The Dark Shore (The Dominions of Irth Book 1) Read online

  Why not go to her again, wherever she is now? Drev pondered.

  At the mere thought of such a foolish notion, he scowled at himself, plucked the amulet from the altar, and fit it into his shoulder pocket. As its faint charmlight suffused and dimmed away within the radiance of his personal Charm, he stopped and thought again.

  Dangerous possibility, he knew. Yet why not? What is left to lose at this point? With what time was left him, might he yet disclose why fate had bound her to him and in so lowly a station?

  “Fate," the wizarduke quoted from sacred text, “is the pattern within the radiance of the Abiding Star and our lives the screen upon which it is projected."

  Though a moral man of stringent principles and pride, he was not a holy man. He had been trained in the Lazor lineage of pragmatic wizardry, and he thoroughly comprehended the mechanics of hex-gems and amulets.

  The enigma of Charm and the awesome reality of the Abiding Star that rose and set each day had always been too vast to contemplate in his hectic life at court. Yet here at this threshold of a dangerous new life, reciting these passages that he had first learned in temple at his mother's side gave him comfort.

  Why not fulfill this scry from my green days? he asked himself from this pivot, this clarity that balanced hopelessness against faith. Why not trust that fate is faith?

  For a moment, he hesitated at the thought that in seeking out the young woman, he placed her in danger. Is not everyone in danger, always? he reasoned. And perhaps I can actually do something to help her, protect her somehow.

  He determined then to go to her once more. He would use the faint aura of her within the newt's-eye of the seeker amulet to track her. If he could find her—and if she would have him without any Charm but his sword and this one amulet—then what?

  Fate will decide.

  He called for a standard issue traveler's cloak and a provision sack fully appointed for a trooper in the wilds. He would take nothing more with him. The other amulets he would leave here for his successor. Whatever charmed tools he might need, he would fashion along the way.

  The marshal from the Falcon Guard who delivered the items knew well what his lord intended, and his eyes sparkled. He had served beside him since Mevea's death.

  "You cannot go alone, my lord." The marshal's red whiskers fanned along his jawline as he cast an unhappy and disappointed look at the darkened court.

  "There is no other way, Leboc." The wizarduke adjusted the harness straps of the pack and slung it over his shoulder in counterbalance to his sword.

  "Lord regent—" the dismayed man blurted before he caught himself. "My duke, you will fare better with a personal guard."

  Drev scowled. "No. Together, we will simply offer a larger target." He could see that getting out of Dorzen was not going to be easy unless he abandoned farewells. He threw the blue cloak over his shoulder and turned away from the old soldier. "As your slip of tongue implies, dear friend, you and the Guard still think of me as regent. I am not. Your place now is with the new regent."

  "The Falcon Guard will deploy at Lord Keon's command," the marshal stated curtly as he followed the duke into the mosaic tiled corridor that led to the gardens. "We have already received readiness orders to move out. By evening, those of us who remain will leave for Arwar Odawl."

  The duke stopped abruptly and spun about. "What do you mean remain, Leboc? Desertion from the Guard is still punishable by death."

  The marshal stroked his grand whiskers nervously. "At term's end, all Guard commissions are released."

  Lord Drev glared, appalled at this man he thought he knew. "This is not term's end, marshal. This is a transfer. You and the other guards are still bound to obey the regent."

  "We will stall with legal motions." His round, ruddy face bore no cunning, only determination. "We can easily tie the Guard down until after tomorrow. If that surly Wrat makes good upon his threat and destroys Arwar Odawl, the legal charge is moot, and we will live on as avengers."

  Madness! the wizarduke thought and stared aghast at this ugly man made handsome by scars, the compact warrior who had fought in the field beside him and always bravely. Leboc—staunch Leboc—is talking treason! Anarchy has come!

  "I see the fear in your face, my lord." The marshal leaned confidentially closer. "We understand. The Guard are also aware of the reports from Sharna-Bambara. We all know what we're up against—at your side or on our own." Pain pinched the corners of his avid yellow eyes, and the man appeared about to cry. "When the new regent is dead in the ruins of his city, the avengers will come for you to lead them. And will you then raise the sword of Taran against the Dark Lord?"

  Gently, Lord Drev pushed him away and said as tenderly as he could, "Go, Leboc. I am no longer your commander—or I would hold you for treason."

  Hurt disappointment glanced off the aged warrior's face, and he stepped back and swung a despairing look down the corridor to the wide open doors of the central court. Several officers of the Falcon Guard had appeared there with a squad of anxious troopers.

  "Farewell, Leboc." The duke saluted his comrade formally and held his stare, appealing to his sense of duty. "Please, serve me this last time and see that no one impedes my departure."

  Brow furrowed, Leboc watched the wizarduke march past.

  The metal doors to the gardens banged open, and the wizarduke strode away, into the hedge maze he knew from childhood, with its arboreal tunnels and secret portals that led to the glider hangars and the wings that would carry him out of the floating city.

  Dogbrick and Ripcat

  A crimson scent of danger cut through the stink from the factories of Saxar. Dogbrick stopped on the steep slope of Smelters Alley and swung his long head sideways, swiping direction from the perilous smell.

  It wafted upward from where the alley opened into a maze of tinker shacks. He recognized the acrid hue of the scent, the clove-tanged bitterness of 100 Wheels, nemesis of all who lack Charm.

  100 Wheels the pitiless—faceless as a surgeon, prowling the crooked streets for the desperate, the survivors living without amulets. 100 Wheels the Charmed, the murderous security agent hired by the factories to break thieves such as Dogbrick.

  Up from the smoldering well of the alley, 100 Wheels approached.

  To calm himself, Dogbrick drew a deeper breath of the fetid air and nearly choked on the acid fumes from the smelters. The tight alley held more than a score of foundries. Their round walls had scorched over millennia to volcanic glass, bulging blue as eggplants. Any one of them could be involved in the lucrative smuggler's trade. Perhaps 100 Wheels was coming for one of them.

  This infernal district minted most of the dominions’ useful amulets, and Dogbrick expected factory agents to abound. Feigning nonchalance, the thief paused before the convex wall of a smelter's shop and pretended to regard his broad reflection. Briefly he admired himself. Though the tawny locks of his mane and beard had dulled with grime and the grisly heat from the foundries, they still handsomely matted his heavy shoulders and stout chest.

  100 Wheels appeared at the bottom of the hill. Her lissome quicksilver shape made the cobbles at her feet gleam. Faded pink hair floated around her like hot, drifting ash, and long, devilish, wicked eyes in the silver dish of her face brightened to embers.

  Dogbrick watched her reflection in the heat-tarnished wall of the smelter's shop. The agent ascended the alley with her head slung forward intently, her slinky form seeming to expand muscularly with each step.

  The thief accepted she was coming for him. Casually, with his back turned, as if still oblivious of her, he edged away from the foundry to continue his stroll. Then, as he stepped from the curb, he bolted.

  Large frame filling the narrow passage so tightly shop fumes and vent steam danced after him, he barreled up the alley. He had no hope of escaping 100 Wheels—nor had he any need to escape, for on this lucky morning he had nothing to hide.

  Dogbrick had been on his way to get information from a factory spy about inventor
y worth stealing, and he had in his possession at this time nothing illicit. Yet he ran with all his might. He wanted to see how far he could get before the fabled 100 Wheels boxed him. Such intelligence might prove decisive on that crucial day when she did show up and he had loot to lose.

  Bursting from the alley, fang glints and leather cloak of clattering amulets a wind blur, the thief startled two smiths lugging an ingot between them. The metal clanged on the flagstones, and the workers threw themselves to the gutter under the bestial shadow of the leaping man.

  Not sparing an instant to look back, Dogbrick crossed an empty lading yard and jumped down a dingy stone ramp. The chute dropped him into a puddled lane behind the charmwrights' shops. Three lizardwings startled from among refuse drums when he thundered past, and they whirred in the air after him like pieces torn from his shadow.

  The crimson scent of musty cloves sharpened, and Dogbrick dashed to the end of the lane and vaulted the pronged iron fence that blocked the precipice. He plunged, arms outspread, cloak billowing.

  Though he could see nothing through the factory smoke swirling in the air, he knew precisely where his blind fall would take him. Like every thief in this cliff city, he had mastered leaping from one level to the next to elude capture. He always knew the nearest jump street.

  Dense smog shredded, a jolt of cold salty air stunned his lungs, and the city's improbable vista loomed before him as he plummeted into clear sky.

  Saxar gleamed like black mica. The city‘s tiers of smoldering factories and tilted streets had been hewn into the raw rock of titanic sea cliffs. Far below this fuming hive, the ocean surged. Its silver tusks flashed in the morning glare.

  Dogbrick threw his head back to view the city's heights and glimpsed black dirigibles, a fleet newly arrived from the south. Three of the ornately festooned trade vessels hovered near the sky bund with its massive trestles, far upwind of the sulfurous smoke.

  Farther yet, suspended deep within the cobalt fathoms of the sky, the worlds of Nemora and Hellgate hung like chunks of transparent crystal. Beauty and grace possessed him for one glorious instant. Then the orange mist from numerous factory flues received him once more into its sour fog.

  Dogbrick met the gutter stone of Amble-by Lane with legs bent and recoiled easily over the rusty railing onto the pavement. Winded from his sprint, he hurried, gasping, downhill, hoping to lose himself in the furnace smoke pouring through the cramped byways among the refineries.

  His hands under his cloak began nimbly closing amulets, wanting to appear less conspicuous in the alchemic haze. He continued running past blistered metal doorways and open hangars gusty with sparks and the clangor of metal finding new shapes.

  These slanted lanes of jammed buildings seemed deserted except for an occasional apprentice running errands. But Dogbrick spied where the grim denizens watched—children squatting under moss-grown piers and in the rancid shadows of gargoyled cargo bays. The older ones, the longest survivors, did not show themselves at all. Yet he knew they watched, too—from behind gutter grates and sewer lids.

  These oblique streets of sooty stone held no secrets from Dogbrick: he had grown up in this blighted precinct. Orphaned at an early age, he had lived wild in the burnt warrens behind the factories, catching his food in the weed lots and the slag yards, sometimes stealing it from windowsills or bird feeders of homes on the bluffs where the factory workers lived. All his life he had been running the angular alleys and hobbled stairs of dripping stone that plumbed this vertical city.

  Even without the giddy strength of amulets to brighten his step and boost his leaps, he moved swiftly and smoothly among the refinery district's mongrel paths. Under a colossal skyline of chimneys, he scampered along pipes, dropped to a drainage culvert, and hurtled down traces of withered sumac between corrugated warehouses. Though he no longer sensed 100 Wheels, the thief pushed himself until his legs staggered.

  He stopped with hands on his knees in the mouth of Peek Alley at the corner of Everyland Street. Farther up, above the clouds of factory exhaust, Everyland opened to an opulent boulevard flanked with stately spark trees and the onyx estates of the wealthy.

  As a young child, he used to think that Charm from above trickled down with the pavement seepings, and he had spent a lot of time on the rheumy end of this street splashing in the green puddles.

  Later, orphaned and bereft, when the nether dank became unbearable, he prowled the skull-colored buildings of the district, looking for open offices he could plunder. From cavernous market halls, he stole unrefined ore by the pouchful, bags of conjure-wire snippings, hex-metal shavings, and shards of broken witch-glass—anything that he could sell later to the charmwrights. They were glad to get these materials at a fraction of cost, and by this bold thievery he survived.

  Dogbrick blew off his unhappy memories and straightened, looking for 100 Wheels. Her scent of burnt cloves had disappeared. Only a few drab workers from the office buildings flitted through the noxious steam of rubbish drifting up the street. No one with much Charm was anywhere in view. Surprised to have gotten away, he wondered if he had been mistaken about the security agent coming for him.

  Hope flared briefly, then guttered with the first glimpse of liquid light at the edge of his vision. Torn tinsel gleamed in the opal mistings of Peek Alley, and more silver shadows flickered among the vapors rolling up Everyland Street. Wherever he looked, a chrome figure shimmered in the haze. 100 Wheels closed in from all sides!

  "I've warned two smugglers and a yegg in the time you've been running," she scolded in a hot voice that came from every direction. "Stay—and listen to what I have to say. If I'd wanted to box you, you'd never have gotten out of Smelters Alley."

  By lack of scent, Dogbrick knew she approached from downwind, and he ignored the apparitions that cast no odor. He settled on a fluid platinum shadow running against the amber smoke of Peek Alley. In a dramatic and mockingly brash gesture of submission, he removed his amulet harness and his mantle, held them at arm's length, and dropped them into the alley.

  "Nemesis of the Hopeless!" he brayed, thick arms extended, exposing his blond underbelly. "I stand defenseless before you! I have nothing to hide."

  "You always have something to hide, Dogbrick," 100 Wheels chided from behind and laughed hideously to see the stiff hackles bristle across his wolf-pelt shoulders. The sudden stink of her walloped him, and the luminous figure pressing through the mist of Peek Alley vanished.

  Dogbrick spun around to face long red eyes in a mask empty as a mirror.

  "You're a parasite," 100 Wheels spoke from so close he could see through the radiance of her Charm to the vizard of a peeled skull, empty eye grots spitting flames. "You have to hide to survive."

  With a yelp, Dogbrick leaped back a pace, stumbled on his dropped harness and mantle, and crashed to the pavement.

  100 Wheels shook her head and stepped into the alley. Her radiance lifted rainbows from the black tar walls. "Sit—and listen, Dogbrick. I can't squander any more time on you. There are many others I've yet to track down. The factories have sent me to warn you all, every thief and smuggler in the city. Arwar Odawl has fallen this day."

  Dogbrick rubbed his head where the curb had kissed him and blinked, perplexed, finding little to remember of Arwar Odawl. A floating city far to the south. He knew of it only because of its famous brandy of the same name—and also, of course, because it was renowned as the oldest city on Irth.

  "For over two million days," the shining woman said, "the Brood of Odawl have ruled Elvre unmolested, protected by their most venerable Charm." She bowed closer, and her hair diffused the space around her, bright as fire. "Now that Brood is broken."

  Dogbrick could not imagine why she had run him down to tell him this. "Mists rise and kingdoms fail..." So went that most famous of ballads from the Songs of Truth. But he did not want to annoy her, so he did not hum the tune but rather feigned interest and asked, "What warlord has taken Arwar Odawl?"

  "No warlord." She gazed flatly
at him, and he met his bewildered expression in the pan of her face and shut his mouth.

  "You said the city fell." He hooded his eyes with incomprehension.

  "Yes."

  "You can't mean—"

  100 Wheels hung her head, and her pink hair drizzled over her shoulders. "A terrible thing has come upon our world this day. Arwar Odawl has fallen into the jungles of Elvre."

  "Into the jungles..." Dogbrick's mind reeled at the thought of a floating city cast to the ground. Thousands live in that city! If the factory agent were not herself telling him this, he would never believe it. Numbly, he groped to understand. "The entire city?"

  "Utterly destroyed this day."

  "How?"

  100 Wheels raised her silver face through her powdery hair, and her long, devilish eyes gazed unblinking. "Cacodemons."

  "Caco—" Dogbrick shook his head with such violent disbelief his curly tresses fanned. "Only children believe in cacodemons."

  "The Dark Lord has come from the Gulf," the agent continued solemnly. "From the Shore of Night—and he commands hosts of cacodemons. Today he has struck Arwar Odawl from the cloud paths. In the days ahead, he will advance upon the other dominions and their cities. I have come to warn you of this, Dogbrick—and to ask: Will you stand with us against this enemy?"

  "Stand with you?" Dogbrick sat up taller. "Are you summoning me to arms?"

  "All of Irth must unite against this threat." 100 Wheels extended her open hand, and Dogbrick rose, lifted by a balmy force so quiet it nearly felt like his own volition.

  He marveled at the luxurious Charm the factories commanded and listened astonished to what their agent spoke. "I have been sent to recruit fighters from Saxar. You ran well just now, Dogbrick. You have the agility and the physical might to make an imposing warrior. Will you join our ranks and fight to save our city?"

  "Fight?" The thief gestured at his harness of battered amulets lying crumpled at his feet. "Nemesis, do you think if I had Charm enough to fight I would seek my destiny as a thief?"