James Clemens - Shadowfall

The city was the realm of the god Lord Balger. Its western border dissolved into the wilds of the untamed hinterlands that shadowed the far side of the Middleback Range. In the Dell, such boundaries blurred. It was said that the border between settled land and hinterland was as unreliable as Lord Balger’s moods.

The god’s stormy temper was as legendary as his debaucheries. He reveled in the pleasures of the flesh without restraint. He ate to a belching fullness, growing rotund. He drank to a blackened stupor, pissing from the towers of his castillion, “blessing” passersby with his streaming Grace. He whored with his own men in low places, accompanied by a Hand who would collect his spilled seed. But worst of all, he found pleasure in cruelty. Screams flowed from his castillion as often as song.

It seemed even the lowliest of Myrillian scum needed a god, a land to call their own. Balger offered them such hard shelter.

Tylar paced Rogger as they followed the thin path through the hummocks and hillocks. “Why risk the Dell? Why not wade back into the marshlands and head due east?”

Rogger waved a hand to the left. “The waters around the Middens are treacherous with quicksand. A misstep and all would be lost. We’re lucky to have gotten here as it is. To set off in another tack, we’d have to retreat all the way back to the Fin, then circle back in again. I know the Middens. We’ll be fine.”

Tylar didn’t argue. Here at least was dry, solid land.

As they hiked through the thick marshlands, the sun climbed into the sky, visible through the boles and fronded limbs of swamp palms and the skeletal forms of fennwood trees. The day wore warmer, steaming away the layers of fog and mist. The stench of the bog grew, a pungent smell of sulfur gasses and decay.

Still, they marched onward, occasionally leaping from one hummock to another. Frogs plopped away to either side of their path, marking their passage with tiny splashes. A loon called across the waters, a haunted, forlorn sound.

“You’re limping again,” Delia said softly after a long spell of silence.

Tylar noted how he had assumed the posture and gait of his formerly broken body: right leg stiff, short hobbled steps, back crooked. He forced himself straighter, his step more assured.

Delia moved closer. “Why do you still do that?”

He shook his head.

“Is it that you don’t trust this hale form you wear now?”

“What is there to trust?” Tylar said. “The only reason my bones have been mended is to cage the dred ghawl inside me. Once I’m rid of the daemon-if we’re victorious-then my body will revert to its broken posture. So why lose the reflexes honed from years of crippling? I may need them again.”

Rogger grumbled ahead of him, “Cursed with the daemon… broken without it. A real corker there.”

As they continued marching, the sun climbed directly overhead.. and still there appeared no end to the marshlands. Tylar searched around him. Hadn’t they passed this way already? Wasn’t that the same stump of fennwood?

Hadn’t he already pushed through this bramblebrier tangle before? He searched the mud for the telltale print of his boots. Nothing.

Still, he felt as if they were circling and circling.

Delia voiced a similar concern. “I thought you said it wasn’t far to clear the swamps.” She dabbed her brow with a pocket kerchief.

Rogger scowled back at her, dripping sweat from nose and brow. “Far… near… it’s all relative. I’ll get us-”

With his attention turned, Rogger failed to see the trap. His foot stepped into the snare, it sprang with a sharp thwip, and the thief flipped into the air with a cry of surprise. Bouncing a bit, he hung upside down by one ankle.

Tylar crossed under him. Deer snare. During their long hike, he had spotted a few long-legged fawns and even an antlered buck, bounding from hummock to hillock and away. Fleet-footed… more so than Tylar’s thieving companion. He freed a dagger to cut him down.

Rogger caught his winded breath, still bouncing. His eyes were wide, clearly still panicked. “Trap…” he gasped out.

Tylar froze, dagger in hand.

He heard the twang of the crossbow and turned to see Delia struck in the shoulder and spilled into the water. Before he could take a step, he felt something crack against the back of his skull-then the ground rushed up at him and struck him in the face.

He heard Rogger cry out.

Then darkness.

Awareness came slowly. But no sight. He heard distant sounds: the clank of an iron door, the rattle of a chain, echoing words, even the drip of water. But closer, by his ear, a voice spoke from out of the blackness.

… BE AWARE… BEWARE…

Tylar had no sense of himself. He hung weightless in a black sea, between consciousness and oblivion.

But he was not alone.

He felt the stir of current around him, something swimming past, under him. He sensed the immensity of its size, a leviathan of the deep. Its scrutiny drew all warmth from him.

… THE CABAL… HUNTS…

The words were not at his ear, but in his head. Tylar found no tongue to express his confusion, but it was understood.

A more frantic stirring spun him in the dark sea. He sensed urgency, a press of time like a lead weight. What did the speaker want of him?

… RIVENSCRYR…

Tylar shivered in the darkness. He caught the barest scent of spring blossoms, dried and burned on a brazier, sweet but smoldering. A shadow of Meeryn, the scent of her funeral pyre… only this was not death. Again the presence swam beneath him. Tylar sensed who spoke to him now. He felt a writhing where his heart once lay, deep within his chest, past bone and blood.

It was the dred ghawl.

Awakened inside him.

A single word arose from the darkness:

… NAETHRYN…

Tylar inwardly shivered. He remembered Fyla expressing her belief that such a being, a naethryn, slew Meeryn. Was this further proof? That one of the dread undergods, the dark shadows of their Myrillian counterparts, had broken into this world?

The scrutiny of the daemon grew more intense, swelling into him, through him. Such language was beyond it, but still it struggled.

NOT DAEMON…

It sought to clarify, putting all its efforts into one last thought.

NAETHRYN… I AM NAETHRYN…

Shock shattered away the darkness. Firelight flickered in the cracks and drove the dregs of the black dream away. Still Tylar felt the slither of the daemon behind the bones of his rib cage, fiery with anger.

Not a dream…

I am naethryn.

Could such a thing be possible? Did he bear some aspect of an undergod inside him, a creature a thousandfold more foul than any daemon? And if truly a naethryn, could it be the very monster who murdered Meeryn?

Before he could ponder further, awareness of his surroundings finally struck through his shock. He was in a stone cell. Another dungeon. He lay on his back, naked except for a loincloth, strapped spread-eagle on a rack, lashed in rope that stank of shite. Black bile. The ropes had been blessed by bloodnullers, protecting the hemp from Graced enchantments.

He sensed a presence in the cell with him.

“He wakes,” a slithery voice said.

Tylar turned his head, making the room spin and his stomach churn queasily. A black-robed figure huddled near an open door, bent in shadow, face cowled. A hand, smeared in filth… black bile… pointed to him. The stench off the bloodnuller filled his nostrils, gagging him further.

With the nuller’s words, a figure stepped into the doorway, limned in torchlight. A tall man of wide girth and broad shoulders. He wore a beard, forked to the middle of his swollen belly. His clothing matched his hair, as black as a crow’s tail: boots, leggings, surcoat. Only his shirt seemed woven of silver thread, reflecting the torchlight, like the finest wrought chain mail.