Girl of Shadow and Glass by C.K. Beggan

Author:C.K. Beggan [Beggan, C.K.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 0000000000000
Published: 2021-10-24T18:26:34+00:00

Seventeen

“Listen and learn, Kith,” Gongol commands.

“Once again, those frightened, greedy Sunshadows looked down from their high seats in Pyrite and gave a decree.” He pauses again, I think only to give space to an airy sniff. “Unlike their other decrees, it was not spread throughout the World. No runners were sent to the posts and outposts, carrying messages that would be sent on to the next outpost, and the next, until even the valley had read the exact words of the Council. But they had declared war against the Shadow Tribe just the same.

“This time, they would begin that war in silence.

“What occurred once was happening again. But there were lessons learned from the first war, ones that changed the method of prosecution.

“The Sunshadows began preparations while another war was still just a whisper in the shadows minds, by fine-tuning arts that had nothing to do with sorcery. They lived in peace while laying groundwork for this second war, expecting it would come. The Shadows, meanwhile, believed they would be ready if war did come, and lived their lives expecting peace.

“Strategy, dear girl. It does not win all wars, but it will win most.

“They attacked us without warning, in the place we were most vulnerable. They pushed us out of the bowl of the mountains, where the Golden Fields lay. This was a genius move, one that relied on the work of intelligence. Spies, Kith, placed carefully in the decades before. They are people who lie and deal in secrets. In this case, they studied the way we stockpiled the grain of the Golden Fields; they knew it was an ingredient to our magic. Eventually, they saw we'd come to rely upon it in other ways.

“It was the beginning of the end for the Shadows in Sundown.

“Next, the Sunshadows fought us with their great magic, working their way through the last cities we could live in; they need not strike in each of them, for after the Shadows were driven from their homes and neighborhoods in Garnet and Basalt, Lavan expelled their Shadows the old-fashioned way: with simple weapons from kitchens and their fields, and threats spat from their mouths. With lies and rumors and prominent folk, urging the common people to believe as they did. And what they believed was that Shadows had no place living among them.

“They could not sway every Sunshadow. But there was another incentive: the threat of Pyrite’s army marching through their cities and towns. They would come for the Shadows; everyone could see it.

“The Sunshadows of Lavan could not abide the thought of armies in their streets. The problem, then, became the Shadows—not the Council in Pyrite and the actions they took. But ask the folk who believed that, and they would swear they bore no ill-will toward the Shadows.

“I think they planned for this, the Sunshadows sitting on high. They expected their people would turn against the Shadows. They expected the Sunshadows that dared to live with the Shadows in Limestone and Obsidian would begin to feel the same way, and leave.

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