Shadowborn

by Katie MacAlister

  “Blessed goddesses!” she yelped, and threw herself to her knees, words tumbling over each other while she sobbed out an apology, almost gibbering in her fear and anguish. “Blessed Kiriah and Bellias protect me. I meant no disrespect, for I am the humblest of all your servants. Show mercy to me, and I will become your devoted slave for the rest of my life…”

  I flicked a glance toward the guard when he took a hesitant step toward me. His hair lit on fire. He screamed again, and ran off, disappearing into the gathering crowd of Shadowborn…and a couple of Harborym.

  Two Harborym ran toward me, swords lifted high, their voices calling guttural oaths, but they were stopped in their tracks by a column of white-gold light that I called down upon them. Behind them, the remaining Shadowborn backed away slowly, their faces twisted with fear and disbelief.

  I unwrapped the dirty bit of cloth and beheld a long greyish-green crystal about the width of my palm and twice as thick. “This ought to do the trick,” I said, wrapping fingers that glowed golden around it. I spun around, intending to return to the cave where Nezu remained with the thane. It would have been the sheerest folly to face Nezu without Kiriah’s blessing, but now that it flowed through me, I knew I had the power to wield the moonstone against him. I might not be able to destroy him outright, but I was willing to bet I could contain him in some manner, and force him back to the mortal realm, where Hallow and his arcanists could bind him.

  I took one step before the light within me faded, leaving me feeling bereft and empty. “No!” I yelled, holding up my hands, watching as the glow slowly melted from my arms. “No, no, no! Not now! Kiriah, just two more minutes! That’s all I need!”

  Kiriah evidently didn’t see things as I did, for she withdrew her power completely, leaving me as I was before: trapped in the spirit realm, the prisoner of a merciless god, weaponless, helpless, hopeless.

  “Deo named me Hopebringer, and by the twin goddesses, I will not lose that, too,” I growled to myself. Holding the moonstone firmly, I snatched up my scabbard from where Mayam had let it fall, quickly strapping it on, the familiar weight of the swords against my back giving me comfort.

  Mayam remained on her knees, her body curled upon itself as she rocked back and forth, repeating a whispered prayer to Kiriah over and over.

  “Right. I can’t tackle Nezu without Kiriah’s help, but I can take the other moonstones.”

  Just then a shout caught my attention. I whirled around and saw a veritable battalion of Harborym pouring around an outcropping of rock. A few Shadowborn had run to meet them, and were even now pointing back to the camp.

  “Or not.” I amended my plan. “One will do fine.” I ran forward in the direction opposite from the Harborym, pausing when my conscience twisted painfully. I paused, swore to myself, then with a muttered curse that I really hoped Kiriah would never learn of, grabbed Mayam by the back of her tunic and hauled her to her feet. “Come on, you annoying woman, you.”

  To my surprise, she didn’t fight back. She didn’t even respond; she just followed meekly when I released the cloth and took to my heels, keeping up with me as we dashed around rocks, fallen trees, and large, dusty-looking shrubs, heading to the fringes of a forest that swayed in the light breeze.

  “I can’t believe I’m doing this. I should have left you where you were, but Sandor always said that Kiriah honors those who show mercy in her name, and since she’s just blessed me—well, you can thank her for the fact that I didn’t leave you where you were, that’s all I can say. Not even going to tell me how bossy I’m being?”

  We reached the edge of the forest as I spoke, the noise of the Harborym growing ever closer as they made up ground, but for some reason I believed the forest offered us a safe haven. It was a place of life, of growing things, of sanctuary for those who wished to hide.

  Mayam gave a hiccupping half-sob, saying in a voice that had lost all its arrogance, “I’m not—I wasn’t—Lord Racin said that you wish to destroy him. He is not as evil as you think. Once, I thought as you do, but then I learned that he has been betrayed, exiled from those he loves. Those who should have been closest to him drove him from all he held dear. It is for that reason that I plighted myself to his cause, but I see now that the goddesses viewed that as spurning them. Which I would never do! They are most beloved in my eyes.”

  “Mmhmm,” I said, deciding that her mind must have become unhinged when I cast the light net on her. I wound my way around massive trees that caught at our hair and tunics, long streamers dripping from the upper branches, waving in the wind in a manner that reminded me of the thane’s hair. “Stay close. It’s getting thicker, and if I lose you, I am not going back to find you. Kiriah might not like it, but I will not risk being captured just because you can’t make up your mind whose side you are on.”

  “I’m on no one’s side,” she protested, her voice still sounding thick. “That is, I want to help Lord Racin, but only because he has been so abused—”

  “I think we’re going to have to agree to disagree on that subject. Hold!” I raised a hand and held my breath a moment, listening intently. Mayam obediently stopped, glancing around. We had reached some sort of a game trail, the area thick with small shrubs and huge ferns that reached almost to my waist. Overhead, the branches of the trees whispered to each other in the language of the forest. I wished that I had Hallow with me, for I knew he’d made a study of such things, but limited as I was in my training as a priestess of Kiriah, I knew only enough to make out that there was no sound of large bodies crashing through the undergrowth.

  I relaxed, lowering my hand. “I don’t hear them. With the goddess’s grace, we’ve lost them. Let’s go find a high point, so we can see where we are, and then we can figure out how to get out of this blighted land.”

  Mayam followed me silently, but I felt her emotions leaching out, cloaking us both in a miasma of sorrow, regret, and despair.

  Chapter 5

  “I leave at dawn.” Deo imparted the information to Hallow, then turned and headed for the stable to ensure his horse would be ready for travel.

  “What?” Standing outside the single remaining tower of Kelos, his hands spread out over an intricately drawn field of stars that glittered silver in the lifeless grey dust coating everything, Hallow looked up in surprise. The two other arcanists he’d evidently summoned stood with him, the three of them forming a triangle. The air and ground in front of them were full of symbols.

  Deo considered the center of the triangle, the focus of all the magic that flowed around the starfield. In the middle of it, a wooden staff had been stuck in the ground, with a wooden bird attached to the top. “I suppose you know what you’re about, but I can’t imagine anyone wishing to be bound to such a puny-looking eagle.”

  “It’s not an eagle; it’s a sparrow hawk, and Thorn will love it, assuming we ever finish this summoning spell. It takes three days if we all concentrate and don’t die of exhaustion in the meantime. What do you mean you’re leaving at dawn?”

  “I mean that at dawn, I will leave,” Deo said with more patience than was usual for him. He was in an exceptionally good mood, anticipating the battle waiting for him. Not to mention Idril. They’d only had a short time together after they’d driven Nezu from Eris, and he’d laid down the law about her running off and marrying whoever caught her eye when she was supposed to be waiting for him. But now that he’d made himself clear on that front—and she had finished blistering his ears with her thoughts regarding his quite reasonable commands—he missed her.

  “I understand the basics of the sentence, Deo,” Hallow said, snapping off each word at the same time he drew glittering symbols in the air. “What I want to know is why you feel compelled to leave right now. As it is, I’ve just sent Quinn and Ella to sneak into Starfall to keep an eye on what Darius is doing. Aarav and Tygo and I can’t stop the summoning spell or we won’t get Thorn back, and if we don’t get Thorn back,
he can’t find Allegria and return her to me. Dammit, Deo, don’t you dare walk away from me!”

  “You have no need of me,” Deo said, pausing to send a quick, potent glare to the arcanist. “I can’t help you with Allegria’s rescue, and you, yourself, saw the message I received this morning that my Banes have definitely sided with Jalas. I didn’t believe it could be so, but now there is no doubt of their perfidy. I did not risk all for them to abandon me and join forces with a madman.”

  Hallow said something so softly that Deo couldn’t catch it. “Regardless, we need you here in case the thane and his men return.”

  “The thane has been driven back to the spirit world. He will not return for some time,” Deo said dismissively, his mind busy with the things he would have to say to his Banes when he saw them, alternating with the things he wished to do with Idril’s fair body.

  “You don’t know that—Tygo, quickly, that spell in the lower right is unwinding. Ah. Good catch. You don’t know that the thane won’t return just as soon as he regains his power.” Hallow pulled out a silver dagger and etched runes into the air above the staff. The runes glowed the same as the silver blue symbols on his wrists and ankles before sinking into the wood of the staff itself. “We have need of you here. If the thane were to come back now, we would be vulnerable. And since the whole reason you came to Kelos with us was to take care of the thane, I’d appreciate it if you could remain here to do just that.”

  Idril had never been one to be driven by the lusts of the flesh, but the most recent meeting with her had changed something inside Deo. His heart had always been hers, but now…now it was as if she was in his blood. He frowned to himself as that thought prickled along his flesh like a particularly spiky burr. How dare she make herself so needful in his life? He made a mental note to inform her that although her place was at his side, delighting him with her quick wits, barbed comments about those who spited him, and her nubile, lush body, he was a warrior first and foremost, the savior of the Fourth Age, and he could not always be stopping his duties to think of her silky thighs, and the weight of her breasts in his hands, and the way she tasted when he parted her legs and—

  “Deo?”

  With an effort, and an uncomfortably tight feeling in his breeches, Deo realized his mind had wandered to the point that he’d missed whatever it was Hallow was saying. “What?” he asked, mildly peeved that his contemplation of Idril’s womanly parts had been disturbed.

  “We need you here,” Hallow said, his eyes narrowed, and his dagger glinting in the sunlight while he continued to cast runes onto the wooden stock of the staff.

  “You have the spirits here to help you should the thane decide to ransom Allegria back to you,” Deo said, dismissing the idea of remaining. The message his father had sent was most clear that his Banes had turned, and that, he would not tolerate. “The Banes must return to my side, after which, we will remove Jalas, and then deal with Darius and Nezu.”

  “You said you wanted to fight,” Hallow called out when Deo resumed his path to the stable. “You have a far better opportunity to do so here, where the thane is likely to return, than with your own Banes!”

  Deo ignored the comment, alternately focusing on his ire that his Banes, the men for whom he had sacrificed so much, would cast him aside, and the things he had to say to Idril.

  The following morning, Deo mounted Crow, the big black stallion who had been his stalwart companion for many years, and rode to the west, leaving behind an angry Hallow who yelled some particularly inventive curses after him.

  “—and I can only pray to both goddesses that your stones shrivel up until they are the approximate size and shape of runty raisins, leaving Lady Idril frustrated, and you childless to the end of your days for abandoning us in our time of need!” Hallow finished in a bellow that echoed off the broken walls of the ruined buildings. The three arcanists were still casting their spells upon the staff that would bear the spirit form of the former Master, all three men looking exhausted.

  Deo lifted his hand in a rude gesture to indicate he appreciated the quality of Hallow’s insult, but quickly dismissed the thoughts of the irate arcanist from his mind in order to better focus on the things he had to do. Hallow would move the stars and moon to rescue his beloved Allegria, and would be far more effective doing so without Deo there getting in the way.

  “No,” he said in what he thought his most reasonable tone of voice, “there is nothing for me to do in Kelos, and many things to do on Aryia, Crow. First, I must bring the Banes to heel. Then I will tell Idril to stop filling my mind with thoughts of her thighs and belly and breasts and the way her breath hitches when I rub my cheeks on the sensitive flesh of her woman’s parts.” He thought for a moment, shifting uncomfortably in the saddle. “Perhaps I will deal with Idril first. That would only be polite. Then the Banes, then Jalas, then a return to Genora to show my father how taking care of pesky gods is done. Yes. I like this plan.”

  Deo continued mulling over his plans for the next day, spending the night at the same inn where the company had rested on the way out to Kelos, and was on the road again as soon as Kiriah graced the morning sky. It was when he was about an hour outside of Bellwether, the sun warming him pleasantly despite the cool air of the coast, that a shout had him reaching for his sword and the chaos magic causing the runes on his harness to light up reddish gold.

  Emerging from a curve in the road hidden by a jagged cliff, a small company of eight rode in tight formation. Deo narrowed his eyes as the men spurred their horses toward him. “Those are the queen’s colors, but I don’t see her. Besides, that’s the Old South Road, and my mother went to the north coast, to the land of the water talkers. Who—ahhh. The goddesses are good to us, Crow. Very good.”

  Deo recognized the pale, pinched face of one of the men, the one who rode in the middle of the others, and joy sang in his blood. He waited until the men charged up to him, swords in hand, the lead-most calling out an order. “Halt! Stand down for King Darius of Starfall!”

  “King Darius?” Deo dismounted slowly, giving Crow a pat on the neck that warned the horse to move out of the way of harm. “I was not aware that my mother had married, let alone raised her consort to the status of king. Darius, is that you hiding behind these sun-seekers?”

  There was no worse slur for a Starborn than to be referred to as their once-most-hated enemy, and Deo took great enjoyment at the angry red face of Queen Dasa’s former steward.

  “The queen is dead. Long live the king,” the headman said, dismounting and lifting his sword, aimed at Deo’s heart. “You will kneel before him.”

  “I kneel before no man,” Deo told the upstart soldier with a pitying glance, then brushed past him to where Darius was hiding himself.

  “Lord Deo!” Darius looked alternately furious and worried. “What—what do you on Genora? We heard you had been banished to the land of shadows along with Lord Israel.”

  “You heard wrong. Stop that.” He glanced over at the head soldier, who had been poking him in the chest with the sword, clearly trying to get his attention. “This is my only clean tunic, and if you make me get your blood on it, it will be itchy and unbearable all the way to Aryia.”

  The man sputtered in anger, saying—without taking his eyes off Deo—“Would you have me dispatch this uncouth cur so that you may proceed without vexation, my king?”

  Deo stared at the man in wonder for a few seconds, then shook his head. Uncouth cur? Vexation? If that was the sort of man his mother had kept in her court, he’d have to have a few words with her. “I have no time to teach you how a proper soldier speaks, for I must deal with the one who has betrayed my mother. Darius! Come forth. You are now my prisoner, and I will take you with me to Abet, where we will address your perfidy.”

  “I am not perfidious!” Darius squeaked in his high voice, shoving the men in front of him forward. “Kill him! He wishes harm to me!”


  The lead soldier swung his sword back at the same time the other six soldiers rushed forward to attack, but Deo had been carefully keeping the chaos leashed, and with a sigh and another shake of his head, he let the control slip.

  It was over in a matter of seconds. “You have much to answer for,” Deo told Darius while wiping his sword on the tunic of one of the now dead guards. “First you betray your fealty to the queen by taking her throne, and then you hide behind others rather than facing me yourself. No, do not struggle. If you fall off your horse again, I will simply allow it to drag you.” Deo checked that the bonds holding Darius’s hands behind his back were secure before tying the reins to his saddle.

  “Mmf frmfm hrn,” Darius said, the words muffled by the sleeve Deo had torn off of one of the dead soldiers and used as a gag to stop the man’s unending curses.

  “We are going to Abet,” Deo answered to what he assumed was his question, and, mounting Crow, continued on the road to Bellwether. “Where you will answer for your crimes, and we will call to order a Council of the Four Armies. Well, we won’t have Hallow, or the queen, and of course, Jalas is deranged and an enemy now, so there will really only be one of the four present, but I will represent the Starborn interests, and between my father and me, we will decide how best to deal with you.”

  Darius protested some more behind his sleeve gag, but eventually he stopped trying to kick Deo, and rode along glumly. They reached Bellwether just as Kiriah was taking her rest for the day.

  “You, innkeeper! Do you have a secure gaol in this town? I wish for the usurper to be placed somewhere he cannot escape, since there are many charges for which he must answer,” Deo told the rotund innkeeper when the man scurried out to greet him.

  “Yes, yes, my lord, we have several rooms that we use for those transporting prisoners. Frog! Frog! Where is that boy? Never around when there’s work…there you are. Take his lordship’s horse, and see that he’s rubbed down,” the innkeeper instructed a gangly stable lad with a fond buffet to the head.