The Dark Shore (The Dominions of Irth Book 1)

by A. A. Attanasio

  Poch had sobbed while Jyoti had stared in shocked silence. Only their charm-frocks held hysteria at bay. At night, when their escorts would have come to take them home, no one had arrived. The horizon where the city had fallen breathed flames, and by that scarlet glow could be seen the ascension of the dead.

  There were so terribly many, they blotted half the night as the nocturnal tide lifted corpses into the wind and drifted them toward the edge of the sky. There the outbound current of the Gulf would sweep them into the abyss with all other dead things.

  A nauseating stench of char and volcanic miasma sifted across the sand rivers, and the brother and sister activated all their hex-gems to filter out the stink. Against the stars, the ascension of the dead and the black swarm of cacodemons swirled.

  / |

  The margrave's children fled, and morning found them well south of the black rock escarpment where they had witnessed the destruction of their home. Jyoti felt that all her 7,048 days before this morning had been a happy dream, a quiet prelude to this terrible time. She paced the stone creek before her brother, pondering what to do next.

  With impotent rage, she reviewed all that she had witnessed of yesterday's holocaust. Cacodemons are not real, she repeated to herself, wanting to understand what she had really seen. Niello eye charms did not lie, and she had to admit finally that fabled monsters had attacked and destroyed Arwar Odawl.

  Sharp and strange, that truth hurt her. She had trained her whole life long to emulate her forebears, the ancient warriors of pre-Charm times. Her beloved grandfather, Lord Phaz, had inspired her to believe that the hardy and archaic virtues of the first people could only enhance the modern powers of the Charmed generations. Neither old-fashioned warrior spirit nor contemporary magic had prepared her for cacodemons, monsters that existed only in children's stories—until last night.

  Jyoti amplified to maximum intensity the two power wands she wore at the collar of her amulet-frock, resting atop her clavicles. Their strength soothed her helpless fury and lent cold precision to her thinking. This horror was only a beginning. Her parents were dead—Lord Keon and Lady Erna—and grandfather Phaz—and all of her clan, all her friends, all her people. Dead.

  Mourning lurked behind the calm strength of Charm. Deeper than her shock, grief lay coiled around her heart, hoarding its toxins. In time, it would come for her. On this grim day, she required mental alertness, and she would not diminish the strength of her power wands or hex-gems. She had to reason out a plan, and for that she had to know what had happened.

  From where did the cacodemons come? Are they a ridiculous disguise for some known enemy?

  The somber hum of bees droned from the sunny bank, where a tiny bird with green, silver-tipped feathers strutted among knobs of cactus. She stared at the bird and did not see it, for her mind ranged among horrific possibilities. Her eyes gleamed with malicious hurt as she considered old family rivals who might have discovered some new magic—

  "They will see you out there," Poch warned again. "Come hide."

  Jyoti faced her brother with a soft expression. A gentle youth, extravagantly spoiled by their parents, he did not even know how to read the accumulation of signals gathered by his amulet-frock. He had always relied on others to protect him—their parents, the guards, herself.

  "You don't have to hide, Poch," she told him once more. "The eye charms see no threat to us at this time."

  "Maybe the eye charms are blind to the cacodemons," he whined. "How else could they get into the city?"

  "We saw the cacodemons with our own niello eye charms, Poch. Stop cowering there and start thinking straight."

  Poch sat up but did not budge from his covert under the thorn bush. “Try the aviso again."

  Jyoti found the tiny black crystal in the breast pocket of her frock and rubbed it alert. A blue spark danced in its faceted interior but no sound came from Arwar Odawl, not even static.

  As she pointed the small communicator in another direction, a harsh screeching pierced the morning. She thumbed the volume plane of the aviso, and a frenzied voice bounded onto the creek bed.

  "... approach impossible. They're everywhere. In the canopy. In the cloud cover. The jungle is filthy with them. No one has gotten through."

  Everywhere! Jyoti shuddered and peeked again at the niello eye charms on her shoulder pads. The thorn shrubs, stony creek bed, and broad pans of cracked clay that stretched to the sand rivers beyond appeared empty of threat. And above them, the blue depth of the sky held no clouds.

  "They're cacodemons," the voice reported. "Don't tell me it's impossible. We have multiple confirmations. Cacodemons! And we can't stop them. Charm doesn't touch them. Wait. We've got another sighting. Nearby. Looks like one of them in the river grass. Watch it! It's seen us. Pull back! Hurry!"

  A havoc ensued of frantic breathing and thrashing vegetation. Then, the unmistakable sound of firecharms shooting in rapid bursts. Static from the discharges smothered the shouting voices of the warriors.

  Shredded with breakup, the voice returned, panting. "We're hitting them ... direct blasts from firelocks and calivers! Point-blank! ... Nothing ... It's nothing to them! ... Hey! Watch it! Stand back! Stand back!"

  Roaring flared through the aviso.

  "One of the damned things snapped a firelock in its teeth! Broke the charmbreech wide open. The blast blew two gunners to ashes. They're gone! And it's still coming! It walks through green fire!"

  More rapid bursts from the firecharms disrupted speech. A scream gargled above the thudding automatic fire of a caliver, then silence.

  "Give me that." Poch held his hand out for the aviso.

  Jyoti tossed it to him and continued pacing across the creek's cobbles, stupefied by what she had heard. It walks through green fire! Not even the soothing lave of Charm from her power wands could ease that horror.

  What she yearned to do was remove her amulet-frock. She wanted to bring forth her grief and mourn. But she dared not. Not yet. Maybe never. Her alertness took in shadow patterns cast by the thorn brush, bees humming among empurpled blossoms, a vivid green bird watching her, and a front of cumulus swelling in the north offering cover for an approaching nightmare. At any moment, cacodemons could appear. More than ever, she needed her amulets. Yet never before had they weighed so heavily.

  "Listen!" Poch turned up the aviso's volume.

  "... only death! For I am Hu'dre Vra, the Dark Lord. As example to all, I have this day set my cacodemons upon Arwar Odawl, and that oldest and fairest of cities now burns in the jungles of Elvre. So shall it be for any who oppose me. Do not resist my might. Lay down your arms and bend your knees before me, and you shall be spared. For those who dare stand against me, there is only death! For I am Hu'dre Vra, the Dark Lord. As example to all, I have this day set my cacodemons upon Arwar Odawl, and that oldest and fairest of cities now burns—"

  Poch silenced the aviso. "It's loop broadcasting on all the local public bands. The whole dominion must be hearing this."

  "Who is he?" Jyoti glared up at the empty sky and felt the heat of rage and cold fright clashing within her. "That is no name we know."

  "Dare we find out?" Poch asked, holding up the aviso. "We can reach the local sender."

  "And call down those monsters on us?"

  "He says if we bend our knees we will be spared."

  Jyoti looked hard at him. "This so-called Dark Lord destroyed everything we cherish. Father and Mother are dead!"

  Frowning with perplexity, Poch groaned. "Must we die, too?"

  Jyoti gnashed a cry, lurched forward, and violently seized her young brother. She hauled him out from under the thorn bush and with two deft tugs unstrapped his amulet-frock and yanked it from him.

  "Hey!" he protested with a shrill cry as she tossed the frock with its clattering amulets behind her onto the stone bed of the creek. "What are you doing?"

  "Charm has blinded you." She moved to block him from retrieving his frock. "You stand here now without your Charm and te
ll me you want to bend your knee to the killer who destroyed all we love."

  Poch trembled, as much from fear of his sister's fury as from the abrupt loss of Charm. "Jyoti—give me back my Charm!"

  "How does it feel?" she asked and unstrapped her own frock and dropped it at her feet. A welter of emotion sluiced through her—a vortex of wild fear, anger, and shock—and at its immutably still center, a green ache of implacable loss.

  Poch clawed to get past her, and she stopped him, vigorously thwarting each of his frenzied attempts. She slapped aside his grasping arms and shoved him backward so vigorously he tripped and sat down hard.

  "Why are you doing this to me?" he cried in anguished frustration. Without Charm to quiet the hysteria, terror mounted. He felt like a mote in a violent storm. The destructive winds had blown away everything he knew—parents, home, teachers, friends, and his whole future—all blown away into the void. And all that remained was his small, quivering self and his mad sister.

  Jyoti stared hard at the abject fear in her brother. She felt the same dismay. But he lacked the training. Father and Mother had reared him to rule with Charm, in the manner of all their noble ancestors—except for eccentric Grandfather Phaz, the throwback to aboriginal times.

  Poch had wanted nothing to do with that tough old man and his harsh disciplines. No one did. Jyoti herself showed her first interest only out of pity for the solitary and grizzled elder. Then, to her happy astonishment and the misgivings of her family, she discovered she actually enjoyed shedding Charm and focusing her mind on perceptual extremes. And she learned the athletic limits of her body.

  Not Poch. Not then—not at this time. The weepy fright on his young face hurt her, more keenly now that he was all who remained of her family. In his chemise that showed his rib slats and bony shoulders, he appeared wholly helpless, a mere child. She picked up his frock and handed it to him.

  "I'm sorry," she said and retrieved her own frock. "This Dark Lord—whoever he is—is our enemy. We will never bow to him. Never."

  Poch sat small and huddled in his frock, not looking at her, sobbing quietly.

  She turned away and held her own frock out at arm's length. This thing, she thought, this thing that makes us strong makes us weak.

  A pang of lamentation hurt her to think of Grandfather Phaz dead among all the others, and she gazed at the garment with cold eyes.

  The frock itself was white suede, made of the softest antelope leather. Two power wands yoked the collar. The gold thread that bound them also conducted Charm and trimmed the edges and patterned the panels in spirals and fretwork. Atop this circuitry, tiny blue rock studs affixed amulets in clusters that focused energy over the body's vital organs: Ruby hex-gems starburst the left breast, black mirrors patched the length of the spine and outlined the rib cage, iridescent emerald panes covered the kidneys, and platinum sigils guarded the alchemy of liver and abdomen.

  She peered into the epaulets of black prism, seeking within the niello eye charms any sign of danger. For weapon, all she had was a small utility knife. It was nothing compared to the firecharms she had heard on the aviso, vainly blasting the cacodemons.

  We are defenseless—on a journey with no destination.

  Grimly, she donned the charm-frock and secured the gold hasps. At least when they came, she would not be struck blind.

  "What are we going to do?" Poch asked in a voice tight with tears. "Everyone is dead."

  Jyoti sat down next to her brother and put a gentle arm across his shoulder. "Not everyone. We are alive. We have each other."

  "I'm useless to you." He sniffled. "You're better off without me."

  "Why do you say that?" Her arm tightened across his shivering shoulders. "Are you so scared you would just give yourself to the enemy?"

  Poch did not answer. He kept his watery stare in the dirt. Finally, he mumbled, "Where will we go?"

  Where? she wondered and removed her arm. Slowly she rose and paced again the stone bed of the creek. The low electric buzz of bees continued as though nothing had changed in the world.

  Where? No answer came, and the violent muscle of her heart twisted harder to realize there was nothing at all left of their lives but their own bodies and the charms they wore.

  "No!" she practically shouted as her heart unclenched and offered a new hope. She faced her brother with bright and wicked purpose. "There is one other. Of course! He wasn't in the city. He left almost a thousand days ago. You remember him. The old sorcerer—"

  "Father's weapons master..." Poch whispered and lifted his face. His traumatized features looked starved, they were so scared—eyes staring from pits, mouth slack—yet, for this one moment, they took on a little of their former vitality.

  "Caval," Jyoti said. "We must find Caval. He will help us."

  "Yes. He will!" The boy stood up, alert to this real possibility of salvation. "Father always said Caval is the best weapons master on Irth. He will know how to fight cacodemons." He grasped his sister's arm. "But where is he? Father retired him long ago."

  "We must find him." Jyoti took a seeker from her frock's inside pouch. Its star shape woven of gold filaments encased a homing bauble that held a lock of their father's hair.

  "That won't help us," Poch said grimly. "He's dead."

  Jyoti shot him a dark look. "Caval is a sorcerer. He worked for father a very long time—a lifetime. There may yet be a bond between them, and this could be our link to him. If we call, he might hear us."

  Poch looked skeptical. "Might as well pray to the Abiding Star."

  "Look, Poch, if Caval is yet on Irth, he will surely be aware of what has happened to Arwar Odawl. He may come to help us."

  “Why would he?" Poch stared at her. "He was not of our clan."

  "No," she said and met his stare calmly. "But he is of the Brood of Assassins, a mercenary whom father hired as a young man. Caval served no other master. I believe we can depend on his loyalty."

  Poch scowled. "Loyalty to whom? The margrave he served is dead."

  Jyoti knelt beside the frowning boy. "Poch, Father is dead. And Mother, as well. That means that I am our brood's margravine now."

  "There is no brood!" he shouted. "They're all dead. Everyone is dead! You are no margravine. There is no one left for you to rule."

  "There is the dominion," she said softly and adjusted the power wands at his collar to soothe his anger. "We have Elvre. We will build a new city."

  He pushed her hands away. "Shut up. We are doomed. The cacodemons are going to kill us like they killed everyone else."

  "That's why we need Caval." She held out the seeker. "Put your hand over mine. Call with me. The sorcerer will hear us, and he will come."

  Poch sullenly stared at her, then placed his hand over hers so that they squeezed the seeker between their palms.

  "Now reach out with me for Caval," she instructed. "We have the Charm. He will hear us."

  They closed their eyes and began beseeching: Caval! We need you! Where are you?

  Their psychic cries glinted in the air like spun sugar caught on the wind, and the time loop abruptly closed for Caval.

  / |

  The small bird with green, silver-tipped feathers burst into flight, unnoticed by the two crouching figures on the dry creek bed. The bird flew directly into the white-hot glare of the Abiding Star and vanished.

  Half a world away, Caval awoke in green and red twilight. A day had passed.

  The glazed surface of the flagstones burned with cold. He concentrated his diffused Charm on the quivering pelt of his body and warmed himself.

  Tossed from his trance, he felt disoriented.

  The thin air, he thought.

  Yet, even as his Charm recharged his blood with oxygen, he groped to comprehend how he could be lying there under evening's red velvet. Moments before, he had been a gleaming bird in the morning light.

  Time has turned inside out.

  A rain of starlight drizzled through the dusk.

  The Calendar of Eyes,
he told himself, rises above the clear boundaries of time.

  He sat up taller and groped to understand what he had witnessed in his Charmed flight.

  Hu'dre Vra...

  The name sounded hollow—a cheap mask for the scavenger Wrat.

  Hu'dre Vra, he repeated, and again, Hu'dre Vra!

  Across the lake of twilight, his chant shaped a vision of Hu'dre Vra's future: Smoldering ruins ranged the horizons of Irth.

  The man is mad! the sorcerer realized. Craters pocked the land where floating cities had crashed, and cacodemons crisscrossed in the ashen skies above godless wastes. Mad!

  Caval stood, rigid with outrage. He brought his Charm to bear on the edge of night and the beginning of stars. There he invoked his memory of the young survivors who had cried out for him.

  Jyoti! he called into twilight's deepening scar. Poch!

  Again he saw their bodies splayed open beneath the fang-leering hulk of a cacodemon. Their spilled entrails glistened like dark fruits.

  Deeper! the sorcerer called.

  Charm probed deeper into chance. And still their bodies lay torn upon the ground. Ripped flesh glimmering red exposed bones rasped clean as shafts of moonlight.

  Deeper!

  Charm reached through chance toward zero.

  The sorcerer dizzied. He sagged to his knees, yet did not blink. He kept his gaze firm. And he met, staring back at him across countless fatal chances, the green-blue irises of Jyoti and Poch.

  Caval seized upon that dim and distant vision and poured his Charm into it.

  The space around them swallowed light. Darkness enclosed them. And by that he knew only the slimmest hope connected them.

  Yet, hope! he exulted. What is seen in the Calendar of Eyes may yet be!

  He struggled upright, swerving his arms to maintain balance, all the while holding fast to the two figures in the dark socket of furthest vision.

  In the night that surrounded them, at the edge of time, possibilities shifted position: Cacodemons writhed in shades of black—teeth and claws tarnished glints—and from the absences between them, outlined in their separations like paper cutouts, his own shape repeated many times.