City of Night

by Michelle West

  So. He sat heavily, and once again took to the quill.

  “And the ring?”

  Her robes suddenly twisted, tightening around her body until he could see the shape of her thighs. “It will grant you death,” she replied.

  “A good death?”

  “No.”

  He frowned. “Why, then, would this be of use to me?”

  “You have made yourself a target. Deliberately. You have aimed yourself at Terafin.”

  “I have not—”

  “And they desire Terafin. But you do not understand the kin; they are not mortal, and they are not all of one thing or all of another. Lord Cordufar is not mortal.”

  Rath nodded.

  “Nor is Sor Na Shannen. They serve Allasakar.”

  The name fell like doom, and silence eddied around it. Not even the Priests of the gods and goddesses who could be worshiped across the breadth of the Empire spoke that name.

  Yet she did, and she did not flinch.

  “They will not simply kill you. They will not kill you at all.”

  “How then could I be of use to them?”

  “They will possess you, Ararath. A demon will be summoned, and he will have no flesh but yours. He will take your body, which is not a threat to any but The Terafin.”

  Rath waited. This time, he won the round.

  “If he takes your living body, they will have access to everything—everything—that you now know. They will know, not only about the undercity, but about Jewel Markess.”

  He stiffened at her use of the name, half-rising from his chair.

  But she lifted a hand. “I mean her no harm, Ararath. But I know of her, and I know what she is.”

  He forced himself to return to his chair, to lift his quill. This woman had, through one of the most famous bards of Senniel College, returned the crest of Handernesse. She was not—could not—be normal.

  “They will know about the letter you choose to leave her; they will know where you live, and when you hunt. They will know all that you know, and they will control what is left; you will be present, and you will see every action your body takes, without the ability to control—or stop—it.”

  “If they can do this—”

  “They cannot do it easily, and they cannot do it often. It is far better to take shape and form flesh; to hide behind illusion. But illusion will not give them what they need to know.”

  He wrote a sentence, and then another, before he again looked up. “The ring,” he said, “will destroy me.”

  She did not look away, and did not blink. “The magic is a Winter magic, Ararath. To use it, you bind your soul to the Winter road. It will devour you entirely. Some pieces of mind and memory will remain if you do not call it quickly. But you will die, and they will have shards, no more, on which to act.”

  “And if I am dead?”

  “They will have perhaps two days. The demon will still live within your flesh, and he will expend magics to ensure that that flesh does not wither or decay, but he will have a corpse, and not even preservation magics—and they are not adept at those—will disguise that fact for long. They will have to act, immediately, upon their desires. They will have to choose caution or boldness.”

  “You favor bold.”

  “They are becoming bold even as we speak. Yes.” She looked at the letter. “They will not be able to prevent the use of that ring. When they see it, and they detect the magics upon it, they will assume that you are the pawn of an ancient enemy; this will explain much to them, for that enemy will be in their minds. They will do what they can to prevent that enemy from seeing or knowing of their existence, and this close to Scarran, they can achieve that. It will be an expenditure of power that they feel they can afford, but it will hurt them.

  “It will not occur to them until far too late that the ring is bound to you, and only to you. They may never realize the truth.”

  “And your role, Lady?”

  “To guide.” A flicker of expression crossed her face, as if it were a trick of the light.

  “And when will you guide me to this death?”

  “Tonight, Ararath. I would not have come, but you have stayed here these past four nights, writing and rewriting the same letter.” As she spoke, she drew from the folds of the midnight-blue robe a small sphere.

  It was as if legends walked, in that small and dingy room with its lack of natural light. The globe shone more brightly than the magestone in its stand, but unlike the stone, with its flat, gray surface, the globe was almost alive. Clouds whirled in it, blown by some internal wind that could not be felt, and every swirl, every movement, was like the beat of a heart.

  A seer’s crystal. A myth.

  He wrote. Not of the crystal, and not of the seer; not, in the end, of the demons, or of the god they worshiped. Not of the hopes that he had for Jewel, in a future he would never see, not directly. But hope was there.

  He set the quill down, but did not rise.

  “It is almost too late.”

  He glanced up at her face, and saw, in the violet of her eyes, some dark reflection that the moving roil of clouds hid from his view. “If you know the future,” he began, as he at last vacated his chair, “why did you not seek out someone with the power to prevent what has happened?”

  Her expression stiffened, as if cold had leeched the warmth from muscle. He thought she would not answer, and he busied himself, curling the letter, which ran several pages, into a tube. This, he carried to the bedpost, and, after fussing with the top knob, inserted it into its hiding place.

  “When you deal with gods, and you are not one, it is difficult.”

  He raised a brow, exchanging one jacket for another.

  “A better question would be: How is it that we can expect to have any hope at all of thwarting the will of a god?”

  “They are not here,” he replied. “And they care little for what occurs upon this plane.”

  “You don’t believe that.”

  He shrugged. “You don’t. Or perhaps you do. What I know is this: If you are to be believed—and I believe you—you spoke to my grandfather and he gave you the symbol of his House. If you could convince my grandfather of the truth of this, you could convince anyone. You could bespeak the Kings themselves, and they would listen. You could intercede with The Ten—” He paused, and grimaced. “Perhaps that is stretching things too far; The Ten are fractious and very little occurs that is not to the benefit of one or another member.”

  “I could,” she agreed. “If I were given that choice.”

  He frowned. “And you are not?”

  The bitterness of her expression robbed her face of years. He revised his estimate of her age down, for in the elderly, expressions of this nature often added them.

  “I cannot speak of it,” she said at length, “but the answer is no. I walk where I walk, but between one moment and another, I am not certain where I will appear, or who I will see when I do. I did not know for certain that I would speak with you this eve.”

  “You suspected you might.”

  She nodded.

  “And if it were your choice?”

  “Were it my choice, Ararath Handernesse, I would not be here at all. It is not a great pleasure to lead men to their deaths, however necessary those deaths might be.” She stopped speaking a moment, and when she resumed, her voice was softer, her expression more careworn. “And that is unfair. I understand that in your fashion you gift me with your reserve. You do not burden me with your fear or your desperation, and you do not plead with me to change what I cannot change.”

  “I do not waste words,” he said, “when it serves no purpose. If I did those things, it would not change anything.”

  “It would hurt me,” she replied, in a tone of voice that made her seem invulnerable to the pain she described.

  “And that would avail me nothing.” He set aside all but the oldest of his daggers; those and the ones that had come from Sigurne. He whispered the light to shadow, but before it dim
med entirely, he turned to face her, and he smiled. “But I would ask a boon, if you could grant it.”

  “Ask. But be aware that I can grant little.”

  “I will ask much. Are we walking?”

  She nodded.

  “Through the undercity, Lady, or upon the open streets?”

  She hesitated, at that. “The undercity, as you call it, is not safe. Not this eve.”

  “Safety is, it appears, beyond me.”

  She nodded.

  “It is not—yet—beyond the ken of those who live, work, and walk in the streets above.”

  “No.”

  “Then if there is to be death, let us avoid bringing it to those who are innocent. In a manner of speaking. When the kin hunt, men and women die. Children die,” he added, bitterly. “If it might protect them, we will take the safer route.”

  She shook her head. “They will face far worse than this before the end. But you are right. Let them face it later, rather than sooner.”

  “Why did you not just tell them where I live? I understand that you have said you cannot choose where you arrive, but as you are now here, would it not have been a simple matter of a message?”

  “I have no manner of sending them such a message, or I might have.”

  He raised a brow. “I would appreciate it if you did not attempt to lie to me in my own home.” He was surprised at the slight blush in her cheeks; he would have thought her beyond it.

  But he would have thought himself far beyond anything that had happened in his home this eve. He led her to the supply room, and to the basement, but he did not lower ladder or shoulder the backpack with the rope that the undercity often required. He began to, and she gestured; light filled the darkness. It was magelight, but it was not contained by something as small and simple as a stone.

  “We descend?” she asked.

  He nodded, although he thought it obvious, and she gestured again. Midnight blue billowed at her back, and her hood rose slightly, as if at a strong wind. He felt his feet leave the flooring, and drew one sharp breath as she carried them both to the ground below, light surrounding her as if she were stone. But once they landed, she waited, and he took the lead.

  “Jewel,” he said, as he walked, his hand tracing the gradual changes of the tunnel wall as if they were all the map he needed.

  She said nothing.

  “You mentioned Jewel Markess.”

  “I did.”

  “Tell me, will she receive the letter that I’ve labored over for such an unseemly length of time?” He struggled for, and abandoned casual; the words were right, the tone was wrong.

  Evayne hesitated for long enough that Rath turned. But the hesitation was linguistic; her expression was seamless, shuttered. “She will find it.”

  “Will she take it where it needs to be taken?”

  “She will.”

  He nodded, and continued to walk. “Have you been here before?”

  “Yes.” The word was like a wall. Tonight, however, walls didn’t matter.

  She fell in beside him, light following her. He almost told her to dampen it, because he was unaccustomed to walking with so much illumination among these broken cloisters and sunless galleries. The stone walls, height to floor, broken and cracked faces, were almost white; light made them unfamiliar. “What was this place?”

  “It was called Vexusa, before its fall.”

  Vexusa. The word felt vaguely familiar, but the memory evaded him, like the flicker of dim starlight, glimpsed out of the corner of an eye, that cannot be clearly seen when confronted.

  “It was like, and unlike, the Cities of Man.” Her voice was soft enough that he slowed to catch it, and as he did, he noticed that she looked to the heights; what she saw, he could only guess. “But there was power here, and it did not hide itself. We will never see the like of such a city again.”

  “If we’re lucky?”

  She grimaced then. “I speak, often, to myself,” she told him, with just the vague hint of embarrassment. “But yes; there is beauty in power. There has always been beauty in it, but it is not a delicate beauty, and it leaves room for very little else.”

  “What follows in the wake of power,” he replied, thinking briefly of a single dance in a mansion that seemed a world away, “is often ugly.”

  “By our standards, yes. But by theirs? No. It’s just another facet of power, the shadows beauty casts. Power doesn’t exist in isolation; it exists in a hierarchy.”

  “A point. This way.”

  She frowned, but the frown cleared.

  “Will Jewel survive?”

  “Ararath, I am not a device to be pointed.”

  “No, Lady. But she is much in my thoughts.”

  Silence, and then, “Yes, she would be. But it is not fear for her own survival which drives her.”

  He raised a brow. “Have you met?”

  Evayne did not answer. When she did, it was not the question he asked, or knew to ask. “The last time you spoke to her is not the final time you will see her.”

  He stopped walking, and she touched his sleeve. “No, you will not see her tonight, and you will not see her in Averalaan again. She will not be in the danger you are in.

  “But if you can, remember this: You will speak one final time. I do not know what she will say to you, nor, in the end, what you will have—if anything—to say to her. That is all I can offer you, Ararath. I am not known for either my kindness or my mercy, with reason.”

  Ararath Handernesse did not leave the maze again.

  He thought it fitting, in the end, although he did not expect it.

  He walked the streets of the undercity in the glow of Evayne’s light. Magelight, when carried by hand the way Rath carried his, was an individual illumination, and it required proximity to reveal the things that otherwise lay under the blanket of absolute night. Evayne’s light was true magery; it was like the glow of dawn, before the sun has fully crested the horizon, and it opened the streets up, depriving them, momentarily, of familiarity. Familiarity returned as he walked; he felt the same solid ground beneath the slightly worn heels of his boots; saw the passing crevices and the cracked stones, and knew them as they approached. She did not once leave his side as he walked, although he had expected her to lead. Minutes passed. Perhaps an hour. Something was wrong.

  His smile was a bitter twist of lips. Of course something was wrong. But he needed to quantify it, pinpoint it, understand it. That had always been his way, and the night’s journey only sharpened the need. It took him some moments to understand what elusive thing had caught and worried away at the edges of his attention.

  It was Evayne, of course. Not the woman herself, not even her light, but the way her light cast shadows. His own, he knew, and he expected; they were an ephemeral but constant part of the geography of this maze beneath the City of the living. Hers? They were too long for her height, and too wide for her style of dress, and as he walked beside her midnight form, he fancied he could hear whispers just beneath the sounds made by their footfalls, hissing and struggling to be heard.

  He glanced at the shadows she cast perhaps once too often, and she flinched. “It is Scarran eve, the night before the darkest night of the year, when the Old Roads are open, and the host is hunting.” She shivered as she said it, and drew the folds of her cloak more tightly around her shoulders. “I should not be here.”

  He caught a glimpse of silver at her neck, some hint of pendant or necklace; she touched it, briefly, before it was lost to a surge of blue light. Her robes twisted free of her hands. The shadows in the folds of fabric grew, and as they did he heard, for a moment, the distant call of horns, and he felt the chill of a Winter so cold it existed only in imagination.

  He heard her cursing, the flat neutrality of her syllables broken by brief, harsh sounds. The light which had shone so brightly around her shattered into a spray of colors, sharp and harsh, that might in a different sky, in a different place, have resembled a rainbow.

  Before they f
aded, he drew his magestone from his pocket, whispering it to a brightness that now looked dim. The shadows across the ground, stretching now like a slender path, groped toward him, devouring the steady, gentle glow. Winds howled, here, and he felt them as a stinging caress on his cheeks; he lifted his arm to protect his face. It didn’t help. There had never been even a breeze in the maze; the velvet silence of an empty, ruined city had been so much a part of its character he had almost failed to recognize it until it was broken.

  But this darkness, he had never seen in his life. He felt it now, and he knew it was as much a threat to life in this city as the demons he had played his deadly games with in the streets above. And as if it were demonic, he reached for the hilt of a dagger, drew it, and held it.

  In the dim light, the blade was glowing, the runes, carved and enchanted by some magic he did not understand, searing their way into his vision. “Evayne!” He lifted the dagger, edge toward her, and the gale broke against it. But the runes dimmed as it did, and he understood that the Summer magic which could devour a demon whole would fade and diminish here against merely the wind.

  Evayne’s eyes, as she turned to look at him, were all of black, as if she had swallowed shadow and it had filled her. She did not speak, but lifted her hand, her fingers shaking, trembling. In the mound of her palm, the seer’s crystal rested, and the light it shed was striated, broken. He remembered his legends: the crystals were some part of the Seer’s Soul, extracted and bound. By who, or what, those legends did not say; nor, at this particular moment, did he care.

  She spoke, struggling with words.

  “Ararath! Come, stand beside me!”

  He took one step, one slow step, and then another, but it was hard; instinct told him to flee into a familiar darkness that was in every way a comfort in comparison. Horns sounded again, closer, clearer.

  “Evayne—”

  “Don’t touch me!” She cursed again, softly. “I should have known,” her voice was the bitter chill of the Winter that kills. The instincts that had preserved his life for long enough that he could be called Old Rath screamed as he took each slow step. He fought them; what did it matter, now?