The Shadow Eater (The Dominions of Irth Book 2) Page 4

  "My cap!" the gnome blurted. "That is my cap you have there, elf!"

  "Oh, is it?" Broydo brushed the velvet nap. "I found a meal sitting in it some days ago." He displayed the armbands he wore of blue monkey fur. A simian visage glared eyeless from one, its leathern snout locked in a permanent fanged snarl. "Makes a handy fan to ward cooking smoke and flies."

  Old Ric snatched the hat from Broydo's grasp. "This is no flyswat. This is my hat."

  "Well, you're welcome then, Old Ric," Broydo said, and turned his attention to the hares he had flensed, gutted, and impaled on a spit of spruce wood. "Wear it in good health."

  Ric glumly fit the hat to his head. It smelled of monkey fur and woodsmoke, yet he was glad to have it back, for without it, he had felt naked.

  Though fearful of what lay ahead, the eldern gnome ate heartily. Broydo produced a sack of varied nuts, which he placed in the fire and shucked as the heat cracked them. Berries, too, came forth from another pouch. And moss wine from a flagon embossed with elvish sigils.

  The minty green wine frosted their insides with a euphoric chill, and soon they were smiling and lauding each other—the gnome for his hat restored and his life spared from squid monkeys and troll, and the elf for the hope, however slim, that Ric offered the stricken clan.

  Into the Dark Labyrinth

  In the midst of their third toast, a ferocious roar scalded the uplands, and the two squatters leaped to their feet. A bull lizard, huge as a horse, loped toward them, drawn by the scent of the braised hares. Razor jaws flanged wide, heaving shoulder muscles rippling and serrate tail lashing, it came straight at them!

  The elf and gnome abandoned their meal and ran up the rocky scarp. The gnome knew better than to look back and instead fixed his attention on the crest and its grove of dwarf spruce.

  Broydo dared a backward glance. The sight of the giant fanged lizard elicited a cry of terror, and instantly he lost his footing on the tangled heath and fell hard to his stomach with a mournful gasp.

  Old Ric heard the self's frightened scream and turned in time to see the lizard descend upon him. Its talons pinned Broydo squirming to the ground, and its dagger fangs slashed. The elf's vest and bodice flayed open, and Broydo's shriek rode high above the triumphant growl of the bull lizard.

  With a despairing yell, Old Ric wrenched a fist-sized rock from the ground and hurled it with all his gnomish strength. It whistled as it flew and smote the beast in the socket of its swivel eye.

  An anguished yowl slashed from the lizard, and it reared back, claws flailing and a black ichor drooling from the struck eye.

  Ric darted forward, grabbed Broydo under his shoulders, and dragged the stunned elf out of the shadow of the beast. "Get up!" he bawled. "Get up, elf, and flee to live!"

  Broydo twisted upright and stood agog before the giant lizard clawing at the sky in its agony.

  The gnome snagged the elf's arm and pulled him along. They ran hard, heads wagging, legs gulping wide strides as they crashed through the brittle branches of spruce at the crest of the bluff. Only then did they risk a look back at the beast.

  The lizard had forgotten them. It slouched down the scarp, lolling its horned and wounded head.

  Broydo's hands slapped his naked torso, astonished to find himself intact. Only a thin crimson welt from his clavicle to his navel marked the path of the lizard's claw. He burped a disbelieving laugh and slapped his belly again to ascertain that he was whole.

  "You saved my life," the elf gasped.

  "Aye, so I did." The gnome beamed, hands on his wobbly knees, heaving for breath. "So I did."

  Broydo sat down hard on a tuffet knobby with quartz. "Well then, your life-debt is paid."

  "Aye, so it is." The gnome sucked a deep breath through his teeth. "So it is."

  The elf gazed about with eyes that looked bruised with grief. "It were better then that you had left me to the bull lizard."

  "Was it?" The gnome straightened painfully, still panting.

  "Oh, yes. For now you're free to go your own way—and my clan—" Broydo took in a harsh gulp of air. "What hope has my clan now of lifting the demon's curse?"

  Old Ric plopped down beside him and cast him a sidelong look of incredulity. "What hope did your clan ever have with me, an eldern gnome, as your so-called champion?"

  "All of us have failed to retrieve the Necklace of Souls," Broydo spoke hollowly. "But we are only elves. You, at least, are a gnome. You were our best hope."

  "Me?" He pulled back his head in disbelief. "I have no Charm, no amulets or talismans, no weapons of any kind. What hope could you possibly invest in me?"

  "But you're a gnome!" Broydo returned Ric's skeptical look. "Gnomes are clever enough to live and live well, without Charm, on the ice world of Nemora! If you can do that, then stealing jewelry from dwarves would be little challenge, I'm sure."

  "From dwarves, perhaps," the gnome conceded, sitting taller with pride. "But a demon—what hope against a demon?"

  "Help us, Old Ric." Broydo fell to his knees before the gnome, and his curly brows bent piteously. "I will accompany you into the Labyrinth."

  "My debt is paid, Broydo," Old Ric said gently. "Believe me, if I had no other task before me, I would help you. I am old and have no family expecting my return. The plight of your clan moves me. And you have been not unkind to me. But I have been summoned by the author of these worlds."

  "Author?" Broydo squatted on his calves. "What author of these worlds?"

  "She has not divulged her name to me," Old Ric said thoughtfully. "She is of another, wider order. There, beyond the cloud mountains, she dwells guarded by her sentinels, the Radiant Ones."

  "There is naught beyond the cloud mountains, gnome, but the Abiding Star itself."

  Ric removed his hat and wiped the glinting sweat from his brow. "So I myself thought. Then, the voice came. The thunder voice of Asofel, the Radiant One. He had been sent to summon me to her garden. I followed his voice to a ladder of twine." A laugh wheezed from him. "Twine! But how luminous, lit with cold fire! The ladder ascended into a rock wall among the ice-veined crags of Nemora, where I had lived nearly my whole life until then. I climbed it. It did not seem a long way. But when I emerged, I found myself atop a massive well of ancient origin. The Lady was there. She said she had bid me into her presence for a talk."

  "A talk?" The elf canted his head skeptically.

  "Aye, a talk," the gnome repeated, and fit his cap back on. "She would talk with the dream itself, she said. The dream— that's us, you see. All the Bright Worlds, a dream of hers, hung here in the void by her magic."

  "Who was this lady?" Broydo pressed, his interest piqued. He pulled his legs out from under to sit more comfortably. "How did she refer to herself?"

  "That she did not." Old Ric put his knobby hands on his thighs and bent forward under the weight of what he had to impart. "She is of the Nameless Ones. I know of them from my own fire magic. I have been trained to see into flames. And in those torn veils of light, I beheld a shadow thing trespass our Bright Worlds from the Dark Shore. I was not the only one to see this, of course. But the blind god Chance led the Lady of the Garden to me among all her subjects who had witnessed this evil. It is an evil that I and others believe was Hu'dre Vra, the Dark Lord who brought cacodemons to Irth from beyond the Gulf. He is dead. However, he has left behind another, a magus whose presence injures our lady. And that injury may well invoke the wrath of the child's father and other Nameless Ones."

  "I know of no such Nameless Ones." Broydo lidded one eye. 'Were you perhaps dreaming this yourself?"

  "No!" The gnome sat straight. "What I say is true."

  The elf rubbed his warty, dented chin. "Have you any proof?"

  "None that would satisfy a counselor such as yourself, Broydo."

  "Then why am I to believe this?" Broydo heaved himself impatiently to his feet and began tying together the loose shreds of his torn bodice and vest. "I think this is a handy story by which to evade a terrible journey. You
needn't bother, gnome. Your life-debt is paid. A simple 'no' would have sufficed."

  Old Ric sighed heavily. "Whether you believe, I care not at all. I am bound to serve the nameless lady. She has sent me back into the Bright Worlds on a dire mission. I must accomplish it in short order. I fear that I have little time left, and none to devote to your quest."

  "A day!" Broydo cried, hands out held beseechingly. "The Labyrinth of the Undead is before us. We will go in this very afternoon and be out by tomorrow's dusk, I promise you. One day of your time, and you will have saved my clan and won our fealty."

  "How can you say one day?" The gnome cast a fearful glance toward the cankerous horizon. "There is a demon in there, not to mention vile dwarves and wraiths voracious for bloodlight. We may never get out."

  "But my clan!" Broydo fixed him with a piercing stare. "What will become of us?"

  "Elf, listen well to me." Old Ric stood and drew a deep breath. "If I do not complete my mission for the nameless lady, then all the worlds will cease to be. Everyone will die!"

  "Bosh!" Broydo waved him away in disgust and strode down the far side of the bluff toward the badlands. "Go serve your author of the worlds. I must find salvation for my people."

  "Farewell, Broydo!" Old Ric called, but the elf did not bother to respond. The gnome watched after him a short while, his chest clogged with grief for the elf's suffering. Then, he looked about him at the wind-bent spruce trees and boulders splashed with lichen under the sky's blue, and he wondered how he would find his way down to continue his quest among the Bright Worlds.

  Possessing no charmful object to barter, he could not book passage on the human's ether ships. Yet, even if he had possessed such a charmful object, he knew not the way to the nearest human enclave or even if such enclaves existed here on far-flung World's End. He crouched on the scarp ledge and peered at the pitch-green depths of the Forest of Wraiths. There, the wounded bull lizard roamed among flame vipers and squid monkeys and other horrors.

  He glanced back at the retreating figure of Broydo and realized with dread resignation that the path into the Labyrinth of the Undead was in truth no more perilous than any other direction he might follow in his trackless journey across World's End. And there, in the diminishing figure of Broydo, strode his one and only ally in this fierce nether realm.

  "If I succeed in retrieving the Necklace of Souls," the gnome reasoned aloud to himself, "I will have a clan of elves and all their charmful things to help me find my way to the Bright Worlds beyond. And if I fail"—he puffed his cheeks out and shrugged—"I will be no more, and what concern will I have then that all the worlds have followed me into oblivion?"

  Shaking his head at the implacable course of fate, Old Ric rose from his crouch and shambled after Broydo.

  The elf blinked hard when he turned to see the gnome striding downhill, waving his cap, and calling his name heartily. "What, may I ask, changed your mind?" Broydo inquired suspiciously.

  “I yet owe you a life-debt,” the gnome confessed. “You saved me from the troll in the ghost hole. How did that slip the mind of an elf counselor?”

  “It did not slip my mind, gnome,” the elf replied irately. “I acted to preserve the agreement already established between us. In effect, I saved my own life.”

  “That is a fine distinction.”

  “A distinction any worthy counselor would recognize.” Broydo dismissed the gnome with a curt wave. “Go your way freely.”

  “No. I cannot go freely. I need allies for my quest," Ric admitted with candor. "I must find a dark thing that has come into the Bright Worlds, and I cannot accomplish this without charmful tools. If I help you save your clan, will your clan help me find this dark thing?"

  "If you help me in the Labyrinth and we emerge alive with the Necklace of Souls," Broydo said, breaking into a lavish smile, "your quest will be ours, assuredly."

  "Done!" The gnome extended both hands, right arm crossed atop the left, palms down.

  The elf likewise crossed his arms in front of him, palms up, and clasped Old Ric's hands in the timeless grasp of elvish covenant. "How do you, a gnome, know the elfen embrace?"

  "There are elves on Nemora, you know," Old Ric explained as they continued their walk through the heather toward the infernal horizon. "On my world, gnomes and elves are not unkindly toward each other."

  "On this world, too, then," Broydo said past a sudden tightening in his throat, "we shall be friends."

  "We shall need to be friends if we are to survive what lies ahead," the gnome said, gazing upon the unruly terrain.

  In a short time, they were slogging through reddish black sand among stobs of whitethorn cactus. Ridges of albino sand rose before them, too steep to climb.

  They wended among the gypsum hills, using the Abiding Star as a guide through the convoluted gravel paths. Gradually, the white walls darkened to barren granite above which a stark promontory of cinder cones came into view. Slurry and volcanic ash crunched underfoot.

  Broydo offered refreshing sips from his flagon of minty wine, though by nightfall both of them would have preferred to slake their implacable thirsts with simple water.

  "It did not look so far from back there," the elf defended his reason for carrying wine.

  Old Ric said nothing. He devoted his alertness entirely to the terrible twilight above the black hills. Blood red clouds shone as a backdrop for the zigzag flights of bat-winged asps.

  Soon, dark filled the crevasses of the volcanic maze, and the narrow sky above swarmed with planet light, cometary vapors, and star smoke. By that illumination, the two wanderers decided, despite the daunting odds, they would press on.

  "We are within the maze as it is," the elf-counselor repeated each time they reached a fork among the rocky passages. "Best we continue on."

  The gnome kept his silence, all senses strained to their limits. Above, swift-flitting shapes played darkly against the cope of heaven, and below, among tarnished silver shadows, frightful noises abounded—the crunch of gravel, the scrape of sand, the growl of a predator on the far side of the walled granite.

  The only weapon between them was Broydo's flensing knife, which he kept unsheathed and wavering before him. Ric thought to warn him to put it away lest he trip and fall upon it, but he was too afraid to speak. He had invested all his focus on finding their way through the dark Labyrinth. The star patterns provided directional clues, and they managed to continue their approach toward the dread cinder cones where the Undead lurked.

  The sizzle of coils rasping against gravel sounded from a nearby corridor. The immensity and nearness of the perilous noise coaxed Broydo to a run, and he slammed into a stone abutment and dropped his knife. While he fetched about on the dark ground to retrieve it, the slitherous scraping drew closer, accompanied by an ominous brattle of claws.

  "Forget the knife!" Old Ric whispered hotly. "We must flee!"

  Broydo found the blade. Before he could stand, the air quaked with the grating of granite. From out of a side passage, a gruesomely massive face shoved. Its undershot jaw exposed rows of needle-thin teeth. Aslant with wicked fervor, eyes gleamed in starlight under a ledged brow of cracked shale.

  The gnome seized Broydo by the back of his pants and hauled him backward into another corridor. The giant jaws snapped on the elf's shadow, and Broydo stood a hand’s breadth from the meshed fangs and bone-pit eyes of the huge beast. A fetid stink jetted from its nostrils and choked the elf's scream in his lungs.

  Broydo stabbed his knife into the scaly hide, and the roar that burst from the gaping jaws blew the elf and gnome deeper into the corridor. They rolled to their feet and fled howling. Ric's hat flew from his head and disappeared into the dark. Heavy claws scratched rock, and the big face lurched up and out of the trace only to rear above them, a reptilian colossus scuttling across the ridge crests.

  Talons swooped over them, and Ric and Broydo pressed themselves against the rock walls whimpering. The stupendous visage peered down on its prey, snapping the air
and bellowing with rage, unable to wedge its mammoth head into the narrow defile. Again, it struck with its claws, scratching rock dust from the walls. In moments, it would shear away enough rock to scoop them into its ravening maw.

  Old Ric and Broydo looked for escape. The passage only widened in either direction. Cries of hopelessness leaped from them, swallowed up entire by the roaring of the beast.

  Then, from the wide end of the passage ahead, a cowled figure separated from the shadows. It beckoned them urgently and signed toward a hole in the rock wall. Gnome and elf clutched at each other, looking to see if either could surmise who this stranger might be. They found only terror in each other's faces as the behemoth above tore at the rocks protecting them.

  Frantically, Ric and Broydo locked arms and ran bent over. The air around them shook with the rage of the beast and the scything nearness of its claws. The figure ahead had vanished. The hole in the wall remained, and Broydo dove in first. Ric swiftly followed, and the two crawled through the narrow chute a long way. The frustrated roars of the predator echoed dimmer behind them, and an amber glow brightened ahead.

  The Witch

  Eventually, after much huffing exertion and shouted encouragement, Old Ric and Broydo crawled out onto an alkali pan whereon blazed a warm, welcoming fire. The cowled figure sat before it and silently summoned them into the light.

  Broydo pulled his companion closer and chattered nervously into his doughy ear, "Behold, gnome, that fire burns without kindling!"

  "Aye, but it's warm and bright withal," Old Ric replied bravely.

  Firmly grasping one another, elf and gnome approached the fire, their entrails shaking like the shuddering shadows cast by the blaze.

  "Don't be afraid." A woman's gentle voice spoke from within the hood. "Come to the fire and warm yourselves. There are no creatures nearby who will harm you."

  "Thank you, kind lady, for offering us escape from the beast," Old Ric said, and sat opposite the cowled woman. "I am Old Ric, an eldern gnome of Nemora. And this is my fellow traveler—"