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

by Shadowdrop (html)

  So I tore at the ruby crystals in her skull.

  She yanked me by the scruff and threw. I was getting used to being airborne. A shame I wasn’t getting any better at it. This time I landed among the Underseers, and I took my opportunity where I found it. I leapt upon Wurm anew, and she screeched.

  Suddenly hands seized her from either side and she went still. Very still indeed.

  As I dropped to the stone I apprehended that she’d become a marble column, supporting the ceiling. A hint of her startled expression remained within the veins of the stone.

  Beside her, Masters Hake and Slint had likewise transformed, grim faces suggested in the stone by ripples and cracks.

  Mistress Voyd’s head was bowed. “It’s the last devotion of the Underseer,” she said, “to become part of the city we defend. My colleagues sacrificed themselves to stop Wurm... and gave her an honorable ending.”

  “You won’t receive one,” said Ruingift, advancing as the earth shook.

  Yet as she spoke a tide of snarling darkness swirled into the chamber.

  A hundred black cats crossed Ruingift’s path.

  The earth trembled again, and half the temple’s ceiling collapsed upon her. She raised her face as if to ward off the rubble with her ruby eyes. The three crystals glowed like compact furnaces. But they’d been loosened by my assault, and, unluckily enough, they all chose that moment to topple out of her head, trailing red ichor as they fell.

  The weight of history buried Ruingift.

  Our nook of the chamber survived. Near the transformed Underseers there was a pocket of improbable stability, in which crowded our little empire of cats and the three humans.

  Old Grimtail told me, “Shadowdrop, good to see you again. Close up, this time. The Overwatchers broke the terror Ruingift had us under. I’m just sorry we weren’t in time to claw the stuffing out of her. And that we’re all doomed, of course.”

  “Mistress,” said Nightwise, nuzzling Voyd. “I’m sorry I defied you.”

  “I regret we didn’t recognize the danger,” Voyd said. “I regret many things. It took Emperor Rel summoning me to make me understand.”

  “Indeed,” said Quickfang, for she and Whiskerdoom were among the cats as well. “But that is the past, and this is now.”

  Zik was shaking his head. “So, the cats talk?“

  “Yes, brother,” said Tru. “I wasn’t just crazy. Maybe someday you can learn how.”

  Quickfang sighed. “I don’t think there will be any somedays. The emperor told us there’s no stopping the Elddrake’s awakening. It will, at minimum, stir sufficiently to destroy the city before it settles again. I’m afraid this is goodbye.”

  “This chamber can hold for a time,” Voyd said, “but inevitably it will fall.”

  She was a wizard. She must be right. And yet.

  “We are all here,” I told the assembled cats. “Kindred, I’m the strongest of you. It’s no secret, though I’ve long kept to myself.”

  There were a few cries of dissent but many more of encouragement. “Shadowdrop will save us!” one voice rang out.

  “What I have long feared,” I pressed on, “I embrace. I am the bringer of bad luck, and bad luck can help us now. Let me lead you to the Elddrake himself.”

  “Shadowdrop will get us killed!” the voice amended.

  Nightwise stepped beside me, wordlessly showing his support. Impulsively, I nuzzled him. I felt brave, my strength rising even as all things were tumbling down.

  At that moment Hork and the hellsnouts roared into the chamber.

  I felt compassion then, for in their own way they’d suffered at the hands of Ruingift, even as had we. Underground with us, they would surely perish. I screeched, “Bad luck!” and my kindred all did the same.

  Whining, Hork and his ilk scurried from that place with tails tucked between their legs.

  “Heh,” said Whiskerdoom. “Bad luck does have its good side. You really think we can stop the Elddrake?”

  “This is our last card,” I told them all. “Today we hunt.”

  And so I led them down, farther from the sunlight than I’d ever been, instinct guiding me through the tunnels, waves of luckbane parting the earth where needed, following the vision I’d seen before within the Orb.

  And after what seemed an endless dark race, we found the very Pit that marked the cavern of the Elddrake’s eye.

  Nightwise and Whisperdoom gasped beside me, staring up at the oval eyelid of rock, big as the city. “Well,” Whiskerdoom said, “as last things to see before dying, I admit it’s fairly impressive.”

  “You should see it as we saw it in the Orb,” I said, “with its eye opening.”

  There was a rumbling and a shaking all around.

  “I think he may get that chance,” said Nightwise. “So what do we do now?’

  “Follow my lead,” I said, and ran onto the great oval path below the eye. The others followed, a great dark wave of skewed probability.

  Overhead the rock trembled. Flecks of stone fell upon us as we ran, and a great windy whispering arose. Some of the whispering formed words.

  CATS, the words said. I TALK IN MY SLEEP, DREAMING OF CATS.

  Here goes, I thought. “We must remain a dream, O benefactor.”

  WHY? THE FIERY LETTERS TICKLE MY BRAIN. I AM AWAKENING.

  “If you wake now, great one, you will perish. Or at least go blind in one eye.”

  EXPLAIN, CAT.

  “If you awaken, your eyelid must open. And as it sweeps across this immense chamber, we will cross its path.”

  There was a pause. The rumbling did not cease. MY EYELID WILL SWEEP YOU ALL INTO DARKNESS.

  “That is as it may be, but your fortunes will be poisoned. You who gave us this bad luck, you will suffer it all.”

  I CREATED YOU.

  “You changed us. But we have always been, and always will be, cats. We will not be dismissed. We will not let our city be destroyed without a fight. And we will do all these things while looking magnificent.”

  I CREATED... I CHANGED YOU... TO QUELL THE HUMANS. YET YOU SERVE THEM?

  “We serve ourselves. This is our city, which we permit the humans to inhabit.”

  Now the whispering seemed to acquire a chuckle. YOU AMUSE ME, CAT. IT IS NOT YET TIME TO ARISE AT THE ENDING OF DAYS. I WILL SLEEP ANEW. BUT I CANNOT STOP THIS BRIEF AWAKENING... UNLESS I AM CALLED BACK INTO DREAMS.

  “How can this be done?”

  ONE OF YOU MUST SEND YOUR SPIRIT INTO MY EYE.

  “Send our spirit...? What happens to this volunteer’s body?”

  IT WILL PERISH. BUT THE SPIRIT CAN WEAVE TALES FOR ME, SPIN IMAGES, AND SOOTHE ME INTO DREAMING.

  If this was the only way, then I, in my magnificence, was the only one who could manage it. I said, “I am the greatest of us. I will volunteer—”

  “No,” said Nightwise, “I’ve studied luckbane, and the Elddrake. I should—”

  “Out of the question,” said Whiskerdoom. “I am, not to put too fine a point on it, the most learned of the familiars. It shall be me...”

  “You’re all wrong, wrong, wrong,” said Grimtail. “As your elder, the task is surely mine.”

  Other voices took up the call. It was perhaps the strangest, proudest moment of my life, when every member of my tribe offered themselves up, with all the arrogance they could muster, for the greater good.

  The vast eyelid opened a tiny bit, but that was enough to shed blazing light upon the proceedings.

  It will be me, came a human voice. The magic sword business can wait.

  And looking up we saw a distant shadow against the light, a fleck against the blaze, a shadow that might have taken the form of a scratching post before it resolved into a man’s shape.

  Remember me in your claws now and again.

  As the eyelid closed, we heard the voice grow distant, even as it said, An Underseer, an Overwatcher, and a black cat walk into a tavern...

  The eyelid closed like a vault door, and the shaking ceas
ed.

  We came to a halt, and I raised a paw in salute to Postgrad. “We did...” I tried to say, then started over, “We all would have sacrificed...” and finally attempted, “we really...”

  “We are cats,” Nightwise said. “We did as we did. For our own reasons.”

  “As indeed we always will,” said Whiskerdoom.

  “But we must never,” said Grimtail, “and I do mean ever, breathe a word of this to the humans. We have a reputation to maintain.”

  “True,” I said.

  “I’m over here!” my human called out, with Underseers and Overwatchers behind her.

  Things have changed. Things always change.

  The first thing to change was what we experienced when we returned to the surface. Pattering sounds came all around us. Soft coldness spattered our faces. Blinking, it took me a long moment to remember the word rain. The convulsions of the Elddrake had changed the weather somehow, and the drought was over, for now. Soon children were stomping in puddles and adults were staring up with their mouths open. The parade was ruined; this was better.

  I didn’t like rain. I soaked it up, just for the feeling of it.

  The second thing was that Emperor Rel was waiting for us, his rash-covered face bright-eyed beneath the dark hood of a rain-spattered cloak. “I had a feeling you’d prove important to the city, Shadowdrop. You faced your crisis more resolutely than I dreamed. Which is very fortunate, since my enemies proved even more powerful than I feared. You played a good hand.”

  “Or paw,” I couldn’t help saying.

  I envisioned being grabbed by soldiers and dragged to the alchemist Glu, but Rel merely chuckled and said, “Or paw, indeed.”

  “I was lucky,” I said.

  “This time we all were. But you shifted the balance of probability in our favor. The Eldshore must reward you.”

  “There is no reward greater than being a cat.” Apparently something in me couldn’t help but be smart with emperors.

  “Naturally. But even a cat must satisfy her curiosity. The Underseers must be built up anew. You could learn much by joining them.”

  “I have tried being a familiar, Emperor Rel. I don’t think it suits me.”

  “I suspected as much. But there are new openings for a job with fresh air, good food, and flexible hours. How would you like to enlist in my new bureau of Nocturni?”

  “Nocturni?”

  “In earlier days it meant the men of the night, people charged with fighting fires and crimes after dark. I thought I might revive the name, as it is quite appropriate for black cats. But they will not be cats alone, nor avoid the day. There will be humans, and goblins, and delven and perhaps stranger things. For I’ve seen new possibilities in all our denizens working together. Sometimes that is what bad luck does, you know, makes fresh opportunities apparent. You will guard the roads and public places. And if you are willing, Shadowdrop, I do have an immediate task for you and yours...”

  Which brings us to the third thing.

  The folk in the ornate carriages slinking back toward the half-crumbled city walls along Via Antiqua swore as three cats’ black shapes leapt onto the lead vehicle. They hissed again as they noted the smiling, freckled girl (perhaps no longer quite so thin) clutching the leash for the magic-warped bloodhound named Hork in one hand and a bill for civic damages in the other. And cursed once more as their gazes flicked back up to the cats.

  As we used their gold-leafed roof as a scratching post, Nightwise, Whiskerdoom, and I shared a look. We didn’t blame them. We would have been more afraid of us too.

  Thanks to Nicholas Ian Hawkins for advice and cat-lore.

  © Copyright 2018 Chris Willrich