Jaleigh Johnson - Unbroken Chain

Ashok glanced back at the shadar-kai. Beyond him, the guard stood silent, watching them.

Vedoran followed his gaze. He lowered his voice. “Ask him to step back into the tower,” he said.

Confused, Ashok said nothing. He thought the man was playing with him, but the shadar-kai’s face was an unreadable mask. He stared past Ashok into the abyss, waiting.

Was it another challenge? Ashok wondered. He took a step toward the guard and nodded in greeting. The guard returned the gesture.

“Would you leave us for a time?” he asked, in a tone of respect.

Without speaking, the guard turned and went back inside the tower.

Alone on the ledge, Vedoran motioned Ashok to join him at the edge. “Well done,” he said.

“Why didn’t you ask him?” Ashok said.

“Because he knows I’m a Blite,” Vedoran said. A lazy smile spread across his face, but his eyes were hard. “He believes his god Tempus is better than any other, and that makes him think he’s better than me. Knowing that, I’ll be damned if I’m going to ask him for any favors. But he doesn’t know what your rank is yet, so I thought I could use you to my advantage. I was right. It feels good though, doesn’t it?”

“What?” asked Ashok.

“Being in control again,” replied Vedoran, He stood with the toes of his boots over the ledge, dipped his head back, and closed his eyes. “Ironic, isn’t it?” he said. “That to feel this centered, you have to stand on the edge of falling.”

His body swayed from side to side. Watching him, Ashok’s palms began to sweat. The vicarious fear beat a pulse in his blood. Vedoran seemed completely in control and at ease, yet he must know that Ashok could step forward in a breath and push him from the ledge. Ashok’s breath quickened. He stepped up to the ledge beside Vedoran, tipping his head forward instead of back. He didn’t close his eyes but stared down the canyon, the water beads brushing his face.

If he listened closely, he could hear the soft babble of voices drifting up on the wind. By the time they reached his ears they were too insubstantial to be words, but the murmur itself was rhythmic and soothing. The vibration hummed against his skin.

“Is this the Span?” Ashok asked.

“The bridges,” Vedoran said, “between Pyton and Hevalor. There are three of them. The highest is ten feet below us.”

Ashok looked, and he remembered the portrait in Uwan’s chamber. But he didn’t see the bridges.

“They were built of the same material as the tower, but altered to blend in with the canyon wall,” Vedoran said.

“If enemies penetrated one tower,” Ashok said, “they wouldn’t have immediate access to the other.”

“Precisely,” Vedoran said. “We often teleport from level to level via these archways, but the towers are too far apart to teleport between them.”

Everything about the city had been planned for defense, Ashok thought. Besieging Ikemmu would be a nightmare for any attacking force.

“Are you ready?” Vedoran asked.

Ashok looked at him. “For what?” he replied, though he thought he knew.

Instead of answering, Vedoran stepped off the ledge. He dropped, his black cloak billowing behind him, and landed in a crouch ten feet below Ashok. He stood, turned, and looked up at Ashok with that same lazy smile. He walked forward a few steps, seemingly treading on air.

Ashok’s heart beat furiously against his breastbone. His legs quivered, aching for the jump. He took a moment to enjoy the sensations: the vertigo, the heat in his blood, the tense muscles poised for that instant of gratification when he stepped off the edge.

Live or die-it was all up to him.

Ashok opened his arms, caught the wind, and jumped.

The towers sped past him, impossibly fast. The slope of the canyon wall leveled out to a sheer surface, sucking away the darkness and lantern shadows like a spell. He could see the bridges rushing up to meet him, Vedoran’s form coming closer.

It was over far too quickly. Ashok’s boots hit stone, and he fell into a crouch to absorb the impact. Dust and rock scattered in his wake, the debris falling into space. With his arms spread, Ashok found balance on the edge of nothingness. Invisible hands held him up; one step backward or forward, and he was gone. But that breath in between was a century. That space was the only space that existed for him.

He looked up and met Vedoran’s half-crazed eyes. Ashok smiled. He couldn’t help it.

Vedoran laughed. The emotion seemed to steal his breath. His chest rose and fell as if he’d been running for miles. “You … You’re alive, after all,” Vedoran said. “I thought you were made of stone.”

Ashok sat down, his legs straddling the bridge. He put his hands on the curved stone tusks rising up around him. The bridge was so narrow. Navigating it with any kind of burden would be an adventure in itself.

Vedoran seemed to read his thoughts. “Only the shadar-kai use these paths,” he said. “The other races are afraid.”

“Has anyone ever fallen?” Ashok asked.

“Yes,” Vedoran said.

Ashok nodded. He lay on his back on the bridge, his arms outstretched in the constant wind. The force of the upswells was almost enough to bear their weight. He stared up at the cavern’s ceiling. Between the distant stalactites were shadows even the city’s lights couldn’t chase away, making him think of the tiefling woman with the staff.

“This city …” He didn’t know how to say it.

In Ashok’s peripheral vision, Vedoran sat with an arm across his knee, the other propped behind him, holding his weight.

“Say it,” he said.

“Is it yours?” Ashok asked. “It feels … old. Did the shadar-kai build it?”

“No one knows who built it,” Vedoran said. “The lore I’ve heard claims the shadar-kai who settled the city were led here by their gods-Tempus, as you can imagine. You’ve seen the carvings on the towers.”

“The winged folk,” Ashok said.

“The clerics say they’re Angels of Battle, Tempus’s emissaries,” Vedoran said.

Ashok caught a tone in Vedoran’s voice, something like the vocal shadow of his lazy smile. “You don’t believe them,” he said.

“Skagi calls me arrogant,” Vedoran said. “And so I am. But I’m not so full of hubris that I think any god would prepare a city just for my folk.” He nodded at the buildings below. “I’ve seen the black scars. Someone burned the angels-if that’s what they were-out of their city. Probably it was the Spellplague, but we’ll never know.”

The Spellplague. Ashok knew it only in stories: the Blue Fire that had raged across the mirror world of Faerun, its tendrils reaching even to the Shadowfell. A force powerful enough to rip apart entire cities-he could well imagine such a thing to have scarred Ikemmu. But to consume an entire people … Ashok shuddered at the thought of extinction through the blue flame.

Above Ashok, a shadow fell from the clouds, spread dark wings, and descended toward the bridge.

Ashok and Vedoran came to their feet at almost the same instant, weapons in their hands. Vedoran pointed. “Cloaker,” he said, as the thing angled toward them.

“Are you sure?” Ashok said.

“Oh yes,” Vedoran said. “The witches say that the cloakers were here when the shadar-kai first came to Ikemmu. They called it Sphur Upra , the Gloaming Home. If you want to know how the city came to be, ask a cloaker.” Vedoran chuckled darkly. “If you can keep it from killing you.”

Ashok braced his feet so he wouldn’t succumb to the vertigo of standing on the near-invisible bridge. He twirled his chain, waiting to see if the cloaker would attack.

It drifted down like its namesake, bone claws curled at the edges of the false fabric. Ashok kept the chain moving, swinging it above their heads and in front of his body. Still the thing floated, falling at a leisurely pace, coasting on the air currents.