Shadow Magic (29 page)

Maurin looked toward the western end of the pass and tensed. There was movement, surely he had seen movement at last. In a few minutes more, he was certain. A gray river of Lithmern flowed toward the narrow funnel of the mountains.
Only a little farther,
Maurin thought.
Only a little longer and it begins.
Cautiously he signaled to the main mass of troops and cavalry, hidden behind the ridge. He was luckier than they; at least he could see the enemy approaching, instead of waiting in ignorance, dependent on a signal from above.

For the hundredth time, Maurin checked his armor and his weapons. All about him others were doing the same, shifting awkwardly to avoid sending any telltale gleam or clink down to the floor of the pass. Beside him a grizzled veteran grinned. “Aye, you take proper care, lad,” the man said in a low voice. “Some of them, now, they’ll be crow meat for not checking right.” He spat into the snow.

Maurin eyed the worn leather sewn with metal rings that the other man wore and his eyebrows went up. “Are you sure that you are as well prepared as they are?” he asked, nodding toward a group of Marhal’s men in chain.

“It’s good enough for me, lad, and has been these many years,” the veteran replied. “Those staves with the blades on them can’t get through the rings, and I can move a bit faster without all that extra weight. You’ll see. Lithmern, bah!” He spat again.

Maurin grinned and they touched clenched fists before the other man disappeared to find his place in the line that was slowly forming along the base of the ridge.

By the time the vanguard of the Lithmern army approached the ridge, Maurin was light-headed with anxiety, with eagerness, with tension, with a confusing welter of familiar emotions that made the blood sing in his veins. The long wait was forgotten; these last few minutes were harder than the hours had been.

From the other side of the pass a horn sounded. Almost as one the men rose and charged down at the Lithmern, while the cavalry rode out from the concealing ridge and into the front of the Lithmern column. Behind the Shee riders, the foot soldiers of Alkyra closed their ranks and advanced.

There was a roar as the two sides met. The front part of the Lithmern column was halted, at least for the moment, and the soldiers farther back milled about in confusion, unable to see what was happening in front of them. From concealed positions along the tops of the cliffs, the Wyrds rained arrows down on the exposed ranks of Lithmern. Then, from the rear of the column, there was a ripple of movement, and the soldiers shrank away as the Shadow-born advanced.

On dead black horses with madness in their eyes, fifteen shapes of darkness and shadow rode forward. Their forms continuously shifted around the edges; even the enveloping cloaks they wore could not hide it. To stare too long on those fifteen creatures made of nothing-at-all invited madness. They rode up Coldwell Pass at a slow, steady walk like a funeral march. In the center of the pass, just in front of the Alkyran lines, they stopped.

And the Shee sprang their trap.

There was a shivering, and a tremor ran through the pass itself. For a moment, nothing seemed to happen. Then, high above the Shadow-born, a mile-high slab of the rock wall began to crumble. With deceptive slowness, the avalanche came on, gathering rock, snow, and speed as it came. There were screams of terror and a moment of mass confusion as half the Lithmern tried to turn back, out of the way of the deadly mass of rock.

One of the Shadow-born raised an arm, and the army stood motionless, bound in their places. His companions did not move, but about them the air grew suddenly dark and heavy. The avalanche continued, its roar drowning out all other noise. It reached the edge of the cliff and poured over it toward the floor of the pass.

The dark ring around the Shadow-born expanded rapidly. It met the leading edge of the falling wall of ice and rock fifteen feet above the heads of the Lithmern army, and held. Stone piled up above the barrier, and the first rocks were ground to a powder by the pressure from the rest of the mass. The shadow-wall darkened further in response, but still it held.

The last echoes of the avalanche died away, leaving both armies staring incredulously. For half a mile or more, the west end of the ravine was covered by an impossible bridge, a tunnel made of tons of rock and snow resting on darkness. Below it, the Lithmern army stood unharmed, save for those who had been trampled in the brief panic.

The Shadow-born hissed an order in Lithran and lowered its arm. The Lithmern shuddered and began to move again. Some of them looked upward uneasily, but none quite dared to defy the creatures they had raised to serve them. The Shadow-born gestured again, and the Lithmern surged forward with a roar.

The Alkyrans and their allies groaned in despair. The pass was narrow enough that they could hold the Lithmern for awhile despite their smaller numbers. The Wyrd bowmen could pick off the massed Lithmern easily from their positions on the cliff tops, but there were still far too many, even without the Shadow-born standing, motionless as statues, in the center of the pass.

A wave of hopelessness swept over Maurin even as he fought.
So many,
he thought,
how can there be so many? Even without the Shadow-born to help them, they could destroy us.

Suddenly the whole struggle seemed pointless. Maurin looked hopelessly from the thinning Alkyran ranks to the Lithmern, milling like gray worms in the shadow of the tons of rock suspended above them. More and more of the attackers were passing through the uneasy tunnel of rock and magic, and the invading army began to push the Alkyrans back, until they reached the narrowest part of the pass.

There the defenders held, but it was only a temporary delay. Suddenly a cry of fear went up. The Shadow-born were moving forward at last, and darkness flowed before them in a flood.

Before it reached the Alkyran lines, the wave of shadow slowed, as though something hampered it, and Maurin guessed that battle between the Veldatha and the Shadow-born was joined at last. The Shadow-born halted, and the darkness began to creep forward once more. Inch by inch it drew nearer to the Alkyrans.

The fighting came almost to a standstill. Silence fell; behind Maurin someone sobbed in terror, but he did not turn to look. Like a bird watching a snake, he stared at the shadowy border that wavered, now, only a few feet before him. Even as he watched, it gained another inch, another six. Maurin drew a shuddering breath and clutched his sword in a hand slippery with sweat.

Coruscating light flared in front of him, and for a moment Maurin was blind. He almost screamed; was this the purpose of the shadow? Behind him he heard a ragged cheer; it was not to be feared, then. He shook his head and his vision began to clear.

The Shadow-born sat unmoving, but their spell of darkness had moved back almost half the distance between them and the Alkyrans. Little darts of fire flashed across the boundary, making a net of light that held back the darkness. Behind the Shadow-born, the rest of the Lithmern had stopped advancing and were moving uncertainly.

For a few moments, time seemed to stop. The Shadow-born, motionless on their great black horses, did not gain any more ground, but they did not lose any either. Then one of the figures signaled, and the Lithmern came forward again. They stopped short of the interface between shadow and clear air, and Maurin looked at them in dismay.

They covered the canyon floor from cliff to cliff in an unbroken mass stretching back nearly to the mouth of the pass; half the army was still inside the tunnel formed by the avalanche and the Shadow-born’s spell. As he looked, the veil of shadow shivered and broke through the restraining net of light. It began to advance once more, steadily this time. The Lithmern army came behind it, moving forward at the direction of the Shadow-born. Maurin was beyond terror; he felt almost calm as he waited for the wall to reach him. His last thought before it touched him was a vague curiosity.

Cold, darkness, and despair froze him where he stood. In the moment the spell swept over him, Maurin saw the loss of everything he ever loved, felt again the guilt of every mistake he had ever made and every wrong he had ever done or imagined. He saw his dimly remembered mother dying painfully in his arms. He saw Alethia screaming in terror amid the blizzard, dying slowly of thirst and exhaustion in the Kathkari because he had not found her. He saw Har hacked to pieces because he was not there to help him; he saw Traders from the vanished caravans dying in torment because he had not searched for them.

Maurin bowed his head in misery and self-condemnation. Just in front of him, a grinning Lithmern soldier was advancing to the kill; very well, he would not resist. Death was all he deserved. The Lithmern’s sword swung up and wavered mistily before him.

Alethia awoke early. Though it was still cold and gloomy, she was much more hopeful. Her arm was healing, and she knew she traveled in the right direction. She started off as soon as she finished eating the last of her food. She had been hoarding it carefully, but she was certain that she would find someone before nightfall who could replenish her supplies at least.

The ground rose slowly. A few hours of hard riding brought her to a ragged cliff above a maze of rock piles, and she began to wonder whether she really was traveling in the right direction. Then, ahead of her, she heard a roar. Looking up, she saw a piece of one of the mountains go sliding away. Without stopping to think, Alethia dug her heels into the horse’s sides.

The animal broke into a trot, then a gallop, and suddenly the battlefield was in sight. Alethia reined her horse to a halt atop a low ridge that commanded a good view. She slid out of the saddle and looked down; she had no doubts that she had found Coldwell Pass.

The Alkyran army was drawn up at the foot of the ridge. Facing them, the Lithmern were emerging from the shelter of a tunnel of some sort. Alethia saw the blackness at its edges and flinched away. Only then did she see the Shadow-born themselves.

Alethia froze. Without realizing it, her hand clutched at the bulky package that contained the Crown of Alkyra, and spell-sight hit her like a wall. The ravine was dark with power. She felt the fear and pain of the men below, and suddenly realized that the Shadow-born were drawing it in, feeding on it.
That is why they are so still,
she thought numbly.
They are feeding.

She tore her eyes away to look for the Veldatha; somehow she thought she still might reach them before the Shadow-born began their attack. The wizards were not hard to find; to her spell-sight they were a white blaze against the shadows. For a moment Alethia felt more confident; then her heart sank as she saw how small was their fire compared to the mass of darkness that was the Shadow-born. She started to remount, but even as she did she felt the Shadow-born begin their attack.

Power swept out from the creatures in a wave. The Veldatha flame met it, slowed it, but could not stop it. Alethia felt the terror of the troops below her, felt the way the dark spell fed on their fear. Then her spell-sight saw a weakness in the Shadow-born spell.

For a moment she hesitated, torn between fear of detection and fear for her friends, family, and home. Then she threw all of her power against the shadow-spell. Light flared as her force struck, and the shadow gave ground. Alethia pressed harder, searching for more weak spots, but the Shadow-born recovered quickly.

The spell-sight gave her an advantage, and she held them. Not alone; the Veldatha were still fighting, and they added their power to hers as they realized what had happened. She could see weak spots that the wizards could only sense dimly, and she formed a wall of lightning to keep back the Shadow-born’s spell.

The creatures of darkness stopped moving and motioned the Lithmern forward. As the army surged around them, they drew more power from it. The Shadow-born reached out, and Alethia realized with a spasm of fear that she had been right; the creatures knew that the Shield, the Cup, the Sword, and the Staff were somewhere in Coldwell. They were searching for the added sources of power. Alethia moved to block them, but the effort stretched her powers too thin, and the shadow spell moved forward once more.

The spell reached the edge of the Alkyran army, and Alethia reeled under the wave of guilt and terror and misery that flowed up from them. For a moment she was shocked out of the linkage of power, and in that moment she saw Maurin, tall and stern, standing with his head bowed before a Lithmern soldier, about to be cut in two.

“No!” Alethia screamed, and with the instincts of desperation she raised her hands and jammed the Crown of Alkyra on her own head.

Time stopped. The world swam before her eyes as the full power of the Crown coursed through her. The mountains themselves seemed transparent; the armies below were insubstantial ghosts, frozen in mid-motion. Only the power of the Veldatha and the Shadow-born was real and tangible. As if in a dream, Alethia reached out and once more summoned the power of the Veldatha to her.

It came to her in a burst of fire. She turned toward the Shadow-born, and saw clearly on them the mark of the bindings that had held them for three thousand years. She felt a moment’s doubt; even with such power, could she replace them? Once more, she reached out.

A feeling of warmth crept through her. Shapes of fire formed in the air in front of her, and another power rose in her like a flood tide, making her very bones ache with joy. The Gifts of Alkyra had been summoned through the power of the Crown.

No longer hesitant, Alethia rebuilt the ancient spells, following the pattern that only she could see. With great bars of power she bound the Shadow-born to the rock beneath the pass, cutting them off from the roots of their power. The struggle was intense, but brief, and the Shadow-born sank out of sight, melting into the stone.

Through his trance of despair, Maurin heard a familiar voice crying, “No!” He gasped, shaken out of the spell, and his arm jerked reflexively to block the Lithmern blade. He was only partly successful; the sword bit into his side before he killed the man wielding it. He hardly noticed. “Alethia!” he shouted, looking about wildly. “Alethia?”