by Rachel Aaron
Josef pursed his lips. “Why in the world did the Shapers kick him out, then? If he’s that good, I’d think they’d be after him like mad.”
“They would be,” said an annoyed voice behind them. “If they could find us.”
Eli, Josef, and Nico whirled around to see Pele leaning against the doorway, looking cross. Eli relaxed when he saw her, but Josef looked put out, and Nico looked deadly furious. Neither of them was used to people being able to sneak up on them. For her part, Pele just crossed her arms and gave the three of them a sour look.
“Next time you decide to gossip about your host,” she said, “don’t do it inside his awakened house. When I tell you the walls have ears, it’s not a figure of speech.”
“Don’t be prickly, Pele,” Eli said. “If your walls were listening, they know I didn’t say anything to my companions I haven’t said directly to Slorn’s face. Have a little faith in me, darling.”
Pele looked skeptical. “Slorn wants to see you outside. All of you.”
Eli, Josef, and Nico exchanged a look, then stood up and filed out. Pele brought up the rear, but Eli hung back, letting the swordsman and the demonseed outpace them.
“So,” he said quietly, glancing at Pele, “it’s ‘Slorn’ all the time, now?”
“Shaper tradition requires distance between a master and his pupil,” Pele said. “Technically, as my father, he shouldn’t be teaching me at all, but it’s not like there’s anyone else.” She looked up as they exited the house, staring north at the distant snowcapped mountains. “I don’t even remember the Shaper mountain.”
“Well,” Eli said, putting an arm around her shoulder, “you’re not missing much. It’s dreadfully boring.”
Pele shot him a glare, and Eli removed his arm before she did it for him, hurrying down to the riverbed to stand beside Josef at the edge of Slorn’s circle.
Slorn himself was standing at the center beside the carefully stacked pile of materials that had passed his rigorous examination. His bear face was impossible to read, but his movements were anxious as he motioned his guests closer.
“I’ve finished material preparations for the coat,” he said gruffly. “But before I begin the cloth, I’ll need to take one final measurement.”
“What?” Josef said. “Did the girl miss an inch last night?”
“This measurement can’t be taken with tape,” Slorn said. “This coat doesn’t just hide Nico’s body; it hides the nature of her soul, and what lives inside it. For that, I need to take Nico up into the mountains.” His dark eyes flicked to Josef. “Alone.”
“Why?” Josef said, hand drifting to the Heart’s hilt. “What do you need that you can’t do here?”
“Those are the terms,” Slorn said. “If you don’t like them, you can leave.”
Josef looked supremely uncomfortable, and Eli was about to say something to deflect the tension when Nico stepped forward, her cracked-leather boots soundless on the packed sand. “I’ll go.”
Eli blinked in surprise. “Are you sure?”
Nico just gave him a scathing “of course” look over her shoulder before going to stand at Slorn’s side. The bear-headed man nodded and turned to Pele. “Bring these”—he pointed to the pile of materials at his feet— “to my workroom. Eli, you and your swordsman can put the rest back into storage.”
Eli gaped at him. “What part of our deal says we’re your grunt labor?”
But Slorn had already turned and started walking toward the woods, Nico following close behind him. Pele just grinned and started gathering the chosen materials. A moment later, Josef started picking things up as well. When it was clear he wasn’t going to be able to get out of this one, Eli sighed and started lugging bolts of cloth into his arms, muttering under his breath about Shaper wizards and the dreadful decline in service. Josef, however, was ignoring him. The swordsman picked up the balls of yarn and yards of cloth with only half an eye to what he was grabbing. His real attention was on the trees, where Nico and Slorn had vanished into the forest’s shadow, and nothing Eli said could draw him away from them.
Nico and Slorn moved silently through the forest. They followed no path, but they did not need one. The trees parted for them, the young hardwoods creaking softly as they lifted their branches. Slorn nodded his thanks as he passed. The trees rustled in return but then grew still as Nico walked by.
They walked without speaking until they reached the foot of a steep, leaf-strewn slope. There, Slorn began to climb, his heavy boots moving surely over the slick leaves. Nico followed more cautiously, digging her hands into the wet leaf litter to keep from slipping. They climbed for a long time, and as they got higher, the trees began to change. Slender oaks and birches gave way to heavier, darker trees Nico couldn’t name. They clung to the slope in great knots of root and stone, looming enormous and dark, their black leaves blotting out the sunlight until the ground was a dim patchwork of shadows.
As they climbed in the dark, the need to flit ahead through the shadows was overwhelming. Why, something inside Nico whispered, should she crawl like an animal? She could have been at the top ten times over by now. But Nico forced the feeling down. Such thinking was dangerous. Shadows were the demon’s highway, and moving through them, even for a short jump like this, always made her feel like a shadow herself. Without her coat, it was easy to lose focus, to forget to come out of the dark. Easier for the thing inside her to go places it shouldn’t, the places in her mind where she hoarded her humanity. A cold, clammy feeling began to wrap around her, and Nico shook her head, focusing her attention to a dagger point on Slorn’s back as they trudged on. To stay with Josef, to stay human, she needed to keep her mind clear, sharp. It was only a little longer. She would see what Slorn wanted her to see, and then go back. Easy, simple. She repeated those words again, and deep in the dark behind her eyes, something began to snicker.
Finally Slorn stopped. They were high now, the air cold and heavy with the smell of snow. The strange trees were shorter here, thinner, and Nico caught glimpses of blue sky through the branches. Yet the sun seemed to shy away from them, leaving the thin woods at the top of the slope darker than ever. Everything was quiet. Despite their height, no wind rustled the trees, and no animals moved in their branches. The slope was still, a heavy, unnatural stillness that pressed down on Nico like deep water, and she had the strong feeling she should not be here.
“What you are feeling is the will of the valley,” Slorn said softly, turning to face her, his gruff voice grating against the silence. “We woke it years ago and tasked it with keeping things away.”
Nico looked around, confused. She didn’t see a valley, just the slope and the strange trees. Slorn saw her confusion, and he motioned for her to look at him, his voice becoming deathly serious.
“What I am about to show you,” he said, “you must tell no one, not even your companions. If you cannot promise me this, I cannot make your coat. Will you promise?”
Nico looked up at him hesitantly. No one, not even Josef, had ever asked her to promise something. She thought about it a moment, weighing the weight of a secret against the necessity of her coat and her own growing curiosity, and then she nodded.
Slorn turned and walked up the slope, motioning for her to follow. Nico did, slowly, fighting against the growing certainty that she should turn around and run while she still could. She was so focused on putting one foot in front of the other that she almost didn’t see Slorn’s shape flicker ahead of her, as though he’d walked through a curtain of water. A step later, Nico felt it rush over her as well, intensely cold and strange, as if the air itself was moving to let her pass. It was only for a moment, and then the world around her changed. She was standing beside Slorn, still on the slope, still surrounded by the strange trees, only now she was balanced on the edge of a knife-sharp ledge looking down at a valley that had not been there a moment before. It was a small, narrow thing, barely fifteen feet across and maybe thirty feet long, more like a fissure in the slope than a val
ley. There were no trees growing nearby, yet the light was somehow dimmer than ever. When she looked down into the cleft, shadows flowed like a river, making it impossible to tell how far down the crack in the stone went.
Nico frowned. She wasn’t used to shadows hiding things from her. But as she leaned forward to get a better look, a familiar, terrifying feeling crashed into her. It took her over, passing through her senseless body like a spear and landing hook first in her mind. No, deeper. This feeling, the sense of grasping claws, of an endless, gaping, ravenous hunger, of being trapped, of being crushed, was deeper than mind or thought. For an eternity, it was all Nico could do to hold on to the tiny flickering light of herself until, inch by inch, the darkness subsided. Rough, warm hands were shaking her shoulders. She didn’t remember falling, but Slorn was helping her to her feet. Already the feeling was fading like a dream, but deep inside her, something curled closer, drinking it in.
“I’m sorry.” Slorn sounded genuinely upset. “I didn’t know it would affect you like that.”
“What is it?” Nico whispered, shrinking away from the ledge. Yet even as she asked, she knew. She knew the demon hunger as well as she knew her own breath. Slorn’s answer was to step aside, and very slowly, Nico looked again. The gully was the same; so were the shadows, but the overwhelming wave did not come back. Relieved, Nico stared into the darkness until it gave way, and the dark bottom of the valley came into focus. It was a dry, dead place. The bottom was sandy, as if water had flowed there once, long ago. Now there was nothing but rocks and the scattered leaves of the dark trees lying dry and brittle on the sand. And at the farthest, deepest end, sitting cross-legged on a large, flat stone, was a woman in a long, black coat.
She sat very still, her head bowed so that her hair, wispy and dark, fell to hide her face. Her hands, skeletally thin and pale, were folded in her lap, while at her wrists, gleaming dully in the dark, a pair of silver manacles trembled. She wore a silver collar at her neck as well, and rings on her ankles. All of them were shaking, buzzing like bees against her skin so that, even this far away, Nico could hear the faint, hollow clatter of rattling metal.
The woman gave no sign that she saw Nico and Slorn on the ridge above her. She sat as still as a doll, the shaking bindings at her wrists the only movement in the gully. Yet the more Nico stared, the more the woman’s very stillness seemed to move and crawl. The cold feeling began to gnaw at Nico again, and she was forced to look away.
“Is she alive?” Nico said, looking back at Slorn.
“Oh yes,” Slorn said, looking down at the woman with a sad look in his dark, animal eyes. “Very much alive.”
“She’s a demonseed.” It scarcely needed to be spoken, but Nico said it anyway, as if having it out clear and simple like that could somehow make the woman in the dark less terrifying.
“That she is,” Slorn said softly. “Her name is Nivel. She is my wife.”
“Your wife?” Nico’s voice was trembling now. She knew very little about things like wives, but it seemed wrong that the woman should be alone here in the dark under the open sky, miles away from home.
Slorn must have followed the same line of thought, for his answer was fast and defensive. “It was her choice,” he said. “She chose to live here in the valley so that when she awakened she could not hurt her husband, her child, or anyone else. The valley helps her by keeping innocent spirits away. No rain falls inside those walls, no trees sprout, no wind blows.”
“Nothing to feed the demon,” Nico finished softly. “But how does she live? Humans must eat.”
Slorn clenched his fists. “In the five years since I lowered her down there, Nivel has taken neither food nor water. She doesn’t sleep and she doesn’t move. But her will, her human will, is still there, still fighting. So, in the only way that truly counts, she’s still my Nivel. Still human, even now.”
Nico didn’t see how someone who never ate or slept could be called human, but she held her tongue. Slorn looked down at the woman in black again and his voice grew very sad.
“Over the last decade I have pledged everything: my life, my work, my place as a Shaper”—he raised his hand to his furry face—“even my humanity to finding a way to bring Nivel back from the brink. Yet for all my work, all I’ve managed is to slow the inevitable. The coats I make, the manacles, these are all just stopgaps, ways to starve the demon, to restrain it and keep it distracted.” Slorn bared his teeth. “Ten years and I am no closer to finding a cure than I was at the beginning.” He looked at Nico. “Do you understand why I am telling you this?”
Nico shook her head.
“Because, unlike your swordsman, I refuse to give false hope. That’s why I brought you here.” Slorn took Nico’s shoulders and turned her to face the dark gully again. “Look sharply. What you see down there is your future, the unavoidable end. I’ve heard about what happened in the throne room of Mellinor. I know you’ve gone over the edge and come back. It’s a trick not many can pull off, but no one returns unscathed.” His hands tightened on her shoulders. “No one is strong enough to play with the demon and come back every time. No one can hold off the demon forever. Even if you resist with everything you have, a demonseed is something outside of human or spirit understanding. It is a predator, and we, all of us, humans and spirits, are its prey. Just as the sheep cannot fight the wolf, we cannot fight the demon. Eli brought you here for a coat, but I cannot make one for you until you understand completely that it is only a crutch, not a cure. No coat or shackle, no human implement, no magic, no spirit can stop the thing that is inside you.”
Nico looked him straight in the eye, shrugging her shoulder out of his grip.“That may be,” she said, “but your wife is still alive, and so am I. So long as we’re alive, we can fight.” It was the first thing Josef had taught her.
“Still alive, as you say.” Slorn sighed. “But as for the fight…” He looked down into the valley, and the look of grief on his face was the most human expression Nico had seen him make. “The only way for you to understand is to ask her yourself.”
Nico’s eyes widened and she turned back to the dark valley. The woman, Nivel, sat still as ever, but then, almost imperceptibly, Nico saw her fingers twitch. Her hand rose from her lap, lifting straight up like a marionette’s hand on a string, and the thin, limp fingers curled in a beckoning motion. Beside Nico, Slorn stood perfectly still, watching the woman as her hand fell back to her knees.
Nico swallowed. “Is it safe for me to go down there?”
“Of course not,” Slorn said. “Nothing is safe in your condition, but you have less to fear than anything else. So far as I know, demonseeds don’t eat each other.”
That didn’t make her feel any better about dropping into the dark, but Slorn was settling down on the ground, obviously not going anywhere. Realizing that this was what he’d brought her up here to do from the beginning, Nico decided to see it through. She took a deep breath and then, very carefully, stepped off the cliff edge.
It was a shorter fall than she’d expected, another trick of the unnatural shadows that filled the valley. She landed badly in the sand, but righted herself automatically. Now that she was down in it, the valley was darker than ever. She could see nothing, not even the stone walls of the cliffs that boxed her in. The only sound was the metallic rattle of the woman’s buzzing manacles. Nico could feel her own restraints trembling against her skin in answer, matching the rhythm. As the sounds merged, her vision began to sharpen. Not lighten, for there was no more light than before. Even so, she could see clearly now despite the dark. And there, in front of her, was Nivel.
The woman was closer than she’d realized, her bare feet almost touching Nico’s legs. Nico jumped back, and the woman in the chair made a thin, hollow sound, like sand blowing over metal. It took Nico a moment to realize Nivel was chuckling.
“You have good instincts.”
The woman’s voice was a rasp, a mere shaping of breath, as though she’d long since screamed her throat away. H
er eyes, bright as lanterns in the unnatural darkness, glittered behind her long, matted hair. Behind them, shapes and shadows flickered in unnatural forms. Even so, meeting the woman eye to eye, Nico felt a strange feeling of kinship and, with it, a strong urge to run away as fast as she could.
“Heinricht gave you the speech, did he?” Nivel said. “He gives it to every demonseed before sending them to me. Still, you are the first I’ve seen in a very long time. I thought maybe he’d finally given up.” She sighed, a cutting, rasping sound. “My poor, faithful bear.”
“Other demonseeds?” Nico said, startled. “He’s sent others here?” It seemed impossible. Surely the League of Storms would shut any operation like that down in an instant.
“A few,” Nivel said, waving her hand. “We’d hoped to learn something, but the demonseeds we could get were too small and weak to be any use. The League never lets them get too big, you see. But you”—her eyes locked with Nico’s—“you’re different.”
Fast as a shadow, Nivel’s hand shot out, grabbing Nico’s wrist and dragging her closer. Nico fought by instinct, but the woman’s grip was filled with a demonic strength even greater than hers, and Nico found herself on her knees beside Nivel, her face inches from the woman’s own. This close, she could smell death and rocks and something else, a sharp, acidic bite that tugged at memories she didn’t want to recall.