Shadowfall g-1

by James Clemens

  Laurelle nodded. “I remember that. I thought he was just infatuated with you. You were looking lovely in that dress.”

  Dart was taken aback. “Lovely? Me?” She shook her head. That was not the point. “No. It was your story of the illuminaria. He was watching me so intently as we left the dinner. I know it was him in my room. Who else could it be? He works in secret, tells no one, dabbles in dark dealings, like in the gardens. Then the very night Yaellin’s attention is drawn to me, someone sneaks into my room, burning strange alchemies.”

  “But why would he do that? What did the alchemies do? Do you remember anything from that night?”

  “Dreams… bad dreams.” Her voice drifted back to the strange flight and escape from some dark wood, chased by unknown pursuers.

  “Nothing more?”

  “No.”

  “Then I don’t see we have any choice,” Laurelle said.

  Dart frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “We must tell Lord Chrism all that happened. He’ll know what to do.”

  Dart clutched Laurelle’s hand. “We mustn’t.”

  “Why? He should know of Yaellin’s strange actions.”

  Dart feared the attention such an accusation would raise. She would be singled out. She would most likely be soothed to prove her testimony against one of Chrism’s respected Hands. And when soothed, how much else would be revealed? Her dark secrets could not withstand such a bright light. To expose Yaellin meant exposing herself.

  Laurelle continued to stare at Dart, eyes questioning.

  “I cannot.” Dart stumbled over her words. She had no way to explain to Laurelle without revealing her deepest shame.

  “Well, I can.” Laurelle stood. “I’ll tell Lord Chrism. I can explain to him it was I who saw Yaellin in the Eldergarden. That should raise enough of a tumult to sanction him. He’ll not be able to sneak into your room after that. The truth will come out.”

  “No. You’ll be soothed. They’ll find out you were lying.”

  “And by that time, Yaellin will be under scrutiny. It will be safe for you to come out of hiding.”

  Dart realized Laurelle had misinterpreted her reticence to expose Yaellin as a fear of reprisal.

  Laurelle gained her feet. “We should wait no longer. I noticed that Chrism keeps a light burning in his room till past the ring of the final bells. I could go now and tell him what you told me.”

  Dart stood. She had an urge to deny everything, to tell Laurelle it was all a fabrication, a fireside story, nothing more. But fear and exhaustion kept her silent. A part of her wanted this secret taken from her. Dart found her voice. “No.”

  Laurelle pulled a silver robe over her nightclothes. “We must tell Lord Chrism. Yaellin may even be tied to the assassination of poor Willym.”

  Dart nodded. “I know. But it should be I who tells him. It is my accusation to speak.”

  Laurelle handed Dart a second robe, a crimson one. “Are you sure?”

  She certainly was not. But she had no choice. Laurelle was right. If Yaellin was pursuing some vile purpose, Dart would have to risk herself to expose him. Others, like Willym, might die if she kept silent. With the decision made, she felt a surge of relief. Come what may, it would finally be over.

  Laurelle helped her into the robe. “I’ll go with you.”

  Dart found her hand in Laurelle’s. Tears rose in Dart’s eyes.

  “We’re sisters,” Laurelle said.

  Dart quickly hugged her friend… her sister. She wiped her eyes on the hem of a sleeve. In the distance, the final bells of the night chimed.

  “We’d best hurry,” Laurelle said, crossing to the door.

  Dart went with her, continuing to hold hands. Pupp left his hearthside roost and trotted after them. They made a strange company, two robed girls, one in silver, one in crimson, and a fiery companion with no substance.

  Dart’s confidence in her decision persisted, but she sensed she had forgotten something significant. Something that tickled a warning across her skin. Before she could ponder it further, Laurelle opened the door and stepped out.

  The bells echoed away.

  But not her trepidation.

  The pair stood in front of the golden doors. The High Wing was dark, painted in ruddy hues from the giant iron-and-bone brazier at their back. The few lamps hanging on the walls had been wicked low and half-shuttered.

  Silence was complete. No voices rose from the common rooms at the end of the hall. Everyone had retired to their respective rooms.

  Including Lord Chrism.

  In the gloom, firelight flickered from beneath the jamb of his wide doors.

  “Maybe we should wait until morning,” Laurelle said, sounding scared for the first time this night. “You could spend the night in my room.”

  Dart could not count on her determination lasting until sunrise. “I’ll knock… announce us.” She took a deep breath and pictured Chrism’s warm green eyes, his easy, lazy smile. She regretted bringing bad tidings to his door in the night. She remembered the haunted words, lost and concerned. We must be watchful… all of us.

  She had no choice.

  She slipped her fingers from Laurelle’s and crossed to the doors. A silver knocker, carved into a flowering branch of a wyldrose, hung on the door. As she reached, she sensed movement beyond the door, a shift of shadows at her toes. Someone had moved across the hearth.

  Lord Chrism.

  Her fingers hesitated, trepidation flaring.

  In the silence, the unhitching of a latch rang sharply.

  Off to the left.

  Dart flew back. A door opened.

  Her door.

  Laurelle stared, mouth open. Dart grabbed her arm and drew her down behind the brazier. Two figures stepped from her doorway. The first was a woman, her lithe figure decked in leather from boots to waist-length riding cape, the only dab of color, a blouse of ruby silk. The ruddy glow from the brazier lit her face as she glanced up the hall.

  Dart recognized her.

  Mistress Naff.

  She served as the Hand of Chrism’s Seed.

  Behind her came a taller figure, outfitted in shades of green, wearing brown boots. About his shoulders was a cape of tanned leather framed in black fur. His eyes glowed in the darkness, full of Grace.

  It was Lord Chrism.

  “She must be bedded down again with your Hand of Tears,” Mistress Naff said as Lord Chrism pulled closed the door.

  Both glanced in their direction, not toward the brazier but toward Laurelle’s door. Dart ducked fully away, ears craned to hear every word.

  “She should be safe enough for the moment,” Lord Chrism said.

  “So how long do we dare wait?”

  “Until all show their true colors,” Chrism said.

  The scuff of boots sounded, moving away.

  Dart risked a glance around a corner of the brazier. The pair headed down the length of the High Wing. She watched until they vanished through a door that opened to the lower stair, taking a lamp with them.

  Dart turned to the side. Laurelle had also watched them depart, peeking through the legs of a fanciful animal sculpted from the iron of the brazier.

  Dart stood up, drawing her friend’s eye.

  “Why did we hide?” Laurelle whispered, her voice tremulous. “It was Lord Chrism… whom we had come to find.”

  Dart had no cause for such caution, except simple habit. “Maybe we should leave our own accusations until the morning,” Dart said.

  Laurelle nodded, her features pale even in the reddish glow.

  Pupp sniffed at the brazier, slowly checking out each sculpted beast.

  Dart stepped away when another bolt slid free of a lock. This time, Laurelle needed no encouragement to dive behind the far side of the brazier. The door to Chrism’s rooms pulled open as they ducked away.

  Dart peered under the brazier and spotted a pair of black boots. Only now did she remember the movement beyond the door to Chrism’s chambers. If Lord Chrism
had been in Dart’s room, who was this other?

  She risked sliding to the side to spy around the edge of the brazier.

  The interloper headed down the hall, aiming to follow Lord Chrism and Mistress Naff. His figure was indistinct, fading into and out of the gloom, appearing as ghostly as Pupp. It took a moment for Dart to recognize the reason why. She watched the shadows seem to swim around the retreating form. A shadowcloak. During Dart’s schooling, knights periodically visited the Conclave. She had witnessed their blessed ability to move through shadows unseen.

  The figure pulled up the hood to the shadowcloak, vanishing completely for a breath, swallowed by the gloom, then reappeared briefly on the far side of the High Wing. He vanished down the same stair, following after the earlier two.

  Despite the shadowplay, Dart had gotten a good look at the man’s face before it disappeared under the hood of the shadowcloak. She could not mistake the ebony hair split by a shock of white.

  “Yaellin de Mar,” Laurelle mumbled at her side, aghast.

  He had been in Chrism’s room while the god had been in Dart’s.

  Why? What was the meaning of all this?

  Dart stood up. All she knew for sure was that she had to follow after them all. She started down the High Wing. Pupp danced after her.

  Laurelle hung back. “Dart, what are you doing?”

  “I must warn Lord Chrism,” she said, her steps hurried.

  “Wait,” Laurelle urged. “We don’t know what’s going on.”

  Dart could not argue. All she knew was what she had spotted in Yaellin’s hand as he crept down the hall, before he vanished into the shadows.

  A blade.

  A black blade.

  The same as had murdered the woman Jacinta.

  “I must go,” Dart said.

  Dart climbed down the stairs, moving as cautiously as a titmouse, staying close to the wall. She hiked up the edge of her robe to keep the hem from brushing the stone and alerting the others of her presence.

  Laurelle followed after, moving in Dart’s footsteps, mimicking her careful progress.

  Pupp continued ahead of them both, blazing a path onward. His fiery form illuminated their path, at least to Dart’s eyes. Laurelle kept one hand on Dart’s shoulder. Distantly the meager glow of the retreating lamp carried by Chrism and Naff flowed back to them.

  Where were the guards posted to this doorway and stair? After the assassination of Master Willym, the High Wing was under constant guard. But none were at this door.

  Dart continued onward, ready for living shadow to rush out and nab her. How had Yaellin obtained a shadowcloak? And how did he work its Grace to hide in the shadows? She had been taught that such blessed cloth would respond only to a knight.

  She prayed the meager light cast by Pupp’s molten body would be enough to expose a hidden assassin like Yaellin. Because that certainly must be his purpose. Surely the blade could not kill Lord Chrism, but Mistress Naff had no defense against its curse.

  Then again, what was Yaellin doing in Chrism’s rooms? Had he gone to harm the god? And what were Lord Chrism and Mistress Naff doing in her room? They had been searching for her, expressing concern for her safety. Did they already know of her nighttime intruder? Or maybe they were the ones who had come in the middle of the night, casting some blessing of protection upon her that she mistook for dark alchemies.

  Her mind whirled with various scenarios.

  They wound down and around the stairwell, then struck another hallway heading toward the southern half of the castillion. Where were they going? Occasionally a snippet of voice would carry back to them. Lord Chrism or Mistress Naff. But the words were unintelligible at this distance. So the two continued their pursuit.

  Finally, another stair-an even darker stair-led downward again. It was narrow and dusty with disuse. Dart considered retreating back to the High Wing, but after coming so far, she had no choice but to continue.

  The stair wound deeper and deeper.

  “We must be well below the streets now,” Laurelle whispered. “I’ve never been down this far.”

  Neither had Dart. Even the subterranean Graced Cache that stored Lord Chrism’s repostilaries was not buried this deep. The air smelled dank, of river water and muck. And a chill had grown around them. Even the stairs had become cruder, hewn roughly from the rock, the edges crumbling.

  Laurelle slipped on a stair and clutched Dart’s shoulder to keep from falling. She gained her footing with care, but a slight limp marked her step.

  “Are you all right?” Dart whispered.

  “Bent my ankle a bit. But I can walk.”

  “Are you sure? Maybe we should turn back.” A part of Dart hoped Laurelle would need to return. Determination could be sustained only so long. Fear had worn it thin.

  “No,” Laurelle said, her voice struggling for firmness and failing. “We’ve come this far. And besides, right now, down is easier than up with my ankle.”

  Dart nodded and slowly crept down the narrowing stairs. They had to proceed one after the other now. Laurelle kept behind.

  “It’s dark as pitch now,” Laurelle said. “I can see no glow of the other’s lamp.”

  Dart peered ahead. Laurelle was right. She had not noticed that the distant light had faded away.

  A full flight ahead of them, Pupp continued downward, a ruddy ember rolling down the stairs. Rounding another turn in the stairs, firelight revealed the end of the staircase.

  “There’s a door ahead,” Dart said.

  “Where? How can you see?”

  “I… I have good night sight,” she lied and guided her friend. “It’s this way.”

  Taking Laurelle by the hand, she crossed down the last stairs and approached the door. It was made of stone. Markings etched the door’s surface. Ancient Littick from the look of the writing. And wound throughout, an intricate relief of a flowering wyldrose, the symbol of Chrism and Chrismferry.

  Dart placed her hand on the door and felt a tingle under her palm. The door had been warded with Grace, sealed against intrusion. But now it stood ajar-surely left that way by the assassin who followed Lord Chrism. Yaellin must have broken the ward and kept the way open for a fast retreat. There was just enough room to slip through without moving the door. Dart feared the scrape of stone might alert Yaellin.

  “This way,” she urged the blind Laurelle. She waved Pupp ahead of her. His ruddy form illuminated a tunnel beyond the door.

  The passage was high and narrow, appearing almost to be a natural fissure in the rock. Dart entered first, followed by Laurelle. Bits of silvery quartz caught every trace of light and glistened like tiny stars.

  Again the echoed murmur of a pair of voices reached them.

  “Oh, I can see a bit of glow again,” Laurelle said, her feet growing steadier, less hesitant. “Where are they all going?”

  Dart had no idea. They continued down the passage for a long stretch, chasing after the lamplight. Surely their destination could not be too much farther. In Pupp’s glow, Dart noted flashes of white in the walls. She peered closer at one, then pulled back.

  Bones…

  A tiny rib cage and skull of an ancient fish. More and more appeared around them, a veritable school of dead fishes… and some larger creatures among them, with pointed toothy jaws. Dart had seen fossilites before, but their presence now boded ill. It was as if they were treading through some haunted sea, frozen in time, populated by skeletal denizens.

  At last, the tunnel seemed to climb. Roots began to appear, knotted and thick, frilled by tiny hairs. More and more draped from the high roof or kneed out from the walls. Rock vanished under the mass of vinelike rootlets and thick taproots, forming a leafless forest around them, festooned with hanging falls of moss.

  From haunted sea to haunted forest…

  “We must be under the Eldergarden,” Dart whispered. She pictured the massive myrrwood tree that graced the oldest section of the gardens. From its spreading limbs, roots dropped to the rich soil
and grew into secondary trunks. New limbs then stretched farther, dropping more trunks, until one tree became a forest, filling most of the gardens.

  Dart stared around her. She sensed they were under the spread of the myrrwood, with its dark bowers and sweet glens. The path had begun to angle upward, slowly wending back toward the surface. As she walked, she considered the warded door and the direction of the tunnel. She finally understood what path they must be walking, where it was taking them.

  Into the heart of the myrrwood.

  The tunnel must be Chrism’s secret passage, leading to his private sanctuary, a region of the myrrwood reserved for the god alone.

  Dart’s feet slowed as they continued through the subterranean grove of roots and vines. It was not just fear of where she trespassed that heightened her caution. The growing tangle offered too many hiding places, too many cubbies in which assassins might conceal themselves. Furthering Dart’s unease, the hairy rootlets that fringed all the surfaces waved in strange dances, contrary to the breeze that had begun to whisper down the tunnel. When she brushed against them, they clung and snagged, tugging hems and hair, as if trying to pull them away.

  Even Pupp seemed uneasy, sniffing the air, pausing there, dropping back closer to them. He kept to the center of the tangled pathway. Dart slowed in turn, needing Pupp’s glow to light her way.

  “What’s wrong?” Laurelle asked, noting her caution.

  Dart shook her head.

  As Pupp edged around a bend in the tunnel, he brushed too closely against a hanging corkscrew of a root-or maybe it had reached for him. Either way, Pupp suddenly jerked away, darting forward, ripping away tiny root hairs… and yanking part of the root down.

  It took half a heartbeat for Dart to realize the root had touched Pupp.

  His body flared brighter, eyes flashing with fire. In the brightness, she saw the reason why. An oily wetness seeped from the torn root. It dripped to the floor and glowed against the dark stone. The crimson color could not be mistaken.

  Blood… blood imbued with Grace.

  Before she could react, Laurelle stepped around the bend. A small cry sounded. Dart glanced back. Laurelle’s eyes were huge, shining in Pupp’s radiance. Horror paled her features. Laurelle stumbled back, catching herself up among the roots. Tendrils snagged into her robe, nightclothes, hair. One long feathery root wrapped full around her stretched neck.