Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
Nova
Thalia led the way across a wide expanse of rocky, flat landscape she referred to as the Wastelands . I trailed just behind her, while Aleksander and his company brought up the rear, with Zayn leading Uldrin—Thalia’s beastly horse, who was doing us the favor of carrying most of our bags.
My gaze kept trailing toward that horse, studying his red eyes that burned like twin embers in the darkness, and his sleek black body that rippled with shadowy energy. One of the scourge stallions, Thalia had informed me—steeds specifically bred to withstand this realm, their bloodlines allegedly infused with magic.
Phantom spent the first several hours racing circles around the creature, memorizing it, doing his best to shift his body into an imitation of it. I encouraged the practice; if he could master the form, it would likely provide a much smoother ride than what I’d experienced on the back of his canine shape yesterday.
All morning long, we’d been walking steadily toward the glow on the distant horizon—the one Aleksander had been staring at last night. The sky was lighter, now, making the faraway shine less obvious, but I still thought it looked like the hazy halo of a city’s collective lights.
I wanted to ask Thalia a thousand questions about that glow and all the areas around it. About the landscapes we were passing through. About her power— my power—and the magic that shaped this realm and its ghosts and its walls and everything else…
The longer we walked, though, the more my attention kept being stolen by the groups of restless dead spirits that were pressing closer and closer.
They were following us; no less than a dozen drifted along on either side. They appeared as swirling blurs of grey fog in my peripheral vision, but they took on more definite shapes whenever curiosity got the better of me and I turned to stare at them in earnest. Each time I looked, they seemed more defined, like figures being carved out by a hidden hand, released from within slabs of grey.
They felt less dangerous now that I had a group of living beings surrounding me, but they were no less unnerving.
“You seem rattled,” Thalia commented, slowing to walk at my side.
“Every time I look, there seem to be more,” I said. “And they seem to grow clearer to me.”
“Clearer?”
“Their faces, especially.”
“…Interesting.”
“Is it?”
“They don’t often reveal their faces to people,” she said, frowning.
My heart skipped a beat as I made eye contact with one of the smaller ghosts. A child. Her body was pale, nearly translucent, and there was no color to the simple shift she wore, nor to the loose braid that swung to the middle of her back. Her eyes, though, were a bright and curious green.
I felt an immense sadness when I looked into them; a longing for something I couldn’t even name.
I moved closer to Thalia, fixing my gaze straight ahead.
“They’re merely shades,” she informed me, her eyes darting to the clusters on either side of us, lips moving silently. Counting them, I thought. “They won’t hurt us.”
“They seem less…well, dead than I was expecting. More sentient than the ghosts one reads about in stories.” I hesitated, then added, “Shortly after I first arrived in this realm, one of them chased me and got a hand on me.”
Thalia gave me a long, searching look; I got the impression I’d said something wrong. Something foolish. Something one of our magical alignment should have known better than to say—though I couldn’t imagine what it had been; I was only telling the truth about what I’d experienced.
“They don’t see themselves as dead,” Thalia explained, her tone difficult to read. “But they don’t remember true life, either. They know only wandering. These are the lucky ones, I think; there are others who are more aware of the life they once lived, but still unable to truly grasp what it meant to be alive. They carry on in a state of neither true death nor true life, with only the vaguest impressions of memories to give them meaning—we refer to them as wraith s. We’ll encounter them on the path ahead; to get to where we’re ultimately headed requires passing through a city full of these creatures.”
“So that glow ahead is from a city?”
“Yes.” She visibly tensed. “ Erebos . The City of Forgetting. The ones who dwell there are…well, complicated. And potentially more dangerous to us than the ghosts around us now.“
The green-eyed shade girl suddenly let out a high-pitched giggle and raced in front of me, her hand outstretched as if to tag mine and initiate a game of chase. When I didn’t reach back, her giggling turned to a sound more like a howling wind, and she disappeared in a swirl of grey mist and cold air.
The sorrow that had gripped me when I’d stared into her eyes was back. I stood half-frozen on the path for a moment, trying to catch my breath as the grief washed over and threatened to drown me.
“They’re drawn to your magic,” Thalia said. “We’ll continue to gather them toward us throughout our travels, I suspect.” With a grim smile, she muttered, “At least their glow gives us some extra light.”
I considered her explanation as I tried to settle my nerves. “Your magic draws them too, right?”
“Not as much.”
“But you’re just as powerful as me, if not more , based on what you did to Elias back at that wall we passed through.”
She shook her head. “The shadows I controlled there were not from any magic I created. The energy already existed, put into place by much stronger magic-users than me a long time ago. I merely directed some of it by way of my staff. And I directed it poorly, in all honesty; the magic of our world grows less predictable—less manageable—by the day, it seems. I didn’t intend for that man to die.” She glanced over her shoulder at Aleksander and the others, lowering her voice as she said, “Not that it makes any difference to those left behind.”
I frowned as I, too, looked over our tense, wary group. She was right; no one in our company would be forgiving her—or truly trusting her—anytime soon. If not for my curiosity about magic and my desperate need for a more knowledgeable guide, I would have been nowhere near her myself.
We walked on in silence for a few minutes. She occasionally fidgeted with her staff, adjusting some of the gems along it, just as she’d done yesterday on the hilltop. She seemed troubled by our conversation—maybe by thoughts of Elias’s death?
I didn’t want to linger on that death, either, or try to make sense of the complicated feelings I had about it, so I redirected the conversation with one of the countless thoughts I had tumbling around in my head.
“You remind me of someone in the world above, the way you tinker with your weapon. He was very handy when it came to creating things that could channel magic.” I lifted the wrist that held most of my bracelets and gave it a shake. “He made these to help with mine.”
Slowly, she pulled her attention away from her staff. She seemed to be fighting against drawing too close to me, but in the end, her curiosity over the jewelry won, and she stepped close enough to briefly lift the black-rose bracelet from my skin and study it.
“This is powerful work,” she concluded. “He must be a master craftsman, with a very keen eye for magic and how it moves.”
I hesitated. It seemed foolish to be spilling too much of my life to this woman I barely knew—regardless of the things we might have had in common—but talking of Orin made me feel less alone in this upside-down world.
“Do you know of the Aetherkin?” I asked.
“Aetherkin…” she repeated, her step slowing and her voice taking on a strangely hushed tone. “It’s been some time since I’ve heard about one of them. I thought they were all gone.”
“Well, at least one still lives. His name is Orin.”
She went back to studying my bracelets. “You draw your own power through these pieces he made, though, don’t you? Your innate magic.”
“With most of these, yes. Although this one—” I held up the leather and amethyst bracelet “—was made specifically to navigate through the magic that links the living and dead worlds.”
She drew away from me and kept walking as she asked, “What happens if you lose them?”
My breath hitched at the mere thought. “I can still use my magic. It’s just less… predictable . More wild.”
“Stronger?”
“Maybe.”
She considered my answer for several steps. “Like shackles, then.”
The word settled uncomfortably on my chest. “…In some ways, I guess.”
She nodded but said nothing else, letting the comment hang in the air. It was difficult to tell whether she thought it was a good thing or a bad thing that my magic was suppressed. I’d rarely thought of it as anything other than good. Orin had always had my best interests at heart; I had no doubt about that. And yet…
The words he’d said to me at Calista’s shrine rang through my head once more—
Trust yourself. And don’t be afraid of your darkness.
But I was afraid. Even more so now that Aleksander’s magic was tangling up with mine in unpredictable ways, awakening the shadows that had laid dormant for so long.
What might those shadows do in this world if I didn’t shackle them somehow?
The bracelets were like so many of the masks I donned in my life in order to bury my true feelings and fears, I guess. To take them off meant to expose myself to a world that couldn’t handle all of me and my magic; I wasn’t ready to even attempt such a thing.
“What about you?” I asked Thalia as we marched on toward the hazy lights of Erebos. “Don’t you have innate magic as well?”
“Very little.” She twisted her staff absently in front of her as she spoke. The shades on both sides of us crowded closer as she did, like fish drawn to the movement of a shiny lure. They dispersed quickly, however, when she tapped upon one of the staff’s gems, sending a cool breeze rippling outward. “This staff helps pull out what I do have, but more than that, I use it to help direct the shadowy energies that exist outside of me.”
I started to reply, only to be distracted by the sight of walls taking shape within the murky daylight, far in the distance.
They were massive, twisting and turning beyond where I could see. Parts of the city itself loomed even larger behind them, the spires of buildings thrusting up like swords toward the dreary sky. Pedestals full of blue fire were spaced evenly along the tops of the walls, and the flickers of more sapphire flames could be seen reflecting off the windows of the city’s varied architecture.
Now I understood why I’d been able to see its glow from such a distance; the entire place seemed to be burning in some way, boldly separating it from the dark landscape all around it.
We slowed to a stop, allowing the others to catch up with us.
Zayn let out a low whistle as he approached, his gaze fixed on what appeared to be a towering trio of torch-wielding statues in front of the city’s main gate. “This is a touch more intimidating than you let on,” he said to Thalia.
“There is no going around it,” she replied, unapologetically. “The walls stretch for miles in both directions, and at the terminus on both sides are cursed areas known as the Grim Barrens , which are uncrossable given our current state and supplies. We go through Erebos, or we don’t go forward at all. Or I don’t go, at least.” With this declaration, she called Uldrin to her, walking the stallion a short distance away, watering and checking him over while leaving me and the others to contemplate our next move.
Zayn spoke first. “Anybody else have a terrible feeling about this city?” he asked, stretching. “Do we really want to go inside it?”
“As opposed to staying out here?” Aleksander asked, glancing around. “Where it’s positively bright and cheerful and safe?”
“It just feels like she’s not being very forthcoming with the details about this place.”
No one could disagree with that.
“I want to get a closer look, at least,” I said, though my voice threatened to tremble with the suggestion. It felt like a bad idea—but once again, so did turning around.
Rowen and Farren both agreed to my suggestion, giving us the majority.
We moved cautiously down the hill toward the main gate, making our way onto a great, sweeping pavilion that stretched in front of it, its polished marble floors reflecting the twisting and tumbling fires of Erebos in a way that was both enchanting and ominous. Arches of all shapes and sizes were erected across this pavilion, most with words or symbols carved into their faces; there seemed to be some organizational purpose to them, but I could only guess at what it might have been.
Stretching through one of the grandest of arches—one close to an iron-barred door to the right of the gate—a line of shades had gathered; like a queue, almost. I found myself wandering closer to it, searching for the green-eyed girl who wanted to play tag earlier, but I didn’t find her.
Thalia returned to us a few minutes later, her horse’s hooves clopping loudly against the shiny stone.
“There are always hordes of them waiting at the gate,” she said, quietly, acknowledging the line of shades with a slight nod. “Unfortunately for them, the city opens her doors very sparingly. There simply isn’t enough room for all of them inside.”
“You said the wraiths inside there are worse off than the shades out here, though,” I reminded her.
“In my opinion, yes.” Her hand twisted and untwisted Uldrin’s lead rein. “But the ones on the outside are drawn to the possibility of the city and its energy, all the same.”
“So, how do we get inside?” Zayn wanted to know. “As royalty, we’re not really accustomed to waiting in lines, I’m afraid.” He flashed Thalia a smile and a wink.
She looked entirely unimpressed by his charm. “We’ll just be guests passing through,” she explained. “There’s a different entrance for that. It will come at a price, but it won’t be impossible—you just have to know who to bargain with, and how to win him over.”
“And you know these things?” Aleksander asked.
“I’ve passed through here often enough,” she said, and then she unceremoniously dropped her horse’s reins into Rowen’s hands. “Mind the beast. He doesn’t like this city. There’s always a chance he’ll try to bolt and take all your belongings with him.” Without waiting for a response, she turned away and strode toward the gate.
Zayn followed, mumbling something under his breath.
Again finding myself without a better option, I started to follow as well—until I noticed Aleksander lingering behind, studying the line of shades. That line seemed to be growing longer by the minute.
I hesitated. We’d ignored each other for the better part of the day, staying just close enough to keep his magic balanced, but not close enough to actually speak to one another . It was much more peaceful that way.
Yet, for some reason, I couldn’t help moving closer to him now.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
He cut me a sideways glance.
“Or, never mind,” I muttered. “We can continue ignoring each other, if you prefer.”
He looked back to the shades, seemingly eager to do just that. But I only made it a few steps away from him before he said, “The number of ghosts we’ve encountered today is…a lot.”
What did you expect on an adventure through the underworld? I started to ask—but caught myself. Because he hadn’t expected to be experiencing anything in this world, had he? I’d had years to prepare for my descent into Hell; he’d had mere seconds.
“It’s even more jarring, I suppose, because no one speaks of the dead very often in Elarith,” he explained. “We rarely even hold funerals. Our ‘graveyards’ consist of simple books listing the names of the deceased, whose ashes are piled into a collective urn. Anything more than that is considered grotesque.”
“Really?”
He nodded. “Which is strange, I guess, but I never thought much of it until my own parents died and I was not permitted to mourn them for longer than a few days—not publicly, at least.”
“A few days ? That’s absurd.”
He shrugged.
“Death is a part of life.”
“Not a part to dwell on, according to the Keepers of Light. It’s a culture they’ve worked hard to instill throughout Elarith—and one they’ve been aiming to spread throughout the rest of the empire as well.”
“But they used to be the ones in charge of sanctioning visits to this realm, didn’t they?”
He nodded.
“…I always wondered why they stopped allowing them.”
He looked to the torches held by those three statues near the gate. His brow furrowed, and the reflection of fire within his golden gaze danced with a particular violence; I wondered what he was truly thinking about those Keepers, now that he knew they had placed an imposter on his throne.
“Several reasons, I’ve been told,” he said. “It was too dangerous, for example—opening the path between the realms risked deadly energy bleeding through, much like what has apparently happened at your old home. And then you had the ones who didn’t want to come back after their allotted time visiting the dead.”
“I can’t imagine staying here in this darkness, indefinitely,” I said, suppressing a shiver at the thought.
He considered this for a long moment before answering. “People deal with loss in different ways,” he finally said, turning away and starting to make his way toward Thalia and the others. “I suspect it wouldn’t seem all that dark to someone who had lost what felt like everything to them.”
Something in his tone drew me even closer to his side. A question danced at the tip of my tongue— how dark does it seem to you ?
I didn’t find the courage to ask. The contemplative peace between us was too enjoyable to disturb. And we were nearly to Thalia, now—close enough that I noticed she held her staff at the ready, and my attention shifted fully to her, wondering what she was about to attempt.
There was an odd pattern of different-colored bricks in the wall some distance away from the grand, main gate; she had stopped before it and, as we reached her, she lifted her staff and began to draw ribbons of some sort of foggy substance out from those bricks. Their color faded as she wound more and more ribbons around the tip of her weapon, until, eventually, there were no bricks at all.
A window had appeared.
Thalia took several steps back—nearly colliding with me—as a man slowly stepped up to this newly revealed window, rolling his shoulders and cracking his neck as though he’d been sitting stiffly for the past several hours. Even after shaking his muscles lose, his movements still seemed unnaturally stiff and twitchy. He looked as solid as us, but his skin was a pallid shade of grey. His eyes were oddly wide and blinked far too little, as though they’d adjusted poorly to the dim lighting of this realm.
“Gatemaster Atros—just our luck,” Thalia said under her breath. “Let me do all the talking to this bastard, please.”