The Shadow Within (50 page)

Uncle Simon tried to warn you? Well, it’s nice to know I made
some
headway
with him, even if everything
has
gone over the walls by now
. He turned his thoughts back to the man in front of him. “We all make mistakes, Laramor. Had I made it clear from the start what I was, perhaps things would be different. And I doubt we could’ve stopped Rhiad anyway. Now, what can you tell me about this morwhol?”

The border lord met Abramm’s gaze for a long, hard minute, then gave a little nod and proceeded to tell them of the blood feud of Lords NakNaegl and Breen. “Breen was the Terstan,” he said, “NakNaegl the powerful warlock who commanded the ells. He created the beast and set it loose. It killed most of Breen’s family in its hunt, finally cornering Breen himself not far from where Breeton stands today, where it slowly tore him apart. Afterward, bound to him even in death, it stayed beside the remains, feeding on all who lived nearby or happened along. It took nearly fifty years to starve to death.”

“According to the record I found,” Madeleine interposed, “the beast was captured by its maker afterward and used to intimidate serfs until it turned on him and consumed him. That it was
his
remains it stayed with.”

Laramor shook his head, his clanlord earring glittering. “The beast turned on NakNaegl before it slew Breen. And it was NakNaegl’s son who claimed to have captured it, but it was really only a wolf in a cage.” His gaze came back to Abramm. “The beast itself was made for Breen and stayed with him until the end.”

“So if this one kills me here today,” Abramm said, “you’re saying it will stay and feed off people in Springerlan until everyone moves away. And Graymeer’s will be twice cursed.”

“I think it’s too young to kill you today, sir.” Laramor’s gray eyes met his own grimly. “Which is why
you
must find it first.” He proceeded to corroborate Abramm’s earlier speculation that it fed on the life energy of its victims, and that the more it killed the larger and stronger it would become.

“Then we have no time to lose,” Abramm announced when he had concluded, the old urgency rising up in him. “We ride to Graymeer’s.”

Laramor looked startled. “You know it’s there?”

“I do.” He told them what had transpired at the crofter’s hut. “It seems I have some kind of link with it. At least I hope I do.” It would be dreadful to waste the time riding all the way up there needlessly, but at the moment he had nothing else.

Laramor and Kesrin were exchanging frowning glances and then, as

Abramm was about to turn away, Kesrin said, “We would like to come along, sir. Perhaps we can be of assistance.”

“I’d welcome it, sir.” He glanced at the border lord. “But your friend here looks like he should be in bed.”

“Your uncle would say I always look like that,” Laramor retorted with a wry grin.

Abramm eyed them both, then gave his consent, wheeling Warbanner around to set him at a canter back up the Longstrand road and then south along the crest-line track to Graymeer’s. And all the way, he was beset with the recurring sensation that the beast he sought was actually seeking him, that it was not in Graymeer’s but following unseen somewhere in the surrounding mists, from which at any moment it might attack. That it had not, made him think the sensation was a ruse, designed to frighten him off, like the griiswurm auras. It also made him wonder if he’d guessed right after all, if perhaps the beast only wanted him to think it was at Graymeer’s, when it was actually fleeing across the headland in the opposite direction.

The final upthrust appeared without warning out of the mist, the ground taking a steep upturn as the trail turned crosswise to the slope. As they ascended the switchbacks to the ruin itself, the sound of the surf crashing in their ears, Abramm’s sense of imminent attack redoubled, his neck hairs rising again and again with the sense of something coming at him. Warbanner grew even more jumpy with his rider startling at every little clack and thump, and the desire to turn back became so intense it took all Abramm’s will to keep his hands from pulling the reins around.

They reached the top without incident, however, passing through the barbican and crumbling gateway into the mistbound outer yard, where the internal pressure fell suddenly and completely away. Unnerved, Abramm reined in Warbanner by the ashes and scorched earth that remained where his men had burned the griiswurm on their first visit. The mist hung thicker now than before, boiling around them as if disturbed by their presence, visibility only a few feet, even in the outer yard. Already the spawn were making a comeback, a few dark, tentacled shapes crawling alongside the road, a sprinkling of staffid unrolling between them and skittering away.

Unable to sense the creature’s eyes on him anymore, Abramm feared that he’d been right: the draw to Graymeer’s
was
a ruse. But when at last he dared to seek it, it was still there, no longer a looming menace, but a tiny ratlike thing, scrambling to escape his notice somewhere in the inner ward. He rode forward without comment, aware of his companions’ uneasy eyes upon him. Past the second gateway, he stopped beside the half-buried cannon at the foot of the ramp to the wallwalk. The mist was so close now, he wouldn’t have recognized the few feet of ramp that he could see had he not known it was there. Most of his companions were obscured, only Trap and Channon clearly visible, with Ethan Laramor a vague shape beyond them, Madeleine and Kesrin vaguer still. The others he could not see at all. Nor could he see any of the broken walls of the inner ward’s crumbling storage and living quarters, though he knew they lay before him.

He hesitated, seeking the way to go as he ignored the aversion that pulsed within him, the almost overwhelming compulsion to turn and leave.

And then the scene shifted.

He raced down a narrow corridor whose stuffy air was sharp with the tang of
spawn. Staffid lay hard and quiescent under his paws and a faint green light
glimmered ahead of him, gleaming off the irregular surface of the roughhewn,
griiswurm-covered walls. His urgency to escape was mounting. The Other must
not come near. Not yet. He needed the master. The master would know what to
do.

The light grew closer, brighter, and at last he burst into a familiar place—the
domed chamber with the pit full of spidery things swimming in their own secretions.
The master lay sleeping on the wall bench, cloaked in dark wool, his halfbarren
head pale in the green light
.

Abramm gasped and was back in the mistbound inner ward again, staring at the half-buried cannon. “They’re here,” he said, dismounting and striding into the mist. “The beast and Rhiad both. And the beast knows I’m after it.”

There was a scramble of activity behind him as the others dismounted and some hurried to catch up, but he barely noticed, all his awareness fixed upon the mind-scent of the creature he sought. Afterward, he could never say how he found his way—nor retrace his steps—but somehow he did, almost as if he were being drawn, despite the beast’s now-desperate attempts to ward him off. Again and again he was struck with the sense of imminent attack, wave after wave of neck-prickling alarm washing through him. Ironically, each incident, rather than increasing his fear, served only to strengthen his resolve, confirming his belief that none of them were real.

He was vaguely aware of men walking closely beside him, kelistars shining in their hands—
He nosed desperately at the sleeping man, whining. But the master would not
wake up. He knew the man wasn’t dead—the scent of life billowed out of him,
and blood still wept from the cut across his palm. And the blood . . . he paused to
sniff the wound, the aroma filling him with a golden rush of delight—then remembered
his need. The Other was coming! The Master must save him! Another
shove with his nose, another jostle with his paw. Wild with fear now, he nosed the
limp hand again and sank his needlelike teeth into the gnarled thumb. The master
leaped up, howling, and, seeing him, began to rage
.

Abramm blinked and came back to himself, jogging now down a narrow stair, with staffid scrambling away before him and griiswurm brushing his shoulder. The stair emptied into a long passageway walled in obsidian, equally choked with spawn. It smelled familiar, as if he had only moments before known this acrid stuffiness. Down the passage he went to a second short stair, green light glowing at its end. His heart began to pound.

But the great domed room with its green-lit pit at the bottom stood empty. He paused only an instant, then dashed for the left opening. Passages led to stairs to more passageways to more stairs, and finally he emerged in a low vaulted chamber, supported by three pair of squat stone pillars. At the far end stood a dais from which sprang another pillar, this of one red light. And at the base of the dais, a half-bald man with a silver braid carrying a small, doglike thing with heavy, maned shoulders and slim, dangling hindquarters. Abramm’s eyes darted back to the pillar of red, and suddenly his breath left him. That was the opening of a corridor through the etherworld!

If they reached it—

He bolted across the chamber, rapidly closing the gap as shouts rang out behind him—but the malformed pair had too much of a lead, and even as he ran, Abramm watched them fly up the low stairs and fling themselves toward the scarlet column. There was only one possible way to stop them.

As he launched himself after them he heard a shout of warning, felt a hard jerk on his cloak just as he collided with the corridor itself. The world erupted in a firestorm of white and red and green as the Shadow lurched up in him and residualized spore burst alive. A horrible screeching tore at his ears as a million fire-footed ants raced across his skin. He glimpsed a passage of impenetrable darkness, felt for a moment as if he were being turned inside out. Then the Light poured out of him, a vast current of it, that blasted upward through rock and earth and cloud and sky. Spears of it penetrated every passage the main beam crossed, flashing through all the warren that honeycombed the great rock under Graymeer’s.

Something slammed into him from behind, and suddenly he was lying on his back, gasping for breath in air turned biting and sulfurous. Shimmery violet afterimages danced before his eyes, and he wondered if he were even alive, though Tersius was not here to meet him and surely Eidon’s Garden of Light wouldn’t feel like this. . . .

When he could see again, he realized he lay on his back at the edge of the dais, still in the underground chamber. Someone lay beneath him, grunting and squirming in the effort to get free. Abramm rolled off him and sat up, not surprised to find it was Trap. “Are you all right?” he asked his liegeman.

Meridon sat up, as well, staring at Abramm oddly, then at something over his shoulder. “I think so,” he said. “What did you just do?”

“I thought I could destroy the corridor before they got through it. That if I touched it with the Light, I could do what Carissa did to the one Rhiad made back in Esurh.”

“You did more than that, though. You pulled the Light out of me.”

“And me,” Kesrin interjected, looking up at them from where he stood at the foot of the dais.

“And me.” Laramor stood at his shoulder.

“Me too,” added Madeleine, while Channon nodded agreement behind her.

Abramm stared at them in consternation. They were all looking at him quite oddly. “Well, not because I was trying,” he said finally. “I can’t even throw the Light reliably, let alone draw it out of someone else.”

They began to frown, exchanging puzzled glances. Kesrin shifted and swept the chamber with his eyes. “Nevertheless, you did. Maybe it has something to do with Graymeer’s itself. Something here that you tapped into.”

“Something like . . . what?”

“I don’t know.” He turned to scan the back of the chamber. “There are stories of the old kings and their impenetrable fortresses. Their ‘walls of fire’ and ‘hearts of flame.”’

“Yes!” Madeleine exclaimed, stepping up beside him. “During the age of the Kings of Light.”

Abramm frowned. “Those are myths, my lady. Wild things.”

“So say some of the story of the White Pretender, sir.” She smiled impishly at him, and he felt his face flame.

“Well, it’s not something we’re going to figure out today,” Trap said. “And we have more important concerns at the moment.” He gestured across the dais toward the corridor. “At least we can rest knowing no one will be coming back through
that
anytime soon.”

Abramm turned to look at the dark, smoking disk that was all that remained of the pillar of light. But instead of triumph, he felt only profound dismay.
I have no corpse to bring back to the lords. I may not have even killed the
thing
.

Trap, as usual, was on the same thought track, putting the uncertainty into words and adding, “You were sensing it before. Can you still?”

Abramm flung his senses outward, seeking the beast’s bitter mind-taste. A long moment he searched, then shook his head. “Nothing.” Not even the small ratty thing.

“It must be dead,” Madeleine concluded.

“They might just be out of range,” Laramor argued. “Young as it is, it’s not going to be that strong.” He gestured at the smoking disk. “My guess is that thing was part of what we in the Highlands call the Dark Ways, Shadow paths conjured by powerful warlocks to take a man leagues across the land in a heartbeat. One of them probably used it last night to help Rhiad make the creature. If your beast is alive, it’s likely up in the Highlands, and out of range.”

“So we’re back to not knowing,” Abramm said.

“I’m sorry, sir,” said Laramor. “Time will tell. If I’m right, it will be drawn back to you.”

“Killing as it goes,” said Abramm. “I’ve got to go after it, then.”

“No.” Kesrin’s quiet voice stopped him short. The kohal’s dark gaze flicked up to him. “You don’t, sir. In fact, you shouldn’t.”

“If it’s killing my people, kohal—”

“You don’t know that. You don’t even know it’s alive. Don’t you see?” He stepped up onto the bottom stair. “It’s a distraction. As Lieutenant Merivale just said, you have more important concerns.”