Shadowrealm - By Paul S. Kemp Page 0,13

glowed with malice.

“Shadows!” Kelgar shouted, and clanged his blade on his shield.

The darkness deepened as the throng of shadows closed. Some darted into the earth and disappeared. Others flew high and circled around the army. Still others flew directly for them. There were still more behind the initial wave, so numerous they blotted out the storm. They seemed unending, filling the air with their cold, their shrieks, their hate.

They hit Reht’s army and men and horses began to scream. Beside Reht, Kelgar roared a battle cry and galloped into the shadows. A lightning bolt shot from the war priest’s outstretched hand as he charged the undead. Two other Talassans followed him, whooping battle cries.

“Hold your ground, dammit! Hold!”

The darkness prevented a large-scale organized response and the battle turned into a series of isolated melees. Shadows darted in and out of Reht’s field of vision, merging with the darkness in the air. Red eyes flashed past him, around him, over him, under him. He slashed and stabbed at any within reach, heard the men near him do the same. His horse reared, kicked, whinnied.

He and a dozen other men formed a circle, but it proved useless. The incorporeal shadows moved as freely through the earth as through the air. He and his men were attacked from all sides no matter their formation. The cold hand of panic gripped some of the men, more.

Magical globes of light formed in the darkness but lasted only moments before the shadows blotted them out. Screams sounded from all directions, muted shrieks, all of it an eerily beautiful symphony for the dying.

Reht’s mount neighed and bucked as a throng of shadows burst from the ground under it. The movement threw Reht, and he hit the ground in a clatter of steel. His mount wheeled, nearly trampled him, and darted off in a panic.

Reht scrambled to his knees, to his feet, slashing, shouting. Men fought and died beside him, around him. The shadows nearest him focused their dead, glowing eyes on him and in the otherwise blank holes of their faces he was able to distinguish features.

“Lorgan?”

His fellow commander’s expression wrinkled with hate. Reht saw other faces he recognized and understood what had happened to Lorgan and his men.

And what would happen to Reht and his.

“Find peace, old friend,” Reht said, and charged Lorgan.

Lorgan shrieked and his features dissolved again into indistinguishable darkness. Other shadows darted in close, reached through Reht’s shield and armor, cooled his flesh, diminished his soul. He screamed, and slashed at Lorgan. His enchanted blade bit Lorgan’s shadowy form and sent streamers of deeper darkness boiling away into the air, but Lorgan reached into Reht’s chest and nearly stopped his heart. Reht staggered backward, gasping, his vision blurred.

In the distance, he heard the sound of chanting, the Talassans calling upon the power of their god to fight the undead. Reht glanced around, saw men and horses dead and dying all around him. He heard their shouts, screams, and whinnies, but he felt isolated, alone in a cyst of darkness warring against his own personal shadows.

The surrounding sounds diminished then went silent. He heard only his own labored breathing, his grunts as he swung his blade, and the sound of his own heartbeat keeping time in his ears. He slashed, backed away, stabbed, twisted, stabbed again. Shadows emerged from the ground and passed into and through him. Others flew, heedlessly, at and through his blade, reached into his chest to his lungs and heart, stole his breath, his strength. He staggered, still breathing, still fighting. He looked around for a mount, any mount, saw none. He tripped over a corpse and fell on his back.

Shadows swarmed him. He felt so cold he could not breathe, felt his heart slow. He saw Lorgan’s face in one of the shadows over him, Enken’s on another, both of them caricatures of the living men they once were.

They reached for him. He felt himself drifting, floating. He reached for the maps at his side, thinking of his father, and the cartographer to whom he should have been apprenticed, the life he should have led. Cold filled him and he gasped. He could not see anything but red eyes and darkness.

He died thinking of maps and regrets.

He rose thinking of hate.

CHAPTER THREE

2 Nightal, the Year of Lightning Storms

Cale and Riven materialized on the Wayrock, outside the Temple of Mask. Sunlight, alien after the darkness of the storm, cast the temple’s shadow out before it. Cale and Riven stood within