The Order of Shadows

by Tess Adair

  “Let’s never do this again,” she said.

  “I’m with you there.”

  Together, they marched through the archway.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  High Secrets

  It was light out by the time Logan pulled back the curtain in her room the next day. Grabbing her towel from the hook on the back of her door, she pushed out into the small shared living room and made her way into the bathroom. Knatt and Jude were nowhere to be seen.

  She showered quickly and thoroughly, making sure to wash whatever faded remnants of makeup might still be on her face. With no grime or blood to wash off, it wasn’t the same as most of her showers, but it felt like a relief nonetheless.

  Knatt was still nowhere to be found when she exited the bathroom, and Jude’s door remained shut tight, no light emanating from underneath it. So Logan continued back to her cell to get dressed.

  The next item of business was to locate herself some coffee, and perhaps a spot of food as well. She pulled on her jacket, checked on the key in her pocket, and headed toward the door.

  No sooner had she opened it than she stopped cold, finding herself suddenly standing toe-to-toe with Alexei, who was slumped somewhat suggestively against her door frame.

  “Well, hello there,” he said, his voice unusually low and husky. She wondered if he were suffering any ill-effects from the night before.

  “Hi,” she answered, her right eyebrow rising almost automatically. “What are you doing here?”

  “Thought I’d see if you were hungry,” he answered easily. “Care to join me for breakfast?”

  “Only if there’s coffee.”

  “It would hardly be breakfast if there weren’t.”

  He straightened his spine and bent his elbow, offering it to her.

  “All right.” She stepped through the doorway to join him, though when he wagged his elbow at her, she shook her head. “Lead on.”

  As they made their way toward one of the dining halls, Logan took note of the comparative emptiness of the corridors through which they passed. During the first few days of the Summit, she could hardly travel down two consecutive hallways without seeing someone darting in another direction, looking for a lecture or a demonstration. The sounds of droning voices and whirring projectors had clouded her ears at all times.

  But now the halls were completely empty, and she could only make out one or two voices in the distance.

  “Seems like the fun’s all over,” said Alexei, as they turned down yet another deserted corridor. “Although I thought I’d see more new Adepts out and about, eager to keep playing with their new powers.”

  “I think they’re all asleep,” said Logan.

  “Asleep? It’s almost noon. What kind of sorry, half-assed soldiers are they training here?”

  “It’s not really up to them,” said Logan with a shrug. “It’s just how the process goes, when you bind a human with demonic abilities. They’re not in charge of the high they experience, and they’re not in charge of the crash that comes afterward.”

  “Ah, I hadn’t thought about that.” Alexei smiled sheepishly. “Consequences aren’t really my forte.”

  “Shocking.”

  Suddenly he waved at someone behind her. “Ah, look at that! We’ve been reunited.”

  Logan turned around to see Sasha, her face determined as she marched over to them. She no longer wore her sleek gown from the night before; instead she looked smart and mission-driven in bold yellow jeans and a dark purple blouse. Now that she’d caught their attention, she waved them down.

  “I don’t have a ton of time,” she said quickly, as soon as they were in earshot. “My ride is here, metaphorically speaking.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” asked Alexei, staring at her quizzically.

  Sasha smiled reluctantly, then held up her right wrist, pointing at the tattoo encircling it, which now glowed red. “Duty calls.”

  Alexei took her meaning, and his eyes grew wide. He glanced back and forth between the two women, then nodded and took a step back.

  “Did you need to tell me something?” asked Logan, hoping to get right to the point.

  Sasha glanced up and down the hallway, looking for signs of life.

  “Do you think we’re safe from the ears of crows here?”

  Logan’s voice was even and calm as she answered.

  “You’re never safe from crows.”

  “Right.” Sasha sighed. “The first thing I have to tell you is…show Alexei the paper. The one you showed me—the Mark of the Deeper Beast. I don’t know why; just do it.”

  “Okay, I will.”

  “The second thing is just that I’m leaving.” She touched her left hand to her right wrist—an almost unconscious motion. “You need to know that I won’t be here. You need to count your allies carefully.”

  “I always do.”

  “Good luck, H.C.”

  “You too, Sasha.”

  She turned to Alexei and gave him a smile.

  “Be seeing you.”

  With that, she turned on her heel and left, her swift legs carrying her out of sight within moments. Logan was sorry to lose her presence, but she also felt increasingly sure that, even with the dangers of duty waiting for her out in the world, Sasha would be safer once she’d gone.

  With careful deliberation, she turned to Alexei.

  “I guess we’ve got something to discuss.”

  Jude couldn’t remember much from the afterparty. She remembered how they’d gotten there, but after they stepped through the archway, the details began to blur. She was fairly certain it was magnificent, of course. She was sure there were fountains of some kind, and tables with more drinks and little cakes, and multiple curtained-off rooms where people could dance to different styles of music.

  But she hadn’t really taken in any of it; she was too busy noticing every tiny movement Eliana made, and stealing surreptitious glances at her whenever she thought no one was looking.

  She wasn’t exactly sure how long they’d stayed before Eliana had grabbed her hand and pulled her away from the party, but she remembered exactly what it felt like when she did.

  Down they trundled through the endless staircase again, stumbling and laughing as they went. Down they slipped through the resulting corridors, and a few more staircases, until they entered into a hallway Jude had never seen before. Departing from the brick-and-tapestry mysticism that marked the rest of the manor, this hallway was tighter and more austere, designed around function instead of impression.

  Finally, it clicked—these were the dormitories where the Novices slept.

  Sure enough, a few minutes later, Eliana had opened a door labeled “2422” and ushered them both inside. Eliana explained that she shared the room with Fisher, and it was anyone’s guess when he might tear himself away from the dancing they’d left behind.

  Collapsing together on her slim bunk, Jude and Eliana talked, and watched videos, and laughed their way into the wee hours. Jude wasn’t sure when they’d fallen asleep, and she couldn’t remember if they’d heard Fisher come home or not.

  The last thing she was sure she remembered from the night before was Eliana reminding her that she shouldn’t worry if she couldn’t wake her up tomorrow.

  “It’s a binding thing,” she’d said, gesturing vaguely, her words nearly slurred.

  Shortly after that, they’d both drifted off to sleep.

  The moment Jude woke up, she felt the brief, barely conscious moment of panic as she realized that she didn’t know where she was. Then she remembered Logan, and the Summit, and the Ball, and Eliana. She tried to shift her right arm, which seemed to be stuck underneath something.

  Eliana. Her arm was pinned beneath Eliana’s torso. As her eyes fluttered open, she took in her full posture, wrapped around the other girl as if she’d been afraid she might run away.

  Eliana’s breath rustled a few spare hairs across her face, and suddenly Jude remembered the haircut she’d gotten, too.<
br />
  Weird night. Long night.

  As warm and contented as she felt, she could tell her arm was on the verge of falling asleep. With careful effort, she extracted it, making sure not to wake her sleeping companion.

  Once her arm was free, she wiggled her weight around in the tiny bed until she lay on her stomach, propped up on her elbows. Beside her, Eliana’s head rolled back on the pillow, her magnificent curling hair stretched out behind her.

  A part of Jude desperately wanted to wake her up, if only to get her assurance that everything that had happened the night before had been real—or, if not real, had been experienced as real by everyone involved.

  I think I saved the day, she thought to herself, with some amazement. Glancing down at Eliana, she added, Wish you could tell me I didn’t make that part up. Oh well.

  For a moment, she contemplated staying right where she was until Eliana woke up, but it didn’t take long for her to realize what a boring, limiting plan that was.

  Also kinda creepy, she thought. I’m gonna pretend I realized that first.

  So, with little ado, she extracted herself the rest of the way from Eliana’s sleeping embrace and stepped awkwardly out of her bed. She was unsurprised to see Fisher passed out in the other bed, just as dead to the world as his roommate. She didn’t remember him coming in, but that didn’t mean much at all.

  Once Jude was up, she took a moment to make sure she had all her belongings on her and that her suit looked as free from wrinkle and rumple as she could get it.

  With one last glance back at Eliana, she muttered, “I’ll catch up with you later, when you’re out of the coma.”

  Making sure to close the door as quietly as she could, Jude slipped out of the room. The hallway outside was completely deserted, and just as Spartan as it had seemed the night before. Jude didn’t care much more for this decorating sense than the one that governed the rest of the Order.

  Still, as she slowly made her way back to the side of the building that held the guest quarters, Jude felt an unanticipated buzz of contentment running through her body.

  She had finally stood up to something that scared her, and she’d beaten it. Sure, “it” was little more than a cast reflecting her own fears back to her, but what did that matter? She’d been terrified when it was happening. And she’d faced it anyway.

  And that means I can do it again.

  “The Mark of the Deeper Beast? Those were her exact words?”

  “Yep. They were specific enough for me to remember.” Logan shifted uncomfortably on her feet, waiting for Alexei to bring up whatever page he intended to show her. They had relocated to his new apartment, reassigned to him just that morning. Logan was fairly certain it was at least triple the size of the one she shared with Knatt and Jude.

  They sat now at the small island in his kitchen, while he moved around the mousepad on his computer, searching for whatever it was he wanted to show her.

  “There are a lot of symbols that look similar to that,” he explained, pointing at her pocket, where she’d tucked away her drawing once more. “But only one that I’ve heard referred to by that specific name.”

  At long last, he turned the laptop around to show her. The website he had pulled up looked old, full of blocky, dark text on top of a dark background; Logan got the vague impression that it hadn’t been updated since the early days of the internet.

  With a sigh, Logan began.

  THE STORY OF THE KORATHTESH

  The first myth about the daemon Ko’ra’thtesh seemed to have originated in the region which now makes up Albania, sometime during the 1400s (NB: some sources dispute this, note similar folklore over a century earlier in Tibet, links at the bottom of the screen.)

  The daemon Ko’ra’thtesh, also known as the Deeper Beast, was believed to be a devourer of strength itself, making it a particularly dangerous foe for any knight or hero, as it was believed by many that the stronger the enemy of the daemon was, the faster the Ko’ra’thtesh would be able to drain him of all his strength.

  Other stories eschew this part of folklore and focus instead on the origin of the Ko’ra’thtesh and what it represents. It is said that the Ko’ra’thtesh only came into existence because of man’s own sin and folly. When a Ko’ra’thtesh is born, it is because some man or woman has committed an unspeakable crime.

  As with many of these such myths, the truth lieth somewhere in betwixt.

  Logan stopped reading and gazed up at Alexei with one eyebrow raised.

  “I didn’t write it, okay?”

  “Sure, sure.” Her eye dropped back to the page.

  The truth about the Ko’ra’thtesh’s origin is, in one respect, the same as that of any other demon: it must be summoned onto this plane of existence from another, by a human being.

  But in another respect, it is quite different: the summoning of the Ko’ra’thtesh requires human sacrifice, yes, but not just any human sacrifice—it requires the sacrifice of a Demonically Bound Person.

  While this researcher cannot in good conscience commit to the internet the full details of this ritual, suffice it to say that for it to be performed, the DBP must actually consent to the ritual, though of course, the true consent of any Bound Person is a subject of continual debate. But in practice, the Bound Person must formally agree to be included in the ceremony, and must allow themselves to be given the Mark of the Deeper Beast, to be tattooed on their dominant hand.

  And so, we can see how the two different takes on the myth may have originated from the truth—

  The text continued, but Logan did not. Instead, she scrolled further down the page until she came across a lone image printed in the middle of the text. It looked like a cross with horns drawn through the center, each spike ending in a point. She glanced up at Alexei again, this time a far more serious expression on her face.

  “There are only so many things this could mean,” she said flatly.

  “Where did you see the Mark?”

  “On James Atherton’s reading desk.”

  “He left it out for you to find?”

  “I’m not sure he realized I could see it. If I were human, I probably couldn’t have made it out.”

  “It’s possible he was just researching it.”

  “It’s possible, yeah.” She glanced down at the page, but she didn’t really see it. Instead she saw that footage he’d shown her, of his own people running for their lives. Of the hand that fell to the ground, unable to reach the weapon for which it searched. “I saw it somewhere else, too. On an Order Adept.”

  “An Order Adept?”

  “Yes. He showed me some footage of his own people, trying to take the Wolf by surprise. And when one of them fell, I saw the mark on his hand. Which either means that somehow the Wolf got an Adept of the Order of Shadows to submit to a dark magic ritual to bring forth a demon—”

  “Or James Atherton did.”

  “Exactly.” Logan motioned toward the screen again. “Will you bring this to Knatt and tell him what we’ve discussed? In private, of course.”

  “Of course. And where will you be?”

  “I’ll be giving James Atherton exactly one chance to explain himself.”

  Logan’s sense of direction had been temporarily impaired by the scents of endless casts when they first arrived at the Summit, but she’d long since adjusted to the overwhelm and figured out new ways to get her bearings. So, it was with some certainty that she set out to retrace her steps to Atherton’s office, despite the circuitous way Clément had taken to get them there.

  And yet, when she finally reached the point where she was certain that all she had to do was turn left, and she would find the door to that oddly long and claustrophobic hallway…there was nothing there. She walked backward a little bit, to an earlier point, and stopped and closed her eyes, trying to bring up every detail of the walk with Clément. Certain she had it this time, she opened her eyes and tried again.

  The hallway felt right to her as she turned down it, but there
was no door. She backed out again, and this time she tried to take a different approach toward the same area. Then she tried a different floor. The end was still the same.

  After several more failed attempts, she decided to try an experiment. She went and got herself a new cup of coffee and drained its contents. Then she found the approximate spot where she believed she had first encountered the entrance, which now featured only a locked cleaning cupboard across from an empty wall, and she placed the cup there. Then she went to a different floor, and after waiting about five minutes, she returned again.

  The cup was gone, but more than that—the closet was gone, too.

  The hallways are moving.

  She sighed. She could try every hallway in this building and never find the right one. There was no way for her to reach Atherton. Her only option now was a public confrontation: she would have to attend the meeting with the Seers and the highest Adepts and expose his actions to them. She could only hope they would actually disapprove of the casual killing of bound Adepts.

  Seeing no point in continuing her experiments, Logan gave up and began to make her way back to the suite. She might have been imagining it, but it seemed to her that the corridors she passed through were even emptier than they had been this morning.

  Eventually she was back in the guest residences, and shortly after that, she stood at her own temporary door. With a swift turn of the key, she stepped inside.

  Knatt, Jude, and Alexei were already waiting for her, ominous expressions on their faces. While Jude and Knatt sat on the couch, Alexei leaned against the door frame to her tiny bedroom.

  She closed the door definitively behind her. “What’s going on?”

  Knatt cleared his throat. “Clément came by, hoping to find you. She said there’d been a change of plans, and the meeting that was supposed to occur this evening had been moved up to now.” He glanced down at his watch. “That was almost an hour ago.”