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  SHADOW DAWN

  A Bantam Spectra Book

  Publishing History

  Bantam hardcover edition published January 1997

  Bantam paperback edition / March 1998

  SPECTRA and the portrayal of a boxed “s” are trademarks of Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc.

  ™ and © 1997 Lucasfilm Ltd.

  All rights reserved. Used under authorization.

  Map illustration by Jim Kemp & Anita Karl /

  Compass Projections.

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 96-45148.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  For information address: Bantam Books.

  ISBN 9780553572896

  Ebook ISBN 9781984800022

  Published simultaneously in the United States and Canada

  Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, New York, New York.

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  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  The Twelve Great Realms

  Map

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Dedication

  Published by Bantam Books

  About the Authors

  With a grin of purest delight, Elora Danan summoned fire.

  It burst from the ground as though she’d simply opened a tap, a tiny geyser of raw incandescence drawn straight from the molten heart of the world. In a heartbeat, every aspect of physical sensation within the forge was transformed. Each breath tasted sulfurous on her tongue, the furnace heat baking the air so fiercely that sweat evaporated the instant it formed on her skin. Phosphorescent lichen had been gathered in wall sconces to provide illumination, but the fountain’s radiance made them instantly redundant, dominating the modest chamber as the noonday sun would a cloudless summer sky. The room’s many shadows had been utterly banished. Instead the dark face of the chiseled stone was painted now in wild hues of scarlet and gold that never stayed the same from one moment to the next, but moved and changed with such madcap abandon the stone seemed alive. Impressive as those colorations were, they paled in comparison to the appearance of Elora herself, as the fireglow danced across skin the shade of purest polished silver.

  She’d spent the better part of a week preparing the kiln for her examination, scrubbing it clean both physically and mystically. She’d gone over her notes until the order and structure of the requisite spells were engraved as deeply in her consciousness as the house sigils were in the mantelstone above the family hearth. She knew what to expect when she began the summoning, but wasn’t sure what would actually happen. It was one thing to watch, no matter how intently, when Torquil or his apprentices worked their special brand of magic. It was another altogether to try it herself.

  She was dressed for work in ironcloth trousers, padded at the knees and tucked into stout-soled moccasin boots that laced to the tops of her calves. A sleeveless cotton undershirt hugged her torso. Over that went a proper shirt of soft brushed cotton, proof against the natural damp and chill of the tunnels. Last, a tunic of the same battered ironcloth as her trousers, padded at elbows and shoulders. The tunic hung to her knees, slit up both side seams to the waist to allow her legs total freedom of movement. It was cut big in the body, too, which she found a cause for some annoyance, as it made her appear far heftier than she actually was. She was proud of her physique; she’d worked hard and long burning off the excess pounds that had been a part of her all through childhood and didn’t care for any reminders of the way she used to look.

  As she crouched before the firespout her face split in a grin of irrepressible delight. She was determined to fix every aspect of this, her first conjuration, in memory, the better to transcribe it later into her journal. The molten rock, she observed, was of a thicker consistency than water, heavier even than oil. Tiny sparks flashed all along its length as the intense heat ignited any stray and wayward scraps of dust in the air that swirled too close. Elora could feel prickles across the small patches of exposed skin and she had to narrow her eyes against the glare, even through the dark glasses the Rock Nelwyns used whenever they channeled lava.

  Unexpectedly, and with a small pop, something wrestled its way through the fissure and slithered up the interior of the small fountain, to burst into full view at its summit. Elora beheld a figure that, in broadest brush strokes, consisted of a central torso, a pair of arms, a head. She could see no legs. The lower half of the creature was one with the pillar of molten rock. Its head began as a featureless orb, but the longer she stared at it, the more features and definition appeared: eyes where human eyes should be, a nose bisecting the face, a proper mouth above a strong chin. Streams of russet flame poured back from a sharp widow’s peak to form a thick single plait that reached all the way down the figure’s back until it flowed into the molten rock.

  Elora thought it was a most attractive creature. She hadn’t realized she was looking at a vision of herself.

  “Hello,” she said. The elemental cocked head and eyebrow together in a gesture that was a match for hers, as if each were the reflection in the other’s mirror.

  Its mouth worked to form a similar reply, grew teeth and tongue behind the lips to follow Elora’s template. Lines formed between the brows, in an all-too-human expression of puzzlement, as the elemental measured the gap between form and function and attempted to divine where it was lacking.

  Elora took another, more obvious breath, to demonstrate that speech came from the outrush of air over her vocal cords.

  “Hello,” she tried again.

  The elemental’s chest swelled as it drew in air for speech. Elora smiled, so did it, both in anticipation of what was to come.

  A hand near the size of her head snagged her by the scruff of the neck, and just as the elemental began to reply Elora found herself yanked bodily behind one of the massive shield walls that ringed the furnace.

  “Hello,” was what she heard, in a voice strangely like and yet unlike her own. What she saw was an outrush of raw flame powerful enough to put a dragon to shame. What she felt was the last awful glory of a moth in the face of the candleflame that consumes it. For a span of heartbeats that seemed an eternity—and which for Elora Danan, very nearly was—her forge was engulfed in elemental fire, to scorch walls and floor and ceiling, to sear the very surface on the opposite side of the barrier behind which she and her savior lay huddled.

  Then, just as suddenly, the fire was gone, the forge plunged into comparative darkness as her eyes struggled to adapt to the light shift. The lichen had been consumed by the miniature holocaust and the elemental itself had vanished that same instant. The vision that remained in Elora’s memory, like an afterimage imprinted on the eye, was of a creature as startled by what happened as the young woman herself, who’d done harm where none was m
eant and had fled in shame of the deed and terror of the consequences.

  “Wow” was what she tried to say, though the air in the chamber was too hot for any proper breaths and far too dry to make the act of speech practicable. Neither lips nor tongue felt flexible enough to form the words. There was precious little sensation to them and she wondered if her skin was as cracked as earth after a drought.

  She was set roughly on her feet and propelled out the door into the main forge beyond, the plunge in temperature so sudden and extreme that, despite her protective clothing, she couldn’t help a brutal attack of shakes.

  Water was offered. Elora took a shallow sip from the flask, her eyes remaining downcast while she sagged against the wall behind her. She assumed that stone would be as cool as the air, but it was actually warm to the touch, as the shell of even a well-insulated oven would be after a day’s hard cooking.

  She was shakier than she’d first realized, as both the efforts required in casting her summons and the shock of the encounter with the elemental took their fierce toll. She found her legs suddenly unable to support the rest of her. She folded in on herself, barely aware of running feet in the distance and harsh-voiced cries of alarm and concern.

  Manya, as always, led the way, donning the last of her own protective gear as she burst through the entrance to the forge with a mix of siblings and senior apprentices close on her heels.

  “Torquil,” she cried, searching the vaulting chamber for a sight of her husband, “Torquil!”

  “I’m here, woman,” was his reply, sounding hoarse and stressed from a throat as parched as Elora’s. “I’m all right. Everything’s all right.”

  “The devil you say.” She had a broadhead ax in one hand that could cut through stone as naturally as wood. In the other was a sealed flask, which held the strongest sending the Nelwyn shamans were able to cast, to be used only in the most dire of circumstances.

  “Peace, Manya,” Torquil said again, adding enough force of command to his voice to bring both his wife and her companions to a stop. “The danger’s passed, of that, you have my oath.”

  “You look like hell,” she told him gruffly, making a face as she flicked char from his hood.

  He grinned, teeth gleaming against a sooty visage. “It was only a brief visit.”

  “Damn near gave Rakel a seizure, Torquil,” she said seriously, and made a gesture with her head toward the household shaman, whose drawn features with lines of pain and stress etched deep around eyes and nose and mouth provided eloquent proof of how severe a shock it had been.

  “It won’t happen again,” he assured her.

  “Please the Maker, let that be so,” was her response. She flipped the flask end over end in her hand, ignoring the shaman’s swift intake of breath as she caught it and handed it to him in the same swift gesture. “It came through our wards as if they didn’t exist. If things had gone bad in here, husband, I’m not sure this would have made a difference.”

  He sighed. “Rakel, was the phenomenon localized?”

  The shaman’s reply was terse, each phrase making clear how painful it was for him to speak. “Manifestation, yes. Effects…?” He shrugged his shoulders.

  “There’ll be queries from the other forges, then.”

  It was Manya’s turn to chuckle. “Shrieks of outrage and fury, more likely, if their shamans were hit anywhere near as hard as Rakel here. No fear, though, I’ll deal with ’em.” She shook her head as if to clear it, and said in her pragmatic way, “Back to business. Got a message from the Factor. If you’ve consignments on order, the sooner they’re filled, the better for all. Seems pretty certain the bazaar won’t last the full season. May not even see the next full moon.”

  “That’s today’s task.”

  “All right, you lot,” she began, directing her attention to the clutch of apprentices strung out behind her, but Torquil stopped her with an upraised palm and the shake of his head.

  “The child and I will handle things,” he said.

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “The forge is my domain, wife,” he told her formally. “Trust my judgment in this, as I do yours in other things.”

  Manya considered the better part of a minute before replying. As she watched from her seat against the wall, Elora could tell that Manya was of a mind to overrule her husband, for while the forge was his, theirs was a marriage of equal partners. To the girl’s surprise, Manya reached forward with her free hand and caught her husband around the neck, gathering him not into a kiss but a close embrace that in its own way was even more passionate. Fear was as strong in both of them as relief and that realization made Elora’s heart pound painfully in her chest. The elemental had come and gone so quickly, the moment of its manifestation had seemed so wonderful to her, that she hadn’t given a thought to the danger.

  “Nothing to say for yourself, then?” Torquil demanded.

  The question caught her by surprise. She hadn’t expected to be challenged.

  “I meant no harm.”

  That response won her a dismissive snort from the forgemaster.

  “Neither did the elemental!” she protested further.

  “Fat lot of good that would’ve done you. It’d be sorry, you’d be ash, an’ where’d the fate of the world be then, I ask you, eh?”

  She lifted her gaze in what started as defiance but just as quickly turned to something else before the unflinching glare she found facing her.

  She was small for her age, she’d hardly grown at all these past three years, but that still made her a head and more taller than the average Nelwyn. In Daikini like herself, height was determined mainly in the length of the legs; not so for the Nelwyns. They were mostly torso, and that was packed with a ferocious strength out of proportion to what one might expect from a being their size. Big shoulders, powerful arms made them born farmers and born miners. Among their number, working in wood or stone or metal, were counted some of the finest artisans in all the Twelve Great Realms on either side of the Veil.

  Torquil was an elder of the Rock Nelwyns, which put him a few turns past the prime of his life. Even so, he hefted with ease hammers Elora couldn’t lift from the ground, and was as renowned for the delicacy of his work as for the purity of his ore. His age made itself plain in the salt and pepper of his hair, and in the deep creases and textures of his face. His beard was a throwback to younger days, composed of fire colors only lightly scattered with snow, and he wore it close-cropped to emphasize the strong line of his jaw. His eyes were gray as primal stone, as cold and unyielding now as the granite on which the two of them, child and guardian, stood.

  “I thought,” Elora conceded, after drawing out the silence as long as she dared, “I’d taken the proper precautions,” which was true.

  “Elora…” His exasperation was plain. “I should box your ears. And worse. It’s no less than you deserve for such foolishness. By the Maker,” he continued, the words tumbling from him like a flash flood from a dam that had just burst, his tone making plain that his ire grew mainly from fear for her safety, “what were you thinking?”

  He tore his padded skullcap from his head and turned this way and that, wanting a physical release for his wrath but unable to find one that was suitable.

  “What am I saying? If you’d thought a whit, the smallest jot and tittle, we wouldn’t be standing here in the first place. Whatever brought you here, thought had nothing to do with it.” He rounded on her suddenly and thrust a finger straight to the end of her nose.

  “And don’t you dare cry on me, girl!”

  “I’m not crying,” she said as she used the heel of her free hand to wipe away her tears.

  “Have you learned nothing since you came among us?”

  She had no answer that wouldn’t make things worse, so she kept silent.

  “What’s the first rule of the forge?” he demanded of her.
<
br />   “ ‘Fire is our tool and we, its master.’ ”

  “And the second?”

  “ ‘Above all else, see to the safety of the forge.’ ”

  “Which means?”

  “ ‘When faced by the unexpected, stop. Everything. At once.’ ”

  “At least you know the words.”

  “That isn’t fair!”

  “Thorn Drumheller placed you in my care. ‘For all that she is the Sacred Princess Elora Danan,’ he told me, ‘she is as dear to me as if she was my own. And I charge you, cousin, to care for her as if she was your own.’ By blood and blade are we kin, yet in all our years he’s never asked a favor of me, nor called in the debts between our houses. How am I to say to him, then, forgive me, cousin, but the Sacred Princess Elora got herself burned to a crisp?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Well, that makes everything all right, then. I feel much better already.”

  The Nelwyns she’d known of had been a small village of farmers, half the world away in a lovely vale off the River Freen. They kept mostly to themselves, and seemed happiest when they interacted least with their neighbors, be they Daikini or the various races and creatures among the Veil Folk. Their credo was modesty in all things. The key to their survival was simply to stay unnoticed by those who might do them harm.

  These Nelwyns were altogether different. They made no attempt to hide, quite the opposite. They took their cue from the great peaks where they made their home: here we are, they proclaimed to the world, here we stand. They mined and worked metals, base and precious, as skilled in the art of crafting fine jewelry as they were renowned for the quality of their weapons.

  “Sacred Princess you may be, Elora Danan,” Torquil continued as he led her back around the shield walls to examine the furnace for any damage from the elemental’s manifestation. “Blessed by fate. Protected against all manner of magic. But still flesh, still blood.”

  “Spare me,” she said, and thought, with all the asperity only a fifteen-year-old can muster, because I’ve heard this lecture before, Uncle. I know it by heart. She spoke with an unconscious hauteur left over from childhood, when all her days had been spent in a tower in the city of Angwyn, capital of the westlands kingdom of the same name, waited on hand and foot, her every whim someone’s pleasure to fulfill.