by Shona Husk
The bone-handle was like polished ice against his palm. The handles never got hot. They were always as cold as the Shadowlands and the goblins they were made from. Desperation makes men do desperate things. He’d needed weapons and had made them from whatever he could. These knives had always flown true whenever he used them, as if they carried a little of the death magic of the Shadowlands. Maybe that was why they came to him easily in the dream. Part of them existed in the realm of nightmares.
“You asked for help? Here I am. What do you want of me?” he called out.
From the rocks the man broke free. A goblin battle cry tore out of his very human throat. His bow was raised and arrow notched, aiming at Dai. Dai raised his hand ready to throw the knife and froze. His blood shattered in his veins. He knew that face.
The face of a warrior he’d never thought to see again after watching him fade to goblin the night the Decangli died.
Meryn.
Meryn changed his aim at the last moment and the arrow flew wild, hitting the man’s arm. A man. Not a goblin. There were no humans here. Did I really call the man here? I wanted help, but what could a man do? He needed the king.
His brow furrowed as their eyes met. The man wrapped a hand around his arm, cursed in a language Meryn hadn’t heard for a long time, then vanished.
He was there, and then he was gone without a fight. Meryn walked around the spot where the man had stood. Not even his footprints remained. Meryn shook his head. A trick of his mind and nothing more. A nightmare from a past he didn’t want to remember. He retrieved his arrow but color caught his gaze.
Blood.
Red blood stained the point. He sniffed it and ran his tongue over it, tasting the coppery sweetness. Human blood. Meryn wiped the arrow clean on his trousers.
The man’s face lingered in his mind like a memory of another life. He couldn’t dislodge the scraping inside his skull that he should know the man who left no trace.
Dai fell off the sofa, crouched and ready for battle, but with no weapon in his hand. His palms were cold like they remembered the bone-handle. He glanced around his apartment, but he was alone. His heart returned to a slow and steady beat.
The dream was so vivid, as if he was actually there. The cold, the peculiar echo. He hadn’t been. He was sure of that. He’d been traveling between realms for long enough to know what that felt like. A new nightmare then. One he could never fix. Meryn had faded and they’d all watched helpless to the unfolding horror.
In the quiet of his lounge room water dripped. He looked down. Not water, blood. His blood splashed onto the floor. It dripped from the soaked sleeve of his ripped shirt. Cautiously he examined the tear in the black material and the flesh beneath.
He was rewarded with a sharp rasp of pain escaping his lips. Damn it. He hadn’t been shot in decades. He glanced at the floor, and then the wound. He’d been shot in a dream.
He’d been shot by Meryn.
Meryn was human.
His blood plopped and burst into tiny suns on the floor as his world collapsed and got sucked into the endless gray of the Shadowlands.
Roan and he had never thought of what would happen to Meryn when the curse broke. Dai pulled his hand away; brilliant scarlet blood stained his fingers. Now he knew.
Meryn was alive and human and trapped.
Dai picked up his cell phone and found Roan’s number. His thumb hovered over the green call button. It was four o’clock in the morning. His brother had a wife. Dai released his phone. He couldn’t ask his brother to leave everything he’d ever wished for to chase after Meryn in the Shadowlands.
He was going to have to get Meryn on his own.
The room spun. Dai tried to focus. Blood on his hand, blood on the floor. He had to stop the bleeding. He dripped his way to the kitchen and wrapped a hand towel around his upper arm. Red soaked through the white. It would be too awkward to stitch himself as it was too high on his right bicep. He pulled the tea towel away and twisted for another look. If he was left-handed, he would’ve given it a go.
He leaned against the pantry door. He couldn’t go to the hospital. They’d want to know how and why—so did he. How had Meryn pulled him into the Shadowlands and why had Meryn shot him? Dai blinked and examined the threads linking him to Meryn. The gray fiber was there. Thin and sticky, but without enough substance to follow to the Shadowlands. But maybe that bond was enough for Meryn to reach him in his sleep and give the dream enough life for it to have repercussions. He gritted his teeth against the long forgotten burn of injury.
The other option was worse, that when he slept he did return to the Shadowlands where his nightmares could kill him. He shook his head. He’d always survived his dreams, and he’d never once felt the spiraling sense of dislocation that came with crossing realms.
Dai peeled away the tea towel. With the sight he could see the ragged fibers of the wound that let the flood of life out. His body cut as if it were multilayered cloth, now weakened from the severed threads. He had to do something or he was going to lose too much blood. He studied the deep slash in his arm. He couldn’t stitch it with a needle, but maybe he could sew it up with magic. It would be like darning clothes. If he could just pull the edges together and keep them together, the wound should hold. He concentrated on a handful of threads, pulling them toward their counterparts. Then he knotted them, tying each thread off. Not as good as new, but close enough that the bleeding stopped. He tossed the towel in the sink and stripped off his shirt to inspect his handiwork. His first magically healed wound.
Who needed books when he could experiment on himself?
The wound was closed. But it didn’t look like any healing injury he’d ever seen. Bridges of skin joined the sides; between them the wound was raw. He’d closed the wound as if he’d been sewing, probably not the best way to approach magical surgery, yet he couldn’t help but grin. He’d healed himself.
And while he was a long way off from the delicate work that would be required to help Brigit, it was a start. He could learn. He glanced around his living room half expecting someone from Birch to appear and re-open the wound. No one came. But his celebration was short-lived. He still had to go back to the Shadowlands and retrieve Meryn before the goblins ate him. His soul gave a shudder of fear. He had no idea how to get to the Shadowlands, and once there he had no idea how to get back. He could get stuck.
And he’d just discovered someone worth living for. Amanda.
Chapter 18
Sleep didn’t return when Dai tried forcing it. Meditating on the Shadowlands had provided plenty of wide open nothing, but no connection back to the Shadowlands. No object he owned was connected to the Shadowlands with a thread strong enough for him to follow. All the things he owned, even those he’d brought from the Shadowlands, had been made in the Fixed Realm. He raked his fingers through his hair and paced his living room floor. Who’d have thought he’d ever need to go back?
He was running out of ways to get to the Shadowlands, really get to the Shadowlands—not the reflection he experienced in his nightmares. Crossing realms wasn’t as easy as crossing the globe. He couldn’t just will himself there. He needed something that was made of the Shadowlands.
The nightmare provided the answer. He needed one of his goblin bone knives. His palm chilled as if the skin still felt their cold touch and death magic. Did they even exist anymore? How would he even find one?
His steps faltered as he remembered the confusion and terror of those first years, before they settled into the monotony of hunger and fighting. Gods, just existing, had taken everything they had.
Even if he got back to the Shadowlands, how would he get Meryn out? Would he even be able to get out again himself? As a goblin, he could pass through realms easily. As a human, everything was different. And everything that he’d been denied would again be lost if he became stuck in the Shadowlands. He wanted more time with Amanda; he wasn’t ready to leave. And yet he had to. Time moved differently in the Shadowlands. One more day could
be the difference between life and death for Meryn.
Meryn deserved another chance. The man had lost everything to the curse; his wife, his children, and his humanity. While Dai couldn’t bring back his wife and kids, he could give him a chance to rebuild.
What if Dai couldn’t bring them both back to the Fixed Realm where they belonged? He pushed away the thought, refusing to give power to anything that would steal his hope.
He pulled on a shirt, grabbed his phone and keys, and headed out of his apartment. As he walked down the street, he let his vision slide so the world became a mass of threads weaving around each other. Occasionally a sticky gray thread would appear. He followed one by sight; it ended with a woman who caught him staring and scowled, her weave becoming tight like she was trying to hide from him. He looked away. A false lead, she had no connection to the Shadowlands, but her fears tied her thoughts there. That wasn’t what he was looking for. He wanted something hard. A tangible object. Magic worked best with an item, something on which energies could focus and bind. In his quest to break the curse, that item had been his body, a vessel of the curse.
Around him, the city moved like a river, constantly in motion, never stopping for breath. His head started to ache as he searched a thousand threads with each heartbeat. If he couldn’t find something there, he’d go to a bigger city. He would keep looking. In the back of his mind he heard the ticking of a clock. Meryn didn’t have forever to wait for Dai to find a way back.
He blinked and cleared his vision. He was doing it the wrong way. If one of the six bone-handled knives still existed, he should be able to find it no matter where it was in the world. Jumping into someone’s private collection or a buried tomb was a whole lot less appealing now that he had a life worth risking. Stepping into a trapped stronghold hadn’t really bothered him as a goblin—okay, the flooded tomb had given him more than a moment of panic before he’d gotten out. But he’d gone back better prepared.
He had to be smart. He couldn’t go jumping through reality and into a brick wall. He leaned against a building and closed his eyes. An image of the knife built quickly in his mind, along with the ever-present chill. They’d come to him easily in his dream, so he expected no trouble if they still existed in the Fixed Realm. Sure enough a fragile thread extended from him to somewhere. Then another, and another.
Three blades.
Two were far away, over the sea, and the gods knew where. At least he had a second and third option. He let them go and focused on the close one, looking for any clue about where it was. He got none, only a resonance of age that made no sense. The knife was old, and he had no idea how old the goblin had been.
He opened his eyes and took a step, careful not to close the full distance between him and the knife. He stood in front of a large building. Well, it was more like two old buildings joined together by a large glass structure. A museum. He turned around and faced the museum again. He knew where he was. To his left was the library, glittering as the knowledge inside created a world of its own. The museum by contrast was swathed in the threads of history.
A strong gray rope spun around the brickwork, but it wasn’t part of the building and there was no tail end to follow. It grew around the building the way a vine might. He frowned and walked closer to examine the thread. Thick and gray and cold. It was definitely a part of the Shadowlands’ death magic that had been allowed to take hold. And it was growing from something inside the building. His knife.
His lips curved. He glanced over his shoulder but no one was looking at him. If anyone knew what he was planning, they would’ve thought him mad.
He let out a breath. He was mad. There were so many what-ifs. What if he couldn’t find Meryn? What if he was too late? What of he got pinned down by a troop of goblins? If Roan came with him, at least he’d have someone he trusted at his back. And if it all went bad, everything would be lost.
In his pocket his cell phone rang. He cleared his vision of the tangled threads and the tension in his forehead eased. He glanced at the screen, and his heart lurched.
Amanda.
He shouldn’t have been surprised. She was the only person who rang him. What was he going to tell her? She’d already lost a husband. He didn’t want her waiting for him if he got stuck. No matter how hard he tried to quash the fear, it kept sticking out its ugly head. He wasn’t even in the Shadowlands yet and the desperation and despair were already giving life to fears he shouldn’t acknowledge.
He smiled as he answered, even though the magic from last night was buried in the gray dust of the Shadowlands. “Hello.”
“Hi, how’d you sleep?”
Great until he was shot. Still, he’d been lucky. It was unlike Meryn to miss a target. “Not too bad.”
“Good.” The warmth in her voice traveled down the line.
But it didn’t warm him. Instead he felt the razor edge of loss against his skin, cutting deep. He wanted to see her again, just in case he couldn’t make it back. He needed to see her and let her go. He rubbed his hand over his eyes as if he could wipe away the headache. Two thousand years to have a chance at what most men took for granted. But she would be there when he got back. It was a temporary break. He’d tell her he was going away for work. Then he’d leave a letter for Roan in the apartment. That way they’d know what had happened. He didn’t let the thought grow.
If he planned to come back, it was more likely to happen.
He glanced up at the sign on the building. “Did you want to do something today?”
“Sure.” Her voice raised and he could taste her excitement. “What did you have in mind?”
“What about a trip to the museum?”
“Okay…but Brigit will be with me.”
“I kinda expected that.” He’d take any time he could steal with Amanda.
When Amanda arrived, Dai greeted her with a smile and a kiss on her cheek as if he was aware he was being supervised by Brigit. She would’ve turned her head and offered her lips, but she didn’t want her daughter asking more questions that she wasn’t sure how to answer.
She was falling for Dai. Not in the sudden flash of knowing that it was with Matt—one look was all it took. But she was younger then and less wary. Now her heart was more guarded, and while she recognized the spark of attraction, there had to be more.
She slipped her hand into his, needing to touch him, as they went into the museum. Her skin craved the contact the way a plant stretches toward the sun. The night before seemed so long ago, she’d been so tempted to stay, to respond to the heat burning in his eyes. Would she have regretted it? Probably not. Would he?
She didn’t know.
Watching him speak yet not understanding a word except a few names—Mave, Roan, Claudius, and at the end Eliza—had still revealed a lot. She heard the emotion in his voice and saw the tension in his face and hands. Felt the scars on his skin beneath her fingertips. He must’ve had a hell of a time growing up. But the damage didn’t seem as great as she expected. And for all his concern about knowing how to be gentle, his touch was soft and sure.
Desire tightened her stomach for a moment. His fingers tightened around hers as if he was also remembering. He gave her a look, and his eyes shimmered as if he was using magic.
“I enjoyed last night,” she whispered.
“So did I.” The shadows in his eyes were gone, replaced by a new danger, something she didn’t recognize. And there was a silent but. They were walking side by side, yet they might as well be in different states. Something changed.
Amanda couldn’t help but watch him as he talked and laughed at Brigit’s badly constructed jokes. The weight was gone, he seemed happier, but he wasn’t really with them. Was he having doubts about telling her everything and nothing? But that didn’t fit. He asked her to come out; he was the one to lean in and offer her a kiss.
Brigit darted from display to display until she came face to face with the skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. She gazed up, her mouth open, as if she was able to see t
he fearsome creature in flesh and blood.
“Dai, you’re old, do you remember dinosaurs?” She walked around, not taking her eyes off the bones, like watching it could keep it still.
“Brigit!” Dai was only a few years older than she was. Did her daughter think she was old enough to remember dinosaurs too?
“I’m not quite that old,” he said with mock seriousness. “But I did meet a dragon once.”
“A real dragon?”
Dai nodded. “Of course, she wasn’t as big as the dinosaur…”
Amanda stared at him. Was he playing, or had he really met a dragon? He could do magic, he’d made her believe in magic. How did she know if he was telling the truth or making up stories?
“And where was this dragon?” Amanda raised an eyebrow.
“Africa,” he said as if dragons prowled the savanna. His eyes glimmered for a second as he scanned the room. To anyone else they would think it a trick of the light, but she knew better. And she knew him. Dai was looking for something. A chill slid down Amanda’s spine. What would he be looking for in a museum…and more to the point why? Was it something to do with healing? Her breath caught in her throat. Had he found a cure?
“Mom, can we go to Africa so I can see the dragon?”
Dai looked at Brigit. “The dragon died.”
“But there’s more?” Brigit tore her eyes off the bones and stared at Dai.
“No. She was the last.” His smile was gone as if he were talking about losing an old friend.
“Well, there are no dragons here, but there are plenty of other animals to look at.” Amanda steered Brigit onto the next display.
“What were you looking for?” she said as they walked on.
He opened his mouth, paused, and then spoke. “How did you know?”
“Your eyes, there’s a reflection or something. Besides, you scanned the room like you were looking for something, not at something. Is it for…” Amanda nodded her head in Brigit’s direction.
