The Shadow Eater (The Dominions of Irth Book 2)

by A. Attanasio

  "By the bones of drakes," Old Ric complained, "I feel no pain, no weakness! I could have removed that cursed arrow long ago!"

  "Thank the gods you waited till you did." Broydo squeezed the gnome's shoulder affectionately. "And I think now we might more correctly say blessed arrow."

  "It wasn't the arrow that stopped Duppy Hob from taking the Necklace of Souls." Old Ric turned to each of his friends, though he could see them only vaguely in the dark. "It was the witch Lara. She rallied the lost souls of the Necklace to assault the demon. They surprised and weakened him."

  "Can you see Lara in the crystals?" Broydo asked.

  "And Reece Morgan," Jyoti queried, almost too frightened to ask. "The ether devil stripped him of his beastmarks, but we haven't seen his body. Is he yet alive?"

  The eldern gnome lifted the shining gems close to their watchful faces. Lara gazed back at them from the jeweled facets. Her languid black hair framed a whole body unmarked by wounds. Winter sunlight leaned through her transparent figure, and within the window of her body they regarded a snowy sward of parkland, bunched gray trees, mummied joggers, brisk dog walkers, and a blond-haired man in black robes with cardboard wrapped around his feet trudging along a bike path.

  "Reece!" Jyoti's voice wobbled to echoes through the blind charmways.

  

  Lara strolled beside him. Her shimmering white raiment pressed against her in a ghostly breeze. Duppy Hob's spell had broken, and Reece startled awake to find himself clutching a crumpled dollar bill given him by a passerby during his tranced walk from Tribeca.

  "Young master—"

  Reece glimpsed Lara beside him. Her dusky face smiled crisply. She blinked out of sight, then appeared farther along the cinder path. A shadow of sable tresses and swarthy skin flurried on the path, clothed in veils of light. Again, she blurred to nothing and glittered into view at a distance. She beckoned from a mound of black, glacial boulders.

  Into a narrow crevice among rocks overgrown with frozen grass, Lara slipped. He staggered after her, clutching himself against the brutal cold. Glancing about for dwarves or some other sign of Duppy Hob, he wedged his body into the gap between the boulders where the ghost had retreated. He turned his head sideways and had to exhale all his breath to squeeze through.

  A cold blue day expanded across crystal peaks of ice mountains.

  He crouched with surprise before the wide vista and glanced back the way he had come. The parkland of gray trees, the joggers, the skyline of Manhattan replaced by a mountainside of frost-veined cliffs. And gleaming high overhead, adrift in the azure sky, the glassy disk of Nemora.

  "There are charmways to the Dark Shore everywhere." Lara's ghost hung in the air beside him, pale as water. "Duppy Hob built them throughout his exile. Sometimes strangers wander into them and lose themselves on Irth."

  "Lara—where is Duppy Hob?" Reece stared through her at the crevice in the scarp where he had emerged and worried that dwarves might appear at any moment. "The child's soul is in peril."

  "The child is safe now." Lara's black hair blew across her face in an untidy wind he did not feel. "Duppy Hob's power is broken. The others will explain. They are coming. I cannot stay. I've led you here to the Calendar of Eyes, to the tallest peak on Irth, so that we would be close to the Abiding Star, to the Charm I need to speak with you this last time."

  Reece placed a hand in her emptiness and felt nothing, only his joy at seeing her whole. And his sadness, watching her fade. "Don't go. Tell me what has happened."

  "I have no time." She pointed into the sky at the silver glare of the Abiding Star. "I'm going there now, young master. Now that Duppy Hob's power is broken, we are free of him. And I am going where I belong, back to the Beginning."

  Reece opened his arms to her imploringly. "Stay with me."

  "I've already stayed too long." She touched his unhappy face with her empty hand. "I am a ghost, young master. I am a ghost who has lived again and made a difference among the living."

  "And you are truly free, Lara?" The magus searched the young witch's eyes and found stars of joy in her stare. "Duppy Hob has no hold on you?"

  "All that remains of our bondage to that ether devil is the pattern of sigils that tattoo your body." The ghost placed two fingers over the small cicatrix pentagram that marked his flesh where his collarbones met. "This is the central emblem. Break this star, and your bond to Duppy Hob ends. And so will your magic in the Bright Worlds."

  Reece did not hesitate. He scooped up a flat shard of flint and slashed its edge across the cicatrix star of flesh. Blood streamed down his chest, and the air chilled colder. Deprived of magic, his body began to shiver.

  "Now you are free, too, young master." Lara's smile expanded even as her form slimmed away. "A new life begins for you—and something wider opens for me."

  "Lara!" Reece cried into the emptiness where she had disappeared, and the cold shook him free of his vision.

  For a long moment, he leaned into her absence. His trembling hands held daylight and the frail smoke of his breath. Then, the pieces of what she had told him fit together, and he lowered his arms and squinted up at the Abiding Star.

  Unfathomed happiness opened in him deeper than the chill from the frigid air or the hot pain of his cut flesh. Lara had smiled. Her suffering had truly ended.

  He hobbled toward the escarpment, seeking warmth in the charmway where he had crossed from the Dark Shore. His name resounded from the crevice with a joy muffled in echoes, and a moment later Jyoti pulled herself through. They embraced in the fusing cold, mute with excitement to find themselves in each other's arms again.

  Old Ric and Broydo emerged from the charmway, hands shielding their eyes from the radiance of the Abiding Star. They tugged at the lovers and pulled them back into the cleft of the rock wall. And there, in warm daylight, they shared their stories.

  "Where is Dogbrick?" Reece asked when each had spoken.

  "On the Dark Shore." Old Ric offered the Necklace of Souls to the daylight, and Charm composed rainbows to a view of Dogbrick. He sat in a splash of sunlight among giant cedars, and at his side several shaggy bipeds shared handfuls of nuts with him. "When we saw that he was safe, we chose to follow the Necklace of Souls to you, here on the Calendar of Eyes."

  "Who are those creatures with him?" Reece watched Dogbrick munching nuts and signing satisfaction to the others.

  "We thought you'd tell us," Broydo replied. "You're from the Dark Shore."

  "I've heard of sasquatch..." With wonder, Reece observed the forest hominids slapping their brown pelts, imitating Dogbrick, who barked with laughter and nearly choked on a nut. "We have to go back for him."

  "In time," Jyoti promised, "the Dominions will conduct a thorough survey of Duppy Hob's pathways to the Dark Shore. We'll retrieve Dogbrick before he gets too friendly with the natives. But for now, Old Ric, you must return the child's soul to its mother. If you wait for us to equip ourelves with charmware, we will escort you."

  Old Ric demurred with a shake of his bald head. "The dwarves are gone. I'm sure the path ahead for me is clear."

  "This is too important to leave to chance," Reece said. "Wait for us to get amulets and firecharms, and we'll make sure you reach the nameless lady with her child's soul."

  "The blind god Chance has favored us this far," Broydo answered with merry eyes. "I am not blind, nor is this eldern gnome, and we have seen the Forest of Wraiths in the gems. There are no dwarves in the woods where my clan dwells. We've seen none of those maggot-warriors anywhere. Asofel destroyed them all."

  "There is a monastery on the ridge below this slope," the eldern gnome said, slanting a crystal prism to show the others the Charmed view of the mountain flank. "The Brotherhood of Wizards will welcome you, margravine. And by the time you tell them what has transpired, and they provision you, I will have climbed beyond World's End and into the garden. Go, you two. Hurry while there is still some warmth to the day, before the Abiding Star sets and catches you charmless on this mo
untainside."

  Jyoti thought to protest. But the afternoon had already darkened toward amber, and there was no question of them continuing with the gnome and the elf without Charm.

  They huddled in farewell and shared the soft brightness of the Necklace of Souls. Charm laved them in peacefulness, and when they separated they each carried some of that serenity.

  Fear returned only later.

  As they skidded down the mountainside and Charm waned for them without amulets, they worried for the Necklace of Souls and the child's life within. "How will we know if the child is safely returned?" Reece fretted. "The dream of these worlds could end at any time. I have no magic anymore, no way to save us."

  Jyoti paused on the rock trail overlooking the ruddy domes of the monastery and took his hand. "This unknowing we’ll live together."

  "And with Charm," Reece chattered as cold numbed the blue tips of his face and limbs. "The future always looks brighter through an amulet."

  They laughed together despite their dread and the cold it fed upon. And they hurried down the stony trace, arms locked, hearts shining.

  

  The eldern gnome and the elf watched after them from the threshold of the charmway until the lovers dipped from sight. Then, Old Ric and Broydo returned to the cave and followed the images in the radiant Necklace. The emerald glints of the Forest of Wraiths brightened as they progressed through the lightless tunnels.

  Sepulchral sounds of echoed footfalls and slow seepings relented to tolling birds and chattering monkeys, and soon they emerged among knolls of crimson pearl mushrooms and groves of eel-branched trees.

  "My home!" Broydo shouted.

  "Silence or you'll call squid monkeys down on us!" the eldern gnome berated him with a serious scowl, then burst into laughter. "We have come full circle, elf!"

  Out of the hollow trees, green-haired elves emerged, summoned by Broydo's shout. Soon an excited throng had gathered in the grove. They milled about their clansman returned from his long travels and gawked openly at the Necklace of Souls. Song burst from them, celebrating these gems that had once purged them of the demon Tivel.

  By the time Smiddy Thea arrived, a carnival atmosphere ensued. Gourd lanterns hung from the boughs, feast planks buckled on their trestles under the weight of burl-bowls brimming with honey berries, nut pastes, roasted tubers, monkey stew, and blue wine.

  Her blue-black face grinned happily, netted in wrinkles yet unmarked by the pocking disease that had once gnawed the clan's flesh.

  Old Ric did not linger to celebrate. He stayed among the elves only long enough to extol the bravery of their clansman Broydo. Then he allowed the entire clan to accompany him through the jade avenues of the forest while he followed images in the crystals of the Necklace.

  Scouts rushed ahead, searching for bull lizards and squid monkeys and finding none.

  Old Ric knew there would be no obstacles now. The Necklace of Souls hummed on his shoulders with magic greater than Charm, and he was not surprised when they arrived in a somber glade of towering ebony trees and there found a ladder of plaited vines hanging from a dark zenith.

  Broydo clutched his friend. Vagrant sorrow touched the elf when he gazed up into the darkness where the ladder disappeared. "I will lead the way."

  "No, Broydo." Old Ric crossed his arms, palms up. When the elf took his hands in the elven clasp, the gnome told him, "The circle is complete. I must go alone into the garden. That is what she wants."

  The eldern gnome climbed the ladder without glancing back. As he ascended, the vines untangled beneath him, and by the time he mounted out of sight into the dark heights, only threads of aerial roots wavered where the ladder had been.

  Old Ric crawled out of the ancient well near the garden. He clambered down the massive skewed stones and their iron braces forged in magical glyphs. And he moved quickly under clustered lights of fireflies, through the garden's selvage hung with dewed webs and the onyx husks of beetles.

  "The day is nearly done," said the Lady of the Garden. "For a while I thought I would have to wake the child's father." She awaited him in the stone pool beneath an aspiring helix of clematis and hanging roses white and yellow, afreight with golden bees intoxicated by attar. Their bumbling droned louder than the rapturous parings of distant music that filtered through the evening air.

  "My lady, I have returned the soul of your child." The eldern gnome pulled himself onto the lip of the marble pool and lifted the crystal prisms in both hands. "An ether devil from the Upper Air captured the child in these hex-gems."

  "I saw what you endured in my dream." The young woman lay on her back in the garden's pool, rubbing sleep from her eyes as she bathed her swollen belly. "Drop the Necklace into the water."

  Old Ric hesitated a moment, his last moment, before he remembered where he was. He removed the chain of hex-gems and waited for his mortal wound to claim him. No pain followed even when he released the Necklace and it slipped into the water with a small splash.

  A smile lit her soft face. "The child moves!"

  Old Ric rose to his toe tips, gaunt face grinning. "Then the worlds are saved!"

  "They are my child's caul," the lady said through her smile. "My dream will teach this small one compassion and the greater aspirations of the heart."

  Old Ric bowed, almost weightless with relief. Only one sorrow remained to mar the joy of his adventure. He looked hopefully at the happy woman grasping her large belly. "I have a matter that gravely troubles me, my lady." The eldern gnome settled back on his heels. "Asofel—"

  "Is dead—I know this." The young woman's magisterial gaze hooded sadly. "I feel his loss here in the palace. Even as my dream is stronger for the light he has sacrificed."

  "That is just it, my lady." The gnome stepped forward beseechingly. "This is your dream. Can you not perhaps dream Asofel back to life?"

  The lady peered up through her inky tresses from where she had been marveling at the child moving in her womb again. Sadness dulled her voice, "No, Old Ric. My magic is not strong enough to revive a Radiant One. Asofel is gone. He gave himself that my child would live, and he will be honored in our memory always."

  Old Ric hung his bald head and backed away.

  "Is there anything more, old one?" the woman's voice called after him.

  "Nothing more, my lady." He knelt to climb down from the pool. "I am glad for your child. I am glad for you—and for the worlds."

  "Then follow your gladness out of here, gnome, and return to the worlds." The young woman lay back in the pool, and her hair spread like blood in the water. "Asofel is no more, but his light cannot be destroyed. It is part of my dream now and has given me strength to make some small adjustments. I hope these will please you."

  Old Ric did not tarry to question the nameless lady. Her child lived. The worlds thrived. On airy legs, he ran over cobbles aswirl with golden leaves, one hand at his chest, feeling for the arrow wound and finding none.

  Blooms and fronds dimmed under the slantwise shadows of enclosing night. Evening's purple bleared overhead into violet, fading toward the ultratones of the invisible. And within the utter black of the void no stars glimmered, no moon glided, only shoreless depths of emptiness ranged.

  Upon those alien reaches, another life dreamed, fugitive of all light. The child's father even in sleep informed the ill-shapen, deranged, and malevolent forms of darkness that circled closer out of the night.

  Duppy Hob had been this Nameless One's shadow in the young woman's dream. What had that shadow become in the dream now that the ether devil had perished?

  The eldern gnome scurried through deranged darkness of bracken and flowers and arrived breathless at the ancient well. Not daring to glimpse to either side, he bolted up the skewed stones, amazed at his renewed vigor. He descended the ladder into blue brightness.

  Plaited vines dropped him onto the crescent face of a snowdune. He tumbled down the drift to an ice field and spun upon his reflection. In the wind-brushed panes of ice, he saw hi
mself—his hair fleecy red and full, all wrinkles gone from his face save one vertical line of worry between his handsome gray eyes—stamped there by his sadness for Asofel and the fearful thoughts of darkness that had accompanied his descent from the night garden.

  "Da!" a small voice piped from the morning mist. "I found you! I found you! Now it's my turn to hide!"

  Old Ric whirled upright on his knees. He recognized that child's voice by its wet lisp. Amara! His youngest daughter—who had died many years ago...

  A young girl with pallid face and slim shoulders draped in braided loops of russet hair slid across the ice and into his arms. "I found you!"

  Young Ric grabbed the child and faced her from far back in his heart, astonished. He stared hard at her until he saw through his fears and his hopes to her actuality—and the fact that a new life had truly begun.

  * * *

  Full Cast

  The Nameless Ones—hyperspatial, godlike entities that dwell inside the Abiding Star, the energy source of the universe [the Big Bang].

  The Lady of the Garden—a noblewoman of the Nameless Ones, who has magically created the worlds of our cosmos to serve as a learning tool for her as-yet-unborn child.

  The Lady's Consort—the Nameless One who has fathered the Lady of the Garden's unborn child; he now sleeps within the Abiding Star; his nightmarish dreams of malformity, cruelty, and madness darkly influence the worlds that his lady's magic has created.

  The Four Mystic Worlds—consist of the original reality that is the Abiding Star and the three realms created by the Lady of the Garden's magic in the void outside that primordial radiance:

  • The Upper Air, the turbulent corona of the Abiding Star in which dwell numerous energetic beings, including ether devils, spawns of the nightmares that trouble the sleeping consort.