by Jim Melvin
In addition, Peta was unerringly good-natured and talkative. Though Elu now was sterner and more taciturn than he had been before, he still found himself embracing her gregarious nature. The trio had been walking together for two days before the Svakaran warrior was able to pinpoint what it was that was generating Peta’s optimism. The beautiful ghost-child was enjoying the tactile beauties of the world more than a person with sight could imagine.
She could walk fast too, and for extremely long distances without rest. The Svakaran admired her. For many years, he too had been forced to compensate for lack of stature, jogging while others walked and sprinting while others jogged. But being smaller than someone didn’t necessarily mean you were weaker. Certainly Peta was anything but feeble.
One night it rained with extraordinary vehemence. The strange thing was, even before the sky darkened, Peta had known. Though most of the interior of the Gap of Gati was little more than stunted grass, the ghost-child had led Elu and Ugga to a ring of spear-shaped stones rising unexpectedly from the terrain. The out-of-place shelter kept them dry through the worse of the tempest, and the Svakaran slept wonderfully as the rain thump-thumped on the rock. With the innocence of a child, Peta pressed against him.
At midafternoon of the following day, the trio reached Nissaya.
Peta led the way, striding through the broken gates without trepidation. Her foresight told her they were safe, and Elu trusted her. So too did Ugga, who pranced about like a horse and sniffed around like a dog. If the crossbreed was upset that he was no longer human, his behavior did not show it.
Black knights met them. They were cautious at first but quickly transformed to ebullient. It was clear to both sides that they were friends.
“Tell them, Elu,” Peta said.
The Svakaran nodded. “Ladies and gentlemen, we have a request of you. Please bring all the Maōi that can be found within your walls and place it on the battlements of Balak, Ott, and Hakam.”
“Would you be so kind as to tell us why?” a captain said.
“I cannot . . . for I know naught myself,” Elu said. “Only that it should be so.”
The captain nodded. “Our king is dead, our queen is missing, and the Asēkhas and Tugars have left us to our own devices. It falls to a man, a girl, and a bear to command us. These are indeed strange times.”
“This is no ordinary man or bear,” Peta said boldly. “And I am no ordinary girl.”
The captain nodded again, as if he sensed the truth in her words. Without further debate, the black knights began the tedious process of carrying out the Svakaran’s request.
Shroud of Darkness
69
AS INVICTUS MADE his way to one of the wire cages that rose hundreds of cubits to Laylah’s bed chamber, a Mogol rushed over and flung himself onto the stone floor at the sorcerer’s feet.
“My liege . . . we have a problem.”
“Tccch! What now?”
“The tower is under attack.”
Invictus snickered. “Is that all? I thought you meant a real problem. Well, you know what to do. Open the palisade and unleash the fiends—but just some of them, not all. They are so difficult to corral once they start wandering.”
“It will be as you say, my liege.” Then the Mogol rushed off to perform his task, knowing too well the price of failure.
“Yes, it will,” Invictus called after him and then snickered again.
A part of him wanted to rush outside and join the festivities. He would very much enjoy watching the fiends have a feast. He loved them, after all. It had been no simple task to arrange for half a million people to drink from undine-infested water. Every golden soldier and Mogol who had remained in Avici, plus most of the population of Kilesa, had been needed to complete the task, and even then it had taken several days to herd all of the former citizens of Avici within the palisade that surrounded Uccheda. If not for his considerable powers, it would have been an impossible feat for one hundred times their number.
The fiends he had encountered at Senasana had aggravated him, but now that he had created his own army out of his former worshippers, Invictus found them endearing. Still, he resisted the urge to join the slaughter.
Now it was time for his thrice-daily check on Laylah to make sure she was well-fed and healthy. His sister carried his son in her belly, the heir to Akanittha, and it was his duty to ensure that no harm came to her body. As for her mind, Laylah seemed to have adapted far better than he’d expected. She was almost never contrary. Perhaps motherhood would suit her.
The wire cage carried him to near the top of the tower, and he strolled unannounced down the hallway past the guards and into Laylah’s room. His sister was sitting up in bed, with Bhacca standing over her. When Invictus came forward, Laylah’s eyes opened wide, as if he had caught her and the newborn corpse talking behind his back. But he was just being paranoid. Bhacca was no more capable of gossip than one of his Avician fiends.
“Dear sister, how are you this morning?” he said, trying to sound charming. A part of him expected that this would be the moment when Laylah reverted to her former surliness.
Instead, she said, “I feel wonderful. It must be the medicines that Bhacca brings with my food. I’ve been sleeping a lot, but that’s not a bad thing, right?”
“What do my doctors say?”
“They seem quite pleased,” said Laylah, her smile suspiciously sweet.
“If they’re pleased, I’m pleased,” Invictus said, not quite trusting her good nature but unable to uncover anything overtly sinister.
When Invictus left Laylah, he felt discomforted. Ever since his sister had become pregnant, she had accepted her circumstances without complaint. Part of this abrupt change, at least, he could understand. But though she was still a prisoner, she seemed almost pleased.
Perhaps he should keep a closer watch. It had been quite some time since he had used the scrying basin in his upper chambers to spy on someone. Starting tomorrow, he would have to resume his activities.
Just to keep a better eye on her.
70
THOUGH THE RAIN had no desire to relent, Jord suddenly awakened and stood with renewed enthusiasm. Instantly, she transformed to Bhojja and encouraged Torg to mount her. Then the great mare shot eastward as fast as a ball of pitch flung from a trebuchet. In a short time, they left behind Nissaya and thundered toward Java, the miles passing underfoot in a blur.
A few leagues southwest of the forest they came upon a company of Tugars led by Podhana, who had assumed the rank of chieftain now that Kusala and Tāseti were no longer. Podhana always had been the most dependable of the Asēkhas, treading the middle path between the extremes of emotion. The new chieftain had handed Obhasa to Torg, then bowed so low that his nose touched the gray grass.
Torg bade him to rise. “Tumhe na koci puujetha (You bow to no one).”
Torg had missed Obhasa almost as much as his human friends. The staff quivered and thrummed as if it had missed him too. The Death Energy that flowed within the fibrous ivory surged into Torg’s palm and filled him with strength. He hugged it against his chest like a beloved pet. None who watched seemed to find this unusual. The Tugars also loved Obhasa. The staff was a symbol of the greatness of their king.
During Torg’s brief meeting with the chieftain, Bhojja had behaved with uncharacteristic restlessness, snorting and stomping her hooves. Something momentous was about to occur. And the great mare knew it.
The two of them left the Tugars and continued on their journey. Through the rest of the night and on into the day, Bhojja galloped without rest, at one point crossing over a bridge that spanned the Ogha. Then she veered away from the shortest route to Avici, instead heading northeastward into the Gray Plains.
Torg leaned forward and whispered in her ear. “Lady, where do you carry me now?”
Bhojja’s only response was to continue to gallop. In the midafternoon she finally stopped by a small pond and drank her fill. Then she transformed to Jord and demanded that
Torg eat from his pack.
“Tonight, you will need your strength like never before,” she scolded. “Our plan must not fail just because you lack the energy to carry out your role.”
“Tell me what my role is, and I’ll eat everything in sight,” Torg responded.
Jord grunted. “When the time comes, you will be informed.”
“Or so you say.”
But he did eat. And drink. And then sleep.
71
BY THE TIME Deva reached Avici, it was almost midnight. With his extraordinary night vision, the snow giant could see a score of Tugars and several hundred smaller companions walking the battlement east and west of the southern bridge. The great iron gates were open, as if inviting any who might approach to enter the Golden City. But Deva had no desire to join forces with them or anyone else. Whatever business remained between him and Invictus, the two of them would settle.
Deva sprinted westward and then northward alongside the Golden Wall, running for about a mile in the time it would take a human to travel a tenth of that distance. The snow giant came to a portion of the bulwark that was shrouded in deep darkness and unguarded by friend or foe.
Though the gold-coated wall was almost thirty cubits tall, the snow giant was not dismayed. He sprinted forward and sprang at the last moment, landing gracefully on the battlement. Then he leapt over the side, disdaining the interior stairwell.
Soon he was deep inside the great stone city, striding along streets that were disconcertingly quiet and empty. Mala had walked these roads and alleyways many times, and they had never been deserted, even in the early hours before dawn. The citizens of Avici didn’t tend to sleep particularly well, and there was a good deal of milling about, even in the darkness.
Deva found himself wandering almost aimlessly. Something was causing him to hesitate. Was it cowardice? It didn’t feel like it. Rather, it was more like regret. A part of him wanted no part of vengeance, even if he could somehow successfully execute it.
As if in a half-sleep, Deva continued to stumble forward.
On the main causeway he finally encountered some of Avici’s citizens, though they seemed to be wandering as aimlessly as he. Deva walked over to them with his arms spread wide, intending to apologize for the atrocities he had committed while entrapped within his former persona. But the nearer he approached, the stranger their behavior became. Suddenly, they were attacking him, biting at his legs in fits of ravenous hunger. This disgusted Deva, and he realized with sadness what they had become. He swept the fiends away with his huge arms, splattering them against the nearby stone walls. Afterward, he continued on, his determination renewed.
When he reached the peak of the dead volcano and looked down upon the valley that contained Uccheda, the sight stupefied him. A glimmering palisade surrounded the tower, and jammed within it were several hundred thousand fiends. As Mala, Deva had had many conversations with Invictus about the worthlessness of the citizens of Avici, and how better to make use of them. Deva remembered suggesting how much more valuable they would be if they all could be transformed to fiends—and then he had laughed.
But Invictus had not.
Amazingly, the sorcerer had pulled it off, turning half a million people into cannibalistic monsters. Had any of them known what was happening, and if so, had they even tried to resist? Knowing their fear of Invictus and his minions, perhaps not.
By the time Deva reached the palisade, it was less than a bell to dawn. The fiends huddled near the fence, not daring to touch it, but they snarled at him and bared their teeth, their lust for living flesh unquenchable.
Deva, of course, had nothing to fear from them. No number of fiends could harm him. But the sight of them smote his heart. Invictus had committed atrocities on a scale never before seen on Triken. Not even the demons or dragons were capable of this level of cruelty. Deva felt tears gushing down his cheeks.
Even Deva had no desire to touch the fence, which Invictus’s golden power had superheated, so he simply leapt over it, landing amid the fiends and then wading toward Uccheda. He knew the locations of the secret portals at the tower’s base and how to open them. He also knew the ways that led deep beneath the bedrock to where the sorcerer slept during the night. If Deva could catch Invictus unawares before dawn, there was a chance he could slay him.
Thousands of fiends pressed against him, but Deva cast them aside with great sweeps of his arms and huge thrusts of his legs. Now the tower was just a stone’s throw away.
Suddenly, the snow giant stopped.
And slowly looked upward. What he saw amazed him.
Though dawn was approaching, the eastern sky was growing increasingly dark—increasingly black—and it was happening . . . fast.
For reasons he did not quite understand, it made him want to cheer.
72
DURING HIS MANY travels, Torg had skirted the border of Kauha several times but never had entered deeply into the swamp. Though usually curious and fearless of the unknown, the marshes had disconcerted him, as if he could sense that for him some sort of doom awaited inside. Now it was midnight, and he again stood on the fringe of their madness.
Bhojja, transformed to Jord, also was there. Then Peta joined them, adorned in the same dress she had worn the first time he had seen her seven centuries before.
“Father,” Peta said, without even saying hello, “life has been appeased. But Death and Undeath still await their payments.”
“I don’t understand,” Torg said.
“It is time to enter,” Peta said.
“Why the marshes?”
“Do not fear,” the ghost-child said.
Despite her diminutive size, Torg wanted to slap her. “The only thing I fear is becoming someone’s puppet.”
“You distrust me,” Peta said. “And I don’t blame you. But, it will do you no good to hate me. I have your best interests at heart . . . as well as Laylah’s. It’s not a simple thing to destroy a god.”
“My distrust sickens me like poison,” Torg said.
A raspy voice from the darkness interrupted their tête-à-tête. “Are the two of you going to gab all night? We’ve got work to do. My grandson won’t remain blind to our conspiracy forever.” Then Vedana came forth and glared at Torg, her eyes ablaze. “If you care at all about your pretty little girlfriend, you’ll quit asking so many annoying questions. Either follow me and do what you’re told, or get the hell away from here and try to figure out for yourself how to rescue Laylah. You certainly did a great job of it in the Green Plains.”
“You are I have unfinished business,” Torg said, holding Obhasa in his left hand and the Silver Sword in his right. “But once again, I am at your mercy. Lead on. But do not expect me to love you.”
“Who cares? I’ve had better than you—lots of times.” Then the grandmotherly version of Vedana swirled and waded into the swamp, her translucent flesh aglow.
With Jord and Peta at his side, Torg followed warily, sloshing first through ankle-deep and then knee-deep water. Soon they entered a snarl of bushes as dark and forbidding as a cave. The dense canopy shut out moonlight and starlight. In the deep darkness, Vedana, Peta, and Jord glimmered, but they did not provide enough light for Torg to see for more than a few cubits. So he willed Obhasa to shine, casting blue-green illumination several dozen paces in each direction.
Vedana turned and glared at him, but then shook her head and kept wading.
The water was black and cold. Torg felt it seeping through his boots and freezing his feet. He could sense that this wasn’t ordinary water, nor was the squishy bottom ordinary mud. Though his boots were thick, he still could feel strange creatures squirming and wiggling around his calves, as if the water were filled with worms. And perhaps it was. The light from Obhasa did not penetrate beneath the surface. When he lowered the tail of the staff into the water, the ivory seemed to vanish into oblivion.
Vedana, meanwhile, was entirely in her element. Though the labyrinth of passages twisted and turned, the
demon seemed to know exactly where she was going.
Several times the water came up to Torg’s waist, and he carried the ghost-child on his shoulders. Jord requested no aid, though her expression was stern, as if she had been appointed an unpleasant task that she nonetheless was determined to complete.
The going was difficult, but a brisk current always was at their backs, making it easier to maintain a steady pace. The four of them waded deeper into the swamp, continuing forward for more than a third of the night. The air grew stale and seemed to lack nourishment.
Torg’s claustrophobia, born in the pit on Mount Asubha and intensified in the labyrinths beneath it, lifted its ugly head, causing him to breathe so quickly that his heart pounded and his head felt woozy. For a panicked moment he considered using Obhasa to blow a hole in the roof of Kauha’s tangled canopy to let in some fresh air and starlight. But a saner part of him knew that this would alert Invictus to their presence, which would destroy any chance of rescuing Laylah. As he had done in the bowels of Asubha, he used his millennium-long practice of meditation to calm himself and regain his wits. To be with Laylah again, he would confront any enemy or fear.
Now the water was knee-deep again, and it seemed to go on forever. Torg began to suspect that they were being followed. Fluttery breezes caressed his cheeks and danced on his neck, slipping inside his jacket and crawling on the thick muscles of his shoulders and chest like invisible ants. He found himself jerking his head this way and that. Swirling wisps hid just out of the range of his peripheral vision.
“It is not your imagination, Father,” Peta said in a near whisper. “Ghosts have joined us. Death must be appeased.”
“Some are only recently deceased,” Jord said in a voice strangely sad.
“Who are they? And why do they follow?” Torg said.
“There you go with your questions,” Vedana snarled, so loud that it seemed to echo off the bony branches. “You’ll find out soon enough. We’re almost there. And don’t ask ‘where.’”