Nightglass

by Liane Merciel

  It was as if the nightglass swelled somehow, or he himself shrank, so that instead of being a boy looking at a piece of polished stone no larger than his head, he was a mouse confronted with an enormous black doorway. The starlight was almost gone, muted to glimmerings of gray that danced about the doorway's edges. Darkness stretched beyond it, and that darkness was alive.

  No, Isiem realized, not really alive. It moved. He saw faces shifting in the dark—ravenous, misshapen faces, with hollow eye sockets that sagged below their noses and wrinkled mouths full of fangs—but there was no life in them. Not truly. It was hunger that animated them. Hunger, and envy, and a desire to consume his life so that they could fuel some brief semblance of their own.

  At first there was only one, and he wasn't sure of that one. But soon others joined it, forming a mob at the door. They strained at him, reaching out with fingerless hands and licking at their lipless mouths, but they could not come through. Not unless he opened the way for them. Isiem understood that instinctively, as one understood the logic of fairytales or dreams: the darkness could not come into his world, his home, without an invitation.

  That is so, the shadow-creatures whispered in voices that he heard without hearing. Summon us, and we will serve you. There is so much we can give. Power. Wealth. Eternal life, eternal youth. Magic.

  No, Isiem thought. He wanted to say it aloud—he wanted to shout it, and flee—but his limbs and his jaws remained stubbornly locked. I don't want anything you can give me.

  You are foolish to refuse, the shadows said. Foolish, foolish child.

  Isiem didn't answer. He focused entirely on pulling away from them, and from this strange never-world inside the mirror. It was hard, as taxing as forcing his way through waist-deep snow against a brutal headwind...but he did it, and came back to himself with a start.

  Cold sweat plastered his shirt to his chest. He was heaving for breath, so winded he could scarcely stand upright. The pale moonlight was so bright it seemed blinding.

  The female shadowcaller leaned toward him. Her eyes were completely black from lid to lid. They had no whites, no pupils or irises. Isiem had never been close enough to notice before. He wished he wasn't close enough now.

  "What did you see?" she asked.

  "Nothing." He forced the lie through numb lips. Ignorance is safety. "I didn't see anything."

  "Nothing?" she echoed, disbelief clear in her voice.

  "Nothing." Isiem turned away from the penitent's path, resisting the urge to flee outright. He tried to sound calm, even a little disappointed. "I'm sorry."

  She nodded brusquely, already dismissing him. Ascaros stepped up next, and Isiem hesitated, wanting to give his friend some warning or reassurance before he looked into that bowl. He couldn't think of what to say, though, and he was afraid to attract the shadowcallers' notice again. Instead he moved to the side and stopped, curious to see how Ascaros reacted.

  It didn't look nearly as dramatic as it felt. Ascaros just stood there, staring into the nightglass. His face was pale, but then he was always pale; his expression was rapt, but Isiem couldn't tell how much of that was real and how much was his friend's desperation to prove himself a wizard.

  Then he saw that something was rising from the polished stone. Smoke, it seemed, or shadow ...but it could not be smoke, for it coiled against the wind, and it could not be shadow, for there was nothing to cast it. Swiftly it spun upward, reaching for Ascaros's face with gray tendrils. The boy remained motionless, his eyes starting from his head and his face drawn taut as he gazed through the unnatural smoke into the mirror.

  "Such power," the shorter man breathed. "Such potential. That he can not only see the shadows in the nightglass, but call them forth with no training at all..."

  "But can he control them, or will they consume him?" the woman asked. Her silver necklaces clinked softly as she tilted her head, watching. "Power without control is worth less than nothing."

  The tendrils were snaking into Ascaros's hair and curling along his face. Where they touched him, Isiem saw his friend's skin blanch white and then go corpse-gray, while the smoke grew thicker and more solid. The russet brown of his hair, ordinarily touched with vibrant red, began to go gray too.

  It was feeding on him. The shadow was stealing Ascaros's life, hoping to create its own—but it wouldn't succeed. It couldn't. The shadowcallers would crush it before it got that far ...and then his friend would have died for nothing.

  And they were willing to let him die. Right here, in front of all the gathered villagers. Isiem saw that plainly. If Ascaros couldn't wrest himself free, they would let the nightglass kill him.

  He rushed forward, shoving Ascaros away from the mirror. The female shadowcaller snarled, drawing a hand back to strike him, but the tall one with the circlet of chains shook his head and she froze.

  "Let him try," he said. "I want to see what he does."

  Isiem scarcely heard the man. The shadows had let go of Ascaros, but only so they could twine around Isiem instead. They were cold, colder than the sharpest winter wind, and the same tingling burn followed their touch. He gasped, and with watering eyes stared into the mirror.

  Once again the starlight blurred before him, and he had the eerie sense of space stretching, or his own reality shrinking, so that the nightglass engulfed him in its vastness and the old world fell away. The shadows had greater definition here: what seeped through the ebon doorway were not shapeless tendrils of smoke, but thin black fingers, impossibly long and triple-jointed. Each one was tipped with a fragment of bloody bone.

  Release me, the gaunt face between those fingers hissed. Starlight whirled in its eyes, imitating the whites of human eyes. They were almost real. Almost sighted to the living world. Release me to feed. The bargain was struck. Release me, and my power will be yours.

  No, Isiem thought back.

  Then you will die. You do not have the strength to send me back.

  That was true. Isiem had no idea how to close the mirror's gate. He didn't even know if it could be closed.

  But there were other truths as well. You'll die too, he thought, and then amended: or at least you won't be free. I can't stop you, but the wizards waiting here can, and they will not let you escape into the world. Go back, and return another time.

  I am already here, the shadow-creature insisted, but Isiem felt its hesitation. Its tendrils, or fingers, unclenched their grip. They undulated in the air, darting toward the shadowcallers and retreating just as swiftly before making contact. Then they pulled back from the living world, back through the nightglass, back into the ebon doorway.

  Quickly Isiem severed his connection to the magic. The nightglass's distortions receded; the autumn night returned. Sound came back to him. Scent. Trembling, he closed his eyes. He smelled smoke from the burning effigy, heard distant laughter from late revelers and the relieved sobs of Ascaros's mother.

  "You will come with us," one of the shadowcallers said. Isiem didn't know which one. But he nodded shakily, surrendering to his fate. Of course they would take him now. He'd given up his pretended ignorance to save Ascaros. And although he was afraid of what that might mean for him, he had no regret about interrupting the shadowcallers' test.

  His mother was wrong, Isiem thought. Not everything they promised was shadows and lies. They promised death, too. And that was real.

  Chapter Two

  The Midnight City

  They took two other children from Crosspine: a brother and sister named Loran and Helis. The girl, near Isiem's age, was a coltish thing, starveling thin, with a tangle of black hair that hadn't seen comb or scissors in months. Her brother, only eight, was among the youngest children to stand for the test. He kept close to his sister's skirts, rarely venturing a sound. Both wore rags that were more holes than cloth, and their shoes were only bags of greasy leather held up with drawstrings around their ankles.

  Isiem didn't know either of them well. They came from one of the forest farms outside Crosspine, and he'd seldom had
occasion to talk to them. He didn't have the chance to renew even that slight acquaintance before they left the village. Something ugly had happened in the night, and the shadowcallers were in a hurry to return to Pangolais.

  Their silent black horses had emerged from the stable's shadows in the morning, and with them came two more for the children to ride double. Isiem hoped the mount he shared couldn't sense his dislike. The inky gelding carried him and Ascaros smoothly, even though neither of them had ridden before, but it felt ...wrong. There was no warmth to its body. Isiem couldn't feel its heart beat, and it didn't seem to breathe. It didn't seem real, and at any moment he thought it could dissolve into swirling air, dropping him to the ground.

  The shadowcallers didn't seem to notice. They were still preoccupied with whatever had happened in Crosspine. Isiem didn't know what that was, but he had noticed that they'd left under a cloud of silent resentment. The villagers voiced no protests—they couldn't, not against shadowcallers from Pangolais—but they had watched the strangers go with flinty eyes.

  "You couldn't restrain yourself a little?" the female shadowcaller snapped at the shorter man as they rode into the Uskwood.

  "We are permitted to share in the rites of penitence," he replied haughtily, keeping his focus straight ahead.

  "Oh, most assuredly. But the girl was a simple villager, not a petitioner for the Joymaking. What were you thinking?"

  "Lamion. Chorai. Enough." The shadowcaller with the circlet of chains did not turn in his saddle, but the other two straightened and fell silent immediately. "Lamion is correct: it is permitted to share in the penitents' rites. And Chorai is correct as well: one should practice restraint among the uninitiated. They are not prepared for the full measure. Will the girl live?"

  "She should," the shorter man—Lamion—muttered.

  "Any permanent damage?"

  "Maybe one of the eyes."

  "You truly are an idiot," Chorai marveled. "Pray the Triune never hear of this, or you'll spend the rest of your years cleaning the Joyful Things."

  "I see no need to trouble the Triune with such a trivial matter," the tall man said. "A village girl may have some scars. Lamion will learn greater care. That ends it."

  "As you will, Amrael," the other two chorused, and they rode on in silence. The black-leaved branches of the Uskwood closed overhead, casting their path in dappled shadows that shifted—but never relented—as the sun moved distantly through the sky. A wind whispered through the wood, but no wildlife was to be seen or heard; there were no birdsongs trilling from the trees, nor squirrels leaping among the boughs.

  There were animals in the Uskwood, Isiem knew. Trappers brought their meat and pelts to sell in the village, and he himself had seen the white webs of the wood-spiders stretched across entire trees. But all the beasts of the forest were under Zon-Kuthon's sway, and the Midnight Lord wanted no interference with his servants' return.

  "What did you do?" Ascaros whispered into Isiem's back an hour later. The shadowcallers had ridden a little farther ahead, giving them enough space that the children felt they could whisper to each other without being overheard. "With the nightglass, I mean. When you pushed the shadow away from me."

  "It wanted to be free. I told it that even if it killed you, or me, it wouldn't be. The shadowcallers would just banish it. That wasn't what it wanted, so it went back into the glass."

  "It talked to you?" Ascaros sounded astonished.

  Isiem glanced over his shoulder at the younger boy, surprised in turn. "It didn't talk to you?"

  "No. I just ...I looked into the glass, and I saw a shadow ...or something like one. I couldn't see it clearly. It reached for me, and it ...it went inside me, somehow. I could feel it moving, and I could feel myself getting weaker, but I couldn't do anything to stop it. Then you pushed me, and its hold broke."

  "It wasn't like that for me," Isiem said.

  "What was it like?"

  He shrugged uncomfortably. "I saw a doorway, and things in the doorway that wanted to go through. They couldn't unless I let them. I didn't want to let them."

  Ascaros was quiet for a while. Then he asked: "Why did they have to ask you, and not me?"

  "I don't know."

  Another silence fell. Leaves spiraled through the air ahead of them, falling in slow circles untouched by any breeze. Their horses trotted on soundlessly, leaving no tracks on the mossy earth.

  "I'm not sure I want to be a wizard," Ascaros confessed.

  "It doesn't matter," Isiem said. "We're going to Pangolais."

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Three days later, they reached the city.

  Black-leaved trees towered over Pangolais, shrouding its glassy streets and obsidian buildings in constant shadow. Neither sunlight nor moonlight touched the Midnight City, yet it glittered like a sea of stars. Silver twinkled on banisters and decorative spires; pale moonstones gleamed serenely on the brows of the citizens who walked the wide avenues. Great gray moths flapped among the trees' branches, and their wings were luminous with spectral dust.

  Amrael led them through the hushed streets toward a soaring building of smoky glass. Its pointed arches and long narrow windows drew the eye upward, as did the twisted spikes that crowned its towers in silver and steel. Clerestory windows, tinted in a thousand shades of gray, created a ceaseless play of shadows as the ghostly lights of Pangolais fell through them from both sides.

  Eerie, fluid sculptures flanked the two great doors in the center facade. As they drew nearer, Isiem saw that the sculptures depicted nude human forms, male and female, that clenched their maimed fists around spiked chains to hold themselves above an onyx sea. The base of each carved figure dissolved into amorphous swirls, melting into the waves.

  "This is the Dusk Hall," Amrael said. "You will begin your studies here. Lamion."

  "Follow me," the shorter shadowcaller said, dismounting. The other two rode away, leaving the children to climb awkwardly off the horses on their own. Isiem, stiff-muscled from the long ride, barely managed to keep from falling. Loran, less fortunate, landed hard on his backside. After a gasp and a moment's stillness, he pushed himself back to his feet. Tears started in the child's huge brown eyes, but he bit his lip and refused to sob.

  Lamion paid him no heed. He pulled open one of the doors and stepped into the shifting gloom. The scent of incense and hot metal drifted from its depths, along with an undercurrent of burned flesh. "This way. The horses will see to themselves."

  The children followed in a huddle. On either side, arched windows rose above them, inlaid with steel traceries that evoked sharply pointed, lightless flames. Black and white candles mounted in iron sculptures stood between the windows. The few sculptures Isiem saw, before he stopped looking, were of gaunt, twisted men and flayed women whose mouths had been sliced wide to hold the candles' ends.

  They were not the only entrants in the Dusk Hall. Others passed them; students or teachers, Isiem couldn't tell. To a one, they were thin and pale, and they moved with the peculiar, graceful lassitude of Pangolais's natives. Some were dressed in glossy black leather, some in matte white. A few wore the soft gray robes of shadowcallers. All ignored Lamion's charges.

  Halfway down the hall, Lamion stopped at an ornate door and withdrew a key from a hidden pocket. Suffering figures, wrought in black iron, covered every inch of that door. Each broken body was set like a gem amid a filigree of spiked chains and studded lashes. The keyhole was a wound gouged into the side of a stylized rendition of Zon-Kuthon, also cast in black iron. The tines of the god's crown clicked into his skull, one by one, as Lamion turned the key in its lock.

  "Go," he told them, stepping aside. "The Joyful Things must see you."

  With an uneasy glance back at the shadowcaller, Isiem led the children in.

  A wide hall stretched before them. Black iron beams and curved braces encased the ceiling in elaborate trusses, as though the hall itself were held in bondage. More black iron sheathed the massive pillars that ran down the center of the hall
. Candles flickered in serrated lines on both walls, perfuming the air with musky resins and molten wax.

  Under that heavy, masking fragrance, the place smelled thick and foul, like the stink of an invalid's sheets in summer. It was the smell of disease, and of others' indifference to that disease. The hall felt cold and lonely; grand though it was, Isiem was sure that the shadowcallers rarely lingered here.

  The ironwork on the pillars held odd, egglike shapes hoisted high above the children's heads. They resembled huge maggots, pallid and featureless in their cocoons of bent metal—but as Isiem walked toward the first one, it blinked open eyes he had not known it had.

  "Ah," the thing croaked in a rusty, gurgling voice. Its face was a soft white sack of flesh, its mouth a wet glimmer between pouches of suet. Yellow sand caked the corners of its pinkish eyes. Caged from the neck down in iron, the creature could not wipe the crusts away. "Young blood. Come, children. Let me taste you."

  It was a man. Hairless, limbless, locked immobile on a pillar in this seldom-visited section of the Dusk Hall ...but at one point he had been human, whatever he was now. Isiem watched in astonishment as the man's iron cocoon descended along the pillar with a rattle of heavy chains. The other hanging cripples had opened their eyes as well. They did not speak, but they watched with an unblinking hunger that recalled the nightglass's shades.

  When the limbless one was level with the children, the chains groaned to a halt and his iron egg-case stilled. "Come, children," he said again. Dried saliva crusted his shapeless chin. A sour smell emanated from the innards of his cage.

  Isiem held back, too frightened to obey. The other boys quailed with him. Helis, casting an angry look over them all, shoved between them to approach the crippled man.

  "I'm not afraid of you," she announced, crossing her arms and closing her eyes. "Do it."

  "A lie," the limbless one replied, his words thick and wet with yearning, "but I will." His tongue rolled out—long, long, infernally long—and engulfed her head in its slimy, blue-veined coils. Helis issued a muffled protest, but the tongue wrapped around her face suppressed it.