James Clemens - Shadowfall

It glides, a shadow seeking the light. Its true name cannot be spoken within the logics of flesh and breath. It is no more than a trembling, a dark vibration along the plane that lies beneath rock and storm. It has no form, no shape, no substance.

Naethryn.

That is its being, but not its name. It is a creature of the naether, that vast and empty void.

It glides up to one of those rare places where its existence overlaps into the world of substance. Few know of these moiety points. But they exist. Just as the sea rides up onto a rocky shore, so do the tides of the naether roll against the world above.

The naethryn finds a hidden estuary, an opening where its world and the upper world blend and shift. Rising, it swims up a choked channel, silty with substance, into the world above.

Abandoning the naether far below, it enters the depths of a black sea, birthing into the icy waters. Light never reaches these depths. Here is eternal darkness, blurring where one world ends and another begins. But the naethryn knows its way. It’s been told, instructed, willed.

The shadow creature rises through the cold, dark sea. It shudders and gains form, drawing bits of luminescent life from the ocean. The deaths are small, but they thrum through its being, vibrations of pleasure. It sails upward. More and more life is drawn. Substance builds, layer by layer, like barnacles on a ship’s keel.

Form and shape bloom out of nothingness.

Pressure lifts as aquamarine moonlight bleeds down, bathing the naether creature’s new form. As it nears the surface, schooled fish flee in clouds of scale. Even a monstrous rill shark flicks its muscular tail and vanishes.

Unconcerned, it allows them to escape. It has all the structure it needs for this world. It tests its black limbs, its long snaking tail, and swims upward out of the dark womb.

At last, the naethryn breaks the waves with a crested head and breathes the night’s salt-soaked air, testing its lungs. Lidless eyes shine with a light that does not belong to this world. It stares across the foam-limned waves toward the distant shore.

Islands breach the waves: shoals, reefs, atolls, volcanic peaks.

An archipelago.

The Summering Isles.

A hiss escapes the broken fish bones that make up its teeth. It swims toward its destination, the largest island of the archipelago. Eyes reflect the flickering lights that sparkle from the isle’s crowned peak and spill down its slopes to the sea, describing homes, streets, and ramparts. A few lamps even skip out into the waters, marking moored fishercraft and masted deepwhalers.

The naethryn ignores all, knowing its purpose.

As it crosses the ring of reefs, none note its undulating passage. Even the lesser moon hides her face behind fog and cloud. The naethryn moves through the seawater as easily as through the insubstantial reality of its home.

Land rises beneath the waves. The naethryn resists touching such solidness, gliding through the shallows, remaining in water for as long as possible. But soon, force and blood and promise drive it from the waves.

Clawed feet dig into sand. Climbing upright, it balances with a long tail. Though it wears flesh and bone, edges blur with the shadows of the dark beach. It does not belong here.

It steps forward.

It must.

Water sluices from the assassin’s shoulders as it lurches forward. Steam rises from its scales. Claws drip with more than water. It moves across the sand, turning each step to molten glass behind it.

It has come here to slay.

To slay a god.

Some nights simply never end.

Tylar de Noche rolled to one knee atop the broken cobbles and wiped blood from the scrub of dark beard under his chin. A moment ago, tossed out of the Wooden Frog, he had landed hard on an arm that was more club than limb. His support had given way, slamming him facedown onto the unforgiving street.

As he kissed the stones, he was reminded of an old adage concerning the Summering Isles: A good night can last forever, but a bad night lasts even longer.

On his knees now, Tylar prayed for this particular evening to end. Forget raising a pint and acknowledging, if only to himself, the thirtieth pass of his birth year. He wished only for his lone bed in the garret over the fishmonger’s shop.

But that was not to be. He would be lucky to see sunrise.

Tasting blood from his split lip, he swept his gaze right and left as he sought any means of escape.

Upstreet spread the terraces, palacios, and gardened heights of those with enough wealth to enjoy the cooler breezes of the isle’s cliffs, leading up at last to the white castillion that blazed atop the Summer Mount. Guarded heavily, there would be no escape in that direction.

Nor downstreet. That direction led to the crooked alleys, whored corners, and dark narrows of Lower Punt. Safety never lay in that direction.

So, trapped in the middle, he faced his adversaries.

Bargo and Yorga.

The pair of bulky Ai’men bore matching tattoos on their shoulders. Two halves of the same slave ring. Once bonded and linked combatants in the blood circuses, they were now freemen.

Only their sport hadn’t changed.

Yorga fingered ebony guild beads woven into a lock of his mud-brown hair. Tavern shield beads. Marking him as a hired guardsman to the alehouse.

At his side, Bargo, the one still with his tongue, barked, “Goodly Master Rind don’t take to Punt scabbers crawling into his tavern a’beggin’.”

Tylar, his eyes narrowed, kept his post in the street, knowing better than to protest his innocence. He’d come to the tavern with two brass pinches, plenty for a pint. But it seemed he had chosen the wrong tavern. He knew better than to risk the establishments of the high city. This wasn’t his place. Yet sometimes he forgot himself. Sometimes he simply sought some memory of a different life.

He shut out such thoughts and crouched on the cobbles as a warm black rain misted from the dark skies. It was not the pleasant, cleansing downpour of a true storm, but more of a fog that trapped the day’s heat and held it to the islands.

Still, it wasn’t the weather that pebbled Tylar’s brow with sweat and made his ragged clothes suddenly seem too tight.

Yorga balled up a fist, and a garbled sound flowed from his scarred throat. Laughter.

The pair of Ai’men strode out from under the creaking sign of the Wooden Frog. Tylar was to be their amusement this night.

Yorga came first, all fist and muscle. Little finesse. But skill was not needed against Tylar-at least not any longer. Once a Shadowknight, Tylar previously could have taken both with hardly a wind.

But the Graces had been stripped from him, along with rank and title. Additionally, the empty vessel left behind had been broken by a half decade spent in the slave rings of Trik. His sword arm was a callused club, numb from the elbow down. His legs had fared no better-one knee was a knot of locked bone from an old hammer blow, the other slow and painful. Even his back was crooked, tightened by scars from the whip.