“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe the fact that she accepted your suggestion so quickly. Didn’t that seem strange to you? It was as if she had that envelope all ready for us.” I paused. “Maybe she already knows what this artifact is, and there’s some other reason she wants me to go out there. But what? I can’t figure it out.”
Alia Morgana had made it clear she could kill me with a word. So was I supposed to be afraid of her now, or grateful, or what? I felt like a pawn on a chessboard, surrounded by lethal pieces on every side, trusting a powerful chessmaster to maneuver me safely through all the deathtraps. But what was her end game? My survival might well depend upon figuring that out.
A pawn isn’t a piece you protect forever, I reminded myself. It’s something you sacrifice to keep more important pieces on the board.
Rita put down the jewelry. “Do you want to go home, Jesse? Because we still can do that. Our transportation costs were covered when you gave Morgana the painting, and she hasn’t done any other favors for us yet. We don’t owe her anything. Do you want to get out of here now, while that’s still easy to do?”
Did I? On a purely visceral level, it was tempting. But any hope I had of helping Mom would be shot to hell if I left. And who was to say Morgana would allow me to quit the game? If she’d been planning this deal from the start—as I suspected—she wasn’t going to let me just walk away from it. I had no idea why she’d chosen to protect me this long, but if I walked out on her now, I could kiss that protection goodbye.
I had no choice in this. Not really.
“I’ve come this far to help Mom,” I murmured. “I’m not going home empty-handed.” Never mind that it wasn’t my only reason for staying. Rita didn’t need to hear every dark thought that was churning in my head.
With a nod she pulled off the rings one by one and dropped them back into their storage pouch, followed by the bracelets. “Then let’s just deal with the task at hand, and not drive ourselves crazy trying to guess at Morgana’s motives. Okay? I doubt the devil himself could figure that woman out.” She pulled over my backpack to return the pouch to its zippered compartment, but as she did she seemed to discover something. “What’s this. . . . ?”
I realized what she must have found. “Don’t take it out, Rita—”
But she did, and she held it up in disbelief. “A Kindle?” She blinked. “They told you not to bring any electronic devices with you, and you packed a Kindle?”
I tried to grab it away from her, but she held the device high, out of my reach. “Say it a little louder,” I muttered. “I don’t think people in the next county heard you yet.”
“I doubt they’ll hear anything over the tussle we’re about to have. Or are you going to let me look at this thing without a fight? Because sooner or later I will look at it, you know that.”
Exhaling noisily, I gave up and sat back. She opened the cover and activated the device. “Oh look, no Wi-Fi signal available. Who’da thought?”
I sighed. “Can you at least look at it without being snarky?”
I watched her swipe the screen as she went through the index item by item, checking to see what books I had downloaded. Slowly her expression grew more serious. When she was done she looked up at me. “This is for Sebastian,” she said softly.
“Very insightful.” I took the Kindle from her and shut it off.
“Does this mean you’re planning to contact him?”
I sighed. “I’m not planning anything. I just thought that if we needed help while we were here, he was the only person outside Morgana’s circle that we knew well enough to turn to. And he’s a mercenary, so I brought something to pay him with.” I pulled my backpack to me and tucked the Kindle deep, deep into it, hiding it beneath folds of clothing. “I wouldn’t know how to contact him even if I wanted to.”
She was about to respond when we heard someone approach the door. Both of us froze.
A soft knock sounded. “Dinner’s being served.” It was a woman’s voice. “You’re welcome to join us in the common room if you’d like, or else we can have something sent up here for you.”
Rita and I looked at each other. I suddenly realized that I was clutching my backpack to my chest so tightly that anyone who came in would surely wonder what was in it. I forced my grip to relax.
“We’ll eat up here,” Rita called out. “Please.” After a moment she added, “Thank you.”
The footsteps padded away.
“We need to be careful,” I whispered.
“I wish you’d told me about the Kindle.” Then she sighed. “No, I don’t wish you’d told me. In fact, I wish I still didn’t know about it.”
I closed the pack and padlocked the main zipper shut. Normally I didn’t bother with locking it, but I was feeling particularly paranoid at the moment. “How about, ‘Don’t look in other people’s bags if you don’t want to know what’s in them’?”
She ignored my sarcastic tone. “Are you going to warn Sebastian that he has to read everything in there before the battery runs out? ’Cause he’d have to come back to Terra Colonna to plug in the adapter.”
A knowing smile crossed my face. I patted the bottom of the pack. “Portable solar charger. Size of a cell phone.”
“Damn!” She shook her head and laughed. “I underestimated you, Jesse.”
“Good.” I stowed the pack under my bed, wedging it in tightly, so anyone who tried to pull it out would shake the frame and wake me up. “Now let’s hope Morgana does the same.”
10
SHADOWCREST
VIRGINIA PRIME
ISAAC
“IT’S TIME.”
Isaac shut his eyes for a minute, then nodded.
The journeyman who had come for him was a distant relative, someone Isaac barely knew. Giovan Antonin was dressed in formal Guild attire similar to what Isaac was wearing: a long robe the color of smoke, with a silk stola—a long, narrow band of fabric—hanging down both sides of his chest. It was the kind of outfit you had to practice walking in, especially when going up stairs, lest the stola get caught underfoot. Isaac had learned that the hard way. Giovan’s stola was gray, a shade lighter than his robe—a journeyman’s color—and symbols of his achievements had been embroidered down both sides. By contrast, Isaac’s stola was white—the color of a blank page—and the only decoration on it was the crest of House Antonin embroidered on one end. Not until he had earned a journeyman’s status would he be allowed to advertise his accomplishments.
Not that he had any accomplishments to advertise. At least not ones the Shadows would celebrate.
“I’m ready,” he told his cousin. A half-truth. While part of him was genuinely curious to witness the secret rites of his Guild, another part wished he were miles away from Shadowcrest right now. The fact that his father had pulled strings to get him invited to this event only reinforced the lie that Isaac had been living, and he was sick of pretending that he was interested in following in the man’s footsteps. But he’d promised that he would pursue a Shadowlord’s education, so sooner or later he would have to attend their rituals. Apprentices were rarely invited to witness a Binding of the Dead, so the fact that he had been invited to this one was a high honor. Or maybe just a measure of how many strings his prestigious father could pull within the Guild. By bringing his son to this ritual, Leonid proclaimed his own power.
Isaac followed Giovan silently through Shadowcrest to the elevator, and together they descended to the Well of Souls. There were so many spirits present this time that the effect was physically claustrophobic, and for a few seconds Isaac found it hard to breathe. What must this place be like for the Shadowlords, to whom the voices of the dead were not muted whispers, but full-volumed cries? He shuddered to think about it.
The chamber Giovan led him to was the one he had passed while walking with his father. Now it was filled with Shadowlords and their ghostly retinues. T
he black stolas of the umbrae majae were embroidered with elaborate heraldic crests, representing dead Shadowlords whose memories the wearers had consumed. Some displayed dozens of such crests, which was a dizzying number when you considered what each one represented. How someone could absorb the memories of a dozen other people and remain sane was a mystery to Isaac.
Not that anyone had ever accused the umbrae majae of being sane.
A few journeymen were standing in a far corner of the room, trying to stay out of the way of their betters, and Giovan led Isaac over to them and quietly made introductions. Several of the younger ones scowled at Isaac, clearly disapproving of his presence. They’d had to earn their journeyman rank before being invited to this prestigious ritual, so why should Isaac be exempt from that requirement? Did the same rules not hold for Leonid Antonin’s son as for everyone else? They were all polite to him, in a superficial way, but the undercurrent of resentment was unmistakable.
Great way to start out, Isaac thought bitterly.
His father was in the chamber, but he was focused on Shadowlord business and didn’t seem to notice that Isaac had entered the room. Just as well. If he paid any special attention to Isaac right now, it would only make things worse.
From where Isaac was standing he had a clear view of the stone table at the center of the room, and he could now see that there were deep channels incised in its surface, as well as the chains and shackles he had noted previously. Several of the umbrae majae were arranging the latter so that they lay open and waiting, and Isaac noted that the surface of the table was canted slightly, so that whatever fluid pooled in the channels would flow to the lower end, where a wide brass bowl was waiting to receive it. Isaac felt a knot form in his gut at the sight of it. When his father had invited him to witness the Binding of the Dead, he had assumed that it would be performed on . . . well, the dead. But clearly that was not the case.
The Shadowlords suddenly fell silent, and they began to move back from the table, forming a wide circle around it. Isaac hadn’t heard any kind of signal, but maybe it had been voiced by one of the many wraiths present. The journeymen took their cue from Shadowlords, and Giovan nudged Isaac into position in the circle. Isaac could sense the spirits in the room growing agitated. Though his fledgling Gift allowed him to detect their emotional state, he couldn’t make out what they were saying, but it took no great skill to guess what the trouble was. Those for whom death had been a traumatic experience hated to witness the death of others.
A pair of doors at the far end of the room swung open and two umbrae minae entered, dragging a young boy between them. He had been stripped to the waist and his skin was slick with sweat. He was obviously drugged, and at one point fell to his knees, so that his escorts had to lift him to his feet again, forcing him to walk toward the gruesome altar. The fact that he appeared to be Isaac’s age, or very close to it, made the spectacle doubly disturbing. Where had the Shadows gotten this boy? Had they purchased him from his parents, perhaps, after a Seers’ evaluation had declared him unGifted? Or harvested him from the ranks of some orphan gang that was wandering the streets of the city? Or maybe captured him in a raid like the one that had decimated the Warrens? There were a dozen different ways that one might obtain unwanted children for ritual purposes, most of which made Isaac’s blood curdle.
Then the boy turned toward him, and Isaac’s heart stopped beating in his chest.
He knew this boy.
He knew him.
Shaken, he watched as the two umbrae minae lifted the boy up onto the stone slab, trying to gather his thoughts enough to remember the boy’s name. Jason? No, Jacob. A regular visitor at the Warrens, who often snuck out of the orphanage he lived in for a few hours of secret midnight freedom. Isaac had gone on thieving expeditions with him, and had found him to be a skilled pickpocket, agile in both his hands and his wit.
Now he was here, trussed like a sheep for slaughter.
Isaac felt sick.
As they started to bind the boy down, the full horror of his situation finally broke through his drugged stupor, and he began to struggle wildly. But whatever drug they had given him had sapped all the strength from his limbs, and with practiced efficiency one of the men held him down while the other fastened shackles about his wrists and ankles. Then chains were stretched across his body and hooked in place, binding him down so tightly to the cold stone surface that he could do little more than twitch desperately. Only his head could move freely, and he whipped it back and forth as he searched the room for . . . what, exactly? Sympathy? Hope? There was no mercy to be found in this crowd.
Don’t look at me, Isaac thought, drawing back into the shadows. Please, please, don’t look at me.
The umbrae minae bowed respectfully to the assembled Shadowlords and took their leave. They might be Masters of the Guild in their own right, but they were not undead, nor planning to become undead, so they had no place here. As soon as the doors shut behind them, two of the Shadowlords stepped forward to take over. One of them, a women robed in deep crimson, took up station on one side of the sacrificial altar. The other, a man in black robes, stood across from her. In his hand was a knife whose long blade appeared to have been carved from obsidian, and the curved facets of its flaked edge glinted in the light as he moved, reflecting fireflies on the walls.
The woman began to chant in a tongue that Isaac did not understand. It sounded ancient. The man in black raised up the knife and presented it to her over the boy’s bound body. Seeing the blade, the boy began to struggle even more desperately, looking feverishly around the room, desperate for anything that could save him—
And his eyes met Isaac’s.
The boy’s sudden recognition of him struck Isaac like a physical blow, and he had to ball his hands into fists in the folds of his robe, struggling to suppress any visible response. Fingernails digging into his palms hard enough to draw blood, he tried to focus on the pain rather than the horrific tableau before him. The one thing he could not afford to do now was display any emotion . . . least of all sympathy. But the boy’s eyes were pleading with him, and their message pierced Isaac’s soul. Help me, Jacob begged silently. You’re my only hope. Don’t let them kill me! Isaac’s hands trembled in the folds of his robe, and he knew he should look away, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t bring himself to move. The boy’s terror had transfixed him.
Then the crimson Shadowlord took the knife from her assistant and cut deeply into Jacob’s arm. He whimpered in pain and jerked against his chains, but his eyes never left Isaac’s. It was as though there was a connection between the two of them, an umbilical cord of pain binding their souls together. The woman cut his other arm. Then his chest. Then his thighs. He cried out anew with each cut, but his eyes remained fixed upon Isaac. Help me, they begged. Help me Help me Help me. Heart pounding, Isaac finally dared to respond, shaking his head from side to side, a gesture so slight that he hoped no one else would notice it. I can’t, it said. I’m sorry. I don’t have the power to change this. Even that much sympathy would be condemned as inappropriate passion if anyone noticed it, but everyone else was focused on the ritual, watching with vampiric delight as cut after cut was made, until every inch of the boy’s flesh was lacerated, bright scarlet streamers running down from his flesh to the table beneath him, and from there to the brass collection bowl at his feet. Still Jacob’s eyes remained fixed on Isaac, as he desperately grasped the one shred of sympathy he’d been offered to keep from drowning in utter madness.
This is why we are taught not to feel, Isaac thought miserably. Maybe if he’d been more attentive to his lessons he would be able to look away. Maybe it wouldn’t feel as though every cut was slicing through his own flesh as well as the boy’s.
Now the chanting changed to English, and Isaac heard poetic promises about how the boy’s soul would find refuge in eternal service, would have this Shadowlord’s undying protection, how death was a blessing. Pure bullshi
t. The Shadowlords didn’t give a damn about whether their slave spirits were happy.
Jacob’s eyelids began to droop as the last of his life drained out of his veins. The Shadowlord in black retrieved the collection bowl from the end of the table and handed it to the woman. The blood within it contained the spark of the boy’s life, Isaac knew, and at the moment of death it could be used to bind his spirit. Isaac was no longer trying to look away from Jacob, but willingly held his gaze for as long as the bloodshot eyes were still open. At least he could give him that much, so that he didn’t have to die alone. The contact seemed to steady the boy a bit . . . or perhaps he was simply too weak to struggle any more. Then the woman sipped from the bowl of blood, and Isaac could sense a connection being established between the two of them. When the boy’s spirit left its body it would discover it was tethered to this woman, unable to leave her side for as long as that blood was in her system. If she could establish mental control over him before it was gone, he would never be able to leave her.
That’s what all the torture was about, Isaac realized. To shatter the boy’s mind, so that once he died it would be easier for a Shadowlord to take control of him.
Finally Jacob’s eyes closed. Isaac’s Gift was just strong enough for him to sense the moment of death, which was also the moment of birth: a new wraith coming into existence. It was the first time Isaac had ever witnessed such a thing, and he strained his fledgling senses to witness what was going on. Death was a kind of creation, he’d been taught, and Shadowlords were masters of the process. But when he heard the boy’s ghost cry out in terror at its birth pangs, he wondered if anything could justify such practices.
The chamber was silent. The boy’s body lay still, relieved at last of its struggles. The new ghost’s cries faded in volume as spiritual exhaustion overwhelmed it. It was said that such bound spirits were insane, and now Isaac understood why. Who wouldn’t be driven mad by such an experience?