He was standing at the side of a stone customhouse, accompanied by his lieutenants and Gont and Reshik, captains of the Hound and the Snake. The crews of all three of his ships were gathered in clusters flanking both of the great dock gates, yet they were almost lost in the mass of dead men who were spread all along the wharf in their hundreds, standing near-motionless, exchanging not a word, and utterly unaffected by the smoke from the burning timbers and debris. Bureng could see the grey-pallored Hanavok off to one side by himself, his head turning this way and that as he shifted his stare from the smoke-swathed battlements to the fires at the sea gates, then to the dark outlines of his ships crowding the long piers of the Silver Landings.
What nameless thoughts were filtering through the sluggish mind of the undead admiral? Bureng wondered while being certain that impatience was not one of them.
He cursed and kicked a barrel off the edge of the dock. As it splashed heavily into the unseen waters, he rounded on Bull Arik.
“So where are they?” he snarled. “Why are the gates still sealed?”
“Captain, we sent eight squads over the wall,” Arik said, eyes wide with fear. “You’d’ve thought that at least one’d get through -”
“Send more over.”
“But they’ll be expecting…”
“Do it! — or I’ll cut out your tongue!”
Shoulders slumped, Bull Arik walked over to a group of crewmen standing by the wall. But before he could issue any orders, a ragged cheer went up from the further away of the massive gates which began to swing open. At once Bureng shouted at Hanavok to get the revenant pirates moving through to the city. For a moment the admiral looked at him with black, unreadable eyes, pits of distilled emptiness, then raised aloft a corroded sword and stalked over to the widening gates. Corpse eyes stirred and decayed feet began trudging as if to some silent battlecry.
Bureng followed close behind, one hand grasping the mirror talisman, and at his side trotted Rikken, faithful, doglike Cursed Rikken who was secretly carrying the Crevalcor codex in a locked leather satchel slung across his shoulders. Bureng had not dared leave it aboard the Mocker, yet felt that its bulk would be to encumbering so he decided to entrust it to Rikken whose loyalty he knew was beyond question.
As his lieutenants and chosed guards forced a way through the press of dead shuffling men, he felt a rising sense of anticipation, excitement, hunger. He had received four more spirit-wraiths during the slow voyage to Sejeend and the memory of their absorption into his mind led him to savour from afar this other presence, this counterpart who also regarded him with a similar rapacity.
Such a celebration of pleasure it will be, he though, to crush your defiance then devour the very stuff of your making, piece by piece, power by power. Then I will be greater than you or any of those scurrying magelings, and I will build an empire that will never fall!
Then they were through, part of a great surge of invaders pouring into the streets of Sejeend. There were a few defensive points, not much more than a few packing crates heaped with sandbags or an overturned cart, whose handfuls of soldiers either fled or were quickly overwhelmed. There were other soldiers and archers on rooftops and balconies from where a mounting hail of fire was coming, but Bureng now had only one prize in mind:
“To the Keep!” he bellowed.
* * *
A gusting breeze made the signal banners up on the Keep’s roof snap while torches flickered wildly in their niches on the brick walls of the square storage bunker. A dozen and a half archers, mostly Imperial army men, were at the walls watching for any likely-looking shapes in the streets below. There were also another half dozen engineers manning the two arc-throwers, war machines designed to hurl heavy, weighted arrow. Just then, however, there were no invaders in sight or in range so a good deal of joke-telling and barrack gossip was being exchanged as well as murmured speculation about the Iron Guard officer and his two companions who stood across the other side of the keep roof.
But for all that they kept their voices low enough to avoid their serjeant’s attention, the Shadowking still heard all that they said, each and every word as clear as those spoken by Jumil and Vorik nearby.
“…but if Ilgarion had not stripped the city of all his seasoned troops, we wouldn’t be in this situation,” Jumil was saying irritably.
“If we had known what this Shadowking was capable of, I might have been able to persuade Shumond to keep an entire company of the Iron Guard here,” Vorik said. “As it is, High Steward Roldur and his officers are struggling with the Cabringan levies and there’s few enough of them.”
“I’ve told you already that the crafting of great powers is not a discipline of exact measurement,” Jumil snapped. “The Wellsource resists detailed alignment or neatness — it wants to be used, not constricted, set loose not marshalled, which is why a Wellsource mage needs such a strength of purpose and will, qualities that this other clearly must possess in order to have concealed himself and his campaign for so long…”
The Shadowking smiled to himself at that. His rival was scarcely capable of controlling his base and inchoate desires, never mind consciously adopting a clandestine scheme. Jumil was merely attempting to mask his own inadequacies in the eyes of his brutish underling, this Vorik. From this vantage point, however, the Shadowking could see that the situation was deteriorating with the line at the Valewater wharfs starting to collapse while one of the Silver Landings gates was now open. Soon there would be a request….
A runner emerged from the main stairs and hurried to whisper a message to Vorik who nodded and dismissed him. Then he looked at Jumil.
“About two hundred of these pirates have outflanked the waterfront defences near the Valewater,” he said, standing. “Some made for the Melvio Stairs but the bulk of them are headed this way. The waterfront line is in tatters as well, with more raiders spreading through the streets with no particular formation. But the best news is that they’ve broken through at the Silver Landings.” He smiled sourly. “Perhaps the time for the crafting of great powers is upon us. Excuse me, master, but I must give the serjeant and his men new orders.”
As Vorik strode across the keep roof, the Shadowking watched Jumil stare off to the north and could feel him trying to extend his senses as if seeking to verify what had been told.
“It is true,” the Shadowking said casually. “All of it.”
The Wellsource mage regarded him coldly. “Your powers reach far and deep,” he said. “How easily can you draw upon the Wellsource?”
The Shadowking ignored the question and turned to lean on the stone crenellation of the battlement, leaning out to inhale hints of smoke.
“You call your master the Great Shadow,” he said. “Who or what is he?”
“You know him well,” Jumil said.
“I know what all the bits of me once knew,” he said. “Taken together they say that I am still only a part of the godhead that was broken, splintered and scattered at the end of the Shadowking War. Are you saying that there is yet another of we half-blind remnants, a third Shadowkinglet vying for whatever trickles of power still find their way to the Realm Between? Answer!”
Jumil smiled calmly. “Like calls unto like and it is not necessary to exhibit every line of influence, every armature of intent for powers to follow their nature and thus work in concert.”
“It is of interest to me, understand? Why should I submit to the schemes of one who may be no more than an equal, if that?”
“He is both less than that and more,” Jumil said. “Further I cannot say — you will just have to trust to his plans and to me.”
The Shadowking laughed. “Why trust when I can squeeze the truth out of you?”
Unruffled, Jumil met his gaze. “You could try.”
With unthinking instinct, the Shadowking reached out with his mind, seeking purchase and openings….but found only a perfect, intractable barrier. The closer he examined it and what lay behind it, the better he came to understand the futili
ty of coercion, for although he was able to break down that defence, Jumil would undoubtedly abandon his physical frame rather than disclose what he knew.
“You see how pointless it would be,” Jumil said. “How my passing would wreck our plans for a new realm here. That is what the Nightkin and the Shatterseed are for, to prepare this world for a new beginning.” He glanced over at the soldiers. “However, these raiders are drawing near and I see that most of them have been raised from death…interesting too, that their unlife is sustained by spell-infused charms. I fear that they may be too much for the Keep’s troops to cope with — perhaps you could go down and lend assistance? A small matter for such as we, true, yet it may get out of hand otherwise.”
The Shadowking nodded and grinned, marvelling at the way Jumil had turned his weakness into a strength. Clearly, he still had a lot to learn.
“Give death to the undead?” he said. “Why not?”
Saying no more, he rose and walked across the gloomy roof to the wide, downward steps. He was still wearing the long, dun cloak given to him just after the coalescence but he doffed it and threw it into a corner as he decended. Beneath he had on heavy quilted troos and an old, dyed-red leather harness, all scuffed, cracked and scored but still serviceable. He also had a long, horn-handled dagger in a sheath at his side but he knew that he would have no need of it. The floors of the Keep were mostly deserted, some unlit apart from the lamps of the square stairwell, and he passed no-one on the way down.
At the first floor he decided to leave by one of the large windows rather than go out the main door. Using a whisper of Wellsource he jumped the 20 feet or so, landing lightly on his feet. He then loped swiftly and silently across the cobbled side-court to a stairway that rose to the top of the 30-foot courtyard wall. The sentries on the ramparts were watching the group of figures gathering to the west, across a tree-adorned square and a wide road beyond, so he was able to drop down to the street outside unnoticed.
He then soundlessly threaded his way through the shadows towards the other side of the square. Hearing voices he scale the side of a shop and padded along a recessed sloping roof then onto a balcony which ran along to an alleyway and round the building’s corner. There, below, a crowd of undead raiders was gathering, accompanied by a small number of living brigands. Some kind of argument was developing so the Shadowking crouched in the darkness and listened.
“You better be getting across there to fight them ironcaps,” one of the brigands was saying. “Captain Raleth don’t take kindly to them as disobeys orders…”
“This….was not his….command,” came the wheezing voice of one of the revenant pirates. “This is….not…our desire…we wish only….a final ending….”
“Curse your rotten mouth! Move, I say!”
“You do not….hold the shield….your words….mean nothing…”
There was the metallic hiss of a sword drawn forth.
“We…would welcome the edge…of your blade, we….crave death’s return…”
“What’s this?” said a new voice. “Gaf, put up your sword!”
The Shadowking smiled in the dark. He had felt the aura of the talisman and its bearer, felt the webs of power shift and contract even before he saw the newcomer approach at the head of a band of pirates and carrying an iron shield. To the living, it would seem to be no more than an unremarkable, battered buckler but to the Shadowking’s eye it was a semi-living thing crawling with Wellsource power which pulsed from the intricate symbol scribed upon its face.
“These carrion ain’t attacking, captain!”
The man with the shield, Raleth, glared at the massed crowd of the undead.
“Why do you hold back?” he said.
“It is…not our….desire…” said the hoarse spokesman. “But…you have the….talisman…what is…your will…”
Raleth pointed across the square at Hojamar Keep. “There is the stronghold of our enemies. I want everyone inside slain…”
The Shadowking decided that now was the moment and with one lithe movement leaped over the balcony, landing softly at the crowd’s edge.
“No-one,” he said, “is going to attack that keep.”
Heads turned and the crowd parted as Raleth came towards him, pausing a few yards away, suspicion and contempt in his face.
“Really?” he sneered. “No-one? Well, begging your pardon, your lordship, but I have other plans and plundering yonder fort is top o’ my list!”
The Shadowking ignored his words. “Not only is no-one going to attack the keep, but you’re going to give me that shield of yours.”
Raleth laughed. “A merry jape, fool, but I have no time for this…”
The Shadowking took a single stride towards the nearest of Raleth’s undead pirates and reached out to lightly stroke his forehead. The blank-eyed, stiff-faced revenant lurched back a step, swayed there for a second, then fell apart in a cascade of dessicated skin, dust and bones. There were curses from the living and silence from the dead as Raleth bellowed, “Protect me!”
Scores of the grey, impassive revenants converged on the Shadowking with a strange alacrity as it they were sleepwalkers eager to awake. As with the first, he had only to sever the invisible threads of power that bound them to the talismanic shield and thus to that dry, empty unlife. One by one he dealt with them, like a priest bestowing a benediction, his touch released them from servitude. Then, as the ranks of the undead began to thin, he came face to face with one of Raleth’s own pirates who snarled as he brought a long axe arcing down towards the Shadowking’s head.
He swept up one arm, a blur of motion, and grabbed the haft of the axe just below the blade. Then he wrenched it from the hands of the surprised pirate and struck him in the face with the leather-bound grip. As he went down, the Shadowking spun the axe in one hand to gain a proper grasp, sent a few more undead assailants to oblivion with the other hand, then turned to seek out Raleth in the darkness of the alley. The pirate was backing away towards a side wynd while a section of his raiders were advancing across the square.
He vigorously laid about him with the axe then leaped across the heaps of bone and dusty, torn garments in pursuit of Raleth who had broken into a run. In only a few strides he was within arms length of the man, and chose to tap him on the side of the head with the flat of the axe. Raleth cried out as he went down, losing the shield as he rolled across the filthy ground to sprawl motionless by a brick wall. As the Shadowking picked up the shield, Raleth’s undead pirates as well as his own brigands were moving towards him from either end of the alleyway, dark figures dimly lit by lamplight from a high window. Among the dead men, the living ones bared their teeth and readied their blades…
Regarding them, he raised the shield, focussed his mind on the scribed symbol it bore and let Wellsource power pour into it. In seconds the symbol began to glow red, then yellow, then white before it melted and ran in rivulets down the shield. By then, all the undead were turning on the living in their midst and the Shadowking tossed the shield aside as he walked untouched through the furious battle to the wider alley then out to the tree-darkened square.
The shield talisman, he realised, was a source of control rather than the means of maintaining the revenant spell. He could see other threads or power trailing of to the coast, to the main docks. As he started in that direction, leaving the clashes and cries behind, a voice came to him, a low sinuous voice;
Ah, so you’re the one. Destroying one of my talismans will avail you little.
“You should give up this siege,” he replied. “Surrender yourself, for it matters not which of us triumphs — the aggregate will be the same, will be a greater whole.”
I see, then you would have no objection to surrendering yourself to me.
“I think not.”
An amusing dilemma.
“But not an unfamiliar one.”
It will be resolved soon, one way or another.
“I can sense your goal,” he said. “Be careful not to get killed bef
ore I reach you.”
I shall be waiting. Bring all of your skill.
The Shadowking laughed and set off at a leisurely run.
* * *
After their escape from the underground chamber of bones, Coireg gave Calabos an account of his experiences while leading them along a tortuously secretive route to the dale of the Kala.
“What’s their name again?” Calabos said, frowning.
“The Ushralanti,” said Coireg. “They’re a clan of traders and hardened sea travellers, as well as talented potion-mixers.”
Calabos smiled, glad beyond words to see his old friend freed from the demon in his mind.
“You wear your sanity well,” he said.
Coireg Mazaret laughed quietly and nodded. “It confers an entirely new perspective on life — I’ve not had the chance to reflect upon the past…for quite some time.”
A look passed between them, unseen by Dardan and Sounek who followed behind as they all slipped through a shadowy alley. Calabos was sticking to the story he had concocted back at the lodge a few days ago, and had let Coireg know with swift whispers during the hasty ascent from Jumil’s lair. And now Coireg was enjoying the benefits of his fortuitous encounter with these Ushralanti who, it seemed, were keen to meet Calabos and discuss matters of moment with him. This made him wonder if Coireg’s encounter with them had been less a matter of chance than it seemed.
A narrow, stone-walled passage between two buildings led to a small, flag-stoned courtyard where rats scurried away from a barrel overflowing with stinking rubbish. Wrinkling his nose, Coireg indicated a door beneath a guttering niche lamp and they hurried after him. Inside, they found themselves wandering through a coaching inn empty of guests and staff alike, a very recent departure going by the still-steaming tankards of mulled wine sitting on the bar counter. From the latticed window Calabos could see that they were now on the north side of the spot where the Kala river dipped into a masonried culvert and vanished beneath the city. When he followed it back through the gloom he could see that a rough barrier of upturned carts and barrels had been thrown across the mouth of the Kala dale.
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