Shadow Moon

by Chris Claremont

  “The trooper and I were attacked by a pack of those beasts in the mountains,” he said.

  “So he told us. A most impressive feat. Two men against a Great Hunt, I didn’t think it possible.”

  “It’s been years since I’ve seen any; I thought there were no more.”

  “Where’d you see them, Peck?”

  “They attacked Nelwyn Vale, seeking the Sacred Princess when she was a baby.”

  “A truth. I can tell. But the truth?”

  “The truth, lord”—words directed to the Maizan, but his gaze was fixed full on Anakerie—“is that they are evil.”

  “As, by extension, are those who master them?”

  “Your words, lord.”

  “Your bad fortune, Peck, if true.”

  “Enough banter, Mohdri,” Anakerie said, stepping close. “Let’s get this done.”

  While the warlord and Thorn had been talking, she’d taken some jars from a carryall she’d brought with her, and mixed various substances together, taking the opportunity to focus her spirit as well for the task to come, so that Thorn doubted she’d heard a word of his exchange with her companion. Now she dipped the three middle fingers of her right hand into the bowl and turned them clockwise. When she drew them out, sparkles of tiny stars fell from them, as water would, in a glittery cascade.

  Two fingers together, she drew a line across the center of his forehead, then another bisecting it, from the crown of his head to his chin. Where the two lines came together, she drew the symbol of an open eye, a magical window to his soul. Next, she outlined his lips, to prevent him from holding back any words. After that, the same to his ears, so he’d hear only her words. And to his nose, so she’d have mastery over his very breath.

  At the major joints of arms and legs went more symbols, and with them the absence of any sensation. His chest was bared, and more stars were cast upon his heart.

  As she worked, each marking made on his flesh was replicated on hers. They breathed as one, their hearts beat as one; in every sense, save that she could move and he could not, they became one.

  He didn’t try to fight, partly because he wasn’t sure he could. This was an enchantment he knew and had used himself, derived as much from the essential spirit of the user as from the external powers drawn upon. In her case, surprisingly, a heart as pure as starlight itself.

  “How are you called?” the Maizan asked softly.

  “Thorn Drumheller,” was the answer his lips shaped, but the words came from Anakerie’s mouth. That was a surprise to him, betokening a bond between the two Daikini as strong and deep as the one she was forging with him.

  The questions were simple: who was he, where did he come from, why was he here? He chose his answers with care, from that deepest place within him where he still held dominion. They asked of the battle, and of his friends. Of days he wished were long forgotten, and the companions he mourned. He let her feel the sense of loss, without quite revealing the reasons for it, and was rewarded by a hitch in the smooth rhythm of their breaths, as his pain struck too sharp a resonance in her own memory.

  “Anakerie?” There was a surprising gentleness to the warlord’s inquiry; Thorn hadn’t thought the man had such kindness, or such passion, in him.

  “A moment, Mohdri.” Her voice was trembling and Thorn was thankful the bond between them was substantially one-way. He didn’t want to know what floodgates he’d managed to open in her, to hurt her so. Instead, he used the break to shore up his own inner defenses. Hard enough to resist, but in the bargain he had to make sure she remained completely unaware that he was actively, and fiercely, opposing her. Ultimately, it came down to a battle of wills, a chess game of the soul played at snap-reaction speeds, where each move provoked a split-second counter. He couldn’t have done it ten years ago. The potential was there, had been since birth, he’d known it even before he could put words to thoughts. Like a sapling not quite grown into an oak, or a length of rudely shaped steel fresh from the forge, that still needed tempering and honing before it became a proper sword. He’d been so afraid of his instincts then, because in this secret bastion of himself he’d known the true cost of embracing his heart’s desire. He’d been a happier man then, in his ignorance.

  The horror, of course, the awful joy, was the realization that—given a second chance, even with all he knew—he’d make the same choice. Because happy as he thought he was, he’d still been only a ghost of a man.

  He had no sense of the true passage of time, save in the lines of fatigue he saw etching themselves across the Princess Royal’s face. He’d built his mask properly and fastened it tight across the face of his soul; every answer had its element of truth, yet the totality of the interrogation was a lie.

  At long last, she wiped the starstuff from his breast and nostrils, and the third eye from his forehead, breaking the core of the link between them. As she did, the replications on her own body vanished as well.

  “Well?” prompted the warlord.

  “A wanderer,” she replied, after a long and thoughtful pause. “No home, no family, no more than what he says he is.”

  “You don’t sound convinced.”

  “Grief.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Too much grief.”

  “A pretense?”

  She shook her head, picking her silver clip from her braid and then threading her fingers through her hair from her forehead to pull the thick, mahogany plaits free, as though she couldn’t bear it to be bound any longer.

  “Hardly. His heart has been well and truly cut, by the kind of loss that mostly breaks those it does not slay. The kind I’ve felt myself.”

  “So?”

  “Some come through it stronger.”

  “Is this Peck such a one?”

  “You wouldn’t think so, to look at him.”

  “Is he a threat, dread lady?” The Red Lion spoke for the first time. A deep voice, more suited for the battlefield than the parade ground. “Shall I kill him, then?”

  She returned him the rueful smile of an old comrade in arms. “Is that your solution to everything, Jalaby?”

  “It has the advantage of finality, Highness.”

  They’d cleared a step or three away from the wall and him, but he wasn’t fooled. This exchange was as much a part of the interrogation as anything that came before. The slightest overt reaction and they’d be on him like Death Dogs. He could only act when, and if, they decided to turn words into deeds. And trust he’d have strength and skill to stop them.

  Anakerie shook her head. Back and shoulders were ever so slightly bowed, with an equivalent heaviness to her carriage that betokened a hard-fought struggle. She’d put her all into the duel with Thorn, and it had cost her as much as any purely physical fight.

  “It’s too close to the Ascension, I want no blood spilled.”

  “Who’s to know, Keri, who’s to even notice?” Mohdri now, seemingly taking the sergeant major’s part, but Thorn sensed something in voice and manner that told him different, that this was for show. He tried to focus his wits, to probe more deeply, but he still resonated too strongly with Anakerie and found his concerns blunted by her deep affection for the man. It was a brutal paradox; she knew he was dangerous, yet cared for him nonetheless.

  “You ask such a thing, with the forces and personages loose within these walls?”

  “That’s your only reason?”

  Thorn caught a glimpse of a smile from her, a wan little thing, surprisingly at odds with the tenor of the moment. She wrapped her arms about her body and held herself close, as though chilled to the bone.

  “No,” she mused, thinking mostly aloud. “He’s isn’t much to look at. Yet the Magus wants him.”

  “How fortunate for him the captain came to us, then, eh? Should I be flattered that you trust me, since it was I and my Thunder Riders who brought the Magus to Court? Or is this a case of holdi
ng friends close but enemies closer?”

  She hardly heard the man’s words; another thought entirely was on her mind as she turned her gaze toward Thorn. For a moment Nelwyn and Daikini eyes met and Thorn blinked as InSight cast another visage across hers, a residue from the Bonding. Male to female, distaff sides of the same coin, so disconcertingly alike they might be one, separated by the span of a decade. The boy’s hair was close-cropped, covering his head like a wild hedgerow, and both had the same ready, incandescent grin. She’d just lost hers since.

  As she did now, with a slight shudder. And he knew she’d seen that same haunting face reflected in his own eyes. He had to be more careful, there were still too many ties binding them; no matter how hard he worked to purge them, some would always remain. She’d wrapped herself in his soul, even though he’d kept a fair chunk of it hidden. Twinned themselves in spirit, as she and her long-lost brother had been twins in flesh.

  “An old rivalry perhaps,” he heard the Castellan say, “a feud we know nothing about.”

  “Perhaps,” Anakerie conceded distractedly as she struggled to recover her composure; the depth of the resonance had shaken her, as it had Thorn, yet she said nothing of it to Mohdri. “I want to be sure before I act.”

  “As Your Highness commands.”

  “Too many questions, Mohdri. If the Magus is so powerful, why his concern with this Nelwyn?”

  “Ask.”

  “I saw no need before now.”

  “Would you rather learn the hard way?”

  “Leave the Nelwyn as he is, Mohdri, till after the ceremony.”

  “That, Highness, would not be prudent.”

  The warlord stepped forward, one long stride taking him right to Thorn, fast as a striking cobra. Too late, Thorn saw him draw a handful of black, crystalline sand from a pouch of his own, watched it coalesce before his eyes into a slim stiletto blade of gleaming obsidian, held lightly between both palms. Then, with the faintest outrush of breath, he puffed it forward into his skull, stabbing right through the point where Anakerie had drawn forth his third eye.

  Thorn convulsed, like a man dancing with lightning, lips curling back so far from his teeth he thought the flesh would tear free, thankful—in the rapidly dissolving spaces within him still capable of conscious thought—for being chained. He might dislocate every joint with his madcap twists and turns, but otherwise he’d have surely broken himself to bits. He was gabbling nonsense noises like a Death Dog and in that awful moment knew he’d been taken by the enchantment that had been used on Faron.

  Then Anakerie shoved the taller man aside, with a force and fury that surprised as much as amused him, though all good humor faded in an instant when Jalaby put his body between them.

  “Damn you, Mohdri, I gave you no such leave.”

  “A good commander knows when to take the initiative, my pet.”

  She bridled at the intentional diminutive, that was plain on her face. But Castellan Mohdri couldn’t see the response; not only was his view blocked by her escort, she was too close to Thorn and there was no sense of it in her reply. She would have grabbed hold of the prisoner, but his movements were too violent and unpredictable. Of the stiletto, there was no sign; the blade and all its malefic power had been absorbed into Thorn’s flesh on contact.

  “He’s of no use to anyone smashed to a bloody pulp!”

  “Least of all himself, my intent precisely. Forgive me, Keri, you yourself said this night is too important to take the slightest risk. If anything’s amiss, it’s surely blocked now.” He paused, allowing her a moment to reply, and when none came: “Shall we go, Princess? We’ve indulged ourselves enough for one evening.” There was no outward alteration to voice or manner, yet he made plain precisely who was the power in the room. Thorn shook as mad testament to the fate in store for those who opposed it, and from Mohdri came the definite hope that Jalaby would be fool enough to try.

  Still hidden from view, Anakerie blew on the fingertips of her right hand, then touched them to Thorn’s lips, thereby passing on the ghost kiss. When she took her hand away, a scattering of faint sparkles remained on his lips, a lingering of starstuff. There was blood as well, where a tooth had broken her skin. As she rose she pulled on her gauntlet, covering the small wound.

  Mohdri ushered her up the stairs, but paused himself after she’d stepped outside for a last, soft-spoken word.

  “Caught you,” he said with an appreciative nod at how completely the deadly trap had closed. “Just as the Magus said. Let my princess crack your shell with niceness and stab you before you can close the breach.” He smiled, flashing gleaming, perfect teeth like a shark about to bite. “Poor Peck. Did you ever dream a ChangeSpell could be cast so easily? Magus thinks you’ll beat it, maybe we’ll toss the boy Geryn in when I come back, for FirstFeast, see if he’s right. However it turns out, you’ll have scars across you no power can erase. Dead, broken, turned, all the same to me and mine. What matters is, you’re beaten.”

  And Thorn was alone.

  He gave voice, then, as he had over the ruins of Tir Asleen, majestic walls crumbled all to powder, with naught but dead before him and Elora’s spirit long gone from the place. Everything in him that hurt, he transformed into rage and cast it out his voice. Fire exploded from his breast, lighting him from within as it followed the byways of his nervous system to the ends of his body and shot away with such fury the chains were ripped from their place in the wall. Much of the wall came with them, but his body was in such a state his spasms simply threw the hulking blocks off him, no matter that skin was broken and bones crushed beneath.

  This would go on, he knew, until he was pulp and stretched to full extension between the realms of life and death, no longer one, not quite the other. It was the same enchantment that had been used on Faron, as too late he realized that Mohdri had been the leader of the dark figures he’d seen in the boy’s memory. But where he was concerned, the ChangeSpell manifested itself with significant differences. It would smash his body to rubble as it would his soul and rebuild both in the image of a beast. The intellect of a man, the Power of a sorcerer, mated to the brute force of a Death Dog, all tightly leashed to the Magus who had cast the spell. To lock the Change in place, to curse the spirit as well as the flesh, required a blood sacrifice. Ideally a friend, the more innocent the better.

  He fought as he never had before. He forged a sword from the substance of his soul and used it with a skill his arms would never have. Backed by a wild ferocity that danced along the edge of madness. With each swing, though, his blade shone a fraction less brightly; he took no steps forward, only back, and Shadow hemmed him in from every side. He’d seen Anakerie as the paramount threat; after the Bonding, he couldn’t help but relate to her as something of a friend. His defenses had been down, and he was being crushed as inexorably, as completely, as Tir Asleen. The battle would have been over already had not Anakerie’s farewell kiss canceled much of her remaining enchantment, which held him physically helpless, and restored a measure of his own resources.

  The Magus himself was the most frightening element. Thorn had seen his share of danger; in his travels he’d honed his magical abilities as any swordsman would his blade, and learned to defend himself against all manner of assaults. Yet against this spell, his best efforts, his most wily and cunning stratagems, came to naught. The Magus seemed to know him better than he did himself; every parry had been anticipated, every counterthrust was bent harmlessly aside. The harder he fought, the more quickly he raced toward ultimate defeat.

  Trust me, he heard and wished he was deaf.

  You’re a Demon, he shrieked in his mind, teeth so broken their jagged chunks had savaged tongue and cheeks beyond the ability to speak.

  You won’t die, they won’t let you. They’ve caught you good and proper and through you, the child. Can’t save yourself, Peck, how are you to save her?

  You’re a Demon!

  Your only hop
e, now as before.

  He didn’t have long. The spell attacked the mind before the body, and he had a sudden, sickening image of his soulself, hacking away at Shadows long after everything it embodied had been consumed. Even if he survived, through some miracle, all that remained of him would be a shell.

  He spat blood, and worse, but forced himself to say the words aloud.

  “Help me,” he asked. “Please.”

  All light went away; the torches left by Mohdri so Thorn could watch what was happening to himself simply winked out. The floor rose up around him, as though it had turned to tar…

  …and then he was the floor.

  In that twinkling, his InSight expanded beyond its farthest boundaries, sweeping him from one realm of perception that he had always known into another for which none of that knowledge had the slightest meaning. He was stone, every stone, from the core foundation to the highest roof point. He had no words to describe the experience, no means to catalog the overwhelming number and variety of sensations. It was like standing at the heart of a mirror room, knowing that even the most wayward glance would reveal a near-infinite number of reflections, no two quite the same.

  Human instinct made him want to move, but he found himself anchored in place, the stones bound to each other by mortar, the entire edifice standing atop a plug of solid rock that was like a mountain within the earth, unaffected by the cracks and fissures that laced the surrounding substructure. At one and the same moment he beheld the dungeon where he lay, the kitchen spaces of the palace proper, and every other room as well, the entirety of Elora’s Aerie, the ceremonial hall—specially constructed for the coming sacrament and, like her china and gowns, to be used this once and never again.

  Everyone was moving, and he felt as though he was being pounded over every inch of his body. There was constant noise; he could no more discriminate between sounds than between sights, his brain couldn’t handle the load. He was drowning in sensation, as he would in water, except the outcome wasn’t death but madness.