Shadowgod

by Michael Cobley

  "Ah, Suviel, Suviel," he said in a low, silky voice. "How I've longed for this moment. Your face has haunted all my days and hours, even when I was out there in the desert, hunting down his men, one by one."

  He stood smoothly and easily and turned to stare up at her. When she looked into his eyes she know with sudden, dark certainty that it was not him.

  "You can tell, can't you?" the rivenshade said, drawing out a bright, slender sword as he started up the ramp. "You know that I am only his image, a reflection plucked from the mirror. Well, who is to say that the image cannot be superior to the original?"

  The smile grew voracious. "After all, I killed him. Oh, he was cunning, I'll grant you - the way he pitted us all against each other showed an admirable capacity for duplicity and trickery. But in the end it was me that cut him down with this very blade, then I left him to bleed his life out into the sand and returned here…"

  Suviel began to back away, up the slope, preparing in her mind a thought canto to dazzle the rivenshade, hoping that the surrounding Wellsource ambience did not disrupt it. Then a hand snaked up over the edge of the ramp, grabbed the rivenshade's ankle and yanked it sideways. As he went down in a tangle of cloak and arms, a lithe, brown-clad figure leaped up onto the ramp and dived on him. A hand bearing a straight broadsword rose and fell once, and the rivenshade cried out, convulsed violently for a moment, then was still.

  The brown-clad figure rose to stand over the corpse. Suviel felt a jolt of fear and dread when she found she was looking into the tear-stained features of… herself.

  "I wanted to see you," her rivenshade said, voice shaking. "I had to know why he could love you but not me - but now he can't love either of us, since this dreg killed him. I saw it happen and I picked up his sword afterwards." She bent down and lifted the sword that Suviel had inscribed with the Void sign for Ikarno. At her feet, the rivenshade's body was dissolving into a dense, white vapour which was pouring down the ramp in a slow, pale tide. "I knew he was dying. I saw such a lot of blood -"

  "Takes more than a cut like that to kill me off…" came a hoarse voice that made Suviel's heart leap.

  Up from a hollow beyond the ramp a tall, pale figure in a flowing grey robe came half-staggering into view, leaning on a broken spear. Both women watched his slow, painful approach until he reached the foot of the ramp where his legs failed him and he fell to his knees. Suviel cried out and dashed past the rivenshade, running to crouch by his side.

  "… though in truth I can feel my death upon me," Mazaret gasped.

  "No, I won't let death have you," she said doggedly, tugging at his robe where one of his hands clasped a blood-dark wad of cloth to his side.

  "It is you," he said wonderingly. "After all the grief, after seeing all those shadows of you… and at last, you're here. My beloved."

  Then he breathed in sharply and she saw the pain in his eyes. Without further pause she closed her eyes and focussed on her attunement to the Crystal Eye, driven by love and desperation, calling on its strength, its powers and its enfolded knowledge. She delved down into the flow of his body, the flux and reflux of blood and sensation, and followed the waves of pain back to their source, a cruel sword puncture which passed through two lower ribs on the right and out the back. Suviel forced severed channels and nerves to rejoin, muscles to reknit, sealed the gashed walls of viscera, while numbing the hot, twisting pain.

  Hesitant footsteps approached, and almost simultaneously came the creaking whisper of many bows being drawn taut.

  "Hold, lady," said Yasgur's voice. "Throw down the sword and come back up the ramp…"

  Suviel cracked open her eyes to see the rivenshade of herself standing a few feet away, silent tears running down her face, the inscribed sword held blade up in one hand. Behind her at the top of the ramp, and clustered along the shelf above, were dozens of Mogaun archers with readied bows trained on her.

  "There is no path through this realm that I could walk," she said. "The Lord of this place is coming and I will not be an instrument for him to use." So saying, she raised her empty hand and made a slash across it with the sword, then took the sword in that hand in order to slash her other palm. Then calmly she sat at the foot of the ramp with her back to the wall of Keshada and closed her eyes.

  Suviel looked on with a sense of foreboding as she considered these final words. When the rivenshade's form began to dissolve into that thick vapour, she noticed that Mazaret was watching with sadness in his eyes. She reached out to stroke the whiteness of his hair, and he looked at her, took her hand and kissed the palm of it. Above them the archers had relaxed, and the growing noise of horses and men spoke of a busy corridor.

  "It seems that you've brought an army," Mazaret said. "And were those Mogaun tribesmen I saw?"

  "The story," she said, "is longer and more complicated than a Dalbari family tree and can wait. More importantly, how do you feel?"

  "The pain is gone," he said.

  "Good - there is much to do," she said. "We must find Alael…"

  "One of the men - when some of the masks still thought I was a rivenshade - spotted a woman and a man heading out into the desert down that gully," he said, pointing.

  "How long ago was this?" Suviel said.

  "Perhaps two or three hours."

  She groaned. Mazaret carefully got to his feet and helped her up.

  "They won't have got very far on foot," he said.

  But Suviel shook her head. "This is the Lord of Twilight's realm - distance and direction are not quite what we are used to."

  "Then the sooner we dispatch some scouts, the better, eh?"

  Smiling, she nodded. It was the only thing that could be done, as well as pray to the Void that she could get the Motherseed and the Crystal Eye to the Wellsource before any clash took place between the Earthmother and the Lord of Twilight. If she could achieve that, and if the spirit of the Fathertree somehow managed to have the Staff of the Void brought here by his mysterious allies, then the burden of the final clash would fall to her.

  And in all likelihood, it would result in her obliteration, her unequivocal, irrevocable death.

  * * *

  The Shadowlord's attack on the Drumkeep at Rauthaz was executed with immaculate timing and ruthless brutality. At the northern end of the Great Aisle, a short distance before it ended at the mustering halls beneath the fortress, he opened a multitude of side-portals, each one leading to a point of defensive strength. The thousands of mask troops Thraelor had brought from Casall would, with speed and precisely reckoned tactics, be able to overwhelm a garrison almost four times their number.

  When all his troops were in position, many on foot, many still mounted, the Shadowlord gave the order. For a few minutes the Great Aisle was filled with the din of numerous charges, then the portals closed behind them, leaving him standing alone in the silent, slivered gloom. For a moment he stood motionless and smiling, ever smiling, as if thinking pleasant thoughts, then he turned and began to walk towards Rauthaz.

  But well before reaching the fortress's underhalls, he made a doorway appear and with a leisurely gait passed thorough it to emerge on the snowy battlements of the curtainwall surrounding the Drumkeep. Fighting was going on down in one of the high walled inner yards while a riot tore through the city and smoke rose from pillaged warehouses. The Shadowlord brought another door into being and walked elsewhere.

  A high roof retreat set above and back from the Keep's forge, a square paved area where devices of gears and wire sat upon ironwork tripods, pointing to the sky.

  A walkway across an eaterbeast breeding pit, where the tinemasters fled at the sight of him and the beasts raised their snouts to wail in devotion as he passed.

  A long corridor of polished black carvings, statues, reliefs, with frail hanging lamps spreading golden light everywhere. Every surface was crowded with gleaming, ebony forms, and one corner sported a tall ornate mirror. As the Shadowlord paused to gaze into it, the reflection changed to show an armoured figure sittin
g in a huge grandiose throne whose back merged with a wall that looked like an expanse of faces frozen in black ice. The entire scene was plunged in ashen blue light, and the Shadowlord gave a nod of approval before turning the corner and walking on.

  The Shadowking Grazaan was standing in a wide doorway in the wall, where the tiled floor of the corridor changed into the seared brown sand and rock of the Realm of Dusk. Further along, the wall with its exquisite decorations was fading and retreating as the Realm asserted its supremacy.

  Grazaan stood facing outward but a ghostly red face watched and grinned from the back of his head as the Shadowlord approached.

  "I am casting an illusion into his mind," said the face. "He believes that he is running towards the Wellsource to use it against you."

  "Foolish," said the Shadowlord who seized Grazaan and swallowed him whole, his face and jaw enormously distended to accommodate the physical form. Again, the blurring of forms, the striving for assimilation, amalgamation and eventually, union. Clad in blood-red armour covered with green, staring eyes, the Shadowlord rose and gazed out at the Realm of dusk.

  "Kodel," he said. "But first, our guests."

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  What dread voice now calls forth,

  To stir the seas to howling,

  And plunge the world,

  Into the deepest gloom.

  What awful whisper!

  What dire curse!

  —Calabos, Beneath the Towers, act 3, iii, 35

  The gully that led away from Keshada proved to be just one of several ravines and arid watercourses which criss-crossed each other for a mile or more before coming to a line of low hills. A handful of experienced Mogaun trackers had picked up the signs and traces of Gilly and Alael's trail which had headed straight for the hills where it turned sharply right along a winding gorge. The Besh-Darok army, however, had now come to a halt at the mouth of the gorge while on a ridge overlooking it a small party were making last adjustments to their mounts and saying farewells.

  From where he sat on his horse up on the ridge, Mazaret was able to survey a great swathe of this god's domain. The slope-sided gorge meandered through sandy rock striated in shades of rust and ochre, while to his left the low, broken-backed hills were worn leaden teeth beyond which lay a flat, ash-white plain. At its centre sat the truncated, shattered and jagged remains of a great peak, Hewn Mountain, at whose heart was the Wellsource. That, he knew dolefully, was where Suviel was going with the Crystal Eye and the Motherseed to carry out a task that would very likely kill her.

  That was not how she depicted it but he could tell from her unwavering calm and iron resolve that she had come to terms with her own mortality and was ready for death. For Mazaret, though, it was almost unbearable to think that they had faced such unimaginable torments of body and spirit, only to reach this most bittersweet parting of the ways.

  Suviel was tending to her horse and packhorse while Bardow tried fruitlessly to talk her out of it. As he made his case, she glanced over at Mazaret and their eyes met for a moment of painful longing then broke away. Mazaret forced his thoughts along less sorrowful paths by considering the travelling companions she had asked to go with her.

  Atroc seemed to have become more wizened since Mazaret last saw him, his gaze darker, more sardonic. He could understand why Suviel might consider him a worthy ally, given his status as Yasgur's seer and is perception of the mysteries, but her other choice left him baffled and uneasy.

  Byrnak sat upon his horse, a black-cloaked, bear-like figure hunched over his ornate high fronted saddle, frowning as he stared out across the leaden hills to the splintered crags of Hewn Mountain. Mazaret had heard from Yasgur how Byrnak had created his massed armies of mask soldiers by first using Mogaun tribesmen as hosts for the resurrected spirits of old, then drawing on the menfolk of towns and villages throughout the north. This went some way towards explaining why the Mogaun host had switched sides before the siege of Besh-Darok. There was also no doubting the cold hatred in the eyes of Welgarak and Gordag whenever they regarded the once-Shadowking. Atroc, on the other hand, now looked on him with a kind of grim affection, and had told Mazaret how Byrnak lost his fragment of the the Lord of Twilight before relating his first-hand account of Tauric's death.

  All in all, these accounts of the siege of Besh-Darok and its attendant tragedies left him with a burgeoning need for battle, despite the quivering ache he still felt in his side.

  As Mazaret sat there studying him, Byrnak straightened in his saddle and glanced round at Suviel. But when he caught Mazaret watching him, he quickly looked away, fear in his eyes. Mazaret was jolted with surprise at this, then stirred by a rising anger but before he could urge his horse forward a soft touch on his arm made him turn. It was Suviel, her gaze full of warmth, humour and love. Mood softening, he dismounted and embraced her.

  "Worry not about Byrnak," she murmured in his ear. "There is no danger left in him."

  "Yet I've seen fear in his eyes."

  "Everyone here is fearful, beloved."

  "Fear is the seed of hate," he said, then relented, seeing that she was unyielding. "Then why take him with you?"

  "To act," she said. "To bluff. There is no telling who might be waiting at the Hewn Mountain, guarding the Wellsource, and if Byrnak could persuade them that he is still what he was, even for a short while, that may be all the advantage that we need."

  Arms about each other's waist and heedless of anyone else's regard, they walked a short distance along the ridge.

  "The thought of you facing such dangers," Mazaret said, as if about to say more. But he found it hard to express the combination of anger and powerlessness which held his thoughts in a deadly grasp. Suviel smiled sadly and nodded.

  "When we're guiding our horses through those sombre hills, I'll be thinking the same of you," she said. "Pursuing the Earthmother through this realm of evil, fighting off whatever horrors the Grey Lord sends against you…I fear what you will have to face."

  "Are we going to die, then, you and I?" he said, turning to face her.

  "I do not know, but it seems likely." Then she shrugged. "Yet the future is unwritten and much may happen in the time that is left to us. We are not alone in this struggle."

  Mazaret knew she was speaking of the spirit of the Fathertree, and heard the weary hope in her voice. Moved by the wish to give her some token of his devotion, he reached inside his mailed jerkin and took out the small ivory book leaf that he had found in Khatris months before. After Suviel had released Gilly and himself from the Acolyte's dungeon, he had rediscovered it in an inner pocket without realising its meaning. But as the rivenshades of himself were slain one by one, pieces of his memory returned and revealed what had been lost. She seemed puzzled when he gave it to her but as she read the inscription in a low voice between the two of them, she smiled.

  "Oft times in dreams, my love,

  It seems that you lie beside me.

  Yet with the waking day,

  My soul's desire becomes but a dream

  And it seems that the day will never end."

  There were tears in her eyes as she carefully put the ivory leaf away in one of her cloak's pockets. Then she took both his hands in hers and kissed them.

  "One moment by your side, beloved, is timeless," she said. "You will always be with me."

  "And you with me."

  They embraced one last time before Suviel broke away and hurried over to her waiting horse. Minutes later, three mounted figures and a packhorse were riding slowly down the ridge's scree slope towards a grey, rocky vale which curved away in the hills. As Mazaret watched them go, Bardow came over, leading his own mount by its reins.

  "This is a risky affair, old friend," he said. "She has the two talismans with her, as well as the melded sword."

  "Will they help her to defend herself?" Mazaret said.

  "Perhaps… or they could make her more of a target."

  Mazaret nodded grimly.

  "Then it is time we
moved out," he said, urging his steed round to the downward path. Below, the host of Mogaun and Besh-Darok riders waited in a long column that snaked back along the dusty gully, with a few knots of scouts on the raised ground across from the ridge.

  Let us find the Lord of this place, he thought. I'm sure we can do something to get his attention!

  * * *

  Gilly knew that this was a god's realm but when he followed the possessed Alael around yet another rocky dune and saw that eerie grey forest directly ahead, he at last began to believe it. From the moment they left Keshada, Alael had been striding along a perfectly straight course. For the last hour or more the forest of tall spindly trees had been some distance away on their left. Yet there it was, now spread right across Alael's path.

  From which she was not deviating in the slightest.

  Gilly toyed with the idea of trying to physically restrain her but only for the briefest moment - two previous attempts had ended with him tossed aside and nursing bruises.

  What else can I do but stay on her trail? He thought. And hope that Mazaret and Suviel catch up with us…

  Even from 20 yards behind, he could still see the golden nimbus that enfolded her and which grew brighter as she approached the fringe of the grey forest. But as he watched, she took a few steps inwards and was suddenly gone from sight. Alarmed, he rushed over to the spot where she had entered and even as he approached the spindly trees changed colour from sliver-grey to darkening shades of green. Twigs and sprigs sprouted from roughening branches, bushes burst up out of the burgeoning ground, berries, buds and blooms swelled beneath lush arrays of leaves, and flowering vines wound up trunks and along boughs, dividing, spreading, entwining. It was an eruption of foliage which seemed to be confined to the vicinity of Alael's passage through the forest. Gilly stared at the dense greenery in amazement, then gathered his resolve and plunged in.