The Dark Shore (The Dominions of Irth Book 1)

by A. A. Attanasio

  The youth climbed the Ladder of the Wind above the sere plain, higher than the icy marblings of the atmosphere, into the vacuum cold between worlds. Usually, neophytes self visited Nemora. The most courageous went as far as Hellsgate. Few had gone beyond those near worlds and come back.

  He remembered hanging there in the glittery dark with the Charmed worlds floating about him, luminous as seashells. He began working his Charm with the crazy weave of amulets that he had devised for the occasion—and he vanished from the top rung of the ladder!

  Everyone, including himself, knew at once what had happened. He had fallen into the Gulf. He fell forever. He fell like a shadow out of the Empire of Light into eternal darkness. When vision adjusted, he noticed cold worlds glittering among the clots of star smoke that had formed them. His shadow brushed across their smoky faces.

  The Dark Shore—he recognized, as serene as the brood had bred him to be.

  He fell to a world of forests and aboriginal peoples. Among them, he wore a skin of light that covered his boyish frame with a bestial fur meant to intimidate the natives. He visited the tribes and spoke wisdom in their own tongues. He did what good he could for them while he prepared to create the amulets that would gather the Charm to climb the Ladder of the Wind back across the Gulf to Irth.

  It had been done before, though the knowledge of this remained occult. The uninitiated were not to suspect that the Dark Shore could be trespassed, or many foolish lives would be forfeit.

  Only those trained by the Sisterhood and the Sanctuary of Sages knew that Charm could be found anywhere in the Gulf—even on the cold worlds beyond. Charm on the Dark Shore was exceedingly tenuous. Devising amulets capable of culling that sheer substance required tremendous cunning. To the natives, he referred to it as alchemy, for it required ponderous equipment and produced a substance of concentrated Charm of golden luster in the tiniest dusty quantities.

  To climb back to Irth, he would need his body's weight in alchemic gold.

  He sought an assistant. From the peoples who lived in the cities outside the forests, he recruited Reece, a young homeless man, sophisticated enough to comprehend his plight. Reece eagerly visited the forests where Caval worked, intent on absorbing the young sorcerer's instructions.

  In time, they became friends, and he invited Reece into his laboratory and later his abode. He told him of Irth and the Abiding Star. He taught him the laws of Charm.

  With this knowledge, Reece became a potent sorcerer in his own world, wielding magic both in the wilderness and the city. He was able to gather for Caval everything required for the alchemic laboratory, leaving Caval with the time to devise the amulets that would ultimately return him home.

  For the final phase of the work, Caval needed a witch. Since none existed on the Dark Shore, he enlisted Reece's aid in creating one. They began with a female infant saved from flood waters. They named her Lara, and together they reared her in the forests in the manner of the Sisterhood, two men mimicking the ways of the Goddess. Very early they taught her the power dances so that she quickly grew strong enough to assist them in the arduous rituals of alchemy.

  Nineteen summers she danced for them. They had trained her well, and her dances drew power to them from the terminals of the world. The work flourished—until the late summer that the aboriginals killed her.

  Caval, devastated, remembered why he had not wanted to remember. Pain grasped his chest at the image of Lara's face rayed with her own blood.

  She was dead—and young Caval had spun enough alchemic gold to finally climb again the Ladder of the Wind. He clambered back to Irth and left his sorrows behind on the Dark Shore.

  Or so he had thought.

  From his wider vantage in the Cloths of Heaven 38,500 days later, he saw something that terrified him. After he had climbed the Ladder of the Wind, closed the Door in the Air, and returned to Irth and the astonishment of the Sisterhood—Reece had followed!

  The trance nearly broke apart before Caval's shock. Only his fabled serenity retrieved the depth necessary to see how this terrible thing had happened. Clearly, Reece had used the techniques Caval had taught him to work his own alchemy and climb the Ladder of the Wind after him. But the denizen of the Dark Shore did not know about the Door in the Air. Caval had never told him about that. The magic Caval had taught him opened the door on its own. And Reece left it standing open behind him.

  That is how Wrat brings his cacodemons to Irth!

  Caval woke, dizzied from his trance. His eyes rolled about for a disoriented moment, and his arms swung to steady himself. Then, he became perfectly still. His face looked hammered loose from rock, and he gazed at Poch as if paralyzed by a basilisk's venomous stare. From a great depth inside himself, he muttered, "I created the Dark Lord."

  The Star Fallen

  A star fell singing into the sea. Its fiery arc lit up the night sky, dimming constellations and brightening mushroom folds of clouds across the Reef Isles of Nhat. At the point on the horizon where the aerolite vanished, darkness bent backward over amethyst flames. A pale rose burned briefly there while a star song blew in musical winds across the shoals.

  Dogbrick and Tywi looked at each other across the sudden pastel dawn. They had been working separately for many days, the thief off shore in the waves and the waif raking the tide line. To avoid Whipcrow's ire, they kept apart. Exhausting nights and dream-bound days used them up and left few opportunities to talk.

  The star song made them forget distance. They both heard dreamy beauty. To Tywi, the music inspired hopeful joy. It felt like the tranquil amazement she'd known in the Qaf after the beastfolk had rescued her from the trolls and healed her with amulets. She had never felt so much Charm before, almost to the point of trance.

  Dogbrick, too, experienced the precise hopefulness he had known in the desert when he had carried his future in a brass-cornered trunk. He recalled the abundance of possibility he had possessed with his fortune in Charm.

  So many days without Charm and then abruptly soaked in it again, Dogbrick and Tywi came to the same momentary happiness in their suffering. They sighted each other across the bright air. Dogbrick waved, and Tywi dropped her rake and walked into the balmy music.

  Others heard the star song, each in their own way. For the ogres, it burned like a scream. They ran from the beach and lay hidden in the marsh for long dark minutes after darkness smothered the song.

  Whipcrow heard the same serenity as Dogbrick and Tywi, and it carried him to the tranquil loveliness of the warlock's gardens. The music lilted like the mesmermur breezes in the maze of blue and green glass at the Palace of Abominations, where the dead were kept awake. He thought of Ralli-Faj hung on his stick, watching everything with empty eyes. He decided then he would retrieve this rare thing for his master.

  Fog rolled in: soft, warm, and fragrant steam from where the star had burned out in the sea. Dogbrick and Tywi met each other on a sandbar as sultry clouds encircled them in sea stench and tangy floral darkness.

  "Follow the waves to shore," Dogbrick advised. He unlatched his three-tined hook and tether from his trawl, and the net ballooned away in the smoky water. "Can't see anything in this damn dragon smoke. Let's go in."

  "Wait." She stopped him by catching his massive arm, and his strength lifted her off her feet. "I must speak with you. I think we can escape."

  He lowered her to the soggy sand and listened hard. Who might have heard her? Escape! Reaching into velvet darkness, hearing the wild cries of others in the distance and someone laughing maniacally far out by the crashing surf, he speculated that Tywi herself might be an illusion.

  He missed his amulets and had to turn his face to the wind to catch the scent of her before he could dismiss his fear. She seemed real. She smelled like bruised fruit. She was starving. Yet she remained strong, hardened by her survival days in the factory lots.

  Dogbrick relaxed. No one had overheard her. He sensed their solitude on the sandbar, two silhouettes, bestial and frail shadows of each ot
her.

  "You are giddy from the star song," he warned and shouldered his coil of tether line attached to a three-pronged hook. He lifted his head to listen, smell, and look as far as he could. The air smelled sweet and tepid, without a hint of threat. “I feel it, too—the joy, the sense of out Charm. The flash of the falling star has filled our hearts with hope.”

  "No, there's more than just Charm.” Tywi stepped closer, and her voice softened to a whisper. “Owl Oil told me not to tell you.”

  "Owl Oil"—he dropped an unhappy laugh—“the crone who believes hope is sour desire!"

  "Yeah. She also said you're the strongest of us,” Tywi gently reminded him. "You could help free us from this prison. That’s why she used her last opal to heal you."

  "You've seen her since?" he asked, distracted by a mournful yodel far off in the seething calm.

  "Only afar. Sometimes at morning count. She works with a forage crew in the marsh." Tywi leaned on his arm and confided. “That energy Owl Oil helped me see in the dark—remember that? I know who that is.”

  "She showed you the walking shade of Rali-Faj,” he whispered back, suppressing a shudder of dread.

  "She warned me about him. That’s why I ain’t tried to tell you sooner. But now—"

  "It's the touch of Charm after so long without it,” he surmised and took her hand. "Be careful what you say, Tywi. ‘Silence listens,’ and we are Charmed but without amulets! Let’s return to the beach.”

  Again, she would not budge. “A Peer’s been visiting, watching.” She spoke with breathy excitement. “He came close to me once, and we talked."

  "A Peer." Dogbrick heard the gruff calls of ogres crawling among the dunes. “Ralli-Faj is a Peer.”

  "Not the warlock." She stood on her toe-tips to tell him. “Some fugitive from the Dark Lord. One of his enemies.”

  "Say no more to me." He stepped back and released her hand. “Without amulets, we can't know what is real and what an illusion.”

  "Yeah, he warned me to tell nobody.” She followed him toward shore, into the deeper water of a tidal pool. “Our enemies are cruel, he told me.”

  "The phantom is right." He waded more surely toward the beach.

  "Only this, Dog." She stopped. The tepid water at her waist lapped in bioluminescent ripples. "We got to get ready to escape.”

  “To where?" He sniffed for danger. "Ogres are excellent trackers."

  "We got a destiny," she called after him.

  He faced her small shadow. "I don't like that word." He squinted at the sincerity in her expression. "Destiny. That is a clumsy thing. Hard to hold in one's hands. I prefer will. That's all in the hands."

  "We got to will it, then, Dogbrick." Her voice grew firm, and even without rat-star gems he received the impression that she spoke from conviction. "This is evil. We got to stop it."

  He drifted toward her. "Let us escape now."

  "What about the others?" They stood in a vacuole of the fog, seeing each other clearly. Dogbrick, bedraggled and hollow shanked, revealed the weight he had lost. Yet he still stood imposingly tall and broad of bone, and she told him, "Owl Oil said you was the strongest. You got to help us all."

  "Me? I am a thief. I am not a warrior—and I do not serve the Peers." He looked sadly upon the small animal before him. He had not attempted to flee by himself, because he felt responsible for her. "Look, this is our chance if you want to escape. In the fog, we can swim to another isle. I'll carry you. We will make our own destiny."

  She shook her head, her chop-cut hair plastered to her brow and cheeks. "My destiny is right here."

  "With the phantom who visits you?" He leveled a cautionary stare. "How do you know he is not Ralli-Faj? We are in his camp. This is a monstrous cruelty he works on you, Tywi."

  "No, Dog." She took one hand of his in both of hers. "This shade ain't evil. I felt him—with my heart."

  "Hmm. Your heart?" He patted her hands. "You are in love with his handsome and powerful physique."

  She scowled at his mocking tone and the fear it touched in her that he might be right, that the wizarduke come to save her was an illusion.

  "He is handsome and powerful, isn't he?" Dogbrick snarled. "Tywi, he is a skin of light—a deception projected by some malformed creature with a hungry soul. If not Ralli-Faj, some other dangerous servant of Wrat."

  A wet sucking cry swelled out of the waves, a ferment of many small cries surging shoreward in a tidal rush.

  Dogbrick and Tywi grabbed at each other and shouted in unison: "Seaworms!"

  They splashed toward shore, Dogbrick huddling beside her with his arm over her shoulders. Whiplash shapes frothed in the misty water on all sides. A hive of seaworms had broken apart under the impact of the falling star, and the swarm frenzied through the waves and the soft sand.

  A writhing coil tangled Tywi's legs, and she fell forward and jerked backward and down into wet darkness so rapidly no cry escaped her. Dogbrick jumped up surprised, clutching her empty tunic.

  Instantly, he spun about, gabbed his hook and heaved it forcefully at the sandbar behind him. The heavy prongs caught something living that pulled the hook out of sight. Dogbrick leaned his full weight on the taut line, and the sandbar split like a skin.

  A tentacled maw rolled out—a writhing tube of glossy, segmented worm thick as a tree trunk—and Tywi, mired naked in wet sand, struggled to free herself from a tangle of suctioned feelers. Where the suckers touched, scalded blisters mottled her flesh. The thing had already begun to digest her when the hook caught it behind the head. One prong emerged through the rubbery flesh beside a black staring squid eye.

  Dogbrick pulled himself closer and twisted the hook with one hand while tearing away tentacles with the other. Tywi squirmed free and thrashed across the tide pool and into the fog. The thief tore loose his hook and pursued.

  Seaworms snared his ankle, but none were large enough to hold him. He kicked and lurched across the pool and found Tywi struggling to pull herself out of the water. With one hand, he dragged her onto the black lip of the shore. He draped her in her ragged tunic and scurried with her through the fog before collapsing on the dry sand.

  The ogres' driftwood fires shone like dark gems in the fog. Dogbrick mumbled about getting warm, but Tywi sat shivering in the sand and made no move to rise. Seaworm toxins sickened her. Numbness muted her limbs, and weariness swelled closer with the mist.

  The thief caught her as she glided upward, shedding her mortal weight. He carried her to the nearest fire, where two ogres frowned at her hot wounds and called for a healer. Out of the gloom, a bent figure drifted.

  Owl Oil knelt beside her, arms covered with coppery sheets of wet kelp. "I'm tending burns up and down the beach," she told the ogres and began placing the gelatinous ribbons on the young woman's blister stripes. "A whole hive cluster is disturbed."

  "Can you help her?" Dogbrick peered anxiously at the woman's tired features, reading the rays of wrinkles for signs of what she read in Tywi's limp and buoyant body.

  "She's breathing without trouble," Owl Oil said and brushed strands of hair from Tywi's sleeping face. "Keep her Irthbound, and she'll sleep through the night. Dawn shall find her curled like a seed inside one thick husk of a headache."

  Dogbrick looked to see that the ogres were busy talking to one another and leaned closer to Owl Oil, gazing sternly at her from inside the hood of his mane. "You are a witch."

  The crone tapped her leather vest with her thumb. "Charmwright."

  "You talk like a witch," the thief asserted quietly. He glanced over his shoulder to be certain the ogres paid them no heed. "The bosses call you a healer. And you happen to be here for Tywi. You always happen to be where she needs you. It smells of witchery."

  "I am watching over this young woman," Owl Oil admitted. In the firelight, her caramel eyes gleamed with grandmotherly kindness. "She has a destiny."

  "That word again!" He tilted his stare suspiciously. "Then you are a witch?"

  "No. I am no witch.
" Owl Oil brushed the hair from Tywi's shut eyes, then looked at Dogbrick with grim candor. "I am an enemy of the Dark Lord."

  "Hush!" Dogbrick flinched around and saw the ogres herding other scavengers to the fire. "'Silence listens.'"

  "Yes, smart Dog, but it cannot speak!" She giggled with silent mirth as she finished applying the kelp plaster. "I am not afraid to speak so long as only silence listens." She placed Tywi's wet tunic on an antler of driftwood within the thermal aura of the fire. "Ralli-Faj is farther down the strand with Whipcrow. They are busy contemplating how to retrieve the fallen star. No one spies us—yet."

  "The warlock is a shade when he patrols." Dogbrick stared into each underlit face as the scavengers came to the fire, recognizing them all, sensing no threat. "How do you know where he is?"

  "Never mind that." Owl Oil smiled benevolently. "The fallen star is an omen."

  "Omen. Destiny." The thief pulled his head back. "Woman, you speak like a witch."

  "Charm, Dogbrick." She picked up a twig and stirred the flames expertly, fluffing heat over Tywi where she slept in Dogbrick's arms. "Nothing happens on Irth but for Charm. The star that fell returned Charm to a dominion that has lost too much of it since the Dark Lord erected his Palace of Abominations."

  He watched the ogreish profiles at the perimeter of darkness. "Are you sure we can talk of these things?"

  "You think I am one of them?" She tossed a disdainful look at the brutish silhouettes. "Trust me, Dogbrick. We are allies." She snapped her fingers, and a green spark winked in the air. For one instant it rotated like a big snowflake, revealing its lace of geometric angles, a perfect gem of light. Then she blew it, and it flurried before his startled face and disappeared through the velvet between his eyes.

  A light went on inside Dogbrick. Improbable joy changed colors through all the small spaces of his body. Charm kissed him.

  "How did you do that?" Dogbrick gusted a big sigh, his body heavy, dark, and charmless again. "You have amulets?"