The Truth of Shadows

by Jacob Peppers

  The big man seemed to hesitate, then sighed. “Follow me.”

  He led them through the castle, down to what Alesh took to be a wine cellar. Past rows and rows of barrels stacked on end, until they reached a stone wall with two unlit torches mounted on brackets. Alesh was just about to ask what they were supposed to do now when the big man reached out and grabbed one of the torches, pulling it down. There was a grating sound, like stone sliding against stone, and the next thing he knew, the wall—which had looked perfectly solid—slid away to reveal a doorway.

  Alesh blinked. It seemed there was no end to the skill Larin had with building things with his hands. He shook his head in wonder. “Evertorches. Walls that slide into themselves, booby traps. If you would have shared some of your knowledge…”

  “Then people would have found a way to use it to kill each other,” Larin snapped. “It’s what they do, after all.”

  Considering that there was an army of soldiers trying to murder him and his friends, Alesh didn’t think now was the time to disagree. Instead, he remained silent as the big man reached over and grabbed a lantern from where it sat on a nearby barrel and flipped a switch. Light blossomed in it, clear, almost white light.

  “How did you do that?” Rion said. “Without flint or—”

  “You want to get a lesson, or you looking to survive the night?” the giant demanded, and Rion went silent. The big man watched him for another moment then grunted in satisfaction. “This way.” He led them through the opening into a long, dark tunnel. Sandstone walls pressed in on either side. Larin reached up and pulled a lever embedded in the wall, and the wall slid shut behind them.

  The big man continued further down the tunnel, the only light that of the lantern he carried, and it was all Alesh could do to follow. They were underground, in tunnels carved out of the earth, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that, at any moment, the ceiling—and the thousands of pounds of earth and sand on top of it—would come crashing down. Judging by the ragged breathing of his companions, he wasn’t the only one who’d had the thought. Only Sonya seemed unaffected, following the giant easily enough, an amazed smile on her face as if she had just discovered some magical world.

  The big man drew a long stick like a taper from his tunic then ran it against the wall. There was a hiss and suddenly flame blossomed at the end of it. That done, he glanced back at the way they’d come, heaved a sigh, and pressed the open flame against a thin line of rope running so perfectly between the cracks in the stone that Alesh hadn’t noticed it.

  Another hiss as the rope caught, and they all tensed, expecting an explosion, but nothing happened, and they looked to Larin. “What do we do now?” Alesh asked.

  The big man grinned. “I’d vote for run, myself. According to my calculations, these tunnels ought to hold after the explosion—it’s why I made them, after all—but, it ain’t the sort of thing a man can test, is it?”

  And that was enough for the lot of them. They were off and running, sprinting down the hallways, the lantern the big man held swaying in the darkness as they traveled through the belly of the earth. Minutes later, there was a distant rumble followed by an impossibly loud thunder of sound. The walls shook, raining dust and small pieces of rock around them, and they all froze, tensing as they expected the tunnels to collapse on top of them.

  But finally, the shaking, the thundering stopped, and they all breathed a heavy sigh of relief in unison. “Well,” Larin said, clearly pleased, “it worked.”

  Alesh didn’t love how surprised the man sounded, but didn’t bother saying anything. Sonya was standing beside him, smiling. She glanced at Marta who gave her an encouraging nod before turning back to Alesh. “I’ve got three feet,” she pronounced, her expression serious.

  Alesh frowned, and they all turned to stare back at Marta who winced and avoided their eyes. “What? Comes in handy to know how to lie, sometimes. Anyway,” she muttered to Sonya, “we’ll work on it.” Alesh couldn’t help but laugh. Soon they were all laughing at the ridiculousness of it all, at the fact that, despite everything, they were still alive.

  Sonya offered Alesh her small hand, and he took it. Then they began down the tunnels once more, and he found that he felt better than he had in days. The darkness that had been creeping through him, that had threatened to consume him entirely, was not gone, not completely, but it was receding. And as for the tunnels they traveled, for where they might lead, he didn’t worry. Perhaps they would lead into daylight, perhaps into darkness, but that, too, did not matter, for Alesh and the others had their own light. They carried it with them.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chunks of rock bigger than a wagon flew past the Broken, and he lunged from side to side, narrowly avoiding the debris hurtling at him and the soldiers, dodging the big pieces, and knocking the small ones away with his god-gifted weapon. It seemed to go on forever, that deafening, deadly explosion—then finally it was over, and the Broken stood with only minor scratches and abrasions.

  Many of the men who had been near him had not been so lucky. Dozens, perhaps as many as a hundred men lay on the ground, writhing in pain or not moving at all. The force of the exploding castle had seemed to go out in every direction, and he did not doubt that there were more casualties among the troops who had been spread out, encircling it.

  “Sir? What do we do?”

  The Broken turned to see a Redeemer approaching. The man was unscathed, proof that he’d been far enough away from the blast to avoid the worst of it. The Broken stared thoughtfully down at his hand. The wound he’d taken had stopped bleeding, but it was still coated in dried blood. Then he looked back up at the castle, little left of it now but the foundation stones, the rest of it scattered as far as he could see. “We find them.”

  “But…sir, they’re dead, surely. No one could survive that.”

  “No,” the Broken said, shaking his head slowly. “They live yet. Trust me,” he added, studying the ruins. “I know something of death.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Kale Leandrian awoke with a choked gasp, and it was some time before he got his ragged breathing under control. He was drenched in sweat. For the last week or more, he had not felt well, not well at all. He’d spent the days with his stomach churning dangerously, his skin fevered, seeming to writhe with whatever sickness infected him. He had sent for healers, but they had told him it was only a passing illness, one that would be gone in another few days. He had called on the last over a week ago. Since then, he had not seen another, spending his days instead cloistered inside his quarters, being seen to by the Proof.

  The rash had spread—he was not sure how much, as he had broken the last mirror days ago, and dared not send for another. But he could see it on his hands now, and on his chest when he removed his shirt. Yet even that wasn’t the worst of it. The worst was the dreams that plagued him each night, left him tossing and turning, moaning with fear, so that he was never able to get any rest. Red dreams. Dreams of darkness and blood and screams in the night, dreams of fangs and claws and the taste of flesh. Even his very thoughts, upon waking, felt strange, alien, as if they didn’t belong to him at all but some animal, some…beast.

  His senses too, had changed, perhaps as some symptom of the sickness. His hearing, his sense of smell, all had become more acute, so strong, in fact, that he could smell the guards stationed outside his quarters, could hear their quiet whispers, asking after each other’s families, talking about the weather. The smell of them so strong he could almost…taste it.

  Today, though, he felt better. Stronger. And he thought that whatever sickness had possessed him was finally beginning to depart. He did not even feel the itch that normally plagued him, though he had begun taking the shadow man’s ointment several times a day now, and he was long due for his next dose.

  “How do you feel, my lord?”

  Kale turned and saw the shadow man standing in the corner. He was there now, always there, and though no lamp was lit, Kale could see him plai
nly. “I think…I think I am getting better.”

  “Yes,” the shadow said. “You are. You have done well, Kale Leandrian, and our goddess is pleased.”

  “Done well?” Kale asked. “But I’ve done nothing.”

  “Oh, but you have,” the Proof insisted. “Still, you need not take my word for our goddess’s pleasure. Would you speak to her, Kale Leandrian? Would you speak to your goddess?”

  Kale hesitated. There was something strange, almost eager in the shadow’s voice that he did not like, as if the man knew something he didn’t. “Very well,” he managed.

  The man picked up a cloth-covered bundle from where it sat against the wall and walked toward Kale. He paused, holding it in front of Kale from a foot away, then removed the cloth and tossed it to the side. Kale winced, seeing that it was a mirror, and afraid of what he might find reflected in its surface. But he needn’t have been afraid. The mirror—if indeed that’s what it was—was clouded, its surface showing nothing but darkness.

  “There is a flaw—” he began, then cut off as that darkness within the mirror began to shift like storm clouds.

  A moment later, a voice came from within it. “Ah, Chosen Leandrian,” it said, a woman’s voice, one full of power, and he knew at once that he listened to the voice of his goddess. “You have done well.”

  “Done, Mistress?” Kale asked, forcing the words out of his suddenly dry throat.

  “Indeed. You have asked for power, Kale Leandrian, and I have given it to you. Can you feel it? Your new strength?”

  Kale hesitated. But the truth was, he could feel it. His body felt more alive, more energized than he ever remembered. He felt stronger, faster, and, of course, there were his senses, far greater than they ever had been. “Yes, Goddess,” he said. “I…I feel it. But…I think, perhaps, something is wrong. I have been having strange dreams.”

  Chuckling from the mirror, loud and pleased. “Red dreams, Chosen?” Shira asked. “Blood dreams? Tell me, Kale, have you heard of the leader of the nightlings, the one slain by Olliman?”

  Kale nodded slowly, surprised at the change of topic. “Argush. They called him King Argush.”

  “So they did,” the goddess replied, the storm clouds swirling in the mirror’s surface in an entrancing, almost hypnotic way. “Yet, for all their supposed knowledge, the scholars who wrote of those events were fools.”

  Kale could hardly breathe, let alone answer, so consumed was he by the swirling clouds in the mirror, ones that, he felt if he looked closely enough, would form some pattern, some shape he could understand. “Fools, Mistress?”

  “Indeed,” the Goddess of the Wilds answered, “for you see, Chosen, Argush is not a name—it never was. It is a title.”

  “Title?” Kale said, struggling to order his chaotic thoughts.

  “Just so. A word from a tongue not spoken in hundreds of years. Would you like to know what it means?”

  “Y-yes, Mistress.”

  Laughter again, ringing like thunder. “It means ‘death of the light,’ Chosen. It was the title I gave him, my most trusted servant, he who I tasked with leading my army, the one I created. And it is now the title I give to you.”

  “Your…army?” Kale asked.

  “Yes. My children. You know them as nightlings, others as the Bane.”

  Kale’s breath caught in his throat, and his heart began to hammer in his chest. “But…Mistress, forgive me, do you mean…do you mean to say that you made the nightwalkers?”

  Laughter again, so loud and piercing to his newfound senses, that Kale grunted in agony, and the next thing he knew he had collapsed to his knees. “Yes, Argush,” she murmured. “They are mine. Just as you are mine. They serve, just as you will serve.”

  The clouds shifted then, seeming to part, and suddenly the mirror was just a mirror. And in its surface, Kale saw a creature staring back at him. Gray, mottled skin like scales on its face, and crimson eyes, glowing in the darkness. But there was something of that creature he recognized, something…familiar. He reached a hand to his face, his breathing ragged and shallow, and the creature did the same. But the hand was not a hand at all—it was a claw.

  Understanding came then and with it, terror. Kale Leandrian, once son to the wealthiest noble in Ilrika, once apprentice to Chosen Olliman, screamed. He screamed, and he screamed. The sound of it carried through the castle. And to those guards outside his quarters, to those servants going about their daily tasks, it did not sound like a man’s scream at all, not truly. It sounded like a howl.

  The shadow man pulled his hood away, revealing his face for the first time, and it was not a man’s face at all, but that of a beast, its amber eyes glowing with amusement as it spread its fangs into a wide, bestial grin.

  Would you like to know a secret, Argush? the goddess’s voice came, this time not from the mirror, but from within Kale’s head.

  The truth of shadows, Lord Argush, is that they are not born.

  They are made.

  Come say hello!

  Well, dear reader, we have come to the end of The Truth of Shadows. I hope you enjoyed spending time with Alesh, Katherine, and Rion. The third book of The Nightfall Wars will be released soon. While you wait, you can get started on a new series by checking out A Sellsword’s Compassion, Book One of The Seven Virtues.

  If you’ve enjoyed The Truth of Shadows, I would really appreciate you taking a moment to leave an honest review. They make a huge difference, and there are very few things better as a writer to hear from readers. You can leave a review by clicking the appropriate link below:

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  If you’d like to reach out and chat, you can email me at JacobPeppersAuthor@gmail.com or visit my website.

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  About the Author

  Jacob Peppers lives in Georgia with his wife and three dogs. He is an avid reader and writer and when he’s not exploring the worlds of others, he’s creating his own. His short fiction has been published in various markets, and his short story, “The Lies of Autumn,” was a finalist for the 2013 Eric Hoffer Award for Short Prose. He is also the author of A Sellsword’s Compassion and The Silent Blade.

  Note from the Author

  Dear Reader,

  This is the end of The Truth of Shadows. I hope you enjoyed your time with Alesh, Katherine, Rion, and all the others. Alesh and his companions have evaded The Broken and those who sought their death—at least for now. Their enemies grow greater by the day, and there is no telling what the future might hold.

  Yes, this part of the journey is over, but there is much more to come. The road ahead lies in shadow and light both, and there is no way to know where it might take us. The forces are gathering, those of the Dark and the Light, and in what is coming, gods and mortals alike will fall. Will our heroes be enough, or will they be swept under the rising tide?

  Perhaps the fires of Alesh’s anger will not burn bright enough to cleanse the plague that has come upon us. It is possible that, soon, Katherine’s harp will play a funeral dirge, and her voice will sing a song of mourning, of loss. And I fear that even Rion’s luck may not be enough to see us through.

  I cannot promise that all those who we have come to know will survive the coming storm—in truth, I cannot promise that any of them will. I can only assure you that, whatever fates awaits them—whatever fate awaits us—we will meet it together.

  I’d like to take a moment, before I say goodbye, to thank all those beta-readers without whom this book would have been much worse. You are a breed all your own, and I cannot thank you enough. Thanks also to my wife
—after all, someone has to deal with the day-to-day tasks of this world while I go gallivanting in fictional ones.

  Thank you for coming on this journey with me. For now, rest while you can. There are dark days ahead. But, just maybe, we will find our way through.

  We’ll speak again soon,

  Jacob Peppers