Shadowmasque (58 page)

To the left of the arch a wide, plain stairway led up a dozen steps or so to an open gate in the cliffedge battlements, passing between two slender and seemingly unmanned guard towers.

The Duskgeneral’s masked wife was sitting on a low retaining wall that curved along to the foot of the cliff steps, and watching him closely.

“What will you do if you succeed?” she said. “Will you free everyone from the White Prison, and replace them with us?” She shivered. “It might be interesting to see them emerge, to see her..” She glanced over her shoulder at the cliffs. “Sometimes, when I come up here, I can hear her calling to me — sometimes I can hear her weeping…” She stood and walked over to stare down at the Nightrealm. “I’ve been alive too long, too many sights, too many memories. Perhaps you should kill me after all — the half-death might be a blessing, if that is what is in store for such as I…”

“I don’t know what will happen if I succeed,” Calabos said. “All this will change…”

“You could change that face of yours,” she said. “Or mine — would you do that for me?”

He stared at her, with a cloud of half-suspicions coalescing in his thoughts.

“Well, since you’ve seen my face,” he said, “Won’t you show me yours, that I may come to the correct decision?”

“As you wish, ser.”

And when the feathered mask was removed, he saw that it was indeed Suviel Hantika.

He smiled sadly and fitted the Murknight helm back on his head, then adjusted the harnessing of the scabbard so that the sword of powers was in the right position for drawing over the shoulder.

“Have a care, lady,” he said. “I am neither of those that you imagined me to be, but if Byrnak does come this way he would not hesitate to slay you.”

Without another word, he strode away from her and began to mount the stairs that led to the dreamcourts of the Great Shadow.

* * *

When he left Tashil and Ayoni on that bushy slope, Coireg had been on the point of rebelling against his terrible duty. But he had already given the directions of their journey to Besarl and the others earlier so while fear and doubt racked him, the Daemonkind loyally lifted him into the night sky and commenced the flight towards Besdarok.

Now is my fate sealed, he thought. All the knots and mazes of my life straighten out and I have become like an arrow or a swordpoint speeding towards my target.

They flew across the dark straits of the Great Canal, the wide waterway created by the defeat of the Shadowkings when the dread towers Gorla and Keshada and their vast, encircling fortifications had collapsed into the tormented depths. A few moments later only the faint, radiant greyness of the Blight was beneath them, a smooth blanket whose dips and bumps were the only indication of natural landmarks, now smothered. The Daemonkind banked north and before long a wide stretch of the canal came into view in the darkness, a place where either bank bulged outward for this was where Keshada had stood three centuries ago.

The Daemonkind slowed and Besarl spoke above the flap and rush of beating wings.

“Is this close enough, friend Coireg?”

“Yes, but should we perhaps be lower…”

Besarl laughed. “Have no worries — we shall no relax our grip and soon you shall be pastwalking with us in the Pit of Time.”

Coireg nodded, trying to feel assured and calm even though his stomach was churning and his heart was racing. He knew that Captain Ondene had experienced this leap through time, as had Calabos and it was the latter’s account which was going through his mind, at least the unsettling parts thereof. He tried to tell himself to look forward to the unknown, to expect some kind of exhilaration…then Besarl said;

“Now, friend Coireg — close tight your eyes!”

Even as he did, his sense began to shift and gave the impression that he was suddenly moving in a circle very quickly. And although his eyes were shut, grey threads leaked into his vision from either side, turning silver as they interwove, then white as they began to coil into the centre. Then the spiralling hub of it surged towards him and he cried out as his sense of balance swung to and fro. His ears were full of his own voice and panicky breathing, hissing and roaring…but after an interminable time these sounds grew quieter and more rhythmic, even as the inpouring white traceries lost their meshlike texture, merging into an irregular whiteness rushing by beneath him…

A snowy landscape, its purity broken by trees, farmhouses, fences, and there was the rhythmic beating of Daemonkind wings bearing him through the sky. Ahead the towering mass of Keshada loomed and below he could see where a great number of riders had recently passed, churning the snow and mud right up to the tower’s wide open gates.

“Shall we enter?” Besarl said.

Shivering, Coireg pointed up. “The ramparts…will be quicker.”

The alighted on a deserted parapet where only grey banners moved listlessly in the fitful icy breeze. Coireg warmed himself by beating his hands against arms and legs, and thought of the journey that lay ahead, through Keshada to the chambers where the Lord of Twilight’s realm had started to invade the world. From there they would fly across the Realm of Dusk to the vicinity of Hewn Mountain where he would discover if the Sleeping God’s buried imperative would take them all into the death throes of the old after all, would carry them safely into the black dream of a ruined world….

Ikarno Mazaret would be there, fighting for dear life along with the rest, Bardow and Yasgur, Suviel and Gilly, Tauric and the witchhorses. But he would see none of them and would be unable to save any of them.

“I once had a brother,” he told Besarl as the Daemonkind handed him a torn, discarded tabard. “I wish he could have know that I defeated my inner darkness and found the strength to stand against the outer. But even now he’ll not know.”

“All that arises from the Void returns to the Void,” Besarl said. “If you have done this, he will know.”

Coireg thought on this for a long, illuminated moment, then bowed deeply. “Thank you, Besarl, for such a kind and graceful comment — I am changed by your words.”

“This is as it should be, friend Coireg,” the Daemonkind said. “Shall we commence?”

“We shall.”

As Besarl led the way into the halls of Keshada, Coireg thought —
So this is the end which becomes the beginning, but will the beginning take us to a worthy end?

From the mountains I came,
With a song and a smile,
But it is with torch and sword,
That I descend into the abyss.

—Gundal,
The Doom Of Gleoras
, ch2, v.

Hand over hand, with fingers punching holes and ledges in the sheer rock face, Byrnak climbed towards the fortified dreamcourts of the Great Shadow. Below, the siege raged, with the most intense fighting taking place around two immense holes which the Mawl had bored in the outer wall before the defenders destroyed it with well-aimed sections of masonry. There was also a savage clash on one of the lower ramparts from which scaling ladders and nets hung.

It was a satisfyingly brutal sight. His demolition of Orlag Tower had earned him a reputation for ruthless, irresistible purpose which he turned to good account in his dealings with other district chieftains and leaders. Almost as important were the adepts who were drawn to his own overt mastery of the Wellsource, and persuaded by promises of tuition to pledge their loyalty.

The higher he climbed, the harder it was distinguish among the press of warriors at the foot of the Citadel. The glimmering gloom blurred details and reduced those struggling thousands to a heaving, dark grey mass. Glancing down for a moment, he laughed and continued his ascent. It was every bit as spectacular a diversion as he could have wished for.

When he was about half way up he changed direction and traversed the cliff face towards the citadel and leaped onto a wide, ostentatiously-carved balcony. From there he rose through the remaining floors of the citadel, killing all he met. Crowds of foppish, masked people screamed and ran from the bifurcated black shard of a sword with which he slew and maimed.

This is the full pleasure of dominion,
Byrnak thought.
And when I throw down the unworthy lord of this realm, I shall bring a new order to its every road and life. I shall need every hand and every back when I begin the true conquest of all the other worlds that lie beyond.

As he strode bloody-handed through the halls, he turned part of his perceptions inward, curious to know if the original spirit of this host body was conscious of all that was transpiring. Past inspiralling veils Byrnak’s inner eye flew till he came upon a narrow place where the opaque core of the man Ondene still resided, a misty knot of images and memories wrapped tightly around a dull spark, the embers of his hope, no doubt.

At last he reached a cold chamber and a curved ramp that led to the very roof of the citadel itself. Out in the icy darkness, with the silver-grey cliffside battlements stretching out to either side, Byrnak stood right at the edge of the rooftop platform, staring out over the Nightrealm, and roared and laughed in triumph and defiance. Then he turned to face the fortified cliffs and the great stairway that rose to an open gate, and with an easy agility ran across to climb the steps three at a time.

Slender towers topped by lookout chambers flanked the gate but both were as vacant as the flagstone street beyond. Yet for all the absence of guards or anyone, the sense of being watched by innumerable observers was all-pervading. Poised on the gate threshold, Byrnak glared at the dark windows of a tall, elaborate, flat-roofed building opposite, certain that he had glimpsed figures at them. Then he stepped across the threshold — and the building faded from sight as another, smaller one with steep, peaked roofs slowly appeared in its place. Moments later, it too dissolved into a pillared temple with a bell tower jutting into the road.

Such transformations were taking place all around him as he walked warily along the street that led straight on from the gate. A city of silent, impermanent buildings, walls and gables that melted into one another, doors that stretched into yard entrances, archways that shrank to windows. And roads which changed direction, became deadends, or even grew new junctions and side-streets.

Byrnak glowered as the road he was following was suddenly cut of by the flowing appearance of a row of terraced houses, just as a large villa on his right parted to reveal a new turning. He knew that he was being steered through this flickering, hazy maze, and knew that he could seize control of it if he wanted, and freeze everything in place.

“Play your games,” he bellowed to the changing waves of masonry. “It will only delay your doom, not alter it!”

As he strode down the opened way, other details came to his notice, like the huge, dark columns that rose from the midst of these mutable courts and stretched up to vanish in the upper darkness. Also, as nearby buildings and those beyond twisted through their changes, he would occasionally catch a glimpse of something else as changeless as the towering columns, a massive, sloping dais almost half a mile away, up whose face a rack of steps rose to a wide platform where there was a throne in the shape of a huge, upraised sword. Behind the throne was a pale grey, faintly mottled wall stretching some distance above and to either side, while upon the throne itself…

Was there a shadow-swathed figure seated there? Did burning eyes full of ancient hate gaze steadily across that intervening distance? Byrnak could make out no details but did feel the pressure of that implacable presence, to which he uttered a burst of harsh laughter and walked on.

Roads closed and roads opened, alleys turned back on themselves, stairways became bridges. Then the street he was following narrowed to a brick passage ending in an antechamber with an archway which led out to a pillared cloister encircling the pack earth of an arena. Tiers of seats banked back on all sides, and they were crowded with onlookers, only it was a crowd as wayward and spectral as the buildings of the Great Shadow’s dreamcourts. And just as silent.

But Byrnak was unconcerned with such spectators, knowing that his arrival her presaged a duel with either the Great Shadow himself or his champion. Would it be the Duskgeneral, he wondered, or some other monstrous servant?

“I am ready,” he bawled to the wavering watchers. “Come forth to your defeat!”

For a moment, nothing, only the jostling crowds, soundlessly laughing and talking, changing seats, pointing down at the arena floor, all a fluctuating throng. Then a figure emerged from the shadowed cloisters on the other side, a man garbed in the armour of a Murknight and carrying a longsword on his back. Yet he knew immediately that this was not the Duskgeneral — he what aura-taste to expect from that one. No, this was another….who nevertheless provoked an undercurrent of familiarity in him.

“Who are you?” he sneered. “What feeble opponent has the Great Nothing sent out in his cowardly stead?”

The Murknight made no reply, instead reached for the hilt jutting over his shoulder and drawing out a long, straight blade which glittered silver and green. As Byrnak looked at it, something in him quailed.

“I have come here to put an end to gods and would-be gods,” the Murknight said. ”Not to grovel before them.”

Byrnak’s anger at the thread of quivering fear within surged into rage at these words. “You’ll do more than grovel when I’m done with you!” he snarled, then drew his own sword and charged.

* * *

Calabos had followed a similar route through the maze city, more than once pausing to glance backwards when he felt that he was being followed. But when he saw no-one he continued on his way past the variable exteriors of buildings and down the roads which seemed to beckon to him. He was crossing a stone bridge, whose balustrade decoration changed three times in his way across, when running footsteps made him turn quickly, hand reaching for his sword.

But it was the old man Culri who came to a staggering halt before him, bending to lean on his knees, gasping for breath.

“Curse these….deranged….streets….”