Shadow (38 page)

‘The windows. They have all gone blank. Did you know?'

‘I know,' answered the Arch.

‘Have the war mages returned? Any of them? Is there … sign of the girl? Should she not be back by now?'

The Arch rounded on him, ready to strike the Strategist down with a spell, but he was no longer there. There was an echo of laughter instead. Avridis knew that at last he was truly on his own. Angered beyond any rage he'd known before, a feeling that surpassed any desire or emotion he'd ever felt, he went to Vous's chamber and blasted open the metal cases holding in the foreign airs, wanting only to cause some pain, some harm, with – for the first time in his life – no further hint of purpose or reason. Everything he'd done in this castle, every act of war or torture, even every act of kindness, had served a purpose, until this deed.

The foreign airs, a harsh and luminous red, filtered into the vast winding threads swirling about the castle like the arms of a whirlpool with Vous its centre. The red joined the mix of dark glimmering colours till it was no longer discernible. The disturbance in the airs was almost too subtle to see, but he saw it, and felt a twist of pleasure. Whether this act caused what came next, or whether the timing was coincidental, the Arch, and of course Vous himself, would have no way of knowing.

2

‘Is Shadow among you?' Vous breathed, stirring from his pose at last.

Though whispered, the words left his lips and found the ears of every listener below. The wind spoke and asked the same question as it scattered the women's hair, whipped through the trampled grass, tossed about litter, flapped people's clothes – flapped Anfen's and Sharfy's too as they hung back at the very edge of the throng, watching like everyone else. The thunder asked the same question in its deep loud voice, clanging and booming about like a maniac striking a drum. The rain hissed down, demanding to know if Shadow was among them in its babble of many tiny voices. The crowd watching spoke many different things, but each word translated itself, took on the meaning of the words their Friend and Lord had spoken. But no one had the answer. If Shadow was there, he hid somewhere.

‘Is Shadow among you?' Vous repeated in a louder voice, a hint of displeasure showing itself. And a warning. The crowd shifted on their feet nervously, several thousands of them pressing in together on the castle lawn, pushing at the steps and the barricades set up to keep them out, the older frailer ones among them crying out weakly in pain.

Upon whom should their Friend and Lord's displeasure fall? They were one entity here after all, as seen in his eyes from far above. The skies darkened and thunder bellowed a threat. Lightning stabbed the higher castle towers and the ground shivered.

Vous's voice became a scream louder than all other sounds. ‘
Is
 …
Shadow
 …
here?
' The last word drew out and echoed, shrill and obscene. Their Friend and Lord's face was blazing with hate and rage and fear, eyes huge and gleaming as the beam of his gaze swept through all of them below, like a light searching, searching for Shadow.

Vous's screaming voice was all fear and pain; for now his rage had left him, and was the people's to express. A third of them changed so that their faces were Vous's face, eyes ablaze, the fine chiselled features identical to his, their bodies changing too so their arms were thin like his, their fingers long and delicate like the artist Vous had fancied himself to be, centuries before. All things, he'd fancied himself to be, unique and special and brilliant among all the history of men, the finest of warriors, the deepest of thinkers, beauty and charm to seduce the goddess Wisdom if indeed he deigned to do so (he did not). Yet now on the lawns he was replicated several hundred times. Old women with Vous's head hissed angrily at their neighbours in the throng, ‘Is Shadow here?' A thousand chattering words, spoken by those with Vous's face, and alike by those who were unchanged, said, ‘Is Shadow here?'

Babbling, babbling, a screeching cacophony of voices demanded to know, while Vous far above them screamed with his jaw hung wide as a wolf's, eyes blasting their light through sheets of rain warm as blood. Anfen grimly watched while Sharfy held his ears, wishing for it to be over, not knowing what he witnessed, only that it was worse, somehow, than anything else he'd ever seen, in all the vast catalogue of death and pain and misery his past held.

Those with Vous's face dug out the others' eyes with their fingers, scratched and bit off their ears, bit their throats, ripped hair and strangled, spilling blood all down their chins. Those being slain screamed, broken by pain out of the spell, while Vous above stared down, still screaming, still screaming. The last sound in many dying ears, his voice. The last sight in many dying eyes, his face, branded into the features of a stranger, or onto a wife's or husband's or son's or daughter's who'd made the journey here to the castle lawns with the very person they now clawed and bit and ate to death. Vous, high above, watched this death he had created with no sign of whether or not he approved or even understood what he'd caused. Anfen watched it silently, not drawing his weapon, and not seeming concerned that any of the fevered crowd would turn their way.

Blood soaked the grass of the castle lawns, churning beneath thousands of stamping feet as those on the edges of the crowd panicked and fled.

3

Shadow was among them. Shadow watched some distance back, fascinated by the strange, beautiful creature standing so far above the crowd. The sight of that being – who glowed with light that seemed to be angelic, whose screaming voice was in Shadow's ears a beautiful song – filled him with a peculiar emotion which shifted, moment to moment, from longing to rage. He wanted to kill that being for no reason he could find, yet he loved him without knowing what love was.

Fear could be seen all through the emanating light around the slender, delicate-looking creature so high above, Vous's own fear, seeping from him and bleeding into the air all around, till it had filled the denizens watching below.

The sense Shadow had watching Vous was far stronger than, though similar to, that emotion which had marked Eric as a point of reference. He wanted to yell in answer to Vous's voice, to sing in harmony with it at the same time as shout it down and blot it out. He did not know what to do. He dared go no closer, though the urge to do so was near overwhelming. His mouth opened wide and he tried to find his own voice to match Vous's screaming, but he could not.

This was the first thing to take from Shadow's thoughts the prison he'd just escaped. How sweet it had been at first, his entrapment in what had seemed a round thin room, spinning about itself. He'd fallen backward through suspended clattering chains of many colours. Their touch was pleasure itself: they scratched itches, quenched thirsts, gave sensual delights of a kind his body had not conceived. He had felt whole there, known peace and contentment, felt free of the need to roam and to learn in that outside place where all lessons so far showed that pain or hollowness was at the heart of all things, or that horrible mess lurked inside each person's pleasing exterior; that the pretty things in the landscape were just
there.
There, in that backward-falling space, it had all been balmed and cured, all dissatisfaction and restlessness. It truly was just what had been promised by the lure that had called him across this world, across countless miles, and had eluded him at the tower when Eric and Siel had tricked him.

But with time the chains had grown hot, till heat and pain overrode all pleasure and each second became a shrieking agony. Every thought and instinct bent toward his being free. He'd been so mad with pain that he did not remember how he had come to be free; he half recalled a cold wind rushing over him as though a tiny door had been opened, and remembered diving toward it …

And by chance he had ventured here. Now Shadow did scream, a more successful attempt to echo Vous, whose arms now reached up to embrace the storm above him. On the lawns the people swarmed and splashed in blood like Shadow had seen fish do in a river in the wild country, swarming through waters turned to bloody froth as the fish ate the killed animal he'd dropped among them.

At the sound of Shadow's scream those Vous-things nearby turned toward him and went still.

4

As Anfen drew his blade it sang like a rasping metal throat. A burst of silver flame ran from handle to tip and Sharfy recoiled from its ice-cold burn. Even when Anfen had cut down the Tormentors, the blade had never burned with this coldness.

He followed Anfen's gaze and his heart leaped when he saw Eric, the Pilgrim, who in Sharfy's mind occupied the exaggerated place of a dear friend and comrade. He was deeply alarmed to see Eric so close to danger – in fact what was he doing here? Who was he with?

The things with Vous's face had turned Eric's way. So it seemed natural enough to Sharfy that Anfen had drawn his blade and was now moving with some urgency toward Eric, surely with the intent of protecting him. Sharfy drew his own sword and followed, through a shoving mass of people screaming as they fled the Vous-things.

It was soon clear that something was wrong. Eric didn't look right: he looked like a mage's illusion or something, with blurred outlines, and – that noise, that screaming sound! Eric's mouth had gone wide as a beast's; his eyes were dead black holes which seemed both far wider than Eric's face and to fit inside it at the same time. Sharfy recoiled from the sight.

A Vous-thing with an elderly woman's starving body clawed at Sharfy, scratching grooves of skin from his neck and lunging to bite his throat. He yelped and kneed her but she kept coming till he slashed his blade across her midsection. She fell sprawling, still trying to get up despite the guts falling out of her, till she was trampled into the grass.

Sharfy ran to catch up with Anfen, who cut a wide arc through the swarming crowd with a cold flare of silver fire, not mindful of whether he slew Vous-things or their fleeing victims. Sharfy had time in the tumult to wonder if one day Anfen would be back here, hopeless with grief over these careless swipes of his blade and eager to polish more long-dead bones. The crowd swarmed away from his cold silver fire. Sharfy held his sword firm as a Vous-thing ran straight at him and impaled itself. He released the blade, stuck fast in the body, and sprinted until he was practically riding Anfen's back.

‘
Is … Shadow … here?
' Vous screamed louder than the peal of thunder which followed. To Sharfy's disgust, many of the dead flopped and twitched as though they'd heard a cry to arms. Trampled, mangled, with pieces of their faces hanging loose, with eyes clawed out, they rose and Vous's face pressed itself into their ruined features. They staggered to their feet.

Anfen had reached the Eric who could not really be Eric. Sharfy had no idea what to think – if it
was
Eric, he was under some curse or evil spell beyond their curing. The Eric-being turned to face them, screamed its emotionless scream, utterly inhuman, the voice of rusting metal or barren turf or Sharfy knew not what. Like that big metal wagon that screamed over the bridge, when we went into Otherworld, he thought.

A flock of Vous-things swarmed toward the Eric-thing. Anfen's arm had surely never moved faster, not even when he was in the cusp of youth. He cut them down and the air was filled with his cold silver fire. More of them swarmed over, realising that the enemy Vous feared and screamed for was here. Sharfy knew then that this was it, the final moment, death had come and it bore Vous's face. Had he time for one last mug of ale to reflect before the moment came, he'd have found it fitting that it took the world's Friend and Lord himself to kill him.

But Anfen cut them down. They came in waves but he cut them down, until there was a massive pile of bodies for the others to scuttle over. And then Anfen's sword did strange things, for he seemed to swing it in a circle about his head and yet, some distance away, the oncoming ones would fall back with limbs and heads sliced off, as though the blade had cut them from a distance. Sharfy with his knife in hand was perfectly useless, could only watch with growing shame Anfen's sword saving him from what would have been a warrior's death.

The Eric-thing watched Anfen too, then it flickered and was on the ground behind Anfen, laid out behind him like a shadow … like a shadow …

A moment later Shadow was before Anfen again. One arm was long, thin and bladed. It cut through the air, struck the breastplate Valour had made, and was halted with a shower of sparks. Shadow's sword arm broke and fell away. He stared down at the stump left, hesitant and confused.

Anfen wheeled like a dancer, swung his blade in a wide slashing arc, silver fire tracing the swing through the air. Shadow screamed, a worse sound yet than the one he'd made before, as a part of him was cut away.

As the wound was made there was a blinding flash. A force knocked them all down as though it were a blast of the strongest wind. All the Vous-things and their fleeing victims toppled, Sharfy and Anfen blown hurtling back among them. When the flash of light cleared, up on the castle balcony Vous was gone from sight. The Vous-things got to their feet and sprinted away as mindless as insects. The dead ones who had risen fell back and resumed their interrupted sleep.

5

Shadow streaked blindly across the world, shrieking in pain, his path a drunken zigzag covering miles in heartbeats. He went in a line from the Godstears Sea to the unnamed ranges as though from one side of a room to another, so fast he sent his own senses spinning and almost undid himself by the act; as though by doing something that impossible, he nearly made
himself
impossible. A trail of heat blazed behind him, igniting fires to either side of its path as the world objected to this impossibility.

He paused, waited, recovered his senses. The wound still hurt. He was whole, but the left part of his body seemed to flow like molten silver. With agonising slowness its terrible heat dimmed.