Shadowblade

by Tom Bielawski

  Zach found that even though he could not move very well, his strength was slowly returning. As his vision cleared he saw a darkly beautiful woman enter the room through the debris of the broken door. She was wearing a silky gown of pure black, and her hair seemed perfectly poised upon her head with an array of jewels and pins. Silver bracelets and necklaces and a waist chain adorned her body and a heady perfume drifted through the air around her; the woman appeared as though she belonged in the ballroom of some king or noble.

  “Tut, tut, Cerunnos,” the woman said condescendingly. “Why do you always find it necessary to intrude into my affairs?” Though her voice was sweet and relaxing, Zach was not fooled. Her deadly eyes glittered with intelligence and power and perhaps a touch of madness.

  “Damn you, Witch!” hissed the Horned Hunter, angrily. “I didn’t know he was your play toy.”

  “Didn’t he tell you?” she asked sweetly, hiking up the hem of her generously split dress to step over the piles of wood and debris and revealing a pair of stunning legs.

  “No, Balzath.”

  Balzath! Zach wondered how this would turn out. He didn’t think the woman would be pleased with him for entangling himself in a fight with the Horned Hunter. But how could this woman be so powerful that even Cerunnos deferred to her? Could she be one of the Dark Lord’s Shadow Hunters too? Then she turned those eyes toward Zach and he felt his heart racing again. The woman was beautiful. More beautiful than any he had ever seen. Instinctively he understood that to this woman, beauty was a weapon to be used at every opportunity.

  “Zach,” she purred. “Why do you toy with this thing when we have work to do?”

  “Forgive me, Balzath,” he replied weakly. She seemed satisfied that Zach respected her and waved a finger at him as she whispered something that sounded very much like Tayban. Then, he found that he was free of whatever invisible bonds she had placed upon him.

  “Cerunnos, go and play somewhere else. We have real work to do for the Dark Lord.”

  “Yes, Mighty Balzath,” said the warrior. Zach was amazed that the woman’s condescending tone did not provoke the man, he assumed that was a testament to her power.

  Zach watched in amazement as Cerunnos stood, brushed himself off, and disappeared into the shadows. Balzath turned and walked out of Zach’s apartment.

  “Come along, pet” she said airily. “We must go and meet your new master, Shalthazar.”

  Zach followed after, it seemed his fortunes were changing for the better after all.

  C H A P T E R

  15

  War.

  The portal shifted and shimmered into being like a whirlpool of colored light. It was located between the columns of a Pathway Arch, a place constructed on the mortal world of Llars that allowed those who could not travel by means of magic to travel great distances. But the Pathways in place between any pair of Arches were treacherous at best. The Pathway Arches led travelers into the space between worlds, a dangerous place where a person would be confronted by the Pathway Collectors, immortal beings who collected whimsical fees for the use of the Pathways, and perhaps be accosted by supernatural terrors such as the spirits of the damned who haunt them.

  There were a number of Pathway Arches located around Llars, but the locations of most of these were lost to the memories of Man. This one, however, was located in the frozen reaches of Erestonin, the land of the Frost Elves.

  Slowly the swirling colored light between the columns of the Pathway Arch dimmed and a figure emerged, colored light trailing like wisps of a spider web behind him. He was a towering figure of a man, perhaps seven feet tall. To any observer he would look very much like a large man, or perhaps an elf, but without any physical flaws. His features all seemed perfectly crafted and exactly spaced. His eyes were blue as the sky on a clear summer day and his dark hair was closely cropped. He had a beard that was so neatly trimmed it seemed that there could not be a single hair out of place.

  But that was not all that was interesting about this figure. He was wearing golden armor that shimmered like hot air above the sandy desert floor and seemed to be made of the very air that surrounded him and he carried a great glowing sword in each hand. As the man stepped out into the icy world of the Frost Elves, he surveyed the landscape with his cool eyes.

  “What do you see, my prince?” the cool voice drifted to him through the portal.

  For a moment, the man said nothing as he looked this way and that. The Pathway Arch he emerged from was located at the foot of a mountain range that separated Erestonin from the Northern Continent, its twin located on the south side of that mountain range. What he saw was a barren, snow-covered, and windswept tundra extending to the left and right with the mountains at his back. Before him, in the distance, was a great glacier.

  “I see Glacier Palace, Crystoph. It is there that we will make our assault.”

  The second figure hesitantly emerged from the portal then, as though he was unsure this was something he was allowed to do.

  “My Prince,” he began. “Are you sure this is wise? If Zuhr…”

  “Zuhr will not care. We placed these rules upon ourselves, Crystoph, not Him.”

  “Still,” persisted the second, armed and armored very much like the first. “These are the rules!”

  “Indeed, they are. And Umber’s Cjii have broken them first by allowing his demons to aid his mortal followers.”

  “Two wrongs, Prince Mycal?”

  “One wrong,” corrected the first. “One wrong of theirs makes us right. The rule allows this when other Cjii have broken the rule first.”

  “Our troops are not the seasoned veterans we’ve commanded in the past, My Liege,” warned Crystoph. “I do not think this is wise.”

  Prince Mycal squinted and his perfect brows came together in a slight frown. “I share your woe over the inevitable loss of some of the Cjii who will fight with us today, but we have little choice. Our spies in Erestonin were slaughtered before they could pass information about the number of demons and Cjii who are serving Umber in the mortal realms. We have to provoke them and draw them out.”

  “Let’s get on with this, then.”

  Prince Mycal faced the arch and waved his hand, signaling to an unseen presence before walking across the open tundra toward the palace. Soon after, a hundred more men and women very much like him spilled out from the arch. When all of them were out of the portal, and its shimmering light had ceased, the hundred beings leaped into the air and flew, in a number of small tight formations, toward the giant palace on the horizon.

  “We do this for the glory of Zuhr and to strike the first blow in the coming war, Crystoph!” shouted Prince Mycal as the pair sped away ahead of the host of flying warriors.

  “I hope so, Your Highness!”

  As the mass of golden flying warriors sped through the sky over the cold and barren landscape of Erestonin, a dark mass of similar size arose from the highest spire of the glacial palace and raced toward them. The leader of this dark flying mass held aloft a long spear. Prince Mycal seemed intent on meeting him in battle. A dark shadowy line of flames trailing after his followers marked his progress toward the golden warriors.

  A host of mortal Frost Elves surged out of a gate from the palace on the icy fields below, hoping that the brightly shining attackers would fall, injured and vulnerable in the mortal realms, to the icy ground. Soon bolts of black lightning, balls of blue flames, and golden sun bursts began to hurtle back and forth across the rapidly closing distance. To the Frost Elves waiting below, it did not matter who the fallen were, so long as a body fell for them to plunder and kill.

  The warriors under the command of Prince Mycal and Prince Crystoph formed into a massive wedge shaped formation, with the two princes leading at its tip. The host of demons flew as an amorphous mob, a seething cloud of darkness, towards their golden, glowing foes. Finally, the two sides met in mid-air amidst a deafening clash of magic and steel and thunderous booms. The host of angels under the command of M
ycal and Crystoph split apart into two separate formations and tore through the mob of demons with ease. Shouts of agony and victory filled the air and the mystical beings of darkness fell to the ground as they were cut from the sky by Crystoph’s warriors, where they were immediately set upon by their own bloodthirsty Elvish allies. It was no surprise to Crystoph that the enemy would treat their own kind this way; it had happened thousands of times over his immortal lifespan.

  The powerful Crystoph hacked and slashed and parried and destroyed the minor beasts that made up the bulk of the enemy’s ranks. The enemy Cjii preferred to use the weaker supernatural beasts of the lower planes as fodder for their assaults. Thus the angels cut those first ranks of scaly foul-smelling beasts to ribbons very quickly, but soon they found themselves winded on this mortal plane of existence as the more powerful immortals had begun to enter the fray. Crystoph’s angels eventually lost the advantage of their formation as the demons began to form their own loose ranks and soon the combat became one-on-one or perhaps two or three-to-one.

  A horde of icy blue, man-sized, wyverns launched into the air among their Cjii masters from a hidden place in the glacial palace and entered the fray on the side of the dark demons, wings buzzing like a swarm of blue hornets. The demons were fresh but the battalion of angels was getting winded from the first round of the fight.

  Crystoph looked around for the form of his liege, Prince Mycal, and assumed he was the brightly glowing ball of light that was surrounded by a mob of stinging wyverns and lighting hurling demon Cjii. Crystoph was getting worried, and he was getting tired. The great Archangel, Prince Mycal, was of the First Order of Cjii, and among the most powerful that ever existed. In all likelihood, he could stay out among this horde alone and keep the vermin at bay. But the others under the command of the two princes were not as strong or as skilled as their great leader. Many were falling to the darkfire blades of the Shadow, and finding no mercy on the ground below among the wicked Frost Elves.

  Crystoph cut his way through the enemy to reach the side of his liege lord, killing many of Umber’s Cjii, demons, and wyverns along the way, but the angels could not hold any longer. The enemy’s numbers seemed to continue to grow impossibly stronger, as though there were another Pathway Arch under their command within the palace walls below.

  “My Prince!” called Crystoph, as he sliced the stinger from a roaring wyvern. Then, with a great stroke of his flaming sword he sliced the screeching beast down the length of its belly, spilling its blood and guts to the ground below. “We must go now!”

  Prince Mycal seemed lost in a battle craze and Crystoph wondered if he remembered their plan. He was a blinding force of light hurling golden sunbursts at demons and immolating them with the holy fire of Zuhr, and mercilessly cutting down the dark Cjii who served Umber. But Prince Mycal did in fact hear Prince Crystoph’s warning. And he heeded the wisdom in the words of his lieutenant.

  The great voice of Prince Mycal, Archangel of the Cjii, carried across the raging battle and sang into the ears of his angels: “RETREAT!” At first nothing happened as he soared far above the battle and away from the enemy, and the prince of the angels thought he might have to sound the retreat again, so engaged in fighting their hated enemies were his troops. One by one, however, his angels soared skyward and away from the palace of ice. Many were pursued by the demon Cjii but they were no match for the great speed of the powerful angels. Soon enough those that still lived, half the original number of warrior angels, were away and leaving only trails of fire that cooled quickly in the icy air; leaving only Mycal and Crystoph behind.

  The two held their position the sky, as the dark demons and Cjii of Umber surrounded them in a sphere of seething blades and scaly hides. Mycal and Crystoph sheathed their weapons and held their positions aloft. The ancient rules of the Cjii forbade one from killing another so long as his weapons were sheathed and he took no offensive posture or actions. Even the unpredictable and chaotic demons had abided by this rule over the millennium; Prince Crystoph hoped fervently they would continue to do so.

  A great and monstrous laugh bellowed from one of the demon Cjii, assaulting the ears of the two great angels. “And so the two mightiest of Zuhr’s army of angels squirm and cower in fear before me, the lowly Tartarus!” Tartarus appeared as a giant with great bat-like wings and oozing, pustulated, sores covering his diseased flesh. His eyes were milky white and maggots crawled across his skin. A carrion stench pervaded the air and nearly made Prince Crystoph gag, but he forced himself to show no weakness before this enemy. His skin crawled with the perverse evil that emanated from the demon Cjii.

  “You’ve broken the Code, Tartarus!” shouted Prince Mycal in such a thunderous voice that even the infamous demon Cjii shuddered involuntarily. “For all eternity the Cjii have abided by the Code, even you! Yet here you are now, on Llars with a host of your filth and none of us were here to justify it.”

  “Is that what you think, O high and mighty Prince Mycal?” taunted the sickly Tartarus. A tooth fell from his mouth as he spoke and yellow puss dribbled from his sore covered mouth. “We were not the first to break the code!”

  “That is a lie!” challenged Prince Crystoph, but Mycal said nothing.

  Tartarus cast Crystoph a wicked grin and maggots spilled from his mouth, falling like drops of drool from a slobbering dog.

  “Who, then?” demanded Mycal. Tartarus seemed to instinctively want to obey Mycal and provide an answer, although he did not.

  “That is something the omniscient Prince Mycal must learn for himself!”

  Prince Mycal was the greatest warrior Cjii in the entire existence of the immortal race, and there were few who would dispute that claim. “We serve Zuhr, the Great Father, you cannot escape his wrath! Umber and all those who follow his unlawful commands will be punished!”

  “Bah,” spat the demon angrily. His spittle landed on a subordinate below him who shrieked and screamed in pain as though burned by the fire of a dragon, before one of his comrades ran him through with a sword of darkfire. “Zuhr’s days are numbered!”

  Prince Crystoph was taken aback by the comment. None, not even the vilest demon Cjii who served Umber or Grymm had ever uttered such High Blasphemy against the Great Father. Ever. He looked over at Prince Mycal, concern in his deep blue eyes. But Mycal’s face was a mask of stone before this age-old enemy.

  “You will desist this unlawful entry into the world of mortals, Tartarus. You and your demons will take your leave from Llars now!”

  “Who is going to make me? Eh, Mycal?” A ripple of what could only be mocking laughter carried through the crowd of demons. “You? I think not.”

  “You will see, demon. You have been warned!”

  Another ripple of derisive laughter carried through the ranks of the demons. “You may go now, Prince Mycal. And take this princeling with you. When you see that wrinkly old man, tell Him that the Code has been abandoned; it is no longer in force.”

  The two princes remained aloft as the demon Cjii disappeared from the air before them, each with a great clap of thunder and an explosion of darkfire and shadows. When they were alone, Prince Mycal looked to his lieutenant with sorrowful eyes.

  “It is as He has foretold,” said the commander with grief in his voice. “The time of the Children of Zuhr has come to an end. They will not repent.”

  Crystoph could say nothing, it was a terrible revelation. He looked down at the carnage below his feet, stricken with grief, and shed a tear for the loss of so many of his angel troops.

  “We must report to the Great Father,” growled Mycal as he flew off into the direction of the Pathway Arch.

  “How did they bring so many of their army into the world? Surely not through a Pathway Arch!” said Crystoph, following after.

  “No,” answered the commander. “More likely they’ve developed some way to manipulate and pass through the Fabric that surrounds Llars.”

  In minutes the two powerful angels were back at the Pathway Arch where
the remnants of their battalion had reorganized and were trying to treat their wounded. Mycal strode directly to the Arch and activated the magic that commanded it. Within seconds the Tides swirled within it and the portal opened to the Pathways that would lead him and his men back to the Heavens where Zuhr resided.

  Crystoph stayed back, waiting until every last soldier passed through to the other side and then waited longer. He watched the landscape of the barren land of Erestonin for long moments, and was saddened by the changes that were coming to Llars. He had been working behind the scenes on Llars for thousands of years. Doing the work of his god, Zuhr, had been the honor of his existence. And now, he wondered what would become of the people of Llars, and of his own people.

  With a sigh of resignation, he turned and entered the portal.

  Devoricus slipped out from behind a rock formation near the Pathway Arch as the last of the Angel Legion soldiers slipped through. His master, Qra’z the Mighty, ordered him to abandon that fool bishop in Hybrand and conduct a secret surveillance mission.

  The devious Cjii who worked for Qra’z witnessed the entire debacle between the forces of Zuhr and Umber and wished that each had wiped the other out of existence. That was not meant to be, however, and so the Cjii made the best of the situation.

  When the second angel prince, Crystoph, had lingered by the Pathway Arch, lost in his daydreams, Devoricus had been able to watch the elder Cjii and learn how to manipulate the magic that powered it. The power to use these magical devices had been lost to mortals, and even some of the Cjii, for longer than he could remember, and he could remember a long way.