Before Marsh could respond, he’d closed the door in her face. She crouched there a moment longer and then sighed. Resting her head against the door for another heartbeat, Marsh drew a deep breath and pushed to her feet.
“I’ve got to go see Aisha,” she told Roeglin. “See if I can’t get another door slammed in my face.”
The shadow master gave her an odd look and shrugged.
“Sure, if that’s what you want.”
Marsh glared at him and stalked past, leading the way to her room.
“No parent wants that,” she said, “but…”
She arrived before she could finish her sentence and pushed open the door. What she saw made her come to a sudden halt.
Curled along the wall of Aisha’s bed, Mordan raised her head, her lips curling upward in a feline snarl. Snuggled in the curve of the big kat’s belly, Aisha was sound asleep, one arm thrown over Scruffknuckle’s neck, her head cushioned by one of the kits, and the other kit lying around her legs and feet. The mother kat hissed quietly, but it was too late; Aisha stirred, opening her eyes and lifting her head enough to see Marsh.
“Marsh? Look! I sleeped.”
Marsh gave a short laugh and crossed the room to wrap her arms around the child.
“Yes, you did.”
“You sleep now?”
Marsh shook her head, the smile fading from her lips.
“I’m sorry, Aysh, but I have to go.”
“Where?”
“To Ruins Hall.”
Aisha struggled free of the animals curled in her bed and swung her legs over the side.
“I come too.”
“Not with me.”
The girl’s mouth set in a firm line.
“Yes!”
“No.”
“With you!”
Marsh forced herself not to shout back. It required effort, but she managed to keep her voice even as she placed her hands on the child’s shoulders and looked into her large blue eyes.
“With Brigitte. Tomorrow. To fix the glows because I can’t.”
Marsh delivered the order as firmly as she could manage and Aisha stilled. When the little girl replied, it was in a very small voice. “Promise?”
Marsh nodded. “Promise. Tonight, you need to sleep, and I have to go ahead and make sure it’s safe for you to go out, okay?”
Aisha studied Marchant’s face with serious eyes and then nodded. “Kay,” she said, and wriggled back onto the bed, worming her way between the sleeping animals and wrapping one arm around Scruffknuckle’s neck before draping the other one over the kit she was using as a pillow. “Take Dan.”
The animals rearranged themselves around her, all except for Mordan. The big kat stretched and yawned before hopping carefully from the bed to stand in front of Marsh.
“Bye, Marsh,” Aisha mumbled sleepily, turning onto her side. “Love you.”
“Love you, too, kiddo. Sleep well,” Marsh murmured, then hurried from the room, the hoshkat padding at her heels with one of her kits following in her wake.
Roeglin, the three shadow guards, and their guide were waiting in the hall, carefully out of sight of the child in the room. They turned and led the way down the hall as Marsh emerged, not a single one of them commenting on the presence of the kat as she quietly closed the door behind her.
Marsh hurried after them, trying to ignore the way her eyes were blurring. She hoped Roeglin and the others wouldn’t notice as she dashed a hasty hand across her face, but if they did, they said nothing as they returned to the stairs and made their way to the Supply Master’s office.
6
One with the Shadows
Gustav met them in Stores as he had promised, and he had both Henri and Jakob in tow. Neither man looked impressed, but they didn’t complain as the Supply Master sent her apprentices hurrying away to gather the supplies they needed. Roeglin introduced them to the shadow guards.
“Clarinay, Zeb, Gerry, and Izmay—Henri, Gustav, and Jakob.” Roeglin fixed them with a stern look. “You are all mine and will look after each other.”
“We will look out for each other,” they answered, but the way they eyed each other looked more like they were sizing each other up as opponents rather than comrades.
Marchant glanced at Roeglin and raised an eyebrow when he met her eyes. He followed the flicker of her gaze and shrugged.
They’ll be fine, he said, accepting the pack handed to him by one of the Supply Master’s apprentices. Out loud he added, “And we need to be going.”
Marsh didn’t have anything to say to that, and none of the guards had anything to add either. Mordan studied each of them carefully. Marsh wished she had time to link with the kat and gain her perspective, but she knew she didn’t. Roeglin led them swiftly through the halls and out of the gates, breaking into a steady jog as soon as they hit the trail beyond.
Marsh adjusted her eyes so that she was seeing mostly through the faint traces of heat blooming from the fungi and rocks in the cavern. Every now and again, something burned bright across her vision; small bats hunted through the air around her. It made her wonder what else might be abroad.
As soon as she’d thought of it, she let her consciousness slide a little, tapping into the energy that let her sense what other life might be nearby. It was harder to do on the move, but Marsh made herself remember that all living things were connected. According to the Master of Beasts, they all were part of a web of life stretching around the planet, even the most insignificant.
Focusing on that thought, Marsh sought those connections. In her mind, the fungi grew and stretched into a single massive forest, the tallest callas linked to the tiniest blue button in a tangle of gleaming threads—and crawling or flying between them were a multitude of brighter points of light: beetles, centipedes, frogs, spiders, and moths. Marsh let their forces flow over her and then moved her focus to the trail ahead and the expanse of fungi on either side.
Her mind assessed her eight companions, absorbing their presence in a flawless display of light as she moved among them. Outside their tightly packed lanterns of life, Marsh sensed Mordan, the hoshkat pacing them through the dense growth to their right, smaller lifeforms fleeing her tread. Occasionally, she’d catch a glimpse of the kat’s brilliant life force moving between the rest.
As soon as Marsh was sure she had the hang of seeing through her mind, she let herself surface enough to register more than the sound of her feet hitting the ground. Hanging onto the sense of life around them was difficult once she began relying on her eyes, but Marsh managed it. It didn’t take long before they reached the place where the glows by the side of the trail were dark.
Marchant’s first instinct was to stop, but she squelched it down as Roeglin kept up the pace. The cavern around them seemed to grow darker and more ominous and Marsh turned her head, using the direction of her eyes to guide where her life-sense focused. They’d been running for an hour before Roeglin slowed the pace to a walk.
By then the lit glows were well behind them and the cavern silent around them. They’d reached one of the small roadside stops the shadow mages provided for caravans, and Marsh regretted not having any rock wizards along to secure the space. She said nothing as Roeglin called a halt, though.
“We will reach the junction in another three hours,” he told them when he’d caught his breath, “but we’ll be walking the rest of the way. Take a breather. We’ll move on shortly.”
As the guards settled onto rocks around the rest stop, Roeglin came over to Marsh.
“What are you doing?” he asked, and Marsh blinked.
Up until that moment, she’d been sending feelers out into the dark, sweeping the area around them in a search for what lifeforms might be nearby.
“Sorry?”
“Your eyes: they’re green,” he said. “Bright green. What are you doing?”
“I’m trying to sense the life around us.”
“Why?”
“If there are raiders, I’d like to know the
y’re there before they know we’re coming.”
He looked thoughtful for a long minute and then nodded.
“How do you feel?”
His question puzzled Marsh until she thought about it, and she realized what he was really asking. She was a little weaker than she should have been.
“Oh.”
“Hm.”
Marsh blushed, feeling like she’d been caught in a rookie mistake, but then Roeglin spoke.
“I like the idea, but I need you on your feet, too. Save it until we’re an hour off the junction. I think we’ll be safe until then. After that, I want you scanning. Something tells me they’re waiting.”
Marsh wanted to know how he could be so sure, and he explained.
“It makes sense for them to be watching the fortress to make sure we don’t send reinforcements, and to make sure nothing gets through if we do. If I thought you could sustain it longer, I’d get you to keep scanning, but moving and scanning? That’s a new one for you, right?”
Marsh nodded. She’d only just thought of it, and it had been a little more taxing than she’d anticipated.
“Good. Eat something. Drink something. Take a breath. Tell me when you’re ready to get moving.”
It didn’t take long, and soon they were back on the trail. Roeglin had used the stop to partner each shadow guard with a caravan guard, and he’d paired Marsh with Clarinay.
“You’re my scouts,” he said, and Clarinay had given Marsh a doubtful look.
Roeglin caught it.
“She used to be a courier, and now she can sense a little of what lies ahead of us before we can see it. Take her with you. Teach her what she lacks.” He glanced at Marsh. “Treat it as an extension of your training.”
Marsh wasn’t going to argue. As skills went, learning how to scout sounded like a good thing. She decided she’d couple those skills with the ability to blend with the shadows, and then wondered if she’d be able to master it.
You can only try.
Marsh frowned. It was disconcerting the way Roeglin kept popping into her head like that. She wondered if there was any way she could stop him.
You want to learn?
“You’re the only mind mage I know.”
The amusement left his mind-voice.
But I’m not the only mind mage there is.
“Will the raiders have them?”
Do you want to find out the hard way?
“No.”
Then we’ll see if you can learn.
Marsh was reminded that not everyone could learn every kind of magic.
“When?”
After we reach Ruins Hall.
“I can’t stay in Ruins Hall,” Marsh told him. “I have to try to reach Kearick.”
“Why?”
“He’s working for the raiders, and he has to be stopped.” Marsh paused. When she continued, her voice was slightly softer. “And he’s already sent one assassin to retrieve the artifact. I doubt he’ll stop there.”
“You’ve signed on as a trainee at the monastery,” Roeglin told her. “You can’t just leave.”
“He needs to be dealt with.”
“Agreed, but not by you, or at least, not on your own.”
“Agreed,” Gustav said, joining the conversation with a single decisive word. “Not on your own. Monsieur Gravine will have something to say on this matter as well.”
Marsh sighed. She was about to reply when Clarinay tapped her and Roeglin on the shoulders.
“Time we went ahead,” he said. “We’re getting close.”
Roeglin nodded and slowed his pace. Clarinay signaled for Marsh to follow him into the shadows alongside the path. When they were a few steps away from the trail and out of sight around a large boulder, Clarinay turned to her, his gray eyes gleaming.
“You’re noisier than I’d like,” he said. “You need to move more quietly, like the shadows.”
His eyes turned a dark storm-gray and then went completely black. Marsh watched as his body darkened and faded, blending with the shadows, even to the way he looked when she sought heat instead of visible shapes and outlines. She started when he solidified in front of her, his heat signature growing brighter the more solid he became.
“Can you do that?” he asked, and Marsh shrugged.
“I can try.”
“Do so.”
“Care to give a girl a hint?”
“Think of yourself as part of the shadows, no more solid than the air that makes them. A beast that prowls their depths yet remains alone.”
Marsh drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. She pushed aside the thought that they did not have a lot of time. Roeglin would not have stopped. He might already have led the others well beyond the point where they stood. Taking another breath, Marsh sought the shadows.
By keeping her eyes open and on Clarinay’s face, she was able to see when she’d made it—and then she looked down at herself and saw only shadows. Clarinay did not give her time to celebrate.
“Let’s go. We can move faster this way as well.”
He did not wait for her reply but moved away, and Marsh was hard-pressed to keep up with him. She discovered that seeing as part of the shadows was different than seeing when she was solid. To her surprise, the path to the junction was clear of anything that might harm them—and nothing lay in wait on either side. Together, she and Clarinay leapt through the shadows.
They flew through the dark, sweeping around the stems of calla shrooms and leaving no mark on the patches of blue buttons and brown noses as they passed through them. The mushrooms and toadstools shivered but did not bruise, even though Marsh’s shadowy feet touched their caps. As soon as they were sure the junction was clear in both directions, Marsh and Clarinay returned to the path.
When they saw Roeglin and Gustav ahead of them, Clarinay tapped Marsh on the shoulder and steered her off the path.
“It won’t do any of us any good if we get killed by our own,” he explained as he left the shadows to become flesh and blood once more.
Taking the hint, Marsh followed his example. She hadn’t known she’d been so light as a shadow. The sudden return of the weight of what she was carrying came as a surprise, and her knees buckled. Marsh caught herself before she could fall and straightened up.
“Well,” she said, “that was new.”
She watched as Clarinay ferreted around in one of his belt pouches and was surprised when he pulled out two of Brigitte’s cookies.
“You need to eat,” he told her, passing her one, “and we have to get back to the others.”
Marsh accepted the treat, biting into it as she followed Clarinay back to the rest of the team. She was comforted that he demolished his own cookie faster than she did.
“Didn’t see a thing out there,” Clarinay reported and Marsh nodded, too busy chewing to do more.
“We’ll hit the junction then, and head toward Ruins.” Roeglin looked from Clarinay to the gathered guards. “And we’ll look for somewhere to camp along the way.”
The junction was as clear as it had been when they’d checked it before. Nothing moved in the shadows. Nothing moved amid the rocks and crevices of the tunnel walls. Nothing, that is, except Mordanlenoowar, and the hoshkat showed no sign she’d found an intruder. It was unnerving, but Roeglin wasn’t looking any gift horses in the mouth. He signaled Marsh and Clarinay to go ahead.
“Find me a campsite,” he ordered, and Marsh followed Clarinay into the shadows again.
This time she remembered to check ahead of them for what other life might lie on the trail ahead, and just like the last time, she found nothing out of place. There were the usual insects, centipedes, a scorpion, some bats, and a rat or mouse or something equally small, but nothing big. Nothing like the hoshkat, or even remotely human-sized, waited on the road before them, and it remained that way until they reached a point where the trail widened into another small cavern.
This one held more shadows and more life than any they’d yet passed, but s
till, nothing that might threaten them. It was also the most likely point they’d seen for a campsite in over an hour.
That’s our camp. Wait there, Roeglin said, speaking clearly in her mind. Marsh stopped.
She was standing at the edge of a large pool of water, and she looked up and across to where Clarinay had knelt at the edge to dip his fingers into the water before raising a cautious handful to his mouth.
“Roeglin says we’ll camp here,” she told him, and he raised his eyebrows, glancing around them and nodding.
“It’s a water source, but there’s nothing else here,” he answered, then added, “Not yet, anyway.”
It was poor comfort, and a good reminder that other things moved along the glowless trails—and that creatures congregated near water. Marsh shrugged. Clarinay could be as gloomy as he liked; it didn’t alter the fact they needed a break. Even so, she said nothing when the scout melted into the shadows. Instead, she followed his example. One more check around the cave wouldn’t hurt.
It wasn’t as though they’d missed anything, but it was always possible something had moved in while they’d been stopped at the pool. Moving in the opposite direction to the one Clarinay had taken, Marsh wove through knee-high brown-nose toadstools and some kind of ferny shrub growing in the glow of a cluster of golden gleams. Emerald highlights winked and moved across its leaves, and Marsh paused to take a closer look.
The fern was covered in green-carapaced beetles, all milling and jostling for space on its long, delicate leaves, their shells glinting in the golden gleams’ glow and the dark blue outlines of their jaws shining. Marsh stepped back and made sure not to brush the leaves as she went past. Shadow form or not, she didn’t want to risk a bite.
Her circuit of the cavern meant she met Clarinay in the middle. She wasn’t sure, but she thought the scout tried to stealth his way past her, and it made her think. If she encountered another shadow mage in this form, how exactly was she going to stop him?
Intrigued by the problem and darn sure the situation would occur, Marsh tried the age-old tactic of sticking out her foot and attempting to sweep his out from under him. To her surprise, she connected with his ankles, but before she could do anything else, he hopped over her foot and took two swift steps before pivoting and coming back at her. This time, though, he pulled a blade out of the shadows and swung at her head.
Magic Below Paris Complete Series Boxed Set (Books 1 - 8): Trading Into Shadow, Trading Into Darkness, Trading Close to Light, Trading By Firelight, Trading by Shroomlight, plus 3 more Page 32
