Spire of Shadows

by Sarah Hawke

  “The path has been laid out before us, Caelan,” Kraythe said. “The only question is whether or not you are righteous enough to walk it with us.”

  The Lord Vigilant glanced back and forth between them as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing—or hearing. The last of the color slowly drained from his face, and his hand fell to the handle of the sword at his waist.

  “I don’t know what powers you believe you have consorted with, Edmund,” Arinthal said, his voice a low growl, “but the true gods would never abide this…heresy! This is clearly the work of demons.”

  Jessara snorted incredulously, but the Lord Protector stepped forward before she went on the attack again. “I understand your hesitation, old friend,” Kraythe said, closing his hand and extinguishing the light in his palm. “I didn’t want to believe it either, at first. It wasn’t until Escar showed me his vision of the future that I finally understood. The Tel Bator was founded to unite Darenthi—to bring an end to a sinful kingdom and light the way for the gods to return. Thousands of good, honorable men and women have died for this cause over the centuries…and now, at long last, their sacrifice is about to be rewarded. Our faith has made the gods strong. They push at the walls of their ancient prison, and they have given us the gift that will finally set them free. All we need to do is win one final battle in their name.”

  “And to win that battle, we require the Faceless,” Jessara said. “You will begin the Purges immediately. The north must be secured until the Templar are ready.”

  Arinthal’s cheek twitched. “I do not take orders from you, girl, no matter who your father is or what power you claim to wield. I am the Voice of the Watcher!”

  Jessara snorted and clenched her claws together, extinguishing her own glowing orb. “Yet you have failed to carry out his will time and time again. The Tel Bator must act as one. If you will not do what must be done, then my father and I will find someone who will.”

  The Lord Vigilant’s eyes blazed as if he thought his glare alone could reduce her to cinders. “You dare threaten me here in the Watcher’s spire?”

  “It is not a threat, my lord—it is a statement of fact. The Keepers will begin the Purges. The only question is whether you are still strong enough to lead them.”

  Arinthal drew his sword. The high-pitched ring of steel on steel reverberated across the great chamber, and when he squeezed the handle, the vatari runes etched upon the grip pulsed with Aetheric energy—energy his tattoos immediately fed upon. The wide blade was far too heavy for any normal human to wield with precision, but an empowered Keeper possessed the strength of an ogre and the speed of a tiger.

  “The sorcerers of the Galespire are under my protection,” the Lord Vigilant declared. “You will not touch them as long as I draw breath!”

  “Don’t be a fool, Caelan,” Kraythe said. “The Spire has always been a bastion of the damned, nothing more. If the blood of a few corrupted wretches can spare Darenthi from the flame, then we must—”

  “No!” Arinthal roared. “No Faceless, no Purges, no more atrocities in the Watcher’s hallowed halls!”

  “Fine,” Jessara said with a scoff. “Guardian guide your soul…or not.”

  She thrust out her hand, and a brilliant beam of blinding light erupted from her palm and struck the man squarely in his breastplate. He flew backward across the chamber and slammed into the wall behind him as if he had been slapped by the mighty tail of a dragon. He crumpled to a knee when the beam vanished, steam rising from the now-glowing steel plates of his armor.

  But the Lord Vigilant wasn’t dead—not even close. He still clutched his massive broadsword in one hand, and his Keeper tattoos radiated an eerie blue light beneath his smoldering breastplate. As the markings fed upon the magic, his eyes began to glow as well.

  “I…am the Voice…of the Watcher!” he snarled as he pulled himself back to his feet. “No vile magic shall tempt me. No dark sorcery can stop me!”

  “I told you, old friend, this has nothing to do with sorcery,” Kraythe said as he strode forward, his hand dropping to the handle of his own sword. “The gods have granted me the pure essence of divinity…and in the glorious light of gods, all corruption shall be burned away.”

  “I will stop this madness, Edmund,” Arinthal said. “Even if I have to—”

  Another beam erupted from Jessara’s hand, this one even brighter than the first. The Lord Vigilant screamed when the searing light pierced his armor and again when it enveloped his entire body. Kraythe could feel the divine energy flowing from him into his daughter, and he couldn’t help but be awed at her control. She might not have inherited all of her mother’s abilities, but she was every bit as determined and resolute. It made her the perfect focus of the Guardian’s power…and one day soon, it would make her the perfect Lady Vigilant.

  “You…can’t…arrggh!” Arinthal screamed as the light seared his hair and scorched his flesh. His tattoos desperately tried to absorb the energy pouring into him, but they simply couldn’t keep up. The air crackled and sizzled, and his sword clattered to the ground.

  “Enough,” Kraythe said.

  Jessara didn’t stop. Her amber eyes blazed with unbridled fury, and he had no doubt that she would gladly roast the Lord Vigilant to cinders. Unfortunately, she seemed to have inherited a streak of her mother’s ruthlessness as well.

  “Jessara, enough!” he repeated.

  The beam of light dissipated as she reluctantly pulled back, and she panted for breath as she turned to look at him, confused.

  Kraythe drew his own sword from its scabbard. The runes etched into the moonsilver blade gleamed even in the dim light of the massive chamber, and he traced his finger across the inscription upon the handle. “Absolution” was the blade’s name, though he hadn’t been strong enough to wield it in combat for what felt like a lifetime. Ever since his arm had been crippled at Gareth’s Stand, his wraithblade had been a stark reminder of what he and all the Templar had sacrificed to save this kingdom.

  “For what it’s worth, I wish it hadn’t come to this,” Kraythe said as he approached the smoking body of a man who had once been a loyal comrade. “You were a good man once, a loyal servant of Darenthi and the gods who watch over it.”

  The Lord Vigilant trembled in pain as he glanced up. His hair and eyebrows had been burned away, and his skin had been charred almost completely back. If not for his Keeper powers, he would have surely been dead already.

  “You…” Arinthal rasped. “Traitor…”

  “I will see you again, old friend,” Kraythe said, squeezing the handle of his sword and dispersing the moonsilver blade into the Pale. “I only hope that in the next life I will be able to make you understand.”

  He swung the sword. The brilliant blue-white beam carved through air and then through flesh, and the corpse of the Lord Vigilant rattled to the floor with a dull, unceremonious thud.

  “I told you he wouldn’t listen to reason,” Jessara said as she stepped up behind him. The claws on her right hand still gleamed with the searing heat of her power. “Neither will the tharns or the dukes or even the Lady Vigilant. We will have to drag them screaming into the light.”

  “I know,” Kraythe said, lowering his blade. “But the world is changing. Those who refuse to change with it will be swept aside like dead leaves before a righteous wind.”

  1

  Sundermount

  He’s dead. Zin is really dead.

  Rohen Velis squeezed the handle of his wraithblade until his fingers went numb. The sword was speared straight down into the frozen dirt, and the kneeling Templar’s chin was braced atop the pommel as if he were about to recite yet another prayer to the Guardian.

  But Rohen was long past begging the gods for deliverance. All he wanted now was revenge.

  “We should get moving soon,” he said, his frozen breath billowing out in front of him. The half-moon had finally pierced through the clouds, but the pale, shadowy illumination was both a blessing and a curse. The snowy fie
lds surrounding him and his companions were glowing almost as if the Maiden herself were lighting the path of their escape, but when Rohen glanced back over his shoulder to the north, he could also see the distant outline of Rimewreath fortress and the fires still consuming its battlements.

  If the gods won’t punish Lord Kraythe for his treachery, then I will.

  Rohen clenched his teeth and stood as he turned to face the others. Delaryn and Sehris were still huddled together in front of the small campfire, partially to share the heat but mostly to comfort one another. The worst pangs of the Flensing should have passed by now, but both girls still looked exhausted.

  Or perhaps just defeated.

  “We could probably reach Fort Sundermount in three or four hours,” Rohen went on. “The sooner we can warn them about what’s coming, the better.”

  The girls remained silent. Rohen closed his eyes and swore under his breath as yet another wave of despair threatened to pull him under. He still couldn’t believe that Rimewreath had fallen. He couldn’t believe that General Galavir and the Pact Army had been slaughtered.

  And he really couldn’t believe that his best friend was gone. Forever.

  Rohen wanted to scream into the darkness. The blame for all of this madness—the massacres at Whitefeather Hold and Rimewreath, the death of King Thedric and the Pact Army—lay squarely at the feet of Lord Protector Edmund Kraythe, the Voice of the Guardian and the leader of the Templar.

  And the man who had been Rohen’s mentor.

  For the better part of the last three years, Kraythe had practically been family. He was the one who had taken in a seventeen-year-old half-elf orphan who had committed treason against the crown; the Templar had offered Rohen redemption when no one else could. There were probably rats in the Whitefeather larder with a better claim to mercy than a pale-blooded mongrel, yet the Lord Protector had never made Rohen feel the least bit guilty about what he had done in the name of the Usurper King.

  And now, for some inexplicable reason, Lord Kraythe had unleashed the very Culling he had sworn an oath to prevent.

  “After we pick up some supplies at Sundermount, we can push on to the Galespire,” Rohen said, reopening his eyes. “If we—”

  “The Galespire?” Delaryn asked, her ice-blue eyes opening wide in disbelief.

  “General Galavir said that’s where Lord Kraythe was headed,” Rohen told her. “I have to confront him. I have to tell the Lord Vigilant what really happened and—”

  “I can’t go to the Galespire, Rohen!” Delaryn insisted. “If any of the Keepers recognized me…”

  She trailed off, and the dread in her voice seemed to carry on the bitter wind. Rohen understood how she felt, of course; no unsanctioned sorcerer with an ounce of sense would ever voluntarily approach the bastion of the Watcher’s Keepers. Even if she weren’t a channeler—and the daughter of the Winter Witch—visiting the Galespire still would have been a harrowing prospect at the best of times.

  But right now, they simply didn’t have a choice. One way or another, Rohen was going to avenge Zin and everyone else who had been butchered here tonight.

  “I know it’s dangerous, but it’s the only place we’ll get any answers,” Rohen told her. “Kraythe must pay for what he did here.”

  Delaryn closed her eyes and looked away, too distraught and drained to argue. Rohen didn’t want to fight, either, but he needed her to understand.

  “I know it’s dangerous, but we’ll take precautions,” he said, lowering his voice. “Once we’re close, Sehris and I could go inside the tower while you—”

  “I can’t go back, either,” Sehris said. Her husky, dark elven voice was barely even audible over the cracking fire and whistling wind. “Not now.”

  Rohen looked at her in silence, wishing desperately that there was something he could do to ease her pain, even for a few moments. Her luminescent violet eyes were still swollen from crying, and he could tell that she was barely keeping it together. So far, he had been able to channel his shock and sorrow into rage, but that wouldn’t work here. Anger was like poison to her.

  “The Keepers shouldn’t give you any trouble,” Rohen said. “You’ve never broken the rules.”

  “But they’ll never let me leave once I return,” Sehris reminded him. “They’ll bind me to another Keeper! Or worse, they’ll try to have me Purged. You heard what Thorne said in Dorelas. Kraythe wants to turn half the sorcerers in the Spire into Faceless!”

  “I know, but once we tell the Lord Vigilant what really happened, he might—”

  “He might what?” Sehris interrupted. “Take our word over the Lord Protector’s? How do you know they aren’t working together? How do you know they didn’t plan all of this?”

  “She’s right,” Delaryn murmured, her blue eyes fluttering back open. “The Lord Vigilant never liked Thedric, either. None of the Voices did. The Tel Bator have always believed that they should rule the country, not the dukes and tharns of the court.”

  Rohen glared off into the east. “I have to find Lord Kraythe,” he said, grinding his teeth. “He will answer for what he’s done.”

  He could feel the girls looking at him, but he kept his eyes locked on the jagged, moonlit peaks of the Sundered Spine mountains. On the back of his griffon, they could have reached the Galespire in a few short hours, but on foot it would probably take them at least two days. Even with supplies from Fort Sundermount, the path through the mountains would be long, hard, and cold.

  But Rohen refused to simply give up. His anger would keep him warm even if nothing else would.

  “We could travel west,” Sehris whispered. “Past Palegarde and into the Northern Reaches.

  Rohen turned and stared at her as if she were mad. “You can’t be serious.”

  “If the Dragon of Highwind is real…maybe we could ask for aid against the Chol.” The dark elf shrugged. “Surely with his power, he could—”

  “We are not going to Highwind,” Rohen said, shaking his head. “If even half the rumors about Jorem Farr are true, he’s more of a tyrant than any Crell Sovereign.”

  “I doubt that very much,” Sehris said. “The Tel Bator slander him because he’s a Wyrm Lord. He’s everything they fear.”

  “I’m not saying we should blindly trust the Triumvirate priests, but they’ve spent plenty of time demonizing the Crell, too, and I don’t think the Sovereigns are secretly our friends.” Rohen sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “We don’t even know if there really is a Wyrm Lord. There hasn’t been a real dragon in this part of the world for what, a thousand years?”

  “Longer,” Sehris admitted. “And the very idea of a human Wyrm Lord does defy belief…no offense.”

  Rohen snorted and crossed his arms. He had never been to Highwind, obviously, but by all accounts, it was even more chaotic than Silver Falls. And if the city really was ruled over by an actual dragon…gods, he wasn’t even sure what to think. Maybe the endless litanies and warnings from the Tel Bator had gotten to him.

  “We could head for Nelu’Thalas instead,” Delaryn suggested. “My father was on decent terms with the elves. Queen Malareth might be willing to—”

  “We’re not going to Nelu’Thalas, either,” Rohen interrupted. “For all we know, they’ll shoot Sehris on sight.”

  “He’s right,” Sehris whispered. “The Ilwetharri will never allow a dark elf to set foot in the Moonweald.” She paused and swallowed. “But what about heading farther north? What about the Roskarim?”

  Rohen blinked. “What?”

  “Delaryn’s mother was a sacred figure to them. Why wouldn’t they take in her daughter?”

  “They won’t want anything to do with me,” Delaryn said. “When the Keepers executed my mother, the Clan-Lords demanded blood. If the Chol hadn’t already decimated their numbers, they probably would have started another war against Darenthi.”

  “But that was almost twenty years ago,” Sehris pointed out. “They still have a settlement north of the Moonweald, don�
��t they? We could try speaking them.”

  “No,” Delaryn said firmly. “They’re not my people. I don’t know them, and they don’t know me.”

  Another pained silence lingered between them, and the grim specter of loss loomed over them like a choking miasma. Rohen almost wished that a group of Chol would catch up to them. His wraithblade would make short work of the Godcursed elves, and carving through an endless sea of monsters would help him channel his rage and dull the pain of Zin’s death.

  Despair was a far more implacable foe. It couldn’t be slashed or stabbed; it didn’t have a body to kill. It just hung in the air and grew fat upon the stillness.

  “Hathal niveh,” he whispered, dispersing Varlothin into the Pale. The blade transformed into a heatless, fiery blue beam, and he effortlessly pulled it out of the ground. The spectral light cast their small camp in an eerie, otherworldly glow.

  “So where do we go?” Sehris asked. “What do we do?”

  “First, we warn Sundermount about what’s coming for them,” Rohen told her. “Then we travel east to the Galespire.”

  Delaryn stared up at him, her eyes wide with fright and wet with tears. Rohen’s heart sank in his chest, and he forced himself to turn away and look at his weapon instead. He whispered the Elvish phrase again, shifting Varlothin back into the physical world, and he stared at his reflection in the gleaming moonsilver blade.

  Rohen had spent most of his life as a hapless, pale-blooded orphan with no identity and no purpose, but now he had both: he was a Templar of the Guardian, entrusted to protect the realm and its people from any and all threats. The Chol may have been behind him, but the true monster was still in front of him. Lord Kraythe would pay the price for his betrayal, no matter the risk. No matter the cost.

  “Come on,” Rohen said, sheathing his sword and offering his hand to help the girls up. “It’s time to go.”

  ***

  Delaryn knew she should have been freezing the moment they left their campfire behind, but her body was already so numb with grief she barely even felt the wind blasting through her cloak or the snow crunching beneath her boots. Every few minutes, she would close her eyes, and when they reopened, she half expected to be back in Whitefeather Hold lying in bed with King Thedric.