In Siege of Daylight

by Gregory S Close

  The hilt of ilnymhorrim hummed against his waist.

  “Yes?” he muttered, a faint smile coming to his lips. “You tire of this too.”

  Though the sword had no voice, it made its wants known – sometimes more insistently than others – but known nonetheless. And this time, at least, it seemed they agreed. The whisper of the sword’s will scraped like ice and steel behind his ears.

  Dieavaul turned away from the charred hole in the side of the mountain and swept his sword through the thin air of the cave. A slice appeared in mid-air, spreading like a parchment slowly burning under the heat of a candle, opening into a hole of swirling grey – hundreds of greys from light to dark and back to light again, but devoid of color or form. Perhaps some good came of this after all, he reflected as he stood before the howling gate of Shadow. If nothing else, he had inconvenienced them. Delaying them may serve me just as well.

  The Pale Man stepped through, disappearing within the portal. The fringes of the doorway bent inwards in his wake as if he were a great wind, pulling the ragged edges of its sides together until they caught, meshed, and folded back into reality.

  The wind howled through the lifeless cave, tugging at the flapping cloaks of its butchered occupants as if to rouse them from a deep slumber. But none stirred as the wailing of winter sang its cold and lonely dirge.

  The dead slept on.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CASTING SHADOWS

  AEOLIL pounded on the ancient wooden door again, and the sound of her impatience echoed down the staircase behind her. She knew that the door was not really that thick, but she also knew from years as Agrylon’s pupil that it would be more difficult to breach than the castle gate. This door had been here since the aulden called it home, and it was infused with more protective wards than even Agrylon could account. And, perhaps more significantly, it was still a part of the original wooden tower that lay smothered beneath the thick stones that Grand Duke Milo Jiraud had erected back in Providayne’s provincial days. In the city, such thoughtless second-guessing of fae architecture had killed many of the songwood buildings, but here some unknown power kept the buried trees alive.

  She shook her head at the door that refused to open. An iiyir convergence, Agrylon called it, a place where the ley lines were thick and abundant. He had been trying to tap into that same power for the majority of his lifetime, as he suspected the aulden once did, but with no real luck. He had only enough information to illuminate what the Ceearmyltu had been able to accomplish with such power, but all traces of how they accomplished it were either too well hidden or long vanished.

  The door opened, and a purplish light spilled from the chamber within. Aeolil felt gooseflesh rising on her skin as she perceived the iiyir traces licking her awareness. She entered, and the door shut itself behind her. Aside from the colored light that spilled from the casting circle in the center of the floor the room was covered in a cloak of grey shadows. Within this darkness, hovering like ghosts in the dusky light at the edges of the chamber, were hundreds of books and arcane writings, scroll sheaves, charts, maps and a small collection of artifacts the wizard used in his more powerful incantations. There were no windows in the tower room, no other doors, no wall hangings or decorations. His treasure, if any, was his collected information and, she had no doubt, some array of things he deemed best to keep secret from even her.

  Agrylon stood over the casting circle, passing his hand over the runes carved by song into the polished wooden floor by aulden mystics, ages past. They were all over the floor, a dizzying array of patterns and geometric shapes. Agrylon refused to speak of them, claiming such knowledge at her early stage in the Craft would be more dangerous than useful. There was a good chance that was the truth, but with Agrylon she was never sure. She read his lips as he mumbled the words of power in a quick chant.

  “A divining?” she inquired after he was finished. She knew better than to distract him in mid-spell.

  He only nodded, not turning to face her as she approached. He was still intent on the purple glow before him. The color deepened, then brightened, alternating in intensity around the form suspended in the eerie radiance. At first the figure was vague and incomplete, a shifting intimation of a man, but as her eyes adjusted she could see the features of the face coalesce into solid form, followed soon after by the rest of the body. There was no life to its shifting, translucent vapors, but the image was clear.

  “Who is that?” she asked.

  “That was our would-be assassin,” he said. “Do you recognize him?”

  “No. How did you…?”

  Agrylon waved casually to the center of the divining circle, indicating a nondescript mass crumpled there. Aeolil saw the charred fringe of a cloak, the sole of a boot, and a long bone with dangling pieces of charred flesh ending in the grisly remnants of a hand. The corpse had been dumped there with little care or respect.

  “Vanelorn was most cooperative, for a change,” continued the wizard, “or most desperate. No matter his reason, it’s less than I hoped to discover. He is rather well cooked, I’m afraid.”

  Aeolil nodded. Aside from blackened flesh and contorted limbs, there wasn’t much to look at.

  “Here.” Agrylon made a fan-like gesture with the fingers of his left hand, and the glowing body disappeared below the neck. The disembodied head enlarged to twice its normal size, and the wizard pointed at the man’s eyes. “There is some scarring on his brow. A sigil of some sort, but I have not been able to decipher it.”

  Aeolil guessed that one of the deadly blows from the fire iron had landed squarely on his temple, and obfuscated the marking with ruptured flesh and splintered skull. Whatever design the sigil had once represented, it was now but tendrils licking the edges of a gaping wound. “That servant’s aim was too true,” she muttered.

  Agrylon’s eyes darted to her for a moment, his face pinched in thought. “The tides are with me,” he said, stroking his beard. “I believe I will call him back for a little chat.”

  Aeolil stifled a grimace at the thought. She’d seen him do it once before, call the dead back from the greylands for a parlay, and it was no small feat, even for a Wizard of the Eleventh Order, like Agryon. Tampering with Shadow had brought death, ruin or madness upon many who had undertaken the task capriciously.

  “Agrylon…”

  “Do you want to know what is afoot,” he said, even as he brought a well-worn tome down from the shelf, “or sit and wait for the answers to come looking?”

  “The ur’iiyir is on the ebb. At least wait for the tides so that –”

  “Please don’t presume to lecture me,” Agrylon interrupted again, shaking his head as he leafed through his text to the appropriate passages. “The world-tides are receding, but my iiyir has not ebbed as yet. Now, fetch me some gaengrhe powder and srhrilakiin blood and leave the sorcery to me.”

  Aeolil took a deep breath. For such a major spell, common wisdom held that the ur’iiyir of the world-tide and the il’iiyir of the caster’s own internal tides should both be at their peak. Agrylon, with hundreds of years’ experience and a pedigree that extended back to the days of Empire, only heeded common wisdom when it suited his purpose. There was, in fact, little common about the man at all. She shook her head, restraining her irritation by concentrating on the task at hand. It was a mechanism of day-to-day survival as his underappreciated disciple, and she had nearly mastered it.

  The gaengrhe powder was on the lower shelf of collected materials, with the crushed herbs. It was derived from the desiccated husks of the gaengrhe plant, dried and pounded to dust with a silver mortar and pestle, then left to age for a decade or more in the dark. It was vital that no natural light shone on the powder, or its ability to compel truth from the shadowborn would be negated. She opened the opaque jar and measured out an even spoonful into a clay bowl.

  The blood was a tar-like ichor that stank of rotten vegetables. It hid behind the more common of the rarest ingredients on the top shelf, labeled in t
he inscrutable and dangerous calligraphy of iilariish, the runic inscriptions of the magi. She knew enough to read the magescript only in her peripheral vision. To read the writing directly would invite any number of unpleasant side effects, death not the least among them.

  Agrylon took the components from her and set to work mixing them in the proper proportion, until there was a thick, pungent paste covering his fingers. He spread the mixture into the outline of one of the casting circles on the floor, chanting quietly. Aeolil stood back as he worked. Preparation for ritualized magic such as this required the caster’s undivided attention. There could be no deviation from the parameters set forth in the spell. Even the slightest misstep could lessen the effectiveness of the summoning, or worse still, weaken or dispel the protective wards altogether.

  Agrylon stood, raising his hands into the air as his chant increased in both speed and volume. Aeolil’s heartbeat matched the rhythm of his words even as the crackle of gathering iiyir charged the air around her. Spectral flames of blackness flickered to life around the summoning circle, drawing light away from the purple glow surrounding the assassin’s body and into their hungry sputtering shadows.

  Aeolil knew that the spell was complete when there was nothing left but the blackness inside the circle. The purple hue of the divining was gone. In its place, the Dark. The flames were like faint chalk outlines amidst the blackness, bleeding from the inner ring of the casting circle, trickling one by one toward the form within until it was surrounded in a pool like pale moonlight. Agrylon spoke a final word of power, and the tendrils seeped into the burnt carcass – oozing into the eye sockets, ear canals, and the gaping breathless mouth. Where there was no such convenient entry, they soaked through the flesh like water into a sponge until the whole of the dead man glowed faintly in the non-light.

  Agrylon faced the cardinal directions in turn, pausing long enough to offer each a separate gesture and calling upon the corresponding power of the elements. “By the Foundations of Earth, by the Firmament of the Skies, by the Consuming Flame and by the Restoring Waters of Life – I compel you to come forth, spirit,” commanded Agrylon, his hands outstretched.

  The husk of radiant flesh twitched.

  “Between the Illumination of Light, that reveals all things, and the Obscuration of the Dark, that consumes revelation, I bring you forth from the Balance of Shadow, to speak truth. What is your name, spirit?”

  There was a low, tortured moan, a sound of pure despair that crawled up Aeolil’s spine. The dead man rose on the blackened sinew and muscle that clung to the scorched bone of its legs, drawn upward like a tattered marionette on the invisible strings of a sadistic puppeteer.

  “Corbhin,” the dead man spoke, his voice a rasping echo of the soul-splitting moan that heralded his re-entry into the realm of the living. “I am… I was Corbhin of Vespa.”

  “You served Calamyr?”

  “I served the House Vespurial,” he answered. “Why do you bring me here? What do you want of me?”

  Aeolil had hardened her heart against sentiment. She’d had to in order to survive after the murder of her father and brother. Any bit of softness left exposed to the world had then sunk even deeper with the anchor of Kiev’s horrible death not long after. Even so, the desperation in that voice struck her to the core. She almost felt pity for him – so palpable was his longing for release. She reminded herself what he had done to keep her sympathy at arm’s length.

  Agrylon exhibited no such conflict; his voice was stern and commanding. “Who ordered the death of Calvraign?”

  “I know no Calvraign. I know of no orders for his death. I was an honorable man. I… I don’t know what you want of me, but…” His dead mouth hung open in a rasping sigh. “Please do not send me back. Not back to the Dark.”

  Agrylon’s brow creased. “The Cythe barbarian. You attacked him before your death – who commanded you to attack the boy? What were you promised?”

  “I know nothing of this,” the spirit answered. “I was killed with my men, on patrol north of Vespa. We were taken. She took us to the Dark.”

  Aeolil looked to Agrylon’s face for a sneer of disbelief or anger at the dead man’s refusal to speak the truth. She hoped to find something other than the perplexed frown that met her gaze.

  “Please, before She hears you – before She comes for me. Please help me. Send me away! I would rather suffer Oblivion than the Dark.”

  Agrylon’s momentary bewilderment evaporated into a look of realization and, if not fear, foreboding. “Impossible,” he whispered.

  “Hurry! She comes. She comes!”

  Agrylon’s hands spun through the air as he barked the word of dissolution. The black flames should have extinguished. The chalky form should have collapsed back to empty flesh. The spirit should have fled back to whence it came.

  Nothing.

  Then the flame erupted into a column that licked the ceiling, boiling along the living wood and the invisible barrier of the casting circle, demanding release. Agrylon stepped back with his right foot, as if bracing against a strong wind, his hands splayed palm up before him, his face a grimace as he strained against some unseen force.

  “Aeolil,” he barked. “To me! Quickly!”

  Aeolil knew he didn’t need her physical aid. She began reciting a spell of communion, forging a thread of iiyir into a ley line to link their tides and shore up his wavering hold on whatever lay beyond the flames.

  Corbhin’s body convulsed as his spirit emitted an inhuman shriek. Aeolil shuddered, her concentration wavering but not breaking. A bony arm punched out of Corbhin’s stomach with a moist pop, then another from his left shoulder. “She comes!” he wailed, as another arm burst from his hip, shattering the bone with a loud crack. The talons at the end of the appendages flexed, dropping bits of discarded human tissue to the ground. “She comes!” His legs split in two, each falling away to reveal two chitin-plated limbs. The four legs sprouted from the beast’s hips at angles from the emerging torso, two facing forward and two facing the rear. The appendages arched upward to barbed knees before bending backward to end in sharp spear-like points that clacked heavily on the floor.

  Aeolil felt the ethereal tug on the ley line that signaled her spell’s success, and Agrylon immediately drew on her energies. He siphoned the iiyir hungrily, and she allowed him to channel the power with reluctant trust. Such symbiosis was no small thing even amongst close friends, but Aeolil was without the convenience of choice, and she knew it.

  Three more arms erupted from the flailing physical remains of Corbhin, accompanied by screams of increasing intensity and desperation. His ribs were jutting through his chest now, his skin tearing from his neck to his abdomen as the black-furred mass within sought to burst through.

  Agrylon pressed his hands forward, his eyes like amber flames. He spoke words of power that Aeolil could not identify, but she fell to her knees, retching at the mere sound of them.

  Words of Shadow.

  Aeolil shuddered at the thought. She coughed, spittle dripping from her lips to join the vomit between her legs. She could feel the essence of those dark incantations resonating in the filaments of iiyir that joined them, like the spread of infection. She almost severed their connection, but she maintained the link, certain that in this case Agrylon was, at the very least, the lesser of two evils.

  The blackness receded, sucked into the half-transfigured being that once had been the body of Corbhin of Vespa, and he burned again. The black flames burned, but they did not consume. Aeolil could see it on Agrylon’s face, in the dimming of his angry eyes; sense it in the faltering connection of their ley line. He was losing the battle. Agrylon, Wizard of the Eleventh Order, a Black Robe of the Dacadian Legions, had not the strength to hold back this creature of the Dark. Even with the succor of his apprentice, the black fire began to creep from the tortured shell to once again test the confines of the casting circle.

  Aeolil watched in growing fear as Agrylon’s face contorted from exertion to de
speration and finally to pain, and then in surprise, as he severed their bond abruptly.

  Corbhin’s spirit screams ceased, replaced by a quiet rasp. “She’s here.”

  Without pause, the last remnants of his mortal self were ripped away by the hideous thing within. An oblong head emerged, crowned by three curved horns, each six inches long. There were two rows of thirteen yellow eyes, one spray of blinking orbs to each half of the horrid head. The mouth ran vertically from bearded chin to leathery brow, bisecting the creature’s face, lined with rows of soiled ivory teeth that oozed glutinous saliva as its jaws flexed.

  Even as the last bits of the once-human face dropped away, the fanged maw opened and uttered a word that split the air like a thunderclap. Agrylon was thrown backward, flung like a doll across the room from the impact of the word of power, his eyes and nose bleeding before he even struck the far wall. Even though she had not been in the direct path of the word, the aftershock sent Aeolil reeling back onto her elbows.

  The thing struggled against the invisible walls of the protective enchantment, slowly breaking through into the world beyond Shadow. It clawed its way toward Agrylon, gnashing its teeth in anticipation of whatever fate it had in store for the wizard.

  Aeolil’s fear almost overwhelmed her. She lay still. Having not yet attracted its attention, she didn’t wish to do so now. An image flashed in her mind: a memory from childhood, in the glades outside the castle walls where she lay trying to gather her skirts after being thrown by her pony. An unshaven man in officer’s garb was dragging her from the sod by a fistful of her torn dress, his sword planted through a mountain viper’s neck scant feet away. “Survive first,” he’d told her, and it was the first of many times. It was his mantra, and it had served him well.

  Aeolil sucked in a shivering breath. She knew what was loose, and it was no mere spirit or shadowborn minion. This was a Neva Seough, a Demon of the Dark, a full-blooded beast of unfathomable evil with claw, fang and blackest of iiyir at its disposal. Such were the monsters of the ancient tales that did battle with saints, avatars and heroes. They were unspeakable, nightmares even for the likes of andu’ai and perhaps even dragonkind.