The Office of Shadow

by Matthew Sturges

  He and Faella saw it at the same time. Cobalt and iron were simply variations on a theme, as were the Gifts. Thaumaturges had believed in the Gifts for so long that they had made them the reality, just as the Chthonics had made a reality of their own gods. Believing made it so.

  Believe in iron, Ironfoot told Faella. Something reached out of Faella, colorless color beyond sight, and twisted.

  The truth is sharper than any blade.

  -Fae proverb

  ela watched Faella and Ironfoot think back and forth at each other, marveling at the speed and clarity of their thought. Sela understood almost none of it. It was all beyond her. Color without color? Belief in iron? It made no sense.

  She looked away from them to catch a glimpse of Silverdun and Hy Pezho. Hy Pezho had Silverdun on the ground, kneeling over him, wrestling the knife from Silverdun's grasp.

  She screamed "Silverdun!" Oh, how she loved him. Despite all that was going on around her, all she wanted was for him to be safe. She knew he could never love her. It hurt, but it didn't change how she felt.

  After all that Lord Tanen had done to her, after all that she had seen in her time with the Shadows, she wondered whether she could ever be whole. Lin Vo, in the time they'd spent alone together in the Arami's tent, had told her that she was like a bird who'd lived all her life with clipped wings. She was capable of flying higher and farther than other birds. She was capable of seeing so deeply into the heart that if Lord Tanen had nourished her rather than hobbled her, she might have ascended beyond what she was.

  Sela had no idea what Lin Vo meant by "ascended," but it brought back memories of childhood. Memories of a feeling of wholeness, of a knowledge of things that now baffled her. It was something akin to what Ironfoot and Faella were now discussing. Seeing beyond. Seeing through. When she was a child she had known bliss.

  And then Lord Tanen had come and taken that bliss away from her and turned her into a monster. That word "ascended" also reminded her of the thing in her that she'd showed to Lord Tanen and the crones, to the doctor at Lord Everess's apartment, and to the Bel Zheret in Elenth.

  She'd asked Lin Vo whether she could ever be whole again.

  "No," Lin Vo had said sadly. "Not in this life. You will never know bliss. But you may find a way to live."

  She heard Silverdun grunt and Hy Pezho swear. She looked but couldn't see them anymore.

  Ironfoot and Faella had reached some sort of understanding. Something flowed out of Faella, something that Sela could neither see nor comprehend, and everything began to change. Pain leapt up at her from the floor, a hot wind of re blowing up from beneath her.

  Caught off guard, she lost the threads with Ironfoot and Faella, but it didn't matter. Faella already had what she needed. She was in rapt concentration. All around her, the floor was turning dark, becoming iron.

  Unfortunately, Faella and Ironfoot appeared to have forgotten that they were now standing on it.

  There was a violent crash, then a series of smaller concussions that reverberated in the chamber. Sela swayed and fell, scorching her palms on the now-iron floor. A chunk of cobalt landed on the floor next to her and she leapt onto it. Ironfoot was with her.

  "Faella!" he shouted. "A little help for the rest of us!"

  "Sorry!" said Faella. She waved backward toward them, and a disc of pure silver flew from her palm and slipped beneath their feet. It rose up into the air and the pain withdrew.

  Sela looked up and gasped. One of the bound gods, Ein, was bound no more. He was sitting up, stretching. He was impossibly large. Sitting up on the platform, his fiery red hair nearly brushed the ceiling. He looked around at the scene below him.

  "What is this?" his voice boomed. So loud that Sela covered her ears. "Awake, brothers and sisters!" he shouted, even louder. "Awake! Our bonds are broken at last!"

  "No!" shouted Faella. Sela could feel the re in the room swirl, faster and faster. Whatever Faella was doing, it was stirring the essence into a frenzy.

  Sela looked around. "Where's Silverdun?" she said.

  "I don't know," said Ironfoot, holding on to her. "As soon as Faella's finished I'll go find him."

  "It's working!" shouted Faella. I got to the bonds before the other gods could move. They're still trapped!"

  Ein looked over at her, his eyes glowing. "They might be, little Fae," he shouted. "But I am not." Ein lifted his finger and gestured, and Faella flew backward, halfway across the chamber, slamming into a wall that was now made of pure iron. She screamed.

  Silverdun was fading fast. A chunk of Ein's bindings, if that was what it had been, had struck him in the forehead, hard enough to make his head spin. It had given Hy Pezho the advantage he'd needed to pry Silverdun's knife out of his hand. Now Hy Pezho had the knife and was trying to bring it down across Silverdun's neck. Silverdun gripped Hy Pezho's wrist with all his strength, but it wasn't enough.

  Silverdun heard Ein's voice rattling in his ears, so loud he couldn't make out the words. He heard Faella shriek in the distance. "Faella!" he shouted. "I'm coming for you!" But there was nothing he could do for her. There was little he could do for himself.

  "You have no idea what I went through to survive," hissed Hy Pezho. "You have no idea what I've sacrificed. Only to become Mab's errand boy. I was to have been an emperor. Now I'm a lackey. And a happy lackey at that. She has turned all of my ambition to love."

  "I really couldn't care less about your problems," Silverdun managed. "To be honest, I don't really know who you are. To me, you're just some evil bastard who likes to blow things up."

  Hy Pezho made no response, but pushed the knife down farther.

  Oh, well.

  "You! "

  Em's voice was so loud that Silverdun thought his eardrums would burst. He looked straight up into Ein's bearded face, his enormous eyes glaring down at him. But Fin wasn't speaking to him. He was speaking to Hy Pezho.

  "You are the one who pricked me while I lay helpless! You are the one who taunted me, thinking me asleep!"

  Ein leaned down farther, and Silverdun could feel his terrible breath, the heat of a thousand ovens, the stink of death. "I have not slept! I lay in wait, gathering strength bit by bit over eons, waiting for my time. And you, flittering insect, dare to steal from me! From Ein?"

  Ein's fist came down hard toward them. Silverdun rolled, flipping Hy Pezho off of him, and the knife clattered to the floor.

  But now the floor was of iron, and it burned Silverdun's hands. The pain was white-hot, intense. He lurched for the knife, snatched it from the ground, burning his knuckles anew as he wrapped his fingers around the hilt.

  Ein was slow, very slow, but made up for it in strength. His fist connected with the floor in a shattering blow, spilling Silverdun down again. He could barely feel his hands now.

  Hy Pezho was next to him. He'd fallen as well, and was now scrabbling to his feet.

  Silverdun thought of calling out to him, speaking his name to resume their fight face-to-face, as propriety dictated.

  "To hell with that," he muttered. He stabbed Hy Pezho in the back, and the Black Artist fell to the floor, quivering on the iron as it burned his skin.

  "Well done," said Silverdun. "But now what?"

  Sela had never felt so helpless. She and Ironfoot were standing on the floating silver disc, twenty feet in the air. Ein had stood and was stomping his foot, howling in rage. On the other side of the room, Faella lay writhing, trying to get to her feet, but the iron burned her all over, stealing her ability to use re.

  "What do we do, Ironfoot?" she cried.

  "I don't know!" he said.

  Something glittered in the corner of her eye. A moth fluttered toward her, swaying and dipping crazily. Hy Pezho?

  No, not Hy Pezho. Silverdun.

  She smiled in spite of herself and cried out.

  "Amazing little creation!" Silverdun shouted. "I haven't a clue how to fly it, though!"

  He flew toward them, almost collided with the ground, then righted himself
and glided toward them. He hit the disc a little too hard, with his midsection, and glanced off of it. The disc shuddered but remained erect. Again Silverdun righted himself and fluttered back, grabbing hold of the disc's edge.

  "Where's Faella?" he asked.

  Sela pointed.

  "Let's go," he said. He squinted in concentration and the wings of the armor flapped violently, pushing them forward, toward where Faella lay.

  Ein continued stomping, his footsteps like percussive spellbombs. The literal wrath of Ein was dreadful to behold.

  "Apparently, Hy Pezho made himself an enemy," said Silverdun.

  They reached Faella, and Silverdun let go of the disc and drifted down to her. He gathered her carefully in his arms and rose, placing her gently on the disc next to Sela.

  "Faella, darling," he said, fluttering next to her. "Wake up. You need to get us the hell out of here."

  She opened her eyes, groggy but conscious. "Silverdun, love," she whispered. "You came for me. You didn't leave me again."

  Silverdun looked at Faella. "Never again, love," he said. "Never again."

  Sela's feelings were contorted into an unrecognizable shape that dug inside her like a many-pointed knife.

  "Ein," said Faella. "He's loose."

  "We need to go," said Silverdun.

  "No," said Ironfoot. "Look."

  Ein had finished with Hy Pezho, and now turned to regard his bound siblings.

  "Althoin!" he cried. "The wise! I must know your counsel!"

  Ein stepped toward the platform next to his own. He grabbed the iron bonds on his brother Althoin and pulled at them. They creaked but did not break.

  "Althoin!" he shrieked. The bonds began to give way.

  "Get us out of here!" said Silverdun.

  "Yes," said Faella. "Let me think of how to reverse the fold. Give me a moment."

  Sela looked at Fin and felt his pain. He was alone, bound for so long, a bird with clipped wings.

  "Here we go," said Faella. "We'll work it out, won't we?"

  "Let's just get clear," said Silverdun. "One thing at a time."

  The air began to shimmer.

  Sela leaned over, off the edge of the disc, and kissed Silverdun lightly on the lips. "Good-bye," she said.

  She leapt.

  "Sela!" shouted Silverdun. But his voice was faint, distant. Silverdun, Faella, and Ironfoot vanished into the fold.

  Sela was on the floor. The pain of the fall mingled with the fire of iron on her skin. She stumbled, staggered toward a chunk of cobalt, one of the few remaining. She pulled herself up on it and stood.

  "Ein!" she called.

  Ein continued to tug at his brother's bindings.

  "EM!" she shrieked. "Look at me!"

  She grabbed the Accursed Object and tore at it. For a horrible instant it clung to her, but it slipped on the sweat that covered her and fell away for the last time.

  Ein turned.

  He looked.

  A thread formed.

  She knew a god.

  He flowed into her and she flowed into him. She showed him all that she was and all that she could have been. He let out his grief in waves that nearly consumed her. She showed him her childhood, her sweetest memories of devotion in the Chthonic temple of her youth, showed him Lord Tanen's cruelty and Milla's dead body. She showed Ein what he was. The full extent of her power, without the Accursed Object. To show what truly was. What was beyond what was.

  She let it all flow out of her, into her, though her. Without the Accursed Object to restrain her, she drew in all of the re around her, channeled it into Empathy, hurled it all at Ein. All of her love and her loss and what remained of her purity.

  All of her.

  The thing that had risen up in her, that had destroyed Lord Tanen, the doctor, the Bel Zheret. It wasn't inside her. It was her.

  Her last thoughts were of love.

  Mauritane's company reached the gate and dispatched the terrified guardsthose who remained, anyway. Many of them fled back into the city.

  Outside, the Unseelie troops, now cut off from their escape route into Elenth, began to retreat to the east, away from the city and away from the reinforcements that were hurrying to join them from the southwest. The battle had turned, and with it, the war. It all depended on the Einswrath now. It all hung on that.

  An odd silence came over the battlefield. One of the odd lulls that sometimes occurred, when every combatant was silent: falling, or gathering breath, or swinging.

  Something small and dark flew up into the sky. Mauritane watched it arc and begin to fall. It was headed straight for him.

  He closed his eyes and said a prayer to Aba. Why not?

  A horse whinnied in the distance. Mauritane opened his eyes. A black blob the size of an orange had landed on the ground twenty feet away from him.

  The fighting had ceased. Everyone knew what it was; they had all heard the stories. Einswrath. They all waited to die.

  But the thing just lay there. After a moment it began to sizzle, then shudder, then it melted into a black puddle and soaked into the ground.

  Mauritane offered the remaining Unseelie soldiers the opportunity to surrender and they happily obliged.

  An hour later, the Seelie flag hung over Elenth.

  Just before sunset, while the dead were being cleared away, Mauritane walked through the field, deep in thought, looking.

  It took him almost an hour to find Baron Glennet. He would have found the body sooner, but a horse had fallen on top of it. Mauritane's sword was on the ground next to him, bloody but unbroken.

  Mauritane called out to a nearby private. "Have someone send a message sprite to the City Emerald." Mauritane wiped the blood from his sword in the grass. He wondered whose life Glennet had managed to take, and whether the Unseelie soldier he'd killed knew how lucky he'd been.

  "Tell them that Baron Glennet led the charge at the battle of Elenth, and that he died a hero of the Seelie Kingdom."

  Immortality is a predicate only in the abstract.

  -Prae Benesile, Thaumatical History of the Chthonic Religion

  ❑ce Elenth was taken, the other landed Unseelie cities soon fell against the combined forces of the Seelie and the Annwni. Now unable to land troops, the Unseelie had attempted to bring one of their cities to bear above Mauritane, but Mauritane had dispatched it with one of the missiles he'd brought for that purpose. After that, the Unseelie had been forced to concede defeat. General Ma-Hora of the Unseelie Army and Mauritane signed the Treaty of Elenth two days later. The treaty ceded all three landed Unseelie cities to Queen Titania, extending the border roughly eighty miles north to the base of the Tyl mountains.

  Silverdun learned all this en route to Elenth, with Ironfoot and Faella. The knowledge that the Einswrath had failed, that Sela had succeeded at whatever she'd done, was heartening, but none of them felt much like celebrating. They were exhausted and in pain, both physically and emotionally. The act of folding them back to the Chthonic temple had shattered the cynosure, meaning that they now had no way to return for Sela. Not that any of them were physically up to the task, or that any of them truly believed that Sela had survived.

  Still, Silverdun had no intention of giving up on her. It was fortunate for many reasons that the war had gone as it did. To their immediate purpose, it was critical; the nearest Metropolitan Chthonic temple was located in Elenth. According to Prae Benesile, each Metropolitan maintained its own cynosure.

  When they arrived in Elenth, they went directly to Mauritane's temporary headquarters in the Elenth City Building. Mauritane must have been surprised to see Faella, whom he knew only as the ingenue daughter of a mestine he'd met two years earlier, but he was as impossible to read as ever, and greeted her without comment. When their brief congratulations had ended, and they told him what had happened at Prythme, however, he did in fact raise an eyebrow. And when they explained why they were in Elenth, he grew visibly chagrined.

  "That won't be easy," he said. "The Chthonics h
ave been extremely accommodating to us since our arrival, and have done much to smooth relations between us and the Unseelie populace. I'm loath to ask them to allow you to go mucking around in their temple."

  "Understandable," said Silverdun. "Consider, however, that we have no idea what happened after we folded away. For all we know, these bound gods are dusting off their lightning bolts and preparing to annihilate all of Faerie."

  "No course in the academy on how to handle a situation like this, is there, General?" said Ironfoot.

  "I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt," said Mauritane. "In fact, it would be best if the cynosure were destroyed entirely, if it does what you say it does."

  "We won't make any friends doing that," said Ironfoot.

  "I didn't come to Elenth to make friends," said Mauritane, sighing.

  By nightfall, Ironfoot was ready. His modifications to the cynosure proceeded more quickly than the first time, and he'd been able to use what he'd learned from the first journey in order to ensure a smoother trip.

  The Chthonic priestess had, of course, been furious at the idea. But she also realized that at the moment she needed Mauritane far more than he needed her, and ultimately acquiesced.

  "Are you sure you're up for this?" Silverdun asked Faella.

  "She loved you, you know," said Faella, as if this answered her question.

  "I know," said Silverdun. "I think we owe her this much."

  Faella folded them, not only directly into the chamber of the gods this time, but directly onto the silver disc she'd created to protect Ironfoot and Sela.

  It was dark. And silent.

  Silverdun flared witchlight, and the room erupted in white light. Ein was gone, his platform empty. The other gods were silent, unmoving.

  "Sela!" called Ironfoot.

  Ironfoot channeled Motion and they floated throughout the chamber looking, but Sela was gone. The only sign of her they discovered was the silver-coated iron band that she'd always worn. The Accursed Object, she'd called it. Ironfoot plucked it gently from the ground, his hand wrapped in his cloak.

  They returned to the temple in Elenth without incident. As soon as they arrived, Silverdun snatched the cynosure off of its pedestal, hurled it to the ground, and smashed it to pieces.