Sisters of Shadow and Light

by Sara B. Larson

  “He had to have been a Rider,” Halvor pressed. “All the Paladin who came to Vamala were, you know. That’s how they tracked down the rakasa. It was far too slow on foot—Vamala is too large. It took us months to get here from Mercarum. But on a gryphon … it probably only would have been weeks. Maybe even less.”

  I nodded as if I did know, too embarrassed to admit that no, I hadn’t known that—and that I didn’t know if my father had a gryphon or what had happened to it if he did. But I’d definitely wondered, and had even let myself imagine it once or twice—what it would have been like to ride on one, to soar up into the sky, the citadel dropping away below me, far from the reach of the hedge, the world opening up before me …

  When the silence drew out long enough to be uncomfortable, he turned back to me and asked, “I hope you don’t find this question impertinent, but what happened to Inara today? I was eager to see her at dinner—to make certain she was all right.”

  It was my turn to stare out the window, at the night-shadowed grounds that were Inara’s domain during the day. I thought of her lying in bed, locked in her room on the opposite side of the citadel from us, hopefully sleeping. I’d never had to explain my sister to someone before—had never spoken to anyone who didn’t already know her, or at least of her. A handful of times some of the villagers had come to the gates, shouting at us through the hedge. Mostly curses, blaming us for some misfortune that had struck the village. Though none of them had actually seen Inara, they called her words I’d never heard before and demanded she pay for their suffering.

  They quickly learned—like all the others who had come—that although the hedge was our captor, it was also our protector and attacked if threatened.

  “What you saw ‘happen’ to her this afternoon—that’s how she is the majority of the time. To have met Inara when she was lucid was … rare.” I spoke to the moon hanging full and ripe in the velvet sky, afraid to see repulsion or worse on his face—afraid of what I would do if I did.

  I’d claimed my mother had loved Adelric fiercely, and I was certain she had, because only a powerful love could have engendered such hatred in its wake. But the love I had for Inara went beyond fierce, it was … everything. My entire life—my every waking moment—was spent thinking of her, taking care of her, wishing I was with her, or trying to come up with a way to help her tap into her power so I could steal a few precious minutes of conversation with her. Even my fascination with the Paladin and my efforts to learn more about them were mostly in hopes of discovering anything useful that might help keep my sister with me longer.

  “She said ‘it’s coming’ before she…” He trailed off, but though he seemed uncertain of how to describe her condition, he didn’t sound disgusted or put off by it. I hazarded a glance at his reflection in the window and saw only concern on his face. “What did she mean by that? What was coming?”

  “She calls it ‘the roar,’” I began, hesitant, unsure, knowing my response would only bring more questions—questions I didn’t want to answer. What I wanted was for him to answer mine. But perhaps if I told him everything, he would be willing to help me—to help her. “She has tried to explain it to me before, during her lucid times. She said it fills her body, so loud and so heavy it drowns everything—and everyone—else out. She can’t control it and she can’t focus because of it. Trying to communicate with her is nearly impossible. She doesn’t have an accent—she speaks like that because she’s had to learn to talk in short spurts of lucidity throughout her life, and the rest of the time, she can barely hear or understand any of us.”

  “What causes it?”

  I shrugged, watching my shoulders rise and fall in the window, my reflection ghostlike in the moonlit glass pane. “I think it has something to do with the Paladin power, but I don’t know for certain. She can … do things. That’s her garden down there—that’s where she spends almost all of her time during the good-weather months. If I can get her to help her plants, sometimes the glow in her eyes … it … um…”

  “Spreads?” he suggested.

  “Yes,” I agreed, turning to him in surprise.

  “That’s how their power works,” he explained. “From what I’ve learned in my studies, when a Paladin suppresses their power, the glow of it is only visible in their eyes. But when they use it, the power travels from the internal source of it somewhere inside them, through their blood and out of their hands, making their veins glow the same way as their eyes. Is that what you’ve seen?”

  “Yes,” I answered breathlessly. He truly did know about them; he knew precisely what I was talking about—and even why it happened. My heart quivered hopefully beneath the cage of my ribs as I stared at him in wonder. “That’s exactly what it looks like. And if I can get her to do that—to use her power, as you said—the ‘roar’ goes away for a few minutes.”

  “And you get your sister back.” Understanding dawned on his face.

  I nodded.

  “Zuhra…” He paused, lifting his hand as if he’d reach out to me, but then thought better of it and let it drop once more. “I’m very sorry. I had no idea when I approached you this afternoon that she … that I was using up your valuable time with her because of my intrusion.”

  “You couldn’t have known,” I murmured, but his apology—his understanding—meant more than I was able to express to him in that moment.

  “All the same, I am sorry.” Halvor stared down at the gardens below us, eyebrows pulled together in an expression I was beginning to learn meant he was concentrating, trying to work something out in his mind. “How often are you able to get Inara to use her power and help her mind clear?”

  “Not nearly enough. Maybe once every week or so.”

  “That’s all? And the lucidity … it only lasts for…”

  “A few minutes usually in the summer. In the winter, when she has to keep her vegetable plants alive inside, without sunshine, it seems to take much more of her power, and sometimes we get a couple of hours together, if we’re very lucky.”

  Halvor shook his head, turning away from the window to pace toward the nearest bookshelves. “So little time…” he murmured, more to himself than me it seemed.

  “Do you see why I need you to tell me everything you possibly can about them? If tonight is all we have—if the hedge lets you leave tomorrow—I need to know anything you can think of from your studies that might help her.” I still clutched the lantern in my hands; the metal handle bit into my skin from gripping it so tightly. “Please.”

  Halvor reached up to touch the spine of one of the books, running his fingers down it as I imagined one would stroke a lover’s jawbone. It was an intimate, almost reverent, touch. Even from where I stood, I could make out the familiar but undecipherable characters of the Paladin language. “Yes … yes, of course,” he whispered, and I wasn’t quite sure if he was responding to me or to some unspoken thought in his own mind.

  “What does it say?” I asked when he didn’t say anything else for several moments. “Can you truly read it?”

  Halvor shook himself and glanced over at me, then back at the shelf where his hand still rested on the books in front of him. “Oh, the book?” He bent closer, studying it, and then, “It’s called Plants of Visimperum—which might prove useful, actually. Perhaps it will have something about this hedge of yours in here.” He pulled the book out, his face glowing with something akin to veneration as he gazed down at the tome in his hands.

  “Visimperum?” I repeated, baffled.

  He glanced up, forehead creased and eyes wide. Apparently “Visimperum” was something else that should have been familiar to me that wasn’t. Before I could ask, he hurried to explain: “That’s the name of the world where the Paladin and rakasa came from.”

  “Oh.”

  “Your mother really has kept you ignorant of … many things.”

  I flushed. “Maybe that’s why the hedge let you in. Perhaps it’s time I learned.”

  Halvor’s eyes met mine. His fingers
tightened around the book he held when he nodded. “We’d better get started then.”

  EIGHT

  “So you believe her power has been trapped without an outlet for too long, and that is why it has this effect on her?”

  Halvor nodded, his honey-brown eyes warm in the lantern light, even though it was nearing dawn and neither of us had slept. His wavy hair was askew from the countless times he’d pushed his hands through it during the night. Books were strewn around where we sat side by side on the floor, our backs resting against the cold windowpane. I’d been nervous to lean against it at first, but Halvor had studied the windows for several long minutes, his eyes wide and fingers pressed experimentally against the pane, before turning to me and assuring me that it was no ordinary window—that it was Paladin glass, created in Visimperum and imbued with Paladin magic making it clearer than any glass manufactured in Vamala, but twice as strong. He’d looked almost as excited about the glass as he’d been about the library.

  “It’s the only explanation that makes sense. She uses that power to help her plants grow, and in so doing, it releases the ‘pressure,’ so to speak, just enough for the roar to recede—albeit only briefly.”

  “That’s the part I don’t understand. If it is a buildup of power, why doesn’t releasing it help longer?” I looked down at the books Halvor had eagerly skimmed, longing to be able to understand them as he did. We’d spent hours there; he scanned the pages silently while I watched and impatiently waited for him to explain what he’d read, trying to wrap my mind around the reality that I was sitting next to a boy, in the library, reading Paladin books together. Talking. I was talking to a boy … and hopefully didn’t sound like a complete fool.

  “Well … I do have one theory.”

  “Yes?” I prompted when he didn’t immediately expound.

  “What if…” He cleared his throat, keeping his gaze down. “Perhaps your sister is far more powerful than you realize. If that were the case, it would stand to reason such a small release of power—encouraging a plant to grow—would barely be enough to clear her mind and only for a few minutes, as you’ve seen.”

  Could it truly be so simple? After all these years of trying and failing to help her … all I’d needed to do was find a larger outlet for her power? “But … what?”

  Halvor had already gone back to his book, flipping pages eagerly, until my question made him pause and look up.

  I clarified, “What else could I do to help her use a greater portion of her power?”

  He placed his finger in the book before closing it to hold his spot. “I’m not sure. What else has worked?”

  I rubbed at my eyes, trying to ignore the sensation of grit beneath my eyelids, as though I’d been standing in a sandstorm for hours instead of a library. “Not much,” I admitted. The burned curtains came to mind, but if she had regained lucidity after accidentally starting the fire, I hadn’t seen it, because Sami had rushed her away while I’d tried to calm Mother down and put out the fire.

  “There must be something more than growing fruits and vegetables.”

  “Is it possible that her power only works on plants?” I shifted on the hard floor. My back ached from sitting for so long, leaning against the night-chilled windowpane. Outside, the moon and stars had slowly been blotted out by clouds of onyx and slate slithering over the distant peaks and creeping across the sky toward the valley.

  Rather than responding, Halvor began rifling through the stacks of books he’d pulled from various shelves. I forced myself to wait, having already learned in the few hours we’d spent together that he often seemed to be ignoring a question or like he’d forgotten to answer me, but in reality was searching for the very answer I awaited. He was so very methodical, from the way he moved, to the things he said, even the care with which he held the books and turned their pages with his long, tapered fingers. A scholar’s fingers, with residual ink stains still on a few knuckles, despite his months of travel from Mercarum to Gateskeep and the citadel. I had to resist lifting my own fingers to compare them to his.

  Finally, he chose one—a beautiful tome bound in black leather with lettering that looked to be gold leaf embossed on the cover. He scooted slightly closer to show it to me until his arm brushed my arm. Halvor seemed oblivious to the contact as he tapped the words on the cover exuberantly, but I couldn’t ignore the proximity of his body to mine—the warmth and solidity of a living person pressed against my side compared to the lifeless chill of the glass at my back.

  “This word here”—he underlined it with his finger—“means ‘power’ in the Paladin language. With any luck, we might find some answers in this book.”

  “Do you really—”

  The door across the library suddenly banged open and Sami rushed in, her nightcap askew and a robe haphazardly tied over her sleeping gown. Her age-worn cheeks were blotchy and her hairline was damp as if she’d run the entire length of the citadel. I launched to my feet, my heart lurching up to my throat.

  “She’s up,” Sami gestured wildly, her eyes frantic. “She already summoned me for some tea. Come! Hurry!”

  Panic seized me and I rushed for the door, the books forgotten in my alarm. I still wore my dress from the night before and my hair was untouched. If Mother found me in the forbidden wing of the citadel—with Halvor—and deduced that we’d spent the entire night there … I didn’t dare guess what punishment she would dole out. She’d preferred a wooden spoon when I was younger, but the days of isolation after trying to open the door to the Hall of Miracles last year came immediately to mind—and that small act of defiance was nothing compared to this.

  The pain, the hunger … those I could handle. But being separated from Inara now, when I’d finally summoned the smallest ray of hope that I might be able to find a way to bring her back to us for longer periods of time—that would be nothing short of torture.

  I glanced over my shoulder to see Halvor following after me, but his speed was hindered by having scooped up as many books as possible to take out with him. Behind him the windows revealed the first blush of dawn limning the cliffs to the east in a smudge of light, barely enough to separate the craggy peaks from the inky sky. But it meant sunrise—and my mother—were coming swiftly.

  “Leave them!” I cried. The thought of abandoning so much knowledge—so many possible answers—was a pain as keen as the crack of a wooden spoon across my knuckles that was sure to come in mere moments when Mother discovered none of us were in our rooms. I hadn’t even thought to muss my bed to make it appear as though I had spent at least a portion of the night there. And if Halvor came dashing through the citadel clutching an armful of Paladin books …

  His eyebrows sank over his crestfallen eyes, but did as I said and dropped the books onto the nearest shelf—all except one, which he stuffed into a pocket of his jacket. It bulged slightly, but didn’t warrant too much notice, especially on a scholar. I hoped.

  As soon as he hurried past me, I remorsefully heaved the door shut, unsure when I’d be back. If Mother somehow discovered what we’d done, it wouldn’t be surprising if she devised a way to ensure that I was never able to visit this wing of the citadel again.

  “Both of you go to your rooms. I’ll try to find a way to divert her, but she’s sure to wonder why I disappeared for so long after her summons as it is,” Sami panted as we hurried through the hallways still enshrouded in the darkness of night, though every window we passed revealed the sable sky ever-lightening to rich indigo shot through with streaks of tangerine.

  In the space of a minute or two that felt like hours, as if we were running through molasses—sticky and thick, sucking at our feet and slowing us down—we reached the cavernous main hall. The sound of our footsteps echoed back to us from the domed ceiling that soared far above us, impossibly heavy with the intricate carvings of rakasa and Paladin locked in battle over our heads as a solemn reminder of what Vamala had once suffered—how the Paladin had done what we couldn’t have done for ourselves, no matte
r what the king came to believe.

  “Do you remember the way to your rooms?” I paused to point Halvor in the right direction.

  “I believe so—”

  “What is the meaning of this?”

  My mother’s cold voice shot ice through my veins, freezing me in place, too terrified to turn. Halvor’s eyes flashed to mine and then past me. My mother’s presence loomed behind us, every bit as foreboding as the hedge outside.

  “Madam, please forgive them. I was lost and called out for help—they were kind enough to—”

  “Spare me your lies,” she snarled.

  The slap of her heels on stone stamped over the harsh throbbing of my heartbeat. She paused to grab my sleeve, yanking me to face her. “Slept in your clothes, did you, Zuhra?”

  I kept my eyes on the ground, my guilt bitter and sharp on the back of my tongue.

  Mother released me and faced Halvor. “What exactly were you doing with my daughter?”

  “Nothing dishonorable, Madam. I swear it.”

  “Nothing dishonorable,” she repeated. “Did you or did you not spend the entire night with her—unchaperoned?”

  “No … that is, not like that…”

  I barely swallowed my whimper of dismay. He’d as good as doomed us.

  “Like that?” It was practically a shriek. “Like what, exactly? Like a young man and an unwed girl alone for the heavens only know how long in the middle of the night? The only proper recourse is to wed her immediately.”

  “Mother!” My face was so hot it must have been vermillion.

  “We were merely reading!” Halvor interjected and my stomach turned to lead. He probably thought himself helping, but he couldn’t possibly know that trespassing into the library was probably a much higher sin than fornicating on my mother’s list.