Shadow and Flame

by Gail Z. Martin

  “This spirit is as dark as Prokief’s, maybe darker,” Tormod replied after a moment consulting his vision. “A stocky, brown-haired man with angular features and a nasty glower. The sense of malice is intense.”

  Blaine sighed. “That’s my father, Torven take his soul.”

  “That’s the problem,” Kestel muttered. “Torven didn’t.”

  Tormod stilled, moving back into trance. “The two malicious spirits have clawed at your energy, weakening you. But the third spirit, your brother, forced them back. The damage has begun to heal.”

  “How did he do that?” Blaine asked.

  “He stands between you and them and battles them off,” Tormod replied. “Taking the damage himself.”

  “Can you free them?” Blaine asked, meeting Tormod’s gaze intently. “Can you destroy Prokief and my father so that Carr can go to his rest?”

  “You ask a great favor,” Rinka said.

  “Blaine’s the one who figured out how to solve your Western raider problem,” Piran pointed out. “That ought to be worth something.”

  Tormod nodded. “Rinka is protective of me,” he said with a fond half smile. “But Piran is correct. You’ve already done us a great service. I will do as you ask,” Tormod replied. “Come with me.”

  Rinka looked decidedly unhappy as they followed Tormod from the great room down a long hallway toward a set of descending steps. She hurried to catch up with her brother, and they exchanged whispered comments. Although Blaine and the others could not hear the content of the conversation, it was clear that Rinka did not like the bargain, but what roused her anger, Blaine could not guess.

  “Mick, are you sure about this?” Piran asked, using the nickname Blaine had assumed when he had gone to Velant as a convict.

  “I’ve had nightmares for a long time,” Blaine admitted. “First about Father, and later, after we freed Velant, about Prokief. Not just memories, or regular dreams. There have been enough of those as well. These nightmares were much more real,” he said.

  “In the dreams, I would fight Father or Prokief off, but they would always draw blood, and when I woke, I felt weakened,” Blaine continued. “That’s why I think Tormod is telling the truth. When anchoring the magic was killing me, I dreamed that Father and Prokief were feeding from my connection to the magic, like talishte hungry for blood.”

  “And Carr?” Kestel asked. “How do you know Tormod’s telling the truth about that?”

  Blaine took her hand. “Tormod wasn’t around for Carr’s madness, or his crazy risk taking.”

  “A spy among our troops could have heard of it easily enough,” Kestel argued.

  “True,” Blaine admitted. “But since his death, I’ve dreamed of Carr standing between me and darkness, just as Tormod said.”

  “Can a mage of Tormod’s strength send you dreams of his liking?” Piran asked in a voice just above a whisper. “Set you up to be indebted to him, manipulate you into making a bad bargain?”

  “I could, but I didn’t.” Tormod’s voice carried back to them from farther down the stone stairs. “Rinka also faults me, says the working will squander my power,” he added with a hint of bitter humor. “Such are the concerns of those who care for us.”

  Although the summer night had been pleasantly warm, it became cooler the deeper they descended, cold enough to raise gooseflesh on Blaine’s arms. Tormod opened an iron-bound door and led them into a large room. A wooden worktable sat along one wall, covered with relics and artifacts. Shelves lined one wall, filled with skulls and bones from a variety of creatures, stained and discolored jars, and bits of pelts, feathers, and leathery skin. In the center of the floor was a large circle.

  Tormod turned to Kestel. “The magic-dampening amulet you wear is a hindrance,” he said with a smile. “As you have seen, it does not stop my magic, but it makes it twice as difficult. So does the deflection amulet Blaine wears,” he added, raising an eyebrow. “I must ask you to remove the amulets. I will need to raise a substantial amount of power for this working.”

  Kestel gave him a murderous glare, but she removed the amulet from beneath her tunic and handed it to Piran. Blaine did likewise. “Here,” she said. “I’ll stay near Blaine, and you can watch the door.” Kestel knew how much Piran mistrusted mages, Blaine thought. She was giving him an out, letting him stand sentry away from the main working. She fixed Piran with a pointed look. “I want it back when we’re through.”

  “I’d take it all the way back to camp if I had my way,” Piran muttered. But he tucked the amulets inside his tunic and went to stand by the door, sword drawn.

  Rinka looked worried, and she moved closer to Tormod’s circle. “Do you need to draw from me?”

  Kestel and Blaine exchanged a glance. She’s worried about the magic, and Tormod doesn’t want to discuss it, Blaine thought.

  “Something’s not right. There’s a risk you haven’t told us about,” Kestel said, moving a step closer to where Tormod and Rinka stood.

  “It’s nothing that should concern you,” Tormod said, a little too quickly.

  “Nothing to worry you,” Rinka snapped. “But my brother should think twice.”

  “Why?” Kestel pressed.

  Rinka faced her with a sneer. “Because my brother isn’t all-powerful. His magic has dangers. And when he wades into the netherworld to vanquish your ghosts, all kinds of creatures try to drag him under. You have no idea how dangerous it is for a necromancer to step across the threshold.”

  “Rinka!” Tormod’s voice was sharp. “I choose my battles. Allow me this.”

  Rinka glared at her brother, but gave a nod. Watching the interplay between brother and sister was fascinating, Blaine thought. Rinka was a fearsome warrior on the battlefield, like a blood-drenched goddess of retribution. Tormod was a powerful necromancer. Yet it was clear that they were as protective of each other as they were seemingly invincible.

  Tormod moved around his workshop, gathering the things he needed to call his magic. Rinka helped him set out candles and light them. Then he took a charred staff of wood and carefully drew a larger circle outside the first circle, with a gap between the two circles.

  “Step inside the inner circle,” Tormod said to Blaine. “We will face your foes together.”

  Blaine gave Kestel a reassuring nod and went to stand inside the inner blackened circle, careful not to touch its outline. Tormod positioned Blaine in the center, and then walked the inside of the outer circle as Rinka walked the outside. Tormod chanted, and Rinka scattered a powdered mixture along the circumference of the circle. As they walked, a faint golden light rose from the circle that was drawn on the floor. When they had made the full round, Tormod gestured and Blaine saw the power snap closed. The glow rose in a golden cylinder around them, shimmering in the gloom of the workshop.

  Tormod repeated the process by himself, walking widdershins around the inner circle from the inside, until the power closed around him and Blaine, raising a second golden column inside the first.

  Tormod’s chanting changed. His tone became strident, and his words were guttural and harsh, in a language Blaine did not understand. The golden energy of the warding dimmed, becoming the dark indigo of twilight, shimmering now and again with light like falling stars. The area within the circle grew colder, and the glow of the outside circle darkened to the obsidian of a starless night.

  Mist swirled between the circles. Tormod’s voice grew more commanding, the intent unmistakable.

  Forms began to take shape from the mist, taking form slowly as if the spirits fought the commands and obeyed grudgingly. Carr’s ghost was first to appear. Tall and lanky, rawboned and angular, Carr looked as he had on the night of his death, bloodied by a mage’s torture, and from his own self-inflicted death wounds.

  Carr faced them defiantly, his battle sword grasped in one hand, a short sword in the other. He said nothing, but he met Blaine’s gaze unswervingly, as if daring Blaine to fault him for his choices either before or after death. Even now,
Blaine could not find the words to respond to the ghost’s silent challenge. I’m sorry seemed woefully insufficient. Thank you stuck in his craw. Carr’s expression changed from a defiant glower to a lopsided, bitter grin as if he knew Blaine’s struggle. Then he turned his back on Blaine and Tormod and moved into a defensive posture as two more figures appeared in the mist.

  Commander Prokief was the first to step from the swirling fog. He was a tall, hulking brawler with a cruel set to his thin-lipped mouth and cold, angry eyes. Prokief had been as much a prisoner as his inmates in the inhospitable, brutal cold of Velant Prison. Too successful on the battlefield to dismiss, too brutal to remain in a peacetime kingdom, Prokief had been named warden of Velant by King Merrill, making him chief among exiles.

  Those who were not lucky enough to be hanged were exiled to Velant, on the northernmost continent of Edgeland, an arctic wasteland claimed by Donderath and colonized by the convicts who did not die under Prokief’s inhumane rule. Ruby mines and herring fished from the Northern Sea made the colony lucrative for Donderath. Prokief ruled with brutal, ironfisted effectiveness, knowing that those he killed would die unlamented.

  Prokief’s ghost fixed Blaine with a baleful stare, his fleshy features twisting into a mask of hatred. It was clear in Prokief’s mad gaze that the commander desired to finish in death what he had been denied in life. Prokief moved toward Blaine, but Carr shifted between them, and the indigo light of the inner warding flared, forcing Prokief to keep his distance. Prokief’s murderous glare made it easy for Blaine to hear the dead commander’s voice in his memory.

  Only a matter of time, boy, before I kill you. Only a matter of time.

  To the left, the mist coalesced into a second shape, and although Blaine knew that the man he saw striding from the fog was dead, that he himself had struck the deathblow, the sight of Ian McFadden made Blaine’s heart constrict with fear out of old, hard-learned habit.

  Someone needs to teach this cur a lesson. The memory of that harsh voice echoed in Blaine’s mind. Ian McFadden had taken out his foul temper on his family for years. Blaine had taken blows meant for Carr and their sister Mari, and had done his best to rescue servants, pets, and horses from Ian’s cruelty. But when Blaine discovered that Ian had dishonored Mari, his temper found its limits.

  Ian glowered at Blaine with the vicious intent Blaine remembered well from his youth. Broad-shouldered and stout, Ian McFadden had won renown on the battlefield and the regard of King Merrill. The murderous glint in Ian’s ghostly eyes made it clear that he still longed to even the score.

  In one accord, Ian and Prokief rushed at the indigo warding. Carr blocked Prokief’s advance with his sword, and as Prokief’s blade raked Carr’s arm, Carr’s ghost trembled, losing some of its luster. Ian dodged to one side, throwing himself in a fury at the dark-blue, glimmering warding as if to tear it apart with his bare hands in order to get at Blaine within.

  “Zerak-aggo!” Tormod cried out, a guttural war cry. The indigo barrier flared like a cold-burning blue flame. Ian fell back, glowering.

  “Ian McFadden and Commander Prokief. You have transgressed against the accords between the dead and the living, against the edicts of Esthrane and Torven, masters of the Sea of Souls and the Unseen Realm,” Tormod said, proclaiming justice. “For this transgression, I send your souls to their reckoning in Raka, where you can no longer harm the living. So shall it be!”

  Tormod raised his hands, and Blaine felt the shift in the air around them and sensed the use of magic. Tormod’s presence grew stronger as his magic filled the inner warding, and then a rush of power surged from inside the warded circle. The magic passed right through Carr’s spirit without harm, but it immobilized Prokief and Ian McFadden’s shades, transfixing them. A black, gaping hole opened along the inside of the outer warding, as if Tormod had split the room open to face an empty, starless night.

  The darkness reached out for Ian and Prokief, snagging them like flies on a spider’s web. As the two doomed ghosts were pulled into the rift, their mouths formed soundless screams, eyes wide with terror. The shapes grew dimmer as their lingering consciousness unraveled, spooled off into the hungry, endless night of Raka. And then, the rift vanished, leaving the outer warding as if nothing had ever happened.

  “Carr McFadden,” Tormod said, and Carr’s ghost turned to the necromancer as if he had no choice. “You are free of your burden. Would you go now to the Sea of Souls?”

  Ian and Prokief had been denied the ability to speak, but now, Carr’s familiar voice sounded from the other side of the inner warding.

  “Not yet,” Carr’s ghost said, avoiding Blaine’s gaze. “Things aren’t settled. I’m a soldier. Leave me my last duty. Let me do this, and when Blaine’s place is secure, I’ll be glad to go.” Finally, he looked at Blaine with such a mixture of emotions that Blaine could not decide what to read from his brother’s expression. “Let me do this right. I mucked it up the last time.”

  Tormod looked to Blaine. Blaine swallowed hard, trying to find his voice. Before his exile, he had been Carr’s protector, and they had been close. Since his return, Carr’s resentment had created an angry gap between them, and his death in willful defiance of orders had left Blaine angry as well as grieving. Now words did not seem sufficient.

  Blaine nodded to Tormod. “So shall it be,” Tormod said. “Carry out your last service with honor, and the gods will favor you when you cross the Sea of Souls.”

  Carr looked as if he meant to say something sarcastic. Instead, he gave a sardonic smile and a flippant mock salute to Blaine, made a respectful bow to Tormod, then turned his back on them, taking up his position on guard once more.

  Tormod gestured with his right hand, palm forward, and Carr’s ghostly form vanished. He turned to Blaine. “Ian McFadden and Commander Prokief can’t hurt you again,” he said. “They’ve passed beyond the boundaries of return, and they can have no more contact with the mortal world. I read no deception in your brother’s intent. It’s a geas he has placed upon himself, and his soul won’t rest until it’s completed.” Tormod’s expression softened. “In such dangerous times, a protector against unseen threats isn’t a bad thing to have.”

  “You’ll see that he rests when the time is right?”

  Tormod nodded. “There’s nothing to hold him back. But yes, I’ll help if needed. You have my word.”

  “Thank you,” Blaine said. Tormod inclined his head in acknowledgment. Once more, Tormod began to chant, walking the circle in the opposite direction to dispel the outer protections first, and then the inner shields.

  The wardings vanished, and it felt to Blaine as if the room had stopped holding its breath. Kestel and Rinka moved toward them. “Could you see?” Blaine asked Kestel.

  “Not clearly,” she replied.

  “I’ll tell you all about it later,” Blaine said quietly, and Kestel nodded in assent. Rinka and Tormod spoke in low tones, paying the others no attention.

  Piran joined them, his relief clear in his expression. “Thank the gods that’s over with. Now that we’ve had our fill of ghosts and Plainsmen and talishte legends, can we go home? We’ve got work to do.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  DAYS WERE DIFFICULT, BUT NIGHTS WERE INTOLERABLE. During the day, Pollard had the thankless task of keeping Solsiden running and managing both Hennoch and the mages. But come nightfall, Thrane and the talishte awoke and returned to the manor, making it clear who was really in charge, should anyone have doubted.

  “He’s just gone back to the troops,” Pollard said of Hennoch to Thrane’s question. “I gave him his orders today, and planned to update you on his report now that you’ve risen.”

  “Not enough,” Thrane said, and his gaze lingered on Pollard, a crafty, powerful look that made it clear who was servant and who was master. Thanks to the kruvgaldur, Pollard could meet Thrane’s gaze, but the raw need for dominance in his eyes made Pollard wish he dared look away.

  “I’ve left Hennoch to your management for too long.
It’s time I took the reins. Bring him—and his son. I would look on them,” Thrane demanded.

  Pollard was certain that Thrane knew just how much he detested giving in. “As you wish, m’lord,” he said neutrally, and went to make it so.

  “Send a rider on a swift horse,” Pollard said to the guard at the front door to the manor. “Tell General Hennoch to come as quickly as he can. Emphasize that his son’s life depends on it.” He made the guard repeat the instructions, then sent him on his way. Kerr was waiting for him at the bottom of the steps with a flask, and Pollard knocked back a mouthful of the raw whiskey to fortify him before he went back in to pacify Thrane and his wastrel brood.

  Thrane, the ancient renegade talishte better known as Hemlock, sat in Pollard’s chair behind the desk in the parlor, the desk that had belonged to Pollard before Thrane and his supporters showed up. Black-eyed and sharp-featured, broad-shouldered and powerfully built, Thrane looked more like hired muscle than someone of noble blood. Then again, he had existed for centuries, and in that time, even a street ruffian could amass a fortune, given a little talent and a ruthless streak. Thrane had both.

  “I hope Hennoch realizes I don’t like to be kept waiting,” Thrane said with the hint of a malicious smile. His hangers-on chuckled, a cold sound that reminded Pollard of the growls of hungry wolves.

  “He knows,” Pollard replied. Long years with Pentreath Reese had trained him to keep his face expressionless, his thoughts distant and bland. Reese was Thrane’s get, and Pollard had come to realize that Reese was a pale shadow of his maker’s image.

  “We dally on trivialities.” Vasily Aslanov leaned against the wall, toying with a goblet of dark blood. He shook his long blond hair away from his face. Tall and slender with a long, pointed nose and sharp chin, Aslanov was as mean as he was plain. Aslanov had always been critical of Reese and a thorn in his side. Now, he prodded Thrane to free Reese sooner rather than later, certainly out of concern for his own agenda more so than Reese’s well-being. Aslanov was older than Reese, maybe even one of the renegade Elders who had left the talishte council.