by Sam Bowring
‘Beauty indeed,’ said Bel, and collapsed onto his back.
Construction
Teliah wandered happily barefoot down the gentle slope into Erling’s Vale. It was not a vale in the traditional sense, for it was not surrounded by hills, but merely an area of land lower than that around it. Willow trees stood here and there along streams so reedy they were almost hidden, except for the telltale dragonflies hovering about. Underfoot the grass was the softest Teliah had ever known, and ahead lay the round clay huts of the healers’ community in which she had grown up, and where she would find her parents.
How long since she’d come here? Years?
A pair of children ran past, dragging a kite through the still air, only keeping it aloft by their momentum. She remembered doing the same at their age, tearing down the slopes with her little brother, Harren. She had not seen him often since leaving for Holdwith to begin her training as a lightfist. When she’d last returned, a fleeting visit for her eighteenth birthday, he hadn’t been here; he had gone off north somewhere to find his fortune. It had disappointed her not to see him, and she wondered what kind of man he’d grown into. A good one, she was sure – but did he have the same easy laugh, the same bounce in his step? Would he be here this time? Had he returned?
‘Look,’ said the man beside her, and she looked. There in the grass was Harren as she remembered him best, tossing a ball from hand to hand, still a boy! She gasped and flew to him, reaching to hug him …but he faded at her fingertips. She came up confused, and turned to her companion.
‘So,’ he said. He touched the back of his hand to her breast, right above her beating heart. Somehow his presence, his touch, made her calm. ‘That’s the one you hold most dear?’
She frowned …was it? What of her parents? But no, it had always been bright-eyed little Harren she loved the most. He had been her eternal companion in their imaginary campaigns, laughing as they decided which tree they would climb on any given day. They had been a team, always together, loyal to each other above anyone else.
‘Yes,’ she whispered.
The man nodded.
A wind caressed the back of her neck, and she shivered. It caught the children’s kite and stole it from their grip, twirling it away into the sky. The day grew cold.
‘Look there,’ said the man.
To the south, the horizon darkened. The great boiling mass of the Cloud crept towards them, sending out runners that it quickly caught up with to engulf, even as it sent out more. She wrapped her arms around herself tightly, not understanding what was happening.
‘The Shadowdreamer is coming,’ said the man.
‘But …what of …our defences?’
‘Fallen,’ said the man.
‘Holdwith?’
‘Fallen.’
A memory tried to rise to the surface, but she found it hard to grasp hold of. Shadow wraiths whirling along parapets? No, no, it could not be.
‘We must flee,’ she said. ‘There will be others who’ll fight on …maybe we can band together?’
‘Too late,’ he said. All around, the world faded, until they were standing in a vast, empty void.
‘What is this place?’
‘He comes,’ the man answered. ‘Let us see how you imagine him.’
Out of the darkness strode a figure, dragging a small boy by the wrist. He was tall, powerful, his blue hair wild as a bramble bush, his fingers tipped by broken nails, his eyes slit and snake-like, his face angular and cruel. The boy he pulled along was Harren.
Teliah cried out and tried to run to her brother, but her legs wobbled and she fell to her knees.
‘What’s wrong with me?’ she asked desperately.
‘You are dying,’ said the man mournfully.
He knelt by her, took her arms, and gently showed her wrists. Blood leaked from clean wounds, slowly but surely, ebbing away.
‘How?’ she whispered.
‘Does it matter?’
The Shadowdreamer came to a stop, and despite her cuts she flung up her hands, attempting to cast spells. It was difficult, for she was weak, and did not seem able to force them out. A series of tiny fireballs, small as fireflies, issued from her fingertips and glided slowly towards the dark lord. He chuckled and, with his free hand, batted them away lazily as if they were nothing but bugs. Others that met his black cloak slid down like dollops of honey, igniting the ends of loose threads, which sizzled briefly.
‘I make you an offer, mage,’ said the Dreamer, his voice harsh and grating. He flung Harren in front of him, and the boy looked up to Teliah with sad, scared eyes.
‘Don’t hurt him!’ she cried, then felt the reassuring touch of the man on her shoulder.
‘You have a choice,’ said the Shadowdreamer. ‘Your death, inevitable as it is, could be made useful to me.’
He made a gesture and, from out of the void scampered a lizard-like thing, sleek and scarlet-skinned.
‘Cast your legacy spell upon this creature,’ the Dreamer said, ‘building upon its already-shape. If you do me this favour, your brother will not be harmed – this I promise you.’
Teliah stared at the lizard, which cocked its head at her, a sharp tongue flickering in and out of its mouth.
‘Why?’ she managed. Her vision swam and it was hard to think. Blood continued to pulse from her veins.
‘It is but a fancy that would please me,’ said the Dreamer. ‘Mind you not the why. Simply know that if you do what I ask, your brother’s safety is assured.’
Beside her the man stroked hair back from her face. She turned to look at him, finding comfort in his kind eyes.
‘I don’t think we can trust him,’ she said, and he smiled sadly at her.
‘I will be here still,’ he said. ‘I will make sure the Dreamer holds to his promise.’
Teliah knew he was telling the truth. She didn’t know how, she just did – the way she knew things in dreams sometimes, for no reason.
‘Will you stay with me?’ she asked.
‘Yes. But now you must hurry. The Dreamer’s promise will not bind him if you don’t fulfil your part of the bargain. Time is short.’
With dull despair she felt her grip on life waning. She turned her eyes to little Harren, crouching on the ground between them. He smiled at her reassuringly. Perhaps she could not save herself, but she could still save him.
As her soul lifted from her body, breaking free of mortal confines, she diverted a stream of life-force towards the lizard-thing, wrapping it tightly. Energy sparkled and changed from light to something else, then solidified, scarlet, an extra layer that left the lizard larger.
As she separated completely from her body, the void around them fell away, and she saw where she had really been.
The great hall of Holdwith Academy had been cleared of tables. Rows of slumbering lightfists, her fellow students and teachers, were spread out on either side of her body, stood over by shadow mages keeping them asleep. Her body was slumped against the man, her dream companion, who held her head in his hands. She could see no sign of any wounds on her wrists. He looked up at her departing spirit, the same calmness in his black eyes, and she knew that it was he who had killed her, he who had tricked her. Some distance away, at the far end of the hall on a clear patch of floor, the lizard-thing ran about, snapping at the edge of some invisible perimeter. Near it stood a Black Goblin, his arms crossed and fangs bared.
What did they do here? What did they hope to achieve?
Anger passed through her as she rose, but she could not resist the pull of Arkus’s Well …and then the light took her, on to whatever came next.
•
Tyrellan watched as, at the other end of the hall, Losara rose from the girl and moved on to the next sleeping mage. It gave him great satisfaction to be here, to witness this event, to be finally striking blows against the enemy. All his years of waiting were beginning to bear fruit.
He would not have thought it possible to believe any more that Losara was blessed, yet he f
ound this belief reinforced despite himself. To be able to convince a departing soul, which no longer had any earthly tie, to do his bidding at exactly the right moment of separation from life was a singular skill indeed. Then again, he was the Shadowdreamer, so what province was more his than the minds of the sleeping? Tyrellan had never really thought about the title before, but now it seemed more appropriate than ever.
Not every attempt to cajole a sleeping mage to help them had resulted in success, of course, but Losara seemed to be getting better at it, and there were plenty to spare. Really, they had only just begun.
He watched the shadowmander racing about, impressed with how much it had already grown. It was now some four hand spans long, and each time it grew, so did the distance it could travel from him. It now seemed to meet with resistance about twenty paces away, something like double the distance the butterfly had been able to travel. It did pose a problem, though, for the mander was, as always, bent on destroying anything it could that was born of light. There had already been one messy incident when it had come too close to a sleeping mage. As he watched it now, stalking back and forth, he knew it wanted nothing more than to scurry up to the other end of the hall and wreak carnage amongst those lying there. Commendable, of course – that was the purpose they’d built it for – but as the creature grew and its area of influence expanded, Tyrellan needed to move further and further away. Would there come a point when they were too far away for the Dreamer to target the mander with a legacy?
Reinforcements had arrived from their main army, and it galled him that he could not move freely around Holdwith to oversee them. Word had arrived that the Throne was moving his own enormous army towards them, and though it came slowly, progress here was also slow. As the mander grew larger, Tyrellan knew that each legacy ‘building block’ would become less noticeable. Losara seemed to be finding some kind of pace to his work, but it was still only about two mages an hour.
Roma was present in the fort, and had set about making it ready to defend if needed. It was good to have another capable commander present, yet Tyrellan could not help but wonder at the way events were turning. He was being shaped into a tool, a mooring for the shadowmander. If it grew as large as Losara envisaged, there was no way he would ever be able to live his life as he once had. Forever tied to an enormous and indestructible beast, his days of slipping quietly through shadows were over. Would he even be able to enter Skygrip again? It had been his home for many years, yet he knew he could no longer walk through its corridors – this creature was now too large to fit inside.
Home , he thought derisively. Nothing but a sentimental state of mind.
It wasn’t any notion of home that bothered him, however. What did he care for home, he who had murdered his family and abandoned their farm to squatters or the elements, without a care for which it turned out to be? It was practicality that he would lose, the freedom to come and go as he pleased; it would mean the loss of all subtlety.
If this enterprise results in victory, any forbearance is worthwhile , he told himself.
Another curious shimmering descended on the mander, solidifying into its ‘flesh’ and making it grow again – less discernibly this time, as expected. It was an instantaneous change, Tyrellan had noted – unlike when that mage bitch Elessa had cast the first legacy on him. The butterfly had taken months to appear, only ‘hatching’ on his birthday. He had originally thought the waiting period was a part of the spell, but now he realised she had done it deliberately, had been mocking him, making him live with a ‘cocoon’ inside him, instead of just casting the butterfly straight off and being done with it. Would she still be laughing, now that her petty revenge was leading to the construction of the greatest weapon the shadow had ever possessed?
Losara stood, and another dead lightfist slid from his lap onto the floor.
•
When Losara came to bed that night, Lalenda could tell that he was troubled. He had about him a faraway look, and she wondered what toll his work was taking on him. She knew he did not like the killing, though why he cared about enemies who would see him dead in an instant if they were able to, she could not fathom. Personally she did not even like the smell of them – she had that very day washed clean the sheets once rested in by Methodrex, and opened the windows to clear the room. She wished she had some Fenvarrow blooms to scatter about. A faint smoky scent still lingered from the fireplace, above which hung a portrait of the High Overseer, who had looked on her with disapproval until she’d flown up and left a slash mark across his eyes.
There was no lovemaking, for Losara did not seem in the mood, so she rested her tousled mop against his chest, listening to the heart that moved shadow around his body in place of blood. He stroked her forehead with those shadowy hands that she loved so much, smoother than smooth.
‘How goes the building?’ she asked.
He sighed. ‘Well, I suppose. Tomorrow we may have to go out into the square, to keep the mander an adequate distance from the sleeping. It wants nothing more than to rend and tear – such a single-minded creature. If it is indeed a creature, or even has a mind.’
‘You don’t think so?’
‘No, it’s not alive. It’s just a spell, unusual though it is.’
‘But it’s built on souls,’ she pointed out. ‘On living essence.’
‘Mmm,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘You are right, flutterbug. I suppose it is not just a spell. Perhaps it is alive, but …not in any way that you or I could identify with. It’s only bits and pieces, melded together in one shape.’
‘Where is it now?’
‘With Tyrellan across the fort, away from the sleeping lightfists.’
She had gone down to the great hall for a time today, to watch the process. Losara had not seen her, for he had been in another’s dream: an auburn-haired girl whose head he’d held tenderly in his lap as he slumped over her. She’d experienced a flash of jealousy on seeing that, but then remembered that he was killing the girl, not cradling her.
‘What is it like, in their heads?’ she said.
He fell silent at that, and after a while she thought he may not answer. Then, ‘Troubling,’ he said. ‘I grow to learn what they fear to lose most, then use it against them. It would be the same as if someone threatened you to make me do something I didn’t want to.’
Her heartbeat quickened at his words. Was she really what he feared to lose most?
‘Even to make a strange lizard grow bigger,’ he added. ‘As odd a request as that is.’
‘I don’t need any help to make your strange lizard grow bigger,’ she giggled, and he chuckled as she playfully bit his neck.
‘Savage little,’ he said, squeezing her. ‘But it isn’t just that.’
‘What is it, then?’
‘In the dreams,’ he said, ‘I let them see me as they imagine me.’
‘Oh?’
‘It is …well …I don’t know. They see me as a menace, in various guises, but always twisted and hateful. Sometimes much older, or wilder, or more violent. Sometimes with claws, or fangs, or towering and wrapped in muscle. Some imagine me as Battu. I guess maybe they’ve seen a picture of him somewhere, and think all Shadowdreamers are the same.’
‘Then they are fools,’ she spat. ‘Always they have hated us, conjured images in their minds that have nothing to do with the way things are.’ She sat up then and stared into his eyes. ‘If they saw you as I do, they would realise how beautiful you are.’
‘I doubt they’d think me beautiful.’
‘Fools then, like I said.’
‘Besides, it’s you who is the beautiful one.’
‘They probably wouldn’t think that either.’
He smiled at her. ‘Fools then, as you said.’
‘But do not let their prejudice affect you, lord,’ she replied. ‘Why should it? You do not suffer from the vanity of your other. ’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Perhaps that, then, is the reaction I’m missing.’
‘No n
eed to miss it,’ she said, deliberately twisting his words. ‘You look better without it. There’s nothing like vanity to make a man ugly. He who stares into the mirror reveals the truth behind needing one.’
‘I’ve seen you look in the mirror,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But I’m a girl.’
Grimra came under the door, chortling to himself.
‘Well, who be this?’ said Lalenda. ‘A self-satisfied ghost?’
‘Oho, yes, mightily!’ said Grimra. ‘Flutterbug would not believe it – someone be leaving a heap of dead mages piled up in search of a stomach to enter!’
‘Well,’ said Lalenda, ‘let us hope there’s someone who’ll oblige them.’
‘Too late!’ hooted Grimra. ‘They have been obliged – much, much obliged!’
‘Goodness,’ said Losara. ‘I know I shouldn’t laugh.’
‘Don’t try,’ said Lalenda, and it was good to see the mirth on his face.
•
Long after Lalenda dozed off, Losara lay awake. He had not been entirely honest with her about how troubled he felt by his actions. Yes, it was disturbing to learn how these Kainordans pictured him, but he could hardly take umbrage when it was their very lives he stole. He tried to console himself with the knowledge that they went without pain, at least physically, but there was little solace in that.
Before Holdwith he had killed twice – the Throne Naphur, and Gellan. Can I really claim that? he wondered. I may not have been the dealer, but I am the cause of other deaths. Trolls tricked down from mountainsides, a village mage in the woods, peasants, and a dragon slain by Mireforms …
