by Alec Hutson
“What is it?” Whisper said, his shadowblade leaving its sheath with a hiss.
“I’m not sure,” Demian replied, pausing to unpack the lantern he had brought. “But I have my suspicions.”
The walls of the corridor were pocked with holes, dark niches the lantern’s light revealed to contain skeletons. Most appeared to have been undisturbed since they had been laid to rest, their bony hands laced across their chests and their jaws shut, as if they had died while sleeping. But as his light skittered over the bones Demian noticed that on more than a few skeletons were the signs of violent ends. Here a skull had clearly been staved in, and here the ribs had been shattered. Light glinted among the yellowing bones: a tarnished copper disc inscribed with the sunburst of Ama hung around the neck of one skeleton. As Demian slowly walked down the passage, he noticed the same amulet in every niche.
“These were the Pure,” Demian said. A tingling puissance radiated from the bones, making his skin crawl. He tried to grasp his sorcery but felt it slither away, smoke between his fingers. It was like death had concentrated the power wielded by the paladins in life, and Demian shivered. He had been collared once before, an age ago, and it had felt the same. Like he had suddenly been rendered deaf and blind.
Surprisingly, he felt a thin trickle of fear. Foolish—he was not only a sorcerer, but a shadowblade and a swordsinger. No warrior had trained for as long and with the same discipline as he had.
Even still, he should be careful. Demian crouched in the middle of the passage and drew forth a slim object.
“What’s that?” Whisper murmured, turning from the bones he was examining.
“A precaution,” Demian said, standing the corpsetallow candle and its cold flame in a metal holder.
“You took that from the meeting place?”
“Yes.”
“But that is the beacon. What if more of our brothers arrive in the city?”
Demian set the candle down on the stone and stood. “How many have arrived in the last fortnight?”
There was a pause. “Just you.”
“And likely no more will come before we return.”
They left the sallow light of the corpsetallow candle flickering behind them, and the faint silver and blue glow was quickly swallowed by the blackness. Demian kept the lantern lit as they passed through the winding corridors of the catacombs—one of the powers bestowed on shadowblades was the ability to see in darkness, but the gift was not total. The lantern illuminated far more, even though Demian could tell Whisper was becoming agitated. Those who grew up under the mountain preferred the darkness.
“What if someone sees the light?”
Demian smiled faintly. “I pity any poor soul that stumbles across us.”
They continued through the twisting labyrinth, choosing corridors at random when they diverged. Despite Whisper’s concerns, they did not meet any guards or inquisitors—the catacombs seemed abandoned, just a sprawling crypt. Demian tried to keep a rough count of the number of skeletons they passed, but quickly gave up. There were thousands, at least, and while most had been placed in the wall niches, a few were laid down on stone biers in small antechambers off the main passages. Some of these paladins still clutched their white blades, that unnatural metal untarnished despite so many centuries.
Several times they found themselves where Demian was certain they’d been before—there was little to distinguish the corridors, but he was sure he had seen a skull canted the same way, or an identical bit of fallen masonry littering the ground. He was considering laying down some kind of trail so they’d know if they were walking in circles, but then Whisper drew in his breath sharply.
It was a larger entrance than they’d seen, the ceiling slanting upward to accommodate thick stone columns, and as they approached Demian could see what was engraved upon the broad lintel: the sunburst of Ama above a message in archaic Menekarian: ‘The Light Will Reveal’. And there was indeed light within; it puddled in front of the entrance, burnishing the stone a rich gold. It did not flicker or dance like the light thrown off by flame—it looked, unbelievably enough, like daylight.
Demian set down his lantern and crept closer. He pressed himself against one of the columns and peered into the chamber. It was vast, soaring more than a hundred span high and extending perhaps a thousand across, empty save for a few tiered steps that climbed to a platform in the middle of the room. Light pierced the wall high up near the ceiling and lanced down to illuminate the top of the dais and the woman who hung there motionless. Chains extended from her slim arms, vanishing into the blackness, and her bare feet dangled above the platform. The robe she wore was in tatters; dark lash marks laced her back, and rivulets of dried blood reached down her legs. Her long black hair was matted and tangled.
Alyanna.
Demian rushed into the chamber, ignoring Whisper’s startled cry to wait. He didn’t care—he hoped there was someone here for him to kill. He would tear down the palace if she was dead.
He bounded up the steps three at a time, dreading that he would put his hand on her and find her flesh cold. Relief flooded him when he gently touched her leg and it twitched in response.
“Weaver,” he said softly, coming around in front of her. “Can you hear me?”
His heart quickened as she stirred, lifting her head slightly. Demian sucked in his breath when he saw that her face was a mess of purple and black; her lips were split, and around her eyes was so swollen and bruised he doubted she could open them.
“Demian… ” she rasped, before a shudder passed through her and her head fell again.
“I’ll get you down,” he said, drawing forth Malazinischel. He sliced through the chains and caught Alyanna as she collapsed into his arms.
“Be careful… ” she murmured into his ear “… my slave… ”
“Undying One!” hissed Whisper from where he crouched at the base of the steps, pointing towards the entrance they had come through. A fat man stood in the doorway, the light from the lantern Demian had left outside the chamber shadowing his features.
“Greetings! Please excuse my surprise—I had no idea guests would be stopping by today.”
The accent was Shan, so this must be the black vizier of Menekar. Demian’s grip tightened on his sword’s hilt. Cut! Bleed! Malazinischel shrieked in his mind, and Demian did not try to dissuade the blade. This was the one who had taken Alyanna—almost certainly it was on his orders that she had been tortured. Demian kept expecting for a regiment of guards or the Pure to rush into the chamber, yet no one else came as the vizier strolled a few steps closer and crossed his arms over his chest, slipping his hands into his long sleeves. He did not seem worried.
“I know that sword. How many of my kin did you slay, swordsinger?”
Coldness filled Demian. The genthyaki. Alyanna’s pet had somehow survived and slipped its leash. He had hunted them down long ago, before the cataclysms, but always with other sorcerers at his side. They were the most dangerous enemies he had ever faced—faster and stronger than any warrior, capable of drawing as much sorcery from the Void as the greatest of Talents.
He might die here today.
The long shadow cast by Demian and Alyanna stretched down the steps, and Whisper moved closer to it. Demian knew what he was thinking and almost bade him stop—perhaps if they waited for the genthyaki here they could try and attack it from two sides. Then again, a shadowblade in the back would also kill the creature.
Whisper vanished as he touched the edge of the shadow. Now the beast had to be distracted.
“I killed many of your kind, monster. Malazinischel remembers the taste, and hungers for it again.”
The genthyaki sighed. “Ah. A thousand years, and still you prattle and boast. Age does not make your race wiser, it seems.”
“Yet for all your power, your race has always skulked in the shadows.”
The
genthyaki chuckled. “Skulking in shadows, you say… ” He withdrew his hands from his sleeves. Then he moved, faster than Demian thought possible, whirling and reaching into the darkness beside him. Whisper came stumbling out, wrenched forward by the genthyaki’s grip on his arm.
How was this possible? Even from this distance Demian could see the shock in the shadowblade’s eyes, visible above his veil. He tried to pull away, but he might have been straining against iron.
“We built the paths in the darkness, manling,” the creature hissed, shaking Whisper like he weighed nothing. “And you think you can hide from me in them?”
The genthyaki clamped his other hand on the shadowblade’s collarbone. Then, as if he was pulling a fly’s wing from its back, he casually ripped Whisper’s arm from his shoulder. The sound of cracking bones and tearing meat was terrible, but Whisper’s screams were worse. Blood gouted from the gaping hole, soaking the genthyaki’s dark robes. With a contemptuous snarl he tossed the severed arm aside, then scooped the shadowblade’s throat from his neck.
“Weaver… Alyanna… ” Demian said numbly.
He felt her small hands tighten on his back. “Kill me,” she whispered.
The genthyaki was stalking towards them, the shape of the black vizier molting away to reveal the monster beneath. Gray flesh erupted from its dark robes, studded with curling thorns, as the nubs of leathery wings pushed from its back. The creature swelled huge and lean and terrible, its face twisting into something that resembled a horse’s skull. One side of the genthyaki’s face had been scarred by fire, the burned flesh pink and glistening.
He could not fight this thing. Perhaps if he could call upon his sorcery . . . but not here, with the bones of the Pure dampening his power.
There was only one chance.
“Alyanna, you must be strong. I can take us away, but there will be pain. Can you stand it?”
She said nothing, but he felt her shift against him. He took that for acceptance. “Brace yourself,” he said, and stepped into the shadow cast by the hanging chains.
He stood upon the stones hovering in the emptiness. Alyanna gasped as the coldness washed over her—the first time in this place, he knew, was like being thrown into an ice-cold lake. The shadowblades spent years hardening their bodies against the chill so that they could withstand it for a few hundred heartbeats. Alyanna had far less time than that before she slipped into shock and died.
Hoisting her over his shoulder, Demian began to run. He watched where every one of his steps fell upon the narrow path; a single mistake, and they would plunge into the abyss below. He desperately hoped she would not start thrashing when the cold became too much to bear.
He stumbled and nearly fell as a shriek erupted from behind them. God’s blood, the genthyaki has followed us here! Alyanna moaned, and Demian gritted his teeth and plunged on.
After passing the light that represented the lantern he had set outside the chamber the path did not diverge; no other glowing doorways hung in the emptiness, as there were no other shadows in the endless blackness of the catacombs. Except for one.
In the distance he glimpsed a hazy point of silver light. He was surprised it was so close—the straight path to where they had entered the catacombs was not actually very far. He willed himself on faster, until his legs ached and his breath burned ragged in his throat. At any moment Demian expected to feel the genthyaki’s claws at his back, tearing Alyanna away and shredding his flesh. But it did not come, and for a brief moment he allowed himself to hope the genthyaki had vanished… but then the shriek came again, closer than before. Alyanna gave a strangled sob.
The light swelled closer, and he could see the vaguely man-shaped soul writhing in the dark. While the corridors in the catacombs had twisted and turned, the path in the blackness ran straight and true, through walls and solid rock. It had been less than a hundred heartbeats, but already Alyanna must be feeling the toll of this place.
Eighty paces.
Fifty.
Demian heard the rasp of talons scraping against stone.
Thirty.
Ten.
Another piercing scream, so close he imagined he felt the monster’s hot breath on his neck.
He threw himself forward, into the light, and landed hard on the stone floor of the catacombs. Screaming in triumph, he scrambled to smother the corpsetallow candle, willing the soul into oblivion.
Darkness rushed in. Demian collapsed on his side, gasping. After a moment, he squirmed closer to where Alyanna lay unmoving and turned her over.
“Weaver… speak to me. Please.”
He saw with the twilight eyesight of the kith’ketan her throat working to form words.
“Kill me,” she croaked again, and a tear trickled from her swollen eyes.
“Weaver, we escaped. But it will come after us once it finds a way out of there. We need to flee. I can carry you, I just need a moment to gather my strength.”
She shook her head weakly. “No… Demian. Kill me.”
“Why?”
With a great effort, she forced her eyes open. A brilliant golden light flooded the passage, and Demian recoiled in horror.
Alyanna had been Cleansed. She was one of the Pure.
They skirted the edge of the great southern city of Gryx, where the Iron Road ended, staying outside its tall red walls in one of the trading towns where caravans made camp. The next morning, they were awoken by the prayer horns of the Lonely God winding in the city, and they emerged blinking from their guesthouse to find a hundred believers of the Keshian faith prostrating themselves before a great tongue of flame dancing within a copper brazier. A passing merchant informed them that in the great square of Gryx there was a flame as tall as a palace’s tower, a ladder of fire into the sky begging for the Lonely God to abandon his solitude and climb down to join his followers once again.
Keilan also saw one of the pens where slaves were stabled. Nel told him that this muddy encampment ringed by guards was but a shadow of the massive markets within the city where the Fettered were bought and sold. Most of the people Keilan saw milling about in the camp didn’t seem angry or scared—more resigned than anything else. When he told this to Nel, she had nodded, and said most of the slaves had been sold into servitude by their own families to pay off some debt or escape famine. Slavery, in some ways, was safer than being poor—you would likely be bought by someone with wealth, so you would always have food on your plate and a place to sleep. And while Keilan saw a few sullen, angry-looking men, Nel told him that usually they did not end up in these markets. They would be sent to the fighting pits, and their lifeblood would mingle with the red sands in front of a roaring crowd.
Listening to the stories of the harsh lives of slaves brought back memories of the nights along the Wending Way, teaching Xin how to read. The Fist brother had been willing to trade his life for the knowledge his masters had denied him. Keilan suspected that some of these slaves he now saw, with their carefully blank expressions, secretly harbored similar thoughts.
After Gryx, they followed a road that climbed into the Blackmonts, heading towards the Kingdoms. These were the largest mountains Keilan had ever passed through, though they paled in comparison to the vast peaks he had seen towering to the north as they’d ridden along the Wending Way. He grew a little dizzy as they went higher, but the feeling vanished the next day when they descended into a valley filled with familiar-looking trees.
As they crested one of the last foothills of the Blackmonts and saw the red forests of the Shattered Kingdoms sweeping out into the distance Keilan had felt something in his chest, a mix of excitement and panic. Somewhere ahead of them, over the rolling sea of leaves, was his village. Sella. Mam Ru. His father.
He had been born there and lived his whole life among the mud huts and fields and forests. He had fished with the other villagers, eaten with them, helped them rebuild their homes af
ter storms. And in the end, they had turned their back on him and let a paladin of Ama take him to what they certainly must have assumed would be his death.
And they had murdered his mother.
“Are you all right?” Nel asked soon after they left the last of the hills, matching his pace as they rode beneath arching branches, some of which were bare, some still speckled with color.
“Yes. I’m just… ” He struggled to put what he was feeling into words.
“Nervous? Scared?”
“No… ”
“Angry?”
Keilan glanced at her, and Nel nodded.
“You have a right to everything you feel. They hurt you. And they hurt your mother. I think… I think you have a lot buried deep down inside you. It will need to come out, eventually, or it will fester and become something worse.”
“You told me your mother was murdered,” Keilan said. “Did you forgive?”
Nel looked away. “No,” she finally admitted. “I never did. For years I hated, and it poisoned something inside me. I couldn’t… love others. Except for Vhelan, and he became my family. He kept me alive during those years in the Warrens. Otherwise I would have turned into something else and ended up dead in a gutter. It wasn’t… it wasn’t until I met Xin that I felt like I could open myself to another person.”
Keilan’s hands tightened on the reins. “What about the men who took my mother? Can I forgive that? Can I forgive… my father for not stopping them?”
Nel was silent for a long moment. “I know it will be difficult. Perhaps forgiveness is the wrong word. Maybe you can try and understand why they did what they did. Your village… what is it like?”
“It’s small. Poor. We never had much. My mother’s books might have been the only ones in the village.”
“Did you feel that way when you lived there?”
“No.”
“Why?”
Keilan swallowed, suddenly understanding. “Because… I didn’t know any better. All I knew was the village.”