The Dragon's Shadow

by Jonathan Moeller

  That caught Lucan off-guard. “Why?”

  “It was what he commanded me to do,” said Alighar, “and no one refused Marstan. He told me that if I ever heard he had perished at your hands, I was to wait a year and a day. Once that time had passed, I was to poison Lady Tymaen and wait for you to come.”

  “Why did Marstan tell you to poison her?” said Lucan at last. Had his former teacher left such an order out of spite? Marstan had responded with vicious cruelty to even the pettiest slights, sometimes nursing a grudge for decades. But his former master had been a practical man, and had never done anything without gaining something concrete from it.

  “I don’t know,” said Alighar. “I swear it. Marstan was as cruel and cunning as the Old Demon himself. He commanded me, and I knew better than to question him.”

  Discerning Marstan’s motivations could wait until Lucan had cured Tymaen. “What poison did you use?”

  Alighar shivered. “Shadowrose.”

  “Oh,” said Lucan.

  That was very bad.

  “I have never heard of such a thing,” said Montigard.

  “Few have,” said Lucan. “Every bloom of shadowrose is unique. A skilled apothecary can use it to brew a lethal poison. There is an antidote…but it must be made from the petals of the same bloom used to brew the poison. The exact same bloom.” He looked at the trembling apothecary. “For your sake, I hope you still have that flower.”

  “I don’t,” said Alighar.

  Lucan’s mouth pressed into a hard line. “Then I have no further…”

  “Wait!” shouted Alighar. “I know where it is.” The words tumbled out of him. “Marstan brought the poison to me. Just the poison, already brewed. He said…he said that after I poisoned Tymaen, you would come to me. And that I should tell you the rest of the shadowrose bloom was hidden in his workshop.”

  “My father burned Marstan’s workshop,” said Lucan.

  “Not the one he kept in Swordgrim,” said Alighar. “He had another one, hidden from both you and your father. A cave on the shore of the Lake of Swords, a half-mile west of Swordgrim’s walls. It was sealed with a spell, a spell he said you would recognize. He said you would seek it out, that you would go to it at once.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me all this?” said Lucan. “You could have saved both of us a lot of trouble. And you wouldn’t be lying in the dirt with a spirit-wolf’s jaws around your neck.”

  “Because I wanted you dead!” said Alighar. “You know all my secrets. And you would always use them as a lever against me. If I killed you…I would be free at last.”

  “I see,” said Lucan.

  He fell silent.

  “Let me go,” whispered Alighar.

  “Why the devil would I do that?” said Lucan.

  “Do not!” said Montigard. “He will betray us the moment we turn our backs.”

  “I won’t,” said Alighar. “I’ll flee the Grim Marches and never return, I swear. I’ll go to Barellion, and hide myself in the crowds. Or to Northreach, and conceal myself in the wilderness. Please, I beg you, let me go. You’ll never see me again, I swear.”

  Lucan said nothing.

  “I told you everything you wanted to know,” said Alighar. “Everything!”

  “Yes, you did,” said Lucan. “I'm grateful.”

  A hint of tremulous hope appeared on Alighar’s face.

  “But you poisoned Tymaen,” said Lucan, turning away. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

  He sent a silent command to the wolves.

  Alighar screamed, and the sounds of the snarling wolves and tearing flesh drowned out his wails. Lucan waved his hand and banished the wolves to the spirit world. They vanished in swirls of gray mist, leaving Alighar behind.

  Or what was left of him.

  “A bad way to die,” said Montigard, wiping his brow.

  “Yes,” said Lucan, “it was.”

  But not as bad as Lucan had wished to inflict.

  “Er,” said Montigard, “not to question your lordship’s judgment, but perhaps we should conceal the body? We left quite a trail of corpses in our wake this evening.”

  “No need,” said Lucan. “The outcry over the dead Justiciars will last some time, and Alighar was not popular. No one will notice his death for some time.” He shrugged. “At least until the neighbors complain about the smell.”

  He headed for the ladder without a backward glance. The antidote, the key to saving Tymaen, lay at hand. And Lucan would do what was necessary to save her.

  Whatever the cost to himself.

  Chapter 7 - The Necromancer’s Apprentice

  “A question, my lord,” said Montigard.

  Lucan shrugged. “Ask.”

  They walked west along the shore of the Lake of Swords, the dark mass of Swordgrim rising to the east. The shore was rough and rocky and rose in a sharp bluff to the plains of the Grim Marches proper. Every few paces Lucan cast the spell to sense the presence of magic, seeking the hidden entrance to Marstan’s secret lair.

  Nothing yet.

  He wanted to save Tymaen, but a small part of Lucan hoped he would not find the lair.

  He did not want to know what horrors his teacher had sealed within that cave.

  “Who is this Marstan fellow?” said Montigard.

  Lucan glanced at him. “You are new to the Grim Marches, aren’t you?”

  Montigard grinned. “Indeed I am. My father is a minor noble in service to the Prince of Travia. After gaining my knighthood, I hoped to follow in his footsteps. Alas, I had a minor indiscretion with my elder brother’s wife. And…ah, the wife of my younger brother.” He coughed. “And one of the Prince’s bastard daughters. Since then I have been traveling in search of my fortune. Or willing women.”

  Lucan laughed. “You’re lucky to be alive.”

  Montigard’s grin never wavered. “Indeed I am.”

  They walked in silence for a moment.

  And then, to Lucan’s surprise, he started to speak.

  “When I was a child,” said Lucan. “I manifested magical power. By law and tradition, my father should have sent me to the wizards’ brotherhood for training.” He heard the bitterness in his voice. “But my father would not countenance it. He rules in the Grim Marches, not the wizards’ brotherhood. He would not let the wizards turn his son into a weapon against him. Not when he could turn his son into a weapon for his private use. So he arranged for a private tutor.”

  “This Marstan,” said Montigard.

  “Yes,” said Lucan. He cast the spell again and felt nothing. “Marstan was a renegade, and spun a pretty tale about how the church and the wizards’ brotherhood had unjustly persecuted him. My father regarded him as an ally at once. He didn’t realize that Marstan was a necromancer. Marstan studied under Simonian of Briault, who men say learned his black arts from the Old Demon himself. The Dominiars, the Justiciars, the wizards’ brotherhood, and a dozen lords all had the death price on his head, and his crimes had earned all that and more.”

  “And that was the man your father hired to make you into a wizard,” said Montigard.

  “For ten years,” said Lucan. “Marstan was an excellent teacher. I am barely twenty, Montigard, but I am the most powerful wizard in the Grim Marches. Certainly I am one of the strongest wizards in the realm.” He smirked. “Exactly as my father wished. A powerful wizard, beholden to no one but him.”

  “I see,” said Montigard. “Then your father had Marstan killed, lest he prove a threat.”

  “Not quite,” said Lucan. “Marstan was a necromancer, and he intended to live forever. His spells had sustained his body for decades, but it was starting to fail. He needed a new one. It couldn't be a random body. It had to be a body accustomed to wielding magic.”

  Montigard thought this over.

  “You,” he said.

  “Me,” said Lucan. “Marstan planned to possess my body and claim it for his own.”

  “I assume,” said Montigard, “that I am not addressing M
arstan right now. At least, I hope not.”

  Lucan managed a brief smile. “No. Marstan ambushed me in his workshop, and tried to expel my soul from my body and replace it with his own.” He still remembered the horror of that day, and tried to push it aside. “He warded himself against every spell I could try, but he neglected to shield himself from physical attacks. We broke a chair in our struggle, and I bashed him over the head with one of the legs. He fell, cracked his skull, and died.”

  Montigard laughed. “Hardly an end worthy of song.”

  “No,” said Lucan. “But he had his revenge. He wasn’t able to take my body…but he almost did. Many of his powers transferred to me, along with most of his memories. I changed because of them. I grew harder, colder, more like Marstan.” Sometimes he found himself using Marstan’s mannerisms or gestures, or phrasing something the way Marstan would have.

  And Marstan would have killed Alighar without a second thought. Had Lucan done that of his own volition? Or had Marstan's memories influenced him?

  He no longer knew.

  “And that,” said Montigard, “is why the Lady Tymaen left you.”

  Lucan scowled. “You know about that?”

  Montigard shrugged. “Women love to gossip, and when the son of the liege lord of the Grim Marches breaks his betrothal…well, that is gossip, no?” He thought about it for a moment. “You should find another woman.”

  Lucan scowled. “And leave Tymaen to die?”

  "Well, that would be churlish," said Montigard, scratching his beard. "But save her life, and then find yourself another woman. Else you'll obsess over her. It makes for fine poetry, but for an unpleasant life. Let it stew in your head for too long, and you do something foolish like kidnap her or murder her husband or both."

  "I shall do neither," said Lucan, again casting the spell to sense the presence of magic. "Tymaen...is better, away from me. Safer. And that is all I shall..."

  He frowned, turning as he tightened the focus of his spell.

  "You've found it?" said Montigard.

  "I think so," said Lucan. " There."

  A pile of boulders lay against the base of the bluff. Lucan walked closer, hand extended. He felt the presence of a familiar spell upon the rocks. Marstan had used that spell every day in the early years of Lucan's training, teaching him to dispel wards and open locks.

  His hands moved in the familiar patterns of the counterspell, his lips mouthing the incantation.

  A flash of blue light, and one of the boulders vanished.

  The dark mouth of a cavern yawned before Lucan.

  "A clever trick," said Montigard. "Think of all the treasure you could hide in a secret cave."

  "Marstan was a necromancer of power," said Lucan. "I doubt he left gold in there."

  He took a deep, slow breath. Marstan had left the shadowbloom in the cave, the antidote to Tymaen's poison. But if he had wanted to kill Tymaen just to spite Lucan, why even bother with an antidote at all?

  What else was waiting in the darkness of the cave?

  "You may await me here, if you wish," said Lucan.

  "If you die, I don't get paid," said Montigard, "and I will have wasted an evening I could have otherwise spent in that delightful brothel."

  "It's your neck," said Lucan.

  He lifted his palm, summoning the sphere of blue light. Holding his left hand up like a torch, he led the way into the cave. The blue light threw weird, eerie shadows over the rough walls of the tunnel. The passage widened as it descended into the earth, and at last opened into a yawning cavern. The ceiling rose overhead in a crude dome.

  "It looks a bit like a church," said Lucan.

  "I never spent much time in church," said Montigard.

  Lucan worked another spell. He felt the presence of magic, powerful magic, some distance away. Deeper in the cavern, he thought. He fed more power into his light, and saw the entrance to another tunnel on the far side of the chamber.

  "Through there," said Lucan.

  "A larger cave than I expected," said Montigard.

  "There are thousands like them below the plains," said Lucan. "The high lords of Old Dracaryl liked to conceal their treasures in places like this, or hide undead warriors until they were needed." He shook his head. "I'm not surprised Marstan made his lair here. He liked to fancy himself the equal of the old high lords, and..."

  "My lord!" said Montigard.

  Lucan saw something move in the shadows.

  And then green light strained against the blue glow coming from his hand.

  A human shape stepped into the blue light. It was a gaunt, skeletal figure, its skin like leather, its clothes little more than ragged scraps. A sickly green light shimmered in the depths of its empty eye sockets.

  "What the devil is that?" said Montigard.

  "A zuvembie," said Lucan. "A corpse animated by necromantic spells. Marstan left guards behind."

  A half-dozen more zuvembies stepped into the light.

  "And just how," said Montigard, "am I to kill a man already dead?"

  "Like this," said Lucan, and cast a spell.

  A pale green haze shimmered around the blade of Montigard's sword.

  A dozen more zuvembies shuffled into sight. They moved slowly, but Lucan knew they had just sensed his presence. Once they decided that he was a threat, they would become much more dangerous.

  "Strike!" said Lucan.

  Montigard swung his sword in a two-handed blow. The green-glowing blade sheared through a zuvembie's skeletal neck. The skull rolled across the ground, the green glow in its eyes winking out, while the rest of the creature collapsed in a pile of dusty bone. Normal steel could not harm the zuvembies, but the magic Lucan had placed upon Montigard’s sword disrupted the controlling spells upon the undead flesh.

  Montigard took another zuvembie with a quick slash, and then split the skull of a third. The rest of the creatures surged towards him, moving with sudden speed.

  They had not yet decided Lucan was a threat, and that gave him the space he needed to work another spell. Psychokinetic force burst from his hands and slammed the charging creatures to the cavern floor. The zuvembies began to claw their way back to their feet, but Montigard seized the moment to attack. He dispatched four more of the creatures with quick strikes, and then dropped to a defensive posture as the zuvembies charged him.

  Lucan cast another spell. Green fire flared around his hands, and his will reached out, seeking the controlling spells upon the zuvembies. He sensed them at once - Marstan’s work, intricate and masterful. Lucan could dispel them, given time, but the zuvembies would tear him apart long before he finished.

  It was simpler to disrupt the controlling spells.

  The zuvembies went motionless, frozen as Lucan commanded them to remain still.

  Montigard shot a surprised glanced his way.

  “Quickly!” said Lucan, sweat trickling down his jaw. “I cannot hold them for long!”

  Montigard went to work, tearing through the zuvembies like a reaper through wheat. Lucan’s hands trembled with the strain, but Montigard worked fast. A few moments later the last zuvembie collapsed in a pile of bone and dust, and Lucan released the spell.

  “I must say, my lord, you are a handy man in a fight,” said Montigard. “A pity the dead fellows had no money. Else we could have taken their purses and fled.”

  Lucan's head throbbed and ached, and his eyelids had begun to feel heavy. He had worked a great deal of magic in the last day, and the strain was wearing on him. “I couldn’t have held them for long. Then we would have a score of angry men after our heads.”

  Montigard grunted. “I wouldn’t want another mob on my heels.”

  “Another?” said Lucan, crossing the chamber to the far tunnel. “How many times has that happened to you? Wait…the angry husbands. I had forgotten.”

  He waved his hand before the tunnel. It sloped downward into the earth, the darkness swallowing his light's blue glow.

  “More zuvembies?” said Montig
ard.

  “No,” said Lucan. “There’s a ward over this tunnel. Powerful, but subtle. Else I would have sensed it by now.”

  “What does it do?” said Montigard.

  “If anyone steps into that tunnel,” said Lucan, “the spell will burn them to ash. But…” He frowned, tightening the focus of his magical senses. “But…it seems familiar somehow, like…”

  His eyes widened, and Lucan stepped forward.

  He passed unharmed through the ward. Blue light flickered over the entrance to the tunnel, and Lucan felt its power pass through him like a wave of ice.

  “It is harmless?” said Montigard, starting forward.

  “No!” said Lucan. “Stay where you are. Another step and you’re dead.”

  Montigard froze.

  “The ward is attuned to me,” said Lucan. “It’s allowing me to pass. Marstan…wanted me to come here. Alone.”

  But why?

  “Can you dispel it?” said Montigard.

  “Eventually,” said Lucan. “It would take hours. Perhaps until dawn. And Tymaen does not have that much time left.”

  “But if you are slain,” said Montigard, “how shall I be paid?”

  “You won’t,” said Lucan. “Wait here until dawn. If I’m not back by then, leave the Grim Marches and never return. My father will seek to blame someone for my death, and you would make a convenient scapegoat.”

  “As you wish,” said Montigard. “Good fortune, my lord.”

  Lucan laughed. “Because if I am slain, you will not be paid.”

  Montigard shrugged. “True. And yet, I think you are a valiant man. A fool, certainly, to risk so much for a woman who is not your wife. But valiant nonetheless.”

  “Then,” said Lucan, “let us hope that fortune indeed favors fools.”

  He descended into the dark tunnel.

  Chapter 8 - Shades

  Lucan frowned, sniffing the air.

  He smelled mildew and mold. A distant murmuring came to his ears, soft and persistent. At first he thought it was distant voices, or perhaps a wind. Then he realized it was the sound of water lapping at stone.

  An underground stream, perhaps?

  He saw a pale blue glow in the darkness ahead.