Located at the southern end of this whole region, which covered the lower half of the western portion of the Cerilian continent, was the capital city of Imperial Anuire.
When the land bridge connecting the continents had still existed and the first humans had crossed over from Aduria, it was in Anuire that they had established their first settlement. Over the succeeding years, that settlement eventually grew into a thriving town, and the town into a teeming city, and the city, as the people spread throughout the land, into the seat of government of the Anuirean Empire.
As the oldest and most populous human city in Cerilia, Anuire was a vibrant center of trade, learning, and entertainment, a bastion of the arts and of political intrigue. Each time Aedan left the city, he always felt as if he were leaving civilization behind to venture out into the wilds of the outlying provinces, and he could not wait to return. This time, in particular, he was eager to get back … not only to Anuire, but back into the world of daylight.
As they rode through the cold and misty woods, he knew that they would soon be approaching the lands of Diemed, roughly sixty miles from the city of Anuire, which lay just across the River Maesil. The river marked the boundary between the provinces of Diemed and Avanil, where the capital was located, and Aedan was extremely anxious to see it’once again. He knew they would be there soon, and he kept trying to reassure himself with that knowledge, while at the same time forcing himself to remain constantly on the alert. He could not afford to become preoccupied. Not here.
They had journeyed this way several times before, and Aedan had learned, over his last few reluctant and uneasy expeditions to this foreboding, chilling land, to recognize some of the natural features of this most unnatural place. Even though some of it had
begun to look familiar here and there, other parts of it kept changing, and he knew he would never, as long as he lived, truly grow accustomed to the Shadow World.
As they rode their horses slowly through the thick, dark woods, past grotesquely twisted and misshapen trees choked with hanging moss that resembled the gray hair of old women, Aedan thought about the first time he had traveled through the Shadow World, eight years earlier. He hadn’t liked it then, and his tolerance for the world between the worlds had not increased with time. It was, after all, the world of his worst childhood nightmares and, unlike most things in dreams, in this case, the reality was worse.
Eight years ago, he and Michael had set off from Tuarhievel together with the elven mage Gylvain Aurealis and his sister, the elf warrior Sylvanna, on their return journey to Anuire. They had traveled with an escort of elven fighters and a halfling guide named Futhark. From the elven city, they had traveled on foot for two days through the Aelvinnwode until they reached the foothills of the Stonecrown Mountains to the south, near the lands of Markazor.
Even back then, Aedan had known that they were venturing into dangerous territory. Markazor had goblins living in its forest highlands, and the Stonecrown Mountains sheltered gnolls and ogres and desperate human renegades who had fled from persecution by the law in their own lands.
Yet, this was where Futhark had brought them, because for some unknown reason, as the halg had explained, the veil between the worlds was thinnest in those regions whert-chaos reigned over order.
Futhark was unable to explain why this was so.
Perhaps, he had said, it had something to do with the energies generated by negativity and evil. Perhaps those places where people had descended into depravity were brought closer to the Shadow World, which became more and more permeated with evil with each passing year.
Or perhaps, he theorized, the awnsheghlien rendered their domains temporally unstable by their massive expenditures of dark power and the profligate bloodtheft required to support it. The halfling didn’t know for certain, and Aedan found it difficult to follow even his theoreti_
cal explanations. All the halflings really knew, said Futhark, was that it was easier to cross over in certain areas than in others. And those
“certain areas” were definitely not places Aedan would have visited by choice.
This time, as in the previous few journeys they had made through the foreboding Shadow World, the place where they had crossed over was the Spiderfell, but that first time, returning from Tuarhievel, it was a little-known mountain pass in the Stonecrowns, near the border of Markazor. Aedan thought back to how it was then, and the memory seemed as sharp as ever. Even though it had occurred eight years ago, when he was just eighteen, it seemed as if it had been only yesterday.
Aedan had always wondered about the reputed ability of halflings to create dimension doors so the could shadowwalk. while he had dreaded actually crossing over into the world of his childhood nightmares, at the same time, he had been perversely curious to see how it was done.
As they had moved up the path leading to the mountain pass, Futhark had gone into the lead, a bit out in front of all the others, but not so far that they lost visual contact.
As he walked, the halfling seemed to sense the air, almost as if he were an animal, stopping on the trail every now and then and sniffing the wind to detect the presence of any predators. There were halflings in Anuire, but Aedan had never really spent any time with one before, so he watched Futhark closely, with fascination.
The halfling looked like a more-or-less normal adult human male, except for the fact that he was about three-and-a-half feet tall. Everything about his proportions was in proper scale, unlike dwarves, whose legs and arms were smaller and out of proportion to their heads and torsos.
Futhark’s hair was thick and black, rising in a crest on top and descending to the middle of his back almost like a horse’s mane. His features were angular and sharp, similar to those of elves except that his eyebrows were thick and lacked the pronounced, delicate arch that elves had, and his ears were not as sharply pointed. In fact, one had to look closely to notice that they were pointed at all. City halflings, Aedan had heard, tended to adopt the dress styles of whatever locality they lived in. Futhark, however, dressed in leather hides. His arms and chest were bare beneath a dark brown leather doublet laced together with rawhide thongs, and his breeches were made of soft, natural buckskin with the rough side out. On his feet, the halfling wore leather moccasins that came up to just above his ankles and were likewise fastened with rawhide thongs. Perhaps, thought Aedan, he dressed this way because most elves in Tuarhievel wore similar attire.
As they walked, Futhark kept stopping and looking around, head cocked as if he were listening for something. Occasionally, he would stretch out his arms, his hands held palms out, fingertips splayed and extended, as if he were feeling the air. And then, abruptly, as they started on a slight downward slope entering the rocky pass, the halfling stopped and made a pass with his hands, as if clearing cobwebs from before him, and a gray, swirling mist appeared on the trail just ahead.
It was as if a fog had suddenly risen, but in only one small area, an arched space in front of them no larger than a portal. And it was a portal … a doorway into another dimensions bridge to the world between the worlds.
Aedan recalled how his stomach had suddenly tensed and a sharp pressure had started in his chest.
His mouth had gone completely dry, and he found it difficult to swallow.
His breath began to come in short, sharp gasps, and cold sweat trickled down his spine. His curiosity had been fully satisfied.
He had seen a halfling make a dimension portal. He did not quite understand how he did it, but that was something he could pursue another time. He had seen the door to the world between the worlds opened.
However, he did not want to find out what was on the other side.
Anyone with half an ounce of sense would have known enough to feel at least some trepidation at passing through that swirling mist and into the unknown, especially since people had been known to pass into the Shadow World and never emerge again.
Anyone in his right mind would have thought twice about entering that misty por
tal that had suddenly
appeared like a low-flying cloud upon the trail. Anyone except Michael Roele. Michael was positively thrilled and could not wait to go through. It was then, seeing the eager expression on his young face as it lit up with enthusiasm, that Aedan became convinced the new and not-yet-crowned young emperor was not merely fearless; he was crazy.
With Futhark leading the way, they had gone through the swirling cloud into the Shadow World, emerging in a place that looked, in many ways, much like the world they had just left … except, at the same time, it was different.
They could recognize the trail they were on. The path ahead of them looked much the same as it had back in the world of daylight. The countryside was similar, as well, and so far as Aedan could tell, they were still in the foothills of the Stonecrown Mountains, heading into the pass that led to Markazor.
Only after that, things were not quite the same.
For one thing, the light was completely different.
Even though it had been a clear and sunny day when they passed through the portal, when they came through into the other side, everything was dark and gray and damp, as if on a foggy, heavily overcast day out in the coastal marshlands. Tendrils of mist rose up from the ground, over which hung a perpetual fog that came up almost to their knees.
Vision was limited to no more than a dozen yards or so, except for brief periods when the mists parted from a sudden gust of bone-chilling wind.
And it was cold. Numbingly cold. The kind of cold that seeped into the bones and made them ache. It was a mirror image of the daylight world, only this mirror was a dark one, reflecting only …
shadow.
At first glance, the surrounding countryside looked similar to the place they had just left, except that everything was gray and mist-shrouded, but on closer examination, the trees turned out to be twisted into macabre shapes and choked with hanging moss that trailed down from the branches and raised unpleasant shudders if it contacted the skin. The underbrush was different, too. It was more sparse and spiky, with thorns large enough to cut the flesh like daggers. The ground was mostly bare and rocky, save where a strange silvery-blue moss grew in widespread tufts, like a diseased carpet. And there were nervous scurryings in that tangled thorny underbrush, creatures stirring that Aedan didn’t really want to see. He found out about some of those creatures soon enough.
“Aedan, stop! Don’t move,” Sylvanna said, as they headed down the trail.
She had spoken calmly but forcefully, and something in her tone had made Aedan freeze at once.
“What is it?” he asked uneasily.
“Just don’t move,” she replied. “Not even a muscle. Don’t even twitch.
Stand very, very still.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her draw her dagger from its sheath on her belt. He frowned in confusion, then felt something moving across the back of his neck. He swallowed hard and clenched his teeth as he fought down the shiver that threatened to run through his entire body.
Something was crawling on him … something hairy.
Sylvanna stepped forward quickly, and her blade flashed at the back of his neck. He felt just the faintest scratch as the tip of the blade barely brushed his skin, then saw Sylvanna stomp her thick-soled moccasin down on something white and multilegged, A violent shudder went through him, running down his spine all the way into his feet.
“what was it?” he asked, uneasily.
“Albino spider,” she replied. “A small one, just a baby. They grow as large as your head, and that’s just the body. Sharp fangs, deadly poison. One tiny bite, even from a little one like that, and you would have died in horrible agony within moments, beyond the help of any healer or magician. The poison simply works too fast.”
Aedan had paled. “Thank you,” he said. “It seems you’ve saved my life.”
“Just be careful of that hanging moss,” she replied.
“They like to make nests in it, and they can’t tell the difference between the moss and your hair. If you let one get into your hair, even if it doesn’t bite you, it might still lay eggs.”
Aedan still felt rather queasy whenever he thought about that. Since then, he had fought in many battles, and had faced several of the horrors the Shadow World had to offer, but nothing had ever made his skin crawl like the thought of tiny eggs hatching in his hair, releasing a horde of little white spiders with sharp fangs dripping poison. He had avoided the hanging moss ever since, as if contact with it would be lethal. And, he thought, when one considered what it sheltered, it easily could be.
“What are you thinking?” Sylvanna asked, riding up beside him on the trail through the misty woods.
Her voice brought him sharply back to the present once again, and he realized he had been preoccupied with reverie. That was entirely too dangerous to be countenanced under present circumstances, but he was exhausted-they all were-and his mind had simply started drifting of its own accord.
“I was thinking of spiders,” he replied to her question. “Little white spiders, hatching from a score of tiny eggs.”
For a moment, she stared at him, frowning with puzzlement, and then her face cleared as she suddenly made the connection. “Ah, you were thinking back to the first time we journeyed through the Shadow World.”
He nodded. “In some ways, it seems as if it were only yesterday. But in others, it seems like a lifetime ago.”
“It was about five years ago, wasn’t it?” Sylvanna asked. “Or was it longer?”
“It was eight years,” he replied, smiling to himself.
Elves were not good with the concept of time. Being immortal and consequently having all the time in the world, they found little significance in time, unlike humans, who had less of it and therefore paid it more attention. “Eight years in which a great deal has happened.”
For one thing, he thought, as he glanced at the emperor riding a short distance in front of him, Michael had grown up. At twenty, he was still young, but physically, he was a full-grown man. He had shot up to over six feet and was now taller than Aedan. He outweighed him, too, by at least forty pounds. Michael had taken his training very seriously, working out with the weapons master every day. As a result, he had developed a husky, muscular build, with a thick chest and large, powerful arms able to swing a two-handed broadsword with great speed and strength.
Many young men of the empire were little more than boys at his age, but Michael had done a lot of living in the eight years since Tuarhievel, and those years had been fraught with unrest in the provinces and heavy responsibilities at home.
Boeruine had been only the beginning. When they had returned to Anuire after their abduction by the goblins and their brief stay in Tuarhievel, they discovered that a little over a year had passed on the outside.
That was the difficulty in traveling from the elven lands, where time’s flow was affected in peculiar, inexplicable, and unpredictable ways. One was never certain how much time would have passed when one came back to human domains, even when going through the Shadow World.
Shadowwalking was not Aedan’s preferred mode of travel by any means, but Michael had employed it many times since that first journey. By creating a portal into the Shadow World, a halfling could at least temporarily suspend the flow of time. As Futhark had explained it, if they had a desperate need to travel from Anuire to Kal Kalathor, clear on the other side of the continent, and they absolutely had to be there as soon as possible, if they were to travel on horseback, even at a fast pace, changing mounts on the way, it could still take as much as a month. It would mean covering a distance of at least a thousand miles, even more if they went out of our way to avoid traveling through such potentially dangerous territories as the Coulladaraight and the Tarvan Waste.
On the other hand, if they were to shadowwalk through the world between the worlds, their journey would take roughly the same length of time …
but they could emerge back into the world of daylight almost at the same time as they h
ad left to go into the Shadow World.
In other words, for them the same long span of time would have passed, but little time in the daylight world. With one exception. Elven realms.
In the same mysterious way that the laws of time were twisted in the Shadow World, so were they affected in the elven realms, which to Aedan suggested a correlation of some sort, though he could not venture to guess what it could have been. The point was that while time within the Shadow World seemed almost to stand still, in elven realms, it was completely unpredictable. It either “expanded’ or contracted,” and there was no way of predicting which way the effect would go. As a result, traveling from the elven realms into the Shadow World and emerging in human domains could have some interesting effects.
“I have never forgotten our first journey through this dreadful place,”
Aedan said as he and Sylvanna rode side by side, holding their horses at a walk.
Galloping or even trotting through the forests of the Shadow World was risky. There was no way of knowing what you were likely to run into-unless, of course, the unknown was preferable to the risk of facing whatever was behind you. “As if it were not enough that we faced death by choosing to come this way, to discover that a year had passed while we were in Tuarhievel for merely a few days…… He shook his head and sighed. “Well, at least we have not had to repeat that particular experience, even if the emperor does insist on saving time by traveling through the Shadow World whenever we need to cover a lot of distance. I used to suspect he didn’t fully understand the risks involved. Now I realize he simply doesn’t care. But that first time … I shall never forget it. I never truly understood the strain my father had been under until I saw him. Only a week or so had passed for me, but it was a year for him. A year in which he was never really certain what the next day would bring. One year in which he had aged twenty.”
“You still miss him very much, don’t you?” Sylvanna asked.
Aedan nodded. “More than I can say. I miss his wisdom and his guidance. It was my mother who sustained the greatest loss, of course, but in another sense, she merely lost her mate, while I lost not only my father, but my teacher, too. There was so much more I could have learned from him, if only he could have lived at least a few more years……
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