Shadow Cross (The Shadow Accords Book 5)

by D. K. Holmberg

  There had to be a different answer. She just had to figure out what it was.

  25

  Carth crouched in front of the window of the healer’s shop. She saw movement behind the window, but it was mostly shadows. The night air had a crispness to it, and she wished for a warmer cloak, but was thankful that she had any coverage.

  Nothing else moved along the street. They were alone here, standing in front of the door as they waited. How long did she risk waiting?

  They would have to go in soon if she was to discover what had happened, and why the slavers had come here. It could be chance, but it didn’t feel like it.

  Why this shop? Why would the slavers have come here of all places? It had been empty when she’d last been here, abandoned after what had seemed like an attack.

  She glanced over to Timothy, but he said nothing, leaning casually against the wall of the building, looking almost as if he simply waited for someone.

  She ducked low and remained beneath the window, trying to listen. An occasional sound drifted out, including something that sounded like a whimper, but she wasn’t certain whether it was real or not.

  She needed to get inside the shop.

  When she had been here before and found it empty, she hadn’t explored enough to know whether there was a rear entrance. Then again, when she had first come, the older healer had disappeared out the back. There had to be another entrance.

  She nodded to Timothy and hurried around the side of the building before turning down one of the side streets. He said nothing, trailing willingly and not seeming concerned about the fact that Carth hadn’t explained what they were doing.

  They came upon an alley, and she turned down it. The alley was narrow, barely wide enough for the two of them to walk side by side. Doors from buildings on either side of them lined the alley, with most locked.

  She paused about midway down the alley. How far had she gone? Which one of these doors would belong to the healer’s shop?

  “That one.” Timothy pointed towards a door that had once been painted a dark brown but now had faded and chipped overtime. The handle gleamed with a soft silver.

  Carth grabbed the handle and found it locked. Likely it was barred from the other side as well. “How sure are you that this is it?”

  He looked over at her, a bemused expression on his face. “How certain? I think I’ve proven my tracking ability, haven’t I?” As Carth tried the handle again, Timothy chuckled. “I’d think your abilities would come in handy here.”

  Carth gripped the handle, pressing heat through her palm, sending it slowly oozing through the door. With that connection, she felt the metal shifting.

  An inspiration came to her.

  She pressed through the door, triggering it with the shadows. It was almost as if the shadows knew what was asked of them. The lock clicked softly, and the door started to open before meeting resistance.

  Barred. She had suspected that it would be, and finding that it was didn’t surprise her.

  She wanted to get in quietly. Doing anything else, triggering it in any other way, ran the risk of exposing her to those inside. Somehow, she needed to lift the barricade without getting discovered.

  She needed to find out what exactly was blocking the door. Pressing heat through the doorway, she used that to trace the contours of the bar, letting it tell her the shape and nature of the obstruction.

  Could she lift the bar?

  Not with her hands, but maybe with the shadows if she were to use them in such a way that she thickened them, made them something more corporeal.

  Carth began twisting the shadows, thickening them so that she could pull up on the bar. She had never attempted anything quite like this before, but she had known that she could use the shadows in ways that she had not fully explored. They were for more than to cloak her, and more than to strengthen herself. There had been times when she had wished for someone to teach her, another shadow born or even a skilled shadow blessed, but she had fumbled along on her own, managing well enough. She would do so now.

  The bar lifted free.

  Carth held it in place, not wanting to drop it and make noise. She held on to it, but she didn’t dare move. If she did, she feared she’d lose the connection to the shadows, and lose the connection to the barricade.

  “I need you to go in and grab this before it falls.”

  Timothy studied her for a moment and then nodded.

  He slipped past her, pushing the door open barely enough to slide inside, and then she felt him lift the bar from her shadow grasp.

  Letting out a relieved sigh, Carth released the connection to the shadows and joined him inside the healer’s shop.

  The back side of the shop was quite a bit different than the front. There was a row of low shelves, all cluttered with different leaves and berries, but these were not labeled. Carth suspected that many of these were more dangerous than the ones on the other side of the shop.

  Two doors led off from here. One she recognized as leading into the shop itself. The other most likely led into a side building.

  The door off to the side compelled her. Carth tried the handle and found it locked.

  Why would this door be locked?

  “Watch that door,” Carth told Timothy. “Listen and see if you can hear anything useful. And keep anyone from coming through it.”

  Timothy smiled at the command but nodded his agreement.

  Carth steadily began building energy through the lock, thickening it the same way she had the last time with the shadows, grasping the locking mechanism in some way that she didn’t fully understand. It clicked, and the door unlocked.

  Unlike the outer door, there was no other barricade. The door came open, revealing a darkened room on the other side. A foul odor met her nose. It was the stink of sickness, that of vomit and rot.

  Rather than pulling on the shadows to retreat into the darkness, she used the power of the flame and pressed it through her palm as she had done when looking into the wagons. Light bloomed in her hand and she could look around.

  Her stomach dropped.

  Rows of benches occupied this room. On each bench sat nearly two dozen different women. Some were children, barely more than ten or eleven.

  All the women appeared to be drugged in some way. None of them reacted as she entered. None moved, barely looking up when she opened the door.

  Could the healer be complicit in finding women for the slavers?

  She recognized one of the women. It was a girl from the tavern, a woman Julie had worried about getting abducted.

  There was another door on opposite side of the room. Before rescuing these women, she needed to know what was taking place. She paused at that door, noting that, like the other, it was locked. She unlocked it the same as she had the other two.

  This room was different than the others, and well-lit by lanterns stationed around the room. It was ornately decorated, with a gilded desk that filled much of the middle of the room.

  A man sat at the desk and looked up as soon as she entered.

  Carth wrapped him in heat and shadows as she darted towards him. The shadows muffled his shout. The heat was intended as a mild torment.

  She stabbed him in the shoulder with her knife, pressing shadows through it, which began creeping along his arms. He screamed again, but she continued to muffle him with her connection to the shadows.

  “We’re going to talk, you and I.”

  The man’s eyes widened. She eased the muffling back enough to allow him to speak, though she was prepared to stuff it back down his throat, using the shadows as a gag if she needed to.

  “Who… who are you?”

  Carl shook her head. “I’m the one who gets to ask the questions.”

  The man licked his lips and swallowed. His head swiveled, eyes darting around the room, but Carth had maintained her draw on the shadows, forcing his attention back to her.

  “Who’s in charge here?”

  Carth felt a sudden pressure
against the shadows. She had recognized it before, had felt it when she was traveling into the city. It was a surge of power that diminished her shadows.

  It didn’t eliminate them altogether—she was wrapped too tightly in them for that, and she held on to the power of the flame as well, which prevented her from losing her connection altogether—but… her shadows faded.

  A door on the opposite side of the room opened. The man she knew as Chathem, the scholar who had purchased her and carried her through the forest, stood opposite her. A dark smile twisted his mouth.

  “Ms. Rel, I believe? Interesting that you should return here. I think I will enjoy discovering why.” He started towards her, a pair of knives appearing in his hands.

  Carth blinked slowly, drawing upon the strength of the shadows and the strength of the flame as she unsheathed her knives. “As will I.”

  26

  Carth approached the man slowly, knives clutched in her hands. She kept herself wrapped in the shadows, pulling upon them and trying to retreat into them, but something he did pushed against them. It was as if he had some way of countering her use of them.

  She fought, pulling on the shadows in a way that allowed her to hold on to them, clutching them, afraid that he might be able to do something that would prevent her from maintaining that connection. What he did this time was not like the poisoning, when she couldn’t reach either shadow or flame. This was a magical resistance.

  Carth mixed her two magical powers together. They surged within her, a flash of power that filled her with her combined energies.

  She poured them out through her knives as she attacked.

  The man was quick. He managed to catch her first attack and turned it away.

  Carth lunged, slicing towards him, sweeping her knives around, dropping to the ground as she did.

  He backed away, holding his knives in front of him. The air seemed to ripple in front of him. Pressure built away from him, taking Carth’s breath away. If she didn’t act now, she suspected he would continue to drive her backwards.

  Her feet slipped upon the ground, and there was nothing she could do.

  The man smiled at her, the malevolent grin he’d worn when he’d first captured her returning to his face. “You really would’ve been quite the intriguing study.”

  With that, she shifted her focus, pushing with her power of flame into the ground, anchoring herself. It held her in place, and with a surge of heat and fire, she jumped towards him.

  “Why does everybody keep thinking that I’m something to study?”

  She slashed at him, catching him in the chest with the knife powered by her S’al magic.

  He staggered back, and blood poured from where her knife had connected.

  She twisted, trying to reach him with her shadow knife. This one missed, and he caught her wrist, bending it down.

  Carth tried swinging with her free hand, wanting to catch him with the knife summoning the flame, but he held on with an iron grip.

  Her arm snapped.

  Carth screamed. Pain raced through her body, a terrible, burning sensation, and she lost her grip on the knife. The pain severed her connection to both the shadows and the flame. She was unable to think of anything but pain.

  Carth scrambled back, trying to get away, but he held on to her useless arm.

  “I think I’ll be a little more careful with your dosing this time. Once we reach Fylan, you will be less trouble for me. From there, I will take my time studying you. I think your abilities will provide much insight.”

  Carth hadn’t heard of Fylan but didn’t think she would be able to escape him again if she were captured. Escaping once had been luck, mixed with a little skill. A second escape would be less likely, especially now that he knew she had managed to escape once. He would watch her closely, and she feared the way he would use her.

  She swung her good arm around, twisting with the knife, but he squeezed on the broken arm. Carth nearly dropped her other knife, and it was only by chance that she did not.

  He dragged her towards the door. If he brought her where the other women were, if he chained her and dosed her with whatever poison he used to confine the others, she would not be able to escape.

  She kicked, driving the heel of her boot towards him, but the man jumped, carrying her with her.

  Her arm throbbed as he did, pain racing through her arm, jolting up it like a thousand needles stabbing into her skin. It was something like when she’d first begun summoning the power of the flame. At that time, she’d experienced it as a burning sensation within her blood, a fire that tore through her when she tried pulling on that magic.

  This was a hundred times worse.

  If she didn’t do anything, she would be dragged into the other room. Carth blocked the pain out, forcing it away from her thoughts, trying to create nothing but a blank slate within her mind.

  It was difficult, the overwhelming pain searing through her making it hard to think of anything else, but she needed to overcome this.

  They reached the door. The scholar’s hand touched the doorknob.

  Carth closed her eyes. She was not helpless, and he had not defeated her—not yet. She could still reach the shadows, and she could still reach the flame, though the connection was difficult with the pain searing through her.

  She could use the magic to suppress the pain, possibly even to heal herself. All she had to do was reach them.

  The connection was difficult, but it was not impossible. She had suffered pain before, and she had survived it. That was what she was: a survivor. She had power, she had magic, but she had survived things that should have killed her time and again.

  This man—this scholar—would not claim her.

  Carth breathed out.

  As she did, the shadows and the flame mixed together, creating something much like what Ras had used when he had first attacked her. It exploded from her, and the scholar staggered back, losing his grip on her arm.

  Carth clutched the broken arm against her. It hurt less than she had expected. She sent power spilling through the broken arm, stabilizing it with magic much as her mother had once stabilized others with her herbs.

  The pain receded enough that she could function.

  Anger surged through her. This was the man who had attempted to capture her, who would have done harm to her as well as others.

  Carth spun, kicking out with her left heel, driving towards his chest. He wasn’t able to block it, and he staggered back from her attack.

  With an angry stare, Carth approached. The magical explosion had injured him.

  A look of grim determination crossed his face. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small glass jar containing a white powder.

  Carth’s eyes widened as he reached inside it.

  “Yes. You recognize this, don’t you? We call this moon dust in my homeland.” He cocked his head to the side, the grin still plastered on his face. “Such a mystical name for something with such practical purposes. This is nothing more than a simple combination of plants. Mixed in the right combination, it steals away even the most powerful magical practitioner’s ability. As you have seen.”

  Carth backed away. “Why are you doing this?”

  “This? This is for me. There are too many with powers who exist in the world.”

  “So you intend to capture those with abilities?”

  “Only some. Those I take to study. It’s important, I think, to understand the source of their powers. Once I understand them, then I can defeat them. And that knowledge is valuable to the right buyer. Now that you reveal yourself, I have seen something like what you possess. You clearly come from the north. There they possess a strange shadow magic. I have seen that from some before. This other—this heat—I have not experienced before. I will study you. I will learn its secrets. Then I will understand how to defeat it.”

  Carth stood in the corner of the room, her arm weighing heavy, fire burning through it. A part of her hoped that her magic healed her as she
stood there. She needed to stall him and prevent him from using this moon dust against her. If she didn’t, she suspected he would disable her abilities. Then it would come down to hand-to-hand combat.

  Though she had trained with A’ras, she didn’t like her odds against him while injured. She had seen the way he had disabled her fairly easily.

  “I’m not the only one with this ability,” Carth said.

  Let them think that there were others who could come for her. The A’ras might remain in Nyaesh, but that didn’t mean they would always remain there. Then there were the descendants of Lashasn. She hoped to organize them and get them trained, but it would take time for them to gain much strength and skill. If someone developed a way to counteract their abilities before they mastered them, they would be defenseless.

  The scholar stalked towards her, holding a handful of the dust now.

  What could she do to defend herself? If he released the dust into the air, she could only hold her breath so long. Fighting him would be difficult if she couldn’t breathe.

  Was there another way?

  She still had her abilities. They hadn’t been suppressed yet.

  A plan began forming in her mind.

  The scholar stalked towards her, clearly believing that he had won. He brought his hands together, and the dust hung in the air like a white fog.

  “Breathe it in, little soldier of night. There’s nowhere for you to go.”

  Carth closed her eyes, her breath held. He was right. There was no place for her to go. But there was something she could do.

  Mixing the shadow and the flame together, she breathed out, much like what Ras had done when she had faced him. The combination of the two met the dust, and it began sizzling, crackling in the air. The moon dust exploded in the air and threw Chathem backward.

  That had been unexpected.

  Carth still didn’t breathe, but launched herself forward, reaching the scholar before he had a chance to recover. She rained blows down on his face. She wasn’t willing to kill him; she needed his knowledge.

  At first, he managed to withstand her punches, but she began imbuing them with the strength of the shadows. They made her stronger, and each punch came like stone.