Shadow Dawn

by Chris Claremont

  There was a definite beat to the incantation, built around what she recognized as the form of a standard spell of Binding: one and two and three and FOUR and one and two and three and FOUR….

  The culmination of each verse was a fraction louder than the one before, and the speed of recitation increased as well, like an engine slowly but steadily building in force and momentum to craft chains that were barbed and unbreakable. It wasn’t the spell alone that frightened Elora, but whatever being it was designed to restrain.

  She snaked herself carefully up a slanting tier of rock, her mouth working of its own accord to expel the taste of each breath. There was nothing organic about it, but still she had the unshakable sense that something was dead and rotting around her, and to her horror, she wondered if it might be the mountain itself.

  Beyond was a cavern of modest size, average for a Nelwyn forge. Some work had been done to regularize the floor and provide a comparatively flat and even surface. Similarly a pool had been opened at one end, filled to the brim with liquid firegold. At first, Elora thought it was no more than molten rock, but then a gleaming, sinuous shape broke the surface and she bit down hard on a gloved fist to smother a gasp of shock and recognition. The grotto was hot as any working forge, but in that instant Elora felt herself flooded by an arctic chill that left her shaking.

  Three years ago was when she’d seen them last, on a ridge in Cherlindrea’s Grove, half a continent to the west, when the Deceiver had cast them loose to consume the forest that could not be burned. They were firedrakes.

  For most of the inhabitants of the Great Realms on either side of the Veil, these were creatures out of legend. Some stories labeled them as one of the core forces of the cosmos, who made their homes in the molten hearts of the stars themselves, while others held it was they who burned holes in the velvet fabric of the sky that allowed the light of heaven to fall upon the waking world. They were kin to dragons or kin to demons, no one knew for sure. The one constant thread through every story was that they were beings of raw and untamed passion, whose quicksilver spirits were a match for their protean substance. If they were intelligent, their minds raced along paths neither Daikini nor Veil Folk could easily follow, and those who tried were quite often driven mad by the encounter.

  They were powerful beyond measure, so much so that only the most absolute and all-encompassing of wards could have even a hope of restraining them. Without exception, they were considered the bear best left sleeping in its den, to be ever avoided and never disturbed. Yet some mage had taken this whole clutch captive and even now was working further magicks on them.

  She saw five figures, four cloaked in robes as well as shadows, moving in ritual unison a fair distance behind their companion, who stood at the very edge of the pool. He was the celebrant of this obscene rite. As Elora watched he swept a spearlike pole through the depths of the molten pond and up into the air. From the angle where she lay, it appeared that the man was etching sigils on the surface of the wall before him, but Elora knew different. Each swipe of the javelin’s needle point seemed to leave its mark on her nerve endings as symbols of raw fire were cut into the fabric of the very air, a Nelwyn body length outward from the rock.

  The celebrant was masked beneath a fantastical demon’s head helm of leather and iron, accented with gems and sprouting a double curve of ram’s horns from each temple. The mask’s face would be a horror to behold, she knew, designed to confuse whatever entity was being Summoned into believing it stood before one of its own. At a glance, the gems themselves might be mistaken for rubies, since they glowed with the dark radiance of rich wine, but here again Elora knew better. These were bloodstars, she remembered from what Thorn had taught her on the road, mystically charged crystals that focused and amplified the user’s magical talent. In their natural state they most resembled diamonds and were often mistaken for them. They could be energized, and their malefic power unleashed, only by the execution of a blood sacrifice.

  Elora tasted a metallic liquid on her tongue and found teeth marks leaking blood from the pad beneath her thumb. Using the tip of the pinkie of her other hand, she daubed a set of sigils of her own on the rock beneath her in small, precise strokes. If she was the beacon Torquil described, the combination of the summoning sigil and her own blood to mark it should bring the elemental back to her. The others in their prison wouldn’t hear the Call and the celebrants were too caught up in their own frenzy to notice something this small and focused. Or so she hoped. A heartbeat later the elemental came in answer to her Call, spreading its essence along the tracings Elora had drawn until the entire design began to glow.

  “I should have known you from the start,” she said softly, but there was no reason why. She’d never seen a young firedrake much less a newborn, and at this stage of their existence it seemed deceptively like the lesser elementals she and the Rock Nelwyn had often encountered.

  Quickly, but without hurry, for this was not a time for carelessness, she covered the sigil with her right hand. Then she took a breath so deep she thought her ribs might burst. The infant’s warmth spread throughout her body, casting tendrils of itself along the threads of her nervous system. At the same time Elora released an aspect of her own spirit, flowing into the firedrake as it did into her, until the two of them shared a conjoined corporeality.

  Thinking became an effort. The firedrake simply wasn’t old enough. This was still a creature of instinct, for whom desires were instantly gratified or as quickly forgotten. Almost nothing could be stored or remembered, and it lived totally and absolutely in the present and for the moment. That it had returned to her, and with a definitive purpose, was all the more remarkable.

  She’d be of no use to anyone if she let its nature overwhelm her own, but that added a regrettable delay to her actions, as every thought and response had first to be processed through her human consciousness and then manifested through her elemental being. As the infant slithered through the rock Elora understood the anguish that drove it to seek her out, and the pain that was surging ever more forcefully through the heart of the mountains themselves. The other firedrakes were screaming, hurling themselves with furious and futile desperation against the bindings that imprisoned them, wriggling themselves into a frenzy as they tried to avoid the spear point that was claiming their lives and power with ever-increasing frequency.

  Elora had seen World Gates before, the doorways that allowed transit through the Veil that separated the Realm of the World from that of the Spirit, allowing those who inhabited the Realm of the Flesh to pass from one to the other. So far as she had been taught, which she was beginning to suspect was precious little, they could only be located at the intersection points of arcane energy that the Cascani called ley lines. Supposedly there were none of those near the Rock Nelwyn holdings.

  Yet here was a sorcerer building one out of thin air.

  That has to be why he’s using firedrakes, she thought. What else in nature could be powerful enough to form a Gate and then maintain it?

  She’d given little consideration to what was actually happening here, the purpose behind the enslavement of the firedrakes and the Gate that was being constructed. She really didn’t care. These were creatures she knew, to whom she had offered friendship and received it in return. They were in danger and there was no question in either mind or soul that the threat to them was evil. Nor was there the slightest doubt that she would try to save them.

  The question was, in the face of such a formidable foe, how?

  From that need came an inspiration.

  The four chanters were responsible for maintaining the bindings about the pool. They also helped sustain the Gate. The closer the spell came to completion, the more effort and concentration would be demanded of them. That made them vulnerable.

  Using her InSight, Elora cajoled the infant firedrake to do as she asked, wrapping her wits tight about them both as she came up right beneath the chanter
s. Through its eyes, she saw the scene, noted how the acolytes’ footsteps struck the rock like hammers, each one sending streamers of malefic energy outward through the very fabric of the mountain. If there was a flaw in the substance of the rock, they would find it and, once found, make it a fraction worse, until the solidity of the mountain was reduced to a cruel deception. The stone that the Rock Nelwyn depended on for their protection would instead guarantee their destruction.

  The infant firedrake had the power to incinerate the quartet. A part of Elora yearned to yield to that temptation, but so sharp and sudden a disruption of the spell would be as catastrophic for Elora and the infant both and very likely the adult firedrakes as well. Frustrating as it seemed to her, subtlety was the better way.

  So she asked the firedrake to overcome its instinctual fear and prick one with a needle of white-hot flame, straight through his boot to the sole of his foot. The fastest possible jab, here and gone so quickly it could hardly be noticed. In response, the acolyte fell the merest fraction out of sync with his fellows.

  She struck again, one of the others, and then the next. A succession of random pokes that barely registered on their conscious awareness, just enough to tease the nerve endings and put all four fractionally off stride.

  When she slid back into the comforting mass of the basal rock and felt the rhythms thundering from above, she couldn’t help a grin. She’d broken their pattern, and they hadn’t noticed.

  In and of itself, this didn’t change a thing. The bindings still held, apparently as firm as ever, renewed with every repetition of the chant. Only now those repetitions carried within them the tiniest flaw, which with every cycle became increasingly pronounced. And, glory of glories, with the Summoning building to its own crescendo and the chief celebrant caught up in the equally demanding rhythm of his own responsibilities, he hadn’t yet realized that anything was wrong.

  Such good fortune wouldn’t last, of course. Moreover, the moment the flaw was noticed, it would also be recognized that this was no accident. Even if Elora went undiscovered, the chamber would immediately be laced thick with protective wards so tight she’d never break back in. Or worse, she might find herself trapped outside her body, with no way of returning home.

  Back to the pool she flashed, to strike at it with even more care and accuracy than she used against the chanters. She couldn’t afford to let the other firedrakes even suspect what was happening, because in their panic they’d be sure to reveal her activities to the celebrant. The hardest part for her was to force herself to take her time, to work as fast as she was able but always stay within the rhythm of the deed, which meant ignoring the thrashing cries of the firedrakes in their increasingly futile attempts to evade the celebrant’s lance. Paradoxically, as their numbers lessened and the survivors gained more room to maneuver, his accuracy improved to match. Each stab found its target, each wriggling eel of flame found its life force added to the construct overhead. The little creature Elora had bonded herself to was no less affected by the ongoing massacre, which forced her to devote a portion of concentration, that she could ill afford to spare to restrain it from hurling itself against the wards in a wasted attempt to blunderbuss a hole in the prison they formed.

  To those whose senses are acute enough to perceive them, wards initially appear as solid objects, walls or globes of shimmering translucence that can range from nearly invisible to wholly opaque. That appearance is dangerously misleading. In reality, they’re a woven lattice of energy, whose strength derives from the density of the “thread” count and the complexity of the weave. A coarsely loomed network is surprisingly porous, while its opposite is virtually unbreachable, depending on the strength of will of the sorcerer who casts and maintains it.

  These wards were near solid, which was why Elora struck at the chanters first. That attack established a flaw in the maintenance matrix. As the surface strata of the ward structure were worn away by the constant assault of the imprisoned firedrakes, the layers that replaced them incorporated that flaw into the core structure of the energy field.

  Elora scooted right up to the field and began to weave the most minute strands of the infant’s essence into those imperfect threads. This close, she had no effective buffers against what was happening above. Each stab of the lance struck an equivalent sympathetic resonance in her—like what I did to the chanters, she thought ironically, only worse—in a succession of razor cuts that drew no blood, did no physical damage, but hurt nonetheless. She ignored the pain, choosing to focus on the task and the goal.

  Her stitching finished, she gathered her strength into herself and smiled wickedly, for this was something she alone could do and no one else in the world or the Realms. For reasons she or Thorn had yet to divine, she was immune to magic; spells rolled off her like water off a duck.

  And wards had no power to hold her.

  She sent a minute charge of her essence along the string of fire she had laid, and—poof—the section of ward she had attacked shriveled at its touch. She poured a dollop more of self into the infant as it hurled itself into the breach, combining her strength with its form to keep the way clear while calling out to the others that the route to freedom was open.

  The firedrakes rushed her in a stampede, the brute force of buffalo mixed in with the slip-wriggle sensation of being caught in a salmon run as more bodies than Elora could count hurtled past, enveloping her in a radiant tide of cascading firegold. There was no way to hide what was happening; the chanters knew instantly that their containment had been ruptured and struck back with all their own considerable strength. Strands of energy tried to leap the gap across her body, to restitch the lattice closed. She grew as many hands as needed from the substance of her elemental to ash them in mid-flight, flexing her eldritch muscles at the same time to force the opening even wider.

  Those natural gifts weren’t enough. She had strength, she had knowledge, she had courage; they had more. First one, then a second, then a third strand made a successful leap, to form the beginnings of a cocoon she suspected she could not easily break, and she knew she’d soon have to run herself.

  She never got the chance.

  Without the slightest warning, Elora’s material body folded in on itself in its hiding place above the grotto with a hoarse cry that couldn’t be bitten back as the barbed and gleaming point of the celebrant’s lance punched straight through the slim form of her firedrake.

  The shock of contact was so blinding, it broke her hold on the wards. Before she knew what was happening Elora found herself being scooped up through the now empty pool and into open air. Like so many others before it, the infant tried to wriggle free, to no avail. Elora could offer no help. This was primarily a physical assault, her special gifts were useless against it.

  “Bless my damned soul,” she heard the celebrant say in wonderment as he held the infant firedrake aloft like a trophy, “what’ve we got ourselves here?”

  The small creature spat flame at him but the celebrant merely laughed as its flame skittered harmlessly off his vestments. With the firedrake, Elora struggled to reassert a measure of control, to redefine the input of its senses in terms she could comprehend. First and foremost, that meant manifesting eyes to see with, but the image that loomed before them when she did was one she outright refused to believe.

  The celebrant of this unholy rite was a Nelwyn.

  In that same flash of time he realized he held far more than a simple elemental.

  “Well well well,” he repeated, “what have we here?”

  “Carig,” called one of his acolytes, and to her horror Elora recognized them as Nelwyns, too, “the ‘drakes are away.”

  “No matter. They’ve served their purpose an’ this’un I’m thinkin’, best of all.”

  “But they’re sure to come back!”

  “If thou’rt so concerned, Samel, thou’d best maintain the wards. They can’t fry what they can’t touch,
remember. ’Course,” he said to the infant and Elora, in a more quietly conspiratorial tone, “wouldn’t be any call for such an upset if he’d done his job square. That was a neat little scheme, I’ll grant thee that, shoulda spotted it myself. Serves me right for depending on lesser souls. Serve them right if I let ’em burn.”

  Who are you? Elora demanded wordlessly, although she knew he could not hear. Why are you doing this, how can you betray your own kind?

  “Think themselves safe, they do, snugabed in their rock holes, in their rock spells. Be a revelation when that selfsame rock crushes ’em, burns ’em, makes of them and their precious community naught but a memory. So sure they was, that a Gate could be built only where the laws of nature permit. Branded me outcast for sayin’ different, that with the proper alignment o’ forces y’ could generate a Gate matrix any damn place. Manya, she believed, say that right off. Took one look at my calculations, knew I was right, had me banished straight—because, she said, the means o’ sustaining my construct were an abomination.”

  He smiled, and Elora beheld in his eyes an expression she’d never seen before, a hunger that was insatiable mated to a spirit more dead than ashes. They were eyes whose gaze might have given even Bavmorda pause, possessing a cruelty she could not comprehend.

  “The plan,” he continued, “is to corrupt the fabric of the mountains. The opening of this Gate will breach the pool here an’ the wards like a broken dam. The Ancient One I Summon will drive the firedrakes before it. They’ll follow the paths of least resistance, through the flaws an’ fissures my folk bin opening in the rock, an’ tear into the mine an’ the community beyond like a flash flood. They’ll burn, those who cast me out, an’ their precious mountains with them. And all will assume that they’d brought this doom upon themselves. None will look past the obvious to note the true purpose of the exercise, none will realize till it’s far too late what dread power now haunts the waking world.