Sy lunged at the MagiCreature, slicing at its wings, but it only batted him away like he weighed nothing. He hit the ground hard, the dagger bouncing away into the grass.
The Vespa flapped its wings and rose a few feet, kicking out at her and rolling her body. She moaned as the creature lifted in the air, hovering just out of Sy’s reach. He cursed and yelled at the MagiCreature, trying desperately to fixate on its sources and dissipate it like Coren had once done.
But his magic was not strong enough, had never been strong enough, and the great bird only dodged and swooped in the air.
Shouting in frustration, Sy dove for his bag. If he could find his bow sword and assemble it and take good aim…yet even as he rushed through the motions, he knew there was no time.
The darkness was beginning to flake from Coren’s skin like scales from a fish, and she moaned, clawing at her mottled and bloodied flesh. The Vespa ducked and dove at her again, another claw swiping across her stomach, bringing more blood and screams. Sy tugged desperately at the weapon, which was caught on something inside the overstuffed bags.
The Vespa screamed once more, and Coren yelled wordlessly back at it, her voice hoarse with pain and outrage and anguish. She cradled her arms over her bleeding stomach, but as she twisted, Sy saw the braid of her whip loose around her middle.
“Coren! Whip!” he shouted at her, finally breaking the bow sword free and rushing to click its parts together. She fumbled with the handle, gritting her teeth as the whip rubbed against her raw skin. But when the Vespa dived once more, she struck out at it, severing a single golden claw that fell to the ground near her hand with a thud.
Sy finally loosed an arrow, but the Vespa jerked away at the last second, screaming in what sounded like rage. It circled away, higher and higher, until Sy couldn’t see it anymore. He didn’t think it was coming back, but he didn’t even care. He scrambled to Coren, gathering her into his arms as she shook with pain and knowing.
His back was exposed to the sky as he held her close, but he cared nothing for the threat of the creature. He rocked her like a child, smoothing her hair and brushing away the strange dark ash that was still flaking from her skin. Blood soaked her shirt, and any remaining shreds of hope disintegrated as he saw the Vespa’s blue-gold poison shimmering in each wound.
“I’m going to die,” she whispered. “After all this, I’m going to die.”
Shadow hurt. It felt pain, a new sensation.
Or rather, a sensation it hadn’t felt in many, many years.
The Vespa - yes, Shadow knew those - it had turned on its creator and chosen the girl instead. It had denied its dark-earth, bloody origins and taken to the clean, smooth glass of the sea and sky instead.
But Shadow wasn’t as worried about the Vespa as it was worried about its own broken skin. No, not broken. Shattered.
Its own shattered skin.
Shadow was not supposed to be in pieces. That meant there was too much light. Shadow was supposed to join the light and dark.
Shadow knew it was not all bad, but neither was it all good. One piece slunk across the blades of grass, latching onto another piece, and then a third piece joined, the magnetic pull growing stronger with each addition.
Soon there were enough pieces in one place for Shadow to see the boy again, and the girl.
Oh, the girl.
Shadow wanted the girl. Her blood. Her blood, her blood, her blood.
It would make such powerful, powerful magic.
But the boy stood then, cradling the girl in his arms. He kicked at the brown-like-dirt bags, shoving them away into the too-dark passage where Shadow couldn’t go, and then the boy took the girl.
He took her, and Shadow wanted her.
Another splinter of darkness moved silently through the grass to join the others, but progress was slow, and soon the boy and girl were gone.
Sy stumbled into the outer banks of EvenFall, his eyes searching desperately for a reputable hotel. There were many places to stay, but very few who wouldn’t call the Riatan guards, or where he would be comfortable leaving Coren while he left to get a doctor for her wounds.
Sy refused to admit that no Riatan doctor could help her now.
He rounded a corner and finally saw a familiar sign: the NightGuard.
The man at the counter inside wasn’t familiar, though, and he gave Sy a highly suspicious glare on seeing Coren in his arms, bloodied and now unconscious.
“Please, sir,” Sy begged. “We were attacked by an animal. I need a bed and a maid with warm water. I have plenty of money.”
“Pay now,” the man responded sourly.
Somehow, Sy resisted cursing him up and down. Keeping one arm firmly under Coren’s limp body, he braced her back against the wall to dig in his pocket, finally pulling out a sack of Riatan coins and tossing them on the counter.
“Now, a bed please!”
The man nodded but continued to count the money out carefully before turning to ring a brass bell on the wall behind his desk. A girl appeared shortly, her eyes growing round at the sight.
Sy groaned when the girl led him down a long, darkened hallway and up a ridiculously steep staircase, finally unlocking the door to a narrow attic room crowded with a single sagging bed. Sy tried to lay Coren gently on the bed, but his strength was gone, and she moaned as she hit the blanket, her eyes fluttering.
“You need water?” the girl asked, her voice barely a squeak.
“Hot water, and towels, and food, if you can. My bags aren’t here yet, and I have nothing to clean her wounds with. But I have money,” Sy repeated, as though coins could solve such a problem. He wrapped the rough blanket around Coren as gently as possible, then collapsed in the room’s single chair, breathing heavily.
Coren moaned again, and the girl jumped. “I can send for the doctor,” she whispered.
“Please!” Sy said, smiling gratefully at her and digging again in his pocket for the coins. Now he could tend to Coren until the doctor arrived with medicine for the pain. And perhaps then he could find one of his contacts and retrieve their bags from the passage.
His brain pulsed with a list of things to do, even as his heart twisted in half, knowing all of this was false industry.
The girl came back quickly with a bowl of water and a few threadbare towels, then again with a plate of bread, cold sliced meat, and a hunk of white cheese. Sy poured some of the water into Coren’s mouth, and she gulped and coughed, silent tears leaking from her closed eyes.
He lifted the remains of her shirt, peeling the fabric as gently as possible from the dried blood and dabbing the dampened towel to her shredded skin. Where the iridescent, blue-gold Vespa blood had swirled with her bright red was now a shimmering purple.
Sy blinked back tears as he worked.
There was no way to save her, he knew. Even a Weshen healer had no power against a Vespa’s poison, but he couldn’t just let her suffer. He couldn’t just do nothing. He regretted any anger he’d shown her over the last days.
“Sy,” she whispered, her eyes fluttering open.
He bent near to her. “It’s okay. I have a doctor coming.”
She shook her head weakly. “No. Leave me to die and rescue those Wesh. Promise me you’ll rescue them. There’s nothing left for me now.” Her voice ended in barely a breath, and her eye drifted closed again.
Her breathing slowed so much that Sy panicked, pressing his cheek to her lips. He felt warm air, but he feared she had nearly run out of time and energy.
“Sir?” the girl called from beyond the door. “Sir, you have a visitor.”
“Send him in!” Sy yelled, turning to greet the doctor.
But it was no doctor who opened the door to Sy’s room.
“Resh!” Sy choked. “What? How?”
“And why, I suppose? No matter - it looks like you’ve nearly managed to kill the witch yourself. I admit I hadn’t thought of Vespa poison to do the job.”
Sy rose and shoved his brother against the door as
it closed behind him. “She is no witch. She’s just a girl who’s lost everything,” he gasped, losing his strength on the last word. Slumping into the chair, Sy held his head between his hands.
“Brother, I saw it all. I’ve been in EvenFall for days, watching the passage for you. Why was she so weak coming out of the tunnel?”
“Wesh,” Sy mumbled, too spent for these questions.
“And I saw Shadow jump from the cliffs and coat her body. Did you know about this dark magic? Does she control its power as well?” Resh took a step toward Coren’s limp form.
“Did it look like she had control of that power?” Sy spat back. “Shadow is Umbren. We have nothing to do with that. Her magic - our magic - is pure Weshen.”
Another knock sounded at the door, and the girl called, “Another visitor, sir!”
“Come in,” Sy managed, staggering to his feet to greet the doctor.
But again, it was not the doctor who pushed open the door.
Instead, a slight girl stood before them, her hair a mass of dark waves, her face shadowed by a deep hood.
“Shanta,” Resh said, extending his hand. She pushed back her hood enough for Sy to see her eyes and her glare for his brother.
She brushed past his hand and strode to the bed, bending over Coren. “Vespa?” she asked, poking at the slice on Coren’s stomach.
Sy nodded. “On her back, too.”
“By the Magi,” the girl cursed and shook her head. “I have herbs that will ease her pain. And I have some that will put her to sleep until she dies. But she will die.”
Sy blinked at her, unable to respond. She ignored him and began rummaging in her pack, pulling out a jar of thick yellow cream and spreading it on the wound, then rolling Coren’s unresisting form over to add the cream to her back.
All Sy could do was stare numbly at the skin that was once so smooth and beautiful, now sliced to ribbons of red mixed with the shimmering blue poison.
“Shanta is a Wesh healer. I thought her presence would be more helpful than some ignorant Riatan doctor,” Resh offered. “I met her last year on a mission in here in EvenFall.”
“He means to say he was caught by my crew,” Shanta said, a hint of derision in her voice. “Caught trying to cheat us with a false talisman.”
“What can I say?” Resh grinned. “I make my money the dishonest way.”
“Shut up, both of you!” Sy exploded finally. “Corentine is dying, and I promised her I would complete the rescue, and I can’t leave her!” He broke down, slamming both fists into the wall and hanging his head between them. His muscles shook from the fatigue of the day, of the week, of the month.
“She has lost everything,” he whispered. “And I very nearly have. And all of it - all of it - is the fault of the Restless King.”
Shanta glanced at him. “What rescue?”
He shook his head.
“What rescue?” she repeated.
“The Wesh,” Resh guessed, and Sy found the strength to nod.
“They were to be sold today, I think,” he said, knowing in all reality the auction had likely already happened. They had taken too long with Damren, too long in the passage, too long with Shadow and the Vespa.
“The auction was held early on special request,” Shanta said, breaking into his thoughts. “Two days ago.”
Sy felt himself slump even farther down in the chair, defeat resting heavily on his shoulders.
“But I could still find out who purchased them. Rumor has it that the king bought many of them,” Shanta said, a dark look crossing her face.
“The Restless King?” Sy asked stupidly, fear and hopelessness growing in a tangled mess in his gut. He’d never be able to rescue them now. His father had been right. The mission would be suicide.
Shanta nodded. “He still collects any Wesh or Weshen he finds, to test their power. But like I said, if you’re willing to pay, I can find out more.”
“You want payment for helping your own people?” Sy asked, his dislike for Shanta growing.
“No-one works for free in EvenFall,” she shrugged.
“I won’t pay you to do something I could do for free!” Sy exclaimed.
“Then pay me for a map of the route they’ll take to StarsHelm,” she suggested. “Oh, and for the herbs.”
“I’ll wait for the doctor,” Sy said, turning away. He had no intention of paying this girl for anything.
“He isn’t coming,” Resh said. “I intercepted your message and saved you from a load of trouble. Didn’t you even pause to think of what her blood might be worth?”
Sy felt his own blood drain from his face. He hadn’t. But obviously Weshen blood was still valuable, and a dying girl would certainly be too tempting for the average medicine man. Sy hated to admit it, but Resh had been helpful.
Sighing, he began to dig in his pack for coins to pay Shanta.
Coren stirred just then, rolling to her back as her arms and legs went rigid. She whimpered and thrashed her head, but her eyes remained tightly closed.
“Vespa,” she whispered hoarsely, and the cut on her stomach seemed to glow.
Sy bent over her, using the towel to wipe the sweat from her brow. Something clutched in her hand began to glow, and he grasped her wrist, spotting the single severed talon burning her palm.
He pried it from her fingers, careful not to touch the needle-sharp end, but he gasped at its heat.
Shanta sucked in a breath and stepped closer, but then the talon flared even hotter in Sy’s hand, and he dropped it. It wormed across Coren’s stomach like a thing alive, and Coren clamped her hands over the claw, sealing it between her fingers and her skin. She twisted and writhed on the bed, a low moan turning quickly to a growl.
Sy shouted at Shanta, who shoved at Resh, but none of them could manage to grasp her writhing body or pull her hands away.
And then her eyes flew open, a scream like nothing Sy had ever heard bursting from her lips. Her hands flew out straight as though someone had tied them back, and Sy gasped as he saw how the claw had pierced the skin above her belly button, curving itself into a shining, glowing golden circle.
“A true talisman,” Shanta breathed and began to step backward toward the door, edging away from Coren with a look of mixed horror and awe in her silver-blue eyes.
Chapter 27
The whole world was burning, and Corentine Ashaden was the sun.
She knew it now.
This was how she was going to die. Not in the darkness or the shadows. But seared by the light of the noon sun on the summer water, her body skipping helplessly across the ripples like a flat stone, the salt scrubbing mercilessly at her wounds.
And her back bore the brunt of it.
The sun was burning away her skin, her muscle. Her blood boiled in her very veins, as they too were opened to its rays. Her body was disintegrating, and she had no idea how she could possibly fuse her own sources together again.
This was how she was going to die.
Her spine curved as she curled into herself, shifting smaller and younger, the bed and the blanket swallowing her whole. Perhaps this was also disintegration, and she would shrink and shrink until there was nothing left of her but sources - orderly piles of bone dust and flakes of skin and droplets of her cursed, poisoned Weshen blood.
But just as she’d grown small, her limbs rebounded and began to stretch back to their normal length, then longer. Her throat was raw from screaming, and still she screamed as the bones remade themselves inside of her, thinner and longer.
And different.
Her skin tried to stretch to accommodate these new bones, but there simply wasn’t enough of it, and the bones burst through the source that was her skin, showering her back and the tattered blanket in ruby droplets.
“Jyesh, I’ve failed,” she whispered to the darkness hovering in her mind, “Even your power can’t save me.”
Now face down and spent on the bed, she could still feel her arms pulling and stretching wider and wider, and
backward - the wrong direction for arms. They swooped behind her and up and up, and down, and a single iridescent Vespa feather floated down from the skies to cause a new ripple in the sea and remind her again that she was dying because of this cruelest of MagiCreatures.
“Corentine!”
The voice sounded familiar, and as it shouted her name again, Coren realized it had been calling her for some time now. With tremendous effort, she raised her head. The feather tangled in her matted hair, and she paused to watch its beautiful shades of gray flicker in the sun streaming in the window. Where had it come from?
She was so sore. Every bit of her ached as though it had been pummeled from the inside out for hours.
“Coren?” the voice tried again, closer now.
She pulled an arm from beneath her and pushed up. That wasn’t right…her arms had been twisted and tied behind her. She could feel them behind her. Yet here they were, before her eyes. She sat back on her heels and nearly fell backward over the edge of the bed as the unnatural weight of her back pulled her off balance.
Strong arms caught her and righted her in the bed. “Coren, look at me!” the voice pleaded. She turned and blinked until the form took focus. A blanket was pulled up her front, and she realized her skin was naked beneath it.
“Sy,” she whispered, as he held the blanket gently to her shoulders. She watched, puzzled, as tears slipped down his face. “Mourn me when I’m dead,” she said, her voice stronger now.
“You’re not dying,” another voice said. A girl. Coren swiveled her head and tilted her face to examine the girl before her. She looked like an arach, all shadows and gleaming silver eyes crouched in the corner, her arms splayed as though she were ready to scale the wall and disappear if needed.
“I was poisoned by a Vespa,” Coren said. “Of course I’m dying.” She no longer felt sad about it, either. It was a fitting end to her pointless life. Maren would care for the twins. They would be better, even.
Shift of Shadow and Soul (SoulShifter Book 1) Page 27
