DIE SCHATTEN

German, "the shadows"

Wie wird man seinen Schatten los? (How can you get rid of your shadow?)

Wie sagt man seinem Schicksal ,,Nein"? (How can you say "No" to your fate?)

Wie kriecht man aus der eig'nen Haut? (How can you crawl out of your own skin?)

Wie kann man je ein and'rer sein? (How can you ever be someone else?)

-- Mozart! das Musical, Wie wird man seinen Schatten los?

At first Karandren thought Diarnlan was just pretending not to recognise him. He fully expected her to draw her sword and attack him. An hour passed. He went out of his way to annoy her. Nothing happened -- although she ground her teeth so fiercely it was a miracle they didn't shatter under the strain.

There was something very strange going on around here. First Diarnlan didn't recognise him. Then she described a monster nothing like any of the ones he'd heard of before. Now she reluctantly allowed him to tag along and still hadn't tried to kill him. This was officially their strangest lifetime so far. No doubt it would end in their deaths just like all the others. But in the meantime he could take advantage of Diarnlan's newfound tolerance -- or amnesia -- to annoy her.

"Why are you hunting a monster alone?"

She didn't answer. Karandren didn't expect her to. He spoke mainly for the amusement of seeing just how far he could push Diarnaln before she snapped.

"You can't search in all the places it could be. It could have doubled back on its trail. Maybe it's watching us somewhere and laughing at us."

Amazingly that prompted a response. "Monsters. Don't. Laugh."

That was debatable. Karandren had been called a monster quite frequently in his earlier lives and he had certainly laughed about it. "How do you know?"

Diarnlan said nothing and walked faster. Unfortunately for her she wasn't used to this sort of terrain. Every few minutes she stumbled over an uneven patch of ground. Her feet must hurt, but she refused to react outwardly to the pain. She didn't even let her stride falter. Karandren would have been impressed if he wasn't so busy making a nuisance of himself.

"How do you plan to kill the monster anyway? It'll fight back." And then we'll get killed, and the whole thing will start all over again. "You'll have to sneak up on it. Do you think we could set a trap? Maybe we could catch it in a net!"

Diarnlan threw a silencing spell at him. For the next half hour Karandren struggled to remove it while also keeping pace with her. Once again he discovered the drawbacks of being fourteen. Not only did he have less magic than he should, he had much shorter legs than he was used to.

In the meantime the scenery changed around them. No longer were they in the bare, stony terrain that surrounded the mountain. Instead they were crossing a stretch of moorland covered with heather. It would have been a nice place for a picnic. It was not such a nice place for people hunting a monster. On the bright side there was nowhere for a large animal to hide -- but then again, there was also nowhere for them to hide if it appeared.

Karandren paused several times to examine plants that were out of place -- mostly tropical flowers and berries that only grew in the western part of Avallot. He never had a chance to look at them for long. Diarnlan did not share his curiosity about odd flora, and she wouldn't wait for him to study them. He could have stopped anyway -- it wasn't as if she could get out of sight on such flat terrain -- but he didn't intend to give her any chance to slip away from him.

At long last he managed to break the silencing spell. "I think there are flower spirits around here."

Diarnlan startled briefly, but recovered and continued walking as if he hadn't spoken. Karandren would honestly have been more surprised if she had answered.

"Most of these flowers aren't native to here," he continued.

"And of course you are an expert on moorland flowers," Diarnlan said dryly. "Will you never shut up?"

"No," Karandren chirped. He grinned at Diarnlan's scowl. "We can ask the flower spirits if they've seen the monster."

Diarnlan rolled her eyes so dramatically it was a miracle they didn't fall out. "So now you think you're an expert on flower spirits."

"Not really," Karandren said. It was true in a way; he wasn't an expert on flower spirits, but he'd met many of them as a child. "I just think it's better than wandering all over Avallot looking for something that's miles away by now."

"Since you dislike it so much why don't you go home and stop bothering me?"

Karandren opened his mouth. No sound came out. Damn it, she'd cast another silencing spell. But astonishingly she hadn't attacked him yet. He was beginning to wonder if he'd fallen into a parallel universe.

As he trailed along after Diarnlan a plan began to form in his mind. If they caught up with the skrýszel -- highly unlikely considering Diarnlan's idiotic method of trying to find it; she'd have better luck looking for a needle in a haystack -- they would probably both be killed. He knew from experience that he tended to live longest when he got to Miavain. He also did not want to give up on the entertainment provided by annoying Diarnlan. Solution: find some way to drag Diarnlan along with him to Miavain.

Like the vast majority of Karandren's plans, this was not the result of careful consideration. Or any consideration at all, for that matter. If he had he would have realised how stupid it was.

Unfortunately he didn't realise that. He spent the next hour gathering his magic and forcing it beyond its limits until those limits gradually increased. He called on his memory of dark magic and included some of it in his spells. To prevent Diarnlan noticing anything he cast them at the ground behind him.

It never occurred to him that just because Diarnlan didn't notice him didn't mean other things hadn't.

In the distance he had a faint rumble like thunder far away. It grew gradually louder. The earth began to tremble beneath their feet. Diarnlan stopped so abruptly that Karandren almost bumped into her.

"What do you think that is?" he asked. "If we were still in the mountains I'd think it was an avalanche. Oh! Do you think they get flash floods around here? We'd better--"

"Shut up," Diarnlan interrupted. She stared straight ahead, squinting at the horizon. "Do you see that little black speck?"

Karandren followed her line of sight. Sure enough there was a small dot on the horizon. A small dot that was getting larger. A thoroughly unpleasant suspicion began to form in his mind. To test it he threw another spell at the ground. It struck an unfortunate plant that promptly shrivelled up. The tremors increased in force and frequency. The dot hurtled towards them. Now he could begin to spot features. It was a very large animal. A very large animal that moved much faster than any ordinary animal, in fact. And it had something odd growing from its face. Something like... octopus tentacles.

With false cheer he said, "Great! We don't have to look for the skrýszel any more!"

Diarnlan ignored him. Like the idiot she was, all she did was draw her sword and wait for the creature. Karandren face-palmed.

Of all the ridiculous things to do! She'll never be able to kill it! It'll run right over her and then I'll be the only one for it to attack, so it'll kill me and we'll be right back where we started! He watched the monster draw ever nearer with the weary exasperation of someone who knew he was about to die and just wanted it to be over. I can't kill it myself. Unless... Unless!

Now was as good a time as any to test his control over dark magic. He focused his powers into a cutting spell. It was a spell he'd used frequently in Miavain. Mainly to castrate priests and cut off people's limbs and sometimes to destroy the statues in temples, rather than to kill large and angry monsters, but still. All he had to do was put all his magic behind it.

He remembered how it felt to use this spell before. He remembered the blood, the screams, the furrow in the floor where the spell had cut through someone's flesh and also scraped the stone below. He remembered putting too much power behind it once and cutting a man in two. When he opened his eyes they were red.

The spell was the most powerful one he'd cast in all of his recent lifetimes. It struck the monster in the middle of the face. Its skull split open, pouring blood and brains on the ground. The spell kept going, slicing through its neck and body. Finally it lost power and fizzled out. The skrýszel collapsed. It was cut almost completely in two.

Utter silence fell. Karandren took stock of his magic. The dark magic writhed in his chest like a living thing. His ordinary magic retreated from it, out of his reach unless he fought through the dark magic. Diarnlan stood so still she almost looked like she'd been turned to stone.

Slowly she turned to face him. She flinched and looked away when she saw his face. Karandren blinked.

"What's wrong?"

Diarnlan's voice was very cold. "Why are your eyes red?"

Oh. He'd forgotten about that side-effect of dark magic. "It's a long story. You see--"

"How did a child like you manage such a powerful spell? Why do you reek of dark magic?" she interrupted. Karandren couldn't help remembering the incident of the jǫtunn. Her attitude and her questions were eerily similar. She finished with an icy, "Who are you?"

When in doubt, tell the truth. It was a maxim his father had tried to hammer into his head as a child. Karandren had let it fall by the wayside over the past... however long it was when you included all his many lives. He found himself thinking of it now.

"I'm your arch-enemy who you've killed at least twice already. And I've killed you a few times too. And both of us get killed by those things--" He gestured to the skrýszel's body, "--more times than I like to remember."

Unsurprisingly she didn't believe a word of it. "You're mad."

Karandren grinned, showing all his teeth. "Probably. So are you. Reliving the same events over and over will drive anyone mad."

Diarnlan spun round and began to walk away. As usual Karandren didn't think. He acted. He sprang forward and grabbed her sleeve. She tried to punch him. All she succeeded in doing was almost overbalancing because she forgot she was still holding her sword in her other hand. While she was distracted he summoned his magic for a teleportation spell.

On the scale of terrible and ill-thought-out plans, this one ranked just slightly below the "charge at a skrýszel that can electrocute you" catastrophe. Even Karandren had to acknowledge that. On the bright side, neither of them was dead yet. And they were in Miavain, which wasn't really bright yet because he still had to conquer it. More to the point, they'd ended up in the abandoned house where Karandren had spent his first night of exile. He recognised the place in the wall where the statue would have stood.

The force of the teleportation spell dragging them through space and past the wards left the two of them feeling rather dizzy. Karandren tried to sit up. His stomach roiled and the room turned upside down. He lay down again until he felt less like he'd just been thrown into a whirlpool.

Diarnlan hadn't moved at all. Karandren risked looking over at her. At first he saw six of her, then two, then just one -- one that kept drifting in and out of focus. His head began to ache. He closed his eyes again and waited to stop feeling so sick.

Today was full of unpleasant surprises. The giant monster, the strange boy who wouldn't leave her alone and who turned out to be a lunatic, and now this kidnapping.

Let that be a lesson to me never to speak to anyone ever again, Diarnlan thought.

Off to the side she heard her kidnapper try to sit up. He promptly lay down again with a pained whimper. Probably he'd used too much magic. Painful experience had taught Diarnlan that would leave anyone with a splitting headache and feeling like they were on an out-of-control carousel. His state was a relief for two reasons. First, because he wouldn't be able to cast any more spells for a while. If he was an ordinary teenager it would have taken him the better part of a week to recover. Based on what she'd seen so far, Diarnlan had a nasty suspicion he was much more powerful than many adults, let alone teenagers. No one should be able to cut a monster in two and then teleport themselves and someone else away from the scene immediately afterwards. So for all she knew it might only take him a day to recover. Why, he might be almost fully recovered right now.

That lead to the second reason. She had a chance to escape before he got up.

Diarnlan opened her eyes. She examined as much of her surroundings as she could without noticeably moving her head. A ceiling covered with cracks, walls with mouldering paper, and no furniture. Apparently her kidnapper had dragged her to some abandoned house. Was this where he lived? If so, no wonder he was so deranged. No one could stay sane if they had to live in such a dilapidated place.

The memory of his words after killing the monster returned unbidden. "I'm your arch-enemy who you've killed at least twice already. And I've killed you a few times too." It was nothing but the rambling of a madman. There was no other possible explanation.

So why did she have to force herself to believe that? Why did his words make her think of things that flitted into her mind and promptly disappeared like half-remembered dreams?

Thinking about it made her head ache. Diarnlan gritted her teeth and pushed those thoughts out of her mind. She had to get out of here while she still could. When she was safely away then she could wonder about whether or not her mind was playing tricks on her. Then, and not before.

Some of the floorboards were solid, but others sagged beneath her weight. They would almost certainly creak when she moved. Diarnlan moved her head only about an inch, first to the right and then the left. She took note of where the windows were -- on her right, near the juncture of two walls, both of them glassless and large enough to climb through -- and where the doorways were. There was one behind her, a dark and empty gap in the wall that led further into the house. She put that down on her list of "avoid at all costs". Possibly she could escape that way, but why take the risk of getting lost in an unfamiliar house that looked like it might collapse at any minute?

The door to the outside was just out of sight beyond one of the windows. She couldn't tell if it was open or not. The whole place was so cold and draughty that an open door really wouldn't have made any difference. But if it was closed she'd waste precious minutes trying to open it.

Best to climb out the window, she thought.

She glanced over at her kidnapper again. He hadn't moved. His skin was so pale it was practically translucent. He certainly wouldn't pose a threat to her in that state. Now was as good a time as any.

Diarnlan jumped to her feet, sprinted over to the window, and climbed out through the empty frame. It proved more difficult than she'd thought. Fragments of grass remained in the frame. One of them sliced open her palm when she accidentally grabbed it. She ignored the pain and jumped down into the garden. It was so overgrown and weed-infested that it could barely be called a garden. She shoved her way through the long grass. Her foot caught on a branch buried in the undergrowth. Pain shot through her ankle. Again she ignored it and kept running.

When she reached the few remaining fragments of the house's fence she looked around wildly for the best place to go. The road running past the house was almost completely hidden beneath grass and weeds. No one had come this way for ages. She couldn't see any other houses nearby.

She also couldn't see any herds grazing in the fields around her. That struck her as odd, but she didn't have time to consider why it was. Her kidnapper might catch up with her at any moment.

Diarnlan picked a direction at random and started to run. Her chosen route took her over the empty field beside the house and towards a few trees growing together at the bottom of the field. All the time she expected that little bastard to run up behind her and grab her. She wouldn't have any trouble fighting off an ordinary fourteen-year-old, but one who had far too much magic and was also completely insane? And had killed a monster bigger than Diarnlan's house? The thought of what sort of spells he might send after her chilled her to the bone.

At last she reached the trees, unharmed except for the pain in her hand and ankle. She dived behind one of the trunks. It was wide enough to hide her from the sight of anyone looking out of the house.

It's no use at all when he knows where you've gone, a little voice whispered in her head. She ignored it.

Silence fell over the field. Diarnlan clasped her uninjured hand over her mouth to muffle her breaths. She strained her ears for any sound of footsteps or the rustle of someone moving through the grass. Nothing. Just the faint creak of the branches blowing in the wind and the twittering of birds overhead. She risked peeping out from behind the tree. No sign of anyone out in the field. But then, it was a field with fairly long grass. Someone could creep along on their hands and knees and the grass would hide them until they were right in front of her.

Diarnlan looked down at her clothes. Her grey trousers, grey waistcoat, and the white sleeves of her shirt couldn't possibly have been more out-of-place in the middle of all the green around her. On the bright side, they blended in surprisingly well with the silvery trunk of the trees.

As soon as she caught her breath she scurried to the next tree. From there she moved on to the one beyond it, and the one beyond that. In this way she managed to reach the end of the group of trees without stepping out into the open fields in front of and behind her. No point in giving away her position until she had to.

For a while she waited, crouched amidst the roots of the last tree, for any sign of pursuit. Still nothing. She looked around at the field beyond. If she ran in a straight line she'd have to cover at least eighty saulgr[1] of open ground before she reached a place where the ground sloped downwards. If she ran diagonally, on the other hand, there was a cluster of hedges much closer.

She ran for the hedges. When she risked a glance back towards the house she saw something that made her blood run cold. A small figure stood outside it. She was too far away to see them clearly, but she felt sure they were staring directly at her.