Journey into the Void (42 page)

S
HADAMEHR HAD THE SENSATION OF BEING A CHILD AGAIN, BEING
rocked to sleep in his cradle. He might have enjoyed it, except that for some strange reason, his mother kept flinging cold water into the bottom of his cradle, water that was continually sloshing back and forth. And as if that wasn't bad enough, she covered him with a blanket made of fish.

He tried repeatedly to wake up to complain about this rude treatment, and sometimes he managed to do so. He would wake up just enough to be able to drink water that tasted of fish, eat fish that tasted of fish, and when he was starting to think he was sufficiently awake to sort things out, he would sink back to sleep in the waterlogged cradle.

Shadamehr had no idea how long this lasted. Day blurred into night and back to day again. His sleep was dreamless and peaceful, except for the sloshing water and the smell of fish. No one hurt him. Indeed, they were very protective of him. Just like his mother. Despite that, he felt resentment start to grow inside him, and one day when he had been hoisted out of the bottom of the cradle and carried onto dry land, Shadamehr stared at a cup of water they shoved into his hand and tossed it away.

“No,” he said groggily. “I won't stand for this.”

His words came out sounding as if they'd been mixed with mush, but apparently the orks understood, for one of them ran off to report. The Captain appeared. She stood over him, glared down at him. Shadamehr
roused himself, looked up at her. She seemed to swell in his vision, then recede and swell again, and he spent a few moments blinking until she settled down.

“Whash going on?” he demanded. His tongue felt as if it had got into the wrong mouth.

“You have been asleep for six days. How do you feel?” the Captain asked.

He gave her question a moment's thought. “Well rested,” he answered.

The Captain laughed heartily.

The boat had been beached on the bank of a wide, sluggishly flowing river, where willow trees dropped dead yellow leaves into the water. One ork stood guard over the boat. Other orks were fishing or cooking fish. The air was chill. The winter sun shone overhead, danced off the water. Damra lay beside him, slumbering soundly.

“Is Damra all right?” Shadamehr asked.

“She is well,” said the Captain. “She sleeps, that is all. We have fed her and given her water. Do not worry.”

Shadamehr cudgeled his weary brain, forced himself to try to think. Damra was there, but others were missing. He started to remember.

“Alise and Griffith,” he said. “Are they safe?”

“Your fire-haired woman and the elven omen-maker? I left them behind.” The Captain chuckled. “I have no need for bad omens on this trip.”

Shadamehr winced. “You knew the truth about that?”

“Of course!” The Captain was disdainful. “A shaman who can't tell a god-given omen from an omen made by an elf wouldn't be much of a shaman.”

“Why did you go along with it, then?” Shadamehr asked. “Why order the ships to leave?”

“It suited my plans,” said the Captain.

One of the orks shouted something. The Captain waved her hand.

“We have to go.” She pointed at the fish. “Eat your meal. You will grow weak otherwise. Even in sleep, your body requires food.”

“Where are we going?” Shadamehr asked.

He heard chanting and began to feel drowsy. They were casting a spell on him. He fought against it, but it was no use.

The Captain took the food from his limp hands. The last words he heard were those of the Captain.

“You know where,” she said.

 

Again the enforced slumber, the smell of fish, the water sloshing around him in the boat, as he lay at the bottom, covered in an oil-slick tarp. Again the passage of time, slipping past him like the river water, the waking and wondering and eating, all ending with the sounds of chanting. The Captain did not speak to him again, and the other orks stared at him with blank expressions when he demanded answers.

Then the motion of the boat ceased. Strong hands grabbed hold of him. A muscular ork flung him over his shoulder. Once he got Shadamehr properly settled, the ork wrapped an enormous arm around Shadamehr's legs and carried him off as if he were an obstreperous child being hauled away to bed.

His head and arms hanging down behind the ork, Shadamehr could see nothing except orken behind. His brain was still sleep-fogged, and he drifted in and out of consciousness. But the next time he awoke, he awoke fully, without the horrible sensation that someone had stuffed his head full of goose feathers.

He sat up. His hands and feet were securely bound, but, checking himself over, he found that otherwise he appeared to be in good condition.

“About time,” came a deep voice from the darkness, speaking Elderspeak. “I'm sick and tired of listening to you snore.”

“I don't snore,” Shadamehr returned with dignity, then added, “I wonder why it is we always deny that we snore. One would think it was some kind of terrible malady, like the plague.”

“Who cares?” the voice said irritably. “Who are you, anyway?”

Shadamehr didn't immediately answer, for a rock was jabbing him uncomfortably in his posterior. He scooted his body into a more comfortable position and looked about. As near as he could make out, he was in a cave. Sunlight streamed in from a large opening about ten paces distant. Outside, he could hear the crash of rushing water—a far different sound than the gentle rippling of the placidly flowing river.

Hearing a groan and a sigh, he wriggled around and saw Damra lying next to him. Her hands and feet were bound like his.

“How very extraordinary,” Shadamehr said. “Her magical armor should have protected her. Strange. Very strange.”

He wiggled his hands experimentally. Finding that the knots were secure, he gave a shrug. He wasn't going anywhere, not for a while at least.

“I said—who are you?” repeated the voice belligerently.

“Are you a prisoner?” Shadamehr asked.

“No, I'm here for my health!” the voice snapped.

As Shadamehr's eyes adjusted, he could eventually make out a short, squat figure, trussed up with ropes around his arms and legs, sitting with his back against the rock wall. Shadamehr could see nothing of the face, except a pair of eyes that gleamed with indignation.

“You're a dwarf!” said Shadamehr.

“What has that got to do with anything?” the dwarf demanded.

“Look, I'll tell you my name. It's Shadamehr. I was formerly Baron Shadamehr, but now I'm landless, pfenningless Shadamehr. I'd shake hands, but I'm rather incapacitated at the moment.”

“I've heard of you,” said the dwarf.

“Good things, I hope?”

“I'm trying to remember.” A pause, then the dwarf said grudgingly, “The name is Wolfram.”

“By the gods!” Shadamehr gasped in astonishment. “I've heard of you myself!”

Something clicked in Shadamehr's mind, like the inner workings of a water clock. It was only a trickle of thought, but enough to start the mechanism moving. He had the feeling that something had clicked for Wolfram, too, for he grew a shade less distrustful.

“Do you know a Vinnengaelean named Ulaf?”

“Do you know a Trevinici named Jessan and a pecwae named Bashae?”

Damra sat up, stared down at her bonds in perplexity. “What has been going on?”

“I was wondering that myself,” said Shadamehr. “Your magical armor should have acted to protect you.”

“What magical armor?” Wolfram asked suspiciously.

“Who is that?” Damra asked, just as suspicious.

“For that matter, who are you?”

“Damra, this is Wolfram, who was with Lord Gustav when he died,
according to Bashae. Wolfram, this is Damra, the person Bashae gave the Stone to. It seems we have come full circle,” said Shadamehr. “I know how we got here, Wolfram. The orks brought us. How did you come to be here? Did the orks bring you?”

Wolfram hemmed and hawed a great deal, but eventually his story came out.

“So you ran into Shakur. You travel in exalted company, Wolfram,” said Shadamehr.

“And you are lucky to be alive with your soul intact,” said Damra.

“Your friend, Ulaf, is looking for you, Baron. He had a message for you.”

“We'll get to that later. When did all this happen?” Shadamehr asked.

“Not long ago,” said the dwarf evasively.

“If we are where I think we are,” said Shadamehr, “Mardurar is a far piece from here.”

“If you must know, there's a rogue Portal in the Meffeld Pass,” said Wolfram. “I took it. I'm in a hurry, you see. I inherited a manor house in the north—”

“From Lord Gustav,” said Damra.

“Never mind Lord Gustav,” Wolfram growled. “I was on my way to my manor house. I walked out of the Portal and the next thing I know, a shadow comes alive and looms up in front of me. Then the sun falls from the sky and gives me a blip on the noggin that knocks me cold. And that shouldn't have happened, because—” He halted, clamped his mouth shut.

“Because…” Shadamehr prompted.

Wolfram remained silent.

“Because your magical armor should have protected you,” said Shadamehr. “Just as Damra's should have protected her.”

“What magical armor?” Wolfram groused. “I don't know what you're talking about.”

“I'm afraid I don't either,” said Damra.

“He is a Dominion Lord,” said Shadamehr. “He carries the dwarven portion of the Sovereign Stone. And he's not going to his manor house. He's going to Old Vinnengael.”

Wolfram's jaw dropped so that they could practically hear it thunk on the cavern floor.

“Here, now,” he said suspiciously. “How do you know all this?”

“Because I carry the human portion of the Sovereign Stone,” said Shadamehr. “And Damra of Gwyenoc carries the elven portion. And, unless I am much mistaken,” he added, as the Captain of Captains entered the cave, “the fourth part of the Stone is with us as well.”

Reaching beneath her shirt and the leather, fur-lined vest she wore over it, the Captain of Captains drew out a silver chain from which hung suspended a jewel, smooth-sided, triangular in shape.

“You told us that the Sovereign Stone was inside Mount Sa 'Gra,” said Damra.

“I lied.” The Captain shrugged. “But there was a second full moon that month when I said it.”

“A lie told under the second full moon in the same month doesn't count as a lie,” Shadamehr explained.

“Besides,” the Captain continued, her voice hardening, “there was a reason for the falsehood. We discovered that an evil creature, one we call a Soul-stealer, seeks our Sovereign Stone. He thinks it is in Mount Sa 'Gra. He searches for it there. Not here.” She thrust the stone back into her breast.

“What's a Soul-stealer?” Wolfram asked, puzzled.

“A Vrykyl,” said Shadamehr. The mental waterwheel was turning very fast now. “Dagnarus sent one of his Vrykyl to take the form of an ork to try to steal their Stone.”

“But why spellbind and tie us up and make us prisoners?” Damra demanded. “Why bring us here to this cave?”

“I know the answer!” Shadamehr cried, wriggling in excitement, as pleased with himself as any brown-nosing schoolboy. “You had to drug us to separate us from Alise and Griffith. A very wise idea. I had that part figured out. The spellbinding took me a bit longer, but I've solved that, too. You had to keep us spellbound because the person who is behind this was afraid we would try to escape before he could meet us and explain it to us. Right so far?”

The Captain nodded. Summoning two orks, she told them to untie the captive's bonds.

“You had to keep us tied up in the cave,” said Shadamehr, wincing and flexing his fingers as the circulation started to return to his hands, “because you were afraid that in our groggy condition, we would wander
out and tumble into the Orken Gorge which is where we are. Right?”

“We had to secure the boat,” said the Captain.

“Of course you did!” said Shadamehr. “Which meant you had to leave us alone. And you treated our friend Wolfram here in such a rude fashion because the person behind this wants all four bearers of the Sovereign Stone to make this journey together. Am I right again?”

“But the dwarf said that he was stopped by a ‘shadow come to life,'” argued Damra, “and struck over the head ‘by the sun falling from the sky.'”

“And so I was,” Wolfram stated, still wrathful.

“I think I can answer that, too,” said Shadamehr. “There is your sun.”

He pointed to the orken Captain.

In response, she clasped hold of a medallion she wore on the same chain as the Sovereign Stone. Silver armor flowed over her body. A silver helm, in the form of a dolphin leaping from the waves, adorned her head. Standing in the sunlight in the cavern opening, the orken Dominion Lord did look very much like the sun come to Earth.

“And here is your shadow,” Shadamehr added.

An elf, clad all in black, slipped silently into the cavern. Coming to stand beside the ork, he bowed to the group.

“Silwyth,” said Damra, understanding at last.

“One night,” said the Captain, “as I was out for an afternoon's fishing in my boat, a strange sleepiness overcame me. I dreamed that a human came to me. He said his name was Gareth, and he told me that I must take the orken portion of the Sovereign Stone to Old Vinnengael. The time had come for the oath-breakers to make good the vow that they had taken long ago.

“When I awoke, I went back to shore. I summoned the shamans and told them of my dream. I asked them to perform the omens to see if I should obey this human's command. A strange thing happened. None had seen the like before. The omens were good and bad—both at the same time.

“What did it mean? What was I to do? Who could explain it? My shamans tried.” The Captain made a contemptuous gesture. “Those with the good omen said I must go or all would be lost. Those with the bad omen said I must not go, for if I did, all would be lost. The shamans actually came to blows over the matter.