Shadowgod (34 page)
Before long, the grand procession came to a halt before a very imposing painting of a magnificent white stallion, the very image of equestrian nobility, standing by a long placid lake amid wooded hills with a domed temple on the other side of the lake. For a moment Tauric stared, wondering why they had brought him here. Then a tall and regal man garbed in blued armour and a long red cloak and wearing a black crown made to resemble a turretted citadel, came forward and rapped his knuckles on the painting's hard, dried surface. He smiled wordlessly at Tauric who shrugged and did the same...and staggered forward a step as his hand passed into the painting without any resistance.
With a gasp, he snatched his arm away and backed off a little. His well-dressed audience, on the other hand, were chuckling at his alarm, sharing winks and nudging each other, then encouraging him to step into the picture, into that lush lakeside vision with its noble horse.
Such a marvellous beast
, they seemed to be saying,
is fit for only the bravest, the most dedicated of leaders.
Tauric nodded, putting determination in his stance, the set of his jaw and the temper of his gaze. Yes, he fully deserved such a creature as his mount, so he faced the painting, raised his left foot and quickly plunged forward -
The ground on the other side was higher than it looked, and his landing sent a shock up his legs. And it was colder and much darker than the picture had suggested, with a rushing wind gusting and shaking bushes and branches all around and hurling swirls of leaves across the clearing and onto the restless surface of the lake. The horse, too, was not what it had seemed, careering around the clearing in panic. Then it wheeled on sighting Tauric and trotted over to nudge and shove him with its great head, as if urging him to flee. Tauric tried to calm the creature, stroking its neck and shoulder and murmuring soothing nonsense words.
Just as it was becoming more subdued, an immense bestial roar sounded from some distance along the lakeside. At once, Tauric felt the horse begin to tremble and pull away from him, but he held onto the mane and flung his arm over its neck.
“No, wait, brother horse!” he cried. “Stay with me…”
Quickly he jumped and swung a leg across the horse's back even as the unseen monster bellowed and smashed its way through the forest towards them. The white stallion whinnied its fear, trotted off the side of the clearing but there was only impenetrable, tangled forest hemming them in.
“There is no escape, brother,” Tauric said to it. “We must face this horror together…”
Then, with Tauric holding on tightly, the stallion reared in its terror and despair and spoke:
“Which path shall we take, sire, which path? Quick - you must choose!”
Confused, Tauric could only point at the oncoming menace. The horse reared again and charged across the clearing as something vast, faceless, shapeless and black came crashing out of the trees and reached for them -
Then Tauric was sitting bolt upright in bed, eyes wide, thinking that he had been woken by the shock of that strange, hideous dream. But there were voices outside his chamber, the thud of a fist on his door and a couple of his White Companions come to tell him of the living torches who were burning all along the city walls.
* * *
In a north-facing room in a small tower on the Silver Aggor, Atroc made his preparations for the night ahead. He had thrown out the few sticks of rotten furniture and swept it clear of bird feathers and old crumbling leaves. He set no fire, but lit three small rush lights and put a taper to two bundles of herbs, blowing out the flames to let them smoulder and give off certain fumes. Soon the room was grey and choking with scented smoke, giving strange halos to the little rush lights.
“Time to peer into the Door of Dream,” he whispered and opened the room's shutters. Cold air flowed in and he breathed it in then sat cross-legged before the window, letting the odours and the peace flow through him.
Atroc's dream brought him to a ridge overlooking a city dominated by a slant-walled fortress with a huge drum keep. The fortress sat atop a wide rocky outcrop and the city was blessed with a wide harbour sheltered from the sea by a long, curved headland. He immediately recognised the city as Rauthaz, capital of Yularia and lair of the Shadowking Grazaan. This was the very stronghold that Gunderlek and his unkempt army had somehow seized less than a year ago, only for it to turn into their tomb when the Acolytes sent in their vile beasts.
Now, as he watched, a massive wave rolled in from the sea, a long wall of water whose curling, frothing leading edge took on the form of a great, stampeding herd of horses. Each mount had a rider, thus there were a myriad faces and most of those in the lead were ones that he knew. He saw Byrnak, Yasgur, Welgarak, Alael and Bardow, the boy-emperor Tauric, Grazaan and Thraelor, Kodel and Ystregul, Mazaret and Gilly, Keren and her mirrorchild sister Nerek, and many more. The great horse wave thundered across the city of Rauthaz and over the low hills, and as it rushed on towards the Gorodar mountains, Atroc found himself flying through the air, keeping pace with those riders at the front.
He soared higher and was able to gaze down at the peaks of the Gorodars as the great wave slammed up against their northerly slopes and surged over them without the slightest pause. Those pale wave riders fought with their watery chargers as they crashed down onto the dark forests of northern Khatris and swept on, steadily turning south. To Atroc, it all looked remarkably like one of the allegorical canvases he had seen brought out of hiding after the battle for Besh-Darok.
South drove the flood, drowning all in its path, and he noticed that certain faces began to vanish from those leading players, quite a few Mogaun slipped out of sight as did a large number of Southern soldiers and officers. A group of Acolytes stumbled and were overwhelmed by the torrent. Then others began to fall - Mazaret, Yarram and Ghazrek, then Nerek, all gone in an eyeblink, closely followed by all the Shadowkings bar one, Byrnak. Gilly foundered in the raging white waves, as did Yasgur. By now the thunderous flood stretched from the Gorodars across to the Rukangs as it poured south across central Khatris then turned west and poured through the Kings Gate pass. Bardow, Keren and Medwin fell within sight of Besh-Darok, as did the last surviving Mogaun chieftains. Through the pass of the Girdle Hills the diminishing deluge ran, across the fields and the woods with but three riders lurching onward in the spray - the Shadowking Byrnak and off to one side, Alael and Tauric. The very walls of the city were drawing near but before they could be reached the extravagant, nightmarish scene began to fade. Much to Atroc's frustration the Door of Dreams was closing, with that element of timing he had come to hate.
Opening rheumy eyes, he saw immediately the fires blazing down at the city wall, with the majority clustered near the Shield Gate. So Bardow had been right about Byrnak's love of night's drama and while he watched more fires began to bloom in the dimness some distance off to the south. As his eyes took in the darkness he began to espy large bands of riders moving through the even, snowy gloom beyond the walls. That meant that Byrnak and the other Shadowkings remained wary of committing the fullness of their strength. Of course, the dream he had just experience seemed to suggest their ultimate triumph...but the trouble with some dream visions was that their meanings were so obscure that only a genius or a madman could fathom them, and Atroc had only ever aspired to be half of either and neither at the same time.
He rose from his cramped position and blew out the rush lights one by one. Yasgur would undoubtedly be asking for him very soon….
There was a knock at the door.
“Master Atroc, I am sent by Lord Regent Yasgur to ask that you join him I the vantage chamber in the Keep of Night.”
He chuckled quietly to himself, then cleared his throat. “I hear and obey,” he said loudly. “Inform the Lord Regent that I shall do all of his bidding that my aged bones can manage.”
As the messenger's footsteps walked away, Atroc laughed darkly to himself while gathering up the herb bundles, now reduced to cold charred twigs, and flung them in the hearth. Perhaps it would be best to keep his dreams to himself, at least until he had a better idea of their meaning. For while Prince Yasgur certainly had motes of madness in his character, he seldom showed evidence of genius when it came to assaying enigmas.
* * *
In bewildering silence she drifted, with her memories and thoughts trailing, nagging, dragging, shaming. This was a place of timeless time, of no thought and no action and thus no pain, yet still she was followed by all the spectral rags of her life, persistent ghosts which steadfastly refused to dissolve into the flowing silence. And even though she had managed to banish their tormenting presences from her mind, they never gave up trying to return, coming forward to present themselves to her or arranging themselves into stories too frightening to contemplate.
When one of those old dogged memories, an image of herself, broke away from the rest and floated up and out of sight she felt a measure of satisfaction. Later, however, it reappeared, gliding up from below and bringing a long string of shadowy, ominous memories. The image of herself looked serene and slightly amused, and as it came towards her she tried to turn aside, avoid contact, but failed. That errant fragment of herself thrust the memory string at her and she plunged into a dark story.
In the beginning, the world moved in the darkness of the valleys of the Great Lake of Night. Then came the Fathertree and the Earthmother, although they had other names then, and brought daylight and seasons, sowings and harvests, that the beast herds would raise their faces to the light and become human. The humans divided themselves into the tribes of the People, learned well the lessons given by the Earthmother and the Fathertree, and worshipped as they prospered.
Then, from the well of the Void stepped the Prince of Dusk with nobility upon his brow, joy in his eyes, a smile on his lips and a gift in his hands for the Earthmother. This was the Motherseed, a wondrous object which was both key and door to a realm full of life and growth and all the green verdancy cherished so deeply by the Earthmother. The Prince of Dusk tried to persuade his fellow divinities to keep the human tribes low and untutored, saying that learning and knowledge would bring them only pain and suffering. The Earthmother listened and agreed, but the Fathertree refused and went to live among the tribes of the People.
While the Prince of Dusk and the Earthmother oversaw the building of great temples in their name and enjoyed the devotion of innumerable followers, the Fathertree found that pain and suffering could exist without knowledge and learning. So he created the Crystal Eye so that healers could heal, children would live and wisdom would spread. This angered the Prince of Dusk and the Earthmother who came to him with the intent of forcing him to unmake it, but he had already made a gift of it to the wisest man of the tribes. He in turn had used it to teach many willing pupils how to wield the Godriver, as the Lesser Power was then known.
This infuriated the Prince of Dusk who raised up an army from his followers, imprisoned the Fathertree, and pursued the wise man and his pupils into deep, elder forests. The Earthmother saw unarmed people dying on spears or by club blows and, now knowing that the Prince was wrong, went to the Fathertree and offered her help and her love. Together they confronted the Prince of Dusk and when the Earthmother openly denounced him and rejected his advances, his anger turned to hate. But she had the Motherseed and the wise men had the Crystal Eye so he was forced to release the Fathertree and retreat to his great temple.
There he brooded and nursed and fed his hate for many a year before coming to a fateful decision. There was no hesitation in him as he delved into the abysses of the world to see where the Great Lake of Night seeped through. In one vast underground cavern where darkness lapped at far-flung shores, he found a proud and savage race whom he raised from beasthood to become the Daemonkind, first and deadliest of his servants. Next, he cast his gaze over all his worshippers and selected a few of the most loyal for a similar elevation, and they were the First Woken. After that, it was easier to construct all the sinews of the war to come, the armies, the weapons, the duty, the training, the fortifications and bastions which were ultimately overshadowed by the immense citadel of Jagreag.
The war itself was a convulsion of blood that darkened every land and every life. Seas reared up to bury forests and mountains while new peaks and fields were wrenched up from the bed of the oceans. The vast struggle culminated in the year-long Battle of Kogil which ended with the fall of Jagreag, brought about by the Staff of the Void, made by the Earthmother's own hand.
The Prince of Dusk was banished to his newly-formed realm, where he gave himself a new name, the Lord of Twilight. His surviving servants were imprisoned, apart from the Daemonkind who had had sent away at the battle's end. Yet this marked merely the beginning of an ages-long struggle less cataclysmic than the first but pursued with the same relentless purpose….
The story tailed away with a few of the turning points of history, the rise and fall of empires both dark and light, the instigation of the Wellsource followed by the seeding and growth of the Rootpower. The founding of the Khatrimantine Empire and its defeat a thousand years later, along with the destruction of the Rootpower….
As the string of memories came to an end, she could not help noticing the thread of her own story weaving in amongst it all, brought to an abrupt end by that fall from the top of the High Basilica in Trevada. Then the memory string was gone, falling away, back into the depths, but the memory image of herself was smiling at her now. It glided towards her, garments slowly rippling, arms spread wide to gather her in despite her fear and panic, to wrap itself around her -
A long, long instant passed and all her perceptions changed. She was aware of her body and its weight as she lay on her back, and the uneven ground beneath, and the damp grass she could feel with her fingertips. She sat up dizzily, looked down at herself and saw that she was wearing the shawl and blue robe of the memory image. She felt ready to weep or scream yet could do neither…