Sagaria (81 page)

The climb seemed to go on forever. Samzing managed to display something of a swagger, but the others following (Perima first and then Sagandran who was constantly turning to check for an attack from the rear) were less successful in their portrayals of bravado. Only Flip, who’d decided for some inscrutable reason that it was easier to run up the curving banister than to be carried
in Sagandran’s pocket, seemed to share any of the wizard’s assurance. As he scurried upward on the metal rail, the little fellow sang the song he’d tried to teach them long ago:

Sagandran wasn’t sure that it cheered any of them up except Flip, but it was a relief from listening to nothing but their own grunts of exertion as they climbed, and the clang of their own feet on the iron treads.

Every minute or two they stopped by mutual agreement, ostensibly to listen out for the sound of others on the stairway, but also largely to catch their breath. It was during one of these pauses that Sagandran’s torch abruptly guttered and went out.

“That’s odd,” he said, staring at it in the uncertain light from Samzing’s brand above. “It was burning quite healthily just a moment ago. I thought it had plenty of life left in it yet.”

“Another sign,” came Samzing’s voice, echoing down the stairway, “that Arkanamon’s anticipating our arrival. That was no natural draft that extinguished your flame. Indeed, I expect that at any second—ah, just as I predicted.”

The second torch, the one held by the wizard, suddenly died. The companions were plunged into almost total darkness.

Sagandran, who’d sheathed Xaraxeer before commencing the ascent, drew out the weapon again, and once more it shone its gilded light upon them. However, the blade’s glow seemed a little dimmer than usual.

“Arkanamon’s magic is affecting the Lightbringer as well,” said Samzing, confirming Sagandran’s thought.

They resumed the climb. With only the dulled light from the sword to guide them, they had to move cautiously, and more than once Sagandran missed his next step and stubbed his toe painfully on its edge. He was reminded of the time there was a power outage at home, just as he got home from school, and he’d had to climb the unlit stairs to the family apartment one by one by one, feeling for each step before taking it.

“Flip,” said Samzing, “how well can you see in the dark?”

“Better, I think, than the rest of you.”

“Could you run up ahead of us, then, and see if there are any hazards lying in wait for us?”

“On my own?” squeaked Flip.

“Unless Memo would like to go with you. He’s the only other one who can use the banister rather than the stairs.”

“I’m asleep,” came a muffled but determined voice from the wizard’s pocket.

“On your own then, Flip,” continued the wizard smoothly. “Do you think you could manage that, little friend?”

“I–I suppose so.”

Sagandran gave Flip, who was alongside him, what he hoped was an encouraging smile. “I’m sure you can do it.”

“So glad one of us can,” muttered the rodent. In a louder voice, he said, “Okay. Here I come. As they always say, no danger is too great for the Adventurer Extraordinaire!”

With a rattle of claws he vanished into the gloom above. Within a surprisingly short time, he was back.

“We’re close to the end!” he cried. “Just keep on going for another minute or two and you’re there.”

“You’re sure?” said Samzing.

“Think I’d lie about something like this?”

The wizard let the question pass.

Sure enough, they were soon on a landing barely large enough to hold them all. Sagandran, with Perima by his side, looked over the banister into the darkness through which they’d just ascended. He swallowed. It seemed even a longer distance down than the climb had been. The door leading off the cramped landing was made of simple, unadorned wood with a wooden handle.

“I suppose it’s through here that we have to go,” said Sagandran, doing his best to sound positive.

“No time like the present,” prompted Samzing.

Sagandran pressed on the wooden handle and the door creaked open.

There was a little more light in the plain, unfurnished room beyond, than there had been on the stairs. It was a pale, silvery glow that seemed to come from all directions at once, as if someone had brought a few handfuls of the sorry shine from the Shadow World’s disconsolate moon. Even so, the lure of the light was enough to bring the companions pressing into the room close on Sagandran’s heels.

The air was unnaturally chilly. Sagandran could see his breath pluming in front of him.

No sooner were they all inside than the door slammed behind them.

Sagandran turned to tug at the handle, but even as he did so he knew that it was pointless. The sound of the closing door had told him as clearly as words could that it would not be opening again until whoever had slammed it permitted.

“Trapped,” breathed Perima.

Her single word was answered by the extinction of all light in the room. The last glimmer of Xaraxeer’s blade died. The companions were lost in black darkness.

“Where are we?” whispered Sagandran.

“You, boy, are home at last,” said a cold, dark, inhuman voice from all around, as if the air were speaking to them. “The rest of you, you are trespassers in my realm.”

“Arkanamon!” said Samzing loudly. “We have unfinished business, you and I.”

“I’ll finish it soon enough.” The unearthly voice gave a little snicker of derisive laughter. The sound was like fingernails scraping across a blackboard.

“Show yourself, coward.” There wasn’t the slightest trace of uncertainty in Perima’s voice. To all intents and purposes, she was a Princess Royal imperiously demanding the obedience of a subject.

Again, there was the horrible scraping noise.

“Coward,” she repeated.

The scraping stopped.

Sagandran squeezed her hand.
Well done. You placed that barb with skill
. A moment before, he’d been resigned to them all being consigned to some ghastly fate, powerless to resist the Shadow Master. Now there was at least a seed of hope germinating in him. Perima’s defiance had reminded him of what the prophecies predicted.
Even if Arkanamon did indeed know something more about the prophecies than Memo did, that didn’t mean that what the Shadow Master knew was actually right. He can be a victim of wrong prophecy just as much as I.

Sagandran raised Xaraxeer, the blade invisible in front of him in the stygian darkness. It was an empty act of defiance, he knew, but it made him feel less afraid.

“Still your efforts, brat,” said the dispiriting voice from the air and walls. “Your sword is impotent against me.”

“So you say,” said Sagandran. “But you, Arkanamon, are not just the master of shadows, you’re the master of lies as well. Why should I believe a single word you say?”

The air growled. That was the only way Sagandran could describe the sound. It was greatly reassuring. First Perima and now he himself had succeeded in getting under the Shadow Master’s skin. The despot could not be as all-powerful as he was trying to present himself. He had unknown vulnerabilities, and he was aware of them. All the companions had to do was find out what those vulnerabilities were and choose their moment to strike. But strike against what? For all Sagandran could tell, the Shadow Master could be everywhere at once, or nowhere.

It was Flip’s turn to try to goad the tyrant. “Are you scared to show yourself, Arkanamon?”

Once again, a snarling roiled the air of the room.

As it slowly dissipated, Sagandran had an inspiration. If no torch would burn here and even the gleam of the Lightbringer was quenched, there was still another possible source of light he could call on.

“Scared?” cried the Shadow Master. “You dare to suggest this? On the contrary, rattish creature, it is the fear of you and your friends that fills this chamber. I can feel it. It’s … it’s beautiful.”

Sagandran dug into the front of his T-shirt and felt for where the slender silver chain Grandpa Melwin had given him nestled against the flesh of his chest.

Got it!

Feeling as if he should be doing this with some sort of ceremony rather than with hasty, fumbling fingers, Sagandran pulled the Rainbow Crystal out into the plain air. At once, the room was flooded with brilliance. For a moment, Sagandran thought that the light came from the crystal dangling on its chain, but then he realized that the Shadow Master had responded to the production of the stone by rekindling whatever it was that had lit the room before, but now it was a thousand times brighter.

The room was also far larger than it had appeared to Sagandran during the few brief moments between entering it and the pale glow being extinguished. The floor was of the same polished black marble as the stairs into the Palace of Shadows. It seemed to stretch for acres in front of him. The roof overhead was so high that he could barely see there was a ceiling at all. At the far end of the room was a broad opening through which they could see a square of sky, which appeared miniature due to the distance. Sagandran could just detect the stone balustrade of a balcony beyond it.

A tall figure stood on the balcony. Long black robes swirled as the figure turned to face them.

“Isn’t naked fear like the sweetest of music?” said the Shadow Master.

It sounded as if the words were being spoken right next to them.

What happened next seemed to Sagandran like it was when he looked through the telescopic lens of Mom’s camera and zoomed in to the picture. He could never decide whether the companions slid toward the Shadow Master or the Shadow Master slid toward them, but in just a couple of seconds the distance between them shrank, until the Shadow Master, the window and the balcony were no longer tiny and far off, but full-sized and just a few yards away.

Now Sagandran could see that the Shadow Master was wearing a crown fashioned out of some dull metal. On the front were three skeletal hands. Two were clutching crystals – one dark, one light – and the central one gripping only emptiness. It wasn’t hard to guess that this middle space was reserved for the jewel, which Sagandran was holding on its chain.

“So we meet at last.” Arkanamon’s voice was like a snake’s hiss. There was something in his manner that was snake-like too. With each syllable, his head came forward a little, as if seeking a place to sink its fangs. His tongue constantly flickered over dry lips. Even his eyes, which were like burning coals that could go from smoldering to blazing in a moment, had the stare of a cobra.

“What a motley little raggle-taggle army it is that Sagaria and the Earthworld have sent to meet me: three runts and a senile incompetent of a wizard who should have died by my hand many years ago. You call this an army?” cried the Shadow Master. “Let me show you poor amateurs what a real army is like.”

Again they slid, this time until they were all, the Shadow Master included, standing on his balcony looking out over the ashen wastes that had once been Tamshado. Almost directly beneath were the flames and machinery of the slave mines, but all that any of them had eyes for were the distant plains beyond a low ridge. There, it seemed as if some giant hand had been cupped to hold a million squirming black maggots. Sagandran could feel his heart sinking. Each of those tiny black dots, he knew, was a fully armed warrior. The Earthworld had weaponry that would be unimpressed by metal armor, but what chance had Sagaria of withstanding an invasion of so many? Even the Earthworld, with its bombs and tanks and drones and white phosphorus and high explosive artillery, had nothing with which to fight the dark magic of the Shadow Master. It felt to Sagandran as if, finally, he was staring into doom’s jaws.

Perima was the one who seized the moment from the Shadow Master. “Your hordes have a poor record, Arkanamon,” she observed with a sniff. “We may be just a group of misfits, though I’d have you know that I am a Princess of the Blood Royal from of a proud lineage, but these misfits” – she pronounced the word as if it were contemptible – “were more than a match for your Shadow Knights in Wonderville, were they not?”

“True.”

“And we made your host of worgs look foolish, did we not?”

“They were foolish before you started,” said the Shadow Master, “but you’re right. You people may be pathetic, but in my own way I’ve come to feel slight admiration for you. Especially for you, Princess Perima. You have spirit. Once it has been tamed by suitable … methods, you might be fit to serve as one of my consorts.”

Perima flushed just enough that Sagandran thought he might be the only one to notice, but she continued gamely.

“Sir Tombin disposed of two of your Shadow Knights just a few hours ago.”

“But died in the process,” qualified Arkanamon. “Let us not forget that, haughty princess. I heard about it all. Even the very walls of my realm report to me everything they see.”

He smiled – a terrible sight. His mouth reminded Sagandran like some lamprey out of a nightmare.

His minions must pass through that temple every day on their way to and from the slave mines, thought Sagandran, so how come he doesn’t know about it? Is there treachery in his ranks, perhaps? A conspiracy of silence? Or does the goddess Tamash choose to reveal herself only to those whom she wishes to see her? Was that why Cheireanna was so urgently reverential the moment we came across the fountain and the statue? Are the hidden temples of Tamshado hidden in a far more profound way than I’ve imagined? Not just tucked away in secret corners, but deliberately hiding from eyes that should not see them?

“Your liege, Deicher, fared no better than your Shadow Knights,” Perima was saying. So great was the vehemence of her passion that her face seemed to glow with a light from another world.