Richard Baker - Avenger

“I am willing,” Sarth said. He indicated the old cellar around them with a motion of his horned head. “Shall I perform the crossing here? We will translate into a shadow analogue of this cellar. You may prefer to be in the streets above when we make the crossing.”

“Here is fine,” Geran decided. “We might as well stay out of sight as long as we can.”

“Then gather close to me, take one another’s hands, and be still. The crossing itself is not perilous, but we have no way of knowing what awaits us on the other side.” Sarth waited until Geran, Hamil, and Mirya were arranged as he liked, then drew a large vial from beneath his robes and poured black, acrid-smelling ink in a rough circle around them. Replacing the vial’s stopper, he took his rune-carved scepter and murmured words of command, pointing its tapered end at the splatter of ink on the floor. Under the influence of his magic, the ink flowed and shaped itself into glyphs of power. Geran didn’t recognize them, but that didn’t surprise him; he’d seen that Sarth’s learning was not the learning of Myth Drannor. As each glyph took its final form, the dark ink shimmered with a violet glow. Sarth chanted softly as he worked, shaping the circle. As the diagram approached completion, the tiefling stepped carefully inside its bounds to stand close beside his companions, and gave Geran and the others a warning glance without breaking the words of his spell.

Mirya stiffened next to Geran, and clutched at his arm. In the cellar around them the light was changing , growing dimmer in some strange way that did not change their ability to see. The flickering shadows dancing on the walls and ceiling from Sarth’s glowing runes began to take on an unsettling, viscous appearance, sliding and flowing over the brick and timbers like liquid oil. Sarth’s chant approached its end, and the tiefling completed the last glyph of the circle surrounding them. The whole design pulsed once; Geran felt a strange lurch or pull on his stomach from a direction he couldn’t define, and the circle went dark.

The cellar seemed almost the same … but Geran could see at once that the doorways were subtly crooked, the rubble and debris heaped a little higher, the air colder and more still. Mirya shivered against him, and he put his left arm around her shoulder, drawing her close. “What is this place?” she murmured.

“The shadow world,” said Geran. “Sometimes called the Shadowfell, or the Plane of Shadow. It’s an imperfect echo of our own world, existing alongside us but rarely touching our world. In some ways we’re exactly where we were when Sarth began his spell. But if you were in the cellar we’ve just left, you would have seen us disappear into thin air.”

“I see that you are familiar with the Shadowfell,” Sarth observed.

“During my days as a Coronal Guard, I was part of a small company sent into the Shadowfell to retrieve an elven artifact stolen by the shadar-kai,” Geran answered. “I never mastered the crossing ritual, but I learned what I needed to know about this realm and its perils.”

“Perils?” Hamil asked.

“The powers of darkness are very strong here,” Sarth said. “This is where the restless shades of the dead wander when they refuse to pass on to their final judgment. And there are old, hateful entities that lurk in the deepest shadows. They are best avoided.”

“I can imagine,” the halfling muttered. “Well, let’s get on with this, then. Where is Rhovann’s citadel?”

Geran studied their surroundings, allowing his eyes to become accustomed to the gloom that seemed to press in around them. “My guess is the shadow copy of Griffonwatch. It’s the strongest, most secure place in Hulburg, so it stands to reason it would be here as well. Mirya, where’s the closest access to the streets from here?”

Mirya shook herself and pointed to the corridor leading north. “There’s a door not fifteen yards down that hall that lets you into the cellar of the old Black Eagle guildhall.”

“Good.” Geran allowed Hamil to lead the way, and followed after Sarth. The door proved to be a little farther than Mirya remembered, but then again, that might have been the disconcerting proportions of the Shadowfell; distances were not as constant here as they were in the daylit world. When they finally found it, the door was stuck fast. It took Geran and Sarth pushing together to force it open. Inside, a rickety staircase led up to the ground level in the middle of a burned-out shell of a building. Through a gap in the floor over their heads they could look up and see a starless night sky above. Despite the lack of streetlamps, moon, or stars, there was a faint gray luminescence that gave them just enough light-or a lessening of shadow, anyway-to see by. Silently they climbed up and made their way out into the street. They weren’t far from the Winterspear, at the north end of Fish Street.

“Look at the castle,” Hamil said softly.

Geran found that the dim gray gloom didn’t hide things with sheer distance the way a normal night might have. Over the ramshackle rooftops and ruined walls of shadow-Hulburg Griffonwatch’s black crag towered, noticeably narrower and steeper than it would have appeared in the normal world. He followed its battlements up to the Harmach’s Tower at the top, which leaned precariously over the cliff’s edge. Pale swirls of lambent light played about the castle’s upperworks like a purple aurora.

“Rhovann’s defensive wards,” Sarth observed. “Interesting. The spells with which he guards the castle are visible in this plane.”

“Come on,” said Geran. “Kara’s waiting for us, and we’ve already lost hours.” He led the way as they turned left and headed north-if such directions had any meaning in the Shadowfell-through the ruined districts on the west bank of the Winterspear. These neighborhoods had been razed long before in the daylit world, and he was somewhat relieved to see that they were much the same here. Wiry tufts of pale grass and thorny brambles grew out of great mounds of rubble, intersected here and there by the crooked silhouette of a surviving wall. Sarth conjured a small, ruddy orb of light that bobbed along a little above him. It did little to brighten the gloom that surrounded them, but Geran decided that it raised his spirits a little, and it wasn’t so bright that it would be seen from any great distance. Once or twice as they hurried along the rubble-strewn street he thought he heard ominous scuttlings or whispers from the mounds of debris around them, and he noticed that Hamil kept a wary eye on the shadows nearby. Geran chose not to say anything to Mirya; he didn’t want to needlessly alarm her if it turned out to be nothing, since she was unsettled enough already.

They came to the small court where Keldon Way met the foot of the Burned Bridge. The bridge wasn’t there. The old stone piers were still where they belonged, but the newer wooden trestle that had been built atop them was missing. “What in the world?” Mirya murmured. “Now how do we cross?”

“It’s the nature of the Shadowfell,” Sarth answered. “Sometimes things that have come to ruin in our world remain intact here, and other times things that are still whole in our world have been destroyed here. It can be capricious.”

“Well, capricious or not, it’s damned inconvenient,” Hamil said. “We’re still on the wrong side of the Winterspear.” He looked at the river, swift and dark in the ever-present gloom. “I hate the thought of swimming it. I don’t suppose we can fly or teleport across?”

“It’s too far for my teleport spell,” said Geran. “Sarth, can you carry us one at a time?”

“If I managed you once, I can certainly manage Hamil and Mirya.” The sorcerer gauged the distance, and sighed. “Let me begin with you, Geran.” He murmured the words to his flying spell; Geran felt the shadows drawing in around them as the magic took its shape, but nothing more happened. Sarth stepped close behind him, locking his arms beneath his, and sprang up into the air. The cold waters raced swiftly beneath Geran’s feet, and the broken stone piers of the old bridge reeled by on their left. Then the two of them landed heavily in the ruins by the riverbank, not far from where the Troll and Tankard stood in the Hulburg Geran knew. Sarth panted for breath.