Unbroken Chain

by Jaleigh Johnson

  “Speak!” Uwan cried. “Or if you will not—” With both hands he grasped the man’s shirt and ripped the fabric away. The shirt fell in torn halves around the shadar-kai’s waist.

  The man’s pale gray skin shone dully in the half-light. Glistening weevil scars traced crooked lines horizontally and vertically across his back. His bare arms were cut and scarred as well, and from elbow to wrist his skin was mottled by bruises.

  Uwan stood back and spread his arms. “This is why you’re here, recruits,” he said.

  With all eyes in the crowd upon him, the young man instinctively grabbed for his ruined shirt to cover himself. Uwan grasped his wrists.

  “Don’t hide yourself. You are shadar-kai!” He raised the man’s arms above their heads. With their hands joined, Uwan stared into the young one’s eyes. “The battles we have fought leave many scars,” he said. “Never be ashamed of these marks you bear, for they are wrought by the deadliest foe the shadar-kai have ever known.” He dropped his hands to the man’s shoulders. “Tell me, warrior, who inflicted these wounds?”

  The man met Uwan’s unwavering stare. His chin rose. “I did, Lord Uwan,” he replied.

  Uwan nodded and stepped back. He gazed out over the crowd, but he had them. Nothing else existed except their leader. “Just so,” Uwan said. “To be shadar-kai is to be at war with our very selves! Is it fate that damns us so? The gods? No.

  “Our sires and dams were Shadovar. You know their names. They of the empire of Netheril—humans who lived so long in the plane of shadow that their offspring were born of shadowstuff. Our bodies are the vessel, but they are poor sanctuaries, friends, mistake me not. These fleshly constructs cannot hope to contain the shadows that are part of us and that would scatter to the winds were we not vigilant in restraining their flight.”

  Drawing a dagger from his belt, Uwan raised his forearm and put the blade against his bare flesh. “This is what you all have in common, and why you have come here today. This war you fight with yourselves every waking moment of your lives.

  “To be shadar-kai is to need. Every base instinct, every opportunity for stimulation seized.” He pressed his blade, and a thread of blood ran down his arm. “We crave the pain, anything to heighten our awareness, to bind our souls to this form, while the siren song of the shadow seeks to draw us to oblivion. She sings to us constantly, and our souls hear her. If we grow complacent, friends, we greet our doom.”

  A cry of agreement came from somewhere in the crowd and was picked up along the line of warriors until they all shouted in assent.

  “Do not despair, friends!” Uwan said, holding up a hand for silence. “Today marks a new beginning in your battle. You are no longer alone in this struggle. I will walk the path with you, but even that will not be enough.”

  Cries of protest rose from the crowd. Uwan held up his hands again. “No, friends, listen, listen!” he called. “I too, hear the cry from the shadows. I too, seek the pain, but the blood I shed is in service to a greater master than me.” Uwan pounded his fists against his chest. “This vessel I pledge to Tempus!”

  “Tempus!” A deafening swell of noise burst from the assembly. The warriors pounded their own chests and stamped the ground. Ashok thought that had they possessed weapons, they would have struck the air with blades in praise to the warrior god.

  Beside him, Cree and Skagi took up the cry. The training yard was alive; the iron fence trembled with the force of shadar-kai devotion. Only Ashok remained silent, but he was not unaffected by the assault.

  His heart pounded at the raw power and devotion of the assembled warriors. Ashok could not remember a time when he had been so stimulated and had not been in pain. With his speech, Uwan had every one of the warriors in his thrall. To the shadar-kai, he might have been Tempus embodied.

  “In this place,” Uwan said, when the crowd had settled enough for voices to be heard again, “you will train to fight, but you will also learn discipline, trust, and service.” He took off his cloak, went to the scarred man, and threw the cloak around his bare shoulders. The young one looked up at his leader in awe. Uwan smiled at him.

  “Your first duty is to protect your city,” Uwan said to the warriors. “You are new recruits, but if you take well the lessons of your teachers, you will rise in the ranks. Some of you may become Camborr, the breakers of beasts; or Guardian, the soldiery that protects our city. You may choose to become teachers yourselves. Some of you may even become my Sworn.”

  “What are the Sworn?” Ashok asked Cree.

  “His most trusted advisors,” Cree explained in a low voice. “The Watching Blade has a council of advisors, representatives from the trade houses and the other races that dwell here. But the Sworn, like Neimal, are his military advisors.”

  “Is that what you aspire to be?” Ashok asked.

  “It’s what everyone aspires to be,” Skagi said.

  “Remember this, as you begin your training,” Uwan said. “Only those who prove themselves worthy will bear the mark of Tempus. Fight well—against your foes and against yourselves—and you will be rewarded. Your bodies now belong to me. Use them in service to Ikemmu, and I will mark you with Tempus’s sword.” He held up his bloody arm. “Put not the dagger to your flesh, lest you be made weak. Weakness will not serve this city. Weakness will not serve us.”

  Uwan drew his sword from its scabbard. The blade glinted silver and black in the half-light. He raised it high.

  “May Tempus drive out the weakness from our bodies and silence the siren’s call! Our lives are now His, and with our deaths we go not to the shadowed oblivion, but to His side to fight forevermore.”

  “Tempus!”

  The cry shook the air. Ashok looked up to see a colony of bats take flight from the tower, wheeling to escape the divine storm. The warriors cried their god’s name and Uwan’s, and before the storm passed, Uwan sheathed his sword and walked back inside the tower.

  Ashok found he’d been holding his breath, one hand clutching the iron fence. He let go the air and iron. Skagi was watching him.

  “Do you still want to meet him?” he asked. His tone tried for amusement, but his face glowed with the same fervor Ashok felt coursing in his blood.

  With an effort, Ashok cleared his head. Despite his excitement, he knew his situation had not changed. He was a prisoner, and if they were truly going to take him to see Uwan, the leader of the enclave, he had to be ready to act. He would find out what his captors wanted from him, or he would die. Since it appeared he could not escape, there could be no other outcome.

  “Take me,” Ashok said.

  CHAPTER

  FIVE

  WHEN THEY GOT INSIDE TOWER ATHANON, ALL ASHOK SAW WERE shadar-kai warriors. He recognized many of them from the training yard. They stood in groups, talking, arguing, sometimes wrestling their disagreements out on the floor, but Ashok got the impression it was done half in competition, half in jest. There was no violence to their movements, and nobody drew a weapon.

  It stunned him that so many shadar-kai would gather in one space, where a knife might find someone’s back so easily. In the caves of his enclave, the narrow tunnels provided a buffer that kept large groups from forming. There was always a wall to put your back against, and Ashok had learned to use the tunnels to his advantage.

  While they walked up a spiral stair, Ashok counted ten levels of recruits and their living quarters. The next four were a series of heavy doors guarded by helmed and plate-armored shadar-kai. They were obviously not new recruits. Skagi said they were all Guardians: soldiers in charge of the city’s defenses.

  The top level of the tower had only one room off it, and the door was unguarded.

  Skagi knocked twice upon it, then went back to where Cree waited on the stairs. “We’ll be waiting below,” he told Ashok.

  “You’re not coming with me?” Ashok asked, surprised again. “No guards?”

  “That’s the way Uwan wants things,” Skagi said. “Get on with it.”

 
When they’d gone, Ashok stood before the door. He considered taking out his chain but decided against it. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of shadar-kai stood between him and anything he could do to Uwan with the weapon.

  Ashok pushed open the door and entered a lamp-lit chamber. A long, rectangular oak table surrounded by ten chairs dominated the room, and on the wall behind hung a framed portrait of a vast landscape.

  As he walked to the table, Ashok’s eyes were drawn to the painting’s details. He’d never seen anything so lifelike in a picture. The inky shadows peeled back to reveal an overhead view of Ikemmu, its four towers prominent against the lighter canyon wall. The waterfall was there, and Ashok saw that the two towers in the middle, Pyton and Hevalor, were connected by stone bridges with curved tusks instead of rails at the edges. He’d not noticed the bridges on the real towers, they blended so well with the surrounding landscape.

  “Do you like it?” said a voice.

  Ashok hadn’t heard the door open at the far side of the room. He tensed, but it was Uwan who came through, followed by the cleric, Natan. Uwan was again adorned in his cloak and armor. His greatsword lay on the table before a high-backed chair of polished wood. He looked over Ashok’s shoulder at the painting, seemingly unconcerned that Ashok stood between him and his weapon.

  “It was a gift,” Uwan said, when Ashok didn’t reply to his question.

  Still Ashok remained silent. He wasn’t sure what Uwan expected him to say.

  Natan stood to one side of the room. He did not acknowledge Ashok’s presence. His gaze was drawn to the painting too. His thin shoulders were stooped, and he seemed very weary, almost on the verge of collapse. Ashok was surprised. The cleric had shown no such weakness in the sickroom.

  “I apologize for not welcoming you properly in the training yard,” Uwan said. “But Skagi and Cree tell me you’re not interested in seeing our city.”

  “Your city is a cage,” Ashok said flatly.

  Uwan shook his head. “You are not a prisoner, Ashok. You can come and go as you like.”

  “But I can’t leave the city.”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  Uwan seemed amused, though his expression did not change. Ashok sighed. He was tired of such games. “What do you want from me?” he asked.

  “A few answers,” Uwan said. He glanced at Natan. Something passed between the leader and the cleric. Ashok had no idea what it was, but the cleric did not look happy. Uwan frowned and turned his attention back to Ashok. “Where do you come from, Ashok?” he asked. “You were far from any enclave when my patrol found you, but you seem too undisciplined to be fleeing the empire. You’re a skilled warrior—that much was clear from the shadow hound corpses. Neimal, however much she wants your head, respects what you did at the wall today. You weren’t afraid to take on her entire force. For whom do you fight, Ashok?”

  “For myself,” Ashok said. Let Uwan think he was a wanderer, with no enclave.

  “No one holds your loyalty?” Uwan asked. “What of Tempus?”

  Ashok saw Natan tense when Uwan mentioned the god’s name. “My Lord, is this wise?” the cleric asked. “He is not—”

  “Natan,” Uwan said quietly, and the cleric immediately fell silent. “Well, Ashok?”

  “Tempus?” Ashok replied. He thought the question was strange, but it was one he could answer honestly, giving nothing of himself away. “I’m not Tempus’s servant,” he said, meeting Uwan’s gaze levelly.

  Slowly, Uwan nodded. “I see. Well, if you won’t tell me where you come from or anything else about yourself, I see little reason to trust you with my own motives for bringing you here. So, at this impasse, here are the facts. I’ve saved your life. I expect repayment for my trouble.”

  “In what form?” Ashok asked. He nodded to the portrait. “I have no coin to offer a city like this.”

  “I don’t need your coin,” Uwan said. “All I ask is that you remain in the city for a time.”

  “Forgive me, my Lord,” Natan said as he took a step forward. “Please consider what you’re saying. He can’t be trusted to roam free.”

  Uwan didn’t answer the cleric. “I could lock you in a cell, it’s true, but that would be a gross waste of talent,” he said. “Train with us, Ashok. You are skilled, but there are many things you could yet learn from us.”

  “Learn from you?” Ashok said, laughing. “Listen to your friend. I’m not of this city, and that makes me your enemy. Why would you want to make your enemy stronger?”

  “We’re not enemies, Ashok. That is the first thing I hope you’ll learn during your time among us,” Uwan said. “In any case, you could not join the ranked soldiers, not without first swearing fealty to Tempus.” Uwan lifted his sword from the table. “None may rise in the military ranks without giving that oath. But you may dwell among us, as my guest.”

  “For how long?” Ashok asked.

  Uwan offered an enigmatic smile. “Until I have a sign as to your worth,” he said. “What is your choice, warrior? Dwell in a prison cell until your soul drifts away, or live among us and learn all you can?”

  “There is no choice,” Ashok said, “as you know. I accept.”

  “We are agreed, then,” Uwan said as he held out his hand.

  Ashok did not take it.

  After, Uwan gave instructions to Skagi and Cree about where Ashok was to stay, then he left the three of them and went back inside his chamber to Natan. “You continue to question my judgment,” he said when he was alone with the cleric.

  Natan bowed his head. “Forgive me, my Lord,” he said again. “But you heard him yourself. He does not come to us at Tempus’s behest. If that is so, my vision says he brings danger.”

  “Or it could mean that Tempus works unseen in him,” Uwan said.

  “My Lord, it is very easy to see things as we wish them to be, rather than as they truly are,” Natan said.

  “You’re right,” Uwan replied. His gaze strayed to the portrait, its unrelenting detail of the city, every shadow, every flaw. “We rarely see things as they truly are. Absent is our reminder of this.”

  “But not lost,” Natan said.

  “Did I choose the right course,” Uwan said, succumbing to the uncertainty, “keeping him here? Perhaps I should have told him about your vision.”

  “He is not …” the cleric faltered. “I can’t find the words. He is not whole. The times I’ve seen him, he seems always on the verge of fading. Even if he is not an enemy, he can’t help us in his current state.”

  Uwan laughed softly. “So I’m to remake him?” he asked.

  “Or send him away,” Natan said. “Perhaps he cannot be saved.”

  “He has no regard for Tempus. I saw it in his eyes,” Uwan said. “I could have cut him down for it.”

  “But you didn’t,” Natan said.

  “No,” Uwan replied. “I believe it is Tempus’s will that he remain here. So I will do what I can.”

  Skagi and Cree led Ashok down the tower steps to the barracks levels. Smells of leather, steel, sweat, and smoke filled the air, reminding Ashok briefly of home.

  They’ve given me up for dead by now, he thought.

  Skagi stopped before a door on the second level. “This is home,” he said.

  Inside, a pair of lanterns had been turned down low. Six bunks were chained and bolted atop each other against two walls. Two of these bunks were occupied by shadar-kai men.

  Ashok recognized one of them: the scarred man from the training yard.

  “What have you brought us, Skagi?” the other man said. “Something to amuse, I hope.”

  He was tall when he stood, but slender, and he moved with slow grace. Black hair fell in a tightly bound horsetail down his back. He came to stand before Ashok, his gaze speculative.

  “He’s our guest,” Skagi said dryly. “Ashok, this is Chanoch”—he pointed to the scarred man—“and Vedoran. You’ll share space with all of us while you’re here.”

  Ashok nodded to them both. Chanoch, the
scarred one, had dark, unruly spikes of hair jutting out all over his head. Up close, Ashok could see his cheeks had been scored as if by claw marks. Ashok guessed by the size and the spacing that the wounds had been self-inflicted when he was a child. The scars and mass of hair gave the young man a chaotic, unfettered appearance. When he came across the room to greet Ashok he moved in jerky strides, like a young animal just learning to walk.

  “Are you all in training?” Ashok said.

  “All but Vedoran,” Skagi said. “He’s a sellsword. He’s only squatting with us.”

  Cree chuckled. Vedoran made a rude gesture in Skagi’s direction. “Officially, I belong to a trading consortium from Pyton,” Vedoran said. He had a deep, rhythmic voice. “But I train within the military ranks in order to”—his lips curled in a mixture of amusement and disdain—“improve myself.”

  “Arrogant bastard already knows he can best any of us in this room,” Skagi said.

  Vedoran glanced at Ashok. “Perhaps not anymore,” he replied.

  Ashok said nothing. He went to one of the bunks and sat on the edge with his back to the wall.

  After a breath of uncomfortable silence, Skagi spoke. “You wanted amusement, Vedoran,” he said. “What did you have in mind?”

  Vedoran was still watching Ashok curiously. He shrugged and turned his attention to Skagi. “I have business in Pyton at the next bell,” he replied. “Time enough for a drink after. What say you?”

  “Not without me,” Cree said, and Chanoch was quick to agree.

  All eyes turned to Ashok. Vedoran raised a brow, his eyes lit with challenge. “Coming, stranger?” he asked.

  Ashok stayed where he was. His pale brow furrowed in consternation. “There are four of you,” he said.

  “Well, he can count,” Chanoch said, and the others laughed.

  Somewhere in the back of his mind, Ashok heard his brothers’ voices.

  Come with us, Ashok.

  Yes, come. We’re tossing the dice. We’ll show you how to play, little one.

  Ashok remembered smiles, outstretched hands like bait. Young as he was, he had known better than to bite. His brothers never sought amusements together, never made themselves vulnerable to one another, lest someone take the opportunity to rise in the ranks with their father.