Shadowgod (55 page)

Panting, Mazaret saw the minor cuts and cursed his luck, expecting the pale foe to be at him again in a moment. Instead, the rivenshade shrieked in agony, dropped his sword and fell to his knees.

"The Void sign!" he cried as pale wisps of vapour began to leak from his mouth. White fumes were pouring from the wounds on hands and arms, wounds that were widening. Mazaret was engrossed by the grotesque sight for a moment until the hiss of a sword sliding from its scabbard snatched him back, and he whirled to face the grey-clad rivenshade.

"You were sent by the Void, weren't you," the rivenshade said, pale, hating eyes tempered with wariness. "Sent with an inscribed blade…"

The Void?
Mazaret thought.
But isn't that just a great emptiness, a sea of nothing? Bardow would know…

Then realisation struck him - some of his memories had returned and some of the names and places Suviel had mentioned suddenly had meaning.
By the Mother!
he thought.
I'm inside Keshada!

Then suddenly the rivenshade was on him with a flurry of savage, hacking blows. But Mazaret had some knowledge of swordplay in his mind now, in addition to a lifetime of visceral reflexes. Swiftly, he backed away down the corridor while shrugging off the short green, pattered coat given to him by Suviel. The rivenshade followed, leaving behind the remains of the other, which was by now reduced to a few limp articles of clothing draped over lumpy objects oozing white vapour.

When the grey-garbed rivenshade came within reach he attacked with arm extended, using his sword's length to best effect. Mazaret, though, was ready and with his free hand swaddled in layers of coat he grabbed the other's sword by the blade, then leaped forward and drove his own weapon into his foe's chest, running him through.

The rivenshade let out an ear-shattering wail of torment, released his sword and staggered back. Mazaret pulled his own back out of the enemy's chest, saw pale wisps drifting off the long, tapered blade then noticed something glowing near the hilt, the small hooked rune …

The rivenshade's breathing rattled and wheezed, then with a white, misty sigh, he sank to his knees by the wall, keeled over and began to dissolve.

"So you are Ikarno Mazaret," said a silky, mocking voice.

It was one of the Suviel rivenshades, garbed like one of the mask soldiers except that silver glyphs adorned every item of her clothing. She regarded the collapsing rivenshade with amusement as she walked up to Mazaret.

"I would expect nothing less than complete victory from the real Mazaret," she said, laying a hand on his arm. "If you come with me, I'll help you kill the others, then we can rule Keshada together. And you can love me as you loved her…"

Mazaret felt as transfixed by her as he was by his returning memories. And Suviel's words came back to him through his confused thoughts -
"It is not necessary to slay them for my sake."

He shook off her hand and stepped back from the sudden rage in her features.

"No!" he cried and turned to run.

But her screamed words came after him as he fled.

"The Prince of Dusk is coming, Ikarno Mazaret and when he triumphs you will be mine!"

* * *

It had taken Keren several hours and a night of sleep before reluctantly agreeing to accompany the two Daemonkind renegades down into the depths of Jagreag. But by the time they and Domas appeared at her chamber door with armour and weapons for her, the Jefren forces down in the rocky valleys were mounting a determined assault. Her chamber was one of several that honeycombed a tall crag high up the mountainside, and she saw several family quarters, a nursery and a scullery as she was taken along to a square, curtained doorway leading outside. Beyond was a walled shelf open to the skies and whipped by winds so cold Keren almost cried out.

From there a long stairway of cracked and worn steps snaked down the mountainside. Most of the steps had been brushed clear of snow but some had ice patches that made Keren careful with her footing as she followed Domas. On the way down they passed landings where children played on the threshold of open doors and others where no doors were visible to the eye. Keren's attention was drawn more to the conflict going on below- from this height she could look down into the gorges and ravines that gashed the Druandags' scree and boulder foothills. Troops, horses, cart and lines of bound prisoners swarmed through them and over the hills in their thousands.

"They're not sparing any effort," she said to Domas through chattering teeth.

"What you should say is that they don't mind wasting lives," Domas said. "You'll see soon."

Several minutes of downward trudging brought her nearer to the focus of the siege and she began to understand. The main battlements of Untollan were hewn all along the south western face of Mount Harang, which was less a mountain and more a series of sheer, slope ramparts surmounted by a snow-blasted fist of rock. The battlements were unassailable except for one place where a broad ridge shouldered out from Harang's flank and sloped down into the rocky vale. Past owners of the citadel had reinforced that point with walls and towers and it was against them that the Jefren generals threw their might. But at a terrible cost - corpses and their blood darkened the ground all around the jutting fortification, and yet more bodies lay scattered all down the side of the mountain's shoulder along with broken weapons and shattered scaling ladders.

The long staircase ended at the entrance to a long, open gallery cut into the face of Mount Harang about a hundred feet above the main battlements. The gallery's inner wall, crowded with chipped, weather-ravaged carvings, was broken by several heavily draped doors which Domas off-handedly referred to as 'quarters and training rooms'. Before long he brought them to a halt at a part of the gallery which projected from the rock face, a tapering shelf sitting atop a natural outcropping which ran like a narrow tower right down into the roots of the mountain. When Keren joined Domas out on the small balcony the icy wind cut like a knife through her leather armour and troos, adding to the chill in her flesh. But nothing could detract from the magnificent, panoramic view, the grey and white foothills, the shadowy ravines, with the uneven, snow-streaked lands of south west Anghatan stretching away towards the Sea of Birrdaelin. Keren took it all in, the wide vastness, the rushing broken clouds, the birds wheeling overhead, the paleness of distant uplands, even this sharp, biting cold. She wanted to fix it forever in her mind for she knew she was about to vanish into the darkness below ground and face an unknowable fate.

A small bird fluttered down to land on the shelf's low wall, a greenwing which eyed her and her companions for an instant or two then sprang away on blurred wings, uttering a piercing cluster of notes as it did so. Keren watched it dart away up into the air above Untollan and wished she could do the same.

"Keren Asherol," came the voice of Rakrotherangisal. "The time is at hand."

She turned and nodded. Domas put a hand on her shoulder.

"I wish I were the one," he said with a rueful smile. "Even if only to get away from the Jefren and their slaves." He bowed formally to her and the Daemonkind. "May you walk in the way of the Light."

The Daemonkind both gravely returned his bow. "May your wings never fail," said Orgraaleshenoth.

Keren following the two Daemonkind a few paces along to a draped entrance through which they ducked. She paused on the threshold to glance back at Domas, who raised his hand in farewell. She did the same and slipped past the heavy curtains.

It was warm and dark inside, a narrow corridor stuffy with the odours of hot candle tallow, leather and a certain aged mustiness. She had just realised that it smelled like an old library when they turned a corner and emerged in...an old library. An one-armed man in battered rider's leathers looked up from an open book, gave a single, unsmiling nod and went back to the page he was on. By the few wavering candles, the library seemed small and cramped but as she followed the Daemonkind across to a large door, she saw that a shadowy gap between shelves in the diagonally opposite corner was actually a passageway through to more shelves stacked with a jumble of books and scrolls.

Beyond the large door was a walkway which ran as a shelf along and above a torchlit main corridor busy with archers and spearmen hurrying out to the ramparts, and stretcher parties bearing the wounded into the healers. At the end of the walkway were stairs leading downwards, a feature that Keren was to become more than familiar with over the next hour or so as the Daemonkind took her down into the dark, decayed labyrinth of Jagreag.

They were passing through lightless areas now, and the Daemonkind produced a pale, illuminating glow from the crystals atop their staffs. It was bright enough to see where they were going, and for Keren to catch glimpses on either side of the irresistible devastation of time. Corridors so old that they were like bent and rounded tunnels, muddy underfoot and bearded with ash-grey mosses populated by tiny, white spiders. Chambers that were decrepit caves where unseen things scurried. Stairways worn by running water into slippery, uneven slopes, and everywhere the smell of stagnant dankness.

Once, their route took them out onto a narrow ledge passing across the vertical face of a crack in the mountain itself. Halfway along Keren looked up to see a long, pale jagged shard of sky and a few bright droplets of ice-melt falling from above. It was gloomy where they carefully walked while an icy, swallowing blackness gaped below.

In fitful silence they travelled, with one or other of the Daemonkind warning her of unstable walls or dangerous areas of floor, and the deeper they went the quieter their voices. When they came to a long, wide stairway, the Daemonkind dimmed their staff-mounted crystals to a glimmer, just enough to see by.

“We must make as little noise as possible,” said Rakrotherangisal. “There are creatures at this depth who should not be disturbed.”

Chilled by his words, Keren followed him down the crumbling, debris-strewn steps. After several minutes the wall on the left became marred by large jagged gaps beyond which was a black emptiness. It both intrigued and unnerved her, like a looming, faceless presence. Then, a short while later, she was negotiating a section of steps worn near smooth by water trickling from a crack further up when her foot slipped and she lurched towards one of the open gaps. Her hand shot out to stop her fall and struck a layer of dust and rock fragments, which cascaded out into the black. For a long moment there was silence… then the faint clatter of the fragments hitting the bottom. The Daemonkind stared at her.

“I’m sorry…” she began to say in a strangled whisper but stopped when a light flared in the blackness, far off in the blackness. She glimpsed the merest outlines of an immense chamber with an upward curving ceiling broken by several giant shards of rock thrusting down…

Orgraaleshenoth grabbed her by the arm and in a moment all three of them were rushing down the rotting stairs. After much slipping and stumbling they reached a landing where without hesitation Rakrotherangisal turned right, and as they hurried along Keren could hear an eerie, high pitched piping far behind.

“Who are they?” Keren said, gasping.

“The
Issusk
,” Rakrotherangisal said shortly, then glanced at Orgraaleshenoth. “We should make for the sundered bridge.”

The elder Daemonkind nodded. “They know we are here now, so the longer route is pointless.”

From the landing they dashed through a circular room half-choked with strange spiral vines to a corridor that sloped downwards. At its end it curved to the right and Keren was the first to run out and find herself staring across a massive, chain supported bridge. The high piping sounds were louder and a faint radiance was coming from below, but what held her attention was the large empty gap near the middle of the bridge. Gauging it by eye, she guessed that nearly twenty feet separated the sagging, ragged edges.

“We may have to take that longer route,” she said over her shoulder. “This is…
hey, what are you
– “

The Daemonkind were suddenly on either side of her, lifting her by her arms as they rushed out onto the bridge. Fear choked her throat and for a long, terrifying moment she believed that it was an elaborate trap until they reached the gap in the bridge at a hurtling sprint and, still carrying her, jumped…

Her own legs and body were trailing as they soared through the air, and she was able to stare down into a long, sheer-sided canyon. A huge mob of creatures, some upright on two feet, some carrying blazing brands, were surging along it and some pointed upwards at the Daemonkind and Keren. Hooting voices rose in anger above the morass of wails, clicks and barks.

Then they landed on the other side, Keren held higher until her bearers slowed enough for her to be set down safely. She wanted to be angry at them for throwing such a scare into her, but realised that there was no time for such tantrums.

Further downward they went, another stairwell, and another wrecked, muddy corridor at the end of which was a wall of compact rubble worn into solidity by time, water and millennia of lichen and questing vines. It was a heavy curtain of these that Rakrotherangisal pulled aside to reveal a low, dark tunnel through the ancient debris. Squeezing and scrambling through it left them streaked with black mud but Keren forgot that as she got to her feet and saw the huge, sloping door which filled most of a high, enclosed chamber. By the glow of the Daemonkind staffs, it seemed to have been made of a single, imposing slab of striated grey granite, its surface covered in spiralling panels of carved men and beasts.

Keren felt a wave of weary hunger pass through her, so she sat on a mossy boulder and dug into her harness pouches for pieces of dried meat. She had just started on her second mouthful when Orgraaleshenoth said ‘Here’ and rapped the tip of his staff on one of the carven panels. There was a responding knock, then a deep grinding sound as the upper edge of the carved door began to tilt inwards. Pivoting on a central horizontal axis the bottom half slowly swung out and up. Seeing this, Keren swiftly uncapped her leather water bottle and downed half the contents, then stood and hurried after the Daemonkind who were already striding through. She had just joined them when the door began to swing slowly back and she paused to watch it close with a solid, reverberating thud, followed by a series of quiet muffled taps from within.