Cloak Games: Shadow Jump Read online

  “Damn it,” I said. “Why am I always in cars that get shot to pieces?”

  “You’d done this kind of thing before?” said Cecilia.

  “Sort of,” I said, looking out the shattered back window. “There were orcs the last time, though. And then anthrophages. Damned things are like cockroaches. Vicious, fast cockroaches. Boccand, what’s wrong with the engine?”

  “It was shot,” he said. “That tends to have a deleterious effect on all number of things.”

  We had put nearly a mile between us and the traffic jam. The gray van we had clipped had stopped pursuit. I wondered why, and then saw that we had crushed its back bumper badly enough that the back tires had been punctured.

  For the moment, no one was pursuing us.

  “Then let’s get off the freeway,” I said. “Right now. We’ll abandon the Venator, steal another car, and get out of Minneapolis. With luck, by the time Martin Corbisher is done lying to the Inquisition, we’ll be long gone.”

  “I like that plan,” said Boccand. “I am very enthusiastic about that plan.”

  “That off-ramp,” I said. Ahead an overpass stretched over the freeway, connected to both on-ramps and off-ramps. “That one. It’s our best chance. We’ll disappear, and…”

  I saw a flicker of motion on the overpass as Boccand changed lanes, and as we drew closer, I glimpsed a parked gray van atop the overpass, three figures in dark suits standing at the railing, one of them lifting a black tube to its shoulder…

  “Boccand!” I shouted.

  Some instinct made me grab my seat belt and slam it into place.

  Boccand, to his credit, reacted at once. He slammed on the brakes, the tires squealing like banshees, and twisted the wheel to the right, trying to get to the off-ramp. As he did, fire flared from the overpass as the anthrophage fired the rocket launcher, a scream ringing through the air as the rocket hurtled towards us.

  I don’t remember the next few seconds clearly.

  The missile exploded about three yards from the Venator, and combined with Boccand’s attempted turn, the supercar skidded to the side and slammed into the wall at the base of the onramp. Metal screamed and howled, the fiberglass stripping away from the side of the car, and if the window hadn’t been rolled down, it would have exploded. I had a surreal moment as concrete filled the window, as if the Venator had plunged into a sea of concrete. The strap of the seat belt dug into my chest, and if I hadn’t been wearing it, my head would have slammed against the wall and I would have died.

  The Venator slid to a stop with a groaning rasp of twisted metal, and I slumped against the seat belt, dazed. Boccand was bleeding from a cut over his eye, and I heard Cecilia shouting his name as she grabbed at his shoulders.

  My terror cut through my daze. We had to move now. There could be a dozen anthrophages on that overpass, maybe more, and they would be coming for us. For that matter, those we had left behind were in hot pursuit, and at least some of them had functioning vehicles.

  “Boccand,” I rasped, releasing my seatbelt and grabbing the AK-47. “Go. Can you stand up?”

  “Yeah,” said Boccand, blinking. He wiped the blood from his forehead. “Just a little cut. I think I’m fine. I think…”

  “Then go!” I said. “Your door is the only one left!”

  “What?” he said. “Yes. Right!” He tried the handle, and for a moment I was afraid the door was stuck. Then he cursed and kicked three times, and the door wrenched open. Boccand stumbled out, pulling Cecilia after him, and I followed them both.

  I got to my feet just in time to see a score of anthrophages racing down the off-ramp. I looked back to the north and saw two Homeland Security SUVs and a gray van speeding towards us, their lights flashing.

  “Oh, God save us,” said Cecilia. “We’re trapped. We’re trapped.”

  “Yeah,” said Boccand, grabbing his anchor from the damaged trunk and dropping it into a pocket of his coat.

  I took a deep breath, flexing the fingers of my free hand, and slung the AK-47 from its strap over my shoulder. Magic rose at my call as I prepared the most powerful spell I knew.

  “Can you shadowjump away?” said Cecilia.

  “I can’t,” said Boccand. “This close to my anchor, it’ll just draw us back here. I can break my link to the anchor, but that takes hours, and we haven’t the time.” He seized Cecilia’s hand. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

  “We’re not finished yet,” I said, stepping in front of them. “Stand next to me.”

  “What are you doing?” Boccand said.

  “A spell to get us out of here,” I said, the power crackling in my mind. “Brace yourself. This is going to be a little shocking.”

  I thrust out my hands, casting the spell to open a rift way, all my power going into it. A sheet of mist and gray light erupted from the ground before me, and through it I expected to see the familiar, terrifying landscape of the Shadowlands in Earth’s umbra, the strange auroras across the black, empty skies, the pale grasses, the forests of obsidian trees with their eerie, glowing leaves.

  Yet as I looked, I felt something tugging at me, and my left jacket pocket glowed with ghostly blue fire.

  The pocket holding the medallion of the Dark Ones.

  It occurred to me a half-second too late that I had never tried casting the rift way spell while carrying that medallion.

  “Wait!” said Boccand, fear flooding his face. “You’re wearing a Sign? You can’t use a rift way with that! It…”

  The rift way snapped open, and through it I saw the twisted terrain of the Shadowlands…but I also saw a grim fortress of green-tinted black rock, lit from within by a ghostly emerald glow.

  One of the anthrophages behind us loosed its wailing hunting cry, and then the rift way swallowed us whole.

  Chapter 10: Venomhold

  After a moment of staggering, whirling disorientation, I caught my balance, my shoes slapping against massive flagstones, a huge wall of black stone rising before me.

  “Oh, hell,” said Boccand. “Hell, hell, hell. This is bad. This is very, very bad.”

  I turned in a circle, catching my breath as I took in our surroundings.

  And, as Boccand had said, it was very bad.

  The familiar wild auroras of the Shadowlands lashed and writhed over the starless black vault of the sky, and I felt the familiar surge of arcane power. The Shadowlands were the source of all magic, and the power leaking through the barrier and reaching Earth was what allowed humans to use magic. Spells would be more powerful here, which I suspected would prove useful shortly.

  We were in a vast black range of mountains, grim and craggy and bleak. The lands spreading below looked twisted, the vegetation poisoned, and a strange, misty green glow rose from the forests in the valleys below.

  “What is that?” said Cecilia, her voice awed.

  I turned, and saw the fortress of black stone rising over us like a mountain in its own right.

  It was huge and mad and surreal. Its half-ruined look put me in mind of the spell-shattered towers in the wreckage of downtown Chicago. The sprawling fortress looked sort of like a castle, yet it was a strange mix of towers and cathedral spires and ziggurat terraces and palace colonnades, a dozen different architectural styles blended together, all of them half-damaged and crumbling. If I had given a demented architect a hundred trillion dollars, an unlimited supply of illegal hallucinogenic drugs, and a thousand years, he might have come up with something like the castle sprawling along the mountainside.

  And I had seen a fortress like this before.

  The Knight of Grayhold’s citadel had looked like this, with the same look of antiquity and immense size. Yet Grayhold had a sense of…solemnity to it, of stern and unrelenting purpose. This fortress looked wrong, somehow, as if something had twisted and corrupted it. Throughout the ruined walls and towers I saw more of those misty green glows, hundreds of them, and it gave the fortress a sickly aura, as if it was diseased.

  Or, perhaps, poisoned.


  Somehow the fortress put me in mind of a giant tumor.

  “Where are we?” said Cecilia in a quiet voice, shivering a little. “The Shadowlands?”

  “Yes,” said Boccand, looking around. “But it’s worse than that. We’re in Venomhold.”

  “Venomhold?” I said. “The place looks like Grayhold…”

  Boccand whirled to face me. “I wish we were in Grayhold. Do you have any idea of what you’ve done?”

  I scowled. “Explain.”

  “I don’t know all the history,” said Boccand, looking around. I realized that he was holding magic ready, preparing to cast a spell. “Thousands of years ago, some old King of Akkad in what is now the Middle East found the way to enter the Shadowlands. He realized the Shadowlands were a danger to his empire, so he founded thirteen demesnes in the Shadowlands and charged their keepers to guard Earth from the creatures of the Shadowlands in general and the Dark Ones in particular.”

  “I heard that,” I said.

  Boccand frowned. “Really? From who? It’s another little secret that isn’t widely known.”

  I shrugged. “The Knight of Grayhold himself.” And from the frost giants’ ambassador to the High Queen, but I didn’t want to share my part in that little misadventure.

  “You met the Knight of Grayhold and you’re still alive?” said Boccand, incredulous. “Are you one of the Graysworn?”

  “I don’t know what those are,” I said.

  “Huh,” said Boccand. “The gaps in your education really are appalling.”

  “Then fill them,” I said. “What is Venomhold?”

  “Right,” said Boccand. “Thirteen demesnes, held by thirteen Knights. One by one the Knights were all slain, and were replaced by successors. In time, those successors were killed, and the demesnes were destroyed and absorbed back into the Shadowlands. Only two of the demesnes remain, and of the two only the latest Knight of Grayhold remained faithful to his calling.”

  “Yeah,” I said. The Knight of Grayhold and the Jarl Rimethur had set up an elaborate plot between them to screw over the Rebels…and that made more sense now that I knew the Rebels were involved with the Dark Ones. “So I guess this is Venomhold, the other demesne…and the Knight of Venomhold didn’t stay faithful to his calling.”

  “Her calling, actually,” said Boccand. He shuddered. “Let’s hope we don’t meet her. We…would not enjoy the experience. She has allied herself with the Dark Ones, and she permits the Rebels sanctuary within her demesne.”

  “What?” I said.

  “Why do you think the High Queen hasn’t been able to exterminate the Rebels?” said Boccand. “She crushed all resistance after the Conquest, didn’t she? It’s because the Knight of Venomhold grants the Rebels sanctuary, and a lord of the Shadowlands is supreme within her demesne. When the Rebels retreat here, the High Queen can’t follow them. The Knight might be trapped within the boundaries of Venomhold, but within those boundaries she is invincible.”

  “Yeah,” I said. I had known Rogomil could use magic, and I had wondered how he managed to escape Madison alive after his failed assassination attempt on Jarl Rimethur. “Wait. You’ve been here before, haven’t you?”

  Boccand’s smile was a rictus, and Cecilia squeezed his hand. “How do you think I got away from the Wizard’s Legion in the first place? Deserters are shot. Or electrocuted or incinerated, depending on the magical abilities of the wizards who catch them. I ran, and a Knight of the Inquisition caught me. Fortunately for me, the Inquisition needed someone to do a little errand for them in Venomhold. I did it…and the Inquisitor let me go.” He shivered. “I survived, but barely. I hoped never to come here again.” He scowled. “And then you brought us here! Why the hell where you carrying a Sign of the Dark Ones?”

  “Armand,” said Cecilia.

  I spread my hands. “I took it from an anthrophage I killed in Los Angeles a few months ago. I assume that if you’re carrying the Sign when you open a rift way, you get dumped here?”

  “Yes,” said Boccand.

  “Damn it,” I said. “You could have mentioned that.”

  Boccand spluttered. “You could have mentioned you had the damned thing.”

  “Well,” I started, “you…”

  “Enough!” said Cecilia. “We’re here, and that’s that. Arguing won’t fix anything. Miss…Rastov, is it?” I nodded. “Can you get us home?”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “If the Knight hasn’t noticed us,” said Boccand. “If she does, we’re finished.”

  “But if she hasn’t,” I said, rummaging in my pockets, “we can get out of here.”

  “Just how are we going to do that?” said Boccand.

  “You don’t know much about rift ways, do you?” I said, still digging through my pockets. I needed something useful, something that would get us away from Minneapolis. If need be, I could open a rift way at random, but that might dump us in the middle of the Pacific Ocean or the middle of the Caliphate, and neither option was appealing.

  “No,” said Boccand. “I can’t cast the spell. You’re the only human I’ve ever met who could.”

  “Wow,” I said, emptying out the contents of my right jacket pocket. There were a few old receipts and a key for an apartment that didn’t exist any longer. “There are some alarming gaps in your education, you know? It…”

  “You’re the one who didn’t know what an aetherometer was,” said Boccand. He took a nervous glance at the wall again, where a massive stone archway led into the depths of Venomhold. “So how can you get us back to Earth?”

  “All right,” I said. “Rift Ways 101. Think of the Earth as one thread, and the Shadowlands as a separate thread. Both threads are tangled together, and touch each other in different places. So if I opened a rift way within say, the lobby of Corbisher Tower, it would open into a specific place in the Shadowlands. Opening a rift way from that specific place in the Shadowlands would go right back to the lobby of Corbisher Tower.”

  I held up one of the receipts. It was from a restaurant in Milwaukee where I had eaten lunch with Russell. I cast my tracing spell and felt the tugging. The tugging was faint, and the point was at least a thousand miles away. It wouldn’t work.

  “So if you opened a rift way from this terrace,” said Cecilia, hugging herself, “it would go back to I-35W in Minneapolis.”

  “Actually, it wouldn’t,” I said. “It seems like the Sign of the Dark Ones acts as a magnet, drawing anyone who carries it here. So if I opened a rift way on the terrace, I have no idea where it would go.” I tried another receipt from Milwaukee. Still no good. The access point was too far away. “Might take us someplace safe. Might not. There’s no way to know.”

  “Not even with an aetherometer,” said Boccand, producing his and glancing at the dials. “The flows of magic through the Shadowlands change too rapidly. What is that spell you are casting, by the way?”

  The aetherometer let him detect spells? Interesting. I would have to get myself one of those devices if we lived through this.

  “It’s a tracing spell,” I said. “Like I said, physical locations on Earth correspond to random locations in the Shadowlands. If you have an object from one of those physical locations, you can use it as a compass to lead you to a place in the Shadowlands that corresponds to that physical location.” I tried another receipt, this one from a La Crosse gas station, but that was even further away.

  “That sounds too easy,” said Cecilia. “Why don’t more people cast that spell, then? The Elves could use it to travel anywhere in the blink of an eye.”

  “There are problems,” I said, trying something else – an old gum wrapper – and failing. “The object has to be tied to a specific location. Like, a pebble from a furnace room. The pebble probably hasn’t moved in years, so it’s linked to that furnace room. Our clothes wouldn’t work, because they’re linked to us. Also, some places on Earth don’t correspond to anywhere in the Shadowlands, or to places within the Shadowlands that are too dang
erous to visit.”

  “That,” said Boccand, “and the entirety of the Shadowlands are dangerous. You’ve seen the anthrophages, and they’re actually some of the least dangerous creatures here.”

  “Yeah,” I said, rolling a key around my fingers as I cast the tracing spell. I had forgotten I still had the key. It was an unremarkable steel key, and the apartment it had unlocked no longer existed. “I only come to the Shadowlands as a last resort. Every time I’ve come here, I’ve almost gotten killed or eaten. So the sooner we leave…”

  I blinked, straightening up.

  I felt a powerful tugging from the key, and it led someplace nearby, no more than a half a mile at most.

  “Here,” I said, holding up the key. “This will work. It touches a location about a half a mile away, deeper within the fortress.”

  “Oh, wonderful,” said Boccand.

  I gestured behind me. “Would you rather go that way?” The broad terrace we were on terminated in a vast cliff than plunged a thousand feet to the valley below.

  “Not really,” said Boccand.

  “Follow me,” I said. “Do you know any spells that would be useful in a fight?”

  “Some elemental fire,” he said. “Elemental ice, but not as powerful. You?”

  “A lightning globe,” I said. “Hopefully we won’t need it.”

  “Maybe I should have one of your guns,” said Cecilia.

  “Wouldn’t help,” I said. “Guns don’t work here. It’s why the men-at-arms train with swords and spears and crossbows.”

  “Oh,” said Cecilia. “Right. I forgot. Look…whoever you are, thank you. I don’t think…”

  “Later,” I said. “Follow me. Cecilia, stay behind us.”

  I led the way through the archway and into a vast, gloomy gallery, the key giving off a faint gray glow in my left hand. My shoes rasped against the stone floor, the flagstones themselves seeming somehow greasy. Pale green light shone from the pillars supporting the distant roof, illuminating lines of inscriptions.

  “Cuneiform,” said Boccand.