“Child of Shadow,” Thali corrected.
“My apologies,” Sonara shot back. “You think you know so much about the planet. Why in the hell would it bring back a Wanderer? Seek and find that truth.”
Thali’s next words were a whisper. “I will not pretend to understand. But it remains the same. We took him captive, but he is not what he once was. He’s not an enemy any longer. He shouldn’t be bound.”
“He will remain so until we decide where his loyalties lie. For now, they’re with his people.” She looked back to Karr. “But you should know that it wasn’t my choice to kill you. And if what Thali says is true—as much as I’m inclined to disagree—then the planet decided for me. It felt like something gripped my power and pushed it forth.”
“Yesterday,” Karr said, putting aside the fact that she still looked like she wanted to kill him, “I split the cave floor. I did it, but it felt like my… my magic… was doing it of its own accord.”
Azariah nodded. “It lives, just as the planet lives. It’s a part of you now, just as the shadows are.”
“What are they?” Karr asked.
“The planet’s soul,” Thali breathed from behind her mask. “A gift granted to you because in the place of darkness and light… you did not choose.”
How could she have known what happened to him when he died?
“We all went there, in death,” Markam added, as if he were reading Karr’s mind. He shrugged. “A terribly boring place. Lonely.”
“The details change,” Sonara said, “depending on your memories. But the half-ness of it is the same. Part darkness, part light.”
Karr suddenly had a flashing image return to him. Like a snapshot taken by a camera, displayed on the ceiling of his bunk inside the Starfall. “I wouldn’t say it was lonely. The child was there.”
A pause, as the Dohrsarans all looked to each other. There was something shadowed in their glance, like they were holding onto a secret Karr hadn’t any idea how to unlock.
“What child?” Sonara asked.
“A girl,” Karr explained. “She told me the half-place was made up of my memories.” He saw the girl in his mind, heard the ghostly recall of her voice. But the exact words she’d spoken had faded like ashes on the wind. “There was something ancient about her all the same.”
Markam shook his head. “There’s no child in the half-place, Wanderer.”
Thali’s pale eyes met Karr’s from behind her mask. The firelight danced in them, a blazing inferno that had him locked in her gaze. “What did she look like?”
Karr shrugged. “Like starlight incarnate.”
Her eyes seemed to dim for a moment.
“I heard a voice when I was there,” Sonara said. “I have heard that voice every day since. It is the whisper of my curse, the voice that begs me to pay attention. But it never had a form. Never a body. Certainly not a child.”
Silence swept across the cave like a heavy blanket.
“So… why am I here?” Karr asked softly. “What do you want with me?”
Markam plucked a limb from the rat and began to gnaw on it, the only sound in the cave besides the crackling fire. “You’re a ransom, Wanderer. But for now, we need information. In exchange for offering it, we’ll let you live for the time being, until your captain meets our demand.”
“A fine reward,” Karr said darkly.
Again, he thought of Cade. Of what would come when the Antheon was distributed across the stars, Geisinger’s new creation.
“What do you know of this Antheon my brother seeks?”
It was Azariah who answered. “It… changes a man.”
“In what way?”
She swallowed, looking about the group. They watched her closely, as if they too were waiting on her answer.
“I do not know. Not fully. But to see it land in the hands of this Geisinger, and of my…” she cleared her throat, “of the king… I fear it would give them a great deal of power. A great deal more than they deserve.”
“You have a mighty power,” Thali said. “The both of you, for whatever reason, are being called. Your fates are intertwined. I suspected as much with you, Sonara, but… but now, it seems the two of you are called. Joined.”
“The heart of the planet,” Sonara said. “The place Eona found.”
“Who the hell is Eona?” Markam asked.
“The first Shadowblood,” Sonara explained. “She tried to steal the planet’s heart. To take it for her own and wield it. To become the most powerful person this planet has ever known.”
A face flashed in Karr’s head suddenly.
Cade, standing beside the Dohrsaran king as they looked at their prisoners cutting into the mountainside, a hunger for more always shining behind his eyes.
“The heart,” Karr asked slowly. “Is it a true heart?”
“The source of all things,” Thali said. “When a Child of Shadow is chosen, she lends to them a bit of her very soul. The heart… well, as the records show… it has no limit to its power. It can do all things.”
“In the story,” Azariah explained, “Eona was drawn to the heart. The pulse of its power was too deep for her to resist.”
“Like your magic,” Thali said. “When you reached a place of great fear, it struck out as raw as a babe’s first cry in the world. The heart of the planet, I believe, is calling you and Sonara both. Beckoning you to pay attention. To listen close. The heart is a beautiful gift, the source of life. But to others, it is a dangerous weapon, the kind that only a monster would want to control. To take it would be to kill the planet. To take it would be the end of the end.”
The end of the end.
Only a monster would want to wield the planet’s heart.
A monster like Geisinger.
A monster like Cade, now that he’d taken the wrong side.
“We have to stop him,” Karr said. “If the heart exists. If it’s true…”
“Of course it’s true,” Thali said. “The Great Mother’s beauty is upon the very door you revealed.”
“The source of all things,” Karr said. “The source of life, with great power.”
He pieced it all together.
The energy source that was constantly appearing on Cade’s scanners.
Like a pulse.
A beat.
A beating heart.
He felt sick, suddenly understanding it all, even though he’d never heard the full story. Even though this planet was not a place to call his own. It had changed him, that much was true, with this power that roiled beside his blood and bones.
“We have to stop Cade,” Karr said. “I think he’s after the heart. He doesn’t realize it—he thinks he’s just seeking out Antheon, this powerful substance, but if Thali is right… what happens if the heart is removed?”
The woman in the mask pressed her hands to her chest as if she wanted to calm the racing of her own heart. “The planet would cease to exist. For what living being can survive without a heart?”
He had to stop it.
For this place may have been where he’d died at Sonara’s hand.
But it also gave him a second chance at life.
To see it fall at Cade’s hands… his brother had no idea what he was about to uncover. What he was about to destroy. All these people, these creatures, the ringed planet that looked like a glittering jewel nestled among the stars. All of it would fall, if it was true. If Cade discovered the planet’s heart.
How many other planets were out there, like this one?
How many others had a source of life, and Geisinger was sending missions out across the stars, conquering entire worlds, enslaving their people and devouring the very planet’s source of life?
Karr knew it would take all of the group’s magic combined to shut down Cade’s mission. To destroy the Starfall’s energy source and set the prisoners free from his brother’s command.
But Karr would do it, for something in Cade had changed the moment he’d taken the job from Geisinger. When h
e’d discovered Karr trying to fix up the escape pod in the belly of the ship, there was a new light in his eyes. Karr had mistaken it for excitement, for the promise of freedom.
Now he realized it was hunger.
A hunger for power.
For money.
For a life that offered more.
Some part of him wondered if they’d ever be able to get out from Geisinger’s fist once he stopped this job. But Cade wasn’t buying them freedom. He was just placing them in thicker shackles.
“Tell me the story of Eona,” Karr said. For he feared that it would mirror Cade’s greed. “All of it, please.”
Thali nodded.
She motioned for the others to join her. Azariah helped Karr stand, and they all led him towards the door, where Thali sat close, examining the details on the rock as she spoke.
“The first Shadowblood was a young princess named Eona,” Thali said, her voice mixing in with the sound of the crackling fire. “She discovered the heart of the planet, and died trying to steal it for herself, so that she could conquer the world…”
As she spoke, Karr gently pressed his hand to the door.
The story of Eona washed over him, and he could have sworn he felt a gentle pulse beneath his palm, coming from the other side.
Chapter 27
Cade
He’d never had to don a mask this wicked before, but he wore it gratefully, for it would bring back his brother safe and sound.
It was a carefully crafted one, the kind that Jeb would have worn were he in charge of a mission gone awry. A mask of indifference—of utter cold—that Cade slid upon his soul.
The Deadlands night wind howled like a vicious wolf on the prowl, and whisked away the warmth that had been here earlier today as his prisoners worked.
Geisinger had only given him a few more days to complete the mission.
There were eyes across the stars, ones that would come to call, should they learn about the work.
Remember your part, Cade told himself, and calmed the furious shaking in his knees as he stared out at the horizon. From up so high, here on the loading dock, he should have felt like a king in this world.
Instead he felt sick as the prisoners continuing to cut into the mountainside far below.
“They’re late,” Rohtt said with a grunt now. He stood to Cade’s right, arms crossed over his chest, the picture of a military man who obeyed orders and didn’t ask questions. That was Rohtt’s way. It had never been Cade’s, until this job. “I told you not to get your hopes up, Kingston.”
He hated Rohtt.
He truly did.
But the man acted as Geisinger’s eyes and ears, and tonight Cade was grateful for the distraction.
Cade leaned forward, trying to get the feeling to return to his toes. All day, he’d paced upon this loading dock in the sky, waiting for a glimpse of the Devil. She’d left no way to contact her; and Cade knew she was out there somewhere, watching.
Free the prisoners, had been the Devil’s command.
Cade wouldn’t do it. He couldn’t do it, not if they wanted to complete the mission on Geisinger’s time. His hands were tied. Geisinger would take Karr from him if he didn’t.
There was no winning when his brother’s life was being threatened on all sides.
Three soldiers stood to the right of the dock, three to the left, all of them armed.
Cade’s new prize for the Devil was the man now bound and kneeling on the loading dock, a dark sackcloth over his head. Jaxon, a part of her troupe. A criminal with crimes similar to Cade’s.
Queen Iridis had sworn that if Cade threatened him, the Devil would not destroy the rest of his plans. His work could go on, with fewer workers, fewer prisoners. But Geisinger would still get his Antheon. Cade would still get his payday. And Karr would still live out his future as rich and protected as a king.
It was the life he deserved, the one Cade had promised he’d give to him, long ago, when Karr was saved from the raiders and their knives.
“By nightfall,” Cade said now. He glanced to Rohtt, who held the imprisoned Jaxon in his grasp. “She said by nightfall, or Karr would die. What if we’ve made a mistake? What if she hasn’t seen our message?”
All day, they’d left Jaxon bound and fully visible on the loading dock, surrounded by guards. All day, Cade had paced, watching and waiting for a sign of the Devil.
He knew she was watching him, too, out there somewhere in the wilds.
Queen Iridis swore the Devil would come for Jaxon… But perhaps she was wrong.
Rohtt grunted. His eyes glittered darkly behind his visor. “Trickery. Bastards always think they can do things on their own terms.”
“Tis is on their terms, you Wanderer buffoon,” the prisoner Jaxon said, his words muffled by the hood over his head. “You’d be wise to treat it as so. The Devil will kill you all, for what you’ve done.”
Rohtt slammed him in the back with the butt of his rifle.
Jaxon crumpled, his body bruised and battered from the countless beatings Rohtt had given him upon interrogation. The mites had done their job, taking the Dohrsaran to the edge of consciousness, countless times when Cade pressed the command button.
But Jaxon had also been wounded in the Gathering attack, according to Rohtt, with a broken arm that had left him unable to defend himself when they’d discovered him holding a mighty golden sword, the hilt like a scorpion’s tail poised to strike.
They’d taken the blade from him without a fight, Cade certain that its weight in gold would be worth something, somewhere across the stars.
But even in his pain, Jaxon had offered Rohtt no information. Only a cruel smile and four whispered words.
The Devil will come.
Cade looked back to the sky now, the planet’s rings dancing in the distance. Colors so beautiful, he knew Karr would have longed to capture them in one of his drawings.
His hands clenched into fists. And then his heart clenched, too, as if it were a fist of its own. As if it wanted to squeeze every drop of terror from his blood until Cade had nothing left.
“There,” a soldier said. “Movement.”
Cade’s head snapped up.
He followed the flow of the wind towards the Bloodhorns that held Geisinger’s Antheon beneath. Tricky, to uncover the hotspot of its power, the Queen of the Hive, as Geisinger said. For it seemed the Antheon’s energy moved. Appeared sometimes on the tracking radar, then faded the next, like it was a living thing.
“I don’t see anything,” Cade growled.
“There it is again,” another soldier said. He lifted his rifle. “The black wyvern.”
“Weapons down,” Rohtt commanded.
Ghostly, those Bloodhorns, with twisted mountaintops that looked like jagged glass capable of carving a hole in the sky.
Cade shifted his gaze as a dark mass lifted from between two peaks, the moonlight cascading down to show the arched back of a dragon. A mighty head, sharp scales curving from the top of its neck down to a barbed tail that flicked and twisted as the beast soared across the sky.
First, there was no sound but the wind. But then the beast’s roar arrived, and the great flapping of its wings carried across the pass as it grew closer. And larger, every second, large enough to take up half the loading dock with its sheer size.
“Hold your fire,” Cade said into his helmet com, grateful that his mask of indifference held in place, for he’d seen plenty of alien beasts before.
But never dragons, not until Dohrsar. It was a beast that matched the night, spiraling downwards, snapping out its wings to catch the wind as it landed upon the dock. Its mighty talons screeched against the metal as its wings hovered overhead, casting them all in shadow.
Upon its back sat three figures.
A man wearing a wide-brimmed leather hat to match his duster coat, the shape of two blades visible as he slid down from the dragon’s back with ease, keeping a hand upon its sinewy side.
Next, the young woman called th
e Devil, blue-haired and ferocious with a too-large leather hat on her head and a cerulean sword hanging at her hip, the same one that she’d driven into Karr’s heart.
And then Karr himself.
He was there atop the dragon, his hands bound, a hood over his head, but it was him. Cade would know that lazy posture anywhere, from his gangly arms to the scar that was visible just above the cut of his shirt, protruding from his collarbone.
The Devil climbed down from the wyvern’s back. It huffed out a mighty breath, two plumes of smoke trailing from its snout, and the smell whooshed across the platform, even through his mask’s filtration system. It reeked with the stink of death. Its eyes, easily the size of Cade’s head, focused on him. Dark and pupilless. A low growl rumbled in its throat.
“Easy, old friend,” the prisoner Jaxon said from beneath his hood. As if he knew that growl well and feared it not. “We’ll be reunited soon enough.”
The wyvern whimpered. Then lowered its head to the platform, eyes watching him intently.
Cade swallowed, wondering if perhaps he’d made a mistake in bartering the life of a man who commanded a wyvern as a child would a family dog.
“Welcome, Devil,” Cade said to the blue-haired woman. His voice remained strong, even with the howling wind. “I believe you have something of mine, just as I now have something of yours. We can do this trade quickly. No harm need come to anyone.”
“Save your diplomacy for the next planet you invade,” she said. She marched towards him on worn boots, that sword remaining on her hip as silence seemed to sweep across the landing dock. The soldiers leveled their guns at her.
“Hold your fire,” Cade commanded, lifting a hand.
They froze just as she did.
She curled her hands into fists. Her eyes dropped to the hooded Jaxon, her jaw tightening as she seemed to take a deep, steadying breath. “Can you read, Wanderer? Because it seems you have not agreed to my simple demand. Free all the prisoners. Then you’ll receive Karr.”
It was Rohtt who spoke this time. “Free Karr, or your comrade here will receive death. We’ve already given him more mercy than he deserves.”
He pointed his rifle at Jaxon’s head. They’d removed the mite from his neck, knowing full well the Devil wouldn’t take him with it still intact.
Blood Metal Bone: An epic new fantasy novel, perfect for fans of Leigh Bardugo Page 26
