by Garth Nix
Great-uncle Ebbitt was his last hope. Surely Ebbitt would think of something.
The wardrobe of white bone was gone, though it had been there only that morning. It seemed such a long time ago, because so much had happened. Not for the first time, Tal wondered how Ebbitt moved everything around so quickly.
Tal moved cautiously through the furniture. He wasn't in the mood for one of Ebbitt's practical jokes, particularly since they often involved some sort of mild injury.
But his great-uncle was clearly in sight when Tal rounded a marble statue of a Chosen, caught forever in the stance of a light-sculptor, Sunstone at the ready. That was a good sign. When Ebbitt hid, the practical jokes were always much worse.
Coincidentally, the old man was sitting by a Beastmaker table, idly shuffling the cards. He got up as Tal approached.
"How was the Achievement?" he asked. "I heard it was a superb performance."
"I got the Yellow Ray of Failed Ambition," said Tal sullenly.
"I didn't ask about your results," snapped Ebbitt. "You would never be properly rewarded with Sushin as one of the judges."
"But why?" Tal sat down in a convenient but too large chair, and rested his head in his hands. "Everything I do, there seems to be someone against me!"
"Probably because there is," Ebbitt observed. "Sushin for one. He's always hated your father for besting him in the Achievement of Combat. Eight times, I believe, over the years. But he wouldn't dare act alone. I'm afraid that someone higher up has taken a dislike to our family."
"Who?" asked Tal.
"I don't know," said Ebbitt. Without warning, he suddenly pursed his lips and whistled a complicated birdcall, then cocked his head as if expecting a reply. When none came, he continued. "But I'll find out. Now, where have you been? The Achievement finished hours ago."
"I went to see the Empress -"
"You what?!" exclaimed Ebbitt.
"But the guards wouldn't let me in," Tal continued. "Ethar said she would if I won a game of Beast-maker, and I was winning, but then Sharrakor -"
"Sharrakor!" exclaimed Ebbitt, gripping his white hair and doing a strange, frenzied dance across to Tal.
"Sharrakor came in and spat on the game and the beasts disappeared," said Tal. "Then Ethar and another guard kicked me out."
"Thank the Sun and the Stars and all things of Light," said Ebbitt, sinking to his knees. "Don't you know anything, boy? You must never, ever go to the Empress without permission!"
"I just wanted to get a Sunstone," Tal said wearily. It seemed he couldn't do anything right. "I have to get a Sunstone somehow. I've asked the cousins, and tried to win an Achievement, and tried to see the Empress. I can't think of anything else."
"Why not?" said Ebbitt. "You are my grandnephew, aren't you? You must have inherited some of my tremendous thinking power."
"I don't know," said Tal. He wasn't sure Ebbitt had all that great thinking power. He had lots of weird thought power, but that wasn't the same.
"Where can you find Sunstones?" asked Ebbitt. "Sunstones that no one owns yet. Lots and lots of lovely Sunstones, ripe for the taking."
"Nowhere," Tal replied glumly.
Ebbitt stretched out his hands toward the ceiling and capered around in a circle, singing, "Up in the Sun, the Glorious Sun, where Stone Fingers stretch and stretch, up through the darksome Veil!"
"You mean the Towers?" asked Tal, unable to believe what Ebbitt was suggesting.
"Yes," said Ebbitt. He stopped capering and knelt down next to Tal, suddenly serious. "It's dangerous, but I believe it is the only hope now. All the usual means of gaining a Sunstone will be blocked by Sushin or the Chosen he is in league with. You will have to climb one of the towers and steal a Sun-stone. Steal several, while you're at it."
"Steal a Sunstone?" asked Tal. "But what about the guards, and the Spiritshadows, and the traps?"
"Try the Red Tower," said Ebbitt. "It will be the least protected. Your shadowguard looks pretty smart. It'll help you find the traps."
Tal looked at his shadowguard. It had taken a shape similar to Tal's natural shadow, but with the chest bravely puffed out. Obviously it thought stealing a Sunstone was a good idea.
"How would I start?" asked Tal. "I don't even know how to get outside."
"I know," said Ebbitt. "Underfolk ways, unseen by Chosen. I'll show you."
Tal stared at the old man, and then down at his puffed-up shadowguard. It sounded extremely risky, but he really couldn't think of anything else.
"All right," he said finally. "But first I want to go home and have a rest."
And, he thought, he could say good-bye to his mother, and Gref, and Kusi.
In case he didn't come back.
"Excellent!" exclaimed Ebbitt. "I'm sure you'll have lots of fun!"
PART TWO: AFTER
CHAPTER ELEVEN
"Lots of fun, lots of fun, lots of fun, lots of fun…"
Ebbitt's voice was echoing inside Tal's head, accompanied by a weird, really loud rushing noise. It was also incredibly cold and dark. For a few seconds, Tal thought that he was in the middle of an awful nightmare. Any moment now he would wake up, to the soft light of his sleeping chamber…
But he was awake!
He had taken Ebbitt's advice. He had climbed the Red Tower. And he'd fallen off, right through the Veil. In just a few seconds he would hit the Castle roofs and that would
Suddenly Tal realized that he wasn't falling down so much as sideways, like a feather blown on the wind. Something was also gripping him quite painfully around the chest and waist.
Tal craned his head around, but couldn't see. It was absolutely black, the darkest he had ever experienced. Dark so fearful that his hand automatically went to his Sunstone.
But it wasn't there. The chain was still around his neck, but the Sunstone itself seemed to have gone. Desperately, Tal pulled at the chain, hoping that his fingers would find the Sunstone.
But the chain was caught somehow. It wouldn't move. Tal tugged at it again, and light suddenly blossomed behind him. At the same time, there was a sound that Tal found unbelievably comforting -his shadowguard's warning hiss!
He craned his head back again and saw that his shadowguard was gripping him. It had made four arms to hold him tight, and a pair of very long, very thin wings. That was why he wasn't falling! He and the shadowguard were gliding on the wind.
Tal laughed, a crazy laugh of relief. He was speeding away from the Castle, carried by the wind, out into darkness. But he had his shadowguard, and he had his Sunstone he hoped.
The laughter stopped as everything went black again. Tal clutched at his chain. It was still there. He tugged on it, and the shadowguard hissed. Tal tugged again, and the shadowguard hissed louder.
Finally, Tal understood. The shadowguard must have formed around the Sunstone, drawing every little bit of the stone's light to make itself as big and strong as it could. All shadows needed light to exist. Without the Sunstone, the shadowguard would dissipate in this total darkness, under the Veil.
There was a lot of snow. Cold, wet lumps kept hitting Tal in the face. He had become totally soaked by them. He remembered blacking out, but not for how long. By the feel of his frozen hands and face, it had been for quite a long time.
He looked down. There was nothing to see but darkness, a dark so terrifying that Tal had to shut his eyes. It was better to pretend to be asleep than to look into a world without light.
In fact, Tal thought, maybe he was dead. This was what happened after life. There wasn't anything outside the Castle. He'd died and gone somewhere else.
Perhaps he would fall forever…
But he didn't feel like he was dead. He could feel his body, which was shivering with both cold and fear. He felt the shadowguard shift a little, try to flow around him to give him extra protection from the wind, but most of its shadowflesh was being used in the wings that kept them gliding.
On and on they flew. Tal lost track of time, and all feeling in his face and
hands. He opened his eyes every now and then, blinking against the onrush of snow and ice, blinking away his own frozen tears. But there was still no sign of light.
Later, Tal was almost unconscious again and totally frozen. He thought he was going to die and that this horrible flight through darkness and snow would never end. Then he saw it. A bright glow somewhere ahead and below.
"The Castle!" Tal shouted, or tried to, but his lips were frozen together, and all that came our was a muffled cry.
The shadowguard tilted its wings, and they turned toward the distant light. Surely it was the Castle, Tal thought, not caring that the wind must have taken them away from his home. As far as he knew, there was nothing else in the whole Dark World. It had to be the Castle.
But as they flew closer, he became puzzled, his tired, frozen mind grappling with what he saw. The light was too small to be coming from the Castle, too feeble. There should be hundreds of lights, thousands of lights!
He was still wondering what it might be when the shadowguard suddenly hissed and flapped its wings in a frenzy, desperately trying to slow them down. Three very long seconds later, Tal and his winged shadowguard plowed into the side of a hill, snow spraying out in all directions as they bored into a deep, wet drift.
CHAPTER TWELVE
They went a long way into the drift. So far that Tal seriously thought he'd be smothered before he could claw his way back to the surface. At least the shadowguard had let go of his Sunstone, so he had some light and could tell which way was up.
Or so he thought. Being buried in the drift was a bit like being underwater. The cold, wet snow was all around him and kept getting in his mouth and nose every time he tried to breathe. The only way to move was to use a half-swimming, half-digging action.
Fortunately the Sunstone warmed him and lit his path. When Tal finally clambered out of the drift and staggered to a point where he was only up to his waist in snow, he held the Sunstone up and concentrated on it. It grew brighter, and waves of warm air flowed from it over Tal's hands and sopping wet clothes.
Tal groaned and grimaced as the warm air returned feeling to his frozen hands and face.
Tal stood there for what seemed like hours with the warm air flowing around him, as much as he could generate from the Sunstone. But he still couldn't get really warm. His shadowguard was draped across his shoulders like an extra cloak, but it didn't help.
Even worse than the cold was his sense of disorientation. There was nothing but snow around him, as far as his Sunstone's light fell. There were no other lights in the darkness.
It was a completely alien landscape, even stranger to Tal than the spirit world of Aenir. At least he had been there before and was trained to cope with it. He also knew how to leave Aenir. What if he was trapped in this cold wasteland forever?
The warmth of his Sunstone helped Tal think a little. It was familiar and comforting, even if did melt the snow around his legs and make them wetter as the rest of him got dry.
"I have to get back to the Castle," said Tal. Saying it aloud made it seem more likely that he would. On his shoulder, the shadowguard made itself a head and nodded in agreement.
Saying it was easier than doing it, Tal thought as he looked around. The Sunstone illuminated a small area around him, but even ten stretches away it was dark again. There was no sign of that other light he'd seen from above.
"Which way is the Castle?" he asked, hoping his shadowguard would know.
It shuffled on his shoulder and then extruded a thin, one-fingered arm that pointed off at a right angle.
"That way," said Tal. It looked the same as any other way. "How far?"
The shadowguard did not answer, but he felt it make a motion like a shrug. Tal thought about the question for a moment, then rephrased it. He was used to working at communication with the shadowguard. He often had to ask the same question several different ways.
"How far to the Castle in stretches?" asked Tal. Distances inside the Castle were measured in stretches. Tal knew his arm from shoulder to wrist was almost exactly one stretch. They didn't need a larger measure.
The shadowguard extended a hand and grew ten or twelve fingers, which it wiggled up and down too quickly to count.
"A long way," Tal translated. He knew it had to be, but he'd somehow hoped it wasn't. "Well, I guess I'd better start walking."
Following the direction the shadowguard had given, he started to push through the snow. It was hard work, harder than he expected. The snow was tightly packed, and though the envelope of warm air around him melted it a little, it was not enough to make walking easier.
After a few hundred stretches of this, Tal was exhausted. He'd started to sneeze, too, and could feel fluid spreading in his chest, making it harder to breathe. Back in the Castle, he would simply have gone to his parents, who could heal such simple ailments with their Sunstones. But Tal had not yet learned Healing and so could only suffer.
But he wouldn't give up. Far away, his mother lay ill in her bed. And what had happened to Gref? What if the Spiritshadow that had taken Gref was like the one that had attacked Tal above the Veil? Gref could be dead, or lying wounded somewhere. Tal had to get back as soon as he could.
After a while, the snow got shallower, and while it was easier to walk through, Tal started to slip more often. He realized he was walking on ice, under a light dusting of snow.
"One, two, three…"
He started counting steps. Somewhere around a thousand, he lost track of what he was up to and had to start again. His shadowguard was also having to point out the right direction every few minutes, as Tal started to turn into a circle. Everything looked the same. Ice and more ice, with nothing to see.
He was up to one thousand and ninety-eight steps when he suddenly realized that while he was still counting aloud, his legs had stopped moving. In fact, he had fallen over in the snow, too weary to immediately realize what was going on.
The shadowguard was tugging at him, hissing, trying to lever him back up again. Tal laughed at its efforts, a hysterical laugh that surprised him, because what was happening was the exact opposite of funny. But he did get up, and staggered on a few steps, his laughter turning into a choking cough.
Then he saw the light. A strange, soft green light that was moving over the ice faster than he could run. For a moment he thought it was two enormous green eyes in the head of a huge monster, sprinting toward him.
Then, as it drew closer and slowed, he saw that the light was coming from a box that was being drawn across the ice, in harness, by six shaggy-haired, four-legged creatures with tall heads and spiky branches sticking out between what he presumed were ears.
The box was some sort of cart, Tal realized, like the ones the Underfolk used to move things around. But it had very long, thin sort of feet-things, Tal guessed, instead of wheels.
The soft green light came from the globes that were mounted on either side of the strange cart. They were made of tightly woven strips of bone, with the light coming through the gaps in the weave.
Then Tal noticed that there was someone in the contraption. For a second he felt incredible relief. It had to be some of the Underfolk. He'd never really understood where they got all the food and goods used by the Chosen. Obviously they came out here to get something. He would commandeer their strange transport and have them take him back to the Castle immediately.
"Thank the Light," he gasped, staggering forward, holding up his Sunstone, ready to show light and prove himself a Chosen.
The next thing he knew, he was facedown on the ice, with his shadowguard wrapped around his knees - just as a spear whistled through the air exactly where his head had been!
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Tal's attacker made a horrible keening noise as Tal desperately rolled to the side. New energy came from pure fright, as he pushed himself up and tried to run away.
But the spear-thrower was in front of him. A short monster covered in furs, concealing everything of its form. Its face was totally
white, as pale as bone, with hideous markings and deep-set yellow eyes. Its mouth was a round, dark hole.
It also had an ax, a great-bladed thing, not of metal, but some sort of carved bone or translucent stone.
Instinctively, Tal raised his Sunstone and directed a blast of white, hot light at the creature. It yowled like a cat, raised one arm to shield itself, and advanced on its hind legs, swinging the ax viciously from side to side.
Tal stumbled back, while trying to keep the light focused on the creature's eyes. But it had tucked its chin into its chest, avoiding the beam. Even like this, it still came on, howling and chopping with its ax, the blade cutting the air just in front of Tal as he retreated.
It would catch him soon. He was too tired to keep focusing on his Sunstone, and would slip. If he didn't do something else he would be chopped into bits.
The shadowguard realized that, too, and Tal felt it slip off his shoulders. It fell to the ground as a dark splotch, but was up again immediately, as a Corvile that dashed at Tal's attacker.
The creature, head down, didn't see it till it was too late. The shadowguard nipped at one knee, shadow-teeth ripping through fur and possibly the flesh underneath.
"Ow!" exclaimed the monster, sounding surprisingly human. "By the Crone, you'll pay for that!"
Tal almost stopped in surprise as he heard that voice. This wasn't a monster. It was a girl! The hideous face was a mask, with amber lenses in the eyeholes!
Girl or monster, she was still very dangerous. She saw Tal's surprise and lunged forward, the blunt end of her ax striking him in the stomach with a sickening thud. Winded, Tal crumpled to the ice, his light beam shooting off into the sky.
"No, no," he begged, holding up one hand as if he could ward off the ax blow that followed. "Don't kill me!"
"Die, thief!" she shouted in return. "This is Far-Raider's Ice!"
Everything seemed to happen in slow motion then. Tal saw the girl raise her ax high above her head, the blade glinting in the Sunstone's light. The shadowguard was wrapped around her leg, biting, but she paid it no attention.
Higher and higher the ax went, and Tal could hear the deep in-drawing of the girl's breath as she prepared for a blow that would cut him in half.
