When Shadows Fall

by Bruce Blake

  “Nonsensical runes,” he conceded. “What do you see?”

  “Letters,” she whispered. “Words.”

  “Read it to me.”

  The princess waved her hand. “Get ink and paper first, in case they disappear when the wine dries.”

  He rushed across the room, his foot striking the silver goblet that had rolled off the table and sending it clattering across the floor; he stopped at the sound of it. Danya glanced toward the door, both of them waiting for it to rattle against the bolt, for a voice to call out, asking what was going on, but neither happened. The princess released the air from her lungs and Teryk went to the desk set against the wall by the window. He returned a moment later with a blue-tinted sheet of paper, an inkpot and quill.

  “Damnable goblet,” he muttered.

  “Hurry. The light’s fading.”

  Teryk wiped wine off the edge of the table and set the paper down while pulling the cork from the bottle of ink. He rested the inkpot beside the paper, dipped the fine tip of the quill, and held it above the blank sheet.

  “Well?”

  Danya wet her lips with her tongue, surprised at the tingling sensation the action spread across them. Funny what one’s imagination caused in the thrall of excitement.

  “Okay. You’re ready?”

  “Yes. Hurry.”

  The princess read the first line. “When days of peace approach their end.” She paused while the tip of Teryk’s quill scratched the words down. He dipped into the ink again and waited for her to continue.

  Danya read the next line, and the next. To her ears, it sounded as though someone else read the words, though they did so with her voice. She became a child seated on a pillow, legs crossed, hanging on each word as a master read her stories of heroic deeds and mythological lands. If she’d been that child, she would have leaned forward to be closer to the words, losing herself in them so the room and people around her disappeared, leaving her alone with the story. Sensations tingled and pulsed on her skin as though she flowed along the curve of the letters, following their bends and rushing across their straight lines like a boat swept along a river, riding its rapids. She—

  “Slow down.” Teryk’s voice broke the spell.

  Danya blinked, surprised to find she’d leaned forward almost until her nose touched the parchment. She smelled the spicy-sweetness of the mulled wine soaking it, the bitter scent of charred paper and fire beneath clogging her nostrils. Clearing her throat, she leaned back, standing straight.

  “How far did you get?”

  “To raise the Small Gods, a Small God must die.”

  The princess continued reading, slower this time, and the words didn’t draw her in as before. Her voice came from her mouth, the rasp of the quill on the paper and the occasional drip of wine plummeting from the edge of the table holding her in the moment. She paused between each line, giving her brother an opportunity to keep pace and refresh the ink on the tip of his quill.

  When she spoke the final word, the scribbling continued for a few seconds, then ceased. Teryk held the writing implement over the paper, waiting.

  “Is that it?”

  Danya nodded, her gaze remaining on the scroll. The pink surface touched by the wine darkened to red, then brick and ruby. The glow of the runes faded and the color overpowered them, sucking their light back into the parchment.

  “Do you see?” she whispered.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed her brother’s nod.

  The paper went scarlet, crimson, then black. The shapes and forms disappeared, the scroll rolled up on itself, and Danya’s heart lurched. She tore her gaze away, directing it to her brother and the blue-tinted sheet of paper on the table in front of him, the tip of the quill hovering above the cursive letters drawn by his hand.

  “Did you get it?” she asked, breathless.

  “Yes.” He set the quill beside the ink, knocking the cork rolling across its top to rest against the scroll. “I got it.”

  “What does it say?”

  Teryk raised a brow.

  “You don’t know what it says? You read it.”

  “I...” If anyone in the kingdom might understand what she experienced reading the lines on the scroll, it was her brother, but she found no words to describe it. He sensed her lack and came to the rescue.

  “It’s a prophecy,” he said, wonder and awe plain in his voice. “A prophecy about me.”

  Danya stared at him for a moment before the guffaw broke from her lips, uncalled and unexpected. His face went instantly angry, and she put her hand over her mouth to keep more laughs from escaping.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t...I don’t know where that came from.”

  He scowled at her, unimpressed with both her reaction and the subsequent apology.

  “It says right here.” He pointed at the paper with an ink-stained finger. “The firstborn child of the rightful king.”

  “Which king?”

  “What do you mean? There’s only one king: our father.”

  “Now, yes. But how many kings before him? How many more to come? Maybe it’s referring to one of them. A king long dead, or your son.”

  “No. It’s not. It’s father.”

  “But if it refers to a long-ago king, that would explain why it’s written in an ancient language.”

  Teryk shook his head and she read his frustration in the set of his brow. He rubbed his lips together, passed his tongue between them, thinking, concentrating. His eyes scanned the paper, fell on the scroll, then rose to meet hers.

  “If it had been written to be read by someone long ago, or someone yet to come, then why did we find it? Why were you able to read it?”

  She shook her head, lacking an answer.

  “Danya,” he leaned toward her as though telling a secret. “Why did it speak to me?”

  His eyes shone and she perceived in them the excitement she’d experienced when she read the scroll. It had left her now, an insidious sliver of dread insinuating itself in its stead, but she couldn’t argue Teryk’s words. All the happenings leading them to the scroll seemed too many for mere chance, as though an unseen hand guided them through the dark underground channel to the secret chamber in which no one had ever set foot. The voice he heard, the scroll surviving the flames, her ability to read its words. It all pointed toward one thing.

  “Magic,” she whispered.

  “We were meant to find it. This,” he picked up the paper on which he’d inscribed her translation and shook it in the air, “is my destiny.”

  A shiver crawled up Danya’s spine at her brother’s words; the sliver of apprehension expanded through her mid-section, up into her chest. She knew her brother well enough to realize he meant what he said, that this wasn’t a dramatic action meant to elicit a surprised response, or a laugh like so many times before.

  “What will you do?”

  He shook his head and paced away from the table, crossed the room to the desk where he opened a drawer and stowed the blue-tinted paper.

  “I’m not sure. I need time to think.” He faced her again, hand resting on the drawer’s handle. “Right now, I’m tired. It’s been a long day.”

  All his exhaustion seemed to fill his face at once, and then it leapt across the room and settled into Danya’s bones. It weighed on her as though she wore a full suit of plate and carried Trenan on her back. Her knees shook and she grasped the edge of the table to keep them from buckling.

  “As am I,” she said and stifled a surprise yawn with the side of her fist.

  Teryk returned to her side, his hand grasping her upper arm. He guided her to the door and unbolted it.

  “Careful,” he whispered, opening the door a crack. He peeked through, blocking her view. “Still sleeping.”

  Teryk opened the door wider and Danya saw the guard slumped on the stool, the line of drool they’d snickered at on his chin now a patch of dark wetness on the front of his blue jerkin. The princess dared to poke her head out and glance along the hal
l; the guard outside her door had returned to strike a similar pose.

  She nodded to her brother and he put his hand on her shoulder. Their eyes locked, silent words passing between them to keep this discovery to themselves, to support each other as they’d done their entire lives. Danya stepped out into the hallway; Teryk shut the door gently behind her.

  Despite the sleeping shift she wore, Danya felt naked standing in the corridor. At any second either of the guards might awaken and discover her, and now it would be only her, not the two of them together. She understood he hadn’t abandoned her, that necessity demanded she make the short return trek to her chamber on her own, but it poked at her heart and made the unease in her stomach spread.

  She inhaled shallowly, then went down the hall, leaving the guard outside Teryk’s door to drool on himself until the morn.

  The pads of her bare feet made no sound as she stole to her room. The guard assigned to her snored atop his stool, his rumbling breaths disguising the noise made by the opening of her door. She stepped one foot across the threshold and paused to look back at the man. His helm sat askew on his head, pushed forward when his head tilted back against the wall, his mouth open to allow air to rattle noisily along his throat. Despite the exhaustion settling into her limbs, a thought occurred to the princess. Before she entered the room and shut herself in, she leaned down and touched the guard’s shoulder.

  “Guard?”

  The man continued to snore, so she grasped him more firmly and shook him.

  “Guard.”

  No response. She kicked the stool, punched his shoulder and raised her voice.

  “Guard!”

  A louder snore echoed along the hall but she received no more reaction and Danya gave up. The tiredness that had seeped into her bones forced itself into her eyes, making her lids heavy. They fluttered as she closed the door, her mind wanting to ponder the mystery of the sleeping guards, recognizing a connection to the evening’s other events, but her weary head fought against seeing it.

  She reeled across the chamber and slumped onto her bed without pulling the covers over herself. When her eyes closed, she pictured letters made of light crawling like snakes, then she dreamt of a man who came from across the sea.

  XII Reunion

  Birk’d tethered his horse and wagon out back o’ the tavern, away from the other horses. Seemed Birk weren’t the only outcast, but his mount, too. Horace didn’t pay it much mind, though, because his thinkin’ were on other things. Red and white floatin’ things. Small Gods and a god under the water what ate you things.

  The wagon slammed through a rut in the track, jarrin’ the ol’ sailor’s teeth together and pullin’ him outta his worried musin’. He gawked 'round at nothin’ but trees linin’ the side of the road in the darkness. Coulda been other things in there, and Horace thought if he gave it enough effort, he just might find ‘em, but he didn’t wanna look hard, and he didn’t wanna see. Trouble were, he didn’t particularly wanna talk to the man drivin’ the wagon, neither. He’d’ve been right fine workin’ for a bed in the tavern’s back room rather’n go with Birk to meet the man what crawled outta the sea.

  Horace cleared his throat, the thin flavor of ale and tasty stew tingin’ his phlegm and makin’ him wish for another tankard, another bowl.

  “You doing all right, friend?”

  Birk directed his eyes toward the ol’ sailor instead o’ the road, so Horace stared straight ahead at the horse’s ass.

  “Yep.”

  “Not much of a talker, are you?”

  “Nope.”

  Birk flicked the reins, slappin’ the leather on the flank o’ the animal pullin’ the wagon, but Horace knew it were for show—he didn’t prompt the horse enough to make it go any quicker. The wagon driver returned his eyes to the path ahead and it felt to the sailor as if someone lifted a weight from offa him. Still, he figured he should say somethin’ to the feller...he did pay for dinner and ale, after all.

  Horace only cared to talk on one thing.

  “When did you say this feller crawled his way outta the sea?”

  Birk paused before answerin’, and ol’ Horace Seaman suspected one o’ them sly smiles might be slinkin’ its way onto his face, but he didn’t take a peek to find out. He didn’t like them skulky smiles.

  “Less than a quarter turn of the moon,” Birk answered finally. He looked skyward and Horace followed his gaze to the half-moon hangin’ up high amongst the Small Gods. “Three sunrises ago, it was.”

  Horace nodded as though the timeline made sense to him. He thought back to the last moon what caught his eye, the night before the simpleton pushed him into the water and ensured the Devil o’ the Deep got ate by the God. That night, the moon’d been a sunrise beyond the quarter turn, but his mind didn’t recall if it were first quarter or last. How long’d he floated in the sea?

  “And three sunrises ago, when this feller washed up on the beach, he were alive?”

  “And remains so.”

  “Talkin’, is he?”

  Birk flicked the reins again, meanin’ it this time. “He hasn’t regained consciousness yet.”

  Horace faced the wagon driver and raised a brow toward his forehead. Birk caught the gesture and nodded.

  “He’s not woken up.”

  The sailor let the air outta his chest and tightness left his limbs. He didn’t have no explanation why this feller from the sea were makin’ him all tense and such—might be any ol’ fisherman fell into the ocean and got himself washed ashore—but somethin’ in Horace’s gut told him a clumsy fish-gatherer weren’t the case. If he’d learnt anythin’ in near thirty-five turns with his feet set on ship’s decks, it were to give his attention to whatever his gut had to say. The other thing he’d learnt were that he hated the sea.

  “Is he gonna live?”

  “I think so, but he needs the doc. That’s why I need your help. And to find out if you know him.” Horace sensed Birk’s gaze on him, his grin grinnin’.

  “Can’t see how’s I would.”

  His voice held a tremor, and he hoped Birk ain’t detected it. They continued their trip in silence, the dead quiet of the night bein’ disrupted only by shoed hooves gratin’ on rocky road and rattley wagon wheels bouncin’ through ruts. Horace sat on his hands and chewed his bottom lip all the way, wonderin’ if a God o’ the Deep were able to make an appearance on land.

  ***

  No surprise to Horace findin’ Birk’s house on the outside edge o’ town—Millstream, the place were called, on account o’ the fact there were a mill and a stream. Birk lived in a small shack what appeared built by a man who went to school to get book learnin’ ‘stead o’ figurin’ out how to use tools in his hands like a man should. The shack ain’t fell o’er yet, but it resembled one awaitin’ a stiff breeze to finish the job. Horace licked his finger and held it up as he climbed offa the wagon. No wind, so it might be safe for sleepin’ in one more night.

  “She’s stronger than she looks,” Birk said, noddin’ toward the shack as though he’d listened in on the words in the sailor’s head. “Built her with my own hands.”

  “Figured.”

  Birk titled his head, then laughed, apparently takin’ no offense. Instead, he set to unbucklin’ his horse from the wagon and Horace gave him a hand without makin’ him ask. After the man bought him stew and ale, it were the least for him to do. He wished it were all there were for him to do.

  The unhitchin’ done, Birk led the horse 'round behind the shack to a barn what looked to need no more’n a breath to send it topplin’ to the ground, but it appeared to be holdin’ its own as good as the shack. Whatever this Birk feller were doin’, it didn’t look pretty, but it worked to keep the rain offa his head and the bugs outta his teeth.

  “Come on, I’ll show you the man from the sea,” he said, closin’ the barn door behind him.

  Horace chewed his bottom lip some more, got a bloody flavor on his tongue and made himself stop. Eatin’ himself weren’t no good a
nswer.

  They crossed the short yard to the door, gravel crunchin’ under Horace’s one foot and pushin’ uncomfortably against the sole o’ the other. He’d appreciated the stew, and the two tankards fulla ale, but if he got outta this encounter with his life, he hoped this man might have a pair o’ boots to spare.

  Birk swung the door open and stepped into the shack’s dark interior; Horace hesitated before followin’ him, his mind thinkin’ on the man in red and white bobbin’ upon the sea. But he’d not seen the man’s face, nothin’ but white shirt and red pants. Maybe the man didn’t have no face, but a monster’s face, the God o’ the Deep’s face.

  The ol’ sailor shivered despite the warm night and forced himself to step o’er the threshold and into the shack. Only a chickenturd stands in a doorway, afraid and shiverin’, and First Man Horace Seaman weren’t no chickenturd. He just didn’t wanna be in a certain place at a certain time, nothin’ more.

  Horace swung the door shut behind him and stood unmovin’ in the dark. The day’s heat’d brought out the shack’s odors, and the lack of light prompted his nose into workin’ harder’n usual. It told him the thresh on the floor were fresh, that Birk’d built at least part o’ the shack outta cedar, and he’d cooked himself up a chicken for his dinner. Beneath ev’rythin’, clingin’ to them smells like a rash on your balls what didn’t wanna go, Horace sniffed the briny stench o’ sea water and fought to keep his meal from comin’ back up on him, ‘cause pukin’d be a terrible waste o’ good stew.

  “A moment and I’ll have the lamp lit.”

  Part of Horace relished the idea o’ light, so his eyes’d do a portion o’ the work and his nose’d stop showin’ off, but another part didn’t wanna see what hid in the dark. What were ol’ Horace Seaman gonna do if the lamp lit up on a man wearin’ red pants and white shirt?

  What were he gonna do if it were a god crawled outta the sea to collect what shoulda been his?