Shadow Magic

by Joshua Khan

  “Lily.”

  They both laughed.

  Rose galloped around the room. “You should have seen him, Lily!” She swung a hairbrush left and right. “Charged straight at them on the back of Tyburn’s horse!” She neighed and galloped around the room a second time.

  “Thorn rode Thunder?” Lily couldn’t believe it. “How?”

  “No idea, but one minute, he was surrounded by Gabriel and his squires, and the next, they were being chucked this way and that. I saw it all from the storeroom door.” She swiped the hairbrush. “Thwack! Thorn hit Gabriel right center, sent him flying a hundred feet in the air, I swear he did!” She collapsed on Lily’s bed. “It was brilliant.”

  “That Thorn’s a boy of mystery,” said Lily. “He rode Thunder? Really?”

  “And you’ve seen that arrow in the gargoyle, the one with the broken ear?”

  “You mean Chip?”

  Rose nodded. “Thorn did that.”

  “They said it was a lucky shot.”

  “Right after he hit a bull’s-eye? No one’s that lucky.”

  “And what were you doing up so early in the courtyard?”

  Rose blushed. “Mary…she needed some fresh flour. From the storeroom. It’s not my fault that’s when the squires do their training.” She grinned. “And in the summer when it gets too hot, they all take their shirts off.”

  “Rose! I’m shocked!” Lily laughed. “You’re a woman of mystery yourself.” She leaned closer. “Any particular one you have your eye on?”

  Rose looked down shyly before confessing, “Fynn. He’s a guard at Skeleton Gate.”

  “I know who you mean.” Lily nodded. Big, friendly. Not too bright. “Good choice.”

  Rose suddenly became serious. “People don’t notice servants. That don’t mean we don’t notice things.”

  Was that a dig at Lily? It was true. There’d been plenty of times when Lily had forgotten that Rose was standing right next to her. A shadow of a Shadow. “What is it?”

  “I…I don’t know.”

  “There’re only us two here, Rose.”

  Rose sat up. “It’s about the feast.”

  “What about it?”

  “I was there, Lily. I was mostly busy keeping Baron Sable’s flagon filled. But I was there.”

  And no one noticed. Including me. “What did you see?”

  Rose looked anxious. “I haven’t told anyone. I didn’t because who would believe a servant over a duke’s son?”

  “This is about Gabriel?”

  “He’s evil, Lily. Really evil. You need to watch out for him.”

  Lily laughed. “Gabriel’s a stupid fool.”

  “It was the crystal cups,” said Rose. “I saw what he did when you went off and danced with the Sultanate boy.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He put something in your cup, Lily.”

  Lily caught her breath.

  I told them from the beginning, and they didn’t believe me.

  Lily stared. “Are you sure? Totally sure?”

  Rose nodded. “It was Gabriel who tried to poison you.”

  I hate this place. Really, truly HATE it.

  Every cobweb and every stone. Even the sound of it. The way the air moaned out of secret vents, and the echoes that decayed like the breath of old men.

  Castle Gloom was unnatural, hard and lifeless, the opposite of the world that Thorn had grown up in.

  Instead of a forest of great, leaf-wrapped trees, there were endless columned corridors all covered in dust. Instead of soft grass and moss, there was hard, dead marble. Instead of sparrows, falcons, pigeons, kingfishers, crows, and a canopy filled with birds, there were bats, bats, and more bats.

  And Castle Gloom went on and on. Forever.

  He hadn’t encountered any zombies, which was good. But he hadn’t found a way out, which was bad.

  He’d fallen off one roof and right through another, knocking himself out in the process. He had lain among broken beams and shattered tiles for hours and only awoken after dusk.

  No sign of Gabriel and his cronies, fortunately. They must have seen him fall and assumed he’d broken his neck.

  Bruises and cuts covered his body, but amazingly, he hadn’t suffered anything worse. Thorn’s head was thicker than most.

  There’d been no way to climb out of the hole in the roof, so he’d gone exploring instead.

  That was hours ago.

  Thorn clawed through walls of cobwebs and wandered through corridors thick with untrodden dust. He strayed down hallways where the faded faces in the portraits seemed to move in their frames to watch him go by. Once or twice, strange sounds had reverberated from somewhere hidden and dark and, his heart racing and his hands clammy, he’d hurried on to the next vaulted chamber.

  It was obvious to him by now that large sections of the castle were empty except for the moaning wind and him.

  And, of course, the bats.

  A slice of moonlight shone through the collapsed ceiling high overhead. Bats flew in and out of cracks in the castle walls in waves. Their wings fluttering in that uneven, frantic way that bats flew, as if they weren’t really sure about this whole wing thing.

  What was the point of bats?

  Thorn was lonely, aching, and starting to feel weak from hunger. Would anyone come looking for him? Old Colm? Tyburn? Maybe even Lady Shadow?

  Don’t be daft.

  They wouldn’t waste their time on a nobody.

  Thorn sat down, weary to his core.

  Everything had gone wrong. The more he tried, the worse it got.

  Ever since that day he’d gone hunting alone in Herne’s Forest. It seemed so long ago, and so far away, like it had happened to someone else.

  The nobles called it poaching. He called it not starving.

  One deer. That’s all he’d taken. A two-year-old doe. No one would miss her.

  He’d been proud of the shot. Late in the evening, with poor light, and plenty of foliage in the way. A distance of over a hundred yards, and he’d hit true at a target smaller than his palm.

  After that? One disaster after another.

  You can’t beat ’em.

  Maybe he was one of life’s losers.

  Just give up.

  The bats circled above him, shrieking hideously.

  They came and went as they wanted. In and out of the broken roof, through the vents, and into the sky.

  If they can get out, then so could he.

  Thorn gritted his teeth and rose to his feet.

  He’d show everyone. He’d show those royals that even if they had their castles and magic, he had more. Jewels and shining swords didn’t mean much down here. Not as much as guts.

  The roof openings were too high up, and climbing in the dark was beyond stupid. He needed to find an opening lower down.

  There, a break in the wall. He watched as bats swooped into it.

  He peered in. It was dark, but he could hear the echoes of beating wings.

  Thorn found a tapestry and ripped it into strips. He tied them in a bundle around a broken chair leg and, after a few minutes of striking his pocket flint against the floor slab, created a small fire. The cloth took a while to catch, but eventually he had a smoking torch. Good for an hour or two, he reckoned.

  He slipped through the crack.

  He shimmied sideways and downward until he found himself in a crooked passage. He passed tall black statues of hooded men, horned demons, and skull-faced women. The stone creaked, and Thorn’s heart beat faster.

  Where was he? Below the foundations of the castle? The walls were crude, bare rock, and the chambers were natural caves rather than brick-built halls.

  The floor was pitted with shallow pools and boulders. Stalactites hung from above, some as sharp and fine as needles, others with bases thicker than oak tree trunks.

  Bats swooped among them.

  The air trembled. A breeze, strong and earthy with the smell of damp fur, blew over him, causing the torch’s flam
e to waver and smoke.

  Something above him hissed. It let out a long, waking breath that made the hairs on the back of Thorn’s neck rise.

  A shape moved overhead.

  Thorn lifted his torch.

  The light shone on one of the huge spikes of dark stone above him. Water trickled down over its folds and creases, and Thorn saw it move. Bristles stood up along it, and it shook.

  That ain’t no pillar.

  It unfurled its sail-sized wings. The creature shivered and droplets of water showered down on Thorn.

  The wings kept opening. A dozen feet wide and not half open. Then twenty or more.

  Thorn moved behind a boulder, hunter-quiet, his eyes never leaving the waking monster.

  Blank eyes opened and a mouth widened to reveal saber-like fangs. Its fetid breath stank of things long dead. It snapped its jaws, and in one bite, swallowed a host of smaller bats. It sniffed the air through its flared nostrils.

  Stalagmites had begun to form upon it, long strands of limestone that cracked and splintered as it loosened itself. How long had it slept to become encased like that? Decades? Centuries?

  It jumped down. Despite its immense size, it landed with barely a sound and lapped water from a pool.

  Thorn stood, utterly motionless, staring. The fur on its body was as spiky as pine needles, and the wings were oily black and lined with veins.

  Thirst quenched, it raised its head and searched with its high-pitched shriek.

  It’s still hungry.

  Snacking on the small bats wasn’t going to fill its belly, not after a long hibernation. Thorn crouched a little lower in his hiding place. The bat was big enough to swallow him whole.

  The monster beat its wings. The leathery skin slapped like sails catching the wind.

  It needs to get out and hunt.

  But how? The bat was gigantic. Its body was over a dozen feet long, and each wing stretched at least fifty.

  The bat turned around, its ears twisting in all directions. Thorn could see long, old scars through the fur on its back.

  It’s looking for a path to the sky.

  The bat’s attention locked onto a deep, crooked tear in the chamber’s ceiling.

  Was that an opening?

  The bat flapped its wings and rose to its claw tips.

  Thorn was a few feet behind it. His heart beat like it had never beaten before. He was terrified and yet thrilled. The bat shrieked again, louder and clearer. It was a declaration.

  This has to be the stupidest plan of all time.

  But stupid is better than none.

  He had to decide right now. Stay and find his own way out…

  …or hitch a lift?

  The bat beat its wings harder and hovered a few feet off the ground.

  It’s leaving.

  It’s now or never.

  Thorn leaped on just as the bat launched upward.

  Thorn dug his fingers into the bat’s fur as he slammed against it, and hung on for all he was worth.

  The bat shot upward.

  Thorn screamed as it swooped along the chamber’s ceiling, weaving in between the jagged stalactites.

  This is insane!

  The bat threw itself in wild directions, tumbling and spinning as it tried to shake him off. Thorn flattened himself against the hairy back, smothering his face in the thick, stinking fur.

  Faster and faster it raced along secret paths through underground halls and caverns. It shrieked, and Thorn heard its thundering echoes. Sometimes they hit him almost instantly, meaning the rock was close; other times the sound returned after a few seconds, telling him the walls were farther away.

  He hung on, listening and praying.

  Then, suddenly, the echoes didn’t return at all.

  Thorn opened his eyes. He saw a slash of stars in the darkness ahead.

  Sky. It was sky.

  He just had time to gasp as the bat burst out of the cave mouth. It accelerated with every beat of its massive wings, now fully unfurled.

  Thorn’s heart filled his throat as the bat flapped, rising higher and higher toward the moon.

  Could he fly all the way there? It was a wild thought, but before he could urge it on, the monster peaked, arched backward, and tucked in its wings. For a moment, they paused in the sky.

  Then they plummeted back toward the earth.

  Thorn gripped tighter and felt the bat’s heartbeat thumping against him. His own heart seemed ready to burst with the sheer thrill of it all. The ground rushed toward them.

  Then the bat threw out its wings and skimmed over trees, its claws brushing the tops.

  Despite the icy wind biting his face, Thorn grinned. He was faster than the wind!

  Spindlewood. We’ve come out of Spindlewood.

  Could he fly all the way home? Over the woods and sea and into the morning sun. Stour was somewhere to the east….

  But the bat had its own ideas about where it wanted to go, and moments later, they swooped over Castle Gloom. They flew across the battlements and the petrified soldiers, between spindly towers and smoking chimney pots.

  Wind tore at Thorn’s face, biting cold but fresh and free.

  With a twitch of its left wing, the bat banked toward the animal pens. A stink hung over the large courtyard, and there was a central patch of thick mud where the pigs lay. The cows were in the sheds, but the sheep roamed within a fenced square.

  The bat hissed and plunged.

  It smashed the fence into splinters and piled into the panic-stricken flock.

  For the second time that day, Thorn was thrown off his mount. He smacked down among the sheep, reducing his world to spinning sky and hooves and smelly wool. The sheep were panicking, and he got a kick in the head.

  “Get off me!”

  The sheep weren’t listening. They trampled over him, eyes wide with terror as they surged toward the gap in the shattered fence.

  Bruised, bleeding, and with a mouthful of wool, Thorn let himself collapse.

  I’ve just ridden a giant bat.

  He grinned.

  I bet even high-and-mighty Tyburn hasn’t done anything like that.

  Then a sour, troubling thought bubbled up.

  Giant bat. Giant hungry bat.

  Sheep.

  Drat.

  Groggy and still not too sure on his legs, Thorn struggled to his feet.

  A sheep bleated before the bat sank its fangs into its body. The bat lifted it up and, grinding its jaws, devoured it whole.

  Then, suddenly, the sky was filled with wings.

  Bats poured out of every doorway, every chimney and vent and crack. They rose from the broken roofs of the abandoned buildings, and a cloud of them descended from Witch’s Tower. Not in the thousands, but in the hundreds of thousands.

  Thorn watched in awe as they circled above the giant bat like an ebony halo. All animals had a pecking order. An alpha, a top dog. But he’d never seen anything like this.

  They’ve come to greet their king.

  The giant bat hissed and grabbed another sheep, holding it down with its claws and ripping off its head.

  House Shadow soldiers came running with spears and crossbows and faces white with horror.

  Thorn ran in front of them, hands raised. “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!”

  The soldiers aimed at the bat.

  “Don’t shoot!” Thorn shoved one of the soldiers back.

  The bat turned to face the line of soldiers and widened its mouth, revealing its bloody fangs and hissing out a warning. It swatted a pair of spearmen aside with a flick of its wings.

  “Put your weapons away!” shouted Lady Shadow as she raced across the flagstones, waving furiously. “Put your weapons away!”

  Spears dropped and fingers came off the crossbow triggers. The bat picked out his third sheep.

  Lady Shadow stopped, panting and flushed. “So, Thorn”—she stared at the bat, her eyes as big as the moon—“who’s your new friend?”

  “His name is Hades,” sa
id Lily, pointing at the name written on the wrinkled page of an old family diary. She could barely contain her excitement. It hadn’t even been an hour since Thorn had flown in, and now she sat at the desk in her study with Thorn, Old Colm, Tyburn, and Pan gathered around it. “It means king of the underworld.”

  “That fits,” said Thorn.

  Lily tapped the small leather-bound book. “This is the diary of my great-great-grandfather Faustus Shadow. He kept Hades as a pet.”

  Thorn’s brow creased. “A pet?”

  “Faustus was a famous alchemist. He…experimented on Hades. Growth potions. Extended life span, too, it seems.” She flipped to another page. “See here? Faustus even rode Hades into battle. He disappeared a hundred and twenty years ago, so everyone assumed he’d died, but it turns out he was just hibernating.”

  Old Colm sat tapping his wooden leg on the flagstones. He always did that when he was worried about something. “You’re full of surprises, aren’t you, troll?” he said to Thorn.

  Pan dabbed his sweaty forehead. “Twelve sheep that monster ate. Twelve. We’ll have to buy more. Mary will throw a fit.” He helped himself to his third glass of wine in as many minutes.

  “Where is Hades now, Master Colm?” Lily asked.

  “Murk Hall, m’lady. He’s settled down for a sleep.” Then he growled at Thorn. “So what happened, troll?”

  “I got lost,” he answered.

  Old Colm grimaced. “I heard you got in a fight with Duke Solar’s son.”

  “I got lost. Looking for the privy. Sir.”

  That sounds like a big, fat lie.

  She knew it and so did the others.

  “That’ll be all,” said Pan. “You may go, boy. You, too, Master Colm.”

  “What about my bat?” said Thorn.

  “The animal is too dangerous,” said Pan. “Today it ate some sheep. What if it’s a village child next time? Or, the Six forbid, one of the Solars?”

  “Like Gabriel?” said Lily hopefully. Then she caught Pan’s not-amused-at-all look and sunk down into her chair. “Which would be really, really tragic.”

  “The best thing to do is kill the beast,” Pan declared. “Tyburn, deal with it.”

  “You are not hurting my bat,” said Thorn, stepping up to the executioner.