Shadow’s Lure (55 page)

A roar ripped through the chamber. The shadow beast. Caim pushed harder and felt a crackle along his spine. Something bit him on the shoulder, but he didn’t stop. With a final push, the paralysis shattered like a crust of ice covering his skin. The moment his arm was free, Caim swung at the spot where the witch had been standing, but the black blade cut only air. Then his grunt became a hiss of pain as the shadows tore into his flesh. He tried brushing them off, but they were everywhere. He stomped on the ground and swung his blades. Then the stinging bites vanished and the darkness lightened. Hundreds of shadows—maybe thousands—fluttered in the air like demented moths, colliding in the air and falling to the floor. His shadows had come to him after all.

As the pall lifted, Caim looked around. Kit was nowhere to be seen, and neither was the shadow beast, but he didn’t have time to find out why as four shapes glided toward him. He ducked under the curved blade of a sword-staff rushing at his throat. Rolling across his shoulders, buds of agony blossomed from the wounds along his back, but he was alive. For the moment.

A line of fire traced down his left arm. Caim spun around, but the shadow warrior had drifted out of range. He started to follow until another warrior advanced on his right flank, forcing him to turn in that direction to deflect blinding-fast cuts from a pair of black-bladed axes. Caim parried and circled away, never stopping, but the four warriors had him pinned. Every move he made put him in range of one of them. A twisting thrust from the scimitar broke past his defenses to jab his upper thigh. Caim smacked aside the midnight blade and riposted with a long lunge. The scimitar wielder parried his thrust, and Caim followed up with a combination of high-low attacks. The tip of his
suete
slashed across the cuisse plate covering the warrior’s thigh, but it didn’t penetrate. Caim jumped back as the other three closed in around him. But even that much success bolstered his resolve.

He wove around a slash from the sword-staff and rushed in low, dropping to his knees and sliding under the shadow warrior’s guard. His knife rose to ward off the sword-staff while he thrust with his other hand. The sword’s point dug between armored plates and punched through the mail underneath. Caim pushed until the blade’s length sank into the shadow warrior’s guts. He was up on his feet and turned around before the body hit the floor.

The remaining warriors pressed him harder than before. Caim backed away under their barrage of attacks, trying to keep one shoulder to the wall. The axe-man wandered half a pace too close and took a deep cut across his elbow. But before Caim could follow up, a jet of cobalt fire lit up the hall. Caim dropped to his belly, and a blanket of frosty air draped over him as the blue flames washed against the wall. Hoarfrost spread up the wooden paneling, which split under the intense cold.

Caim jumped up. The shadow warriors were gone. No, he felt their presence in the room, moving through deep patches of darkness even his vision could not pierce. The witch was gone, too, and that worried him more. Caim edged farther into the chamber. A draft of cool air wafted across the back of his neck.

Caim dropped to one knee and swung his sword as he spun around. The axe-man fell back, blood streaming from the stump of his severed wrist. His other hand came up. Caim blocked the overhand chop. The sword lashed out again and again until the warrior lay on the floor, his legs drawn together and one arm folded over his chest.

As Caim stepped away, a mass of dark webbing caught his left hand, its fibers clinging to his wrist. He turned with the pulling of the net and parried a spear thrust. As the weapon flicked out at him several times in rapid succession, Caim gave up trying to pull away and instead yanked himself closer to the spearman. The scimitar sliced the air behind Caim as he swatted aside another spear thrust. He made two quick counterjabs and the spear clattered to the floor, followed by the shadow warrior’s body, pierced through the throat under the chin.

Caim sliced through the net holding his wrist and flung himself over his crumpled opponent. He turned as soon as his toes touched the floor, but the remaining shadow warrior held back, watching him from several paces away. Caim trembled from the exertion even as the sword’s hunger pulsed through him.

A snarl cut through the quiet, and the scimitar wielder collapsed facedown on the floor. The shadow beast perched on the warrior’s back, its jaws locked around his neck. Caim looked around, expecting to have the flesh blasted from his bones at any moment, but the witch was gone.

Heavy thuds sounded all around the chamber as the outlaws fell from the walls, their shadow-wrought cocoons evaporated. The men were covered in bloody marks, and they moved a little slow, but it looked like they would live. Caim thought he should feel some relief at that; instead he just wanted to be gone. Across the hall, he spotted the lingering remains of a gateway. He could see the direction it led, but not where it arrived.

It was a trap, of course. He thought of the many reasons why he shouldn’t follow, but then the sword sent a jolt of pure hatred spiking up his arm. He needed to end this now, while he had her on the run.

As Caim sprinted across the slick floor, someone spoke behind him, but he was listening to something else, a faint buzz at the edge of his hearing. His heartbeat thundered in his ears as a black hole split the air.

For Liana and Hagan. For my father, my mother …

He took a deep breath and plunged into the portal.

Caim swayed as he landed on hard flagstones. He reached out, thinking he was going to fall, but then his balance snapped back.

He had an idea he was still inside the city, but beyond that he was lost. The place was dark, though he could see well enough with the sword in his hand. High stone walls enclosed him on all four sides, decorated with bizarre pictograms, some of which might have been words but in a tongue he had never seen. A massive throne of black stone towered on a pedestal in front of him. Above it, something carved into the wall had been defaced and smeared with soot. Two smaller seats rested before the platform. The place had an odd smell, dry and acrid like a tomb.
Or a temple
.

A chill ran across his scalp. There was no sign of Kit, not that he expected any. He hoped she was smart enough to stay away. Caim tensed as something stirred beside him, and relaxed a hair when the shadow beast padded out of the dark. It sat on its haunches a few paces away, watching him like a tame hound. Caim didn’t know if he entirely trusted the creature; his dealings with it had been haphazard at best, but it had also saved his life. Whatever it was, wherever it came from, he was glad for its presence.

He found an open doorway behind the gigantic throne. The corridor beyond ran straight as far as he could see. The shadow beast entered, but the hairs on the back of Caim’s neck stirred as he followed.

He held the sword before him as he advanced. He saw movement down the corridor and made it out to be a shimmering sheet suspended across the passage like a black curtain stirring in the breeze. The shadow beast stopped and growled. Caim reached out with his sword. The curtain’s surface yielded before the tip, stretching like skin. Then the point pierced the membrane. Too fast for Caim to follow, the curtain detached from the corridor walls and slashed at him with curved ebony claws.

Caim lifted his knife to block, but the claws passed through his
suete
to score stinging furrows down his arms. Fluid as quicksilver, the rippling creature struck again, scoring on his thigh and hip; shallow cuts, but they burned under his skin. He jumped back to make some space between them, but it harried him with rapid swipes. Caim managed to deflect one with the flat of the sword, but the thing was more powerful than it looked, and the parry almost tore the hilt from his grasp. The creature dipped under his guard, and Caim braced for another set of fiery cuts, but before it could strike, the shadow beast jumped onto its back. The two creatures rolled across the floor. Then, with a sound like tearing leather, the shadow beast tore a hunk of material out of the creature’s center. A keening wail filled the corridor as pieces of silken flesh fluttered in the air. Caim prodded the curtain to make sure it was dead.

The shadow beast sat a couple paces away. It didn’t lick its paws or pant with a lolling tongue; it didn’t do anything a normal animal would do.

“You ready?”

The shadow beast started down the hallway, and Caim followed. Another fifteen paces brought them to an ornate archway that marked the end of the corridor. Intricate scrollwork was carved into pillars of pale limestone and across the arch above. Beyond the aperture there was only blackness.

Well, I’ve come this far
.

Caim called, and the shadows gathered around him in the hundreds. Their tiny voices hissed in his ears. With their bodies wrapped about him like a second skin, Caim stepped through the doorway. A moment of panic gripped his chest as the temperature plunged. A bitter wind snatched at his clothing. Once he was through, he looked back and saw only a wall of bare stone behind him. His breath curled in the air as he tapped the wall with the butt of his knife.
Solid. At least a foot thick. What did I do?

He was in some kind of chamber. It had a subterranean feel. A shroud of shadows obscured much of the walls and vaulted ceiling. The place stank of alchemy and death, quicklime and camphor infused with the rot of the grave. Caim couldn’t see Sybelle, but he got the impression she was here, in the dark that ebbed and flowed around him. His skin prickled from more than the cold. He had stepped into the viper’s lair.

At least the shadow beast had come with him. It stood near his feet, its broad head swinging side to side, nose to the ground.
That’s it. Sniff her out
.

Without warning, the beast leapt into the murk. Caim froze, listening for sounds of fighting, but all was quiet. The shadows clung to him as if afraid to wander from his person. A lilting chant whispered in the dark. Caim looked around, trying to pinpoint the source, but the song came from multiple directions. The words were alien, but also somehow familiar. Had he heard something like them before? It almost sounded like …

Caim dove sideways as a stream of bitter cold rushed past him. He came to his feet with both weapons extended. A throaty laugh tickled his ears.

“I remember that night.” Her voice filled the air, like she was speaking directly into his head. “When we came to crush the worm who dared to abduct my sister.”

Caim slunk forward, straining every sense to locate his quarry. The floor was covered in something like gravel or broken glass. He strived for utter silence, but he’d only taken a few steps when the sword’s point struck a wall and rang like a gong. He jumped back, and another jet of freezing air hurtled past the spot where he’d been standing. The shadows on his back squirmed while Caim listened. Obviously Sybelle couldn’t see him either, or this hunt would have ended already.

“Your father was twice the fool,” she said. “First, to think he could abscond with a daughter of the Shadow, and then to believe he might live the rest of his days in peace.”

Caim kept his ears open as he traveled along the wall.

“The truly absurd thing about it,” Sybelle continued, “was that my sister didn’t resist once we got her away from that sty where she’d been living. I think she longed to return to proper civilization almost as much as I did. If we hadn’t come for your mother, she would have left on her own in time.”

Caim bit his tongue as he worked his way around the edge of the chamber. His fingers found the splintered remains of a cupboard or bookcase, and he avoided the debris. But as he crept onward, it became increasingly difficult to concentrate. The urge to lash out built inside him, as palpable as physical lust, until his blood was pounding and sweat ran down his back. The sword thrummed with fury, as if the blade had its own vendetta against the witch. He saw his father again. Dying.

He knelt at their feet
,
with a sword’s pommel jutting from his chest
.

Caim shook his head, but the image refused to leave. The sword’s vibrations shook him from his thoughts. The witch’s voice had moved again.

“The conceit! To think he could keep her,” she said. “Mud-born aristocrats. Grant titles to a nest of
vretch
and it would mean as much. Even my Erric, for all his beauty, is still only … was …”

She sounded nearer now, but Caim still couldn’t pinpoint her. He decided to leave the safety of the wall and strike out into the unknown middle reaches of the chamber. He held the sword up to his chest so it wouldn’t give him away again as he probed the area for Sybelle, but she had fallen silent. When he reached a point he judged to be the center of the room, Caim stopped.