The Shadow King

by Alec Hutson

  He froze, coldness creeping up his spine. It almost looked like something was crouched among the drifting fronds, watching him. His unease grew as he continued to stare at that patch of shadows recessed among the stalks. Finally, he could take it no longer and he grasped his sorcery, summoning a ball of wizardlight. Pale radiance filled the tunnel, dispelling the gloom. All along the walls small creatures scurried into holes, and even the odd flora seemed to shy away from the light. With a thought, Keilan sent his sorcery floating down the corridor.

  The leaves shivered as one of the Chosen stepped out into the light. Shocked, Keilan’s hold on his sorcery slipped, and the tunnel plunged into twilight again, the demon’s ragged shape merging with the darkness.

  Panic rising, Keilan fumbled to weave his wards, letting out a triumphant cry as they shimmered into existence.

  He waited, barely breathing, and stared at the shadows where he had seen the Chosen. Could it have been a phantasm like his mother? His mind playing tricks? Perhaps it—

  His ward shivered, buckling. He had barely begun to scream before the demon pushed through his sorcery and the darkness swallowed him.

  Cho Lin stepped through the wound and into the humid interior of the Ancient. It was like entering a jungle cave overgrown with vegetation: traceries of vines clung to the ceiling, and strange plants and fungi crawled along the walls, drooping with unnatural blossoms. Small lizards skittered away from her approach, and a huge insect uncased silver wings and whirred into the air with thrumming urgency. Overlaying all this was the distant, maddening drumbeat of the great beast’s heart. That reminded her that the ceiling was not stone but flesh, and the latticework of vines was actually strands of organic matter. The creatures that inhabited this realm were parasites on a vast host.

  A crackling far down the tunnel drew her attention. In the vague, dusky light that permeated everything she saw a shape crouched among a profusion of curling stalks and broad leaves.

  “Alyanna!” she cried, and the sorceress rose, turning to look at her.

  Cho Lin peered down the tunnel. Where was Keilan? Had he not yet pushed his way through the mist?

  “Shan,” Alyanna said, carefully stepping over a small puddle of yellowish liquid as she approached Cho Lin. “You made it past the guardian.”

  “The thing that looked like my father?” she asked, squinting at the glowing mist on the other side of the wound. It roiled and eddied, prevented from entering this place by some invisible barrier.

  “Yes. The complexity of the sorcery took me by surprise, but now that I can consider what I experienced I’ve concluded that it was something fashioned to dissuade us from entering. Unlike any sort of sorcery I’ve ever known, but the Burrow was made by creatures very different than us, and in many ways very far beyond our capabilities.”

  “Did Keilan make it through?”

  Alyanna stooped down to examine a shining black knob of something that looked vaguely like bone. “He did,” she said, running her hand along the surface of the protrusion and then sniffing her fingers.

  Cho Lin looked around again. “Well, where is he?”

  “I’m not sure. I think he arrived first. But there’s another smell here . . . a foulness I know. The Chosen.”

  “They must have come through the rift as well.”

  Alyanna pressed her palm into the soft flesh of the ground and closed her eyes. “Keilan’s sorcery is . . . messy. There’s a residue here that suggests he summoned as much as he could hold, and then that was slapped away from him, spilling everywhere.”

  “So you are saying . . .”

  “The demons have him, if he’s still alive.” Alyanna straightened, staring down the length of the tunnel. “The Chosen taint their surroundings with their passage. It’s a trail I think I can follow.”

  “Is that how you discovered them in the warlocks’ tower?”

  “No,” Alyanna replied distractedly, still focused on whatever clues the Chosen had left behind. “I was experimenting with the sorcery of dreams and they called out to me.”

  Cho Lin reacted without thinking. She seized Alyanna by her robes and smashed her against the wall. The sorceress gave a pained yelp as her head struck a twisted black vine.

  “You were the one who freed them!” Cho Lin cried, shaking Alyanna like a doll. “You lied to me! The shapechanger spoke the truth!”

  Rage contorted the sorceress’s face. “Filthy Shan!” she hissed, and the gloomy tunnel suddenly grew darker. “You dare touch me?”

  “You killed my father,” Cho Lin said coldly, then slammed Alyanna again into the soft wall. Bits of debris rained down from above, tangling in her hair.

  The sorceress stared at her hatefully. “Fool,” she spat. Tendrils of purple light coalesced from nothing, reaching out to wrap around Cho Lin’s arms and neck.

  Yet when the sorcery touched her, it shimmered and vanished. Cho Lin felt the bone amulet pulse with warmth.

  Shock replaced the anger in Alyanna’s face, her eyes widening.

  “You unleashed the Betrayers,” Cho Lin said, throwing the sorceress to the ground. Alyanna broke her fall with her outstretched arms, but one of her hands landed on a flower with gleaming, shard-like petals and she shrieked with pain. She rolled onto her back, cradling her bleeding hand. “This horror is all because of you!”

  A wave of blue flame billowed up from where Alyanna sprawled, but the sorcery melted away before it reached Cho Lin.

  “You need me!” screamed Alyanna, fear lacing her words.

  “I cannot trust you,” Cho Lin replied, and she found that her hand was on the hilt of her butterfly sword. “Will you destroy the Betrayers, or try to use them for your own ends, as you did before?”

  “Idiot girl,” Alyanna snarled. “If I have to be the one to wield the black knife, I will.”

  “You will have to take it from me.”

  “I’ll take it from your cold fingers!” Alyanna cried, then swept her arm across her body in a cutting motion. A scythe of crimson energy erupted from her hand, consuming Cho Lin’s vision. Where it struck her there was no effect, the bone upon her chest throbbing, but she realized belatedly that she was not the true target. With a wet ripping sound, the membrane stretched taut across the wall beside her ruptured, and a surge of cold liquid knocked her from her feet.

  Cocooned in a shell of sorcery, Alyanna could only watch in mute astonishment as the ichor she had unleashed flowed in pulsing waves. It was like she was a stone at the bottom of a fast-flowing river, staring up at the water rushing above. She hadn’t expected a flood like this; she had been hoping merely to send the Shan tumbling, maybe render her senseless so she could remove that damnable Pure artifact from around her neck. Clearly, though, she had punctured some deep pocket of whatever this substance was, and it was draining into the tunnel.

  The world lurched. Alyanna screamed as she was flung about with jarring force, and only her wards kept her from smashing hard into the walls. Even still, black spots swam in her vision as more spasms rocked the tunnel, tossing her back and forth. An earthquake . . . but this was not under the earth.

  The tremors subsided as quickly as they had started, though the dark liquid continued to gush from where she’d pierced the wall. Gradually even that started to slow, until finally it was no longer coursing over her in a torrent. With some effort she stumbled to her feet, swaying. The tunnel was flooded by the black ichor; it came well up past her knees, and was still slowly flowing. Her gorge rose at the smell. The sundered membrane hung in ragged strips, and beyond it was a vast, dark cavity.

  Had she hurt the Ancient? Was it even now rousing from its dreams, or had whatever flicker of pain she’d caused already been forgotten?

  And where was Cho Lin?

  She must have been swept down the tunnel and out of sight. Hopefully she cracked her skull open, Alyanna thought as she slogged through th
e black liquid. She needed Niara’s knife – why had she allowed Cho Lin to carry it? She cursed her foolishness, though it was true she’d never expected the Shan to turn on her, even if she’d somehow realized the truth of what happened with her father. Idiot spider-eating savage, more obsessed with her family honor than her own life. With all their lives.

  Alyanna turned down the bend in the flooded tunnel, and her heart sank. The floor in front of her was riven by a chasm about a dozen paces across, and the liquid flowing around her legs was tumbling over the edge. She crept closer and peered down into the abyss; the same vague radiance as in the tunnel illuminated the depths, and she could glimpse a river of black far below.

  Oh, by all the dead gods. The Shan must have been carried down there and swept away. She was never going to be able to find her now. A numb hopelessness spread through Alyanna as she stood on the lip of the chasm and gazed down at the ichor or blood or bile of the Ancient. Alyanna stumbled and nearly fell as another tremor, smaller than before, shivered the White Worm. She glanced back the way she’d come. The Chosen had taken Keilan in that direction; presumably, they were bringing him to wherever Jan and the queen and the Skein shaman had gone. It must be a place where the beast could be woken. Alyanna fingers brushed the ivory handle of her wand. She may not have the knife, but she was still a Talent. She could not destroy the Chosen anymore, but to rouse the Ancient the dark children must need the power of the sorcerers – otherwise why bring them inside? Perhaps if she killed the other Talents the Chosen’s madness could still be stopped.

  Vhelan was just picking himself up when a second, stronger tremor struck, knocking him back down into the snow. A tremendous crack sounded, and he glanced up the slopes of the Burrow as a sheet of stone broke free. Luckily, they were not in its path, and he gave silent thanks for this as he watched the avalanche gather ice and snow and scree as it swept down the side of the Burrow.

  “That’s not good,” Nel said, helping Seril to her feet. The magister was staring up at the Burrow, her face a welter of emotions.

  “What if they need our help?” Seril asked.

  “There is little we can do,” Vhelan said with a sigh. “Except perhaps to get farther away.”

  “We can try to enter,” the younger magister suggested. “Maybe once we get inside the effects of the Worm are lessened.”

  Vhelan shook his head slowly. Seril’s newfound bravery cheered him, but he had no illusions about what they could do to aid the two Talents that had already gone inside.

  “It looks like whatever is under there is waking up, boss,” Nel said uneasily.

  “Hope that it doesn’t,” Vhelan replied. He turned back to the rest of the soldiers, most of whom were staring at him like he knew what to do. “In the meantime, let us retreat back to the ridge. At least get somewhere we won’t be crushed by falling rocks.”

  “What about the supplies and horses?” Seril asked, waving her arm in the direction of the half-burned Skein wagons.

  “Help the men salvage what you can; we’ll need the food if we’re going to survive the journey out of the Frostlands.” If we ever get that chance, he thought with a grimace. “But be quick about it. We don’t know what is coming next.”

  With some effort, Keilan swam back up towards the light. He cracked open his eyes and saw the mottled walls rushing past him in a blur. His cheek rested on something cold and hard and his arms were wrapped around the body of a thin and gaunt child, held in place by fingers that gripped his wrists as solidly as iron manacles. Pain lanced from his knees and shins as his legs knocked against the bulging growths emerging from the uneven ground.

  Realization of what was happening slowly wormed into his awareness: he was being carried by one of the Shan demons. Terror rose in him and Keilan tried to pull his hands free, but it was like straining against a mountain. A scream bubbled up, but all that escaped his lips was a broken whimper. He could feel the sharp shoulder blades and each individual knob of the demon’s spine digging into his flesh as he squirmed, trying to free himself.

  The Chosen ignored him as it hurtled down the tunnels.

  Where was it taking him? What was it—

  The world spasmed.

  Keilan tumbled through the air, his head smashing against something hard. The darkness returned, and he struggled to keep from slipping into unconsciousness. He coughed, moving his arms feebly. Where was the Chosen? He tried to sit up, but it was like there was a great weight pressing against his chest. The ground beneath him shivered again, and he groaned. What was happening?

  Cold fingers touched his wrist. He forced his eyes open, and after a moment the blurry shape hunched over him sharpened. The Chosen was crouched beside him; it had lifted his limp arm, and seemed to be examining it. Terror swelled in Keilan again as he saw clearly its corpse-pale features and the black holes beneath its tangled hair. It had been a girl once, he thought from the shape of its face, but it was difficult to tell for sure. Its attention flickered from his arm to its own. Mustering all his strength, Keilan lifted his head slightly so he could better see what it was looking at. Black veins were etched stark against its white flesh, and the exact same pattern was visible on his own arm. As he watched, one of the dark lines in the Chosen’s arm twitched, and as if in a mirror he saw the same movement under his own skin.

  “No,” he mumbled, unable to accept what he was seeing.

  The Chosen wrenched its attention from their arms and bared its sharpened teeth at him, hissing.

  Then he was being lifted again, as easily as if he were a child, and the Chosen resumed its flight through the tunnels of the Worm.

  The rushing darkness carried her along. When she’d first struck the surface after her fall, Cho Lin had accidentally swallowed a mouthful of the cold, viscous liquid, and it had burned all the way down her throat. It wasn’t water, whatever it was, but it also hadn’t killed her. Her stomach ached a little, and her skin was tingling as the ichor seeped into the wounds she’d taken. Now she was just trying to keep her head above the surface of the black substance as the walls of the tunnel flashed past.

  A muted rumbling slowly began to swell, and by the time she realized what it was she was being carried over the edge of a small waterfall. She screamed, fearing that something hard or sharp waited for her at the bottom, but luckily she ended up plunging into a deep pool. She surfaced, spluttering, wiping the black liquid from her eyes. She was floating in the middle of a large cavern, or cavity, or whatever one would call such a space inside a great beast. While the first tunnels they’d entered had appeared to have been hacked from the flesh, this place gave her the impression of having been naturally formed, channels carved by this liquid as it flowed through the Worm.

  She began to swim with awkward strokes – it had been some years since her father had insisted she learn following her fall into the koi pond, and the thick liquid was more difficult to move through than water. The only reason she wasn’t panicking was because she could see that a strip of dry flesh fringed the edges of this pool. There even appeared to be a hole set in the wall, which hopefully would provide an exit. She couldn’t think of a worse way to die than being trapped down here, slowly withering away, unable to escape.

  Finally, she heaved herself onto the shore, her hands and arms sinking into the ground. Tiny crab creatures skittered away from her as she rolled onto her back and stared at the soaring rib-like structures that met at a point far above her.

  She felt disgusting. The liquid clung to her, oozing along her skin and pooling inside her clothes. With a shudder, she shrugged out of her furs and then began to try and scrape the substance from her body, dressed only in the light garments of the southern lands. It was warm inside the great beast, and glancing at the sodden heap of furs she realized there was nothing that could get her to wear those again. She did find the black knife and the shard of her father’s sword within the discarded furs and secured them in the
belt that cinched her tunic. Then she staggered to her feet, wishing fervently for a way to wash this foulness from her hair, and set off towards the gap that she prayed would give her a way to return to the tunnels above.

  Just before she entered the crack in the wall, something shifted within its depths, and then she stumbled back as a small shadow stalked from the darkness.

  Keilan had the vague sense that the tunnels the Chosen had been rushing through had opened up into a much larger space, and then he was unceremoniously dumped onto the ground. He lay there, too drained to look up, his cheek pressed against the flesh of the Worm as the reverberations of its heartbeat echoed in his skull. The sound had been swelling for a while now. He imagined a gnarled black heart the size of a great castle suspended in the semi-darkness, awash with the ichor that he had seen flowing behind the translucent tunnel walls.

  “Is he what we need?” a man said, his accent grating and harsh.

  the boy has powerful sorcery.

  This was the hoarse whisperings of many children roughly layered over each other. He’d heard the same voices once before in the ruins of the Selthari Palace, as a broken sky bled above a temple of twisted corpses.

  Keilan struggled to his knees and looked around, swaying.

  The chamber was large, but it still seemed constricted given the size of the black iron door set into the far wall. The door was round and covered with strange, swirling designs that had been incised into the dark metal, fairly blazing with sorcery in his mind’s eye. Keilan wasn’t sure if this power was bound up within the door, or if it was originating beyond it and leaking out from around the edges, but it was so overwhelming he had to look away.

  When he saw what else was in the room, he moaned. A cadaverously thin man in threadbare robes stood close to the iron door, staring at Keilan. The skin stretched taut over his skull was smooth and unlined, but Keilan could not believe this sorcerer – and this was the Skein shaman, he was certain – was as young as he looked. The soul staring out from his unnaturally blue eyes had an ancient, terrible weight. With some effort, Keilan looked away from the Skein and at the other figures in the room.