The Wounded Shadow Page 7

  She followed him, thankful for the dirt and hay that silenced their footsteps. Her heart set a cadence that urged her to run. She groped at her waist for the only objects she couldn’t afford to leave behind, her scrying stone and her purse.

  With Wag at their side, they ran out the back of the stable toward the wall and the gate that opened onto the back street. Throwing the bolt, they slipped through, casting glances to either side. She took enough time to close the gate, wincing at the sound the hinges made.

  She reached out and grabbed a handful of Fess’s shirt. “Don’t run. You’ll attract attention.”

  “I was raised in the streets, Lady Deel. I know better than to call attention to myself that way, but walking won’t disguise a sentinel.”

  She nodded, turning toward the nearest alley. “Let’s get off this street and circle around. I want to have a look at our visitors.”

  Moments later they crouched behind a large planter, watching men who moved with the fluid grace of the gifted, each wearing similar clothing.

  “Do you know them, Lady Deel?”

  “I have a suspicion that they’re church guards,” she said, turning away. “That would mean the Archbishop wants something badly enough to send them. But it doesn’t matter. We’re leaving.”

  Fess didn’t stir from his crouch. “Lady Deel? What about Lord Dura and the rest?”

  She couldn’t help but hear the tone of accusation in his voice. “How many men did you see, Fess?”

  His features closed into a scowl. “Perhaps a dozen, with more already inside.”

  “Too many for us to fight,” she said. “We will have to let Lord Dura and the rest settle this with their wits.”

  “We can’t just—”

  “We can and will,” she said, “or have you forgotten Ealdor’s instruction?”

  “What about Modrie?” he asked.

  She paused, weighing options and possibilities. “She has plenty of food and water. Willet can tend to her better than we.”

  “What about the horses and supplies?” he asked.

  “No time. I have money enough in my purse to replace them.”

  “Is this what happens with the gift of domere?” he asked. “With all that time, do we all become stone inside?”

  She chose to answer his question instead of his accusation. “The gift is given in the hope that those who receive it will manage to retain their humanity.”

  Chapter 9

  Time and rain in the south had been just as merciless as the forest in the Everwood, both conspiring to reduce their churches to nothing more than a shell. Though the church here had been built to last for centuries, even the best construction had to be maintained. The red tile roof had withstood the elements better than thatch would have, but it hadn’t lasted through a century of disuse.

  As I picked my way through the narthex and entered into the sanctuary proper, I tried not to think of the parallels between the village church and myself. Spots of light came through holes in the roof, where tile and plaster had failed at last to keep the outside world at bay. “The pews are gone.” I don’t know why that surprised me. The sea had been implacable, but slow. The priests had probably taken everything of value.

  I scuffed my foot in the sludge that covered most of the floor and noted the similarity to Ealdor’s church in Bunard. A broad central aisle provided the main access to the confessional rail and the altar, while smaller aisles on the outside ran past empty holes where I assumed stained-glass windows had been.

  The altar was gone too, though for some reason they’d left the confessional rail. Evidently the exodus from this church in Aeldu had been more orderly than Ealdor’s little parish. I kept an eye out for snakes but didn’t see any as I made my way to the dais at the front, stepping to each puddle of light like a child playing hops.

  Of Ealdor, there was no sign.

  I sat on the top step of the dais with my back to the empty spot where the altar had been and waved away the dust that rose from my movement to tickle my nose. The church, abandoned and derelict like the ones in Bunard and the Everwood, depressed me. “This is getting to be a bad habit.” I half expected an echo, but the dirt and cobwebs muffled the sound.

  “Greetings, Willet.”

  Ealdor didn’t walk out of the shadows this time. Maybe he’d decided to surrender that pretense, or maybe he just didn’t like the shadows here. At any rate, he appeared on the top step, sitting next to me as if he’d been there all along.

  A beam of sunlight from a jagged hole in the roof illuminated my old friend, but I could see a stone buttress through his right shoulder, as though the little church, ruined as it was, possessed a substantiality that he did not. “You’re fading.”

  He shrugged, and the buttress behind him waved like grass in a pond. “No one lives forever.” My friend paused for a moment, considering. “At least so far.”

  Something in his manner, the diffidence combined with the slightest hitch in his voice, told me this was more than jesting. “Are you telling me someone is immortal? Who is it?”

  He met my gaze, and his eyes held a depth of sorrow that all my misfortune couldn’t hope to match. “You know the rules, Willet.”

  I nodded. “You can only tell me what I already know. Alright, is there any wiggle room in this rule?”

  He put out his hand to catch a stray beam of sunlight, and I saw light on the floor beneath his arm. “Evidently not,” I sighed. “Then I won’t ask you any questions.”

  I groped for what to say, hesitant to push my friend into forbidden territory. “You broke the rules when you came to us in Edring,” I said, my eyes stinging. “I’m sorry, Ealdor. I’m so sorry. Custos told us that we needed a circle, and I didn’t even try to put one together. I just called you.”

  Ealdor nodded, and bit of sunlight flared behind his eyes, making them appear lit from within. “That was a mistake, but it was mine, not yours.”

  “But I saw you,” I said. “You would have stayed if you could.” I paused. What I was about to say, I didn’t know, but strongly suspected. Would the rules allow him to confirm my intuition? “But if you’d stayed, you would have faded completely.”

  Ealdor eyed me for a moment, and I reminded myself that he wasn’t really there in the church with me, but in my thoughts. I could almost feel him rummaging around in my head before he answered. “Yes. The rules are severe.”

  “Who made them?” I asked before I could catch myself and thrust my hand out to keep him from answering.

  “You don’t have enough information yet to puzzle that one out, Willet. Take a step back.”

  I shook my head. “It’s impossible. There are too many questions screaming at me. I don’t know which ones are important, much less which ones I can figure out.”

  “You’re a reeve.”

  “Was a reeve,” I corrected.

  Ealdor smiled. “I’m not talking about your profession or circumstances, Willet. I’m talking about your nature.” He sobered, and something unimaginably desperate hollowed out his gaze. “Please. There’s more at stake here than you can know.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut and held up a hand in forbidding. “That’s not helping.” I took a pair of deep breaths that made me shudder as they came and went. I was rolling the bones with my friend’s life and countless others. “Alright, let’s go back to the beginning. Something has gotten loose from the Darkwater,” I said. “Cesla said he came to a lake and stood on metal. And he delved it.”

  Ealdor nodded once, slowly.

  I pulled a memory from my first conversation with Custos about my gift, how the ancients had described it as tunneling, like someone mining. The first commandment said not to delve the deep places of the earth. “It’s the same word for both, tunneling and delving.” Then I had it. “It’s a prison. The Darkwater is a prison, and when Cesla delved it, something inside the prison sensed it and took him.” I pushed myself off the dais, the room in the air too thick to breathe. Ealdor didn’t flinch. “Oh, Aer
help us. That was why we weren’t supposed to delve the deep places of the earth. It was never about silver or gold, it was to keep whatever was locked in the Darkwater Forest from getting out.”

  I stopped my frantic pacing. Something about that last bit didn’t ring quite true. “No.” I shook my head as if I could deny the disaster that was about to fall on the world. “If that was true, then there would be no need to continue luring people to the forest.” A memory of Myle holding a sliver of metal near a harp came to me. “Aurium. The prison is made of aurium, and whatever is inside isn’t truly free until the prison is breached.”

  I sat down, horror draining the strength from my legs. I spat a curse. “Cesla. What kind of arrogance makes a man break the most basic commandment of the liturgy?”

  Ealdor shrugged. “You already know the answer, Willet. Cesla placed his own ideas and inspiration above the liturgy. Perhaps he thought Aer had given him a new commandment.”

  With an effort, I pulled my thoughts back from Cesla and his stupidity and concentrated on the clues that were in front of me. “It’s not hopeless,” I said looking at Ealdor. “If it was, there would be no point to you showing up.” An unexpected flare of hope blossomed somewhere in my chest—small, but there. “There’s a way for us to win.” Just as quickly, it guttered and died. “But if you can’t tell us, how will we find it?”

  Ealdor stilled. “Let me point out two things you already know. Cesla is no longer himself. He is a combination of whatever is imprisoned in the Darkwater and the human known as Cesla.”

  “Well enough.” I nodded. “We’ve known that ever since Vaerwold. What’s the second?”

  A tremor worked its way across his right hand, marring the perfect peace Ealdor had worn ever since I’d known him. “How will you know what’s important to him, how to stop him?” He put his hand into a beam of sunlight and flexed it. Only after he turned it palm up and examined each finger did he sigh in relief.

  I opened my mouth to reply and stopped. Ealdor’s obvious question had carried some threat to his corporeality, some danger to his presence. Cesla. Two intelligences within one body. If there existed a way to stop him, and Ealdor’s appearance testified that there was, then Cesla would know of it as well. “And he’ll take steps to prevent us.” I finished the train of thought out loud.

  I looked at my friend, grieving over those parts of him that had become translucent. “He’ll strike at whatever threatens him.” I sighed. “You know that means we’ll have to react. We’ll be chasing him from behind, just as we did before.”

  “I know, Willet, but if I continue to break the rules of summoning, I’ll fade completely. I won’t even be able to tell you what you already know. I’ll just be gone.” His head dipped, and he wet his lips. On anyone else that gesture would have signaled nervousness, but one of the Fayit . . . ? I’d never seen Ealdor show that emotion.

  “Now I need to ask you a question, Willet.” He leaned toward me. “How do you know my name?”

  “I don’t—” I stopped at the look of panic that washed over him. Had he become less real than he’d been just a moment before or had I imagined it? Of all the things he might have asked or spoken of, he’d chosen this. If I said I didn’t know, then Ealdor had guided me toward some hint of knowledge I hadn’t possessed before. “How does anyone learn someone else’s name?” I said. “You told me.”

  He nodded and my heart fluttered with relief in my chest. Ealdor possessed the gift of domere as surely as if he were one of the Vigil. He’d looked into my thoughts far too often for there to be any other explanation. He knew Pellin and Toria and even Fess had all delved me, had searched me for the origin of his name. And none of them had found it.

  He winced, exhaling as if he’d been struck and the buttress behind him became easier to see.

  “Oh, Aer, help us. Even that cost you?” I asked. He held up a hand.

  “It’s not as bad as it could have been,” he said, “but the rules divine some measure of intent.”

  In that moment, his gaze held me as if he’d already died and had left his body of mist behind. The familiar abstraction, the glamour that came over me in the presence of the dead, exerted its hold and I slipped into the stare of his blue eyes. “What’s out there, Ealdor?” I whispered. “What will you see on the other side of eternity?”

  His laughter broke the spell, and I shook my head to scatter its traces. “Don’t worry, Willet, you’ll see it when it’s time.” He looked up toward the empty spot where the altar had been. “Time. It’s amazing how you can think you have so much of it and then realize it’s been slipping away faster than you could imagine. Would you like to celebrate haeling with me?”

  “This is why you came to me here,” I said, gasping with the intuition. “There’s something about celebrating haeling that sustains you.”

  He smiled and for a moment I could have pretended we were back in Bunard before Elwin’s death. “That was very well done, Willet. Doesn’t the church say that the celebration brings healing? It’s more real than you know. Even among the Fayit the mysteries of Aer held us. Shall we?”

  I nodded, trying to ignore the stinging in my eyes. Without a gesture or a word, an altar of uncut stones, similar to the one in the Everwood, appeared on the dais, and Ealdor’s worn purple stole graced his shoulders once more. I joined him behind the illusion and raised my hands to bless the empty church.

  “‘The six charisms of Aer are these,’” I pronounced, wondering as peace, unexpected as a ray of sun during a storm, found a home, however temporary, in my heart. “‘For the body, beauty and craft. For the mind, sum and parts. And for the soul, helps and devotion.’” After I finished haeling, Ealdor vanished, taking his altar with him, but the peace remained and I finished the coda, my arms raised to receive whatever blessing Aer might give.

  I left the church and descended the two sets of steps back to the plaza, their grouping of six and nine reminding me of the burden I had to satisfy before I could summon Ealdor for knowledge I didn’t already have. I needed a circle of six gifts or nine talents, and they all had to be pure. I tried not to let the fact that there no longer existed pure gifts or talents in the world deter me.

  I tried, but I failed.

  Gael, Bolt, and Rory looked at me with varying degrees of expectation in their gazes.

  “He came to you,” Bolt said. Not a question.

  I nodded. “It’s like most things. There are glad tidings and ill.”

  “Better to hear the ill first,” Bolt said. “It gives you something to look forward to.”

  Rory shook his head. “In the urchins, we always give the glad tidings first. That way if you die, you’ve missed out on the bad news.”

  I saw Gael start to say something, her eyes stricken, but Bolt cut her off, nodding in simple agreement. “Sense. I think I’ll start eating dessert first.”

  “We always do,” Rory said.

  “I like peaches,” Bolt said. “Especially in pies.”

  “I’m fond of currants,” Rory said. “There’s nothing like currant brandy to take the chill off.”

  I shook my head. “Are you two done?” I looked back the church. “The glad tidings are that we can win. Ealdor wouldn’t have come to us otherwise.”

  Bolt nodded, but his eyes were hooded, suspicious. “And the ill?”

  “He can’t tell us how. The rules binding his existence forbid him from answering our questions unless we can satisfy the strictures of summoning. That means assembling a circle of perfect gifts or talents. If he tries to break the rules again, he may disappear completely.” I pulled a shaky breath. “He’s lost so much of himself already.”

  Gael’s hair lifted in the breeze, mirroring her frustration. “That’s not overly helpful. That leaves us to guessing. We could spend lifetimes trying to find a way to fight the Darkwater.”

  “If it were impossible, he wouldn’t have come to me,” I said. “And we won’t have to guess Cesla’s intentions. Whatever has gotten loose fro
m the forest will strike at whatever threatens him most.”

  “Kreppa,” Bolt said. “And we’re supposed to magically interpret that into some course of action?” He shook his head in disgust. “‘When your enemy dictates the course of war, you’ve lost.’”

  I recognized his military adage from somewhere, but I couldn’t place it. “Whose is that?”

  “Magius, one of the generals who fought Agin and lost in the Gift of Kings War.”

  “That’s not exactly heartening to know,” I said. The Vigil’s answer to Agin had been to create something new, the dwimor, assassins who couldn’t be seen except by children. Whatever had taken Cesla had gained access to that knowledge. Three times I’d almost been killed by people I couldn’t see when they were right in front of me.

  Chapter 10

  We didn’t speak much on the road back to Edring, consigned as we were to waiting for Cesla’s next strike before plotting our course of action. For reasons I couldn’t quite define, I didn’t make mention of Ealdor’s question about how I knew his name. That it carried unimaginable importance, I couldn’t deny; Ealdor had risked and lost some of his nebulous existence to ask it. Yet it wasn’t the loss of a bit more of his presence that scared me so much as the implications of the obvious, terrifying answer.

  If Pellin, with over seven hundred years of existence and experience with the gift couldn’t find the memory of learning Ealdor’s name in my mind, that meant there was only one place it could be.

  Inside my vault.

  Somewhere within the black scroll lay the knowledge of Ealdor’s name and more—or else he wouldn’t have risked the last of his life to tell me. To get to that knowledge I would have to allow Pellin or Toria to break my vault and hope that against all odds and experience, I survived. As soon as that thought crossed my mind, two others accompanied it. A memory came to me of Bronach, a simple tanner woman from Bunard sitting on her stool, her mind shattered beyond repair after I’d broken her vault. Tearing the unreadable black scroll into pieces too small to reckon had robbed her of the last vestige of her humanity.