Shadowmasque

by Michael Cobley

“Yes, you should,” Vashad said, undeflected by Dardan’s sarcasm. “But you won’t — you’ll gather together your feeble armies and deploy whatever inept sorcery this world provides, and you’ll fight and resist us every step of the way, and every step along that road will paved with your bones. There shall be only defeat, pain and death for you before the end comes and all of this world is joined with the Nightrealm in the long-denied union.”

  Tashil laughed. “How blind! You think you can reach everywhere, and you think that you know or can know everything, a logical impossibility.”

  Vashad smiled faintly. “We know all that is necessary to know, yet even that which we do not know still lies within the scope of the known and thus there is nothing which is truly unknown.”

  Tashil exchanged incredulous looks with Sounek and Dardan, then said, “How invulnerable to you imagine your master’s realm to be?”

  “We know of those who have passed through the Shattergate,” Vashad said. “But the Great Shadow is the master of life and death there so any and all machinations and insurrections will prove fruitless and futile. So, my answer is — completely invulnerable.”

  Tashil nodded. “And how invincible is your army?…oh, you do have an army, don’t you?”

  The High Captain’s smile widened perceptibly and he turned slightly, throwing out one gauntleted hand in a theatrical gesture. On cue, the grey blanket of the blight began to bulge in many places to either side and some way back from where the encounter was taking place. Then the bulges split along their bases and peeled back like mouths, disgorging black-armoured troops in their hundreds, then thousands, marching lock-step into ranks facing across the Valewater. And every one of them was an archer bearing a grotesquely adorned bow nearly as long as he was tall.

  “Yes, I do have an army,” Vashad said. “This, however, is only the spearhead echelon but I am sure that it will suffice.” The metal of his helm began to flow across the contours of his face, and a moment later the slotted visor had reformed. “I shall permit you to return to the other side before out attack begins. May you die well.”

  As he walked away, Dardan looked over his shoulder and began waving at the longshoremen. As Sounek hauled up the anchor and the rope tautened, pulled them back, Tahsil gazed despairingly at the serried black ranks that moved as one, drawing long, strangely-tipped arrows and making them ready. Feeling a sense of foreboding she focussed her thoughts into farspeech…

  Inryk?

  (Yes, Tashil…)

  Have you been watching?

  (With magesight, yes. It looks bad)

  You have to get anyone out in the open along the dockfront indoors or under cover before the arrows fly…

  (We’re already doing that — what about you?)

  She glanced at the north bank, gauging the runing distance from the low jetty up the wharf and back to the nearest warehouse.

  I think we can make it, she thought. But it could be close.

  (It would be a help if we knew what those arrows will do)

  I expect something between agonising and horrific.

  (Oh good, I do love surprises!)

  Dardan, overhearing, rolled his eyes as the skiff rocked and wallowed as the rope was hauled in.

  * * *

  Pain started to well up from Tangaroth’s jaw shortly after the war council began but he bore it with iron determination, forcing himself to remain alert as that upstart, Count Jarryc, gave an outline of their defenses. Characteristically, Jarryc’s summary was bleak, as if he sought to challenge any optimism by painting as forebidding a picture as possible. Shumond responded with a far more balanced view of their successes as well as the challenges that they faced, penned into this small upland with their backs to the Great Canal.

  At least he was spared the presence of Jarryc’s harridan wife and that backstreet conjuror, Nyls Chellour, although the bombastic Baron Klayse was in attendance. Combined with the effort of feeding his words through the mouth of his proxy, Gessik, it constituted a considerable strain on his stamina. Soon after arriving with Shumond and the remnants of the Iron Guard, he had contemplated having Jarryc and the others executed for treason. But a swift appraisal showed that had he done so the moral and resolve of the 150-odd troops would have collapsed. In the wake of the grey engulfment of Besdarok, it had proved a wise decision. Having survived the first day and night of fighting, the defenders of this small upland enclave found the Mogaun attacks becoming less frequent with fewer warriors involved. Scouts and lookouts reported signs of fighting among the Mogaun, a most pleasing development. But this was tempered by the news that there were less than two days-worth of stores left, which presented them with a stark choice: obtain more supplies from nearby Belkiol, by either stealth or raid, or try to stage a breakout followed by a headlong retreat south to Sejeend.

  As emperor-elect, Tangaroth found neither prospect appealing, the former for its high degree of risk, the latter for the great indignity it would inflict. Through his intermediary, Gessik, he said to Jarryc and Klayse;

  “Gentlemen, I understand the gravity of our position and would ask you to allow me some moments to ruminate on these matters by stepping outside. My thanks….Shumond, wait a moment.”

  Looking grim, Jarryc and Klayse left the tent and once the tent flap swung back into place, Tangaroth beckoned Shumond closer.

  “Is it true about the stores?” he murmured through Gessik.

  The Lord Commander of the Iron Guard nodded.

  “Yes, your majesty, and that’s with the men on quarter-rations.”

  “What course of action would you choose?”

  Shumond considered it a moment. “The breakout,” he said, “with a side raid to try and lay hands on some mounts.”

  Tangaroth nodded and sat back in the ricketty chair, feeling another surge of pain in his face.

  “You may be right,” he said. “But I need seclusion to think….”

  “As you wish, majesty,” Shumond said, heading for the tent entrance.

  You too, Gessik, he thought to his attendant. Gessik’s eyes widened in surprise, but he made no objection and followed the Lord Commander outside.

  Once he was alone, Tangaroth let out a shuddering gasp and raised a trembling hand to his head. With the other he fumbled within his enfolding robes and brought out a cluster of chainberry leaves which Gessik had picked for him this morning. Carefully he pulled aside the bandage and one by one slipped them into his ruined mouth. There was pain for a moment or two, then the sap of the leaves began to dull the torment.

  He remembered how the battle with the Mogaun cavalry had wavered back and forth, even as that ghastly grey tide was advancing towards them all. In the end it had been a riderless horse, driven mad by arrows in its flanks, which had reared up and struck Tangaroth full in the face with a lashing hoof. When he fell from his mount, Ilgarion saw and came riding over to help and was himself unseated by a Mogaun spearman. Wounded, he was still able to despatch the spearman before going after his wandering horse, only to walk straight into a long limb of the consuming greyness which had stretched ahead of the leading edge.

  One eye-witness said that the emperor had not even had time to draw his sword before being engulfed by the grey blight. After that, the battle was lost and the survivors faced a desperate rush to the canal in the hope of finding a boat or any floating debris. Tangaroth was lucky enough to be carried by members of the Iron Guard back to one of the longboats that had been used to ferry the troops over the night before.

  The chainberry sap was spreading a vaguely warm numbness through his face and down into his neck. He had found on previous occasions that the use of this remedy tended to inhibit the sharpness of his mage abilities but he felt that it was a small price to pay. He almost felt able to cope.

  Yet I am not an emperor, he thought. No crown or coronation could make me into a monarch, but I must shoulder this burden and safeguard the empire — I must.

  Shumond was right — breaking out of this enclave then re
treating to Sejeend was the only real option, now that it was clear that no help would be coming from the capital. He had repeatedly tried contact his mages there by farspeech but without success, which caused him no end of dire speculation.

  He sat back in his chair, thoughts wavering between the worries of their predicament and the lulling soporific of the chainberry. He also desperately needed the services of a healer, which was another reason for a swift return to Sejeend. The prospect of losing the ability to speak for good filled him with horror….

  Then, at the edge of his undersenses, he felt a tremor of power nearby and a change in the air. Someone or something had appeared in the tent behind him, yet for all that he had no weapon about him he felt oddly calm. His instincts urged him to reach out to Gessik, or even the Countess, for help, but the presence made no move and seemed to possess no aura of ill intent.

  Who are you? he said in his thoughts.

  “One who see you crowned emperor,” said a calm, male voice.

  A figure in dark, opaque armour stepped into view. The newcomer also wore a long cloak of some shimmering deep red material with a dark blue lining. The armour, however, had a smoky, gleaming radiance which surpassed the gloom within the tent, and was clearly invested with great power.

  You are from the grey shroud which has swallowed the isle of Besdarok, Tangaroth thought. Why have you come here to say such things?

  “To offer you a pact, majesty, and to heal your wounds if you so wish.”

  Tangaroth stared up at the smooth black visor which masked the man’s face, set in a swept, fluted helm which rose to a strange coronet of short, bifurcated tines.

  Heal this…wound? Why?

  Call it a gesture of good faith, a token signifying ancient but common bonds.”

  Before Tangaroth could reply, a cold, sharp tingling raced through the lower half of his face and there was an odd metallic taste as he felt the shattered pieces of his jaw shift yet with not a hint of pain. Several ripples of heat passed through his mouth and a faint resonating sound accompanied each one. Then the tingling coldness receded from the muscles and the flesh, leaving a dull ache in his teeth but, mercifully, not a sign of the bone-grinding torment from before. With shaking hands he pulled away the dressings and touched his lips and face while probing the inside of his mouth with his tongue. And as the exultant relief made tears sting his eyes, a small, hard part of him was thinking — Now I am beholden, now I have an obligation…

  He breathed in deeply, trying to steady himself.

  “I thank you, ser,” he said hoarsely, savouring the sound of his voice. “You have removed a great burden from me, for which you have my deepest thanks. But you mentioned some kind treaty, as well as ancient and common bonds, which I am eager to explore further with you. However, you can quiteopenly regard my face whereas I have yet to see yours.”

  Almost before he reached the end of the sentence, the helm’s visor altered, melting, flowing aside to reveal the man beneath. It was a youthful face, yet very pale, with near-white hair and frost-grey eyes which were like twin glimpses of some desolate emptiness. And it was face that Tangaroth found disturbingly familiar.

  “Be welcome, ser,” Tangaroth said. “Yet I must repeat my first query — who are you?”

  “I am known as the Duskgeneral, militarch of the Overseers and suzerain of the Black Host of the Great Shadow.” The pale lips twitched in amusement. “But once I bore another name and, briefly, another title. I too was once an emperor.”

  Tangaroth could feel his heart thudding in his chest as the reasons for the man’s familiarity emerged from his memories, the realisation that a younger version of his face could be seen everywhere in Sejeend and across the empire…

  “Are you…truly Tauric, son of Kerrigan?”

  “I have the honour to bear that name, but I am not the Tauric who sacrificed his life for the sake of his people.” A bleak look came into his eyes. “You see, the final battle of the Shadowking war took place in the very depths of the Void and was so savage and destructive that the course of Time itself was ruptured, split in two. Along one stream the Shadowkings and the Lord of Twilight were defeated and history unfolded as you have known it. But along the other they triumphed and all the world was enslaved and plunged into a terrible domain called the Nightrealm, a pit of deathless, neverending servitude.”

  The man calling himself Tauric shook his head. “For long ages we have played out the roles of futile conspiracy and revolt for his brutal pleasure; I have become his Duskgeneral and comander of his Black Host, and buried all that I was out of sight, out of my conscience. But now that his hunger and pride has led him into this assault upon your world, I and others are determined that it will prove to be his undoing.”

  Tangaroth listened closely, his thoughts in upheaval as he strove to perceive the truth or otherwise of this tale. Part of his mind wanted hard proof or some form of corroboration, while another facet was certain on a visceral level that Tauric was all that he claimed to be. Unable to resolve this, he reasoned that it was the proposed pact which was of more immediate importance.

  “You mentioned a treaty, ah, Lord Tauric,” he said. “What would it entail?”

  “An alliance, majesty,” Tauric said, leaning forward. “I have led a small, hand-picked force through to this world, supposedly to establish a beachhead in advance of the main army. My intention, however, is to take my men off this island and join with you in preparing to resist the approaching invasion. But my master’s agents are rife amongst the Mogaun and it is they who stand in my way. Will you help us to overcome these mutual enemies?”

  The sense of rightness was almost overwhelming. To know and understand that they both faced the same enemy — that was brotherhood.

  “What help can we offer?” Tangaroth said.

  Tauric’s smile sharpened. “Your spirit of generosity humbles me, majesty. Very well, my plan is this — under cover of night, a ship bearing my men will sail along the canal and attack Belkiol from its waterfront and northern boundary. If your army can launch a raid in force on the southern boundary about half an hour before as a diversion, our assault will catch them unawares and wipe them out.”

  “The Mogaun in and around that town outnumber us by nearly four to one,” Tangaroth pointed out. “Such a ploy as yours would require excellent timing.”

  “You have well-developed sense of strategy, majesty,” Tauric said. “And I concur completely with your appraisal, but what I propose is this….”

  As the black-armoured figure and the cloaked Tangaroth leaned together, a pair of little eyes peered at them from a clump of weedy grass at the foot of the rock wall at the rear of the tent. The eyes belonged to a small bushfox which also possessed a pair of sensitive, twitchy ears. The bushfox had been stalking tiny rodents earlier when something inexplicable led it through the undergrowth to the back of the tent, then to edge its snout under the waxed canvas and then to wait and watch and listen.

  And less than 50 yards away, on the other side of the jutting pillar of rock, Ayoni and Chellour were crouching behind bushes, hearing what the bushfox was hearing and trying to make sense of it. But before long the little creature was distracted by insects buzzing outside the tent and when it crept off in pursuit the fragile bond was lost.

  “Who was that?” Chellour muttered. “And that story about another world…”

  “Tangaroth seems to believe him,” Ayoni said. “Especially after his mouth was healed.”

  They looked worriedly at each other.

  “Shumond will support whatever Tangaroth decides,” Chellour said. “What will your husband say?”

  Ayoni gnawed her lip. “It depends on how Tangaroth explains it — I doubt that he’ll mention the appearance of someone claiming to be the Emperor Tauric!”

  “We have to tell Jarryc about this immediately,” Chellour said. “That infiltrator seems to be playing some kind of convoluted game — I mean, why would this Duskgeneral want us to attack the Mogaun? Why not
just attack either us or them first?”

  “We need to know more about the grey blight, as well,” Ayoni said. “I’m sure Tashil and the others could tell us more, but I’m still having no luck with farspeech. Perhaps we should keep trying every half hour or so….what is it?”

  Chellour’s brow was furrowed with concentration. “Our little spy has given up chasing twigflies and I’ve got him back to the tent….ah, Tangaroth is alone again….and that slightly disturbing attendant of his, Gessik, has reentered….”

  “Then Tangaroth will be calling the others back in,” Ayoni said with a half-smile. “So we’ll have to wait to see what Tangaroth tells them — I’m sure that Jarryc’s account will be an entertaining one!”

  * * *

  So slow, the return of his conscious mind, so agonisingly slow. Through the limpid darkness of no-self, only the impressions of feelings seeped, followed by bubbles and motes of thought. Connections began to form, here, there, above, below, before, behind, around and across — then a toppling rush of linkages and he suddenly knew he was sitting in a dark, dank place, sitting on cold, damp stone, sitting with one arm cradled in the other, a hand of broken, seared fingers…

  There had been pain, and that was the only memory that came back to him at first. But thought joined with thought with flitting remembrance with emotion with smell with texture with physical action with sounds with voices shouting….

  …shouting his…

  …his hame…

  It seemed to hang before him, echoing in his head, yet something made him hesitate, something in him which longed for another name, a hungry, savage name. But with a surprising ease he stifled that inner longing and instead turned his attention to all the new sounds he was hearing, cries, reverberating hammer blows, footsteps, moans, the clatter of chains, a guttural, demanding voice….uttering questions in heavily-accented Yularian, he knew with a shift in his mind, like some dislodged foundation of knowledge suddenly dropping back into place.

  And although the stinking, glimmering gloom of these pillared dungeons never changed, he became conscious of changes outside, how the silver radiance from the small, high windows grewopaque and how a moist chill poured down into these vaulted chambers. There was day and night out there, he was sure of it.