Voyage of the Shadowmoon Read online

  “Learned Einsel, I am about to give Silverdeath its first real test,” Ralzak announced. “Do you have any advice?”

  “Ah yes, esteemed lordship,” replied Einsel, bowing and rubbing his hands together.

  “And that is?”

  “Don’t.”

  “You have been giving that advice ever since Silverdeath was found. Can you not say anything new?”

  “Ah, take it to the mountains, leave it at the bottom of a very deep ravine, and bury it with a very large rockslide.”

  “That is what the previous master of Silverdeath did.”

  “Very sensible of him,” said the little sorcerer, bowing yet again to emphasize that his reply was not sarcasm—even though it was.

  “Einsel, I want to hear you say something other than ‘Don’t’!” snapped the commander.

  “Well, then, what about, ‘Do not use it, esteemed lordship’?”

  “I am rapidly losing patience! What operational advice do you have regarding Silverdeath?”

  “Stand well back,” said the sorcerer with a shrug.

  “Cypher, do you have any suggestions?” Ralzak asked, turning away from the nervous and miserable little man.

  “No, esteemed lordship,” the masked man replied with studied deference.

  “But you located it for us.”

  “I’m learning, too. From your mistakes.”

  Ralzak scowled. Cypher’s expression was not visible beneath his mask and hood.

  “Experience is an expensive school, yet fools are always clamoring to get in,” Einsel cautioned.

  “Are you mocking me?” demanded the commander, rounding on him.

  “No, esteemed lordship, but I am trying to warn you,” responded Einsel, staring the noble in the face this time.

  Ralzak blinked. It was the first time he had known Einsel to stare anyone in the face for the entire fifteen years he had known him. “I cannot understand why you are so frightened,” he said, folding his arms behind his back and turning away to scowl at Larmentel again.

  “Commander, we barely understand the most basic features of this thing,” cautioned Einsel. “All the ancient authorities do agree that it is immensely powerful, however.”

  “Rax, we don’t understand why fire burns wood but not rock,” said Ralzak dismissively, “yet we still use fire to cook, light our way at night, warm ourselves, and burn the towns of our enemies. The test will go ahead. Is there anything you would like to do?”

  “I would greatly desire to stand well back.”

  “I meant, in the way of magical tests?”

  “I should like to stand well back behind a very large rock, to test its ability to keep me safe.”

  Ralzak’s preparations took two hours. Men on active, relief, and sleep shifts were all ordered to strap on armor and stand ready. The infantry were deployed at five strategic points to prevent the escape of anyone from the city, while elite lancers were stationed to ride for any breaches the enemy might make. Storm climbers with ladders and water-shields stood in closest of all. It was the eighth hour of morning before Ralzak was ready. Wearing his full skirmishing armor and standing with his battle-ax drawn, he faced Silverdeath before a small group of senior officers and nobles.

  “Do your worst, destroy my enemies,” he commanded, pointing with his battle-ax to the undefeated walls of Larmentel. “Today I will walk into the royal palace of Larmentel and spit at the feet of its king as the all-conquering victor.”

  Those close enough to hear began to cheer his words mechanically. Silverdeath’s skin began to shimmer, then crawl, as if tiny silver ants were swarming over it. Its head slowly expanded, transforming into a shimmering silver globe. Those nearby began backing away, and Ralzak noticed that its hands had become white. Even as he watched, white skin was also exposed at the neck. Warsovran’s jaw became visible, and by now the globe had expanded into a sphere the size of a small tent. Commander Ralzak stood his ground, watching as the mouth, nose, and eyes of Warsovran, the mighty emperor himself, were exposed. As Silverdeath detached itself from its host, Warsovran’s body toppled to the ground and lay still.

  Silverdeath floated free, a globe that shimmered and trembled like a soap bubble, and when it was the size of a house it began to drift upward and over toward the besieged city. Ralzak thought it was growing translucent, and soon it was so high and insubstantial that it was no longer visible at all. The sky was blue over Larmentel, and all seemed serene and calm. Ralzak began to wonder if Silverdeath might be playing some humiliating hoax on him. A half hour passed, then another quarter hour. All through the besieging army, the rank and file began to mutter.

  “Can’t wait to loot it,” drawled Colcos as he stood ready with his spear, gazing wistfully at the distant towers.

  “Its women are famed throughout Torea,” added Manakar, licking his lips.

  “They say its cellars hold enough wine to float a deepwater trader,” sighed Lurquor.

  “Their windows have glass in ’em,” said Colcos. “You ever broken a glass window?”

  “Can’t say I have,” conceded Manakar.

  “Grand sound, so satisfying.”

  “You never broke one.”

  “Yes I did! I spent two years as a slave in a salt quarry to pay back its value.”

  “They say it could be today,” interjected Lurquor.

  “What could be today?” asked Colcos.

  “The big attack, the big one that cracks ’em.”

  “It’s already happened,” Manakar pointed out. “Their armored engines burned our towers down to the wheels.”

  “Burned the wheels, too,” said Colcos.

  “Any city that can afford to pour boiling wine on us as we climb the siege ladders is a long way from being cracked,” Manakar concluded with a sneer.

  “They say Warsovran and Ralzak have a new weapon,” Lurquor protested. “The thing that floated up from the command tent and over to the city.”

  “‘They,’ ‘they,’ ‘they’—who are ‘they’?” demanded Manakar.

  “Folk who knows.”

  “Well, if it’s that small, then it’s not going to be any use against—” Colcos began.

  With the abrupt, shocking swiftness of a bolt of lightning, a huge, circular rent burst open in the sky above Larmentel, spilling a curtain of brilliance that swept outward from a point above the palace. Abruptly it winked out. In its place was a towering column of yellow-and-crimson flames as a firestorm burst through roofs and poured through windows and archways. A blazing-hot wind flung heavy tiles about like leaves and turned great wooden beams to ash within the moments it took for the shattering thunderclap to reach Ralzak’s army and shake each warrior like a blow from a mace. Most men flung themselves down in reflexive alarm, others stood petrified with fear. Breakers of flame cascaded outward, sweeping along the streets and out to the citadel walls where they burst like waves on the shore, then rose high into the sky. To the amazement of the besieging army, the circular wall of fire then curled back upon itself to focus above the very center of Larmentel. All that was left was smoke, which boiled up into the sky above the city like a mighty, malignant tree. The heat had been so intense that it scalded the faces of the nearest besiegers. Larmentel’s heart was burned out. The circle of fire had spilled across a third of a mile at the center, its edges rolling upward, then backward. It was as if the flood of burning had been on a spring that had reached its limit.

  The thunder’s echoes took many moments to die away across the plain, then for a short time there was complete silence.

  “Shit,” said Colcos.

  “Shit me,” said Lurquor.

  “Shit me senseless,” said Manakar.

  Someone nearby gave a strangled squawk that may have been a gasp for breath, but which those around him took to be a cheer. Their cheers quickly spread in both directions around the army encircling Larmentel as the troops realized this thing of hellfire was not to be feared, but was on a leash held by their commander. They cheered
their invincibility under the command of Ralzak and Warsovran, they cheered the fall of Larmentel, and they cheered the end of a siege that would waste not one more of their lives.

  “Brilliant!” shouted Ralzak. “The greatest of strongholds in all of Torea, annihilated!”

  Riders were immediately despatched with a demand for surrender, but all gates were already open and the surviving defenders streaming out of the city. Larmentel had been stabbed through the heart, and its citizens were bleeding out through its walls.

  Suddenly Ralzak realized that Warsovran was standing beside him, pale and thin yet somehow looking very healthy—even youthful. Ralzak dropped to his knees.

  “You did well,” the monarch who had brought down a dozen kings said hoarsely.

  “Emperor Warsovran!” exclaimed Ralzak, now standing again to support his unsteady and swaying leader. “Sire! Are you all right? At’rik! Here, bring a medicar, now!”

  “No medicar,” whispered Warsovran, waving the man back. “Silverdeath was medicar enough. It is good to its host bodies, Ralzak.”

  “Your Majesty, how can I ever apologize enough for commanding you for all these months past?” moaned Ralzak, genuinely mortified.

  “You commanded the machine, not me,” replied Warsovran as he glanced across to the writhing nightmare of smoke and dust that was rising above Larmentel. “And no harm was done.”

  “Oh, indeed, Emperor, and many of your men have been saved by Silverdeath’s magic. You can now enter Larmentel in triumph.”

  “No, I must return to my capital,” said Warsovran as he beckoned for a horse. “You will remain here.”

  “But … But Larmentel has fallen. Sire, the triumph—”

  “Is yours, Commander Ralzak. Stay here, do what you will with the city. Make an example of it for all others to know and fear. You are Silverdeath’s commander, after all.”

  Ralzak glanced about for a figure with his face veiled with maroon cloth, but Cypher was nowhere to be seen.

  “When Silverdeath first made you its host, Cypher was shouting at you to obey him,” Ralzak confided to his commander.

  “Was he indeed? And what did you do?”

  “I had him thrown out of the tent for insolence.”

  “And Silverdeath accepted you as master? Curious. What did you do that Cypher did not? No spells, chants, castings, incantations … Curious, very curious.”

  For all his feigned puzzlement, Warsovran did know Silverdeath’s secret. One did not wear Silverdeath to become its master, one provided it with a host, then commanded it. Ralzak had helped Warsovran to put on Silverdeath. The person who puts it on the host becomes the weapon’s master. Warsovran said nothing. There was a great deal Ralzak did not need to know.

  “Is Cypher nearby?” Warsovran asked.

  “Yes,” replied Einsel. “I was speaking with him only minutes ago.”

  “Have him killed, Ralzak. He knows enough to be dangerous.”

  “Consider it done, sire,” declared Ralzak.

  Cypher was in fact quite close, but hidden from view by those crowding around. Upon hearing his death sentence he slipped away, reversing his trail cloak to display military blue as he walked, and removing his helmet and masking of cloth. He had not concealed his face to hide his identity, but to be able to flee unknown when he removed the mask. He secured a new plume for his helmet and a fresh warhorse at the cost of two lives. Within a minute of hearing his death ordered, Cypher had become just another despatch rider. Many such officers were riding about with messages and orders, so nobody thought it odd that one more was riding away west. By this time Warsovran was pointing above the city.

  “Silverdeath is still up there,” he said to Ralzak.

  “I do not understand, sire.”

  “I shall write out a series of incantations for you to make just before the eighth hour of morning on certain days over the months to come. They will invoke Silverdeath in ever more powerful and frequent fire-circles. You must invoke it again and again until its energies are exhausted, and then it will fall from the sky above the city in its original form. When that happens, find it and bring it to me. Einsel, you will ride with me now.”

  “But, Your Majesty, how do you know all this?” asked Ralzak.

  “I wore Silverdeath for five months, Commander, and in that time I shared some of its thoughts.”

  The ink was still wet on his scroll of instructions as Warsovran set off with Einsel, accompanied by a strong escort from Ralzak’s personal guard. Ralzak rode in triumph through the main gates of the city’s outer wall at the head of a squad of heavy lancers. Larmentel now reminded him of a powerful and exquisitely beautiful queen in the grip of a deadly wasting disease. Except for the inner citadel, the place was intact and brimming with wealth and potential slaves, yet its spirit had been burned away. Well-dressed families hurried along with whatever they could carry down the straight, clean streets and across pretty, ivy-smothered plazas, all prey for the long-frustrated and unsympathetic troops of Warsovran. There were occasional piercing screams and cries of pain mingling with cheers and hearty laughter, and fires burned that were nothing to do with Silverdeath’s stunning feat of martial magic.

  Closer to the center, Ralzak looked toward the ruins of the citadel walls … the long, straight avenue was lined with the burning stumps of trees. The mighty ironbound gates of oak had been blown out and burned to ash, and beyond was a glowing ruin. The stubs of the university towers looked like burned-out candles, while the palace domes might have been a nest of huge, smashed eggs. Ralzak rode as close as he could urge his horse, noticing that the buildings touched by Silverdeath’s fire were not just smashed, but partly melted as well, and heat radiated out from them as if from a baker’s oven. Nearby houses had been set ablaze by the radiant heat, and the roadway was littered with the charred corpses of those who had been too close.

  Finally Warsovran’s commander dismounted and, wrapping his cloak about his head, strode toward the citadel’s gates while a retinue of guards and aides begged him to come back. The hot air was barely breathable, yet oddly free of fumes. The soles of his warboots smoked as he trod the hot stones of Larmentel’s devastated heart. Ralzak finally stopped just within the palace gates, spat, and turned back.

  “I vowed I would spit in the royal palace as victor, and I have kept my vow!” he declared to the officers, guards, and aides around him as he swung back into the saddle. Parts of his clothing were singed where they had brushed hot stones, and the soles of his boots were charred and crumbling, yet standing in the palace and spitting on the royal sanctum was all the reward the dour, steady commander had wanted.

  Upon leaving the city, Ralzak declared his eyes closed for three days, then gave his men the freedom of what was left of Larmentel.

  Nearly two months later, at the western port city of Gironal, Roval Gravalios stood waiting in the shadows of a dockside street, his tricorner hat pulled low over his face and the black lace collar of his cloak turned up. The air in the port was chilly, but there was something else nearby that was making him shiver. He was by now no stranger to the feeling. Miral was rising in the east, and its huge, ringed disk cast green light and inky shadows all along the street.

  From one of the terrace cottages in the distance came screams and curses. Roval strained to hear the words as he waited. The gist of it involved hidden money, drinking, feeding the children, and someone wanting to go back to the tavern. Somewhere nearby a crier rang two hours before midnight and added that all was well.

  The argument became screams and thumps, then the screams faded to silence. Presently a burly docker about a head taller than Roval came swaggering down the street, and he tipped the brim of his cap deferentially as he passed the ship’s officer. Roval caught the scent of ale as the docker walked on.

  Suddenly a dark shape detached itself from a balcony and dropped onto the big man. The attacker had planned the ambush well, as the place was within deep shadows, and further obscured by a row of parked wagons.
The fight was a flurry of darkness against darkness, and curiously quiet. As Roval hurried over, he saw the docker pinned to the cobblestones and a dark shape bent over him. Traceries of etheric energy gleamed and writhed amid the shadows as the blood and vitality was drained from the big man. He struggled, grunted, wheezed, then lay still, but lights and sparkles still danced about his neck, and the face of his attacker, who was dressed the same as Roval.

  “For pity’s sake, Laron, what if somebody comes?” pleaded Roval.

  The dark shape ignored him. After what seemed like an eternity Laron sat up, carefully wiped his lips, then fumbled for his victim’s purse.

  “Dammit, Laron, if you just wanted a couple of silver crowns you could have asked me for a loan!” snapped Roval as he knelt beside them. “That was the most disgusting thing I’ve seen since I walked in on my grandfather while he was treating his piles with leeches.”

  “Well then, next time do not watch,” replied Laron softly.

  “Our ship sails within the hour and—This man is dead!”

  “I drank all his blood, that usually does the trick.”

  “But, but, but—”

  “We are to be at sea for some time. Would you rather I fed on the crew?”

  Laron stood up and moved out of the shadows. In Miral’s light he began taking patches of hair from his face, licking their resincloth base and reapplying them to his cheeks.

  “How does my beard look?” he asked as he finished.

  “Ridiculous. Now, can we go to the ship?”

  “Not yet,” said Laron as he began walking away.

  “What do you mean?” Roval demanded as he hurried after him. “The tide waits for neither live man nor dead.”

  Laron stopped before the door of a neat but shabby terrace cottage, then knocked smartly. Presently, a woman with a build not much different from that of the late docker, opened the door a fraction and warily peered out.

  “I told ye, I don’t ’ave any more in—”

  She stopped when she saw the two cloaked officers, then opened the door to admit them. The bruises on her face were fresh and ugly in the light of the candle she held.