Shadow (7 page)

‘How often is not often?'

‘Twice a year that I know of. The victim is usually one of their own.'

The cultists walked in ranks of five. They limped and looked starved. Their wails and shrieks sounded like carrion birds. The one with a flail lashed his own back with it then passed the weapon to the one next to him, who did likewise. Some of their black robes were already shredded, wounds glistening beneath. ‘Come with us!' a few of them cried as the group closed in. There was a reek of infected flesh.

‘We're on business for the Mayors. Leave us be,' said Siel.

The whole group of them laughed. Said one, ‘Wayward sister! What business? We are the first to go to the new world. You too are invited, by virtue of our invitation, if not the Great Dark One's direct call, which was our privilege alone, for long service given. You may come. We are generous. But you both must walk in the rear rank.'

‘Nay! Behind the group, on their own in a rank of two. They may
not
use the flail.'

Said another, ‘It was fourteen nights ago his arm reached down! It is said he laid a gift upon a hilltop tower, a sign for all of man.'

‘He did!' cried another. ‘I saw it with these eyes, traversed the tower's steps with these feet, and read the signs he left there! He calls us across, Great Dark One, roamer of night skies, shepherd of the icy winds—'

‘Bringer of the ice winds, shepherd of the storm clouds, tamer of the brood, roamer of the—'

‘Breaker of the Wall!'

With each outburst they came closer, their bulging eyes bloodshot. Eric brandished the gun openly but it was clear none of them perceived it was a weapon. An older man with what had to be a broken forearm fell to his knees, wailing: ‘Aye, down he cast it, his hands parting the twin
skies
like curtains. Come with us, be among the
called
taking steps of great distance!'

‘Have you seen him?' a hunched middle-aged woman cried, her face swollen and bleeding from blows struck by the thick branch in her hand. ‘It is said he has roamed these skies.'

‘He was west of here, near the Great Road,' said Siel, her tone mocking theirs. ‘You should hurry. He awaits you.'

The bruised woman threw herself at Siel's feet. Eric fired a warning shot into the air, the Glock loud as thunder. The cultists shrieked, scattered and ran, then resumed formation and marched south, not one of them looking back, already incorporating in their mythos the gun's firing as some kind of test of resolve. Clearly, they had passed it.

Siel and Eric watched them go. ‘There are things I could tell them they probably wouldn't like,' he said. He replaced the gun's clip but could not bring himself to throw the empty one away.

Siel's ears rang painfully. ‘They are not always so worked up,' she said. ‘I have heard if Nightmare's sighted, they sometimes attack people. It's why I was nervous…' but she trailed off.

Behind them a solitary figure had returned. It stared at them. For a second she was sure it was Eric over there. His clothes and hair were different, and he stood at a strange angle, leaning nearly forty-five degrees sideways. The being did not respond to her wave. A blink later it had vanished.

Eric, still staring after the Nightmare cultists, hadn't seen it. ‘Come,' said Siel, keeping her voice steady. ‘Your gun's noise may have drawn … all kinds of things. We should hurry.'

‘Hurry where?'

‘We should head for Tanton. The people of these lands must have gone there. A good choice. Their mayor is Tauk the Strong. He will fight, whatever comes from World's End.'

‘How far is Tanton?'

‘A hundred miles, nearly. Don't tell me you're tired of the road; I am more so. But it's not safe out here any more.'

5

It wasn't long before Nightmare himself – the Great Dark One, guider of the ice winds – was seen, drifting high off to the west. ‘Stop here! Hold! He is seen! He is great!'

‘He
is
great! He, tamer of the brood, breaker of—'

‘What does he wish? My vessel is cracked, bleeding. My arm is lame. I hurt, I thirst. I am ready to replace this unworthy shell, to be renewed and—'

Lansith, who had climbed the tower and read the signs, gestured for silence and received it. ‘See?' he said. ‘It is as I read. It is as the evening rites foretold, may the soil glory our victim! And lo, you see his gaze is fixed upon us!'

Indeed it was – Nightmare had turned a slow ponderous circle, his long streaking trail a dark hook across the sky. He drifted toward them.

‘March!' Lansith screamed. ‘It is what he wishes, it is what he asks. We must cross into that land of reddened skies, we the first, we the called!'

There was not far to march. A hundred paces, fifty paces. They broke into a sprint, those with damaged legs hobbling badly. All of them gave joyful cries.

Nightmare moved with uncharacteristic haste when the group's intent became clear: they meant to cross the boundary. With a low thrumming sound of distress louder than the ground's booming beneath stoneflesh feet, the god rushed through the skies to them, covering in a blink the full distance. Nightmare swatted a hand through the air as he cast. Reality about the group parted in tiny fractures. The effect was as of a cluster of flying blades going through them. Their shredded remains blew through the air, tumbled to a halt and lay scattered across the ground.

Nightmare drifted away, seeking the next threat, wishing for the other Spirits to wake to the danger and come to aid him.

THE WOLF'S FOE

1

His feet thudded down on soft rain-wet grass, a soothing break from the hard slap of mountain road or the stony gravel which tore bleeding sores in the pads of his feet. They would heal when Far Gaze shifted back, but that was slim comfort, since the shift itself in either direction meant bones breaking and re-setting. The inner organs moving around during a change was perhaps even less pleasant:
that
felt like squirming creatures loose inside his body. There was no magic known to ease the punishment of shifting shape.

Of course the wolf would whine and argue against the need to change back – it always did. The arguments weren't complex:
Stay. Run! Hunt!
But it was always a wrestle with temptation for that little part of the human mind still present in the wolf's. Some shifters he'd known had lost the battle, stayed their animal selves too long and forgotten the way back.

But they were, he had thought sourly many times, probably much happier for it. Other than rescuing errant Pilgrims from war mages and other perils, what a relief it had been to switch off his human mind and just
run,
a thousand scents spicing the cold air, rare people gaping or cowering when he passed them, a thunderous growl from his throat for show, give them some tales to tell. (Wolves and dogs knew humour too!) Most of the gawkers had probably never seen a real shape-shifter, wouldn't know there was a mage within the huge hulking white frame, the savage red mouth packed with white knives, tongue lolling and flapping, steam puffing from its breath into the morning air as though an engine in its chest chugged it along.

The wolf did not need much time to pause and rest, but he had sprinted non-stop since near Elvury where the old Pilgrim had jumped from a cliff to his rather pointless death. He'd been tired before then, for the strange and mysteriously powerful woman in the green dress had exhausted him. But whenever he thought of pausing to rest, he'd get a hunch she was close, even pick up a hint of her scent.

As he did now. It was stronger than it had been since he'd picked up her faint trail some while back. She wasn't far.

Ah, these fields were fine to run through, country not recently trampled by the feet of people making war. The air was clean and laced with stable magic. He could smell food cooking in the farmstead homes. One or two polite growls at someone's back door and he'd be served well, no doubt of it.

The air's scents had told him many things as he loped through the night, which his mind would translate when he changed back to human form. The other cities – he had passed Faifen in the night – were in a panic for some reason, perhaps the same reason that had caused the ground to rumble and shiver, and for the very peculiar currents to pass in the upper airs. In fact if Far Gaze judged right, it looked very much like the influx of a new, strange and – surely not –
foreign
magic flooding in.

He would, had his human mind engaged with it, have had an idea of what all this meant. For a while now he'd heard enormous rumbling and playfully pretended the sound was caused by the thudding of his own feet.

And – there! Twisting up in the distant morning sky was a thin spiral of disturbed energy, like a line scrawled in fading ink from the horizon to the clouds. It would have looked to Far Gaze's human eye suspiciously like
her
work. The mage in the green dress, that ‘woman' named Stranger.

After what happened in the woods near Faul's, he didn't credit for a moment that she could truly be human. He'd stood as much chance against her as a child with a toy sword fighting an armed, trained soldier. There was one moment alone – as she'd cast that pillar of light in Faul's yard – when she'd been distracted enough for him to get his teeth around her throat.

He'd almost got her too. In her ensuing casts were little flourishes and touches which would have been delighted laughter, had they been translatable to human expression. There had been something playful about the combat from the outset, as though she was showing off to (at last!) an audience able to appreciate her arts.

Knowing he couldn't beat her, he'd hoped only to keep her away from Anfen and the Pilgrims. Whatever she truly was, she was great, surely greater than the Arch (himself about as great as humans could become). Ah, how dearly he'd have paid to learn what she
was,
and where her power came from.

The spiralling twist of spent energy was recent, and yet it had almost faded. It had to be her. A normal mage, even one skilled, could not mask his casts this well. She too would be seeking the remaining Pilgrim. He surged forward with greater speed in the direction of the cast spell.

When a mile or two passed the southern skies had a funny look to them. There was a shimmering redness in the distance. In fact, the Wall should be in sight by now. For some reason it wasn't …

Suddenly the wolf saw what the night's scents had tried to tell him. He skidded to a halt, growled low in his throat and then, for want of better ideas, howled at the sky.

2

Another night's run through Outcast country, past some villages emptying of people, through others looted and abandoned. At one, bandits had begun slaying families in some kind of casting ritual. They had people tied, waiting in grim silent groups while homes were plundered. Far Gaze the man might have stopped to do something about it. But the wolf did not, any more than a man on urgent business would risk himself taking sides in a vicious fight between wild wolves.

There now was more of that disturbing scent. The wolf held a vast library of scents in memory, easily recalled minute variations and combinations of each one.
This
scent was not in there.

Never mind that – there was meat close by! It didn't smell too old, either.

The man forbade eating such things, for it would make him sick if he changed back soon after. But how about just a
look
at the meat? He padded around to the edge of the clearing near another abandoned hut and found the body of a horse, perhaps just a day old. He sniffed. It had died of the horse plague which had made the beasts so rare and valued. But humans didn't catch that sickness. Nor wolves. One little mouthful would not make the man
too
sick, not like the time of that week-old stuff which had nearly killed him, and made him refuse to shift form for over a year.

With what sounded like a growl but was really a note of pleasure, the wolf ripped into the carcass, sending off a cloud of little black bugs. His jaws cracked bones, loosing delicious marrow. Heaven!

He was so occupied it took a moment for his keen ears to notice men's voices from the hut nearby. With a whine he obeyed duty's call, rose from his prize, stalked around the clearing and saw shields had been laid to rest by the front door. There were some the colour of Tanton, others of High Cliffs. The wolf listened for a while, locking in memory conversation of which it understood only parts. It heard that war brewed among cities who were just recently friends. It heard that these two cities – Tanton, High Cliffs – now sought the Pilgrim, thinking him responsible for something or other. The Pilgrim held a mighty weapon, they said, and might help them, although he was very dangerous. If need be he could be slain, but the weapon must be captured. It was their last hope in the war.

Far Gaze the man would listen to it all later. The man would be far more pleased with his wolf incarnation for storing these words in his mind, than for the meat in his belly. It was time to go. The wolf bounded off again through fields of crops plundered and scattered.

So much he'd already scented in the long night's sprint. From the scents alone it would seem a hundred messengers had come.

And there, Anfen's scent! Faint though, quite faint. He had been through here many days ago. The wolf turned north, followed the cooling trail, then caught sight of another plume of used magic. Instinct said to chase that instead.

Half a mile later her scent hit him strongly. He ran into a green valley, between light grey trunks of papery bark, leaped a brook with shimmering cold water then slowed to a careful stalk. She was close! Scents told the wolf locals fished here every day, children swam the waters. But they weren't here now.

The water burbled among the brook's boulders, hiding the sound of the wolf's feet padding down. There was her laughter, free and easy. He would not fight her this time, he decided. Unless a gift opportunity came to catch her offguard, he would stay hidden, watch her and learn. Later, the man would know what to do about her.