Cast in Secrets and Shadow

by Andrea Robertson

  With a low cry, Ara rushed to them, the Loresmith Forge and the purpose of the axes forgotten.

  Startled by a newcomer’s approach, Huntress spun around, snarling, but when she recognized Ara she gave a welcoming bark then returned to her sentinel post.

  After a quick glance in Ara’s direction, Nimhea asked, “How badly is she hurt? There’s been no time—”

  The princess jumped over a tentacle that swung low, then struck, shearing off its thorned tip.

  The creature shrieked with pain, and its other tentacles shrank back.

  Ara dropped to her knees beside Lahvja, setting Wuldr’s axes aside. Lahvja was so still Ara couldn’t tell if she was breathing. She pressed her fingers to Lahvja’s neck, searching for a pulse. It was there. Weak, but there. Her dress was torn. Ara pulled back the ruined fabric to reveal a long but shallow slime-covered gash that ran along her left side.

  “She’s alive,” Ara breathed. “But she’s bleeding. I need to bind the wound.”

  “Do it,” Nimhea told her. “I’ll protect you.”

  Even as the words left Nimhea’s lips, the creature attacked again, and Nimhea fended off the sweep of tentacles with ferocious sword strokes.

  Ara tore the dress further so she could create bandage strips. Her heart pounded as she wrapped the cloth around Lahvja’s body.

  “Done,” she told Nimhea.

  Nimhea turned to look down at Lahvja. “Thank Nava.”

  “Ara! Nimhea!” Teth’s shout pulled her eyes to the tree. “Look out!”

  At the same moment, Huntress snarled a warning.

  Ara sensed the attack coming a moment before she saw it. One of the limbs flew at her. She somersaulted backward and rolled away from the limb, its glistening thorns passing mere inches from her body.

  Nimhea dove to the side, avoiding the tentacle, but was unable to recover in time to strike it with her sword.

  Out of the beast’s reach, Ara crouched low to the ground. She had yet to find her bearings when she heard Teth yell in pain. Her gaze flew to an object dropping from his tree. Tears of the Traitor tumbled through branches and hit the forest floor. She heard the sounds of snapping branches a moment later, but she didn’t see Teth. His perch in the tree was empty, but the thief was nowhere to be seen.

  With a strangled cry, she lurched toward the tree, while the swamp beast refocused its attack on Joar.

  “Stop!” Nimhea grabbed Ara’s arm. “We need you here. Defend Lahvja while I help Joar.”

  Ara shoved Nimhea away, wrenching her arm free. “I have to find Teth.”

  Then she was running. She ignored Nimhea’s shouts that followed her.

  Ara went to the place Tears of the Traitor had landed. She searched around the tree, looking for any sign of Teth.

  “Teth!” she shouted. “Where are you?”

  Nimhea was still shouting for her, but an irrational obsession had taken hold of Ara. The sounds of the battle seemed to fade away as her head pounded with a singular need:

  I have to find him.

  She circled the tree twice.

  There was so sign of Teth.

  Is the creature so fast it grabbed him and has already drawn him into the swamp?

  A broken sob bubbled up her throat.

  “Teth!”

  Mind reeling, she fell back against the tree. A wave of dizziness swept over her, and she leaned her head against the trunk. Her gaze traveled upward.

  A body was tangled in the vines. They formed a natural net into which Teth had fallen.

  Relief spilled through her. He wasn’t moving, but Lahvja hadn’t been either.

  How can I get him down? He’s too vulnerable up there.

  A scream shattered Ara’s focus.

  Nimhea.

  She didn’t scream a second time.

  Shame pummeled Ara mercilessly as she realized how rash she’d been to leave the others for Teth’s sake. The horror of Nimhea’s sudden silence turned her blood to ice.

  “Eni protect him,” Ara breathed before racing back the way she’d come.

  Nimhea was lying facedown beside Lahvja, while Huntress menaced any tentacles that came near.

  “Nimhea!” Ara threw herself to the ground beside the fallen princess and turned her over.

  She couldn’t stop her own scream.

  The tentacle had caught Nimhea at the left cheek, its thorn ripping through skin up to her hairline, catching the corner of her eye. The left side of her face and neck were covered with blood and slime.

  Ara’s gut twisted.

  This is my fault.

  There was no time to bind Nimhea’s wound. If they were to survive, she had to help Joar: the warrior who now faced this monstrosity alone.

  Guilt dug its claws into Ara. Joar was the second Loreknight. Getting the newly forged axes to him should have been her sole focus upon returning to the others. Instead, she’d let her emotions rule her with disastrous results.

  From the moment of Ara’s arrival, Joar hadn’t slowed his attack, nor had he stolen a glance in her direction to discover what new events had transpired. His focus upon the creature never wavered.

  He hacked ceaselessly, sending chunks of its flesh flying. All the while, Joar sang. The deep, bellowing melody was in a language Ara didn’t understand. It was a choppy song, broken up by his puffing breaths and war cries, but that it was a song was unmistakable. Each note drove him forward, filling him with resolve.

  With one last glance at Nimhea’s prone form, Ara scooped up the axes and ran toward Joar. She waited for a moment when the creature retreated slightly from its assailant and screamed its pain.

  “Joar!” Ara shouted.

  He turned and she raised one of the axes overhead, dropping the other, so she could grip the first with both her hands. “This is Storm!”

  She hurled the ax, watching it fly end over end. Joar dropped his own ax and caught Storm’s haft with his left hand.

  A boom of thunder shook the air.

  Joar threw his head back and let loose a cry that rivaled the rumbling in the sky. Huntress lifted her muzzle and howled.

  He stretched out his right hand. Ara picked up the second ax and threw it. “Song!”

  When he caught Song, the booming was joined by a swelling chorus, distant voices carried on the wind, echoing the melody Joar had sung when Ara first came upon him. A silver-blue nimbus hovered over his skin and became a sphere within which raged a terrible storm. Music surged around him, accompanied by a gale filled with spikes of ice and needles of snow.

  Ara staggered back, overawed by the power Wuldr had instilled within the axes. Joar was now the god’s vessel, and she was there to bear witness. Her limbs shook with amazement, but at the same time she felt a deep sense of completion, of the fulfillment of her true purpose.

  The creature bore down on him, lashing its thorn-tipped tentacles in a renewed attack. Joar answered the assault, swinging StormSong with the driving downbeats of the ethereal music. He surged forward, hacking limbs with each step. The storm traveled with him, assailing the creature with its frigid arsenal. Hunks of ice smashed into the monstrosity, and it sent up shrieks of rage.

  Tentacles shot out at Joar, but they were fewer now, and he cleaved any that came within reach of his axes. The creature’s cries became those of fear, knowing that once it had been the attacker but was now the attacked. It began to retreat into the water of the swamp, but Joar had no intention of letting the beast escape. He stepped into the swamp but didn't sink; the water beneath him had frozen instantly. While the creature’s size only let it move slowly through the mire, Joar moved swiftly along a frozen path. As he approached the beast, the water surrounding its trunk turned to ice, trapping it in place. The creature shrieked again, its limbs thrashing. Joar raised both axes and hurled them. The creature’s great single eye exploded,
and the axes lodged deep within its body. It slumped onto the ice, unmoving.

  The blizzard surrounding Joar faded, as did the song. Joar walked to the beast and dislodged his axes, pausing to rinse them in the swamp water just beyond the ice. He followed the frozen path back to shore; when he stepped onto earth the ice vanished and the swamp returned to what it had been. The creature’s carcass floated atop the dank waters.

  Joar came to Ara, holding up Storm and Song.

  “What is this wonder you have wrought?”

  But the spell that captured her while Joar fought had been broken and was replaced by a torrent of fear, grief, and guilt.

  “I’ll explain,” Ara said, her voice on the verge of breaking. “But first we help the others.”

  He nodded gravely. “That is as it should be.”

  “Go to Lahvja and Nimhea,” she told him, then bolted toward Teth and cursed under her breath. She’d had no choice but to leave him and help Nimhea, but she was terrified of what she might find.

  To her surprise, he was crouched beside the tree when she reached him. He raised one hand and gingerly touched his swelling forehead.

  “Teth.” She reached for him, then stopped, suddenly arrested by shame. He’d been all she could think of from the second he’d fallen, and it had almost gotten Nimhea killed.

  “That’s going to be a big bump,” he groaned. “Tell me my irresistible looks haven’t been marred.”

  She smiled impulsively at the joke, but then Nimhea’s torn flesh reared up in her mind’s eyes and a vise closed on her ribs.

  “Are you all right?” Ara knelt beside him, but kept herself slightly apart. “Aside from the bump?”

  “I think so,” he answered. “I had to jump out of the tree to avoid a tentacle, but I managed to jump right into a branch. Thankfully the vines were nice enough to catch me.”

  Ara flinched at the memory of staring up at Teth’s body tangled in the vines. The way the need to help him had made her ignore everything else and what it had cost.

  “I take it we won.” Teth’s gaze had found the dead creature in the middle of the swamp, and he grimaced. “What of the others? Is anyone hurt?”

  Ara couldn’t bring herself to speak about their fallen friends and gestured for him to follow her back to the others. They found Joar kneeling beside Nimhea, rummaging through Lahvja’s satchel. Huntress trotted around them in circles, whimpering.

  “You are well?” he asked Teth as they approached.

  “Well enough,” Teth answered.

  When Teth saw Nimhea, he sucked in a sharp breath. “Nava be merciful.”

  “She was. They will both live,” Joar said.

  Ara looked at the terrible wound and thought, Is this mercy?

  “I found what I needed in Lahvja’s satchel.” He handed Ara linen bandages. “Do what you can to stanch the bleeding.”

  When he poked silk through the eye of a long silver needle, Ara’s stomach curdled.

  “Her eye—” Ara began, when Joar’s stitches neared the socket. The flesh surrounding Nimhea’s eye swelled in sickly hues of yellow and green.

  “I hope it can be saved,” Joar replied. “I know only a little of healing, and this is the best I can do. The paste Teth is making should help with the pain and keep infection away. We will need to apply it to Lahvja’s wound, too.”

  When he’d finished the stitches, Joar cleaned Nimhea’s skin of blood and spread the green paste Teth had created over the wound. Ara helped him bandage the left side of Nimhea’s head.

  They then removed the makeshift bandages Ara had wrapped around Lahvja.

  “Not deep enough to require stitches.” Joar sounded relieved.

  He applied the green paste to Lahvja’s wound and then covered it with fresh bandages.

  Staring at the two motionless women, Ara asked, “Is the poison still harming them?”

  Gesturing to Lahvja and Nimhea, Joar said, “Its attacks were meant to maim, not kill. I do not believe its venom to be fatal, given what I’ve heard. Neither of our friends shows signs of fever or convulsions. They breathe freely.”

  He continued. “We should plan to rest here for the night. We’ll need to build litters for our injured companions so we can carry them back to the village. They will be in pain for some time and will need rest as their wounds mend.”

  “You knew about this creature?” Ara asked, surprised he’d given them no warning about such a threat.

  “There are tales about such a beast,” Joar replied. “But I did not believe them to be true. I thought them no more than a story meant to frighten young children and keep them from wandering into swamps. Most stories about monsters are of that ilk.”

  Teth frowned at him. “What did you mean when you said it didn’t want to kill them?”

  “In the stories, this creature’s poison renders its victims unconscious, and once they are in its clutches it waits for them to awaken before it consumes them.”

  Ara shuddered.

  “That creature cannot be of this world,” Joar continued. “Earthly predators do not feast on the suffering of their victims as well as the flesh.”

  “It was born of a god’s madness,” Ara told the hunter, and for a moment she was back in the cavern, staring at Ofrit’s frenzied state. His awful suffering. “The god is now free of this madness, and the creature is slain. I believe the swamp will return to its natural state.”

  Joar’s brow furrowed. “How can you know this?” He placed StormSong on the ground between them. “And what of these weapons? It was only by their power that I was able to defeat the beast.”

  “Senn’s teeth,” Teth murmured with a sharp look at Ara. “I didn’t see that coming.”

  “I forged those axes,” Ara told Joar. “They are a gift from Wuldr for you.”

  “StormSong.” Gazing at the bright axes, Joar’s face filled with wonder. “The storm on the blades is alive. The voices of my ancestors rise up when I wield them. I cannot fathom a weapon more suited to me.”

  He paused, then added, “Though, it grieves me some to know I will put aside my father’s ax.”

  “You can still use it for regular tasks, like chopping wood,” Teth suggested. “Think of the others as your special-occasion axes.”

  Ara rolled her eyes at him, and he flashed her a teasing smile.

  “Why has Wuldr gifted me StormSong?” Joar said softly. “I have not earned such a blessing.”

  “Wuldr seems to think otherwise,” Teth countered. “And I’d say your sojourn in the wilds is officially a success.”

  Regarding Joar thoughtfully, he added, “That’s the good news. The bad news is, you now have a new quest.”

  Wuldr frowned at him. “A new quest is an honor. Such a thing could never be ‘bad news.’ ”

  He spoke the last words like they left a foul taste in his mouth.

  “Guess we don’t have to be worried about getting you on board then,” Teth said. “That’s more good news. Welcome, friend.”

  Teth clapped his hand on Joar’s shoulder. Then gave the bulging muscle a tentative poke.

  “What are you even made of?”

  Huntress growled at him.

  “Sorry.” Teth pulled his hand away. “No offense meant.”

  “You are a strange man,” Joar said with a rumbling laugh. “So very strange.”

  “I’ve heard worse,” Teth replied.

  Ara appreciated his attempt to lighten the somber situation they’d found themselves in, but she couldn’t feign mirth. Her eyes kept finding Nimhea’s bandaged face.

  That is my fault. I failed her.

  The truth of it gnawed at her ribs. It was for Teth’s sake she’d abandoned Nimhea and Joar. He hadn’t even been in real danger.

  How could I have been so reckless?

  By abandoning Nimhea, Ara reali
zed she’d put their very purpose at risk. She felt a sickening twist in her stomach. Nimhea was the leader Saetlund’s people would rally to. The Resistance had shown little interest in Ara’s quest—it was Nimhea who was important to them, the future queen of Saetlund. To lose her would be to lose everything they fought for.

  Ara had made a near-fatal mistake, and she was terrified of the moment when Nimhea woke up and she would have to tell the princess what happened.

  I don’t know if she’ll be able to forgive me. I don’t know if I can forgive myself.

  “Tell of me this new quest.” Joar’s words broke through Ara’s dark thoughts.

  “You know of Saetlund’s gods.” Ara focused on the hunter. “But have you heard of the Loresmith and Loreknights?”

  Joar nodded. “My father was fond of telling tales, especially the old legends.”

  His usual somber expression gave way to a sudden wonder, revealing the young man who lived beneath the mask of the solitary, hardened hunter.

  “Our quest is to restore the Loreknights to Saetlund,” she said. “So the Vokkans are driven from Saetlund, and the true heir to the River Throne will rule once again and heal this land and its people.”

  She gestured to the princess. “Nimhea is Dentroth’s heir. She returned from exile to claim her throne.”

  “My father said the Loresmith line had been broken.” Joar looked doubtful, but hope sparked in his wintry-blue eyes. “There can be no Loreknights to save the kingdom without the Loresmith.”

  “The line was broken,” Teth told him, reaching for Ara’s hand. “But things changed.”

  Glowering at Teth, Joar was clearly drawn to the mystery, but hesitated to embrace its truth. “If the Loresmith did not pass on his gift to one of his children, that magic was lost. What you say cannot be true.”

  “It can,” Ara replied, lacing her fingers with Teth’s. “Because of me.”