Shadows Undone

Prologue - A Better World

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley. But when you were building a better world, some people inevitably paid a higher price than others. It was all about perspective.

If he was honest with himself, Marcos was a little disappointed by the narrow-minded outlook of the local peasants. Alright, there had been a few burned homes, some scorched crops and a hefty number of sheep snatched from the fields, but in the grand scheme of things, was that really so bad?

A few children as well. There was that. It wasn’t ideal, but at the same time, if you knew there was a dragon lair not five miles outside the village then the onus was on you to keep your children inside during the hunt. Anything less was just bad parenting, frankly, and hardly the dragons’ fault. It certainly wasn’t Marcos’s fault, whatever the occasional angry mob might say.

Gods, but he loved his job. When he had stuck up his hand for the role six years prior, his captain had seemed only too eager to send him on his way, and his fellow soldiers told him he’d go mad with boredom after a month. He had worried about that at first himself, but it turned out the quiet life suited him.

He rested a hand on the glass wall of the Chamber. A faint vibration, a distant thrumming sensation, and a strange, tingling energy caused the hair on his arms to stand on end.

Time to get to work.

The former Watchmaster had been full of instructions and advice; he always insisted, for instance, that the lever had to be pulled at dawn and dusk. It hadn’t taken Marcos long to put that one to the test—thanks to a little too much sleep after a night of drinking with the lads—and he had a pretty good sense now of how far he could stretch it. It was two hours past dawn now, and the Barrier was only just starting to strain.

He looked back over the Valley. A flicker of golden light caught his eye, the barest shimmer of colour floating across the Barrier below.

He pulled himself away from his musing and turned to survey the large glass dome at the centre of the Watchtower roof. It looked somewhat akin to an old lighthouse lantern room, but there was no flame—in fact, fire of any kind was strictly forbidden in the Chamber.

The Chamber was empty but for two things: a beautifully carved, very dusty book stand, upon which rested an equally impressive and dusty old tome; and a lever, half the height of a man, embedded in the floor, angled towards the door Marcos entered through. In contrast to the book, the lever was clean and well oiled.

Marcos placed his gently smoking pipe onto the book stand—careful not to actually touch the ancient pages, of course—and paused to wipe his nose on his sleeve and give his hands a quick clean on his trousers out of respect. He stepped up to the lever and braced himself for the pull. The ancient spellbook lay open on its stand, but Marcos had learned it by rote years ago. Muttering under his breath, he recited the necessary passages in a sing-song little voice, then threw his shoulder behind the lever and cranked it forward and back sharply, three times, before stepping back to listen.

A faint, continuous high pitched sound—the kind you never noticed til it stopped—whined in his ears for a moment and then faded away, leaving his ears ringing faintly. The tingling sensation on his arms disappeared. Job done.

With a contented sigh, Marcos reclaimed his pipe and returned to his favourite spot on the Watchtower roof, the glass Chamber at his back. He gazed eastward across the barren, windswept plains, then downwards at the long, steep-sided Valley stretching away from him, straight and true—like some angry God of the Old World had sliced into the earth with a great battleaxe six miles long and half a mile wide. The wind and late spring sunshine had long since burned off the morning fog on the plains, but down in the valley mist still wreathed the wooded hillsides and dales. Not surprising: things were always a little different in the Valley—the Barrier did something to the weather patterns.

He took one last draw from his pipe and then emptied the remnants over the wall, watching the ash drift gently on the morning breeze until it scattered for a moment across the invisible Barrier below. Even in the depths of winter he enjoyed his daily pilgrimages to the rooftop with his pipe. Now, in the last golden days of spring, there was no place in the world he would rather be.

A mile distant on the valley floor hunched the sleepy little village of Hubbard’s Rest. Sometimes Marcos enjoyed pulling out his looking glass to peer down at the peasants scurrying to and fro like ants, going about their planting or baking or whatever it was they did to entertain themselves. He didn’t know any of them personally, of course. His encounters with them in the past six years—and there had been few enough of those—tended to be more of a… group activity, and discussions were more ‘yelling’ than ‘talking’.

During the last such incident, just two months past, around twenty of the bigger, burlier villagers had tried to make a run on the Watchtower door, using an ancient log as a battering ram. The Watchtower itself was a monolith of smooth black stone. The Valley closed in on both sides, pinching at the base of the Watchtower’s fifty-foot wall. Most of the Watchtower rose high above the level of the valley, but a single door opened at the base of the wall into the valley itself—a door of solid steel nearly a foot thick operated by a complex pulley system from inside the tower.

Marcos had leaned over the railing and quite politely suggested they stop attacking his tower, but they weren’t great listeners. After a quarter hour or so of banging, Marcos wearied of the noise and had a couple of his men toss some hot oil over the side. It was always interesting to watch what happened to things like oil when they encountered the Barrier. The scalding liquid pooled and slicked across the surface for a moment, spreading out in a wide puddle across it and making the surface shimmer faintly, before slowly sinking through the energy field and dropping on a couple of the malcontents below as they were gearing up for another run at the door.

The whole thing had broken down rather quickly after that. The peasants never really kept their hearts in it once Marcos put his foot down. They must have known their attempt was doomed to fail; there was simply no way through the door, just as there was no way through the Barrier that roofed the rest of the Valley. Perhaps these attempts simply gave them something to do? There could only be so much entertainment in watching sheep munch on grass, after all.

A loud bang from behind made him flinch, and nearly drop his pipe over the wall. Mossy, his second-in-command, poked his head up through the tower trapdoor and mumbled what might have been an apology as he more gently resettled the hatch in place.

Mossy was long-legged and solidly built, but his tendency to slouch—and his fairly lax hygiene practices—took away from what might have been an impressive figure. He was an old man now, near fifty years, and he had spent more than half his life serving at the Hubbard Watchtower. Marcos had forgotten the man’s real name; he had clung to these grimy black walls for so long now that everyone just called him Moss, or Mossy. Mossy didn’t seem to mind.

He shambled over to stand beside his commanding officer, the dog-end of a cigar between his teeth, and tapped out a lazy salute on his breastplate as he rested his arms on the wall.

“Porridge was bloody awful this morning,” he said by way of greeting.

“I’ll fire the cook tomorrow,” Marcos replied. “Weather’s warming. How much longer til they rouse, do you think?” He gestured vaguely with his pipe towards the jumble of rocks at the opposite end of the valley, six miles distant.

“Another week or so,” Moss said confidently. “Normally see Midnight first, then Trevor a day or two after.” Midnight was the larger of the two dragons, jet black and clever; Trevor was a deep red, and tended to follow Midnight’s lead. ‘Midnight’ was fairly obvious, but why the red was called ‘Trevor’, no one knew. This particular Valley had been under the invisible veil of the Barrier for forty years now, and whichever soldier or magician or lord had named the beasts was probably long since dead.

“What’s the pool look like this year?” Marcos asked, trying not to let his interest show. Mossy snorted.

“Thirty gold so far. Garner predicts a quiet season. He’s down for two dozen sheep and a couple of kids. Norstrum’s bettin' the opposite way, as usual; he thinks forty sheep, six homes burned and no less than two families snapped up. Kellie’s in the middle somewhere.”

“And you?”

Another snort, which turned into a cough as Mossy choked on his cigar. “I’m out of the game this year. Thought I’d give you young fellas a crack.”

Marcos nodded. Every year in late spring, the men took bets on how much havoc the dragons would cause during the hunting season. It was macabre, but it did help pass the time. There wasn’t a lot of fun to be had here on the edge of civilization. Most of the year the dragons hibernated in their dark caverns, only coming out to hunt in the high summer. It was another reason the villagers really shouldn’t complain so much. Two or three months of the year wasn’t so bad; Marcos had heard of other Valleys where scorpions the size of horses, or basilisks half a mile long, hunted all year round. He’d even heard of one valley where the plants and trees themselves came alive and attacked at random, though he couldn’t see what was so frightening about that; how hard could it be to overcome plants, really?

“Put me down for thirty sheep, but no peasants this year. I’m an optimist.”

“Whatever you say, boss.” Mossy flicked his cigar stub over the wall with a practised gesture, and together they watched it skitter across the empty air before eventually coming to a stop and dropping through to the other side.

“You ever wonder how far you could run out there before you fell through?” asked Marcos. It was something he pondered often on his solitary inspections. The Barrier stretched the entire length of the valley, from edge to edge, shaving off the topmost branches of the trees as they reached the crest. As far as Marcos could tell, it was uniformly flat all the way across, and by skimming stones over the surface he had determined that speed was the key to staying out of trouble; once things slowed down, they sank through and dropped. The birds inside the Valley had learned decades ago that there was no getting out—though air and smoke seemed to have no trouble passing each way—but the birds outside the Valley still occasionally crashed into the barrier at speed before sliding through in a crumpled little heap.

Mossy tilted his head to the side and sucked his teeth. “Half a mile. At least in my younger days. But I’d never try it, course. The Valley drops off too sharp and quick, so anyone more’n a few paces out is in for a nasty shock when they fall through.”

Marcos nodded. Half a mile seemed about right.

“Got your post,” Mossy said, and fished in his rumpled coat pocket to produce a battered envelope. The royal wax seal was still firmly affixed to the letter, but as usual Mossy had already slit the top with a knife. He’d never seen any problem with reading other people’s mail, and since it saved Marcos the trouble, he never complained. It wasn’t as though he ever got anything personal; it was all business. Marcos took the letter, but didn’t bother to fish it out.

“What’s the word from on high?” he asked, stuffing the envelope in his own trouser pocket.

“Big doings in the city, seems,” Moss replied. “Old king dropped dead last week, and they already gone and elected another one.”

For the first time, Marcos turned to give Mossy his full attention. Big doings, indeed.

“Arcus is dead? But he was still young for a king, wasn’t he? What—twenty-five years old, thereabouts?”

“Near forty, turns out. And the letter don’t say, though I’d guess foul play, like as not. New man in charge seems keen. Certainly don’t waste any time making changes about the place—almost as if he were ready and waitin’ for the old king to kick it.”

Marcos frowned. “What kind of changes?”

“Well, he’s gone and fired you, for one,” Mossy said flatly. Marcos jerked away from the wall as if Norstrum had snuck up from below and slapped him across the arse again.

“What?” he yelped, fumbling the letter back out of his pocket. Mossy nodded sagely, his expression a mixture of sympathy and apathy. It was a look that said “You’re a good enough boss, but commanders come and go. Moss, though… They’ll never shake old Moss off the wall.”

“New government, like I said. Watchmaster’s a political appointment, blah blah blah. They’re changin' out commanders left and right, so said the messenger.”

Marcos was only half listening, scanning the letter frantically—and with a growing sense of anger. Phrases like ‘services no longer required’ and ‘more in line with His Majesty’s agenda’ jumped off the page at him, but it was all just window dressing. Like Moss said, he was getting fired; simple as that.

“Six years,” he choked out. “I work my arse off for six years, keeping the Barrier up, keeping the villagers down—keeping the dragons at bay!—and they fire me with the morning post and not so much as a thank you?”

Mossy raised an eyebrow and shot his commander another look. He could be very expressive with those. This one said “Dunno about working your arse off when you drink most nights and wake up late most mornings just to pull a lever and look at the scenery”, but Marcos was having none of it.

“This says my replacement arrives in two days. And they want me to stay another week to show him the ropes.”

“Yessir,” Mossy muttered, patting a different coat pocket and producing a fresh cigar and a little box of matches—another of the newer inventions out of the city in the last few years. “Traditional for the old Watchmaster to see in the new man.” He struck the match and bent over it with the cigar in his mouth, giving a few sharp puffs to get it started. The match, too, went over the side.

Marcos stormed past the Chamber and fetched up against the western parapet. Far off in the distance, barely visible as a smudge on the horizon, the morning sun reflected off the city’s tall metal buildings. Those were new, too—and it was people like Marcos who should be getting thanked for it, instead of this, this… Insult!

“Want me to start collecting your things, Lieutenant?” Moss called. Marcos stiffened, but he knew Moss wasn’t trying to be rude. It was just his way. In Mossy’s mind Marcos was probably already as good as gone.

“No,” he snapped, trying to keep a rein on his temper. “I’ll sort it out tomorrow.”

“Right you are,” Moss answered after a moment, and Marcos heard him lift the hatch and climb back down into the Watchtower. “Not to worry, Lieutenant. Plenty of work out there for a former Watchmaster. You’ll land on your feet.” He closed the hatch behind him with a solid thud. Marcos didn’t look back—just kept staring at the distant city.

Mossy was right, of course. Plenty of work out there. It wasn’t as though this job was particularly interesting; reciting a few lines from a book and throwing a lever back and forth a couple of times a day wasn’t the kind of lifetime achievement you wrote to your family about. But that’s what he loved about it. Once that task was done, he could while away his hours playing cards with his men, or skimming rocks across the Barrier, or tumbling one of the cook’s helpers into his bed—and no one thought twice about it. No one was breathing down his neck, giving orders or expecting things from him. What other job was going to give him an officer’s stripes and a healthy paycheck without wanting him to actually work hard for it?

He slouched over the parapet with his chin in his hand, glaring at the distant buildings where right now some new king was hard at work making Marcos’s life miserable. After an hour or so of brooding, he went down to join his men.

Garner and Norstrum were sympathetic, banging him on the shoulder and encouraging him to keep his chin up. Kellie seemed to think there’d been a bit of a mix-up and Marcos would be back inside a couple of weeks. They were good men, these; not the brightest, maybe, but certainly among the best. Norstrum pulled out the cards and they went a few rounds, cursing out the new king for a fool, before Marcos excused himself and went to his bedchamber. He really wasn’t in the mood for cards.

By mid-afternoon he was back on the Watchtower roof. There really wasn’t anywhere else particularly interesting to go. He was back at the eastern parapet, watching as some of the peasants below worked to put up some kind of spiked wooden barricade around the edge of the village. They, too, would know the dragons weren’t far off waking, though Gods knew what a few spikes were meant to do against Midnight and Trevor; what good was timber against a fire-breathing dragon? And the dragons could just fly over it anyway. Idiots, the lot of them.

Just before dusk, Moss came up and rejoined him at the rail. This time he brought a flask of his infamous home brew. He took a swig and winced before passing it along to Marcos.

“Stew was bloody awful this evening,” he said by way of greeting.

“I’ll fire the cook tomorrow,” Marcos intoned, completing the time-honoured ritual. He tipped his head back and nearly choked as the alcohol burned down his throat. Mossy slapped him on the back and reclaimed the flask.

“Why are you still here, Moss?” Marcos asked. “You’ve worked here day in and day out for quarter of a century. You never spend your pay, so you must have plenty for retirement. You always refuse promotion, but you never leave. Why?”

The old soldier smiled a little smile. “Moss on a wall, Lieutenant,” he said. “It sticks, and finds all the cracks, and you’ll never scrape it all off no matter how hard you try. Only way to be rid of it is to burn it off.” He took another gulp of his vile brown liquor, and Marcos thought that might be all the answer he would get. But after a moment, the old man continued.

“It’s them, innit.” He gestured towards the milling villagers, who had finished with their spikes and were busy shifting wagons around to form a second wall behind the stakes. “None of them asked to be down there. Most were born under the Barrier. And there they gotta stay, sure, 'cause that’s the way it works, and if it didn’t work then none of that” he jerked a thumb over his shoulder towards the city, “would be possible. I get that, for sure I do. But we don’t gotta be mean about it.

“Some of the other Watchmasters were hard little sons of bitches. You’re alright, and the last fella weren’t too bad, but the one 'fore him was a nasty piece of work. Used to taunt the villagers by opening the door some during huntin' season, then slamming it in their faces at the last moment and havin’ 'em trek all the way back home with Midnight or Trevor on the prowl. Weren’t called for. So I stick around to make sure the bosses do the work right, and we all get our better world. Well—all of us but them, I guess.”

Marcos nodded slowly, and at last it dawned on him why he didn’t want to go. Sure, it was easy work for easy money, but more than that, he felt like he was doing something that mattered. Something to make his sisters proud, and give his father something to brag about to the neighbours. "My boy stands on the wall and keeps the dragons in."

“You really think we make the world better, Moss?”

Another swig. “Yep. That I do. Forty years gone my father shovelled dung and mucked stables for a living, and would have done til the day he died. That big city of ours was not much more than sticks and thatch when I was a lad. But then a bunch of dusty librarians find a way to let the magic in, and suddenly it’s marvel upon marvel, and twenty years later my old dad dies in a feather bed a hundred feet up in the king’s shiny new steel palace. I call that better. What would you call it?” He set his flask on the wall by Marcos’s elbow, clapped him on the back with an air of finality, and left without waiting for an answer.

Marcos turned his attention back to the villagers, lost in his own thoughts as the sun dipped below the western horizon and gloom fell over the Valley, taking the occasional pull from the flask. No dragons yet—but soon. And he was going to miss all the action, miss being part of it, even if his part was just to stand on the wall and keep the peasants in line. Because they had to stay, didn’t they? That was his job—all the Watchmasters’ jobs; to keep all those poor bastards in their dragon-infested, scorpion riddled, vine-choked valleys, and keep the magic flowing.

But not any more. Now he was unemployed.

In the darkness, an orange shimmer flickered over the Barrier. Without him really noticing, the Chamber had started to hum again. With a sigh, he turned away from the Valley and crossed to the Chamber door. He stopped with his hand on the latch. Thinking.

A better world… Your services are no longer required… A steel palace... More in line with his Majesty’s agenda…

Apathy: that was the problem. The Watchmaster and his men were on the front lines, holding back the monsters so everyone else could enjoy a life of ease and prosperity, but the truth was that sacrifice was mostly forgotten. Out of sight and out of mind; a few hundred men holed up on the plains who were only remembered when something went wrong. They were the moss on the wall; the annoying whine of the machine… Only noticed when they weren't there.

Thirty sheep, but no peasants; I’m an optimist... Forty years under the veil... Why are you still here...? He’s gone and fired you… Political appointment... We all get our better world. All of us but them... My job…

Time to get to work.

He lowered his hand and stood back from the unopened door, the hair on his arms resettling as he receded from the energy field within the Chamber walls.

He had only ever done one important thing, and now that was over. They thought they could do it without him, that he wasn’t needed after all. Did they think none of this was real? That there could never be consequences? No one visited the plains any more unless they were posted to the Watchtowers. Dragons, giant scorpions… They were at the edge of myth now.

The hum inside the Chamber was growing louder. He could feel a static charge building around him. A strange taste, almost metallic, entered his mouth.

He turned on his heel, opened the hatch, and left the rooftop. If they didn’t want him to do the job, then fine, he wouldn’t do the job. The next man could take over when he arrived. They should still have a few days to set things right again before Midnight and Trevor woke up and left their black caverns at the far end of the Valley, and the peasants were too busy erecting barricades to waste time testing the Barrier now.

Marcos went to his chambers and stuffed a few personal items into his travel bag, piled a few clothes on top and pulled on his coat and hiking boots. He thoughtfully left a note for Mossy on his bed, then waited til the Watchtower fell silent for the night before slipping out the western postern and heading down the road at a fast walk. Perhaps it was his imagination, but he could sense a heaviness in the air tonight, a sense of… pressure… beating down gently from high up the Watchtower. He didn’t look back.

If they thought he was going to wait around to show some dimwitted sycophant how to do his job, they were sorely mistaken. He was going home. Mossy could hold the place together for a day or two.

Really—what was the worst that could happen?

Chapter 1 - The Worst That Could Happen

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