Shadowbound

by Gage Lee

  The soulforged looked very uncomfortable at that comment and lowered his face without a word.

  “A robot?” Biz mouthed to me when the first two members of the Tribunal returned to take up positions near the door.

  “And I am Reesa Wollar,” a creaky voice said from the doorway. The last of the Tribunal entered the room with the assistance of an impressive staff. “I speak for the Iron Quill Cognate.”

  Reesa’s gray hair burst from her scalp in an unruly, wiry tangle. She wore a pair of glasses fitted with so many lenses I didn’t understand how she could see, and her milky skin was stained with splashes of ink in a riot of hues. Her only clothing, an oversized smock that hung all the way to the floor, was splattered with vivid streaks of color, as was the long, wormlike tail Reesa had in place of legs.

  It took her a while to reach us. The others in the room made no secret of their impatience, which annoyed me to no end. Reesa was clearly doing her best. They didn’t have to be jerks about it.

  I tugged on Biz’s sleeve and offered Reesa our hands.

  “I’m Kai Evers,” I said. “It is a pleasure to meet you.”

  “Biz,” my sister said. “When do we go home?”

  “Yes, well,” Ylor Valasa said. “Perhaps it is better if you see for yourself.”

  The eldwyr motioned for us to step follow him out of the chamber. Biz and I waited for Reesa to exit after Ylor and Baylo had departed, and Monitor took up the rear. It was hard to tell from his metal face, but the soulforged seemed very uncomfortable with all this.

  Our group entered a hallway with a white-and-black marble checkerboard for a floor. The ceiling was at least twenty feet overhead, and the crystal chandeliers that dangled from it held not a single candle. The only light came from a golden globe that had appeared over Ylor’s head. The radiance cast no shadows and illuminated everything, including the tapestries that clung to the stone walls. Those enormous fabrics held images of creatures and people that slowly moved as we passed them. The perspective was confusing, and it seemed to me that the figures could either be fighting one another or working on some elaborate construction project.

  Our tiny caravan came to a stop in the next room, a great hall with an enormous dark wood table in its center. The light here came from a ragged hole in the ceiling. The sky overhead was a deep purple flecked with brilliant sparks that could have been stars. Things drifted through the sky above us, looking somehow both organic and mechanical. They were so far away, though, it was hard to tell what they were.

  The towering walls held enormous portraits of what must have been, at some point, very important or famous people. No one had looked after them for a very long time, however, and the pigments had faded away to bland smears trapped in heavy wooden frames. The carpet that ran down the room under the table looked like something had been nibbling at it, and the threads were frayed and coming loose all down its length.

  Despite how decrepit this room looked, it was also strangely beautiful. Magic and mystery lurked in the shadows, promising to reveal their secrets if only there was a place worthy of holding them. I don’t know how I knew, but miracles had been performed in this building, and wanted to happen again.

  “As you can see,” Ylor said after we’d all had time to absorb the room’s decaying grandeur, “the Ghostlight Academy has fallen on difficult times. That is why we called for Narsk Alaush, and why your presence here is so troubling.”

  “The ghostlight pool was our best hope to receive the aid we so desperately needed,” Reesa said in her surprisingly melodious voice. “As that has failed, however, we must make do with the tools we have on hand.”

  I did not like the way all eyes swiveled to Biz and me.

  “We’re kids,” Biz said. “You know, children. We’re not tools.”

  “The blade knows not its purpose,” Baylo muttered, then cleared her throat when the other members of the Tribunal gave her the stink eye. “The rest of you can shove it. I’m done dancing around the truth.”

  The green-skinned woman sat on the edge of the table and fixed Biz and me with her emerald stare.

  “Listen up, kids,” she said. “We’re in bad shape. The Ghostlight Academy is ruined, we blew our last shot at being rescued, and now we can’t leave this crumbling building without risking the wrath of a very old, very unpleasant curse. And that’s all a very long way around the point that we can send you home—”

  “Great!” Biz clapped her hands. “We’re all packed. Ready when you are.”

  “—but doing so will condemn us all to a slow and painful death.”

  Chapter Four

  BAYLO’S WORDS HUNG in the air for the space of three breaths. I tried to fit the last half of her sentence into my thoughts.

  “I don’t understand.” I frowned as the dire warning sank in. “I don’t see how sending us back home will kill anyone, much less all of you.”

  Reesa folded her hands together and tilted her head back, like a teacher reciting an important lesson from memory.

  “When the Fell Lords attacked the many worlds, our only recourse was to splinter our holdings and hide them within the shadowstream,” the worm woman lectured. “Each of the splinters is protected by a Tribunal and watched over by a Monitor. In order to sustain these holdings until such time as an engineer can properly restore them, the members of the Tribunal have invested all their available ghostlight into maintaining their splinter. It is possible—not guaranteed, but possible—that we could recall that ghostlight and use it to restore the gate and send you home.”

  “But, as Reesa has just explained to you,” Ylor interjected, “this course of action would lead to the end of this splinter, and all of us. The Ghostlight Academy, our most powerful hope to defeat the Fell Lords, will be lost. The many worlds will, in all likelihood, also be lost. As the only resident engineer, you could still command us to send you home, and we would honor that wish, dire as its cost would be.”

  “I don’t want to kill anyone,” I said quietly. “But I can’t rebuild your school, either.”

  The members of the Tribunal eyeballed one another, stared pointedly at Monitor for a few seconds, then directed their attention toward Biz and me. The three of them concentrated intensely without speaking, their eyes alight with sparks of golden ghostlight. Finally, Ylor pinched the bridge of his long, narrow nose and folded his hands into the wide, bell-like sleeves of his robes. He glided toward us, so smoothly I wondered if he was floating instead of walking. The eldwyr stopped a few feet away and nodded to my sister, then to me, before speaking.

  “The Tribunal is grateful that you would not condemn us to death out of hand,” he said. “That you would choose otherwise shows great wisdom.”

  “We haven’t decided anything yet,” Biz said. “I’m not even sure any of this is real.”

  “That is a philosophical point of view,” Ylor said with a cold chuckle. “After all, given an infinity of universes, surely one of them would host an intelligence capable of producing a facsimile of all the many worlds. There are sages among the great cultivators who believe that we exist in such a simulation. Be that as it may, I would like to assure you that we are as real as you are. In some cases, we may even be more real.”

  This conversation made my head spin. Like Biz, I still wasn’t convinced any of this was actually happening. There was a good chance I was in a hospital bed somewhere with my skull cracked by a piece of concrete knocked loose by the earthquake. I bit down on the inside of my lip, hoping it would wake me up. I felt the bite, but it didn’t hurt nearly as much as I’d expected.

  Weird.

  “Assuming we don’t want you all dead,” I said, “how do we get out of here?”

  “The Ghostlight Academy was once one of the most powerful institutions in the many worlds,” Ylor said solemnly. “There is a gate within it that can take you home. If, that is, you restore it.”

  “How?” Biz snapped. “If the four of you couldn’t fix it, what makes you think a couple of kids from A
naheim can?”

  “Narsk Alaush was dispatched to gather supplies and personnel to help in rebuilding this splinter,” Ylor said quietly. “He also carried the interface, which is vital to the success of this mission. I believe that he transferred it before you reached the gate that brought you here.”

  “He didn’t give us anything,” Biz said. “He was trying to steal our prize. He would’ve, too, if my bro wasn’t so much smarter than him.”

  Narsk hadn’t been a nice guy, but he had given me something. As I’d raced for the doorway that would take us to the gate, he’d thrown something that hit me in the back. The memory of that stinging sensation came back to me along with echoes of the many times I’d heard the voice in my head since then. If any of this was real, then I definitely had the interface. But I didn’t see any advantage in letting the creepy eldwyr know that.

  Still, if I was careful, this was a good time to learn more about what this thing inside me could do.

  “What does the interface do?” I asked, trying to seem less curious and concerned than I actually was.

  “It connects you to the local network.” Reesa slithered forward, one finger wagging in my direction, before Ylor could answer. I was surprised she could move quickly when she wanted to. “An engineer can use the network to direct ghostlight and perform restorations. It is not simple, however, no matter what the stinking elf will tell you.”

  “I do not lie,” Ylor said haughtily. “If you inkslingers ever took your noses out of the books you love so much you would know that the interface has improved dramatically these past centuries. It’s no more dangerous than a ghostlight transfer, and both these children have survived one of those.”

  “I don’t know anything about this garbage,” Baylo said lazily. “But I have heard that engineers only last about four years on the job before they retire. Or they get retired. It’s a dangerous job, with risks few outside the chosen will ever understand.”

  It would be nice, if once, just once, an adult told me the whole truth about anything. I wasn’t a genius, but you didn’t have to be one to see that the members of the Tribunal hated each other’s guts. It was just as clear that they all wanted something from Biz and me, but they wouldn’t just come out and tell me what that was. Instead, they were trying to manipulate me with their vague arguments and snippy disagreements.

  I hated it.

  “How long would it take to get us out of here if I did have this interface?” I asked.

  I wasn’t ready to admit that I did have it. On the other hand, I also didn’t want to walk around with this voice in my head for the rest of my life. I needed answers.

  “Well, that depends,” Ylor began.

  “How long?” Biz said. I recognize the dangerous tone of her voice. She might be a thirteen-year-old girl who was all of seventy pounds soaking wet, but she was also devious and more than willing to cause an ungodly amount of trouble if it suited her.

  “If you follow my advice, the best case would be several weeks,” Ylor sighed. “But there are many variables that I do not have control over. Any of them could affect the length of your stay here.”

  It was hard to hide my shock at Ylor’s estimate. Our mom would lose her mind if we were fifteen minutes late. If we disappeared for weeks, who knew what would happen?

  The idea of Biz without her medicine for that long would send our mother into hysterics. No, I couldn’t let her suffer like that. My mother may not have been the greatest parent in the world, but she didn’t deserve that kind of grief.

  “That’s way too long.” I turned my attention to Reesa. “Your turn. Is there another way out of here?”

  “Yes,” the worm woman said. She pulled her fingers through her long, scraggly hair and scratched her chin. “You could stockpile your ghostlight. It would take a great deal of time, but it is an alternative. With enough ghostlight, you could activate the gate even without repairing the generators or focusing crystals. But that would be a monumental undertaking. You could safely stockpile twice your core’s capacity in blades each day. If you pushed yourself, risking madness or possible core collapse, you could increase that to triple your core’s capacity. I do not know precisely how many blades it will require to send you home, but we burned nearly ten thousand in our attempt to bring Narsk Alaush to the Ghostlight Academy.”

  On a whim, I mentally asked the voice in my head what it would take to repair the gate and send Biz and me home. I wasn’t sure if I was pleased or scared that it answered almost immediately. It was nice to know there was something inside me that could provide information about this crazy world. It was terrifying to think that I might be crazy enough to not only imagine this whole mess, but also a voice with all the answers.

  >>>Akashik network interface transfer gate restoration report

  The transfer gate has suffered critical damage. Full restoration will include all of the following:

  Full constellation alignment of all ten orbits at a cost of one hundred blades per orbit.

  Complete gate repair at a cost of two thousand blades.

  An additional two thousand blades are required to fuel the transfer.<<<

  I suppressed a groan and gave up on that pipe dream. My core held five blades of ghostlight, and I imagined Biz’s did, too. If what Reesa said was true, my sister and I could safely store a total of twenty blades each day, and thirty if we pushed it.

  Best case, it would take us between eight and nine months to generate enough blades to fix the gate, refinery, and generator. That was insane.

  Biz grabbed my wrist and gave me a tug. She jerked her head toward the far corner of the hall, and I followed her for a private meeting out of earshot of Monitor and the Tribunal.

  “I don’t know what we should do,” she whispered. “I’m not even sure any of this is real, but if it is...”

  “I know,” I whispered back. I took Biz’s hands in my own and looked deep into her eyes. “I couldn’t live with myself if I asked these people to sacrifice themselves for us if this isn’t a dream.”

  “If I get sick here, I won’t get to live anyway,” Biz murmured.

  My sister’s words tore at my heart. The last thing I wanted to do was hurt her. And, no matter how cold Biz was acting right now, her illness had taught her just how precious life was. Those deaths would weigh on her conscience long after we were home. I couldn’t let that happen.

  “I know you’re scared,” I said. “I am, too. But three weeks isn’t that long—”

  “Mom is going crazy right now.” Biz clenched her fists and punched me in the shoulder. “You know she’ll lose her mind if we’re missing for almost a month.”

  “I know.” I took a deep breath, then let it out. It didn’t do much to calm me this time. “I think we have to see this through, Biz. If we’re hallucinating, it doesn’t matter how long we’re here, does it? And if this isn’t some messed-up dream...I can’t ask them to die for us.”

  Biz chewed on her lip for a moment, then turned her face to the side. Her cheeks were flushed, though her breathing sounded fine.

  My sister was crying. Not because she was sad; no, Biz didn’t work like that. Those were tears of frustration. She hated being out of control. Too much of her life had been decided for her by the sickness, our mom, the doctors and nurses who worked on her.

  “I’m sorry, kid.” I pulled Biz into a hug that she didn’t return. “I’ll get us out of here, just as fast as I can.”

  She nodded and returned my hug, but she wouldn’t look at me.

  I left my sister in the corner and returned to the table where the Tribunal and Monitor were gathered. It was hard to believe anything that had happened over the past hour was real. It all felt like a fever dream that I’d wake up from at any second. But it just kept going on and on.

  I’d been so close to winning those season passes Biz had dreamed of for so long. Then the earthquake, the Awakening, and Biz looking better than she had in years. Now these weirdos insisted the only way I’d ever see home
again was if I helped them renovate their moldy old castle.

  “We’ll help you restore this place,” I said with far more confidence than I felt. “But we’re only fixing what we need to go home. Tell me what needs to be fixed to get the gate up and running as quickly as possible.”

  “The generator,” Reesa said. “It will provide us with power. The Cognate can use that to repair the sutras around the school. That will make our lives more comfortable while you complete the rest of the repairs.”

  “Ridiculous.” Baylo pounded her fist on the table to emphasize her point. Her green eyes burned into mine, and she flashed me a tight grin filled with teeth that looked very, very sharp. “We need to retrieve the soulforged armor from the shadow vault to protect the Academy from the dangerous forces beyond our walls. Only after we’ve secured our base can we expand it.”

  “I cannot believe you are on about that again,” Ylor sighed. “The soulforged armor requires a vast amount of ghostlight for fuel and an experienced operator with a dedicated connection to control it. We have neither of those things, Baylo.”

  “Ylor is right,” Reesa grumped. “We do not have the blades the armor will need.”

  “Thank you for your concurrence,” Ylor said with a grimace, “but your priorities are no better than the green thug’s. Turning on your reading lights will help you. It will not help these children return home. Restoring the Chapel of Containment, on the other hand, will allow me to summon servitors and resources that will help us all.”

  “You talk an awful lot for the leader of the Silent Council.” Baylo snorted and walked around the table to stand toe-to-toe with me. “Listen, boy. These two eggheads are afraid of anything they can’t bind into servitude or fit between the covers of a book. There are dangers outside these walls they can’t even imagine, much less protect you against. And if you work with Pointy Ears over there, you’ll be up to your eyes in spirits and oogie boogies in no time. Come with me. I’ll teach the two of you how to fight. We’ll spend a few months getting the soulforged armor out of the vault and back to fighting shape, then you can worry about how to get home.”