Shadow (33 page)

They left Stranger alone and went down the swirling waters below the tower, crossed the water bobbing with dead war mages and headed for the village. The wolf trotted ahead of them, sniffing the air and whining in fear of what the scents told.

2

Through the window Stranger watched the group of them head up the path through the woods, not far from where Dyan had come. It was hard to sense the dragon from this place where the waters seemed to cast a barrier. But she knew somehow that he wasn't too far. She hoped he was not hurt. Surviving an encounter with Nightmare had made him think himself invulnerable.

She went upstairs to confirm that the drake, the Pilgrim and Aziel had gone also. Had they felt the attack meant it was no longer safe here? Maybe it wasn't. ‘Come back, Dyan,' she said quietly, looking at the night sky. ‘Come back, my love.'

At the sound of footsteps approaching she murmured the words to a simple lurking spell and faded from common sight. The bleeding colours of the Strategist's robe preceded him up the steps. He leaned on his walking stick, rubbed his eyes and stared right at her. ‘I see you.'

‘Are you alone?' she said.

Blain grunted.

‘Why have you returned? You were not among friends.'

‘I am a model prisoner,' said Blain, barking laughter.

‘Your jailers have gone. I was their prisoner too. There's no need for you to be here.'

‘Ah, is that so? Then you have an issue, girl. For I'm
not
a model jailer. Many thousands attest.'

Stranger edged closer to the window. ‘I see.'

He hobbled toward her. ‘You see not a tenth of it yet. Tell me about the dragon. What will he do now he knows of Vyin's charm?'

Stranger's mouth fell open. Far Gaze had been very careful to keep him away from Aziel and her necklace. How had he known?

Blain scoffed. ‘Oh, she's
shocked!
I'm not one of the soup-making mages you must be accustomed to. I sensed his touch before I arrived here. What's he intend? Why
Aziel,
for the love of the Spirits? What's Aziel mean to the Majors?'

‘I can't know the minds of the great ones,' she said. ‘I can't even claim to know Dyan's. And I won't be held here by you. I've been your prisoner before and won't be again.' She turned to the window but as she did it vanished – bare wall was now in its place. She touched it, expecting to feel the window glass, but it was no longer there. The other windows vanished. The stairway behind Blain was suddenly a pile of impassable rubble. ‘You're going nowhere,' he said. ‘Nowhere at all, ever again.'

Ten Evelles and half as many Thauns spread in a wide fan at Blain's back.

‘Dyan comes,' said Stranger. ‘He will not stand for this. Do you want a dragon angry at you?'

‘Do you mean that much to him?' said Blain. ‘Wait until he sees Evelle. She stirs my old blood, and my organs failed long ago.' The Evelles smiled sweetly, their movements in synch. ‘I know what you are, girl,' said Blain, stepping closer to Stranger. ‘A rare common enemy I have with the rebel cities. Even the deranged tribes who gab with elementals would name you traitor, demon, vermin, scum, shit. You are all those things. Know what your dragon did?'

‘No.'

‘Liar! You know what he did at World's End. You know every last thing they intend. Talk, girl. Or it's going to hurt very badly, very soon. Here, I'll show you a real lurking spell.' The colours on Blain's robe glittered and the Hunters vanished. ‘Where have they gone?' he said with mock alarm. ‘What do they intend? Are their blades drawn? Do they have vials of poison? Speak, girl!
Speak!
'

‘What do you wish to know?' she said, backing to where the window had been.

‘Shadow,' said Blain, stepping toward her. ‘Tell me everything you know. Tell me all that the others wouldn't. And what purpose has Vyin's charm?'

‘I don't know its purpose,' she said.

‘Louder, girl! I can't hear you.'

She wept. ‘I don't
know.
Dyan was sent by Shâ and Tzi-Shu. But a second dragon – a second at least – has been sent.'

‘Why?' Blain's voice was hard.

‘Dyan thinks it comes to watch him. That's why he went to World's End and distracted Nightmare. That's why he caused a stoneflesh giant to cross over. The Major personalities who sent him want the Pendulum to swing high. Dyan has been idle and fears their wrath.'

‘But it
wasn't
a second dragon he sensed, was it?' said Blain. He limped toward her until he was almost standing on her toes. ‘And you know it. It was Shadow he felt. Wasn't it?'

She frowned. ‘Shadow? How…?'

‘Cut one of her eyes out. She's not sharing.'

Stranger cried out as a blade was drawn close by with a hiss of metal. She said, ‘Dyan is here to learn of Shadow! He knows nothing yet. Nor do I. Nor must the Major personalities, if they send him to learn for them.'

‘You know
some
things, my one-eyed beauty.'

She crouched with her head in her hands. ‘Yes. Shadow is somehow drawn to the Pilgrim. He looks like him too. We don't know why.'

Blain said, ‘And Vyin's charm just happened to find its way to the Pilgrim too. Why?'

‘I – I think it's meant to contain Shadow.'

‘
Contain
him?' said Blain.

‘Yes! He's drawn to it, I think. And it has trapped him, caged him. That's a guess. Don't hurt me.'

‘Don't cut her yet! How is your guess so specific?'

‘Little clues. Air patterns about the charm. Fragments of conversation they didn't notice I overheard. They tried not to speak of it in front of me. They don't trust me. Stop all this,
please.
I'll tell you what I know. I'm not loyal to the dragons, nor to Dyan. Don't you see? I have no one! I'm nothing!'

Blain cursed quietly. His illusion spell abruptly ceased. The room returned to normal with no sign of the Strategist or his Hunters.

Stranger went to the window. A dark shape moved in the southern sky. Dyan was coming – so that's why Blain had fled. She leaned out over the sill, sick and giddy from nerves. She yelled, ‘My love! Help me!'

The dragon wheeled once, twice as if searching for something, then swooped to the tower with a rush of wind which pushed her back from the window.

Dyan landed on the sill, sticking his head inside the space too small for the rest of him, peering quizzically around the tower's top floor. His scales glimmered with red and gold. Waves of heat came off him. ‘Are you hurt?' he said, his tail snaking through the window and gently running down her arm.

‘Do you truly care?' She told him what had happened.

‘Great Beauty, you are safe now. There is no one here but you and I, and whatever force gives this place life. A strange place. Well made, for human work.' He sniffed. ‘Curious. A drake has been here.'

‘Dyan! The Strategist can't be far. He was just here. Won't you kill him? He will come for me again as soon as you leave me.'

‘Why do you say I'll leave you, Great Beauty? Have I not returned for you? I have saved you from yet another peril, the man-beasts with horns. And I was burned for my trouble.' He moved so she could see a black mark streaked down his hind leg.

‘You are too careless,' she reproached him, stroking his neck. ‘Won't you come in? Change form and come in?'

‘I'll not cast more just yet,' he said, sniffing. ‘There are foreign airs here. A big wave washed in across the boundary. Some strains of it have reached us here.'

‘The Strategist cast while you were gone. Very elaborate illusions.'

‘Then he is a fool, and the least of my concerns.'

She was hurt. ‘What then is the greatest of them?'

‘I went to see Shâ,' said Dyan, a ripple of white going over his scales. She had never seen this before but could tell it indicated fear. ‘They claim they did not send out another dragon. They are disturbed by what I told them.'

‘What happened?'

‘I won't speak of it,' he said with a shiver. ‘But they will not be idle. Vyin's betrayal enraged them.'

‘What will they do?'

Dyan quietened the deep music of his voice, as though afraid the great beasts would hear his voice from their sky holds. ‘They have gone to their forges and begun crafting artefacts of their own. They have guessed Vyin's purpose. But they must rush their work, if they wish to change events already unfolding! That is why they are so angry. Vyin's necklace was surely a work many human lifetimes in the making. Whatever the others create will be rushed by comparison, shall need to be crafted in mere days. Do you see now, Great Beauty, that when I leave you it is because I am called away by forces greater than either of us? Greater even than my love for you?'

She tried not to cry. ‘You have told me so many times that nothing was greater than that. And I believed you.'

‘I am sorry, Great Beauty. I longed to believe it as much as you. And now that I am with you again, perhaps I do.'

3

Movement caught the dragon's eye down by the water's edge. He showed little reaction, tried not to make it obvious he was looking down there as the woman continued to whine at him, and while he made the appropriate responses, said the necessary things. He loved these creatures, loved them as one might love a musical instrument. Such sentimental music.

But while he spoke to her he watched another. A most intriguing form: slender, with long curling dark hair, an immense bust, a face of dark smiling mischief, and an aura about her as dark and colourful as shed human blood. She had no native magic to her, just some borrowed effects from little charms.

But that mattered little; he felt drawn by the natural effortless magic of her intent. She was showing herself to him
on purpose.

From the water's edge she peered up into his eyes and slowly, teasingly, removed her clothes, revealing a body whose splendour would be the envy of all the Invia. Here she was, seducing
him,
trying to draw him with this provocative dance … fascinating! He had never been in this position before. He had always been the seducer, never seduced.

There was no resisting this temptation.

One minor cast surely would not be too great a risk. Stranger would never know, would never remember it. Dyan whispered part of a word in the tongue of his kind, made short and simple for human understanding. It meant
sleep.
He put just enough power upon it. Stranger fell back in a faint. She'd not remember the latter part of the conversation when she woke.

Dyan dropped from the window, landed gracefully by Evelle. ‘Welcome,' she said, opening her arms to him. He curled his tail about her, ran the point of it over her skin.

‘I will call you
Hathilialin,
which means in my tongue
great beauty
…'

4

Stranger sat up. The peaceful lap of waves and the breath of breeze across water still played soothing music but she knew before hearing the knife being drawn that her death was close.

Stepping before her was a wiry man, naked from the waist up, with thin braids of beard hanging from his chin and a long knife in hand. The tattoos across his chest looked like protective wards; the piercings over his body had to be charms, for they made almost invisible patterns in the air about them.

Next to the man, Blain leaned on his walking stick, face twitching as though burned and singed by a hot simmering rage beneath his bearded mask. To the Hunter he said, ‘Cut off her hands.'

The man sighed regretfully. ‘Yes, Strategist.'

Thaun had her before she could reach the window. Stranger let her arm go limp in his hand. Without Dyan here to help, her only spell options to get out of this situation would likely kill her instantly. It was better to try talking her way out. She said, ‘What do you think you will gain from doing this?'

Blain said, ‘This is your last chance to talk. Your true love is busy with Evelle. He's taken her on a long romantic flight.' He shuddered. ‘Talk, girl. Lend me a hand.'

Thaun's knife-edge gently touched her skin. ‘Tell him you'll talk,' he said quietly. ‘I don't wish to do this.'

‘Do not do that in here,' said a quiet voice from the stairway. Blain wheeled about, face betraying his shock. A tall magician stood at the top of the steps, peering at them with half-lidded eyes. He said, ‘It will do no good to mutilate her, unless the act is its own pleasure for you, Blain. Do you do it for a purpose, or for love of such deeds?'

‘A purpose, of course,' said Blain, sputtering. Crimson colour flushed through his robe.

The tall man inclined his bald head. ‘And you have chosen a course in life that requires such deeds quite often. A coincidence?'

‘Why do you care about her?' said Blain, hobbling toward the newcomer. ‘The dim wench is going to free the great beasts. Do you plan on a place by her side among the Favoured?'

‘I don't care about her,' the magician said. He peered at Stranger with a look of distaste. ‘Do with her as you like. I just asked you not to do it here. It bothers the airs and the senses. Mine, at least. Besides, it may be that I can answer your questions better than she can.'

Blain grunted, a sound in which Thaun apparently detected instruction, for he put away his knife. ‘Very well,' said the Strategist. He stroked his beard thoughtfully, trying to work out if this was the one who had interfered with his casting earlier; until now, he'd presumed it had been Stranger's doing. He said, ‘What do
you
know of Shadow?'

‘I suspect you have guessed Shadow's purpose as well as I,' the magician replied. ‘Avridis wishes to be rid of Vous, to find a more pliable personality to elevate to godhood. So too does a part of Vous yearn for death and peace. Avridis fed this part of Vous till it grew large, fed it by accident at first, then in recent times on purpose. In response, Vous created something able to destroy himself, quite subconsciously, of course. He created Shadow.