The Shadow Eater (The Dominions of Irth Book 2)

by A. Attanasio

  The name struck him like a blow.

  

  He woke under streaks of copper dawn. The Qaf looked blue in early light and its gypsum hills ghost shrouds, remindful of the dream.

  Lara—Caval—

  The names shook him alert. Caval the wizard, the weapons master of the House of Odawl, battled fiercely at this moment with the Dark Lord.

  Or does he?

  Confusion eclipsed his dream. Time had turned back on itself. Is this the past or the future?

  His keen ears detected the crunch of gravel from within the Qaf—several bodies large as trolls moving directly toward him. He slapped his body, reaching for a knife that was not there. He remembered that he did not remember. He wore strange clothes—a ripped denim shirt, gray trousers that fit too tight, and ankle boots that hurt his feet.

  He curled into the shadows of the rocks and circled through the muted light toward the approaching sounds, seeking higher ground. Belly-crawling up a sand hill, he contemplated how he could defend himself without a weapon against trolls. At the top of the dune, his anxiety evaporated.

  "Ripcat!" Dogbrick's big voice boomed. "I know you're out there! I know you can hear me! I have a seeker!"

  Ripcat stood. He raised a hand in greeting to the three figures marching out of the morning radiance. Night's last stars whistled silently in the green air above them.

  He scrutinized the short, stocky fellow beside Dogbrick and noted his crude boots of chewed tree bark, grass tunic, burnt-looking face, mossy green hair, and pointed, pink-tipped ears. He carried a sword that shone white as a moonbeam. Is he an enemy? Does be hold the others in thrall?

  Jyoti broke from the group and spurted toward him, mauve dust at her heels.

  Ripcat squinted into the bronze haze of early day as into an antique world, trying to discern the margravine's expression. The last time he remembered seeing her, they stood together in the Palace of Abominations. Obscene living corpses had floated in tanks on either side, their exposed hearts throbbing with the Dark Lord's magic. She appeared changed. Something quieter about her visage.

  What mischief is this? he wondered as he slid down the dune face on his heels.

  "You've changed back!" she huffed with alarm and stopped just short of throwing her arms around him. The sight of him transformed thrilled and frightened her. She fumbled with her amulet-vest while looking him over, glad to find no wounds. A power wand came free, and she pressed it against his chest.

  "Jyoti—" At the touch of the amber wand, the sullen anxiety in him dispersed, and he reached for her.

  She clasped his arms and felt night's chill on his fur, saw bewilderment in his slant stare.

  "What's happened to us?" he asked, avidly searching her face for clues and finding consolation in her sad regard. "Has the Dark Lord defeated us? Why are we here—in the Qaf? And why are you looking at me like that?"

  "Defeated us?" Dogbrick snarled, coming up behind Jyoti. "The Dark Lord is dead! You killed him yourself."

  The tan smell of him, the tree-sour scent of her, both baked by a day's Charmed hike through the Qaf convinced him this was no magical deception. "I don't remember," he admitted.

  "Give him your rat-stars, Dog." She brushed the marked velvet of Ripcat's cheek. "Maybe they'll brighten your memory. Meanwhile, we'll tell you everything."

  "Why are you here?" he wanted to know.

  "We crash-landed yesterday, some leagues away," she told him and looped a strand of rat-stars into a headband.

  "We thought we were alone out here with the trolls," Dogbrick added. "And then, this activated and made all my hackles stand on end."

  In his large hand, Dogbrick presented a seeker amulet—a round case of conjure-metal and witch-glass with a lock of blue fur sandwiched within it.

  "I kept this as a memento of our partnership in Saxar," Dogbrick explained, and indicated with his thumb where on his shawl of amulets he had stowed it. "I never thought it would be of use again. Remember when I used to need it to find you in the cliff lanes the morning after a job? All night, I could barely get myself to believe it was really detecting you."

  "We thought perhaps it was broken or, worse—a trick," Jyoti said. "Something the Shadow Eater had worked to deceive us."

  "Shadow Eater?" Ripcat's round face turned to the stranger, who cringed under his feral gaze.

  Jyoti put her arms around him again, and they walked to the leeside of the dune and sat where the rising light would not smite them.

  By turns, they told him all that had happened. When they had finished, the morning had advanced and the Abiding Star blazed above the tilted rocks of the Qaf. Ripcat rose, stunned by the revelations.

  He walked a wobbly circle, his mind indrawn, trying to reason through a strategy. "I think I understand my dream now..." he ventured aloud. His mind ranged dizzily to the limits of his comprehension. "Last night, I met Caval again. His ghost called to me from the Dark Shore. He told me—he told me that when I met him on the Dark Shore all those years ago, he had gone there not of his own will as he had thought."

  Ripcat muttered more to himself than the others, "Caval had come to my world without realizing that he had been called there by a greater being—" He stopped pacing and faced the others. "He named the devil worshipper—"

  "Duppy Hob," Dogbrick snarled, and his big teeth snapped fiercely.

  Jyoti rose to go to Ripcat. She put a hand to his furred chest and felt his heart hammering. "Much more is at stake than Irth alone, I fear."

  "Old Ric says the worlds will end," Broydo piped up, "unless you are driven into the Gulf."

  "Can that be so?" Ripcat asked. His desperate eyes searched his comrades' faces. "The Door in the Air through which I came from the Dark Shore is closed. I can't open it as Ripcat, only as Reece. The only way back for me now is to kill myself!"

  Dogbrick and Jyoti protested at once, and Broydo said, "There is time. The eldern gnome says that time moves differently for the Nameless Ones. There is time yet to restore yourself to Reece Morgan."

  "How?" Ripcat asked with a twang of despair. "Caval is dead."

  "There are other wizards," said Dogbrick. "We will travel with you to the wizarduke himself in the capital of Dorzen if we must."

  Jyoti shook her head doubtfully. "Caval had knowledge gleaned from the Dark Shore. I doubt any other wizard on Irth can remove this skin of light from Reece."

  An oppressive silence fell upon the group, until finally the elf thought to speak up. "The Necklace of Souls will restore you."

  "Where is this eldern gnome?" Ripcat asked. "You say he and the Shadow Eater had left Saxar ahead of you to find me. They should have located me by now."

  "Not as Ripcat," Dogbrick realized. "My seeker found you because it holds a tuft of your fur. But the eldern gnome is searching for Reece. He has no notion of Ripcat. You are invisible to him."

  "And then perhaps I am invisible to this nameless lady above World's End as well," Ripcat hoped. "Perhaps so long as I remain in this form, I can stay here on Irth."

  "Maybe—maybe not," Broydo pondered. "We cannot know for sure, and it is far too great a risk."

  "Then we must find Old Ric," Jyoti concluded.

  "Or Lara." Ripcat's eyes brightened. "She, too, has a crystal prism."

  "She is a ghost." Broydo rested his chin on the hilt of the serpent sword, whose tip he had embedded in the sand. "She will be even harder to find."

  "Wait!" Dogbrick jumped to his feet. "There is a way! We are not the only ones seeking the Necklace of Souls."

  "The dwarves!" Jyoti almost shouted. "If we can locate them in the charmways, they will lead us to the Necklace of Souls."

  "We will do better than follow them." Dogbrick's lips curled back from his fangs with a laugh. "Ha! We will become again the thieves we once were, Ripcat and I. We will use our cunning and sneak up on the dwarves. And then with Broydo's sword, we will kidnap one and use it to guide us to the Necklace!"

  Massacre on Nemora

  O
ld Ric kept to the high trails where he and the Radiant One would not be seen by the gnomes of Nemora's summer veldt. The open country below bustled with activity. Numerous cobbled roads crisscrossed groves of tall staghorn ferns.

  The quaint peat houses and grassy knolls stirred profound nostalgia in Ric, and he yearned to walk again the mushroom-banked paths where he had frolicked as a child. Yet he dared not, for the presence of Asofel would alarm the residents.

  The Radiant One had grown stronger than ever. Nemora's close proximity to the Abiding Star saturated him with Charm. He was not yet powerful enough to assume again his invisible station adjacent to the nameless lady's dream. But he had changed. His hair billowed like thermal smoke. And his eyes—slits of compacted light—burned dense as thunderbolts.

  The hills carried old forests swarming with creatures, and the travelers easily stayed out of sight behind walls of ivy when hunters approached. Those gnomes wandered the hills tracking specific beasts for the breeding yards of the villages.

  The veldt's economy depended on providing beastfolk as laborers to gnomish communities in the icy vastness that dominated most of Nemora.

  From a high bough in a lightning-scarred cedar, Old Ric satisfied his wistfulness by watching unobserved as gnomes below fulfilled their labors. Some toiled in the orchards and gardens laid out in spoke-wheel patterns on the open plains. Others tended wellsprings and cider presses. But the majority worked in the breeding yards.

  Unlike most mortals on the Bright Shore, gnomes had no need of amulets or talismans. The Charm they carried naturally in their bones kept them grounded when Nemora faced into the night.

  Gnomes also exhibited an uncanny ability to use their internal Charm to work gnomish magic. That magic included the ability to fuse the reproductive cells of disparate plants, animals—and mortals.

  Combining birds and humans produced beastfolk useful to the textile mills in the ice caves. Their keen eyes and swift, dexterous handiwork had won their renown as the best tailors and seamstresses in all the worlds. Avian beastfolk equally excelled at gathering snail-linen threads from snowy crags where slugs excreted colorful filaments to cross crevices.

  For gathering spidersilk, the gnomes had melded mortals and rats. The nimble ratfolk served usefully in the textile industry for their nonpareil skill at loomwork and their ability to harvest spider-nest fabric swiftly and without injury.

  Over the ages, beastfolk had been traded for goods from other worlds, and their descendants had settled across the Bright Shore. Only ogres openly protested the gnomish magic that created beastfolk. Both elvish and human communities openly offered their young populations opportunities in the breeding yards.

  The gnomes paid their genetic recruits well: After siring two or birthing one beastmarked progeny for the gnomish magicians, the youths had earned funds sufficient to live well another thousand days.

  As a child, Ric had anticipated learning the breeders' trade, until his family had moved to the ice caves. For a moment, he speculated about that tedious magic tinkering with all its percolating beakers full of crimson jellies and yolks.

  Instead of seed-magic, however, he had apprenticed to a fire magician in the frost fields when his family moved there to continue their labors as dyers and pattern cutters. He had no love for garment work and gladly spent his days serving the gnomish kith with warmth and light. Whenever forges faltered or ovens malfunctioned, he brought remedies, for he had learned all the mysteries of fire and how to use the Charm of his bones to control the flames.

  His lifetime's work providing fire to his kith gave him some small empathy for the nature of the Radiant One. He watched Asofel sitting patiently at the base of the tree, shining like quicksilver. He climbed down the cedar, and said, "Returning to Nemora fills me with memories of my life's days."

  "You indulge in memories?" Asofel asked. Annoyed, he coldly removed his gaze from the ancient stairways of daylight deep in the woods. "I thought you were searching for the wraith Lara."

  Old Ric's nose wrinkled. "I've no need to search for her. I see her clearly in the Necklace. She thinks she can lead us merrily on and on. But she is in for a surprise quite soon. Now that she is here on Nemora, I can use my gnomish magic to reach from the Charm in my bones, through the Necklace of Souls, and into her crystal prism. And I can hold her fast."

  "Then why have you not done so?" Asofel groused. "I've been miserable for days in this cold dream. Let us find this wraith and learn what she knows about the shadow thing. Why are you dawdling, gnome?"

  "Dawdling?" The eldern gnome blew a cold laugh from his pierced lungs. "I am well aware of the peril that threatens all creation. I would not waste an instant, I assure you. But I do not have your radiance. And gnomish magic is not as swift as talismans and amulets. It takes more time. Yet it is effective. Patience, Asofel. My magic reaches out, and soon the ghost will stand before us, fixed solid as a tree."

  The luminous being rose before him glittering in tiny stuttering rainbows. "How much longer then?"

  Quickly, the gnome tried to think of a way to distract the unhappy being while the magic worked.

  "Long enough for you to tell me what your world is like," the gnome responded, eyes bright with reflected luminance. "Is it as beautiful as Nemora?"

  Startled at first by the question, Asofel answered in a voice slow with disdain, "I do not come from a world." His chromatic body swelled with pride of his origin. "I come from the light. From a realm of energy within the corolla of the Abiding Star."

  "This I know." The gnome's eyes slimmed with curiosity. "But what is it like there? Do you have trees? The nameless lady has revealed to me her garden, with its climbing blossoms and sunken pool."

  "So it appeared to you, gnome." Asofel turned aside and paced through the chipped light of the forest as he spoke. "In the corolla, all form is made of thought. Life does not devour life there."

  "And yet, you war," the eldern gnome inserted. "Why else would the lady need sentinels? From what do they guard her?"

  Asofel's hot stare rayed through the pollen smoke adrift in the daylight. "Good and evil are not exclusive to these chill worlds. Nor is mortality. I guard our lady against those that would harm her."

  "And who are they?"

  The Radiant One's laugh sounded empty as a cough. "What concern is that of yours, little gnome? You belong in this cold dream. Not I. I need explain nothing to you." Wrapped in ribbons of light, he spun away and stalked restively through the trees. "Take us to the witch."

  Old Ric tossed his hands up, frustrated with his companion's surliness. "Very well. My gnomish magic is beginning to have something of a hold on her. Follow me then."

  They marched out of the trees, and for a moment one could see green horizons folding into lavender distances and snow peaks far away. Then the slope carried them down root steps and slate stairs maintained by local hunters.

  Smoke from lodges rose thinly above the trees behind them. Ahead, riprap crossed a creek where faun prints poked the mud. A cobbled path began in a glade of club moss and led to a stone bridge over dark knots of water and a family of blue-haired elves washing their laundry.

  On the far side of the bridge, a party of farmers from the high fields charged toward them with pitchforks and scythes. They had seen Asofel's prismatic radiance from afar and, alarmed, had come running to protect the village below.

  As they drew closer, their pace slackened, slowed, then stopped entirely at the sight of the Radiant One's wicked beauty. He appeared to them as burning stardust shaped to a demonic angel who moved with the agility of music. And behind him—an eldern gnome run through the breastbone with a hooked shaft!

  The sight sent snakes slithering through their hearts, and the gnomish farmers backed off onto the tussocks at the side of the cobbled path and did not challenge the intruder. Only one dared call out, "Ho, eldern gnome! Ho!"

  Old Ric made no response. He had determined earlier not to reveal himself to his fellow gnomes. He wanted to minimize their f
right. And so he strode forward entranced by his bone-deep Charm. He had threaded that Charm through the crystals of the Necklace of Souls. And then he had affixed it to the prism that bound the ghost to her form.

  The eldern gnome held tight his threads of Charm and paid no heed whatever to the children who came running to see the frightful glory of Asofel, or their screaming mothers charging after them. He moved steadily along the stone road past garden gates and cottage fences.

  Most of the startled gnomes stood silent, though some called out greetings, warnings, frightened gibberish. He heard none of it. Threads of Charm fastened him to Lara, and they drew tighter with each step.

  

  The witch felt the constriction of her power at once. She had drifted toward the peat village, with its grassy roofs and bracken fences. The breeding yards had intrigued her. And, thinking herself beyond reach of her pursuers, she had intended to explore this domain before returning to the Well of Spiders and luring the Shadow Eater and the gnome farther yet from her young master.

  Her fascination with the white-furred children running hay-sheaf obstacles, their laughter like birdsongs, kept her attention diverted from her crystal prism. She did not sense Old Ric's approach until her movement began to slow.

  She pushed harder, and the invisible threads tightened. With a hand to her chest, she sensed their convergence on her prism. There was nothing that she could do. She tried twisting her fingers to mudras and gesticulating every exorcising sign she knew. The astral cords tightened further yet, and soon she could not budge from the roadway where she stood, locked like a boulder.