The Shadowglass

by Rin Chupeco

  “They speak the truth,” Lady Altaecia observed. “Their heartsglass is as clear as day. Whatever crimes they committed, the murder of the other elder asha cannot be laid at their door.”

  “It’s that foul bone witch’s curse!” another of the elders spat out. “Even now you keep her familiar as a pet!”

  Lord Fox said nothing, but Princess Inessa was not as kind. She lunged forward, a sword drawn from a belt on her hip, and the elder found herself staring down its pointed tip. “Retract those words,” Princess Inessa stated coldly, “or lose an eye. Lord Fox Pahlavi has proven his loyalty time and time again. When given the choice between his sister and Kion, he chose my kingdom every time. If the Dark asha received assistance, it was not through him. Even Hestia herself admitted his innocence. When the blight pestilence came upon this city months ago, he saved her. Or has dementia robbed you of your memory?”

  “We are innocent, Your Highness! We only hid the forbidden runes for fear they could be exploited by others. We’d never—”

  “As the council house has been decimated, you are all to return to your own respective asha-ka until further notice,” Empress Alyx ordered. “My men will guard you for your own safety until I have salvaged what I can of my kingdom. Remain there until I send for you again.”

  Once the asha had departed, Lord Fox kneeled before the empress with his head bowed. “Your Majesty. I am sorry.” His voice cracked.

  “Rise, Fox,” Empress Alyx said, as gentle as she had just been harsh. “If you had not been by my daughter’s side all this time, I would have had reason to suspect you. But you have comported yourself with the loyalty and diligence I would wish for from my most trusted generals. You saved Hestia’s life, even while she fought for the end of yours.”

  “I could have brought in my sister. I had the chance.”

  “He is a good man, this Lord Fox,” Lord Garindor murmured beside me. “Guilt feels heavier on good men’s shoulders.”

  “Ridiculous,” the princess argued. “Tea was surrounded by daeva. You could not have dragged her, kicking and screaming, back to Kion, whatever you might claim.”

  “You saved my life,” Empress Alyx reminded him, “and my daughter’s. I am only sorry that you cannot protect Tea like you do us.”

  “She made her bed, built it with nails and needles. Now she must lie in it.” Lord Fox rose to his feet, his expression resolute. “There is still the matter of the oracle, Your Majesty.”

  “What of the oracle?”

  “Her temple has been destroyed. There is no sign of her body among the wreckage, nor of any of her attendants. I am heading there now to investigate further.”

  “For what?”

  “For Tea.” There was a leanness to him, eyes narrowing and jaws shifting into an expression I recognized whenever he thought about his sister or when he believed her near. “I felt her. Briefly. I felt her satisfaction when you dressed down the elder asha. She is somewhere in the city. And I intend to find her.”

  I didn’t wait. I spun away from the window and dashed downstairs, shouting half-sentences to Lord Garindor about my intentions, stopping only to snatch the letters I had set aside for Lady Altaecia to read.

  The bone witch may have abandoned me, but I knew my duty.

  7

  The temple of the oracle stood out like an overgrown weed amid the lush greens and roses of traditional Kion aesthetics, but it was all the more remarkable for it. There was an honesty and earnestness about that domed shrine—unlike the asha-ka, which was arrayed on all sides. It made no attempt to impress with its simple, white walls and modest greenery. The only feature of note was the bell that hung over its main doors for visitors to ring, announcing their entry.

  I was here alone, as was the custom. Fox and Kalen had gone to Knightscross. That my family was in Ankyo and not in our village brought me selfish relief, but the thought of another blight assault was worrying. I had promised to contact Fox as soon as I was done. Communing with the oracle was a private affair, not to be shared even among the closest of siblings.

  The winding corridors were the same as I remembered. I had visited these sacred halls more times than any other asha, and I could have walked its silent paths blindfolded. It was unusual for a full asha to visit the temple of the oracle more than half a dozen times in her lifetime, and yet here I was, making my twenty-seventh visit. It’s been said that an asha confided in only two people in her life: her hairdresser and her confessor. I had no deep ties to any of the gods worshipped within the Willows, but the oracle was the closest thing I had to a confessor.

  The last several visits, however, had been failures. I sought the oracle many times for counsel on shadowglass and my own black heartsglass, only to be rebuffed. No number of zivars thrown into her fires as offerings could change her mind. I had not expected this visit to be any different than the last.

  I did not know how old the oracle was, only that she had presided over this temple when Mistress Parmina had been but a baby. The mysteries of her shrine were a puzzle; no one in the Willows claimed to know the process of selecting and training temple candidates. Some believe that the oracle was a title passed down from mother to daughter, that both come from an unbroken line of revered seers since the time of Vernasha. Still others were convinced the oracle was immortal, though no such spells or runes exist.

  All I knew, as did everyone else, was that the oracle was a permanent fixture of the Willows. She—or perhaps more accurately, one of her ancestors—had been present when Vernasha first founded Ankyo, and she will be there when the last asha-ka closes its doors.

  The flames burned lower than they had on my last visit. The oracle was unchanged, or perhaps no one had lived long enough to see the variations between successors. A veil was drawn across her face to mask her features, though at times it would shift to reveal a soft, generous mouth. She was dressed from head to toe in a flimsy, silver gauze that revealed nothing and suggested everything.

  As before, no servants tended her fires, none available to offer sustenance amid the heat of the hearth. The oracle seemed to survive without the need for food or drink or sleep. Worship was her nourishment.

  I knelt before her and shook my crescent-and-stars pin out of my hair, one I had worn since my days as a novice.

  “That is not necessary.”

  I paused, shocked. This was different. It was customary to offer a zivar to the oracle’s pyre; in exchange, she might dispense advice or predict one’s future. “Are you turning me away?” I asked, my voice small and insignificant in the expanse of that bare chamber.

  The oracle was silent. I could feel her eyes studying me from behind her veil. “Only those who call themselves asha are granted passage within these sacred halls,” she finally replied.

  “I am an asha.”

  “Asha serve the Willows and abide by the laws dictated by its elders. You no longer believe in those precepts.”

  Her assumptions angered me. “You’re wrong. I am an asha regardless of what laws of the Willows I disagree with. I am an asha even as I go against the elders’ will. Obedience to a decree I had no say in does not make me an asha. My service to the people, performed to the best of my ability and to the best of my belief, is what makes me an asha. Protecting my fellow sisters and brothers makes me an asha. And that includes searching for truth. If the Willows’ rule is all that matters here, then maybe you’re right. Maybe I’m not an asha.”

  I stood, but the oracle’s voice, stern and demanding, stopped me. “I gave you no permission to leave.”

  I had never seen her like this before. The oracle had always maintained neutrality. And now this mysterious woman, this seeress who had prophesied that I would one day take control of the azi and kill a Faceless sounded almost afraid.

  “Shadowglass,” she said simply, and I froze. “You seek it.”

  “I do not want it for myself. I only
wish to prevent Druj and any other surviving Faceless from possessing it. It was not fair for the asha elders to hide this secret from the rest of us. We had the right to know Blade that Soars’ true origins.”

  “That magic is a deviancy and must be rid from the world?” The oracle’s voice had softened into velvet. “Do you understand the consequences of such knowledge?”

  “It isn’t right for them to keep us in the dark.”

  “And what would you do should you get your hands on shadowglass? What would you do, if you were able to keep the Faceless at bay, if you were able to convince the elders to impart this knowledge onto the lands? What will you do, my daughter?”

  I had never wanted this power for myself. Shadowglass offered two options, it was said; immortality was one. And unlike Aenah, I had no plans of living forever.

  The other was to rid the world of magic. But even I, who had relied on magic for so long, could smell my own hypocrisy. I balked at the idea.

  How could we live without magic? I could not fathom the idea of a world without heartsglass, without the familiar glows of red and purple and silver to tell us the healthy from the sick, the deceiver from the truthful. Without magic, the asha would lose their luster, would no longer wield the influence and power we enjoyed. They would become nothing beyond glorified entertainers, diminished in stature in everyone’s eyes.

  I could understand why the elder asha would keep the shadowglass spell their secret, to go so far as to burn books and deny knowledge. It is frightening to lose the power that you and your sisters have known for thousands of years.

  But…

  “I want to live.” The words came easily. Despite all the nightmares I’d suffered in the last few months, it was this admission that shook me to my core. It was my one constant fear since leaving Knightscross for a new, uncertain life in Kion, worse than slaying daeva or facing down Faceless and their minions. “As did the bone witches who have come before me and the bone witches who will follow after. We shorten our life spans every time we face the Dark and receive little applause for it. Instead, we are given derision and anger. All we want is the chance to live a full life.

  “I have seen what the Willows did to Mykaela. I’ve seen them turn away after her heartsglass was taken from her. I have seen her fight hard to live. She gives so much of herself and has suffered greatly in return. I no longer want to see her in pain. I want her to live the rest of her natural life in comfort, without the threat of the Dark sapping away at her soul. And as selfish as it may seem, I do not want to share the same fate she has already endured for so long.”

  “You would not use shadowglass for yourself,” the oracle said, shaping her words with deliberate languidness, “but as a threat against the elders should they fall out of line. You would force the elders to relax their laws, to institute regulations that would lengthen your life spans. Blackmail.”

  “Yes.”

  The oracle bowed her head. Silence crackled between us for several seconds. The flames dipped lower, as if as troubled by my pronouncement as their mistress.

  “It would be easy to carry out what shadowglass was intended for,” she said. “No magic, no asha. You can resume the life you led before you were conscripted to the cause, and your mentor could live and thrive. The elders you so despise would be deprived of their status and would no longer harm you or your loved ones. And yet you seek a middle ground, still unwilling to give up magic in its entirety.

  “The elder asha refuse shadowglass—they crave magic for the dominance they exert on the kingdoms, and fear to lose what Vernasha of the Roses accomplished by cunning. The Faceless are willing, but they too will use shadowglass as Blade that Soars had and not as Hollow Knife desired, no matter their claims of worshipping Hollow Knife. But why do you hesitate?”

  I closed my eyes. “Because without magic, I will lose my brother. Let the elders have their magic and their power plays. All I desire is my brother, here with me.”

  “He is dead.”

  “He’s the closest he will ever be to living.”

  The oracle sighed, and from somewhere unseen came the sound of a chorus echoing her soft lament. “When shadowglass is created, with lightsglass and darksglass fused together, on the day you pluck the First Harvest from its sacred tree, your world as you know it shall end.”

  “But I have no intention of using its—”

  “What you intend does not matter. The Faceless have long hungered for shadowglass; they have cannibalized Hollow Knife’s words, bent and shifted them into their own making, so that his teachings matched their greed. Like Blade that Soars, they will take the magic left by the Creator and gift it onto themselves without thought. What they do not understand is that wearing seven daeva in their hearts will be worse than darkrot, and they will die from too much of the Dark before the year is out.

  “The elders only seek to control, to incite fear in the hearts of those who wish to seek it out. The very thought of a world after shadowglass sends fear down their spines; it curdles their blood as it once did Vernasha’s. They were content to let the Faceless squabble over their share for as long as they retain hold of its secrets. You tread on dangerous ground between both, Tea.”

  She had never called me by name before. “Are you telling me not to seek it out?”

  “Use shadowglass to become like Blade that Soars—or follow Hollow Knife’s path. There is no middle ground, Tea. There is only a choice, and not even I know the right path to take.”

  “I cannot live like this.” It was hard not to sound desperate. “I cannot live a life like Mykaela’s, forever sacrificing herself for a world that would not have blinked an eye at her death. I am selfish. I am not the compassionate woman she is. Sometimes I feel she is far too kind for her own good. I will serve the kingdoms, but not at the cost of my health. I do not want to wait until I am feeble and weak, able to do nothing but wait as the magic eventually takes its toll. I want the right to enjoy my old age as much as I do my youth. I want Mykaela to have that right. It is not fair.”

  “When she was a young girl your age, Sakmeet came to me, just as distraught. She shared your fears, your hurt. I saw the same visions of her as I had of you. But while you control the azi, I saw her harnessing the zarich. Daeva can be gentled with lesser consequences to your heartsglass.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me all this before?”

  “Twenty-seven visits to my chamber and still ignorant of why you come. For me to answer, you must first ask the question. Mykaela never did. As you said, she is far too compassionate for her own good. One daeva is adequate, but to command them all invites the same darkrot you fear. It is the same with shadowglass.”

  “Then what else have you not told me?”

  “There is nothing else to tell you.” The oracle turned away.

  “Wait! What of my heartsglass? If you can see into the future, then surely you’ve seen what happens to it.”

  “There is little to do. Black heartsglass is as much of you as it was when it had been silver. It is what you choose to do with it that matters most.” For the first time, I detected a trace of fatigue on her person, a faint tremble of her shoulders. “Now I am tired and wish to rest.”

  I knew no amount of zivars or entreaties would move her at that point. So I stood and watched as the oracle departed to some unseen inner chamber, her head bowed as the flames sprung back to life, kicking up such a storm that it obscured her from my view. When the fire settled, she was gone, and with it, my last hope.

  The brass bell hung, silent and broken, over scaffolding once a part of the oracle’s temple. This was the worst casualty within the Willows, and the roads leading to it were paved with detritus and the smell of burnt jasmine. A sense of mystery had always permeated the bone witch’s recountings of this sacred place, and it almost came as a disappointment to me to realize that, when stripped down to its bare bones, it was not so different
than the other asha-ka and cha-khana that gilded its borders. There was no magic here, and the zivar on my breast remained dull and dormant.

  The winding corridors that weaved through the shrine’s inner maze were gone. The high ceilings and heady incense spiraling out of its slender chimney were gone. Even the domestic fires that had once burned with care within the sanctuary, the holy flames that had borne witness to asha professing desires under the guise of confessions—even their hearthstones were blackened beyond recognition. They lay collapsed under the weight of the building’s domed roof, destroying an institution that had served Kion faithfully for centuries.

  There is an epic of the semi-mythic warrior-czarina Agafya the Good, a favorite tale of the Isteran-Tresean war saga. She had laid claim to Grezel, consequently sacking that Isteran city. She took great pains to destroy the temple of the Great Hero Anahita, the Isterans’ pride and joy.

  Were not the walls built to keep all pillagers at bay? the poems sang. What foul manner of beast could tear down the dwelling of Anahita, that blessed temple upon temples? No man alive can equal its defenses, and for as long as it stands tall and proud, brilliant and ivory polished, Istera shall rule.

  But sleek-eyed Agafya looked and saw the crumbling walls and aging remnants of an old order, not the vaulted shrine boasted of in ancient ballads. And so she raised her spear and cried aloud: “I am she who was born in the mouth of a mountain, nursed by warriors of the spring and reared by the wildness of winter. I am the new and the strong, while you cower behind artifacts of bygone eras. If this paltry shrine is all that speaks to Istera’s strength, then let it come tumbling down. I am no foul beast—I am only Agfaya.” And so did the czarina break Istera’s stronghold and chain them to her reign. And all that remained of Anahita’s temple were the shadows of better days.