Shadow Moon

by Chris Claremont

  His was a considerably more coherent and focused presentation, order against the Demon’s natural state of chaos, and he allowed himself a silent whistle of admiration at whoever had Bound the creature prisoner. There was no stronger stone than this primordial granite; it had been formed in the earliest days of the world, cast up as the heart of the first range of mountains; time had simply weathered it down to its purest essence. By contrast, there was no more anarchic form of being—he wasn’t even sure the term “life” properly applied—than Demons. They abhorred any sense of structure, be it moral or physical; their sense seemed to be that if they could thrive in a realm where no rules applied, why couldn’t everyone else? Wizards feared and fought them because their own abilities were confined within a structure, the so-called natural order of things; their strength lay in their skill at weaving lesser patterns into greater ones. Demons took delight in tearing any and all such patterns to bits. The stronger the mage, the more powerful the Demons attracted to his work. They would attack, and the mage would pray his wards were sufficient to hold them at bay. Because of the forces involved, those conflicts occasionally had a spillover into the tangible world, and as with any battle, those aftereffects weren’t pretty. That was how common folk came to fear Demons, to the extent that even wholly natural disasters were blamed on them. Certainly, the Cataclysm had been, though Thorn had always doubted that; any Demon capable of wreaking such havoc on a global scale wouldn’t have stopped there. It would gleefully have shattered the world entire.

  Still and all, Thorn told himself, by rights and everything I’ve ever heard, having a Demon imprisoned in the rock should have made this the most unstable of foundations.

  Do I surprise you then, little magus?

  “Damnation! Will you please stay out of my mind, I’m trying to concentrate here!”

  You think too much. Action would be better.

  “When I’m ready.”

  Your time is not your own.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  He shouldn’t have spoken aloud, shouldn’t have heeded the Demon in the slightest. The distraction was just enough to open the tiniest crack in the ramparts of his concentration.

  He heard the sound of wings, so vast that each sweep could be mistaken for the pulse of a hurricane, beheld in his mind’s eye a glory so pure it couldn’t be described, that was at one and the same moment the embodiment of the Demon’s chaos and the antithesis of it. He looked to his dreams, and it was there, looked to his imagination and it was there; it was at the heart of laughter, it was the radiance that eased the Shadow thrown by grief. The blood that burned beneath its breast likewise filled his own, but where he was flesh transcended by the Powers he had learned to wield, this was a creature whose essence was magic, barely restrained within a physical casement.

  The dragon smiled.

  The Demon spoke.

  Drumheller.

  Thorn felt tears, for the first time in over a decade, but no longer of sorrow. He wept from awe, and a wonder that swept across the wasteland of his soul like a spring rain, as though he were once more the farmer surveying his fields after planting, beholding not simply the fact of things but how all those disparate elements acted together to bring forth new life. He hadn’t realized his wounds had gone so deep, or that he’d buried them beneath so thick a scab to mute their awful pain. The best part of him had been numb for so long; in following the path of his life he’d somehow lost his way.

  My child, Drumheller.

  “I know,” he said, every part of him tingling, as though an electrical storm had passed by him.

  You gave your word.

  “I know.”

  He blinked, to restore himself fully to his cell and the task before him, but instead found his spirit cast once more into the wild ocean that was the Demon’s Power, only now it had become a perceptual maelstrom that for all his own strength and skill he was unable to master. He knew how to swim, but only as a man; he had no sense here of how to be a fish, and so was swept helplessly away to the top of Elora’s Aerie:

  At precisely the stroke of midnight on the last night of Elora’s twelfth year, the Vizards come for her. They are her keepers, the high priests of a religion that doesn’t officially exist, charged—on peril of life and soul across the Twelve Domains—with her care and protection. One representative from each Realm, rotated each year, so that on this special day there will be twelve sets of twelve to stand by her. She never sees any one of them for more than a month; each new moon brings a new face, or so she assumes. She has no way of knowing for sure, beyond the obvious differences in their respective races; they all are masked (hence, their name), presenting her with the same unchanging visage day in, day out.

  Swept helplessly away to the apartments of the Princess Anakerie:

  Anakerie stands on the wraparound balcony of her rooms and stares up at Elora’s Aerie, not bothering to mask the emotions that turn her cheeks ghost pale and her eyes the color of bloody sand.

  Thorn shuddered at the backwash of old and bitter hatreds, resonating off both girl and woman like stones from the bottom of a fire pit, deceptively cold to the touch but rich with the memory of what it had been like to burn, needing only a reminder and a surge of desire to bring them once more to blazing life. He sat cross-legged in the darkness of his cell and tried with fierce desperation to seal the doors and windows of his perceptions, sick with the realization that it was a lost cause. The more he used his Talent, especially while he was coupled to the Demon—and seemingly to this dragon as well—the wider and more deeply ranged his InSight, all the more acutely in the case of Elora and Anakerie because of the Bondings between them. Their feelings came together in him, the one striking resonant chords in the other, forming twisting riptides of passion that he could no more escape than control.

  “It’s an honor,” he hears the King say, and looks around before he can stop himself, realizing too late that both voice and scene are part of Anakerie’s memory. And he wonders if she is just as privy to the secrets of his own past.

  A mask lies between father and daughter, on a silken pillow surrounded by a badge of office. It is a thing of beauty, a human face interpreted by the finest artisans of the Veil Folk. Perfect in every aspect, it has as little substance as gossamer yet is as expressionless and impenetrable as a statue. Anakerie will not even touch it, for within her is the certainty that once donned, the mask will leave its mark on her forever, like the harshest brand.

  “I don’t want it,” she says, and those who watch look amongst themselves in dismay. The King has a certain tone, used when he is not to be swayed, and woe betide any who dare to cross him in such a mood. Even at thirteen, his daughter matches it.

  Being a father, for all that he loves her dearly, he doesn’t notice.

  “This is to be worn by those who serve the Sacred Princess Elora,” he explains, though his manner makes plain he would much rather simply be obeyed. “It was made for you. You will be the first to attend her.”

  “I don’t want it,” she says again in that same certain voice.

  “It is an honor.”

  “I don’t want it. I am a Princess.”

  “I am your king. It is my will.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “I don’t ask you to understand, Anakerie, nor even that you approve. I do require your obedience.”

  He’s slain men for less. He is a throwback to a harder age, which is fortuitous because these are bloody times. He fought a pitched battle on his wedding day, and would have perished had his fiancée not led her own troops from the altar to his rescue. She was as courageous as he, as skilled in the arts of war, and often rode beside him in the field. Her true vocation, though, was governance and they divided their roles accordingly; he defended the realm and she ran it. Until the Cataclysm, when the King was summoned home to discover his wife and son—Anakerie’s twin—among the casualties; the one dea
d, the other missing. In their place, a lost soul, thrown among his household like a changeling and treated much the same. Over the decade since, he’s stayed closer to home, trying to shape his hand to the quill pen instead of the sword. He masters the strategy of statecraft and the art of persuasion. But he never loses the air of the warrior; all who deal with him know that they have but to scratch his surface, and silk will quickly give way to the steel underneath.

  In these early days, however, when Elora’s provenance has been established and decisions must be made about her future, the pain of loss is still too raw. He has no patience, especially with those he loves.

  She is her father’s daughter, a match for him in every way, but she is too young and he, determined absolutely. She will wear the mask, and attend Elora for her allotted month.

  Instead, she flees.

  The images of her lasted until she passed beyond the palace walls; they were the limits of the Demon’s range. Of what transpired beyond, it had no interest and less care, and for that, Thorn was profoundly grateful. He was close enough to shrieking madness as it was from this mad cacophony.

  Elora isn’t in her room.

  And in that moment, resonating as he was from Anakerie’s memories, Thorn was gripped by the wild fear that she had fled her fate as well.

  For the palace staff, that means panic, as though a marauding army has suddenly materialized within the gates. If any among the Vizards feel the same, those feelings are safely hidden behind their masks. They don’t need much of a search to find her, she isn’t trying to hide. She has simply exchanged bed for garden and nestled herself in the crook of one of the oak’s main branches. The Vizards surround her, spacing themselves a double arm’s length apart as though this is part of the ceremony; they take great care to stay on the flagstone border; none take a step toward her, nor edge even so much as a tiptoe onto the grass. They stand, they stare; she stares back for a time and then goes back to sleep.

  Thorn couldn’t help a smile at the sight, and wondered how long the stalemate would last. Then his smile was gone as he beheld…

  …a burgher within a public sitting room bites his thumbnail; the bluff Daikini—the same merchant Thorn saw earlier with the King’s minister of state—spits it on a fire, resonances of the deed and thoughts behind it pulsing through the stones of the palace, blurring Thorn’s focus like a splash of water across a windowpane.

  “Has value, damn it,” the Daikini says. “Her bein’ here, the Sacred Princess, serves a purpose.”

  “Probably said the same, last place she lived,” counters his companion, equally rich with drink, unable to sleep, unwilling to leave, both men falling back on the traditional means of passing the time before tomorrow’s ceremony. “Look what happened there.”

  “ ’S our land, bugger your eyes, our land!”

  “Not if we say different,” intrudes a new voice, as though silver bells had been turned all to blades.

  The Veil Lord’s proportions are all wrong, too little breadth to go with his impossible height. He is a stick figure, half again as tall as a tall man, forced to duck his head to pass beneath most doorways; only the ceremonial gates afford him an easy entry.

  “We have rights,” the burgher grumbles, oblivious to his companion’s cautionary “shush.”

  “Which we honor,” the lord replies, “as we expect to be honored in kind. Wherein do we hinder your commerce?”

  “There are better ways, is all I’m saying.”

  “For you, I’m sure. How so for us? Be thankful, merchant, we accept your trespass in our domains. As you charge for your goods and services, so do we.”

  “She’s Daikini,” the burgher says with an unsteady lunge to his feet, “she’s human! B’longs with her own kind, t’ stand by ’em!”

  Thorn found himself torn violently away from the scene, once more bound to his own flesh, breath bouncing out of him in a single, great exhalation that doubled him over. He’d been punched to less effect.

  “Are they mad?” he whispered, because that was as loud as he could manage.

  They are what they are, and do what they do. It’s no concern of yours.

  “Elora Danan is!” This was louder, almost full voice.

  When you are free. When my child is safe.

  “Then help me keep these damnable visions out of my head!”

  Ignore them.

  “Easier said, Demon.”

  You have no need to look.

  He knew that, but he was curious and there was always a sight, a scrap of conversation, to catch his interest.

  “I’ll do my best.”

  Once you begin, little mage, my offspring’s life is yours alone to hold.

  He knew that, too. Another reason for holding back. A mistake, the smallest hesitation, would mean the Child’s death. He didn’t want to think about how the Demon would react.

  Again comes the sound of wings, only this time the glory manifests itself in the form of a human child, standing at the open balcony doors of a private sitting room. More than boy, less than girl, frame and age combine to confuse any onlooker as to which. Wearing clothes like a second skin, that splinter the glow of hearthfire and candles as though the fabric is spun crystal. A marvel to look upon, even as Thorn recognizes the child as the Troubador who’d spoken to him on the esplanade, but he can’t help wondering how bright sun might be reflected and knows that such a terrible beauty would be the last thing his eyes ever beheld. Knows as well that his bearing witness to this conversation is no accident, that somehow this child is responsible.

  “You are not what We expected, Kieron Dineer,” says another voice of silver bells, this one with edges sheathed, by way of greeting. Consort to the Veil Lord, the sheer force of the woman’s personality makes her chair a throne, and the suite an extension of her own otherworldly palace. She is robed for bed, and while one servant offers cider in a goblet of wrought gold, two maids comb and braid her hair. No easy task, since it is twice as long as she is tall. And, like all her race, she is very tall. The child blows a tiny puff of breath into its own cup and immediately steam rises from liquid heated almost to boiling.

  “Be glad I’ve come at all, lady.” The child’s hair is a mass of unruly spikes, as though someone has taken a knife to it without any concern other than that it be short. No sleeves to the shirt, either, for what looks to be the same reason.

  “I am Queen Magister of the Realms Beyond,” the woman says, the frost in her voice easily overmatching the poor hearth’s valiant efforts. “I stand second among the assembly to Cherlindrea herself. Do not be impertinent with me.”

  “And I am as my brethren would have our hosts see us, complete with Daikini name to match their features. You are but a single aspect of the Veil Folk, we are of Earth and Air and Fire and Water. Flesh and spirit conjoined, mind and passion, real and dream, transcending all boundaries, making All, One. We come to this assembly in freedom and friendship….”

  “You are far too trusting. Your power has made you arrogant.”

  “Perhaps so. But none of us shall break the peace we all of us swore upon Elora Danan’s birth.”

  “My lord was provoked.”

  “Your lord should know better.”

  “And what of the Daikini who assaulted my lord with words and blows? Will none reprove him?”

  “Your lord took care of that. I doubt any will raise their hand to you and yours again.”

  “Now, perhaps. But what will happen when they have that accursed brat to stand as their champion?”

  The child savors its cider, and though its eyes are hooded, almost closed, Thorn feels transfixed by its gaze.

  “According to Prophecy,” is the infernally calm reply, “Elora Danan is to stand champion for us all.” An ever-so-slight emphasis on the last word.

  The Queen Magister makes a rude comment.

  “We’re fools,” she mutters, casting the wo
rds somewhere between a growl and a snarl, “casting everything we have, everything we are, at hazard. And for what? A promise of better times. Perhaps times are good enough the way they are? Perhaps we all should leave well enough alone?”

  She sweeps to her feet and past the child onto her balcony, letting the night wind play with gown and hair and hoping it will cool her temper.

  “The Cataclysm manifested itself in every Domain,” Kieron tells her, holding out its cup for seconds and accepting it with a smile so charming it brings an instant response in kind from the maid. “Tir Asleen was destroyed so utterly that stone was not left on stone, and even those were ground to powder. Only Elora Danan survived. Whatever struck at her, lady, is a Power to be reckoned with.”

  “A Power that’s not been seen since. As you yourself know, only a fool tweaks the sleeping dragon’s tail.”

  Kieron nods its head in amused acknowledgment. “I’ve heard the saying,” it says.

  The Queen turns to face the room, leaning hands and body back against the railing, gown draped enticingly across her long, lithe form. “What will happen tonight, do you think?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I find that hard to believe. I thought you and yours knew everything?” The mockery in her is gentle and underlain with a sense of true regret; she depends on this child more than she cares to admit.

  “Allies we don’t trust, a champion in whom we have no faith, a ceremony whose outcome is totally unknown…” Her voice trails off.

  “And a Prophecy, lady, that’s part and parcel of the history of every Domain. Every seer, from every Realm, had the same vision. Of one who will take the Shadow and restore its true balance with the Light.”

  “I know. I heard those words from our own sage’s lips, as did my mother, and hers before her, and hers before that. Suppose they’re wrong? Or it’s a lie? Or the opposition too great? Our hopes are too high, our need too desperate.”

  “Have we an alternative?”

  “Elora Danan?” She makes her dismissal plain.