Of Shadow and Sea (The Elder Empire: Shadow Book 1)

by Will Wight

  She threw herself back into the fight, redoubling her efforts. Whenever the Children approached, they were crushed, decapitated, or simply slammed out of the way.

  After a few minutes, the two humans both began to laugh.

  As Urzaia grabbed her by the ankle and hurled her into a still-standing stone pillar, he laughed. As she lunged from the rubble, seized a rock the size of a cannonball, and launched it at Urzaia’s head, she laughed.

  When the Izyrian broke the missile in midair, but the debris still slammed into his face and chest, knocking him backwards a step, they both laughed.

  They soon refocused, attacking each other with renewed ferocity, but Meia knew he thought the same as she.

  At last, she had a chance to cut loose, to push it forward and find out what this body she’d earned could do.

  It was the most fun she’d allowed herself to have in ages.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Ten Years Ago

  As Gardener training and common sense dictated, Shera targeted the gunmen first.

  One, a woman with her head pulled up in a cap, spotted them as they rushed down the hill. She pulled her musket to her shoulder, took aim, and squeezed the trigger.

  Shera ducked to one side, but the shot was wide. It struck the skin-covered ground ten feet from Lucan, sending up a spray of gray-green blood. The woman in the cap was the only one with a musket; two others had pistols, but they kept their weapons raised, waiting for the Emperor and his assassins to get closer.

  They waited too long.

  The woman with the musket was driving a ramrod down the barrel when Shera reached her. She raised her gun to block a descending strike, but Shera ducked low, driving one of her shears up under the woman’s ribs.

  The blade slipped in and out of flesh as if through water. Had Lucan’s one hour of attention done that much?

  Shera shot behind a nearby patch of fungus, instinctively seeking cover, but she stopped halfway there.

  Everyone else was already dead.

  The Emperor flicked his two long blades, ridding them of excess blood. His white armor had been spattered with a red spray, and three bodies were still crumpling behind him. Two of the corpses clutched pistols.

  Meia stood over another body with a spade in his throat, and Lucan stood in the center of a cloud of glittering sand, a corpse at his feet. But none of them had moved as quickly as their Emperor.

  None of them paused, walking straight over to the burrowed wound in the island’s flesh.

  Kneeling down, Meia peered into the hole. Shera thought she saw the other girl’s pupils flicker, as if they had changed shape for an instant.

  “Highness, there’s someone down there,” she reported. “I can see movement.”

  The Emperor stepped out over empty air. “It’s him.”

  He dropped straight down the hole.

  The rest of them had to descend less dramatically. Shera slipped climbing-hooks onto her gloves and the tips of her shoes. They were made to gouge handholds in wood, but they had no trouble driving wounds into the strange flesh of this island.

  Lucan’s gloves and boots seemed to stick to the wall like the legs of a fly, and he descended as quickly as if he were walking down a staircase. Meia merely flexed her hands, and her fingernails hardened into claws. She climbed down in the same way as Shera, though with far more grace.

  Not for the first time, Shera wondered what the alchemists were doing to her.

  As they moved farther down, Shera got a better look at the anatomy of the island. The sides of the wound were dotted with holes the size of her head, so deep they vanished into darkness. It looked as though they were burrowing through dry veins. Once, Shera rested on the lip of a hole big enough to drive a wagon through. Something moved at the far end, but she didn’t have time to investigate. The Emperor was already down there, somewhere, and Lucan and Meia were about to catch up.

  Past that point, the hole was crisscrossed with sticky red wires no wider than her thumb. They looked like thin tendons, or perhaps threads of a spider’s pink web. The wires were sparse at first, and many had been cut to get them out of the way. But the closer they got to the bottom, the thicker the wires clustered.

  At the end of the vertical tunnel, the room opened up into a cavern. Nothing as gargantuan as the Garden, which could safely hold a city, but it was at least the size of a rich man’s basement.

  The air between them was thick with those reddish wires, which bunched closer and closer together as they terminated at a single point. The flickering, unsteady light of a flame lantern illuminated the room, casting shadows into the corners.

  Meia simply jumped down, and Lucan unspooled a quick climber’s rope for a few feet before he followed. The floor they landed on was gray and squishy, like the giant tongue of a man long dead.

  Shera wanted more information before she followed, but she could neither see nor hear the Emperor. This was not the time for hesitation.

  Stretching out, she seized one of the reddish wires and gave it a tug. Seemed solid enough. She disengaged her climbing-hooks, swinging from one wire to another like an ape through the Izyrian jungle.

  When she landed with a squish on the gray surface, she dropped into a crouch, both shears drawn and ready.

  Nothing. The lantern rested on its side a few feet to her left, feebly casting its unsteady light. Somewhere in the distance, liquid dripped into a pool with the regularity of a bleeding wound.

  Shera looked away from the lantern, letting her eyes adjust to the darkness. There, in the corner, the Emperor’s white armor showed up as a slightly brighter patch of shadow. Lucan and Meia stood nearby, weapons in hand, still hesitating.

  Seeing Shera, the Emperor walked out of the shadows, dragging a ragged-looking man by a fistful of his hair.

  The Blackwatch traitor was older than Shera had expected, maybe fifty years old, with the naturally tan skin of Vandenyas heritage. An intricate, squirming tattoo masked half his face, and the design made her nauseous for reasons she couldn’t quite name.

  The Emperor knelt, pushing the side of his captive’s head down into the moist floor. “Tell them what you told me.”

  Whimpering, the captive still managed to summon an insane smile. “You lose!” he gasped. “The long game is over! Make this easy for all of us—”

  The voice of the Aurelian Emperor rang out in the confined space, so packed with Intent that Shera flinched back. “Say it!”

  When the words finally came from the disgraced Watchman’s throat, they crawled out. “That which sleeps…will soon…wake…”

  The Emperor’s answering smile was as mad as his captive’s. “Soon for me, yes. But not today. And not for you.”

  Before Shera could fully register what was happening, the Emperor had seized another handful of black hair and dragged the traitor over to her, closer to the lantern. The Watchman struggled weakly, but his captor gave no notice.

  The Emperor pulled something out that Shera hadn’t noticed before: a white sash, which he had tucked between plates of his armor. He placed one boot on the tattooed man’s chest to prevent him from squirming, and then he stretched the sash out between both hands.

  “What a comforting pillow this will make you,” he said, and folded the sash in half. “You’ll get a good night’s sleep.” He folded the sash again. “Nothing will wake you. Not a sound. Not an itch. Not a scratch.”

  The Watchman sputtered something out, slamming his fist into the Emperor’s armored leg, but the Emperor simply knelt again, tucking the sash under his captive’s head.

  “Pleasant dreams,” he said, then he removed his boot from the man’s chest and stepped back.

  For a second, the traitor tried to rise, but he couldn’t seem to pull his head from the makeshift pillow. His eyes drifted closed as he tried to speak, but Shera heard only mumbling. His right hand lifted, then fell back down without strength. His legs kicked like a dreaming dog’s.

  Then even that motion stopped, and hi
s only sign of life was the slow rise and fall of his chest.

  “Would you like us to kill him?” Meia asked. Her voice was flat and businesslike, which meant she was uncomfortable and trying not to show it.

  The Emperor didn’t answer. He staggered away, gripping a handful of red wires as if to steady himself. “It’s not enough. It’s never enough. Century after century, and it’s never enough.”

  Shera followed the red wires as they ran from the Emperor’s fist down to the floor in a corner of the room, one still bathed in shadows. Most of the wires in the room ended at that point; the Watchman had severed several near the base, as though trying to dig through them.

  Struck by curiosity, Shera moved toward that spot.

  “Back where I started,” the Emperor murmured. “It begins again. They’re not ready. They need to be ready. They need to be better!”

  A soft wind picked up from somewhere, hissing through the chambers like a thousand distant voices.

  Then Shera saw what waited at the end of those sticky red tendons. They terminated in a gray-green heart, but not as sickly as the one the Emperor wore around his chest. This one was healthy as a ripe apple, pumping in a steady rhythm. The wires stuck to it, fused with it, carrying blood or nutrients or whatever the Elder needed back to the rest of Nakothi’s vast, not-quite-dead body.

  Now Shera could hear it, echoing through the whole island: a faint heartbeat.

  The Emperor’s hand had slid from the wires down to the hilt of his sword. “I can make them better. I can remake them, reforge them. I can give them rebirth.”

  And the voice of Nakothi howled through the chamber, echoing the Emperor’s final word.

  “REBIRTH.”

  Then the Emperor slammed his booted heel down on the glass lantern, and the light went out.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Awakened objects may be powerful and somewhat self-aware, but they are no substitute for a living human being.

  From this day forward, non-human entities are no longer allowed a seat on the Council of Architects.

  -Secret Laws of the Am’haranai, Number Seventeen

  Kerian lunged on her one good leg, almost collapsing on a fused monstrosity that looked something like two drowned men trying to escape a shapeless blob of flesh. The Child of Nakothi spurted up foul-smelling milky blood, curling in on itself as it died.

  Some of the rotten fluid got on Kerian’s clothes, but she was past caring. If the stench could distract her from her pain, so much the better, and she was already going to tear the purple dress off her body and burn it as soon as she had half an opportunity. That was what she’d earned, dressing for negotiation instead of battle. She’d been thinking like an Architect and a Councilor, not like a Gardener.

  Sitting back and kicking at the Child’s corpse with her good leg, she managed to push it away from one of the secret entrances to the Council chamber: a brown metal hatch fused to the back of a fake tree, hidden behind a thornbush.

  For a second she sat on the ground, regarding the entrance. Having everything concealed and difficult to reach was a long tradition of the Gray Island, stretching back to the origins of the Am’haranai. It spoke to their philosophy: humble in appearance, complex within.

  But she was only beginning to realize how impractical it all was. It was all well and good to have secret entrances and tunnels everywhere as long as all of your Guild members were able-bodied, but what about during a battle? What if they were injured? Even a Consultant who knew the Island like her own home couldn’t get around any more quickly than an ignorant enemy, if she couldn’t rely on both legs and both arms.

  She felt a newfound sympathy for those Guild brothers and sisters who lost a limb during a mission. They had all retired to the Gray District in the Capital—the block of expensive homes where long-serving Consultants lived out the rest of their lives. She had once wondered why so few of them chose to stay on the Island.

  Now she knew.

  She gripped the hatch in both hands, shivering and sweating through the pain in her injured wrist. Kerian didn’t blame Shera for doing what needed to be done—it was Calder Marten’s fault for abusing the power of the Emperor’s crown, not anyone else’s—but she couldn’t help but feel that the girl could have taken it easy. Kerian wasn’t as young as she used to be, after all.

  Finally, with a shot of pain like an alchemist’s needle pressed straight against the bone, Kerian managed to wrench the hatch open.

  Inside, cloaked in shadow, waited her greatest opponent yet: stairs.

  She pulled herself through awkwardly, grateful that there were no witnesses around, and pulled the hatch shut behind her. The last thing she needed was another Child of Nakothi crawling through, forcing her to fight in the dark, on the cramped stairs.

  She slid down on her backside, scooting down one stair at a time, ignoring the foul stink coming from her clothes. She was tempted to tear the dress off now, but she didn’t enjoy the thought of pushing her way down the stone steps in nothing but her underthings. That could result in some scrapes in awkward places.

  Finally, after what seemed like an eternity of pain and discomfort and wire-taut fear, Kerian reached the Council chamber at the bottom.

  The pale lights hanging from the roots on the ceiling had never felt so bright, as she’d never come down the stairs in complete darkness before. With all the agility of a ninety-year-old invalid, she pushed herself to her feet and staggered closer to the white table of the High Council of Alchemists.

  It looked like nothing so much as a waist-high column of chalk, and the Councilors mostly used it to doodle in yellow light during meetings, but it was an ancient artifact created by the greatest Readers and alchemists of the early Empire. The table had been used to plan attacks on Great Elders, and given to the Am’haranai to train their strategists.

  And for one other purpose.

  Kerian pressed her palm against the surface of the table, activating her handprint in yellow light. She tried to focus her Intent, though she was never sure how well she’d done; she wasn’t a Reader, so she couldn’t see the results of her own Intent.

  When she thought she was properly focused, she spoke out clearly and firmly. “I am Kerian, Architect of the High Council. I seek the wisdom of Bastion, and the safety of the Veil.”

  It took long enough that Kerian had begun to wonder if she had done everything correctly. She had tested this process out once, upon being elected to the High Council, to see if it would work. Since then, there had been no need: Yala took the swearing-in of new Consultants as a religious duty, and guarded that right covetously. Kerian had never minded, since she normally had more important things to do, but now she wished she’d had a little more practice.

  Just when she’d resolved to try again, a rectangular slice of the table’s center withdrew, sliding down into itself with the scrape of stone on stone. Kerian withdrew her hand, slumping against the edge of the table, breathing deeply in relief.

  It had worked. Maybe they would have a chance.

  After a moment, the stone slid back up. A glass box sat on top, packed with clouds of silver mist. At a certain angle, the mist almost looked blue, whirling and twisting as though it were buffeted by invisible winds.

  She placed a hand on the device—the Vessel that had once raised Bastion’s Veil—and focused her Intent once more, speaking loudly and clearly. The instructions she’d received upon being raised to the High Council clearly stated that she didn’t need to speak the words out loud, so long as she held them clearly enough in her mind, but she felt more comfortable speaking. It seemed easier to control.

  “Our home is threatened,” she said. “The Veil is breached. Lend us your power and cleanse this island of that which is unclean.”

  Once again, nothing happened for a moment, but this time she was prepared. Prepared for anything, in fact: this was one of a dozen emergency procedures she’d had to memorize upon her election to the High Council. She’d never expected to need it.r />
  A moment later she gasped as her vision was stolen away, and she was given a view of Nakothi’s Handmaiden, rampaging across the Island, directing the Children of the Dead Mother like a shepherdess with her flock.

  It’s a Reader’s vision, she thought. This must be what it was like for Readers, though as she understood it, they mostly viewed the past instead of the present. But this certainly felt like a trance, as though an outside force had taken over her imagination and plugged an image into it.

  Kerian’s view wasn’t steady; it whirled and spun, as though battered by the wind. After a second she realized she was seeing out from within Bastion’s Veil itself.

  The sound of the wind tore around her, and she had listened for almost a minute before she realized that the furious wind was trying to speak to her.

  “...break us...”

  She screwed up her ears and her mind, focusing on picking out the words.

  “...she will break us,” Bastion’s Veil whispered.

  The Intent bound within the ancient Vessel flowed directly to her, and she understood the full story from those few words. As Kerian had been warned years ago, releasing the Veil was an action of dire emergency. Using all of the mists at once would cleanse the Gray Island of Elderspawn, but the island would go without cover for weeks afterwards as the Veil recovered.

  Now Bastion’s Veil was telling her something else, something that Yala and Tyril hadn’t known when they inducted her. The Handmaiden could break through the Veil. If Kerian collapsed the mist and attempted to drive the Elders away from the island, she’d be pitting Bastion’s power against the power of the Handmaiden.

  And the creature of Nakothi would win. Easily.

  The Veil would be just as broken, requiring weeks to recover, but the Elders wouldn’t even be inconvenienced. They would have free reign of the Gray Island, and by the time the mists returned, there would be no one left to save.