Spire of Shadows

by Sarah Hawke

  They had come from a Faceless.

  “Oh, shit,” Rohen hissed, eyes widening at the sight of the black-armored monstrosity roaming the narrow, torchlit hall. He had thought that nearly all of these bloody things had been destroyed or dismantled after the last Culling, and he had never seen one at the Galespire before for obvious reasons. Their very existence violated the Sevenfold Accord.

  But apparently the Keepers had been storing one in a cellar somewhere, and Jess and her father must have deployed it as a not-so-subtle reminder about the price of disobedience.

  Rohen cautiously stepped into the hall, his blade still at Jess’s throat. If he remembered correctly, this passage would eventually lead into the great hall just past the entry foyer, and realistically there was no fast way around without taking twice as long…

  “Stay back!” he warned.

  The Faceless turned all the way toward him and lifted its mighty ax. The physical body that had once been fused inside the metal shell had almost certainly disintegrated by now, but two pinpricks of searing orange-red light were still visible through the narrow visor of the golem’s closed helmet. Its armor creaked and groaned with every motion, and its towering eight-foot-tall figure cast a long, ominous shadow halfway down the hall.

  “I command you to stay back!” Rohen repeated. “You’re smart enough to recognize your mistress, aren’t you?”

  It wasn’t. The golem lurched forward and hacked down with its weapon, forcing Rohen to awkwardly dive out of the way. The ax slammed into the floor with an enormous, echoing clang—but left no cracks in the ancient, polished stone. Undaunted, the golem’s head turned to him, and it began raising its weapon for another swing. With its immense reach, there was no way he would be able to slip by and sprint toward the great hall, at least not while carrying Jess. He was going to have to do this the hard way.

  Swearing violently under his breath, Rohen laid Jess down near the entrance to the stairwell, then quickly shuffled to the side to make certain the Faceless didn’t accidentally cleave into her. He lifted his left arm and activated the Guardian’s Ward in his bracer, summoning the familiar blazing blue shield over his forearm. Relying on it somehow felt odd after what had happened back in the dungeon, but he knew he couldn’t afford to be distracted right now. This wasn’t going to be easy.

  The golem struck a second time. It hacked diagonally with its polearm, and Rohen leapt out of its way and studied its movements just like his Templar instructors had taught. He’d never actually seen a Faceless in action, but the Lord Protector had once told him that a single golem could hold the line against dozens upon dozens of Chol. Their strength, durability, and near-imperviousness to magic made up for the cumbersome bulk and awkward movements—especially against Godcursed who relentlessly threw themselves at their enemies.

  Fortunately, Rohen wasn’t a mindless Dretch. He had fought plenty of slow, powerful opponents before. He just needed to anticipate and prepare a proper counterattack…

  The Faceless attacked with another wide, diagonal slice, but Rohen held his ground. He hoisted up his unbreakable Ward in anticipation of blocking the strike and then slipping beneath the golem’s guard—

  It didn’t work. While the shield deflected the attack, the sheer force of the blow was so powerful it still sent Rohen skidding across the hall until he slammed into the wall. He wheezed when the air rushed out of his lungs, and if the damn golem were any faster, it could have rushed in and cut him down while he was staggered. Thankfully, it seemed more interested in blocking the hall than killing its opponent; it carefully repositioned itself before it began lumbering toward him again.

  “Hathal niveh,” Rohen said, dispersing Varlothin into the Pale. It was time for a change in tactics.

  He pounced at the golem, baiting another strike. The Faceless happily obliged—it chopped straight down with its ax, and this time Rohen didn’t even try to block. He shifted his weight and rolled clear of the strike, then slashed his wraithblade up through the ax’s long shaft. The brilliant blue blade effortlessly seared through the wood, cleaving the weapon in two.

  A human soldier would have panicked; the Faceless did not. It simply dropped the shattered pieces of its sundered weapon, pivoted around to Rohen, and backhanded him instead.

  The half-elf barely had time to raise his shield, and once again he found himself skidding across the corridor until he smashed into the same wall as before. His skull smacked the stone hard enough that he nearly blacked out, and he collapsed forward on his knees and desperately tried to blink the concussive haze from his vision.

  Delaryn is counting on me. Sehris is counting on me. Maiden’s mercy, even Jess is counting on me, whether she realizes it or not!

  Snarling, Rohen hopped back to his feet just as the Faceless lunged for him with its huge gauntlets. He ducked beneath the first swipe and slashed across its torso, drawing a searing orange line across its black breastplate, then tucked himself into a ball and rolled through the golem’s legs. When he sprang back to his feet, he belatedly realized he now had a clear path to leave. He could sprint for the great hall and pray that only a handful of Keepers were still awake and at their posts.

  But that would have meant leaving Jess behind. He wouldn’t have been willing to do that even if there had been a dozen of these bloody things lumbering around the halls.

  Bracing himself for a final strike, Rohen collapsed his Ward and shifted to a two-handed grip. The Faceless was already lurching toward him, compelled by whatever basic command the Keepers had given it—presumably to block this hall at any cost. Thin wisps of steam rose up from the golem’s smoldering armor, but the wound didn’t slow it down in the slightest. It would come after its target with the single-minded fury of the Godcursed elves it was meant to destroy.

  But if there was anything Rohen knew how to kill, it was Chol.

  Rohen surged to his right when the Faceless tried to swat him again, but this time the young Templar carefully studied the golem’s movements as if it were any other opponent. He forced himself to be patient and learn; he allowed the monstrosity to swat at him again and again while he waited for the perfect moment to strike.

  And when he realized that moment would never come, he created his own. Rather than lunge away from the golem’s pounding strike, he angled Varlothin in front of him like a shield. The Faceless pushed effortlessly through the brilliant blue blade…and cut off its own hand in the process. The smoldering black gauntlet hit the stone floor with a clang that probably echoed across three floors, but Rohen didn’t allow himself to be distracted. Without pain as a deterrent to slow its attacks, the Faceless simply struck with its other hand—and Rohen cleanly sliced that one off as well.

  He had no doubt that the monstrosity would keep coming after him as long as it had limbs, but also knew that every second he wasted here jeopardized his escape—not to mention the safety of Delaryn and Sehris. When the golem missed with its next handless strike, Rohen reared back and threw Varlothin right at the center of its helmet. The Pale-shifted blade seared straight through the visor until the cross-guard clanged against the metal, and the Faceless froze in place, blue blade burning out from the rear of its helmet.

  Rohen had no idea whether such a strike would actually kill the thing or not—it wasn’t as though it had blood to spill or organs to pierce. But the strike must have unraveled some of the magic binding the shell together, because the golem eventually stumbled forward and crashed to the floor.

  Hunching over and panting for breath, Rohen warily counted to five before he crept forward and grabbed the handle of his sword. He shifted the blade back into the physical world with a whisper, then raced back over to where he had set Jess down on the floor. A younger version of himself would have loved to wait and see exactly what, if anything, the golem could still do, but he simply didn’t have time to indulge his morbid curiosity. He had already wasted far too much time.

  After sweeping Jess back up into his arms, he rushed on down the corridor
toward the great hall. He feared that a few dozen Keepers would be waiting for him when he reached it, given the noise he had already made.

  He was wrong. There were six, and they rushed out to stop him in the corridor before he ever set foot in the hall.

  “Halt!” one of them yelled, his halberd lowered menacingly. Three of his comrades were holding heavy crossbows, while the others had their swords and shields at the ready. All of them were staring at the unconscious woman in the Templar’s arms.

  “Stay back!” Rohen warned, hoping the hostage bit would work better with actual, thinking men than a mindless automaton. “If you get any closer, I’ll…”

  He trailed off when the air in the corridor inexplicably chilled like a winter breeze. His brow furrowed in confusion, but before he could even look around, a thick wall of ice suddenly and inexplicably formed between him and the Keepers. Soon they were little more than barely visible dark blotches on the other side.

  “What the…?” he gasped, turning.

  And spotted the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

  “Rohen!” Delaryn called out as she raced toward him from down the corridor, Sehris close on her heels. Both women were wearing packs and looked a bit breathless but otherwise unhurt.

  “But…how?” Rohen breathed, wondering for an instant if his blow to the head had been more serious than he had thought.

  “That wall won’t hold them for long,” Delaryn said. She looked like she was about to leap into his arms, but then she abruptly came to a halt and stared at the woman in his arms. “Who is that?”

  “A Sanctori Inquisitrix,” Sehris said, her black eyebrows arched in surprise. “Jessara Kraythe.”

  “Kraythe?” Delaryn gasped. “You mean—”

  “It’s a long story,” Rohen said, swallowing and trying to keep himself centered. A hundred questions threatened to steal his attention, but he knew they didn’t have long. Even if her wall of ice were ten times as thick, no magical barrier could hold the Keepers at bay for more than a few moments. “How in the bloody void did you get in here? There’s no way to…oh, shit.”

  The answer was as obvious as it was harrowing. His stomach instantly turned over, and he almost lost his grip on Jess’s body.

  They traveled through the Pale, just like back at Rimewreath. Oh, gods…

  “We didn’t have a choice,” Delaryn said, answering his unspoken question. Her eyes lingered on Jess for several more seconds before she looked back up at him. “A group of Keepers showed up at the cabin, and I knew that meant you must be in trouble. There was no other way!”

  Rohen swore under his breath. He was beyond ecstatic that they were safe—he couldn’t even begin to imagine what he would have done if the Keepers had captured them—but he also remembered the horrors they had unleashed back at Sundermount. If Delaryn had somehow created more fractures and unleashed more demons from the Pale…

  The wall of ice shuddered as the Keepers slammed against it. The shadowy outline of their bodies was just visible through the semi-translucent barrier, and their muffled shouts had already been joined by others. The blockade Rohen had been fearing all along was finally coming together.

  “We have to go,” he said. “But Watcher knows how many more of them are between us and the entrance.”

  “The only way out is the way we came in,” Delaryn said gravely.

  Rohen grimaced. Traveling through the Pale at Rimewreath had been terrifying even before they had learned about the fractures and the demons they could unleash. The idea of crossing over again made his stomach roil.

  “Gods forgive us,” he said, swallowing as the Keepers slammed into the wall again. Delaryn closed her eyes, and unlike the last time, he swore he could actually feel his skin tingle as she reached out to touch the wall between worlds…

  “What about her?” Sehris asked, looking at Jess. “You’re not seriously going to bring her with you?”

  “I have to,” Rohen said. “She has the power to…well…”

  He trailed off when he looked down at Jess’s face. If he took her with them, the Spire might fall into chaos—but likely only for a little while. Her absence would delay the Purges, especially if the High Artificer refused to cooperate and forced the Keepers to relearn the old techniques, but Rohen had no doubt that they would eventually figure it out. At best, stealing her away would buy them a few weeks or perhaps a month.

  But if her father truly was a Conduit like the stories of old—and if he really could communicate with her anywhere just like she had said—then it stood to reason that the Lord Protector would also be able to track her wherever she went. No matter where Rohen and the girls fled, they wouldn’t be able to escape Kraythe’s gaze as long as Jess was with them.

  There is another way. I could leave her here and pray to the gods that she’s the woman I think she is—not a monster or a zealot, but a true believer who earnestly cares about the truth. She saw into my mind; she knows what happened in Whitefeather Hold whether she wants to admit it to herself or not. If she comes around, she’s the only one who could permanently stop the Purges. She might even be able to rally the rest of the Tel Bator against her father.

  The wall of ice shuddered again, and Sehris grabbed his arm. “Rohen, we have to go!”

  Swearing under his breath, Rohen knelt and gently laid Jess down on the floor. If he was wrong, he would be damning the High Artificer and Watcher knew how many other sorcerers to Faceless shells. But if he was right…

  “The Moonmaiden’s light reveals all truths,” he said, brushing her cheek with the back of his hand. “I just hope to the goddess you’re willing to accept it.”

  Letting out a final deep breath, Rohen stood and lunged over to Delaryn. The air began to hiss and pop around her, and he swore he felt something crawl down the back of his neck as the color of the physical world began to drain into an endless, all-consuming gray.

  “Guardian guide us,” he whispered as the shadows of the Pale enveloped them. “And may the Maiden have mercy on our souls.”

  Epilogue

  Jessara Kraythe awakened to the warmth of a soft hand on her cheek. She groaned and smiled, amazed and astonished that Rohen had managed to wake up before her despite how exhausted he had looked after his fifth and final confessional of the evening. She had honestly wondered if he would even possess the strength to fly himself to Griffonwing in the morning.

  “Is it dawn already?” she murmured, reaching up to squeeze his wrist.

  “N-no, Inquisitrix, not quite yet.”

  Jessara’s eyes shot open, and her dream shattered like so much broken glass. She was lying atop her bed in her chambers with one of the Keeper acolytes standing over her, his eyes wide in confusion and terror as she clutched his wrist. She snarled and pushed him away, but when she tried to lean up, a wave of dizziness instantly crashed over her.

  “Please, lie down, my lady,” the young man begged. “You hit your head and—”

  “Get away from me!” Jessara snapped, clutching her temples in both hands. Her memories returned in a frantic, painful rush: Rohen’s betrayal, his inexplicable powers, an explosion of light…

  “I-I’m sorry, Inquisitrix, I didn’t mean to—”

  “Where is he?” she growled. “Where is the Templar?”

  The acolyte practically shriveled into a ball next to her. She could barely even see his face in the dim candlelight.

  “We don’t know,” he said. “The others have been searching for him for hours, but he seems to have…well, vanished.”

  “Vanished? How is that possible? Did he run out the front door? Did he steal a griffon?”

  “N-no, Inquisitrix.”

  “Then where in the bloody void did he go?”

  The acolyte swallowed and visibly braced himself. “We have no idea, my lady, but he had help. The others had him cornered near the infirmary, but they were stalled by magic.”

  Jessara scowled. “Magic? The Keepers were stalled by magic?”

  “Y-
yes, but only temporarily. They said that someone created a wall of ice in the hall. By the time the men broke through, the Templar was gone.”

  “A wall of ice…”

  “They have already begun to question the sorcerers to see which of them were responsible, but only a handful of the older ones even know how to channel elemental magic. It is only a matter of time before—”

  “He wasn’t helped by any of the sorcerers here,” Jessara said, clenching her teeth until her jaw hurt. The rest of her memories quickly returned, including the ones she had plucked from Rohen’s mind. Somehow, someway, the daughter of the Winter Witch had come here to rescue him…

  An unbidden surge of rage seared through her veins like a molten river. Even now, after everything that had happened, she still couldn’t believe that Rohen had betrayed her for that Whitefeather cunt. But she had seen every horrid detail in his mind, and the image of Delaryn’s disgusting barbarian body wrapped around him made Jessara want to cast both of them into the sea.

  “I…I don’t understand, my Lady Inquisitrix,” the acolyte stammered. “What do you—”

  “Silence!” Jessara snarled, closing her eyes and reaching out to the Aether. Its power flowed through her body and into her right hand, and she allowed its restorative energies to snatch away the pain of her wounds just like her father had shown her.

  Her father…

  The magic stilled in her palm. She could feel his presence through the Aether right now, and if she really concentrated, she could feel the others he had bound to the Godsoul as well. Slowly but surely, her father’s divine power was transforming the Templar, and soon it would transform all of Darenthi.

  The question was…into what?

  Jessara hissed softly as she reopened her eyes and stared into the golden light glimmering in her palm. The power felt pure. It felt right. But then she thought about the other images she had seen in Rohen’s mind, and her stomach immediately twisted into a sickening knot.