Shadowlands

by Malan, Violette

  Suddenly I wanted to tell him I couldn’t go, that I was too sick, that I couldn’t make it. That maybe I should lie down for a while after all. I told myself there was no way to know if lying down was going to make me feel any better. There hadn’t been any food for me to eat, but since I could only drink tiny sips of the purest of water without gagging, that hadn’t seemed so important. So far, we hadn’t really taken that much time; I certainly didn’t feel hungry. But wouldn’t I feel the lack of food eventually? We had to find the Horn and get back to the Shadowlands—back home—while I was still able to function.

  We set off once more. Now Wolf Sang under his breath the whole time. I don’t know how he knew the tune—maybe he was making it up as he went along—but as he Sang, he urged his Cloud Horse forward, and we almost immediately left the dense woods for a grassy path where the trees were well spaced and there was little underbrush.

  Then, so suddenly it made me blink, we were riding along the edge of a steep hill, with a narrow valley below us, a stream winding along its bottom, far below.

  “Um. Are we headed in the right direction?”

  “Look.” Wolf pointed upward. I shaded my eyes with my hand and looked. “The sun in the northern sky. And do you not feel the wind? Look below, I would wager the water in that stream is cold enough.” I directed my eyes downward without moving my head. The stream did sort of look like a snake, now that he mentioned it. “We have begun.”

  I had to take his word for it. In fact, I had to take his word for most of the rest of the day’s journey—if it was a day. I found out for certain why they called the place the “Lands,” in plural. From the hillside, we came around the shoulder of a rock and were suddenly in the dark. It was raining, and I would have freaked completely except that we were on what seemed to be a paved road, and the rain was warm. Nevertheless, Wolf passed out short cloaks from a pack he had behind his saddle and as soon as I had mine around me not only did the rain not fall on me, but where it had fallen, I was immediately dry. I could see how useful one of these would be at home—not that there was a lot of cloak wearing on the streets of Toronto.

  “We’d be rich if we could make umbrellas out of this stuff,” I said. But either he didn’t hear me, or I hadn’t spoken aloud.

  The dark rainy road turned into a sandy beach that stretched out for kilometers ahead of us. Between one step and the next, we were in a field of some kind of grain, under cloudy skies, and then in a beautiful mountain meadow dotted with multicolored wildflowers. I went on reciting lines from the Song as we went. Wolf would repeat them after me in his warm liquid voice, and the landscape we were looking for would appear. I started to feel a bit dopey, like when you’re falling asleep watching a movie and you only catch glimpses here and there. At one point I wondered whether we were actually traveling into these places, or whether Wolf was calling them into being with his Singing.

  Then I wondered why it would matter.

  Suddenly, I found myself swallowing a lot, so much that I couldn’t get out the next line.

  “Do you wish to dismount?” Wolf said. He reached out as if to take me by the elbow, to steady me, but I held up my own hand, warding him off.

  “Don’t…touch…me,” I managed to say. It really felt as if I was going to puke. Very slowly, holding my head as level as I could, I got down from the Cloud Horse. My foot had no sooner touched the ground, however, than the world began to spin for real, and I had to cling to the saddle to keep upright.

  “Wolf,” I croaked out. He must have seen what I was trying to do, because he immediately dismounted, and gave me a boost back onto my own horse. He’d only touched me for a moment, and all I got from him was a confused sea of faces and the knowledge that he didn’t know how his parents had died—and that he was afraid either he or Fox had something to do with it.

  “I know.” I was leaning forward, clinging to my Cloud Horse’s neck, only dimly aware that I was getting no reading from him at all, and more than grateful for the respite. “How your parents died.” I must have been speaking aloud, because Wolf’s face was suddenly close to mine. “In the fullness of time,” I said. “Their dra’aj was returned to the Lands.”

  “I thank the Chimera who guides me,” he said, like he was praying. “I feared…” He was just a little too scared to say out loud what it was he’d feared.

  “S’okay. I know.”

  “A little water? Must you take more of the pills?”

  “Water.” Somehow, now that I was back on the Cloud Horse, my stomach was settling a bit, and I was able to manage a couple of sips of water.

  “Should we rest?” There was real concern in his voice, but not just concern for me. Time was passing, and if I couldn’t feel it, Wolf could.

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “Part of me wants to lie down, but if what just happened is any indication, I should probably stay on the horse.” I never thought I’d hear myself say that.

  “I have asked him not to let you fall.” Wolf was nodding. “Perhaps that is helping you. You may be able to sleep if we go forward slowly. Tell me the next ten lines or so, I will find the way, while you rest.”

  So that’s what we did. I dozed, leaning forward, my arms around the Cloud Horse’s neck, warm and dry under me, my cheek against his skin, with the most pleasant smell of a recently mowed lawn. Never quite asleep, never completely awake, we followed as Wolf led us through several more landscapes, more than I wanted to keep track of. Eventually, I thought I was feeling a bit better and was thinking about trying to sit up, when the Cloud Horse stopped abruptly. I pushed myself upright.

  We were in a valley, treed slopes to our right, rocks and scrub brush to our left. And, directly in front of us, a monster.

  I was startled enough that I sat bolt upright, my motion sickness forgotten as adrenaline shot through my system. That won’t help, I thought. I don’t know what would have been worse, the nausea, or constantly cranking myself up to avoid it.

  In front of us, blocking the path, was something I had never, in my wildest nightmares, wanted to see. It seemed to have some kind of snakelike body, what looked like a crow’s wings, each as big as a kitchen table, a bird’s head with a curved beak and a fleshy crest like a rooster’s comb, and a spiked and scaly tail. Its eyes were enormous and it kept turning its head, looking at us first with one eye and then the other. I couldn’t tell whether or not it had feet, but I guessed not, since it seemed to be thrashing back and forth on the ground. Hound, was the thought that gripped me.

  The Cloud Horses didn’t shy, however, or bolt, which is certainly what I felt like doing, and I was startled to see that Wolf was leaning forward with a look of interest on his face. I was more than surprised. The thing would have made me feel queasy to look at even if I wasn’t already suffering from motion sickness.

  “What is it?” I think it smelled bad, too.

  “A Cockatrice.” I could tell from Wolf’s tone that I was supposed to have known this.

  “Uh-oh, that’s bad, isn’t it?”

  “No cold winds from the west, and now you think a Cockatrice is an evil thing. Where do you humans get these ideas?”

  That made me blink. It was true that humans did tend to assign abstract value to things, like dark being bad and light being good. Since I’d been introduced to the world of Faerie—sorry, I mean of the People—I thought I had a pretty good idea exactly where we got some of these ideas. But maybe Riders weren’t the best people to explain that to.

  I tried to look at the Cockatrice without prejudice. My nose wrinkled up. No, it was definitely ugly, even if ugly didn’t mean evil.

  At that moment the Cockatrice disappeared and in its place was the youngest Rider I’d ever seen. If human, I would have said he was twelve or thirteen, though he was already taller than me. He was a Moonward Rider, with jet-black hair hanging shaggy and loose down his back and brilliant green eyes. He was dressed completely in black—leather trousers, knee-high boots, sleeveless jerkin. I was surprised to see th
at he already bore a gra’if guard on his left arm.

  “Did you see it? Did you see my Guide? I did it! I knew I could. My mother told me I should not try, but I knew I could.” He was beside himself with excitement, and I pegged his age a little lower. But then I took in what he’d said.

  “That was you? The Cockatrice?”

  He nodded, still grinning from ear to ear. “My Guidebeast. I am Iceriver. My mother is Tree in Leaf.”

  Wolf introduced himself and then me, naming me a friend of the High Prince. Apparently, people knew that Cassandra had spent a long time among humans, and it wasn’t too shocking for them to encounter one, so long as they thought I “belonged” to their Prince.

  “It is an honor to meet a friend of the High Prince,” the young Rider said. “I would greatly enjoy speaking to you about the Shadowlands, when your tasks permit it.”

  “Oh, sure. I mean, it would be an honor to share my knowledge with you.”

  “Tell me, Iceriver,” Wolf said. “Do you know of this place,” and he recited “‘Far to the horizon the rocks and grasses, Far to the horizon the ravens fly.’”

  “Of course. That’s the Moor of Ravens. I can Move you there, or do you wish to Ride?”

  “By all means Move us, if you are not tired from manifesting your Guidebeast.”

  Instead of answering, Iceriver stepped between our two Cloud Horses, put one hand on Wolf’s left boot and one hand on my right.

  CRACK!

  “Behold, the Moor of Ravens.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  NIK LED MOON AND ALEJANDRO up the stairs to find the outer office empty, and Elaine ensconced behind her desk.

  “I sent the ladies home,” she said, without shifting her eyes from the monitor she was watching. Nik looked for any signs of slackness in her face, any shakiness, but his friend seemed fine, her usual poised self. He knew that her last infusion of dra’aj should last Elaine a much longer time, now that she was becoming used to carrying it, but he checked her out just the same. Yeah, and I should be doing the same for myself.

  “Do we still have a business?” Nik approached the desk.

  “Sure, or we will have on Monday, once I’ve got all this organized to run without us.” She made a final entry and looked up, looking past him to where Alejandro and Moon stood in the doorway.

  “This is Walks Under the Moon,” he said. “She’s here to help us.”

  The Rider came forward with her hand outstretched. “Moon,” she said.

  “Great.” Elaine gestured at the monitors. Two still ran news reports, Nik saw. “How handy are you with spreadsheets? I could really use one for—what is it?”

  Moon was peering with great interest at what she could see on the monitor nearest her. “Are these ‘spreadsheets’?” she said, turning back to Elaine, her gray eyes shining. “We do not read, or at least I do not. The Prince Guardian has been teaching me but,” she waved at the monitor, “evidently not enough.”

  Elaine swallowed. “Okay, no problem. Fieldwork, it is.” Her smile faltered. “What’s up with you two? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “We have had a most unexpected encounter,” Alejandro said, tilting his head to look Nik over. “And I have learned that Nik is a brave man.”

  “Hey,” he said, lifting his hands when both Elaine and Moon raised their eyebrows at him. “Don’t look at me. I was terrified the whole time.”

  “But you did not run. You stood your ground, and more, you functioned as mediator.”

  “Mediator?” Elaine came out from behind her desk. “With whom? Not one of the Hunt?”

  “A Rider. A lieutenant of the Basilisk’s.” Alejandro turned to Moon. “Do you remember him from that time?”

  Nik noticed that when Moon frowned, no wrinkles formed on her forehead. “I thought I did. He came to the Basilisk’s guard within the last year or so.”

  Alejandro turned back to Elaine. “He found us in the Royal York, and had a proposition for us.”

  Elaine made for the door. “Hang on, this sounds like coffee might be needed.” As she left the room, heading for the coffee works in the main office, Moon moved to a seat at one end of Elaine’s small couch, Alejandro took the seat next to her, and Nik dragged over the upholstered client’s chair from in front of the desk. Coffee must have been waiting in the thermal jug, because Elaine returned with jug, mugs, cream, and sugar on a tray before they had even settled in.

  By the time they had finished pouring and passing the cream, Alejandro had filled Elaine in on their encounter.

  Moon had her lower lip between her teeth. When she finally spoke, her voice was quiet. “I was not there for the beginning of this meeting. Manticore save me, they gave dra’aj oaths? There were rumors that the Basilisk had begun some special ordeal for anyone who was not a Sunward Rider, but no one would have thought of this.”

  Nik leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “I didn’t want to ask, but when Sunset mentioned this dra’aj oath, and Alejandro didn’t say anything about it…”

  “It’s one of the minor Chants,” Moon said. “The Basilisk had a number of People searching out such things.” Moon suddenly bit her lip again, and looked away. “There are a number of these Chants, Minors or Smalls as they’re known, which manipulate dra’aj,” she said finally. “Cassandra—my sister—she speculated that the Hunt use a variation of it to take the dra’aj of others.”

  “Even in my day I had heard of such things, of course,” Alejandro said. “But I had thought them the stuff of Songs.”

  “Like so much the Basilisk uncovered.” Moon took a deep breath and straightened. “Your dra’aj swears the oath,” she said, looking down at her clasped hands. “Not merely your heart, or your intention. Your very dra’aj. You cannot act against the oath, even if you would wish to.”

  “Whoa.” Nik leaned back in his chair. He’d known it was serious, from the stricken look on the strange Rider’s face, but there was something faintly sickening in the explanation. “Still, before I feel all sorry for them, I’ve got to keep in mind that they’re asking for this world, our world, as their reward for helping us out.”

  Elaine set the sugar bowl back on the lacquered tray with a slight click. “When you say they asked for our world, is that such a bad thing? I mean, if these Riders want to live here? They’re not going to feed on us.”

  “The High Prince might have to close the Portals to contain them.” If Alejandro stirred his coffee any more, Nik thought, he’d wear through the cup. “Their oaths force them to fight against the Prince Guardian, and therefore against the High Prince as well.”

  “But if the Portals are closed,” Nik continued, “What controls do we have on Riders? What stops them from just taking over?”

  “Really? How many of them are there? No offense,” Elaine nodded at the two Riders sitting on the couch. “But how much trouble can you cause against billions of us with your swords?—Oh!”

  Nik sat back so abruptly he spilled coffee on his leg. Sitting on the couch, where Alejandro and Moon had been, were perfect replicas of Elaine and himself.

  “We wouldn’t be limited to swords,” Moon said in an eerie but perfect facsimile of Elaine’s voice. “We can use any weapons we like.”

  “And we have many you have never seen.” As he spoke, Alejandro resumed his own appearance, but now he had an elegant goatee, and his hair was a darker red.

  “‘Nuke them from space,’” Elaine said under her breath. But she wasn’t grinning, the way she usually did when she used this quote.

  “Sure, if they’re all in the same spot, but if they’re not?” Nik put his mug down on the table and dabbed at his pant leg with a napkin, hoping the others couldn’t see his hands shaking. He’d known they were fast, and of course they could Move, but he hadn’t known they could change their appearance that much. You could be sitting in a room full of Riders and never know.

  Except for Valory. She’d know. Who they were and where they’d been, and maybe where they were
going to be. If only people would listen. And how safe would that make her?

  “Let’s not jump into the quicksand before we have to. How likely is any of this to happen?” Trust Elaine to be thinking ahead in an entirely different way. “Is this the kind of bargain that could be struck? It feels like the Pope dividing South America between the Spanish and the Portuguese. Don’t humans get any say?”

  Alejandro looked at Moon, and waited. That’s right, Nik thought, she’d already said what she thought the High Prince might do.

  Still, he wasn’t sure he liked the look on Moon’s face.

  “Cassandra would wish to include you,” she said. “But it is more complex than I led Sunset on Water to believe. It would not occur to most of the People that humans be consulted.” She glanced at Alejandro and he nodded at her to continue. “Many regard humans as—well, as mythological creatures—as, I gather, we are regarded by you.”

  “Great, just great.” Nik scrubbed his face with his hands.

  “Sunset on Water accepted that Nik had the right to speak for humans. That is significant.” Alejandro leaned forward and poured himself more coffee from the carafe. “I would say a bargain can be struck. The High Prince would not simply cede the Shadowlands unless the Hunt is dealt with.”

  But Nik was still watching Moon’s face. “You’re not so sure,” he said.

  “The Hunt is an old problem, one we have been living with for Cycles,” Moon studied the surface of her coffee. Unlike the rest of them, she was still on her first cup. “As we speak, these forced followers of the Basilisk Prince are being hunted down and killed.” She looked around, outer corners of eyes and lips turned down. “There has been no choice.”

  “But there is now.” Elaine was nodding, as though she’d followed a legal argument through to its logical conclusion.

  Alejandro was shaking his head. “The whole of the People fights with the High Prince, and eventually the Lands themselves will rise against her enemies.” He looked around. “At least, that is what the Songs tell us.”