Chapter 3 - The Shadow Gate

We reach the heart of the central continent on the ninth day, and I know we have crossed out of my father's reach the moment the light changes.

Eloria is a country of fjords, steep rock walls, deep bays, and hard snow, but the first thing I see in the central capital of Kolzhely is the citadel, an old tower of black stone looming over the Kolzhvar River. Since Emperor Theron of Skiagreth took the city five years ago, someone has hung iron lanterns from every arch and rampart, and they burn deliberately low, so the shadows stretch long and cold across the water. The whole city climbs out of the gray afternoon in towers of black stone, and the shadows here do not behave: they pool in the eaves, gather under the arches, and move a half-breath after the things that cast them, as if they have wills of their own.

Iona has her face pressed to the window of the carriage, her mouse-brown braid coming loose, her hazel eyes gone round.

“Are they supposed to do that?” she whispers. “The shadows. Are they meant to move?”

“No, I don't think so,” I say. “They are probably meant to be frightening.”

She pulls back from the glass and gives me a pointed look instead.

“Yes, well… that's all well and good.” She huffs before looking me over. Then she wanders over and pulls out a comb. “Hold still, my lady. I am not delivering you to an emperor looking like you slept in a hedge.”

I scoff at this. “You know very well, as I do, that I have slept in here the entire time.”

My maid smiles at me. “Even so, we want you to look your best.”

I scowl at this. Why would I want to look good for a man who may end up killing me? It doesn't make sense to me, but I let her fuss over my hair.

Over the next hour she attempts to tame my curls. I have wavy red hair, and Iona struggles to coax the front of it back into two braids. She leaves the rest down the way I like, loose and over my shoulders. It has always bothered me, sensory-wise, when my hair is pulled too tight, and I am grateful that Iona remembers this.

“There, see? Much better,” Iona says as she pulls out a small handheld mirror. When I gaze into it, I see I am wearing the dark blue and silver dress of my father's house. The dark blue contrasts with my red hair.

Iona braids several more strands before tying it back. “There,” she says, and smiles. “You look like a princess.”

“I look like a bastard in a good dress,” I say as I hand her back the mirror.

“You look,” she says fiercely, “like a princess.”

I don't press the issue. Some kindnesses you are only meant to take.

The carriage stops in a courtyard of black stone, and a man is waiting for us. Iona, Master Torsten, and I all step out. Several of the knights who rode with us step aside as we approach the courtyard alone, per the instructions relayed to me by my father.

I look up at the six-foot-five man, expecting a frown, or a cold face, or worse. What I get is a bear of a man, grinning down at me like I am the best thing to happen to him all day. He is enormous, tall, with shoulders that would make any ordinary set of doors look small. His hair is gold, cropped close at the sides and left longer on top, with two strands framing his face. His eyes are red. Not the red of fury or blood, but a clear, bright garnet red, lit from behind, and I know it before he says a word: House Aslon. Even in the north we know the red-eyed Counts of the south, the shield-bearers, the ones the Skiagreth Empire sends when a thing needs to be held down and not moved.

“So you're the one who's put the whole court in a frenzy.” His voice is warm and dry and entirely unbothered. “Smaller than the rumors. They had you ten feet tall and breathing fire.”

I stare blankly. I am assuming he is joking. He must be joking. Truthfully, I have never been good at knowing what to do when a joke is happening.

“I am five feet and five inches,” I say, “and I have never breathed fire in my life.”

He laughs, a real one, surprised out of him. “No. I don't suppose you have.” He offers me his hand and gives a polite bow. “Lykos, of House Aslon. Third son, which makes me nobody's heir and everybody's errand, so when His Imperial Majesty needs something precious fetched from the edge of the world, he sends me. Congratulations, my lady. You're the precious thing.”

“I am not precious,” I say. “I am expendable. That is the entire reason I am here.” I take his hand in greeting.

Behind me, Master Torsten nearly chokes. “Don't be ridiculous, my lady!” he says as he steps forward. “You are essential to peace negotiations, and Emperor Theron should be honored for the opportunity to marry King Canute's eldest daughter.”

I look over at Master Torsten, and he glares. I avert my gaze, thinking I have probably said too much.

Lykos clears his throat into the awkward silence. “Yes, well… His Majesty will be the judge of that. Now come along, this way.”

I look up to follow him, and for a brief moment an odd expression flickers across his face. Not pity, but amusement.

Master Torsten shifts his weight before brushing past me. “Lord Lykos. The hour.”

“Yes, yes, I'm aware.” Lykos does not look at him. He keeps his red eyes on me, and on Iona, who has crept half behind my shoulder. “We are not walking to Skiagreth, if that is your worry. Three weeks of bad road, half of it on fire. I have something faster.”

He rolls his shoulders, and the courtyard goes wrong.

Every shadow in it leans toward him at once. They peel up off the black stone like something poured in reverse, gathering at his back, thickening, and where they thicken they harden. In Eloria I have watched knights pull magic into light.

This is the opposite.

This is light being eaten. The dark folds itself at his shoulder, glossy as spilled ink, and then it opens, and there is a door standing in the middle of the courtyard with nothing but more dark on the far side of it.

Iona makes a small squeak of surprise.

“House Aslon shapes the shadow,” Lykos says, gentler now, the way a large man learns to be gentle with small frightened things. “Mostly into shields. My brothers can stand a wall of it between you and an army and not blink. I came out with my father's height and a knack for doors instead. Same cloth. I just cut it differently.”

“Does it hurt?” Iona asks. Her voice is very small.

“Only my pride, the first time I tripped.” He offers her his arm first. Before me, before Torsten, before the princess he was sent to fetch, he offers his arm to a frightened maid. “One step. Don't think about it. You'll feel a bit dizzy the first time. Everyone always does.”

I watch Iona disappear through the shadow gate first. Then Lykos returns and offers his hand to me, and with it I take a single step into the dark.

There is no floor for the length of a heartbeat. No up, no down, no cold nor hot. It is the same nowhere the crystal put me in the night I wore a dying man's eyes. Then, suddenly, I am out of the darkness, and cobblestones appear under my feet, and heat settles gently over my face, and I am somewhere else entirely.

Skiagreth is warm.

That is the first thing I notice, right before I lean over and feel like I am going to puke.

“Ugh… I don't feel so good,” I say as Lykos approaches.

“Sorry, my lady. This was the safest and most efficient way to get you here. Everyone feels ill for the first time.”

I nod, but it doesn't make me feel any better. I think I hear Master Torsten being sick in a nearby bush. After a few moments my stomach settles, and Iona hands me a waterskin.

I take a sip of the refreshing water and look around.

After a lifetime in the northern cold, the south is very different. It is warm, and it smells of salt, green growing things, and stone baked all day in the sun. We are standing in a courtyard three times the size of the one we left, open to a sky going gold at its edges, and above us a fortress of pale stone and black banners climbs into the light, so vast it takes me a moment to understand that it is a single building and not a city.

Somewhere inside it is the man I have been sent to marry. The tyrant. The one everyone north of the fjords swears will take one look at me and send me home in a box, if he is feeling kind, and in several boxes if he is not.

Iona's hand finds mine and holds on.

I smooth the blue and silver of my skirts. I lift my chin.

Let him look.