  Dogbrick's inspiration came from Tywi. The falling star had changed her as well, and her transformation was the most mysterious renewal the thief had ever witnessed. From a withdrawn and mousy waif, she became overnight a presence infused with authority. She moved confidently among the scavengers, no longer a mere factory orphan but a woman with purpose and vision. Directed from within by the destinal part of her that belonged with Lord Drev, she knew as if instinctively whom to approach, what to say, and how to cohere the disparate scavengers into a group that shared a goal—to survive and eventually escape.

  In a few days, the scavengers' sense of defeat and doom gave way to a quiet cooperation. The crews began to work more intently. They had a plan. With Tywi's and Dogbrick's gentle encouragement, they determined to defeat defeat, to grow stronger, and to be ready to take back Irth. In time, the opportunity would come, and they would have to be ready.

  Whipcrow had no notion of what had galvanized the scavengers. The change occurred slowly over days and without any Charm; so, Ralli-Faj, too, did not grasp what was happening. But the warlock, the manager, and even the ogres agreed the crews worked more efficiently and had increased the quantities of goods they dragged from the sea. Impressed, Ralli-Faj rewarded Whipcrow with more trance time in the gardens. In turn, the manager, who took full credit for the industry of his crews, increased the scavengers' rations.

  With Whipcrow absent more often and the ogres no longer so bellicose now that they had earned more dew-wine, the scavengers found their arduous lives less oppressive. Tywi and Dogbrick won the respect of the camp. Days on days passed in hopeful endeavor, waiting for a way out of slavery.

  When none appeared and the extra rations began to seem customary, doubt set in. People argued, fights broke out. Crews scavenged less efficiently. Drownings occurred more frequently. Soon, Ralli-Faj noticed a decrease in his exports, and he curtailed Whipcrow's rapture time and sent him to oversee the camp more closely.