Shadowmasque (61 page)

What reason do I need besides the guiding star of my divine inspiration and the rule of might?

Calabos’ smile widened a notch. “Ah yes — what you can reach you can grasp; what you can grasp you can take.”

Exactly — all else is either subordinate or a distraction, much like you.

The tall figure then raised an arm into the air, and ragged shadows rippled up it like hungry smoke, coalescing into the shape of a heavy, double-headed battle-axe, its black surfaces elaborately etched, its haft weighted with a large, silvery jewel. As Calabos watched, the upper tines of the axe blades began to glow with a hard, white radiance and the Great Shadow spoke.

I am the source of beginnings in this place, and also the father of endings — here is yours!

He swept the axe down to level it at Calabos. In that instant, Calabos felt fear and an intense alarm from senses stretched wide by the protective activities of the spirit-wraiths within. Afterwards, he was not sure if it was his own instincts or theirs which saved him, but there was a reflex urge to leap backwards and swift casting of the thought-canto Ram to carry him further than his legs could manage. There was a darkening of the prevalent gloom and a sound like a thousand mouths sighing in the moment before —

Before something immense came crashing down on the spot where Calabos had been standing. It was a building, a tower of some kind that struck the ground at an angle, spire first. Calabos landed near the pillared cloister just an instant before it did and even as he rolled he felt the gigantic impact and heard the shattering din. The tower broke and the crushing, collapsing weight sent cracked masonry flying in all directions. On hands and knees and still holding the sword of powers, Calabos scrambled behind one of the cloister columns as chunks of stone banged and thudded to left and right. A large spinning piece struck the third column along from his position, smashing it into splintered debris.

At last the roar of destruction faded to nothing, a silence disturbed by the click and rattle of small fragments seeking rest.

And footsteps.

Calabos rose from his crouch, turned and moved out from the cloister shadows. The fallen tower lay across the arena in a long mound of rubble around which a fine haze of dust was settling. Of the Great Shadow there was no sign but there were others there instead, five others whose names he knew all too well.

“Ah, our brother,” Thraelor said with a languidly cruel smile.

“Our lost brother,” said Kodel, regarding Calabos thoughtfully.

“Our treacherous brother,” growled Ystregul, the Black Priest.

“Our reluctant brother,” Grazaan said grimly.

“Our enemy brother,” said Byrnak. “Come to break thrones and crowns, to pit himself against us and ultimately to fail. Concede the futility of your task, brother, and join us.”

Calabos stared back at the face that was so like his own, then surveyed the rest. All five Shadowkings were arrayed in a curve before him, all attired in fabulously intricate suits of armour seemingly fashioned from a gleaming opaque substance, each with a different colour, gold, crimson, jade, amber, and blue. And each bore a long-hafted, double-headed battle-axe.

He laughed and shook his head, while conferring inwardly with his spirit-wraiths.

“So you would rather indulge in this play-acting,” Calabos said. “This dance of masks amongst the shadows. Forgive me, but I have no desire to take part in your little ritual. Put off your masks and face me, or are truly the Great Nothing?”

The Shadowkings in turn all shook their heads and in unison said, “The insolence of an insect,” then suddenly leaped forward. Calabos lurched backwards, thinking they were coming for him but instead they converged on a spot several yards in front of him. Their forms darkened and grew amorphous, merging as they rushed together into a single, tall figure cloaked in writhing shadows.

You will be consumed,
the Great Shadow thundered.
The devouring of your flesh will become a new ritual for the Nightrealm.

Again, Calabos felt the panicky, piercing warning and threw himself sideways, just as something burst up out of the arena floor. At first he thought it was a rough pillar as thick as a man, then saw it bend and curve down towards him, black jaws gaping in an eyeless head. Like a grotesque serpent of stone, it undulated in his direction, forcing him to run. The Great Shadow’s laughter boomed around the arena as a second, a third and a fourth erupted from the rubble-strewn floor and began seeking him out. The murky halflight of the cloisters could not conceal him from their pursuit and as he dodged and dashed from their snapping heads, he knew that the moment of extremity was upon him.

To the bound spirit-wraiths within he said —
The time is now. Are you prepared?

(
Yes, Calabos, but we will need something more to be sure of victory
)

What
?

(
The sword of the mind’s pattern rests in your inner thoughts — release it to us and we will destroy this god for you
)

He hesitated for only a moment or two, during which he sidestepped a lunging stone serpent and dealt it a blow with the sword of powers, which merely clanged and rebounded.

It is yours,
he said.
Go.

As he released them, his senses blurred and he seemed to see himself from several angles at once, crouched behind a tilted section of tower wall. Then the spirit-wraiths glided away from him, their forms vaguely manlike, dark knots of hands holding blazing white blades while all their faces were his own.

In his mind’s eye he followed them as they flew up to where the Great Shadow hovered above the rubble mound and converged upon him there. As battle commenced, Calabos found himself darting madly from the stone serpents who redoubled their savage attacks. They were also more closely co-ordinated, keeping him trapped in the section of the cloisters across which the tower had fallen. Only the rubble and wreckage that was piled on the rampart above the cloister and down onto the arena, offered any kind of refuge. In his minds eye, he could see how the spirit-wraiths had surrounded the Great Shadow, and were attacking him with swift hacking lunges. But his own situation was becoming precarious as the stone serpents began ramming their heads into the sheltering rubble, steadily knocking it away.

The impacts not only peppered him with sharp fragment, they also threatened to collapse the slope of shattered masonry at his back. One of the stone serpents was now visible, its toothless, jaws thudding shut just a few feet away. Calabos watched the encroaching sorcerous beasts with bleak grimness, trying to gauge his chances of ducking past either of them then running for some other more likely bolthole…

Then the fleeting images in his mind went black. An awful sense of dread gripped him before a deafening bellowing came from the stone serpents which thrashed about for a moment before falling to the ground with a massive shattering sound. As the reverberating echoes faded away, Calabos warily emerged from his refuge and looked around at the arena. The serpents lay in broken pieces upon the floor, while a turmoil in the heights above the dreamcourts cast shifting patches of radiance across the now-unchanging nearby buildings.

(
Calabos…
)

He glanced about this half of the arena and up at the long mound of rubble. Seeing nothing, he trusted to his undersenses and hurried through the cloister to the other side of the arena and saw a tall dark figure waiting there. It made no move as he approached, and as he came nearer he could see that its shadowy bulk was flickering, almost rippling. Closer still, he saw the features of the Great Shadow but his form was now a patchwork of his own funereal substance and the smoky shapes of Calabos’ spirit-wraiths moving in a slow swirl around him.

(
Calabos — the Great Shadow cannot be destroyed. The very essence of his being runs through the Wellsource and is bound tightly to the underpinnings of the Nightrealm
)

Hearing the spirit-wraiths tell him this with his own face while unhurriedly weaving around the Great Shadow’s darkling form was greatly unsettling, and his heart sank.

“Is there nothing that we can do?” he said.

(
Something has already been done — Corlek Ondene...and another, await us at the heart of the White Prison, by the Wellsource itself. The Duskgeneral has been subdued but as with the Great Shadow it cannot last. However, Ondene’s companion insists that there is a solution
)

“Which is?”

(
Exile. The Great Shadow must be taken to the Wellsource, but we are unable to move him as all our powers are devoted to subjugating him
)

Calabos stared at the eerily calm images of his own face drifting around the frozen darkness of the Great Shadow.

“So what are you asking of me?”

(
We do not ask — we can only offer the solution. It is for you to decide. In this case, the only way to move the Great Shadow is for you to carry him to the Wellsource yourself. It will be a taxing burden, in many ways
)

Calabos swallowed hard.

“To become a host for him, you mean.”

(
You will be bearing us too — whatever ruse of deceit he tries to employ, we shall be there to keep him shackled and you safe
)

“And how would I do this?”

(
Walk forward into this form of his. Your sight will dim for a moment then return. And we must not tarry in this
)

Calabos breathed in deeply, then laughed. He gazed up at the shifting high gloom and the huge pillars that rose up to vanish there. Then he glanced at the throne dais and the pale, looming wall of the White Prison. But when he stepped determinedly into that dark embrace it was with eyes closed.

* * *

The shaft leading down to the fount of the Wellsource was like the neck of a bottle, its bright, emerald narrowness widening to a dim, grey cavern. From the very centre of the hard, flat floor the burning flux of the Wellsource rose in a quivering column of power too bright for ordinary eyes. Ondene was standing a few feet away, watching over the sullen, glowering figure of the Duskgeneral-Tauric while the other, spectral Tauric was investigating the Wellsource, studying it up close.

“You cannot win,” the Duskgeneral was muttering. “My master’s essence and power is spread throughout the Nightrealm. It matters not if you bring him here and disperse that which you hold captive, for he will rise again.”

“So you say,” Ondene said. “But since you have nothing to say that I wish to hear, you are only wasting your breath.”

“Unfortunately, he is telling the truth,” said the other Tauric.

Dismayed, Ondene turned to regard him, shielding his sight from the Wellsource’s dazzle, but before he could speak a newcomer descended from the entry shaft and clambered down the rough blocks which bridged the drop to the floor. It was Calabos, attired in the shimmering armour of a Murknight, and carrying a longsword in a harness over his back. Ondene felt a surge of relief and joy but his smile froze on his lips when he saw the drawn and haggard look on the man’s face, the trembling in his features and the scarcely-veiled mortal dread in his eyes.

Calabos took a few faltering steps towards the Wellsource, then blinked and turned away from it.

“Unburden me of him,” he said through clenched teeth. “Now! — I command you!”

As Ondene watched, his armoured form grew blurred as an ashen haze gathered around him like a larger ghostly figure. This enclosing form began to darken and obscure Calabos, and Ondene noticed that strange shapes were also moving in the dense opacity, undulant shapes whose faces were that of Calabos.

Even as a shock Ondene took this in, Calabos himself emerged from the menacing form, almost seeming to force his way out. Trembling and gasping, his face pale, he managed to stagger a couple of steps before collapsing to the ground. But Ondene was already at his side.

“I nearly….very nearly didn’t get here,” Calabos said. “His poisonous thoughts were like a river of vermin washing through my mind — every step was a struggle against savage desires and gross illusions, and that was with my spirit-wraiths helping.” He grimaced in disgust. “And I came close to surrender, to embracing it…”

“My master will embrace you all,” snarled the Duskgeneral. “See! His divine essence surges against your inferior sentinels…throw off these, shackles, Great Shadow, and crush our enemies!”

Shadows writhed about the tall figure and as Ondene and Calabos watched, hints of a snarling face became visible. It took a step in the direction of the Wellsource, and a second, then the spirit-wraiths together uttered a droning song, each with Calabos’ face. The Great Shadow came to a halt but his hate was a palpable thing in the dim cavern, an invisible, choking miasma.

(
Soon all of our efforts will be exhausted
) said one of the spirit-wraiths (
You must decide what to do and soon
)

Calabos shook his head. “Since his essence is bound to the Nightrealm, he cannot be obliterated, so presumably destroying him would also destroy this place and everyone in it” He looked Ondene. “So what is left to us? And who is this companion of yours?”

Then the spectral Tauric drifted into the group and smiled.

“Greetings, Calabos, poet and mage — we’ve come a long way, you and I.”

Calabos stared a moment, then chuckled. “So the Sleeping God bequeathed a second gift, hm?”

Tauric nodded sadly. “But more sacrifice than gift, Calabos,” he said. “In this place, fates entwine and doom looks both ways…”

His words were drowned as an insensate bellow of rage shook the cavern. All eyes glanced over at the shadow-wreathed form and Ondene felt a stab panic to see that one of the spirit-wraiths’ faces had turned into a darker, more brutal visage.

(
Time is short
) sang the others as they converged on the usurper.

Calabos gripped Ondene’s arm as he tried to rise to his feet. Ondene helped, supporting some of the man’s weight with a hand about his waist.