Shadowmasque (50 page)
“Who are his deputies?”
Dar frowned. “I’m not sure, but I can find out quite easily.”
“Do so, and find out which one hates Kural the most.”
The next day, Byrnak had the seven remaining Hangers training with knife and staff while Dar was away ferretting out the truth. He sooned returne with the news that Kural had three captains, one of whom he had viciously and sarcastically lambasted before the rest of the chapter just a couple of days ago. This captain, known as Domas, Byrnak contrived to encounter later that day in one of the upper halls, calmly introduced himself, praised Domas’ tactics in a territorial clash a few weeks past (which Dar had learned of during his investigations). He then made several enigmatic comments about Domas’ loyalty not going unnoticed, and let his mouth curl with contempt as he mentioned Kural’s ‘judgement’. Then he made his excuses and departed, leaving a puzzled-looking Domas in his wake.
The following morning, Byrnak went seeking an audience with Kural, accompanied by the best two of his seven fighters. Intrigued by this stranger who had so swiftly deposed Yanama, Kural agreed to the meeting and that was his undoing. Less than ten minutes after it began, Kural and two of his deputies lay hacked and insensible on the chamber floor whiel Domas sat off to one side, disarmed and bound by Byrnak’s men. Byrnak then disclosed his powers with a small demonstration of Sourcefire, holding a clay bottle in a fire-wreathed hand and reducing it to a charred and smoking ruin. Domas stared, fear and uncertainty writ clearly in his features.
“First the Stone Wolves,” Byrnak said, sitting opposite him and speaking a low voice, as if he were confiding in an equal. “Then the Roaring Gauntlets and the Eyrie, then the district, then a domain, then….” He smiled. “The Nightrealm needs a new purpose, a new strength, a new ruler. Are you with me?”
A revelatory light came into Domas’ eyes and he nodde.
With Domas and Dar’s help, Byrnak circulated the story that Kural had been plotting with another militia in a neighbouring district to remove Cebroul and disperse the Roaring Gauntlets. Three days after Kural’s fall from power (and the subsequent exile of his body parts to a faraway district), Byrnak was peremptorily summoned to an audience with Cebroul in the Skyhall, the topmost floor of the Eyrie. Byrnak smiled when it came, issued orders to Domas and Dar, then left to ascend the tower’s levels.
It was the most luxurious chamber Byrnak had yet seen in the Nightrealm, certainly when compared to the rundown shabbyness prevalent everywhere else. Banners hung all around the oval walls, racks of spears were stacked to left and right, and vine-oil lamps cast a silvery glow over the black pillars and the grey tiles. Cebroul was seated on a tall throne of some red-veined stone, flanked by scores of subordinates and guards and glowering as Byrnak entered by himself. The leader of the Roaring Gauntlets barely waited for Byrnak to take half a dozen steps into the hall before launching into a venomous tirade, claiming that Kural’s loyalty had been beyond question, that his military skills would be hard to replace, and that Byrnak was a pox-ridden vermin who deserved to be dismembered….
Byrnak kept silent as the rant wound on, standing a short way back from the middle of the hall, right between two large pillars. At last Cebroul ran out of insults and snarled;
“So what do you have to say for yourself, eh?”
But Byrnak frowned, gave a small shake of the head. “Can you hear it?”
Mutters of outrage at this behaviour went round the assembled underlings.
“Hear what?” said Cebroul, anger reddening his face. “What?!”
Byrnak struck a listening attitude for a moment, then smiled. “Something unavoidable.”
A low rumbled came up from below and the Skyhall trembled. Then without further warning most of the floor fell in, just suddenly broke apart in a roaring cascade of masonry, tiles and screaming members of Cebroul’s court, including Cebroul himself, all plunging through billowing dust. Byrnak seemed to be safe where he was, having previous made sure of the location of the supporting wall in the floor below, yet he backed away to the hall entrance as one of the far pillars toppled and crashed through the outer wall.
Byrnak had known that he would be summoned to the Skyhall and had sent a squad of trusted men with masonry backgrounds to prepare this devastating surprise. Their work was skilled and deadly — all except two of Cebroul’s court suffered the half-death, and the collapse wrecked less than a third of the two floors below without endangering the rest of the building. With all the senior commanders of the Roaring Gauntlets gone, Byrnak moved to establish his authority in the Eyrie and when next morning one of the nearby militias carried out a raid on an outlying Gauntlet guardpost it was the perfect excuse for a swift retaliation. When his men returned laden with trophies and weapons, it set the seal on his claim to the mastery of the Eyrie.
The morning after the counter-raid, Byrnak was in the Skyhall with Dar, taking stock of the damage while a few labourers were attempting to shore up the weakened outer wall. Suddenly there were shouts of warning and the sound of discarded tools. Byrnak looked round to see a large, winged figure clambering in through the ragged gap in the Eyrie wall as the labourers darted away in panic.
“Oveerseers,” said Dar. “What’s their interest…”
The Overseer was nearly 10 feet tall and had a man-like body, but the skin seemed rough and the face looked distorted, the jaw overlarge and the flinty eyes recessed beneath a bony brow. The pinions of its leathery wings jutted well above the shoulders, indicating a prodigious span.
“You’re the one I seek,” the Overseer said in a deep, rasping voice as it strode towards Byrnak.
Byrnak regarded the newcomer, sensing a raw but semi-disciplined power in him. He knew that he could master this Overseer but realised that the consequences of such an act might forestall his plans. Better to mask his own powers and to see and judge.
Coming to halt a few feet away, the Overseer towered over Byrnak and stared down at him with undisguised despite.
“So Cebroul’s been cut down to size, has he? Matters not — he was an insect, just like you and no doubt you’ll go the same way. In the meantime I’ve come to make sure you understand about the levy.”
“What levy?” said Byrnak.
“The levy of the Black Host,” the Overseer growled. “Cebroul’s was 90 able bodies a month, but from you I want a nice round 100 in six days time, understand? I can see that you’ve got some of the power in you but just be sure that you don’t get above yourself — you might end up with bits of you spread over a wide area, eh?”
Impassive, Byrnak nodded and the Overseer grunted.
“Worms, that’s what you people are. Worms.”
He walked back to the break in the wall, climbed out then looked over his shoulder;
“Don’t forget — 100. Even if you have to include some of your own.”
Then dark wings spread, beat the air once, twice, and he was gone.
Byrnak was surprised at how calm he was, in spite of the searing hate that had boiled up during the encounter. He stared at the ragged opening in the wall then went over to it, beckoning Dar to follow. Standing before it, both gazed out at the sweeping vastness of the Nightrealm, a colossal city of cities, endless shadowy districts and domains, a glittering darkness strewn with the silvery pinpoints of lamps.
“Where did that Overseer come from?” Byrnak said.
“Orlag Tower,” Dar said, pointing.
Byrnak looked and saw a tapering spire with a bulbous apex rising from a confusion of roofs about twenty miles away. It was roughly twice the height of the Eyrie and looked strong and defiant.
“I wonder what it would take to bring it down,” Byrnak said.
Dar began to laugh. “I know of something that might be useful,” he said. “Very useful!”
* * *
Conscious of the gathering crowd watching from the riverbank, Tashil tried to concentrate on paddling the small skiff across the Valewater towards the grey-shrouded south bank. Beside her was Sounek, likewise wielding a paddle, while in the snub prow sat Dardan who, for once, was wearing his habitual hooded cape and appeared restless in the bright light of late morning. In his lap was a bulky leather pannier containing a rack of stoppered vials, each one full of a different liquid or powder which had been hurriedly garnered north Sejeend’s few apothecaries in the last couple of hours. At least one of them, it was hoped, would turn out to be of use against the grey blight.
As she paddled, Tashil tried to focus on the task in hand but her thoughts kept drifting back to the valedictory encounter with Calabos and his Daemonkind allies just a few hours ago.
A dark and perilous realm,
was how he had described his destination, and Tashil had wondered how monstrous a place it could be compared to the dark perils the Watchers had faced these last few days. But then it was a place which had produced the sorcerer Jumil who had then conjured a proliferation of evil acts and atrocities culminating in the desecration of the grey blight. Tashil’s imagination pictured a shadowy land peopled with montrosities and ina constant turmoil of violence and pain, and she gave a small shudder.
The skiff was past the midpoint and approaching the opposite bank. Tashil glanced over her shoulder, checking on the rope which trailed from the sternpost down into the water where a series of bladders buoyed it all the way back to the north bank. There a squad of longshoremen stood ready to haul the skiff back from the other side if signalled to by its crew.
When the distance to the bank was down to about two yards, Tashil and Sounek stopped paddling and a small iron anchor was tipped over the side with a hefty splash. This close, Tashil was able to see more of that vile, deathly blanket — it came up to the bank and hung over in pale, ragged curtains, or extended down a nearby, sloping shingle almost to the water’s edge, recoiling visibly when wavelets surged up the slope. As she was studying the blight, Dardan unbuckled the pannier and flipped back its cover, then produced a pair of heavy gauntlets from a side pouch.
“So, which one first?” said Sounek.
Dardan sniffed as he considered the rack of vials. Then he gave a thoughtful smile.
“Well, there is one attack I’ve been eager to try since this began,” he said, raised a fiery hand and hurled a single firedagger bolt at the nearby, blight-swathed shingle.
The burning shard of power plunged into the greyness and almost immediately the surrounding area erupted in a writhing forest of tentacles and stems, strange bulbous growths which burst open in displays of squirming flowers, bizarre jointed limbs several yards long, some of which lashed out towards the skiff and its occupants. Sounek waved frantically at the north bank and the longshoremen hauled the skiff back from the commotion. It took more gesturing to get them stop, and since the wild outburst soon subsided Tashil and Sounek had to haul in the anchor and paddle back to where they had been. Much to Tashil’s irritation, Dardan was visibly amused at the entire episode and was still chuckling as he pulled on one of the heavy gauntlets.
“So now we know that it likes Lesser Power sorcery,” said Sounek. “Thrives on it, even.”
“Let’s see how it copes with this,” Dardan said, picking out one of the vials and hurling it over onto the blight-covered beach. As they watched, the blight quickly ate through the glass vial, letting the contents — an amber fluid — flood out only to be summarily absorbed.
“And that was?” said Tashil.
“Corroding Elixir,” Dardan said, frowning.
Sounek smiled. “Next, if you please.”
Thus one by one Dardan worked his way through the rack of vials and each time the result was the same — no effect. At the sixteenth, Dardan declared himself one with the useless process and doffed the gauntlet. Tashil sighed, picked it up and put it on, then selected the next vial, which held a fine white powder, and threw it onto the beach. It spun through the air and there was a tiny breaking sound when it landed, sending the contents flying out onto the surface of the blight….which dissolved on contact with the powder, forming large gaps through which plain brown earth showed.
“Well done,” said a voice from nearby. “A fascinating discovery but unfortunately, too little, too late.”
The speaker was standing a few yards downstream on a raised stretch of the bank, He was clad from head to foot in night-black armour whose surfaces caught no light but instead carried a leaden glitter which shifted across the limbs and torso in a slow, continuous swirl. As Tashil watched, the slotted visor seemed to melt and shrink to reveal the pale, waxen features of a man framed by the close-fitting helm.
“I am High Captain Vashad of the Black Host,” he said. “Soon to be Governor of this province.”
“You sound very sure of yourself,” Sounek said.
“I have every reason to be,” the High Captain said, his manner vaguely dreamlike. “The force of Fate is with us, not you.”
“How very reasonable,” Dardan mocked. “What a devastating argument — perhaps we should just put down our weapons and await the inevitable.”
“Yes, you should,” Vashad said, undeflected by Dardan’s sarcasm. “But you won’t — you’ll gather together your feeble armies and deploy whatever inept sorcery this world provides, and you’ll fight and resist us every step of the way, and every step along that road will paved with your bones. There shall be only defeat, pain and death for you before the end comes and all of this world is joined with the Nightrealm in the long-denied union.”
Tashil laughed. “How blind! You think you can reach everywhere, and you think that you know or can know everything, a logical impossibility.”
Vashad smiled faintly. “We know all that is necessary to know, yet even that which we do not know still lies within the scope of the known and thus there is nothing which is truly unknown.”
Tashil exchanged incredulous looks with Sounek and Dardan, then said, “How invulnerable to you imagine your master’s realm to be?”
“We know of those who have passed through the Shattergate,” Vashad said. “But the Great Shadow is the master of life and death there so any and all machinations and insurrections will prove fruitless and futile. So, my answer is — completely invulnerable.”
