Shadowkings

by Michael Cobley

  "The square is too dangerous. We'll have to run past them," whispered the girl as the three eyeless townspeople came nearer and nearer. "They don't look able to keep up with us - "

  "I wish I could be that sure," Tauric said, teeth on edge.

  "Then I'll distract them while you attack them from the side." And she darted back along the alley, snatched up the spear dropped by the guard earlier and managed to dance away from grasping hands that lunged for her. And, Tauric saw in disbelief, she was grinning as she fended off her attackers. Mad, he thought wildly, she is completely mad. And raised his sword and rushed to the attack.

  But there seemed to be little they could do to harm those who were already dead. Hacked and slashed by blade, or pierced and bludgeoned by spear, they still lumbered back into the fray, forcing the two youngsters away from the alley entrance and out into the square. Tauric could now heard the racket of fighting coming clearly from all around, and feared the sound of approaching hooves. Every joint ached and it seemed that he was covered in a multitude of scrapes, cuts and bruises. Their opponents looked worse with deep gashes, missing fingers, and the other terrible mutilations Tauric and his companion had been forced to inflict in self defense.

  Then the girl's spear broke. She stepped back, lost her footing and fell. At once, one of the dead leaped at her. Instinctively, Tauric brought his blade down on the attacker's exposed neck and severed the head. Bloodless, the body collapsed in the dust and Tauric grabbed the girl by and dragged her along the side of a building, searching for an open door. The other two took a few steps in pursuit, then stopped. Confusion passed over their ruined features for second before each let out a single, soul-wrenching howl and fell to the ground.

  And behind them, just emerging from the alley's shadows, were three Mogaun warriors. They were smaller and older than others Tauric had seen, and wore strings of bones and feathers over shapeless fur garments. Long grey braids framed wizened faces full of bright hate, and eyes that were trained on Tauric.

  "The Mogaun shamen," whispered the girl as Tauric helped her to her feet. "Oh no, they musn't - "

  Three pairs of leathery hands rose chest high, long-nailed fingers crooked as if grasping something unseen. The shamen moved their lips in unison, muttering a continual stream of guttural syllables. Tauric felt the hairs on his neck and head prickle while pushing and hammering madly on a door he had found, to no avail. Then the shamen stamped the ground and threw their hands outwards in Tauric's direction.

  Tauric was engulfed in a ghastly emanation of power. Strength drained from his limbs and he sank to his knees, his mind racked by a pulling and a tugging as if by claws that searched his very thoughts. This was a horror beyond imagining, in a way worse than the tortures he had suffered at the hands of Byrnak. He wanted to cry out, to somehow let his pain pour out but he was helpless and senseless, crushed beneath a torrent, an ocean of lead and stone...

  Suddenly, light penetrated the grey veil, the torment fell away and he felt himself being lifted to his feet. A hand on his arm, his steel arm. The girl. A peculiar radiance cloaked her, and her heard her sob as she raised his metal arm and pointed it at the three startled shamen. Through her quiet weeping she began to whisper a series of strange words over and over and over till he began hearing them in his own mind like a single bell chiming. In one instant he was staring at the Mogaun, blinking the sweat from his eyes, and in the next a pure white fire erupted from his hand and spewed across the intervening space.

  The shamen burned. Writhing and screaming, they tried to struggle free of their furs but the fire wrapped itself around their forms, hungrily devouring them.

  "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," the girl was babbling. "I didn't want this, and I don't want to be...." She paused, both hands pulling him closer. "I'm sorry, but I have to do this..."

  He tried to turn towards her but she was whispering again and the words were like tiny silver birds which entered his head, their wings striking against the inside of his skull, making it ring like a cave of glass. Tauric was staring into her reddened, tear-wet eyes when a blinding light filled his head and wiped her from his sight.

  The next thing he saw was a dozen Mogaun riders galloping straight for him across the square, feathers fluttering from the points of spears couched at him. The night seemed like day, and the riders wavered as if seen through water, yet Tauric felt as if his body was strong and heavy, his feet planted solidly on the ground. He could see such details, such a vividness in everything, individual hairs of soft rich brown and deep iron black in the furs the warriors wore, or the sheen of firelight reflected from the hammered texture of the crude leaf mail they wore. The blinding light shifted within him and his metal arm sang. Suddenly the riders let go their spears and weapons, some toppling to the ground to scrape and claw at their scalps, while the rest of the horses halted in their charge and began leaping and bucking wildly to dislodge those still hanging on.

  A demented joy filled Tauric as he strode around the square, giving himself over to the whispering light, letting it do its work, and staring in fascination at what he wrought. Groups of warriors rushed him and were thrust back dead or wounded, blood jewelling their limbs or the ground. Hard-pressed defenders in the barricaded positions around the square hoarsely cheered him as he dispensed retribution with the hot white power which blazed around his steel arm. One heedlessly brave Mogaun climbed the outside of a shop front to leap on him from above, but the light in his head saw it before he did, caught the assailant and hurled him across the square and through the shutters of an upper storey window.

  "You cannot harm me!" he shouted.

  This is not you, screamed a voice inside himself. You are not doing this - this is being done to you...

  The light began to dim. The words in his mind grew slower and deeper. Then he saw some of the defenders clambering over their barricades and was confused for a moment or two before seeing the surviving Mogaun horsemen regrouping at the other side. It seemed that they were preparing for another charge, then they turned and rode from the square. Cheers and triumphant shouting went up all around, but Tauric felt as though everything was falling away from him. The light in his head was guttering now and the vividness of things was blurred, losing all presence and beauty. He had been filled beyond his limits and was now emptying to the dregs of his spirit.

  Tauric's legs gave way and he slumped to a sprawled sitting position. He heard someone calling his name, the broken word only making sense after being repeated several times. The words in his head were grave and stately now, tones of finality, of resolution. A man in leather armour crouched down before him, a slender, middle-aged man with grey hair and blood oozing from cuts on his brow and cheek. The Lord Commander Mazaret, he realised dully. Then he began wondering about the girl - he still didn't know her name, yet she was important somehow...

  Then his grasp of his surroundings dissolved and blackness took him down into nothingness.

  * * *

  While the physician attended to the arrow wound in his shoulder, Mazaret sat in a heavily ornate chair by the audience chamber's window, gazing out at the city of Oumetra. It had been raining, and noon sunlight was edging through breaks in the cloud, making the city shine. The audience chamber was high up in the Great Keep and from where he sat Mazaret could see the massive structures of the city's founders and the lesser, frailer buildings which clustered around them. And if he leaned forward a little he could see the crowds still gathered in the courtyard below, all hoping for a glimpse of the youth who had performed wonders at what was becoming known as the Battle of Imperial Square.

  Frowning, he sat back, provoking an agonising twinge in his shoulder.

  "My lord," said the physician in exasperation. "I cannot work if you keep moving thus - "

  "Good sir, you have been burrowing in my arm for half the morning. What do you hope to find?"

  The physician was a slender, ascetic man with a neatly trimmed grey beard and moustache, and he wore a long rich yellow rob
e embroidered in red at the collar and cuffs. He gave the Lord Commander a vaguely disappointed look. "With respect, my lord, the arrow head shattered on piercing your armour but the shaft drove tiny shards of flint deep into the flesh. I have extracted several fragments but still have others to recover. May I advise another mouthful or two of the fraol?"

  Mazaret scowled and raised to his lips a silver flask chased with hunting scenes and took a swallow. The powerful Dalbari liquor coursed down into his stomach and a pleasant warmth spread through him.

  "A fine vintage."

  "Our former lord, the esteemed Vaush, thought so too," the physician murmured dryly. "How sad that he remains missing."

  "Not any longer," said another voice. "We found a gang of beggar boys playing kick-and-catch with his head a hour ago."

  The last time Mazaret saw Kodel had been in the early hours of the morning, shortly after the Mogaun made their final, half-hearted assault on the main gate. Then, he had been wearing gashed, blood-stained leather armour and the torn remnants of a rider's cape, and his hair had been wild and dishevelled. Now he wore finer clothing, an armless black jerkin over a pale yellow shirt with dark brown leggings tucked into high boots. His long black hair was oiled and tied back in a warrior's topknot, accentuating his long face and hawkish features. A cavalry sabre hung on his left hip and a simple dagger was strapped to the right calf.

  "And the whereabouts of this trophy?" Mazaret said, offering him the flask.

  Kodel grinned. "Hanging over the main gates, right next to Begrajic's ugly head."

  "What of the rest of Begrajic's warband? Do we know where they are going?"

  "Geraine's scouts say that they rode north along the shore of Lake Audagal, as if heading for their northern encampment, then doubled back along the Red Way. They were last seen riding full tilt towards Hargas."

  Mazaret nodded. Hargas was an important fishing port whose Mogaun overlord was Vasegd, half-brother to Begrajic. Vasegd would be sure to be enraged at the death of his brother and would hurry to move against Oumetra.

  At his side the physician made a satisfied sound, and when Mazaret glanced round he saw the man folding away a small white pad of cloth on which lay a cluster of tiny black slivers.

  "That is the last of it, my lord," he said, wrapping a dainty pair of silver tongs and other instruments away in waxed velvet. He applied an ash-grey salve to the wound, bandaged the area with strips of fine linen, then packed all his impedimenta away in the pockets of his long ochre coat.

  "I would advise rest for at least a week, my lord," he said. "And the dressings to be changed twice a day. If pain returns after a week, or the wound begins to weep or smell malodourous, call me at once." And with a grave bow, he left.

  There was silence for a short while. Mazaret watched Kodel sample the fraol, sluicing it around in his mouth before swallowing it and regarding the flask with an approving nod.

  "Clothing belonging to the honoured Captain Volyn has just been recovered from the canal," Kodel said after a moment. "No body has yet been found, nor have there been any reports or sightings of him from elsewhere in the city. Until his remains are found, or he reappears safe and well, I am forced to assume his responsiblities."

  "I understand," Mazaret said, uncomfortably reminded of the struggle he had with Volyn on the footbridge the previous night, but also recalling a glimpse of the man paddling towards the canal bank. "I share your concern. In the meantime I think we should talk about the girl - her name is Alael, am I correct, of House Tor-Caverill? And she can use the Lesser Power in a way I have never heard of before."

  Kodel seemed not to have heard, just stood looking out of the window for a moment. Then: "Has Tauric Tor-Galantai remembered anything more about what occurred at the square?"

  "No. He can recall very little from when the girl Alael began using him as some kind of vessel for her talent." Mazaret regarded the other man with a frown. "However, he did tell me of how you helped and protected him since leaving Krusivel. Why would you do all that for a boy who has no mage ability when the Hunters Children has been hiding a girl who has?"

  A gleam of something close to anger came into Kodel's eyes. "For the simple reason that I knew nothing of it. Whenever Volyn spoke of her to his senior officers it was in the broadest terms and made no mention of such powers. But I believe that not even he knew - he and I had many private discussions and while he told me a great deal about Alael and her past, he never so much as hinted at anything to do with the Lesser Power."

  "There has been no sign of her anywhere?"

  "Nothing, no witnesses or rumours. I visited our sanctuaries across the canal and had them all searched, to no avail."

  Mazaret listened closely, and something in the words sent doubt threading through him despite the steady sincerity in the man's words. "How convenient, careless even, for you to be afflicted by two disappearances. You don't think it possible that someone in your faction is concealing her from us?"

  Kodel gave him a savage look. "The stench of your suspicions is overwhelming, my lord, yet I will not be provoked by sneering words. Know that the loyalty and obedience of all of the Children's attendants and agents are unquestioned. If you have any genuine challenges to make then speak out. But before you do, remind yourself of where you were when the honoured Captain fell into the canal."

  Stung by the scarcely-veiled accusation, Mazaret was on his feet in a second and about to reply when a burst of loud cheering came from outside. Both men turned to stare down at the thousands of townspeople now crammed into the Great Keep's courtyard and the figure who stood on the wide balcony overlooking them all.

  It was Geraine. The slender man raised his hands and gestured for quiet, and the mass of voices died away to nothing.

  "My friends - for a decade and a half we have suffered invasion and the torments of barbaric oppression. How many of us have lost those dear to us in these long years of darkness? - who has not been touched by grief and loss? Who among us did not feel despair when brave Gunderlek fell in Yularia, and ached with the desire to fight back, to somehow even the scales of justice?" His voice lowered. "We have waited for such a long time for something, a ray of hope, a sign, any kind of victory. And in a single night all of that came to pass! For that which we thought gone forever has returned, the bloodline which the Mogaun and their foul allies tried to extinguish at Arengia has come blazing back to life!" A buzz of excitement rose from the crowd and Geraine smiled. "I can say no more. Let him speak for himself."

  Geraine strode over to a broad curtained archway at the rear of the balcony and stood to one side. Horns sounded from upper windows, three short blasts, and two attendants emerged from the curtain, each carrying a large banner bearing a white tree on a dark blue background. Mazaret felt a thrill of joyful recognition, and heard astonished mutters rippled through the crowd, some of disbelief, others of ecstatic anticipation. It was the symbol of the Khatrimantine Emperors, its depiction forbidden on pain of death these sixteen years. Then the horns sounded again, the archway curtains parted and Tauric stepped into view. He looked at Geraine who bowed his head, and a thunderous roar erupted from the crowd. Hats were tossed in the air, people cheered and sang and hugged each other as Tauric walked up to the balcony railing. He wore a simple tunic and trews of pure sky blue, the attire of a priest of the Fathertree. The tunic's shortsleeves left his arms bare and his metal one lacked the leather covering so that it gleamed in the sun.

  He raised his other hand for silence and slowly the clamour subsided. An utter peace held sway for some brief moments during which he stood and surveyed the sea of hopeful faces before him. Mazaret began to fear that the lad's confidence had broken, then Tauric spoke in a voice trembling with emotion.

  "My father would have been so proud of you!"

  The roar of cheers and stamping and shouts was tumultuous and died down only after several moments.

  "The battle we fought yesterday is only the beginning, and once word of it travels outwards from Ou
metra then others will know that the time of freedom is at hand. From the mountains of Dalbar to the plains of Roharka, people will rise up and throw off the chains that have bound them for so long. You will need leaders, great leaders like Geraine, whom you all know so well, and Lord Mazaret, commander of the Knights of the Fathertree, a man who fought at my father's side at Arengia and who is among us this day." He broke off as shouts went up naming himself, hands outstretched and pointing up at him, and he shook his head. "I am but a youth and only recently come into the full knowledge of my heritage - "

  The shouts grew more vociferous, demands and pleas that he lead them. Watching, Mazaret muttered: "Accept the role, lad."

  "He will, my lord," said Kodel at his side. "He must."

  Tauric bowed his head a little, raised his hand and spoke over the noise. "If it is your will that I play a leading part, then so be it. But others shall direct the strategy of our rebellion and ensure victory. Together we shall become the Mogaun's Bane, and their vicious grasp shall be cast off forever..."

  A small group near the foot of the balcony began chanting 'Emperor Tauric! Emperor Tauric!' Tauric shook his head impatiently, gesturing sharply at them with his real hand.

  "No! I am not the Emperor," he said fiercely. "Nor will I lay claim to such a title until all our lands are free and the enemy has been vanquished."

  Mazaret stared in amazement, seeing in the youth the same commanding nobility that his father possessed, and seeing belief and bright hope kindling in the faces of all those below. There was something almost dreamlike about the scene, as if the entire throng of Oumetrans was entranced by Tauric's straightforward honesty and direct words.

  "Now," Tauric said, suddenly seeming to tire, " - return to your homes and your hearths, rest, and offer prayers to the Earthmother. The days ahead will be hard and full of struggle." He paused, gazing slowly from side to side and out across the great crowd. "But we shall prevail. Be ready." He raised one hand, his metal one, almost in a half-salute, and as the crowd roared his name he walked away from the balcony and went back inside the keep. Mazaret shook his head, simultaneously amazed and delighted and even a little unsettled.