Night of Knives

A PATH WITHIN SHADOW

A feeble wind moaned over a vast plain of hardpan sands scattered with black volcanic rocks where dust-devils danced and wandered. They raised ochre plumes then faded to nothing only to suddenly swirl into existence elsewhere. Across the plain, all directions stretching to a featureless horizon, identical, monotonous, a figure hitched a cripple’s slow limp.

Like a playful follower, a whirlwind lurched upon the figure, engulfing it in a swirling winding-sheet of umber dust. The figure walked on without flinching, without raising a hand or turning its head. The dust-dervish spun on and away, scudding an aimless spiral route. The figure tramped a straight path, its twisted right leg gouging the sand with every step.

It wore the tattered remains of what might have once been thick cloth over armour of leather and scale. Its naked arms hung desiccated and cured to little more than leather-clad bones. Within a bronze and verdigrised helm, its face disclosed only empty pits, nose a gaping cavern, lips dried and withdrawn from caried teeth. A rust-bitten sword hung across its back.

Far in the distance a dark smudge appeared, but the figure continued its laboured march, on and on under a sky that remained hazy and dim, where shapes resembling birds swept high into the clouds. Only once did the figure halt. Glancing to one side, it stood for a moment, motionless. Far off, the horizon had altered. A pale silver light glowed over darkest blue like the mirage of distant mountains. The figure stared, then moved on.

The distant smudge became a mound, and the mound a menhir. The figure limped directly to the foot of a blade of granite twice its height and stopped. It waited, facing the menhir while the dust-devils criss-crossed the plain. Vertical striations gouged the stone like the claw marks of some ferocious beast. Spiralling down and around the stone wound silver hair-fine symbols. Stiffly, the figure knelt to peer more closely, not at the glyphs but at a shape of brown and mahogany hunched at the menhir’s base.

The hump shifted, raised a hairless head of chitinous scales. Almond eyes of burning gold nictitated to life. A broad chest of angular plates swelled with breath.

‘Still with us after all, Jhedel,’ observed the crouched figure. Its voice was the dry breath of the tomb. It straightened.

‘Nice to see you too, Edge walker.’

Edgewalker half turned away, examined the plain through empty sockets, staring out to the silver and blue bruising.

Jhedel rolled its head, grunted. It stretched out one leg of armoured plates and lethal horned spurs, flexed its broad shoulders. It tensed and heaved to rise, but failed. Its arms disappeared behind its back, sunk up to the wrists in the naked granite of the menhir.

‘What brings you round?’

Edgewalker turned back. ‘Has anything passed by, Jhedel?’

Jhedel’s yellow fangs flashed in what might have been quiet humour. ‘Wind. Dust. Time.’

‘I ask because something’s coming. I can sense it. Have you…’

The amber eyes narrowed. ‘You know this small circle is my world now. Have you come to taunt?’

‘You know I am bound just as tightly.’

Jhedel looked Edgewalker up and down. ‘Not from where I’m sitting. Poor Edgewalker. Moaning his enslavement. Yet here you were long before the ones I slew to take the Throne. And here you remain after those who bound me in turn are long gone and forgotten. I’ve heard things about you… rumours.’

‘The power I sense is new,’ Edgewalker said, as if the other had not spoken at all.

‘Something new?’

‘Very possibly.’

Jhedel frowned as if unsure what to make of new. ‘Testing the Realm?’

‘Yes. What do you make of it?’

Raising his head, Jhedel sniffed the air through slit nostrils. ‘Something with a heart of ice and something else… something sly, hidden, like a blurry reflection.’

‘Eyeing the Throne I think.’

Jhedel snorted. ‘Not likely. Not after all this time.’

‘A Conjunction approaches. I am for the House. There might be an attempt upon it. Who knows — perhaps you will be released.’

’Released?’ Jhedel snapped. ‘I will show you my release.’ He drew his legs up under his haunches, strained upwards; his clawed feet sank into the dust. His shoulders shook. The chitinous plates of his arms creaked and groaned.

For a time nothing seemed to happen. Edgewalker watched, silent. Dust drifted from the chiselled sides of the menhir. It appeared to vibrate. A burst of silver light atop the monolith dazzled Edgewalker. It spun like lightning down the coil of silver glyphs, flashing, gathering speed and size as it descended until Edgewalker averted his face from its searing fire.

Jhedel gave a mad cackle. ‘Here it comes,’ he shouted over the waterfall roar of swelling, coalescing power.

The ball of power smashed into Jhedel, who shrieked. The land buckled. Edgewalker was thrown from his feet. Dust and sand eddied lazily in the weak wind. When it cleared, Jhedel lay motionless, sprawled at the menhir’s base. Smoke drifted from the slits of his eyes and slack jaws.

Edgewalker’s fleshless face remained fixed. He was silent for a time, then he rose to a crouch. ‘Jhedel? Can you hear me! Jhedel?’

Jhedel groaned.

‘Do you remember?’

Prone, the creature nodded thoughtfully. ‘Yes. That is my name. Jhedel.’ He shrugged in the dust.

‘Do you remember who bound you?’

‘Whoever they were, they are long gone now.’

‘I remember them. They were-’

‘Don’t tell me!’ Jhedel kicked himself upright. ‘I want to remember. It gives me something to do. Wait… I remember something…’ He thrashed his legs away from Edgewalker, hissed out a breath: ‘A rumour about you!’

Edgewalker took a few limping steps from the menhir.

After a moment Jhedel called, ‘Come back. Please. Release me. It’s within your power. I know it is!’

Edgewalker did not reply. He walked on.

‘Release me, damn you! You must!.. Damn you!’

Jhedel wrenched savagely on his arms. Dust flew like a scarf from the menhir. Through the dust the glyphs glowed like finest filigree heated to burning.

‘I will destroy you!’ Jhedel bellowed. ‘You and all those who’ve come after! Everyone!’

It twisted again, screamed out its rage and pain. As the ground lurched Edgewalker tottered. He glanced back to the menhir. Something flailed and heaved amid a cloud of kicked up dirt at its base. A plume of dust climbed into the sky.

Edgewalker continued on. He was late, and time and the celestial dance of realms waited for no one. Not even entities as insane and potent as the one pinned behind him. When they conversed during more lucid moments, it could remember its full name, Jhe’ Delekaaran, and that it had once commanded this entire realm as King. Liege to the Que’tezani, inhabitants of the most distant regions of Shadow. And mad though he may be, Jhedel was right in one thing: it had been long since the Throne last held an occupant. With the coming of each conjunction, this absence worried Edgewalker. But this time what intrigued him most was something so rare he’d almost failed to recognize it… the coiled potential for change.