The Arcana: Shadow Wars, Codex I

Chapter XXXII

Vows and Stratagems

In which they prepare for battle

Sheridan glanced at Alia as she brushed past him, but held his tongue. Wise of him, Alia judged. Speaking in a civil fashion was not in her at the moment, and Sheridan didn’t deserve to have her snap at him. Shattering the altar to that obscenity of a goddess had felt good, but it was a temporary pleasure, a drop in a sea of rage.

She choked back her tears.

The unspeakable torments her aunts had endured at Zephyra’s hands was terrible enough. But to know Zephyra had imposed their suffering for their own good broke something inside of her.

Why, why did the Huntress forbid her from repaying Zephyra the evil she had done? Surely the Huntress wanted to avenge the defilement and murder of Her own daughters, what mother wouldn’t? Whatever means Zephyra used to kill her aunts should be visited on her.

Only slowly, and more painfully.

Alia walked ahead, as fast as she could to put as much distance as she could between herself and that—that person—because if she was in strangling reach of the Handmaiden, Alia would tear her throat out.

The others followed. Though Alia listened, she heard not a single word from Zephyra. Not even a whiny protest about the destruction of the altar. The Handmaiden was no Brennus Fellrath. Apparently.

What possible plans did the Huntress have for the Handmaiden? Aunt Nalini said Zephyra needed to be turned back to her original purpose. Zephyra was supposed to be a Restorite, but somehow she had been made into its opposite: she was a destroyer. One who uttered spells of negation in order to murder people. Still worse, she—

Alia halted in her tracks and whistled. The watchmen came up beside her. They had seemed to submit to her leadership, and she wondered if it was because they were emphasizing the watch part of her title of Watch-Huntress. They saw it as a point of commonality. Further, she had proved her legitimacy in their eyes by exposing the protector and protecting their city from the shadow fiends.

“Stop!” Captain Jahan shouted. He held up a hand, and the others abruptly halted.

Blood red fog snaked down the corridor toward them. In rhythm with the beat of a heart it floated, coming no higher than their knees. With it came the iron tang of blood and death, thick enough that Alia tasted it.

“We have the aegis. We should be safe from the death wind,” Alia said quickly, glancing back at the Eitanite priest. “Isn’t that so?”

The elixir should protect them from the death wind. Though Alia was loath to walk through it, they should be able to survive in its presence.

“We took the elixir,” Edana said.

Cold fury washed over her as the meaning sunk in. On the one hand, she would not be guilty if Zephyra failed to survive the miasma. Right? How was she to know Zephyra would need their protection from her own side? Besides, likely the Handmaiden would survive just fine, since she was allied with the one who had loosed the death wind upon them.

Samara flashed before her eyes, and the back of Alia’s neck prickled with shame. No matter how much Zephyra deserved it, she wasn’t worth risking the means to save Samara and the Land of the Radiant Gate. Though Alia wasn’t responsible for their predicament, she was responsible for what she chose to do about it.

Besides … there was no guarantee Zephyra wouldn’t die quickly and painlessly if the miasma got to her.

Alia whirled on her heels. “Back. Hurry.”

Zephyra stiffened when she saw the mist seeping towards them. She made no resistance when Tregarde pulled her along, forcing her to run at his pace.

They all began running, dashing through Zephyra’s apartments as fast as they could to put enough distance between themselves and the death wind. When they came to a fork in a corridor, Alia halted the group. Everyone took a moment to catch their breaths, but Alia turned to face Zephyra.

Leveling her most Rikka-like stare, Alia demanded, “Zephyra. Make yourself useful and tell us how we can escape.”

Zaran Tertius grabbed Zephyra’s hand, again preparing to certify whatever she said.

“That depends on what you want to do: I can get you to the gate. Or to the aerie. But not to both,” Zephyra said breathily, between huffs.

“The gate,” Edana said promptly. “Or else everyone in Elamis will die.”

“That was the plan,” Zephyra muttered. Hastily she added, “Not my plan. This is the excuse Artostes gave me when I asked about the army of arsh’atûm. According to him, because we didn’t have the dryad to sacrifice we would need a sacrifice of equal worth. The entire city would serve, he said.”

“And where is he?” Alia asked, shuddering in her disgust.

“I don’t know,” Zephyra said. Her arm jerked as Tregarde yanked the chain binding her wrist. The glare she shot at him was met with an impassive stare. With what dignity she could, Zephyra straightened her posture and fixed her face toward Alia, ignoring the sorcerer. “When I killed him, he became a shade and fled the throne room.”

When she killed him? Alia studied her, but found no trace of guile or deception. Internal strife between her enemies suited her own purposes, but for the moment she couldn’t see a way to make use of it.

“We should get going,” Jahan urged. “Show us the way to the gate.”

Obediently, Zephyra stepped forward and marched ahead, without regard for Tregarde or Zaran Tertius. Such icy hauteur Alia had seen before, in the archons of Lyrcania. Of course Zephyra didn’t imagine the men wouldn’t follow her; in her life she was used to her servants anticipating her every whim and fulfilling it without her having to ask. At some point the girl would need to be humbled. Thoroughly humbled.

But for now they needed to get out of the palace.

Soon enough, Zephyra brought them to a set of double doors that were already thrown wide open, onto a garden.

Or, what had been a garden.

Hellebores and other winter blooms were ground into the dirt, their torn petals scattered everywhere. Pot shards littered the brick-lined paths. Swathes of dyed wool garnished the thorns of rose bushes, along with occasional drops of blood.

A multitude of footprints told the tale. Prints which ended at the wall of rose thorns ahead. Warily, Alia surveyed the wall from where she stood in the midst of the garden. Until she knew what mechanism or spells were used to operate the wall, she wouldn’t bring the group any closer.

The guardsmen shut the doors behind them, enclosing them in the garden. Useless against the death wind, Alia thought, but no corporeal arsh’atûm could take them unawares at least.

Alia took out her Ellura Aura Detector No. 8 and crept to within arm’s reach of the wall. To her surprise, the Ellura remained inert. What, no spells on the wall? Yet, obviously, those who ran towards it did not expect it to be a barrier. Somehow, they got past the wall. How?

Alia turned a side-eye onto Zephyra, who as it happened, was watching her.

“Go through there to the tunnels,” she rasped. “And the dungeons, where we kept the dryads. More than that, you can get to the gate from there. But…if the death wind came from the gate, you may be right on it. There are two entrances to the shadow gate, the miasma may have traveled both or just one.”

Edana leaned against a quince tree, catching her breath. “Honored One,” she addressed Narsai, priest of the Sower. “Is there more of the elixir?”

“None,” he managed to say between coughing fits. He paused to rest on a bench. “I brought none with me.”

“Why did it come to this side?” Bessa asked. She was looking right at Zephyra. “I thought you were in league with whoever opened the gate. Why send the death wind where you will be? Don’t they need you?”

Zephyra remained upright, standing tall at just enough distance from Tregarde and Zaran Tertius to maintain some slack in her chains. Nevertheless, the seer still held her palm firmly in his own.

“I killed Artostes,” she said, without a hint of remorse. “Even if he’s angry with me, I don’t think he’d go against … Rahqu? He would not cross her. So unless she has someone in reserve, she wouldn’t let him get away with killing me.”

“So does that mean you are immune to the miasma?” Alia pressed.

If she was, it gave them options. How bitter it would be, if one of these people had to yield up their life just to save her.

I will not sacrifice anyone to save Zephyra, Alia vowed to herself.

“I’d rather not test it. I am…proof against many poisons.” She gestured to her robe, drawing their attention to the embroidery of opium poppies and belladonnas.

Bessa frowned and folded her arms more tightly around the box Narsai had taken from Zephyra. “Are those a boast of your prowess? Or are they symbols of Rahqu's creed?”

The note of reproach in her voice sharpened everyone’s attention, including Zephyra’s. However, the erstwhile handmaiden of Rahqu answered matter-of-factly.

“I wonder, now. Apart they are deadly poisons. Together they do some good.”

“If you count pseudo death-sleep as good,” Bessa snorted.

Once more heedless of her guards, Zephyra started for the thorn wall. Tregarde; however, must have shared Alia’s belief Zephyra needed humbling, because he remained where he was. Thus, Zephyra’s body jerked the moment she exceeded the reach of the chain.

With a yelp of surprise she whirled back at him.

“Mind how you go, little miss. Whatever traps and allies you have in those walls, just remember that every decent, and not-so-decent person in this city wants you dead. As for those of us within a dagger’s breadth of you right now? We’re the only ones who have a reason to keep you alive.”

“I am not unaware, sorcerer,” she said, without heat. “The wall operates by clever machinery, not magic. As I will demonstrate.”

This time, she waited for Tregarde and Zaran Tertius before she headed to the wall.

Alia slipped in beside Bessa as they followed Zephyra, so she heard Edana ask for an explanation.

Bessa answered, “Papouli said you need a fine hand to use those poppies and belladonnas together. He used their elixir in surgery, or brewed it on behalf of midwives. He had no other purpose for them together; it was too dangerous for his tastes. One flower can paralyze you, the other dulls your pain. The belladonna’s poison makes it painful to be in the light. If you mix it with the poppies you dream even as you’re awake. Taking it makes you helpless, and you will not remember anything that happens to you. I can’t help but draw a certain conclusion from that. Don’t you?”

Alia looked anew at Zephyra’s gown. Where did the Handmaiden stand in the analogy? Did Zephyra see herself as the dispenser of poisons? Or was she the one in the waking dream, helpless and ignorant of all that happened around her and to her?

Lies surrounded her everywhere she turned.

Fury blinded her before, but now Bessa’s words penetrated Alia’s mind. And Aunt Nalini’s words came to remembrance just then:

The one you call ‘Handmaiden’ is only a toy, for she is manipulated like the toys I made for you in your sapling time.

Desire for vengeance ebbed, if only a little, when Alia considered that when Zephyra fully learned the truth of how she’d been toyed with her pride would shatter as completely as the flower pots littering the garden. Humbling Zephyra would require no effort from Alia beyond standing aside while the truth barreled into her.

Ahead, Zephyra had reached the wall. As they watched she groped here and there along the wall, until suddenly a part of it swung open.

Amber torchlight glowed from within the tunnel, illuminating a staircase curving down out of sight.

Muddy tracks on the stone floors confirmed that some people had escaped this way. The watchmen again took the lead, on the grounds that someone could be waiting in ambush.

“Who all knows about these tunnels?” Alia asked.

“The servants knew,” Zephyra said with a shrug. “Everyone knew, really. Knowing wasn’t the issue, it was access: if you weren’t an upper servant or one of Amavand’s inner circle then you had no way of reaching the garden. You can only enter through my apartments or the lord protector’s. Not everyone in the palace was allowed to do that.”

Zephyra led the way downstairs. At the landing they came to a fork, where either they could continue down the stairs, or take another tunnel. Zephyra went into the tunnel, and Alia noticed the footprints did not come this way.

“What will happen if you do die from the miasma?” Tregarde asked. “You’re putting an awful lot of trust in your usefulness to a fellshade.”

“Indeed?” Zephyra said dryly. “I am sure your lore speaks of people like me. What do you say would happen to my kind?”

Tregarde didn’t answer, but Narsai did.

“You would be judged. And likely fed to the Abyssal Serpent.”

“Ah,” came Zephyra’s answer. “Then that is what will happen, I suppose.”

They moved in silence.

Because of their quietness, they heard the footsteps.

Footsteps not of their own making, Alia realized that immediately. The tread was unnatural.

“Weapons,” she murmured.

They were quick to obey, all except Zephyra, whose hands remained cuffed. Zaran Tertius and Tregarde dropped into guarded stances beside her.

Moments later, a shadowy shape appeared ahead. The shape shambled in time with the odd footsteps; clearly the creature was the one they heard. Weapons ready, they waited. Prudently, Tregarde put up another shield of protection. The shield was still in place when at last the creature stepped into the torchlight several feet away.

A hirsute, squat-bodied, bulbous-headed creature lurched toward them. Powerful muscles rippled below matted black fur. Dim yellow eyes peered out of a round face. Seeing them the creature cocked its head and skinned its lips back from its flat yellow teeth.

“Bakhtak!” Zephyra cried.

“The what—?” Sheridan started.

“Bringer of Nightmares,” Alia translated. Thanks to one of her cases she knew the bakhtak as a monster that menaced those who slept. It sought the deaths of sleepers, sitting atop them, crushing the breath out of them even as it reached into their dreams to change them into terrifying nightmares. Worse, swords did not affect it, for the bakhtak was truly more shadow than flesh. It only appeared to have a true body.

Exuberant, Alia exhaled. Finally, something easy. This arsh’atûm was no flayer. Having dealt with flayers no simple arsh’atûm impressed her anymore. While the monster was impervious to swords, it was not impervious to amulets. She reached for her medallion, preparing to dispatch the monster.

Suddenly, the bakhtak seized up. Its beady eyes rounded, and its mouth gaped open to reveal a cavernous throat. The bakhtak vanished, not even troubling itself to leave a corpse. Only then did they see another captain of the city watch, who straightened in surprise. He held out his own golden eagle amulet, which glowed leaf-green in his hands.

Captain Jahan greeted his counterpart. “Captain Darasha. Have you taken down the fellshade in the gate?”

“Negative,” Darasha replied, fastening the amulet around his neck. “We need your help. Come!”

As they ran, more sounds came to them. Screams, squeals, grunts, and growls, faint at first.

They came to a fancy courtyard, where ornate bronze doors were shut fast beneath a magnificent white iwan arch. Beyond the doors, the sounds of battle assaulted their ears.

“Stop! Don’t go in!” Bessa shouted.

Everyone halted, including the guard captains. Bessa rushed ahead of them all and stood before the door. She threw her arms open wide, as if to bar the way.

“Don’t go in,” she repeated. “Look. Do you see?”

She was pointing to the doors. Carved in high relief on the doors were motifs of jasmine, wolfsbane, belladonnas and poppies. Bisecting the door was a huge amulet carved to contain a symbol, which Alia did not recognize.

The symbol featured a paradox being, one with the head of a lion, a man’s body, and six serrated arms sporting hands of draconic talons.

“The gigalion,” Edana gasped. “This is the monster the giants—the Atta’u—turned into when the soldiers at Red Pointe killed hundreds at once.”

Ah. From what Mother taught her, Alia knew the shadow gates were not supposed to be marked in such a fashion. The Salamandra exclaimed as well.

“This is the wrong symbol,” Alia said, tracing an outline of it in the air. She was loath to get near enough to touch the symbol; it exuded unholiness. “The door to a nekromanteion should have a holy symbol, a twining of the marks of life and death.”

The amulet on the doors should have featured a labyrinth pattern of violet and red, the colors of life and death. The labyrinth itself would be encased in a meander border, patterned in white and black, the colors of the holy and the infernal. None could cross the gates without respecting such powers.

Why would the symbol be changed to a monstrous creature?

“The Atta’u come through such gates,” Zephyra said. “But Artostes said you didn’t have to use life-sowing magic to cross the seals. Amavand thought he had some sort of cheat to cross them. And I suppose he did: he was an Erebossan.”

“And that’s the problem,” Bessa said, still pointing, and that was when Alia realized she was focusing on the posts and lintel.

Something left deep claw marks in the posts and lintel, but not so badly to utterly obscure the shredded remains of the symbols once carved there.

Bessa continued, “I was warned once to never enter any room in a sorcerer’s house if you couldn’t see the posts and lintel of the doors. Sometimes they have symbols to bind a fellshade. At Honoria’s, the ones on her door were to allow her to come and go, and bring other fellshades with her.”

“The binding on this one was destroyed,” Tregarde said, his lips thinning into a grim line.

Alia and Edana drew their knives slightly from their sheaths.

They glowed a brilliant white.

Zephyra frowned up at the door. “I never saw those markings before. They were covered with drapery — maybe the binding was undone long before this.”

“Can it be fixed?” Alia asked, looking at Tregarde, who was shaking his head. She remembered then that he had been unaware of the higher aspects of the Huntress’ powers.

Captain Darasha groused, “That damn door has been our downfall. Two of the sorcerers tried to bind it, and the arsh’atûm just kept sending beasts to kill them. I managed to get out, and I closed the doors just in time. That thing was sending more monsters. We’re penned in; we can’t cross the gate seals to close the gate.”

Alia and Narsai glanced at each other. Twelve hours ago Bessa had suggested combining the powers of the Huntress and the Eitanim priests. Was he up to the task?

The lines around his eyes and mouth suggested he might be twenty or thirty years her senior, but he seemed robust enough. Grey did not salt his hair, in spite of his age. Like her, he wore a symbol of a holy authority around his neck. His emphasized that his Speaker could sow life. Hers emphasized that she could protect it. She walked over to him and leaned close, so only he could hear her.

“I have an idea. But I should tell you that if we fail, we won’t come out of that antechamber alive.”

He met her gaze. His eyes were a stunning stark green, not the teal of Edana’s. For the first time she noticed the scar running through his right eyebrow, and she found herself hoping that he’d earned it in combat.

“So long as we bring down the citadel as we die, there is no place for regrets,” he replied.

She inclined her head to him, a gesture of respect she had learned from the New Lyrcanians. “Then let it be done.”

Alia turned to the others and outlined the plan quickly. No one interrupted her, but she saw Bessa’s eyes grow rounder and rounder. The Siluran began to tremble, then she steeled herself, snapping her jaw shut as she held back her protest.

Sheridan; however, did not keep his silence. “How can you be so sure this is the only option? You’re the only one—”

She clamped a hand on his shoulder. The young man had gone pale, but his expression was animated in a way she’d never seen in him before.

As forthrightly as she could, Alia met his gaze. In the time she had known him, Sheridan had never offered rebellion. Her apprentice had been an apt pupil, quick to learn and measured in his actions. He had far less experience than she did at fighting against Rahqu, Queen of the Shadow Court, but she didn’t doubt his devotion to bringing her down.

“If I die to close the gates, it’s worth it,” Alia insisted. “I am not so important that a city should die just so I can save myself. Besides, there’s no guarantee I will die.”

It was true, she told herself. It was not a given she would die, or they would die. They simply had no way to retreat.

They won or they died.

Side by side, Alia and Narsai stood together, raising their amulets and pointing them at the door to the gate room. In their liturgical languages they each uttered prayers and incantations. Silver filaments shot forth from their amulets, streaking like lightning to the bronze doors.

As soon as the filaments struck, the doors burst open, collapsing off their hinges to fall on the floor beyond. Now, at last, they witnessed the carnage meted out in the nekromanteion. Almost instantly a shimmering silver shield barred the doorway.

A hideous shape rammed against the shield, vaporizing the moment it made contact. Quickly, more shapes appeared, each destroying itself as the Erebossi tested the shield.

It held fast.

Alia exchanged a wolfish smile with Narsai, who dipped his head to her, a small smile on his own lips. She turned to face Zephyra and her smile vanished.

“You stay here,” Alia commanded. Turning to Sheridan she added, “Guard her well.”

He opened his mouth to object, but she raised her hand, silencing him.

“It is not I who am asking you,” she said gently. “The Huntress wants her alive. So keep her alive. All this time I trusted you to guard my back. Now I’m trusting you to do this.”

Sheridan nodded, the embers cooling in his eyes. “Ironwing. It’s been an honor.”

A lump grew in her throat, and she looked away for a moment. When alone at night she sometimes lay in bed and wondered what her life might be like when she accomplished her quest to save her mother and her aunts. Without her mission to hunt Fellrath’s Brotherhood, would she have a place in human society?

In ways she could not explain, Alia always felt like an interested observer in the doings of humans. Not like a participant, but more like a politely tolerated guest. One who would be forgotten immediately once out of sight. But Sheridan didn’t appear indifferent to her existence, which gratified her in a way she didn’t expect.

“Likewise,” she managed at last. She cleared her throat. Casting about for somewhere to look, her eyes landed on Zephyra again.

The other woman’s jaw bunched, as if she, too, were on the verge of speaking. But the one-time Handmaiden dropped her eyes, looking at nothing.

Was it guilt? Bile burned her inside. Certainly the woman ought to feel guilt. By no means was she worthy of protection—but Aunt Nalini had made it clear the woman was not expendable, so Alia was obliged to protect her.

Even though Zephyra wasn’t worth dying for.

But Samara was. Rikka was. Aunt Xylia, her favorite aunt of all—they were worth dying for. If the only way to save them was to save Zephyra, then she would die saving Zephyra.

She turned to face the others.

The Salamandra were unsheathing their swords. Once bare in their hands, the swords flared into blue fire. Alia went over to them and blessed their weapons. Narsai was doing the same for the watchmen. Tregarde’s daggers were already white with holy light. He stood nearest the shield, his eyes on her.

You’re the golden eagle. Fit for bigger prey, he’d said of her.

Her blood began to race, even as ice water filled her belly.

There was always a bigger predator.

Always.

“Stay here, Bessa,” Edana said, unsheathing her knives as she prepared for battle.

Bessa drew herself up to her full height. “You’re not going in there without me!”

Edana startled her by throwing her arms around Bessa and hugging her so fiercely that Bessa had to gasp for breath. Her hair brushed Bess’s face, bringing with it the perfume of the violet-infused oil Edana brushed through her hair on the morning of the solstice. Had it only been yesterday?

Tears stung Bessa’s eyes. The world seemed to spin.

“I am,” Edana insisted. Her voice had a trembling note that she could not hide from Bessa. “You’re neither a sorceress or a priestess. Your knife only protects you from basilisks. Stay here with Selàna.”

It was sensible. It was wise. Fury and terror washed over her, threatening to drown her like a wave pulling her out to sea.

In her life she had seen her father dead, having been the one to find him hunched lifeless at his desk. Then came Papouli, who died watching the sunset with Grandmother in his arms. The faces of her slaughtered workers came back to her, as did the sketches of the tomb that would hold them. All of them were silent now, eternally silent, and she would never see them again this side of Erebossa.

But if she understood Uncle Min’da’s stories, then Edana might go to a different part of Erebossa than Bessa would.

If Edana died…if she died…

Edana drew back, sheathing her knife. Her hands free, she now lifted Bessa’s left hand and pressed the palm of her own left hand against Bessa’s. They still wore the bandages from their blood-binding ceremony. Edana’s fingers felt warm. Warm with life, warm with the pulse of her beating heart.

“Bessa—”

Bessa violently wrenched herself free. “Together! We do this together or not at all. That was—that was—that was what we decided! You know that. You know—”

She broke off. How could she explain? Seeing the Star Dragons return from the Red Daggers’ headquarters without Edana had nearly destroyed her. In that moment she had vowed to herself that Edana would never again face such danger without Bessa there to watch her back. Had she gone with Edana, Gallo could not have carried her off to Honoria’s, and Edana would stood a better chance of prevailing against the eidolon.

In her own bedroom at Falcon’s Hollow, Bessa had been the one to insist they were a pack. But when the time came, she had not been there to guard Edana. For this failure, this breach of honor, she must apologize. The greatness of the wrong meant she could not merely speak the apology with words, she must speak through her actions. To stay behind yet again would be unconscionable. A lifetime ago Edana had called upon her father’s spirit to witness against her if she failed to live up to the bond he’d made with Bessa’s father. This time, Bessa would call upon her father’s spirit.

She opened her mouth, but no sound came out. Every word she would say was stoppered by her throat. Her tongue fastened to the roof of her mouth.

Edana blinked, but made no move to wipe away her tears. Instead she unclipped the pouch at her belt, and pressed it into Bessa’s shaking hand.

Murena’s keystone.

Sorcha’s stone hung around Bessa’s neck. At her hips she carried the purse containing the orbs the Fire Lords had given them. And now, with Murena’s keystone, with Selàna in her charge, Edana had effectively bound her to the world of the living.

“Elisabet Philomelos. If I leave this world…if I leave this world, don’t do as I did: don’t give your life to grief. Write your plays. Marry Lysander. Name your firstborn after me.”

Without waiting for an answer Edana spun on her heels and rushed over to Alia, becoming the last to join the group. Once more she unsheathed her knives, the opalescent steel flashing in the light.

Just once she glanced back, meeting Bessa’s eyes.

Then she was gone.