Shadow Games

Chapter Twenty-six: OVERLOOK

The one who had withdrawn everything but moral support did not give up his right to complain and criticize.

The gathering of the Shadowmasters took place in the heights of a soaring tower in that one's new capitol fortress, Overlook, which lay two miles south of Shadowcatch. It was a strange, dark fortress, more vast than some cities. It had thick walls a hundred feet high. Every vertical surface was sheathed in plates of burnished brass or iron. Ugly silver lettering in an alphabet known only to a few damascened those plates, proclaiming fearful banes.

The Shadowmasters assembled in a room not at all in keeping with their penchant for darkness. The sun burned through a skylight and through walls of crystal. The three shrank from the glare, though they were clad in their darkest apparel. Their host floated near the southern wall, seldom withdrawing his gaze from the distance. His preoccupation was obsessive.

Out there, many miles away but visible from that great height, lay a vast flat expanse. It shimmered. It was as white as the corpse of an old dead sea. The visitors thought his fear and fixation dangerously obsessive. If it was not feigned. If it was not the fulcrum of an obscure and deadly strategem. But it was impossible not to be impressed by the magnitude of the defenses he had raised.

The fortress had been seventeen years in the building and was not yet more than two-thirds completed.

The small one, the female, asked, "It's quiet out there now?" She spoke the language that was emblazoned upon the fortress walls.

"It's always quiet during the day. But come the night... Come the night... " Fear and hatred blackened the air.

He blamed them for his dire circumstances. They had mined the shadows and had awakened the terror, then they had left him to face the consequences alone.

He turned. "You have failed. You have failed and failed and failed. The Radisha went north without inconvenience. They sailed through the swamps like vengeance itself, so easily she never had to lift a finger. They go where they will and do what they will, without peril, so blithely sure they don't even notice your meddling. And now they and she are on your marches, conjuring mischief there. So you come to me."

"Who could have suspected they would have a Great One as companion? That one was supposed to have perished."

"Fool! Was he not a master of change and illusion? You should have known he was there waiting for them. How could such a one hide?"

"Did you know he was there and fail to inform us?" the female mocked.

He whirled back to the window. He did not answer. He said, "They are on your marches now. Will you deal with them this time?"

"They are but fifty mortal men."

"With her. And the Great One."

"And we are four. And we have armies. Soon the rivers will go down. Ten thousand men will cross the Main and obliterate the very Name of the Black Company."

A sound came from the one at the window, a hissing that grew up to become cold, mocking laughter. "They will? That has been tried numberless times. Numberless. But they endure. For four hundred years they have endured. Ten thousand men? You joke. A million might not suffice. The empire in the north could not exterminate them."

The three exchanged glances. Here was madness. Obsession and madness. When the threat from the north was expunged perhaps this one ought to follow it.

"Come here," he said. "Look down there. Where that ghost of an old road winds through the valley up toward the brilliance." Something turned and coiled there, a blackness deeper than that of their apparel. "You see that?"

"What is it?"

"My shadow trap. They come through the gateway you breached, the great old strong ones. Not the toys you drew into your services, these. I could loose them. I might if you fail again."

The three stirred. He had to go for certain.

He laughed, reading their thoughts. "And the key to that trap is my Name, my brethren. If I perish the trap collapses and the gateway stands open to the world." He laughed again.

The male who spoke the least when they gathered spat angrily and made to depart. After hesitating the other two followed. There was nothing more to be said.

Mad laughter pursued them down the endless spiral of the stairs.

The woman observed, "Maybe he can't be conquered. But while he persists in facing south he offers us no peril. Let us ignore him henceforth."

"Three against two, then," her companion grumbled. The other, in the lead, grunted.

"But there is one in the swamps, whose debt of anger might be manipulated if we grow desperate. And we have gold. Always there are tools to be found in the ranks of the enemy when gold is allowed to speak. Not so?" She laughed. Her laughter was almost as crazy as that peeling out above.