The Shadow Eater (The Dominions of Irth Book 2)

by A. Attanasio

  Jyoti climbed down the sinkhole first. By light from lux-gems on her amulet-vest, she ascertained that the cavern where Ripcat and Dogbrick had been seized by dwarves remained empty. Through a rift in the wall, they edged sideways and out a damp stone gullet to a wider corridor tall and spired as a basilica. Liquid drippings ticked from the slow seepings of the forest above, clocking the aeons that built the mineral columns and pillars upholding the world.

  Through a region of skewered rock floors and fanged ceilings, they advanced. Their footsteps returned soft stone echoes. The honeycombed wall where Ripcat had escaped the dwarves shimmered in the blue radiance of the lux-gems.

  "This is where the charmway to Gabagalus is located," Jyoti whispered, and her voice sounded loud against the dull chimes of dark leachings. "Once we enter, we may find ourelves among dwarves. Prepare yourself."

  Broydo answered by turning the flat of the blade so that it caught the shine of Jyoti's amulet-vest.

  They crunched over coral-like flutings of limestone, and the rays from the lux-gems extended into lightless depths.

  Jyoti grabbed at Broydo, and the ground beneath them fell away.

  The elf yelled with alarm. No echoes answered.

  The next instant, they lay together in darkness. A tang of sea scent tainted the cool air, and the muffled shuffling of the tide came and went.

  A sour odor as of bloodcurd sifted from the nether dark. Jyoti angled her lux-gems so that their radiance fanned across Broydo's anxious face. Beyond him, those rays illuminated a bandy-winged basilisk, a predator crouched at the back of the cavern. Surprised by the abrupt arrival of two warm-scented prey, it glared hungrily.

  Jyoti gasped at the sight of the voracious mask whose mouth grinned fiendishly. Frantically, she scrambled away from the mutely screaming fangs yet knew that she could not outpace those razorous teeth. Its leather wings snapped, and its spiked head shot forward.

  With a gut-twisting cry and eyes squeezed shut, Broydo leaped upright, sword outthrust. The impact smashed him against the cave wall, ramming all breath from his lungs. He did not expect to breathe again.

  When his next breath gasped and his eyes peeked open, he stared into the golden eye of the basilisk. Death dilated the darkness at its core. The serpent sword had pierced it through the top of its mouth and pithed its brain.

  Jyoti stood beside Broydo and, with her back to the wall, kicked aside the slain monster. The sword came away oiled with basilisk blood.

  "I killed it..." Broydo's voice arose from far away inside him. "I killed a basilisk!"

  Jyoti cuffed him on the shoulder and grinned at him. "It seems you did—because we're still alive!"

  Devourin g Giants

  Asofel wandered the fire-chewed hills of Hellsgate devouring giants. Flames sawed in the wind around him as he strode as if in a fever dream. He moved strongly through the shimmering lens of that hot world. He ate the Old Ones, the giants who had lain down ages ago among the mountains to listen to the planetary music that seeped from the magnetic pulse of the core.

  None rose to defy him. Over the unruly ground, the Radiant One advanced nimbly. The giants lay motionless as the stark promontories they appeared to be. Yet they pulsed with the firebeat of the planet, partaking of the living dream of the nameless lady.

  With each of the black volcanic entities he absorbed, Asofel grew brighter and more dazzling. No cries went up. No convolutions quaked the land. The dreamers in their rapture simply disappeared into the unspeakable, leaving behind the moon-blanched dunes where they had lain for ages.

  Throughout that smoky day well into banded twilight, Asofel traversed the seared hills. Strength swelled in him. His skin sloughed away in cinders and a brighter self emerged, with a heart of fire.

  Old Ric, who once refused to countenance Asofel's slaughter of any mortals, found the massacre of the giants less objectionable, so despicable were they to him. Stunned by the renewed glory of Asofel, the eldern gnome closed his eyes and imagined extinction for the imperiled giants, for the crew of the Star of Fortune, and the elf clans on World's End, for all who had been devoured by the Shadow Eater. Is there rapture in being rent from the dream? Or is there simply nothing? Transformed into pure light, pure beyond identity, seemed a strangely happy fate to the gnome.

  He shut his eyes to mere slits, trying to discern features in the starfire that webbed the blunt hills. Sharp rays of silver light lanced his brain with kaleidoscopic motes of eyes aslant with wicked glee, sun dogs, ball lightnings, and chimerical imps ajog across the incandescent furrows of his brain.

  The gnome blinked strongly, trying to shiver himself alert. He had slouched to the ground beside the cave of the charmway. Light clicked in his staring eyes.

  With effort, he averted his slack face. Retinal shadows danced like squalid ghosts, and everything he looked at stood embroidered with stars. Boulders, gravel flats, black clouds glinting with gem-points. He shook his head. The magnificence of Charm sunk him deeper where he sat, to the very seat of his soul.

  He realized then, though he felt no weariness at all, that he was tired. Fatigue, physical need, and most of his bodily pain had ended when the dwarvish arrow pierced him. As a deadwalker, he partook of the inexhaustible energy of the Necklace of Souls that drew its power from the Abiding Star. And yet, he knew by his yearning for nothingness that he had become more deeply tired than he could feel.

  Basking in the Charmed glow from the Radiant One, he found enough strength to admit to himself that he had nothing left. Everything he was had been subsumed to this cause.

  This thought countered his weariness sufficiently for him to contemplate this one particular irony: that with the death of his beloved daughter Amara, he had withdrawn so completely from gnomish society that he had been more of a deadwalker then. Now, he truly knew what it meant to give of oneself. After Amara died, the pain had been so great it had pulled him into himself, and he could not get out.

  "Thank you, lady," the eldern gnome whispered to the Nameless One who had called him out of that dire selfishness. He had lost his life in her service, yet he wore the barbed arrow proudly, for it pointed him to freedom.

  He opened his eyes, refreshed by the Radiant One's Charm.

  The Abiding Star watched him across the chiseled plains like a tiger's eye. Asofel passed before the setting disc as a silver spark, spectral will-o'-wisp, acetylene spore dream-hung against the bright vermilion blear of dusk. Old Ric waved, and a jet of flame saluted him.

  

  Asofel grinned giddily at the eldern gnome though he knew he could not be seen within the glare of himself. The pandemonium of twilight matched perfectly the wonder, the brash colors of his bliss at absorbing the light of the dream. He had become strong again, and this vigor fed his hope that soon now, he would locate the shadow thing, wherever it had hidden, and drive it from the Bright Shore.

  Then, he could return to the light.

  At first, he had hated the eldern gnome for requesting him as an escort and for putting the idea into the lady's mind to begin with. Now, though, restored to his former power, he felt surprisingly magnanimous toward Old Ric. Is not the gnome himself but a shard of the lady's dream and, therefore, unable to help his obeisance to his dreamer? Asofel reasoned to himself. All the pain that Asofel had experienced because the gnome had pulled him deeper into these cold worlds meant little. The conjectural destiny of the worlds themselves seemed hopeful once more. He would find the shadow thing. Then he would go home—to the light.

  At home all this would seem a strange dream. All these lives, all under indictment of death—as was he. At least his death was known. He would grow brighter, as did all in the light, until his brilliance outshone the shadows of his thoughts. Then, the I at the center of the shadows would blaze with an intensity greater than could be held within the premises of spacetime. Other dimensions awaited beyond the jurisdiction of I. Someday, he would go there.

  These unfortunate beings, woven of the lady's dreamstuff and subje
ct to blind reckoning, had such doubtful fates. Thinking of the earnest, dutiful eldern gnome broken to emptiness saddened him. And that sadness surprised him. Why, suddenly, should he care for these illusions? And yet he did. The ingenuous gnome did not himself care that he belonged to a mere dream. To him, this world seemed as real as the light itself, as real as Asofel's own home.

  Bumbling Broydo, too, moved unfamiliar feelings in Asofel. Who is this elf exiled within the largeness of his heart? Why has he forsaken his clan to serve a gnome? Love alone answered those questions. Love for this dream of rocks spinning through the cold of space warmed by the feeble rays of smoldering stars.

  Love for the darkness, he realized, stunned that anyone could favor these tiny, fanciful lives. And he began to realize that he felt pity for those caught inside the nameless lady's creation, hungering in her mind's tenements.

  The awareness that these creatures struggled in the wreckage of their existence with as much passionate faithfulness as he thrived in the light awed him. A simultaneously antic and profound desire whelmed in him to speak to the eldern gnome, this creature of darkness.

  Old Ric sprang to his feet at the approach of the Radiant One. The shadows of the night loosened. Frost-fire in the shape of a mortal stood in the cave mouth. The shape cooled, its heat thinning to billowy gusts of chromatic smoke. A visage of heat-blotched shadows darkened to Asofel's demonically angelic countenance.

  "Radiant One!" Old Ric hailed, vivid with the excess Charm blustering in the air. "You have slain giants!"

  "I've slain nothing." Asofel stood at the threshold of the cave, and its interior burned bright as a cauldron of lava. "Their very nature is illusion. As are you."

  "And yourself!" the gnome cried jubilantly, drunk with vitality. He could gaze directly upon the sentinel, for Asofel had chilled to a figure of blue snow. "We are all spun from the eternal and the Nameless. All dreams!"

  "I'm not a dream," the Radiant One averred strongly. "I am the light."

  "A different dream and yet a dream withal." Old Ric felt almost drunk with happiness to see the Radiant One empowered once again, and he energetically bantered with the being of light. "We are all spun on the loom of nothingness. Waves of light on the black surface of the void. Atoms of matter swarming in the vacuum. We fall apart. You blur away. Ha! We all change."

  "Then why do you suffer this quest?" Flamespun hair floated like strange filaments down the eye's film, and Asofel stepped closer.

  "Leave the shadow thing. Let the lady wake the child's father. This dream will end and you and all these deceptions of matter and energy will be no more."

  "That won't do, Asofel." The eldern gnome fixed a bold stare on the mica seams of Asofel's eyes. "Something greater is at stake here. Surely, you see that?"

  "I do not." Asofel looked about disdainfully at molten shapes of wasteland. "But I have come to tell you that I do feel something—for you, for that fool Broydo. I understand better, now that I am strong again, what it means to be weak. You are weak. And Broydo weaker yet. Nonetheless, you both strive with all that you have. Why?"

  "The child!" The shrunken, pug-nosed face lit up gleefully. "These worlds were created not by whim. They exist for the lady's child. The interplay of light and darkness, of void and substance, and—yes!—of good and evil, these are the forces that will shape the child. These will anoint it with awareness of suffering and compassion. That is why these worlds must go on. We serve what is greater."

  Asofel crossed his arms, diamond eyes watching, assessing. "How do you know this?"

  "I am a gnomish magician." Old Ric spoke as if this fact were evident. "My magic is fire. I know why there is no malign thing in the light and why the darkness triumphs time and again. I know someone old is stitching them together by victory and loss. Each of our lives is one small stitch among the countless that will heal this wound—this wreckage of existence as you call it. By our suffering—by our willingness to suffer for what is good— by that we will make of darkness a light."

  "Grand notions from a little being," Asofel replied, lowering his chin dubiously.

  Old Ric plucked the stuck arrow. "I've given everything I have to holding together my stitch of light and dark. What about you, Asofel?"

  "I am of the light." His face shone calm as glass. "I am faithful to the one who sent me here."

  "I know that." Old Ric waved an impatient hand. "I'm talking about your soul. And by that I mean, what of your feelings? How are you holding together your great light with the vast darkness of this creation?"

  Asofel shook his head, unhappy with the gnome's questions. "I want to go home."

  "To the light. I know." Old Ric's cheeks gleamed with joy. "I have tasted of your Charm this night, and I myself would go with you if I could."

  "You can." Asofel smiled, and a lightning flash stained the underbellies of the night clouds. "I will carry you to the Abiding Star. From there, your radiant body will grow. Maybe in time I will see you in the fields of light where I dwell."

  "Not likely." The gnome thumbed his knobby chin and spoke what he had seen in his trance while Asofel ate giants. "You'll have brightened by then beyond those fields into distances of the soul's going, brightening toward infinity."

  "You know of my home."

  "I know of fire."

  Asofel offered a white hand shining from within. "Let me take you to the Abiding Star."

  "Forget me." The eldern gnome stepped back with an annoyed grimace. "Think of the child. Think of the ages to come. You feel it. I know you do. Why else would you have come back to speak with me? You feel my striving—and Broydo's, too. If you looked into any of our mortal hearts, you'd find that same striving. This is no dream to us. We are each of us endeavoring for what we believe is real. But we don't all reach for the same thing. Some want more light—"

  "Others, more darkness." Asofel nodded with understanding: there would be no going home until the work was done. "I will step outside the dream and find the shadow thing."

  The Radiant One faded quickly away, and darkness recharged the landscape with mystery and threat. Old Ric stumbled blindly toward the cave, seeking sanctuary in the sudden night.

  

  Asofel, too, sought asylum from the wrought feelings that the gnome evoked in him. Outside the dream, in the realm of light within the aura of the Abiding Star where he had originated, the Radiant One stood sentinel. He felt peace here and joy that, at last, he had reclaimed the strength to return to where he belonged. He had come here to find the shadow thing, and he began to search.

  Far and near merged in him like wind and fire. Sparks blustered—snippets of distances he had crossed while down there. He saw again the Labyrinth of the Dead on World's End. And there was Broydo doubled over with grief before the eighteen corpses of his clan raised from their graves by the demon Tivel. The mourning in the elf's body throbbed like physical hurt.

  He brushed the sparks of timefire away, not wanting to see any more of that grievous place. It took a while for his eyes to adjust, he had been so long in the shadow world. When he could see, he noticed that he had emerged not far from his station at the south wall of the garden, upon the Gate of Outer Darkness.

  By the nightglow of luminous plants and insects, he found sufficient illumination to view the terraced lawns with their fishponds and tarns, upon whose mirrored surfaces drifted black swans. Beyond them loomed the bridge-gate with the brimstone light of its one lantern. Upon the far side of that gate awaited his own station as sentinel of the Beginning.

  With blithe exhilaration, he stared down to either side of the entry ramp and glimpsed the wild lands above the terraced lawns, the hunched boulders shawled in creepers. Leather-winged minions rose up from there on the vesperal wind and flashed past him with their agonized faces. He gasped happily to see that nothing had changed, and he mounted the steep, zigzagging road faster.

  At the final bend in the path, he stood proudly before the bridge-gate with its ponderous lantern of iron fins and spike
s. Thick dockweed and dense hollyhocks sprouted before the weighted gate, yet even so the massive timbers obeyed his touch.

  Light.

  The portal opened on dazzling luminosity—the radiance of himself. From here, he could look into the dream and find the shadow thing.

  Azure water cast fluttering webs of reflected light across a wall of tesselated dolphins. Diamond froth off a sparkling swimming pool underlit a man with feline beastmarks—blue fur and slant green eyes.

  Duppy Hob

  Ripcat finished drying himself, and his fur fluffed upon his lean frame. He glanced about for a place to set the wet towels. Then, he looked again at the old man sitting in the wire chair watching him through a mask of tired flesh with eyes like perforations.

  "Drop them on the floor."The aged man’s slack mouth barely moved. "And sit here." His veined hand wavered toward an empty wire chair beside a swimming pool.

  The beastmarked man obeyed and sat among reflections of rambling morning light. He could smell the ferment of the decrepit body across from him. "You are Duppy Hob?—the devil worshipper?"

  "Once I worshipped devils." The old man sat perfectly still in his black tunic of gold trim. From the feet in his green slippers to the dried face spiced with age marks and blebs, he looked inert. "Now, devils worship me."

  Ripcat shifted in the comfortless wire seat, searching the undersea chamber for signs of devils. Outside the belled, transparent walls, mermaids spun. Inside, an oval swimming pool framed in red tiles revealed more mermaids through its transparent bottom. "This is a tranquil place for a devil worshipper. You live here?"

  The flesh under the old man's tired eyes looked like dripped wax. His face twitched this time before he spoke: "Don't you want to know why I have brought you to me?"