The Shadow Of What Was Lost (7 page)

“You can’t come,” Davian said,
lacing the sentence with as much authoritative finality as he could muster.

“Then I’ll have to go and wake
Elder Olin,” responded Wirr.

Davian ran his hands through his
hair in frustration. Wirr had the upper hand, and both of them knew it.
“There’s no time. You don’t even have any clothing.”

“I have about as many things as
you do, Dav. It will take me all of two minutes.” Wirr stood, heading towards
the door. Davian instinctively stepped into his path, but Wirr just raised an
eyebrow in amusement at him, looming over his much smaller friend. “Really?”

Davian flushed, then stepped
aside. “I’m not happy about this, Wirr.”

“Strangely enough, I’m fine with
that.” Wirr paused as he opened the door. “I’ll meet you in the courtyard. And
Dav - ” he held up a finger in warning – “ if you leave without me, I’ll raise
the entire school to come after you.”

Davian rolled his eyes but nodded
a grudging acknowledgement, releasing a breath he hadn’t realised he was
holding as Wirr vanished down the hallway. Beneath his reluctance, he felt a
flood of relief. Davian truly hadn’t wanted his friend to make such a sacrifice
for him... but he hadn’t wanted to do this alone, either.

He waited for a few more minutes,
each seeming an eternity in the silence of the evening. Eventually he snatched
up his bag, slipping outside as quietly as possible. There was little chance of
running into anyone at this hour, but he nonetheless kept to the shadows where
he could, heart pounding. The night was cloudy, with only a few stars providing
any natural light. That was good – it meant that once they were outside, there
was little chance of being spotted on the road.

Wirr was already waiting when he
reached the courtyard, clutching a bag similar to Davian’s. “No sign of Jarras
and the others,” he whispered as Davian approached. “Your Elder seems to have
kept his word.”

Davian nodded, a jolt of anxiety
running through him. This was it, then. “We shouldn’t waste any time,” he
whispered.

Without speaking further they
crept towards the gate. Every muscle in Davian’s body was taut, and he expected
someone to shout out a warning at any moment. Nothing stirred, though. Within
seconds they were beneath the portcullis, and then past the edges of the
torchlight and into the night.

They jogged silently along the
road until they were at the tree line, then stopped as if at some unspoken
signal, turning and looking back at the school. There were no cries of
discovery; the looming structure was quiet. Peaceful.

“So. This is the last time we’ll
be here,” Wirr said softly.

Davian nodded; he felt it too.
Regardless of how their journey went, he did not expect to see the school
again.

“It’s not too late for you to
turn back,” he observed.

The corners of Wirr’s mouth
curled upward. “You won’t get rid of me that easily.”

Davian just inclined his head in
response. Tearing their gazes from the familiar lines of the castle, they
continued along the derelict road and into the shadowy forest.

Neither looked back.

Asha stared dully at the ceiling.

She’d been doing that for the
past few minutes now, ever since she’d woken and remembered what was happening
today. She knew she should be leaping from her bed and finding Davian before
the Trials began, even if it was only to spend just a few extra seconds with
him. Her body, though, refused to move. Today would be the last she would see
of him for a long time – probably ever. Getting out of bed felt like it would
just bring his leaving a little bit closer.

Finally she gritted her teeth and
found the energy to throw back the blanket; she rose, shivering in the morning
chill, and quickly dressed. The first true rays of dawn were brightening the
horizon outside her window, and Asha grimaced at the sight. The Athian Elders
would have already departed their inn in Caladel. When they arrived, the Trials
would officially begin.

Suddenly she paused, puzzled.

She’d seen several Trials during
her time at the school; from her experience there should have been a cacophony
of sound from the courtyard outside – certainly
something
to indicate
students and Elders preparing for such a big event. The silence was decidedly
odd.

The more she thought about it,
the more she realised that the entire feel of the morning was…
off
. From
the corner of her eye she could see that her roommate, Quira, was still fast
asleep in her bed. That wasn’t unusual, though; the younger girl tended to
sleep well past dawn. Asha turned and was about to slip outside when something
made her hesitate.

The room was
quiet.
Moreso
than normal. Now that Asha thought about it, Quira hadn’t stirred once. The
girl was a restless sleeper at best, as well as a terrible snorer.

Asha crept over to the bed,
frowning. Quira was lying on her side, facing the wall. Gently, Asha placed a
hand on her shoulder. The slight pressure caused Quira to roll onto her back.

Asha’s breath caught in her
throat. She just stared for a moment, paralysed.

There was blood everywhere.
So
much blood. It was pooled mainly around Quira’s head and chest, staining the
mattress a dark, violent red where it had poured from the gaping wound in her
neck. Dark smears streaked across her face; Asha realised numbly that it was
from where Quira’s attacker had covered her mouth to muffle any screams. The
young girl’s soft brown eyes, wide with shock and fear, stared into Asha's.
Pleading.

Suddenly there was a voice,
screaming for help, desperate and afraid. It took a few moments for Asha to
register it was her own. She slumped to the ground beside the bunk, dazed,
waiting for someone – anyone – to come to her aid. She sat there for what
seemed like hours.

Nobody came.

Finally gathering her wits, Asha
forced her body to move, trying to shake off the shock that was rapidly setting
in. The female students’ quarters were adjacent to the courtyard; even at this
early hour, someone should have been awake to hear her cries.

Outside in the hallway, the
school again seemed unnaturally quiet. Limbs heavy with dread, Asha moved to
the next room, where Taranne and Jadan slept. The door was ajar. Somehow, she
knew what she would find before she entered.

There had been no attempt to hide
the slaughter in this room. The blood had spilt out onto the grey stone; the
girls’ heads were twisted at odd angles, with Jadan’s body hanging in grisly
fashion halfway out of her bed. Unlike Quira, their throats had not been
cleanly slit, but had rather been torn out so completely that the sharp white
of the spine was visible through the pulpy red tissue.

Asha fled.

She stumbled along the hallway,
too numb to cry, to scream, to do anything but keep moving, look for someone
else who had survived. She couldn’t be the only one. She
couldn’t
.

Room after room of people she had
grown up with passed in a blur. Tessia, the sweet girl who had shown more
promise in her first two years than even Wirr. Danin and Shass, who had arrived
only a few months ago and couldn’t have been older than ten. She had comforted
them during their first night as they had wept, helped them accept the
difficult truth that their family had abandoned them. They had made her a daisy
necklace to thank her, which she still kept pressed in one of her books. Now
they just stared after her with horrified, vacant eyes. In each room there were
more.

It only got worse.

Outside, the courtyard was
littered with corpses. She almost collapsed when she saw Jarras. The Elder’s
head had been torn completely off, a trail of blood between it and his torso
glistening wetly in the early morning light. Jarras’ expression, usually full
of warmth and mirth, was frozen in a contortion of pure, wide-eyed fear.

Fenred and Blaine – the two boys
who had evidently been on guard duty with him – lay a few feet away. Like the
others, their throats had been ripped away, leaving only slivers of torn flesh
and bone between their shoulders and heads.

She moved on, wandering almost
mindlessly now; each room seemed to have more bodies, some of them barely
identifiable with so much blood covering their features. Mistress Alita’s plump
figure and long dark locks lay near the entrance to the kitchens, her face
blessedly turned away from Asha. Elder Olin was still in his bed. Administrator
Talean lay just outside his office.

Then something registered through
the haze of panic and grief. The boys. Davian.

She was sprinting towards the
North Tower in a moment, all other fears suddenly pushed aside. He
had
to be alive. She ran up the steps and burst into his small room in the tower,
breathing heavily from both exertion and anxiety.

A quick scan gave her a sliver of
hope. The bed was empty, the room devoid of any signs of violence. Her heart
began beating again. Maybe he’d escaped. Maybe he’d been miraculously left
alone, the same as she.

Her fears far from allayed, Asha
made her way back out of the tower and towards Wirr’s quarters at a determined
run. She didn’t stop to look in the other boys’ rooms as she passed, but most
of their doors were ajar, and the splashes of red she saw from the corners of her
eyes told her all she needed to know.

Asha skidded headlong into Wirr’s
room, only having a moment to register the three surprised faces turning
towards her before a massive weight slammed into her, forcing her to the ground
with her face hard against the cold stone floor.

Her first reaction was blind
panic, and she thrashed wildly against the pressure. Then she stopped, breath
coming in ragged bursts, too emotionally exhausted and grief-stricken to do
anything more.

After a few seconds, she felt
herself being lifted up. She glanced down to see coils of Essence wrapped
around her body, raising her smoothly into a standing position.

She looked up again to see three
people watching her grimly. She recognised them now. The Elders from Tol
Athian, the ones there for the Trials. They weren’t responsible for this,
weren’t going to kill her.

Every muscle in her body went
limp with relief, only the bindings preventing her from collapsing to the
floor. It took her a moment to realise that one of the men was talking to her.

“Fates, girl,
who are you
?”
the dark-skinned man asked her again, his tone urgent. His face was drawn,
haggard, and he kept glancing nervously towards the door as if he expected an
attack at any second. “You’re obviously Gifted, else the First Tenet would have
stopped us from binding you. What do you know?”

Asha forced herself to breathe
slowly and evenly. She was far from calm, but the mania that had threatened to
take over a few seconds ago was receding. She was safe with the Elders.

“Ashalia,” she said as steadily
as she could manage. “My name is Ashalia. I woke up… I don’t know how long
ago.” She glanced out the window. The sun was now well above the horizon. Had
she been stumbling around the school for an hour? Hours? “Quira was dead… everyone
in the girls’ quarters too. They’re all dead.” Saying the words made it sink in
and she choked back a sob, trailing off into silence.

The Elders exchanged meaningful
glances.

“She’s the first one, Ilseth,”
said the woman.

The one called Ilseth nodded thoughtfully.
“I'll find out if she knows anything more. You two should go and look for any
other survivors.”

The other man raised an eyebrow.
“You don’t think we should stick together?”

Ilseth shook his head. “Whatever
did this, Kasperan, it's long gone. The danger has passed.”

Kasperan nodded his
acknowledgement, and he and the woman left Wirr’s room. As they did, the cords
of energy holding Asha vanished; Ilseth put a supporting arm around her
shoulders, guiding her to sit on Wirr’s bed. “Now. I know this has been
traumatic, but we need to know everything you can tell us. Are there any other
survivors? We were in Caladel overnight; we only arrived a few minutes ago.”

Asha swallowed. “I think… I think
my friends might still be alive. Wirr – this is his room – and Davian. Davian’s
room was empty, and neither of them were in the courtyard. I checked.” She
shivered. “They must have gotten away. But I don’t know about anyone else.”

Ilseth drew a slip of paper from
his pocket, the wax seal on it already broken. He handed it silently to Asha.
It was addressed to Elder Olin.

She opened it with
still-trembling fingers.

Elder Olin,

Davian and I have had to leave at
short notice, on a matter of some importance, and one I believe needs my
oversight. Send no-one after us – Davian is under my protection. Please tell my
father that if we are caught, I will use the name I used here. He can retrieve
us
both
at
his earliest convenience, and I will explain matters to him then.

Torin.

“I don’t understand,” she said,
looking up at Ilseth in confusion. “Who’s Torin?”

Ilseth just nodded to himself,
glancing towards the doorway. Then he gently removed his arm from around Asha,
standing.

“It can never be easy,” he
sighed, drawing a small black disc from his pocket. In a sudden movement, he
leaned forward and pressed it against Asha's neck.

Asha tried to jerk away, but the
second the disc touched her skin it stuck like glue; she found herself
paralysed, able only to move her eyes. She stared at Ilseth as he crouched down
on his haunches in front of her, calm as he observed her for a few moments. She
tried to talk, to ask him what he was doing, but no sound came from her
throat. 

“Becoming a Shadow is not so
bad,” Ilseth said quietly. “It is quick, and you won’t remember the pain. In
fact, you won’t remember anything since you woke up this morning. Almost a
blessing, given what you’ve seen today.” He stared into her eyes. “Regardless,
I can't risk anyone realising that Davian got away. I would ask you whether he
foresaw what I was planning, or whether he saved your friend through sheer dumb
luck – but I doubt you know. And if you don’t know about that, I doubt you
understand why the escherii spared you, either. But still… if it saw fit to let
you live, then I suppose I should do the same. There are always reasons for
these things.”

Asha tried desperately to move,
to call for help, but it was no use. She watched in terror as Ilseth reached
forward, pressing his finger against the disc on her neck and closing his eyes.
For a few seconds a gentle warmth flowed through her body, relaxing every
muscle.

Then the heat inside her became a
raging fire, searing through her blood as if she were being burned alive from
the inside. Every nerve shrieked in agony; her back arched of its own accord as
muscles spasmed and convulsed. The tiny corner of her mind not screaming in
pain watched as Ilseth nodded in quiet satisfaction, then turned and left.

Eventually the room, and then the
pain, faded. She knew no more.