Of course, as soon as Rose saw the sketchpad she asked what I was working on. I said I was drawing a character for Tommy, an illustration for one of his games. Of course she asked to see it. So I opened the pad to my drawing of the dream visitor and showed her that. My brother played along, leaning over to look at my work and murmuring, “Yeah. Yeah. That’s it!” I could sense how curious he was, but he didn’t ask me any questions.
We’d become well practiced at hiding the truth from family.
Then Rose reminded me about her booth at a local art gallery, and how I really should display some of my work there. We had that conversation pretty much every morning. Berkeley Springs was a haven for local artists, and there was a converted mill on the outskirts of town where people could rent booths and sell their work. Rose had a table for her pottery, and she kept trying to convince me to display some of my drawings there. She seemed to think it would help with my emotional healing, though she never said that directly. Truth was, under normal circumstances I would have jumped at the chance to display my artwork in a real gallery setting. But all my pieces had burned in the house fire, so I had nothing to display. Unfazed, Rose pointed out (again) that I could always paint something new, and she offered (again) to buy me any supplies I needed.
Art heals, right?
Finally breakfast wound down and it was possible to take my leave of the family. As I left the room I heard Tommy follow suit. He walked behind me in silence through the house, holding back any questions he had until we could find a place to talk privately.
As we passed by the front parlor I saw Uncle Julian’s gun cabinet, which had been adapted from a 1930s wardrobe. It now had shatterproof glass in the front and a modern lock on the bottom drawer. He’d told me it was a compromise between his desire to have a gun rack on the wall and his wife’s demand that weapons be stored under lock and key. Of course he explained to me during my shooting lesson that you would never fire a rifle in the house, for fear of the bullet going through a wall and killing someone in the next room. I didn’t bother to argue that if the servants of the undead came for you in the middle of the night, you might deem it worth the risk. I just studied the cabinet when he wasn’t around, noted that the back of it wasn’t as solidly constructed as the front, and stashed a crowbar behind the cushions of a nearby couch, just in case.
Past the parlor was the front door. As we left the house I looked around the porch to make sure that no one else was outside, then sat down in one of several squeaky metal chairs and handed Tommy the sketch pad. He settled onto a nearby wooden bench and whistled softly under his breath as he flipped through my latest drawings. He stopped when he got to my picture of the girl. “This is from a dream?”
“Someone I saw in a dream. I think she came from outside it.”
He looked up at me, eyes wide. “No shit?”
I nodded solemnly. “No shit.”
I told him the whole story. I tried not to sound too anxious, but once I started putting the experience into words, I realized just how truly bizarre—and threatening—the situation really was.
Tommy looked over my drawings while I talked, and when I was done he turned back to my portrait of the intruder. “This looks like anime.”
Startled, I realized that he was right. I wasn’t a big fan of Japanese animation, but Tommy was, and I’d caught sight of enough brief snatches while he was watching to recognize the general artistic style. And yes, the oversized eyes, wildly spiked hair, and other subtle details of disproportion did indeed suggest that genre. Did that mean my dream invader was some kind of Japanese cartoon character? From a style of media I didn’t even watch? What kind of sense did that make?
“Could be an avatar,” Tommy mused.
“An avatar?”
“You know. Like in a computer game. It’s an image that you use to represent yourself in a fantasy universe.”
“I know what an avatar is,” I said sharply. “What makes you think this is one?”
He shrugged. “Young androgynous figure with strange magical effects floating around it . . . pretty common design elements, really. The anime crowd loves that kind of thing.”
I was silent for a moment, trying to wrap my brain around this new concept. “So . . . you think the avatar’s owner wasn’t really in my dream? He or she was just projecting a fantasy image into it?”
“You weren’t in your dream either,” he reminded me. “It’s like when you play a computer game. You create a fictional identity that allows you to interact with it, and its image is visible, walking around inside the game universe like a real person, but you’re not really there in any physical sense.” He paused. “Maybe someone did the same kind of thing with your dream. Treating your brain like a multi-player platform.”
“If that was the case, wouldn’t I have had complete control over the programming?”
“You’d think,” he agreed.
But what if I was just imagining the whole thing? Dreamwalkers were supposed to go insane over time. Maybe an early symptom was that you thought strangers were invading your dreams.
It was an unnerving concept.
Just then my phone vibrated. Pulling it out of my pocket, I saw that I had a text message from Devon. I continued talking as I went to read it. “If so, then the next question is—”
I stopped. And stared at the phone. I could feel all the color drain from my face.
“Jesse?” Tommy was immediately on high alert. “What is it?”
Slowly I turned the phone so he could see it. The message was only two words, but as he read it I saw his eyes go wide in astonishment.
“Holy crap,” he muttered.
Rita’s back, it said.
2
SHADOWCREST
VIRGINIA PRIME
ISAAC
THE ELEVATOR’S CAGE carried Isaac smoothly down into the earth, its lamp revealing rough-hewn rock walls pressing in on every side. Two years ago Isaac might have found the closeness unsettling, but compared to the dank, lightless tunnels of the Warrens, he now found it downright inviting.
Besides, he had bigger things to worry about.
He practiced breathing steadily as the elevator passed through level after level of Shadowcrest’s underground complex, offering fleeting glimpses of the floors where the Guild’s most secretive business took place. He tried not to fidget. Real Shadows didn’t fidget. They didn’t shift their weight nervously from foot to foot, or pace from one side of the steel cage to the other, working off their nervous energy. They certainly didn’t crush a letter from their father in sweaty hands until it looked more like a crumpled wad of toilet paper than a meaningful communication.
Swallowing dryly, Isaac unwadded the short note and read it one last time. It offered no more insight into his father’s intentions than the last ten readings.
Well of Souls
Midnight
Lord Leonid Antonin, Umbra Maja
He hadn’t even known that his father was back in Virginia Prime until that note arrived. The elder Antonin had been attending to business in another sphere for the last few weeks—some kind of probability survey in the Sauran Cluster—and Isaac had been stuck in limbo, waiting for his judgment. Oh, his mother had welcomed him home right away, and had championed his cause among the other Antonin elders, encouraging them to accept him back into the fold despite the fact that he’d run away for two years. But she was still alive, an umbra mina, so her influence among the Shadows was limited. Not until his father returned would Isaac’s fate be decided.
And now there was this note. With no explanation.
Isaac had no clue what to expect from his father. The days when human affection might have impacted the Shadowlord’s actions were long past, and whatever undead emotions coursed through his heart now were shadowy and mysterious things, beyond the understanding of a mere teenager. Leonid Antonin had accepted First
Communion—the transformative Shadow ritual—soon after Isaac’s birth, so his son had no memory of him that didn’t involve moaning soul shards and eerie whispers from other worlds. Not exactly the kind of father it was easy to bond with.
And then of course there were all the other souls that gazed out at him from his father’s eyes. One never got used to that.
With a sigh Isaac shoved the crumpled note back into his pocket and wiped his sweaty palms on his jeans to dry them. At least he was alone in the elevator. Displaying this much agitation in front of an umbra maja would have reflected poorly on his entire family and probably doomed any chance of earning his father’s approval. Assuming that was still possible.
The Well of Souls was a level of Shadowcrest that apprentices usually didn’t enter, so Isaac had no clue why his father wanted to meet him there. It was where the darkest and most secretive rituals of the Guild were performed and, normally neophytes were not privy to such things. If he’d been just a little more paranoid, or a little more ignorant, he might have feared that his father intended to force him to submit to First Communion. But any schoolchild knew that one had to submit willingly to the transformation for there to be any hope of success.
Isaac drew in a deep breath as the elevator finally slowed and stopped; a section of steel grate moved aside to reveal a large, dimly lit chamber. As he stepped out, he saw that everything in the place was black. Black floor, black walls, black pillars supporting a black vaulted ceiling. The only hints of color were polished gold sconces affixed to the pillars, with tiny glow lamps inside, though what little light they exuded was sucked in and devoured as soon as it hit one of those merciless black surfaces. In such little light Isaac could neither see any details of the chamber, nor even be sure how large it was.
There were spirits present, of course, whispering indecipherable secrets into the darkness. Any place the Shadowlords frequented drew the dead to it like flies to rotting meat. Many of the spirits here were probably just soul shards, fragments of identity incapable of independent thought or motive, but there might be a few bound souls as well, serving as guardians of this place. Isaac had heard rumors about the ritual used to create such servants, and even by the dark standards of his Guild they sounded unusually gruesome.
Then the tenor of the whispering changed. New voices were approaching, whose cadences were familiar to Isaac; these were the spirits that were bound to serve his father. Drawing in a deep breath for courage, he turned to face their master.
Leonid Antonin was a tall man, stoic and dignified, and the long formal robes of an umbra maja fell from his shoulders in crisp, precise folds. He seemed more solid than most of his kind, with only the outermost edges of his form fading out into darkness, but for some reason that made his presence even more disturbing. Black, hollow eyes fixed on Isaac, cold and dispassionate; it was impossible to meet that gaze without shivering.
This is what they want me to become, Isaac thought, suddenly remembering why he’d run away from home in the first place. “Father,” he said, bowing his head respectfully.
For a moment his father studied him in silence. Isaac dared not meet his eyes, for fear of the condemnation he might find there.
“Come,” the Shadowlord commanded at last. He turned away and began to walk. Isaac followed, jogging slightly to keep up with his father’s longer stride. Across the chamber and through a narrow archway they went, moving quickly, into a long corridor dressed entirely in black marble. Glow lamps in the ceiling sparked to life as they approached, illuminating white veins in the polished stone; the lamps extinguished after they passed, creating the illusion of an island of light that moved down the hallway with them. Isaac caught sight of doors marked with mysterious symbols to either side, but his father was leading him forward too quickly for him to get a good look at anything. One door was open, and there was just enough light for him to make out the shape of a vaulted chamber beyond it, with some kind of large table in the center. He thought he saw shackles lying on top of it.
He shuddered.
At the end of the long hallway they came to a pair of ornately carved doors, twice as high as a man. They reminded Isaac of the ones at the entrance to Lord Virilian’s audience chamber, but these were grander in scale, and the carvings were much more complex. Images of men, beasts, skeletons, and demons had been rendered with such depth of detail that they seemed about to burst from the door’s black lacquered surface. Subtle gilt highlights only increased the illusion. The artwork was beautiful but morbid, and Isaac could feel his skin crawl as he studied it.
“Images from the Lost Worlds,” his father said. “Meant to remind us of the burden of responsibility that we bear, in our duty as Shadows.”
The Lost Worlds. Those were human civilizations that had been destroyed by the coming of the Shadows. Some had been unable to handle the sudden influx of alien germs and parasites that outworlders brought with them, some had been raided so often by slave traders that their gene pool fell below the threshold required for species survival, and some simply could not face the revelation that they were no longer masters of their own fate, and died a slow spiritual death.
And then there were those rare worlds that needed to be Cleansed, because the Shadows decided they were a threat to interworld commerce. That might mean destroying the underpinnings of local technology, so that society collapsed into barbarism, or taking actions more directly destructive.
Now Isaac understood why the doors here were black. Why this whole place was black. The path to a Shadow’s duty was paved in death: this was their reminder of it.
He watched as his father took hold of the ornate lever that served as a door handle and turned it to the right. Nothing happened. Then a prickling at the back of Isaac’s neck alerted him to the approach of a new spirit, whose presence was far more powerful than that of the others. He could sense it approaching the door, perhaps touching it—and then the lock snicked open.
Of course, he thought. Since no one but an umbra maja could command spirits, any lock that required the touch of both the living and the dead would be impassable to other Guild members. It was a simple but effective security.
“Come,” his father repeated as the great doors swung open—seemingly of their own accord—and Isaac followed him into a vast, shadowy chamber with tiny golden lights hanging in mid-air as far as the eye could see. Like stars in a night sky. As his eyes adjusted he could see that each light was in fact set atop a marble pedestal, and that there were walkways running around the chamber at several heights, each with its own row of pedestals, evenly spaced.
His father gestured toward one of the nearest pedestals, indicating he should approach it.
There was just enough light for Isaac to make out the shape of a golden sphere with symbols inscribed in it, protected by a glass dome. He recognized the mark of the Weavers on the glass; there were others he didn’t recognize.
“We call these soul fetters,” his father said, coming up behind him, “but they’re not really that, you understand. Simply recording devices that store the memories of former Guild members.”
Suddenly Isaac realized what he was looking at, and a wave of nausea came over him, fear so thick in his throat he could hardly breathe. This thing was the source of Communion, the mechanism used to pour the soul of one Shadow into another. He had to fight the urge not to back away from it, and though he managed to keep his expression calm, his heart was beating so wildly it made his chest shake. Had he been wrong about his father’s intentions? Had the Shadowlord discovered a way to initiate an unwilling candidate into the ranks of the undead? Why else would he have brought Isaac down here?
But his father made no move toward him, and after a few seconds Isaac found himself able to breathe again. Turning his attention to the pedestal itself, he saw a column of small brass memorial plaques with names and dates on them. Three dates each. There was also a narrow shelf with a thick leather-bound j
ournal on it, and as his father reached out to remove the book, his arm brushed against his son’s, sucking all the heat from his flesh. Isaac tried not to flinch.
“The names on the plaques are those who contributed their memories to this particular fetter,” the Shadowlord explained. “Some of the earliest date all the way back to the Dream Wars. Most are more recent. Communion didn’t become common practice until centuries after that.” He placed the book on the pedestal in front of Isaac and opened it. “These are the histories contained in this fetter.”
Isaac looked up at him. “I thought Communion only transferred a single set of memories.”
“In a technical sense, yes. But each man’s input includes the memory of his own Communion. So when you accept the memories of one Shadowlord, you inherit echoes of all the others.”
Good God, Isaac thought. That meant that a Shadow who accepted Communion one time would absorb the memories of what, dozens of other men, hundreds? How could anyone maintain his sense of identity in the face of all that?
Not everyone succeeds, he reminded himself. Though it had been a long time since any Antonin had been driven insane by First Communion, the lesser bloodlines lost people regularly. Initiation into the ranks of the umbra maja was a high-risk enterprise, and only the strongest survived. “It sounds . . . chaotic.”
“The memories of a Shadowlord fade in clarity over the centuries. A few generations down the line, only the most intense fragments remain,” his father said. “But, yes.” A faint, cold smile was briefly visible. “The experience can be quite disconcerting.”
Isaac reached out to the book and slowly turned the pages. The paper felt ancient beneath his fingertips, and the pages made a soft rustling noise as they moved. There were handwritten notes in a variety of scripts, some of them noting major historical events, others more personal details. Every few pages he saw a new name and a set of three dates: Birth, undeath, and true death.
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