Shadows of Blood

by L. E. Dereksen

  A boot stomped onto her back, nailing her into the dirt.

  “Enough is enough,” said a drawling voice. “Time you left your turn-coat nephew to me. And we’ll make sure he talks, say yeah? Make sure he tells all kinda’ stories, we will.”

  Her eyes started to glaze. She struggled to breathe, to get a mouthful of air, even if it was just to damn that bleeding bastard to the ten fires. Then there was a final bang. Tandra Yourk jerked one more time and lay still.

  Chapter Thirty

  Magellan Yourk

  Magellan Yourk ran. Ran for all he was worth. Ran like a coward, leaving his Aunt Tandra to die.

  She’d appeared so suddenly, out of nowhere! And hadn’t he hoped? Hoped fervently she’d follow him, expected it even?

  Aunt Tandra will find you. Aunt Tandra will save you. Yet it was selfish and petty, and now she was dying—because of him.

  His lungs were already burning when the shot came.

  The bullet ripped into his right thigh. He hardly had the breath to scream. He stumbled, crashed to the ground.

  Sea and Stone! He was on his feet again without thinking, everything bent towards escape, hobbling towards the cover of forest.

  Tandra was shouting. He risked a single glance over his shoulder, then wished he hadn’t. Two of the Terryn men were almost on him, guns raised. They could have shot him dead already.

  “Give it up, Yourk!” one of them hollered. He fired over Mag’s head, enough to rattle him. He fell. Then they were there, circling him, cutting off his escape.

  It was all over, Mag realized, and the sick twisting in his gut told him it wouldn’t end well.

  “Don’t shoot, don’t shoot!” he cried, throwing his arms into the air. Time to resort to words. “It’s not what you think, I swear.”

  “Save it,” the man snarled. “You’ll get your chance to talk, soon as we sort out what’s what.”

  There was a shot behind him. Mag spun, heart leaping into his throat. He watched Tandra fall. Then the man strolled up to her, utterly unhurried, easy as death, as if the whole world could wait for him.

  Mag knew that walk. His heart went cold. He strained for a moment in his aunt’s direction, body tense, desperate to do something, but there were two guns fixed on him. What could he do but watch as the man aimed his revolver straight at his aunt’s head and fired? The sound was deafening. And final.

  Mag stared. A part of him couldn’t believe what he’d just seen. Run! Run, Aunt Tan, he begged her. She couldn’t . . . he never thought she could actually . . .

  Tears were winding down his face. “Damn. Damn. Damn you.” He wasn’t sure if he cursed himself or the Terryns. He turned away, chest heaving.

  Mag, you fool! He had to run. He had to do something—or he knew what was next.

  He knew. He’d seen it before. What they did to traitors and spies.

  He waited. His heart beat every tick, counting back the remains of his freedom—or his life. Then he dove at the nearest pair of legs. The Terryn man staggered and cursed. Mag twisted. He yanked all his weight backwards, and they toppled together.

  Mag was on him. The second man bellowed in surprise, but couldn’t shoot with them tangled together.

  Mag scrambled for the gun. Wrestling, scuffling, twisting, he managed to flip the man, rolling with him, trapping him with his legs, his arms, pulling in opposite directions— there was a snap as the man’s shoulder popped loose. The Terryn screamed and the gun fell into Mag’s lap.

  The other raider fired as Mag twisted free, but Mag grabbed the man with the popped shoulder just in time, heaving him up like a shield. The bullet zipped through the side of the Terryn’s head. Blood shot in every direction.

  The body dropped on Mag, driving him back to the ground. He grunted and cursed, fumbling for a better grip on the stolen revolver.

  Struggling out from beneath the corpse was anything but graceful. He rolled to his knees, aimed—

  A shot cracked just before he could squeeze the trigger. Something slammed through his left elbow, and a second later, he felt the pain.

  His arm jerked in the wrong direction and wouldn’t respond. It just fell limp, fingers jumping as pain sliced through every nerve.

  “Move and I’ll shoot you again,” said that dreaded voice. “Though I’ll see to it you won’t die just yet.”

  Two revolvers were now aimed at him—and the one who’d shot him was only three paces away. Mag faced him, saw the cold, grey eyes, like chips of granite, the half-sneer. He could care less about his three dead men, now he had his one. Mag knew him, everybody knew him. The Contessa’s favourite bloodhound. Slaver, scoundrel, and executioner. Brit Garden.

  Mag began to shake. It wasn’t just fear, though gods above, he was scared. Everything coursing through him, the tension, the pain, the thought—that one terrifying thought he couldn’t quite drive from his mind. He was still holding the gun. If he took another shot, Garden wouldn’t hesitate. But if he took the right shot, they couldn’t take him alive.

  Before he could think better of it, he cocked the gun under his own chin. His hand was trembling so bad he thought he might squeeze the trigger by accident. At least it would make the choice for him. Either way. If Garden shot him now, the finger would twitch just enough to finish it.

  “Now, now,” Garden shook his head, like he was disappointed. “No need for drama, my dandy.”

  “Why the hell not?” Mag’s voice shook as bad as the rest of him. “You’re gonna make me look like Marty, I know it.”

  “Marty’s alive,” Garden said with a shrug. “He learned what’s what. Now he does what he’s told. You put that gun down, aye, answer a question or two, give us back what don’t belong to you, and who knows how this’ll end, yeah?”

  “Shit,” Mag spat. “I know. You know. No point in playing games.”

  “Straight to it, aye?” Garden smiled. “Smart lad. But look here, you’re young, with a pretty head on your shoulders. Damned be all I know, but my mistress took a fancy to you. A lot can happen, see, when a man’s alive.”

  Mag didn’t buy it. Didn’t buy it for a second. But it was working anyhow. What a dangerous thing hope was. Stupid impossible hope. His hand trembled. He hesitated. Gods damn him, but he didn’t want to die. He should have done it from the start. Just pulled the trigger and be done with it. Now he was losing his nerve. Garden saw it. Said nothing else. Just waited.

  Mag dropped the gun. Let it hit the dirt at his knees. Felt a bewildering flood of relief and terror all mixed into one.

  “That’s it.” Garden’s smile grew. “Now slide it to me, easy now. No point keeping temptation in arm’s reach.”

  Mag brushed the revolver one last time, then tossed it across the grass.

  “Wonderful!” The man snapped his fingers, pointing to the ground. “Down.”

  Mag stared at him. He knew what he wanted, but his body seemed unable to move. Now that his life was going to go on, he was all too aware of the bullet in his thigh and the shattered bone in his elbow, the blood running down his arm, dripping off the ends of his fingers.

  “You heard me, turnie. I said down. I want you kissing the dirt.”

  He swallowed. Turnie, turncoat, traitor, spy. Krunyn’s eye and Ajak, he’d made the wrong decision. Too late. Grinding his teeth together, he used his uninjured arm to lower himself down, right down, until his cheek brushed the grass.

  Then the other Terryn came up behind and grabbed both his wrists, jerking them behind his back, twisting Mag’s injured elbow. His scream cut off as he blacked out from the pain.

  When he came to, he tasted blood where he’d bit his tongue.

  “Gods . . . gods be,” he gasped. “There’s no need for—”

  “’Course there is.” Garden stomped close. Mag could smell the leather of his boot, just a handspan from his face. Then the toe jabbed him in the cheek, digging into the soft spot below his eye. “I said you’d live, so long as you sang alright. Didn’t say I’d make it easy, now di
d I?”

  Thin wiry cord wrapped around his wrists, biting into the skin, tied tight. There’d be no slipping out of these knots, leastwise not with his ruined elbow. Time to be strong, Mag. Time to be real strong. Aunt Tan was a survivor. She’d lived fifty-some years, doing gods know what, all over the Honan underworld and Manturian frontiers alike. He thought she’d take care of him. She always did, one way or another. But now she was gone, and Mag was on his own. Time to learn what that meant. Time to be a survivor too.

  Garden turned and started to walk away, not even looking behind him when he snapped his order. “Come, turnie.”

  The other Terryn didn’t lift a finger to help. Mag even waited a moment, breathless, until he felt a boot ram him in the ass.

  “Move,” the man growled.

  You’ve got to be joking. Mag gritted his teeth together, then pulled one leg in under him while he rolled over just a little onto his right shoulder. That meant the thigh with the bullet in it was going to have to bear his weight up. But it was that or the elbow, and right now, the elbow hurt more.

  “You coming?” Garden hollered.

  Mag spat blood into the ground. He’d finally pushed up onto his knees. “No problem!” he hollered back, then climbed the rest of the way. He spared a glance for the nearby Terryn corpse.

  “Friend of yours?” Mag sneered.

  “Say one more word and I’ll rip out your tongue,” the raider growled.

  Wouldn’t be able to say much, then, would I? he almost blurted out, but the look on the man’s face was a bit too eager. Maybe not now, but later, sure, once Garden had got all the information he wanted.

  So he just scowled and turned away, limping after his captor, trying to ignore the blinding pain in every step.

  Then he noticed something. Something no one else seemed to be bothered by: the place where his aunt’s body should have been was empty.

  He looked quickly away, in case they followed his gaze, but his heart started thumping with a wild idea. Impossible! He’d seen Garden shoot her. Seen it with his own eyes. But the simple fact of the matter was she’d been there . . . and now she wasn’t.

  Impossible—except it wasn’t. Mag had never told Tandra how the stone worked, but his aunt was a clever sort, and if she’d found it . . .

  Krunyn’s eye, he hardly dared believe it. Until you know better, his aunt always said, trust your eyes. So he walked on, as best he could, trying not to let a new, ridiculous hope beat in his heart. But gods be, maybe he’d get out of this yet.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Alutan Na-es

  Hyranna was close.

  Alutan could feel it as he ran: the Aktyr, the overwhelming strength of it. A demand for the world to bow, bend, and break. Alutan had sworn to be the one that stood in its way. The one who could break—and never die.

  And so he had.

  But this was different. This was Hyranna Elduna, Balduin’s own friend, little more than a child. In the throes of the Aktyr’s power, would she even recognize him? Would she lash out at him, as the Aktyr had done so many times before?

  Soon he would know the extent of the Aktyr’s hold on her. Great Tree, give me strength to help!

  As Alutan ran, he felt the presence of the Aktyr draw near, even as its strength waned. Whatever had happened was strong, yet it was already being brought under control. That gave him hope. Maybe Hyranna wasn’t as enslaved to it as he feared? Its presence had been subtle in Tellern.

  That was before she’d killed with it.

  His feet began to slow. He was close now. A thrill of fear ran through him. He would confront it again. Any moment, and he would see her. I can help you, he would say. As long as Hyranna herself wanted to be free. Then we can find Balduin together.

  Alutan heard a groan. He stopped. The Aktyr was close now—yet that hadn’t sounded like a girl. It had sounded like . . . like . . .

  He froze. An intuition shot through him. No. It couldn’t be! Yet sweat broke across his face. This was every nightmare, every foreboding, all the pain and regret of his life, bound to him.

  So why did his heart leap with a sudden, sickening hope?

  Alutan willed himself forward, and there, kneeling at the foot of a tree, coughing and retching, was a man.

  He was clothed in a faded Guardian’s robe, with a faded red Guardian’s sash around his waist. He had no shoes on his feet. He had no cloak or belt. No weapon. Wild black hair had been hacked short, then left to grow out in a shaggy mess. He looked unchanged from that day beneath the Dandyri, so very long ago.

  The man groaned and pressed his head against the tree. Blood dripped from his mouth, staining his chin. His shoulders shook.

  Pity and horror clutched at Alutan. He stared. It was him. After all these years, it was actually him—by the strength of the Aktyr, no doubt, by some dark desecration, by . . .

  Hyranna.

  His stomach lurched. No.

  “Where is she?” He stepped forward, dread coursing through him.

  The man’s shoulders tensed. His fingers tightened on the tree like claws.

  “Where is she?” Alutan pounced on him. “What have you done to her?” He seized the dirty robes, hurling the man to the ground.

  The Aktyr punched through him like a hammer.

  He’d almost forgotten the force of it: Seen and Unseen colliding in a single, violent rupture, bursting through space, coming from everywhere, nowhere, severing flesh and spirit with malicious glee.

  The light inside him was ready.

  Protective walls slammed up, even as the force drove Alutan off his feet. He spun. He cracked into the side of a tree, shuddering it from root to crown. Then he struck the ground. A wheezing cry burst from his lungs. The fire licked through him, burning away the internal damage—cracked bones, ruptured organs—knitting flesh to flesh.

  Alutan forced himself to his elbows, breathing hard.

  The man rose to a crouch. Dark eyes burned with recognition. That face—Alutan knew it beyond all doubt—ran through a dozen emotions. His face: Ishvandu ab’Admundi’s.

  For a terrible moment, Alutan thought he would attack again. The Unseen pulsed and writhed with the Aktyr, throbbing in its need to destroy, to unmake, to batter Alutan into dust. Yet as he watched, Ishvandu wrestled the Aktyr under control, slamming it away inside himself. Then with an abrupt, nauseating shift, it was gone.

  When Ishvandu finally spoke, his voice was raw and thick. “Kylan?”

  Alutan’s breath seized. The whole world contracted into that name, like an echo of another life, reaching back and back, before the darkness, before the long and wretched years of waiting, back, back—and there was hot sun and sand between his teeth and a heart swelling with young desires.

  Kylan, Kylan.

  And he had failed.

  Alutan fell back, feeling drained, limp. Without words.

  Ishvandu just shook his head, grimacing and wiping blood off his face. His hands shook.

  “You don’t change, do you?” he spat. “Couldn’t help yourself. Had to keep following me, didn’t you? Three hundred blasted years I’ve been dead, so they tell me, and what’s the first thing I see? You. Kulnethar ab’Ethanir, like a sand-shitting nightmare.”

  Alutan opened his mouth, unable to speak. His tongue felt heavy in his own mouth. Kylan. Kulnethar. Son of the High Elder. Crushed in the dungeons beneath Ne’adun, beneath the heavy years, beneath the darkness . . .

  “Sorry.” Ishvandu’s voice cracked. “Is that name a bit much? What are they calling you these days? Lel-na? Rosha? Maybe something a little less pretentious? Hyranna did mention an Alutan. Another healer. I suppose it was too much to hope it wouldn’t be you.”

  “Maker’s breath,” Alutan finally muttered. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

  “Me too.” Ishvandu swallowed, then turned over and threw up again. Blood came out, thick and clotted and stinking, like a fetid corpse. He gagged and grimaced. His face was a sickly pallor. “Ugh. I think I must have
died or something.”

  He gave a weak, groaning chuckle, but it vanished when he met Alutan’s eye.

  “Where is Hyranna?” Alutan demanded.

  “I didn’t ask her to find me.” He scowled. “The Aktyr took her. There was nothing I could do.”

  Alutan groaned. “Great Tree, what did you do? What—? Tell me you didn’t . . .”

  Ishvandu waved back in the direction he’d come. “Go see for yourself. Isn’t that what you do? Follow me around and clean up? Fix what the Aktyr breaks?” A rictus grin spread across his face. It was hurting and broken.

  “You killed her,” Alutan breathed.

  “Not exactly . . .”

  “Ishvandu!”

  “The Aktyr can’t have two masters.”

  “Maker save me . . .”

  Ishvandu snarled as he rose. “Oh, don’t be so disgustingly self-righteous! Trust me, you said. Trust me. But who lured me into that death-trap? Who promised to hear me out? You were supposed to be my friend and you betrayed me!”

  Alutan stared. “I betrayed you?”

  “Yes! I came to you in trust. I came to you. And if you’d listened, none of this would have happened.” Ishvandu threw out his arms. “You think I wanted this? Any of this? The Realms are breaking, Kulnethar ab’Ethanir—”

  “And whose fault is that?”

  “Ours!” he snapped. “Mine and yours and all those blasted Kyr’amanu, from the Elders who broke the Pillar right up to every weak sot in Shyandar who could think of nothing more inventive to do than die.”

  “Save me, I can’t believe I’m having this conversation. No. No, I refuse—”

  “I can fix it!” Ishvandu shouted, and the Aktyr burst from him in a concussion of Unseen force, rocking the ground, spreading out from him.

  A crack snaked between his feet.

  “Stop!” Alutan cried, leaping up. “Just stop, Ishvandu. Stop this foolishness and look what—”

  Ishvandu laughed. “Cracks. Cracks in the Realms. Yes. And this won’t be the last.” He took a step forward, and the crack followed. “The Aktyr is strong, Kulnethar. Don’t you see? If I wanted to unmake worlds I could do it here and now. But that’s not my intention, is it? And if you had stopped to listen to me before you killed me, you might have realized that. But no. You knew so much. You knew what you had to do to get your vengeance. And with your own flawed judgment you might have doomed us all. Yl’avah’s blasted might, Kylan, what have you done since then? Name one single good thing you’ve done in your three hundred years of useless waiting—and now? Now it might be too late.”