The founding of the Longue dynasty was a thousand years in the past, as much legend as history. Euphorians had been nomadic bands eking out an existence on the barren Atlan cliffs. The Sung, roaming horse-folk who occupied the foothills and the steppes to the south, had rarely ventured into the range. My ancestors were safe from casual depredation because they had adapted to the high altitudes; air atop the peaks was so thin lowerlanders would sicken and die if they attempted to settle there.

When a Sung warlord rose among the riders of the steppes, he expanded their territory like wine spilled upon a map, using outright carnage to intimidate whole cities into kneeling and begging to be ruled. The Atlan mountain range was at the Sung's backs, and though it contained little of value to them, they grew suspicious of my ancestors and sent hunters into the high places to court death. We weren't prepared, and their ferocity eradicated entire tribes, driving those that remained to shelter in the most inhospitable reaches. Horses were useless in the caverns and rocky defiles where we retreated. That should have been enough to dissuade them from any further harrowing, but the warlord was insulted by his incomplete success, and he invested a massive force of conscripts to flush out survivors, employing my captive ancestors as guides.

Out of the broken eyes of the mountain came Yao Longue, a sorcerer and caller of spirits. The first written accounts of our family's magic did not appear until a generation later when Yao Longue's children had established their legacies in Cloud City. Yao Longue created the first compass, and used it to predict where and when the warlord would strike. The sorcerer was said to have drawn the breath from his enemies lungs, held lightning in his hands, and caused the very rocks and soil to rise and do his bidding. By his will, the invaders were driven down the slopes, and our people were united for the first time under a single ruler.

Yao Longue claimed prisoners and commanded them to build his fleet. They thought him mad, constructing warships that could never touch the sea, but when they were done he bound spirits into the hulls of those ships and commanded them to fly. With Euphorians raining stones and spears invincibly from the sky, not even the massed armies of the warlord could stand against them.

It all led to a great battle where the warlord demanded the right to personally challenge Yao Longue. With tens of thousands on one side, and mere hundreds on the other, the two armies faced one another with their leaders in between.

The details of their confrontation were not recorded, but at its conclusion, the warlord went to his knees. His entire army followed.

Tradition holds that my ancestor explained the workings of the sacred compass and the diagrams to the warlord, who was immediately overcome with awe for the sacred knowledge. I had my doubts.

After that, the Sung people acted as our guardians in the foothills below Atlan. The empire they had built collapsed over the succeeding generations, its far flung arms replaced by other kingdoms, and their descendants returning to a simpler way of life. We didn't need their protection.

It had to have been around that time that Yao Longue made his deal with Ahriman. But why had he done it? Had there been no other way to save our people? How did one go about seeking to consort with humanity's shadow? All our books and scrolls spoke of magic as a special quality that was bound up in the blood of the royal line. Now I wondered if that was false. Could it be that what was bound in us was our bargain with Ahriman, that Yao Longue had been linked to this daemon all along?

There had to be another way, another kind of magic. I spent days scouring the library for books I'd never seen before, or legends and myths that I'd dismissed as metaphors to guide us toward a better life.

Lorekeeper Kala wasn't much help.

"What are you looking for, exactly?" She asked.

"Information about specific daemons," I said, "but all I can find are hierarchies relating to Ahriman."

"Daemons are shadows, and Ahriman is the Lord of Shadows." Lorekeeper Kala was an overweight woman with ornate glasses and shoulder length hair. She loved books, their smells and textures, to be around them. She did not actually love to read. The compass had given her this path when she was young, perhaps Ahriman did not want curious people maintaining the libraries.

"I know that, I just feel there should be something more to learn."

Kala gave me a few basic recommendations that I ignored, they were books I'd read as a child, and I went deeper into the stacks. Around when I was starting to crave my noon meal I tripped over a loose tile and landed flat on my face. Glad no one was around to witness my embarrassment, I waited until my nose stopped throbbing and kicked at the offending piece of flooring. The tile jumped, and there was an audible snap. It had been attached to a wooden hinge that was rotted through, and in its absence a deep, square compartment lined with books and scrolls was revealed.

They weren't titled, but as soon as I unrolled the first scroll I knew that I'd found something worthwhile. Much of the calligraphy was unreadable, but a symbol stood out. It was the center of the sacred compass, only the depiction was unusual. Instead of the tiger and the dragon, there was a man and a woman entwined in an embrace. The woman's color had faded, but she had once been gold, and there was a suggestion of wings. The man was purple, and he had curled rams horns sprouting from his temples. I was sure the man was a representation of Ahriman, but who was the woman?

The scrolls were difficult to parse, and I shuffled back and forth from the compartment to a table until I'd collected them all. Some were so delicate they could barely be unrolled, and their edges flaked at the lightest touch.

What I could make out confirmed the male figure was Ahriman, though the character they used to label him was just a stylized "shadow". The woman was his counterpart. Euphorian lore did not include a female partner for Ahriman. He played many roles, some innocuous, some maleficent, but no spirit was his equal.

One rune stood out to me, so I used a charcoal stick to sketch it on a scrap of parchment before hiding everything away and leaving the library.

That afternoon, I had scheduled an appointment with my diagrams tutor, Ciao. He was a high ranking official, and a very busy man, but he had happily shared his time with me in the three years since I'd outgrown my previous mentor. Ciao was short, just under five feet, and he wore raised sandals to hide it. His robes were an ostentatious green leaf pattern, and his cap bore a gold bead. He greeted me in his apartment in the palace.

"Princess, what a joy to see you." He blinked at me, being incapable of winking properly, and I bowed almost as deeply as I would have for my father.

"What brings you to my chambers?" His rooms were very distinctive, being furnished in the Kanton style. The high tables and chairs were purported to be healthy for an ailing back. I had an inkling he also liked to put people who visited him off balance because they were not accustomed to such accessories.

"I came across something, teacher, and I think you may be the only one who can identify it."

"Flattery." He blinked at me. "Please sit."

"It isn't flattery to state a fact." I took the chair across from him. It was uncomfortable. Gracians preferred to recline on divans, while Kanton furniture was rigid and unadorned.

"I heard you visited the matchmaker. Did you learn anything of interest?"

"She will be announcing my engagement soon."

"A happy time for a young woman."

"Yes." This led to an awkward pause as I hesitated to elaborate.

Ciao always seemed to hear more than what was said, and his eyes disappeared into narrow slits. "Are you going to show me then?"

I produced the sketch I'd made in the library and Ciao snatched it out of my fingers.

"Where did you see this?" It was an accusation.

"A crate of old books in the stacks."

"It needs to be destroyed."

"What?" This wasn't at all what I'd expected. "You know what it means?"

He crumpled the paper, rose, and placed it among the coals inside a small brazier by his window. There wasn't a fire, so he lit it with a spark stick that was lying on the cabinet nearby. I didn't interrupt him.

"This thing is forbidden. You must bring me these books from the library. Tell no one, not even Kala."

"Teacher, why?"

He turned to me, very serious. "This is a sign of a flamebringer, a spirit unspoken."

"A spirit unspoken?" I repeated. "Ahriman is the Lord of Misfortune, and we don't shy from using his name."

"Ahriman is a force of nature, he is the shadow that follows behind us to our graves. We may not like what he does, but what he does is in the expected course of things. Life ends, lightning strikes, machines fall apart. That is Ahriman, and we learn to live with him best we can."

The explanation was familiar, and I'd never found it very convincing. Yes, sickness was a natural occurrence, but we still fought against it however we could. Ahriman wasn't evil, it was taught, but if he wasn't, what was? The daemon I'd seen in the cage had certainly seemed evil.

"A flamebringer is evil," he said, and I felt as if he'd read my thoughts. "It is unnatural. It disrupts the order of the world."

"But what is her name?"

"It is not spoken." He snapped. "And it is not a she."

"Teacher." I gave him a look that let him know what he would be in for if he didn't tell me, and he quickly caved. With a sigh, Ciao grabbed a charcoal stick and marked a few phonetic characters on the table wood.

Li- Thi - Ah

He obscured the marks almost as soon as they were made.

"Do not speak it aloud."

"I don't understand." I said. "How can this daemon be so dangerous if I have never heard of her?"

"It. Not her." He narrowed his eyes again and sat back down. "A flamebringer is removed from the histories. It has no power as long as none remember it."

"So she, I mean it, is outside the natural order," I said. "But Ahriman is a force of chaos as well. What has this unspoken done that is so terrible?"

"It is not what the flamebringer has done, but what it will do. Your first ancestor prophesied that Euphoria would reign forever over all the kingdoms, and the only force that could bring destruction to our people was the unspoken. It is like a hunger that devours all things in its path. Whereas Ahriman might burn a building down, or take a life with fever, he always leaves us room to rebuild. His way is a cycle of life and death, as sure as the seasons. The unspoken brings only destruction."

"It would destroy our way of life."

"It would destroy everything."

I bowed my head. "Thank you teacher. I didn't know what I had found."

"Bring those books to me, every one."

"I will go at once."

My heart was pounding as I reentered the library. Lithia was exactly what I had been looking for, an enemy of Ahriman. The rest of this flamebringer business was propaganda. Lorekeeper Kala was less than delighted to see me back so soon, she preferred her charges remained on the shelves, but I waved her off and returned to the cache of ancient works. When the tile was removed, I began picking out books to take to Ciao. I was keeping all the scrolls, but I had to be sure I gave him something that included the symbol I'd found. He would want to know where I'd gotten it. After separating as many books as I could safely carry, I reburied the rest. It pained me to know that so much knowledge would be lost, but I hoped it was enough of a sacrifice that Ciao would believe it was everything. This was for the greater good.

When I gave Ciao the books, he spent a quarter of an hour scanning through them in silence. I waited with my hands in my lap.

"This was everything?"

"Yes, teacher."

"Where were they?"

"Hidden behind other books in the stacks." There was a time it would have been inconceivable for me to lie to my teacher, but as I grew to suspect our civilization was founded on deceit, it was becoming easier. Besides, there is nothing particularly evil about a falsehood in and of itself, it's to what end we use them that counts.

"What were you looking for when you found them?" Without ceremony, Ciao began tearing the books apart, covers first and then the bindings, disassembling them with ruthless precision.

"Just looking." I flinched at the sounds of tearing parchment. "I've been nervous about the matchmaker's announcement and I went to the library to take my mind off of it."

"I've never known you to be nervous."

"Marriage is new to me."

"Maybe." He was so focused on annihilation that he didn't look at me. If he had, I was sure he would have detected my dishonesty. "You will be the same after as before. I'm sure the matchmaker had things to say about the proper duty of a lady. Pish. Don't forget your studies. It is you who will be the master of the diagrams, not your husband. It won't be his place to command the daemons, nor to command you."

I wanted to thank him, but I was afraid anything I said might let slip the truth. Perhaps more than anyone, Teacher Ciao had always been on my side. It was difficult to keep the truth from him now.

I left my teacher burning the pages a handful at a time.

There was something else I had to do before I went any further. Beneath the palace, a maze of passageways gave way before my eidetic memory. Because I knew the chamber I was looking for, the High King's wards had no power to distract me from my destination. Without my father's key, I couldn't enter the outer cage, but I could see my sister.

She was sitting up against the bars of the inner cage at an angle to me. The bronze mirrors were turned aside, so Ahriman was invisible, but the censers were burning and the cloying scents of his incense was thick in the air. Did father light these censers every day, or were they bound with spirits to keep them burning?

"Can you hear me?" I whispered, and my sister didn't stir.

"I'm your sister, Joi." My voice strengthened. "I didn't know what happened to you, and I don't want it to keep happening."

Silence like a tomb, which I suppose it was, a prison and a tomb.

"I used to pretend you were with me when I was little. I liked to imagine what you would look like, how they would dress us differently to tell us apart. Whether you would like the same sorts of foods as I do..." My voice trailed off and I felt foolish. There was no one in that cage with the daemon. It was like my father claimed, her soul was gone.

"Do you hear me?" I whispered. "Are you there?" I took out a small peach I'd saved from my breakfast and put my arm as far through the bars as I could reach, then I rolled it through the second gate and it stopped just short of the inner cage.

"I didn't know if they fed you. If you wanted anything. Maybe I could bring you things."

My sister finally moved, just a twitch of her hand. I held my breath as her head raised and she looked at me. Her eyes were so deeply shadowed they were without color, and her lips were bruised. They moved without sound.

"I'm here," I said. "I'm here for you."

She saw the peach and reached for it, but as soon as her fingers grazed the skin the fruit blackened and shrivelled. In mere seconds it was reduced to a dark mush around a solid pit. My sister took her hand back.

"No!" I shouted. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'll try again with something else."

"It won't work," she said, and I jumped. "This thing all things devours. Nothing you bring her will survive."

"It doesn't matter," I said, "I'm going to get you out of there. I know you're alive now."

"She doesn't understand what you're saying, princess." My sister was still sitting, but she twisted to face me as if her head was independent of the rest of her body. "She was a baby when you gave her to me, she never learned to speak."

Bile built in the back of my throat, and tears burned my eyes. This wasn't my sister at all. This was Ahriman speaking through her.

"Is my sister alive?" I asked.

"Yes, alive enough to feed me. Just as your daughter will be." Its voice was cracked and small, feminine, the voice that belonged to a body so seldom used.

"I'm not going to give you anything," I said. "I'm going to banish you from my kingdom."

"Oh? And what will your subjects say when they starve because of your pride?"

"It isn't pride."

"Isn't it? You believe your suffering is more significant than the suffering of thousands of others. You are so proud."

"We don't need you anymore."

"You think not?"

"I know there is another."

"Oh?"

"Lithia."

There was a long silence while my sister's body maneuvered to its feet. "You know nothing of that creature."

"I know she is your opposite. You tried to erase her, but she's still here."

My sister's face was as slack as a corpse. "Go then. Seek her. You will find her price more painful than mine."