Shadowguard

by Gama Ray Martinez

  “By your command, lord pharim.”

  “Now!”

  In the same instant, Ziary sword slammed against the shield around Dusan and Luntayary’s struck the protections around the rune. Dusan groaned, and Luntayary felt the shield weakening. He drew deeply of his past, accessing what he had once been. His mortal flesh screamed in pain, slowly being consumed by the power coursing through him as Luntayary’s presence grew stronger. It was like he was dying and being born at the same time. His sword inched closer to the rune, and Luntayary sent even more power through the blade. The shield around the rune shattered.

  “No!”

  The word came from both Dusan and Luntayary, but the voice was not that of a pharim. It belonged to the mortal who, even now, was fading.

  “This must be done.” Luntayary’s silent voice spoke to Jez. “Your time in this world is over.”

  “I’ll die if I have to,” Jez said. “But I won’t kill. Kunashi...”

  “Kunashi is already dead!”

  Luntayary lifted is sword. His will was too strong. Jez would never be able to stop the attack, not entirely. He threw his will against the pharim’s. The sword turned aside, and missed the closed eye as it sliced through an image of a head.

  “No! You don’t know what you’ve done!”

  Dusan’s voice was filled with fear. His fingers danced through the air, trying to recreate the rune that protected him from possession. The room rumbled, and Dusan flinched, losing the power he’d been weaving. He tried again, but he was out of time. He screamed and clawed at his head, but he couldn’t stop the horns from emerging. Fiery wings grew from his back, and his face elongated, his mouth growing dagger-like teeth. Ziary took a step back and lifted his weapon. Dusan’s flesh twisted and writhed. The screams were no longer human. Marrowit roared as he consumed Dusan’s body. Without Dusan to sustain it, the shield around him faded. Ziary surged forward but Marrowit lifted a hand and Ziary stumbled. His wings came free of his body and the light faded, leaving only Osmund to crash to the ground

  “Sleep, little scion,” the inhuman voice said. It kicked him with a clawed foot. The tattered remains of a boot went flying as Osmund skidded across the ground. Then, it turned its eyes to Luntayary. “You’ve changed.”

  Luntayary charged.

  CHAPTER 35

  Luntayary’s sword tore through the air, and Marrowit caught it in his hand. The demon laughed, and Luntayary thought the room would collapse on them. The demon ripped the sword from his hand and tossed it aside. The blade returned to normal steel as it clattered to the ground.

  “You are no Darkhunter,” Marrowit said.

  “I am a Shadowguard,” Luntayary said.

  He waved his hands in wide circles. The demon roared and jumped at him, but Luntayary formed a minor binding that redirected the charge and continued with his weaving. Besis had been right about combining the dream web with a spirit chain, but that wasn’t all that needed to be done. Even Luntayary didn’t have the power to do what was required, not alone. There had to be a hole in his binding, one that only led to one place. Otherwise, the demon would throw his strength against the binding and would eventually break free. Luntayary ducked under Marrowit’s attack and thrust his hands upward, entangling the creature in bands of light.

  Marrowit roared against the chains as Jez pumped more power into them. He could feel the demon’s mind struggling against the bindings, trying to find a way out in this world or any other. With Dusan’s death, all his magic had failed, even that which had isolated Kunashi. Luntayary allowed a crack to open, and Marrowit seized on it, opening the way to Between. He tried to flee, Luntayary kept a powerful grip on the chain, and the demon pulled him in. At the last instant, Luntayary grabbed Osmund’s unconscious form, and they both disappeared into Between.

  There was still too much mortality in Luntayary, and he couldn’t shape Between as readily as a full pharim could. Marrowit strained against his bonds, but Between was no place for demons, and his attacks were weakened by the need to maintain himself here. Luntayary summoned the image of the Carceri Academy and went there, holding his grip. The demon screamed as it was dragged back into the physical world.

  The ground was shaking, and people were screaming. The sky was filled with birds who Luntayary guessed were mortals skilled enough to change their forms. The moon had gone dark, and only the fire erupting from the ground gave any light. A portion of the central spire broke and fell off barely missing a group of blue robed students. To their credit, they didn’t flee but kept channeling their power into the mountain, though it did little good. With neither Master Besis to guide the terramages or Master Fina to guide the pyromages, the Academy was ill suited to deal with the eruption of Mount Carcer.

  A contingent of pyromages stood nearby, trying to take hold of the power in the mountain, but they didn’t have the skill to do anything useful with it. They simply redirected it upward. Great gouts of flames shot into the sky. They looked surprised when Luntayary appeared in their midst, but these were students of destruction, and they recognized the thing he brought with him as an enemy. As one, they directed their destructive energies at the demon.

  “No!” Luntayary cried out, but their attacks were already sailing through the air.

  If he’d had his full power, Luntayary could have warded off their attacks, but the battle and his time Between had drained him. He tried to tap into the power of the erupting fire mountain, but he wasn’t fast enough. Marrowit screamed in pain, but a second later, it became a laugh as the remainder of Dusan’s physical form was consumed. Jez’s bindings, lacking a form to hold onto, shattered and the demon fled into the realm of dreams.

  “What was that?” One of the pyromages asked.

  There was no time to explain. Mount Carcer still rumbled and threatened to explode. Luntayary reached into the earth and took hold of the power he’d hoped to use to seal away Marrowit. Even as a mortal, he’d performed the binding to release a sleeping victim. Now, he did that same binding a thousand times on every person asleep in Tarcai and Hiranta. It wasted a lot of power to do it without being physically near all the victims, but he had a lot of power to waste.

  One by one, they woke up, as Luntayary drew out the curse of the sleeping sickness and forced it into a physical form, but there was still too much power in the eruption. Luntayary took hold of it and summoned an image of the mountain in his mind. With Marrowit free, he’d be able to bring the sleeping sickness on anyone he desired, and Luntayary wove a ward that would protect everyone within five miles of Mount Carcer from the demon, pouring the remaining power of the eruption into his weaving. The effort strained his mind, but finally the ward fell into place.

  Slowly, the mountain quieted, and Luntayary let out a breath. Then, he collapsed, utterly exhausted.

  CHAPTER 36

  Jez woke with Master Balud standing over him. The chancellor was humming softly as pain receded from Jez’s body. He sat up the room started to spin. He took a deep breath, and his vision cleared. He was in a room lined with beds. Several of them were occupied by people with arms or legs in slings or bandages on their bodies. Murus sat unconscious in a nearby bed with a bruise covering half his face. Jez was in the sick ward with those who had been hurt when the mountain nearly erupted, but there were none who seemed to be under the sway of the sleeping sickness.

  “It worked,” he said, though the effort of speaking exhausted him.

  “So it did,” the chancellor said. “It very nearly killed you. There’s damage I can’t repair.”

  “It was Luntayary. My body couldn’t contain him.”

  “Luntayary?” Balud asked. “Is that your scion?”

  Jez hesitated. “Something like that.”

  “I’ve never heard of one so strong. He took control of the eruption by himself. I’ve never seen anything like it. Has Marrowit been destroyed?”

  Jez shook his head. “Not destroyed, just driven off. He’ll be back once he’s had a chance to gather his
power.”

  Balud sighed. “I was afraid it wouldn’t be that easy. Where is he?”

  “In the dream world, specifically in the dream created by all of those with the sleeping sickness.”

  “But you woke them up.”

  Jez shook his head. “I woke up those who were nearby, but the sleeping sickness is in Randak and Kunashi and who knows how many other places. Marrowit will barely even notice the ones who were here.”

  “Then what do we do?”

  Jez looked around and patted his pockets, but they were empty. For a moment, panic seized him, but he forced himself to calm down.

  “I should’ve had a stone with me,” Jez said. “What happened to it?”

  Balud reached into his pocket and pulled out a smooth pebble the color of the sky. Milky images swirled on its surface. Before Jez realized what he was doing, he’d snatched the stone away.

  Balud looked surprised as Jez let out a breath of relief. “I’m sorry. It’s very dangerous.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s the sleeping sickness, or at least the part I drew out of the people nearby.”

  “You think we can use this to cure it permanently?”

  Jez shook his head. “It’s not exactly a disease. It can’t really be cured. It’s more like a curse.”

  “So we can use this to break the curse?”

  Again, Jez shook his head. “It’s not really that complicated to cure. It just takes a lot of power, more than most here aside from me can manage.”

  “Then what do you intend to do with that?”

  “I’m going to use it to curse myself with the sleeping sickness.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Because with this, I can follow Marrowit into the dream world and fight him there.”

  For a second, Balud gaped at him. “Jezreel, I won’t claim to know as much about this demon as yours, but I’ve done research into nightmare demons since you told me about him. If you go in there, you’ll just add your dream to his.”

  Jez lifted the stone. “The curse did more than force people to sleep. It joined their dreams to form a single whole. This is the very substance of dreams, and if I use its power, I may be able to control my dreams enough to face Marrowit on equal terms. That’ll never happen in this world.”

  “You’re getting this information from your scion?” Jez just stared at him. “Remarkable. This is how he was bound the first time, isn’t it?”

  Jez nodded, though it was a complete lie. When Marrowit had first been bound near the creation of the world, three pharim had been needed to take him down. Sariel had made it clear that wasn’t happening this time.

  “Very well,” Balud said. “What do you need?”

  “Just a quiet place to rest.”

  Balud nodded and Jez clutched the stone in his hand. He could feel the demon’s power inside. He didn’t tell the chancellor that there would be no retreating if this went wrong. The curse was too strong, even for him. He would never be able to break it. From the moment he took the curse into himself, he would be asleep and no one would be able to wake him as long as Marrowit remained free. He would win or he’d be forever trapped. He closed his eyes and loosened the binding around the stone. The curse leaked out and was absorbed by his skin. He drank it in. As the binding fell, he tried to seize control of the curse and harness its power, but it slipped through his fingers, and the sleeping sickness of a thousand people came to rest on him. Darkness consumed him.

  CHAPTER 37

  He landed in Tarcai, but the city was empty. The buildings had been torn down, and a massive crack ran through the caldera. Lava flowed through the streets. Jez was on a piece of stone floating on a molten river. He realized his makeshift boat had once been the walls to his quarters. He had failed. Tarcai had been destroyed by the escaping demon. He looked into the lava and considered jumping in. Everyone had depended on him, and he had let them down. He hadn’t cared for some of them, but that didn’t mean they deserved this. It would be right for him to end his life in the fires that had claimed theirs.

  Something tugged at his mind, a memory that he couldn’t quite remember. A stone with milky images floating on its surface appeared in his hand for a second before vanishing. This wasn’t right. He shook his head to clear his thoughts and tried to remember. Mount Carcer was huge, and Tarcai sat in the middle of it. If the mountain had erupted, it wouldn’t have left this ruined shell. The entire city would’ve been consumed.

  He hadn’t failed. The power had been redirected, freeing those under Marrowit’s curse and protecting anyone who was close enough. The mountain rested again, and the city was safe. He held the power of the curse.

  Slowly, like the high tide receding, the lava retreated beneath the earth which closed behind it. He blinked and the city was restored. He now stood in the courtyard in front of the central spire which once again seemed whole.

  “I’m here,” he said to no one. “Where are you?”

  This was Jez’s dream, but it was also part of a much greater whole, one composed of the dreams of all those under Marrowit’s sway. Perhaps he just had to walk far enough to find the demon. He looked at the edge of the mountain rising up over the city. It would take the greater part of a day to reach the bottom. At least it would in the real world.

  He took a step forward, and the world shifted. He found himself looking down the edge of the caldera. He’d been a mile away, but that didn’t make a difference in a place where the mind mattered more than the body. Most of the mountain looked every bit as large as its counterpart in the real world, but at its base, a snowy plain stretched out before him, and beyond that, he could see a patch of desert. Even more terrain waited beyond that. It looked like a bad quilt. Some pieces were long and wide. Others were so small, he could barely make them out. Mount Carcer dwarfed them all, though whether its size was due to the strength of the sleeping sickness on him or the power of Jez’s own mind, he couldn’t be sure.

  On impulse, he spread his arms and leapt into the air. He imagined wings carrying him high in the air, and suddenly, the mountain vanished, and Jez was left suspended by wings formed of his own imagination. He was so shocked by the change that his mind went blank. Then, the ground rushed up toward him, and he cried out, forcing the image of the wings back into his mind. At the last instant, they appeared, and he flapped, catching himself before he crashed into the ground. A few seconds later, he was soaring through the sky.

  The sensation of flight was exhilarating. It felt like the whole world stretched out before him. It was so familiar. Wind ruffled his sapphire robes, and he looked down, wondering where those had come from. He scanned the landscape, looking for any sign of the demon, but there was nothing aside from the interweaving of thousands of dreams.

  “And what does a demon dream about?” he asked the sky.

  Marrowit’s nightmares had to be of Mount Carcer, where he’d been held since the foundations of the earth were laid, but he obviously hadn’t been there. Dusan had followed Marrowit for power. If the demon had spared any thought for the baron, perhaps he’d be in the manor at Randak.

  Jez headed east, though he had no real reason to suspect the manor would lie in that direction in the dream world. Still, it was the best idea he had. The landscape changed rapidly beneath him, a patchwork of forests, plains, and mountains. On three separate occasions, he saw the red stones of Kunashi. At first, he thought he was going in circles, but the surrounding area was different, and he understood. With the entire town asleep, it made sense that many people would dream of home.

  Time was odd in this place, and Jez had no idea if he had been flying for a minute or an hour before he reached the edge of the dream. The world just stopped. The ground below ended like a cliff over a sea of darkness. Jez’s wings continued to flap, but the ground underneath remained still as if the dream would not allow him past its borders.

  He landed on a patch of sand that could’ve been desert or shore. He moved to the edge and tried to force
his hand past the edge. He met no resistance, yet his hand wouldn’t move forward. Off to one side, a patch of ground materialized, extending the border of the dream slightly. A tree sat in the center of the new ground. Something moved in its branches. He flew in that direction, but found nothing other than the tree growing on a field of grass. It was a good climbing tree with low branches and thick knots of wood that would provide places to grab onto. There had been something in the branches, but it was gone now

  “Where are the people?” he asked himself.

  Every piece here had come from a sleeping mind. This newest section had to be from a person recently brought under the sway of the sleeping sickness, but he couldn’t find any sign of the dreamer. They had to be here somewhere. Jez launched himself into the air, flying along the edge of the dream. Every time a new section was added, he swooped down, but he found nothing. Finally, after a dozen tries, he got lucky.

  He landed on a stretch of rocky ground. There was no one there, but just before he lifted off, a street with a building on either side appeared. A young girl, no more than five years old, stood in the center of the street. She saw him and, for a moment, she looked confused. A gust of wind blew her hair into her face. She lifted her hand to move it away, but her finger seemed to turn to sand and blew away. Her jaw dropped as the rest of the hand was carried off. Her arm followed a second later. Before he could do anything, she was gone. He could barely see the specs of dust carried on the wind. Jez spread his wings and took to the air. He lost the trail of dust before he had gone a mile, but he kept going in the same direction.

  After another few miles, he stopped, scanning the patchwork landscape. Off to one side, a wisp moved across desert sand, and he went after it, barely catching a glimpse of the specs that must’ve belonged to some other dreamer. He kept on like that, finding a new gust whenever he lost the one he was following. He went through dozens before he saw where they were going.

  He’d only seen Rumar Keep in paintings, but Dusan had possessed several images of it. Jez had dreamed of it often. Its stone looked like gold shining under a morning sun. Its towers rose high enough to survey the land for miles in every direction. A moat of crystalline water surrounded it. Rumar Keep was the jewel of the civilized world, but even in a dream, he could smell the otherworldly nature of the inhabitant.