Shadowblood

Chapter Three

Rik invoked the illumination spell. A faint ball of flame flickered within the crystal sphere Asea had given him. It was barely more than a witch light but enough to let his half-Terrarch eyes see the broken machinery and shattered glasswork around him.

Rik did not like this place. The last time he had been in this basement, he had found a vat full of undead soldiers. Now it smelled of acid and blood and death and fire. The voices in his head were uneasy too, as they should be, for if he died they lost their last desperate finger-hold on life as well.

Rik kept his back to the wall and checked the pistol. It was loaded with a truesilver bullet of the same type with which he had killed Malkior and he wondered whether he was going to have to do for the daughter as well. He would prefer not to. For all her viciousness, he had always rather liked Tamara, and the last time they had met, he thought they might have reached some sort of understanding.

He wished that he had time to find Weasel and the Barbarian and have them back him up. Then again the last time the three of them had gone up against Tamara things had not ended well. He felt uncomfortable standing in the cellar with spring mud on his boots and clinging to the cuffs of his trousers. The stairs were rickety and would not make a good escape route, and that was something he had learned early in life that you should always have. It would be easy enough to trap him here given enough men.

Why had he come, he asked himself again? He was still not entirely sure. Perhaps he was just past caring. He was tired and the Inquisition might find him at any moment and cart him off to be burned. And he was curious as to what Tamara wanted. And, if she expected him to be easy prey, she was in for a surprise. The last time they had met he had not possessed the skill in sorcery that he did now. Perhaps that would help.

Even as the thought crossed his mind, a tearing sensation ripped at his soul. A patch of shadow in the corner of the room clotted and hardened. A humanoid outline appeared in it, a shadow that no one had cast. In moments it took on three dimensions, bulged outwards and Tamara was standing there, a beautiful Terrarch girl, snub-nosed, bright big eyes alive with mischief. A blade glittered in her hand. There were runes in it, and he guessed that it was a thing of peculiar deadliness. He rested the barrel of the pistol in the crook of his arm. Not accidentally it pointed directly at her.

“I am surprised you came,” she said, a smile quirking her too-broad lips. If having the pistol sighted at her made her uncomfortable she gave no sign of it. She wore men’s clothing, dark and tight-fitting. He noticed there was no mud on her boots.

“No you are not. You knew I would come.”

“I suppose so.”

“What do you want?”

“Exactly what I said in my letter. I want to talk with you.”

“About your father?”

“Yes. Rumour has it that you encountered him recently.”

“I did.”

“And how is he?”

“Dead.”

“Are you sure? People have thought that before but he always returned.”

“I killed him myself.”

She laughed in a way suggested that she did not believe him. There was also something about her expression that suggested that she might want to. “You killed him?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“With a truesilver bullet just like the one in this pistol. Then Asea cut him into little pieces and buried his remains in lead lined caskets in five different places.”

She shook her head. Her expression was a little dazed. “I don’t believe you.”

“Believe what you choose. It does not alter the truth one little bit.”

“It’s not possible. He was a great sorcerer and a greater assassin. You are only a half-breed soldier.”

“He under-estimated me. You people have a habit of doing that.”

She cocked her head to one side and studied him for a long moment. “That I know. I have done it myself. Still it does not seem possible that he’s actually dead. He was one of the First. He had walked Al’Terra. He served…”

“He served the Princes of Shadow.”

“Yes. How did you know that?”

“He told me. He told me a lot of things before he died.”

“And why would he do that?”

“He was my father.”

She just looked at him, then she sheathed the blade and leaned against the workbench, arms folded across her chest.

“He always wanted a son. He told me that often enough. He did not think it was possible though.”

“Apparently it was. He killed my mother or had her killed before he found out about me.”

“So you have the power too?”

“I believe so.”

“Which would explain how you knew about my arrival. Only another Shadowblood would have known that and then only one with peculiar gifts.” She spoke slowly as if putting things together for the first time in her own mind. She glanced at the glowglobe. “And Asea has been teaching you, which explains why you are not afraid of me.”

“I am very much afraid of you, which is why I have this pistol trained on your belly. Please be very careful. A gut shot is a painful way to die and I would rather not see it happen to you.”

“That makes two of us.”

“I would appreciate it if you would make no sudden moves. I have bad memories of the last time the two of us fought.”

“It would seem you’ve come a long way since — unless you were only pretending then.”

He said nothing, not bothered if she wished to jump to the wrong conclusions.

“I can understand why Lady Asea has taken such an interest in you now. Did she ask you to kill me?”

“You mean the way you asked me to kill her.”

“She is the enemy of my nation and she was the enemy of my father.”

“She is not my enemy.”

“I can see that you believe that. Were you ever what you pretended to be?”

“Interested in killing her? No, not really.”

“Do you intend to try and kill me?”

“No. We talked about this before. It might be useful to both of us to have a friend on the other side.”

“Are you trying to recruit me?”

“No. I am just telling you what I think.”

“And you really expect me to take you up on that, after you killed my — our — father.”

“I am just letting you know the offer still stands.”

She slumped backwards and laughed again. It was an odd sound, half mirth, half sorrow. “I can’t actually believe that this time he won’t be coming back. He always seemed invincible.”

Rik could not disagree with that. One thing Malkior had not lacked was self-confidence. He had planned to use the entire human race as cattle if he got the chance. It was no small ambition.

“So the old monster is finally dead,” said Tamara. “And I am free of him after all these years.”

“If that’s what you want,” said Rik cautiously.

“He was hateful and he made me the same.”

This was not exactly the reaction he had been expecting.

“And what am I going to do about you?” she asked. “I doubt the Empress would recognise any claim of yours to his estates.”

Was that what she was worried about? Malkior must have been extremely wealthy. He had been one of the First and one of the most powerful nobles in the Dark Empire. If that was what she was concerned about, she could stop.

“I don’t want anything that belonged to him,” he said, and was surprised to find that he meant it. Not that it made much difference anyway. Tamara was right. The Sardeans would never accept a legal claim from someone like him. “It would appear that you are rich.”

She studied him closely. The appraisal in her gaze started to make him uncomfortable. “You got more from him than I think you know.”

“Forgive me if I seem ungrateful.”

“I think you inherited some of his personality as well as some of his gifts and his tastes. I noticed it during our last meeting. You have taken up thanatomancy, haven’t you?”

“Not willingly.”

She arched an eyebrow.

“I killed a Quan. It was trying to eat my soul. Instead I ate its.”

She looked shocked and a little more respectful. “Then you have more native talent than most sorcerers.”

“So Lady Asea tells me.”

“She would know.” An uncomfortable silence filled the air between them. Rik wondered how he was going to get out of here without shooting her. He had no desire to turn his back on her as he went up the stairs.

“What will you do now?” he asked eventually.

“I believe I will return to Sardea and stake my claim on the estate before I am declared dead too.”

“There is a war on. You may find it difficult to travel.”

She gestured towards the shadows. “I am sure I will find a way.”

He was sure about that too. She was nothing if not competent.

“What about you?” she asked. “I hear there is an Inquisitor in Halim and he is interested in you.”

“I have heard that too.”

“Will you kill him?”

“If it proves necessary, I might.”

“I would advise you to run as far and as fast as you can. The Inquisition has great power and I doubt even you can kill all of them.”

“Your concern touches me.”

“It is genuine, believe it or not. I have always liked you.”

“People keep telling me that. It makes me suspicious.”

“No-one made you suspicious. You were born that way.”

There was a strange tension in the air. Rik wondered what it was. They seem to have exhausted whatever business was between them, but she seemed oddly reluctant to go.

“He is really dead?” she asked. There was no need to ask to whom she referred.

“Yes.”

“Then I am finally free.”

“If that’s what his death means to you then yes.”

“I find myself not sure what to do now. I have lived in his shadow for so long.”

Rik thought of his own life, the dead mother he had never known, his abandonment, his life in the orphanage and as a soldier, his confrontations with Malkior. “We both have,” he said at last. “We’ve both lived in his shadow.”

“I will bid you farewell,” she said, and stepped back. The shadows extended to greet her, and he was aware of the sensation of reality tearing. A moment later the darkness folded in on itself and she was gone. He waited for a second to be sure that no attack was coming and then began to edge away towards the exit.

He wondered if he would ever see her again.

Briefly Tamara fell through a cold airless place in which alien things waited. She stepped from the shadows and into the small room she had taken overlooking the old necromantic lab. She took a deep breath, filling her lungs then let out a long sigh of relief.

A quick glance around told her that no-one waited in ambush. None of her wards had been disturbed.

She felt weak at the knees. She was not sure whether it was from emotional distress or the toll that shadow-walking always took from her. The greatest of efforts sent stumbling across the room to slump down in the single chair.

Elation, fear and relief fought a three way battle in her mind. Her father was dead. At long last the old monster was gone. She was free of him, and his schemes, free of the ancient evil he represented.

Carved ikons left by the previous occupants leered down at her mockingly, and she reminded herself just how false their promise of salvation was. This world was in the grip of the Shadow. Evil was the true lord of the universe and there was no escape from that. Her father might be gone, but there were others like him, and worse things waiting to take his place.

How odd, she thought, that one so deadly should meet his fate at the hands of a mere youth, one who had not possessed a thousandth of his knowledge. It seemed that Malkior had forgotten his own lessons in the end. He had never tired of telling her that even the most expert swordsman can be killed by a fool that gets lucky.

Rik was no fool though. He was calm and calculating and there was something quite chilling about him that had not been there only a few months ago. She supposed the human part of him that was responsible for that. He had their trick of changing very quickly, of growing and learning almost before your eyes. He had succeeded in frightening her and not many people had ever managed that.

Perhaps it had not been him but the things that looked out of his eyes. She had sensed them there, the Elder world demon and its victims. He had partaken of its forbidden knowledge and she wondered whether it would destroy him in the end.

It was such knowledge that had really destroyed her father. Malkior had become ever more erratic in recent years. No mind, human or Terrarch, was capable of devouring another one and remaining completely sane. There was no way to integrate so many conflicting memories. Even Terrarchs, whose vastly longer lives meant more memories than humans, could not do that, and humans went insane swiftly when they practised thanatomancy. It would be interesting to see which part of his heritage won out. Perhaps it would be the true test of whether Rik was human or Terrarch.

She forced herself to rise and walk over to the pack she had stowed with her travelling gear. Within it was a silver flask and within the flask was moonglow wine. She took off the stopper and drank some, letting the cool rich taste run over her tongue and down her throat until it settled, burning in her belly. A morsel of strength returned.

She returned to the chair, set the bottle beside her and the runic dagger on her lap. Malkior was dead, she thought. Her father was dead. And she was glad although it was a gladness alloyed with many other emotions.

She remembered him from when she was a child, watching her proudly as she spelled out the runes in her book, and telling her wonderful tales of the world the Terrarchs had lost and would one day have again. He had been bad to the bone even then, but she had not known it, and had merely looked at him with the eyes of a doting daughter.

She fumbled with the locket at her breast and opened it. Within, in opposite faces of the casing were two miniature portraits of her parents. The likenesses were good, showing their ageless Terrarch beauty.

He looked poised and confident, the soul of charm, and she was sure that there had been a time when her mother had loved him. It had most likely been finding out what he really was that had driven her mother mad in the end. Lady Alysa had married a monster and given birth to another and it had been one of her father’s pleasures at the end to torment her with this knowledge, when she was too sick to tell anyone, and even those servants who listened to her ravings had thought her mad. There was sadness in the features the miniature portrayed, as if even then her mother had known what was to come.

She remembered the kindly, beautiful woman of her early years and supposed she must have loved her too once before her father had turned her against Alysa with his subtle words, his silent disrespect, the things he did not say that were more damning than the things he did. Her mother had spent many years trapped in the huge echoing mansion on their enormous estate, cut off from her friends and family, surrounded by servants who were her fathers slaves, watched constantly even by her maids. For decades, she had been unable to think of her mother except with contempt. It had taken a long time for her to realise how much her father had encouraged her in it. He brooked no rivals in her affections.

Why had they married? Her mother had loved her father she knew and perhaps there had been a time when in his own twisted way, he had loved her. Perhaps that’s why he had kept her a virtual prisoner, taken the time to subject her to his most exquisite mental cruelties, returned home after his many affairs. Of course, there had been other reasons. His mother was the last survivor of an ancient line, immensely rich, inheritor of many magical treasures, and her father had been a collector of such things, as many powerful sorcerers were. Perhaps her mother had merely been another thing he had collected.

She looked down at the blade. It had come from her father’s trove, part of the dowry her mother had brought, a product of the ancient magical arts of Al’Terra. It had their exquisite beauty as well as their potency. It could slice through magical protections, slay demons at need. It was woven round with protective spells to shield its bearer against death magic.

Strange, her father had not died from a blade, but from a weapon that had not existed on the home world; a truesilver bullet fired from a weapon that most Terrarchs thought obscene, the bane of their age, the herald of the end of their dominion. A gun had ended Malkior’s life. It was a new weapon for a new age, an age in which humans were rising against their betters, and had the tools to work the overthrow of even the most powerful of sorcerers. With truesilver bullets they need have no fear of demons. Even the Shadowblood could fall before them.

Perhaps Rik, half-human, half-Terrarch, as comfortable with guns as with sorcery was the symbol of this new age, and of the bastard culture that would grow out of it. She thought of his mixture of arrogance and fear, and wondered what would become of him. Perhaps he would survive. Perhaps Asea would use him up and then discard him as she had done so many others. Perhaps he would fall to the Shadow, the first of many like him, who would become its agents in this world. Like Asea, the Shadow used whatever tools it found most useful.

Something irritated her eyes. Her face was wet. Her father was dead. He was dead and all the things she had wanted to say to him would remain forever unsaid, all the questions she had wanted to ask would never be answered. All the complex knot of emotions would never be untangled.

Thinking about her father and about the Shadow she felt oddly adrift. She had served both, but she realised now that she had really served her father, seeking always to please him, to gain his attention even when she had defied him. Until recently she had possessed no real knowledge of what the Shadow was like. She had thought she had known, but she had not, not in the way that he had.

Malkior had been one of the First. He had come through the gates from an older, purer world. He had experienced the Shadow first hand, had served it since childhood, had bowed before its glory willingly, had been touched by it and granted power. He had not thought of it as demonic. He had talked about it as liberation, of freedom from the tyranny of Adaana, of the old Angels who had held back their people for so long.

She had known such things only through him, his stories and his faith. He had been its prophet and its embodiment and now he was gone. There was nothing left for her to serve. She felt more loyalty to the Queen-Empress of Sardea than she did to the Shadow’s cause. Without the physical anchor of his person, the Shadow’s was merely a side on which she found herself by accident.

Doubts she had long suppressed beat black wings around her skull. In a way she was glad that her father was gone, his plans to use the Black Mirror and open a gate to Al’Terra unfulfilled. For all his certainty of their glory, she had found the idea of the Princes of Shadow manifesting in this world a frightening one. It was one thing to work towards such a goal in the long distant future. It was another to live with the knowledge that soon the world would be utterly and irrevocably changed. She was not like him. She had grown up in a world where everyone thought of the Princes as the embodiment of purest evil, and it had tainted her with a suspicion from which she could never entirely be free.

She was merely putting things off, she told herself. She really ought to be going. Her work here was done, and the longer she stayed the greater the danger to her would become. There was no guarantee that Rik would not report her to Asea or to the authorities, and with a High Inquisitor in the vicinity, things could become very dangerous very quickly.

She needed to get back to Sardea and report the failure of her father’s plan to the Queen Empress and to Malkior’s former associates.

She stayed slumped in the chair, sipping liquor from the flask until eventually, red-eyed from weeping, she fell asleep.