Shadows of Blood

by L. E. Dereksen

  And yet, she waited.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Alutan Na-es

  Alutan crouched at the girl’s side. Outwardly, he was as a calm as a still pool, but his heart was racing. Hyranna . . . Hyranna, what has he done to you?

  It was happening all over again. He should never have left Elamori and his purpose there: to protect the red tree and the thing it harboured. Why hadn’t he listened to Andalina?

  He could feel Hyranna’s frailty. She was dying, so near death it made no difference. The Manturian woman was right. It was too late.

  Familiar despair threatened the edges of his mind. The dark, and the waiting, and the pain . . .

  “No,” he said, as another part of him reared up in defiance: the man from before the darkness. He refused to let this be for nothing. He wouldn’t let that thing win. Not this time.

  He took the girl in his arms. She was limp and cold. Her face was broken, her body drained to nothing. But it was her mind that had been ruined. He could feel the deep, rending scars. The Aktyr had coiled its way inside her, destroying her from the inside out, binding itself to her, body and mind and spirit.

  In ignorance, perhaps, she had taken it. And it had used her. She’d become what it needed, and not entirely against her will. He could see the places in her mind where she had moved with the Aktyr, even shaped it, perhaps thinking she was acting for her own good. All the while, it had burrowed deeper, twisting itself through her like an invasive weed until there was no place it wasn’t.

  Then the Aktyr’s master had taken back the shard that controlled it. The separation was doomed to destroy her, ripping out everything the emptiness had touched.

  Alutan’s eyes burned with anger. But this was his purpose. Where the Aktyr sought death, he brought life. Where it tore down, he would restore. There was no ambiguity here. If anyone could save Hyranna, it was he.

  Still cradling her in his arms, he bent over her. The Aktyr was not the only power at work. “Help her,” he whispered. “I know I’ve failed, but . . .”

  No more words would come. Nothing was needed. The fire opened inside him—not with violence, but in affirmation. It swept through them both. In its light, all Realms were whole— Seen, Unseen, and Seeing—complete, purposeful.

  He felt the gaping wounds in her mind start to close, drawn back together with invisible threads; he felt the bones of her body shift, her heart stir and beat with new life. Then her lungs opened, the choking fluid was burned away, her chest heaved, and a gasp of breath rushed into her.

  “Krunyn’s eye!” cried the Manturian. She stared in shock for a moment, then holstered her gun, dropped to the girl’s side, and seized her hand, face bright with new hope.

  “That’s it, child!” she said in Imo’ani. “Breathe!”

  Hyranna was trying. Alutan could feel her body fighting, even while her head lolled back, unconscious. She was coughing and gasping, her heart beating strong, chest pumping up and down.

  The Northwoman gazed up at him. “What did you do? It’s impos—”

  “E’tuah!” Hyranna cried in a cracked voice. Her body jerked. Alutan gripped her, while a chill stole across his skin. He had heard that name before. E’tuah. E’tuah. Then Hyranna’s eyes fluttered opened, and he found himself staring into orbs that were utterly black.

  Horror seized him: sudden, overwhelming panic. The Aktyr wasn’t gone. It was still bound to her, still destroying her.

  And then he understood. It wouldn’t truly leave her until she was dead. It hadn’t been ripped out. It was shredding apart her mind of its own volition.

  Hopeless. Failed again, again, again . . .

  “No!” he cried, this time in furious protest. “You won’t have her! Hyranna, listen to me, do you hear me?”

  She was gasping, over and over again like she couldn’t breathe. Her free hand flailed, found Alutan’s cloak and grabbed, pulling with white knuckles. He could feel the strength in that grasp.

  See? the Aktyr hissed, as it sought to drag him down. See? You cannot win. Weak. Weak. Weak.

  “Gods be, what’s happening?” the woman demanded. “You started this, do something!”

  Hyranna let out a keening wail. Her back arched, and she tried to twist out of Alutan’s grasp. It was an unearthly sound. Like—

  He leapt to his feet, tearing himself away from that thing. Fear gripped him. He was losing her. There was no way to destroy the Aktyr itself. He had tried before. Tried and failed.

  “Where are you going?” demanded the woman, while Hyranna kicked and struggled.

  “Hold her.”

  “But what are you doing?”

  “I said hold her.” Alutan ignored the outrage in the woman’s voice. He paced. Nervous energy ripped through him, palms slick, eyes burning. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t.

  But he had to. It was that or give in: admit defeat from the very outset. He took three deliberate steps. Stopped, turned, and paced back. One, two, three. Then again.

  “Never act out of fear. You promised yourself. You promised him. You promised the Chorah’dyn. You promised Lina and Balduin.”

  If he walked away, if he let Hyranna die, it would be fear alone that allowed it.

  He stood, forcing himself to look at the girl. The Manturian woman held on, pressing down with the weight of her shoulder, strong, yet tender. She cared about the girl, maybe more than she knew herself, and now her hope, so cruelly restored, was slipping out of her grasp again. Alutan knew how painful that could be.

  “Liar!” Hyranna screamed. She jerked, growing stronger with the Aktyr’s might. It was building towards something, and Alutan feared what it would do. “Let me go! Let me go! Don’t leave me, E’tuah!” She sobbed and shook.

  Alutan groaned. “What have you done, Ishvandu? Is that what you want to be? Is it?” He clenched his fists. “No. Not this time. I’m not finished with you yet.”

  “A little help here!” the Manturian hollered.

  He sucked in a breath and knelt, this time with his knees pointed to the top of Hyranna’s head. If it destroyed him, so be it, and let that be the terrible end. But he wouldn’t give up on her. He wouldn’t let one more succumb to its insatiable greed.

  “Hold her,” he said again. His voice was hard as he met those blue eyes. “But whatever happens, Manturian, don’t touch me. Do you understand?”

  The woman hesitated, then gave a curt nod. “As you say. But whatever you’re going to do, hurry about it!”

  “I’ll try.”

  He took another breath and let it out: slow, controlled, even. This was not a battle he could win from without. He had done this before. He had gone within, to visit the Unseen, where light and spirit met, fashioning mind and soul. It was impossible to say what he would find there.

  Alutan draped his hand across Hyranna’s eyes. At once, he could feel the heavy shroud, the Aktyr’s poisonous mantle, clinging to the girl, eating into her mind and shredding whatever it found. Alutan had restored her—for a moment—but it was no more effective, no more freeing, than his own attempts had been, for nine years in the dark, in the blackness beneath the City of the Undying Sun.

  This wasn’t a test. Whatever happened, it would be a decisive statement of authority. Alutan was terrified.

  So much for starting off small.

  He let his eyes fall, and descended into the Unseen.

  Spirit Seer

  The bread was fresh.

  It sat on the baker’s board, still steaming from the hot stone oven. Its scent wafted across the street, cut through the stench of too many bodies, and hit Balduin in the stomach like a load of rocks.

  He groaned.

  Two days in Calton had left him with nothing. No mention of his father. No idea of where to go next. Nothing but a very empty stomach and the odd greasy rain barrel for water.

  “Naught I can for yeh,” said the baker, shaking his head as he pounded a hunk of dough. Heavy moustaches swayed past his bare chin, and Balduin couldn’t help star
ing. Why would someone shave their face so diligently, yet leave a few hairs to grow out from their upper lip like the branches of a tree?

  “Did yeh hear me at all, boy?”

  Balduin had to swallow a few times to speak past the thickness inside his mouth. The question had always been the same. He was looking for someone. Could they help? But the Calton city folk cut him off, laughed at him, or ignored him as if he were no more than a dripping eaves.

  At least the baker had listened.

  He swallowed again. “Hungry,” he finally managed.

  The baker frowned. “How much?”

  “Just a bite…?”

  “How much coin, boy? How much coin you got?”

  Balduin’s face furrowed. “I…I don’t know—”

  “No coin, no bread.”

  The next day, Balduin watched.

  People came, handed the baker a few round pieces of metal, then left with a steaming loaf.

  A trade.

  With his failing strength, he scoured the streets until he noticed a twisted length of metal.

  He returned. “Coin,” he said.

  The baker laughed and laughed until tears ran down his ruddy cheeks and soaked his moustaches.

  Balduin got a bite: a nibble of something hard and dry that seemed only to expand the hole inside him.

  When he returned the next day with another bent scrap of metal, the baker shook his head, reached behind the counter, and spread out four perfectly round metal disks.

  “Coin,” he said. He pointed to each in turn. “A silver. A half mark. A four-piece. And a short.” Then he tapped Balduin’s offering. “A shoeing nail. See? Coin, boy—or no bread.”

  “But please: where do I get it?”

  The baker snorted as he scooped the round disks back behind the counter. “Not here.”

  Balduin felt faint. He eyed the fresh bread as the emptiness clawed around inside him. He swallowed. “Do I…hunt for it?”

  The baker snorted and scooped a ladle of cream-coloured flour into a bowl.

  “In a manner of speaking. Far as I know, a body comes by it in one of three ways: stealing, gifting, or honest work.” He scraped a deft hand through the flour. “Now maybe you have a thing or two in that sack to sell off to Yol’s, eh? What do I know? Hop on and let me back to work; I’ve my own coin to make.”

  Balduin let out a long breath.

  Coin. His task was to find his father—that much he knew. But if he wanted to keep his own two feet under him, he had no choice but to find some way of feeding himself.

  “Yol’s,” he murmured. Again, there was that name, though Balduin hadn’t been able to find the shop again. “Could you tell me the way?”

  For the second time since being in Calton, Balduin found himself staring at the bright red sign.

  Something about that sign bothered him. The blood-red colour was peeling off the wood, reminding him of a freshly-skinned carcass, and the painted black markings, like everything else in Calton, resembled nothing he could make sense of.

  Sucking in a breath, he knocked.

  No answer.

  Maybe Yol wasn’t in? He debated whether he should knock again or slink away to find another alley hole to sleep in when a voice hollered from within.

  “Can’t ya’ read? Says open!”

  Balduin pressed against the door. There was a clatter of wood chimes overhead as the door cracked inward to reveal steps up to a bizarre room.

  It reminded Balduin of the storage caves back in Elamori, except full of items he had no reference for. Shelves and hooks and leather netting hung haphazardly around the room, and every conceivable free span of it was covered: boots, tools, a stuffed bear skin, uncountable pots and jars, and rudimentary wooden statues in the centre of the room, dressed up in random, mismatched clothes.

  “Ah,” muttered the voice. “East Ellendi, of a sort, or…” He trailed off. “Maker save me, who spilled you out and mixed you back together, eh?”

  Balduin tucked his splotchy-coloured hands behind his back and peered up through the gloom. A broad-bellied Imo’ani was balanced on the highest rung of a ladder, poised with a hooked contraption as if to spear a tree-squirrel.

  He gave a little lunge, snagged the strap of a bag, and the whole ladder tottered dangerously.

  “Gotcha!” the man crowed, and before Balduin could grab the legs, the man shifted his weight and the ladder clattered back to its own two feet. Then the shop-owner leapt down and threw the sack onto a nearby counter.

  “What brings you to Yol’s?” he asked, wiping meaty hands across the front of a grimy shirt.

  Balduin reached for his pack.

  “I…I have an extra shirt, and I heard you’ll…uh…trade for coin?”

  “That’s my business, alright,” Yol announced, then lumbered behind a counter and thumped the cracked wood top. “Well, let’s see it. Hurry on, now.”

  Balduin opened the sack. Out came his extra shirt, the fox-fur cloak, and the set of beads Hyranna had given him last harvest. Then with a clatter, fell the knife from the Cay-et—the one whose dark wooden handle was purportedly fashioned from the Great Tree herself.

  Balduin snatched it up and slipped it behind his belt, but Yol’s brows had already shot up.

  “Now that, I’ll see.”

  “It’s not for trading,” Balduin said.

  Yol eyed him. Without a word, he picked up the shirt, then tossed it back with a curled lip. “I’ve no use for Ellendi rags, boy.”

  “It’s all I have.”

  “But it isn’t, eh?”

  “No, I won’t consider—”

  “The handle alone looks worth a silver.” Yol tipped a brow.

  “No! The shirt—and the cloak. For coin.”

  Yol grunted. “I told you kid. I’ve no use for such matted fur, leastwise not the present. If you’ve got no serious business, I suggest you be on your way.”

  Balduin licked his lips. The Cay-et’s dagger. Worth a silver, he’d said. Would that be enough to get him some bread? Maybe a shred of meat?

  Yol saw him thinking. He leaned his chunky arms forward onto the counter, eyes drawn together. “You’re new here, boy.” It wasn’t a question. “Now you wouldn’t be selling the shirt off your back if it weren’t for a hole in your belly, I reckon. Having a knife to your side’s a fair start to surviving, but believe me now, an ugly old rusted spike will do the trick just as well as that beauty you’ve got, so why don’t you do yourself a favour and trade down, hm?” Yol reached behind the counter and lifted a case out. Small knives and rusted blades tossed around inside, clunking like old bones. “Leastwise, let me give you an offer, eh?”

  Balduin’s stomach twisted at the thought. What was the dagger to him? The Cay-et woman had caught him and drugged him. Why hold so tightly to a stranger’s gift?

  Before he could think better of it, Balduin found himself cradling the knife in both hands.

  Yol leaned forward. There was a studied carelessness to him, yet Balduin noticed the spark in his eye, the twitch in his fingers.

  The dark wood of the handle curved into Balduin’s palm like it was made for it. The sheath slipped open, and an ivory blade winked into view. Balduin swallowed.

  Supposedly made from the Chorah’dyn herself. Was it true? If so, no coin or bread could compare to its worth. But how could he believe it?

  “Bone,” Yol was saying. “Huh. Should have known an East Ellendi as yourself wouldn’t be toting metal. Now it’s a pretty thing, sure, but the blade won’t stand up to a good knock. You’d be better off with one of these old daggers if it’s protection you’re after, boy. Sure, they aren’t much to look at, but they’ll save your skin when it counts.” Yol hefted a short, stabbing blade shaped like a tusk. “Now seeing as I’m a fair man, how about I give you a choice of these and I’ll pay you the difference in coin: say, a full mark and a half? That’s enough for a bed and a week of meals, depending how you stretch it.”

  Balduin hesitated. A pang of hunger
dug through him and he glanced at the Cay-et’s dagger again. It was beautiful to look at—but the value, Balduin knew, didn’t lie in its appearance. The wood warmed his hands like a living thing. Was she really a part of it, the Chorah’dyn? Could he speak to her, ask her advice?

  His eyes fell shut. He wanted to believe she was there, a stirring of breath and memory beneath the touch of wood. Yet when he opened his eyes, there was silence—and only the studying gaze of the shop-owner.

  Balduin sighed. “My boots,” he said. “Would you buy my boots?”

  Yol snorted and dropped the rusted knife back into the case. “A half for the pair and the cloak, and that’s all.”

  “Uh…one more thing.” Balduin swallowed. “I’m looking for someone.”

  “Nope.” Yol stashed away the case of knives and gave the counter a quick swipe. “You’ll have to do better than old boots for that.”

  The chimes over the door clattered as a second customer entered, and Balduin felt his opportunity slipping away.

  “But I was told to come here for that kind of information. The man’s tall, with light-coloured hair, like a Southerner, and he knows about—”

  “Hush!” Yol snapped. “The boots, quick, or you’ll get nothing.”

  Balduin glanced over his shoulder. The new customer was examining a rack of clothes, apparently absorbed in the choices before him. Yet when he glanced up, their eyes met, and Balduin felt a jolt of unease.

  Those eyes.

  He had seen those eyes before. On a nearby street. Watching him.

  Balduin tugged off his boots.

  A moment later, he found himself barefoot in the street, two round metal coins clinking in his hand, with a growing sense of unease.

  Was the man following him? Was it coincidence?

  Bread. First, he had to get back to the baker. Trade one of these coins for a bite. After, when his stomach didn’t hurt so much…

  Then he slowed, hesitating.

  There were some men up ahead, milling by the street corner. Manturians. They wore dark coats over dark pants—the same coats, the same boots, the same guns on their hips, and the same symbols stitched onto their sleeves. Balduin had seen that patch before: a winged eye, with arrows crossed behind. They looked official, like they belonged together, like the city was theirs. They were the sort others gave space to.