In slow motion, she moved; in slow motion, she fell, so that it seemed to take an age to strike the ground. She landed in an ungainly sprawl, one kneecap bruising itself on unyielding stone while her face struck something far softer. She felt a sudden blotch of wetness on her cheek, tasted copper on her lips, and groped reflexively for the blades she carried in belt and boot. They came away empty, she was unarmed, and so she felt instead for the features of the body she’d stumbled on. A wail escaped her as fingertips found the touch of a familiar mustache, a crooked and broken nose, a scar riding outward from the crest of the left cheek.
For that instant, MageSight locked her eyes into focus, and she saw the face of her second lieutenant.
“Taliesin,” Elora cried, and Thorn started at the anguish in her voice.
Khory’s world wouldn’t stop spinning, poisoned in body and spirit. Try as she might, Elora could find no firm purchase for the anchor of her will. This storm couldn’t be escaped, couldn’t be fought, couldn’t be overcome. She could only run before it, with tight hold on her own wits, and pray for whatever skills or strength or sheer blessed fortune was required to survive.
Images bombarded her like volleys of thunderstones, each one alone capable of leveling a fortress wall.
Eamon Asana. Her voice was crying out to him, but he made no reply. The look in his eyes, though, struck her to the quick. It was more sorrow than any soul should have to bear. She challenged him to meet her eyes, but he could not. He left her to her fate.
A fortress. Foul stone under a foul sky. Spiked walls that loomed like small mountains, fit snugly into the crook of a saw-toothed range. There was only one approach, across a plain that was broad and deep and sodden with the residue of those who’d died here. She knew of vengeful monarchs who’d sown fields with salt to ensure that nothing would ever grow again. Here was one saturated with blood, that could bring forth only horror. Awful as this was, she knew it would be far worse within as the gibbering howls of Death Dogs arose from within the gate to herald her approach.
This was the seat of the Malevoiy power.
She thought she would face death here. She was wrong.
They thought they could break her to their will. They were wrong, too.
Sword in hand, she stumbled through the endless, crooked hallways, letting instinct guide her, for in this nightmare domain her physical senses were useless. Every aspect of the fortress was designed to drive intruders mad. She was their greatest enemy become their greatest prize, whom they hoped to turn into their greatest weapon.
Again and again, she lashed out with the obsidian blade she’d taken from the first Malevoiy she’d slain. Each life she took stripped from her one more layer of her humanity. It was a price she willingly, eagerly paid.
Images came in frantic quickstep, to match the pulsebeat of her racing heart, flash after flash, blazing bright enough to sear their image indelibly onto the canvas of her mind’s eye, replaced one after the next before the scene could properly register. The sanctum tower. A room at the summit, with walls so thick that windows and doorways were more like endless tunnels, whose low ceiling warred with the expanse of the chamber itself, denying the space beyond its boundaries to make it seem as though the room were buried deep within the earth. Skylight in the ceiling, a ringed, many-pointed star carved from a crystal that admitted no light from outside but generated one of its own like nothing Khory had ever seen.
Guardsmen ringed the wall of the sanctum, more than enough to overwhelm her, but they gave her a wide berth. A copy of the skylight was etched on the shadowstone floor and at each point of the star stood a Malevoiy.
They were expecting her. They let her find this place because this was where they’d wanted her all along.
Welcome, she heard in their voice like nail scratchings on smooth slate.
Her sword point sagged, as she responded in kind to the courtesy of their greeting. With a snarl that provoked a chuckle of approval from her foes she jerked it back en garde and raked the warriors for someone to slay. They wisely kept their distance.
Embrace thy fate, warrior. Be One with Us.
These were creatures who’d hunted her race for sport since time immemorial, who’d made the world a slaughterhouse for all its people. She’d hated them since before she knew how to talk, and fought them any way she could for almost as long.
Yet their offer struck a chord in her, mouth curling into the beginnings of a smile at the temptation.
Shadow without, Shadow within, as something uncoiled from the pit of her soul, kin to what rippled and curled within the boundaries of the Malevoiy circle.
Defy Us not, warrior, for We have so much in common.
Hate begets hate, she realized too late, as do cruelty and the lust for blood. Have I fought my enemy so long and hard only to become him?
She found a crossroads in her mind, two doorways, and remembered the classic warrior’s conundrum, the Damsel or the Death Dog. One path led to glory, the other to damnation.
She made her choice.
She was in Darkness. She was dying.
There was no peace to the last moments, she was in such agony she couldn’t draw breath enough to give voice to her screams. She didn’t understand how flesh could be so burned and broken and yet still cling so stubbornly to life. Her lungs continued to pump, her heart to beat, her mind to observe with preternatural acuity. She didn’t know where she was, save that she lay splayed along a wall of stones and that it was far from where she’d been. There was age to the place that put the Malevoiy stronghold to shame, but though she was surrounded by such darkness that even her MageSight was useless she felt nothing of the taint that had surrounded her.
She was alone. She knew none would find her. She didn’t mind. She’d struck her last, best blow, and her wolfish smile returned at the memory of Malevoiy screams.
Then, the darkness before her…moved.
It twisted and flowed, malleable as mercury, shot through with reefs of violet and deepest purple, colors that only served to emphasize the total absence of light. Looking at it made her ill but she couldn’t turn her eyes away. It thrummed with curiosity and expectation, in the presence of something wholly outside its experience. It was a whole catalog of impossibilities and contradictions, every aspect of its being a fierce and heartfelt denial of the natural order of things. It could not possibly be, and yet it was.
And when Khory’s feverish thoughts came to that juncture, a wail of bleakest despair escaped her lips.
It was a demon.
It had come to claim her.
She felt an echo then, so faint she first assumed it was imagination, a siren call from the Malevoiy. Reach out to Us, little lostling, she heard. Thy time is not yet past, thou canst still be saved.
To her surprise, she wasn’t tempted. She managed a quirk at the corners of her mouth, the best excuse she could do for a smile, and felt eerily at peace. In song and story, demons were portrayed as fearsomely as the Malevoiy. Indeed, it was said they were the one creature the Malevoiy truly feared. She knew of mages who had truck with them, and seen the blasted, cindered ruins that resulted.
Damned by one hand, she thought, damned by the other.
“Better,” she decided, trying to speak aloud, “the devil I don’t know. I’ve had my fill of those I’ve met.”
She felt a tingle of sensation at her fingertips as the darkness within darkness made contact. She felt afraid, but it wasn’t a bad fear. Like riding into battle, it was an acknowledgment of the unknown, a faith in herself, an acceptance of what was to come.
She felt no more.
Stillness. Elora heard the bellows pant of her own breath, in measured cadence, felt a myriad of impressions—the thunder of her heart, the sizzling fire of blood flowing through her like the molten essence of the world, a line of coolness on each cheek where tears brimmed from her eyes. Her nose wa
s running, too; she’d been crying quite a while.
The fire wasn’t only within her. Khory was glowing as well, a pale reflection of Elora’s own roseate luminescence. However, those fires were fading in both of them. Her work was done, the infection routed completely, the Deceiver’s traps tripped and overcome.
There was a dull ache within Elora’s breast, left over from her wanderings through Khory’s past. She looked about the vault of her memory but found no sign of what she’d seen. She didn’t really mind. The journey had been hard enough, she could wait a bit before reviewing what she’d found.
She offered the DemonChild a smile, received the same in return, and beheld in Khory’s eyes a different quality than had been there before. Elora hadn’t been alone in her journey; all that she saw and felt, her companion had as well. And, like Elora, been changed as a result.
She wanted to sleep forever. Instead, she felt a Nelwyn hand upon her shoulder, looked up and around to behold Thorn’s worried face.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “that all you could do was watch. It must have been so hard.”
“Simple solution, silly girl. Don’t do it again.”
“No fear, old duffer. But it worked. We won. She’s all right.”
“Glad I am to hear it, Elora Danan,” Drumheller said softly, with the utmost seriousness. “There’s no more time. We’ve got to go. Now!”
She could see Thorn clearly. Beyond, and all around, was nothing, a darkness so absolute and impenetrable Elora couldn’t help but shudder. A body length above them floated the ball of radiance that he had conjured earlier, still so blinding that only a momentary gaze in its direction left spots before her eyes worse than staring straight at the noonday sun. Its glare lit the three figures huddled close together and that was all.
She could still feel solid ground beneath her but all her eyes revealed was featureless ebony, without the slightest boundary to demark the horizon or differentiate earth from sky. The scene tugged at her memory, the way a fish might nibble on a lure, trying to decide whether or not to take that fatal bite. She hoped in vain, however, for nothing came of that faint and evanescent tease. She looked to Drumheller, to voice her frustration, only to be checked by the look in his own eyes. The setting struck a chord with him as well.
“What,” Elora prompted, but it was Khory who replied.
“The dungeon,” she said.
Elora’s mouth formed an O of comprehension. “Where you were imprisoned, Thorn? In Angwyn?” Unspoken was a question for Khory: Where you were reborn, a demon’s soul bonded to a Daikini body? It was forbidden sorcery, the spell that had brought her into being, considered by many to be the blackest of arts, piled thick with prohibitions and punishments, that would result in summary execution for Thorn and Khory both if the truth were ever revealed. In the process, as he passed a portion of his human essence into Khory’s body to remind it of the sensations of life, so was that offering replaced in turn by a similar fragment of the demon.
Supposedly, demons were as fundamentally and irredeemably evil as Thorn’s Spell of Transposition was profane, yet Elora felt no sense of that from either him or Khory. In the same way, while the darkness surrounding them made her draw her body closer in upon itself, she recognized as well that it was only her imagination that was populating it with beasties. There was a hush to this corner of the world that made her wonder if this was how things were in the moment before the first sparkling flash of Creation.
“Yes,” the Nelwyn Magus said, concern for their welfare overwhelmed momentarily by the sense of wonder and insatiable discovery that was at the core of his being. “In the oldest stories,” he continued, “dragons are said to be the firstborn of Creation. Some say it was their flames which lit the first celestial fires. Demons are their bastard stepchildren, who refused to see the Universe settled into orderly patterns. They are shaped and defined by chaos; the more solidly a thing is built, whether spell or house or even a world entire, the more eager they are to smash it to bits, just for fun. Yet from that chaos always comes a rebirth, making them an essential part of the balance they seem hell-bent on destroying.”
“That makes no sense.”
He smiled broadly and almost permitted himself a chuckle. “Now you know why sorcerers go prematurely gray and we’re almost always cranky, trying to puzzle out the inherent contradictions in the shape of things.” His grin faded a bit, his tone turned more serious. “This place, it’s like Khory was before the spell. Alive, but not. Rich with potential but lacking the spark of animation that would bring it into being.”
“A house,” Elora said, “with nobody home.”
“Something like that,” he agreed.
“Are we overstaying our welcome?”
“Here? Never. This is the Realm of Dreams, Elora, in the Circle of the Spirit. Supposedly, the only way to visit as an outsider is in your dreams.”
“Yet we’ve come to it in the waking, walking flesh.”
He nodded. “That wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t meant to be.”
“Does that apply to the Deceiver, Thorn? He beat us to it. He almost claimed the power here, the future of all the Great Realms”—and she patted her pouch for emphasis—“for himself. Even if the dragons were at the end of their lives, as Calan said, how could he have breached their defenses?”
“A reason, I fear, for us to make our way quickly home—to find out. And to forestall him from coming back to try again.”
“Place isn’t so important, mage,” Khory noted with a minor outrush of breath as she levered herself to a sitting position, grimacing in mock pain as she rolled the muscles of her arms and shoulders to life. She pulled her legs up as well, crossing them at the ankles and leaning elbows on her knees. “Any more’n was I before you worked your magic.”
“Darkness,” Thorn said, his voice sounding a little lost and suddenly so lonely that Elora took immediate, reflexive hold of his nearer hand. “An eternal void, without shape or form.” He shook himself, throwing off those thoughts as a dog would a coatful of water. “That’s how the old texts describe things before the Realms.”
“If all was nothingness,” Elora asked, “who was there to take notes?”
“Thank you.” The sorcerer sighed. “One more gray hair I didn’t need.”
“Makes you look distinguished.”
“Wasn’t someone saying,” Khory interjected, “it was time to go?”
“If we’re ready,” Thorn said, with an assessing look at both companions.
“We’ll have to go back pretty much the way we came,” Elora said. “That means passing through the Malevoiy Realm.”
“Can’t be avoided. They’re the point of contact between the Realms of the Flesh and Spirit.”
“And they’ll know what’s happened here.”
“Elora, child, every sorcerer worth the name, every creature and being in all the Realms with only a drop of magic in their soul, knows what’s happened here, even if they can’t find the way to put that knowledge into words.”
“We’ll deal with that when we have to. It’s the Malevoiy who are right across our threshold. They’ll want these eggs as much as the Deceiver, won’t they, and for pretty much the same reason? Control the dragons, you control the shaping of the Age to come?”
“It makes sense.”
“You don’t know?”
“For sure?” He shrugged and shook his head. “No. Answer me something, child, will you? From your heart.”
“Anything.”
“Don’t be so hasty.”
“I trust you, Thorn.”
“Hear me out first. These eggs, is it better to risk them falling into the wrong hands, or take the chance that they may be lost forever?”
Her mouth opened at once to give her answer, but her brain thankfully trod both feet upon her mental brakes, leaving her sitting a long moment with j
aws agape until she slowly remembered to reel them shut.
“What do you mean, ‘forever,’ Drumheller?”
“Simple word, simple meaning. Strong as I am, any ward I cast can be broken, especially since the Deceiver seems uncomfortably familiar with our personal histories.”
Elora shuddered visibly and again felt the quicksilver sensation of memories slithering through her grasp. Something had happened during her battle with the Deceiver, but there were too many shadows in her recollection; she’d been so caught up in her attempt to save the dragons, and then the act and aftermath of their destruction, that all the collateral events had been shoved aside into a jumble pile she had no desire to sort through.
“Strong as you are, Elora,” Thorn continued, “you’re still barely grown. Still learning about yourself, your abilities, and, more importantly, liabilities. And Khory, for all her skill as a warrior, has none in the arcane arts. We’re all of us mortal. We can be hurt, we can be broken in ways too horrible to contemplate. We can be killed. Therein may be our salvation.”
“Come again, mage?”
“When you were a baby, I cast a Spell of Protection about you, keyed to draw its strength from your own.”
“I remember. It saved my life.”
“What I propose is much the same. An interlocking lattice of guardian wards, to keep the eggs from being opened by any but we three.”
“I thought you said any spell you cast could be broken.”
“Good as I am, I stand alone. That means I have limits. But Khory is part-demon and you draw on reserves of energy and inspiration that encompass the whole of the Twelve Realms. Imbue the spell with a portion of the life force of we three together, and I’ll wager not even the Deceiver can find a way to untangle that knot. Or,” he added, recalling the legend of a King who’d faced the challenge of a puzzle that couldn’t be solved, “hack his way through it. The three of us cast the spell, the three of us must release it. Of our own free will.”
Shadow Star Page 4