Shadow Borne (17 page)

"You told the men
not to teach me to fight." The accusation in my voice was mild,
more perplexed than irate.

"Yes, I did." he
said, shrugging as if to say, 'so what'.

"Why?"

"Because I forbid my
men to help you do something foolish."

"Me learning how to
defend myself is foolish?" I frowned.

"You fighting is
foolish."

"Why?" When he
didn't answer, I tried again. "I want you to train me."

"You want me to
train you." he repeated my words slowly and carefully, dark eyes
resting on me but completely unreadable.

I clasped my hands,
knotting my fingers together and squeezing tight. I sucked in a
deep breath through lungs that felt constricted and was momentarily
light headed when all I could manage were shallow sips of the cool
evening air. "Yes." I finally nodded, eyes locking with his.

His mouth turned
down in blatant disapproval and I rushed on without giving him the
chance to refuse. "It wouldn't take up very much of your time. And
I can learn. I'm feeling much better now and–"

"No." The word was
clipped, authoritative. Final. He turned away from me, facing the
crackling fire and bending to toss another fragrant piece of dry
timber on the dancing orange flames. The wood sparked and hissed
before erupting in a quick flare and then, a minute later settled
down to a steady, toasty blaze in the pit Aranu had dug.

He'd said no. I
closed my eyes, opened them to find myself still staring at his
broad, tan back. He couldn't refuse. He just couldn't. "But–" I
opened my mouth to protest his obvious, and rude, dismissal.

"Ari, the answer is
no." he said without turning around.

"You have to. You
owe it to me, to help me."

He did turn and face
me, then. I almost wished he hadn't. "I owe you? Saving your life
wasn't enough?" His voice was quiet, dangerous.

My tongue flicked
out to wet my lips. "No. No, that didn't come out right." My bare
feet shifted in the dirt and I tried again. "I meant that
men–warriors–have a duty to their people, don't they?"

"Yes." he shrugged,
relaxing a little now.

"So, warriors have a
duty to make sure that people can protect themselves."

"Makes sense." he
nodded after a moment.

"So, you'll train
me, then?" My eyes flew up to his.

"No."

"But, you don't
understand." The words felt like they were torn from me. He wasn't
going to help. Panic began to claw at me, and on the heels of that,
a tiny spark of anger was beginning to simmer and burn.

"I understand." he
fired back. "You want me to show you how to swing a blade, or shoot
a bow so you can go do something stupid and probably get yourself
killed for the effort. The answer is no." His eyes narrowed.

"I have to be able
to defend myself!"

"You want
vengeance!"

"Wouldn't you?" I
demanded hoarsely, abruptly realizing that my hands were now
clenched into fists at my sides. "Answer that, Aranu. Tell me the
truth. How would you feel?" My words bounced off the valley around
us and echoed.

His expression
softened a fraction. "Ari, listen to me. This isn't a good idea. If
you'd stop for a second and think about what you're asking me to
do, you would see that."

"I am not going to
rush out and start massacring guards. Please." I forced back the
anger, knowing that right now it wouldn't help my cause. "I need to
know how to fight." I argued.

"If you stayed in
the protected zones, you wouldn't have any need to fight!"

I recoiled, feeling
like he'd slapped me. "Is that what you think, then?" I choked the
words out and the bottom of my stomach seemed to drop as I looked
up into his harsh face. "That it was my own fault?" I took a
breath, turned my back on him. My arms tightened around my
midsection and I stalked to the edge of the small clearing, closer
to the cave's entrance. I wanted to crawl inside and never come
out, a small part of me wanted to sleep and never wake up. I wanted
to hit something. I wanted to...scream. Memories undulated through
the darkest recesses of my mind. They played on a continuous,
sickening loop, never really going away, just at times more
noticeable than others. Being grabbed. Claire being kicked. The
fear on the faces of the others. Would this go away? Ever?
When?

Behind me, Aranu
exhaled and swore. I spun around in time to see him coming toward
me. He halted a few feet away and moved to reach for me and I held
my breath as he stopped at the last minute, letting his arms drop
to his sides. I stared back, but then let my eyes slide away from
his intense scrutiny, afraid he could somehow see the pain and
turmoil that raged inside my head.

Aranu swore again,
softly this time. "Is that what you thought I meant? That what
those...things...did to you, was your fault?"

"Things?" I asked
idly, still unable to look him in the eye.

"I refuse to call
them 'men'." he returned flatly. "Answer me. You think I'd actually
tell you what happened was your own fault? That you deserved to be
raped because you were in an unprotected zone of the woods?"

I flinched away from
the word, not ready to hear someone say it. Not yet.

"I would never say
that, Ari. I would never think that."

"Fine." I finally
shrugged. "It doesn't matter, anyway. I'll leave in the morning." I
said, moving past him and walking back toward the fire. The flames
leapt and crackled merrily above my outstretched hands. I felt
Aranu's eyes on me the whole time, but I wasn't bluffing, I
realized with something akin to shock. The thought of a trek
through unprotected zones of the Lerna's Crossing forest...well, it
made my blood run cold.

But he wasn't
leaving me any other choice. I had to be able to defend myself and
if he was refusing to teach me, and intended to make good on his
threat to forbid his men from training me, too...then I was left
with only one viable option. The Sprites. The band of warrior women
who made their home in the heart of Lerna's Crossing were the
closest option I had, at this point. I knew the women would help me
and best of all, they wouldn't require Aranu's blessing to do
so.

Fingers bit sharply
into my upper arm and I whirled on Aranu, still snared in his
grasp. My startled gaze flew up to him, questioning, teetering on
the edge of panic.

"You can't just
leave. You aren't ready, not by a long shot. You almost died,
Aries."

"I'm fine." I
insisted, holding still and steady under his hand. "I need to be
able to protect myself and if you won't help me, the Sprites will.
That's where I'll go. Thank you...for your help, earlier," I
stammered, uncomfortable as I recalled the way he'd saved me from
the brink of death and spent countless hours nursing me back to
health. I hated to just leave, knowing it must have seemed beyond
ungrateful. But I had to think of myself. I had to get strong. I
had to find Claire and make sure this never, ever happened again.
"I have to do this, Aranu." I finished, softly now.

His eyes fell to
where long, tanned fingers were still wrapped tight around my arm
and abruptly he released his hold, dropping my arm as if it had
just burned him. His expression was tense, unreadable and then he
spun around and his long strides ate up the distance between the
fire and the cave. At the entrance, he paused.

"Training starts
tomorrow at dawn." he said without turning around. He started to
duck into the cave, stopped again. "Aries?"

"Y-yes?"

"I won't go easy on
you. Be ready."

Abruptly, I brought myself
back to the present. Everything happened for a reason; that used to
be such a foreign concept for me–every action having this divine
purpose–and mostly it still was, even if now I
thought
I may have at least
understood it a little better than before. Or rather, I thought I
understood how people could not only believe it to be true but also
find comfort in it. Because, sure, everything happened for a
reason. I mean, that much was obvious enough, right? Kahn killed
innocent people because he was a low down murderous bastard.
Action. Reason. End of story.

So, all of this chaos was a direct result of
that one core fact...I paused on the trail that would take me the
rest of the way home, picturing Lerna, not as it had been, but as
it was now, a broken replica of the real thing. The reason for this
entire damn war was all because of one man's demented idea of
leadership, power, and a need to control. So much death. I closed
my eyes in a silent prayer for the fallen ones, both new and old,
and those yet to come, before taking a deep breath and continuing
on the narrow dirt trail. Yes, it was difficult to find much
comfort at all in the phrase 'everything happens for a reason'.

Reasoning out the actions of the Matrons
proved to be even more conflicting. As far as anyone in Terlain
seemed to know, they had shown themselves only once in recent
months. The group of eight had come to Mark and Claire's wedding,
high in the ruins, in order to deliver both a blessing and a
warning; it was there, high atop the mist filled mountains, that
they had cautioned Claire against the dangers of crossing between
her world and ours. And while they weren't exactly forthcoming
about what such consequences could potentially be, when the matrons
speak, people tend to listen.

In short, Claire was here to stay. And so
was Mike. I had come full circle back to the heart of the matter,
to the crux of my own problems. Silly, maybe, for Mike Roberts to
even rate on my personal radar right now with so much other more
pressing, immediate matters demanding my time and attention and
skill. But anything that caused me to lose focus was a big deal. I
couldn't afford even the slightest distraction. It was imperative I
remain firmly planted in reality. In my reality, anyway, violent as
it was.

My first obligation would always be to the
people of Terlain, now. There wasn't any room left for Mike or
anyone else, not in that capacity. Of course, knowing something to
be true and fully accepting it are two very different things. I was
very much afraid there was a part of me that would always be ruled
by dumb bitch Aries. Well, my chin came up a notch, that was just
too bad because she wasn't in charge.

I forced myself to put Mike and our
convoluted history firmly out of mind as I picked my way carefully
along the pebble strewn path. The closer I got to the edge of the
woods, the more substantial the mist became. I frowned, thinking
that was strange since the fog was only on one side of the forest,
especially odd considering that side was the one facing away from
the water.

Sometimes, late at night, the thick gray
wisps would roll off the water in vapor-waves. I quickened my pace;
the cabin was up ahead, just over the slight crest of a hill, more
of a bump really, that marked the tree line where forest met
clearing. With an even stride, I broke through to the clearing in a
matter of seconds. There was nothing left to see. The world had
been reduced to a terrifying gray scale, the kind where you can
barely see your own hand in front of your face.

There was only a vague outline where the
cabin should have been plainly visible. The shimmer of the fence
created tiny golden halos in the gloom and I breathed a sigh of
relief. Though I couldn't say exactly why, I'd almost expected the
fence to have failed, for the world to have truly gone black.
Relief that this wasn't the case flooded my system.

The joy was short lived. It took all of two
seconds to realize I was not alone. I heard him before I actually
saw him. Not that there was much to see, but it didn't matter. I
knew immediately what I was looking at. The mist and the fog was
thick and dark and that was hard enough to see through but
this...this was black. It was darker than night. Evening shadows
seem to press in on you but this thing, this darkness, had a life
all its own.

I was surprised and yet all at once I
wasn't. The shadow man had finally come for me. My only consolation
was that we were on opposite sides of the fence, at least for now.
It was a damn good thing too, since the only weapon I had on me was
a small knife.

"Hello, Aries."

Everything in me recoiled at the sound of
the demon's voice. And that's what he was, I realized anew, a
demon. I was face-to-face with a demonic force. Terlain was full of
centuries-old tales of the shadow man, though he wasn't like any
'man' I'd ever seen. In modern times only a handful of people were
believed to have seen the war demon commonly referred to as the
shadow man, and less commonly as the Lahuel.

There had never been any reports of the
Lahuel actually speaking to someone. At least, if there were I
wasn't aware of them. But I was certain that 'hello, Aries' wasn't
the thing's first uttered word. Probably, during that long ago time
historians referred to as Terlain's only other major war before
this one, someone had had the acute, hair raising displeasure of
hearing the Lahuel's gritty, gravelly, broken voice. In a mere two
words it was obvious the tone was much more than a serious
under-use of vocal chords.

No, I shivered under the dubious cover of
the mist. The Lahuel had just spoken my name with such a volatile,
abject hatred that my entire being recoiled from its ugly force. I
felt sorry for all of those long ago soldiers who'd been honor
bound to face the war demon on the battlefield. I could attest to
the fact that it wasn't much of a surprise most of those brave men
and women hadn't lived to recount the tale.

In two words the Lahuel had spoken volumes,
most notably that the only thing saving my ass and stopping it from
tearing me apart was because it physically couldn't; the
fence–praise all that it was still intact–prevented the demon from
crossing over into the clearing where I stood all but shaking in my
boots. My boots and one very tiny knife. Hell.