Shadow Moon

by Chris Claremont

“For myself, that means I’ll fight. For Elora Danan, against the Deceiver. You’ve seen my heart”—and he regained his feet to confront the StagLord full in the face, as though there was no longer a size difference between them—“both when I healed you and now, with this judgment. And through me, my friends. That is truth. We are not your enemies, lord, and that child is all the hope of the world!”

  “How noble a sentiment, Peck,” intruded the Deceiver’s voice, too familiar by half, the sound of it stabbing at Thorn like a dagger, as resonant here as it had been in Elora’s tower.

  At the same moment a shape flashed past the corner of Thorn’s vision and he sprang toward it seconds too late to catch Bastian and Anele before the eagles’ broken bodies, bound cruelly in a barbed capture net, bounced on the flagstones. He had his knife out by the time he reached his friends, and he used a dollop of Power to add keenness to the blade, strength to his swing, as he slashed at the mesh. All he saw was blood, and the eagles’ rapidly dimming eyes; all he could think of was the anguish of losing another that he loved, and how much their strength was needed for the coming battle. He never stopped to consider why he’d felt no hint of any attack over the link he shared with the two great raptors, if not from them then surely from Rool. He saw what he was supposed to see; out of fatigue, out of fear, out of love, he never turned to InSight to make sure it was real.

  Too late, as he touched the net, he realized he’d been tricked and the sight before him, an intentionally cruel illusion. The strands flowed out and up and over him, the barbs reversing themselves to stab through clothes and skin and fill him with a poison that numbed his limbs and flooded him with an agony that far surpassed even what the StagLord had just put him through. In the meantime the eagles’ forms altered as well, legs and necks elongating, bills stabbing outward into something best resembling a rapier, bodies swelling to twice their original size, with wings whose span surpassed the height of a tall Daikini.

  At first look, Night Herons appeared black, but it was really the darkest of blues, noticeable only as highlights at the tips of their feathers, or when sun or firelight touched them just so. Their accent colors were an equally dusky red. They were the essence of sorcerous power cast into a semblance of flesh.

  One of the pair stooped for the StagLord, who used his whip to fair effect, raking it across the body of the creature. The heron staggered in flight, a raw lesion opening across its breast, but that blow had taken all that remained of the whip’s power and it sizzled to nothingness in the StagLord’s grasp. He’d meant it only as a delaying tactic, however, and took the moment’s grace to shift back to his cervine form. Without the slightest hesitation, he stabbed forward, catching the heron across the throat with crown and royal antlers, before finishing the job with his brow set in a lifting strike that opened the predator from abdomen to throat. He belled his challenge as he cast the already decaying carcass aside, but the triumph was brutally short-lived; as he reared up on his hind legs to rally all his domain, he was struck from every side, by so many crossbow quarrels that it seemed in that one appalling instant as though he’d been turned into a living pincushion.

  His legs collapsed as he landed, folding at knees and shoulder and sending him crashing partially to ground before Thorn, who fought against his own bonds in a futile attempt to go to the stag’s aid. Somehow, the beast twisted a foot into place and began to struggle upright.

  There was a tumult toward the rear of the huge chamber, and a pair of horses burst into view, one black, the other white, the same color as their riders. The woman reined in her mare as the scene came fully into view, but her companion spurred his own mount into a full charge, sending animals scrambling frantically from his path. Some snarled defiance, a very few made reflexive moves to attack, but snipers from hidey-holes scattered high along the walls cut them down with ease. Panic swept the assemblage with the consuming ferocity of a wildfire, and here and there across the vast space some of the animals broke for freedom.

  Thorn was bawling defiance, it was all he could do, make these idiot sounds; the poison had severed the linkages between mind and voice, stripping him of the ability to express himself with any coherence. The StagLord knew what was coming and he was determined not to be found wanting. The Castellan leveled his spear, his stallion eating the distance between them. It seemed so easy. The stag stood much as he had atop the reef, legs splayed, chest heaving—only in this instance, each pump of his heart sent another helping of his life pouring through a skin festooned with iron quills. There was blood on his muzzle and streaming from his mouth, together with a crimson froth that meant his lungs had been punctured. He was angled away from his attacker, preferring in this last moment to share his glance with Thorn. There was no regret in his dark eyes, only a grim anticipation.

  At the moment of contact, the StagLord spun with a speed and strength that none suspected were left in him. The spear was bang on target, punching through the solid bone of the beast’s shoulder, through both lungs and the noble beast’s indomitable heart. Simultaneously, though, the stag raked its crown the length of the horse’s flank.

  The stallion screamed like a woman, a high-pitched ululation that resounded through the hall, freakishly gaining in intensity before it began to fade away. There was a cry from the Castellan as well as the animal reared and pitched itself aside, allowing no chance for its rider to leap free before crashing down atop him.

  It was as though that fall was a signal. The archers lay down an indiscriminate fire, as quickly as they could reload, choosing what they saw as the most dangerous targets among the gathering, namely the great, fanged predators. But neither cats nor wolves—nor anyone else, for that matter—stayed still to be massacred. The whole floor began to move, in every conceivable direction, as though it were a pool of water suddenly unleashed down an open drain.

  Through that living chaos surged the Princess Anakerie, urging her mare with more care than the Castellan had shown but no less determination, reaching him more quickly than any of his men. The StagLord was dead, as was the horse, and Anakerie’s ragged cries went unheard at first, amidst the howling, rowling cacophony of roars, yips, squeals, squawks, and chitters, not to mention the scrabble of every kind of foot upon the stone, as the animals all fled. And the more than occasional scream, as each side took its toll of the other.

  Stillness returned to the room without warning. Looking about herself, Anakerie could see a fair share of bodies, but less than nothing compared with the multitude that had been, and she couldn’t help a shudder at the memory of the exodus of animals from Angwyn only a few nights before.

  “I need a healer!” she roared again, hooking her arms beneath the Maizan’s shoulders and bracing a foot against his saddle, the better to heave him free. He was a mess, one leg slashed multiple times to the bone, a wicked gash along his flank as well, so sodden with blood that she was sure a major vessel had been severed, while the other leg was visibly broken above and below the knee. She stripped a belt from her harness, wrapped it tight about his thigh, as snug to the crotch as it would go, then twisted it again and again until the pulsing stream slowed to the merest trickle.

  “Damn you, Peck,” she snarled at Thorn, making no attempt to hide the raw fury on her face, “for what you’ve done.”

  “No fear, my dear,” called the Deceiver from the hearth, “ ’twill soon turn out aright.”

  “Mohdri’s dying, wizard, can you do something about that?”

  “At the moment, regretfully, no,” the Deceiver said.

  Thorn cursed the fact that he was draped away from the hearth, with no idea what was happening there. The poison had crippled his InSight, he couldn’t see through his friends’ eyes. It had been years since he’d last been headblind and it wasn’t a treat.

  “But your Peck’s a healer, brought stag and Wyr both back from the brink. Make him an offer he can’t refuse, I’m sure he’ll see his way clear to offer you similar service.”
>
  She took Thorn by his bonds, hauling him hard and high, ignoring the grimaces as its barbs stabbed him.

  “Fair deal, Peck,” she said, “the Castellan’s life for yours.”

  He wanted to ask why she cared so much, for someone who had to be her deadly enemy, and ask as well what force her pledge had in a room full of Maizan. So it was probably for the best that he couldn’t say a word.

  Instinct once more spoke for him, with the only movement he could manage, the barest nod of his head.

  Once released, he tried to take a moment on the floor to gather his wits, but a rough hand grabbed him by the scruff and set him upright.

  It was Geryn Havilhand, in the leathers of a captain of the Red Lions.

  Khory and Taksemanyin had been separated and moved to opposite ends of the great fireplace, there lashed in place against the massive andirons and watched by guards with ready swords. Elora hadn’t moved from where she knelt before the fire; only now that blaze stretched from one end of the hearth to the other, the tips of its flames vanishing above the lintel. Before her, in the heart of the inferno, stood the Deceiver.

  As tall as before, as beautiful, the picture-perfect hero—and yet…to Thorn’s eye there were pieces missing. A softening around the edges, as though the figure were somehow losing definition, the way an object might look to someone with weak eyes. Thorn’s were perfect (bless his powers); the wrongness wasn’t his, but the Deceiver’s. His eyes looked a fraction more hollow, as did the drape of skin below his cheekbones, and the skin itself had lost a measure of resilience. Whatever had happened since the aerie had visibly diminished him.

  “For what it’s worth, Nelwyn,” the Deceiver said, “I meant for none of this.”

  “Is this some plea for absolution?” He spoke slowly, rounding his words as though he had trouble speaking. “Am I supposed to care?”

  “Always, you judge me,” the face remaining no less perfect in fury. And he understood his foe meant more by “always” than these past days, another piece for his mosaic, making no more sense than the rest. “As the StagLord did you. Have a care, lest you share his fate as well.” Then, calm returned, the mask slipped once more back into place. “Do your work, little sorcerer,” the Deceiver said dismissively, “while I do mine.”

  Thorn turned to Anakerie. “Let Elora Danan go, I’ll save your prince.”

  “Waste of breath, Peck,” the Deceiver said over its shoulder, throwing the words directly into Thorn’s mind, where no one else could hear them. “She’s not the power here.”

  “What’s this, then?” Thorn asked of Geryn as he was escorted to the fallen warrior.

  “I’m a soldier of the King. I swore an oath,” the lad replied proudly, as if that explained all.

  “And you, what’s your excuse?” he demanded of the Princess as she unlaced Mohdri’s helm.

  Geryn cuffed him soundly. “She’s Princess Royal,” he admonished, “an’ yeh keep a respectful tongue in yer head, Peck, or suffer for it!”

  “I’m Princess Royal of the Realm,” Anakerie replied, with a formality of speech Thorn hadn’t expected, at odds with her brusque, matter-of-fact battlefield manner, “and I too swore an oath.”

  She pulled Mohdri’s helm free—and therein, Thorn thought, lay perhaps part of the answer. It was a haunting face, defined by planes and angles so sharp they might have been cut by a master stonemason, as many edges to his features as to his personality; in feature, in body, here was a man distilled to his quintessence, pale of skin, with hair of white gold. As little color to his eyes, even allowing for the significant loss of blood.

  He’s not good enough for you, he thought, shifting his gaze from one to the other, and wondered if Anakerie read that in his face because she flushed and turned her hawklike gaze away. But I can see why you might think otherwise. Because for all the cruelty and calculation that swam in the turbulence of the Castellan’s spirit, there was also true feeling, a regard for this woman, possibly even love, that surprised the Maizan above all.

  “Please,” she said, and he knew it cost her to say so, “he’s dying.”

  “Stop stalling, Peck!” snapped Geryn, with a not-so-gentle clout to the shoulder. “And yeh’ll na’ be needin’ these!” With a thrusting twist of his short sword, he severed Thorn’s belt and quickly sidekicked the pouches out of reach.

  No matter. Thorn’s offside hand came out of his vest pocket closed about a pair of acorns: one for each of them, followed by a solid punch to shatter them to bits. He kept them as keepsakes, to remind him of a time when both the power and the ability of a sorcerer were still mostly dreams. But they served a practical purpose as well. The acorns were a very basic magic, not the sort of thing any foe worth the name would expect. For the same reason, he practiced his old sleight-of-hand tricks; every scrap of knowledge, no matter how seemingly trivial, was an asset, never to be discarded. Because a body never knew when it might come in handy. Unfortunately, he had no idea what to do with the snipers, or the guards watching Khory or Ryn, or most especially how to deal with the Deceiver. His only certainty was that once he began his work on the Castellan, Elora was doomed.

  “I’m glad you’ve found your heart’s desire, Geryn,” he said. “I pray this lays your ghosts to rest.”

  The Daikini’s blade lightly touched his lips. “No sweet words, Peck,” Thorn was warned, “lest yeh lose the tongue t’ speak ’em, get my meaning?”

  “It’s your destiny, Elora Danan,” he heard in his mind from the hearth, and knew the Spell of Dissolution was once more being woven.

  “To reach out your hand across the Domains, and know your will is Law; that’s not so horrible a thing? To wipe away hatred, fear, greed. They are prideful folk, they require a strong will to master them. Not yours, I’m sorry to say”—and there was true regret in the words—“but every prize of value has its price.”

  Thorn couldn’t help himself; he turned and saw the two figures separated by a boundary of cold flame. The Deceiver had a small advantage of height on Elora, though in manner he seemed much taller, with a commanding presence that matched the Castellan’s. His hand was outstretched, his body curved forward along the back in eager anticipation, Elora’s matching him in every gesture, every expression. Fire rippled in the Deceiver’s grasp and leaped across to hers.

  “I won’t beg, Nelwyn,” said the Princess. “But I won’t let Mohdri die unavenged.”

  He faced her. “That’s not salvation happening over there, Highness, it’s doom!”

  “Your word against his, and he’s her protector.” And in an undertone she cast toward him over the link they shared, And the power, Drumheller. Both here and in Angwyn.

  He took another look, without a care for the blade that Geryn lay across his throat hard enough to draw a line of blood. Elora had her arms wrapped about herself, the Deceiver’s wrapped about her, as though the one were enclosing the other, and about them all swirled a nexus of flame, become a living being all its own. Thorn heard the chatter of teeth, clamping his mouth tight upon the realization they were his own, and used a portion of his own magic to stoke the hearthfire within his flesh against the growing cold. There was an air of tension about Geryn, shared by the Maizan Thorn could see, born of the sudden fear that they were all to be frozen now as Angwyn had been.

  “The way of the world is so hard, Elora Danan,” crooned the Deceiver, almost as though he were speaking more to himself than to another, with a wilding change to his voice that struck Thorn with that same disconcerting sense of familiarity he felt in Elora’s hall. He knew the face of Willow was a mask, but wondered more than ever about what lay behind it. “So much pain. So much grief. You want none of that. Accept the pattern laid out for you, let things happen as they were ordained. Embrace the fire, let it burn away all troubles, all cares; be one, little spirit, with the oblivion that should have been yours at birth. Let us be One.”

  They all watched, even M
ohdri with the last scraps of consciousness and life left him. Thorn had never seen so artful a seduction, never imagined such a thing possible as the Deceiver spoke longingly, lovingly, of all the secret places in Elora’s heart. It was as if that abomination knew the child better than she did herself, as it wove a glorious tapestry of desire with thread drawn from Elora’s soul. Another figure came into being before them both, facing the fire, a gossamer frame at first, whose general size and proportions approximated Elora’s. But with each caressing phrase, with each new strand drawn outward from the child, the simulacrum grew more real, taking on shape and form and substance until it seemed as though the hearth had become a mirror.

  It was then that Thorn, with blinking eye and shaking head, realized that the Deceiver had nearly faded away. The outline of the creature still remained, but it had lost almost all substance, to the point where it had become as translucent as a pane of flawed glass, through which could be seen only the inferno that it had created, making it the embodiment of living flame. The same delicate threads that had been drawn from Elora now emerged from the Deceiver’s own flesh, striking forth like cobras to claim their prey.

  Thorn’s mouth opened, to cry a last denial…

  …but it was Elora who spoke.

  It was the voice that came to her on Morag’s schooner, her legacy of the storm, erupting from the bottom of her belly with a strength none present, and the child most of all, ever suspected she possessed, a cry of defiance coupled with a fierce lunge forward from the flames. She smashed through her likeness, the creature combusting at her touch, momentum and a lack of balance sending Elora tumbling to the floor. A fortunate fall, because right on her heels came a terrible gout of flame that spewed forth from the Deceiver’s outstretched hands like the Wrath of Ages, incinerating with cold whatever lay before it. The bodies of the StagLord and the Castellan’s horse were most notably in the way; they twinkled under an instant coating of hoarfrost, like objects frozen beneath a cloudless winter moon. Then their own weight proved more than their fragile, crystalline substance could bear, and they shattered.