Shadow's End (Light & Shadow) (2 page)

“I used to think he was just loyal to my uncle,” Miriel said, “but I don’t think so anymore.”

“He’s loyal. He’d kill either of us in a moment if the Duke wanted.” That was the fact I always chose to remind myself of where Temar’s loyalties lay, because it was the fact that hurt the most. I reminded myself of it whenever I could not help thinking of him—I hoped that the pain of it might break me free of my foolish infatuation.

“I think he’s playing his own game,” Miriel posited. She did not tell me to think on it. She knew that, now that the theory was out, I would not be able to rest until I found the truth. For a moment, I hated her for knowing
me so well. “Good night,” she said, knowing as well that I would not welcome any further conversation, and she wrapped her cloak around herself and curled up.

“Good night,” I said moodily. I lay back and stared up at the star through the bare branches of the trees. Exhausted as I was, I knew it would be a very long time until I would be able to sleep.

Chapter 2

The next day dawned bright and clear, but clouds gathered as we rode, and the weeks that followed saw the onset of spring rains. Miriel and I rode
hunched over, huddled into our cloaks, increasingly sodden and miserable. The ground thawed and cracked, and ice gave way to fields of mud that slowed our progress to a crawl. In any other season, the countryside would have been beautiful: verdant fields, or acres of ripened grain, the brilliant riot of fall colors or the sparse, white-on-white beauty of snow. But now it was mud—mud, and bare-branched trees, and rain.

There was no staying dry, and there was no staying warm. I spent an hour each evening constructing some sort of shelter for us and for the horses,
and equally as much time trying to coax sodden branches into some sort of fire. I coddled Miriel as well as I could, but with the constant damp and persistent chill, both of us soon developed racking coughs, and the horses grew thinner, miserable, and prone to staring at me as if I was a willing architect of their misery.

Miriel, thankfully, showed no signs of fever, but I watched her as carefully as I might a priceless jewel that had been entrusted to my care. I had the sense in those few weeks, inexplicable, that all our fates hinged on Miriel. She was not only my friend, the other half of myself—she was something of infinite value to us all, and I was entrusted to keep her safe from harm, that she might fulfill her purpose. I wondered if this was only foolish fancy, the wanderings of a mind worn down with constant fear and endless cold, determined to make something worthwhile of my suffering, and I knew that there was no way to be sure; I
only wondered, and wondered, as well, at the strength of my belief.

It was better for me to
wonder on that than to let my mind wander, for the moment I relaxed my vigilance, my thoughts always came back to the puzzle of Temar. Miriel’s words rang truer than I would have wished. I had known for years that Temar hated the Duke; and yet, undeniably, he served the Duke without question. I had thought it a puzzle, but never thought that he might be playing his own game. More the fool I, I thought now—how many clues were there, now that I thought to look back and search for answers? His words that I was meddling in things he said were too great for me to understand, meddling in his plans—not the Duke’s plans, but Temar’s own. There was the rift between him and the Duke, their tension over how Miriel and I might be best handled. There was the sadness behind Temar’s eyes that never seemed to go away, and the words he had spoken to me when we had first met, when he had told me that he knew I was fate-touched, for those who were fate-touched called to each other.

Above all, there was the way that neither I, nor anyone else, seemed to know the first thing about Temar’s life before he became a Shadow, and the way no one seemed to think to ask; even I had only wondered once or twice. He might well
be
a Shadow, in very truth; I wondered if he was even human, and a wave of melancholy swept through me at the thought. Who should know better than I what it meant to be a Shadow, to have come from nowhere? If I died, there would be no web of family to mourn me. I could count on my fingers the number of people who would ever miss me if I was gone. I had come from my village and then disappeared, like a breath of mist on a cold day, and I might as well have come from the land of faerie. I was a nothing child, an ill luck child, an ice child—completely forgotten by my kin.

When I thought such things, reminding myself of Temar and the Duke seemed almost a relief. I thought often on the night that I had come upon the two of them in the tunnels beneath the palace. They had spoken of a vow, Temar’s vow, and of the Duke’s choice of his Shadow. I remembered Temar’s anger, and the Duke’s humor at it. The Duke, who was so relentlessly driven, who trusted no one—no one, except Temar.
The Duke saw Temar’s anger, and even his hatred, and yet he still trusted the man. And the Duke was no fool.

I re
alized that if I suspected Temar of playing his own game, and not the Duke’s, I must first know what vow they had made together—I must know what it was the Duke sought. I remembered his words well:
I wanted the power of the throne for myself, not that brat.
Was that it, truly? Was that all? Or were there layers beneath it, shifting? What did I know of the Duke’s life? Shockingly little. For all I knew, he had emerged fully-formed from the skull of a God on the day before he had led the Heddrian army to victory.

Thinking of it was maddening, for I had the sense, when I did so,
that I could see a vast pattern, beyond the Duke and Temar and Jacces and Garad, stretching across the whole of the earth and all of time. I had always scorned fate and those who believed in it, and yet here we were—and for some reason, when I thought on that, I did not think we were simply on a cold, muddy field. I had the sense that we were following a path, some direction we could not quite see. It was far beyond my knowledge as yet, but I knew some of the shape of it. Miriel and I were learning what questions to ask, that we might realize what it was we saw.

So, as Temar had taught me to do, I laid out my questions in my head: Who is Temar? What vow did he make to the Duke? How did the Duke choose him? Why has the Duke, who sought to guide the mistress of the king, never married and gotten children of his own
to marry to the royals? The last was a question I had wondered and discarded, thinking it was too small, the whim of a rich man, nothing more. Now I wondered, and kept the question close. Nothing was irrelevant now. To understand Temar, I knew that I must first understand the Duke.

“What do you know of your uncle’
s life before he became…well, the Duke?” I asked Miriel one night. She was shivering, wrapped in a blanket and looking at her piece of bread and dried meat as if she would rather not eat it. She might be free of illness, but the journey had been hard on her: she was thinner, the gown hanging loose and her cheekbones standing out. Her eyes seemed overlarge in her pale face as she frowned, trying to remember.

“You mean before the war? Not very much. My mother once said that he had no right to reproach her for bringing shame to the family, for he had been no good to them, either. She said that when they had needed him, he had been gone. But she wouldn’t explain it, and no one else would speak of it.” She shrugged. “You know how Voltur was.” I nodded; I did know. The guardsmen of Voltur worshipped the Duke, and eve
ryone else was plainly terrified of him; even the Lady’s sullen dislike did not overcome her fear. No one would have told a story that he did not want told. Miriel tilted her head to the side. “Why do you ask?”

“I feel like he’s the root of everything with Temar,” I explained. I held up a hand to stave off her question. “I don’t know why. Well, I do. Temar is bound to the Duke, like I am to you, and he’ll obey him in everything…I think. But you know it’s not for love. He hates the Duke, and still he obeys. Why?”

“Is he religious?” Miriel asked. “That might be it, he made the vow and he thinks the Gods will hold him to it.”

“No, I don’t think—wait.” I thought back to Temar’s exclamation as we had fought
in the palace, all those months ago. He had been trying to uncover Miriel’s misstep, and I had been trying to keep it hidden. I remembered that he had been furious, driven by energy I could not understand—something entirely beyond loyalty. And he had said…what was it he had said? “He did say something once,” I murmured. “He mentioned a God I had never heard of, or a saint: Nuada.” I raised my eyebrows at Miriel, who shook her head.

“I’ve never heard that name before.”

I sighed. “I’ll keep thinking. I just don’t think…I don’t think we’ll ever know.”

“If anyone can get it out of him, you can,” Miriel said. After a moment, I decided to take that as a mark of confidence. She sighed and stared into the acrid, smoking fire. Each night, I dreamed of starting a proper fire, with crackling flames and dry wood, but this mess was all we could ever accomplish in the constant rain. “Do you dream of him?” she asked, her voice strangely yearning.

“Yes,” I said shortly. I knew better than to dissemble with her about this, but I did not want to speak of it. The silence stretched until I realized that she was not going to ask anything more, and then I found myself unbearably curious. “Why?”

“I dream of Wilhelm,” Miriel admitted, after a moment. “And I hate it. I wish I didn’t. But it keeps me true. I keep thinking that maybe when we are there, working for the rebellion, the dreams will end.” She paused, and then said, very softly, “I hope I never see him again.”

She looked over at me as if she was worried that I would think her mad, but I did not; of all people in the world, I knew what she felt. More than anything, I wanted to see Temar and share a silent joke, know the companionship of the only other Shadow in the world, revel in his smile. But that could never be; Temar and I would share caution and mutual mistrust instead of laughter, if ever we saw each other again. Worse, I feared that if I ever saw him again, it would be death for one of us, or both.

With this fear fresh in my mind,
I did not admit to myself that I
knew
beyond doubt I would see him again. I told myself that we would never return to Penekket, that my fate would catch me before he ever could, that the Duke would never think to look for me and Miriel in the heart of the rebellion. It was impossible that Temar and I should meet again. I told myself that I believed him to be no more than a dream to me, now. He was a face in my dreams; he had no form, no voice. He was an echo.

Only, without fail, I did the exercises that he had taught me every night. I practiced my tumbling, I threw knives, I used the stands of trees to practice moving silently. I ran through all the poisons and antidotes I knew in my head, and during the long days of silence, I recited everything I had ever been taught: the Kings of Heddred, the religious tenets of the old faiths, lists of the Saints, historical alliances of each noble family. I was no longer a creature of the Court, but I kept myself honed for it, ready for a fight, ready for the endless intrigues of nobles. All of it, I did with a blank mind; I never questioned why, and I never admitted that it w
ould be useful only for scheming and Court battles.

After the first, panicked day, Miriel and I had not spoken of returning. Unlike me, Miriel seemed to have set aside her constant practice; her beautiful mannerisms might remain, but she no longer cultivated them. For a great many evenings, she sat quietly by the fire and watched me as I ran through my exercises, the only sound being the hollow rasp of her cough. This, after her days and days of prayer at Voltur; Garad’s death had knocked something out of her, and I could not say yet what it had been.

“Why don’t you practice anymore?” I asked her one night, and she smiled at me bitterly.

“Why, what do I have to practice?” she asked, and I saw that her silence had been masking fear. “I don’t think the soldiers of the rebellion will care much if I can dance or sing. I have nothing to give them. We’ve been thin
king we’ll be heroes, buts…”

“Don’t say that.” I
sheathed my daggers and went to sit by her side. “You’ve got your mind. It’s…what Garad loved about you.” I had not spoken his name to her since the night he died and Miriel stiffened slightly. Finally, she nodded, and I pressed on. “You’ve read all of Jacces’ letters, and you have your own thoughts. You know how government works, and the Court, and even military theory. I bet you have a plan, for how to become a leader of the rebellion—don’t you?” I was truly curious. Miriel was beautiful, effervescent, charming—but what did such things mean to farmers, struggling for their rights? How could Miriel ever earn their trust? But she nodded in response to my question. Miriel always had a way forward, toward her goal.

“
I’ll offer them a leader who will take action,” she said promptly. “A leader who will do what the High Priest does not dare to do.” There was anger in her voice, so long suppressed that even now, in the wilderness, she whispered the words. “He stirred up this rebellion, but he gives them no direction, no resources—and this from a man with the wealth of the Church at his fingertips!”

“They don’t know that.”

“No, but they know that they’ve had soldiers coming into their towns, searching their houses and interrogating their wives and their children, looking for Jacces. If they haven’t already begun to wonder what good Jacces has really done them, it won’t take much to make them ask.”

“Miriel…” My voice trailed off. The High Priest, bound to Penekket as he was, was a powerful man. He had roused thousands of hearts to his cause, he had a network of messengers to deliver his letters—I could only think that he must have spies as well. And this was a man who had sent assassins before. He was ruthless, he would make a terrifying enemy.
At Miriel’s knowing look, I saw that she had thought the same thing.

“We need to gain their trust, we need to lead them,” she said simply. “You know that as well as I do, there’s no way for us but to act quickly. The longer we wait, the longer the Court has to find us, and the longer the Council has to try to change Wilhelm’s mind about the rebellion.” She was determined. “Who will help him there? Jacces? Or will he wait, to choose his time?”

“We’ll make an enemy,” I warned her. I could not refute her words. I knew as well as she did that we needed allies, and we needed to move quickly. But I must caution her. “He’ll have spies, he’ll hear what you say—he’ll know it’s you.”