The Shadow Within

by Karen Hancock

  He came out of the barbican and continued down one of the long lanes that radiated through the host encamped outside the castle, still at a trot, unwilling to rouse the men with the noise of Warbanner’s gallop or risk running someone down in the dark. Thus by the time he’d reached the edge of camp, he felt almost as impatient as his horse and was relieved to nudge the animal into a gallop.

  Flying across the dark, ruin-littered fields, it wasn’t long before he realized he was being followed and glanced back to find a veritable troop riding in his wake. Now he knew why he’d not seen Trap nor Channon nor any other of his personal guardsmen in the moments before he’d left. Irritated, he pulled Banner to a stop and turned him to face his pursuers, now pulling up likewise, scattering about him in a rough semicircle. Small kelistars flared into existence, balanced on palms and saddle humps, and he stared around at a group of familiar, and by now beloved, faces: Trap, of course, Shale Channon, Ethan Laramor, Everitt Kesrin, Will Ames, and several other of his personal guard, in addition to Lords Foxton and Whitethorne.

  “What is this?” Abramm demanded, Warbanner tossing his head and prancing impatiently at the delay. “I told you I wanted no escort.”

  “Nevertheless you have one, sir,” said Captain Channon.

  “You have jobs back in the camp. The men will need you. The people will need you. And you’ll be no help to me, anyway.”

  “We can be witnesses of your courage, sir.”

  “I don’t need any witnesses of my courage.” Plagues! There probably won’t be any courage to witness! “And you’ll just provide more targets for it to strike at.”

  “They say it will be focused on you, sir,” said Foxton.

  “Yes, and after it kills me, it will go for all of you. Especially for you, since it will know you are men that I care about.”

  “Yes, Sire,” Trap said. “But Kohal Kesrin says that in killing you, it will have killed that part of itself that is most alive and thus become vulnerable to the blades and power of other men. Especially if it’s already been weakened in battle.”

  Abramm scowled at Kesrin. “You know this for fact?”

  “It is what I believe the Words teach, sir,” Kesrin said with a respectful nod. “Though, admittedly, I know of no instance in which my theory has been tested.”

  “Then it could all end in ruin.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “It’s a risk we are willing to take,” Trap interjected. He paused as Abramm’s gaze came back to him. “We might well be able to see it’s slain, my lord. If you cannot.”

  Abramm stared hard at him, shocked to discover he had no argument for that. He let his gaze slide over them again, one by one, angry that Trap should have thought of this and that he himself could think of no rebuttal. How could he turn them down now, realizing that if he should fail—an all too likely possibility—hundreds of lives could be saved by their presence?

  “Very well,” he relented. “But keep your distance until it’s obvious I’m finished. There’ll be no leaping in to help me—you all know there’s nothing you can do until I’m dead.”

  “We know, sir,” said Trap.

  A moment more he regarded them, then wheeled Warbanner and launched him up the slope onto the remains of the ancient road that skirted the northern edge of the valley. Still in fairly good shape, the road was grassgrown and wet with rain but smooth enough. They kept the horses to a canter, and the clash of stone and hoof thundered up around them. While a slower pace would have been less likely to attract the attention of enemy patrols, time was running out. More and more Abramm saw the night through the morwhol’s eyes as the beast came up the pass from the other side. It ran with an eagerness he had not sensed before, like a hound hot on the scent of its prey, for it knew he was coming to meet it and already was filling his mind with visions of what it would do to him.

  He clung to the Light and turned them aside, one after the other. Madeleine’s words held like a shield before them. “I don’t believe it will end as you say.”

  Gradually the morning dawned around them. Gnarled, black tree-shapes emerged from the murk. The clouds hung low overhead and drifted through the trees. To their left, the land ascended sharply and disappeared into the clouds. To the right lay the valley floor, the camps of the two opposing armies mostly hidden in mist. Both sides were already stirring, but Gillard’s was much more active than Abramm’s.

  They entered a stand of spruce and emerged at the mouth of the steepwalled canyon that led up to the pass from this side. A rush of brown water tumbled out of it in a boulder-strewn channel that crossed under the road here, spanned by the crumbling stonework of a Tuk-Rhaalan bridge, still sufficiently intact to be serviceable. They clattered across it and circled the base of the long flat-topped knoll that extended into the valley. Crumbling walls and pillars crowned its terraced top, their heads cloaked in clouds that were once more spitting rain.

  This was the Temple of Dragons, if he recalled the map correctly. The road wound around this knoll, then switchbacked up the slope beyond it into the canyon itself. He had no idea what he would find there—the road might be impassable. Regarded as a place of Shadow ruled by ells, people had long avoided it, so the maps showed nothing.

  Then, as if triggered by his thoughts, he saw again through the eyes of the beast, now racing up the opposite side of this pass to meet him—

  Rock walls soared closely around a steeply ascending road, lined with stone shrines. Each held a robed statue, wreathed in individual hues of light. Lavender, blue, red, amber—they flashed past as the beast galloped upward. Its bloodlust burned so hotly now, it could not keep itself quiet, its triumphal yowls echoing back and forth up the canyon and down the other side.

  Abramm blinked free of the link as he rounded the base of the temple knoll, the beast’s cries coming down as a distant echo in his ear. Warbanner flung up his head with a snort, but Abramm kept him on track. Setting his jaw against his own rising fear, he rode on, his men thundering after him. The clouds hung lower here, new veils rising from the moisture-soaked ground.

  He was slowing Banner to adjust to the reduced visibility, when directly ahead he spied horsemen behind the parting mists, ranged ahead of him to block the road. A command rang sharply through the morning quiet, and more riders rode out of the mist into position along the road, closing off any avenue of escape to the valley on the right. As Abramm hauled Banner to a stop, he noted a good number of them were cloaked in gray. Regular foot soldiers stood both behind them, and across the road to Abramm’s left, the men ranged across the temple knoll’s steep slope. Together with the horsemen they formed a long funnel drawing down to the riders who waited at its apex. Of those, one wore the pale robes and gray mantle of a Mataian, another, Gadrielite gray. Between them, mounted on a tall black horse, sat a big man in a golden breastplate and purple cloak, his shoulder-length, whiteblond hair secured by the circlet of kingship upon his brow.

  CHAPTER

  39

  It was the circlet that caught Abramm’s eye as he walked Banner toward them, for it was not the original. Thanks to Simon, Abramm had that in his own possession, though he wasn’t wearing it. He hadn’t even considered it. Yet here’s Gillard, audacious enough to make his own circlet and wear it out here as if he were already king.

  The mist swirled and shifted around the men, alternately obscuring and revealing them as Abramm approached. To Gillard’s left sat Prittleman, holding his bandaged right hand close to his middle as he glowered at Abramm in self-righteous triumph. Belmir rode on Gillard’s right, his face closed and hard, with a flinty look in his eyes Abramm had seen only rarely, and never before directed at himself. Gillard wore his usual sneering disdain.

  “I know you got my warning,” Abramm said as he drew up before them, “or you wouldn’t be here. I can only conclude you didn’t take it seriously, else you’d not have brought these men with you.” He gestured at the soldiers surrounding them.

  Gillard smirked. “I’m told this
beast is only after you and those you care about, brother. These men have nothing to fear.”

  “These men are my subjects, whom I am duty bound to protect. They have everything to fear. Even you might not be completely safe.”

  Gillard’s face went dark. “I know what you’re trying to do, little brother, and you’ll not wiggle out of our contest that easily. Did you think all the nonsense about you being the White Pretender would really scare me out of accepting? Far from it! I’m eager now to test your mettle.”

  Abramm opened his mouth to respond, then reality shifted—

  A huge, long-faced stone man peered down from a narrow alcove on the left, heavy browed, eyes flickering red-orange in the shadows. The ancient road wound upward, clinging to sheer walls, the air heavy with the scent of damp stone. Mist swirled overhead, shredding in a brief window to frame a rocky crag gilt by the sun, bright against blue sky— “Aaug! Look away! Look to the velvet shadows and the dark, damp rock. Feel the fire inside. We are close now. Very close. Friends will make more clouds to shield.”

  The creature crowed its victory as again Abramm pulled free of it.

  His brother affected a high-pitched, mocking voice, “‘The monster is coming, brother Gillard. Best take your men and flee while I go out to meet it, for I alone can do so.”’ He reverted to his natural, deeper tone. “You thought I would heed that?” He spat on the ground between them. “That’s not the way this tale will end. You got the kraggin. I’m taking this one.”

  Abramm gaped at him. “I’m the one it’s after!”

  “If that’s true, we’ll just hold you here until it comes. That way we can choose the battlefield.”

  When Abramm had told Simon to send word the morwhol was coming and for the men to be moved away from the pass, the last thing he expected was that his brother would seek to face the monster himself.

  “Gillard, you can’t—” He broke off in frustration, realizing anything he said would be discounted as another attempt to seek his own glory.

  Gillard smirked at him, savoring his victory as he’d done that night in Southdock six years ago. Gritting his teeth, Abramm gestured at the soldiers surrounding them. “At least get your men out of here.”

  His brother rocked back in the saddle. “But then we would have no one to witness what we do.”

  “All we’re going to do is die. You and I, seeing as you’re so intent on taking my place. I see no reason to drag them along with us.”

  He loped up the narrow winding road, looking to the deep shadows instead of the painful brightness above, savoring the sharp smell of stone and the growing scent of horses and men—one man in particular. A roofed shrine slid by on the right, cut out of the sheer stone walls sheltering the Lady within. Her eyes pulsed amber. “Yes, she will make us a covering.”

  Abramm shook away the vision, and fire turned to a ball of ice resting in the pit of his stomach as he realized who the “friends” were—rhu’ema.

  Gillard gestured grandly at Belmir. “Have you not noted my companions, Abramm? Your once esteemed Discipler, now a master among the Holy Brethren? The venerable and righteous Lord Prittleman? We ride under the protection of Eidon’s Sacred Flames.” He glanced over his shoulder at the group of Guardians Abramm now saw standing up the road, half hidden in the mist, holding the flattened bronze orb of their traveling brazier aloft. “What need have we of fearing monsters of the Shadow?”

  “You’re trusting in them to keep you safe? Plagues, Gillard! They’ll just make it stronger.”

  Belmir’s face slackened with astonishment, then drew down into a thunderous frown as Prittleman sputtered about Terstan heretics and blasphemy.

  I don’t have time for this!

  Abramm glanced at the line of archers hemming him in on the left. Gillard must’ve thought the steepness of the hill behind them would be enough of a deterrent not to warrant another line of horsemen. Or maybe it would’ve been too hard to hide them. In any case, Abramm could probably charge Warbanner straight up the hill through their ranks to the top of the knoll before they knew what had happened. According to the map, a narrow track led from the back of the temple complex to the main road up the pass, joining it well beyond Gillard’s line of men.

  Prittleman was still raving when an ear-piercing yowl cut him off and brought every man to horror-stricken attention. It came again, a black arrow of sound that froze the body as it impaled the heart with the knowledge that something evil and brutally violent was at hand. Dying echoes rolled over the knoll and the road and the lines of men made suddenly aware of their own mortality.

  Like the rest of them, Abramm sat transfixed, stunned by the realization that the visions that had long tormented him were about to become reality. Then Warbanner reared up, screaming an angry challenge. The moment he came down, Abramm wrenched his head around and kicked him hard. They flew up the hillside and through the line of archers as easily as Abramm had predicted, had topped the misty knoll by the time he heard Gillard bellowing orders behind him, then Trap’s voice, swiftly swallowed by a rising tide of shouts and screams and the muffled thunder of hoofbeats.

  Abramm never looked back, guiding Banner up a wide bank of grassgrown steps, across a plaza, up another bank of steps, and finally racing him for all he was worth up a long promenade flanked by mist-hung pillars and low crumbling walls. At its end they clattered up the stepped sides of the temple’s wide porch, through the arched opening of its freestanding façade and across the flat beyond, wet grass intermingled with the irregular remains of the stones that had once formed the temple’s main floor.

  Then the mist parted and the knoll ran out. Warbanner skidded to a stop at the edge of a steep-walled, boulder-strewn canyon, churning with runoff. The passage Abramm sought was not here after all. Perhaps there’d been a bridge once, but today they faced a deep cleft, too wide for Warbanner to jump, the other side too steep to offer purchase even if he could.

  They returned to the temple porch to find Trap, Channon, and the rest of Abramm’s men having taken a stand at the midpoint of the promenade Abramm had crossed only minutes ago. Gillard’s men had closed with them, and the two groups struggled fiercely. Banner was fast enough, Abramm knew, that by the time anyone saw him he could easily evade them—but to what purpose? The horse wasn’t faster than the morwhol, and it would only be a matter of time before the beast hunted them down. Besides, Abramm wanted Banner as far away as possible when he was finally forced to face off with it. Better to take his stand here.

  Knotting the reins to keep them on the horse’s neck, he sprang from the saddle and—

  Cresting the top of the pass, he flung himself down the now-descending trail, shrines looking on with bright benevolence, swirling shreds of mist rising up around them. The man-scent was growing stronger, swelling his head and chest with bloodlust till it felt as if they would burst.

  The jolt of his landing pulled Abramm back to himself. Warbanner had stopped and was looking round at him in puzzlement. With a shout, Abramm swatted his pale hindquarters, and the stallion wheeled with an indignant snort. He trotted a few paces along the top of the stair, glanced at Abramm again, then plunged down the steps and raced away. Too late Abramm realized he’d taken the pike with him.

  The battle on the promenade had shifted, and a few horsemen had broken through the line, racing headlong now toward Abramm’s position on the temple porch. Leading them was a big man in a golden breastplate. Abramm jogged down the porch stairs to meet him, unwinding the sling from his wrist as he went. He pulled a stone from his pouch and slid it into the sling’s leather cradle just as he reached the bottom. Praying for more of the uncanny accuracy he’d enjoyed outside Graymeer’s the day of the picnic, he dropped it back and let fly. Gillard’s eyes widened as he spotted Abramm for the first time, shifted his weight backward to stop his horse—

  The stone struck dead center of that gleaming breastplate with enough force to knock Gillard out of the saddle and reeling on his horse’s rump. The morwhol screa
med again, closer now than ever. Gillard’s horse, already flustered by his rider’s erratic weight shifts, spied Abramm now, too, and shied violently, as if Abramm himself had been the source of the scream. Gillard hit the ground rolling and came up with his rapier in hand.

  But then he staggered and leaned forward, coughing and gasping back the breath that had been driven out of him when the stone hit him midchest. By the time the three gray-cloaked men who’d accompanied him pulled up to flank the royals, though, he’d recovered, advancing toward Abramm with a sneer. “You just gonna throw rocks at me, little brother, or will you finally show me you really do know how to use those blades you wear?”

  The taunt stung, as always, rousing the familiar, almost instant anger. And better to save the stones for later, anyway. Swiftly Abramm rewrapped the sling about his wrist and pulled out his blades, rapier and dagger both. One of the Gadrielites tossed Gillard a buckler, and the brothers closed, circling.

  As soon as Gillard’s back was to the steps, Abramm attacked, forcing him to retreat awkwardly upward. Halfway to the top, he broke it off and danced out of the line of attack, ascending even with his brother. Gillard remained condescending.

  “Well, apparently you do know something of the sword, after all.”

  “The stories are true, Gillard. I really was the White Pretender.” And again Abramm attacked, forcing Gillard back on the diagonal this time, not letting up until they’d reached the porch itself. By then Trap and Channon had left the main battle on the promenade to engage the three who’d come with Gillard, a contest Abramm was aware of only peripherally.

  The bloodlust was overwhelming. Eagerness made his great limbs shake as he loped down the trail, the scent of his prey strong now, and close. He came around a bend in the canyon walls, the road curling across the face of the steep grassy slope below. And finally, there they were: gray-cloaked men ranged across the hillside, their backs to him as they looked down into the mist-filled valley below them, the slopes of the temple knoll rising to their right. Blind, deaf, ignorant as the woolly ones. He laughed and slowed to savor the moment. They had no idea they were about to die. . . . Then he was among them, biting and slashing and tearing.