“And the door?” Azariah asked. She looked at the Wanderer; the blood on his head, dried black as the blood that ran through all their veins, except Thali’s. “What do you think…”
Sonara could sense the princess’ curiosity. But among it was also fear.
The aura was thick and oily on Sonara’s tongue, coming off Azariah in waves as she looked from the Wanderer to the red door and back at Thali again. “Is it…”
Sonara knew what the princess was leaning towards. Knew it, because just the night before, they’d spoken of such impossible truths, about the first Shadowblood, and the heart of the planet. But it was only a tale. A tale that had begged her to listen and had felt like a deep history of Dohrsar, nonetheless.
Now the door felt like another page of that story. Another chapter to the ancient tome that was the beginning of Dohrsar.
“Perhaps it belongs to one of the old kings. An old storage hideout, or bunker,” Markam said, as he gave up on trying to open the door. He’d even foolishly kicked it with his boot, earning a yelp and a bruised toe.
“Possible,” Sonara said. She looked at the princess. “Do you know if your father has secret hideouts across the Deadlands?”
Azariah nodded. “Of course he does. What royal wouldn’t, when the history between all three kingdoms has always been war? But… I’m not sure he would have created one this hard to reach, and this far from the palace.”
Markam lifted a dark brow. “What, you mean he didn’t stash a door hidden behind a solid wall of rock, only accessible by a Wanderer-turned-Shadowblood’s strange new Terra magic?”
Thali gave her torch to Sonara. She knelt before the door to examine the symbols. “All my life I have studied. All my life I have committed myself to worshipping Her. But I have never felt so close.”
“What do you mean?” Sonara asked.
Thali breathed out slowly. “These are the Great Mother’s symbols.”
With trembling hands, she reached out, her bone gauntlets stark against the red door. She pressed her fingertips to the symbols, and her whole body seemed to shiver. “The planet has spoken to the Wanderer, calling to his magic.” She glanced back to Sonara, the torchlight flickering behind the Canis’ jawbone. “Just as she spoke to you, Devil, to bring your sword to strike the Wanderer’s heart, and draw him back as a Child of Shadow made anew.”
“What do the symbols mean?” Sonara asked.
Her heart had begun to hasten its pace. Her curse, curled up in its cage, winked open an eye again and began to sniff the air, as curious as ever.
“I cannot be certain,” Thali said. “But I believe this door leads to a sacred place. One that may very well contain the heart of Dohrsar itself.”
In any other time, Sonara would have laughed.
But now that conversation she had with Azariah, deep in the shadows, felt all too much like a history lesson instead of a fireside tale.
Across from them, the Wanderer groaned and began to wake.
“Start a fire,” Sonara said to Azariah. “We’re going to have a talk with our Wanderer, and see just what fate Thali’s Great Mother is leading us to.”
Chapter 26
Karr
He was in the half-place again.
But today the scenery had changed, a throne room swapped out for the shores of an ancient, endless sea. The waves were split down the center, rolling towards where Karr stood, barefoot upon a grey sand shore.
He stared out at the sea, wondering which side, given the chance, he would choose.
The left half of the sea was dark and furious, the wind raging, the white waves tossed about until they exploded upon the sand.
The right half was calm. A gentle ocean of dark waves. They barely kissed the shore as the wind danced like a delicate thing, in time with a song that was unheard.
Both sides collided against each other. One crashing furiously, the other gently lapping.
Together, the sounds made a word.
Choose.
But he’d already chosen.
The grey sand was warm beneath Karr’s bare feet. He wiggled his toes, feeling as if he were home.
“It is far more interesting than the last place,” a voice said. Delicate, like the tinkling of bells or a wedding song. “Memories are fascinating things. You never know what sort of picture they might paint.”
Karr turned, and there she was.
The child made of starlight. He hadn’t the chance to look at her closely, the last time he met her in the half-place. But now he saw her in full. Little glowing planets rotated across her skin as if she were their axis. They swam through the starlight that made up her long coils of glowing hair, then danced across her collarbone, into her arms and her fingertips and back again.
“I chose,” Karr said.
The child rose a shimmering brow. “Did you?”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I guess not.” He glanced back at the half-sea. “What is this place?”
“The center of us all.” She pointed her finger at Karr’s hand. “May I?”
He lifted his palm and held it out to her.
A tendril of starlight shot from her fingertip, a tiny galaxy stretched like a rubber band. Heat seared his skin as the starlight sliced a cut along his palm, drawing that strange, ghostly black blood. It soared off into the sky, half splitting towards the white sea. The other, barreling towards the dark.
“The shadows,” Karr said. “What are they?”
The child laughed. Her eyes were like nebulas, swirling with colors he could not even name. She motioned for him to follow, and together they walked along the grey shore. The half-sea followed them, always crashing in part darkness and part light, always keeping them in the center of the two. “Not shadows, my heart. They are tendrils of soul. They dance within us, always keeping the balance. Half-darkness. Half-light. It is what sets the Shadowbloods apart. What keeps them worthy.”
“Shadowbloods?” Karr asked.
“Yes, my heart. It is your second chance.” Her smile was tired. The starlight that made up her skin seemed to dim, some of the lights winking out, some of the planets growing still. They walked in silence for a time.
Karr knew he was asleep, lost inside of his dreams. But it felt real, the warmth on his bare toes, the stinging pain on his palm, the little scab of black beginning to form over his cut.
They stopped when shapes began to form in the distance.
A castle the color of sand, on the fringes of a city that unspooled towards the sea. Like a child’s seaside creation; a fortress that felt vaguely familiar to him, as if he’d seen it in a storybook, flipping past the pages with his mother and father before their lives were cut short. He gazed at it for a time, wishing he could run to it. Lose himself inside of the castle halls, discover the secrets that waited within.
“What is this place?” Karr asked the child.
“Memories,” she said. “Every Shadowblood has them.”
“But they aren’t mine,” Karr said.
“My dear lost soul.” The girl’s nebula eyes met his, and there was sadness within her gaze. “You do not remember. But there is one who does. Soon you’ll discover the truth. When you do, you must be ready.”
“For what?” Karr asked.
The star child smiled. “The end, my heart. You must be ready for the end of the end, where there will be another choice. And this time, you must choose a side.”
She reached out, placing her fingertip upon his chest.
It went through him, searing past his skin, past his blood and his bones, into his rib cage, where she removed his heart.
Not flesh, as he had suspected.
But solid black.
The Antheon that Cade was after, but today, it pulsed in the child’s grip.
Like a still-beating heart.
When he woke, Karr Kingston’s captors had prepared a feast for him.
Or so they’d said.
But by the looks of the hideous creature rotating on a ma
keshift spit over a fire, its jagged teeth poking out from a charred, fleshy head… he wasn’t so sure.
Sonara, the blue-haired woman had called herself. She’d dragged him here by his ropes, setting him before a stack of unlit wood, where the rest of the group sat. Dirty and not heavily armed, there were only four of them in total.
The beautiful one, with black, depthless eyes, had held her hands before her, her dark brows knitting together as she concentrated.
“Find your peace with it, Azariah,” the small-framed one, in the wolfen mask, leaned forward and seemed to sigh. “Settle your soul into the depths of the Great Mother and let your power soar.”
A spark of blue shot from Azariah’s palms, sparking the fire to life in an instant.
Karr hardly believed it—for that was magic, living and breathing, in front of his very eyes.
Magic the likes of which he himself had achieved yesterday. Impossibly, he knew it was his magic that had done it, his power that had split the cave floor.
He remembered that awful heat, that roiling darkness that had broken inside of him, tumbling into an abyss in his soul where something living had been waiting for him to open it.
That great surge of power had shoved the very cave walls aside, revealing a crimson door, as if it had been there in hiding.
The firelight spread further, revealing that very door now.
There it stood in the rock, sealed shut.
He had done that.
But how had he done that?
The question made him look at the group differently, for this wasn’t any normal prisoner-of-war situation.
Something had changed drastically in himself, and it made him desperate to try to discover what other secrets this group, this planet, might be hiding. For was it possible the people who’d taken him captive were all like him? Was it possible that others, on Dohrsar, had this hidden magic?
He looked to Sonara, who sat cross-legged on the other side of the flames, her hand resting on her black-and-blue sword.
“Why did you kill me?” Karr asked cautiously. “And why did I come back changed?”
She picked at her teeth with a bone. “I ask the questions. If you answer mine, you’ll earn the right to ask me one back. Is that clear?”
Azariah simply ran her hands through her tangled hair as if trying to remove the knots. The one in the wolf-skull mask was motionless, looking towards the red door in the rock, and the man beside her, whose eyes danced with mischief as he twirled a dagger between his fingertips, was watching Karr like he might bolt.
Like he dared him to bolt and see just how far he could run before he sank that menacing dagger between Karr’s shoulders.
“Fine,” Karr agreed. He’d play her little game.
Sonara tossed the bone behind her and sat back in a casual, relaxed lean. “What business do your people have on my planet?”
He chose his words very carefully. “I’m not in the business of taking people captive. I’m not in support of this mission at all.”
She narrowed her eyes.
“My captain didn’t offer me the truth about the mission. All I knew is that we were to come to your planet, dig for a black substance called Antheon. He never explained the details. Never said it would come to this, to taking your people captive and using them as workers. If I’d known, I would have tried to stop it.”
He hoped she believed him. He hoped her magic sensed his honesty, his truths.
She nodded. “Alright. Markam?”
Markam sighed and stood to approach him, his hand on the dagger at his hip.
“I-it wasn’t a lie!” Karr said, as he watched the dark-eyed man approach with a sickening swagger. “I told you the truth.”
But instead of reaching for Karr with some horrible magic that would squeeze the air from his lungs or suck out his eyes… Markam only turned the spit, removing the hideous creature from over the flames. “Relax, Wanderer. You’ve earned yourself a meal with that first truth.” He ripped off a roasted ear from the creature and held it out. “The first taste.”
“Oh, goddesses, hold me,” Azariah groaned. “You said you were done with torture.”
Markam raised a brow. “I beg your pardon, Princess?” He tossed the ear into her lap. “Perhaps you’d like the first bite?”
She swept it from her lap as if it were on fire.
“Enough.” That was Sonara again, drawing the situation back to her. She grabbed the ear and popped it into her mouth. Her gaze flicked to Karr, who realized suddenly that he was relaxed. That his heart rate had slowed, no longer on edge.
For in that small bit of chaos, the situation had shifted again. He’d seen more than captors in these strange, magic-bearing Dohrsarans.
He’d seen humanity.
And at that glimpse, he saw hope.
Perhaps they would see reason, decide to set him free, if he could convince them he’d had no part in it.
“My brother took the mission of his own accord,” Karr said. “He was hired by a man named Geisinger, a king in his own right, from a planet called Earth. Cade brought us here, said he was going to have a crew waiting to dig beneath the planet’s surface to find the Antheon. Said Geisinger had set it all up. I pressed him for answers, but he gave none. And then when we got to the Gathering, and you,” he looked pointedly at Sonara, “killed me… I’m guessing it set things into motion. Now it’s my turn. Why did you kill me?”
He felt so strange asking the question, speaking of his own death as if it were a casual topic. As if they were old comrades sharing a drink together by a warm hearth.
Sonara cracked her neck. “To understand the truth, you must know the origin of it all. I’m a Shadowblood, brought back from death to live a second life.”
That word.
The Child of Starlight had spoken it, in his dreams.
Karr leaned forward, holding onto her words, desperate to understand them.
“My blood has been replaced by living shadows,” Sonara said, “and those shadows have granted me a curse. Each Shadowblood’s curse is different, perhaps pulling at some strength they may have had in their first life. With mine, I can sense the auras of others. Their truths and their lies, their emotions, their anticipation before a swing. Before they try to escape.” She smiled wickedly at him. “I killed you because my curse deemed it so. It directed me to end your life, for some reason deeper than us both. And now here you sit before me… A Shadowblood, made anew.”
A shiver of fear ran through Karr. But it was also followed by something that seemed to slip past the fear. Curiosity.
“Why?” he asked.
Karr’s heart was pounding in his ears again, like a tub of water set churning down a drain.
“The Great Mother chose you,” the woman in the skull mask said. “The planet itself. Dohrsar. She lives and breathes… and chooses. And you have been chosen, Wanderer. The planet commands all magic. Commands all things. I believe it spoke to Sonara. Urged her to make the choice, taking hold of her magic so that it could set things into motion. Just as it urged your magic to reveal that door to us.” She looked over her shoulder at the crimson door nestled into the rock. “For whatever reason… the planet needs you here. Your fate is intertwined with Sonara’s.”
Karr swallowed. Was this girl, this Child of Starlight in his dreams, some incarnation of the planet’s soul? It was impossible, but so was magic such as this…
He’d seen plenty of strange things in all his travels.
He’d met plenty of people that believed in things others would call ridiculous, religions that he’d never given much thought to, while others gave their entire lives to the cause.
Eventually, one of those religions had to be found to be true. He just never suspected he’d be the one to discover real proof.
“And all of you,” Karr asked, “you have been chosen, too? You have this shadowed blood?”
“It’s terribly complicated, I’m afraid,” said Azariah. “When I was only a child, my father mur
dered me. He slit my throat in a golden temple of his own making, and I came back as one. Most of us meet a horrific end before we’re brought back.”
Karr felt like he might be sick. And not just from the smell of the smoldering cave rat.
Thali spoke again. “It appears you have Terra magic. The depths of your abilities, we cannot yet be sure. But they all have their own. Lightning runs in Azariah’s veins. Markam can make illusions appear true.”
Sonara glared at her. “Details, cleric. Hold your tongue.”
But Thali did not seem fazed by the command. There was something unique about her, beyond her appearance. It was the ease with which she carried herself. The calm certainty. “He is one of us now. Even if he came from that ship.”
“The ship that has taken our people captive,” Sonara said back. “And still holds Jaxon and Soahm with it. They took everything from us.” Her gaze became icy, the same way it had when she’d nearly taken her blade to his skin. “Everything.”
“He did not,” Markam corrected her. “You told me that yourself. He spoke true, about Soahm. He knows nothing.”
“But his people do,” she said. “I’m certain of it.”
“Certainty and desperation are two very different things,” Thali said softly. “You would be wise not to confuse the two, Devil.”
Silence fell between them.
“Continue to speak truths, Wanderer,” Sonara said to Karr again. “Or you will die.”
“He will not,” Thali’s voice hardened beyond her bone mask. “No Child of Shadow will be harmed on my watch. Harming him would be to cause harm to yourself, because for whatever reason, Devil, you and this Wanderer are bound by fate. Do not test the planet, by hurting him now.”
Sonara crossed her arms over her chest and stared across the flames at Karr.
Beneath her gaze, he felt like he was in someone else’s skin. He stared back at her, unblinking, looking at the lines of her face.
This wasn’t happening to him, truly. Was it? But he could feel that the strange sense of the power in him was real.
“Fine.” Sonara sighed. “You will not die today, Wanderer.”
Blood Metal Bone: An epic new fantasy novel, perfect for fans of Leigh Bardugo Page 25
