‘It may not look like much, but it is just what we need,’ Arpherius said, taking a key from his pocket and using it to open the lock on the outside cellar door.
‘Time is of the essence,’ Arpherius said, ushering them down the steps and into the darkness.
When the other three had descended the steps, Arpherius followed them, closing the door behind him and locking them in. All was black, then there was the sound of a match being struck and they saw a flame. Its light revealed the face of a man with a steely-grey goatee beard, black robes and a hood covering his forehead, sitting in the corner. The man lit a lantern. He pointed to several stools piled in the corner.
‘Please, take your seats.’
His voice had a gravelly tone that attested to his advanced years.
One at a time, the group took a stool.
‘It would appear that we are missing someone,’ the black-robed figure said.
There was a heavy rapping on the cellar door.
‘Ah, that will be him now. Arpherius, please let him in.’
Arpherius went back up the steps and opened the cellar door. A figure wearing a mask walked slowly down the steps.
‘Take a seat,’ the black-robed figure said. ‘You are just in time.’
The figure lingered at the bottom of the cellar stairs. He jumped upon hearing the bar of the cellar door being slid across.
‘You are with your own kind,’ Arpherius said as he walked past Trisidulous.
‘Will you be joining us, Trisidulous?’ the black-robed figure asked, pulling back his hood.
Trisidulous gazed at the people in front of him. Edging forward, he took a stool from the pile and stepped closer. He placed it on the ground, a long way from the others, and sat down.
‘Say your piece, old man,’ Trisidulous said, in a rasping voice.
Under his mask there was a protrusion that looked like a snout.
‘For those who do not know me,’ the old man began, ‘my name is Amrodan. I am a member of a secret order of monks whose monastery is situated in the Realm of Delathorn. For the last six hundred years, my brothers and I have devoted much of our time trying to track down and contact others like myself: the Shadowless.
‘Everyone in this room is aware of the dangers we face in our everyday lives. The blue-cloaked Shadow Watchers who are sent by the temples to seek us out; the high priests who want nothing more than to execute us, to try and gain favour with their gods. And then, of course, there are the gods themselves. They punish and destroy any town, village or city knowingly harbouring us. So, as a result, most of the people in the Northern Realms hate our kind, persecuting us and handing us over to the authorities whenever they find us.
‘In case anyone here is in any doubt of what we are; let me remind you that many years ago, we were each spawned with one intention: that the gods who fathered us would come back to reclaim their power. They, quite literally, sow their seed and when their fruit grows in power and begins to ripen, they come and harvest it – harvest us, getting more power back than they invested. This is how these monsters get stronger; this is how they become more powerful.’
Amrodan stopped and looked around at the faces staring back at him. Confusion clouded all of them, apart from that of Arpherius, and the masked Trisidulous.
‘What do you suggest we do about it?’ Valan asked.
‘I am sorry, I do not believe we have met,’ Amrodan said, extending his hand.
‘Valan D’Arakis,’ he said, shaking the monk’s hand.
‘Ah, the Vanishing Assassin of Tarantum. I have heard so much about you. Your reputation precedes you, sir. It is an honour to be in the presence of such a talented individual. And of course, the Dorn twins. Meeting another of my kind is always a delight but this, I must admit, is a rarity in itself. For out of all the shadowless beings I have encountered, you are the only surviving set of twins. It is a privilege to meet you,’ he said, rising from his stool and shaking Kurt and Yana’s hands.
He then walked over to Trisidulous.
‘It is a joy to be in your company, Trisidulous Glarr. Your ability to shapeshift is the greatest I have ever seen. I have wanted to meet you again ever since I saved your life in Castle Sengart.’
He took Trisidulous by his leather-gloved hand. Sitting down again, he turned to the five in front of him and a wry smile crept across his face.
‘What’s so funny?’ Kurt asked in his low, grumbling voice.
‘I have been alive for over six centuries. In that time, I have met close to fifty of our kind, but never so many at once. This is something I will truly never forget.’
‘Why have we been summoned here?’ Trisidulous hissed.
Amrodan smiled.
‘You are right, Trisidulous; you have seen through my nostalgia. It is no accident that you have all ended up here. This night has been no chance encounter; it has been destined to occur for many years. When I first received the vision that told me to come here, I questioned its accuracy. I could scarcely believe that I would meet so many of you at once. I am lucky if I find someone without a shadow every decade, yet here are five of you.
‘What I am about to tell you, I do with a heavy heart. I have met and befriended many of our kind through the years. Men and women who have risked all, and in some cases, have made the ultimate sacrifice, so that we may stand a fighting chance.’
‘A fighting chance against whom?’ Yana asked.
‘The gods,’ Amrodan replied.
‘Am I missing something?’ Valan asked. ‘Who said anything about fighting the gods?’
‘Have you ever asked yourself why you have never left Tarantum, Valan?’ Amrodan asked, then turned to Kurt and Yana. ‘Or why you two spent most of your life hiding in Greywolf Forest?’
‘If we were found then we would be executed,’ Yana stated coldly.
‘You would be executed by the men carrying out the will of the gods, Yana. Do you not see, it is not the men who are the problem. They only do what they think is right.’
‘What do you suggest?’ she asked.
‘If we kill the men, the Shadow Watchers and the priests, then more will come. To get rid of the problem for good, we have to eliminate it at the source. We have to stand up and fight the gods.’
A stunned silence descended upon the room.
‘This is madness,’ Trisidulous hissed.
‘Is it, really? What will you do if we don’t stand up to them, Trisidulous? Run? Hide? Crawl back down into your sewer and hope they do not find you?’ Amrodan stood up and ran his eye over the five of them. ‘If you choose to run then yes, you will all survive for a while. In the end, eventually, these things will catch up with you and kill you. The gods are relentless. The only way to stop them is to kill them first.’
‘What makes you think they can even be destroyed?’ Kurt pointed out.
‘They can be wounded. I have seen it happen. If they can be wounded, they can be killed. They once slaughtered each other during a civil war. If they killed each other then why can we not kill them?’
‘There’s a difference between the gods killing each other and us killing them,’ Valan said.
‘Is there? I am standing in front of three of the most prolific killers in the Northern Realms. One of you can disappear, another can crush armour and bone with his very hands and the other can slow the sands of time. I have been waiting centuries for the right people to be born. The right warriors with the right combination of abilities that will allow us to bring one of these titans down and send a message to the others that we will not be farmed like cattle.
‘For the last two hundred years I have been collecting weapons that will aid in our battle against the gods. I have travelled to the four corners of the Northern Realms, bringing back magical items and artefacts to help us defeat these things. There has never been a better time to stand up and fight back.’
/> ‘Are you in on this?’ Kurt asked, turning to Arpherius.
‘The way I see it, it is better to be the hunter than the hunted.’
‘I’m guessing you and Yana won’t be doing much fighting, Amrodan, so that would leave just the four of us taking on one of these things,’ Valan said. ‘Those aren’t great odds.’
‘Who said it would just be the four of you?’
‘How many are there?’ Kurt asked.
‘If everyone is still alive when the time comes: twelve.’
‘Who are these twelve?’ Yana said.
‘I have sworn to protect their identity, as I swear to protect yours, but what I can tell you is that they possess abilities that are some of the most powerful I have ever seen.’
‘Powerful enough to bring down a god?’ Trisidulous snarled.
‘If everything goes to plan, then yes, the combination of everyone’s abilities will be enough to bring down even a god.’
‘What if things don’t go to plan?’ Valan enquired.
‘The god will escape the ambush and go on the rampage. He may even summon the other gods to help him. They will kill all of you.’
‘Don’t sugar-coat for us, whatever you do,’ Valan quipped.
Amrodan leaned forward and stoked his goatee beard.
‘This is not some lame boar you are going to be hunting. When we summon this thing, it is going to see that not one of you has a shadow and go straight into a blood-mad frenzy. It will charge at you with the force of one hundred men and attack you with the strength of a battering ram. What it will not be expecting is something with even more power than it has.’
‘Like what?’ Kurt asked.
‘Like the last of the black dragons.’
Chapter XVI
The Missing Piece of Lórkrond Nox
A faint scraping could be heard from within the wooden chest. Outside, flashes of lightning lit up the sky and rain beat against the dormitory window. Still Amrodan stared at the chest.
Is this the right course of action? he pondered. Once it is done, it cannot be undone.
He pulled up his robes and looked at his right knee. It was misshapen, with a pronounced indentation to its outer side and scars running across the skin. The scraping drew his attention back to the chest. Sighing heavily, he snapped open the latch. As he pulled up the lid, the scraping stopped.
Carefully, Amrodan took out the contents of the chest and piled them neatly on the floor. Robes, books, religious symbols cast from copper and brass; all were treated with respect. Then he came to a brown cloth sack at the bottom.
The sack was large and heavy, the woven fibres of the cloth straining to contain the item within. He laid it flat on his mattress then picked it up by the bottom corners.
A lower leg, made from stone, rolled out. It was dark grey and smooth and looked like it belonged to a fully grown man. Amrodan poked it. Very slowly, the toes began to move.
‘Let us see what your owner has to say,’ he muttered, putting the leg back in the bag.
Amrodan took a torch and hauled the sack into the depths of the monastery. Down the twisting stairwells he limped, through the crypts and the catacombs, until he came to a tunnel, larger than the rest. He saw light at the end. Placing the torch in a bracket, he followed the tunnel until it opened up into a large candle-lit room that had been hewn out of the bedrock.
Set against the far wall was a round metal door. This had dead-bolts at its top, bottom and two sides. At its centre, was a giant wheel. Above it there hung a plaque with gold lettering. It read:
No weapons beyond this point
‘Hello, Brother Amrodan.’
Amrodan turned to see a man standing at a lectern. ‘Brother Grimslöw, good to see you’.
‘I believe you are here with a proposal for one of our guests,’ Brother Grimslöw said, walking towards the door. ‘Good luck with that.’
Brother Grimslöw began revolving the wheel. With every ninety-degree turn a metallic clink rang out and Amrodan saw each of the four dead-bolts retract from the door frame in turn. Brother Grimslöw pulled the wheel and the door swung towards him.
‘You will need these,’ Brother Grimslöw said, giving Amrodan a bunch of door keys.
Behind the door was a narrow corridor carved out of the rock, the sides of which were jagged and rough. The right side was broken up by light emanating from five doors.
Adjusting his grip on the sack, Amrodan stepped into the corridor.
It was cold and damp. Water trickled down the rough, uneven sides, collecting into small pools. Amrodan edged along it, straining under the weight of the sack. He reached the first of the five doors. A faint shuffling sound could be heard from within.
Slam! The noise caused him to recoil. A large creature, covered in grey-and-black-spotted fur, with the head of a cat, was banging its body against the door. One paw shot through the bars and swiped at Amrodan. Its razor-sharp claws missed his robes by an inch. Exhaling, he edged past the cell. The creature spoke.
‘I’m going to get out of here one day, Amrodan. When I do, I’m going to tear your head off and rip out your lungs.’
‘I am fully aware of that, Kragnárl.’
‘This cell won’t hold me forever.’
‘It has done a good job so far,’ Amrodan said, as he moved to the second door.
His response was met with snarls and growls.
The second door did not have bars. It was made from a solid slab of metal and had a six-inch-diameter glass porthole for a window. The spaces between the door and the frame were sealed with wax. Inside the room was a man composed of gas. As he paced the room, he left a trail of mist.
Amrodan knocked on the porthole. There was no reply. He knocked again, harder. This time the figure stopped pacing and turned to face him, two ice-blue lights shining from where his eyes should have been. Amrodan raised one thumb.
The gaseous man made a rude gesture with its hand.
Charming, Mister Burtgrúnd, Amrodan thought, and continued down the corridor.
As he neared the third cell door, he could hear a voice making heated comments. Putting his sack on the floor, Amrodan looked through the bars into the room. Inside it were several black-haired men with pencil moustaches wearing exquisite purple dinner jackets.
Shaking his head, Amrodan gazed at the identical men. Sitting on the bed, privy, chest of drawers and floor, the men turned, one by one, to Amrodan.
‘Hallusâm Myrth, are you trying to lose what is left of your mind?’
The men nodded manically, every one of them with the same wild look in his eyes.
‘Come now, end these illusions. Reveal yourself.’
The men shrugged their shoulders and opened their eyes wide. Amrodan sighed.
‘As you wish, and to think I had some news for you. Never mind.’
‘What is it?’ an accented voice asked.
All but one of the men vanished. The real Hallusâm rushed to the cell door.
‘What is it, Amrodan? Please tell me.’
‘What if I told you that the Shadow Council has decided to free you – on two conditions?’
Hallusâm smiled revealing rotten teeth.
‘Anything…I will do anything.’
Amrodan got closer to the bars and whispered.
‘They want you to help us when the time comes,’ he said, winking and tapping his nose with his finger.
Hallusâm sat down on the floor and brought his knees to his chest, rocking back and forth.
‘But if I get hit by one, it could kill me.’
‘But you will not get hit, Hallusâm. The god will not know which is the real you.’
Hallusâm swatted an imaginary fly away from his ear.
‘What else do they want from me?’
‘Only that you stop torturing people to d
eath,’ Amrodan said in a soothing tone.
Hallusâm ran to his bed, dived under the blanket and started bawling.
‘Go away,’ he said, between sobs.
Amrodan watched in pity as Hallusâm argued with himself under the covers. Of all the things he has lost, he must miss his mind the most, he thought.
‘You have a little think about it, and I will come back another time,’ Amrodan said.
He moved on to the next cell. A woman with bright-red hair was lying on the bed with her knees bent, reading a book.
‘Hello, Pandimonia.’
The woman closed the book.
‘Good evening. I say evening; of course it could well be morning. It’s tricky to tell around here. The only way I can gauge time is by the meals I get.’
‘I hope you like the book; I was not sure if it would be to your taste.’
Pandimonia examined the cover.
Rivers and Waterways of the Northern Realms
‘It’s a real page-turner, it’s practically reading itself.’
‘I thought something a little light-hearted might be in order, just to temper the mind.’
Amrodan turned away.
‘So Willow’s been found,’ she said.
Amrodan turned back, smiling. ‘Now how would you have found that out, I wonder?’
‘You forget what my power is, old man,’ she said, smirking. ‘I know everything. These bars may confine my body, but there’s nothing you can do to restrain my mind.’
Amrodan shook his head in resignation.
‘You are good; I must admit.’
Pandimonia winked. ‘Tell me, what will you do if Nox can’t retrieve the mask?’
‘Then I shall think of something else.’
‘I could help.’
Amrodan inspected the bars of the cell door, wondering how it would feel to spend years behind them.
‘Do you really want to help, Pandimonia? Or are you simply telling me what you think I want to hear?’
Pandimonia put her book down. Got up off the bed and strolled to the door.
‘I want to help. I’ve changed. Give me a chance, and I’ll show you.’
Shadowless Page 48
