The Shadow Within

by Karen Hancock

  Rennalf? Rhiad had come through Rennalf’s corridor, though how he’d come to be in Rennalf’s employ was a mystery that bordered on the inexplicable. Genuine or not, he was a known Mataian, and Rennalf would have no truck with a Mataian. Nor could she imagine Rhiad consenting to work for a border lord. In fact, she couldn’t imagine this Rhiad consenting to work for anyone, for he seemed quite mad. Besides, if Rennalf had sent him, shouldn’t they be heading north? Perhaps not, if he was taking her to another corridor. Heading north, they would find travel conditions increasingly difficult, so if another doorway lay to the south, that would surely be the direction to go.

  “Eidon will make us a way,” Elayne had told her at Owl Creek.

  Well, if this was the “way” Eidon had made, Carissa was not impressed. Now, after almost twenty-four hours in the saddle, she was so tired she barely felt the pain of wrists rubbed raw in the attempt to free them and was all but falling from Heron’s back every time the mare set a foot down awkwardly. She was beginning to wonder how much it would hurt just to let herself fall. Would Rhiad simply ride on unheeding? When he finally did stop, maybe she would be dead, and wouldn’t that just fix his plans! Whatever they were.

  Heron stumbled to a stop and Carissa looked up. Her captor had flung back his cowl to gaze skyward, where streaks of blue sky now showed between the rapidly shifting, orange-gilt edges of the breaking overcast. The rain was slacking off, too, though the forest still dripped vigorously. Suddenly the little beast sprang from under Rhiad’s cloak to the ground and disappeared into the forest. After a moment Rhiad kicked Arrow forward again and Heron followed, their hooves sucking and squelching in the mud. Somewhere a jay squawked, and Carissa decided it was time to drop another ring.

  In addition to her four rings, already minus one, she’d picked up a spoon, a hoof pick, a snarl of horsehair, and a handful of coins she’d found hidden at the bottom of one of Rennalf’s supply packs which Rhiad had forced her to go through in the kitchen. These she had slipped surreptitiously into her belt hoping to leave Cooper a trail. She suspected now it was an exercise in futility. Even if Coop was still alive and had somehow managed to escape the prison Rennalf had confined him in, the idea that he’d find something as small as one of her rings in all the long stretch of muddy track they’d traveled was ludicrous. But it was better than doing nothing, and in this rain, he’d have little else to go on.

  Guess I’ll just have to trust Eidon to open his eyes, she thought sardonically.

  She had just worked the ring free and dropped it, along with one of the coins, when the little beast returned and after yammering at Rhiad for a bit, led them off the track and through the forest to the hollow, hut-sized stump of a gigantic, lightning-felled tree. A long, dark mound of decomposed trunk marked the path of its fallen upper parts, some of which remained intact, propped on the logs against which they had fallen. The nearest lay ten feet away, swarming with bees in the waning light.

  Rhiad dismounted, untied the tether that bound Carissa to her saddle, and pulled her off, leaving her clinging to the stirrup leathers while she waited for her numb and useless legs to work again. She was barely able to stand unsupported when he shoved a water bag into her hands, gestured at the nearby stream, then turned to the task of getting firewood, wielding his ax with surprising strength and agility.

  She stood there, working slowly through her surprise, buffeted by thoughts of escape that were discarded as impossible. If she was no longer tied to the saddle, her hands were still bound. She’d be on foot, and even if she managed to elude her captors—unlikely with that beast around—how could she survive alone in this weather? All of which Rhiad had undoubtedly considered.

  The beast brought them a rabbit for dinner. Or at least, it brought a rabbit to where they sat inside the massive stump. Rhiad immediately confiscated the animal and began to skin. For a while the creature sat in the stump’s opening growling softly as it watched him. Then it whirled and vanished into the forest to return with another rabbit. This Rhiad also took, though he met greater resistance now, the little beast yammering its protest like a child. Afterward it paced before the opening, growling and hissing until Rhiad straightened from his work and sharply told it to be off.

  The third rabbit Rhiad did not take, by now having spitted the other two and set them roasting over the fire. The beast whined at him for a bit, as if it wanted another confrontation, and when it was still ignored, it ran off again, leaving its latest kill where it had been dropped. The creature brought three more rabbits, and finally a porcupine. By then the rain had started up again, so it dragged its latest prize into the shelter of the stump, and lay down with it. Then, seemingly unfazed by having its face full of quills, the beast very deliberately tore open the porcupine’s soft belly and began pulling out its organs—not to eat, but to play with. Carissa had never seen anything so disgusting in her life, and the creature seemed to know it, its great green eyes fixed upon her as it worked.

  It had acquired quite an array of “toys” when Rhiad roused from his mutterings and noticed. Instantly furious, the man leaped up, seized the mutilated porcupine, and cast it out into the night, kicking the organs after it and screaming epithets all the while. When his pet snarled a protest, he seized it, as well, and hurled it out into the rain after its prize.

  Shrieking as if it were being burned alive and heedless of Rhiad’s ire, the creature returned to them in a heartbeat, throwing itself on the dry ground beside the fire where it rolled about frantically, shuddering and twitching. Its human companions watched in astonishment as gradually its cries subsided. At last it ceased to thrash and rolled to its feet, hunkering before its master with piteous cries and doleful looks. Rhiad stared at it a moment more, then fell to his knees, gathering his pet into his arms and nuzzling the wet, bloodsmeared head as he croaked out a stream of apologies. The beast licked his face almost tenderly in return.

  After a bit, when the rabbits were cooked, he let the creature go, and it settled quietly at the edge of the circle, licking the blood from its paws. Rhiad tossed Carissa’s rabbit into her lap, heedless of the hot grease that immediately seeped into her skirt, or the fact her hands were still bound. She heard him mutter something about “he will pay” and “shouldn’t have poked his nose where it didn’t belong” as he settled tailor-style across the fire from her, tearing off strips of rabbit as if it were the “he” he referred to and stuffing them into his mouth. “. . . useless cripple, am I?”

  Carissa’s appetite had long-since vanished, but she forced herself to eat anyway, determined to keep up her strength should an opportunity for escape arise. And once she was warm, fed, beginning to dry out, and no longer overwhelmed with terror, she thought it wasn’t an unreasonable hope. It occurred to her now that Rhiad had taken all the supplies they could find in the fortress kitchen, indicating he planned a journey of at least several days. The farther they went along the road, the greater the chance of running into someone who might help her. Or of Cooper catching up before Rhiad could take her through the corridor..

  Outside, the rain had once more become a steady downpour. Rhiad broke off his muttering to stoke the fire, then laid on another of the branches he’d cut earlier. Taking advantage of what seemed to be a break in his angry internal ramblings, Carissa asked him if he’d loosen the bonds on her hands, since they were getting swollen. He straightened from his work over the fire and glared at her with his good eye. “You think I am so stupid I would let you free to stab me in the night?”

  Carissa frowned at him. “Stab you, Master Rhiad?”

  “No, you’d lack the courage, wouldn’t you? But you would slip away if you could.”

  Carissa’s eyes went to the beast, still licking itself beside the wall of the stump. “I doubt your friend would allow that, sir.”

  The madman considered his pet for a moment as it paused in its grooming to meet his gaze. “You’re right. If you leave my protection, it will kill you— rip that pretty face right off your skull.
”

  She stared at him in horrified astonishment, the gruesome images the beast had poured into her mind on first meeting resurfacing in all their bloody glory.

  Rhiad chuckled. “I see it’s shown you.”

  “What do you want with me?”

  “What do I want with you?” The brow over his one eye arched. “I should think it obvious after what you and your brother did to me.”

  “That was an accident. I never intended that—”

  “You intended to get rid of me, and this is what came of it. For that you will pay. You will both pay. He thinks he has won, sending me away from Springerlan as he did, getting you to help him destroy that corridor. Hoping to finish the job you started in Esurh.”

  “I haven’t spoken to Abramm in four years. And I had no idea— You came from Springerlan?!”

  But he didn’t hear her, caught up in his own ravings again. “He took it all from me, just as I’ll take it from him. So straight and strong and handsome. I’ll take it all back, you’ll see. I got his blood and hair. There’ll be no mistake. It knows him already, just as he knows it.”

  He raved on, making little sense, his voice falling away to that vitriolic mutter that now filled her with an unspeakable sense of dread. For enough came through that she began to put the pieces together. There’d been a gate to the Dark Ways in Springerlan, now destroyed—at Abramm’s hand, apparently— through which Rhiad had barely escaped with his pet. He had not intended to come to Breeton, at all, but to an exit in the sea village of Longstrand. She figured her own efforts to destroy the corridor to Balmark had somehow drawn him to her—along with the flash of Terstan Light Abramm had sent after him—transferring her from Rennalf’s hands to those of Rhiad. Who was now on his way back to Springerlan to revenge himself upon her brother. The part she was to play in it all remained unclear and was not something she wished to pursue. So once she had the gist of things, she stopped really listening to the rest of what he was saying. It was hard to follow anyway, and she had no way of knowing how much of it was even real. Better to concentrate on the good part, which was that Springerlan was less than two weeks away, that they’d be traveling through populated areas to reach it, and that surely there’d be opportunities for escape. Besides which, she was fairly confident Abramm could handle this threat, seeing as he’d already chased both Rhiad and his pet out of Springerlan in the first place—and destroyed the etherworld corridor, as well. After Beltha’adi, surely Rhiad was nothing.

  Except . . . Rhiad hadn’t said where the gate to the corridor was in Springerlan. And its destruction had not been a subtle exercise of Terstan Light. It was very possible Abramm’s secret was already out, that he’d already been deposed, Gillard put back in power. Or maybe those hideous Gadrielites had taken him, hoping to “restore” his lost purity. He might be on the run. He might be dead, for all she knew.

  Across from her, Rhiad gradually wound down, his rough voice drifting away to inaudible mutterings. His head dropped forward repeatedly, a short lock of gray hair dangling loose against his temple. Finally, after nearly falling into the flames, he flashed a glare at her, then wrapped his cloak about himself and lay down beside the fire. In moments his breathing had slowed and deepened. Over by the stump’s ragged-edged doorway, his pet stopped licking itself and looked up—first at Rhiad, then at Carissa. After a moment it crept over to where his master lay and crouched beside him to lick the cut that slashed across the palm of his gnarled left hand.

  She watched it from the corner of her eye, uneasy being alone with it and unwilling to look at it directly. Rhiad had said it would kill her without his protection, and she believed him, despite the creature’s small and spindly stature. She’d seen how high it jumped, how easily it killed, and she’d seen the light of cruel intelligence in its eyes.

  As if it sensed her thoughts, the beast stopped licking and turned its head to look at her. When she did not return the glance, it stood and walked slowly over to stand in front of her, eye to eye. This close she noticed how oversized its strange, long-toed paws looked, and how big its short, upright tufted ears seemed. The green eyes sought to hold hers, but she refused to cooperate, studying the dark, leathery skin of its short snout, puckered and swollen beneath a forest of stiff black-and-white quills. She could smell the musky stench of porcupine guts on its breath and Eidon alone knew what else.

  The beast stepped closer, triggering a sudden burst of warmth at the right side of her waist. Slowly the creature lowered its head to sniff her legs, running its quilled nose along the bent length of both, crossed tailor style before her and covered by her cloak. All the while those green eyes sought hers as the warmth at her side grew to a point of pain, like something pinching her. She wanted to ease back from the beast, but feared to anger it and figured it would only follow anyway. Its emerald eyes glowed in her peripheral vision, and the compulsion to shift her gaze the fraction it would take to focus upon them increased. Doggedly she fixed her attention on the dark night beyond the shelter’s opening, where the firelight flickered off slashes of rain. Under her cloak her fingers sought the Terstan orb, which she had managed to slip under her belt unnoticed in the first few moments after Rhiad had captured her back in Breeton. It was the source of the heat at her side, downright painful now, probably only moments from starting her clothes on fire. She should take it off.

  Her fingers were starting to unwrap the broken chain from her belt when she realized what she was doing and stopped. By then the creature was literally in her face, its nose but a hair from her cheek. The smell of it grew thick and stifling, and it was that which unleashed her revulsion. She erupted, striking the beast’s face as fire seared her waist and ran up her arm. The thing yowled, leaping ten feet—much farther than the force of her blow could have thrown it—to land on all fours, hissing with fury, ruff bristling about a snout full of sharp white teeth. The fire continued to burn at her waist as she let go of the chain and found the orb itself. A strong and covering presence flowed out of it, which the beast seemed to sense, ears flattening and eyes blazing as they sought again to snare her own while the tip of its tail twitched rhythmically back and forth.

  Then beside the fire Rhiad lurched up with a cry. He sat groggily, looking from one to the other of them, and finally grasping the situation, commanded the creature to leave her alone. It yammered an apparent reply, to which he responded, “You are not big enough yet. Nor strong enough. And he is not here.”

  The beast yowled sulkily, but returned to its place by the doorway nonetheless and promptly fell asleep. Soon afterward, Rhiad followed it, but it was a good while before exhaustion finally overwhelmed Carissa’s fear.

  In the morning, the rain had stopped again and the beast was gone, though its pile of carcasses had grown: Countless rabbits and mice, a raccoon, an owl, and a couple of jays now lay uneaten outside the stump’s opening. The creature came back as they were readying the horses, and Carissa was surprised by how much bigger it looked in daylight. The quills were gone, and golden honey glistened in their place. Seeing it, Carissa glanced to the log which had cradled the beehive and saw it was torn asunder, the honeycomb pulled out onto the ground, most of it eaten away. A handful of bees buzzed around it, seeming lost and bewildered.

  She glanced at Rhiad’s pet. Surely you didn’t pull that log apart. It seemed to grin at her, licking the honey off its snout with a long black-mottled tongue, then vaulted again to Rhiad’s lap as they prepared to move out. She heard it yammer softly at him. “I know there’s not much,” he replied. “It’ll be better down in the valleys.”

  Another yammer, and Rhiad laughed. “Yes, there will be woolly ones. You will grow big and strong on them.”

  She had no idea what he was talking about, but it gave her a chill nonetheless. When they reached the road, she dropped the spoon she’d stolen from the fortress kitchen, praying if Cooper had managed somehow to follow, he’d get here before they found the “woolly ones.”

  CHAPTER

  3
4

  Word had spread from the moment of its happening that Simon Kalladorne had given his fealty to Abramm as rightful king of Kiriath, and that all who chose likewise should muster at the Valley of the Seven Peaks, south of the Snowsong. Thus it was when the two Kalladornes reached the valley themselves, four days after leaving the cave along the Hennepen, they found themselves preceded. Tents, wagons, and makeshift shelters stood among the scattered ruins of Tuk-Rhaal in the bowl-shaped valley where, despite the rising wind, a wide column of men had come out to meet them. Their ranks stretched all the way to Stormcroft keep on the valley’s far west side, and the moment Abramm rode out of the Eberline Gap into view, they started cheering.

  As the king pulled Warbanner to a stop, Simon drew up not quite abreast of him and glanced at him. A storm was blowing in from the north, a heavy bank of cloud lurking in the distant sky above the valley’s jagged northern rim, and already the wind had grown strong and chill. It set the king’s dark cloak billowing across the back of his mount, ruffled his blond hair and short beard, and tore at the blue-and-white banner draped over the dappled flanks of his young stallion—a banner stitched with the golden shield and red dragon rampant of his coat of arms. A banner Simon himself had brought to him.

  Warbanner tossed his head and pranced with impatience, uneasy in the face of the crowd. Abramm held him steady, letting the reins slide through his gloved hands and absently taking up the slack again as he surveyed the gathering before him. His face was stern by nature, his expressions often hard to read, but just now there was no mistaking his astonishment.

  “You didn’t expect anyone to be here?” Simon asked.

  Abramm glanced at him. “I didn’t expect so many.”

  Simon returned his attention to the valley and didn’t offer his own reaction— dismay the number wasn’t greater. He comforted himself with the reminder that only four days had passed since Abramm had made his intentions clear. Many of his would-be supporters might only now be hearing the news, or else were still on their way. Some were, no doubt, still dithering. The nobles especially would be troubled, disinclined to declare support for either side. Going to war was not in their situational lexicon. It could take them days to accept the fact that the brothers really did intend to fight. Days more to build up the nerve to support one. Even then, the support was more likely to come as funds and supplies than men and arms.