by A. Attanasio
"Asofel is cold with purpose," the eldern gnome explained to the others. "We must look to our own protection. The Necklace of Souls contains enormous Charm. We will hold together, and I will share it with you all."
"No." Asofel held out a luminous hand for the eldern gnome. "Sentiment will not endanger our mission. Come, Old Ric. Our quest for the shadow thing takes us below to the Dark Shore."
"I will not leave the others..." Old Ric was saying when Asofel's fiery hand shot from his wrist, spraying sparks as it snagged the gnome by the Necklace and whipped him away.
The Radiant One and the gnome dropped out of the cave, into darkness. Asofel's radiant strength carried them swiftly into the atmosphere of a blue planet.
Broydo scrambled toward the edge, wanting to follow, and gravity pulled him back.
"Let them go, elf." Dogbrick grabbed Broydo's grass-woven garment and held him in place. "One is already dead—the other is not of our worlds. We can't follow them into the abyss."
Jyoti had disassembled her vest, dividing the amulets into three groups. She had striven to connect the pieces into crude bracelets—amber power wands bound with conjure-wire to theriacal opals, far-see onyx, ingots of witch-glass, and strings of rat-star gems. Quickly, she wrapped the clunky assemblage around the wrists of Dogbrick, Broydo, and herself.
The elf placed the serpent sword point down between them, and they each grasped a portion of the hilt and attached their linked amulets to the haft.
"To the Dark Shore!" Dogbrick howled into blazing silence.
Old Ric heard the animal cry from the cerulean space where he and Asofel stepped down the broad stairwell of the wind. He looked for the rock vault fallen from the cliffs of Zul and espied it far off across the sky, a blazing meteor.
Its fiery trajectory arced over wintry woodlands, flashed briefly in the forest's secret veins, the frozen rivers and streams, the lacquered lakes and ponds, the crusty snowfields, the green glass of icicled pines, and finally exploded among scrub oak and conifers.
The blast shattered the amulet chain that bound Jyoti, Dogbrick, and Broydo and flung them through space. Charm streaked from them like comet smoke.
Dogbrick flew over the spires of the forest, shaggy arms and legs churning as if sprinting across the sky. Sprung energy from the shattered amulets lofted him toward ancient hills. There, mammoth old trees awaited him, bent under their burdens of snow like ghouls of winter.
Jyoti arrowed low among the boughs. Branches snapped away before her Charmed flight—until she struck the thigh of a giant oak. A splash of green fire and splinters of woodmeat dropped her senseless to the ground, and she lay there in a rag doll sprawl under clumps of snow fallen from the shaken tree.
Clutching the serpent sword to his chest, Broydo hurtled across the attic of the forest, spanked by tossing tree limbs and pelted with pine cones, yodeling a terrified scream. He burst out of the woods and soared over the silver platter of a lake.
Gunshots cracked the cold air, and smoke puffed from canebrakes along the shore where two hunters stalked the sky. A bullet struck the elf's forehead, shearing away all his Charm and denting his skull.
Below, two bearded men in red vests and hunter's caps slogged over the frozen shore of the lake to retrieve the weird thing they had shot out of the sky. It had landed atop a snowy bank beneath the wall of the forest. Appalled at first that they had shot what appeared to be a husky man, they hurried.
As they drew closer, however, the body's elfen features slowed the hunters to a halt. The creature’s purpled skin, lichenous hair, and tapered ears astonished them. Curiously, the bullet had pushed in the elfs brow and not broken the skin. The frost blue eyes stared upward at the dent with cross-eyed and death-locked fixity.
One of the men picked up the serpent sword, from where its blade had pierced a snowdrift. It felt light as plastic, though its haft of coiled gold looked metallic. When they attempted to move the elf, he too lifted as easily as papier-mâché. He felt so light that they had to weigh him down with tire chains in the back of their pickup so the wind did not carry him off.
Across the blue sky, Old Ric looked for those who had fallen and discovered nothing but winter sprawled across the hilly horizons. And the horizons themselves folded like the interlocked fingers of a giant. Then even that wide view curved away as Asofel carried him down the steps of the wind.
A bristly hillside of leafless trees swung aside, and Asofel strode over peaked rooftops and a grid of asphalt streets. At their approach, mercury-vapor streetlights blinked on and off though they arrived at midday under a lucent blue sky.
They came down between two brown industrial barns in a lot of iron-black trees. Children in a playground across the street squealed at the sight of them and rushed in every direction.
A premonitory shiver chilled the Radiant One the moment he touched the Dark Shore. He felt as though something huge and cold from deep within the dim planet laid claim on him.
Silent and implacable hostility pervaded this world. He sensed the darkness of death, of the dream's deepest unconscious limit, the darkness locked inside matter, starved for light.
The sentinel refused to allow his dread to own him or even show itself. Like a prophet returned magnificent from a desert transfiguration, Asofel strode across the street. Brash wind flashed through his massed curls like reflected sunlight and obscured his long features in a bright nimbus.
Behind him, among flapping streamers of Asofel's iridescent raiment, Old Ric hobbled. Gravity weighed the gnome down, and even with the power from the Necklace of Souls, he needed all his stamina to keep up with his luminous companion.
The sight of the arrow-pierced gnome elicited more startled cries from the intrepid faces waffled by the chain-link fence. Old Ric ignored their hoots and tugged at Asofel's robes. "Where are we going?"
"To destroy the shadow thing." Asofel approached a parked car with windshield ferned in ice. He put his hand on the hood, and the vehicle barked, spewed a gust of white smoke from its exhaust pipe, and churred to life. "Get in."
"You can command this wagon?" Old Ric asked, and fumbled to open the back door.
"I have enough energy for now to command the dream," Asofel replied, and pushed the gnome into the backseat. "We must hurry. This far from the Abiding Star, my strength is taxed. I cannot endure long."
Old Ric crawled from the back into the front passenger seat and watched in fascination as the parking brake disengaged even as Asofel slid behind the steering wheel. The Radiant One slammed the door, and the car jumped away like a startled horse. The gnome's head snapped back against the upholstery. He felt them moving at great speed, but he could see nothing through the frosted windshield.
Old Ric fretted anxiously. "Oh Asofel, what will you do when we find the shadow thing?" He regarded the Radiant One with hopeless confusion. In all their adventures together, he realized, he had never understood his strange, taciturn companion, had never been able to foresee what Asofel would do. "If you use your light to destroy him here on the Dark Shore, your life is forfeit. You will not have energy to leave the dream.”
The steering wheel turned free of Asofel's touch as the entire car embodied his will and sped along streets that would carry them by the shortest route to where he sensed the presence of the devil worshipper. He behaved as if this feat required his full attention, and he did not answer the gnome.
In truth, he had accepted the fateful possibility that he might exhaust himself here in this dream and die. That had always been the risk, and now it was a chance that had become more coldly real. He knew that death on the Dark Shore meant that his light would be lost, parsed forever among the inert densities of matter in the void. He would never rise to radiance. He would simply die.
That thought left him cold inside. And for once in his life, he knew fear. The final endarkenment did not exist where he originated. In this remote world, destiny was derelict. Anything could happen. The idea dizzied him with fear, yet he had
to go on. Not only the dream worlds were in jeopardy but also the world above, that had lost so much of itself to this nightmare.
"You're not answering me, Asofel." The gnome shifted uneasily in his seat. "This arrow through my heart doomed me. I'm a deadwalker, and I have no hopes for myself. Yet I cherished a hope for you and the nameless lady we serve."
Asofel's luminous face dimmed, blue as star ash. "You are not afraid to die?"
Laughter pealed from the gnome. "Life offers far greater hardships than death. What is to fear?"
"Losing the light—vision, consciousness, the magical will."
A flicker of anxiety stamped the Radiant One's long face. "To lose all this and become less, so much less..."
A siren lashed loudly from behind.
"What demon is that?" Old Ric shouted, hands over his ears.
Asofel sighed. Another distraction. The more time he had to reflect on dying, the less will he had to stay in the dream. He wanted to move quickly to the shadow thing and be done with this frightful task. Yet, he sensed the authority of the woman in the screaming car.
Asofel slowed to a stop. From the sideview mirror, he watched the police cruiser pull up behind them.
"You're not going to eat her shadow, are you?" Old Ric asked fretfully, craning his neck to peer through the slushy back window.
The police officer walked toward them, and though dark glasses and a patrol hat maskedher ferret face, her erect posture carried her astonishment that this snow-blind car had found its way down the road at all—let alone at high speed.
"Promise me you won't eat her shadow," the gnome persisted.
With a disappointed glance at Old Ric, Asofel got out of the car. His radiance dazzled the officer, and he quickly stepped closer while she winced. He intended to speak nine words to her inmost self, "Go back to your vehicle, sleep, and forget us." As he approached, he felt her life, her place within the dream and the living distance of her destiny. Janice Archer, mother of twins, now nine, divorced, dating an accountant from the state tax office, but most recently tending a man dying of cancer at home under hospice care, her father.
He stepped back, startled again by the vivid intimacy of each life in the dream. Gray, forested hills rose in adoration on all sides of this empty country road, and he realized with a shudder that those inert hulks of matter existed as real and as authentic as the fields of light where he belonged.
The policewoman's eyes adjusted, and she gasped at the sight of him: long-faced as a horse angel with fleecy silver mane and eyes canted with wickedness.
Asofel spoke the nine words, and Janice obeyed at once. He went back to his car and, with one swipe of his hand, cleared it of ice. Then he got in, and they continued their journey across the Dark Shore.
Reclaiming the Dead
Old Ric examined the Necklace of Souls, searching the prismatic depths of its crystals for whatever he could find. The gems revealed nothing more than frayed rainbows.
"Touch the Necklace with your power, Asofel," the eldern gnome entreated. "I don't have enough Charm here on the Dark Shore to see anything in these crystals."
Asofel budged his gaze from the side window of the car, where he had been staring at the landscape trundling past: uphill fields and their constellations of nibbling sheep huddled under the frigid wind. He himself had been wondering what the sheep's locked existences felt like, but he had restrained himself from reaching out to them. "I must conserve my power."
"The Necklace needs only the smallest touch of your Charm, and we need to see what has become of the others. Where is the witch-ghost Lara without her crystal prism? What has become of our companions on the Dark Shore—the margravine and Dogbrick?" Old Ric looked at him in despair. "And where is Duppy Hob? This is his world. He brought us here. Surely, he is watching us. Should we not at least have the power to see what is around us?"
The Radiant One reluctantly extended a pinky to the Necklace. A small green spark arced to one of the gems, and the rainbows tightened in all the crystal prisms. Images appeared within the facets.
Dogbrick hung like an auburn pelt among conifer boughs. He had been hurled high into the hills, onto a ridge of old-growth forest. A small wind ruffled his fur, and his nostrils dilated, breathing in the scentscape and quivering at the news of strange animals.
"I've found Dogbrick," Old Ric announced excitedly. "He appears dazed. Is he hurt?"
Asofel reached across the dream and touched the nearby presence. "He is not physically hurt. But the impact has dislodged his memory. The same fate that befell his partner when he arrived on Irth as Ripcat. He is amnesic."
"Then we must restore his mind." Old Ric extended the gems to the Radiant One. "Without Charm of his own, his memory may never return."
Asofel returned his attention to the winter sheep under the deep clarity of the sky. "Dogbrick can fend for himself for a while."
Old Ric peered again into the gems of the Necklace and watched Dogbrick gingerly climb down among the brittle fir boughs. The cold did not trouble him through his shag. He moved agilely yet timorously over the cushioned pine-needle floor, exploring the rambling mansion of cedar halls fairy-dusted with snow.
"Now show me Broydo," the eldern gnome directed, and the Necklace gems clouded to an opal milkiness. "Broydo—the elf-counselor from World's End. Show me Broydo."
"He's dead."
The gems clattered against the gnome’s skewered chest. "He had Charm! The serpent sword…"
"It was not enough."
Old Ric closed his wrinkled eyes. Jaw loose, mouth open, he sat stunned by grief. Then, his teeth clacked shut. "We can't accept that."
"We have no choice, gnome." Asofel, brushing from his face strands of hair lively and bright as voltage, shifted to face Old Ric. "Don't you understand yet? We cannot dissipate our energy or compassion for these souls. We need all our strength to face Duppy Hob. He knows we are coming. He will be prepared."
The stubbled chin of the eldern gnome thrust toward a brown hillside hazed in lavender of cold weather. "He's out there ... his corpse. Let us stop and retrieve his body. We owe him that much."
"Forget the elf." Sparks crawled up Asofel's face. "Think of the worlds."
Ric's eyebrows knitted to a reproving look. "That is why he died. To save the worlds. He knew what we are about. He is one of our own in this strange world." The gnome's voice slowed under the weight of his conviction. "We are not going to abandon him here, even as a corpse."
Asofel grimaced but did not protest. The nameless lady had set this gnome over him, and though Ric's command defied strategy, it appealed to the Radiant One's small, awakened interest in these dream-bound lives. He slowed down and, again without having to touch the wheel, spun the car around and drove back toward the county access road where he sensed the body.
"Show me Broydo's body." The eldern gnome scowled at the Necklace of Souls, and it disclosed the interior of a log tavern with the elf's cross-eyed corpse hung by tire chains from the rafters. Revelers with frothy mugs of fermented brew gawked and laughed and passed around the serpent sword.
The car stopped beside a cobbled stream of old leaves paned in ice. Old Ric looked about confusedly at the stands of sleek, dark trees. "Why are we stopping here?"
Asofel got out and crossed the small creek.
"Wait." Old Ric flung open his door and followed the Radiant One into the gray wood. "Where are we going?" He mumbled grouchily when Asofel did not answer.
The loomwork of frozen creepers, iced branches, and rotted logs slowed him down. He fell behind among trees beswirled with mist. He almost panicked when he could find no other tracks but his own upon the snow-patched ground. Then, the Radiant One's sullen voice summoned him.
Asofel stood beside an oak cracked to its pale pith. At the foot of the split tree lay a crumpled body. Streaked blond hair splashed the snow.
"It's the margravine!" Old Ric swept the hair from her face and determined that she bore
no marks of apparent injury. Yet she did not breathe. "The charm of her amulets protected her body. But her soul—it's been knocked out of her."
The Radiant One did not wait for the gnome to ask or order. With a sound like fire, he lifted an arm to the sky and his hand blurred from his wrist, reaching into the empyrean where Jyoti's comatose soul drifted languidly, dissolving into the void. He fit her back to her body.
Quite unexpectedly, at the moment of fusion, as coagulated blood incandesced and flowed fluidly again and the soul shivered awake, Asofel felt the core of her, where the dreaming appeared.
This matched the lucidity he knew at his own core, and its beauty amazed him. A sole star spins light at the center of every living being, he marveled to himself, amazed that the thought had never occurred to him before.
Jyoti sat up slowly. Memory dribbled back into her groggy brain. Asofel's Charm filled her with paradisial air and calmed her while she remembered. When she felt strong enough to stand, he stepped away and walked back through the trees to the car.
Old Ric helped Jyoti steady herself, though his attention fixed on the sight of tracks, footsteps, left in the duff and snow by Asofel.
"We haven't much time left," the eldern gnome began to explain to Jyoti, coaxing her to step more lively through the cluttered forest. "Asofel has become heavier—less light..."
Words shriveled in Old Ric's throat when he glanced at the Necklace of Souls and noticed short, stout, helmeted warriors scampering among the trees waving hatchets. "Dwarves!" He cast an apprehensive stare over his shoulder at the empty pine haunts, and hurried Jyoti faster. "There are dwarves nearby."
Reflexively, Jyoti reached for her niello eye charms before she recalled that all her amulets had been destroyed, smashed to charmdust, by the force of their impact.
