Plague of Shadows

by Howard Andrew Jones

  Renar was two-thirds of the way to the monstrous, roaring beast when Vallyn told him to get back. But Renar wasn't about to retreat and be accused of cowardice. It didn't matter that he could practically feel his heart in his mouth, or that his pulse beat in his temples like a drum. He pledged to himself that he would not hang back while his friends struggled. His father would not have done so.

  When the lovely rainbow screen dropped all about the wyvern, the creature's head swiveled his direction and Renar halted, thinking the thing had seen him. Then he noticed its eyes tracking after an especially pretty shimmer of blue drifting to the right. Renar had seen sorcery before, but never anything like this. Kellius had talent.

  Renar steeled himself and advanced to swing at the beast's swaying neck. It was a glancing blow, but he'd connected. Somehow that granted him greater courage, and his second strike bit through the blue-black scales. The impact of it raced up through his arms, and he knew a savage exultation as blood spurted forth in dark rain.

  He heard Elyana cry a warning. "Renar! Jump back!"

  He was accustomed to obeying Elyana instantly—there was no room for hesitation when training horses. He did as bade, and the swinging tail and its bloody spike missed him by a handspan.

  As the wyvern's head rose, Renar saw two arrows blossom along its neck like gruesome spines.

  "Run, boy!" he heard Vallyn shout, and he leapt back, watching that tail and the head that was suddenly no longer fascinated by the shining lights. A clawed wing swung down as he backpedaled, and then a blazing ball of fire struck that same wing, filling the air with the sound of sizzling and the smell of burned meat.

  The wyvern roared again, and at close range, Renar's ears rang at the sound. Smoke rose up from the flapping wing as the creature beat it rapidly to put out the flame.

  Elyana raced up on its blind side, the long slim blade glittering in both hands. Renar saw the creature's nostrils flare open. Its head turned.

  The elf's blow sliced deeply into the beast's neck a foot back from its head. Renar shouted warning as the tail swung up and then down at her, but Elyana threw up her sword. The tail spike clanged against it, and Elyana staggered, then dropped to her knee.

  "Back!" she called to Renar in a strained voice. He'd assumed her first neck blow would kill the thing, but the wyvern beat the grass with its wings. Dirt, dry leaves, and grit blew out, stinging the boy's eyes.

  Elyana stumbled backward, panting, and Renar went with her. The wyvern beat its wings once, twice, gave a little hop as though it meant to take flight, and then crashed into the earth.

  Its wings fluttered, feebly, and its legs clawed at the grasses. Even after it stopped moving it moaned for several long minutes, in such a pitiful way that Renar actually felt a little sorry for it.

  "Is it dead?" Kellius asked, trotting up. A ball of light floated just back of his left shoulder, and black smoke trailed up from the ends of the fingers on his right hand.

  "Mostly," Elyana told him. "Stay back." She moved off into the dark. Renar followed.

  Elyana found Drelm lying still in the grass, his breathing swift and shallow. As if that weren't a clear enough indicator of what had happened, the plate armor about his right arm was bashed in around a slim hole that leaked blood across the plate, the chain sleeve beneath it, and the tabard that covered both.

  Poison. She had no cure for poison.

  "Get Vallyn," she told Renar without turning. The young man dashed away as she bent down, centering her focus. There was a slim chance that the bard had learned greater healing magic in the intervening years. Certainly Arcil had improved—perhaps Vallyn had as well.

  Elyana centered her focus with a deep breath. She lowered both hands to the wound and extended her spirit.

  The injury was deep and painful, plunging through nearly the whole of the musculature, right down to the bone. The half-orc's arm was more than twice as thick as hers. She wondered if the spike would have passed all the way through hers.

  She sealed the upper layers of his flesh first, so that the blood ceased its egress from the body, and then set to work lacing the muscles together. She was not as practiced nor as polished with more challenging wounds, but she knew that the injury was most of the way knitted. The real problem was the weakness caused by the poison. It marched slow and steady through his bloodstream like a procession of mourners halfway up the cliff to where they would inter the body.

  "Looks like we'd best start digging," she heard Vallyn say beside her, and she snapped out of her trance.

  The bard's lute was slung once more on his back. His nightshirt was rumpled, his hair mussed, and Elyana was surprised by how much older he seemed.

  "He's poisoned," Elyana said quickly to him. "Are your healing magics—"

  "I don't know poisons, Elyana." The bard cursed and passed a hand through his hair. "I never thought I'd be burying an orc," he finished, sounding bemused.

  "We're not burying him," Elyana said, rising. She did not remind him, again, that Drelm was a half-orc. She considered the horizon, and the distant point of light that was Woodsedge.

  "He's not dead already, is he?" Renar asked, dismayed. "Isn't there something we can do? And what do you mean we aren't going to bury him? He deserves a proper burial—"

  Vallyn talked over Renar, paying him no heed. "That's a Galtan city, Elyana. Even if they didn't want to shoot you and me on sight, there's no way any healer would help Drelm. He looks too much like an orc."

  "We can get him to a temple of Abadar."

  "He'll be dead before we can make it," Vallyn countered.

  "Not if we take a shadow ride," Elyana answered.

  Vallyn winced. "A plague on shadows. You'd be mad to try."

  She stared at him, hard, and he looked down.

  "When I last saw you," she said, still staring at him, "you were working on spells that altered your appearance. Do you know them still?"

  Vallyn nodded, reluctantly at first, then added a pleased little shrug. "I've gotten pretty good at it, if truth be told."

  "Can you alter someone else?"

  Kellius and Renar looked back and forth between them, wondering at the length of time it took Vallyn to reply.

  "I can," he said. "But I can't alter us all. Only one."

  "One will have to do."

  "But there's three of us needing disguise."

  "Two." Elyana produced an amulet from her pouch. "I have a little help from Arcil." So saying, she lifted the necklace and clasped it around her neck. Instantly Kellius beheld the face of the thin-nosed, arrogantly handsome man who'd confronted them in the ruins.

  "Arcil!" Vallyn cried.

  "He left this on the body of his apprentice," she said, astonished that her own voice had now taken on the haughty, male precision of her former friend. "Listen to me!" she said. Despite everything, amusement rang in her voice. "He's very good."

  "He's very bad," Vallyn countered.

  "Is this wyvern his work?" Kellius asked.

  "Probably," Vallyn said. "It'd be like him. If he were listening and thought we had him pegged to attack after we found the crown, he might've sent the thing just to show us up."

  "Wyverns are common in the mountains," Elyana noted.

  "I know we've little time," Kellius said quickly, "but I have one more question. It's clear the Galtans want you two dead. Arcil rode with you. Won't they recognize his face?"

  "Arcil was always good with concealment magic," Vallyn said. "I don't think any Galtan that lived ever saw his real face."

  Elyana faced the bard. "Set a spell on Drelm so we can be on our way."

  Vallyn shook his head. "I'm still wanted there, remember?"

  "When's the last time you were on a wanted poster, Vallyn? Do you look the same?"

  Vallyn's hesitation seemed to indicate mor
e surely than anything else that her point struck home. But he nodded. "They know me even better than you, Elyana."

  "Very well." She undid the necklace and passed it over her head, changing in an instant back to her true form and voice. "You wear it. I shall wear a hood. Place your spell on Drelm."

  Vallyn considered her, then let the amulet sink into his palm, the chain dangling between his fingers. "He's probably not going to live," Vallyn cautioned. "This is—"

  "The sooner we get moving," Elyana said coolly, "the better his chances. Cast your spell."

  Vallyn thrust the necklace into an upper pocket on his shirt. He unslung his lute and stepped over to the prone captain.

  In moments the bard was plucking at strings, singing a simple little melody, his voice rich and thoughtful. Drelm's features wavered and blurred, and Elyana suddenly found herself regarding a pale fighting man with dark hair. He did not look so much a different man as he did an image of what Drelm would have been if the orc blood were somehow stripped away. Fangs vanished, the brow ridge faded, the ears shrank down. He was still thick and muscular, but even in rest was somehow more peaceful.

  "There he is," Vallyn said, a touch of pride in his voice. "It'll hold for a few hours. After that—they'll have a half-orc on their hands."

  "He might be dead before then," Elyana told him.

  They worked quickly to saddle the horses and gather their gear. Even so, it was not swiftly enough, and Elyana twice checked Drelm's pulse, so concerned was she that they were wasting time.

  She herself held Drelm, knowing that she could trust Persaily to carry the extra weight and travel the strange terrain. She hoped she could likewise trust the mare to carry them through the Plane of Shadow. To the others she gave the lead lines of one pack animal each, hoping they were skilled enough to manage their beasts and lead another, then set her mind upon the ring and called forth the shadows.

  Chapter Eight

  Temples and Temptation

  The spiraling gateway of darkness spun open before them, and Elyana urged on her mount. Persaily advanced at a trot, ears cocked forward. The other horses followed her example, whinnying back and forth to each other.

  Persaily snorted in surprise but settled to Elyana's soothing whisper. The landscape through the barrier was flat and grassless, the sky gray. Mountains loomed on their left, but they were twisted and impossibly high. A strange blocky shape with immense bat wings glided high in the air, beneath the drifting stars, and its body trailed long hair or tendrils. Elyana couldn't tell which they were and hoped it would never fly close enough for her to learn.

  As was common with powerful energy foci from the real world, the city dominated the plain on the shadow realm. In Elyana's experience, cities and landforms large enough to register in the shadow realm either compressed distances, or somehow attracted objects toward them. After only a minute of riding Elyana had already drawn close enough to the shadow version of Woodsedge to perceive the sides of its buildings. Homes and shops seemed fashioned in misshapen parallelograms, sometimes narrower on the top than the bottom, sometimes longer on one side than the other. Distant and lumpy man-shapes lurched between those buildings, and as their horses cantered toward them, Elyana saw two of those humanoids turn and point at their coming. Above, the winged thing turned in the air and glided down.

  They would have to chance riding on a little farther. There might be no city wall in this shadowy reflection, but there was certainly one circling Woodsedge.

  "Take us back!" Vallyn urged.

  But Elyana rode on, and with that strange rippling of distance that happened all too often in the Plane of Shadow, she was suddenly before the figures in the city. The "men" were just as warped and twisted as their buildings, longer on one side than the other. One in front raised a bent staff to swing at her, but she leaned away, balancing Drelm's slumped form with her off hand, and Persaily sped past. She made for a dark alley, willing the gate to reopen. Whatever the creature was that flew above let out a high, trilling call that sounded like a concert played on smashing glass, with a chorus of female choking victims.

  The gate between planes spun open in a counterclockwise pattern before her. Persaily dashed through, her hooves clattering on the cobblestones beyond. The animal snorted in relief as Elyana drew her to a stop.

  They'd come out in a winding side street. Multistory apartments crowded so far overhead that they blotted out all but a slim ribbon of the sky. She saw no watchmen. Scent was restored to her, but not the crisp, clean smell of steppe grass—it was the stink of a city with massed, unwashed humanity and overflowing sewers. Her mouth twisted in disgust.

  She turned Persaily. Over her shoulder she found Vallyn and Renar riding clear of the portal. Kellius, exiting last, stared fearfully back as the gate rolled shut and vanished in a puff of smoke. Both the horse he led and the horse he rode showed widened nostrils and rolling eyes, and she took a precious moment to ride back and soothe them.

  A bell tolled from within the city, a mournful sound. It struck three times.

  "Now comes the hard part," Vallyn said tiredly.

  "That wasn't the hard part?" Kellius drawled. He adjusted his hat, and Elyana noticed that it still boasted the petunia. She wondered if he'd been wearing it all the way through the fight with the wyvern.

  "That was just a race," Vallyn replied. "Now we've got some talking to do." He took stock of his surroundings and lifted Arcil's necklace to his head. His voice changed in mid-sentence as he continued: "We can follow the bell to the temple district." As startling as it was to hear the sound of Arcil's voice, it was even more peculiar to see Vallyn's transformation into the aristocratic wizard.

  Elyana pulled up her hood. A simple disguise, but adequate enough in the darkness.

  Woodsedge was a small, remote city, but it was Galtan, and as such the tall black shape of a guillotine stood like a grisly beacon in the central square. Lights burned in high towers beside the three stories of the columned magistrate's building across from it, and lantern lights flickered in high windows of many tenement buildings. As they rounded a corner, two men wearing black sashes and drooping, knit liberty caps spotted them and hurried to the middle of the street.

  "Citizens!" The larger of the pair called out to them in a booming voice. "What are you doing here after curfew?"

  "Greetings, citizen," Vallyn answered smoothly. He'd already slung his lute across his chest, holding the reins with one hand and the instrument with the other.

  The large man raised a hand and halted in front of them. The other raised a whistle to his mouth with one hand, though he did not blow it. With the other he brandished a cudgel crudely carved with the outline of a guillotine.

  Vallyn pulled his mount to a stop in front of the guards, who peered suspiciously. Renar quietly asked Elyana what they should do.

  "Listen," she answered.

  Vallyn spoke swiftly while plucking a soft, bright melody. His voice rose in a singsong way. Elyana wondered if the real Arcil would sound as pleasant were he to chant or sing.

  "We few but ride to aid a friend. He fell tonight and needs our aid. We know that you will let us by, for you can see we do no harm."

  The man with the whistle lowered both it and the cudgel. His companion's arm fell and his expression softened. Both looked a little blank.

  Vallyn kept strumming as he guided his mount down the street with his knees. Elyana and the others rode after.

  She did not remember the city in its entirety, for it had been more than a quarter-century since she'd briefly walked its streets at nighttime like this. Yet she wondered as to Vallyn's course, because it veered from the temple district down toward the south end of the city. Up ahead she heard the sound of music, and recognized that they had come to a neighborhood where they'd once lain concealed. It was a maze of streets, and if not quite lawless, less well patrolled t
han much of Woodsedge. Here, apparently, there was no curfew, for folk still walked the streets, albeit only in groups, and with sharp eyes for those who passed them. Many taverns and inns remained open, pale light shining ghostlike from upper windows, and music rose over strained and drunken laughter. Elyana likewise heard shouts and a single, distant scream that rose sharply and ended with abrupt finality. None of those they passed paid it any heed.

  There was just enough room to trot up to Vallyn's side.

  "What are we doing here, Vallyn?" she asked.

  "The temple district's closed by curfew," Vallyn answered. "But we can reach the temple of Calistria."

  Elyana's mouth tightened. She knew what a temple of Calistria was like here in the north. Of course it would remain open into the late hours, unlike a staid temple of Abadar.

  They left their horses with twin stable hands they found awake and dicing in front of the barn beside the temple, then Kellius and Renar carried their heavy burden. Even stripped of armor, Drelm was no lightweight.

  Vallyn led the way in; Elyana saw that he'd removed the disguise from his features and guessed that he meant to be recognized here by friends or allies. It troubled her that he'd changed their course of action without consultation, but now was not the time to question him. She fell back behind Renar, her hood drawn high.

  Renar had heard of Calistrian temples, but had never seen one, much less walked through one's doors. Used to the austere stonework of a temple of Abadar, he was impressed first by the easy way the walls of Calistria's house were softened by silk banners, its benches by bright pillows.

  Then he was struck by other things—the drifting clouds of incense, the little pools of light and the tables about which folk gathered, and most of all the attractive folk who moved among them and held court. These, he knew, were the priests and priestesses of Calistria, selected not just for physical beauty but for their intelligence and force of personality. The priestesses, with their scant yellow silk skirts and flounced, low-cut blouses, were some of the loveliest women Renar had ever seen, moving with long-legged ease, their hair swaying with their hips. When they smiled in response to offered questions of those come to the temple, it was like sunlight striking an altar or the opening of a flower. Off to the right he saw one lovely creature leading a man by the hand through an archway that led up a flight of stairs. He gulped, a flush creeping over his features. At that moment he had scarce thought for the dying captain whose shoulders he carried.