Shadowfall g-1

by James Clemens

  It was said that a god’s aspect reflected his or her character. Gods of loam were as patient as a budding seed, as solid as rock and hard-packed soil, while gods of the air were aloof and farseeing, ethereal in mind and grace. Gods of water, like Meeryn and Fyla, varied the most, fickle in temperament and spirits, as changeable as water itself: solid ice, flowing water, misty vapor. Then there were the fire gods, who were as quick to anger as a lick of flame, as volatile as a woodland blaze, as passionate as the heated embrace of lovers. They were the best and the worst of all the gods.

  And Lord Balger smoldered among the worst of them.

  He lowered his hand to Tylar’s chest. Tylar remembered the burning touch of the god’s finger a moment ago, the sear of flesh. The smoke of Tylar’s charred skin still tinged the air.

  Balger pressed his hand down atop Meeryn’s palm print.

  Tylar winced but found no burn.

  Instead, it was Balger who gasped. The god’s fingers vanished into the black print as if Tylar’s flesh were mere shadow. He probed farther, wrist deep, into Tylar’s chest.

  Rogger moved closer. The thief, like Tylar, had examined Meeryn’s palm print. The print had been no more than a tattoo on his flesh.

  “I think you should be wary, milord,” Rogger intoned.

  Balger’s brow pinched. “What is this strangeness here?”

  His gaze found Tylar’s. He opened his mouth to question further, but then suddenly the god jerked like a fish on a line. A cry burst from the Balger’s lips, spittle flying, landing like molten wax on Tylar’s skin.

  Balger fell backward and yanked his hand from the shadowy pit in Tylar’s being. Only his hand did not reappear. The stump of his wrist sprayed blood in a fountain of fire, pumping with the beat of the god’s panicked heart.

  Balger roared, a noise that threatened to bring the roof down atop them. Alarm spread among the guards beyond the cell door.

  Tylar writhed in his bonds. His skin burned from the splashes of blood. A crimson pool of fiery humour poured down his breastbone and vanished into the inky blackness over his heart, as if down a stone well. He felt the Grace flowing into him as warm as mulled ale. The daemon inside swelled, pressing against his rib cage, threatening to shatter through.

  There was no doubt what had bitten off the god’s hand.

  The dred ghawl.

  Balger roared back to his feet. He cradled his severed wrist as guards swooped into the room like a flock of black crows, capes billowing, swords ready.

  Balger crossed back to Tylar, destruction in his eyes.

  Rogger attempted to step in the god’s path, but Balger shoved the thief aside.

  The god leaned over Tylar, baring his mutilation. Already the blood had stopped flowing as the wounded wrist healed with a speed of a god. The hand, too, would grow back in the thickness of time. But for now, Balger’s entire bearing flamed with fury. His skin smoked with Grace, his eyes flashed with fire, his breath seared with the winds of a pyre.

  A bellow of rage formed words. “You think to kill me, Godslayer!”

  Balger drew a dagger and wiped its blade across his anger-damp brow. Steel, blessed now by the god’s fiery sweat, turned as ruddy as a branding iron. Balger touched the tip of the knife to his seeping wound, gracing it with his own blood. The god’s eyes narrowed as he cast a specific blessing. The blade went white-hot, more flame than substance.

  “A bale dagger,” Balger said, holding up his handiwork.

  Tylar struggled in his bonds, sensing his doom.

  “Milord! No!” Rogger struggled to elbow through two guards.

  Balger raised the dagger high, then plunged it into Tylar’s belly.

  Searing pain shattered outward.

  Balger dragged the knife up from groin to rib cage, gutting him.

  Tylar cried out, but agony throttled him, turning wail into gurgle. His body arched off the rack, on shoulders and heels, writhing as the room went black. His innards blazed with molten fire.

  He fell backward into darkness.

  For an untold time, Tylar balanced on the razor edge of agony, sightless and witless. The pain refused to relent, to let him escape. It held him in claws of fire, ripping and tearing.

  Then the torture ended. Abruptly.

  The sudden cessation of pain woke him like a frigid dive into a snowmelt stream. Gasping, blind still, Tylar collapsed back to the rack. He blinked back his vision, damp with tears.

  He watched Balger step from his side, smoking blade in hand.

  Tylar stared down at his body, expecting to see intestines spilling from a gaping wound. But his skin lay unmarked. Only the thin course of hair across his belly smoldered, marking the path of the blade.

  Balger leaned over him again. He lifted the blazing dagger. “Ripe with my fiery blessing, the bale blade cuts and heals at the same time. I can slice you all day and all night and you will never weaken or expire.”

  He raised the blade again and plunged it into Tylar’s shoulder, striking clean through to the wood beneath.

  Tylar screamed, unable to help himself.

  Balger straightened, abandoning the impaled dagger. “Or I can leave it here. Cutting and healing continually in one place, leaving only pain, a pain that never dulls, but always remains fresh.”

  Tylar writhed. He had been struck by arrows and blades of all manner. The sting of impact was always intense, but it dulled as severed nerves retracted. Not now. This agony never relented.

  Movement by his toes drew his narrowed vision. Rogger appeared and grabbed his bound foot. “I’m sorry, Tylar.” The thief’s deft fingers snatched his littlest toe, met his eyes, then snapped his digit cleanly.

  Tiny bones snapped.

  The pain was small compared to his shoulder, but in a single breath, it spread outward in a growing wave of agony: up his leg and out over the rest of his body. Bones, healed by Grace before, broke anew, shattering his form. The dagger’s bite disappeared under the assault, overwhelmed.

  Through this agony, Tylar felt something shake loose from the broken cage of his body, snaking out. In the wake of its passage, fractured bones drew back in place, malformed and misaligned, fusing and callusing anyway. His body twisted and joints stiffened, back into his old bent form.

  The pain receded, except in his shoulder. Fire continued to blaze outward from the impaled dagger.

  In the torchlight, a font of black smoke, darker than shadow, billowed from his chest as if from a baker’s chimney. Eyes opened in the darkness, ablaze with lightning.

  Guards scattered to the four walls. Several dropped swords in fright.

  Balger kept his post. The god’s gaze followed the column of smoke to where it pooled like spilled ink across the cell’s low roof.

  From the black sea, a sinuous column snaked out and downward, forming head and neck. Wings swept out as a pair of flanking waves. Silver eyes blazed brighter with white fire. Hanging upside down from the roof like some shadowy bat, the daemon studied the room. The dred ghawl ’s wings lowered protectively to either side of Tylar. A keening wail, beyond hearing but felt on every hair on the body, echoed off the stone walls.

  A humpbacked guard stabbed a lance at the shadowy creature. Its steel head melted and splashed back at the attacker’s toes. Its haft caught fire, falling away to ash. The guard dropped the cursed weapon and fell out the doorway and away. Others followed. Balger’s loyalty was earned by fear. A greater fear now overwhelmed his retinue.

  In moments, Lord Balger was alone.

  The god’s eyes narrowed upon the daemon. “I know you, creature. Spawn of the naether do not belong in this world of sinew and bone.”

  The dred ghawl ’s mane of smoke bristled, and its muzzle sharpened. It stretched toward the god. Balger backed up as the daemon snaked out to meet the god, eye to eye. The white-fire blaze of the daemon’s gaze flashed. The keening in the room focused to a hiss that pained the ears and drew cold sweat from pores.

  Tylar recognized that voice, having heard
it before, on the streets of Punt, from Meeryn’s dark attacker. It was not easily forgotten. Tylar knew what he heard-both then and now.

  The voice from the naether… the voice of the naethryn.

  Balger’s eyes grew wider as he listened to the naether daemon. He stumbled back to the far wall. “No!” the god gasped out with a sharp shake of his head. “Not possible… Rivenscryr was destroyed!”

  Tylar felt a tug on his ankle. He glanced down to see Rogger slicing his leather bonds with a dagger. His right leg was freed, then his left. Rogger shied forward and worked at his left wrist. “Be ready to run.”

  Tylar’s suspicion of the thief flared, but as long as he was being freed, he kept silent. Pain still flamed his right shoulder.

  “The bale dagger,” Rogger said, moving to his last binding. “Can you free it?”

  As answer, Tylar reached to the hilt of the dagger. He grabbed the bone hilt. He felt the Grace fired within it. It helped steady his grip. With an explosion of pained breath, he tugged it from his shoulder. A wisp of smoke trailed the blade’s tip, taking the agony with it. Bathed in the brightness of the blade, Tylar’s shoulder was unmarred, healed and hale.

  Rogger helped him sit up.

  The daemon kept the god pinned to the wall.

  But Balger’s shock waned. The disbelief in his voice hardened to anger. “You lie, naether-spawn!”

  Tylar dragged himself off the rack and crouched on the far side. He fell easily into his old form, back bent, left leg stiff as a walking stick. The ache of his joints was as familiar as a warm cloak. It helped center him, despite the horror.

  The dark umbilicus flowed out from the black print over his heart, coiling and twisting. Tylar waved his hand through the channel, but found nothing but smoke. He recognized the billowing darkness now. While fleeing out of the depths of Tangle Reef, he had witnessed the same. What the seafolk named the Gloom. A penetration of the naether into this world. Only this black font leaked from his own chest. A conduit for the naether-spawn, the naethryn undergod.

  He waved his hand again.

  Though it caused him no harm, he knew its touch to be as deadly as the marine Gloom. He had witnessed how the guards had died back at Meeryn’s castillion in the Summering Isles, left boneless or broken as he and Rogger fled the keep.

  Rogger kept low and hissed at him. “Let’s go.”

  Guards shouted beyond the dungeon cell. The alarm spread quickly. Like all gods, Balger had his own Shadowknights… though such men who bent a knee to the lord of Foulsham Dell were of low ilk, disgraced knights whose crimes did not warrant full stripping. They, like their counterparts among men, found themselves washed up on these hard shores, lost and without futures. The knights of this realm were as likely to be found in bed with a sell-wench as snoring under a table at a low tavern.

  Still, Tylar knew it was best to be away before pieces of shadow sprouted swords and men. He hobbled after Rogger to the door. The daemon continued its guard upon Lord Balger, sensing the greatest danger lay with the god.

  Only once they vacated the cell did the daemon flow back with them.

  Balger made no move to follow. Only his voice chased them. “If Rivenscryr is here, we’re all doomed!” Cruel laughter followed. “One man and one undergod cannot stop the end of all.”

  Rogger led the way to the end of the short hall. Empty now. An iron door clanged shut ahead of them. The screech of a sliding bar echoed to them. “The cowards are trapping us here.” A snort of derision punctuated his words. “Locking a godslayer with their god.”

  “What can we do?” Tylar asked as they reached the doors.

  From its post behind them, the naethryn daemon snaked its neck over their heads and flowed to the iron… through the iron. Metal poured in rivers of molten slag. Hinges and locking bar melted away. The door toppled and crashed into the far room.

  Bale dagger in hand, Tylar led the way, careful to step on the solid iron, using it to ford the pools of fiery slag. The last of the guards vanished out the other side of the dungeon’s anteroom. In their haste, no one bothered to bolt the far door.

  In the larger room, the daemon streamed fully forward with a billow of smoke and reformed its wolfish silhouette, wings folded to its back, long neck questing up the stairwell beyond.

  Rogger collected an abandoned short sword, while Tylar donned an oversized pair of leggings and boots found beside a cot. He kept his chest bared for the sake of the daemon’s umbilicus. Once ready, the daemon seemed to sense their desire and flowed up the stairwell.

  Rogger and Tylar followed. As they wound up out of the subterranean warren, Tylar confronted the thief. “You sought to sell my life for your own.”

  Rogger scowled. “So we wanted everyone to believe.”

  “We?”

  “Delia and I. We concocted this ill strategy while you slept these past days. We guessed word would’ve spread after our escape from the corsairs. Ravens graced with air can outrace any sputtering Fin. We needed a way to make landfall. A way to get you to Tashijan alive. With blessed wards, far-seers, and Graced armies spread along the shores and borders, it would take the protection of a god to keep your skin on your bones.”

  “And you chose Balger?”

  “What better god to know the value of a godslayer? Balger may be vile, but he is no fool.” Rogger shook his head. “I must say even I underestimated his cunning. I thought he’d be satisfied with the price on your head.”

  “So the entirety of your plan was to have me captured by Balger and delivered trussed up and nulled to Tashijan?”

  Rogger tugged his beard. “Just about.”

  “And you couldn’t forwarn me of your plan?”

  “We couldn’t risk you being soothed. You had to be unaware.”

  “What about you and Delia being soothed?”

  Rogger shrugged. “When you have a godslayer in tow, few look elsewhere. As we imagined, we were ignored.”

  Tylar frowned. Ahead, a warm breeze blew down to them. It smelled of swamp and sea, salt and weed. Sunlight reflected off the sweating stone walls. With each step, the air grew hotter.

  They cleared the last flight and found a doorway of rough-hewn squallwood planks. An open iron grating let in the slanting sunlight. Again the daemon pushed through the door. Wood turned to ash. The iron grating dropped and clanked against the top stair.

  Out in the yard, muffled screams and shouts grew louder and clearer as the door fell away. Tylar ducked after the daemon. Rogger kept to his shoulder.

  With their appearance, arrows and crossbow bolts rained around them, but the daemon’s wings spread out, a shield of shadow. Feather, wood, and steel all burned away or were deflected aside.

  Rogger kept low. “Seems Balger’s men are braver from a distance.”

  “What of Delia? We can’t leave her here.” Tylar slowed. He would not abandon her.

  “She’s already gone. Two bells ago. Her escape was easy to arrange. I am not unknown among the wenches who serve… well, let’s say under Balger. Though sometimes on top, too, I’ve heard.”

  Gongs clanged, raising the alarm.

  Rogger pointed to the open gate to the courtyard. They fled across the weed-strewn yard.

  It wasn’t far. Balger’s castillion was no larger than a manor house, a graceless jumble of blocks built of stone and wood. It sat in the middle of the Dell, atop a small outcropping of bedrock, a toad on a mound. The township itself was only so much flotsam and jetsam washed up against its rocky flanks: tumbled, chaotic, broken, waterlogged, bloated, rotted. A miasma of woodsmoke and swamp gasses cloyed the air and turned the sun into a continual glare. Beyond the city lay the only bits of arable land. Wheat, barley, and oat grass formed a fringed patchwork around the ramshackle town. And beyond the farmlands stretched endless marshes, bogs, and fens.

  Where could they go?

  They cleared the gates and spanned a moat that appeared more of a sewer than a defensive perimeter. Rogger led the way into the alleys and str
eets of Foulsham Dell. Shutters slammed all around. Cries raced ahead of them.

  Rogger finally tugged him by the elbow into a cramped alleyway. He waved a hand at the daemon hulking half in shadow with them. “From here, mayhap you’d best rein in your friend there. That beastie of yours attracts too many eyes.”

  Tylar licked his lips. The daemon seemed to read their intent. Its head snaked back, framed in a mane of smoke. Its fiery gaze burned brighter, angry. Here crouched one of the naethryn.

  “How?” Tylar asked warily. “It took Meeryn’s blood last time to drive the beast back inside.”

  “According to Delia, you bear Meeryn’s blood. At least the Grace of it. She thinks you’ll be able to reel the daemon back into you with a touch of your own blood.”

  Rogger held out his short sword.

  Tylar pocketed the dagger stolen from Balger. Such a dread weapon could not draw blood, only pain. Tylar ran the edge of his hand along Rogger’s pocked sword. It was a shallow cut but stung like an adder’s bite. Blood immediately flowed.

  The scent of it drew the attention of the shadowbeast. The naethryn craned back, muzzle sniffing, eyes shining silver.

  Tylar cradled his weeping wound with his other hand. Blood pooled in his palm. Tylar smeared his hands together, coating his fingers in wet crimson. He reached out to the smoky column and throttled it with his hands.

  He expected his fingers to pass harmlessly through the smoke again. But shadow gained substance under his bloody palms.

  It felt leathery, yet warm.

  From his fingertips, a crackling rush of cold flames burst forth. The wildfire flushed out and over the naethryn’s form. In a heartbeat, it reached the tip of its muzzle and rebounded back. On its return, the daemon’s form vanished, burned away by the retreating fire. The flow of fire fled back along the umbilicus, back over his hands.

  Tylar took a hurried breath as the rebound struck him in the chest. A mule kick. He was knocked against the alley wall. A flash of whiteness blinded him, then winked out. The alleyway lay in full shadow again. Darker than a moment ago.

  Rogger searched the shadows for the daemon, making sure it was gone. “That’s better. I was sure one of those smoky wings was going to brush through and melt the bones from my body.” The thief shuddered.