Shadows of Blood

by L. E. Dereksen

  The back of his hand came away slick with blood. He glanced down at his feet. Bloody. And his knees. Scraped and bloody.

  He felt a sob building somewhere inside.

  No. No, he would not be weak.

  “Very well,” the man sighed. “I am Garrick. I suppose you had better come back with me.” He stood and stuck out his hand.

  Balduin stared at it.

  “I will not hurt you.”

  He wasn’t sure if he believed anyone anymore. But did he have a choice? Barefoot was still looking for him, whoever that was. And if Balduin tried to leave here on his own, Dart would fall on him again like a wolf.

  He took Garrick’s hand.

  The Southerner lifted Balduin to his feet in a single smooth motion. His other hand steadied him, then began steering him down the alley. Deeper in.

  “I believe this is where you also say your name,” Garrick said.

  “Balduin,” he replied, before he could stop himself. His legs were trembling, his head spinning as he limped down the alley.

  The man grinned. “An Aethen name! Bold and blessed.” He clapped him on the back. “You are part Imo’ani, part Aethen, I think. No? It is a noble heritage. And a good name.”

  Balduin just nodded. Maker’s breath, he didn’t feel either bold or blessed right now.

  “So,” the man continued, “here is what we do. I have some friends, and one is rather good with bandages. You come back, get cleaned up, and then we talk.”

  “Talk?” Balduin glanced at him.

  “Yes. I assume someone paid you to follow me. Badly, if I can be honest. I would like to know who.”

  “Uh…”

  “It is fine. Right now, we take care of first things, yes? You had a rough day.”

  “But no one paid me, I—”

  “Here.” Garrick stopped and, letting go of Balduin for a moment, he swept off his long dark coat. “Put this on.”

  “But…”

  “Trust me, sthu.” Before Balduin could summon up another protest, the coat was wrapped around his shoulder and the hood popped up. It rested lightly on his head, hiding the torn and bleeding scalp, hiding his dirty clothes, his wretchedness.

  Despite everything, Balduin felt a surge of gratitude.

  He found himself clutching the coat with white knuckles. “Thank you,” he whispered.

  Garrick just nodded, then started moving Balduin along again—gently, but firmly.

  Just wait until he hears what you told the Watch.

  Balduin winced. He was a fool. He should never have come to Calton. He should have never climbed over those walls. How had he ever expected to find his father here?

  They walked back through the alleys, down long twisting streets and narrow roads, and Balduin was relieved to see no oily, shimmering patches of air.

  Finally, they stopped down a dingy, deserted street, and Garrick rapped on a door.

  “Ith,” he said, and a moment later it creaked inwards.

  Balduin glanced into the dark interior. A narrow hall opened to a glow of lamplight. Floorboards creaked, a fire snapped, and a murmur of voices drifted out to meet him.

  Balduin summoned his last scrap of courage. “Am I your prisoner?” he asked.

  The man laughed. “Freidtha, no!”

  “Don’t believe a word he says!” called a voice from inside.

  “Is that another of his strays? Shit, he can’t keep doing this! A secret hideout is secret for a reason.”

  Garrick grinned, and Balduin resisted the impulse to bolt and run. Something told him he wouldn’t get very far.

  Besides, he’d followed Garrick on purpose. He’d been drawn after him. Desperate for help—or maybe more. A Southerner. Like his father.

  Balduin took a deep breath, then ducked inside. I’ll find you, Father, he whispered, and the door closed behind him.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Alutan Na-es

  Colour bled from the world.

  Alutan found himself in a grey forest. The trees were dark, dripping with black slime. His nostrils were filled with decay—pungent and sharp.

  “Hyranna?” Alutan called. “Hyranna Elduna?” His voice fell in the thick, acrid air, words tumbling to the ground and lying in the rot at his feet. He swallowed.

  Give fear a foothold and it has already won.

  He was in the strange Unseen place of vision and truth, and whether Hyranna knew it or not, so was she. He needed to find her. But more importantly, he needed to find the Aktyr and destroy it. Before it destroyed Hyranna.

  Alutan started to walk. He moved through the undergrowth, squelching muck between his toes, feeling other, unpleasant things slither and scurry across his skin. He didn’t look down.

  A wall loomed out of the dark: a grey, stern slab, reaching over his head, above the tops of the trees, before it disappeared into the gloom. There were no cracks, no place where brick joined to brick. It was a single, uncut rock, and there would be no climbing it.

  Alutan put a hand to it and immediately felt the chill of death. He pulled back, studied it for a moment, then turned to his left, suppressing the urge to run, to hurry. Hyranna was dying and he had to get to her. But time moved differently in the Unseen. Even if the Aktyr’s power had created a nightmare and a fortress to bar his way, alarmingly real, he could not forget where he was. He would not allow himself to rush.

  His eyes roved across the wall as he followed it, looking for a door, a crack, anything. He sensed the forest beyond was where Hyranna was.

  Sure enough, the wall bent inward to enclose him. He wasn’t on the outside, trying to get in. He was the one trapped. As if her mind was trying to defend against intruders.

  Trapped.

  Memories clawed at him.

  Not here! Not now! He pushed them away. He had to focus on freeing Hyranna. And to do that, he needed a way in, not to get lost in his own pain.

  His feet kept moving, his eyes bending ahead. Then he stopped. There were footprints in the squelching ooze, small indentations, and he could see wriggling things disappearing back into the muck. His own footprints. He had come full circle. Found nothing. No way out.

  You’re not trapped. You can leave any moment you want. Just open your eyes. Give up. You can’t save her. What is she to you, anyway? Your mission was never to face the Aktyr itself. Go back. Hurry. Before Vanya gets away. Before he finds your son . . .

  Alutan shoved the thoughts aside. Too obvious. He wasn’t so out of practice he would balk at the first obstacle. He knew perfectly well what was at stake.

  So he circled the wall again. Slowly, carefully. And when he traced another revolution, he turned and sprinted the other way. He tried walking backwards. Still nothing. Moving wasn’t the answer. He resisted the urge to throw himself at the wall. Instead, he picked a rock and sat down to consider his options.

  Did you actually think you had any real authority here? That you could defeat me?

  Alutan shut his eyes at the voice’s intrusion. It grated on wounds still raw. Now wasn’t the time for his own pain.

  And yet the blurring of his mind, the tugging, the inescapable descent: it was happening anyway. He took a deep breath.

  Escape was not the answer. The Aktyr was dragging him into his own memories—and maybe that was exactly where he needed to go.

  He fell into the dark beneath the glittering halls, beneath the countless layers of history, and the dancing lights, and the huge, vast emptiness—down, down, down . . .

  And then him.

  “What did you learn from the Tree?” The voice was cold and deep, echoing inside Alutan like a snake curling around his heart. “What could possibly have been so important that you would crawl out of hiding to learn it? Did you think I wouldn’t find you?”

  Alutan was bound and gagged and hooded, but he didn’t need eyes to see his captor. The Three Realms bent around him: Light, Blood, and Spirit. The man was not invincible—not quite—yet he was cunning and had spent his long, immortal life in
mastering many things. Even Alutan could not match him, and now here he was, a testament to his foolishness in thinking otherwise.

  Alutan felt the hood lift and the gag ripped off. An eerie blue light flickered on the wall above them, a small globe, channelling the power of the ancients through their bending of ytyri. It was enough light to see a dirty, unformed hole, barely wide enough to take a full step. A prison.

  Alutan fixed the Undying with his eyes, unafraid, refusing to be intimidated. Shatayeth an-E’tuah: his enemy, and the enemy of his people. “You’re interfering again,” he said quietly. “Why now, after all these years? What are you afraid of?”

  There was a ghostly flicker in the man’s eye.

  “What name are you taking these days? Rosha? Baldun the Blessed?” He laughed softly. “Lel-na?”

  “That was a long time ago.”

  His lips curled. “You still wear it, that stink of arrogance, thinking a few hundred years is something to be proud of.”

  “You think I’m proud of that failure?”

  “Yet you bear it like it’s your own, like you have any right to it. You did not fail, Spirit-Seer; you were simply unable to succeed. Why do you blame yourself for what was never under your control?”

  “The Aktyr is my burden.”

  “Why?”

  “You would never understand.”

  “No? Let me explain it to you, Kulnethar ab’Ethanir Lel-na.” Shatayeth crouched and looked him straight in the eye. “You thought you were given a chance to redeem your friend, to undo his crimes. But it was never possible, was it? So either the Great Tree lied to you, used you, or the fault was yours and you failed. So you believe the less painful of the two. Better to fail than to be a pitiful dupe. Hence—your arrogance.”

  “If that’s how you choose to see it.”

  “Choice is an illusion.”

  “Is that what you tell yourself to excuse the long account of your own atrocities?”

  Shatayeth smiled. “Of course not. Choice is an illusion—for you.” Then he stood and spread his arms. “Let me demonstrate. I’m going to ask you a question, and you will give me what I want. Let’s call it a show of faith. Then you can return to your meaningless pastoral existence.”

  “Are you really so desperate?”

  “I am patient.”

  Alutan tried to hide the flicker of worry. “So am I.”

  “Then let’s play a game, and see who wins. Where have you been hiding?”

  Alutan stared at the man whose very presence tingled with authority. He may have failed, but that didn’t mean Shatayeth had won yet. The fact Alutan was here was proof. “Why would I play games with a liar?”

  “Why not? Do you have something to hide, ab’Ethanir? A discovery that drove you out of safety? Something new—or someone? Perhaps even . . . a child?”

  Alutan’s heart flipped. He was guessing, groping in the dark, looking to glean a reaction. Alutan tried to slow his heart back down, but it was too late, and Shatayeth was watching him, eyes bright and cold.

  “Take your time,” the man smiled. “As much time as you need. I suppose we’re both immortal now, aren’t we? So this could be a long game indeed. Tell me, Lel-na. Have you learned to tire yet of the Great Unending?”

  “My duty is unchanged.”

  Shatayeth glanced up behind him, towards the flickering blue light. “It’s a wondrous thing, isn’t it? Your ancestors were brilliant, the greatest civilization to tread the earth. Perhaps I can show you more.” He lifted a brow. “You see, the Kyr’amanu were masters at many things. Light, art, inventions. Did you know they used ytyri to make a flying machine? It could cross mountains and seas, but its cost was high. That was always their dilemma. Not enough ytyri—and they spent too much trying to get more.

  “In the end, their greatest accomplishment was war, violence, and the learning of secrets.” He smiled. “Interrogation. The bedrock of civilizations. They perfected many ways of causing pain. I wonder, Lel-na, if you would like me to show you.”

  Alutan never looked away. “You think to torture me into compromise? Pitiful savagery, even from you.”

  “Maybe so. But prove to me you can pass, and we shall try something else.”

  It had seemed so easy, then. What wouldn’t he suffer to protect his son? And he had. Pain so excruciating it made his heart pound to think of it. He would have died a hundred times, if it weren’t for the light burning in him, piecing him back together, collecting the frayed ends of his mind and mending them before he could break.

  He learned just how soft he had become, hiding in the forest, keeping watch, playing at healer. A peaceful life, a happy life. Almost. Alutan. Alutan. Healer. His own name mocked him.

  And even then, the dark did not win.

  Alutan opened his eyes. He was still in the grey forest, but now the slab of rock had changed. A crack had appeared, as if the wall had shivered and split from top to bottom. And where it met the ground, there was a gaping crevice. It was beckoning him.

  He rose and approached the crack. It was like a dream—a dark, horrible dream, and the only way forward was down. At the place where the wall opened, stairs descended into the earth. The slime dripped, oozing into the blackness, but where everything else was grey, here a spot of colour reached out to him: a ghostly, flickering blue.

  Great Tree, let me be strong.

  If this was the only way forward, so be it.

  Taking a long, deep breath, Alutan descended into the familiar dark.

  The endless corridors were rough-hewn, stinking, and hot—mimicking the underbelly of Ne’adun, his ancestors’ rotten heart, buried beneath their extravagance.

  He moved through the blue-lit corridors, grim and purposeful. The Aktyr thought it could set a labyrinth for him, something cobbled out of his fears, trying to use his own mind against him. Yet did it know? Did it really? In crossing over, Alutan brought more than his own memories.

  He did not rush. Time was different here. Running madly through the dark would avail him nothing. And so he went slowly, deliberately, turning through narrow passages, squeezing around tight, confining bends.

  At last, he came to a stop. Huge iron doors stood in his way. He tried each of them, rattling the latches. They didn’t budge. His steps echoed back. He turned down the corridor he’d entered through—and met with another dead-end. No door, no branching passage, just bare stone wall. He had been expecting this, and still, he felt his heart pick up.

  Not real, he told himself. None of this was real, just a creation of the Aktyr, formed out of his memories, like a dream. Even still, his hands began to shake. He took a few steps back, turned, and found another wall just behind him, a single blue light flickering from the ceiling. He was trapped again. Except in the forest above it was easy for him to think, to assess his options. Here, his fear threatened to engulf him.

  Alutan ground his teeth. “Let me through!” He surged forward and slammed his hands against the stone. They made a dull, pathetic plink. Futile gestures. Futile words. He shut his eyes. He could hear himself screaming. Not in pain, but in rage.

  No, no, no . . . not that memory. Anything but that . . .

  But resisting meant defeat. Like in the grey forest above, his own mind was the key forward. To win this battle, he had to bring all of himself. Even the parts he wished to forget.

  He couldn’t afford the luxury of fear. He had to strip it away. Seek it out and grind it down. Broken Alutan would not win this battle—only Alutan redeemed by the light.

  “I won’t let you win,” he whispered.

  He kept his hand pressed to the stone and shut his eyes.

  And he saw light.

  A small boy ran, bare feet heedless of the rocks. Wild red hair curled from his head. Hands shot out to either side, face scrunched up, mouth pinched, all seriousness as he focused on where he was going.

  Then he caught sight of Alutan.

  “Papi!” he cried. He hurled himself forward, already laughing. Alutan caught
him, strong arms tossing him in the air to the tune of gleeful shrieks. Then he set him down. A girl came barrelling after him, tottering on her own chubby legs.

  “Badu! Badu!” she giggled, the best she could manage of her friend’s name. Her black hair was like a stream. She didn’t even notice her scraped knee and torn dress. One hand clutched a bouquet of meadowsweet.

  Alutan squatted down and pulled out a handful of pine nuts. “Balduin, for you and your friend to share,” he said. He poured them into his son’s tiny, outstretched hands.

  Immediately, the boy was serious again.

  “Anna. Here,” he said, turning to his friend. “Sit.”

  He plopped himself on the ground cross-legged while Hyranna joined him, big dark eyes intent on what he was doing. Carefully Balduin made two piles, like he was learning sums. One for Hyranna (he started with her), then one for himself, and so on. The small girl waited, mouth parted but saying nothing. When Balduin came to the last nut, there was one extra. He hesitated only an instant before setting it in front of Hyranna.

  “For you,” he said, very seriously. The tiny girl beamed and grabbed a fistful of the nuts, eating them with enthusiastic abandon. Balduin tasted one at a time.

  Alutan thought his heart would burst. He glanced away. Andalina had followed at a distance, and he spotted her now, standing with her arms wrapped around herself, just watching. Their eyes met. He saw the anger there. She knew. She read his mind, as always, and she turned away, back into the forest.

  Lina . . .

  He hurried after her. The children were so intent on their prize they didn’t notice him slip away.

  He found her standing with her back to him, one hand pressed to a birch, eyes closed in a frown. Her red hair twitched at the ends, as if tugged by a breeze. There was none.

  He said nothing. A hand reached out to brush her back, but she jerked away, whirling on him.

  “I thought you weren’t going. You said you would reconsider. How could you do this to me? How could you leave me here with these people?”