The pain was soul-wrenching. Gord tried to scream it away, but his throat was constricted. Then his heart stopped, and total blackness washed over him. The last thing he remembered was reaching for the great opal, intending to throw it over the wall so that the foul priest would never regain it, but he acted too late. He got it into his hand, but then the ray of death washed over him, his arm refused to obey, and then he felt nothing.
A flare of green light enveloped the body, nearly blinding the priest and anyone else who happened to be looking in that direction, as the would-be escapee fell lifeless to the ground. The great cleric of Nerull shook his head to clear his vision, crying, “Hurry, dogs! Bring me that body! I am not through yet!”
A score of lesser clerics and guards scuttled to obey. Flaring torches made the yard surrounding the temple into a scene straight from the hells, but there was no other way. Cleric-cast illumination would alert all of Dyvers that something serious was amiss at Nerull’s great house, and that was unallowable. Several of the group surrounding the area where the intruder had fallen detached themselves and came slowly back toward their master.
“Hurry, run! I command it!” There was no instant response, but finally one of the men shuffled forward to stand before the high cleric, saying: “I… we can find no body, master. There is but a scorched outline where the swine fell dead. Perhaps your power burned him to nothingness!”
The bald-pated chief priest scowled and struck the underling across his cringing face. “Bah! Look further! Take all night if necessary, but do not come into my presence again without the corpse of that man!” Then the cleric retired into his temple’s safe confines.
Although the matter wasn’t entirely forgotten, the search for the body was abandoned at dawn an hour later. After all, reasoned the priest, perhaps his curse had indeed blasted the fellow. What other explanation could there be?
Chapter 18
“Get up. You are not dead.”
“Yes, I am. Leave me in peace.”
The toneless voice continued, not bothering to point out the contradiction, the impossibility of someone dead being able to converse. “You are not dead. You will arise.”
“No!” The voice was beginning to annoy him, and with irritation came added strength to resist. “I am dead! I will do nothing but remain so.”
“Get up. You are not dead.”
That did it. Gord would show this monotonous know-it-all a thing or two! He sprang erect suddenly, hands reaching for his weapons. A flash of pain sent him reeling-his right arm was fine, but his left was injured. Gord looked and saw a stub sticking from the gray flesh of his bicep. A broken crossbow bolt was causing the severe pain. How in the hells had that happened?
“Go to Shadowhall now and-” The toneless voice stopped in mid-sentence.
Gord looked up. The sound issued from a shapeless thing of black, a seemingly formless coalescence of shadows that floated nearby. As he peered at the phenomenon, Gord inadvertently raised his right hand toward his injured left arm. This movement partially exposed what he held clenched in his fist, and at the sight of it the shadowy thing recoiled, wafting back as if afraid.
“Shadowfire!” it said. Somehow the lifeless voice carried a note of awe in it.
Now Gord looked down, wondering what the strange being was going on about. He saw a glimmering in his own hand, a play of blackness interspersed with motes of deep green, all made vivid by what seemed a tongue of flame that appeared and disappeared within the great gem’s heart. What the dancing devas was this?
“This?” Gord inquired, thrusting the orb out toward the thing of shadows as he spoke.
Now the creature jerked backward as if yanked by a rope. Fully twenty feet rearward it flew before it came to a shuddering halt. “No!” the shadowy speaker intoned loudly. “Keep it from me and I will not tell the master anything about you,” the creature called as if pleading.
Gord sat down on the silvery-black grass, feeling tired and weak. The black thing remained distant, but Gord was not satisfied at all. “What are you talking about? Who is the master? Where are we? What do you mean, I’m not dead?”
As he addressed the thing of shadows, Gord had placed the massive black opal in a pouch. Noting this, the creature again drifted nearer as it replied. “I speak of your half-existence, once-man. The master I speak of is the lord of this place, Shadowrealm, the place where we both must dwell eternally. You thought yourself dead… I read the thoughts plainly for a time. You are not, of course, nor are you un-dead. You are in Shadowrealm, so you are half-living, half-dead, neither and both.”
The lack of intonation, the flatness and droning quality of the thing’s voice, made Gord grind his teeth. He did not like the creature, whatever it might be. “What are you? Where is this so-called master of yours?” He stressed the last word of the second question in order to let the dull monstrosity know that what it considered to be its lord did not affect Gord’s status.
“I am important. Don’t you recognize an adumbrate when you see one?”
“Don’t answer a question with another,” Gord admonished the black, formless thing, “and pay attention too! I also asked where your lord was.”
Now the thing somehow managed to sniff, and the mass of shadows grew thicker and distended, as if it were drawing itself up. “His Umbrageous Majesty, the Lord of Murk, is my master-and yours too, now that you are consigned to Shadowrealm. His Gloominess just happens to be nearby at this very moment, for the Chiaroscuro Palace is readying for the Great Celebration.”
The self-proclaimed adumbrate had continued approaching as it spoke. While its toneless voice betrayed virtually no emotion, the posture the inky monster assumed, if such could be determined in a creature like this, seemed to indicate extreme hostility. Gord read it as a desire to attack and harm him, so he reacted accordingly. As the thick clot of shadows wafted nearer, the young adventurer gathered his strength and sprang to his feet. His sword’s short blade rasped forth even as he gained his footing, and the silvery steel darted out to come within a foot of the creature.
With a sound like wind stirring dead leaves, the adumbrate darted aside from the threatening point, little streaks of silvery light arcing within its body as if the thing were a miniature stormcloud filled with lightning. “So, manling,” it now boomed, its voice taking on a tinge of emotion. “You think to threaten me with a mortal blade?” Still venting the dusty, stirring sound, It shot a short distance sideways, then came toward Gord as if to envelop him.
The sword seemed to react of its own volition. One moment it was elsewhere, the next it was a bar before the adumbrate’s near-lightning advance. The glistening metal seemed to glow, become molten, as the thing of shadows touched it. Gord felt a shivering surge of force flow up his arm as the blade contacted the creature. There was a rush, the sound of a gust of wind venting down a chimney, and a faint, nearly indiscernible keening. Then his sword was plain metal again and the thing was gone. “Good riddance,” Gord murmured, giving his full attention to his wounded arm once again.
Withdrawing the shaft was painful, but Gord knew it had to come out, and he managed to endure the hurt. A gush of black-looking blood came from the wound as the wooden shaft was pulled free. Then Gord clamped a clean strip of cloth from his shirt against both sides of the bicep, slowly winding it to make a tight binding around the injury. It wasn’t pretty, and the cloth already showed dark stains of blood, but Gord thought the bandage would suffice. He had taken far worse wounds and still lived to speak of them.