Shadow's Curse

by Alexa Egan

  He danced away from a second strike and a third, his mind aflame with past horrors and paralyzing fear.

  “Your blood is as black and tainted as your heart, St. Leger. Did the pretty little Fey-blood whore spread her legs for you? Did you take her as man or beast . . . or both? Perhaps I’ll do the same before I drive a dagger through her heart.”

  David drove the past from his mind, refused its power and its pain. He would not bow to Beskin’s slimy threats. No fetters held him fast. No hostile crowds eyed him with loathing. He would not cringe and cower. He would bury his shame and his memories in the same grave as the enforcer’s body.

  St. Leger sprang for the throat. Beskin parried with a slam of his sword. The snow muffled the sounds of battle while blood spattered scarlet across the white ground.

  * * *

  Tied hand and foot to the horse, Callista struggled with her bonds, the ropes digging into her wrists, blood leaking down over her fingers. Luckily, her extremities had gone numb hours ago. There was no pain, only a sense of impending doom with every growl and curse blowing down off the ridge, bringing with it showers of blood-speckled snow.

  A swarm of crows gathered overhead, their raucous squawks and croaks scraping against her brain like nails on a slate. They must have had the same effect on Beskin’s horse. It shifted and backed and tossed its head. She clamped her knees tighter against its sides in an attempt to keep her seat on the slippery saddle. Fettered as she was by a length of cord running ankle to ankle beneath the horse’s belly, a fall would trap her between the nervous gelding’s legs.

  She gritted her teeth and struggled once more, in and out, back and forth as the blood slicked hot over her hands and she forced her mind from dwelling on the Duncallans’ fate. Had Beskin killed them before he’d stolen her away in the middle of the night? Had he decided the only good Fey-blood was a dead one? Or had they managed to escape? Were they looking for her? Was help on the way?

  A shelf of snow broke free and spilled in a thick cascade off the ridge, bringing with it the tumbling and rolling gray shape of an enormous wolf. The horse lifted its head in a frightened whinny, its hooves pawing at the ground as Callista tried desperately to hang on.

  The wolf lay panting, a long, jagged gash upon its shoulder, blood and slaver dripping from its jaws. Beskin’s shadow speared the snow above it, his silver sword flashing against the slate-gray sky.

  “David!” she screamed. “Look out!”

  Just as the sword descended, the wolf rolled up and away, its jaws clamping on Beskin’s leg, tearing through flesh and muscle, ripping in a frenzy of animal brutality, though the beast’s eyes shone pale with human hate and human desperation.

  The enforcer screamed in agony, the sword falling from his hand as he grappled with the wolf, the snow a churned mess of blood and earth. A dagger aimed for the wolf’s throat was turned aside at the last minute, glancing off bone and rib instead. The animal yelped and sprang free, sides heaving, blood streaming from half a dozen wounds. It took a few shaky steps before sinking lifeless against a tree.

  Callista fought the ropes, tears streaming frozen from her eyes as she cursed her helplessness. Just a bit more. A little farther.

  A hot wind buffeted her face as the air around the wolf shimmered and blurred like rain streaming down a pane of glass. Raw, unfamiliar magic sizzled along her skin and flip-flopped her empty stomach. She blinked away her tears to see David lying wounded and dazed on the snow. A shimmer of light rippled across his broad shoulders and down his long legs before dispersing to mingle with the rivulets of blood sliding in ribbons and curls down the hill.

  “David?” she whispered.

  He rolled up and onto his feet. Eyed Beskin with revulsion. The enforcer’s leg below the knee was a mess of pulpy cartilage and bone, his face an ugly mask of horrified agony as he struggled to crawl across the snow toward his abandoned sword, dragging his mangled limb behind him. The crows thickened and wheeled, diving down to pluck at Beskin’s flesh, grabbing up gobbets of blood.

  A little more. A little closer. She could feel her right wrist sliding free. The horse shimmied to one side, agitated at the scent of blood and animal and the growing cloud of crows and ravens drawn by the blood-soaked snow.

  David crossed the few yards and plucked up the enforcer’s sword with a smile as cold and cruel as death. He stood over Beskin, his expression grim, his jaw jumping, muscles taut. It was like watching a stranger. The man she knew and loved had vanished behind a brutal and merciless mask of vengeance. She wanted to call out to him, speak words to pull him back from the brink of madness, but her voice caught in her lungs, her breath naught but a frosty cloud. Bending low and awkward across the horse’s shoulder, she turned her efforts to the icy-hard knots at her ankles.

  “This is for Kineally and the others you’ve slaughtered.”

  “Kill me, more will follow,” Beskin groaned through lips drawn back from long sharpened teeth. “Pryor’s power grows. The Duke’s time is past. The Ossine rule”—his hand whipped out to latch on David’s ankle—“now!”

  He dragged David off-balance and hard into the ground, his fist driving up into his jaw with bone-crunching strength. “The curse tainted your blood. The Fey-blood polluted your mind. You’re weak.”

  David struggled for the sword, but the hilt had tumbled just out of reach and Beskin’s hold was like iron. His face seemed to warp and lengthen, the shades of man and beast flickering beneath his skin as he sought to shift. As David scrabbled to reach the fallen sword, Beskin reached to his left boot. Drew free a needle-thin blade. Let it sail.

  Callista shouted as her right ankle came loose, while the blade whistled past her ear to land hilt-deep in the horse’s neck. It screamed and reared before falling to the ground in a tangle of churning legs. Callista tried rolling clear of the dying gelding, left, then right, until her head exploded in a burst of red and black, and darkness took her.

  * * *

  David kicked and twisted free of Beskin’s grip and scrambled over the snow to where Callista lay curled at the base of a tree, the snow from its heavy branches half burying her, the dying horse thrashing as it pumped its blood onto the churned ground. He pulled her clear and felt the lump at the back of her skull. She’d survive, but he needed to get her out of the weather. Somewhere warm. Somewhere safe. A shadow speared the air above him. He looked up into the maddened eyes of an enormous bear dragging the grisly ruin of its leg behind it. Small advantage when David still faced razor claws and fangs long as daggers.

  He threw himself sideways as the bear swung one giant paw down in a blow that would have scissored through flesh like a knife through butter.

  He spun and darted, luring Beskin away from Callista, drawing ever closer to the fallen sword. Beskin followed, roaring his rage and pain. His breath blew hot on David’s neck as he swiped at him. Claws tore into David’s calf, dropping him to the ground. Rising up on his hind legs, the bear bellowed in triumph. Lurching with one last gasp toward the sword, David braced for the crushing, gut-ripping, claw-tipped strike. Instead, a rush of wind and feathers brushed his face.

  The bear roared and reeled backward, deep gouges slashed across its snout. The crow dove again, raking and clawing. David snatched up the fallen sword, and before he could breathe or think or regret one more ghost to haunt his dreams, he drove the blade through the enforcer’s chest. Pulled it free with a sucking yank and slashed downward, slicing deep into the bear’s shoulder and neck.

  Blood gushed from the bear’s throat and it slumped to the ground, its eyes glazing as death approached, its great hairy body fading in a rush of shimmering air back into the naked pallor of a man. Beskin stared up into the hard sky and the girl in her cloak of crow feathers. Blood spilled from his mouth and his chest as his life ebbed. “It’s true. Lucan lives.”

  Badb returned his black stare. “He never died.”

  Crumpling to his knees, David retched his stomach empty. His body shook with tremors, his head crawling
with voices, dry and crackling, smooth and silky sweet, hard as a smithy’s anvil. Fey magic sizzled the air, and he gripped his skull as if his brain might leak out his ears.

  “The enforcer is dead. They will see you the rest of the way to Dunsgathaic,” Badb said, her voice coming from far away and yet echoing through his shattered skull.

  David looked up to see a group of gray-robed women surrounding them. Old, seamed faces and gnarled fingers; plump, young cheeks and curious stares. One stepped forward. Small as a child, she walked with the grace of a dancer. Her golden eyes shone like the sun. Her potent Fey-blood magic nearly doubled him over. “The stones will see us home,” she said.

  “I can’t,” he tried to explain. “I mustn’t.”

  “It is for us to maintain the path between. You must bear her body.”

  “The dream . . . you don’t understand. I’ll kill her. Badb, tell her . . .” But the Fey had flown, the crow no more than a black speck in the sky.

  “Child of the clans, bring her or leave her, but you will come with us to Dunsgathaic. You, the Ard-siur wishes to see.”

  Weak from illness and blood loss, he couldn’t fight. Besides, there was no point. He knew a superior force when he saw one. And these, for all their soft words and slender figures, were as single-minded as any of Napoleon’s officers. Marshaling his last ounce of strength, he scooped Callista up in his arms as they tied a rope threaded with golden and pearlescent strands to his wrist, the other end knotted around the wrist of the young priestess.

  “The connection will carry us together through the void of between. Do not fear the dark. Do not heed the cries. Do not speak to those who would lure you from the path. And whatever happens, do not loosen the knot binding us together.”

  “What lies within the between?”

  “The abyss where the Unseelie dwell, the soulless and the damned and the forgotten.”

  He limped with his precious burden behind them up the hill to the ridge and the stone circle. Stepped into the waves and wash of Fey magic captured there. The midnight black took them where none of his Imnada senses worked. He was blind and deaf to the emptiness around him. He felt only the weight of Callista’s body in his arms. Only the heat of the rope taut against his wrist. The force of magic tore his words away, then his breath, drove his stomach into his throat, clawed at his mind with a thousand screaming voices.

  But at least in the emptiness of the abyss, none could hear his painful screams and he might weep without being seen.

  19

  Warmth woke her. Blankets tucked to her chin, a hot brick wrapped in flannel against her feet, and a cheerful fire dancing in the hearth combined to ease the throb of thawing tired limbs. Then memory flooded her sluggish brain and she sat up with a cry. A hand, spotted and knobbed with age, but deceptively strong, pressed her back against the pillows. A face swam into view above her, but it was not the one she yearned for. Instead wrinkles lined a pleasant countenance and crouched in the corners of two pale blue eyes. “Easy, lass. ’Tis all right. You’re out of the wicked snow and warm as toast within the walls of Dunsgathaic. None will harm you.”

  She’d arrived on Skye? But how? Callista remembered nothing after falling beneath the horse’s flailing hooves. Her memories were all of snow and ice and blood and death. And a red-hot slash of pain in her head before the black swallowed her.

  “Where’s David? Is he here? Did he . . .” She couldn’t bring herself to ask the question.

  “The shapechanger lives,” the woman answered, though her gaze grew serious, and the smile fled from her face. “Rest now. I’ll return when you’re summoned before the head of our order, the Ard-siur.”

  She wanted to argue. Wanted to wrestle the sister aside and search for David, but her body refused to cooperate. Her brain was as muddled as her memories, and her legs and arms seemed weighted to the soft mattress.

  She slept and woke again. The shadows had moved, and the sky beyond the window was a crisp blue. She gazed around at the room for the first time noticing the scattered rugs upon the floor and the comfortable chairs drawn up to a tiled hearth. A cabinet contained a pitcher and washstand. Another table was scattered with curios and curiosities. A bird’s nest. A bowl of sea-washed pebbles. A vase of celadon holding skeletal winter branches.

  And, set upon a far cabinet by the door, a familiar mahogany box, the carved lid worn smooth with generations of hands running over it, the round brass lock and hinges as shiny as if new forged.

  She rose from bed to take up the box. Set it back on the coverlet beside her, positioning the tumblers and springing the lock. Key, Summoner, and Blade; all as she’d left them. Her mother’s letters still nestled in the corner. Callista pulled them from their resting place. Felt the crinkle of the thin paper under her fingers, the faded ink, the frayed ribbon.

  “I’m finally here, Mother,” she whispered to no one. “I’m in Dunsgathaic.”

  Wind rattled the casement and moaned round the door, a lonely sound that sent worry curdling unbidden up through her. She swallowed back a hard knot of fear. The sisters wouldn’t harm David. But what of the Amhas-draoi? They lived within these walls as well. The battle-queen Scathach’s army of warriors and mages were sworn to protect and defend. Would they see David as a threat? Would they recall the story of Lucan Kingkiller and take their revenge?

  Bypassing the robe hanging over a chair, she scrambled into her own discarded gown drying upon a rack before the fire and wound her hair up into a knot. The mirror over the mantel showed her a peaked face of drawn skin and dark hollows. It also revealed the tremble in her fingers as she buttoned the last button and the nervous pulling at her lip with her bottom teeth.

  In a moment of childish longing, she slid the packet of old letters into her pocket as a reassuring talisman against nervous uncertainty. These were all she had left of her mother, a last link to the heartbroken woman, forever torn between love for the family into which she’d been born and the family she’d built together with the man of her dreams. A last link to the last true home Callista had ever known. These, even more than the bells, were the true treasure kept safe in that box.

  The door opened, a draft chilling the back of her neck and guttering the sconces. The priestess didn’t even lift an eyebrow when she saw her charge up and dressed. She merely motioned for Callista to follow. “Ard-siur is ready for you now.”

  “What of Mr. St. Leger? I refuse to budge a step until you tell me where he is.”

  “All your questions will be answered when you see the Ard-siur.”

  “I want them answered now.” Callista folded her arms over her chest.

  The priestess’s pose of serenity cracked and an irritated frown passed over her face. “The shifter is safe and in one piece, which is more than you’ll be if you keep the head of our order waiting.”

  Without another word, she led the way through a long stone passage and down a steep winding flight of steps. Callista had no choice but to follow. She stared with wide eyes as they crossed a broad, muddy courtyard. A group of sisters stood in conversation. A heavy-set priestess in a dirty apron carried a basket on her shoulder. Another trailed a tail of four young girls like ducklings. Two bandraoi mounted on mules waited among a knot of laborers with shouldered picks and shovels and a man leading a bullock.

  This would be her home from now on. These women would replace the family she had lost.

  Why did the idea not fill her with the joy and anticipation she had thought it would? Why did the walls seem higher, the sky seem grayer, and her heart feel weighted with lead?

  A set of tall double doors opened onto an enormous chamber of streaming blue and gold and ruby light from rows of high stained-glass windows. The priestess gestured Callista in with an impatient wave of her hand. “Miss Hawthorne, Ard-siur.”

  “Thank you, Sister Brida.” A woman stood at a table, her gray robe edged in royal blue, her expression hard and unyielding as flint, but it hadn’t always been that way. Callista had seen it young
and unlined and bright with laughter as a girl gripped a kite string and raced across a green lawn toward a house of golden stone.

  “Aunt Deirdre?”

  * * *

  David felt the priestess’s hard gaze like a blade, her disapproval evident in her stiff posture and her clenched arms. She did everything but curl her lip in a superior sneer. He flashed her a winning smile that usually had London’s mothers queuing up with daughters in tow.

  She scowled harder.

  “You’re fortunate in your allies, Mr. St. Leger. The sisters do not bestir themselves for every traveler plagued by difficulties. Without Lord Duncallan’s persuasive urging, you would have found yourself without our aid. You owe His Lordship your life.”

  “With that and a penny, he’d have enough for a beggar’s bowl,” David quipped.

  She eyed him down her long hawkish nose. “Just so.”

  “Always good for the convent coffers to help a peer of the realm, but that wasn’t what really brought you scurrying to our rescue, was it?”

  She pursed her thin lips tight, her hands in her long sleeves tighter.

  Callista stepped forward, face flushed, dark hair spilling free from a hasty chignon to curl against her cheeks. Just seeing her clenched his stomach and heated his skin.

  “Please, Aunt Deirdre. I’ve told you everything. Can you help him? Can you lift the curse?”

  If the woman sneered at him, she fairly glowered at Callista. Not exactly the hearts-and-flowers reunion with her aunt that she had been hoping for. The head priestess had been as sour as a lemon, unbending as an oak.

  “A curse is the darkest of magics,” the Ard-siur said sagely. “A foul twisting of the mage energy. It would take much to unravel such a confusion of evil intent.”

  “Is that your way of saying no?” David asked, hoping to turn her wrath from Callista back onto him. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d been brought before a superior to answer for his transgressions. And after the Ossine’s savage punishments, it took more than a brittle, stick-up-her-back old snob to frighten him.