Chain of Shadows (Blood Skies, Book 6)

by Montano, Steven

  The voices sliced at his mind. They were there, always there, cutting at the edge of his thoughts. He was too terrified to move.

  Creasy had managed to elude the storm riders when they’d arrived, and he’d kept out of sight by staying hidden in the husks of abandoned buildings and pressed against the walls of narrow alleys.

  He saw them from a distance: pale and empty people tethered to the sky by smoking tendrils of dust and grease. Their eyes were blank and lifeless, pale orbs shining like lightning-fused glass, and they moved with deliberate harmony and precision, conjoined in their motions. They stood before each house and focused on it, concentrating, apparently not needing to enter in order to determine what lay inside. They were Nezzek’duulians, for the most part, but he saw Southern Claw people as well. No matter their origin their skin was ashen and washed of color and their clothing was scorched black, like grisly uniforms. Their faces were expressionless. They never blinked, and made no sound save for their communicating calls, those animal grunts that didn’t even seem to truly come from their bodies.

  He moved slow and stayed in the shadows, avoiding the areas they searched. Creasy’s spirit kept his movements silent as he made his way towards the edge of the city, but as soon as he was outside the possessed hunters started patrolling the surrounding wastes. More of those creatures were out there waiting, hidden amongst the dusty ruins and trenches. Creasy sent his spirit out to gauge how many there were, and she was cowed by their presence.

  Storm clouds filled the western skies like ink stains. The voices sliced through the air. Dank lightning scoured the atmosphere as he peered up over the edge of the ravine and saw shapes in the distance, odd and ugly shadows, strange pachyderms and war beasts lumbering across the cracked soil.

  His spirit couldn’t count how many creatures there were, but the soiled presence he tasted on the wind told Creasy everything he needed to know – they were legion, an army of poison ghosts wearing stolen skins, and they were coming for him.

  Creasy saw no way out. He couldn’t fight his way through so many and hope to make it, and he couldn’t go back into the city without being detected. One way or another, he knew he was going to die.

  He waited in the dark. Night came fast, and with it the cold. His spirit kept him warm while he balanced on the slope of the ravine, gun in hand, listening to the distant and hollow cries.

  I’ve failed you, he thought to his spirit. You said it was our job to stop this, to stop whatever it is they’re doing, and I’ve failed you.

  His eyes were tired, and his muscles and bones ached with fatigue. He knew he didn’t have much time, that whatever had taken this city knew he was here, and that it would find him soon. If he had any avenue to get away it was rapidly shrinking, but somewhere deep down inside he didn’t believe escape was even possible, that this was where he was supposed to be so he could stop the evil of the Maloj.

  He thought of Tanya, and for a moment his chest seized up with regret.

  Protect her, he told himself. It’s up to you now.

  He wiped bitter tears from his eyes and focused on the task at hand. It was getting more difficult to see. Creasy quietly pulled his spirit in and breathed warmth into his hands. He felt her energies burn in the crude thaumaturgic gauntlet, the same simple leather implement he’d used ever since he was a boy, the tool that allowed him to channel her power without burning a hole through himself. He sent her back out to the edge of the ravine, where she circled and kept watch for intruders so Creasy would have some warning before the shadow people were on top of him.

  What now?

  This had all started with the wolves, and it had to end with them. The Maloj had come into their world through the gate the girl Shiv had tried to close. But even though they’d crossed over the Maloj didn’t seem whole…otherwise, why would one of them have bothered to smuggle itself inside of Ronan? Creasy hadn’t been sure of what was happening at the time, but he knew now that whatever had been in the swordsman was now in the Southern Claw warlock Laros, and that was why these shadow people had taken him.

  One thing was clear – he had to get Laros away from them, and he could only hope Laros was still with Jade. Because Jade was on her way.

  He’d never lost track of her location. She was still a good distance to the east, beyond fields of churned mud and rubbish, where caravans had been blasted to pieces and left strewn across the cracked earth. She was alive, which itself seemed unusual – why hadn’t the storm riders occupied her body as they had with all of the others? Were they incapable of possessing mages? Whatever the case, she’d slowly been approaching the ruined city for the better part of an hour. Assuming Laros was still with her, all Creasy had to do was wait.

  He thought about Tanya, and Roth. He thought of the men and women of Wolftown, those brave souls who’d spurned the cities, surviving on cheap clothing and poor equipment and drinking home-brewed alcohol and sleeping in the miserable cold, eking out an existence hunting giant wolves that were capable of ripping humans to shreds. Plenty of them complained about the lifestyle, and people came and went frequently. They never bore those who left any ill-will – Wolftown, like most of the other wilderness settlements, had been built on the notion of people only being a part of the community if they wanted to be, and anyone who chose to escape the thrall of the more civilized areas would always have a place to go that wouldn’t turn them away, that wouldn’t judge them based on whether or not they were born with an arcane spirit, that wouldn’t pressure them to act a certain way or do certain things or not speak out against their leadership. All were welcome, and you took from Wolftown what you brought to it.

  It had been a hard life, but a good life, and Creasy missed it. He missed each and every person who’d been living there when Fane had rolled through and put the community to the torch. He still had nightmares of that onslaught, still heard the screams and tasted the flames. He smelled the smoke of burning buildings, saw his friends die beneath tank treads and flaming shrapnel. Fear lanced up his chest and crippled his heart.

  Creasy wept, silently. His limbs shook. He sat there on the sharp stones in the iron dark, and it was all he could do not to fall apart, not to let the pain fold him in on himself. He held it all in as best he could, but there was only so much a man could bear, so many screams he could hear echoing through his mind before it was lost.

  His spirit came to him, filled him. She warmed his flesh and wrapped around his body. Her presence was a comfort.

  It took a long time, but eventually Creasy was able to breathe calmly again, and he sat quiet, his gun in hand and his spirit coiled around him, waiting to go and march to his doom.

  You know what you have to do.

  He looked up at the sky, and again thought about Tanya. How he’d miss her.

  Jade was close. He heard the massive stamp of lumbering beasts and the soft call of engines.

  The rest of the storm riders arrived. They came in droves, the sky heralding their arrival with peals of thunder and echoing distant booms like submerged explosions. Dissonant shadows sliced across the ravine as ghastly figures approached the hollow city.

  Creasy’s spirit clung to his skin as he followed the network of dry riverbeds which ran like varicose veins away from the crumbling city walls. Spots of incandescent light scorched the ground. He tasted his spirit’s excitement and fear. She’d never been a war-mongering ghost, but like most spirits she was easily animated by adrenaline, often in spite of herself. Many times when they’d hunted he’d find himself caught up in her bloodlust, sometimes to the point where it was difficult to pull away.

  He felt that now – her jittery anticipation made his heart race, and even as he slapped away his fatigue and fought through the pain in his aging legs he couldn’t help but find himself gripped by the primal excitement of the moments before battle, the pent up exhilaration the hunter carried like a weight in his chest or his loins, the kind of knotted tension that would tear a man apart until it was released. The thrill of the
hunt.

  Creasy peeked over the edge of the ravine. Animal shapes were just visible through the darkness, reptile and pachyderm monstrosities ill-defined in the shadows. Like their masters they were held together by spectral sinews, the pulsing undead veins of the phantoms who occupied them. They were flesh vessels, lumbering bulwarks of armored skin.

  Rocks and dust flew into clouds around the feet of tusked grey-skinned beasts, enormous creatures standing thirty feet at the shoulder and weighed down with rickshaws and war platforms, shifting shelters of wood and bone lined with spikes and arrow-slits. Heavy ropes and cables trailed on the ground like ganglia.

  There was a score of the monsters. They shuffled across the landscape to the sound of onerous booms, and a low collective moan passed from their lips like sealed air escaping a coffin. Creasy watched in horror, but he took slow and steady breaths and reminded himself why he was there.

  It falls to us.

  His spirit searched for Jade, and found her. Her soul was weak, her spirit weaker. She was near the front of the pack, somewhere on one of the lead war-beasts.

  Creasy moved forward, using the clouds of bone dust as cover. His spirit folded light and haze around his body to make him seem more a blur than a living creature. He wasn’t exactly sure what sort of detection capabilities the storm riders or their mounts possessed, but if they were anything like arcane spirits it would be difficult for him to hide for very long.

  He moved through whirling cyclones of shadow. The air was dark and hot, and the cityscape loomed behind him, partially obscured by the dust fog. Dark crackles of blue lightning sliced from the heavens and cast the dead city in stark silhouette.

  Creasy stayed low. The light of the ghost tempest was bright higher up in the sky, but there was enough darkness at ground level that he still felt relatively obscured. He moved behind mounds of blasted vehicle and railway debris and ran around piles of blasted stone.

  Drips of flaming drool burnt from the mouths of the lumbering creatures. Creasy waited. He was a thousand yards away from the nearest beast, just the first of many. Each footfall crushed the earth, and he felt the staccato vibrations all around him. Up in the sky he saw humans floating like hanged men, their arms limp and their heads lolling to one side. The dull shine of blank white eyes cast their faces in spectral glow.

  There were a dozen of the massive war mounts, and many more of the storm riders, but at that moment their attention was on the city. He moved. Creasy pushed through clouds of sand. His spirit clung to him with claws.

  He ran towards the luminous flesh of giants, walking fortresses with tower-like legs of grey-white skin covered with scars and ruts. He saw open pores leaking puss and blood, spikes and fetishes driven into animal flesh. Their feet were the size of cows, easily large enough to crush him if he mistimed his run. The shadow of the nearest creature eclipsed him.

  Creasy cast his spirit up and out. She lightened him, made him seem almost to float as he made the leap onto the creature’s foot. He clung to the crusted bone spurs on its massive ankle and held on like he climbed up a ledge. He moved with the leg as he held on tight, and his stomach lurched.

  He held his breath, waiting for some call of alarm. Strangely, none came, and after another thunderous beat of steps Creasy seemed to have gone undetected. He waited with muscles tensed and fingers aching as he held on to the inside of the massive creature’s leg, concealed in the shadow of its body. His fingers ached and his limbs burned with effort. The world shifted and spun, and his center of mass moved like a pendulum.

  Skin creaked like wood overhead. The lines and pulleys dangled and scraped against the ground. Bits of metal and rope clanged like dark chimes.

  He focused, and sent his spirit out to find her mate, that slice of her form he’d split off and sent with Jade so he could track her. He felt exposed using his magic so close to the storm riders but felt he had little choice, since she literally could have been anywhere among those walking mountains of dusty skin. Creasy saw little from his vantage save for the dirty hide of the creature he’d hitched a ride on, but occasionally he caught sign of the floating dead, vagrant corpses moving like flotsam beneath the darkening skies.

  The air turned blacker as the beasts neared the city. Creasy imagined this band used to be a Nezzek’duulian war party, marauders who’d run afoul of the shadow people and found themselves possessed. There must have been a hundred or more of those ghosts, floating around on their own volition or piled on the backs of the enormous corpses.

  At last his spirit found Jade on one of the other war mounts. The horde had nearly reached the black gates.

  A conflagration of light spiraled over the city, and Creasy smelled blood and burning stone. Something was happening, something he knew he had to stop.

  Creasy twisted in place and looked back between the legs of the beast. He knew where Jade should have been, could even almost make her out. After a moment he did, and he cursed to himself.

  You knew this wasn’t going to be easy.

  Jade and Laros were a few hundred yards back, mounted on the face of one of the horned pachyderm walkers. Each of them had been tied and mounted to either side of a strange blunted horn protruding from the bridge of its nose. The bone was blackened and painted with odd runes, and the two mages were secured with wires that sliced through their torn and ruined clothing. Even at that distance he registered the pain on their faces and saw the hundreds of tiny cuts all over their bodies, like they’d been thrown through a storm of glass. Their spirits hung uselessly by their sides like dangling vines, drained of power, now little more than dead weights.

  Damn it. What now? He’d already considered the notion of killing them. Not only would it spare them a slow and painful demise, but it might – might – rob the storm riders of what they sought.

  Would that work? he wondered. Or will the Maloj just leap to another vessel?

  Creasy decided that killing the warlock would be a last resort. He had little confidence in that plan, so he tried to gauge the best way to get the two captives free. Using his spirit was the easiest answer, but doing so would draw the ghost legion’s attention.

  Damn. Well, you really got us into it now, didn’t you? he thought to his spirit. So what do I do? I’m here, I know I need to get them free…and I have absolutely no way to do it.

  As he hung there, thinking, Creasy felt something in the air – another spirit. He quickly pulled his own back, hoping he’d managed to move her before she’d been detected. There was another mage nearby, a witch. He considered using his magic to run a trace pattern and determine her exact location, but after a moment he realized he didn’t have to, for she came to the front of the platform on the back of the same beast Laros and Jade were mounted on.

  The witch was stunning and terrifying at once. Dark skin somehow managed to shine even in the storm of smoke and shadows, and she wore a black cloak covered with bones and bits of razored steel. Her braided hair flowed well past her waist, and her eyes glittered like bronzed stars. A sense of power and presence surrounded her, and looking at her felt like gazing into the core of a frozen sun.

  She seemed to be staring right at him, even though he knew he was hidden from sight. The air around her body shimmered like plasma.

  I am the Black Witch, a voice said deep inside his skull, so full and present it pierced his brain like a blade. You shouldn’t have come here. Because now you’re going to die.

  Creasy’s heart froze. He sensed the storm riders as they floated on the wind, closing in on him from every direction.

  He was trapped.

  SEVENTEEN

  COILS

  She came across the wreckage near dusk. The airship had gone down in a steep ravine south of the main road, maybe within the last hour. The sound of its descent might have been concealed by the black storms raging in the distance, effusions of iron light and crackling dark explosions somehow linked to the Skaravae. Those storms had been appearing more and more over the course of the past day, an
d they were getting closer.

  Trails of debris led her from the hills just south of the road to the edge of the slope. The earth was littered with broken shards of steel and fragments of hatch and door. Oil and fuel melted the ground, and she smelled vehicle guts and burning hex. The ship was smaller than a Bloodhawk, probably a short-range reconnaissance vehicle used for area patrols or survey missions. The sleek design seemed suited for navigating through harsh desert winds, and the fore and aft sails were constructed with an eye towards protecting the small and open cockpit from the bitter sun.

  Danica looked into the bloodstained sky for signs of other fliers, but there were none. She glanced around, shielding her eyes from the dying light, looking for whatever might have brought the vessel down. The air was utterly quiet save for the familiar moan of the merciless wind, which blasted down from the north and pushed against the natural rock barrier at her back. Her spirit roamed and circled, anxious and on edge.

  Shit.

  Something didn’t feel right. The ship bore the same symbol on its unfurled sails as the one she’d seen on the flags in the railway station, a fist clenched around a handful of knives. Her spirit noted the presence of death energies, roaming ghosts of the recently dead still wandering the plains, lost and afraid.

  She stood and watched as blades of orange sunlight cut through the distant black clouds. Dust and sweat clung to her skin. She tensed and shifted her bloodsteel arm to make sure no sand had gotten lodged inside, licked her lips, and took a drink from her canteen. The wind shifted in her direction and carried the smell of death.

  Danica steeled herself and started down the side of the hill, making her way towards the crash. Her boots crunched through broken soil, and she used her golem arm to maintain enough of a grip that she didn’t spill headfirst down the slope. A small cloud of dust heralded her descent.