Shadow (42 page)

6

Shadow watched her, asleep in this glade as if she'd grown out of the forest floor like the other living things. She looked truly beautiful to him for the first time, beautiful because there was no trickery to it: she was just here, just
being.
Her chest rose and fell, pulling in air to keep her alive, which itself seemed a kind of magic, one he was newly aware of. His life did not depend on sucking in air, nor on eating and drinking.

So where was she now, while she slept? The dead ones lay like this too, but their chests did not rise and fall. It would be easy to kill her, and to kill the others in that cave just yonder. Easy as swiping his arm down fast.

His rage had died in the long journey. Though his body was again whole, the pain from his wound throbbed slow and dim, now and then flaring like the man's sword had flashed through him again. For a long time his side had burned like molten silver was stuck to him.

The sword had given him something else, a new and peculiar feeling: fear. He'd known what fear looked like in others, the way their eyes widened, their gasping breaths. Even animals had displayed it. But he'd never understood it.

The other girl still called him. Rather, he was called by that thing she wore around her neck, the little place he knew he'd fall into if he got too near to her. Yet it held the same promise and intrigue as when he'd followed its pull across the world. Soon its pull would again become irresistible, and he would forget, he knew, the necklace's danger.

There was a lure to Siel too, which drew him not as keenly.

He pondered the two effects. This lure came from within him, that was the difference. The other pulled at him as would hooks dug under his skin. Every hour, it pulled him with more strength.

Eric had left Siel behind. Why? What had she done to offend him? He shadowed her and learned what she dreamed of: walking through an actual past hidden in this glade; that happenstance magic of hers was confined for the moment to her dreams. Her body revolved in cycles, purging itself. Soon she would have these visions while awake again. She hated having them. Strange creature.

Ah, she was stirring now. Eyes open, sitting up, backing away as he'd known she would, hand quite uselessly going to her knife, face indicating despair upon seeing him. He didn't like that. Why not be glad to see him? What could he do to make her smile and laugh? He kept his distance, spun through the ground from nervous energy, though he knew she didn't like it.

‘You dreamed of this place.' He waved an arm about the glade. ‘Three women sat about a fire trying to do something to make one of them have a baby. They were going to kill an animal in a way that would make magic happen. But two of them killed the other woman instead. Buried her here.'

‘I don't remember,' she said, looking back at the cave where the others sat and talked. She wanted to run over there, he saw.

‘I'll leave soon,' he said. A strange and unpleasant emotion went through him. It was pain, of sorts, but not physical. He didn't understand it.

‘What do you want?' she said.

He considered the question as best he could. ‘I don't know.'

‘Where is Eric? And Loup?'

‘Away.' He pointed north. ‘Far. When I was near them, I knew where they were going, and why. Now I forget.'

‘Shadow. Will you do me a favour? Will you forget me too? Altogether, forget me? Pretend I am dead.'

That pain again. ‘I'll try.' Then anger. ‘I could make you dead. If you want.'

‘I don't want that,' she said.

Had he hoped she'd be scared? She wasn't. But she wished he wasn't here. ‘I don't want it either,' he said.

‘What
do
you want, Shadow?' At the cave mouth the half-giant scanned the glade then headed outside to search for her. She called to him, ‘I'm fine. Leave me be for a moment. I'll be back soon.'

Shadow thought again about her question. ‘I want to learn things. That's all. What am I? Do you know what I am? I understand things for a little while but then it's all gone. I knew things about the man who cut me, the man with the sword. I even knew why he wanted to cut me. But now it's gone. I knew things about the dragon I saved you from, but it's gone.'

‘Anfen? Was the man's name Anfen?'

This seemed to excite her. ‘Yes,' he said. He tried to remember what had happened but the order of it all was muddled. The basics: ‘I fought him. He cut me. It hurt.'

‘He cut you? How?'

‘His sword has power to it.'

‘Where did this happen?'

He pointed in the direction. ‘Far. I fled. Came to see you.'

She chose her words with care. ‘You have been tricked before, Shadow. I will speak to you as truly as I can. I do not know what you are. A man named Vous created you. He is your father, not Eric. Why he really made you I can't answer. Maybe
he
can't answer either. But if you will take me to him, to Eric, I will owe you a debt.'

‘Why?'

She blinked at him. ‘Why what?'

‘Why do you want to see him, but never me? We look the same, him and me.'

‘No. You don't look the same.'

That bad new emotion came through him like a trickle of poison. It was as if she had cut him the way the man's sword had. If she would cut him like this, why shouldn't he cut her back? This was a kind of duel now; she'd made it so. He didn't know how to use the invisible weapons she used, the pain she invoked just with words and a look on her face. He was growing dizzy with pain.

And she watched him coolly, not reacting even as he made his eyes go wide as pits, sucking her into them. His jaw fell wide too; sounds came out of it designed to scare her. The men and half-giant, hearing, came to the cave mouth. She fell toward him, but still a look on her face said she was perfectly willing to meet her death here and now, not afraid like the others were, who had known they would die. She did not care that she'd lie here broken and unmoving!

He grew so confused that some vital piece holding him together pulled taut and threatened to break. He screamed a sound of rage, shoved her away into the rock she'd sat on, watching her body bounce hard against it, then fall limp. With great speed he tore himself far away, not knowing if he'd left her dead or alive, broken like something dropped from a tall height, but still beautiful, in the quiet green glade.

THE CASTLE

1

Eric had a dream that Siel was dead, so convincing he was shocked when he woke in the snug little drake den, enveloped in Case's warmth and snoring. There'd be no more sleep. He was left to wonder if the dream had been her spirit saying goodbye. It had been so convincing that tears pricked his eyes.

Aziel had forgotten her pride – rather, set it down for a moment – and lay huddled close to him as though he could protect her from what she saw in her nightmares. He thought it likely she saw Shadow, still. And he wondered why she forgave him for looking like Shadow, when Siel hadn't.

When daylight came, Eric stood at the cave mouth and gazed at the white dragon-shaped castle they would surely reach today, if Case flew there directly. The airs about it took his breath away when he willed himself to see the magic in them: giant cartwheeling arms of colour turned slowly in the vague shape of a star, so big its upper points surely scraped the sky's white roof.

He guessed at what it was: power gathering itself about the god being made, the god named Vous. And my fate is tied up in his, Eric thought, startled as though this were a new idea. In a way it was new; he had tried to believe it was indeed sheer chance that made it true, but suddenly other possibilities invited him: he really was some kind of saviour, had been all along, a hero from the comics he'd once escaped into after a hard day at the office. It was no accident he was here in Levaal after all …

That was absurd. But wasn't all the rest of it just as absurd? He sought for mundane memories of his old life to dispel it all, evidence for the case his being here was all coincidence. But he could find nothing to do it. His mind was blank, as though that old life had never happened, or had been a dream, now murk slipping like sand through memory's fingers.

Loup stumbled past him through the cave's mouth, sent a spray of urine over the ledge, rocking back and forth on his feet as if he felt himself immune to the gravity wishing to pull him into the abyss beneath. It had become quite apparent he was proud to have a powerful urinary stream at his age, just as he was proud of the fit torso so eagerly displayed with all its peppering of white hair. Dick in hand he grinned a toothless grin at Eric as if to say,
Impressive, no?
then gazed at the distant castle. ‘Spirits have my guts! Look at those airs!'

They both watched the slowly revolving star-arms without speaking. Now and then thin streams would flit from elsewhere in the sky and join up with the larger mass of powers; others would break off as though the streamers of colour were living things leaving a nest.

‘No good's going to come of this at all,' sighed Loup. ‘Ah well, let's get it done. We were never going to live forever, lad. Most don't choose their time either, but we have. Today's the day. Ready to fly, Case old man? Ready, Aziel? You're going home, girl. So are we, back to where we came from before our time in these prisons our bodies really are.' He wiped a tear from his eye and tapped his chest. ‘Going to miss it in this cage. Up, Case old man. Time to fly.'

The drake got up, yawned, stretched its stiff wings with a sound of leather creaking, then lowered for them to sit upon his back. Aziel – as she'd done every morning – shooed the men out of the cave and spent ten mysterious minutes in there alone before emerging on Case's back.

The drake leaped into the sky and flew them toward their deaths. Whether that destination lay just around the bend as Loup suspected, or was indeed still some way distant, the castle seemed to approach at an equal pace.

They flew high enough that the Great Dividing Road was only just in sight. They passed over the villages set aside for a select Favoured elite of loyalist workers and retired veterans, but as Case took them down a little they saw a curious lack of order below. The country about the castle should have been teeming with people and vehicles; yet the Road and the terrain about it were bare of anything but spot-fires burning and the littered dead. Patrols and guards were nowhere to be seen. The few people they saw moved as though frantically fleeing a battle.

‘There!' said Loup, pointing at a group running across a field, converging on a fleeing man with a bundle in his arms. He had nowhere to run and they swarmed over him, his cries faintly reaching them. Loup patted the drake's rump. ‘Take us down, Case old man, we have to see what goes on here. This country's the most peaceful and orderly in all the Aligned realm, or should be. Take us down, old man!'

The drake tilted forward, descended, and Aziel shrieked as in clearer detail they saw the attackers were wet with the dead man's blood. But it was their faces which made Eric want to join her in crying out, for it was Vous down there, a face Eric recognised with a jolt from the ghostly figure appearing in his bedroom, some time back. In his mind echoed:
You are Shadow … last sight, last sound … my face, my voice …

A group of Vous-things scattered from the drake's descent. A handful remained and turned their heads up. Eric felt their glaring eyes meeting his. One had the hunched body of an old woman, her torn dress bright red. Another was in army garb; a sheathed sword hung by his leg which he'd neglected for the use of fingers and teeth.

The drake set down in the grass and huffed a few breaths in an attempt to summon a menacing growl, but it sounded more like a wheezing fit. Aziel crouched behind him, hiding from the Vous-things' view.

The Vous-things fanned out and approached them with hesitant steps, hands limp by their sides, blood-slicked faces blank and vacant. When they got within a dozen paces, Case belched a glut of orange fire.

‘Eric, speak to em,' Loup murmured. ‘Vous made Shadow from you. He made these things too. Speak up, lad. Let's see what they do. It'll help us understand better what's going on.'

Eric clambered off the drake's back, ‘I am here,' he said.

The Vous-things went still – even the swirling wind which howled around them did not ruffle their clothes or hair.

Loup gasped at something he saw in the airs. Eric focussed on them too: a long groping strand from that mass orbiting the castle had wormed over and now moved like a finger above each of the Vous-things, as if briefly debating on one to select. It lingered about the dead man the others had partly devoured. The dead legs twitched, the torso heaved in an effort to sit up before collapsing again. The strand of airs moved to the former soldier, through whose eyes poured a gleam of yellow light. Eric raised the Glock at its chest. High-pitched noise garbled in its throat. ‘My daughter returns,' it said.

‘I'm not here,' said Aziel through tears. ‘Tell him it's not me.'

‘Forget your daughter,' Eric said.

‘Who brings her?' said the Vous-thing sadly.

‘It's who you have waited for.'

‘I have waited for myself.'

‘You have waited for me,' Eric said.

‘I once dreamed of creating beauty,' it said with quiet regret.

‘You did. You created your daughter. She has beauty. I bring her to you. I am the one you have waited for.'

‘My face. My voice.'

He swallowed. ‘I am Shadow.'

The Vous-things hissed. The daylight dimmed. A noise like a whirring machine began from the Vous-thing which had spoken. Quiet at first, the noise built until within it a thousand voices shrieked, babbling panic and rage. It slowly built like a storm about them.

Loup crouched down beside Aziel. The ground heaved, making the castle itself seem to tilt for a moment as though it would fall forward upon them. With a noise like an enormous exhaled breath the five Vous-things lifted up, spun through the air with surreal speed and were drawn back toward the castle, the yellow points of their glaring eyes locked on Eric's own until they were gone.