Unbroken Chain: The Darker Road

by Jaleigh Johnson

  The witch pursed her lips. “No spell I cast will last that long. There is an item I can give you, but it’s highly valuable. If anything were to happen to it—”

  “A risk,” Ashok agreed, “but think of what you’ll gain in return. The nightmare won’t trouble your Guardians anymore.”

  “You’ll leave the beast in Faerûn?” Neimal said.

  “The nightmare goes where it wants. I’ve never had any control over that.”

  “Why do you want to take it?” she said. “All this time, you could have gone out to the plain to ride the beast, yet you never did. Now you want to take it to Faerûn.”

  “When Ilvani and the nightmare came together out on the plain, the beast fought off the madness that gripped it,” Ashok said. “If the spirits attack us when we get to Rashemen, the nightmare will be able to warn me by its actions. I’ll know to be ready.”

  He’d thought the plan over carefully during the past few days. Although familiar with the shadow beasts of the plain, Ashok knew nothing of the creatures of Rashemen. The telthors, whatever they were, might react with violence toward Ilvani the same way the spectral panthers and shadow snakes had. If that happened, Ashok wanted warning and all the powers he could muster for defense.

  Neimal considered his words, and finally she nodded. “Come back at the Tet bell,” she told him. “I’ll have the item for you then. Its suppression aura is continuous as long as it touches the nightmare’s flesh. I’ll weave the illusion into it when you bring the beast into the city.”

  “My thanks,” Ashok said.

  “Tempus go with you, Ashok,” Neimal said.

  Ashok nodded, though as far as he was concerned, Tempus could stay in Ikemmu. The city needed Him more than Ashok did.

  Later, Ashok stood on the Shadowfell plain, more than two miles from the portal and the Guardians who stood watch. They’d offered him aid, thinking he meant to tame the nightmare with his chain. They had no idea the stallion was waiting for him.

  But maybe I have a few surprises for him, Ashok thought.

  From his pouch, Ashok took out the item Neimal had given him before he left the city: a necklace of yellowish bone spurs threaded onto a thin metal chain and magically altered by the witch to fit around the nightmare’s neck. Neimal told him if he could get it on the stallion, the necklace would suppress his aura of terror down to the blood.

  Ashok hoped it was impervious to fire.

  The necklace in one hand, Ashok fingered the spikes of his chain with the other. He thought he felt warmth from the metal, but he passed it off as the heat from his body infecting the chain. His thoughts filled with strategies of defense and the option for retreat if it came to that.

  In his heart, he knew neither of them would back down. The anticipation built to an ache, his tense muscles ready to fight. And it would be a fight—a brutal one. The nightmare would make Ashok earn his service.

  A speck of movement appeared on the horizon. Ashok drew in a breath and let it out. Time slowed down, and every sound on the desolate plain faded to silence. In that breath of utter peace, he heard the distant pound of hooves against the cracked soil.

  One, two, three, four went his breaths on the air—the fiery hooves struck the ground, the blacksmith smote her anvil and forged her weapon. They were all in Ashok’s mind—the city beneath him, the sky above him, and he and the nightmare in between, on the edge—the breath between action and inaction.

  He remembered experiencing this same sensation with Vedoran on the bridges between Pyton and Hevalor. He’d been a separate entity then, too, utterly alone and yet surrounded by Ikemmu. These moments, the small eternities, the spaces in which entire lives were lived—shadar-kai lives.

  These moments belong to no gods, Ashok thought. They are only mine.

  The nightmare came across the plain with mane and tail ablaze, the beast an exhilarating mass of coordinated muscles and graceful steps. Once within sight of Ashok, the nightmare slowed and tensed, nostrils flaring in question.

  He’s looking for Ilvani, Ashok realized. He remembers that pain.

  Holding the necklace loose in his hand, Ashok came toward the beast to reassure him that he’d indeed come alone. The nightmare snorted and put his nose against Ashok’s chest, taking in his scent.

  “That’s right,” Ashok said. “No one but you and I—no one around to see if we kill each other out here.”

  Whickering, the nightmare regarded him with his red eyes, and Ashok wondered, not for the first time, how much the beast could actually understand him. Was the nightmare intelligent enough to comprehend speech, or was their relationship purely instinctual, a shared bond of blood and death?

  “You understand well enough to know that I want something from you,” Ashok said. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t need you.”

  The line of flames that ran up and down the beast’s spine dimmed somewhat, which to Ashok meant calm. But the heat was a constant presence, a promise of violence. Ashok gripped his chain and carefully raised the bone spur necklace.

  He saw a flash, the whites of the nightmare’s eyes, but by then it was too late. The beast reared into the air and kicked. Ashok saved himself at the last second by angling his body to the right. The blow glanced off his left shoulder, but the force drove Ashok to the ground.

  Instinctively, he rolled away, but the nightmare didn’t attack again. He knew that pursuing Ashok inevitably meant tasting his spiked chain. Instead, he danced back, and the flame burned bright and hot from his back.

  Coughing, Ashok sat up. His arm was numb from shoulder to elbow, except when he tried to move it. Then his shattered bones grated against each other and made Ashok’s vision go dark around the edges. He gasped with the pain of it. He couldn’t let himself lose consciousness—he needed the pain as he needed the nightmare’s trust.

  He stood and faced the nightmare again, his dead arm dangling at his side. “So the direct approach isn’t going to work, eh?” he asked the stallion. “It’s all right. I thought you’d say no at first. Let me convince you.”

  The spiked chain came up, then down. Spikes tore up the dirt at the nightmare’s feet. The beast jumped away, but Ashok followed, driving the beast in a circle. His chain clipped his front forelock, and the nightmare screamed loudly, a sound that momentarily deafened Ashok.

  The scream died away, but the disorienting effect left him dizzy and fighting the fear aura. He came on the attack again, but he stepped sluggishly. The nightmare saw the advantage and charged in beneath the reach of Ashok’s chain.

  At close range, there was biting and fire. Ashok dodged the beast’s mouth, but the nightmare slammed into him with his body, burning Ashok’s cheek and barely missing his eyes and mouth. He fell again, blistered skin scraping the ground. Ashok breathed heavily and took in this newest source of agony. Waves of pain shuddered through him, but the injuries weren’t debilitating. He’d far from reached his limits. The nightmare knew that as well as he did.

  Ashok got up. The problem had become apparent to him at the same time his face was being ground into the dirt. He had two hands, but with a broken arm, he would never be able to manipulate his chain and throw the enchantment over the beast’s head. The nightmare would make him fight with one or the other, and the necklace was a poor choice for a weapon.

  Or was it?

  Deliberately, Ashok snapped his chain in the air to get the nightmare’s attention. The beast whickered softly—amused, Ashok thought—at the display but did not retreat. Then, instead of attacking, Ashok draped the necklace over his own head. He had no idea how the magic would affect him, but wearing the necklace served two purposes. The nightmare would know that the necklace contained no killing magic, and now Ashok was free to wield his chain.

  Using his good hand, he threw one end toward the beast, snapped it back with the other, and immediately followed up the feint by charging straight at the beast.

  Again, his world exploded in pain.

  Ashok dropped to his knees as a
dozen needles stabbed him simultaneously in the chest. He looked down to see the bone spurs burrowing into his flesh. They passed through his clothing and bone scale armor, pinning the plates to his chest as if they were parchment. His heart stuttered, and Ashok suddenly couldn’t get his breath.

  Maybe he’d been wrong—perhaps it was killing magic after all, or at least a spell meant for a much larger creature than a shadar-kai.

  The nightmare circled him. Ashok wondered why the stallion hadn’t closed in for the kill, but then he realized his sudden collapse must have confused the beast. He expected another feint, a trick to lure him close to Ashok. That suspicion probably saved Ashok.

  He planted his feet and tried to stand. The ground tilted and blurred with the sky. The disorientation wasn’t from the pain, though that was intense enough to demand his attention. It was the magic coursing through his body. Neimal hadn’t lied—it went to the blood. To experiment, he tried focusing his mind to teleport behind the nightmare. Nothing happened. His body was as solid as ever—and as vulnerable.

  The nightmare narrowed his circle, hooves pawing the ground in anticipation of another charge. Ashok knew he would have one chance to react when the beast came near. All or nothing, burn or fly.

  He staggered, and this time the nightmare took the bait, surging in to knock Ashok aside. Ashok absorbed the blow as fire licked along his ribs. Reaching up, Ashok wrapped his bad arm around the beast’s neck. His hand passed through flame. The burn and pain of broken bones drove him to the edge of unconsciousness, but he held on. With his other hand, he ripped off the enchanted necklace, tearing the bone spurs from his flesh. He heard a loud roaring and realized it was his own voice screaming in pain and triumph. He slipped the necklace over the nightmare’s head and released it.

  Gasping, burning, Ashok collapsed on the ground. He rolled feebly back and forth to extinguish the flames on his cloak and back. Above him, the nightmare bucked and thrashed to try to get the necklace off, but it was too late. The bone spurs dug into his flesh, and the stallion screamed in fury and pain. Hooves smashed the ground inches from his head, but Ashok had no strength to roll away. Instead, he simply stared up at the beast and let him decide to kill him or not.

  The nightmare continued to thrash for several minutes more, but gradually, his struggles grew weaker, until he looked more irritated than savage. After a while, the beast just stood still, snorting his foul breath on the air, as if unsure of how to react to the necklace, whether to regard it as a threat or a trick. One thing the nightmare hadn’t done was scream, but Ashok didn’t know whether that meant the beast couldn’t or whether he knew on some level that that power wouldn’t work anymore.

  Ashok still danced on the edge of unconsciousness, but he managed to sit up and pull his chain close. He needed to have enough focus to teleport if the beast came after him again.

  But the battle appeared to be over. The nightmare regarded Ashok warily but didn’t try to attack. His fire burned purplish blue against the roots of his mane. Ashok wondered if the necklace also suppressed his flames. He doubted it. The fire was part of the beast. That was why the flames couldn’t harm the nightmare’s flesh—they came from within.

  Ashok looked down at the blistered flesh of his dead arm, the puncture wounds from the necklace, and wondered what his victory would be worth, in the end. He gazed at the nightmare and saw—Ashok told himself he must be imagining it—the wicked pleasure in the beast’s eyes. Ashok read the expression plainly. You may have bound me, it said, but now we’re brothers again.

  Ashok didn’t need the beast’s aura to be afraid.

  The beast let Ashok approach and climb onto his back. Gripping fistfuls of mane, Ashok fell forward against the nightmare’s neck, careful not to dislodge the bone spurs. His broken arm throbbed, and the burns caused waves of nausea to roll over him. He needed to stay conscious. The nightmare would not hesitate to dump him off if he lost his grip.

  Despite the pain, the ride back to the portal was another world. The nightmare ran full out, as if he could outrun the collar around his neck. The gray shadows of the plain passed before Ashok’s eyes like smoke.

  He brought the nightmare back into Ikemmu. Neimal and a cleric from Makthar waited for him at the gate.

  “I thought you might need a prayer or two,” the witch said. She looked him over. “Any longer and you would have needed a resurrection.”

  Ashok let the cleric lay hands on him. The pain slowly faded away, and when the cleric was finished, Ashok flexed his mended arm. “My thanks,” he said.

  “Thank Tempus,” the cleric said.

  “Of course.” Hours ago, Ashok declared to himself he didn’t need Tempus. He was a hypocrite after all.

  He heard Neimal chanting. He looked up to see the witch make a gesture in the air around the nightmare. A breath passed in which Ashok’s vision blurred. He blinked, and the nightmare was gone. In his place stood a tall brown stallion, thick-bodied with tan fetlocks. The only evidence of his true nature was in the black roots of his mane.

  Ashok stood next to the beast and ran his hands along his brown flank. He felt nothing of the aura of fear that he usually experienced in the nightmare’s presence, but his appearance was by far the most disturbing change.

  “He looks almost pure,” Ashok murmured.

  Neimal shrugged. “Humans and dumb beasts often see what they expect to see and nothing more,” she said. “But you will never forget what this creature can do, will you Ashok?”

  He wouldn’t forget. Ashok knew the beast at least as well as he knew himself.

  CHAPTER

  SEVEN

  ILVANI AWOKE IN HER CHAMBER. SHE’D DREAMED OF A BROWN horse. Something about it frightened her, but she didn’t know what. She rolled over and tried to sleep again, but the room was hot, and her linen shirt stuck uncomfortably to her skin. Giving up, she got out of bed and walked barefoot to the ladder that rested against her window ledge. She climbed up, tucked her legs close to her chin, and leaned against the window. Outside, the city went about its business, all sound muffled by the glass.

  “Never more peaceful than now,” she said. “They’re so small, how could they hurt anybody?”

  “But you hurt yourselves—it’s your nature.”

  Ilvani looked up and saw a reflection in the window. The woman from the plain, the snow rabbit who’d disappeared into the storm, gazed back at her. When Ilvani turned, she stood on the ladder, her arms crossed on the topmost rung.

  “You’re still dead,” Ilvani said. “Go away, snow rabbit.”

  “You called me that before—why?” the woman asked. Her face scrunched up in consternation, but her eyes didn’t change—they were still dead.

  “I saw it. The snow rabbit-spirit used to watch over you when you were a little girl,” Ilvani said.

  The woman looked shaken. “How did you know that?”

  “Someone whispered it to me. I don’t remember who.” What was it like for other shadar-kai, the ones who didn’t have to wonder what was real and what was a trick played by the shadows?

  The woman started to come onto the ledge. She got a knee up on the stone before she saw Ilvani’s malevolent expression. Slowly, she lowered her leg.

  “We’re not friends, are we?” the woman said. She didn’t sound angry, only curious. “You don’t like me.”

  “The storm swallowed you,” Ilvani said, “but you keep coming back. You put things in my head, and I don’t have any room for them.” She opened her green pouch and took out the boxes, all the captured memories, and spread them before her. “These are all that matter,” she insisted.

  The woman reached down and picked up a small wooden box with a gold latch. For a moment, her eyes seemed to come alive with a stream of thoughts. “I remember something like this,” she said. She stroked the smooth lid, a light wood inlaid with darker squares like a chessboard. “What do you keep in it?”

  Ilvani reached across the space between them and opened the latch. She lifted t
he box lid, and the memory washed over her as if it were newly born.

  She was learning magic. The woman who taught her—Ilvani couldn’t see her face—held a wilted rose in her hand. Ilvani saw herself wanting the dead flower, but the woman held it out of reach. Why wouldn’t she let her touch the petals? What was she hiding?

  The woman made a gesture, and suddenly the rose sprang to life again, its petals red and dew-covered. Thorns grew from the stem, and Ilvani thought they would puncture her teacher’s skin. That was when she realized it was all an illusion. There was no rose. How could there be? Nothing like that ever grew on the Shadowfell.

  “The day I learned that witches lie,” Ilvani said. She stared at the woman on the ladder—what had Ashok and the halfling called her?—the Rashemi. “That’s what I keep in the box.”

  The witch on the ladder nodded thoughtfully. “Well, then, if we’re not friends, I suppose I’ll have to die again.” She slammed the box lid down on Ilvani’s fingers.

  Ilvani cried out in pain and tried to free her hand, but the woman was all over her now, arms grasping and tearing at her hair. Her fingers elongated, and her nails became viciously sharp claws. The more Ilvani struggled, the more monstrous the Rashemi witch became. Her jawbone stretched, and her body warped into an emaciated husk, all the life sucked out of her at once.

  “Please,” she croaked. “Help me. It’s coming … for me.” She wrapped skeletal arms around Ilvani’s neck and pressed withered lips to her mouth.

  The kiss filled Ilvani’s mind with chaotic images. One breath she was in the pine tree forest where she’d first met the woman, and the next she soared high above a mountain range. When she looked down, she saw a white dragon fly up to meet her, but the scene changed again before she had time to be afraid. She saw a village on the shores of a lake. Boats with no helmsmen drifted through a thick mist. An owl flew out of the white cloud, its wings grazing the water. Then came another, and another. Symbols covered their bodies. Light so bright it burned Ilvani’s eyes flashed from the markings.