Stories From the Shadowlands (8 page)

Everything has been quiet as of late. We know there are Mazikin in the city, but they are once again underground. This dream tonight, that memory of Juri standing under the dome, staring greedily at the sky, the sound of his voice promising his return… I will not become complacent in this ebb of activity. I will use it to plan for the next time we meet, because I know it is coming.

Day 4612

"This is your fourth training injury in as many weeks," Raphael said when he appeared in my quarters this afternoon. "Takeshi is concerned for you."

I laughed. "Takeshi is concerned I won't be able to patrol, making more work for him."

Raphael has a way of looking at me that makes me feel very young and foolish. "You give him very little credit."

He's not right about that. Takeshi is the most practical of soldiers, and I learn from him every day. He is cold-hearted and clear-eyed in a way I try—and often fail—to emulate. "I think I understand him very well."

Raphael smiled, and as always, I had to look away. "Is there a reason you're pushing yourself to the brink of physical collapse?"

"The Mazikin will grow their numbers soon. They always do."

"Indeed. Thus far, they always do. But you do not always tear muscles and tendons to prepare for that eventuality." He looked down at my knee and calf, purple and swollen.

"I've been having nightmares."

"About Mazikin?"

"About one Mazikin. His name is Juri."

"Ah." Raphael nodded. "The one you fought outside the nest. The one who promised he would return."

"He was different from the others."

This time, his smile was rather ghostly. "Then it is good that you're preparing for his return. But perhaps, if you hope to win, you should not abuse and damage your best weapon?"

I looked down at my body, which at that moment felt bent and broken. I didn't need to tell Raphael that he was right; I suspect he already knew. And without another word, he sank me into a black, mercifully dreamless sleep.

Day 4698

My body is a weapon. My mind is a weapon. I train every day, I patrol, I explore and build my map block by block. I practice what little I know of the Mazikin language, trying to replicate those awful sounds. At night, I dream of stalking them down dark alleyways and beneath dank bridges over trickling streams of brackish-smelling slime.

And even with all that, I was not prepared for what happened today. I was patrolling alone, in Harag zone, near an area where someone has grown a cluster of towers and abandoned each halfway to the sky, leaving their tops drooping toward the ground. I had reached a spot between two of them when someone shouted "Guard!"

I looked up in time to see a man throw a woman from a window several floors above me. She tumbled through the air, silent, her eyes wide, her mouth open. My arms rose from my sides. But as she hurtled toward me, I realized that if I tried to catch her, I would die with the attempt. So I watched helplessly as she shattered in front of me.

"You can't save them," the man called from above. He was speaking German, a language I know very well. Even though I was several floors below him, I could still see his grin.

I charged into the building, scimitar drawn. I knew, without a doubt, who the man must be. I searched the entire building and did not find him.

But I will.

Day 4713

Juri's blood has stained my armor. Tomorrow morning I leave for the Station. I don't know if I am returning in triumph or defeat.

It took days of watching, days of listening, and one brutal interrogation of a Mazikin I caught at the edge of Harag in a FOOD market. That one, who had possessed an elderly man who spoke Slovak, told me there is no nest nearby, but there is a small outpost, and Juri is indeed recruiting here. The old one was happy enough to give me this information in exchange for a quicker death, because I could not afford the time and struggle it would take to drag him to the tower, nor the risk that he would escape if I imprisoned him elsewhere.

After that, I knew where to look. And as it turns out, Juri is wily, but not always patient. Too eager to fight, too bloodthirsty and impulsive for his own good. He must have chosen that woman in the tower for recruitment, but when he saw me on the street below, he could not help but call attention to himself. So I patrolled at night in the middle of the street near their outpost, my armor on and my weapons in plain sight.

He could not help himself. He sprang from an alley, but I had already heard his footsteps. I caught his wrist in a noose-like binding and threw him to the ground. He bit at my leg, but his teeth had no chance of penetrating the leather greaves over my shins. A few seconds later I'd captured his other wrist. He was so enraged that his roar echoed up and down the block.

I had him. But as I moved to secure his feet, he managed to grab a knife from one of my thigh sheaths. When I saw him slice his own throat, the anger rose up in me. I clamped my hand over his wound and began to fire questions at him. But he merely grinned with blood on his teeth.

"Soon," he mouthed, for he could not make a sound, not with the deep gash and my own fingers closed tight over his windpipe. "See you again soon."

I'm not sure whether he died from the blood loss… or strangulation.

Day 4731

"What is a Mazikin, really?" I asked Raphael when he came to heal a knife wound to my bicep, sustained during throwing practice with Takeshi. I'd made some smart remark, and he'd "missed."

Raphael's gray eyes settled heavy on me, almost curious. "What do you think they are?"

"They move like animals. They behave like animals. Like animals, they seem to be without conscience."

He merely stared at me.

"Where do they come from? Why are they so determined to come here, of all places?"

He tilted his head. "Why do you think they want to come here?"

I sighed. My arm had bled so much that I felt a little dizzy, so I closed my eyes. "No one would want to come here unless the place they were escaping was worse."

He chuckled. "Sometimes I wonder why people bother to ask questions."

He chose that moment to begin his work, and my thoughts went dark and silent.

Day 5619

Today I nearly died again. One would think a person might get used to the feeling, and might learn not to be afraid. But I am always afraid when the blade slashes close, when the teeth sink into my skin, when I crash to the ground.

I've just learned to keep going in spite of it.

But today, I was nearly killed by a group of my own Guards.

Takeshi and I have been practicing the Mazikin language. He say it's a ridiculous waste of time, but he was still willing to come with me and hide in one of the ducts above one of their outposts. We listened for hours before attacking. We killed all but two, which have been imprisoned in our holding cells for the past seventy-three days.

Tomorrow they go to the tower, but we have learned much from them. Earlier today we sat in the cell room and spoke to them. It tears at the throat, this coughing, growling, barking language, but they understood me. I could tell by the recognition in their eyes and their rage.

Unfortunately, Rais and Bilal overheard us, and drew a very unfortunate conclusion: they thought Takeshi and I had somehow been possessed. They gathered a group of Guards and charged into the cell room, attacking with all their fearsome strength and hatred for the Mazikin.

We managed to fight without killing them, but it was a near thing, and Takeshi suffered a deep slash across his back. We were shouting for them to stand down, but they didn't believe it was us. They had us cornered and on our knees when Raphael came in and managed to stop them from beheading us.

The worst part about it was not the fear of dying, though. It was the sound of the two Mazikin laughing.

Day 6379

We've destroyed a nest. This one, located a few miles north of the entrance to the city, was unusual in that the Mazikin had located it on the upper floors of a building nearly forty stories high. In general, these structures are perfect nesting grounds for Mazikin, because the citizens grow and abandon them quickly, never satisfied no matter how monstrously huge or grand they are. Often, these buildings collapse or rot, only for others to grow in their place.

Usually the Mazikin prefer lower floors and basements that offer easy escape, though. This time, however, they chose something different. And now I am sitting and looking out a shattered window of this structurally unstable building, and I am wondering if I know why.

I can see the Suicide Gates from here. Distant, yes, but there is light there, more than at any other point along the wall. The new arrivals stream down the main thoroughfare before veering off to find the things that comfort them deep within the city. From here, they look like ants fleeing the hill.

Were the Mazikin merely looking for an easy supply of candidates for possession—or were they contemplating escape from the city?

Day 7168

I wish, when Mazikin screamed, that they did not sound so terribly human. I have captured the creature known as Jof, one of the Mazikin scouts who sneaks through apartment buildings, collecting residents where they should be safest. I collared her two days ago and brought her to the Station.

I’ve been hurting her. I know Juri is in the city. He hung one of our residents from a flagpole someone had grown, and he wrote his name on the sidewalk in the poor soul’s blood. I need Jof to tell me where he is.

But she is stubborn. And when she screams, I feel it. I hate it. I want to dig it out of me. I don’t want to pity her. Takeshi seems unaffected after even the most brutal Mazikin interrogation, but I feel sick every time.

It doesn’t mean I will relent. I am going in there now. She may ask for mercy, but she will not receive it.

Day 7169

"I have something to tell you," Jof whispered, blood trickling from the corner of her mouth. "You will want to know."

"Then tell me," I said, stabbing my knife into the wooden table in front of her. "I am listening."

Her eyes followed a red drop as it slid down my blade and spread itself into the splintered grain of the wood. "You care about these people."

"I have no need of your personal insights," I said. "I want information."

"That's what this is. Don't you want to know what happens to these citizens when we take their bodies from them?"

Something inside my chest grew tight. "Where do they go?"

Her eyes glittered dark and evil in the lantern light. "To our city. Fire and death and suffering. This place is a paradise in comparison. Why do you think we come here?"

I touched the handle of my knife. "Is it worse than the dark tower?"

She shuddered.

"That is where I am taking you tomorrow." I stood up. I had grown so weary of the games Mazikin played during these interrogations. I had grown weary of becoming a monster just to keep up. "Or shall we leave now?"

"We can," she said quickly, "but that means the woman whose soul occupied this body will never be free."

"What?" I said it so loudly that Jof flinched.

"You can free her." She ran her hand over her dark hair, over the deep brown skin of her stolen face and body. "This woman, she suffered in her life, and she suffered after she ended that life, and now, she suffers even more. No way to die, no way to escape—unless you kill this body here."

"You are lying."

She grimaced. "Then take me to the tower. Destroy this woman's chance to be free." She stared at me. "You could free her, Malachi. All you have to do is kill me."

"But then you will come back," I said.

"Maybe, maybe not. That is up to the Queen. But what is not up to her is the liberation of the woman's soul. That is in your hands."

My hand closed around the handle of my knife and I pulled it from the table. "If you come back, I'll hunt you down."

"We know." She bowed her head. "All of us know that. But if you put me in the tower, you are condemning her for eternity."

She sat very still while the longing grew inside me. When I was in a place of fire and death and suffering, how much would I have given to have someone release me? Hadn't I thrown myself on the fence in an effort to release myself in the only way I knew?

Jof might be lying, but what if she wasn't?

She breathed her last breath in that moment, right before I cut her throat. I spoke my prayer over her body, but it was not for her. It was for the woman she'd taken, the one she'd condemned. I imagined her face, smiling and free. I imagined her walking into the Countryside.

I washed the blood from my hands. I think I will sleep better tonight than I have in a long while.

Day 7170

Today I went to Takeshi and told him about what Jof said to me. I asked him to change the practice of taking Mazikin prisoners to the tower.

He refused. He stopped just short of calling me a fool. He said I’d let the Mazikin play with my mind.

I understand that all of that could be true. My mind is not muddled. The only way to guarantee that a Mazikin will never return is to imprison them forever in the tower.

My heart is a different matter entirely. If there is a chance, any chance at all, of freeing a soul, of ending its suffering, how can I live with myself if I don’t take it?

Day 11000

We have a new human Guard. Last night, Raphael appeared in the training room, where Takeshi and I were trading insults in the Mazikin language and doing our best to inflict deadly injury on each other. As soon as I saw the expression on Raphael’s plain face, I knew something had happened.

And then he told us: a woman named Ana bit and clawed and fought her way into the Sanctum, demanding to see the Judge. I listened to the story with a pit in my stomach, remembering the moments I spent punching and kicking and dodging the inhuman Guards within the Sanctum, certain that if I got to the front of the courtroom, that this Judge person would free me. Ana must have gotten the same idea, and now she will suffer the same punishment.

"A female Guard?" Takeshi asked.

Raphael’s eyebrow arched. “It’s happened many times before, Captain. Like with Malachi, you will be responsible for training her.”