Shadowgod (56 page)

When she looked round she almost cursed in surprise – the two Daemonkind had shrugged off human form to return to their own. Orgraaleshenoth was as she remembered, nearly twice her height, his head hairless and reptilian, his torso broad and muscular while his hide was rough and pebbled, black and emerald, and folded wings jutted above his shoulders. Rakrotherangisal was shorter by a head and his hide was black and red but his amber eyes were as steady and unfathomable as Orgraaleshenoth’s.

He turned to the older Daemonkind. “Nighthunters have arrived to fight for the Jefren Theocracy. Untollan will soon fall.”

Orgraaleshenoth nodded. “With Byrnak gone, the Acolytes know that the remaining Shadowkings are incapable of regaining control. Grazaan is paralysed by his own fragment of the Lord of Twilight and Kodel has gone into hiding –”

“Ystregul is no more and Thraelor has stirred himself…”

Their words were tinged with a wry amusement, but Keren was appalled. “But what will happened to Domas and his people, his families…”

“There are many hiding places, and several escape tunnels have been prepared,” said Rakrotherangisal. “But not, unfortunately, for us. Come, the Processional awaits.”

Together they strode along the plain stone passageway. Both the Daemonkind still had their glowing staffs but they seemed oddly shrunken in those big, taloned hands. Up ahead Keren could see a pale, misty radiance which gradually diffused as they drew near. Through the haze she began to make out the details on a sloping wall beyond the end of the passage, intricate patterns that snared the eye. But it was the scale of the stonework which came to dominate her field of view and when at last the passage opened out, Keren found her footsteps slowing as she stared about her.

Rakrotherangisal had referred to it as the Processional while Domas called it ‘a vast, sloping tunnel’, yet such words could not begin to describe its gaping immensity. By eye alone, she guessed it to be perhaps 200 yards wide and some 300 high. Every surface was burdened with carven images, the sheer walls reaching up to the massive, sloping ceiling, all covered in depictions of semi-naked figures struggling or fighting or marching in triumph. All of it was in a leaden grey stone cracked and streaked by yawning gulfs of time, lit by a strange, sourceless radiance as pallid as light cast through tainted ice.

Beyond the passage a flat shelf extended for several yards to the head of a rack of stairs wide enough to accommodate an army. Although the steps looked freshly cut and unworn, they were littered with chips and fragments of masonry no larger than her hand. Ahead of her, the Daemonkind were already descending with their hulking yet lithe gait and as she hastened to join them she noticed another feature of the colossal shaft. Towering alcoves, dark and empty, were hewn into the walls at regular intervals on either side, twin rows of shadowy openings marching down into the hazy, faintly glowing depths. She also noticed that each one had a platform jutting from its base, a wide slab of stone as thick as one of the Daemonkind was tall.

“Once, every one of these alcoves had an enormous statute of the Lord of Twilight standing before it,” Orgraaleshenoth said. “But when Jagreag fell, they were all hauled up to the surface and destroyed, then the fragments were taken out onto the Sea of Birrdaelin and thrown into the waters.”

“He was known to imbue some likenesses of himself with a kind of life,“ Rakrotherangisal said. “So the victors made sure that none were left standing.”

Keren nodded in silent understanding. As she walked down the steps, she stared at the empty alcoves and found herself imagining a fifty-yard high stature of Byrnak standing in one of them, grinning, watching her…

She shivered.
This is a place of ghosts.

Even the air smelled deathly, cold and harsh with the odour of the fine stone dust that their feet disturbed. There was also a musty staleness, the faintest hint of immemorial corruption with Keren tried not to be too conscious of as she carried on beside the two Daemonkind.

“What manner of guardians or wards shall we be facing?” she asked.

“That is not an easy question to answer,” said Rakrotherangisal. “The ancient spells protecting this place seem to respond differently to each intrusion.”

She stared at him, surprised. “So others have been here before us?”

“The records in Untollan’s library speak of more than a score such attempts since the fortress was first occupied during the Othazreg clan migrations five thousand years ago. Most were groups of fortune hunters following local legends and mountain stories, or fugitives from pursuit, but one was a small army led by the chieftain who ruled Untollan a few generations after the Othazreg migration. Although not one member of that army returned, a few others did and each had a different story to tell.

“One claimed that they were attacked by wave after wave of glass-like spiders and insects which burrowed into the flesh and killed from within. Another said that grotesque, leathery white creatures had come flying out of the alcoves and snatched his companions up into the air before tearing them apart. Yet another emerged from the Processional broken in mind and spirit and would only talk of fog creatures that sucked blood from their victims.”

Keren stared ahead of her, down the long, receding rake of stairs to the pale, misty blur far below. In the wake of the Daemonkind’s account, the great shaft took on the aspect of a tomb-like throat into which they were descending…

Then her gaze picked something out of the distance, something larger than the small shards of fallen masonry. As they drew nearer it began to resemble a prone, huddled form while further down other similar shapes were coming into view. When they gathered around it Keren could see that it was an ancient, desiccated corpse, its clothing gone to frail tatters, its skin reduced to stretched membrane over brown, pitted bones. A layer of fine, grey dust covered the sad remains, and clung to the few strands of spider web that draped it.

“I wonder how he died,” Keren muttered, crouching nearby.

“There’s no visible evidence,” said Rakrotherangisal, dipping his great head for a closer look. “No cuts or holes –”

“Someone comes,” Orgraaleshenoth said in a low, warning voice.

Standing straight with her companion, Keren instinctively looked down the stairs and felt the first chill touches of fear. A tall narrow shape had emerged from the misty depths and was ascending towards them. Its outlines were vague, its substance opaque and lacking detail but on it came, steadily, silently. Suddenly, Keren saw that it was a figure, pale as milk-clouded water, walking up the stairs yet its outlines shifted oddly… then she realised that it was two or more figures moving in single file.

Wordlessly, the Daemonkind positioned themselves on either side of her, staves aglow and at the ready as the sorcerous guardians drew closer and spread out across the steps. At last they were near enough for Keren to discern details and she gasped, seeing that she and the Daemonkind were facing themselves!

“Go back…”
came their hideous, scraping whispers.
“Flee this place…death waits here for thee…”

Then the spectral images swept up the stairs and were upon them. There was no solidity to them but Keren could feel a cold caress across her hands and arms as she backed away. The one that was her counterpart had only a rudimentary likeness, with crude features and no distinction between skin and garments. But the eyes were white pits and the mouth moved incessantly as it glided around her before swooping in again. When it tugged at her hair and clothing a choking fear made her wrench out her sword and slash wildly at the harrying spectre. As her blade struck home, it seemed to open a blazing, amber gash in the opaque creature which uttered a thin shriek…

In the next moment, there were only three patches of smoking vapour dissolving into fading tendrils. Breathing heavily, Keren looked at the Daemonkind.

“They were a warning, Keren Asherol,” said Orgraaleshenoth as he planted his staff firmly on the step before him. “The guardian spells only sent them forth because our presence was noticed. Therefore…”

He raised his staff and made a circular pass with it between the three of them. For a moment Keren saw nothing different, then noticed a faint nimbus around her two companions.

“I have laid a glamour upon each of us,” he went on,” one that will conceal us from strange eyes and some but not all sorcerous divination. The guardian spells will know that someone is passing through, but not who or where. Thus we must be utterly quiet. From here on we are in deadly peril.”

The descent continued, and the dusty, shrivelled cadavers grew more numerous. After a time they found themselves treading among a proliferation of scattered bones as if this had been the site of a terrible slaughter. The dried-up husks of bodies, most lacking head and limbs, lay everywhere, even upon the platforms that protruded at the foot of the great, dark alcoves. Keren recalled Rakrotherangisal's account of the army that had marched down into the depths and knew that these had to be their remains.

Then from an alcove above her came a sound which chilled her to the bone, a long, rasping breath that made her quail and glance fearfully over her shoulder. As she did so, several misty, shapeless forms came gliding out of the nearby alcoves. Others issued forth on the other side of the shaft while still more drifted slowly and silently down from the sloped ceiling.

A cry of terror bubbled at the back of her throat. Striving to keep from uttering even a whimper, she found herself halting and hunkering down into a crouch to avoid the pale guardians as they swooped to and fro across the bone-littered steps. But Orgraaleshenoth was gesturing for her to continue so, trembling, she forced herself upright and resumed her careful downward path.

They encountered another two clusters of victim's bones, neither as numerous as the first. But their progress through those areas prompted further eruptions of formless, misty guardians and some were beginning to resemble the Daemonkind, having a vaguely similar outline and protrusions that were almost wing-like. But they were still blind to the three intruders who continued their descent while pale shapes danced and whirled in the air above.

They were passing through the third scattering of dusty cadavers when Keren realised that she could at last make out the foot of the long stairway. Somewhere down there was the Staff of the Void, and assuming they were able to locate it and seize it without difficulty, there was still the question of returning to the surface.
Perhaps the Staff could be used as a weapon in these circumstances
, she thought, hope rising in her.

But hope was dashed when a faint crunch came from across the steps, followed by the sharp rattle of bones. Rakrotherangisal was rising from where one of the ancient steps had crumbled under his weight, sending his foot slipping down to kick one of the dessicated corpses. It had burst apart in a cloud of dust and clattering bones towards which the pale guardians were now swooping. Petrified with fear, Keren could only watch as some began surrounding Rakrotherangisal, nudging him or trying to envelop him even though he was still veiled in the concealing glamour. Then he raised his staff, its crystal aglow, and struck out at them.

A high-pitched moan of alert anticipation went through the scores of guardians as they gathered around the young Daemonkind. Then Orgraaleshenoth turned to Keren and she heard in her thoughts just the one word:

Run.

In the next moment he had cast off his own cloaking glamour. All around him the misty guardians were taking on Daemonkind forms, and Keren saw him raise his blazing staff on high before she turned and fled down the steps. Moments later, a great flash of light from behind sent her own shadow flickering ahead of her but then it was gone as a mass of voices roared with pain and anger. The terrible cacophony reverberated up and down the shaft but Keren still hurried downwards, careful of her footing, determined not to pause or look back.

The cold air chilled her chest, and her legs and feet were aching and trembling when she reached the bottom. There were still sounds of fighting far above her, diminished by distance, but before her now was a huge, gloomy hall of pillars whose floor was the sole source of light, a meagre grey radiance like corroded silver. Not knowing what perils lurked here, she stole through the vast hall, flitting from column to column beneath impenetrable shadows.

The Staff of the Void sat upon a waist-high pillar of light atop a wide dais that lay at the focus of the great chamber. Curved, shallow steps led up to it and as she reached the uppermost of them, the sound of beating wings made her whirl, sword at the ready. Then she relaxed a little on seeing that it was Orgraaleshenoth who was carrying the bloody form of Rakrotherangisal in his arms.

The Daemonkind staggered when he landed near Keren, and fell to his knees as he made to place his companion on the steps. Keren rushed over and immediately saw the ghastly nature of Rakratherangisal's wounds, gashes welling with black blood, gouges exposing bones and organs.

"My death is upon me, Prince Orgraaleshenoth," the younger Daemonkind said. "Have we triumphed or failed?"

"You have done more for the Israganthir this day, brother," Orgraaleshenoth said, "than centuries of service to the Grey Lord." He turned to Keren. "Get me the Staff - quickly!"

She jumped to her feet, dashed up to the white pillar and lifted the Staff of the Void. Warm to the touch, it looked to be made of translucent marble shot through with blue veins, and was heeled with silver and gold bands while its head was a simple orb of some dull black stone. Swiftly she returned to Orgraaleshenoth with the Staff held out… but it was too late.

Orgraaleshenoth's great hulking form was still as he bowed his head. Keren then began to notice that he too was badly wounded but could say nothing.

"Enemies draw near," the Daemonkind said. "We cannot stay here.”

Even as he spoke, she heard sounds of battle coming from the far end of the hall.