Shadowgod

by Michael Cobley

  “It isn't, I swear,” Gilly said. “Do you see any tokens on me?”

  “Hmph. That don't mean nought to some o' them. Not like it were in my day…”

  Yet he tightened his grip on the reins, cracked his whip lightly over his horse's ears and the cart jerked into motion, turning a wide curve in the street. As the wheels rattled over the cobbles, Gilly looked back at the High House of Keels and wondered what Medwin was thinking or saying at that moment.

  Something deeply guilt-provoking, no doubt, he thought. That man could harvest remorse from a Jefren executioner.

  Gilly and his driver trailed the other carriage down through Scallow's narrow streets. When asked to keep a good distance from their quarry, the driver grunted, clamped his hat more firmly on his head and did as he was bid. Before long it became clear that Coireg Mazaret was heading for the Bridges district. A light rain was falling by the time Gilly's carriage crossed from the shore onto a wooden stilt road which passed between storehouses and odd travellers inns with their own small jetties, over bridges whose underspans were crowded with a ramshackle array of homes, taverns and workshops.

  Gilly wiped raindrops from his face and ran fingers through his damp, greying hair. The rain had eased off to a scattering of droplets but the sky remained a rush of sullen cloudracks all the way to the horizon, a sure sign of more bad weather to follow.

  As the carriage lurched and rumbled along, Gilly imagined himself corner the possessed Coireg, somehow forcing him to disclose where the Shadowkings were holding Ikarno and what they were doing to him, and from this devising a plan of rescue…

  A fool's plan, he thought suddenly. A bout of rashness and folly, that's what this chase is. What am I doing here? Who knows what dark powers this sorcerer has at his command…

  He was on the point of telling the driver to turn round when the carriage came to a halt.

  “As far as I go, good ser,” said the driver over his shoulder.

  They were sitting on a raised planked area overlooking a darker district from which reared what appeared to be the sharp corner of a tilted building. Gilly realised that it was a ship's stern with a weather-beaten roof atop it. Visible in the shadows further along was a row of supporting beams, clearly shoring up one side of the leaning vessel, while heavy, mildewed hawsers ran straight and taut from holes in the rotting hull to rusting irons stanchions. Beyond this mouldering ship Gilly could see the lines of others, some almost vague beneath encrustations of makeshift huts and buildings and gantries and smoke flues and balconies and pigeon lofts….

  Wracktown. It was set lower than the rest of the Bridges district, its shadowy rubbish-strewn wharfs and walkways raised little more than a foot or two above the waters. From where Gilly's driver had stopped, a long ramp sloped down to a cluttered dockside: half way along it was Coireg's carriage, moving further away.

  “Why have you stopped here?” Gilly said.

  “Sorry ser, but I don't go inter Wracktown for anyone's money, beggin' yer pardon. Ain't safe.”

  Gilly snorted. “Between my blade and your whip, we can surely see off any cutpurses or petty rogues.”

  The driver shook his head. “Far worse than them down there, ser. I'll not be going.”

  Seeing that he was adamant, Gilly shrugged, climbed out and paid him a generous quarter-crown. The driver gave a bleak smile and tipped his disreputable hat.

  “Mind yer step in there, ser,” he said. “And be wary of the waters.”

  The horse and trap wheeled round and headed back towards Eastbank. Gilly turned and trotted down the ramp, careful to avoid a hole in the heavy planking at the foot of the slope, an arms-length gap from which a watery sloshing and a rank seaweed stench emanated.

  The other carriage had slipped out of sight but he determined to follow in any case and headed towards where he last espied it. This took him along a wharfside caught in perpetual shadow between the jumble of ancient, refashioned ships and the high wall of wood and stone that marked the main boundary between Wracktown and the rest of the Bridges district. Along the bottom of the great wall was a variety of shacks and lean-tos, a few being oddly elaborate with tiny upper floors, windows and flues. Most, however, were merely rough and squalid, their inhabitants looking starving and broken.

  Mothers name! he thought. There was none of this when I was last here…

  Between a couple of sturdier hovels someone had built a shrine out of crates, a shabby wooden alcove with shelves that were cluttered with little carvings of animals, symbols scrawled on scraps of parchment, ivory leafs inscribed with prayers and hymns, and the puddled remains of votive candles. But since it was open to the sky, everything was wet from the rain, including a solitary statuette of the Earthmother carved from pale draelwood. It was about 2 feet tall, showing the goddess as the sorrowful soother of pain. Someone had painted red tears leaking from her eyes, and someone else had tried to scrub them out. But the ink had soaked too far into the wood for that, and to Gilly a figurine of the Earthmother weeping bloody tears seemed somehow grimly apt to this place.

  “Buy lights for t'Lady, milord?”

  A hunched and ragged beggar proffered a tray bearing a handful of green, stubby candles. The beggar smiled fixedly through an unkempt beard while his pungent, unwashed odour assailed Gilly's nose.

  “Not at the moment,” he replied. “But I might have a couple later, if you're still here.”

  At this the beggar gave a cackling laugh which quickly turned into a raw moist cough that made Gilly wince.

  “Y'should buy 'em now, m'lord,” he said. “You might not come back this way…”

  Chuckling, the candleseller shuffled off into into one of the dim hovels. Gilly shook his head and strode on, glancing warily about him.

  Soon he came to a good-sized opening between two of the ancient hulks. Most of the gaps he had seen were narrow, sometimes no more than a cramped doorway leading into some enclosed warren of stuffy passages and odd-shaped rooms. This opening was formed by a large gantry linking the two ships, and was easily wide enough for the carriage that stood empty and motionless some distance along the boardwalk.

  He passed a few locals as he strolled along: washer women, some old fathers gathered around a copper flagon steaming over a brazier, a yawning stall owner, and a few hard-faced youths lounging by the way. All watched him pass by, cold eyes taking in the details of his fine garments, but he stared back with a sneering half-smile that brought uncertainty to their features. Unhindered, he walked on.

  At the abandoned carriage, two children were feeding oats and roots to the horse still waiting in harness, but when he seemed about to speak to them they dashed off past him. To the left was the near-vertical hull of a large vessel, a former cargo dromond perhaps, its planks gone green and black with mould, gaps and holes sprouting weeds and seedlings. To the right was the half-sunken ruin of a smaller ship, canted noticeably away from the boardwalk with a gantry sloping up to a dark doorway cut crudely into the hull's curve. Since the broadwalk ended several yards further on, broken and slanting into the water, the gantry seemed the most likely route to take. Drawing his sword, he started up it.

  Beyond the door was a narrow companionway stretching off into pitch black on either side while before him a wooden ladder led up to an open hatch and grey sky. He sheathed his blade, put one foot on the bottom rung then froze, breath held as he listened to the darkness.

  A faint scratching came to him, like rat claws. A thud, a gasp, a heavy splash from what seemed to be further down. A dread chill went through Gilly and he quickly climbed towards daylight.

  His fingertips found the woodwork damp and gritty to the touch as he pulled himself up onto a sloping deck, bared his sword again and looked around him. There seemed to be no trace of anyone, just the empty deck with its shattered stump of a mast and a ravaged bridge house amidships. There were signs that other buildings, huts or the like, had once sat on this deck but they had been ripped up and discarded quite recently. Smashed timbers,
rotting rope and other debris had gathered along the foot of the slanted deck and swathes of twisted netting hung over the side.

  “Greetings,” said a calm voice from somewhere behind him. “You appear to be lost.”

  Tense readiness rushed through him as he turned and stepped up to the bulwark. Across on the next ship was Coireg Mazaret, standing barefoot on the raised prow and regarding Gilly with icy interest.

  “Nay, ser,” Gilly said. “I believe that I have arrived at the right place.”

  “By following me, it would appear.” The other man shrugged. “No matter…”

  Then to Gilly's astonishment, he sprang into the air in a long leap that carried him across the intervening distance in an arc of effortless ease. He landed lightly and perfectly on the hulk's raised peak, legs slightly bent, arms loose at his sides, and Gilly noticed that a faint green nimbus clung to him.

  Gilly grimaced. More than a hint of sorcery to this one, he thought. On impulse, he resheathed his sword and sauntered casually along to the bows. Pausing a few feet away from the prow, he leaned against the bulwark, folded his arms and looked up.

  “Pray tell me, good ser,” he said. “Just who are you?”

  The face of Coireg Mazaret, every pore and crease tinged with vibrant emerald, stared down, the eyes full of a usurping presence. Gilly ignored the penetrating gaze and went on.

  “You see, I recognise your form and face, but I know that another's thoughts move behind those eyes. You are not Coireg Mazaret, thus I am curious to know who you are.”

  The possessed man uttered a quiet laugh. “Such boldness should not go unrewarded. Very well, child of earth, know that my name is Crevalcor of the First-Woken.”

  “The First-Woken”

  A nod. “After the Lord of Twilight raised up the Daemonkind from the Great Lake of the Night, he knew that he would need other servants to aid him in the coming struggle against the other two gods, the forsworn ones. Dawn-Eagle and Sun-Tiger were their aspects then and all the tribes across this land and others bowed down before them. Only among outcasts and dissenters did the Prince of Dusk find those who would listen, those like myself.”

  A melancholy note crept into his voice. “He woke us to the presence of the Wellsource and opened our minds to its powers. By his hand he taught us, rewarded us, and even punished us, and to us fell the same tasks when others turned to his banner. We helped in the construction of fortresses to which Gorla and Keshada were no more than outposts, and commanded armies vaster than all the Khatrimantine Empire's combined.”

  “I can only assume that this was a very long time ago.”

  “Several ages have come and gone since then,” Crevalcor said. “What was land now lies below the waves, and farms and forests garb ancient seabeds. And who is to say that such tumult may not occur again?”

  “Indeed,” Gilly said, wrinkling his nose at the reek of decay that seeped up from the wreck. “Sadly my curiousity is scarcely whetted, ser Crevalcor. You were one of the Lord of Twilight's generals in that long-past age, yet here you are prowling alone through these rotting ships. I wonder why…”

  “For the fulfillment of a long-held purpose,” said Crevalcor, his eyes shining. “I saw the many-towered citadel of Jagreag topple and crash, and the Dusktide phalanxes falter before the Forswearers' horde on the Plains of Kogil. I fought and wept and fought for days on those fields of slaughter till at last I too fell. For a timeless time my spirit wandered in the jungles of the Earthmother's under-realm and drifted down its limitless rivers, but I could never be washed clean of my devotion and purpose.

  “Then came the moment for which I had hopelessly wished down long eras, the obliteration of the Fathertree and the destruction of the Rootpower. That mighty death reverberated throughout the Earthmother's realm, and her cry of grief was pleasing to hear. It seemed quite soon after that the Shadowkings sought out my spirit and raised me up into this useful vessel.” He glanced down at his body and smiled.

  Gilly listened and shivered in the stinking, deepening cold, knowing that he faced ancient, implacable sorcery. I could make a run for the hatch, he thought, letting his hand slip down to grasp his sword's hilt. Or dive over the side…

  “A fultile plan,” Crevalcor said. “For I do not prowl alone…”

  All Gilly heard was a faint creak from behind him but it was enough. He leaped forward onto his left foot while swiftly drawing his sword, then swung it to the right and round in a savage disembowelling slash. The blade hacked into the side of his assailant and lodged there. Gilly's fury at this turned instantly to horror as he beheld the creature he fought.

  He had listened to Alael speak of the walking dead they fought in the battle in Oumetra, and had heard a few of Mazaret's men whisper tales of unquiet graves in the wastes of Khatris. Neither could have prepared him for this. Standing in rivulets of water, the cadaver still wore flesh and garments in places, dripping, rotten coverings encrusted with sand and broken shells. Skeletal hands twitched at its sides while a sickly hot green radiance flickered around exposed joints and in the vacant eye sockets.

  Gilly wrenched his sword free and retreated down the sloping deck. The cadaver watched him then turned to Crevalcor, ruined throat straining to form words.

  “...drown him...for you…drink from him…”

  “No, captain, I want him taken prisoner to keep your brothers under control.”

  Other mouldering revenants were emerging from the hatches, pulling themselves up onto the deck or lurching out from the bridge, some carrying ropes. As he watched the dead converge Gilly heard splashing in the water and looked over the side to see more of them clambering up the seaweed-choked nets.

  Gilly dashed madly back up the deck, kicked the legs from under one pursuer who came too close and hewed the arm from another. He reached the bulwark and even had one leg slung over it before a thrown rope mesh tangled itself about head and arms, and bony hands hauled him back. His blade was torn from his grasp and once he was firmly bound he was dragged over to sprawl at the feet of Crevalcor. The sodden rope of the mesh had rasped across Gilly's mouth, pushing past his lips until he turned his head aside. The taste was vile.

  The ancient sorcerer smiled at him. “My Source-sense knows of you, so I am sure that you will have much to tell me.”

  “Might be less than you think,” Gilly said, despair honing his wit. “A few songs about the ladies of Choraya and a recipe for Falador game stew, that's about it.”

  “Yes, I'm sure you will amuse me greatly before we have it all.” He turned to the cadaverous captain. “Soon the warblood will be spilled and we shall cast off. Do those we leave behind know what to do?”

  “….yes, my lor'…”

  The captain turned to his crew and grunted wordless orders at them. As most of them descended the sloping deck and climbed over the side, Crevalcor spoke to Gilly.

  “Most of them were sailors on these broken ships. It was little effort to wake them from their watery tombs.”

  A deep groan came from within the vessel and the deck under Gilly shuddered. The sound of splitting wood came from the stern. He felt the entire hulk lurch as it began to right itself. Struggling into a half-sitting position he saw the ramshackle structures and roofs on either side sliding sternwards. They were heading out to the inlet that led to the sea.

  Without oars or sails, Gilly thought dizzily. And a hull punched with more holes than my socks…

  Shouts came from the decrepit jetty as onlookers gathered, but their voices soon faded. Other sounds reached Gilly's ears, a thrashing surging din that emanated from a nearby cargo hatch, and in his mind's eye he pictured torrents of water gushing through splinter-edged gaps in the hull…

  A ship of the damned, he thought with grim relish.

  “A ship of sorcery, child of earth,” Crevalcor said. “Driven by my will, my unwavering purpose.” He turned to look ahead with a breeze ruffling his hair and an emerald aura shifting about him.

  “A ship of twilight!”
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  Chapter Twelve

  Fever dreams full of fire,

  Crash onto the shores of sleep,

  And seep steadily out,

  To set the day ablaze.

  —Jedhessa Gant, Dreams In The Red Chamber, 2, vi

  Even as the ravaged wreck was carrying Gilly Cordale out to sea, the Archmage Bardow was standing on a frosty balcony near the top of the High Spire, watching a group of horsemen ride away from the Shield Gate and the snow-shrouded walls of the city. From the great audience chamber through the arch behind him came the sound of hammer chisels but his thoughts were wholly on the meeting that would shortly take place out at the rebuilt fort. As soon as Yasgur arrived.

  The stratagem offered up by the Mage Council had been accepted by the High Conclave with surprisingly little resistance, almost as if everyone knew that launching an attack would be as hazardous as inaction. Bardow had spent most of that day advising on the gathering of materials and volunteers, and the assigning of knights from the Order of the Fathertree under Yarram. The small caravan had then set out in the icy late afternoon to arrive at the old smugglers' ridge by sundown. By evening, he knew, a flagpole would have been erected along with several tents before work began on the ruined fortifications by torchlight and continued through the night.

  The early morning brought a steady snowfall and a masked messenger from one of the enemy bastions to propose a meeting of the opposing commanders before noon.

  “And to converse with the honoured Archmage Bardow too,” the messenger had said. “Such is my master's request.”

  “I shall convey your words to my Lord Regent,” had been Yarram's stiff reply.

  Recalling the verbal report brought by one of Yarram's sergeants, Bardow smiled bleakly. The enemy are so eager to learn what lies behind our apparent confidence, that they're almost daring me to meet them face to face, he thought. Which, of course, is out of the question.

  Instead, the Shadowkings or their underlings would have to deal with Yasgur, with Atroc and Yarram on hand as useful distractions. Without any mages to take the measure of, the enemy would be forced to speculate on the nature and scale of the powers ranged against them. And in the light of the Earthmother's intervention during the last battle, the Shadowkings might be inclined to be more cautious.