Of Shadow and Sea (The Elder Empire: Shadow Book 1)

by Will Wight

  Calder, she noticed, didn’t seek shelter. Instead he knelt by Urzaia, heedless of his own safety.

  Good. Maybe he’ll get crushed.

  She sunk down, sitting with her back against the shed, and listened to the patter of stones like rain. A thunderous impact shook the arena as the Handmaiden dropped the roof to the side.

  Shera put a hand on her shear to quiet its laughter.

  “What did you name it,” she asked, without looking up at Lucan.

  “Syphren,” he replied, grinning down. “It means ‘The Whispering Death.’ The knife helped me choose the name, so it wasn’t all my fault.”

  Meia looked at him suspiciously. “That sounds like an Elder name.”

  “It killed a Heart of Nakothi. There’s a little Elder in it.”

  The Handmaiden loomed over the exposed arena, her face shifting and horrible. “Speaking of Elders,” Shera said, “what are we going to do about that?”

  Lucan squinted up. “You should be able to kill it. Syphren can feed on anything it does to protect itself.”

  “I’ll walk up and stab it, then.” The Handmaiden’s tentacles writhed, each big enough to tear a shark to pieces. The Children of Nakothi swarmed around her, vague and shapeless at this distance, but surely enough to keep Shera from approaching.

  Meia looked at her blue-scaled shoulder wound, which was taking longer than usual to heal. “Come to think of it, Lucan, how did you get out?”

  “The cell fell apart in the earthquake,” he said. “I just sort of...walked out.”

  So it had been that easy, had it? “If I had known all it would take was an earthquake, I would have made one years ago,” Shera said.

  He looked skeptical. “How do you make an earthquake?”

  She gestured around her. “Maybe I made this one.”

  “Did you?” Meia asked, suddenly serious. “What happened? Why is there a Handmaiden here at all? Where did the Children come from?”

  Shera leaned back against the wall of the shed, resting her injuries, but still keeping a wary eye on Calder. “I don’t know. I’m sure it has something to do with the Heart, so I was coming here to find out if Calder Marten had done something with it. Not much chance of that now.”

  Meia looked to Lucan, who sighed and pulled off his glove. “I assumed Shera had destroyed the Heart and this was the result,” he said. “But I’ll see what I can.”

  He held out his bare hand, wincing in pain. He must have overdone it, working on the Heart’s seal and then Awakening her blade. But he stayed in that position for thirty seconds before his eyes snapped open.

  “I think the Heart is gone,” he said. “It’s hard to tell, since the power of Nakothi is everywhere, but I don’t hear anything like the Heart. Someone must have destroyed it.”

  “It wasn’t me,” Shera said. She had assumed that she was the only one on the Gray Island with an invested weapon significant enough to kill Nakothi’s Heart, but that was nothing more than an arrogant assumption.

  She thought of Calder Marten’s orange-and-black sword, and the effect it had on Elderspawn. He had stabbed that headless gorilla once, and it dissolved into a rotten black mess. Would it have the same effect on a Heart of the Dead Mother? Maybe he had destroyed the Heart, and somehow survived the ensuing release of Nakothi’s power.

  If it had that effect on the Heart, then what would it do to a Handmaiden?

  Urzaia Woodsman had given up even his tentative hold on life, and Calder rose. The falling dirt and rocks had stopped, now that the broken roof was gone, but the distortion in space was still there. Sand and smaller pebbles drifted up in streams, clouding the air.

  Through the cloud of dust, the Navigator walked toward them, Awakened sword in his right hand and the Emperor’s crown on his head. He stopped only a few yards from their shelter.

  Meia tensed, and Lucan slid his glove back on, his hands drifting toward his shears.

  Shera rose to her feet, unconcerned. Calder wouldn’t attack them head-on like this unless they’d backed him into a corner; it was more his style to run. Unless the rage over Urzaia’s death had gotten the better of him, in which case she would kill him.

  “It seems we have a common obstacle,” he said. The Handmaiden, she assumed. His voice was bitter, as though he resented even having to speak to her.

  He pointed his orange Awakened blade at her green one. “Can you kill it?” he asked.

  Why was he asking her? If he could destroy the Heart, surely he had the power to deal with a lesser Elder.

  But she had received her knife only minutes ago, and she was already learning the nature of its power. If he had carried his sword for longer than that, then he should know its limitations. And he was a Reader as well; maybe he knew he couldn’t fight the Handmaiden.

  She turned to Lucan, silently asking for his opinion. He was the one who had Awakened the weapon.

  “If we can get you close enough,” he said. She could tell that he didn’t think they could get close, but he was willing to try.

  Calder rubbed his right arm with his left. Now that she looked closely, there was a red mark visible through the tears in his sleeve. It looked like some sort of brand, or an angry bruise left from a monster gripping his arm too hard. Even with a sword that dissolved Elderspawn, it seemed he couldn’t fight through an army of Nakothi’s Children without taking an injury or two.

  “It’s planning on attacking soon,” he said, which Shera accepted as a product of his Reader’s senses. “When it does, I’ll hit it as hard as I can. You’ll have to find your own opening.”

  So she would have to go up and stab the giant Elder after all. Great.

  Her wounds pulled at her body and spirit like weights, dragging her down into exhaustion, but there was some core of her that had plenty of energy. Her mind and her flesh cried out for sleep, but somehow she felt that, right now, she could push herself beyond those limitations.

  It was the energy she had stolen from Urzaia, she realized. That, or the Awakened weapon itself did something to increase her stamina. Either way, she’d take it.

  If it would even help.

  “What are the odds that it will stay dead?” she asked wearily. Maybe as a Reader, he knew something she didn’t.

  “Based on my experience with Elders? Abandon that hope right now.”

  She’d been afraid of that. She rubbed a hand over her closed eyes, wishing for sleep. “Maybe if I get wounded killing an Elder they’ll give me some time off. Meia, here’s your chance to stab me in the back.”

  Meia opened her mouth to try and respond, but muscles shifted unnaturally under her skin, and the blue-scaled flesh around her wound crawled. She shut her mouth, giving up.

  Every time Shera grew jealous of Meia’s enhanced power, she only had to remind herself of the drawbacks.

  Lucan patted Shera on the shoulder. “Don’t worry. I’m sure she would stab you if she could.”

  Something about that statement seemed to make Calder angry. His fist tightened on his sword as though he meant to use it, and his face turned red. “Just do your part,” he said roughly, and marched away.

  Lucan and Shera looked at each other. After a moment, Lucan shrugged.

  Meia pulled herself to her feet as her skin settled down. The blue scales faded from her shoulder, the wound having closed to an angry red scar. She gulped down air like she had emerged from a river.

  “Sorry,” she panted. “Had to...take care of that.”

  “It’s not like we were doing anything important,” Lucan said.

  Shera held Syphren’s hilt and looked up, staring at the Handmaiden in the...chest. It was too painful to look directly at its head.

  The Handmaiden stood there at the ledge, bubbling like a teakettle gone mad, Children running around its “feet.”

  “What is it waiting for?” she asked.

  “It’s afraid,” Lucan began, but whatever else he was going to say was drowned out in a bellowing, threatening voice that bounced around
in the hollowed-out arena as though an army of men were all shouting at once.

  “TESTAMENT,” the voice shouted. The three Consultants all grabbed their weapons and turned, looking for the threat.

  Calder stood only a few yards away, speaking to his pet Elderspawn. The creature flared its wings, tentacles writhing over its mouth, and its cruel, dark eyes seemed to sparkle with laughter.

  “Foster,” Calder said, and a second later the creature boomed out an echo: “FOSTER!”

  The Consultants ran, both to distance themselves from the voice and to prepare. Calder was obviously doing something, and they needed to be in position.

  As soon as they left the shelter, they saw that they were surrounded.

  “READY CANNONS!”

  The Children of Nakothi weren’t just waiting above; they had snuck down into the freshly opened crater around the arena, gathering around the sandy arena floor, waiting to attack. Now monstrosities of dead flesh filled the seats built for the living, gnashing teeth and snapping claws like dogs held on the end of a thousand leashes.

  Just as Shera saw them, pulling her shears, the Handmaiden slithered to the edge of the hole. She shrieked, pointing down into the arena.

  And every one of the Elderspawn exploded into action.

  “AIM,” Calder’s pet declared, and then Consultants met Children blade-to-bone.

  Shera was sure they’d be overrun in seconds, given Meia’s condition, but she underestimated her new weapon. The bronze blade in her right would cut through children perfectly well, but Syphren...

  The Whispering Death reveled in its role. A nick of the green transparent blade stole all of Nakothi’s power away from the Child struck, reverting it to nothing more than an inanimate pile of body parts. Green wisps of light floated around each of her victims, spinning around her and around the Children like an army of ghosts.

  And with each enemy struck down, she got a little stronger, a little faster. She vaulted over something like a wingless, crawling wasp made of petrified muscle, slashing it as she flew. It died, and another green ghost was born. A blue-skinned imp rushed at her, screaming, and she did something on pure instinct that she’d never imagined.

  She reached out with her mind and tore its power away.

  An emerald wisp of light was ripped from its body, and Shera hadn’t even come near it with her blade.

  As an experiment, she stopped, listening to Syphren’s whispers for a moment. They didn’t cohere into words—the blade was having too much fun to converse—but she drew some meaning from it nonetheless.

  And a second later, she drew in her Intent as though taking a deep breath.

  A wave of green light, like an ocean’s tide, surged out of the surrounding Elderspawn and into her. For a moment she was blinded by a verdant flash, as though she’d stared directly into an emerald sun.

  For fifty yards around her, all the Children collapsed.

  The surge of strength was like nothing she’d ever experienced. Every grain of sand stood out in distinct contrast to its fellows, every hiss of the wind was like a symphony. The world was bright and clear, and power shone through her body. She felt like she was glowing.

  She glanced down at herself for a moment to make sure she wasn’t actually shining.

  “FIRE!” the hideous voice shouted, and the Handmaiden staggered back as though she’d been struck by a cannon. A second later, the sound of a cannon firing caught up, and Shera realized what Calder was doing.

  His ship was in the water, off the edge of the island. He was ordering his gunner from here.

  Shera started to run toward the edge of the hole, where a ladder went up to yet another hidden entrance. It should come out right under the Handmaiden’s tentacles.

  She slowed when she realized that Lucan and Meia weren’t following.

  Blades at the ready, Shera spun, ready to kill whatever threat her two teammates were facing. Only to realize that she already had.

  Body parts in the shapes of animals and monsters lay in piles before Lucan and Meia, messy and rotten. They both had their shears in their hands, staring at her as though they couldn’t believe their own eyes.

  “Shera,” Lucan asked unsteadily, “what did you do?”

  “FIRE!” the Elderspawn announced again, and the island shook again.

  “What do you mean?” Shera held up the dagger, showing him its shining green hands. “I’m using Syphren.”

  “Awakening can give a weapon powers it didn’t already have,” he said. “It can’t give them to you. Shera, I think you may be Soulbound.”

  Meia’s left eye twitched, and she looked like she was holding herself back from screaming in frustration.

  She glanced at the dagger and then up to him, skeptical. “I don’t think so.” She didn’t feel any different. “I’m not any stronger than I was. That Izyrian gladiator could punch through stone. You know what the Emperor could do.”

  “FIRE!”

  Above them, the Handmaiden collapsed.

  “What a Soulbound can do depends on their Vessel,” Lucan explained. “Most of them aren’t any stronger than anyone else. Urzaia was a Champion—his body was enhanced, like Meia’s. That’s likely where his strength came from.”

  Shera waved that away, heading for the ladder. “That doesn’t matter now. We have our mission.” And she had so much energy now that was begging to be used.

  Lucan hurried after her, still speaking out of concern. “This is important, Shera. There are risks in the bonding process, and there are certain dangers facing Soulbound...you’re not listening.”

  She wasn’t.

  She leaped up the ladder, landing with her feet on the fifth rung, and kept climbing.

  Behind her, Meia grumbled.

  ~~~

  They emerged from the hatch at the top of the ladder amid a forest of undulating white tentacles and flailing, grasping hands. The hands were made out of the same pale flesh as the rest of the Handmaiden, seeming to grow out of the flesh of the tentacles, but otherwise they looked human.

  The whole mess of tentacles smelled like an open sewer filled with fish, and Shera had to breathe lightly through her mouth as she staggered away from the hatch.

  Optimistically, she pulled Syphren, slashing at one of the nearby tentacles. Maybe it would affect the Handmaiden as easily as it had the Children, and they could all go home.

  The limb slithered out of the way, and her strike bit only air. A second later, the Handmaiden pulled back from them entirely, gathering her tentacles underneath her body. It was difficult to appreciate from down in the arena, but the Elder was huge, towering sixty or seventy feet in the air at least. Her arms, bony and double-jointed, looked as though they could smash buildings and uproot forests. Her head...

  Shera tried not to think about the creature’s head.

  The Handmaiden let out a long, wet scream, like a singer drowning in the middle of a solo.

  At that signal, all the Children in the forest charged toward the three Consultants.

  It was like facing down a hideous army, but fueled by her newfound strength, Shera ran straight toward the onrushing wave. The first rank died, collapsing in a whirling storm of green wisps.

  But the second rank was right behind them, hitting Meia with slashing claws, whipping tails, and gnashing mandibles.

  Shera couldn’t react in time, stunned as she was by the incoming energy from the dead Elderspawn. The Children of Nakothi met Meia instead.

  Eyes shining orange, Meia hit the monsters with a shout. Her shears cleaved through the first creature, something like a hollowed-out bull with swollen, jet-black horns. She leaped over it and landed with both feet on a skinless dog, planting both knives in its back.

  Lucan followed up, impaling two Children at once on his shears. He stayed behind Meia, careful not to get in her way, catching only the ones that first made it through her.

  It took Shera a few seconds to blink the light from her eyes and catch her breath after the influx of str
ength.

  This will take some getting used to.

  Syphren didn’t seem to agree. I want it, it whispered. Bring it to me.

  Shera’s eyes moved to the Handmaiden, and she ran forward once again. She passed Meia, slashing Elderspawn with her green blade, leaving a trail of emerald ghosts spinning in her wake. The Children were trying to get in her way; up there was her real target.

  The trees were packed with Children of Nakothi, so thick that it looked like the underbrush had sprouted rotten flesh. Shera scrambled over them, walking from crawling beast to crawling beast. She killed them when they got in her way, but her eyes were still fixed on the Handmaiden.

  Behind her, Lucan called out, but she ignored him. He wasn’t important.

  “It’s mine,” she and the knife whispered at once.

  A moment later, a figure in black hurled a bone-white insect out of her way. Meia came to a halt, kicking up the dirt of the forest as she skidded to a stop. Her blacks were torn, stained, and even burned in a few places, though her mask was still in place. Her blond hair fell around her eyes, in worse state than her clothes, and her gaze burned orange. Black sleeves flexed and moved as muscles squirmed under her skin.

  Meia was clearing the way for her. Good. That would help her reach her real target even faster.

  Shera started to walk past Meia, but a hand caught her on the collar and shoved with superhuman strength. Shera staggered backwards, managing to stay on her feet, flailing for purchase with hands that held her shears.

  Meia was trying to get in her way. What was she thinking?

  Didn’t she know that was dangerous?

  One of the Elderspawn leaped at her from the side and she stole its power without looking, green wisps spinning around her body. Shera fell into a fighting crouch, Syphren on her left and bronze shear on her right.

  If Meia wanted to stand in her way, so be it. Shera could go through her.

  Someone placed a hand on Shera’s shoulder, and it was a presence even her knife recognized. Lucan.

  “Put your blades up, Shera,” he said desperately. His hand vanished from her shoulder and there came the sounds of combat: grunts from him, and a weird whistling growl from one of the Children.