Shadowless

by Randall McNally

  Amrodan tried to remain unmoved by his opponent’s performance. Verbal jousting was Clanitâr’s means of testing for weaknesses.

  ‘We go back a long way, Clanitâr, and when we served together in the Black Monastery, I thought of you as a brother,’ Amrodan said calmly. ‘It is for that reason that I have come to give you one last chance. I would prefer you crawl back under the rock from which you came rather than come to harm. So I ask you: leave this place or face certain death.’

  ‘My poor disillusioned brother, I will not be going anywhere, so you and whatever rabble that you have assembled must do your worst. You think that after seven-and-a-half centuries, I fear being threatened with death? Why, my dear Amrodan, I am the bringer of death.’

  Clanitâr opened his sunken green eyes wide and smirked.

  Amrodan sighed in resignation. He walked past the gaunt figure. ‘Then death it is.’

  Flies buzzed around the bucket of blood. Clanitâr stared at the circle on the barn wall.

  The circle went black; the green eyes appeared. Clanitâr dropped to one knee, bowed his head and waited.

  ‘Why do you summon me?’ As ever, the voice sounded faint and tortured.

  Clanitâr rose.

  ‘I have done as you required. The soldiers are dead. But there is another problem, my lord. A man has arrived, his name is Amrodan, and he is a…’

  ‘Kill the girl.’

  Clanitâr stopped, unsure he had heard right.

  ‘The girl? What about Amrodan?’

  ‘Kill the girl,’ Pimböth repeated.

  ‘The girl is of no consequence, My Lord. She is a minor distraction. The real problem, I believe, is Amrodan. He has friends and allies throughout the Northern Realms; if he mobilises a force against me it is not inconceivable that they could drive me from Pinedale.’

  The high-pitched scream made Clanitâr cover his ears. Only when it stopped did he remove his hands from them.

  ‘Kill the girl,’ Pimböth said.

  The portal on the barn wall disappeared, leaving the bloodstained circle.

  ‘Did you talk to your friend or is he away on holiday with everyone else?’ Sulwenn asked.

  She was sitting on a hay bale, outside the barn, swinging her legs.

  ‘I told you to stay in the market square, my rancid little buttercup.’

  ‘I got bored,’ Sulwenn said, jumping to her feet.

  She threw her arms around one of his legs.

  ‘Come on; you said we could try on more hats.’

  Clanitâr looked to the heavens. You poor little mite, he thought. You have no idea what your fate is.

  He was, of course, not averse to murder, he felt that people had to die if the natural order of things were to be restored. He had been responsible for the deaths of thousands of people, and without having lifted a weapon.

  But, for some reason, he felt differently about Sulwenn. She did not run in fear from him, she did not try to manipulate or trick him. In the brief time he had spent in her company, Sulwenn’s innocence had somehow managed to puncture the intense feelings of loathing and revulsion for mankind that he had shrouded himself in.

  The pair walked through Pinedale, making their way to the market square. On the way, Clanitâr reflected on the orders he had been given.

  If I do not carry out his commands then he will no longer answer me, and may even try to kill me, he thought. I have to do as I am bidden. The girl has to die.

  Feeling his hand being grabbed, Clanitâr looked down to see Sulwenn holding tightly to it.

  ‘You’re very quiet, Mister Clanitâr. Are you all right?’

  As she walked, her blonde plaits bounced in the breeze. Her cheeks were rosy and freckled.

  Clanitâr smiled. ‘I am fine.’

  The two continued through the town, bypassing the market square.

  ‘But you said we were going to the hat shop.’

  ‘Not today, Sulwenn. Today we are going to a different shop,’ Clanitâr said, forlornly.

  ‘You never call me Sulwenn. I like it better when you call me the funny names. Why is no one burying all the dead bodies?’

  ‘The gravediggers are on strike,’ Clanitâr replied.

  Clanitâr let go of Sulwenn’s hand and took a few steps forward, stopping outside a shop. The wooden sign swung gently above the door, black lettering embossed on a peeling yellow background. Kidínmire’s Arms and Armoury.

  ‘Stay outside,’ Clanitâr commanded as he entered the shop.

  The door creaked. Inside, the shop was cold and smelled fusty. Much of the weapons had been looted yet some of the less valuable swords, knives and axes still sat against the walls. The floor was dominated by wooden mannequins wearing armour and holding shields.

  Clanitâr went to a knife rack and picked one out.

  I can just run the blade across her throat, he thought. That would be quick and painless.

  He dropped the knife and picked up a sword. Swinging it a few times, he thought how uncomfortable and unwieldy it felt in his oversized hands.

  Putting the sword under his robes, Clanitâr walked to the door. He took a deep breath.

  ‘You have to kill this girl,’ he muttered, three times.

  As he opened the shop door, Clanitâr heard giggling and saw Sulwenn skipping over the dead bodies on the footpath. Seeing him, she ran up the street and embraced him.

  ‘Now can we go and try on hats?’

  Clanitâr reached under his robes for the sword.

  ‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘Let us play a game first. Turn away and look down the street towards that coach, Sulwenn.’

  As she did what he had asked, Clanitâr stood behind her and took out the sword. Putting it near to Sulwenn’s neck he moved it back and forth, picking the place where he would cut.

  ‘What am I meant to be looking at?’

  Clanitâr paused.

  ‘I’m looking at the coach,’ Sulwenn said. ‘Now what?’

  Clanitâr tried to swing the sword. Something stopped him. Gritting his teeth he glanced at the ground where Sulwenn was standing, where her shadow should have been. Letting the sword slide from his hand he collapsed to his knees and wept, bringing his hands up to his face.

  Sulwenn turned round. ‘What’s wrong, Mister Clanitâr?’

  ‘I have signed my own death warrant,’ he sobbed. ‘I have never disobeyed him. Now that I have, he will send his followers to slay me.’

  ‘My daddy says that when someone’s mean, to go and tell on them and then their mummy will send them to bed without any supper… look, there’s a ball of fire falling from the sky.’

  ‘What?’

  A fireball was hurtling over the rooftops towards them.

  ‘Run,’ Clanitâr screamed, grabbing Sulwenn’s arm.

  The fireball exploded on the street, yards from where they were standing. The blast blew in the windows of the nearby shops and houses. Liquid flame spewed from where it crashed, showering fire down upon buildings and bodies alike.

  ‘What is it?’ Sulwenn shrieked.

  ‘Amrodan did this.’

  ‘What are we going to do?’

  ‘We are going to get out of here.’

  Clanitâr picked Sulwenn up and made a break for it. Running down the street, he saw the fiery trace of projectiles streaking through the air. They were coming from every direction.

  Sulwenn was screaming.

  A projectile streamed through the mist towards them. Running to the nearest doorway, Clanitâr felt the force of the blast hitting him on the back as the fireball detonated.

  Smashing through the shop, the two were sent sprawling on the floor.

  ‘Are you hurt?’ he shouted.

  ‘I’ve scraped my knee,’ she replied, her bottom lip out.

  Clanitâr hauled himself up. Fr
om the window, he could see that the street was on fire and from over the rooftops he could see the orange glow of blazing buildings, piercing the mist.

  Smoke was billowing into the shop.

  How the hell are you getting out of this one? Clanitâr thought.

  ‘It would seem that they are intent on burning the town to the ground,’ Clanitâr stated.

  Projectiles were falling rapidly outside, exploding as they hit, with a blast of flame and vast plumes of black smoke.

  ‘I fell on Claude.’

  Sulwenn was holding the flattened body of the hamster.

  ‘I am sorry for your grief, my fetid little flower, but right now we have more important things to concern ourselves with. Should we escape this perilous situation, I will not hesitate to replace your diminutive creature with an affectionate black plague rat.’

  Clanitâr re-focused his attention on the burning street and the continuing bombardment.

  ‘Our end is imminent,’ he muttered, as the flames roared closer.

  ‘There, Claude, eat your corn like a good boy,’ Sulwenn said.

  The little tyke has gone mad from fear, he thought. She is trying to feed her dead pet.

  There was a low squeak.

  He spun around. Sulwenn was feeding corn to her hamster, whose body was as flat as it had been a minute ago. The rodent’s skin was ripped and torn from parts of its body. Its front legs were nothing but bone and one side of its tiny skull was crushed. Unconcerned, she was popping corn, which it was readily chewing, into its mouth; the pieces fell out through the holes in its chest.

  ‘You were hungry, weren’t you?’ she cooed.

  Clanitâr was shaking.

  ‘Sorry to interrupt this adorable moment, but was your little friend not deceased a few seconds ago?’

  ‘I don’t know what that means,’ Sulwenn said. ‘He was broke, but I fixed him.’

  Clanitâr threw his arms around Sulwenn.

  ‘Of course you did, my putrid little petal.’

  As the hamster was cleaning its skeletal paws, a fireball struck the roof of the shop opposite, the explosion ripping through slates and rafters. The building burst into flames.

  The whole town will be on fire soon, Clanitâr thought.

  ‘So you can fix animals when they are broken?’

  ‘Yep. Is that special?’

  ‘It is simply splendid,’ he said, his gaze darting back out on to the street. Through the flames, Clanitâr saw a coach about ten yards away. It had metal wheel-rims: a sign of quality. Mangy-looking horses, rotten and half eaten, were tethered to it. But the flames were quickly spreading and the pair were cut off from it.

  ‘My delightful Miss Dargräve, would you be able to fix those two horses, so that they may bring the coach to us?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Putting her hamster in her pocket, Sulwenn walked to the doorway. She stared at the horses and then held her arms out straight, fingers towards them. Green-and-black energy crackled from her fingertips as she moved her hands upwards.

  One horse twitched, then the other. Slowly, the two animals staggered to their feet, shaking what was left of their manes and flicking their tails. When they were upright the steeds began to move, trotting down the street with the coach in tow, through the flames, towards them.

  ‘I feel now is the time for us to vacate this slum, my corrupt little tulip.’ Clanitâr made a sweeping gesture towards the coach. ‘My lady, your transport awaits.’

  The two boarded the coach as fire spread from the back of the shop, engulfing the front. As soon as they closed the door the undead horses took off down the smoke-filled street, pulling the coach through the flames. Buildings collapsed about them, their structures succumbing to the conflagration. As they drove over the dragonfire it stuck to the coach’s wheel-rims and the undead horses’ hooves, and when Clanitâr looked out the window he found that both horses were on fire.

  ‘Well, this is certainly a first,’ he muttered.

  As the air grew thick with bellowing smoke the pair fled from Pinedale, rushing through the main gates of the town in a ball of flame.

  They broke through the blockade of soldiers from the Pholôs Army, smashing between their lines and racing out into the open countryside.

  Once they were clear of the roadblocks Clanitâr doused the wheels and horses, extinguishing what remained of the flames. Then they travelled through the night before coming to halt over a hundred miles from Pinedale.

  It was the morning of a sunny and cloudless day when the horses suddenly stopped running. Clanitâr looked out and saw that their bodies had fallen limply to the ground. Sulwenn must have to command them again, Clanitâr thought.

  The inside of the coach was covered in red velvet with silver fittings. He opened the door, the noise waking Sulwenn.

  ‘Where are we?’ she asked, yawning.

  ‘We passed the Pillars of Tavinbrôr late last night, and we have been travelling south. So, unless I am very much mistaken, we are close to the city of Hollowhaunt.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘We are far from Pinedale; over a hundred miles by my reckoning.’

  ‘A hundred miles? That sounds like a lot,’ Sulwenn said, stretching and yawning again.

  ‘Some feat from our animated steeds. They have been running at full speed for almost a day. I have heard that undead horses are notoriously hard to tire.’

  ‘Can we go back to Pinedale and look for my daddy?’

  ‘Of course we can but let us have a look around here first. What do you say? There was a battle fought in this area a few centuries ago. It was in a field at the top of this hill, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Can we see it?’ Sulwenn asked, jumping up and down excitedly.

  ‘Well, we have plenty of time on our hands.’

  The pair crested the hill and looked out over the plain. The tips of the Cardüth Mountains could be seen to the west and before them, the craters that housed the cities of Tarantum and Stormhaven.

  There was a large pile of rocks some three-hundred yards away.

  ‘Those rocks mark the place where the battle occurred,’ Clanitâr told Sulwenn.

  ‘Where are the people who died in the battle buried?’

  ‘I am not sure, my necromantic little imp. I suppose where they fell…’

  Clanitâr had a darkly mischievous thought.

  ‘I do not suppose you could work your magic and raise the unfortunate souls who lost their lives during the battle could you?’

  Sulwenn raised her arms.

  For a minute nothing happened, and Clanitâr cursed his luck. Then a small patch of ground slowly began to move. The soil heaved up and down, as if it were breathing, then cracked. Another piece started to move, then another.

  A skeletal hand, picked clean of flesh, punched through the soil. This was quickly followed by a head. Wearing crumbling armour and wielding a rusted metal blade, a skeleton climbed out of the ground and stood to attention in front of the pair.

  Clanitâr stepped back.

  Another skeleton pulled itself to the surface, then another. Before long, the field had been ripped apart and the remains of thousands of warriors were climbing from their graves and standing to attention.

  Clanitâr was open-mouthed at the sight of the undead army.

  ‘What do you think?’ Sulwenn asked.

  ‘What do I think?’

  Keeping an eye on the undead warriors, he put his arm around the girl.

  ‘Sulwenn, I think this is going to be the start of a beautiful friendship.’

  Chapter XIX

  The Magnetic Personality of Keltarä Brandark

  Keltarä was writing in her diary. Outside of her caravan, she could hear the sounds of birds chirping in the trees that overhung the woodland trail. The morning sunlight pierced the holes in
the caravan’s curtains and she glanced at the dust visible in its strong rays.

  The convoy was parked nose-to-tail, with her caravan the last in the line. Some of the other miners were milling around outside. Having exhausted their tin mine outside Baríoren, the crew had purchased the rights to a silver mine south of Siddenharth and they were on their way there.

  Sitting up, she parted the curtains and, shielding her eyes from the sun, had a look around. One of the men was in the process of starting a fire while another was laying rashers of bacon out in a frying pan. Keltarä smiled then lay back down in the bed, her diary-writing forgotten.

  I will wait until I can smell the bacon, she thought. Then go out and ask if they need help.

  She chuckled and pulled the blankets up to her neck. Closing her eyes, she lazily dozed.

  A few seconds later, someone began battering on the door of her caravan. Jumping from the bed, she put a sheet around herself and took the latch off. The head of the crew, Jenkat, was standing in his trousers and boots.

  ‘Shadow Watchers are coming up the path,’ he snapped. ‘Hide.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Anywhere but here. If they find you, they’ll kill you – and the rest of us.’

  Keltarä grabbed what clothes she could and fled into the forest, cursing her luck. Running through the woods she paused only to dress herself. She made her way to a hillock that overlooked the parked caravans, and waited. Peering down, she saw a dozen blue-cloaked guards and an older man, dressed in white robes, approaching the miners.

  Shadow Watchers, she thought, shuddering at the sight of them. Two of them had dogs: large hunting hounds. The men began searching the caravans and seemed to be quizzing the miners, who had abandoned any thoughts of eating. The hounds were barking and slavering as they were led in turn to each caravan, their handlers struggling to restrain them, until finally they reached hers, which they entered.

  Seconds later, the dogs emerged and were charging into the forest towards her.

  The tranquillity of the woods was shattered as Keltarä ran through ferns and hurdled over the roots of trees. The growling told her that the dogs were close.