11 Kythorn, the Year of Wild Magic
The old knight and his squire hobbled their weary destriers through the charred and shattered gate. They walked the rubble-choked streets of the murdered city, where even a fresh horse would likely lose its footing.
At first Kevin felt numb and sick. The short, sandy-haired youth had yearned his whole life to ride to war, had felt feverish with excitement on the long, difficult ride from Kirinwood to Tilverton. But he had never imagined war's aftermath: broken buildings and broken bodies reeking of burning, evil magic, and rot, the stink perceptible despite the drizzling rain.
Gradually, though, pure stupid horror lost its grip on the squire, and he regarded his master, only to discover a new cause for dismay.
Before forsaking martial endeavors to run the family farm and make fern-and-mint wine, Sir Ajandor Surehand had seen other scenes of carnage nearly as grim as this. Yet he trudged along without a word, his thin, wrinkled face with its drooping white mustache ashen, his gray eyes lost and empty beneath his shaggy brows.
Kevin was appalled. He had always thought the gaunt old knight indomitable, but apparently the loss of an only child could overwhelm anyone.
'Sir,' he said, picking his way around a spill of field-stone, 'you know, it may not be possible to find him.'
If Ajandor heard, he gave no sign.
'There are so many dead people,' Kevin continued, 'some disfigured by fire and the like. Others no doubt lie inside the collapsed buildings.'
'Is that what you think?' snapped Ajandor, who had never before spoken harshly to Kevin in all their years together. That my son was cowering indoors when he died?'
'No! I'm sure he died fighting the enemy.'
'Then shut up.'
As Kevin wondered what to say next, a gray form sprang up from the ground, where it had apparently been lying flat as a sheet of parchment. A pair of vague limbs outstretched, it pounced at Kevin.
The squire tried to dodge and draw his sword at the same time. He managed neither. The dark thing slammed into him and bore him down to the ground. Raking claws shredded his mantle and surcoat and ripped at the hauberk beneath.
Something flashed. The creature leaped away, and Kevin saw Ajandor standing over him with Gray Dancer, his sword of gleaming mithral silver, in his hand. The knight had used it to drive the phantom back.
Kevin scrambled to his feet and yanked out his own blade, a plain steel one, devoid of pedigree and with only the simplest of enchantments. The humans and the creature stood and regarded one another.
Kevin could see that the shadow resembled an enormous cat, though perhaps that was only one of many possible forms, for its murky substance seemed to flow and shift from moment to moment. The refugees whom he and Ajandor had encountered on the road had warned them of such shadow creatures, phantoms apparently engendered by the same wizardry that had destroyed Tilverton and the army assembling inside its walls.
Evidently hoping to flank the apparition, Ajandor edged to the left. Kevin moved to the right. The cat sprang at him, its entire head opening like an oyster to become nothing more than a set of jaws.
Sidestepping to throw off the shadow's aim, Kevin cut at its shoulder. Though he had felt the phantom's weight and strength, his sword swept through it as if it were made of smoke. That should have been good, but he knew it wasn't. Some supernatural beings were all but impervious to mundane weapons, and this was apparently one of them.
The phantom clawed at him, and he jumped back. Ajandor rushed in and drove his point into the shadow's flank.
The creature spun, reared on its hind legs like a bear, and raked at Ajandor with talons grown long as daggers. Scarcely giving an inch of ground, the knight met the shadow's attack with savage stop cuts. At least his blade seemed to be biting something solid, though whether it was doing the phantom any real harm was impossible to say.
Kevin could tell that his master was trying to get inside the shadow's reach for another stroke to the head or torso, where, perhaps, some vital organs resided, but the creature was holding him back. For his part, the squire couldn't hurt the phantom, but perhaps he could distract it. Yelling at the top of his lungs, he charged and beat at it.
The shadow whirled, loomed above him like a mountain about to give birth to an avalanche, then it jerked, and the point of Gray Dancer popped out of its belly. Ajandor had seized his opportunity to bury the mithral weapon in its back. The cat toppled, and Kevin scrambled aside to keep it from dropping on top of him.
Panting, his heart pounding, the squire was content to stand clear and hope that the shadow wouldn't get up again, but Ajandor was not. Seemingly contemptuous of the cat's flailing limbs, he kept on attacking. The shadow stopped moving and still he hacked at it, until the body abruptly melted away to nothing.
Only then did Ajandor turn to Kevin. The knight's eyes had gone from dull and dazed to fierce and hard.
'Are you all right?' Kevin asked. The collar of his tattered cloak chose that moment to tear completely apart, dumping the garment around his boots.
'Yes.' Ajandor inspected his blade of 'true silver,' only to find that, except for drops of rainwater, it didn't need cleaning. The phantom hadn't possessed any blood to foul it. 'Let's move on.'
'Move on? After a fight, if it's practical, a warrior always rests and recovers his strength. You taught me that.'
'Don't throw my own words back in my face.'
'I'm just saying… look, further wandering may be a bad idea. We've just seen that the survivors told us the truth. Tilverton is haunted. We should-'
Ajandor turned away, his patched, faded war cloak swinging, and headed up the street. Kevin mouthed a silent curse, snatched up his ruined mantle, threw it around his shoulders like a beggar's rag, and hurried after him.
They prowled until darkness began to envelop the city, creeping up on them as stealthily as the shadow cat, or so it seemed to Kevin. With the sun hidden behind the perpetual gray cloud cover, he had seen no hint of its setting.
'We should get back to the horses,' he said, 'and make camp for the night.'
Ajandor shook his head. 'I want to walk.'
The mounts need care, assuming that some horror hasn't killed them already.'
'You can tend them. It is part of your duties, is it not?'
'Yes. Still, what's the point of searching for Pelethen'- Ajandor flinched almost imperceptibly at his son's name-'in the dark? You could march right past his body and never notice.'
'I still feel like wandering.'
'But the shadows will be more active in the dark, for that's the way of shadows, and without a single light burning anywhere about the streets, you'll never see them coming. They'll kill you before you can even lift your sword!'
Ajandor frowned, considering. At length he said, '1 wouldn't want to fall without striking a blow. That would make a poor end to the tale of my line. We'll return to the Cormyr Gate.'
On the way back, they passed one of the sets of stairs that climbed to the Old Town, a precinct built on high ground. Famed for its picturesque beauty, it was likely as ruinous as the rest of the city. Partway up the steps was an Altar of Shields, unmarred by the devastation that prevailed on every side. To Kevin, it almost seemed a mockery, as if Helm, god of guardians and protectors, had preserved his own little shrine while permitting the rest of the city to perish.
The squire's mood soured still further when they reached the gate. Redwind, Ajandor's charger, lay dead. No shadow had come to rend the faithful animal. Rather his heart had given out and small wonder. At the knight's insistence, the two riders had pushed their mounts unmercifully once they heard about the destruction of Tilverton, even though, from a coldly practical perspective, they no longer had any reason to hurry at all.
Ajandor gazed down at the horse that had borne him for the past ten years, an animal that, Kevin believed, he had loved.
