Excerpt

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Isa Day

Raghi the Shadow

The Stairs of Eternity

Pongü

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Copyright © 2019 by Isa Day and Pongu Text & Design Ltd., Meilen, Switzerland

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the author.

Cover Design: Isa Day

ISBN:   978-3-906868-16-5 (ebook)
ISBN:   978-3-906868-17-2 (print)

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Chapter 1

“Are you here to kill me?” Raghi asked, leaning against the sarcophagus as if he hadn’t a care in the world.

“Yes,” Faya said.

Angry satisfaction rushed through his veins. The moment had finally come.

“Then what are you waiting for? Come here and snuff me!” he challenged her, spoiling for a fight.

He had known for a long time that one day they would face each other like this—Castelalto’s assassin for special assignments against him, the wayward apprentice.

It was after midnight—the perfect time for sneak assassinations. The place was unexpected, but fitting. She had tracked him down in a removed complex of Eterna’s catacombs where even the destitute who lived among the dead rarely ventured. It was a stone chamber full of cobwebs and shadows that moved on their own. The torches in their wall brackets danced in the perpetual draft that kept most of the tunnels and chambers well ventilated and dried the city’s better dead to mummies. Now and then, the flames hissed and sputtered like angry snakes.

It was a comfortable hiding place. The smell of dust and old bones was soothing. And this far down, neither the blistering desert sun nor the freezing cold of the nights reached. The temperature remained the same all year round, chilly and refreshing like the spring days back home. Having grown up on the storm-tossed islands of the Ice Sea, Raghi had never got used to Eterna’s brutal desert climate.

Faya pushed herself up to sit on the crypt’s other sarcophagus. The stone slab was flat, the outline of its occupant engraved in shallow lines. These burials were ancient, their simple style having gone out of fashion eons ago.

“Sometimes you are such an idiot!” Faya stated, rolling her eyes. Her face seemed to hover in empty air because her black clothes merged with the shadows.

“Thank you for appreciating my better traits,” Raghi retorted and mimicked her by sitting cross-legged on the sarcophagus behind him. Compared to her, he looked ragged. The wild strands of his hair hadn’t seen scissors in a long time, and he hadn’t taken the time to mend and re-dye his faded assassin’s garb—a long-sleeved tunic, sensible trousers, and a cape.

They glared at each other. The distance between them was about two long strides, short enough that she could instantly reach and kill him. Nobody had a chance against this little killer, except…

“How is perfect Emilio?” Raghi asked.

Her expression softened into a smile. “Blissfully happy and fitter than ever.”

“Always the overachiever,” he scoffed. Part of his derision stemmed from jealousy. Watching the deep bond between those two had made him feel even more alone. And that Emilio had got away from this hell he and Faya still lived in…

“Why the foreplay?” he taunted her.

“Do you really think I would kill you?” she fired back.

“Well, let’s say that your actions were occasionally suspect.”

Something changed in her aura, and he felt a shiver run down his spine. Faya was such a slip of a young woman—small, almost frail like a half-starved kitten. She should have looked innocent with her long raven hair, her huge black eyes, and her olive-toned skin.

But something had lit up in the depths of those eyes. Their glare seemed to pierce his soul.

“Raghi, please take off the hood.”

He obeyed with an exasperated sigh.

“You have been starving yourself again.”

“First, that is none of your business, and second, food is largely overrated.”

He averted his face so that he didn’t have to meet her scrutiny. Contrary to perfect Emilio whose dark Southern looks turned women’s heads, he was pale and plain. His face resembled those of the marble statues in the temples: perfect skin, straight nose, full lips, pale, expressionless, stone-cold. Just the dark rings beneath his plain brown eyes provided a hint of color besides his mousy brown hair.

“Raghi…” Suddenly, she stood in front of him, gently taking his hands.

He flinched with surprise. Why hadn’t he heard her move?

“Trying to soften me up before slitting my throat?”

She did not rise to the bait, just waited until he forced himself to meet her eyes.

“This abuse you put yourself through has gone on long enough. You may not believe it, but you are something special.”

“By being the only prince the master didn’t have to steal because my parents sold me? Yeah, lucky me!” He snorted.

Her face filled with compassion. “At least you know where your roots are, no matter how bad or corrupted.”

She had him there. Her origins were unknown although her dark skin and hair suggested somewhere in the South where most dark-skinned people lived. It must be hell not to know, not to have a home to dream about. He had at least that. While he hated his parents, their wild island kingdom was stunning in its beauty.

“Why do you think I am special, Nameless?” he asked.

She put her palm over his heart. “Because of your energy. You are like a tornado—a force of nature that sweeps everything away. I know nobody else like you.”

Remembering some of his crazier escapades, he gave her a lopsided grin. “I don’t think the tavern keepers of Oblivion Alley would describe me with such friendly words.”

“Well, you burnt down their street after enticing all of their customers to drink themselves way beyond senseless.”

“And thus providing them with the most lucrative night of their lives. As I see it, I did them a favor. They got filthy rich over it and didn’t have to tear down their rat-infested hell holes themselves. No effort of cleaning could have scraped away the accumulated grime of centuries. Now everything looks nice and new.”

Faye tried to look stern. “Let’s not forget the riot you caused by showing the prostitutes of Eterna’s most expensive brothel how to dance more enticingly than ever before. The city guards had to intervene when you transferred your performance to the balcony above Magisterial Square.”

Raghi grinned evilly. “I got a huge number of flattering offers out of that stunt. Too bad Castelalto wouldn’t allow me to become a dancer.”

Something stirred in him, something he didn’t want to awaken as long as Faya was there. He should pick his jokes with more care and bury those memories that caused his barely contained anger to flare. But the young woman made it easy to trust her. She knew most of what had happened to him and the consequences for his self-esteem, having suffered her own brand of cruelty at the master’s hands.

“If you had changed your career, then perhaps you wouldn’t have acted out your latest piece of mischief.”

Icy rage rushed through Raghi’s veins. “I fail to see why that straw broke the camel’s back.”

Faya sighed while he remembered. Castelalto had done his worst to him almost three years ago. These days, the master of the assassins’ guild meted out punishment by giving him as a sexual plaything to rich sadists. As if he couldn’t deal with that! As if pain was of any consequence for him!

“You terrorized a powerful magistrate. He expected to get a rush of power from dominating you, but you turned everything around and frightened him to death. In doing so, you shook up the master’s hold over the man. Distrust shattered their companionship of shared evil and cost the master a considerable chunk of his influence.”

Raghi smirked. “Then it was well worth it. So what are you waiting for? Kill me!” And everything would finally, finally be over!

“I most certainly will not. I want you to strike me down, then flee.”

“Flee where?” He opened his arms wide. “Castelalto terrorizes the entire continent and outlying islands. There is nowhere to hide!”

“There is. The past.”

He stared into her eyes, his tirade forgotten. “That is the way Emilio went. But it is only open to committed felons who are granted a second chance!”

She grinned. “So you think.”

He grew pensive. Was she setting a trap for him? “What is in it for you?”

Her expression turned wan. “Knowing that another of my friends has a chance to escape this hell and find happiness.”

“Since happiness is not an option, let’s focus on the escape. How do you suggest I make it work?”

“Just by sneaking down the stairs and hiding somewhere and sometime in the past. You will not grow older, but at least…” She faltered.

Her countenance gave him pause. “You are hiding something from me. Something big. What is it?” He jumped from the sarcophagus and grabbed her shoulders, too rough in his agitation. When she winced, he instantly eased the pressure of his fingers. He might not trust her, but she was his friend and frail, just bird bones and velvety skin.

“Based on everything I know about you, there is one person you love in this entire world. Intelligence reached me very late. Thus, I can’t be sure, but perhaps it is still possible to save her life.”

The blood rushed to his feet, and he reeled. “Nana! What did those devils who are my parents to do her now?”

“Reports are that your mother gave birth to a girl like you. They tossed the newborn into the dungeon to starve. When your nurse tried to intervene on behalf of the little one, they locked her in with her.”

Bloodlust filled his brain and impeded his thinking. With iron determination, he forced it down to focus. But something stirred, that alien part of him he was unable to control. When it separated from his body, he closed his eyes. “I am sorry, Faya.”

He heard her gulp.

“What does it do?” Raghi could not look. If it attacked Faya and killed her, then those dregs he called his life were truly over.

“It is staring at me and seems to be listening.”

Raghi opened his eyes to glance over his shoulder. Yes, there it was, and she was right. It looked enraged, its terrifying eyes burning like the fires of hell, but the rage was not directed at Faya.

“Get your mouth running! What do we need to do?” he urged her to continue.

“You once showed me a locket containing a lock of your nana’s hair. Are you wearing it now?”

“Yes.”

“Then you have everything you need. Time will freeze once you enter the Stairs of Eternity. If your nana is still alive then, she will not die. Do you understand? Once on the stairs, you can take all the time you need to find a place that suits you.”

“Time will stop. I can take all the time I need,” he repeated to prove that he was listening. Since he often made a joke of ignoring what other people said, it was important that Faya believed him.

Her gaze grew intense, her black eyes burning. “If you return to this time and place—your original timeline—time will start again at the exact moment you left, and your nana will again face death. If you go, you must not return here—not ever. Understood?”

She seemed to be speaking the truth, yet he had a hunch she was giving it a spin to fit her intentions. Did it matter?

His burning anger answered the question. Nana had been the only beacon of light and love in his dreadful youth. Only she mattered.

“Yes, I understand that I can never return!” he hissed. The thing behind him growled.

“Everything on your body will travel with you into the past. A single hair can suffice. Once you enter a stream of time, what you carried with you will appear at your side in the state it had when you entered the stairs.”

His heart lurched. “So I might find myself with my nana’s dead body?”

She nodded gravely. “That is an unfortunate possibility.”

“What about my chimera? I carry her feathers with me to make arrows.” He opened his pouch to show Faya.

“She is bigger than a horse for which you need ten hairs of the animal’s mane to make the journey work without fail. With that number of feathers, she will follow you.”

He made his decision. “Then I will go now. Show us the entrance to the stairs.”

She looked behind him, narrowing her eyes. “You realize you just said ‘us?’”

He grinned at her rakishly. “There is so much of me that I deserve to count as more than one.”

She snorted. “Regarding your ego? Certainly!”

Chapter 2

Raghi had always preferred the city of the dead to that of the living. Eterna was busy, loud, and confusing. The masses thinned in the half-world of the catacombs.

The man-made caves offered good shelter, but living there also meant that you had reached the bottom rung of society and given up all aspirations.

Those poor that still retained a shadow of hope huddled in the overcrowded hovels leaning against the ramparts. Those huts stank, turned freezing at night and into an oven under the relentless sun. But they were above ground and hence belonged to the respectable world.

Faya led him into yet another tunnel unknown to him. How had they got here? In the months and years after his arrival in Eterna, Raghi had painstakingly cataloged all corridors of the catacombs, out of boredom and because he knew that one day he would need to disappear.

Never before had he set foot in these parts. Suspicion grew. Was Faya leading him to his death? No problem there, but if yes, then he wanted to know.

“Are you sure this is the way?” he asked, reaching for the knife at his belt.

She swung around and noticed his defensive move. “Seriously, you have that thing at your side and are afraid of tiny me?” She pointed at the shadow that followed them.

Raghi stared at her. “Of all assassins, you are the most dangerous. Even perfect Emilio had levers to push and a conscience. I am not so sure about you.”

She sighed in exasperation. “We are almost beneath the magisterial palace. These are the oldest parts of the catacombs and shut off from the rest to prevent sneak attacks. In your preoccupation, you did not notice, but a while ago we went through a secret door and down a stairway. Ask your thing if you don’t believe me. It noticed.”

With trepidation, Raghi looked back at his shadow. Its bottomless burning eyes focused on him.

“Is that true?” He hated to speak with it, but he needed to know.

It blinked, indicating yes.

Raghi growled. “This place is disgusting,” he complained to nobody in particular.

Heaps of dirt and dust covered every surface of these caves and tunnels, and tangled curtains of cobwebs hung from the irregular stone ceiling. The air was musty, motionless, and smelled of mildew. And then the corpses! It seemed that in ancient times the dead were hung side-by-side from the walls. Hooks driven into their necks held them up and made them look like desiccated rag dolls. Most of their jaws hung open.

“Why don’t they fall down?” he asked, poking one skeleton’s ribcage.

The mummy dropped to the stone floor and turned into a bundle of bones and leathery skin. “Uh…”

Faya rolled her eyes and hurried on.

She opened a small door and went through. Raghi followed her without thinking and froze.

“I knew it. You are trying to kill me!” he yelled, his eyes growing wide with terror. He stood on empty air over a bottomless black abyss. High above his head, gray mist swirled. And in the center of the cavernous space they had entered…

Faya grabbed his arm and pulled him with her. “Don’t be such a baby! Come now. You can stare all you want once we are standing on the stairs and time stops.”

Damn, the little hellcat was strong! Raghi was of medium height, tall enough that he had to look up to few men. She should not have been able to drag him this easily to where he did not want to go.

The Stairs of Eternity were a circular staircase that spiraled unattached in emptiness. They looked as if they had once been situated in a high tower and remained in place after the protective building had rotted away.

Faya shoved him onto one of the ghostly, orange glowing  steps that was just turning into stone beneath his feet. “Now you can ask questions. We have stepped out of time.”

Raghi looked down. The step beneath them seemed to remain the same while from above spectral, translucent steps wound their way down, and below, newly formed stone steps dropped away into the darkness. All of a sudden, he found his questions irrelevant. “They are beautiful,” he said with awe.

“Yes, they are. It is said that a wizard king built them so that he could wander through time and make sure that his people always was happy and well. When he died, his successors realized that the stairs could serve for good and evil and hid their existence by encasing them in a palace. Since cities are built on cities, the stairs sank into the ground over eons, forgotten by Eterna’s ordinary people, while the magisterial palace rose higher and higher into the sky. Today, only the Guardians of Eternity remain aware of their existence. Everybody else believes them to be a myth.”

“Do you think there is any truth to that tale?”

She shrugged. “Does it matter? Dreams can be more important than the truth.”

Raghi took her hand. It was cool, the dark skin on its back soft and the palm coarsened by callouses. “I promise to do as you say, Faya, but now is the time to tell me the truth. Is my nana in danger and have you received the master’s order to kill me?”

Her eyes filled with tears.

Shocked, he gripped her hand harder. “Faya?”

“Your nana is in danger and odds are that she already died from the abuse she suffered. As to the order to kill you, it was given, but not to me. The master tasked one of the Old Ones.”

Raghi’s stomach seemed to drop to his knees. “Wow, I hadn’t realized that I once again managed to be that annoying!”

“Don’t joke about this, Raghi.”

It was either joking or panicking. The history of Eterna’s assassins’ guild was vague. It had always existed in one form or another. Then, about five decades ago, Castelalto had seized power and made himself guild master with the aid of a group of followers. Those assassins, called “the Old Ones,” were now in their fifties or early sixties.

And unlike the younger generations that considered themselves craftsmen or contractors and found no joy in killing, the Old Ones seemed to subsist on bloodshed and murder.

Raghi had encountered all of them, and his breath seized at the painful memories. A furious growl by his shadow calmed him.

“Be that as it may. If my nana is dead, I will return and take revenge on my parents. They’ve had it coming for a long time!” he swore.

Faya reached up to wipe a tear from his cheek, her touch ever so gentle.

“Stop that, or you will have me crying all over you,” he warned her.

She smiled. “I will leave you now, my friend, because you need to forge your own destiny without my meddling. Go down the stairs into the past. Each exit leads to a different time and world. Wait until you reach the door that feels right. You will know when that happens. And please promise me you will take good care of yourself. No more starving, no more self-abuse.”

“No more poking the devil?” he joked. His tears spilled over.

“I can’t ask that of you. You will always be who you are, walking a line right on the edge of disaster. Just try to remember now and then that you are worthy of being loved. And even if you can’t find anybody else—which I doubt—that I will always love you.”

“Oh, Faya, stop it!” He pulled her into his arms, looking instinctively over her shoulder for Emilio’s approval. But Emilio wasn’t there anymore. Raghi realized something. “Who will protect you now? With Emilio gone and my leaving, you will be more vulnerable than ever. Why don’t you come with me?”

Her embrace tightened. “I can’t, Raghi. Each one of us has a different destiny to follow. Go now!” She pulled herself free and turned away, trying to hide that she was weeping. “No outsider will ever know how it was to grow up in the guild. The bonds we forged during our apprenticeship are stronger than even the ties of a loving family. None of us will ever be truly alone.”

She stepped away from the stairs onto the abyss.

“If you believe that, you are a fool!” he yelled after her. “In all of this, we are completely alone and always have been.”

She was walking away. “Whatever!” she shouted back, waving without turning around.

When her outline disappeared into the twilight around the stairs, Raghi shouted, “I love you, Nameless!”

He heard her chuckle. Then she was gone. “I know,” her beautiful voice drifted to him.

Alone with his shadow, Raghi tried to take in his surroundings while deliberating what to do.

“This place is scaring me shitless!” he said with a shudder. Realizing what he had just done, he scoffed. “Which I have just proven by talking to you!”

The thing growled at him.

“Oh, shut up!” he snapped. “Faya told us—me!—to go down. So let’s go up.”

He set foot on the first translucent step leading up into the future. All at once, the soft orange light disappeared. Rough stone walls solidified around him, and the sole of his boot met an ordinary stone step.

Raghi swung round. A small wooden door standing open marked the spot where he had entered the Stairs of Eternity. Through it, he still saw the bottomless abyss over which he had walked.

He shuddered again. “Smoke and shadows. As if we hadn’t enough of that in the guild! And what is real? This?” He hit the wall with his fist—and winced when the rough stones scraped his skin. “Or what we saw before? And I will stop talking now before I turn completely nuts!”

A strange sensation filled his stomach. It increased with each new step he climbed. So much for forebodings! What he was doing felt wrong. His decision firmed. His curiosity about what awaited him grew.

Raghi reached the first door and looked through. His breath caught, and his heart almost stopped.

He was looking down at Eterna like a desert falcon soaring on the winds. The magisterial palace and the spacious square in front of it were unmistakable. But this future version of the city differed from everything he knew. The flag on the highest tower of the palace explained why. It bore the master’s coat-of-arms.

Raghi stared down at the monstrosity in horror. The Eterna of his time was a gilded cesspool—a dangerous, rotten place that presented a beautiful face to the world like an old witch wearing a mask. Nevertheless, lots of people managed to find happiness within its ramparts and lived a good life. At the academy, the sciences were thriving and led to new discoveries every year. Even those in search of music and banter could spend a night out without being robbed, unless they grew careless.

But this Eterna…The golden stone of the buildings and walls had turned black. Whole quarters were in a terrible state of disrepair, the houses falling down. And on the desert plains around the town, a forest of gallows and crosses grew. From every single one hung something that had once been a human being.

“I seem to remember that your friend ordered you to go down into the past,” somebody observed neutrally at Raghi’s elbow.

[…]

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