by J. L. Doty
The Elhiynes halted cautiously well out of range of any bow shot from the castle walls. BlakeDown had two of his scouts waiting on horseback just outside the castle with a flag of truce. He nodded to them, and they rode out to the Elhiyne force. The fact that they were not cut down immediately was a good sign. They spoke briefly with Malka, then returned at a quick trot.
“My lord,” the head scout said. “Lord Malka agrees to your terms of parley. He will meet you alone, unarmed, half way between here and his own forces.”
BlakeDown nodded. “You’ve done well.” He turned to one of his squires. “Have the stable master prepare my horse, and tell him to be quick about it.”
When Malka rode out to the intended rendezvous BlakeDown marveled at the girth of the Elhiyne warrior. Even at such a distance he was an imposing man, and BlakeDown knew he would feel small beside him.
“Your horse is ready, my lord.”
BlakeDown decided to let Malka wait a little. It would do him good to stew a while, to contemplate the folly of an attack upon Penda. Only when Malka seemed on the verge of leaving did BlakeDown climb down from Penda’s battlements, mount his horse, and trot slowly out to the rendezvous.
“What is this?” Malka barked angrily. “You treat an ally as if he were an enemy to be feared.”
BlakeDown showed no emotion. “I treat an ally as an honored guest. But I must know first that he is truly an ally, and not some enemy in disguise.”
Malka grew livid with anger. “An enemy in disguise—what game do you play, Penda? You ask our aid, then scorn us when we come?”
BlakeDown shook his head. “I did not ask your aid.”
Malka’s brows furrowed and his eyes turned coal black. “Did not ask—what lies are these? You sent a messenger, with a tale of Decouix attack.”
BlakeDown tried not to show the keen interest he felt in Malka’s unfolding story. “I sent no messenger.”
“But he bore the seal of Penda inscribed with magic upon the palm of his hand.”
BlakeDown shrugged. “Then the seal was a forgery, the messenger an impostor.”
“Impossible,” Malka said, shaking his head. “We checked the seal for authenticity.”
Again BlakeDown shrugged. “A talented impostor, but nevertheless an impostor.”
“But who?” Malka demanded. “Why?”
BlakeDown took great pleasure in his next words. “If I were you, Elhiyne, I would look to my rear.”
Sudden comprehension dawned on Malka’s face, comprehension and fear. “By the gods!” he swore softly. “Our home lies unprotected.” His eyes widened. He spun his horse about and charged madly back to his men. He screamed angry words at them. They reacted quickly, and soon were all racing away back toward Elhiyne.
Poor Elhiynes, thought BlakeDown. Foolish Elhiynes. So easily duped. They would be no match for the Decouixs, never had been a match for Decouix machinations. The Decouixs were subtle, sophisticated, like BlakeDown himself, and it was that subtlety that would see them victorious over Elhiyne.
BlakeDown smiled. With Elhiyne out of the way Penda would become ascendant in the Lesser Council. BlakeDown would finally have the opportunity to show the Decouixs how worthy an opponent he could be. Yes. They would learn to respect Penda, and its leader.
He had a sudden thought. The coming conflict between Decouix and Elhiyne would be bloody in the extreme. It might be wise to bolster his border troops, perhaps even to close the borders entirely. Otherwise the bloodletting might spill over into Penda lands, and that would not do. No. That would not do at all.
~~~
A cock crowed in some yard somewhere. A dog barked in reply. The wind gusted cold and chill off the stubby growth of the newly planted wheat fields below, and Morgin shivered in the morning air. He had no cloak to keep him warm as he huddled tightly within the shadow of the castle’s man-gate, waiting. The sun would soon rise and the shadows, for a short while, would be long and deep.
For two days now a group of Kulls had searched the small woodland for him. Each morning they emerged from the castle just after sunrise, carrying lances and pitchforks. They moved through the woodland stabbing each clump of brush that might offer hiding for a man. Sometimes Valso would come, sniff the air, say, “I smell his magic. He’s still here,” and the Kulls would search on, complaining, grumbling.
What had seemed an easy task, to search the small woodland and flush Elhiyne game, had proven frustrating and difficult. The wood was not so small, and hiding came naturally to Morgin, and with his magic now rising upon a strong tide of power, it was easy to elude them.
It soon became obvious that Valso was waiting for something. He had seventy or eighty Kulls. Not enough to take and hold the countryside, but enough to hold the castle for a short while if it was secured from within. He definitely had NickoLot as a prisoner, and probably all the Elhiyne women with her, and with hostages of that kind, the Elhiyne men, when they returned from wherever they were, dare not try to retake the castle by frontal assault. But, Morgin had reasoned, if they had an ally within, then stealth might yield some gain where force would reap only blood.
To that end he had spent half the night on his belly crossing the no-mans-land, one more shadow in the dark. The only thing that might have given him away would have been quick movement, so he’d cast a shadow about himself, then, on his elbows and knees and stomach, he’d inched his way with painful slowness across the cold, barren landscape.
It had taken hours to reach the castle’s man-gate, a heavy wooden door recessed deeply into the outer wall. Its dimensions had been carefully chosen: too narrow for two armed men to walk through shoulder to shoulder, but large enough for a single man leading an un-mounted horse. Morgin would have to pick his moment carefully, and do it right the first time.
A gust of wind swirled through the gate’s recess where he hid. His jaw muscles tightened as he tried to control his shivering. He’d stood there waiting through the cold night, unmoving for hours, and he wondered now if his muscles would be too stiff to take the opportunity when it came.
The sun peered over the eastern lip of the valley. The shadow in which he hid deepened, its edges grew sharp and well defined. That suited him. He needed shadow, for he dare not cast strong spells that Valso might sense. He waited until the sun rose full, until the shadows were long and deep, then he cast a light spell, a wind spell. He built it slowly, carefully, lest he use too much power and alert those within. And then he waited, holding his spell in check, allowing it to gust the wind just a little here and there so that it wouldn’t grow beyond control.
When his moment came, it came quickly. His only warning was a shout from within, then boot steps marching across the castle yard. He tensed as he heard voices muffled by the thick planking of the man-gate, then its bolt shot back with a sharp crack.
Morgin moved. He brought his shadow with him as he stepped out of the recess and pressed his back tightly against the outer wall. If one of the guards at the battlements above happened to look down now, he had little hope that his shadow magic alone would conceal him sufficiently.
The gate slammed outward. He heard voices and boot steps. A cloaked Kull walked past him, not looking back. Morgin watched the halfman’s back as he stomped his feet and blew breath into his cupped hands. It made a cloud of steam in the cold morning air. Another Kull joined the first, then another, then a large group, all looking outward to the woodland with their backs to Morgin.
“It’s bloody cold,” one of them cursed.
“No colder than the tits on that old witch Olivia, I’ll wager you,” one of his fellows answered.
More of their ilk joined them. “I’ll be glad when this spring is done,” one said, “and summer’s here to warm my bones.”
“I’d like to warm my bones on that witch AnnaRail,” another said.
One of them laughed. “If Lord Valso is pleased with us, you may get yer chance.”
Morgin waited, breathless, shivering. He counted twenty-three Kull
backs now. There’d be one more, then a few words of instruction, and the gate would close. He deepened his shadow, tensed for action, waited.
The last Kull stepped out. The Kull gatekeeper followed, but stopped, one hand on the half open gate. As he made some crude joke about the Elhiyne women Morgin released the wind spell. It gusted, blew the gate momentarily free of the gatekeeper’s hand. Morgin slipped behind him, past him, through the gate and into the castle yard, pressed his back tightly against the inner wall near the gate.
The gatekeeper cursed and swore, grabbed the gate, swung it shut, threw the bolt. He walked away swearing about Elhiyne winds, and did not look back. Morgin slipped quickly into the inner recess of the gate and the dark shadow that lurked there. In all he had moved only the thickness of the heavy gate, but now he huddled against its inner side, waiting, biding his time.
He could not wait long, though. He had no delusions about the limitations of his shadowmagic in broad daylight. By the time the castle fully awoke he’d have to be well concealed elsewhere. So he waited only long enough to be certain the yard was empty, then moved quickly, just another shadow among the many beneath the parapets.
There came a sudden commotion at the entrance to the main building. Morgin ducked quickly into the relative safety of the stables as Valso and the Tulalane stepped into view. The Decouix prince strode purposefully to the man-gate. “I tell you something is wrong here. I can sense it.”
Several Kulls accompanied Valso and the Tulalane. Their commander pleaded, “But, Your Highness, our guard has been meticulous.”
The Tulalane scanned the courtyard slowly. Morgin ducked back into a deep shadow, holding his breath, motionless. Valso stood within the recess of the man-gate and sniffed about like a hound on the scent. He turned to the Kull commander angrily. “He’s been here. Inside. I can smell his magic.”
“But that’s impossible, Your Highness,” the Kull said fearfully. “This gate is rarely opened. And then only under the eyes of two twelves of my men.”
“Don’t argue with me, Verk,” Valso snarled. “He’s been here. And not long ago.”
“He’s right,” the Tulalane said, still scanning the courtyard. His head moved slowly from side to side like a snake preparing to strike.
Across the courtyard, huddled deep within his shadow, Morgin watched and waited, swearing that he would not be spooked prematurely. The Tulalane scanned the yard once more, then his head froze, looking at Morgin as if there were no shadows in this world of mortals. His lips curled slowly into a satisfied grin. He raised his arm, pointed at Morgin. “He’s there, Verk. Take him. Now.”
The Kull peered intently, shook his head. “I see nothing, my lord.”
Morgin waited no longer. The stables were a trap with only one exit. If they caught him there he’d be done for. He put all the power he could muster into the strongest shadow spell he’d ever made, then sprinted out of the stables and across the yard. The cry rose immediately, for gray-black shadows do not run of themselves in the light of day.
Morgin dove into a narrow gap between two buildings, a back route he’d taken hundreds of times as a boy and knew well. He burst into a small garden, hurdled one row of flowers and trampled another. He turned right, then left, then cut into the kitchen and ran head-on into two Kulls. All three of them sprawled into a cascade of pots and pans.
Morgin was the first up, with one of the Kulls close behind. Morgin kicked him in the side of the head, then spun about and brought his sword down blindly on the other Kull. It bit deeply into the halfman’s shoulder. He spun back to the first Kull, kicked him in the face, then sprinted out of the kitchen and into the main building.
This was home ground. He knew it well, but the Kull pursuit was close on his heels so he cut a random path through the ground floor halls. There was shouting and screaming behind him and all around him, and he had no time to think far ahead, just to the next room or corridor, often only one step ahead of his enemies. There came a time when he thought they would catch him, and that he would die then and there, but then those behind him thinned out as they split up to search the castle, and for the first time he had hope of losing them.
Elated that he might be free to move about the castle at will, adrenaline surging through his veins, he turned into a wide corridor and met two Kulls face to face. One had a sword and reacted quickly with Morgin. Their weapons clanged together once, but Morgin’s magic was strongly aroused. He swept the halfman’s sword aside and took off most of his head with the next stroke.
The other Kull bore a crossbow and was slower to react. Morgin turned upon him, brought his sword down in a long arc just as the halfman raised his weapon. He felt his blade bite into the Kull’s skull just as he heard the twang of the crossbow. Then, as if he were a doll slapped backward by some great god, the crossbow bolt slammed into his chest, lifted him off his feet and dropped him on his back in the center of the corridor. The bolt had passed straight through his chest and out his back.
He coughed, struggled for air, tried to cry out but no sound came. His mouth filled with blood. He spit it out. More blood pulsed from the hole in his chest. He tried to breathe, but a white, hot lance of pain shot through his chest. His mind blinked, and for an instant he lay in an odd world of painless tranquility, then it blinked again and he returned to a world of agony. The corridor tilted and swayed crazily. His mouth filled again with blood, and he understood then that his wound was mortal. He had come to life’s end, and curiously, his only fear was that his family would not know of his passing.
With his mind swimming in a sea of pain and gathering darkness, he rolled onto his side to die. His vision blurred, narrowed, then his eyes locked onto a shimmering haze that caressed the wall before him. It sparkled, fluttered an ethereal flame fed by some unknown power. Then it disappeared, and there, recessed into the wall as if it had been part of the castle for centuries, he saw the alcove he remembered as a child, his enchanted place of hiding. It had not appeared to him in years, and he had long forgotten its existence, but now old memories flooded into his mind as he crawled there, dragging himself across the floor through his last agonized moments of life.
The pain seemed almost distant as inch by inch he crawled into the alcove. He struggled slowly to the far side, rolled onto his back, lay there with his head resting against the far wall. Now he could die, and the Kulls would not find him, and Valso would not know his fate, and perhaps, if nothing more, the prince of the Decouixs would ever wonder at his return.
Out in the corridor a lone Kull came upon the bodies of his two dead comrades. He looked cautiously up and down the corridor, prepared for an attack that might come from any direction. Then, seeing that none would come, he relaxed and frowned, disappointed. He looked back the way he’d come. “This way,” he shouted. “He come this way.”
The corridor filled quickly with Kulls, the black pits of their eyes alight with an eagerness for blood. “Where is he?” one snarled.
“Don’t know,” the first snarled back, squatting down to examine one of the dead. “He’s a fighter, this one is. Not easy to kill.”
“I like ‘em not easy to kill,” another growled. “Makes for more sport.”
Their leader eyed the scene carefully, then reached down and picked up Morgin’s sword. “He must be bad wounded to leave his blade behind.”
Another pointed to the crossbow bolt half buried in the wall. “Look! Here’s Mook’s bolt. It’s blooded.”
The Kull leader looked the scene over one more time, as if trying to reconstruct what had happened. He examined Morgin’s trail of blood, a jagged smear that disappeared strangely beneath a solid stone wall. He inspected the wall, seeking a crack or fissure that might indicate some secret passage. To Morgin, who lay dying on the opposite side of the wall, it looked as though the Kull was comically inspecting thin air.
The Kull leader finally shook his head and turned away from the wall. “Enough of this,” he snarled. “He can’t be far, and if we don’t f
ind him soon the prince’ll have our balls.”
Morgin watched the Kulls move down the corridor, his mind flickering in and out of consciousness, his soul fluttering between the agony of life and the bliss of death. And then the blood suddenly stopped pulsing from the hole in his chest. His ears filled with a distant roar and he tried to scream, but no cry came to his lips. Kings and wizards flashed before his eyes as demons of great power spoke to him in words he could not understand. He walked the halls of strange castles, stood before the tombs of long dead gods, but finally, laying on his back in the alcove, his grip on consciousness began to fail and he drifted toward the darkness that awaited him.
But as the darkness approached he had a vision that the alcove itself opened into a much larger chamber, a chamber that had not been there before. It was a room cluttered with swords and shields and armor of the finest kind, not fighting armor, but the ceremonial armor of a mighty lord, perhaps even the trappings of a great king. His eye caught the glint of a jewel embedded in the hilt of a sword, and another in the face of a shield, though the metal was oddly lacking of luster and seemed dulled by the dust of ages. And he noticed that on the walls the tapestries hung in moth eaten tatters, while cobwebs filled the corners and dust lay upon everything.
Even with his mind dulled by pain he knew then that the chamber of his vision was actually the tomb of a great and mighty king, for at the center of the chamber, surrounded by riches beyond imagining, had been placed a throne, and upon it sat unmistakably a king, though like the tapestries on the walls he too was decayed far beyond life. In life he had been a majestic king, while in death he was no more than a skeleton of bones and tufts of hair, seated upon his throne, one skeletal arm resting casually on an armrest, the other on the hilt of a great sword. Morgin recognized him as the skeleton king of his dreams.
