Shadowmasque

by Michael Cobley

  “I see,” Calabos said as he climbed with heavy footsteps. “Have any of his….talents manifested themselves?”

  “Hmm — not as yet.”

  Daguval was fit for his age and showing no strain when he reached the head of the spiral stairs. Calabos, as a matter of habit, deepened his breathing and leaned slightly on the wall as he mounted the last step. They had arrived at a narrow landing with two doors.

  “You know,” Daguval said, “last week he and I had the most fascinating discussion about Cabringan poetry from the reign of Droshan the First. Was he ever an archivist, I wonder…if such a query is permissable?”

  “I would not be violating my trust to say that certain archives were in his charge...prior to his tragic misfortune.”

  Bishop Daguval nodded gravely, then turned to one of the two doors and gingerly pressed his ear against the dark-grained wood.

  “All seems to be calm,” he said. “You may enter, as you wish. I shall await you in the vigil cell.” He indicated the other exit.

  Calabos faced the door, thoughts aswirl with apprehension. Then he steeled himself, opened the door and stepped in side.

  The room was low-ceilinged and oblong in shape, with a bed recess in the same wall as the entrance. The grey, rough-mortared walls were bare except for a framed piece of embroidery depicting trees and indistinct lines of verse. Embers were slowly dying in a small hearth in one corner where there was also a half-empty basket of kindling, a solid wooden chair and a low, three-legged stool. A burnished brass oil lamp hung from a shoulder-high iron bracket, adding amber radiance to the weak light that filtered through the single, curtained window. In the middle of the room was a square, heavily-built wooden table littered with carpenter’s offcuts, odd lengths of branch stripped of bark, and a few piece of planking. Some of them bore evidence at woodcarving, rough semi-reliefs of horses’ heads, ships and fish. The corner of the table closest to the door had also been engraved, a fantastic tangle of leaves, berries and vines with the snouts of tiny foxes peering out here and there.

  An offshoot of tendrils and foliage wound along the table edge to where the figure of a man clad in a grubby yellow smock sat bent over a flat section of golden torwood. As he worked on the piece with a small implement held tightly in hand, his hunched posture managed to convey a kind of furious intensity. Calabos smiled to himself as he regarded his old companion, his self-chosen charge, but before he could speak -

  “He is here!” said the man as he put down the implement and turned.

  Three hundred years or more had not blunted the piercing severity that shone from Coireg Mazaret’s eyes during these periods of derangement.

  Calabos met the unbalanced gaze as understanding settled into his thoughts. The Lord of Twilight is here….

  “You’re certain? How can you know?”

  Mazaret uttered a dry, contemptuous laugh and rummaged through the heap of woodpieces before him. “How else would I know? — by my sensing of the Wellsource, naturally. It still lives in the deepest deeps of the Void yet I can feel every quiver and ripple in its constricted flux. Some of it, however, is bleeding across the realms and now His hungering spirit is abroad once more.”

  He paused as he found what he sought among the now-scattered sections of branch and beam, a dark piece which he clutched to his chest as he went on. Calabos attended closely while a sense of inner dread crept over him.

  “His hungering spirit,” Mazaret repeated, a feverish light in his eyes. “He never died at the crux of that final battle, you know, not wholly, not truly — I’ve read your dramatised account and you were wise to not to fabricate some improbably scene with the boy-Emperor overmastering the Prince of Dusk….”

  “So where is he?” Calabos said.

  “He reigns in blackness,” said Coireg, a slow, malign smile coming to his lips. “In glittering, soaring, magnificent blackness….” He half turned in his seat while considering Calabos with a sly, sidelong glance. “Tell me — do you ever think of the dead, poet, your dead?”

  Calabos gritted his teeth. For three centuries, he thought, the same cursed question…

  “Not my dead,” he said.

  “The great plains of Khatris laid to waste, its towns and villages ransacked, their inhabitants slain or enslaved — ”

  “Not my dead,” he repeated sharply.

  Coireg stood to face him. “Was it not your hand that plundered the lands of Yularia and Anghatan of their menfolk? Many tens of thousands they were and every one was emptied out by your Acolyte servants then made into fit vessels for more ancient, loyal spirits…”

  “Not by my hand,” Calabos said grimly.

  “...then there’s the dead Mogaun, the dead of Besh-Darok, and those of your masked slave army who died twice.” Mazaret had moved towards him and was almost an arm’s length way. “A vast, smothering host of the dead, an abyss of agony, an ocean of blood.” His grin was savage. “Your dead. Your hand.”

  Gaze met gaze, will locked with will. Calabos had to consciously resist the pressure of this unhinged, malefic presence before him while keeping in mind that it was only a fragment of Coireg Mazaret, twisted and deformed by the inhuman tortures of the spirit that he underwent three centuries ago.

  “The I that I am,” Calabos said in a low voice, “scarcely existed when Byrnak was stumbling along the path laid down for him by other. When He…..was freed by the melded sword, Byrnak ceased to exist, leaving behind a walking shell and a few instincts and habits, enough to rattle around inside and create the semblance of being…”

  Before him, Mazaret laughed darkly. “But you remember, don’t you?”

  It was true. His mind, even after all these years, remained the voluminous storehouse of another’s memories but it went beyond that. His hands were the hands which had held the axe which had lopped off Kiso’s hands and feet on the fateful night of Tauric’s capture. It had been his powers which had subdued Ystregul, the Black Priest, and imprisoned him in that spell-laden casket after the first abortive assault on Besh-Darok; his chest which had been pierced by the melded sword in the hands of Nerek….

  Calabos breathed in deeply and slowly exhaled, feeling the tension ebb. The longevity laid upon him by his god-host role had also provided or cursed him with persistent, undimmed memories of those experiences (unlike his experiences since which were prone to fading or misremembrance). Many times he had tried to expunge them from his mind with drink, drugs, hypnosis or sorcery or some combination thereof. But nothing, he found, could wipe them away so over time he alternated between avoiding conscious recollection of Byrnak’s part in it all, or striving to come to terms with it — his penning of ‘The Great Shadowking War’ was an attempt of the latter kind.

  Then there were the recurring encounters with Coireg Mazaret’s madness, likewise a consquence of an immersion in horror and the full force of the Wellsource.

  “My memories are my own,” he said. “To embrace or reject or treat as I see fit.” He leaned forward a little and met Mazaret’s unfriendly gaze. “That aside, it would be of great use to us if you were to tell me where He is….”

  Mazaret’s smile grew sly. “In the Nightrealm, the domain of the Eternal.”

  “Which is where?”

  But Mazaret was not listening, his febrile stare wandering around the room. “Do you remember what I said to atop the great keep of Rauthaz?”

  Calabos’ recollection of that moment was effortless and all that was said paraded through his mind even as Mazaret gave his own recitation.

  “Ghosts in the sky and sea and the black chasm of the night...armies and nations of ghosts….”

  Mazaret held out his hand, at last offering the piece of black ironwood to Calabos who warily accepted it as the words continued;

  “...a world full of ghosts, full to overspilling, hungry enough to eat the flesh of the sky and bones of the land, leaving nothing, only shadows….” Then he stepped back, his face gone pale with fear and his eyes seemingly fixed on somethin
g unseen. “The world is a ghost, a flimsy parchment skin stretched across a blackened skull…!”

  Then the eyes rolled up, showing the whites, and he keeled over, knocking a chair aside as he fell to the floor. Calabos leaped forward, levered Coireg’s head and shoulders up off the woodshaving-strewn floor, then hauled him over to the boxbed in its corner alcove. As he laid him out o the plain grey pallet, there were signs of returning awareness, a groan then a weak coughing as the eyes fluttered open. Calabos poured a beaker of water from a jug on the floor and offered it. Gratefully, Coireg nodded and drank.

  “You are a good friend,” he said at last. “I wish that I were less of a burden to you and more of a help.”

  “You’ve been more help than you know,” Calabos said. “From the very outset of our journeying.”

  “If only I could be now…” Coireg Mazaret shook his head gingerly. “Everything my shadow half rants about these days is overlaid with a symbolic esoterism that I cannot penetrate.”

  “He was quite unambiguous about our old adversary,” Calabos pointed out. “He is here…”

  “And he mentioned a place….” Mazaret paused to yawn widely, “somewhere called ‘the Nightrealm, domain of the eternal’. It seems familiar.”

  Calabos frowned. “I’ve heard it too, but it must have been since the war — I cannot recall where or when…” Certainty evaded him, but as he thought on it some possibilities suggested themselves. “It sounds like part of a ritual prayer, or perhaps an invocation…”

  He stopped, realising that Coireg Mazaret was fast asleep.

  Truly, Calabos thought, you are a sailor upon your own restless seas, trawling strange catches from the deep.

  Carefully, he placed the jug and beaker on the floor but within easy reach of the boxbed then rose and quietly left the room. Out in the narrow hall, he took the ironwood carving from his pocket and examined it. The detail was very fine which made the subect matter all the more disturbing — it depicted a flat surface from which the forms of people protruded, faces, head and shoulders, hands and arms. All seemed to be struggling, as if drowning…

  Then the other door opened and the elderly Bishop Daguval emerged, and Calabos unhurriedly slipped the carving away out of sight.

  “Did you find him in a tractable mood?” said the bishop.

  “Intractable,” Calabos said with a wry smile. “Yet oddly informative.”

  “And now?”

  “Sleeping soundly,” Calabos said. “The madness lifted from him but left him exhausted…”

  Daguval nodded sagely. “Yes, my friend, that is a familiar consequence but I shall prepare some broth in case he wake later.”

  “Thank you for all you have done,” Calabos said, moving towards the downleading stairs. “Unfortunately, I must return to Sejeend to meet with several close colleagues. When he next regains his senses, tell him that I shall return in a few days.”

  “I shall,” the bishop said. “May you have a safe journey.”

  Calabos smiled then descended the stairs, thinking about Mazaret’s words and the carving and, for once, quite forgetting to walk like an old man.

  Chapter Four

  Tiny bells can ring clear and wide,

  In the sacred silence of great temples.

  Small stones can disturb the still mirrors,

  Of calm and windless lakes.

  Thus, the purer and stronger the light,

  The deeper and darker the shadow.

  —Prayers At Midnight, Keldon Ghant

  Vorik dor-Galyn finally found the cluster of shabby workshops, but they seemed much further back along the steep-sided dale of the Kala than the clerk Jumil had suggested. A steady trickle of cityfolk passed along the walkways still, yet Vorik had doffed his mask, relying for concealment on his cloak and cowl and the foliage-muted light of mid-afternoon.

  The workshops were part of a long, low rough-tooled building divided into small, open sections where the likes of farriers, fletchers and weavers plied their trade. He approached the dank, shaded end of it and leaned against the corner post. The nearest of the workshops was empty and disused and although it was where he had to go he had to wait for a pause in the flow of passers-by. Before long the visible path either direction became deserted so he swiftly made for the rear of the vacant workshop where he used a crude key to open a rickety door. Beyond it was a dark narrow room reeking of mould. From an inner pocket he took a velvet pouch and tipped out a bright, glowing gem hung on a long chain. Wrapping it around one wrist, Vorik could see that a layer of broken detritus covered the floor so with careful footing he picked his way to the end of the room where a tall cupboard stood against the outer wall. A second key, smaller and finer than the first, opened its heavy door to reveal an empty interior with only a few wooden hooks still fixed to the back at head height. He reached in and twisted the hook furthest to the right, whereupon the back of the cupboard split down the middle and swung inwards, opening on a dim passage.

  A wave of stone-cold air brushed Vorik’s face as he clambered through, then closed first the cupboard door followed by the secret doors. Turning, he held up the light-gem to illuminate his surroundings — the passage had been hewn through the solid rock in a manner which all the surfaces uneven yet oddly free of roughness or sharp protrusions. The cold rock was so undulantly smooth to the touch that he wonder if the action of running water could have been the cause. Then he noticed something embedded in the rock, irregularities that looked like teeth. But even as he fingered them in the light of the gem, a voice came from further along the passage:

  “Don’t loiter, Vorik! — you know how I hate to be kept waiting!”

  He jerked upright in surprise, uttering an oath under his breath. It was Jumil, sounding close enough to be just past the first curve of the passageway before him. But when he hurried round it there was no-one to be seen, just more tunnel sloping gently downwards into darkness.

  He must have dashed on ahead of me, Vorik thought. What fool’s game is this?

  Vorik felt his anger rise as he hastened along the tunnel. Ever since those cursed Watchers snatched Ondene away last night his temper had been on a short leash, and up until recently he would have been unconcerned about expressing his anger before Jumil, or even berating him on occasion. But almost a week ago, after not hearing from him for two days, Vorik received a message ordering him to find four willing men among the city’s dregs and bring them that night to a safe house by the West Wharfs. This he duly did, arriving with the new recruits in a cart. The house was a primitive dwelling, little more than a single, packed-earth floor room with a scullery and pantry in an alcove and a couple of smoky lamps hanging from the two supporting posts. Jumil was waiting within, and he locked the front and only door when they were all inside. Vorik had been in the mood to deliver a stinging rebuke to him but held his tongue when he saw the sheathed broadsword hanging on the man’s hip.

  Jumil had then directed the men to sit in four chairs already arranged in a square in the centre of the room. What happened next seared itself into Vorik’s memories.

  Jumil had regarded them one by one, then announced that he only had need of three of them, pointing them out. The fourth he approached, laid a hand on his shoulder and asked him to say something about his family. A strange light entered the seated man’s eyes as he began to gibber on about parents and cousins, yet Vorik had thought nothing of it. For the next moment or two.

  The clerk Jumil had listened to this prattle, nodding at this point or that, then calmly drew forth his sword and hacked off the man’s leg. Vorik had cursed in shock, as did the other three men, yet their companion still gabbled on and on as if nothing had happened. There was blood, yet only a steady trickle, and the words kept coming even as Jumil lopped off the other leg and both arms until he was standing in a welter of gore with the still-living torso sat on a red-drenched chair, still talking. Silence came with the final blow, after which Jumil promised the other three, pale and quivering with fear as they wer
e, that there would be great rewards for obedience and loyalty.

  Then he told them to await his orders and dismissed them. All three were near rigid with terror as they quickly left: Vorik, on the other hand, had a stronger disposition towards carnage, having served with the Imperial army in eastern Honjir, teaching bloody lessons to Carver trespassers. But the sight of this made him realise that something fundamental in Jumil had changed, for the bloody performance had been as much for his benefit as for the three new hirelings. And Vorik had more knowledge than they of the great powers Jumil had at his disposal, powers that Vorik often dreamed of possessing.

  It was this ambition that had drawn Jumil to him some months previously, leading firstly to the Revelation Initiation, a sorcerous ritual which made manifest the powers of Shadow, drawn from the Lord of Twilight himself who had yet endured. Although much diminished, he was still at one with the Wellsource which enable him to conduct his stratagems from a refuge hidden beyond the many veils of the Void. Secondly came his ordination as Master of the Flock which brought with it the responsibility for recruiting Nightkin and the promise of power.

  All of this trailed through Vorik’s thoughts as he hurried and stumbled along the strange tunnel which wound this way and that, steadily descending into the cold bedrock beneath Sejeend. After a time the tunnel turned and opened out to a low chamber lit by torched jutting from sockets in the walls.

  “At last. Your sense of urgency leaves a great deal to be desired.”

  Jumil was over at the far wall, garbed in his customary long black robes. Next to him, standing with face to the wall, was a naked man, his arms and leg trembling, his head covered with a hood.

  “I came with all speed, honoured one,” Vorik said carefully, as if his anger was an obstruction he had to speak around. “But I did not realise how long the passage was…”