Shadow Moon

by Chris Claremont

  He popped another morsel into his mouth, and spat it out almost immediately, before he could properly bite down on it and shatter a tooth. It wasn’t a piece of biscuit in his hand but one of the stones he’d gathered. As he held it his eyes rose and shifted sideways. Quickly, he was on his feet and hobbling as fast as his stunted legs could carry him toward a spot marked in the mountain’s memory. He remembered as he went the old saw that Nelwyns weren’t made for walking because they were meant to spend their days close to hearth and home; he’d always wondered why that had never been enough for him.

  Should have been paying more attention to the present, not the past, as he put a wrong step on the slick surface and one foot skidded out from under him, stretching him full length hard enough to keep him lying there a good, long minute while he recovered his wits.

  He was sore, mostly about the knees and forearms, which had borne the brunt of the impact, but otherwise unhurt as he pushed himself gingerly upright, until his body blocked the sunlight enough to cast the site into a fair semblance of shadow. Nothing happened when he held out the stone, or even when he placed it on the ground. It was a piece of debris, like all the rest around him.

  Didn’t look right, though. Not where it was, nor how it lay. He thought a moment, without the slightest notion of what was to come next, ignoring a faint hail shouted along the breeze overhead, until his left hand moved of its own volition; he couldn’t help a small smile, because even the smallest and most inconspicuous use of his power was a delight to him.

  There were no fireworks, not the slightest tingle of energy, as his mouth pursed thoughtfully and his fingers turned the stone and moved it…just so.

  He stroked the tips of his fingers across his lower lip and considered what he’d done. Almost immediately, a new impulse made him draw another pebble from the pouch. This one wasn’t set beside the first, however, but about a hand-span distant and off at a diagonal. The movement was like popping a brick from a dam; again and again, his hand returned to his pocket, placing one stone after the other on the ground before him.

  When at last it was empty, he’d built a fair-sized pile.

  “Interesting,” he mused aloud. “I didn’t think I’d gathered so many.” As he spoke he reached out to fractionally adjust the alignment of one of the components.

  “There,” he said. “That’s right.”

  It was, too, he felt it in his bones. He was looking at the mountain in small. The towering central spire, a sheer drop to the plainsward side, with two subordinate ridges binding it to the range beyond, plus the cols that flowed off them; this was a proud and arrogant piece of creation, no easy conquest for the man foolish enough to try.

  He looked around, aware once more of that wailing undertone of anguish he’d sensed earlier.

  “If stones could cry…” He took a breath, let it out slowly, hearing a voice calling from the distance and paying it no mind.

  “I’m sorry,” he said to the cairn. “I wish I could undo what’s been done.”

  A furious gust of energy from out of the heart of the mountains struck upward through the soles of his feet and rocked him back off his heels, hard enough to knock him flat; as he fell, senses reeling from this onslaught—a wild, almost incoherent mix of rage and betrayal—he wrapped his arms protectively about himself, like a boxer losing the ability to defend himself.

  Thorn spat blood, watched it strike his miniature mountain and then be absorbed into the very stone. The fused earth beneath it began to bubble and boil, as though being eaten away by some ferocious acid, with secondary fissures radiating outward from his peak to mar more of its polished perfection. The cairn was no longer an accumulation of stones and pebbles; it was hardening visibly before his eyes, taking on the cohesion and solidity of the mountain it had once been even as it once more forged its link with the earth from which it had been raised. There was the taste of grit in his mouth, and as the tiny bits of pumice ground across his teeth, he felt a sudden flush of heat shoot through him from the soles of his feet, with such force that he was consumed before he could utter a sound. It wasn’t pain, at least that resembled any he’d felt on those occasions when he’d been physically burned, but it was very nearly more than he could bear. He was sure he was glowing, that every object around him was either melting or bursting instantly to flame, because that had to be what was happening to him.

  Hard on the heels of the incredible heat came a delicious chill, sinking to the heart of bones and soul from the outside in, locking him in form and place. There was a strange duality of perception, akin to what he felt when his InSight merged his consciousness with the eagles’ to allow him to see the world through their eyes, an awareness that he retained the potential of movement while becoming ever more firmly rooted to this spot. He turned his head, his body following—moving not as it used to, through the articulation of his limbs, but seeming instead to flow. Parts of him would liquefy and recast themselves once more when he chose to come to rest. And if each time he looked a little different—an arm lost here, a leg impossibly stretched and bent, a face increasingly devoid of human features—that didn’t matter. His essence remained true.

  However, as he surveyed the stony boneyard, there was a form and structure to the landscape that he hadn’t perceived before. His wish had been granted, as he realized he could now complete consciously what had been begun solely on instinct; there was a way to make amends and set things right. He could pick and choose among the broken remains, to gather the pieces and restore them in their proper sequence. It wouldn’t be an easy task, rebuilding a mountain by hand, but he had no doubts he would be up to it. As for time, he sensed he was no longer bound by Nelwyn or even Veil Folk constraints. His span was mated to the world itself and measured its days on the same terms. An age to him would encompass the rise and fall of a continent, from the dawn of his kind to long past its sunset.

  Even as these thoughts came to him (and that wasn’t so very quickly, for his mind was resonating in tune to his body, casting aside all unnecessary memories and focusing solely on the task at hand) he caught sight of the next stone to add to his construction and began his glacial trek toward it.

  With every breath he became more content. This was peace. This was fulfillment.

  He felt a swash of air as something large passed close by overhead, the impact—very faintly felt—of tiny feet on his shoulders.

  The next he knew, equally small fingers had grabbed a respectable handful of nose hair. The brownie tugged and Thorn popped back into his own head with an outraged yelp and a tremendous sneeze.

  “Talking to you, sirrah,” cried Franjean, brimful of an outrage to match the mountain’s, before he could say a word.

  “Saving you,” echoed his companion, triumphantly brandishing his prize in one hand while holding on to Thorn’s shirt with the other.

  “Fool’s errand, if ever there was one,” Franjean finished, so close to Thorn’s eye that his face filled the Nelwyn’s vision even though his body didn’t stand as high as many meadow flowers.

  “Can we go, now, please?” Rool demanded, after a shallow nod of acknowledgment. “We really aren’t welcome here.”

  “Hang on, Rool,” cried Franjean, and then the eagles were upon them.

  Two great sets of claws sank themselves deep through the fabric of padded vest, wool overshirt, and cotton shirt, closing firmly enough to hold him secure without doing any harm. Thorn felt the backwash of two powerful wings, a span that surpassed the height of a tall Daikini, and cried out as he was summarily yanked from the ground. It wasn’t the physical separation that caused him pain—throughout his ordeal he’d felt like he was melting; in actuality his body hadn’t changed shape in the slightest—but the severance of his psychic bond with the mountains.

  “Careless,” said Bastian, not bothering to hide his disdain as he muscled his limp burden skyward.

  “A fledgling’s mistake,” sniffed his mate, Ane
le, holding guard position just off Bastian’s left wing, a little behind and below, to catch whatever might fall should Thorn start struggling. “I expected better.”

  “Easy for you to say,” protested Thorn feebly in his own defense.

  “Speak when you remember how,” Franjean told him from just outside his left ear.

  “When you have something worth the saying.” Rool, from his right.

  Thorn couldn’t think of anything, so he cast his awareness outward to join Anele, a far safer choice than distracting Bastian. As always, the view took his breath away. For those first moments he luxuriated in the caress of air across his skin—personalizing the sensations even though he knew they were really hers—aware of every twitch and tickle that signified an adjustment of feathers and pinions as she soared. Though they hadn’t risen all that high above the ground, the air was significantly cooler. The first time he’d merged senses with the raptors, it had been as great a shock as plunging into a winter stream; he’d broken the link immediately to lie shivering in a heap, his body tucked in tight to itself, terrified he’d never be able to take another breath because the one before had frozen him inside and out. Paradoxically, the sun lay across the eagle’s russet-gold back like a quilt, a furnace without to complement the one within, stoked by Anele’s heart, which sent blood racing through her body far faster than Thorn’s did through his own.

  “That wasn’t very nice,” Thorn grumped, stifling another sneeze as he was unceremoniously deposited on the ground close by their campsite, the clearing mostly shrouded in sunset shadows. He tried to stand but instead flailed uselessly with arms and legs, as though he’d forgotten how to use them. He moved like a baby at first, but each random gesture cast another line between spirit and flesh until—after what seemed an eternity, although it really wasn’t very long at all—the wayward pieces of himself were once more bound tightly and properly together.

  “Compared to what, may I ask?” came Franjean’s arch riposte, mocking the manners of courtiers he’d seen in their journey.

  “Tried to get your attention,” Rool said, in a more pragmatic tone.

  “Called until our voices broke.”

  “But did you listen?”

  “Did you care?”

  Then, in unison: “I think not!”

  Thorn made a face. He’d seen goddesses with less hauteur than these diminutive creatures. They’d walked the world together, these brownies and he, and he had the inescapable feeling that he was still being taken on sufferance. Truth to tell, he was always more comfortable with the eagles; they were killers when they had to be, but they lacked the brownies’ instinct for the verbal jugular. The eagles hadn’t landed themselves but instead returned immediately to the air, beating quickly to altitude until they were lost from sight against the darkening eastward sky.

  “I didn’t hear,” he told them all, voice to the brownies, mindspeech to the eagles.

  “Too busy spirit dancing,” scoffed Franjean.

  “We could have left you, Drumheller,” chided Rool.

  “Should have.”

  “Madness enough that you go gallivanting into the heart of such an accursed place.”

  “Don’t expect us to come save you again.”

  “I know it was hard—” Thorn began, but Rool cut him off.

  “Sometimes, wizard, you know nothing,” he said sharply. “About what is needful. And especially about what’s hard.”

  Thorn nodded. “I ask your pardon, Rool,” he said formally. “And yours, Franjean. I offer my apologies to you, and Anele and Bastian. This was wrong of me. It’s one thing to risk my own life; I had no right to make you do the same.”

  “Find what you were looking for, did you?” asked Franjean with a practiced air of malicious glee.

  He knew that was coming, and answered like a schoolboy before his headmaster, a sensation he thought he’d put behind him ages ago. “No,” was his flat reply.

  “Are we surprised?” The brownie threw up his hands in a too familiar gesture of exasperation.

  “Franjean, I had to try.”

  “What, you refuse to believe the fire is hot until you’re burning?”

  “I know the fire’s hot, but I need to learn the nature of whatever set it alight.”

  “You’ve looked for ten years and more, Drumheller. If you haven’t learned by now, when?”

  He had no answer and so made none, which only provoked an even more acerbic outburst from the brownie.

  “What is the use, Drumheller, I ask you? Far be it from us to offer the slightest hint of criticism, O mighty wizard, or place the slightest impediment in the way of your quest, but is this to be the pattern of our lives? Are we fated to wander the Twelve Domains until we drop while you continue your compendium of the sites of the Cataclysm’s greatest disasters?”

  Franjean was right. His search had taken him across the face of the world, to lands and peoples he’d never dreamed of, yet he felt no closer to his answers today than when he set out. It was a realization that had been growing in him for a long time, with a bitterness that ate at his insides like an acid poison—that he had doubly failed, not only to save those he loved, but also to avenge them.

  “Are you quite finished?” he demanded.

  “Will you ever be?”

  Rool spoke up. “This isn’t the time, Franjean.” There was a different shading to his voice, as though something had tripped an alarm in his head. Thorn caught the shift and his own focus sharpened accordingly; Franjean didn’t.

  “Will it ever be?” Franjean snapped in return.

  Over the years Franjean had grown into a veritable peacock, with nary a stitch out of place regardless of circumstance; he always managed to convey the sense that his outfits had been constructed that very morning, for someone who lived on the cutting edge of fashion. Thorn could never decide which amazed him more: the sheer variety of the brownie’s designs or how he managed to come up with them in the middle of nowhere.

  Rool, by contrast, was the more practical of the pair, possessing a sobriety of manner that was echoed in the style of his clothes, which were so comfortably broken in they seemed like they’d be part of him forever. In this instance, buckskin mainly, trousers and pullover tunic, with hard-soled boots that tied snug to the leg at the knee. Thickly woven cotton shirt beneath the tunic and an ankle-length canvas coat that swirled out from his body like a cloak when he walked, to protect him from the evening chill.

  “The Daikini,” Rool reminded his companion, with an edge to his tone that matched the keenness of the blades he wore at his belt. There was no ornamentation to him; his hair was far longer than Franjean’s, the color of richly polished cherrywood, falling past his backside, swept straight from the face and gathered in a leather sleeve that was anchored at the base of the neck by a leather clip chased with drops of silver that Thorn had made him.

  “What Daikini?” Thorn asked.

  Franjean cocked a dismissive eyebrow. “The one we’ve been screaming at you about all the livelong day.” He rounded on Rool. “Should have scared the brute away ourselves! Make that stupid Daikini’s stupid horse think it wandered into the land of angry hornets, hah!”

  “If they could have passed us by,” Rool told him, “they would have. They’ve no more liking for this accursed place than we do.” Then, to Thorn: “This is someone I think you should see, Drumheller.”

  “As you wish.”

  There was no ease to his movements as he followed the brownies through the scrub brush and tumbleweed. The memory of his struggle with the mountains had sunk past thought and deep into his bones; he couldn’t cast himself loose of the images, which in their turn lashed him with the sting of a sorrow so awful he had no words for it. The mountains had left their mark on him, a hole straight through his own heart to match the one through theirs.

  The Daikini had chosen as good a defensive position as could be managed on th
is barren, broken land, on the steepest slope with a fair rise of rocks to his back. He’d stripped a good-sized clearing—to give him a broad and deep field of fire—and used the gathered tinder for an impressive fire to warm his bones and give him light to see by.

  Thorn’s InSight revealed a wandering zephyr, a ghost of a breeze, so faint it barely tickled the distant grass, thrown into turmoil as it came close by the violent updrafts of the blazing campfire. The Daikini slumped on the far side of the flames probably wasn’t even aware of it, yet to Thorn it was like sitting ringside for a fierce back-alley brawl. The zephyr seemed aware of his sympathy, as it swirled up on him from behind to stroke him top to toe; he had to clench his teeth to keep from laughing at its touch and was certain the struggle flashed across his face like an alarm beacon.

  Yet the Daikini didn’t notice. All remained still.

  The man’s horse snuffled, shifting from one hobbled hoof to the next, not quite nervous but no longer wholly calm. Instinct told the mare she should be somewhere else, but she was too worn-out to care. Moreover, in the recent past she’d taken a nasty wound from which she’d never truly recovered. A glance told Thorn all he needed to know. Death Dogs. They carried no poison, but their bites were ferociously septic; if they drew your blood, you were sure to sicken from it. All too often, that infection killed. He could smell their poison within her, even though she’d fought it to the point where it now lay dormant. This night’s rest was welcome, but while she might manage a plodding walk in the morning, the first decent, sustained run would be the end of her. She knew that, too.

  He turned back to the zephyr, but that little wind was too faint and fickle to be of any real use. Wouldn’t matter anyway; if Death Dogs were coming for them, it would be from dead downwind, following the scent of their prey.