Shadowfall

by James Clemens

  Now it would all end.

  Paltry leaned over her, holding four thimble-sized jars. “This unguent is made of the blood of the four aspects. You might feel a little tingle, and the corresponding illuminaria will shine brighter if you are accepted. You must pass all four. Do you understand?”

  “Y-yes.” She squeezed closed her eyes. In her ears echoed the cries of ravens.

  A finger touched her brow four times: top, bottom, left, and right. The points of a cross. Only if she passed would the marks be connected with blue oils, sealing her purity.

  Dart shook, knowing that would never happen.

  As the fourth mark blessed her forehead, Paltry spoke near her ear. “Now to judge the purity of your spirit and—”

  Glass exploded with a shatter. Dart cried out, curling in a ball. Overhead, shards rained down from the chandelier.

  Dart felt impacts rattle the underside of the bench. Slivers cut into her back and arms and thighs, like a thousand bee stings.

  Matron Grannice yelped, ducking away. Pupp raced in circles around the bench, eyes ablaze, jumping and leaping, as startled as any of them.

  All around light blazed from the four illuminaria, near blinding in their brilliance.

  Paltry stood, bleeding from lacerations on his face. His eyes were huge. “By all the gods . . .” he swore under his breath. The light quickly faded from the four exploded illuminaria. “I’ve never seen such a response.”

  “What happened?” Matron Grannice asked, accusation in her voice, her eyes fixed on Dart.

  “I didn’t . . . I couldn’t . . .” Dart said. “I’m sorry.”

  Paltry wiped his face, picking out glass, then did the same for Dart. “It’s not her fault. While normally the illuminaria wax only slightly brighter, I’ve witnessed more brilliant displays over the years. Yet nothing of this magnitude. The strength and clarity of her spirit is without question.” Finished with his ministrations, he glanced up at Grannice. “From this radiant response of the illuminaria, I see no need to perform a physique.”

  Dart felt a surge of hope. Without an intimate exam, her terrible secret would remain hidden. Perhaps for another half year, until the next physique.

  But such hope was dashed with Matron Grannice’s next words. “You must, Healer Paltry. A supplicant before the Oracles must be cleared spiritually and physically.”

  Paltry stared at the ruined illuminarias. “Of course, you’re right. But let’s be quick about this. I must study in more detail what happened here.” He waved for Dart to stretch back on the bench. He examined her with swift efficiency, hurried, with none of his usual gentleness.

  Dart trembled under his touch as he checked her body from brow to toe. Lastly, he crouched between her spread legs and reached toward the ache in her loins, probing toward the root of her shame. “She’s been bleeding,” he said.

  “Her first menstra,” Grannice explained, arms folded.

  By now, tears rolled down Dart’s cheeks. She awaited the end of her life.

  With a clearing of his throat, Paltry straightened and gained his feet. “Everything appears fine,” he said, patting her inner thigh. “She can attend the night’s ceremony.”

  Dart gasped in shock, struggling to speak.

  “Up with you then, child,” Matron Grannice said. “Into your clothes.”

  Dart stared between the portly woman and the healer as he marked her forehead in blue oil. “I . . . I passed?”

  She could not keep the incredulity out of her voice. Was she healed? Maybe the attack in the rookery had been just some horrible nightmare. She could almost believe it, wanted to believe it. At times over the past days, it had even felt that way. Or had some Grace secretly blessed her, made her pure again?

  “Pure,” she repeated aloud. In her heart, the word also meant home and family.

  “Yes, yes,” Matron Grannice scolded, “it’s indeed a blessed miracle. Now get yourself dressed. You’ve much to do before the full moon rises.” The matron turned to Paltry. “What of the other girls? Those still in the hall?”

  Paltry shook his head. “I can test no others. It will take some days to acquire another four illuminaria. As such, they will not be able to attend this moon’s ceremony.”

  Grannice hurried Dart into her clothes. “See what you’ve done, child! Ruined it for all the others!”

  “But I didn’t mean to—”

  “It’s truly not her fault,” Paltry pledged in her defense.

  Dart nodded vigorously, tugging on the last of her clothes. She could only imagine the anger of the remaining thirdfloorers. There would not be another choosing until midwinter.

  Frowning deeply, Matron Grannice led the way to the door. Dart hopped after her, trying to get her foot into her last slipper. Pupp, thinking it a game, jumped and nipped at her loose footwear. She shooed him away.

  The matron reached the door and tugged it open. As Dart pulled into her slipper, she heard the matron’s announcement and the shocked responses that followed. Wincing, she stood in the shadows, sheltered behind the large woman’s bulk.

  Healer Paltry placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder and leaned to her ear, speaking low and urgently. “I don’t know what you did with Master Willet, but I promise you I’ll find out.”

  Dart gasped. Understanding struck her immediately. She had passed the healing wards on the seventh floor on her way to the rookery. The room tilted, and her vision darkened. Paltry was Willet’s partner. The healer had lied about her purity a moment ago. She remembered his fingers . . . in her, probing . . . possibly even appreciating his partner’s bloody handiwork.

  A shudder passed through her. She felt violated all over again, her momentary hope dashed into ruins. She felt unmoored, terrified, trapped.

  “I’ll be watching you, Dart.” His voice was as gentle as ever, but his fingers dug deeper, painful, threatening. “In the meantime, it seems we both have secrets to keep.”

  Matron Grannice spoke above the babble of shocked voices from the hall. “Come, Dart. Night won’t wait on you forever.”

  With a small cry, Dart fled the healer’s grasp and into the passageway. Forty pairs of eyes narrowed at her in angry rebuke. None came to congratulate her on the blue cross on her forehead. She felt a bone-deep urge to flee to the nearest privy and scrub the mark off. But for now the cross was all that stood between her and banishment.

  She continued down the hall, refusing to look back. She had won back her home for a short time—but was it even worth it?

  Laurelle and Margarite met her at the end of the hall. They stared at her as if she had been freshly dredged up from the muddy bottoms of the Tigre.

  “What happened back there?” Laurelle asked.

  Dart shook her head. She had a more important mystery to ponder: What was she going to do now?

  Night came much too quickly.

  Dart huddled with the crowd of other supplicants in the hall below the High Chapel. In the center of the room, a spiral brass staircase wound up to the sacred domed chamber above, but the way remained locked, awaiting the rising of Mother moon’s full face and the chiming of the oracular bells.

  Earlier, after sunset, Dart and the others had been sent here to prepare themselves. Small altars dotted the walls of the hall. After fasting the entire day, the supplicants to the Oracles were required to burn a stick of incense, sending their prayers up into the aether, while dropping leaden weights into deep watery troughs to shed their sins into the naether below.

  With this final purification complete, only the waiting remained.

  Dart stared around her. Off by the staircase, in a place of honor, the young men and women of the fifth and sixth floors gathered, stubbornly struggling to look calm or bored, but Dart saw their terror. Time ran short for members of this group. It was the very last ceremony for some of them, the last chance to be chosen.

  On the other side of the hall, the fourthfloorers chattered merrily, wide-eyed and still fresh to the ceremonies, excited by the pa
geantry of it all.

  Closer at hand, a sea of boys surrounded her, all thirdfloorers, dressed in the traditional black breeches, tucked into gray boots with loose gray shirts. The likelihood of being chosen was slim for those of such tender age. As such, their attention was focused away from the spiral staircase and toward the odd trio of small girls in their midst: Laurelle, Margarite, and Dart.

  Word of the incineration of the illuminaria had spread rapidly through the Conclave. A few glared at Dart with murderous intent, others seemed merely intrigued, while most simply found it all too amusing.

  “So they blew up?” Kessel asked, motioning with his hands and whistling. “I wish I could have seen poor Healer Paltry’s face!” The boy screwed up his own face into a mock of outraged shock.

  His young attendants almost burst from trying to stifle their laughter, patting him on the back, holding their sides, and trying not to make too much noise.

  “It was not funny!” Laurelle huffed at him, pinning the others with a baleful glare. “The . . . the accident ruined the chances for the other girls. Now they have to wait half a year, until the midwinter ceremony.”

  “That only leaves more chances for all of us!” Kessel said with a shrug. “We should be thanking that girl.”

  The gathered gazes focused back on Dart. She tried to shrink away.

  “Don’t worry,” Margarite said heatedly. “The other girls will be thanking her later up on our floor.”

  “That’s if she isn’t chosen first,” said a boy in the back. Dart did not know his name, but she had noticed him before. He was new to the Conclave, arriving only last year. He was taller than the others, his skin a deeper bronze than theirs, suggesting he came from one of the lands far to the south. But he never said exactly where, not even to his fellow thirdfloorers.

  “She’ll never be chosen,” Margarite shot back. “Look at her, wearing hand-downs from storage. She smells of mothguard and mold.”

  Dart kept her arms crossed over her black dress, tucking down her frayed gray half cloak. Even her boots were mottled white with age, not like the rich gray leathers of Margarite’s and Laurelle’s footwear.

  “It is not the cut of one’s cloth that will be judged here,” the bronze boy said, turning away dismissively.

  Dart appreciated his support, but it was futile. Despite the blue cross on her forehead, she was not pure enough to kneel before the Oracles of the Myrillian gods. It was not only mothguard and mold that would be sniffed out by these blind seekers of handmaidens and handmen. They would surely know of her corruption. The servants in the High Chapel were not mere boxes of old humour, like the illuminaria. They were the very senses of the gods.

  The best she could hope was not to be exposed. And if she did indeed escape such ruin, what then? The punishment that would surely be inflicted upon her by the other girls was nothing compared to the terror that awaited her in the empty halls, where Healer Paltry would be waiting.

  She had only one other hope.

  Pupp appeared out of the crowd of boys, winding around some, passing straight through others. The crowds had him all excited. He pranced to her side, glowing brightly, his brass-plated muzzle steaming, a tongue of flame lolling from his razored mouth. At her side, he shook out his mane of copper spikes, ruffling them like real fur.

  As she reached a hand to him, chimes began to ring overhead.

  The oracular bells.

  The room immediately went silent. Laurelle and Margarite grabbed each other’s hands and pulled in close.

  At the top of the spiral staircase, double doors were thrown wide. The musky scent of darkleaf flowed down from the open doorway, accompanied by bright moonlight. The beaten silver doors shone like shields of pure light.

  The ceremony had begun.

  The fifth- and sixthfloorers headed up the brass stairway, winding around and around. They would be presented first, followed in order by the other floors. As everybody waited to mount the steps, tension in the room grew thicker. Many were already in tears, wiping them away quickly lest they appear weak. One boy from the third floor ran to an altar stone and emptied his belly with a splash of fluid. None derided him. All felt the same.

  Now was the moment when dreams were either lost or fulfilled.

  As the last fifthfloorer disappeared into the vast vault that was the High Chapel, the fourth floor’s group headed up the steps, their earlier chatter strangled away by the austere moment.

  At the base of the staircase, the boys from the third floor had already gathered. Their faces craned upward, bathed in moonlight. Only one remained bowed, eyes on the floor: the bronze boy who had come to Dart’s defense. His lips moved in silent prayer.

  Dart found herself staring at him. In the moonlight, his skin appeared even darker, a bronzed sculpture in prayer. Then his group began the winding climb to the High Chapel. He unclasped his hands and followed.

  Dazed, Dart continued to stand there, frozen in place, a statue, too.

  A small hiss drew her attention. Laurelle motioned to her. She and Margarite, still hand in hand, were heading for the stairs. Pupp followed after them, sniffing at the edges of their dresses.

  Dart found her feet moving on their own. She hurried to the girls, finding comfort in the familiarity of her fellow students. As she joined them, Laurelle reached out with her free hand and gripped Dart’s. All past sins forgotten in the terror of the moment. Even Margarite nodded to her, eyes wide.

  The last thirdfloor boy mounted the stair.

  The girls stared at one another. Who would go first? Laurelle took a deep breath, steeled her grip upon her two companions, then let go. She crossed stolidly to the stairs and climbed them. Margarite was right at her heels.

  Pupp planted his forepaws on the lowest step and wagged the stump of his brass tail. He stared back at Dart. For the briefest flicker, she again saw a strange, dark intelligence shining from his eyes, studying her. Then it was gone, snuffed away by unseen winds. Dart headed to the stairs. Laurelle and Margarite were already two steps ahead. She hurried to close the gap. Her boots clanged on the brass stairs. The rail was ice to her fingers.

  She stared at the line of boys vanishing away through the blindingly bright doors overhead. Nothing could be seen beyond. The line of supplicants continued to be swallowed away.

  At last, Dart and the other two girls reached the top of the stairs. The open doors lay ahead. Laurelle glanced back to them, her face drained of blood. Tears brimmed her eyes.

  Words came to Dart’s lips. It was the first she had spoken since entering the hall below. “Be strong,” she whispered.

  Laurelle closed her eyes for a breath, opened them, and nodded. She turned and strode through the smoky doorway. Margarite ran after her. Dart moved more slowly, led by Pupp.

  The group marched through the clouded nave. They passed braziers piled with dried darkleaf, the leaves crisping and curling in flame, roiling with thick, acrid smoke. In the chapel beyond, a single greatdrum beat in slow rhythm, guiding their steps forward. The sonorous beat thrummed against the rib, against the heart.

  Once past the braziers, the smoke cleared as the domed chapel opened before them. It was like stepping out of a tunnel and into open air. The High Chapel stood atop the tallest tower of the Conclave. It was said that the only higher tower was Chrism’s own keep.

  Dart’s gaze immediately drew upward to the glass eye in the domed roof. The full face of the lesser moon shone down at them. The greater moon had long set, leaving the night sky to the beauty of its pregnant sister.

  The illumination of the moon limned the entire room in silver. There was no other source of light. Then again none was needed. It was nearly as bright as midday.

  Dart trailed the others into the chamber.

  Tiered rows of seats and balconies circled the High Chapel, climbing half the wall. The highest tiers had long gone rotten and were blocked off from use. Shadowy shapes filled the lower benches and balconies: the mistresses and masters of the Conclave, the c
loistered entourage that accompanied the great Oracles from far-off lands, and the families of supplicants with wealth enough to be here.

  Dart noted Laurelle searching around, a hopeful glow on her face.

  But there was not much time to scan the gallery. Already the other students were filling the supplicant stoops. The kneeling benches were raw squallwood, arranged in an oval, facing inward. Dart kept in step behind Margarite, but with her eyes on the chamber, Dart’s foot knocked into the corner of a stoop. She flew forward, arms outstretched. She bumped into Margarite, who kept her feet.

  Dart was not as fortunate.

  With a startled yelp, she landed on her hands, skinning her palms raw and landing flat on her belly. Dart quickly pushed up amid small sounds of amusement from those in attendance, but it quickly hushed. Dart scrambled to her feet, ignoring her stinging hands, and hurried after the two girls.

  Margarite glanced back at her, mortified. Laurelle simply covered her mouth. Dart motioned them forward. They hurried after the last boy and took the three stoops beside him. Dart noted it was the bronze boy. He glanced at her, then away, his face unreadable.

  Dart gratefully sank to her kneeling bench, resting her elbows on the rail. There were many empty stoops, as vacant and dusty as the upper balconies, more than could be accounted for by the missing thirdfloor girls. The school must have been more populous in the distant past.

  Before Dart could consider this oddity, the bells chimed one final peal. From a door opposite the supplicants, a row of white-draped figures drifted into the room.

  The Oracles.

  A small red-liveried servant attended each figure, guiding their blind masters. As each Oracle entered the chapel, their snowy cowls were tossed back. They bore red strips of silk across their eyes, or rather where their eyes should have been. From her studies, Dart knew that the Oracles’ eyes were burned to empty sockets by the blood of the god they represented. Emblazoned on their foreheads was the sigil of the god they served.