The Dark Shore (The Dominions of Irth Book 1)

by A. A. Attanasio

  "Poch is alive," Tywi repeated in a voice that sang with certainty. "And he's in there."

  / |

  Ralli-Faj learned of the escape of two prisoners from his labor camp at the same time that the Dark Lord arrived in Nhat. The cacodemons inside the Palace of Abominations sensed the approach of their master, and they began to chitter in singsong rhythms from their perches among the girders of the pyramid.

  Their mesmermur music sifted through the warlock's gardens and burned him with fright. His hanging flesh stood unmoving upon its stilts, and his eyeholes gazed emptily at the single cacodemon who had intruded on his rapture to bring him the frightful news. In stunned silence, his mind refused to work.

  The slinky demon wavered slowly. It danced to the chant of the others whispering in the silver air. It thought that the warlock Ralli-Faj may not have heard it the first time, and it repeated the message: “Two prisoners escaped the camp."

  The raspy voice shredded the warlock's numb shock to raw fear. "Escaped?" his fiery tongue spat. “Who? How?"

  “The thief Dogbrick,” the demon answered, its smaller thoracic faces humming the mounting chant of its brethren, grinning with crazed bliss. "And a female factory worker, Tywi. Two intruders with firecharms stunned the ogres and Whipcrow."

  "Intruders-s?" Ralli-Faj fought back panic. "What intruders-s dare defy our Dark Lord? How many?"

  "Two—"

  “Two!" The warlock's shout cracked from his mouth hole in a spurt of flame. "How could two overcome the ogres-s?"

  “The rain drove most of the ogres to camp," the cacodemon explained and swayed to the soft singing of its belly mouths. "The intruders were swift."

  "Who?" Ralli-Faj's voice gusted with fear. "Who are they?"

  "The ogres and Whipcrow do not say. They remain unconscious. I came at once."

  "Wake them!" The warlock gazed in dismay at the dancing cacodemon. "Damn the ogres-s dis-s-like for it—put magic on them! Find out who dared. But do not report here. I mus-s-t meet our lord now. Await me in the camp. Go at once!"

  The demon slithered away through the air.

  "Wait!" Ralli-Faj called, his mind sprinting to catch up with events. He cursed himself for the complacence that had allowed him to indulge again in rapture after his triumphant seizures of Drev and Rica. "Find the es-s-caped pris-s-oners-s."

  Wait again! he stopped himself, realizing that the Dark Lord would know at once something was amiss if too many of his cacodemons departed. "Take what demons-s are already on patrol. Find the es-s-caped pris-s-oners-s!"

  With the demon gone, Ralli-Faj sunk deeper into his shock. Sooner or later, the Dark Lord would learn of this.

  Better later, he decided, after the prisoners are recovered—and punished.

  The cacodemons' chant shrilled, and by that the warlock knew that Hu'dre Vra was moments away. He wanted to receive his lord at the top of the pyramid, in the opulent adytum that he had designed for the master of all Irth.

  Using the Charm in his stilts, Ralli-Faj flew through his gardens and up the stone spiral. He glanced only briefly to his sides, to be certain that his prisoners remained immersed in blood smoke. Their scalded faces gazed back blindly from within their transparent crypts.

  He arrived at the summit to see the rainy dawn's mint colors streaked with flights of cacodemons. Out of their viperous writhings descended the Dark Lord in his jagged armor with his consort, Thylia, aflutter in her witch veils.

  They lighted upon the curved lip of the gateway, and even Hu'dre Vra looked diminutive before the titanic portal with its towering folds of stone. The grandeur of the design melled anatomical motifs of organic convolutions to the pure, straight-line geometry of the pyramid and created within its vertex an immense, crystal interior.

  The Dark Lord stood unmoving for a lengthy moment, appreciating what he beheld. The adytum’s interior shone with sonorous, watery light, illuminating languid contours of bare-walled emptiness. The wall curved and folded inward toward a secret candescent core. From there, serene mesmermur music sifted through the chitterings of demons.

  "The interior des-s-ign I leave to your own tas-s-te, my lord." Ralli-Faj greeted Hu'dre Vra. "I pray this-s pleas-s-es-s you."

  "I am well pleased," he conceded, though in fact he preferred the human dimensions of the palaces he had occupied on his tour. Yet he had to admit that this imposing and frightfully bizarre monument was precisely the structure from which he wanted to preside over the dismantling of Irth.

  "What do you think of it, my dear?" the Dark Lord queried Thylia.

  The witch queen sneered at the obscene architecture. "I like it not."

  Hu'dre Vra boomed with laughter. "Of course. It impales the female genitalia, the symbol of fertility, of life, upon the impersonal point of a pyramid, an abstract thing. It is a most apt symbol for what I am doing to this world. Job well done, Ralli-Faj!"

  "Thank you, my lord."

  "Now show me our prize,” Hu'dre Vra gloated. "Show me the wizarduke, Lord Drev."

  Tok. Tok. Tok.

  The warlock on his stilts stalked past the Dark Lord and the witch queen, across the labial threshold and downward, perpendicular to gravity, toward the circular track, the cloacal emblem of all that the Dark Lord intended to eliminate.

  The rusty chain screamed to a halt at the approach of Hu'dre Vra. Thylia stayed behind in the giant curved frame of the doorway, gazing with fascination when the doors of the carriages cried open.

  She loathed Lord Drev and his entire brood for the enmity that his ancestors had inspired in her people by their brutal insistence on unifying the dominions. And yet at the sight of him—his flesh greenish, his haunted eyes staring mindlessly from their sockets—she knew pity.

  Her only consolation was that she had kept her silence. As witch queen she was privy to all the secrets of the sages in their sanctuaries and the witches in their covens. She had known from the first how the cacodemons had come to Irth. She knew the secret of the Dark Shore. And she had breathed not a clue of it to Wrat. Amorous distractions—the most vulgar and prurient pleasures—were sufficient to keep him preoccupied. Not once yet had he questioned the blind god Chance who had brought him back to Irth or wondered what roles were played by that god's two companions, Death and Justice.

  His sturdy laughter rose up to her from where he confronted his enemy. She watched as he dropped his armor to face Drev as Wrat.

  "How long I have anticipated this moment, my lord Drev." The conqueror spoke with proud joy. "At last our roles are reversed. You taste defeat. I triumph!"

  Drev knelt with exhaustion, gazing numbly. The Dark Lord infused him with sufficient magic to heal his torn soul. Sentience sharpened again in the wizarduke's features.

  "Speak to me, Drev." Wrat beckoned. "Tell me exactly how you feel."

  Drev pulled himself upright and stared down at the man until Wrat made himself taller.

  "S-speak to your mas-s-ter," Ralli-Faj commanded from where he stood looking on.

  Drev took a moment to relish the absence of pain. He lifted his face to the chill rain and tasted the sky. Light shafts from broken clouds touched the swamp and ignited cusps of mist. He took in the beauty of the land—the mirror sheen of the waterways, the muted colors and mulch fragrances of the wet morning.

  Then he looked into Wrat’s malicious close-set eyes and said calmly, "You are a deformed man. And everything you do is deformed."

  "Ha!" Wrat pushed his sharp face closer. "And who was it deformed me? The Peers! So that they could dwell comfortably in their floating cities, I lived as a scavenger right here in these reef isles. You and your kind deformed me!"

  "No, Wrat." Drev smiled knowingly. "That is just your excuse for the murderous spite that kindles your heart. Even as a Peer you would have been deformed. Regard your slave, Ralli-Faj, a Peer of as noble a lineage as my own."

  Wrat shook his head and showed wet brown teeth. "This is far better than I had hoped, my lord Drev. Remember when I killed your sister, Meve
a?" His grin widened to see the wizarduke flinch at that memory. "Recall how I skewered her through the womb with my sword and how she died screaming her curses at me? Hers was an ugly death."

  Drev reached for Wrat, but tentacles snared his hands and throat and threw him back into the corroded interior of the Chain of Pain. The cacodemon who had seized him coiled atop the carriage and hung its gruesome head down to watch him with its tiny spider eyes.

  "And what of those curses from Mevea?" Wrat asked, leering derisively. "They did not stop me. Here I am. And there you are."

  Wrat laughed when the door slammed shut and Drev flung himself to the window anticipating pain.

  "Have the chain make several circuits without hurting him," the Dark Lord commanded. "I think I should like to play with him for a while."

  / |

  Ralli-Faj left Hu'dre Vra laughing and chortling at the sufferings of Lord Drev in the Chain of Pain. Begging pardon to attend to the business of running the Palace of Abominations, the warlock made his way swiftly to the labor camp.

  He floated out of the swamp mists on his stilts and toured the huts. With his face skin of hollow eye sockets, he peered in at the frightened prisoners. They cowered and gawked back at him with shrill eyes.

  Then he drifted to the central courtyard and planted himself at its muddy center.

  The camp was so still, he could hear the fine rain sizzling atop the frond roofs and sighing from the marsh where the ogres hid. Afraid to show themselves, they pretended to search the fen trails and bog paths.

  Only Whipcrow came forward, leaning heavily on his tall amber staff. He hurried out of the swamp tunnel where the abduction had occurred. Anxiously, he had been waiting for the return of the handful of cacodemons who had fanned out from there across the slough. At the height of his panic, he had actually prayed to the Nameless that the demons return with the fugitives in their tentacles before the warlock arrived. Now, as he scurried toward the flayed skin stretched upon its twin talisman poles, he ground between his teeth a curse on the Nameless.

  The manager folded back his cowl and lifted his two bruised eyes to Ralli-Faj. "O powerful warlock, take pity on this pathetic Crow."

  "Who es-s-caped?"

  "That mangy philosopher Dogbrick!" Whipcrow answered with startled repugnance. "And his servant girl Tywi."

  “Tell me about them."

  Whipcrow pulled his shoulders to his ears and peered upward at the human hide with pitiable perplexity. "He was a thief in Saxar. She was a factory waif. They are gutter lives, my lord. They are unimportant."

  "They are important enough to s-someone. Who freed them at s-such great ris-sk." A blue spark spit from the warlock and danced briefly in the air. Somehow, he knew, this touches upon Drev's arrival here. Yet how? "Who took them?"

  "I don't know." The manager whimpered. "It was dark. Dogbrick struck me between the eyes."

  The stretched skin offered the silence of an inert thing. Within, Ralli-Faj quivered with rage and fright. Something terrible had gone awry, of that he was certain. But what? His unknowing infuriated him, even as he coldly dreaded the fury he would face when this incident became known to mad Wrat.

  If I am to be undone by the blunders of ogres and beastmen, the warlock intoned to himself, peering down at cowering Whipcrow, then this sniveling dolt will precede me to hell!

  Whipcrow read Ralli-Faj's silence accurately, and he lifted his trembling hand and staff above his woeful face, his blackened eyes sparkling with tears. "Please, great warlock, take pity on this frightened Crow."

  "In this-s world of cacodemons-s you cry for pity?" The splotches of green fungus on the boneless face of Ralli-Faj darkened an ominous hue. "You are not worthy of the humanity to which you pretend, beastman!"

  "No!" Whipcrow screamed, sensing what grimly impended. He swung his staff at the warlock on his stilts, and the large power wand splashed to muddy water on contact with the black magic that infused Ralli-Faj.

  The manager retreated three paces, shocked by the power to transform Charm to bilge water. With abject terror, he stared at the entity before him and opened his mouth to plead again for his life. But his mouth held a bird's tongue and out jumped a bird's raucous cry!

  Whipcrow spun about to flee, and the legs beneath him splayed at their ends to claws. His arms erupted as wings. His torso winced tighter. And his head shrunk to the stabbing face of a crow.

  The bird flew to the edge of the camp and lighted upon a rubber tree bough. From the side of its head, its ebony eye watched the warlock warily. Then it cawed loudly, triumphantly, and spread its wings.

  As the crow lifted into flight, the glossy leaves of the rubber tree exploded, and a carrion monkey snatched the bird on the wing. Its greedy claws bit deeper as the night wings thrashed violently to escape. Then the fierce simian face shrieked fangs and tore apart the screaming bird, dropping loose feathers and gouts of gluey flesh.

  Satisfied, Ralli-Faj turned his attention upon the ogres. From out of his naked hide seeped green mist. It pooled below him, where the sharp points of his stilts sunk in the mud. Viscous bubbles blistered its surface and frothed to ichorous suds.

  The warlock fed his wrath into the effluvia puddling below him, and out of that he shaped wraiths. They rose, bent as monkeys with arms dangling streamers of paralyzing tendrils. Spectral faces, pale and ripped as old bridal veils, bared needle teeth and muscular, unhinged jaws that blurred like smoke as they raved.

  After the wraiths had grown to the size of ogres, Ralli-Faj set them loose. They charged into the swamp on vaporous limbs. They did not seem substantial enough to stay long intact, yet the foliage shredded before them.

  It was the warlock's vehemence that powered them. In moments, the first desperate shrieks began. Minutes later, the hacked parts of an ogre emerged from the underbrush and crawled over the mud to the center of the courtyard as if conveyed by legions of army ants. A bloody haunch, both severed arms, and a huge keg head with woolly mane and ferociously condensed face, wide-eyed in death, crept into the muddy courtyard on wisps of ectoplasm. The wisps evaporated and left the butchered cuts steaming in the gentle rain.

  The wraiths killed three ogres among the swamp coves as well as the two who had fallen unconscious before the firecharms. Groggily recovering in their treehouses when the murderous wraiths set upon them, their screams reached like siren wails across the bog land. After the chopped sections of their bodies fell from the trees and came sliding into the camp on snails of green smoke, the warlock stopped the killing. Rage had exhausted him—and, besides, he needed the others to run the camp.

  He turned his back on the filthy dismemberment and stalked out of the bamboo gates and onto the swamp track where the escape had taken place. A cacodemon rose from the congested verdure at the side of the path.

  "Water holds no tracks," it informed him. "The land is too vast. We need more brethren."

  "No, no more brethren," Ralli-Faj insisted urgently. He needed time to assess what was transpiring out there in the marshes. Since it in some way involved the wizarduke, he felt compelled to inform Hu'dre Vra immediately, before he learned of this from the cacodemons. Yet he hesitated.

  In his long sight, Ralli-Faj observed that the Chain of Pain moved by fits and starts. He could almost hear the cries of Drev and Rica curdling to echoes. Wrat was happy.

  Why disturb the Dark Lord now? the warlock reasoned. While he takes his pleasure, I will stalk his enemies. I will find Dogbrick and Tywi and those who freed them. I will turn this threat to my advantage.

  The few cacodemons involved in the search, he would keep occupied with missions farther afield, he decided, strolling back to the camp. As for the ogres, none of them would dare betray him after today's punishment.

  Flies hazed about the chopped corpses, and the warlock moved swiftly through the camp's crude gate. On the fen road that led to the palace, he heard the metallic bellowing of the locomotive as it chuffed faster in pursuit of itself. He looked up at the pyramid, and a was
h of pride soaked him at the grandiosity of its terror.

  Tok. Tok. Tok.

  Under the murmuring cypress bower, his stilts found the pavement that went directly to his gardens. Thylia stood at the sand bed of colored rings, gazing down at the sleeping star.

  Ralli-Faj stopped with a startled jolt that wagged his limp arms. He had sensed no one in here. A moment later, he understood why. She looked at him through her crisscrossed veils of gray transparency and faded away.

  A cold wind sliced through him. There would be no secrets from the Dark Lord.

  / |

  All around Caval and Poch the Cloths of Heaven breathed light as clouds flew past the Abiding Star. Rain dripped in. Mists rose. Shafts of lucid daylight penetrated the foggy ruins like narrow passages into a realm of lost souls.

  Caval sat immobilized with shock in one of those blue rays of dayshine. Charm spilled out of him in ectoplasmic vapors and mixed with the rising rain smoke.

  Squatting before him, Poch, too, did not move. The viscous Charm wafted over him, sustaining his telepathic bond with the sorcerer. He experienced the man's scalding remorse. "I have unleashed death and anguish upon many thousands! I have destroyed Arwar Odawl—your brood—your father, who trusted me—"

  "You didn't know."

  "I didn't know—I didn't know anything at all..." He closed his leathery eyelids to face his darkness. “The blind gods used me."

  "They use us all, master Caval." Poch spoke soothingly, grateful for the energizing Charm laving over him from the sorcerer. "That's what the sages and witches teach, isn't that so?"

  Caval recalled his own lifelong ambition to live as a sage and a self-mocking smile hooked one corner of his sad mouth. "Chance flung me to the Dark Shore. Death cut me free of that cold world most cruelly. And now Justice—yes, Justice has taken me into her blind hands." His eyes snapped open, and he gazed forth unblinking as if he himself had become sightless. "The destruction! The suffering! It's all my doing—all of it set in motion by me alone. Me alone. Alone of all on Irth..."