Shadowmasque (27 page)

The Archmage glanced up at the sky for a moment, smiling enigmatically, then said, “I think that we are the echoes of our true selves. Something colossal happened when Suviel and Tauric confronted the Lord of Twilight in the Void, something which affected certain people and cast reflections of them into this dream-place.”

“I don’t feel like an echo,” Atroc said gruffly.

“Yet we have been trapped in this ageless bodiless existence for 300 years or more,” Bardow said. “Well, we may at some point find an answer to the enigma, but for now let us employ our ethereal nature to our advantage in the Keep of Day.”

Then as one they rose into the air, heading north, and moments later passed through the outside of the Keep of Day, the great cylindrical bastion which oversaw the inner and outer parade grounds. Most of the flat roof had fallen in and roughly a quarter of the outer wall lay in grassy mounds of rubble at the base. Lightless yet still visible to their eyes, the interior was a muddle of caved-in floors, cracked pillars and stairwells choked with shattered masonry. As they descended through the floors, it seemed that the lowest had escaped the worst of the structural ruin. Then they arrived at the ground level, in a large circular chamber plentifully lit by torches and where a wide ring of 10 small, conical candles sat burning in the middle of the floor. Before each candle a cowled figure sat facing out, and the moment the four spectral mages entered the chambers the nearest candle flames flared and tilted in their direction.

“Master!” cried out the men nearest their entry point. “Another intruding presence, over here!”

At the centre of the circle of ten was an eleventh who sat straighter then pushed back the heavy cowl to reveal a handsome, finely-featured face whose dark eyes gleamed with arrogance. Ayoni stared at him in surprised recognition.

“Mother’s name,” she said to Chellour. “It’s Limbor cul-Mayr!”

Chellour stared a moment then nodded. “The threadbare lordling himself, and I’ll bet that’s his flock of nightkin….ah, I’m not sure what he’s doing but perhaps we should back off a ways…”

Cul-Mayr had taken a small blowpipe from within his robe and calmly slipping a little red-feathered dart into the mouthpiece. The four quickly retreated beyond the wall of the chamber to a dark, curving corridor along with another man, translucent, bearded and grinning, was strolling.

“Wondered how long it would take,” he said. “Did he spit one of his darts at you?”

“We didn’t wait to see, Gilly,” said Bardow, turning to Ayoni. “You know the leader of those men? He is familiar to you?”

She regarded the newcomer for a moment, certain that he had to be Gilly Cordale, then nodded, saying; “He is a penniless noble who lost almost all his family’s estates and riches through trade debt and gambling. We’ve been sure for a while that cul-Mayr was involved with a malefic sect called the Nightkin but solid proof has evaded us — until now.”

“Is there any connection between these cultists and that army camped on the other side of the Great Canal?” said Bardow.

“We know that certain members of the nobility as well as senior military officers have some involvement,” Ayoni said. “But we know almost nothing about their motives or their goals so it’s difficult to make sense of their actions…”

“Well,” Gilly Cordale said, “It so happens that there’s an open doorway along this passage which we can watch from without signalling our presence.”

All agreed to this and as they proceeded round the curve the archmage formally introduced Gilly and Ayoni and Chellour.

“I miss Sejeend very much,” Gilly said. “Even as the overcrowded city that it’s become.”

“So why are you here rather than there?” Chellour said.

Gilly Cordale smiled bleakly. “The one thing worse than being a disembodied spirit is being one in a place you think of as home.”

When they reached the open doorway they gathered on its threshold to watch. The leader, the noble Limbor cul-Mayr, was still seated at the centre of his Nightkin flock, and from a casket was producing several small golden emblems which he placed on the floor all around him, ten in all. To Ayoni’s eyes each one possessed a strange ashgrey nimbus. Cul-Mayr smiled an unpleasant smile as he placed the last one then surveyed the Nightkin.

“Brothers,” he said. “The blessed vulsors.”

Hands dipped into pockets or delved within robes and brought ten pendants, all identical — a flattened copper ring with a greenish stone at its centre and glyphs inscribed all around it. As the Nightkin hung them about their necks, Ayoni noticed that they possessed the same flickering grey aura. There was nervous, quiet laughter, exchanged looks, dry lips licked, hands restlessly moving or tensely clasped. Cul-Mayr nodded in satisfaction.

“Now the orisons.”

The ten began a low-pitched chant in old High Mantinoran, archaic syllables that Ayoni could just about understand as imprecations for an entity called the Great Shadow, pleading for its intercession. As the Nightkin repeated their chant, cul-Mayr began to declaim in Yularian;

“Hear thy servant, Great Shadow of the age — the foes of Holy Night are weak and scattered and our lands lie fallow, awaiting thy plough, thy seed, thy scythe. The towns and the cities will cast down their walls before thee and thy eternal word shall become the very arbiter of life and death. Open the fount of thy will and wisdom, we pray, that we might further perfect and strengthen our purpose. Open the well of thy powers that these poor servants of thine may offer themselves up as truly worthy vessels of thy inexorable might…”

Cul-Mayr continued in this vein for a short while before lapsing into silence. But this was only a brief pause before he started again, introducing a string of servile oaths and vows, promises to pursue the Great Shadow’s enemies and exterminate them down to the last. When he paused for a second time, Bardow turned to Atroc and said;

“Do you recognise any of that, I wonder?”

The old Mogaun grunted. “Before the tribes came to this land, the Acolytes of Twilight often walked among us, trying to teach us their prayers. While many shamen were swayed, the seers remained wary, always seeking to avoid cages for the mind. The doggerel that this one is spewing is a corruption of those ancient devotions.”

“So this is a ritual for invoking the Lord of Twilight?” Bardow said.

Atroc shook his head. “Such a ritual would be more than just words; it demands all thought, all belief, all of love and hate. No — you should look at the charms they are wearing and the ones he put on the floor around him. There is something darker coming.”

Bardow looked Ayoni and Chellour. “In 300 years all of us have borne witness to innumerable groups of zealots, mystics and self-proclaimed prophets in this place, so something may transpire, or it may not.”

“And yet the Carver came here and ascended,” said Chellour. “Did any of you witness it?”

“Only Nerek saw it,” Atroc said. “And she said very little save that the Carver’s body became wholly like ours before he disappeared.”

“Is that what these are attempting?” said Gilly. “Ascension of some kind?”

“No, my friend,” said Bardow. “Real power in the here and now is their goal, power to use for their own self-aggrandisement, power as a way of gaining more power…”

“Something’s happening,” said Ayoni.

As she watched, the restless grey auras around the ten floor emblems had begun to expand, slowly but noticeably. Not they wer extending upwards, wavering like tongues of ashen flame that encircled cul-Mayr who spoke on and one with eyes closed. At the same time, the pendants worn by the Nightkin began to pulse with the same grey radiance while their wearers sat still and chanted, oblivious as each nimbus extruded a hazy tendril towards the corresponding emblem on the floor next to Limbor cul-Mayr. Suddenly, all the ghostly tendrils lanced forward to join with the auras surrounding the floor emblems and as one the Nightkin acolytes froze in mid-chant, mouths open, lips trembling as they strove to speak or even scream. Seeing this, the seated cul-Mayr smiled.

“Master, hear me,” he said. “My flock is trammelled and I am ready to begin the Bloodgate ceremony.”

Then another voice was heard in the great empty chamber, a sibilant rushing voice.

“You have done well…prepare now for your reward!”

Then the upward trailing tongues of ash-grey flame swirled and swiftly coiled around cul-Mayr, embracing him from crossed legs to the crown of his head. A look of utmost horror came to his face and his throat gave forth only gasps as he fought against the spectral bonds. But his struggles quickly slowed and his eyes became glazed and vacant. The ten Nightkin jerked where they sat, small convulsion that preceded a darkening of the grey tendrils that bound them to cul-Mayr. Then the darkness grew red and flowed down towards the golden emblems encircling cul-Mayr and before long a crimson flush spreading up through the greyness that entwined him. Ayoni felt sick as she watched, knowing that all of these fools had been betrayed by their master, condemned to be sacrifices in a vile act of blood sorcery.

One by one the Nightkin slumped or toppled lifeless to the floor as their veins were exhausted. The grey weave enclosing cul-Mayr changed to a dark, mottled scarlet which also began to suffuse his own flesh and garments. By the time the last of his flock finally lay sprawled and dead, cul-Mayr was fully cloaked, encased in a dully gleaming red caul in which the features of his face were only vaguely discernable. Its surface wept shimmering droplets and a heavy vapour drifted down its flanks as it took on a slight glow. The glow brightened through shades of red until it became the unwatchable, burning fury of the furnace. Ayoni and the others averted their gaze as the brightness obscured all and filled the chamber.

Soon it subsided and faded away. When Ayoni looked she that all the lamps and torches had gone out, leaving only the faint, glimmering radiance of the dream-realm to challenge the darkness. As they entered the chamber, she realised that there was a strange blotch of greyness in the middle of the floor exactly where Limbor cul-Mayr had been sitting. Drawing near, she saw that it was an irregular patch of some neutral blue-greyness, like a mould. It was perhaps four or five yards across and had a foot-high mound at its centre and ten tapering protrusions.

“Nobody touch it,” said Bardow. “This is the result of necromantia, which usually means deadly peril.”

“I am relieved,” said Gilly with a grin as he rose into midair, and floated over the greyness. “I thought it might be really dangerous.”

Bardow frowned and shook his head. “If you choose not to listen…”

But Gilly had reached the centre of the greyness and was hovering a yard or so above the mound.

“The surface of it is finely texture and very even,” he reported. “There seems to be vague shapes beneath, however…not sure what they are — ah!”

“What?” Bardow snapped.

“Er, a pair of eyes just opened in the top of this mound and they’re staring up at me.”

“Move away from it, now,” Bardow said. “Everyone else get back.”

Gaining height, Gilly twisted away from the grey mound but then the surface bulged and put forth a thin, flat-tipped tentacle which thrust upwards to wrap itself around his legs. Gilly let out a cry of shock and fought as other grey coils lunged up at him, engulfing his legs.

“Bardow, what can we do?” Ayoni said.

“What can the disembodied do?” he retorted angrily.

“Perhaps nothing,” Atroc said. “Perhaps something.”

At first the Archmage shook his head, then he shrugged and together he and the old Mogaun flew over to Gilly who was being drawn inexorably down. But the rippling greyness beneath him bulged again and, in an abrupt transformation, became the head and shoulders of a pair of hooded figures, both as grey as the thing blighting the floor. These deathly forms rose suddenly on thick curved columns, hands outstretched. Ayoni and Chellour shouted warnings and although Atroc managed to evade the snatching grey hands Bardow was caught. Then the hooded figures’ outlines melted and flowed, engulfing the archmage up to his chest.

“Send them…back, Atroc!” he cried as he was pulled down towards the roiling greyness which was clearly growing in size. Just behind him, Gilly’s still-struggling form was sinking into it.

The seer Atroc swerved past more tentacles and flailing figures as Ayoni and Chellour backed out of the chamber’s wide entrance. Atroc was grim-faced as he reached them.

“A terrible way to die,” said Chellour.

“We do not live,” the Mogaun said bitterly. “How can we die? But remember what you have seen here, for any good that it will do…”

He muttered a swift string of words and made a cutting gesture. Ayoni’s last sight of that place was Atroc turning to face of the monstrous tentacle-forms as it lunged through doorway at him —

The transition back to the physical reality of her own body was like being dropped into a cold river. Gasping and trembling from the sudden surge of sensations, it was several moments before Ayoni realised that the prison wagon was in motion. From the way it was jolting and swaying it was clearly being driven at speed, but by whom?

And her cell door was open, she saw, with lamplight coming from the passage outside. As she sat up on her boxcrib, Chellour staggered into view, holding onto the door frame, and a moment later a bearded man in leather and mail armour joined him from the other end of the passage.

“Are you well, ser?”

Chellour gave a dry laugh. “Nothing that a month of rest and fine wine wouldn’t remedy!”

Disorientated, Ayoni spotted the crest of a boar on the man’s chest at the same time as she recognised him as one of her husband’s closest allies, Baron Klayse, and her heart leapt.

“My dear baron,” she said. “It is most gratifying to set eyes on you. I assume that we are escaping.”

“Indeed we are, countess,” Klayse said with a grin. “Your recovery will please your illustrious husband almost as much as I.”

“Where is Jarryc, baron?”

“Driving this wagon, lady. Our destination is a small port near the southern mouth of the Great Canal and thence to the port as Besdarok. From there, a ship will take us east to Margrave Tergalis’ coastal estates in far-off Cabringa!”