by J. Thorn
“Where is Delia? Bring her to me if you wish to live through this night.”
He charged again and the night rippled in front of him. Something grabbed and lifted him like a child’s toy, an unseen giant’s hand squeezing the life from him. He hung suspended in the air, flailing and listening to Kira crying for the woman to stop. The pressure increased. Thom’s ribs cracked and popped. He couldn’t breathe.
Rowan staggered past him, his broadsword reflecting the haunted face of the moon in its blade. The woman’s eyes shifted toward Rowan and Thom felt the strength holding him waver. Rowan’s broadsword sliced through her robes. Fiery light enveloped the woman and for a moment, Thom believed Rowan defeated her. But the light coalesced into a single ball and struck the earth like thunder in front of the innkeeper. Rowan hurtled backwards through the air, landing beyond Thom’s vision.
Kira called for their daughters, shouting at the house as though the girls awaited rescue. Thom still hung in the air but he felt the power weaken when the woman directed her attack at Rowan. He could breathe again and although his body ached, the invisible grip relented.
“Tell me your name, shepherd, and I will let you live.”
The meadow filled with the odor of smoke and smoldering cloth.
“Your daughters told me their names and now they are part of me forever. Isn’t that what you want? To be at one with the power?”
“I don’t believe you,” Thom said. The grip tightened and the image of the cloaked woman and the house of bone faded toward black.
“Jasmine. Krea. Sarra. Such potent names, but none as powerful as little Delia.”
Thom screamed. Tears streamed down his face. Labored breaths billowed outward in the frigid air before evaporating.
“You are aware she has your power? The other girls were expendable. A meal to be consumed. Nothing more. But Delia Meeks…”
Kira’s cries drowned out Thom’s. She screamed her daughter’s names, pleading with Rowan to awaken from somewhere behind Thom. Kira’s yell ripped the night asunder and she charged the woman with Rowan’s broadsword. The burning eyes turned toward Kira and Thom sensed the woman’s smile from within the deep shadows of her hood. The grip about him weakened, giving Thom another opportunity to struggle free. But pain overcame him and he drifted close to unconsciousness.
As black sleep numbed his mind, he cringed, waiting for the woman to cut Kira down. His lips tasted the hot salt of his tears.
I failed them all. My daughters. Rowan. And now Kira.
Thom blinked.
But why? Why me? Why does she need my family?
His question hung, drifting like smoke as his eyes rolled into the back of his head. Sleep beckoned him, promising him peace and comfort.
Why does she need me so?
He felt the night ripple again. Time stood still, torturing him as he waited for the explosion that would destroy his wife. A high-pitched squeal stung his ears, a painful itch he could not scratch. The pressure against his head tightened like a vise.
“Your magic,” Marik said. The sorcerer spoke as though he stood by Thom’s side.
“I don’t know what you are talking about,” Thom said, his voice quivering as though he fought to hold back sobs.
“You’ve always known what you are truly capable of, Thom. Don’t give her what she seeks. Fight her.”
“I cannot.”
Kira stopped in her tracks, hearing Thom speak to no one except the conjured ghosts of his delirium. She backed away, as frightened by Thom’s ramblings as she was the dark presence regarding her with hateful eyes.
“Accept the gift given to you. Destroy her.”
The sorcerer’s voice seeped away, fading with Thom’s consciousness. The world became a black thing, a void through which hate drifted.
“It is not a gift. It is a curse.”
From somewhere far off, he heard Kira crying and those sounds faded away as though the clearing dropped out from under him. The burning scents of the meadow changed and now he smelled the copper of lifeblood and the fiery timbers of the Fair Haven Inn.
His eyes opened and he saw Droman Meadows—his friends slaughtered in the main road, the howling of dread wolves coming out of the fields. Drakes Pass and the slaughtered peddler. The house of bone. His daughters, terror welling from their eyes.
Blink.
Sarra with the crown of flowers.
Bran Allador, a few years older than when Thom last saw him, asking for Sarra’s hand in marriage.
Krea and Jasmine, mischievous grins painted on their faces, dressing Sarra on her wedding day.
Delia, a teenager, dancing at the inn. Rowan and Kira, laughing and clapping to the music. Thom holding down a lump in his throat as a young boy spun Delia through the circle.
I could have saved them.
They are gone because I did not act.
It is not a gift. It is a curse.
Blink.
The scene began to fade and Thom did not hold back his tears as Delia’s smiling face drifted away. He wanted to reach out and grasp hold of her. He wanted to clutch what could have been and hold it to his heart. But everything faded. Everyone left him, gone forever.
I could have saved—
Blink.
Thom floated in an endless sky of white. But it was different this time. The air bristled with heat and energy. The strange sky felt like it wanted to combust.
There was danger here, but Thom never felt more alive.
The symbols drifted on the wind, and they appeared because he demanded it.
The air rippled and Thom knew someone else was there. An intruder. Someone who meant to sever the link between him and the power which was his birthright. A pressure squeezed his body, something holding him so he could not drift unencumbered through the sky.
The image of Mylan’s crumbling walls flashed before him and he grasped two words he could not read but understood as an infant understands the need to talk. The words became his and he replaced the image of Mylan with the house of human bones. A white light shot out through the gaps in the bones, flickering like hellfire. The home imploded in a blinding flash and Thom heard a scream resounding from one end of the sky to the other. The pressure about his body relented. He felt fingers coming apart and an enormous hand pulling away as though it touched a hot brand. He could move of his own free will. The presence that sought to challenge him was retreating through the sky, marked only by perturbations in the infinite brightness like ethereal footprints.
It was not fleeing, however. He sensed it changing and if Thom did not stop the presence in time, all remaining hope would be lost.
He opened his arms and the symbols came to him, disappearing beneath his cloak. The wind built into a hurricane, roaring with fury. It was as though the entire sky rushed into him, digging through the pores of his skin. He smelled the burning autumn leaves as before, the sweet, intoxicating scent like syrup cooking on the woodstove. The sword in his hand vibrated with boundless power. His loss, his sorrow, his anger channeling into limitless power that could simultaneously encompass the universe and fit itself onto the head of a pin. He was at one with the magic, streaking higher and higher through the blinding light, taking what belonged to him.
Blink.
Thom’s eyes opened to a mass of rubble where the house of bones once stood. Smoke rose off of the destruction, floating gray into the night sky like specters and whipped away by a deafening gale.
He tried to remember what he did. He heard a woman screaming but it was not Kira. He saw a jumble of cloaks piled on the ground where he last saw the old woman.
It’s over, he thought.
The keening wind whistled, laughed.
“Run while you have the chance, Thom,” he heard Rowan say.
The cloaks rose up and took form. Rowan and Kira shouted, but Thom heard neither over the wind’s roar. Eyes of starlight flickered to life. The monstrous form of the woman loomed over him, larger than before.
He saw the fi
rst sliver of predawn from the corner of his eye as he stepped toward the shadow. He was dimly aware of the sword, its blade shimmering with the summer sun and pulsating in his hand. He felt the energy he sensed in the endless sky living within the sword.
The air before him rippled and he saw the woman’s shadowy form as though through lake waters. The blur vanished and a stream of fire segmented the dark, racing toward his heart. He swung the sword and the blade absorbed the fire. A second fire stream came at him and again the sword met it and extinguished it. He thought he saw fear in the woman’s eyes.
“Give me back my daughters.”
The air shimmered again and before the woman could bring her power down upon him, he swung the sword. The iron tore streaks of fire through her cloak. The woman bellowed with terror.
She swung at him with a hand aglow in pulsing light, striking his shoulder. He cried out and dropped to his knees.
“Thom,” Kira said, her words screamed into the gale.
The wind grabbed her cry and hurled it away.
He felt fire in his shoulder where the woman struck him. As he rose, he felt her magic like static electricity. A ball of light smashed into his chest. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. Blue and white light threaded around his body, each pulse stabbing him as though with needles. The air rippled again.
I’m going to die.
Rowan rushed to his side and pulled him away as the earth exploded to Thom’s right from the bolt of energy thrown by the woman. The magic binding Thom dissipated as the woman set her sights on the innkeeper.
Thom broke from Rowan’s grip, his wicked blade already sweeping toward her as earth rained down on the meadow. The sword ripped another streak of fire across the woman’s body and this time the sword struck flesh. The woman cried out and the trees along the rim of the clearing bent backward as though the wind turned against them.
She struck at him again. Thom ducked underneath, dropped to one knee and swung the sword up through her belly. A black, thick liquid sprayed his face.
The wind raged and it was all Thom could do to keep from tumbling backward. The night seemed to rush at him, fleeing the burgeoning gray light on the horizon.
She raised her hands to the sky and twin black funnel clouds formed on her fingertips. As the clouds writhed and twisted, the woman’s wounds closed.
“You cannot overcome a soldier of the Shadow any more than you can hope to swallow the ocean.”
The meadow rumbled. A line formed in the soil and the earth ruptured upward as though a beast moved through the ground. It tunneled toward Thom.
He stood transfixed as it came closer. He felt hands at the back of his cloak, trying to pull him away.
“Get out of there.”
Rowan’s voice was lost in the roar of wind and quaking earth.
Black smoke billowed out of the ground. When the tunnel almost reached him, Thom saw the smoke take the form of clawed hands. He heard the laughter of the old woman as the ghostly demon emerged. Without thinking about what he was doing, Thom plunged the sword into the earthen tunnel as it arrived at his feet. The ground lit like the noonday sun and an inhuman shriek came out of the ground. Thom stared wide-eyed as the tunnel reversed course and rushed toward the cloaked woman.
“No,” she said.
The earth imploded at her feet, leaving a hill of rock and soil. The ground buckled with the sound of thunder. Thom fought to keep his balance as the earth rumbled and the wind rushed past him. The woman staggered back and forth, the lights of her eyes fading like weak, thin smoke.
The sword pulsed with energy and Thom believed if he let go of the hilt, the sword would fly toward the woman on its own. The weapon pulled at him.
He ran at her, his voice a shrill scream demanding vengeance for his lost daughters. The lights of her eyes flickered as she stood watching him. Like the first frost of autumn portending the arrival of winter, he felt her fear.
“This will never be over for you,” she said.
He leaped over the hillock of ruptured earth. The sword blazed in orange, catching the first ray of sunrise. He hung suspended, time standing still. The blade changed and within the fiery oranges burned the images of his daughters. The woman shrieked as the blade plunged down through her heart. Black crimson splashed his face. He felt the sword pierce flesh and cartilage, driven through her nightmare form by his hatred.
The blade cut through air. The point stabbed into the earth and landed upon a pile of cloaks. The woman vanished into the retreating night. Black tendrils of smoke snaked out of the cloak and drifted toward the remnants of the home.
The house’s bones disappeared as if it was never there. Smooth stone lay scattered across the earth in place of the bones.
Thom collapsed onto his back as the energy within the sword extinguished. The iron gleamed with the rising sun and he began to sob. In the moment of time suspension before he destroyed the woman, he saw his daughters in the blade and felt their strength carrying him. Now the magic was gone, and their presence gone with it. He cried with the departing night, the final opportunity to save his daughters swept westward with the last stars of dawn.
Kira ran to him and hugged his limp body to hers. He tasted her tears on his lips. He saw Rowan standing back, leaning on his broadsword to stay upright. His pallid face repelled the warm colors of dawn. Rowan swayed before collapsing to one knee.
So my friend, too, will die because of me, Thom thought.
The horizon brightened. The sun caressed Thom’s face like an old friend, yet he felt no warmth. He lay in Kira’s arms, feeling not only the loss of his daughters but a longing to be at one with the magic again. It abandoned him in his hour of greatest need.
It is not a gift. It is a curse.
Noises came from behind. He was vaguely aware of the sound of stones overturning and thought it was the broken house crumbling. He saw Rowan’s face staring toward the shattered remains of the house.
“Thom,” Rowan said. “Look.”
Kira lifted her head at the sound, and now she too stared with mouth agape. Tears filled her eyes and Thom saw the beginnings of a smile. Kira pulled Thom up and turned him toward the house, as though she wanted his eyes to confirm what she saw.
Thom gasped. He blinked his own tears away.
“Delia,” he said. A sob choked his voice.
Thom and Kira’s youngest daughter staggered away from the ruins, her dress torn and tattered. She glanced between Rowan and her parents, smiling with eyes as empty as a fallow field.
“It’s a miracle,” Rowan said with a laugh. He coughed long and hard before his grin stretched from ear-to-ear. Delia stumbled into Kira’s arms.
Kira pulled Delia to her, holding her as if doing so would ensure she would never lose her daughter again. Tears flowed down Kira’s cheeks.
Thom wrapped his arms around both his wife and daughter. He allowed the sun to touch him, to warm him. In that moment, he no longer hungered for the magic.
He clung to Kira and Delia, holding onto the only lifeline keeping him from the chasm of madness. He did not notice the sunrise burning in the eastern sky like blood from an open wound. The crimson rays touched the crumbled house, and long, black shadows reached for Thom and Kira.
Thom felt the cool touch of the shadows and the magic reawakened deep inside, shielding him and stirring the desire to unleash its power. The sword on the ground pulsed with light but Thom did not see it because he kept his eyes closed, his arms locked around his wife and daughter. Nor did he see Rowan struggling to his feet, the broadsword clutched within his trembling hands.
This will never be over for you, shepherd.
“Thom,” Rowan said. The hoarse whisper did not reach his friend’s ears.
From the clearing’s rim came the haunting call of a whippoorwill. Crimson seeped from the eastern sky, reaching out to the meadow’s survivors with bloody claws. Rowan shuffled toward Delia with his last remaining strength, the broadsword raised. The air shimmered above h
er head.
The little girl watched Rowan advance, smiling, her sunken eyes burning like the rising sun.
###
Acknowledgements
Dan Padavona
Writing a novel is a journey which is often full of solitude, but never traveled alone. I would like to thank my wife Teresa Padavona, and our two wonderful children Joe, and Julia Padavona, for supporting me on this journey. You gave me the courage to see this through to its conclusion, and without you this would not have been possible.
I also wish to thank my loyal readers who connected with me on Facebook and through my website. Few greater joys exist than to be able to entertain people through the magic of storytelling. Thank you. You are my inspiration. Know that this journey has only just begun, for I have more tales to tell.
Dan Padavona is the author of Storberry and the son of the late heavy metal icon, Ronnie James Dio. Padavona’s parents separated when he was four, and he was raised by his mother, Loretta.
Dan reads and writes for several hours each day and has a particular affinity for fantasy and horror. He makes his online home at www.danpadavona.com.
If you want to be automatically notified when Dan’s next book is released, please sign up at http://www.danpadavona.com/new-release-mailing-list/. You will only be contacted once or twice a month, and whenever a new book is about to be released. Your address will never be shared, and you can unsubscribe at any time.
You can connect with Dan on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/dan.padavona, and on Twitter at https://twitter.com/DanPadavona. He loves to talk music, horror, fantasy, and more, so be cool and connect with him today.
J. Thorn
I am grateful for the dedicated support of the readers who support my craft. I would be lost like Thom in the dark forest without The Keepers. I'd like to especially thank the early readers of this book, including Robert, David W., David D., Sherry, Mary, Carol, Brandy, Dean, Cheryl, Bonnie, Libby, Zach and Scott.
