“If Asea has been teaching you sorcery you must have done this sort of thing before. From repetition comes mastery.”
“That is certainly something I have heard before.”
“And you’ll certainly hear it again, because it’s a basic truth of all magic and all learning.”
“Now you do sound like Asea.”
“I don’t take that as a compliment.”
“Somehow I thought that would be the case.”
“When you can visualise the shadows around you perfectly, see them as they are, without opening your eyes you will have walked aways along our path.”
“I trust you had an enlightening chat with your half-sister?” Asea said when he entered the chambers in the old farmhouse that they shared.
“She has begun to explain to me how a shadow walking works.”
“Describe the technique.” Rik did so. When he finished Asea nodded and said, “It sounds like it should work. She is preparing you to begin manipulating shadow at the most basic level unless I miss my guess.”
“Could you do this? Could you learn what she is teaching?”
“I could do this elementary exercises but I am sure that she will soon teach more complicated things, and the ability to work those is in the blood, passed from parent to child. My talents do not run in that direction.”
“Is it dangerous- what she is teaching me?”
“All knowledge is dangerous in the wrong hands, Rik. Be very careful of what she tells you. A teacher can place all manner of traps in her spells to ensnare the unwary apprentice.”
Rik smiled at her. “The same could be said of you.”
“I am sure it is, Rik. But this is deadly serious. I have no reason to want you dead. What will you do if Tamara teaches you the way into the Shadow paths but the way she gives you to exit them fails to work?”
It was a good question and one to which he had no easy answer. It rather took away his pleasure in learning a new form of sorcery.
“By the way, you had better get dressed in your best. We have been invited to dine with my brother this evening.”
Wonderful, Rik thought. What could the General possibly want with him?
Rik felt out of his depth in the tent of the inhuman General, Lord Azaar. A floating chandelier illuminated the sumptuously furnished space with magical light. Spells of silence deadened the noise from the army camped around them. The shadowy outlines of servants and sentries loomed through the water-repellent spidersilk. It was the night before battle and all of the staff officers had been at dinner and gone. Neither Asea nor her brother could sleep. He had no idea why he had been asked to stay on. The voices whispered to him to be careful.
On one side of a rune-inlaid table sat Lady Asea, tall, stately and beautiful as a painter’s dream. On the other side of the table, his features concealed by a silver face mask, his rotten stench not quite concealed by the heavy musk wafting from his neck-hung pomander, lounged Azaar, Lord of Battles, Commander of the armies of the West.
On the table between them was a chessboard. As far as Rik could tell the two were equally matched, but their play was far beyond his understanding so his opinion on the subject was worthless.
Asea finished her contemplation and raised her queen moving it to a position that threatened the General’s left flank. Azaar nodded and moved a bishop immediately in response. It was evidently a move he had anticipated.
“I don’t like it,” he said. His voice was clear and rasping, his accents those of one used to being listened to respectfully and obeyed instantly. “These damned winds have blown plague out of the East all winter. The dead stir in their graves. The living fall sick and die faster than we can burn them. My scouts report that we will encounter the Eastern army tomorrow and it is much larger than I expected. I would have considered retreating before it but it's moving faster than we are and anyway I have my damned orders to advance East and engage the enemy.”
Asea stared at the board, her eyes concentrating on her pieces. She seemed to be paying no attention to her half-brother’s words. She moved one of her pawns moved forward to block the bishop’s attack on the Queen.
“There’s dark magic at work in this plague, for sure,” said Asea, as Azaar’s reached out and pulled his bishop back. “I have not seen anything so virulent since we left Al’Terra, and the way the victims rise afterwards is disturbing to say the least.”
'What's more disturbing is that the dead seem to be joining with Easterners.'
Asea steepled her fingers in front of her and studied her reflection in the General’s mask. “Someone has cast a necromantic spell of immense power. I can feel its workings over this entire land.”
“Can you disrupt it?”
“Perhaps locally but even then perhaps not. I have not felt magic this powerful since we left the home world.”
“I wish you had not told me that,” Azaar said. “I'd like to think that you were the most powerful wizard on the planet.”
'Not anymore,' she said. 'Whoever is behind this is far more powerful than I.'
Rik did not find this in the least reassuring. He shuddered. The General turned his bright mad eye on Rik. It took all the youth’s self control to keep from flinching. Azaar's family had been killed by Shadowblood and that if the General ever suspected what he was, the best he could expect was a quick death.
'I hear that you have the Lady Tamara in truesilver chains. Is there any particular reason for that?'
'Despite her appearance, she is a very powerful sorcerer.'
'So was her father so that does not surprise me. Why do you think she chose to join us now?'
'She claims to have fallen out with the new rulers of Sardea. She claims that the Prime Minister is a follower of the Shadow and that he has a grudge against her.'
'The bit about Xephan is quite possible,' he said the General. 'Her father and Xephan were great rivals. Xephan schemed to have old Malkior replaced for decades. Do you think there's any truth to the other part of Tamara's claim?'
'I fear there is. All of this sorcery, the plague, the war, the assassinations, the rising of Elder daemons — it's all connected.'
'Then it's happening — what we've always feared. The Shadow has followed us to this world at last.'
'Yes,' Asea said. 'And we are not ready for it.'
'We were never going to be ready for it.'
Asea seemed amused. As always she met adversity with perfect poise. Rik wished he could emulate her but he lacked her centuries of practise. Azaar looked at Rik as if trying to judge how he was taking this. Rik realised that he was in a position of immense trust if these two members of the First were prepared to discuss this in front of him.
The beadiness of the General’s stare increased. “There’s something about you I can’t quite fathom, boy. Something uncanny.”
Rik took a deep breath and willed himself to be calm. What did Azaar suspect? Rik had many secrets, any one of which would be cause for having him executed. Deep in his mind, the voice of beings long dead whispered to him. He did his best to will them to silence but it was hard to do under the circumstances.
“You’ve been teaching him sorcery, haven’t you, Asea?” It was not a question. “It’s written all over him. The question is why?”
Asea did not answer and the General went on speaking so quietly it seemed like he was talking to himself. “And he’s always there when strange things happen. He was at Achenar when the Spider God woke, and he was with you in Morven when you destroyed the Serpent Tower. He saved Queen Kathea and then he was accused of killing her. Easy to see why the Inquisition might be interested in him.”
He stared directly at Rik and said, “The eye of the storm always passes over you, boy. Have you any idea why that is?”
Rik’s mouth was dry. What did the General suspect? Why had he mentioned Inquisitors? “I have no idea, sir.”
There was no mirth in the ancient General’s cackling laughter. “I am not entirely sure I believe you.”
Rik wondered what he was supposed to say to that. He was in no position to argue with the supreme
