Shadow in the Empire of Light

by Jane Routley

  CHAPTER FIVE

  NOTHING COULD HAVE got my attention quicker.

  “Bright’s still in the village. He was too exhausted to go far tonight. The innkeeper waived the Blessing rule and said he might stay at the inn. News has got about and Grumpy’s come to complain to Lady Splendance.”

  Thomas dragged me down the passageway towards the entrance hall of the house as he spoke.

  “Oh, Lady! Where are they? Does Impi know?”

  “Look out,” hissed Thomas, pulling me into a nearby room as the door of the drawing room opened back along the passage. Katti was snoozing by the banked-up fire. She lifted her head and gave a brief mew of enquiry before deciding our human business wasn’t interesting.

  Through the half-open door, I saw Impi floating past along the passageway and into the great hall of the Eyrie. Most mages walked when they were on the level, but Impi had to make a show for the peasants. Silly rooster.

  We crept down behind him to see what was going on.

  “Good evening, good fellows. Blessings upon you.” Impi was at his most urbane. He landed and strutted forward, shoulders back, hips square, all in blue and red and gold like some cheap village cock. He shouldn’t even have been there; this sort of thing was the duty of the Matriarch, or failing her, the Avunculus, Great Uncle Igniate.

  Not that the villagers cared. A mage was a mage to them. As Thomas and I crept out and huddled in the shadows where the passageway opened into the Eyrie, I heard the rustle and thud of mundanes dropping to their knees. Impi stretched out his bejewelled hand, and each of the villagers shuffled forward on their knees to kiss his ring.

  Sure enough there was Grumpy the blacksmith, a hulking fellow with a huge belly and a perpetually scowling slit of a mouth—and backing him up were four of his drinking buddies. Always sitting round in the inn complaining the world was doing them wrong when they should’ve been home helping their sisters.

  It made sense that Grumpy would rat on Bright. Bright’s valet, Graceson, was Grumpy’s nephew and their scandalous relationship did Grumpy no favours in the village. I wondered if he realised that his nephew would come out far worse in any brush with my uncle than Bright would. Perhaps he didn’t care. Men are strange cattle, as the saying goes.

  Impi waved his hand languidly at the villagers.

  “Please rise. How may I be of service to you, my fine peasants?”

  Amazing how he could make the most innocent words sound belittling.

  “With all due respect to your lordship, we come to tell you we don’t hold with mages staying overnight in the village, ’specially not during Blessing time. We’d be very beholden to you if you could make our representation to the mages concerned,” said Grumpy.

  “Mages?” asked Impi. “What mages?”

  “Lord Bright,” muttered Grumpy. “We don’t hold with it, whatever Jar Ellasdaughter says. It breaks our sacred agreement. No mages overnight in the village, that’s how it’s always been.”

  “Lord Bright is lodged in the village?” said Impi calmly. He flicked an imaginary piece of dust off his sleeve. “How very interesting.”

  “Thomas, quickly, get my horse saddled,” I hissed. “I’ll be there in a moment.”

  Thomas ran away down the darkened hall.

  I darted back into the breakfast room. Katti had sensed my urgency and was up already, stretching her back into an arch. By the light of the banked-up fire, I scribbled a note of warning and tied it securely round Katti’s collar, all the time telling her to go to Bright in the village inn. If she went straight there, she would get there very quickly, but cats are easily distracted and I knew I had to follow her to be sure.

  I shoved open the glass door to the breakfast room and she shot past my legs and lopped away towards the village while I ran round to the stables.

  I KEPT THE horse at a canter most of the way despite the track being dark and rough underfoot. All the time I was peering back over my shoulder, certain that the mages would set out immediately. When Bright’s relationship with Graceson had finally become a scandal, Impi had had his retainers thrash him in the street. They’d hurt him so badly that Bright’d been too concussed to use magic and had had to come back to Willow by canal boat. I still remembered the swollen eye, the broken nose and the dark bruises. Graceson said he’d pissed blood at first and it was two days before he could heal himself enough to walk properly. Impi had promised a repeat performance if he ever set eyes on Bright again.

  My one consolation was that Impi would want to gather help and he would need to be selective in who he chose for such a sensitive family mission. The women would be praying tonight and unavailable, and he would not want to involve mere retainer mages. This gave me some hope of beating them there.

  As I cantered down the dirt track that was the village’s main street, I was cheered to see no sign of crystal light behind me. The tap room of the big whitewashed inn at the village centre was noisy with drinkers, but everything else seemed quiet. I leapt off my horse and ran into the inn.

  “Where’s the mage?” I cried to the little serving boy, who was passing through the front hall way with a tray full of dirty plates.

  “Parlour or—”

  I didn’t hear the rest of what he said. I dashed up the stairs and barged in through the private parlour door crying, “Look out. Impi’s coming.”

  “Why, my dear!” said a languid voice. “Unpleasant news, no doubt, but surely not cause for alarm.”

  I found myself facing not Bright, but another of my noble cousins, Lady Sparklea, the one who’d let me out of the closet all those years ago. The only decent one of the lot. She was standing by the fire in riding boots, plain travelling clothes and a merely medium-sized hat: yet she still looked stylish. Klea always did.

  “Oh, no! Sorry, I—”

  There was a crash from upstairs and an explosion of magic. Without pausing to think I blurted out, “Bright’s hiding upstairs. Impi and the others have come to beat him up. I have to help him. He’s almost exhausted.”

  “You can’t go up there,” shouted Klea, as I dashed back towards the door.

  I felt myself seized by her power and pulled back as she raced past me and up the stairs. I went after her, only to run into her back on the top step.

  “What are you going to do?” I asked, uncertain of her loyalties. As children, she and Bright and I had all been great friends, but it was a long time since I’d last seen her.

  “Rescue Bright, of course,” cried Klea, pushing me back against a door at the end of the corridor. “I told you to stay.”

  She had her hat pulled down over her head and was tying a kerchief over her nose, covering everything but her eyes.

  Further down the hall, a door hung shattered on its hinges and sounds of shouting and breaking wood came from the room. Even as Klea flew towards the broken door, a burst of power shot out, blurring the air and blasting a hole in the wall of the corridor. Klea threw herself in at the door, power already forming between her hands, and almost tripped over a large animal shape that came streaking out through her legs.

  “Katti! Here! Good girl!” I shrieked, as the blast of magic rocked the whole inn.

  As I tried to reach out and catch her, someone touched my arm. I jumped so much, I missed Katti and she fled away down the stairs.

  “Shine, stay in here,” cried Graceson. He’d come out of the other room. He had a loaded crossbow in his hand and he was making for Bright’s room.

  I seized his arm. “No! You stay. A mage has gone to help Bright.” Even as I spoke, the whole inn rocked to another blast of power. Graceson and I clutched each other.

  “For Mother’s sake, put that thing down,” I cried over the sounds of shouting and smashing.

  Graceson pulled the bolt out of the crossbow. “I smell smoke,” he said.

  The fire or candles in Bright’s room must have got away—inevitable in a magical fight with so much air swirling around. Even as we smelt the smoke, it began to fill the corridor. G
raceson and I tumbled down the stairs as quick as we could, both screaming “Fire! Fire!”

  Not that we needed to. The last of the villagers were already rushing out into the street. People were screaming and shouting. The round figure of Jar Ellasdaughter could be seen organising a bucket line from the well. Someone was running towards the inn carrying a ladder.

  As Graceson and I ran towards the well to help, a hole burst in the thatched roof of the inn and two figures shot out and streaked away across the sky, arm in arm. Burning straw flew everywhere as three more figures burst through another part of the roof and shot off in the same direction. From the speed of the first couple, I was certain that that was Klea in the front, which meant that Bright was most likely safe. I eased out a sigh of relief.

  Jar the Innkeeper was screaming, “Shitty mages!” and shaking her fists at the sky. “What about my sodding roof, you scabby roosters?”

  Her voice was drowned out by a roar of flame as the fire streamed up through the thatch.

  She looked angry enough to forget my rank, so I abandoned the idea of helping out and took up the idea of running away instead. Graceson must have had the same thought. As I was looking fruitlessly for my horse—which clearly had long since bolted for home—he seized my arm and dragged me down an alleyway. Liking his plan so far, I broke into a run and followed him as he sprinted along a couple of dark muddy lanes.

  We quickly found ourselves at the edge of the village. By the flickering light of the burning inn, we could see the village temple nestled under its huge Holy Tree.

  We both leaned against the tree and coughed smoke out of our lungs.

  “That was my lord in the front, wasn’t it? Do you think he’ll get away?” asked Graceson. He was completely devoted to Bright.

  “That was a female helping him,” I said. “No way they’ll catch them.”

  “Ladybless,” breathed Graceson. He pushed open the temple door and drew me in after him.

  The village priest, a very old man, was sitting on a pallet on the floor beside a brazier. Our village was too insignificant to have a female priest. He lit a taper and looked up at us.

  “My boy. How wonderful to see you,” he cooed in a voice like dried husks.

  “Most Holy Zostre,” sighed Graceson. “Thank the Lady, it’s still you. You must be the only person in this village happy to see me.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  WE VISITED WITH the priest for the rest of the evening. Graceson recounted the tale of his meeting with his mother, Grace, and of her reproaches. Though he told the story in a humorous way, I could sense the pain beneath it and squeezed his arm. He and the priest began exchanging news about places and people I knew little of, so I left them and wandered into the temple proper. In the flickering light of the votive lanterns, I could see spring leaves and a few early flowers heaped around the feet of the statue of the Bright Lady of Light. But most villagers still believed in the old spirits of place and of nature they had worshipped in the days before Magekind had arrived from out of the rising sun and brought the civilising influence of the Lady of Light, and the temple reflected that. Clustered around the feet of the Lady and huddled in niches in the walls were dozens of little statuettes dedicated to tree spirits and well spirits, to Mooncat and Grain Boy.

  Zostre, a village man himself, understood this. If truth be told he was more an old-style shaman than a priest of Light. Grain Boy helped make the crops grow, so I could see the point of him, but Mooncat was a forest spirit who never seemed much use to me. Yet it was a popular spirit in our district, with little shrines all over the forest. It always seemed to me that the villagers had more belief in Mooncat than even Our Bright Lady.

  I lit some incense and made a prayerful obeisance to the Bright Lady and to all the other spirits as well. I was officially a Light worshipper, but I had never seen the Bright Lady of the Sky except in her guise as the sun. I had, however, seen things in the forest—shapes rising from lakes and glowing lights moving among the night trees. Sometimes I sensed a personality in trees and other supposedly inanimate things. I could not help believing in spirits. I’d never told anyone except Bright. Auntie Eff, like most educated people, dismissed spirit worship as arrant superstition.

  “The gentlewoman is welcome to take my mattress for the night,” offered the priest. “Please, I press you to stay. The spirits of Mooncat are restless at night.” Regretfully I declined. I was worried about the ghost alone in my room and also about what would happen if Impi found out I’d come to warn Bright. Eff’s allowance was the only money we had and Impi kept threatening to have it cut back. Once the village had quietened down, I took a torch from those by the temple door and set out to walk home by torchlight.

  Willow was two miles walk from the village. The same cart tracks I’d ridden down so quickly seemed a long way back on foot in the dark, with only torchlight for company. I’d shed my robes before I’d gone out, so I was freezing in my underrobe and body shaper. My dress shoes, which were cheap and flashy, were extremely unsuitable for walking on mud. Curse Bright; he owed me a pair of good shoes.

  Worried about where Katti might be, I called out for her a few times, but stopped as the farmland ended and the home forest came into view. The forest surrounding the manor house descended unbroken from the mountains and, despite the river, which acted as a kind of moat, wild cats and grunters would occasionally turn up near the house. No point in attracting their attention.

  Or other things. The forest of the Secret Mountains was an uncanny place even this close to habitation. Big pallidly glowing orchids known as corpse lilies hung in the branches of trees like sickly lanterns. The earth around here was impregnated with crystal dust, and magic got into every living thing. Inanimate things moved and creeping animals flew. You heard things talking in strange inhuman voices sometimes.

  Tonight, as the trees closed in along one side of the road, I felt certain something was watching me. I wished Katti were there with me to scent danger. Don’t be a coward, I told myself and kept walking steadily, if a little faster.

  Then a twig cracked so loudly that I spun round before I could stop myself.

  Padding along the track behind me was the biggest glowing white wild cat I had ever seen. I swear it was as bigger than I was.

  I screamed and almost dropped my torch.

  It stopped, one shimmering velvet paw in mid-air.

  “No!” I cried, trying to sound commanding. I held the torch out towards it. It seemed a pitiful matchstick against such a creature and the hand that held it shook.

  It stood there, a few small bounds away. Shimmering. Huge. Real. I would never outrun it and it didn’t seem worried by the torch.

  It took a step towards me. This wasn’t some tame hunting cat, it was a wild cat three times the size of Katti.

  “No!” I shouted again; it sounded pleading. “Don’t.”

  I waved the torch around. It took another step towards me.

  Suddenly it turned and loped away, with a crashing of grass.

  A bright light came skimming around the bend from the house and I ran towards it.

  “Help, help!” I cried. The light slowed and hovered above me and I saw it was a messenger mage in one of those enclosed chairs they travelled in. Must have been an important message to have gone to such expense.

  “What do you want?” said the messenger, sticking her head out of the window.

  “My horse bolted and I saw a wildcat,” I cried. “Please help me!”

  “A wildcat? Really?” she cried excitedly. Oh, to be a mage, for whom the thought of a large deadly beast delightful rather than terrifying.

  “Please can you take me...?”

  But she had set out in the direction of my finger, shining a light over the fields beneath her. Just my luck to have met up with a keen hunter.

  “Can you take me back to the house?” I shouted.

  “’Gainst regulations,” she called back. “You go on. I’ll stay and keep an eye out for the beast. Go on.
You haven’t got far to go.”

  Curse her! Still, it was better than nothing. I set off at a run.

  BACK AT THE house, I panted round to the bathhouse, hoping to wash off the mud and smoke and get warm. Alas, it was occupied. The village wheelwright was on his back on the warm boards near the stove being fiercely ridden by a woman retainer mage. Another lad crouched behind her, stroking her breasts and kissing her neck. The wheelwright was a very virile lover—I’d enjoyed him myself—but from the clenched look around his mouth, he was doing his best to last as long as possible and not enjoying it too much. I closed the door as softly as I could and went round to the kitchen.

  Thomas was sitting at the kitchen table with Hilly and Jenna. All of them were wearing the long hooded robes of mundanes who did not want to take part in Blessing congress. I was still shaken by my brush with the Mooncat and considered telling them about it. Then I thought better of it. A confession would cause a fuss. Hilly would cover me in sacred amulets and everyone would get anxious about what it meant. And maybe it’d been nothing. Maybe I’d been affected by puffball spores drifting out of the forest and had simply had a vision.

  “The women of the family retired to rest some time ago,” Thomas told me. “Lord Impavidus and the boys are back. Lord Bright and a mysterious woman escaped—so they say.”

  “Has he gone over to the right path, Marm?” asked Hilly. Hilly, who had been our nurse, always hoped that Bright would ‘come good.’ As if he wasn’t good enough as he was.

  “I don’t think that’s what it means. Did Impi ask after me?”

  “I don’t think he noticed,” said Thomas. “Though he berated your aunt about letting Bright visit her. In front of everyone. But Lady Glisten defended her, so I don’t think she’ll lose her allowance.”

  “If only I could get her away from here,” I sighed. No chance of that. Eff had been exiled to Willow for her political activities before I had been born. She wasn’t even supposed to leave the estate.