Ashes of Candesce: Book Five of Virga

Dear Antaea, it read.

My name is Leal Hieronyma Maspeth. I don't know if you remember me, I studied with your sister at the academy. We had supper together, the three of us, one time. Your sister once told me she wanted to join the Home Guard and I told her it was a myth. I guess I was wrong.

She did remember Leal Maspeth; she'd been her sister's timid, academically minded roommate when Telen went to college here in the city of Sere. Maspeth was one of the few people in the world who'd known of Telen and Antaea's plan to track down the supposedly mythical Virga Home Guard and join up.

I'm writing you, Maspeth continued, because we have a problem, and the government refuses to admit to it, and they refuse to let the Home Guard in to investigate. I don't know who else to turn to, so I've asked the Guard to bring this letter to Slipstream and maybe they can get it to you.

There is something in the dark.

Antaea stood and walked to the window. It looked out over Rowan Wheel's main street, providing an unchanging vista of lit windows and deep shadow. No sun ever rose here. No one born and raised in Abyss should be afraid of the dark.

Nobody will talk about it. Officially, things are fine. But people have been disappearing--whole town wheels! They're outlier communities, fringe places whose people only show up to market once or twice a year. Now they're not showing up at all. Far as we are from any sun, the darkness has always seemed normal. You know, you grew up here. Lately, though, it broods. I believe something has awakened in one of the cold abandoned places of the world. It is picking off the weak and those who get separated from the group and it is growing bolder.

If you make inquiries no one will admit to anything, so don't even try! I know I'm asking a lot, but you must trust me. We need someone who has experience with this world's mysteries, Antaea. We need a hunter.

Nobody cares about Abyss. We're all like you and Telen, as far as the sunlit countries are concerned: just winter wraiths of no account. Maybe you no longer care about your old home, either, in which case I shall never hear from you.

But if you do care--if you believe me even a little--please come home. I don't know who else to turn to.

--Leal Maspeth

Once, the darkness hadn't bothered Antaea, either. There had been a time when she wondered what waited there--oh, not in the unlit cloud banks and fungal mists beyond the lights of Sere, but beyond: past the iceberg- choked walls of Virga itself, in the vast universe that bounded and, lately, threatened this little world. Telen had wondered and had found out, and been more than killed for that knowledge. Antaea had chased her, too late to catch her, and didn't know what it was that she'd found other than that it was horrible.

Leal Maspeth was missing, too. The government wouldn't talk about it; the officials Antaea had spoken to acted like she should already know, and she'd been afraid to push lest they begin to question her authenticity. So far, though, Antaea had learned that somehow, impossibly, timid little Leal had gotten to know the famous sun lighter and adventurer Hayden Griffin, and then ... The rumors spoke of murder and of the Crier in the Dark, and then she was gone.

Antaea unbuttoned her jacket, aware with each twist of her fingers that she would never be putting it on again. She'd kept it out of sentimentality uncommon for her; it was time to let it go. She dropped it on the bed and forced herself to turn away.

Then, she dressed herself in civilian clothes, slid knives into the boots still hidden under her trousers, and added one to the back of her belt.

Crase wasn't going to make her leave. She'd failed to save her own sister from the dire mystery that pressed upon her world. Walking the streets here was about to get much more dangerous for her, and the ministries and offices she'd been able to enter as a Home Guard member would be closed. From now on, her appointments would be in the alleys and at the docks. It was going to be hard.

She would find Leal Maspeth.

Part One | THE OFFER

1

'LEAL, HURRY!'

Leal Hieronyma Maspeth took a look back to see how close their pursuer was and felt the scree under her feet give way. Suddenly on her knees and then her side, she began to slide. She heard shouts, and half-visible hands reached for her. Darkness opened below and, in desperation, she grabbed for a half-glimpsed jut of rock.

She swung, suddenly and shockingly, above open air. The gravel made a trickling sound as it sped past her, but she couldn't hear it land. It just disappeared.

'The rope's just to your left, Leal, can you see it?'

'No,' said Leal. 'That's okay. I'm going to reach for it now. Tell me if I...' She forgot words as she stretched out her left hand, and felt her right slip another inch. Now she was hanging on by just her fingertips.

She had an awful moment then. The thing that was following them was close. If it caught up to them, if it was the one to rescue her--for she was sure it would neither kill her nor leave her in this predicament--would she regret not having just let go?

Should she let go?

'Leal!' That was Piero Harper's voice ... She blinked; something brushed her face. 'Grab the rope!' He was only a few feet away, but above her.

'You've got to keep going!' she hissed at him. He shook his head.