The Shadow Eater (The Dominions of Irth Book 2)

by A. Attanasio

  At last, Broydo had water to sip. He licked the rock walls and kissed the crevices, gnawing at the scabby lichen and chewing wads of moss. Gradually, his near-mummified flesh began to relax, and his eyes lost their dull glaze.

  In the night, the ground leveled and became soft and damp. Creepers and grass mats covered the volcanic ash, and the starry vista grew smaller, screened by tall cane and saplings. Monkeys cried. Birds sang morning up out of the darkness, and the wanderers penetrated the dense and steamy margins of the Forest of Wraiths.

  Golden salamanders flurried through the underbrush, and trumpet lilies breathed intoxicating fumes. Broydo knew these paths, and he exultantly took the lead, hacking through ivy curtains and looping vines with his serpent sword.

  The witch called, "Stop!"

  The elf and the gnome paused and looked for the witch among the forest's buttresses of light. They found her standing in the shadow of a leaning oak.

  "I have fulfilled what I promised," she said. "You are now in the Forest of Wraiths and will soon be among the elves. Give me the crystal prism."

  "Give it to her, Ric," the elf agreed. "We are not far from my clan, and I know the way well from here."

  Old Ric conceded with a nod and produced the crystal prism from the pocket of his vest. "Here it is, witch. You have kept your word. I now keep mine." He held out the prism, and a filament of daylight threaded through it and wove a small rainbow in the air.

  The witch's transparent hand reached out of the shadows and plucked the crystal prism from his fingers. The instant she touched it, her hand firmed and became opaque. The blood that had covered it vanished.

  A gentle laugh came from the witch. "Thank you, gnome. You have proved a worthy champion for me." She drew back her hood and revealed a lovely face unmarked by wounds. Sable tresses sinuously framed a pale and smiling countenance of dark eyes and broad cheekbones.

  "You are whole again!" Broydo marveled.

  "Yes, indeed I appear whole again, thanks to the Charm of the crystal prism. Yet I remain a wraith, an insubstantial being given form by Charm alone."

  "What will you do now?" Old Ric asked.

  "I have a mission to fulfill, the same as you have, gnome." She turned to go and watched them sidelong across the pixie slant of her face. "Perhaps we will meet again among the Bright Worlds."

  The gnome motioned to speak, but she was already gone. She had stepped into a hot slant of dayshine and vanished, leaving behind only a few motes of charmshine that settled like snowflakes on the grass and melted wholly away.

  "Come along, gnome," Broydo beckoned. "My clan is not far."

  Old Ric turned quickly and followed the elf through the ferns, but the image of the beautiful witch lingered. And her words haunted him. I have a mission to fulfill, the same as you have...

  "What did she mean?" Ric asked the elf. "A mission the same as I have?"

  Broydo hacked strenuously at the dense growth of bracken, cutting a trail for them. "She is a witch, how am I to know?" He shrugged and grunted with the force of his slashing blows. "But rest assured, she did not descend from the Abiding Star and risk annihilation by green fire at the Gates of the Underworld on a whim. She is about some witchy task."

  "Not some witchy task, Broydo," the gnome pressed. "Think on this like the counselor you are. She said the same as I. The same."

  "She is on a similar mission to the Bright Worlds," Broydo speculated. "She is searching for someone, obviously."

  "Then why did she not simply say, 'I have a mission to fulfill, even as you do'? Why say, the same as I? Does that not strike you as of a particular meaning?"

  "And what would that be, gnome?" Broydo cut through the fern screen to a wide avenue of the forest and paused in his efforts.

  "Do you think—" Old Ric scratched his bald head and wished he had his cap to wring. "Could it be?"

  "What?" Broydo urged. "Could what be?"

  "Maybe I am not alone on my mission?" the gnome speculated. "Perhaps the Nameless Ones have sent another."

  "A redundant searcher? To be certain you achieved your mission." The elf nodded ruminatively. "That may be. And it would explain why she sought us out in the Labyrinth of the Undead. But there's no knowing now. She is gone."

  "Unless, as she herself said, we meet again." The gnome shrugged and put a finger to the shaft piercing his torso. "Whatever happens, this arrow shall point the way."

  Broydo dared a laugh, and Old Ric joined him. They proceeded down the lane of interlocking trees, conversing with good cheer, glad to be away from the desolate rimland and once more in the midst of life's verdant frenzy.

  Before long, swart visages with vivid green hair and astounded ice eyes peeked from tree hollows and the tunnels of the underbrush. Broydo trilled a triumphant elvish cry, and the peeking faces accepted that Broydo was not a wraith in the presence of this gnomish deadwalker, and they rushed from their coverts.

  As each of them came running through the leaf drifts, laughing and shouting welcomes, the fungoidal warts fell from their ravaged features, drizzling away like so much ash. The Charmed presence of the Necklace of Souls banished their deformities before they came within arms' length of the wanderers. By the time they grasped Broydo in happy embrace and heaved him upon their shoulders, they were whole again.

  None dared touch Old Ric. Pierced through with a barbed arrow and yet striding nimbly on the forest boulevard, he frightened the elves. Not until Smiddy Thea herself stepped out from a hollow tree did anyone address him directly.

  "You do not come well into our presence, Old Ric," she spoke sadly, though her gnawed-looking face had sloughed its cankerous growths and Charm had already begun to heal the pits and gouges in her flesh.

  "I am a deadwalker, Smiddy Thea," Old Ric acknowledged with a grim nod—then smiled widely. "Yet I feel stronger and more nimble than ever I did in my younger days."

  "Alas, you sacrificed your very life to retrieve our salvation," Smiddy Thea said, stepping forward and putting her dark and smooth hands upon him. Her face, though still old, had lost all deformity and shone with regal loveliness. "Our clan, every one of us, owes you a life-debt, Old Ric, eldern gnome of Nemora."

  "I shall have to collect at some other time, lady elf," Ric answered with a courteous nod. "I am pursued by dwarves. They would have their Necklace returned. And I fully intended to give it back to them—until they nailed my life upon this arrow you see in me. Now they will have to wait until I complete my work in the Bright Worlds beyond. But I dare not tarry here. You may well be subject to their wrath."

  "Dwarves cannot travel by day," Smiddy Thea knew. "Stay and celebrate with us then, Old Ric."

  Broydo agreed with a boisterous shout and waved the serpent sword. "Be not afraid, gnome. Should a dwarf show its deformity here, it will die beneath my blade."

  Old Ric conceded. The journey thus far had been arduous—not physically, of course: the Necklace of Souls gave him indomitable stamina. But his soul, the feeling pith of him, suffered from all that had happened at World's End, and he would be glad for a happy respite.

  He followed the elves into a hollowed tree and descended among song and cheers to their grottoes of luminous moss. Festive music began at once, and a parade of delicacies emerged from the larders. They began with berries and sugar stalks ready at hand while cooks set to work preparing a proper feast.

  "You intend to return the Necklace of Souls when your mission for the Nameless Ones is finished?" Smiddy Thea asked, staring with interest at the barb-tipped arrow.

  "Yes, lady elf," Old Ric responded between munches of a mint apple. Before him, burl-bowls of honey tubers and snowberries had been placed on a fern carpet. He required no feed, felt no hunger, and ate merely to show courtesy. "Gnomes are not thieves. As, I'm sure, neither are elves."

  "Elves surely are not thieves," the crone agreed, "yet we have no compunction about keeping what we win in contest of blood."

  "Yes." Old Ric wiped his mouth with a napkin of pressed moss.
"But my blood is old."

  Smiddy Thea ladled dandelion mead into a goblet of polished bluewood. "When you return the Necklace of Souls—you will die."

  "All whom I love have gone that way already." He accepted the goblet with a gracious nod. "When this difficult task is accomplished, I shall be joyful to join them."

  "You are honorable to a fault, Old Ric." Smiddy Thea nodded sadly. "It is no wonder to me that the Nameless Ones would choose you to do their bidding."

  While Smiddy Thea and the gnome chatted, the clan's charm-wrights gathered around Broydo to examine the extraordinary craftsmanship of Blue Tipoo’s ivory sword. The elf grinned proudly at them as though this were his handiwork. But when he passed them the serpent sword, he collapsed. The long trek without sustenance had emptied him of all strength save the Charm of the sword.

  A Battle of Dwarves and Elves

  The elves carried Broydo to a back chamber to rest. And the clan gathered before Old Ric to hear the story of the journey through the Labyrinth of the Undead to the Gates of the Underworld. He told them in detail all that had transpired, and when he came to the account of Asofel immolating the demon, Smiddy Thea wanted to know, "Who is this being of light that comes at your call?

  "Asofel does not serve me," Old Ric corrected. "He is a Radiant One, a sentinel, one of four set upon the terminals of the garden to watch over the lady and her unborn child."

  The gnome explained how he had been beckoned into the presence of the nameless lady and what assignment he had been given to fulfill with the help of Asofel.

  "It has long been known that we and all created things are but a dream," one of the charmwrights said thoughtfully, "but there is no notion among any of the sages—elven, gnomish, or human—that a shadow thing would trespass our Bright Worlds and endanger our very being. What is this shadow? Whence does it come? What do you know of it, Old Ric?"

  "Very little, I must admit." The gnome passed an abashed and hapless look over the gathering. "I thought perhaps it was the Dark Lord."

  "The Dark Lord is dead," another charmwright called from the crowd. "If ever he was alive."

  Ric placed his perplexed look upon Smiddy Thea. "What do your people mean?"

  "We are denizens of World's End," the elf crone stated. "Our charmwrights usually find their materials in the wilderness. But occasionally they trade with humans for witch-glass and hex-gems. The rumor among the humans is that some criminal of theirs who was thrown into the Gulf actually returned and brought with him cacodemons impervious to Charm."

  "That was the Dark Lord," Old Ric acknowledged with a frightened nod.

  "Dark Lord." Smiddy Thea snickered. "What a childish title."

  "That was his flaw," Ric remembered. "He possessed a weak mind."

  "You saw this Dark Lord?" the old elf asked. "He is not a rumor?"

  "No, I never saw him, thank all the beneficent gods." Old Ric addressed the group of elves, eyes wide. "But he was no rumor. He came back out of the Gulf with a host of cacodemons from the Dark Shore."

  "What befell him?" the crone asked, drawing closer with curiosity.

  "He and his legions of demons ravaged Irth for a season," Ric said, "and then a magus from the Dark Shore arrived. He slew the Dark Lord, and the cacodemons disappeared like smoke. I thought nothing more of it, snug in my den on Nemora, until the nameless lady drew me to her."

  "Ah, you thought perhaps what ailed her was this invasion of shadow creatures from the Dark Shore." Smiddy Thea nodded with understanding.

  "Yes. I advised her to wait for the spell to pass." The gnome shared a look of dismay with everyone. "But I was wrong. She drew me to her again and informed me that her child yet lies motionless within her."

  "So if her suffering is not the result of the Dark Lord," Smiddy Thea said, eyes slimming with comprehension, "it must be the magus brought into our worlds from the Dark Shore."

  "I suspect he lingers on Irth." Old Ric scratched his bald head and longed again for his lost cap to wring between his helpless hands. "No doubt he is ignorant of the Nameless Ones, as so many of their dreaming are."

  "What do you know of this magus?" Smiddy Thea inquired.

  "Very little." Old Ric plucked nervously at the cuff of gray hair above his large ears. "On Nemora I paid little heed to the events of Irth."

  "We will find out for you." Smiddy Thea pointed a bent finger at her clan. "Charmwrights, go hence to your scrying crystals and far-seeing mirrors and look to Irth."

  "It will exhaust our Charm to peer so far from World's End," a charmwright groused.

  "That is why we know little more than rumor of that world," the elf crone muttered to Old Ric, admonishing the others with a frown. "Our lives were forfeit to the demon before this gnome saved us." Smiddy Thea gazed sternly at the charmwrights. "Exhaust our Charm and look to Irth."

  "That is not necessary, dame elf," Old Ric demurred. "With the Necklace of Souls, I will learn to scry, and I will find the shadow thing wherever..."

  A bone-juddering gong sounded, and the crowd of elves surged to their feet as one.

  "The war alarm!" Smiddy Thea informed the startled gnome. "We are under attack!"

  The throng seethed toward the exits. Several brutish guards immediately formed a protective barrier around the sphinx throne.

  "The dwarves!" Old Ric realized. "Is it yet night?"

  "I fear so," the crone admitted, accepting the serpent sword from one of the guards. Her venerable face brightened at the touch of the remarkable weapon. "There is more Charm here in this blade than in all the clan's amulets and talismans combined."

  "Give the serpent sword to your best warrior," the gnome counseled.

  "Spoken like a gnome!" The crone hacked a laugh. "Your kind does not much use charmworks, so you are to be forgiven your ignorance. A weapon of Charm makes the warrior."

  "You are going to fight the dwarves?" Old Ric stood back amazed to watch the old clan chieftess brandish the sword with flourishes of lethal speed and precision.

  "I am the leader of my elves." Her blue eyes stared proudly from their bone-pits. "Swordplay is not unknown to me. I regret that you suffered so much to bring us healing only to have the dwarves snatch our lives from us."

  "It is my fault," Old Ric moaned. "I should never have lingered."

  "Call down your Radiant One," Smiddy Thea said, the sword-light casting her aged features to stern shadows. "If you die here, the Bright Worlds are lost."

  "Asofel told me not to call him until I found the shadow thing." Old Ric spoke to the crone's back as she hurried across the grotto to a stairwell. "Can we not dispatch these dwarves ourelves?"

  "Dispatch dwarves?" a gruff voice despaired, and Broydo, clutching a club strapped with conjure-wire, jolted from out of the chamber where he had been roused from his slumber by the alarm. He brandished the club and gazed nervously at the arrow piercing Ric's chest. "Gnome—behold your own woeful fate at the hands of the dwarves."

  Ric clutched at Broydo while they climbed the tight stairwell behind the crone. Screams and deathly cries crashed from above. "Perhaps we can reason with them. They will die, too, if the Nameless Ones end the Bright Worlds."

  "Reason will not avail!" Smiddy Thea shouted in the doorway to the forest. "These are maggots!"

  The night shone with green blurs of light—the ethereal glow of the dwarves in the trees. They fired arrows at the elves who emerged from the grottoes. Many elves stood nailed to trees by arrow shafts, some squirming, others limp in death.

  Through the underbrush came a wave of dwarves radiant with green fire. They wore no armor or garments to cover their creased and translucently white hulks. In their big hands they wielded pikes and hatchets, and their red eyes glinted like drops of blood.

  Old Ric shivered with fright though he was already dead. He knew that dwarves possessed supernatural stamina. Every gnome knew that. How dare the elves regard these foes as mere maggots? Desperately, he tried to warn the crone, "Retreat, my lady! Call a retreat! We will neg
otiate with the dwarves for the Necklace."

  But his words were snatched away in a tempest of howls and screams. A whistling wind of arrows threw Broydo off his feet, and he collided with the gnome. The two collapsed over a root shelf as barbed shafts swarmed past. The serpent sword in Smiddy Thea's hands whirled and deflected the hail of arrows. The next moment, she danced lethally into the midst of the charging dwarves.

  "My clan is doomed!" Broydo wailed from behind the root ledge where he crouched with Old Ric. He peered through a cluster of arrows embedded in the tree root and watched as the dark tunnels of the woods disgorged an army of dwarves. "Every maggot on World's End is here!"

  Old Ric saw that this was true. The dwarves had positioned themselves with uncanny accuracy among the numerous exits of the hollow trees. They had discerned the major passageways into the elven grottoes and had stationed snipers clever enough to wait until all the clan had emerged.

  "Old Ric!" Broydo shouted in despair. "Call Asofel!"

  The gnome did not hesitate. He shouted for his guardian. But his breath would not come. His fright had constricted his voice.

  Broydo saw at once what had happened and began to shout, "Asofel! Asofel!"

  An arrow buried itself to the fletching in the tree bark beside the elf's face, and he fell silent. His cries had only alerted the dwarves to their presence.

  Ric could not quell his fear sufficiently to muster a cry. And the sight of armored dwarves on a root ridge above them withered him to a whisper.

  "Ric!" Broydo bounded to Old Ric's side and shook him. "Call for Asofel!"

  "No—voice!" Ric croaked, clutching at his throat.

  The elf gaped with disbelief. "Calm yourself, gnome! You're a deadwalker. Look!" Broydo grasped the Necklace of Souls and held a crystal prism to Old Ric's terrified face. "Look! What do you see within?"

  At the first glimpse into the crystal, the gnome's world deepened as though he had passed into a long, echoing valley. The war whoops and death shrieks of the battle dimmed and yet sounded more distinct. Peacefulness enclosed him as in a harbored remembrance of childhood, far gone among the ice caverns on Nemora manyfold winters ago.