Chris Willrich - [BCS261 S01] - Shadowdrop (html)

by Shadowdrop (html)

  “We’re coming,” Nightwise called. “I was telling Shadowdrop my exploits.”

  “That shouldn’t take long,” Hauntclaw put in. “Hurry it up.”

  I didn’t know what to say. We returned with the mice and settled onto our books. Now, the crystal sphere was like a giant drop of day-lit ocean. Within it seemed to dart rainbow-striped fish. It fixed the attention. I nibbled thoughtfully on my mouse.

  After a while, Quickfang said, “What would you like to watch, Hauntclaw?”

  “Birds in the mountains,” said Hauntclaw, touching the crystal ball, “somewhere where it’s dawn.”

  The ocean shimmered and vanished into wild dazzles of light; the bright flurry faded and became grey cliffs and the aeries of hawks, with the brow of the sun just now glaring above shadowy grasslands. We watched the birds and our voices rattled in our throats.

  I felt dizzy, and left off eating. “Amazing...”

  Hauntclaw said, “I suppose it’s like nothing you’ve ever seen before.”

  I did not want to concede this truth, and so said instead, “Can it find a particular being?”

  “I’ll show you,” Nightwise said. “When it’s my turn.”

  After we watched hawks glide and dive and return with rodents, Nightwise rose and touched the glass and said, “The Elddrake.”

  The other familiars stood still. They hadn’t expected this. We beheld our meandering country from a great height, with wisps of cloud between us and the green-brown land and its companion the midnight blue water. We could not see the political borders, but the combination of coastline, hills, and mountains did suggest a serpentine form.

  “So it’s true,” I said.

  “Yes,” Nightwise said. “Now—the skyward eye of the Elddrake.”

  “Nightwise,” Hauntclaw said. “You sure...?”

  The view was like that of some mythic bird diving through clouds to behold our city sprawling in bright and decaying majesty. Somehow its walls and harborage did suggest an eye.

  “And now,” Nightwise said, “the earthward one.”

  We plunged, it seemed, into the streets and thence into darkness. Now I perceived catacombs and caverns, lit by a fiery red glow that seeped mysteriously from the stone itself. In time we came to a vast pit with molten fires dancing far below. The roof of the chamber was an inverted stony dome, fringed with stalactites big as buildings. A pathway ran directly beneath the dome and around the edge of the pit, large as a city wall.

  We gazed at that titanic shut eye, and something in me felt a strange recollection, as if the eye and I knew each other from of old.

  The scene lurched. The eyelid shifted, and light like an exploding sun appeared at one edge. The vision faded to white.

  A tremor shook the tower. “What have you done?” hissed Quickfang.

  “I... we got its attention...” Nightwise said. It was hard to say if he sounded rueful or triumphant.

  As the tremor subsided, we heard footsteps far overhead.

  “Move,” Quickfang told us. “There is time for only him to be blamed.”

  “But my turn—” I began as the others leapt from the table.

  “Stupid meekbreed!” hissed Hauntclaw.

  I ignored her. Touching paw to Orb I said, “Zik, brother of Tru, of Foottown, last seen at Scarside Falls.”

  Shadows twisted like a muddy river. The scene shifted to a dying campfire on the edge of an abyss, a waterfall surging beside. A ruined passage framed the scene, and more ruins piled above and below. A band of sky told me the spot wasn’t quite underground but lay so deep amid the ruins no one in the living city could spot it. Three human boys crouched beside the fire. One looked like an older, male version of Tru, though his hair was short and he wore a permanently befuddled expression. He conducted a hushed conversation with his companions.

  “Hey, wow... did you feel that tremor?”

  “Of course we did, Zik. So what?”

  “We’re going to die here, Zik.”

  “Shut up, Jol. Ignore him, Zik.”

  “Hey, leave him alone, Dev. And, hey, I don’t want to wreck anyone’s mood, but we’re going to have the ruins collapse on us if there’s another one. That could kill us or something.”

  “Don’t cry to us about it, Zik. It was all your idea anyway.”

  “Hey, now, you thought it was a good one, Dev.”

  “We’re going to die here, Dev.”

  “Shut up, Jol.”

  “Wait. Do you, uh, hear Things moving around below? Like, monsters? Because, now that’s exciting!”

  “Shut up, Zik.”

  More footsteps above me, and doors creaking. “They’re at the Orb again,” came a woman’s exasperated voice.

  A man sighed, “Could they have caused that quake?”

  Another man mused, “Doubtful. They are just cats.”

  I whispered to the Orb, “Show me more; pull back as if we were a bird, flying.”

  Within the Orb swelled an expanse of Scarside, thick with dawn shadows, its gaping chasm like a ghastly maw in the earth, sucking up silver waterfalls.

  A cat tackled me, and I saw no more.

  “Move!” hissed Nightwise.

  The Orb was a milky sphere again.

  “All right,” I said, my anger quenched in the wonder of another cat caring for my welfare. We fled.

  The Underseers were emerging from their dwelling overhead. Light flared in crystals strategically placed within the swinging junk cages. “There they are!” I heard, and “Confounded cats!” and “Come back, Nightwise!”

  At those last words, uttered by Mistress Voyd, Nightwise twitched and ceased running. “Hide,” he told Shadowdrop. “You can get away, you’re not wearing...” He gurgled, turned, and staggered toward the wizards like a puppet with mismatched strings.

  I hesitated.

  Another voice cried out, “You as well, Whiskerdoom!”

  So commanding was that rich voice that I almost bolted toward it. Worse, it was, to borrow a word, familiar. I dared not tarry to think about it, and I retreated up the cat stair.

  “What a fool,” Hauntclaw greeted me on arrival at the landing.

  “What were you thinking?” Quickfang said.

  Postgrad had nothing to add, for which I was grateful. I fled and hid within Whiskerdoom’s alcove. I saw his iron collar twitch of its own accord.

  The great wizard-sized door opened and That Voice roared, “Out, Whiskerdoom!”

  “Enough, Wurm,” soothed the voice of Mistress Voyd. “Let it be. It’s not worth—”

  “You correct your familiar, I’ll correct mine. Out!“

  The collar rattled. I held still.

  “Very well,” said Mistress Wurm. “Your willpower’s increased. I’m impressed. I have business in the city and can’t waste time with you. You must emerge eventually, if only to eat. Those mice were barely nibbled. There’ll be no food until we have words.” The door boomed shut.

  The collar ceased its shaking, but my own commenced.

  For I recalled now where I’d encountered Wurm’s voice before—in the hulls of the Scatterwind Market when I’d heard her discussing, with someone named Ruingift, the destruction of the city.

  Yowling echoed through the tower.

  After it stopped, there was a great silence. Eventually Quickfang and Hauntclaw slipped into Whiskerdoom’s nook. I stayed curled up, head under paw.

  “He’s not back yet,” Hauntclaw said. “Mistress Voyd’s never kept Nightwise this long.”

  “It’s all your fault,” Quickfang said.

  “How?” I said, slowly uncoiling to face them.

  “How?” said Hauntclaw. “What do you mean, ‘how?’ You stayed at the Orb!”

  “And you lacked your collar,” Quickfang said. “That meant Mistress Wurm couldn’t summon you back. And that made her angry.”

  “To be fair, she’s always angry lately,” said Hauntclaw. “But this sure doesn’t help. She may have goaded Mistress Voyd into punishing Night
wise. That’d be just like her.”

  I regarded the collar, with the truth about Mistress Wurm on the tip of my bristly tongue. “How do I wear it?”

  “It’s too late for that—” Hauntclaw said.

  “Wait,” Quickfang said. “Why?”

  “Because,” I said, “if I go to the Underseers, maybe they’ll go easier on Nightwise.”

  “You’d do that?” Hauntclaw said.

  “I had assumed,” Quickfang said, “you kept the collar off by choice.”

  “Whiskerdoom didn’t tell me how,” I said. “I would wear it now, if I could make life easier for Nightwise.”

  Quickfang studied me. Proud though I was, I felt like an insect. She said, “You may be right—your appearance may ease things for our colleague, whether or not you don the collar. Perhaps having the collar will perpetuate your and your brother’s deception, if you wish.”

  Hauntclaw said, “If Wurm uncovers your ruse, it may go a lot worse for Whiskerdoom later.”

  Quickfang said, “Wurm is cruel but unobservant. She is the sort of human who thinks she knows all truths before she even sees them. Shadowdrop... lower your nose into its center and purr. You must believe in the purr. Do what is necessary to attain that state. You might imagine yourself a kitten, and pretend the collar is the jaw of your mother. You might, if you are truly pathetic, envision yourself in the lap of a human being. Whatever thoughts can ease you into believing that submission is joy, use those, and the collar will leap to encircle you, for a split second, dividing.”

  “How do you get it off?” I asked.

  “Dream about the hunt,” said Hauntclaw. “But do it soon. It gets harder and harder to remember the chasing and the pouncing and the heartbeat pounding, the longer you’ve got the collar on.”

  I wondered at the hidden aspects of Whiskerdoom, that he had managed to remove his. Slowly, I lowered my head—but my attempt was interrupted.

  The great metal door opened. Pale hands lowered a black cat into familiars’ territory. Nightwise walked stiffly to his alcove. The hooded shape of an Underseer lingered for a long moment at the opening before the door clanged shut.

  “Nightwise,” called Hauntclaw. We all followed as he slunk to his lair.

  As we crossed the threshold, Nightwise spun and hissed. He appeared physically unharmed, but his movements were the opposite of catlike grace. “Stay away,” he said. “Especially you, Shadowdrop. I wish you had never come.”

  We three backed out, regarding each other in silence.

  “Perhaps it is best you go,” Quickfang said at last.

  “‘Perhaps?'” Hauntclaw scoffed.

  “I have to wait until sunset at least,” I said, not meeting their gazes. “To keep up appearances.”

  “Then Whiskerdoom will return,” Quickfang said. “Things will at last resume their normal pattern.”

  No they won’t, I thought. I wanted to tell them about Wurm. But I couldn’t make myself speak. And why would they respect anything I said? And would they side with Wurm regardless? I slunk away to the least conspicuous shadow and dropped myself there.

  Sunset blazed bloodily as a slaughterhouse on a coronation day. Whiskerdoom had not returned. I decided I couldn’t wait. I was doing no one any good, including, significantly, myself, so I descended the stair.

  “Where are you going?” whispered the scratching post.

  “Away.”

  “Oh.” He sounded disappointed.

  “What is it to you, Postgrad?” I snarled.

  “Well... it was nice to have someone to talk to. I mean, someone who didn’t want to cause me pain.”

  “There’s nothing for me here. And I have to warn...”

  “Warn?” Postgrad surprised me by taking me seriously. “Warn whom? What about?”

  I hesitated. But if you can’t confide in a scratching post, whom can you confide in? “It’s Wurm,” I said as quietly as I could. “She’s up to something terrible. I don’t really understand it. I have to warn someone.”

  “I can readily believe she’s up to something terrible. Have you alerted the familiars?”

  “Won’t they take Wurm’s side?”

  “Is Wurm betraying her duties?”

  “I am pretty sure.”

  “I’m no fan of the familiars, but they believe in duty.”

  “Even so, I’m not sure they would believe me.”

  “Hm. Well, find a human!”

  “I’m just a cat. Humans don’t understand us.”

  “I understand you.”

  “You’re not human.”

  “I was human. I could tell someone. It would delight me to foil Wurm.”

  I regarded him dubiously. “You are a scratching post.”

  “That is not my fault.”

  “If you warned a human, they would say, ‘Aieee, it is a talking scratching post.’ I suspect that would be their full response. Until they fetched an axe.”

  “You may be right. And there is the problem of transport. Hm... Aha!”

  “Yes?”

  “The Orb.”

  “I don’t like where this is going.” I said.

  “The Orb can send messages. If you could bring me to the Orb, I could speak through it. I would be a disembodied voice, reverberating with tinkles of crystal, arising as if from the ether, like a spirit speaking from unfathomed realms beyond the grave and therefore much less disturbing than a talking scratching post.”

  “Are all your plans like this?”

  “Ever since I planned to be a wizard.”

  I said nothing, realizing with some horror that I was actually considering it. I could hear human movement elsewhere in the tower.

  “All right.” I started clawing him.

  “Hey! What did I do?”

  “This isn’t to hurt you. I need to tip you.”

  I leaned Postgrad over, using my own tail to muffle the noise of impact. It hurt like a booted foot, and I suppressed a yowl. From there I carefully backed myself down the stairs, clawing Postgrad along.

  “Shadow—ow—drop, I’m not—ack, so sure—urg—about this.”

  “Too late now. There’s no way I’m getting the Orb up the stairs, but I can get you most of the way to the Orb.”

  “Be—urk—careful. I—ngh—hear the talk—oof—of wizards.”

  At the bottom of the stairs I listened. Luck, not just luckbane, was with me. It seemed the wizardly conversations were happening overhead, echoing down from the human-sized stairway that curved along the wall. I caught the voices of Voyd and one of the males. I made out a few tantalizing words, like probaballistics and candlequicks and dracotectonics. The rest were inaudible, or at any rate even more mysterious.

  I tugged Postgrad bit by bit across the floor of the grand workshop. A gentle light emanated from the Orb. I hauled the scratching post beside the Orb’s table and leapt up.

  A creak made me stop and peer upward. One of the cages of junk twisted on its chain. A stray breeze perhaps? I returned my attention to the Orb.

  My task was to roll the great crystal onto the floor. It would contact Postgrad, and Postgrad would contact help. Simple. But I had to prime the Orb by selecting someone. I pawed books out of the way to clear a path, every moment fearing creaks and sighs. Whom to contact? The Emperor? The head of the Archaeoguard? At last I decided on the chief of the Overgazers.

  I raised my paw. But a sudden impulse came over me, just as one might be stalking a bird and become distracted by a tasty moth.

  “Whiskerdoom,” I mewed, paw upon crystal. “Find me Whiskerdoom.”

  Light swam and sparkled, before darkness shrouded the Orb. I feared I’d botched something. Then my eyes adjusted to a dim illumination and my ears detected a waterfall. A black cat crouched in the same spot I’d located Zik, though no humans were visible.

  “Whiskerdoom.”

  “Shadowdrop?” came his voice. “Is that you? Not some trick?”

  “It’s me! What’s happening?”

  “I ma
de it, through cleverness and athletic prowess, into the Scarside catacombs. Embarrassing to admit it but I like your human. Acceptable chin scratches. I find myself so loyal now, you’d think I was a dog. The shame! But I must remember I am a cat, and a great one! It took a familiar like me to discover the secret passage from the left heel of Emperor Garn into the tunnels.”

  “You found the boys?”

  “There was more than one? You’d think they’d make more noise. No—but I have found monsters! I think they may have a considerable presence here. In fact, I think they are coming for me. It is very exciting.”

  “Run, Whiskerdoom!”

  “I am shy on escape routes and flush with precipitous falls... Shadowdrop! Of course! You can inform Mistress Wurm!”

  “Um.” Fear churned in my gut like bad milk. “Wurm is working with the monsters.”

  “Surely not!”

  “I’ve heard her voice in the underworld. I didn’t know it was Wurm’s until today.”

  “She wouldn’t do that... would she?”

  “Trust your sister, brother. We have to warn the city. Somehow you must talk to a human.”

  Pairs of red eyes filled the vision within the Orb. The black patch that was Whiskerdoom edged back toward the brink.

  “I’m a little short on humans right now. You will have to find a way.”

  “Whiskerdoom, watch out, they’re—”

  “Beware, Shadowdrop, for I hear a candlequick—“

  Something seized me.

  The dim light of the Orb went out. I yowled and kicked and bit. The grip was not fleshy but waxen. My claws dug in, but the servitor admitted no pain.

  Our tussle knocked the Orb loose. I felt like a player of Treatment forced to draw side-effects, as the Orb dropped, bounced, and chimed.

  “Shadowdrop!” Postgrad hissed. “Who do I—”

  I heard no more as the waxen thing and I rolled off the table together. Impact broke our grapple. The Orb flared just then, and I got a good look at my foe. It was a large candlestick with eight fused smaller candles serving as limbs. As I watched, the wicks ignited. The overall effect was that of a brass spider on fire.

  Wizards were cursing. Cats were racing. The Orb’s light died, but at least the flames marked the candlequick as it lunged, and I scurried out of reach.