The Truth of Shadows

by Jacob Peppers

  You are loyal to nothing but your own pride, Tesharna. You have listened to the songs of the poets, to their flowery words and twisting of the truth, and you, the fool, have believed them, have thought yourself a goddess. Is that it, Tesharna? Do you think to be my equal?

  “Of…of course not, Mistress. I did not mean—”

  Look, Tesharna. Look upon the mirror and see yourself as you truly are. See what you will become, should you fail me again.

  The Chosen Priestess Tesharna of Amedan, once member of the Six, known for her courage and wit, realized that in her fear, she had turned away from the mirror. Slowly, she brought her gaze back, not wishing to but knowing that to disobey would only make her punishment worse. When she looked back at the mirror, she gasped. An ancient woman stared back at her. Her flesh sagged impossibly, as if it had begun to melt from her face. Her eyes were red-rimmed, dried-out orbs, shifting listlessly within their cavernous sockets. The woman smiled, a ghastly, terrible expression to behold. Few teeth remained and those that did were black with age and rot, her skin a sickened, yellow color as if she was diseased, but even all of that wasn’t the worst of it. The worst was that her hair—her once beautiful hair—now hung in strips from a wrinkled scalp, and where the skin of her head showed, so too did angry sores that wept a thick, oily pus.

  Her once alluring face, admired by thousands, looked like the skull of some decaying cadaver, the skin stretched so tight that it looked as if it would soon begin to rip. Tesharna wanted to look away from that horrible visage, wanted it more than she had ever wanted anything in her life, but she could not, her gaze held in place by some invisible force. And as she was forced to stare at that countenance, her countenance, slowly, the skin began to erupt in boils, before it started to fall off in patches of rotten flesh.

  Tesharna screamed then. She forgot about all her own ambitions, all the things which she had worked for, forgot that she was a woman of power that few possessed. Forgot, too, about the guardsman standing in place outside her door, believing the fiction that he could protect her, that anyone could. Her scream was loud and terrible, the wailing of some tortured beast, driven mad by suffering and possessed of none of its humanity.

  “Chosen Tesharna!” The guard threw the door open and charged forward, his sword drawn, his eyes scanning the room for the threat.

  “N…no,” Tesharna gasped, “g-get out, you…you shouldn’t—”

  Witness, Tesharna, the full weight of my displeasure. Tesharna’s eyes were pulled, of their own accord, to the guardsman, still searching for any danger. At first, nothing seemed to happen. Then, a curious expression crossed the man’s face, as if he was trying to solve a particularly difficult riddle. A second passed, then another, and Tesharna watched as the man’s puzzled expression slowly began to change. “C-Chosen,” he said, looking at her, “something…I don’t feel right…”

  He took a halting, uncertain step toward her. Then his face began to change. His youthful features—the man was in his early thirties or younger—began to shift, the flesh bubbling and writhing as if serpents squirmed beneath his skin. “Chosen, what’s happening?” he asked, and with the next step, he nearly fell, but managed to catch himself on the wall. When he pulled away, Tesharna was sickened to see skin clinging to the stone surface where he had touched it.

  Another step, and the skin of his face continued to fall off off in bloody chunks that struck the floor with a wet splat. Tesharna tried to rise from where she was still on her knees, wanting to run, to get away from the monstrosity coming toward her, but she was frozen in place. The guardsman opened his mouth, as if he would say something more, but nothing came out but a wet, gurgling wheeze, then a lump of flesh fell out of his open mouth, and it took Tesharna several seconds to realize that it was his tongue.

  “P-p-please,” Tesharna stammered, her body shaking so bad with her fear and disgust that she could barely breathe. “D-don’t come a-any closer. P-p-please.”

  But the man did. Another step. Another splat as some piece of him struck the ground, and his body began to shrink, deflating beneath his clothes as if some giant, invisible beast were taking bites out of him. His helmet fell from a head that was far too shrunken to hold it any longer, and his body seemed to go through weeks of decay in a matter of seconds. His once golden hair—beautiful hair, and the reason, coupled with his once handsome features, that Tesharna had picked him to guard her room—began to to lose its color, falling out of his head and taking patches of skin with it.

  Another step, and the man was less than a foot away. He reached out with one desiccated hand that was little more than bones and rotten flesh. Tesharna tried to shrink away, but still her body would not obey her commands, and she felt his touch, warm and sickly as if with fever, against her skin. She had thought she did not possess the strength to scream anymore, that the pain of the last minutes had stripped it from her. She had been wrong.

  The dying man’s hand clamped around her arm, the bones digging into her, painfully tight, and as she watched his flesh fell away until his skull was visible beneath it, then that too fell, breaking into chunks of bone that, moments later, turned to a fine, gray powder. In seconds all that was left of the guard was his clothes and a pile of dust at Tesharna’s feet.

  Tesharna stared at that pile that had, minutes before, been a young man in the prime of his life, and thought of the same thing happening to her, thought of the ravages of time, not some distant thing that might happen one day, not the slow, plodding decay of the flesh as it marched closer to its own death, but as an immediate, inarguable reality. And she was afraid.

  Do you see, Tesharna? This one did nothing to fail me, has aroused none of my ire, and yet I have done this to him so that you might understand. Do you, Tesharna? Do you understand?

  “I…I do, Mistress. Please, do not…I am loyal. I swear. I have failed you, but I will not do it again. I will send men now to kill this one you have spoken of. I will do it myself if you wish. This Alesh, he will not survive the night.”

  No. You will do nothing against this one, Tesharna. For I have others who will succeed where you have failed, others who will make him suffer for his arrogance, for my husband’s arrogance. I have other plans for you.

  “I l-live only to serve you, Mistress.”

  No, Tesharna. You live only because you serve. Remember that. In the end, you and your kind are nothing but sacks of meat, no more than cattle waiting to be butchered by your betters, if they take it in their mind to do so. And for all your vanity, you are the same. Remember that. Please me, and I will bless you with a beauty beyond the ken of men, will make of you a temptation that no man or woman can ignore, that will be spoken of for eons to come. But fail me, Tesharna, and you will come to know pain and despair that you could not even imagine. Now, gaze upon the mirror. There are things I would say—things I must show you.

  And the Chosen of Valeria, known throughout the world for her beauty and grace, for her courage and tactical genius, gave the only answer she could. She obeyed.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The Palietkun people of the southern desert were the largest of the Ferinan tribes, composed of several hundred men, women and children. And though they slept in thick canvas tents, regularly moving from place to place as their nomadic forebears had before them in search of food and water, when they chose a place to take up temporary residence, it was as if a small town appeared on the blighted landscape overnight. A small town whose lights shone brightly in the darkness, sanctuary to any who found themselves stumbling through the broken landscape. For even here, in this place, the nightlings came, always testing the perimeter, searching for any signs of weakness in the defenses.

  But tonight, as every night, they would find none, for while most of the world forgot their history, had long since lost the knowledge of how to make fires that burned bright and true, the Ferinan, the Palietkun, had not. And while what few of those in the wide world who remembered—the Lightbringers they called themselves—guarde
d their knowledge jealously, like misers who would not even use their coin to buy food to live, lest they have less of it, the Palietkun did not. The knowledge of true fire, of the herbs and powders used to make flames that would not falter, was sacred, but it was also knowledge to be shared with all, to help all.

  To do anything else was to send the ignorant into a war they did not understand, blind and weaponless, was to pretend that the man who sent them so was not culpable in their inevitable deaths. Such knowledge was to be shared, to be used as a shield not just for the Palietkun, but for all peoples, strangers perhaps, but all taking part in the war against the Dark, whether they realized it or not.

  And this knowledge, this sharing, had saved more than a few travelers who found themselves in distress, who felt the breath of the darkness as it crept toward them, ever hungry and ever cruel. When the Palietkun found such desperate souls wandering the desert, they fed them and gave them water, a place to rest, and flame to see them to their sleep. In doing so, they believed they performed a sacred duty, for each soul saved from such destruction was one who could stand tall against the darkness, another soldier with which the eternal battle might be fought and perhaps—one day—won.

  Such men and women, when they were saved, were often half-mad with fear, and the Dawn Whisperers concocted herbal remedies to give them peace until their minds returned to them. But the ones who the Palietkun scout and his partner—for the Palietkun believed only fools ventured into the darkness alone—watched approach in the distance did not hurry, and they showed no signs of fear at the blanket of night enveloping them.

  Many carried no torch or candle to guide their way, and had there not been a moon, the scouts would have never seen them at all, so much did they seem a part of the darkness in which they walked. Their exact numbers were difficult to determine in the poor light, but there were a hundred warriors, a hundred at least. The scouts turned and met each other’s eyes, and though they used no words, they understood well enough what such a force meant—what it could only mean. Death had come upon the Ferinan, upon the Palietkun. Death in black armor and crimson cloaks.

  The scout pointed at his partner, then behind them to where the whole of the Palietkun tribe lay only a mile away. A distance that seemed very long indeed, when men such as they ventured into the night, but now seemed all too short. When the scout pointed at his own eyes and then back at the men, the message clear enough. Go. Tell the others. I will watch.

  The other scout did not argue, for the Ferinan, raised in the desert among its many dangers, knew that the price of hesitation, in such times, was death. Instead, he rose, silently, and was just about to begin to break in a jog that would carry him back to their people when a streak of silver flew out of the darkness. The Ferinan were trained to fight at an early age, trained to defend themselves against desert beasts and nightlings, should the worst come and the light fail. So it was that the strike—almost too swift to follow—did not take the scout’s head from his shoulders, as it had been intended to do. Instead, he leapt away, but for all his speed, the blade still cut a deep furrow across his arm.

  The other scout jumped to his feet, lifting his spear from where it had sat on the ground beside him and rushing to stand in front of his partner, raising his weapon. The man who stood regarding them looked calm, untroubled, and he held the shaft of his weapon at its center, one of the blades that protruded from either side of it resting lightly in the sand, the other pointing into the sky. The Ferinan scout saw the man, understood at once the meaning of the whorls and serpentine markings on his face. He also understood that he was outmatched, that he and his companion both were. It had only been one strike, but he had long been trained in combat, and the speed of the blow was enough to make him have some inkling of the skill this one possessed. Enough to kill him. Enough to kill them both.

  “Go,” he said to his partner standing behind him. “Go now.”

  Perhaps his partner hesitated for a moment, perhaps he gave some desperate look to the man who he had known since they were children, to his friend, hoping, wishing there were some other way. Perhaps he even told himself that his partner would be victorious and never mind that it was a lie. However, there was no way to know for sure, for the scout did not look away from this hunter who had come upon them, dared not, and in a moment he heard the near-silent footsteps of his companion as he raced across the sand to tell their people of what was coming.

  “He goes to warn them,” the stranger said, his eyes studying the remaining scout.

  The Ferinan did not answer, for while they were taught how to fight and how to live, so, too, did the Dawn Whisperers teach their people how to die, how to meet their deaths. His death had come upon him in this one, he knew—it lay somewhere in the keen edge of this stranger’s unusual weapon, and he would meet it the best he could.

  “It will not matter, in the end,” the Ekirani said, and there was something almost regretful in his tone. “It cannot.”

  The Ferinan remained silent, and the stranger finally gave a single nod. “Very well. Fight well, Ferinan,” he said. Then he moved in a blur, the edge of one of his blades whistling through the night air, and the haft of the scout’s own weapon rose up in answer, then it began. As it transpired, the Ferinan did fight well, fought with a skill even he had not thought to possess. Yet for all that, it was over in moments, and the stranger with the whorls on his skin stalked off into the darkness, leaving the corpse behind him.

  ***

  For all their knowledge of flames, for all their trust in the light, it was a practice of the Palietkun people—one handed down for generations—to post watches along the borders of their camps. So it was that when the bloody scout stumbled toward the camp, barely able to keep his feet, he was discovered by one of their number who called for assistance. The scout recounted his tale and, in moments, he was being carried back toward the encampment, another sent ahead of them to gather the Dawn Whisperers. They would know what to do. They must.

  In minutes, the Dawn Whisperers, five of the Palietkun tribe who had been deemed the wisest of them, were gathered in their tent in the center of the Palietkun encampment. They had only just arrived, seated along a collapsible table—one of the few items, save for weapons, the tribe possessed that was built of wood—when the wounded scout was helped inside. His good arm was thrown over the shoulder of the man who had found him, and the other had been hastily-bandaged, blood already staining the white fabric a deep crimson.

  The Dawn Whisperers shared a look, for one did not have to be wise to understand that the blow was a killing one. The man had lost much blood already, was losing more, and he would not live for much longer. They listened without interruption as the man spoke, as he told them of those who approached, described for the Whisperers their black armor, their crimson cloaks.

  They listened, all of them gathered there, and they said nothing, for the man was dying, and in his dying, he spoke truths. Death Truths, their people called them, and believed them to be the voices of the gods themselves, speaking through the mouths of those who approached the veil. When the man finished, he was barely lucid at all, his eyes rolling in their sockets. “See to him,” one of the Whisperers told the man holding him, “prepare him for his journey. It will not be long.”

  The Ferinan nodded, his face solemn at the approaching death of one of their own, but showing no reaction at the news that one had brought, and why should he? After all, the people of the Palietkun tribe chose their Whisperers for just such reasons as this, and they trusted them to make the best decision for their people. A decision that, in this case, the shared look of the Whisperers meant they all understood would be a bloody one, no matter what.

  “They will be here soon,” one of their number said, an old matron, her face wrinkled with age. She, like the rest of her people, wore no face paint to cover the passing of the years on her flesh as the northerners did. For she, like the other Ferinan, believed the ravages of time badges of wisdom, deserving of reverence
and pride.

  “Yes,” another said, this one a man, also aged, thin from his years, but not without the corded, wiry muscle that showed he had once been a warrior.

  “If only the First Witness were here,” another said, and they all turned to look at the youngest of their number, a youth of no more than fifteen years. There was always one such, for the wisdom of youth was a wisdom all its own, one lost in the passing of time but no less important for all that. Yet, the others understood that the wisdom of youth was a fickle thing, often clouded by the rampant emotions and yearnings of the young. In this case, that emotion was writ plain on the girl’s face for all to see, should they but look for it—fear. Fear and the naivety of the young which believed that their heroes, those they revered, were invincible, capable of incredible feats, of doing what no man—or woman—could do. Such naivety was part of the wisdom, tied to it, the two intertwined so that only the wisest, cleverest, might think to separate one from the other. But that wisdom, the wisdom of hope, would not serve them now. The understanding they now needed was of a colder, bloodier kind.

  “Darl-asheek Binakrala has his own task,” another of the Whisperers said. “One that is equal, if not more important, than the saving of the Palietkun itself. For we are but one people among many, and if a man must sacrifice his foot to live, then who would not? Better to be crippled and lame than to be nothing.”

  The youth did not respond, which was wisdom too, and was right. In normal times, death—to the young, at least—was a strange, alien landscape, but those elders who sat within the room understood it well, had caught glimpses of it from time to time, had felt the dried, ashen sand of that place beneath their feet. “One hundred warriors, he said,” spoke another. “One hundred at least.”

  “Likely more,” another agreed.