Shadowborn

by Joseph DeVeau

  “Nameless isn’t real!” Aeryn screamed. “I’ve been in his castle, Rickon. There is nothing there. Just centuries of dust and rotting wood. No food, footprints, rats, nothing! You’re throwing away your life to serve men that don’t care whether you live or die.”

  “Lies! Blasphemy!” Rickon’s eyes glowed with what he no doubt considered righteous rage. “When I bring the Voices your head and those of your heretic friends, Nameless himself will reward me!”

  Aeryn exhaled deeply. He was not going to be swayed short of Nameless actually appearing himself, and every moment she spent arguing was one moment less her friends had to live. If they still lived.

  “I’m sorry, Rickon,” she whispered. “But you don’t leave me any other choice. I have to end this once and for all, and I can’t leave you at my back where you might interfere again.”

  Rickon stumbled forward, caught off balance as Aeryn sidestepped a lunge he put too much weight behind. Arm up, she spun and embedded her blade into his back, parting the ribs to drive into the thumping heart beneath.

  Convulsing once, he fell limply, sliding free of the blade. Aeryn did not let a single tear form. Instead, she focused all that sorrow and sadness into a wind that fanned the flames of her anger.

  She threw the doors open and she stepped forward into the Voice’s audience chamber.

  Bouncing off either wall the doors slammed shut again at her back. Darkness met her. Pure, unadulterated darkness.

  “The girl.”

  “The Shadow.”

  Aeryn instantly Drifted until the room became awash in color. The massive, columned room, easily thirty paces by thirty and lined with a double row of fluted columns on either side, was a testament to Voice’s greed. Just as a street urchin was poor simplicity taken to its extreme, so to was the rich elegance of the space before her allowed to grow and expand to its extreme. All perfectly arranged, masterfully worked rugs, tapestries, frescos, paintings, statues, carvings, and everything else of value under the sun dotted the room. By the vast differences in style from piece to piece, it must have taken centuries—probably ten to be exact—to gather.

  Aeryn hardly saw any of it. Her eyes were locked on the wedge-shaped table in the center of the room. Notched in staggered alcoves, five men sat at the table, two on either side, one at its head.

  “The girl has some skill after all,” said the Voice on her left, furthest from the wall at their back, which was the only unadorned segment of the room. It was clearly meant as a reminder that they were one-step away from God. But a reminder for whom? Themselves? Or more likely, the Shades that attended them?

  “No doubt from that Lord,” said the next highest Shade.

  “And his traitorous son.”

  “No matter. I’ve had word the latter died last night. The former will soon join him.”

  “Still, she’s a thorn,” said the Voice at the table’s head, finishing the cascade.

  Aeryn’s eyes flicked from one speaker to the next. The way they spoke in alternating sentences, each giving way to the one closer to the wall at their back, was as mesmerizing as it was hard to follow.

  “Thorns have their uses,” began the one at the fore.

  “But if she made it this far, our servants, our soldiers, our Shades are all dead,” continued the second.

  The third shook his head. “Fear is a strong motivator. We will rebuild.”

  “They will flock to bow to us.”

  The fifth nodded. “Yes. We will rise again, stronger than ever.”

  “No,” Aeryn said. The five looked shocked that she had spoken. “I grew up on the streets. Hope is stronger; love is stronger yet.”

  “Hope?” The closest raised an eyebrow.

  “Love?” The second one sneered.

  The third stared into the distance as if seeing Rickon’s body beyond the doors. “She lies. She killed her street friend in her hate.”

  “No!” Aeryn shouted, breaking the cascade. She had killed him because she loved Merek and Jynx and Ty and all the others so much, not because she hated what Rickon had done.

  “Oh, yes,” the Voice at the head of the table said with a wicked grin. For the first time, one of the Voices addressed her directly. “I see it now. Hope and fear. No,” he shook his head, “betrayal. Maerilin was betrayed from within. It will band the city together like never before. We—and by we, I mean Nameless,” the Voice said to Aeryn with mounting enthusiasm, “will provide a light to rally around, just as it was done a thousand years ago. Hope will be the glue that binds the city as one.”

  Locking eyes with each of them in turn, Aeryn spoke just as they had, one word to each, starting with the first. “Enough talk. You’re all dead.”

  “Pity. You would have made such an excellent Shade,” said the Voice at the apex. “Kill her.”

  The other four rose.

  Aeryn did not wait to see what they would do. Sprinting forward, using the flaring agony coursing through her body as fuel, she pulled out the simple knife Ty had made and flung it at the first. It connected squarely with his chest and drove him backward. Not accurate enough to kill immediately, but without a skilled healer—which Aeryn intended to ensure he did not get—he would die readily enough.

  Not slowing, she crashed into the second, sword point leading the way, knocking him off his feet and sending him flying backwards over his armchair.

  Rising from the convulsing body, she tore her sword free and faced the next Voice. Knife in hand, he charged at her with a low shout.

  Aeryn met him head on, all her muscles screaming to be released. Flowing from one side to the other, she dodged and deflected his blows one after the other. Were he twenty years younger, Aeryn, Merek and Asher combined could not have taken him in a fair fight. As it was, his age and extra bulk slowed his movements. His eyes widened, belittling his supreme arrogance, as his strikes fell further and further behind. Faltering for an instant, Aeryn cut out his throat. He slumped, his hands flying up to staunch the spurting flow of blood.

  Pain, shooting, searing pain like she had never felt before, bloomed in Aeryn’s back. Muscles spasming involuntary, she twisted and fell, slipping on the slick marble floor. She landed on her shoulder and screamed as it cracked and popped out. Rolling onto her stomach to take the pressure from her blazing shoulder, she scraped to a stop.

  Scraped?

  Aeryn looked down. Six inches of steel sprouted from her right breast. Somehow, that surprised her less than the fact that blood was barely trickling out.

  The blade must be holding it back, her foggy mind replied.

  “Kill her!”

  “With pleasure.” The answer came from somewhere above her feet.

  Gritting her teeth—she was not going to die before she finished this—she rolled over. The blade twisted in her breast as its hilt contacted the floor. Aeryn felt nothing. No pain, no burning sensation, no stabbing bolts of lightning, nothing.

  Shock. I’m in shock.

  Aeryn used the moment of clarity to kick out with all her might.

  Her feet connected solidly. The shins of the Voice standing over her shattered. He let out a primal scream and pitched forward. Aeryn helped him as he closed the gap, grabbing his tunic and pulling him down, the left side of his chest meeting the steel protruding from the right side of hers. He coughed, spurting blood into her face as he squirmed, then lay still.

  “Hiding isn’t going to save you,” said the remaining Voice.

  Aeryn felt herself—and the Voice now stuck to her—being rolled over. The shock vanished like fog burned away by the rising sun. Every nerve in her body flared to life, searing away all cognizant thought. It could have only been seconds later, but time ceased to have any meaning as the blade twisted in her chest. Facing the floor atop the dead Shade, the sword slid free with a nauseating slurping.

  Again the rolling came. When the world stopped spinning, she found herself staring up into the eyes of the Voice that fancied himself a God. His face wavered in and out of fo
cus.

  “That’s better,” he said. “I want to see the light go out of your eyes when I kill you.”

  Aeryn tried to talk, to curse him, to say anything. She did not want to die silently. The words came out as spittle and a racking, convulsing cough, more blood than saliva. A glob flew up and struck the Voice’s cheek.

  The Voice whipped away the warm liquid and roared. “Die!”

  The Voice’s features went slack. Time stretched. His body listed and fell, smashing facedown against the marble tiles. A familiar knife, its blade etched with the letters “I” and “B”, jutted from his neck where head met shoulders.

  “You first,” Merek said.

  Clothes half-burned off, soot staining ever inch of him, Merek barely controlled his descent as his knees gave out.

  Aeryn struggled to draw in air as he began packing the oozing hole in her breast with cloth, torn from the bodies of the Voices.

  Sometime later, it could have been a week for all Aeryn knew, unsure whether she was supporting Merek or he was supporting her, the Protector’s Gate finally came in sight. Aeryn opened her mouth to call out. Blood and spittle came out instead. Smoke, billowing from the Voices’ palace to join that from Nameless’ castle—apparently there was more wood left in there than she had realized—blew into her lungs. She collapsed in a fit of coughing. Merek fell with her.

  “Aeryn,” came a faint cry.

  “Merek.” Slightly louder.

  Bulky arms swept her to her feet, holding her upright with effortless ease. Even bulkier arms pulled Merek to his feet.

  “Send for a healer,” Ty’s voice boomed out. Shirtless—Aeryn could not remember him taking his shirt off—his meaty hand pressed the fabric against her chest.

  Mareen’s yell was every bit as loud, but much more specific. “Reeve, you old coot. Don’t just stand there gaping. Go fetch Emeline. Now! Their lives depend on it.”

  Aeryn laughed. Well, tried to until it turned into a pained fit of blood-spluttering coughing. She really did like Lady Mareen.

  “What happened?” Merek croaked.

  “You did it,” Mareen said, tears welling in her eyes. “The remaining soldiers threw down their arms and fled as soon as they saw the castle and palace go up in flames, taking their invincible Shades, Voices, and God with it.”

  “What about. . .”

  “Quiet you old fool,” Mareen said, readjusting her arm under Merek’s shoulders. “Save your strength. Help is on the way.”

  Aeryn opened her mouth to ask about Gerald and Katelyn and Jynx. Had they made it back? Blood rushed in and she fell to another fit of strained coughing. Annette—when had she arrived?—fussed with Aeryn’s leg and shoulder.

  “What,” Mareen said dangerously, “are you doing here?”

  Aeryn groggily opened her eyes. Ty was carrying her like a baby now.

  When had that happened? She felt like the world was skipping by, one frame a minute.

  “I came as soon as I heard,” Lady Alys said, her face painted as though she were on her way to a grand gala. Hair held up in a rolled bun by a gem-studded silver tine, every stitch of silk on her gown was pristine and unruffled. Alys strode up to Merek and Mareen.

  “Go find yourself a bloody rat’s nest to crawl into and die,” Mareen said.

  Lady Alys did not flinch. “You two deserve each other,” she said.

  “What’s that supposed to—“

  Before Mareen had finished her sentence, Alys’ hand whipped up to her bun and pulled out the silver tine that was not a tine at all, but a needle-thin dagger. It entered Merek’s chest an instant later. She had it pulled out and driven into Mareen’s prodigious girth before either of the pair could react.

  Mareen twisted before Alys could extract the dagger for another strike. Meaty arms now free of Merek, who had fallen to the ground where he lay perfectly still, Mareen brought them around in a vicious roundhouse that very nearly knocked Alys’ delicate head from her shoulders.

  Ripping the knife from her stomach—it hadn’t appeared to hit anything but voluminous folds of fat—Mareen fell on Alys, raining down blow after blow, each hitting home like a runaway carriage. Alys was nothing but a wrecked pulp of blood, dirt, and smeared paint by the time Reeve, Annette, Gerald, and a dozen others rushed up and were able to pull Mareen away.

  The gnarled old healer arrived on scene and sent people running every which way.

  Aeryn used the last of her strength to raise an eyebrow at Gerald in question when he met her eyes.

  Gerald shook his head somberly.

  Aeryn shut her eyes, welcoming the blackness that came with it.

  24

  Moving Forward

  Are you sure you can’t stay just a little longer?” Annette asked.

  Aeryn’s mind cast back to the fight against the soldiers, Shades, and Voices. The fight against a God that had not existed. It had been days before she had woken from that final fight, weeks before she had been able to leave bed, and months before she had been able to walk again without assistance. After that, well, she had made one excuse after another, using everything from “I’m not feeling well,” and “Mareen is having me over for dinner,” to “It is too cloudy today,” or “I’ll leave tomorrow,” to stay a little while longer.

  In all, more than a year had flown by—or crawled as Emeline led her through one excruciating exercise after another—since Merek had died. That thought alone was enough to push aside any final lingering thoughts she had of staying. If she did not keep moving forward, she would be trapped here.

  Maybe in a few years she would return. Maybe. After all, only a few years ago she had been curled up and shivering herself to sleep in a darkened alley corner, hoping no one would spot her. Then, even in her wildest dreams, she could not have imagined the events that spiraled in on her.

  Aeryn shook her head. “No,” she said. “I have to go.”

  “But you’re a sister to me,” Annette protested. “You can’t leave. You just can’t.”

  “Annette, you have four sisters.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t like any of them near as much as I like you.” Annette harrumphed and put her hands on her hips. “I just don’t understand why you’d want to leave. Mareen has promised you anything you want. Anything! Reeve says you are Merek’s heir.” Aeryn was still surprised about that one. “Ty says—“

  Ty put his massive arm around Annette’s shoulder and squeezed affectionately. It was also conveniently hard enough to cut her off.

  Aeryn raised an eyebrow. “What did Ty say?”

  “That sometimes you have to go and get away from everything before you can appreciate what you left behind,” Ty said.

  Annette rounded on the blacksmith. “Ty, that is not what you said.”

  “Shush, dear,” Ty said, favoring Aeryn with smile. “We’re here to say goodbye to Aeryn, not argue.”

  “You’re right,” Annette said. “Though,” she crossed her arms tightly beneath her bosom, “we are not done with this. Not by a long shot.”

  Ty rolled his eyes at Aeryn.

  “I saw that!” Annette exclaimed.

  Aeryn laughed and turned from Ty to Mareen as the blacksmith began to assure Annette he had done nothing. When that tactic did not pan out, he switched gears and launched into a crazed theory that tried to make it seem a good thing.

  “Sure you don’t need anything more?” Mareen asked. “Coin? Clothing? Food? Gear? How about supplies? I can arrange for a carriage. It wouldn’t be any trouble at all, just a quick word and I’ll have one readied for you.”

  Aeryn wrapped the Lady in a hug. At least, the parts she could fit her arms around. No doubt each of the items Mareen had listed off would somehow run into “difficulties” that delayed Aeryn’s departure another week, a month, or three.

  “Thank you,” Aeryn whispered in Mareen’s ear. “You and Merek were the parents I never had.”

  Mareen pushed away from Aeryn and held her at arm’s length. “Some surrogate parents we
were, thrusting you into the middle of our war.”

  “No,” Aeryn said, shaking her head. “You might have given me the opportunity, but I walked into it with both eyes open. Besides, I never would have had the chance if not for all the times you two secretly looked out for me.” Aeryn meant every word of it. Without Mareen and Merek, she would still be living on the streets.

  Actually, you would be dead on the streets, corrected a voice in Aeryn head.

  “Then how about staying and seeing it through to the end?” Mareen asked, taking the direct route now that the circuitous one had failed. “You can be one of the Co-Chancellors of Maerilin’s new Representative Parliament. I’ll have the scribe start copying the books you’ll need to read right away. It’ll be—“

  “No.” Bloody hell she was saying that word a lot recently. “You already tried getting me to read those books once,” more than once, actually, “and it isn’t going to happen.” She would sooner have a sword through her chest again than read one of those dry tomes.

  Mareen sighed, accepting defeat. “You know if you ever come back. . .”

  “I know,” Aeryn said. “I know.”

  Mareen pulled Aeryn back into a suffocating hug. Aeryn felt her cheeks grow wet. When she managed to extract herself a minute later, Mareen’s cheeks were flushed red and the paint beneath her eyes was running.

  Aeryn took one last look over the city she had called home. Like ants, workers scurried over the Slum’s Wall with pickaxes, hammers, and shovels, breaking it up into pieces and hauling it off with wheelbarrows. Further back, obscured by buildings, she knew the other three walls were likewise falling. Ironically enough Ty, a former street urchin, had made most of the tools that were now dismantling the set of onion-like walls.

  The pieces of all four would be used to build a new wall three hundred paces further out from the Slum’s Wall. After all, the laborers, former street urchins, beggars, and those down on their luck, would need somewhere to live. And with coin, albeit mostly in the form of puddles of gold, silver and bronze, in abundance now that the Voice’s palace was burned to the ground, there was plenty to pay for it.