Shadowmasque (49 page)

As his fear abated, he emerged in a pillared chamber with three tall openings in the far wall. It was a large but shabby place with bare stone walls, dark grey mold on the columns, and a floor of five-sided tiles, many of which were cracked or loose. Two of the openings faced the brick wall of another building so warily he crossed to the third beyond which there seemed to be a platform or landing. As he approached he saw that there were steps leading down between a black rock face and the adjacent building, then his viewpoint opened out and, struggling to comprehend, he halted on the threshold.

The stairs were a long rack descending into a peculiar leaden darkness and the shadows of a small square with a wrecked fountain surrounded by the low halls and houses of a small town. A few roofs further beyond was a large fortified wall which cut across, with smoke rising from its guard towers; on the other side was a district of narrow-peaked woodframe houses and next to that was a cluster of crude stone-and-earth tribal lodges, and next to that the log palisade of stockade, then the porticos and cloisters of opulent townhouses, a ruined fort, a long, half-demolished viaduct, a high-walled temple on whose roof he could see sentries patrolling….

And on it went, sloping gently upwards from his vantage, a dizzying profusion of roof and towers and arches, cabins and mansions and taverns, turrets and keep and redans, all crammed together in a single, unbroken cityscape, or rather a patchworked vista of innumerable villages, towns and cities. The upper districts were lost in the darkness of distance, compounded by the deathly half-light which had no source yet which was all-pervasive, muting colours and casting a grainy silver patina over every surface.

Ondene tried to remember what he had witnessed and overheard during Calabos’ encounter with the Sleeping God, at least before the arrival of that spirit-wraith, and recalled that this was the world of the other path of Time, once in which the Lord of Twilight had triumphed. This Nightrealm was a living nightmare presided over by the Lord of Twilight, now called the Great Shadow. There was no death here, or at least no end to a ghastly experience, no escape…

And now I’m trapped here, too
, he thought grimly.
Is there anyone that I can trust in a place like this?…

A cold sensation made him turn and he saw the ghostly figures from before converging upon him. Their whispering touched the edge of his thoughts and he recoiled, retreating to the head of the long stairway as they drifted toward him.

Master… master… master… arise… awake… begin the war…

Choking on his own fear, Ondene plunged away down the steps, down into fracture darkness. But as he ran the fear began to change, its inward spiral turning into an upward surge of anger at the ghosts, at the Shadowking, at Calabos and the Sleeping God, and at this funereal realm. As the foot of the steps came nearer, indistinct figures emerged from the deeper shadows to discover the source of the clattering boots, first a few then a dozen or more, and yet more. Ondene could see the gathering crowd and sense the brooding menace in their manner. But the anger in him drowned all sense of caution as his gait slowed to a deliberate walk while hate began to grow out of his anger like a coiling vine that slowly filled up his thoughts.

“A stranger comes,” said someone in the crowd.

“Aye, from out of the fell tunnels,” said another.

“Is he a danger?”

“Only one way to find out!”

And with a roar the crowd surged forward. Ondene, mind dissolving in hate, charged down the last remaining steps and was engulfed. Heedless, the mob piled in on top of him, wielding fists, knives or clubs, and in the deranged confusion a scattering of fights broke among the ambushers themselves. Blood splashed on the cobbles, black in the ashen light. Ghastly wounds were given and received and terrible injuries abounded on all sides, yet non slumped into death or gasped their last. Several crawled away from the carnage holding severed limbs or trying to keep spilled innards in place. Screams, shrieks and shouts slashed the air and of Ondene there was sign beneath the heaving press.

Then suddenly bodies were flying back, thrown out from the centre where a figure stood, fists clenched and burning with an emerald glitter twin to the radiance that shone from his eyes. He snarled at the sprawled and maimed ambushers, and hot green power leaked from his mouth. A knot of them had regained their feet and seemed to be debating whether to rush him again, but when he stalked towards them with flamelets dripping from his hands they broke and ran….

“Overseer!” some cried, “Ware overseer!…”

Watching them flee from the square, the Shadowking felt a certain exultation in the intense purity of Sourcefire as it coursed through his body. The traverse between that other world and the Nightrealm had swept him down into the undervaults of Ondene’s mind but his stoking of the fires of primal anger and hate had opened the gates to the Wellsource and himself. So now Ondene was again confined to inner durance and he was once more enthroned with the Wellsource at his fingertips and a land to conquer.

He smiled, a hidden expression now that the edge of his Sourcefire had abated somewhat.

“Enthroned,” he said for the pleasure of hearing his own voice.

A thin, cracked laughter rang out from a gloomy mound of rubble to one side of the long stairs. Frowning, he walked towards the sound and saw how the mound was the collapsed debris from the front half of the tall brick building, and halfway up its jagged slope sat a wiry old man clad in rags. He stopped laughing as the Shadowking drew near and regarded him with beady eyes.

“What amuses you?” he said.

The old man stared for a moment, then burst out laughing again.

“And…and still they come!” he managed. “Let me guess — you’re going to persuade all the crews and chapters and militias to put aside their precious feuds and hatreds, to unite behind your banner and launch a war to free all of the Nightrealm from the Great Shadow’s tyranny, yes?”

The Shadowking gazed at him thoughtfully, deciding to explore the limits of this paltry denizen’s knowledge.

“No,” he said. “I have come to take what is rightfully mine.”

That made the old man pause and give him a close look.

“Hmm, you don’t look much like a naïve hero or a shadow artifice, which are the usual agents of misfortune who come along from time to time to make us forget the word ‘futile’.” He coughed and spat. “So you don’t want to set us free, rather you just want to usurp the Great Shadow himself — well, that’s not entirely novel but it’s still rare enough to be refreshing. Very well, I’m your man, willing to swear fealty and offer whatever wise counsel I can dredge out of this aged head…”

The Shadowking watched him pick his way down the rubble mound.

“I never asked for your fealty,” he said. “What makes you think that I need your counsel?”

“Because of all the questions you want answered, lord, and because I know who the local chiefs are and what some of their weaknesses are.”

The Shadowking smiled. “Good, then I accept you into my service, but before you swear the oath of loyalty tell me your name.”

“Dar,” the old man said. “That is all. And you, lord?”

A name,
the Shadowking thought.
It needs be a name of strength and ruthless purpose — yes, I know which one….

“You may call me Lord Byrnak,” he said, feeling the rightness of it even as he spoke.

“Byrnak,” Dar said. “I’m sure I’ve heard that name before, long time since…hah, matters not. So, my lord Byrnak — I swear by all that I hold sacred to serve to the best of my abilities and with the utmost regard for discretion. Now — what is my first task?”

“When that mob fled my wrath, some shouted that I was an ‘overseer’,” Byrnak said. “Explain this to me.”

“Ah, the Overseers,” Dar said, nodding sagely. “Put simply, the Overseers serve the Duskgeneral, who serves the Great Shadow. The Overseers have a number of tower strongholds all across the Nightrealm from which they range forth, some on the wing, some on foot, to warn, to punish, to slay, and just occasionally to reward.”

The Shadowking Byrnak gazed up at the walls of the square and the buildings beyond, eyes searching the receding proliferation of streets and roofs and domes and turrets.

“And the Duskgeneral,” he said. “What manner of bastion has he?”

“A gigantic fortress called the Citadel of Twilight which sits against the sheer cliffs near the zenith of the Nightrealm. The topmost chambers of the citadel lead out onto the clifftop and the dream-courts of the Great Shadow, a column-ringed maze of shifting walls and buildings open to the sky.”

Byrnak smiled. “Has he a throne?”

“A huge, jewelled throne in the shape of an upthrust sword which presides over the dream-courts from an imposing, stepped dais. And behind it is supposed to be the White Prison, a towering wall of ice in which the Great Shadow keeps certain favourite prisoners.”

“The Great Shadow clearly has much to defend,” Byrnak said. “Who has threatened him?”

Dar snorted. “The whole of the Nightrealm is littered with the ruined fortifications and wrecked war machines constructed by those who have sought to oppose him. But he has the fearful Overseers, the Duskgeneral’s Murknights, and the echelons of the Black Host to call upon, a fearful army indeed.”

“Then we shall a still greater army,” Byrnak said. “Who is the nearest and likeliest chief to dispose of?”

“That would be…Yanama, I would think,” Dar said, narrowing his eyes. “Yes, he leads a small crew of rogues out of one of the Eyrie’s underhalls. Not to important that his ousting would attract attention, but not so small as to be pointless.”

“Is it far?”

“If we hurry, we can reach the Eyrie before nightfall,” said the old man.

Byrnak grimaced. “Day and night? Here?”

“Indeed, yes, a freezing fog-smothered night through which hungry power and sly beasts hunt, my lord, for the likes of you and I! Come, let us be on our way…”

Through chilling, gloomy roads and winding alleys Dar led him, passing on more scraps of lore, names, places, locations of recent battles, the favoured tactics of the Overseers when they trawled for captives. Byrnak learned that there was no true death here, that however brutal and thorough the despatch, a victim’s body would always regrow somewhere across the Nightrealm in certain gardens. He learned that the only food consisted of roots and tubers that grew in dark cellars, alleviated by a bitter berry beer made by brewers out on the periphery of the Nightrealm, near the immense cliffs that hemmed this grim land in on all sides. He learned that most weapons were of a kind of forgeable glass, that the ore was mined at several places and each one was the seat of a powerful chapter or group of militias.

As they stole through the shadows, Byrnak saw many people in groups or ones or twos, loitering, fighting, running, standing in doorways or leaning out windows, and nowhere were any children to be seen. And during his exchanges with Dar he got no sense that the old man thought or knew about the origins of the Nightrealm, in fact no sense of history at all. He thought on this, realising that if there was no death then all the men and women he saw here were over three centuries old: could they all have forgotten the Shadowking War and the Lord of Twilight’s triumph on this path of Time? Or was this the result of some deliberate glamour cast by the Great Shadow to make their memories short?

The Eyrie was a tall, ugly tower surround by a cluster of equally ugly buildings, some of which were in a state of partial or complete ruin. Several gangs and warbands had lairs in nooks and crannies on the ground and basement levels, leaving the rest to a powerful militia called the Roaring Gauntlet, led by one Cebroul. Yanama’s crew was known as the Hangers and their underhall was beneath one of the half-demolished buildings, reached via a creaking, timber-shored tunnel which led crookedly through the ancient rubble. A pair of guards at the underhall entrance searched them both before admitting them. Emerging in one corner of a tall chamber, Byrnak quickly counted those present — nine, including the guards — and gauged their readiness and possible threat as fairly low.

“Visitors, huh?” said a balding man from a large, jutting ledge at the top of a ricketty, wall-set staircase. The ledge bore a low pallet and a stool and had a pair of fastened shutters in the rough stone wall. “You here for business or pleasure?”

Judging this to be Yanama, Byrnak gesture Dar to remain below, then started up the stairs.

“I’m your new recruit,” he said.

Yanama sneered. “I take on blooded warriors, not novices. I will, however, take your jerkin, your boots and any weapons ye have.”

“I only have my fists,” Byrnak said as he neared the top. “But they’re yours.”

At the ledge he lunged at Yanama, who had drawn a curved black dagger to slash at Byrnak’s throat. But Byrnak grabbed the oncoming wrist, turned in midstep and threw Yanama over his shoulder to crash onto the floorboards. The ledge shook underfoot. Byrnak then pounced on the dazed warband chief, hauled him up and dragged him over to the shutters which he opened with a single, savage kick.

“Don’t come back,” he growled at Yanama before pitching him headfirst out the window. Turning back, he faced two of Yanama’s henchmen who came howling up the stairs — one ended up sprawled in agony on the underhall floor while the other followed his chief out into the dense fog. The remaining seven looked at each other with expression ranging from stunned amazement to naked fear.

“You have a new chief,” Byrnak said to them. “Stay or leave.”

The seven fighters paused for only a moment before bending the knee and swearing an oath of loyalty as Byrnak descended the steps.

“Good,” he said, pointing at the now-unconscious man on the floor. “And get rid of this.”

Dar was at his side, grinning and chuckling.

“Most efficient, my lord. Most, ah, direct. Now, what is your will?”

“Who is the most powerful chief in the Eyrie?” Byrnak said. “Apart from Cebroul of the Roaring Gauntlets.”

“Kural of the Stone Wolves,” Dar said. “A dangerous man.”