The Shadow King

by Alec Hutson

  The Betrayer twisted its head to look at her again, its lips parted slightly, and she heard it truly speak for the first time. Not in hoarse, layered whispers, but in the voice of a surprised child.

  “No.”

  It broke apart into tattered strips of darkness. The fragments dwindled, fading into nothing.

  The piece of the sword slipped from her fingers. Without the hand of the Betrayer filling the wound in her belly the blood was pumping out of her in great gouts. She felt the warmth of it even as the rest of her body grew cold and numb. She turned her head back to the lake. Her father was closer now, nearly to the edge. The liquid barely reached up to his ankles, though his long robes were somehow dry. She blinked, trying to understand how this was possible. Even more strange, he was smiling at her, something she hadn’t seen since she was a small girl. Slowly, he raised his hand, beckoning her to come to him.

  In another chamber hollowed from the flesh of the Ancient, the last three creatures that called themselves the Chosen dissolved into mist and shadow.

  “Your Highness!” Keilan cried as the queen let out a shuddering cough and fell forward. Cein d’Kara caught herself with splayed hands before she struck the ground and stayed like that for a long moment, her tangled red curls veiling her face. Beside her, Jan had doubled over, his arms folded across his chest and his eyes closed. Suddenly his body was wracked by violent heaving and he spat up a clump of glistening darkness.

  Keilan hurried over to the queen, offering to help her up as she slowly raised her head. She ignored him, struggling to her feet with a look of grim determination, then stumbled towards where the Skein lay.

  The sorcerer was not yet dead, to Keilan’s great surprise – he’d managed to prop himself up against one of the larger chunks of the broken iron door, his arms and legs hanging limp and his skull-like head lolling to one side. A line of blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. The only indication that he was alive was his ragged breathing, his chest rising and falling despite the sword embedded in his ribs.

  He did not lift his head as the queen came to loom over him. She swayed, then steadied herself and leaned over to grip the silver hilt of Keilan’s sword with two hands. With a grunt she pulled hard, nearly toppling backwards as the blade slid from the sorcerer’s body. He coughed as a fresh wash of darkness stained his robes, but still he did not look up at the queen.

  “Don’t be afraid, Skein,” Cein d’Kara said. “After all, life is a circle.” Then she swung the sword. Blood erupted from the stump of the Skein’s neck as his corpse toppled to the side, and Keilan had to jump back as the head of the sorcerer bounced close to his boots.

  The queen turned back to Keilan, holding out his sword for him to take. The Skein’s blood speckled her pale face. He accepted the sword with a nervous bob of his head, trying to avoid staring at the gore-streaked blade or the queen’s satisfied smile.

  “The . . . Chosen,” Jan gasped, and they turned to him. The Min-Ceruthan was on his knees again, staring around the chamber. “Where did they go?”

  “They just . . . broke apart,” Keilan answered. He felt the queen lash together a sorcerous weave and send it questing outwards.

  “They’re gone,” she said. “Destroyed, we can hope.”

  “Look!” Jan cried, pointing.

  A ghostly haze surrounded the Skein’s severed head, leaking from his eyes and mouth. As it dissipated, Keilan saw that the hair of the sorcerer was fading to gray, and his skin – once youthful and unblemished – was now creased by wrinkles. The queen gazed at this transformation for a long moment, her face unreadable. It did not look to Keilan like she was surprised by what had just occurred.

  “The Chosen might be dead,” Keilan said, tearing his eyes from what was happening to the Skein’s corpse. “Or more dead than before. Cho Lin was carrying a weapon that could kill them.”

  “Cho Lin is here?” Jan blurted, finally finding the strength to stand.

  Keilan nodded. “And Alyanna—”

  “Alyanna as well?” The Min-Ceruthan looked dazed, as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

  “Yes. We came here to rescue you, but we got separated. And then I was ambushed by one of the Chosen and it brought me here.” There was so much more to tell, but it would have to wait. “Alyanna believed the Chosen were connected, all of them bound together by the will of the most powerful of the children. The Shadow King, he called himself. It was his hate and anger that drove them to punish the world for what had happened to them long ago. Perhaps somewhere in this place Cho Lin managed to strike him down, and the rest of them followed his spirit into oblivion.”

  The queen was looking at him strangely. “You are not the same boy who ran away from Saltstone,” she said, shaking her head.

  “Much has happened, Your Highness,” Keilan replied, embarrassed by her scrutiny.

  “Clearly,” she said, turning away from him to stare at the tunnel that had been revealed when the door was destroyed. “And there will be time later for the telling of stories.” She stepped over a still-smoldering chunk of black iron as she approached the threshold.

  “Wait,” Jan cried. She glanced at him, one eyebrow raised, and he seemed to realize the impertinence of giving her a command. “Your Highness, that door was a Min-Ceruthan artifact of incredible power. It was never meant to be breached. They wanted to keep whatever is behind it hidden away forever.”

  The queen stared at him for a long moment, her face inscrutable. “I cannot turn away now,” she finally said, taking another step towards the tunnel.

  It was like walking inside a hollow length of polished black bone, Keilan decided. Which it might actually be, he admitted, though he hadn’t seen anything like this before in the body of the Worm. He’d read somewhere that the bones of dragons were black as obsidian – perhaps the Min-Ceruthans had brought the remains of one of those legendary creatures here . . . or maybe the Ancient had swallowed one thousands of years ago.

  It was likely something else entirely. He wanted to ask Jan and the queen what they thought, but he couldn’t bring himself to break the eerie silence that had descended. Even the heartbeat of the Worm was muffled, when just a short while ago his teeth had fairly chattered with the pounding. His companions also seemed to be baffled by the tunnel, if their expressions were any indication. The queen’s pace was slow and measured as she trailed her fingers against the smooth black walls; her brow was knitted and her eyes were narrowed, suggesting she was lost in deep thought. Jan looked more nervous, his hands clenching and unclenching as he followed a few steps behind the queen.

  The tunnel stretched arrow-straight, until it terminated far ahead in a hazy white glow. Gradually, this patch of light grew, until Keilan saw that it was another chamber. The heartbeat of the Worm swelled again here, its walls and ceiling the same mottled white flesh threaded with organic filaments he had seen before. The entrance to another black-sheathed tunnel was across from the one they had just traversed, but between them and this passage was something strange.

  It hovered in the center of the circular chamber: a sphere larger than a man carved of some opalescent substance. Keilan was reminded of the pearls that divers risked their lives to gather in the rocky coves near his village. Washes of shimmering color crawled across its surface, as if it was reflecting light from some hidden source. A thin stream of sorcery, visible in Keilan’s mind’s eye, extended from the sphere and vanished down the tunnel across from them.

  Cein d’Kara approached the strange artifact, her hands clasped behind her back, and made a slow circuit as she studied it carefully. A tendril of sorcery flickered out from the queen to gently caress the sphere, but she must have learned nothing, or what she did learn simply confused her, as after her investigations she pursed her lips, frowning.

  “Do you know what this is?” she asked Jan, who had edged closer than her to the floating pearl.

 
; “I . . . think so,” he said slowly, though he did not sound at all certain. “There are . . . echoes of something I’ve felt before. Perhaps if I . . .” As he reached out his hand the queen cried a warning, but it was too late. His palm found the gleaming surface, and for a brief moment the energy coruscating across the pearl infused Jan, his hair lifting slightly and sparks dancing from his fingertips.

  The queen muttered a curse, her wards flaring into existence.

  Jan shivered as he pulled away a moment later, the crackling power dissipating.

  “Yes, it is,” he said softly, his voice raw. He cleared his throat and spat out another wad of blackness. “It’s what I thought it was.”

  “And?” the queen asked with a hint of impatience.

  “A soul jewel. Or something very much like one.”

  The queen’s brow furrowed. “Wait. The same sort of artifact you and the other Talents used to gather the lives necessary for your immortality?”

  Jan nodded grimly. “Alyanna forged her jewel in the black kiln, the lost workshop of the Warlock King, following instructions set down by that ancient sorcerer. This artifact is much older, I believe. Different, but perhaps the same principles. It is an artifact designed to absorb lives and transform them into energy that can be harnessed for great acts of sorcery.” His eyes were sad, Keilan thought, as he stared into the roiling sphere. “There are lives in this one still, though they are not human.”

  “Not human?” Keilan blurted. “What are they, then?”

  Jan gestured at the artifact, as if inviting him to touch it. “See for yourself. It won’t harm you.”

  Keilan and the queen shared a quick glance, and then they stepped forward and laid their hands on the sphere.

  The brightness scalded her skin. It hurt to raise her eyes so she kept them fixed on what was below, the great writhing mass of her people. They filled the huge pit that had been scooped from the mountain, mothers and elders and young, their sobs and screeches carrying up the slope to where she clung. She had been one of the last to be herded into the pit, prodded along by the metal claws of the savage men, and so she had not been forced by the crush of bodies to go deeper, as had happened to the rest.

  Where were the fathers? They were supposed to protect. What had happened, that the people could be pulled from under the mountain and brought here, to suffer beneath the blazing fire fixed to the roof of the outside?

  A roar split the air, and hissing in fear she glanced up at the ridge above the pit. Light rippled across silver scales as the great wyrm reared back and spread wide its wings. The men in their metal shirts raised their claws and gave answering, triumphant cries. She moaned, scraping her cheeks raw with the filed ends of her talons, tearing at the silken ribbon the elder had tied around her neck for luck on her spawning day.

  Five shining points hovered in the air above the great pit – Wielders, but men, which she had been told by one of her mothers long ago was impossible. Men could not Wield, as they were little more than beasts. Lines of fire connected the five Wielders, forming a burning pattern in the sky. Her mother had been wrong.

  Another roar, and the wyrm leapt from its perch on the ledge. She glimpsed the terrible queen of these men, her golden hair flowing behind her as she held tight to a spine on the wyrm’s back. The wyrm circled the pit, its wings churning the air.

  Where were the fathers? Where were the Wielders? Where was the king and his broodmates?

  The wyrm banked again, its sinuous neck twisting so that it faced the people huddled below. How many thousands were shrieking in fear under that merciless gaze?

  The wyrm’s maw opened, and flame consumed everything.

  Keilan’s fingers slipped from the surface of the pearl and he was thrust back into the chamber, the edges of the scene he had just witnessed – so vivid and distinct only moments ago – already beginning to blur.

  “Wraiths,” he said softly, meeting the eyes of the queen as she lowered her own hand from the sphere. “I was a wraith child. A girl.”

  “And I was an elder,” Cein said. “I could not breathe because there were so many others crushed against me.

  “You saw the moment of their death,” Jan said, his face troubled. “The last of their memories before their souls were drawn into this artifact.”

  “Men did this,” the queen said. “I saw them on the cliffs above.”

  “It was my people,” Jan murmured. “Min-Ceruthans. That dragon . . . I recognized her. It was Kalixias, the Mother Drake, though in my time she was ancient, her scales tarnished and her spines yellowing. She was the first of the great dragons to be tamed by a sorceress queen of Nes Vaneth.” He looked overwhelmed by what he had just witnessed. “And that woman on her back must have been Galiana, the one who waged war against the wraiths and tore down their mountain kingdoms. She was revered as the queen who first made the holdfasts mighty.”

  “She murdered the helpless,” Keilan said, harsher than he intended.

  Jan said nothing, but his gaze turned to the black tunnel where the thread of sorcery from the sphere vanished.

  “Why did the Min-Ceruthans do this?” the queen said, joining him as he stared into the darkness. “What is feeding on this sorcery?”

  Jan shook his head to suggest he didn’t know. “We can still walk away from here, Your Highness. Seal up this place as best we can and pray that the Worm returns to its slumber.”

  Cein gave no indication that she had heard the bard. She took a step in the direction of the tunnel, and Jan’s hand shot out to grab her by the wrist. The queen turned back towards him, her eyebrows rising.

  “Do you know why Alyanna feared you?” Jan said, his voice almost desperate. “Because you and she are the same. You both push forward, heedless of the consequences, and others die because of your ambitions.” Cein watched him without expression. “She freed the Chosen, despite the dangers she knew must come with ushering such demons back into the world. She ended the old empires because she saw no other way to cheat death. You broke through the barriers that had been erected in my mind because you had to know what was behind them, even though the risks of prying at an unknown sorcery were great.” Keilan thought he saw a flicker of emotion in the queen’s face when Jan said this. “And she knew you would do this – that is why she sent me to Herath. She knew this because she understands you; she realizes you are like her. Alyanna has accepted herself and embraced her nature. But you . . . you still have a choice. You can step back from the edge.”

  Jan fell silent, and the queen studied him for a long moment. She searched his face, seemingly looking for something, and then she pulled her wrist from his grip.

  “You truly believe that,” she said, her voice tinged with sadness. “You think it is ambition that drives me forward. The pursuit of power.” She ran a hand through her tangled red hair, smoothing out some of the snarls. “We live in a time of ignorance, Jan. The candles that once illuminated the dark corners of this world have guttered and gone out. And there are ancient things out there, in the shadows, watching us. Dangerous threats. Creatures like Alyanna. The Chosen.” She spread her arms, indicating the flesh of the Ancient that they stood within. “The White Worm. I do not press against the boundaries of what we know because I want to gather more for myself; I do it because that is the only way I can reveal what lurks beyond the light. I do it to protect my people; in truth, I do it to protect all men.” Her voice was rising, growing more strident. “We are a weak and fragile species, and only the most recent of many to walk this world. The rest have all vanished. What was their undoing? How can it be prevented?” Cein returned her gaze to the tunnel. “To know this, I have to bring light to the darkness.” With a flicker of sorcery her wizardlight swelled in the tunnel, the pale radiance sliding along the polished black walls. “The Kalyuni sorceress and I are very different. It saddens me if you cannot see this.”

  She moved forward, i
nto the tunnel, walking directly beneath the thread of sorcery emanating from the soul sphere. Jan watched her with his shoulders slumped, as if he had failed at something of great importance. Then he sighed deeply and followed her.

  “If only you could talk,” Alyanna mused, addressing the head she was holding up by its brittle hair. Intensely blue eyes bored into her, glazed by death. She brushed a finger against the yellowing, parchment-like skin stretched tight over the skull, grimacing at the strange, oily residue of sorcery that clung to it. These remains reeked of the Void. This must have been the Skein sorcerer, and she remembered what the genthyaki had said. A Hunger, tainted by powers beyond this world. Perhaps the shapechanger had been telling the truth, mad as it was.

  She glanced around the chamber, taking in the headless corpse with the brutal stab wound in its chest, the chunks of iron smoldering with potent sorcery, and the black tunnel stretching into oblivion. No sign of the Chosen or the other Talents, although there were two unclasped collars lying on the ground. Her gaze lingered on the dead Skein. His head had been hacked off with a sword, which would suggest that it had been done by Keilan. As prisoners, Jan and Cein certainly wouldn’t have had any weapons. Did that mean the Chosen had been destroyed? She stretched out her senses, searching for their vile presence, but found nothing except a fading trace.

  It truly seemed that they were no longer here.

  This would suggest the Crimson Queen was free once more, and that instead of fleeing this place she had decided to push even deeper into the Worm.

  How interesting. Alyanna allowed herself a crooked smile, and then tossed the head over her shoulder. She concentrated, spending a moment tucking away all traces of her sorcery, folding her power deep within herself.