“What did you bring here?”
“Oh, not much. What I wear and carry is all,” Gord answered lightly. “And whereabouts is the capital city or castle of the one who is called Shadowking?”
“Location is always relative here,” Smirtch supplied, meanwhile making a tiny gesture that the gloam undoubtedly thought would be indiscernible to Gord. “Just be in the right place, and the palace comes to you. Now, would you be so good as to display your possessions?”
“Certainly not,” Gord said matter-of-factly. “How would you describe the so-called right place?”
“Briefly, if at all,” Smirtch shot back at the young man. “Do you have any amusing trinkets with you?”
“Amusement is a matter of taste and perspective,”
Gord replied as a group of the shadow-men drew near behind him, with a clump of murklings and fuligi trailing behind. Gord decided that he had played this game long enough. It was time to test his theory. Should he be mistaken, his fate could hardly be worse than what the gloam undoubtedly planned In any case. “However,” Gord said, casually reaching into his pouch with his injured arm, “I do have a trantle which you might regard as meriting some diversion,” he smiled. Fingers grasping the sphere, Gord suddenly withdrew the stone that the adumbrate had called Shadowfire, exposing its surface to the gloam as he brought it forth.
“Put that back in the pouch!” Smirtch groaned in a scratchy whisper, sliding away slightly as he hissed the command.
Ignoring the creature for the moment, Gord spun rapidly, gem held at shoulder height, short sword suddenly sweeping in a glistening circle as he turned. Green and scarlet motes danced along the blade, colors he never had seen before in this place.
It was more than the mere sight of those colors that made the menacing creatures who had been about to fall upon him from behind moan and whimper as the young thief confronted them. The force of Shadowfire swept them backward as a gust of chill air sweeps away the dry leaves of autumn. Not all of them were quick enough; where blade touched shadow there was a coruscation of glittering black and lambent maroon. As if formed of these flickering, burning flashes, each shadow so touched became a thing of whirling sparks for an instant, then disappeared entirely, leaving only a little sound, a noise like the whine of a receding mosquito, behind for a moment.
After four shadow-things were thus touched and made gone, Gord completed his circle and again faced Smirtch. “What is wrong, most helpful of beings? Don’t you care for pyrotechnical displays?”
“You’ll pay for this!” the thing threatened, safe at a distance many feet beyond the reach of the still-fulgent blade. Then Gord advanced, and the gloam sped away, making an evil susurration as it glided rapidly out of sight. With that, all the remainder of the other shadowy creatures fled as well. Moths and birds fluttered and flapped to escape, while animals of other sort scuttled or ran to be clear of the spot. In a short time Gord was quite alone.
Chapter 19
“Most enlightening!” Gord said to himself heartily after all the creatures had gone.
To test his newfound power more thoroughly, Gord then brought the opal’s sphere into contact with the pommel of his sword. The motes brightened and grew larger, each particle seeming to spin and whirl more rapidly. Then the whole multitude of coruscating flashes merged into twin halos of color. One nimbus was coralline, shot through with weaving tongues of snapping scarlet; the other was of peridot hue, and similarly filled with darting arcs of bright emerald.
The transformation took but an instant, and Gord scarcely had time to note the sudden change before the hues intensified and dual bolts shot from either side of the blade to strike a fat-trunked, treelike growth at which the sword happened to be pointing.
“Zow!” Gord exclaimed as he viewed the results, hastily withdrawing Shadowfire from contact with his weapon. Where the shadow-tree had been there was nothing, and the shadow-ground where its roots must have spread was now a gaping hole, a place of deeper blackness from which faint tendrils of silvery stuff wafted upward and away.
“No wonder, then, why Smirtch and the menagerie were attracted to me,” Gord murmured as he carefully sheathed the sword. “This gem is more precious than one might suppose-at least in this realm of shadow!”
With the potent black opal safely back within his pouch, Gord set off to locate the Chiaroscuro Palace of the Shadowking, confident that he could handle any chance encounters along the way. His dweomered blade was more potent here than elsewhere, it seemed, and in combination with Shadowfire something much greater was at his disposal.
“Perhaps this plane is due for a new ruler,” Gord said to himself as he strode along. “No, I take that back… This drabness and gloom is not for me. When I discover how I came here, and how to leave, I shall ask no more than an emperor’s ransom as a parting gift!” Then he tried whistling a jaunty air, but somehow all he could manage was a rather mournful tune in a minor key.
After what seemed several days, Gord had trekked across many miles of the Plane of Shadow. During the course of his journey he had been left alone.-whether by chance or through avoidance, he neither knew nor cared. During the time so spent, however, the young thief had found opportunity to think and observe.
For one thing, he recalled that his flesh had been gray when the adumbrate had forced him to awaken. He remembered assuming at the time that the light had made his skin appear that way. But after his experimentation with the gem, Gord’s complexion had become silvery and he had felt more alive. Then it turned grayish again, and lethargy crept into his body.
Application of the huge opal to his skin seemed to restore the bright sheen to it, so periodically Gord rubbed himself with it. Somehow he had been consigned to this plane, but there was no sense in allowing any transition of his normal self to the stuff of shadow if he could prevent it. He hoped the gem would negate or at least stave off such a metamorphosis. That posed another problem, though. When he was radiating the sheen of argent tone, then the shadow-water and shadow-food he foraged was useless to him. Gord found it slaked not his thirst nor assuaged his hunger.
As he became more like the substance of the plane, the dim waters of sable streams became more substantial, and quaffing them did ease his parched throat and cool his brow. In like vein, the fruits and berries depending from shadow-tree and shade-bush were as nourishing as smoke unless he allowed himself to become shadowy. Gord chose a middle course. Thus he was always somewhat thirsty, his stomach never quite full, his step slightly weary, but it was not difficult to keep going and remain alert. He was no stranger to hardship.
It interested him to note a subtle change that seemed to be occurring as he made his way. Gord thought of the plane as having essentially only two axes of direction. One was parallel to the flow of the terrain, the second was across the current. The first was easy to observe and verify. If one waited in a certain spot, it seemed that all of the plane’s landscape would eventually flow by. The second direction was assumed, but it seemed logical. The landscape slid by, getting more and more distant downcurrent, as he moved along at right angles to the flow.
The longer he traveled on the same path perpendicular to the flow, the faster the shadow terrain slipped by him, before and behind. Therefore, it seemed there were backwaters, of a sort, and a main stream. Gord was certain that if he backtracked on his path and trudged long enough, he would eventually come to the relatively slow-flowing portion of the plane again, and then by continuing he would come once more to the swiftly flowing main portion. This indicated that Shadowrealm had but a single surface and one edge. How broad the surface? How long the edge? Those questions he had no desire to speculate upon. He decided that such thinking could only bring disheartenment.