by Caitlin Seal
“Five years should do it,” the woman said. “What will it be, girl? Will you give up five years of your future for one who is already dead?”
Five years. What potential would she be signing away? How much time would she have left when it was gone? She couldn’t know, and that thought was terrifying. Then again, she might die tomorrow at the hands of Queen Lial, or some madman with a wraith eater. Creator, she’d already risked a lot more than five years coming here. How was it that gambling everything could feel less terrifying than this finite cost? Naya swallowed her fear and forced a smile. Everything in life had a price. “Yes. If Corten agrees, then I’ll pay the cost.”
The woman gave Naya a disappointed look. For a moment her face looked so much like Naya’s mother that Naya felt her throat closing around a sob. “If this is your choice, I will not stop you.” She turned to the man. “Go. See if the boy is willing.”
Corten squinted against the heat of the glowing furnace runes. His arms were tired. His head ached. But the walls of the glass shop stood solid around him. Twice he’d felt them shake as something, or someone, tried to force its way inside. He’d pushed back those attacks and for the moment all was quiet outside.
He had no idea how much time had passed since. His only measure was the slow and steady drain of his own strength. If another attack came, he wasn’t sure he could hold it off. But soon that wouldn’t matter anymore.
He hadn’t created this place just to hide, after all. When the shadow man left, Corten had gone to work. His arms moved in smooth arcs as he ran the blade of the glass sword one more time across the grindstone. He held it up and grinned, admiring the way the light gleamed off the polished surface and the glow of the molten core running through its center. It had felt like madness when he’d begun. Who made a sword out of glass?
Him, apparently.
Corten didn’t know how to hammer steel. He had no memories to craft a forge from the darkness. Besides, glass had felt somehow right. This place didn’t follow the same rules as the living world. So he’d poured all his frustration into the blade’s glowing core. The edge was anger-sharp, tempered by memories of dusty books and long days spent studying the secrets that separated life and death. He wasn’t a warrior. But if he was going to explore the darkness of the fringe, he needed the means to defend himself.
His shoulders hung heavy with the leather vest he’d always worn when working in the furnace. Instead of metal rune plates, it now glimmered with disks of dark glass. Into each piece he’d forged a happy memory—his mother humming off-key while he lay in bed sick, the day Lucia accepted him as her apprentice, that first time Naya looked at him and really, truly smiled.
Corten set the sword down and massaged his temples, wincing at the pain that had taken up permanent residence in his head. He was about to pick the sword back up and continue honing the edge when the pain intensified. Corten gasped. He planted one hand against the wall and braced for another attack.
But the blow didn’t come. Instead, someone knocked on the shop’s outer door. Corten snatched up the sword and waited. The knock came again. He stood and cautiously stepped from the forge into the main shop. While he’d managed to hold on to the memory of the forge, the rest of the shop was fading. His re-creations of Matius’s statues looked eerie against the backdrop of near-transparent walls. Only the front door remained solid.
Corten tightened his grip on the sword. Then he crossed the room and opened the door. The shadow man stood outside, his face unreadable as ever. “What do you want?” Corten asked.
The shadow man looked him up and down. “Well,” he said drily. “It seems you’ve been busy.”
A flush crawled up the back of Corten’s neck. There were no mirrors in the shop, and he hadn’t bothered to dream one up. He’d hoped the smoky glass armor and glowing sword would look intimidating. But for all he knew, he looked as silly as a child playing warrior with oversize clothes and scraps of old wood. “What do you want?” he asked again.
“I come with an offer,” the shadow man said.
“I already told you. I’m not going through your door.”
“I know. That is why I have come to guide you back to life.”
Corten tensed. “Just like that? Sorry, but I find that hard to believe.”
“There is a price,” the shadow man admitted. “We see darkness looming in the future. You will be our agent in the fight against that darkness. If you succeed, your life will be yours again.”
Corten wanted to say yes so badly he could almost taste the sweetness of the word on his tongue. “Why me?” he asked instead.
The shadow man gestured to the glowing sword. “Because your will is strong. You have a chance to succeed. Also, someone has come looking for you.”
“Who?” Corten asked, barely daring to hope.
“A girl. She came to barter for your soul.”
Naya. So she and Lucia hadn’t given up on him. Corten closed his eyes. He’d made the sword and armor out of a vague notion of fighting his way into the darkness in search of a path back to life. To have one handed to him now felt too good to be true. “If I say yes, then what? I’ll be your slave?”
“You must join our fight, but your actions will be your own.”
“Will you order me to kill anyone?” Corten asked.
“Yes, if there is no other option.”
He didn’t trust the shadow man. Perhaps he only wanted to lure Corten back out into the darkness so he could drag him to the door. But that didn’t fit with the way he’d acted before. And if the offer was genuine, Corten would be throwing away his best chance to escape this place. Could he really risk giving that up? He hesitated, then slid his sword carefully into the sheath at his side. “I’ll do it.”
“Good. Then I will show you what we face, and I will carry you as close as I can to the border. The last steps will be up to you.”
Before Corten could respond, the shadow man grabbed his arm and the world vanished in a swirl of howling wind. His voice sounded in Corten’s head. “Look, and see the danger of what has happened, and what may yet happen again.”
Something slammed into Corten, as though the wind had condensed into a solid wall. Then light, and sound, and life materialized around him. He was standing at the edge of a courtyard paved with uniform slabs of gray stone. The air was hot and muggy, and above him clouds churned around a perfect circle of blue sky. Corten gaped. The edges of the world shimmered like the memories he’d fallen into. Except this couldn’t be a memory because he was sure he’d never seen this place before.
He heard voices and turned to see a circle of strangers. They wore loose, vestlike shirts that exposed arms covered in spiraling runic tattoos. A muscular man stood in the center of the circle, his body covered in tattoos that glowed with aether. The runes were strange, and the man was speaking in a language that sounded both familiar and frustratingly incomprehensible. Even so, there was something powerful in the words that made the whole world pulse in time to their rhythm. The man called out and his followers echoed him in a rising, singsong chant.
Aether churned around them, creating a vortex more powerful than anything Corten had ever felt. As the energy built, the man in the center drew a long dagger. Corten watched in horror as he pressed the blade to his chest and carved a new rune into his flesh. The man spoke again, and though the language did not change, the meaning of the words echoed in Corten’s mind. “I name us gatekeepers! From this day on, the doors of death will be ours to command.”
Energy exploded from the circle and hit Corten like a punch. The man in the center grinned triumphantly. Then his face twisted as the rune on his chest burst into flame. The ground cracked and the howl of the wind rose to a scream. Something dark leaked into the aether. Corten braced himself, but the power flowed harmlessly around him. Everything else it touched died. Flesh withered and color leached from plants and stone alike. The p
eople in the circle screamed, the runes on their bodies burning black as they crumpled to the ground.
There was no sense of movement, but suddenly Corten could see the destruction spreading. The plaza sat at the center of a vast city. As Corten watched, the ground sank. Buildings fell and thousands upon thousands died before the rising wave of darkness.
“Remember,” the shadow man whispered. “It must not happen again.”
Corten flinched from the vision. Darkness swallowed him and through it he heard a familiar voice calling. Lucia’s song. The notes wrapped around him and Corten ran, letting them guide him through the dark.
He saw the portal up ahead, but before he could reach it, a scavenger came screeching out of the dark. Clawed limbs slashed toward him. One cut his arm, drawing a bright line of pain down his biceps. Another bounced harmlessly off the glass disks of his vest.
Corten stumbled back and drew his sword. He slashed wildly and connected with one of the creature’s limbs. The impact jarred his shoulder as the blade sliced deep into ethereal flesh.
The scavenger shrieked and reeled back. Corten saw his opportunity. He lunged to the side and sprinted. He could hear the scavenger chasing, but the glow of the portal was bright ahead. A claw scraped along his back and Corten leapt forward, his fingers stretched out and straining toward the glow of life.
The world exploded with light and for a terrifying moment Corten felt nothing. Then, slowly, he became aware of pressure against his back and the brush of air moving against his cheek. A knocking sounded from somewhere nearby, sharp and urgent.
“Corten?”
That voice.
“What happened? Did it work? Is—”
He opened his eyes. At first everything was a blur of light and color. He blinked and the colors resolved themselves into the aged brown of a low wood ceiling. A soft weight settled over him, a blanket probably. When a wraith reformed their body after a resurrection, they always came back naked. That voice. Naya. Naya had called out his name. Which meant Naya was here. Which meant she’d seen…everything. Corten sat up, pulling the blanket in close.
Someone gasped. It took a moment for Corten’s vision to fully clear. Lucia was sitting in front of him, just inside the edge of a rune circle he didn’t recognize. When he turned, he saw Naya staring at him, her eyes wide and her lips parted as though about to speak. Her hair was a wild tangle of curls and beneath her joy, her eyes were shadowed by exhaustion. For a split second, the room was silent. Then the knocking began again.
“Naya? Lucia? What’s going on? Are you all right?” a man’s voice asked through the door.
“I told you, you can’t go in there!” a woman’s voice said, also from outside, sounding slightly frantic.
Corten looked around. He was in a wooden room, sitting on the floor between a long table and a small desk. Strangely, the legs of the table were bolted to the floor. “Where are we?” he asked. Was this real, or was it just another one of the shadow man’s illusions? The edges of his vision didn’t waver like they had before. His sword and armor were gone and everything around him looked solid and gloriously, wonderfully real. When he touched his arm, he found a thin white line, like an old scar, where the scavenger had cut him.
He tried to bask in the relief of finally being back, but all he felt was a sort of hollow fear. The shadow man’s words echoed through his mind and the back of his neck itched with the conviction that the darkness lurked somewhere right behind him.
“Who is that? Damnation, someone, open this door!”
The unfamiliar voice snapped Corten back to the present. He tried to stand but fell back when the floor rocked gently beneath him. Wherever he was, it definitely wasn’t Lucia’s shop. The room smelled like wood and pitch, and something musty and sharp he couldn’t identify. Lucia leaned forward, staring at him with an intensity she usually reserved for books.
“Everything is fine,” Naya said, holding up her hands in a calming gesture. “You’re safe.” Her voice shook. She turned to glare at the door and seemed to steady herself before calling out, “Give us a moment, Lucia’s still recovering.” More quietly she added, “Please, Corten, I’ll explain everything, just stay quiet and stay out of sight.”
The banging on the door stopped. “Naya? Did something happen? One second I was asleep and the next my tattoos were burning with aether.”
Quiet was the last thing Corten wanted to stay. His body thrummed with aether and his head was full of images of crumbling cities and beasts of shadow and claw. “Naya, I—”
“Please, Corten. We can’t let anyone find you here.”
That did not make him feel better. But he could hear the fear in her voice, so he nodded his agreement. Naya gave him a brief, tired smile, then slipped around the table and unlocked the door on the other side of the room. She opened it a crack. “Everything’s fine, Francisco. Why don’t you go back to bed? You look awful.”
“That is exactly what I told him,” the female voice from before said. “But he wouldn’t listen.”
“I said I’m fine,” the male voice—Francisco, apparently—answered. “Is someone in there with you?”
“Only Lucia. She just finished adding the new bone to my bond.”
“I thought I heard a man talking,” Francisco said.
“Then maybe you were dreaming. I’m sorry we woke you.” Naya’s tone was soothing despite the rigid grip she held on the door.
“It definitely wasn’t a dream,” Francisco said, suspicion growing in his voice. “Who are you trying to hide in there?”
“Nobody!”
“Naya,” Francisco said, now sounding exasperated. “You asked me to trust you, but you are making it damned hard.”
“You’re the one—”
This wasn’t working. “Naya, stop,” Corten said, bracing himself against the table so he could stand. “Whatever you’re trying to hide, just stop.” She’d said it was too dangerous for him to be seen. But Francisco didn’t sound like he intended to go away, and if they kept on like this, their argument was bound to draw more attention. Besides, the tone of Naya’s voice reminded Corten too much of those days in Belavine before he’d found out who she really was. He wouldn’t sit quietly while she spun more lies.
“Who’s there?” Francisco asked again.
Corten stepped carefully over the painted lines of the circle, noticing with a shudder that the wood looked pale and warped around the edges of the runes. He kept the blanket wrapped tight around his waist as he approached the door. A sallow young man about his own age leaned against the doorframe as though it were the only thing keeping him upright. His rumpled shirt hung half-unbuttoned and bulged where thick bandages had been wrapped around his stomach. Necromantic tattoos circled his neck and wrists, still rough with scabs from the needle’s work. When Corten drew aether, he could feel the pulsing thrum of pain leaching off Francisco. A pretty Ceramoran girl with curly hair and soft features stood behind Francisco, staring at Corten with wide eyes.
“My name’s Corten. Who are you?”
Francisco blinked, then his brow furrowed. “Francisco Delence. Wait. Did you say Corten? Corten Ballera?”
Naya made a small noise in the back of her throat. Corten glanced at her. She looked like she wanted to slam the door shut. “You know who I am?”
Francisco shook his head. “You can’t be Ballera.”
“Why not?” Corten asked.
“Because he’s been dead for weeks.”
Corten took a step back. “That can’t be right.” He tried to remember everything that had happened since he’d died, tried to track the time moment by moment. Days, maybe a week, no more than that, surely. He met Naya’s eyes, hoping she’d deny it.
“I can explain,” Naya said quickly. “Lucia and I found a ritual to bring you back. But we had to sail to Talmir to get a journal with the right rune diagrams.”
> “Did you say Talmir?” Corten asked.
“That’s right, you’re in Talmir,” Francisco said. His voice was hard, and his eyes narrowed as he looked at Naya. “Creator, I can’t believe this. Are you trying to start a war? And you.” He turned to Lucia. “What did you do, exactly?”
“I, ah, I’m not actually sure.” Lucia looked at the center of the ritual circle. Corten followed her gaze to a pile of broken bones. “I would very much like a few minutes to speak in private with Naya and Corten.”
“If we’re going to talk about this, could we please not do it with the door open?” Naya asked, casting a furtive glance down the hallway behind Francisco.
Francisco swallowed, looking like he might be sick. “I’m going back to the palace. My father needs to hear about this. He’ll know what to do. He’ll know how to hide what you’ve done.”
“Wait!” Naya said. “I’ll go with you, but I’m not leaving until I’m sure Corten is all right.”
“No. Stay here,” Francisco said. “I made the mistake of trusting you once. I won’t do it again.”
Naya flinched and Corten almost did the same. Those words sounded all too familiar. What had happened since his death?
“Fine,” Naya snapped. “If you think you can convince your father and the Congress to let me leave with the Gallant, then be my guest.”
Francisco glanced around, then stepped into the cabin and shut the door. “Tell me one thing. Why in creation would you risk this? Do you care at all what this could do to Ceramor’s reputation if anyone finds out?” Francisco turned to the round-faced girl who’d slipped in behind him. “And what about you, Felicia? Don’t tell me you were in on this as well. You should have come to me immediately as soon as—”
“This isn’t her fault!” Naya snapped. Corten felt a tug in the aether as Naya drew energy. “Contrary to what you might think, we’re not the ones you should be worrying about right now. I need your help keeping this secret if we’re going to stand any chance of stopping the people who killed Valn.”
