Shadowmasque

by Michael Cobley

  Master, the buildings on the north side of the parade are only covered stalls and two-storey workshops, Tashil said. There’s nowhere for us to take a stand.

  (While our main group is striking their rear, a second group led by Dardan will be heading for your position, enough to keep you from being overwhelmed) Calabos said (By then, hopefully, the revenants will have ceased to be a problem)

  If that’s the plan, then let us proceed, Inryk said. The enemy shows no sign of flagging.

  Which was true enough — down in the street, a mere handful of surviving guards were fleeing uphill through the pouring rain towards another torchlit barricade. Beyond that, Tashil knew, was tree-lined Onwyc Parade which ran west and curved south past the main gates of Hojamar Keep where it met the square there. Where this Jumil and another powerful sorcerer were ensconced, according to Calabos.

  If its absolutely necessary to capture the invaders’ leader, she said, then this seems as good a plan as any.

  (It is necessary, I assure you)

  Then let us press onward, she said. Just tell Dardan not to be late!

  She caught a flash of the old man’s humour, then the presence of his thoughts faded, leaving her in the cold, dim room with the others. By the light of a solitary hooded lamp she could see that her brother, Atemor, was studiously sharpening his sword while Rog and Gillat were chewing on dried beef and hard biscuit which they had looted from an abandoned guardpost near the docks. Inryk stood by the other window, smiling sadly, and she wished briefly that Dybel was with them. But he had been utterly exhausted by the fight out on the bay and was in no fit state to continue: when they moored at the Silver Landings, hard on the heels of the undead ships, the steward Enklar had volunteered to stay aboard the Merry Meddler and mind Dybel, to which the rest agreed.

  Atemor looked up and met her gaze. “Are we to join the battle, ‘Sheel?”

  “After a fashion,” she said and outlined Calabos’ plan. Rog and Gillat shrugged and nodded, while Atemor frowned.

  “A perilous tactic,” he said. “If your friend and his fighters are too late, we die.”

  “When we find the right place from which to launch our attack,” Inryk said, “we could survey the vicinity for possible escape routes…” He glanced out the window, “and the sooner we leave the longer we’ll have.”

  Down in the street, the mob of invaders had swollen in number, now looking to be several hundred strong as they strode uphill. As one, the five companions rose and made for the stairs with Tashil in the lead, employing her mage sight while the lamp was with Gillat who brought up the rear. Outside, they dashed across the cobbled road and clambered over a log wall which blocked a narrow alleyway. While the main streets in this part of Sejeend ran straight, the back streets were a maze of alleyways, passages, private yards, and gardens, and improvised walls. This would have been risky territory for any invading force, crammed with ideal ambush points and avenues of escape both above and below ground.

  It was a higher path that they were taking, a route that lay along courtyard walls, the flat roofs of sheds and middens, balconies and gantries, much of it slippery from the rain. The townsfolk were much more in evidence here than out on the main streets, and the five attracted catcalls and curses as they hurried past open windows and doors. The buildings here were almost uniformly decrepit and crumbling, their brick walls blackened with age, marred by moss and sprouting grass or even small bushes eaves and the crannies around chimney pots. Once, as they traversed an angled roof, a gang of gutter urchins starting throwing stones at them from a nearby low wall until Inryk sent a spray of ice needles their way, forcing them to duck out of sight.

  An intermittent fence of rotten planking marked the boundary between the back streets and the properties that faced onto Onwyc Parade. As they dropped from a rickety balcony down into a muddy lane, Tashil risked a brief sending in farspeech.

  Calabos, she thought. We’re almost in position.

  For a moment there was no reply, then;

  (We’ve got problems…more of the enemy here than we thought so we’re taking another way towards Onwyc — let me know when the main group reaches the parade…)

  She began to agree but he was gone. All was utterly dark in the lane and for a second she thought that the others had abandoned her, until she caught Inryk’s presence nearby. He was just round the corner of a two-storey building, probably one of the workshops.

  “Atemor and the guards have gone inside to scout,” he said as she joined him. He was standing beneath the dripping lintel of a double-doored entrance. “This place is much like the others along this part of the parade. Once the invaders break through the barricade at the top of Beehive Street they’ll have to come past here, whether they’re heading for Kala dale or the Keep…”

  He paused as Rog appeared in the darkened doorway to mutter an all-clear, then lead them along a short passage and up stone steps to a lightless second floor. Gillat was standing over by another set of steps with the hooded lamp, its muffled glow showing up rows of wooden shelves crammed with what looked like pottery. These stairs led up to the roof, emerging beneath a sloping, unsteady wattle-and-canvas canopy which sheltered some small barrels and an open crate half-full of shattered crockery. A knee-high mortared wall enclosed the roof and Atemor was squatting near one of the front-facing corners, staring out at the wide road. Tashil went over to crouch by him, ignoring the rain which was now gusting heavily along Onwyc Parade, rushing through the trees.

  “Sometimes these cities feel more dangerous than the swamps of Gulmaegorn,” Atemor murmured.

  Tashil smiled wryly, knowing the truth in his words. She was about to mention some of the perils of life in their father’s house when a couple of figures dashed into view along the road, close to where Beehive Street began. Sure enough, moments later ragged-looking men came stalking forth in ones and twos at first, then a dense mass of them. Pouring into Onwyc Parade, then wheeled round to march in the direction of Hojamar Keep.

  Swiftly, Tashil went within to focus her farspeech, seeking Calabos — They’ve reached the parade! They’re here…

  Again, a long empty moment.

  (We can’t…we’re hemmed in on an upper floor but our serjeant thinks there’s a way out….Tashil, you must delay them…Dardan will be with you soon….have to…)

  As his thought-aura faded, Tashil came back to the cold wet night to see Inryk crouching beside her, a half-smile on his lips.

  “He’s been held up, but we still have to attack, yes?”

  “That’s right,” she said.

  “It’s going to be a like twisting a moortiger’s tail,” he said. “So — firedaggers in the middle of a downpour….hm, might work…”

  A glittering, roseate radiance bloomed around his hands and he smiled. Tashil laughed softly and looked back out at the enemy host as it approached. The sight was unnerving — only a few carried torches, living pirates probably, and they were grouped near the leading rows, clustered around someone who had to be their mysterious leader. The rest comprised a great shuffling mass numbering in the hundreds, their forms barely discernible as they trudged on in rain-drenched darkness, their deathly presence pervading the surroundings. She could sense the dim flickering awareness of those subjugated spirits, dragged back from the Vale of Unburdening and the other realms of death to act the part in another’s extravagant melodrama. Ending these pitiful existences could only be the grimmest of chores, but a necessary one.

  As the host began to draw level with their position, Tashil resorted to farspeech once more.

  Calabos…Dardan? — we shall soon be in need of your skills…

  (We’re not far away) came Dardan’s irascible response (Just run into a little trouble…carry on…)

  And he was gone. Inryk chuckled.

  “Time to light up the night, methinks.”

  She glanced at the dark host of the undead, whose crowded centre was passing by and suppressed the fear that gnawed at her resolve. She made a �
��hold’ gesture, waited for the trailing edge to straggle by, then nodded. Together, the mages stood, their hands ablaze, and hurled a volley of firedaggers into the central mass of the undead invaders. Hissing like knots of burning snakes, the blazing bolts struck and spread over several forms. Gouts of steam erupted and a few angry cries went up from the living. The dead, though, merely halted and turned to look up at Tashil and the others on the workshop roof, all clearly following the overarching regard of their master. For a frozen moment, Tashil almost felt the eery pressure of hundreds of dead gazes focused unwinkingly on those who had dared to assail them. Then the entire mass of sodden figures moved as one towards the workshop.

  Almost immediately, Tashil heard a shout and sounds of fighting from over by the steps — Rog and Gillat were hacking and kicking at figures trying to climb up to the roof while Atemor was rolling two barrels over from the other end of the shelter.

  “They’re not part of the crowd at the front,” Tashil yelled. “Where have they come from?”

  As Atemor steered the barrels one after another into the open stair hatch, Tashil gritted her teeth and turned back to the street before the workshop. As the undead crowded in close to the walls, she and Inryk sent repeated barrages of firedaggers down into the press but with little obvious effect.

  Dardan! she thought in farspeech. Now would be a very good time….

  (Wait…just hold for a bit longer…)

  I wish we could, she thought as a sopping wet figure hauled itself up over the wall to her left and lunged at her. In savage reflex she called on the thought-canto Barb and as those shrivelled hands grabbed at her she delivered a back-handed blow with a fist wreathed in lightning. For a second she saw the unleashed power flare through the revenant’s mock flesh, turning it patchily translucent and showing up age-browned and bitten bones — then it opened its mouth as if to scream but instead burst apart in a cascade of rotten, dessicated bones and soaked rags.

  But there were now others following his example, clawing up the outside of the workshop, clambering up over each other to reach the roof.

  Are we going to die here? she thought to herself. Is this how I touch my fate?

  Atemor was still fighting furiously to clear the side wall and the canopy while Rog and Gillat wrestled a long object from behind the barrels, a heavy ladder which they then hauled over to the wall — and flung out to span the gap between their workshop and the next.

  Tashil felt a surge of something like optimism and tapped Inryk on the shoulder.

  “On to the next bastion!” she cried above the noise.

  Pausing to toss another firedagger into the half-skeletal face of a giant undead brigand, he followed her to the improvised bridge. Tashil strove to keep her feet on the rungs as she hurried across, and when she got to the other side she urged the others to do the same. Gillat was the last over and he had to fight off two undead assailants and one of the living raiders before he was able to step onto the horizontal ladder. A yard or two from salvation his footing slipped but he held on and crawled the rest of the way on hands and knees. Once he was safe, the rest dragged the ladder across too, dislodging a couple of the enemy down into the milling crowd.

  Tashil had a desperate plan — to use the ladder in a similar fashion to bridge the gap between this workshop and the fence that ran along the back lane and thus escape back into the maze of alleys. She quickly explained this to the others and they were about to manhandle the ladder over to the roof’s rear wall when a man carrying a small silver object leaped up over the wall and landed nimbly on the roof before them.

  “Time to pay the price for your folly,” he said, gesturing at the ladder which promptly burst into flames. There were fearful, angry cries as the ladder fell clattering on the rain-puddled roof. The man studied them as he strolled over and casually rested one booted foot on the low wall, grinning as a stream of his undead servants emerged from the stair hatch behind him.

  “Who are you?” Tashil said, angry in her despair.

  “Captain Bureng is my name, fair swordmistress,” he said. “Although when this is over I may have to take on a title more befitting my new standing….”

  “Your new standing?” Tashil said. “Please, Captain, explain further.” And in her thoughts she said — Dardan, we need you!

  Bureng laughed while holding up the silver thing he held, which she realised was a mirror and also the heart of the Wellsource spell that was maintaining the host of the undead. To Tashil’s eye, it was like the burning core of a web of threads extending in every direction and she knew that only its destruction could ensure the invaders’ defeat.

  “Your friend cannot answer because very likely he is fighting for his life,” Bureng said, glancing at the dozens of black-eyed revenants now gathered on the rooftop. “As for my new standing…well — as I look around me, I see an empire badly in need of leadership, a throne without an emperor…”

  “Actually, we already have on,” Inryk said. “Admittedly, he’s not too bright, but at least he has the virtue of moderate sanity.”

  Bureng gave him a look of deadly glee. “I think I’ll kill you first,” he said and took a step forward, his free hand raised and burning with emerald fire.

  There was a bright burst of light and a loud thud as a sorcerous bolt of power struck the edge of the roof where Bureng had just been standing. The dazzling flash lit up the rain-whipped rooftop in a brief instant of startled reactions, then Bureng heedlessly stepped up to the smoking, shattered hole in the stonework and waved his fist at one of the tall buildings on the other side of Onwyc Parade.

  “Come now, brother!” he bawled against the rush of the wind and the rain. “Why so timid? Meet me face to face -”

  A second bolt lanced out of the darkness and crashed into the crowd of revenants, destroying several, knocking many more off their feet or over the side of the roof. As Bureng ranted and railed at his unseen adversary, Tashil turned to the others.

  “If we take him by surprise, we could get hold of that mirror,” she said. “That’s where the power over the undead resides.”

  There were nods all round and as one they charged at him, but a short scrawny man standing nearby yelled a warning and Bureng turned to meet their attack. He brought the mirror round blazing with power and gave Gillat a mighty blow which threw him off to the side, then landed a fist squarely in Inryk’s chest. But Atemor managed to wheel behind him and wrap his arms around the man’s throat while Rog went for a sliding kick at his legs.

  They all went down in a tangled heap of grunts and roars of fury. Tashil had got hold of the upper part of the mirror and was trying to tug it away but Bureng was holding on for dear life. She was thinking of using her other hand to get out a dagger to stab his hand when Bureng’s voice took on an eery, sawing quality that grew louder while apparently emanating from his body. Suddenly it was like a terrible heat invading her hands and arms as she wrestled and fought for the mirror, a hot buzzing stabbing at ears and eyes. A kind of animal panic took hold and she had to let go and get away from that burning vibration, as did the other apart from Atemor who held on to Bureng’s neck with grim determination. But Bureng was possessed with eldritch power and dragged Atemor with him as he got to his feet then reached round for the young warrior. Tashil was about to throw herself at him again when a tall, gaunt figure dived between them and dealt Bureng a blow to the face that brought blood from his face and sent him reeling.

  The newcomer then swiftly seized the hand grasping the mirror and wrenched it free. Still struggling against Atemor, Bureng bellowed in rage as the tall man held the mirror out in one hand and stared at it. All around was a scene of mayhem, Rog and Gillat fighting like madmen against the mob of dead brigands, Inryk regaining his feet and loosing firedaggers at them while sheets of rain swept over them all.

  The tall stranger seemed to shut it all out as he gazed at the mirror. Then the complex, interwoven pattern on the mirror began to glow a dirty orange, then ruby red then brightened to
the colour of gold in a forge…all the undead brigands ceased their fighting and clawing and pushing, and turned to regard the mirror. The pattern upon it was white hot now and as it slowly sagged and melted, the hundreds of revenants on and around the workshops and everywhere across the city of Sejeend uttered a collective, mournful moan and broke apart, every shrivelled, rag clad form collapsing into a heap of bones and crumbling, dusty matter into which streams of water ran.

  As the stranger tossed the buckled remains of the mirror down into the street, where it clinked on the cobbles, Bureng let out a howl of fury and twisted his shoulders, trying to dislodge Atemor. As he did, a blazing bolt flew down from the high buildings opposite and struck the roof nearby, engulfing them both in a deafening eruption of chaotic brilliance amid which shadowy figures went flying. When Tashil’s eyesight recovered she found that she and the others were crouched on a rooftop strewn with heaps of wet bones. Smoke and vapour rose from a charred hole where the bolt had struck and near the centre of it a figure was sprawled. As she stumbled over she saw that it was not Bureng, who had vanished, but her brother.

  Atemor lay on his side, still and unbreathing. An awful quivering fear gripped her as she crouched down beside him. Some of his hair was missing and there was a ghastly, dark red wound high on his neck, beneath one ear, yet his rain-beaded face seemed calm, the eyes half-open as he was about to fall asleep or had just woken…

  Tashil could hear Dardan’s voice nearby and sense Calabos’ farspeech calling to her on the fringes of her mind. But all she could think about was how her father would blame her for Atemor’s death, how she had failed to protect him….

  * * *

  The tears and the rain ran down Rikken’s face into his sobbing mouth or down his neck as hauled the small, two-wheeled cart containing Captain Bureng along a sidestreet. Everything had gone wrong — the talisman mirror had been wrecked, the undead army had been unmade, the Mocker’s crew were either dead or scattered, and the Captain had scarcely seemed alive when Rikken had dragged his scorched, inert form out of the filthy alley after his fall off that roof. He had been lucky enough to find the rudimentary handcart in a small shed not far along the back lane. But finding a safe route back to the pier where the Mocker was moored was proving a fateful test.