A Tempest of Shadows

by Washington, Jane

  “Who—” he began as I hid my hands behind my back, twisting the ring around my finger and thinking a name loud and clear inside my mind.

  Andel.

  I fell onto a desk, which wasn’t a surprise. Well … not for me, anyway. Andel’s violet eyes blinked at me before narrowing in what I could only assume was about to be a burst of unconfined rage. I began to scoot off, but his hand slapped down onto my thigh, keeping me in place. When he spoke, his tone was admirably even.

  “You’re early.” He didn’t seem to be asking a question. His eyes snagged on the oversized shirt I wore, but once again, he didn’t ask anything. His best guess was apparently good enough for him.

  He stood, his hand still keeping me pinned to the spot. “Why here?” he asked.

  Because I couldn’t say the name I really wanted to say.

  I couldn’t put Calder in danger.

  “It’s your day next.” I shrugged.

  “You didn’t return to the barracks.”

  “What I need is here, not there.”

  I noted the slightly detached look in his eye, the way his hand hadn’t twitched even the slightest.

  “And what do you need, Tempest?”

  “Knowledge.”

  His lips twitched, a quick, sharp grin. He backed off, his touch falling away. “And what will you trade for it?”

  I groaned, notching my hands back against the desk, my head becoming heavy.

  “Do it,” I said before I could change my mind. “You’re the only one who hasn’t. But in return, I want full access to the library.” I frowned, adding for good measure, “And the apothecary.”

  He tilted his head, considering me, considering my offer. Eventually, he nodded, stepping closer. He grabbed my legs, drawing me to the edge of the desk. When he pushed against my knees, I resisted, but he was only trying to get closer, and as he pushed again, I let them fall to the side. He drew me against his chest, his hands threading into my hair and pulling it over one shoulder. When his fingers touched the back of my neck, his eyes met mine, flaring briefly.

  “There,” he said, tapping a spot at the nape of my neck.

  “Why there?” I managed as my lip itched. I tried to ignore it, but his body was warm, his hands firm, and my mind remembered the yearnings of my dream, convincing me somehow that what I needed could be found right there. Right in front of me.

  “I don’t want the others to see it yet.” He didn’t wait a second longer. I felt my skin prickle and burn, and I gasped, my attention flicking between his eyes.

  He was unnervingly close.

  “Your soul mark has been activated,” he noted tonelessly. “Your pupils are dilated. Your heartbeat is accelerated.”

  The fingers of his left hand squeezed my wrist, apparently measuring my pulse, and I looked away, shaking my head.

  “It is part of my equation,” he mused, his mark complete, both of his hands falling to my thighs. “Intimacy.”

  “Not part of mine,” I gritted out, even though I swayed closer to him.

  He smiled, stepping away from me completely, that little spark of instability flashing across his face again. “For now,” he allowed. “Now get off my desk.”

  I spent the rest of the night wandering through the shelves on the many levels of the Obelisk, my hands trailing the spines, hoping that one might jump out to me as had The Battle for Ledenaether on my first visit to the Obelisk. After some time, I was forced to give up, and I returned to Andel’s apartment, where I curled up on one of his window seats. I had chosen a spot on the opposite side of the apartment to his office, knowing that he was unlikely to come looking for me.

  When I woke up, it was almost dawn, and I used my ring to travel to the river again, though I knew Calder wouldn’t appear again. Not now that it was clear the Warmaster would find out. Even so, when I arrived, there was a rope threading through several iron weights, sitting there innocently in the rain. I grabbed the ends of the rope and spent the next hour trying to drag it up the small hill from the bank to the trees. I felt all the time that Calder was watching me somehow, but even when my back twinged painfully, sending me to the ground with a cry … he remained hidden.

  I spent the rest of the day cleaning for Andel and staying out of his way, and then while his dinner was boiling, I dropped back into the barracks to find a small group of recruits in the room I shared with Bjern and Frey.

  “We covered for you today.” Raekov separated himself from the others. “Bern tied raw meat to our backs and had us run from the hounds. It was wildly entertaining.”

  “Covered for me?” I asked uneasily, unsure of what it meant that they were all there, quietly lounging around. When had we all become friends?

  “Bjern is able to convince people of things,” Frey answered, stepping up beside Raekov. “He’s been convincing his dad that Raekov is really you all day. It’s quite impressive.”

  I blinked, dumbfounded. “Thank you. I … I’m sorry I wasn’t here.”

  They stood there, waiting. For what, I wasn’t sure.

  “We want to help you,” Bjern finally said. “You need to win this battle, Lavenia. We’re depending on you.”

  “Is it true the world is ending?” one of the recruits asked, the question exploding out of him as though he had been holding it in with his breath.

  “Something like that,” I said.

  “And you might be able to stop it?” another questioned.

  I glared at Frey and Bjern, but they didn’t look the least chastised. Frey even copied my expression back to me.

  “Be grateful for the help,” she berated me. “Every one of us is strong and brave and waiting by the door to do whatever we can to help you.”

  “You’re right.” I felt a rush of guilt, and I quickly grabbed her hand. “I’m sorry. I’m glad for the help.” I stepped back and shrugged the bag from my shoulders, upending it on the floor. Books tumbled out, forming a small pile. “I brought these,” I offered. “From the Obelisk. Thought you might be able to find something I couldn’t.”

  Her brows arched high onto her forehead, and every one of them seemed to stare at the pile, silently acknowledging the trouble they would be in if they were to be discovered with a protected tome stolen from the Obelisk.

  “What am I looking for?” Frey asked.

  “Anything about Ledenaether, or the midworld—”

  “Forsjaether is real,” she breathed, her eyes widening.

  “Yes. Or anything about the Fjorn. Old stories, rumours, legends. Anything at all.”

  I left them after that, finishing my chores for the Scholar. I curled up uneasily on the side of his bed that night, but as with the week before, I woke to find his side untouched, and a lamplight still burning beneath the door of his office.

  The rest of the week passed in a similar fashion, with the recruits helping me to scour the books of the Obelisk and covering for me with Bern as I endured the torture of the masters during the day, and the torture of my own mind during the night. I searched the darkness of my nightmares and the bright, painful spark of each of my dreams, always reaching for Calder, always seeking his face. When I woke at dawn each morning, there was always some new training apparatus set up by the river. The tests were often difficult, leaving me injured and sometimes unable to move, stuck by the riverbank with my heart beating outside my chest and the rain threatening to wash me away. One morning, there was a felled tree by the bank, a line in the dirt from the top of the hill where it had been dragged from, and I pulled my shoulder from its socket trying to drag it back up the hill, following the line laid out for me.

  I dropped into the barracks, my loud sobs waking Bjern and Frey—the former of whom stuck a leather belt between my teeth as the latter popped my shoulder back into place, somehow knowing exactly what to do from a book that she had memorised. The shoulder healed in two days, during which no apparatuses appeared by the river. Not that it mattered. Frey had pulled the information out of me about how I became injured and insis
ted that she and Bjern come to train with me from that day onward.

  For our final task as recruits, Bern gathered us into an overgrown section of the wood bordering the west of Hearthenge, where he spread us around a covered pit in the ground, the slithering and hissing beneath leaving no doubt as to what kind of task waited for us, even before the pit of snakes was uncovered. We were forced, one by one, to climb into the pit while the rest of the recruits were expected to watch from above, provoking the animals with sticks. The change that had begun with Raekov, however, had rippled through our entire group of recruits, and instead of stirring the snakes, they used their sticks to protect whoever stood in the middle, hooking the slithering bodies away whenever they grew too close.

  When it was my turn, Bern watched me climb down with a strange look in his eye. He was frustrated about the recruits refusing to turn on each other, but there was a flash of fear in his gaze, too. He was supposed to be making it impossible for me to become a Sentinel … and he was failing.

  “Put your sticks down,” he ordered, as the recruits began to move the snakes away from me.

  They did as they were told, unable to refuse a direct command, and he knelt by the edge of the pit, a word falling from his lips as fire raced from his palm to scorch the sand the snakes slithered upon. While the fire didn’t touch me, it aggravated the snakes, and they lashed out at me, latching on to my arms and legs. I tried to reach for my ring, but my limbs became stiff, unmoving, venom rushing through my veins, incapacitating me. I collapsed, and the snakes slithered all over me, the fire burning toward my head and feet.

  I stared up with slitted eyes, watching as Bjern argued with his father quietly, his eyes wild. Bern shook his head, his gaze holding mine, and I was able to make out the words formed by his lips even though I couldn’t seem to hear the sound of his voice.

  One hour.

  Frey tore from the group, mounting a horse and fleeing the small clearing without looking back. Bites covered every inch of my skin, sweat mixing with blood, stinging through each of the punctures. I could feel it running into my eyes, my vision blurring as I stirred in and out of conscious. Eventually, Bern knelt by the pit again, whispering another word, and I felt the heat of the fire recede, but it was too late. I was completely paralysed, the venom creeping toward my heart, which had begun to sound loudly in my ear.

  Flop. Flop. It bled, gasping wetly for life.

  It must have been close to an hour when Helki appeared. He strode through the crowd of recruits, his expression fierce when he dropped into the pit, hauling me up and over his shoulder.

  “Warmaster—” Bern began in alarm, but whatever protest he had been mustering was silenced when Helki shifted my body to secure it with one hand, his upper half jolting forward.

  I heard the sound of bone cracking, followed by the sound of a body collapsing against the ground, and then Helki was striding into the woods, Bern’s protest silenced. Somehow, Frey had known to tell him. Somehow, she had known that he wouldn’t want me dead.

  Not at this time, in this way.

  I fell unconscious soon after he jostled me a second time, my infected blood rushing to my head, and when I woke up I was in Vale’s hut, which had been miraculously fixed—though the storm still raged on outside, and a faint drip drip could be heard from the corner as the rain escaped inside.

  I shivered, drawing the blanket that had been thrown over me closer about my shoulders. Vale was missing, the fire having been left alone for hours, a frigidness seeping into the cracks between the floorboards. I curled to the side of the bed, glancing down in shock.

  There was frost on the floor.

  I sat up, putting the blanket around me tighter, shaking my head as I realised the dripping I had heard was only the sound of frost melting from the brick ledge above the hearth. I shoved my feet into my boots, which were sitting beside the bed, shuffling over to the frost-salted window. Outside, it was dark, the sun struggling to crest above great big pillows of snow.

  The world was no longer weeping.

  But this … this seemed worse, somehow.

  Vale stayed away for the rest of the day, and as soon as night crested, I abandoned his hut for the barracks. The rooms in the tower had been cleared out, so I went to hall, bundled in the cloak I had stolen from Vale’s wardrobe. Snow drifted about my hair, stinging my cheeks. It wasn’t yet falling heavily enough to hinder my walk through the barracks, but it would soon become that way. The stalls and workshops along the main road had all been boarded up, protected against whatever the sky decided to throw at us next. Sandbags lined the road, along with sacks of salt.

  I ran into Raekov as I pushed through the heavy doors of the hall, and he grabbed my shoulders, his eyes running all over me.

  “You’re okay!” he exclaimed. “I mean … of course you are. We didn’t doubt it, but we were worried. Especially when it started snowing. Feels like things are escalating, doesn’t it?” He shot a look to the windows, and I nodded.

  “Grab some food,” he ordered, “and then I’ll show you where they’ve put us. We’re sworn in, now. You included, since you’re alive. Congratulations, Sentinel.”

  He clapped me on the back, and I felt a stupid smile spreading over my face.

  Sentinel.

  My smile turned to a laugh, and I spun around instinctively, my eyes searching for someone who wasn’t there. The smile immediately fell away, replaced by frustration and anger.

  I didn’t see Calder that day or the next. Even when Helki’s day came around again and he forced me to shovel snow from the roads of Hearthenge until blisters covered my hands. I grew more and more withdrawn, a coldness settling into my heart as though planted there by the persisting snow, and on the day of my Legionnaires battle, I chose to walk there alone.

  The great masters had taken every opportunity in the remaining days to dissuade me from my battle. They threatened me. They attempted to cripple me. They offered deals, and at one point, they even offered Calder. That had been the only thing to make me pause, but it wasn’t conceivable that Calder would sacrifice himself in such a way only to have me trade my battle for his freedom.

  I had to remind myself to trust him.

  And when I couldn’t … I forced myself to reject their offer anyway.

  The battle would be held at the very top of Sectorian Hill, where the snow had been cleared from the Temple of Ledenaether—our makeshift arena. Sectorians and stewards alike lined the road leading to the temple, word of the battle having well and truly spread by that time. There was a strange, solemn air about them. It seemed more like a funeral procession, and the realisation that I had become important to some of these people—to some of the stewards, at least—began to settle into me.

  They weren’t sure who to cheer for.

  Helki had been their hero for a long time, for as long as most of them had known of him, but I was important too. In some way. When I reached the temple, there were even more people packed around the pillared structure, but they parted when they saw me, allowing a view of the five figures standing alone within the temple.

  Helki, Vale, Andel, Vidrol, and Fjor.

  They each wore heavy, dark cloaks lined in thick fur. All except for Helki, who stood like a true Vold in only boots, pants, and a multitude of weapon straps.

  “Tempest,” he said as I stepped from the grass to the marble floor, which was already dusted with snow again. “This is your last chance to back out.”

  “No,” I muttered offhandedly, searching the people surrounding us.

  Frey was there, Bjern beside her, Raekov beside him. They must have climbed the mountain early to claim spots at the edge of the temple. I offered them a small smile, that cold grip inside me tightening, and I turned my eyes about the faces one more time, with one last, fragile hope. Something inside me broke apart when I finally saw him, pushing through the perimeter of people, a thick cloak sweeping the snow behind him. One gold eye and one blue eye fixed me to the spot, his firm lips twisting into
a rueful smile, knowing somehow that he had chosen the exact moment that I had given up on him to step into my vision.

  “I have the right to choose the time of my battle,” he said, his voice rough and loud, shouted for everyone to hear. “And I choose now.”

  He swept the cloak from his shoulders, tossing it to the side, revealing his bare chest beneath, covered in straps and sheaths just as Helki’s was … with one notable difference.

  The Legionnaires’ brand spread bright and bold from one shoulder to the other, carved into the entire upper half of his chest.

  I choked out something that might have been a protest, but the garbled word was lost to the sudden uproar of the crowd. Vidrol and Fjor appeared either side of me, a hand on each of my arms, dragging me swiftly back to the edge of the temple, though I fought them with every ounce of my strength.

  Vale swept after us, reaching out to tap me on the forehead, not a single inch of surprise in his expression. My limbs froze, the fight draining from my body. I couldn’t move. I was stuck.

  “How,” I croaked, my throat stiff, though I wasn’t even sure what I was asking at that point.

  “Fate is time,” Vale murmured, moving to the side of Vidrol. “And what is movement, but motion through time?”

  Utterly powerless, I watched as Helki and Calder faced each other, a savage kind of emotion passing between them. I felt tears of frustration spilling from my eyes, but I blinked them away angrily, refusing to take my attention from Calder for even a second. He had promised to keep his distance from me in return for the Legionnaires’ brand, for the ability to hijack my battle, because he thought his entire purpose in life was to protect me. And the great masters had allowed it because each new Legionnaire had to defeat the previous Legionnaire in battle, which meant that if Calder defeated Helki…

  I would be forced to defeat Calder.

  He was sacrificing himself twice over to save me.

  A furious scream burst out of my throat, but no notice was taken of it as Calder sprang at Helki, a knife appearing in each hand. They clashed in the middle of the temple, blood spilling onto the marble, wetting the snow. It was impossible to tell who was winning the fight at any point, as they moved too fast, their knives skittering out of grip one after the other, falling to the edges of the temple until their weapon caches seemed depleted and both of them sprayed drops of blood from their wounds with every lurching movement.