by Jon Sprunk
The Eregoths were mounted up on the surviving horses. Dray held his brother's spear balanced on a stirrup. His eyes scanned the broken ruins as if he expected the shadow warrior to return at any moment. He's got the right idea.
Caim exhaled through gritted teeth as he hobbled over to his mount. His leg was stiffening up. He turned to Shikari. “Here. Can you ride? It's going to be tough keeping up on foot.”
“We are accustomed to walking,” she said.
Caim held out the reins. “So am I. Get on.”
She did as he asked, although she was a little wobbly as she swung her leg over the saddle. At least she wore pants, which made for easier riding than a skirt. Caim and Hoek trailed her out of the plaza. His leg ached with every step, but he felt better keeping them both in his sight. Just in case.
As they marched through the ruins' crumbling streets, Caim wondered if Kit was nearby, maybe watching him. Punishing him for what he'd said. She would turn up eventually. If not tonight, then certainly tomorrow or the day after.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The wind tugged at Caim's cloak as he stood on the rocky plain. The morning was bitter and gusty. Snow floated in the breeze, and the clouds smudging the slate-gray sky promised more to come.
The cairn was just a pile of rocks. Not much of a grave for a friend, but the ground was too hard for digging. Malig and Dray stood on either side of the grave like sentinels, Dray leaning on Aemon's spear.
Caim shifted to ease his injured leg. Egil's stitching wasn't as good as Aemon's had been, but it would serve. Dray started humming, and Malig joined in. The dirge didn't have any words, but its heavy tones suited the gloomy morning. Caim shifted again. He was going to miss Aemon, but part of him just wanted to be back on the road.
What's wrong with me that I can't even mourn a friend?
Caim looked north, following the pulling sensation. It had returned not long after they left the ruins, and now he could tell the subtle difference between the two magnetisms. This one was the low droning tug he'd been following since Othir. The other had only been a mirage of some sort, possibly created by the shadow swordsman. It had been a cunning trap, and they probably would have been caught, or killed, if not for Shikari and her protector.
The two escaped slaves sat on a flat rock away from the funeral. Shikari had tried to engage Caim in conversation while they traveled, asking him where he came from and why he was here. Though her interest seemed genuine, he deflected her questions until she fell silent like her mute companion. The big Einarian deferred to her in everything, following her around like a lost child. When they stopped, he built a fire for her and gave her his cloak. She hadn't bothered to thank him. An odd pair.
“Our father died when we was just boys,” Dray said, breaking Caim out of his thoughts. “Our ma took care of us the best she could. But she took sick when I was eleven. Aemon was just nine. She never got better. Just kept getting sicker and sicker. By the end she couldn't leave her bed.
“Aemon wouldn't leave her side. He fed her, washed her face when she got fevered, even slept beside her. One night I went in to see her. Aemon was asleep, and I thought she was, too, but when I went to leave, she opened her eyes. She told me she was dying and made me promise I would take care of Aemon as best I-” His voice caught.
“He was my little brother. But damn me if he wasn't always the one looking after me. Mal, you remember the time we broke the ice in the creek behind your house in the middle of winter and went swimming?”
“Yeah. I remember.”
“You fell in and I went in after you, and neither one of us could climb out. Fuck, that water was cold. If Aemon hadn't pulled us out…”
“He was too good for this world.” Malig looked up with a scowl. “Right now Aemon's sitting at the right hand of Father Ell, hoisting a big cup of mead.”
Dray lifted the spear to the sky. The wind fluttered their hair and cloaks. A pebble rolled down the cairn.
“What are we doing here?” Malig asked. “What's so damned important up here that Aemon had to die for it?”
They turned to Caim, and he looked down at the cairn. It was time. He owed them the truth. So he told them about the raiders in black who had attacked his father's estate, about Othir and Levictus and his familial tie to Sybelle. He finished with how he had learned of Erebus. “So I'm here to find out what happened to my mother.”
“Bugger me,” Malig grumbled. “Between you and Dray, ain't there no end to the tragedy?”
“I never asked any of you to come.” Caim was finding it hard to talk above a whisper. His throat had closed up tight. “You were always free to go back.”
“Back? Across all those miles and over the mountains? Are you fucking serious?”
Dray hadn't moved. He still stared down at his brother's grave, but his fingers were white around the shaft of the spear. “What am I going to do now?”
“I understand if you want to go back to Eregoth,” Caim said. “But I'm going to see this through.”
Dray let out a long breath that curled around his head. “All right. But I want blood. I'm going to send Aemon to the afterlife on a river of it. That one you were fighting. He was part of what happened to my brother, wasn't he?”
“I suppose so.”
“I want him. I want to send him down to the Dark myself.” Dray lifted up Aemon's spear. “On the end of this.”
Malig scowled at them both. “That's it, huh? We're decided? Fine. So where in the name of all that's holy is this Erebus place?”
Caim looked to Egil, who squatted at the foot of the cairn. “North, I'm guessing.”
The guide shook his head. “No one goes there. It's not wise to-”
“To speak of it,” Caim finished for him. “I know. But what do you know about it?”
Egil stood up, brushing his hands. “Just what I've heard from others. It's far up past the Bear lands. That's where the dark lord keeps his court, in a city with walls a thousand feet high.”
While Malig started a long litany of curses, Caim gnawed on his bottom lip. Levictus had mentioned the Lords of Shadow-it seemed like years ago now. “We can make our own way from here if you want to go back home.”
“I'll stay on, if it's all the same to you,” Egil replied.
Shikari walked over, with Hoek shadowing her footsteps. “We would also like to accompany you.”
“Now we're taking on strays?” Malig asked.
“It won't be safe,” Caim told her. “We'll find a place for you to stay. A village or a homestead.”
She stepped closer. “I don't ask for myself, Caim. My sister was enslaved the same as me. While I was given to a barbarian chief, she was taken north. I believe she may be at this place you speak of.”
“If we find her, we'll-”
“How will you know her? No, I must come with you.”
Caim sighed, wanting to argue, but it was pointless. He nodded, and Malig's string of curses grew. Dray saw to his horse, but Aemon's spear never left his reach.
While the others prepared to leave, Caim looked back in the direction of the ruined city. Where was Kit? He cursed her for leaving, and then cursed himself for a fool. He had all but driven her away. Why couldn't he just tell her how he really felt?
Something moved on the plains. Caim tensed until a low, four-footed shape emerged. The wolf's eyes were amber coins in the dark, staring in their direction. All by itself.
Caim pulled up the collar of his cloak as he put his foot in the stirrup and swung onto his steed. The wind was picking up again.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The salty wind stirred up a white froth across the ocean waves below the cliff. White birds cawed as they circled overhead. The sun was painful to the eyes as it sank beneath the horizon, but not so bright as to be blinding.
Balaam inhaled and let the smells fill him. There was something about the water, its vast expanse and unknowable depths, the rhythm of the waves. He closed his eyes and remembered his homeland, the many nights h
e had stood on the beach at his father's house in Drechensvelt Prefecture looking out over the midnight lakes.
The summoning beckoned him, pulling at the recesses of his brain. Balaam considered defying it as he took a last look over the endless blue waters. The fire that had engulfed his cloak was gone, but the shame of failure remained. He saw the scene again in his mind: the trap laid perfectly, his heart beating with anticipation as the scion entered the killing ground, the daemon released from its etheric prison in the pit. And then their duel. Balaam had run through every moment of the fight in his mind, studying every step, every blow, every breath. It had been a dance of combat perfection. Elegant, fierce, and honorable. Until they were interrupted.
His flaw was that he'd failed to account for outside interference. Now he wished he'd stayed to conclude the battle with the scion, even if it had meant his defeat. Better to die than face this dishonor.
The portal deposited him in a rough-hewn chamber far beneath the citadel's foundations. He followed the tunnel around several sharp angles to its conclusion. His breath misted before him as he entered a colossal cavern. Carved from the rock, it stretched more than a hundred spans from end to end. Fingers of translucent ice cascaded down the cratered walls, reflecting the light of the eternal blue flame burning in the obsidian urn at the center. The fire gave off no heat, but Balaam hardly registered the cold of the subterranean cavern. His anger and shame kept him warm.
The Shadow Lord stood on the far side of the chamber. His shoulders were slumped, his back bent slightly as if under a heavy weight. Balaam kept a tight rein on his composure as he crossed the uneven floor. All at court knew the Master came down here often by himself. The rumors of what he did here were rife with ill intent, but few knew the truth. As Balaam passed the urn of fire, the far wall vanished into a well of nothingness. No, not nothingness. More, and somehow also less.
It was the original gateway that had brought them to this world. Embedded in the stone wall, it was black and impenetrable like a starless sky. Many thought the gateway had been lost, destroyed by the Shadow Lord, but Balaam and a few trusted others knew that their Master had hidden the gate in the earth and built his citadel above it. Yet what wrenched Balaam's insides was not the gateway, but the pitifully small figure stuck within it. He remembered Isabeth from the old days. The Master's daughter had been so full of life and breathtakingly beautiful, but the warped, stone-gray statue before him hardly resembled that girl. Save for the eyes. Even embedded in the flinty substance her flesh had been transformed into over these long years, they retained a spark of rebelliousness.
Dark things moved under the surface of the void. Balaam remained still, hardly daring to breathe, as an inky tendril emerged from the gateway and touched the Shadow Lord. Abraxus shuddered, his eyes closed tight as if lost in rapture, or agony. Moments passed. When the Master turned, he was no longer the ancient man who had presided over Lord Oriax's execution, but strong and hearty with the bearing of a younger man, though his gaze was slightly vacant as if he'd been staring into the void for hours. Perhaps he had.
“Sometimes I think it means to destroy me. But I will endure it as long as I must.”
Balaam folded his gloved hands behind his back. “Master?”
Abraxus stepped closer to the gateway, until his face was mere inches from his daughter. The void's eldritch energies writhed and palpitated, as if excited by the Shadow Lord's presence. “She was my prize, Balaam. My magnificent jewel. Do you have children?”
“No, Master.”
“A wise decision. This is where your father died. Did you know?”
“No, Master.”
“It was here. The traitors came while I was in my meditation. Your father slew them all. When I returned from the ethers, he was lying next to the sentinel flame.”
Balaam said nothing. There was nothing to say, but for an instant he imagined drawing his sword and opening his lord's throat, saw the black blood spill out on the floor. I am a soldier. I live only to serve and die. He held fast to that belief as he clutched his hands together. The Shadow Lord's daughter stared at him from the void.
Abraxus turned away from the gateway. “Have you found him?”
Balaam gave the full account of his ambush, leaving out nothing. When he came to the part of his defeat, his stomach clenched and a cool sweat broke out across his brow, but he continued on and ended with his new plan to use teams of Northmen to track the scion.
Abraxus nodded. “Yes, Balaam. Do as you see fit. My trust in you on this matter is complete. But I have an additional task for you.”
Balaam bowed his head. Any duty would be preferable to continuing this farce, even a transfer to a distant battlefield far from Erebus. And far from Dorcas.
Lord Malphas emerged from the shadows on the other side of the flames. The majordomo was dressed in an impeccable gray suit with a long jacket. “One of your Talons has left Erebus without permission.”
They are mine again now?
Lord Malphas held up a black helmet. “Deumas, I believe her name was. She left this at the foot of the Master's throne.”
Balaam took the helm, turning it over in his hands. Yes, it belonged to Deumas. Her desertion was no great surprise.
“You are to find the traitor,” Malphas said. “Eliminate her and bring us proof when you have finished.”
Jaws clenched tight, Balaam bowed to Abraxus. “As you command, Master.”
The Shadow Lord placed a thin hand on his arm. “You are my chosen, Balaam. My most loyal servant. Let none stop you, and we shall deal with the scion in good time. He will come to us like a slouching mongrel, but his power will crumble in the face of…in the face of…”
“In the face of your power, Master,” Malphas finished.
“Yes,” Abraxus said, his voice hollow. “Perform the tasks I've put before you. That is all I require.”
Balaam bowed again as the Shadow Lord took a step and vanished, leaving them alone together in the cavern. The majordomo approached within arm's reach of the lady, gazing into her blank, frozen eyes. The gateway's surface was now as smooth as black glass. “You knew her,” Malphas asked. “Did you not?”
“I was raised in the Master's household from a young age. I knew his entire family.”
Lord Malphas faced him, his features smooth like a sheet of dusky granite. “I forgot you were raised as a Talon. I've always wondered what it must be like to live a life of service, beholden entirely to another's will.”
Balaam clenched his fingers around the helmet to keep from throwing it at Malphas's face. Deumas had been more right than she knew. This one was a snake. Balaam tried to get hold of his tongue, but it slipped away from him. “I doubt you could understand the honor that is found in the service of a great lord.”
Malphas's lips twitched as if unsure whether to smile or frown. “Do not fail in the task you have been given, Talon. This defection by one of your own has caused distress in the court.”
“I will not fail.”
“Very good. Lest we begin to question even your fabled loyalty.”
The majordomo left. The eternal flame's harsh light cascaded across the Shadow Lord's trapped daughter, creating deep shadows in her eyes and in the hollow of her throat. Could she hear what they said? Did she know her son was in the wastes, possibly on his way here?
Balaam considered the helmet in his hand. Then he created his own portal and stepped away from the cavern.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Caim watched his crew as they marched ahead of him. After just a couple hours' sleep, everyone rode in silence, but they were wound tight. Though he'd been riding with Malig and Dray for weeks, he didn't know them well enough to recognize their breaking points. When they came, he was afraid it was going to be ugly.
“You look troubled.”
Shikari looked down from atop his horse. Though the temperature had dropped overnight and remained uncomfortably frigid, the former slave didn't complain. And Caim couldn't criticize her resi
lience; she and her protector kept up with the pace without faltering.
“Just thinking about what's ahead.”
She gazed northward, her eyes narrowed as if studying the darkness. “Yes, Erebus. Aren't you afraid?”
The question caught Caim off guard. Fear wasn't the word he would use for his feelings. Resigned, maybe. “Back at the ruins, you-”
“Sturmgaard,” Shikari said. “That is what the Northmen call the place. It's very old. Older, perhaps, than anything else in the wastes.”
“You know a lot about this land. How long were you a slave?”
“Less than a year, but it felt like most of my life.”
Caim considered the path ahead. The tugging had intensified. Was he getting close to his goal? “Don't the Northmen brand their slaves?”
“Sometimes. I had the good fortune to be owned by a man who didn't want me blemished. Hoek, show Caim your mementos.”
The big slave pulled up his shirt to reveal several marks burned into his skin. The older ones were seared over, but Caim could make out an animal paw with three claws and a wolf's head under the scars.
“You don't trust easily, Caim,” Shikari said. “In that way you are like the people of this empty land.”
“I've learned that things aren't always what they seem.”
“All that is gold does not glitter?” She laughed. It was more sultry than her petite frame would suggest.
“You were held by the Bear tribe?” When she nodded, Caim asked, “What are they like?”
“They are a grim people. They never laugh and seldom cry.”
“Not even the children?”
“When they reach the age of three, every child is taken from their mother and given to the asherjhag-the priests. Those found worthy are given to the warrior's society or the women's hall to raise in the ways of the tribe.”
Caim didn't want to know what happened to the children found unworthy. “We saw some of those priests. Do they hold much power in the Northman tribes, then?”