Shadow (3 page)

Your death is not my wish or it would long ere now be done. I have spoken here to synchronise our purpose, which is now done. My words will guide your paths, but never perfectly nor without risk. Hark! Have I your blessing to reshape the stuff which makes you? It will serve better purpose. I do so if you are willing. Only if so.

The cavern spun. Case fell, his head landing on a soft mound of powdered scale. The necklace glimmered and shone near his feet. His only thought was that it was so very pretty.

Answer,
said Vyin.

‘Yes. Don't know … what you mean … but yes.'

The two star-heart dragon eyes descended upon him pulsing their light, bathing him in it almost lovingly, their heat pouring over him. The beast's warmth and scent enveloped him. The stone beneath Case's limp body groaned with the dragon's pressing weight. Its mouth opened. The jaws closed about him with great care, lifting him up, but Case thought he was floating. Then he knew nothing.

IN THE QUIET

1

Anfen's feet were blistered, his legs chafed and weak in reeking leathers, but still he staggered north on the Great Dividing Road. Standing on the rear feed trough of a passing trade wagon had eaten up many miles before its driver became aware of him and shook him off by veering off road over bumpy turf. The second time it happened had been worse. But he'd got right back up with cuts and bruised ribs and kept on toward his own death, which he fantasised about with relish.

He did not feel the world owed him much, did not feel in a position to make lavish requests. So he wouldn't have asked for the tiredness or aches to be dimmed by drink or by one of Loup's spells. But if one request
were
granted, he would dearly have loved to be free of the constantly playing memory of the Arch Mage at the Wall, his words, the twist of the square gleaming gem in its eye socket. It was all still so clear it may as well have been a gloating phantom ever on the Road before him.

Stones and pebbles tapped and scraped past his boots as though blown by strong wind. In truth, no wind blew. The Road was flat, yet Anfen walked into what felt a stream of gravity, an endless, steep hill. This invisible force was quite real and had pushed back against him since the Wall came down. It did not occur to him to go off road, over where the force was weaker, to ease the burden of each step.

And that was not for fear of the tall dark shapes he occasionally glimpsed through the trees or in fields skirting the Road, motionless but for the curling of spikes all down their long bodies and, once, a head swinging gracefully round to watch him pass. He watched it right back, stared into its stony eyes, expecting it to come at him with stiff lurching strides and the hissing rattle of a mane packed with thin needles. He did not fear
those
bastard things. Nor the Invia who would hunt him, drawn to his Mark, nor anything else, not any more. Instead the Tormentor had just watched him.

Not long ago he'd woken in a ditch. Some courteous traveller had spooned him into it off the Road, rather than leave him to be trampled by a horse or wagon. The traveller was so courteous he didn't bother to rob what must have seemed a corpse, albeit one armed with a sword and knife. One which in life had twice won a warrior's highest honour, Valour's Helm. To be feared, as corpses went …

Whether Anfen got to his destination or not hardly mattered. Death if he did, death if he didn't. He wanted the slow death he'd earned, wanted to feel every slow second of it, for his flesh to burn. He'd been walking toward it since his first infant steps lurched across the kitchen floor to grasp his mother's shin for balance. Those steps just as unsteady as these steps now.

His staggering legs weakened against the invisible push, his body lurched, he head-butted the ground. White lights flashed. Before he blacked out, for some reason he heard his mother's merry laugh showering her joy down on him, her praise and encouragement for his clumsy steps across the kitchen floor, a little toy sword in his hand which his father had carved.
My little soldier,
she'd called him,
my little soldier.

2

‘Why is it you wish to die, warrior?' said a voice behind him.

Since he'd raised his pained body back upright and sent it forward again, the Road had been his alone. The sky, the whole world, was a deep shade of twilight he'd never seen, the landscape black silhouettes against it. Silence had snuffed out the wind, bird calls, nearly everything but his scuffing boots. That was until the slow
clip-clopping
hooves began behind him, carrying a rider he knew wasn't really there.

Anfen didn't want to turn and look at a phantom whose existence (he realised) marked his final parting with sanity. But this quiet was nice. So was the ghostly and somehow patient
clip-clop, clip-clop,
its rhythm keeping perfect time. Such calm he'd seldom known, such eerie peace. Where had the world gone? All he recognised was the Road and the distant fang-shaped peaks black against the sky.

Here and there in the gentle blue-black light were what looked like gems hung in the air: clusters of glimmering diamonds. Some were tiny, some the size of boulders suspended far above and distant. The sight disturbed him; why had his mind conjured these strange and beautiful objects? He had no wish or need for beauty.

But ah, such precious quiet.

The Road's southward push had always been there, he reflected as he laboured into it. It was why the clouds went south down the world's middle. Since the Wall came down, it had changed, got stronger, it had … But he lost the thought, for the horseman behind him spoke again: ‘There is rage and grief in you. For he who names himself the Arch Mage. But you were not cheated, warrior. You were elevated. Your function was performed. As was his. It is now done.'

Anfen's hoarse croak was barely audible. ‘You mean my choices weren't my own. If they weren't, they never have been. Are they mine now, or not?'

‘That is not what I mean, warrior. Your suffering is needless.'

‘It will end soon enough.'

‘Shed this part of you as you would toss aside a rusted blade and find a new one, far keener,' said the voice.

‘What's the difference? I'll go to the same place.'

There was just the slow
clip-clop
of hooves for a time. ‘Where do you go to, warrior?'

‘I'm going—' he began, but felt no need to explain to a shadow, a figment of delirium, that he was going to the underground cavern where Stranger took him. He'd nicked his passage in and out on the walls, so he'd surely find it. If he made it there alive – somehow he thought he would – he'd kill one of the newly replaced unfortunates who were, presumably, held this minute in the clutches of those pincer-things, those burning hot shackles. He'd lay the body gently down and put himself there instead. He'd grit his teeth while he endured the hissing burn of cooking skin, those curved tips digging slowly into his flesh till they reached the bone, turning deep red or black with heat.

‘What purpose will this death serve?' the figment said.

Anfen shrugged. ‘It's a death,' he said and laughed.

‘I have seen better deaths.'

‘I don't care,' said Anfen.

‘You are a warrior.'

Anfen spat to get those words out of his head.

‘For me to name you such is high praise,' said the voice.

‘Leave me be, I warn you.'

It was not
just
death he sought. Likely as death was, Anfen had just a half-formed hope that the caverns would turn him into a New Mage like Stranger, powerful enough to do with spell craft what he could not do with a sword. He remembered her claim that the underground caverns made New Mages unswervingly loyal. But he knew there was not a thing in the Dragon's world that could pry free the glowing hot lump of hate burning inside him. He would never, ever relinquish it.

‘Do not waste yourself,' said the voice behind him. ‘There are no New Mages.'

‘I've dealt with such a mage,' Anfen said wearily. ‘Her name is Stranger.'

‘She is not a New Mage. She told you that to hide what she truly is. She told you that so you would tell the Mayors, who would see their doom coming. So that in desperation they would help you bring down the Wall. That is what she wanted.'

‘She has power. I have
seen
it. A pillar of light she conjured in Faul's yard.'

‘Why do you wish to die?'

‘Shut up.' Anfen drew his sword and turned. There was nothing but the southern sky and the Road. The horseman's voice carried to him on the wind:
The Pendulum has begun to swing again. The Pendulum has begun to swing.

He was not in the quiet place any more – he was back in the world's harsh and hateful clarity. A hot breeze with the smell of smoke blew across him like an unwanted caress. High up came the occasional flash of red and white as foreign airs clashed. He felt the
push
into his back. How easy it would be, to reverse his course and walk
with
that force.

He spat into the air, watched the push take his spit a long way, sheathed his weapon and walked instead up the steep hill.

3

Here came the group which – Anfen knew it upon his first distant glimpse of them – marked the end.

Two dozen men approached, all of them too well fed and too well dressed to be refugees fleeing the north. Some wore colours of various Aligned cities, a few wore glinting chain-mail. As they got closer he spotted one among them in the dress of a First Captain. The stripes had not changed since Anfen himself wore them.

Anfen wondered if he were imagining things again, to see such a small group of highly ranked castle men, roaming south mostly on foot, in disputed territory, along the Great Road which was watched by spies of both sides.

Now the group had seen him too. Weapons came to hand. A few fanned away from the Road in case he ran. He would not. Some of them exclaimed in surprise. He heard his name spoken.

Gladness filled him. He drew his sword for the last time and smiled, thinking back to the wooden one his father had carved, wondering if this end would have pleased the man.

Laughter brayed out from the midst of the approaching group. The tallest among them, in black leather from toe to collar, threw back the hood of a weather-beaten coat, exposing a springing coil of red hair and a gleeful smile.

Anfen could not help but be surprised to see Kiown among high-ranking enemy men. Not just surprised but stupefied, at his own blindness most of all. This was someone who had fought with him with rare courage, who'd travelled uncounted miles with him; someone he'd trusted with his life. Even now he battled with the truth, wondered if his madness was again at play, casting Kiown's face on someone else.

Until he spoke. ‘You men are to help spread word of this.' Kiown strode forward. He wore a sparkling gem in one ear, probably a charm which would help him fight. Another on his finger. The kind of gear they gave Hunters.

‘Word of what?' asked another of the group.

‘That this year I won Valour's Helm. He can swing metal, this one.' The men now surrounded them both in a wide ring. Kiown drew his blade. ‘Nothing to say?' he asked.

Anfen stared at him tiredly.

‘No? Well, then. Bye.' Kiown lashed his blade in fast cuts. Strong ones. Anfen blocked them but his arm jarred badly. He knew he'd become weak but not
this
weak. Kiown was dictating the fight, making all the attacks, too fast on his feet, making a game of it, unnecessary spins and flourishes, showing off. Anfen was tired, no adrenaline in him, no will to win, just technique. The
ching
of clashing swords and their scuffing boots filled the afternoon. Anfen felt he watched the fight from a distance, as though he were part of the ring of men surrounding them.

He was brought back when pain thudded into his gut and knocked the wind from him. A crossbow bolt knocked him sideways like a hard punch; the sword clattered from his hand. The watchers laughed; fired as a jest, the shot had come very close to hitting Kiown. Who was furious.

‘Who shot that?
Who
fucking shot that bolt?' He stormed over to a man in Athian colours hiding a large crossbow behind his back and smashed his sword hilt in the man's face. A scuffle broke out as others rushed over to hold him back, not before some of his kicks landed. The man didn't get up, nor would he.

Nor could Anfen, who had almost been forgotten, writhing on the ground clutching the still-protruding bolt. Instinct was to pull it out, which would make the damage far worse. So that's just what he did. The pain almost sent him unconscious behind a rain of white flashes. Amazing, spectacular pain.

He lay bleeding to death as their boots tromped past, careful not to tread on him. A couple of them matter-of-factly called him a traitor. Kiown crouched beside him, inspected the damage, patted his shoulder. ‘Not looking good, my friend. Not looking good. Lost your edge. It happens. Have you considered other work?'

‘Be well,' Anfen said, suddenly free of anger and of everything else. How quickly the life ebbed out of him. He was thirsty. He shivered with cold.

Kiown frowned. ‘Now … now
that
is an odd remark. Where's that old familiar belly fire? I killed Doon and the rest of them. Did you know? Led them to an ambush.
We
killed them, I guess, you and I. You put me in charge, remember? “Kiown leads you, wisely I hope.” Angry about it? The real Anfen would be. He'd find a way to kill me even now. He'd choke me with those guts leaking out of him. My, what a lot of blood.' He pointed at the crossbow bolt Anfen had yanked out of himself. ‘Ah, I get it. That's for me, right?'

Anfen let the dripping thing fall from his fingers. Kiown hurled it away then leaned close, pebbles grinding beneath his boots. ‘Listen. I want you to know something. Tonight, I'm going to have roast fowl in the Batlen. Know it? Luxury inn, not far. Fowl with trimmings, true-gold ale, a nice drop. And I will tip my cup to you. “To Anfen,” I shall say. And that will be that. I will bunk in a soft warm bed, two or three whores sating my every strange impulse. Then I shall go about my life, which will be long, exciting for a while, then
very
comfortable. As wills Vous, our Friend and Lord.'