Shadowlith (Umbral Blade Book 1)

by Stuart Thaman

“I don’t know.”

  SHADOWS OF DOUBT

  Palos was tired. He had always had trouble returning to sleep once someone had woken him, and the previous night was no different. When the sun broke through his window, he was already awake to greet it. He had spent most of the night in frustration, trying to figure out exactly what the dead man in the street meant for his expedition, but he hadn’t arrived at any meaningful conclusion.

  With a sigh, he pushed open the door to his room. A bleary-eyed soldier nodded to him across the hallway from his post. “Is Captain Holte awake?” Palos asked curtly.

  “Yes, my lord,” the guard nodded. “He is downstairs.”

  Palos took the stairs slowly, like his feet were suddenly made of stone. In the main area of the garrison, Holte ate his breakfast with a handful of other soldiers.

  “You took care of it?” Palos asked quietly.

  The captain regarded him for a moment and nodded. “It’s done.” Some of the other soldiers looked their way, but none of them asked any questions.

  Palos knew the rumors would fly through the army once everyone had awoken. He wouldn’t be able to conceal the true purpose of their journey much longer. “Can we leave by midday?” he asked.

  “Certainly,” Holte answered. “It does not take long to get provisions for a force this size, and Westhaven is well-stocked. We can be ready to move at your command.”

  “Wonderful,” Palos said. He thought about taking something to eat, but he was too tired to be bothered with food. Instead, he left the garrison to begin making final preparations with Westhaven’s commander.

  Alster and Elsey had barely slept by the time dawn broke. The abandoned house they had stayed inside was full of cobwebs, broken boards, and mice. “We need to get more food,” Alster said once he had cleared most of the tiredness from his mind.

  “Where?” Elsey asked.

  “I don’t think anyone would recognize me,” he answered. He looked down at his hands and smiled. “Unless I start to glow again,” he clarified.

  “How much did…” she hesitated, casting her gaze toward the ground. “How much did he have left?” she finally asked, far from eager to repeat Rai’s name.

  Alster dug through their supplies and pulled out a small leather coin purse. “He had some silver,” he said, holding four coins in the palm of his hand. “That’s more than enough.”

  “Take the horse south and find it somewhere to graze,” Elsey said. “No one saw me. I can try to find supplies.”

  “Alright,” Alster agreed. He handed the silver to Elsey and went outside. He wasn’t sure why the city they were in had a large stone wall cutting through the middle of it, but he found it curious, and his curiosity was heightened by the end of the wall farther south. As far as he could tell, the buildings ended there as well. “When you have everything we need, meet me at the end of the wall,” he told Elsey as she began walking north.

  “I’ll be back by noon,” she replied.

  Alster led their horse slowly along the wall, stopping often to make sure no one was watching him. “Where is everyone?” he wondered aloud. The whole city gave him an eerie feeling he couldn’t shake. The town was far larger than Velnwood, but no one seemed to live in it. The houses were in such disrepair that most of them were nothing more than ruins. He saw a well at the intersection of two streets that had crumbled into a pile of stones, broken beams, and old shingles.

  Back toward the populated center of the strange city, there were fortifications built on top of the wall. In one of them, he could vaguely make out what looked like people moving about inside the guard post, though he wasn’t sure. At the edge of the city, no such posts stood. He wondered what the guard towers were meant to stop, and what could possibly be lurking on the other side of the wall.

  Letting his curiosity get the best of him, Alster looked for somewhere he could go which would afford him a view of the other side. He saw a ruined chimney which stood roughly equal in height to the wall, but he knew he’d never be able to climb it. Defeated, he kept walking.

  It took him about an hour to reach the end of the wall, and part of him grew nervous when he did. The wall curved westward to Alster’s right, where it ended with decorative stonework, obscuring his view of what was beyond. A short gate had also been constructed where it ended, but it was obvious that no one had used it in quite some time. Tattered banners displaying Karrheim’s blue and white checkers hung from several posts atop the structure, and the portcullis was lying flat on the ground.

  Alster led the horse in a wide path around the gate, and there he saw the Rift. Despite the sun overhead, shadows freely danced in the broken earth.

  At once, Alster’s hands ignited with red light. The dagger tucked into his belt similarly flashed to life, and everywhere the red light sprang, heat accompanied it. It wasn’t unbearable like it had been in the depths of Scalder’s Inlet—it was instead a comforting heat, like a warm hearth in the dead of winter.

  With his red hands glowing before him, Alster was drawn to the Rift immediately. He let go of the horse and stumbled forward, eager to touch the shifting black and purple tendrils rising up from the ground. Where the Rift began, the grass was black and shriveled, and it crunched beneath Alster’s feet.

  The closer he walked to the Rift, the warmer his hands became. By the time he reached the edge of the swirling river of shadow, his hands were so bright he could not look at them. He heard the horse whinny behind him as it shook its mane.

  Finally, Alster closed his eyes and reached a red hand into the Rift. A pulsing tendril nearly twice his height stretched out to meet his fingers like a lover inviting him in for a gentle embrace.

  When Alster’s hand connected with that tendril, he felt a rush of emotion he had never before experienced. His whole body tingled, and his arms vibrated so violently he feared they might explode. Still, he waded deeper into the Rift, his mind consumed by the shadows. Before he was fully conscious of his actions, he was in the center of the Rift, nearly thirty feet below the edge of the city he had left. Above him, the wild tendrils writhed.

  “They don’t attack me,” Alster wondered aloud, reaching his hand out toward another tentacle. The Rift looked so overtly menacing, yet he felt completely safe within its clutches. As he touched the base of the nearest shadowy appendage, he recognized something within the Rift which called out to him: submission.

  The Rift wanted him to be there.

  “Lift me up,” Alster commanded the nearest tendrils. Surprisingly, the black essences of shadow slithered around his legs and torso, pulsing with energy, alive with purpose. Alster smiled, and the tendrils began to lift him upward. They carried him carefully to the top of the Rift as though he was some precious treasure being presented to a king. Or perhaps he was the king, and he was being presented to his kingdom.

  Alster wished he could look into the minds of the tentacles, to see their thoughts and know what they wanted of him; to learn if they were sentient at all. When he tried to use the connection he felt to the shadows to learn their intentions, he found nothing. “What do you want from me?” he asked them. Looking at his glowing hands, a hundred other questions rushed through his mind. “What am I?” he muttered.

  The nearest tentacle not supporting him responded to Alster’s question, slowly turning from the boy and leaning eastward, pointing to the other shore of the Rift. In unison, the other tendrils began to do the same, all of them pointing to the east and thrumming with energy.

  “Show me,” Alster commanded the Rift. He didn’t know what he expected the shadows to do, if anything at all, but he felt it was worth the effort.

  Under his body, Alster felt a tendril slither up beneath his shirt. It was cold against his skin, an odd contrast to the heat he felt emanating from the red light of his hands and dagger. The tendril reached the base of his skull and stopped, pulsing rapidly against his skin. Alster’s vision began to dim. When he could no longer see the Rift around him, the scene changed, showing him a shad
owy landscape of towering mountains. Between the two nearest mountains, he saw a thin trail like a dried riverbed winding its way through the red clay. As his eyes followed the trail, the shadowy image moved, carrying his vision along the path as though he was a bird flying overhead.

  Deep into the mountain range, perhaps many miles beyond the first peak, the trail terminated where a large landslide had buried it under hundreds of heavy boulders. It was there that the shadowy vision ceased.

  With a nauseating rush, Alster flew back into the present, into the Rift. His mind reeled from the distance it had traveled in such a short time, though he could feel the shadows trying to comfort him, to reassure him. “The tomb,” he muttered, and he wasn’t positive if the words came from his own mind or the Rift’s.

  Facing east, Alster pointed a finger toward the shore and imagined the tentacles carrying him there. They obeyed his command without hesitation. It wasn’t until Alster was firmly planted on his own feet that he remembered the horse standing on the opposite side of the Rift. Still close enough to reach out and connect to a tendril, he cautiously asked the Rift if it could bring the horse to him.

  Almost before he finished the mental question, the tendrils shifted back toward the western bank where they slithered out along the ground to the horse’s legs. Alster laughed aloud when he saw the horse lifted from the ground and floating through the air on a bed of darkness. The creature protested violently, but it was powerless to resist the strength of the shadows, and so it arrived on the eastern bank of the Rift in a fit of agitation.

  For the first time, Alster turned his attention fully away from the Rift and looked into the eastern half of the city. Everything on the eastern side was ruined. Only a few buildings stood taller than he, though none of them had roofs or any substantial walls. Leading the skittish horse away from the shifting tentacles of the Rift, Alster hobbled deeper into the abandoned city. He looked back at the wall bisecting the two halves and wondered how long it had taken to create such a structure.

  A noise to Alster’s right caught his attention. He turned toward what appeared to be a collapsed storefront, and he saw a strand of light red hair disappear behind a pile of debris. His mind first turned to thoughts of Rai somehow following them, but he quickly dispelled the notion. It had to be someone native to eastern Vecnos, perhaps someone living among the ruins.

  “Hello?” Alster called tentatively. He wasn’t sure if he would need to try and fight, or if he was simply paranoid.

  He looked around some of the ruins, leaving the horse in the center of a destroyed street, but he didn’t see whoever was there. Finally, Alster turned back toward the Rift. He didn’t like the idea of showing his back to someone potentially dangerous, but he knew he was not a fighter, and it likely did not matter.

  When Alster was halfway back the way he had come, he heard a noise behind him, and he whirled around, dagger in hand. An old man, covered in grime, was scrambling out of the ruins in the opposite direction. His light red hair hung down to his waist in knots and tangles.

  “Wait!” Alster yelled, though he immediately felt foolish for saying anything at all.

  Surprisingly, the man looked back over his shoulder as he moved away.

  “What did you see?” Alster asked loudly. His hands shook when he looked at the man, though not from any fear of physical harm. He was worried the man would reply.

  Backing away down the street, the man’s red eyes were wide with terror. “Shadowlith!” he yelled, pointing a dirty finger at Alster. “Shadowlith!”

  Alster’s heart sank as he watched the man run away.

  When Elsey returned to the Rift several hours later, she saw Alster sitting on the eastern bank, the horse not far behind him.

  “Alster?” she called to him, bringing his attention back to the present. When her initial amazement upon seeing the writhing tendrils for the first time faded, she realized that Alster and the horse were on the wrong side of the river-like trench. “How-” she began, but Alster cut her off.

  “I’ll bring you over,” he called back to her, his voice barely audible.

  Elsey readjusted the bag of supplies on her shoulder and began to speak again, but the tendrils of the Rift came alive. They moved toward her with purpose, driven by some unseen hand.

  “Alster!” she yelled. “What’s happening?”

  “Just trust me,” Alster called back.

  Elsey took a deep breath and tried to believe Alster, though none of it made sense. The nearest tentacle touched the skin of her ankle, worming around her body. She shuddered and shut her eyes.

  “Hold still. I’ll bring you over,” Alster yelled.

  “Alster!” she yelled again. She felt her feet leave the ground, and her stomach dropped. When she thought she was roughly halfway over the Rift, she managed to open one eye for a few seconds. Below her feet, she saw the inside of the Rift, the trench of shadows and darkness. Her stomach dropped further, and she thought she would vomit. Then, before she could even begin to process exactly what was happening to her, she landed gently on the eastern bank.

  “Are you alright?” Alster asked hesitantly.

  “What was that?!” Elsey screamed as she tried to catch her breath. She scrambled away from the Rift, and away from Alster, moving toward the nearest ruins with terror plastered to her face.

  “It's okay,” Alster stammered, though he didn’t follow her. “The Rift obeys me,” he added. “Or it obeys Alistair’s gauntlets, at least.”

  Elsey nodded slowly, but still looked terrified. “In the town,” she began, her voice wavering, “I heard a group of soldiers say that the man last night, the one you…” her voice became too quiet to be heard.

  “The one we killed,” Alster reminded her. He remembered Rai’s arrow ripping through the dark shade, then he saw the man shriveling on the street, and he struggled to resist a heavy pang of guilt.

  “The soldiers said he was killed with magic,” Elsey exclaimed. “They said it was shadow magic.”

  Alster tried to recall the men who had seen him in the street, to remember if any of them had gotten a good look at his face. “I doubt they would be able to identify us,” he finally said, though he barely believed it himself.

  “That isn’t the point,” Elsey snapped.

  “I know,” Alster said, looking down at his hands. He hated the idea of what he was becoming, of what he had already become. “You’re afraid of me.”

  Elsey silently held her ground.

  “I would never hurt you,” Alster added.

  “Are you a shadowlith?” she demanded. Her heart raced in her chest.

  Alster shook his head. “I can’t control my shade,” he told her.

  Elsey pointed to the writhing tentacles of the Rift. “You controlled those!” she said.

  Defeated, Alster turned back toward their horse. “I would never hurt you,” he repeated over his shoulder.

  Without anywhere else to go, Elsey followed Alster, but she kept her distance. “If we’re going to do this,” she began, “I need to know exactly what it is you hope to accomplish.”

  With his hand on their horse for support, Alster looked back to her. “When I fell into Scalder’s Inlet, I got stronger. The gauntlets melted into my skin and made me more powerful,” he said flatly. “If I can find Alistair’s greaves inside his tomb, I’m going back and jumping in Scalder’s Inlet again. I want my legs.”

  Elsey could read the determination in his eyes. She had never seen him so focused or motivated, and it was equal parts frightening and inspiring at the same time. “Once you find the armor, you’ll be done with shadow magic?” she asked.

  “I’d never hurt you,” Alster said for the third time.

  Elsey wasn’t sure what to make of his response. “I just want it to be over,” she said. She began organizing the supplies she had procured and got their horse ready to travel. “Which direction is the tomb?” she asked, deciding to leave her previous question unanswered.

  Alster pointed
away from the Rift. “There,” he said. “I think the Rift told me where to go.”

  Palos spurred his horse up to the front of his army, inspecting the soldiers as he passed. They were refreshed from the short respite, and they were also eager to be underway. He had to remind himself that he commanded an elite force of Karrheim’s best. They were professional soldiers, each with decades of training. None of them felt any concern at the prospect of only getting a single day’s rest.

  At the head of the column, Palos joined his officers. “To the Blightstone Gate,” he said.

  Lieutenant Marius nodded. “The pace, my lord?” he asked. Palos noticed the man had shaved, as the other officers had, and their uniforms were crisp and clean.

  “I want to reach the gate within the week,” he answered. “Have the footmen rotate with the cavalry riders when they tire.”

  “The Blightstone Gate is perhaps one hundred and fifty miles from Westhaven. A forced march will have us there in just under six days, my lord,” the lieutenant said, not a single trace of concern in his voice.

  “Make it so,” Palos replied. At once, one of the officers trotted off ahead to set the pace, and the others filtered back through the ranks to relay the command to the rest of the army.

  “Do you think the shade hunter from your estate is following us?” Holte asked when he was alone with Palos.

  “I don’t know,” Palos replied honestly. “It appears that we are being followed. The chances of two shade hunters existing seems farfetched.”

  “Or two shadowliths,” Holte added.

  “Only a handful of nobles even know for a fact the shadowliths were never fully eradicated. A shadowlith only turns up every five or ten years or so, and we make quick work dispatching them,” Palos said.

  “Perhaps there is another force behind the sudden resurgence,” Holte posited.

  “What are you thinking?”

  “Maybe someone is creating shadowliths again,” he suggested, though he had to admit that the notion felt extreme.