The sharp grind of steel told Ashley that Glavenor’s blade had been fully drawn. Yet he had nothing to arm himself with. In this place, there was no Light essence at all.
If Ashley had ever doubted the existence of the Shadowcasters before, he knew that he would never have the luxury again.
A force of nearly fifty men and women surrounded them. A haze of dark particles flickered from Shadowcaster to Shadowcaster, linking them in an aura of motes. Ashley recognised the movement of essence. It was the same magical flux the Lightgifters employed, only the sprites he was seeing were as black as night.
What does one do with Dark essence?
The thought chilled him to the bone.
Five Shadowcasters formed a group in the road and advanced. A figure cloaked in a shifting cloud of gloom led them. It was impossible to discern exactly where the leader stood, because of his use of the motes. Nonetheless, Ashley felt the immense weight of the figure’s scrutiny.
“Why do you trespass in my kingdom?” the leader demanded, his voice an angry scraping wheeze. The challenger spread his hands. Darkness seemed to rise from the rocks. Ashley felt the sting of something as it took the warmth from his flesh, the sickening bind of a strange spell. He felt as if he had been pushed from a high place. He knew that there was an impact to come.
A wave of nausea washed over him. He felt so small before the mighty man who faced them. The fact that he couldn’t see the man’s face made the fear even worse.
The Swordmaster’s voice held no trace of the terror Ashley felt. “We do not trespass! This is the land of Eyri. You know you are the subject of King Mellar, and I am the King’s Swordmaster.” Glavenor held his blade at the ready. It glinted pale blue.
“I know who you are, Garyll Glavenor. Sheath your sword,” the leader commanded in his harsh, scratching voice. The Dark essence rushed over the company like a spindrift. Ashley was glad he was seated in the saddle, for the crushing despair and weakness he felt would have buckled his knees, had he been standing.
Glavenor’s face was cut from stone.
“Are you the leader of these people?” he demanded.
There was a long silence measured only by the nervous breathing of the Gifter’s horses.
“I am Cabal, Darkmaster of Ravenscroft. This is my land, and my people. I ask only once more. Why do you trespass in my kingdom?” The edge of menace in the voice was sharp enough to draw blood.
Father Keegan stepped close to Glavenor. They held a brief, whispered conversation. Then Keegan addressed the one who called himself the Darkmaster.
“We chased a man, a murderer, to—this place. He has killed many. We seek only justice.”
“Whose trail of blood do you follow?”
“He calls himself Kirjath Arkell,” said Glavenor. The name was pronounced with fierce contempt. “I presume he is one of yours.” Glavenor was tensed, as if for attack. Keegan rested a pacifying hand on the Swordmaster’s arm. They exchanged a brief glance.
“Father Keegan, you are most wise,” rasped the Darkmaster. “Yes, I know who you are, all of you. It is only at my mercy that any of you shall leave this place. You would do well to remember that, Glavenor.”
The Darkmaster seemed to know too much about them. Ashley tried to shrink down further into his saddle.
A command was relayed through the Shadowcasters. A horse was led to the fore, a grey, bearing two riders who were hidden beneath a thick, black cloak.
“Are these the riders you seek?” the Darkmaster asked. He extended his hand and issued a sharp command. The bulky cloak flipped open, then dispersed as if the wind had blown it to pieces. There was nothing inside the cloak. A cloud of black particles flew to the Darkmaster’s hand.
Dark essence.
“What you have chased was an illusion, but it served the traitor’s purpose, in bringing you here. Now I must decide what to do with you.”
They huddled in the road. Keegan made to speak, but the Darkmaster had already raised a swift hand. Motes flickered through the air, forming a net around them which seemed to contain a thick silence.
Nothing moved, the air was cold, and still. They waited.
Glavenor seemed to be counting their adversaries. High above, the rose-fingered dawn began to streak the sky, but on the ground, the gloom seemed to linger with the Shadowcasters.
Ashley hoped that the Darkmaster would forgive them for tresspassing.
What am I thinking? This is Eyri.
But he couldn’t deny the feeling of desperation and inadequacy. Even Glavenor seemed to feel something, for he sheathed his sword at last. The Darkmaster gestured the motes aside, and the sounds of the vale returned.
“So you can count, Glavenor.”
“Our grievance is with the murderer Arkell,” Garyll answered. “He must have evaded us in Fendwarrow. We shall ride peacefully from here and bother you no more this day.”
“Your words do not hide your intent very well, Glavenor,” the Darkmaster responded. “It is clear you wish to return another day, to settle the issue of my rule. No matter, I expected no less of you. And in that, you shall serve my purposes well. It is time I bade my neighbour a warning, and who better to announce it than the Swordmaster of Eyri? None shall doubt your word. Tell Mellar that we wish to trade, that much can be gained from working together, and nothing from resistance. And tell him to send a more—diplomatic—emissary next time.”
A hollow laughter issued forth from the cloaked Darkmaster, a sound like shattering flint. For an instant, Ashley thought he saw the figure reduced to a shorter man, with a lined, thin face. It made the Darkmaster’s menace no less, only more concentrated.
“You may go, but you shall not ride peacefully. You must be gone from Ravenscroft by the breaking of dawn. You have little time to make the bridge, but we shall help you ride.” The Darkmaster raised his arms to the lightening sky.
Ravens descended in droves. They dived from the high cliffs, flocked from the fields, and some were even formed in Shadowcasters hands as Ashley watched. Morrigán.
Glavenor leapt to his saddle. A bird dived and Grace’s horse squealed, reared, and fled, with the Sister clinging desperately to its neck. The rest of the horses could not be held back. They charged in panic, away from the driving birds of Ravenscroft.
If Ashley had been a horse, he would have run faster, for a wave of cold fear chased them. Motes pressed the awful spells of the Darkmaster into their backs. They galloped along the wide black road, with the Morrigán sniping at their horses like dark arrows.
The fearsome bridge that spanned the chasm was more terrible in the pre-dawn light than it had been in the dark. The drop was huge on either side. Sheer, broken cliffs fell hundreds of feet. The bridge looked smooth, too narrow to be safe without rails, yet that was all there was—a span of the blackest stone, arching through the air.
But the fear driving the horses was greater, the flurry of black wind and broken cries compelled the beasts to bear their riders over the slick surface at great speed. Ashley closed his eyes, and prayed that the horse did not.
After the crossing, the horses would not slacken their pace. The Morrigán continued to harass them, though not as intensely, and gradually Ashley began to fear their attacks less. They never seemed to strike the riders or the horses. Their task was simply to frighten, to chase.
Peaks passed by, and the sky lightened ever more. The road held no danger, save that it sloped downward. They raced through a narrow defile with the birds screeching and cawing at their heels. They burst into a gentler landscape, where the hills opened outward, and the air was clear. As if responding to a sudden command, the Morrigán pulled up and away, wheeling in a black gaggle behind the company, before heading deeper into the mountains. Their cacophony faded; they had returned to their roost.
The horses took a while to calm, but their pace slackened to a canter, then to a trot, and finally they allowed themselves to be reined in.
The view was spectacular. They were halted on
a hillside that had stern peaks on its right, and the Black River ravine on their left. The trail wound downward, towards Fendwarrow. The ravine was thick with mist, and over the lower ground ahead it crept, extending far across Eyri, covering the Amberlake with a soft white blanket. Far across the realm, the unmistakable shape of Fynn’s Tooth was fired by the brilliance of the morning sun. Dawn had broken, and the immediate danger had passed.
They let the horses graze briefly.
The voice of the Dovecote Assembly came to Ashley through his orb, but he did not have the heart to join them in the Morningsong. There was no Light essence in this abandoned place. Having witnessed the Shadowcasters, he wondered if the Gifters would ever have the power to resist their spells. He could still taste the bitter poison of despair which had scourged his soul.
Without Light essence, they had been defenceless in Ravenscroft. The same could happen elsewhere. Ashley suspected that the Darkmaster wouldn’t be content to remain in his hidden vale forever.
It was the Swordmaster who put a voice to the thought.
“Ravenscroft is a worse threat than the murderer who led us there. An entire army could be hidden within that Keep, and we would not know it.”
“Yet they have never sought to invade Eyri,” said Keegan, in a pacifying tone.
“No Father, you are wrong. The troubles in Fendwarrow stem from that dark vale up there. They began their invasion of Eyri long ago, only so subtly that we were never alerted.”
“The Darkmaster could have killed us!” Keegan objected. “And yet he sent us off with a message for the King. Maybe his intent is not as menacing as you think.”
“Or he is immensely confident of his position, to act so boldly,” Glavenor countered.
“What of Hosanna, and Rosreece?” asked Sister Grace. “We cannot abandon the duty of finding them.”
Glavenor turned to face Ashley and Grace. “We followed a decoy here, so Arkell must have left Fendwarrow by another route. He might still have Hosanna with him, but I fear your Rosreece was eliminated, even before we came to Fendwarrow.”
“Why would he keep Hosanna?” Ashley blurted out, then bit his tongue. Keegan gave him a sharp glance.
“Maybe he just needed a healer,” suggested Grace, but her eyes held a deeper sorrow. It didn’t need to be said. A man who murdered with abandon probably wasn’t the best company a woman could hope for.
“We shall pick up his trail in Fendwarrow. I think a chat with Mukwallis is long overdue.”
“And what of Ravenscroft?” Keegan asked.
“That is a matter for our King,” answered Glavenor. “Come, let us begin the trail, or it shall never end.”
The pace was slow, for the horses were tired, and the mists soon swirled around them. A damp mood claimed the morning. They all had much to consider.
When they came to the tunnel above the falls, the horses would not enter. They had reached their limit—too many terrifying incidents, too long a road. None of the horses would step into the darkness, even Garyll’s steed shied and stumbled away.
They let them graze on the rich grass above the falls. Ashley searched for another passage, but there was no way down the loose, broken cliff or out of the steep-sided gorge. Glavenor tried to coax his horse through the tunnel with a branch he managed to set alight, but the wood smoked and spluttered and only worsened the horses’ unease.
“I shall send my men to retrieve the animals,” Glavenor announced. “They can set proper torches in the walls of the tunnel. I intend to place a strong guard here, to ensure no traffic passes through these falls.”
They agreed to picket the horses and to march the last league. The falls were as icy as ever, but the daylight diminished the threat. They staggered through the sloping tunnel behind Garyll’s smoking torch.
It was late afternoon by the time they tramped into the village of Fendwarrow, weary as plough-horses. Glavenor agreed that they rest overnight while he hunted for clues. He left them at the Crowbar. The inn had a strangely deserted feel to it. The kitchens served poor fare, but none of the Gifters had the energy to complain.
It wasn’t long before Ashley had fallen into an exhausted sleep on top of his bed. Even as he dreamt, he was aware of the night falling. He knew that somewhere, in a vale filled with Dark essence, the Shadowcasters were rising.
His sleep was troubled.
21. KING OF EYRI
“Thread by thread, the spiders weave,
but ever less their web can leave.”—Zarost
Kirjath began the day in high spirits. He hid the boat in the Scrags, the hidden coves of shattered rocks which formed the abandoned south shore of the King’s Isle. The woman he tied to the mast, like the pitiful sack of flesh and bones she had become. As the wine wore off, she had become morose and tearful. Kirjath supposed he could give her some jurrum to ease the Dwarrow-bane, but there was a more pleasing alternative.
He wove a Dark spell of Despair, and guided the motes to infest her mind. She would be too hopeless to recover that day. She would want to kill herself, she would feel she had deserved it all, and would not attempt to escape, if he judged her right. She would await his return, that he might punish her. He smiled to her, and set off through the tumbled rocks.
He had evaded the other Lightgifters, and sent them as a present to the Darkmaster. They would be dead in Ravenscroft by now, or fleeing for their lives, if the Master had been merciful.
Mercy from the Darkmaster?
They were dead. The Master would still be furious, ranting and raving, plotting ways to discipline his traitorous servant.
Servant no more!
A flickering doubt tainted his courage. The Darkmaster was a formidable enemy, maybe he had gone too far. His hands found jurrum in his pouch. The juice filled his mouth as he chewed a leaf, and his confidence returned with a thrilling surge. He would find the girl, claim the Ring, and begin to gather his power. With the aid of the Morgloth, no one would stand in his way.
The morning mist was not clearing off the lake, and the sun hid above the vaporous soup. The mist was greasy and dank at water level, infused with the scent of Stormhaven’s effluent. That meant he was close to the sewers. There wasn’t much shore between the Seep and the Kingsbridge. Then he would reach the City Gates.
There was a movement in the mist ahead. Sudden voices. Swords.
Kirjath waded quietly into the chill water of the lake. The Swords would be too suspicious of him, so far from the Kingsbridge. The memory of his capture at First Light was fresh; as infuriating as a weevil in the brain. The tinpots had been too clever for him. He had been caught in the simplest of traps.
Never again.
Kirjath halted silently. He wrapped his body in the gloom of Dark essence, diffusing his shape into a bulky charcoal cloud, a cloud with faintly yellow eyes.
“Hey, what’s that out in the lake?” A young guard’s voice. Eager to impress his superiors, no doubt.
I’ll impress him.
A fantasy with black wings, dread talons, and a deadly bite came to mind. But Kirjath kept as still as stone, and allowed the Dark essence to spread outwards instead, blurring his figure, widening, shifting, confusing the man on the shore.
“Jumping at shadows, Bradley?” an older voice asked.
Kirjath could just make out their forms in the mist as they peered his way. He focused the Dark into three prongs above his head.
“Just an old tree, kipper,” the senior guard admonished. “The mist does strange things to the eye. Come, we have a way to patrol yet.” The Swords walked on, leaving the water lapping against Kirjath’s legs.
He waited until they were far gone, then he waded parallel to the shore for a way. The jurrum was growing sour.
He scratched his scalp, pulling scurf from the rippled skin.
Blast and shatter the Lightgifter!
She may have eased the pain, but she had left him with scars aplenty. His head felt like a burnt potato. He spat the stale jurrum into the water. He h
ad a task today; to gain entry into Stormhaven, and to find the girl.
The City Gate was the only way in—Stormhaven’s sheer walls of stonewood were impenetrable. But the guards at the Gate were a mere formality—they would be easily fooled.
He could hide himself beneath the cowl of his robe while he stated his business. A merchant seeking advice from the House of Law, that would get him in. It wouldn’t take long to find where the girl was. If she used the Ring at all, she would be an even easier target.
* * *
Tabitha gazed down at the street from her bedroom window. Most of Stormhaven was wrapped in a woolly blanket of mist, and even in the higher parts of the city, pale threads of moisture curled around the roofs. The Morningsong had come and gone in her Lightstone; familiar words but an unfamiliar joy of communion with the Assembly.
Stormhaven was busy in the mornings. Already the streets were filling as the busy folk of the King’s Isle emerged like ants from a nest. Through the merchants, bureaucrats and nobles, marched a strict procession of Swords on patrol.
A voice at her side brought Tabitha back to her immediate surroundings.
“Good morning, Miss Tabitha.”
Pia was as neatly dressed as ever. The little guideling was beaming.
“Hullo Pia.”
“Miss Westerbrook said you’re to meet her as soon as you’re ready at the House of Ceremony. I’m to help you dress.” She offered a pile of folded blue linen.
“Dress? Why? What is to happen this morning?”
“You’re to see the King.” Pia could not mask the awe in her expression. “Miss Westerbrook said she will request a special audience.” She proudly opened the fabric she held, and layed a deep blue dress on the bed. Tabitha gasped.
The King.
It was a most beautiful garment, as blue as the evening sky, loose-sleeved and finely-weaved.
The King?
A golden sash was folded about the waistline, and embroidered swallows crossed the fabric in pale tones.
The King!
The Riddler's Gift: First Tale of the Lifesong (The Tale of the Lifesong) Page 31
