Shardless

by Stephanie Fisher

  “Good boy,” Taly murmured. She tried to reach a hand out to pet his flank, but she couldn’t muster the energy. She was so tired, and every breath she took just reignited that aching blaze inside her body. It was like continuing to drown even after being pulled to shore. She tried one more time to scratch at Byron’s mane, but her hand just fell away, bouncing limply against his neck as he plodded forward. Byron’s head cocked to the side, acknowledging the gesture. If she didn’t know any better, she could’ve sworn she saw both affection and worry reflected in his glassy, equine eyes.

  The next time she looked up, she saw the rusted wrought-iron fence that surrounded Infinity’s Edge to her left. They had made it. The tumbling rapids that ran underneath the citadel roared in the distance, and she could feel the hum of the four massive hyaline relays that flanked the royal residence vibrating the very air around her.

  For as long as she could remember, Taly had always been fascinated by the abandoned palace. She was seven years old the first time she saw it. She and Sarina had been going to Ebondrift to buy fabric, and they had made a detour so they could ride by the front gates. Sarina had lived on the island for a very long time, several centuries at least, and she could remember what the old palace had looked like when the Time Queen was still in residence. She always used to say that the glamographs couldn’t do it justice, couldn’t come close to capturing the breathtaking beauty of those towering, swirling spires when they were lit up with great blazes of magical fire.

  Infinity’s Edge had been left to decay after the Schism—a monument to a massacred tribe. The cobbled drive in front of the palace gates was overgrown and strewn with scrap and what appeared to be discarded pieces of old Mechanica armor. Fragments of what Taly could only guess used to be brilliant shades of blue, red, green, and even chrome were just barely visible beneath the corrosion, and if she dared to look closer, she knew she’d see shards of bone beneath that old armor that had yet to decompose. The final resting place of the Time Queen’s Crystal Guard—exposed to aether, a corpse could take several centuries to completely turn to dust.

  Still, even ravaged by war and neglect and surrounded by the bodies of the fallen, the ruined palace was a thing of beauty. A great dome flanked by columns of white marble crested in gold reached up towards the heavens, and even from this distance, Taly could see the glint of moonlight reflected off the carved, twining roses that stretched up and over the exterior walls of the main palace. She couldn’t remember ever being able to see that far, especially at night, but these new highborn eyes could easily detect details that previously would’ve been lost to the shadows.

  They were almost there now, and even the air started to smell sweeter as they approached the gated entrance. The heavenly draft soothed the burning in Taly’s lungs and made the dull, throbbing pain that had taken root deep inside her just a little easier to bear.

  As they passed by one of the colossal, darkened relays, it unexpectedly flashed, lighting up the night sky. For a brief moment, night turned into day, and she recoiled as the blinding glare hit her overly sensitive eyes.

  Byron reared, and though Taly grasped at his mane, she couldn’t stop herself from sliding off his back. Her breath got knocked out of her as she hit the ground, and instinct had her quickly rolling to the side to avoid getting trampled. Another flash from the relay sent Byron galloping off into the woods.

  “What the…” she panted, her eyes darting from side-to-side.

  “Ah! There you are, little mage,” a low voice boomed. The malicious, masculine drawl came from everywhere and nowhere, all at once.

  Taly clambered to her feet, ignoring the twinge of pain in her knee as her hands groped for the pistol holstered at her waist. She would recognize that voice anywhere. It would no doubt be haunting her dreams from now on. The shadow mage from the relay room had finally found her.

  Her hands were steady as she scanned the tree line nearby, but she didn’t see anything out of place. Just the bright flashing of the hyaline monolith to the west—a part of the communication system for the palace that had been disabled shortly after the Schism.

  He’s somehow managed to tap into the scrying relay, Taly thought, raising the barrel of her pistol. If that was truly the case, that meant he was close by.

  “That was a very impressive display back there, little mage. You caught me off-guard. Believe me when I say, it won’t happen again."

  “Who are you?!” Taly screamed into the empty air. She began edging along the fence, towards the gates, but something must have happened to her leg when she’d been thrown. When she went to take a step, she stumbled over a stray piece of scrap. She twisted, trying to regain her balance, but her knee immediately buckled. With a pained groan, she hit the ground, and something in her leg gave a sickening crunch.

  The disembodied voice of the man was almost gleeful when he suddenly exclaimed, “Wait! I recognize you. Now that you’ve managed to burn through the rest of that desecration spell… Shards, I thought you looked familiar. Those eyes—those gray eyes.” He paused to laugh good-naturedly. “My my, look at how much you’ve grown, Corinna! I must say, you look just like your mother now. It’s a little uncanny.”

  Taly tried to get back on her feet, but her leg wasn’t capable of supporting her weight anymore, and she just fell back to her knees.

  “Now, now, stop struggling. I know you’re scared right now, but I can take that away. Just be patient. If you stay where you are, I’ll be there soon. And I promise I’ll be gentle with you this time. I spoke with my master, and he has decided to honor you. He is going to raise you up, give you a special place in the great war that is to come. I promise you—all this pain, all this uncertainty… soon it will be gone.”

  The bushes started to snap and rustle in the distance.

  Taly tried one more time to push herself to her feet, but when that didn’t work, she started crawling. She needed to get past the gates of the palace. Some forgotten instinct told her it was safe beyond the gates. The grit and pebbles bit into her cheek as she pulled herself across the old gravel drive.

  Her lungs were starting to burn again. She was too tired to move, too tired to fight, and something in her already knew that whatever magical ability she might have wouldn’t work right now.

  A shadow stepped out of the forest just beyond the first hyaline pillar—the man from the relay room. But instead of the hunched and limping figure she expected to see given the extent of his injuries, he stood tall. His fine clothes had been singed, and his skin was still a little flushed from the heat of the flames, but otherwise, he was unharmed. He stalked closer, and the yellow of his eyes seemed to glow as he studied her. He took careful steps as he skirted around the edge of the large, circular patch of gravel, his hands clasped behind him. Snowdrop was sheathed at his waist.

  “Before the Schism,” he drawled as he drew closer, “there were more like you.”

  Taly raised her pistol and fired off a shot. She smiled when the bullet embedded itself in the man’s shoulder, but her heart sank soon after when he just laughed and dug the bullet out, wiping his hands on his trousers as the flesh instantly knitted itself back together.

  “Not very many, mind you,” he continued casually—as if they were just two friends catching up. He chuckled when Taly renewed her efforts to put more distance between them. She gripped at the iron railing, trying to pull herself along, but it was no use. Although his pace was halfhearted and mocking, he was still gaining on her. “Even at the height of their power, time mages were considered quite rare, which made the birth of a time mage something to be celebrated, even envied. Oh, how the noble houses used to clamor, trying to arrange marriages, even soul bonds, all so they could introduce a few precious drops of that coveted time mage blood into their family line.”

  He stopped, pretending to ponder something as he ran a finger along his chin. His beard was gone now, burned away, and the skin that had grown to take its place was smooth and pale. “Of course, that’s certainly n
ot the case anymore. These days, breeding contracts are arranged to try to prevent the births of new time mages. Not all successfully, obviously.” He waved a hand in Taly’s direction as he continued to circle. “Granted, your parents were matched long before the Schism. In hindsight, they really should’ve been more careful—or at the very least kept you in Faro. Shards, what did your poor mother think when she saw that golden glow at your Attunement Ceremony? She must have been crushed.”

  Taly wasn’t going to make it to the main gates. She could see that now. Eventually, the shadow mage would grow tired of toying with her, and whatever this man and his master planned to do to her, she had no desire to find out. But even if she couldn’t escape him, she did have one other option.

  She already had her pistol in hand.

  She could still control the way this ended.

  Her hand trembled as she slowly raised the gun and placed the barrel to her temple. The metal felt cool against her skin, and her heart thundered in her chest as she considered what she was about to do. Would this even work anymore? The memory of those startling highborn eyes staring back at her from the river’s edge flashed through her mind.

  Yes—it would work. She could see it in the way the shadow mage’s eyes widened, in the way his shoulders tensed. He needed her alive. And even if she weren’t human anymore, if she didn’t have any aether left, her body wouldn’t be able to recover from a gunshot wound to the head before her heart stopped.

  “Now, now, little mage,” he cooed gently, stopping his pursuit. He held up his hands in supplication. “Let’s not do anything hasty.”

  The edges of the carved snowdrops etched into the side of the gun bit into her skin—her last gift from Skye. She still wasn’t sure if that vision in the relay room was real, but she hoped so. Because if it was real, that meant he would eventually make it back to Ryme. He would be safe. If she had managed to play even a small part in making that happen, then every risk she had taken had been worth it.

  She slowly squeezed the trigger, her thoughts lingering on Skye—on that final image of her family together at the townhouse.

  Before she could fully depress the trigger, four distinct claps of deafening thunder shook the ground. The towering, hyaline pillar closest to her shattered, throwing shards of crystal in every direction. Taly flinched, but the shards never seemed to reach her, sloughing off some invisible barrier that encircled the palace.

  The shadow mage was not so lucky. Flung off his feet by the blast towards the tree line, he moaned feebly as he was impaled by a large spike of translucent crystal. At almost a foot in diameter and four times as long, it tore a gaping hole in his torso.

  Taly’s grip on the pistol still pressed to her head faltered. Was he dead? No—he was still moving, already recovering in fact. And Shards, what had caused that explosion? A possible ally or something else? Should she try to fight? Could she make it to the gates? And what protection could the palace actually afford her at this point? When this man regained his feet, he would eventually tear through whatever was left of the palace’s defense system. Perhaps her fate had already been set.

  With that thought, she slowly raised the gun back to her head…

  “Darling, no,” a gentle voice said—a woman’s voice. The same voice from the relay room that had told her to run. A hand clasped hers, and as the gun was pulled away, Taly found herself staring at a very familiar face—one that looked strangely like her own.

  The woman from her dreams crouched in front of her. Although her body looked almost transparent in the dim light, a soft sheen of shadow magic engulfed her, keeping her from completely fading into the night. Her golden hair was pulled back and piled upon her head in a braided coronet, and she wore armor forged from shadows and embedded with glittering waves of shadow crystals. The familiar symbol of the Water Shard’s personal guard—a kraken impaled by a trident—was set into the breastplate.

  “Don’t be afraid,” she said soothingly, her hands moving to cup Taly’s face. “My baby. My darling girl. How I’ve longed to see you again.”

  Something, some long-forgotten memory, finally clicked into place. “Mom?”

  The woman smiled. “That’s right. I’m Breena. I’m your mother.” She paused to wipe at her eyes. “Shards, and here I was afraid that you wouldn’t remember me.”

  Taly shook her head, her overworked mind not quite able to process just what was happening. “How…?”

  Arching a single brow, Breena grabbed Taly’s wrist, and her finger grazed the shadow crystal that was embedded there. “A little planning and a lot of luck. I knew they would come for you eventually—to Vale. Ever since the day a human girl with my eyes stumbled up to my cottage, I knew the Sanctorum would come looking for us. Thankfully, you were able to warn us long before they set the fire, and my brother and I were able to make the necessary preparations.”

  Taly simply stared at the woman blankly, her mind reeling. An image of that burned-out cottage she’d passed back in Vale flashed through her mind, and her eyes widened. That moment, however brief it had been—when an invisible power had brushed past her and reshaped the landscape right before her eyes… that had been real. That man as well as the woman she now recognized as being her long-dead mother—they had been real.

  “I… I don’t understand,” Taly stuttered. “What do you mean, before the fire? The fire was 15 years ago. I just saw you back in Vale a few hours ago.”

  Breena’s other hand came up to graze the pendant that hung from Taly’s neck. A glimmer of recognition and relief flitted through the older woman’s eyes. “Your magic allows you to view time differently than the rest of us. What happened only moments ago for you can be but a distant memory for others. That is your gift. And in this case, it was your salvation.”

  Breena sighed, as though considering a long list of painful memories. “I could tell just by that brief glimpse that you had inherited your father’s recklessness. You had that same look in your eyes.” Turning Taly’s wrist over, Breena gave the younger woman a stern look that had her shrinking back instinctively. “Apparently, I was right. You almost burned up your anima when you tore through the last of the spells suppressing your magic.” She tapped the still-healing rune on the back of Taly’s hand. “I’m not sure where you went or how, but I had to bind your soul just to get you back into your body.”

  “So that tugging…?” Taly’s voice trailed off as she recalled the strange encounter when she had somehow slipped out of her body. “When I was talking to Skye, that was real too?”

  Breena’s brows shot up. “Skye? You mean that boy Ivain took in as his student? How interesting,” she murmured. “I never would’ve guessed that the two of you would’ve already… How unexpected."

  “You bitch!” the shadow mage howled, finally recovering from his wounds and pulling the crystal from his body with a sickening squelch. Both women’s heads turned just in time to see him rising to his feet. He now wielded the bloodied shard of crystal like a mace. “Breena. I thought you were dead.”

  Breena’s lips curled into a sneer as she rose, her hand reaching for the sword sheathed at her side. “Close, but not quite, Vaughn.”

  The man, Vaughn, raked a disdainful eye across the shattered hyaline pillar. “Not bad for a dead woman. I daresay, when I awoke this morning, I never would have imagined two members of House Arendryl walking into my web. My master will be very pleased, indeed.”

  “Your master?” Breena’s silvery gray eyes narrowed as they flicked down to the amulet that hung around Vaughn’s neck. “So, the rumors were true? He’s awake?” Vaughn gave her a smug sneer, and she huffed out a laugh in response. “Well then, that’s just going to make this even more satisfying.” A violet ripple of energy snaked around her hand, and then the ground erupted beneath Vaughn’s feet, throwing him back.

  “Aether destabilization?” Taly stuttered as Breena pulled her to her feet. She had to lean against the fence just to keep from falling, her leg still unable to carry her weight.
“I’ve only ever heard of Ivain being able to use that spell!”

  “Well, who do you think taught me, dear?” Breena replied. A snap of her fingers was all it took to set off another explosion, and more shards of hyaline rained down from the nearby pillar. Vaughn moaned pitifully as he struggled against the crystal spikes that pinned him to the ground. The shadow crystal around his neck flashed, and a roiling cloud of magic curled around his body as he channeled his aether. He renewed his efforts, throwing off sprays of blood as he thrashed about. The crystals began to splinter and groan beneath the onslaught.

  Breena started pulling Taly along the fence line, toward the gates of the palace, but Taly stumbled when her knee once more gave out beneath her. Breena moved with the kind of agility and grace that only a shadow mage could manage, quickly catching her and slinging an arm underneath her shoulders. Her mother’s body felt remarkably solid considering Taly could see right through her.

  “Now then, my dear,” Breena said, “I wish we had more time, but you need to go.” When Taly pulled against the woman in protest, Breena just hoisted her up to her toes and started dragging her along without missing a beat. “If I were still alive, I’d have a chance at killing him, but as it stands, I only have enough power left to distract him while you get to the palace.”

  “If you were still alive?” Taly asked incredulously. “So you’re dead then? I don’t understand. How can you be here if you’re dead?”

  Breena glanced at Taly from the corner of her eye. “When the Sanctorum came to Vale, we had very little warning. When the fires started, I didn’t have enough aether left to completely bind your magic, so I gave you my anima. My body died, but my soul was woven into the enchantments that allowed you to stay hidden. When you broke through the last of the spells suppressing your magic back at the relay, you released me. Or rather, what’s left of me.”