Mickey Zucker Reichert - Shadows Realm

by Shadow's Realm (v1. 0)

  Eight years old, Harriman crouched behind a floor-length curtain of velvet and lace, watching naked bodies entwined on the canopied bed at the center of the room. Silme knew the couple as Harriman did, his mother, a maid, smashed beneath the bulk of the duke. As the duke’s bastard, Harriman had free run of the keep except for this bedroom. The lure of the forbidden had drawn him here, and now he attributed his mother’s moans to violence inflicted upon her by the duke. The scene should have cut him to the heart, but, oddly, it inspired no reaction. Silme separated her mind from Harriman’s, discovered the spliced pathways that should have supplied emotion to the scene. Accepting the burden, she forced herself to look upon the incident as a boy concerned for his mother rather than a woman pitying the recollection of a child.

  Carefully, Silme added the anguish, rage, and a glimmer of hatred, felt them blossom and Harriman’s answering shudder. Linked with his memory, she watched the child that was Harriman dash aside the curtain and run to the bedside. She heard his scream of outrage, felt his tiny fist pound the duke’s tautly-muscled back. The duke twisted. A hand lashed out, caught the child a staggering blow across the mouth. The force flung Harriman against the wall. Fighting for breath, hands wet with blood and tears, the child covered his eyes to block out the scene on the bed.

  Harriman supplied the memory, Silme the sensation. Magnified by Bolverkr’s handiwork, the combination nearly overwhelmed Silme. Tears of rage and pity burned her eyes. She felt Harriman sobbing, too, and released him from the recollection. Quickly, she backtracked, found the remembrances of the berserks battering Taziar, and forced Harriman to confront his actions in the cruel light of his own judgment. Mangled by the passion borrowed from Silme, Harriman shuddered, racked with guilt. Encouraged by her success, Silme shouldered aside mercy, steering Harriman’s thoughts to his attack against her.

  Suddenly, fingers gouged Silme’s shoulder. She gasped and felt her shock flash solidly through Harriman’s mind. Whirling, she found herself staring at a tall, thin man dressed in a tunic and hose so neutral gray they seemed to have no color at all. He wore a brown cloak, and, above the collar, Silme met blue eyes as cold as the bitterest Scandinavian winter. White hair lay sweat-plastered to his forehead. His face was clean-shaven and eternal as mountains. The life aura surrounding him glimmered, as blindingly brilliant as a roomful of high ranking Dragonmages. His stance seemed casual, but it neatly blocked Silme’s escape.

  Silme knew she confronted Harriman’s master yet, oddly, the realization brought no fear. She could not hope to best him; her powers lay so far beneath his, a fight would prove futile. If he wanted to kill me, he would have done so already. The awareness released Silme from the need to plot, freed her from all emotion but curiosity, and no pretenses were necessary. “Bolverkr,” she said simply, as if well-met over a glass of wine rather than amidst the tatters of a human mind whose owner lay weeping on a granite floor.

  “Silme.” Bolverkr nodded with careless respect. He continued as if he had come solely to make conversation. “You nearly destroyed my hard work.” He flung a gesture at Harriman’s mind.

  Silme studied Bolverkr’s face, unable to guess his age or fathom his intentions. “That was my objective.”

  “Indeed.” He conceded. “And understandable, I suppose.”

  Silme’s gaze followed the lines of Bolverkr’s frame. His body obstructed the exit from Harriman’s mind too completely for accident. Confused by his pleasantness, she awaited an attack as abrupt and ruthless as the ones perpetrated against Taziar. “I don’t suppose you would stand aside and let me leave.”

  “No need.” Bolverkr shrugged narrow shoulders. “You’re Dragonrank. A simple transport escape would take you anywhere you wanted to go.”

  “Not from inside someone else’s mind.”

  Bolverkr shrugged again, this time in concession. “We could go elsewhere. Some place where you could escape with a transport spell.”

  “Certainly, but at what price?”

  “An insignificant expenditure of energy. The life of an unborn child who should never have been conceived. Nothing more.”

  Bolverkr’s game had worn thin and, with it, Silme’s patience. “Sorry, it’s my baby. I chose to conceive it, and I choose to bear it. That decision doesn’t involve you.” Annoyance made her bold. “I don’t even know you. What possible interest could you have in my baby?”

  Bolverkr shifted but left Silme no opening for escape. “That child is an much as anathema as Loki’s own. Allowed to live, it might inflict as much evil as its father.”

  “Evil? Allerum?” Bolverkr’s accusation seemed so ridiculous, Silme had to struggle to keep from laughing. She recalled the features that attracted her to Larson: selfless dedication to friends and causes, an unfamiliarity with her world that allowed him to treat her as someone to be loved rather than feared, the ability to cry, and a guileless, solid morality that drove him to defy Gaelinar at the risk of his own life. “That’s nonsense, Bolverkr. Allerum acts tough at times. I admit, he’s trained to fight, but he wouldn’t hurt anyone or anything without good cause.”

  Bolverkr placed a hand on Silme’s shoulder, his touch patronizing. “I didn’t question the elf’s intentions. You must realize he’s an anachronism. He doesn’t belong here. Purposeful or not, his presence disrupts the fragile balance of our world. Just like Geirmagnus.”

  “Geirmagnus?” Silme repeated, floored by the comparison. “The first Dragonrank Master?” She recalled how Larson had let Taziar describe the men’s exploits in the ancient estate of Geirmagnus. At the time, Taziar had mentioned that there was something odd about Larson’s knowledge of the ancient Dragonmage’s artifacts. But Larson had avoided the subject, passing it off as unimportant. Attributing Larson’s reticence to grief for Kensei Gaelinar and reluctance to relive his own near-fatal gunshot wound, Silme had let the matter rest. Now, recalling Larson’s tendency to gloss over details of his past that he found too complicated to explain, Silme wished she had pressed him harder for information.

  “Geirmagnus wasn’t a Dragonrank Master,” Bolverkr corrected. “He was the Master of the Dragon Ranks. Doesn’t that school of yours teach history? Geirmagnus never had the ability to perform magic. Like Allerum, he came from the future. Geirmagnus used techniques from his era to find potential sorcerers and teach them to channel Chaos. I think he meant well, but he dabbled with the foundations of our world as though they were his personal toys. Because of Geirmagnus, the gods of legend became real and Dragonrank mages can tap power. No doubt, his meddling caused many other changes throughout our world and its past and future history. But forces are made to balance, to keep our world alive; and those forces fought back, Silme. The Chaos Geirmagnus summoned killed him before he could inflict more damage on our world.”

  “How could you possibly know all that? The school teaches Geirmagnus’ history as well as any man or god has learned it, but he died centuries ago.”

  “One hundred eighty-nine years.” Bolverkr met Silme’s incredulity with an expression so somber, she did not think to doubt him. “I was there.”

  “That would make you more than one hundred eighty-nine years old.”

  “Two hundred seventeen.” Bolverkr patted his chest. “Not bad for a man of my age.”

  Silme said nothing, the joke lost in a wash of bewilderment. She glanced at the shattered barriers of Harriman’s mind and shivered with awe at the amount of chaos Bolverkr must command. The Dragonrank school had taught her that the earliest sorcerers wielded more power than modern mages, and Taziar’s story confirmed the speculation. But not even the exaggerations of bards and storytellers had prepared her for the boundless energy of the Dragonmage before her.

  Bolverkr cleared his throat. “Is Allerum a sorcerer?”

  Silme knew lying would prove fruitless. Bolverkr had already explored Larson’s mind, and his question could only serve to test her honesty. “Certainly not.”

  “Is he strong?”

  “Not unusually,
” Silme admitted.

  “Is he skilled with weapons?”

  “Yes.”

  “When he first arrived in our world?”

  When I met Allerum, I’m not sure he knew which end of the sword to hold. “No,” she said aloud. Not wanting Bol-verkr to lose his reluctance to challenge Larson directly, she added, “But Gaelinar ...”

  Bolverkr interrupted. “Yet a man without any special abilities killed a god and a Dragonrank Master, restored life to a sorceress and another god. A god, I might add, the gods themselves could not rescue. Can you explain that?”

  Bolverkr’s words spurred memories within Silme, a grim mixture of joy and sorrow. The tasks had proven difficult beyond compare. Success had required effort, desperation, gods’ aid, threats, and a lot of teamwork. Luck played a large role, and victory had been tainted by the death of friends. Still, Silme was more interested in Bolverkr’s theory, so she turned the question back to him. “Clearer purpose and a more focused will.” She used the words Gaelinar would have chosen. “But I imagine you have a different explanation.”

  “Allerum doesn’t belong here. Something about misplacement in time makes the natural forces more sensitive to his interference, Silme.” Bolverkr paused, genuine concern creasing his timeless features. “Gradually, Allerum will destroy our world. That’s why we have to kill him now.”

  “You’re mad.” Silme took the offensive. “And what you propose is madness. I told you before, Allerum would never harm anyone without provocation.”

  “No?” Bolverkr’s tone became a perfect blend of grief and triumph, as though he made a solid point at the expense of his own happiness. “Let me show you.” With an exaggerated gesture of apology, he grabbed Silme’s wrist and pulled her through the exit of Harriman’s memory.

  A flash of light obscured the maze of Harriman’s thoughts. Silme’s awareness overturned. Flung back into her body, she barely had time to glimpse Harriman’s bedroom before she was wrenched into a vortex of Bolverkr’s sorcery. She landed on her back amid a wreckage of stone. Autumn wind swirled, chill through the tatters of her dress. A stomach cramp doubled her up. She rolled, clutching at her abdomen, knees and elbows drawn in tight.

  After the deep gloom of Harriman’s mind, the ruddy light of sunset seemed bright as day. At length, Silme’s vision sharpened and her nausea subsided. But where she expected to find farmers scurrying to finish harvest before nightfall, smoke twining from cooking fires, and goats tramping muddy paddocks, she saw crops uprooted and a shattered jumble of thatch and stone. Corpses were tumbled in awkward piles, terror locked on every upturned face. Grief battered at Silme, and the foreignness of its source frightened her as much as its intensity did. The spell Bolverkr had used to bring her to this location defied all logic. He drew us out of Harriman’s mind to cast it, so we must have transported here. Yet no Dragonmage has ever held the power or knowledge to transport another being. “It’s a trick,” she said. “An illusion.”

  “Neither.” Bolverkr removed his cloak and spread it across Silme’s shoulders. “To make you see something unreal, I would have to access your mind. I would need to do to you what I did to Harriman. I think you know I haven’t.”

  Silme sat up, drawing the cloak over her torn clothing. She winced at the imagined pain of Bolverkr’s attack against Harriman. If Bolverkr holds enough life energy to shatter mind barriers, why couldn’t he learn to transport another sorcerer? Fear clutched at her. How can I hope to defy a mage with this much power?

  “You’re seeing Harriman’s last memory of his village and his friends.” Bolverkr knelt beside Silme, staring out over the town. His features were etched with pain, but he took the time to answer Silme’s unspoken questions. “I created an entrance to this thought so it can be accessed with a transport spell, but, as you can see, I didn’t change the memory itself. The sorrow we feel is Harriman’s.”

  The immensity of the tragedy jarred Silme beyond speech. A question came to mind, but Bolverkr answered it before she could put it into words.

  “I left Harriman the emotion this scene inspired in order to commit him against the enemies who caused the destruction.”

  Suddenly, Bolverkr’s strategy became clear to Silme. “You want me to believe Allerum and Taziar caused this?”

  “Yes.” Bolverkr pulled at a fold in his cloak, covering a rip in the fabric of Silme’s dress. “But only because it’s the truth.”

  Silme scowled. “You’re lying.”

  “I’m not. And when I explain how they did it, you’ll know I’m not.”

  Silme shrugged. Beneath a noncommittal exterior, she felt ragged with doubt. “Speak, then. But I’ll judge for myself.”

  “I expected nothing else.” Bolverkr tipped his face away, and Silme could see the edge of a bitter smile. “Did Allerum and Taziar tell you they killed a manifestation of Chaos?”

  “A dragon.” Silme felt the queasiness return. “Yes.”

  “Not just a dragon. The dragon that killed Geirmagnus and nearly all the original Dragonrank mages.” Bolverkr seized Silme’s hand. “A dragon composed of enough Chaos to balance the resurrection of a god and a sorceress of your power.”

  Unnerved by the direction Bolverkr’s explanation was taking, Silme jerked her hand free. “They told me. What of it?”

  Bolverkr accepted her rebuff without comment. His hand hovered, as if uncertain where to go, then it dropped to his knee. “You and I know Chaos is a force, not a being. The only way to destroy chaos is to slay its living host: a man or a god. Dragons are manifestations of raw chaos, not living beings. When Allerum and Taziar killed the dragon, they dispersed that chaos. Dispersed it, Silme, not destroyed it. And the natural bent of such energy, whether of Order or Chaos, is to find itself a master.”

  Horror swept through Silme, chipping away the confidence she had known since childhood. “You?” Though unnecessary, the question came naturally to Silme’s lips. Bolverkr’s life aura gave the answer, still so grand as to obscure hers like a shuttered lantern in full sunlight.

  “The one man alive since the conception of magic. A logical choice, I think.”

  Silme doubted Chaos had the ability to reason. Still, even mindless things seem drawn to survival. Few other hosts could have lived through the transference of that much energy. She dodged that line of thought, embarrassed curiosity could unsurp concern for Larson and Taziar. “Allerum never meant you any harm. He had no idea the Chaos-force would seek you out and no way to know it would kill people. You can’t condemn a man for ignorance.”

  “Why not?” Bolverkr waved his hands in agitation. “The laws do. Imagine if a foreigner killed and robbed a tavern-master in Cullinsberg. It wouldn’t matter to the baron that this was acceptable behavior in the foreigner’s kingdom. The murderer would be sentenced and hanged as quickly as any citizen.” His voice assumed the practical monotone of a lord passing judgment. “The ignorant should not, must not meddle with the fabric of our world. Allerum and Taziar plunge willingly into impossible tasks without bothering to consider the consequences. For their crimes, any regime would condemn them to death.”

  “No.” Silme felt as if something had tightened around her chest. “Have you lost all mercy? Allerum and Taziar would never harm innocents on purpose. Even the strictest king would give them another chance.”

  “Another chance to destroy the world?” Bolverkr dismissed Silme’s argument, his tone underscoring the ridiculousness of her claim. “Don’t let love blind you to reality.”

  “Nor should anger and grief blind you!”

  Bolverkr’s manner went cautious. “Well taken. Neither of us in a position to judge. However, should we leave the question for our peers, I have no doubt their verdict would be, ‘Guilty,’ and the execution just. Are you equally certain about your assertion?”

  Silme’s fingers twined in the fabric of Bolverkr’s cloak. She pictured her fellows at the Dragonrank school, recalled the thick aura of arrogance and intolerance that seemed to accompany power. B
olverkr is right. My peers would condemn Allerum. A breeze creased the valley between her breasts, and she tugged the cloak impatiently to close the gap between its edges. And for that, my peers are fools. Aware she could not convince Bolverkr with this line of reasoning, Silme changed tactics. “Why?”

  Bolverkr blinked. He turned his head to meet Silme’s gaze. “Didn’t I just tell you?”

  “I mean,” Silme started, gaining confidence, “why are you telling me this? I helped to kill Loki. I was the reason Allerum and Taziar fought the dragon.”

  “Yes.” Bolverkr fidgeted.

  Sensing his discomfort, Silme plunged ahead. “And?”

  Bolverkr folded his fingers together, their skin smooth, elastic, and well preserved despite his age. He hesitated, as if considering options, then sighed, apparently choosing candor. “When I first saw you, I believed I would have to kill you. And I was prepared to do it.”

  The pronouncement came as no surprise to Silme. Bolverkr’s uneasiness gave her the upper hand, and she savored the moment of control. “But something changed that?”

  Bolverkr swung around to face Silme directly. Again, he reached for her hand. When Silme shrank from his touch, he did not press the matter further. “People fear what they do not understand. I came to Wilsberg to escape the whispers, the fawning, the isolation. I traveled south to an area where the existence of sorcerers is attributed to legend, to a farm village where even legend might not pierce. I found acceptance. My friendships seemed genuine until necessity forced me to use magic and the townsfolk realized they aged while I did not appear to grow older. They let me stay, whether from familiarity or dread I don’t know. And, over time, their grandchildren learned to care as deeply for me as I did for them. But though I fathered many of them and the babies of many others, there was always an awe in their love which kept me distant. They showed the caring of children for a hero rather than the shared love of partners or friends.”