If they couldn’t, she would go without until the following evening.
She didn’t tell him that, just pulled a third of the loaf she’d set aside for the next night’s meal from the pack and passed it to Aisha. As she did, Scruff lifted his head; it was a race to beat the pup to what remained.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” Marsh told him, stuffing the loaf farther into the pack and pulling the top closed. “We’ll need that tomorrow.”
The dog nudged the bag and whined, but after Marsh pushed him away from the top of it, he settled back to the floor. When she was sure he’d given up his fight, Marsh tipped the pack back on its side, this time with the top close to where she was sitting, and the base closest the pup. Somehow, she doubted he’d eat his way through the package Kearick wanted her to deliver, and she’d notice if he tried to get at it through the top.
Satisfied the bread would be safe, she settled down, leaning on the pack. The children curled up under the blanket she’d pulled out earlier. It didn’t take Scruffknuckle long to make his way over to where they were lying and worm his way between them. His contented sigh made her smile, and she stared at nothing until sleep overcame her.
It was still early when she woke, and it was quiet. Remembering the voices and footsteps she’d heard the night before, Marsh shifted the pack carefully away from the opening to their camp and listened to the silence in the corridor beyond. She started when she heard a scrape behind her, relaxing as Tamlin settled beside her.
“Feeling okay?” she asked.
“Still tired,” he said. “You think that settlement is far away?”
“Way they were talking last night,” Marsh answered, “I thought it was pretty close.”
“Think you can find your own way in?”
“I was just going to follow the tunnel,” Marsh told him, and he sighed.
“There’s at least one more turn,” he said, “and you should know it’s not Ruins Hall, but somewhere outside it. Maybe a waystation for explorers.”
“Seekers?”
“Yes. Them too.”
“How do you do it?”
She felt him shift, his clothing rustling against the stone, and glanced toward him.
“I ask the shadows.”
“Like Aisha asks the rocks?”
“Sort of.”
It would be a useful skill, but Marsh had never shown any talent for magic. Tamlin didn’t know that, though.
“I could teach you.” Marsh stared at him and he continued, “It’s like you talking to the hoshkat.”
She felt her eyes widen. Now, why in all the Shades did he think she’d done that? She’d just been hoping the kat would see the implications of how she’d been standing. The rest had been wishful thinking. Tamlin studied her face, and his eyes grew wide with surprise.
“You didn’t know you were really talking to the kat?” he asked, his voice rising in pitch. “Truly?”
“What makes you think I did?”
“You talked about it having kits. Only way you would have known was if you’d been inside its head. I heard what you said. You gave it your word for its life and asked its word for ours. Hoshkats never end a hunt without a kill, but this one left. You talked to it.”
“But I can’t use magic,” Marsh protested. “I’ve tried. I just can’t.”
“Look,” Tamlin replied, “there are stories that say anyone can use the magic—and I can’t speak to the shadows today. I don’t have enough energy to do it right. I’m tired, and you need your hands free in case we need your sword. You don’t need to be carrying me, which is what will happen if I use any more magic before I have a proper meal. We need you to try.”
“Why can’t Aisha do it?”
“Because she’s too little,” Tamlin told her, “and she’s heavy. You don’t want to be carrying her any more than you want to be carrying me.”
Marsh looked back out into the corridor as she thought about it. He was right about her not wanting to carry either of them, and right about her sword arm, too. But the location of the nearest settlement wasn’t the only thing she needed.
“Can the shadows tell me where those men are?”
“The ones from last night?”
“Oui. I don’t want them catching up with us and realizing it was you and Aysh they heard last night.”
“Just ask.”
“How?”
“How did you ask the kat?”
“I didn’t think I had. I was just wishing very hard.”
He pressed his lips together and frowned.
“I don’t do it that way,” he explained. “I picture what I’m looking for and ask the shadows to help me find it. For the settlement, I think of all the people I’m trying to find, and it feels like I’m being pulled toward them.”
Marsh wondered what would happen if there were two tunnels that would take him where he wanted to go but decided not to complicate matters.
“Give me a minute,” she said. “I’ll need to practice. Why don’t you and Aisha share the last of the bread with Scruff?”
“What about you? You’re going to need to eat when you’re done.”
Would she? Marsh didn’t remember feeling particularly hungry when she’d finished talking to the kat.
Of course, that could be because she’d felt too relieved at being allowed to live, which was not something she wanted to think about.
“I’ll be fine. You go eat,” she said, and Tamlin didn’t need to be told twice. He slithered back into the hollow, dragging her pack around until he could undo the top.
Marsh watched as he pulled out the bread, smiling as the pup bounded out from under the blankets and had to be pushed away. In the end, Aisha wrapped her arms around its neck until Tamlin was ready to give it its share, and then she let it go so she could take hers. Once they’d settled to their meals, Marsh closed her eyes.
Talk to the shadows, right?
Well, first she was going to have to find herself some shadows. That shouldn’t be too hard, given that she was surrounded by them. Taking a deep breath, she thought about the shadows, about how they were everywhere and touched everything, how they might feel against her skin, and how everything the shadows knew, she could know—because they were connected.
They were connected.
All she had to do was pull the knowledge through them. The men from last night had been drawn from their camp by the sound of the children laughing, so they weren’t too far away. The same shadows that touched her would be touching them, somewhere in the caverns.
“Where?” she whispered, the word coming out on a single breath. “Where?”
She thought of the direction the footsteps had taken, of where the voice had been when it said “Easy” and then “Steady” and searched the shadows in that direction.
“Show me where,” she requested, and opened her eyes so she could slip out and stand straight in the shadows along the tunnel walls.
“Where?” she repeated, stretching a hand out into the dark and feeling the threads that ran through the shadows and connected everything they touched.
There!
It was as though the shadow vibrated under her fingers and all she had to do was follow it.
5
Exploration and Introductions
Marchant found it easy to draw on the thread of shadow, pulling in the information it was connected to. The men had camped not very far from where she, Tamlin, and Aisha had emerged from the last tunnel. Back then, they’d been relieved to find a broader path to travel down, and Marsh had held secret hopes that Ruins Hall wasn’t far away. Tamlin’s guidance had taken them away from where the men had set themselves up, a hundred yards down a side tunnel that branched off the main corridor in the opposite direction from the one they’d taken.
She continued to think about where the men were, asking what their camp looked like and discovering that they’d been lucky enough to find a small self-contained grotto with water seeping through the wall at one end and pooling i
n a deep hollow. When she pulled the information back, she realized the campsite was empty.
Where were the men?
The thread could not answer that, so Marsh stopped pulling on it. It had given her what it knew, but it couldn’t give her what it didn’t have. She let it go.
“Where are they?” she asked, whispering to the shadows, her voice a soft echo in her ears.
It was hard to relax, not opening her eyes to make sure they weren’t already creeping up on her and the kids, but she managed it. Taking a deep breath, Marsh re-focused on the shadows, feeling the glide of them over her skin, the touch of their fingers on her face.
“Show me where they’ve gone,” she said, wanting their reassurance that the strangers she’d heard outside the hollow were well and truly gone. Dropping into the patois of her parents, she tried again. “S'il vous plaît. Montre moi.”
Please. Show me.
As if the words could open doors, she knew where the men had gone. Not far, but farther than their camp, and not alone. The shadows showed them in the company of others. How many was not relevant; it was not a question she’d asked. Where? Well, heading away down the side tunnel—and at a lot slower pace than they’d moved the night before.
Marsh watched them go, without seeing them. She felt their presences fade farther along the strands that linked them through the dark—and she breathed a sigh of relief.
“Merci,” she whispered, then switched back to Traders’ Common. “Now, show me the town. Show me Ruins Hall.”
At first, the shadows responded, different threads tweaking against her skin, but when she mentioned Ruins Hall, all pressure stopped, as though “town” and “Ruins Hall” were two different things. Marsh paused.
“The town, then,” she said, clarifying when several different threads responded at once. “The nearest town.”
Well, that was easier. A single thread maintained its pressure, and Marsh reached out to draw the knowledge through it. She felt like a fisherman taking knowledge from the dark; chasing something specific, but not knowing exactly what would come back on the line.
The town was there. It was small, and she wondered how many people were in it. Another line in the shadows wound around the first, bringing her the answer. Not many—and nowhere near as many as those who traveled with the men from the night before. For a minute, Marsh thought about taking the children back down the tunnel so they could join the men and whoever was with them, but she didn’t like the fact they were so far away from Ruins Hall and using routes that led to nowhere she could think of.
That thought made her pause, and she stopped to consider it.
Perhaps she’d forgotten one of the four towns Kearick had business in?
Slowly letting the shadows slip from her mind, Marsh went over the routes she’d traveled and the ones she’d memorized, and the answer was still no. The men were moving along paths she didn’t know; paths that didn’t exist on any of Kearick’s maps and didn’t lead to any of the four towns that made up her world.
It left her feeling strangely unsettled.
Why were there so many traveling with them, then? Where had all the people come from, and where were they going? She opened her eyes, and fatigue rolled over her like a wave.
“What the f—” She cut the word short as she heard movement behind her and remembered the kids and the dog.
“What?” she asked, trying to hide the tiredness behind that one curt word.
She looked down to see Aisha standing beside her, her small arm holding up the last of the loaf of bread. Behind her came the skitter of claws and a frustrated whimper as Scruff tried to join them.
“You need ta eat.” The girl eyed her doubtfully. “And maybe to sit down.”
Marsh took the bread as Tamlin gave a short cry of frustration and Scruff shot out from under the overhang in a flurry of paws and fur. He barreled past them in a blur before skidding to a halt and coming back to look up at Marsh. He eyed her chunk of bread and gave a small, whining wuff.
Marsh laughed at him.
“I think I’ll stand while I eat this,” she told Aisha, watching the pup.
The pup did not return her gaze but kept his large golden eyes fixed firmly on her food.
“Not a hope in all the shadows,” Marsh told him and took a large bite.
The pup gave a grumbling wuff and continued to sit, watching, until all the bread was gone.
More sounds came from under the ledge and then Tamlin emerged, dragging her pack.
“So,” he said. “We going? You know the way, right?”
Marsh glanced at him as Aisha handed her the water flask.
“Oui,” Marsh said, taking a long swallow and capping the flask before she pushed off the wall.
She was still tired, far more tired than she should have been from the past two days’ walking. When she reached out to take the pack from him, he shook his head.
“Nah. You look like you might fall over. I’ll carry it.”
Much as she wanted to, Marsh didn’t argue. The kid had a point. She not only looked like she might fall over, she felt like it. Tamlin narrowed his eyes.
“We could go later,” he said, but Marsh shook her head.
“It’s not that far,” she told him, hoping she’d judged the shadows right.
“You sure you remember the way?”
Marsh reached out and ruffled his hair.
“I remember the way. It’s part of what I do as a courier. The shadows showed me where to go, just like a map, and I remember.”
She didn’t add that this was a really good thing, because she wasn’t going to be asking the shadows any questions until she’d slept—and maybe not even then. Tamlin didn’t ask her anything else, and Marsh reached out to take Aisha’s hand. The three of them headed down the tunnel away from the hollow and the much larger company of people moving through the dark.
Marsh wanted to ask someone about that, but the kids weren’t that someone. For one thing, they probably wouldn’t know, and, for another, she didn’t want to worry them. They might know more about talking to the shadows and the rocks and whatever, but they were still just kids. She was supposed to be looking after them, not the other way around.
Marsh led them along the tunnel, relieved when it opened into a much larger cavern. The walls rose around them to a ceiling that vanished into the dark, and Marsh wondered if they’d crossed into another portion of the ruins or just found one of the many giant spaces that existed below the surface. The tumbled boulders and stones that had littered the passage gave way to much larger rocks, and then the more angular shapes that answered her question.
This was another of the great spaces left behind by the ancients, but one in which stalagmites and stalactites grew and descended as the natural world slowly reclaimed the ground. Marsh took a deep breath, drawing in the slightly musty odor of fungi, and the earthier scent of cattle and mules. Water, too.
She took another breath, savoring the clean, slightly sharp smell of fresh water, and kept moving forward. All she wanted to do was sleep, and that wasn’t possible until she was sure the children were safe. She kept walking, relieved when the tumble of rubble and debris gave way to the faintest thread of a path that led to a much wider trail.
Looking both ways along the trail, Marsh saw that one end of it vanished into a squared off entrance in the tunnel wall, while the other rounded a pillar of stone. Both sides of the trail were lined by glows, and she felt the tension ease inside her. Glows. Not many, but enough that the shadow monsters would be deterred.
Marsh turned away from the cavern exit, hoping to find the settlement just around the pillar. She was disappointed, but not by much. The walls of a waystation formed a square outline against the lighter cavern walls beyond. Well before it, though, there stood the much lower and simpler outlines of a stone farmhouse.
“We’ll stop there,” Marsh said. “See if I can pay for a night of sleep.”
“You look like you need two nights,” Tamli
n offered, and Aisha giggled.
“Lots of nights,” the girl added, “lots and lots and lots and lots.”
“Thanks for that, kid,” Marsh told her, but her voice creaked with tiredness and her body ached, so she didn’t argue. She just hoped the farmers wouldn’t think she was sick and turn her away.
Even as she thought it, something big bounded out of the main building, baying as it came toward them.
“Great,” Marsh muttered as a familiar ball of fur bounded past her on a collision course, yapping fiercely.
“Scruffknuckle!” Aisha cried, tearing her hand free of Marsh’s grasp and racing after the pup.
“Aysh!” Tamlin took off after his sister.
“Well, Shadow’s Heart,” Marsh muttered, but couldn’t find the energy to pursue any of them.
Instead, she made herself keep moving as fast as she could lift her feet without losing her balance. She figured once she hit the ground, she wouldn’t be getting up again. Ahead of her, Tamlin managed to grab his sister and hold onto her despite her best efforts to grab the pup. Scruffknuckle, for his part, had planted himself firmly between Aisha and the bigger dog and was barking as fiercely as any puppy.
The farm dog had stopped and was staring at him, and then, as Marsh watched, it closed the distance between them, stretched out a paw, and set it squarely between the pup’s shoulder blades. Scruff twisted beneath it, snapping at the big dog’s ankle, as it pressed him to the cavern floor.
Scruff yelped and Aisha shrieked, and the dog raised its head and looked at the girl. Seeing that neither she nor the boy was trying to move toward him, he looked past them to where Marsh was walking up the drive. He didn’t move, ignoring the squirming puppy beneath his paw and both children as he waited for Marsh to reach him.
“Hey, pup,” Marsh greeted him as she approached. “We mean no harm. We just need somewhere to sleep.”
She didn’t stop, and he growled.
“Give it a break, dog,” she said, sounding as tired as she felt. “Why don’t you go tell someone we’re here and do something useful for a change.”
Trading into Shadow (The Magic Beneath Paris Book 1) Page 4
