****
Corin paused in the act of lifting his cup of tea to his mouth, staring when Rafferty and the other priest appeared at the door to the dining hall again. This was the third day they'd shown, selecting five of them to go clean a library. It was the same library each day, and none of the gossip Corin had overheard made it make any more sense.
Probably the priests were being finicky, Corin thought as Rafferty listed out names again. Corin didn't breathe again until Rafferty listed the last name. He wasn't picked, which was a good thing. He wasn't looking forward to whatever scrutiny the priests were putting them under—
Corin's thoughts stumbled to a halt when Rafferty looked right at him, a pensive look furrowing his brow. He turned away in the next second, and Corin stared after him, wondering what that was about. Rafferty hadn't given him a spare look since he'd dropped Corin off at the monastery. Setting down his cup of tea, Corin tried not to worry. Rafferty probably didn't remember Corin and couldn't place why Corin looked familiar. There was no other reason for Rafferty to be giving him such a strange look.
He didn't get a chance to think about it any further, as the normal priest came in then and started handing out assignments. Corin was assigned with a handful of others to cleaning the great hall where the priests held their sermons each week. Corin ended up scrubbing the dais where the head priest stood and lectured.
It wasn't a difficult job. The dais was made of smooth, polished wood that required very little in the way of actual scrubbing. He took his time doing it, not eager to move onto the stone portions of the floor. The dais was large, covering as much floor as the tiny room he slept in. A podium, carved out of dark gray stone, was set directly in the center of the dais. There were cubbies on the side facing away from the audience area of the room, Corin noted. They were empty, but dusty, as though they hadn't been cleaned or used in a while.
A semi-circle of tall candelabras stood behind the podium. They'd be lit during the ceremony that opened the sermon, and the candles were left to burn afterwards. The wall behind the dais was decorated with tapestries that depicted famous scenes from the priests' teachings: lightning striking out against dark clouds, a man standing tall against a shadowy monster, light wreathing a man dressed in priests' robes.
Sliding his bucket along the dais towards the nearest candelabra, Corin started washing it. He glanced back over the hall, unsurprised to see the rest of his group working as slowly as he was. They were chatting though, and Corin stifled another wave of homesickness. He wanted someone to talk to, but no one here would give him the time of day. He deserved that, he supposed, for being so dismissive of Karli.
Eight months. That wasn't too long, right? So why did it feel like he was never going to leave? Corin rolled his eyes at himself—that was about as dramatic as Karli and her shadows. Corin turned to focus his attention on the candelabra again, only to have his eye caught by a flash of red. An apple, bright and ripe, sat on the edge of one of the cubbies of the podium.
Corin swore it hadn't been there before. He'd looked in the podium—it had been all dust and nothing else. Corin glanced back out into the sermon hall, but no one was close enough to have snuck up and put it there without his noticing. He wasn't concentrating that much on cleaning. Looking back at the podium, Corin frowned pensively at the apple. His stomach flipped uneasily, and he turned back to the candelabra, focusing on running his rag through the grooves and designs decorating it.
There was something wrong, Corin decided, but he didn't know what, and he didn't know what to do about it. He wasn't touching that apple, though. Nothing good could come of that. Corin turned and glanced at the podium again. The apple was still there, sitting innocuously at the edge of the shelf. He'd leave the podium to last, Corin decided, and then wash around the apple if he had to.
Maybe it had been there before? How much attention had he really been paying to the podium earlier? Maybe he'd looked at the bottom shelf and decided the top shelf was empty as well? Corin glanced at the podium again—the apple wasn't on the edge of the shelf like he'd thought, but six inches back, shadowed by the sides of the podium.
He was being as bad as Karli's dramatics again, Corin thought, rising to his knees to reach higher on the candelabra he was cleaning. The apple was probably some priest's breakfast snack. Except apples weren't in season, Corin's traitorous mind told him. How would a perfectly ripe apple exist this far away from fall? Corin's stomach flipped again, and a chill raced down his spine. He stared resolutely at the candelabra, refusing to give into the urge to check if the apple was still there.
The sound of footsteps on the dais brought Corin's head around, and he stared at Rafferty for a moment before turning to check the podium. The cubbies were completely empty again, and Corin's stomach settled, the uneasiness disappearing as suddenly as it had come. What in the world was going on?
"Come with me, please," Rafferty said, breaking into Corin's thoughts. He looked grim, and Corin wondered if he'd done something wrong. He'd been doing what he was told, cleaning the dais. Scrambling to his feet, Corin dropped his rag into his bucket and obediently headed after Rafferty, his mind racing.
The apple had been there. He knew it had been there, even if it hadn't been there when he'd started cleaning the dais. Running a hand through his hair in agitation, Corin didn't pay any attention as Rafferty led him out of the sermon hall. Maybe he had been seeing things. It wasn't as though he'd been sleeping well lately. There was every chance that his lack of sleep was playing games in his head.
Rafferty stopped suddenly, and Corin barely stopped himself before he ran into Rafferty's back. Rafferty pulled out a key and unlocked the door in front of him, and then pushed the door open. He stepped inside, holding the door for Corin. He shut the door firmly, and Corin clearly heard the lock slide home, leaving him once more feeling unsettled.
That feeling didn't abate as Rafferty started chanting softly, rhythmically, and Corin took a few steps further into the room, away from Rafferty, as though that would do him any good if Rafferty were about to kill him or do something dire to him. Rafferty didn't look particularly murderous, Corin admitted, crossing his arms over his chest as he watched Rafferty chant at the door.
Rafferty was handsome, Corin admitted to himself. He had bright, golden blond hair that was tied back at the nape of his neck. His eyes were hazel, bright and sharp as he chanted. He had a strong chin and high cheekbones, and Corin was staring. Turning away, Corin stared at the room, trying to distract himself. Nothing about this felt right—from the apple to Rafferty's chanting at the door.
The room was small and smelled of soap and dust. It had two large windows overlooking the fields below. A small writing desk was set against one wall with a matching chair. A shabby blue rug marked a circle across the stone floor. Other than that, the room was empty, sparse and quiet.
When Rafferty stopped chanting, Corin turned back towards the door where Rafferty stood. He looked pensive again, not happy, and Corin crossed his arms, waiting for whatever bad news Rafferty had. It was obvious he had something to say to Corin, and it wasn't going to be happy, judging from the expression on his face.
"Have a seat, please," Rafferty said quietly. He gestured towards the chair by the writing desk, and Corin obediently crossed the room, sitting down. His stomach sank. He wasn't allowed to contact home, but what if something had happened to his mother or one of his sisters? Surely they'd tell him that, and what else would Rafferty pull him away from everyone else to tell him? The chanting was still strange, though.
"I need your help," Rafferty said, his voice still quiet as he walked over to the windows. He touched a finger to one of the panes of glass and started chanting again. The windows turned darker, as though they had a sheer black curtain covering them. Corin stared, but he wasn't seeing things. The windows were definitely darker, as was the room.
Rafferty turned, and his eyes seemed too bright for the dimness of the room. He stared at Corin for a momen
t, as though expecting Corin to say something, but Corin stayed quiet. Rafferty had definitely turned the windows darker, but that was unnatural. How had he done that? Was it related to the apple? Was Corin asleep and dreaming?
"Do you know why you're here?" Rafferty asked. Corin couldn't read his expression, shaded as he was in the darkened room.
"To learn humility and respect," Corin recited, obediently repeating the words that were drilled into them every week. "To serve the priests. You."
"No," Rafferty said, shaking his head. His too-bright eyes were pinned to Corin, and Corin fought the urge to squirm under the weight of Rafferty's gaze. "You've noticed the shadows."
"The shadows?" Corin repeated, unable to keep the skepticism from his voice. "There are shadows everywhere."
"Don't be an idiot," Rafferty said, scowling at Corin. "You're too strong not to have noticed."
"Strong?" Corin repeated, wondering if Rafferty was feeling all right. Perhaps he'd fallen ill and was hallucinating, dragging Corin into his strange visions?
"Strong." Rafferty sighed, the pensive look slipping over his face. "Everyone has some measure of spirit energy; you have a great deal of it, more than some of our highest priests. Priests are taught to shield against the shadows, like I did there," Rafferty gestured towards the door, "but since you don't know how, the shadows will have been following you, trying to get close to you."
"You mean the demons in the shadows?" Corin asked, furrowing his brow. Maybe the priests had learned he was skeptical of that line and were trying to scare him into believing? Rafferty, with whatever he had done to the windows and door, could probably try to fool him with his tricks. The apple, too, maybe?
"Yes," Rafferty said. "You don't believe a word I'm saying."
Corin hesitated and then shrugged. He was pretty sure he wasn't supposed to say that.
"They're real," Rafferty said quietly, his eyes sliding half-shut. He looked eerie, his face mostly shadowed and his eyes still glowing slightly. He continued quietly, his voice a raspy whisper in the quiet of the little room. "They're very real, and they want to be free of the shadows."
Corin shifted in his seat uneasily then stood, crossing over to the window still draped in darkness. Rafferty watched him, not saying anything as Corin approached the window. Corin touched the glass, surprised to find it felt normal despite the dark tint to it. "What is this?"
"No one can see in," Rafferty said. "It blocks anyone on the other side from seeing into the room."
"Wouldn't that attract attention?" Corin asked. He'd be curious if he looked at a window and saw darkness where it wasn't supposed to be.
"The room looks normal from the outside; they can't see us, is all," Rafferty clarified, his eyes opening fully again. They were glowing, Corin noted, and he swallowed hard, wondering what that meant.
"You don't want anyone to know we're talking?" Corin guessed. He couldn't think of any other reason for Rafferty to block the windows. He'd probably done something similar to the door, if that was the case.
"No," Rafferty said. "If they knew I was speaking with you…" Rafferty trailed off, frowning. "But you don't believe me, so why would you believe…"
"Believe what?" Corin asked, not liking the ambiguity of Rafferty's statement. It sounded like there would be bad consequences if they were caught talking, but Rafferty hadn't said anything that Corin would consider worthy of punishment.
"The priests are going to kill you," Rafferty said, his tone completely matter-of-fact. Corin stared at him, wondering if he'd misheard. "I need your help to stop it."
"What? Why?" Corin asked, his brow furrowing. "That doesn't make any sense."
"It happens every year," Rafferty said. He turned to face Corin squarely, holding out his hand. "The demons are bound to do no harm and to stay in the shadows, but the binding needs to be renewed every year."
"How do they renew the binding?" Corin asked, suddenly sure he didn't want to know the answer to that, but he couldn't keep from asking.
"It takes spirit energy," Rafferty said, and Corin connected the dots.
"Which I have a lot of," Corin said, feeling light-headed all of a sudden. "But—if it's done every year, why hasn't anyone noticed? Everyone here is a gossip; they wouldn't keep it a secret."
"No one but the priests know," Rafferty said, stepping forward and grabbing one of Corin's hands. Corin stepped back, trying to tug his hand free, but Rafferty didn't let him. "Stop." Corin stopped, uncertain, and that uneasy feeling washed over him again. "Can you feel that?"
Corin hesitated, but nodded, startled when the uneasy feeling morphed into something warm and hot snaking across his skin and straight to his cock. Ripping his hand away, Corin took a step back, hoping the darkness of the room hid the way his cheeks were turning red.
"What was that?" Corin asked, the words tumbling from his lips unbidden.
"Um," Rafferty said, shaking his head as though to clear it. "Energy. I didn't—It wasn't supposed to do that."
"Right," Corin said, crossing his arms and making a note to never touch Rafferty again. Casting about for a change of subject, Corin asked, "How does no one know?"
"They drug the wine at dinner," Rafferty said. "Make sure everyone sleeps through it. In the morning, when someone's missing, they declare they've run off and set the authorities to find them. There are always one or two runaways a year, and no one thinks anything of it."
"But…" Corin protested weakly, because that made a certain amount of sense. "What happens if they don't…" Corin trailed off, not able to say 'kill me.' It still seemed so fantastic and out of the realm of reality. Rafferty was deadly serious, though, and there had been that moment—Corin flushed again, trying to figure out what he was missing, where the joke was, what Rafferty really wanted.
"The demons will break free of the shadows," Rafferty said. Corin gave him an incredulous look—how was that better than Corin's dying? Not that Corin wanted to die, but letting demons loose was better how? "There's another way."
"What?" Corin asked, not sure he wanted to know. Nothing Rafferty had said so far had been good news, so who knew what he'd suggest as an alternative to Corin's dying—if he was even telling the truth about that, which Corin still had doubts about.
"There are spells that can be cast instead," Rafferty said, glancing at the windows and touching the darkened panes. "Like this, except they serve the same purpose as spilling your energy."
"Why isn't that done instead, then?" Corin asked, frowning.
"It takes more energy and more effort," Rafferty said. He didn't say anything more than that, but he didn't have to. Corin had seen the priests in action. None of them seemed the type to expend more effort than they had to. But to go so far as to kill people instead of spell casting? "They've also been doing it this way for almost a century and aren't willing to even try anything else." There was frustration in Rafferty's voice, and Corin bet he'd tried and failed to convince the other priests to try it his way.
"You need my help because I've got the energy to cast the spell?" Corin asked. He really should doubt this whole tale, but why would Rafferty lie to him? What did he have to gain from that? Corin hadn't been imagining the sensation when Rafferty had touched him and done whatever he'd done with his energy.
"Between you and me, we have the energy to cast the spell," Rafferty said, his face relaxing somewhat. "So you believe me now?"
Corin shrugged, looking away. "Weird things have happened. Demons in the shadows are as good an explanation as any."
"Weird things?" Rafferty asked, stepping closer. "Like what?"
"Um." Corin hesitated, but if anyone was going to believe it, it would be Rafferty. "I get these weird feelings sometimes, like when you first…" Corin held out his hand, not sure how to describe what Rafferty had done.
"When I first pulled your spirit energy out?" Rafferty finished for him and that sounded incredibly creepy.
Corin nodded and made himself continue, ignoring the rest of th
e feelings Rafferty had instigated when he'd pulled Corin's spirit energy out. "Then there was the apple."
"Apple?" Rafferty asked intently, and Corin only barely kept himself from taking a step back at the intensity of Rafferty's stare.
"Right before you showed up in the sermon hall," Corin said slowly, not sure he should have been explaining how much he was possibly hallucinating. "It just appeared under the podium. I was sure there wasn't anything there. Then it moved back on the shelf, and when you showed up, it disappeared."
Rafferty didn't say anything, looking pensive again, and Corin decided he shouldn't have said anything about the apple. He probably sounded crazy, and how would demons in the shadows make an apple appear and move and disappear?
"I was probably imagining it," Corin said hastily. He didn't know what to think anymore. Was he crazy? Was Rafferty? He'd been dead set against the idea of shadow demons earlier that morning. Why was he now acting as if they were real?
"The priests conduct a test when the barrier against the shadows starts to fail to gauge the strength of the spirit energy of each person in the building," Rafferty said, and Corin stared at him uncertainly, not sure what that had to do with Corin's backtracking. "We pick five or so people and have them each pick up a magical talisman."
"Is that what you've been picking people for at breakfast?" Corin asked, connecting the dots.
Rafferty nodded, stepping away from the window and towards the door. Corin watched him uncertainly, but Rafferty turned after a few paces and headed back towards the window. He didn't look happy, and Corin shifted in place, wishing he were back in the sermon hall cleaning candelabras. Well, perhaps not there, since the strange incident with the apple had happened there. The room he slept in wasn't safe, either—that was where the strange feeling happened. Was there anywhere Corin would be safe?
"You've probably heard about it, that everyone is made to clean a certain desk in the room," Rafferty said, breaking into Corin's dismal thoughts. "The talisman is on the desk. It's obscured, in the shape of an apple."
"You think it's related?" Corin asked, immediately feeling stupid for asking that. Of course Rafferty thought it was related. Why else would he have brought it up?
"The barrier must be failing more quickly than I thought," Rafferty said quietly. He stopped pacing, coming to a stop by the window. Corin wasn't sure if he was supposed to have heard that. Rafferty didn't seem to expect an answer, staring out the darkened window as though all the answers were hidden somewhere in the landscape.
"What does that mean?" Corin asked, wiping his sweaty palms on the front of his trousers.
"They shouldn't be able to move objects or manifest them, whichever it was. The barrier is weaker than I realized, which means we don't have a lot of time," Rafferty said, his brow furrowing in thought.
"So we have to… do the spell thing sooner?" Corin asked.
"It takes a few days to prepare for the ceremony," Rafferty said. Corin jumped when Rafferty suddenly slammed his fist against the window pane. "Dammit!"
"What?" Corin asked, taking another step back. He nearly tripped over the writing chair behind him, barely managing to right himself before he fell.
"If Tennyson notices the barrier is failing, he'll step up the testing," Rafferty said. "I've been keeping you out of the selection, since you're strong enough that they'll stop looking, but if he steps up the testing, they'll find you much more quickly."
"Tennyson?" Corin asked, not placing the name. It was easier to focus on that instead of his impending death. If Rafferty was telling the truth and not spinning some elaborate lie. What would he gain from that, however? Rafferty didn't strike him as deceitful, but what if he was an excellent actor?
"The head priest," Rafferty clarified. "I'll figure it out, don't worry."
Corin scowled because the way Rafferty said that, it sounded as if he was completely dismissing Corin, as though Corin couldn't handle it. "What happens if I don't trust you to handle it? I could run off for real."
"Then they'll kill someone else in your place," Rafferty said flatly, scowling at him. "And next year, when your sister comes for her turn serving here, they'll pick her. She's almost as strong as you are."
Moori was two years younger than he was. Rafferty wasn't lying when he said she'd be required to serve the following year. So if he didn't go along with Rafferty's plan, the other priests would kill him. If he ran off, they'd kill someone else, and either way, Moori would die the following year. Clenching his fists, Corin glared at Rafferty. "Fine."
"I didn't mean—" Rafferty started, stepping towards Corin.
"Don't you have preparations to be making?" Corin asked caustically, wondering if he could make a dramatic exit, or if whatever Rafferty had done to the door would prevent him from leaving.
"Right," Rafferty muttered. He gave Corin a look like he wanted to say something else, but in the end, he only turned away, stepping up to the window and touching it. The darkness slid away from the glass at Rafferty's touch, dissipating in the air. Corin blinked at the sudden brightness.
Rafferty turned sharply on his heel, striding across the small room to the door. He paused with his hand on the knob, looking over his shoulder at Corin. "Don't touch the apple."
Corin nodded, vaguely unsettled, and then Rafferty was gone, opening the door and stepping into the hallway. Corin stared after him, his mind buzzing. Nothing made sense, and he had the feeling that it was only going to get worse.