Shadowfane

by Janny Wurts

  Taen disengaged from Jaric's embrace. Wide-eyed with distress, she started for the supine form on the dais.

  'Don't let her touch him,' Anskiere cautioned. Lest sentiment overwhelm her good sense, the Kielmark clasped her shoulder in one mailed fist. With Taen shepherded between them, Keithland's defenders skirted a fallen trestle and mounted the steps to the dais.

  Morbrith keep's chair of state jutted like a monument above the table with its seal and documents. The restored rule of the High Earl had been brief enough that he had not finished reviewing his accounts. Struck down with equal lack of warning, his conqueror sprawled with his head cradled on the emerald velvet armrest. Dark hair looped one carved post. Opened eyes shone vacant as sky above cheeks scribed with blood. More scarlet streaked from ears and nose, to pool in rusty stains at his collar. The dread Dark-dreamer of Shadowfane breathed through parted lips like a sleeper; stubble shadowed his chin. Hands that had guided a younger sister to the tide pools to collect shells now rested palm upward, as if beseeching mercy. Taen caught her breath in a sob. More than ever, this man seemed the brother she recalled from Imrill Kand, but scarred in places she had not guessed, and lost in clothing too large for his underfed frame.

  'When his Gierj deserted him . . .' Taen skirted the edge of breakdown, yet forced herself to qualify. 'The effect wounded his mind. He feels like a vessel empty of spirit.' Hesitantly she stepped closer.

  'Don't touch!' warned Anskiere.

  The Dreamweaver seemed not to hear. Near enough for contact, she raised a hand to her brother's shoulder. Yet even as she reached, the Kielmark's hands spun her back, into Jaric's restraining grasp. Taen cried out. Stone walls splintered her grief into echoes, deadened as Cliffhaven's sovereign pushed past. Muscles bunched in his forearm; he raised his sword over the still figure in the chair, blade angled for a mercy stroke.

  Taen flinched, then buried her face in Jaric's arms. Even after the massacres at Morbrith and Corlin, and the murder of friends under Corley's command, she could not bear to watch her brother slaughtered.

  The blade flashed and fell. Anskiere thrust his staff between. Steel struck brass in a dissonant jangle of sound.

  The Kielmark locked eyes with the sorcerer like a wolf whose pack mate had foolishly intervened with his kill. 'Are we women, faint at the thought of blood? Kor's Fires, Prince! That's not like you.'

  Anskiere shook his head. More than compassion tempered his reply. 'No. I've not abandoned reason for mercy. For Keithland's sake, we must understand what's happened here. I very much doubt that the Dark-dreamer's collapse was anything planned by Shadowfane.'

  The Kielmark lowered his sword, point rested with dangerous care against the floor. 'Just how will we accomplish that? Taen's not fit to sound the mind of a mouse. If you ask any more of her, I'll stop you.'

  Anskiere sighed with weary resignation. 'I'd thought to contact the Morbrith burrow of Llondelei.' The light in his staff faded slowly as he added, 'Now, please, would you sheath that weapon? Gierj can't build power in the presence of steel. Between you and Jaric, we've swords enough to safeguard a garrison.'

  * * *

  The chamber in the north spire of Shadowfane was curtained, walls and windows, with drapes of woven wool. Yet draughts still seeped through the cracks when wind swept across the fells. A swirl of chilly air teased the flame in the red-shuttered lantern. The wick guttered, thinned to a spark as Scait Demon Lord stepped through the door, into stillness and shadows.

  'The Morrigierj stirs,' rasped a voice from the chamber's dimmest corner. It spoke a language unknown to men, and used by demons only when contention for dominance made the sharing of thoughts an unavoidable challenge.

  Scait stopped. 'You say?' He narrowed sultry eyes and waited.

  The voice resumed, dry over the moan of the wind beyond the drapes. 'I know. Maelgrim's Gierj have deserted. The call of their true master drew them while he was engaged in mind-link. The damage caused then is irreparable. Your Dark-dreamer lies dying and Shadowfane itself is endangered.'

  The gust ended. Icy air mantled Scait's ankles, and the flame in the lantern brightened, throwing ruddy light over the chamber. On a reed pallet by the wall, a young Thienz with turquoise markings lay ill and gasping for air. Scait recognized the one who had bonded the Sathid that once had controlled the witch Tathagres; when Marlson Emien had stolen that matrix, the process of cross-link had inseparably paired the boy's life with that of the Thienz. The elder who attended the sick one crouched on pillows in the corner, its flesh wrinkled and hideous, and its gillflaps yellowed with age. Honour bracelets crusted all four of its limbs, badges of superior status among its fellows. As the Demon Lord crossed the chamber, the creature watched with bead-black eyes and no sign of humility.

  Scait read censure in the creature's manner; short hackles prickled at his neck. 'Show me.'

  The old Thienz delayed, implying defiance. By granting the Dark-dreamer a twelve Gierj-circle, the Demon Lord had directly jeopardized the young Thienz whose Sathid base Maelgrim shared. The old one's outrage swelled as draught eddied the lantern, and shadow dimmed the chamber once again.

  Scait ruffled his hackles down, disdaining challenge. 'Yes, your kind have grown few in number. But no life has passed to memory in vain. Firelord, Stormwarden, and Dreamweaver, and also the Thienz-murderer called Kielmark, are presently in Maelgrim's presence, true?'

  The old Thienz pinched its lips in acquiescence.

  Scait gestured. 'So, then. Our control of Maelgrim will last so long as life remains. Let us work together and arrange the downfall of enemies.'

  The elder demon considered and grudgingly yielded. While the flame in the lantern stretched upright and brightened, it shuffled over to its ailing companion. There it crouched, eyes hooded by lashless lids. Presently the one on the pallet sighed and stirred weakly upon the cushions. Scait shifted his weight, impatient, but the older Thienz would not be hurried. It removed an honour bracelet and bent the ornament around the supine Thienz' wrist. The fact that the recipient lacked strength to acknowledge the accolade gave the Demon Lord pause; Maelgrim must be failing fast, to have drained a Thienz to the point where it abandoned indulgence of vanity.

  At last the elder raised its head. 'To the death of enemies,' it sent, then passed its ludicrously tiny hand before the lantern. Awareness joined with the underling linked to Maelgrim in Sathid-bond, and an image shimmered to visibility above the flame. The Earl's hall at Morbrith became manifest through the distant eyes of the Dark-dreamer ...

  * * *

  Night darkened the high, arched windows there, but no stars shone. Hedged by deep shadow, fallen trestles and furnishings bulked like the broken bones of dragons against a solitary gleam of light, a candle shielded behind panes of violet glass. Tinted illumination was unnatural for mankind; at least one figure gathered around the stricken form of the Dark-dreamer was not human. From the shadowy depths of a cloak hood gleamed the eyes of a Llondian empath.

  The Kielmark stood to one side, both fists clasped to his great sword. Distrustful as he was of strangers at the best of times, the presence of a demon called in as ally did little to settle him. He watched with predatory vigilance as the Llondel sat forward and laid six-fingered hands upon the unconscious form of Maelgrim Dark-dreamer.

  Taen's brother did not flinch from the touch. The tissue of his brain had suffered massive disruption, and internal bleeding impaired what bodily function remained. After the briefest moment of rapport, the Llondelei lifted her hands and broke contact. She turned bleak eyes upon the humans.

  'He dies the Gierj-death, this human enslaved by Shadowfane.' Her thought-image came tinged with anger, a bitterness indefinably deep. Maelgrim's affliction resulted directly from manipulation of a Gierj-circle. Demons at Shadowfane well understood the consequences attached to such power; they ensnared humans in Sathid-bond expressly for the purpose of manipulating Gierj-born forces without sacrificing one of their own. When their victim collapsed from haemorrhage, a rep
lacement could always be created, until the store of stolen matrix was exhausted.

  The Llondel ended with a flourish of apology and sorrow. The crystals had come to Keithland with her kind; malicious creatures from Shadowfane had plundered the heritage of the Llondelei young expressly to engineer betrayals such as Emien's, and before him, Merya Tathagres'.

  The Kielmark's grip tightened on his weapon. Taen sat with her face in her hands; Jaric's arm tightened around her shoulder.

  But the Stormwarden raised a face turned bleak as midwinter. His voice reflected no gentleness. 'Why should the Dark-dreamer's Gierj desert, when plainly the plans of Shadowfane's demons were incomplete?'

  The Llondel whistled affirmation. Her thought-image qualified, showing a smooth, spherical object that drifted at the height of a man's shoulder. Harder than rock, and defended by deadly nets of force, the thing wakened slowly to sentience. In future time, energies sparked and flared beneath its surface; Gierjlings that were its natural servants banded together and invaded Keithland, to ravage and conquer. Under their rightful overlord, their power for destruction knew no limit. Even the compact at Shadowfane feared the network of forces that the Gierj might sing into being. The Llondel finished with a spoken name, Morrigierj, never before mentioned among men.

  Anskiere frowned. 'Then the Landfast archives were inaccurate, and the Vaere misled. No Morrigierj was ever listed among Kor's Accursed.'

  The Llondel whistled a minor seventh. 'Surely the records kept by men are limited. Where there are Gierj, a Morrigierj will eventually develop to focus them. But the creature takes many scores of centuries to mature. Perhaps your forebears did not know.'

  The comment met with silence. That a threat might exist more grave than the existing power of the compact was a concept that defeated hope.

  Only Taen thought one step further, to a purpose that all but undid her with dread. Pale in her soiled shift, she locked gazes with the glowing eyes of the Llondel. 'What if Emien wasn't the only one?' Sick inside, she reviewed Morbrith's dead, the mind of each person ruthlessly sorted before life had been pinched out with the ease of so many candle flames. Taen forced herself to speak. 'Suppose 'Emien was expended because the demons already got what they wanted? Children with latent talent might have been stolen during his conquest of Morbrith. With no parents alive to raise outcry, who would know? Orphans might be held prisoner at Shadowfane to suffer the fate of my brother.'

  Air hissed over steel as the Kielmark raised his sword. He tossed the blade fiercely from right hand to left and said, 'The Dreamweaver's right. And the Stormwarden deserves an apology for my words against him earlier.' He gestured to the Llondel, then angled his blade toward the waxy figure of Maelgrim. 'Alive, that scum might tell us for certain.'

  Anskiere nodded acknowledgement. Too enmeshed in concern to be astonished by a word of conciliation from the Kielmark, he spoke a phrase to the Llondel in the creature's own tongue.

  The demon returned an image of stream water running uphill; but the adage perhaps held another meaning to those of her kind, for instead of rebuttal, she bent willingly and laid twig-thin fingers once more upon Maelgrim's brow . . .

  * * *

  In the red-tinged gloom at Shadowfane, anger finally prevailed; the long hackles lifted at Scait's neck, and he swiped a fist through the tenuous image garnered from Maelgrim through the senses of the failing Thienz. Flattened by disturbed air, the lantern flame guttered. The vision of the Earl's hall with its gathering of men and Llondel went dark.

  The Demon Lord hissed. 'I've seen enough, toad. Hear my orders. Destroy the one who shares Sathid bond with Maelgrim, that the Dark-dreamer perish at once. Better they both die early than have mankind learn more of the Morrigierj and my plot to ruin Keithland.'

  The ancient Thienz shifted with a jingle of bracelets. It blinked eyes opaque as gimlets and responded with disarming submission. 'Your will, Lord Scait.'

  The Demon Lord spun on his heel. Shadow swept the room as he strode between lantern and pallet, and departed. Then the outer door boomed closed, leaving the soft sigh of draughts, and the laboured gasp of the injured Thienz.

  The elder stroked the near-departed's gillflaps long after its master's footsteps died off down the corridor. It saw no wisdom in Scait's high-handed command, not when the Vaere-trained of Keithland had already divined the gist of Scait's intentions. Both of the Sathid-bound would be consigned to memory by morning anyway. Until then, the old Thienz chose to maintain its foothold in Maelgrim Dark-dreamer's mind.

  Toward dawn, the wind stopped. The red-paned lantern burned low; the chamber at Shadowfane grew stifling with the reek of hot oil as the sickened Thienz breathed its last. Far to the south, the racked body of Marlson Emien shuddered a final time and stilled; his wax-pale fingers loosened in death. Taen covered her face in her hands and wept.

  At Shadowfane, the Thienz elder's awareness of her faded away with the essence of its departed cousin. The demon stirred stiffly from its corner. Layers of honour bracelets jingled as it rose to ungainly feet and closed the eyes of its departed. Then, with a croak of irritation mostly due to aching joints, the old one waddled out to seek Scait. It bore news of much import. Humans and Llondelei had held council during the night. Between them they had determined that demon-controlled atrocities such as Merya Tathagres and Maelgrim Dark-dreamer were a menace too grave to risk again. Even as Taen Dreamweaver mourned by the corpse of her brother, Ivainson Jaric and Kielmark Thienz-murderer mounted horses and turned east, their intent to steal Sathid from Shadowfane.

  A grimace that passed for a smile cracked the old Thienz' lips. Humans might know of the Morrigierj; but Shadowfane had gained warning as well. Shortly Ivainson Firelord and the hated sovereign of Cliffhaven would be bait for the taking.

  * * *

  At Morbrith the night seemed to linger without end. Darkness still cloaked the high windows of the Earl's hall when the candle behind its violet glass flickered in a spent pool of wax. Taen arose from her vigil beside her brother's body. She rubbed stiffened and saddle-galled knees, then straightened her crumpled clothing. What remained of Emien, the creature that Shadowfane's demons had named Maelgrim, was gone now. The grief of his passing was not new. For a very long time, Taen had accepted the fact that she had lost a brother. During his final hour of life she had tried to take comfort from the fact that his end had come without need of an execution by the Kielmark. All that remained was to inter his body, and in that she would have the Stormwarden's help. Jaric had used Earthmastery to carve out a grave site, before he departed.

  The final details of burial at least would wait till the morning. Exhausted enough that she thought she might sleep, Taen raised the lamp left by the Llondelei healer. She covered her brother's face with a tapestry, then picked her way around ruined furnishings and passed the great doors to the corridor.

  Darkness closed about her, dense and musty as old velvet. Taen raised the candle to see better. The flame flickered, then died, quenched in puddled wax. Caught in the midst of a turn, Taen tripped on an edge of crumpled carpet and cursed.

  That moment something beyond the keep walls chose to meddle with her wards. The Dreamweaver felt her skin prickle in the dark. She dropped the spent lantern with a crash and strove through weariness and muddled emotions to muster her talents.

  Jaric and the Kielmark had ridden out more than an hour ago; unless they met trouble and turned back, no living being should remain in Morbrith to try her defences. The alternative was daunting in the extreme, that Shadowfane's demons might already have launched an offensive. That the probe was aggressive was never in doubt. Even as Taen sent a call to warn Anskiere, the disruption came again.

  She set her focus at once on the main gate. The mist there glowed silver, but not from moonlight. A robed figure stood before the arch. The glow emanated from raised hands that glittered with rings. Taen's wariness eased slightly. This was no visitor from the compact; the meddler who challenged her barrier was none other than the Magel
ord of Mhored Kara. Whatever cause had brought that ancient to venture from the security of his towers would not be slight. Taen guarded her relief as she dispelled trance and faced the more mundane problem posed by her spent candle.

  Her powers were sorely overtaxed. The idea of using dreamsense to guide herself through the castle's darkened corridors made her head ache. Left the undignified alternative of groping, Taen resolutely trailed her fingers along the wall. After two steps she stubbed her toe roundly on a statue. She hopped, cursing irritably, then compounded her difficulties by banging her elbow against a torch bracket. Her yelp of pain drew notice.

  Shadow splintered before a harsh glare of sorcery. Dazzled, Taen squinted. She managed to identify the triple haloes of the Stormwarden's staff before she tripped on another rucked edge of carpet and tumbled unceremoniously to her knees.

  Anskiere caught her arm in time to spare her from a fall full length upon the floor. 'I was just coming to look for you.' Worry shaded his tone. 'Is something wrong?'

  'Maybe.' Taen took full advantage of the sorcerer's support and pulled herself to her feet. A wry smile bent her lips. She had to be the first to be rescued from the perils of the dark by powers better suited to harnessing storms off the Corine Sea. 'We've got a visitor.'

  Her evident amusement gave Anskiere space to relax. He damped the intensity of his staff and rested the brass-shod end against the floor with studied care. 'I gather no one dangerous.'

  'You'd know better than any.' Taen's humour fled. 'Waiting at the gate and demanding admittance is His Eminence the Magelord of Mhored Kara. Why would he come here?'

  Anskiere's hand tightened upon his staff; his eyes turned icy with distance. Yet if he resented the captivity set upon him by conjurers on the isle of Imrill Kand, his words revealed no rancour. 'I don't know. But if the Magelord expected to face me at the end of his road, his reasons for travel won't be pleasant.'