Shadow Star

by Chris Claremont

  With a grace far beyond even the most elegant of the High Elves, and that could not be comprehended by the Daikini even in their dreams, Elora danced along the magnificent thoroughfares of Angwyn, from the Royal Promenade to the shore-hugging esplanade more popularly known as the Rambles. For the first time in her life, she visited Silver Square, that legendary market a square mile in size where anything imaginable from either side of the Veil could be bought or sold. She had lived in Angwyn nearly her whole life, yet had experienced nothing of this fabled city, for she had spent that entire time sequestered in a tower adjacent to the Palace Royal. She’d been allowed out of her apartments only on rare occasions of state, under the close escort and strict supervision of her guardians, the Vizards, a dozen cloaked and cowled specters culled from the finest families in the kingdom and meant to represent the Twelve Realms over which she was expected to claim dominion.

  As she neared the palace, the wind lessened its fury. This was the center of the cyclone, the engine that drove this elemental machine. Here all its forces achieved a measure of balance. There was no wind, no precipitation. For all the fury and madness raging scant yards away, here at least could be found a measure of peace.

  Elora wasn’t surprised to find the eye of the storm centered on her own tower.

  Nor, at long last, to be attacked.

  Even the weapons weren’t wholly unexpected.

  At some point in her youth, a rookery of Night Herons had been established in her tower. They were creatures of the vilest sorcery, as feared in their own way as Death Dogs, and no one at Court was pleased with their arrival. Unfortunately, there were no sorcerers in the kingdom willing to make the attempt to drive them off. By the same token, the King—Anakerie’s father—though he was a warlord of well-deserved renown, was reluctant to take any action that failed. This, he concluded, was as clear a case of letting sleeping dogs lie as ever he’d seen and his ministers were equally quick to support him in his decision. So long as the birds did no harm, they would be left alone.

  Elora knew nothing of that. She’d actually befriended them and fed them tidbits from her own hand.

  Now they repaid her by seeking her life.

  They were shadows themselves, coated with the same shade of pitch that had stained Elora’s argent body, and their beaks and claws could rend the strongest steel armor. Unlike many of the races that lived beyond the Veil, in Lesser and Greater Faery, Night Herons weren’t bothered in the slightest by cold iron. Worse for Daikini, they couldn’t be killed by it, either.

  Elora, however, was no longer Daikini. She had bonded with the Malevoiy. She was Malevoiy. So she merely stood her ground, projecting an attitude of casual unconcern to mask the excitement in her breast. This would be slaughter. This would be fun.

  And it was.

  She made a mess of the flock and for the briefest of moments was liberally coated with their blood. That moment was all the time required for her chitinous armor to absorb it, filling her with a piercing joy that made her cry out with delight, sensations so intense the distinction blurred for her between pleasure and pain, agony and ecstasy.

  And these were but little lives, she heard within her head, the desiccated tones of the Malevoiy itself, still bound to their own Realm though their link with her had given them perceptual access to the other Realms they hadn’t enjoyed since their exile began. Imagine, childe, how it will feel to claim thy mortal foe?

  The thought made her tremble with anticipation. It quickened her pace into the main entrance of her tower and up the winding circle of stairs, around and around and around until she burst through another doorway and into the vestibule of her apartments.

  She had no doubts as to where she’d find the Deceiver. A steady stride took her into the amphitheater where her Ascension was to be consummated.

  All within was as she remembered it at the moment Thorn jumped with her into the body of the floor. The Monarchs of the Great Realms—save one, conspicuous now by its absence—and their retinues, flash-frozen by the Deceiver’s spell. That empty space represented the Malevoiy, still so hated, so feared even after this immeasurable length of time that not even a representation of them was allowed, to mar the celebration.

  Fools, she thought, the Realms are of a single whole. Cast aside one, you cast aside all. You should have used the opportunity to try to make your peace with the past. She laughed, and it was a sound far colder than the air outside these walls. Now that chance is gone. There will be peace, but on my terms.

  She heard chittering in the depths of her soul and knew the Malevoiy approved. In her, they had finally found their true champion, a far better choice for them than Khory Bannefin.

  The faces that surrounded her were all smiling, as though they beheld their hearts’ fondest desires, without a clue as to what was really happening. Assembled there were some of the most powerful beings in the Realms, yet the Deceiver had wrapped them up in her enchantments without any of them being the wiser.

  As Elora passed the Queen Magister of Greater Faery and Her consort—noting with amusement that the Lady of Lesser Faery had come alone, leaving her consort Tyrrel the keys to their kingdom, just in case—her steps faltered. Predator though she’d become, filled with the dark passion and ancient hatreds of the Malevoiy, she could not look upon the body that lay before her and not confront the immutable reality that Kieran Dineer, a dragon, had fought and died for her.

  That was supposed to be impossible. Not the fighting part, but the dying. Dragons were the Monarchs of the Realm of Dreams. They were Creation incarnate, beyond such petty concerns as life and death.

  Yet Elora had seen it happen. And had done far worse herself.

  She knelt on one knee by the dragon’s great wedge-shaped head, so huge it alone dwarfed her entire body, the contrast in their sizes offering a glimmering insight into how such as Thorn Drumheller must feel in a world of Daikini. She wanted to reach out and touch Kieran but her hand refused to cross the gap between them. Though he was dead, the Malevoiy in her refused to abide the slightest contact with its most ancient and implacable foe.

  “Hurts, doesn’t it?” the Deceiver said cheerily. “To discover what you’ve lost.”

  When Elora turned toward the other woman, all emotion had been stripped from her face. She had made herself as alien in aspect as the Malevoiy had originally presented itself to her.

  “This is your doing, Deceiver,” she said softly.

  “Like the voice. And the look. And the manner. The silver was too stark a contrast. This makes us more of a piece.”

  “We are nothing alike.”

  “Of course we are, that’s the point.” The Deceiver raised a gauntleted hand and from each fingertip extruded claws identical to the ones manifested from Elora’s armor. She mounted the dais with a flirty pirouette, her skin alabaster pale against the shadow of her own armor. Elora might have resembled a statue, the Deceiver was more in the nature of a waxworks doll. As Elora watched, not quite spellbound, the Deceiver conjured a brilliant rainbow and wrapped its spectacularly vibrant colors about her like a sash, across her hips, her breasts, the elegant column of her throat, one end dangling from an outstretched hand while the other circled her leg and trailed off behind her. Then, with a snap of the fingers, all that beauty was drawn into the Deceiver herself.

  The results were instantaneous and dramatic. Pale rose dusted cheeks whose flesh glowed with an inner radiance of health and vigor. Her hair became spun gold touched with flame, her eyes cut lapis lazuli, her mouth a generous slash of crimson.

  “Most impressive,” Elora conceded. “But ultimately, a lie. As are you!”

  “I’d be careful what I said, if I were you.”

  “Or what, my life is forfeit? According to you, that judgment is foreordained, it holds no moment as a threat.”

  “You want to end it then, once and for all? Bless my soul…”

 
; “I didn’t think you had one in you.”

  The Deceiver laughed. “A fair retort. You’ve been taking lessons from the brownies.” Her face grew somber, the eyes losing a bit of luster, allowing Elora a glimpse of the wasteland within, as bleak as the growing ice field that surrounded Angwyn. “They remained with me almost to the end, Franjean and Rool. They kept faith far longer than I gave them credit for.”

  “What have you done?”

  “What I’ve told you from the beginning, weren’t you listening, ever?” She sounded petulant, as Elora remembered of herself not so long ago. It was an ugly way of speaking but the Deceiver didn’t appear to notice or care. “I did what was necessary, sacrificing a few for the good of all.”

  “Your friends? Those who loved you?”

  “That’s the price demanded by some spells. Those bargains can’t be struck over the slaughter of enemies, believe me; I tried enough times! Oh dear, child, have I shocked you? I didn’t think that was possible with one who wears the colors of the Malevoiy.

  “We have that in common as well.” And she gave a small curtsy, to present her own version of the Malevoiy armor.

  “You killed the brownies?”

  “Tiresome wretch, yes, does that satisfy you? And Sorsha, and Madmartigan when the fool tried to come to her rescue. Fin Raziel died naturally, though there were stories aplenty to slander me that it was really a broken heart. Do you know it was said that her dying words were a wish that she hadn’t saved me from Bavmorda, that the world would have been better off with both of us dead. The bitch!”

  Elora stayed silent through the Deceiver’s tirade. Instead, she began closing the gap between herself and her foe, using her grace in such a way that it was impossible to see her move. She was in one place but after the blink of an eye she was somewhere wholly different without having given off the slightest sense of a body in motion.

  She didn’t anticipate the Deceiver using the same sets of skills against her. Her other self met her halfway, before Elora was ready, with a kick like a hammer to the solar plexus that set the younger woman sprawling. The Deceiver leaped after her, landing astraddle the fallen Elora, plumping her bottom down on Elora’s pelvic girdle and jamming her boots down hard on Elora’s elbows, effectively pinning her arms.

  Her voice when she spoke was chiding and full of disappointment.

  “Child child child,” she said, idly tracing designs on the body of Elora’s armor with a claw and watching blood swell up to fill the runnels, appreciating Elora’s shock at how casually her impenetrable armor had been breached, “have you so little regard for me, for all I’ve accomplished, that you assumed the acquisition of some power, the forging of a new alliance—I grant you at some considerable and lasting personal cost—would be sufficient to make you a match for me?”

  She rocked her feet back and forth over Elora’s elbows and the young woman bit back an outcry at the shooting pains that filled both arms. The Deceiver worked a tad harder and was rewarded by a grunt.

  She flashed fangs of her own and sank both sets of claws through the material of Elora’s armor as if it weren’t there. Elora’s back arched, face twisting with a sudden, vicious rictus of excruciating pain. It felt to her as if the Deceiver had literally grabbed her by the heart.

  “Pick whatever road you please, little one,” the Deceiver said with an undertone of melancholy and genuine regret, “you’ll find my footsteps to blaze your way. There is nothing you can do that I haven’t done before you.”

  “And this is how you seek to set matters aright?”

  “I know the full measure of what is to come. I know what you cannot, which are the pathways to damnation and which to a better place.”

  “Done a terrific job so far!” There was unbridled fury in Elora’s voice, which was answered in kind by her foe.

  “All that has happened is on your head, not mine. Had you been less willful, this would have been avoided.”

  “If as you say, we are one and the same, only from different epochs of time, how could you possibly imagine I’d be any less willful than you yourself?”

  “It doesn’t matter. I have you now. As lamb, as lion, you’ve still come to the slaughter.”

  She reached out to Elora’s face but to do so had to rise fractionally from her perch. That was all the opening Elora required; it was what she’d been counting on. Recognition and action occurred as one, as she lifted both legs from the hips, bending them out and around to hook her ankles under the Deceiver’s jawbone. Next came a flex of Elora’s entire body, putting the whole of her strength into a spasm that heaved the Deceiver head over heels off and away from her.

  Elora used that same move to roll off her back and into a fighting crouch, regaining her balance as the Deceiver flung herself to her own feet.

  The next attack was a scorching blast of arcane energy, from the Deceiver’s outstretched hand to Elora’s torso. Contact wouldn’t have been fun, so Elora made sure to be somewhere else.

  There was no more conversation, no more gibes or japes as the battle between them was joined in earnest. For both of them, this was a last chance. Only one could walk away and with her would go the fate of a world. Mercy then was a luxury neither could afford.

  They were so intent on their own battle, as the air quickly filled with the snap and sizzle of bolts of magical energy and the residue of powerful spells, neither noticed a stealthy figure slip into the amphitheater. Or the faint gleam of that figure’s drawn sword.

  * * *

  —

  Thorn’s party beheld Nockmaar at dawn, which like every sunrise in this accursed region was a misery that combined gunmetal sky and a chill, damp wind that carried with it the stench of something rotten that must have just died in some noxious marsh. Dawn was signified by a gradual lightening of the sky, no sign of the sun itself was visible, nor would there be any sight of stars in the night. Nockmaar existed under a perpetual overcast that offered an icy drizzle and threatened worse and somehow managed to soak a body to the skin, regardless of the thickness and efficacy of foul-weather gear, oilskins, and woolen sweaters.

  It was a place that made intruders feel like they wanted to be somewhere else, preferably far away.

  The main gates hung open, sagging from smashed hinges, but Thorn and his company took little comfort from the sight. Too much resemblance to the jaws of a trap.

  “Pardon my asking, Master Drumheller,” said Luc-Jon, as they rode down from the crest of the final escarpment, into the broad valley that led up to the derelict stronghold, “but why’d you leave it?”

  “Intact, you mean?”

  “If it was no use to you, why not make it the same for everyone?”

  “Sound strategy. We spent the better part of a fortnight trying. We used fire, we used magic. We mined saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal to mix our own batch of Chengwei powder and set about blasting the place to bits. It wouldn’t burn, the spells wouldn’t take, and our explosives fizzled in the damp. Some of the men even attacked the walls with sledgehammers and chisels. Their steel broke, and their mallets, their muscles, and their will, without them even chipping the surface. Whatever brought Nockmaar into being, my young friend, it’s beyond our power to destroy.”

  As they approached the moat and saw that the drawbridge remained down, the portcullis beyond still raised, they beheld two other parties marching toward an evident rendezvous. Both were as quickly identified as they proved a surprise.

  The leader of the Nelwyns spoke first, a bluff plug of a man, a little taller than Drumheller but far broader in the shoulders and body, proclaiming to all the world the strength that Drumheller preferred to keep hidden. There was a similarity of feature that marked them as kin, but they weren’t close relations. As well, a tension existed between them.

  When they met, after Thorn dismounted, the newcomer didn’t extend his hand in greeting.

 
“Greetings, cousin,” Thorn said, ignoring the discourtesy. “I bid you welcome.”

  “That’s no’ a word fit for this accursed place, Drumheller,” replied Torquil Ufgood. “Any more than decent folk are fit to visit. Nockmaar was built by the damned, I say leave it to ’em.”

  “I can’t, Torquil. I told you why.”

  “An’ you know my mind on the subject.”

  “Yet you’re here.”

  “We’re family. Bound by blood, clan, an’ sept. An’ you’re a Magus.”

  “Since when did that count for much among the Rock Nelwyn?”

  “Old Jaffrey cast his runes, Drumheller. Near worked hisself into a fit tryin’ t’ puzzle ’em out. What he saw scared him silly.”

  “What did he see?”

  “Dunno. Wouldn’t tell me, only Manya.” She was Torquil’s wife and leader of their clan. “The wife, she tells me, do as y’re bid. So here I am, an’ here are y’r toys. I’d wish y’ the best of ’em, Drumheller, but in this pisshole what’s the point?”

  In his hand, Torquil held a faceted globe, the most brilliant and perfect diamond ever cut from the earth. Its size was less than half that of the sphere Thorn had seen in Ch’ang-ja but he knew without examination that this was without flaw. Here was a case where Nelwyn care and craft far outstripped the best the Daikini could offer.

  He recognized the style of the facets.

  “You did the cutting, Tor?”

  “Manya,” the Rock Nelwyn replied with a shake of his head. “Insisted on it. An’ proved by doin’ so she’s no’ lost her touch.”

  “That’s no error.”

  The globe was once more wrapped in a felt cloth, then packed into its carrying case. Torquil’s companions had brought with them the twelve platters, as intricately carved as their Chengwei precursors’ but scaled more to Nelwyn dimensions.

  The High Elves had brought the mechanism itself, perhaps ten feet tall instead of nearly thirty and lacking the ornamental filigree that had decorated the original machine. Elves had no love of machines, but there were none finer in the craft of woodworking. Their artisans had constructed the components, and then delivered them to another clan of Nelwyn to fit those pieces properly together.