The Dark Shore (The Dominions of Irth Book 1)

by A. A. Attanasio

  "You do not understand." The long red eyes flared impatiently. "The dominions need warriors, people who can fight with their hands and their wits. We need street fighters—we need you."

  "Alley brawls are necessary down here," he said, gesturing to the pitted bricks. "But up there? Charm would squash us."

  "Charm is useless against the Dark Lord and his cacodemons. If we can amass enough warriors, perhaps we can overwhelm them with physical force." 100 Wheels said this softly, unwilling to be overheard by the empty streets, yet her words clanged loudly in the thief's brain.

  "No Charm?" He tugged at his handsome beard, trying to comprehend this. "Fight cacodemons with our bare hands and no Charm? That's madness!"

  100 Wheels abruptly turned away and strode out of the alley. "I have no time for your befuddlement, Dogbrick. If you will fight against the Dark Lord, come to the Millgates tomorrow. Training begins at noon.”

  Erased by mist, the silvery figure dissolved in the smoke galloping up Everyland. Only a faint bitterness of cloves and her harsh voice lingered.

  "If you do not come, then life is over for you. Until the Dark Lord is defeated, Charm has no value. No matter how many amulets you steal, they are only so much stone and metal when the cacodemons come."

  Her voice and her dangerous scent drifted away.

  "Wait!" Dogbrick called into the wind. "Who is this Dark Lord?"

  Passersby glared at him from their dingy sunshafts as they hurried to and from the market halls in the skull-gray buildings. Seeing him in this caustic air without a cloak and ranting, they thought him a drunken scrounge, and he was lucky no one tried to spike him.

  He picked up his mantle and harness and put them on. The reek from the factories dimmed and the air brightened around him with every amulet he opened.

  He wore thirteen. Seven consisted of power wands: amber-black rods, each long as a hand and thick as two fingers. Even with his brawn, he possessed the stamina to unsheathe only five wands at one time, but he kept the other two as reserves.

  The power wands formed the brace of his harness and fit snugly across the hull of his chest: A central wand lay in the groove of his sternum and the other six pressed three on a side against his ribs, positioned to infuse power directly to his vital organs.

  Two niello eye charms fitted his shoulder cusps like epaulets. The ebony lozenges allowed him to feel around corners and into darkened stairwells.

  Under his beard, three rat-star gems studded the neck strap of his harness, directing nimble energy into his brain and quickening his wits. The moment he unhooded them, they began squealing with the grotesque implications of 100 Wheels' message: a Charmless world beset by cacodemons!

  The world is ending!

  He put a hand under his beard and lidded two of the gems. That softened his anguish, and he gained sufficient composure to peer out of the alley at the sparse traffic on Everyland.

  Far across the foggy Market Plaza, in the vaulted colonnades of the auction arcade, business appeared robust. No one in that radiant arena seemed aware that a dominion had been destroyed—let alone that cacodemons had suddenly become real and Charm offered no defense.

  Out of the mist on Everyland, drays floated up with rangy stevedores hanging from the sides. Dogbrick knew what lay beneath the chain-mesh tarps covering the drays: fetish marl quarried from the glacial geodes of the Edge, a lithified slit congested with hex-gems.

  Boots sparked on cobblestones as the workers struggled to guide the buoyant carts to their berths. There, the drays released their mineral cargo in sparkling avalanches of gem dust. Appraisers and buyers from the factories emerged from the skull-gray buildings and mingled with the dealers and the charmwrights. While they haggled, security agents and thieves lurked among the dunes of alchemic marl that sat in the market alcoves like heaps of dirty sunset.

  Dogbrick weighed the possibility that 100 Wheels had deceived him. Perhaps this was her perverse way of mocking him, of venting her frustration at not being able to seize him legally. He snorted a laugh at himself and turned away from the luminous vapors of Everyland Street.

  As he strode down Peek Alley with his sunshaft dazzling off the glaziers' round windows and crystal curtains, he did not believe 100 Wheels had lied. Rat-star gems, even ones as cheap and unreliable as his, could easily see through a deception that huge.

  No, Dogbrick thought to himself. 100 Wheels did not lie. The world is ending!

  He groped in the capacious pockets of his cloak for his thirteenth amulet, perhaps his most important one—a seeker. Like all seekers, its star shape woven of gold filaments encased a homing bauble minted to locate the person whose lock of hair it clasped. The tuft of white hair in this seeker belonged to Dogbrick's partner. If anyone but Dogbrick opened it, an acid ampule had been rigged to dissolve the hair.

  The thief found the seeker in his collar pouch but did not open it. His partner slept by day. That was just one of his strange traits—that he slept. Only the poorest people, those with no Charm, suffered the risks of sleep. Yet Dogbrick's partner sought sleep. If Dogbrick woke him because of a ruse, he might slash into one of his silent rages.

  Dogbrick released the seeker and decided not to disturb his partner but instead meet with the factory spy and seek confirmation. He exited Peek Alley at a drain ramp, dropped onto Merchants Boulevard, and rode the city trolley uptown, back to Smelters Alley.

  Hurrying because he was late, he bolted frantically among steaming tinker shacks, twice missing the obscure sunken postern crusted in rime. No more than a stained hole in the ground, it led through a dank tunnel of weeping stone to the gusty cliff stairway called Devil's Wynd.

  Dogbrick quickly descended the treacherous switchbacks as fast as he could leap and still watch his step on the timeworn cobbles of the narrow stairs. If he fell, he would plunge through veils of smog a long way to the heaving waters hidden below. Despite this immediate danger, the burly man could not keep his mind from the appalling revelation: Charm does not work upon these demons!!

  The weight of that thought stopped his descent. Huffing anxiously, he turned sideways and pressed his back to the pocked wall of rock. His fingers fumbled at the neck strap under his beard, adjusting the rat-stars to meet his implacable dread.

  That did little good. Acid mist enclosed him even through his sunshaft, and the burning fetor of the Devil's Wynd that had always before hurried him along went unnoticed as he tried to see a way past his horror.

  Ruder fear no man could bear! He dug his blunt fingers into the wall's powdery rock and dizzied a moment before the enormity of what he had so recently learned. Without the hope of Charm, why am I here in this stink? My mistress is hope! Without her, I should be frolicking at the Wise Fish for what last pleasures can yet be disclosed before the cacodemons come!

  "Dogbrickl" A thin voice pierced the opaque fumes. "Is that you I hear whining?"

  "Whipcrow—" Dogbrick called upward, surprised.

  "You're late. It's well past mid-morn."

  "Am I at the eleventh?" Dogbrick asked, squinting to see the narrow, black figure of Whipcrow emerge above him.

  "You ran past me at that bend. This is twelve." Whipcrow sat so that his tight face, narrow as an ax, fell eye level to the big man's hairy browridge. "What's wrong?"

  "I lost count."

  "So"—Whipcrow twitched impatiently—"what's wrong?"

  Dogbrick could no longer restrain his fright and blurted, "I just found out—that's why I'm late. I just found out!"

  “Arwar Odawl?” Whipcrow's swarthy features widened with shared awe. "You heard, too! Crabhat boxed me on my way here. You heard, then? Arwar Odawl—"

  "Fallen into the jungles of Elvre!"

  "Yes! So Crabhat said. Where did he find you?"

  "100 Wheels found me in Smelters Alley. Ran her all the way to Everyland."

  A mocking grin of disbelief crossed Whipcrow's unhappy face. "Save your bragging for the Dark Lord."

  "I think it is a ruse, clever Crow."
Dogbrick nodded knowingly, glad that someone else had also heard this outrageous tale. "I think this so-called Dark Lord and his cacodemons are a ploy by the security agents to unnerve those who have eluded them and mocked their authority."

  Whipcrow's frown deepened. "And so we will gather at the Millgates to be trained and instead be herded away to the tide pools, eh?"

  "Perhaps." Dogbrick brushed back his mane defiantly. "I say we ignore this malign thing and disobey those who would thwart us with fear."

  "Ignore it?" Whipcrow lifted one sketchy eyebrow. "So, you will still do business?"

  "Why else would I be here in this stink?" Dogbrick asked sarcastically. "What do you know?"

  "I know where you can pick up as much trance wrap as a man can carry." Whipcrow's tiny eyes tightened at the centers, and he added, "None of it is marked! That's what's so precious, so very precious. None of it can be traced. It's all yours—if you can handle shriekers."

  "How many?"

  "Many. Whoever goes in will have to dance to get out."

  Dogbrick nudged Whipcrow aside with one thick finger and climbed past him. "Call me when you have some real work, Crow. No more dancing."

  Whipcrow clenched a fistful of the thief's cloak and pulled himself upright. "This is real, Brick. If you can move as fast as you did on the scarab job, the trance wrap's yours. It's the same as the last time. The shriekers are gang rotated, and I know the pattern and the timetable. If you're fast, you won't see a shrieker until the exit gate. Then just dance the way you did last time and you're out. What'd you get for that scarab? You paid me a wand for that—so you probably got three for yourself. Ha! For the same risk, we can share a fortune."

  "Share?" Dogbrick glared. "You'll get your quarter."

  "Half this time," the gaunt man insisted, gray expression cold as rain. "An opportunity like this won't happen again for me."

  "Especially if there is a Dark Lord."

  Whipcrow released Dogbrick's cloak and stepped back. The wind lifted his sticky black hair like feathers. "I fear that, Brick. Oh yes, but then the wrap will be even more valuable, won't it? Everyone will want to forget their misery. So, either way, we are rich."

  Dogbrick bent closer. "Tell me what you know, and if I succeed, you will get a third. After all, if I fail, it is I who must pay with my life."

  Whipcrow conceded with a weary nod. "But first, you must agree to pay me my third even if the Dark Lord himself comes to Saxar."

  "He had best stoop swiftly to our cliffs," Dogbrick assured him with a thick grin, "for if what you know and tell me is true, you will be paid by morning."

  "So tomorrow mid-morn, then. We will meet on Mirage Climb—"

  Dogbrick nodded with understanding. "The willow park above the Millgates."

  "Yes, we can look down from there on the grounds where the factories will gather their army." His blue lips curled mockingly. "I would see the legion of dunces the security agents lure to their ranks."

  "Good." Dogbrick's smile vanished in his beard. "Now tell me what you know."

  Whipcrow beckoned the thief closer to the corroded wall and told him everything with a direct intensity that lost not a word to the rasping wind. He had Dogbrick repeat back to him what he had heard before he sealed the agreement with the dim smile of a man who has just surrendered the authorship of his future to another—the soft despair of those who must wait.

  "Mirage Climb well before noon tomorrow," the spy confirmed a last time before he flew up the worn steps into the smoky attic of Devil's Wynd.

  Dogbrick saluted him jubilantly, then bounded down the smooth stairs, giddy with the bargain he had struck. Two-thirds of all the trance wrap a man can carry! He had only to convince his partner to take the risk.

  The scarab job had nearly killed the strange fellow, and they had both sworn off dangerous ventures. But this was an extraordinary prize, a genuine oath breaker, and Dogbrick hummed with eagerness to talk business. He opened his partner's seeker and spoke aloud his name to activate it: "Ripcat!"

  The golden star directed him with a cool current, an invisible and silent guide that confidently led him to the nearest exit. Emerging from the wynd through a nitre-toothed tunnel, the thief climbed into the brash glare and noise of a weavers' bazaar.

  Talismanic tapestries hung on scaffolds. Thousands of flamboyant panels crowded the sunny plaza and climbed radiant boulevards beyond. Each tapestry had been woven with filaments of trance wrap so that the illustrations they depicted lived for those who pumped Charm into the fabric.

  Crowds milled about, many chanting passages from their favorite panels and dancing the vigorous weaver's jig. Seeking Ripcat through this confusion would take longer than waiting until twilight when the odd man came out of hiding. Dogbrick closed the star amulet and returned it to his collar pouch.

  The planet Hellgate had vanished in the radiance of noon, and only Nemora's crystal skull marred the azure void above Saxar. Devil's Wynd had carried him across town, outside the gloom of the refineries and mills. Like a giant's fleece, sooty and tawed, industrial smoke stood massively to the east.

  The weavers' urgent cymbals beckoned, and he considered whiling away the hours here, enjoying this magic. After all, the trance wrap he would steal that night made this bazaar possible. Without it, there would be no weavers, and by this time tomorrow, he would never have to pay for trance again. Blissful irony, he exulted, before a deeper irony jinxed his pleasure, especially if there is a Dark Lord.

  Until he knew the truth of 100 Wheels' warning, his old joys could not offer him their familiar zest. He retreated from the immense bazaar and caught a city trolley going to the sea coves.

  For most of the ride along Fiddler Street, the spicy carnival fragrance of the weavers clung to him, and he prayed 100 Wheels had lied. He didn't want cacodemons ripping apart the tapestries. He wanted to know again the stupendous abandon of talismanic rapture.

  If all Charm became worthless, then his whole life, everything he had struggled to possess by his thievery, lost value. All his risks and hard work had been in vain.

  Anger swarmed from that thought, and he opened a window to clear his head of the bazaar's perfume, the scent of mirage. A headlong stream of sea wind gushed into the hollows of his body and fit him to the world again.

  In the burning air of the factory district, impacted with childhood sorrows and stalked by the security agents, Dogbrick detached and grew strange to himself. The brisk air restored his happy hopes.

  Watching Fiddler Street's lean, pastel houses float by, he could not imagine cacodemons trampling their blossom terraces or disturbing their serene spiral balconies and floral turrets.

  By the time the ocean hove into view, the thief had convinced himself that Saxar would never be invaded. The refinery town clung to titanic cliffs at the most remote and desolate extreme of the Qaf, an epic desert swarming with gruesome terrors. No military force had ever amassed enough Charm to cross that unruly wasteland.

  Nor could any sizable force approach unseen from the ocean, because the Edge cut close to the horizon at this latitude and whole armies could easily fall off the planet and into the sky's cold abyss with one Charmed shift of the wind.

  The other passengers in the city carriage—charmwrights in suede aprons, a witch silent within her veils, and a mentor talking history with her two young neophytes—sat well apart from the scruffy troglodyte whose pugnacious features carried a dim and uneasy smile.

  He took no offense. In fact, this close to winning his fortune, he felt benign to the whole world, and the presence of the other passengers graced him. By sharing this carriage, they affirmed him as a citizen, instead of the thief he was, and he nodded amicably to each of them as they came and went.

  Dogbrick rode to the end of the line, following Fiddler down through the talus hills of rubble neighborhoods that sprawled across the steppes. The sight of the blackstone piles stained with cliff-bottom seepings filled him with shame, for he had ineptly plundered many of these meager ho
useholds while learning his trade. When he was wealthy, he would make restitution. He had promised himself that for years, and at last tomorrow he would have that proud chance.

  Fiddler dwindled to a sandy trace meandering through dune villages and driftwood hamlets, transient as their sand moorings. Gull shrieks and spindrift stung the crisp breeze, and he hummed a jaunty tune, alone finally in the floating carriage.

  On tidal flats shining bright as beaten silver, the track widened again to an avenue of mariners' shops. He leaped out and landed in a splash of dry sand before the carriage began its swivel around the turnpole.

  With a frisky stride, he crossed Ocean Avenue and marched along a mossy tide wall. He saluted marina workers and drydock hands who sometimes did business with him.

  Briskly, he headed toward the Wise Fish, a lantern-hung den where sail menders and talisman braiders ate together at the open grill. The owner, a former thief, provided a discreet place to do business and get a decent meal. Dogbrick liked its location at the far end of the longest pier, where it commanded a view of all Saxar.

  To avoid the long walk down the pier and inevitable encounters with people who owed him or wanted to do business, he climbed down from the tide wall and waded through the shallows. Seahorses shed bright peels of color in the crystal-lit water, and periwinkles swirled up along his wake.

  At the pier, he climbed a notch ladder to the wooden catwalk connecting the pilings beneath the dock. He made his way among busy seiners in blue slickers and red gloves. Only two owed him, and he settled quickly with them, arranging for deliveries of mollusks to the den in the coming days.

  The world functioned so familiarly that the thought of cacodemons once more seemed childish, and the hope of impending fortune ripened his swollen heart. With waves swirling in a havoc of foam under him, he stood before the shrouds that climbed to the hatch in the floor of the Wise Fish, but he did not mount that rope ladder.

  This had been his sanctuary as a child, this lean-to at the end of the pier, this fish grill with its sharkskin lanterns, cracked mead tables, wobbly benches, and walls of woven driftwood.