Shadowborn

by Joseph DeVeau

  “Why are you wearing silk over wool?” Annette nosily asked.

  Aeryn exhaled deeply. Because I’m going to sneak into Nameless’ castle, disguised as a servant since they are all but invisible, and figure out a way to kill him. At least most of the time servants were invisible. At the moment however, Aeryn was certainly noticing Annette.

  “If you want me to be back by noon, be quiet and help me out, would you?” Aeryn said.

  That certainly shut the girl up. Aeryn was outfitted, shawl, jewelry, and all, and sitting in a carriage rumbling its way to the Protector’s Gate in no time. Dressed in two layers, the chill air gusting through the windows was a blissful change from the roaring fireplaces that kept Merek’s house bathed in perpetual summer.

  “My Lady,” said a bald man, his hand extended to help her down when the carriage rolled to a halt, “if you’ll follow me, I’ll escort you to your guide.”

  “What about Lord Merek’s tithe?” Aeryn asked with a glance at the wagon coming up behind her.

  “Do not worry,” the bald servant said. “The driver knows where to go. Rest assured that your Lord’s tithe will be taken care of properly. Now if you’ll follow me?” Indeed, even as he finished speaking the wagon, a locked and ironbound chest bouncing in its bed, rolled past.

  Aeryn followed, unable to keep her head from swiveling this way and that to take in the sights. She had been treated to one grand sight after another ever since Will had taken her over the Lord’s Wall, but never could she have imagined the buildings laid out before her this day. A few of them actually dropped her jaw. Perhaps not the soldiers’ barracks sitting beneath the Protector’s Wall, but the others. . .

  Solid, gleaming white marble rising three stories with entries lined by fluted columns was just the start. Golden steeples speared the heavens themselves, bas-relief carvings on every surface, and even a hint of a masterful choir and Lady’s chapel that wrapped around the far side.

  And the God’s Gate. It was. . .grand. Arching to the very peak of the battlements and spanning twice as wide, an army standing four high on each other’s shoulders could pass through with room to spare. The gates themselves were the very opposite those on the Slum’s Gate, now rusted open; oil reflecting the sunlight, a child could swing them closed despite the hefty latticework of steel bars thick as a horse’s leg.

  “This, my lady,” the bald man said, “is Asher, servant of the Voices, disciple of Nameless. He will guide you from here on in.” With that, the man turned on his heels and strode away. Aeryn was left alone with Asher.

  “Welcome, my lady,” Asher said with a bow. Despite the ice-cold, iron-strong set of his face beneath a smile that did not quite reach his eyes, he was much more handsome than Aeryn had expected. It leant an almost uncomfortably personal feel to the mystery-cloaked Shades. “If you’ll follow me, I’m sure you are as excited to continue as I am to show you around.”

  “Are you really a Shad—servant of the Voices?” Aeryn asked, hiding the slip of her tongue by gawking at him. Gods! Merek had versed her backward and forward on how to act and she had almost blown it in the first ten seconds. Just because she alone of everyone that had come before her in a centuries-old tradition of Maerilin’s nobles visiting those that protected them knew her tour guide was a Shade did not give her leave to vacate her senses.

  “I am,” Asher said, paying no heed to her slip but for a single back-stiffening instant. “I have been serving the Voices for more than ten years. I actually came from a Lady’s house very close to your own.” He gave Aeryn an appraising look. She knew he was weighing her and likely wondering if she, a former street urchin, would lead them all to their doom.

  “You did?” she asked, doing her best to sound curious.

  Asher nodded. “The first time I walked through these majestic columns,” he swept his hand wide to encompass the grand colonnade now engulfing them, “I was but a child of four, come to marvel at the benevolence of our protectors as you are doing now.” He gave her a look that seemed to say, “Well? Why aren’t you marveling?”

  Aeryn craned her neck up and around. She did not have to feign a look of shock and put her hand to her chest and gasped. While the exterior had been impressive, the interior, especially the vaulted cathedral-ceilinged atrium they had just entered, was rich beyond imagining. Tapestries hung on every wall, frescos decorated the ceilings, and marble statues and busts adorned every corner. Everything, right down to the tiles at her feet depicted the Voices, Shades at their backs, Nameless’ light shining down from above, driving back and defeating legions of vile and vicious Shadows.

  Satisfied with her display, Asher continued. “The second time I came here was to pledge myself to the Voices after my fiancé and her mother were brutally murdered by those that serve evil. Since then, I have dedicated my life to rooting out and destroying all that seek to exploit those they see as beneath them.”

  Aeryn took note of his careful choice of words. While Asher had heavily implied that Shadows were behind the deaths of his former family-to-be, he had not come straight out and said as such.

  “What happened? Did you ever find those responsible for killing your fiancé?” she asked, playing along. She half wondered if he would reveal some new detail she had never heard before. After all, if she had learned one thing living past the Lord’s Gate, it was that you never knew who was listening or watching, waiting for you to stumble.

  “I did,” Asher said as he led Aeryn into a wide hallway, “in a place I never suspected.” All around, the décor reinforced a single, unified theme: without the Voices, guided by Nameless, and in command of an army of Shades, all of Maerilin would be consumed by Shadows.

  Stopping, Asher faced a masterfully woven tapestry that depicted a handful of simple wood buildings huddled together against the night.

  “In the beginning, Maerilin was but a tiny hamlet. Poised on the brink of destruction by ever-increasing attacks from Shadows, they lived day-to-day, sure each night would be their last,” Asher said, sounding every bit like a father explaining to his daughter why the world worked the way it did.

  “One particularly brutal night raid by Shadows claimed the lives of more than half the hamlet,” Asher said. He moved a few paces down the hallway to stop before a tapestry that showed the tiny hamlet consumed in flames that rose a hundred paces into the night sky. “Worn down and beaten, the very spark of their souls all but extinguished, the survivors lamented in their loss.” He gestured to a clump of men, women and children wailing over the bodies of the dead at the edge of the light.

  “Even as despair claimed the lives of those sickened with grief, a miracle happened.” Asher moved to the next tapestry, this one depicting a golden-white light radiating down from a turbulent black sky. “Nameless appeared, bringing salvation with him in the form of the Voices.”

  “Why is he called ‘Nameless?’” Aeryn asked. Anyone that passed near had to think Asher was selling her on the essentiality of the Voices. At the same time, the passerby had to believe that Aeryn was buying it by the wagonload and henceforth would tithe a good portion of her house’s fortune to the Voices for their vital protection against the ever-lurking Shadows. On this point however, she was genuinely curious. “Surely he has a name.”

  “Of course he does,” Asher said, moving down a few paces to show her a view of the tiny hamlet growing into a fledgling city large enough to warrant its first wall. “It however, is shared only with the highest of Voices, those deemed worthy enough in their devotion that they are allowed past the God’s Gate to serve Nameless himself.”

  That had not been the story Aeryn had heard growing up on the streets. But like the nobles being privileged enough to warrant a tour beyond the Protector’s Gate, they were both things she had not known about until only recently.

  Asher showed Aeryn a dozen more tapestries that depicted the rise of Maerilin. One wall became two, the houses that had been within the first wall torn down and rebuilt to make room for the beginnings of a
castle and port. Two walls eventually became three and the houses were moved once more. This time they made way for a barracks and the first of the Voices’ and Shades’ buildings once Nameless’ cathedral had been completed. Finally, the fourth wall sprung up, the Voices’ buildings still expanding in leaps and bounds while the rest of the city matured with large open-air markets, nobles’ houses and a seawall to surround its port.

  “Beyond the golden doors at the far end of that hall,” Asher said, indicating a gilded passageway abuzz with servants as he left the tapestries behind, “lies the Voices quarters.” Aeryn could just make out a pair of Shades standing stock-still at either side of the doors. “Set at the base of the God’s Wall itself, the quarters have a splendid portico that opens into an expansive garden.”

  “Can I see it?” Aeryn asked.

  Asher shook his head. “While Shades are allowed past when their business demands it, only a handful of the most devoted servants—and then only at very specific times—are allowed to disturb the Voices. No commoners are allowed past.” Even as he spoke, Aeryn saw another Shade glide down the hallway. Servants scurried out of his way, their heads bowed in reverence.

  Golden doors clanging shut and cutting off sight of the Shade, Aeryn turned to Asher. “Have you ever been beyond those doors?”

  “I have,” he said, matter-of-factly. “Why I was in the garden this very morning. Despite the cooling weather, the few servants allowed in there keep the garden meticulously maintained. No matter what time of year it is, there are always a variety of flowers, shrubs, and trees in full bloom. It is very beautiful.” He began working his way back down the maze-like set of corridors they had taken to get here. “Given the colors of the Lady’s shawl,” he pointedly looked at the woven pink and purple silk wrapped about Aeryn’s shoulders, “she may appreciate one area of the garden in particular.”

  “Oh?” Aeryn asked, intrigued, and not in any way that had to do with flowers or pretty colors.

  “In the back,” he said, voice lowered as though imparting a secret known only to a select few, “pushed all the way against the God’s Wall and obscured from sight most of the year behind a set of spiraling junipers, is the most wonderful sight. A vine, regretfully hibernating this time of year, creeps more than halfway up the wall with stalks thick as your forearm. In the spring a few months hence when it emerges from its slumber, it sends a web of shoots spreading over the wall like a fisherman’s net. A week later it puts out the most delicate flowers and turns the entire garden’s backdrop into a bright field of pink and purple to match your shawl.”

  “It sounds beautiful,” Aeryn said.

  “It is. I only regret that you cannot see it. Now,” his voice snapped back to normal volume, “if you’ll follow me this way,” he began down a second set of maze-like corridors, “I’ll show you where the Shades, the right hand of the Voices, train to become more than ordinary men and part god themselves.”

  Something he had said piqued Aeryn’s interest. “They become part god?”

  “Oh yes,” Asher said. “How else can you explain how the Shades are able to meld with the darkness and become something that is not quite human?”

  Not quite human, indeed, Aeryn said to herself. No one could kill and torture innocent people at the orders of another and retain their humanity. Especially not when it was for the sole purpose of controlling them and their purse strings through fear.

  “The Voices are even less human and more god,” Asher continued. “Only one short step from Nameless himself. But, I digress. As I was saying before, we are heading towards the wing where the Shades. . .”

  Aeryn listened to Asher recite one line of propaganda after another. That was exactly was it was. Propaganda. All carefully designed to keep Nameless, and by extension, the Voices and Shades, in power. Bad as the speeches were—she had heard much the same from every hawker, merchant, and vendor in Maerilin over the course of her life on the streets—she could have stomached them if it were not backed up by life-ending deeds to drive the point home. It was sickening, pure and simple.

  “Which way to the Lady’s room?” Aeryn asked, interrupting Asher’s latest narration, which detailed yet again, how the Voices were but one small step from leaving behind their humanity and passing beyond the God’s Gate to serve Nameless.

  “Right this way,” Asher said. Aeryn thought she caught the slightest glimpse of a smile on his face as he led her through a set of back halls and stopped before an eloquently carved wood door, just thick enough for a faint smell of waste masked by perfume to seep through and into the hall. “Here you are.”

  Aeryn turned to go, wondering if perhaps she had misread his intentions.

  “Is the Lady hungry?” he asked.

  Stomach so twisted up in anxiety Aeryn did not think she could eat the blandest bread much less keep it down. “Not particularly.”

  Asher’s smile flipped to a frown. “Just in case you change your mind, I’ll fetch a tray while you are occupied. It will take a few minutes, so do not worry if I’m not here when you ready. If you take a left at the end of this hall, then your second right, you’ll have no problems finding me.” With that, he spun on his heels and walked swiftly away.

  The instant the hall was clear Aeryn got to work. First, she went into the Lady’s room and stripped down to her servants garb. Next, she stuffed her silk clothing into the corner and hopped back into the hall, where a left and the second right brought her to a familiar corridor that ended in a set of massive golden doors.

  She made it all of two steps before she felt the eyes of the buzzing servants scrutinizing her. Not her clothes, those were the identical to all the others’, but her; everything from the way she held herself to the way she walked.

  Scrunching down and trying not to draw their stares had precisely the opposite effect. Two more steps and her heart was beating so hard it felt like a kettledrum. Before she even finished the fifth step, she realized what was wrong. These servants—every last one of them—were men.

  Before everything fell apart, Aeryn pretended she had forgotten something, turned back, and very nearly sprinted down the hall. The second she rounded the far corner, she ducked out of sight and pressed her back against the wall, chest heaving.

  Bloody flaming blasted—

  Aeryn cut off her string of curses with a shake of her head. How could Asher and Merek not notice something as simple as there being no female servants?

  Breathing hard, pulse racing, Aeryn thought as fast as she could and weighed the remaining options. With the clock ticking and knowing from experience at Merek’s house that the main halls never truly emptied of people, Aeryn knew she only had one choice that did not involve tucking her tail and running: Drift and pretend to be a Shade.

  Aeryn made up her mind to move forward and Drifted. It was difficult wearing the unfamiliar servants garb, but at least it was plain wool with no adornments. She would never have been able to Drift in the silk clothes she had stashed. She managed go just deep enough into the Etheric Plane that anyone that saw her would mistake her for a Shade. At least she hoped they would.

  Taking a deep breath, she stepped around the corner, barely able to see in the premature darkness that came with Drifting in daylight. All the swirling “ifs” spurred her forward with ground-eating strides.

  She need not have worried. Before, all eyes had been on her. Now, not one dared meet her gaze. Servants scurried out of her way, heads bowed in reverence.

  Aeryn was through the doors, breathing a sigh of relief and searching for the Voices’ garden in no time. Though the plan had worked—after a minor hiccup—she still wished Asher could have put Ty’s contraption in a place that did not involve her walking so brazenly out in the open. If a single Shade or Voice had happened to see her for what she was, she was doomed.

  Aeryn stopped that horrid train of thought and immediately Drifted back upon setting foot in the garden. If she could not see, how could she find the spot Asher had indicated? Thankfully th
e garden was exactly as he had described. She set off, wasting no time.

  Standing sentinel against the God’s Wall on the far side of the garden, a trio of spiraling junipers rose up, masking the dormant creeping vine. A swipe with her foot at its base uncovered a dirty brown sack. Taking out Ty’s steel, four-pronged, half-anchor, half-hook, she swiftly coiled its connected rope at her feet.

  Wishing she had had more time to practice, she twirled the purpose-build hook in a circle at her waist. Releasing it just as it hit its peak, it up the full height of the wall.

  It clattered down a moment later, nearly taking her head with it. She cast a nervous glance over her shoulder, making sure no one had heard. Three more throws, each setting her heart thumping harder than the one before and she finally had it hooked about a merlon at the top of the wall. She started up the rope as fast as she could manage with her hands slicked from sweat.

  A third of the way up and a hushed conversation filtered through the junipers at her back. Ears wide, Aeryn froze and remained perfectly still. She knew from experience that the slightest movement drew the eye as readily as sound drew the ear.

  “. . .Voices will be in conference until noon. Work fast, as I have been informed that they will be retiring early tonight. You know what happened to the last servant that lingered too long, hoping to catch a glimpse of a Voice.” Becoming louder as he approached, the words were stern, brokering no argument.

  “Yes, Master,” came a chorus of replies.

  “I wish I could see a Voice,” said one of the youthful voices with a hint of awe. The voice sounded familiar. Aeryn struggled to place it even as she struggled against quaking muscles.

  “Me too,” said a boy with the high-pitched squeakiness that proclaimed he had not yet passed into manhood.

  “Quiet you two,” hissed another voice.

  “You, and you,” the first voice—the stern, commanding one—barked out. “You two have only been here a few months so I will not have you whipped for speaking out of turn. Instead, you will tend to the gardens after you have finished your other duties. You will pick up every fallen leaf, cut out every withered vine, and ensure that every spring flower will bloom in full when it is their time.”