by J. L. Ficks
Lord Sadora emerged from the shadows. He appeared to almost glide across the floor like a wraith, a tall eerie silhouette lost in the gloom. He seemed to carry the shadows with him. His chilling violet eyes burned from underneath the cowl of his black hood. Shade would never forget those cutting knife-like eyes. They were so sharp they pierced the memory, seering so hot and deep they would be forever burned into his darkest nightmares. He gulped.
The collective breath left the training pit. The recruits’ tense faces sweated harder, gritting their teeth, as they struggled to keep pace. The trainers intensified their lashes, pounding out a renewed rhythm of punishment.
Sadora’s cold steel voice cut through the shadows, “Halt!”
Every Unseen froze and stood at attention. All noise instantly vacated the room. Shade saw several recruits trying madly to control their edgy trembling, to emit not even the slightest creak of worn leather. The room went so silent that Shade could hear the steady dripping of sweat as it hit the floor. He thought he smelled urine on one recruit. He knew they were all praying…praying that their master did not find in them any shred of displeasure.
Lord Sadora’s eyes swept the room, causing every heart to shudder, until they finally settled on the most unlikely recruit of all. The Shadowlord frowned fiercely. He stalked directly towards Shade.
Shade did not move. Those burning violet eyes bore into the secret corners of his shivering soul. He could feel their penetrating power as they pierced his spirit. Time slowed down to a crawl. He heard the click of his master’s heel on every stone. His knees had the overwhelming urge to buckle, but he restrained himself fast. The tall hooded form stopped in front of him. Shade gulped. It might as well have been the Grim Reaper himself, for this dark entity also collected souls.
Sadora pulled back his hood and looked Shade full in the face. The Shadow-lord’s glowing violet eyes highlighted the hard cut yet soft angles in his strikingly handsome features. He had a dark devilish appeal to him, but his admirers had a nasty habit of disappearing. His long slick black hair had been drawn back into a ponytail. He wore hard leathers accented by a lordly violet cape. His breastplate bore the image of a single eye set into the palm of an open hand—the emblem of the Shadowhand Division. The Shadowlord’s lips curled into an unflattering frown as he looked Shade up and down.
Shade stood at attention. He betrayed not even a shred of weakness, nor even a sliver of panic or fear. He did not take his eyes off his master. He heard the shuffle of several far more clumsy footfalls behind the Shadowlord. He had hardly noticed the few others who had entered with his lord, so commanding was Sadora’s daunting presence. Shade did not look, but he saw his master’s hooded servant, Wormin, out of the corner of his eye. Wormin led a captive over to him by a brown twine rope which had been tied around the neck.
The captive had an empty potato sack pulled over his head. He wore a filthy frayed tunic that stank of a familiar dung. He was no Unseen, a peasant from the looks of him, as filthy as a mud-wallowed hog. Shade had a sneaking suspicion he knew the captive’s true identity. The Unseen Order blindfolded all visitors to the Sada’Korum in an effort to keep its location secret.
Shade also saw Jeshrim scramble behind their master, but he kept a safe distance. He crossed his arms and grinned brazenly at Shade. His long curly black hair fell across his smug highbred features. His crimson eyes glowed like fine wine, but he was drunk with the power of his influential family. He always had a crazed look in his eyes. Jeshrim’s face glowed in triumph. He poured his smirk on a little too thick. Shade could only imagine his satisfaction. Jeshrim would soon be rid of his rival and become their master’s new star pupil. Too bad Sadora’s new protégé was doomed to only be a cut above mediocre.
Shade ignored him.
Lord Sadora finished his cold appraisal. He stalked over to the prisoner. He pulled the sack off of the Faelin’s head with an undisclosed disgust.
An old Faelin geezer blinked and gaped around. His mostly toothless mouth hung open and he drooled dumbly. He gawked about like a frightened old housecat tossed into a pit of dogs. He had gray hair, another sign he was not nobility for highborn Elvish hair tended to grow more illustrious with age.
Shade recognized the Faelin at once, Dumley, one of the countless beggars that plagued the street corners of his old hometown. The fool would never make it out of here alive. Jeshrim’s contacts must’ve lured him from Nefar under promises of vast riches no doubt. Too bad Sadora would squash him like a bug before he risked a rat like Dumley selling the location of the Sada’Korum to the next bidder. It wouldn’t matter that the old geezer was dumber than a sack of rocks.
Sadora pointed at Shade and asked bluntly, “Is this him?”
“Aye, that’s him, I'd recognize that boy anywhere,” Dumley nodded, “he grew up among thieves. Bastard son of a harlot barmaid in fact.”
Jeshrim beamed even brighter.
Wormin pulled the bag back over Dumley’s head. He yanked the twine hard around the neck. Dumley groaned, but kept his lips clamped.
Lord Sadora marched back over to Shade. “And what have you to say to this grave accusation?” he demanded, “You lied. You are not Selvan from the noble house Saquinarian? You are just a lowly commoner from Nefar?”
“I am,” Shade said proudly, “I moved unseen among those who move unseen.”
“Speak plainly, boy! You know what’s at stake!”
Shade took a deep breath, puffed up his chest. “I know.”
Sadora glowered at him in disbelief, as if every fiber of his spirit hated the derailing knowledge of this horrible truth. His voice drew out like a blade, “You understand then the due penalty for any common blood that pollutes our ranks?”
“I do.”
“So be it!” the Shadowlord spat. He whirled around in a flash. “Then receive the due penalty for your weakness!” A dagger was already in his hand. Lord Sadora struck with such unfathomable speed Shade barely had time to react.
Shade turned slightly, but felt the sting of a dagger slide deeply into his left pectoral. He felt blood gush from the wound and wash down his abs. He staggered but held his ground in mind-reeling pain. He struggled to stave off the flooding unconsciousness. He felt shadowy spirits wrap their cold icy fingers around his soul. He felt their tug and pull, dragging his spirit down into the realms beyond the grave, but he refused to let death take him.
Everyone gasped.
Sadora yanked the blade coldly out. More blood flowed, but Shade stood. His master stared at him in staggered shock. Never before had this happened in the history of his rule! Never had Sadora failed to deliver a killing blow. Every student he had purged from the order had simply keeled over and died, but not Shade.
Shade’s glowing yellow eyes glared back at his master like a pair of quenchless flames. He ground his teeth and pushed through the waves of blinding pain and faintness. He had managed to turn the deathblow aside just far enough that it had missed a vital organ.
Lord Sadora’s violet eyes smoldered in rage. How dare this lowly peasant embarrass him in front of his order! He struck again, this time so swift and confident that he would surely kill Shade. Clash! He blinked. It took a moment to realize that steel clashed against steel. Shade had managed to not only draw one of his master’s own daggers, but deflect the second thrust altogether. But how? Even whiter shock ghosted across the Shadowlord’s face.
Another collective gasp echoed throughout the chamber.
Sadora caught his breath, but his blood boiled. He trembled in uncontrolled anger. He uncorked the full measure of his bottled rage. He delivered the final strike.
And then Shade did the unthinkable. He not only managed to parry his master, but strike him back across the jaw with a swift backhand.
The crowd of Unseen cried out in shock.
Lord Sadora turned his shell-shocked face back to Shade. He reached up and dabbed his finger on the blood that trickled down his cheek. His violet eyes blazed with anger, a storm crackling
in their midst, but suddenly they softened. Shade thought he could actually hear the thunder, he thought he could actually see the lightning disperse in his master’s eyes. He stared up in throbbing shock as his master’s sharp features relaxed.
Sadora sheathed his dagger and turned to the rest of the order.
Every eye remained held in thrall.
“Mark well this night, Shadow Brothers,” Lord Sadora said softly, “for here before us stands a Faelin of true worth to the order.”
Shade woke up suddenly. He clutched his bleeding chest. He had to stop the bleeding; he had to stop it before he bled out. He slipped his hand under his leather breastplate. He dug his fingernails into his skin until he felt pain. A slow realization hit him that his chest was dry. He was not even wounded.
He blinked and looked down. He relaxed his grip and the pain subsided. He realized he was not in his home forests, but in a crude stone hut. His dreams had been invaded by a locked away memory. It all had seemed so real. It had all been so clear, so powerfully visual, like it just happened yesterday.
Stone hut! The assassin snapped fully awake. He jumped up and hit his head on a leaning slab. He rubbed his sore skull. His eyes swept wildly around the primitive dwelling. The undead, he had been fighting the undead! The interior of the stone hut whirled around in his head, toppling his already shaky orientation. His heart sounded like a mallet pounding loudly on his eardrums. He felt like he was going to faint. He looked around, but only the stark rays of dawn’s early light slipped through the cracks and crevices in the stone hut.
He breathed out a long sigh of relief. He was alone. The night had passed and he lived. He stumbled a few steps and dusted off his old leathers. The blood that flooded back into his left leg felt like the pricking of a thousand needles. He must have slept on it. His experience with the undead had made him feel mortal again. They had almost killed him. It had been too long since he had been so close to death’s door. He didn’t like it. It shook his fortress of confidence.
Shade staggered over to the door and paused. He did not feel like himself. He felt awkward, clumsy. A sliver of doubt pricked away at his carriage. He felt its sting nibbling away at his ordinarily callous composure. He feared another horde of wretched undead awaited him outside. Above all, he feared his consciousness being left intact when that mindless hunger sunk tooth and nail into his flesh. He froze. Could he really do this? Could he really cut the head off Lewd’s syndicate? He had already nearly died and he hadn’t even reached Kurn. He felt like a whipped dog.
The assassin stared hard at the old hide door flap. He watched as it blew in the wind. The doubt in his blood boiled away replaced by a burning disgust for his own inexcusable weakness. He reached under his armor. He traced his finger along the scar Sadora had given him all those years ago.
“No one stands up to Sadora,” he recited to himself, “I did.”
Shade brushed the flap aside. He peered out onto the sunny Ruins of Garrlohan. The wind whipped the yellow Bullgrasses, but the dead city of Jahaeddra laid still and silent. He saw the carcasses—the bones and the rotting corpses of the undead who had pursued him, but they did not rise. Xzoron’s ragged moaning still hung on the air, but he ignored it. He stepped back out into the ruins. Nothing rose. He grinned brazenly. “No one kills Warlord Lewd,” he said aloud, his words dripping with a familiar confidence, “but I will.”
Chapter Six:
Kurn, the Magnificent
Shade saw the brown fields of Kurn momentarily through the fog. The Bermuda Grasses still lay dormant and would show no signs of green for yet another month. The northern Ruins of Garrlohan pandered to few snows, but the sky hung with a dreary overcast which bore the recognizable face of winter in these warm northern lands. The cold southern gusts nipped at his back, dueling with the warmer ocean winds. The fog lifted to the far west. Shade could hear the sounds of the ocean. He walked until he could make out the bleak gray expanse of the Vespuviar Depths. The hypnotic dance of the waves soothed his weary spirit as they rolled and crashed against the western shores of Sylvane.
The assassin slowed down from a light jog. He took out a cloth and wiped the sweat off his face. The ruins remained eerily silent. He could still hear Xzoron’s ceaseless lowing, though it sounded far more distant. It was just enough to prick at the edges of one’s sanity. Shade had found himself repeatedly eying the bone-littered fields with a gnawing unease. He feared another grisly resurrection, but the bones did not rouse again.
Shade had made it to the border of Garrlohan by early afternoon. The north fork of the Shardenile cut across the landscape where it splintered into a delta before empting into the ocean. The Northfork boasted a stronger current than its southern cousin, but was still navigable. Together the two forks drained the Shardenile of her might. The assassin could no longer see the fields of Kurn as he approached. A fog hung over the river. He breathed out a long sigh of relief. He could finally leave this accursed land behind him.
A barrel-barge appeared suddenly through the fog.
Shade watched four Valsharen men, or riverfolk, manning the craft. Barrelrunners Shade guessed. Dozens of barrels floated downriver alongside the barge. They used their spears to guide the barrels along and keep them from getting caught along the banks or in thick reeds. The Valsharen wore long oilskin surcoats that dropped all the way to their knees, over hard rubberized leathers. Their heads were covered in long strange blue hair stringed with many beads, a color the Dark Elf thought looked unnatural on humans. The Barrelrunners guided the craft by using the butt end of twelve-foot long fishing spears.
The light blue eyes of a Barrelrunner widened as he glimpsed the Dark Elf.
Shade sprawled out on the ground. Had he been sighted? He peeked over an old log. All four Valsharen were now looking across the river, searching for him. Shade frowned. The riverfolk were relatively peaceful, so long as they were left alone, but the assassin didn’t want to take chances. It was rumored a Valsharen could throw a spear clear off the river some forty feet. Many would-be thieves had been skewered right off the bank by attempting to rob a Valsharen barrel crew.
“Hey, someone’s out there,” the first Valsharen man said.
Shade froze.
“Another thief?” another said, “I could use the target practice.”
“No, it looked like a Dark Elf.”
“A Dark Elf! Nah, it couldn’t be.”
“I did. I swear! He was standing right over there!”
The Barrelrunner pointed directly at Shade’s position.
The Dark Elf hid his face behind the log.
Shade could feel the weight of every glare as it swept over him. He cursed under his breath. They’ll alert the guards and there will be a lynching!
“Your imagination must be acting up again,” said the second, “but we can report it to the guards just in case. I doubt they’ll believe you, of course. They haven’t forgiven you for that whole Sky Whale incident.”
“Am I ever going to be permitted to live that one down?” the first man shot back, “Clouds don’t glow like that, ok!”
“Here we go again.”
And then the fog swallowed them.
Shade cursed. He crawled over to a monolith. He peaked out around the broad stone face. He saw the old crumbled stones of an ancient bridge, overgrown with moss and lilies, some hundred yards off. It was the only way across the river. Long lines of barrel-barges headed further downstream. An endless stream of barrels bobbed and banged together on the rough river currents, all manned by more Valsharen on their sturdy watercrafts.
Shade ducked cautiously from marker to marker. The traffic began to back up. He saw a few riverfolk throw in anchors. ‘At least that will keep that crew from getting ashore,’ Shade thought, ‘but I’d better be careful of all those eyes.’ The barges would tie off at the docks at the end of the line. He saw rows of oxen drawn wagons waiting to meet the barrel-runners busy mooring at the overcrowded docks. The Valsharen skillfully fished as many
barrels as they could manage ashore, but hundreds more continued downstream. The rest of the barrels would be caught at the dam.
Barrelrunning was the riverfolk’s most lucrative business, especially just south of a great trade city like Kurn. For a small fee even a peddler could ferry goods downriver from Feltmore or Rivannah or countless other great cities. Long lines of impatient patrons waited on their goods, which meant this area had to be policed by guards. And then just as soon as he felt he had a clear handle on his surroundings, the fog closed over once again.
Shade frowned fiercely. Not even his sharp Elvish vision could penetrate the fog. He did not think the Valsharen who saw him had yet made it ashore. It took awhile for each dock to unload. He should go now before they had a chance to dock. He just wished he could see the guards through the crowds. Terramite helmets might come standard here. Terramite was a metal alloy known for its ability to repel magic and could give away his dark heritage. ‘So much for passing the bridge in Unseen form,’ he thought, ‘I’ll have to turn to other methods.’
The Dark Elf reached into a pouch and retrieved a round tin tub. He pulled off a glove and unscrewed the lid. He dipped his hands into a tan facial cream. He spread it all over his dark face. He cringed fiercely as he applied the balm. His cheeks itched madly. He hated this stuff and much preferred the illusionary spells of his magic, but he could not afford to take chances here. His complexion gradually lightened from its normal charcoal black to a tan Elvish gold.
Shade resisted the overwhelming urge to scratch. He only used this tactic as a last resort. The cream would only protect him from cursory glances. It looked, well, odd. He tucked the cream away and pulled his cloak over his head. He peered back around the stone. The fog had thickened once again and he couldn’t even see past the bridge. He’d better go now. He could use the fog for cover and slip into the crowds before anyone noticed.
