Shadow Hunted (The Collector Chronicles Book 1)

by D. K. Holmberg

  “She’s right. The Dark Night knows that she’s right.”

  She set the body of the dead down, and Carth realized that it was a woman with flowing brown hair. She brushed the hair back from the side of dead woman’s head, and a tear dripped from her eyes.

  Carth swallowed. “Let me take them to the edge of the trees. I can hide them there and you can come back for them when it’s safe to do so.”

  “It won’t be safe to come back here,” the woman said. “They think we’re with the Collector, but we were only trying to sail to safety!”

  Carth frowned. What was happening here?

  At least she’d saved these women. She didn’t know what else was taking place, but she had done something right in helping them.

  “I think that once this night is over, they’re going to avoid this village.” Carth couldn’t imagine the smugglers—or whatever they were—using the village for safety after she escaped with three of their prisoners. If it were her, she would abandon it unless she had enough fortifications—and sufficient magic—to ensure that those within the village were safe.

  The woman nodded and Carth grabbed the other body from the two remaining women. They hurried to the edge of the trees, where she propped branches around the bodies, concealing them. They would decay, but if the people here wanted to collect the bones of their dead and bury them, or whatever their people demanded of the dead, Carth wasn’t about to be the reason that they couldn’t.

  The two women started off, but the first paused, looking back at her. “Thank you.”

  Carth shook her head. “I don’t know what any of this is about, but don’t remain caught up in some battle.”

  “We don’t have much of a choice.”

  “That’s never true.”

  The woman glanced down at the fallen. Was it someone she cared about? She was too old to be her daughter, but could it be a sister? The affection she had for her shone within her eyes and the wetness she saw within them. “That’s always true,” she said.

  She nodded and darted off into the darkness after the other two.

  Carth pulled the shadows around her and raced back toward the shore.

  Muted shouts attempted to split the shadows, and she knew it was time for her to depart. She raced toward the shore, searched for what she detected of her friends out in the river, and pushed off with the shadows.

  6

  Carth stood on the deck of the Goth Spald and stared out at the darkness. She felt unsettled. The air had a coolness to it, a crisp bite that felt out of character for this part of the world, but it seemed to fit her mood. What had she just witnessed?

  Alayna leaned over the railing next to her. Faint moonlight reflected off her green eyes and she smelled of a floral scent, likely from one of the elixirs that Boiyn concocted. Many of them had a floral base, and it was that which gave the elixirs a certain strength. Many of them reminded Carth of the healing medicines her mother used to mix.

  “You seem troubled,” Alayna said.

  “I’m not sure what we’re facing,” Carth said.

  “Well, we always seem to be facing something, so maybe that shouldn’t be surprising. It wouldn’t be the first time you were uncertain and we still rushed in.”

  Carth smiled at Alayna. “Are you accusing me of rushing in this time?”

  “It’s not an accusation, it’s an observation. I’m not saying that you did anything wrong, only that this isn’t the first time that we’ve gone through this scenario and had to try to figure out what to do next. Think of what we faced in Tardith.”

  Carth smiled. The battle in Tardith had been a difficult thing for both of them, but perhaps more so for Alayna. It had been the first time that she had really understood the extent of what Carth did. Seeing the way that Carth had risked herself for the others had bonded them, bringing them together in a way that they hadn’t been before. Alayna had been reserved prior to that, and ever since that time—ever since she had truly begun to use her ability to See—she had been ready to do whatever it took for them to succeed.

  “Are you saying that this time, we might be able to draw Linsay out?”

  Alayna glanced over at Linsay, who stood staring out into the darkness. She wore a forlorn expression and, as usual, Carth had a difficult time reading her.

  “Maybe not quite in the same way. I get the sense from her that she has no interest in fighting.”

  “Perhaps not, but that doesn’t mean she can’t.” Carth had made certain that Linsay had some skill with fighting. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have been much use if they got into trouble.

  “I thought you were opposed to enhancements,” Alayna said.

  “I recognize their value, and there are times when they are necessary. That doesn’t mean I have to love that we put our people in danger, taking things like that. I’ve seen what happens when the enhancements fail.”

  “Yet, you know Boiyn will continue to study so that everything is done as safely as possible,” Alayna said.

  “Just because we can do a thing doesn’t mean that we should,” Carth said.

  “Says the woman who has all the power that she wants.”

  “Not all the power. And it’s not as if I asked for the power that I have.” She leaned over the railing, staring out into the darkness. “If I had my choice, I never would have lived this life. I would much rather have a simpler life, one where I could have known my parents as I grew up. Maybe married. Maybe…”

  Carth shook her head. Those had been her dreams once, and not so long ago. When she had been with the A’ras, training with swordsmen who controlled magic of the flame, she had thought that even then, she would be able to find some normalcy. There had been a young man there who had drawn her eye, and there had been a connection between them, however briefly. Now, Carth doubted she would ever have that settled feeling. And dreams of a life with a husband had changed—even her tastes had evolved—though her dreams of a life with anyone she cared about had ended. She had lost too many to allow herself to get that close again.

  “We all faced loss. That’s what brings us together, Carth,” Alayna said, facing Carth and reaching for her hands. The gesture forced Carth to turn toward Alayna. “You’ve shown us that we can move beyond loss, and that we can come out of it stronger. Most of us are thankful for that experience. We know that from darkness, there is light.”

  “It’s an interesting choice of words,” Carth said.

  “Interesting, but no less true. I’m not talking about your connection to the shadows, or your connection to your flame magic. What I’m talking about is something different, something that fills each of us. Some more than others.” She turned and looked at Jenna, who stood at the ship’s wheel. They had spent considerable time working with Jenna, trying to get her ready to sail, but it simply wasn’t her skill. Jenna had many gifts, and fighting was chief among them, but Carth was only comfortable with herself and now Alayna sailing.

  “What happened to her is more than just darkness,” Carth said, keeping her voice low. She didn’t want Jenna to know that they were talking about her. Despite that, Jenna glanced over, almost as if she knew that they were. She was a bit of a mystery, the time spent sailing together still not having given them that great of an understanding about what made Jenna’s mind work. “You know what she’s been through.”

  “It’s not any different than what the rest of us have been through,” Alayna said.

  “Yet you don’t carry the same anger within you. You don’t try to destroy quite the same way that she does. If she had her choice, she would kill everyone that she faced. Somehow, we have to find a way to help her learn restraint.”

  “And I have faith that you will,” Alayna said, smiling at Carth. “Still, she’s come far from where she was. Think about what she’s been through.”

  “Every day I do.” Jenna was one of the most scarred women that Carth had ever attempted to help. She had been abused from a very young age, and with her natural gifts, she had been show
n nothing but violence. It made her a skilled fighter and made her deadly, but there was an emptiness within her that Carth had sensed she wanted filled. She wasn’t able to know what it would take to fill it, though she was more than happy to do whatever she could to help.

  “What next?” Alayna asked.

  “Well, we came here looking to see what was happening to our ships in this part of the world, and it seems as if there is something taking place. I don’t know whether to worry about this Collector or the smugglers who oppose him.”

  “There’s always something taking place, Carth. There’s always someone with power who is attempting to oppress those without it. And there’s always pain inflicted upon those who deserve better.”

  “Which is why we do what we do,” Carth said. “And it’s why we continue to grow stronger while others do nothing more than squabble amongst themselves.”

  “How much longer do you think we’ll be allowed to do that?” Alayna asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, how much longer do you think you will be allowed to grow stronger? Your network is gaining attention. There’s going to come a point where someone is going to attempt to weaken it. Maybe this attack is meant to do just that. We came here for information about the Binders ships, and we’ve found that there is something.”

  Carth sighed. There was something, and she didn’t care for the fact that what they had found made it seem like her ships had been attacked. Would she find her people in a village like she’d just gone through? Would that be the secret to what had happened with them?

  They had been careful… or so she had thought. Maybe they hadn’t been nearly as cautious as she had intended.

  “They can only attempt to weaken my network if they know about it. Why do you think that we keep everything secretive? If we didn’t, if we allowed ourselves to grow with any real strength, we would draw attention, and those of us without any power would be in danger.” It was that kind of danger that Carth hoped to avoid. She had spent considerable time and effort—and resources—in ensuring that she was not perceived as a threat. She didn’t need others with real power to view her people as something to fear.

  “You might want to keep it secret, but there comes a point where it’s not possible. There comes a point where what once had been secretive becomes too large to control.”

  “Do you think we’re there now?”

  “Maybe not yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there comes a point where someone comes at us simply because of who we are.”

  She hoped it wouldn’t come to that even as she saw the wisdom in Alayna’s words. There might come a time when they were attacked, and she could see how that would happen, someone wanting to focus on coming after them, attempting to defeat them so that they could take over her network.

  The nature of her network made it so that no one could easily replace her. It wasn’t something that Carth had done intentionally; it was more that she’d forged the connection between her people, the Binders, by bringing together those with similar experiences.

  Maybe those experiences would prevent them from succumbing to someone else’s attempt to destroy them all.

  “What do you want us to do?” Carth asked.

  “Are you asking me with sincerity, or are you asking because you think you need to?”

  “I think you know the answer to that.”

  “I know that you would like to figure out what happened to those people.” When Carth started to object, Alayna shook her head. “I can see it in your eyes. There is something there that burns within you whenever someone suffers. I don’t know exactly what you saw in the village, but it must’ve been enough to trouble you, and if it troubled you that much, then we need to act on it. We’re with you, Carth. Whatever else happens, we trust that you will lead us where we should go.”

  Carth couldn’t shake the image of what she’d seen in the village. The three people killed, and how they had been so casually—and brutally—slaughtered. It wasn’t what she had expected to find here, though she hadn’t expected to find a ship nearly able to take hers down, and yet she had.

  “What I’d like to do is figure out where that ship came from,” Carth said. “I haven’t seen anything like it and they were well armed, almost as if they were ready for us.”

  “Not us. They were ready for something.”

  Carth thought about how they had resisted her connection to the magic and the way that they had so easily slowed her. It was a situation that she was not accustomed to. She had escaped, but doing so had been more difficult than it should have been.

  “What you think they were ready for?”

  “I don’t know,” Carth said. “And I don’t really know if any of this has anything to do with the ships we lost.”

  “Maybe that’s what we should determine.”

  “If you keep making sense like that, you’ll be leading us before too long.”

  “None of us want me to lead,” Alayna said.

  “Why would you say that?”

  “I’m getting more skilled with fighting, but I’m not you.”

  “No one would ask you to be me.”

  “The Binders follow Carthenne Rel. They wouldn’t follow me. Even the others on this ship wouldn’t follow me without you here.”

  Carth stared at Alayna. Whereas Jenna struggled with her impulsivity and the ongoing burden of her anger, Alayna struggled with her confidence. Eventually, Carth would have to find out what had happened to Alayna that had made it so difficult for her to believe that she mattered. That her opinions mattered. Alayna was competent. More than that, she was gifted in ways that Carth was not. It was that skill that Carth took advantage of, thankful that she had a fighter of Alayna as capability.

  “As I’ve told each of you, there may come a time when I am not with you, and you will be asked to take on greater responsibility. I know that each of you is much more capable than you let on, and each of you has your own skills.” Some of those with her on the Goth Spald needed a little more help than others, but that didn’t mean that Carth couldn’t bring them along. She thought that she could help them.

  “Even Boiyn?”

  “Boiyn has his own unique talents,” Carth said. “He lives for peace, wanting only to find a way to avoid fighting, yet he has brought himself here, risking whatever dangers he might find sailing with us so that he can better understand how he can find that peace that he seeks.”

  “I think Boiyn enjoys the possibilities that you give him. I think he likes the fact that staying with you grants him the opportunity to continue to work on his enhancements and gives him access to places that he wouldn’t otherwise have access to,” Alayna said.

  It was possible that was the reason that Boiyn had come with them, but it was possible there was another explanation. Carth offered Boiyn a certain level of protection that he had never had before. There were rumors of power attributed to albinos, rumors which brought particular attention, and Boiyn was one who did not care for that kind of attention.

  “What would you have us do?” Alayna asked.

  “Nothing different than what we have always done,” Carth said. “We’ll search for information. We’ll help those who need it. And somehow, we will add to our network.”

  “Somehow? I think we know the how. It’s the who that we don’t quite know.”

  There was that. There were two sides that she had found so far. And of what she had discovered, there were no answers as to which side she needed to help.

  7

  Wind whipped around them, gusting through the sails until they fluttered. It was a comfortable wind, no longer as cold as it had been, and heated by the bright sun overhead. As Carth stood at the helm of the ship, steering away from shore, she scanned the distant horizon, searching for signs of disturbance.

  She saw nothing, but didn’t expect that she would. She pulsed out, sending waves of her connection to the flame and to the shadow across the sea, probing for signs of the attackers’ sh
ip. If she could learn anything of it, then she might be able to figure out what her next move would be.

  Jenna worked with Linsay, taking her through a series of movements, showing her how to hold, and then conceal, her knives. Every move that Jenna made was incredibly fluid, and she flowed from sheathing to unsheathing her knives, the blades deadly in her hands. She was a natural fighter. It was that skill Carth wanted her to keep, but to tone down and lose some of the aggression.

  Linsay was not nearly as skilled. It wasn’t that she couldn’t fight—far from it—but other than Boiyn, who would never fight, Linsay was the worst fighter on their ship.

  Alayna lounged near the rear of the ship, occasionally glancing behind it as if studying the rudder, and then flicking her gaze up to the mast and then beyond. What did she See? Was there anything she would pick up on as she studied the path they traveled? Maybe her ability didn’t provide that kind of information. Alayna rarely spoke of it, not able to explain her ability.

  She had considered taking them farther south. There was a trading center nearby, the city of Keyall, but it was one of the most distant points along the continent and Carth wasn’t sure how valuable it would be to head there until she understood what was taking place here.

  Eventually, she figured they would have to make their way to Keyall to truly understand what had happened with the attack. It was possible that Keyall received information and supplies out of the far west, a place that her maps did not extend, only alluding to a people who lived beyond the map’s border. With as much as she had sailed, there had only been rumors of them, nothing more.

  Could they be responsible for what had happened to her ships? Or was it only the Collector?

  There were times when Carth wished that she still had the guidance of the man who had taught her to sail, wishing that he could inform her of what secrets there might be beyond the edges of her map. What peoples lived there? Could there be allies as she struggled to face the Hjan?