Shadowgod (16 page)

More fortifications were grinding their way up out of the ground, a wide curving wall punctuated by turrets and enclosing most of the shallow bowl. Beyond it to the east, a solitary rider watched from the crest of a hillock and some shred of intuition told Mazaret that it was Atroc, paying witness to this monstrous calamity.

The terrible, rasping roar took on a deep drone which began to climb in pitch and strength till Mazaret could feel his scalp itch and his teeth ache. A spidery crawling sensation attacked his skin and a needling irritation made his eyes water. The air in his lungs vibrated and in panic he clamped his hands over his ears and closed his eyes.

After long moments the droning suddenly faded away into a strange, reverberant silence. Breathing heavily Mazaret lowered his hands and opened his eyes to more surprise. The shattered remains of the ridge which had formed heaps below were gone, and the muddy, mossy ground had been stripped away to reveal a wide courtyard of interlocking flagstones enclosed by the curved battlements. But what dominated the transformed landscape was the vast structure which now reared up behind the wall before him. It resembled a drum keep but built on a prodigious scale from a pale, almost translucent green stone. An eldritch, pearly aura surrounded it, slightly blurring the details of the relief carvings which encircled it in great bands.

“Behold the glory of Gorla.”

The rivenshade's words were icy intrusions upon the utter quiet. She was now standing several yards away and directly in front of towering double doors which were slowly beginning to open. Each door must have been 30 feet wide and a hundred high, and hung on a spindle hinge that made a rolling iron sound as it swung outwards. Within was a canyon of shadow, a high-sided passage beyond which Mazaret could see the softly-radiant bottom levels of the keep called Gorla. And marching ranks of soldiers, chariots and cavalry.

Mazaret's own composure in the face of this naked might pleased him in a way. His fear seemed to have dissolved in the corrosive knowledge of his vulnerability and now all that he had left was to decide how to die. Then he saw a tall figure emerge from the shadows, a man in black-stained leather armour who walked with a certain swagger and carried a heavy broadsword at his hip. He had a full head of curly black hair and a trimmed beard, while his eyes brimmed with hate and a gleeful intensity. He halted beside the Suviel-rivenshade who put her arms about his neck and pulled him lower for a long, lascivious kiss. When he straightened there was blood on his lip.

“I always knew we'd meet again, my lord.”

The rich, expressive voice instantly struck a chord in Mazaret's memory and as recognition came to him, a cold voice spoke.

“Truly, he is the Deathless one.”

A pale figure in a fawn leather bodice and kirtle and bearing a spear, stepped from the blackness of the gate, and anger kindled in Mazaret's thoughts – it was a second Suviel-rivenshade. Then a third came out, garbed in chainmail and carrying over one shoulder a long-handled woodcutter axe.

“What joy it will be to fight at your side,”
the one with the spear said.

“Never,” Mazaret said.

“Ah, but you shall be with us,” Azurech said with his new mouth. “I promise.”

“And I will make you break that oath,” Mazaret said, drawing his sword and charging.

Azurech brought out his own blade swiftly enough to parry Mazaret's incoming blow. Mazaret then ducked under the backswing and swept on past the warlord, running with sword raised towards his true target, the rivenshade with the spear. If he could slay just one, it would be a kind of vengeance.

As he beat aside her spear he cried out, “Suviel, forgive me!”

But the rivenshade shrieked with laughter and the shadows flowed out to engulf him.

* * *

From the hillock, Atroc had watched the breaking of the hills and the battlements which they birthed and the vast keep which rose up out of the earth. The titanic din was like the roaring of a thousand beasts heralding the sight of a legend made real.

Gorla. The oldest sagas of the Mogaun told of the Lord of Twilight's banishment by the Fathertree and the Earthmother after a great battle at the world's dawn. Of all his fierce bastions, only two of the lesser ones – Gorla and Keshada - did they allow him to shift into the Realm of Dusk.

And what a place for this ancient fortress to appear, on Besh-Darok's front doorstep!

With eaglesight, an old talent learned in his long-gone youth from a forest crone a continent away, Atroc was able to see all that transpired before the huge gaping doors. When the Shadowking Byrnak came striding out he uttered a black oath, then a moment later frowned. Despite the man's astonishing resemblance, he was tall and gaunt where Byrnak was shorter, broader and bearlike. And when Mazaret unsheathed his blade, Atroc felt a sense of bleak approval for the man's determination to die like a warrior.

Then he was startled to see the Fathertree knight swerve past his foe and rush at one of the rivenshades. For a moment it seemed he would overcome her until a mass of guards wielding clubs and nets swarmed out of the shadows and overpowered him by sheer force of numbers.

As they dragged the sad, bound form off into darkness, Atroc grimly tugged his horse round and dug in his heels, urging the animal into a gallop. He had to return to the city with all speed and find out if Gorla's sister citadel, Keshada, had also appeared. If it had, then Besh-Darok faced a tidal onslaught of violence and evil not seen in these lands since the world's dawn.

He lashed his mount faster through the misty trees, as if trying to outride what he still saw in his imagination, Gorla's huge courtyard athrong with hosts of men and horrors.

Empty and hungering, Winter comes,
With white chimes and chains,
And a pale embrace for the unwary.

—Jedhessa Gant,
The Lords Desolate
, Act 2, ii, 18.

Inside the swaying boxwagon, warmed by the bolted-down brazier, Gilly sat on a unsteady, padded stool while striving to restring the 8-string kulesti he had bought early that afternoon. The varnish was chipped and scored in many places and one of the ivory tuning pegs had been replaced with a wooden one, but he had noticed that the neck had a metal, perhaps bronze, chine, a clear indication of quality. Its former owner was a sorrowful mother of three clearly driven by hunger and desperation to sell the instrument. A twinge of pity had made him give her an extra half-regal on top of the asking price. Now, as he struggled to thread one of the tuning pegs with a catgut string while the wagon lurched along, he could feel his patience starting to fray.

“If you wait till we stop to make camp, you might find that less challenging.”

Gilly glanced over at the shell-like wicker chair in which Keren sat, legs drawn up as she lounged amid an abundance of garishly-coloured cushions. Various cutting remarks suggested themselves, but instead he put on a smile that was almost a leer.

“Ah, but I enjoy a challenge, dear lady.”

Keren regarded him coolly from within the wicker chair as it shifted and creaked on its four short legs. “That must be why you were sent with us.”

“Hmm, you really need more practice with the barbed insults, you know. That one barely made sense - ”

At this Medwin sat up in the boxbunk fixed to the front of the wagon's interior, a look of exasperation in his face. “I don't know which will drive me mad first - your bickering or this monstrous decoration!”

Gilly looked around him at the crimson-and-gold wall hangings, the curlicue-carved woodwork (painted bright blue), the array of torn and peeling paper masks pinned to one wall, the tinkling clusters of charms, the bronze openwork tallow lamp swinging from the roof, and the motheaten, heavy purple drapes that hung across the rear door. It was gloriously hideous.

Gilly stroked his chin, smiling. “I find it quite soothing.”

“Compared to your incessant sparring, it may well be,” Medwin said sharply. “But for the time being, kindly confine your conversations to pleasantries and necessary matter. Agreed?”

Gilly and Keren looked at each other but before either could speak the wagon lurched to a halt and knuckles rapped urgently on the slatted shutter on Gilly's side of the wagon.

“Ser Medwin,” came a voice from without.

Gilly stood quickly, flipped the latch on the big square shutter then opened it and leaned out into the cold night. The commander of their escort, a city militia captain called Redrigh, sat on horseback before him while beyond the riverbank and all the towering cliffs and slopes of Gronanvel looked dark and ghostly pale in their shrouds of snow.

“What news, captain?” Gilly said.

“Ser Cordale,” Redrigh said. “We're within sight of Vannyon's Ford but I can see fires burning on its opposite bank - ”

“And fighting too, captain,” came Medwin's voice from the roof of the wagon where a skylight afforded a higher view. “How long till we reach the town?”

“At least another hour, ser. Two, most like.”

Gilly stared along the dark, high-sided valley, squinting to make out details from the far-off yellow glows. He was fairly sure that it was buildings that were ablaze but all else was lost in the distance or obscured by the sheer cliffs that hemmed in the great valley of Gronanvel between here and the mouth of the waters beyond Vannyon's Ford. At this point, though, the road passed between the frozen shoreline and steep, densely-wooded slopes but would soon curve south and climb into hilly uplands before joining the gulley that would bring them to Vannyon's Ford.

A finger prodded him in the shoulder. Sighing, he moved back from the open window and gave a mock-graceful sweep of the arm to Keren. She sniffed haughtily and stepped over to take his place.

Medwin was standing four steps up on a green-painted, flaking ladder attached by hinges to the edge of the skylight, discussing the situation with Captain Redrigh. Gilly smiled to himself - after being ambushed on the outskirts of Sejeend, the captain had insisted that the three delegates continued the journey under safer conditions. Gilly had sent forth word of their need through a few local contacts and later that day they found themselves looking over the gaudy carriage. Medwin and Keren had been unenthusiastic, but for Captain Redrigh it was enough that its sides and roof were solid wood and the purchase was duly made.

Gilly returned to his padded stool, retrieved the kulesti from a heaped woollen blanket and was about to resume the restringing when he heard a slight scratching. He frowned. It seemed to be coming from the wall opposite Keren...then he saw it, the dark iron tip of a blade probing between shutter and frame for the latch. Quick and quiet, Gilly wrapped the kulesti in its blanket, stowed it in the nearby corner, then drew forth his broadsword, muffling it on the heavy cotton of his troos leg.

On careful feet he went over to the window and quietly placed his sword point in the gap below the probing dagger. Then with all his might he thrust his blade through the gap, felt it strike home and heard a shriek of agony.

“Ware - ambush!” he roared. Wrenching his sword back, he whirled to grab Medwin's arm and drag him down from the skylight. Gilly heard shouts outside and the thud of feet landing on the wagon's roof, then a snarling, tangle-haired man appeared in the square opening and leaned down with a cocked and loaded crossbow. Keren, having rolled away from the other window, jumped with a small, studded shield which she threw at his face edge-on.

The brigand yelled as blood spurted from his smashed nose. In shock he let go of the crossbow, clasped hands to his wrecked features and rolled away from the skylight, bellowing and cursing. Before another could take his place, Keren leaped up the ladder, pulled the cover shut and twisted the dog latches, locking it in place.

“This is the third ambush we've had to endure,” Medwin said, angrily pushing up his sleeves.

Gilly nodded. “Once might be chance and twice a coincidence, but three times is just bad manners…”

Something began hammering on the ceiling above them. Glancing up, Gilly saw splinter fly as an axeblade bit through the wood. At the same time, a thudding came from the door at the rear while sounds of fighting filtered in from outside.

Keren, who had retrieved her own sword as well as the blood-spattered shield, looked across at them; “Sers, we have visitors.”

“Methinks it time for a hearty welcome,” Gilly said with a grin.

He unlatched the door, threw it open and leaped out into the fray. Torches burning atop the wagon cast a fitful ochre glow on knots of struggling figures. The ambushers looked to have outnumbered the escort but Redrigh's men were giving a good account of themselves. Gilly took on a quilt-armoured man wielding a club and a rapier and found himself fending off a frantic barrage of blows. The brigan had bronze Ebroan charms woven into his braided beard and uttered a string of curses in Hethardic as he fought. Backing away Gilly flashed a grin and replied with a couple of choice insults he had come by in Bereiak a few months before.

The Ebroan warrior glared and spat as his face went red with rage, then he lashed out madly just as Gilly had hoped he would. Ducking the club arm's wild swing, he dodged past and hooked the man's feet from under him. The Ebroan pitched forward onto his face and Gilly finished him with two savage blows to the neck.

Straightening and catching his breath, he saw Medwin subduing one of the brigands with a cold, blue nimbus while elsewhere Redrigh's men were gaining the upper hand. Then he heard Keren shout his name and whirled to see her emptyhanded and running from a pair of determined ambushers. Gilly threw himself after them, but felt something snag his ankle. He went down, gasping as he hit the snowy ground and his sword spun off to the side. Looking back he saw a badly-wounded brigand crawling towards him with a bloody axe in his hand and an evil grin on his face.

“I don't have time to play!” Gilly snarled, snatching up a handful of wet snow and flinging it in the axeman's face. Then he rolled to his feet, aimed a kick at the man's head, then snatched up his sword and resumed the chase.