Shadowfane Read online

  Shadowfane

  Janny Wurts is an author and illustrator of several highly praised novels, including the Cycle of Fire trilogy. She is also co-author with Raymond E. Feist of the bestselling Daughter of the Empire, Servant of the Empire and Mistress of the Empire.

  JANNY WURTS

  SHADOWFANE

  THE THIRD BOOK OF THE CYCLE OF FIRE

  HarperCollins Science Fiction & Fantasy

  An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

  77-85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

  This paperback edition 1994

  135798642

  Previously published in paperback by Grafton Books 1990 Reprinted two times

  Copyright © Janny Wurts 1988 Illustrations © Janny Wurts 1988

  The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

  ISBN 0 586 20485 7

  Set in Meridien

  Printed in Great Britain by HarperCollinsManufacturing Glasgow

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  For Raymond E. Feist

  true friend, talented author,

  and (my influence to the contrary)

  an incurable enthusiast of jazz

  and the Chargers

  Acknowledgements

  The finish of a series requires a great deal of thanks to the many individuals who helped the author along the way. In particular my appreciation goes to the following individuals, for efforts that made all the difference: Terri Windling, for seeing three books between the lines of two, and asking gently to make it happen;

  Virginia Kidd, for her tireless efforts of negotiation; and Jonathan Matson and Abner Stein, for the same, but overseas;

  Soni Gross and Fern Edison, whose contributions above and beyond the normal call helped make the start a success;

  Peter Schneider, for off-the-cuff assistance with promotion;

  My parents, who put up with a lot of unreasonable dreams;

  My friend and former landlord, Daniel P. Mannix, who for eleven years gave me guidance and a roof under which to create;

  Beth Fleisher, my editor, for sharing my passion for sailing and twisted plots;

  Gene Mydlowski, art director, for belief in an author who happens also to paint;

  Elaine Chubb, copy editor, whose unfailing devotion to detail is a mystery and a miracle all by itself.

  Prologue

  The seeress of the well in Gaire's Main woke gasping in the straw of the stables where she sheltered. She shivered, blind eyes milky in the moonlight that spilled from the loft. The visions that had broken her sleep racked her still, bringing terror beyond anything mortal. The seeress stirred ancient joints and rose. Clothed in scraps of knotted leather, she groped down the dusty ladder and made her way past stall and grain stores, then out into the waning autumn night.

  Beyond the barn lay a crossroad and a trough awash with muddy puddles. The folk of Gaire's Main presently used the sacred spring as a watering place for beast and household; to them the seeress was a senile beggar woman given to strange outbursts and mumbling. But tonight no confusion blurred her movements. She knelt on the chill ground and scrabbled through pig droppings until she located the stone that founded the mystery of her craft.

  The slab was black, laced with metallic streaks of gold, and rinsed clean by overflow from the spring. Tears brimmed from the seeress's lashless eyes as she laid her palms against the talisman. Energy welled from the contact. With a cry of agonized relief, she surrendered her burden of dreams to its current...

  * * *

  In the wind-whipped darkness of an ocean roiled by the aftermath of a gale, a boat with tattered sails rolled hove to in the swell. There a black-haired man dressed in the cottons of a fisherman reached out to an injured Thienz-demon who clung to a drift of timber in the waves. Neither kindness nor compassion prompted the man's action; his spirit was not human, an evil sensed palpably across the fabric of the seeress's dream.

  The rescued demon was not to survive its deliverance from the waves. As its toadlike fingers closed upon the man's wrist, the seeress sensed its agony, the burning sting of salt splashed into its gills. Poisoned beyond healing, the demon endured only long enough to deliver its death-dream, which held intact the death-dreams of others who had perished earlier, in a backlash of forces brought about by no natural means.

  These memories the Thienz impressed directly into the mind of the human in the boat, for their significance to mankind's enemies offered proof that an artifact of paramount significance still existed. Untempered and entire, the death-dream of the Thienz seared like magma through the young man's awareness. When he screamed, the seeress screamed with him, and the wellstone beneath her hands relayed the dying demon's legacy to mankind's most ancient defender . . .

  * * *

  On an islet far distant from Gaire's Main, the old woman's sending cut like the cry of a dying doe across a grove of enchanted twilight; there an entity known as the Vaere received her images with an understanding not given to mortal men. The news promised grimmest consequences. The dying Thienz had stumbled upon a secret centuries old. When that knowledge reached the demon compact at Shadowfane, its full import would be recognized. Then would the wardenship of the Vaere itself become threatened. Now the untried talents of the sorcerer's heir but recently come to sanctuary offered the only expedient. If Ivainson Jaric failed to master his father's talents, if he failed in the Cycle of Fire while the compact unriddled the mystery of the Vaere, mankind would suffer extinction at the hands of demon foes . . .

  * * *

  The seeress broke contact with a quivering sigh; and silence ominous as the calm before cataclysm settled over the grove of the Vaere.

  I

  Riddle

  Cold came early to the wastes beyond Felwaithe; frosts rimed the lichens and traced a madman's patterns on the bare rock of the hills. Here, far north of Keithland's border and the lands inhabited by men, a single lantern burned in a hall of bleak stone. Within its circle of light, Scait, Demon Lord of Shadowfane, sat upon a chair fashioned from the bones and the hides of human victims. He pared his thumb spurs to needlepoints with a penknife, while an immature Thienz ornamented with beads crouched at his feet, froglike limbs folded against its loins.

  Scait flexed scaled wrists and paused in his sharpening. His upper lip curled over rows of sharklike teeth as he addressed his grovelling underling. 'What has occurred that Thienz elders send a hatchling to trouble my thoughts? Speak, tadpole! What tidings do you bring?'

  The Thienz cowered against the icy stone floor. The sovereign of Shadowfane quite often killed out of temper, and this youngster brought ill news of the worst import. It flapped its gills in distress. 'Most-mighty, I bring word of the boats sent into Keithland to capture Ivainson-Firelord's-heir-Jaric. Your servants have failed. Jaric has reached sanctuary on the Isle of the Vaere.'

  Scait hissed explosively. 'Seed-of-his-father, accursed! How did one wretched boy slip past five dozen Thienz elders?'

  Beads chinked against stillness; the Thienz battled an overwhelming instinct to flee, yet the flash of displeasure in its master's sultry eyes did not metamorphose into blows. Its crest flattened in reluctance against its blunt head, the youngster prepared to offer images of s
torm and death, and the wreckage of the fleet that had failed in its directive to take the gold-haired son of Ivain Firelord.

  But the sovereign Lord of Shadowfane refused direct sharing. Instead he twisted the blade of his knife and pricked at the stuffed human thigh that comprised the throne arm. 'I would know the particulars of Jaric's escape from one who is senior, and experienced. Fetch me Thienz-eldest, for no other will suffice.'

  The young demon bobbed hasty obeisance, then scuttled from the dais, its discharge of fear and relief a palpable stink in the air. Once clear of the steps, it spun and fled around the mirror pool set into the floor beyond. Scait watched with slitted eyes as it vanished into the gloom of the doorway; rage born of frustration bristled the long hackles at his neck. He had hoped to capture Jaric, enslave and manipulate his Firelord's potential for the ruin and sorrow of humanity. Now this recent failure by the Thienz invited terrible risk. Ivainson Jaric might survive the Cycle of Fire; then would humans gain another Vaere-trained sorcerer, one powerful enough to free Anskiere of Elrinfaer from his prison of ward-spelled ice. The paired threat of Stormwarden and Firelord would pose a serious inconvenience, if not a direct impediment, to the conquest planned by the demon compact at Shadowfane.

  Scait paced, knife clenched between spurred fingers. He ground his teeth in agitation until the Thienz elder he had summoned presented itself before the dais.

  Lest an underling of no consequence sense his distress, the Lord of Shadowfane smoothed his long hackles and sat. As the elder completed its obeisance, he scraped one spur across the bared edge of his knife and demanded.

  'How did Ivainson-Fire-lord's-heir-Jaric come to reach the Isle of the Vaere?'

  The Thienz replied in words, the barest ruffle of its crest hinting defiance. 'Ivain's-get-Jaric arranged the release of a weather ward of Anskiere's.' Offered the clear, precise image of a stormfalcon's feather, and the blue-violet shimmer of sorcery that had released a ruinous gale across the southwest reaches, Scait bared his teeth.

  The Thienz hastily continued. 'Storm-death did not bring the bane of all Thienz-cousins sent hunting. Another hazard entirely prevented their closing with the prey.' The Thienz closed tiny eyes and sent the death-dream salvaged from a failing survivor by Maelgrim Dark-dreamer. In precise, empathic images, the Lord of Shadowfane shared the last memories of three Thienz who had huddled in drenched misery aboard a boat many leagues to the south.

  Only moments before death, they whimpered among themselves, their shared thoughts riddled with terror. The storm that Ivain Firelord's heir had caused to be unleashed had bashed and capsized and drowned the crews of seven companion vessels. The Thienz who sailed aboard the last boat trembled, fearful their own doom would follow.

  Scait hissed. The dagger dangled forgotten in his grip as the doomed creatures' vision filled his sensors. At one with the memories of the Thienz who had crouched afraid in that-boat-sent-to-apprehend-Jaric, he, too, beheld the roiling and spume-frothed crests of gale-whipped ocean.

  Suddenly the air seemed to shimmer. Sky and swells rippled, blurred, and shifted into pearly mist; then fog in turn dissolved, transformed to a prismatic chaos of energy, all shattered bands of colour and light. The display lasted only a moment before cruel fields of energy blistered the Thienz' bodies. They fell, crying curses, the agony of their dying accompanied by wood that popped and steamed, and canvas that burst sullenly into flame.

  The dream ended. Scait's lids snapped open, unveiling irises hard as topaz. Needle rows of teeth gleamed as he framed words in speculation. 'Tell me, lowly toad. What memory does that death-dream call to mind?'

  Possessed of the eidetic recall common to all demons, the Thienz squirmed uneasily upon the carpet. 'This death was the same as that dreamed by ancestor-among-the-stars who died, trapped by the expanding field of a time anomaly when a ship drive malfunctioned. But such interpretation is questionable. Keithland's humans have lost all memory of technology.'

  'Not entirely.' Scait snapped his jaws closed. Delicately he stroked his dagger across the arm of his throne. 'Veriset-Nav,' he mused triumphantly. 'This dream gives proof beyond doubt. The navigational guidance module must have survived the crash of star-probe-Corinne-Dane-accursed. We have only to find it, and recover the unit intact, and our exile from home-star will be ended.'

  The Thienz wailed, its crest flattened against its earless skull. 'Lord-highest, you suggest the impossible. Where can we seek? Corinne Dane's emergency systems capsule plunged into ocean, destroyed.' The Thienz paused to whistle soulfully, its tune an expression of knowledge lost.

  But Scait ignored its protests. Preoccupied, he arose from his chair. Wire ornaments jangled against scaled knuckles as he paced the dais.

  Like an ill-sewn frog puppet, the Thienz twisted its blunt head to follow its master's steps. 'Mightiest, Set-Nav is lost, still.'

  'Perhaps not.' Scait jerked to a stop. He leered down at the Thienz. 'I say all along that Set-Nav may have hidden behind a persona called the Vaere.'

  At this the Thienz rocked back on webbed feet, snorted, then burst into croaking peals of laughter. 'Mightiest, O mightiest, you surely jest! We know the Vaere! Human superstition, brought forward from earliest, most barbaric remnants of old Earth culture.' All in the compact knew that Tamlin originated in a tale conceived by primitive ballad singers; funny indeed, if mankind might be witless enough to mistake the most sophisticated technology its people ever created with a make-believe creature of faerie!

  'Silence!' Scait's short hackles lifted in warning. 'Be still, one-who-forgets.'

  The demon beneath the dais quivered at the insult. It rolled whiteless eyes as Scait leaned over and thrust the knife toward its chin. 'Myth or not, facts are these: Tamlin of the Vaere reputedly trained our greatest foe, Anskiere, and also Ivain Firelord. And, one-who-forgets, remember that humans possess no senses to differentiate between the dream-state and reality experienced! Recall that Corinne Dane's Set-Nav guidance unit came equipped with mind-link modules.'

  Such machines could induce a man to dream for years, and still preserve his body. The Thienz blinked, jolted to sober reflection. The time-differential field of the star drive neatly accounted for the unnatural ageing that afflicted those mortals who received their sorcerer's training from the Vaere.

  Scait shot to his feet, eyes ablaze with excitement. 'Now, one-who-forgets, let scornful laughter pucker your tongue with the taste and the texture of excrement. For I think humankind does not know its sorcerers are guided to mastery by technology its people once possessed.'

  The Thienz whuffed its gills, silent, while Scait subsided back into his chair. Strangely, terribly, the Demon Lord's reasoning suggested truth. Man might have forgotten his vanquished empire among the stars; yet an electronic guidance system endowed with intelligence, self-repair and the logic to master the bewildering mathematics of interstellar navigation would never lose its loyalty, or its mission. As killers and imprisoners of creatures with paranormal endowment, Stormwarden and Firelord might indeed continue the starprobe Corinne Dane's original directive: to discover means of defending mankind against the psionic warfare of aliens.

  Curled in idle malice upon his chair of human remains, Scait qualified the Thienz' thought. 'Toad, you misjudge. Deliberately Set-Nav may have cloaked its identity as Tamlin, that the compact might overlook its existence.'

  The Thienz twisted the tiny fingers of its forelimbs and moaned, while in abrupt agitation the Demon Lord stabbed the dagger to the hilt into stuffed human upholstery. 'O toad, the death-dream of your companion brings promise of triumph-and-trouble. We must unravel the riddle of Tamlin, for time is precious. Ivain-son-cursed-sorcerer's-heir-Jaric escaped us. Now, surely as stars turn, a firelord could emerge to balk us. If so, we might face the hatching of the Morrigierj unprepared.'

  The Thienz stiffened. It raised, then lowered its webbed crest, and a tremble invaded its limbs. The memories-of-ancestors knew Morrigierj, that grand-master entity spawned each three thousand years to
bind the collective powers of the Gierj into a single force; of all sentients sworn to the compact of Shadowfane, the mindless Gierjlings owned a latent capacity for destruction that intimidated even the strongest demon. With a squeak of apprehension, the Thienz fled the chamber; it slid with a scrape of claws around the doorjamb and scuttled like a dog down the stairwell.

  Scait laughed at its flight. His threat had been a lie designed to intimidate; when the silly Thienz paused to think, it would recall that no grand hatching could occur without maturity of a Morrigierj spore. Since his predecessor's death at Anskiere's hand, the Demon Lord held power against the machinations of ambitious subordinates; at best, his supremacy at Shadowfane was precariously secured. With his current plot to defeat mankind thrown into setback, underlings must be kept cowed to discourage rivals; for challengers there would be, unless Scait found means to counter the threat posed by the possibility of a new firelord. The discovery of Set-Nav, though of paramount significance, was of secondary importance to politics and power within the compact.

  Scait thought bitterly upon Jaric. Once he had glimpsed the boy's aura; demon-perceived clarity had sensed the ringing patterns of energy that mapped a gifted human's aptitude for mastery of Sathid-bonded forces. Never until then had any demon imagined that humans, even rare ones, might hold so much latent affinity for power. Untrained, such individuals could easily be enslaved and turned to the detriment of their own kind; the loss of Jaric's talents stung doubly. Scait bristled his hackles in frustration. Humanity bred and proliferated like pest parasites. Except for the wizards inhabiting the towers at Mhored Kara, most were blind to the psychic energies of the mind. Perhaps among Keithland's teeming towns, other children born with such gifts were overlooked.