We search, Bull-Horns says again, and all he can do is nod. His body aches with fatigue, his legs are weary, and worry gnaws at his gut. We search.
I know.
They come to the dark river. Bony refuse floats on the surface, and he sees the outlines of beasts swimming below. The river stands between them and the base of a wide path that cuts its way through an imposing onyx cliff several hundred feet high. The path is difficult to see in the darkness, but it’s been marked with the pale bones of massive creatures.
The shadow soldiers prepare for battle. They move towards a wide platform made of wood and steel, a craft hooked to a thick chain that stretches across the river and is attached to pillars of cold iron on the opposing shores. Arcane runes and sigils cover the chain and the barge. The vessel isn’t large enough for even half of the shadow warriors.
They’re not coming.
After a moment, he understands why.
The Shadow Lords haven’t left the entrance to their inner realm unguarded. Dark fliers take shape in the sky, human bats and draconic beings, things without form, nightmare avians. More shapes approach on the ground, humanoids that look like the arcane natives, only these enemy creatures wear human skins and ride bastard conveyances of living flesh and shadow matter, dark iron armor grafted to unstable reptile skin. The small legion appears from nowhere and moves with startling speed.
The black air comes alive. He doesn’t even see the battle begin. Bodies fly into one another, shadow vapors and steel. The combatants are voiceless in their conflict. Metal explodes against metal and bodies explode like sacks of gel. Razor-white blades shear away limbs. Dark blood smears across the ground.
He watches in horror, but he’s held back and hedged towards the barge. His allies restrain him, and they prevent him from taking part in the strife. Shadow limbs push and shove him along. His vision goes dizzy as he’s forced forward.
Fliers descend. They fall in an aerial wave. They fill the crimson sky with the sound of beating wings.
Blood rains down. The sound of ripping fills his head. There are no shouts or screams, but he hears bodies torn apart in the razor storm. The ground grows thick with ruined corpses.
He stumbles, dizzy, his blade held ready. The swarm of fliers launches down, and his allies push him to the ground.
Blood pounds in his ears. His body aches. Dark fluid burns his eyes. Stone grates against his knees. Something hauls him to his feet.
White missiles explode in mid-air and fan out like webs of steel rain. Behemoth hooves stamp shadow corpses into paste. He swims through a sea of sand and blood.
Bodies fall into the water, where they’re consumed by the ripping tides. Bone fish and serpent limbs drag them under.
He can’t tell the combatants apart in all of the chaos. He swings at whatever comes close and threatens him. He hopes he isn’t hurting his allies.
He’s on the barge. He barely remembers getting there.
Bull-Horns and Longspear are with him. They toss the dark mooring rope ashore and push the heavy vehicle into the waters. The chain guides them across.
A feeding frenzy takes place just beyond their feet. Moon-pale fish with black eyes and knife teeth chew their way through dark bodies. Corpses come apart and drift like putty to the surface. Black water splashes onto his face.
An explosion shakes the barge, and he falls. Fliers descend, but they’re forced away by Bull-Horns and Longspear. He joins them in battle. His blade carves through shadow flesh and spills silver blood that sizzles on the deck. Ozone and acid fill his nostrils. His arms grow sore as he saws back and forth and cuts through relentless waves of misshapen bat-like creatures with human faces and long prehensile tails capped with quivering hooks. He sees eyes, deep and cold and black, shards of ice encased in dark flesh.
His arm is wounded. He bleeds shadow bile that freezes against his skin. Pain blazes from the cut. His skin is overtaken with cold.
Bull-Horns is ripped from the vessel and thrown into the water. The body thrashes before it’s snapped up in the jaws of an oil-skinned marauder, a shark-creature with a pulsating orifice mouth. Bull-Horns vanishes underwater.
He fights on, one-handed. Longspear stands next to him. Blasts of cannon fire issue from the shore behind them, some crude artillery. Gargoyle bodies explode and scatter like clumps of wet sand.
The black warriors struggle on. It’s all but impossible to tell which side has the upper hand.
Deep cold gnaws at his bones. He feels a chill so utter it makes his shadow-stained flesh burn. His head pounds. The glacial air makes his body shake.
A twisted presence worms its way through his veins, some poison from his wound. Soulrazor/Avenger wills the corruptive toxin out of his body, but his flesh pays the price. He isn’t even aware of his own screams until the sound of them hurts his ears.
The barge lands on the far shore. Longspear pulls him to the bottom of the steep slope that leads up into the canyon wall. The bone addled path ascends into a veil of fog. Ancient fossils and hieroglyphs lie embedded in the high stone walls.
When he turns, the barge is back in the river, headed towards the far shore. Longspear is on board, returning to his comrades, not wishing for them to die alone.
Cross watches them fight. He knows they won’t survive. The faith they must have in the Eidolos – in him – is baffling. They know nothing about him, and yet they sacrifice themselves, for they feel he can bring the Shadow Lord’s reign to a certain end.
They have nothing to lose. They want things to change, and they think I can help bring it about.
Skinwings fold their bodies around ebon warriors. Enemies run each other through with saw-bone blades. Mutated mounts trample foes into the ground. Skirmishers are skewered on spears and dragged howling into the waters, where they are consumed by aquatic terrors.
The fliers keep coming. More of the Shadow Lord’s minions storm in from the west.
They’ve forgotten him. Even if the battle had once been about his getting across the river, it isn’t any more. They are lost to their bloodlust and carnage.
He turns away and climbs the path.
His arm throbs with pain. Hurt burns through his body every time he tries to lift the damaged limb. He walks like he’s made of glass, and fears he has some sort of fever.
He makes his way up the narrow path with his blade in his good hand. The rock looks recently shorn: the remains of civilizations have been entombed in the black and crusty stone.
Dark shapes slither up and down the walls. Knots of tension run through his back. He slowly regains feeling in his arm.
His legs are tired. Sooty sweat leaks from his skin. His armor coat feels heavy, and though he no longer needs sleep he briefly remembers what it feels like, and he longs for it.
Molten faces snarl and melt around him. He reaches the top of the path, and finds himself on a shallow trail filled with bone and gravel. Dark trees stand vigil like lost men. The valley and the river below seem like they’re miles away. Black mist rolls over his feet, like he’s stepped into an ink stain. Dark trees surround him, fused together by smoke and fog.
There are riders in the forest, vague silhouettes darker than the shadow-thick sky, gaunt figures who wear dangling fetishes and chains. They have long clawed limbs and curved weapons, hooks and hammers and double-swords, claw-handles and barbed shields. A dozen of the creatures file out of the darkness on sinuous mounts made of blades.
Part of him wonders how he could be so stupid. The emissaries of the Shadow Lords would never leave the entrance to their inner realm unprotected. These are hunters, and they’ve been sent to destroy him.
He doesn’t hesitate. He ignores his pain and moves fast and low into the forest. He knows that he has no chance if he stands and fights, but there’s little room for the riders to navigate in the thick of the trees, and he can use that to his advantage. The iron oaks glow like slivers of the moon, unnaturally bright for the shadow realm.
He is close to the Bla
ck Citadel. Things are more solid, more real.
The rider’s gangly weapons sweep low to the ground and stir dead leaves. Their mount’s eyes shine silver.
He bends around the trees and dodges a long blade. Sparks fly as steel strikes the forest, like the trees themselves are made of iron. He brings Soulrazor/Avenger up and cleaves through black armor flesh, metal fused to tissue. The blade hisses as he buries it into the rider’s face. The creature makes a high-pitched draconian sound that reminds him of boiling lobster.
Another rider comes at him. He dodges back, uses the cobalt trees for cover.
His heart pounds. He hears the dissonant whinnies of primordial steeds that smell of carbon and fused metal. The air is deathly cold. Every breath freezes and falls.
The rider swings at him, but he deflects the blow with his double-blade. His arm reels from the impact as the force of the attack drives him to the ground. The creature and its mount rear up, one a part of the other, a centaur made of shadows. The mount’s hoofed feet kick at the air.
The blade gives him strength. Harlequin power surges through him, a bastard fusion of diametric energies. His attack sears through the mount and into the rider, and tears them both apart. They explode in a brittle cloud of dust glass that rains like pellets to the forest floor.
White hands erupt out of the ground, and they reach up and grab him. The other riders charge through the trees. Desperate, he cleaves through the clawing ice limbs. Pale blood sprays onto the black earth.
He flees deeper into the forest.
We search.
He runs for hours. Hooves thunder behind him.
He can’t stop. Blood pounds in his ears. He waits to be crushed by a blow to the back. His legs ache with fatigue. He runs through a forest covered in frost smoke and made dense with darkness. Trees like slivers of ice cage him in.
The riders cease their pursuit. He isn’t sure how long it has been since he’s lost them. He slows, and walks deeper into trees turned blue with frost.
The sky is different. The normally dank illumination that suffuses the Whisperlands fades to a frozen lunar shine that makes everything ghostly. The shadows recede. He sees the stark details of the bone trees and the scarred terrain. Skeletons sit in piles of frozen leaves and seem to stare at him.
Time is slower, like the air has thickened.
He struggles against the cold. Every crunching leaf echoes like breaking glass. The air tastes of forest rot and burning ice.
There are fires in the distance. He moves ahead cautiously. Soulrazor/Avenger feels heavy in his hand.
The trees grow taller as he nears the gates of a grim city. The settlement is made of fortified wood held together by iron sap. Thin streams of milky water run in a perimeter around the forest outpost. Tall arrow slits reveal grim shadow faces with pale eyes. Bows are aimed at him, and he senses the presence of a mage’s spirit. The creatures are vaguely reptilian.
What is your business here? He hears the question, but when he tries to answer they’re all gone. Only the dead forest city remains. The water has turned to dust. The gates lie shattered.
There are no creatures there, living or dead. He finds crushed wagons and open homes, abandoned watch posts and weapons long unused.
His feet shuffle in frozen dirt. Open doorways look like hollow eyes. He feels like he’s being watched, even though he knows he’s alone. Nothing living has dwelled within those walls for a very long time.
We search.
He knows this City of Thorns is where the arcane natives came from. This was their home, when they’d had a home. This place is stranded, exiled in the Whisperlands just as Earth is stranded in the world After The Black.
He wonders why they left. He feels he should be afraid, but he isn’t.
He wanders from house to house. The small wooden structures are bereft of furnishings. Ice and dust cover everything. Glitters of frozen crystal litter the ground like fallen stars.
There is a well at the center of the city. Its broken stone wall surrounds a shaft that runs deep into the frozen sludge. There are bones at the bottom, frozen white shards of once-humans that glitter in the pale air.
He moves on.
The west end of the City is a small shrine, similar in many ways to the place where he’d first met the natives, the building where they’d worshipped the triple-succubus deity. The building is sinuous and curved. It’s an almost organic thing made of cold wood and black iron. Frozen glass covers the temple’s face.
The gaping doorway seems to stretch wider as he approaches. He senses a cold presence inside, but he is beyond fear. He will keep moving and earn his escape, or else he will die. He is tired of walking with no purpose.
The air in the shrine is warmer than outside. The pale light won’t penetrate the gloomy interior.
A black corpse waits in the shrine. The ebon warrior kneels in penitence, petrified in reams of ice. Its dead eyes are cast to the ground, and its arms are frozen forward. Its hands grasp at something it will never hold.
He steps closer, and his eyes follow to where the corpse’s fingers point at something buried beneath the frost on the wall.
We search.
He looks upon that frozen figure and understands. They’d left that place, their home, to find a way to escape the Whisperlands, but something kept them from ever returning.
They forgot what they were…who they were. They went off to find a way out, but once they left this city they forgot what they were looking for. The Whisperlands corrupted their minds before they could complete their quest, and now that this place is dead they can never gain that knowledge back.
But they still remember that they search. They remember that they came from the City of Thorns, even if they can’t recall what they’d left to search for, or why.
Maybe that’s why I’m here, he wonders. Maybe they need me to finish the search for them. To find what they couldn’t.
He turns away from the corpse and wipes the ice from the stone. What he sees there chills his heart.
Suddenly, he knows what he must do. He knows why it’s so important for him to escape that dread realm.
I just hope I’m not too late.
nine
GREY
They took Kane below deck and led him down a narrow and dimly-lit hall filled with dangling hooks and rusted steel plates. Dank doorways led to foul-smelling rooms. They brought him to a wide cabin lined with wooden pillars, work benches and a table covered in sharp tools.
Ronan sat on a chair in the middle of the room. His hands were bound behind his back.
“Ronan!”
“It’s ok, Mike. They’re not going to hurt you.” Ronan looked up at the nearest reptilian, who glared back at him with yellow-gold eyes. “Well…not yet…”
They fastened Kane to a chair with a length of nylon cord and then cut Ronan loose. A reptilian sentry armed with an iron spear and a pistol in his belt escorted Ronan from the room, while two of the creatures stayed in the cabin with Kane.
“Just relax, Kane,” Ronan said as they led him out of the room. “It doesn’t take long.”
“What? WHAT doesn’t take long?!” he yelled.
One of the reptilians stood right in front of him. It wore no boots, which gave Kane a clear view of its clawed and iguana-like feet. Its skin was deep grey and brown, and its claws were diamond black. The creature wore a sun-colored leather cloak with epaulets on the shoulders. Beneath the coat, the creature wore an armored vest covered in thaumaturgic apparatus, a network of opaque tubes and metal syringes managed by a small clockwork engine. Green-grey saliva dripped from beneath its gasmask, and its eyes shone brightly in the dim golden light that spilled through the shuttered port windows.
“Hi.” It was all Kane could think of to say.
The creature watched him for a moment, and then nodded to the other creature in the room. The larger reptilian stepped up and wrapped its arm around Kane’s throat as it put him into a painful headlock. His back and shoulders a
ched as he was twisted and contorted. Breaths caught like balls in his throat.
“Stop…that…” he coughed.
The creature in the coat leaned in close. Its grey and scaly hands were encased in some sort of arcane gauntlet, just like the ones Cross wore, leather and metal straps set with spidery nodes that extended along the back of each long finger. A dull black gem on the back of the gauntlet pulsed with light that intensified as the creature’s hands drew closer to Kane. He felt heat pulse against his skin, a toxic glow that smelled of fish and seawater.
The air grew moist. Sweat trickled down his face.
Relax, a voice said in his head. We must prepare you.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Kane coughed as claws took hold of his face. “Wait…you’re not even…talking…”
Quiet, the voice commanded. It took Kane a moment to realize the voice was his own voice, and that it spoke inside his head.
His skin burned. Sickness crawled in his stomach, and every ache and wound he’d acquired in the past twenty-four hours came rushing back at him. He struggled there, wracked with pain and nausea and about to pass out, forced to keep still as grisly green energy poured down his throat.
Images flashed through his mind with violent force.
He sees sinking sand and giant faces, obelisks of bone slate and rust. Massive winged creatures, primordial brutes with razor maws and sawblade ridges down their armored backs, scream into a black sky. There is blood on the ground and smoke in the air.
Rows of reptile-fleshed humanoids stand bound and bloodied at the edge of a deep pit. Something pushes them down, one by one, and they writhe and scream as they fall. Something in the depths of the hole consumes them, a dark and ancient presence with cold and calculating hunger.
Kane was back on the ship. He felt wrung dry, drained of all his energy and strength. The taste in his mouth and the cloying dampness on his chest and legs told him he’d vomited. His muscles ached so badly it felt like he’d been running for days.
Crown of Ash (Blood Skies, Book 4) Page 10