“There’s this thing that happens to shadowblacks sometimes,” he said, the ebony beads drifting around him as he spoke, “when our demons are just beginning to overwhelm our minds. I’m told it’s like the crest of a wave crashing down on us. Some find the strength to resist, some let the darkness take over. Still others—” he let the words hang there a second, pointing a finger at me—“become suicidal. Is that what’s happening to you, Kellen of the House of Ke?”
I didn’t appreciate his use of my family name. I felt a profound urge to slap the smile off his face.
Stop. Quit thinking like a squirrel cat, damn it. Use arta siva for once. Be charming.
“You should run now,” were the words that came out of my mouth.
So much for my arta siva.
“And why would I do that?”
Fair question. Sometimes my mouth gets ahead of my brain, and the rest of me is forced to catch up. Truth be told, I had no idea why I’d said he should run—that is, until I noticed the pompousness of his gaze, the preening movements of his shadows and, above all, considered the manic preparations for war he’d made in response to the spell bridge. All of those combined told me something about him that he’d kept hidden from his followers.
“You’re bad at this,” I replied at last.
I barely saw his eyes widen before his shadows enveloped me, swallowing me up like quicksand. Every inch of my body was covered, turning the world black. When I tried to breathe, his shadows filled my mouth, keeping me even from wasting the last of the air in my lungs to scream. I tried to rip and tear the stuff from my body, but it was like pulling at rubber.
My throat spasmed. I’d been breathing out when he attacked, and already I felt myself becoming lightheaded, the muscles of my legs giving way. Then, just as abruptly, the shroud left me. I landed hard on my knees, gasping for breath, trying to rub away the last traces of his shadows from my skin even though they were already gone. The abbot waited patiently.
His display of power only confirmed what I’d suspected. “You’re … an … amateur.” It was hard to speak, but I couldn’t afford to let him get in a reply; there was too good a chance it would be paired with a second attack. “You prance around your fortress like some battle-tested warrior, this god-like figure leading his people to peace and safety, but you don’t have a clue, do you?”
He was watching me now, eyes narrowed. I think he knew I was neither crazy nor suicidal. I’ve no doubt he could see how scared I was, yet I was talking back to him in a way his brethren and students never would. “Enlighten me,” he said.
“My father’s bringing seventy-seven mages to this abbey. These aren’t half-baked spellslingers like me or even adepts like Suta’rei. They’re proper war mages. Hell, I’ll bet most of them are lords magi. They’ll burn everyone here to ash with ember spells, rip their internal organs apart with iron magic. They’ll have silk spells and sand spells and some will even bring blood magic. Those people you have frantically training in the square will die without ever seeing the face of their enemy.”
The abbot’s blobs of shadow took on the shape of a dozen spears, which arrayed themselves around my head like a crown of swords. “They’ll have to get past me first.”
I shook my head, carefully though, so as not to impale my own eye. Reichis would laugh his little … No. Stop thinking about Reichis. Stop hearing Ferius’s voice. Stop wishing Nephenia were here. It’s down to you now. “Ke’heops is a master strategist. He won’t try to impress you or terrify you with his power.” I gestured to the strands of light piercing the corpse of the dead monk. “If he launched that spell bridge, it’s because he knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that he’s going to win once he reaches the other side.”
The abbot said nothing, his eyes losing focus as my words broke through his certainty, his determination that he had to be right, all the way to the core of his being.
“You’ve got to run,” I said. “Take your people and scatter as far and wide as you can. Pray that once my father’s razed the abbey to the ground and he’s won the glory he needs to be crowned mage sovereign, his posse will get bored and go home.”
His next words were so quiet, I wasn’t sure he even meant for me to hear them. “Do the Jan’Tep ever tire of killing shadow-blacks?” The tremor in his voice convinced me he’d break then, fall to pieces right in front of me. Instead he turned to gaze at the spell bridge, and off into the distance where the strands of light disappeared into the horizon. “I could beat any of them, you know. Any one of those bastards out there hunting our kind for pleasure or principle or whatever the hell they think gives them the right. Even with just Diadera and the shadowcasters beside me. I sometimes think I could take on the whole lot of them alone.”
“Religious zealots often think that way. They’re almost always wrong.”
The abbot walked over to the massive black stone arch that housed the gates into the abbey and stood in front of a damaged section on the left side. He stared at it, as if doing so might make it disappear. Without looking back at me, he motioned for me to join him.
I approached slowly, painfully aware that convincing him he couldn’t win wasn’t the same thing as persuading him not to kill me. Then I saw what he was staring at, and my caution was replaced by confusion. When stone breaks, it wears away from the edges or comes apart where the mortar weakens. Here, though, the damage came from dozens of tiny, jagged lines spreading out from a central flaw, like a spider’s web or the cracks in a pane of glass after it’s been struck by a pebble, almost like Azir’s onyx road after he’d …
“Ancestors …” My gaze left the arch, travelling past the gates and into the rest of the abbey. The unnatural, almost impossibly elaborate architecture, the ornate, fantastical towers, the perfectly smooth stone avenues and covered cloisters. Ever since I’d first come here, I’d wondered how they’d quarried so much of this peculiar black stone and got it to the top of a mountain. The answer was simple: they hadn’t.
“Something troubling you?” The abbot was doing a lousy job of hiding his self-satisfied smile.
“This place,” I said, choosing my next words carefully, “you created it.”
“Well, I suppose I can take some credit for its construction, but—”
“No, I didn’t say you built it or designed it or oversaw the people who did. I mean, you actually created it. This whole abbey, it’s …” Just saying the words made me wonder if I was going crazy. “It’s made from your shadows..”
“Come on now,” he said, spreading his arms wide. “Look how big this place is What kind of man—nay, god—could ever create such a wonder?”
“Show me,” I said.
He held his hand flat about an inch from the damaged section of the arch, closing his eyes tightly. At first nothing happened, but slowly, ever so slowly, the material lost its solidity, turning into a thick, viscous black liquid. The abbot brushed it with his hand, and the cracks disappeared. When he stood back up, the stone repaired, its texture that of solid rock once again.
“Incredible,” I said out loud, though I hadn’t meant to. I’d seen all sorts of mages who could manipulate matter before, and recently had almost died at the hands of a bloodshaper, but this? Creating an entire fortress from shadow? “This mountain … It’s an oasis of shadow, isn’t it?”
“Took me half my life to find it. The abbey stands at a nexus between a dozen planes of shadow, Kellen. In this place I have greater control over my shadows; I have more power.” He gestured past the gates, to the people beyond as they went to and fro, frantic activity the only thing keeping them from blind panic. “Yet you still don’t believe it’s enough to defend them from a Jan’Tep war coven, do you?”
I considered the question for a moment, then lifted up my right leg and tugged off my boot.
“What are you doing?”
“There’s a little rock in here that’s been biting into the sole of my foot.” I shook the boot until the pebble fell out into my palm. Keeping it there,
I put my boot back on.
He raised an eyebrow. “Comfortable now?”
I didn’t answer. Instead I watched his eyes, waiting for the moment when he blinked. The instant he did, I flicked the tiny rock at his face. It hit dead centre on his forehead.
He wiped away at the specks of dust left behind, even as the floating beads of his shadowblack became wickedly curved black blades encircling my neck. “You’re too late,” I said, fighting to keep my voice steady. “You’re already dead.”
“Dead? You think some peb—”
“It wasn’t a pebble. It was a crossbow bolt. An arrow. A spear. Maybe just a sharp rock. You didn’t see it coming, so it hit you, simple as that. Strong as you are, you’re still human, and everybody blinks.”
He chuckled then, though there was no joy in it. “You really are spectacularly good at pissing people off, aren’t you?”
“What I’m good at is surviving against people with more power than I’ll ever have.”
His eyes met mine, held them. “With all those Argosi tricks of yours, if I asked you to kill Ke’heops, could you do it?”
The question took me aback. “It wouldn’t save the abbey. Someone else would—”
“That’s not what I asked.” The abbot took a step closer to me, his gaze tracing the winding black markings around my left eye. “Your grandmother cursed you with the shadowblack. You may well die from it before ever learning her reasons. Your sister left your squirrel cat to die alone in the desert, even as she tricked you into giving away the secrets of the abbey.”
He grabbed my forearm and held it up to the fading light, the sigils that marred the tattooed bands for sand, silk and blood glaring back at me. “Your parents took away your magic—no doubt to protect your father’s ambitions. At every turn your family has betrayed you.” He let go of my arm. “And now Ke’heops comes here, to destroy this place, this sanctuary for people like you and me. So I ask you again, Kellen, with all they’ve taken from you, will you not use your remarkable cunning and those Argosi talents to finally rid the world of your father?”
I stood there, enduring the abbot’s scrutiny, smothered by the litany of offences he’d levied against my family and the unthinkable, inevitable question to which they led. Truth was, for a long time now I’d been asking myself if, when the day came, I’d be able to kill my father. The answer always came back the same. “No.”
“Because he’s cleverer than you or because you wouldn’t have the nerve?”
“Does it matter?”
“I guess not.” He turned away from me to walk inside the abbey gates. “Have you ever wondered why, with all their tricks and daring deeds, there are so many places the Argosi aren’t welcome, Kellen? Why they aren’t folk heroes and legends? It’s because for all the good they do, they never take a side.” He resumed his march into the abbey. “They never finish the job.”
43
Constellations …
The abbey grounds were all but empty by the time I made my way back inside the abbey walls. The throngs of monks, craftspeople and their families had gone to bed after exhausting all their frantic energy on preparations for a war most of them would likely never see. Mages rarely feel the need to face their enemies head on. Once here, the coven would launch spells of ember and iron, destroying this place and turning all within it to ash.
That thought followed me as I climbed the stairs of the abbot’s tower up to the third-floor guest room. It was pretty much the last place I wanted to be, but whatever else happened, I couldn’t keep walking around without a shirt. So I washed myself in a basin of water someone had courteously left there, dressed in the closest thing I had to fresh clothing and set about cleaning my weapons. The steel cards Ferius gave me only work if the balance is perfect and the edge is as sharp as a razor. I wiped them off, one at a time, and polished each one until it gleamed in the light coming through the room’s tiny slit of a window.
My powder pouches were empty, and there wasn’t anything I could do about that. It was only by dumb luck that I still had my five castradazi coins. Back in that village—I didn’t even know what country it was in—I’d had to pull open the stitch in the fold of my other shirt to remove the warden and fugitive coins. Afterwards I’d put them all in my pocket. Now I took them out one by one and polished them as I had the cards. I doubted it would make any difference to their effectiveness, but by that point I was clutching at straws, searching for anything that might distract me from despair and grief.
Eventually, however, I ran out of things to clean, and found I couldn’t bring myself to stay in that room. I guess I’d gotten used to sleeping outside over the past couple of years. I wouldn’t have said I liked it, but for some reason I always felt a bit lost if I couldn’t see the sky. So I walked down the three flights of winding stairs and out the tower. It must’ve been long past midnight. The glassy surface of the stones reflected a thousand stars lighting up the courtyard. I leaned back to look up at the night sky and nearly lost my balance. There’s something profoundly disorienting about staring at arrangements of stars different from the ones you’re used to. Had I come to this continent by boat, I would’ve adjusted to its constellations. Instead I’d been brought here through shadow, where time and distance held no real meaning, and now I felt utterly lost.
There were no bodies left in the courtyard. Either the abbey’s inhabitants had finished whatever funerary rites their loved ones had required, or perhaps the possibility of imminent invasion had made such rituals a luxury no one could afford. I hadn’t even had time to wonder whether Reichis would’ve preferred to be buried, cremated or simply have the bones of his skeleton arranged together in a suitably terrifying pose. Probably that last one.
Tears started to slide down my cheeks.
I shouldn’t have to say goodbye, I thought, weeping from bitterness as much as sorrow. Life ought to be more than just losing the things you love one after another until you have nothing left.
I wiped the sleeve of the shirt I’d taken from my pack over my eyes. It was shabby from too much wear and had a hole in the front. Reflexively I stuck a finger through and rubbed at a sore spot underneath, immediately finding the tiny ridge of a cut that had healed months ago, but still ached. Ancestors, I’m only seventeen. How can I have this many scars? Am I really supposed to feel this old already?
Exhaustion overwhelmed me, and I was forced to lean back against one of the columns holding up the roof of the cloister running alongside the square. The cold, hard surface bit through my threadbare shirt. By my count it had been two days since I’d eaten a solid meal, and almost a year since I’d had a good night’s sleep. As more tears came, I counted myself lucky that the courtyard was empty, so for once there was no one to witness me cry.
“I used to weep too,” a voice said from behind me, so close that I stumbled forward and felt myself begin to fall.
Ancestors, forget my other questions and just answer me this: why do you hate me so?
Big hands took hold of my shoulders, keeping me upright before gently turning me around. I looked up to find Butelios looming over me.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Just great,” I replied, managing not to sob or sniff—a real victory for me by this point.
“You don’t need to be ashamed,” Butelios said. “It’s just you and me here.”
“I said I’m fine.”
I wasn’t though. I couldn’t seem to muster any strength. If his hands had let me go right then, I’d’ve fallen at his feet. Butelios seemed to be aware of this, and kept holding me up, watching me. His eyes were brown, and surprisingly warm, I thought. It was strange to have another guy looking at me that way.
“Are you about to kiss me?” I asked.
“Do you want me to?”
“No,” I said, too quickly. “Sorry, I’m not … I mean, it’s not like I’m … Look, I just—”
He smiled out of one side of his mouth. “Are you this bad around girls too? Or is it only
boys that leave you flustered?”
“It’s everybody,” I said, more defensively. “Especially when I’m exhausted and I can’t be sure who here wants to kill me and who wants to bed me.”
Butelios propped me up a little more until he was sure I wouldn’t fall back down, then released me and stepped back a pace. “Better?” He didn’t wait for a reply before adding, “What do you suppose it says about you that the moment anyone tries to show you the slightest kindness you assume they must want to sleep with you?”
I hate people saying insightful things about me when I’m too tired to think of a clever comeback. “Go to hell, Butelios.”
He laughed and slapped me on the back. “No doubt I will, friend. But in the meantime, let’s go have a little fun, all right?”
“Wait, what? I mean, I just told you I’m not—” I stopped myself. A test. The bastard had just given me a little test to prove his point.
“Come on,” he said, his arm around my shoulder both leading me down the path towards the training square and keeping me from falling on my face. “There’s a ritual we shadowcasters perform after every mission.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“We get drunk enough to forget how close we came to dying.”
44
… and Consolations
Celebrating has never really been my strong suit. It’s possible this is because I haven’t had much practice at it, given my life has been a long string of failures interrupted by occasionally tripping over destiny and unintentionally doing the right thing. Ferius had tried to teach me how to find the joy in being alive. Too bad she never covered what you’re supposed to do when your best friend is dead and you’ve unintentionally destroyed the lives of four hundred innocent people. Maybe that was a more advanced lesson in the ways of the Argosi.
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