The Shadow Age (The Age of Dawn Book 7)

by Everet Martins

  He bared his bloody teeth and closed his stabbed hand around her fist gripping the dagger. His crushing grip made her shriek in agony. “No!” She drew on her every last reserve of strength, putting it all into driving that blade home. Senka’s all wasn’t enough. She was not enough. She knew her strength couldn’t match nor surpass his. Bezog bent from his hips, driving her screaming to her knees, his warm blood trickling into her hair.

  “Senka! Senka!” Isa screamed, voice breaking. He started for Bezog, but Claw’s hand caught him before he could take more than a step.

  “Don’t,” Claw snarled in his ear. “This is the way, and you know it. She agreed to this!”

  Isa glared at him and saw his eyes were bright and glossed with tears. “Please,” Claw croaked.

  The people of Midgaard shrieked for murder, pleading for her imminent death. Bezog released Senka, and the knife through his hand thumped to the dirt. His hands wound around her throat.

  The world shimmered in reds and blues, edged in abyssal blacks. Senka strained to work a finger between Bezog’s vice grip hands. She tried to breathe, choking on nothing. He was too strong, too big, too fast, too everything.

  She gave up on trying to break his grip, both hands fumbling around the dirt and searching for the dropped dagger. Nothing. She punched at his leg and connected with something soft, a place where armor met leather. She resumed her search for her dagger, her only chance. Her one chance at survival.

  “Die!” Bezog roared in her face, his grisly wound yawning open and showing all the molars on one side. Her face burned like magma. Sound vanished like her ears had been corked.

  Her fingers found metal, fumbled then wrapped around a frozen hilt. She stabbed up into that spot of softness, dragging the blade up to flay Bezog’s inner thigh open. His grip weakened, and blood rushed into her head, smashing against her temples. She made no effort to watch Bezog’s reaction, just worked her dagger to slice up his other leg to give it a matching wound. She fell to her back as he pressed his hands to the cuts, and she took advantage, scampering away from the giant of a man.

  Bezog’s face paled as ropes of blood pulsed from his legs. She’d gotten the arteries, she realized with the start of a strange smile. He raised his head to look at her, eyes wide in horror before collapsing onto his back. His hammer and shield lay at his side, the dropped weapons of the king’s champion. His chest raised and fell slightly as he breathed out his last, head lolling from side to side as he muttered, “I can’t… not supposed to. The Oracle said. A hero, hero. A hero can’t die…”

  And then nothing.

  Senka lowered her head to the earth and closed her eyes.

  Some time passed.

  “Senka! Senka?” a voice said. It was familiar. A voice she liked. It sounded as if it was calling from a vast canyon.

  “Isa,” she murmured. “Is that you?” Her words sounded foreign, trapped in an ancient tunnel.

  Something lifted her off the ground, propping up her back. Firm hands cradled her shoulders. A flood of warmth washed over her limbs like a hot bath. She crooned at the sensation, which was quickly followed by a wave of chill. She felt her wounds, bruises, and aching bones stitching themselves back together.

  “Mistress?” Senka whimpered, opening her eyes to see the Arch Wizard kneeling over her, her long fingers glowing with the light of the Phoenix.

  “It’s me, Senka. You won. You can rest now, Senka, you’ve won,” Nyset said with a sad smile. “You did it.”

  “I did it,” Senka said distantly, unable to believe it. She hardly remembered the final blows, coming back like the memories of a dream.

  “Are you… okay, Senka?” Isa whispered into her ear.

  “I got too confident, too sure,” she said, shaking her head. “Got lucky. I shouldn’t have won.” She saw she’d been dragged to the edge of the square. She glanced over at Bezog, catching sight of the king sending a hard kick into the man’s corpse. “He won.”

  “No,” Isa whispered. “You did. You’re alive. You won.”

  “Doesn’t feel like I should be,” she said distantly.

  “No more self-pity.” Isa lifted her to stand. Without his support, she felt as if she would’ve fallen over despite the Arch Wizard’s healing.

  Nyset put an arm around her shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze. “You’ve done well, Senka. I’m very proud of you.”

  “Th-thank you, Mistress,” she said, eyes filling with wet. She shifted her focus to the Midgaard Falcon behind her, working to drag Bezog’s body onto a cart. “He was… a terrifying opponent.”

  Isa, Claw, and the Arch Wizard hemmed her in on her sides and walked her through the line of wizards and Armsman. They’d been silent until now but erupted in a burst of cheering upon seeing her.

  She did it, she thought with a nod. By the Dragon’s grace, she won. The Arch Wizard said she was proud of her. Senka felt that if she were to die tomorrow, she would happily return to the Shadow Realm.

  ELEVEN

  Pawns

  “We think our souls each sing with their own individual music, unaware of the dark hand that pushes us.” - The Diaries of Nyset Camfield

  “Did it work?” Amand asked eagerly, bolting upright from his father’s chair. Candles guttered from iron sconces along the meeting chamber’s walls about every five feet. Shadows clawed over the gilded paintings. The hearth crackled with a sorry tongue of fire. “Well?” Amand’s tone was colored by impatience. He pressed his dark fists into his father’s desk and leaned forward. A slight smile threatened to erupt across his face.

  Romek glared at Amand, marched across the room, and promptly collapsed onto one of the stiff couches. Cold sweat grabbed at his robe, the heavy fabric clinging to his body and lacing every movement with annoyance. He couldn’t get a proper breath. He tugged his collar down hard, noting the tear of some of the stitchings. He started stroking his beard, alternating with both hands, brow so deeply furrowed it was starting to hurt.

  “What am I going to do? What are we going to do?” he whispered to himself, shaking his head. “If the Arch Wizard saw me… by the Dragon and by the Phoenix she knows my face,” he hissed, cupping his hands around his mouth.

  He was going to crumble under the weight of his failure. After all his combat training, all the sweat, and after all the effort, he’d wasted his only chance at atonement.

  Amand’s smile became a white line of hard-pressed lips. He seethed. “Did it work or not?”

  “Not,” Romek said with a swallow.

  Their impetuous plan had been an abject failure. Had he been seen? Had anyone at all seen him? The question revolved around in his mind in new derivations. He took a circuitous route back through the city, enduring the clamor and shuffling stink of the poor in Dirt Ring in an attempt to shake any potential followers.

  Walcott, Romek’s younger brother, swept into the room after him, halting to stand akimbo. He regarded Romek with a scowl, turned and kicked the heavy banded door closed behind him. The handle was a heavy ring of iron, thumping at the wood. “Why won’t you answer me, brother? Is it done or is it not?” he demanded.

  Romek let his head flop over the couch back, slowly shaking his head and blinking back tears. “My strike was true. The poison was properly prepared. She flicked the needle away and fought on like nothing happened. How is that possible!” He screamed his rage at the thick ceiling beams. A warm breeze poured in through the windows making candles flicker and twitching the bottoms of embroidered curtains.

  “Wait! You-you’re saying it didn’t work?” Walcott paced around the room, snatching one of the ancient swords from a section of a wall lined with weapons and brandishing it in his fist. “After all this time, all this planning, and Father’s death goes unanswered.” He scoffed, laughing in disbelief. “I won’t stand for it. I’ll kill the Arch Bitch myself.” He stabbed the air with the sword, directing the point at Romek. “You failed us, brother,” he growled.

  Romek slowly raised his head, leveling
a hard stare at his brother. “Turn that fucking point away from me, or I’ll take that sword from your girlish hands and slit your fucking throat with it. Father never would’ve let you touch his weapons then, and I’ll surely not defile his wishes now. Put it back.” He nodded at the bevy of swords hanging from the wall.

  “No.” Walcott vibrated with rage, planting a steadying hand on the edge of a squat chair.

  Romek narrowed his eyes as the shadows unnaturally moved near his brother. “What is…” He started to rise, head tilting, nervy seed sprouting in his stomach, brow beading with new sweat.

  Walcott’s eyes blazed. “You were supposed to avenge him! You—” A flash of steel at his brother’s neck. Walcott blurted a shriek of agony congealing with a wet gurgle. A line of red and sinew yawned open at his brother’s throat followed by rivulets of spurting blood. Walcott thumped to the rich carpets like his bones had turned to dust, revealing the silhouette of a man made of shadows.

  In the stranger’s porcelain hand was a curved dagger, the edge pattering with Walcott’s blood, fingers bathed in scarlet. With his clean hand, he peeled back his hood to reveal a hairless head, eyes a blue so bright they seemed to glow, his cheeks sunken hollows.

  “Assas—” Amand started to scream, becoming a choked yelp as that length of steel arced across the room, burying itself up to the hilt in the center of Amand’s throat, pinning him against the wainscoting. Blood sprayed across the lacquered finish, his dark eyes rolling with terror, fingers delicately pawing at the dagger wedged in his neck.

  “Who are you!” Romek sprang over the back of the couch, fumbling in his belt for the blowgun and his leather roll of needles. “There were guards. How did you get past all the guards?” he said aloud, not realizing he said it until the assassin wordlessly answered, pointing at the opened windows with a fresh knife. Amand slumped to the floor, leaving a broad streak of blood behind, dagger embedded in the wall where he’d been pinned.

  “On your knees,” the assassin demanded.

  “No, no, wait. I know you. Isa, right? Isa, of the Arch Wizard’s council. Look, what is this about?” He stepped farther back, feeling the heat of the hearth licking at his legs.

  “You’ve got the name.” He nodded, voice graveled. “Not that it matters since you’ll not be leaving this room alive. I saw what you did to the Arch Wizard’s champion,” he said, parting an inky black coat to reveal an equally dark belt rife with instruments of death. There was a ball-peen hammer, a hatchet, a short meat hook, and maybe two more daggers. He drew the hammer, the wood whispering long and slow against the brass loop. “Treachery must be punished.”

  Isa’s face was a grinning skull as he dropped the hammer to his side, expertly catching the end of the haft. “You wish to die as a man then. I can appreciate that.”

  “No! Please. She killed my father!” He openly wept, uncaring of the shame. “The Arch Wizard killed my father. What would you have me do? What would you do? Forget that it ever happened? You said it yourself!” He growled, terror melding into rage. “Treachery must be punished. He was a peace-loving man, never did anyone no harm,” he pleaded.

  The assassin’s lips pulled into a cold grin. “Other than trying to order the Falcon to put the Arch Wizard in chains, incapacitating her just long enough so that the Shadow could assert its grip on the realm. Had she been put in the dungeons of Helm’s Reach while the Shadow held the Tower… I can’t begin to imagine how the world might look today.”

  “Okay, alright, fine! He made a mistake. Can a man not make mistakes?” Romek whimpered, giving up on the blowgun, knowing his chance at success against this monster an impossibility.

  “He can.” Isa slowly nodded, cheeks seeming to be sucked into his mouth while he pondered. He pointed at him with his hammer. “But you tried to kill her Champion. She wasn’t just anyone. She means something to me. Sorry to say that once again your family underestimates the magnitude of its decisions.”

  “P-please!” Romek stammered, raising his hands, chest heavy with terror, throat closing down to a straw of wheezing air. The killer raised his arm high, and a great roar crashed into Romek’s ears. A sheet of red cloaked his vision.

  Prodal paced around his great chamber with his arms crossed, the walls shifting wider and wider to accommodate the growing circumference of his circling. The room was curved, but curved in a series of harsh lines. A pair of pillars stood in the center of the room covered with sheets of gleaming emeralds cut into long rectangles. Sometimes they became diamonds, other times they were sheets of sapphires. The walls were made up of carved bookshelves, every inch filled ancient tomes penned by time’s greatest scholars, though without an iota of dust. The Fire Realm did not have dust because he willed it so.

  An enormous glass sphere taller and wider than a man sat near a wall showing his true reflection. The mirrored image was of a gangling humanoid creature whose limbs doubled the length of its torso, flesh a dull gray, skin taught around lean muscle, head long and narrow like a dog’s, eyes razors of golden light. From the back of his head emerged a crown of six horns. Along his bony spine were six pairs of horns, each emerging from between his vertebrate. His torso was cramped and held the stub of a tail, the end pointed with a needle of white bone. He had four fingers and four toes, all wiry like the rest of his appendages. He gazed at himself for a moment, wondering how and why he had come to appear this way. He peered farther into his Future Sphere.

  Within the Future Sphere were stars that winked in and out of existence, glowing blue-green dust hanging on the air, a series of bright threads connecting the stars and forming a web among the shimmering dust. His creation held a certain beauty that had always left him transfixed by its glow. The tapestry of light, dust, and stars was ever changing, ever shifting into new shapes and patterns. It had an infinite depth, the closer he looked at an area the more it materialized into further detail. It wasn’t perfect. Sometimes the Future Sphere was wrong. He sometimes wanted to smash it to shards, but thought a better experiment would be to create a second revision.

  In front of the first Future Sphere was the second iteration, about half the larger one’s size, both of them gently warbling. It was indeed more accurate. It sometimes grabbed his mind with such intensity it felt like he was falling down into a black void, struggling to pull himself out of its snares. He glanced at it, eyes narrowing at the flashing images.

  Within the smaller sphere, he saw Scab perched against the banister of the Wem. He saw Senka running from Death Spawn within the Black Furnaces, saw her father being mauled by Death Spawn. He stoically watched as Sinred Graves was torn limb from limb by the Shadow’s pets. He saw Isa bowing before the Arch Wizard at the Helm’s Reach graveyard where she pulled the Shadow Slayer from the bowels of the earth. Isa pledged his loyalty to the Tower then, but those pledges only go so far, he thought with a chuckle.

  He saw Senka fighting a man in a patch of earth. Her opponent was a giant of a mortal in dark as night armor. She was surrounded by wizards and members of King Ezra’s Black Guard, some cheering and others cursing. She appeared to be losing, he observed with a limp shrug.

  Then there were snakes. Thousands of snakes with violet eyes swarming over the Tower’s bridge. There were so many the bridge couldn’t contain them all, some plummeting into the gorge below. He saw the Arch Wizard in her office with the Shadow Princess standing over her battered form, limbs twisted in the wrong direction, an eye gouged and hanging from the socket. “Make it stop,” the Arch Wizard cried. The Shadow Princess paid no heed to her cry, dropping down to pummel the woman with fist and claw.

  Another version of this same image played out, showing the horde of snakes caught in a conflagration of Dragon fire. Thousands of bodies were fried to dark husks, torn away in a gale and their crumbling remnants dragged into the Far Sea. The Shadow Princess appeared, her armor glistening with blood, hand reaching up and out of the sphere as if trying to choke him. He blinked with curiosity, and the image vanished into a sphere of swim
ming light.

  Prodal set his gaze on Zekes, Asebor’s former minion, swaying about the chamber in a mindless twitching of mismatched limbs. Even this creature before him, an amalgam of the flesh of mortals and men only lived by his will. He made a fine pet. He had the legs of a dog, the muscular arms of a dark-skinned man, and the slender torso of a woman with full breasts. The creature was sexless, and for simplicity’s sake, Prodal had taken to using the masculine pronoun. His face was a patchwork of tissue stitched together by Asebor, having all the features of a man but none of it in the right places. The creature clutched a large jar between its breasts, within it the gray corpse of an Ice Spirit. The Ice Spirit glowed with a cool blue once, in another time and another world.

  He peered back at his baubles. The handsome face of Greyson Rogard appeared. A shock of burning red hair fell around his rheumy eyes. His skin held a sheen of sweat, skin the pallor of the dead. “She did this to me. She murdered our men. Despite her champion’s victory, we can’t let her crimes go unpunished,” he whined to the king.

  “The king of nothing,” Prodal whispered to himself. “King of a world I could crush with a single hand. There would be no fun in that. Don’t you agree, Zekes?”

  Zekes stumbled toward him, legs kicking out to the side with every step. “Zekes,” the creature said flatly. He only repeated words you’d said to him. He had both the legs and the intelligence of a dog.

  “We will abide by the treaties. The Tower has bested us in a fair bout, and the law will be observed,” King Ezra growled into his son’s face, crown slipping down the side of his head. “Do not question my decisions, child.” The images of the king and his son fell away, replaced by a sight that piqued his curiosity more than any other.