Shadow Run - Episode 39

The sun sparked off the mica dotted benches outside the zerl’s rotunda. Such a cheery, quiet day with little blue lizards playing in the garden pond and tiny birds fluttering in the bushes. Zie hadn’t considered before that the weather could be mocking him, but it certainly felt like that with the anxious storm raging inside him.


Their passage back home had been…idyllic. A dream that Zie struggled to hold close for comfort, reviewing memories of simply being with Ess and Davs, of Ke’s careful teaching, of the murmuring of waves and the wind untainted by Shadows. Ess had carved him a cane with a sefta head since they said the clever little river predators reminded them of Zie.

Slowly, slowly, the left side of his body had begun to obey him and through persistent, constant practice, he could walk again, though he dragged the left leg still. The left arm was weak and shaky but could manage simple things like helping to pull on a boot. His eye…well. That would likely always remain cloudy, his sight on that side like peering through heavy fog at night. Davs had sewn him a blue eye patch to match his coat.

He wore both coat and eye patch now as he waited to be called into the chamber by the gathering of ulla, the clans’ eldest matriarchs, who made up the zerl. Their initial reaction had been joy to find that someone from his clan had survived. That joy had turned to stone-faced anger when Zie told them the whole of it.

For him, the kernel of bittersweet joy, of relief, to find his people still alive, to learn that while clans were wiped out, the damage had been limited to four and not the whole of the north. He had returned, he said to them with his head bowed and hands held wide in penitence, to tell the tale and to face judgment.

Ess and Davs were in there now, acting as witnesses. Davs testimony was a quiet rumble in which Zie couldn’t make out any actual words, though he was sure that Davs kept to factual answers. Ess’s voice rose and fell, some of his testimony impassioned enough that Zie could make out phrases like never seen such courage and all he needed was answers.

He supposed his actions at the end might have been mistaken for courage. He hadn’t felt at all brave at the time, though he loved Ess for trying to make him into the hero. No illusions. No hiding from it now. You’re the villain in this story. So many dead. Children. Elders. Entire families. My own family. I have snuffed out potential and murdered knowledge in all those lives. Murder is murder and can’t be erased.


I’ll always be a murderer. No matter what the decision today, I have to live with that.


One of the little blue lizards had climbed onto the carved entrance archway and was trying to bite one of the painted stone flowers. Six times it tried before it gave up. Some things were more difficult to learn than others, perhaps.

Ke’s voice, raised in anger, floated out from the chamber, “As if you’re free of blame! That boy has more power in his little claw than all of you’ve had in your long, pebble-headed lives! And you simply let him wander around untrained because of tradition!” She practically spat the last word, but then lowered her voice so Zie couldn’t overhear any longer.


He sat blinking in shock. No one spoke to the zerl that way. It was a wonder they hadn’t tossed her out. Ke must have stunned them all to silence to be permitted to keep speaking, though a little bit of his heart warmed to hear her speak so fiercely in his defense.

Finally, after the sun had moved across nearly the whole of the garden, Ess came to fetch him.

“They’re ready for you now.” Those lovely burgundy eyes were deeply worried. “Do you need an arm?”

Zie stood and made sure of his balance after sitting for so long. He tugged Ess’s head down to kiss their cheek. “No. I need to do this on my own.”

The five steps up into the chamber were the hardest since the actual floor where councils took place was raised in order to run heating pipes underneath the stone to keep old joints comfortable in the cold months.

Thump-slide, thump-slide, thump-slide, cane, then drag the leg up another stair, one slow step at a time. He meant no disrespect, but this was as fast as he could manage, and he was all too aware of Ess hovering behind him in case the leg buckled.


When he reached the center of the room, directly below the octagonal window of colored glass at the apex of the dome, he straightened as best he could, though he kept his gaze on the floor.

The ullas murmured around him, the thirteen who made up the zerl, though it was Ulla KIsh whom he faced, the oldest at somewhat over two hundred years.

Despite her age, her voice rang out strong and steady, and perhaps a bit irritated. “Young mahk, you have caused grievous harm. Your impetuous, reckless actions, summoning monsters in complete ignorance, might have been the end of all things. And certainly was the end for far too many.”

Zie had no right to refute the truth. He nodded and remained silent.

Ulla Kish clicked her tongue and let out a gusty sigh. “You complicate things since you also saved everyone left alive from these same monsters.” She raised a hand when Zie looked up and might have spoken. “We understand how wild your grief for your mother must have been. We understand that you had no one to teach you but your own rather frightening ingenuity.”

“The judgment, Kish,” one of the ulla’s behind Zie called out. “Haven’t we been here long enough today? I’d like to get home before the seasons change.”


“I may get to it faster if certain persons wouldn’t interrupt me.” 

Someone laughed. It might have been Ke. Zie gripped his cane tight, trying to stop himself from flexing his claws. This was where he lost his freedom for the rest of his life and never saw his loves again. This was only what he deserved.

“Zie of clan Ruzt,” Ulla Kish went on. “You are banished from sylvas lands. If you set even claw or hair here again, the survivors of the decimated clans are given the right of blood feud by this council. Your clan’s holdings and goods are forfeit, to be divided among those survivors. You may return to the compound for your own belongings, whatever you can carry on your own back, and your mother’s knives. We give you two days grace for travel.”

Blinking in astonishment, Zie’s head jerked up. “I’m not…I’m not being sent to the deeps?”

“No, youngling. Untaught, you’re far too dangerous to shut away and hope for the best. Part of our decision came about because you have a teacher now.” Ulla Kish narrowed her eyes at Ke. “One as ferocious as the north wind, it seems. But you must be taught elsewhere. Go away, preferably far, and do not return.”

“Yes, Ulla.” Zie offered a bow, tongue-tied and dazed. Thank you seemed wrong somehow. Blessings on your judgments might sound facetious. All he managed was to repeat, “Yes.”


A gentle pat on his shoulder and Ke’s voice just behind him telling him it was time to go finally snapped him out of his frozen state. Two sets of strong hands reached up to assist him down the stairs, and this time, shaking and dizzy, he was more than happy to accept the help.

Emerging back into the sunlight, Zie drew in a gasping breath as if he’d surfaced after struggling up from the depths. A heavy stone of sorrow lay in his stomach, that he would never see his homelands again, that he was forbidden to live among his own people, but overtop the sorrow was…relief.

“Sweetheart, are you all right?” Davs asked from his left.

Zie tipped his head up to look at that beloved face. “I’m not certain. Not yet, at any rate.”

“I won’t have you going back into that compound where all this happened,” Ess said in what they probably meant as a stern voice, ruined by the quake in it. “You tell us what you need and we’ll fetch it out. And then…” Ess swallowed hard, their tone far less certain. “And then I’m hoping you’ll come home with us?”

“Home.” Zie considered the word a moment. It no longer meant what it used to. “I’m home. With you and Davs. The location doesn’t matter.”

Ess’s smile could have lit the length of a winter night and Davs leaned in to plant a kiss atop Zie’s head. It might well be that Zie would never walk comfortably again, but right then, he was certain he could fly.