Shadow Dawn

by Chris Claremont

“What is this place?” she asked, in a voice as hushed as the moment.

  “A high tor,” she heard Rool say aloud, and Bastian swung out of a tight circle to claim a perch on a nearby outcrop of stone. A nudge with her knee sidestepped Windfleet close beside it and she raised her arm to make the transfer easier. She noted a harness tucked beneath the eagle’s shoulder feathers. Rool used it to swing to her hand and from there he made his swift and surefooted way to his usual perch on her shoulder.

  “A place of gathering,” he finished. He wasn’t happy to see Duguay alongside but chose not to press the issue.

  “Something special about tonight?” asked the troubadour. “You made it sound urgent.”

  “We’re at the midpoint between solstice and equinox. It’s a window of opportunity for the casting of major spells, if you’ve the knowledge and the heart.”

  “Let me guess,” Elora noted. “Someone up there has both.”

  “I see horses tethered in that hollow,” Duguay noted. “No riders visible.”

  “None alive, leastways,” was the brownie’s grim comment.

  “Maizan?”

  “The ones who stole Ryn had comrades waiting in the forest. And more here.”

  “Those poor bastards.” At Duguay’s exclamation, Elora looked at him in startlement until he explained. “The patrol, those four men sent out to mark the Maizan’s trail.”

  “They were alive when they were brought here. And when they were dragged up the slope.”

  “What about Khory?” Elora demanded.

  “She dealt with all the Maizan she could find. Then she followed. We’ve seen an’ heard nothing since.”

  “The summit’s obscured,” Bastian explained with mindspeech. “And something about the mist that shrouds it made me keep clear.”

  “Made us both,” echoed Rool, who’d heard him.

  Without a word, Elora swung herself to the ground, leaving Rool behind on the saddle.

  “Elora Danan,” he snapped in protest, but his mouth clacked shut as she tossed the reins to him.

  “Keep her calm,” she said, meaning her mare.

  “And mine as well, small master, if you please,” said Duguay, slinging his own reins over Elora’s saddle horn.

  “And his as well,” she agreed, since he clearly wasn’t about to be denied in this.

  “Suppose there’s trouble!” Rool cried.

  She ghosted a grin. “If there is, I’m counting on you and Windfleet”—she gave the mare a comforting stroke to the muzzle—“to bring help. Watch over him, Bastian,” she called.

  “Always, Royal Highness.”

  With that, she was gone, Duguay by her side.

  Dressed though she was for the road, Elora was glad whatever forces shaped her physical being had gifted her with a marked resilience to extremes of weather. The temperature was closer to cold than chill, and a skirling breeze put sharp teeth into its bite. Thickly layered as he was, in wool and leather and fur, she could feel Duguay shiver.

  At this altitude, the air was thin enough to permit a spectacular view of the firmament, a sight Elora had beheld often before but one of which she never tired. It was a cloudless night, and with the moon wholly occluded there was no competing radiance to detract from the overarching glory of the heavens. Even when she told herself there was nothing new to see, she found herself casting forth the net of her imagination and picturing a different kind of Elora on some distant peak looking back at her across that inconceivable gulf. Usually those dreams made her laugh, because it was hard enough to conceive of the myriad and conflicting aspects of life on her own world, much less crowd an entirely new and different order of creation in beside them.

  There was more. As Thorn said resignedly, there was always more. If each of those dots was a sun much like the one that sustained this world, and if each of those suns had planetary children, and each globe inhabitants, then the universe, already so vast and unfathomable, grew utterly beyond all hope of comprehension.

  That’s usually when she stopped thinking about it, for the concepts made her head hurt, as when she spun herself around and around like a dervish until she found herself no longer able to stand. A dizziness of the spirit to complement the vertigo of the flesh.

  She saw a flash, high above and toward the horizon, brilliantly scoring the darkness for the merest moment before it was gone.

  “Shooting star,” she and Duguay said together, and both made light of their impromptu congruence.

  A mist rose in the time it took them to make their way to the base of the tor, across a jumbled scree that reminded her of a child’s messy playroom, with building blocks all tossed carelessly about. Save that these blocks were stone instead of wood and weighed tons, not ounces, and could only be held in a giant’s hand.

  The smell of blood drew her to the first sacrifice. He’d been stripped, but Elora assumed he was one of the four Sandeni troopers. He’d been staked head down toward the base of the tor, with his feet directed at the summit. His aspect was due north. Elora assumed that if they circled the tor they’d find the other three men at the remaining cardinal points of the compass. There were a pair of Maizan close at hand, as dead as he, with their torturer’s tools smashed and scattered about them on the ground. One was twisted back on himself in a way that indicated both his spine and neck had been broken. The other was minus his head altogether.

  “It’s called the blood eagle,” Duguay said in a voice totally devoid of emotion, as though flat reportage was the only way this scene of horror could be endured. He was on one knee beside the sacrifice and with a hand indicated the ruin that had been made of his chest. “The object of this atrocity is to keep the victim alive until the ceremony’s complete.”

  “Look at his face. That’s a man at peace, not in agony.”

  “Your friend Khory’s doing,” Duguay reported in that same matter-of-fact tone. “She took care of the Maizan, then gave this poor devil the mercy of a quick, clean death, to put an end to his torment. Should we try to find her?” he wondered.

  “She’ll be after Ryn.” Elora’s gaze rose up the slope before them. “That’s where to look.”

  “Let’s go, then.”

  She shook her head.

  “Not you, Duguay. Not any farther.”

  “I’m not having this discussion another time, Elora.”

  “No, we’re not. There’s sorcery afoot here, so foul I don’t have words to describe it. But at least I have some immunity.”

  “Suppose there are other Maizan. You’re not that good in a rough-and-tumble scrap that you can’t use someone to watch your back.”

  “If Khory’s gone ahead, there are no other Maizan. Stay by the horses and heed Rool. If he says, you bolt.”

  “You need me by your side, Elora!” he called.

  She didn’t look back. He didn’t follow.

  She heard the first scream when she lay foot upon the actual slope of the tor. There were no evident paths, to Mage- or InSight, and while the grade wasn’t anywhere near vertical, it was steep enough to be a trial. This first stretch was the most difficult, mainly because the footing was so treacherous, the surface littered with stones that threatened to skibble out from underfoot with every step, and handholds equally ready to betray her.

  It was a man’s voice, the kind of bellow that mostly comes from a physical shock, cut off with a finality that left her no illusions as to his fate.

  Elora felt something grab at her, twisted instinctively to break its hold, lost her balance in the process, the sharp tip of a rock making her cry out as it poked her, and began a madcap toboggan back the way she came, managing to stop herself by frantically splaying every limb to full extension and scrabbling for purchase with fingers and toes together.

  She was on her back, and therefore had an uncontested view into the heart of the mist. She didn’t consider t
hat a blessing, as a twisted, glowing shape leaped from those skirling clouds to swipe at the laces of her tunic. The attack was so quick, the creature was out of reach before Elora could even register her danger, much less attempt any defense. It wasn’t alone, either, as a glance up and down the course of the mist revealed almost as many glowing shapes within as there were stars above, all of them racing pell-mell for the tor’s summit.

  A second creature began its charge and this time Elora took a swat at it, only to see it loop around her hand with an ease that beggared birds and insects both and zoom back to safety with her sleeve slashed open to the elbow.

  This time, though, she’d caught a decent look at her attacker. It was a fairy.

  All her life she’d thought them the most inoffensive of beings, little more than adornments on the form of Creation in the same way that decorations adorned the Yule trees. They were always said to be the kindest of souls, who never tormented a stranger in their midst out of malice, but tried their best to entrance with play.

  The emotion she saw now was anything but gentle, and the blow that struck her was likewise rich in hatred.

  A third and fourth broke from the cloud to come at her, but this time the surprise was theirs as she spun to her feet and sprinted uphill, accepting the risk of an occasional slip as she blazed a crablike switchback trail—racing to her left, to her right, to her left—that gained her distance with every reversal of direction. She didn’t evade these new attacks, she refused to pay them any mind, keeping her concentration focused instead on the need to reach the summit.

  Rock soon gave way to grass, a rich, thick, loamy sod that had no business being on these slopes at all, much less at such an altitude. Here and there Elora could see patches where peat had been worn away to bare rock, and the image came to her of waves pounding ceaselessly on a shore, each crash of surf inexorably peeling away another layer of sand. Same here, in its way. Magic sustained the life represented by this grass. But with the passage of the ley lines, the magic was no longer renewed. Eventually that residue would be exhausted, the grass would wither, the soil fly away on each gust of wind as dust. Snow and stone would claim this peak, as they had all the rest.

  Another scream, a gargling ululation so piercing Elora had to cover her ears and blink away a wicked cascade of tears before they overflowed her eyes. The first death, however brutal, had been quick and in that way merciful. Not so the second, in either respect: not quick, not merciful. She couldn’t recognize the voice, and prayed it wasn’t Ryn’s.

  Elora had come better than halfway, and forced herself to pause not so much for breath but for the opportunity to take stock of herself and the situation. The strands of mist had been thin when they started rising around the tor, their course following the whirlwind form of a tornado. In the time Elora had been climbing they’d thickened and widened, to the point where they’d closed the gaps between them totally below her into a solid mass of cloud. She could see more lights as well, sparkling brilliantly within that gray mass. Each one, a fairy. Each fairy with a blade.

  She couldn’t retreat now if she wanted to.

  Her clothes were a shambles, hanging off her body in great droops of cloth, with every seam slashed through. She salvaged what she could and cast the rest aside. She’d grown so used to the style and manner of the fairy attacks she gave them little mind any longer. It was a nuisance having her clothes literally cut from her body but hardly worth the effort needed to defend herself.

  This one came sharply around the curve of the hillside, in a blindingly fast, diving attack that Elora didn’t catch until it was nearly too late. Even then it was only a reflexive snap of the head away from the pop of fiery radiance that was the fairy that saved her eye. She felt a blow strong enough to stagger her, heard a howl of triumph that was a poor imitation of a wolfsong as the tiny creature swept back into the misty skystream, and then felt something wet across the curve of her cheek.

  The gash was barely two fingers long, only a surface cut, although it bled freely and stung worse than any wasp or hornet. More than the attack itself, what disturbed Elora was the crazed grin the fairy wore, as it took a feral delight in an act that its kind would have once considered obscenity.

  At least now Elora understood why they’d been tearing at her clothes, and realized as well that even the shallowest of wounds, in sufficient number, can cripple if not outright kill.

  As the fairies came for her she attacked the hill, scrambling the intervening distance to the summit with a frantic, four-limbed gait that was an unconscious but disconcertingly effective echo of Ryn when he was in a rush. Her assailants redoubled their own efforts, no longer striking singly but descending in a swarm to scourge and harry her, determined to claim sole credit for this one life in the face of the score run up by whatever ruled the summit.

  Rounding a last pile of boulders, she crashed headlong into a Maizani hell-bent on flight. The collision pitched them both to the ground, though Elora caught the worst of it, since the warrior had the advantage in bulk, not to mention the remnants of his armor. He struck out from the moment of contact, fists and feet flailing with such fury that to protect herself Elora had no choice but to curl into a tight ball, knees to chin, her own hands closed into fists, forearms crossed before her face, taking the blows on bones, gambling that none would strike so hard to break them.

  The Maizani wasn’t interested in doing her harm, merely in driving her away. Once she was out of reach he lumbered on. Elora’s instinct was to follow and bring him down, for in his state and on this sharp a grade, his course would lead him only to disaster, but she uttered not a word, made no more than that sole halting gesture. She’d seen the man’s eyes in the moment of contact and there was no intellect left in them for commands or comfort to reach. He had been reduced to little better than a beast, obedient only to the most basic of inborn natural directives.

  The fairies appeared to view his attempted flight as more important, possibly more sport, than her ascent. None attempted to defy the current that spun them all ultimately to the summit, but those below who’d been gathering against Elora now turned their full attention to the Maizani. She saw him in bursts as he emerged from each line of mist, with every appearance more and more dotted with flashes of radiance until he might well be mistaken for a creature of light himself. In far less time they stripped him to the skin, and then they stripped him of his skin, only to discover a prey too dumb to know it was doomed.

  The fairies could make him fall, they couldn’t keep him down. Elora found herself thankful that the arid air, so sharp and dry each breath scored her lungs, kept his outcries from her ears. This was hard enough to watch, unbearable to hear as well. Sworn enemy though he was, being a Maizani, she had to acknowledge him a marvel of a man, brimming with strength and life. She wished he had less of both—so he could die.

  It was a spear that claimed him, cast from the summit as swift and sure as any arrow. Elora’s heart leaped to see it, for she knew only one person with so deadly an aim and the strength to make it good.

  “Khory,” she whispered. “Alive!”

  But for how much longer, she thought as a last glance down the slope saw the Maizani collapse to his knees, the spear standing up from his body like a standard, while the fairies burst away from him like a nest of glittering hornets.

  Elora began to run, and prayed there wasn’t far to go.

  The summit was roughly the size of the fort’s parade ground, dipping down and away from where she stood to form a shallow bowl before rising to a crest two thirds of the way to the other end. It should have been barren save for the natural adornments of grass and flowers. Any sarcen stones and plinths to mark the cardinal points of the physical as well as arcane compass should have worn away ages past, for once the lines of power moved on there was no reason to use this tor any longer. It wouldn’t even be effective as the setting for a World Gate to and from the Veil Realms.
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br />   Yet stones stood before her. The perimeter ring marked the rim of the peak. It was composed of the smallest pieces, wedge-shaped and no taller than her knee. Narrower at the top than base, they reminded Elora of the battlements of long-lost Tir Asleen.

  A slightly larger set, each stone approximately Elora’s height and breadth, demarcated the bowl itself, with the primary stones arrayed in a circle about the altar. Those last dwarfed all the rest, and for the life of her Elora couldn’t imagine how anyone had set them in place.

  The perimeter was rough-hewn, giving Elora the impression that a load of boulders of approximately appropriate size had been gathered and then chiseled into shape on site. By contrast, the primary sarcen stones were an obsidian so dark and gleaming they might have been touched with oil and polish just the hour before, surfaces so smooth, corners so sharp, they must have been quarried and then finished by master artisans. She’d rarely seen steel come from Torquil’s foundry in so excellent and flawless a state.

  Khory was waiting.

  Perhaps there’d been fewer fairies to oppose her, or they didn’t much care even in madness to pit themselves against a warrior with a demon’s soul; whichever, she’d reached the summit in a far better state than Elora. There was blood on her, and some of it was her own, a testament to the prowess of her foes.

  “Are you all right?” they said as one and each spared the other a fleeting smile of reassurance to discover they were.

  “What’s happening?” Elora asked.

  “I think I’m happier not knowing,” was the taller woman’s laconic reply. “The Maizan knew I was coming, there were ambushes set for miles back. This had already begun when I arrived.”

  “Makes sense. Begin at moonrise, climax at zenith.” Elora skated a glance across the heavens but the mist lay too thickly overhead. “There can’t be much time.”

  “I thought, if I finished those men below before their time…”

  “It was a kindness, if nothing else.” She turned toward the heart of the stone circles. “I have to go in there.”