Shadow’s Lure (15 page)

Caim took back his possessions. The buzzing in his head persisted. “You two all right? I see you managed to stick around this time.”

The muscles in Keegan’s cheek twitched. “I’m no coward.”

“That’s too bad. I was starting to think you were the smart one in this bunch. Come on.”

Caim didn’t wait, but took off. Keegan and Liana stuck to his heels. He didn’t know what he was going to do with them. Get them back to their father, he supposed. The problem lay in eluding pursuit with the youths in tow.

The trees on the other side of the bonfires loomed like a company of silent sentries. Caim glimpsed a flash of metal among the underbrush a split-second before something hurtled out of the darkness. He dragged Keegan and Liana to the ground as the missile zipped over their heads. Five men in steel helms and leather coats emerged from the trees. One was clad in mail. Caim recognized them as he climbed to his feet. The soldiers from the roadhouse and the duke’s son.
What are they doing out here
?

Caim looked over his shoulder as the soldiers advanced with drawn weapons. Keegan was helping Liana up and almost stabbed her by accident. Clenching his jaws, Caim reached out to the shadows. They swarmed out of the trees like a plague of locusts. One soldier with wild, yellow locks turned and ran back into the woods. The others pummeled themselves with their fists as the shadows slithered inside their armor.

Caim called off his minions before they killed. For a moment, they remained as if testing him, but then left with sullen slothfulness.

The duke’s son stood alone as his men writhed on the ground. When Caim approached, the young noble slashed the air with his sword. Caim blocked it and punched him flush in the nose. The duke’s son fell on his back in a jingle of mail links.

Caim kicked the lordling’s sword away and crouched over him. The point of his knife hovered over the young man’s eyes.
Do I let him live
,
and possibly have to face him again
,
maybe at the head of an army
?
Or kill him now and get it over with
?

The buzzing in his head had gotten worse. No matter how he tried to ignore it, the droning remained nonetheless. The duke’s son looked up without expression. With a frown, Caim touched the man’s throat with the tip of a knife. Then he stood up and beckoned to the siblings. They stepped around the soldiers and joined him under the trees.

“What are we going to do?” Liana asked.

“Hide,” Keegan said. “Wait for them to leave, and then I’ll take you back home.”

“I’m not going back!”

“Yes, you are!”

Caim ground his teeth together. Somewhere nearby, Kit was probably laughing her ass off. Shouts echoed through the surrounding forest.

“Quiet!” he whispered. “Hiding is a good idea. Do you know someplace nearby?”

Keegan chewed his bottom lip for a moment, until Liana hit him. The youth rubbed his arm and glared at her. “The hills. There are places they won’t find us.”

“Secret places,” Liana added.

Caim considered the idea. Getting to higher ground was a good plan, as long as they didn’t starve or freeze to death. For now, he’d have to trust these people.

“All right. We’ll—”

The words caught in his throat as a sudden pressure expanded behind his breastbone, squeezing the air from his lungs. Fighting the pain, he motioned for Keegan and Liana to go ahead. They looked at him for a moment.

“Go on!” he growled.

Keegan led his sister away through the trees. Caim waited until they were gone before he turned around. Something moved beyond the bonfires on the other side of the clearing. Then he saw it, a black pillar emerging from the space between two tree trunks. The pressure in his chest throbbed as a figure stepped out onto the snow.

The warrior was huge. His thick arms swung like tree trunks as he strode into the clearing. A cloud of shadows clung to him like a cloak ripped from the night sky. Yet it wasn’t the intruder’s size or the company of shadows that slowed the blood in Caim’s veins, but the armor that encased him from crown to foot—plates of black steel with scalloped edges that seemed welded to his body. Caim had seen that style of armor before. In his dreams, the night the soldiers came to kill his father.

Caim froze as the visored helmet turned in his direction. Before he realized what he was doing, he started back into the clearing. He stopped himself. The shadows crowded around his feet, their touch colder than the winter air, while long-buried emotions roiled inside him. He had come north to find some clue related to his mother’s disappearance, and the gods had sent him this darkly shining gift. He wanted to go out there and peel the armor from the giant’s body, and then go to work on the flesh underneath until he got some answers.

Two Northmen entered the clearing. They looked like children beside the armored giant. One tossed something into the nearest bonfire. Caim saw it just before it fell into the flames. A severed head.

He let out a slow breath. He wasn’t in any shape for another fight. Cursing, he jogged back among the trees in the direction of the siblings. His leg ached, worse than it had in days, and his arm hurt so much he wanted to cut it off. How fast could he move with two kids hanging on his apron strings? Not fast enough. The Northmen would be on their trail with a vengeance. Unless they were distracted.

Caim gathered up the shadows around him. They whispered and crooned in the trees overhead. Taking a deep breath, he sent them back toward the clearing.

Through the canopy of branches, the horned moon emerged from behind a bank of clouds. Its rays cast silver halos around ice crystals hanging in the trees. Caim pulled down his hood and concentrated on keeping his footing.

It was going to be a long night.

S
ybelle gazed down at her lover reclining on the bed, and thoughts of murder turned in her head. He slept like a man half in his grave, drunk on rich southern wine and kafir and sex. So fragile, this life he clung to. She could extinguish it as easily as putting out a candle. Some how, that made her love him all the more. She bit down on her tongue.

I will not love him anymore
.
I will not
!

He stirred, his lips pursing as if to kiss her, and the murderous thoughts fled. As she leaned down to meet his mouth, an icy tentacle caressed her ankle. Turning away from the bed, she opened a shadow door, and stepped through …

… onto the cool stone floor of her sanctum. Shadows flocked to her as she went to the pool.

The waters were in flux. Leaning over the low retaining wall, Sybelle saw bodies on the snow amid puddles of congealing blood. So it was no surprise to her when a great helmet filled the pool. Flecks of moonlight glinted from its black metal, but no light intruded upon the narrow eye slits. Soloroth had been taken from her not long after he was born to be raised by his grandfather, and she hadn’t seen him again until he came of age. By then his eyes—as dark as her own—had become empty. The eyes of a stranger.

“What did you find?”

“The information was accurate.” His voice echoed through the cavern. “An unlawful gathering took place here, but the area is now under our control.”

The view shifted to a nearby body. The man had been split nearly in half at the waist—Soloroth’s handiwork, no doubt.

“All were slain?”

“A handful escaped. My wolves are in pursuit.”

His wolves
. With a hiss, Sybelle slashed her fingers across the water’s surface where the helmet loomed. “I told you to eliminate them completely!”

The slits of his helmet remained fixed upon her across the intervening distance until the waves stilled. “They will be found.”

“There is something else. What is it?”

“There was a
shivalar
among the outlaws.”

A shadow walker
?

“Impossible. There are no
shivalar
in this—” A wayward thought froze the words on her lips. She swallowed. “The scion?”

He stared at her without answering. She had known it might come to this after she communed with Levictus’s shade. She could send Soloroth after the target, but it would take him into unknown territory. Still, if he succeeded …

Sybelle’s heart almost stopped as a deep tone echoed through the sanctum. A summons.

“Find him,” she told Soloroth. “And kill him.”

“There is another matter. Lord Arion wishes to return to the city.”

No surprise in that
. She wished she could allow Soloroth to eliminate the duke’s whelp while he was at it, but Erric adored his son and that tenderness was a useful vulnerability.

“Convince him. Tie him over a horse if need be, but bring me the scion’s head.”

As the helmet disappeared into the pool’s depths, the chime rang again. At a pass of her hand, the waters became as smooth as glass, and another image appeared. Sybelle bowed her head.

“Master.”

“Have your forces crossed yet into Nimea, Sybelle?”

No greeting. No words of affection. His voice was hard enough to shatter an empire, and perhaps rebuild it anew. Though she would have preferred to lie, she dared not.

“No. There have been delays with—”

“More excuses! My agents report the Nimeans are divided against each other and ready to topple at the slightest excuse.”

She flinched at his anger, and at the mention of other agents in the south. She had believed she was his only emissary in this part of the world, and cursed herself for not suspecting otherwise.

“I serve as best I am able with the tools at hand, Master. And now that the cold season has set in—”

“The weakness of these Brightlanders has corrupted you, Sybelle. My own daughter, reduced to a mewling babe spewing pretexts and justifications.”

“No, Master.” She dared to meet his eyes. They were shimmering jewels set deep in his face under ominous brows, reflecting nothing back to her. “Plans are moving according to your dictates.”

“Tell me.”

Sybelle bowed her head once more, the picture of perfect obedience as she told him about the massacre of the clan chiefs, and how under her supervision Erric was moving to pacify the region.

“I mistrust this alliance you have embarked upon, Sybelle. These Brightlanders do not think as we do. They do not understand power. End it.”

Sybelle swallowed as she scrambled for an argument to salvage what she had built here. When she first joined her father in exile from the Shadow, she had shared his vision for the conquest of a new domain. But matters changed when he sent her to Eregoth. First there was the unspeakable business with her sister. Then she’d found Erric, and her ideas about what was possible in this world had altered.

“I believe this can still work to our advantage.”

She trembled as the words left her mouth. Testing her father’s indulgence was a dangerous gambit. He cared for her, she knew, as much as he cared for anything or anyone, but the risk lay in measuring those depths.

“Explain.”

“Though the duke is weak as you say, his people are loyal. Much time would be lost if we deposed him now. I can manage him. He will do whatever I instruct. Soon this land will be under our full control, and thereafter we will expand into Nimea.”

She waited with downcast eyes for his response. She thought of Erric and the life she wished she could have with him. A normal life. And perhaps another child, one not so brooding and distant as her son. A child she could love and teach—

“I see through you, Sybelle. You spend too much time in the pursuit of your appetites.”

“Master, I—”

“Be silent.”

Her hands curled into fists within the wide sleeves of her gown, but she held her tongue. Evil thoughts percolated inside her brain, dreams of a day when she would supplant him.

“Sybelle, Sybelle. My dark angel. Sorceress without peer.”

She tensed. When her father handed out praise, people died.

“Impress me, Sybelle.”

She was careful to hide her smile.

“Impress me with swift victory,” he said. “My other captains are enjoying success on their fronts. I would not wish to see you fall behind.”

“I will make every effort. You will see. I shall prove myself still your most potent weapon.”

“I hope so. For your sake, Daughter.”

She froze in the act of looking up. As the image dimmed within the pool’s water, those last words lingered between them. She experienced a moment of panic, but calmed herself. Not even
he
could read her thoughts. Still, she would pressure Erric to make more advances, to win more victories she could claim as her own. So far, she had been content to hide behind the throne and pull the strings, but perhaps she had erred too far on the side of prudence.

Sybelle turned away from the pool, and the shadows flocked to her, cooing as they pressed their small bodies against her skin. She walked to the passageway leading to the temple. Her next move would be a bold thrust, enough to pacify her father and bring her one step closer to her ultimate aim. If she could not change what was, she must prepare for what would be.