Shadowmasque (53 page)

With that, he excused himself to go and work on some of the others mens wounds. Calabos regarded him for a moment then returned to the alcove where the Daemonkind were resting. Qothan looked up.

“How are your wounds, friend Calabos?”

He held up his hand in answer, working the fingers.

“Cured, yet still in need of recuperation,” he said, sitting beside the hulking Daemonkind outrider.

“There may not be time for such,” Qothan said. “The woman Kerna wants to launch the rescue raid by the end of the next day, which means that we will have to be in position for it.” He gave Calabos a considering gaze. “Are you going to play a part, and will you wish to carry your blade?”

“Yes, and yes,” he said. “But let me ask you this — have you had occasion to employ sorcery since our arrival?”

Qothan exchanged looks with Viras and Yostil.

“Yes, and it was unnervinv experience.”

“Why?”

“The powers of the Israganthir derived from the Wellsource but through another part of the Void,” Qothan said. “Here, the flavour of it is tinged by other strains of power, and thus it behaves differently.”

Calabos nodded. “That’s what the Sleeping God said, that when the Lord of Twilight triumphed here, he seized the other powers and combined them with his own…but I’ve felt nothing through my undersenses, no feeling of power woven into the air and the surroundings as it is back home. Perhaps I should attempt to form a thought-canto but I’m unsure of the risk.” He snorted in self-reproach. “Truly, the timidity of an old man…”

“Calabos,” said Qothan. “I had not wished to mention it before now, but you no longer look like an old man. Since passing through, your hair and your beard have become utterly black and I see few lines in your face.”

Reflexively, Calabos reachd up to finger his beard, then squinted down at a tuft held out and saw black not grey curls, And a closer look at his hands and arms revealed fuller, more muscular flesh.

“Was it the journey here that has caused this?” Qothan said.

“Perhaps,” Calabos said. “Certainly, it greatly affected my mind. You should know, however, that my elderly appearance was an adopted disguise, whereas this is how I really look.”

“A mask,” said Viras. “To hide your long-lived nature.”

“Just so, although I also moved from place to place to keep from arousing suspicion…”

Just then, there were sounds of a commotion near the arched doorway at the rear of the chamber. Calabos glanced over to see a couple of Kerna’s Hornghosts struggling with a bald, gangling man in shabby garments whose protests quickly grew louder.

“Let me be, you…villains —
cutthroats
!….”

Calabos and the three Daemonkind drifted over to observe, along with most of Kerna’s warband, while she glanced once at the disturbance then contined her discussion with two of her serjeants. As Calabos drew near, Guldarem joined him from the side, indicating the beggarly captive.

“No need to go looking for old Culri,” the adept said. “He’s come to you!”

“…yer filthy hands off! — I seek the sword-bearer, the one who has crossed the unseen bridge!”

Calabos exchanged a look with Qothan, then looked back. The two brigands restraining the old man tried to bind his hands but he squalled and screeched and fought them. Certain that the old beggar had been referring to him, Calabos was about to speak up when Kerna finally stepped forward.

“What is all this racket? I can hardly hear myself think!”

“We spotted this old bag o’ bones skulking around in the lower halls,” said one of Culri’s captors. “When he tried climbing up the outer ledges, we grabbed him and brought up here.”

The old man ceased his struggles and glared at the speaker.

“Once there was a time when you were kinder to me, Losker,” he said. “But that was four or five half-deaths ago for you, back when you marched with Gonderlak…”

The man called Losker paled at this and Culris went on, passing his angry gaze across the gathered warriors. “There are others here I recognise, yes, almost half of you I knew well, but now you don’t know me at all….”

“There’s one thing I do know,” said Kerna, standing over him. “That I’m getting a headache listening to your drivelling!”

Culri regarded her with disapproval. “I knew you, too…”

“Do you know me, old man?” said Calabos, pushing to the front.

The moment he laid eyes on Calabos, joy flickered in his face then awe and a little fear. At a gesture from Kerna, the guards released him and he hesitantly went up to Calabos and studied him.

“What do you hope to find?” Calabos said, amused at this.

“So long, so long….only the absence of darkness,” Culri said. “I remember your face, Calabos, remember it despite the ocean of years that have washed through this realm of darkness….”

Kerna came over and addressed Calabos. “All right, he can stay for now, but once you’re finished questioning him he’s to leave. I don’t want him listening to what don’t concern him.”

“As you wish,” Calabos said and guided the old man over to the alcove as the other warriors lost interest and dispersed around the chamber. Culri glanced at the three Daemonkind for an amused moment, then faced Calabos before he could sit down.

“You’ll not succeed,” he said. “You’ll fail and end up in that ice prison of his, if you deny your nature!”

Calabos was taken aback. “We have skills and powers at our disposal and a weapon of surpassing might, which may mean little in the face of the Great Shadow’s hordes. But somehow we have to find a way into his courts to confront him there.”

“What an elaborate way to commit suicide,” Culri said with unconcealed derision. “Unless you accept the foundations of your nature.”

Calabos was silent a moment, coldly certain of the old man’s meaning.

“The ‘nature’, as you put it, is gone forever,” he said. “Torn out by the very blade which I have brought to this place with the intention of testing its powers on him!”

Culri shrugged. “The time will come and you will know what has to be done. In the meantime, just how do you imagine you’ll even get as far as his courts?”

Calabos smiled. “It is my understanding that this had been achieved at least once before.”

“Just the once, the culmination of Omizar’s campaign,” the old man said. “And he had the one thing that could unlock the Duskgeneral’s citadel — the armour of a Murknight.” Then he laughed. “Of course, he also had a huge army at his back…” Glancing around him at Kerna’s warband, he laughed again.

Calabos gritted his teeth and suppressed his irritation. “So how would I lay hands on a suit of Murknight armour?”

“By killing a Murknight.”

“Of course.”

Culri looked over his shoulder at Kerna who was glowering at him from the middle of the big room.

“I fear that my time here is almost done,” he said. “Look for Murknights after dark, mostly — they enforce the Duskgeneral’s orders to the high chiefs, and there is rivalry between them and the Overseers who see themselves as the hand of the Great Shadow….”

“Where would I find one?” Calabos said.

“Not on the streets, you may be sure. They’re the messengers of power so they’ll only leave the Citadel on missions of import…”

Two Hornghosts sauntered over to stand behind him, a silent warning. Culri shrugged and, pretending not to notice them, started to stroll towards the chamber entrance. But he paused to give Calabos a sidelong look.

“Only the half-death can make you forget your nature,” he said. “Do not squander the opportunity.”

Then, with a jaunty whistle, he passed through the shadowy doors and was gone, leaving Calabos caught between frustration and bleakness.

The fog of night cleared at last, revealing the eye-defying dark and close-packed roofscape of the Nightrealm, a black and glittering panorama of buildings crammed relentlessly against each other and sloping up towards a gloom-shrouded convergence. There was no source of true light, only the strange, all-pervasive ashen radiance so it was difficult to make far-away details or to gauge distances. But Calabos thought he could just discern a wide array of sheer cliffs with a huge fortification at their midpoint, reaching to their full height. It was, he reckoned, perhaps 50 or 60 miles away.

Here and there across the crowded, colossal city, tapering towers rose above the chaos of roofs and streets, each a leaden column with a bulbous bastion at its apex. One of Kerna’s serjeants told him that they were the tower fastnesses of the Overseers, and when Calabos asked where Kerna’s sister was being held, the man pointed to a cluster of squat, conical forts about 15 miles upslope.

“The Red Scabbard,” he said. “The lair of Grachek’s Daggerdogs.”

Calabos nodded, his mind turning over ideas for the forthcoming raid. A short while later he went to Kerna with a plan to which she listened carefully. When he finished she paced back and forth, mulling it over and occasionally glancing over at Qothan and the other Daemonkind. At last she nodded.

“I like it,” she said. “We’ll do it your way.”

The rest of that morning and afternoon the Hornghosts spent hurrying in twos and threes through less well-used streets on their way to the vicinity of the Red Scabbard. Due to their stature and the bulky visibility of their wings, the Daemonkind were forced to travel across the rooftops while watching for any observers, above or below. Calabos, accompanied by two of Kerna’s most skilled men, followed her own route through the ebony districts and was the last to arrive. By the first onset of evening, everyone was in position and the raid began.

Posing as Overseers, Qothan, Viras and Yostil forced their way into Grachek’s Red Scabbard fortress under the pretext of an inspection demanded by the Great Shadow himself. With this assertion they demanded and got access to the prison levels, leading various officials and warders through the cell-flanked passages while Kerna and the Hornghosts followed, eliminating guards and barricading doors into other areas of the Scabbard. Calabos was with Kerna, guarding the approaches when news came back that her sister Nilka had been found alive. When she finally appeared with Qothan and the others, looking battered and bruised, Calabos was privately amazed to see that she was indeed Kerna’s twin. Yet Nilka was possessed of a vibrant charisma that made Kerna seem mild and easygoing by comparison.

But misfortune struck as they retraced their steps out of the prison corridors. The balconied entrance hall by which they had entered was the scene of fighting as Hornghosts battled Daggerdogs in shadowy, pillared cloisters. A burly, one-eyed man in skins and wood armour emerged onto the overlooking balcony and bawled, “Lay down your weapons! — You’re outnumbered, you can’t win! Surrender and I’ll promise you a quick half-death, no torture…”

It was Grachek. Then, behind him, another figure came into view, at which many of the Hornghosts muttered fearfully. It was a man in a full suit of armour which shimmered smokily and whose visor was sculpted like a face. The dark figure casually crossed its arms, as if relaxed and expecting some entertainment.

“A Murknight,” Kerna muttered to her sister who spat an oath and ordered her men to close ranks.

Calabos stared up at the newcomer, at the armour, then in farspeech said;
Qothan, get me up there
!

Immediately, the Murknight unfolded his arms and the visor face spoke; “Who are you?”

But Qothan and Viras already had Calabos in their grip and were lifting him up onto the balcony. Grachek tried attacking with an axe but a sweeping wingtalon pitched him over the balcony. The Murknight drew his own heavy blade to meet Calabos’ weapon, the sword of powers, and at the first clash the Murknight’s blade shattered. Yet even as the Murknight flung the useless sword aside his free hand flared with emerald power and jagged bolts sprang forth. As Calabos and the Daemonkind countered this attack, their enemy whirled and dashed away along an upper corridor.

Calabos, Qothan and Viras gave chase, eventually cornering him in a high chamber decked with banners and grim trophies. Prepared for the Murknight’s attacks, Qothan and Viras were swift to lay hands on him and tear him limb from limb. But when the first arms was wrenched from the shoulder not blood but a heavy black vapour poured forth. At the same time, all resistance ceased and the black-encased form fell apart in the Daemonkinds’ grip, armoured section clattering to the floor amid boiling gouts of the same black, leaden mist.

By the time Calabos and the Daemonkind rejoined the Hornghosts, with the Murknight armour lashed to Qothan’s back, Daggerdog reinforcements were arriving. Led by Kerna and Nilka, the Hornghosts withdrew from the Red Scabbard along planned escape routes through tortuous back alley mazes choked with icy night fog. The pre-arranged meeting place was the top floor of an abandoned chapterhouse, by a ruined Skyhorse temple. But when Calabos and the Daemonkind reached it, someone was waiting for them — the old man, Culri.

“So you got the armour,” he said. “Did the Murknight give you a good fight?”

It was a long room of rotten floorboards, cracked rafters and large gaps in the roof tiles through which the chill moistness of the night vapours trickled.

“The thing dissolved,” Calabos said. “Melted away into black smoke. What are they?”

“It is said that they are all sorcerous images of one man, one of the Great Shadow’s enemies from the earliest age of the Nightrealm.” The old man tightened a ragged brown cloak about his shoulders and met Calabos’ gaze. “But listen — there is news from across the realm, news that I’m sure you will find intriguing.”

Calabos glanced at Qothan who had doffed the burden of armour and was retying the pieces into a more comfortable load. Qothan gave a wintry smile and a faint shrug.

“So what’s your news?” Calabos said. “Don’t tell me that street crime has risen again.”

Culris laughed darkly.

“One of the Overseer strongholds, Orlag Tower, has fallen to the new chieftain of the Roaring Gauntlets, an easterly militia army. This chieftain rose from being the headman of a petty warband just a few days ago, and already he’s challenging the Nightrealm’s rulers. Do you want to know his name?”