The Dark Shore (The Dominions of Irth Book 1)

by A. A. Attanasio

  Caval clutched at him apprehensively. "Yet you are still vulnerable to physical injury. If you are not careful, you too can be made a corpse."

  Reece pulled himself away from the quavery old man. "I'm no fool."

  Caval shuddered in a cold breeze of ill omen that reached to his marrows. "The Palace of Abominations has horrors other than cacodemons."

  Jyoti brandished her weapon. "We'll meet those horrors with my firelock."

  "Ralli-Faj protects Wrat." Caval tugged fretfully at his beard. "He is a ruthless warlock and with much power. I must go with you."

  "No." Reece spoke decisively. "We must fix together what together we broke. I will end this defiling of Irth. And you will close the Door in the Air. Yes, I remember passing through that portal—and I remember clearly that I did not close it behind me. You thought you had not taught me that fact about the Door. Yet I knew. I was a more observant student than you believed, Caval. I knew the Door had to be closed. But I fell through too quickly. And now you must go and do what I failed to do. Go, so that this horror will never happen again upon Irth."

  "I don't have the strength to climb the Ladder of the Wind," Caval confessed weakly.

  "Find the strength, Caval," Reece pressed him. "Go to the Sisterhood if you must and get their help. Only you and I can locate that door in the vastness. One of us must go and shut it or there will be more cacodemons."

  Caval raised his hands, grasping for a compromise. "After Wrat, we will go together."

  "No, old man." The taut lines in Reece's young face set firmly. "I will not follow your commands again. Not after Lara. I climbed up here to undo all that. This time, you will obey me."

  Caval blinked wearily. The young magician from the Dark Shore was right, he knew. The three blind gods had already made that clear to him. In his episode of mad grief at what he had done, he had finally seen the necessity of Justice.

  Chance that had taken him to the cold world of Reece and Lara and Death that had freed him—both had to be balanced now with Justice. And to him that meant he had to accept all the consequences of his visit to the Dark Shore.

  "It is for the best," Reece said, glad for the acceptance he read in his mentor's withdrawn demeanor. "Think. If you fail, I will climb the ladder and close the door myself. And if you succeed and I fail to slay Wrat, then at least the door will be closed and Hu'dre Vra can summon no more monsters. In time, the united dominions will defeat him and slay the last of his cacodemons."

  Pale Caval stood motionless and almost invisible among rays of gray storm light. "And if we both fail?"

  Reece smiled sadly, with foregone clarity. "Then we will have paid in full the blood debt for Lara."

  Jyoti already climbed toward the broken wall that enclosed the ruins, and he followed her without glancing back. He felt no remorse toward Caval, having seen him scorched by time. He only hoped that the old sorcerer still had the cunning to find a way to close the door.

  Without his Charmed body, climbing proved arduous. Reece struggled to clamber up the rubble mound to the high perch where Jyoti waited. Skidding on the shattered rocks, he missed his cat reflexes.

  Jyoti offered him a helping hand, and he seized it gladly. She pulled him to her side, and they stood together on the ruined parapet overlooking Nhat.

  Before them, the jungle and its mists sprawled to a horizon dominated by the Palace of Abominations. The sight of the pyramid, with its obscene cartouche of fleshy shapes and its hidden vaults of suffering, inspired silence that called alone upon their courage. No words, only deeds, could fill that silence.

  Clasping hands, they went forward to find their way through the ruins toward a future with no memory.

  / |

  In the Palace of Abominations, Hu'dre Vra celebrated. Mesmermur music flooded the immense adytum, and hosts of cacodemons floated in majestic wheels, tentacles waving, viper lengths coiling among one another, coupling in grotesque braids and slithering chains.

  The Dark Lord sat on an onyx throne set in the pharaonic mouth of the adytum. From there, he commanded a lordly view of the Reef Isles where he had been born, the tidal flats that had enslaved him, and the pain chain that enslaved his enemies.

  At his side sat the witchqueen, Thylia, her black diamond eyes averted from the copulating cacodemons and fixed haughtily on the distant weather above the swamp, at the afternoon's bruised edge.

  The storm ends, she thought, glad as never before to see lances of light leaning among the thunderheads.

  "Why are you smiling?" Hu’dre Vra inquired. Of late, her passion for him had waned, and he sensed a deathly resignation in her. He had begun to think it was at last necessary to kill her a few times—and then, she smiled.

  "The storm is over," she intoned demurely. "And light shreds the darkness."

  "If we were not such intimates, sweet Thylia, I'd think you were speaking in symbols." Wrat wiped away his mask and pulled aside the queen's veils so nothing came between their naked faces. "Yesterday, you were all over me. Today, we're talking about the weather. Why have you changed?"

  "'Everything changes everything,'" she muttered disconsolately and pulled her veils back into place.

  "Quoting sacred screed again." Wrat hissed in exasperation and pulled her tighter to him. "You cannot hide from me inside, witch. I am the supreme lord of everything. Remember Romut!"

  Her black eyes flashed fright or menace—Wrat was not sure which. Before he could pry into her soul with his magic or again pull aside her veils and read her intentions from the lines of her face, the cacodemon who had captured Poch arrived.

  "You see, Thylia!" Wrat stood upon his throne and pointed at the chewed body of Poch hanging slack and pink as a skinned animal. "My enemies suffer and die—and then suffer more!"

  He raised his right hand, and his fist blazed with astral flames. When he extended his fingers, Poch thrashed awake with a pain-stricken cry. His wounds bleared away.

  "Why would anyone want to be my enemy?" he asked Thylia, head canted inquisitively.

  "For some it can never be possible to be your friend," she answered dryly.

  "Ah, true." He grinned evilly at Poch. "Do you know Lord Drev of Ux?"

  Poch gaped in terror at the small man before him.

  "Speak to me, boy!" Wrat stepped closer. "Or I will hear you sing!"

  "Lord Drev—" Poch's mouth trembled, fear vibrating in him unhindered by Charm. "He is your enemy."

  "Oh, yes. My enemy." Wrat's smile widened to show his brown teeth, and his deadly eyes tightened deadlier. "My defeated enemy."

  "I am not your enemy," Poch declared from where he hung in the tentacled grip of the floating demon. His pallid face gleamed with oily fear, and he repeated, "I am not your enemy."

  "Are you not?" Wrat twisted his head from side to side, mock-studying the boy. "I slew your father. I slew your entire brood!"

  Poch hung speechless.

  Wrat's smile slipped away. "Now I'm going to kill you." From the air, he plucked a black scythe and ran the razor edge under the boy's jaw, ear to ear, etching a burning line of blood.

  Poch screamed.

  Wrat smiled again. "Our first voice—the scream! The salute to pain."

  Poch squeezed his eyes shut, and his breathing labored to calm himself.

  "On the Dark Shore, pain is a god," Wrat whispered, his voice barely audible above the droning mesmermur music flooding the adytum. "On Irth, we pay pain only superficial notice, for Charm heals all our ills—for those who can get it. But on the Dark Shore, pain is the first and most pervasive truth of life."

  "I never did anything to you!" Poch bawled. "Why are you doing this to me?"

  Wrat tossed the scythe into the air, and it did not come down. "Why not?"

  Thylia finally rose from the onyx throne and approached the frightened boy. "Let him down."

  "Down?" Wrat chortled, and his tight eyes widened with glee. "The only place he's going is around! He's going to ride the Chain of Pain."

  "He's a b
oy," the witch pleaded.

  Wrat crossed his arms and cocked an eyebrow. "A boy with a secret."

  Thylia's jet eyes watched impassively from behind her gray veils.

  "You know what I'm talking about." Wrat cajoled her with a bent grin. "Most witches would see it. The queen certainly. That shadow in his body light." He plucked at the air beside Poch's head, and the boy's aura vibrated visibly: an orange halo striated with grainy shadow bands. "What else can this be but a secret? Hmm? Don't you think, Thylia? Look at it. It's so secret, he would like to hide it from himself if he could."

  "Leave the child alone," the witch queen urged. "You are misconstruing his fear."

  "Am I?" Wrat pushed his pointy face close to Poch's, and the boy smelled the rancid heat of his breath. "When you are ready to give me your secret whole and entire boy—just stop screaming! Then, I’ll know you’re ready to talk." He flashed a delirious grin, then ordered the cacodemon: "Take him to the chain."

  Poch kept his silence out the portal and down the sooty plane of the pyramid. Even the rusty chain did not unnerve him with the otherworldly screech of its winding engine spewing hot-metal fumes. But when the carriages slowed and the dented doors pulled wide, the sight of Lord Drev and Lady Rica crawling in their vomit, raving in shattered voices almost soundlessly—that broke him.

  "I can help you," Poch cried out, then cried again louder, "I can help you!"

  "Please, do," Wrat invited and signaled for the cacodemon to release him. He took the boy by the elbow and helped steady him. Tell me what you know, Poch."

  "You must promise me you won't hurt my sister," the trembling boy begged urgently.

  Wrat beckoned, and a tentacle swung before Poch's startled face. "Tell me now—or ride the chain and tell me later."

  "My sister—"

  "She will have to make her own arrangements with me, dear Poch."

  The demented glitter of Wrat's wicked eyes decided it for Poch, and he clamped his jaw and closed his lids tight. He swore he would say nothing. He thought he could swallow enough pain to kill himself, and he did not cry out when the tentacles seized him and hauled him away.

  He did not cry out until the chain started moving. And then the pain slashed away every semblance of reason, meaning, and mind. One circuit later, the chain stopped, the door screeched open, and tentacles hauled him out gibbering everything he knew about Caval's escapade on the Dark Shore, the witch Lara’s tragic death, and her mournful lover, Reece, who had come to Irth to find her—and who had left open behind him the Door in the Air.

  When Wrat had wrung from him everything he knew, he had the cacodemons fling him back into the chain. It shrieked into motion, and its cry was the Dark Lord's own.

  The gremlin inside his heart scratched painfully, and he thudded his fist against his chest. "No, we are not leaving Irth! I will not release you to the Dark Shore again until I have destroyed all my enemies. That was our agreement! You have enjoyed ravishing Irth. You have reveled in power forbidden you on the Dark Shore. I have kept my word! You have tasted heaven. Now be still!"

  The searing chest pain abated, and Wrat breathed deeper and relaxed his fist.

  From the lip of the adytum, Thylia watched him, her veiled body floating like a flame.

  And just as dangerous, he thought. Romut was right to warn me against the witches.

  He sensed that she knew as much as he had wrung from the timorous boy and maybe more. Yet her body light remained clear and flawless as water. Whatever she hid, if anything at all, he had never reached deep enough to find it.

  And that would be sufficient reason to slay her at once—if not for her other witchy skills.

  / |

  Wrat clapped, and the dancing cacodemons fled the adytum in a rasping tempest. They stampeded over the canopy of the jungle, casting a shadow across the land wide as a curtain of night.

  Thylia fixed her attention on them until they receded to a black cloud scudding above the dim horizon. Behind her veils, she smiled at Wrat when he came flying from the Chain toward the adytum, clutching his chest.

  The gremlin was unhappy She knew why.

  It has felt the change in the weather.

  She curled her legs under her on the onyx throne, features obscured by her veils, quiet, detached, watching Wrat approach in a burning brown wind, a fetid steam billowing with panic. Even with her impeccable training, fear tainted her when she smelled that feculent miasma.

  "Do you know?" he demanded gruffly.

  "The boy's secret should be no surprise to you, my lord." She lowered her face veil to confront him with her serenity. "How did you think you got back to Irth?"

  "The Ladder of the Wind!” Wrat answered at once. "The black magicians of the Dark Shore know the invocation for the Ladder of the Wind. I wrung it from them."

  "You really are still the scavenger you always were, aren't you, Wrat?" She allowed herself a slim smile at his ignorance. "The invocation for the Ladder of the Wind is commonly known. Anyone can climb into the sky, fool. But to cross the Gulf, one must know the secret that unlocks the Door in the Air."

  "I unlocked it!"

  "No. It was left open before you ever climbed to it. It is being shut now." Her smile ended. "There will be no more cacodemons arriving from the Dark Shore at your beckoning."

  Fear gusted like wind in Wrat, yet he was not moved. His face locked in a frown as he reached for comprehension. "You knew about the door?"

  Her wearisome expression spoke for her.

  "You used my lust to hide from me!" Wrat realized. "Sex was your weapon."

  "You knew I plied your desires to humor you."

  "Of course I knew!" he snapped, and a black string of smoke seeped from his nose. "That's what makes it so good. You have to please me. But I thought—all along, I thought you were submitting to save yourself. You deceived me!"

  "Nonsense." She lifted her chin defiantly. "I am queen of all witches. I serve the Sisterhood. And I submitted to you to serve them."

  "By deceiving me!" A sharp stink of pitch assailed the space around him. The palpable presence of his fright and fury trickled as tar fumes from the holes in his head. "You knew a door was open that let me through and I did not open it. You knew all along there is another."

  "He is on his way here this moment to kill you," she told him frankly.

  Wrat restrained himself from ripping her head from her shoulders. He needed more knowledge to meet this unexpected threat and to quell the fear that maddened the gremlin inside him. "Who is Reece?"

  "A magus from the Dark Shore," she told him, almost bored. In moments, she would be dead. If she wanted, her soul could then return to the brighter world beyond the gateway of the Abiding Star. Or she might choose to stay for another life in a new body, to enjoy Irth again without the annoyance of Wrat. She had perfected her internal arts to assure her this choice. The deeds she had worked for the Sisterhood with those internal arts had made her queen to begin with, and she was impatient for the last deed that would free her once more.

  "How can I stop this magus?" Wrat asked, smoldering in a haze of bituminous vapors.

  "Can you kill a man with your bare hands?"

  "A weapon! I need a weapon!" Wrat gathered the tarry smoke around him into belled shapes of ebony armor sticky with spikes. "Ralli-Faj!"

  The warlock appeared almost at once, a tiny figure rising into the colossal doorway and hurrying closer.

  Tok. Tok. Tok.

  Erect on his stilts, leather mask pulled taut, Ralli-Faj hung like a crude effigy bedecked in amulets. Behind him, the cacodemons returned, darkly gliding on the golden rays of the afternoon.

  "A man is coming to kill me," Hu'dre Vra informed the warlock. "He is a magus from the Dark Shore named Reece. How can I protect myself?"

  Ralli-Faj's mouthful of blue fire dimmed at this shocking news. Before he could speak, the Dark Lord sent a moth of blue flame flitting into the warlock's empty eye sockets and infused him with all that he had learned from Poch.


  "I mus-s-t s-see the boy!" Ralli-Faj insisted at once.

  Hu'dre Vra signed, and a cacodemon exited to retrieve Poch from the Chain of Pain. "Why?"

  "I mus-s-t s-see what he has-s s-seen!" The warlock's fungal patches rippled in bioluminescent waves, signaling his distress. "This-s is-s dan-gerous-s, my lord."

  "No, little men," the witch queen said drolly. "This is more than dangerous. This is where we die."

  The Dark Lord raised both his hooked and tined arms above his horned helmet. "You do not frighten me, witch."

  "If you don't realize you are frightened," Thylia told him in frigidly measured cadence, "then you’re too scared to think. The gremlin knows."

  Hu'dre Vra felt the gremlin like a stone in his chest. It took much of his concentration to keep it calm.

  "It senses the magus who can slay it," Thylia warned, her black diamond eyes shining. "It felt him the moment he doffed his skin of light. You feel him, too."

  Tok. Tok. Tok.

  "S-silence her, my lord!"

  "And take off that ridiculous outfit you're wearing." She mocked Hu'dre Vra. "It's just an illusion to him anyway. You'll have to face him as who you are."

  The armor fell away as gluey smoke, and Wrat strode toward her, face dark with anger.

  "I can kill with my own hands!" he yelled and grabbed her by the throat. She felt frail in his enraged grasp and offered no resistance. Eyes closed, she leaned into his lethal embrace as if giving herself in desire. Within moments, her body convulsed once, and she was dead.

  Immediately, the impulse seized him to call her back with his magic. He threw her furiously to the ground and stepped back, disgusted at his own weakness.

  Poch entered in the coils of a cacodemon. He looked insane, his hair matted, face bruised where he had smashed it against the carriage window.

  Ralli-Faj washed the boy in Charm, cleansing him of his wounds and his fright, soothing his heart's small immensity with the rapturous power of the Abiding Star. Then he peered into him and saw Reece.

  "The magus-s approaches-s," Ralli-Faj announced and stepped back from the boy. Now that he had made the connection by seeing Reece's countenance, he no longer needed Poch. He could sense the magus in the swamp below.