Fragments of a Broken Land: Valarl Undead. Robert Hood

to prove his intuition true.

      “Are you the one who called me!” The voice was clear and strong—too strong to be only in his ears. Someone was drawing upon the Deep Powers.

      A shadow moved in the shifting darkness. Aridor ran forward a pace, but a continuation of the movement he had already seen caught him unawares. It was like a tidal-wave in a rock canal, pushing the sea into furious eddies. He saw it sweep out of an alleyway ahead of him and knew instantly it was too late to avoid it. When it hit him he staggered physically, though the wave was no material disturbance. It was a thing of the spirit.

      His mind reeled. He was afraid. Burning pitch was foul in his nostrils.

      Something struck him a blow to the side of his head. It felt like a fist.

      “Shut up, boy!”

      He was kneeling in the dirt. A large, warty face leered at him. One of the raiders that had appeared from the sea.

      “Tanuul!”

      It was important that he ignore his father’s voice. They were killing the old man and Aridor could do nothing to help him. To hear the pain would only harm himself.

      “Help me, Tanuul!”

      There were blows and his father screamed. Aridor collapsed face down, covering his ears with his hands.

      But his arms were grabbed and the sounds flooded back.

      “You’ll hear,” a voice snarled. “You’ll hear it all.”

      The images of his own past—the death of his father at the hand of raiders—collapsed into darkness. Aridor leaned against rough stone as the night fractured again.

      “Take it!”

      A creature like a man stood before him, its flesh dry and decayed. Aridor knew it was dead—no longer a man, but merely the animated shell of a man.

      “Take it!”

      The undead creature reached out, its fingers scraping Aridor’s face.

      It was in his mind, but he cringed and suddenly was in the street again.

      Light flared. For a moment, clearly, he saw a bright, jagged shape burn out of the darkness—as though the night were a gray fabric that had been shredded by the creature’s fingers. The light was coming from a place far beyond the world he knew. It was from outside, where the real and the imagined blended together and became infinitely powerful.

      He recognized the shape of the light.

      Cerendar! he cried. His voice echoed in the street. A creature was before him for a moment, real this time, looming out of the darkness of the alley’s mouth. Grotesque. Decayed. It did not see him. He fell back and collapsed onto the cobbled road. When he looked up it was gone.

      The night fell silent, though there had been no real sound made, apart from the scraping of feet on stone and dirt. Aridor blinked into a mist of fine rain. The Street of Telfith’s Mast was empty. He made himself stand, his body weak. The wave of Deep Power had come from the alleyway—not an attack upon him, but a spell-residue to which his sensibilities had made him vulnerable. The creature, too, had come from the alley.

      Aridor reached the wooden fence at the corner of the alleyway and peered cautiously into its shadows. Gathering the last vestiges of his strength, he extended his sight to push aside the darkness.

      He saw a woman. She walked along the alley, studying something held in her hands, too distracted, hopefully, to notice his magic.

      In that instant Aridor’s knees began to buckle under him, but he forced himself to stay upright. The woman had to be followed.

      His consciousness drifted in and out of shadows. With an effort he made it into a doorway before he lost control. He fell heavily and for a while there was nothing.

      When he woke, mere moments later, the woman was far down the street, but still visible. Aridor staggered up.

      A dull stream of rust-blue whiteness was draining out across the firmament, catching fire on the damp air and igniting clouds in the north. Behind it, in about half an hour, would come its source, Taal-Numid, the Skywave that brought day with it, a pulse of intense iridescence that stretched in a cosmic bow from the west to the east and moved steadily southward over the world toward the home of his Dark Gods at the end of the world. Soon it would be full dawn, and the City would wake.

      Aridor stood, his head throbbing. Images of the undead creature and of the Cerendar were clear in his mind. He took a step. It was difficult, but the one that came after was easier. Then another. He began to run, staggering unsteadily, before the woman disappeared from sight.

      He knew the importance of this effort he was making. The undead creature. This woman whom he assumed could control it. Surely in them was the secret to finding the legendary Cerendar. The connections seemed obvious.

      His Master would be pleased.

      In this way, the woman’s fate and that of Aridor—and beyond him, that of his master Lord Worjaren Rehemon—had became entwined. There could be no turning back from this.

      Gathering his determination, Aridor hurried on.