by Jon Sprunk
She didn't know how long she'd been standing here on the edge of the surf. Thoughts flew around and around in her head, all weighed and pondered and dissected a hundred times over. But in the end, she knew what she wanted. What she needed. With a cleansing sigh, she walked up the beach and climbed the stone path to her grandmother's house.
“Do you think these heliconias are getting too much shade?” Her grandmother stood up from a bed of lush red and orange flowers.
Kit paused under the arbor leading to the garden. “Ealdmoder, I've come back to ask you how I can become human.”
The old woman put aside her pruning shears. “Yes, I thought you might. I'm sorry, Kitrine. I love you with all my heart, but I refuse to help you throw away your life.”
Kit bit her bottom lip as a seed of anger opened inside her. “But you don't know.”
“Kitrine Alessa Diamuntaria. I do know about love, and I know more than a little about mortals. They are savages who live short, meaningless lives filled with misery and despair. They know nothing of beauty or the harmony of the kwa that ties all things together.”
“You don't know him,” Kit said, as respectfully as she could manage. “You don't know what it's like to be close to someone, to watch over them and protect them, but not be able to express your love. You don't know what it's like to die inside every time you try to touch him and fail.”
“Child, child. Shedding your immortal essence isn't like changing your clothes. Once done, it can never be taken back. You will never be able to see your family again, never see the land of your birth. You will be mortal to the end of your days, however long or few they may be. Do you understand?”
Tears tickled the corners of Kit's eyes as she nodded. She had dreamt of this for so long. She and Caim would finally be together. That was worth anything, even the prospect of growing old and facing the long sleep of death. “Yes, Ealdmoder.”
Her grandmother looked at her with eyes as gray and serene as the sea. “I wonder if you do. If you truly seek mortality, go into the garden and you will find it.”
Kit wanted to run into her grandmother's arms one last time, but she remained still, afraid to ruin this opportunity. Her grandmother gave a sad nod, and then turned and walked back inside the house. When the door closed, Kit faced the garden. She remembered playing in it as a child, but it seemed larger and more forbidding today. This is what I must do to be with Caim.
Taking a deep breath, she stepped onto the path.
A cool breeze rustled through the trees and wrapped around her as she entered the garden, raising goose bumps on her arms. Kit walked past rows of plants and flowering bushes. Their open blossoms followed her as she wondered where she was supposed to go. Would she know mortality when she found it? Following the curve of the path, she came to a crossway. She turned left on a whim and kept going until she arrived at another crossing and chose the right-hand track. It was getting darker as a bank of storm clouds tumbled across the sky. Kit turned another corner and another, until she lost all sense of direction. Finally, she stopped in the middle of the path. She turned in a circle to figure out where she was going, but it was hopeless. She couldn't see beyond the wall of vegetation.
Kit was about to try to retrace her steps when she heard a sound that sent chills down her backbone. She held her breath and listened. She started to exhale as the only thing she heard was the wind, but then it came again, an ominous crackle in the bushes. Kit whirled around, and stopped when she faced a mass of scarlet flowers. Two yellow eyes watched her from the shadows at the base of the plants. Kit shuddered when a sleek, black head elongated into the light. She couldn't help herself. She ran.
Kit raced blindly through the garden maze, pushing through hedges, trampling flowers, knowing that Death stalked in her wake. She jumped to get a glimpse of her grandmother's house, and finally found it. But it's so far away!
She was darting through a bed of daffodils when she realized what she was doing. Stopping in the soft loam and turning around took every ounce of her willpower. She had to face this. This was what she wanted. Right?
But the fear returned like a vise around her throat when the serpent slid into view. The creature was as thick as her wrist and very long, extending more than twice her height before it drew in its coils. Kit swallowed. She was shaking while sweat ran down her back. The serpent's eyes were enthralling, cold and incredibly deep at the same time. She didn't want to look away. A strange languor had infiltrated her limbs. It will be all right. I'll have Caim, and he's all I need.
Yet even as she tried to comfort herself, another part of her brain was screaming and thrashing about like a wild bird trapped in a cage. The serpent's lower jaw yawned as it approached. Kit took a deep breath as Death touched her foot and crawled up her leg, its raspy scales caressing her calf. Her thigh. Her hip. She couldn't control her shaking. I love you, Caim. I love y-
When the fangs pierced her flesh, they hardly hurt at all.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Caim ducked out of the path of a slave coffle, hardly sparing a glance for the shackled men and women marching past to the crack of whips.
He was tired. Not just in body, but in his spirit. The citadel loomed in his mind, titanic and impregnable. How many shadow people lived inside? Too many for him to overcome. He needed an army, but all he had were Dray and Malig and two escaped slaves.
Caim turned a corner and pressed his back to a wall. He almost reached for the shadows, but caught himself in time as a group of Northmen priests in dirty red robes passed by. The few people on the street, slaves and warriors alike, made way for them.
Once the priests were out of sight, Caim crossed the street and slipped into a narrow alley between two squat tenements. A quick jaunt down a zigzag brought him to the courtyard at the rear of the tavern where he'd left his crew. He only hoped they had managed to stay out of trouble.
A candle was lit in the foyer, with a tin plate to catch the drippings. Caim went to the door of their room and lifted the latch. It was pitch-black inside. He squinted, but his eyes didn't adjust to the gloom. A smell like seared grass met his nose. He reached down with his right hand as he stepped over the threshold. He expected to feel the presence of shadows, but they were strangely absent. There was no sound either. Then something slid across the floor. Hard leather. A boot. Caim eased the seax knife free of its sheath as he maneuvered sideways around where he guessed the noise had originated.
Caim started to take a step forward, but he was jerked backward by an arm across his windpipe. He grabbed for the arm out of instinct as his feet left the ground, but the limb was insanely powerful, its muscles and tendons as hard as petrified oak. White spots appeared before his vision before he remembered his knife. Caim stabbed behind him, aiming for the midsection, but the point of his knife rebounded off something solid. While the white spots grew and pulsed, Caim reversed the grip and plunged the knife over his shoulder. The arm around his neck loosened, and Caim kicked backward and thrashed his head back and forth until he was free. As soon as his heels hit the floor, he spun around and drew his suete knife. He could make out the outline of a big man, so big he first thought it was Malig, but then a chill touched his ankle and the gloom lifted.
Hoek stood before him. Blood ran in a thick stream from a puncture in his cheek, but the wound didn't seem to slow the big man as he shambled forward. Caim ducked under outstretched hands and lunged with both knives. He wanted to inflict nonlethal wounds, but found himself aiming for the bowels and groin anyway. His knives pierced woolen garments, but stopped when they hit the flesh underneath like they'd struck plate armor without the accompanying clang. Caim didn't have time to recover before Hoek barreled into him. Powerful fingers gouged into his face and shoulder. Caim slashed his way free, but again Hoek didn't stop, as if the pain didn't register. Caim threw himself to the side. He rolled to his feet beside a hammock and saw Dray lying in the rope sling. Malig was in another hammock. Both men stared up at the ceiling as if drugged.
<
br /> Caim shouted, “What's wrong with you two? Get up!”
A light blossomed in the far corner. He risked a glance over his shoulder to the corner where Shikari stood, smiling as she held a twisting flame in her hand. She had changed into a rust-red…Oh, shit.
Shikari wore an asherjhag robe. A black medallion hung around her neck on a long cord. Caim squinted. The medallion was shaped like a tower with square battlements. He'd seen that design before.
The breath left Caim's lungs as Hoek grabbed him by the head and threw him to the floor. A huge boot rose into the air, and Caim rolled aside before it connected with his skull. Shadows appeared along the low ceiling. Their tiny voices echoed in his head, making it hard to concentrate. Then Hoek was upon him again. Caim slashed at everything that came at him-hands, wrists, and kneecaps-until Hoek staggered back, bleeding from half a hundred slices. The big man's mouth gaped as if he suddenly understood what he was doing, but then his features slackened, and he charged again.
Caim braced himself. His knives trembled in his grip. He was on the edge of losing control. The smell of blood in the room was overpowering. The shadows urged him to let go, to give in to the killing lust. Hoek closed within three steps.
Two.
One.
Caim unleashed the shadows. They dropped from the ceiling, inundating Hoek in a night-black deluge. His arms churned as if trying to swim from the shadows, until his legs gave out and he collapsed on the floor to the sound of soft chittering. Through the swarm of darknesses, Caim could see the big man's arms changing color from pale white to black and gray. He pushed the shadows away with his thoughts. They resisted at first, but then oozed away at his insistent command. Where Hoek had lain was now a horrid, mottled creature, roughly man-shaped, but with longer arms and plate-sized hands with curled talons. Knobby lumps covered the thing's bald skull. For reasons he couldn't discern, Caim was reminded of the shadow serpent that had attacked him in his apartment in Othir. The Shadow had caught up to him again.
Caim stared across the room at Shikari, still with the flames dancing in her hands. Her eyes shined with the fiery light. “You escaped my trap in Jarnflein,” she said. “But I knew I would find you again, scion. My rewards shall be boundless when I bring you before the Master's throne.”
Not alive, you won't. Caim pushed off from the wall toward her, knives extended-
— and leapt back as an axe swept across his peripheral vision. The blade struck the wall just above his shoulder in a shower of wooden splinters.
“No!” Shikari shouted. “I need him alive!”
Caim turned and slashed with his knives, but pulled up as Malig's bearded face reflected in the firelight. He dove under Malig's arm and circled around behind him. “Mal, what the fuck has gotten into-?”
Caim hissed as a pack of shadows adhered to his torso, sinking through his jacket and shirt to cleave to his skin with frigid claws. Before he could react, a spear thrust from out of the gloom. The point struck him below the nipple, but deflected from the layer of shadows instead of piercing his lung. Dray followed up with a low counter-thrust, but Caim batted the spear away. What in the hells was going on? Malig and Dray were crazy, sure, but not this crazy. Caim blocked Dray's next thrust and got in close, but instead of burying his knives in his companion's heart, he cracked him in the forehead with a pommel butt. Dray didn't even blink, but swung his spear across his body and forced Caim to leap back. Malig recovered his broadaxe and lumbered at him again.
The Eregoths came at him side by side. By the firelight, their eyes were black as squid ink. Caim retreated until his heels hit the wall behind him. His companions came on with silent intensity, aiming stroke after stroke that he deflected or evaded. They moved slowly, like they were swimming through oil, but he had nowhere to go. Behind them, Shikari hummed a strange, hypnotic song while the flames twisted in her palms, looking almost like two small people as she manipulated them back and forth. Every time she turned her wrist, the Eregoths lurched forward.
Caim twisted sideways to avoid a stab from Dray as Malig chopped down with a two-handed swing. A gap opened between them, and Caim lunged through it. Before he could take three steps, a wall of orange flames burst from the floor in front of him. Caim jumped back from the hellish heat. Dray and Malig turned with jerky motions and were once again attacking him. Caim ducked under an axe stroke aimed at his neck, pivoted on his heel, and threw.
The seax knife spun pommel over tip through the flaming curtain and struck with a wet thud. The flames evaporated in puffs of smoke from Shikari's hands as she looked down at the steel protruding between her breasts. A slithering sensation ran through Caim, like an invisible line between him and the sorceress. As Shikari collapsed to the floorboards, a burst of energy exploded inside him. It happened so fast he hardly understood what had occurred. As the strange vitality surged through his body, Caim lifted his suete against the next attack from the Eregoths, but they were standing motionless, weapons hanging limp in their hands.
With effort, Caim took a deep breath and exhaled through his nose. Dray groaned. Malig shuddered and snorted as if he'd been plunged into an icy lake. But their eyes had cleared of the black film.
“What the-?” Dray started to ask, but his voice was hoarse.
Caim grabbed them both and shoved them toward the door. Once the Eregoths were out, Caim darted back inside the burning room. The curtain of flames had spread to the walls and ceiling, feeding on the stone as if it were kindling. He started to form a portal for a short hop through the fire, but then recalled the shadow-jumping he'd seen the shadow swordsman do during their brief duel. Without knowing exactly what to do, Caim concentrated on being on the other side of the room. Nothing happened except that the fire burned closer and sweat dripped down his face from the intense heat. He almost gave up, but then a sharp pain pinched behind his eyes. His stomach twisted upside down, and he landed on his feet, standing over Shikari's body.
She was still smiling. Blood covered her chest, drenching her amulet. The black tower stared up at Caim, the same icon that had been etched into Soloroth's armor. He yanked his knife from her corpse, grabbed their gear, and used the new energy coursing through him to make a proper portal.
Smoke seeped through the seams of the stone walls as Caim emerged from the house. Dray was bent over in the courtyard, coughing. Malig watched the spreading fire with a dull stare. His beard was singed at the bottom.
Caim wiped his hand down his face, and it came away black with soot. His neck and shoulder ached from where Hoek, or whatever he was, had gouged him.
“What happened?” Dray asked when he could breathe.
Malig shook his head. “I had this gods-awful dream. I was lying abed, and someone was talking in my head, but I couldn't move. Then I saw Caim.”
Dray squinted at Caim. “I heard the voice, too. I wanted to kill you.”
Caim saddled his horse. “It's over. Let's move.”
“Where are we going?” Malig asked.
“I've got a plan, of sorts. But you might not like it.”
Malig grunted. “What a sheep-fucking surprise.”
Caim sat by the window of his new room, looking out over the town at the pale cliffs in the distance. After the fire they'd found another boardinghouse, but he hadn't been able to sleep. The influx of energy buzzed inside him.
He flexed his wrists as he watched the dingy gray of twilight slip into full night. His hands had finally stopped shaking, but the feelings inside him remained. He tried not to think about the thing Hoek had turned into and what it meant, or how he would have killed Malig and Dray if his knife-throw hadn't ended Shikari's sorcery. His focus was on the upcoming mission. Kit, if you can hear me, come back. I need you more than ever.
The truth of that had sunk in these past couple days. She was the only person who understood him. She would know what to do, would know if he was just throwing his life away on a hopeless dream. I'll listen to you, Kit. Just please come back.
Ther
e was a knock at the door. Dray peered in. “You ready?”
Caim pulled on his cloak and checked his knives. Malig waited in the hallway. Both men carried heavy sacks that smelled of oil and paraffin. Without speaking, they went downstairs and out the back. He'd told them his plan before they retired. Neither of them liked it, but they had as much at stake in this mission as he did. “My brother's shade must be avenged,” Dray had said. Whether it was true or not, he couldn't say no after bringing them this far. They were all damned in this together.
Few people on the street paid them any mind. Caim peered into every nook and shadow, glanced down every alley as they made their way through the maze of stone buildings until they reached the plains. The hills glimmered in the dusk like they were coated in stardust. Caim concentrated on his core, where his powers originated, and suppressed them like he had before. It was more difficult because the new energy inside him wanted to burst free, but he felt better when the sensations subsided. He couldn't say why, except that the citadel unnerved him less with his powers masked.
“Saronna's dugs,” Malig swore when they reached the top of the cliffs. “My da used to tell stories about giants who built castles in the north. I think he must have been right.”
“Keep your mind on the job,” Caim said.
The outer ramparts rose to the sky like a colossal black wave poised over them. Red lanterns shone at the front of the gatehouse. Caim led them east around the curve of the wall, searching for a flaw in the design, but the walls were solid, the massive towers all sloped and positioned to provide enfilading fire. By the time they had hiked nearly a third of the way around the citadel without finding anything they could exploit, Caim halted. Motioning for his crew to stay put, and praying they obeyed for once, he crept forward to a span of the wall where the curvature appeared to form a blind spot where neither of the two nearest towers could view it directly. A quick inspection confirmed his suspicion. Perhaps there had been a gate planned for this section, or an imperfection in the bedrock called for a different configuration. Whatever the reason, he didn't waste time. He hissed for the others to come.
