The Shadow Eater (The Dominions of Irth Book 2)

by A. Attanasio

  The dwarves who had imprisoned him here had removed his shawl of amulets, and he wore only a breechcloth. His shoulders still ached from where the hatchet spikes had jabbed him. The theriacal opals from his shawl had closed the wounds, but the amulets had been removed before they had completed their healing.

  Without Charm to protect him, he felt the cold reaching through his fur. His pelage, a dense shag the color of cedar, brushed back from the stiff wind and exposed a grievous face. His dark eyes silently screamed in their bone-pits, and his packed jaw muscles hung slack, exposing a glint of fang. The nocturnal tide lightened his bones, and the absence of his rat-star headband left him prone to oppressive gloom.

  "Why do we say that night falls?" He spoke to the empty cavern, and his deep voice resounded hollowly. "Night does not fall. It rises. Look at it there, seeping out of the ocean—the lusters of darkness, mollusk stains in the sea…"

  He ran both hands through his thick mane, and the clank of chains thickened his despair. "This is the neap tide of my Charm, my strength, my blood. I don't have the mind to know why we are here."

  His great head turned and scanned the stone socket. He found no one, yet he sensed a ghost. His hackles had fluffed the moment the dwarves had dragged him here.

  The wraith’s electrifying muteness, her prickling nothingness stirred something unhappy in his deeps. If he had his eye charms, he might see her. Yet even without amulets, her presence touched him with vacancy. the sole shape of placelessness that the solitary twilight only heightened.

  "These chains hold me," said Dogbrick to the unseen presence. "What holds you?"

  Far down the cliff, the tide seethed.

  Dogbrick let his gaze roam out the cave mouth. The tarnished shine of the sea reflected the luminous paraphernalia of night. He thought he knew these cliffs. Their stone draperies and numerous islets reminded him of the cordillera north of Saxar, where he had journeyed as an adolescent. He had hoped then to find employment as a stevedore in the dockyards at the polar palace of Zul. But the palace did not hire men with beastmarks.

  "Yes, I believe I camped down there as a boy," Dogbrick remarked. "I'd been miserable three days over my rejection from Zul. Beastmarks! Forever they mark me as less than human and more than a man."

  He watched long ripples of surf cooling in the darkness far below. "I might have become a dock manager or even a wharf foreman. Who knows? Instead, I returned to Saxar and learned the trade of a thief."

  As blunt fingers tangled in his hair and his beast-slanted brow furrowed, he wondered aloud, "What would that hurt young man think of me now if he could see me here years later in shackles awaiting what indignity? Torture? Enslavement to dwarves? Slow death?"

  Chains clanked as he rose and paced to the back wall of the cave. "I need Charm to soften the hardness of these thoughts, this dread."

  In the middle of the cave, he sat cross-legged, with his chains coiled in his lap, trying to think of nothing. He hoped nothing would take his worries and his heavy mood away from him. After a few moments, he lowered his brow to the cave floor and moaned piteously, mourning his lost Charm.

  

  Lara watched him from where she crouched invisibly in a corner. The crystal prism that gave her form so far from the Abiding Star lay hidden under her cassock. The dwarves had seen it and stood mesmerized by their own green auras reflected in its rainbow depths. She had feared then that they were going to rip it away from her.

  Since they had delivered her here early in the day, she had almost wished they had taken the prism. She had sat too long with herself, thinking. Once pain had kept her thoughts simple. Reece had taken her pain away, taken the whole of her suffering into himself, and the shock of it had transformed him into Ripcat.

  She brooded about this. She had seen the white of his terrified animal eyes when the transformation happened. The good she had hoped to work for him had been lost. She consoled herself with the fact that even when she had presented what she knew to him, before he had dared to take her pain from her, he had been skeptical.

  Am I wrong? she had time and clarity to consider. The Shadow Eater that she had so feared was not an enemy. Rather, he had been sent to spare Reece from doing harm that could end the worlds!

  She had misunderstood the intent of the Radiant One. The message from Caval that she had received while a dreamful soul in the Abiding Star had faded too quickly, and now she could indeed sing with this beastmarked prisoner, This is the neap tide of my memory…

  What was her purpose if she could not trust even her own recollection? Better the dwarves had taken the crystal prism from me—she thought, and tried to imagine dying again. The first time had been so horrible that only the Abiding Star itself could heal her from its pain. She imagined that giving up the prism would feel different.

  The stars glinted like knife points. Darkness, amnesiac anonymity, eternal silence—all are myths. Her first death had proved that to her. What awaits in the abyss of the Gulf for my soul cut free of this crystal? Only great diminishment. She could expect intermittent consciousness but never again with the lucidity and tranquillity she had known in the Abiding Star.

  She did not want to die. She wanted to return to the Abiding Star and the warm, sustaining radiance of the Beginning. No way back to that bliss opened among the dwarves. No hope—save this man of shaggy beastmarks.

  "What is your name?" Lara asked.

  In a frightened clatter of chains, Dogbrick lunged upright. "Waug!" he shouted. Disoriented without Charm, his startled senses ran him in a tight circle.

  "Don't be afraid." The ghost showed her healed face, her placid face meant to quiet him. And he sprang to the far end of the cavern and hunched there with ears flat, fangs bared. "I thought you were aware I was here."

  Dogbrick reminded himself that he confronted a phantom. The thought carried no reassurance without Charm, and he remained crouched around a growl.

  "Look, Dog!" She revealed the crystal prism. Its spectral edges spun nimbly in her fingers, casting Charm and radiance across the cave. "There is Charm here for you. I know you need it. Come closer. I will share it with you."

  Dogbrick's tense mind relaxed. On her outstretched palm, the universal sapphires, emeralds, and rubies glittered from within their secret kingdom. There, everything of the cold world had its counterpart shaped of pure light. A shiver of warmth whirred through him as he edged closer to the spinning crystal.

  "There, Dog, there—" Lara extended a phantom hand and at her touch images fluttered through her of the blue-furred creature Reece had become. The whirling charmlight revealed flicker-flash scenes of Cat and Dog together on the steep avenues of Saxar. "You must be Dogbrick."

  "I am," he growled softly, content to curl up in the shining Charm.

  "Sleep, then, Dogbrick—sleep." She lowered her hand over his glistening, watchful eyes, and he slept.

  

  At a touch of the prism to his furred brow, Dogbrick's memories expanded across the slewed facets of the gem. If she wanted to, she could draw his entire soul out of him with this Charmed rock. She meant him no such harm. She wanted only to see him.

  Shaking her long hair over his slumbering face, she used the crystal prism to sift his memories. She discarded childhood traumas. She looked past recent struggles and triumphs with Dig Dog Ltd. and restricted herself to remembrances of Reece disguised with beastmarks.

  Ripcat—

  She mouthed the name, fathoming its associations for Dogbrick.

  Ripcat had lived as a thief in Saxar after he had left the Dark Shore and forgotten his existence as Reece. But he had kept none of the factory-pilfered goods for himself. He had retained only what he had needed to survive each night. The rest he had given away, buying goodwill in the impoverished districts of Saxar and the sanctuaries where he could sleep and dream—of her.

  Lara had loved Reece as long as she could remember, had loved him with more than filial caring. When alive in the forests of the Snow Range on the Dark Sho
re, she had possessed dreams, too. She had wanted Reece for her own—witch and magus united as family.

  The murdering knives had slain that dream. As a ghost, she laughed at her romantic prayers for love and children. Now she prayed for the freedom of the Abiding Star: Free of pain, free of all shapes, she had died to see that fate is form. She keened for the formless, the rapture beyond surfaces and masks.

  

  Dogbrick shivered awake. Eyeballs rolled into place, and he sat up alertly, not afraid but astonished to find himself in the comforting presence of the Charmed wraith. All bite and bark in him diminished. His mouth working soundlessly, flustered as a fond fool flattered.

  "That's what your teacher Wise Fish used to say to you, isn't it?" The woman of clove complexion and dark eyes smiled with crooked, white teeth and an impish dimple. "I saw her in your memories when I went looking for Ripcat. He is my master."

  "He is?" Dogbrick extended an amazed hand toward the luminous stone, and the ghost withdrew her palm.

  "You've had enough Charm." She returned the crystal prism behind the folds of her cassock. "We need to stay clearheaded to get out of here."

  Dogbrick's attentiveness sharpened.

  Pale blue Nemora showed its long horns atop the third station of the night, and he shivered to realize how long he had been ensorcelled. "Who are you?"

  "I am the witch who served Caval and Reece on the Dark Shore."

  "Lara—" Dogbrick sat up alertly. "Ripcat has often spoken of you. You lived in his dreams all our days in Saxar."

  "Where is my master now?"

  Dogbrick stared disappointedly at her neck chain. "Can you not scry for him in your amulet?"

  "Only when he is Reece." Her rapt look faltered with her hope. "I cannot see him as Ripcat. I searched your memories, but I did not see everything."

  He covered his eyes in shame. "Thank you for preserving some scrap of my dignity,"

  "You have nothing to hide, Dogbrick." The wraith brushed his mane again and envisioned him with Ripcat once more in vertical Saxar. "In an important regard, you have lived a life of dignity."

  "Perhaps you did not look deep enough," he said through his fingers. "I was a thief."

  She smiled at his contrite self-assessment. "You stole only from factory surplus, to survive."

  "I made it a profession." He addressed his knees. "I could have sought other gainful work."

  "You survived in Saxar." Lara bent closer. "Can you help us survive here?"

  Dogbrick shook his chains and did not raise his head. Still buzzing with the realization that he was speaking with Lara ... a ghost, he said nothing.

  "You are a thief." She followed that with a note of silence before chiding him, "You are not going to let something as elemental as these chains stop you."

  "The elemental is often the most powerful."

  She snorted derisively. "Is that comfort from the Gibbet Scrolls?"

  "No." Dogbrick looked up sharply. "You should learn the Gibbet Scrolls. They offer more than comfort."

  Lara engaged his challenging stare with the chill dark in her eyes. "What do they offer us here?"

  Dogbrick lowered his stare, said quietly, "That gem that you hold—"

  "The crystal prism." She removed it again, and its light smeared back the darkness.

  "Can it help us?"

  "We may look inside it." Lara felt comfortable enough to hold the prism close to him, where he could see the rainbows folding upon themselves like inward music. "Look—there are the dwarves."

  The compact warriors flowed like green corpuscles through black arteries of tunnels. "The charmways are packed with them," Dogbrick whined. "There's no escape."

  "Not that way." The ghost tilted the crystal, and the vista shifted from the green-glowing marchers in the cave tunnels to the empty beach below.

  Salt waves sang on the rocks, casting silver nets of spray. Under the fiery night sky, the long wet strand beneath the cliffs gleamed like black silver dented with bright things thrown up from the sea.

  "The tide is going out," Dogbrick said, broad nose almost touching the crystal. His eyes crossed to watch the loom of waters tossing its tide wrack onto the sand. "Even if we could get down there, we'd be swept out beyond the sea, into the night sky—into the Gulf."

  "That would be death for you." She rose to her full height, black hair disheveled across the cowled shoulders of her cassock. "But for me, with this crystal-gem, the Gulf offers escape not even the dwarves can thwart."

  Dogbrick jutted his jaw, impressed. "With the crystal prism to protect you, you could cross the Gulf and return to the Dark Shore."

  "Will you help me?" she asked fervidly, looking for some glimmer of commitment in his deep-set eyes. "If I cannot return to the Abiding Star, let me fall back whence I've come. Maybe from there, I can find Caval. After all, he is the one who summoned me to this quest."

  Dogbrick rattled his chains again.

  "Can't you yank them from the walls?" She followed the black chains to bolts wide as her wrists driven cleanly into the stone and found her answer.

  "What holds you here?" Dogbrick gestured graciously to the black sea. There, auroras shimmered lividly, enclosing planets and stars in curtained colors. "Why not stride on down to the beach and ride the tide?"

  Lara shuffled to the brink of the cave and stood translucent against the star vapors. When he blinked or moved his head, she wasn't there at all, only her voice, beneath his skin, like a map of rivers, like his blood, "I can't carry the crystal prism out of this cave. Since the dwarves have captured me, I don't have the strength. They have placed a binding spell on me that keeps me here. But you could go—if you were free."

  Like a jester, Dogbrick rattled his chains once more and wagged his big head.

  The wraith slowed down. "What do you think is going to happen to us?"

  "I don't know." Dogbrick crossed his arms, reconsidering. "Well, I know something." He turned reluctantly to point outside to the black sheets of rock that sliced into the phosphorescent surf. "I've been here before. On my way to the polar palace at Zul. It's at the very edge of the world. I went to work there as a stevedore, on wharves that touch the abyss. I think the dwarves are taking us there."

  "Why do you think that?"

  "That's where exiles are cast into the Gulf."

  Hellsgate

  Asofel carried Old Ric through a charmway to a cracked lake bed of lava, a measureless pan of rifts and ledges devoid of all flora.

  "Where are we?" the Radiant One asked, and looked about at odd shapes of wind-fashioned marl. Sulfur fumes wisped from the rifted and cracked floor of the bleak caldera. "Do you know this place?"

  "Hellsgate," Old Ric replied tersely, and peeked over the burned-out plain below. "I told you not to take that charmway. Now look where we are."

  Asofel's yellow eyes glared. "How did you know not to take this charmway?"

  "It was not the cave that the ghost Lara used." Old Ric kicked a pebble over the side, and it plunged soundlessly. "She came up the Well of Spiders. That's the only reliable charmway among the worlds. The others are unpredictable—like this one."

  Asofel ignored the gnome's grouchy stare. "Then we will return the way we came."

  "And go back to those hatchets?" Old Ric rolled his eyes. "Not wise, O Radiant One." He lifted the Necklace of Souls and rattled the prisms vigorously. "This is what those maggots want. And they'll follow us here to claim it soon as they feel their numbers are large enough to challenge us. Be sure of that."

  "Then we will find another charmway within that cave and leave this place." Livid colors moved like flame beneath Asofel’s skin.

  "Lead the way—lead the way," the gnome mocked. "Where in the worlds will we end our day?"

  "Rebuke me if you will," Asofel complained. The tunic and slippers he wore had thinned to translucent membranes on his luminous body, and he lit up the black rocks around him. "If you cannot find the shadow thing in your strong eye—what good are you to the n
ameless lady?"

  "What good?" Old Ric jutted his chest so that the barbed arrow pointed directly at Asofel. "Behold this shaft that pierces me. I have given my life to serve our lady. What more good can I offer?"

  "May I suggest patience?" Asofel moved toward the cave hole that had admitted them. "Is that an attribute known among the gnomes?"

  "Patience?" Ric threw his bent hands toward the lowering skies. "The worlds are ending! Patience has lost its virtue to apocalypse."

  "Why am I arguing with you—a gnome!" Asofel shook his head and approached the cave.

  "And why should a gnome avoid a good argument?" Old Ric followed, rigid with indignation. "You should know, gnomes of all mortals carry their own Charm and are…"

  The eldern gnome broke off. He heard rock grating. Sand drizzled across the mouth of the cave, and the wanderers stepped back away from the cave just before shingles of stone crashed where they had been standing.

  Over the rock wall slid a massive, three-fingered hand glossed black as tar and as wide as Asofel stood tall.

  Old Ric flicked a cry to his partner as he danced backward, "By the Goddess—it's a giant!"

  Asofel, who had never seen or even heard of a giant, did not budge. He stood dumbfounded as cobbles of rock crashed around him when the giant shoved into view on the scorched hillside above.

  Old Ric grabbed Asofel's arm and pulled him back to the edge of the cliff. "Stand back! This is a giant! They're malicious creatures!"

  "Malicious?" A voice wide as the burning sky vibrated pebbles out of crevices. From above the scarp that enclosed the cave, a giant, lying on its belly, rose to its elbows. Its hairless face, rugged as scoria, rose like a wall. Its long mouth flexed angrily, revealing teeth gray as iron ingots.