Shadowmasque (26 page)

In the evening’s deepening gloom, the Great Canal became a curving sweep of blackness over which Ayoni and Chellour flew, as if towed by the old Mogaun shaman. The lights of the imperial camp were receding to distant glows and were gone by the time they crossed over the opposite bank. Then they caught sight of another, larger cluster of bright pinpoints a few miles further rond the Great Canal, spread out on the inner bank.

“That is Belkiol, the thousand-tent city,” said the old Mogaun. “The last resting place for pilgrims before they walk the final stage to Besdarok. There, they will perform the 3 privations, the 5 songs, the 6 prayers, and the 10 farewells.”

On they flew with their guide wordlessly pointing to bands of pilgrims moving on from or returning to Belkiol, their pole-lamps carried over their shoulders. And ther, just a few miles to the east, were the pale walls of Besh-Darok. Ayoni had visited the ancient, mostly-deserted city just once, in her youth, when she had accompanied her father on a journey to visit relatives in southern Mantinor. Their small ship had docked at one of the few piers still safe to use — old wrecks littered the waters by most of the wharfs — and they had spent the night at an inn on the front without straying any further into the ruined city. She smiled at the irony of it. Although she had been keen the next morning to go and explore the abandoned streets, her father refused out of respect for the dead and whatever spirits might walk the walls and towers, yet here she was returning to Besh-Darok as a disembodied spirit….

Through the darkening sky they rushed, feeling no sensation, neither cold nor hot, nor any taste or odour. Before long they were swooping down low over the crumbling battlements of the city and the caved-in, derelict buildings beyond, all of which possessed the same tenuous darkling radiance, a faintly turquoise nimbus. The dilapidation of the centuries and the incursion of plantlife of every kind was plain to see — tumbled masonry swathed in moss and grasses, bushes and climbing vines half-concealing doors and windows, broken pillar wreathed in dog-ivy or wallthorn, entire trees grown up from the centre of buildings, branches pushing aside walls while their roots burst through the floors and burrowed outside.

Their elderly Mogaun guide angled their course towards a huge oval building enclosed by the remains of a diamond-shaped fortification with a large, round keep at either end. From its nearness to the city wall Ayoni suddenly realised that this had to be the old imperial palace, on which the palace at Sejeend had been modelled in part. She had seen drawings and paintings of how it had once looked but at some point after the great Shadowking War, the graceful High Spire had toppled to leave huge overgrown mounds extending north from the central stronghold across the curtain wall and the city wall, both clearly breached by the tower’s fall.

Inside the palace walls, more wild undergrowth had smothered the evidence of ruin and the age-old ravages of battle. The old Mogaun brought them to alight on a weed-choked stretch of cracked flagstone before a tall arched entrance which once would have been barred by heavy timber doors. As the shaman led them towards it, Ayoni thought that she saw a pale, almost misty figure pass behind one of the upper windows, just for a moment. Chellour frowned as she hurried to catch up but shook her head and stepped smartly in front of the old shaman, turning to face him.

“What is your purpose in bringing us here, honourable one?” she said. “Who sent you to get us?”

“I am not
sent
by anyone,” the Mogaun said sharply as he sidestepped her. “It was and is necessary to bring you here to ask, answer and to witness…”

They were walking through a devastated great main hall, much of its area filled with rubble, sections lichen-encrusted masonry and long shards of pillars. Once a wide staircase had risen from the middle of the floor and a portion of it still jutted above the mossy wreckage, broken-off steps visible against the purpling night sky. The old Mogaun strode on through, leading them to a wide chamber off the hall, its floor littered with more grass-fringed rubble, massive shattered pieces of stone from the ceiling which was open to the outside. The pale, opaque form of a young woman sat on one of the pieces, gazing out a tall narrow window. She looked round as they entered, and smiled.

“Why, Atroc — you’ve brought guests!”

“For a short time only, Alael,” the Mogaun named Atroc said. “And theirs is a serious task.”

The woman called Alael nodded as she approached. “This must be about those newcomers,” she said to Ayoni and Chellour. “They’ve set up camp in the Keep of Day and Bardow is very worried.”

“Where is the master mage now, lady?” said Atroc.

“A little while ago I saw him up on the Silver Aggor, talking with Yasgur,” said Alael.

“Hmph, didn’t see him. Perhaps he is at the Keep of Night,” Atroc said. “I thank you, lady.”

The young woman smiled brightly then wandered off through the wrecked chamber. As she left, Ayoni exchanged a wide-eyed look with Chellour.

“Was that really….Queen Alael?” he said.

“Queen Alael’s ghost?” Ayoni suggested, trying to reconcile the slender young woman with the images of Queen Alael that she had grown up with, those of a stern, commanding woman always pictured wearing the imperial crown and sharing the frame with a sword or a shield or some other implement of war. Crowned in the aftermath of the Shadowking War, Alael had been faced with widespread chaos and upheaval from which marauders and freebooters had sprouted like vicious weeds, and in which several determined would-be rivals sought to challenge her for the throne. The first twenty years of her reign had almost been one continuous military campaign aimed at reuniting the former territories of the Khatrimantine Empire, a campaign that left succeeding generations with the enduring image of Alael, the warrior queen.

Yet here she was in this city of ghosts, looking as youthful and relatively burdenless as she might have been before her coronation. And there had been mention of other names from history, the Archmage Bardow, and Yasgur, the Mogaun prince who had been made a Lord Regent during the war. And their guide had to be the Mogaun seer Atroc, who had been Yasgur’s closest advisor and the man who had befriended Gilly Cordale and kept him from harm.

“We could be meeting Chael Bardow,” she muttered to Chellour as they followed Atroc from the chamber by stepping through the wall. “The others will be beside themselves with envy when we tell them.”

Chellour frowned. “Something is wrong here — why would the ghost of Queen Alael be young rather than old? Does she even remember being queen, I wonder…”

The seer Atroc led them through the violet darkness of an outer pathway choked with dying bushes and saplings to a wider gap between the palacial stronghold and the inner wall. Out here, where the light was plentiful during the day, all was a profusion of foliage, flower and berry-laden bushes, great ironwood and torwood trees pressing against the stones of the inner wall, the branches decorated with hanging masses of litrilu blooms, all wreathed in subdued, many-coloured auras. Amid all this, Atroc paused to point along to the dark mass of the Keep of Night.

“Bardow awaits us,” he said. “Ask him what you will but be assured that you’ll have more questions at the end than you did at the beginning!”

“He is not there,” said a voice.

The translucent figure of a tall, bearded man in half-mail and a cloak emerged from the gloomy mass of greenery. His face was sombre, perhaps even a little weary Ayoni thought, but his dark eyes were steady and alert.

“So, milord,” Atroc said. “Where might we find him?”

“The imperial barracks, Atroc. Up in the observatory.”

“Again? Reading the stars?” Atroc snorted. “Be as well to try and read the ripples on the bay for all the good it will do. If the end is almost upon us then how can we prevent it by this gazing?”

Then the newcomer seemed to notice Ayoni and Chellour for the first time, regarding them with a stony distrust.

“Perhaps that is why Bardow asked you to look for witnesses,” he said. “Lady, ser — I am Ikarno Mazaret, former Lord Regent of this sad and withered place. I do not know why this party of strangers have come here but I fear the worst, thus any and all aid would be most welcome.” He turned back to Atroc. “I will be in the gardens, watching…”

The old Mogaun sketched a stiff bow. “Of course, lord.”

Ikarno Mazaret,
Ayoni thought as she watched the tall, spectral man stalk off along an overgrown path.
Who survived the final battle in the Lord of Twilight’s realm, according to the sagasongs.

“Come,” said Atroc. “We shall take a direct course.”

As he spoke, they all rose into the air along a curve that swept up and through the palace battlements to emerge within a large building outwith them, then ascended past empty broken floors to the loft where birds perched on rusting iron joists and the stumps of buttresses standing stark against the sky. At one end of the long, roofless attic, a pale figure stood staring up at something on a crumbling section of wall. As they approached, Ayoni could see that there were several tub-like contrivances jutting from the wall, each set at a different angle from the others, and it was through one of these that the stock figure of a man was peering.

“Ah, good,” the man said without looking round. “Thank you, Atroc, for bringing such noble guests to our regrettably ramshackle abode.” He gave them a sideways glance and smile. “I’m glad you are here and I hope that, as mages, you might be able to shed some light on the mysterious visitors who arrived here by sea several hours before that army of Ilgarion’s set up camp.” He straightened, turned and clasped his hands. “But firstly, introductions. This is Atroc, shaman and seer, as you may already know, and I am Chael Bardow, former Archmage to his imperial majesty Tauric the First, and you are…?”

“Ayoni, Countess of Harcas, and bound by outh and duty to the Order of Watchers,” she said.

“Nyls Chellour of Adnagaur,” Chellour said sardonically. “Likewise of the Order of Watchers.”

“Excellent,” Bardow said. “And the fact that you are currently imprisoned by that fool Ilgarion speak volumes to me about your character.”

“Pardon my asking, archmage,” Ayoni said. “But do you know much of what happens in Sejeend?”

“Not specifically,” Bardow said. “We pick up a few useful details about recent events from the pilgrims who travel to and from the city, although the more worthwhile comments come from others like traders, sailors and the like.”

“When they can be bothered actually talking about such matters among themselves,” Atroc said sourly.

“But occasionally I also come up here,” Bardow went on. “Not all of these neareye tubes are for looking up at the stars. But enough of these pleasantries — perhaps we should now proceed to the Keep of Day and see if they’ve let slip any revealing details.” He looked at Atroc. “Is Yasgur still on duty there?”

“Gilly has the watch now.”

“Good, and I am finished here for now…”

Ayoni smiled at him. “Archmage, I confess to being puzzled by both our and your presence here and in these form. Forgive me, but are you all ghosts and if so, then what of Chellour and myself?”

Bardow nodded as she spoke. “I likewise admit uncertainty, Countess. We seem ghostlike and are invisible to all the pilgrims and the few city residents, as well as most animals. We seem to inhabit an empty place congruent to this world, thus we are able to pass through solid objects since they are absent from where we truly are. Yet when people sleep and dream they take on a new form which is how Atroc was able to bring you here.

“But are we ghosts? That implies that we died and these pale shades are our spiritual residues — certainly I do remember my death in the realm of the Lord of Twilight, how I was cut down by those reptile-riders with their scythes, and how I later found myself wandering through the streets of Besh-Darok as singing, cheering crowds celebrated the fall of the Shadowkings and the collapse of their reign — yet none could see or hear me. Soon after, I encountered Ikarno Mazaret, his form as pallid as misty as my own, and his last recollection was the awful climax of that battle in the Lord of Twilight’s realm. Others like he and I arrived in Besh-Darok in the days and weeks following the end of the war, and every one had a similar tale to tell.”

“Who were they?” Ayoni said. “And where are they now?”

“They were mostly mages of one kind or another, or those who had been directly touched by either the Lesser Power or the Wellsource. The great majority of them simply moved on while we few stayed out of a sense of familiarity or attachment, or perhaps because we hope that one day long-lost faces will eventually show up, passing through.” There was a palpable sadness in his words. “But I do not think we are ghosts. More than a week after the phantom-like Ikarno Mazaret arrived here, he and I were to see the flesh and blood Mazaret ride in through the city gates. The same happened with Alael and Gilly, although our Gilly stayed here while the real one left for Cabringa.”

Chellour was intrigued. “So does that mean that Lord Mazaret watched himself….grow old?”

“He was there in the Court of the Morning when his beloved Suviel Hantika appeared amid a bed of flowers,” Bardow said. “And while his real self greeted her he could only stand there watching in silence.”

“How sad,” Ayoni murmured.
So that’s why he said he would be in the gardens.

“Alael had a similar experience, watching herself be crowned, then finding her way into the role of queen, ruling, commanding, weighing problems and crises, judging and punishing, or rewarding.”

“That must have been difficult for her,” said Ayoni.

The Archmage smiled faintly. “At some point I think she decided that this other Alael was just another, different person and her interest became less encompassing. But when the real Ikarno Mazaret passed away, at a crotchetty 82, there were two Alaels mourning by his deathbed. Our Mazaret avoided it, and the burial ceremonies.”

“Understandable,” Chellour said drily.

“So, ser Bardow, if you are not ghosts then what are you?” Ayoni said.