Shadow (11 page)

‘Such rhetorical flourish will surely aid you in persuading our enemies,' said the First Captain, bristling to be insulted this way before Evelle.

‘Of what do you wish to persuade the rebel cities, Strategist?' said Thaun.

Blain grunted. ‘To preserve the world for a while. Until later, when we can stab their backs at a time of our choosing. All of which they will know full well. But for now we need them. There's little point winning a prize which has burned to ash. How absurd. We need them!' Blain laughed again with what seemed real mirth. ‘Go,' he snapped at Tauvene. ‘Assist him,' he added to Envidis. No one was under any illusion what
assist
really meant. Least of all the First Captain.

‘And where is the rest of your entourage?' said Blain to Thaun when they had left. He got slowly to his feet and drew his plain coat over the shifting colours of his Strategist's robe.

‘They are back at the inn, Strategist.'

‘They still live?'

‘Most of them,' said Evelle, smiling.

‘Well let's go and see if they're useful. Take me there. You!' He pointed at Kiown. ‘You're not here for your brains. Or your looks. Carry me.'

MIGHTY WIZARD OF THE TOWER

1

While they walked Eric watched the ground before him. Some parts of the sky's lightstone hung lower than others; some grew brighter than others. Right now, Siel's shadow was faint. But Eric indeed had none at all. ‘Don't worry about it,' she said, wishing she could take her own advice. It worried her a great deal. ‘There must be an explanation for it.'

‘Like what, pray tell?' he said.

‘Sometimes spells go wrong. Little effects linger in the air. You can step into something you don't even see, and it's almost like you've been cast on.'

He scoffed. ‘Look, are you telling me some wizard out there tried to remove his own shadow and
missed,
but the spell kind of blew around on the breeze until I walked through it?'

She shrugged. ‘It's not common. There aren't enough mages left for it to be common. Nor is the effect always what the wizard intended. We have been exposed to many strange events, magic effects at play in them. And yes, things are possible which are stranger than losing a shadow. People have died from loose effects. Or been changed for life. There is a famous story of a man who had amazing luck for the rest of his life.'

‘All I know is, every time I think I get used to this fucking place—'

‘I will listen to your complaint, Otherworld Prince. But it's my turn next.'

‘Forget it.'

In big loping strides Gorb led them down an incline until they found a path winding north-east through puffy green thickets and woodland. In it large star-shaped flowers slowly dripped clear sap like tear-drops. Birds made inquiring sounds from the trees. ‘Hey Gorb, can I have my weapon back?' said Eric.

‘Nope,' said Gorb, not turning around. ‘Not till I know I can trust you. Which may take a while.'

Siel whispered, ‘He's lying about the dolls. He didn't make them.'

‘How do you know?'

‘I saw something as we left. A glimpse, I think it was recent past. A man being led through the village as though he were captive. I think it was an Engineer.'

‘A what?'

‘People who make devices using magic.'

‘They're mages?'

‘No. Rarer. No one teaches them their trade, they are born with it and can do nothing else useful. They sometimes come away from the cities to collect airs for their works. These people must have captured one. If the city he or she came from finds out, the people of this village are in deep trouble.' Almost on cue there came a banging noise from back at the village. It was unmistakeably the Glock firing.

‘What was that?' said Gorb, looking back with alarm.

‘Car backfiring,' Eric muttered.

‘Give me a moment,' said Siel, ducking off the road.

2

She was used to bathing and peeing in front of travelling companions, but like beds and baths, privacy was a luxury to grab with both hands when on offer. Now she slipped off the path and through trunks spaced like a natural avenue, went deeper in until the road could not be seen through the messy lattice of tree branches. She set down her bow and quill, crouched with her back to a tree trunk. There was hardly a sound but for the now mournful birdsong. The woods smelled clean and there were tracks from game all over the ground.

What an idyllic life this must be, she thought, when bandits are the worst of the villagers' problems. For how many generations have they not known hunger or war? She pictured life here in this greedy idyllic peace, and desire for simple wholeness and happiness pulled her strongly.

There was that image again, once so horrible but now almost cherished: a girl afraid but calm in her hiding space in the wall hollow. Her parents had said,
Stay here, we'll return,
hearing the men kick down their neighbours' doors. The same men kicked down their door, took them outside, knelt them down in a long line with the others of that street. Calmly creeping out of the hiding space, over to the window, listening as a proclamation was read out, full of long words she mostly didn't understand. They had aided enemies of their Friend and Lord. They had been ungrateful. They were dangerous. The hiss of a drawn blade. Cries of protest. Calm still, peeking through the curtain gap. A sight less comprehensible than the words in the proclamation as a man in castle grey walked down the line, swinging his blade.

She had finished peeing when a shape loomed right beside her, jagging her back to the present. She gasped and fell sideways, pants still around her knees preventing a quick roll to her feet. She'd fallen away from her bow.

Looking down at her was Eric. She felt a flare of hot anger for him, embarrassing her this way. ‘What are you doing?' she snapped.

Then she saw it
wasn't
Eric. It was someone nearly identical to him, aside from his dark garments and long flowing hair. His outline was slightly blurred, its edges wavering. What seemed Eric's face held eyes that were hollow unblinking things, small dark holes. He spoke in a voice like Eric's but dead of expression: ‘Interesting. I'll save you from something. Soon. It's ahead on the axis. In the future. I can see it.'

The stranger leaned forward over her until his body tilted at an angle defying gravity. ‘You have a name,' he said. ‘And you're alive. Are we the same, or different? I don't understand.'

Siel's hand found her curved knife, while the other pulled up her pants. She rolled backward, was up on her feet, turned to run. But he was there right behind her now. ‘You're afraid of me,' he said as though this was interesting in an academic sense.

Her knife flashed with a gleam of bright steel but it only cut air. He was on the other side of her now. ‘Fast,' he said. ‘You're fast. I can be, too. I can do whatever you can do. Even that … that little bit of magic you have, where you see things on the axis. And this! This is interesting.' He had her bow and quiver in hand. The objects stood out in their solidity against his blurriness. He turned them at different angles, examining with childish curiosity. ‘You shoot well with this. I've seen you do it. I can too. Watch.' He clumsily nocked an arrow in the string and pulled it back, holding the bow completely wrong.

‘Who are you?' said Siel, her voice far more commanding than she felt.

He turned his hole-dark eyes to her. ‘Who?' he said quietly. ‘I don't know. The question means I'm
someone.
Like you. Doesn't it? It means I'm alive. Doesn't it? Am I alive, like you are?'

‘You've followed us. Why?'

‘I went lots of places. There's a lot to look at. I don't understand much of it yet.'

‘Put my bow down.'

‘Sure, I can do that. Soon, all right? Watch this. That bird.' It appeared he'd let loose the string by clumsy accident, but the arrow whizzed from the bow and quivered in the body of a small bird, which landed with a thump in the undergrowth. ‘It's dead,' said the stranger. It took Siel a moment to work out this was a question.

‘Yes. Dead,' she replied, watching nervously to see if he'd nock another arrow. Instead he dropped both the quiver and bow and lay on the ground, peering so closely at the dead bird his nose touched it. ‘How does that work?' he said. ‘Something's alive, then it's dead, and it can't go back. You can't put back the stuff you took out, or fix the part you broke, and make it move again. Why?'

‘Did you kill the dogs?' she said.

The hole-dark eyes peered up at her from Eric's face. ‘I can take you far away, if you want me to. Fast. You like fast. To see other places. Have you seen them? Maybe you can explain things to me. I don't know much yet. It's all … strange. I want to understand it all. But there's so much. And I don't think I belong here, I don't think I fit.'

‘Did you kill the dogs? Tell me. I know it was you.'

A blink of the eyes later, the stranger was tilting at a perverse angle right before her, so that he leaned backward, looking up at her from near her knees. ‘That's a bad question,' he said.

Her backward step was involuntary. ‘What is your name? Is it Eric?'

‘I have to go.' The stranger righted his angle, stood with arms hanging awkwardly. His dark hole eyes peered into the distance, brow furrowing. ‘I'm
him,
sometimes. The fellow you travel with. I can feel him, like someone listening to me. I can … I can be you, if you want me to.'

He stepped toward her. She lunged, her knife slashing a curve through the air. Again he was simply no longer in the space her knife sliced through. He was some distance behind her, body leaning sideways, face and dark pit eyes expressing nothing at all. Siel grabbed her bow and quiver and sprinted back toward the road. The messy green lattice broke as she ran through it and scraped at her.

Eric lay by the roadside, one leg crossed over the other. He turned as she skidded to a halt and she recoiled from his eyes, expecting – and for a moment seeing – the empty pits she'd seen in a face like his just moments before.

3

‘What's wrong with you?' he said.

She looked behind her, saw nothing. ‘Where is the half-giant?'

‘What are you afraid of?'

‘Nothing! Where is he?'

‘He got tired of waiting for you. He gave me directions and went ahead to the tower.' Eric stood up. ‘Let's go get the gun. It's back at the village.'

‘No! We shouldn't be alone.'

‘Siel, what the hell is the matter?'

‘I had a glimpse of the past. A bad one. It doesn't matter.'

He recalled her unflinching after the hilltop fight when death was spread all over the road, unflinching at the doomed hunters' hall while he'd been sick to his core by what just two or three Tormentors had done; calm as they'd fled the chaos of a falling city. What just now could have been worse?

She kept looking behind as though for a pursuer as they followed a footpath through a small crop field, twisting back through thin woods. Abruptly the trees fell away from a wide flat meadow. In it a crowd of thirty or so people – Gorb among them – gathered about campfires, none seeming to notice their arrival.

All eyes were on the peculiar structure which sat in a wide shallow lake of clear water. Small curling waves rippled their way in slow motion to the grassy shore. In the water's midst, an odd structure stood tall as a hill which had been sliced down the middle, its back half curved, with towers and facades built into the sheer sliced face. Crumbling brick, wood and mortar were all at disagreeing angles, in places as tangled up as tree roots. Grey, dead-looking skeletal trees clung here and there to the flat side, some taking root on crags high above the ground, their thin branch tips sticking out like the last grey hairs from an ancient head.

The air's magic showed a strong dark ribbon running in a glimmering funnel from the sky down to the tower's highest flat-side window, then out another at the rear where it spread out thinly into the atmosphere again.

He had never seen magic behave this way; something within the building surely drew it in for a magician's use. Among the peppery dark bands was the occasional red flash of foreign airs sitting uncomfortably in the mixture. A breeze breathed across the gently lapping waves, which filled the meadow with their swishing music.

Gorb padded over to them, heavy footsteps sinking deep into the grass. ‘Fish in the water aren't real,' he said. ‘I caught one. Popped in my hand, into just sparks. They're saying don't go in the water at all. Some weird spells about it, they say. Dunno how
they
know: they're not mages.'

‘Is anyone up there?' said Eric, nodding at the high tower windows. He felt they were being watched.

‘See that woman over by the fire?' said Gorb. ‘Myela's her name. She saw a wizard. Said he's got four arms, the head of a bull. Wants to cast death spells at us. He ain't done anything of the sort
yet.
But if this tower's what I think it is, war mages will come.'

Eric didn't properly hear the answer to his question. He laughed aloud in delight. He'd seen a face in the window, a familiar one and no bull's head. The window slid open, scattering a handful of dirt and pebbles to splash into the water. ‘Eric, Siel! Get yourselves up here!' Loup shouted as though they were late for an appointment.

The villagers turned as one to gape at them. ‘You silly gawking buggers!' Loup screamed. ‘Look at you, jaws all hanging loose! Well, they should be! That there's a Pilgrim, from Otherworld.'

A chorus of talk went up. Siel looked at Eric, mortified. ‘
Why
did he tell them that?' she whispered.

‘He's here to save us all, you mark me,' Loup babbled. ‘Save us from what, none yet know, not even
him.
But when he knows, he'll get to it! Good lad, he is. Come up here, Eric. Any of that black scale left? I'm almost out and I need it. The rest of you silly gawking folk, piss off.'