Shadowed Ground

by Vicki Keire

  With an entire floor separating her from the unsettling Eliot Gray, Chloe gingerly peeled off her clothes. She heard him turn on music, heard him sweeping up glass, and hung her head. He was stuck cleaning up her mess while she dealt with old ghosts in the form of a dead aunt’s diary and unwanted new memories.

  She ruled out a shower almost immediately, conscious of the burns across her shoulders and neck. She wanted to feel streaming heat, to feel the stink of fire and fighting literally wash off her and disappear down the drain. She knew it wasn’t possible. Forgetting would never be possible; she’d carry the events of that night with her forever, branded into her skin, a silvery map of how screwed up her life was.

  It would have to be a bath. At least, in the bath, she would be able to keep her neck and shoulders above water, and the sting of Eliot’s little needle would lessen after a moment or two. She would change the bandages on her neck and shoulders after, anyway, and then maybe Eliot could help her wash her hair at the kitchen sink. She felt herself flush with anger and embarrassment immediately after having the thought.

  While the tub filled up, she rooted around in the bathroom closet with shaking hands. She found huge fluffy towels. There was a large basket stuffed full of toiletries. It was obvious a woman had stayed here. Chloe thought briefly of her unknown aunt, and of the journal she’d cast aside as soon as she trooped back up to her strange bedroom. I wonder what I’ll find out about her, she thought, and about myself.

  She got a nasty surprise when she finally, after what seemed like days, stripped to the skin. Her knee was swollen and bruised. She remembered twisting it when she fell in a heap in a darkened room. She remembered kicking Griffin. Chloe’s fingers curled into fists as she looked swiftly away. Later. There would be time to deal with her feelings about Griffin when her life wasn’t in imminent danger. One deep breath, then she swept up her hair on top of her head and turned her back to the mirror.

  Chloe saw red flesh scabbing over in places. Two hands spanned her shoulders and neck, burned into her skin like skeletal wings. The thumbs met right at the base of her skull. That part was the most healed. She could just make out a faint silver color pooling in the middle of the thumb-shaped scars.

  Branded, her mind kept repeating. I’ve been branded with their poison and now I look like a tattooed freak.

  She realized her fist was in her mouth to keep the screams inside.

  It’s ok, it’s ok, she told herself fiercely. Things are going to get a lot worse than that.

  But she wondered how she could possibly stand it when they did.

  Wet from the fastest bath of her life, Chloe collapsed into her borrowed bed. She’d scavenged a soft, oversized t-shirt from the room across the hall and threw it hastily on over a pair of too-big boxers. I’m going to need clothes, she thought grimly, rolling up the waistband of the baggy shorts. Her sundress from what seemed like lifetimes ago lay in a singed heap at the bottom of the bathroom trashcan, where she’d stuffed it as soon as she found it in a corner of her room. The fewer physical reminders she had of that night, the better.

  She snatched up the diary, for once grateful the red leather book had the power to distract her. Chloe ran her fingers over the cover of the only recorded history of a past she didn’t remember. Her fingers fumbled with the ribbon. The trembling only got worse as she tore open the envelope with her name on it.

  The writer possessed an elegant, scrolling script. Chloe would have known it for a woman’s hand even if Eliot hadn’t told her it belonged to her dead aunt. She perched on the edge of the bed and began to read.

  Dear Chloe:

  If you are reading this, then the worst has happened. People you love may be dead or dying; you have learned unbelievable truths about yourself; and a strange young man has come to you with dire warnings and death in his eyes.

  You must believe him, Chloe, because the warnings are true.

  The Abandoned have followed us here. I did not think it was possible, after all the sacrifices we made, including having you taken from me. None of us thought it was possible, and we have all been proven fools at the expense of two worlds. You are the only thing left that can hold the portal closed against the very same creatures that destroyed a home you do not remember. If you refuse, then this world will burn too.

  They will speak to you of sacrifice and necessity. They may mention our shrinking wards, and how only you can restore them. They may even tell you of the ritual that requires blood and sacrifice. I will do none of those things. Instead, I have questions.

  Who is your favorite person in this world? Your favorite place? Do you love your music and your cinema, and do you have a cherished book you read over and over again?

  If so, hold those things in your mind. Now picture them burning, the people you love screaming as the Abandoned slay them or take over their bodies. Picture every book ever written floating away when you touch it, because it has been burned to ash. Know that every movie and song you have ever seen or heard exists nowhere except in your memory. Think of these things, because they are the reason you must accept this responsibility, Chloe. Not because of a world that’s dead already, or for a family you don’t remember. No, you must accept this fight because of the world you come from:

  This world. This is your home now, and no matter how much they talk to you of the one that died, this is the one you must defend. You are the only one that can hold the portal closed. Your heritage is important, but it is not the most vital thing we need from you.

  Willingness is.

  I hope what you find in this book offers the explanations you need. I hope it will absolve us all somewhat, for what has been done to you and what is yet to be done.

  Callista

  In the borrowed bedroom where she could just faintly hear waves through the open window, Chloe Burke held a dead woman’s diary that only she could touch. She heard Eliot below, playing music louder than usual and banging things as he worked. She made a mental list of things to ask him and tried to still her shaking hands. Chloe tried not to feel sick as she turned the pages.

  High Summer, 15th Day, 6018;

  Capital Citadel, Annwyn

  Fall has always seemed the cruelest season to me. Fall, not winter, is the real season of death. Annwyn Forest will be bare of leaves, its branches stark and spindly; the orchard robbed of all its fruit; the fields cut to stubble and burned.

  I hate fall. By Mid Fall, I’ll be married. I am barely nineteen.

  It is, by far, the cruelest season.

  The old blood is jealous of its secrets, and our family produces few heirs. They use words like duty and responsibility and privilege, as if my blood does not already sing to me with the burden of the land I am to protect. Even Aran’s marriage was arranged long ago. But Aran and Miranda at least get along. I feel nothing for the heir of Durrivant. An alliance with them will secure our eastern border at least. I am not a fool or a selfish child. I can see the sense of the arrangement.

  My bad luck that Jason is such a bastard. He makes my skin crawl.

  Taran hates him, and he her. He would send her away if he could. But she is my best friend in the world, and he could no more send her away than he could cut off my arm. She tries to get me to see the good in this, and sometimes, she succeeds. But she is also ruthless and deadly, and I can’t help but notice the way she always finds some excuse to stay near me whenever Jason Anders, Prince of Durrivant, pays a visit.

  Enough of my dark musings. It is High Summer, and tonight is the Festival of Lights. Jason Anders will not happen for a while yet.

  Taran is here. More later.

  -Callista

  Chloe tried to piece things together over the increasing volume of Eliot’s music. She thought about throwing the diary across the room and yelling at him to turn it down, but she was afraid she wouldn’t ever pick it up again. There was no way to name the rush of feelings. My parents didn’t choose each other. Maybe they didn’t even love each other. The knowledge that her parents had
an arranged marriage rolled over her like a dark but certain tide as her life history rewrote itself in the space of minutes.

  Chloe gnawed on her index finger and took deep, ragged breaths, suddenly grateful for his loud music. It was haunting and dark and it wouldn’t go away. Just like him. For now, it was enough. She wrapped her arms around her knees, listening. Perhaps his music would ease her way through the rest of it. She forced herself to keep reading.

  Mid Winter, 21st Day, 6018

  Fortress Durrivant

  A new religion of fire and punishment has taken root as the rest of the world descends into chaos. The fire-priests are horrible; I stay far away, although Jason and his father seem almost bespelled by them.

  Something catastrophic is happening to our world. Disasters of every kind are occurring in waves. The islands of the Azure Seas are starving; fish, long their biggest industry and main food source, are washing up dead on the beaches by the thousands. Their scientists say the oceans are acidic to poisonous levels. Tierney’s Well of Sorrow, on our western border, has been sending up columns of smoke, as if it were a volcano rather than the deepest well in the world. The worst are the wild fires. Entire towns are burning, and nothing seems to help. The nations to the east of Durrivant and to Annwyn’s northern borders are in crisis. We send what aid we can, but our first priority is our own land, our own people.

  Our Magisters are working hard to give us answers, but so far, they have nothing but dire warnings. As if we did not already know that. Even I, with my fledgling powers, can hear the land crying out. For Father, it is much worse, of course. He is ill and has constant headaches. Even Aran feels it.

  Magister Thorne is our most brilliant scientist. He tells us no nation exists in isolation, and that what affects one will eventually affect all. We must strengthen our borders, he tells us, because trouble is coming. We must be prepared, and plan, for the disasters to reach us eventually. What that plan may be, only he and Father know.

  -Callista

  Chloe swallowed hard against building frustration and sorrow. So far, the diary was raising as many questions as it answered. Fire-priests; that must be how the Abandoned started, in their world. My world, she corrected, but it didn’t feel right. Not yet. Magisters must have been something like scientists, and it sounded as if at least one of them guessed they were fighting a losing battle already. She wondered if his solution involved portals.

  She moved her finger back over an especially interesting part, repeating the words out loud: “Even I, with my fledgling powers, can hear the land crying out. For Father, it is much worse, of course. He is ill and has constant headaches. Even Aran feels it.”

  They could feel the disasters and the land in crisis? Literally? These strangers who were her family, her legacy? She bit one side of her lower lip, a habit she could trace back to long afternoons in her father’s study. Not yet. Not enough information yet, she realized, turning her full attention back to a diary that was becoming as interesting as it was depressing.

  Late Summer, 3rd day, 6019

  West Village, Durrivant

  Durrivant has fallen, Jason is dead, and even now they hunt us.

  We escaped while the fortress burned around us. It is a testament to the fire-priest’s power, that they can damage the cold metal of Fortress Durrivant. Jason died holding them off; no matter how much I hated him, he did give us that chance. I don’t remember much beyond that, beyond waking, injured, in this small house near the border.

  Even now Taran stands guard. We have been in this cottage for three days. She says if I cannot walk tomorrow, she will carry me across the border on her back. After all that has happened, Annwyn’s wards are active again. The fire-priests cannot cross. No one can cross who is not of our nation, who does not have either our blessing or our blood. Perhaps that is why they want me so badly. They would use me to cross, or even break, our wards.

  The fire priests hold Fortress Durrivant. Kazek himself sits the throne. Kazek, the first and worst of them. The Emperor of Fire. We must get back to warn them, to find a way to stop them from devouring Annwyn too. But mostly, I just want to go home. My family needs me, and I need them. The land needs me, and I need the safety of its protective wards.

  -Callista

  “They would use me to cross, or even break, our wards,” Chloe read aloud. Her aunt had been hunted, just like her. And they had gotten her at last. It had taken almost twenty years and two worlds, but they had finally gotten her.

  The diary dropped from numb fingers.

  Chloe knew she was next.

  Chapter Five: The Folkways

  Eliot found her crying in the middle of his room, the diary flung halfway across the beige carpet. He rubbed his damp rough hands across the sides of his jeans, not sure how to approach her. Her not-quite curly dark hair hung down a heaving back. His ratty purple Save the Whales, Eat a Dolphin t-shirt hung off her, at least two sizes too big.

  She curled into herself when she cried. Even her fingers curled into fists, locked around her knees as she hunched over them, her shoulders shaking with a force that outdid her quiet sobs. She sounds like a sad kitten, he thought. Some other time, he might have laughed at the overall mix of cute and heartbroken. But he knew at least some of what was in that diary. He had lived it, and been told the rest. He found himself wondering if it was worse to know the truth all his life, eventually making a kind of tortured peace with it, or to have it thrust on her all at once, in the middle of the worst week of her life.

  Suddenly it didn’t matter. There was no one but the two of them. He didn’t quite know how she wound up in his lap, crying into his sandy wet t-shirt, but there she was. He didn’t know how his hands found her hair and knew to stroke it, or to rock her gently, or to make soothing sounds. He instinctively found their bond and shoved every safe and calming emotion he could feel at her. He wasn’t even grossed out when she wiped her nose and face on his shoulder.

  Chloe flung an accusatory arm at the diary. “That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever read,” she sniffled out. “And the most maddening. How could my parents not tell me? They only got married to have me, I just know it, Eliot. I’ve been some kind of insurance, or consolation prize, all my life, without even knowing it.” She choked on a fresh sob.

  Her fingers were claws through his thin shirt, digging into him, but his throat had gone dry and he was frozen inside on more levels than he could count. “This bonding thing, which I can’t remember because someone somewhere did a wonderful job of brainwashing me. It involves a ritual, with vows? That’s why you can… force certain actions?”

  He nodded. “But only when your safety is directly involved,” he rushed to assure her. “Only then. And yes, the ritual involved blood exchange.”

  “At least you remember some of it,” she said dully, flopping back so she sat propped against his unmade bed. She pulled his Save the Whales t-shirt down to cover her indrawn knees. “Eliot, who was Taran?”

  His heart turned to ice, and his voice was just as brittle. He hoped she would let it go. He didn’t know how many more boundaries he could cross with her today. “A very ruthless, very loving woman.”

  No such luck. She was on her knees, touching his arm, her face deep with concern and a kind of wonder. “I felt that. I feel you. You’re in pain. Is that the bond? Eliot?” He barely nodded. “Eliot?” she tried again, softer this time. Closer. “What’s wrong? Who was Taran?” He was afraid she would try to hold him, and he would have to shove her off, so he jumped to his feet and retreated to the door.

  “Nothing. No one. I’ve got things to do, to get us ready to leave,” he forced out through gritted teeth before walking away.

  He calmed down, repeating his newly found mantra: It’s not her fault, she doesn’t know anything, she doesn’t know what not to ask. Eliot found himself skulking in the doorway, watching Chloe as she read, sitting cross-legged on the floor. She’d twisted her hair into a loose knot at the nape of her neck and stuck a pencil through it to ke
ep it in place. Dark tendrils escaped anyway. She looked incredibly sad. He wished he could spare her. Callista had warded it for a good reason: him. “Find anything interesting?” he asked, keeping his voice light.

  She tore her attention up to him with effort, and made no mention of the previous incident. “Yes, I think, though much of it doesn’t make sense. There’s a useful but confusing bit about sensing the land.” She looked pained. “But the history part, I don’t have any reference for, and some of the people she writes about…I don’t know who they are. I think I’m getting a picture of the Abandoned, though. Who they are, how they got such a hold on your world.”

  “Our world,” he corrected with a touch of bitterness.

  She didn’t notice. “Right,” she agreed absently. She flipped pages, not looking at him. “I’m just trying to understand them. Their motives.”

  “The Abandoned’s motives?” He shook his head in anger and disbelief. “What about them, Chloe? I can tell you their motives. Hate. Evil. Total destruction.”

  She looked at him, eyes narrowed in anger or exasperation or both. She sat hunched over the little book in a way that didn’t look comfortable, the perfect picture of an absent-minded scholar. Eliot thought then that his own Magister of a father, had he lived, would have liked her very much. Maybe even more than he liked me.

  “Don’t do that,” she said finally, uncurling her shoulders and rolling her stiff neck. “You’re too smart to do that.”

  “Do what, exactly?”

  “Fall prey to cartoon villain syndrome.”

  “What?”

  “You know. The idea that the bad guys are just flat, one-dimensional cartoons with no real motives other than being bad guys. Evil for evil’s sake alone.” At his puzzled look, she sighed and leaned back over the diary. “Well, I don’t believe it, anyway.” She flipped more pages, annoyed. “I’m trying to tease out some real motive. Something they want, some reason to explain their actions. If I can find one, maybe it can help us stop them.”