Shadow Dawn

by Chris Claremont

  “He’s not a beast,” Elora snapped intemperately, “he’s a Wyr!”

  “Aye,” the guardsman agreed, “an’ some o’ them can’t be touched by madness, same as Daikini? Best for all t’ keep him penned so, cruel as it may seem. Them sodbusters in that wagon train out beyond the gate, they’re already in an uproar about ’im, sure an’ certain he’s one o’ those t’ blame for their troubles.”

  “But he’s not!”

  “No matter, when a body’s out for vengeance. Trust our colonel, missy. He’ll deal square an’ fair with the Wyr, an’ that’s no error.”

  Throughout, Elora had gradually closed the gap between herself and the cage until she was right up against its bars. There was no sense of recognition of her, of her scent or her mindspeech, and she didn’t need InSight to show that the spell still held him fast.

  “Oh, Ryn,” she keened so quietly she hardly expelled breath enough to stir the words past her lips.

  Ryn Taksemanyin, she called in mindspeech, casting the summons forth with all her strength as a fisherman would his net, only to see it sink beneath the surface without a trace. Reaching for his thoughts, for any aspect of his spirit, was like making a free dive into the Great Deeps he spoke of so fondly, plunging down and down and down into an icy darkness that never seemed to end.

  Her body saved her, reacting before her mind became aware she’d moved, hurling Elora back from the bars even as ravening strands of energy erupted from Ryn’s body to where she stood. The guards saw nothing of these, they reacted solely to Elora as she fell, legs scrambling for purchase on the dusty hardpan as she struggled to kick herself out of the reach of the onrushing tendrils. She hit her rump and kept going, heard the delicate fabric of her scarf tear as she flipped through a sideways roll that yanked her legs back under her and put her back on her feet in a combat crouch that left her perfectly balanced for attack or evasion. Most of the runners discorporated the instant they touched the iron bars of the cell. The three that survived to press on after her were speedily dispatched by slashes of the blade she plucked from her traveling pouch. Then, remembering her role and realizing the threat was past, Elora collapsed to her knees, back bowed with hands to her mouth while she let her dagger fall from nerveless fingers and uttered a wail of utter misery. She didn’t have to feign a sense of shock, or stark terror, she felt both in full measure. The tendrils had been a deadly surprise.

  Her own fault, she knew. A sorcerer formidable enough to capture a soul as cantankerously independent as Ryn’s would have set layers of trip wires to protect his handiwork. She’d been right to take care with her healing, but the thought now struck her that she might have inadvertently triggered some other defense.

  Could I have set off some kind of beacon, she thought, that gave away his hiding place to the Maizan?

  Everything happened so quickly that the guardsmen had no chance to react before the danger was past.

  “What the hell,” the older man cried as he sprang to the fallen girl’s side. “What the hell?”

  “I’m sorry,” she gabbled. “It’s all right, I’m all right, really I am, no harm done, it was my own silly fault you see for going too close, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!”

  “Damn me, Marn,” the younger one said to his companion, his pike held at the ready in both nervous hands. “I dint know better, I ain’t seen with my own eyes, I’da sworn you was attacked, girl!”

  “Well, she weren’t, Roke, so give your imagination a rest. But you called it right, lass, for goin’ too close. Your fault for bein’ so lackwit, ours for givin’ you leave. It’s a blessing you ain’t hurt none.”

  “Tell that to my backside,” she told him with a pout.

  Out of nowhere, a pair of hands closed about her shoulders to lift Elora to her feet with breathtaking ease. She knew without a glance, from the feel of his gloves and the texture of his spirit, that it was one of the Maizan.

  “You’ve lost your scarf, lass.” His Sandeni was fluent but strangely shaped by his native plains accent. “If you like, it’ll be my pleasure to retrieve it.”

  Somehow, in the confusion, it had ended up inside Ryn’s stall.

  Looking up at the Maizani, Elora had a flash of insight as to how the Daikini world in general must look to Nelwyns. This warrior was a living, breathing, walking, talking embodiment of big, and she felt sympathy for the poor horse that had to carry him. He was smiling, too, but his expression lacked any of the gentleness she’d seen in Marn. He’d seen her, he desired her, he would possess her.

  “No,” she said flatly, keeping her replies simple so there’d be no misunderstanding. “Thank you.”

  “Wouldn’t allow it anyroad,” Marn said, and Elora noted the quiet shift in his own stance as each warrior took the other’s measure.

  The Maizani raised an eyebrow, as though to say, And you’ll be the one to stop me, old man?

  Roke bristled at the unspoken insult, but Marn didn’t react in the slightest, which immediately marked him as the more formidable of the two.

  “Take it here,” the Maizani said, referring to Ryn, “or on the road, it’s of no matter.”

  “What do you mean?” Elora demanded.

  “Ours by claim, ours by right.”

  “Not if our Commandant says different,” snapped Roke.

  “We are Maizan,” the warrior replied. “Better to be our friends.”

  He still had his hands around Elora’s arms, tight enough to hold her fast though not enough to hurt. He was daring her to struggle to escape or beg for her release. Either would be a victory.

  Instead she cocked her hips as she’d seen other young women do when ever so slightly peeved, and assumed an air of such boredom that Marn couldn’t repress a snort of raw amusement.

  The Maizani knew instantly his ploy had turned against him and that he’d become the butt of someone else’s joke. Neither suited him, and like all Maizan he reacted with lightning speed by shifting once more to the attack.

  So quickly she had no chance to slip from his grasp, Elora was spun ’round to face the man and then lifted off her feet. His lips closed on hers. There was no comparison between her kiss with Luc-Jon and this. That was invitation and entreaty on both their parts, where this was outright invasion.

  She didn’t resist, she didn’t respond, and when the Maizani held her away from his face, the self-satisfied smirk on his features was greeted by an expression even more bored than before.

  “You mock me, girl?”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “Why bother, when you do such a superb job of it yourself?”

  “Diseased dog whore,” he snapped at her in Maizan, unaware she knew perfectly well what was being said. The two Sandeni troopers didn’t understand the words but the tone was plain. It was Marn who stepped forward, while Roke stood watchfully to the side, bringing his pike down to guard position.

  “I think enough has been said and done this day,” Marn said companionably. “Set the lady down, if you please, an’ be on about your business.”

  “And if my business is with this piece of excrement?”

  “Not within these walls, not the way you mean. You’re guests of the Republic of Sandeni. Don’t abuse our hospitality.” With each phrase, there was less “companion” to Marn’s speech and much more steel. The Maizani’s eyes flicked arrogantly from him to Roke, balancing present pleasure against future pain, gauging the amount of damage he could inflict on the two troopers versus the punishment meted out to him afterward. Then Elora heard the faint creak of gut and yew that marked a longbow being drawn to full extension. The Maizani’s eyes moved upward to the hayloft and the archers who’d quietly taken their positions. Though he’d yielded his weapons to the garrison Provost Marshal, the Maizani wore heavy mail beneath his leather tunic. No matter, the bowmen’s shafts were tipped with points designed to punch right through, and they had skill enough to
place them wherever they pleased.

  The Maizani set her down.

  “No harm done,” he said, thick with mockery, daring them to fire.

  * * *

  —

  By sundown, it was the talk of the fort. Eyes shifted Elora’s direction, and whispers followed, everywhere she went—and no longer because of the way she looked. With each retelling, even over the course of a single day, the confrontation grew more extreme and her response more devastating. It was as though the entire complement of the fort, military and civilian, soldiers and dependents, had been waiting for the merest excuse to put the Maizan in their place. Elora was the catalyst to ignite all that pent-up animosity.

  There were no demonstrations of hostility, collective or singular, no one was that stupid. Or suicidal.

  There was simply…

  …laughter.

  This patrol represented the nation who’d conquered half the continent, whose proclaimed goal was to bring the whole of the world beneath their feet, yet they couldn’t quell the spirit of a single, solitary slip of a girl. The aura of invincibility they used to armor themselves had taken a nice dent, and each chuckle from then on marred it that much more.

  They sat alone at dinner, with an entire table to themselves.

  Elora worked the far end of the room that night, keeping close by the Commandant’s table, partly to steer well clear of the Maizan and thereby avoid the possibility of another incident, but mainly because she wanted more than gossip from the evening. She guessed rightly that the garrison’s officers would be focusing on their guests and that the conversational “shop talk” would involve not simply the tactical aspects of fighting those legendary warriors but the strategic ramifications of the Maizan’s eastward expansion running up against Sandeni’s borders.

  “Stairs of Heaven to the south,” a captain said, referring to the monster mountain range that split the continent just above the equator, one spur forming the secondary range where the Rock Nelwyns made their home, “Ice Lands to the north, an ocean behind ’em, our Wall in front. They’re boxed, same as that creature outside they’ve such a hankering for. They might as well get used to it.”

  The Commandant wasn’t convinced, Elora saw it in his eyes, sensed those doubts skibbling across the surface of his thoughts. He kept them to himself, however, he was here to listen to others’ counsel.

  “You think?” queried another troop commander, likewise a captain. She recognized him from her first night here, returning from his patrol. His name was Sam.

  “Fact of nature, Sam my dear friend, the way the land lies. They’re reaching the natural limits of their ambition. I mean, they already rule near half the continent, how much more do they want?”

  “Forgive me, Captain,” came an interjection from the Commandant’s left, “I’m just a plain, old, country doctor….”

  The self-deprecating introduction was greeted with snorts and chuckles and pro forma protests. The physician may have gotten his age right but he was in no way plain and the respect accorded him by the others was very real, as glasses of wine were raised to him here and there in salute.

  “…but it’s my experience that some ambitions have no limit. Neither does human ingenuity. Why are you so sure of our security?”

  “The Wall, of course.”

  “Yes?”

  “Doctor, half the continent’s two thousand feet higher than the other, demarked by a sheer cliff that runs from these mountains north to the sea.”

  “Actually, Captain, it slopes. Travel far enough, there isn’t any sort of cliff at all to bar your way.”

  “No, Doctor,” the other man countered with a laugh, “merely some of the most raw and unwholesome terrain ever created, land that must have been cursed the day it was formed. I did my first tour of duty in those Ice Land territories. Believe me, if the mud and flies don’t finish you in what passes there for summer, the ice and cold of those endless winter nights will for certes.”

  “Smugglers manage.”

  “A band of outlaws is hardly an army. I mean, if this Castellan were to cut a deal with some of the Veil Folk or other, then we’d have a different story. But to all accounts he’s death to them. And magic besides.”

  Here, the discussion turned along lines she’d heard before, as some spoke for the ways things had always been and others about what might be coming. Again, there was a sense of loss, for magic added an element of spice and wonder to the world, a spectrum of colors and possibilities that enriched both the eye and the imagination. At the same time she heard an undercurrent of eagerness, a hankering for an age when the Daikini could reign supreme and gather the future of the globe wholly into their own arms.

  “You see,” the Commandant spoke at last, with a smile that was mainly sadness, “there is no limit to ambition. You dream of a day when Daikini might reign supreme over the world, the Maizan of one where they reign over the Daikini. Different perspective, same goal. Yet what of the cost, to our spirits as much as anything, if all the Gates between ourselves and the Veil Folk are sealed shut forever? Do any of you wonder why this is happening? We accept the what, that the Maizan are doing something, without a clue as to their reasons?”

  “It suits our interests,” the Doctor noted idly. “As a species, as one of the Great Realms, we chafe under the restrictions imposed on our lives by the Veil Folk. Of all the absurd things, asking permission of dryads before logging a single tree, much less a forest, or of naiads before building a dam. It’s a wonder anything’s gotten done these past eons.”

  A lieutenant spoke up. “Forgive me, sir, but would you go into a neighbor’s house and take their possessions without permission—cook a meal in their kitchen, serve it on their china? It’s not our world alone; others were here before us. We owe the courtesy, the respect, of sharing that we’d expect for ourselves.”

  “Bravo, Lieutenant. From out of the mouths of babes. We are not alone, gentlemen. We of the Twelve Great Realms have lived in various measures of comfort and relative harmony for the whole of recorded history. Being creatures wholly of the world, we do not understand the Veil, much less those races and Realms that lie beyond it. There are some who presume we fear what we do not understand and there’s something to be said for that. Worse, though, to my eyes, is that we have no regard for it. We log that tree I spoke of without a thought for the dryad who perishes with it. We plow the land with no concern for the fairy nests or brownie burrows we ravage in the process. We create reservoirs that doom naiads who must live in the active, running water of streams and rivers.

  “And moreover—to borrow your analogy, young Lieutenant—because that neighbor’s house is so much grander than ours, because the covenants on the land—that have existed for far longer than we—prevent us from building ours to equal or surpass it, we content ourselves to turn a blind eye to an assault on its foundation. If it is diminished, we profit. If it is destroyed outright, we profit. Secure in the certainty that whatever happens to our neighbor, we remain unassailable.”

  “Which is,” the Commandant continued for him, “utter rot. Of course”—and he fixed his gaze on the visiting patrol across the hall before returning it to the captain who’d spoken first—“Sandeni can be taken. It’s a fixed position. Any fixed position can be taken, given sufficient resources.”

  “As you proved, Mikal,” the Doctor told him, but the Commandant waved off his proffered hand, choosing instead to refill his glass to the brim.

  “And I might point out, gentlemen,” the Commandant finished, “that whatever happens to our capital, we have no wall to stand as our bulwark, save those we’ve built ourselves.”

  “Perhaps, sir,” hazarded another lieutenant, in hopes of lightening the mood, “the Sacred Princess Elora Danan will save the day for us all?”

  That jape occasioned its apportioned share of laughter, but again Elora sensed the rising heat haze of despair, a
foul coloration to the mood that made every attempt at humor sound forced to her ears. All their lives, these men and women had lived in a world where magic was an integral, intricate part of its primal fabric: gods could be conversed with, enchantments cast, blessings requested, and curses overthrown. At some time or other, through the whole of a Daikini lifetime, it was inevitable that there’d be at least one point of contact with one of the Veil Folk. Many dealt with them on a daily basis. Whole economies were based on that ongoing interaction.

  Now, before the eyes of the world and wholly beyond its control, that relationship was being deconstructed. Old loyalties no longer had weight, covenants that folk on both sides of the Veil lived by were crumbling to dust, to the point where lasting friendships were giving way to active hostility.

  If that verity of being no longer held, why should any other? If magic could be stolen from the world by the Deceiver, could impregnable Sandeni likewise fall? How could it possibly survive?

  That was the moment when Elora Danan took center stage.

  She’d been working on this with Duguay but hadn’t considered herself anywhere near ready. Tonight changed that. She could no more stand aside in the face of this growing miasma of the spirit than she could deny a soul who needed healing.

  She stood in a pool of candlelight, cast in shades of gold that accented the stark black red of her lipstick and nails. She glistened, but except for the barest, accenting highlights, there wasn’t a hint of silver to her coloration. Instead she seemed to flash fire, little chips of glitter scattered across fabric and flesh, adding to the illusion by making it appear as though she was striking sparks simply through contact with the air.

  She stood stock-still and swept the room with her eyes, waiting for the background noise to ease past the point where she could be heard.

  The audience was a bit confused. They were expecting Duguay, used to seeing her waiting on their tables. And this was something altogether new and unexpected for Elora. Though she’d played the apprentice and dutifully begun to learn the trade, she never once seriously considered assuming the stage. From the instant she stepped forward, she knew she was making the right decision.