Child of the Sword, Book 1 of The Gods Within (40 page)

“What did you see, Cort?” Tulellcoe
asked.

“I don’t know. It was like a horseman, a
mounted rider wearing a long black cloak, but it wasn’t. He came
out of the shadows at the edge of the road, rode some distance up
the road, then disappeared into the shadows again.” She shook her
head and frowned thoughtfully. “There was the oddest thing about
him, as if he and his horse were themselves shadows.”

Suddenly it all came together in
JohnEngine’s mind. “What did you say?” he demanded. She started to
say it again but he waved her off. “No, I heard what you said. You
said shadows.”

Behind her France smiled and shook his head.
“You know, JohnEngine me lad, sometimes yer not very quick.”

“You don’t mean Morgin?” JohnEngine
demanded. “He’s not even here.”

Abileen spoke up. “He crossed alone, your
lordship. At Kallun’s Gorge. The night before the rest of you
came.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this?”

The soldier shrugged. “I figured you knew.
And he told me not to speak of it. And when I heard he was under
sentence of death, I figured best to keep my mouth shut.”

Suddenly JohnEngine understood. He hadn’t
sensed Morgin’s presence because he was so used to having him
nearby. It was like not noticing the air itself, though he still
sucked it into his lungs.

“He’s always around us,” Packwill said.
“Sometimes I hear a twig break and there’s no one there, like he’s
one of the shadows himself. Maybe he is the ShadowLord, finally
come to life.”

“Of course not,” JohnEngine said. “That’s a
tale to frighten small children. You’re a grown man, Packwill. You
know better than that. The ShadowLord doesn’t really exist.”

Abileen shrugged, tilted his head slightly
to one side. “Well maybe he does now, my lord.”

“There he is,” the Balenda said, again
pointing down to the road.

This time they all saw him; he’d trotted his
horse out into the middle of the road and there brought it to a
stop. The apparition of a horse and rider obscured by shadows in
broad daylight where no shadows should have been sent a shiver up
JohnEngine’s spine. But then suddenly the shadows disappeared, and
what remained was no less frightening: a lone black rider in a
hooded black cloak atop a coal black mount. Illalla and his army
were still beyond the bend in the road and had yet to see the rider
waiting for them, his horse abnormally still, his sword drawn and
gripped in one hand hanging casually at his side. It was the
rider’s arrogance that was most frightening, for he waited alone in
the middle of the road for the oncoming army.

“He’s playing a game with Illalla,”
Tulellcoe said. “A game of terror. And I think we’re about to see
it ratcheted up to a new level.”

~~~

Morgin waited in the middle of the road
trying to control the pounding of his heart. He could sense Illalla
in the distance and the Kulls and the clansmen that accompanied
him. Soon, Illalla and his men would round the bend in the road and
find themselves confronted with a long, straight, narrow stretch,
empty of everything but a single black rider seated on a black
horse standing arrogantly in the middle of the road wearing a
hooded black cloak. He had chosen this spot carefully for just that
effect.

It had taken Morgin quite a while to fashion
the hood from a strip torn from the bottom of a cloak he’d taken
from a Kull he’d recently killed. His trail kit included a needle
and thread, but he was not trained in their use for anything beyond
quick repairs, and from up close the results were poor. But it only
needed to look good from a distance, and if the game he’d chosen to
play was to have the desired effect, the hood was mandatory, for in
the children’s tales the ShadowLord always wore a hooded cloak. It
would also serve to shadow his face in the bright sun, adding
further to the illusion. Illalla, of course, and the noblemen with
him, would not believe that the ShadowLord had come to life, but
common soldiers were, by nature, a superstitious lot, and this day
Morgin intended to leave them with a story of their own to
tell.

Suddenly the main column of the Decouix army
rounded the bend in the road. Morgin waited a good distance down
the road, well out of bow shot, and of course the Kull patrol had
already passed, so they expected the road to be empty and did not,
at first, notice him. They continued to advance for some seconds,
but then one of the noblemen near Illalla stood up in his stirrups
and pointed. Morgin saw the nobleman’s lips move, but the distance
was too great to hear his words.

Now they all took notice of him, and Morgin
held tightly to Mortiss’ reins, for the image he wanted them to
remember was a rider and horse standing with unnatural stillness.
Illalla hesitated, allowing more of his army to round the bend, but
then he raised his hand and slowly brought the advance to a
stop.

Illalla turned to the nobleman who had first
sighted Morgin and said something. Moments later the nobleman and
two Kulls left the main column and rode towards Morgin at a trot.
They stopped a good distance away and the nobleman shouted, “Who
are you? What do you want?”

Morgin held his silence, and Mortiss
cooperated by remaining perfectly still.

“Speak up,” the nobleman shouted
angrily.

Again Morgin held his silence. But finally,
his patience exhausted, the nobleman turned to the two Kulls and
said something. The Kulls both drew their swords and spurred their
horses forward into a side-by-side charge.

Morgin had picked this spot with extreme
care. Not far from him, between him and the charging Kulls, the
branches of a large oak tree extended well out over the road,
casting the road and the shallow ditches on both sides in a mottled
patchwork of sunlight and shadows that shifted constantly with the
soft breezes in the tree tops. He and Mortiss stood statue still
while the Kulls charged, for his timing must be perfect, and not
until the two halfmen were at full charge did he finally touch his
spurs to Mortiss. But to everyone’s surprise he merely nudged her
into an easy trot, and he didn’t even bring up his sword.

He reached the mottled shadows in the road
two heartbeats before the Kulls, and in that instant he cast a deep
shadow over him and Mortiss and pulled her suddenly off the road
into the shadowed ditch. He knew it would appear as if he’d
suddenly vanished into thin air.

The Kulls were as startled as everyone else,
and in mid charge they sat up in their saddles, lowered their
swords and let their horses run slowly down to a trot, passing
swiftly through the shadows beneath the tree and out the other
side. They came to a complete stop, turned their mounts and looked
about quizzically. The nobleman stood up in his stirrups and
shouted, “Where is he? Where’d he go?”

One of the Kulls raised his arms in an
exaggerated shrug. The nobleman spurred his horse forward into a
trot, passed through the shadows in the road and joined the two
Kulls. They looked around for a few moments, then turned and began
trotting back toward Illalla and the main column, and as they
passed back through the shadows Morgin pulled Mortiss silently into
step behind them. The nobleman and the two Kulls passed unknowingly
into the sunlight, and as Morgin followed them he quenched his
shadowmagic so that it would seem to everyone that he had
reappeared just as suddenly as he’d vanished. He gave Illalla and
the main column just one instant to see him, then he raised his
sword, spurred Mortiss hard, and charged between the two Kulls,
beheading them with two quick strokes of his sword. He continued
the charge, driving Mortiss into the unwary nobleman’s mount with
enough force to knock horse and rider to the ground.

The nobleman fell in a sprawl. His horse got
up faster than he and trotted away in a panic. Morgin brought
Mortiss to a stop over the nobleman, leaned over and put the tip of
his sword at the man’s throat, but said nothing. The nobleman took
one moment to look back and see the two headless Kulls sprawled in
the road, then he looked into the black shadows of Morgin’s hooded
face. There was fear in the man’s eyes, but he controlled it
nicely. “Who are you?” he demanded.

The shadows within the hood were quite
natural, so Morgin cast a shadowspell over his face and head, then
slowly reached up with his free hand and slid the hood back. And
when the nobleman saw that even after he’d withdrawn the hood all
that remained were shadows, his eyes widened and his control broke.
This time his voice came out in a trembling whisper, “What are
you?”

Morgin had thought carefully how he would
speak when the time came, and he spoke now in a low-pitched growl.
“Tell Illalla I am the beast that walks the night. Tell him I am
the shadow that brings death to his men’s dreams. Tell him I am the
ShadowLord, and that soon I will come to his dreams.” And with that
Morgin lifted his sword, trotted Mortiss back into the shadows, and
vanished before the nobleman’s eyes.

~~~

That night Morgin made his usual visit to
Illalla’s camp, but this time he killed all of the guards
surrounding Illalla’s tent. He wanted to leave the impression that
he could have killed Illalla, though he knew that in fact he could
not, not with Bayellgae close at hand. And even had Bayellgae been
absent, Illalla was a powerful sorcerer, far more powerful than
Morgin. But the impression would remain, at least as far as
Illalla’s men were concerned, that the ShadowLord was invincible to
the point where he could toy with the High Lord of the Greater
Clans. And perhaps even Illalla would begin to doubt some of his
own power.

The next day Morgin again met Illalla on the
road, and played out his role as the mythical ShadowLord. This time
Illalla did not hesitate, but sent a dozen Kulls charging up the
road after him. Morgin slipped into the shadows at the edge of the
road, waited for the Kulls to stop and start milling about in
confusion, appeared in their midst, cut two of them down and
disappeared again. He did that several times, and in a confusion of
shadows and darkness, he cut the halfmen down one by one. That
night more than two hundred men deserted Illalla’s army even before
Morgin slit his usual quota of throats.

Morgin checked on Tulellcoe and his men
quite regularly, usually slipping into their camp in the early
evening and the early morning hours. They were badly divided now,
for France and Tulellcoe were of the opinion that the best thing
they could do was stay out of the way so that Morgin would not have
to divide his attention between protecting them and terrorizing
Illalla’s army. The Balenda and JohnEngine, however, wanted to
continue to harass the Decouix.

The next morning, with the sun still low on
the horizon, and the shadows from the trees slanting sharply across
the road, Morgin chose a stretch of road and slipped into the
shadows to wait for Illalla. The High Lord now had three Kull
patrols scouring the road ahead of his army. Morgin watched them
pass by several times, and their frequency forced him to wait until
Illalla was much closer than usual before spurring Mortiss out onto
the road.

He decided to give Illalla and his men a bit
of a show, and this time held his shadowmagic strongly in place
even as Mortiss carried him out into the daylight, and it was that,
and Mortiss, that saved his life.

Illalla reacted instantly. Morgin could hear
him shout, “There he is. Now,” and too late Morgin realized he was
much too close.

Two bowmen, riding beside the High Lord,
raised their bows and fired almost as one. Both arrows sliced
through the air toward Morgin and there was no time for him to
react, but at the last instant Mortiss reared beneath him, rearing
high and placing herself between him and the death slicing toward
him. The first shaft caught her squarely in the breast; the second
slipped past her and buried itself in the meat of Morgin’s left
armpit.

Morgin almost lost consciousness then and
there; it was all he could do to ignore the pain and hold on as
Mortiss screamed and collapsed beneath him, sending him sprawling
into the shadows at the side of the road. The arrow in his armpit
snapped off painfully as he slammed into the ground, leaving a
short length of shaft buried beneath his skin, though somehow
through the pain he managed to hold onto his shadowmagic.

He staggered to his feet in the shadows at
the side of the road as a dozen Kulls charged toward him, glanced
over his shoulder once but could see nothing of Mortiss where she
had collapsed in the road. Fighting to hold onto consciousness and
his shadowmagic he slipped into the trees and started working his
way up the road.

The Kulls reached the spot where he’d gone
down, split up and began searching in the shadows with their
swords. Morgin found a small game trail that made his going easier,
though he was bleeding profusely and his head swam. As he staggered
up the trail he started calling for power, digging into the
netherworld for it, tugging desperately at any he found. He managed
to stop some of the bleeding, and lessened the pain somewhat, but
he knew he would not get far on foot. And then suddenly, there in
the trail before him, standing there and blocking his path, was
Mortiss.

She seemed unhurt, and he assumed the arrow
must have missed her, though by so narrow a margin it appeared to
all she had been killed. Morgin found it near impossible to climb
up into her saddle, but he managed it nevertheless. He turned her
away from the Kulls still searching the shadows on the road behind
him, spurred her lightly, and as she broke into a trot he leaned
forward against her neck and passed out.

~~~

“There’s something wrong here,” Tulellcoe
said as they crossed the shallows at Gilguard’s Ford.