Lord of Shadows

by Alix Rickloff

  “You,” she said, her voice shaky with anger, joy, and fear.

  “Try to curb your enthusiasm,” he answered dryly.

  And just like that, seven years shrank to nothing. Tears spilled over. Ran like rivers down her face. “Oh gods, Daigh said . . . and the notes . . . and then . . . but I tried not to believe. I didn’t want to be disappointed. But you’re here. It really is you.” Horrible, wretched weeping shook her, making her nose run and her throat ache.

  “That’s more like the response I’d hoped for,” Brendan teased.

  She snuffled. “You’ve changed.”

  “Seven years spent looking over one’s shoulder can do that to a fellow,” he answered through chattering teeth.

  “You’re soaked.”

  “Compliments of a few buckets of water from St. John’s flunkies.” He bent to examine her wrists. “I can try to undo those knots, but it may take a while. St. John’s hurt my right hand. I think it’s broken.”

  She turned her back to him as he began working at the knots, an awkward silence falling between them.

  What should she say? What did one say to a brother who, until a few short weeks ago, was assumed long dead? Where had he been? How had he lived? Why had he come back now?

  Questions banged around inside her mouth, yet she remained speechless unable to form any of her thoughts into words. Instead she resorted to, “You didn’t write that last note, did you?”

  “Actually, I did. St. John’s arguments became overwhelmingly compelling. And extremely painful. It was only after I had done it that he stomped on my fingers for fun.” His breath came labored as he picked with frustrating slowness at the knots.

  “But why does he want me? What use could I possibly be to him?”

  “The sisters wouldn’t question your movements while you lurked about looking for the Rywlkoth Tapestry.”

  “It really is hidden there?”

  “It won’t be for long if St. John has his way. He’s got orders to retrieve it. Using any means necessary. You, my darling sister, are those means.”

  “But I don’t even know what it looks like. How—”

  “Shh,” Brendan cut her off. Dropped his voice to a whisper. “Don’t tell St. John that. Let him think you know what and where it is. Get him to let you go back for it. And don’t return.”

  “St. John will kill you.”

  “I’m safe from St. John. He may beat me black and blue, but he’s got strict orders to keep me alive. When you get back, go to your Ard-siúr. She can send for the Amhas-draoi. They’ll know how to handle St. John.”

  “But the Amhas-draoi . . . they want to kill you.”

  “They’ll have to get to the back of the line.” She opened her mouth to protest. “Sabrina, I’d rather face a quick execution at the hands of the Amhas-draoi than a drawn-out death at the hands of Máelodor. He and I have a long history. None of it on friendly terms.” A long pause, a wrench of her arms, and, “There.”

  The ropes came away. She faced him, rolling her aching shoulders, rubbing her wrists. “I can’t leave you.”

  His face stiffened into a harsh mask. Not at all Brendan-like. This was a man she didn’t know. A stranger. “You’ll do as your told. Do you understand? This is bigger than me. Besides, my life was forfeit years ago. Whatever St. John uses to frighten you, don’t heed him. Just get the hell out of here when you have the chance.”

  Daigh paused in front of the tapestry for only a moment before tearing the cloth from its nails. Shoving it into his coat pocket and retracing his steps.

  Sister Anne remained where he’d left her. Slumped unconscious across her desk. By the time she woke with a knot and a headache, he’d be long departed.

  So much for Ard-siúr’s resources.

  In the outer courtyard, Sabrina’s would-be protector paused in tending his cook fire long enough to challenge him, but Daigh never slowed. Instead his steps turned toward the workshops and the traveling smithy’s abandoned forge. Plucking up a sharpened billhook, he shoved it into his belt.

  “What’s yer business here this time of night?” The man filled the doorway, his eyes narrowed, his glowering features pricked with suspicion.

  “My business is my own.”

  “Not if yer skulking about where ya shouldn’t.”

  Daigh felt Máelodor now like a second consciousness. Watching with voyeuristic glee. Filling his mind with hate and violence. “Let me pass.”

  “Mayhap I’ll be hollering for me mates instead. Teach ya some manners. I seen the way you look at that young girl. Not decent. Not respectable. Pat! Jasper! We got that scoundrel cornered.”

  His mates shoved their way into the closed space of the tool crib. The three of them together stoked high on gin and frustration. Daigh, a tidy outlet for their drunken rage.

  He refused the black powers surging through his veins. The ruthless fury that sought blood and killing and death. Máelodor might claim him in the end, but Daigh would not make it easy.

  Instead, he used the strength born of tilt-yard training and the cunning honed through countless border raids to level the first man with a quick fist to the jaw, his companions with a flurry of punches that left one doubled over in a retching heap, the other spitting blood and teeth.

  Stepping over them, he slipped back into the night. Disappeared through the gate, the weight of Ard-siúr’s disappointed gaze boring into his back.

  He turned back, shouting into the night. Knowing she would hear. “Your bones were wrong, old woman! There is no hope for the damned! And I have betrayed you all!”

  Máelodor had always wished for the power of flight. To soar above the clouds. Look down upon the ants as they toiled and slaved in the fields and towns. To be one with the heavens. As powerful as the Fey themselves.

  The nights he dreamt of climbing the skies, he always woke refreshed, without the grate of brittle bones or the ghost-pain in a leg that was no longer there. But these nights were few. His dreams now were taken up with darker forces and more sinister fantasies than the innocence of flying.

  The traveling coach lurched, dropping heavily into a rut. Bouncing free. He grit his teeth against the constant jostling and swaying. Every pothole only served to remind him of his waning strength. Of the sacrifices he’d endured to summon a Domnuathi and bind him to the cause. Of the enormous drain on his powers to seek out his wayward creature.

  He would need to expend more power to crush the Domnuathi’s stubborn will. How Lazarus had managed to break free of his bondage, Máelodor couldn’t guess. But it would not happen again. He would see to that.

  Still and all, he could not be dissatisfied. Willingly or not, Lazarus had revealed the truth. Brendan Douglas was at Glenlorgan. The hunt was nearing its conclusion.

  It would be mere miles until he could look upon the treacherous face of the man who’d betrayed the Nine, including his own father, to save his pathetic skin.

  Skin, Máelodor planned on flaying inch by excruciating inch. He trembled in anticipation.

  Rapping against the carriage roof, he urged his coachman to increase the pace.

  To hell with his bones, he had a reunion to attend.

  Sabrina had done what she could for Brendan’s hand, though the bones had been crushed almost beyond even her repairs. She’d cleaned his lip. The deep gash across his ribs. His torso carried the same mottled bruising as his face as if St. John had taken to him with a club.

  “Fists only,” Brendan explained, wincing at every pass of her dampened cloth. “But there may have been a few pieces of furniture, and at one point a spur caught me. That’s the mess across my ribs there.”

  As the hours dragged, Brendan’s face paled to a sickly gray, color high upon his cheeks. And his grip on lucidity loosened despite her attempts at reducing the rampaging fever. He drifted in and out, sometimes muttering incomprehensible gibberish, sometimes frighteningly quiet, barely a breath steaming the chilly air. She’d beaten upon the door, hollering for help to come. Bring a blank
et or even a candle to break the unceasing gloom.

  The first time she’d received only a curse and a shout for silence in response.

  The second time, the door cracked open to reveal a sinister bearded man who pushed a plate of food through the door at her along with a jug of sour ale.

  Brendan roused himself to poke at the burnt fish. Tear off a hunk of the bread. “There’s at least two blokes besides him. Twice as disreputable and three times as quick with their fists.”

  “But surely your powers . . . I mean you were always so . . .”

  He gave a gruff snort. “Magic can’t stop a bullet or turn a blade. And St. John’s powers as an Amhas-draoi are far greater than mine. The first time I tried to escape . . .” He wrapped his hands around his knees, his face bleak. “Let’s say, it ended badly. The second time . . .” He clenched his jaw and looked away. “The hand was the least of it. Between St. John’s mage energy and his bully-boys’ brute force, I’m stymied. Besides, I can’t leave you, and I’m too weak to protect both of us. I’m afraid if you were looking for me to play hero, I’m singularly unequipped.”

  His impudent tone didn’t hide his mounting fear. She felt it as an added press upon her own sagging spirits. It wouldn’t take much to peel away his remaining bravado. And the waiting only made it that much worse. Every sound made them jump. Every shout caused them to steel themselves for St. John’s arrival. But he did not come.

  Even panic loses its edge over time. The body slowly adjusts to the dry mouth, the closed throat, and the sweaty palms. Fear becomes normal.

  By the time the sun dragged itself into a gray, misty sky, Sabrina had reached that stage, immune to the knots in her chest and the flip-flop of a stomach long since emptied of its last meal.

  She’d offered Brendan the pallet. He slept. Finally. But it was a short-lived rest, soon broken by disjointed muttering. “Lissa . . . the stone . . . Jack!” He woke with a jerk. Scrubbed a hand over his face as he sought to pull himself from his fever dreams. “Have I been asleep long?”

  Sabrina had taken to drawing patterns in the dirt with a piece of stick. “A few hours.”

  “Any sign of St. John?”

  “No. No one.”

  Sighing, he slung his legs over the side of the bed, raking a hand through his wild hair. “Thank the gods. Not up to seeing him again right now. And Máelodor . . . well, least said about that . . .” He peered at her from his one good eye. “Have you slept at all?”

  “Not much. No.”

  “Here. If you squash up next to me, we can combine our heat.”

  He pulled her up onto the pallet beside him, curling her into his shoulder. “There now, better?”

  “Much.” She tried not to worry over the amount of heat he generated alone. “Brendan?”

  “Hm?”

  “Why did you do it?”

  A long silence. Long enough she wanted to cut out her tongue. Why had she asked that? What did it matter now? Didn’t they have enough troubles without dredging up more?

  “Which ‘it’ do you refer to?”

  She couldn’t back away now. She’d asked. She’d get an answer. Even if it wasn’t an answer she wanted to hear. Because though it seemed like ancient history, the actions of those long ago days still rippled outward in ever-widening, every-strengthening circles.

  “All the things they accuse you of.”

  Another long silence stretching thin as spring ice. “My notoriety has grown for every year they couldn’t catch me. I’d not be surprised if I were being held responsible for blighted crops, solar eclipses, and plagues of locusts.”

  “That’s not answering me.”

  He sighed. “I was a different person back then.”

  “What changed your mind?”

  His body stiffened, his arm sliding away to leave her chilled with more than cold. “Perhaps someday I’ll tell you.”

  She drew her knees up to her chest, resting her head upon them. Rain pattered against the roof. Dripped with tortured regularity upon the floor. “Why did you come back?” She hated the quaver in her voice.

  Brendan’s answer came thick as if he were once again close to a slide into unconsciousness. “Heard Father’s diary had been found.” He drew in a shivering breath. “Hoped to beat him . . . didn’t work out . . .”

  “Who’s Lissa?”

  “No one anymore. Go . . . sleep.”

  She didn’t want to. Couldn’t.

  But did.

  A short, grimy man let St. John and Daigh into the cottage. Another filled them in on the prisoners.

  “Barely et, sir, though I gave them what you left. Heard them in there talking, but couldn’t make heads nor tails of what they said through the door. Gentleman’s not tried nothin’ for a while, though we been watchin’ for it. He’s poorly. Mebbe that’s what’s keeping him quiet.”

  “Bring them out.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  The men disappeared up a narrow stair, their boot heels echoing on the floorboards above Daigh’s head. Raised voices followed by a dull thud of fists striking flesh. A woman’s scream.

  Daigh strained against the black rage. The presence so close to the surface, the gleam of the serpent’s eye filled his vision. The glistening, black scales slid just below his skin. Every second his humanity unwound like wool from a skein.

  “Here they are, sir.”

  St. John motioned the couple forward into the room.

  Sabrina started in her captor’s arms. “Daigh!” Was yanked back fiercely.

  Beside her, held upright only by the men supporting him on either side, slumped Brendan Douglas. He cocked a head up, one golden eye studying him from beneath a shaggy head of hair. “So, Máelodor managed it after all. A Domnuathi.”

  Daigh stiffened, addressing St. John. “You agreed. The tapestry for their release.”

  “No,” St. John countered. “I agreed the tapestry and I’d not carve your lover into bite-size pieces. Did you know the sea lies a mile southeast of here? My associates, when they’re not engaged by me, own a fishing boat. According to them, a body weighted and dumped just yards offshore will never be found.”

  “You lied.” Tugging the billhook from his belt, Daigh surged forward, only to be brought up short by Sabrina’s captor pressing a cocked pistol to her temple.

  “Careful,” St. John admonished, holding a hand out for the makeshift weapon. “You wouldn’t want to be responsible for a stray shot, would you?”

  “Bastard,” Douglas rasped. But a brutal punch left him hanging useless between his captors.

  “What of Sabrina’s brother?” Daigh asked, slapping the billhook into St. John’s open palm.

  St. John shrugged. “He’s not part of our bargain.”

  “She’s no more use to you. Let her go.” Daigh tried to keep the pleading from his voice, but by the smug curl of St. John’s lip, the man knew full well to what extent Daigh would go to secure Sabrina’s release.

  “And why should I?” He studied Daigh with renewed interest.

  Palms damp, skin crawling, his stomach churned as he stared the man down. “Because I asked.”

  St. John opened his mouth as if to reject his request, his expression slowly changing as if he read something in Daigh’s eyes that pleased him. He motioned toward a dimly lit back passage.

  Without once looking at Sabrina or her brother, Daigh followed St. John out.

  They had been returned to their prison, Brendan dumped unceremoniously upon the bed, and given a rough boot to the ribs to keep him quiet. She, shoved inside with a leer and a filthy remark that left her face flaming. When the door finally slammed behind them, the turn of the key came like a turn of a knife in Sabrina’s breast.

  She slid down a wall to huddle upon the floor, arms wrapped about her drawn-up knees.

  “Damn it. Seven years hidden, and just like that—” A bout of coughing interrupted Brendan’s tirade. He lay back on the bed, an arm shielding his face as he sought to recover.

 
; “Daigh didn’t do it because he wanted to. He did it to save me.” She pressed a hand to the dull lump just under her breastbone.

  “Why would a soldier of Domnu barter to save you? And why does St. John assume you’re lovers?”

  Sabrina flashed him a look.

  Brendan lowered his arm to cock a quizzical brow in her direction. “Thought I hadn’t caught that, didn’t you? This isn’t the first time St. John has used you as a weapon against the Domnuathi.”

  “It’s not?”

  “What is there between you and Máelodor’s creature?”

  She caught herself picking the nail of her right index finger. Whipped it behind her back. “If I tell you something, will you promise not to laugh?”

  He grew serious. “Can’t say I’m in a jolly mood.”

  She cocked her head, regarding him steadily. “That’s hardly a promise.”

  He sighed. Tenderly leveraged himself to a sitting position. His bruises stark against the chalky gray of his face. “Have I ever laughed? Even when you came to me with tales of trolls under your bed, did I let out so much as a snicker?”

  “No, you didn’t.” She paused. “But that turned out to be true.”

  “Needless to say, in this, Sabrina, I’m the same as I ever was.”

  She gazed on him long and hard. In almost every way, he was so different from the thin, gawky, untidy brother of her childhood. The one whose manner held a guarded reserve, his true emotions carefully hidden beneath a veneer of sarcasm. Except with her. Or so she’d always thought. But his confessions had shaken that faith. Had she really known Brendan at all?

  He seemed to understand her dilemma. Hurt dulled his already beaten features, and he hunched his shoulders. “Please, Sabrina. Trust me.”

  His need ripped through the last of her worries. Aidan had been the brother she idolized. Brendan was the brother she loved.

  “I’m part of Daigh’s past.” He scowled his confusion. “I know it sounds insane, but I’m able to fall into his memories. I see things as he remembers them, but they’re memories of me. And him. Together. It’s more than a vision, it’s as if I’m there. As if I traveled through a portal to the past. As if his memories are a way through time itself.”