The God in the Shadows (The Story at the Heart of the Void Book 1)

by TorVald, Nikolas

  20

  Crossing the Border

  The second major conflict occurred. It did not go well, not nearly so well as Tel’arib promised his soldiers – fool that he is. With Ruination fighting for Az’emon we were overpowered before the first strands of power were woven. But where Might of Arms fails cunning may win.

  – Journal of Selthraxadinian

  A guard approached as they made their way out of the encampment but backed away when he saw the paper Kant pulled from his pocket. The grunts and other animal noises of men sleeping faded into an eerie silence as the four of them walked into the empty space between the camps. If Selth had thought that the No Man’s Land stretching into Andin was desolate it was nothing compared to the mile that separated the armies of Andin and Mardule. Every time her boot knocked into a stone or a horse stepped on a twig the sound seemed to echo all around as loud as a gong.

  Fog covered the night sky and made every obstacle rising in their path appear as if from nowhere. Fallen banners and scattered bones lay everywhere in the wasteland. There were no weapons or armor, everything useful had been stripped to be used by the victorious side in each conflict, but the gaping skulls and bare bones were a more terrifying reminder of the cost of war than anything Selth could think of.

  Once a horse whickered somewhere to her left and Kant hissed, waving his hand for them to keep silent. Their whole group froze in place and he wouldn’t let anyone move until half an hour had passed. He offered no explanation afterwards just started walking forward again silently. Selth was sure that it had been a Mardulian war party sneaking across the border into Andin, though. At one point, she stepped on a bone and it broke in half with a loud cracking sound. Mattle, Kant, and Aren all spun to stare at her and she froze where she stood, horrified. They stood that way for ten seconds until Kant spun and waved them forward, hurrying to leave behind the location of such a loud noise.

  They crept forward in that manner, Kant picking his way across the plain with a calm assurance that showed he had done it before. Aren and Selth occasionally broke a bone and sometimes one of their horses would whicker loudly and the sound would echo through the fog all around them. Each time Kant would hurry them forward for a few minutes before resuming his normal slow pace. Every so often Selth looked over at Mattle and felt a twinge of jealousy. In the city she had been able to ghost her way where ever she wanted, no one could hear or see her until she wanted them to. Out here, he moved along after Kant without a sound. The first time she looked at him she nearly let go of her reins in shock, he looked so much like a wolf moving across a plain. She had pushed that image away though, it was just his training with Kant that enabled him to move in such a manner.

  The mile of wasteland that made up the border between Andin and Mardule seemed to stretch on endlessly as the four of them made their way across it but finally, two hours after they had started their slow movement across the barren plain, Selth saw the flickering lights of Mardulian sentries. As they stalked closer to one of the lights the fog slowly faded and she saw the Mardulian encampment. It looked the exact same as the camp on Andin’s side of the border. For some reason she had expected there to be some drastic difference, had expected to see terrifying monsters crowded on Mardule’s side after all the stories she had heard about the evils of Mardule and Andin’s righteous defense against its unjust attacks. Instead she saw the same rows of tents stretching as far as the eye could see. The same barren wasteland present on Andin’s land was present on Mardule’s. It was as if the two encampments could switch places and no one would be able to tell that a change had occurred.

  Shaking free of her thoughts, she saw that Kant had approached to five hundred paces of one of the sentries. He held up a hand for the others to wait farther back and settled down in the grass patiently. Before the start of the border crossing he had changed back into his color shifting cloak and with it he was invisible in the dark of the night, even Selth’s enhanced eyes couldn’t pick him out.

  The sentry he had chosen was standing behind the light of a fire, ruining his night vision, but Kant sat patiently in the grass. Selth saw that he had his bow across his lap but she wasn’t sure what he was doing. They could sneak past the guard, or kill him, without an issue and be into the camp without anyone knowing. Still, Kant waited. He sat on the ground, motionless, for close to an hour. Selth wanted to walk up to him and demand to know what was going on but she recognized the stupidity of doing such a thing. Sound carried a long ways across the wasteland and Kant would more likely shoot her than answer her if she caused such a disturbance.

  Finally, she saw what he had been waiting for. The sentry he had been observing for the past hour stood and stretched before disappearing into the camp and a new man came to take his place. The new sentry stamped his feet by the fire, clearly not happy to be out on guard duty in the middle of the night. For a while, he circled in front of the fire, peering out into the wasteland between the armies but after just ten minutes he looked behind him to check that no one was watching and lazily walked back to the fire. He slumped on the ground and contented himself with looking past it into the darkness, ruining his night vision in the same way as the first guard. Smoothly, Kant stood and pulled an arrow from his quiver. He drew back his bow so that the string touched his right ear and with a relaxed motion released the arrow. It leapt from the string and sped across the five hundred paces separating him from the reclining sentry, striking him through the left eye. Selth’s mouth dropped open, she’d never seen anyone shoot five hundred paces, let alone at so small a target as an eye, but Kant had turned back to them almost before he let go of the string. Waving his hand for them to come forward, the three of them rapidly trotted to meet him and together they made their way into the camp.

  As he passed the sentry Kant grabbed the man’s legs and pulled him into the camp after them. As Selth led her horse through the horde of tents there was barely a sound anywhere around her. It was nearly midnight and the soldiers were in the deepest of sleeps, where they hardly moved anymore. When they were half way through the camp Kant dragged the sentry behind one of the tents, pursed his lips thoughtfully, and plunged a dagger into the wound he had left with his bow.

  Selth opened her mouth to say something, then looked around and closed it again. She could confront him about that later. There were no bones scattered across the ground in the encampment but every sound she made seemed a thousand times louder than it really was. The brush of boots against the earth was like the grind of an axe on a blacksmith’s wheel. The clop of horses’ shoes was thunder breaking across the sky. It took Kant an hour to guide them through the whole of Mardule’s encampment and when he was finished Selth thought she was going to have a heart attack. Sweat streamed down her face and back despite the cold and she had to keep reminding herself to breathe. When they were finally beyond the encampment she heaved a huge sigh of relief, her three companions jerked around to glare at her and she covered her mouth with her hand guiltily.

  Mounting up, they slowly rode their horses through a mile of wasteland similar to what they had encountered behind Andin’s encampment before entering a forest which was a shock after the destroyed ground they had been on for the past three days. Selth felt a moment’s worry at how much more extensive the wasteland on Andin’s side of the border was but the worry was quickly replaced by relief at being out of the open. It felt as though an archer’s arrow had been removed from the back of her neck as she rode further into the dense woods of Mardule. After a mile, Kant dismounted and motioned for the others to do likewise. They had come to a clearing in the woods with no sign of humans marking the area and with relief Selth realized they had reached a stopping point for the night. “No fire, we get up with the sun.” Kant hissed at each of them, she barely nodded her agreement before she wrapped herself in her cloak and passed out on the ground to dance among the stars.

  She knew that something was wrong when she woke up with a spear poking into her back. Opening her eyes slowly, sh
e stared in horror at the Mardulian patrol that had so neatly captured them. Kant and Mattle were both sitting up with two soldiers guarding each of them. Aren was leaning against a tree, although no one was guarding him, apparently an old man didn’t constitute a threat in the eyes of the Mardulian soldiers. A rough hand dragged Selth upright and two men came forward and dragged her over to where Aren was sitting against the tree. One of the men searched her and she offered a moments thanks to The Provider that the sword Kant had given her was strapped onto her saddle; it would have been hard to explain something like that. Looking around she saw that Raxous was nowhere to be seen and wondered if the soldiers had killed the wolf but she put that out of her head. Raxous was the least of her problems.

  “How did they sneak up on us?” she hissed to Aren when the two soldiers who had dragged her moved away.

  “Because we’re all fools.” he whispered in a cutting way, “No one stood watch because we were all too tired to think through what we should have done when we reached here in the middle of the night.”

  A man stepped forward from the rest of the soldiers, his uniform was the same plain, brown, stiff cloth as the others but a silver knot rested on each of his shoulders marking him as a sergeant. “What are you doing so close to the border of our conflict with the Andian scum?” he snapped in his clipped accent. Selth gave a brief thanks that Mardule and Andin shared a common tongue; it would at least make talking their way out of the situation possible.

  “I am traveling to my cousins.” Kant replied using the same accent as the sergeant, “My farm was burned to the ground by filthy Andian spies and so I must move my family to survive.” Selth was shocked at how accurate his accent was and at how much force he was able to put behind his lies. He had nearly spit when he mentioned Andians.

  “Yes. Andian spies and saboteurs are an issue for all of us among the civilized land of Mardule. But you have not answered my question!” The sergeant snapped, “This area is strictly forbidden to all civilian personnel. What are you doing here?!”

  “I’m sorry honored sir,” Kant bent into as much of a bow as he could with his hands bound and a spear to his back as he faced the sergeant, “I thought it would be faster to move cross country to my cousins but I got lost as we traveled. I didn’t even know we were close to the conflict. I’m so sorry.” He finished by prostrating himself on the ground in front of the sergeant and one of the soldiers guarding him jerked the Inquisitor roughly to his knees.

  The sergeant sniffed as though disgusted to have to be talking with a peasant for so long but Selth could see that Kant’s theatrics had gotten through to him. Puffing himself up importantly the sergeant spoke in a laughably official voice, “I should bring you in for this sort of blatant disregard of the laws,” Seeing her opportunity to help, Selth burst into horrified tears and the sergeant looked over at her, miffed. “But do not worry, I will not make you come with me. I believe that you are telling who you are,” he stuck out his chest again and turned back to Kant, “I pride myself on being able to recognize Andian scum when I see it. In the future stick to the roads.” With one hand he pointed behind Kant, “You will find the road you lost some five miles that way. Long life to the King and General Atlatraigan!”

  Kant and the others echoed the sergeant, Selth adding her voice a little belatedly. What the soldier said had chilled her straight to the bone. General Atlatraigan. With a wave of his hand the sergeant and his soldiers moved back into the forest leaving her and the others unharmed. She and her companions still waited for a good ten minutes before they moved just to make sure no one was around them. They only started moving when Raxous burst into the clearing, startling everyone while simultaneously proving that no soldiers were hanging around.

  Kant started laughing, “That must be the stupidest sergeant I’ve ever met. He believed we were farmers, when we have three swords and two bows his strongest man couldn’t pull halfway back.” Shaking his head in amusement he moved towards his horse, then doubled over, “And four horses! What sort of farmers have horses!” Selth watched the Inquisitor in surprise, she hadn’t thought him capable of the expression of laughter. But looking around she quickly realized the gravity of her situation, they were in Mardule. If that sergeant had been any smarter they would have been dead. With Aren and Mattle quick to follow, she burst into motion, the three of them hurrying to their horses so as to get away from Mardule’s western encampment as quickly as possible. In no time at all the four of them were saddled up and Kant was leading them towards the road the Mardulian sergeant had indicated earlier. “We can travel for three days along the road before we’ll have to cut off into the forest to reach the mountains.” he explained as they rode. No one replied, they were each too wrapped up in their own thoughts to remark on so much as the weather.

  Selth could hardly believe they had actually made it into Mardule. She could hardly believe the country looked so similar to Andin. Looking up she realized that one thing was different. To the North a massive band of darkness stretched as far as the eye could see. The Mountains of Endless Night stood apart from anything she had ever seen, the wonders they must hold would be extraordinary. Slowly the fear of her recent encounter faded, replaced with a burning excitement to reach the mountains.

  21

  The Mardulian Road

  Ruination has returned to us. It gave no reason for having done so, though I have my suspicions. Selthraxadinian plays a dangerous game but sometimes I believe he is the only reason we have lasted as long as we have in this great war.

  – Pel Abis to Celithic

  Getting to the road proved to be more complicated than the sergeant had made it seem with his simple point. Five miles turned into fifteen as Selth and the others forced their way through thick thorn bushes and circumnavigated the massive hills which stood in their way. On top of that Kant was forcing them all to stay quiet so as to avoid running into another patrol of Mardulian soldiers. “Where there’s one patrol, there’s twenty.” he said to her complaints before leading them through a particularly large patch of thorn bushes.

  The horses had it even rougher than the humans in Selth’s opinion. They were far larger and the spaces she was able to squeeze through, to avoid getting pricked by thorns or scraped by branches, her horse had to endure without any such benefit. By the time they reached the road the sun was already brushing the horizon line and everyone was covered in hundreds of scrapes and cuts. Nobody felt like following the road to find out if a town was situated close by.

  Hobbling their horses at the edge of the small clearing they had found, Selth and the others moved to set up camp. They followed the order they had taken the first night in Andin’s forest, Kant hunted for food and Mattle gathered firewood. When Mattle got back to their campsite, Selth was sitting staring at the bare patch of ground where the fire would go and Aren was contentedly puffing on his pipe. As Mattle was bending down to light the fire with his tinderbox Selth turned to Aren, “Why don’t you just light the fire?”

  He faced her and tapped his chin as though considering how much information he should give. Finally he nodded his head as though reaching a decision, “There are wards surrounding all of Mardule right now.”

  Selth jerked back in shock and Mattle dropped his tinderbox in surprise, “How is that possible?” she demanded, unconsciously reaching for her magic before stopping herself, “What are they there for?”

  “The wards register any use of magic and the location that magic was used in. A few of the more potent magical spells I can work are even blocked out completely.” Aren explained, then continued as Selth opened her mouth to reiterate her first question, “I don’t know how it’s possible but I felt it when we passed the border line and I won’t use magic again until we get to the Mountains of Endless Night.”

  “What about,” Selth started, then stopped and rephrased her question, “What about the rest of us? Will the wards detect if Mattle or Kant use their magic?” She didn’t want to say anything about her own power
s with Mattle around. Of everyone in their group he knew the least of what she could do and she didn’t want to add to his knowledge.

  Aren understood what she was asking though, “I’d say that everyone should avoid using magic in general. Mattle should be okay talking with Raxous as their bond is deeper, more personal than the magic which the wards protect against. Otherwise, we should avoid the use of it while we’re in Mardule. Whoever was able to set wards to guard the whole of this kingdom is far more powerful than anyone I can think of. I’ve never seen anything like it before. To set a ward takes five times the magical power as the spell it is set to block, to have them around a whole kingdom,” he shook his head in awe, “it shouldn’t be possible. So it would be best if we avoided having a run in with whoever did set them up.”

  Selth and Mattle both hurriedly nodded their consent, then Mattle glared at her as if he were angry that they had done anything in tandem. She shrugged, if he was going to be a thickheaded idiot that was his problem, not hers. He bent to pick up his tinderbox and Selth leaned back, peering into the forest which stretched all around her. She hadn’t focused on where she was when Kant was forcing everyone through thorn bushes or a mile out of the way because a massive hill was blocking the path but she wanted to see something which could prove she was in a different kingdom.

  At first everything seemed the same as in Andin, the trees stretched towards the sky and a thick foliage covered them. Many plants grew along the ground and in the light of the fading sun the whole area shined in a beautiful light. However, as she looked more intently at her surroundings she began to see that something was off. A sickly looking sap ran in rivulets down the trees and flowers and the leaves drooped as though drained of vitality. The trees had at least as many dead branches as live ones and when Selth listened for the small animal noises that had marked her journey through Andin she realized there was nothing. She almost turned to ask Mattle if he could sense any animals around them before she remembered Aren’s warning about magic and scowled to herself. She didn’t want to talk to him anyways. But she also didn’t want to sit on her own with her back to the fire when everything around her seemed to have taken on a sinister, twisted look.