Shadow Star

by Chris Claremont

  “You’re learning,” Khory noted as Elora trudged ashore, tingling from her exertions.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “How to be a King.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I know you, Elora Danan,” the warrior said with the slight quirk of the lips that passed in her for a smile. “Saw you looking back this way, saw the thoughts behind the look.”

  “You can do that, read my mind?”

  “Read your face.”

  “I thought I kept my expression pretty well hidden these days.”

  “As I said, you’re learning. I just know what to look for.”

  “How, Khory? Forgive me, but before Angwyn you didn’t exist! Three years and change, that’s all the time you’ve walked the world in that body. How could you possibly know me, or even people in general, better than we do ourselves?”

  “Never considered that,” Khory confessed. “Just took it for granted when it happened. I see things, things happen around me, I know what to do. No active thought, no consideration, no hesitation.” She shrugged. “Mayhap the original Khory left more than just her body behind when her end came?”

  Elora sighed. “Or maybe worlds can go mad, just like people. You spend your whole life accepting that life is based on a series of rules, that everything and everyone has their proper place in the scheme of things—only to discover that you may well be a violation of every one of those precious rules. As are all your friends.”

  “That’s war for you. It holds nothing sacred.”

  “She wanted me to attack her,” Elora said suddenly, as the sight of a dragonfly skimming the surface of the stream reminded her of the Deceiver.

  “Seemed so to me, aye.”

  “If I had, would you have struck me down?” Elora turned to face Khory, who made no answer as the young woman gathered herself into her clothes.

  “If it ever comes to that—” Elora started to tell her.

  “Hush,” Khory told her quietly, casually, yet with the underlying force of a battlefield command.

  “I know my purpose, Elora Danan,” she went on.

  “I just—!” Elora tried again, was cut off again.

  “I don’t need you to tell me my duty. Leave it at that.”

  Elora wondered what she’d said wrong, and shooed a big beetle off her trousers. It flexed its gleaming carapace, then popped a fat set of wings from their housings and zoomed away almost faster than her eye could follow.

  She didn’t try, though, she was puzzling over the image of its gleaming casement. The Daikini armored themselves in embossed leather and steel—either mail or segmented armor or molded plate. Sometimes, in the worst extreme, a full suit of plate could weigh as much as the knight wearing it. Those of Lesser Faery mainly took their armor from the natural world about them—nutshells sometimes or suits of bone, depending on the size of the wearer. The elves of Greater Faery attired themselves much like the knights and warriors of the Daikini—cuirass and gauntlets, with segmented pieces for the limbs and extremities—but with one crucial difference. Their armor was ceramic, albeit treated by castings and spells to be as resilient to attack as iron. The pieces were polished to the highest possible gloss; they gleamed even by starlight.

  The Deceiver’s armor had no such segments. It was as flexible and all-encompassing as a second skin. Elora had seen it before, she knew she had, but she couldn’t quite place where—

  —until a memory of Khory’s broached the surface of Elora’s recollections.

  After her betrayal at the hands of Eamon Asana, imprisoned in the Malevoiy fortress, the faces and figures that haunted her had all been dipped in that same eldritch lacquer.

  “The Deceiver,” Elora breathed in horror, “wears the armor of the Malevoiy!”

  She whirled at the sound of chittering laughter, her hand already closing on the hilt of her sword. Nothing untoward stirred in her view. The brook burbled, birds sang, the normal sounds of the encampment rustled the air. The most intrusive noise Elora could hear was the thundering of her own heart, accelerating so quickly it made her head pound and her chest ache.

  She took the deepest breath she could, and recognized that the laughter came from within the depths of her own soul. The Malevoiy had hooked her as surely as any fish, she carried them with her like a plague. It was only the most tenuous of contacts thus far, they dared not play her too sharply for fear their line would break. That was her sole advantage. There would be other hooks and stronger lines. Their goal was to fight her to exhaustion and then gaff her. The trick for her would be to play them just as cunningly.

  But how?

  * * *

  —

  Roughly midway between Angwyn in the west and Chengwei in the east, a huge escarpment split the continent in two, as though in the most ancient days some titanic force had pushed the land in opposite directions. One side up, the other down, to create a sheer wall of cliffs that ran from the Shado Mountains toward the north pole.

  There was no easy way around, since the Shados were a lesser offshoot of the Stairs to Heaven, the greatest mountain range on the planet, so for most of recorded history the Wall—as it came to be called—formed a nigh unbreachable barrier to travel and commerce. However, the point where the Wall merged with the Shados was also where two great river systems began their lateral run to opposite oceans. Flowing westward across the Great Plains and by the High Desert of the Saranyë to its ultimate destination in Angwyn Bay was the Cascadel. To the east, a score of lesser tributaries descended toward the Tascara Sea, emerging from there as the Quangzhua, which defined and nurtured the heartland of the Chengwei Empire. Both rivers were exceptionally navigable through most of their run, the challenge was finding a way to link them.

  Thus was born the trading Republic of Sandeni.

  The earliest foundations were laid atop the Wall—the most easily defensible position—and as a consequence the bulk of the city-state’s commerce was with Chengwei. The strategic value of the city wasn’t lost on the Empire and within a generation came the first of many invasions from the east. Likewise, for the Chengwei, the first in a long line of defeats. The Sandeni were a polyglot mix of races, bound by a fierce independence and the grudging acknowledgment that only through mutual cooperation would they have a chance at survival. Some were slaves, others freebooters, all had ambition and a recognition that they were at heart outlaws and rebels. The established rules and strictures of Daikini society didn’t work for them; they had to find new and better ways of living together. Thus was born the only nation in the world where all its citizens were guaranteed equality as a matter of right. There were no slaves in Sandeni and the only limits placed on the heights a person could achieve were desire and ability.

  One other element made Sandeni unique in the Daikini Realm—and that was its near-total absence of magic. In the dawn of Creation this had been a place of exceptional power, the intersection of so many lines of magical energy it formed the Realm’s preeminent Magus Point, complete with a World Gate. Perhaps because of that stature, its fall from that grace was comparable. Some thaumaturgic historians theorized that the loss of that power might have been coincident with the raising of the Wall, either as cause or effect. If so, the event predated not only Daikini records but the memories of the Veil Folk as well for no evidence was ever found to either prove or debunk those suppositions. What that meant for the Sandeni was that they were denied the use of spells and like enchantments to scale the Wall. In this instance, the ultimate natural barrier required an equally natural solution.

  The Sandeni rose to the occasion, with a water-driven funicular railway, a series of tremendous elevators capable of lifting goods and passengers from the plains to the summit of the Wall. As the city expanded, atop the Wall and out across the plains below, water continued to be their source of mechanical power, driving trolley cars and all manner of associated dev
ices.

  The core of the city was its Citadel, the descendant of the fortress that withstood the original Chengwei onslaught. Here was the seat of government, the only truly representative assembly in the Daikini Realm. Atop the Wall, the city fanned outward from the Citadel, its broad main avenues resembling the spokes of a wheel emanating from its central hub. Where a broad moat had once served as the last line of defense it had long since been replaced by an equally impressive plaza, dotted with small groves of trees and beds of flowers, the ideal spot for a weekend stroll.

  Off toward the left, looking eastward from the Citadel, was a finger-shaped island that at first glance looked utterly abandoned, overgrown with trees and foliage, its location forming an unmistakable intrusion in the otherwise harmonious layout of the esplanade. There, the Citadel’s moat had not been filled in or covered over with the stone platforms on which many of the government buildings had been constructed. The island retained its wholly natural state, so much that tourists often mistook it for an arboretum. The banks opposite the island had been replaced by stone levees, which made the river race even more quickly to the Wall, where it emerged as one of the spectacular series of waterfalls that cascaded down a thousand feet and more to feed the Cascadel below. The purpose for this layout was deterrence, creating a gap too wide to jump and a current far too swift and dangerous to risk any kind of crossing.

  The only access to the island was a narrow causeway, barely wide enough for two Daikini to walk abreast. A pair of crystal obelisks stood sentry at the island end of the bridge, linked by a length of silver chain of hardly more substance than a woman’s necklace. Atop them crouched a pair of watchful, predatory chimera.

  This was the only place in all the city where even a ghost of its former magic remained. Once upon a time, it had housed the embassies of the Veil Folk. In the catacombs beneath those long-abandoned ruins was the Sandeni World Gate.

  The Gate itself opened into a subbasement of one of the ancient buildings and as Elora led her party up a series of staircases she marveled at the enchantments which cared for it, even after so many, many years. Though the furnishings were spare, the rooms themselves sparkled, as if a cleaning crew had just finished work. There was a growing buzz of excitement among the Daikini who followed her, a thankful realization that at last they had reached safety—but a surprisingly bittersweet one as well, because they also recognized that it would mean parting from newfound friends. Once Elora closed this World Gate, Tyrrel and his people would once again have no easy access to Sandeni. That caused a measure of apprehension among Tyrrel’s folk, Elora noted. Shoes were switching feet; this time it was the Veil Folk who found themselves marching into a new and unknown country, swept along by the realization that great changes were in the wind, that might leave the Veil Folk as uprooted as these Daikini.

  That last instant, when Elora alone remained beyond the Veil, when she and Tyrrel embraced and exchanged farewells, she saw that their land for all its beauty could also be taken for a kind of prison. That once closed, the World Gates might never again be reopened.

  “Rool,” she said hurriedly, “Franjean.” And she told them to stay behind, with their own kind, their families, their loved ones. She told them to stay safe.

  They refused.

  “How many times do we have to say this, Elora Danan?” Franjean didn’t bother to hide his asperity. “Our place is by your side.”

  “You think you’re the only one can fight for our freedom, hey?” added Rool. “You want to play glory hog, find some other fight. This one, you got to share. And if we lose, can’t say we didn’t try our damnedest.”

  In one and the same moment, she’d never felt more proud nor more humbled.

  The evacuees were in shadow, and mystery, up to the moment they stepped up to the silver chain on the causeway. Then, of a sudden, they reached the blinding light of midday, crisp and clear, bright with promise.

  Couriers had raced ahead of the refugees, bringing word of their arrival, and the plaza was thick with troops and support personnel. The war—first with the Maizan and now with Chengwei—had set whole populations to desperate flight. Most had made their way to Sandeni, as the outland settlers along the southern Frontier had fled to Fort Tregare. The city had grown far too practiced in handling the steady influx of people, for which Elora was grateful as her followers were welcomed and fed and put into an orientation process that would assign them lodgings and, where applicable, work.

  The afternoon shadows painted streets and buildings in stark contrasts of black and white when at last she clambered out to open air. The plaza before her was in a state of moderate chaos. People filled her vision, reminding her of just how many she’d brought from Tregare, raising a din that put the thunder of the falls themselves to shame as representatives of the city took a census of the refugees, and tried to debrief them as comprehensively as possible about the situation on the frontier, while the refugees attempted to establish themselves with lodging and food and perhaps the possibility of employment. It wasn’t easy and harsh words could here and there be heard as newcomers chafed under the municipality’s rules and restrictions.

  As Elora crossed the bridge, a discernible itch between her shoulder blades told her the sentry chimera had their obsidian eyes on her. She didn’t look back; in fact, she did nothing to acknowledge their attention. The first day she’d seen this island, and nearly crossed the bridge, the brownies had warned her away in terms that would not be denied. She trusted their judgment. If the chimera scared them, they were equally worthy of her respect.

  Just before she stepped onto the plaza, she heard a familiar and welcome voice, rich and melodious, and caught sight of him in conversation with Khory. In height and build, Renny Garedo was a match for Elora, although she might be a tad broader in the shoulders. Clothes and manner were wholly unassuming, making him the kind of person who could stand alone in the center of the plaza and yet remain so utterly unnoticed he might as well be invisible. Chestnut hair, thick and lustrous, was swept straight back from a sharp widow’s peak on his forehead and gathered in a clasp at the nape of his neck to form a ponytail that fell to his shoulders. She recognized the clasp, since he had his back to the bridge and her. It was one she’d made at Torquil’s Forge and presented to him at solstice.

  His eyes were the one incongruous element in his otherwise inconspicuous persona, which was why he generally held his head low. That stance created an attitude of perpetual deference, which made it quite natural for those he encountered to ignore him, or at least underestimate his abilities. That was a fatal mistake, for those eyes missed nothing and the abilities of the Chief Constable of Sandeni were in fact quite considerable.

  He was mixed blood, as were many of the city’s citizens, counting the elves of Greater Faery among his ancestors. She called out a greeting, her brow furrowing slightly when her salutation was ignored. It could have been swallowed by the background tumult but she knew Renny’s ears were as keen and well trained as his sight. Could be carelessness, or something of more interest in the crowd beyond. Whatever the reason, Elora decided to take advantage of it and see how close she could come to him without being spotted. There was nowhere to hide, she stood in plain sight, so she took a leaf from Renny’s book and gathered her personality close in about herself. She let her shoulders slump a wee tad, snugging her cloak about her to hide her distinctive costume. Stance and manner gradually began to match that of Renny’s so that anyone who actually noticed them would assume they were together and conclude he was some minor functionary or other and she, his assistant.

  His conversation with Khory confirmed her worst fears, and Colonel DeGuerin’s strategic analysis. The southern army wasn’t the only one the Republic had to deal with out of Chengwei. A force of equivalent size had been making its relentless way west from the Tascara Sea for weeks now, the apparent goal to catch republican forces between a pair of giant pincers and thereby crush them. E
ven in the face of two such crushing bodies of men, the Sandeni were still confident of victory—it was the Maizan threatening from the Great Plains that tipped the scales. They couldn’t fight three invasions simultaneously. There was growing doubt they could do so sequentially, although they had no choice but to try. Given the nature of their enemies, surrender wasn’t an option.

  “There’s been talk in Council,” Renny continued.

  “Isn’t that what they do best?” commented Khory, which provoked a small chuckle of agreement.

  “Were Thorn Drumheller here, considering the regard in which he’s held, things might be different.”

  Elora’s attention sharpened. This didn’t sound good.

  “A lot of change in so little time, Constable,” Khory said.

  “They’re frightened. In the city’s whole history, there’s no record of an elf attack. Some blame Elora Danan for that.”

  Elora shuddered at the recollection of that bloody night. The Maizan Warlord had come to Sandeni under a flag of truce, to propose a peaceful resolution to any and all disputes between the two states. In reality, what the Maizan offered was surrender as an alternative to being overwhelmed by force of arms. Elora had rallied the people of Sandeni in defiance of the Maizan—and in her mind’s eye she once more beheld a vision of the Wall, lit with torches it seemed from horizon to horizon by what must have been the entire population of the city.

  That fateful night, she sang of lovers, with the refrain “We will be free.”

  She sang of dreams, with the refrain “We will be free.”

  She sang of dragons, with the refrain “We will be free.”

  She sang of hope, with the refrain “We will be free.”

  With each repetition, more voices joined her chorus, until she was accompanied by every voice in the crowded room that wasn’t Maizan.

  “We will be free,” she sang with full voice and all her heart, as her song built to its crescendo, “and we shall!”