​​​​22 The Shathra

Year 915YC, nine years & five months earlier

‘AND WHAT ARE you doing out of bed?’ a voice demanded behind him.

Wither stumbled and turned, ready with a lie, but instead grinned in relief. ‘You scared me half to death.’

‘Hey,’ said Lorn, her mouth agape, ‘how did you do that?’

‘What?’

‘You vanished, like you faded or something. When I spooked you. You never told me you could do anything like disappearing. I didn’t know it was possible.’

‘You should not sneak up on people, you know. It’s bad manners.’

‘Scats will skin you if she learns you’re creeping about the temple this late.’

‘Huh, and what is it you’re doing?’

She shrugged, and winked. ‘At least I don’t get caught.’

Wither’s grin widened. ‘I’ve learned a trick or two since.’

‘Well, I can see that.’

He felt for the glow and reached inside himself, fanning it into flame like Scatter had taught him. He saw the look on Lorn’s face, and knew it had worked. Sometimes his magic worked on instinct without thought. It was harder when he had to concentrate.

‘You can fade, go near invisible. I can still see you, sort of.’ Lorn reached out and poked him confirming he was solid, and folded her arms. She gave him a sharp look. ‘How do I know you’re not sneaking about in my room when I’m asleep? Was it you the other night?’

‘Who cares about fair, and what you don’t know won’t hurt you—ow, hey!’ He rubbed his shoulder, wishing his fading trick meant he wasn’t solid. I guess you can’t have everything.

‘Somebody’s got to keep an eye on you.’ She gripped his hand, and his heartbeat quickened. Her skin was warm and soft, smooth like silk. ‘We should be careful. The bitch suspects more than you think.’

‘You shouldn’t be angry with her all the time.’

This time she spat her words. ‘She’s no mother of mine. Not like she never did anything she shouldn’t have. Don’t you dare be taken in by her and all her righteous piety.’

‘Okay, okay.’

‘We don’t have to do what she says, you know. This is not a temple. It’s a prison, and one day I’m busting out. Now, are you coming, or not?’

Torches in bronze brackets lit the corridor at either end. Enough light to see her eyes shine with anticipation. She pulled him along by the hand, and they crept to the foot of a stairwell. ‘I want to see the Shathra.’

The fabled ring of giant statues lay deep in the forest to the south. No one knew where they’d come from, who’d built them or why.

‘I heard, under a full moon,’ she continued in a whisper, ‘they can be seen if you climb high enough. There’s one tonight. We’re going up the west tower.’ She didn’t sound like she was pretending. They began to climb the stairs. ‘Besides,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘She’s entertaining again. Some fat puff from Icarthya. I bet he’s an informant or something. She sure makes him sweat. I think she likes them fat and jiggly.’ She giggled.

He couldn’t understand why Lorn hated the woman. The Aidari leader had never punished them harshly, and had taught them to control their abilities. He guessed it was a clash of personalities. Sometimes Lorn saw things others couldn’t, though she didn’t always talk about it. It made him wonder what she’d seen in Scatter.

They entered a wide torchlit foyer. Upon either side were moss-covered ten-foot marble statues. One angel held an open book, looking up from the stiff pages. The other held a sword and sceptre, Etruria, the soldier’s patron. Her hair was long, wings sharp-edged. He liked her, though he couldn’t have said why. She seemed benevolent, strong. A bit like Lorn.

She pulled him aside, as footsteps sounded in a connecting corridor. Once the guards were gone, they snuck up the west tower of the old fortress. The Aidari used it as their base within Tarl Forest. There were hundreds of ruins between the trees, and bits of old roads peeking through the moss and ferns, pieces of toppled statues. Scatter said it had once been a vast city. Just this section remained habitable.

They sat on the edge of the tower’s shattered battlements, staring south. Moss and ferns smothered the stones, thorns clambering its sides. The moon was full and the clusters of stars bright and clear. In the distance, atop a hill, Wither thought he spotted the statues. Nothing more than a hint of stone heads, or his imagination. Sat there beside her, he didn’t care. She was smiling as she dangled her feet. Wither felt the anger and hate within him subside. It was always that way with her. Oh, he was friends with Raze and River, and he had grown closer to the new boy, Slither. None of them made him feel calm though. None but her.

He glanced sidelong at her, taking in the lines of her nose and chin, the smoothness of her pale skin.

Her smile faded. ‘When are you leaving?’ she asked in a tight voice.

‘You know, then.’

‘When?’

‘Tonight.’

‘Why won’t you wait? Scats said we’ll strike together when the time is right. We must await the Age of the Viral. We do nothing but prepare, remember?’

‘Oh, so now you listen to her? Anyway, the exemplars purged them all. There are no undead in the world.’

‘I don’t believe it, and not because of what she says.’ She scowled. ‘She knows nothing. None of you do.’

‘What are you saying? You know something Scatter doesn’t?’

She shrugged.

‘What is it between you two?’

‘I don’t make many friends,’ she said, refusing to look at him. ‘If you do this, if you go and do what I know you’re ...’

‘My family deserve justice.’ He meant his adopted family. Oh, they had purchased him from the slavers, but in so doing, they’d saved him. Besides, they had never treated him as a slave, but had made him their son, brother, cousin, and friend. He had watched them die, had held a vigil beneath their bodies. He owed them.

‘They’re all dead, you idiot,’ Lorn snapped. ‘Their ghosts don’t care if you murder a bunch of redcloaks.’ She knew his story, had seen his family’s corpses arrayed like puppets. It had been their first meeting.

‘I care.’

‘The bitch is filling your head with notions. She’s inside your skull. Something is wrong with these Aidari. Can’t you sense it?’

Wither pushed himself back from the edge, and stood. ‘Maybe it’s not them. What if it’s you?’ He didn’t want to part this way, but anger was better than tears.

‘They’re not who they say they are,’ she said, staring up at him. Her face held a look of desperation, as though willing him to believe her.

‘And you are?’

Silence.

‘If you believed all that,’ he said, ‘you’d have left already.’

‘I have my reasons.’

‘I’m sure you do.’

She shook her head. ‘Don’t do this.’

Lorn believed many things he didn’t. A beautiful and kind heart resided within her; one she’d wrapped in rusty iron chains. Everyone thought her dark and bitter, but it was Wither who was those things. Lorn had quietened those feelings in him, but for all her power, she could not heal his heart. Within him, nothing but the need to avenge.

He knew the price and knew she would never be his. Not after this. She could not love someone who did what he was about to. She clung to her belief in the Viral Age when everything would be right. A myth she refused to let go of, while he was in front of her, real and alive. He didn’t understand it.

The boy, who was about to become a man, turned and left. The girl he loved watched him go, tears streaming down her face.