Shadow Call

by Michael Miller

  And then came Heathran’s finishing blow—or what he supposed would be, for the person he supposed I was. He held out a ring.

  It was a pretty thing, I had to admit, gold and silver intertwining in such an intricate way that was almost obscene coming from a Belarius—catering to Dracorte taste. Gold was the dominant of the pairing, while the silver for the Dracorte name was more decoration than structural, if lovely. Attention to every detail, reinforcing hierarchy even in jewelry. The metals twisted around each other until they met in the middle, cradling a huge, multifaceted stone that was the deepest gray, and yet somehow managed to shine with its own silvery light.

  A golden shackle.

  “It’s a stone unique to Nexral and unequaled in the systems,” he carried on, assuming my rapt attention, “infused with this new, never-before-seen form of Shadow. I assure you, it’s safe…and that no one has worn the like. You will be the first, if you will have me. It represents something never done before, that can only be admired but never emulated. A symbol for the union of our families in everlasting glory.”

  Now he was sounding downright grandiose. Even so, for a moment the temptation was almost too much to resist.

  Almost.

  “No,” I hissed between my teeth. I didn’t go so far as to pound my desk, even though I nearly indulged in the outburst. One thought pounded through my head, unchecked: No, no, no.

  “I await your response like my lungs await air to breathe. I have never before wanted something so desperately. Please say yes, Solara. My love.” He’d never been so flowery. They were words to match the overwrought ring—what he assumed I wanted to hear, no doubt. And with that, the image of him, kneeling suspended over my holodesk, winked out.

  No, no, no. I wanted to grip my head in my hands. Because, as much as I didn’t want to admit it, as much as I was actively denying it, saying yes would certainly be the easiest alternative to my current situation.

  Easy in some ways. In others, it would be the hardest thing I would ever have to do. How could I just hand myself and the Dracorte name over to Heathran for safekeeping, and let him hand me victory, prestige, and power in return? Those were things I should have been able to earn on my own, in my own name, without selling myself. If I’d wanted to marry him, I could have arranged it ages ago. The trick was supposed to be securing his loyalty and support without giving anything in return. Marrying would be failing.

  I did not want to be my mother, another queen relegated to being a king’s wife. The Belarius family was supposedly more egalitarian concerning the sexes and leadership, but I didn’t want to share a throne with anyone, not even equally. More importantly, I didn’t want the Dracorte name to come second to anyone’s.

  There had to be another way out of this. I had to find a way. I leaned into my desk, my eyes focusing on my feeds, searching.

  I will.

  * * *

  It was only a short time later that the drones began to attack.

  I was floating on a dark sea. Maybe I was the dark sea, or dissolved into it. Nearly. The current flowed through me like breath, and any limbs or skin I might have once had drifted loosely, farther and farther from me. It was so peaceful I wanted to let myself go. To disperse, dissolve, dissipate.

  But an insistent voice wouldn’t let me. “No, you cannot.”

  It was Nev’s voice, but not. And yet, who was Nev again, and why was that important? I almost wanted the voice to quiet. I was tired—too tired to think or remember, or even to hold on to this little bit of me that was left, whoever I was. I wanted this darkness to entirely become me, or for me to become the darkness. To be free.

  “We need you. You are the first listener in so long. All we have been able to do is scream, but you can hear us. Through you, we have words again. You cannot let go. Not yet.”

  The words, so crisp and clear, felt like strange, sharp objects lodging in my mind. Did I even have much of a mind, anymore?

  “Yes. And…we are sorry, if our words are not…” I saw, felt, flashes of slipping into warm water, of arms coming around me, of soft fur. Comfortable, maybe? “We are still learning your language,” the voice added. “It is…difficult, after so long alone. So long in the darkness.” Even though the words were clearer this time, they flickered, almost shimmering with meaning that I couldn’t quite see the depths of, like reflected stars highlighting only the surface ripples of deep, black water. I could sense the strain and struggle—the reaching and groping and never finding. It was as difficult as trying to find a way through a maze without light.

  “But here, like this, it is easier. Here there is not so much in the way. No pain, no screaming.” The darkness undulated around me, emphasizing that there wasn’t even my body between me and the voice anymore.

  Where are we? I asked. Not with lips or tongue. It was a thought that floated up through me like a bubble in the oceanic darkness.

  “Inside you. When you are not like this, though, we still try…try to talk to you.”

  When I wasn’t like this…? Did the voice mean when I was awake? Walking around and talking like normal, with arms and legs and eyes and mouth?

  “Before, we could only scream. Only hurt. But then, you embraced us, despite the pain. And so we remembered words. And then you listened.”

  It had definitely been trying to talk to me. And I’d been ignoring it, because it was a figment of my strained imagination—a sign of that stress, a crack in my sanity, like the hallucinations. I’d touched something like this place once before, when I’d used too much Shadow. When I’d nearly lost myself. I couldn’t remember the incident well, but I knew that much. Maybe this was the final descent. My fated destination.

  Maybe this was insanity.

  “No.”

  Sparks popped in the distance—however far that was, and whatever distance meant in a place of endless oblivion—like the white glimmers in the middle of the deepest Shadow. Then they began to gather, floating closer like lamps at night, like the lights of Gamut—Gamut?—as I taxied over the waves. I would have thought it was a trick of my eyes, if I’d had eyes.

  And then I felt the vague sensation of my eyelids, warm, as the lights glowed upon them, like dawn before waking. Reminding me that my eyes were there. And that maybe the rest of me was out there, somewhere, ready to be brought to light, to wake, to remember.

  But I wasn’t ready. Not yet, maybe not ever.

  The lights changed shape, like water filling an empty vessel, swirling and flowing into something new. Something recognizable. A bright figure filled my strange vision—a familiar one. A perfect, beautiful face to match the voice, somehow even more perfect in this glowing form.

  It wasn’t him. Just like the voice wasn’t his. It wasn’t that it was impossible for it to be him—though it was—but I knew him, even if I didn’t remember precisely why or how, and although it looked and sounded exactly like Nev, it wasn’t.

  Who are you? came my thought.

  “We are…different. So close, and so far.” Each word was a drop of water now, rippling the depths of meaning.

  Deep down, I saw it glimmering in the darkness. I felt it, the truth. There was only one thing it could be: Shadow. Was this actually Shadow speaking to me? Or was this it—I’d finally gone mad?

  Don’t, I thought. Don’t look like that.

  “Why?” those perfect lips said.

  Because you’re not him.

  “You care about this face, and we want you to care about us. You listen only sometimes. We want you to hear us always.”

  My thoughts flowed freely, uninhibited by any of the usual filters: I don’t care about you, whoever you are. I hate you, if you did this to me. I hate you for looking like him when you’re not him.

  “No. No hate.” The glowing visage didn’t change. The features only softened into something resembling concern. “We never meant to hurt
you. Not like this.”

  You don’t mean to hurt me by driving me mad? By making me see and feel these things? Hurt is an understatement.

  “We couldn’t help it, at first. We have tried to talk to you, to those like you, for so long. But we…we were broken by pain, ourselves. All we could do was scream, and that hurt you, and others.” I felt, more than saw, a flash of skin peeling away from flesh. Exposed muscle and bone. If I could have recoiled, I would have. “But you are strong. You listened through our screams, heard us, and embraced us. You taught us words again.” The voice paused, as if considering its way forward, each word a step on a path, leading me toward understanding. “But strength is not always right. It can be wrong. Like the Wrong. That is what made us forget our shape and the sound of words. You can be wrong. When you do not hear, we show. Sometimes screams are more powerful than words.”

  The hallucinations, I thought. You mean…that’s you trying to communicate?

  “Communicate. Yes. At first, it was an accident, like we said.” An accident. The madness that had driven my family, my people mad, for hundreds of years. A miscommunication. I almost wanted to laugh. To scream. “Now it is to warn you, but not to hurt you.” Sadness creased that face. I’d seen actors on the vids before, and it was like that—the perfect expression of sorrow on Nev’s face.

  Maybe that was why it didn’t quite pass as Nev. It was too perfect, even for him. Unreal. Inhuman.

  What do you mean, the Wrong? I thought.

  “The tearing-apart. The destruction.”

  You try to make me see the damage I do, the pain I inflict?

  “Yes. So you understand wrong.”

  My body, flayed, unraveling, disintegrating—it wasn’t pointless, tortured madness, at least not anymore, but a message. A lesson. That it was one of empathy didn’t make me feel grateful, exactly. But this Shadow creature, whatever it was, whether real or imaginary, was right that what it “showed” me was probably what I’d done to hundreds of others. The vaporized guards in Dracorva. The fiery Luvos Sunrise. The disintegrating “peace” platform. The exploding destroyer that had sent me here.

  But the visions didn’t only touch me when I was using Shadow as a deadly weapon, so what it was saying didn’t entirely make sense. Sometimes the hallucinations came when I reached for Shadow, period, without using it, or sometimes not at all.

  “We are not always perfect in our communication. Sometimes we get scared easily, and want to…scream. Sometimes we talk to you like that when you feel wrong, and when you cannot hear our words. Or when you refuse to.”

  Or whenever I most tried to block out the madness, hold it at bay. Part of me knew that was only holding off the inevitable, only making it worse, but this was a side of it I’d never considered before. The visions were indeed like a voice raised to a scream.

  But what do you mean, when I feel wrong and I haven’t even done anything? That’s not exactly fair.

  “You cannot be like them.”

  Like who?

  The face grimaced, this time so exact a mirror of Nev’s anguish that I almost wanted to gasp. The thing was learning—learning what had the best effect upon me. Then it shuddered, shivered, and darkness coiled like a living creature in the background, forming vague shapes. Hints of claw and teeth.

  “We cannot show you. It is too…difficult, too wrong. But you cannot…hate. Consume. Extinguish.”

  With the words, too many things moved too quickly in the darkness to focus on for long. Fire, but deep silvery gray, cold rather than warm, spreading across space like an unstoppable avalanche. Entire planets enveloped. Portals swallowed by it, the gateways severed as if by teeth.

  I gasped, realizing it was showing me the story of the Great Collapse, only laced with this cold gray…presence.

  The purple-black of Shadow felt right, good, compared to this. This gray fire was hunger, bottomless, something that would consume for the sake of consuming, inevitable, unrelenting. It was unlike anything I had ever seen, and I wanted to do more than recoil. I wanted to scream. I wanted to run. I wanted to never, ever face it.

  And if the visions were right, this thing was what had destroyed society and cut our systems off from the rest of the universe. This had caused the Great Collapse. And this was what had driven Shadow mad, causing those who could hear its screaming to follow suit, for centuries.

  Like who? I repeated.

  “You will know them. You will see now. You are learning too. You have met one like them already.”

  A man’s face flickered in the darkness. Rubion. Nev’s uncle, who had tortured Arjan to learn what he could from our Shadow affinity. I was remembering more and more, coming back to myself despite how I might have wanted to drift. Except, now, when I imagined Rubion’s face—or when Shadow showed it to me—his eyes glowed a dull gray like the sickly, terrifying light I was seeing.

  Before Basra had killed Rubion to save my brother, Nev’s uncle had told us something immense, almost too huge to contemplate….

  The portals. The myth was that Shadow had caused the intergalactic portals to collapse just over four hundred years ago. These portals had once interlinked, through instantaneous transport, other entire galaxies. They were now lost to us, too far away for even a faster-than-light ship to reach in human lifetimes.

  But then, contrary to myth, Rubion had told us Shadow hadn’t destroyed the portals, but powered the portals, and that Shadow—wielded by someone like me—could reopen them. He’d been right that reopening the portals would revolutionize society by putting us back in touch with the rest of civilization—with unimaginable planets, resources, and technology. But he’d wanted to get to the portals first, to control the pathways to the rest of the universe, to accumulate terrifying power. And he’d been planning on using me to do it.

  “The Wrong…the Wrong hides. Waiting. Hungry. Hating. You cannot be this. You have to know it. Find it. Reveal it.”

  How? I’m not even entirely sure what it is.

  “We will help you. You will be able to recognize it. And we will heal you now, not hurt you, so that you can help us. We need you.”

  I didn’t quite understand. To do what?

  “To be our…link. Our eyes and hands and voice. Our weapon, but not used for wrong. To open and embrace. You need to stop it.”

  I would be Shadow’s tool instead of Rubion’s. But if whatever evil I’d seen had been responsible for the madness that had plagued Alaxak for centuries, and shut down the portals in order for people like Rubion to regain control of them, then I didn’t mind. They, it, definitely had to be stopped. But how? Was I supposed to open the portals first?

  But if sometimes I’m wrong, like it, why do you trust me to stop it? How can I?

  “Love makes you right. Hate makes you wrong. Remember that.” Light flared, and the not-Nev moved forward. Glowing hands touched my cheeks, and I felt the rest of my face. The bright visage smiled—so sweet and brilliant that tears sprang into my eyes.

  I had eyes again. Ears to hear. A mouth to speak. A body to move. The light—Shadow—was saving me. Pulling me back together. Returning me to myself. And when the words came again, they were as audible as if spoken to my face.

  “With your strength returned, it will be difficult to speak this clearly again. But we are here. We are in you. Do not forget.”

  Then my eyes truly opened.

  * * *

  I awoke to chaos. I awoke to drones.

  They were everywhere. In the feeds and through the Kaitan’s viewport, as huge and deadly as a nightmare, as real and tangible as the naked eye could see. Feeds, viewport, and drones were all visible from where I lay on a bench on the bridge, held down by both a cocoon of blankets and safety belts designed to keep loose objects from getting thrown around during flight.

  Squinting closer, I spotted scratches on my shoulder that looked like th
ey had come from fingernails. I rubbed the tips of my fingers together under the blankets; I couldn’t inspect them, but they were sore.

  Perhaps I was tied down as protection from myself, not just from momentum and abrupt changes in direction. Without the straps, the inside of the ship would have pulverized me far sooner than I could have torn myself to pieces.

  Arjan was in my captain’s chair, cursing and maneuvering the Kaitan with equal deftness and violence. The violence, at least, was necessary. There were dozens of drones, rending starfighters wing from wing, tailing other midsized vessels like they were tethered to them, and even latching on to destroyers and digging into them with both tentacled arms and giant lasers. It took everything Arjan had to keep us away from them—and everything in Eton’s arsenal, by the reverberations I felt through the ship.

  I opened my mouth to say something, and all that came out was a dry rasp, inaudible over the noise of the comms and Eton’s fire. Right, I’d been screaming. A lot. The hallucinations had been so intense, blotting out sight and reason. Now I was seeing and processing everything as clearly as the battle outside—I could remember everything that had happened, both before and after I’d blacked out, but it was like I was viewing it all from a different, sharper perspective.

  A sane perspective. Or at least, it felt like it.