Shadowmasque (48 page)
“You say what must be said,” the High Steward said. “Even thought the Emperor and his Archmage face the foe in the north, we must needs find the courage to stand firm here. But we know little of what assails us, good Calabos, despite the efforts of your Watchers.”
“My knowledge is equally uncertain,” Calabos said. “But you may yet face a new danger emanating from a portal at the centre of this grey blight, invaders armed and ruthless.”
The High Steward looked appalled, then visibly gathered his resolve. “We shall have to be ready for them,” he said, moving towards the stairs. “Thus I must go to being preparations and warn my captains. Will you be staying to lend us your skills and counsel?”
Calabos shook his head. “My duty takes me elsewhere, to the portal I mentioned before. I, and my unusual allies…” He glanced at the three Daemonkind. “…will infiltrate the enemy’s domain and carry the fight to him there.”
All of Tashil’s fears came together as she struggled to take in his words. “But where is this domain?” she said, then indicated the sword he wore. “And what manner of dangers will you face there, and how many? Calabos, you cannot do this alone — some of us should go with you, please….”
Even as the others added their voices to her argument, Calabos halted them all with an upraised hand and sad smile.
“If I am unable to prevail against the Great Shadow on my own, then your presence would be too much of a sacrifice…” He glanced at Dardan, “and this time it’s true, old friend!” He straightened and looked over at the Daemonkind for moment, and as if at a silent beckoning they stirred and leaped aloft on beating wings.
“Remain in Sejeend,” he said, turning to Tashil and the others. “Although you might find Hubranda Lock a better refuge — make yourselves ready for battle, help the High Steward as best you can, and watch for anything untoward from west along Gronanvel — there is another of these blights centred on Alvergost. Also, you should prepare yourselves for grim news from Besdarok….”
The three Daemonkind were now hovering a short distance overhead, and Tashil could feel the breeze from their wings. As they began to descend, Calabos looked at them all again, one by one.
“My fate now leads me into a dark and perilous realm and in all honesty this may be the last time we meet in this life.” Then he gave a flash of his old grin, all dash and cunning. “But I can return, once doom is averted, be assured that I will — and then you’ll hear a tale like no other!”
Then he raised his arms and the Daemonkind lifted him into the air. Tashil shouted a farewell as tears stung her eyes, and she stayed by the battlements to watch the flying cluster of figures head south and quickly slip out of sight beyond the grey-swathed cliffs. In her loss she found herself thinking of her brother, Atemor, and of her father and family. Leaning on the cold stone, she whispered a prayer for them, directing her plea to the Earthmother yet feeling it to be a gesture cast into the abyss.
How else do we petition the gods?
she thought and went to join the discussion of practicalities just begun by the High Steward.
* * *
A soldier was screaming in agony as attendants rushed him away from the ravine barricades, back up to the camp. Sitting on a partly-smashed barrel, Ayoni wondered if any of the wounded were surviving after reaching the healer tent, considering that the senior healer had died yesterday during the bloody chaos that swept the mainland shore after the crossing.
Chellour, having finished tending to the barricade troops’ flesh wounds, came stumbling over to sit on the grass nearby, hanging his head in an attitude of utter weariness.
“The sarjeants say we may not be able to hold them of next time,” he said. “Especially if we don’t get those troops back from the vale.”
“It was a desperate situation, Chellour,” Ayoni said. “Jarryc’s captains had to have reinforcements. Even so, it could have gone either way — we’re just lucky that the Mogaun don’t’ seem able to co-ordinate their attack.”
Chellour looked up, eyes dark from lack of sleep. “I wonder how many of their chieftains they lost over there, after you dealt with Huzur Marag.”
She shrugged. “Too soon to tell, but hopefully this will be as good as they can get while we grow in strength as more survivors keep arriving…”
“But no Ilgarion so far,” Chellour said with a wan smile.
“Hope springs eternal,” she murmured. “Have you heard any farspeech since we came back across?”
“Before that last attack, I thought I heard fragments of something from Calabos, then not long after a response from Tashil. But I was just too tired to focus — still am.”
“Something is going on,” Ayoni said. “I wonder if the other blights have grown in the same way…”
Chellour gave a bleak laugh but before he could speak, an infantry runner hurried up, saluted them both and handed Ayoni a message tablet.
“From the general, m’lady.”
Ayoni resisted the urge to grin at Jarryc’s newest title and opened the tablet, swivelling the lid on its hinge. There were only a few words —
Come quickly, new arrivals
— accompanied by her husband’s seal. With her thumb she smoothed the clay flat before closing the tablet and handing it back. The runner put it in a waist pouch beside some others, bowed and left at speed.
“I am needed at the the general’s tent,” she said, getting to her feet.
“Tell Jarryc that we have to have those troops back,” Chellour said.
She nodded and headed along the ravine which began to slope upwards after a few dozen paces. It led up to a small wooded plateau with vertical cliffs to the north, flanking the notch-like ravine, but with a long, bushy slope to the southwest, descending into a marshy vale that was proving very hard to defend. In addition there was the canal shore which mostly lay at the foot of a sheer, jagged precipice, and extend into a couple of small coves. All of this had to be defended by the battered remnants of the two companies that Ilgarion had left to guard the siege machines before leading the rest of his army across to the Isle of Besdarok two days ago.
There were few trees on the rocky plateau itself. Many varieties of hardy bushes had found niches among the mossy outcrops and the tufts of hill grass. The camp was a hastily erected cluster of meagre tents and Jarryc’s was a canvas lean-to slung up against an upthrusting finger of rock near the brink of the drop overlooking the canal. Two Earthmother initiates were tending to several wounded on the grass nearby as Ayoni approached while twenty or so muddy and battered-looking soldier were gathered around a cooking fire. A closer look told her that they were mostly from the Iron Guard, so these had to be the survivors Jarryc’s message had mentioned.
As she hurried towards Jarryc’s tent she glanced across the strait. The Isle of Besdarok was now only an expanse of pale, deathly grey, utterly covered by the consuming blight which had expanded outwards from the old imperial palace. The awful fear she had felt yesterday on beholding the advancing wall of greyness was till fresh in her mind, as was the terrible sight of people fighting and killing to get places on boats. Then of course some of the overloaded boats foundered part way across from the pilgrim tent city, hurling women and children into the cold waters. And even as the grey tide was sweeping towards the isle’s western limits, the forces of Ilgarion and Huzur Marag had continued to clash, battling with deranged hatred as a mutual doom bore down upon them both.
All this Ayoni, Jarryc, Chellour and Baron Klayse had witnessed from the seer’s boat as they rowed back across the channel. On making landfall, the Mogaun seers had gone their own way, intending to return to the forests of the north; Ayoni and Jarryc, Chellour and Klayse elected to move southwest to discover a stealthy was back to Sejeend, only to find themselves in the middle of a panicked rout of Imperial soldiers. One of the two companies had been under Jarryc’s command just days earlier and he had been unable to leave them leaderless in such desperate circumstances….
Now as she climbed old mossy steps to the rise and the small camp, Baron Klayse emerged from Jarryc’s leanto, his face grim.
“My lady,” he said. “Your husband — and three others — await you within. I cannot tarry — the defences in the vale will not direct themselves!”
As he hurried away, clearly exasperated, Ayoni’s spirits sank.
Three others?
she thought. Ilgarion and the
Archmage Tangaroth — they survived….
But she was wrong. As she entered, Jarryc rose to greet her as did Shumond, Lord Commander of the Iron Guard and a startled-looking young man she recognised as one of the court mages. A fourth person garbed in capacious, dark blue hooded robes, remained seated and motionless. Something about him stirred the fringe of her perception, vague sensations of pain and anger…
“Countess, it pains me to greet you in these unfit conditions,” Shumond said before Jarryc could speak. “Yet I am the bearer of a tragic news which must be heard and understood, no matter the anguish that it may cause to the listener. My lady — know that our dear and most puissant emperor, Ilgarion son of Magramon, is no more. He fell on the field of battle, defending the glory of the Khatrimantine empire and its heritage to the very last….”
Ayoni kept her face sombre and downcast to mask her inner feelings of cold satisfaction, yet when she glanced at Jarryc his unhappy looked seemed genuine. Something else was amiss, she realised….
“Yet such is the deadly peril what we face here and elsewhere,” Shumond went on, “the empire cannot afford to remain leaderless, its throne empty, its crown unworn. Therefore, myself and the senior officers of the Iron Guard and those nobles yet surviving have proposed that, in the absence of any issue, the crown be passed to another whose service and duty are unquestioned and whose ancestry provides the necessary royal association…”
At this point, the seated figure began to turn towards Ayoni who felt a dark foreboding. Then a trembling hand rose to push back the cowl, revealing a changed Archmage Tangaroth. His skin was pale, almost waxy, and one eye was bloodshot but what caught the attention were the grubby, red-spotted bandages which had been wrapped around the lower half of his face.
“The Archmage suffered a terrible injury,” Shumond said. “And is without the use of his voice, yet Gessik here is able to act as an intermediary…”
At this the young mage jerked suddenly and began to speak in a flat voice.
“I am prepared to overlook your past misdemeanours, Countess,” he said. “Along with those of your Watcher colleague, your husband and even the Baron Klayse. All I require is your word that you will continue in what you have been doing — opposing and destroying the Empire’s enemies.”
It was an unbalancing moment, hearing speech coming from one man’s mouth while meeting the furious glare of another who was the actual source of those words.
“You know that the crown should go to Magramon’s brother’s branch of the family,” she said, “rather than his uncle’s which I believe is the trail of your own ancestery, Archmage.”
Tangaroth’s hard gaze did not waver.
“What are you more interested right now, Countess? — arguing over dynastic details or trying to survive?”
Ayoni glanced momentarily at Jarryc who let slip the faintest glimmer of a smile.
“Very well, Archmage,” she said. “I give you my word that I will oppose the enemies of the empire — all of them.”
“I am gratified by your words, if not your manner, but it will suffice.”
Shumond suddenly smiled widely. “Unity is preserved — now we can plan the downfall of the enemy Mogaun.”
Then, within her thoughts, Ayoni heard the Archmage’s own voice:
(
And always remember — my eyes are upon you
.)
How comforting
, she thought as she bowed and left.
Begin now thy revels,
Of sleepless dread,
And furious night.
—Jedhessa Gant,
The Lord Desolate
, Act1, sc1, 5
Locked within the recesses of his own once more, Corlek Ondene was the prostrate and unwilling witness to every sight and word and thought and act of the Shadowking spirit. And to his own sensibilities, for that journey through the monstrous, rushing intestine of the sea god Grath paled next to this crossing over to the Nightrealm. The open portal of the Shattergate contained only indivisible blackness and one step was all it took to plunge into it. Invasive and pervasive, the pressure of it ignored his garments and engulfed every part of his skin then seemed to seep inwards to probe at veins and bones, nerves and muscles.
And he was walking through it, pace slowing as he became aware of stone underfoot. The air was cold, smelling faintly of musty decay, and along with the hard scrape of his own dragging footsteps were the sounds of others coming from behind. Fearing unseen attackers, he turned — and vision surged upon him and he saw that he was standing in a narrow, arched passage made of stone cobbles. All seemed drenched in shadows, yet a peculiar radiance touched everything like ashen silver. And there, behind him, stood a dozen or more spectral figures, motionless and watching closely. Ondene felt fear turn into curiosity when he saw the great differences among them — there was an old woman with a shawl draped over her head and shoulders, a waggoner in a long, heavy tabard and a wide-brimmed hat, a scrawny man stripped to the waist, a hulking, bearded Mogaun warrior clad in fur and chain mail, and several others whose stares held an unblinking edge of insanity.
“Who…are you?” he said hoarsely.
No mouth opened in response yet a flow of whispering sighs reached him, a mingling of slurred voices talking among themselves…
He sees us… so this is the other… where is our master… yes, the vessel… so weak… our master will soon rise… our rewards…
Ondene turned and fled the ghosts and their tenuous mutterings, spurred by a raw fear which filled him utterly. In panic he turned left at the next junction, found himself in a section of passage open to the sky, a canopy of black and dark-violet clouds which roiled and swirled in continuous turbulence but seemed to make no progress in any one direction.
