Shadowmasque (38 page)

“Is anything wrong, master?” Vorik said.

Jumil shook his head, thoughtfully at first then dismissively.

“Just our Shadowking friend — he’s up to something but it doesn’t seem threatening.”

Vorik shrugged then led the group the last dozen yards to the gate. The guards knew him well and on the strength of his authority as an Iron Guard officer, all the Nightkin were admitted, along with Jumil who was posing as an official recording scribe sent by the Academy. Once they were all through, Vorik glanced over his shoulder as the gate swung shut.

When I pass this was again, he thought, the world will be a very different place.

* * *

Almost two hours before Vorik and Jumil departed Hojamar Keep, Calabos and Coireg Mazaret were navigating the polished wooden passageways of the Daemonkind ship, Stormclaw, seeking out a chamber called the Auracle where a grave conferral was to take place. After the battles and terrors of the night’s chaos, Qothan had announced that the Stormclaw had returned to Sejeend and the clade chiefs were preparing to offer the Watchers sanctuary in accordance with the safe passage guaranteed by High Steward Roldur. Everyone gratefully agreed to this proposal but firstly they had to find a shrouder who would prepare the body of Tashil’s brother, Atemor, for a Mogaun burial. Then they collected Dybel and Enklar from the storehouse where they had sought refuge the previous night, after which they hastened along to the lesser quays beyond the Silver Landings where the Stormclaw and other vessels were forced to berth.

Everything about the ship was a surprise to Calabos, who could still recall the fragments of Byrnak’s knowledge of the Daemonkind. They had been the first and mightiest of the Lord of Twilight’s servants, raised out of darkness and the mindlessness of beasthood, bestowed with an unshakeable sense of honour and duty and gifted with their own source of powers, their own conduit to the primal forces of the Void. But the defeat of their master at the end of the Great Shadowking War had both exiled them from their home, the Realm of Ruin, and diminished their powers. So when they chose to leave the continent Toluveras, they decided to take on human form as a disguise to avoid and evade suspicion and retribution. Calabos had actually picked up a few thin rumours suggesting this years after the extravagant conflict, when he Coireg had sought seclusion in northern Ebro’Heth to rest and forget.

Now, as he walked these corridors, he marvelled at the quality of the expressive workmanship he saw, having never suspected that these former servants could be capable of such skill. He had not known what to expect from the Stormclaw — which had apparently been some kind of trading dromond beforehand — but the Daemonkind had made it wholly their own.

The lines of door frames and ceiling beams had all been pared down to graceful curves and although polished carvings were visible everywhere there was no sense of overpowering ornamentation. The images of wings and winged creatures had been worked into panel borders and wallposts or were the subjects of bulkhead mosaics in mother-of-pearl. Occasionally, he saw in the centre of wall panels or on decorative ceiling roundels the image of a curled-up and sleeping figure.

The Sleeping God,
he thought.

At last Coireg came to a halt before a red wood door bearing an odd device, a ring of 12 eyes inlaid in silver and mother-of-pearl. He knocked sharply three times then entered, with Calabos following.

“Greetings, friends Calabos and Coireg.”

Qothan was standing at the centre of an oval chamber, next to four inward-facing ceremonial chairs. In one of them was a bearded man in black and grey robes, who watched the newcomers with impassive eyes.

“Ser Calabos,” Qothan continued, “Permit me to introduce you to my chieftain, Prince Agasklin.”

Aglaskin rose to meet Calabos who looked him steadily in the eye, trying to discern the Daemonkind behind the appearance. For neither man gave ground, then a brittle smile crept across Agasklin’s features as he extended a large hand which Calabos grasped.

“It is an honour to meet the author of the ‘Great Shadowking War’,” Agasklin said.

Calabos hesitated to respond for a moment, wondering if the chieftain himself or, more sardonically, Byrnak. Then he decided that no pointed ambiguity was intended and gave a nod of acknowledgement.

“You are too kind,” he said. “It was my first prose work of ambition thus I’m always surprised when it garners approval — were I writing it today, certain aspects would be executed in a different manner.”

“A natural sentiment, friend Calabos,” Agasklin said. “All the works of hand and mind appear flawed in hindsight. Our own actions, for example, have been intended to constrain the scope and harmfulness of the dark sorcerer, Jumil, yet they have instead served to complicate matters.”

“This is undoubtedly true,” Calabos said. “But it is also the case that we are hampered by a lack of knowledge or understanding of Jumil’s motives.”

“This is what we hope to address now,” Qothan said. “This auracle chamber has certain properties which will allow us to conduct a conferral with the chieftains of our sister-ship, the Seafang. In the course of which we shall attempt to speak with deeper forces in the Void and elsewhere, to see if we can learn more about this ritual that one of your Watchers witnessed in Besh-Darok.”

Agasklin nodded in confirmation. “To that end we have decided to invite you both to take part in the conferral, a privilege very rarely granted to those outside the crews.”

Calabos glanced at Coireg and saw a troubled frown on his face.

“Would this be difficult for you?” he said.

Coireg shrugged. “I’m worried about how it might affect the unstable part of my mind, true.”

“You will not experience any disruption,” said Qothan. “The calmative elixir works on the flows in the brain, at a level which is untouched by the group thoughts of the conferral.”

Coireg seemed interested in this yet the tension in him did not ease. “If I were to display any signs of reversion to that derangement…would you be able to help in some way?”

“Isolating you from the conferral would be easy to do,” Qothan said. “Do not worry, friend Coireg.”

“Very well, I would be pleased and honoured to be part of this ceremony,” Coireg said, visibly determined

Yet Calabos could still tell how uneasy he was and could entirely understand the fear of losing himself to a pitiless devouring thing in the mind.

When I first saw those spirit-wraiths, he thought, my terror was like a coiling fog which threatened to choke my every rational thought. The mere memory of the presence which had once sat enthroned in my head is still enough to cast a pall across the senses — how much worse must it be for Coireg who still carries a monster within, for all that it’s locked away.

“Then we shall commence,” Agasklin said, indicating for Calabos and Coireg to sit in two of the four central chairs, with the fourth taken by Qothan. At the same time, other Daemonkind begen entering the room, eight in all who found places among the twelve chairs spaced around the wall of the oval chamber. Calabos noticed the twelve painted divisions on the ceiling and the elaborate floor tiling which mirrored them, and the dark smoothness of his chair’s armrests, and the ochre bees embroidered on the dark green cushioning, and the cloudy, crystalline stones set into the carven, high backs. And the stern looks, some disapproving, which he got from Agasklin’s fellow chieftains as they settled into their seats.

All gradually fell silent and an air of sombre expectancy took hold. After a moment Agasklin began to recite some kind of rhythmic verse in a tongue that Calabos at first did not recognise, then Qothan joined in, followed a verse later by one of the chieftains and so on until they were all intoning an intricate interwoven pattern of words. As a faint pearliness grew in the air, touching everything with a softening aura, Calabos felt the hairs on his arms rise, a sure sign of gathering power.

Then ghostly outlines began to appear, wavering shapes of figures seated in chairs similar to the four at the centre only positioned between them, thus giving the impression of eight chairs facing inwards. And outwith them was another spectral circle of chairs occupied by the opaque forms of Daemonkind chieftains.

“I bid you welcome to this conferral, brothers and sisters,” said Agasklin. “How fares the Seafang and her crew?”

“Our sails spread wide,” said one of the ghostly chieftains in the inner circle, an elderly -looking man with grey wipsy hair. “And our hull flies over the waves. And the Stormclaw?”

“Tight-drawn is the glamour that conceals our nature, Sunyoril,” Agasklin said. “And full-ready with weapons is our crew, for the enemy must now suspect our existence after we moved against the talisman bearers of the undead host.”

“The enemy Jumil is difficult to fathom,” said Sunyoril. “The burning of the tower at the palace, the attack of that vile revenant fleet, the recreation of a Shadowking, and now the disturbing rites that his agents are undertaking — all part of something, but what?”

Calabos straightened, suddenly intent.

“Ser, forgive my interruption,” he said. “We have thus far known of only one ritual, in the ruined palace at Besh-Darok — do you know of other?”

The chieftain Sunyoril looked at him with opaque eyes that considered him for a tense moment.

“Ser Calabos,” he said. “We welcome your presence here. Be aware that another three of these rituals have been completed in the last day and a half — one southwest of Sejeend, perhaps on the Ramyr peninsula but more likely in Adnagaur itself; one far to the south, somewhere near Oumetra; and a fourth to the west, in Alvergost.”

Calabos sat back, stunned, suddenly recalling Jumil’s dread words in the bone cave —
‘It shall be ours again, remade forever in reflection of the Great Shadow’s will.’

“He really means it,” he murmured. “He really does mean to remake the world and these rituals are intended to begin the process of destroying….everything.” He quickly related what Ayoni had told him about the rite in Besh-Darok and the resulting grey blight. Stern faces became grim, even angry.

“How long would it take for these patches of devouring grey to spread across the land?” said a frowning Agasklin.

“Who can tell,” Calabos said. “Slowly if they are isolated or fenced off, faster if living creatures are trapped by them. But then, for all we know, there may be more rituals to come that could accelerate the process…”

“We have to put a stop to this abomination,” said one of the chieftains.

“Four sites, scattered across the western half of the continent?” said another. “Both our crews combined would not be enough to tackle such a task.”

“We cannot stand by and do nothing.”

“It is not our concern — there are other lands across the seas…”

“Face it now or face it in a year, two year — that’s the real choice.”

“There must be some way of neutralising it.”

Then out of the babble a single voice spoke forth.

“There is a way — seize the sorcerer Jumil and force him to reverse the effects of the rites,” said Coireg Mazaret who was now standing. “If he refuses — slay him.”

Calabos looked at his old friend, saw the iron resolve born of centuries of mental torment and knew that he was right.

“Yet Jumil is very powerful,” Calabos said. “I don’t think that he has yet exerted even a quarter of his full might.”

Coireg met his gaze and nodded sombrely. “It would be an arduous undertaking against mundane foes as well as sorcerous ones, and we may have to face the Ondene-Shadowking as well. But this Jumil is the source of all the woes and catastrophes that have afflicted Sejeend and now other unfortunate places…” He glanced about him, looking suddenly nervous at being the focus of attention. “Thus if we remove him from the picture, our situation can only improve. Than you for listening to me, honoured chieftains…”

Voice trailing off, he quickly sat down but just as quickly voice were raise in approval and to urge action. Coireg looked over at Calabos who nodded, feeling strangely proud of his friend — his impassioned plea had clearly stirred the Daemonkind chieftains into a furor. Yet not all were in favour and about three separate arguments were going on around the auracle chamber. Agasklin and Qothan were having an animated discussion with the translucent Sunyoril and Calabos was about to break in when he noticed a sudden lessening in the babble and looked up to see two more ghostly figures standing on either side of the inner circle of chairs. Both resembled old men carrying staffs and both were attired in jewelled, ceremonial armour, fine silver chainmail for one, golden, overlapping scale mail for the other. Confused, Calabos turned to Qothan who murmured, “The captains!”

As a respectful hush settled on all, Calabos looked from one apparition to the other, wondering which was Pericogal, captain of the Stormclaw.

“Such a secret enemy is this Jumil,”
said the one in gold, his agitated voice overlaid with strange sighing echoes.
“He has seeded the land with spores of corruption which will eat out the heart of the world if unchecked. Ruin beckons! — to refuse to act is to condemn all to destruction!”

Then the one clad in silver spoke;

“In all the centuries of our long exile,”
he said,
“caution and stealth have been our watchwords, which have served us well even during our sojourn in the lands of Araphel and Ogreina. But the danger we now face is unlike any of the other perils that we encountered on our travels — the fate of peoples and nations is at stake and it is our fate to play a pivotal role.”
He pause to survey his audience for a moment.
“And yet this is not new — we have been in this position before.”

There were murmurs of disquiet.

“I think you know of what I speak,”
he went on.
“Three centuries ago, the Israganthir allowed themselves to be used in the Shadowkings’ schemes, blinded by ancient ties of loyalty and trust to a godhead which had been perverted by an incautious transformation. I am now almost the only one left who witnessed it all, from the vaunting greed of unrestrained ambition to the ignominy of utter defeat. And when we, your forebears, set out on our exiles’ voyage, we wore that we would only serve out of a duty to the wellbeing of all.”
He then looked at Calabos.
“Honoured Calabos, you are living proof that the past need not become a burden of madness and death for the future. Therefore we shall stand with you in this struggle and follow the suggestion of friend Mazaret. Jumil is the one responsible, therefore we shall move to take him prisoner.”