Shadow Soul

by R. Michael Card

  Jais glanced around but couldn’t see the man anywhere. Volf and Gosse were nowhere to be seen. Gone.

  But if they were going to free Barami, he was fine with that.

  He stalked toward the wizard.

  “Fight for me, woman, or the puny humans die!” the wizard hissed.

  “No, please,” Caerwyn whispered, but still got to her feet as she did so.

  “Fight him, Caerwyn!” Jais shouted. “Kill him!” She was so close she could have easily grappled the man.

  “Davlas,” she said halfheartedly.

  Jais was confused, her spear had been broken over two months ago in the fight with the krolloc. Yet one appeared in her hand now. It was near obsidian in color infused with lines of dark red, like veins in marble.

  As he drew near, she stepped in front of him. “Jais, please. If I kill him Barami dies.”

  He opened his mouth to tell her Volf and Gosse would free Barami, but he couldn’t. Then the wizard would know what was happening as well. He’d need to wait for them to act. That grated on him as he felt an intense drive to kill the man behind Caerwyn.

  He tried to move around her, but she wouldn’t let him.

  “Attack him. Kill him!” the wizard shouted.

  She poked at him with the spear, her attacks slow and easily deflected. She was shaking her head, tears streaming down her cheeks.

  “Caerwyn, what are you—? You don’t have to listen to him!” Jais tried to get through to her but didn’t know what to say. What had happened to her to make her like this? She seemed… broken.

  “Kill him or I’ll kill your friend!” the madman shouted.

  Caerwyn trembled, her face pale and without hope, something Jais thought he’d never see. He swore he would make this wizard pay.

  31

  Gosse barely had time to breathe as the world shifted and grew lighter around him. Volf was dropping… whatever it was that kept him hidden. He hadn’t realized he’d been holding his breath. It was only as he charged Gerhardt that he realized he needed air.

  He gulped in a breath, then struck at the large man’s arm.

  Volf had made his goal very clear. Gosse was to do everything he could to keep the brute occupied, and Volf was going to do something sneaky.

  The brute was surprised, that much was clear. He tried to move, but Gosse was too quick and his sword bit into the other man’s arm, though not nearly as deep as it should have. The man had an incredibly tough hide. The wound trickled blood as Gosse withdrew his sword and the cut hardly seemed to affect the man.

  By the Deepest Shadows, this wasn’t going to be easy.

  Gerhardt drew forth his axe, holding the large weapon in one hand, and swung at Gosse. With the attack made more awkward because Gerhardt still held Barami, Gosse easily ducked under the blow and danced to one side, much nimbler than his foe.

  He came up and stabbed the other man low in the side. His sword bit deep enough, but still the wound seemed to bleed little when he moved away, dodging another of the big man’s blows.

  Gosse danced around the man with all the grace of his newly realized heritage and all the skill he’d learned over forty years of fighting drahksani. The other man’s body bled from a dozen cuts, but still he wouldn’t go down or release his prisoner.

  Then Gerhardt screamed. None of Gosse’s attacks had elicited such a violent verbal response, but the big man dropped to one knee, eyes wide. Gerhardt released Barami, who fell to the ground, limp.

  Gosse took a risk, thinking the big man incapacitated, and lunged in to strike at the man’s throat. He drove his sword through the man’s neck and had the satisfaction of seeing the life go out of the big man’s eyes… even as a swing from Gerhardt’s giant axe caught Gosse in the side of his head.

  Then there was nothing.

  Volf trembled. He couldn’t stop his hand from shaking. The hand that had driven his knife into the large man’s back.

  The knife still stood there. Rammed to the hilt into the man’s large form. It had taken all of Volf’s strength and a little of his drahksan-enhanced speed to thrust the blade in. It had bounced around a little. Volf was on the verge of being sick recalling it. But he must have hit something vital. Yet he couldn’t retrieve the knife, couldn’t bring himself to touch it.

  This was the first man he’d killed. Even though the man was a brute and a villain — and in truth it had been Gosse who had struck the killing blow —that didn’t stop him from regretting the loss of life.

  He tried to stop himself from shaking, but everything around him was death and chaos. Yet he needed to do something.

  He stepped around Gerhardt’s hulking form to see Gosse’s head… not attached to his body.

  Bile rose in his throat.

  “Gods,” he breathed in a prayer of mercy.

  He ran to Barami and found the man alive, if unconscious.

  “He’s alive!” he shouted at the others, his voice sounding shaky even to him.

  Hopefully now the tables would turn on the last villain.

  Caerwyn felt something harden inside of her as she spun and threw Davlas with all her might at the wizard. She let out a feral scream as she did, releasing all her pent-up fear, anger, and frustration.

  The man’s reactions were amazing, and the spear only just brushed the side of his head as he flinched out of the way at the last moment.

  She commanded it to spin around and skewer him from the back, but Jais was also charging in on the man and a moment later the wizard was gone, vanished once again.

  “Coward!” Jais screamed, hoarse.

  She summoned Davlas back to her hand before it hit Jais, then fell to her knees again, shoulders slumping as the energy went out of her.

  Gods…

  She’d been so weak.

  How could anyone ever forgive her? How could she ever forgive herself?

  “What have I done,” she whispered to herself.

  Jais knelt beside her. She knew it was him, the feel of his essence to her spirit-link was familiar after having traveled with him for weeks now. He set a hand on her back.

  Spirit-link… it was odd knowing what her abilities were called now. This was the sense she had which pulled her to other drahksani.

  Yet Jais would never get to experience the gifts she received. The dragon was dead. Jais had been the one — more so than any of them — who’d wanted to know about who he was and what he could do. He’d never get that chance now because she’d let that wizard kill Elria and the dragon.

  “Caer? What happened?” Jais’ voice was soft, tentative and caring. It was far too much. He should hate her, and perhaps he would once he knew the truth. She couldn’t take his kindness and was overcome with sobs, loud and embarrassing and in no way cathartic.

  “Caer?” Jais was rubbing her back. “It will be well,” he said in a hushed tone.

  No, it wouldn’t be. It could never be. She’d always been so strong, able to handle anything life had thrown at her. It hadn’t been an easy life by any means, not with having had to flee from two families, but she’d always faced the future with determination. Now she saw only darkness ahead.

  Jais reached around to embrace her.

  She flinched away. She couldn’t — wouldn’t let him comfort her. “Don’t!” Her tone was harsh, scathing. He started back. Good. That’s what he should be doing, recoiling from her cowardice and uselessness.

  “Caer?”

  She barely had any energy, but she rose and strode away from him. She tried to speak through her sobs, but her words were slurred and came out in odd tones and cadence. She didn’t know if anyone would understand her, but she had to keep them all away. “Stay away from me! I don’t deserve your— I don’t deserve anything from any of you! Just stop it!”

  She reached a wall and collapsed to her knees at its base, her head tilting forward to rest on its cold surface.

  “Stay away,” she repeated with much less vigor through her tears. She needed to be alone. She deserved to be alone
. She hadn’t done her job, hadn’t protected those who needed it. She’d failed. She was a failure. Her entire life had been a failure. She could see that now. She had been too young and weak to help her parents. She should have died with them, but she’d run away. She should have stood up to Gosse when he’d accused her of being drahksani to her adoptive father, but she hadn’t, she’d fled yet again.

  She could see now the thread of cowardice in her life. How useless she was. Now she’d sunk so low as to let herself be used by an evil man. What redemption was there for that?

  No one approached her this time.

  It was for the best. She deserved to be alone and cold, miserable.

  Jais stared at Caerwyn. It was all he could do. This wasn’t her. It couldn’t be. He’d never seen her like this before and couldn’t have even imagined it. He’d never seen her weep, not like this. She seemed… broken. Yet she was a rock. She was the rock that kept their group together. Without her…

  “Jais!” He turned at the sound of his name. “We need you!” Volf was leaning over Barami. Next to them was Gosse.

  Oh, Gods!

  Jais ran over to the scene. He’d been too distracted with fighting the wizard and then Caerwyn’s odd breakdown, that he hadn’t noticed what had happened in the rest of the room.

  For a moment, he simply stood staring down at Gosse’s decapitated form. It didn’t seem possible. The man had only just come to know what he was. He might not have even had time to figure out who he was. His impulse was to heal the man, but his mind told him it wouldn’t be possible.

  “I’m sorry,” he said softly to the corpse and turned to Volf and Barami. “What’s wrong with him?”

  Volf’s eyes were wide with fear and concern. “How should I know?”

  Of course, Jais had to stop thinking others could know what was wrong with someone just by touching them. He hurried over and knelt by Barami, skirting around the massive form of Gerhardt. He only wished he’d been able to help take down that demon of a man. In truth, he’d been mostly useless in this past fight.

  Kneeling by Barami, he put a hand on the man’s forehead and searched for the wounds and pain within him. Almost instantly he caught the dislocated shoulder and a couple of fractured ribs, other than that the man seemed to be mostly well, just unconscious.

  He turned to Volf. “I can handle this. Go free Hildr and…” Then check on Elria. He wanted to say the words, but he couldn’t bring himself. He knew she was dead as much as he didn’t want her to be. His heart constricted at the thought. “Just go!” he said a little too harshly. The on-edge feeling he’d sensed from Caerwyn seemed to be catching.

  Volf nodded and ran off.

  Jais healed Barami. It didn’t take long. Resetting the shoulder was a lot easier while the man was unconscious, as it would have been quite painful. Once he was done, he let Barami rest.

  He stood and glanced around and couldn’t help but look toward Elria.

  Moving slowly, his feet traced a path he desperately needed to take yet just as desperately didn’t want to.

  He knelt next to her and put a hand on her cold, far-too-pale cheek.

  She was dead. There was no healing her from this.

  He nodded to himself as he swallowed a heavy lump in his throat, which didn’t seem to go away. Tears formed around his eyes, but he gritted his teeth and wouldn’t let them fall. Yet he couldn’t stop himself from gazing upon her, his eyes drawn to hers, which stared up into nothingness. They were perfect, those brilliant green eyes. That green, with the growing pallor of her skin, was set in stark contrast to the bloom of dark blood at her throat.

  He tried. He had to.

  He pushed a little healing energy into her only to feel it dissipate, wasted upon a corpse.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I should have been here to protect you.” He leaned down and kissed her cold forehead.

  Then the tears came.

  With them came a flood of emotions he’d been restraining: regret, anger, loathing, hatred, love, and so many others.

  “Why did you have to go on?” he asked her. “You could have waited for us to catch up.” But she’d been brave. He wasn’t sure he’d ever given her full credit for her strength and bravery since it was hidden behind her kindness and compassion for people. Yet it was clear now. She’d come here, knowing there was danger. She’d come, and she’d died.

  “I don’t think I ever really knew you,” he whispered, still leaning over her, his tears wetting her face and hair. “I so wanted to, but…” Then he couldn’t speak anymore.

  A voice nearby drew Jais out of his mourning. “I’m sorry I couldn’t get you here in time to save her.” It was Volf.

  Jais nodded, sniffling. “You did everything you could.”

  He rose then.

  He’d been kneeling close enough long enough that there were two imprints of his knees in the darkening pool of blood around her.

  He drew in a long breath and his voice turned hard. “I will kill that man.”

  Volf nodded, then his gaze flicked away to something else.

  The cave was dark, lit only by a few flickering torches, but in the distance Jais could see the pile of what looked like ash, that had once been a dragon. “I guess we’ll never get our answers now,” he said softly.

  Volf cleared his throat. “Actually, Caerwyn and I, we did get some before the wizard showed up.”

  Jais turned to him, trying not to appear envious or heartbroken. “You did?” Perhaps they might be able to help shed some light on his own abilities, tell him more about who and what he was.

  Volf nodded. “I’m sorry you didn’t get the chance. It was a… changing experience.”

  “What did you find out?”

  Volf grimaced. “I know all of what I can do now, and it’s amazing. I was given my bloodline, back to the dragon that spawned my ancestors.”

  “So, we did actually come from dragons?”

  Volf nodded. “The dragons had decided their time was ending and sacrificed their eggs to give birth to our kind to help and protect humanity.”

  “But you wouldn’t know anything about my bloodline or my abilities.” It wasn’t a question.

  Volf sighed heavily. “I am sorry you didn’t get to speak to the dragon.”

  Jais was certain he would always remember this day as one of missed timing and disappointment. Jais looked down at Elria’s dead form and something hardened in side of him. “I’ll never let this happen again.” His gaze drifted upward to no specific point. “And when I find that Holn-damned wizard I swear by Suur I’ll kill him.”

  He turned away at that and went back to Barami. He easily lifted the still unconscious man and brought him over to the area that had been set up as a sort-of camp.

  Hildr looked worn and tired.

  He set Barami down and asked her, “What are your customs for the dead? The ones back at your village were burned, is that the usual way?

  Hildr nodded. “But not without the cleansing ceremony first.”

  Jais sighed. “What does that involve?” They wouldn’t be able to get Elria’s body back to the village, which meant dealing with it here most likely.

  “They are washed and tended. Then wrapped in white cloth and a prayer is said for them.”

  “We have no white cloth. Do you know the prayer?”

  Hildr shook her head.

  “So, what do we do with Elria?”

  Hildr looked like she didn’t want to be making this decision now, but Jais didn’t want to wait. He couldn’t think of her lying in that pool of blood. He needed to do something now.

  “If we leave her—” Hildr began.

  “And let scavengers tear at her? No.”

  “There is little here to use as a pyre.” Hildr shook her head. “And no scavengers will get at her here. This place is protected.”

  Jais closed his eyes and pressed his lips together. He didn’t like the thought of just leaving Elria like that. He wanted to yell at the world, but y
elling at Hildr now would do nothing. “Is there anything we can do for her?”

  “Pray for her.”

  “I’ve already said my prayer,” he said, stoic and stern. His had been to Suur and it been concerning vengeance. He rose and stalked away to Caerwyn. He couldn’t think of the dead anymore. He had to… he didn’t know what.

  The stone that was his soul cracked a little to see Caerwyn so broken. She remained kneeling next to the wall, leaning against it, her posture and position one of defeat and fragility. She no longer wept, but her breathing was erratic like one still sobbing.

  He knelt next to her.

  Words died on his lips. He didn’t know what to say to her, whether to be compassionate or to try jarring her from this state with harsh words.

  “You’re alive,” he said and found his voice was still hard, unyielding. He tried to moderate his tone but found it did little. He remained stoic. “That’s more than some people here. Use it. Be strong. Fight back.” He felt an odd mix of pity and revulsion rise within him, and it came out in his words. “This isn’t you.”

  He waited for a reply, something, but she didn’t even acknowledge his presence. After a long moment of waiting, and with nothing else he could think to say, he shook his head and stood, turning away.

  “I killed her.” The voice was a mouse’s whisper behind him, hoarse and choked with sorrow.

  He froze.

  Killed… there was only one dead ‘her’ in the room. But that wasn’t right. The wizard had killed Elria. He’d seen it happen.

  “He asked me to choose.”

  Those words froze Jais’ soul.

  “Choose?”

  “The wizard. He had Barami and was hurting him. He asked me to choose who would die between Hildr and Elria.” A wet snuffling and a single sob preceded her next words. “I’m sorry, Jais! I killed Elria.”

  She’d chosen…

  Of course she had. She would never have let Barami die. And Barami seemed to have something for the other woman, Hildr. She wouldn’t hurt her longtime friend by choosing a woman he liked. But Jais’ feelings for Elria, they didn’t mean anything to her, they hadn’t been considered. That was clear. It all played out in his head with a sickening logic.