Realms of Shadow Part 26

Ajandor didn't bother to reply, nor did he falter in his advance. Kevin cast away his hindering rag of a mantle, drew his own quite possibly useless weapon, and trotted to catch up with the knight.

As they closed to fighting distance, the phantoms spread out to encircle their human foes. Resolved to prevent that, Kevin pivoted and cut at the one on the left.

The impact felt as if his blade were shearing through cloth, not sinking into flesh, but at least therewas resistance. The shadow reeled back with a rent in the middle of its chest.

Kevin cried out in satisfaction-he was still afraid of the cursed apparitions, but at least this time he was fighting something he could damage-and the shadows responded with a piercing, silent shriek. It wasn't sound, but he could hear it inside his head. He flinched at the pain, and two of the phantoms sprang forward and clutched him by the wrists.

Their fingers were burning cold, but the chill was the least of it. Something, strength, or life itself, perhaps, drained out of Kevin and into his a.s.sailants. His vision blurred, and his knees buckled. Inside his mind, the shadows squealed in greed and triumph.

He tried to wrench his sword arm free, but the shadow maintained its hold. As Ajandor had taught him, he heaved up his leg and stamped, raking his boot along the ghostly creature's shin and smashing it down on its foot. It seemed to Kevin that with so much of his strength leeched away already, the stomp kick was a puny, fumbling effort. Still, perhaps startled, the shadow loosened its grip. The squire shoved that one away and turned to the other. It scrambled in even closer, wrapping its arms around his torso, making it impossible to bring the point or edge of his sword to bear. For a moment, weak, frozen, he couldn't think what to do, and Ajandor's lessons came back to him again. He bashed the shadow's head with the heavy steel egg of his weapon's pommel, and losing its hold, the shadow slumped to one knee.

Kevin swayed and stumbled backward. He desperately wanted a moment to collect himself, but the shadows didn't give it to him. Shrieking their psychic shriek, they rushed him.

Gripping his sword in both hands-otherwise, he might not have been able to swing it-the squire swept the weapon in a horizontal arc. The cut decapitated one shadow, and its body and tumbling head vanished. The other phantom nearly succeeded in darting in close enough to grapple, but backstepping frantically, Kevin kept enough s.p.a.ce between them to use his blade. He plunged it into the shadow's heart, or the spot where a man would carry his heart, anyway, and it too melted away to nothing.

Gasping, shuddering, he looked about for other foes, just in time to see Ajandor dispatch what was apparently their last adversary. For a few seconds, the knight looked satisfied in a grim sort of way, but then restlessness or hunger crept back into his expression.

"Let's move on," he said.

"No!" Kevin said. "Not yet. This time, I must rest. Did none of the shadows get its hands on you?"

"No."

"Well, they did me, and ..."

The world seemed to tilt on its axis, and he realized that if he didn't get off his feet, he was going to fall. He tottered to a horse trough overflowing with rain and sat down on the rim.

"Are you wounded?" Ajandor asked.

"Not exactly. Fm not bleeding. I think I just need a few minutes."

Ajandor's mouth tightened with impatience, and Kevin was sure that he meant to walk away and abandon him, weak and helpless, here in the midst of the haunted city.

Instead the knight said, "Very well."

They waited for a time, Ajandor standing, Kevin sitting, the only sounds the drumming of the rain and the creaking of some damaged building shifting toward collapse.

Finally, when the youth felt that mere talking wouldn't const.i.tute an intolerable strain, he said, "I figured it out. You aren't just watching out for the shadows, you're hunting them."

"Correct."

"With Princess Alusair's army defeated, you have no way to strike a blow against the wizards who killed Pelethen, so you're taking it out on the spooks they left in their wake."

"It's a chivalrous act to purge the land of shadows, wouldn't you agree?"

In Ajandor's tone lurked an irony that mocked the entire notion of knightly duty, and never mind that he had always taught his squire that honor was everything.

"I suppose it should be done," the squire said. "Whatever you think, I'm not afraid to help, but is this a sensible way to go about it? According to your own lessons on tactics, we should have a company of men-at-arms sweeping Tilverton systematically, block by block. We should have priests and wizards to support them with their magic. We-""Perhaps," Ajandor replied, "but Fm not in the mood for that much company."

"That's mad! I understand-"

A shadow fell over them. Startled, Kevin looked upward.

Something huge was soaring over the wreckage of Tilverton, eclipsing the attenuated light sifting through the clouds. Was it a dragon? Kevin couldn't tell. He had never seen a wyrm, and in any case, the t.i.tan's form was as indistinct as that of the lesser shadows. All he could truly discern were tatters of darkness that reminded him equally of a bat's wings and a jellyfish's trolling tentacles. That, and a sense of awesome power and malevolence.

It suddenly occurred to Kevin that the giant shadow might look down and see them, and he cringed, but the thing pa.s.sed on over the gapped wall encircling Old Town and disappeared.

"The king shadow," murmured Ajandor. "In the end, if I must, I'll come to you."

"Not without an army behind you," Kevin said, "and Vangerdahast, too." Then he remembered the rumor they'd heard along the road, that Cormyr's famous wizard had likely perished in the destruction of Tilverton with the rest of the defenders. "Well, some mage, anyway."

"Ready to go?"

He wasn't, but he was reluctant to irritate his master by asking for more time. He struggled to his feet, and they wandered on.

Ajandor took to shouting challenges whether any shadows were in view or not, and from his perspective if not his squire's, it paid off. Alone or in groups, sometimes vulnerable to common steel and sometimes not, the phantoms slunk out of their hiding places to fight.

Somehow Kevin survived half a dozen of these confrontations, until to his profound relief, it started to get dark, and Ajandor agreed to return to the shelter of the gate. Not that the squire had any particular reason to think that they were truly safe there, either, but at least they weren't actively looking for trouble.

After he prepared another supper and watched Ajandor set his portion aside largely uneaten, he said, "If you mean to continue hunting spooks, we could at least do it beyond the walls. The folk out in the countryside need protection."

"I imagine the shadows slip out of the city to seek their prey," said Ajandor, staring out at the night and the hissing rain, "but they all lair inside, where the stink of necromancy lies thick on the ground.

Therefore, I'll be protecting the refugees just as effectively by killing the phantoms in here."

"The people may have other problems." Kevin shifted position, and his shoulder, bruised by a phantom's attack, gave him a twinge. "They may need a leader to sort them out."

"I told you, I don't feel like bothering with other people right now."

"I know they'd respect your grief. Each of them surely has griefs of his own."

"Grief," said Ajandor, as though the word were a paltry, inadequate thing. "Do you know why Pelethen joined the Purple Dragons?"

"Because you did the same thing in your youth. Sir, that does not make you responsible for his fate."

"It's funny. I was happy when Princess Alusair's summons came. To me, the war, with all its perils, was simply a fine excuse for a reunion with my boy."

"I know how much you wanted to see him."

"I wanted to give him this." Ajandor drew Gray Dancer an inch out of its scabbard then shoved it down again. The guard clicked against the mouth of the sheath. "As my father gave it to me. As we have handed it down in our family for four hundred years. What am I supposed to do with it now?"

"Use it to defend the weak, as you have always done."

Ajandor chuckled an ugly little chuckle. "As I have always done. And here at the end, what do I have to show for it?"

"Sir," said Kevin, "with all respect, you've lost much but not everything. Kirinwood is full of folk who love you. Mistress Waterthorn. Old n.o.bby. Galen Oakfriend." He could have added himself to the list, except that it would make him feel like a whining child.

"I suppose it ought to shame me," replied Ajandor, "but I just don't seem to care, not anymore. My heart is empty."

"I don't believe that," Kevin replied. "At the moment, all you feel is pain, but when it loosens its gripa little, the gentler emotions will return."

"You're prattling."

Kevin felt his cheeks flush. "Sir, I just don't want to watch you commit suicide, and that's the true objective of our shadow hunt, isn't it? It's a miracle the creatures haven't slain the both of us already."

"If you're afraid, then leave. I release you from my service." Ajandor turned away.

That night, Kevin did indeed consider saddling his horse and trotting away back down the highway called the Moonsea Ride, but he couldn't quite bring himself to do it. There had to be a way to snap Ajandor out of his trance of despair!

After considerable pondering, the squire thought of one ploy that might serve. He was certain-well, reasonably so-that deep down in his heart, Ajandor still did care for all the same folk he'd cherished a tenday ago. If so, then perhaps a threat to one of those dear ones would bring the affection to the surface and restore the old man's perspective. It would show him that his son's death, tragic as it was, hadn't crushed all the meaning out of his life.

Though the scheme did have one drawback: Kevin himself would have to play the role of friend in distress.

All the other candidates were back in Kirinwood.

A nasty voice inside the squire's head whispered that his notion would never work, because Ajandor actually didn't care about him. Hadn't his brusqueness the past few days made that clear? In times past, Ajandor had been kind to his foster child but had really only cherished his son by blood.

No, Kevin insisted to himself, it wasn't so. He could conjure up a thousand memories that proved Ajandor's love for him, and that meant he could make his scheme work. He'd slip away, his foster father would chase after him, and in the end, everything would be all right.

As the night wore on, weariness at last overtook Ajandor. He sat down with his back against the wall, and, gradually, his head drooped until his chin rested on his breast. A soft buzzing issued from his mouth.

Moving quietly, Kevin rose, unlaced one of the saddlebags, and took out a stick of chalk, which Ajandor had packed to sketch out battle plans, duty rosters, and the like. Wincing at the faint scratching sound, the squire scrawled a message on the wall: I HEAR KING SHADOW CALLING ME, AND I MUST GO TO HIM. FAREWELL.

That accomplished, the youth tiptoed to the arched entrance to the city, thought of all the shadows presumably lurking in the darkness, took a deep breath, and forced himself out into the rain.

To his surprise, he didn't blunder into any phantoms, and after a few minutes, he reached the foot of the Cormyr Stairs. Halfway up, he came upon Helm's shrine. Reflecting that some kindly power certainly seemed to have protected him thus far, he silently apologized to the deity for his earlier irreverence and laid a copper piece atop the Altar of Shields.

He crept on to the top of the steps, peered through the wall, and surveyed Old Town. If any beauty remained to its burnt and battered houses, he couldn't see it under these conditions, nor did he care. He reckoned he'd come as far as required to give Ajandor a nice anxiety-ridden chase, and now he needed a place to wait for him-somewhere indoors, where no pa.s.sing shadow would spot him. At the far end of a little plaza stood a cottage, its eaves encrusted with carved roses and its door standing ajar. He scurried to it, ducked inside, found a stool, and sat down behind a window that looked out at the head of the Cormyr Stairs.

Soon, he a.s.sured himself, Ajandor would come bustling to the top. The knight would probably be furious when he realized Kevin had tricked him, but it wouldn't matter. The shock of his fosterling's disappearance would still restore him to himself.

Suddenly, a wail of anguish broke into Kevin's imaginings. Unlike all the others he'd heard, this one sounded close by.

Looking in all directions, the squire peered out the window. After a few moments, the source of the noise stumbled into view.

Roped together to form a coffle, a matron with gray curls, two men, and a little girl trudged across the plaza, pa.s.sing only a few feet from Kevin's vantage point. Slinking around them, shoving andprodding them on, were several of the man-shaped shadows he and Ajandor had fought before. The youth couldn't tell precisely how many. In the darkness, he was lucky to glimpse the shadows at all.

He wondered if the prisoners had still been living somewhere inside the city, or if the shadows had captured them out in the countryside. Not that it mattered. The only thing that did was helping them. But how?

Charge out and attack? Ajandor might have managed it, but he'd been honing a genius for swordplay for forty years. Kevin had been training a modest talent for five.

He doubted he could handle so many of the shadows all at once.

What he could do was follow the shadows and hope that an opportunity to free their captives would present itself. Not that he wanted to. Not only would it be risky, it would mean he likely wouldn't be in position to greet Ajandor if-no, when, curse it-the latter climbed the Cormyr Stairs, but Kevin couldn't see any alternative.

As he waited for the shadows to lengthen their lead, he prayed to Helm for aid and wished he'd given the G.o.d the sole silver piece in his purse instead of a measly copper.

It was time to go. He crept out onto the porch, and a plank groaned beneath his foot. He cringed, but the shadows didn't seem to hear, so he slunk on.

The stalking proved to be a nerve-racking business. Kevin was no woodsman or housebreaker, schooled in the art of sneaking soundlessly, and no matter how he tried, he couldn't avoid making little noises, each of which threatened to reveal his presence. Nor could he shake the nagging fear that as he concentrated his attention on the shadows ahead, some other phantom would spot him and take him unawares.

But none did, and eventually the shadows and their coffle led him to a drum-shaped keep notorious throughout Cormyr. When Kevin perceived that it was indeed their destination, he nearly laughed in dismay, because it figured, didn't it?

The ruin-now no more ruinous than the rest of Old Town-had once been the residence of the enchantress Tilvara. According to rumor, it was now home to strange beasts and the restless dead, and h.e.l.lishly dangerous. Few would-be explorers ever even got past the "Medusa's Garden," the field of statuary in front of the entrance. The figures animated and attacked them.

Though many of the statues lay shattered on the ground, a goodly number remained intact. Still, the shadows and their prisoners pa.s.sed them unmolested. Maybe they knew the trick of it, or perhaps the tides of battle magic washing through the city had somehow rendered the effigies inert.

The procession vanished through an arched door, and Kevin wondered whether or not to keep following. He was sorely tempted to go look for Ajandor, but what if he couldn't find the knight, who by now might already be wandering the city, either to find his errant squire or simply in search of his own destruction? Or what if he did locate Ajandor, and the knight just didn't care? Or what if the shadows slew the captives while Kevin was off searching?

No, curse it, he had to go in.

Kevin headed for the statues. He realized he was breathing hard, tried to control it as Ajandor had taught him, and couldn't quite. He started down the path.

Stone warriors, rocs, manticores, wolves, and double-headed ettins surrounded him on every side.

If they all came to life at once, he wouldn't stand a chance, but only one of them even tried. A lion shuddered as he pa.s.sed but could do no more. Some power had indeed rendered them harmless.

Kevin tiptoed up to the doorway and peeked beyond the threshold into a murky hall. As far as he could tell, no sentries waited there, just as none patrolled the battlements high above. Kevin found the shadows' want of caution peculiar, but perhaps they didn't think like human beings. Maybe they considered themselves so secure in their possession of Tilverton that an a.s.sault was inconceivable.

Not that Kevin contemplated anything so grand. Could he simply spirit the captives away, he would be well satisfied.

Onward he skulked, groping his way through stygian chambers that would have been entirely lightless save for the gaps in the ancient walls. Legend peopled these s.p.a.ces with watchghosts and round, floating, many-eyed beholders, but he didn't encounter any of those. He wondered if the shadows haddestroyed even them.

He did soon come to the conclusion that the keep was larger inside than out, but the paradox didn't particularly unsettle him. He'd heard that powerful mages could create such effects. At least the doorways weren't sealing themselves behind him. He'd heard that could happen, too.

A vague form moving on four legs, or perhaps six or eight, prowled out of an arched opening not twelve feet ahead of him. His heart pounding, he flattened himself against the wall. The phantom turned in the opposite direction and disappeared into the blackness.

When his nerves ceased their jangling, Kevin crept on, peeked into the archway, and finally saw the prisoners, those he had been tracking and maybe fifteen others as well.

Tilvara had probably maintained a perfectly good dungeon beneath her residence, but for some reason, the shadows had opted to hold their captives in a s.p.a.cious chamber where eight or ten looms stood at regular intervals about the floor. Some still supported unfinished bits of weaving, the weft and woof rotting away and tingeing the air with the smell. The humans were still bound, but not with ropes, which lay in careless tangles on the floor. Instead, the prisoners stood enmeshed in strands of darkness, which, anch.o.r.ed to the back wall, floor, ceiling, and looms, were nearly invisible in the gloom.

Kevin didn't know what the black cables were made of-perhaps the same shadow-stuff as the phantoms themselves-but he a.s.sumed he would be able to cut them once he disposed of the jailer. For as best he could tell in the darkness, only one shadow lingered in the weavers' workroom, and it had its back to the door.

Kevin crept over the threshold. Evidently sensing his presence, the shadow began to turn, and he cut at it. The sword sheared into its head, and it staggered and disappeared.

The prisoners started to babble, and he frantically tried to shush them, so intent on the need for quiet that it took him a moment to take in what they were saying.

"Look up! The spider! It's right above us!"

As soon as he did understand, he looked up instantly, galvanized by a jolt of terror. He didn't like spiders, and if such a creature had spun the strands holding the captives, it must be huge.

Yet he couldn't see it. The room was too dark, and the ceiling too high. His mouth dry as sand, he pivoted back and forth, trying to spot it.

"Does anybody see it?" he asked the others. "Do you? Do you?"

Evidently they didn't. They simply knew from bitter past experience that it was there.

It occurred to Kevin that he could back out of the room and leave them to their fate. He'd tried to help them, no one could say that he hadn't. It was possible that his sword couldn't even cut the spider.