Jaleigh Johnson - Unbroken Chain

One by one, the Beshabans and Sharrans went down. Vedoran went to Traedis, and it was clear the two were arguing again as they left.

Ilvani went to the edge of the tower and looked down. Uwan went to stand beside her. Skagi and Cree led Ashok away.

When they got to the bottom of the tower, Ashok’s guards were waiting to escort him, but Skagi waved them off. “We’ll take him,” he said.

Outside Makthar, the crowd had mostly dispersed-helped along, Ashok thought, by the presence of dozens of ranking warriors of Ikemmu’s military. Ashok was grateful for their presence. He didn’t know if he had the strength to walk through that crowd again, engulfed by such measures of adoration and hate.

The walk back to the deep tunnels was a sluggish march. Skagi and Cree were subdued; Ashok knew they were drawing out the journey as much as possible, giving him a chance to work his muscles and gain a hold on the world. He would need it.

They passed the Camborr training grounds and the paddock where the nightmare had scorched the earth and where Ashok had first learned to ride the magnificent beast. He wondered where the nightmare was now, and if it had found a new master, one more bloodthirsty than he.

Olra passed by them on her way out of the tunnels. She said nothing, but her eyes met Ashok’s, and she nodded. Her arm brushed his and then she was gone.

They stopped at the cave entrance, and Ashok turned for what he thought could be his last look at the city of towers.

The city appeared before him as it had in the portrait Ilvani had painted. The watching eye stared down at the city, and the carved, winged humanoids cavorted on the outside of the towers. Below them, the shadar-kai and the other races went back to their daily business in the city they’d adopted from their winged watchers.

Whether they were Tempus’s angels or the last pictures of a dead race, Ashok would never know. But he could feel their presence. He thought that must be legacy enough.

“I’m ready,” he told the brothers, and walked with them into the dark.

The guards at the door chained Ashok in his cell and put the hood back over his face. Skagi and Cree had refused those duties, but they stayed with him after the guards left. Ashok heard Skagi scuffing his boots against the floor restlessly. Cree was his normal, utterly silent self, but Ashok felt the weight of his concern.

“I’ll be all right,” Ashok told them.

“ ’Course you will,” Skagi said. “We ever say you wouldn’t be?”

“He was right, you know,” Cree said. “What Uwan told you-remember it. You’ll be the one to determine your fate.”

“Uwan said it’s up to Tempus,” Ashok said.

“I don’t think so,” Cree said. “Not this time. You live by your own will, or you’ll give yourself to the shadows.” He touched Ashok’s shoulder. “But the gods be with you anyway, my friend.”

Skagi coughed and patted his arm awkwardly. “Be well,” he said.

Then they were gone, and Ashok settled into the darkness for a long, silent vigil.

Vedoranstood in the half-ruin of the old house and tried to keep from killing Traedis where he stood.

“You betrayed me,” he said. “Ashok lives.”

“Not for long,” Traedis said. “My brethren are confident that he will not survive the ordeal. Uwan has too much faith in Tempus and in Ashok. Ashok will fade, and it will be but the first of many blows we strike against Tempus and Uwan. Be patient, Vedoran, and you will have the satisfaction you crave.”

“You don’t know Ashok,” Vedoran said. “If there is a way, even the slightest hope-”

“There is none,” Traedis said, growing agitated. “I am a servant of Beshaba and I know the face of hopelessness. You’ve won your battle against Ashok. His guilt and shame eat at him, and the shadows will do the rest of the work. You must trust me.”

“That was my mistake,” Vedoran said. He turned to leave. “You won’t see me again.”

Ashok passed the rest of the day and the next in darkness and silence. He awoke on the third day, but it may as well have been the fifth. He was numb again and had no sense of himself beyond the breath moving his chest. The blood had drained from his arms, and his legs wouldn’t move no matter how much he tried to shift his position.

Once, wakeful, he bit his lip. He needed to taste the blood in his mouth, to feel something. He found an already festering wound. The pain and infection shuddered through his body, and Ashok wondered how many times he’d woken with the idea as if it were new. He sweated fever, and chills wracked his body. But that wasn’t the worst of it.

The worst came when he began dreaming.

He stood chained in his cell, blind, yet somehow he could see. His father and brothers walked through the wall and stood in the corner of the cell.

Ashok stared at them. Shadows swirled around them and grew faces and emaciated hands that plucked at their arms and legs. They ignored them and stared back at Ashok. Whispering to each other, they pointed at him.

Ashok couldn’t understand what they were saying, but he saw the condemnation on their gaunt, dead faces. He strained toward them and was shocked when the chains fell away from his arms. The shadows swallowed the cage bars and the cave until Ashok walked in a void toward his family, who continued to talk to each other as if he wasn’t there.

“Why have you come here?” Ashok demanded. “Speak!”

His father stepped apart from the rest and took some of the living shadows with him. They scurried around his feet and laid their heads against his boots. Ashok tried not to look at them and their ratlike movements.

“We’ve been waiting for you,” his father said.

“For a long time,” said his brother Lakesh, stepping forward with shadows caressing his hair.

“You’re dead,” Ashok said. “There’s nothing left for you here.”

“You’re still here,” his father said. “We have no other link, no other amusements, and no god calls us from the void.”

“You have to go,” Ashok said. He backed away, but the void was limitless, black, and swirling. It was madness to watch it, for above and below him the faces swelled out of the shadows and reached for him.

“Where else can we go?” Reltnar said as he stepped out of the shadows to join Ashok’s brothers. “What place would have us?”

“You’re in my mind,” Ashok said. “You’re not welcome here.”

His father laughed. “How do you know this is your place?” he said. “How can you know you haven’t crossed over to our domain, the nothingness after sleep?”

Ashok recoiled. Was it over then? Had he already lost his soul to the shadows? “Father,” he said, “you, all of you didn’t fade. You were killed.”

“You killed us,” Reltnar said, and a shadow skull nuzzled against his neck. He batted it away like a fly. “No god calls us home.”

“No one wants us anymore,” Lakesh said, “so we’ll stay with you.”

“No,” Ashok said. He looked down and saw the shadow figures swimming up toward him through the void. They reached for his boots, and he danced away from them. He smelled foul breath and in the distance heard the constant Shadowfell wind. “I don’t belong here,” he said.

“You were always going to end up here,” his father said in a mock-soothing voice. “Didn’t you ever think of that?”

“I …” Out of the corner of his eye, Ashok saw a figure dressed in black striding through the void. The shadow was just as small and emaciated as the rest, yet it stood apart from its brethren. Silver light outlined its body, and when it came near Ashok saw the other shadows shy away from the light and the waves of heat emanating from its body.