Of Shadow and Sea (The Elder Empire: Shadow Book 1)

by Will Wight

  “I always...assumed...these were statues,” Zhen panted, punching one stone face before the body inside managed to break free.

  Shera looked to the exit, which seemed impossibly distant. They had no chance of making it while protecting her.

  But she wasn’t the only one who could carry the Heart.

  She dashed the other way, back into the main room, leaving the others stranded in the hallway. There were two dead Consultants still there, and she engaged them, driving her shear at one Child’s dry rib cage. It blocked with its own rusty knife, which must have been invested with years of Intent, as it did not crack under the Gardener’s blade.

  Its partner drove a kick at her ribs, knocking her off-balance, but she turned the stumble into a spin, lunging low and shattering one corpse’s hip. It collapsed to the ground, using its hands to lope after her.

  Shera met three attacks from the Child that was still whole and completely animated, then shoved him back and kicked the half-corpse away.

  In that second of space, she dropped her bronze knife, and gripped the Heart in her still functional hand. Many of the Children that had been sealed in the statues had begun to run her way, so she threw the Heart over their heads.

  She had assumed that they would simply watch as the Heart sailed over their skulls, but one of the first dead Am’haranai leaped into the air, catching Nakothi’s Heart in both hands before landing. In an instant, the other Consultants fell into a defensive formation around the Heart, knives out and bristling like a porcupine’s quills.

  “Why?” Tyril shouted, tone sad and forlorn as though he were begging for an answer.

  “I thought it would work!” Shera called back.

  Now it was the living Consultants’ turn to attack as the dried husks fought a retreat, trying to back through the broken walls. At first, it looked as if Nakothi was backing herself into a corner, but Shera knew better. The labyrinth originally constructed by Jorin Curse-breaker wove in and out of the entire Gray Island. If the Heart escaped this chamber, they would never be able to find it.

  Shera threw herself into the fight with renewed energy, but it was difficult to make any headway. Even one of the ancient Consultants was quick and skilled enough to be a significant opponent, and they didn’t necessarily die when you dealt a lethal blow. Sometimes disembodied hands gripped at her ankles, forcing her to waste precious seconds breaking it free, and distracting her in key moments.

  The dead funneled through the remnants of the shattered wall, trickling toward the back, where Shera could glimpse a dark hole into the distance. The corpse carrying the Heart shoved its way through the crowd, kneeling to squeeze through the hole. Shera fought desperately, but she only had one arm.

  I will give you a new purpose, Nakothi’s voice hissed.

  Then a hand on Shera’s shoulder pushed her aside, and Meia stepped forward.

  She flexed her hands, exposing short claws.

  “Excuse me,” the Gardener said. Then she went to work.

  It was like someone had unleashed a sandstorm in the narrow corridor. In the first instant, Shera had wondered why Meia wasn’t using her shears, as the Children of Nakothi were difficult to kill with any other weapon. She soon saw that Meia didn’t need them—her own methods were brutally effective. She seized a dead Consultant and leaped, crushing its skull to powder against the ceiling. Before its body hit the ground, she had already put her fist through an empty set of ribs in another spray of dust, ripping that enemy in half from the inside out.

  Two enemies came at her with knives, and she simply let them hit, accepting the shallow wounds for the opportunity to grab them each by the top of the skull and pitch them into the crowd. She waded in like a child into autumn leaves, stomping and crunching with each step, moving closer to the hole at the end of the room.

  Shera had to back up, coughing. The air was filled with corpse-dust, and it was getting hard to see through the haze.

  When she made it back into the other room, Kerian asked, “Did she get the Heart?”

  “She will,” Shera said, letting herself collapse against an intact section of wall.

  The typical post-fight exhaustion crashed around her, submerging her in a wave of weakness, and usually she would do her best to fall asleep as soon as possible.

  But the pain in her shoulder throbbed, and she held the wound tight with her opposite hand, slowing the flow of blood. More than that, she was too depressed to sleep.

  She had thought this would be the end. She had wanted so badly for this to be over.

  Now she had no idea what to do.

  Her left-hand shear had been invested by Lucan and the Emperor on top of the hundreds of Gardeners who had used it before her, and it carried such a weight of Intent that it would be able to destroy Nakothi’s Heart. That was still true.

  But the same reason remained valid: if she destroyed the Heart without draining its power first, all of Nakothi’s will would be released, and it would make what happened in this crypt look like a casual alley mugging. If the Heart was strong enough that it could do this, then destroying it might kill and resurrect everyone on the Island, not just Shera herself.

  To Shera, trading the Heart for an island full of Nakothi’s Children seemed like a bad exchange.

  Meia emerged from the crypt a moment later, wiping dust from her eyes with one hand and holding the cloth-wrapped Heart in the other.

  “Here,” she said, tossing it to Shera. It landed in her lap with a wet splat. “I don’t even want to touch it anymore.”

  “What now?” Zhen asked. Tyril was leaning with his forehead pressed against the wall, catching his breath, and Kerian rubbed at her scar with her eyes closed, thinking.

  “I need to talk to Lucan,” Shera said at last.

  She couldn’t think of any other way to destroy the Heart.

  But maybe Lucan could make one.

  ~~~

  When Shera brought the Heart down to Lucan’s cell, he was writing furiously on a stack of papers. As she arrived, he tossed the top paper aside and continued, holding up his left hand to gesture for quiet.

  She had assumed he would feel the Heart coming and would prepare for her, but he seemed absorbed in whatever he was doing. She cleared her throat. “Lucan, it’s—”

  He waved his hand furiously, urging her to be quiet, and his writing didn’t slow down.

  After another minute, she tried again. “This is important.”

  He waved her down and kept scribbling.

  She gave him as much time as she could as her frustration overwhelmed her, which meant she waited another thirty seconds before lobbing the Heart into his room and onto his unmade bed.

  He recoiled involuntarily against Nakothi’s power, his pen falling out of his hand.

  “We’ve got a time limit here,” Shera said. “The longer the Heart goes uncontained, the more danger we’re all in.”

  Lucan sighed in frustration, moved back to his papers as though he meant to continue writing, and then thought better of it. He rummaged around in his bookshelf for a while, eventually pulling a palm-sized chunk of masonry out from behind a book.

  He walked over to the wall separating him from the cell next door and slid the stone into a crack in the wall. It fit perfectly, like he’d gouged it out of that exact spot.

  The sound in the room deadened noticeably, as though someone had shoved a ball of cotton into Shera’s right ear. It was an uncomfortable sensation, and she rubbed a hand against her ear, trying to dispel it.

  “There,” Lucan said contentedly, rubbing his gloved hands together. “Now we can speak freely.”

  “What did you do?”

  He pointed to the wall. “I invested that chunk of stone to absorb sound, and I invested the rest of the wall to amplify its effects. It’s called Sympathetic Investment, and it was one of the skills the Emperor didn’t have time to teach me. But he always wanted me to learn, and I have nothing but time in here, so...”

  “So...you decided to
make me sound like I’m talking underwater?”

  “Now Jyrine can’t hear a word we say.” He chuckled lightly. “The investment isn’t perfect, she could break through it, so I told her she needed to be quiet or you would kill her.”

  “Jyrine?” Shera asked, blankly. There was something distantly familiar about the name, but she couldn’t place it.

  “The Sleepless girl,” Lucan said impatiently. “You kidnapped her and brought her here.” Gingerly, he picked up the wrapped Heart in his gloved hands. “Did you have to put this on my bed? They don’t give me new linens until the end of the week.”

  Shera hadn’t entirely forgotten about the Sleepless woman’s existence, but she’d had more important concerns. The reminder raised an unpleasant realization, and she pulled her knife from behind her back.

  “Thank you for reminding me,” Shera said. She had left Jyrine alive as a mercy, but only because the woman didn’t pose a threat. The last thing Shera needed was a Sleepless near the Heart of Nakothi. Who knew what problems she could cause?

  Lucan jumped to his feet, leaving the Heart on the table. “Wait, wait, wait! Don’t kill her now! I’ve made so much progress!”

  Shera waited for him to explain, but she didn’t sheathe her blade.

  He gripped the bars, looking into her eyes, speaking intently. “Over the past week or so, I’ve been gradually getting her to open up about the Sleepless. She was eager to do it, actually; I think she’s been waiting for someone to talk to. I’ve learned more about the Sleepless cult and their cabal of leaders than the whole Guild knows. I’ve been writing it down for you, so you can take it to the High Councilors.” He gestured to the pile of notes on his desk.

  So that was what he’d been scribbling when she walked in. At least he was working on something relevant.

  “It’s fascinating,” he went on. “But here’s the most important part: they’ve been communicating with her! In her cell! They contacted her again not ten minutes ago. Shera, they expect the power of the Heart to increase. And they’ve told her to...is that blood?”

  Shera raised her collar and peeked inside, looking at her shoulder. She had worn the bandage under her blacks so that Lucan wouldn’t notice, but it appeared that her wound had started to seep through at the edges.

  “It’s not mine,” she said.

  Lucan gave her a flat look and, without warning, tossed his pen through the bars.

  Shera tried to catch it with her left hand, but a shot of pain through her shoulder made the limb freeze in motion. At the last second, she caught it with her right hand instead.

  “I see your old war injury has been acting up,” he said wryly.

  “Only when it rains.” She shook her head. “Never mind that, tell me about the Sleepless.”

  He didn’t give up as easily as she’d hoped. “Who stabbed you in the shoulder? Come to think of it, why do you still have the Heart? I thought you were going to...”

  His eyes widened, and before she could answer, he went on. “Jorin’s curse box didn’t work, did it?”

  Once again, without waiting for a response, he turned back into his cell and peeled off his right glove. As soon as he did, he winced. Shera could understand why: Nakothi’s song was a constant undercurrent even for her, and it must be much worse feeling that power directly with a Reader’s senses.

  He held his hand a foot back from the Heart, palm out, as though he pressed against an invisible wall. “Shera. It’s getting stronger, even now. We have to keep it away from your shear, at all costs.”

  Keep it away? That didn’t make sense. Nothing would happen unless she deliberately stabbed the Heart, and she knew better than to do that.

  “I’m not going to destroy it,” she said, but he shuddered back from the Heart, expression horrified.

  “Light and life...Shera, this isn’t Nakothi’s stored Intent acting on its own. There is a conscious mind behind this. If you destroy the Heart now, and its power is released, it could wake the Dead Mother. We don’t have room for any accidents.”

  Shera held a hand to the blade on her left, from which laughter trickled in a constant whisper.

  “Wait! It makes sense now!” He dashed over to the desk, pulling the top paper off the stack. “The first time, I couldn’t hear them very clearly, and we mostly spoke about the goals of the Sleepless afterwards. This time, I could hear more of it, though not everything.”

  “More of what?”

  “The leaders of the Sleepless,” he said. “Their cabal. They sent a messenger into her cell, probably an Elderspawn.”

  Shera seriously considered drawing her blade. If the Sleepless girl was capable of summoning Elders in captivity, then she needed to be killed, not contained.

  He waved that way. “That’s not important. I could hear some of what they said. They were quite loud, but their words weren’t meant for me, so there was a little distortion. Okay, here we are: they’re pleased that the Heart arrived on the Island, which means they can sense it somehow, and then they tell her, ‘When you feel the Heart’s power wax,’ something. I’m not sure what comes after that. Either way, they’re telling her that something is going to happen when the Heart’s power waxes. They expect it to increase.”

  He jabbed his thumb over his shoulder, at the Heart. “I think they expect you to destroy it. And when you do, and you release the power stored within, that’s a signal for something to happen.”

  Shera rubbed at her eyes. This was too much. She’d thought the Sleepless were all dead, only to find out now that not only were they here, but they’d been able to sense the position of Shera and the Heart all along. And they were prepared to act.

  As though she didn’t have enough to deal with.

  “After that, they tell Jyrine to call for help after she feels the Heart’s power increase, and they repeat it again. It’s very important to them that you destroy the Heart.” He gripped the bars again with his bare hand. “Which means that we have to find a different way to deal with it. Seal it away, or something.”

  Shera took a deep breath, refocusing. It was too easy to get lost thinking about how much she wanted to sleep, but she had a mission to complete.

  “That’s why I’m here, Lucan. The Heart overpowered the seal Jorin left us. And it turned a bunch of ancient bodies into Children of Nakothi, in the process.”

  Lucan’s eyes flicked to her wound, and he nodded. “I can see how that might happen.”

  “So we need a different way to weaken it,” she said. “We need you to come up with something else, because the rest of us are out of ideas.”

  He turned back to the Heart, and what she could see of his face clouded over. “I’m not sure how much I can do. It’s dangerous working directly on an Elder artifact, much less a piece of their body. One slip, and I might turn on you.”

  “Don’t slip,” Shera suggested.

  “You’re a warm and encouraging beacon for these dark times.” His tone was light, but he still didn’t take his eyes off the Heart. “After an hour or two, I’ll need you to take the Heart away from me. And...I might not want to give it up.”

  My power can become yours, Nakothi whispered.

  “I’ll take care of it,” Shera said firmly. She sank down against the wall opposite his cell. “Two hours. That’s a good nap.”

  He turned back to her, still looking grim. “And you can’t always hold this yourself. I can’t emphasize that enough. Assign a team of people to run it all over the island, spreading its influence around as much as possible. We can’t let it pile up in one place.”

  “Don’t pile it,” Shera repeated, drowsy. The rock wall behind her back felt surprisingly comfortable.

  He said something else, but she was already asleep.

  The song of Nakothi was not quiet, so she dreamed of death.

  And of horrible rebirth.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Ten Years Ago

  The old alchemist strode along the ramparts of his castle, cackling. “I can feel you
r burrowing, little worms! Crawl, crawl, crawling along! Well, here I am!” He spread his arms wide, presenting himself to the darkness. “Take your shot, wormy-worm worms!”

  The copper-plated staff in his left hand spat sparks. In his right, he clutched a bright green alchemical lantern.

  He leaned out over his castle wall, raising the lantern to illuminate the ground far beneath him.

  “Come along, now!” he called. “I’ve got all night, but do you?”

  He continued to shout at the darkness as Shera watched from a cramped trunk three feet behind him.

  Albadol Crane was one of the few men alive to have deceived not one but two Imperial Guilds. First, he trained under the Magisters, claiming an Academy education and a noble lineage, neither of which existed. Shortly before he was to earn his staff, the Magisters learned of his betrayal, and confronted him…only to find his room empty, scrubbed clean. He’d left days before.

  But he hadn’t gone far away, as it turned out.

  Using the same document-forging skill that had gotten him so far in life, Crane lied his way in to Kanatalia, the Guild of Alchemists. Even after Crane spent five years among their number, they never spotted his deception. Fortunately, the alchemists proved themselves better at recognizing shattered minds than forged documents.

  After the fourth release of Albadol Crane’s “miracle elixir” coincided with the fourth disappearance of Guild acolytes, the alchemists called for his dismissal and arrest.

  Only one of those actually happened.

  Once again, Albadol Crane slipped the net, moving out to the Aurelian countryside, where he acquired an ancient castle through means unknown. Here he continued his experiments, crossing the Intent of a mad Reader with the cruel poisons of an unhinged alchemist.

  Nearby farmers disappeared at an alarming rate, but no one noticed. Not until the local governor and the mayors of various regional villages scraped together enough coin to hire the Consultants.

  When the Alchemists heard what was going on, they mobilized every Mason, Shepherd, and Gardener left on the island. Shera had heard, through Meia, that they planned to come down on this castle like the fist of an Elder.