by Jon Sprunk
Locked in the waking dream, Caim shook as the soldiers dragged his mother over to the body. Her lips moved, but there was no sound. Then her gaze lifted to the figure-not the man who had taken her husband’s life, but the woman behind him. The cowl was lifted, revealing features as beautiful and unbreakable as a midnight sapphire. The two women could have been twins save for the glances they cast at each other, his mother’s face etched with loathing, the witch’s eyes glowing with triumph.
Sisters.
A cool spatter landed on Caim’s forehead and left a wet trail down his face. Soft thuds struck the snow around him. The rain felt good on his skin, but it couldn’t wash away the blood that stained his blades, his hands. His soul. This was where it had begun. The sword throbbed in his hand. He looked down at the perfect edges of its blade, the sheen of the black metal. This sword had killed his father. He could feel its power flowing through his arteries, surging in his muscles, wanting him to lash out, to kill again and again to sate its abominable hunger. The blade vibrated harder until he slid it back into the scabbard.
Caim’s hand shook when he lowered it to his side. As much as he hated the sword, he was bound to it. He gazed across the clearing, to the mound that had been the house where he was born. This place was just a graveyard. It held no answers for him. But he knew where to start looking.
The duke’s witch.
Soft light danced on the snow. As he turned, Kit lunged into his arms. He staggered back a step as he caught her. For a moment she felt almost solid. Shocked, and pleased in a way he’d never entertained before, he lifted his arms to embrace her. But she melted into weightlessness, as ethereal as ever.
She looked up, heedless of the gore splattered across his leathers. He trembled as feelings welled up inside him, pushing through the fury that had controlled him just moments ago. The force of it humbled him. He didn’t care where she’d been, only that she was back. He never wanted her out of his sight again.
Then she fixed him with a stabbing glare. “Do you have any idea what I’ve been through?”
Caim ground his teeth together, caught between being glad to have her back and wanting to choke her. Then he saw a line of scabbed blood across her palm. She’d been hurt, which stunned him. It had never seemed possible before.
“Good to see you, too, Kit. Where in the hells have you been?”
“It’s a long story.” She glanced over at the Beast’s remains lying in the snow.
“I’m going after the witch,” he said. “She knows where my mother is. She was there on the night they took her.”
“Caim-”
“I should have figured it out before, when I saw her at the prison. I knew she couldn’t be my mother.”
Kit hovered closer. “Caim, there’s something I need to tell you.”
“People have died, Kit. Liana…” He released a deep breath. “She wouldn’t run because I taught her to stand firm. I taught them all. I should have known.”
He looked away, not wanting to see the accusation in her gaze. I can’t help it, Kit. Something is happening to me. It’s the sword and this place. It’s…
“Caim, I’ve seen your mother.”
He turned. “What?”
She was trembling, tears welling up in her eyes. “She’s alive, Caim! I even spoke to her.”
Despite what he wanted to feel, despite what it cost him to admit it, he believed her. He couldn’t say how, but he did, and that scared him more than a little. “Where?”
She pushed a stray lock of silver hair behind her ear. “That’s going to be difficult to explain.”
“Try.”
“All right. When I was taken away-”
“You mean when you left me?”
She frowned, and a bit of the old Kit returned in her eyes. “When you were fooling around with those farmers at the bonfire, I got this weird feeling. Then just like that”-she snapped her fingers-“I was dragged back into the Barrier.”
He remembered her mentioning a barrier before, when the shadow-snake attacked him in his apartment in Othir. He’d asked how the creature got there, and she had said something about it needing to cross between worlds. But he must have looked confused now, because Kit tugged on her chin.
“Okay, here.” She put her hands together, palm to palm. “There are two realms, pressed together like the two sides of a coin. On one side are the Brightlands where we stand now, and on the Other Side is-”
“The Shadowlands.”
“Right. But there is a middle place, too. Sometimes we call it the Barrier, but it’s more like a maze of corridors. Or a huge field with different trails. Or, well, it’s impossible to describe unless you’ve been there. But the point is that the passages through the Barrier start in one realm and end in the other, or sometimes they join two different places in the same realm.”
“I think I’m following you.” Just pray she gets to a point soon.
“Okay. So I was in this place and couldn’t get out. The path that led me into the Barrier wouldn’t let me go. And I started to feel this pulling in my head, so I-”
He knew that feeling. The tugging and buzzing that had plagued him since his arrival in this cold land. Was there a connection? Lost in his own thoughts, he missed the next thing Kit said.
“Wait. What was that?”
She frowned at him. “Your doggie-shadow was there with me in the Barrier. I was a little leery at first. I mean, he’s not the most adorable-looking thing in the worlds, you have to admit. But we made a good team.”
Doggie? A team? Caim’s head started to ache. He considered sitting down in the snow, but forced himself to focus. “But what does this have to do with my mother?”
“She’s the one who pulled me into the Barrier, so she could lead me back to her.” Kit leaned closer and peered into his eyes. “She’s been a prisoner all these years, Caim. I’m not sure exactly where. There was too much energy around the place, and then I was booted halfway across the world.” She flicked her finger in the air. “But she thought you would know.”
He did. The only place that made sense. He looked to the north. She was there. Alive. Waiting for him. He was tempted to start walking, but then he remembered Liana.
Kit was still talking. “And she told me other things, too. Some of them I don’t understand, but the stuff I did scared me to death.”
Caim swallowed, not sure what to think or feel. He had a hard time finding his voice. “Stuff about what?”
“About your dear auntie.”
Sybelle. The witch. “What about her?”
Kit looked around as if searching for something. “How can I explain this? Okay. Sorcery is a product of the Other Side, right?”
He seemed to remember her saying something along those lines. When he said so, she bobbed her head.
“Sorcery is pure chaos. Everything in the Shadowlands is corrupted with it. And it’s been leaking over into this world for some time. I don’t know why, but it’s getting worse. The Barrier is weakening.”
Caim rubbed his fingers together, remembering the silky feel of the shadows on his skin, the rush he felt when they obeyed his commands. It made some sense, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something Kit wasn’t telling him.
“What about the witch?”
“She’s a product of her world, Caim. The people of the Shadow live and breathe sorcery. It’s as natural to them as air and sunlight to you. Well, maybe not to you…”
“And my mother?”
Kit traced the tear in the sleeve of his jerkin. “Isabeth was the most powerful sorceress I’d ever encountered. And the kindest. The people of the Shadow are a cruel race, but some are different. Like your mother.”
Isabeth. Invisible hands compressed around Caim’s windpipe at the sound of it. Yes, that was her name.
Kit hovered closer and lowered her voice. “But her sister is another tale entirely. She’s dangerous, Caim. Dangerous like you’ve never seen before. She trained Levictus. He was like a pup
py next to her.”
Caim looked past Kit to the courtyard. The snow glowed in the faint starlight. It looked peaceful, like he could lie down here and forget about the world.
“It’s almost funny in a way,” he said. “I understand him now.”
“Who?”
“Levictus. He and I aren’t so different.”
“Don’t say such things! You’re nothing like that animal.”
“We’re both caught in the same web, Kit. Pulled by strings we can’t even see. Killing is the only thing we’re good at. If something gets in our way, we cut it down. No remorse. No regrets. Just death.”
Kit placed her hands on both sides of his face. “Listen to me. You are different. You’re a good man, Caim.”
Was he? He wasn’t so sure.
“There’s a dark shadow over this land, Kit. Maybe it started here with my father and mother, but it’s gone far beyond this place, and I don’t know what to do.”
“Yes, you do. You’ll fight. Not because you want to, but because you have to.”
What she said was true, but knowing the truth didn’t make it any easier to accept. The rage might have left him, but in its place gathered a more primal emotion: vengeance. Blood to answer for blood. There was no other way.
The sword quivered in its scabbard.
Kit looked up to the blade’s hilt jutting over his shoulder. “What about that?”
“What about it?”
“I don’t like it, Caim.”
Yeah? Welcome to the party, darling.
Turning away from the ruins, Caim breathed in the scents of pine and heather. He held that breath as he tore open a hole in the darkness. In its opaque surface he saw his face, drawn and haggard-the face of a dead man. He and Ral, he and the sorcerer, he and the Beast. Dealers of death, one and all. The only difference is that I’m still alive. Don’t follow me, Kit. You won’t like what you see.
Releasing the breath, Caim stepped into the void.
Stone cracked and shattered. Steel was torn asunder, and the air shimmered as eldritch forces shook the foundation of the temple.
Blood leaked from Sybelle’s fingernails as she lay on the floor, digging furrows in the cold marble tiles. Her hair was disheveled, her gown slashed and ripped.
Soloroth, her son, was dead.
In the scrying pool she had watched the battle between her child and the scion, seen victory snatched from Soloroth’s grasp. Frightened for the first time in many long years, she was able only to gaze on in shock as Soloroth fell at the scion’s feet. Then the waters turned dark before her eyes, cutting off her last sight of her son and severing their contact forever.
In the aftermath of her fury, her sanctum lay in shambles. The ancient sarcophagus of Het Xenai, which had withstood the ravages of three thousand years, was reduced to a pile of dust. Her phials and fetishes lay in shards upon the floor along with the orichalcum box, its priceless contents dissolved into the stone. Only the scrying pool remained intact, its black waters as still as death.
A cold wind stirred the debris as a disembodied voice whispered in her ear. One comes…
Sybelle rose to her bare feet as the curtain leading to the nave lifted. Whichever of her priests was fool enough to disturb her in this, the moment of her greatest anguish, had better have good reason. But the temple was empty. The candles wavered, casting tall shadows against the walls. Sybelle stayed the lethal spell on her lips as the duke staggered across the doorstep. He leaned against the bronze doors, eyes glazed over, his clothes stained with wine and worse. Drunk again, or still. In the past sennight she hadn’t seen him any other way. The man had lost his vitality. He was an empty, sodden husk, little better than a corpse. Like my Soloroth.
“You killed her,” he said through numb lips.
The words took her by surprise. She had killed many over the years, thousands upon thousands, but she knew who he meant. His first wife. She’d killed the woman not long after Arion was born, and had taken her place at Erric’s side.
“She was everything I wanted,” he continued, bracing himself against a wall, staring at her. “She was my love. And now you’ve sent my son away to die.”
Sybelle seethed as she looked upon this man she had loved. The sight of him filled her with disgust. She had given him this city, slain his rivals, and still he couldn’t tame this one petty realm, so she’d been forced to send her son, her only child, to do it for him. Now Soloroth was dead for it, and the fault lay at this man’s vomit-caked feet.
He pointed at her. “You’ve ruined my life! Now I’m all alone, all because of-”
“Shut up.”
The duke straightened up, a frown folding the loose skin around his mouth. “That is no way to address me. I am King of Eregoth, Sybelle. No matter what you and your grotesque ogre of a son-”
The air between them blurred as she lifted her hands. A rush of vigor surged into Sybelle as she drew the essence from his fragile shell. It was wan and addled, but still delicious beyond measure. She could have stayed in this moment forever, content, sated. Then he fell to the floor. As abruptly as it had started, the sorcery drained out of her, leaving her weak and shaking.
Sybelle stumbled across the chamber and collapsed at his side. His eyes stared at her without a hint of accusation.
“My love. My darling Erric.”
She rocked back and forth beside his lifeless body. Alone in her grief, she didn’t notice the loud voices outside until the guardian announced the intrusion. Brushing Erric’s lips with a kiss, Sybelle stood up as a band of huge men in bestial hides and furs entered the temple. Her son’s Northmen. At a barking command from their headman, Garmok, they led a coffle of bedraggled people into the nave, men and women and even two older children. Battered and stoop-shouldered, they were forced to kneel at her feet.
“Prizes for you, Queen of the Night,” Garmok spoke. “Where is our hetman, your son?”
Sybelle eyed the prisoners, a renewed hunger growing inside her. “He is dead.”
The Northmen shook their weapons and began to howl. Garmok struck a prisoner with such force that the man sprawled to the floor in a widening puddle of blood. The other captives mewed with terror.
Sybelle smiled, liquid heat spreading through her body as she went down to greet her new playthings.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
They shambled up the slopes of the foothill under a bruised sky. Bloodied, dragging their wounded behind them on shoddy litters, no one would have guessed they were the victors.
Caim marched at the head of the company. He couldn’t face the men, carrying their dead like an honor guard. When he’d returned to the outpost and seen the results of the disaster he’d led them to, he could hardly face himself. No matter what Kit said, he couldn’t blame anyone else. He’d forgotten the first rule of warfare-know your enemy-and others had paid the price. He was a killer, not a general. He had no business leading people into battle. Despite that, they followed him, not complaining when he announced they were returning to the castle. Some, he knew, would leave as soon as they were fit, off to join Ramon’s outfit or just go somewhere safe. He didn’t have the heart to tell them they wouldn’t be safe anywhere in this world. What had started here would spread.
Thunder rumbled, sounding like it came from the other side of the hills. It would be daylight soon, but the northern sky was a mass of black clouds.
Keegan’s shoulders were hunched as he came up beside Caim. From what he’d heard, the boy had accounted himself well, even leading the outlaws in a counterattack that drove off the duke’s soldiers. Caim hadn’t known much comfort in his life; fool that he was, he’d left the only woman who had ever tried to offer it. He didn’t know what to say. That it got easier? The sentiment sounded hollow even to him, but what else was there to say? The truth? No, better that the boy believed this hurt would pass. She died a warrior, but that doesn’t take away the sting, does it?
“What’s the next step?” Keegan asked.
“Ne
xt step in what?”
Keegan jerked his chin back over his shoulder at the men marching behind them. “The plan. Where are we going next?”
Caim gazed ahead through the tree tops. “Back to the castle.”
“And then?”
“And then I go on alone. You’ve done your part.”
Keegan dragged Caim to a halt by his arm. “Hold on. Caedman chose you-”
“I never agreed to anything.”
“No, but you didn’t turn it down either. You owe us.”
Against his better judgment, Caim glanced behind them. The company had slowed to a standstill, the rear elements coming up behind them. His eyes couldn’t help finding the four men who dragged Liana’s travois.
“I don’t owe you,” he told them. “I don’t owe any of you. This isn’t my-”
“My sister believed in you.” Keegan’s voice was no louder than a whisper, but it hit Caim like a club between the eyes, doing more damage than he wanted to admit. “So did Oak, and all the rest who died. You owe it to them to see this through. To the end.”
Caim turned away. He wanted to be alone, responsible for no one.
My sister believed in you.
The words dared him to refute them. He couldn’t. He was prepared to leave them all, except her. He wanted to growl, to lash out, but a shout cut through the chill air.
“Scouts returning!”
Two figures in brown cloaks approached through the maze of evergreens with long, loping strides. The elder of the two, Taun, was a man on the downward slope of his middle years but looking quite hale nonetheless. He leaned on the staff of his unstrung longbow as he caught his breath.
“No sign of our sentries up ahead, sir,” the younger said.
“Maybe they were hiding,” Keegan said.
Taun gave a wolfish grin. “Doubt it. Me and my boy know all the best spots.”
Caim started walking past the men. There were some movements behind him, and then the scouts caught up with him. Taun strode beside him, his son a step behind.
