Skykeeper (The Drowning Empire Book 1)

by S. M. Gaither

  Seeing it bold and intact like this makes my heart give a little leap.

  At least until my eyes dart back to the words he wrote, which make no sense.

  Why was he already on his way to me, even before he received my letter?

  What’s happened that made him leave Garda sooner than planned?

  I am turning the parchment over and over, frantically looking for more information I might have missed, when Coralind shuffles over to me. She is still wrapped in her blanket, looking half-asleep, and she plunks herself down right next to me with the same disregard for personal space that my sisters always had.

  “What’s that?” she asks with a yawn. I flip it back over for her to see the words, the symbols. Her sleepy gaze drifts to the circle in the top center. “The city seal of Silverwater?” she says. “But what do the words beneath it mean?”

  I consider it for a moment, the pieces beginning to click together. “You said you were somewhat familiar with Silverwater, didn’t you?”

  She nods. “My father used to go there a lot when I was younger, bringing deliveries from Solvel’s salt mines to the ports there. I went with him a few times.”

  “He’s talking about a garden,” I tell her. “The place we met part—the emperor’s palace has several giant gardens, and we were in the eastern ones when we made all of our plans. And we’d planned to join each other in Silverwater, originally.”

  “I don’t know of any giant gardens in Silverwater,” she says. “Although…” She yawns again and looks lost in thought for a moment before she finishes: “There’s a place south of the city—if it’s still there—that people used to refer to as the garden of the gods. But it’s not really a garden so much as a shrine.”

  I refold the parchment and slip it securely into the bag beside me. “That’s where I’m heading, then.”

  Chapter 16

  Silverwater, and to the north of it, the causeway itself—both of which sit just within the boundaries of Alturas—are close.

  The only obstacle left is the lower half of the Enyolet mountain range, its dark blue peaks cutting sharply into the horizon ahead of us, jagged and haphazard, as if the gods reached into the ground below and violently wrung the dirt until something that vaguely resembled mountains shot up through it. There are two major routes through the Ens: the safer one—passage through Sinking Valley far to the east—and the quicker one.

  The itch of magic under my skin is becoming nearly unbearable. There are rumors on the wind of battles being fought, rebels clashing, blood spilling, kingdoms turning their angry, frustrated eyes—and their weapons—toward the southern kingdom.

  And so I decide on the quicker route.

  The mountains drop, for the most part steeply and treacherously, into the Atesian Sea-Below at their western terminus. But there are paths, shortcuts, through those steep sea cliffs and caves—if you know how to pick your way through and find them. And luckily for us, Coralind does.

  Those cliffs soon begin to take a more definite shape, their edges emerging spectacular and sharp-edged from the thick white fog rolling up and around them. I focus on them instead of the sky for a while, and then on the Atesian itself, rolling and stretching as far as we can see to our left. It’s too dark to reflect anything from above, and something about that makes me feel almost as sick as I did when I lowered my kingdom’s burning flags into it.

  I am not looking forward to crossing this sea, however many answers may be on the other side.

  Because even just skimming the shoreline, I swear I can feel a tangible sorrow and desolation rising from its depths. And I can’t shake those feelings, even though I know it’s likely just my imagination getting carried away as I remember the legends surrounding those depths. Legends that say this below-sea is a barrier just like our sky—that it’s not meant to be crossed—and that the islands should be left alone and separate from the rest of the empire.

  It’s said that the other borders of our world’s kingdoms are all the same, edged with rivers that tumble over into waterfalls which rush further down than anyone can see, into a nothingness that no one has ever managed to resurface from exploring.

  But things are different in the islands.

  Along their edges, marked on maps as that expanse of grey labeled Terrafinai, are those strange, forlorn places that most people refer to as the Endlands’ Edge. The places that separate our living world from our dead ones. Otherwise known for their darkness, for winding trails that lead the living toward madness and death if they get too close, and as the place that all the original evil in this world was pushed to when the Creators made way for their utopia.

  And the Atesian Sea-Below was once only a river, swift enough to guard most people from crossing and reaching that evil.

  But the pull of darkness eventually proved still too strong, too close, for others.

  So those others built bridges to reach it.

  They ventured over the river and further beyond, past the empty barrier lands that would become the islands, and into the dark edges of Terrafinai. And they began to do unspeakable things in the shadows there, to mine ingredients for sham spells from the strange crystal rock formations that grew in them. Most never made it out of that darkness, but the ones who did quickly became rich off those spells. So they went back for more. Again and again, they crossed over and back, and with them brought more and more of the evil—in the rocks and otherwise—back out of the grey.

  And the legends say that the Westland Creator goddess wept for it, her tears crashing from the barrier above and flooding the river, sweeping it across the landscape and into the immense shape of the Atesian Sea-Below.

  I pull Finn out of the water’s wake just as the uneasy sensation in my stomach starts to get unbearable. Coralind seems to notice my distress—she is good at picking up on things unsaid, I’m noticing—and she wanders down to my side and starts a welcomingly distracting conversation.

  “You’ve never been to the islands, have you?” she says, and then continues almost before I’ve shaken my head no. “I can tell, because if you had, you wouldn’t be in such a hurry to get there. Strange places, most of them…and would be, even without everything that’s happening in the skies above them. Sure, some of the scenery is beautiful, but it’s a wrong sort of beauty, you know? The air around it all is too heavy, feels like it could all be an illusion, a bit of sham magic itself.” She tosses a furtive glance toward West as she speaks, but he’s far enough up the shore that I don’t think he overhears anything.

  I think of all the strange things I saw in her village, but I say nothing.

  No one likes to think of their own home as wrong and strange, maybe.

  I turn my attention back to the landscape around us. “How far to that shortcut you mentioned before?”

  “Let’s see,” Coralind says, sweeping a glance at the landmarks rising in front of us. She focuses on a small village at the base of the distant mountains, a haze of little houses with smoking chimneys. “I think that’s Skyge,” she says, “because that mountain to the right of it there is Mount Scythe.” She points to a peak that towers above the others around it. “See how it kind of curves all sharp like on that side? That’s where the name comes from. Anyway, so that’s Skyge below it, and my father always used that as sort of a marker; there’s a path adjacent to it that slopes down through the mountains and close to the sea again. It’s not too steep—our horses should be able to handle it.”

  I nod, just as I feel a small surge of pressure in my chest. My eyes dart to the sky ahead. It’s a bit darker over those mountains, maybe; just dark enough to raise the flesh along my arms to the point where it won’t settle, no matter how hard I try to make it.

  I grip the reins a bit more tightly, and I push Finn into a gallop.

  The distance to the trailhead Coralind mentioned looked much shorter than it actually turns out to be. It’s almost pitch black out by the time we reach the narrow slope of a path. The rock rising on either side of it blocks
the feeble bit of light that’s left of the day, cloaking us in shadows that slow our steps and send our horses stumbling and slipping over and over again.

  One of their stumbles sends a crash of rock sliding out from beneath him, and West lets out an irritable sigh. “Really glad we decided to take this route,” he says. “Especially in the middle of the night, since it would be a shame if we could actually see where we’re going.”

  “If only your eyes worked half so well as your mouth,” I say, “then all of our problems would be solved.”

  I hear Coralind rustling around in her saddlebags. A moment later, pale blue lantern light washes over us.

  “You remember earlier, when you were telling us about all the thieves and murderers who hide in these cliffs these days?” West asks. “Are you trying to flag them down, just to liven things up for us a bit?”

  “It isn’t that bright.”

  “It isn’t especially subtle, either.”

  “It’s better than listening to you complain about not being able to see. Now come on, let’s just hurry up.”

  We travel on by the soft glow of the lantern, despite West’s continued mumblings about it. As we walk, memories begin to flood through me, unbidden. Coralind’s light looks like it is made from the same phosphorescent blue stones that fill marshfrog skull lanterns—the ones carried by the parade of people who accompanied us to my brother’s last sealing. They were soothing, that night, their supposedly lucky glow shining, illuminating the dark doubts of my thoughts.

  Nothing about that light feels lucky now.

  It feels cold and glaring and cruel, a spotlight on all the things I keep trying to forget about, but can’t.

  I try to divert my thoughts by attempting conversation, rambling off questions about the mountains we’re traveling through. The exchange is still tense at first. But soon it’s almost pleasant, talking to them. We manage to keep the words flowing long enough to make time feel as though it’s passing more quickly, at least. Our pace seems to pick up with the conversation, too, and I am beginning to think we may make it to Silverwater first thing in the morning after all.

  Then the lantern light flickers.

  Within seconds, it’s swallowed up by a black and tangling mist, and suddenly I find myself in a darkness so complete that I can’t even see my own hands.

  “Coralind? West?”

  No answer.

  That shadowy fog settles on my skin as if it is solid; damp and heavy and chilling me straight through. Finn shifts from side to side with increasingly violent nervousness, until I am forced to jump from his back and throw a comforting arm around his neck to try and settle him.

  It does no good.

  And then he does something I haven’t seen him do in years: he bolts.

  My hands tread the nothingness where his body slipped away from me. Panic rises in my throat.

  I force it down.

  Light. I need light.

  I can’t see them, but I lift my palms in front of me and bend each finger, one by one, trying to work out the lingering pain and stiffness still left over from practicing.

  Sweat drips from my forehead, mingles with the mist that has collected on my cheeks as I focus all my energy on trying to summon. The darkness around me is so deep that I can see the very moment the magic approaches the surface of my skin, its soft green glow lighting my veins in a rootlike pattern. Seeing it so clearly makes it easier to control its exit; there isn’t as much of a sting—or as much blood—when it breaks through this time, and I remain in enough control that I can pull it back to me once I’ve released it.

  I wrap it into a sphere shape that hovers in front of me. Not much light, but enough that I chance a few tentative steps forward.

  Someone else follows.

  There are hands on me before I can turn around: one pressing between my shoulder blades, the other wrapped against the base of my skull, pushing forward. I reach for a knife, but a voice stops me the second my fingers touch the handle.

  “Whatever you do,” it says, “do not look back.”

  West.

  Relief rushes through me. It lasts for a fraction of a second before it’s overtaken by irritation. “A little warning, next time?” I snap. “Unless you are trying to make me stab you.”

  “Right,” he replies, his touch between my shoulders easing up a bit, “one: you’re entirely too slow to stab me. And two? If I’d called out a warning, what would have been the first thing you did?”

  I shrug further away from his hands, making sure to keep my eyes straight ahead—though I am still not sure why.

  My focus slipped at the sound of West’s voice, and now my sphere of light is dangerously close to getting away from me; I take a moment to pull it back, watching the way the magic seems to be actively repelling this strange mist, scattering the black strands of it to a wispy, weak grey whenever any of them get too close to my hands. “What is this, anyway?”

  “Dead fog,” West answers quietly, stepping to where I can just barely glimpse him in my peripheral vision. “It usually swallows most light, but not yours, apparently. So… that’s useful.”

  I think of the way it swallowed the light coming from Coralind’s lantern, so swift and so terribly and completely. Fear skips through me, thinking of what may have happened to her. “And what happens if you look back?”

  “You’re lost,” he replies. “It will make sure of it—carrying you away, making sure you fight off anyone who tries to stop you—and then you keep wandering until it dissipates. Which usually isn’t until days, weeks, months later… likely long after you’ve already died. So come on, only forward now—not beside you, and definitely not behind you. You look back, and you will never find your way out of this.”

  “But what if Coralind is still behind us?”

  “She’s probably familiar with this stuff,” West says. “Enough that she’ll know better than to turn around in it, hopefully.”

  He doesn’t sound especially confident.

  “And if not?” I press. “Then what? We’re just going to leave her to die? And what about the horses? Finn is—”

  “Fine, probably. Animal instincts and all that. Either way, it’s not as if you can search through this stuff. And getting ourselves lost isn’t going to help anyone, now is it? We have to keep going.”

  “I…you’re right,” I say slowly, trying to reason with my still-anxious thoughts. “Finn is smarter than a lot of humans I know. And Coralind probably encountered this fog while on one of those trips with her father, if it’s common in these paths. Enough to know what to do, anyway.”

  “Maybe. Although that isn’t really what I meant.”

  The grim tone of his voice makes me turn toward him without thinking.

  I freeze, realizing how close I came to looking back. I have to close my eyes to fight off the horror that creeps along the back of my neck, forming terrifying images against the insides of my eyelids—images of me wandering aimlessly, endlessly, uselessly inside this mist while the world outside comes crashing to an end.

  “What do you mean, then?” I ask, once I’ve managed to shake myself free enough of my fear to keep moving. “I’ve never seen anything like this outside of these paths.”

  “I’m surprised we haven’t seen more of it,” he says. And then, almost as an afterthought, he adds, “Though not especially surprised you’ve never heard of it. Doubt Garda sees much of this sort of thing.”

  I start to reply, but before I can, I am distracted by a wall of rock materializing in the mist in front of me. It’s gritty and cold beneath my palms as I feel along it, and after sidestepping twenty feet or so of treacherously sharp and shifting ground, I come to a small opening. Musty cave air wafts up and encircles me, heavier than the fog and settling just as cold and unpleasant on my skin.

  Controlling my magic for such a long span is starting to make me feel light-headed, but I still try pushing it into the cave ahead of me to get a better look at the path stretching before us. I push it
further and further away, attempting to see, and I try not to pay attention to the way the black mist sinks into the spaces around me the moment that magic isn’t there to repel it.

  It’s a pointless exercise in the end; the path into the cave curves sharply to the right almost immediately, and no amount of light will let me see beyond that.

  “Looks like we’re going cave exploring,” West says, and he doesn’t hesitate to go in. And I’m as eager as he is to try and escape this awful fog by going inside, but I still don’t follow him right away.

  I don’t like this.

  This not being able to see the paths for myself, and having to trust West when he says not to look back. Perhaps I should give him the benefit of the doubt by this point, but I can’t; all I can think about in this darkness is how little I still know about him. And then about the things I do know: the dangerous, corrupted magic he carries, and the way he dismisses my gods so easily…

  “Aven? What are you doing back there?”

  I’ve stopped without meaning to. Reached toward a knife without even thinking about it. “Nothing,” I lie quickly. “I’m just getting a bit tired is all.” I nod to the ball of light floating just in front of him, even though he makes no move to turn to me as I talk. “From the magic.”

  “So give it a rest?” he suggests. “This fog is eerie and all, but it can’t hurt you as long as you keep facing forward. You can stop for a bit if you need to.”

  “I know I can.”

  But I haven’t.

  Not since my brother died.

  I’ve been moving ever since, even when I couldn’t clearly see the path I was supposed to take, and I don’t see any reason to stop doing that now. “I’m fine,” I say. “Let’s just keep moving.”

  I still keep my hand on my knife, just in case.

  Chapter 17

  West never attempts anything sinister.

  Even when my magic starts to dim and I don’t have enough feeling left in my frozen fingers to strengthen its light.