Richard Baker - Avenger

Mirya glanced at Sarth. “Can you fly us up to the top?” she asked him.

“Possibly, although I doubt I could bear Geran so high aloft. But I do not advise it.” Sarth pointed at the flickering aurora around the keep. “We would have to pass through the wardings there. If they were to incapacitate me or suppress my flying magic …”

Mirya shuddered at the thought. “Never you mind, then. We’re not meant to take wing anyway.”

“We’ll make for the postern gate,” Geran decided. “It’s easily overlooked, and Rhovann may not have paid it much attention. If we’re careful, any guards that Rhovann’s posted won’t notice us until we’re well inside the castle.”

Tugging at his baldric to seat his sword more comfortably, he led the way from the clearing by the Burned Bridge into the shadow of Rhovann’s castle.

15 Ches, the Year of Deep Water Drifting (1480 DR)

Geran and his small band met no more gravehounds or other undead as they made their way through the gloom of shadow-Hulburg. From time to time they heard strange rustlings in the dark alleys or the creaking of floorboards behind dark doors, and Geran felt unfriendly eyes upon them once or twice, but nothing emerged to trouble them. Near the square of the Harmach’s Foot they encountered a number of intact buildings-houses and workshops and storehouses-in more or less the same place that they would have been in the living Hulburg. The windows were dark, and no lights glimmered behind their shutters, but Geran sensed that the place was not as empty as it appeared.

Mirya must have sensed it too, since she drew closer to his side. “Who raised these buildings?” she whispered. “Does someone live here?”

“I think that no one built them. Each one’s here because someone put up a house or a workshop or a storehouse in Hulburg.”

“Do they just appear out of nothing here when someone builds them in our Hulburg? And why is each one wrong in some way?” Mirya pointed at a cooper’s workyard as they passed by. “That’s old Narath’s place, but his front door faces across the street, and there should be a fine old laspar tree in his yard.”

“That’s the nature of the Shadowfell. It’s a reflection in a broken mirror. What it shows isn’t the truth of things.”

“What of the people? I can feel them nearby. There isn’t a copy of me here, is there?”

“Souls wander here,” Sarth answered her. “Dreamers drift through briefly, and the dead linger here, sometimes for centuries, before they fade away to the godly dominions. Some know that they are bodiless phantasms, and have no true life in this place. Others do not perceive their incorporeity, and settle into the habits and places they have-or had-in the firmament we come from. And there are also those few who, like us, are here in body and soul at once. Most are travelers who don’t stay long, but a few make homes here for reasons of their own. I have never seen them, but I have heard of strange inns and gloomy towns where those who live in the shadows gather.”

Mirya shivered. “So the shades of the dead are what we feel around us?”

Geran drew close and took her hand in his. “We don’t perceive them because most are already fading from the world. Only the most determined-or most confused-would take a shape we might see.”

“What a terrible place,” she breathed. “The sooner we’re done with it, the better.”

They rounded the base of the causeway, and threaded their way into the woods that lay south of the great stone massif on which the castle stood. The small stretch of woodland in the heart of Hulburg was wild and dark even in the normal world, but here in the Shadowfell the gloom beneath the branches seemed physically impenetrable. It took a conscious act of will for Geran to force himself to take the narrow path leading into the trees.

The silence and the gloom settled in around them, even thicker than before. He felt Mirya pressing up close behind him, and even Sarth and Hamil hesitated before following after him. A walk of a hundred yards or so brought them around to the south side of the crag, a towering shadow that now loomed menacingly over them. To Geran’s left a wrought-iron fence leaned crookedly, marking off a small space where a flight of stone steps led up to a thick door of iron plate in the side of the crag. He let himself in through the rusting gate and approached the doorway.

“Allow me to examine the door,” Sarth said. He murmured his detection spell, peering closely at the postern gate. After a moment, he nodded to himself. “It is warded, but I believe I can suppress it.”

“Go ahead,” Geran told him. He drew the shadow sword again and waited as Sarth began to incant his spell, weaving his hands in the complicated gestures of his craft. The swordmage sensed his magic gathering, exerting invisible pressure against the magical wardings sealing the portal. With care, Sarth checked his power, keeping his effort as stealthy as possible. Geran waited for the sudden clatter of runehelms closing in from the forest, or the lash of some deadly spell trap … but the moment of tension passed, and the postern gate swung open under the sorcerer’s power. Impermeable darkness waited beyond.

“I cannot guarantee that Rhovann is ignorant of my work here,” Sarth said. “He may have sensed the breaching of his defenses.”

“In that case, we’d better not give him much time to react,” Geran replied. With the shadow sword in hand, he plunged into the darkness of the gate. Inside, a short passage led to a low, barren mustering hall where the castle’s defenders could gather for a sortie or mass to defend against any enemy effort to force the postern gate. Geran half expected to find Rhovann’s servants waiting for them just inside, but the hall was empty-evidently the wizard counted on his magic to protect the door. On the far side of the hall a stairway spiraled up through the living rock of the crag, climbing toward the halls and buildings of the castle proper. He murmured the words of a light spell to dispel the brooding gloom, crossed the hall, and began to climb the steps.

The stairway seemed narrower and longer than Geran remembered, another subtle lie of the Shadowfell. His head grew light and his missing hand throbbed as he hurried up the steps. By the time he reached the top, his heart pounded in his chest, and his legs felt weak and rubbery under him. He paused, leaning against the wall to catch his breath. Mirya peered at him, a taut frown across her face. “Are you in pain?” she asked quietly.

“It’s nothing I have time for,” he answered, and winced. She snorted, seeing through his bravado.

Hamil and Sarth reached the top of the stairs. “Which way?” the halfling asked.

Geran set a hand on the shadow sword’s hilt, and reached out for the touch of magic, dark and strong. They stood in a passage that ran beneath the upper courtyard. To the left it led toward the kitchens and storerooms near the great hall. To the right, it met another short stair that climbed up to the chambers built in the cliffside beneath the Harmach’s Tower and the rest of the castle’s highest ring. The air seemed to shiver with the potency of Rhovann’s wards in that direction. “To the right,” he decided. He hadn’t really expected Rhovann to hide the runehelms’ master stone in the kitchens, after all.

He led the way up to the next level of the castle. Now they were just beneath the library and the tower. Here, on the southern face of Griffonwatch, the crag’s top had been leveled and excavated so that the foundations of the buildings above had rows of windows facing the Moonsea, and served as an intact and inhabited floor in its own right. Geran reached the long hall with its windows peering out on the dark, endless night outside. Ahead of him stairs climbed up to the Harmach’s Tower, but the unseen currents of magic did not draw him any higher. Instead they washed over him from his left, where a large council room and trophy hall stood at the end of the corridor. A pair of runehelms stood guard outside the door; he drew back quickly, hoping they hadn’t seen him.