Shadowlands (9781101597637)

by Malan, Violette

  “That’s a prison room?” One hand gripping his gra’if armband, the other braced against the wall, Valory leaned to peer into the Signed room.

  “It is likely, though not all of them are. There was a Song that tells of a pair of Riders who entered a Signed room after their wedding, to spend a portion of time completely alone. The Song tells that the Rider who had Signed the room for them was killed in a sudden accident, leaving the lovers trapped forever. The location of the room is long forgotten, but perhaps the lovers love there still.” Wolf heard a certain familiar lilt to his voice, and cleared his throat. Valory’s caramel eyes shone as if with tears.

  “We must leave here, and leave now,” he said. “When I think of what might have happened as we slept…”

  Valory steadied herself, moving a finger to brush against his bare skin. She swallowed, blinking. It was not possible for her to turn any whiter, but she did release his wrist. “Really? That could have happened to us?”

  Wolf wondered what touching him had shown her. “Before the turning of the Cycle, I would have said there were very few Riders who had dra’aj enough to Sign a room. There may be many more now.”

  “And not just the good guys.”

  “As you say.”

  I turned as slowly as I could, trying to walk without moving my head more than necessary; I felt like one of those bobblehead dolls you see in souvenir shops. I’d been so looking forward to getting whatever rest I could, but I certainly wasn’t going to argue, not after what I’d seen when I touched him. It was like the song of Ice Tor, except that I got pretty much the whole thing at once, probably because Wolf actually remembered it himself. The tune, the lyrics, and the whole of the sadness and the horror of those two poor people.

  I hadn’t finished turning toward the door when a sudden blast threw me backward, and I went sliding into the dark corner where the tower’s stone staircase led upward. I gasped, dizzy and retching, and clung to the edge of the first stair, just level with my head. There was the loudest rushing sound, like a thousand subway trains in a thousand subway tunnels. The light suddenly brightened, and I realized that Wolf had drawn his gra’if sword. The roar of the wind increased, and I was pushed painfully against the stone until I thought the arm under me would break.

  The door of the Signed room slammed shut, the light disappeared, and the air pressure increased as a sound I couldn’t hear lanced through my head.

  Then suddenly everything was quiet, except for a far-off whistling noise, like air through a narrow opening. I swallowed, again and again, waiting for the world to stop spinning, and my retching to stop. The whistling quieted.

  “Softly, softly, little one. Thou’rt safe now.” The voice was breathy, and in the back of it I could hear wind blowing through trees.

  I managed to open my eyes. In the dim light that came in through the smashed door I thought I could see a woman. She shifted, my eyes readjusted, and I cut off a whimper as it tried to force its way through my teeth. There was a bruising force on my shoulder blades and I realized I was trying to push myself backward through the wall. I didn’t stop.

  It was a woman, if women came around two stories tall, and so perfectly formed that she seemed almost delicate. Her skin was multicolored, like a blanket of leaves in the fall, all golds and reds and browns and yellows and rusts. Her eyes were a piercing blue, and her hair, thick and twiggy, grew straight back from her head as though she were facing into a stiff breeze.

  She squatted down on her heels and reached out her hand toward me.

  “Please don’t touch me.” I’m sorry to say my voice was mostly squeak.

  “They’ve hurt thee, then, haven’t they? Well, not to worry, my little one. They’ve hurt me and all, so thou’st nothing to worry thee. I’ve got thee, and thou’rt safe now, safe as houses.” And then she laughed, and the building shook with the wind that roared through it. “Safer than this house, at any rate. I’d knock it down, but for the mouse I’ve got shut in the box.”

  I managed to push myself into a sitting position. My mouth was almost too dry to speak. “What happened to Wolf?”

  “Wolf, is he? What I thought, then. The wolf’s shut away, little one.” She tilted her head toward the door of the Signed room, and a sudden shaft of light shone straight into my eyes as she moved, making me blink. Suddenly her index finger shot forward into my face and her blue eyes narrowed. “Thou’rt no Rider. What art thou?”

  “Hu—human,” I managed to say.

  “Human? A Shadowlander? Why, I’ve not seen one of thy kind for long and long. What did the evil one’s Rider want with you, my little one?”

  I’m ashamed to say it still took me a second to figure out that she meant Wolf, and the true nature of what was going on finally filtered through the Gravol, the pain, and the shock. She thought Wolf was one of the Basilisk’s warriors, and she thought she’d saved me from him. By putting him in the Signed room.

  And if I understood what Wolf had told me, this being was the only thing that could get him out again.

  “He’s not…” I swallowed and tried again. “His name is Stormwolf, that’s his name. His mother was Rain at Sunset and the Chimera guides him. He’s not with the Basilisk Prince. He’s my friend. He, he has fara’ip with the High Prince.”

  She was nodding. “That is what they say, little one. To get you to trust them, and then they try to trap you with Bindings and Chants, and feed you to their Hounds.” Then she smiled and her teeth were square, and orange and well-spaced.

  I squirmed around until I had my feet under me, not that I thought I had the strength to stand up. “No, he’s a good guy. You have to believe me. You have to let him out.”

  She tilted her head to one side. “Art thou broken, then? Did they turn thee and all? I cannot ‘let him out.’ He is a plague, an infection. Better he stays shut away, where he cannot hurt anyone.”

  “No!” I inched closer. My heart pounded in my throat, and I forgot how sick I felt. Wolf would stay in that room forever, longer than forever. Alone for eternity, with only his own thoughts, his own guilt. “Listen to me, you have to—”

  She opened her mouth wide and all the air was sucked out of the building. I put my hands to my ears and opened my mouth as wide as I could. Maybe she thought I was imitating her, maybe she only meant to give me a warning to behave, because all the air came rushing back, throwing me against the edge of the stone stairs. That’s going to leave a bruise, I thought.

  I was blinking away tears, and for some reason that infuriated me. Here was another one who was going to look after me, take care of me, do what they pleased with me, take away the people that mattered to me and ruin my life.

  I used the stairs behind me to push myself to my feet. I drew myself up as tall as I could, my hands in fists, my face tight. “You listen! You stop that and listen! And you let him out! I’m not stupid and they haven’t turned me and you can stop bullying me any time, you stupid bag of wind! I’m telling you the truth and I can prove it.”

  Before she could move or hit me or anything, I reached out and grabbed her little finger and was immediately swept away on a blast of wind, spun like a top. I clung to the anchor, the one steady, firm hold I had, and then I was moving with the air, not as an obstacle, but as part of it, and everything came clear.

  “Little one? Dost thou live?”

  I felt a prodding in my side and groaned. Bruises for certain. My eyes blinked open, and there was a huge multicoloured face hovering over me, concern showing in the slant of her eyebrows and pale, sand-colored eyes.

  “You’re a sandstorm.” My voice croaked and I tried to swallow. “You’re not supposed to be all fall-leaf colored, you’re supposed to be all the thousand beautiful shades of the sand in your desert. You don’t belong here, where all there is to blow is grass and leaves, with their ugly, bright, vulgar colors. They caught you with a Chant of Binding you never thought to hear, caught you to stop your storm, and when they knew what they had, some of them fed off you.” I
patted the back of her hand. Mine looked as small as a doll’s. “But they didn’t get much, did they? Just enough to make you angry, to hurt you, and you tried to blow them away, but you blew yourself here instead.” I blinked. “And now you don’t know how to get back.”

  A tear rolled out of her left eye, splashing me as it hit the stone floor. “Thou couldst guess that,” she said. “From what I told thee, thou couldst guess the greater part.”

  I bit my lip. There had to be something. Something she hadn’t mentioned, something I couldn’t have worked out by logic. At first nothing came, but then then the images settled, and I had it.

  “I couldn’t guess about your seven children. Little sand devils. How they create pillars of sand and how you taught them to dance. Their names are Son’iana, Taru’eva—”

  “Stop.” She sat back on her heels. “Do not say them aloud. No, thou couldst not guess such things. Art thou a Truthreader, then? I did not know that humans could have that gift.”

  “Not very many of us.”

  Her head swung round to look at the door of the Signed room. I could see that the outside of the door had the same kind of intricate inlayed pattern that the walls had. I hadn’t seen that before. “So what you said of your Stormwolf is also true? He is no brother to the ones who harmed me? He is fara’ip of the High Prince?” She got up and leaned toward the door, raising her fingertip to the pattern.

  “Yes.” I sagged down onto my knees. The room swung sharply to the left and settled again, not quite level.

  I squeezed my eyes shut as a high-pitched note pierced my brain and made my head explode.

  Wolf left off chiseling the edge of the door with the point of his gra’if sword. It would not damage the sword, but just as evidently it would do no damage to the door.

  “Chimera, give me strength!” He flung the sword and it stuck point first in the wall next to the door, quivering slightly with a soft musical tone. Wolf rubbed at his face and tried to breathe more slowly. Temper would not free him.

  Nothing would free him.

  He had thrown away his time, mooning about, feeling sorry for himself and look where that had brought him. Now he would have all the time he needed—all the time anyone would ever need—to do absolutely nothing at all.

  And what of Valory? She was only here to help him, and now he had left her, ill and possibly dying, in the hands of whatever being had attacked them, and Signed him into the room. He jerked his sword from the wall and sheathed it. He pulled a chair away from the table and sat down, leaning forward and resting his head in his hands. The baskets and bowls on the table were empty. With luck, he would starve to death.

  Sometime later his hearing seemed to fade. He swallowed, and it cleared. The air pressure in the room was changing. Wolf stood and turned to the door. They would pay for locking him away. He would not waste any more time. He pulled his sword free, and when the door opened, he was ready.

  “Wolf! Wolf, no! She’s a sandstorm, she thought you—” At the last possible instant, Valory’s words penetrated and Wolf drew back, the gra’if blade trembling in his fist. Valory was on the floor, her back against the curve of the stone staircase. Dust motes floated in the shaft of sunlight that fell across her legs.

  Standing next to her, almost over her, was a giantess, all the colors of autumn leaves, but like no Tree Natural he had ever seen. She held up her hands in front of her, and when she opened her mouth to speak, all the dust motes flew from the room.

  “I thought thee a follower of the Basilisk, until thy Truthreader gave me the truth of thee.” Definitely a Natural, that much was certain, but what kind?

  “She is not my…” But Wolf let the words trail away. Yes, Valory was his Truthreader. “Your pardon, Elder Sister. I thank you for my release.”

  “She’s the storm in the Todala’era Desert.” Valory’s smile was shaky. “She thought we were bad guys.”

  “I would not have imprisoned thee else, Stormwolf, son of Rain at Sunset, Chimeraborn. It was spawn of the Basilisk, accompanied by the Hunt, made me flee my desert.”

  “She doesn’t know how to get back,” Valory said, her voice no more than a whisper. “That’s why she was so ready to attack us.”

  That, Wolf could well understand. A Natural that was so tied to its own space, as a sandstorm must be, could easily be maddened by being torn from its place, though that tearing had saved her life.

  “Where is the Todala’era Desert?” Wolf had a glimmering of an idea. “What Ring is nearest to it?” He couldn’t Move to a place he’d never been, but that was what the Ring Road was for.

  “It lies three gusts from the Morganite Ring.” There was a tiny note of a lost howl in the Natural’s voice, a howl that Wolf felt in his bones.

  “And if I took you to the Ring? Could you find your way to your desert from there?” All movement of air in the tower stopped—there was not even any sound penetrating from without.

  The Natural tilted her head to one side, and then the other, studying him. “Thou wouldst do this thing?” She turned to Valory. “He would do this?”

  “He would,” Valory said, before Wolf could even speak for himself. Does she know me, then, this well?

  “Wouldst thou do it now?”

  For answer, Wolf sheathed his sword and stretched out both his hands.

  “Farewell, Truthreader.”

  “Good-bye. Have fun storming the castle.” A ghost of a smile flickered across Valory’s face.

  “Stay here, do not move. I will return in a moment.”

  CRACK!

  The great thing about working with the Riders, Nik thought, blinking at Wolf’s darkened living room, is that no time is lost getting from one place to another.

  “I’m still getting my head around the fact that you people are living in the Royal York.”

  “It is where the High Prince lived, when she was Warden to the Exile. Wolf uses it at her command, so it may be a place he and Valory will return to.” Alejandro looked around at the room, as if he was wishing Val was there right now. Nik knew how the Rider felt.

  “There may be sign outside the door,” Alejandro said, moving toward the end of the room farthest from the windows.

  Nik followed. “What’s ‘sign,’ exactly, and how will we know it when we see it?”

  The Rider opened the door into the same wide, well-lit hallway that Nik had seen once before. Alejandro immediately stepped out and began to scrutinize the carpeting.

  Nik stroked the dragon-shaped door knocker with his forefinger, and then examined both door and doorjamb more closely. “Hey, it’s not a card lock. I’ll bet not very many people have the key.” He looked up. Alejandro was examining the nap of the carpet from an angle. “Anything?”

  The Rider shook his head. “Marks of the vacuum cleaner.”

  Nik turned to go back inside, and got about five paces in before he realized Alejandro wasn’t behind him.

  “What’s up?”

  “I cannot enter.”

  “What do you mean? You were just in here.”

  A line appeared between Alejandro’s brows. “Let me try something.” There was a small POP! Before Nik’s ears had cleared, the Rider was standing next to him.

  “Interesting.” Alejandro approached the door and, carefully making sure he stayed on the inside, examined the edges, finally pushing it gently shut. He looked back at Nik. “I cannot walk in, but I can Move in.” His amber eyes sparkled with humor. “Ah. An old Chant, but a useful one. Wolf has used it to keep strangers out.”

  “Strange Riders, anyway.” Nik shrugged. “Shall we get on with it?”

  Alejandro nodded, but was still looking around him without moving. “It is hard to know how often we should check this place,” he said.

  “If all we’re doing is checking to see if Valory and Wolf have come back, we could leave them a note.”

  Alejandro shut his eyes and shook his head slowly from side to side. “Anyone would think I have not lived as a human for all these ye
ars. Being with Riders has distracted me too much. Of course, a note.”

  “What’s the big deal?” Nik remembered Wolf toying with the pen and pad of paper that time they were in Alejandro’ house.

  “It is simply that Riders do not have a written language. Only those of us who have learned to do so can read and write, and then only in one of the human languages.”

  “Wow.” Somehow it never occurred to Nik that the Riders—who seemed as though they could do anything they wanted—couldn’t do something as simple as reading. Though, now that he thought about it, there were lots of human who hadn’t learned either. He looked around and found notepaper and a pen exactly where he would expect to find them, near the phone.

  “Walks Under the Moon is learning to read,” Alejandro said, as he watched Nik write the note.

  Nik glanced up, his eyebrows raised. “Speaking of which?”

  Alejandro grinned. “She said she would join us after riding in the elevator,” he said. He looked down at the note. “I notice that you have told Valory to call you, and not me. Have you forgotten that she is my fara’ip?”

  Nik felt his ears go hot. Yeah, why wouldn’t she call Alejandro? “I don’t know what that means,” he said. “But this way, she knows she can call me, as well.” It sounded lame even to him, but somehow, he did want Valory to know that she had a human option. That she could rely on someone besides Riders.

  Alejandro finally lifted his eyes from the note. “Be very careful, my friend.” He smiled, but the tightness in Nik’s chest didn’t loosen. “I have told you before. She is blood of my blood.”

  Nik didn’t know what to say to that, but luckily Alejandro didn’t wait for a response. One second he was standing next to Nik, smiling that not-quite-a-smile, and the next he was at the door, with a sword instead of a walking stick in his hand. Nik’s heart thumped in his chest, and his throat felt tight. He took a quick look around and snatched up the poker from the fireplace. Alejandro was standing to the left of the door, and smiled when he saw how Nik had armed himself. With a wave of his blade he indicated Nik should stand over to the right, then grabbed the door and flung it open.