Shadowbridge - By Gregory Frost Page 0,1

world.

She leaned over and looked down the way she had climbed.

In the ocean below, the shadowy shapes of large fish clustered around the immense pier at the base of the pylon, there to breed in the warm, buoyant water. On many spans fishing off a pierside was a popular pastime, but not on Vijnagar, where the people held many fish to be sacred, some by decree. No one’s line dangled in among the fish she saw.

The notion of fishing drew forth an unpleasant memory. For most of her life Leodora had viewed Shadowbridge only from below one straight and decrepit span, called Ningle; it was somewhere off to the east, over the horizon, part of another bridge. Almost as an act of defiance now, she climbed the tower heights of spans to look upon the world as though it might be something she could possess. As if she reigned with the lined-up avatars in a sky palace somewhere even higher.

In the sun fire she glowed like a burnished goddess—a goddess of Edgeworld, surveying the whole of Shadowbridge from beyond the moons. She would have climbed through the clouds themselves if there had been a ladder so tall.

She ran a hand over the top of her head, caught the leather strip binding her braid, gave it a tug. Her hair fanned out across her neck and shoulders—hair as copper and shining as the sunlight upon the sea. She shook it, luxuriating in the freedom. Here, on this height, she was unrestrained.

Stepping back, she turned and strolled a ways between the stone figures. There to the right was one that might have been Chilingana, one of whose stories she would be performing tonight. Glancing left, she spied a figure of certain identity—the demigod Shumyzin, recognizable by the tusks protruding from his mouth. He faced west and brandished a shield and short sword to hold off a clawing gorgon whose snarling face promised death. The swollen sun gave color to Shumyzin’s terrible pop-eyed and unpainted features. Almost health. She sauntered over to him and ran her hand along the edge of his shield, then crouched on the balls of her feet and peered from beneath it down upon the span itself.

Far below, hundreds of people milled about in the lanes and crooked by-roads. She regarded the onion domes of spires finished in gold filigree, the sloping roofs of simple houses cast in darkness beneath them, and colorful tower cupolas, no two the same shade. In one slender nearby minaret, a servant carried a torch from level to level, lighting candles and oil lamps, kindling globes of fairy light in window after window, creating a steadily rising spiral of candescent jewels.

Open fires lit Kalian Esplanade, one of the two main thoroughfares. The first torchbearers had emerged to look for work—for couples and parties they could escort from place to place. There was good money to be made by a well-spoken and knowledgeable torchbearer. Theirs and other lights coruscated the length of the span, all the way to the northernmost support tower of Vijnagar. The salmon sunlight also bathed the flat-topped heights of that terminus. She espied the edge of the next span beyond it, curving out from behind that tower and dwindling into the darkness of the northern sea.

A goddess’s peace settled upon her as she contemplated her temporary domain. “This is where I belong,” she said. And it was true, and she had always known it. Never again would she live beneath the endless spans of the bridge of life, watching but separate and unwelcome. She was going to be forever of the life, immersed.

The breeze whispered across her face, suddenly cool. She glanced up.

The statue of Shumyzin was staring down at her over the rim of the shield with furious eyes. “Hai,” said the statue as if in agreement.

Leodora skittered back from beneath him.

Shumyzin’s head tracked her over his shoulder. He didn’t look like a statue anymore. His skin was bluish beneath the sun’s glow. His huge eyes glistened white with pinprick pupils. Around his tusks he was smiling. His golden armor gleamed.

“Who are you?” she said, the only question she could think to ask.

“You don’t know? I thought sure you did.” His voice was a growl, as if gravel slid roughly inside his lungs.

“I—” She dared to look away from him. “Statues can’t talk.”

“But gods can.”

“But a statue isn’t—” she began, then gave up. Even she recognized her impertinence.

“—isn’t a god?” he finished. “And I suppose that a traveling storyteller posturing