Jaleigh Johnson - Unbroken Chain - The Darker Road

They rode out of the valley and into blinding snow. Ashok’s vision blurred. He raised a hand to see in the darkness, but there was no path to follow. Reluctantly, he reined in the nightmare and forced him to stop. When the wind died enough that he could see again, Ashok realized the ghost army was gone. He felt behind him, but his passenger had vanished as well.

Ashok slid off the nightmare’s back and walked a few paces back toward the valley. There were no hoofprints, no signs to mark the horde of invaders as ever having existed.

He retraced his steps on foot, leading the nightmare. After only a few minutes, he came upon the stone cairn and the dark form of Ilvani crouched in the snow. Ashok sat down beside her and left the nightmare to rest.

He had too many questions, so he asked the most obvious first. “How did I get back here so quickly?”

Ilvani regarded him somberly. “I told you. You traveled fast but not far. At the end, he was so close to his army. He just needed a guide.”

“I touched a spirit tonight,” Ashok said. He looked at his hands. He hadn’t put his gloves back on after touching Ilvani. “I didn’t know it was possible to feel the touch of an undead thing without it corrupting my flesh.”

“They do corrupt,” Ilvani said. “But they do it insidiously-one small touch, then another and another.”

“They’re restless. They pull and grab and overwhelm you,” Ashok said, understanding at last what she meant. “It’s enough to drive a person mad.”

“So they call me.”

“There’s power in your gifts,” Ashok said. “I’ve seen it and not just tonight.”

She looked at him curiously. Ashok put his hands on the cairn where the Tuigan warrior’s bones lay. Two worlds overlapping.

“Eight months ago, when I was imprisoned in the caves, waiting for the shadows to take me, I dreamed …” It was hard for Ashok to speak of it, even after so many months. “I saw my father and”-he would not say Reltnar’s name in front of her, not ever again-“others I’ve killed. They waited to take my soul. Then you came to me in the dark. You drove back the shadows.”

Ilvani gave him a sympathetic look. “It wasn’t me.”

“No. I wanted it to be you-I still feel when I look at you that there’s a connection.”

“It’s safer to think that,” Ilvani said. “He knows that, as well as we do. That’s why He takes different shapes-me, Natan-he takes the pieces he needs and puts them on like puppets on the hand. The game isn’t fair.”

Ashok nodded, acknowledging her words, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to believe them, not entirely. It wasn’t just that he didn’t want to accept the weight of Tempus’s presence in his life. Ilvani had been there. She’d come to him in his cell and left her box of ashes. He’d given it back to her, but they’d never spoken of what it contained and how it had saved him, how her forgiveness had saved him. If she hadn’t been there, Ashok would have faded and been condemned to the void, a nightmare realm of lost souls.

How easily everything could have fallen apart-for himself and for Ikemmu. The shadar-kai constantly stood on the edge of oblivion in more than one sense.

“Daruk was right,” Ashok said.

Ilvani scowled. “About what?”

“That it might all fall apart-Ikemmu, Uwan’s dreams for the city, and the shadar-kai. Tomorrow it could all be gone, and I wouldn’t be able to stop it.” He feared the fate of the city he’d come to call his home, but if Ikemmu fell, it would not represent the worst of his nightmares. As always, he had only to look to that beast of fire and death to find what he most feared.

When Ashok first began training the nightmare, the beast sent him dreams that invaded his waking life. The nightmare preyed on the fears of his victims, and for most shadar-kai, their worst fear was to fade and lose their souls to the void. In Ashok’s visions, he’d feared losing his friends.

Skagi, Cree, Ilvani-all those companions he’d grown to trust-he’d never known a bond such as the one he shared with them. They’d seen him through darkness and accepted the best and worst parts of him. He’d already lost too many in the short time he’d lived in Ikemmu.

Chanoch, Vedoran, Olra-he’d lost his Camborr teacher so quickly, with barely a breath between the thought and the reality. With Chanoch, it had been slow, agonizing hours spent in the dark. Vedoran … Ashok could not summon an image of the warrior’s face without remembering their last embrace, when Ashok had driven a knife through his heart. What if Beshaba never claimed the warrior? Had Ashok condemned Vedoran to the void, his soul gone forever?

“The people who gave me life and purpose keep dying,” Ashok said. “How do I know their souls reached their gods? That Tuigan warrior wandered for more than a century before he found his final rest.” When I die, no god calls me home, Ashok thought. His father and brothers were still waiting in the shadows for him. He accepted that fate, but he would do anything to spare his friends. “I have to protect them.”

“You can’t change their fates,” Ilvani said. “Souls slip through our fingers when we try to grab them, just like memories. In the end, they all fade.”

“Then maybe it would be better if I had no companions at all,” Ashok said, “nothing to touch me.”

“Completely alone?” Ilvani said. “Then why not fade now and be one with the void?”

Ashok heard the anger in her voice. “What did I do wrong?”

“I thought you understood,” Ilvani said. “You can’t run from what you are. All you can do is face it. If you think Tempus will comfort you, then turn to Him, but remember what you have right now. The moment is what matters. Only the moment is real.” Her voice quivered. “You have the power to recognize the truth from the shadows. It’s a precious gift, as precious as life.”

Ashok looked into Ilvani’s eyes and for the first time saw the void that she feared most, the lurking shadows that threatened to swallow her. Ilvani was most afraid of becoming lost in the dark, of not being able to find her way home.

He didn’t know how to comfort her. He wasn’t made for gestures like that. Even if he was, he didn’t think she would accept them. If he tried to take her hand now, she would retreat.

He felt along the ground until he found a flat piece of obsidian half-buried in the dirt and snow. He dug it out and held it up so she could see.

“This stone is real,” he said. “But it came from the funeral cairn, so it belongs to the living and the dead.” He held it out to her, and when she reached out her hand, he pressed the stone between their two palms. The cold, sharp edges dug into their skin, but their hands didn’t touch. He looked toward the valley where the gathered Tuigan ghosts had prepared to ride out to glory. “When you remember this night, remember that those shadows couldn’t touch you. The stone is this moment, here, between us. We are what’s real.”

“Real,” she echoed. She pressed against the obsidian, and Ashok pressed back, until thin trickles of blood ran down their palms. When he let go, Ilvani kept the stone, holding it in her two hands as if to make it and the blood a part of her. “We walk the darker road,” she said. “There will be more spirits after this night.”

“You mean because we’re getting closer to Rashemen?” Ashok said. “What will happen to you in that land?”

“They’re waiting for me,” Ilvani said. She sounded afraid. “The telthors and the storm are waiting to claim their pieces of me.” She closed her eyes and clutched the stone. “I wish we could live in the breath in between. Out of the shadows, away from all the spirits-right here.”