Shadow Dawn

by Chris Claremont

  The pages were no less special, sheets of a parchment finer than vellum but far more durable. It was a book of illuminations. On every recto sheet, the right-hand page, Elora found the representation of some fantastic creature. Opposite, on the verso pages, were what she assumed were the arcane symbols for each image. The brushwork was of a piece with the construction of the book, the pictures so lifelike Elora half expected them to move. She had no trouble recognizing the ones she knew but those proved only a small proportion of the contents. The colors were breathtaking, blazing forth with such vibrant intensity that they might have been applied only yesterday.

  Luc-Jon had included a letter. The book was from his master’s collection, freely given over to Elora because despite its antiquity, this master had no great regard for it and little hope of ever deciphering its contents. Luc-Jon wasn’t altogether sure why he himself had chosen it, save that one of its images was recognizably a dragon and the book had struck a resonant chord with the song she’d sung the night before her departure. Strange as it might sound, he wrote, this was a book that felt like it should be hers. He also included a note of recommendation from his master to a colleague at the university in Sandeni; if she wanted anyone knowledgeable about the history of the Great Realms to talk with, it was he.

  She smiled, curling up on her bed with the letter in her arms, the book left for now off to the side. She could see Luc-Jon in the scriptorium, hunched over his half of the partner’s desk, wearing fingerless gloves to keep the fingers of his writing hand warm and limber while he worked. He used a variety of crow-quill pens and as needed would pause to sharpen the nib or shift to a different edge. There was an elegance to his handwriting that bore little relationship to the rough-hewn facade of the young man himself, which provided as effective a disguise to his true nature as Elora’s makeup did to her own. Yet, though she was sure she’d given him no clue, he’d divined her identity. She didn’t have to read too closely between the lines to see that. He was trying his best to be of help.

  “Rool,” she called, “this is serious. I need you.”

  “Milady,” he replied from a perch on the bedside table, as if he’d been there all along.

  “Don’t start, all right? Come here, would you, and tell me what you can make of this.”

  He forbore the temptation to belabor the obvious and pursed his lips as she turned the pages.

  “That’s a firedrake,” he said, pointing.

  “So would this be its sigil?” she asked, indicating the symbol opposite.

  “I don’t know, I’m sorry.”

  “A bestiary, perhaps?”

  “If so, it applies to creatures that either no longer exist or those who reside far beyond the Veil for the likes of any of us. There’s nothing like this in the worlds I know, either among the Daikini Realm or those I’m familiar with beyond the Veil. Unless”—he brightened—“it’s fiction, the product of some poor soul’s dementia.”

  “Good imagination. The dragon and the firedrake are perfect representations.”

  “I can give it to Thorn,” Rool suggested.

  Elora shook her head. “I want to speak to Luc-Jon’s professor first. He went to the trouble of securing me an introduction, it’d be a shame to waste it.”

  “Look here toward the back, Elora. These pages are blank.”

  “Only the images. The sigils go right to the end.”

  “You know some of them, don’t you? I can hear it in your voice.”

  “Not ‘some,’ Rool. One. The symbol Carig forced me to form.”

  “A name but no face.”

  “Precisely.”

  “Shall we try to find one?”

  * * *

  —

  She discovered while dressing that Rool had been busy again with needle and thread. The Maizan woman’s leathers now fit like they’d been made for her, and there was enough play left in the material and stitching to allow for further growth. It was a sinfully comfortable suit but the mirror’s reflection once she was dressed confirmed her initial impression, that it swung a tad too far onto the side of daring for her taste. Then, of course, she caught what she decided was a scowl of disapproval from Rool, which immediately stiffened her spine and put some sass in her stride as she proclaimed the style wholly and forever her own.

  “Not so used to this high collar,” she noted in mock complaint. Flat in front, it swept up on a steep flare to shield the entire back of her neck to the base of her skull. “Style’s all the rage around town.”

  “Oh joy.”

  “Color suits you.”

  “Wine on silver?”

  “You’re forgetting Duguay’s face paint, Elora. Combine that with the way yon outfit’s cut, I guarantee nobody will look first at your face.”

  “What a relief. I feel more reassured already.”

  The brownie was proved right yet again at the foot of the stairs as Elora descended for some breakfast. She took a seat at the counter, trying to ignore the gawks from a couple of students and concentrated instead on the heady aroma from the mug of steaming tea Susan set before her.

  “Bless you,” she said as she took a hesitant sip, and meant it.

  She wolfed down a bowl of fresh porridge and an omelette flavored with herbs and mushrooms and melted cheese. One of the other women who worked there took a seat beside her and picked off a mouthful of egg, trading a chunk of fresh sourdough in return.

  “You eat and eat, girl, more than is decent,” Pilar groused in good humor. “Why doesn’t it ever show?”

  “The way we work each night,” Elora retorted, “you have to ask such a thing?”

  “I’ll concede your performances. Those are hard.”

  “And I’m a growing girl.”

  Pilar offered the most jaundiced of looks that raked Elora from top to toe. The younger woman had the grace to blush.

  “This is ridiculous,” Elora fumed. “Everyone’s looking at me like I’ve just grown a second head! I’m fully clothed here, Pilar. I don’t get this much attention in costume and that shows off just about everything!”

  “On occasion, sweetie, it’s the assets you hide that become more enticing than what’s on active display. Don’t mind them, though.” She indicated the students. “Scholars have no lives.”

  “Actually, I need one.”

  Pilar raised her eyebrows, looking from Elora to the students and back again with disapproval.

  “Not that way, not socially,” Elora protested, “and not them. Excuse me,” she called to them, sidling off her chair and over to their table, “I’m looking for this professor.” She handed them the envelope on which Luc-Jon’s master had scribbled his name.

  “He’s in Keeys College, yes?” asked one, to nods all around.

  “But you’ll not get in to see him till, oh, mid-afternoon at the earliest. Classes today, you see.”

  “Partial to high tea, though. Scones and cakes, the way to win his heart.”

  “We’re easier conquests, Elora. You’ve won our hearts already!”

  “Aha.” She nodded, and then asked for directions.

  * * *

  —

  Dominating the city was a massive edifice called the Citadel, of which Thorn’s tower was a part. This was the seat of government, so vast it bridged two of the rivers that plunged over the Wall and added better than a hundred feet to the height of the cliff. That prominence wasn’t so evident at first glance, mainly because of the sheer bulk of the stronghold. In shape, from an eagle’s-eye view overhead, it described a rough half circle, which presented a curved defensive palisade to the east (since it was assumed that no attacking force could possibly scale the Wall itself) that in its turn enclosed a massive complex of interconnected buildings and fortifications that extended for the better part of a mile along the escarpment. It was near half that in depth, with far more available spa
ce than was ever actually used, since it was also intended to serve as a refuge of last resort in case of attack.

  Those had been dangerous days, when the feuding warlords of Chengwei had been in an expansionist frame of mind, each determined to seize control of the trading routes to the west—the fabled “Silk River”—as a means of consolidating power to the point where they could proclaim themselves “Emperor.” Some proved little better than brigands and were dealt with accordingly, as were their descendants to this day. Others represented more formidable threats and came across the sprawling tableland in massed formations on horse or on foot, assaulting Sandeni with forces temporal and, on rare and terrifying occasions, magical.

  From the beginning the greatest danger came from the sunrise, and the east was where the city concentrated the bulk of its attention and defenses. Paradoxically, it was also where Sandeni enjoyed its most impressive growth as the city expanded inland from the cliff face as well as along its edge. Fanning outward from this hub were streets and buildings too numberless to count, representing a mass of humanity that easily eclipsed all Elora had known in the past. Tir Asleen and Nockmaar, the preeminent castles of their respective realms, would both be lost within this Citadel. Even mighty Angwyn couldn’t compare.

  Being the confluence of a half-dozen rivers and lesser streams, the land above the falls formed an extensive floodplain interspersed with a fair number of islands, of which Madaket was one. Some were rock, others were composed of silt that thickened over the decades into solid earth. During the initial expansion from the stockade that would quickly become the Citadel, bridges had to be built, traversing not only the free-flowing waterways but the bog and marshland surrounding them, thereby allowing troops to reach the solid land beyond. The swamps were more than a strategic nuisance, though. Summer brought not only a stench that was often indescribable, but hordes of insects who made the citizenry’s life a misery from equinox to equinox. To deal with both problems, a massive public-works project was instituted to drain the marshes and replace the natural landscape with a metropolis worthy of Sandeni’s substantial, and increasing, wealth and power.

  The end result, at least in the eyes of the civic fathers, more than justified the cost.

  Sandeni was laid out much like a wheel, with the Citadel its hub. After generations, if not centuries, of rampant development, the shape of that wheel had been thrown significantly off center. There was much more of the city to the north, where the ground was more substantial, than in the opposite direction. Broad avenues stretched straightaway from the huge plaza that fronted the Citadel. There’d also been two moats, channels connecting the rivers that ran beneath, designed to serve the plaza’s original intent as a clear killing ground. Under constant fire from the walls, it was believed impossible for any attacker to make a successful assault across such a broad expanse. But there’d been no war for two generations, nor had the city itself been under direct siege for centuries before that. The original purpose didn’t seem so essential any longer, and since the plaza was so much more useful for peaceful activities, the moats had long ago been filled in.

  Major intersections on the avenues followed the same basic curve established by the Citadel’s walls. The difference was that the cross streets derived their inspiration from the plaza moats, and alternated solid thoroughfares with aquatic canals. Those canals in their turn were linked so that it was actually possible to travel from the Citadel’s water gate to well beyond the official boundary of the city without once setting foot on dry land. An arrangement of dikes and bulwarks diverted the force of the rivers themselves, preventing the canals from being too affected by their swiftly flowing currents, and likewise keeping any boaters from being inadvertently swept over the falls.

  Every so often some bravo or other, convinced either of his genius or invulnerability, made the plunge, in a contraption “guaranteed” to survive the attempt. Thus far, the falls remained unconquered.

  In concept, the city was simplicity itself, laid out according to a grid with streets essentially at right angles to one another. Six boulevards, named for the six rivers whose waters fed the falls, stretched outward from the Citadel as the “spokes” of the great half wheel, while a mix of numbered avenues and named streets formed the rings that intersected with them. On those boulevards could be found the most impressive and renowned demonstration of the city’s inventive genius, its tram system.

  From the founding of the city, the inhabitants respected the power of the falls. Being Daikini, and finding themselves in a portion of the world where the Veil Folk appeared to have little interest or influence, they dreamed of ways that power might be harnessed. The principle of using a water wheel to power a mill’s grinding stone had been long established. Roughly a century earlier an engineer had the inspiration of applying that same notion to public transport. A whole series of wheels were constructed, connected by an ingenious network of gears to what was essentially a giant pulley system buried under the street. Water spun the wheels, which turned the gears, which pulled the perpetual cable, which dragged along anything clamped to it. Tracks were laid on the street bed to keep the vehicles properly in line, and the Sandeni Municipal Railway was born. Day and night without pause its trolley cars trundled back and forth along the avenues, creating a safe and efficient means for those who lived on the outskirts of the city to visit its center, and vice versa.

  Plans existed, had for some time, to expand the system to the major cross streets, but there remained too much opposition from the Watermen’s Guild, who rightly saw the trolleys as a significant threat to their own livelihoods. As a consequence passengers rode the trolley to the required intersection and transferred to a water bus or taxi, or on a noncanal street, a horse-drawn coach. Otherwise, folk made do with mounts of their own, or rickshaws, or their own feet.

  The streets also served as convenient boundaries for the political subdivisions of the city. The area between the boulevards, roughly the shape of a giant pie slice, was designated a council borough. Districts were delineated by the avenues, which then were broken down into precincts. Unfortunately the expansion of the city, and the equally expanding arc of each borough’s “pie slice,” meant that outlying districts comprised a far greater population than those closer in. They wanted power in council commensurate with their greater number of precincts. By the same token, the older, more established districts were equally reluctant to yield their own influence or status. It was a debate as long-standing as the city itself that had in recent years grown increasingly fractious, with positions hardening on every side, as Elora had heard herself while serving dinner.

  The points of the “pie slices” that abutted the plaza comprised the city’s business center. Here could be found the home offices of Sandeni’s major banks, mercantile houses, cathedrals, each proclaiming to the world their own absolute preeminence in their respective fields. There were also the official residences of the ambassadors of all the major continental Daikini powers, even one whose gate was still adorned with the crest of royal Angwyn.

  Off to one side of the plaza Elora spied an island, sensing instinctively that it was one of the original plots of solid ground on which the rest of the city had been constructed, and positioned in such a way as to provide a deliberate flaw in the otherwise superbly symmetrical design of the esplanade. It intruded no small distance into the body of the plaza itself and took a divot out of the terminus points of the two adjoining boroughs. Here the moat had not been filled in, nor had the race of water been checked in the slightest. Both sound and sight testified eloquently to the ferocity of the current and to its purpose as a deterrent. It was too great a width to jump and far too dangerous to attempt a crossing either by boat or by swimming.

  There were structures visible on the island, but only as disconnected elements, being mostly hidden behind so majestic an assortment of trees and shrubbery that the island might well be mistaken for an arboretum. A promenade ringed its shore,
with paths fading into the shadows cast by the full branches, giving it a marvelous air of mystery and enchantment even at the height of the day. For a stretch of the isle’s circumference Elora beheld a magnificent stand of wild roses, still in bloom despite the lateness of the season. She felt a pang of sympathy for whoever was responsible for pruning that nasty tangle, as well as for anyone fool enough to try to slip through it.

  Rounding the whole of the moat, she found only one way across, a stone bridge too narrow for any vehicle, with barely space for two Daikini to walk side by side. Thinking at first this must be some public garden, she made her way from one shore to the other only to discover a thin length of silver chain, so fine it would hardly qualify as a woman’s necklace, strung between a pair of stone pillars to block the way. It was apparently a permanent obstruction, a quick examination provided no sign of any lock and the links themselves appeared to disappear into the fabric of the lacquered stone. There were no seams visible in the rock, or tool marks of any kind, which gave Elora the distinct impression that these two obelisks were two perfect crystals, either grown in place or brought untouched from the quarry. And while the surface gleamed as though from the ministrations of a daily and thorough polish, there was absolutely no reflection to be seen.

  She considered stepping over the chain, or crouching underneath, but after a glance at the carved gargoyles crouched watchfully atop the obelisks, thought better of it.

  The isle and its dwellings might be empty, even abandoned, but that didn’t mean caretakers hadn’t been left behind to look after things.

  She slumped down onto her heels and chewed on her lower lip while she stared at the island in frustrated fascination, ignoring the faint burr of warning sent her way from above.

  At that point both brownies together decided this was the moment for discretion to prove the better part of valor.

  “Walk away from here,” Rool hissed in one ear.

  “Now!” echoed Franjean in the other, in a remarkable imitation of a cat’s raowl.