The Shadow Sorceress

by Victor Gischler

  The door caved inward just as I arrived, a hinge spinning loose and clanging on the stone floor of the tower’s foyer.

  It should be said that when it comes to matters of life and death, I have never felt any sort of obligation toward sportsmanship. I swung at the nearest soldier from behind, my blade slicing through the narrow gap at his neck between armor and helm. I laid open flesh, and the wound fountained red. The shadow cloak staggered sideways, bounced once off the door frame then went down in a clatter of armor.

  The second one turned to face me.

  The third headed into the tower.

  The one facing me advanced, thrusting wildly, more enthusiasm than skill. I parried his blade past me and stepped inside his reach, and threw a quick, hard jab with my off hand. My knuckles flattened his nose, and I heard and felt cartilage crunch flat, blood shooting from his nostrils down over his lips.

  He swiped his sword back and forth as he stepped back, trying to blink the stars from his eyes. I wasn’t about to let him recover and pressed my attack. I batted his blade aside and swung hard, but my own blade bounced off his thick shoulder plate with a reverberating clang.

  A wrist flick, and the tip of my sword sliced a shallow gash across his cheek on the backswing. He hissed pain and swung at me.

  I drew my dagger, held it in my off hand, and we sized each other up a moment. This was taking too long. The other shadow cloak was already inside the tower, searching for Mireen, I presumed. Behind me, I heard the racket of Lill and the Shadow Sorceress still going at it, but I didn’t dare turn to look.

  I feinted toward my opponent, trying to draw him in. It worked. He blocked, over balanced when I wasn’t there for the strike, his sword extended. I brought my blade down on top of his, putting weight into it, and forcing him to lower his guard.

  Then I thrust with the dagger.

  The dagger blade sank five inches deep into his armpit where there was only leather instead of plate armor. He made a surprised bleating sound and sank to one knee, mouth working for air. I kicked him over and let him bleed there, then ran into the tower.

  A memory hit me as I took the winding stairs two at a time, another wizard’s tower. Knarr’s tower seemed less ancient and ominous than Bazrak’s hidden Winterwood tower, but it terms of architecture, it was very similar. Stairs spiraled up passing level after level – sitting room, bed chamber, workshop.

  At the door leading to the roof, I found the third shadow cloak. It was a smaller door, made of thinner wood than the door below which had taken all three of them to smash through. He was slamming it with an armored shoulder. It cracked and flew open just as I arrived.

  I followed the shadow cloak out onto the roof of the tower, a wide, flat area completely encircled by blazing braziers which provided light and warmth. Just beyond the center of the roof, Mireen lay naked and facedown on a table draped in red velvet. Knarr leaned over her, working intricately at something down her back, and I could only assume he was applying the runes.

  Knarr never looked up from his work but seemed to take in the situation instantly. “Stop him!”

  I put on a burst of speed and leapt. I landed hard on the shadow cloak’s back, smacking my left cheekbone hard on his armor, pain flaring hot in my face, but I hung on, arms going around him, and we both went down in a racket of jangling racket of weapons and armor.

  From my peripheral vision, I saw Knarr continue his work as if nothing else was happening. I hoped he was close to finishing.

  The shadow cloak beneath me twisted, bringing a sharp elbow back in an attempt to knock me off. I leaned to one side, narrowly avoiding an armored elbow to the face. Shifting my weight allowed the soldier to buck me off. I rolled away just as he reached for me, and both of us came up with our swords in the ready position.

  I stood between him and Knarr. I panted, chest heaving, glad that he didn’t attack immediately. I wasn’t really in shape for this sort of thing. I drew the dagger again in my off hand.

  “Maybe go back and tell your mistress you gave it your best try,” I suggested. “If she asks, I promise to say you fought really hard.”

  I thought it a fair offer. Apparently, he disagreed.

  The shadow cloak yelled and charged.

  I charged back at him.

  We clashed, steel ringing on steel and clanging off armor. I knocked his sword aside with my own, struck with the dagger. My hand came away covered with hot blood. I’d caught him on the side of the neck with the dagger. His eyes shot wide. With one hand he tried to staunch the blood spraying from his neck.

  With the other hand, he kept lashing out with his sword as he tried to keep me at bay.

  A hot, sharp pain flared in my side.

  I grunted and took three halting steps back. My hand went down to the rip in my doublet, fingers coming back wet and red. A sudden cold sweat on my neck and behind my ears. I was afraid to probe the wound again. I didn’t want know how deep it was.

  I brought my sword up suddenly, remembering I was still in a fight.

  Except I wasn’t.

  The shadow cloak lay on his back in a pool of his own blood, eyes frozen open.

  Then my knees went, and I dropped into an awkward sitting position. I felt blood dripping down one side, soaking my clothing. “I would seem … seem to be bleeding … quite a lot.”

  I hadn’t meant to say that to anyone in particular, but Knarr assumed I must have been talking to him.

  “The sack at me feet,” Knarr said. “Come on. You’re not dead yet.”

  I crawled to the table where he was still working on Mireen. I managed to sit up and pulled the sack into my lap.

  “A squat little green jar with a cork in it,” Knarr said. “It won’t take much.”

  I went into the sack and came out with the jar. My hands shook, but I managed to pull the cork. “What? Drink it?”

  “A little on your fingertips. Then slather it on,” Knarr instructed.

  The stuff in the jug was a white gunk tending to pink although it was difficult to be sure in the braziers’ firelight. Consistency like bacon grease gone cold. I coated three fingertips then reached inside my doublet. I winced as my fingers made contact with the wound. I rubbed the salve all along the bloody gash, finally finishing, my whole body shaking as I labored for breath.

  I collapsed. The cool stone felt good against my face.

  Gradually, the hot sting in my side ease to a soothing warmth.

  Then the ground shook.

  No, not the ground. I realized I’d been dozing. Where was I?

  The roof of the wizard’s tower.

  And the tower shook.

  “Something’s happening.”

  “You have a gift for understatement, my friend.” Knarr still worked on Mireen. Sweat beaded on his bald head.

  “Aren’t you finished yet?”

  “Soon.”

  The tower shook again, more violently this time.

  “Why is the Shadow Sorceress so obsessed with Mireen?” I asked.

  “Not with Mireen specifically,” Knarr said. “With anyone trying to tap into the shadow. As I explained before, an ink mage taps into something within herself. The sorceress taps into the same well of shadow that Mireen will soon be able to tap into. This means the sorceress’s power is diminished. Like too many men drinking from the same pitcher of wine. She no longer has the shadow all to herself.”

  Knarr didn’t need to spell it out for me. If the Shadow Sorceress wanted to retain her full power, she’d have to murder anyone else with the shadow runes, now including Mireen.

  The tower shook again.

  “Should we be concerned about that?”

  Knarr didn’t look up from Mireen’s back. “It does sound alarming. Unfortunately, I have to finish this once I’ve begun. Stopping could kill her.”

  Whatever threatened to shake the tower apart might kill us all.

  In which case I’d probably need my sword.

  I picked it up and began looking for my dagger
as the tower shook yet again.

  “Looking for this?”

  My head came up, and I saw him.

  Shit.

  He looked even bigger than I remembered, and even more sinister, the eyepatch and the scowl making him seem like somebody who’d come all this way specifically to murder me in the most painful and devious fashion he could devise.

  He twirled his chain and grinned.

  In his other hand, he held my dagger by the blade.

  I summoned a modicum of bravado. “You’re holding it by the wrong end, but yes. It does look like mine.”

  “Allow me to return it to you.”

  With a flick of his wrist, the leader of the shadow cloaks tossed the dagger. It flew end over end straight for my face, steel glinting in the brazier light. I swung my sword and batted it out of mid-air with a ting. It clattered away across the roof.

  I tried not to look so surprised, put a smug look on my face as if I were certainly not going to allow myself to be skewered by my own dagger.

  Not that the one-eyed shadow cloak was especially impressed. He was already moving forward, chain spinning, readying for a strike. I raised my sword, heart beating up through my throat.

  The chain shot out so fast, I wasn’t even sure what was happening until I felt it wrap around my sword and wrist. I tried to untangle myself, dropping my weapon in the process. With both hands, he began hauling on the chain, dragging me toward him. I tried to dig in my heels. No good.

  When he’d pulled me within reach, he punched me hard across the jaw. Colored lights exploded in front of my eyes. I went flying back but jerked to a halt when I hit the limit of the chain. I thought my arm would be yanked from its socket, but instead I snapped back toward the shadow cloak.

  Who punched me again.

  Not hard enough this time to send me reeling again. Just a sharp pop to the forehead which made my eyes cross. I heard him laugh, and felt a hand go around my throat. He squeezed. My mouth opened and closed, hoping to find air.

  The tower shook again and kept shaking. He stopped choking me long enough for both of us to look to the side to see what was happening.

  Over the stone crenellation, I suddenly saw a white hand streaked with blood. Then another hand, and then a second later, Lill pulled herself over, and landed on her backside with a thud, chest heaving for breath, hair matted with sweat and blood. Her left eye was black and swollen. Blood at one corner of her mouth.

  The next moment, she rolled away as enormous thick, black hands came over the same crenellation, fingers elongated and sharp. The hands sank into the stone like grappling hooks.

  And as the monstrous form of the Shadow Sorceress heaved herself into view, the crenellations cracked, stonework crumbling. Great chunks of the tower came apart as the sorceress clawed and climbed her way onto the roof after Lill.

  One moment there was stone beneath my feet, and the next, I was flying.

  The shadow cloak released his grip on my throat. We both flailed arms. I made a panicked grab for something solid. Dumb luck was on my side.

  I clung to an outcropping of stonework. I’d scraped a cheek raw when I’d grabbed, hugging the rough stone, hanging on for dear life. Something heavy dragged on my left leg.

  I looked down.

  The shadow cloak had a death grip around my ankle, dangled over empty space. Much of the tower had fallen away beneath him. It was at least a forty-foot drop. I shook my leg, attempting to dislodge him, but his grip was iron.

  My own grip on the outcropping was slipping. We couldn’t stay like this forever

  I snorted, hawked up something from deep in my throat.

  And spit.

  The glob flew straight and true.

  And into his one good eye.

  He flinched, one hand coming up reflexively to wipe it away. His grip loosened and slipped and in the next instant, he fell, arms pinwheeling, a startled scream flying from his lips. He landed with a hard, armored crunch on a jagged pile of stone, lay still, the angle of his neck so awkward that he surely must have been dead.

  I hauled myself up, muscles straining, and finally pulled myself to safety.

  Safety being a relative term.

  The Shadow Sorceress had Lill pinned to the roof with a huge black hand on her chest. Lill tried to pry the hand away but had no strength. I couldn’t even tell if she were tapped into the spirit.

  The Shadow Sorceress lowered her head, bringing her monstrous face close to Lill’s. The black mouth worked, a single word coming out. “Thief.”

  A commotion tore my attention form Lill and the Shadow Sorceress. Knarr stepped back quickly from the table where he’d been attending Mireen. A strange dark glow emanated from Mireen’s back, and I realized the runes were all lit up black, simultaneously glowing yet also seeming to suck the light from the world.

  Mireen sat up, a delicate hand going to her head as if she were dazed. She swung her legs over the table, stood, finding her balance.

  The Shadow Sorceress looked up, black eyes on Mireen.

  Mireen saw the Shadow Sorceress and her eyes narrowed. Rage twisted her face as if the sight of the Shadow Sorceress were the greatest of affronts.

  Mireen exploded into darkness, her body becoming pure night and filling the sky. Whereas the Shadow Sorceress had seemed to drain the inky blackness from between the stars to fuel her power, Mireen seemed to fill it back up again, becoming the night, her body everywhere around us.

  The Shadow Sorceress released Lill, shrank back. Even with her monstrous visage, the emotion in her eyes was clear.

  Fear.

  An enraged bellow filled the world, shook the tower and the land all around us. It was as if the cosmos itself poured its anger onto the Shadow Sorceress.

  Hands the size of small cottages oozed from the darkness. They seemed formed of black smoke but congealed into reality as they reached for the Shadow Sorceress. Somewhere deep inside the creature, Baroness Ilga was terrified. It was as if shadow itself had turned on her.

  The Shadow Sorceress suddenly stood up straight, raised a hand in the air. She shimmered and suddenly came apart into a million pieces. Each piece began to flap and twist like an oversized insect. As a single cloud, a swarm, the black insects turned and sped west away from Klaar.

  The night screamed, vicious and urgent, the sound of a predator who’d had its prey snatched away at the final moment. I clapped my hands over my ears but could still feel the fury in my bones.

  And then as suddenly as she’d exploded, Mireen drained from the sky, the darkness falling back to the roof in a swirling black tornado which slowly resolved into a shimmering black body. Mireen drew the night into herself, hands raised, the entire world threatening to shake apart.

  Then in an instant the world went quiet. Mireen was simply a women again, standing nude, her arms raised.

  And then her eyes rolled back and she fell over.

  I went to her, pulled her into my arms. Her face was peaceful, but she didn’t respond when I called her name.

  Knarr was suddenly next to me. He put two fingers against her throat, then lifted an eyelid with a thumb, leaning in for a closer look, nodding and grunting. “She sleeps. I don’t think she’s hurt, not in the usual way at least.”

  “What happened?”

  “Seriously? You think I know?”

  I frowned. “You’re the wizard.”

  “I think the Shadow Sorceress saw something she’s never seen before,” Knarr said. “An opponent with the same abilities as herself, powerful and implacable. She panicked and fled rather than test her strength against Mireens’s.”

  A groan from across the roof.

  “Lill!”

  I left Mireen with Knarr, picked my way across the roof, careful to avoid the crumbling edge. I couldn’t quite believe the entire tower hadn’t come down.

  I found Lill, knelt next to her. She lay flat on her back, eyes open. She tried to smile or perhaps it was a grimace of pain.

  “You okay?”
r />   “I’m not sure,” she said. “Everything hurts.”

  “I’m not surprised. You look terrible.”

  And then she did smile, and the smile turned into a laugh and she winced, the laugh turning into a grunt.

  “Please don’t,” she said. “It hurts when I laugh.”

  EPILOGUE

  Lill wasn’t the sort to waste time.

  She headed for Harran’s Bay the next day to catch a ship, bound for home, back to the Glacial Wastes where monumental tasks awaited her. Her goodbye had been typical Lill. A shoulder squeeze, a crooked half smile, and a quick it’s been good traveling with you. And then she was gone.

  Mireen kept her word to Lill … sort of. She did get her booked on the ship heading north, but she’d done it by forging the duke’s signature and borrowing his signet ring when he wasn’t looking. She’d given the signed orders with the ducal seal to Lill and bid the ink mage luck.

  Mireen then spent her time locked away with Knarr, attempting to discover the workings of her new powers.

  With nothing to do and nowhere to be, I spent the next four nights at the Wounded Bird. By the end, I was on a first name basis with all of the ladies. We ate well and drank a lot. They produced a lute from some dusty storeroom, and I played for them. Each and every lady was lovely in her own way, and they were all good company.

  And never once did I follow one of them upstairs to her room although opportunities were plenty, and I had more than enough silver. I simply couldn’t summon the interest.

  Finally, I had to face the question I’d been avoiding.

  What did I want?

  I’d expected to wrestle long and hard with this question, but it wasn’t necessary, not really.

  I knew exactly what I wanted.

  * * *

  I stood on the dock at Harran’s Bay and watched dour, weathered men load cargo aboard the Ice Swan, an enormous fat freighter, slow, but with the ability to carry many tons of trade goods. I didn’t have the means to get aboard one of the duke’s ships as Lill had done, so I’d been forced to wait another eight days for a commercial vessel up from Kern to take me aboard. I’d shelled out the silver for a nice stateroom with the soft bed, the last accommodations available as it turned out.