Shadow Born

by Martin Frowd

  Zarynn’s eyes tingled and itched and he blinked to clear water from them. When he opened them, he was on the rocky orange plain again, under a sky the pale green of new grass, but punctuated with flashes of darker green lightning. This time, however, unlike the previous times that he had beheld this dreamscape, he could still feel himself moving as Furiosa flew on, nimbly threading between the lightning strikes, and he still felt wet, even sodden, though the rocky landscape appeared utterly dry and arid. The smell of salt, lightning and flash-fried fish still permeated his nostrils. His senses of scent and touch warred with his sight – and with his hearing, for the sounds of rain and thunder were suddenly oddly absent from his ears – as reality and vision competed for his attention.

  Fledgling. Zarynn. He had expected the booming voice that emanated from all around and was unsurprised when it manifested once more. Your foes are close and closing fast. They have taken winged form to pursue. On black wings they come, fledgling. Warn your custodian. They come!

  Zarynn blinked again, and the dreamscape, mindscape, whatever it might be was gone, and he was back in the waking world of storm and rain, lightning that was not an improbable dark green, and Furiosa beating her wings rapidly beneath him and Glaraz. Heedful of the warning, he glanced all around. The cloudy sky had lightened a touch – or perhaps his eyes had simply accustomed themselves to it now – and he could see further, and more clearly, than before. Above and behind, he spotted motion, paralleling their own, and rapidly closing the gap between them. He narrowed his eyes into a squint and the moving dark blur resolved and separated into a trio of winged forms, large, with banding of a lighter hue along the edges of their feathered wings. As they dived, he pointed back toward them, shouting to gain Glaraz’s attention over the roar of the storm.

  “Druids, Master Glaraz! Druids!”

  ◆◆◆

  Glaraz Vordakan, master necromancer of the Black Skull, cursed the fate or unholy magic that had enabled the Druids to maintain the chase and catch up after all. He had dared hope, after Furiosa had eliminated the doomhawk over the western edge of the Hills of Dusk, that they were home free, with pursuit too far behind to catch them, and could safely reach the ship and leave the waters off this continent of savages and demon-worshippers. For the first few hours, it had seemed as though his hopes might be achieved without further fighting. The sun had shone and Furiosa had carried them swiftly over the Bay of Dusk, most of the way toward the Isle of Crows where the ship waited at anchor.

  But then the ink-dark clouds had swallowed the sunlight, the thunder had boomed, and the rain and lightning had begun. Typical Druid tactics, Glaraz had recognised at once, his still aching body remembering all too well the fight with the lion-Druid atop the burial mound above the null zone. That fight, too, had been rain-soaked and lightning-shrouded, favoured Druid means of softening up an enemy before closing for the kill.

  Knowing that there were range limitations on the weather magic practiced by the Druids, Glaraz had expected as soon as the clouds swallowed the sun that a Druid – or, the worst case, more than one Druid – could not be far behind. And so, he was not at all surprised when Zarynn shouted and pointed, although he was intrigued that the boy had spotted them first.

  Glaraz’s gaze followed Zarynn’s pointing finger as the lightning flashed again. In the momentary, brilliant flare, three large birds were illuminated as they dived toward Glaraz and his companions. The lightning flashes were too swift for Glaraz to get a good look at their plumage and see any banding, but by their size, he assumed the incoming trio were doomhawks, like the one they had fought a few hours ago over the Hills of Dusk. Yet how could the boy be sure that they were shapeshifted Druids, and not simply the birds they appeared to be? Glaraz wondered, for a moment, if the boy was exhibiting evidence of a hitherto-unrevealed second innate Gift, of Sight or Sensing, alongside his inborn Gift of Shadow, or was simply making assumptions born of panic.

  Focus, Glaraz. Time to consider such things later, he told himself sternly. Survival first, then theories. Both he and the boy were still protected by the last earthbone ward he had cast, and with any luck it might endure until they reached the ship. So, the doomhawks’ beaks and talons would avail them nothing, and if indeed Zarynn was right and all three were transformed Druids, shifting into some other battle-form with sharp claws and teeth would be of equally little merit. Blunt force, however, was another matter, and if the Druids chose instead to strike with lightning, hellfire, curses and other killing magics, the earthbone wards would not turn those aside.

  Furiosa, however, was not protected by the wards, Glaraz realised. Her scales would be more than ample protection against doomhawks, but if the three birds were indeed all Druids, and could transform into more formidable forms? If they brought down Furiosa, short of the ship, Glaraz and Zarynn would be flung into the churning sea and at the Druids’ non-existent mercy.

  “Graa’orth’ghri,” the necromancer incanted, gathering his will to rectify the earlier oversight and grant their winged mount the same protection that he had already applied to himself and the boy Zarynn. She writhed and flexed as she flew, sensitive enough to magic to feel the effect rippling over her. Her great jaws opened and closed, and Glaraz felt rather than heard her satisfied rumble, as the constant noise of the wind and rain, punctuated by booming thunder, drowned out most other sound.

  The lightning flared again, striking the sea close enough to make the hair on his arms stand on end despite the torrential rain. Furiosa flapped her wings and rolled her body and tail, undulating from side to side and threading between the lightning strikes, but the Druids’ aim was improving. Glaraz hoped that they were still fixated on taking at least the boy back alive, to be killed in a formal sacrifice. If that were the case, then likely the lightning strikes were not intended to kill, but merely to maim or perhaps to herd and cage them.

  Another flare of lightning illuminated the birds as they dived close. Glaraz could clearly see the banding on their wings now. Doomhawks, just as he had assumed. As they stooped into the attack dive, they separated, forming a tight triangle around Furiosa – left, right, and rear – rather than attacking from a single vector. The doomhawks to left and right struck together, like twin jaws of a trap, beaks snapping and talons raking. But as all three of their targets were shielded by the magic of the earthbone ward, their raking talons could not penetrate or draw blood, though the momentum behind them delivered a forceful blow.

  Glaraz struggled to stay astride Furiosa as the doomhawks attacked, desperately clinging on and shielding Zarynn within the confines of his arms. Twin beaks jabbed at his head, but glanced off his shadowstuff hood, slipping and crossing into each other’s paths, hindering each other for scant moments. In the brief window afforded to him while the birds were blocking each other’s next attack, Glaraz summoned the last trace of shadow magic that remained unspent in him, and forced out the words of a spell, raising his hands for just long enough from Furiosa’s neck and trusting in the iron grip of his knees to keep him mounted while his hands were otherwise occupied.

  “Duvishim’te’calba!”

  Twin bolts of shadow leapt from his hands to strike the doomhawks before him. At this close range, even their preternatural agility was not enough to evade his magic, and both birds were struck by the shimmering grey bolts, one in the breast and the other in the neck. Not slain, he saw with a silent curse, but at least injured, and blasted back and downward, to splash into the churning sea. Still a threat, and dangerous to ignore, but he had no choice. He could not afford to ignore the third bird, stooping behind him, on course to land on Furiosa’s back.

  Even as Glaraz turned his head to track that third doomhawk, it landed nimbly on Furiosa’s dorsal scales, backlit by another lightning flare. Feathers faded from glossy black to a dun brown and lost their individual lustre, morphing into the consistent smoothness of robes. Wings and beak retracted, body swelled outward and upward. For a mere moment, a brown-robed, hooded Druid stood on Furi
osa’s back in place of the doomhawk. Before Glaraz could react to the new foe, robes in turn sprouted thick brown fur, face elongated once more into a muzzle, and muscle flexed and grew further still, as man in turn gave way to a huge brown bear. Half again the necromancer’s height, the Druid in ursine form stood on two huge rear paws as its front paws lashed out. Glaraz scrambled to dodge, but the necromancer was too slow. The force behind the bear’s assault knocked him off Furiosa’s back.

  Glaraz fell toward the stormy sea below. But his fall was arrested before he could splash down, as a powerful grip wrapped around his left ankle and yanked it back up, inverting him in the process. Hanging upside-down above the storm-tossed waters, he looked up and saw that Furiosa had caught his ankle with one of her claws. Even as she pulled him in, he could see the bear advance on Zarynn, still mounted, at least for now. The boy looked, unsurprisingly, utterly panicked as the bear bore down on him, quick and nimble despite its bulk, the torrential rain, and the powerful gusts of wind that battered at Furiosa from every direction. Glaraz silently urged Furiosa to reel him in faster. If the bear-Druid reached Zarynn first, and made off with him, all was lost. The other two Druids, if indeed Druids they truly were, would no longer be fighting merely to wound or to incapacitate, but going straight for the kill, and in his depleted state he would be hard pressed to hold off another coordinated attack.

  Furiosa deposited Glaraz back on her neck just in time. Standing, the necromancer interposed himself between the advancing bear-Druid and Zarynn, while he focused his will and spoke the actualising words of magic to enforce it.

  “NeOrthom. Vish’te’shuch. Muar’na’graat.”

  Glaraz reeled off three spells in swift succession, as quickly as he could force out the words and focus the corresponding concentration, not waiting to see the bear-Druid’s reaction to each but gambling on his tactics. True to the necromancer’s expectation, the bear shimmered, shrunk in on itself and became a robed and hooded man just in time to raise one arm in a ritual gesture and deflect the rupturing curse. The bolt of invisible death magic slammed into the Druid before he could deflect again, staggering him although it did not kill. The Druid doubled over and spat blood into the stormy sea. Then the petrification spell hit him, while he was still straightening up. Instantly, the man turned to hard grey stone. The statue, no longer able to rebalance its weight to maintain its footing, pitched off Furiosa’s back and into the sea, disappearing with a mighty splash beneath the waves.

  Zarynn’s scream cut through the noise of the wind and rain to alert Glaraz to renewed danger behind him. Whirling, his fears were confirmed. The first two doomhawks were doomhawks no more, but brown-robed Druids. One was still in the water below, treading water, his head and arms above the surface, and even as Glaraz watched, his arms began to move in ritual gestures. The lightning bolts stabbing repeatedly from sky to sea evidently bothered him not at all.

  The other, his robes soaked and bedraggled, had evidently made it back to Furiosa before resuming his human form, had landed just behind her head, and was reaching out in an effort to grab hold of Zarynn.

  Glaraz moved with desperate speed, yanking the boy back behind him. Although it opened him up to a potential rear attack, it was a necessary gamble to avoid the certainty of the frontal threat. All it takes is for one of them to snatch the boy and escape before I can react. The Druid’s hand closed on empty air, and he glared at the necromancer. As he took another step forward, Glaraz was ready for him, one hand lashing out to seize the Druid’s chin while he poured his will ruthlessly into the spell forming in his mind.

  “NeOrthom!”

  The Druid’s chest exploded, as his ribcage burst outward in a spray of blood and gore. The remnant of Glaraz’s strange shadowstuff garment repelled the worst of the spray, but his arms and legs were momentarily bloodied, before the still pouring rain showered the blood away. Glaraz kicked the body off Furiosa’s back, to plunge into the dark, storm-churned waters below.

  One down.

  The gust of wind that hit Glaraz from the left side was too strong and too sudden for him to resist, and too swift for either him or Furiosa to react. Even as the dead Druid splashed down and disappeared beneath the waves, Glaraz too was airborne, lifted clear off Furiosa’s back, and then falling like a stone toward the sea below.

  ◆◆◆

  Zarynn screamed again as he saw Glaraz once again arcing through the air, snatched from Furiosa’s back as if by an invisible hand and flung across the sky, then dropping to splash down into the stormy sea.

  “Fly lower!” he screamed at the winged monster. “Fly lower and grab him! Quick!” Zarynn had no clue, of course, whether Furiosa understood his words in the tongue of the People, but he certainly knew no words in the tongue that the necromancer had used before to give commands to the ebon-scaled she-beast.

  Glaraz disappeared for a moment beneath the surface of the waves, then resurfaced, spitting and coughing up water. Zarynn heard him shouting words of his own, though the only word he caught was ‘Furiosa’. The she-monster was already diving, but seemed to respond immediately, wheeling about in the air and gaining height again. As Zarynn yelped, Furiosa ascended and began flying in a complex, evasive pattern – or perhaps the whole point was that it was in fact not a pattern at all – while undulating from side to side. Glaraz disappeared beneath the waves again.

  The Druid in the water made another intricate gesture and pointed one hand up at Furiosa as she flew in her dizzying not-pattern. Lightning flared once more, but this time, to Zarynn’s wonder, the lightning did not strike from cloudy sky to restless sea, but erupted from the Druid’s pointing hand, aiming skyward! Furiosa twisted and spun in the air, and it was all Zarynn could do to hold on, scrabbling to grab hold of her neck ridge again with both hands and trying to straddle her rain-soaked, slippery neck scales, as the bolt of lightning passed dangerously close by and disappeared into the clouds. Zarynn was blinded for a long moment by the brilliance of the blast and blinked hard, trying to regain his vision. Blurry after-images overlapped on top of one another and bright lights danced at the edge of his sight, as he shook his head in an effort to clear it.

  As Zarynn’s vision cleared, he saw Glaraz resurface, close behind the Druid, hands reaching out to grab and grapple him in the water. But the Druid was too quick. From his perch on Furiosa’s neck, Zarynn could only watch helplessly as the Druid’s dull brown robe gave way to shiny scales of a silvery-blue hue, as his hooded head elongated and thinned into a triangular horror filled with sharp needle-teeth. No longer a man but some kind of serpentine water beast, the Druid easily slipped out of Glaraz’s grasp and submerged. As the necromancer turned in the water to look for it, Zarynn spotted it first, rising out of the water behind Glaraz. Zarynn yelled, but Glaraz was not facing him, and clearly could not hear him over the booming thunder, the howling wind and the pounding rain.

  Then the serpent-Druid struck.

  ◆◆◆

  The blast of wind had caught Glaraz by surprise. While eliminating one Druid, he had unfortunately enabled another to blindside him. Hurled into the air before he could evade and flung wide before Furiosa could react to catch him again, he had splashed down hard.

  The icy water was a shock to his system and left him stunned for too long. As Glaraz recovered, his first priority was a shouted command to Furiosa to keep away and evade. The water was not an environment where she could be of much help to him – not against a shapeshifting Druid – and he would far rather she kept herself, and the boy Zarynn, out of reach while he dealt with the enemy. Enemies. The third Druid, the one Glaraz had turned to stone and pushed into the sea, was surely only temporarily incapacitated and perhaps already on his way back toward the surface and the fight, and the last thing the necromancer wanted was to lose the boy at this late stage because he could not be in two places at the same time.

  Fighting to tread water against the strong and treacherous sea, Glaraz saw the Druid, close by, arms moving in ritual gesticu
lation. A wave broke over the necromancer, dragging him under the surface for a moment, before he broke free of its pull. Resurfacing, spitting and coughing up salt water, he found himself behind the Druid, and reached out to grapple him. But the Druid was too alert, turning and transforming from a man to some sort of eel or sea-snake, writhing and squirming out of Glaraz’s grasp and submerging.

  As the necromancer spun in a circle in the water, seeking his adversary, the eel-Druid erupted from below the surface directly behind him. Glaraz felt the creature swaying above him, water spraying off its slick slippery body onto him, just as it struck. Jaws clamped around his left forearm. Needle-like teeth pricked against his warded skin, unable to penetrate, but the steely grip of the jaws was a relentless crushing assault. Coils of slippery scaly flesh, cold to the touch, wrapped around his body, squeezing, constricting. The eel-Druid’s tail whipped against Glaraz’s neck and head, battering and bludgeoning, as the serpentine creature’s centre of gravity sank lower in the water. The necromancer saw in an instant the Druid’s intent to yank him beneath the surface and keep him there until he drowned. But Glaraz had other ideas.

  “Znak’na’graat,” the necromancer intoned, focusing his will on the slippery-scaled eel-Druid, while at the same time pushing against the entangling coils. In a variant of the same magic he had used on the other Druid on Furiosa’s back, Glaraz invoked a spell of petrification. At once, the eel-Druid hardened to stone. Unable to flex and constrict as living muscle could, the eel-statue lost its grip on Glaraz as it sank beneath the waves. The necromancer kicked to propel himself away through the water, swimming a few strokes before turning, knowing that the petrifying magic had bought him only a little time and distance, as the Druid could break free by changing back to his true, human form. Sure enough, the Druid broke surface not far away, once again a man in robes, surrounded by the silvery corpses of many lightning-fried fish, floating on the surface of the water.