Shadow's Son

by Jon Sprunk

  The sorcerer leaned over him. An object came down beside Vassili's head—a pale wooden box. It resembled an offering box. When he was a boy his father had allowed him to place their family's alms into the box. The young parish priest had had such fervent, penetrating eyes, always watching him. The pain was fading. It wasn't so bad, dying. He would close his eyes and drift into a deep, endless slumber.

  Strong hands rocked him. Metal clattered in the distance. Vassili frowned at this disturbance of his peace. He was a distinguished principal of the Church. He should be accorded all due dignity and respect, not pawed over like a fish at market.

  Levictus bent lower. Words fell into his ear, soft as goose down. “Benevolence spilled his last secret as he died, old man. I know who ordered the arrest of my family.”

  A crumpled piece of parchment was placed on his chest. The indentation of the Vassili family seal stared at him from the bottom of the document like an evil eye. The archpriest strained to speak, but only a dry wheeze issued from his lips. A final surge of indignation constricted his chest, and then evaporated, leaving him empty and weak.

  Footsteps drifted away across the cold tiles. Ral departing. Levictus crooned softly as he reached out to the archpriest. Was this a last caress, an act of compassion for a dying man? No, something approached from beyond the misty edges of his sight. A knife, its blade as black as the new moon, colder than the depths of the midnight sea, descended toward him.

  Closer…closer…closer…

  Vassili's final kiss came not from the lips of his mistress but from the bitter bite of Shadow-tainted steel. He screamed, but there was no one to hear.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Caim swayed to the rocking pace of his stolen horse. They were on the road, if the term could be applied to the rutted pathway wending between hedges of wild golden-brown wheat through the wilderness of rural Nimea. A colossal stone aqueduct ran parallel to the road, its arches clogged with ivy vines and detritus. A century ago it had carried water to Othir from the purple hills staggering away in the distance. Now, it was a monument to a tribe of humble origins that had gone on to conquer most of the world. But even empires died eventually.

  Josey rode beside him on a piebald nag; the animal's mild temperament matched its rider. Since they'd left Othir, Josey had lapsed into a quiet reticence. Caim was content to leave her to her solitude. After their escape through the underground tunnel leading from Pieter's tomb, they'd emerged in the foulburg of ramshackle homes along the western banks of the Memnir River. Caim liberated a pair of steeds and gear from a tavern stable, and they set off into the night. There was only one place in the world where Josey would be safe until he settled their problems, only one person he trusted to protect her.

  They rode west past sleepy villages and isolated homesteads. As the miles wore on, the farms and vineyards fell behind and they entered into a vast tract of wilderness. Still, Caim kept one eye over his shoulder. Even though they hadn't seen a living soul in hours, he couldn't shake the feeling they were being pursued. Invisible phantoms prickled his imagination, and not all of them originated from the events in Othir; with each passing mile he slipped deeper and deeper into his past.

  A yawn broke the morning silence as Josey stirred and stretched. Caim watched her without embarrassment. The last few days had taken their toll; she was thinner than when they'd met; her face had lost some of its color. Still, there was a core of iron in her that could not be denied.

  She caught him staring. “What are you looking at?”

  “Maybe we should talk about it.”

  “Talk about what?” But a blot of color crept into her cheeks.

  “About what happened in your father's house when you kissed—”

  “I was overwrought,” she blurted, “and you had one foot in the grave. It was just a moment of weakness.”

  “Weakness, huh?”

  She fixed her gaze on the road. “It won't happen again.”

  “That's good to know.”

  He shifted in the saddle. He wasn't used to riding anymore. His thighs would be sore tonight. Up ahead, trees limned in shades of bronze and gold emerged from the flatness of the plains. Far in the distance, rounded hills pushed back the horizon, and beyond them towered the shoulders of lofty gray peaks.

  They passed an old marker beside the road. Half hidden by weeds, there was no telling what it said, but Caim didn't need to read it. A cardinal perched atop the stone marker watched them as they passed. Caim tried to remember the last time he'd seen a bird besides the filthy pigeons that infested Othir.

  “So where are we?” Josey asked.

  “Dunmarrow.”

  Josey stood up in her stirrups for a better look around. “I've never been so far outside the city walls. Do people actually live out here?”

  “Few. At least, not many you'd want to meet. We're getting into bandit territory.”

  “Caim, are you sure about this? We could turn back. There might be people who would help us in Othir.”

  He snapped the reins. His gelding trotted for a few steps before falling back to a lazy walk. Josey caught up a moment later, handling her mount with practiced ease.

  “This person you're taking us to,” she said. “He can help us? Who is he? Your teacher?”

  “Not exactly. But I trust him, and I don't trust many people. Neither should you.”

  “All right. So where does he live? On the other side of this wood?”

  The path entered a stand of red maples. Cool shadows played across the ground. These woods were no mystery to Caim. He had explored their length and breadth extensively as a boy. They had been his refuge, his castle, his haven from a host of memories that refused to fade, but he had never considered returning until now.

  Half a mile after they passed under the leaf canopy, a humble dwelling appeared beside the road. Caim pulled his mount to a halt. Not much had changed since the last time he'd seen the place. A tendril of wood smoke rose from the clay-brick chimney. Roughed logs formed the walls, insulated with thick layers of wattle. The roof was bundled thatch.

  “Is this it?” Josey asked. “How long since you've been here?”

  “A long time.”

  Their horses whickered as a heavyset man came around the corner of the cottage. He had a wood axe with a black iron blade in one ham-fisted hand and a load of firewood tucked under the other arm. He looked to be somewhere in his fifties. His broad frame was clad in a homespun tunic tied with a rope over buckskin breeches. His face was uneven from an old war wound that had smashed in the left side of his jaw, giving him a menacing appearance, like a mangled wolf that'd been in too many fights. Watery blue eyes watched their arrival without expression.

  Caim leaned forward in the saddle. The old man had changed. His beard, as scraggly as always, had grown down to his chest, and he'd lost some hair on top. Extra weight now clung to his middle, but his shoulders were still massive, rolling on either side of his head like tumbling boulders. Caim supposed he had changed somewhat himself. He'd been little more than a half-grown boy when he left. Would the old man even recognize him?

  Those fears evaporated with a nod. “Caim.”

  Caim returned the nod. “Kas.”

  The axe man scratched his leg with the blade. “Looks like your taste in company has improved. You two jumped a broom yet?”

  Caim's tongue clove to the roof of his mouth. “Uh, no. Kas, this is Josey. Just a girl I know.”

  The old man started toward the door. “Well, come inside. I've got a pot of cha on the fire. It should be about ready.”

  Caim climbed down and moved to help Josey from her horse, but she beat him to the ground.

  “So I'm not good enough for you?” she asked, wearing the same feral smile Kit gave him whenever she wanted to pull his tail feathers.

  With a grunt, Caim headed toward the cabin, hobbling with every step from the long ride.

  Caim ran his hand across the surface of the table in the larger of the cabin's two rooms. The
whorls and knots brought back memories. He and Kas had spent a lot of time at this table, conversing over meals of homeground sausage garnished with whatever they could coax from the garden. Well, Kas had mostly talked while he listened. He remembered less pleasant things, too: angry words and all-out battles, the bitter winter when everything in the cabin except themselves had frozen solid. Caim could still imagine the chill in the tips of his fingers after all these years.

  The interior was just the way he remembered it, except smaller. A layer of dust covered everything. Cobwebs hung from the rafters and the old spear over the fireplace, and the window shades looked like they hadn't been cleaned since the cabin was built. A pile of threadbare blankets was stacked in the corner where he used to sleep. The smells of wood smoke and Kas's joint liniment hung in the air.

  The old man hadn't said much since they arrived, just dropped his firewood by the hearth and puttered around the squat iron stove. Josey sat back in the homemade chair and studied the two of them like animals in a menagerie.

  Caim shifted to alleviate the stitch in his side. Maybe this wasn't the best idea. He was trying to come up with an excuse to leave when Kas came over with a steaming kettle, a rag wrapped around the handle. He poured a cup for each of them and lowered himself onto a stool made from a tree stump. Josey offered to give up her chair for the third time since they arrived, and for the third time Kas refused.

  “No, I'm fine. I made those chairs, you know. Hope you don't get a splinter.” He made a smile at that like it was a private joke.

  Caim took a sip from his cup and winced. The cha was just like in the old days, horrible, but it was hot.

  “So,” Josey said, “are you and Caim related?”

  Kas glanced across the table with raised eyebrows. Caim shrugged. They were past the point where his secrets could do him much more harm.

  “Not exactly,” Kas replied. “I served his father for a time after my soldiering days. After his father and mother were killed—”

  “She wasn't killed.” Caim squeezed the cup tight. The old resentment bubbled to the surface as quick as marsh gas. “She was taken.”

  Kas nodded. “All right.”

  Josey looked at Caim. “Your father was killed, and someone took your mother? How old were you?”

  Caim took another sip. “Eight.”

  Josey reached out as if to touch his arm, but stopped before her fingers made contact. “I'm so sorry, Caim.”

  “Ancient history.”

  “Who did it?”

  “We never found out,” Kas said. “Caim ran off during the attack. I searched for weeks before I found him scrounging around the streets of Liovard, skinny as an alley cat and almost as feral. I brought him out here and we built this cottage.”

  Caim could feel Josey's stare. He could guess the thoughts running through her head, trying to piece together the shambles of his life, to trace the journey from that small forlorn boy to what he'd become. He could have told her not to bother, that he had chosen his path with his eyes open wide, but it didn't matter what she thought. Nothing could change the past, so the past didn't matter.

  “We had some good times here,” Kas continued. “That is, until he up and ran out on me. You were what, Caim? Fifteen?”

  “Thirteen.” He remembered the day like it was yesterday. They had argued over something; he couldn't remember what, but it had seemed like the most important thing in the world at the time.

  “We had a fight,” Kas said with a shrug, as if that explained everything. “I can't even recall what it was about. Anyways, Caim turned in early that night. The next morning, he was gone. You know, I went back to Liovard searching for you.”

  “No one asked you to.”

  “Dammit, boy. I thought you were long dead by now.”

  “Well, I'm not.” Caim got up. The room was cramped and stifling, the air thick with regrets.

  “I know I made mistakes,” Kas said. “I couldn't replace your family. The gods know I tried.”

  “Save it.”

  Caim left the cabin. He went around back to the wide meadow lined by a bulwark of ancient boles. This had been his playground, the place he went to escape with his thoughts. Years had passed, but the sights and smells of the cabin brought it all back like he was still just a boy, wrestling with the same problems, asking the same questions. And still finding no answers. What had really happened all those years ago on that cool spring night? Was he truly alone in the world?

  Footsteps crunched on the carpet of dry leaves behind him. “I come out here a lot,” Kas said. “In the evening with my pipe. It's relaxing.”

  “Where do you find tobacco this far out?”

  “A trader comes by every few months. I got a new adze last spring.”

  Caim's gaze wandered to a boulder at the edge of the woods. Almost as high as his waist, half sunk into the earth and covered in gray lichen, it had to weigh as much as a prize steer, if not more. He remembered watching Kas lift the boulder and toss something underneath before dropping the stone back into place. It had happened so long ago, and yet the memory was as sharp as a knife.

  “You're thinking about your parents,” Kas said.

  Caim nodded.

  “You think you're strong enough to lift that stone yet?”

  Caim considered the boulder, and the mountain of history heaped upon its craggy face. “I don't know if I'll ever be strong enough.”

  “I think about your father a lot,” Kas said. “Your mother, too. I wonder if I should have searched longer for the ones who did it. Maybe I didn't try hard enough.”

  Caim scuffed the toe of his boot in the dirt and kicked up a pebble. It landed beside his foot, flat and smooth like a river stone. A band of red twisted through the white surface. What could he say? Nothing. He had his own reservations about the past.

  “But you know, Caim, I'm glad I didn't go back, because then I'd never have found you. Your father was a great man, the best I ever knew. He would have wanted me to take care of you until you were old enough to look after yourself.”

  “What about what I wanted? What if I'd been willing to trade a few years on the streets in exchange for the knowledge that what happened to my parents had been made right?”

  “You still want revenge? Boy, listen to me. I've seen war and more than enough killing for a lifetime, and I can tell you from experience, that's an endless hole. You can pour everything you got into it, but every morning it's still going to be empty. It doesn't matter how many men you send to their graves, what's past is never going to change. It's time you learned that and moved on.”

  Caim ground his teeth together until sharp tingles of pain ran along his jaw. “I still see him in my dreams, Kas. He dies again and again right in front of me, and he keeps asking for justice, but I can't give it to him. What am I supposed to do? Just let it go and forget they ever existed?”

  Kas sighed. “Caim, you've been walking a line between light and dark your whole life. Maybe it's time to choose a side and stick with it.”

  Caim stepped away. A sick feeling uncoiled in his belly. Suddenly, he didn't trust himself. Was he doing the right thing? How could he know?

  “There are no sides, Kas. Just everyone looking out for themselves. That's the truth my father couldn't face.”

  “You don't see it, boy. You're in trouble.”

  “It's nothing I can't handle.” He turned to face the man who had raised him. “But I need a safe place for Josey to stay. It'll just be for a couple days.”

  “Of course, she's welcome. What about you?”

  Caim headed back to the cabin. “I've got things to take care of.”

  Josey stood in the tiny kitchen area. She looked over as he entered. “I'm not staying without you,” she said as if reading his thoughts.

  “It's for the best.”

  She crossed her arms across her chest. “You don't get to decide where I go and how I live.”

  He waited for the anger of her outburst to subside. The blush of her
cheeks faded, but her fingers were knotted now, into a hard, white ball. She looked like she was searching for something to throw at him until Kas stepped through the door.

  “We'll have a grand time, lady. We can talk about Caim while he's gone. I'll tell you all his childhood secrets.”

  Her eyes bore into Caim. “What if you don't come back?”

  “I will.”

  “But what if—?”

  He came around the table and wrapped his hands around hers. “I will return. Believe that.”

  She bobbed her head before collapsing against him. “You better,” she murmured into his chest.

  Kas cleared his throat. Caim gently pushed Josey away. He gave her his most sincere smile and a wink, and then he headed for the door. Kas stood in his way. Caim tensed, but the old man simply stepped aside.

  “Hope you find what you're looking for, boy.”

  Caim kept his head down as he stepped over the threshold.

  “Caim!”

  He turned in time to catch Josey. She clutched him hard for a moment, and then pushed a small object into his hand. It was cool against his palm.

  “Take this,” she said, and stepped back.

  He looked down into his hand. A golden key nestled there amid a jumble of leather string. Her necklace. With a nod, he wrapped the cord around his wrist as he went out to his horse.

  Back in the saddle, he took a deep breath, filling his lungs with the scents of pine and maple, good earth and sweet smoke. Then he rode away and left behind the two people he cared about the most.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Othir's gates were barred when Caim returned, their wardens replaced by soldiers in the hunter green livery of the Nimean army.

  So he entered by the underground tunnel. After snuffing the lantern inside Pieter's mausoleum, he stood for a moment with his hand on the crypt's bronze door. If he failed, it was only a matter of time before they got to Josey. The girl was lovely, smart, charming, but she was also haughty and headstrong. She wouldn't be content to wait with Kas for long. And where had Kit gotten off to?