Shadowmasque (62 page)

“So what must be done?” the poet-mage said.

“Surrender,” growled the Duskgeneral from where he lay prone upon the cavern floor. “Bare your throats, accept the knife…”

“Exile,” said Tauric. “The Great Shadow cannot be eradicated, therefore he and the Wellsource must be ousted, expelled. The augmented powers of this Wellsource are open to me and together with the spirit-wraiths’ abilities we may be able to turn this cavern into a prison.”

“Will that suffice?” Ondene said.

“No, it will not,” Tauric said. “Once sealed, the prison must be gradually detached from the Nightrealm before its bonds with the vestigial Void are severed, then it must be thrust still further down, into the Void beneath the Void.” He smiled sadly. “But neither I nor the spirit-wraiths are capable of wielding and guiding the Wellsource without a living host — only the visceral essence of living flesh will permit me to override the Great Shadow’s connection to it and create the deepest connection. The Duskgeneral is wholly his creature and is thus irrevocably corrupt…”

“So it has to be one of us, yes?” Calabos said. “Then I’ll do it.”

Ondene stared at him, at the pallor of his skin, at the exhaustion writ so clearly in his lined features. And was suddenly aware that the spectral Tauric was staring too.

Then he and Tauric exchanged a look, and understanding came to Ondene in a wave of clarity and purpose.

“I’m sorry, Calabos,” he said, “but it has to be me.”

The older man drew away from him, forcing himself to stand unaided with a visible effort of will.

“No, Corlek — you do not have the knowledge and skill with these powers, not to mention very many years of experience…”

“But the truth is that you’re at the end of your strength,” Ondene said. “You’ve given so much to get this far, and given almost everything to carry an unbearable burden to this place. You must let me finish the task — after all, the Sleeping God appointed me the Prince of Change.”

There was another guttural roar of fury which was only muted, not silenced.

“There is no more time, Corlek,” said Tauric. “Are you prepared?”

“Yes, but Calabos must be removed to a place of safety.”

“It shall be done.”

“Curse you, no!…”

Ignoring Calabos’ anger, Ondene stood still as Tauric rushed towards him. A moment of misty envelopment….and then that illuminating presence was permeating his thoughts and sense once more. Almost unconsciously he drew on the torrential flux of the Wellsource, lifted Calabos as if he were as light as a child and then rose up through the shaft to the chaining chamber of the White Prison. There were dozens of people there, former prisoners who shielded their eyes from Ondene-Tauric’s radiance as he emerged and carefully laid Calabos on the chamber floor.

“Well,” said the poet-mage, levering himself up on one shaky arm. “I can see that you’ve made up your mind…and nothing will alter it.” He closed his eyes for a moment then opened them again. “There — I’ve told the spirit-wraiths to obey you as if you were I.”

“Thank you, Calabos,” Ondene-Tauric said. “Give my farewells to all the Watchers and the Daemonkind.”

“I shall. Now go — do what must be done.”

Ondene-Tauric turned to one of the onlookers. “This chamber will soon be very dangerous for you all — you must leave quickly, and take my friend with you. Can you do this?”

They nodded wordlessly and some hurried to lift and carry Calabos. As they made for the way out, Ondene-Tauric descended the bright shaft and returned to the cavern. There, the Duskgeneral was crawling towards his master, the Great Shadow, whose form was a turbulent storm of amorphous distortion amid which the spirit-wraiths fought to maintain control.

He wasted no time and swooped down to stand in the full, dazzling rush of the Wellsource. He was about to wrench free the step blocks to block the entry shaft with, when an object came clattering down from above. It was Calabos’ sword of powers, still in its scabbard. Ondene-Tauric smiled and moved it to one side before continuing with the task. Soon the shaft was full of broken blocks being woven shut with webs of verdant Sourcefire. Suddenly the diminishing aperture was closed completely and Wellsource power flooded around the cavern.

After that, Ondene found himself left increasingly to one side as the godlike being within him bean to employ the Wellsource in astonishing and unfathomable ways. He had heard and learned something of the Void during his extraordinary adventuring, and it seemed to him that this cavern was actually the shrunken remnant of this world’s Void, wrecked and curtailed when the Lord of Twilight triumphed — here. And as the Tauric deity worked, the emerald radiance of the Wellsource spread throughout the cavern and across the uneven walls in slow, rippling waves, losing its dazzling glare as it did so, calming and dimming. At the same time a strange, fine haze began to rise and gather like drifting layers of smoke, swirling and thickening. An occasional flash of ruddy light pierced the haze, revealing glimpses of a much wider underground cavescape than Ondene had already seen, as if the cavern had somehow become many miles across.

The Tauric deity ignored this and continued to labour at its tasks, sealing the boundaries of the Great Shadow’s prison and preparing to detach the cavern from the Nightrealm.

In the cavern itself, distance had ceased to have meaning and the glowing mist gave a dreamlike quality to the twilight-softened vistas of hills, vales, moors and rolling downs which now stretched impossibly all around. Of the Great Shadow and his servant, the Duskgeneral, there were no signs, the raging howls having all but subsided. A tense hush held sway for a while until a single, dark writhing shape came gliding out of the mists, one of Calabos’ spirit-wraiths.

(
The Great Shadow comes
) it said (
War comes
)

Then Ondene gasped as the fount of the Wellsource blurred and flowed, becoming a white-walled fortress upon whose ramparts he stood while the battlements teemed with thousands of brightly-armoured fighters, all wearing Calabos’ face. He was himself attired in silver-green mail and a flowing, pure blue cloak.

The end is in sight,
said the Tauric deity in his mind.
But our Enemy has regained some of his strength and is coming against us with an endless hunger in his spirit and a trembling fear in his heart. You must hold him back until the task is done — you must!

Then barbarous horns blared in the murk-veiled distance and the bellowing of a myriad savage throats shook the air. A moment later a long line of indistinct, opaque shapes appeared in the enclosing mists, then took on solidity and details as they emerged — and this was only the leading edge of a vast horde of glittering black creatures, galloping along on two, four or even six legs. Without pause they charged across open ground towards the Wellsource fortress, urged on by tall armoured knights mounted on grotesque lizard-like beasts with a multiplicity of eyes and mouths. Battle was joined.

In the demented clangour of unrestrained brutality, events seemed to blur into one another. From hand-to-hand combat o the battlements, Ondene went to fighting from horseback within the fortress courtyard, then outside the walls, except that his mount turned into a great armoured beast resembling an ox or a bear. Then it changed again into a massive, golden drakken while the Wellsource fortress became a huge ship surging through stormy waters, an immense dromond with a dozen masts and bristling with war machines. From amidships the glowing stem of the Wellsource poured up to spread across the still-present cavern roof and downward, lighting up the depths.

The fight went on against waterborne attackers as well as those diving from above. Ondene was just leading an assault on a flotilla of boat crammed with armoured predators, when an ominous rumble sounded and a great shudder shook the cavern.

The prison leaves the Nightrealm, and descent has begun,
said the Tauric deity.
Down, further down into the Void beneath the Void we are plunging, drawing taut the Wellsource’s ties to the Nightrealm, drawing forth the Enemy’s poison until finally the bonds will part…

A bestial howl of fury ripped through the air and the waters erupted with monsters, coiling, writhing horrors that flung themselves against the flanks of the Wellsource dromond…..

Which changed again, becoming a high-walled citadel even as the heaving, thrashing sea froze into a desert of wind-sculpted dunes and outcrops of worn rock. Around the foot of the walls, enemy legions swarmed, raising scaling ladders that were living serpents creatures. But the quivering continued in the cavern, which Ondene felt underfoot as he steered his golden mount down to the citadel ramparts and dismounted. He glanced up at the high, glowing roof then out at the hazy distance, hoping that Calabos had found a safe place after throwing his sword down the Well shaft, hoping that all this was helping the defenders back in Sejeend and Besdarok….

We descend — the Void beneath the Void beckons and the knot of fates tightens!

Then the desert gaped and the Great Shadow rode up from darkness on a serpent-headed horse, at the head of an endless army which poured across the desert like a dark tide. Ondene felt the stonework quake beneath his feet, then cried out in surprise and fear when the approaching horde rose in the air on blurred wings like a vast stormfront and bore down on the citadel….

But the cavern shook from ceiling to floor, from wall to wall and darkness fell for a moment like a great eye closing…

Everything…..

…..pause….

And when the darkness lifted, the cavern was how it had been at the beginning only now the flow of the Wellsource was a diminishing spout of radiance while the entire cavern trembled and vibrated. Before the fitful, fading emerald light, a roaring dark figure fought with a pale, ghostly one. Ondene, feeling dizzy, forced himself upright and staggered towards them a pace or two, not sure what to do. Then his foot knocked against something on the floor which clattered and looking down he saw a sword lying bare and gleaming on the uneven, shaking rock.
Calabos’s sword of powers
, he thought as he quickly snatched it up and moved towards the struggling gods.

All is done
, said Tauric in his thoughts.
The last bonds have been severed and the Wellsource is but a candle guttering out its last. We will fall through the Void beneath the Void for eternity and our essences will gradually slow and dissolve into the slumbering sea from which Fate draws its catch. Are you prepared, Corlek?

“I am,” he said. “Just let me strike one last blow!”

And the Great Shadow, once Lord of Twilight, once the five Shadowkings, threw a glare of limitless hate over his shoulder at the oncoming Ondene.

“I will devour you both!”
he snarled.

“I care not,” Ondene cried as he drew near. “For after us, you will feast only on nothingness!”

And with a straight-arm thrust he drove the sword of powers into the Great Shadow’s upper chest. The Enemy, still grappling with Tauric, gave a harsh, despising laughter but that soon turned into a shriek of surprise and agony as the swordpoint speared into the dense, ragged vapour of his form. Releasing the god Tauric, the Great Shadow recoiled from Ondene and the sword of powers, the wound in his chest leaking black smoke, and then lunged towards the flickering, failing fount of the Wellsource. And as he reached for it, the waning glow died. Corlek Onden heard him utter a single, senses-shattering howl of fear and loss…then the indivisible darkness of finality fell and he knew no more of the light.

There are no endings,
Only a river of beginnings,
Rushing onwards for ever.

—Mogaun proverb

As the cavern of the Wellsource began its descent into the Void beneath the Void, the first visible effect elsewhere was on the soldiers of the Black Host. In Oumetra and Adnagaur, or rather the grey, blighted plains where those cities had stood, the Host’s patrols out into the lands beyond became less frequent and kept closer to the Blights deathly borders. In Alvergost, where the Host was under concerted attack by a determined Carver army from Anghatan, the black-armoured troops pulled back to within the Blight itself. At the Great Canal, by the Blight-smothered Isle of Besdarok, the companies of the Black Host broke off from pursuing Mogaun warriors and retreated to the town of Belkiol where they clashed with the Imperial remnants under Jarryc’s command, now allied with the local Mogaun.

At the half-effaced city of Sejeend, the battle that raged all along the banks of the Valewater faltered and the Black Host fell back to the cliffs while their archers staved off attacks by the Daemonkind. And in the gloomy precincts of the Nightrealm, Byrnak’s siege army broke through the gates of the Citadel of Twilight, even as the ground underfoot trembled ominously and the Overseers launched ferocious, near-suicidal attacks from above.

Then at last, the cords of power that joined the Wellsource to the Nightrealm were stretched too far in the pitiless gulfs of the Void beneath the Void, and gave way. As the cavern of the Wellsource became a true prison and fell unhindered into oblivion, a string of consequences were taking place. The Blight darkened and began to visibly shrink, splitting and cracking as it withdrew from the lands and the cities that it had consumed and shrouded. But more dramatic were the reactions of the soldiers of the Black Host — some stopped in mid-motion and fell lifeless to the ground, while others screamed and collapsed in convulsions. Still others broke apart into sections of armour as the very substance of their beings turned to oozing, black vapour. Also, roughly a third were unaffected yet abandoned their positions and fled back to the Shattergates, seeking to return to the Nightrealm.

A handful, however, threw down their weapons and cast of their enclosing helms, revealing men and women whose memories was of life in the Nightrealm prior to their recruitment into the Black Host. None of them showed any desire to return there.

In the Nightrealm itself, entire legions of the Black Host rebelled against their commanders while the Murknights to a man perished where they stood. And with the Overseers either fallen in flames from their towers or hiding in inaccessible refuges, the chieftains of the chapters and militias were fighting for what advantage they could. Tremors and quakes shook the Nightrealm from end to end, yet Qothan and the other two Daemonkind kept their vigil at the top of the Citadel of Twilight, hoping that Calabos would still appear. The Great Shadows dreamcourts had become a bizarre maze of buildings and streets frozen in mid-change, an insane vista of twisted, distorted walls and roofs. They had already ascertained the whereabouts of the Shattergate portals, four being distributed among the ten cliffside bastions, with the fifth located on the Citadel’s 30
^th
level.