The Dragon's Shadow

by Jonathan Moeller

  Lucan cast several warding spells about himself. He kept walking, the blue glow growing brighter, the splashing sound becoming louder.

  The tunnel widened into a vast chamber, the largest he had yet seen.

  A ledge of stone, perhaps twenty yards wide, stretched from the end of the tunnel. The blue glow came from a half-dozen crystals set upon bronze stands. Beyond the ledge Lucan saw a wide lake, its waters rippling. He suspected he was beneath the Lake of Swords itself, and the thought of all that water and stone over his head made him uneasy.

  A narrow finger of rock jutted into the lake, the waves splashing at its side. The finger ended at a small island a half-dozen yards across. Another pair of crystals stood there, illuminating a metal circle set into the rock itself.

  A summoning circle.

  Marstan’s summoning circle.

  Lucan turned and saw his former master’s workshop.

  A half-dozen tables stood against the cavern's wall, laden with jars and vials and strange instruments of bronze and glass. A score of shelves sagged beneath more jars, along with books and scrolls. Lucan felt the faint preservation wards Marstan had laid over the shelves and tables to guard them from mildew and decay.

  Might the remaining shadowrose petals await on those shelves?

  Lucan headed towards the tables, his magical senses seeked for any wards.

  Nothing moved, and the only sound was water lapping against stone.

  He searched the shelves and tables. There were hundreds of ingredients, both for poisons and for rare spells, and countless vials of powdered bone and dried blood. With a living victim, Lucan knew, Marstan could use extracted blood to work a dozen lethal spells at a distance.

  And once the victim was dead, Marstan could use the blood to summon up a shade.

  When a man died, the soul moved on to whatever awaited it, beyond the reach of any mortal magic. But living mortals cast shadows upon the spirit world, and those dark shadows lingered long after death. A skilled necromancer could summon a shade and force it to answer questions, learning the dead man's secrets. And with some of the dead man's bone or blood, the necromancer had a far better chance of successfully summoning the shade.

  And Marstan had hundreds of vials of powdered bone and dried blood. How many shades had he summoned up to steal their secrets? How many long-forgotten spells had he learned? Was that how he had learned the spell to possess Lucan?

  Lucan dismissed the thought. He could ponder his master’s dark secrets later, once Tymaen had been saved. Now he needed to find the shadowrose petals and return to Swordgrim. He crossed to one of the shelves, intending to search vial by vial…

  A green flash caught his eye.

  Lucan saw a podium between two of the tables, facing the lake, as if Marstan had intended to deliver an oration to an audience waiting below the waters. The greenish gleam came from a white object lying lengthwise across the podium. Stepping closer, he saw that it was a human femur. Elaborate runes and sigils marked its length, shining with a pale green glow. That kind of bone wand would help a necromancer conjure up a shade.

  A glass vial stood next to the wand, filled with a dark red fluid.

  Human blood, and still liquid.

  Beneath the vial lay a scrap of paper.

  Lucan lifted the paper and his blood went cold.

  “If you want to save Tymaen,” said the note, “use this blood to summon a shade.”

  It was written in Marstan’s handwriting.

  Lucan started at the writing, his heartbeat thundering his ears.

  This was madness. What sort of game had Marstan left for him? Would the blood conjure up a shade too powerful to control, a shade strong enough to break free from the summoning circle and kill Lucan?

  He looked at the summoning circle on the island and scowled. The blood was here, the wand was here, and the summoning circle awaited.

  A neat, perfect little trap.

  Well, Marstan had liked his games…but Lucan could refuse to play.

  He dropped the note onto the podium and searched the shelves, vial by vial, for the remaining shadowrose petals.

  An hour of fruitless searching later he straightened up, staring at the podium. There was no trace of the shadowrose. Marstan must have concealed it well. Lucan suspected he could find it eventually, but Tymaen didn’t have that kind of time.

  Marstan had built a perfect trap for Lucan…and left him with no choice but to walk into it.

  Lucan took a deep breath. If he had to play Marstan’s game, so be it.

  But he would play to win.

  He picked up the bone wand. It felt cold, like a shard of ice, and the chill spread up his fingers and into his arm. The greenish glow from its sigils brightened.

  And as they did, the lake began to boil.

  Dozens of translucent forms rose from the churning waters and floated towards Lucan. As they drew closer, he saw they were the ghostly images of men and women and children. Some had the fine clothes and proud expressions of knights and ladies, while others wore the worn clothes and hard expressions of lifelong laborers. Yet every last one of them gazed at Lucan with ferocious hatred.

  Shades, all of them. Repeated use of summoning spells in the same location eroded the barrier between the spirit world and the mortal world, and sometimes powerful shades or spirits broke through. But for so many to come at once…

  “Marstan,” spat a knight. “You left me to die!”

  “Marstan!” shrieked a woman. “You murdered my husband.”

  “Marstan!” said a peasant man. “You stole my children and slew them to fuel your necromancy!”

  “I am not Marstan!” said Lucan. “What do you wish of me?”

  The shades swooped at him.

  Lucan summoned magic and unleashed a spell. A burst of green fire shot from his hands, dispelling the first three shades into wisps of gray smoke. Lucan unleashed another blast, and another, destroying shade after shade. But the rest closed around him, and Lucan cast a ward. A shell of green light enclosed his body, and the shades raked against it, hissing and screaming.

  The shell dimmed with every touch.

  The shades were incorporeal, but their touch would drain a tiny bit of Lucan’s life force, and if dozens of them swarmed him at once they would kill him in a few heartbeats. He unleashed another volley of green flame, destroying a half-dozen shades, but the rest threw themselves at him…

  “Get back, damn you!” shouted Lucan, striking again. “Get back!”

  And to his surprise, they did.

  The shades withdrew into a wide circle around him. Lucan blinked, and then felt the bone wand in his left hand.

  It was vibrating.

  He pointed it at the shades, and they recoiled.

  “You have to obey me so long as I am holding this, don’t you?” said Lucan.

  “Yes,” said their shades, their hissing voices filled with hatred.

  Lucan nodded. Binding the shades of his victims into servitude was the sort of thing Marstan would have enjoyed.

  “I command you to get back into the lake,” said Lucan, “and trouble me no more.”

  “You will not escape us, Marstan,” hissed the shades as they glided back into the water. “We will repay our spilled blood!”

  “For the gods’ sake,” said Lucan, “you idiots, I killed Marstan.”

  The shades said nothing as they disappeared into the waters, but Lucan still felt their eyes upon him.

  He lowered the wand. Why had Marstan set such a trap for him? Had Marstan intended Lucan to die here? Had the note only been a trick to lure him to his death?

  The note.

  Lucan looked at the podium, at the vial of blood.

  “If you want to save Tymaen,” said Lucan, “use this blood to summon a shade.”

  He crossed to the podium, picked up the vial, and walked to the island.

  Chapter 9 - The Summoning

  The summoning circle held everything else Lucan needed.

 
All the separate elixirs and powders required to work the spell waited within the circle, along with a brazier stocked with coal and oil. Marstan had been thorough. Lucan set to work, centering the brazier within the circle and setting the coals flame. He cast a series of wards over the metal circle, laying interlocking spells of containment and entrapment over it. Around the circle he drew runes of green fire, further reinforcing the warding.

  With that done, he began the summoning.

  He walked in a ring around the circle, chanting the spell, the bone wand in his left hand. From time to time he threw a handful of powder or poured a vial into the brazier. The coals hissed and spat, changing color as Lucan worked the spell. First they turned the color of blood. Then an eerie, ghostly blue, and then the sickly green of the bone wand’s glow.

  At last the flames turned black, radiating a cold chill instead of heat.

  The spell was ready.

  Lucan poured the vial of blood into the brazier. A snarling crackle echoed through the cavern, and the circle thrummed with power.

  “Come forth!” said Lucan, pointing the bone wand. “Come forth! By the power of my will, by the strength of my magic, by the authority of this talisman, I summon you forth!”

  The air above the flames writhed, and something like a flattened shadow appeared over the brazier. Lucan had a sudden dizzying sense of vertigo, as if he was looking into a deep chasm.

  Like the strange shadow was a doorway to another place.

  The bone wand shuddered.

  “Come forth!” said Lucan. “I compel you to come forth. I summon you!”

  A cold wind howled through the chamber, driving white-topped waves across the lake. The brazier trembled, the stone thrumming beneath Lucan’s boots. The bone wand shuddered in his hand like a nail caught by a lodestone, and Lucan wrapped both hands around it.

  He was close, so close. The shade was almost caught. But he needed a name, he needed a name to complete the summoning...

  The realization came to him with dreadful force.

  “Marstan!” shouted Lucan. “I summon you! Marstan, I compel you! Marstan, by the power of my will I call you forth!”

  The last word echoed through the cavern like a thunderclap.

  The brazier crumbled into black ash, the dark flames writhing. They widened and bulged, as if something behind the air itself was forcing its way into the mortal world.

  And then a shade stood in the summoning circle, gazing at Lucan with a smile.

  His breath froze in his throat.

  Marstan.

  The translucent shade looked exactly as Lucan remembered his old master. The same dusty black robe. The same thinning white hair and lined face with the kindly, grandfatherly smile.

  The same blue eyes like frozen knives.

  The bone wand trembled in Lucan’s hand, its sigils emitting the same peculiar black glow as the circle's fire.

  “Lucan,” said Marstan in his familiar quiet tone. “It has been a long time, hasn’t it?”

  It took Lucan a few moments to find his voice.

  “Not long enough,” he said.

  Marstan raised a white eyebrow. “Indeed? Such ingratitude. Ten years I taught you, boy. Ten years I trained you in the secrets of the arcane, ten years I gave you spells the wizards’ brotherhood could not possibly imagine.”

  “For ten years you prepared me,” said Lucan, “so you could claim my body as your own and extend your wretched life.”

  "That surprised you?" said Marstan. "Did I not teach you that mankind could be divided into the strong and the weak? Do you not understand that the strong can do as they please and the weak suffer as they must?"

  "You taught me that," said Lucan, "but you were wrong."

  "Was I?" said Marstan.

  "You were wrong," said Lucan, "because you are dead and I am not."

  "Then you have become more like me," said Marstan. "Strong enough to kill your teacher when necessary. How much of my power and skill did you inherit? Have you put it to good use? You should have slain your brother, overthrown your father, and made yourself liege lord of the Grim Marches by now."

  "No," said Lucan. " I will not murder my father and my brother."

  Marstan's smile showed his teeth. "Your conscience remains as tender as ever, I see. Do you not understand? Your father tried to turn his sons into weapons, hard and remorseless. He succeeded with Toraine. With you, he failed. Even I failed to make you realize the full potential of your strength. Instead you hobble yourself in service to those weaker than yourself."

  "As opposed to what?" said Lucan. "Becoming like you? A necromancer with the blood of hundreds upon his hands?"

  "Thousands, most likely," said Marstan.

  "And all for nothing," said Lucan.

  "For the pursuit of power," said Marstan, "the pursuit of the only thing that matters. You will learn, Lucan, that power is the..."

  "Shut up," said Lucan.

  Marstan's eyes narrowed.

  "I didn't summon you to listen to yet another of your damned lectures," said Lucan. "I listened to you for ten years, and that was ten years too long."

  "If your ears do not yearn for my wisdom," said Marstan, "then why have you conjured me?"

  "You know why," said Lucan.

  Marstan smiled. "Enlighten me."

  "You had Tymaen poisoned," said Lucan.

  "I did," said Marstan. "That wretch Alighar found the nerve to carry out my commands. Splendid. I wondered if I had chosen a poor instrument. Did you kill him?"

  "Yes," said Lucan.

  "Then you are more like me than you thought."

  "Enough," said Lucan. "Why?"

  The shade shrugged. "You killed me. Why should I not take vengeance upon your wife?"

  "She married Robert Highgate," said Lucan.

  Marstan frowned. "Not you? Why? Did...ah, I see. You received enough of my memories to change you. She didn't like that, did she?"

  "No," said Lucan, voice quiet. "She did not."

  "Then my plan had a flaw," said Marstan. "Yet here you are, trying to save a woman who abandoned you. You still love her." He laughed. "And her death will cause you just as much pain."

  "She is not going to die," said Lucan, "because you're going to tell me where the rest of the shadowrose bloom is."

  "The leftmost shelf on the bottom," said Marstan. "In a jar labeled acidic salts. There are exactly seven petals left. I suggest you make good use of them."

  Lucan blinked. "That's it? All that and you're just going to...tell me?"

  Marstan laughed. "Do you want me to sing? Or perhaps dance?"

  "You poisoned Tymaen," said Lucan. "More precisely, you arranged for her to be poisoned after your death. You set up this lair, you arranged all these traps, and you left exactly the tools I would need to summon your shade." He gestured with the bone wand, the black light leaking over his fingers. "Why?"

  "Spite," said Marstan. "You killed me, so I shall kill your wife." He smirked. "Or, at least, the woman you wished to make your wife. The fact that you shall lose her twice, first as your betrothed, and then her very life, makes my revenge twice as sweet."

  "If it was for revenge," said Lucan, "then why leave me all the clues I needed to find the antidote?"

  Marstan shrugged. "A game, my boy. A simple little game."

  And, indeed, he looked like he was enjoying himself.

  Like a man who knew a secret joke.

  "I know how much you enjoyed your games," said Lucan, "but they always had a point. Did you want me to cure Tymaen for some reason? Why go to all the trouble of having her poisoned, only to have me cure her? Why bring me here..."

  He blinked.

  "No," said Lucan. "No, it wasn't about Tymaen at all, was it?"

  Marstan nodded. "Go on." As if he were still the teacher and Lucan the student.

  "You wanted me to summon up your shade," said Lucan. "Why?"

  "Revenge, of course."

  "Unlikely," said Lucan. "Shades are dangerous, but yo
u taught me too well. One shade, even the shade of a necromancer, is no threat to me."

  "True," said Marstan, his smile widening. "Do you remember what I told you about souls and the undead?"

  "That a soul cannot remain in the mortal world without a body," said Lucan. "Or, barring that, an anchor of some kind."

  "I lied," said Marstan.

  Lucan's chill grew worse. "What?"

  "You're mine, Lucan Mandragon," said Marstan. "Your flesh belongs to me. It has always belonged to me. You thought you escaped...but you are mine."

  "You're trapped in that circle," said Lucan, taking a step back. "You can't do anything to me."

  "Yes, trapped in this circle," said Marstan. "The circle that I built, behind spells that I taught you. But more to the point…spells that I know how to break.”

  He gestured, and Lucan felt a surge of power. The sigils of green fire around the metal circle went out. The circle itself twisted, ripping itself free from the floor, and snapped as if it had been made of clay. The black fires of the ruined brazier sprang up, the dark light making the lake look like a sea of rotting blood.

  And Marstan’s shade was free.

  No, not his shade, Lucan realized. His soul. Somehow, he had conjured up Marstan’s soul.

  And then it all made cold, horrifying sense.

  It had never been about Tymaen. It hadn’t even been about Lucan. In the end, the object of the game had been what Marstan’s games had always been about – Marstan’s own power. Lucan had killed Marstan, but Marstan had planned for that. He had lured Lucan here. He had prepared this hidden sanctuary, leaving the tools that Lucan would need. And somehow Marstan had kept his soul from moving beyond the reach of mortal magic, had tricked Lucan into conjuring it up.

  And now he would claim Lucan’s body for himself.

  Lucan raised his free arm to cast a ward, but Marstan moved too fast. He surged forward, a dark blur of translucent mist, and crashed into Lucan. Lucan stumbled, his wards crackling and flashing, but Marstan cast another spell. The wards collapsed with a snarling hiss, and the backlash drove Lucan to his knees.

  Marstan’s hands plunged into his chest.

  Lucan screamed as the cold chill spread through him. He felt Marstan’s insubstantial grip, not against his flesh but closing around his mind and spirit. He felt Marstan’s dark presence inside his thoughts, felt the necromancer’s gloating triumph.