Shadowtrap: A Black Foxes Adventure

by Dennis L McKiernan

  But Lyssa did not see much of this, for her gaze was locked on the faint traces in the road: traces of cloven-hoofed steeds chasing ponies outward, as well as traces of cloven-hoofed steeds returning at a leisurely pace. “They went this way all right. Then came back.”

  The Foxes followed the tracks up the road until they came ’round the leftward bend. And just past a wedge of tumbled-down rock—”Hullo. What’s this?” murmured Lyssa. She turned to Ky and said, “Hold a moment.”

  Lyssa dismounted and paused in concentration, then knelt and examined the ground. As the others rode up, Ky asked, “What is it, Lyssa?”

  The ranger looked up at the Shadowmaster, then at the others now gathered ’round. “The demonsteed traces leave the path”—she pointed at the verge—”here. They go toward the north wall.”

  Kane hefted his spear. “I say we follow them. See where they lead.”

  “These are drakka,” hissed Ky.

  Kane shrugged. “Drakka or no, they did a foul deed.”

  Arton glanced at the ribbon of sky above, grey clouds scudding across. “It’s just past the noontide. The sun is yet on high. And although these drakka and demonsteeds seem to defy the fate of their kind, still I think Kane is right. We should try to resolve this mystery, for if demonkind ride the day, then evil most assuredly will follow. Besides, when have the Black Foxes ever run from danger?”

  “Ha!” barked Rith. “Plenty of times, Arton. We’ve run away plenty of times.”

  “But not for always,” shot back Arton. “Not for good. Strategic retreats, that’s when we ran—sometimes pell-mell, I admit. But each time we came back with a clever plan, for cunning and guile will out.”

  “What’s so guileful about pursuing drakka and demonsteeds?” asked Ky. “I say we go onward, on to Gapton.”

  “I’d rather follow the tracks, at least for a short way,” said Lyssa.

  All eyes turned to Arik, their unofficial leader. He ran his hand through his flaxen locks and peered in the direction of the north wall, some forty yards hence, then looked at Lyssa and nodded. “A short way.”

  Leading her horse, Lyssa slowly walked toward the sheer stone bluff, her gaze on the ground. On her right rode Kane, his spear couched, his shield ready. On her left rode Ky, a strange darkness crackling about her fingers. Behind rode Rith, Arik at her side, her hands filled with throwing daggers, his falchion drawn. And on Arik’s left rode Arton, his crossbow cocked with quarrel loaded.

  Straight ahead Lyssa led them, and she came to a fold in the sheer stone, where a jagged cleft, perhaps four yards across and three high, drove deeply into the rock, its far end lost in darkness. “’Ware,” hissed Ky, then added, “Let me go first.”

  The Shadowmaster rode to the fore. And while all hands gripped weapons, and hearts hammered against rib cages, the syldari paused in concentration, then peered into the rift. After a moment she hissed, “Nothing. Darksight shows nothing. This place is empty and dead-ended. And I see no door.”

  “But the tracks lead out and back in,” Lyssa said softly.

  Arik turned to Arton. “Perhaps a secret door.”

  Arton dismounted. “Stand ready,” he murmured, then cast a grin to all. “Should something come charging out, likely it or they will run right over me. But if I survive, I’ll need rescuing.”

  “You mean we’ll need rescuing,” said Lyssa, stepping to the fore, her shield and saber ready. “I’m going with you and see where the tracks lead.”

  “Wait a moment,” said Ky. The diminutive Shadowmaster dismounted and sat cross-legged on the ground. “You’ll have to hurry.” She folded her hands in her lap and lowered her head for a moment, then she raised her face and stared into the darkness. And like some hideous ebon thing, blackness exuded from the crevice, flowing outward over the stone, oozing left and right and upward and seeping across the ground. Slowly the darkness within became less dim, but it did not wholly disappear. “Now,” Ky said through gritted teeth, at her limit.

  Crossbow at the ready, saber in hand, into the ragged cleft strode Arton and Lyssa. Following tracks that only she could see, the pathfinder led Arton to the dead end, some thirty feet back. And there they stopped.

  “Here,” hissed Lyssa, pointing at the foot of the stone wall. “The tracks go straight in.”

  Arton carefully examined the stone, running his hands over the dark surface. At last he turned to Lyssa and murmured, “I swear, there is no secret door here.”

  Suddenly stark blackness hurtled inward, ebony darkness slamming down, hiding all.

  Backing away, “Let’s go!” hissed Lyssa, and they scurried outward, running to daylight, where they found Ky lying in a swoon, perspiration runneling downward over her face, Kane attending her. The healer looked up at them. “She fainted. I think she overextended her spell.”

  Weapons ready, they stood silent guard while Kane prepared an herbal draught, crumbling a dry mint leaf into a cup of water. He propped the dazed Shadowmaster up and slowly fed her the drink. At last she opened her eyes, and in a moment took the cup in her own hands and drank the remaining liquid down, as Arton growled, “Next time we’ll use lanterns, Ky.” The syldari peered up at him and weakly nodded.

  Lyssa squatted beside the Shadowmaster and said, “The tracks led inward, into the stone itself.”

  “A secret door?” asked Kane.

  “Arton says not,” answered Lyssa.

  “But there must be a door,” declared Rith. “Not even drakka can ride through solid stone, can they?.”

  “If there were a door, then I would have found it,” growled Arton. The certainty in his voice brooked no disagreement. “I think instead they used magic.”

  “Arton is right,” said Ky, drawing all eyes to her, “and so, too, I think is Rith. Instead of a door or solid stone, the drakka rode in and out of the demonplane through a shadow within, but how they all did so, I cannot say.”

  The chill wind swirled within the canyon, moaning among the high crags.

  They mounted up and rode away, heading onward through the pass. The wind grew stronger and the skies darkened, and by midafternoon rain began to fall and lightning hammered at the peaks. Water ran along the road, turning the dirt to mud.

  It was late in the storm-filled night when the six of them—cold to the bone and dripping wet—rode through the lashing chill rain and into the muddy streets of Gapton. The town itself was shuttered down, and they had to bang on the door of the Ram’s Horn to waken the proprietor. He came carrying a lantern and grumbling and cursing at having his sleep disturbed. But as they tromped in and shed their raincloaks, his eyes flew wide at the sight of six leather-clad helmed and armed warriors, and wider still when he saw that one of them was a tall black woman, and, Arda Almighty, one a yellow-skinned syldari, pointy ears and slanty eyes and four foot ten and all.

  “Stable’s out back,” he declared as he assigned them rooms. “The boy sleeps in the loft. Wake him up and he’ll care for your animals, or he’ll catch it from me, he will. D’y’ need any food? The kitchen’s closed, but I can rustle some such up, though it’ll be cold. And I’ve got wine and ale, should y’ need that.”

  “I’ll care for the horses and mules,” rumbled Kane, slipping his cloak back on. “Just have me a meal and some brandy when I get back.”

  “Make that two brandies,” said Arik, drawing his cloak over his own shoulders and following Kane out.

  Arton threw a fresh log onto the fireplace embers and kicked it into a blaze.

  Within four candlemarks they were dry and warm and fed, and within the next four, sound asleep.

  No sooner it seemed had they fallen into exhausted slumber than Lyssa and Arik’s door crashed inward, yellow light glaring. Viper swift, Arik snatched up his weapon at bedside, ready to skewer the intruder.

  It was Kane.

  The big man stood naked, a handheld lantern swinging on the end of a chain, Kane’s looming shadow swaying back and forth in counterpoint.

  “They were sea
rching for something,” growled Kane. “Something they believed he had swallowed or had forced his ponies to swallow—both of them were gutted, too. The gemstone. They were after the gemstone . . . but it was hidden in silver, and so the drakka failed.”

  In the yellow glow of the lantern, Lyssa lowered her saber and nodded, then looked at Arik and said, “And now it is we who hold the stone the demonkind are after.”

  14

  Gods and Pawns

  (Coburn Facility)

  “Heart rates are up,” called a medtech, gesturing at his monitor. “Adrenaline, too.”

  In the holo, Arton and Lyssa prepared to walk into a shadowy cleft at the base of the sheer north wall of the pass.

  “Doctor Stein, Miss Kikiro’s brain function is anomalous,” said another medtech. “Her neurotransmitters are high and rising.”

  “What the hell is Avery doing now?” demanded Mark Perry.

  Doctor Stein keyed his mike and spoke softly. Images flashed on his monitor screen. After a slight pause he said, “Nothing to worry about, though if Kikiro keeps this up, she’s going to faint.”

  “Faint?” Mark Perry gestured at the holo. “In there or out here?”

  Stein looked at him with undisguised contempt. “I suppose we are going to be plagued all night with these stupid questions. If you had attended any of the briefings, Perry—”

  “That’s enough, Henry,” snapped Toni Adkins. As Stein clenched his jaw, Toni turned to Mark Perry, and in a low voice said, “He’s right, you know. If you had attended the briefings—”

  Mark hissed, “Look, Toni, I was busy most of the time, fighting off the goddamned government. Besides, all I want to know is will she faint in there or out here?”

  Toni sighed in resignation. “Both, Mark. Both. Although she’s hemisynched, in effect she’ll faint in both realities.”

  “And what’s all this about the heart rates?” asked Perry. “I mean, the old man’s not going to have a heart attack, is he? Damn, that’s all we’d need—for Avery to kill the old man.”

  “Look at the holovid, Mark,” said Toni. “See, they’re inside a dark crevice. Adrenaline and heart rates are up because of that.

  “Now look at my monitor.”

  Mark Perry stepped to Toni’s console and Toni keyed her mike. “Avery, show me the medical stats.” Her screen altered to display a number of discrete zones, each zone filled with manifold charts in various colors; the graphs themselves were continuously updated along with associated numbered readouts. “Now, Avery, show me just the heart monitors.” All the zones disappeared but one, and that one expanded to fill the screen with more charts and numbers. “Avery, highlight and expand Arthur Coburn’s heart monitor.” Again the display changed, and all but six graphs disappeared, and these now expanded to fill the screen.

  “See this, Mark? It’s his heart rate: one fifteen. Rapid, but not dangerously so. And here is his adrenaline count. Again it’s up, but given that they are facing the unknown, walking into a cleft where perhaps demons dwell, well . . . his body is merely getting ready for fight or flight. In any event, this bar chart here shows the overall state of his heart, and you can see that it’s well down in the green zone.”

  Suddenly, the heart rate and adrenaline count spiked.

  “What th—?” cried Perry, just as a medtech called out, “Kikiro’s fainted.”

  They all looked up at the holovid.

  It showed Ky lying flat on her back, with Kane bending down over her, and Arton and Lyssa dashing out from the pitch-black hole.

  “Goddammit,” spat Perry. “Avery is trying to kill the old man!”

  Toni glanced at the lawyer and shook her head, then pointed at her screen. “It’s still green, Mark. His overall heart monitor shows he is still well in the green. But as to Miss Kikiro . . . Henry?”

  Stein looked up from his screen. “As I said, her neurotransmitter levels would and did make her faint. They’re receding now.”

  Puzzlement washed over Mark Perry’s face. “What caused her to faint?”

  “Casting magic, Mark,” said Timothy. “That’s what she was doing: casting magic.”

  “But why would that make her faint?” asked Perry.

  “Because, Mark, old boy, as the ancient saying goes, there is no free lunch.”

  “No free . . . ?”

  “Right. Y’see, if magic were free and easy, then every one would do it. Even if it were restricted to a talented few, still, if it were free to them, then they would resolve all their problems using magic. But in Itheria, magic costs. It drains energy from the caster. The bigger the spell, the bigger the drain.”

  Stein snorted in derision. “Ha! Magic! Stupid!”

  Rendell shrugged. “My guess, Mark, is that Avery stimulated the neurotransmitter production in Miss Kikiro’s brain to emulate the effects of overcasting a spell. Hence, she fainted. And for her to faint in a critical situation, well, the penalties could be severe.”

  “Penalties?” asked Perry.

  Timothy pointed at the holovid. “For instance, what if drakka had come charging out of the crevice just as she fainted? The Black Foxes would have been without her aid in combating them and she would have been a liability, lying in a faint on the ground.”

  “Oh,” said Mark Perry in a small voice. “I see. —But tell me, why is there no free lunch? I mean, it seems that magic is a useful weapon to have in one’s arsenal. So, why no free lunch?”

  Timothy cocked an eyebrow. “Don’t you see, Mark, by limiting magic it makes the adventure more exciting. Look, because of the potential penalties, the casting of powerful magic is something that one does at last resort—the risks involved may be too great to loose a spell willy-nilly. Hell, the caster may be weakened in a critical situation, or faint like Ky did, and be exposed to terrible danger. A caster could even die should he give up too much energy in throwing a really powerful spell. And so, Mark, in Itheria, because magic drains energy from the caster, problems, especially big problems, are more challenging and, unlike in other fictional worlds, cannot be resolved merely with a wave of the hand and an arcane word or two. And that, kiddo, adds spice to the game.”

  “Hm,” mused Doctor Meyer, looking up from his minicompad. “I suppose then, Tim, if it costs energy proportional to the power of the conjuration, no one can cast a spell above his own energy threshold, eh? No really powerful magic, right?”

  “Not quite, Drew,” replied Rendell. “Really big spells require that the caster’s own power be somehow augmented—by a demon or god, or by a magical item, or other such.”

  In a lilting voice Stein sneered, “Wands and potions and scrolls, oh my.”

  Before Timothy could respond, “Holy cow, look at this,” called a medtech.

  Stein stepped to the medtech’s console. After a moment he said, “Well, well, Avery has learned a new trick.”

  “What is it, Henry?” asked Toni.

  “Their body temperatures are falling.”

  “Splendid, I suppose,” said John Greyson. “But, why is Avery doing it, and how?”

  Stein’s lip curled. “As to the why, John”—he pointed at the holovid.

  The Black Foxes rode through a pouring chill rain.

  “But as to the how . . .” Stein stepped to his own console and called up various monitors.

  Alya Ramanni gave out a small yip. Grinning, she looked at the others. “He’s using the electrolyte system to push cool fluid into their bodies.”

  Concentrating on his screen, Stein held up a hand. “That’s only one shoe, Alya. The other shoe is that Avery has control of their—um, how shall I put this so that some of you will understand it? Ah yes, Avery has control of their neurological thermostats.”

  “Thermostats?” asked Perry.

  “The neuron clusters wherein people sense how warm or cold it is,” said Toni.

  “Oh.”

  Toni leaned forward and keyed her mike. “Avery.”

  “Yes, Doctor Adkins.”

  “W
e are celebrating the fact that you have learned to control the body temperatures of the alpha team. However, I would like to know why you are doing it.”

  “It’s more realistic if I actually regulate the body temperature, Doctor Adkins.”

  Toni looked at Stein for confirmation and he nodded. “Very well, Avery, but take care that you stay within reasonable limits, say, thirty-five to thirty-eight degrees Celsius.” Again she looked to Stein, and again he nodded. Toni keyed off her mike and sighed. “I suppose it is more realistic this way.”

  “More realistic!” exclaimed Mark Perry. “Look at them. Their teeth are chattering.”

  “Yes, their teeth are unquestionably chattering, but,” said Drew Meyer, “it is as Toni says: we should celebrate . . . not only because Avery has learned this trick of making the adventure more authentic, but also because things are going quite well. I mean, as we are seeing here, Avery really is able to handle an elaborate and dynamic virtual reality for a complex AI team.”

  Toni held up a cautioning hand. “Don’t celebrate too early, Drew. Yes, Avery is indeed succeeding in presenting them with a chilling adventure—no pun intended. But I found the grisly corpse at the entrance of the pass to be, um, a bit too much. Outside of that, and in spite of what this cold downpour is doing to them, I agree, Drew, things seem to be going rather well.”

  “Well?” exploded Mark Perry. “Things are going rather well? Murder, mayhem, fright, and now freezing rain, and you call that rather well?”

  “Oh, can it, Mark,” said Timothy. “This is exactly what they asked for—an adventure in Itheria, true to the writing of Daniel Patrick.”

  “But Mark has a valid point, Timothy,” said Doctor Greyson. “This adventure, it is so very grim. Why, sitting here and watching, I am reminded of the old gods peering down from their Olympian heights as Jason or Odysseus or Herakles or Perseus sweated and struggled and toiled against overwhelming odds to complete some quest.”

  Alya spoke up. “I just saw an old flat—a movie—of Ulysses’ trials. The gods used him for amusement.”