The Shadow Watch

by S. A. Klopfenstein

  Kale was about to abandon stealth and fly from the earth. He could disarm the assassin and flee before the woman knew what had happened. But suddenly, he felt weak. His limbs betrayed him, and he collapsed in the street.

  The Ilya’s blade had been laced with a draught.

  More dark cloaks joined the Ilya woman, and many arms hauled his limp form into the narrow lanes between the sandstone towers. The last thing Kale saw was the woman’s razor smile, teasing from the depths of a dark hood, as he was dragged underground.

  14

  Kale woke lying upon fine pillows in a lamplit room. Oil was pungent on the air as it soaked the wicks and slowly ebbed away with the lapping of soft flames. He lay alone and, to his surprise, unbound. His strength and power were returning, the last effects of the draught wafting away. There were no guards in the room, but voices stirred from beyond the arched entry. With his sense, he recognized a familiar presence. Kale roused himself and left the bedchamber.

  Several round tables littered the vast domed chamber beyond. Around them sat men in dark cloaks, laughing and drinking wine and sharing joints of roasted lamb. When Kale entered, their leader stood and addressed him.

  “I trust you slept well, old friend.”

  “I trust you are still a bastard, Salla,” said Kale, recognizing the man instantly.

  The woman beside him tensed. The only woman in the room, Kale noted, and the one who had put him to sleep in the city. In his mind, he could sense her fierce loyalty to her prince.

  Prince Salla Burodai—Vashti’s brother, the commander of the Ilya assassins, and son of the late Great Soltayne—laughed so that his entire body shook. “All is well, Ashi,” he said to the Ilya woman. Salla rushed forward and took Kale by the arm in greeting. “A bastard, indeed. But no one sees the pathway to the Den of the Ilya. Not even you, Sky Blood. I heard you were in the city, and I knew we must speak.”

  “Word travels quick,” said Kale.

  “Ah! We are not all blessed with eyes in our minds that see the depths of the soul, old friend. But I have been blessed with many hundreds of eyes in the Red City. No one comes or goes without my knowledge.”

  “Not even the murderer of your father, I venture to guess.” Salla did not laugh at this. “Your father lies dead but hours, and here you are, bothering with an… old friend?”

  “My tribesmen believe I am mourning in my chambers.” Salla gestured to his table. “Come, share a cup and a meal, and we will speak.”

  Kale took a seat. The other Ilya moved across the room, giving them the appearance of privacy, but Kale knew Salla kept no secrets from his followers. The Ilya continued their festivities, though in hushed tones, while Salla served up a plate. But Kale could feel their eyes and their concentration fixed upon him, Ashi’s in particular.

  “You’ve come seeking her, have you not?” said Salla, pouring Kale a goblet of wine. For a moment, Kale was puzzled, his thoughts still fixated on the Ilya woman. Then Salla added, “Kirra.”

  Kale tried not to let his excitement show. “Yes, though I sense she’s left the city already. Thanks to you?” He had guessed it the moment he’d heard of the Great Soltayne’s demise.

  Salla patted Kale’s arm and sat beside him. “Eat, please.” Kale did. As he ate, Salla explained himself. “The ability to become as a shadow is one quite desirable among assassins. We may go unnoticed, but to disappear entirely, as Kirra can… I have longed to recruit a Sky Blood for some years. I tried to recruit you, not so long ago.”

  “Yes, and Kirra is wiser than I.”

  “I helped her escape the Morphs.”

  “In exchange for the murder of your father?” Kale’s tone was dark and cold. He tore the lamb’s roasted flesh off the bone. He could sense Ashi’s fierce gaze.

  Salla sipped from his goblet. “Do not blame me because you failed her and now you feel emasculated. I aided Kirra out of honor. I requested her help in return. And she obliged, perhaps because she sees the values of the Ilya.”

  “Or perhaps it was because you had something she seeks. You know something of the godstones.” There could be no other reason Kirra would walk into Salla’s snare.

  Salla lifted a dark, trimmed brow. “Perhaps. You should know this about me by now, old friend. I do what is needed to accomplish what needs done.”

  Kale did know. Salla had discovered the Shadow Watch, after all, in time to save his sister’s life. He was resourceful, and not at all like his father. Though still, Kale could not say he trusted the man. Certainly not when he wanted something.

  “My father was a bastard,” Salla went on. “He deserved to be murdered long ago. It was out of love for my people that I arranged his death. Do you know why my father feared Vashti’s power, Kale? Why he put his own daughter to death?”

  “She was a woman. It was an abomination for her to seek power.”

  “Seek power? Arayeva! Is it seeking power to be true to yourself? But you are right, that was part of it. She was a woman seeking to discover the power within her. Which is an abomination among my people. And yet we worship a woman, don’t we? A powerful goddess.”

  “That was always a puzzle to me.”

  Salla tore a strip of meat and chewed slowly. “My father values women he can control, or who bring him pleasure. Arayeva is our provider, and yet she enters his chambers during the festival. It’s all shenzah, of course. But the Great Soltaynes allow a goddess because even a goddess seems beneath them. A male god would make the Great Soltayne seem inferior and weak. A goddess, though, they can control.

  “When Vashti began to reveal her ability, my father knew what would happen. The people would have come to see her as a goddess, descended from Arayeva herself. A goddess he could not control. The women had already begun whispering prayers in secret. As Vashti’s power grew, the men would have had no choice. It would have been undeniable. In time, there would have been an uprising. So, my father accused her of blasphemy and put her to death before the rumors spread.”

  “Yet she lives,” said Kale, recalling the harrowing plan Salla had concocted to save her. “And you would—what?—have her now ascend the throne?”

  “You do not know my people, Kale. Ghosts do not bring good omens. The Death Walkers of the Old World were a cursed race. Your brother hoped to make her a queen and rally my people. My sister survived the stake, by a miracle of her healing power, but she could never return from the dead. Not to her people. She would be marked a scourge of humanity, and she would be put to death. Properly, this time. They would send her into the belly of Xa’Rila.”

  Kale had heard tales of the Old World monster beneath the Wandering Dunes. During their years of desert exile—in the wake of the War Between the Worlds, after the First Chancellor had conquered their nomadic ancestors—the monster had taken many Yan Avii lives, it was said. Giant whirlpools formed in the sand from nowhere and swallowed men whole. They could spring up anywhere in the shifting desert, without warning. No one knew whether Xa’Rila was many beasts or one—or if it was merely an anomaly of nature, and no beast at all—for no one had survived an encounter. A fact that made Kale doubt its existence. Nevertheless, the monster was still greatly feared by the Yan Avii.

  Salla stood. “I long to create a world in which my sister would never have been executed in the first place. When the mourning for my father has ended and the lots are cast for the next Great Soltayne, I will be chosen and things will change.”

  “Now the Ilya can manipulate fate?”

  “I will be chosen. And Vashti may return. Not as who she truly is, not as Vashti, the princess of the soltaya. But she may return to her home and to her people.”

  Kale was growing tired of the conversation. And he could sense Kirra’s presence drifting farther and farther away from Vlyanii, like a cloud on the horizon about to slip over the edge of the world. “If you are such a saint, Salla, why didn’t you resist your father, then? When it mattered?”

  Salla lost his cool demeanor for the first time. He pounded
the table. “Do not piss upon my love for my sister! You know nothing of honor, Sky Blood!”

  The Ilya stood, but kept their distance. Kale remained calm and gestured for the prince to return to his seat. Salla caught his breath, ran fingers through his slick dark hair, and then sat. His Ilya did the same.

  “Nevertheless,” said Kale, “Vashti is dead to the Yan Avii. She is with my brother now, and there, she can be herself. She can become what she was meant to be. She could never come back and hide in the Red City. I do not doubt your love, but you do not know your sister’s kind. We have been in hiding for far too long. The future is not in thrones, Salla. The future of the Yan Avii, and of the New World, lies in the return of the Watchers. If you truly care for your sister, then become Great Soltayne. And then, gather your tribesmen and join us in war against the chancellor. Then, Vashti may truly be able to come home. Not as a goddess, but as a Watcher of old.”

  “Ah, those are Ren’s words. You do not think in such absolutes. Your few dozen Sky Bloods—your Shadow Watch—they are no army. The chancellor has his Metamorphi, and the tribes are no match for his Legions.”

  “Your father thought differently. No Festival of the Rising Sun has drawn so many tribesmen before. Your father was planning an attack on Osha, while the Legions are focused on Morgath.”

  “And my father would have led my people to slaughter. Why do you think I killed him when I did? We have kept peace for many years. And we will continue to keep it.”

  “How long do you think that peace will last?”

  “Longer than if I ride to war in the wake of my father’s death. A blood red sun rose this morning. The people already fear a cursed year. I will not ensure it comes upon them. We will not ride to war.”

  “I have said what my brother would wish me to say,” said Kale. “And I will deliver your answer. Now, where is Kirra?”

  Salla took a long drink from his goblet. His assassins suddenly sat at attention. Ashi had her hand at the hilt of her blade.

  “Do not worry, Kirra is being kept safe, old friend. Until she completes the last task I have for her. And until you complete your own task.”

  “My task?”

  Salla smiled. “I need your help obtaining my throne. When I am chosen as the next Great Soltayne, you and Kirra may go free. But until then…”

  Ashi’s blade moved so fast, Kale could not react. The draught worked quickly, and Kale’s world faded to nothingness.

  Part VI

  The Shadow & The Morph

  All the chancellor’s servants were Morphs, one way or another. Some showed the change in their physical bodies, but all of us were morphed in the soul. We all ceased to be human. We all were creatures, molded and warped to do the chancellor’s bidding.

  —as quoted by the Last Commander of the Metamorphi

  in Dawn of the Third World

  15

  The Battle of Morgath raged around the Gallows Boy. Darien’s world was a whirl of musket-fire and explosions, blood and ash melding with the bitter rain that poured down upon the battlefield. The fray had reached a tipping point, like a cauldron seething, about to spill over in the fire.

  If the plan worked, after three days of combat at the walls of the Morgathian stronghold of Goran’El, the Night Legions would finally break through.

  The Morgathian walls had proven impenetrable. The Legions had hardly been able to get near them, let alone find any weaknesses. The fortress of Goran’El was shaped like a crescent moon, with a sheer cliff at the rear. Thousands of Shadows had died already as they stormed the walls from all sides. They could not last the carnage much longer.

  It was Darien’s idea to send the Metamorphi, but it would have been impossible without the turbulent storm raging overhead. As the thunderheads sailed in from the Klavash mountains, Darien rushed to tell General Thrain his plan.

  While the Legions created a violent and deadly diversion, the Morphs would descend secretly from the thunderheads and take on the form of Morgathian soldiers within; the cauldron would spill and unleash the fury of the chancellor upon all the Morgathian rebels.

  The outer Morgathian holdfasts had been weaker and fell by the sheer mass of Shadows in the early days of the attack on the rebel nation. Thrain’s troops began the first phase of the invasion, surprising Morgath with an unexpected attack from the east, while the majority of the Legion horde was camped one hundred leagues away at the border of Morgath. After the slaughter of Harrivral, Darien and his comrades had successfully stolen their way through the mountains of Klavash unnoticed, and without warning, they dealt the chancellor’s wrath upon Ravencrest Tower and the nearby village of Eigal with the loss of fewer than a dozen soldiers. Nearly all Morgathian regiments had been sent west to face the main Legion horde, leaving the eastern holds hopelessly vulnerable. The eastern victories were small in scale—only one Morgathian regiment, the rest women and children and old men—but the losses struck up an infectious heart of fear across all of Morgath. Where else might the Shadows come from?

  The seahold of Fangsport and the northern towers of Stormfall and Vulcan Rock fell soon after in a brilliant coordinated attack from land and sea, accomplished with the help of a fleet of ruthless Parjhan privateers sailing from the Boundless Sea in the black of night. Within mere days, the terror-stricken Morgathians retreated to their central fortress, the capital city of Goran’El. It seemed nothing could stop the Legions. But that confidence proved to be their downfall.

  Darien knew they should have taken their time, laid siege to the fortress over the course of weeks, while the troops recuperated and replenished their supplies, while the heart of fear festered within. They should have waited for their cannons to arrive. But the Legions had been lured into a false sense of victory and bloodlust. They felt invincible, and that was exactly what the Rebel King, Hollsted, had been hoping for.

  That was when the explosions began.

  In secret, the Morgathians had devised a cannonball that exploded in midair, raining down lead and fire upon the attacking horde. Combined with the skill of the Morgathian sharpshooters, this new horror proved devastating for the Legions. Despite their far greater numbers, the Legions could not ascend the walls with ladders nor breach the gates with battering rams—they could not come close to Goran’El from any direction without crippling losses. The band of flying Morphs managed marginal damage on the walls, but musket-fire was thick, and they, too, were forced back.

  Now, with Darien’s plan in motion, the Night Legions pulled back and reformed ranks, beyond the range of the Morgathian cannons. The Morphs would need a distraction, and all the Legions needed to be close when the wall was breached. They would not attack from all sides, but would focus all strength on the main city gate.

  Fiery arrows soared like meteors, pinging of the walls of the city with showers of sparks. It was the first wave of the Legion attack. Arrows would do no damage, as the entirety of Goran’El was composed of obsidian star rock—the arrows were a show, drawing all eyes and all men within toward the King’s Gate.

  The second wave of the attack was men. Wave after wave of them.

  Lightning crackled overhead as Darien rushed the gates beside General Thrain, their regiment close behind them, their sister companies on all sides. The Shadows stormed the King’s Gate, fired a volley, and then retreated to reload while the next wave took their place. Two Legion regiments carried battering rams, and after the first volleys of musket-fire, they drove forward with massive socha logs borne upon their shoulders.

  It was suicide. Every Morgathian musket was trained on them, but Darien knew it was a necessary sacrifice. With all Morgathian eyes fixed on the storming of the King’s Gate, the Morphs took flight from the north, invisible in the darkness of night and storm. Within Goran’El, disguised as Morgathian soldiers, the Morphs would bring down the walls. If all went according to plan.

  Thrain’s regiment surged forward again, fired upon the walls, and then retreated to reload. Bodies fell all around Darien. He
had never seen so much annihilation. Men and women he’d marched with, trained with, shared ale and stories around the fire with, lay dead all around him. He’d lost sight of Merri and Jujen and Valeria by their third charge, and could only hope they were not among the fallen. He kept close to General Thrain and reloaded his musket for the next wave.

  A nearby explosion rocked the earth and threw him to the ground—

  His ears rang—

  His vision was a white flare—

  And his back seared with pain—

  A cannonball exploded in the midst of Thrain’s regiment. Shards of lead pierced Darien’s skin, penetrating his thick leathern armor. For a moment, he was rendered immobile. Darien lay in a daze. His brain seemed to be tumbling around in his head. A shrill ringing was all he heard, like a hive of hornets. He did not hear the shots and explosions, nor the cries of his comrades dying in agony.

  One thought brought him back: The general!

  Darien did not see Thrain anywhere in the madness. All was a blur. The ground beneath him pooled with blood and rain. Smoke from musket- and cannon-fire hung over him like the fogs over Glacier Sound, and the air smelled of gunpowder and death. Darien scrambled forward, head still ringing, but he could move, which meant his wounds could not be deep. He managed to stand, but he could see none of his comrades in the chaos, nor the general.

  There was a thunderous crash as the battering rams reached the gate. They would not be able to break through. It was amazing they had not all been shot down already. A war horn resounded from the wall, followed by a flurry of musket-fire.

  Another rocket exploded to his left, and dozens of soldiers fell. Darien was on his hands and knees again, the ringing worse than ever. He covered his head with his hands.

  Gods, what is taking the Morphs so long?