by Adam Golden
“. . . other incursions? Are the Ward Nets holding?”
Alarm spiked in the injured Pyski. The Ward Nets. Meical . . . ‘Other incursions?’ Other guardians had discovered what he had? Jogah strained to hear more, but even Gawan’s bray was gone. The healer and whomever he was talking with had moved away. A frustrated breath rushed out of Jogah. He wanted to know what has happening. He needed to know.
He swung his legs over the edge of the cot and set his feet on the cold floor of the Healer’s Hall. His body felt wooden, clumsy. It obeyed, but in fits and jerks rather than the easy fluid grace he was used to. The Meddygs had done their work well, but he was far from whole. It didn’t matter. He couldn’t lay about any more.
Gripping the edge of his cot, Jogah pushed himself up, teetered, and collapsed back onto the bunk. A sound that began as a frustrated growl turned into a slow steadying breath. Jogah set his feet more firmly, slowly levering himself upward and paying close attention to his balance and center of gravity. He teetered, taking a quick side step to keep from falling, but he kept his feet.
How far would he have to go to reach a Thinning? He couldn’t recall, not far surely, certainly no more than a mile. Yesterday it would have been a journey of perhaps ten minutes. Today? He had no idea. The Pyski Guardian squared his slim shoulders and took a short teetering step, and then another. Once he was clear of the city, he could Transit back to the grove on the edge of the O’Broin estate, and then . . .
‘And then what?’ his own quiet derisive inner voice asked. ‘You can barely shuffle a few steps. What are you going to do?’
Jogah shook off the thought stubbornly. It didn’t matter. He just had to get there. He had to make sure Meical was alright.
Moving got easier as he went, his muscles and joints loosened a touch with every step. His balance was still uncertain, but his gait grew steadier and he was able to increase his pace. He’d been pleased to find the Healers’ Halls quiet and sparsely populated; slipping out unseen hadn’t been difficult. Yet now as he moved toward the outer edge of the city, Jogah felt a tremble of worry.
Aos Si was quiet, far too quiet. Her narrow winding boulevards were all but empty, windows that were always open to welcome the light stood tightly shuttered, and the bright streaming banners which flew from the dozens of delicate spiraling towers that dotted the city were absent. Even the Western Market, which always buzzed with the music of trade and the boisterous exclamations of Pyski well-met after long absence, was eerily quiet. The city held its breath, waiting for something.
Jogah redoubled his pace. Something was very wrong.
The Healers’ Halls were closer to the boundaries of the city proper, which meant that Jogah was much closer to his destination than if he’d been in the core.
“Halt.”
Jogah drew up so sharply he nearly fell backward. Swaying, he managed to lock his legs and come to a sort of attention. He turned slowly and found a young High Pyski, armed and armored in interlocking plates of black metallic scales.
“What’s going on here?” Jogah asked.
The armored Pyski ignored the question and advanced toward Jogah with his long spear held in both hands as though he might thrust.
“Who are you?” the boy asked, his voice quavering slightly inside his helm.
“I am Daiu Jogah, Guardian of the Fourth Rank,” Jogah grated, shocked and angry to be challenged this way within the city bounds, “and I asked you a question. Who are you? What is going on here? Why are you under arms inside the city?”
The armored Pyski faltered and swayed a moment before he came to a halt. “Daiu? But you’re . . . That is . . . You look,” he stammered and then stopped, shook his head, and came to attention more correctly. “Hail Guardian,” he snapped, banging his gauntleted fist over his heart in the proper salute to a superior.
Jogah returned the boy’s salute smartly. “Report,” he prompted.
“Dubhglas, Daiu Seventh Rank, file leader of the fourth watch,” the boy rattled by rote. “My file and I began our watch three hours ago. All quiet until we saw you, Guardian.”
“And why are watches set inside the walls? Has Aos Si been attacked?” Jogah asked. The idea was insane of course. The Pyski had no enemies any longer.
‘Then what is happening to the Ward Nets?’ the small voice in the back of his mind asked.
“No, Guardian, the city is secure. Commander General Rodric ordered the watch after the Ward Net fell.”
The words hit Jogah like a blow to the face. He teetered and landed hard on his backside, suddenly dizzy. ‘The Ward Net fell . . . ?’
“Guardian!” the armored boy exclaimed, rushing forward. “Are you alright?” He looked back over his shoulder and called out, “Ealga, summon a Healer. Hurry.”
“No,” Jogah croaked. “No Meddyg. Tell me. The Ward Net. Where?” The watch leader, now shorn of his helm, blinked at that. “I have been ill Daiu, I have not been well informed. Now tell me of the Net. What happened? Was it Ulster?”
The soldier blinked at him again and gave him a long look before shaking his head slightly. “Not Ulster sir, Hodu. The Net fell two and a half days ago, right after the Court’s edict to inspect the Wards. A party of three Elders travelled to the Hodu Net and found it shattered. The Focus and her family were nowhere to be found. The Elders returned with Guardian Ishranth’s husk . . .” The boy’s voice trailed off as he peered into the stunned, slack face of his superior.
Jogah was nauseous. Dizzy. ‘Not Ulster . . . not Meical.’ The Net, his Net, still held. The relief that soared in him felt dirty, fouled. A Focus was missing, his Guardian dead, and Jogah felt . . . relief? “I have to return to my post, Daiu.”
“Guardian—” the young officer started, but Jogah waved him into silence.
“A Guardian is dead, one of the Warding Nets is shattered. The Pyski are at war, even if we don’t yet know our enemy. My place is with my charge.” The Light pulsed in Jogah and, as he regained his feet, his body shimmered and shifted. His sickbed clothing melted and was remade into a suit of the tightly interlocking black scale plate like the one the file leader wore. “You and your file will escort me to the nearest Thinning immediately. Do you understand, File Leader?”
The boy snapped to attention and saluted again. “I do, Guardian.”
Jogah nodded once, turned on his heel, and marched toward the nearest gate. The Pyski were at war again, and he’d been too long from his watch.
Chapter 4
Meical twisted and kicked, struggling against the grip that held him. Twining coils wrapped him from under his eyes to his ankles, growing tighter with every movement. Jagged shadows leapt on the walls and danced across the ceiling. Gaping jaws yawned toward him, needle-sharp fangs dripped venom. A confusion of writhing, serpentine forms slid about where he could see them. Meical squeezed his eyes shut and swallowed a yelp as something dry and leathery brushed against the soles of his bare feet. Their lands had no snakes. His Da had said so many times; Ulster had no snakes. Yet here he was, trapped in the rough abrasive spiral of a Basilisk.
The air was stale, the boy’s breath came in short sharp gasps. He was hot, prickly hot, a slick of sticky sweat clung to him. The demon snake wound itself tighter and the boy hissed a rasping wheeze filled with dread. There were snakes, his tutors taught him, who ground the bones of their prey with constrictions and then swallowed their victims whole. Would the monster wrapped about him do the same, grind his bones so that it could eat him whole?
Hot tears ran down his face. He wished Jogah were here. Jogah would help him, save him. Where had his friend gone? Meical didn’t know how much help his silly, irreverent little friend would be against monsters such as these, but he would still feel, better to have Jogah close by. He would have zipped about on his brilliant dragonfly wings and tied the beast in knots with barely an effort and some pithy quip on his lips. That was certainly what Jogah would do. He wasn’t Jogah though, he wasn’t magic, or clever, or particularly brave. He was ju
st a boy, and he was scared.
The shadows multiplied, doubling and redoubling as their master squeezed tighter at Meical. His joints were on fire. He thought they might pop. The pitiful snivelling that leaked out of his mouth made him hate himself, but he couldn’t stop it. He was so afraid. He felt cored out, hollow, as though he hadn’t eaten in days. It was getting harder to see, to breathe. If he could just rest a little. His body sagged with surrender.
‘No!’
Some raw animal part of the boy surged, it knew that surrender now would be an ending. He might not be brave or magical like Jogah, but he was an O’Broin, and his father said that meant something. So, he would fight until he couldn’t anymore. He pushed and kicked. He jerked, twisted and tried biting at the snake king’s scratchy hide. There was no give, no purchase he could gain, and every jolt of his body brought the rough leathery folds around him tighter. The monster drew him closer.
‘Oh, oh no . . .’
The slithering shadows exploded into an expectant frenzy, twisting over everything the boy could see like a jungle of living vines. The boy flexed every muscle in his prone, struggling body and heaved for all he was worth. One last desperate attempt before he was crushed and swallowed by the monster that held him.
* * *
Jogah’s Light-wrought javelin took one of the twisted shadow forms through its stretched, vaguely man-shaped torso and exploded into a shower of brilliant sparks. The Pyski Guardian ducked and spun in a pirouette, releasing a shower of sparkling Light projectiles from each hand. The closing shadows reared back and a sizzling hiss, like the release of trapped steam, sounded in the thickly wooded cedar grove.
Jogah pulled more Light around himself, but it was getting more and more difficult to hold the power back. The Light wanted to be shaped, craved it, and it came eagerly when called. But when the caller was tired, anxious, or otherwise unfocused, directing and controlling the raw force became dangerous. Jogah was well past simply tired. A whip-thin staff of blinding white shimmered into existence in his hands and Jogah lashed out. The swarming shadows screeched and drew back as the Light staff spun in blazing arcs around the surrounded Pyski’s head. His transit from Aos Si landed Jogah in a very different grove from the one he’d left just a few days before. Even in the deepest darkest night this place had always felt magical, inviting, safe. The soaring cedar trees stood like guardian sentinels, their spreading branches sheltering and protecting their lands. Now those branches loomed like the talons of some great predator, and everything was wreathed in a miasma of clinging dark that gave every shadow a sense of malice. Things moved in the corners of his vision, threatening things, and there was a constant sense of eyes on your back that brought shivers. This was a haunted place now.
Jogah’s staff spun in a blur, cutting a halo of brilliant white light into the murk around him. Shadows advanced and were knocked back. Tendrils of darkness as thick and strong as stout ropes shot out to snare him. Loping figures formed entirely of sharp edges and barbed points slashed and cut at him with limbs like razors. The Guardian danced away from threat after threat for as long as he could do so and stay moving forward. Where he couldn’t, or where it would cost him even one step backward, he met the obstacle with all the speed and violence he could muster. No retreat, no matter what. He had to keep himself moving steadily out of the grove and toward the tower house. These shadows were a distraction, meant to hold him at bay. The real fight was at the house.
The Ward Net hadn’t collapsed. Yet. The intricate lattice of sigils and glyphs still shone to his eyes, but the glyph he’d tried to reignite was dark now. A small chink, but the dam was leaking. Jogah jabbed with the staff like a spear, and an enemy burst into nothingness, a faint dark wisp on the breeze. He bolted into the space he’d made and vaulted over another dark shape as it formed. His vision blurred, and he felt himself sway as he ran. He couldn’t go on like this.
A talon as hard as steel raked down the scaled back plate of his armour with the ear wrenching screee of ripping metal, and the Pyski staggered, panting and ragged. The darkness closed around him from all sides.
Jogah hefted the mystical staff in his hands, set his feet carefully, and waited. They came at him together, from all sides, hoping to bury him in the press of their bodies. The staff gave them pause. They were only shadows, just simple creations. They weren’t even alive in a real sense, but they felt pain and so they knew fear. It was an advantage, not much of one, but the only one he had. They fell on him like waves crashing on the shore, one after another without pause or pity. Jogah closed his eyes tightly and held his breath. Bile rose in his throat as the thick ooze of darkness coated him and he swallowed it back down.
‘So tired.’
He ached everywhere, his legs burned, his back, hips and shoulders screamed with exertion and the weight of the armor he wore.
‘Focus,’ he barked at himself silently.
He drew on the bar of Light he held, pulling some of its power inward to rejuvenate his flagging strength. The rest he shaped, carefully pushing and molding the naked force into the shape he wanted while trying to ignore the slick of rancid evil roiling over his skin.
The gnawing shadows screamed and fled the jagged bolt of pure Light that Jogah had made of himself as it ripped through them, tearing its way upward until it was lost in the film of gray clouds that filled the sky.
* * *
Silence stretched, the grove held its breath as the shadow things froze, waiting. A high hungry noise shrilled through the haunted night as the ebon things turned back to their buried prey. Whatever the Fae thing’s last desperate gambit was, it failed. The hated weapon was gone. The Guardian was defenseless. The inky black mass that coated the Pyski seethed, pulling and ripping at the flesh beneath it. It scoured and rubbed, it pulled, tore, and chewed, but their victim was frozen. It didn’t scream or fight or bleed. Confusion bubbled in the simple vicious minds of the shadow things. They didn’t understand. The light feared the dark, and that fear made them strong. This light thing tasted stale, there was no pain, no fear, no life. It couldn’t taste . . .
A sharp pincer of shadow dragged down the front of Jogah’s torso, digging for the sustenance they needed. The flesh tore like rice paper and fell away like dried leaves crumbling. The explosion rocked the grove. A firestorm of brilliant white light scorched trees and scoured away underbrush in a radiating ring of destruction. Night bloomed brighter than noon and, wherever the crashing wave of destruction met one of The Pyski’s attackers, it burst into a shower of pitifully screaming sparks.
* * *
Half a mile up and several hundred yards away, Jogah felt a grim smile tugging at his lips as he raced for the Tower house. Fashioning a glamor of himself around a pulsing core of unstable raw Light was easily the most difficult use of power he’d ever attempted, and he’d done it with shadow creatures crawling on him, crawling into him. The Guardian shuddered, both at the remembrance and at the knowledge of what an explosion of raw mystical force could have done to the world.
‘Or might still.’
He didn’t know, couldn’t know. Undirected Light was wildly unstable. Light was never released without intention, without a will to guide it safely. The consequences to reality could be . . . drastic.
“Necessity breeds invention, but desperation breeds indiscretion.” The quote floated up in his mind and he pushed it down. Rion Naimh wouldn’t approve, but what choice did he have? They’d already failed one Focus. Who knew what the consequences of that might be? What would happen if a second was compromised? He didn’t know, he wondered if anyone really did. It didn’t matter. He was a Guardian, his charge needed him. His duty was clear. The justifications tasted like ashes in his mouth. They were true, but not the whole truth. His decision to use the Light in that way was reckless, insanely so, and could be catastrophic. He knew that. He’d known it when he decided to do it. It wasn’t some high-minded calculation, it was pure panicked emotion. Meical was up there in the Tower, afraid, mayb
e injured, and surrounded by enemies he didn’t even know existed. It was more than duty. His friend needed him.
The O’Broin Tower house, usually so warm and welcoming, felt cold and dead. This place, so full of life and rich in its quaint, rundown, rustic splendor, bore the same pollution as the grove, but it was stronger here. In the shadowy gloom, the broken merlons at its crown, and the dark leering pits where stones had fallen from its façade, gave the tower a menacing aspect. A pool of living shadow, like a moat filled with thick molasses, lapped and clung at the walls, grasping at the stone and twining through every crack in the masonry. The Tower house was being consumed, digested.
The Guardian reached for the Light by reflex, aching to burn the infection out of this place, to scour every trace of darkness with killing white Light. It was madness and he knew it. Even at his strongest he couldn’t hope to control enough power to meet such a threat directly. He wasn’t sure if every Psyki Elder still animate could direct that much Light working in tandem. His limbs were quivering with fatigue. The stress, panic, and fear for Meical bounced around inside his mind, feeding off of each other, clouding his thoughts. Reacting emotionally here wouldn’t work, so the Pyski fought down the impulse. A frontal assault was doomed to failure, he’d need to approach this fight more circumspectly. Luckily, he knew the tower as well as he knew his own face. Jogah brought a hand up to touch one of the long, ragged, Light-leaking scars on his cheek and winced. He hoped he knew it better than he knew his face now.
Chapter 5
The Pyski Guardian dropped out of a crack high on the tower’s west wall and froze. A net of tangled, pulsing, ebon-black cords filled the corridor like the mad spinning of some giant demon spider. The web clung to every surface, snaked under every door, and seemed to be burrowing into the stones themselves. This wasn’t the work of the simple shadow-forms Jogah had faced outside. Whatever Unsaelig filth had darkened the Warding was here, and it was nesting.