One thing he knows: he could never betray Jesse to his Guild based on those lessons alone. Not when she hasn’t done anything wrong, or shown any sign of insanity. He couldn’t bear to see them do to her what they did to Jacob.
“Why are you here?” he asks. “Why are you trusting me like this? Yes, I helped you get away before, but this . . . this is . . .”
“So much more?” she asks quietly.
He nods.
A shadow passes over her face. She looks back over her shoulder, as if making sure that they’re alone. “I need your help, Isaac. In all of Terra Prime you’re the only one who can help me. So I took a chance.” Her eyes are fixed on him now, studying his every response. “Was it a mistake?”
He remembers the touch of her lips on his cheek when she kissed him in the dungeon, and the sudden rush of heat to his loins makes him grateful for the loose robe he’s wearing, which shields him from any potential embarrassment. “No.” His voice is slightly hoarse, no doubt due to the lump rising his throat. “It wasn’t a mistake. I don’t know that I can help you, though. What is it you need?”
“I’ve run across something that Sebastian thinks is a ghost, but he can’t tell me anything more about it. It keeps showing up in my dreams. The other day it crossed over into the waking world and almost killed me. I have to find out what it is, figure out how to fight it. Or at least how to avoid it.”
Again she looks nervously over her shoulder. It’s the ghost that she’s looking for, he realizes; any minute now she expects it to appear. The thought sends an icy chill down his spine. “Describe it to me.”
“It looks like a dark blotch in the sky at first, and then it spreads. Eventually it takes on human form, at least in its outline. It doesn’t appear to have any physical substance, it’s more like a void where nothing exists. As soon as it shows up in my dream it starts sucking all the color out of the landscape, like it was . . .” She drew in a shaky breath. “Like it was devouring the dream itself. The first time I saw it, it attacked me.” She pushed up her sleeve and showed him a jagged gash on her arm, that was just beginning to heal. “I still had the wound when I woke up. That shouldn’t be possible, right?”
“Go on,” he says quietly.
“When it showed up in the real world it was . . . cold. It didn’t just suck the color out of everything, but all the heat as well. All the life. Everything it passed by became coated in ice.” Her voice is trembling now, her mask of confidence stressed to the breaking point by memories. “I can’t just keep running from it, Isaac. Your Guild knows how to deal with the dead. Tell me what I can do to keep this one from killing me. Please.”
He draws in a deep breath, trying to think. A dream-bound spirit that acts like a black hole? He’s never been taught anything about that—not officially, anyway—but he’s heard legends. Fearful legends, of creatures that even Shadows would be afraid of. “It may be a reaper,” he says at last.
“What’s that?”
“A type of spirit that’s bound to the dream world. I don’t know much about it. No one has seen one for ages. Most people think it’s only a legend.”
“But legends can reflect something real,” she reminds him. “You were the one who told me that. Remember?”
He nods solemnly. “I remember.”
“So where can I find more information? If I don’t, it’s just a question of time before this one gets me.”
“I don’t know, Jesse” He shakes his head. “I’ve read all the basic primers on spirit types, and nothing like this is described in them. The Masters of my Guild might know—”
“But you can’t ask them,” she says quickly.
“If you think this thing will hurt you otherwise—”
“I’m a Dreamwalker, Isaac. The minute they even suspect that, they’ll move heaven and earth to hunt me down. You know they will.” She shook her head emphatically. “You can’t talk to anyone about this. Not even indirectly. Promise me.”
“Okay.” The edge of panic that’s coming into her voice is unnerving. She seems to fear the Shadows more than she fears the reaper. “I won’t talk to anyone. I’ll just research it myself. I promise.”
Suddenly she looks around the room again. The atmosphere in the chamber has changed subtly, becoming colder by a few degrees. Maybe a bit darker. “I have to go,” she says quickly. “I’ll get back to you later.”
“When do you need this information?”
“Yesterday.” She attempts to smile but it’s a strained expression, without any humor in it. “There’s bad shit going down soon. I need to know how to deal with this thing.”
“I’ll do what I can—”
But she’s already gone.
There was nothing about reapers in the library.
Of course there was nothing.
He had expected there to be nothing.
That didn’t mean the Guild had no information on them. On the contrary, the Masters’ archives probably contained the information Isaac was looking for, in a neatly organized format. The only problem was that as a mere apprentice he had no access to that specialized collection. He didn’t even know where in Shadowcrest it was located.
A Shadowlord could gather that information for him, and Isaac’s father would probably do so if asked, pleased that his wayward son was taking an interest in necromancy. But if the reapers turned out to be connected to Dreamwalkers somehow, then the Shadowlords would know Isaac was interested in that forbidden Gift, and might start asking questions. No, Jesse was right, the risk was just too great.
He would have to research this on his own.
As for Jesse herself, the fact that she had appeared in his dream was no small secret. The Shadows had been at the forefront of the campaign to eradicate the Dreamwalkers, and any sign of the ancient curse reemerging should be reported to them immediately. But the longer he kept Jesse’s visit a secret from his elders, the more he realized that it gave him a perverse thrill to defy them. After years of the umbrae majae telling him who he must be and what he must become, such an act of defiance was intoxicating. Yes, he’d tasted a bit of independence during his two-year walkabout, but in the end he’d done nothing more rebellious than miss some school and avoid talking to his parents. Even freeing Jesse and her friends had been little more than a minor offense, since the Shadows were convinced by then that her brother wasn’t the person they’d been looking for. This, though . . . this was a whole different magnitude of defiance. It was meaningful. It was dangerous. And it made him feel alive, in a way Shadows weren’t supposed to feel alive.
He knew of a place where he might be able to find the information that Jesse wanted, but it would be risky to go there. There was no hard and fast rule forbidding it, but that was only because the Shadowlords didn’t think that such rules were necessary. This was a resource that no one but the Shadowlords themselves could access.
Or so they believed.
Now was the time to call in favors, and see just how useful his new ally could be.
The Well of Souls was black and silent. If Isaac listened hard enough he could hear faint murmurs of the dead, but they sounded distant, as if spirits were passing through the place on their way to somewhere else. The only clear presence was that of Jacob Dockhart, who was staying as close to him as possible. The newly made ghost was clearly terrified of coming down here, but he had agreed to help, and that was all Isaac could ask of him. Without Jacob’s assistance this expedition would not be possible.
“Watch out for guardian spirits,” Isaac whispered to him. “We’ll turn back right away if you see any sign of them.”
Jacob’s acknowledgement—and relief—prickled his skin.
Slowly they moved down the corridor, retracing the path Isaac had once walked with his father. But as they neared the entrance to the ritual room the ghost grew more and more agitated, and Isaac had to stop several times and whi
sper assurances to calm him down. It made sense that Jacob would have issues with returning to the place where he was so brutally murdered, and Isaac was annoyed at himself for not anticipating that. For a while it seemed like they would be unable to move past that point. But then Isaac reminded him that they were defying the will of the Shadowlords by coming down here, and that seemed to help.
Once they made it past the ritual room there were no further incidents, and soon they were standing in front of the massive gold doors that led to the Chamber of Souls. Once he crossed this threshold there would be no turning back; he would be in territory reserved for the Shadowlords, and if anyone caught him there, the consequences could be dire.
Assuming he was able to cross the threshold at all.
“I don’t know how the lock works,” he said in a low voice as he reached for the handle. “I just know you have to do something to help open it.” The last time Isaac had been here his father had summoned a spirit to help with the door, but Isaac’s Gift had been too primitive back then to observe what the ghost did. Hopefully Jacob would be able to figure it out.
He waited in silence, his heart pounding so hard that he could feel his pulse throb against the door handle. He could sense his ghost ally approaching the door, perhaps touching it, but his spirit sight allowed for no more knowledge than that. The seconds ticked by with agonizing slowness.
Finally the handle turned.
Breath held, Isaac unlatched the right-hand door and pushed it open. He waited a moment to see if Jacob would warn him about anything in the chamber, but all he got from the ghost was a general feeling of dread. Finally he stepped inside. The place looked the same as when he’d visited it with his father, but since that day he’d returned to it so many times in his dreams, with fresh horrors added, that now it seemed strangely empty, unnaturally peaceful.
It’ll be anything but peaceful if I’m caught here, he reminded himself. Quickly he walked to the fetter he’d examined when his father had first brought him here. The collection of biographies that accompanied it opened naturally to the first page, and he read the title underneath the first name again: Twice-decorated Grand Crusader in the Final War Between the Shadows and the Dreamwalkers. If there was some kind of spirit that existed only in dreams, he’d reasoned, it might have been active during that time, and hopefully there would be some reference to it. If not, he had no clue how to begin searching in this vast place for a single thread of information.
There was nothing in the Grand Crusader’s biography about the reapers, but the names of several other Shadowlords were mentioned who also fought in the Dream Wars, so he located their fetters and started reading their biographies. Not all the entries were in English, but his education had included enough languages that he could pick his way through most of them. By harvesting a few facts from each biography, he was slowly able to piece together a picture of the conflict between the Shadows and the Dreamwalkers, which was far more complex—and confusing—than he’d imagined. Not only had the Shadows played a major role in eradicating the Dreamwalkers, but they had gone to great length to get the other Guilds to join in the slaughter. The biographies never explained why. Maybe the scribes who had assembled these records simply assumed that anyone reading them would understand their context. Certainly some of the umbra majae, who had absorbed the memories of Shadowlords from this time period, must know the Guild’s early history. So why had Isaac never been taught it?
Hours passed as he worked his way through the fetter records one by one. Jacob disappeared several times, apparently summoned by his mistress to perform one task or another. He always came back, but the brief absences were hell on Isaac’s nerves. Without Jacob as lookout he was terribly vulnerable in this place. That, and the effort required to decipher notes faded almost past recognition, written in dialects centuries old, drained Isaac of energy. He wanted nothing more than to quit for a time, to recoup his mental resources.
But he couldn’t bring himself to stop reading. This project was about more than Jesse now. He was uncovering a history of the Guild that no apprentice had ever been taught, and he could not turn away.
At last he came to a fetter that made him uneasy, though he didn’t know why. The first name on its pedestal was Persian—Shekarchiyandar—and the pedigree that followed was shorter than most. It took him a moment to figure out that what disturbed him was not the list of names, but the dates that went with them. Evidently the Shadowlords who first Communed with this fetter had survived only a few years afterward. And the ones who tried later were even less successful; the last person on the list had lasted only a few months. Whoever this Shekarchiyandar was, his memories appeared to be deadly, and no one had attempted to Commune with them in recent centuries. Yet the fetter was still here, displayed among the Guild’s active offerings. So it must have great value.
Pulling out the book of notes stored in the pedestal, he looked around to see if Jacob was still standing guard. But the ghost was gone again, leaving him on his own. With a nervous sigh he opened the ancient volume and began to read. The original entry was in Farsi, which was frustrating, as his knowledge of that language was minimal. Slowly he worked his way through the faded and brittle pages, trying to make sense of the ancient script. Some of the words were so faded they were nearly impossible to read, and he had to make educated guesses as to their meaning. But in the end his effort was justified, because he had finally found the records he was searching for.
...created the reapers in order to [bring/begin] battle to walkers of dreams in their [fort/citadel/home]. Originally twelve existed, later [winnowed? destroyed?] to seven during final war. After [exit?] of dream walkers from [awake? Living?] world the reapers were not seen again. [?]
There was a note in English following that, the relative freshness of the ink suggesting that it had been added at a much later date: Appearance in 1132 A.D. disputed.
1132. It took him a minute to place the date.
It was the year recorded on the pedestal, of the last attempt to Commune with Shekarchiyandar’s fetter.
Heart pounding, Isaac leafed through the book until he came to that entry. It was a short one, no more than a single paragraph, but at least it was in German, a language he could read fluently. Someone named Gunther the Black had attempted Communion with the fetter, but had gone insane in the months following the ritual. In his final moments, just before the other Shadowlords had to forcibly put him down, he screamed something about the reapers returning. Since no one else had seen any reapers around, the chronicler took that as a symptom of his madness. But Isaac wasn’t so sure. If the reapers were only active in dreams, wasn’t it possible they could appear to Gunther without anyone else seeing them? The same way that Jesse had come to him, without anyone else seeing her?
He was so close to the answers he sought that he could taste it.
He started to turn back to the earlier entries, when suddenly he heard a noise behind him: footsteps, heavy and solid, headed his way. He thought he could hear spirit voices as well, which meant that the visitor was a Shadowlord.
He couldn’t afford to be discovered here.
Panicking, he shoved the ancient volume back into its storage slot and looked for somewhere to hide. But as his gaze passed over the entrance he realized to his horror that he’d left the door open. If the Shadowlord saw that, he would know instantly that something was wrong.
Desperately he sprinted across the floor, grabbed the door, and pushed it shut. He tried to hold it back at the last moment to keep it from making too much noise, but the momentum of the heavy panel carried it forward despite him, and he flinched as it slammed loudly shut. Hopefully whoever was coming would be too distracted by the voices of the his ghostly retinue to pay attention to such noise.
Isaac looked around for somewhere to hide, but the pedestals were too narrow for him to fit behind and there was no other furniture in the chamber. If he could climb the stai
rs to an upper level he might be able to get out of the sightline, but there was no time to do that. So he did the only thing he could think of, flattening himself against the wall beside the door, hoping that when it opened it would shield him from sight. A cold sweat broke out on his face as spirits began to enter the room, not newly made wraiths like Jacob, but the vanguard of a powerful Shadowlord. They didn’t notice him right away, and he could always hope that when they did they wouldn’t report him. Some of the dead who attended the Shadowlords were slave spirits, like Jacob, but others were independent wraiths caught up in the wake of the undead against their will, who owed the Shadows no love or loyalty.
Isaac held his breath as the door handle turned and the massive doors swung open. He put his hands out in front of his face to keep the heavy wood panel from smashing into him; hopefully the visitor wouldn’t notice that the door had stopped short of the wall.
Footsteps entered the room. They passed Isaac’s hiding place without pausing. So far so good.
Suddenly a cold wind swept behind the door, raising goosebumps on Isaac’s skin. A powerful wraith circled him, prodding him with its essence. Then it moved away, heading back to its master. The game was over.
“What?” he heard a Shadowlord exclaim. “Where?”
There was no point in hiding any longer. Drawing in a deep breath to steady himself, Isaac stepped out from his hiding place.
The Shadowlord standing in the center of the chamber was one he didn’t know, but the man’s elder rank was immediately apparent, as was his displeasure at discovering that the trespasser his ghost had discovered was a mere apprentice. “Who are you?” the Shadowlord demanded. “How did you get in here?”
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