Authors: Kelly McCullough
Javan, I remembered the name, but not much more about him than that.
“Truly?” The shadow of a huge horned owl hopped out from behind the glyph, turning his head this way and that as he looked around. “Free?” He jerked suddenly like someone waking from a nightmare. “The light’s gone!”
In an instant he’d collapsed back into Javan’s shadow, but only long enough to sever the straps that confined his bond-mate all in an instant. Then, before Javan could fall forward off the rack, he’d flowed back out in front of him, retaining his human’s shape so that he could catch the young man and ease him to the ground. I was about to suggest we move the two of them to the passageway when I heard a crash behind me followed by a sound like someone tipping a couple hundred gallons of water onto the floor.
Before I’d half turned around Faran called out, “Master Aral, we may have a problem here.”
Another, weaker voice, spoke then, “Oh, thank Namara, I thought sure I was gonna drown.”
The last cell lay across the hall and a few yards down from the one where I’d found Thiess and Javan. It stood wide open now with Faran standing in front of it in an ankle-deep puddle, with more water flowing out all the time. Fortunately, the floor of the passage sloped slightly down and away toward the bend at the back. So, the water was going that way for now. As I splashed across to see what was going on, Faran pushed forward into the flowing water and went to work on the light.
By the time I stuck my head into the cell, she had it tightly fisted, reducing it to a dim red glow. Another rack stood in the cell. It held a shaggy-haired young man built like a bog troll—deep chested and ridiculously broad shouldered, with thick arms that seemed too long for his body. Journeyman Roric, Avarsi by birth, and absolutely unmistakable. Remembering that he was almost as fast as he was strong, I didn’t find it at all hard to believe he’d managed to survive the fall. As I watched, his Shade sliced the bands holding him to the rack, starting at his ankles and working up.
Behind him, water was fountaining out through a wide gap where the mortar had fallen away between two stones high on the wall. From there it hit the rack and cascaded to the floor. Judging by the filthy high-water mark across his chest, Faran had gotten the door open just in time. Like the others, Roric was covered in bruises and scabs, and missing an ear. That didn’t prevent him from stepping free of the rack without any help, or waving off Faran’s offer of a shoulder to lean on as he staggered forward.
“Just let me get clear of this fucking ice water and aim me at the nearest Hand and I’m good,” he growled, flexing thick fingers. “I’ve scores to settle.”
The shadow that followed him out growled its agreement as it took on the form of a gigantic six-legged badger. Ssolvey, if I was remembering correctly. The Shade was another who’d never been much of a talker, which made it harder. But when I silently asked Triss, he reassured me that I’d gotten the name right.
“Give me a hand with the door,” Faran said to me as she followed Roric out. “It was holding back the water as well as any dam before I opened it and I think that’s going to become really important if this storm keeps up.”
“Point.” The ground was still gently shaking from the battering winds above.
As I moved up and put my shoulder to the door beside Faran’s, Triss darted into the room and nosed around briefly before coming back to me.
Kelos touched this door last of them all. Though the water has erased any shadow trail he might have left, there’s a stronger sense of his presence in that room.
The water had gone down enough that we didn’t have much difficulty forcing the door shut, though it did require Roric’s help to hold it in place long enough to relock. As Ssithra saw to that, Loris joined us. He was limping badly, and looked even weaker than he had when I first found him. Fresh blood stained the lower edge of the shadows where Issaru had wrapped himself around his bond-mate’s ribs.
“Roric, Maryam, Javan.” He ticked them off on his fingers. “That puts Leyan and Ulriss in the caved-in cell.” He closed his eyes and his jaw tightened. “She had a lovely touch with a strangling cord, and Ulriss was the sweetest Shade you’ve ever met. I will miss them both. But we have no time for mourning yet. What’s the next step in the plan, Aral?”
“That would be for Jax to bring down the Hand’s barracks as a distraction and to eliminate as many of the enemy as possible while I lead you all out that way.” I pointed to the collapsed passage. “Unfortunately, something went wrong and the distraction happened before I’d even entered the sanctum. And now, the Signet seems to have closed the only available door.”
Loris frowned. “And the backup plan?”
“Still working on that one. Why don’t you have a seat with the others and let Faran and I have a look down there to make sure my information about it being a dead end is correct.” I waved at the other end of the passage and then started that way—we didn’t have a lot of time.
Loris’s expression shifted to one I’d seen a number of times when he was teaching me at the temple, the one he used whenever I’d said something particularly stupid. “I will rest when my students are safe. Not before. Is that understood, Blade Aral?”
It was a formal mode of address used only rarely by a senior master to a junior, and it carried a strong undertone of direct orders.
How bad is he, Triss?
He might be my senior, but the goddess was dead and the hierarchy with her, and damned if I was going to let precedent kill an old friend.
Can you ask Issaru?
I already did. Issaru says he’s bad, but he’ll live . . . if nothing happens to make him much worse.
I gave Loris a faint bow. “As you wish, Master Loris.”
“Then lead the way.”
The whole little power-play turned out to be moot when that part of the passage ended in another cave-in maybe thirty feet beyond the bend. Our world had shrunk to less than a hundred feet of narrow tunnel and a score or so of intact tombs including the ones which had been converted to cells. Add in the Signet and her troops above and we were well and truly fucked, unless one of us could come up with a way to move through solid stone . . . or shadow.
I had been idly staring at the nearest lock without actually seeing it for a good couple of minutes when the idea clicked in my head. How
had
Kelos gotten in and out of the crypt without leaving a trail or anyone seeing him? To the best of my knowledge there was no way to travel shrouded without leaving a shadow trail, and he couldn’t have gotten past the guards without his shroud.
Not if he didn’t want it reported, at least. Even if Kelos worked for the Son of Heaven now, I didn’t think he’d want it getting out that he’d sabotaged the Hand. But what if he didn’t come in through the front door? Then he wouldn’t
need
the shroud. I had an idea of how he might have managed that, but it wanted a better head for magic than mine, or possibly someone who’d been a better listener back in the day. Loris answered to both descriptions.
“Master Loris.” I knelt down next to where he was sitting to put us more on a level. “I once saw Siri step into one shadow and out of another without passing through the intervening space. She said it wasn’t really a spell, more like a sort of side effect of the way the everdark overlaps our world or something like that. Did she ever bring it forward to the council?”
Loris’s eyes went distant and then he nodded. “She did. It involved folding shadows like paper in origami. A couple of the better mages among us even tried it.” He shivered. “I was one. It was very painful and extraordinarily dangerous. Master Thera walked in shadow and never returned, and none of the Shades who looked for her in the everdark could detect any hint of her presence.”
“I always wondered what happened to Master Thera,” I said. A service was held in her memory, but they hadn’t told us how she died—unusual but not unheard of. Sometimes the council or the goddess sent a Blade out on a mission that wasn’t shared with the rest of the order.
“Do you think it would help us now?” I asked.
Loris shook his head. “Even if I remembered the exact technique, I’d be extremely reluctant to attempt it. After we lost Thera, the goddess herself forbade us from trying it again.”
“Why?” asked Faran. “It seems like it would be incredibly useful in certain circumstances, and everyone has to die of something. It’s not like a whole lot of us ever expected old age to get us.”
“It’s less useful than you might think. The distance you can cover is short, no farther than a Shade can stretch and still have enough substance at both ends to form the doorway. Anywhere from five to fifty feet depending on the light, but never more that that. The pain factor is high enough that it renders the user unfit for much of anything for a good minute or two after they’ve passed through the everdark. But far more important is that Thera didn’t just die. She was lost.”
“I don’t understand,” said Faran.
“While she lived, Namara made sure to greet each of us on our way to the wheel of rebirth and thank us for our service to Justice. When Namara felt Thera’s death through her spirit dagger, she went to the gates of judgment and waited, but Thera never arrived. Her soul was lost or destroyed.”
“Do you have a better idea?” asked Faran.
“No, but neither do I really remember how to do it.”
Faran nodded, but the look on her face was one I knew well, and it wasn’t acceptance. I remembered then that when I’d first found Faran hiding in the sewers under Tien, she’d performed a very intricate bit of shadow origami. She’d used it produce an item she’d been hiding in a sort of shadow tuckaside in the everdark.
“You think you might be able to figure it out, don’t you?” I asked her.
“I might.” She nodded again, thoughtfully this time. “It can’t be all that different from the trick I use to stash things in the everdark, just larger in scale. Though I can’t imagine doing it with something as irregular as a tree’s shadow. Siri’s a far better mage than I will ever be.”
“And it’s far too dangerous for someone barely old enough to be a journeyman,” said Loris. “I forbid it.”
Faran’s eyes flashed with sudden anger. “Namara’s dead, old man, and the order with her. I don’t answer to you. Nor even entirely to Aral, though he is
my
master as much as anyone ever will be again.” She looked at me now. “Do you want me to try?”
I didn’t. Not one little bit. But if we didn’t find a way out of here, and quickly, every one of us would die. If it were
my
life and soul on the line, I wouldn’t have hesitated to make the attempt. Now, I wished that I’d never thought of it.
Triss spoke into my mind,
She’s only a little younger than you were when you killed a king. As I recall, that involved you defying the council and asking Namara to make you a full Blade ahead of your time.
That’s different!
Why, because she’s more mature?
Point.
I reached out and put my hands on Faran’s shoulders. “This isn’t the sort of thing that you ask someone else to do. And it’s certainly not the sort of thing you want to see someone you care about attempt. At the same time, I know what you can do and some of what you have survived. I care about you. I don’t want to see you risk yourself this way, but after all the dangerous things I’ve done, I can’t pretend I have any right to tell you not to do it.”
Not bad, not perfect, but you’re getting better at this.
“Would you do it?” she asked.
I nodded, though I really would have preferred not to.
“Thank you.”
“For what?” I asked, genuinely surprised.
“Not lying to protect me this time.”
I remembered my efforts to keep her from coming along on this trip and I was ashamed. “I’m sorry about trying to keep you off the boat. It was wrong. Thank you.”
She quirked an eyebrow. “For what?”
“Showing me that I was wrong.”
Faran hugged me. “You’re still a dreadful old man, but you’re my dreadful old man.”
“And you’ll always be my young monster.”
Much better.
Triss chuckled in my mind, but his mental voice was more indulgent than mocking.
Of course, if you’re going to thank everyone who points out when you’re wrong, you’re never going to have time to say anything else. Why, the thanks you owe me alone . . .
Faran stepped back away from me. “If there’s any chance that I can get us out of here, I have to try.”
“I know you do.”
18
S
tanding
by and letting someone you love risk their life requires significantly more power of will than resisting torture. I’ve done both, and I’d far rather take the torture. It’s doubly difficult when they’re risking themselves because you weren’t able to get the job done.
When Faran opened the gate of shadows for the first time I wanted to forbid her to step through, or better yet, to simply go through myself if anyone had to try it. She wouldn’t hear of the latter for reasons that had to do with the structure of the magic, and Loris backed her up. He’d wanted to try it first himself, but with his wounds he simply wasn’t strong enough to manage such a trip more than once.
I gave her a quick hug and a kiss on the forehead. “You take care of yourself.”
“I’m only going fifteen feet, and the technique isn’t all that different from my little shadow tuckaside. I’ll be fine. Now, I need to go.”
I’d never been more frightened for her, nor more worried. Or proud for that matter. But I just nodded, smiled as best I could, and stepped out of her way, all the while wishing desperately that I had a drink to hand. The portal didn’t look like much, just a sort of deepening of the shadow cast by the broken door of Loris’s cell. The off-kilter rectangle was slightly darker than it ought to be and vibrating gently in time with the beat of the storm. Another thread of shadow ran from it down the hall and across to vanish into the open cell that had held Maryam.
Without another word, Faran reached out a hand to the shadow gate, touched it, and vanished. I hadn’t watched nearly as closely when I’d first seen Siri try it all those years ago. Hell, I probably hadn’t watched
anything
so closely in the years since I last looked on the living face of Namara and took my final assignment.
Initially, the shadow seemed to resist her, bending to the shape of her hand like she was pressing on a silken sheet. Then the surface broke with a sort of pop and, a—for lack of a better word—flash of darkness, short but intense. Sort of like reverse lightning. In that instant, Faran had turned black and appeared to become two dimensional, like a paper doll painted in midnight. Then she was gone.
I started counting. One. Two. Three. At thirty, or about three times as long as it would have taken her to slow walk the distance, the portal vanished and Faran’s voice emerged from the other cell, “Shitshitshit . . . hey it worked.”
I covered the distance in a dash. Faran was leaning against the wall at the back of the cell, hugging herself and looking pale and cold. I wanted to hug her, too, but I could tell she needed the breathing space right now.
“Are you all right?” I asked. “You were gone a long time.”
She bit her lip but nodded. “Hurts. So cold it feels hot, and the distances aren’t the same at all. You’re walking, but you’re falling, too, because there is no up or down. I can understand why Thera got lost.” She shivered.
“You don’t have to do it again,” I said.
“Yes. I do.” I could see how much the words cost her and I wanted to argue.
“We can find another way.”
She shook her head. “Not fast enough. No, this will work and we can do it now. We don’t have time to mess around anymore. Not with the Hand above. And not with the storm trying to tear the whole building apart.” As if to punctuate her words, a large chunk of mortar fell out of the chink between two of the stones forming the barrel vault over the little tomb. “We have a way out, we have to take it.”
“All right,” I said. “Show me how to manage this little trick.”
She shook her head again, even more firmly. “That’s not going to work. If you don’t have the basics, I’m not going to be able to get you there in any reasonable amount of time,
and
I’ve got a better idea. I’ll create the way and hold it open, and you can all pass through on my heels. I think it will work better anyway.”
A shadow phoenix appeared on the wall behind her. “Faran is right. I didn’t fully understand what was needed until we actually did it, but now I see. It’s a sshssithssha way. Each soul that passes along it will make it stronger for a time. That way the strong can lead the weak and, with us to guide you, all are more likely to make the passage alive.”
Triss?
Sshssithssha, that makes sense.
Can you explain it?
Not in human words no. But Ssithra is right that each passage will make it easier for the ones who follow.
“It’s your play,” I told Faran. “We’ll follow your lead.”
“Thank you. Then we only have one thing left to do, and that’s to find a shadow’s path out of here.” She jerked a thumb toward the nearer of the two cave-ins. “That looks far too solid for even the thinnest wisp of darkness to get through, and the other was just as bad. I’m hoping you have an answer for that.”
“I’ve got it covered, I think. I wouldn’t have brought the idea up in the first place if I didn’t already have an idea.”
“What is it?” Loris looked over my shoulder, inserting himself in the conversation for the first time.
“Ever stand on the bank of a clear stream with the sun behind you?” I asked.
“Of course . . .”
“Then you know that shadow can pass through clear water as easily as it passes through the air.” I nodded toward the closed cell where we’d rescued Roric from the flooding. “If the water can get in, we can get out.”
Loris frowned. “That water was coming in awfully fast and we don’t have anywhere for it to go.
And
it wasn’t anything like clear. If you’re wrong, we may have trouble getting the door closed again, and that could become a major problem. What makes you so sure the distance through the water is short enough?”
“I’m not.” I couldn’t tell him that I believed that was how Kelos had come in without revealing a whole bunch of things I didn’t want to have to explain or argue about just yet. “It’s a gamble, but it’s the only one I can think of that might pay out.”
Not bad,
Triss said into my mind.
“Madness,” growled Loris. “Dangerous madness, at that. The water could kill us all.”
“If we don’t try it we’ll all die down here anyway,” I replied. “Later if not sooner. I’m no happier about the idea than you are, but it’s all we’ve got.”
Faran held out a hand abruptly. “Maybe we could extend our range.” She had a very thoughtful look on her face. “Two Shades together might be able to reach farther than one. You’ve done this before, Master Loris, if long ago. What do you think?”
Loris’s eyes went far away and he blinked several times. “I . . . maybe. I don’t know. Tell me what you’re thinking of doing.”
Faran explained in detail, talking about shadow folds, and everdark warps, and nima sharing, and other details that I’d probably have understood a whole lot better if I’d listened closer in my high magic lessons.
“That might work,” Loris said when she’d finished. And then, “Where did you learn all that? You weren’t old enough to have gotten that kind of instruction before the fall of the temple.”
“Here, in the Magelands. I spent two of my lost years in Har. I couldn’t take classes at the university without letting them know what I was. But I was able to use my powers to eavesdrop on quite a number of lessons. Mostly at night, and mostly for the advanced students because of that.” She looked suddenly wistful. “It’s not really an education, but I learned a lot. I’d like to come back someday.”
She shook herself. “But that’s a wish for another time. We’ve already been down here too long.”
A few moments later, Triss and I were standing ready to open the door, with Roric, Maryam, and Javan lined up behind me. While I was getting the others ready, Loris and Faran did something complicated with Ssithra and Issaru. When Triss triggered the lock, the door slammed open, smashing against the stones so hard that I half expected it to pop the hinges. A wall of filthy water fell through the doorway as a couple of thousand gallons emptied into the hallway in a matter of seconds.
We were all briefly up to our knees, and Faran waded in before it had fallen to ankle height, with Loris struggling along in her wake. I followed them into the doorway and waited there as Ssithra spun herself into a cord of shadow and slithered into the gap between the stones. Loris and Issaru stood in reserve, the former looking even paler than Faran had after her trip through the everdark. If Faran could avoid drawing on them, I knew she would, and I was at least a little bit hopeful. If Kelos had come in this way, then the distance should be possible for a single Shade to bridge.
Ssithra returned after a few minutes and resumed the shape of a phoenix. “I don’t think I can do it alone. It’s not that far from here to the place where the water is pouring into the channel, but it’s some distance from there to anyplace big enough for a person to come out that isn’t underwater. Also, the water’s awfully murky. That means I have to put extra substance into maintaining the link.”
“But if Issaru and I help, you can get my students out of here?” asked Loris.
“And you,” said Ssithra. “Yes, I think so.”
“Then let’s do it.”
“Resshath Issaru, are you up to this?” asked Ssithra.
The shadow bound around Loris’s ribs shifted to form a hawklike face. “I am. But for Loris’s sake we must act quickly once I remove myself from my place here.”
A shadow hydra peered around the door frame from behind me. “Resshath Issaru, if Maryam and I go last before you, I can bind Master Loris’s wounds for you until it is our turn. Would that help?”
The hawk face nodded. “A great deal, young Vrass. Come here.”
They did, and the hydra wrapped itself around Loris’s ribs over the top of Issaru. Once she was solidly in place, the older Shade slid out from underneath and briefly formed itself into a shadow hippogriff to bow thanks to Vrass. While they were doing that, I half buried one of the bright magelights in debris on the ground beyond the room’s door. From there it cast a good dark rectangle of shadow on the wall, providing a frame for the gate.
The hippogriff climbed the wall next to the rectangle, then reared back onto his hind legs in the classic heraldic pose. From there he shifted down and back, assuming the shape of his bond-mate, sans only the sword Loris had adopted as a cane. The shadow Loris knelt and produced a flat sheet like black paper from somewhere near his belt. Streamers of green spell-light like fiery thread shot from Loris to his shadow mirror, visible only in magesight. It connected them at ankle and wrist, knee and elbow, almost like a marionette’s strings.
Though Loris didn’t move, the shadow did as the strings grew longer and shorter. Working quickly and carefully, the shadow Loris folded the black rectangle again and again. With each fold, a line of differently colored magical light extended itself from his fingertips to lie along the crease. When he had finished, he had built a rectangular three-dimensional box covered with faint angular lines of color where the creases lay.
It was weird to see it there, a rainbow-edged bulge of pure darkness sticking out from the wall where the shadow play had happened. Leaning forward, the shadow Loris placed the box at floor level in the exact center of the door shadow and pushed it into the wall. Where it had bulged inward before, now it bowed outward, giving an impression of a small but darkened opening extending into some other space. A mouse hole to the everdark.
As shadow Loris withdrew his hand, the hole began to grow and shrink simultaneously, thinning toward two dimensionality at the same time it expanded in height and width to match the shadow of the door. When it was done, the two outlines were in near perfect alignment and it only extended a hairsbreadth into other space. The glowing thread connecting shadow Loris to actual Loris faded as the former twisted into Issaru’s hippogriff form again, leaving only a single narrow strand of shadow to connect him to the door.
“This end is ready,” said Loris, and I could hear a heavy weight of fatigue under his words. “But it’s taking a lot out of me. We need to hurry. I wish I could have done that half so quickly as Siri did it when she first showed us the trick.”
“Issaru?” asked Ssithra.
In response, the Shade collapsed down into a thin cord of darkness to match the one that Ssithra now formed. Faran closed her eyes and spun a thread of green spell-light out from the center of her forehead. Together, the two strands of darkness and the one of light slid into the hole in the wall, spiraling around each other as they went, like the strands of a rope.
Seconds took hours to pass as we waited for them to establish the gate on the other end. From what I’d seen when Faran created one earlier, work on the far end was both much less dramatic and faster. It probably took less than a minute, but it felt like days. I spent most of the time trying desperately not to think about how very much a couple of efik beans or a big glass of Kyle’s would have eased my nerves.
You’d regret it,
Triss sent into my mind.
I didn’t say one word.
You didn’t have to, not when you want it so badly. I can feel you longing after it like a canker in my soul.
Me, too, but I won’t give in to the wanting.
And then, because I wouldn’t lie to Triss,
Not today, at least.
That’s when the gate opened. I hadn’t seen it with the last one, but this time I did. The back of that hairsbreadth of depth the shadow possessed suddenly acquired a sort of reverse translucency, as though darkness was shining through from the other side.
“Follow me.” Faran stepped up to the portal. As before, there was a moment of resistance, followed by a flash of darkness. Then she was gone.
I went next, putting my palm out to touch the shadow. I was expecting to feel something like the press of cold silk against skin when you touch a bolt of fabric in the market. Instead, it grabbed onto me, and I realized the resistance didn’t come from the portal. It came from a soul recognizing the hungry darkness. I tried to pull back, but it pulled me in with a sharp jerk.
My perspective rotated as I passed through the membrane between the worlds. I wasn’t stepping forward into the everdark. I was falling face-first into eternity. And it was cold, so very, very cold that it burned.