The Shadow Saint

by Gareth Hanrahan

  “A woman after my own heart.”

  “After my mother won the Crown, Rhaen fell down the backstairs at the palace. She’d been drinking. Such a tragedy.” Daerinth pulls the cloak noose-tight and fastens the clasp again. “She wasn’t prepared for Vigilance, and the necromancers didn’t get to her in time for her to be Supplicant. She died dishonoured, casteless and quietly.”

  “A cautionary tale to all second sons.”

  Daerinth stops by Lyssada’s carriage. Lowers his voice so the guards standing nearby don’t hear him. “Don’t hand it over. Take the sword yourself.”

  “What?” Terevant stares in confusion at Daerinth. Has he gone mad from sunstroke? Why, in the name of the nameless god, is Daerinth telling him to steal the Sword Erevesic? Daerinth, his brother’s closest adviser, First Secretary, a damned prince of the Empire, is urging him to commit an unthinkable betrayal. Or maybe I’ve gone mad.

  Daerinth hisses at him. “Take the sword and go. Your brother’s attention is divided. He is trying to save both the Empire of Haith and the House Erevesic. He cannot attend to both tasks at once.”

  “You’re a lunatic!” splutters Terevant, but Daerinth continues. This isn’t some whim of the old man’s–he’s clearly rehearsed this speech.

  “He desires the Crown, but is held back by his duty to the sword. Better to remove it from reach. You will benefit from this, too, oh, oh.” Daerinth paws at Terevant’s jacket. “Oh, you shall be outlaw for a while, for stealing the sword–but when your brother wins the Crown you can be pardoned and take your place as the Erevesic. Until then, you can forge a new reputation for yourself. There are two straight paths to glory in Haith, the army and the Bureau, and you stumbled and fell on both of them. Take the sword and cut your own path through the thickets!” Daerinth reaches into the carriage, presses some hidden catch beneath the seats. A panel slides open. The sword’s in there. Terevant can hear the blade whispering.

  “Olthic–he’d never forgive me.”

  “I shall make him understand. Do this, and he will be crowned. He shall make a fine ruler. And the Crown sees farther than the living or the dead. He will still love you. Take the blade.” Daerinth steps back. “I said none of this,” he croaks. His hands are shaking. The old man turns his back and shuffles away towards the pavilion, gnawing on his knuckles, leaving Terevant standing by the sword.

  Kelkin’s march down to the Festival field becomes a procession, then an ambulatory rally. Musicians and performers dance ahead of the crowd; others hold banners high, or chant and cheer. Kelkin ignores them all. Eladora tries to push through the crowd to get to him, but the mob’s too tightly packed around him for her to break through–and down at the field, a hundred times as many people wait.

  It’s well after three before Kelkin reaches the podium, and there are interminable speeches by lesser party figures before he’ll be allowed speak. Eladora doesn’t need to hear the speech–she’s written parts of it, other parts Kelkin’s been preaching for half a century, word for word. Any new material will be about his proposal to hire the city’s ghouls as part of the watch to guard against hostile saints; he’ll take what they said in the meeting and through some alchemy of charisma make people eager to have the ghouls watching over them.

  Chants of “KELKIN! KELKIN!” fill the field, swell up and fill the sky.

  Kelkin raises his hands, and the crowd falls silent.

  His speech is hectoring, impatient, full of numbers–everything that should be uninspiring, but Kelkin’s confidence and always bubbling anger give his oratory a fire that elevates it. He manages to be simultaneously the wily old trickster who knows how to pull every lever and work every cheat in the system, and the firebrand who’s going to burn it all down and build something better. He promises to chart a course between the heartless buccaneering of the guilds and the stifling hand of the church; to bring reform and wealth to the city while obscurely hinting that he’ll deal with any threats. A better tomorrow, if only you’ll believe in him–and yourself. No guilds, no gods–just honest hard work, charity and integrity.

  “He’s always been so good at this,” says Voller.

  Eladora’s feeling better now that she’s out in the air, away from the tent and her mother. “Tempted to rejoin the Industrial Liberals?”

  “No,” she replies. “Look at this crowd. They’re here for the Blessing of Flowers, not him. Oh, some will vote for him, but it’s not his city, and never was. He knows love for the Keepers runs deep. The city for the church, and the church for the city.”

  “Love?” scoffs Eladora. “That’s l-l-like saying marrying someone is the same as locking them in your cellar. The Keepers monopolised the souls of Guerdon for centuries! The people had no choice but to worship the Kept Gods.”

  “They’re the gods of our city, child. Our gods, not the monsters of other lands. They love us–why should we not love them in return?” Voller leans in close, whispering in Eladora’s ear so she can be heard over the roar of the crowd. “You should know better than anyone how they delivered us from the Black Iron Gods, and shielded us from the Godswar. Imagine where we’d be without their blessings! Do you really think a few alchemical guns can stop Ishmere from conquering us?”

  “And going all S-S-Safidist is your solution? We have to defend ourselves from mad gods, so let’s feed the worst impulses of our tame ones, goad them until they go mad, too, and turn some of us into m-mothers–into monsters!”

  Voller steps back. “Eladora, child, please. Stop and think–I know you’ve a good brain. The Keepers are not your enemies. Gods below, they’re not even his enemies.” She points at Kelkin, who’s boasting about trade with the Archipelago. “We all want what’s best for Guerdon. We all want peace–and to put an end to the Crisis. And I’d be the first to admit that the Keepers have made mistakes in the past, but the gods have never stopped loving us. The city needs its gods.”

  “That,” says Eladora coldly, “is exactly what my grandfather said.”

  “Oh, you poor broken thing,” sighs Voller. “It’s unconscionable that Effro has you running around the New City, when you still haven’t healed from the Crisis. You should have a chance to rest. To go home and—”

  “Home to Wheldacre? To my mother? How would that be restful?” A memory runs through Eladora’s mind, an image from many years ago when she was a child. Carillon–always Carillon–stole a jar of honey from the pantry, ran off into the barn to eat it. Ants came, drawn by the sweetness. Cari saw that the ants were eating the droplets of spilled honey, so she upended the jar for them on the ground. Eladora remembers the ants drowning in the honey, caught in its sticky kindness, dying of what they most most desired. The terrible kindness of a god.

  Voller continues to plead. “Eladora, please, you could help. Effro could help. Just—”

  Her words are drowned out in the roar of the crowd.

  “The answer is no,” says Eladora. “There’ll be no pact between us.” She expects Voller to be angry, or to plead with her to reconsider, or say–correctly–that Eladora’s only one possible conduit between the Keepers and the Industrial Liberals, and that she can’t speak for Kelkin, let alone the whole party. She expects that false façade to crack, for the feigned honey-sweet concern to turn to something cruel and icy.

  Instead, Voller takes her hand, and says, “Please, keep him from doing anything foolish when he loses.” She speaks with a terrible finality, as if Kelkin’s defeat is absolutely certain. But how can Voller be so sure? The election is still weeks away, the church has scarely budged in the polls, and here, here in the heart of the Keepers’ Festival, the crowd is chanting Kelkin’s name.

  Her mother threw a bucket of water over the dying ants and washed them all away.

  Terevant stands under the sun, feeling the world rotate beneath his feet, trying to make sense of Daerinth’s bizarre outburst. In the distance, across the fairground, twenty thousand people cheer.

  He climbs into the carriage, pulls the sword from its
hiding place. The ornamental hilt, the family crest drawn in gold, and the ancient dark metal of the blade, damascened with lighter ripples that in some lights look like faces or humanoid shapes.

  The sword’s a better size for him than it would be for Olthic. Ter has just the right proportions to wield the blade; Olthic’s massive physique is better suited for some two-handed monster weapon. When Terevant lifts it, it recognises him. The strength of his ancestors surging through his hands, his arms, flowing into his heart, suffusing him. Memory-flashes of other days, of grand battles.

  The sword wouldn’t be his by rights–Olthic’s the heir. The ancestor-souls living in the blade might reject him. He’d never be allowed to join them when he died, and his soul would be left to rot. But oh, before then–he lets himself dream, for a moment in the dark, of being some fabled roguish wandering hero, a dashing renegade flashing like a lightning bolt across the world. The sword would give him strength and speed, a blade that could cut gods and monsters. A mercenary, maybe. Wading through blood and gold, with the burghers of a dozen cities begging him to fight for their cause. Or a hero who fights against cruel and corrupt gods, kicking over the altars of monstrous deities and putting their saints and priests to the sword. Angry gods raging in the heavens, spitting poison and thunder at him, while he flourishes his blade and laughs at the sky…

  It’d make a good poem, but it’s not his life.

  No, his last throw of the dice was at Eskalind, and look how that turned out. The words of the necromancer who attended his father: He must choose quickly, now, which of the other castes to die in. Advice for life.

  He wraps the blade up again, then climbs out of the carriage. There’s another distant roar from the crowd in the main field, as if they’re cheering him on. He salutes the guards as he enters the Haithi pavilion. He glances around, wondering if Berrick’s here, too, doggedly following after Lys, but there’s no sign of the little man.

  There, at the far end of the tent, stand Olthic and Lys. Daerinth’s there as well, waiting like some monstrous clergyman. His eyes flash with fury when he sees Terevant carrying the sword, but he says nothing.

  Olthic’s impatient, Lys with her enigmatic half-smile that he loved to see break into a laugh. She’s wearing a dress for the celebrations tonight, after the conclusion of the festival. She’s heartbreakingly beautiful.

  He walks towards Lys. He walks away from her, too.

  After the speech, Eladora watches Kelkin and his immediate coterie depart, followed by various guild masters and politicians. She should be with them, but the press of the crowd around her is too great. She’s trapped in the throng. At the far end of the field, the sound of a choir swells, and the hymn is taken up by everyone around her. The crowd reorients, shuffling around to face the altar to the south, and Eladora’s forced to move with them, too. The hymn’s one she’s heard many time before, a song of praise to the Mother. Her four sacred aspects, corresponding to the cardinal points of the year. Mother of Hopes, of Flowers, of Sorrows, of Mercies.

  The faithful raise wooden standards, each bearing the name of the village they come from. The standards are made to resemble barren trees, empty branches like skeletal hands.

  Soon, when the priests bless them, they’ll be garlanded with flowers, symbolising the rising life force, the bounty of the harvest and the gifts of the goddess. Children get to climb up on the standards to hang the flowers. Carillon always insisted on climbing to the very top of the Wheldacre standard, when they were young, balancing atop the swaying pole and hurling flowers heedlessly.

  The hymn grows, and Eladora finds herself singing, too, in unison with the crowd. Eladora’s voice soars–she’s never been comfortable singing, she usually stumbles over the words, but today they come like a fountain of honey. Part of her recoils. There’s something sickeningly warm and comforting about this, a soporific heat that makes it hard to think. The sun wheels overhead, as if the whole field is spinning. The sky is brilliant, brilliant blue, marked only by a few puffy white clouds. For a moment, the clouds seem to draw themselves into vaguely humanoid shapes, reaching down from that heaven.

  It would be so easy to give in, to let the crowd carry her. Let her feet shuffle forward with the rest of the faithful. Let her soul flow into the sunlight, or the sunlight flow into her soul. She remembers Saint Aleena carrying her out of danger, fighting for her. Watching over her as she slept. The sword bright in her hand, as bright as the sun.

  She pushes back, tries to fight against the crowd, and suddenly the sun is a lance stabbing at her eyes, blinding her. Her voice breaks, and she can’t remember the words of the hymn any more. She staggers. Someone elbows her in the side, hard, and she stumbles into the path of a large man, who treads on her foot painfully. Eladora struggles through the crowd, going against the flow, and fights her way to the side of the field.

  Here, she can catch her breath. She’s shaded from the sun by one of the tents, and the pain in her head diminishes. Twice today she’s had that strange disorientation–once in the crowd, and earlier, in the tent, when her mother manifested her saintly gift.

  To calm herself, she runs through some of the magical exercises that Dr Ramegos taught her, draws in her sorcerous energies and lets them run out again. Her limbs tingle as the power discharges, but her head is clear again. The clouds are just clouds.

  From here, she can see the line of red-robed helpers, handing out smaller garlands of flowers to the faithful while the priests chant the Blessing of Flowers. People in the city say it brings good luck.

  She recognises one of the helpers, even at this distance. It’s her mother. Silva’s one of a hundred helpers, passing out garlands. The daughter of the Thay family, once part of the wealthiest elite in Guerdon, handing out little bunches of wildflowers to the crowd. A long queue of people pass by the helpers, each one taking a garland. Soon, they’ll hang them on the standards, and the patrol will say a prayer, and it’ll all be over.

  The downward stretch now, she tells herself. There’s nothing between now and the election. None of the other parties have a leader who can challenge Kelkin. The Industrial Liberals will win, and Kelkin will credit her in his victory speech. Appoint her to some position on the university board, and she can go back to her studies. Return that copy of Sacred and Secular Architecture to the library, and apologise for its lateness.

  Eladora stares across the crowd at her mother, as if trying to catch her eye. You enjoy the sainthood you sought, Mother. It’s probably easier for the gods to fill you, since you’re missing a soul.

  And then the hymn rises in her again, the words of prayer becoming irresistible, and she’s pulled back out into the sunshine. The crowd surges forward, carrying her towards the altar. She stumbles, and when she looks up into the sky she sees them.

  Gods above.

  There, raising his lamp of truth, is the cowled form of the Holy Beggar. A giant, taller than the sky. His cloak is the night sky; his eyes hold all the wisdom that can be found through suffering. Beside him, standing in the midst of the industrial pavilion like a colossus, is the Holy Smith. He shambles forward, lifting his hammer.

  Does anyone else see them? she thinks. Maybe a few do–Safidist fanatics, god-touched mystics, sensitive children. The rest of the crowd are almost insensible to the proximity of their gods. The presence is seen only in aggregate–the hem of the Holy Beggar’s robe brushes over the crowd, and a line of people abruptly shiver despite the heat.

  Eladora’s seen the Kept Gods before. She glimpsed them in the Crisis, when Saint Aleena perished. Then, they were frail phantasms, confused and frightened. Now, they’re much stronger.

  Saint Storm strides in from the east. His armour is encrusted with salt and barnacles, but his sword of fire burns bright across the sky. He looks down at Eladora–she cannot see the god’s eyes behind the helmet’s visor, but his recognition blasts through her like a thunderbolt, leaves her twitching on the ground. Hands in the crowd pick her up and carry her, another pilgrim ove
rcome by religious ecstasy. Someone puts a garland of flowers on her neck, but it comes loose and falls to the ground to be trampled by the mob.

  Eladora tries to fight back. Tries to recite a defensive incantation, but she can’t find the words. All that comes to mind is a lecture from Professor Ongent, snidely dismissing the Kept Gods. A typical example of a minor rustic pantheon… patterns drawn from the cycle of life and death, from divisions between us and not-us… unsophisticated, unremarkable… no more intent or wit than a roundworm or a tick…

  The Mother rises from the fields around her. On her brow, a blazing crown of flowers. This is the bright time, the joyous time, before the toils of autumn and the bitter winter. Joy like honey, too-sweet. Eladora retches.

  But this changes nothing, she tells herself desperately. It’s just an aetheric spasm, a spiritual fluctuation. The Keepers lost their grip on parliament a generation ago, when the gods were just as strong. Kelkin still won then.

  The gods look down at her, judge her–and move on.

  They begin to fade from her sight. The Crown of Flowers on the Mother’s brow shrinks. It’s an implosion, an artillery bombardment in reverse. Concentrating, compressing down to a ring of fire…

  Terevant proffers the sword to Olthic.

  His brother, absurdly, glances back to Daerinth for an instant. Daerinth shakes his head, briefly, but Olthic still reaches for the sword.

  He raises it, and souls run down the blade. Pulses of energy flow through him. He’s magnified by it. Already strong, he becomes invincible. Already handsome, he becomes glorious. Already commanding, now divine.

  The three others–the three mortals–in the room are affected differently. Daerinth kneels, groaning as his old joints bend. Terevant can hear wild cheering, exultation, and for a moment he can’t tell if it’s from the Festival outside or from inside his own head.

  Lys hears the shouts from the Festival. She laughs, kisses his brother on the cheek, and whispers just loud enough for Terevant to hear. “I win.”