CHAPTER SEVENForeshadowed
As orc soldiers raced with their torches to keep up with him, Shadow Demon quickly made his way through the valley settlement of tents and wagons. The tribespeople had hurriedly put out their fires when they had spotted the orcs, but their efforts had been in vain. Shadow Demon needed no light to hunt his quarry.
Not her, not her, not her. There you are!
He found her in a small tent. Najina, not yet a woman, was these people's seer. Her visions of future and fortune decided where the tribe traveled. The tribespeople were dark-skinned, but Najina's skin was as black as coal, as were her eyes, hair, tongue, and fingernails. A true rarity.
Like a living, breathing shadow, thought Shadow Demon.
Three older women surrounded her, tried to hide and protect her. They screamed their word for "devil" at him repeatedly. Two of them tried to fend him off with sticks fitted with little black devil dolls on their ends, which burned with a bright and magical silver flame.
Shadow Demon found these savages' pitiful efforts rather amusing. If he was a devil in their eyes, what would this secluded tribe think of his master? Or of his master's master?
Three orcs, having followed the sounds of the women's screams, rushed in. They had to kill the devoted servants to get to the girl, but they soon had her.
Once outside, Shadow Demon surveyed the massacre occurring around him. The tribespeople had engaged the orcs in an attempt to save their treasured prophetess. He found this even more amusing.
Savages fighting savages, he mused.
The primitives didn't stand a chance. Shadow Demon always made sure to bring enough orcs to subdue a population. It was over in a matter of minutes.
As the soldiers led Najina to the cage, Shadow Demon wondered if she was both blind and deaf, for she showed no emotion over the deaths of her attendants, the slaughter of her entire tribe, or being taken away by orc soldiers. She had not uttered a sound the entire time. He had wanted to hear her plead for her life, as others had. But this one had denied him that pleasure.
But, surely, she should have foreseen this. Why had she not escaped or warned her people? As he thought of it, he realized that everyone they had taken had been surprised by their capture. So, it was as he had thought. Not only was Venger unable to see any possible future, no one else could, either. He wondered if Dungeon Master might be similarly incapacitated, but he knew better than to presume such.
After having futilely exhausted every method of divination known to him, Venger had turned to spells that would tell him the names and whereabouts of everyone in the Realm with any power or skill of seeing the future, as if they might see what he could not. From revered oneiromancers to common pebble readers, Venger had ordered them rounded up and brought before him. And Shadow Demon had been given the tiresome task of overseeing the capture of them all.
I should be at my master's side, not collecting this filth from throughout the Realm. Even I understand by now that no prophet or soothsayer can tell him what he wants to know.
He felt this must be his punishment for failing to pick up the Young Ones' trail when he had been sent back to Edonlea. Upon his return to the ashen village, there was no trace of them. Even the dead had been removed. There were no footprints, no wheel tracks � nothing to indicate what direction the Young Ones had taken, or who had moved the bodies and how. He hadn't needed to suggest to Venger that Dungeon Master had intervened.
Inwardly, he blamed his master for the whole fiasco in Edonlea. He believed that Venger's timing and methods had been much flawed, that his master had allowed his anger to dictate his actions, and thus had lost the advantage. Of course, these were things he dare not voice. He had advised Venger against the preemptive action, offering instead to follow the children to learn what he could, but his master had preferred a different, bloodier course. Shadow Demon felt there was nothing to do now but wait for their young enemies to make the first move.
Now, day after day, Shadow Demon took to his master more people from the list he had been given. And, day after day, their bodies were piling higher in the pit. He watched as their newest prisoner was thrown into the cage with other such augurs.
"That's the last one. We return immediately," he ordered. He was glad the day's work was over, and he could return to his master. Though he had become more irascible than ever and was unwilling to listen to counsel, there was still no place Shadow Demon would rather be than at Venger's side.
Back at Venger's castle, Shadow Demon reported immediately to his master. He bowed, though Venger had his back to him as he stood looking out a window.
"Six more await you, Master. Shall I have them brought to you now?"
He awaited his master's reply.
"Kill them," was Venger's answer.
"Master?" Shadow Demon had not expected this. He knew the augurs were worthless, but Venger had been so adamant before. Now, Venger's grave calm unsettled him. Something had happened. Something had changed. What was it? Though he had been given his order, he lingered and moved nearer to his master.
Then Venger said, "For they emerge to observe what can be seen only with one's own eyes. And so we shall wait . . . as he does." With that, he turned and walked out of the room, leaving Shadow Demon behind.
He? Curiously, Shadow Demon approached the window and looked out. Far, far away, in the shadow of an overhanging rock, stood a figure in a hooded robe. But the shadows could not hide him from a Demon of Shadow; the night itself was only a shadow to Shadow Demon. He looked into the eyes of the man as easily as if they occupied the same room. And the man was looking back with unmistakable focus and intensity. Shadow Demon was certain the man saw him, but the stony expression did not waver. Shadow Demon was simply . . . being watched.
Who are you that my master does not kill you for this insolence? he wondered.
Infuriated, he wanted to dispatch the lurker, but he would do nothing without his master's command. These were very precarious times. Venger might be careless enough to act on impulse, but to Shadow Demon, that meant he himself should exercise a greater control than ever. He watched for a few seconds more, and then, reluctantly, left to dispose of the augurs.
He floated out and entered the antechamber past the four orc guards at the open door � two facing without, two facing within. There, the prisoners stared at him with much the same expression as had the mysterious hooded man. He crossed his arms and stared back, seeing them as nothing more than fresh bodies atop a heap of rotting corpses. That they were shackled together at the ankles and wrists would make it all the easier.
He glided to the dark one and hovered over her. He ran his shadowy claws through her ebony hair. He had always wanted to take a prisoner for himself, to have a captive all his own.
"We die now," she spoke at last.
"So, you do have a voice, and a lovely one at that. I may yet spare you for myself. I take it your power of foresight has returned?"
"We heard your master give the order, you floatin' dung-headed slug," said a man from behind him.
Shadow Demon turned and wrapped his claws around the man's throat. "You die first!"
"We can't see the future anymore," an older man said to distract him. "But there is something to be learned from that alone."
"Yes. It should be enough that Venger knows we can tell him nothing," a white-haired young woman said. "What does he think this means?"
The tone of her voice suggested she had an answer for that, but he would not hear it from this wench. "Silence! It is enough that you know what it means for you!" He turned to the waiting orcs. "Crush their skulls, and then toss them into the pit! All of them!"
There was a cackle below Shadow Demon. A haggard old dwarf woman laughed and said, "Venger knows! He knows! That's not future! It's now! Venger knows!"
Shadow Demon flew from the room as the hag continued her cackling. And though her hideous laughter was soon cut short with a sharp crunch, it seemed to follow him down the hall and through the walls.
INDEXCHAPTER SIX | CHAPTER EIGHT
