Rise of the Shadowalker Read online

  The crowd stirred, a mix of reactions. A man from the ward screamed out, “War!”

  Ayla searched for him, and he shouted it again, lifting a sword into the air. She pointed at him, acknowledging his spirit, and nodded. The crowd came alive, raising their voices in a cacophony of cheers – of cries for vengeance.

  “Who are they to pass judgement? Who are they to say we can’t be free?” Ayla screamed.

  Fights erupted in the ward as Ayla stoked the flames of their ire. From the walls to the keep, all of Hornstall shook with force of their cries of anger. Ayla shook the guardian’s head again, and hollered at the top of her lungs.

  “We are done paying the God of Light’s tax on our freedom! The time has come for them to pay!”

  The force of their reply became the only sound in the world; a unanimous thunder of agreement. Ayla held the Guardian’s head aloft.

  “IT’S TIME FOR WAR!”

  chapter two

  Dark Prince in White

  Justin rode away, putting distance between him and Celia’s body. The Spectral Steed’s hooves did not thunder over the hills. Their magical, silent rhythm and the blur of the countryside served only as a blank canvas for his mind to paint the image of her bloody face. The sounds of flesh tearing as the dogs ripped her apart echoed in his empty soul.

  The wind rushing in his ears did not muffle the memory of her screams. No tears fell, nor any other cathartic relief came. His wintery-blue eyes watered in the wind as his black, shoulder-length hair whipped behind him. The wound on his face from Victor’s claws burned, and his hands had gone numb from gripping the reins.

  He descended the steep windward side of a hill, into the shadows of one of the highlands’ many valleys. The steed whinnied, signaling the nearing expiration of the spell. He would have to stop and memorize another casting.

  Pulling back on the reins, he brought the horse to a stop just as it flickered once. He dismounted, keeping the weight of his lithe, seven-foot frame off his torn and swollen ankle. The steed reared, kicking at the air as the magic faded. By his best estimation, Justin was days on foot from any orc village, and safe enough to study.

  The tops of the grassy hills on either side of him shone orange in the sunset, but darkness had already come to the rocky bottom of the narrow valley. He wished he had remembered to pack his light orb. He hated reading by lamplight. It would only make his headache worse, but he reached into his hidden pocket and found it. Whatever the owner of the tiny, enchanted, drawstring sack reached for always rested on top.

  The lamp came out, a full ten-times larger than the bag itself. He limped over to a large stone with a flat enough surface, and placed the lamp on top. Justin sat on another rock next to it, keeping the leg of his injured ankle straight out in front of him, and retrieved his spellbook satchel. He sighed and touched the claw slashes over the left side of his face with a trembling hand.

  By the time he had the spell memorized, the sun had set and the crickets had struck-up the band. The coyotes of the hills howled as the moon rose into the sky. Justin used to enjoy the melancholy sounds of the humid northern nights, but now, an icy chill crept into his heart. While the calls of these coyotes lacked the same haunting depth as Victor’s cross-bred Abyssal coywolves, the sound bore too many similarities for comfort. Justin reassured himself that for all Victor’s power, not even he could command the creatures of the wild from hundreds of miles away.

  Justin’s head pounded in rhythm with his heartbeat. His ankle throbbed, and had swollen until his trouser bottom pulled taut. Every movement of his mouth or brow tugged at the wound over his cheek. Squinting, he blew out the lantern with a wince, and placed it back into the secret pocket in his sash, still hot. He dropped the satchel containing his spellbooks in along with it, and stood on one foot. After making sure the narrow bottom of the valley remained clear of coyotes and other dangers, he closed his eyes.

  The first words of the spell whispered and scratched the steep, rocky slopes on either side of him, and through the valley. A breath after he said the last word, a thousand points of flickering light coalesced and then faded, leaving a translucent Spectral Steed standing before him. It tossed its wispy angel-hair mane and nickered. Justin leaned over the horse's back, and threw his injured leg over with a wince. Casting had doubled the volume of his headache, the pain radiating into his neck and eyes.

  “South,” he said clearly, and the horse galloped off. It navigated over hills, streams, and gulches; crossing impossible gaps and navigating the roughest of terrains without breaking its stride. The Beanntann Mountains, just a shadow in the night sky, drew closer with each hour until just before morning, when the silhouette of the greatest mountain range on Loatia blotted out the stars of the southern horizon. At the top of the next hill, glowing street lamps illuminated the squat stone buildings of the Hill-Dwarven town of Braigh.

  Justin urged the Spectral Steed onward, hoping that the late hour would ensure his arrival would go somewhat uneventfully. Of course, seven-foot men in white wizard robes did not go unnoticed, no matter the time of day. As the steed neared the top of Braigh Hill, Justin pulled back on the reins, bringing it to a stop a dozen yards from the front gate.

  Two wide-framed guards, in banded steel breastplates and helms with a bar that dropped down the bridge of their wide noses, both raised a hand for him to halt. He gave them a weary nod and held up his hands to show he did not come to their gate armed. Vertigo set in, and he pitched sideways. His head smacked the packed ground and colors exploded behind his eyelids.

  *****

  Justin opened his eyes, the last words of a dream still on his lips. An old dwarf stared down his wide nose at him, his long, gray beard dangling over Justin’s face. The ends of the dwarf’s gray moustache were adorned with garnet and amber beads. The ceiling above him, illuminated by the steady glow of light orbs, bore etchings in the polished stone.

  Justin’s legs hung over the edge of a stone table. After a brief moment of panic, he found the sword still on his hip, lying next to him on his hard bed. The guards probably tried to disarm him, but could not lift it.

  “Don’t sit up just yet,” the dwarf said, and peeled back one of Justin’s eyelids. He peered into Justin’s blue with his deep brown. He nodded in apparent satisfaction.

  “Feeling better?”

  “I think so,” Justin said, his voice little more than a croak. He cleared his throat. “Thank you.”

  He lifted his head, still heavy from sleep. A gray marble statue of the Earth God, a dwarf with arms folded over his chest and a forging hammer in one hand, stood against the far wall, the top of its head reaching the ten-foot ceiling. Glowing chunks of quartz rested in wrought iron sconces on either side of the visage, their glow illuminating the marble in white light. A holy symbol hung around the statue’s neck, the jagged silhouette of a mountain of silver inlaid on a gold disk.

  The dwarven priest put a hand under Justin’s neck and helped him sit up. His legs dangled over the side, with no sign of his ankle injury. Justin pressed a palm to his cheek, but that too had healed. He waited for the thud of the headache to return, but it did not.

  “How long have I been sleeping?” Justin asked.

  “Ye arrived just before dawn. It’s a few hours before sunset. I am Conall, Priest of Ereco, God of Stone.”

  “Nice to meet you, Conall. Thank you again for the healing, but I’m sorry, I need to go,” Justin said, and swung his legs over the opposite side of what he now realized was the altar. It sat in the center of a thirty-foot, circular room. The small, arched windows set high in the curved wall in front of him held no glass, just shutters, closed and latched from the inside.

  He checked over each shoulder, but found no door. There were no chairs, or seating of any kind. Dwarves stood for most formal gatherings, and that included Temple. The wall bore more etchings, like the ceiling. Light orbs glowed from deep swirled recesses in the pattern at odd intervals. The marks stretched all the way around the oblon
g, domed room, hiding any hint of the seams of an exit.

  A broad hand rested on his shoulder. “That would be unwise, young Prince. Every village in the Hills and the Undermountain is looking for ye.”

  Justin sighed. “When did the pigeon arrive?”

  “Less than an hour before you did.”

  Justin put his feet on the earthen floor. A dwarf’s beard did not go gray until at least his fifth century. Conall was ancient. The top of his head had gone bald, leaving a horseshoe of long, stringy hair around the crown of his head, which he left loose and down about his shoulders. He wore a simple, brown tunic with a leather tabard. The Earth God’s symbol was branded into the leather and gilded in gold leaf.

  A war hammer rested against the old man’s hip. No dwarf lived in the hills this close to the Orc lands, and survived this long, without having seen more than his share of battles. If it came down to a fight, Justin would lose.

  “What are your intentions, Conall?” Justin asked.

  Conall folded his short arms above his belly. “How’d ye come by that sword?”

  “You’re the friend Celia stayed with while she was here, aren’t you?”

  “Don’t know what ye talking about.” Conall said, and lifted his eyebrow again. “Answer the question.”

  “That’s a long story.”

  Justin straightened his robes. He almost did not recognize them. After six years in red, the white with gold trim would take some getting used to. Conall stared up at him, waiting for him to continue. Justin cleared his throat.

  “I really am short on time.”

  “The moment ye step out that door, every guard in Braigh will come for ye.”

  “If everyone knows I'm here, why –”

  “No one knows. The guards that brought ye in took a vow of silence. But yer seven-foot tall, and dressed in a ladies’ gown.”

  Rashidi had gifted the robe, red at the time, to Justin when he turned seventeen. The old dwarf could say what he wanted about it. A wizard’s robe was his armor.

  Justin lifted the hem, the enchanted fabric pearlescent in the light stones’ glow. He had not really looked at it until now.

  “Why’d you make them take a vow of silence?”

  Conall pointed at the altar. “It lasts until next sunrise. So ye would have that long to rest, and answer my question.”

  “What question?”

  He pointed down at the sword. “The one I already asked ye.”

  Justin sat back down, both because he had no choice and because part of him wanted to tell someone – needed to. Let an outside perspective from a man with centuries of wisdom decide if he had done the right thing. After everything, Justin was no longer sure.

  He started with the first moment he met Celia, and by the time Justin retold the moment Celia cut off James’ head, the dwarf all but applauded. Conall lifted his hands, but tugged on his beard and graced Justin with a nod of respect for his stepbrother’s passing instead. Justin returned it, an unexpected tightness in his throat.

  He told Conall about finishing Celia with the sword at her behest, and then riding away, forced to leave her body behind. The story ended with a recitation of Rashidi’s message to him, omitting only the location of the meeting.

  “Good story,’ Conall said, and slapped Justin on the knee. “Ye know how to hit the right notes, and which ones to miss. That’s alright, the letter from yer mother tells the other side to it.”

  “What did it say?”

  “That ye betrayed the Empire, murdered yer brother, and are attempting to escape south.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  Conall lifted a bushy eyebrow. “It’s the same story ye just told me.”

  Justin’s heart sank. If the old dwarf planned to send him back up north regardless, Justin would have saved his breath. Conall patted him on the knee.

  “Say a prayer, and get some rest. Ye leave once the watch changes,” Conall said and turned for the statue of the Earth God at the back of the temple.

  “Wait,” Justin said, and Conall turned back around. “You’re not sending me back?”

  “No.”

  “But you said you believed the letter.”

  “If yer confused, ye never should have worn the apostate robes. White suits yer thinking better.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Justin asked.

  “I believe the letter, but I also believe ye. Just because one is true, doesn’t mean the other isn’t. Not everything is black or white.”

  Justin dipped his head to the side. “The letter has an oversimplified truth to it.”

  “Simple works best. Especially when ye are limited to what ye can lash to a pigeon’s ankle.”

  “But I'm not headed south.”

  Conall raised a bushy eyebrow. “Ye won’t find many friends anywhere else.”

  “I still have my master.”

  “If ye wizarding master wears red, then he’s not ye master anymore. And ye’ll never make it through Radoin without getting caught. Magic or no.”

  “Celia vowed to come with me south and accuse the High Priest. That’s why she wanted me to take her soul with the sword, to fulfill her vow. But for her to testify, I have to free her. I need my master to do that.”

  Conall rested one arm over his round belly and stroked his long beard. “Aye. Or perhaps she just wanted to reunite with her father. Perhaps ye just want her back, and this isn’t about stopping a war.”

  Justin swallowed. He had considered that; his own selfish reasonings for all of it. From the moment he decided to rescue Celia, he had made it about something more than his feelings for her. He had to. His mother never would have accepted, “Let her go because I think she’s pretty,” as cause to free a murderer. Nor should she.

  Of course, stopping the war had meant something to him, but if he never managed to rescue Celia from the blade, that point was moot. The war could only be prevented by her testimony against the High Priest for his assassination plot to start the war in the first place. The fate of the war and Celia remained intertwined, as did his feelings.

  The vow had meant something to her, and so had he. Their kiss just before Victor attacked told Justin the truth of it. Celia loved him, and had not been ready to say goodbye. Justin pointed at Conall.

  “You care about her. You were the one that Celia stayed with while she was here.”

  Conall nodded. “And I knew she wasn’t coming back.”

  Justin let out a slow breath. If Conall knew it was a one-way trip, he had also known Celia’s intentions, and chose not to warn the Empress: that made him a co-conspirator. If he had whispered a word of it to anyone, he would have sealed Celia’s fate from the moment she set foot in the Orc Hills.

  That was the real reason he forced the guards into a vow of silence. Conall had just as much to lose as Justin, and because he wanted to know Celia’s fate. They had much in common. Justin ran a hand along the sword.

  “Can you tell if it worked? Is her soul in it?”

  “I can’t say for sure she’s in there, but it’s not the same blade she came here with. It’s the same metal, but that’s all.”

  The lump in Justin’s throat returned. The only thing that could have changed the sword to such a degree was Celia’s soul. Justin predicated every plan, thought, and action on the idea that he had rescued her soul from death. He had subsisted on that hope. If Conall had said ‘no’, then nothing. Justin planned to do next would have any chance of succeeding.

  “What about the prophecy of the High Priest? Did Celia tell you about it?” Justin asked.

  “Aye, and I’ll tell ye what I told her. Prophecies aren’t often right, and when they are, never in the way ye expect. Don’t ye go chasing one.”

  Celia had not listened, and neither would Justin. Fate, the Gods, Celia’s father, and Justin’s mother had left him with no other options. If the storm dragons were indeed set to return, they would make his mother’s army invincible. Celia had given her life trying to stop it a
nd Justin would too, if only to honor her sacrifice.

  “I need to save her,” Justin said, his voice taut.

  Conall pressed his lips together and shook his head. “There are priests of the Goddess of Healing that might be able, but ye’d need her body.”

  “Then I need a wizard.”

  Conall stared into Justin’s eyes. “How old are ye, son?”

  “Seventeen,” Justin said, and sighed, resigning himself to a lecture about his youth.

  “I just celebrated my five-hundred and twenty-third. In my years, I learned to believe in hope right up until it makes a fool of ye. There are some things in life ye just need to accept. Magic can't bring back the dead. She’s gone.”

  “But that’s just it. She isn't gone,” Justin said, and tapped the smooth silver pommel of the sword. “Not everything is black and white.”

  The old dwarf’s expression hardened. “Ye are hard to get along with.”

  A smile found its way to Justin’s lips, despite his best effort to stop it. Conall had just summed up Justin’s entire life in seven words. Having someone say it in plain language gave him a new and simpler perspective on too many relationships from his past. Even Celia had thought him arrogant and entitled.

  “I’m sorry, Conall.”

  “If ye need a wizard, ye should ask one who shares the same robes. Ye can’t trust anyone else. If ye won’t go south, there’s always the elves. Their wizards wear white.”

  Justin had no intention of doing anything other than following through on his plan. Conall did not know Rashidi. Rashidi would be there, and Justin trusted his master with his life.

  “I don’t have time to cross the world for help. Rashidi is one of the few people I managed to get along with.”

  Conall put a hand on his shoulder. “It might serve ye well to heed the advice of a man older than yer great grandpappy’s great grandpappy.”

  Justin’s Great Grandfather was Tor, the immortal minotaur son of the Goddess of Night, but he took Conall’s point. While Tor had lived over three hundred years, Conall could probably remember the Empire before Tor was even born.