Among the Shadows: Book Ten of The Last Eternal, page 1
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
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CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
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About the Author
Note from the Author
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Among the Shadows: The Last Eternal Book 10
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This is for Baby Number Four.
You have no idea how lucky you are.
You are about to be born to the best mother in the world.
To the best older brothers and sister any baby could ever ask for.
Oh, and I’ll be there too.
I’m not much, I’ll admit, but every bit of what I am loves you already.
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CHAPTER ONE
In the distance, great pillars of smoke drifted into the air—dark, gray snakes undulating slowly this way and that as the wind took them.
The wanderer stood staring at those great pillars, the color of soot, the color of ash, and wished that he might make them vanish for the wanting of it. Wished they were nothing but a figment of his imagination, no more than a dream. But if they were a figment, then they were a stubborn one, and what those columns of smoke meant, what they represented was not the stuff of dreams but of nightmares.
A dozen pillars of smoke. Perhaps as many as two dozen, drifting lazily into the sky, but to the wanderer, it seemed like there were hundreds of them. Thousands. Not drifting lazily but shifting and moving, slinking and crawling into a pattern. Into words. Words that spelled out one thing and one thing only.
Death.
The destruction of everything and everyone he cared about.
It was spring and so at least the sun ought to have been warm. But peering out of that shattered, gaping hole in the castle where Charmer’s monstrosity had crashed through the wall before plummeting to its death, the wanderer did not feel that warmth.
What he felt, just then, was cold.
He could not see the source of those pillars of smoke, for their origin was occluded by the expanse of forest beyond those fields stretched out around the castle. Fields in which, until recently, farmers and their families would have lived, tending their crops and their flocks, providing food for the people of Celes and its outlying areas. Not that he could see any farmers just then. Likely those men and women had suffered much the same way Clint’s friend, Murphy and his family had. It was no easy thing, after all, for a man to care about caring for livestock and crops when he was worried about his family being killed. As for the source of those great pillars, while the wanderer might not have been able to see them, he knew them anyway.
Soldiers. Men and women who, for one reason or another, had chosen to betray their people, their world, and side with the enemy, with Corealis and his companions. Most of those men and women who were now marching on Celes were likely not aware that they fought for the same creature that wanted to see them and every other mortal walking the face of the world dead, but their ignorance would not dull the edges of their blades.
“How long, do you think?” asked a grim voice.
The wanderer pulled his gaze away from the distant forest to regard Dekker and his troubled expression as he gazed at the wanderer. But he was not the only one. Clint and Jessup stood beside him. Elizabeth and the wizard, Earl, remained a little further back in the room, while Haggarty and Boulder stood on the wanderer’s other side. But no matter where they were, they all had the same expression on their faces—one of grim resolution mingled with fear. After all, no matter where they stood, they could all see the great lines of smoke trailing into the air, and they all knew what they meant. The moment they had all feared had come at last, as all such moments must.
He turned back, staring out of the gaping hole in the castle wall, judging the distance. “Three days,” he said finally. “Two if they hurry.”
Haggarty grunted as he looked in the distance. “Two days. S’pose a fella can get pretty drunk in two days.”
“You can’t be serious,” Elizabeth said.
“I don’t mean to argue, lass,” the crime boss said, “but when it comes to my drinkin’, I’m always serious.”
“Save your sanity and don’t mind him, Lizzy,” Boulder said. Then he turned to the wanderer. “The guards—we’ll need to get them on the walls.”
The wanderer opened his mouth to speak but Dekker beat him to it. “You mean the same guards who, an hour ago, were doin’ their level best to kill us?” The big man grunted. “Most of ‘em aren’t in any condition to fight—or breathe, come to that. As for those who are, I wouldn’t trust ‘em not to open the gates and hand over the keys to the city as soon as the army gets in handin’ distance.”
“Keys to the city,” Haggarty said. “Wouldn’t mind gettin’ my hand on those.”
“I was just makin’ a point,” Dekker said. “There ain’t really any su—” he noted the crime boss’s small grin and sighed. “Bastard.”
“But—but if we can’t trust the guards then—can we run?” Elizabeth asked. “Get the people of the city together and just go? If they want the city so bad, let them have it.”
“They’d catch us, lass,” Clint said quietly. “Those are trained soldiers down there—and no doubt worse, from what I’ve seen since traveling with Ungr here. Meanwhile, we’d be traveling with the elderly and children…they’d have us before we even managed to get out of sight of the city walls. Anyway, even if we were going to flee, where would we flee to? I’ve lived in Celes my whole life, and I don’t know of another city or town within a week’s travel that’s got much more than a gate a determined toddler could crawl over in terms of defense.”
“Not much of a barrier to keep the bastards out,” Haggarty said grimly.
“Barrier,” Dekker repeated, and he, Clint, and the wanderer all seemed to have the same thought at once, for they all turned to regard the Wizard of the South. “Seems I remember somethin’ about a barrier back in the Untamed Lands.”
The others turned to stare at the wizard also, then. Earl frowned, looking just about as uncomfortable under the weight of that scrutiny as a man could look. “Don’t go gettin’ your hopes up, you big bastard. It can’t be done.”
“You did it before,” Clint reminded him. “For Alhs.”
“For a town of less than a thousand people,” Earl snapped. “Not for one of the biggest cities in the world. There hasn’t been a mage ever lived that could do what you’re askin’.” He snorted. “Shit, even if it could be done—and it can’t—it’d take weeks, months to prepare.”
“Months we don’t have,” Boulder said. “S’pose we could ask those bastards to come back later, but somethin’ tells me they wouldn’t have much interest in bein’ so accomodatin’.”
“Be honest,” Haggarty said, seemingly to no one in particular, “those drinks are startin’ to look better and better, aren’t they?”
“And what will happen to Mother V and the children while you’re sitting around getting drunk?” Clint said, meeting the crime boss’s eyes.
To the wanderer’s surprise, Haggarty was the one that looked away, an expression of what might have even been shame flashing across his face as he gave way to Clint as the wanderer had seen him do on more than one occasion.
Silence followed then, a silence in which each of them contemplated what they faced and, more than that, what they stood to lose.
“We can’t run,” the wanderer said into the quiet, glancing at Elizabeth with an apologetic expression. He let his gaze move to the wizard, “nor can we count on magic to save us. And ale,” he went on, raising an eyebrow at Haggarty, “at least so far as I’m aware, has never saved anyone. So then we are left with only one option—”
“Die?” the crime boss said.
The wanderer opened his mouth to speak but before he could get the words out, Jessup spoke instead. The swordsman had been silent the entire time they’d been talking and even now he said no more than two words, those spoken in a quiet tone approaching a whisper, yet they seemed to thunder for all that. “We fight,” he said.
“‘We’ who?” Haggarty asked. “Listen, I enjoy the bards’ tales of heroes dying in epic battles, say a half a dozen men against an army of thousands as much as anybody—mostly because, when the song’s finished, I can go and have a drink, maybe a screw, then take a nap. I don’t have much interest in bein’ one of the poor bastards that ends up with his head decoratin’ a pike.”
“By the Eternals, you’re a bastard,” Boulder said, shaking his head.
“Maybe,” the wanderer said before the two could get going at each other, for he knew that the two older men could argue like—well, brothers. “Maybe he is a bastard, but that doesn’t mean he’s wrong.”
“True,” Dekker said, frowning. “I’ll die for my city if dying’s required, but I’d rather not. If I got myself killed, El would never let me hear the end of it.” He glanced at Haggarty. “You’re still a bastard, though.”
“But what are we supposed to do, then?” Elizabeth said. “If we can’t trust the city guard…”
“I am sure there are those among them who are good, honest men and women only trying to do their best,” the wanderer said.
“Sure,” Haggarty agreed. “And I’m sure that there might even be some ale in the watered-down piss the tavernkeeps have taken to servin’ lately. The problem is separatin’ the one from the other.”
“All that we face,” Elizabeth said, “and all you can think about is drinking.”
“Aye, lass,” Haggarty said. “Drinkin’ might not solve a man’s problems, but for the price of a few cups, it can help him forget ‘em for a time. And from what I’m hearin’ that might be the best we can expect. ‘Less, of course, our wizard here can magic us up an army.”
They all slowly turned to regard Earl, not for any thought that he could do such a thing but instead that he might do something, that his magic might aid them in some way. The old man frowned at Haggarty as if his thoughts weren’t on using his magic on the approaching army just then as much as the crime boss but finally he grunted, his gaze moving away to the rest of them. “What are you all lookin’ at me for? What, you thinkin’ maybe I can conjure soldiers out of thin air?” He gave a weary snort, shaking his head. “It can’t be done. And against an army of that size…” He let his gaze travel to the forest, wincing. “My magic ain’t likely to do much at all.”
“But…can’t you…” Dekker began.
“Can’t I what?” Earl asked.
“I don’t know,” the big man said, “can’t you, you know…” He paused, waving his hand vaguely. “Burn ‘em all up, or…”
“Burn them all up,” the wizard repeated dryly.
“Well, shit you done it a minute ago,” Dekker said defensively, jerking a thumb at the still smoldering remains of the Head Priestess and those revenants which had been blasted by the wizard’s fire.
“Sure, I did, but then that was for a half a dozen of those bastards. In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s quite a few more than that down there. Otherwise, someone has been very irresponsible in not putting out their campfires.”
He glanced at the wanderer as if for confirmation, and the wanderer nodded grimly. “Likely thousands,” he said. “By now, the enemy knows that we are here, that I am here. I have fought them for long enough to know that they do not believe in half measures. They will have sent everything available.”
“What I done here or in the street,” the wizard said grimly, “well, against those sorts of numbers, it’d be like tossin’ a pebble into the sea and expectin’ it to take notice. No.” He shook his head slowly. “I’m afraid my magic ain’t goin’ to be much use.”
“That…might not be true,” the wanderer said slowly, an idea beginning to form in his mind. They all turned to look at him questioningly, and the wanderer winced, thinking perhaps he’d spoken too soon. He’d had no time to decide if the idea was a great one, or even a good one. But then, he guessed that when a man was facing the likely annihilation of everything and everyone he cared about, any idea was better than none at all. “The disguise you made for me—before, I mean,” he said, slowly turning to regard the wizard, “could you do something like that again?”
“Sure,” the old man said slowly, “but I don’t see as how that’ll make any difference.”
“He’s right, Ungr,” Clint said. “From all that you’ve said, those bastards out there mean to kill everyone in the city, no matter what face they wear. I don’t see as we stand much chance of tricking them.”
“It’s not them I mean to trick,” the wanderer said.
“If not them then who?” Boulder asked.
The wanderer turned to regard Haggarty. “You said something before—that while some of the city guards are no doubt innocent, there’s no way of knowing who is a traitor and who isn’t.”
“Not short of givin’ ‘em a blade and turnin’ your back on ‘em, seein’ what they decide to do with it,” Haggarty agreed. “And while I’ve done some shit jobs over the years, that ain’t one I mean to sign up for.”
“I don’t think that’ll be necessary,” the wanderer said. “I’ve got something else in mind.”
“We’re listenin’, Ungr,” Dekker said.
“What we need is a way to determine which of the city guard are traitors and which aren’t,” the wanderer said.
He noted Haggarty opening his mouth to speak, the crime boss no doubt ready—as always—with a sarcastic remark. But the wanderer held up his hand, and the man remained silent. “There is no way I can see to do that, at least no way that wouldn’t require time, time that we simply don’t have. Except, that is, for one. Instead of trying to look into each guardsman, instead of searching for the traitors among them, why don’t we have them confess their treason to us?”
Haggarty snorted at that, but it was Clint who spoke. “That’d be a neat trick, Ungr,” the man said. “Those bastards aren’t likely to admit to anything when the admitting of it is liable to wind them up in the dungeons at best and executed at worst.”
“You’re right,” the wanderer said. “So instead, let’s offer them a reward.”
“A reward,” Clint repeated, a confused expression on his face.
“You know, Ungr, as far as your ideas go,” Dekker said, “I’ve got to tell you, this ain’t one of your best. I mean, somethin’ tells me that they wouldn’t believe us when we made the offer.”
“Likely they wouldn’t,” the wanderer agreed. “Which is why we won’t be the ones making it. Charmer will.”
The big man’s eyebrows furrowed on his forehead like two thick caterpillars. “You mean the same Charmer lyin’ over there?” the big man said, jerking his thumb at where the creature’s corpse lay. “Now that’d be a trick indeed, you know, considerin’ she’s dead and all.”
“She is,” the wanderer said, “but the rest of the city doesn’t know that.”
Dekker frowned. “I don’t see what that has to do with…” But he trailed off a moment later and the wanderer saw that he did see. Or, at least, he had begun to. “Son of a bitch,” the big man said slowly. “It’s risky but…it just might work.”
“World bein’ what it is,” Haggarty said, “wakin’ up’s risky. But why don’t you explain what it is the two of you are jawin’ about—you know, for the rest of us fools that have no idea what’s going on.”
The wanderer nodded. “The guards you’re worried about—the ones who have thrown their lot in with Charmer and her kind, people like Guardsman Howard—they have not done so out of some sense of duty or morality.”
Haggarty snorted. “Bastards like Howard wouldn’t recognize duty or morality if they bit ‘em on the ass.”
“Exactly,” the wanderer said. “They betrayed their people for the coin, power, and position that Charmer promised them. I see no reason she can’t keep her promise.”
