Sea of Shadows (8 page)

Thirteen

T
he front door was closed. She wanted that to be a good sign, but she knew her father might not have made it back at all. Perhaps he’d been at the meeting when . . .

She opened the door. Inside, the house was as still and silent as the village. Daigo edged past her, growling softly as if to say
, I’ll handle this.
He bounded straight to the back of the house. To her father’s bedroom.

Did he smell him there?
Please, please,
she begged the spirits.
Let Daigo smell him there.

She raced through after the wildcat. In the near-dark, she could see a figure on her father’s sleeping mat. Pale hair glistened on the pillow. She exhaled as relief shuddered through her.

Daigo let out a strange noise, like a strangled yowl.

“He’s fine,” she whispered.

She went to the chest and picked up the lantern, then fumbled in the dark with the flint and firestone. The lantern sputtered before casting its pale glow over the room.

Daigo yowled again.

“Stop that,” Moria hissed. “We’ll check on the others next. I want to speak to Father.”

As she walked to the mat, her fingers trembled. Despite what she’d said to Daigo, his yowl worried her, and she half expected to see blood-soaked blankets pulled up over her father’s corpse. But he lay there under clean sheets, his eyes closed.

“Father?” she whispered. “It’s Moria. Something’s happened.”

He didn’t move. She rubbed the back of her neck, almost nicking herself with her dagger. She sheathed it, reached out, and shook his shoulder. His head lolled.

“No,” she whispered. “No.”

Her hand flew to his cheek. It was cool.

Because it’s a cold night. That’s all.

She shook him harder, calling him. Then she touched his chest, his neck, searching for some sign of life, finding none.

When Daigo jumped up on the mat, she snarled at him. She would have shoved him if he hadn’t leaped off first. When he gave a long, plaintive yowl of pain and grief, she spun on him, hand raised. Then she realized what she was doing, let out a strangled cry, and dropped to her knees.

Daigo rubbed against her, his sandpaper tongue licking her cheek. She put her arms around him and collapsed against his side. A sob caught in her chest. Her eyes burned and stung, but tears wouldn’t flow. She just hung there over Daigo, gasping.

He’s . . . Father is . . .

Her mind wouldn’t even finish the thought. Like the sob and the tears, it clogged up inside her, stabbing through her chest and her head.

I didn’t take care of him. Didn’t take care of any of them. Levi, Gavril, Father . . .

Father . . .

She doubled over, convulsed in pain.

Then she heard a soft moan. From the sleeping mat. She scrambled up and leaned over to touch her father’s shoulder. He just lay there, head lolling, eyes closed.

“Father?”

He made a sound. Like breath exhaled through clenched teeth. Now the tears came, springing to Moria’s eyes as her hands flew to his chest.

Still no sign of life.

No, you’re mistaken. He is alive. You heard him.

As if in answer, his chest moved. She climbed onto the thick padded mat, leaning down and hugging him as tight as she could, tears flowing free now.

“It’s me,” she said. “It’s me, Fath—”

A noise sounded deep in his chest. A strange, unnatural gurgling, and she released him, falling back, apologies spilling out.

A hiss. Then a noise, unlike anything she’d ever heard before, part moan and part snarl. She caught a flash of claws swiping at her, and pain ripped through her arm.

Claws.

Not Daigo. Not a paw. A misshapen hand with talons as long as the fingers themselves.

She grabbed her father’s shoulders to haul him to safety. His eyes were open. Those blue eyes she knew so well, the whites shot with blood. Then she saw his face.

With a cry, she released him and fell back. She hit the floor. Daigo leaped onto her, facing off with whatever . . .

Father. It’s . . .

No, it wasn’t. Couldn’t be.

Then the cry came, a moaning, snarling screech that set every hair on end. The claws swiped at Daigo. The wildcat pounced and caught the thing by the wrist. The other hand slashed Daigo’s back. With a howl, Moria yanked out her dagger and leaped up.

Then she saw it. Truly saw it.

It was her father. She tried to tell herself it wasn’t—couldn’t be—but it was. Her father’s blue eyes. Her father’s fair hair. But not her father’s face. The face of something from a nightmare, gray skin stretched over bone, jutting chin and nose and cheekbones. No lips, just a slash of a mouth. And teeth. Fangs. So big his mouth couldn’t close. He let out another of those terrible cries, his jaw stretching open until all she could see were the fangs. They shot toward Daigo.

Moria broke from her shock and lunged at him. Her blade was raised, but she couldn’t swing it down, her arm refusing to move, her mind telling her this was her father, no matter what she was seeing. All she could do was swipe at him with her free hand. It was a feeble blow, but enough to surprise him. He turned on her. Daigo dropped between them, fur rising as he spat.

Moria made a noise. She wasn’t even truly sure what it was, but Daigo understood. He backed up to her side.

The thing on the sleeping mat—
not my father, not my father
—pushed its gnarled legs from beneath the covers. Its gaze stayed fixed on her, head bobbing, nostrils flaring. Drinking in her scent. Thinking. Considering. Planning.

“Father?” she said. Her voice came out so low she barely heard it. She tried again. “Father? You’re in there. I know you are.”

He’s not. You can see that. Look in his eyes and you’ll see it. He’s gone. This is a . . .

No, no, it’s not.

It is.

Shadow stalker.

This was the missing piece. The one part that had made her think it wasn’t shadow stalkers in the forest. Because they hadn’t seen this. The risen dead. The manifested form.

Her father was gone. This . . . thing was a twisted spirit inhabiting his body. He was . . .

Her breath caught, and it stayed caught, and she stood there, unable to draw air, chest burning, vision blurring.

Dead. My father is dead. This thing killed him.

She let out a howl, flew at the creature, slashing at it with her blade. She had no compunctions now. This wasn’t her father—it was a killer, a parasite. It had murdered her father, and now it was using his body, and she would not let that happen.

Her blade slashed its leathery skin. The bloodless cut only made the thing shriek in rage. Talons sliced through her cloak. Daigo leaped on its back, fangs sinking into its neck. It tried to claw at the wildcat. When it couldn’t reach, it swung at Moria instead.

This time, the talons caught her side, under her cloak. Pain ripped through her. Daigo snarled, shaking the thing, his teeth biting in until she heard a snap. Its neck broke, head falling to one side, but still it kept scratching at her.

She stabbed it in the heart. It grabbed at her and caught her by the cloak. She tried to wrest free, but its claws were embedded. She yanked the clasp and broke away, leaving the thing fighting with her cloak. Then she spun, dagger raised, as Daigo leaped to her side. They dove at the thing together and . . .

A gust of wind knocked them back. As Moria fell, she saw the creature, in shadow form now—that twisting, writhing smoke rising from her father’s body. It rose, then shot past her, and it was gone.

Moria walked to her father’s body. No, not her father. Not truly. It still looked like that twisted thing. A mockery of her father, lying on the floor, clutching her cloak, blood everywhere.

She ought to lift him back onto the padded mat. She ought to kiss his cheek and weep. But this wasn’t her father. She could no longer see it as her father. Ashyn would. Ashyn—

Ashyn
.

Moria spun and ran out the door.

Moria stood in the junction between two lanes. She looked toward the barracks, then the forest. The choice ought to be simple. Everyone was gone. Dead. Massacred by the shadow stalkers. She needed to get to Ashyn right away.

And yet, when she listened, she heard voices in the forest. Not the screeches of the shadow stalkers, but actual voices. Was it possible some guards had lived? The shadow stalkers could have slipped past them in shadow form.

She looked at Daigo, but the wildcat was doing the same thing, his attention swinging from those voices to the barracks and back.

Ashyn. It had to be Ashyn. Her sister was all she had left now that—

Moria’s knees buckled as pain washed over her. Daigo slid beneath her outstretched hands.

“I have you, too. I know.” But it wasn’t the same, because he was almost an extension of herself.

As she turned toward the barracks, she caught a flash of red-gold hair, streaming behind a figure darting between buildings.

“Ashyn?”

Of course it was. They were the only fair-haired Northerners in Edgewood now that their father . . .

Moria stifled the thought and raced after her sister. When she reached the end of the road, she caught sight of yellowish fur running around the next corner.

She whistled, but Tova didn’t come back. She ran after them and again she got to the road’s end just in time to see a flash—of both figures this time, her sister and her hound, running like the spirits of the damned were chasing them. Running toward the forest.

“Ashyn! Tova!”

They didn’t stop. Behind her, she heard that now-familiar snarling, moaning shriek, and she turned to see a twisted figure in an open doorway. A shadow stalker in human form. It lunged at her. She wheeled and tore off after Ashyn.

Ashyn

Fourteen

“S
he’s not coming back, is she?” Ronan said as he moved his playing piece. “She doesn’t want anything to do with me.”

Because you used her blade to kidnap me,
Ashyn wanted to say. She’d forgiven him. Moria would not until he proved himself worthy.

“Is she worried about the Kitsune boy?” he continued. “I mean, yes, of course she is. But that’s what she’s thinking about. Him.”

Ashyn stifled a sigh and pretended to miss the question.

After a moment, he said, “They’re courting, aren’t they?”

Ashyn choked on a laugh. “No, definitely not.”

“But there is someone, isn’t there? A girl like that . . .”

A girl like that.

Ashyn loved her sister. And yet . . . It was not that Ashyn particularly
wanted
any of the young men who trailed after her sister. It was simply . . . well, simply that she wouldn’t mind a boy’s attention, if only to prove that she wasn’t completely invisible next to Moria.

It had started two springs ago, when a young bard came with the supply wagons. Ashyn still remembered him, with his dark eyes and long braids and quick smile, his pretty words and lilting voice. He’d seen Ashyn first and stopped midsong to stare. Then he’d begun to sing about her. He’d followed her from the village square, still singing as she blushed. That had felt . . . new. Wonderful and warm.

She’d walked all the way home with the bard singing her praises. Then Moria came swinging out, blade in hand, and told him to quit his caterwauling or she’d use him for target practice. He’d stopped singing about Ashyn then. And started singing about Moria.

Her sister had made good on her promise, whipping her dagger and pinning his cloak to the wall. And that was it. One throw of that blade, and he’d completely forgotten Ashyn. He’d followed Moria for the rest of his visit, composing ballads about the flaxen-haired warrior girl of Edgewood. By the time he left, his cape was so full of holes it looked like a fishing net. Yet he wore it as proudly as if Moria had covered it in kisses instead.

Then there was Levi. Again, Ashyn hadn’t been truly interested; he was a braggart and a bit of a fool. After he kissed her behind the village hall, she’d hurried home to tell Moria. She’d expected they’d laugh over it. Moria had indeed laughed . . . because he’d done the same to her. The next day he’d awkwardly apologized to Ashyn, and she realized he had drunkenly mistaken her for her sister.

Now Moria had caught Ronan’s attention.

“It’s getting late,” Ashyn said as she stood. “We’ll pick up the game tomorrow.”

“No, stay. My apologies. I was just . . .” He leaned to peer through the window and down the hall.

I know,
she thought.
And I don’t blame you.

“You can’t go anyway,” he said. “Moria said to wait until she gets back.”

“Yes, she does that. But I’ll be fine. I have Tova.”

The hound rose at his name. Ignoring Ronan’s protests, Ashyn put the game aside and said her farewells. Before she could take a step down the hall, though, the guard appeared in the flickering lantern light.

“I cannot permit you to leave without your sister,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

Theoretically, Ashyn’s authority matched her sister’s. But in martial matters, particularly with the guards, it was Moria’s voice that rang the loudest.

“She seems to have forgotten me,” Ashyn said.

Anyone who truly knew Moria would realize that was impossible. Most likely, Moria had been waylaid and simply delayed. But Ashyn was tired and not particularly eager to wait.

The guard looked up at the hatch, as if considering. Then he shook his head. “I’m sorry, but she was very clear.”

“Can you get someone to find her, then?”

He hesitated.

“The barracks are right above us,” she said. “Someone must be near.”

He nodded. She followed him down the hall. He climbed the ladder, opened the hatch, and called out. When no one answered, he called again, louder. Then a third shout, one that made her ears ring.

Something’s wrong.

The thought seemed to leap from nowhere, but it didn’t, of course. It had been there since they’d run from the forest.
Whatever happened out there isn’t over.
She’d felt that in her gut, in the cold silence of the spirit-empty village. When they’d met with the commander, she’d wanted to tell him to run
. Everyone run.

That was foolish, of course. Run from what? Run to where?

Ashyn had watched her sister marching around, giving orders, and making plans, and thought, for perhaps the thousandth time since their birth,
Why can’t I be more like her?
Instead, she’d sat quietly to the side, fear strumming through her, ashamed of her cowardice, consumed by guilt.

Moria insisted that what happened in the forest was not Ashyn’s fault. It was not possible that a mistake in the Seeking could have caused that. While Ashyn knew she hadn’t raised those spirits, she could not help but feel she had still failed. That Ellyn would have been able to stop the spirits.

Now, as the guard came back down the ladder, that tamped-down fear and guilt ignited. She stifled the first licks of true panic and said calmly, “With the search party gone, they must all be on duty. Would you go out and check, please? I’ll wait here at the hatch.”

He nodded and climbed out.

“I’m going to step outside,” he said.

She fought a prickle of impatience as his boots scuffed across the floor. A distant door creaked.

“Hello?” he called.

No answer.

“What’s going on?” Ronan asked from his cell.

She silenced him with a wave and kept listening as the guard’s voice got farther and farther away. Tova whined. She waved him to silence, too.

“You there!” the guard’s distant voice called. “Yes, you! Come back.”

Boots pounded rock as the guard gave chase. When he spoke again, his voice was louder, as if he’d come closer to the barracks.

“I’m not going to report you for breaking curfew. The Seeker asked me to—” The guard stopped short. “Who are you? What’s wrong with—?” A wordless shout of surprise. “Stay back. You have swamp fever. I don’t want to hurt you, but I can’t let you touch—”

A curse. Then an inhuman shriek. The click of a blade against stone or steel. Ashyn gripped the hatch opening, ready to race out fighting, as Moria would.

But you aren’t Moria. You aren’t the Keeper.

Moria . . . Oh, goddess. Moria. Their father. The villagers.

She scrambled down the ladder so fast she missed the last rung and tumbled, her ankle twisting, pain shooting through her leg.

“Ashyn!” Ronan called.

Tova pushed under her arm, supporting her as she rose. She limped to Ronan.

“Something’s happened,” she said. “I need to find Moria.”

As she turned away, his arm shot through the window and grabbed her cloak.

“Wait!” he said.

She tried to yank free, but his grip was too tight.

“Don’t leave me here,” he said as she struggled. “Whatever’s out there, I can help. I can use a blade. My family were warriors once. I’m trained.”

She fumbled to undo the clasp on her cloak and escape.

“Ashyn, please. I’m locked in a cage. If anything comes, I don’t stand a chance.”

She hesitated, then threw open his cell latch and raced down the hall.