Plague of Shadows

by Howard Andrew Jones

  Once inside she experienced the same deadened sense of sound she knew from the Plane of Shadow. And she felt no wind. There was grass, but it grew short, thick, and black. She caught Renar glancing over his shoulder and hissed to him to keep his eyes forward.

  By the time they reached the bottom of the slope they'd descended almost a quarter-mile from the height above. Before them was a long row of black crystals, tall as obelisks, thrust up from the ground at sharp angles. A few lay supine, but some poked up at diagonals, and others were ramrod straight. As they neared them Elyana saw that the crystals stretched as far as she could see to right and left.

  "Don't touch them," she told the others.

  "No worries there," Vallyn answered.

  Elyana unslung her bow and set an arrow to it as she stepped forward.

  The strange forest of crystals ended after only ten paces, and then they emerged upon a sward of longer, finer grass stretching out for the next few miles. It was as though by passing the crystals they had more surely entered the true realm of shadow.

  "I wonder if these crystals are a power source, or a boundary marker?" Kellius asked, reading her thoughts. "I wish we had time to examine them."

  "Don't get to studying shadow magic, wizard," Vallyn said.

  In the distance she saw the tower clearly. It was much shorter than she had expected, rising no more then twenty feet. It had been built in a precise, twelve-pointed star, although time had canted it a few degrees to one side, and five of the slim, decorative spires that crowned its roof were broken off.

  Drelm held up a hand, and as the others obeyed his signal to halt, he crouched, axe gripped in his other hand, and bent his head into the grass. Elyana thought she heard snuffling noises, and then Drelm rose, bearing a skull. He held it in his palm and showed it to them. The mandible was missing. Elyana had never seen such an elongated crown, or such wide orbits.

  Drelm dropped it gently to the turf.

  They soon discovered that the grasses hid great swaths of bones. After the first few Elyana stopped looking to see if she could determine race. Far more important was the cause of death, and the length of time that they'd lain there. It was all too easy to assume that they were all remnants of some long-ago battle.

  She and her companions were a half-mile in before they saw the first shift. A few hundred feet ahead the air blurred, and suddenly a half-dozen scaly things in blackened armor were shoving spears against winged humanoids bearing burning swords. They were there only long enough for Renar to mutter "Abadar" and for Elyana to raise her bow. They vanished without so much as a puff of smoke or a sparkle.

  "Was that an illusion?" Vallyn asked. From the sound of his voice, he clearly did not think so. "By Holy Calistria, I hate the damned shadow magic. I can't believe you got me involved in—"

  They heard a roar behind them and whirled. A lake of dark, bubbling oil had appeared, and a creature bobbed on its surface, its huge reptilian head full of razor-sharp teeth that now stretched toward them at the end of a long, long neck.

  Elyana's arrow sank deep into the scaly head, but the beast was too stupid or hungry to notice, and the maw plunged down toward them. Even as Kellius's fireball blasted from his fingers, the creature blurred and vanished along with its lake.

  "Holy Abadar," Renar said.

  "Abadar's got nothing to do with this," Vallyn retorted.

  "What's going on?" Drelm demanded.

  "These aren't illusions, and that's not shadow magic," Vallyn answered.

  Elyana turned to the wizard. "Kellius, any speculations?"

  He shook his head and adjusted his hat. "I'd guess this entire place is unstable. It's not just that an ancient spell lingers over the valley. This place is weak, dimensionally. It's not just pulling things in from one plane."

  "Plain language, wizard," Drelm urged.

  "Things are getting sucked into this valley from all over the other planes. Near and far. I don't know if that's someone's deliberate design, or an accident."

  "Is there any way to predict when the next shift will happen?" Elyana didn't think there would be, so wasn't exactly surprised when Kellius shook his head.

  Arcil, she thought, would at least have made an educated guess. But she had Arcil to blame for them being here in the first place. Kellius was a better man, and did not deserve the comparison.

  "Let's keep moving," Elyana told them.

  "Quickly," Vallyn added.

  "No," she corrected, "deliberately. Eyes sharp. And we should spread out a little. If something opens up beneath one of us, then the others can help out."

  "What if it opens beneath us then takes us along when it shifts?" Renar asked.

  She'd been hoping he wouldn't think of that. "Let's hope we don't find out."

  Chapter Fourteen

  The Tower

  In the next quarter-hour they experienced three more intrusions, the most spectacular of which occurred in the clear space in front of the tower. Two groups of mailed figures on serpentine steeds fought to the death for almost two minutes before vanishing, the battle's outcome still undecided.

  Black and gray trees stood off in long clumps five hundred feet to either side of the tower. Elyana guided them toward the edges of the woodland, reasoning that they wouldn't be as obvious to whatever appeared if they weren't striding through the open.

  As they drew nearer to the tower, Elyana saw that the structure was larger than she'd first thought. But she did not long dwell on that, for she heard the crash of some large animal plowing through dry vegetation. A half-mile ahead something erupted from the trees and soared out onto the field, just in time to reach a pair of strange opponents. A six-armed lizard on some furred, cyclopean mount saw the dropping shadow and swung his oddly shaped trident up too late—the dragon shape snatched him up with a claw and bore him away. The lizard-man's feathered combatant shook his dark sword and brought it crashing down into the skull of the lizard-man's mount, and then those two vanished. The dragon, however, glided on, bearing its prey in its claws, until it reached the other screen of trees and landed.

  Elyana urged the others deeper into the woods. She ordered Drelm to watch for approaches within the forest, and peered out from behind a tree bole.

  Vallyn stood just behind her, cursing lightly. "By all that's holy, I never thought I'd see another shadow dragon. And that one's a hell of a lot bigger."

  Elyana did not bother responding. She watched the dragon bite the head off the writhing humanoid and then pick his armor apart with obsidian claws, like a man shelling a lobster. The long, fanged maw tore into the body with such vigor that the four of them could hear the crunching across the clearing, despite the strange sound-deadening effect of the Plane of Shadow.

  Vallyn looked pale. "I'm fond of old Stelan—comrades forever and all that—but no way in hell am I going to fight that."

  This beast was a good three times the size of Lathroft's dragon, stretching thirty feet from corded, spiny neck to whiplike tail. It looked smaller when it wasn't flying, curled like a cat toying with a mouse. It was even beautiful, in a gaunt and horrible way—a finely fashioned engine of destruction, blacker than midnight.

  "I say we just teleport out of here," Vallyn said, speaking with nervous rapidity. "I have a couple of the spells readied—I can take almost all of us to safety, or to the edge of the crystals, at least. But we'd best do it now, before it knows we're here."

  "It knows we're here," Elyana said softly. She had not taken her eyes from the thing.

  Vallyn crouched down beside her. "How do you know?"

  "It's putting on a show," Elyana said softly. "It's toying with us and seeing what we'll do."

  "That's ...that's just wonderful. You're sure?"

  "Pretty sure."

  "So what do we do?"

  "I'm thinking."


  She crept quietly back into the forest. She was almost certain the dragon knew she was there, but there was no point in making it aware that she knew it played a game.

  Little light reached them under the canopy of dark leaves. Nothing grew beneath it, either—there was only bare earth, scatterings of rock, and the occasional rounded hump of a skull.

  Once Elyana had briefed the others, Drelm was swift to suggest a course of action. "We stay to the trees. If it attacks us here, it will be hampered. We'll use the ground to our advantage."

  "You're insane," Vallyn told him. "If that thing attacks us, we're done for. We need to retreat."

  "If we retreat, it will attack," Elyana said. "Your spells can't get us far enough to get out, and they can't transport all of us. I'm not leaving anyone behind."

  "We can't go back," Renar said determinedly. "We're going forward. If the dragon attacks, we'll beat him down, just like my father did."

  "Oh, blessed Calistria," Vallyn said, disgusted, "spare me." He shook his head. "We faced a little dragon, boy, and it nearly killed us—did kill one of us. And we had Arcil on our side. No offense, Kellius, but Arcil was pretty good."

  "I think you underestimate Kellius," Elyana said, though she feared Vallyn spoke the truth. "And you surely underestimate yourself. Your teleportation spell can't be the only trick you've learned in the last twenty years. But I do not mean us to attack it unless we must. Drelm is right: if we stay to the trees, we stand a better chance. It's watching to see what we'll do because it doesn't yet know our real strength." Elyana glanced at each of them in turn. "We move forward."

  Vallyn grumbled, but when Elyana set out through the trees, he fell in behind her. If anything, his step was even more certain now than it had been in his youth. "I can't believe what my promises get me involved in," he muttered. She did not acknowledge him.

  They advanced along the edge of the forest. Elyana was fairly certain she knew from what area the dragon had come, and she wondered if they would find a nest or the entrance to a cavernous lair when they reached that section of the forest, or if their proximity would prompt its return.

  "Elyana," Vallyn said quietly at her shoulder. "I do have one idea."

  "What is it?"

  "If we can get close enough to the tower, within a few hundred feet, I can open a portal to the top."

  Elyana gauged distances as she walked. Beyond the greater gloom of the trees, the darkness of the plain flowed suddenly with movement, but it was not the dragon—rather, it was a wave of gray water, man-high and rolling outward.

  "Grab a tree," Elyana commanded, but even as her lips closed over the last syllable the water struck the line of woods. Liquid sprayed out and the scent of it hit her a fraction of a moment before the water itself—a cloying, rotten smell, as if something long dead had made its home in the wave before its sudden arrival.

  The trees broke up much of the wave's impact, but when the water hit it was with a stinking slap that curled her lips. All managed to maintain balance, but Drelm recovered first, calling their attention to further activity on the plain.

  A vast, white worm-thing had reared up in a spiral, and now the dragon was on wing, flapping to investigate.

  There might be no better chance. The wave had brought the monster, and who knew when the strange magics of the valley might take it back.

  "Now," Elyana urged, nose wrinkling at the scent of her own clothes. They ran on through the trees.

  Elyana had to slow herself, for she quickly outpaced the others. In a test of endurance the humans and Drelm would certainly defeat her, but in the woods, at speed, she could have lost them.

  Behind them the dragon was rearing back and blasting at the white worm with an immense cone of darkness.

  The front third of the worm was obscured by shadow, and Elyana was glad that she was nowhere close.

  Renar and Vallyn reached her first, then Drelm and the winded wizard. They looked out from the safety of the trees at the oddly shaped tower, fashioned all of slim gray stones, almost as if someone had built the thing by stacking and mortaring a vast collection of headstones.

  "Vallyn," she said, "is this close enough?"

  "Aye—I can get two others up with me, but there are only so many spells of this magnitude I can weave in a day."

  "Only two?"

  Vallyn shrugged. "That's all I can manage."

  She'd have to leave two behind, then, and she was loath to abandon anyone on the plain with the dragon...although the dragon looked like it might be busy for a while. She thought quickly. She'd love to have Drelm with her in the tower, for she was certain it would have guardians. But that would leave Renar and the wizard to fend for themselves, and they were the greenest members in the party.

  "Drelm, you and Renar keep to the forest. Find a sturdy tree, and stay on guard."

  "We should not split up," Drelm said.

  "I don't like it either, but we've not much time."

  "We have to play the cards we're dealt," Vallyn added. Drelm seemed unconvinced.

  "May Abadar protect you both," Elyana said. She meant it, this time. "Vallyn, get us up there."

  "As you wish." Vallyn slung the instrument from behind his back and strummed quickly, left hand pressed lightly to the strings so that the sound rose muffled. It would have been hard to hear much over a disturbing noise from the vale that sounded rather like an enormous creature vomiting.

  Renar was in mid-protest when a sensation of light-headedness swept over Elyana. As she blinked away the dizziness, she discovered that the ground had tilted beneath her and her surroundings altered utterly. She had arrived upon a worn stone floor canted to her right by about five degrees. They were not, as she had first thought, a mere twenty feet above the ground, for the tower stood in a deep cleft at the valley's edge. The plain dropped steeply into the cleft a good bowshot from the tower's edge, and Elyana saw that the tower itself, seated in that low spot, was at least a hundred feet tall.

  The entirety of the roof's surface was covered with blocky glyphs and symbols. There might once have been a spire at the end of every star point, but several were broken at various points, and all were weathered.

  They had materialized only a few feet from one pointed edge, a proximity both Kellius and the bard hurried to correct by stepping quickly to the central body.

  Elyana moved to the farthest point to better view the lay of the valley, so confident in her balance she scarcely minded her step as she advanced to place a hand upon a spire. She could not see her companions hidden in the woods, but there was no missing the titanic battle underway between the ghastly ribbed worm and the dragon. The worm leaked dark ichor, but, even as Elyana watched, some other lighter substance sprayed out from a set of holes upon its back and struck the dragon's neck. The shadow creature shrieked and beat its wings, rising through the air.

  "One more place I never want to visit again," Vallyn muttered.

  "All the other creatures vanished as swiftly as they came," Elyana said. "This one remains."

  "Then Calistria smiles upon us," Vallyn said. "Why question fortune?"

  Why indeed. Elyana moved away from the edge and joined Kellius, who was crouched on the stone, studying the engraved figures. "Can you read it?" she asked.

  "I think it's a ward," the wizard replied. "But I don't have a clue as to what it does."

  "If it were designed to keep us off the tower, we'd already be blasted out into empty space," Vallyn said.

  "That's not necessarily true," Kellius objected. "Some wards are more sadistic. There might be something already slowly at work upon us—"

  "We'll worry later," Elyana cut in. "We need to move while the dragon's distracted. The roof overhangs a floor that's open below us."

  "How do you know?" Kellius asked.

  "I could look under the
overhang from the edge of the star point. If I hang out I might just be able to swing in."

  Kellius pursed his lips. "That's a long drop if you miss. I can cast a flight spell on the three of us."

  Elyana mulled that over. "Save your energy. The two of you ought to be able to carry me."

  Kellius nodded thoughtfully. "I believe so."

  The wizard worked fast, whispering a few cryptic phrases and passing his right hand across first himself, then the bard.

  "There's not much to controlling the spell," Kellius said to Vallyn. "You simply will yourself where you wish to go."

  The bard was already floating a few inches above the roof. "How long will this last?"

  "Only a few minutes." With an apologetic smile, Kellius grasped Elyana's left bicep, his fingers tightening after the initial contact. He used his other hand to hold down his hat. Vallyn sank to the roof, stepped over, and grasped her other arm.

  Then, suddenly, both men were airborne, with Elyana carried between them. They drifted slowly to the edge of the roof. Elyana tried to ignore the drop, and the thought that all that lay between her and a messy death were the grips of two men suspended in the air by nothing whatsoever.

  Kellius dropped more swiftly than Vallyn so that she sagged to the right, then hastily corrected himself as she sucked in a sharp breath.

  Elyana kept her eyes on the tower.

  The stone of the roof was a foot thick, and overhung the floor below by three feet. Swinging in might not have been as simple a matter as she had thought.

  Vallyn and Kellius floated under the overhang and into the shadowy level below. This tower's designers possessed the same disregard for safety demonstrated by the bridge builders near Elistia. Like the roof, the space was completely open, without railing or even a curb. There were only some stone columns of support, and a sealed door to a thick, squared-off structure in the center. There were no spiders or bats or any obvious hazards, which was both a relief and a concern, for it almost surely meant that there would be something more ...unless the detained dragon were the guardian. But even at its length it could not be an ancient dragon, or even an especially old one. These towers were supposed to have stood for millennia.