Shadowkings

by Michael Cobley

  Do not fail me. He took my beloved from me and I wander in my weeping sorrow and anger, hungering for retribution. I will have vengeance, son of my daughters. I will drive him to his knees before me and take his throat in my hand and cut it through. I will have it, but you must not fail.

  The dark, veiled jungle blurred. Coldness tore at him with ragged talons and the blackness roared in his head as he spun away, falling, twisting -

  - to land on his hands and knees on the floor as his tall chair clattered off to one side. The candles had burned out and the tower room was dim, weak light filtering in at the shuttered window. For a few moments Bardow just sat where he was, breathing heavily, trying to regain his senses and grasp the import of what had happened.

  The Earthmother. He had been brought to the threshold of her Realm, and she had spoken to him, an event almost unheard of outside the Earthmother priesthood. Part of him hung between fear and awe, the feeling that such an experience was usually accounted as an act of divine blessing. That She would speak to him!

  But his ceaseless need for understanding, for the cold knowledge of what is unspoken and unrevealed, reasserted itself, cutting through his confusion. There had been a warning. Somehow their aims were aligned with those of the Lord of Twilight or his creatures. What could it be? - the planned uprisings? The decision to seize Besh-Darok? Cold anxiety stroked his skin as he thought of Tauric on his way to one of the Children's refuges. Or Suviel seeking the Crystal Eye...

  He shivered. Why had the Spiritwing been unable to find her? He thought back, remembering how it had swept through the Void like an arrow swift to the target then lost its purpose and direction as if she had been suddenly snatched away...to where?

  Grasping the edge of the table he got to his feet, fumbled in the darkness for his tinderwheel and lit a candle stub from among the table clutter. Some of his parchments were on the floor and there were scorch marks on the tabletop from the dissolution of his spell. He righted the chair and for a moment or two he stood there, leaning on the chair, wondering if the only thing he could do about Suviel was to wait and see.

  No, he thought. I must be able to do something...

  He was about to sort through several bundles of papers when something else came back to him- I will drive him to his knees before me and take his throat in my hand and cut it through...

  He felt a deep unease. The Earthmother did have a darker aspect as guardian of the Gate of Spirits, a mournful yet stern face reflecting the twin responsibilities of tending the dead and bringing forth new life. That was the portrayal he had learned from initiates and abbesses of the Earthmother Temple, but it seemed that the death of the Fathertree had changed all that. Bardow sighed, rubbing his tired eyes – perhaps the most ominous thing he had learned was that their god had become vengeful.

  Chapter Twelve

  When my battle-hosts hunt you down,

  And flights of arrows seek you out,

  Ask not who comes against you.

  For 'twas your hand,

  That set it all in motion,

  Your gorey, guilty hand.

  —The Saga Of Prince Hachtek, 27, iii, traditional.

  The ridge they climbed was a grassless, pebbly slope, but every stone seemed formed from some opaque mineral, their surfaces dulled and scored. A pale, gritty dust rose to slowly permeate their garments. Suviel knew that this realm, which Haidar called Kekrahan, was truly dead - no movement, no life or colour other than themselves disturbed the desolation. The air was still and odourless, and the cold was more a bearable deadness of sensation than a biting iciness.

  It was now over an hour since the relentless pursuit of a squad of Acolyte guards had forced Raal Haidar to shift them here once more; time enough for Suviel to observe their surroundings. And while this Kekrahan was clearly a foresaken wasteland, she knew that it had not always been so. She frequently saw the dessicated remains of trees poking up out of the ground, or lying half-exposed in the flanks of rubble and dust dunes.

  Both she and the sorcerer were on horseback, while Gilly and Keren walked a few paces ahead as they climbed. The terrain seemed to follow that of the world they had left, but the far distance in all directions faded into a shifting greyness. Once or twice Suviel had noticed partings in that remote veil and glimpsed what appeared to be sheer, impossibly high cliffs. When she mentioned this to Raal Haidar he shook his head.

  "Nothing but an echo of some other far-flung part of this continent," he had said stiffly. "This domain was wrought by sorcery and echoes of that power still remain, causing these mirages from time to time."

  "What else can we expect to see?" Gilly had drawled. "Colossal cities? Dung heaps the size of mountains?"

  The sorcerer had given him a blank look. "Who can tell?"

  As she rode Suviel glanced at Haidar and wondered. He was a curiously emotionless person, betraying scarcely a sign of anger or good humour, yet back at Alvergost he had worked tirelessly treating the ill and the wounded. Had that been no more than an exercise for him, or did his impassive exterior mask deeper, stronger motivations?

  They came to the top of the ridge and gazed down. Ahead was a wide, steep-sided valley strewn with shattered boulders and gouged with long gullies that wound across to a deep depression over a mile away. Streams that once fed a lake, Suviel guessed. But she could see no water.

  They were about to descend to the valley when Keren paused, hand upraised, and cocked her head. She looked at Suviel.

  "Did you hear it?"

  Before Suviel could speak, a faint, drawn-out howl came from the other end of the valley, and was answered by other howls.

  "So there are creatures living here," she said to Raal Haidar.

  "Dangerous, cunning beasts," he said calmly. "They hunt in packs and clearly have our scent, so it would be prudent to return to our own domain. Our pursuers should be some distance away by now, but it might be advantageous to reach lower ground first."

  With everyone in agreement, they hurried down into the valley. The eerie howls continued to sound in the distance and to Suviel they seemed mournful rather than menacing. The horses, though, were nervous and were growing skittish. Then, as they drew near one of the river-like gullies, Suviel spotted movement far off, just beyond the empty lake. A small dark form, smaller than a horse or a cow, running on four legs like a dog, dashing frantically this way and that but all the time coming closer. Others appeared, following the first, then a harsh and shivering cry rose up from nearby. Keren backed away from the edge of the river-gully where she had been standing, sword at the ready.

  "We've got company."

  Suviel looked meaningfully at Raal Haidar who, unperturbed, nodded once and spread his hands.

  Braids of light enfolded her, a patterned web which darkened the surroundings and began filling the valley with colours and shapes. There was a smell, a taste, of hot stone. And just before the last bleak traces of that domain faded she saw something haul itself up out of the gully and lope towards her. Then she was in a bushy glade, trying to calm her horse, speaking soothingly to it and stroking its neck. Gilly and Keren stepped back in case the mare reared but Suviel soon had her under control. Across the glade Raal Haidar regarded her difficulties with unconcern from his own placid steed.

  Suviel dismounted, indicating to Keren to take her place.

  "What kind of creature could exist in that place?" Suviel said to Haidar. "What would it feed on?"

  "Nourishment invisible to our eyes."

  Suviel frowned. "Is it some kind of plant, or a fluid? Are there any other animals - "

  The sorcerer halted her with a shake of the head. "I am already weary from my efforts on your behalf and your questioning tires me. I would rather devote my remaining strength to our journey."

  Suviel felt resentment at this haughty rebuke, but knew that he was right. Swallowing her irritation, she inclined her head. "Forgive me, honoured Haidar. Natural curiousity overcame my manners. There are several villages along this valley a
nd at one of them we will surely find shelter and food, and perhaps more horses." She turned to Keren. "Am I correct in this?"

  The swordswoman shrugged. "This is Ubanye Dale. It leads to another two valleys that open out at the northern plains. They're all very fertile, many farms and villages, all controlled by a pair of Mogaun chiefs, Azbular and Droshal. But if the tribes are sending their fighters east, it might be safer."

  "I think we should assume that there will be Mogaun patrols on the road," said Suviel. "Therefore we must be cautious and alert."

  "Shouldn't be too difficult," said Gilly. "We'll probably smell them before we see them."

  "Well, that should even things up a little," Keren said acidly. "Because they'll certainly hear your flapping mouth before they see you."

  The trader was speechless for a moment, then a slow smile came over his face. Suviel could almost see the thoughts working their way through his mind, about how Keren was masking her true feelings for him with sarcasm. She sighed and walked on ahead with the others following.

  A broad, worn path brought them out of the shadowed glade into the brightness of midafternoon. High broken clouds raced across the sky, periodically obscuring the sun, but Suviel felt barely a breath of wind on her face as she looked north. There were several differences between here and the bleak domain of Kekrahan, besides the presence of life and growth in abundance. The glade was higher than that desolate valley's stoney floor, and from here Ubanye Vale seemed much wider and longer. A low mountain spur cloaked in thick forest jutted across, dividing the long flat plain of farmland and hiding a great stretch of it from sight.

  From here the trail would be easier than the passage through the mountains, at least for three or four days until they reached the steep hills that marked the border of Prekine. There, she would have to either leave Gilly and Keren behind while she went on to Trevada or confide to them her quest for the Crystal Eye. As for Raal Haidar, his purpose remained an enigma, but Suviel resolved to somehow tease it out of him before they arrived at Prekine.

  As she walked on, aware of Gilly trudging along nearby, she thought about the journey to come. The last time she had travelled this way was one summer nineteen years ago, three years before the invasion, when she took her sister's son from Tobrosa to Trevada, then on to Casall and Rauthaz and eastwards through northern Khatris to Besh-Darok. It had been an aunt's gift to her only nephew before he went off to become a junior officer in the Imperial army.

  She tried to picture the road to the north, but her thoughts kept returning to the awful creature that had clambered out of the gully and dashed towards them. Its limbs had seemed badly arranged, almost lop-sided, and possessed more than two joints. Its hide was hairless, smooth and ashen grey, looking more like stone than skin, and the head had been narrow, its muzzle long with jaws agape. But Suviel remembered no tongue, no teeth of any kind, and eyes full of a desperate agony. It hardly matched Raal Haidar's portrayal of a dangerous and cunning beast.

  * * *

  The rest of that day and the next saw them reach the other end of Ubanye Dale without incident. There were Mogaun in the valley, but no more than two dozen under a minor chief who sent them out on occasional, lax patrols that Suviel and the others avoided with ease. That night they slept in a small tavern built beneath the overarching canopies of two massive agathons whose enormous roots had shouldered their way into the taproom. In the morning Suviel bought a pair of hardy ponies from the keeper and they continued north. But by the early afternoon, torrential rain forced them to seek shelter and after a miserable trudge down a barren hill road they found a wide, bush-fringed cave with a short tunnel at the rear.

  The tunnel led to a low-roofed inner cave, its rough floor charred from an old fire and its walls scored with crudely charcoaled remarks and profane designs. Gilly and Haidar tied the horses at the outer cave while the two women led the ponies into the inner one. By the light of a torch, and an oil lamp Keren produced from her saddlebag, Suviel saw two carven recesses that had once been shrines. Both had been desecrated, shattered by hammers or axes, but she knew from a few untouched symbols that one had been dedicated to the Earthmother. The other was less obliterated than the Earthmother shrine, but appeared far older.

  "It's some kind of creature, standing," Suviel said, rubbing encrusted filth from a relief carving within the recess. "...and holding something in each hand?"

  Keren bent down to gain a better view while Suviel examined the shrine interior. At last she had to admit defeat.

  "Well, it is old, very old," she said, straightening, wiping her hand on her robe. "But I have no idea who or what it is for."

  Keren looked up, smiling faintly. "I think it's a Nightbear shrine."

  "But the Nightbear is usually shown on all fours or curled up. I've never seen it standing with its arms in the air."

  "I have, in the north Honjir mountains." Keren's smile turned sour. "I was on a patrol for Byrnak, searching for one of his many enemies, when I happened across an ancient, half-abandoned village. The few inhabitants were elderly, not a child to be seen. But there was a giant agathon tree with a huge boulder embedded in the trunk near the base, and hewn into the face of the boulder was a kind of fane with a carving of a standing bear. The people told me it was the Nightbear but claimed they worshipped the Earthmother. I did notice fresh offerings by the bear's feet, though."

  Looking at the carving again, Suviel saw that the feet and hands did seem more like paws. Some mentors of the Earthmother priesthood believed that the Nightbear and the Skyhorse were, for their savage ancestors, an early manifestation of the Earthmother and the Fathertree. Others insisted that such deities were illusory figments for a primitive people desperate for certainty in a chaotic world which remained so until the advent of Wujad's vision and other portents.

  Keren glanced momentarily at the way out then, in a low voice, said; "Shin Hantika, there is something I wanted to ask you."

  Suviel sighed. "I'll tell Gilly to behave - "

  "No, no, not that. It's Raal Haidar - can we trust him?"

  "Trust?" she murmured, and shrugged. "All I can say is that he has proved a valuable travelling companion thus far. Wouldn't you say?"

  The swordswoman looked sceptical. "Something about him makes my blood run cold. I just look at him and..." She shook her head.

  Suviel frowned, wondering. What if she was right? Could this Haidar be an Acolyte priest, or a created Wellsource mage like the Warlord Grazan? But they had all been acted upon by Haidar's sorcerous shapings, and Suviel was sure that the tall man's power did not derive from the Wellsource. She remembered the feel of it, the hot-stone smell, the texture.

  "I don't know what his purpose is," Suviel said, trying to sound assured. "But I don't believe that he's a danger to us."

  Keren shrugged, a gesture eloquent with doubt, and slipped out past the ponies. After fixing the torch in a cleft in the cave wall, Suviel followed her.

  By the time the rain eased off, the day was showing signs of dimming, the iron grey of the sky darkening towards the east. No-one was eager to spend the night in a cold cave though, so out into the cold and the damp they went, continuing north. The rain lessened to a sparse shower but the wind picked up, a true autumnal blast driving icy droplets into their faces. Suviel tugged the hood of her tattered cloak tighter and rubbed her cheeks and nose to bring warmth and feeling back. Through her own shivering she could feel her pony tremble and knew they would have to find refuge soon.

  A copse of tall trees emerged from the darkness ahead and they came to a fork in the trail. Keren reined in her mount and pointed to the track leading off.

  "I remember there being a holding behind those trees," she said. "We could ask them for shelter."

  A holding there was but there were no lights to welcome them, only the abandoned shell of a farmhouse and a few huts. They found one with a mostly intact roof and after lighting a fire in the crude hearth and wringing out their wettest clothing, they settled down for the nig
ht with Gilly taking the first watch.

  They rose early to the sound of wind gusting in the trees and sighing through the gaps in their dilapidated hut. Outside the sky was a vista of thunderheads and dark rafts of cloud hurrying north on the wings of a gale. Riding away from the wrecked steading, it seemed that the wind which had opposed their progress yesterday was now urging them onwards.

  Before long they entered Ilonye Dale, the valley that led to the border of Prekine. It was narrower than Ubanye Dale, the ground more uneven, the mountainsides steeper and more densely forested. Mist hazed the distance and shrouded the heights as they left the main way for the concealment of the woods, picking their way along disused tracks. Whenever the vegetation thinned Suviel caught glimpses of the farmlands below, small neat fields, herds of cattle and goats. So peaceful and normal, she thought bitterly, almost as if the invasion and all its pain and destruction had not been felt here. Then shame touched her with the certainty that most of those below would have lost some loved one either in the invasion or as a result of the mad folly of Gunderlek's rebellion.

  It was near noon when they cleared the trees. The valuable cover of dense wood lay on the other side of a hummocky incline thick with grass, fallen leaves and unseen mudholes. They were barely half way across when a group of riders emerged onto the slope further down. Keren cursed.

  "Mogaun!"

  "They have not seen us yet," Suviel said. "Just stay calm and head for that gap." She pointed to where the trees stopped before a sheer rocky outcrop that rose to join a great shattered ridge. Then angry cries went up behind them and as one they urged their mounts into a gallop.

  "Honoured Haidar," said Gilly above the drumming of hooves. "A demonstration of your powers might be most useful."