by Jon Sprunk
“Shut him up!” the sergeant shouted. “Or tickle his ribs with something sharp.”
One of the soldiers drew a dagger from his belt.
Caim sat back in his chair, feeling the ache of his wounds. This was going bad, fast. He thought the soldiers would just give the youth a hard time, but the mention of desertion had changed his mind. He didn’t know Eregothic law, but a man could get hanged for that in Nimea. And most of the executions were summary judgments on the spot. But this wasn’t his problem. He could remain here in the shadows, with luck pass undetected, and be on his way. But what would Josey say? Would she tell him he’d done the right thing? In his imagination he saw the disappointment in her eyes.
All right, Kit. Where are you?
The officer reached over and pulled aside the collar of the young man’s shirt. A filigree of knotted blue lines was tattooed on the boy’s shoulder in the shape of three circles bound through the center by a fourth. Caim didn’t know what that signified, but the sergeant pounced on the boy all of a sudden, yanking his arms behind his back, while the other soldiers drew their swords. One farmer turned around, and was slugged in the face with a steel pommel. He dropped to the floor, blood streaming from a mouthful of broken teeth. The old man cursed at their oppressors. Caim reached behind his back. He had seen enough.
As the troopers herded the boy toward the door, Caim stood up. His leg burned like red-hot hooks were shredding the flesh. He drew his left-hand suete knife. Every head turned as he slammed its point into the wooden tabletop.
“Let him go.”
A soldier with a drawn infantry sword started toward him. Caim turned the ruined side of his face toward the firelight. The soldier drew up quick. Not quite what you expected to see in this backwoods inn, eh?
The sergeant hollered, “Yanig! Stop ogling the bastard and put him up against the wall.”
The soldier took another step. That was all Caim needed. He jerked the suete free from its wooden prison. The soldier gasped and dropped his sword as the knife’s edge sliced across the back of his hand. As he pulled back, Caim lashed out again. Once, twice, thrice, and the soldier fell back, disarmed and bleeding from holes through his light armor. Messy wounds, but nothing vital. He’d live if they got him to a chirurgeon.
The other pair of soldiers guarding the patrons charged over. Caim drew his right-hand knife and yanked the other from the table. These soldiers showed more sense, coming in side by side. One held a cavalry sword with a long blade; the other had just a mean-looking dirk, but he carried it like he knew what he was doing. Caim caught the sword with a stop-thrust and bit back a curse as his leg buckled. He remained upright and fended off a slash from the knife-man, and responded with quick cuts that sent both soldiers reeling back. Caim let the men limp away. His forearm stung, and the strain of maintaining a fighting stance made his lower back tighten into knots. He was afraid he would fall over if he tried to move. What were his options? Surrender?
Tiny voices whispered in his ears. When the remaining soldiers advanced, he didn’t have to call for the shadows. They came on their own, and the light from the fireplace suddenly cut out as if a wet blanket had been thrown over the flames. One soldier stopped in midstep. His mouth contorted in terror as a shadow dropped on his head and oozed down his face. The others shouted and swiped at the air as an avalanche of shadows fell from the ceiling. Behind them, the officer drew his sword.
Caim took a step. His leg burned like hellfire, but it held. Every step was agony as he crossed the room. The shadows followed him, crawling along the floor, across the walls, over the struggling soldiers. He could feel them watching him, waiting… for what? The patrons had fled. The back room was quiet.
Caim stopped in front of the officer. Up close, he looked even younger, but he stood his ground even as his men groaned and bled on the floor. Brave little shit.
“Get out,” Caim said. “And take the others with you.”
The young officer looked at the suete knives. “We’ll be back. With more men.”
“Then bring shovels and a priest.”
Caim dismissed the shadows, sending them back to the corners of the room as the officer gathered up his men and herded them toward the door. They watched him with haunted eyes as they passed out the door. At least they were alive. Their voices murmured in the yard, followed by the muted thunder of retreating hoofbeats. Caim noticed the cloaked youth’s sword was gone, too, vanished from the floor where the soldiers had dropped it. You’re welcome, whoever you were.
Caim dragged himself back to his table, where he found a cloth to clean his knives before putting them away. For a moment, he felt the desire to inflict a real massacre in this place. His gaze went to his father’s sword against the wall. Flexing his right hand, he sat down. The stew had congealed into a gooey mass, but he ate it anyway. While he tore off hunks of the bread platter and shoveled them into his mouth, the innkeeper pushed through the curtain with his wife at his back. Caim got the impression they weren’t particularly glad to see him still here. The innkeeper looked around as if he half expected the soldiers to come charging back any moment.
“Erm,” he said. The woman prodded him. “You’ll have to be moving on now. We don’t want trouble.”
Funny. That’s what I said. And where did it get me?
Caim paused with a shovel of cold mush halfway to his mouth. “You’ve already had the trouble. It’s gone.”
“They’ll be back,” the woman said from behind the innkeeper’s elbow.
He pushed his cup toward them. “Another beer.”
At a nod from her husband, she took it and went back to the kitchen.
“Please,” the innkeeper said. “Leave us in peace.”
Caim chewed his food. He wanted to be angry, but he understood their position. Those soldiers would be back, probably at the head of a small army. These people would be lucky if this shack was still standing a few days from now.
He pushed back from the table and stood up. His leg complained with a sharp twinge, but it obeyed. He dropped a handful of small coins beside his plate.
“Before I go,” Caim said, “I need directions to Morrowglen.”
“Never heard of such a place.”
Caim held the innkeeper’s gaze for a moment, and looked past him as the curtain to the back room parted and a man walked into the room. The shadows noticed, too. Caim’s skin prickled with the silent mews of a thousand tiny shadows, but the newcomer didn’t resemble a soldier. Rawhide buskins peeked from under the great bearskin that cloaked his sturdy frame. Pushing back his hood to reveal a mass of silver-gray braids framing a weathered face half hidden behind a long beard, the man glanced around the shambles of the room. Then he sized up Caim with eyes as pale as a frozen lake.
“I know the way.”
The innkeeper looked about to say something, but then lifted both hands as if to shoo them out the door. Caim nodded and picked up his gear. The older man was already heading out the front.
Outside it was snowing again. As the door banged shut behind them, Caim watched his guide head down the road, northward. Caim reached up to scratch an itch on his face, but stopped his hand before it reached his bloodied cheek. It’s not too late to go back to Othir.
Caim started off through the snow.
CHAPTER FOUR
S ybelle stood over the rack of broken vials littering the floor. The tinkle of breaking glass did nothing to soothe her nerves. For three days she’d been attempting to contact her agent in the south, but the oily scrying pool remained blank. It could only mean one thing.
Her sanctum sanctorum was a wide chamber in the heart of her temple. It pleased her to think of it as her temple. Although she had not laid the stones for the vast basilica, she was responsible for its reconsecration. The shadowed recesses of the vaulted ceiling comforted her.
Calmer, she crossed the stone floor to a shelf on the wall. She took what she required, then went to a tall object standing in a corner, covered in a pale sheet.
She swept away the cover from the lidless sarcophagus carved from a single piece of volcanic stone. Nestled within were the mummified remains of a three-thousand-year-old warrior who had lived in an empire that had once spanned the known boundaries of this world.
Sybelle sat cross-legged upon the floor before the withered cadaver. First, she opened a vein in her wrist and spilled a portion of blood into a pan. After sealing the cut with a Word, she cracked open three stone jars and sifted their gritty contents through her fingers, one by one.
“ Adulai nocet e’sulphruka,” she whispered. “By heart and lungs and soul, appear before mine eyes. Het Xenai, I conjure thee!”
Shadows flickered as a combination of odors met her nose, of dust and sand and endless night. The blood in the pan disappeared as if sucked into an invisible mouth, and a draining sensation came over Sybelle. A sigh, as coarse and dry as mummified bones, filled the chamber.
“Speak, Witch.”
“Great warrior, I seek to reach into the land of the dead and contact a departed soul.”
“Ask.”
“Bring me the shade of my servant Levictus.”
Though there were no windows in the sacred chamber, a wisp of a breeze tickled the back of her neck. A pallid light glimmered in the air. It flickered several times before coalescing into a shape roughly the size and manner of a man. Sybelle recognized the scarred face.
“Levictus.”
After a pair of slow heartbeats, he answered in a hollow tone. “Sybelle.”
“Tell me how you came to die. When was the hour? Where the place?”
“Dead?”
“Yes.” She resisted the urge to curse him. It would do no good in the land of shades. “Tell me how you died.”
“I was killed… not long ago.”
She frowned. Before his disappearance, Levictus had contacted her to ask for additional strength, which she had provided at great cost to herself. Levictus had been her most important tool in the southern lands. Not the most reliable-the sorcerer was as unstable as any Brightlander-but his role was crucial to her plans. For him to be killed at the apex of his power was no small matter.
“Who was it?”
“The night was so dark. No moon. So beautiful… We fight.”
She dug her fingernails into her palms, marshalling her self-control.
“Who? Who did you fight, Levictus?”
The shade paused for a few heartbeats. Then his rasping voice warbled across the void.
“The scion.”
Her bosom heaved as the words echoed across the ethers between life and death. Upon granting his boon, she had required one task of her servant. That he kill one man. A very dangerous man.
“Did you slay him as well?” she asked.
Mumbled words whispered from the portal.
“Levictus! Did you slay the scion?”
“He was defeated.”
Sybelle released the breath she had been holding. Thanks be to the Mother Dark -
“But something… interfered. I die. Shinae…”
Sybelle hissed between parted lips. Shinae was a dark metal native to the Shadowlands. She had gifted the sorcerer with a pair of shinae knives during his visit to Eregoth, years ago, but what was he talking about? She needed more answers. Yet he was fading before her eyes. She reached out to take hold of the spirit directly and wring the truth from its spectral voice, but it slipped through her psychic grasp. She lunged after him, but the withered shade of Het Xenai reappeared, gazing at her with vacant holes.
“Bring him back!” she demanded. “I was not finished.”
The ancient warrior’s sigh was a gust of wind over a cold desert plain. “The shade has passed beyond my sight.”
Invectives flew from her lips. The warrior’s spirit wavered and departed, back to its eternal sleep. She brushed the charnel dust from her hands and arose.
This was unforeseen. For almost two decades she had been assembling her power. Levictus was supposed to blaze the trail. Now her plans were unraveled, and her Master was unforgiving. She threw the sheet back over the sarcophagus, its paleness reminding her of the snowfields on the day she emerged from the gateway to step onto these cursed lands. Her father-her liege-had stood before her under the alien blue sky that burned her eyes, and lifted up his hand.
“From this land,” he said, “we shall forge a new empire.”
Despair had welled up inside Sybelle as she gazed out upon the blankness of the bare ice and stone and the foul light rising in the east. They were exiles, outcasts in a world that was but a hollow reflection of the one they had left behind.
She reached out to catch her father’s arm. “We should go back. We could make peace-”
He struck her, and she fell upon the icy ground. She lay there, feeling the sting of his hand, which she knew and hated.
“No,” he said. “We must make our destiny in this world now, or be crushed by it.”
His fist closed, and there was a terrible crash. Sybelle looked back to see the path behind them swallowed into an icy crevasse. The gateway was gone. They were marooned here.
Sybelle pulled her gaze away from the covered sarcophagus. That had been a long time ago, but the pain was still fresh. She had left behind a life of luxury and privilege, and in return been given only hardship and an endless litany of demands. Nothing in this world had been able to assuage the betrayal, not even the birth of her son, Soloroth, who had never seen the onyx skies of Shadow, nor walked upon the pallid shores of its midnight seas.
Steadying herself against a stone pillar, Sybelle went to an alcove in the wall. She took down an elaborate orichalcum box and opened the lid. A bed of fine golden powder lay inside. She took a pinch between her fingers and held it up to her nose. Inhaling the sweet powder, she was instantly rejuvenated. She took another pinch before putting the container back.
Sweeping a curtain aside, she traveled down a narrow passage of dressed stone to a doorway. The beat of pounding drums echoed from beyond the portal. Splinters of ruddy light throbbed in time with the rhythm.
She emerged into a vast hall filled with a throng of sweating, writhing, groaning bodies. The sweet heat of their passion seeped into her flesh and warmed her chilled bones. The smells of blood and sex swept the dusty attar from her lungs. Sybelle closed her eyes and let the energy of the ritual fill her. Since coming to these lands, she had tried to civilize its savage inhabitants. For four years she had worked to eradicate all traces of the True Church. She was shocked to find so many men-and even women, who should have known better-willing to die for their idols. Yet once she and Erric took the city and exterminated the Light-worshipping cult, Sybelle had had a change of heart. Why deny the people an outlet for their baser natures? So she’d devised a new sect to venerate the Dark, with herself as the earthly incarnation of Mother Night. Those who came to worship here gave of their blood and their bodies, infusing the temple with a power that lapped at her soul like an ocean of ambrosia.
Glowing braziers sat along the walls. A company of men and women in various stages of undress cavorted under the lurid light. A haze of blue smoke from a forest of water-pipes clouded the air. Golden bowls filled with ruby wine were placed about the chamber, from which the people dipped their cups and drank or poured the contents over their lovers. Grunts and sighs echoed from the vaulted ceiling while blind musicians played. Near to her entrance, a black basalt throne sat upon a raised platform. Two smaller thrones were placed before the platform. In one of them, the Duke of Liovard slouched, puffing on the end of a water-pipe while a lithe slip of a girl hunched over his lap. Her golden locks rose and fell in time with the music.
Sybelle took her place beside the duke and shooed away the vixen servicing him. The pipe slipped from Erric’s lips. Then he relaxed as she took his manhood in hand. While coaxing him onward, Sybelle observed a knot of glistening bodies on the floor. Amid the tangle of graceful limbs, two rugged men lay upon their backs, drinking from silver cups as they enjoyed the comforts prov
ided by a flock of young beauties.
“How fare our guests from Warmond?” she asked.
The duke made a final groan and slumped in his chair. Sybelle pressed herself against him as she wiped her hands on his pant leg.
He took a deep breath and let it out, deflated. “They seem satisfied. Although they mentioned a need for assurances about the firmness of my control over the clans. Something about rumors that have reached the ears of their liege.”
“Just as I told you.” She traced a tiny scar running down the cleft of his chin. “The death of the thanes was not enough. You must move quickly to consolidate your gains.”
He caught her hand and nipped at her fingertips. “We agreed to wait for Arion’s return. His report will tell us how go the activities along the border.”
Sybelle pulled away. “I grow tired of waiting.”
“Your distaste for my son does not sit well with me, Sybelle.”
She bit her tongue before she said what she really thought of his son. Antagonizing her paramour would only make him less biddable.
“I think only of your future. I helped you secure the greatest city of the north. Will you not trust me to guide you to your rightful place?”
He grunted and reached for a cup beside his chair. Sloshing the wine on his stain-riddled shirt, he took a sip.
“My soldiers are overextended as it stands now, love. It will take months to raise a new levy and train them, and weeks more to relocate them.”
“Then use the mercenaries I have secured for you.”
“I don’t trust them. Their commanders show me no respect.”
“They respect only strength, my lord. Show it to them-send them out to do your bidding-and they will give you the honor you deserve. The honor due to a king.”
He eyed her with a peculiar expression, like a man woken from a disturbing dream. He blinked and the look faded, replaced by his usual jaded gleam.
“Still, I would rather wait for Arion. When I know all is well in the south, I will feel more agreeable to do as you suggest.”
Sybelle stared at the duke, debating how hard to press him, but the sweet ecstasy of the temple chamber made her unable to sustain any true ire toward him. Against her better judgment, she let the matter pass.
