Shadowrealm - By Paul S. Kemp Page 0,44

after they had started moving again did it register with Cale that Magadon had used his powers through their connection. He had not known Magadon would be able to do so through an ordinary mindlink. Then it occurred to him that Magadon might have linked them with something other than an ordinary mindlink.

Mags …?

Cale?

Cale could think of no way to ask the question without it coming across as an accusation. Forget it.

Hurry, Cale, Magadon said, and the connection went quiet.

Together, Cale and Riven shadowstepped through the storm. They covered a bowshot at a stride and the leagues fell behind them. The storm worsened as they penetrated farther into it.

Swarms of shadows thronged the darkness, on the ground, in the air. They flocked in groups numbering as few as a score to gatherings in the hundreds. There seemed no end of them. When Cale and Riven saw the red eyes of the undead break the otherwise uniform blackness of the air, usually they simply sheltered under trees, boulders, or shrubs, and blended into the shadows. Other times they shadowstepped past or around the creatures. They were an island within an ocean of the creatures. Cale did not know how long they could go undetected. One slip would be all it took.

“Stay sharp,” he said. Fatigue would take its toll on Riven before it would him.

“Do not worry over that. No giants, yet.”

“Not yet,” Cale said.

A few hours in, they stepped into a copse of twisted larch. The limbs of the trees, jutting at odd angles, reminded Cale of mace-broken bones. The needles hissed in the rain and wind, whispered indecipherable threats in ominous tones. Cale looked out of the copse and stared out into the storm.

“What in the Hells?”

Riven stepped to his side. “What is it?”

“Bodies.”

A long bowshot before them, the remains of a battle littered the plains. Bodies, weapons, and shields lay scattered over the ground.

Cale eyed the immediate area, the sky, and saw no sign of any shadows. He wrapped the darkness around him and Riven and shadowstepped to the battlefield.

Desiccated bodies dotted the plains. They looked like skeletons wrapped tightly in flesh. None showed any wounds from weapons. Horse carcasses, too, lay scattered across the grass, their abdomens bloated, ready to burst.

“Shadows did this,” Cale said, and Riven nodded.

Shrunken, withered faces stared out of helms and mail coifs, the sunken eye sockets as black as the sky. Lips drawn back by tightening skin offered them mocking smiles. Skeletal hands still clutched blades or crossbows. The soldiers wore rain-soaked tabards that featured the golden wheel of Ordulin. The Shadowstorm had already started to drain the color from them.

“The overmistress’s army,” Riven said, lifting one of the tabards with a blade.

Cale nodded.

They walked the carnage for a time. The bodies of horses and men covered a wide area, faced his way and that. The battle appeared to have been a confused affair.

“Look,” Riven said, and pointed past Cale with a saber.

Cale turned and saw a single horse standing on the battlefield. It appeared so unlikely that Cale thought it the leftover remnant of a spell, or a hallucination.

“How can that be?”

He and Riven hurried toward the creature, but slowed as they neared. The horse was real enough.

“It’s all right,” Cale said, but sounded insincere. He had never been comfortable around horses.

Riven whickered, approached more assuredly. “Steady, girl. Steady.”

The horse—a muscular brown mare—stood on three legs over a corpse, perhaps that of its rider. It held its other leg off the ground, bent at the knee, and Cale saw a shard of bone sticking through the flesh above the hoof. The horse trembled with cold, with terror, with woundshock. Wild eyes watched them approach. It snorted, shifted on its feet, stumbled, and nearly fell.

“Steady,” Riven said in a calm tone. “Steady, now.”

The assassin moved forward slowly, took the horse by the reins. He rubbed its neck and nose, making soothing noises. The horse blew out an exhalation and its trembling subsided somewhat.

“She should not be alive,” Cale said. Curious, he cast a minor spell that allowed him to see dweomers. The horse’s saddle glowed a faint red in his sight.

“Saddle is enchanted. It must shield her from the effects of the storm.”

“Tymora smiled on you,” Riven said to the mare. He kneeled, eyed the fracture just above the fetlock. The mare eyed him warily.

“She needs to be put down,” Riven said.

“We could heal her.”

Riven shook his head. “Then what? There are shadows everywhere. Better to die by the blade than those