The Office of Shadow (2 page)

"Uvenra my daughter sleeps among the ash. She is dead by my hand, for she betrayed me to my enemy
Achera, the dragon who has slain many."

"You have come here to be judged by the gods."

"I do not come to be judged by the gods. I come to
defy the judgment of the gods."

Althoin spoke. He said,"You cannot escape the judgment of the gods.We are seated above you to judge you
and to command you."

"Who seated you there?"

"We seated ourselves."

"Then I will unseat you" Uvenchaud struck the earth
with his sword, and the god laughed at the sword.

"You cannot kill a god," said Althoin.

Uvenchaud struck at Althoin for a week and a day.
After a week and a day he stopped and Althoin was
unharmed. "You cannot kill a god," said Althoin.

Ein, god of War, whose Gift is Leadership, came to
match his strength against Uvenchaud. For a week and a
day Uvenchaud struck Ein with his sword. For a week and
a day they struggled, but Ein was not slain.

"You cannot kill a god," said Ein.

"What I cannot kill I can bind," said Uvenchaud.
Uvenchaud had a rope, made of fibers from the tuluk
plant.The rope was dipped in dragon blood. Uvenchaud
bound Ein with the rope. Ein strained at the rope, but he
was bound.

One by one the other gods came to answer the challenge, and Uvenchaud bound them. He bound Senek. He
bound Urul. He bound Penithe and Althoin. He bound
Tur and Loket. Obore and Reinul he bound. Ehreg and
Purek he bound.Tenul he bound.

In this way did Uvenchaud bind each of the twelve
gods at Prythme.

In Prythme the gods lie. In Prythme they are bound. In Prythme they are held by tuluk fibers and dragon's
blood.

No god judged Uvenchaud for the slaying of Uvenra.

from The Chthonic Book of Mysteries,
translated by Feven IV of the City Emerald

The sun in Annwn perches eternally on the horizon,
swimming in lazy circles that allow it to fully rise for only
three hours each day. Never lighter than morning nor
darker than dusk,Annwn exists in perpetual transitionalways arriving, never arrived.

Annwn was discovered by the Fae long ago and was,
for many centuries, a bastion of the pure Elvish folk. But
it was later discovered by men from the Nymaen world,
those called human, and conquered by them. Over time
the two races mingled, and have now become one. Neither Fae nor Nymaen, they are simplyAnnwni,with some
of the qualities of each.

There are many villages in Annwn, but only one city,
named Blood of Arawn.The city is built upon seven great
ramparts of earth and stone dug out of the otherwise
flat grasslands of that world.The oldest buildings of that
city-the coliseum, the Penn's villa, the temples-are
built of marble, but many of these structures have since
crumbled and have been replaced with more modest
structures of brick. Only the obelisk at the center of the
great market, called Romwll's Needle, remains unblemished after fifteen centuries. Conventional wisdom holds
that a pair of thaumaturges sit in a stone room beneath
the obelisk, whispering bindings without cease, for it is
believed that if the needle were ever to fall, then Blood of Arawn would fall soon after, and all of Annwn crumble
into dust.

Stil-Eret,''Light in Annwn;'
from Travels at Home and Abroad

Five Years Ago

he flashes of witchlight began to streak the horizon shortly after midnight and continued through the night, growing closer by the hour. Paet
ran through the dappled darkness, ignoring the sky.

The attack had come as no surprise to anyone, but Mab's Army had
beaten even the most alarmist estimates in its timing. Back at the Seelie
Embassy, the packing and burning of documents, which had begun in an
orderly fashion three days earlier, had become a frenzy of activity. Bags were
hurriedly packed; valuables were sewn into the linings of garments; empty
kerosene barrels were stuffed with dossiers and set aflame.

None of this was of any concern to Paet.

Blood of Arawn was an ancient city. Not as old, perhaps, as one of its
Seelie counterparts, but it appeared much older as a result of governmental
indifference down the ages. The cobbles in the streets were uneven, some
missing, and Paet could hear carts and carriages jouncing across them in the
street beyond his darkened alley. He could also hear shouts and occasional
shrieks, as certain of the populace considered the reputation of the
encroaching conquerors and decided not to take their chances. Paet could
hardly blame them; life under the Unseelie was certain to be a disappointment for those who decided to stay.

A group of a dozen Chthonic coenobites clattered past Paet, their faces
calm, their legendary indifference suiting them well this night. Their saffron-dyed robes brushed the cobblestones, the bells sewn into their fabric
quietly jingling. As the state religion in all but name, the Chthonics would
be allowed to continue so long as they acknowledged Mab as a goddess, and
superior to their own. This the Chthonics would happily agree to do, praising Mab publicly and ignoring her in private. Their own deities had been subdued eons earlier and could scarcely take offense. Or so the stories went; Paet
had no use for religion.

There was a scintillating flash in the sky. A moment later the ground
shook and Paet stumbled. He stopped and listened as the low rumble of reitic
concussions echoed down the alley. Waves of heat from the battle outside had
begun to roll over the walls before Paet had left the embassy, and now the
city both felt and smelled like a tavern kitchen: stifling, stinking of sweat and
overripe food. Paet felt the prickling of perspiration beneath his heavy linen
shirt. He continued running.

The district of Kollws Vymynal covered the smallest of Blood of Arawn's
seven hills. The East Gate was set into the wall at the foot of Kollws
Vymynal, which put it closest to the fighting outside. Here Paet could just
hear the clash of blades and the shrieks of horses and men mixed in with
thundering hooves and reitic blasts.

How long had it been since he'd left the embassy? His internal time
sense told him it was only about twenty minutes. That gave him just enough
time to retrieve Jenien and make it to the Port-Herion Lock before the Masters shut the thing down, stranding them in Annwn. Not the end of the
world, but close enough.

The streets of Kollws Vymynal twisted and doubled back upon themselves, and what signs existed were printed in tiny ancient script that beggared deciphering. The district's inhabitants had either bolted themselves
inside their homes, drawing the curtains and shutters tight, or had joined the
frantic knots of refugees. Most were headed toward the Southwest Gate,
which meant that Paet was fighting against their current. From the city they
would beg passage to a different world or strike out southward, hoping to
disappear into the plains villages.

The clock in a nearby Chthonic temple struck three and Paet whispered
a curse. This was taking too long.

Paet finally found the address he was looking for at the end of a small culde-sac, a four-story tenement that smelled heavily of burnt cooking oil and
pepper and rot. This was the address Jenien had written down in her logbook
when she'd left the embassy that morning, long before word of Mab's invasion had reached the city. Just the address and a name: Prae Benesile. All she'd told
Pact was that she was going to visit a "person of interest," which could mean
just about anything. By nightfall, while Blood of Arawn convulsed in preparation for its imminent surrender, she still hadn't returned. Paet had waited
for her until he could wait no longer and had then gone after her.

"We won't hold the lock for you," Ambassador Tract had told him diffidently. Everything about Tract was hesitant and noncommittal; his appointment had been a sinecure, and laughably so. In happier times, Annwn had
been a cozy assignment. Now Tract was in over his head, but at least had the
sense to realize it. "If you're not back by sunrise," Tract had said, stuffing a
valise haphazardly with documents, "you're on your own."

Pact breathed deeply ten times. He consciously slowed his heart and
forced out the remainder of the prickly heat that filled his blood. The fear of
the body could be controlled easily, but for the fear of the mind there was no
cure. Only action, despite it.

At the end of the street someone smashed the window of a bakery and
grabbed a basket of bread amid surprised shouts.

Pact let himself into the tenement building and hurried up the stairs,
making no sound that any Fae or Annwni could hear; of course, the things he
was most concerned about were neither, and had excellent hearing. Still. The
stairway was filled with cooking smells and body odor. When he reached the
third floor he stepped carefully out of the stairwell. The narrow hallway was
empty; several doors along its length were open, their inhabitants apparently
not seeing the point of locking up behind them. Many of the older, poorer
residents of Annwn had fought against Mab's Army in the Sixweek War
twenty years previously, and had apparently had enough of the Unseelie for a
lifetime.

The apartment Pact was searching for was near the end of the hall. Its
door was open as well, though light still burned within. Pact took a long, serrated knife from within his cloak, testing the blade with his thumb by force
of habit. He pushed the door open gently and waited, listening. His hardlearned caution warred in his mind with his sense of urgency. If ever there
was a time to take a risk, this was it. He swore under his breath and stepped
into the apartment.

It was small, a single room lit by a lone witchlamp sconce set into the
wall. The long-untuned bilious green light cast harsh shadows over the furniture, placing imagined adversaries in every corner. A tattered cot slumped
beneath the waxed-paper window. A chipped chamber pot sat in the corner.
Books and bits of paper and parchment were everywhere, piled on the floor,
leaned in uneven stacks against the wall, scattered across the cot. There was
no sign of Jenien.

Stop and think. Breathe. Relax and smooth the edges of consciousness.
Paet picked up a book at random and opened it. It was written by Prae Benesile himself, a work of philosophy, something to do with the history of the
Chthonic religion. He put it down and picked up another. This one was a collection of Thule religious poetry, prayers to the bound gods, hymns of supplication, prophecies of liberation and doom. A sampling of the rest of the
books revealed most of them to be of a kind: works of philosophy, sacred
texts-many regarding the Chthonics, but also some Arcadian scrolls, a few
codices from the Annwni emperor cult. Some were written in languages that
Paet didn't recognize. There was nothing here to indicate that Prae Benesile
was anything other than a reclusive scholar.

Paet sniffed. Blood. Blood had been spilled in this room, and recently.
He knelt down and examined the dusty floorboards. Too many shadows. Paet
glanced toward the window, shrugged, and created a stronger, pure white
witchlight that suffused the entire room. The blood on the floor was tacky
and brown, smeared in a scuffle. Paet heard the choking cough from beneath
the cot just as his eyes followed the trail of drying blood toward it. He tested
his grip on the knife and then channeled Motion and drew the cot quickly
backward with a twist of his mind.

Jenien lay curled in a fetal position, clutching her abdomen, breathing
raggedly. She looked up at him, and her eyes went wide in her pale face.