Shadows of Blood Page 4

  “A change is coming,” he said at last. “The Al’kah wants to explore a new use for you.”

  Yl’avah’s might, I didn’t like the sound of that. I swallowed. “I’m at the Al’kah’s service.”

  “Good.” He clapped my shoulder and met my eye. “Be ready.” Then he whirled away.

  The night was still and cold. I shivered, pulling my outer robes more tightly, struggling against weariness.

  The watch following an attack was always the worst. My eyes threatened to close against the shadows and my mind was sluggish. But my back, still stinging from the Sumadi’s claws, kept me awake.

  I paced, my sandalled feet tapping along the narrow rampart that circled the Guardian’s Hall. Originally, it hadn’t been designed for a regular watch, and the parapet barely rose to my knees. I could look out, leaning over the city, feeling the sharp wind and the taste of desert dust. If I closed my eyes, I could imagine I was back on the North Wall, the same defiant boy who gazed out, wishing to be something—like a Guardian.

  I snorted. As if that had made any difference. I was still here. Still trapped by walls and sand and shadow.

  I turned, and my eye caught the Avanir, the towering black pillar of stone at the heart of Shyandar. For two months now it had been dry. That was nothing unusual. It happened every Kaprash. Except there was something . . . unsettling about it now.

  “You’re staring again.”

  I shook myself. Breta was standing a few paces away, head tilted in amusement. “Every time we’re on watch, you stare.”

  She thought I was looking for the water, waiting for Kaprash to end.

  “You know, I can’t help but wonder who’ll be Chosen this time,” she said, and sighed. “I miss him. He might have taken the Oath with us, you know.”

  Pol. She was remembering Polityr ab’Ymashu, sent off to cleanse the Lifewater—or so they claimed.

  “I know,” I said.

  “What if it takes ab’Tanadu next? What if it takes you?”

  “Me? The Avanir would never Choose me. I’m . . .”

  “Too special? Too important?” she teased.

  Too damaged.

  I said nothing. The thought of being Chosen by that thing terrified me, though everyone else seemed to think it an honour. I glanced at the Avanir again. Despite its nakedness, it seemed bigger somehow than it had before. More daunting. More . . . dangerous.

  “Sorry,” Breta sighed. “I forgot how sensitive you are. It’s not a bad thing to hear the Sumadi, you know. Even if it does make you a freak.”

  “Thanks,” I snorted. “But that’s not—”

  I frowned. Had I seen something out of the corner of my eye? A shadow? A flap of cloth?

  Breta followed my gaze, one hand already on her keshu. We waited. Nothing.

  “It’s nothing,” I whispered.

  She nodded, the tightness slowly leaking out of her. “Sands,” she finally said. “How do you do it? Every blasted night on the walls? You must be exhausted.”

  I was. But I shook my head. “I’m the only one who can hear the shades coming.”

  “Little good that’ll do if they wear you out.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Are you? I see the way the Circle treats you. Stands you on the wall every night, trains you to exhaustion, keeps asking you to do more, risk more.”

  I frowned. More, Umaala had said. Much more. “They need me, is all.”

  “Oh, is that all?”

  “Of course!”

  She rolled her eyes. I hated when she gave me that look. Like I was a fool, and even I knew it.

  “I can’t believe you’d be so naive, Vanya. They’re punishing you!”

  “But I haven’t done anything wrong!”

  “Besides embarrassing them?”

  “How the blasted sands—?”

  “Look. They threw you out of the Hall. They were done with you. They made their decision. Then the Al’kah forced you back in. He’s not supposed to do that, but he did, so that’s that. And worse, he was probably right. You can do something no one else can—this weird seeing into the Unseen thing. Don’t you get it? The very fact of you being here is an embarrassment! They need you, Vanya, and they resent you for it. When all’s said and done, they’d be happy if you ate sand. Don’t ever forget it.”

  Breta’s words made me uncomfortable. There was too much truth there, confirmed by the ragged ends of my own stamina.

  All the more reason not to fail.

  Then Breta hissed and grabbed my arm. She pointed. A shadow slipped through the yard.

  “Is it one of them?” she asked. “I thought you’re supposed to hear them coming!”

  “You were distracting me!” I struggled to concentrate. There was a whiff in the Unseen, faint, almost non-existent. I hesitated. “It’s . . . just one, I think.”

  “So should I . . . ?”

  “Wait here.” I launched down the ladder, landing on the hard ground, keshu drawn, then sprang across the yard. The shadow moved, snapping out of sight with the suddenness of Sumadi.

  I swore and hurried after it, desperately trying to re-focus, to listen. If more appeared, we’d have to sound the alarm, but this one seemed alone.

  There. The shadow appeared in the centre of the yard. Just standing there. Watching me.

  A prickle ran through me. Why wasn’t it attacking? I moved again in its direction, and again it vanished, melting into the ground. I pursued, and now it stood near the back, towards the camel yard.

  Breta caught up to me, breathing hard. “Vanya, what it is?”

  “You’re supposed to stay on the wall!”

  “And let you go after one of those things alone? I don’t think so.”

  It was only one. Do more, Umaala had said.

  I had to speak with it. If I sounded the alarm, it would flee. It was only one. I considered arguing with Breta, but that would take too much time. “Come on,” I hissed.

  We slipped through the back of the Hall. Answers, Umaala had said. Well, so be it.

  It appeared again in the camel yard. Moonlight glanced off it—rippling in lines of silver as it took form. It was waiting for me. Just . . . waiting.

  I swallowed. “Breta, wait here.”

  “No way! If you’re—”

  “Breta.” I shot her a look. “Please.” Without waiting for her to respond, I strode across the camel yard alone. The creature didn’t move this time. I felt the cold creeping across the ground, flowing out from it like mist. And I sensed it now, sharp and clear, that familiar sinking in my gut. Like claws latching into me, filling me. Clawing into my eyes, my lungs.

  I banished the memories. This one wasn’t attacking. It stood, watching me.

  Destroy the Broken, it said, as soft as a breeze.

  I stopped. It was speaking to me. None of the creatures had tried to speak me, not since my failure the first night of Kaprash.

  “What’s broken?” I asked.

  Everything.

  I swallowed. “You mean the Breaking of the Pillar of Blood, the Elders who broke the Laws of Creation?”

  It said nothing.

  “I can’t fix that.”

  Nothing.

  “Why are you attacking us? Why now?”

  See us.

  I clenched my jaw. Always the same answer. Like I was missing something. I’d once thought they were the corrupted remnants of the ancient Elders of Kayr, but seeing them, seeing so many in the Unseen, had changed my mind. So what was I missing?

  It didn’t move. Its arms hung listless at its sides. It stared at me, open, hungry . . . pleading.

  See us.

  I sheathed my keshu.

  “Vanya!”

  I ignored Breta’s cry. I strode towards it, hands empty, heart pounding. Yet even as I approached, a Guardian’s calm fell over me. I met its gaze. I walked straight up to it.

  “Have I seen you before?” I asked quietly. That face. It was almost familiar. I stopped only a pace away, and the crea
ture met my eye, blinking slowly. Frowning. It reached out a hand.

  I refused to back away. Not this time. I let its touch rest against me cheek, that scalding cold fire. I did not flinch.

  This was different. Something was happening. Something . . .

  Van . . . ya . . . ?

  I gasped. In that lilt, like a question, desperate and scared, I saw.

  “No.”

  I jerked back, feet stumbling. No. No, it couldn’t be. It was a trick. It was a lie. Some deception in the Unseen. I reached for my keshu. I was cold. So cold. I couldn’t feel my fingers.

  Breta’s keshu sang through the air. Before I could cry out, before I could stop her, the blade sliced through the Sumadi’s ribs, parting putrid flesh, cutting through bone and muscle like cloth.

  The creature jerked and grabbed for her, an agonizing scream leaking out of it. She stabbed again, and it burst into light. Then it collapsed into a heap of flesh.

  Silence followed.

  Breta was breathing hard. She stared at the Sumadi, then back at me. “Sands, Vanya. What happened?”

  “I . . . I . . . I saw . . .”

  I couldn’t form the words. I couldn’t bring myself to speak it aloud.

  “What? Vanya, what did you—”

  “Yl’avah and the Tree, Breta, I . . .” I pointed to the fallen Sumadi. The corpse had fallen backwards, face up, staring through empty sockets into an empty sky.

  “Look,” I finally said.

  “Look for what?”

  “Just . . . just look!”

  Breta looked. She stared at the corpse. She frowned and glanced back at me, then looked again.

  It was less rotten than most Sumadi, some might even say young, with a once-strong frame, a prominent chin, and tangled dark hair. Dark skin stretched thin over shrunken muscles, like someone starved and sickly—yet not a monster at all. Not a soulless tormented creature. Not a shadow.

  Breta gave a strangled cry. She scrambled back, keshu dropping to the dust.

  “No!” She covered her face in horror.

  We heard footsteps. I glanced behind me and saw Mani, one of the older members of our kiyah, hurrying towards us.

  “Is it Sumadi? You didn’t sound the alarm, but I heard . . .”

  She stopped when she saw the corpse, then glanced between us, brows raised in a silent question.

  “It’s not real,” Breta finally croaked, letting out a sob. “It . . . it can’t be.”

  “Are there others?” Mani asked.

  “No. Just . . . just him.”

  Mani frowned at the way I said that, then looked at the corpse. She bent next to it and, with careful fingers, tilted the head towards the moonlight.

  “Yl’avah save us,” she whispered. She glanced back at me. “This was your friend, one of the Novices, wasn’t he?”

  “Polityr,” I finally said. “His name was Polityr ab’Ymashu.”

  Mani was as stoic as ab’Tanadu, yet her face blanched. She let out a long, tight breath. “Polityr was Chosen a year ago.”

  “Yes, he was,” I said. I felt her eyes and Breta’s, but I couldn’t shift my gaze. I couldn’t look away. Polityr. All I saw was my friend. Standing before the Avanir, clutching the bright star of its blessing. Now staring out of a Sumadi’s dead eyes.

  It made sense. It made too much sense. A sickening, horrible kind of sense.

  We thought Chosen never came back. We thought they went off to the Chorah’dyn and cleansed the Lifewater, maybe trapped beyond the desert, unable to return, maybe sacrificing their own lives in the process. But we were wrong.

  Chosen did come back. But not as people. As Sumadi.

  “No.” Breta sniffed, rubbing her face, body shaking with silent tears. “No, no. It can’t be. It can’t.”

  “It is,” I said.

  “But that . . . that’s Pol!” Breta cried. “We knew him. We trained with him. We ate our sand-blasted meals with him and . . . and . . .”

  “And then he was Chosen,” I said. “Last Renewing. A Novice from our Hall.”

  Mani shook her head. “Ishvandu, we only know this body looks like Polityr, but we can’t—”

  “He spoke my name,” I said. “Blasted light and all, he spoke my name. He looked me straight in the eye. He never attacked. He just stared at me, trying to be seen by me. He just wanted to be seen . . .” I trailed off.

  Mani nodded. Then in a sudden move, she slashed out with her keshu. The blade cut through Polityr’s face like a threshing hook. Tearing skin and bone, parting flesh.

  I cried out, but she struck again, and again. In three swift blows, the face was unrecognizable.

  Breta clutched her stomach with a sob. I grabbed Mani’s arm.

  “What did you do? What—?”

  “No one can know,” she said calmly as she flicked her keshu and slid it back into her sheath. “No one.”

  “But—!”

  “Ishvandu, think about it.” Her voice was low. “Think about the panic this would cause. The face of a Chosen on a Sumadi?”

  I was breathing hard, the reality of it starting to hit me at last, the horrible implications, the crimes of the Avanir compounding in my mind with frightening speed as I thought of the hundreds of gaping eyes, the dozens of corpses, year after year, their numbers mounting. Three more every year. And another three. And another. All returning to claim more victims, more dead.

  “Yl’avah save us,” Breta whispered. “The Choosing.”

  “Yes,” Mani said. “And imagine what would happen if our system, our laws, this delicate balance of life—everything that turns upon Kaprash and Renewing—imagine for a single moment what would happen if that was thrown into confusion. Do you know what would happen then?”

  I swallowed. “Chaos.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So we just pretend this never happened? That we never saw?” I stared at her. “We just let wave after wave of Chosen march off to . . . to this? To a fate worse than death? Do you have any idea how much pain they’re in?”

  “I can imagine.”

  “You can’t! You couldn’t possibly have any idea. But I know. And there is nothing you could imagine in this life more horrible than what Pol felt every moment of this wretched existence. Nothing!”

  “Regardless,” Mani said quietly.

  I gazed at her, stunned.

  “No one can know,” she repeated. “For their own good, Vanya. No one. Who would follow the Avanir, knowing this? Who would follow the Guardians, or a system that could perpetuate this? Who would follow us?”

  My voice was raw as I spoke. “Who, indeed?”

  Then I turned away, my heart shrivelling as I abandoned Polityr to the dust.

  Chapter Two

  Kulnethar ab’Ethanir

  I stared in dismay at the withered spots that marched across my plants—little shadows, devouring as they came. They’d sprung out of nowhere, just a few days ago, and already the blight had claimed a third of my danswort. It was a disaster!

  Of course, all destruction was grievous, but this—this was my prized stock. It was the perfect plant. Bright green flowers burst out of a smooth node, able to hold a month’s supply of water. The stems were woody and strong. The roots went deep. The plant’s nectar attracted pollinating insects, and the scent wafted through the gardens every evening, gentler than jasmine, with its own warm energy, like fresh grass and cider. The hips made excellent tea, with a hint of spice, and I was having promising results mixing it with teakwood and bloodwort sap for the treatment of inflammation and internal toxins. It was called danastia tela in the old books, or more commonly, danswort.

  And it was dying.

  I frowned, struggling to contain my emotions. It was a plant. It was just a plant. And yet it was so much more. It was a piece of our past, brought over from the Old Lands, marvellously adapted. It was attractive. It was a bright spot of hope—fragrant and strong. And above all, it was useful. How many ailments had I treated with danswort? How many of my pati
ents had remarked gratefully on their improvements? Even my father, in his condition . . .

  I shook my head, realizing I had no choice but to take invasive action. If I wanted to save the plant, I had to burn it. Burn everything but the healthiest stock, and pray the Chorah’dyn’s strength over what remained.

  I dug my fingers into the soil at the base of the plant, searching until I found the root. There. It was strong and thick, one main tap, with a dozen smaller branches. I grimaced, and pulled. There was a deep pop, like a bone snapping out of place. The plant came loose in a spray of dirt, rich with the smell of earth and manure. I turned and set the plant carefully onto the path, then pulled another. And another. Pop, pop, pop, like seeds bursting over a fire. Tearing, breaking. The green flowers shrank from me, unaware they were already dead.

  “I’m sorry,” I groaned, mopping beads of sweat off my forehead. “I wish there were another way. I do. I really do.” The pile grew into a depressing mound of yellowed leaves and withered nodes.

  “But if you pass this on, you’ll be wiped out in a month. I can’t have that. And you don’t want that either. Of course you don’t.” I yanked out another. The whole root came up with it. Two and half feet of beautiful, thick root. I sighed and set it on the heap. “But I’ll take good care of the others. I promise, I’ll do my best. We’ll make it through—”

  “Kulnethar ab’Ethanir!” an Acolyte appeared, puffing through the greenery. “I’ve been looking all over for you. Quick! Alis needs you. The . . . the patient . . . the one—you know. She’s up, and it’s . . . it’s not good. Hurry!”

  I dropped the last plant onto the stack, took two steps, and glanced back. “Bemyn, can you see this is taken care of? I need the uprooted ones burned, along with every other blighted danswort. Get Tatri to help. See it’s done quickly. Every blighted one, mind you. I’ll check later. Got it?”

  Then I was pelting through the garden, robes yanked up to my knees. I knew what patient, of course. I knew—and had been dreading this moment.

  Students and Acolytes parted for me, and I felt their eyes. I hurried up the smooth, white steps, first tier, second—I could already hear the screaming.

  Yl’avah’s might! I burst into the healing room. It was reeling with white robes and panic. Unintelligible cries pierced the air, churning, deafening, drowning out the shouts of the healers as they struggled to restrain the woman.