Shadow in the Empire of Light

by Jane Routley

  I almost went. Then I turned and said, “I don’t think I will.”

  “What? Don’t trust me?” He smiled. “Very good. You’ll go far.”

  He stepped around me, opened the door of Chatoyant’s room and looked inside.

  “A nice neat search. Very good for a beginner.”

  He pulled the door closed again and leaned against it.

  “How are you planning to spend the rest of this Blessing day? Might I be a part of it?” he said softly.

  His gall was arousing. I could almost picture us...

  I shook myself.

  “As if anyone would believe an ambitious man like yourself would even look twice at me,” I sneered, more strongly than I intended.

  “That’s a sad way of thinking,” he said. He came up close and his fingertips rested gently on the edge of the door by my cheek. “You’re extremely lovely. The man who finds himself in your bed...”

  At that moment Katti let out an ear-splitting yowl of anger and fear inside my head.

  “Katti!” I cried. I’d never heard her thoughts from such a distance before. I ran headlong down the corridor and leapt down the Eyrie stairs two at a time.

  There were no servants in the great hall to see me. I found them all gathered in the corridor around the door of my room.

  Katti was crouched on my bed, tail lashing, hissing at anyone who approached. Her ear was bleeding and so was her leg. Her mind was full of a huge evil yellow-fanged monster that had to be slashed, and slashed good.

  “Another cat. It went out the window,” one of the lads babbled at me. “I don’t know how it happened, Marm. All the visiting cats are s’posed to be locked up.”

  “Get down to the stables and see who’s been letting their cats roam about,” I told him. “They’ll have me to deal with.”

  “Your Katti really showed ’em off.” He grinned, lifting his hand to pat Katti and getting hissed at. She didn’t have time for niceties.

  How had the cat got in here? Had I left the window open? Only then did I think of Shadow.

  “Enough,” I snapped. “Haven’t you all got work to do?”

  I flapped them all out of the room, slammed the door shut behind them and waited as their footsteps thudded away down the hall. I even opened the door a crack to check that the hall was empty before I softly called out Shadow’s name.

  “I’m here,” he called out from under the bed.

  “Stay there.”

  I set about soothing Katti so that I could examine her wounds. The tear in her ear was one thing—it would give her a swashbuckling air—but her front leg was deeply bitten. Her skin had closed already over the wound to prevent loss of blood, which would unfortunately also keep any infection from draining away.

  “We’ll have to get you down to the stableman. Have that dressed,” I said to her.

  “What?” hissed Shadow.

  “I’m talking to Katti. You can come out now. How did another cat get in here?”

  “Your cousin, Illuminus brought it. He came through that window with almost no warning. I just had time to drop under the bed. He would have found me had it not been for your pet.”

  “She’s a good girl,” I said, patting Katti.

  Shadow, still under the bed, seized my ankle.

  “Listen. You need to find me a better hiding place. I swear to you, he will kill me if he finds me.”

  I stroked Katti and tried to think things over calmly. But I was too upset. The intruder mage might have killed Katti if everyone hadn’t noticed so quickly. I squeezed her tightly and she rubbed her cheek against me. I do not die easily, she thought. Idiot creature; she was no less fragile than I.

  “We have to do something. Haven’t you got an attic or a cellar or something?” hissed Shadow.

  “Not if he’s going to use a hunting cat to sniff you out.”

  He shook my ankle. “Look, take me to one of your cousins. This is too dangerous.”

  A cousin—

  “Klea! Oh, curse it. I should have sent you off with Klea this morning. She’s hiding out at Marellason’s. You’d be safe with her. And she’d keep your secret.”

  The ghost groaned.

  “Don’t worry. She won’t hurt you.”

  “I know that. But she did seem... flighty.”

  “They’re all like that. Nothing’s serious for them. But Klea means well, unlike some of them. Listen, a woman mage can best a man anytime, so Illuminus would never dream of coming at you under her protection. If we can only work out how to get you there.”

  “If you are planning to wait until nightfall, it will not—”

  “Listen, I’m not an idiot. I’ve run this estate for nine years.”

  “No, no, sorry,” said Shadow. He climbed out from under the bed and crouched at my feet. “My life means a lot to me, you know.”

  I almost stroked his head while I worked out what to do, but I stopped myself in time.

  Like most big old houses, Willow-in-the-Mist had a secret escape passage, built in the old days to enable helpless mundanes to escape into the forest in case of a battle between mages or a rogue attack. These passages were supposed to be only known to mundanes, although I suspect most of my noble cousins could have found it without too much trouble. I had certainly played in the tunnel with Bright when we were children.

  The real problem was to get Shadow through a full house and into the cellar. Luckily it was Blessing time. People would assume that a cloaked and hooded figure moving around the house was someone who didn’t want to have congress. Even luckier, most of the household’s old clothes were stored in my room—Auntie’s Eff’s wardrobes were too full of books and letters to hold anything else. It didn’t take long to get the ghost all wrapped up in an old hooded robe with my spare riding gloves to cover his hands and a scarf over the bottom of his face in Klea’s style. I’d been planning to disguise him in the same way on the canal boat.

  “Katti, is anyone in the hall?” I asked.

  I opened the door, and she limped to it and snuffed the air outside. She sensed a group of male and female humans down in the Great Hall and, curse it, some small creatures up the other end of the corridor. I’d have to get some baits put down before I left for Elayison or we’d be swimming in mice by summer.

  Then as we stepped out of my door, Katti’s thoughts went blank red with rage and she shot past my legs with a yowl.

  “Katti!” I lunged after her, only to be dragged back.

  “Shine! Don’t leave me!” Shadow’s grip on my arm was surprisingly strong.

  “Yes, yes, of course. Come here.”

  I pulled the ghost over to one of the linen chests that lined the wall. They were completely empty; all the sheets and towels were in use. I thrust him into it, closed the lid and ran after Katti.

  A chill breeze blew in through an open window at the bottom of the winding servants’ stairs. Katti was balancing on four feet on the windowsill, looking upwards.

  He got away.

  I took her collar, coaxed her away and pattered back up to get the ghost. To my surprise, he popped out from behind the tapestry at the top of the stairs and scampered down to meet me mid-stairway.

  “Someone is in your room again,” he hissed.

  So this had been a trick to lure Katti away. I felt that grim chill again.

  “Marm,” said a voice above us. “Might I have a word?” I recognised Hagen Stellason’s voice and managed to shove the ghost round the curve of the staircase just as Uncle Nate’s so-called secretary appeared at the top of the stairs and came down toward me.

  I ran up and met him, blocking his way forward. His eyes widened.

  “You didn’t answer my question earlier,” he said suavely.

  It took me a moment to remember his proposition. I laughed at his persistence.

  “I’m sorry. I’m busy at the moment,” I said.

  “That’s disappointing,” he said.

  We stood there and looked at each other. He showed no sign of
going away.

  “Would you mind if I went down to the servants’ hall?” he said

  “You can’t go this way.”

  “Really? May I inquire why, Marm?”

  His annoyingness started to outweigh his attractiveness.

  “No, you may not,” I snapped. “Now, you listen. I may be only a mundane, but I am a woman of the lineage and manager of this house. So don’t question me. Take yourself somewhere else.”

  Something like anger sparked in his eyes, and then that little smile was back again.

  “Of course, Marm,” he said, bowing. He turned and went back up the stairs. Remarkably slowly, I thought. I stood and watched his back till he was almost at the other end of the corridor.

  I raced downstairs.

  Katti was sitting upright on the open windowsill, her paws neatly in front of her, looking statuesque, and just a little smug. In response to my Where is he? she flickered her ears sideways out the window, where empty wine barrels were stored in the corner of the courtyard underneath the windowsill.

  “Which one?” I asked, getting the idea.

  She got out of the window and stood on the closest one. Luckily it had an old label on it, so it was quite distinctive. She told me that she could smell nothing but wine from these barrels. Good. Hidden here, the ghost would be safe from Illuminus’ cat. And now I had an idea for getting him out of the house that would be even better than using the tunnel.

  As Katti came back through the window, she snuffed the air. She smelled a male figure, possibly Hagen Stellason, approaching the top of the stairs again.

  “Shadow,” I called softly.

  “I’m here,” murmured a voice from the barrel.

  “Stay there. Nothing can smell you, so you should be safe. I’ll come back as soon as I can. Maybe after dark. Or maybe I’ll get them to move you. Yes, that’d work.”

  I thought I heard a groan.

  I was tempted to go upstairs and give Hagen a blast about ignoring my orders, but I was more worried about Katti’s bitten paw.

  “Come,” I told her, and led her down the hall and out into the stable yard.

  CHAPTER TEN

  I MIGHT NOT be a mage, but I had one small advantage over Illuminus: I was in my own home and had trustworthy helpers. Thomas grouched when I asked him to have the wine barrels moved from the corner of the servants’ courtyard. But when I gave him a meaningful look and told him I didn’t want Lord Impavidus to find out, he fell over himself to help me. Am I or am I not a master manipulator?

  He oversaw the loading of the barrels himself. I watched surreptitiously from the dining room window, making sure I knew exactly which of the barrels contained Shadow.

  After that it was a small matter to cut through the woods behind the house, meet the cart of barrels as it passed along the cart track to the village and get Joe the carter to help me offload the barrel carrying the ghost. The fact that the ghost had a sneezing fit as we put the barrel among the ferns beside the road didn’t bother Joe. Clearly he had already guessed that there was someone hidden there, but he was a taciturn man and I trusted him almost as much as Thomas.

  I waited till the cart had clip-clopped away through the trees before I opened the barrel and helped Shadow out; even tough old Joe would have been horrified at the sight of a pale-skinned ghost. While I waited, I enjoyed a smug fantasy of Illuminus searching the house with a fine-toothed comb and grinding his teeth as he found nothing. What could have possessed him to betray our family by crystal-smuggling? Debts? Blackmail? A bet? I’d never thought of Illuminus as a particularly bad person, but then I’d never had much to do with him. He’d been too old to bother with Klea and me for good or ill when we’d been children. Once the ghost was gone, I would have to do the responsible thing and tell someone about him. But who? And how?

  The ghost’s pale skin had gone a greenish colour, like he wanted to puke. We sat under a bush, while he gasped in deep breaths of fresh air.

  “My excrement was almost scared out of me,” he slurred.

  “Sorry,” I said, trying not to laugh at his words. “It was too dangerous to come back and tell you what was happening. The saying is scared shitless by the way.”

  “Scared shitless,” he repeated. “I am sure I will have further reason to use that phrase. So what do we do now?”

  “We walk. Marellason’s hut is a few miles from here. Come on.” I pulled him up off the ground. “The walk’ll settle your belly.”

  “Oh, joy,” muttered the ghost as he staggered to his feet. His irony made me smile. Who would have thought someone so foreign would have had the same sense of humour as me? I took his hand to steady him. It felt clammy, but how lovely and brown my skin looked against his paleness! A first time for everything.

  “Are you drunk?” I asked. “You were over an hour in that barrel.”

  “Let us hope the walk sobers me up. Now listen, before we get to Klea, I have been thinking. How do you know if we can trust her? How do we know she is not in alliance with Illuminus?”

  “Klea hates Flara and her children—that’s Illuminus, Scintillant and Chatoyant. She refuses to even be in the same house with them. It’s why she ran off to Crystalline and went on the stage. Lucky beast! Anyway, if she were on Illuminus’ side, you’d be done for already. He’d know you were here, instead of suspecting it.”

  “That’s true,” said the ghost. “Why does Klea hate this Flara?”

  “Oh, Flara used to be the Matriarch years ago; I think she used to beat Klea and Lucient all the time. And she sent away their favourite nurse. Then something happened to bring Flara down, some money scandal. There’s always something with our family. Eff said she was aiming at the throne. A long shot. She’s the second noble daughter, not the first, and she mostly has sons. The Council would never elect her. Glitter is the solid heir.

  “Anyway, Uncle Radiant, who was her Avunculus, was exiled to some monastery in the Western Desert over the whole thing. And Uncle Batty, who was the only other noble man in that generation and should have taken over as the Avunculus after Radiant’s fall, came here and refused to have anything to do with the other mages ever again. He was smoked out of his brain most of the time. When he wasn’t sipping holy wine. That’s how lazy old Great-Uncle Nate became the Avunculus. And how Impi Claritas, who is only a consort and should have no say in this family, runs everything. Makes me mad thinking about him. Come on, let’s get going.”

  I tied a scarf round our faces. This wasn’t just to disguise Shadow in the unlikely event that we met one of the peasants on this Blessing morning; the deep forest was full of puffballs, a giant fungus that released hallucinatory spores. If you got a face full of such a release, which was very likely if you accidently stepped on one, you’d fall into a vision-filled sleep for the next half day—unless you were eaten by a wildcat or a grunter in the meantime. Another reason to stay on the path.

  Even if one just happened to release naturally nearby, your sense of reality could be dangerously affected. The peasants made holy wine from puffballs and used it in their own nature-worship rituals. Uncle Batty had drunk quite a bit, till the visions of bats attacking him got too much. Bright and I had tried it too, but only the once. It was savage stuff.

  After warning Shadow about puffballs, I presented him with the cat spear. Since we had no hunting cat with us and he was following behind me, it was his duty to discourage wildcats from jumping down from the trees onto his back. He blanched at that; apparently it wasn’t a problem on the other side of the Bone Mountains. I should have known. So, of course, I had to show him how to carry it properly tucked up over his shoulder with the heel resting on his belt and the point shielding his neck.

  “Wildcats mostly sleep during the day, but you never can tell,” I said. “You might strike a sick one, or one with hungry cubs to feed. So it’s best to be careful. Don’t leave Klea’s side if you can help it—and if you do get separated from her, don’t leave the path. Hundreds of years ago when Willow was built,
this was a huge crystal mining site. After it was worked out, it wasn’t good for much else, so they left it and the forest grew back. Unfortunately they didn’t fill in the mineshafts, so the forest is full of them. When the mages come up here hunting, they fly, but the rest of us just have to be careful where we tread.”

  We crossed the bridge into the forest proper and took the small hunting trail up into the hills. After walking a short time we passed a tree that was tied all over with little pieces of ribbon and cloth: prayers to the nature spirits. I said a silent prayer as we passed. Beneath the tree was one of the many Mooncat altars that dotted our district. As usual it was loaded with fruit and flowers. I made a mental note to stop and say another prayer on the way back.

  After that, the forest got wilder. The tall, white-trunked trees were like pillars among the riot of smaller, mossy trees, flowering shrubs, cycads and ferns all bound together by a tangle of vines. The air smelled rich and earthy and birds were chattering away everywhere. I had fond memories of whizzing through here in Bright’s chariot, ducking round tree trunks and chasing light-footed deer through the underbrush. We’d even come at night sometimes. Moonlight was best. You could see the animals moving below and sometimes even catch sight of a wildcat hunting.

  “Are they big, these wildcats?” asked Shadow nervously

  “There’s a couple of sorts. The big ones are twice Katti’s size.” I thought of the Mooncat, who’d been three times as big as Katti, but decided not to make Shadow any more nervous than he obviously was. With its size and eerie glow it was clearly magical, and therefore not normal.

  “Another thing you should keep an eye out for is grunters,” I said. “They’re a kind of big pig. They travel in family groups and the adults can be vicious, but at least they don’t come looking for you. Though they will eat you if they find you passed out from puff ball spores.”

  “Wow,” said the ghost. “Such a friendly forest. Anything else I should be careful of?”

  “Well, there’s still a lot of crystal dust in the soil. It gets in the water. Some of the animals and plants out here, especially the night ones, have magical powers. Some fly, some get very big. Some look extremely odd. Some glow. Sometimes you get fish in our stream with two heads or three eyes.”