The Shadow King

by Alec Hutson

  Alyanna was surprised at the mild dread she felt as she approached the red door – she must be influenced by Cein’s own feelings for this place. Her childhood had not been a happy one, Alyanna guessed. She’d found that to be a widely shared experience among those who had achieved greatness – a life of ease and coddling did not often forge men and women capable of bending the world to their will.

  Her apprehension swelled as she neared the door. Alyanna pushed it to the side, reminding herself that this was not her own feeling. Whatever childhood trauma Cein associated with this place was irrelevant to Alyanna.

  She put her palm on the carved wood of the door, expecting it to be locked, but instead it swung open easily. Light flooded the darkened interior. A figure huddled on the sandy floor gave a pained cry and raised knobby arms to try and block the sun. It was a girl, perhaps eight or nine winters old, her pale skin smudged with filth and fading bruises. Her long, tangled red hair covered much of her nakedness. She whimpered and shied away as Alyanna stepped into the room.

  “Cein?” she asked, but there was no response.

  Alyanna crouched beside the trembling child and brushed aside the hair obscuring her face. The girl flinched, her eyes squeezed shut.

  Every other time Alyanna had entered the dreams of another, her very presence had resulted in the dreamer gaining some measure of awareness. Cein seemed to be lost in the grip of a nightmare, though. Alyanna sighed in frustration; she needed to learn what had happened during the battle, the capabilities of the Chosen, and this mysterious Skein sorcerer Vhelan had described.

  “Cein,” she said more harshly, “listen to me. You are Cein d’Kara, the Crimson Queen of Dymoria. This is a dream. This is not real and we—”

  The door slammed shut, plunging the room into darkness. Alyanna whirled around, summoning her wizardlight. The ball of radiance flared into existence, then flickered and vanished. In that brief moment she thought she saw something move.

  Alyanna controlled her breathing, mastering her rising panic. This was just a dream. She was safe asleep in her furs beside the fire. She reached for her sorcery again, but nothing happened. Something had been severed inside her, like when that mendicant had cut her connection to the Void while the genthyaki smiled and watched in the guise of the Black Vizier.

  This was not happening. Something had fooled her mind into thinking she was still Cleansed, but what was broken inside her had been healed. She fought to stay calm. The room around her was utterly black and silent – that surprised her, as she couldn’t even hear the breathing or scared mutterings of the child Cein anymore. She reached out to where the girl had been, but her hands found nothing except cold sand.

  Something was very wrong.

  She heard the quick patter of small feet churning sand.

  “Cein?” she cried, turning in the direction the sound had come from. “Don’t be frightened. I am not here to hurt you.”

  we are not frightened.

  Alyanna gasped as searingly cold fingers closed around her leg. She tried to pull herself free but the grip was like steel; then she was yanked hard and tumbled to the ground.

  A trap. They had set a trap for her.

  Desperately, Alyanna strained for her sorcery, but it remained stubbornly out of her reach. Her fingers scrabbled in the sand as she tried to get away from the Chosen holding on to her leg.

  The burning fingers suddenly vanished. Gasping in relief, she crawled until her hands touched the wall. She put her back to the stone and tried to stand, but all strength had fled from where she’d been touched and she slid down again.

  She heard them in the darkness, their footsteps whispering in the sand as they slowly approached.

  mistress they croaked in their ragged whispers. you hurt us

  This was a dream. If she woke up, she would be safe. She tried to will herself awake, but the pathways that had led her to Cein’s mind had vanished.

  She had to distract them while she figured out how to escape. “Which one of you is Ko Yan? You are a prisoner – I can help free you from this nightmare!”

  Shapes swelled around her, shards of deeper blackness.

  she is part of us.

  “Us? Or you? She is your slave, like the rest of them. Let them go. You took your revenge on the Shan; the people of this land did nothing to you.”

  the shan are here.

  “Then destroy them! Leave the rest of us be!”

  A rasping chuckle. you are just like all of them. selfish. willing to trade the lives of others to save your own. you are lo jin come again.

  “Who are you?” Alyanna cried as the shadows loomed around her.

  we are wan ying. we are the first and the last

  They fell on her. Alyanna screamed as something rent her clothes and pierced her skin; she raised her hands, trying to ward away the demons, but they batted her arms aside with ease. Sharp teeth tore chunks from her flesh as they dragged her down to the sand.

  “No,” Alyanna moaned. They were so heavy, so heavy and so cold. She couldn’t breathe; the weight on her chest was like a great crushing stone. She could feel the warmth of her life streaming from her as the Chosen ripped her body to tatters. Cold fingers caressed her face, tangled in her hair. Something sharp was being pushed into her belly, and it wriggled like a worm inside her and she felt a scream building but when she opened her mouth nothing spilled forth. Jagged nails slid along her lips—

  Light.

  The demons savaging her hissed as the door swung open. They rose from her and she drew in a shuddering breath, coughing up blood.

  Through a red haze she saw a shape rushing towards her, then arms were underneath her and she was being lifted.

  “Alyanna!” someone shouted, and she tried to focus on who or what was carrying her.

  It had sounded like . . . Keilan?

  A burst of blinding radiance, then the sky was above her. The world seemed to melt, running like wax, the green of the trees and the golden sand and the overwhelming blue above blurring together and she was falling—

  Alyanna came awake gasping.

  She sat up, drawing in shuddering breaths as she tried to orient herself. She frantically patted at her body, expecting to find it slicked by blood and covered in gaping wounds.

  Nothing. Her panic slowly subsided as she mastered herself.

  Around her the other sleepers continued dreaming, undisturbed. She watched the gentle rise and fall of their chests, their small movements as they shifted to find more comfortable spots on the hard and frozen ground. The fire had diminished, but someone had added more kindling so that it would burn until morning.

  “Alyanna.”

  She jerked her head around, seizing the strands of her sorcery.

  Keilan crouched behind her, the concern in his face genuine.

  “Keilan,” she managed, letting the power slide between her fingers. “Was that you?”

  He nodded, his face pale.

  “How?”

  “I couldn’t sleep.” He held up his arm, and even in the semidarkness she could see the black lines etched stark beneath his skin. “They were itching. Burning. I got up and then I saw you writhing. You weren’t making any noise but something was very wrong. I tried to wake you but I couldn’t.”

  “I tried to contact the queen by going into her sleeping mind.”

  Keilan swallowed. “That was her dream? The beach?”

  “I believe so. Something from her childhood, I think. But it was a trap. They were expecting me.”

  “I couldn’t see what was attacking you in the hut. It was the Chosen?”

  Alyanna ran a shaking hand through her sweat-damp hair. “Yes.” She shook herself, then glanced at Keilan questioningly. “How did you follow me?”

  He shrugged. “When I touched you, I could sense a thread running from your body into . . . else
where.” He glanced at the fading lines on his forearm. “You were like a beacon, burning bright in the darkness. I remembered how you’d slipped into my dreams, and I’d glimpsed the basic weave of the sorcery. I did my best to recreate what I’d seen you do and tried not to get lost along the way. Then I was on the beach and I could hear you screaming from the village. There were people standing outside, a lot of them, just watching silently. They didn’t try to stop me when I pushed through the door – you were there, and there were shapes on you; I thought they were animals, but they fled into the shadows when I picked you up. I don’t think they were expecting me.”

  “I imagine not,” Alyanna said softly, pinching the bridge of her nose. She could feel a terrible headache coming on. “Thank you,” she said, touching his arm lightly. “I was careless and they nearly caught me.”

  She couldn’t be sure because of the semi-darkness, but she thought he was blushing. “We need you,” he said. “I saw what these things will do. The world needs you.”

  The walls had breathed.

  He’d seen the wood inhale and exhale like the lungs of a great beast. As if the wagon itself had for a moment lived, or been infused by the spirit of something else.

  Madness. He was going mad. The strain on his mind – the centuries of the Weaver’s tinkering, the trauma he had recently been subjected to – must have broken something inside him. Though in truth there was an even more terrifying possibility.

  What he’d seen in the genthyaki’s prison . . . what if it had been real?

  Jan had never been a scholar. He’d paid only cursory attention to his studies, preferring to while away the days of his youth in swordplay or mastering the sorceries that came to him so instinctually. While other sorcerers had immersed themselves in the lore of the ancients, seeking out clues to unravel the great mysteries, he had instead fought and wooed and sung his songs.

  Now, though, he wished he’d paid more attention.

  What he’d witnessed . . . it was like another reality had infringed upon this world. When Lask had consumed the blood of the genthyaki, something had shifted, or been torn. Jan had glimpsed another place, though he did not know what.

  He wished he could discuss it with Cein d’Kara. But the queen had not been returned to their wagon since that night. Jan could only hope that the shaman had not decided to see what power he could draw from her flesh. The thought was sickening. The eating of others . . . it was anathema in every society. Rituals that involved cannibalism had been what instigated the revolt against Menekar’s Warlock King. The first Pure, Tethys, had found fertile ground for rebellion because of the atrocities committed by the emperor and his court as they pursued immortality. Jan remembered that much from his lessons, at least.

  As the days passed, his thoughts turned to other things. He wondered what had happened to Cho Lin. Her quest to destroy the demons she’d called the Betrayers had been a righteous one, and he’d been selfish in abandoning her when he’d promised to bring her to where their prison was being kept. Of course, the irony was that in the end he’d led her right to where the monstrous children actually were. Perhaps she still lived – she was a disciple of Red Fang, and Jan had never known more skilled or dangerous warriors.

  He considered what had led him to betray Cho Lin’s trust and travel to Nes Vaneth. His memories had come back in a raging torrent after the ceremony atop Ravenroost, the accumulated remembrances of more than a dozen lives. It had been overwhelming. A few moments had been etched crystal-sharp, and the first time he’d traveled back to the old throne room of the sorceress-queens, centuries ago, was the most vivid of all. He hadn’t understood at the time, but the barriers Alyanna had erected in his mind to hold back the memories of who he had been before the cataclysm had been greatly weakened. He’d felt a compulsion to travel north, into the Frostlands, and had eventually allowed himself to be drawn beneath the Bhalavan. There, he’d found the babe hanging in the blue wall of ice – he’d wanted to try and cut it out at that moment, though he knew it would almost certainly be dead. But on the slim chance that the sorcery swirling in the chamber had somehow preserved the child, he had not interfered, fearing that by doing so he would break the spell and kill her. So he’d sought out his vague recollections of a great sorceress – Alyanna – and begged her to help him. She’d responded by obscuring that version of himself, and giving Jan a new life to live, as she’d done so many times before.

  The cruel witch.

  Or had she done it for his sake, as she had claimed? Would the guilt of what he had done to his lover and people have consumed him if she’d helped him? If the child had slipped from the ice dead despite her assistance, would he have ended himself as he’d wanted to do before Alyanna had fashioned for him a new life?

  He wasn’t sure, and that shamed him.

  The girl in the ice. His daughter, it must have been, for only Liralyn would have crafted that sorcery for their baby. What had happened to the child? The Skein king had claimed that she lived, taken by a priest of one of their barbaric gods into the wilds of the Frostlands after he had crudely hacked her from her prison.

  Was she out there, even now?

  The wagon lurched to a halt.

  Jan blinked awake, lifting his head groggily from the pillow he’d made from the stale rushes. Amber light trickled through the high slats; it was late afternoon, if he had to guess. He felt strange, like he was still dreaming. A prickling numbness was crawling down the back of his neck and making the rest of his body tingle.

  Something was happening. The Skein never stopped for the day until the sun had sunk completely behind the mountains. They must have arrived at whatever location they’d been slowly creeping towards over these long days. It was as mysterious to him now as it had been during their journey – he knew of very few places of interest that had survived the black ice the sorcerers of the Mosaic Cities had called down. Most of the other holdfasts had been utterly obliterated in the cataclysm.

  Loud voices swelled from outside the wagon, coming closer. Icy fear spiked in him as he heard the shaman’s barked commands, but when the door swung open it was the same pair of Skein that brought him food and water each night.

  “The king wants to see you,” the one with the bristly red beard growled, climbing inside the wagon.

  King Hroi, the thane of the White Worm. Not Lask. Jan was disappointed at himself for his surge of relief.

  “Where are we?” he asked as they unclasped the manacle from around his ankle.

  “The end of the world,” the other Skein said, a sour-faced warrior with a missing ear and a scar curving down the side of his cheek. The red-bearded barbarian seemed to think this clever, as he snorted a chuckle.

  They grabbed him roughly beneath his shoulders and hauled him to his feet. Jan could walk, but he let them carry the bulk of his weight – hiding his strength seemed like the best course of action.

  They emerged from the wagon and Jan had to shield his eyes. This was the first time he’d seen the sun in many weeks, perhaps more than a month. This long, dark nightmare had begun beneath the Bhalavan, and he was about to discover how it ended. He turned slowly, his gaze traveling over the gnarled mountains. They did not look familiar, which was strange. As a boy he had traveled all over the Frostlands, hunting stag and wyverns and wraiths, and he had learned how to orient himself simply by looking at the closest of the Bones – each segment of the range had its unique characteristics, such as the shape of the peak or a face hidden in the stones of a prominent cliff. Here, though . . .

  He sought any familiar landmark, but found nothing. His confusion deepened. The far north, perhaps. It had been a wild, dangerous land, and he’d heard it was where the clan of the White Worm made their home.

  Wait. No.

  The scrabbling in his head sharpened.

  Why would they have gone there?

  The Skein led him through a thicket of stunted
trees, and with mounting dread Jan became more and more certain what they would find on the other side.

  His heart fell when his suspicions were confirmed.

  They stood on the edge of an escarpment that swept down into a broad, flat field. Most of the Skein host had already gathered there – it was smaller than Jan had suspected, only a hundred or so men. They were all members of the king’s Flayed, the elite warriors of the White Worm, their faces inked to resemble different beasts and monsters. The army that had destroyed the Dymorians must have already disbanded or made its way back to Nes Vaneth. Most of the Skein would have refused to come here, Jan suspected. It had been a cursed, forbidden place for ages, long before he’d been born in Min-Ceruth.

  The Skein were clustered at the base of a great hill that soared nearly as tall as some of the smaller Bones. It did not look like a mountain, though – there was no rock emerging from the unbroken snow, and the swell of it was too rounded when compared to the jagged peaks of the Frostlands. In truth, it resembled one of the burial mounds where his ancestors had entombed their dead, but on an enormous scale.

  Fitting, given what was inside.

  Set into the side of this hill was a door that defied comprehension. It was a thousand span high, at least, a slab of featureless gray stone recessed slightly so that no snow covered its sloping vastness. There were no designs etched into the door, or if there had been ages ago they had long since been effaced. Nor was there any suggestion as to how the portal might open.

  This was the Burrow of the Worm. Jan could feel something squirming in his mind, a wriggling, alien intruder. And he knew it would be worse for the Skein setting up their camp outside the door – the psychic reverberations emanating from the Ancient dreaming under the hill had driven men mad before, but those with Talent seemed to be able to cope better than those without the gift, or even lesser sorcerers. The speculation Jan remembered was that the Ancient existed both here and in the Void, and those with Talent also had a strong connection to that realm. These Skein, however, would have no such familiarity, so it must have felt like they were descending into madness.