Shadows of Blood

by L. E. Dereksen

  “I mean I saw her with my own eyes. She came out of the shadows. Came this close to me.” He held a hand a few breadths from his face.

  “A trick!”

  “No trick.”

  “But that isn’t possible!”

  “I’d agree with you, except for one point.” Adar held up a finger. “The woman was Yashi, and she wasn’t Yashi. She was shattered, gutted, stolen. In her place, was a creature of the Sumadi.”

  The speech had the desired effect, every time. The tent fell silent. First, they would struggle to understand, to line up what they already knew in order to make sense of this revelation. Then, when they ran against the truth, they’d deny it. It was too horrible, too unthinkable. There must be some mistake, they’d say, if only to themselves. But when they remembered how much they trusted Adar, how they respected him, relied on him, how they had already sworn to follow him into rebellion—then they would sink into the revelation like falling into a nightmare. They would shake their heads, stare, and mutter. And finally, if no one had spoken yet, someone would do it now—and it was seldom polite.

  “Shit,” Ham said.

  I nodded. “Exactly.”

  “Can you prove it?”

  “Why don’t you ask your father?”

  “No, I mean can you do it again. Can you show me my brother?”

  “It’s dangerous.”

  “Sands take all that. If this is real, it’s worth seeing with my own eyes. Show me my brother!”

  “Your brother,” Adar said, “would try to destroy you.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “And once it succeeded, it would turn on others.”

  At my request, Adar had left out the detail of the Sending stone. No one but he and Mani and I could know. And no one could repeat the experiment without knowing.

  “Hamanda,” I said. “If you stay in the desert long enough, you may get your wish. Pray that you don’t.”

  “But how did you do it? Can you summon Sumadi out of the stars?”

  “I can speak with them, yes. Sometimes they listen. Usually, they don’t. They are wild, a twisted shadow of the people they once were.”

  “And how do we know they aren’t deceiving you? Changing their appearance?”

  “Because I’ve killed one, and seen a friend’s dead eyes staring at me from a Sumadi’s corpse. Believe me, with my wife on her way to the Chorah’dyn now, I wish it were a mistake, but it isn’t. This is real.”

  “So my brother . . . You’re telling me, he . . . that he . . .” He shook his head, a dark look twisting his face. “You’re telling me he could have murdered my friend?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m telling you.”

  “My brother . . . is Sumadi.”

  “Yes.”

  “And do they know about it?”

  “Who?”

  “They. The Guardians. The Circle. The sand-shitting Al’kah.”

  I hesitated, then found myself nodding. “The Al’kah knows.”

  Mani shot me a look. It was a lie. The Al’kah had no idea. But they needed this—a clear enemy. And if I could direct their animosity away from the Guardians in general back to the one in power, it might focus their cause.

  Hamanda stood. Hatred came off him in waves, and the others were drinking it up, faces darkening, fists tightening.

  “Those Guardian bastards are lying to us,” Daya hissed.

  “Now we know why it’s never Guardian Lords who get Chosen,” said another.

  Larayis gasped. “That means my father is one of those things!”

  “And my son.” Brudan’s fists clenched on his knees. “They took my son. They took my son and turned him into a monster.”

  I thought they might burst out of the tent right there to find someone to kill.

  I lifted a hand. “Yes. Yes, to all of it. Which is why our mandate is clear: we will not submit to the next Choosing.”

  “Then we’ll stop it?” Ham’s eyes lit up with the thought of violence.

  I shook my head. “That’s a fast way to get us all killed.”

  “So we do nothing?”

  I opened my mouth, but it was Mani who stepped in. “We offer an alternative,” she said quietly.

  They glowered at her. They didn’t like that. They wanted blood. They wanted action. And they wanted it now.

  “You mean dying in the desert?” Hamanda demanded.

  “I mean freedom.” She remained calm. “Vengeance will come. But if we spend ourselves in rage, our rising with be fierce and short-lived.”

  “You think we aren’t tough?”

  “I think you’re more powerful than you know. But violence will lead only to death. Why waste life? Life is our future, our hope. The answer is not seizing control from the Al’kah, but simply giving our people a choice. That, my friends, is freedom.”

  Hamanda thought about it. “Then why the weapons? We’ve risked our lives to gather them. We intend to use them.”

  “Bone-headed spears,” I said. “Wooden clubs. Slings. Kindling to a Guardian’s blade.”

  “Maybe we should test that.” Ham stepped forward, challenging me, hating me. It was a reaction to my authority, nothing else. Still, I was tempted to fight him, to give him an outlet for his anger and make a quick demonstration. I wasn’t worried about which of us would win.

  Then Adar touched his son’s arm. A quick, quiet gesture. A warning. It was eerie how immediate the effect was.

  Hamanda glanced at him, scowling, but backed off. He took a seat. All that bitterness turned and scuttled back inside of him, and just like that, he closed himself off.

  It hit me then. If I thought I was the one in charge, I was fooling myself. Adar controlled them. Adar had their loyalty and their trust. Adar was using me.

  “So back to my question,” Brudan said. “Do you have a plan, or not?”

  I struggled to regain my composure. “Yes,” I said, pulling my gaze away from Adar, glancing at Mani. “For now, we will grow our numbers, spread the word quietly and carefully. We will get as many on our side as we can. And when the Choosing comes, the Circle will find us absent.”

  “And if they force us to attend?”

  “Then,” I looked at him, “we will not be silent.”

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Kulnethar ab’Ethanir

  I dumped the armful of scrolls onto the reading table. Alis looked up. She was buried in her own stack, straddling a portable writing table with scraps of parchment scattered around her. Ink splotches decorated her face and arms like a warrior’s mark.

  “Not yet,” she said. “These first.”

  I wandered over. As an Elder, I was allowed to remove scrolls from the Library, and though the practice was frowned upon, I had taken generous advantage of it. And with great satisfaction. We now had an indulgent number of scrolls being processed in our private rooms.

  “Whoa, watch it!” Alis cried, shooting out a hand.

  I glanced down. I had stepped on one of the piles of scrap.

  “Is it code for something?”

  “It’s called categorization.”

  I raised a brow at the disarray. There were clusters of parchment, some big, some small, here and there, arranged in such a way I began to suspect the proximity of one pile to another meant something. There were unfurled scrolls heaped atop one another and bound ones tossed to either side. I winced, wondering what the scribes would do if they discovered their precious writings being wielded so carelessly.

  I bent to examine one of the parchment scraps.

  “Contests of strength . . .” I read aloud. “Mem. Und. 3–14.” I looked at her. “What is all this?”

  “Huh.” She snatched the parchment out of my hand and replaced it. “A cross-reference system. To these.” She patted the unfurled scrolls, then waved towards the rolled-up stack on her right. “Those can go back.”

  I stood, fascinated as she tore off another scrap from an empty parchment and bent over one of the unfurled scrolls. She f
ollowed something with her finger, muttering aloud. She paused. Then she scratched a phrase onto the parchment. She sat back, thinking, looking around her, then deliberately bent to her right and placed the scrap into a small pile of other scraps.

  I backed away, suddenly afraid to disturb the mysterious machinations in progress.

  “Do . . . do you need help?”

  “Hmm.” She scratched something else down. “Not right now.”

  I knew better than to get offended at my wife’s dismissal. I smiled. In fact, it was wonderful to see her absorbed in meaningful work. At least, I hoped it was meaningful. I assumed it would all make sense later.

  “If you’re busy then, I’ll go check on the healing rooms.”

  “Mmhm.”

  I edged towards the door of our rooms.

  Then she gasped. “Here, here, here!”

  She leaned over something.

  “What is it?” I hurried back.

  “Light and all.” She snatched the scroll closer to her face, then thrust it towards me. “You see?”

  I read the document. Without context, it was bewildering: an analysis of a crafting process, including the tempering of metal and the internal structure of some substance I wasn’t familiar with. Then I frowned. Ytyri. I read the document again.

  “This is about crafting ytyri.”

  “Yes,” she replied. “And do you know when it was written?”

  I shook my head.

  “According to the preamble,” she said, “this document—not the original of course—is a copy of something written a hundred years before ytyri was regularly grafted onto metal.”

  I looked at her. “I’m . . . I’m not sure what that’s supposed to imply.”

  She sighed. “This is proof Shatayeth was involved. This is a recipe for a device that creates heat to a degree unattainable before this point.”

  “I still don’t follow.”

  “Look. In order to create ytyri that does something, you have to be able to do that thing already.”

  “Um. Have I been bringing you scrolls that contain forbidden secrets?”

  “Yes,” she said. “But do you see what this means?”

  “Hold on, you can’t . . .”

  “Of course I’m not going to use them. I can’t, since I don’t have any raw ytyri. Besides, it’s not my fault you’re an Elder now and can access anything you want. Now focus. In order to create ytyri that does something—”

  “You have to be able to do it already. Like if you want to make fire, you have to have heat.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So how does that fit Ishvandu’s stone? It’s not possible to create a copy of yourself and send it across the Unseen without ytyri.” I hesitated. “Is it?”

  “That’s exactly my point. It must be. You can’t reproduce the thing until you can already do the thing in the first place. You have to teach the ytyri what to do. Which is why most early inventions of ytyri came from the Laws themselves, like how the use of ytyri to grow plants came from examining the Laws of growth in the natural world, and then accelerating them, with the help of the Chorah’dyn.”

  “I still don’t know what this has to do with Shatayeth.”

  “This is not a natural process, Kulni. This is mixing metal with metal at a sub-structural level. This is the first instance of that sort of binding that I’ve come across, and there’s no precedent for it. Which means someone taught it to them. Which means Shatayeth.”

  “And where did Shatayeth get those ideas from?”

  “He was the king of an advanced civilization that could have lasted millennia before the Wars, so who knows what marvels they were capable of. My “Age of the Undying” cluster is over there—mostly myths, of course, but they hint at some pretty amazing stuff. Plus there’s the question of where Shatayeth himself got his power from. He’s not natural, if what you’ve told me is true.”

  “Okay.” I frowned. “I still don’t understand how this information will help us fight him.”

  “I’m compiling references,” she said. “I’m trying to track his influence throughout history. I think he’s been more involved in Kayr than we would like to admit. We can’t fight him until we understand him, so—this.” She spread her arms, then pointed at the scroll I was still holding. “This is significant because I think it might be the earliest piece of evidence I have for his involvement in Kayr. The first time he resurfaces after the death of Kyrada in the Wars of Rending.”

  I nodded. “Okay. But you have to admit the evidence is circumstantial at best.”

  “Granted.” She bent to scratch something on another scrap of parchment. “Which is why it’s going onto this pile.” She placed it on the largest stack of them all.

  “All that is circumstantial?”

  “No mention of his name or assumed titles, but suggesting his involvement. Which, by the way, includes pre-fall references and,” she pointed to another stack, “post-fall references.”

  “Post-fall . . . after the Fall of Kayr. You mean Shyandar?”

  “Exactly.”

  I felt a curl of dread. I tiptoed through the scraps and crouched by the second pile. “Elder vanishes before eyes. Reflec HE 227. See also Reflec HE 228.”

  I raised a brow at her. “Someone vanished?”

  “Right before the eyes of the council. Sound familiar?”

  “Ishvandu’s ytyri stone.”

  “Mmhm.”

  “So you’re assuming Shatayeth was involved in this as well?”

  “No assumptions, Kulni. Hypotheses. Didn’t you read any of those scrolls on the process of inquiry?”

  I laughed. “Careful, Alis. You’re going to turn into a bent old scholar if you don’t watch yourself.”

  “Well, that’s the point, isn’t it? The only thing those scribes do is copy. Shatayeth gets away with meddling because no one actually investigates anymore. We have records, and no one looks at them and puts the patterns together. Here.”

  She handed a scrap to me from another pile.

  “E’tuah & Avanir—Reflec HE 321.” Then she held up the entire stack—all the exact same thing, with different years and references, more than a dozen of them. The last was from the year 436.

  “This is from when my father was High Elder,” I said.

  “Indeed. These are records of when the two names were used close to one another. Given the title E’tuah rarely comes up at all in Shyandar and therefore must refer to Shatayeth himself, I doubt this is a coincidence.”

  “So Shatayeth is interested in the Avanir.”

  “And who else is interested in the Avanir?”

  “Ishvandu.”

  She nodded. “I wonder why.”

  I frowned. “This is a problem.”

  “Yes.”

  “Can I look at these writings?” I waved the scraps around.

  She snatched them back. “Let me see.”

  After reading each one and rifling through her stack of scrolls, she was able to extract an armful. “Not all the references are directly related, it’s simply a proximity note. But sometimes proximity shows an unconscious connection. Not a direct correlation, perhaps, but if they keep appearing in conjunction with each other . . .”

  She stuffed the scrolls into my arms, then waved me away. “Let me keep—”

  “Nyashal!” I almost shouted the name.

  Alis glanced up at me, brows cocked. “What about her?”

  “I might have one more for you. Remember she died at the Avanir with her eyes plucked out of her head?”

  “I remember.”

  “I never told you this, but she also had a dream, or a vision, or a real visit—we can’t be sure—from someone with bare feet. And Ishvandu talked about E’tuah as if he always walked around barefoot.”

  Alis nodded. “Yes, I’ve heard that before. I’ll make a note of it. Now let me finish this stack here.” She waved towards the bundle of scrolls on her left.

  I frowned. “Alis, when was the last time you
ate?”

  She pointed to an untouched cup. “I have water.”

  “You should eat something.”

  “Later.”

  “It’s past midday.” I shot her a look. “Are you feeling alright?”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “I’ll be right back.” I set the scrolls down on our bed, then hurried to find some food, mind churning with new possibilities.

  The High Elder intercepted me on my return.

  “Kulnethar,” he said, holding out a hand.

  “Not now, High Elder. I’m very busy.”

  “So I’ve heard.” He blocked me, attempting to appear inviting—and failing. “Come. We’ve got some things to discuss.”

  A warning prickled through me.

  “High Elder, right now isn’t really the—”

  “It’s about your friend. In the desert.”

  Ishvandu. I sighed. “What has he done now? And why in the sands is it my problem, anyway?”

  “Both questions I will answer, if you’d be so kind as to join me in my chambers.”

  Again, the warning. I waved a handful of nuts, a skin of cider, and a basket of dates.

  “This is for my wife—”

  “I can have someone bring it to her.”

  “No!” I winced at the alarm in my voice and quickly softened my words. “No, no. Really, it’s okay. I promised I would check in with her . . .”

  I tried to edge around the High Elder.

  “Kulnethar, we have to talk.”

  “Later. I promise, High Elder. I’ll—”

  “Wait!” He grabbed me, nearly spilling my handful of nuts. “I’ve been hearing some very worrying reports from the Library.”

  “From the Library?” I forced myself to laugh. “What could you possibly be—?”

  “That you’re breaking protocol.” His voice hardened.

  “I’m an Elder now, remember? You can’t forbid me research for my work.”

  “And what is that work exactly?”

  “Fascinating!” I pulled out of his grasp. “And I’ll tell you about it another time.”

  Before he could stop me again, I took three quick leaps up the stair.

  “Kulnethar!” he shouted after me. “Kulnethar, your wife is not well!”