Shadowborn

by Katie MacAlister

  “Deo!” He heard the voice before the two Banes realized Idril was there. Deo swore under his breath, knowing with the foresight of a seer what the next few seconds would bring.

  Once again, he was wrong.

  Just as Eset turned to face Idril, who was armed only with the daggers he’d given her, the chaos magic roared to life within him. If he’d thought it had been weakened before, he was mistaken, for suddenly, with the mere act of Eset lifting his sword to strike the woman who had held Deo’s heart for more years than he could recall, he ceased being himself, Deosin Langton, useless blot of nothing and so-called savior of the Fourth Age, and became instead a tool of vengeance.

  Idril reached him, one hand clutching the back of his tunic just as chaos exploded out of him with a sound that he was certain had deafened him. The blast of magic eradicated not only the two men in front of him, but also the stone gate beyond them, a massive structure that stood a full three stories tall.

  Bits of stone, rock, and twisted metal rained down on them, echoes of the concussion bouncing off the cliffs surrounding the town in repeated waves of noise. Deo spun around, curling his body protectively around Idril, his eyes widening when he looked beyond her to where the town lay.

  Or where it should have lain.

  The entire east side of Deeptide was rubble, with a dense cloud of dirt and dust hovering over the remains. Bits of brick and stone walls slid and crashed to the ground, leaving partially-standing shells of buildings. The other half of the town, the part that was caught in the cone of magic that had erupted from Deo…it was gone, swallowed by the sea that surged and withdrew in massive blue-grey waves gilded with the golden red residue of his magic.

  “Grace of the goddesses, Deo,” he heard Idril murmur against his chest. “My ears are ringing. What did you do—”

  She had extracted herself, her eyes widening when she saw the destruction he had wrought. “That…the town…was that—”

  “Yes,” he said, glancing back to where the Banes had stood.

  Nothing of them remained. He felt a moment of sadness at losing men who had sworn to devote their talents to ridding Alba of evil, only to be consumed by the result of once-good intentions. Or rather, the power he had imbued in them.

  “Are you harmed?” he asked Idril as he braced himself for what he must do. Within him, chaos simmered, subservient and quiet once again, but at the same time making him aware that he didn’t have nearly the control over it he thought he had.

  “No.” She continued to gaze at the destruction he had wrought, then wrapped her arms around him, holding him for a moment, filling him with everything that was good in the world before releasing him.

  More than just buildings had been knocked down with the blast. Horses struggled to rise, some with riders being dragged by feet caught in stirrups, while others who had been on foot now lay stunned.

  Deo fervently prayed they were all alive, and rushed past Idril to assess the damage, searching amongst the bodies that lay scattered across the road for those who were familiar, quickly righting the unharmed, while assessing the extent of the injured.

  Thankfully, there appeared to be very few of the latter.

  “Deo!” He heard his father’s furious roar even as he spotted him helping the queen to her feet. She looked livid, her eyes sparking silver lights that he could see from where he stood. “By Kiriah’s ten toes, what did you do?”

  Deo ignored the question, yanking aside bits of rubble, helping the couple of water talkers who had started digging survivors out of the remains of their houses.

  Beyond, where part of the town was missing and waves lapped at a newly made shoreline, figures straggled out of the water before standing and staring in abject horror at the remains of the town.

  “Thank the goddess they are Waterborn,” he murmured, and hefted half a wall from where a woman and her child were huddled under a bookcase. “Are you harmed?” he asked the woman.

  “No…no,” she stammered, her face expressing the same mingled horror and confusion that he had seen all around him as the townspeople recovered. “We’re just—what happened?”

  “My son happened,” he heard his father growl behind him. “As usual, he has rained death and destruction where a simpler solution presented itself.”

  “Destruction, yes,” Deo said, shooting his father a sharp look. “But not much death. At least not that I’ve seen.”

  “The people in the part of the town that you sent crashing down into the sea—”

  “Are even now rising from the waves,” Deo said, nodding toward the fresh stretch of shore where other townspeople, covered in the dust and dirt of the debris, met their friends and family who stood shivering and wet. “They are water breathers. They can’t drown.”

  “They can if they had been knocked senseless, or injured beyond healing,” his father snapped, turning and lifting a hand when Dasa called to him. “What in the name of Kiriah Sunbringer did you think you were doing?”

  “Taking care of the Banes.” Deo leashed his anger and annoyance. Would the day ever dawn when he did not arouse his father’s wrath? He pulled aside bits of broken furniture, jerking one of the water talkers forward when the red clay tiles of a roof came slamming down in front of them.

  “Could you not have done so without destroying everything in the area?” his mother asked, picking her way through the debris.

  Deo cast his gaze momentarily skyward, wondering if the twin goddesses took enjoyment in blighting his life. “No,” he answered, deciding that explanation would have to wait until such time as all the citizens of the town had been accounted for.

  “Bellias help me, Deo, if you can’t control your magic, then I will give your father my approval to banish you somewhere you can do no harm!” Dasa helped an old man and his dog out from where they were sheltered by a table while Deo put his shoulder to a wall that leaned drunkenly inward, blocking a door, and shoved until the wall slid backward, collapsing with a loud noise, and dense cloud of brick dust.

  “I will not be banished again,” he said in a voice made gritty with both annoyance and the polluted air. “Not by anyone. Are you harmed? Good. No, do not go back in there. The walls are not safe. I will fetch what you need.”

  Deo waited with what patience remained him while an old woman croaked her request. By the time he fetched her basket of knitting and returned it to her, his parents had moved off, helping to rescue other residents, pets, and valuables.

  Idril had summoned her handmaidens to help the people of Deeptide, and the women now moved amongst them with pitchers of wine, food, and baskets of ointments and herbs to heal their hurts.

  Deo cast a curious glance at the temple, noting that although a few windows had been broken, it had suffered no other damage, whether by chance or because of the Life-Mother’s protection, he knew not.

  Darkness had fallen by the time everyone was accounted for, and places to stay had been arranged in those structures still deemed habitable. Deo had expected censure by those affected, and wouldn’t have been in the least bit surprised to be further castigated, cursed, and spat upon as the one who had brought such trouble down upon their heads. But oddly, although he met with many a wary expression, the water talkers did not treat him as a villain.

  “Not that you deserve anything but scorn heaped upon your head,” his father said when Deo, exhausted, sat at a long table in his mother’s chambers inside the temple, with Idril at his side, while the captain, Ella, and Dexia were seated on the other side of the table. “Of all the—but no.” Israel took a deep breath, and cut off his rant in mid sentence, a fact that would have taken Deo by surprise if he had any energy left to express such an emotion. “I’ve said enough about that subject. I can see by the stricken look in your eyes that this time, at least, you are fully cognizant of the damage you have done.”

  “You might not have more to say to him,”
Dasa said while pacing past Deo only to turn at the far end of the room to pin him with a potent glare. She’d been pacing ever since Deo’s presence had been requested, and Idril and the others had followed him in to the queen’s rooms. “It is not your kin who have been almost destroyed.”

  “Almost being the key word,” Quinn murmured, giving Idril a sleepy-eyed smile.

  Idril missed it, being at that moment occupied with staring down at her hands where they rested in her lap. Deo wasn’t misled by her apparently subservient demeanor. Idril was at her most inventive when she looked humble. No doubt she was even then planning some particularly arousing way to end what could only be described as one of the worst days of his life.

  The queen whirled around to glare at Quinn. He lifted his hands in apparent surrender, adding, “I meant only that no one died. None but the two Banes, that is.”

  “And the soldiers they killed in the camp outside the city,” Ella added softly. Deo heard an odd note in the Shadowborn’s voice that made him glance at her. Her expression showed nothing.

  “Don’t forget about the swath of destruction they left coming here,” Dexia added, her gaze resting on Idril for a few moments before she picked up a small cloth doll bearing a few braided strands of hair that bore a startling resemblance to the blond tresses that fell in a silken shimmer down Idril’s back.

  “How you could believe that destroying the home of my kin was a solution to the issue of your out-of-control Banes—” the queen started to say, but stopped when Deo rose to his feet.

  “Come,” he told Idril, holding out his hand for her.

  Her eyebrows rose slightly, but she obediently put her hand in his, and got to her feet. “Where, my lord?”

  Deo took a deep breath, acknowledging the debts he owed. They seemed to grow with each passing day. If he didn’t start paying them off, soon they might threaten to drown him. “Kelos. Or near there, assuming Hallow took sanctuary somewhere safe nearby.”

  “You’re leaving now?” Israel asked frowning, casting a look at the now glassless window. “It will be deep night soon. You wish to depart at such an inauspicious time?”

  Dasa snorted, and stomped over to Deo, her eyes still blazing. “Never did I think the day would come when my son would run away from his responsibilities. If any man had told me that you would do so, I would have slain him where he stood. And yet, that is exactly what you are doing!”

  “I am leaving because I must,” he told her as Idril’s fingers tightened around his in warning. “I owe it to Hallow to help him now, when he needs my aid.”

  “He needs your aid?” Dasa’s voice rose. She gestured toward the window. “And what of Deeptide? Does my kin—your kin—not matter? You destroyed their town, their homes, their lives! Do you not feel any obligation to help them?”

  “Their buildings are damaged, yes,” he said, wondering at the fact that the magic inside him was not raging against the tirade directed at him. “But they can be rebuilt, just as the town can. For those who were injured by the destruction of the two Banes, I am very sorry, and have left with the bursar as much coin as I can spare to help rebuild their lives. But beyond hewing stone and cutting down trees, I am of little use to them here. There are bigger threats to their future—”

  “Deo, hear me well,” Dasa interrupted, stepping close to him, so close he could see the black streaks in her silver eyes. “If you leave here now, when my people—your people—need you most, then you will no longer be my son.”

  “Dasa,” Israel said, standing up as his frown grew blacker. “You allow your emotions to rule your reason. Deo, for the first time in my knowledge, has admitted his blame in the happenings today. He has made what reparations he could, reparations that I will contribute to in his name because he did what was needful, even though the Waterborn were ill-used in the process. But beyond that, he speaks with reason. He can be of no use here while Lyl is on the move, and Allegria is lost to us.”

  “These are my people,” she snarled, spinning around to glare at him. “It is my kin who have suffered by Deo’s hand, and I will not have it said he simply walked away in their time of need.”

  “The Starborn are your people, too,” Israel said, narrowing his eyes on her. “Do you forget them in your rush to placate your cousin, the priestess?”

  She spat a word that Deo knew would enrage his father. With a shake of his head at the futility of it all, he simply started for the door, calling over his shoulder, “Disown me if it makes you feel better, but I must have Hallow and Allegria if we are to have any hope of stopping Nezu from destroying Alba.”

  “Do not expect me to rush to your assistance when you need it,” Dasa said loudly over the sound of scraping chairs. Quinn, Ella, and Dexia all rose and followed silently after Deo. “Your Banes have seen to it that my army has been destroyed, so even if I wanted to—and I assure you that at this moment, you are the very last person I would consider aiding—I will have nothing with which to help you. Go now, and you will find yourself alone, with no army at your back, hopeless in the eyes of the goddesses!”

  He paused at the door and looked back at his parents. Dasa’s face was red, her hands fisted, waves of animosity all but rolling off her. He wondered for a moment why she was suddenly so willing to disregard her beloved Starfall, and the Starborn whom she ruled, but that, too, was a puzzle for another day.

  With a nod to his father that, to his surprise, was returned, he said simply, “I might be without many friends, and have no great company, or the blessing of the goddesses, but I am not hopeless.”

  “Nor are you alone,” Idril said, pressing herself against his side.

  “You have me,” Quinn told Deo with a wry smile. “The goddesses have blessed me…or cursed me, depending on your point of view…and that should count for something.”

  “Nor do you need a great company,” Ella said, her gaze flicking between the queen and Deo. “You simply need people who aren’t afraid to do what needs to be done.”

  “And a vanth,” Dexia said, smiling in a way that showed every single one of her pointed teeth.

  He met his mother’s furious gaze. “I will return to lend what aid I can once I have rid Alba of the threat of Nezu.”

  “Deo!” she yelled after him, but he turned and walked through the door, the others falling into place behind him. “I mean what I say! If you leave Deeptide now, I will make it known throughout Genora that you are no longer my son.”

  “Whereas I will make it known to the very same people that you go with my blessing,” Israel called after him. “I will gather what help I can, and follow you as quickly as may be.”

  The door closed on the sound of Dasa unleashing a verbal tirade on Israel.

  “Is your mother always that…volatile?” Quinn asked a few minutes later, as he and Deo saddled the horses while Idril and the others gathered supplies.

  “No.”

  Silence followed that word, one that lasted until Deo led the horses out to the yard.

  “Odd, that, don’t you think?” was all Quinn said.

  It was a question that remained with Deo for some time.

  Chapter 10

  “This is a disturbingly bleak place.” I stood with my hands on my hips and surveyed our surroundings. “What did you say it was called?”

  “Me?” Mayam stood up from where she’d bent to examine a small flowering plant. Like the ground beneath our feet, it was black—everything from the stem to the leaves and flowers all bore slightly different hues of the same color. “Did I say what it was called? I don’t remember.”

  I disregarded that statement. “I don’t remember” had become a frequent refrain the last few days. I frowned at that thought, something niggling in the back of my mind, something disturbing, but whatever it was refused to come forward and let me see it. “I suppose it doesn’t matter. I just thought you called it by a specific name.”r />
  Mayam glanced around. “The stones here are pretty. What would you call it, if you could name it?”

  “The stones, or this place?” I scrambled to the top of a black rocky outcropping, noticing that the texture of the stone was oddly smooth, as Mayam had pointed out. It was almost glass-like, glistening onyx in the dulled daylight.

  Black lay before me: black ground, black rock, a few scrubby black plants, and black skeletons of scorched trees long dead, their jagged, naked branches resembling the fingers of a withered crone.

  Or those of a…of a…my mind came to a stuttering halt at the word I wanted to draw forth. “Kiriah blight it,” I muttered to myself, having the same sense of something trying to get my attention and feeling irritated with my inability to think properly.

  “It’s not very descriptive of the land itself, but I agree that as a sentiment, it suits,” Mayam said, climbing up onto the ebony remains of a fallen tree that looked like it had been blasted by lightning. “Blighted is a good word for it.”

  “No, that was meant for myself. There’s a word I want—the people who were affected by those big red ones—they were all shrunken in on themselves, and had claw-like fingers.”

  Mayam wrinkled her forehead in thought. “Night talkers, you mean?”

  “I have no idea what that is.” I glanced behind me, in the direction we’d come. The edge of the forest was dull grey, as was right and proper in the spirit realm. This blackness that consumed everything was not. “It’s just wrong, and yet at the same time, it feels oddly…right,” I said aloud.

  “No, they really are called night talkers. I’m certain that’s the right name for them. They were well known on Eris, and highly sought after. It’s said they could summon the shadows, and slip into them to hide from view. My mother said she had a night talker in her family, but I never saw him.” Mayam picked up a smooth bit of polished onyx stone, examined it, and, after a moment, tossed it aside. “The rocks here are pretty, though.”