Phoenix in Shadow Read online

  Now he understood his patron’s knowing smiles, Kerlamion’s laugh. There was no passage here to the Hells.

  The Hells had come here, to Zarathan itself.

  The forest was deathly silent now. Even the worst monstrosities he had seen would have fled, be cowering in their burrows or still running, flying, swimming through the ground until they dropped of exhaustion.

  And then there came a sound: the sound of an incalculably huge lock opening.

  Directly before him a gate began to slide open in the impregnable black wall. Sterile, sharp white light poured from within that gate, a light so cold and dead that its touch seemed to leach away color and life. Silhouetted against that light was a black form, round in outline but with hints of much worse.

  As Condor’s eyes adjusted to the fell light, he could see the Thing more clearly, and wished he couldn’t. An ovoid, leathery-skinned body was supported by four talons like those of a gargantuan bird of prey, and sported night-black wings like a monstrous bat. A long, flexible, wattled neck held a long head that shone like black bone or perhaps the carapace of an insectoid abomination; the dead-white glowing eyes certainly had the pupilless, faceted look of the eyes of most insects, but the mouth was long and jagged, as though the beaked mouth of a snapping turtle had been crossed with that of a wolf, or perhaps a dragon. The long, slender tail included black, bladed spines.

  And then it spoke.

  The voice was startling. It was pleasant, gentle, sweet, like that of a young girl—though beneath and behind it, almost beyond the range of hearing, was an undertone that sounded like distant screams.

  “Condor False-Justiciar, step forward.”

  It was the last sort of voice he would have expected from that monstrosity, and it added a crowning touch to the horror.

  But I long since left my choices behind. Shakily, he walked towards the monster.

  It smiled, a flexing of a face that should be incapable of flexure, another horrifying tiny detail. “Well done. You have arrived precisely as directed. The King of All Hells will be pleased indeed, for to cross the land called Hell is a considerable feat.” It turned and moved a wing down, an ebony ramp. “I am to bring you to the King immediately.”

  The wing was frighteningly solid beneath his boots; it did not feel like a leather pinion, but rather a bridge of stone. The creature’s back was softer, dry and flexible as the hide of the elephant Condor had seen once; yet there was something repellent about it, perhaps a faint scent of dry decay, as of a house abandoned in the desert for centuries.

  Smell of decay or no, the Demon—for such Aran knew it had to be, and a powerful one indeed, to be sent on a personal errand for the ruler of the Black City—leapt up and arrowed into the now-darkened sky with speed and agility a smaller creature would envy.

  Now Aran could see the city from above, and knew his horror had not reached its limits. The Black City stretched from horizon to horizon, a ten-mile circle of blackness—black walls, ebony buildings, night-shadowed streets, all arranged in perfect circular arcs. The city rose slowly, a vast cone-shaped arrangement of structures and roads all converging on the gargantuan castle in the center, itself echoing the design of the whole: a ring of walls, a ring of towers, and in the center a great single keep that rose up and somehow faded away; it hurt his eyes and mind to look at how it went from something that was to something that was not. At intervals along the great outer walls were guard towers, posts with guards and with great engines of destruction that looked like nothing he had ever seen.

  Below, demons—monstrous forms of all shapes and sizes—moved busily. Many were marching, drilling—parts of an army so huge that Aran couldn’t grasp it—but many others seemed to be going about their business as though they lived in an ordinary city. Yet even there something seemed wrong, off, as though even in living daily lives there was something terribly twisted and unnatural about them.

  The Demon upon which he rode flew straight up one of the great thoroughfares, a road running true as a sword-stroke to the central tower. The gates of the castle were already open, and nothing challenged his mount as it flew directly up to the door of the central keep itself.

  “Here you dismount,” it said in its eerily pleasant voice. “None save those granted audience may enter the Tower of the Black Star.”

  Condor said nothing; he wanted to save his breath and his courage for the coming confrontation.

  The doorway to the Tower was open, yet nothing could be seen within; it was deadly black. Aran glanced back, but knew there was no choice. I made this decision as soon as I demanded I be given the power for my revenge.

  He brought the image of his foster father’s face to his mind, drew strength from the anger he felt as he contemplated that face as he had last seen it: glaring open eyes beneath a fragment of Shrike’s own axe, plunged lethally into his forehead.

  With a deep breath, one scented with old decay and something sharper but no less deadly, Aran strode through the doorway.

  The echoes of his footsteps . . . changed as he passed into the Tower; they whirled upward in pitch, then dropped so low as to be beyond hearing, chasing themselves in a rumbling, squeaking chorus around the interior. Within a few steps, the darkness lightened, slightly, and now he could see the Throne.

  It stood in the center of the Tower, and the Tower was but a single titanic room, an empty, unadorned space of pure black polished stone a quarter-mile across. The black Throne was simple, a cone that rose from the floor, carved out so that Someone could sit in it, and then continuing up, up, out of sight into darkness, impossibly fading, blending into the void above.

  And in the throne sat Kerlamionahlmbana, the Black Star of Destruction, a figure hewn from the darkness darker than his surroundings, with only blazing, eerie blue-white light showing where his eyes were. The black figure was itself surrounded by a faint blue-violet aura, and a distant wailing howl emanated from Kerlamion, as though the air itself feared his presence.

  Aran, the Condor Justiciar, felt his heart hammering faster than ever before in his life, even more than when he was confronted with his patron and Thornfalcon’s true power. This was the King of All Hells, and no name had ever been spoken with greater fear, save perhaps only that of the Slayer of Gods, the Hunger without End, the King of Wolves, Virigar—and even he, it was said, would not care to casually offend the one who sat upon the Ebon Throne.

  Aran knelt and bowed his head.

  “Rise and approach, Condor,” the King of All Hells said, and his voice was both rumble and howl, the sound of air or water being sucked into a void, screaming and growling at once.

  Aran stood, feeling his knees trembling. I asked for this. I asked for this. I must move forward. Doomed and damned I may be, but at least I must not fail in following my own course. I will not collapse and be shown a coward here, not now.

  Somehow he found the courage to stride forward as though at a review, steps rhythmic and steady as a drumbeat, ignoring the eeriness of the echoes and the deadly darkness that loomed ever higher before him.

  “Stop,” commanded the King of All Hells, as Condor had come to within fifty feet of the Throne, and Kerlamion rose to his full height, his nigh-invisible head thirty feet above Condor’s own.

  Kerlamion looked down upon him, and there was power in that gaze; the mere regard of the Ruler of the Hells was enough to feel as though a leaden blanket had fallen over Aran. But Condor held tight to his pride and purpose, and raised his head to meet that terrible, blank, flaming stare.

  Kerlamion chuckled suddenly, and that was perhaps the most horrid thing Aran had ever heard, causing a sick sweat to spring out across his brow; it was a laugh that had humor and understanding in it, yet mixed with malice and hatred, all twisted and warped by the distortion of sound around the King. “So, Condor, called Justiciar, you come seeking power, power to match and outmatch your enemy, the slayer of the father of your heart?”

  “Yes, your Majesty.”

  He nodded. “Know, the
n, that this is a great boon you seek; for you wish a power sufficient to withstand the power of a god, and return against it enough power to break that god’s wards on its last champion. Yet,” and suddenly a blaze of howling blue-white showed as Kerlamion smiled, “yet, in truth, it is well within my power to grant you this boon; for I am called ‘demon,’ but I am as much god as Myrionar. Indeed, I am greater by far, and have faced the Light in the Darkness himself, contested power with Elbon Nomicon, and still I hold my throne and none dare oppose me here.”

  I must not be utterly cowed. He is volatile—this I know—but he will not respect weakness at all. “This is true, Majesty, yet the boon was already asked, and you bid me here to receive it, not to impress me with your power, which is indeed beyond compare.”

  The deadly blazing eyes narrowed, but the tone showed it was with more amusement than annoyance, and Aran permitted himself to relax the slightest bit. “So. I have devoted some small time to contemplating how best to provide that which you have asked. And seeing you, I now see the best—perhaps the only—true choice. Give me your sword.”

  Aran’s hand was already complying, even before he realized it. Disobeying him would be almost impossible. The sensation was itself frightening; he had never found himself so unquestioningly obedient to anyone or anything before. He extended the blade to the King of All Hells, hilt-first.

  Kerlamion did not bend down; the Justiciar’s blade Skyvault floated up and hung before the burning blue eyes.

  Then Kerlamion reached back and drew forth his own Sword. The blade blazed as black as Kerlamion himself, devouring any light that approached. “The Sword of Oblivion, the Consuming Blade,” the King of Demons said. “Greatest of all weapons, before which none may stand.”

  To his astonishment, Aran saw that the outline of the Consuming Blade was nearly identical to his own, merely immensely larger. “There is a kinship between us, Aran of Evanwyl,” Kerlamion said, with another touch of that monstrous humor. “We wield similar blades in much the same way, and for much the same purpose of vengeance against those who have wronged us. So to you . . . I give much the same power.”

  There was a rending sound as though something had torn sky and stone, and a tiny shard split from the Blade of the Demon King and dropped slowly. It shimmered with the terrible blue-white fire, and descended until it touched Skyvault—

  And Skyvault vanished. In its place was an identical sword, save that the blade was black as night, glinting with the deadly azure-tinted white power. “A piece of my own weapon I give to you. The Demonshard Blade will strengthen you, guide your hand, and deliver absolute force to your blows. Even against the Phoenix Justiciar of Myrionar it will be unstoppable.”

  The Demonshard drifted down to Aran’s upraised hand, and as soon as his fingers touched the hilt he felt a surge of strength, of confidence and power such as he could scarcely believe. Even the King of Hell, while still awe-inspiring, seemed less fearsome. Stunned, he raised his head. “I thank you, Majesty. Is there anything that can withstand this weapon?”

  The eyes narrowed and that terrible smile drew a line of consuming dead fire across the face of night. “Its source and parent, my own blade, of course. But other than that? Aran Condor, even were Terian himself to come before you, he would be cut, yea, and the wound pain him for ages to come. Once you have left my presence, I do not believe you shall find anything to withstand the Demonshard. Wield it well in our service, Condor, and I shall be well content.”

  Slowly, the King of All Hells seated himself. “You may go.”

  The confidence of the Demonshard allowed him to bow calmly and turn, striding to the exit.

  But inside, he desperately wanted to run. And a part of him thought, perhaps, that he would be much wiser to cast this blade aside, and keep running.

  CHAPTER 8

  “What, young Prince? You thought my skills suited only to metalwork?” The Spiritsmith was dipping a pearlescent cloth into some liquid that shimmered like moonlight.

  Kyri saw Tobimar give a wry smile. “I suppose I did assume that, yes. Clearly I was mistaken.”

  “When making armor, can one neglect the padding, the straps, the parts that make it truly wearable and secure? And if these be weak, will they not define the weakness of the armor?” The Spiritsmith’s voice, she noted, was not angry or sarcastic, merely instructive, as he watched closely the way the cloth swirled and coiled without even the slightest touch from his hand. “And many are the forms of armor; I know them all, from woven bamboo and leather to chain and scale, solid plate and metal cloth, all the forms and types that have ever been imagined. These I know, as I know all weapons, forge all weapons, here, whether they be blades of metal or mauls of kerva wood, nets woven of shadow and light or a bow to call down the stars.”

  “And a good thing, too,” said Poplock from a different corner of the forge. The little Toad was sitting on an anvil, surrounded by hundreds of tiny gears, springs, levers, and other less identifiable components; he was hammering on some new piece of metal even as he spoke. “If you were always working metal, I wouldn’t be able to use your anvil.”

  “Ha! True enough, my friend. But for one such as yourself, who has already taught himself much of the craft of metal and the way of machines, I am glad to lend you the use of the forge and what materials you find; even building your largest creations will take but little of what I have.”

  Kyri was glad to hear that cheerful tone in the Spiritsmith’s voice again. For the first few days after the Black City had arrived, it had seemed he might not emerge from his shock. But on the fifth day, he had emerged from his private chambers and slammed his massive fist on the table so hard it had cracked the solid stone. “Enough!” he had said. “Terrible the days upon us, and worse to come, but that calls me to action such as I have not had in ages gone, and you are the first who need me.”

  She saw Tobimar look to another part of the workshop, where two new swords sat within a glowing pit that shone with soft golden radiance; they were nearly ready, according to the Spiritsmith.

  “So,” she said, “what exactly is that stuff?”

  “This?” the massive Sauran said, indicating the swirling material in the vat. “Woven from the webs of the stormsnare, the great spiders of the Khalals. One of the strongest of cloths, and capable of holding strongly to great virtues of power.”

  “Stormsnares? You mean the Charahil, the Winds that Walk?” Tobimar said in surprise. “I’ve never encountered anyone who successfully took any of their webs; those who claimed to be hunting them . . . never returned.”

  “Hunting them? How barbarous. The Charahil are wise and ancient as a people, and nothing like the Doomlocks and other monstrous spider-kin. I killed none for these webs; rather, I trade with them, and gain much from the exchange.”

  Kyri smiled, remembering a similar question about a vat of Dragon’s blood. “Do you get all your materials voluntarily?”

  The Spiritsmith bared his immense bladed teeth in a grin. “Not all, no. Just those that I can. Demon blood and bone and hide, these are not given willingly, to name three obvious examples. Many indeed are the monstrous creatures whose bodies yield materials peculiarly appropriate for my work, and most of them will not donate of themselves so freely either.”

  He reached in and pulled the stormsnare fabric from the vat; the liquid beaded and ran off as though the cloth were waxed . . . but there was now a new moonlight sheen to the material. “Excellent. This will be a fine foundation for your new armor, Tobimar.”

  “I don’t want to impose—”

  “There is no imposition,” the massive scaled smith replied, spreading the cloth wide on a granite table. “Soon enough I will have to travel elsewhere—for surely my King and kinsman Toron will have need of my skills now. But you three will be traveling into the heart of much of this evil, and I will ensure that you are all three well protected.” He managed a wry smile. “Khoros knew this would happen, and thus your presence here is as clear a command to m
e as though he were here to give it.”

  “Not to pressure you . . . but how long until the swords and the armor are done?”

  “Your swords . . . another day and a half. Most of that, however, is infusing the various powers and assuring that they are permanently affixed to the blade in their essence. I expect that I shall complete this armor in that time. It is not, of course, nearly able to match the Raiment of a Justiciar in most aspects, but it will protect you far better than your current equipment and will have certain virtues of its own . . . as well as being exceedingly light and not bulky, so as not to interfere with your style of combat.”

  Kyri nodded. “You mean unlike my style, which is generally more to hit things harder until they break.”

  Both Tobimar and the Spiritsmith gave a snort of laughter. “You do yourself something of a disservice, Phoenix Justiciar,” the Sauran smith said, “but yes, in essence. You have more need of mighty defenses and slightly less of movement—though as you are already aware your Raiment impedes you very little.”

  “Yes,” Kyri agreed. “For its bulk it is very light, yet strong.” She remembered other things she’d felt in battle. “And has that peculiar trait of my sword, as well.”

  “Peculiar . . . ah, indeed. You mean the fact that its lightness is only perceived by yourself, but that it retains all its mass to resist blows as the metal from which it is forged.”

  “I’d noticed that,” said Tobimar, “though more its opposite, with Thornfalcon.”

  “Yes, the lighter blades of the Justiciars are forged with the ability to strike and withstand blows as though they were much greater than they are,” agreed the Spiritsmith. He began to mark the cloth—delineating a pattern for the armor purely by eye, it seemed to Kyri. There were no templates, nothing to show Tobimar’s measurements and ensure its fit, yet she was certain that when the Spiritsmith was done the new armor would fit Tobimar as though it were a second skin.