A Threat of Shadows

by JA Andrews

  Brandson nodded and headed into the trees.

  “We’ll need something to write with,” Milly said.

  Ayda pulled a charred stick from the fire and offered it to Milly with an amused smile.

  “What’s she gonna write?” Douglon asked Brandson as they walked away. “‘Here doesn’t lie the body of a wizard who didn’t beat a dragon’?”

  Milly scowled after the dwarf. She turned to Alaric. “Can you think of anything else we should do?”

  He was taken aback for a moment at being asked, but she looked so earnest that he shook his head. “I think the tombstone is perfect.”

  A few minutes later, the five of them gathered on the scorched grass and watched as Brandson shoved a large flat stone into place. Milly knelt before it and raised her stick to write.

  She paused. “How do you spell Wizendorenfurderfur?”

  Douglon shrugged. “Just put Gustav.”

  “Right,” Milly agreed. “Gustav the Wondrous.”

  Ayda tried to hide her smile until Douglon whispered, “He wasn’t a wondrous runner.”

  Milly ignored them both and finished. Standing back with the others, she cleared her throat.

  “Gustav is gone and we’ll miss him,” she began. “We’ll miss his... um, knowledge and... um... that way he could start fires. He was a noble wizard… At least, I think he was.” She paused, looking at the others. At Douglon’s grin, she flung the stick to the ground and glared at them all. “Oh, for pity’s sake, I barely knew the man! You stone-hearted scoundrels say something!”

  Ayda laughed and stepped forward. “Well, old man, none of us believed you were much of a wizard. I guess you proved us right.”

  “I, for one, will miss you,” Brandson said. “My house was too quiet before you came. And you were an excellent cook.”

  Milly slipped her hand into Brandson’s.

  “Um,” Douglon began, searching for something to say. “Even though it makes no sense, thanks for the tip about the ‘oatry.’”

  “What about an oak tree?” asked Milly. “Didn’t we see oak trees last night?”

  Brandson and Douglon stared at her.

  “Oak tree!” they both yelled and rushed off toward the campsite.

  Milly gave the tombstone one last apologetic look then followed them, leaving Alaric and Ayda at the makeshift grave.

  Ayda cocked her head and looked at Alaric. “Do you think the wizard knew the treasure was so close by?” She looked at Gustav’s tombstone and gave a thoughtful, “Huh,” before she turned and walked back toward the camp.

  Alaric followed her and reached the campsite as the others were gathering shovels.

  “Does anyone see Gustav’s shovel?” Douglon asked, rummaging in the bushes where he’d thrown it.

  “You don’t need another shovel,” Brandson said. “C’mon!”

  The excitement was contagious and Alaric hurried after them. He set his bandaged palm against the pouch at his neck. Kordan’s Wellstone was buried nearby. The antidote. Alaric’s heartbeat raced ahead as well. He cast out, feeling the stand of trees ahead of him and one old, ponderous oak.

  All thoughts of wizards and dragons and strange elves disappeared in a breath. Once he had the antidote and reached Kordan’s Blight, it would take three days to reach Evangeline. Two if he pushed Beast hard. He could wake her. Heal her.

  He rushed to catch up to the others.

  Only Ayda trailed behind.

  It was a large group of trees with one, near the center, reaching above the rest.

  “It must be there!” Brandson said. “Under the oldest one.”

  Ahead of him, Douglon, Brandson, and Milly threaded their way through the oaks. The largest tree was massive, its trunk wider across than Alaric’s reach, thick roots snaking across the ground. Branches spread out, sheltering an area as large as a house.

  “Ayda is going to explode with excitement when she sees this tree,” Alaric heard Brandson say as he walked around the trunk.

  “Where should we dig?” asked Milly.

  No one answered her for a moment.

  From the other side of the tree, Douglon started swearing loudly.

  Alaric finally caught up, stepping carefully over the jutting roots as he rounded the trunk, only to see Brandson and Douglon leaning on their clean shovels next to a freshly dug hole. Alaric joined them and peered in. His stomach dropped.

  The hole was rough as though it had been dug in a hurry. It was about three feet deep and was completely empty. Even the small indentation at the bottom, which clearly used to hold a box.

  It was gone. Kordan’s Wellstone was gone.

  Alaric felt fury rising inside of him, looking for a target. He raised his gaze and found one.

  Leaning against the trunk above the hole was a pointy, star-covered hat and Gustav’s shovel, now covered in dirt.

  Chapter 16

  Gustav wasn’t dead.

  He had survived the dragon.

  He had dug up the Wellstone.

  Alaric’s mind crashed up against a single thought. The Wellstone was gone.

  Ayda rounded the tree and took in scene before her… and the pointy hat. “Stupid wizard.” She kicked the hat, sending it tumbling down into the hole.

  “He’s alive.” Brandson’s voice was a combination of shock and hope.

  “I’m going to kill him.” Douglon swung his axe, glaring through the trees.

  “The wizard’s long gone,” Ayda said. “He has no more use for you or your map, dwarf.”

  Douglon growled and slammed his axe into a nearby tree. Ayda shot him a disapproving look. She flicked her hand, sending the axe spinning out of the tree. Douglon snatched it back up off the ground.

  “He has no use for any of us now,” Ayda said, giving Brandson a small smile. “Our milkmaid’s not the only one who wasted kindness on that old man.”

  Milly walked up to Brandson and slipped her arm into his.

  “I can’t decide if I’m glad or furious,” Brandson said.

  Douglon stomped past them. “…lying, cheating, backstabbing, two-faced…”

  Alaric stared into the empty hole. Gustav had duped him, had duped all of them.

  “Gustav must be a powerful wizard if he escaped from the dragon,” Milly said.

  “He escaped,” Brandson said, “and let us think he was dead.” Anger began to simmer behind Brandson’s eyes.

  “He didn’t escape the dragon,” Ayda said. “He used it to fool us. I think it’s his pet.”

  “Gustav has a pet dragon?” Brandson asked, the anger now moving beyond simmering.

  Ayda shrugged. “What would you call it if you had a dragon that did what you wanted?”

  “Dangerous,” Alaric said.

  “When I was talking to the dragon, I got the feeling that it knew the wizard.”

  Douglon fixed Ayda with a venomous glare. “You knew Gustav was alive?”

  “No,” Ayda said. “Just that the dragon knew him. I didn’t ask if the wizard was still alive.”

  Douglon opened his mouth and sputtered. “You didn’t ask?” His voice rose louder. “You didn’t think to tell us? You didn’t think—”

  “Dragons eat people,” Ayda interrupted, casting a bored look into the hole. “And I never cared for the old man.” With that, she turned and walked back toward the campsite.

  “I hate that elf,” Douglon said, slamming his axe back into the tree. “I hate her.”

  Brandson was staring after Ayda, his mouth wide open in shock. He looked at Alaric. “Would she care that little about any of us dying?”

  Alaric watched Ayda disappear through the stand of oaks. “Most likely. Elves don’t usually care about anyone but other elves.”

  Brandson rubbed his hands on his face and growled in frustration. “Gustav betrays us. Ayda doesn’t care about us. Why couldn’t normal people have fallen into my life?”

  “Look!” Milly slid down into the hole. “Something glinted down here.”

 
“The gem?” Douglon asked, pushing past Brandson to get to the hole.

  Brandson pulled Douglon back with a dangerous light in his eye. “If it’s the gem and you decide to steal it because none of us matters to you either, I will track you down and chop off your beard.”

  Douglon looked at Brandson with raised eyebrows. He shook his head. “Anything we find, Brandson, we share.” He held out his hand to the blacksmith.

  Brandson let out a long breath. “Sorry.” He shook the dwarf’s hand.

  “It’s not the gem,” Milly gave them an apologetic smile. “Just this.”

  She held up a small medallion of some sort. Brandson took it and helped Milly back out of the hole. It was bronze, hammered flat into an oval and inscribed with runes. Two off-centered lines, one vertical and one horizontal, split the oval into four sections.

  Alaric leaned forward to study the piece. What appeared to be incomprehensible runes grew sinister the longer he looked at them. A letter placed oddly, the way the shape of the runes seemed to suggest images. The symbols tugged at his mind, drawing him in.

  He tore his eyes away from the mesmerizing symbols. The oval called to him. “That thing’s dangerous.”

  The others looked up at him in surprise.

  “It would be best if you threw it back into the hole and covered it up,” Alaric said. “Or better yet dig a new hole for it then forget where you bury it.”

  “It was buried with the treasure. It could be valuable,” said Douglon. “Gustav must not have noticed it in the dark.”

  “That was not buried with the Wellstone.” Alaric’s voice was harsher than he intended. He took a deep breath. He glanced again at it. It hummed with malevolence. “Those markings are corrupt. I don’t know exactly what it says, but it is evil. Very evil.”

  “It still might have been buried with the gem,” Douglon pointed out. “The stories of Kordan aren’t pleasant. Maybe your Keeper went bad.”

  Alaric felt as though he had a rock in his gut. This medallion couldn’t have been Kordan’s. He had done some questionable things, but certainly nothing this evil. Alaric reached up to feel the pouch at his neck, feeling the echoes of Kordan’s actions in his own life.

  “Wherever it came from,” he said, again pulling his eyes away from the medallion, “it is evil. You should get rid of it. Destroy it. If it will let you.” He turned away from them and walked back to the camp.

  At their campsite, Ayda was building up a cook fire. He stood aimlessly for a moment at the edge of the clearing. Gustav had the Wellstone. The knowledge felt like lead in his stomach. On the far side of the clearing, Gustav’s pack leaned against a tree. Alaric knelt down by it and dumped out the contents. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, except answers.

  There was nothing to find until a small, clay bottle rolled out of one of the many unmatched, poorly darned socks. Alaric worked the cork out, and a sharp metallic smell cut through the air.

  Fire powder. It’s a good thing Gustav hadn’t had this with him during his dragon stunt. A bottle, even this small, ignited by dragon fire would have caused an explosion big enough to kill Gustav, the dragon, and the rest of them, too. Alaric put the bottle in his pocket and pushed the rest of Gustav’s things back into his pack. Footsteps approached behind him.

  “If you think this thing is dangerous,” Milly said, “we would like you to destroy it. It does seem a little… dark.” Douglon and Brandson nodded behind her.

  Ayda glanced over at them. “What are you doing with the wizard’s medallion?”

  “This is Gustav’s?” asked Brandson. “What is it?”

  The medallion really wasn’t Kordan’s. A wave of relief washed over Alaric.

  “I don’t know, but he was very protective of it. I saw it one night when he was rummaging through his bag. I asked if I could see it and he hid it.” Ayda hunched her shoulders and scrunched her face into an imitation of Gustav. “No one can touch it! NO ONE! GET AWAY!”

  Douglon laughed, reached over and set one finger on the medallion. “I’m touching it.”

  Ayda let out a peal of laughter and took the oval from Milly.

  “If Gustav cared about it so much,” Milly said, “isn’t it odd that he left it behind?”

  Douglon shook his head. “He’s an idiot. It’s not surprising that he screws up anything. The only not-surprising thing is that he succeeded in stealing our treasure from us.”

  Ayda sat down, turning the medallion over in her hands. “I think these are part of the design,” she said to Alaric, pointing to the thick lines cut across the oval.

  Alaric reluctantly sat down next to her. Ayda held it out to him, but he shook his head. “I don’t want to touch it.”

  “It keeps trying to pull me in, too.” She held the medallion so Alaric could look at it. “See these small tails on the lines? They connect the different strings of runes to each other. Like the ugliest flower chain I’ve ever seen.”

  Alaric looked at the lines and felt himself pulled into the medallion. It was a gentle sinking, like falling asleep, but at its core, it felt malevolent. He braced his mind against the pull and studied the runes. Ayda was right. The entire design drew his eye in a serpentine path around the oval. There was no specific starting point, just a twisted loop.

  The longer he looked at it, the stronger the pull.

  Alaric blinked and looked away. “You’re right. The lines are important. It’s some sort of instructions. I can’t read all of it, but it talks about sacrifice, death, and”—he cast a troubled look at the medallion—”bleeding the life out of someone.”

  Ayda crinkled her nose and tossed the oval to the ground near the fire. She wiped her hands off on her dress and stood.

  Alaric’s eyes were drawn back to it. It looked like bronze, but it was missing something. Warmth, maybe. It was too muted to be bronze, as though it sucked in the light that hit it instead of reflecting it. It sat there, a blemish in the dirt, too dark to fit into the sunny day.

  “So Gustav really is… evil?” Brandson sank down beside him. He looked hard at the medallion. “When we found out he was alive, I hoped… I don’t know what.”

  “I haven’t seen anything this dark since Mallon was alive,” Alaric said.

  “Did you know Gustav was really a wizard?”

  “Yes, but I thought his powers were minimal,” Alaric said.

  “I thought he was an idiot,” Douglon said dropping to the ground beside them.

  “Maybe he’s a genius,” Milly said. “If he played a role that well for so long.”

  “Impossible,” the dwarf said. “He’s too much of an idiot.”

  Alaric looked back down at the medallion. It sat dull and slightly too dark. The dirt around it looked wholesome by comparison. Disconnected thoughts swirled in Alaric’s mind. This dark thing was Gustav’s. He hadn’t seen anything that dark since Mallon. The dragon couldn’t have been Gustav’s pet. Dragons weren’t pets. Gustav must have been controlling it. Gustav was good enough at manipulating things to control a dragon.

  Thoughts of the oval, the dragon, and Gustav flitted through Alaric’s mind. His perfectly clear mind. His mind that had been fuzzy since the moment he had laid eyes on Ayda. Which was the exact moment he had laid eyes on Gustav. And his mind had been clear since Gustav had disappeared with the dragon.

  The truth snapped into place.

  How had he not seen it?

  “Gustav is a Shade Seeker,” he said.

  Across the clearing, Ayda froze. Slowly, she turned toward him, her face dark and frightening. Something terrifying glinted in her eyes. “My, my. We did underestimate the old man, didn’t we?”

  Chapter 17

  Gustav was a Shade Seeker. If there had been any doubt in Alaric’s mind before about whether he was still a Keeper, the fact that he had traveled for four days with a Shade Seeker and never noticed settled it.

  To have pulled that off, Gustav must be far more powerful that Alaric had thought. And the wizard had even fooled A
yda. She had figured out Alaric was a Keeper the first night he traveled with them, but she had lived at Brandson’s with Gustav for half a year. The thoughts swirled, dragging him farther into doubt. How was he going to find the Wellstone?

  Douglon had tried to destroy Gustav’s medallion. He’d stomped on it, hit it with his axe, thrown it into the fire, but nothing had any effect on it. While the group numbly gathered their belongings, Alaric wrapped it in a cloth and buried it in the bottom of his pack. The oval didn’t exert any pull on him unless he looked at it, but the knowledge that it was there weighed down his pack in an unsettling way.

  “Patlon might find us if we go back to Kordan’s Blight,” Brandson pointed out.

  “Doesn’t matter anymore,” Douglon said. “We don’t have what he’s looking for. Whenever he shows up, I’ll talk to him. The sooner, the better, as far as I’m concerned.”

  The group trudged back toward the village. Brandson tossed out idea after idea as to Gustav’s whereabouts, each as unlikely as the next. Douglon kept up a perpetual rumble under his breath, cursing the old wizard in every conceivable way and kicking rocks as he walked. Milly and Ayda, less gloomy than the others, pulled ahead a little and chatted.

  “Not all trees are worth talking to,” Ayda explained to Milly. The elf was like a glitter of sunlight passing among the trees. “Whisperwillows are silly, and oaks think too highly of themselves, but a lot of trees are interesting.”

  Douglon rolled his eyes and kicked the next rock at a tree.

  “Can elves really change into trees?” Milly asked. “Does it feel… strange?”

  “No, it’s lovely. You can drink in the sunshine, and rain on your leaves is the most beautiful feeling in the world.”

  “I doubt it,” Douglon muttered.

  Brandson walked up next to Alaric. “Are you going to follow Gustav?”

  Alaric nodded. “I need the Wellstone. It holds information that I desperately need.”

  “What kind of information can a stone hold?”

  “An antidote.”

  Brandson glanced at him, but didn’t press further. “How will you find him?”

  “I don’t know. Shade Seekers have a keep at Sidion. If I can’t find Gustav there, maybe I can find some information about him.”