Winged Shadows over Iskor Yar

© 2023, ANDREW WARWICK

Chapter One – Death Stalks the Streets

Where once the cerulean waters of the Inner Sea had swirled across golden sands, now spread a desolate basin that reached to the far horizons, one filled with shattered boulders and shoals of drifting sands. A white city, still fair to behold, sprawled along the rocky shores, with jutting piers now long abandoned. Once proud boats sat among the shifting sands that lapped against the shores, salt encrusted and decaying.

Out across the now vanished sea, the crimson sun settled upon the horizon, staining all that it touched with the colour of flame and blood. The suffocating heat that had settled upon the land seeped away, to be replaced with the growing cool of the night.

An ancient road, broad and built to last by expert hands, followed the curve of the sea from distant parts towards the white city. Now cracks spread across its surface, and dried weeds forced their way between the stones that lined the way. It had seen the march of an age of boots and hooves, of merchants and traders who had grown wealthy beyond measure, of mystics and priests carrying new ideas and religions before them, and of armies that had marched to war and conquest. None remained but for a single, solitary traveller, a woman tall of stature upon whose shoulders rested a shadowed cloak. Dark and pale she was, with hair like the depths of the night and eyes as clear as the swift flowing waters of Mehmer. A long blade swung at her hip, white as bone and carrying death within.

Iskor Yar the city was called, once standing proud and unchallenged, the favoured city of Nakhurena the Everqueen, but far it had fallen since her death in battle to her fiercest rival, the Summer Lord of Mishas Surut. Now for the most part it had been abandoned, its walls thrown down and its people taken or slain. Those few that remained clung to a precarious existence, serving as traders or raiders or slavers as the fancy took them or opportunity arose.

Night had all but fallen by the time Ishkinil’s step brought her near to the great bronze clad gates that marked the entrance to the city, gates that had been broken open in the shattered walls. Still upon them could be seen the marching forms of a beast in blue, one that was part lion and part dragon, now battered and scarred, the symbol beneath which the armies of Nakhurena had marched and sought conquest and plunder.

Beneath the ruined walls, near to the gates, a handful of men squatted around a small brazier in which coals smouldered. Over it roasted three of the quick running dezet lizards, the sweet smell of their flesh suffusing the air. The men drank from clay mugs and cast bones and dice in the dust between them, gambling for coins of many shapes and sizes and designs, some silver, but most of copper or bronze.

They had an ill kept look, one that did not inspire trust or confidence, being scarred and dusty, unshaven and clad in rough garments of linen and wools, dark haired and skin deep tanned by the kiss of the sun. Resting alongside them were heavy wooden cudgels and spears with tips of sharpened bone.

Laughter and talk ended abruptly as Ishkinil drew near. Mugs and the game were set aside as the men rose from their position, taking up spears and cudgels.

One man, taller than the others, yet not as tall as the pale woman, pale as the priests of Ekhener whose skin never saw the touch of the sun, stepped forward.

“Iskor Yar is closed,“ he said to Ishkinil as she looked upon the broken gates. Only at his words did her attention turn towards them, casting her gaze in their direction, one unsettling in its intensity for there was no fear in it, rather being a source of discomfort. Cold, it fixated them to the spot, leaving them uncertain as to their course of action.

“It would appear that it is open to me,” she responded. Her words were quiet, but all the more resolute for it. As she spoke, upon the broken parapets above the gate, a white eyed raven came to land, to stare down upon those gathered below.

Thalshuran glanced aside to the other men with him, as if seeking out courage from their numbers. The woman was alone, yet showed no concern about it, even in the face of more numerous numbers.

“The gates may not shut,” he went on, “But the city is closed. Death stalks the streets, and worse besides. If you value your life you will not enter.”

“Aye, that is why I am here,” she told him, hand resting lightly upon the hilt of the sword at her side. Thalshuran’s gaze was drawn to it.

“Balshazu’s Teeth, but it is her!” came a whispered hiss from behind Thalshuran.

His eyes widened at the pronouncement and over his face a dawning realisation swept as he studied the woman closer still. Tall she was, more so than any man there, but not by her height was she marked out alone. Her colouration, with eyes and skin so pale, and hair so dark, were a rarity to behold; few others matched her description. Not alone, not bearing the sword at her side. She was the one that walked with Enkurgil, and bore His blade, Dirgesinger, feared and desired. He made a warding sign with his hand, one to stave off death and evil both, as surreptitious as he could so as not to offend the woman before him.

“Death you may know well, but here it is not as it should be,” he told her. “The healthy waste away without warning and the invalid grow strong, yet marred still, while in the darkest places it is whispered that the very dead walk still. All nature is reversed. A curse there is upon this place and it befalls us to warn any who should dare confront it.”

Ishkinil’s gaze was unwavering as she looked at Thalshuran yet there was no indication of her thoughts in her eyes or expression, for they were as a closed book. “Death should not be denied in such a way,” was her only response after a delay that hung in the air for so long that it felt as if an epoch had rolled over them.

The men shifted, ill at ease at her words. All had seen death, and more, before. None wished to meet it, or talk openly of the Bringer of Ends, to draw his attention upon them. Relief he might gift to the old and weary and infirm, but they yet were still young and strong and wished not to talk openly of Enkurgil in such a manner, not as she did.

“It is folly to enter,” Thashuran stated, “Yet you, I fear, shall not heed our warnings and would not let that hinder your passing.”

“It is so.”

Grim were her words, grimmer still her expression but in them Thalshuran found some small glimmer of hope, the weakest of embers that sparked to life, weak still but one that could catch ablaze if nurtured and fed aright. “If in some manner you can comfort this trouble, to bring it to an end, then shall all of Iskor Yar be thankful for you, aye, and grateful besides. Our city withers and dies even as its people do, becoming a haunt for things that are best not spoken of.”

“I make no promises,” Ishkinil replied, “And nor do I seek any rewards. The Lord of Ends has set my feet upon this path and his bidding I do.”

More warding signs came from the gathered men, an uneasy look upon their faces. Thashuran doubted not that Ishkinil had seen it but there was no response, no reaction. Instead she looked upwards, to the skies above the city. “Day has fallen and nights comes, yet I feel that it is with the night that I shall find the answers I seek.” So saying, she turned from the men and walked through the battered gates, into death-haunted Iskor Yar.

***

Long shadows lay upon the streets of the city before Ishkinil that she walked upon, streets now empty and silent. If any still lived within the walls, they showed themselves not, leaving the city to its ghosts. Stillness hung in the air, unbroken.

The street from the great gates arrowed straight through the city, towards where the White Citadel of the Everqueen, Lion and Dragon, had been built, perched upon a rocky outcrop so that it was afforded a view across the whole city. It remained a shimmering beacon in the growing dark, catching the last rays of the sun that was setting upon its walls and high towers.

Once armies had marched along the street, the last being in the service of the Summer Lord of Mishas Surut who had thrown down the Everqueen and brought death and ruin to all in its wake. She could feel the still lingering echoes of it, death soaked into the very fabric of the city, into the stones of its streets and buildings. Death on such a scale, and in such a brief space of time could do no else but to leave a scar on the essence of the place. The city had seen death beyond its measure to contain.

Yet, to one attuned to death as she was, it did not feel right. Not the fact that there had been death there, for there had, but it felt off, not as it should, a discordant note in the quiet, a wrongness that she could not place, as if death had become twisted. The peace of Enkurgil’s embrace had not fully encompassed the city as it should have.

When the last glowing embers of the sun had touched the White Citadel and the dark of night descended upon the city, bringing with it a pallid spray of stars to shimmer across the sable sweep of the sky, a silence still as death settled upon the city. No winds rustled in the air, no people spoke or called out and no sound of even animals could be perceived. Even if all who had lived there had departed, animals would remain, creeping forth from their hidden burrows to scavenge for food. No flies buzzed or rodents scurried or any of the other sounds that she would have expected. It was as if the city had paused and was holding its breath, in anticipation for what was to come.

Yet those who had guarded the way into the city, who had tried to block her entrance, had said that some still remained within the walls of the city. Where then were they, Ishkinil wondered. It did not have the feel of a truly dead city, for all that death had marked it. The sound of silence may have said it was so, but this was no necropolis, home to none but the dead. She could feel that on some level, an echo of it in her bones.

She pressed on, shadow cloaked, into the deepening night, her steps ever pressing on, towards the White Citadel. There, she felt, she would uncover the answers to the mystery of the city, of what had transpired there and afflicted it, if anywhere they could be found.

Soft, whispered tread took her along the street, by buildings abandoned and left open to the elements. From some hung signs on rusty chains, marking where once there had been shops and places of trade. Some bore scars of fire. All were empty. Deeper still she moved into the city, hand curling around the white bone hilt of Dirgesinger, all senses on edge, her eyes never still as they searched out among the shadows of the city for any sign of danger. She moved like a lithe hunter, gliding silent while stalking hidden prey, all but unseen and unheard.

Beneath and around the White Citadel, a broad plaza had been built, and here the street that Ishkinil followed led. Once it had been filled with gardens and statues and colonnades, where the might and power, the wealth and standing of Iskor Yar had been on display. There had Nakhurena the Everqueen received the adulation of the throngs and the spoils of war brought back by her victorious armies. There too had she offered up captives for sacrifice, sacrificed in her own honour, the blood of so many victims still staining dark the stones around the altar. There too had she in turn fallen, her still beating heart torn free by the Summer Lord of Mishas Surut, to the roars of his triumphant army.

Where the street met the great plaza, Ishkinil halted her step, looking out upon it. The still rising moon had started to cast a silvery sheen upon the White Citadel and the plaza, leaving long shadows in its wake. It all looked peaceful, a frozen vista, and yet the odd note that Ishkinil had felt as she ventured into the city had not yet departed, a forewarning of trouble to come. Here, at the plaza, it felt stronger still.

With her sword held to the fore, Ishkinil stepped out into the plaza, alert for any trouble. From shadow to shadow she moved, seeking to avoid the touch of moonlight as best as she could, little more than a shadow herself in her stygian cloak, a flowing cloud of dark that made not a sound. Columns stood all along the plaza, upon which perched statues of the Everqueen’s dragon-lion beast. Most still stood, but some had fallen, or been felled, shattered stone now spread out across the plaza.

It was only by her heightened senses, her keen ears and her cautious approach that she detected the attack when it came. A slight scraping of stone from above, a rippling noise through the air, marking something dropping from a column that she was travelling beneath.

She was rolling aside even as it landed, springing back up to her feet in a fighter’s wary stance, low and ready, both hands on the hilt of her sword. A towering figure reared up where moments before she had stood, snarling softly at having missed its prey. Broad wings spread out, blocking the light of the moon so that she could make out no more than its silhouette.

Twice her height it stood, tall as she was herself, standing above most men. Broad leathery wings extended from its back, in some manner similar to those of a bat. Its body was more akin to that of an ape than a man’s, with a slouched posture and overly long arms that reached down to its knees. Its head, shaggy furred, had a bestial aspect, with a neck as thick as its head. It reared upwards and beat at its chest with solid slabs of hands, though it remained silent, yet as it did, it allowed a hint of moonlight to play across it, revealing its features. Lips rolled back revealing long tearing fangs and its face was that of an ape or some other great primate.

Half leaping and half gliding on its broad winds, it surged forward toward Ishkinil, reaching for her with its long arms, ones tipped with tearing nails.

Ishkinil span aside as it tried to grasp her to drag her within its crushing embrace, slicing downwards even as she did. Dirgesinger crooned through the air, a soft wailing keen, while white blue flames formed and rippled along its bone blade. True did the blade strike the extended arm, biting through the toughed hide and flesh. A howl was drawn from the beast, one of anguish and pain. A blow had been struck, but one that stung more than naught else and did not hinder the winged fiend she faced. It tore its wounded arm away, all but wrenching Dirgesinger from Ishkinil’s grasp as it did. Its other clawed arm lashed out at her at the same time, seeking revenge for the stinging bite, forcing Ishkinil to drop low to her knees to avoid it, still struggling to retain her grasp upon the hilt of her sword. Only just in time did she do so, for instead of a blow that would have struck her full upon the body, it merely glanced off her mailed left shoulder. The force behind it was like to being struck by a thrown boulder, rocking her back on her knees, her left hand coming free from the hilt of Dirgesinger as a result. Her whole left arm had been left numbed by the weight of the blow. It had not been broken but she could barely move it. The beast before her was strong, far beyond the measure of a mere man, and swift too, despite its size. It was a most dangerous foe and she knew that she could not take another blow like the one she had received, not if it struck true.

With a stifled yell, she surged back up to her feet, tearing free Dirgesinger from the arm of the beast as she did so. Back she stepped from it, most cautious now due to the speed and strength of the winged fiend, holding Dirgesinger steady before her with her good arm. Dirgesinger crooned still. It had tasted the blood of its foe and desired more yet, humming in the still air as it waited. The fiend cupped a hand to the wound on his arm. The moon shone full in its face and Ishkinil could see its yellowed teeth as it rolled back its lips once more.

Bestial it may have appeared, yet in its dark eyes she could see an intelligence distinct from that of a mere animal. She could see it watching her in kind, studying her, and assessing in a manner that no animal would, but that a man might. She knew not what it was exactly, though of its origins she felt that she might, that of a being that had been twisted and corrupted by sorcerous powers into a new and more terrible form for purposes unknown, tortures wrought upon it to break it to the will of its maker, and in that moment, she felt a pity for it, even as it tried to kill her. She would slay it if she had to, if it left her no choice, yet her hate was directed upon it, but the one who had made it.

How it had come to Iskor Yar she knew not, or for what ends, but it was not the source of the troubles that afflicted the city, at least not alone. Broken it may have been, tormented and tortured, yet it was a living creature still, and not a creature of the dead. Some other manner of danger stalked the city, one that defied Enkurgil.

For a moment the two of them stood there upon the moonlit plaza, staring at the other, and again the beast bared its fang. Once more it let out a snarling sound, yet different than the one before. There was no anger or malice in it. Then, with a snap of its wings, and a prodigious leap, it alighted from the plaza into the night’s air, to disappear off into the shadows and darkness over the city, leaving Ishkinil alone once more.

On to Chapter Two – A Fallen Queen