by J A Hutson
Xela’s hands tighten on her reins. She’s dressed again in the tight black leather garb of a shadowdancer, which is in stark contrast to the day’s brightness and the red leaves fluttering from the trees.
“She will be surprised to see me, certainly. And in other circumstances perhaps she’d try and punish me for leaving the Umbra. But considering we are going to warn them of an attack, I imagine the abbess will find some shred of forgiveness for me.”
“Then you left the order.”
Xela nods slightly. “I was rebellious when I was younger. I thought by extricating myself from my mother’s suffocating presence I would be happy. It turns out after time I chafe under all authority.”
“You ran away from Zim?”
“Yes. I discovered when I was young that I had been blessed by the Lady of Shadows. I could see in the darkness like it was clearest day, even shape the shadows to my whims. This is a rare gift, but if it is bestowed upon a high noble it is considered a curse, something to be hidden. I found out later that my mother has the same abilities, but had long suppressed them.”
“How did you join the shadowdancers?”
“It was the abbess. She recognized my talent one day at court, and told me I should come learn from her in the Umbra. My mother heard of her suggestion and forbade me from leaving – of course, such a proclamation only emboldened me. So ten years ago I fled Zim and my mother and galloped down this very road, afraid that she would send her Swords to drag me back.”
A gust of wind stirs the boughs of the trees arching over us, and a moment later we are enveloped by a red blizzard of falling leaves.
Xela flicks away a few leaves that have become tangled in her horse’s mane. “The abbess initiated me into the Umbra and helped coax out my gift. Those were . . . hard years. The Umbra is not like any other place. It is interstitial, seeming to exist between the border of what is real and what is not. Between the waking and the dream. I found myself . . . slipping away. Years passed like they were days. You know, shadowdancers who reside in the Umbra never die. Just one day they submerge themselves in the darkness and are never seen again. I . . . did not want that for myself.”
Xela’s face is strained, as if she’s struggling hard to put her experience into words.
“When I was fully trained, the abbess sent me south. She owed a favor to the Contessa of Ysala, and I was the payment. I was to serve her for a year and a day. But the longer I was away from the Umbra, the more my thoughts cleared, and the clotting spiderwebs that kept me from considering what was happening to me were pulled loose. I went to the Contessa and asked her to assist me in finally being free. She agreed, and with her help I faked my own death. In return, I continued to work for her in secret, a life debt of my own, of sorts. I had been her loyal servant for nearly three years, and then you arrived in Ysala.”
“This . . . dream-state you say exists in the Umbra . . . do you think it will affect Valyra?”
Xela nods. “Most definitely. The mind becomes untethered if it spends too long in its halls. If your friend has been there for months, then she no longer knows what is real and what is not.”
I mull this over as Xela lapses into silence. The horror of seeing her mother killed, the fight against the monstrous Shriven in that ancient temple as it collapsed around us, the sense of violation as the Voice clambered from the ground and held us fast with its terrible power . . . and then stumbling through the doorway to another world, emerging into a place like the Umbra. Had Valyra managed to keep hold of her sanity?
I twist around to see how my companions are faring. Shalloch is the only one talking, regaling the silent women riding around him with some tale of adventure on the high seas. They look unimpressed, particularly Vesivia. Bell has caught one of the crimson leaves and is examining it closely. A crossbow is slung across her back, which makes me think of the first time I met her. I smile, remembering her threatening to put a quarrel in me as Poz desperately tried to calm her down. Deliah has donned her carapace armor, and the curving blade of her glaive rises up over her shoulder. Somehow through all this she’s managed to keep the same impressive horse that she rode from Chale. Fen Poria is there as well, though she is a few lengths behind us, hunched down in her saddle and clinging to her reins. Her horse was skittish when she first mounted, and it still looks like it’s not certain of the smell of the feral on its back.
Six companions. Most are skilled warriors – all except Bell I would trust to handle themselves in a fight. But how will they fare against the Swords and Shields of Zim? Are some of them riding to their deaths? A coldness goes through me at the thought. None of them know Valyra – they are each doing this out of friendship with me. Well, all except Shalloch. He’s doing it for the matriarch’s gold, like any good pirate.
“Look!” Xela cries, and my gaze follows where she’s pointing. Through a gap in the trees a mountain rears black and foreboding, and clinging high up on a cliff is a building that seems hewn from the dark rock itself.
“The Umbra,” she says, and I can hear the awe and dread in her voice.
We ride through the night, Xela leading the way. Even with her shadowdancer ability to see in deepest blackness I’m worried that one of our horses will turn a hoof on a rock, or someone will brain themselves on a low-hanging branch. But fortune smiles on us. By the time pink dawn light creeps into the sky we are all tired and saddle-sore, but nothing more terrible has happened than Shalloch falling from his horse in fright when something large and winged swooped from the trees and vanished into the dark.
I’ve been expecting to stumble across the campsite of the Prophet’s Swords, maybe even catch them sleeping, but they must have pushed through without stopping as well. This gives me a little tingle of unease. Did they know they’re being followed? What would drive them on with such urgency otherwise?
The mountain has grown during the night. It drinks the morning light, a great black thorn unsullied by trees or water. The structure that Xela claimed was the Umbra dangles out over a sheer drop of many thousands of spans – it looks like some strange organic growth emerging from the side of the mountain. Now that we are closer I can see crooked towers and distended, bulging buildings stippled with windows. It seems entirely carved from obsidian, and as the morning light slides across its exterior it gleams as if covered with oil.
“Still no sign of the Swords?” I ask Xela as she pauses, squinting up at the Umbra.
“No,” she says slowly. “There’s something, though.”
For a moment I see nothing, and then I realize what she’s looking at.
“The smoke?” Several thin trickles of darkness are emerging from the largest of the buildings . . . but they seem to be escaping from the windows, rather than any sort of chimney.
“There are no flames allowed in the Umbra’s great hall. Shadowdancers do not need light to see, and the fires deep within the mountain keep the monastery warm. Something has happened.”
Xela leads us away from the main road, until we come to the base of a narrow switchback trail that ascends the mountain.
“This is a secret way known only to the acolytes of the Lady,” she explains as she ties her horse to the trunk of a stunted tree. “The main road will lead to the front door of the Umbra, but it is also too dangerous for horses and takes several hours longer.”
“We are going up that?” Shalloch says, his face pale as his eyes follow the many twists of the trail, which looks to be little more than a thin ledge hacked from the cliff face.
“Scared?” Fen Poria sneers, hopping over the shards of black rock littering the entrance to the path.
“This is why I never wanted to leave the sea,” the pirate mutters. “And I always put someone else up in the crow’s nest.”
“Stay away from the edge,” Xela says as she follows Fen Poria onto the path, her boots crunching on the fine black sand. “Hug the mountain. Errant gusts of wind have sent many acolytes tumbling into the void.”
Shalloch looks like he�
��s about to be sick. As Vesivia passes him she claps him on the shoulder.
“Don’t be a coward, my love.”
The way is treacherous, and several times I feel like the sand on the path is slithering beneath my feet, but our ascent is surprisingly quick, and well before noon we emerge onto the same ledge as the Umbra. It squats like a black demon, all bristling spines and strange curves, much of it hanging off the side of the mountain. The section we’ve arrived at has a door incised into the black stone, firmly shut. I’m wondering what we’ll do if no one answers our knock, but Xela strides forward while the rest of us are catching our breath from the climb and places her open palm on the door. She leans forward until her head is almost brushing the stone, and I can see her mouth forming words. Moments later there’s a shuddering crack and the sound of grinding as the door slowly swings open.
“Thank the saints they haven’t changed the password,” she says, then motions for us to follow her into the darkness.
Trickles of wan light filter down from slit windows set high up in the walls of the narrow passages, but are quickly swallowed by the coiling shadows. There’s just enough illumination to see Xela’s indistinct shape ahead of me as we rush down the corridors, entranceways into larger chambers – all equally black and still – flashing past. I can hear the hurrying footsteps of the others behind me, but they seem strangely muted, like I’m listening through a thick oaken door. There’s a strange warmth here, too, that seems to radiate from the walls themselves, as if something hot is flowing just beneath the surface of the stone.
An irrational panic is building in me, both a sense of being watched and a feeling like the walls are constricting tighter and tighter. My breath is coming in ragged pants now, and my skin is slick from this unnatural heat. I want to tell Xela to wait, to let me just rest for a moment and calm my racing heart, but my tongue is thick in my mouth. I reach out to steady myself on the walls and my fingers come away wet and sticky. My head whirls . . . darkness is creeping across my vision and I know I’m going to fall soon . . .
I stumble out of the corridor and into a vast hall, gasping in relief as the sense of being suffocated by the encroaching blackness abruptly vanishes. A pall of acrid smoke is draped here like a funeral shroud, and I struggle to keep my stinging eyes open. It seems to be coming from the smoldering remnants of a great altar, above which hovers a dark jewel nearly as large as a man, its depths veined with pulsing purple light. Bodies are scattered everywhere. Shrouded figures are moving among the devastation, and they pause as we spill from the passage, long curving knives appearing in their hands.
“Saints,” Bell murmurs as she fumbles for her crossbow. I can hear the scrape of Shalloch’s saber leaving its sheath.
“Wait!” Xela commands, holding out her hand to stop us from doing anything rash.
The robed figures seem unmoved by her actions and begin to approach, raising their daggers.
“Where is Abbess Zaria?” she asks them, and I can see from her twitching hand that she’s tempted to draw her own blade.
No reply as the shrouded ones glide closer. My hand finds the hilt of my green-glass sword.
“Abbess Zaria!” Xela barks again, her words laced with desperation. “I know you’re not all so far gone that you’ve forgotten her name. Where is she?”
“Here, child.” The voice is weary. At first I can’t see where it has come from, but then a small figure detaches from the shadows.
The encroaching figures hesitate.
“Enough,” the abbess says. “Tend to the fallen. I will deal with the new intruders.”
As she steps closer to us, the shrouded shadowdancers recede, some seeming to vanish altogether.
“Xela,” the abbess says softly. “You have returned to us.”
“I have, Mistress.”
“But not from across the veil. It seems the Contessa lied to me.”
“I begged her to do so. But please, Mistress – what has happened here?”
The abbess turns slightly to survey the sprawled dead and the ruins of the once-grand altar. “We were attacked in the waning watches of the night. Warriors from Zim burst into the Umbra without warning. Somehow none of our wards were tripped.”
“Did the Shadow protect you?”
The abbess’s mouth thins. “We tried to draw upon the Lady’s favor, but something terrible accompanied these raiders. I have never felt its like before. When we tried to wrap ourselves in darkness it pulled us from the shadows and left us helpless before their blades. I tried to cloud their minds and fill their thoughts with fear, but it was as if my strength was but a puff of wind before a tempest. Instead we found our limbs frozen, our illusions pierced.”
“The Voice,” I say softly, and the abbess’s penetrating gaze settles on me. Her eyes are simply white, without pupils, but I know she sees me.
“Who was it?” she asks.
“You . . . you know him as the Stranger. A servant of the Prophet. But I’ve met his kind before. He is a demon from another world, with terrible powers.”
The abbess is silent for a moment. “Yes,” she finally says slowly, “I know of what you speak. I have seen him, this demon, hovering at the side of the Prophet. One moment he is there, and then he is gone.”
“Who ambushed you? How many were there?”
The abbess returns her attention to Xela. “Less than a dozen, but they were all exemplary warriors. Deprived of our abilities to walk through shadow, we could not stand before them. We slew three of their number, and their corpses have already been thrown from the mountain so that their spirits cannot sully this holy place. There was one, a great alethian with ebony scales that usually guards the Prophet.”
“And did they get what they came for?” I ask, dreading her answer.
The abbess dips her head. “They took the refugee with them, the one who came through the doorway beneath the mountain.”
“Oh, no. Valyra,” I murmur, and the abbess looks at me sharply.
“You know her.”
“I have to save her,” I reply. “Please, how long ago did the attack happen? Where did they go?”
The abbess closes her unsettling eyes. “It is strange, but they did not flee back down the mountain after they seized the girl.”
“No?” Xela asks in confusion. “Where did they go?”
“They descended into the mountain, through the tunnels that connect the Umbra with the depths below. I believe they must be going to the doorway.”
21
“What is the doorway?” I ask Xela as she leads us once more on a mad dash through the warren-like nest of passages which fill the Umbra.
“A legend,” the shadowdancer replies as she clatters down a steep flight of stairs that corkscrews deeper into the mountain. I can tell we are descending into the bowels of the monastery, as no longer are there window slits that let in outside light. I’m carrying a glass globe filled with a ghostly radiance, which the abbess produced after Xela told her we would pursue those who kidnapped Valyra.
“Apparently it’s real,” I reply, turning sidewise slightly to avoid scraping my shoulders on the walls. Everything has grown more constricted the deeper we’ve gone.
“Well, yes. I always thought it real. Just not that the legends swirling around it were true.”
“And what are those?”
“That the doorway was a bridge between realities. The nuns at the Umbra teach that it was through these doorways that the gods fled this world and sought refuge elsewhere. I’ve been down there, once – it just looked like a great stone archway to me.”
“Is that all there is? The archway?”
“You’ll see. There’s an ancient ruin buried among the mountain’s roots, inside a great cavern. The shadowdancers believe this is where the Lady of Darkness now dwells since she decided not to join her divine siblings in their exodus. What I want to know is where the Swords think they’re going. Why would this Stranger lead them down there when there’s no way out?”
The Voice thinks it can open the door. The thought chills me. If it only meant to return itself and Valyra to the red wastes of the dying world, that would be a tragedy, but at least what harm was done would be contained. But what if it could keep the door open, and invite the rest of the Shriven through? The stone key weighs heavily in my belt pouch – am I bringing the means of unlocking the doorway to the Stranger? Was it possible this was all some elaborate plot? But that kind of machination seems impossibly complex. Doesn’t it?
Lower and lower we go, until the smoothly hewn passages of the monastery give way to tunnels gouged from the mountain’s flesh. There are ancient runes incised into the walls here, and elaborate scenes of armies clashing with hordes of monstrous creatures. I can’t stop to examine these carvings, as Xela keeps pushing us faster, but I think some of these twisted beasts resemble the Shriven I encountered in the other world. Monsters with curving hooks for arms, great worms bursting through the ground to swallow entire legions whole.
The air keeps getting warmer as well, until it is almost uncomfortably hot. I glance behind me at the rest of my companions, and it is clear that they are also struggling with the heat. Deliah’s long violet hair is plastered to her skin, and her skin gleams in the light of the glow globe I carry. Shalloch is breathing heavily, and has already shed the heavy fur cloak and gloves that he was wearing when we left Zim. Only Fen Poria seems to be enjoying herself – the feral is baring her teeth in a wolf-like grin that reminds me of a predator stalking closer to prey it knows to be trapped.
“How much farther?” Bell asks between gasping breaths.
“We’re here,” Xela calls back as she follows the curve of the passage we’re rushing down. I nearly collide with her as I turn the corner . . . and then I also stop, awed by what is before me.
We stand on a high ledge overlooking a vast cavern. It’s so big that an entire district of Ysala could fit inside, I think, even the tallest of the city’s towers. Shattered ruins fill much of the space, and mushrooms that range from half the height of a man to the size of mighty trees sprout everywhere. High above the floor of the cavern an enormous twin of the jewel in the great hall of the Umbra slowly rotates. The light veining the gem is much brighter here, and as it slowly rotates it bathes the entirety of the cavern in a purple radiance.