Shadow Star

by Chris Claremont

  “I remember. And a rookery of Night Herons.” They carried the name and general shape of birds but in fact they were a foul amalgam of flesh and sorcery, as were Death Dogs, and were as feared by decent folk on both sides of the Veil.

  The brownies had no comment. They simply breathed the fresh, clean nighttime air and beheld the world of growing things about them, and were thankful for the chance to see all that again.

  There was no moon and a tracery of high clouds cast a film over the heavens, hiding from view all but the brightest stars, which made the night as dark as it could be. That was of no consequence to either Elora or Khory, since both possessed MageSight, which allowed them to see as easily as daylight in far worse conditions than these.

  A brisk wind skirled along the ridgeline and carried away much of their excess heat. Khory took the point and they hurried to the tree line, staying below the crest of the escarpment until they gained an unobstructed view of the fort.

  Bad as Elora had feared it would be, the reality was far worse.

  The fort itself appeared little changed. The walls hadn’t been breached nor any of the interior structures torched or scored by the impact of solid shot and thunderstones fired by catapult. No sign either of the fabled Chengwei rockets. There was a garrison in residence but Elora didn’t need a spyglass to reveal that they wore Chengwei colors and that the flag of the eastern emperor flew in place of the Republican standard. The surface appeared so normal…

  …until you spared a glance at the highway leading downriver toward distant Sandeni.

  At even intervals on both sides of the road, posts had been erected. On each, roughly ten feet above the ground, was impaled a body. Not all were Daikini, the fairies who’d fought beside them had suffered the same brutal fate.

  Elora’s only prayer, with all her heart, was that they’d all been dead before suffering this final desecration.

  “This obscenity must stretch for miles,” she said, a little shocked at how calm her voice sounded. Her mouth was dry, but a swallow of water gave no relief.

  “And you can bet the Chengwei will make sure word of this races ahead of their column.”

  “The price of resistance, you mean?”

  Khory nodded.

  “It could have the opposite effect. People who fear they’ve nothing to lose may well fight all the harder.”

  “Certainly a possibility. Either way, it gives the defenders a hard choice.”

  Elora turned away from the road, sank into a huddle with her back to rock.

  “If I walk that road—!”

  “Don’t go there, child, don’t even think it.”

  “Khory—!” There was no bravado in her voice. It was the yearning cry of someone still more girl than woman, struggling to comprehend the cruelty of the world.

  “Yes,” Khory told her, “you will find people you know upon those posts, is that what you want to hear?” She ignored the tears on Elora’s face. “But their story’s done, the book of their days closed forever. What they deserve, especially now, is to be remembered as they were in life, with all the richness and texture we can muster. Not like that.”

  Still silently crying, Elora looked up at her companion. “Inside the fort, how many Chengwei?” she asked.

  From Khory, a thoughtful huff. “From all I read of them in the Colonel’s library, the standard garrison would be a reinforced company, minimum. Say two hundred men. Considering the location and the circumstances, most likely more. You’re planning something foolish, I can tell.”

  “Supremely. The Chengwei aren’t the only ones who can deal in gestures. And object lessons. But first, we have to pay them a visit.”

  “The two of us? They’re sure to be impressed.”

  “I can ghost walk. They’ll never see us.”

  “Normal ground. Normal foes. Normal odds. I’d say, why the hell not. None of that applies here. That fort wasn’t razed by storm, it wasn’t bloody scratched. Something skunked DeGuerin. I’m not about to find out what by letting you walk into its mouth.”

  “Then stay behind.”

  “Elora Danan!” Khory’s tone was dangerous; she wasn’t used to being crossed.

  Elora’s was a match.

  “I’m going.”

  There was no apparent trail down the steep ridgeline so Elora made one of her own, picking her path with the unerring ease of a mountain goat and prompting Khory to raise an eyebrow in acknowledgment of her skill. There were plenty of opportunities for disaster yet the young woman avoided them all, as did Khory, who made sure to follow precisely in Elora’s footsteps. It was a good route, bringing them to the flat as close as possible to the fort while keeping them masked from sight throughout the entire descent. The marvel of it, Khory noted when they reached the bottom and Elora picked her wary way to the edge of the cleared land, was that Elora hadn’t even realized what she’d accomplished—she simply went ahead and did it.

  “You have been paying attention,” she complimented the young woman as she slipped into a crouch beside her.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Later. What do you see, Pathfinder?” Phrase and question were a deliberate choice, what a patrol commander would ask her scout. Elora responded in kind.

  “The road’s beat all to hell. It was never designed for such traffic. Take a look at those ruts, Khory—hundreds of wagons, at least, probably more came through here.” She thought furiously. “I wonder how much that limits their mobility?”

  “Meaning?”

  “On the flat, they’d have room to maneuver. Until they break through the Shados, they’re confined to this single road. It must be giving their commander fits. He may have one of the great armies of the world at his disposal but he can only bring a fraction of it into action at any one time. Meanwhile, he’s vulnerable all along his line of march.”

  “Pity his opposite number among the Sandeni faces the same challenge. The terrain hinders the defenders as much as these invaders. The Sandeni can harass from the flanks but there’s no way to mount an assault in sufficient numbers to do serious damage. The best they can hope for is to block the road, as DeGuerin did here. Hence, the Chengwei object lesson.”

  Bodies were mounted on either side, leading off into the distance on the left, to the main gate of the fort on the right. Elora had deliberately tried not to look at them from the moment they’d come into view. The chances were fair of finding someone she knew and she didn’t trust her reactions.

  As always in such moments, Khory seemed to read her thoughts.

  “Turn away, Elora,” she said gently, laying a hand on the young woman’s shoulder. “You don’t have to do this.”

  That solicitous touch galvanized Elora to action. She rose lithely to her feet, leaving bow and arrows and knapsack in the underbrush. Khory set aside her own haversack, but kept her bow in hand, nocking an arrow as she followed Elora onto the road. A picket stirred atop one of the corner towers, but the glamour Elora wove about them held fast. She’d originally composed this song as a practical joke to confound Drumheller—when she’d first learned she could do such things, persuade the elements and forces of nature to her will where sorcerers and mages commanded them—inveigling the very air to twist and bend around herself and any companion she chose so they couldn’t be seen. It was a simple cloaking spell for any sorcerer worth the name, one of the most basic taught to apprentices, along with healing incantations. But for Elora, it wasn’t sorcery. She did nothing; it was the natural forces of the world which acted, of their own volition. As a consequence, her “conjurations” couldn’t be detected by any sentry spells. She was likewise unaffected by most wards.

  That made Elora functionally undetectable when she chose to be, by any save the Deceiver. And Khory had yet to see a ward cast that could keep her at bay. Thorn had tried. Khory was a warrior, though, which meant that she was also fundamentally
a skeptic. She had died and been reborn; she was demon, she was Daikini; for her, nothing was absolute. Eventually, she knew, Elora would discover her limits, but only when they hit her in the face.

  Now, like any sixteen-year-old—despite all she’d seen and endured—Elora still considered herself immortal.

  As they approached the gate, Khory couldn’t help but wonder in that context how Elora Danan, so much the personification of Life and Hope, would cope with the Realm of Death. And worse, that of Despair.

  Close up, the signs of battle were far more evident. Nightfall had cast a charm of its own over the fort, masking much of the damage done during the siege. Vicious scars marked the wood palisade and its massive stone foundation, where pots of boiling oil had been poured on the invaders and then set alight. There were cracks in the massive timbers from the impact of huge stones hurled from mangonels. Many of those projectiles had been broken by the shock and still remained along the base of the ramparts, in pieces that were themselves of a size with the two women. Surprisingly, to Khory’s eye, there was no evidence that the Chengwei had employed explosive thunderstones.

  This time, it was Elora who apparently kept pace with Khory’s thoughts.

  “They just threw rocks at the walls. I’d have thought a volley of thunderstones would have done the trick a lot more effectively.”

  “There are spells to inhibit their combustion. They may be saving them for later, the defenses at the passes through the Shados maybe.”

  Elora turned suddenly to face her. “Or maybe their infernal machine affects their own weapons as much as ours?”

  “It’s a possibility. Do you feel anything?”

  “Strange, you mean? Not yet—!”

  Her voice broke off, and Khory feared something had happened to her. Then she saw where Elora was looking and followed her gaze upward to find the brutalized visage of First Sergeant Shando spitted on a post, arms and legs akimbo. He hadn’t died easily and the Chengwei hadn’t been kind to him afterward; add to that the ravages of carrion birds and vermin, it didn’t make for a pleasant sight.

  The main gates had borne the brunt of the Chengwei assault. The flanking turrets of the barbican were scored by fire, one stood almost wholly gutted, the collapse of roof and battlements taking with it a fair portion of exterior wall, exposing a couple of interior levels to view. The gates themselves were likewise gone, looking as if they had somehow been exploded. The blast pattern could be seen in an irregular fan shape over the ground, the force of the concussion such that splinters had been driven deep into solid earth and stone. For anyone standing unprotected in the waryard beyond, there would have been no mercy.

  A makeshift barrier had been erected and through the opening both Elora and Khory could see that construction was well under way on proper replacements. In the meanwhile, security was the province of a guard detail.

  Elora stalked toward them stiff-legged, the one glance she spared Khory before she began her approach giving fair warning that the warrior was not to interfere. Elora’s hands were empty, she hadn’t yet drawn her sword, but that would change with terrible ferocity once she came in reach. Khory took her own measure of the dozen soldiers on duty, and offered a silent orison for their souls, such as they were, for they were as good as dead. She also assumed a shooting stance. The Chengwei wore armor, a comprehensive array of layered leather and mail and tough horn only slightly less sturdy than steel plate. The arrows Khory chose had bodkin tips, with stiletto points of fearsome sharpness designed to punch straight through even a reinforced breastplate.

  For the sentries, there was no warning. The night was quiet, the region totally subjugated, they had little to fear from enemies on either side of the Veil. Despite that, they were professionals, well trained and experienced. Their manner might have appeared casual to the untrained eye but they were ready for trouble. Anything less would have guaranteed them either a session at the company whipping post or a final kiss of the headsman’s block.

  One moment, the approach to the gate was clear. The next, the air shimmered the way it does in high summer under the midday sun and the figure of a young woman strode into view, silver-skinned, her clothes the color of dark wine. She wore one sword, on her left hip, and at the very moment that fact registered on the awareness of the soldiers, she drew it from her scabbard. Without breaking stride she slashed first to the right and then to the left, that gleaming length of steel leaving a burning trail in its wake the same colors as herself—blinding silver, splashed through with scarlet, as the blade cut through armor like it was rice paper. Each cut was fatal, for Khory had taught her well, and the men dropped to their knees, to their faces, without a sound, without time or opportunity to comprehend what Elora Danan had taken from them.

  Their fellows were less fortunate. They had moments to see Death come for them and to try to forestall it, though their frantic efforts proved to no avail. One tried to bring his halberd to bear, to cut Elora down from beyond the reach of her sword, but Khory’s arrow pinned him through his heart to the wall. Two more died just as quickly. One soul, more sensible than the rest, tried to cry out an alarm but Khory switched to a broadhead point and took him in the neck, right across the throat, nearly decapitating the man.

  A couple of the detail tried to mark Khory as a target, but she stood beyond the circles of light cast by their torches. The plain fact of the matter was that the sentries couldn’t spare the attention to worry about the archer; in the swordswoman, they faced murder incarnate.

  Elora had never fought like this. The analytical part of her accepted that when this fight was done she would howl her anguish and horror to the stars. It would leave a scar more permanent for Elora than any physical wound because those at least her healing power could erase. She would recall all the faces that fell before her blade and they would be a part of her forever, their hopes, their dreams, their fears, what they loved and what they hated, the totality of their existence. Brought to an end by her.

  She didn’t care.

  A blade flashed before her, she parried the attack, and steel sounded a clear, clarion note amidst the shuffle of feet and the grunts of blows given and taken. She ducked beneath his counter, lashing out with her leg while he was off-balance to trip him up. Down he crashed onto his back, the shock of landing nothing compared to the blunt realization on his square and unremarkable features that he would never draw another breath. Elora rose above him and drove her sword through his heart.

  Another came for her from behind with an ax and she dived over the body of the man she’d just slain, abandoning her sword for one of her enemy’s. She was ready but her foe was too strong, the backswing slapped the scimitar from her grasp with such force that her hand was numbed. He drove forward to catch her, but Khory’s arrows caught him first, three in a space not larger than a Sandeni shilling.

  Start to finish, the slaughter took hardly more than a minute.

  Without a word or a gesture of thanks to her companion, Elora wrenched her blade from its final victim and continued on her way with that same stalking gait, toward the center of the waryard. Khory began to follow but a peremptory slash of the hand bid her hold her place amidst the slain. Before Elora had taken a couple of more steps, she understood why.

  The ground around Elora began to glow, streaking lengths of pure radiance sliding and wriggling beneath the surface as if the earth had no more solidity to it than water.

  At last came a hoarse shout from above and along the battlements that alerted the Chengwei to their danger. A drum sounded, its cadence picked up by a shallow-voiced horn. An archer with more initiative than sense loosed a shaft aimed for Elora’s back, right between the shoulder blades, the perfect killing shot.

  It never came close. A firedrake leaped from the earth in a perfect arc to catch the arrow and incinerate it before the creature vanished once more beneath the surface.

  She marched to the center of th
e waryard where the flagpole stood, from which now hung the standard of the Khagan, as the Chengwei Emperor was called. She faced what had been Colonel DeGuerin’s quarters and called out in a voice that would have done the Colonel proud.

  “Who commands here?” she demanded, first in Sandeni and then in Court Chengwei, thankful that she had an ear for language and that Drumheller had taken the time during their travels to give her modest knowledge of the continent’s major tongues.

  The barracks emptied so quickly she might have sounded reveille or the call to arms. Soldiers appeared in a hodgepodge of clothes but all carried their full complement of weapons as they raced to take position on the ramparts. A couple of squads were diverted to the waryard, to form a killing circle around Elora. They all carried spears and halberds; bows were the province of their comrades on the wall. Notice was taken of the carnage at the gate, and the second woman who stood with her own bow at the ready, but the primary focus was on Elora.

  When the troops were in place, their commander made his entrance, having taken the time to don uniform and armor. He was an imposing man, radiating strength of purpose and body, and no doubt possessed of courage to match. He gave the impression of someone who wrestled bears for sport. Physically, there was a resemblance to Colonel DeGuerin but that was where their similarities ended. DeGuerin needed no tests to prove his mettle, it was evident from every aspect of his being.

  “I have that honor,” the commander replied, in Chengwei. He wanted to view Elora with the proper contempt accorded a western barbarian and a woman at that but the flashes of light and color from beneath her feet undermined his arrogant posture.

  “I am Elora Danan,” she said simply. “Leave this place.”

  Laughter erupted from among the commander’s subordinate officers, harsh and full of derision. He kept silent and watched the lights beneath the ground.

  “My orders command me to hold this stronghold for my Emperor in the face of an army,” he told Elora and nearly wept at the faint but telltale tremor of fear in his voice. “I will not yield to a lone slip of a girl.”