The Arcana: Shadow Wars, Codex I

Chapter XXXIII

Retribution

In which Edana turns the tables

Edana summoned fresh Star Dragons, a group of eight, sending half to Khratu’s temple. The other half escorted her to the home of a priest.

After Edana’s experience with the First Abyssal she had brooded over a story her father once told her. When she first arrived in Valentis she made discreet inquiries until she located a priest steeped in the lore of the Speaker. It was he whom she turned to now.

“Please, may it not be in vain,” she prayed.

“My child,” he said when she finished. “I feel your plight greatly, I do.”

Edana’s heart sank. “You’re not going to give it to me, are you?”

He rose from his chair. The priest had received her in his own home, near the Sower’s temple. His wife was bustling about, preparing their children for bed.

At their mother’s command the little girls reluctantly abandoned their dolls, which they artfully arranged in a tableau featuring toy gryphons and chariots.

Edana hated to discuss Erebossa and curses in such a place, but the priest seemed more pitying than perturbed.

“No one in living memory has done the rites you require,” he fretted.

He headed for the scroll cases he kept in a cabinet, high enough—hypothetically—to protect them from his four-year-old twins.

“But surely the knowledge is preserved?”

He pulled down one box. The perfume of cedar wafted out when he opened it. The priest flicked through the tags at the end of each scroll, rejecting several until at last he pulled out the one he sought.

“Not here,” he answered finally. “None of my scrolls mention the rites. But what we need—what you need—may still exist. Let me see.”

He unfurled the scroll, setting it rolling across the length of the table. It stopped barely short of falling off the edge.

Edana joined him. The ink hadn’t faded, thank the Sower. But the script form was older than she was used to seeing, and she had to concentrate to make the words intelligible to her own eyes.

“Here,” the priest said, pointing a long index finger at a particular passage. He tapped the passage, emphasizing his point. “The final cylinder is in Eitan. This says the weapon still survives, and is kept in the Great Fane. With instructions.”

Edana’s heart sank further. No portal connected Eitan with any part of the empire. Even if Escamilla were generous in his deadline, she would need at least a month to cross over the Sky Guard Mountains on foot. If she managed it before the first snows fell. Less if she hired a dragon-riding beast master to take her. The sailing season would end shortly; she would have no other recourse.

But Escamilla was not generous.

Her insides froze, and all hope began to fade.

I know what you fear, Escamilla taunted. You told me in your dreams.

Frequently, Edana had nightmares where Bessa, too, died before her eyes. Just as Mama had.

Escamilla couldn’t kill Bessa. But he had gone out of his way to try to force Edana to kill her instead, knowing he would be destroying two of his enemies as they had destroyed two of his kind.

But then inspiration struck. “Thank you,” Edana said calmly. “May I ask one favor of you?”

Nearly two hours later she stood in Lady Nensela’s oraculum. In one hand she clutched a scroll case.

Ziri and Lady Nensela stood next to her, staring at the stars reflected in the pool.

“Are you sure about this? There’s no reason to believe they’d agree to your plan,” Ziri pointed out.

Edana waved the scroll case at him. “Leverage. I only need you to do your part.”

“I will go with you,” Lady Nensela said, surprising them both. “I have not been to Elon for so long a time. More to the point, you said the priest believed no one in living memory has done the rites. I suppose he meant no living Eitanite?”

Lady Nensela’s lips curved, and Edana’s heart somersaulted. For the first time she saw the glorious consequences of having an immortal friend. Even better, the flicker of hope that had cooled to embers now roared back, bigger than before.

“You both need to hold hands with me,” Ziri said.

“How does this work?” Edana asked.

She accepted an outstretched hand as Lady Nensela clasped the other. Ziri’s grip was strong and firm.

Ziri shrugged. “No time for the long answer. Short answer: trust me.”

“Ah. Yes. Well, will we get wet?” Edana shook her scroll case, deliberately chosen because the goatskin exterior was proof against water.

“Oh. No worries there,” he assured her.

Suddenly, the water in the pool was rushing toward them. Before she could even blink, Edana’s gulp became a gasp.

No longer did they stand in Lady Nensela’s oraculum.

Before them now was a spring surrounded by lush vegetation. And, true to Ziri’s promise, the trio was completely dry. A cool breeze caressed Edana’s cheek, and brought along the perfume of night-blooming flowers.

“Ah,” Lady Nensela sighed. “Elon.” Slowly she turned about, taking in the view.

Edana did the same. The walls of a great city loomed in the distance, reflecting blue in the light of the moon. So there was Elon. So this was Eitan! Here she stood now, in her father’s land. Had he ever looked upon those ancient walls?

Bessa would want Edana to soak in every detail so she could relay enough for the city to serve as a setting in Bessa’s stories. But first Edana had to save her. Quickly. She had marked the time before they left; they were now on the other side of midnight. Dawn would come all too soon.

Traveling at a brisk pace, they reached the city gates in less than an hour. Seeing the high priest was not so simple; however. His own servants refused to awaken him at first, insisting the group return at dawn.

“Like civilized people! For decency’s sake!”

“Dawn will be too late,” Edana insisted, all of her terror and heartache coming to the fore. The adamantine stoicism that had always been her shield shattered in the face of the slaves’ stony gazes.

The high priest himself was stone-faced when they brought him to her in his receiving room. He snatched from her hands the letter of introduction the priest in Valentis had prepared for her. The letter crumpled in his fists when he finished reading.

“Your name is Edana?” His lips curled in obvious distaste at her Siluran name.

He spoke in Pelasgian, not in the Eitanite tongue, and Edana suspected he had not done so out of respect for Lady Nensela and Ziri. Edana swallowed hard, but met his gaze forthrightly.

“Correct, Edana Nuriel. Born in Silura, far from my father’s birthplace in the Blue Crescent, where he was one of the Taken.”

When he said nothing she continued. He kept his arms folded over his chest, and glared at her through slitted eyes. In icy silence he listened as she explained what she wanted and why.

“Was it too much bother for your father to teach you our ways? To think you would dare imagine using the cylinder in any vain errand! Such sacrilege.”

Edana folded her hands, and considered what she would say. Contempt radiated from the priest, but she was not moved. What was mere contempt compared to the First Abyssal? And where was the First Abyssal now?

“Eminence, I have great respect for the cylinder’s purpose. I seek only to use it for the very purpose for which the Sower had us create them: fellshades—sleepless enemies—walk this world in bodily form. Am I to permit one to do as it pleases?”

“Can it trouble those who have not put themselves in its hands?”

Ah. Never did she imagine a priest might be naive enough to believe bad things only happened to bad people. But likely he was offended by the ‘barbarian’ half of her heritage.

“Yes,” she answered. “Of course they can, and do. Don’t they seek to destroy their enemies? And the prey of this sleepless enemy is one who has already defeated two of its faction.”

She eyed him. Where the wicked were concerned, the Scrolls were steadfast on an important point: they could not vanquish fellshades. They could ally with fellshades, be enslaved by fellshades, but they could not vanquish fellshades.

The priest blinked, brought up short. He turned on his heel, breaking the withering stare he’d fixed on her the whole time. When he turned back to see her his eyes were clouded, and his face had lost its sternness.

“If I give you the cylinder, it will not be available for Eitan when the need arises.”

Edana felt Nensela stir behind her, but she kept her eyes on the priest. She had carefully avoided looking at her companions; the high priest’s conduct profoundly shamed her. She considered how respectfully Bessa had spoken to her maternal grandparents, even as their insular stance went against everything Bessa believed.

“Your eminence, three sleepless enemies are abroad,” Edana said at last, copying the firm-yet-deferential tone Bessa had used with her grandparents. Inwardly, she was pleased she managed to keep the bite out of her voice. “The Scrolls tell us if you know of a thing, you are accountable, so by my reckoning I must ask this favor of you. Please understand, I’m not hunting fellshades who make deals with simpleminded sorcerers: I am after eidolons who are actively preparing the ground for an invasion into our world.”

The priest blanched, and Edana deliberately let the silence stretch. In silence she studied him, watching the comprehension dawn on his face he re-read the letter she’d brought him. After he rolled up the little scroll he made a small gesture with his hand, which she interpreted as an invitation to speak again.

“What I know is where to find one enemy now; we’re still hunting the other two. Yield the cylinder, and you protect Eitan and everyone else. Keep the cylinder”—she met his eyes—“and you can’t rightly claim innocence when agents of Erebossa unleash the full brunt of their schemes.”

All during their exchange, Lady Nensela kept her silence. Now she stepped forward, regal and formidable. The priest eyed her warily.

The only sign of Lady Nensela’s anger was her cool, measured tone. “Wast thou there, Eminent One, when the cylinders were constructed? In this age, is it no longer known that only the Sower’s own can wield the cylinders? Do I understand thou believeth my companion is unknown to the Sower, solely because of her name? Come, O learned father: a foreign name is no rare and unusual thing amongst thy people. If I know this, thou must know it also.” She spoke the Eitanite language in what was now the liturgical register—which would have been everyday speech when she first learned it.

The priest narrowed his eyes. “Are you claiming to be—”

“Nensela of Ta-Seti, at thy service.”

Her stare was not withering. It was more subtle in its reproach than that, but Edana’s neck prickled all the same. For several heartbeats the priest shifted his weight, before ultimately inclining his head in respect. Accepting Lady Nensela’s claim. And the consequences.

“Your service to our people is known to me,” he said at last, and again Edana wondered why Lady Nensela was exiled to Eitan, and what she did while there. “I will not cross one the Sower Himself gave honor to. You may take the cylinder.”

It took more time than Edana liked for the temple keepers to retrieve the cylinder; but soon enough she and her companions were back in Valentis.

A carriage was already waiting for them when they returned to Lady Nensela’s house. Edana delayed only long enough to fetch one other item.

The sacrificial grounds lay at the edge of the summit of Khratu’s Hill. There they were met by the Star Dragons Edana had sent ahead. The arcana assured them no one had gone into the temple.

“But you should see this.”

They led her to a steeply sloping ravine. At the bottom they found the mouth of a cave, which made Edana think of the Red Daggers’ lair. A shudder rippled through her as memory of Gallo’s compulsion spell came flooding back. Squaring her shoulders, she whispered to herself, “I’m a Star Dragon now.”

By Phaënna’s grace, never again could anyone compel her with magic.

Lady Nensela had her arrows ready, and the men unsheathed their weapons as well. One of the Star Dragons was a beast master. An owl peered at them from its perch on his shoulder. At his command, the owl flew into the cave, ahead of them.

“We will be alerted to any dangers,” he said.

Into the darkness they walked, the owl’s soft hooting guiding them. Though they carried glowlights, shadows pooled around everything the lights touched. Never for a moment did the group believe their lights revealed more than what the shadows concealed.

The Star Dragons formed an infantry square with Edana, Lady Nensela, and Ziri in the hollow middle. Edana was glad for the formation; the hair on the back of her neck stood up when she realized the passage was so wide that even twelve men walking abreast wouldn’t touch the sides at either end. Anything could be in the shadows. Lurking. Waiting.

Just when Edana thought her nerves might break, the owl screeched. A screech followed by an exclamation, and expletives.

“What’s this damn bird doing here?”

Now before her was a cave chamber, illuminated by powerful glowlights. The sight of it took Edana’s breath away. Striations, layers of stone in the wall seemed to undulate in the glare of glowlights. Large, pale grey pillars rose from floor to ceiling, forming a kind of colonnade from one end of the great cavern to the other. Like the columns of a temple. Instinct told Edana that this was Escamilla’s base of operations even before she spotted the three men gathered near an altar.

It was no holy altar, that much was obvious from the frieze carved into its base: dreadful arsh’atûm cavorting about. Some monsters Edana recognized, the lamia in particular. Others she couldn’t name, but they inspired her to pray she never saw them in the flesh. Near the altar, the men had drawn a circle on the floor, but it was too far away for her to make it out.

She turned her attention to the men. Camping gear strewn about indicated the men had been stationed in the caves. Two of the men were sheathing their swords, but the third one still held his out, slack in his hand as he visually tracked the owl flitting about the cavern.

The men didn’t realize they were no longer alone until they saw Lady Nensela’s arrow protruding from the first man’s shoulder. Then the second man knelt, her next arrow taking him in the thigh.

The third man started to charge them then stopped abruptly, seeing the Star Dragon men fan out around the women. He drove his sword into the ground, surrendering. He yelped in surprise when Lady Nensela’s next arrow took him in his left shoulder.

The first man cursed loud and long, but Lady Nensela ignored him to focus on the second man. He was wailing that she’d poisoned him.

“Indeed I have,” she replied. “Have no fear: you will not die. The question is whether you will want to live.”

Silence.

A sweet smile, and the seer looked downright girlish. “You know I am immortal. For you this means one thing: I know poisons the lore of which is lost to the Restorites of this age. I know their antidotes. Do you understand?”

The bandits fixed their eyes on her.

“What do you want?” the first grunted, clutching his shoulder.

“Your master, Escamilla. Summon him. Forthwith.”

Edana, Nensela, and Ziri took position around the circle. Drawn in blood, it turned out to be a labyrinth pattern housed inside a meander border. A little seed sat at the center of the labyrinth. The labyrinth’s walls curved and curled in a serpentine wave. Serpentine, for the Abyssal Serpent. Seed, for the Sower. Death and life, the symbols, Edana had read, that always marked a nekromanteion—a shadow gate.

Ziri pointed at the symbols. “Look at the border.”

Edana squinted, studying the border for a few moments. Then she recoiled. What she’d taken for a meander pattern was something else entirely. The more she looked at it, the more her skin crawled. What was it?

“It’s shadow script. I suspect it’s the name of the eidolon inhabiting Escamilla’s body. I can’t read this. People who can, are people you never give your back to, understand?”

Ziri gave the order. Escamilla’s men uttered the summoning spell.

The Erebossan appeared in a puff of black smoke. He was still wearing the body of his human host, confirmation he still needed his fleshly cage to carry out his plans. And that he had, in fact, been in hiding.

Edana looked him over. Were his body inhabited by a human spirit, its neglected condition would warn of imminent death. But though his cheeks were hollowed, his eyes sunk, his complexion sallow, and his face lacerated with wrinkles, Escamilla’s host body would not die so long as the eidolon dwelt within it.

Escamilla pursed his lips at Edana, and sighed when he saw his men trussed behind her. She stood beyond arm’s reach from the circle, cradling the wool-wrapped cylinder.

With the barest of glances at the package, Escamilla smiled. “Kneel. Pledge your soul … if you would bargain for the life of your precious sister.”

Edana glared at him. Was his gambit an attempt to maneuver her as—she glanced up—the one called the Supreme Strategos might maneuver an enemy? With her soul as the prize?

“There will be no bargaining. I will never bow or kneel to you. Nor will I beg.”

He scoffed, “You are neither a priestess nor a sorceress. No power that can stand against—”

Right then she yanked the cloth from the cylinder. Its silver had taken on a patina of age, which made the holy symbols raised in low relief upon it stand out all the more. The cylinder was no longer than a baby, and no wider in diameter than Edana’s own hand. Yet she cradled it in her arms gently yet securely, as if it were a baby.

Escamilla reared back. His pupils vanished as the whole of his eye sockets turned black, betraying his infernal nature.

Calmly, Edana tapped the cylinder. “Recognize this?”

The eidolon bared his teeth.

In a light, conversational tone Edana said, “You told me how I should destroy you”—she nodded sharply and Escamilla’s mouth clicked shut, aborting whatever he was about to say—“when you chose Bessa as your target.”

He canted his head and smirked. “Trying to use my own words against me—”

“She’s loyal to the Reaper,” Edana continued, as if he hadn’t said anything. “If you don’t know about the living, I’ll tell you: farmers grow our wheat. They scythe them down. They divide the stalks from the grains by beating them with flails against a stone floor. Or they have their animals drag sharp-toothed boards through them, also against that stone. My father’s people don’t worship the Reaper. But they do harvest wheat, and so they call this the thresher.”

She hefted the cylinder, and in the glowlights the symbols blazed.

Now Escamilla folded his arms, though the effect was lost because his sleeves were so voluminous on him. Edana suppressed a smile. How the mighty had shrunk.

“Mortal, you think I will permit you to pulverize my body? Rip my essence away to trap it in your thresher?”

“As four others of your brethren were, in ages past? As I said, Bessa is the one who inspired your punishment. I saw what she would do to one who harmed her family, in keeping with our common heritage. My sister, as you said.”

Escamilla’s lips curled in a sneer. Because he was so busy posturing his contempt, he did not see the curved blade arcing in the air.

Straight for his neck.

Sharp, the scythe cleaved his head from his body.

The body fell forward, thudding at Edana’s feet outside the circle. At the same time, Edana promptly placed the cylinder in the circle, barring Escamilla’s escape.

Ziri, still holding the battle scythe Bessa’s grandfather had designed for the giants, now used the blade to sweep the head to his own feet.

Edana unsheathed one of her moonbow knives. The sigils etched on it glowed with white fire as she slammed it into Escamilla’s body, all the way to the hilt. The fire flared higher with a flame that did not burn Edana …

… but was clearly intolerable to the eidolon inside the body. The expected black cloud flew up, hovering in front of her face.

The symbols of the thresher flared white. Nensela, who had waited off to the side, stepped forward now. She chanted, using an older form of the Eitanite language than Edana had ever heard before. White light lanced out from the cylinder, unerringly seeking and finding Escamilla’s corpse. Encircled and trapped by the white light, the body disintegrated before their eyes, leaving no trace.

But the infernal smoke had already fled. Fled the body, fled the circle, fled the holy light of the threshing cylinder. It fled to the only place that would readily receive it: the head at Ziri’s feet.

Edana retrieved her knife and stalked over to the head. Black smoke furled where the eyes should be. She snatched up the head and looked in the eyes, hoping Escamilla could read her thoughts. With the flat of her still-glowing knife she cauterized the stump of the neck. The mouth was next; she burned the lips shut.

The smoke contracted. Acid green irises peered out of the eye sockets, roving to and fro.

“I have not left you a body,” Edana said, answering the question the now-mute Escamilla could not ask. “Nor will I keep your spirit. You will dwell in this cage, unable to haunt anyone’s dreams from this side of Erebossa, and unable to speak to the living. What comes next will torment you exquisitely … but I shall be pleased.”

It was already first light when they emerged from the caves. Before leaving, Edana found the curse doll on the altar, inside a lead coffin. The woolen doll’s arms were folded across its chest, a typical binding posture. The inner lid of the coffin bore infernal writing that could only have been the curse.

Once again Edana used her moonbow knife, and once more she called upon the Great Sower in a prayer. With holy fire she burned the coffin and the doll, destroying them utterly.

Known as the Supreme Strategos, Khratu — so His faithful claimed — blessed His followers with inventive battle strategies. Lore and legends boasted of the sublime vengeance they wrought against enemies. To Edana’s satisfaction, a calculating light came into the eyes of Khratu’s priests when she gave them Escamilla’s head. They enjoyed her explanation as to how she came to have it. As well, Nensela told them of her prophecy, and Escamilla’s role in it. The priests graciously received Escamilla’s servants, who were still bound and gagged.

“I leave it to you to avenge the desecration of your temple grounds,” Edana said.

The sun had fully risen by the time Edana, Nensela and Ziri descended the temple’s hill. A soft golden haze was settling over the city. Glowlights winked out like fireflies on streets and houses, as soon as the sunlight hit them.

When Edana arrived, Brison himself let her in. As though it were a pass token, she showed him Bessa’s comb, which Escamilla’s men had scattered not far from the altar. Edana also took the strands of hair she’d rescued from the curse coffin. Bessa’s red gold hair was unusual in this part of Rasena Valentis. So was Edana’s auburn for that matter, but Bessa’s was brighter. Seeing the hair and the comb, Brison’s grin could have lit a small room.

Bessa was awake, he said, and he escorted Edana to her bedroom, jauntily taking the stairs two at a time.

True to Brison’s word, two guardsmen were keeping watch at Bessa’s door. They let Edana pass, and Brison waved to Bessa, who was sitting in bed with her head propped against her pillows. She was staring at nothing, her face pensive as Monica attended to her. At Brison’s greeting she looked over, and her eyes brightened when she saw Edana. Brison left them alone.

Edana hurried over to her. “Bessa, I’m so sorry. I tried to stop him as soon as I could—”

Now that she’d defeated the Third Abyssal, Edana refused to speak his name if she could help it.

Bessa closed her eyes, leaning back into her pillows. Her natural color had not returned to her face, and she sounded profoundly exhausted when she spoke.

“I know. He chased me in my dreams. He meant for me to give up, to die. But I could not imagine facing my parents, my mother in particular, and telling them I died so easily. Especially when I knew you would stop him. And suddenly he vanished, and I woke up.”

Monica brought in a bowl of sweet chestnut porridge. By the aroma, Edana knew the porridge had been spiced with rue, pennyroyal, peppers, and silphium, with a touch of honey for sweetness. Just as Bessa liked it. Edana took the bowl from Monica and drew up a chair next to the bed.

As she fed Bessa, Edana told her of all that came to pass. After a while, Bessa had regained enough of herself to joke that she felt as if she’d first run a marathon, then fought off three lions before scaling a mountain.

Edana finished her story as she scraped up the last of the porridge. In silence, Bessa digested the meal. Finally she asked,

“So you didn’t need the cylinder after all?” Her eyes were closed, but she didn’t sound drowsy.

“Oh, I did. I wanted to destroy his body, and that’s what the threshers do: separate the body from the eidolon inhabiting it. But in the ancient days the sleepless enemies used indestructible constructs, not a living person. The thresher is a weapon an Eitanite would use.”

Bessa opened one eye. “But …?”

Edana could not help her smile. “A Siluran would cut off an enemy’s head to bind his soul and spirit within it. I used the thresher to sow and stoke fear in the fellshade. He needed to fear my putting him in it. Unfortunately for him, he didn’t consider I might trap him in the skull instead.”

“Like a Siluran.” Bessa smiled. “Hmm. That means you used his fear against him. Oh, nicely done.”

Monica pressed a cup into Edana’s hand. One whiff of the contents, and Edana’s nose wrinkled. Hot valerian water, which reeked like a sewer. In Bessa’s condition, the valerian might make her sleep too deeply for nightmares.

But Bessa pushed away the cup when Edana put it to her lips.

“I won’t need that,” she mumbled. “Before I was fighting sleep. Now I can rest.”

Edana set the cup aside and patted Bessa’s arm. Sometimes her own dreams were based on the last thing she thought about as she fell asleep. Therefore she said,

“Sleep well, Bessa. By the way, Lady Nensela promises to tell us all about her exile when you join us again. She says she will let you write about it, too.”

Bessa’s laugh, though feeble, left her with a smile on her face as she drifted off to sleep.