Shadowkings (3 page)

Nothing she saw here, no scene of squalor or brutality, was new to her, but it could not fail to rouse her sorrow and anger. Azurech was a Mogaun chieftain, leader of the Whiteclaw clan whose savagery had struck terror into most of Honjir since their trek across the mountains from Khatris just a few years ago. An uneasy league of minor Mogaun chiefs and local warlords had kept a kind of order back then, but month by month Azurech had systematically defeated each one, absorbing their warriors into his own host. Choroya, with its encircling shanties of desperate, starving people, had been the last significant stronghold. Now it was his.

While passing through the crowded lean-toes and filthy tents, she was struck by the silence. No songs, no elders recounting the ancient stories, no chatter, only a deadening hush and resentful eyes following her. But then, the order of their lives had been shattered. Once, it had all been so faultless and clear – the spirit of the Fathertree was the overarching principle, connecting all things and all peoples through not just the priests but also the visible, tangible benefits of the Rootpower itself. In contrast, the Earthmother was the bedrock, the unseen principle of stability, both a source of life's blessings and the resting place for the spirit at life's end. Twin forces in harmony with each other, with the people and with the world and its seasons.

Now it was all no more, and for the sixteen years since the Mogaun invasion existence had been a hollow mockery of what had gone before. As Suviel rode past hollow-eyed children and old women sobbing over still, covered forms, her eyes stung with tears and she muttered bitter curses under her breath. Yet her pity was tempered by a weary sense of self-preservation that kept her riding till the shanties were behind her.

The grey sky was turning ashen by the time she reached a stretch of woods that marked the beginning of the farm holdings. Once under cover of the trees she turned off the road, carefully guiding her horse among the moss-covered roots and slippery mire till she found a westward winding path. After a two-hour ride through the rain-swept trees, she came at last to where an overgrown cart track led up into dark, bracken-cloaked foothills. Despite her sodden clothes and chilled flesh, she smiled - her memories had not misled her. Beyond the hills reared the southern spur of the Rukang Mountains, a cluster of craggy peaks riven by rocky gullies and sheer gorges. Up there lay her destination, an ancient Rootpower shrine called Wujad's Pool.

Suviel dismounted and led her horse up the track, all the while keeping alert for any sound or sign of beasts. Mountain paths like this had become dangerous since the invasion. Where merchant caravans and bands of pilgrims had once trod, now predators prowled and preyed and clumps of thorny growth blocked the route. Often she had to pause to hack a way through.

The rest of the day was spent thus, with the ceaseless rain alternating between drizzle and lashing torrents. Beneath a rocky overhang bearded with dripping moss she made brief camp to rest and feed her horse, then again stopped later under an eyeleaf tree, feeding herself and wringing out her cloak.

Night was falling but she pressed on, determined to reach the shrine before surrendering to sleep. At last she came to the opening of a ravine just visible in the poor light and after a moment's pause led her horse in.

The walls were sheer, lichen-streaked rock. When the last radiance of dusk was gone she unwrapped a tar-soaked torch, lit it and continued. The ravine floor sloped down, becoming grassy and increasingly covered in stunted trees and spiny bushes that looked black in the torchlight. The vegetation grew dense and the air took on a cold edge and an ominous musty taint. Then the path opened out and she halted, shivering in the sudden iciness, staring with deep unease at what had become of Wujad's Pool.

It was over five years since she had last visited the shrine, since when some dreadful change had taken place. Frozen grass and flowers crunched under her feet. Icicles hung from the trees and hoarfrost glittered on the shattered remnants of the small, four-pillared fane which worshippers had built on the rock out in the pool generations ago. The pool itself was an opaque mass of ice, but it appeared to have been in some kind of violent, turbulent motion at the very moment of its freezing. The wavering glow of her torch struck gleaming points of light from the solidified ripples and wavelets which radiated from a dark depression near the rock.

She hitched her horse's leads to a low branch and ventured out onto the pool, gingerly approaching the rock of the fane. There she saw a great hole in the surface of the pool, its inside full of ragged spikes and blades of ice, its edges fringed with frozen splashes and foam. An awful sense of malevolence hung over it and the coldness was so raw that she had to move back a few paces.

Appalled and shivering, Suviel wrapped her cloak tighter. Something evil had emerged from the water and in so doing had cursed the pool and its surroundings. But what, and when? The odour of musty decay, a sure sign of Wellsource sorcery, was strongest here and made her even more edgily alert for any disturbance nearby.

She came to a decision. Retracing her steps she halted at the bank, rested the torch against a small boulder, then straightened and commenced the thought-canto of Purification. The Lesser Power unfolded within her and the chill faded from her fingers and toes. At her feet, frost melted on leaves of grass and the edge of the pool began to gleam and puddle. Tiny fish became visible in the spreading patch of melting water, jerking into life, tails flapping. Then a small shape struggled free of the dissolving ice and in a flurry of wings and spray launched itself into the air. Suviel smiled as the bird, a greenwing, flew once around the glade before alighting on a branch.

But the lesser power canto was beginning to fail. She could feel the pressure of the Wellsource curse inexorably pushing back, freezing the waters she had freed. Mere seconds later all was as it had been, apart from the greenwing on its frosty perch. Then without warning, the bird took off and darted away among the branches. Suviel immediately felt a change in the air and across the glade saw the glow of torches approaching through the trees. Quickly she snatched up her own torch, extinguishing it in the wet grass, then went over to her horse and loosed the reins. She led the animal back along the trail and hitched it to a strong bush near the ravine entrance before creeping back to the glade to watch from behind some foliage.

Seven figures emerged from the trees opposite, one of them leading a solitary horse burdened with several bags. All were garbed in brown furs and black cloaks, the livery of Yularian merchants, but Suviel knew that these were no traders. There was an air of disciplined purpose to their movements that marked them for warriors. Five of them walked out onto the pool and positioned themselves at equal intervals around the hole in the ice. A sixth removed a number of items from the horse's baggage then took them over to the hole where the seventh stood. This man was taller than the rest, his hair was silver and his narrow face was as lean and pitiless as a bird of prey. Suviel began to shiver again, sure that she was looking at an Acolyte of the Wellsource.

Common sense told her that she should slip away while still undiscovered, but something crucial was unfolding here and she had to witness it. The Acolyte began to construct the foundations of a ritual, scattering drops from vials and powder from tiny caskets in and around the hole while muttering a continuous litany of sibilant words unintelligible to Suviel. Then he waved his assistant away, lowered his head and spread his arms, and started to speak in a guttural, droning voice. Suviel could sense the power that was gathering around the Acolyte as the musty decay became a stench that filled her nostrils and tainted her tongue.

And there was light, a pallid, greenish glow that pulsed up from the hole in the ice until it was a swirling column of nebulous skeins and hazy eddies. Within it Suviel could make out a confusion of images, a man asleep in a tent, three riders galloping across a burning desert, a skeleton clambering out of its grave...

The Acolyte stepped back from the column of light and a misty wave rolled out from it in all directions, coming to a halt where ice met ground, so that the pool appeared to be enclosed by an opaque wall. But when the pale wave reached the patch of water Suviel had melted, the Acolyte swung round to stare at it. An instant later his furious gaze swept unerringly to where she was crouched behind the foliage, piercing her to the soul. His eyes were dead white orbs. She gasped in fear and lost her balance, breaking that terrible link. As she regained her feet and scrambled towards the trail back out, she heard him say:

"Take her!"

Who taught you the way of cruelty, and how to scar the souls of men? Who hammered you out and tempered your harsh edge?

—The Book Of Fire And Iron

Keren sat by the camp fire, letting the heat sink into her face and arms. Gasping sounds of pain were coming from the torturer's tent down by the stream but she was working on her sabre, running the rougher of her two wetstones along the blade for the fifth time that night. Outwardly she seemed absorbed in the matter of her notched blade; inwardly her mood swayed between numbness and anger.

Byrnak was down there, personally applying the instruments of torment. His catamite, Falin, was with him and there was something significant about that but for now it escaped Keren's thoughts. Only the young priest's cries filled her mind, stirring up old doubts and the memory of honour. Hadn't there been a time when she would have put a stop to such brutality? Why was she able to just sit here while it continued, and how had she come to be this way?

Shadows
, she thought.
I've been living the last sixteen years the shadows
.

After the disastrous Battle of Wolf's Gate, she had fled with a handful of soldiers south through the Rukang Mountains to find refuge in the high valleys of Kejana. A short time later, on hearing of the Emperor's death, she went through her equipment and buried anything that bore the Imperial sigil. Then she rode north to Anghatan in search of relatives, a long journey fraught with perils, its days a charnel display of horrors, its nights full of screams and burning fields. And everywhere, monstrous beasts commanded by the hooded, white-eyed Acolytes of Twilight.

It took her nearly three weeks, during which she lost her horse twice, took a wound in the shoulder, and was caught only to escape when her captors were ambushed. In that time she built up a picture of how the invasion had begun, how three vast Mogaun armadas had sailed out of the still morning mists to attack the cities of Casall, Rauthaz and Bereiak. Once they had been taken, three immense hordes had then surged inland to clash with the Empire's armies at Wolf's Gate, Pillar Moor, and the Plateau of Arengia. By all accounts, the Grand Army of the South, Keren's army, had fared the worst against the Mogaun, which was no surprise since more than half of its strength had been cobbled together at the last moment from Honjiran and Roharkan militia companies.

On the other hand, the Grand Army of the West, under Upekar, Duke of Kostelis, fought the enemy to a standstill at Pillar Moor and would have turned the tide had not fire-spitting creatures attacked from the air and broken their morale. While on the Plateau of Arengia, the Grand Army of the North was crushed, the Emperor was slain and the Fathertree reduced to ash. Very few escaped that catastrophe.

When Keren finally reached northern Anghatan and the outskirts of Casall, she found that her only remaining blood relative, her dead father's brother, had fled with his family on a ship bound for Keremenchool. And with the Mogaun and the Acolytes of Twilight in firm control of the city, no passenger vessels were being allowed to leave.

With no family and no roots, Keren decided to put her own military skills to use. So, for the next twelve years Keren had travelled the length and breadth of the fallen empire, fighting in the armies and warbands of the scores of feuding domains which had replaced the twelve kingdoms. Then, four years ago, the fine goods caravan she was helping to guard was ambushed on its way from Choraya to Bidolo. The bandits were a ragged but well-trained bunch, whose tall, charismatic leader offered to buy her contract, a proposal she had found surprisingly difficult to refuse.

The sobbing cries of the priest had subsided, but across the clearing Keren could see the cold look on the face of Domas, rider captain of the second company.
Yes, you know, don't you?
Keren thought.
You know just how much Byrnak has changed
.

Down by the stream two figures emerged from the torturer's tent, Byrnak and Falin. The young scout was unsteady on his feet but grinning vacantly as Byrnak, sweat gleaming on his naked upper torso, steered him up towards the rest of the camp. As they strolled over to Byrnak's tent, they shared laughs and low jests with the men: Domas and his three squad sergeants, Keren observed, did not join in the banter, offering only faint smiles in response. Then Byrnak and the scout paused at his tent and hushed the men with a single sweep of his brawny arm.

"Listen well, you bloody rogues - the pusbag Shaleng has gone to feed the eels of the Dreun and our pet priest will spill his secrets before all of his blood..." He paused as raucous laughter rang round the clearing. "But we have need of a new rider captain and after much thought I have reached a decision." He grabbed Falin's wrist and held his arm aloft. "Who else deserves the rank but the man who found Shaleng for us?"

There was a racket of shouts and handclaps of approval. Keren was careful to be seen to join in and spotted Domas and his underlings doing the same. Then Domas' grim stare came round to meet hers and with a tilt of his head indicated the bushy trees a few paces back from the encampment. Keren cursed inwardly but slipped away from the camp once Byrnak and his consort had disappeared inside his tent.

Domas was waiting alone beside a big forked, creeper-wrapped tree. He turned at her approach. "An interesting choice for rider captain, eh?" he said bitterly. "Should be quite a spectacle when we go out on a raid."