Paul Kemp - Shadowbred

"I don't know if I can make it."

"You can," says the voice with certainty. "Do it now."

Without thinking, I jump up and catch the edge of the slit with both hands. I scrabble my boots against the wall for leverage and heave myself up with a grunt. When I can peer through the opening, I find myself staring at another pair of eyes exactly like mine-black pupils, no color. I gasp, startled, and lose my grip. I fall back to the floor in a heap. The impact knocks the breath from me.

"I am sorry," says the voice. "I should have prepared you. Are you all right?"

I climb to my feet, eyeing the slit, stammering, "Your eyes are like mine! How can that be?"

"No," says the voice. "Your eyes are different. I saw them. They are green."

I reel. Green? I am still groggy from the escape, or from the torture, or whatever has happened to me. This does not make sense. How can my eyes be green?

"Are you still there?" asks the voice.

I nod, though the speaker cannot see me.

"Are you a prisoner here?" I ask. "Where are we? Who are you? And why do you look like… like I should look?" The speaker sighs, as if at a precocious child. "Listen carefully. What I am about to say will alarm you. Are you prepared?"

I'm sweating, and I don't know why. My skin turns goose flesh.

"Yes," I lie.

The voice says, "There is no 'here' and you are not a prisoner."

10 Marpenoth, the Year of Lightning Storms

Word of the emergency session of Sembia's High Council spread through Ordulin like a plague. Rumors ran rampant, most of them hurriedly planted by this or that member of the council. Hushed voices in taverns spoke of the Overmaster's demise and the coming power struggle among the council members.

At Mirabeta's behest, Elyril had hired several trusted rumormongers to suggest that Overmaster Selkirk had been murdered and that nobles in service to Endren Corrinthal of Saerb had been complicit. The countess was portrayed as an indefatigable pursuer of the murderers.

The Highspeaker of the Council delayed the emergency session for more than a tenday, to allow time for the twenty-one members of the High Council to prepare and receive instructions. Mirabeta and Elyril, though impatient to grab power, used the time to good effect. They exhausted Ordulin's messengers by sending queries to fellow members of the High Council, trying to determine where each stood on who should be elected the next overmaster. Mirabeta met face to face with seven of her colleagues. Some were coy, but for the most part, the office seemed destined for either Mirabeta or Endren Corrinthal. Elyril marvelled at the loyalty Endren commanded. Saerb was a trade town of little significance, but Endren Corrinthal was the second most powerful member of the High Council. She did not understand how he'd managed it.

Meanwhile, the overmaster's body was sent in magical stasis to the Tower of the Scales, the small shrine dedicated to his patron god, Tyr. The state funeral was scheduled for a tenday later, a sufficient time to allow outlying nobles to travel to Ordulin to give honor to the dead. The Tyrrans forbade anyone from seeing the body until the questioning before the High Council, and not even Mirabeta dared gainsay them.

Sembia's High Council was at last summoned to session. The elaborate gong tower of the High House of the Wonderful Wheel, Gond's temple, sounded the ceremonial summons. The privilege to sound the summons rotated among the faiths of the city every decade and was determined by lot.

Assisted by their coach driver, Elyril and Mirabeta stepped from their lacquered carriage into the shadow of the Great Council Hall of Sembia. Both wore elaborate, high-waisted satin gowns, the current custom of noblewomen in the capital, though both had selected subdued colors in order to appear respectful of the overmaster's death. They also wore small, enchanted knives on thigh sheaths.

Mirabeta, who ordinarily glittered like a dragon's hoard, had limited her jewelry to a black pearl necklace and matching earrings. Elyril knew both the necklace and the earrings to hold powerful protective and communicative magics. For her part, Elyril wore jewelry that featured amethysts set into antique silver. The purple of the gems and the black of the tarnished metal were Shar's holy colors, Elyril's secret homage to her goddess. Elyril also wore her invisible holy symbol on a neck chain under her gown.

The stately Council Hall, a pentagonal affair, sat amid a tree-dotted municipal district in the center of the capital. Autumn had turned the maple leaves blood red. The gated grounds of the Tower of the City Guard and the impenetrable walls of the Sembian mint, called the Guarded Gate, flanked the great hall to either side. A pair of limestone golems, chiseled to look like oversized Sembian guardsmen in archaic armor, stood to either side of the mint's eponymous metal gate.

The polished limestone facade of the great hall and its five towers gleamed almost white in the setting sun. The glass dome of the central rotunda, known by all to be enchanted with the durability of steel, glittered in the sunlight. Flags flying the Sembian Raven and Silver flapped from the tower tops. Black pennons hung below the flags to mark Kendrick Selkirk's passing. Pairs of uniformed city guardsmen, standing at attention and holding halberds at arms, flanked the various entrances to the hall. All wore black armbands on the left biceps, also in honor of Kendrick. They appeared as miniature versions of the golems guarding the mint.

Each tower of the hall opened into a wide corridor, which featured several side chambers and halls, and each of the five corridors intersected at the rotunda of the High Council. She had always thought the whole thing looked something like a giant fivestar, with the rotunda as the hub, the five towers as points, and the corridors as legs.

The carriages of the council members ringed the hall, and several hundred armed and armored guards milled among them. All wore the heraldry of one or another member of the High Council. Ordinary citizens were being routed away from the municipal district, but Sembian custom allowed each council member an armed escort of up to twenty guards, though this right had been rarely exercised in the past.

Elyril noted the various tabards and recognized that the guards had drifted into two large groups, reflecting the anticipated schism in the High Council. The soldiers serving the members loyal to Endren Corrinthal of Saerb massed to the eastern side of the building, along the Wide Way, while those in service to the nobles loyal to Mirabeta massed on the west, on Norgrim's Ride. Mirabeta had sent her force to the hall in the mid afternoon, and they moved among those on Norgrim's Ride.

The two groups eyed each other. Steel and hostility filled the streets.

"Things could turn bloody quickly," Elyril said to her aunt.

Mirabeta nodded and the coachman pretended not to hear.

A force of perhaps seventy city guards was spread throughout the street around the Council Hall and kept the nobles' escorts at a distance. Unlike the sentries posted at the Hall's doors, dressed in customary ceremonial garb, those in the street bore steel shields, wore chain hauberks under blue tabards, and carried heavy maces. Elyril did not see Raithspur, the tall, grizzled captain of the guard. The captain, it seemed, was wise enough not to wade too deeply into political waters.

The men loyal to Mirabeta cheered upon her appearance-at the urging of Mirabeta's own twenty men-and Elyril's aunt smiled in response. Anything more would have been undignified. The men loyal to Endren scowled and a few even booed. Mirabeta only held her smile.

The pair of guardsmen at the nearest doorway of the Hall left their posts and marched down the flagstone walkway to Elyril and Mirabeta.