Shadespire: The Mirrored City Read online

  Zuvass laughed. He was always laughing, as if privy to some secret jest. Isengrim glared at him. ‘What are you cackling about, fool?’

  ‘That you think the gods are all-powerful.’ Zuvass looked out over the keep. ‘That you think their game is anything more than the squabbling of infants. The Ruinous Powers are eternal, but what is eternity to those things that existed before thought – before perception? The things that stalk the empty space between realms, vast and hungry. Look, Isengrim. Look up, where the stars ought to be. What do you see?’

  Isengrim looked up, to the eternal twilight above the keep. He saw shadows. Great swathes of shadow, folding back on itself, falling upwards forever. The sky resembled the surface of a mirror after it had been exposed to an open flame. There were motes of light scattered across it – not stars, but something else. Like cracks in glass. Every so often, something would pass behind them and cast its shadow down on the city below. Something immense, with no shape that he could perceive. He looked away, feeling suddenly small. Smaller than he had in a long time.

  ‘There are monsters in the deep,’ Zuvass said. ‘Hungry things that swim the seas of eternity, seeking anything they might devour. The Ruinous Powers are like them, but younger. They still play with their food.’

  Isengrim snarled and spun, axe licking out. Zuvass interposed his blade so swiftly that Isengrim barely registered the movement. ‘Are you devout then, my friend? Do I insult your god by comparing him to a squalling infant?’

  Isengrim bared his teeth and strained, trying to force Zuvass’ sword aside. ‘You serve them as much as I, you yapping cur,’ he said. ‘Do you think yourself safe here, in this nowhere place? The gods hear all – Khorne hears all. He may well strike you down himself.’

  ‘I look forward to making his acquaintance,’ Zuvass said. ‘It has been lonely here, talking to things no man ought to bow to.’ He shoved Isengrim back and sheathed his sword. He spread his hands. ‘I meant no insult, friend. I sought only to warn you – there are powers abroad in this place, and they too offer gifts in return for service. If I were you, I would not listen to them.’

  Isengrim took a step towards him.

  ‘Peace.’

  The word echoed out, quavering from every fragment of shadeglass on the walls. Isengrim turned as two masked and robed shapes shuffled towards them, carrying a heavy, oval mirror between them. The mirror had a golden frame wrought in an unfamiliar style, and the glass was dark. But in its surface Isengrim could see a man’s shape, clad in rich robes. The masked servants set the mirror down and stepped behind it, so as not to block the view of its inhabitant.

  ‘Zuvass,’ the man in the mirror said. ‘You have returned.’

  ‘I always do, Katophrane.’ Zuvass bowed low. ‘I have brought him, as I promised, my Lord Mekesh.’

  The ghostly face twitched in something that was almost a smile. ‘And you always make good on your promises, don’t you, Zuvass?’

  Zuvass straightened. ‘When I can.’

  ‘What witchery is this?’ Isengrim growled, looking back and forth between them.

  ‘That is our host,’ Zuvass said. ‘You would be wise to show some gratitude.’

  Before Isengrim could reply, the newcomer spoke again. ‘You pursued a woman.’

  Isengrim nodded slowly, glancing at Zuvass, uncertain if it was a question. ‘She led me here.’

  ‘Why did you follow her?’

  ‘She said she could lead me to the man I hunt.’ As he spoke, he felt Zuvass tense slightly. He glanced at the warrior, wondering what had seemingly perturbed him.

  ‘And why do you seek him?’ Mekesh asked.

  Isengrim frowned. ‘He is my prey.’

  ‘Why? Has he wronged you?’

  Isengrim laughed harshly. ‘I do not know him. Khorne showed him to me in a dream.’ He gestured to his head. ‘He put the scent of his soul in my head and commanded that I kill him.’ He shrugged. ‘So I will do it.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘And then it will be done.’ Isengrim looked at Zuvass. ‘Is it mad? Is that why it asks these questions?’

  ‘I am mad, yes. We are all mad here.’ The spirit seemed to take no insult at his words. ‘You’ll fit in well, I think. And Zuvass says you are a strong fighter. I have need of warriors. Will you join me?’

  Isengrim hesitated. But only for a moment. ‘If you can guide me to my prey, then I will fight for you. But if you play me false, I will break your pretty mirror.’

  The spirit laughed. ‘Yes. I suspect you would.’ The shadowy shape turned towards Zuvass. ‘Take him in hand, Zuvass. I must speak now to the Sepulchral Warden.’

  ‘Of course, my lord,’ Zuvass said, bowing low as Mekesh wavered and vanished. He turned and gestured for Isengrim to follow him away from the balcony. ‘Come, my friend. There is much to show you, and much to do.’

  Chapter seven

  THE LADY SADILA

  I saw them there, in the silent light.

  Eternal faces, encased and reflected in an infinite prism of centuries.

  – Nechris Litharge

  Reflections of Eternal Faces

  Reynar followed Severin up what felt like hundreds of spiral stone steps, through the gutted heart of the palaces. Everything around him was either stone or shadeglass. The place was a treasure trove. The gleaming panels set into the walls were worth more individually than Reynar could have spent in a lifetime. As he strode through the corridors, his reflection lagged slightly, thanks, he assumed, to the way the mirrors were angled.

  They met no one, coming or going. The palaces seemed all but deserted. ‘There’s room for an army in here… Why keep everyone contained in the courtyard?’ he asked.

  ‘The palaces are unstable. Unsafe. Some have become… lost in them.’ Severin looked back. ‘Stay close, if you value your life.’

  ‘Lost? What do you mean?’

  Severin didn’t reply. The Liberator-Prime was close-mouthed. Reynar wasn’t sure whether it was simply his nature or that Severin didn’t like him. Perhaps both. With no conversation to pass the time, Reynar concentrated instead on his surroundings. However strange this place, he was determined to memorise the path, if possible. One never knew when such things might come in handy.

  Despite his skill in that regard, however, the palaces almost defied the senses. They seemed to expand or contract around them, with no pattern that Reynar could detect. Corridors sprawled off from the main path, seemingly going nowhere. Walls jutted at obscure angles, as if something had forced them outward at some time in the past. Shards of shadeglass spilled across stone floors and appeared to have taken root like some form of crystalline fungus. Steps rose to meet solid ceilings, or fell away abruptly.

  And then there was the noise. Soft, like the whine of insects, or the hiss of sand. But omnipresent. It grated against Reynar’s perceptions, and the more he tried to listen, the harder it was to discern. Only when he sought to ignore it did it at last resolve itself into what he thought might be voices – many of them, tumbling over one another in a nonsensical babble. He could not tell where they were coming from, only that they grew louder in some places and softer in others. He was tempted to ask Severin if he heard them, but refrained.

  At last, they reached a towering archway carved to resemble an ornate laurel, decorated with skulls. At the apex of the laurel, an elaborate mask of shadeglass glared sternly down at them, its cracked facets shimmering with a strange light. Reynar shivered as they passed beneath it. He felt as if he were being judged by those unseeing eyes. Beyond the archway stretched one of the massive causeways he’d seen, leading towards the dome at the top of the palaces. ‘What is that?’ he asked.

  ‘The palace gardens,’ Severin said. ‘Come. She can be… impatient.’ The Stormcast led Reynar across the causeway. Lanterns hung from poles cast a soft glow across the path. Only a few of them were lit �
�� the others hung dark, or were missing entirely. Those that did glow only did so weakly. Shadows danced along the edges of the causeway. Down below, Reynar could see the fires lit about the courtyard. He looked out past the walls and saw more motes of light in the dark.

  ‘Campfires,’ he murmured.

  ‘Some,’ Severin said, without turning. ‘Not everything that gleams in the dark is a flame. This city is caught halfway between shadow and light, and it can play tricks on the eyes. The glow of a fire can be reflected from one street to another, up and down, east to west. It can travel for many leagues, a false light that draws the unwary into deeper shadows.’

  ‘You sound as if you speak from experience.’

  Again, Severin didn’t reply. Reynar was getting used to it. He looked up. They were high enough now that he could see past the artificial canopy of stone to the sky above. Only, it was like no sky he recognised. He averted his eyes.

  The causeway was mostly intact, but there were places where it looked as if something had taken a bite out of it. Many of these gaps had been repaired with planks of wood that looked as if they had been torn from wagons or palisades. These planks creaked alarmingly beneath Severin’s weight, and Reynar tensed each time they were forced to cross one. But despite his growing unease, they made it across without incident.

  The dome reminded him of certain structures he’d seen in Aqshy and Ghyran – a vertiginous curve of smooth stone octagons, interrupted at irregular points by eight-sided panes of shadeglass. Many of these were broken, but not all.

  The entrance to the dome was another elaborate archway, this one shaped to resemble a great tree, its two-dimensional branches stretching up and around the circumference of the dome. It sat at the top of a set of flat, slabbed steps. Severin stopped on the top step. Reynar hesitated. ‘Not coming with me?’

  ‘She wishes to see you. Alone.’

  ‘You still haven’t said who she is,’ Reynar said.

  Severin frowned. ‘She is our ally. And perhaps yours as well. It remains to be seen.’

  ‘And if she’s not?’

  Severin turned away. Reynar sighed and turned back to the archway and the dim light beyond. More lanterns, perhaps. Or will o’ the wisps. Steeling himself, he stepped into the gardens. Immediately, glass crunched beneath his boots. The ground was covered in a shroud of shadeglass fragments. A pillared corridor stretched towards the interior of the dome. Broken panes of glass lined the walls, and his reflection bled away from him like condensation.

  His footsteps echoed hollowly as he made his way towards the flickering lights. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of shapes hiding in the cracked corners of the panes. They whimpered and drew away from him as he passed by.

  At the end of the corridor was another archway, this one carved in the same shape as the entryway. As he passed through it, the jagged stumps of what might have been trees rose about him in the gloom, all in varying states of destruction. After a moment, he realised that the trees too had been made from shadeglass – they were artificial, shaped and carved rather than grown. A garden not of living things but of statuary and sculpture.

  At least, it had been. Now, by the light of dancing will o’ the wisps, he saw that some of the fragments of shadeglass had begun to sprout, in the same fashion as he’d seen earlier. Like the forest floor after a fire, tiny buds of gleaming glass pushed up from the wreckage and the stumps. The gardens, whatever they had once been, were something else now.

  Crystal growths spread up along the inner curve of the dome, stretching in all directions. Stalactites and stalagmites of dark glass had formed in places, and a thicket of what looked to be young trees occupied the heart of the gardens.

  He stopped, and turned. The gardens were larger than any Azyrite cathedral, rising and spreading to the edges of his sight. There were more trees, whole and tall, their branches scraping the top of the dome. Parts of the dome had broken away, leaving the walls pockmarked with gaping wounds through which the wind whistled.

  The persistent cold was oppressive here. It almost snatched the breath from his lungs, and every inhalation brought a slash of pain to his insides. He rubbed his arms and noted the frost collecting on his hauberk. He watched the shadows cast by the will o’ the wisps dance on the inside of the dome as he waited for someone to speak. When no greeting appeared forthcoming, he called out, ‘Hello?’

  His voice echoed oddly, the word bent all out of shape and stretched into a moan by the strange acoustics of this place. As the echo faded, he heard the sound of laughter. A woman’s laughter. It encircled him, rising up from every direction at once, but softly. He frowned.

  As the laughter faded, a trio of shapes emerged from the gloom. Shuffling, broken things, like those he’d seen in the courtyard. But these wore finer rags by far and seemed in better shape. He thought that they had been women, once. They wore golden belts and masks and had swords belted at their waists. He tensed, but they came no closer. Instead, they stopped and bowed, as if greeting an honoured guest.

  ‘Welcome.’ The word hung in the air like the peal of a bell. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw something flash through the facets of a shattered tree. The shape circled him like a ghyrlion on the prowl, drifting through the facets of one tree and then another. At first, he thought it might be a reflection, but soon he realised that it was in the trees, whatever it was.

  As it drew closer, it resolved itself into an enormous shape stretched through every bit of glass and growth. Like a giant peering down through a net. ‘I thoughtthought you wouldwould never arrivearrive.’ The words reverberated through the broken trees, seemingly rising from every fragment and facet. Reynar could just make out its face. Her face. He felt a jolt of recognition.

  ‘You.’ He stared up at her. She towered over him, her image stretched from floor to ceiling, but he knew her nonetheless. The same woman – the same spirit – who’d led him here, into this strange place. She smiled, and her leviathan shape wavered and shrank, descending through the facets until she stood within the trunk of a nearby tree, almost eye to eye with him. She scratched her fingers across the glass, tracing thin lines from one edge to the other. The noise made his eyes itch.

  ‘Me,’ she said. Her smile was a tiger’s grin, all teeth and promise.

  ‘You’re the one who led us – led me – into this pit.’

  ‘I told you I would bring you to safety, and I did.’

  ‘Utrecht is dead.’

  She shrugged. ‘We defy death here. You will be reunited, sooner or later, if that is your desire.’ She turned, as if looking at something he couldn’t see. ‘We always find each other again.’ There was a hint of melancholy in her tone.

  ‘Why did you bring me here?’ Reynar demanded.

  ‘For the same reason I led the others here. I need you.’ She turned back and pressed her palm to the glass. The tree was taller than him, and she filled it from roots to branches.

  ‘You seem to have servants aplenty.’ He gestured to the broken things that surrounded him. They watched him with empty gazes. Occasionally, one moaned softly, as if trying, and failing, to speak.

  ‘My handmaidens,’ his host said. ‘I took their tongues. Slaves do not need to speak. They need only obey.’ She smiled widely. ‘Should I take your tongue, Reynar?’

  ‘I’m not your slave.’

  ‘No. That’s right – you are a mercenary. To answer your question, I wish to employ you.’

  ‘You have a funny way of going about it.’

  She laughed. It wasn’t a pleasant sound. Reynar’s hand fell to his sword. ‘Stop laughing and tell me what I want to know.’

  ‘Or what? I am a Katophrane. I am beyond death.’ The glass cracked around her palm, bulging outwards as if she were pressing too hard. ‘Look. See.’ Between the growing cracks, images formed and flickered, drawing his eye. He stepped closer. Streets and buildings, people
of all sorts wearing unfamiliar clothes and hawking unfamiliar wares. Shadespire, as it had been.

  ‘I am a prisoner of eternity. As are all of my people. Our city no longer rises over the sands, but instead stretches the length of an eternal moment, all that it was lost save in the memories of its people.’ The image wavered, like a mirage. He saw the city – or parts of it – spreading out as it must have in ancient days, creeping across the desert, conquering more of it day by day, just as the Katophranes were said to have conquered death. ‘We are like smoke drawn up through a flue, twisted all out of shape by the whim of a god.’

  She drew her hand across the cracks, changing their course, and Reynar watched as streets bent back on themselves and buildings unfurled like blossoms of stone and glass. Alleyways and cul-de-sacs were reflected and redoubled, their paths stretching away into oblivion. The city was changing in ways that Reynar could not comprehend. He stared as a great tower crumbled and shifted, taking on the shape of something immense and terrible – something that met his horrified gaze and returned it tenfold across uncounted centuries. It looked not at him but through him, staring all the way to the roots of his soul, seeing him stripped bare of all artifice and rationalisation.

  It saw him, and laughed.

  He wrenched himself away, his bowels squirming. He staggered, limbs loose, and grasped a tree for support. He realised that the broken things – the handmaidens – had prostrated themselves at the sight of whatever it had been. They moaned and cradled their heads, or plucked at their ragged garments. He felt sick, watching them abase themselves.

  His host was suddenly beside him, her face spread across the jagged trunk of a fallen tree, as if she might reach out and help him. He jerked back with a hollow cry. ‘What… what was that?’ he croaked.

  ‘A god. Or part of one. The part that watches over this place – a shard of divinity, made over into a gaoler. It stalks the shadeglass paths, watching and listening.’

  ‘And you’re – what? Its prisoner?’ He laughed harshly. ‘Like the old tale of the princess in the crystal mirror?’