Shadow's Master

by Jon Sprunk

  Shadows descended on the dying men, and through them Caim tasted the dwindling life forces, felt their energy flowing into his bloodstream. His heart beat strong and a trifle too fast, as if intoxicated by the power. Caim breathed through his nose until the rush abated.

  The small chamber beyond the archway had a vaulted ceiling and four branching corridors, but no soldiers down any of them. He chose the north hallway and found more stairs at its end. This staircase had no landings, but kept rising around a central newel column as thick as a wagon wheel. Caim climbed with both knives ready. The stairs ended at a door made of black stone instead of wood. There was no handle or latch, but a circle had been carved into the center, two handbreadths across. Caim studied the door. It was well set into its frame. A slab of this size would have to weigh at least fifty stone.

  Caim started to reach for the circle, but stopped his hand just before it touched the stone. Something tickled the nape of his neck. A part of him whispered that if Kit were still an ethereal Fae, this is where she would appear to tell him he was about to stumble into a bad situation. No, she'd appear right after I stepped into it.

  Caim released the energies seething inside him to form a new portal. Its opaque surface undulated and shimmered in the dark. No balls, no glory.

  Gritting his teeth, he walked through.

  Caim blinked as he stepped into an empty chamber. There were no furnishings or personal effects. The four walls slanted inward to form a point two spans above his head. A window pierced each wall. He looked around. This was the apex of the pyramid, which he'd seen in his vision. His mother had to be here, but there was nowhere for anyone to hide.

  Then he felt something, a texture to the air that reminded him of…home. Not Othir, but his real home in Eregoth. His father's estate. For a moment he could almost smell his old room, the sunshiny scent of his favorite blanket, the beeswax polished into the wooden chair where his mother had held him and rocked him to sleep.

  The images were dispelled by a burst of pain flaring in his chest. Caim crouched against the wall as a figure in black armor stepped out of the shadows. The swordsman had one hand on the long hilt of his sword, which was still in its scabbard. His visor was up. Caim shifted to a forward stance as the swordsman took something from his belt and held it up. The seax knife. He moved his arm, and Caim tensed, but the knife sailed in a gentle arc between them. Caim dropped the butcher's knife and caught the seax by the hilt.

  The swordsman did not move, did not draw his sword. “The Master foresaw this. You and I here at this moment. I doubted, but here we are.”

  Caim gripped his knives tight, feeling every ridge and whorl in the hilts as he advanced. “And now one of us will die.”

  “That is unfortunate. I have come to regret the need to eliminate you.” The warrior retreated a pace, arms by his sides. “We are both killers. Predators. Unfit for this world.”

  Caim tried to ignore the words, but they slipped past his guard and struck home. He'd thought much the same himself. Would the world be a better place if I'd never been born? “If you're trying to make it sound like we're the same, save your breath.”

  The swordsman's eyebrows rose. His lean features were more haggard than at their last meeting. Black stubble shadowed his jaw. “The same? Hardly. You kill for yourself, for profit, for desire. I kill for a cause to which I have devoted my entire life.”

  Caim recalled some words he'd said to Josey on a rooftop overlooking her dead foster father's mansion. Why is it that if a lord or a king sends you to kill a man, it's somehow noble? But if you do this for yourself, it's murder. Explain that to me.

  Caim let the memory slide from his thoughts as he lunged. The swordsman's hands flashed, and his weapon appeared, slashing across the intervening space between them. Caim beat aside the sword and lunged with a stop-thrust that was likewise deflected.

  Caim stayed low, knees flexed to carry him in any direction. The sword tried to cut off his approach routes, but he fought with every trick at his disposal, fueled by the cold fury bubbling inside his gut. As they traded cuts and parries, he alternated between pressing his opponent and falling back to draw him in.

  “You believe I am evil,” the swordsman said as he circled away. “And perhaps I am. But are you without sin? Have you not killed to defend your beliefs? I accept what I am. Do you?”

  Caim felt his lips curl back in a snarl as he lunged again. Just before their weapons met, he channeled his powers and made a short shadow-hop. There was a moment of resistance, as if a skin had formed in the air to prevent him passage, but he pushed through it.

  He reappeared behind and to the side of his foe. As the swordsman spun, with an upward slash that cut through thin air, Caim attacked low and fast. The black sword deflected the seax knife, but the suete stabbed deep into the tendon under the kneecap.

  The swordsman jerked his wounded leg back and made a circular disengaging slash between them as he retreated a few steps. Caim hung back. The wound was crippling. The pain must have been extreme, but the swordsman settled into an off-balance stance and waited, as still as a pillar of ice.

  Caim drew in a deep breath. His fury remained, unabated, but this victory gave him no joy. His opponent hadn't fought with passion or pride, or even fear. He's a pawn, like me. His master points, and he follows orders.

  Caim lowered his knives, even though he wanted to cut open the man's throat and let him bleed out on the floor. The swordsman stood up as straight as he was able, favoring his injured leg, and let his blade droop. “Your mother, Lady Isabeth, is held in the caverns beneath the citadel, deep underground. But none can pass the wards without the Master's leave.”

  “So if I find him…,” Caim said.

  “You will find the way to her. But this is a trap. The Master is waiting for you.”

  Caim pointed with his seax knife. “Why are you telling me this?”

  “My name is Balaam. I have no house save my Master's and I am the last of my line, but I still have my honor.” The swordsman opened a portal beside him. “And there is one thing more. They have your woman.”

  A tremor wriggled down Caim's spine. “Kit?”

  The swordsman gestured, and a cool touch caressed Caim's calf. A picture formed in his mind. The grand audience chamber, draped in darkness.

  Caim blinked, but the swordsman was gone. Could he trust him? There's only one way to find out.

  Caim squeezed his fingers around his knife hilts. The power thrummed inside him like a second heartbeat. He fed his rage into it, feeling the inferno grow higher and hotter. Then he opened his own portal.

  Kit brushed the hair out of her eyes as she turned the corner. The building looked simple from the outside, just four walls and a point at the top, but inside it was a warren of passages and halls, most of them empty. She had started off trying to be quiet, until the clang and clatter of Malig lumbering in her tracks with his huge sword made her give it up as useless.

  Seeing that the corridor ran due south, toward what she hoped was the way out, Kit started down it. With every step she thought of Caim. She shouldn't have let him go on alone. She had become human to help him, but then he'd sent her away when he needed her most. It's just like him. He never listens.

  The corridor widened into a long, high chamber. Arcades ran along either side, topped with balconies overlooking the room. Kit wondered what the place was meant for. It looked like a ballroom or a theater. There were a few doors to choose from, although none of them seemed to head in the right direction.

  “You got any idea where you're going, lass?” Malig asked.

  “Of course.” The bit of hair fell over her eyes again. She licked her palm and pasted it back behind her ear. “A little.”

  “Let me take the lead, then. Maybe I'll find us some action.”

  “I don't want any action, you oaf. I just want”—she almost said “Caim,” but amended it to—“to get out of here.”

  “And when we get out? What then?”

  “
Caim said—”

  “Caim won't be there,” Malig said. “You got any idea how far it is back to Eregoth? We won't make it. Well, I might. But a little thing like you? Never in a hundred years.”

  Kit blinked back the tears that had been hovering in the corners of her eyes since they'd left Caim. “I know! All right? So shut up and let me think.”

  He watched her closely while she considered the options, which made her self-conscious. Just to get moving, she selected the southernmost door in the right-hand wall, but as she headed in that direction, a cold draft blew down the back of her smock. Kit stopped, shivering, and looked up. Two black eyes peered from behind a black visor on the balcony above. The chill took root in her stomach and seized her legs. The face vanished, and then something moved in the far left corner of the chamber. Kit looked, but saw nothing. Only darkness and shadows…

  “What's the problem?” Malig said as she backed into him. “I almost cut off your—”

  He shoved her aside with a hairy hand, and Kit fell to her knees as a slender figure dressed in black stepped out of the shadows under the balcony. A short spear rested on his shoulder.

  Malig pointed his new sword at the man. “I remember you, boyo. But you don't have your brothers around to protect you, huh?”

  Shadows swirled about the room, and another figure in black appeared. And then a third behind them. “Mal…,” Kit said.

  But he'd seen them, too. The Eregoth looked around as he hefted his borrowed weapon. “Run along, little girl, while I entertain these rotten pricks.”

  Kit started to say that she wouldn't leave him, but her words turned to a gasp as a warrior darted in close and slashed Malig across the middle of his back with a hooked knife. Malig swung and missed as his enemy drifted away. Kit climbed to her feet. She didn't have a weapon, not even a knife anymore. Thank you very much, Caim!

  She stepped away from the melee. Malig was turning faster now, trying to keep all three warriors in view, but they were too elusive. Just watching, Kit lost sight of them as they dipped and wove in a swift circle. Malig's sword would have sliced any of them in half if he connected, but he never came close. Inch by inch, foot by foot, they tightened the ring around him. Kit backed away until she touched the wall. She was under the balcony, hidden in the darkness, but she knew the warriors would see her as clear as day when they finished with Malig. They ignored her for the moment. She was no threat to them. Just a mud-woman. Just a pretty face.

  Spotting a torch in a holder above her head, Kit reached up on her tiptoes for the unlit brand. It was little more than a short wooden stick topped with a wad of pitch-soaked cloth, but it had some heft. If I only had a flame…

  Kit jerked back as a tall shadow loomed over her. Behind the warrior, Malig knelt on one knee with long ribbons of blood running down his side and back. He continued to swing at the other two warriors, but it was over. We're done for.

  Kit swung the torch with both hands. She put all of her rage and hopelessness into the attack, all of her love for Caim and her wishes for a future with him. The warrior caught the torch with his hand and wrenched it from her grasp. In his other hand, a wicked knife pointed toward her.

  Rays of crimson light slanted down from the throne chamber's vaulted ceiling as Caim leapt out of the portal. The light shone on a person curled up in the center of the floor, but left the walls and periphery swathed in deep shadow.

  Caim froze when he saw the silver hair. Kit lay on her side, her arms and legs sprawled lifelessly on the black stones. Knowing it was a trap, and damning it anyway, Caim ran over to her side. He shook her gently, but there was no response. He pressed his fingers into the groove of her neck and released the breath he'd been holding when he found a faint pulse. The skin around her eyes was purple.

  As Caim reached to lift her eyelids, a sharp pain pierced his chest. He rose to his feet as the darkness lifted from the room, revealing a crowd of people around him. Their dusky faces watched him, impassive. Four shadow warriors stood at the foot of the dais, black steel weapons in their hands, but his attention was focused on the throne's occupant. The Shadow Lord's face was hidden within a deep cowl, but his presence overshadowed the court like a great black bird of destruction.

  Caim's hands sweated inside his gloves. The energy inside him wanted release. It wanted blood. The shadows crawling along the walls hissed and snapped. He moved between Kit and the throne, and stopped a dozen steps from the dais. A short throw. Just a flick of my wrist.

  “Caim.” The Shadow Lord's voice rang out through the chamber, and the shadows on the ceiling rustled. “We are come to preside over your execution.”

  The shadow warriors spread out into a semicircular formation in front of him. Caim didn't react, his gaze still on their liege.

  “However.” The Shadow Lord gestured to the floor in front of the dais. “I will stay your death if you would bow before me now and claim your rightful place as the defender of your people.”

  Caim wanted to laugh, but it came out in a rumbling growl. “Whenever people start offering me things, I know they're either trying to stab me in the back, or they're afraid. That's what happened with Sybelle and your other stooges in Othir. None of them understood that all I ever wanted was to be left alone.”

  The Shadow Lord opened one hand, and the air beside his throne split open. The swirling vapors resolved into a picture of a woman. At first sight of her profile, Caim took her for his aunt. She had the same narrow nose and full lips, but her features were stony gray, frozen in a horrified rictus. Caim was ready to ignore the image as a statue, though fantastically lifelike, when he noticed the eyes. They were deep and black, boring into him from across the distance.

  A tumult of emotions punched through Caim's chest like a spear. For a moment he was a young boy again, sitting on her knee as she sang to him. Words he hadn't understood, and didn't understand now, tickled his ears. A harsh roar scattered the lullaby. Caim looked past his mother's image to a huge black gateway poised behind her. In its unfathomable depths, darkness strove against itself and roiled in eternal combat. He knew its destination at once. The Other Side. The Realm of Shadow.

  The window vanished, swallowed back into the air as the Shadow Lord closed his fist. “I think you want more than that, my son. What do the mortals of this world offer you? Nothing but a life of skulking and murder, without purpose, without honor. Here, with your people, is where you belong.”

  “Where was that?” Caim asked, taking a step toward the dais. “What have you done to her?”

  The Shadow Lord pulled back his hood. His skin appeared duller, perhaps even looser, than it had before in the audience hall. His eyelids drooped a little. “I did what was necessary to protect my people. When we first came to this world, there were some who believed we would eventually return to the Other Side. I could not allow that false hope to exist, so I hid the gateway and made it seem as if it were lost forever.”

  Murmurs whispered through the hall. The warriors, though, stood as still as eidolons.

  The Shadow Lord stood up from his throne. “We have endured all these years because of my efforts and sacrifices. I even gave my own daughters for this cause! Who dares question me?”

  The voices fell silent, but Caim still could feel the tension. He tightened his grip on his knives. Only nine steps separated them. A leap and a long lunge. In less time than it took draw breath, he could plant his knives in the adversary's chest. My mother's father. Blood of my blood. “Is she dead?” he asked.

  The Shadow Lord shook his head, and a pained look crossed his face. “No, she is as you saw her, trapped between our two worlds. I could not destroy the gateway, but I have been able to keep it sealed so that its influence would not interfere with my plans. But keeping it at bay has been difficult. I needed another source of energy, and Isabeth provided that source.”

  Caim didn't see the attack coming. The Shadow Lord didn't move, but the air around Caim filled with darkness. Icy fangs tore into his flesh from all dir
ections, ripping into his chest and back, his legs and arms, and across his face. Caim lashed out with his knives, but they encountered nothing. Hissing as an attack slashed across his forehead, he lost his patience and tried to open a portal, only to have it collapse before it fully formed. Something was blocking him. Not something. Someone.

  Blood dripping down his face, he pushed outward with the energy pulsing inside him, and bit by bit the oppressive blackness retreated. When it cleared, Caim didn't have time to brace himself as terrible agony ripped up his spine. It spun him around and shoved him to the floor.

  The Shadow Lord descended the dais steps. “When I first heard of your existence, I considered exterminating you. Sybelle could have snuffed out your life the night she retrieved your mother, but I withheld my judgment. I wanted to see what would become of you. But I am not impressed.”

  Caim started to get up, but a swarm of shadows rained from the ceiling. He could feel their hunger as they sped toward him. Caim reached out to the incoming creatures, and the shadows collided with a bulwark of solid air, sliding down the bubble to the floor where they milled around in circles. On one knee, Caim wrenched himself around and threw. The shadow warriors tried to move in front of their lord, but they were a step too late. The seax knife flew past them, only to halt in midair. The blade shimmered in the ruddy light, six inches from the Shadow Lord's chest.

  Caim started to get up, but a massive unseen force shoved down on his shoulders and drove him onto his hands and knees.

  The Shadow Lord gestured, and the knife fell to the floor. “Pathetic. And to think I might have chosen you as my successor. You were a mistake.”