Slender towers topped by lookout chambers flanked the gate but both were as vacant as the flagstone street beyond. Yet for all the absence of guards or anyone, the sense of being watched by innumerable observers was all-pervading. Poised on the gate threshold, Byrnak glared at the dark windows of a tall, elaborate, flat-roofed building opposite, certain that he had glimpsed figures at them. Then he stepped across the threshold — and the building faded from sight as another, smaller one with steep, peaked roofs slowly appeared in its place. Moments later, it too dissolved into a pillared temple with a bell tower jutting into the road.
Such transformations were taking place all around him as he walked warily along the street that led straight on from the gate. A city of silent, impermanent buildings, walls and gables that melted into one another, doors that stretched into yard entrances, archways that shrank to windows. And roads which changed direction, became deadends, or even grew new junctions and side-streets.
Byrnak glowered as the road he was following was suddenly cut of by the flowing appearance of a row of terraced houses, just as a large villa on his right parted to reveal a new turning. He knew that he was being steered through this flickering, hazy maze, and knew that he could seize control of it if he wanted, and freeze everything in place.
“Play your games,” he bellowed to the changing waves of masonry. “It will only delay your doom, not alter it!”
As he strode down the opened way, other details came to his notice, like the huge, dark columns that rose from the midst of these mutable courts and stretched up to vanish in the upper darkness. Also, as nearby buildings and those beyond twisted through their changes, he would occasionally catch a glimpse of something else as changeless as the towering columns, a massive, sloping dais almost half a mile away, up whose face a rack of steps rose to a wide platform where there was a throne in the shape of a huge, upraised sword. Behind the throne was a pale grey, faintly mottled wall stretching some distance above and to either side, while upon the throne itself…
Was there a shadow-swathed figure seated there? Did burning eyes full of ancient hate gaze steadily across that intervening distance? Byrnak could make out no details but did feel the pressure of that implacable presence, to which he uttered a burst of harsh laughter and walked on.
Roads closed and roads opened, alleys turned back on themselves, stairways became bridges. Then the street he was following narrowed to a brick passage ending in an antechamber with an archway which led out to a pillared cloister encircling the pack earth of an arena. Tiers of seats banked back on all sides, and they were crowded with onlookers, only it was a crowd as wayward and spectral as the buildings of the Great Shadow’s dreamcourts. And just as silent.
But Byrnak was unconcerned with such spectators, knowing that his arrival her presaged a duel with either the Great Shadow himself or his champion. Would it be the Duskgeneral, he wondered, or some other monstrous servant?
“I am ready,” he bawled to the wavering watchers. “Come forth to your defeat!”
For a moment, nothing, only the jostling crowds, soundlessly laughing and talking, changing seats, pointing down at the arena floor, all a fluctuating throng. Then a figure emerged from the shadowed cloisters on the other side, a man garbed in the armour of a Murknight and carrying a longsword on his back. Yet he knew immediately that this was not the Duskgeneral — he what aura-taste to expect from that one. No, this was another….who nevertheless provoked an undercurrent of familiarity in him.
“Who are you?” he sneered. “What feeble opponent has the Great Nothing sent out in his cowardly stead?”
The Murknight made no reply, instead reached for the hilt jutting over his shoulder and drawing out a long, straight blade which glittered silver and green. As Byrnak looked at it, something in him quailed.
“I have come here to put an end to gods and would-be gods,” the Murknight said. ”Not to grovel before them.”
Byrnak’s anger at the thread of quivering fear within surged into rage at these words. “You’ll do more than grovel when I’m done with you!” he snarled, then drew his own sword and charged.
* * *
Calabos had followed a similar route through the maze city, more than once pausing to glance backwards when he felt that he was being followed. But when he saw no-one he continued on his way past the variable exteriors of buildings and down the roads which seemed to beckon to him. He was crossing a stone bridge, whose balustrade decoration changed three times in his way across, when running footsteps made him turn quickly, hand reaching for his sword.
But it was the old man Culri who came to a staggering halt before him, bending to lean on his knees, gasping for breath.
“Curse these….deranged….streets….”
“Curse you for being a stubborn old man,” Calabos said. “This is the very heart of peril! — go back, now!”
Regaining his breath, Culri mopped sweat from his face with a grubby sleeve. “I’ve come a long way for this and now I’ll see it through to the end.”
Calabos shook his head. “You’re a fool, old man.” Then he turned to resume walking.
“Ah, yes, I’ve been a fool and worse before this, Calabos,” Culri said with a chuckle. “But in such a venture, are you any less of a fool than I?”
“Perhaps, since I know more about the danger than you!”
Their conversation continued in this bantering style for a time, interspersed with observations and speculations on the inconstant city through which they travelled. Before long, however, they were heading along a narrow street only to have the buildings on either side curve inwards to form the arched roof of a dim tunnel which sloped down and ended in the darkened cloister of an arena.
From the shadows Calabos watched the fur-and-mail-clad figure of Corlek Ondene emerge from another archway, his face almost aglow with the force of the spirit which possessed him. As he roared his challenge at the ghostly throngs who crowded the arena seats, Culri glanced at Calabos, then the Ondene-Shadowking, and back.
“Is this it?” he said under his breath. “Is this were all beginnings end?”
“Stay out of sight,” Calabos told him and strode out from the shadows.
“No, wait…”
The Shadowking calling himself Byrnak looked round at Calabos and sneered. “Who are you? What feeble opponent has the Great Nothing sent out in his cowardly stead?”
Calabos felt the power radiating from Byrnak and knew he was much stronger than before. He could also feel the heat of the Wellsource stirring at the edges of his own senses, hungrily waiting. Too soon for that, he thought as he reached up for the hilt of the sword of powers, drew it across his shoulder and held it two-handed before him.
“I have come to put an end to gods and would-be gods,” he said. “Not to grovel before them.”
A trembling rage seized Byrnak and his distorted features reddened.
“You’ll do more than grovel when I’m done with you!”
Then he wrenched out his blade, a five-foot jagged black shard, raised it behind and across his shoulders and charged.
Calabos watched the black blade coming, gauging Byrnak’s onrushing force and the likely arc of the attack. When it came, the pitch-black sword made a faint keening sound as it sliced the air, cutting straight through the spot where Calabos’ neck had been. Calabos had dived forward at the crucial moment, half-turning and trying to hook Byrnak’s feet with one of his legs. But Byrnak spotted this ploy and leaped over the entrapping limb, stumbling a step or two even as Calabos rolled to his feet.
They faced each other for a long moment, and Calabos could sense Byrnak’s hate rolling off him, a palpable corrosive. Then the Shadowking stepped forward with a thrust that Calabos ducked, then a second and a third. Then he made a fourth which turned into a savage cross cut which Calabos met with a heavy parry that turned into a trial of strength.
As the two blades ground against each other, Calabos heard the sword of powers give forth a faint discordant note of fr
ustration as it failed to bite into the other.
Byrnak grinned across the locked swords.
“I took this little cutter off one of those Overseers,” he said, “then cut him to pieces with it — I wonder how well yours’ cleaves offal!”
“This is not a butcher’s weapon,” Calabos said, turning suddenly towards where Byrnak was holding the hilt of his sword, letting his own blade go down. As Byrnak staggered forward, Calabos lifted one foot and rammed it into his side, throwing him off-balance. Byrnak roared in fury as he went down but managed to roll through the fall and regain his feet. He gave Calabos a murderous, hooded stare.
“Enough jousting,” he growled and flung out his free hand. Blazing knots of power leaped from it and streaked towards Calabos. Even as they were in flight, he charged. Calabos reached instinctively for the Lesser Power and found himself mentally grappling with the turbulent force of the Nightrealm’s version of the Wellsource, to which the Great Shadow had wedded both the Lesser Power and the Earthmother’s Gift. He struggled to form the thought-canto Cadence, not because he could not envisage its elements but because the circle was too easily disrupted by the power on which he was drawing. Then it was too late and the bolts of Sourcefire reached him…and the sword of powers swept and caught them all on the flat of its blade which shone and rang with a new, rich tone.
Byrnak saw this happen as he lunged forward, bringing his sword down in a vertical blow. And Calabos saw doubt in his eyes in those last fractions of a second, and brought up his glowing sword to block the downward stroke. And this time when the black blade met the silver-green, it broke with a loud iron crack which reverberated around the arena. Calabos wasted no time and struck home, running the sword of powers through Byrnak’s side, almost to the hilt.
A look of utter disbelief was stark upon the Shadowking’s face. Calabos, gasping for breath, imagined for a moment that he could feel that impalement, an echo of a memory left to him by the original Byrnak….
Then the Shadowking before him, clothed in the flesh of Corlek Ondene, sank to his knees, one trailing hand still limply holding the shattered stump of his sword.
“What is…happening…” The Shadowking gazed up at Calabos. “How can you be… standing there?….”
Calabos then swiftly pulled the sword out, and the blade bore not a smear or spot of blood. Byrnak looked frozen with horror, quivering eyes darting here and there as unsettling whispering sounds leaked from his slack lips. Then the first spirit-wraith began to emerge from his upper chest, a darkly opaque and writhing mass oozing from beneath layers of fur and chainmail. Byrnak’s eyes rolled back, showing the whites, and a second tore itself away from him, and a third and a fourth….
Suddenly Culri was at Calabos’ side, tugging on his arm.
“Calabos, use the sword on me…”
“What? Have you lost your mind?”
“Quickly, curse you!” the old man cried. “You don’t have to use a killing stroke — just piercing the skin should be enough….”
Angry, Calabos shook him off. “Leave me be…”
But then Culri shrieked in fear, staring past Calabos who turned to see a dark flock of spirit-wraiths converging on him. He backed away in panic, almost choking on nightmarish fear, hacking madly at them with the sword of powers, but even severed they still came on…
Then he was engulfed in a swirl of grey forms which one by one dived into his flesh. He ceased to feel his body as a normal carriage of skin and bone but as some hollow shell which shook with the incursion of every intruder, which rang with a growing rapacious chorus, but in which his own cries of terror were increasingly drowned out. Eventually the last spirit-wraith sank into his unwilling flesh, leaving him sprawled on the floor of the arena, leaning on one elbow while his other hand still gripped his sword. It was deathly quiet now and even the soundless, restless crowds were gone, although Corlek Ondene lay groaning on his back some distance away and Culri was staring wide-eyed and fearful from the cloisters.
And within Calabos chaos ruled, a raging tumult of maddening voices. His attempts to envision this grotesque invasion depicted it as monsters battling amid a sea-storm, or fanged predators fighting across a shifting desert, or fire-creatures skirmishing in a cavern of black ice. But it was an older frame of images which seemed to hold most significance for him, the interior of a great temple or shrine where one many floors and corridors had been torn out, leaving ragged ruin, gaping windows, empty alcoves. But over time there bad been repairs, new floors, walkways, and stairs to connect the useful part of the temple. But now an ashen army of macabre phantoms fought and clashed there, some seeking domination of this or that chamber while others tried to grow stronger by devouring those who were weaker…
Through the powerless misery of his prostrate posture, he became aware of Culri crawling towards him on hands and knees, while of Ondene there was no sign. Soon the old man was close enough to warily poke his shoulder.
“Use the sword, Calabos,” he said, tears in his eyes.
“Could not…even if….I wanted,” he managed.
“You have to! — somehow!…” Culri glanced over his shoulder. “He is bringing us to him!”
Then Calabos noticed that beyond the arena, the flickering buildings of the Great Shadow’s dreamcourts were flowing past on either side as the arena moved steadily towards the immense sword throne dais. And he could imagine a great dark figure upon the throne, beckoning with a crooked finger….but was that his imaginings, or did he truly see that?
“You have to take the sword and pierce me with it, Calabos,” Culri said. “I once had a brother, you know, a mighty warrior who would have been surprised to know that I could remain loyal to my duty, especially for 3 ½ thousand years, my duty to the Sleeping God…”
“How can you…know about the…Sleeping….” Then he paused as a suspicion of astounding enormity began to form in his mind.
“I had to find the end to find the beginning,” the old man said. “Then wait for the end to come round again so that I could bring you the Sleeping God’s gift. Find the strength, Calabos, use the sword.”
“Coireg….” Calabos muttered, gripped by anguish.
“The very same…”
“I cannot…” Then something black clawed its way to the front of his mind and spoke: “I will grant your wish, worm!”
The spirit-wraith drew back his sword and plunged it into Coireg’s chest, then twisted the blade. Calabos howled with fury and sorrow and wrenched back control of his body, but only in time to see his old friend die on the arena floor beside him, and all he could do with his strengthless form was inch his hand onto Coireg’s outflung arm.
Then a strange thing happened — something pale and opaque appeared in Coireg’s open, dead eyes, then passed out of them, a small, slowly twisting scrap of gossamer which for a moment or two just glided towards Calabos, drifting serenely through the air…then leaped suddenly at his eyes. Before he could react it was there, a flash of white that spiralled down into the recesses of his mind. And there, in the half-ruined temple of his mind, amid the roaring confusion of savage spirits, he found himself with a bright spine of light, picturing it held in his hand like a dazzling sword….
The sword of the mind, whispered a fading voice he knew could only be Coireg’s, his final words.
He knew what he had to do and, from his view of the arena’s progress through the mutable city, he knew that he had little enough time to do it in.
Tame all these frenzied spirits, break the urge of their voracious desire, bind them to his will, then hope that somehow they could help him stand against the Great Shadow.
And somehow I doubt that he’ll do me the favour of confining himself to swordplay.
* * *
When the Shadowking Byrnak disintegrated into a swarm of spirit-wraiths tearing themselves from of his body, Corlek Ondene wanted to utter a scream of exultation. Yet even as the last of them departed, fleeing the radiant presence left by Calabos’ sword, O
ndene was left struggling to regain control of his faculties, trying to cope with senses that had been battered and distorted by the savage usurper Byrnak.
Touch, taste, and smell felt grotesque, and the glimmering dusk of the Nightrealm seemed like a dense welter of shadows. He lay on the hard dirt floor of the arena and groaned, vaguely aware of voices a short way off. Then a trembling mote of light appeared above him, growing as he watched into a pale grey oval which looked for all the world like a pair of hands raised to a face. The apparition then swiftly elongated into a featureless misty figure who lowered its hands to reveal the face of a young man.
“Calabos,” he said. “You have to move, you have to get out of the arena — look, there’s a few archways over there…” A flickery outstretched hand pointed.
“Wh…why…” he managed, the word feeling like stones in his throat.
“We have a task, you and I, just as Coireg and Calabos have, so come now — up! Or do you wish to face the Great Shadow in your current state?”
Ondene almost laughed at that, but forced himself onto his knees then lurched upright and staggered over to the perfect black of the cloisters, following the pale spectre through one of the arches. Beyond it, he was led along roads flanked by deforming, distorting buildings, dark and surreal frontages that exuded menace and madness. More than once he called out to the pale figure as it wove and floated on ahead, asking its name, wanting to know where it was taking him, demanding to know, curing it for not answering yet still stumbling on after it, fearing the alternative.
At last, after a score of louring streets, a trail of sepulchral canyons all woven into an endlessly changing maze, Ondene emerged from a high-walled passageway to find his spectral guide waiting in a curiously static chamber decorated with relief geometric patterns, except that every line was in the form of a chain.
Shadowmasque Page 46