by Jon Sprunk
Levictus lowered his forehead to the cool earth. “I accept the risks.”
“And there is another price to be paid as well.”
Levictus had feared as much when he hatched this plan. Sixteen years ago, he had been given a task to cement his original pact with the Other Side. He didn't mind at the time; it gave him a chance to experiment with his newfound powers. Now, after freeing himself from Vassili's yoke, the idea of continued service enraged him, but he would have his final revenge on Othir and the man who had wounded him. Though his heart resisted, he bowed his head in assent.
He listened to the emissary's message, whispered across the Void, and all the while his chest grew heavy with dread as the Shadow's plans were divulged to him. And yet, what choice did he have? He had bound his fate to this path long ago. It was too late to break free.
When she finished, Levictus exhaled a long sigh, and then nodded once more. “I will do as you bid. When do I receive my boon?”
The figure faded from view as the window shriveled up like a dead leaf. “It comes.”
The grove darkened, and black clouds gathered above to block out the moonlight. Branches scratched together as a breeze from the Other Side crept through the trees. The ground quivered under his feet. Levictus clenched his fists as the tides of magic coalesced around him, but he could not have prepared himself for the tsunami that crashed down upon his head. He gasped and shivered, helpless in the throes of power. It scoured the marrow from his bones. It pounded through his veins and swelled in his chest until he thought his heart would explode. Overhead, storm clouds crackled and spat.
Then, like the calm in the eye of a hurricane, the surge evaporated.
Levictus picked himself up from the patch of dry ground where the convulsions had thrown him. He was himself again, and yet he was changed. Things looked different. The darkness churned around him like a living, breathing thing. Glowing eyes watched him from the shadows.
The shadows.
They had changed, too. Looking upon them, he understood what had been given to him, and he accepted.
With a smile, Levictus wrapped his cloak around him. As the deep, cool blackness fell around him, his body lightened and he flew on the night winds, back to Othir to sow the seeds of destruction.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
A cold wind flogged Caim as he crouched behind the neck of his stolen steed. He pushed the animal all the way from the city, cutting cross-country between villages to save precious minutes. The moon, full and red, tracked his progress over the plains. A blood moon, the sailors called it. Night of ill omens.
The wound he'd received from the sorcerer's knife, scrawled like a streak of bloody charcoal down his forearm, burned like the blazes, but the pain was nothing next to the rage boiling in his chest. He knew where he had seen a wound like the earl's and like Mat's.
He stood in the center of the corpse-strewn courtyard. A large man slumped at his feet. Strings of red-black blood ran from the wound in his chest. A tremor ran through Caim as the corpse opened its eyes, black spheres without irises or whites. A whisper issued from blue-tinged lips.
He had been presented with an opportunity he never thought to have in a hundred lifetimes, to avenge his father's death, and he had let it slip through his fingers like wet sand. Damn Ral. It was clear the man had made some kind of deal with that creature, Levictus. But what drew them together? What plan had they hatched, and how did it involve Josey? Caim knew Ral. The man's dreams were grandiose, but teamed up with one who could conjure the shadows, how far could he go? The questions haunted Caim all during the harrowing ride.
When his first horse foundered, he sidetracked to a wayside roadhouse and stole another. The second horse proved hardier, if not so fast as the first, but after an hour of cantering the beast labored for breath. Caim felt sorry for the animal, but he didn't let up as evening approached in deepening strands of purple and blue. Nothing mattered except reaching Josey.
He reached the first stand of trees. The path was an inky band that snaked through the woods. He slowed the horse to a walk as they passed under the roof of branches. Ral had sent people after Josey. Even now they could be at the cabin. For the hundredth time he cursed himself for not killing Ral when he had the chance. The man was a fiend, not fit to live among humanity.
The same could be said for me.
True enough, but he would gladly go to the gallows as long as Ral went before him. If anything happened to Josey, he'd never forgive himself. He should have gotten her farther away, hidden her in another city where she'd be safe. The recriminations battered at him as he peered through the forest's gloom. The cabin was not far off the path. If Kas had left a fire burning, he should see its light soon.
Caim almost passed by the cabin before he picked out its white lines of wattle in the darkness. He yanked his mount to a halt and was running as soon as his feet hit the ground, knives drawn. The front door hung open on loose hinges. Beyond it, darkness swathed the interior. Not a sound disturbed the stillness of the forest.
Caim leaned across the entrance. His gaze darted to the corners of the front room. The place had an empty feel, devoid of life. The hearth had been allowed to go out; the dying embers were sunken beneath a bed of ashes. The few pieces of furniture were scattered about in shambles. Pieces of clay dishes littered the floor amid half-dried pools of dark scarlet. A sharp odor hung in the air. As he stepped over the threshold, Caim spotted the still mound of a body.
Kas.
Three strides took Caim across the room. A pike with a shortened shaft lay beside the old man's limp hand. Caim looked down at the man who had raised him and didn't know how to react. Titanic weights pulled at his insides; conflicting emotions congested in his vital organs. The walls of the cabin closed around him, cutting him away from the night. The wind's whisper vanished like ghosts of years past as the stink of blood and burnt leather filled his head. For a moment Caim allowed himself to feel remorse for the way he had left things between them. He had loved this man, and yet hated him for not being his true father. With an effort that showed in the whites of his knuckles, he shut those feelings away and turned his mind to more immediate matters. Blood stained the weapon's point. So the old man hadn't gone down without a fight. Good for you.
Caim knelt beside the body. The blood was sticky, not yet fully dried. The rest of the room was empty. No sign of Josey. It looked like the bulk of Ral's men had entered through the front door, and one by a broken window. What he thought was blood spattered across the sill turned out to be wine.
The door to the back room was half closed. He nudged it open. Scant moonbeams fumbled across the crude floorboards. A garment was laid over the disarrayed covers of a crude cot. An icy fist closed around Caim's heart at the sight of Josey's borrowed gown. It had been slashed to bloody strips. He flinched as identical wounds made by imaginary swords and daggers pierced his flesh.
He searched the entire cabin for the body, but found nothing. He went back outside to make a sweep of the yard. There were marks in the dirt where one or more bodies had been dragged amid a crowd of hoofprints. Caim was no tracker, but he could see they had come from the direction of Othir and returned the same way. He must have just missed them. Of course, they would stay to the main roads, secure in their numbers.
Caim's breath burned in his throat. Rage filled his thoughts, at Ral, at himself, at the gods if they existed. The Brotherhood had Josey. A thought flashed through his head. If they were riding with wounded, he might still be able to catch them.
He started toward his steed, but stopped after a few paces. The horse shuddered like it had an ague. Strings of milk white foam drooled from its mouth. The damned thing was blown. Useless. It wouldn't run again tonight, if ever.
Caim gave the animal what mercy remained in him. He stripped off its bridle and saddle, and dropped them on the ground. A wasted effort. It would probably drop over dead before morning. He had failed them. Josey, Kas, Mathias, his parents—they were all gone now.
He was alone. Grief sliced up his insides like a river of broken glass. He wanted to scream to the heavens, but the cry lodged in his throat. He had nothing left. Then, a whisper-light touch settled on his shoulder.
“I'm so sorry, Caim.”
The words tickled his ear as Kit alighted beside him. Her inner radiance surrounded him like the light of a thousand fireflies. He wanted her comfort, wanted it more keenly than he had ever wanted anything in his life since the day his father died, but he couldn't accept it. The rage had rendered all his tender feelings down to a lump of useless, hardened tissue.
“Where have you been?” He made no effort to temper his tone. “Out in some meadow, picking flowers and dancing with starlings?”
She floated around to face him. Tears trickled down her face like falling stars. “I was here, Caim.”
“Yet you did nothing.”
“I couldn't!” she cried. “I saw them kill Kas and drag the girl away, but there wasn't anything I could do.”
“You could have come to find me. I could have stopped it.”
“Would you have listened?”
“Of course I would—”
“No.” She retreated a few steps from him. “You stopped listening to me a long time ago, and it only got worse when you met that girl.”
“Her name was Josey.”
“If you want to know where they took her—”
“Say her name!” he screamed.
Kit wiped at her face with the back of her hands. “Josey, okay? Her name is Josey, but she's not dead.”
“I saw the dress, Kit.”
“Listen, you idiot!” A deep crimson blush stained her cheeks as she propped her tiny fists on her hips. “She's still alive. They took her and rode off like a pack of demons. They left the dress so you would get all hellfire mad and go riding after them without a thought in that wooden head of yours.”
He strode through her as if she weren't there, walked up to the door of the cabin, and stood on the threshold. The emptiness within yawned before him like a great mouth.
“I never wanted this for you.” She came up beside him. “Neither did your mother.”
“Don't, Kit.”
Her ethereal fingers brushed his face. “I was happy in my world, Caim, but I had to come when I heard your mother's call. She understood it would be hard for you in this place, born of two peoples, belonging to neither. And I knew the first time I saw you that I would love you forever. That's the curse of my people. We never forget and we never die. We love forever, even after the ones we love die and pass into the great dark.”
“Kit…” Troubled feelings rumbled in the depths of his soul. They chipped away at his resolve and made him feel weak and pathetic.
“Don't you think I mourned for your loss, Caim? Don't you think I cried myself sick after what happened to your parents? But you were a stone. You never cried.”
“What good would it have done them?” But tears, hot and bitter, sprang to his eyes now as her words dredged up his past.
Kit rested her head on his arm. “We don't cry for them, Caim. We cry for ourselves. Kas understood that.”
“And now he's dead, too.”
“He died doing what he knew was right.”
Caim thought of the bloody spear. Kas had died a hero. Would the same be said of him when his time came? The gloom inside the cabin beckoned to him.
“It's funny,” he said. “For years after they were gone, I thought losing my parents had made me a stronger person. Tougher. Now I wonder if I didn't lose the best part of myself that night. The man with the black blades. He's like me, isn't he? A monster.”
An electric tingle ran along his jaw as she touched his chin. “You are not a monster.”
“There's darkness inside me, Kit. I've always known it was there, just below the surface, and you've seen what happens when I lose control.”
She turned away.
“He sent that shadow-snake after me, didn't he? Now he's working with Ral, and Josey is gone. So who the fuck is he, Kit?”
For a moment, he thought she wouldn't answer. Then, “He serves the Lords of the Shadow.”
Caim swallowed past the knot in his throat. The taste of tears lingered in the back of his mouth. A thousand questions jostled in his throat, but only one was important.
“How do I kill him?”
“He is flesh and blood, just like you. Cut him and he will bleed.”
“I tried that.” The admission was torn from his throat in an angry growl. “I tried, Kit. He has powers I don't understand, magic I can't match.”
Her slender finger touched the space over his heart. “The blood calls to its own, Caim. You are your mother's son. You already possess everything you need.”
He laughed, a cruel sound even to his own ears. “Then I'm damned and so is Josey.”
“They took her alive, so she must have some value to them. They won't kill her out of hand. There's still time to help her.”
“Now you want to help her? You couldn't stand the sight of her before.”
Kit folded her arms across her slender chest. “I'm glad you have a mud-woman in your life. I know I can't love you the way I've always dreamed, the way I wanted to.”
“Kit, I—”
She smiled and shook away another bout of tears. “But I'll always be here for you, as your friend.”
“You're my best friend, Kit. You always have been. That won't ever change.”
She punched at his arm. “It better not!” Then, in a more somber tone, “We'll find her, Caim.”
He watched the light play upon the shards of broken glass on the cabin floor.
“I already know where she is,” he said. “Ral told me himself once. He said we were the most feared men in the empire, that we should be lording it up in the palace.”
“You mean the palace palace? Like the big muckety-muck's digs?”
Caim walked into the cabin. A storm lantern hung from a hook on the wall. He took it down and lit the wick from the hearth embers. Light filled the cabin as the lantern sprang to life. He hurled it into the back room. Flames shot to the ceiling as he strode out the door. The growing fire threw harsh shadows across the grass and against the trunks of the surrounding trees as he went around to the back of the cabin. Thoughts of Josey swirled around in his head. He would go after her, and the gods help anyone or anything that got in his way.
Across the yard, the boulder hunched in the earth like the egg of a giant bird. While Kit floated over him, he squatted down beside it. He fit his hands underneath the stone and heaved. The boulder was sunk deep in its loamy home, but he would not be denied. He pulled for the memories of his father and mother, for Kas who'd become the father he wanted and needed even if he hadn't realized it until too late, for Josey who needed him now. He pulled until his tendons strained and his legs shook. The wound in his side ached, but he didn't let up until, inch by inch, the stone came free of its bed. With a groan he heaved it away.
Pale worms wriggled in the damp earth where the stone had lain. Kit crouched beside him as he pulled a moldy leather sack from the soil. He cracked it open to pull out the items inside, and set them on the ground with reverence. The first was a square of sturdy broadcloth. It unfolded into a dirty gray tabard. A great sablewood tree was stitched onto the breast in black thread, the sign of his father's house. The second item was wrapped in oilcloth. Caim pulled away the covering to reveal a portrait in a plain wooden frame. Caim's father was tall and imposing in the picture. His mother looked tiny beside her husband, like a dark-leafed sapling growing in the shade of a mighty rowan. Her hair was long and lustrous black, her eyes mysterious pools of obsidian.
While Kit mooned over the picture, Caim took out the third item. The sword's leather scabbard was in bad repair. He wiped away years of grit from the whorls carved into the pommel. This had been his father's blade. Though the hilt was cool to the touch, holding it produced a burning heat in the pit of his stomach. He had pulled this weapon from his father's
corpse. Now, he would use it to sever the chains of death that had bound up his life for so long, or he would die. In either case, the matter would finally be resolved.
Caim set the sword aside and pushed the other items back into the hollow. Getting behind the boulder, he heaved it back into place.
Kit watched him with an intent expression. “You can't keep running from your past. It's part of who you are.”
He snatched up the sword. “I'm not denying it. I'm finally accepting my true inheritance and everything that goes along with it.”
He started back toward the trail. “You coming?”
She fell in beside him, but said nothing. He was glad for the silence. He had planning to do. The trees swayed over their heads as they followed the rutted path back to Othir. The tang of wet copper stung the back of his throat. A storm was coming. Good. Let the heavens pour out their tears. I'll give them a slaughter worthy of their misery.
Over the plain, flickers of lightning danced through the shroud of purple-black clouds and echoed with the growls of thunder.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Josey's hands, clenched in the folds of her skirt, trembled as she stood before the painting. A regal man astride a fierce charger gazed down at her. His wavy black hair was cut at shoulder length in the masculine style of the previous generation. Thick brows met over a prominent, aquiline nose. And the eyes—she knew them with intimate familiarity. They were her own.
Is this really my father?
A brass plaque below the portrait read:
Leonel II of the House Corrinada
Emperor of Nimea
She whispered the name, adding her own. Josephine Corrinada. The jumble of thoughts warmed her body like a hot bath. Then she thought of Earl Frenig's kindly face and the languor evaporated in a cool shiver. So many secrets, so many lies, all to preserve her identity. How am I supposed to feel? She didn't know, and that was the scary part. And on top of that, what had happened to her at the cabin…
