Shadow's Son (39 page)

Blood dripped from Calm's knives as he stole through the palace corridors. The shadows flew before him, a malevolent whirlwind of darkness
and death snuffing out the candles along the walls with their passage.
Caim saw just fine. The ache in his side was gone. He felt rejuvenated.

The Sacred Brothers in the throne room had fallen to him in a handful
of heartbeats. Driven by anger, it took him almost as long to kick open the locked door. The screams of the nobles as they fled reminded him of
another slaughter. His parents' faces hovered before him. Their mouths
moved, but no sounds emerged, only the pained expressions they'd worn
the last time he saw them, a lifetime ago. An image of Josey imprinted
over the carnage of his father's estate, her body sprawled on the cold palace
tiles, Ral's sword protruding from her chest. Her eyes stared up at him in
horror. He slashed the air and the figment vanished, but his fury redoubled, so hot he felt he might explode at the slightest touch.

He rounded a corner and skidded to a halt at the entrance to a spacious room. Rows of glass cases covered the floor beneath the stiff heads
of a dozen hunting trophies. Five men awaited him.

Markus stood sideways, his sword leveled at Caim. "It's over. You're
done interfering with our plans."

The other Brothers flanked
Caim with careful steps. One sported a
crop of gray hairs sprinkled through his short beard and a row of stripes
on his sleeve. He had probably seen all sorts of action from tavern brawls
to brutal murders.

But he hasn't seen anything like me.

"Nice suit,"
Caim said to Markus. "Did it come with a leash?"

Markus sneered through the mass of burns encrusting his face. "I'm
grand master now, and soon I'll be a lord."

Caim let his hands rest at his sides as the soldiers moved in. The veteran Brother lifted his hand as a prelude to attack.

Then, the darkness exploded.

Shouts resounded off the high walls as the Brothers were under assault
by hundreds of tiny mouths. Caim watched without malice or mercy as
the soldiers fell, one by one, and were consumed. All except for Markus,
who stood in a shrunken circle of light, untouched. He slashed at the
darkness around him as his men cried out for help, but he did not budge
from the circle.

When the shadows finished their feast, they parted before Caim as if
they knew his mind. Perhaps they did. He didn't know and he didn't care.
The remains of the soldiers lay in huddled masses, their flesh gnawed
away down to the bone.

The color fled from Markus's marred features as he stared at
Caim.
"What kind of devil are you?"

Caim slunk forward, his knives held low.

Markus turned and revealed a round shield strapped to his other arm.
A little larger than a buckler, it looked like a relic from another century.
Caim lunged with a double cut, low and high. The links of a mail shirt
stopped his left-hand
suete
. The other was knocked aside by the edge of the
targe. Caim spun away as Markus's sword whistled past his ear.

From behind the protection of his shield, Markus harried Caim
around the room with an onslaught of vicious stabs. Caim stepped around
a glass trophy case. Markus shattered it with a side-armed blow.

"You should have stayed away." He centered his sword point on
Calm's chest. "You should have let us take the girl. Now you're going to
die."

Caim launched a feint and counterthrust, but Markus batted it aside
with the shield.

"You're already dead," Caim said. "You're just not smart enough to
realize it yet."

Markus growled as he charged. Caim twisted away from the sword,
but the shield's boss caught him in the chest and drove him back into the
wall. His left arm was trapped between the shield and the room's partition. The broadsword fell, and he caught it with a desperate parry.
Markus's stale breath blew in Calm's face as they strained against each
other, chest to chest. The air was filled with their grunting and huffing.

Around the periphery of the room, the shadows quivered with agitation.
Caim heard them hissing in the back of his head, eager to attack.

Back!
he shouted at them.
This is my fight.

But he couldn't push free. Markus was bigger, stronger, and he had
the leverage. Moment by moment, he crushed the breath from Calm's
lungs. Inch by inch, the sword's edge dipped closer to his head.

"Not so dangerous now, are you?" Markus smiled over the edge of his
shield. Sweat dripped from the tip of his nose. "Caim the Knife, the most
feared man in Low Town, chopped up and gutted like a market hog."

Calm's chest burned. His right arm was shaking, and he'd lost feeling
in his left. The sword fell a few more inches. He could see his reflection
in the surface of the blade.

"I wonder," Markus said. "Will you scream like your lady-love did
when I stuck her with my prick?"

Caim spat full in his face.

Markus drew back his sword as he blinked away the sputum. The
motion made some space for Caim, enough to catch a breath of air.

Markus's eyes narrowed to bloodshot slits as he swung. Calm's knife
flicked out. A heartbeat later, the sword clattered to the floor and Markus
staggered backward, one hand pressed to the side of his neck. Ruby red
arterial blood streamed down the front of his fine uniform. Disbelief and
annoyance vied in his gaze as he slipped to the flagstones.

The blood roared in Calm's ears like a rushing flood. His hands shook
from the exertion. He took a deep breath. The shadows had quieted at the
edge of his vision. He could feel their impatience as he let out the breath.
Flicking the blood from his blades, he resumed his hunt.

Caim jogged through a groined archway into another wing of the
palace. As he passed a flight of stairs, distant sounds caught his ear: the
slam of a door followed by a wailing roar. The storm.

Caim shook the excess gore from his knives as he turned onto the
steps.

The shadows coursed before him.

ur chariot awaits, Princess," Ral crooned into Josey's ear.

She tried to bite him, but he kept his arm well away from her mouth.
The sharp point of his sword pressed into her back.

A carriage awaited in the bailey courtyard below, surrounded by fluttering torches held aloft by rain-drenched soldiers. Ral shouted to catch
their attention, but his words were lost in the storm. Josey almost laughed
at his predicament. Besides the door there was no other way off the roof
except for a fifty-foot drop to unforgiving stone.

"Your lover," he said, "is dead by now, darling. A pity I didn't get the
chance to cut his throat myself. Shall we go see the corpse?"

Before he could take a step, however, a shape appeared in the doorway.
Josey didn't have to see the face to know who it was. A gasp broke from
her lips, and relief, so long withheld, suffused her body and drove away
the bitter chill as Caim stepped out onto the roof. He moved with his customary grace, but Josey could see his side was paining him by the way he
walked. His long knives glittered in his hands, their blades stained
scarlet. And he wore something new. The hilt of a sword jutted over his
right shoulder.

While Josey took in the sight of her savior, a hulking figure moved
from behind the door. She opened her mouth to warn Caim, but Ral
mashed his forearm hard against her lips. The Brother swung. Josey's
muscles went rigid as she witnessed what happened next, for she had seen
it before in the cellar beneath her father's house.

The night came
alive
.

One moment the mace was sailing toward Calm's head, and then he
was gone, wrapped in impenetrable shadows. Red stains blossomed on the Brother's uniform, at his side, his arm, his chest. Slack-jawed, the soldier
collapsed and did not move again.

Josey sighed as Caim emerged from the darkness.

"Bloody Phebus." Ral yanked Josey sideways. "Not another step! The
princess and I are leaving. You'll stand aside if you don't want to see her
insides splattered all over the yard."

Caim stopped a dozen paces away. "I don't think so, Ral. Without
Josey you're just an upstart with dreams of grandeur."

"I've got important friends, people who want to see me on the throne.
Princess or no princess, I will rule Othir."

"Then prove it."
Caim took another step. "Kill her."

Josey shuddered as she looked into his eyes. He wasn't bluffing.

"Stay back!" Ral shouted.

But
Caim took yet another step, closing the distance between them.

Ral shifted his grip, and Josey felt herself slipping. Her bare feet
scrabbled on the slick tiles. Caim leapt for her. He had dropped his
knives.
Pick them up!
she cried inside her head even as she reached for him.

They slid down the slope, both of them straining to reach the other,
but all she could think about was Ral, lurking above them, ready to
pounce at any moment. A scream lodged in Josey's throat as the roof
ended and empty space yawned beneath her feet.

Their fingers missed by inches.

Then, she was falling. Josey closed her eyes, the cry forgotten, and
resigned herself to a swift death.

Something seized her arm and jerked her plummet to a halt. She
looked up through the pouring rain, thinking Caim had somehow managed to catch her, but what she saw instead brought the scream rushing
up her throat. Black as coal, so dark she couldn't make out its outline at
first, it perched on a stone rainspout like a gargoyle. It looked like an
overgrown wolfhound or a great jungle cat, with deep black holes for eyes
and huge fangs like sooty icicles. Though the thing looked monstrous, it
held her arm gingerly in its massive jaws.

Josey shook with body-jarring sobs as she hung from the mouth of the
beast. Choking on tears of joy and fear, she contemplated the stones of the
courtyard below. With firm resignation, she reached up around the creature's neck with her other arm. Rough bristles scraped against her wet skin.

With a rumbling growl, the creature shook its head and let go. Josey's
piercing wail sliced through the storm as she fell, but her scream was cut
short when her heels landed on firm footing. Shivering, she clutched at
the wall. Her fingers found purchase on an entablature of ornamental
scrollwork below the building's cornice.

Josey looked up. The beast was gone, vanished like a phantom, but
the silhouette of a head peered over the edge of the roof above. She cried
for help, but the wind snatched the words from her mouth. Lightning
split the sky, followed by an epic crash of thunder that shook the palace
walls, and the head disappeared.

Eyes squeezed shut, Josey tightened her grip and prayed.

Thunder rattled the roof tiles as Caim attacked.

He had recovered one of his
suetes
-a small miracle-but his thoughts
were on Josey, dangling below. He didn't know what she had managed to
grab onto; he couldn't see five strides in front of him through the storm's
gloom. Whatever it was, he didn't think her grip would hold for long. He
had to finish this fast. He feinted and cut low.

Ral beat the strikes aside and countered with a jab of his slender
blade, but Caim was already moving. He slashed for the head, but the bastard jumped out of range. Something else was bothering him as well.
When Josey had fallen over the side of the roof, he panicked. She was
going to die and it was his fault. He deserved to die with her, but when
he reached the edge, time had slowed to a crawl. In that instant, the
shadows had scattered and he'd felt the presence again-the same presence he had felt in the Vine and again in Josey's cellar. The sensation had
jangled his nerves like a splash of ice water. He'd stopped himself as his
feet started over the side, but the feeling was gone.

Caim wiped his face with his free hand. The bizarre presence might
have left, but his situation had deteriorated. The shadows were gone, back
to wherever they came from, and his side ached worse than ever.