by Morgan Rice
In reply, their weapons exacted a terrible toll.
They cut in every direction with their assortment of weaponry, moving ahead of every attack as if they had seen it coming, striking back with enough force to sever limbs. Sophia stood as the still heart of it all, perfectly poised while blades flew in every direction around her and blood sprayed. She saw a soldier running at Aia’s exposed back, and sent out a flicker of power to wrap around the man’s mind to stun him. Aia spun towards him and cut him down smoothly.
The battle lasted only seconds, each heartbeat seeming to bring a fresh moment of violence. One beat, and a man was being skewered by a spear, another, and one of the dozen with a curved axe was deflecting a sword blow. A golden armored warrior kicked away a foe. Another ducked under the sweep of a sword and gutted her opponent in one smooth movement. Perhaps none of them was quite a match for Lucas, or for Kate at her most deadly, but each was as dangerous as anyone else Sophia had ever seen.
In less time than it took to make sense of it all, thirty bodies lay on the ground. King Akar sat in front of his throne, wounded in a hundred places, holding out the stone as if it might shield him.
“Here, take it!” he yelled. “Take it, you demon, and let me live!”
Sophia reached out to take the stone, plucking it from his grasp easily. She reached into his mind too. Even now, he was still thinking of how many more men he might be able to call, how even a dozen warriors like this might not be able to stand against them.
“There is still a spear without an occupant,” Sophia said.
“What? No, you can’t!”
“I can,” Sophia said. “I was willing to be fair with you, and now… now I am still being fair with you.”
She reached out, clamping her power around his mind, cutting him off from his body so that he wouldn’t feel it as her warriors lifted him and plunged him down onto the last of the spears there. She saw Lani watching in terror from the side.
“You have nothing to fear from me,” she promised, holding out a hand for the translator to come to her. “Good. Now, we should go. Something tells me that we just outstayed our welcome in Morgassa.”
CHAPTER NINE
Lucas stepped through the gateway, feeling a shift in the pressure of the air as he moved from one place to another. His feet touched rock, and he had to take a moment to catch his balance. He turned, and saw the gateway he had stepped through shimmer and fade, leaving nothing behind but the arch of two ancient looking trees that appeared to have been twisted together while still alive.
Looking around, he could see that he was on an island, ocean visible in every direction that he looked. That didn’t bother him; he had trekked across half the world to find his sisters, and had succeeded in finding places on all kinds of boats to do it. Lucas could make his way across another ocean to get back to them.
What bothered him more was the sheer strangeness of the island on which he found himself. It seemed quiet and empty, warm but largely devoid of animal life, only strips of silk and paper hanging from the occasional trees hinting that there had ever been more.
In spite of that, every sense he had assured him that this was a busy place, filled with creatures. His ears caught snippets of roars and conversations, the chirp of birds and the sounds of small animals. His eyes assured him that there was movement on the edges of his vision every time he turned his head. His skin said that every so often something or someone was brushing against him, darting in and away.
He opened himself up to those sensations, reaching out with the part that could touch minds. There were definitely other minds there: hundreds, perhaps thousands of them.
Where are you? Lucas asked anything that would listen.
We’re right here, silly.
It sounded like a child’s voice, but Lucas couldn’t find it, so that it felt like one of the hiding games Official Ko’s servants had played with him in the palace when he was young. Not knowing what else to do, he went over to the nearest of the trees, examining one of the papers hanging down. There were marks on it that looked faintly similar to Old Chorit, which was just one of the scripts he’d had to learn from his tutors, and which he struggled to recall now. To get a better view of it, Lucas reached out to hold it and stop it flapping in the wind.
He was standing in a corn field that seemed to extend into the distance, with a house further off in it, and birds flying overhead. There were scarecrows in the field, but strangely, they seemed to be working the crops, not hanging inanimate on posts. One raised a straw filled hand in greeting…
Lucas’ hand slipped from the paper, and the image was gone.
“What is this place?” he wondered aloud. Again, there was the sense of laughter just on the edge of hearing.
As an experiment, he went to another tree, and touched one of the strips of silk there. Instantly, Lucas found himself in the midst of a tree lined valley, where spider-like creatures were clambering down into it. Lucas reached for his swords, and the action of reaching meant that he let go of his grip on the silk. Once again, he found himself standing alone on the island. A child’s laughter sounded, close enough that Lucas looked around sharply, but there was no one there.
Where are you? Lucas sent on instinct.
Right here, silly, the child replied, and Lucas recognized it as the same one who had contacted him before.
How do I find you? Lucas asked.
You just have to learn to look properly. My mother taught me how to look when I was just little, and you’re a grown up. Why do you keep looking at places but not going in?
Going in? Lucas asked. The child made it seem as if the scenes he saw were real places that he could enter, and not just images destined to vanish as soon as he let go of whatever scrap tethered them to the world.
You don’t know how to go in either? the child asked. You’re strange.
He was the strange one? Of course, here, he probably was. Lucas was sure now that there was a whole island, a whole world maybe, just out of reach, and that the only thing stopping him from connecting to it was his own mind.
You should come to the village, the child sent.
And how do I do that Lucas asked.
Just follow me!
He had the sensation of movement away to his left, and followed that sensation, trusting his instincts. He had the sense of more people around him now, as if he were in the middle of a thriving settlement, even though he couldn’t see any of those there. There was a tree ahead with just one cloth scrap tied to it, in a broad white bow wrapped around it. Lucas reached out to touch it…
He was standing in the middle of a village square, with a small girl standing in front of him, probably no more than five years old.
“My mummy says you have to con-cen-trate,” the girl said, screwing up her features in a pantomime of it. “You have to make this world more real than the one you start in.”
Lucas suspected that was easier said than done, but he wasn’t about to let himself be defeated. He focused on the village around him, trying to take in its details. He could feel his body, and he tried to focus on his breathing, the way Official Ko had showed him-
“Wrong, silly,” the little girl said. “You’ve got to forget about the other place. Think about this one.”
Lucas did his best, applying the same kind of concentration to the world around him, focusing on the way the wooden houses there fit together, and the feel of the wind in the square on his skin. He focused on the dirt there in the village square and picked some up in his hand, concentrating on the feel of it there…
The world seemed to snap into focus, and somehow Lucas knew that he had entered the place he had only seen before.
“It took you long enough.”
Lucas looked at the spot where the little girl had been, and now there was a woman of perhaps twenty standing there, wearing clothes that were simple in their manufacture, but that clearly had time and effort lavished over them. Dark hair spilled down her back, and deep brown eyes look
ed him up and down with an amused expression.
“I take it that there never was a child?” Lucas asked.
“Oh, there was,” the woman said. “Just not for some years now. I find that people trust that form more, and I like to find out what people are like before they see me as I am. I am Elanora, and you… you are here because the world needs you to find something that we hid a long time ago.”
Lucas nodded. “I’m seeking a stone.”
“One of several,” Elanora said. “Yes, we know. We know what is happening here, probably as well as you do. Probably better than you do. Spirit sees more than flesh, after all.”
“So you’re all just spirit here?” Lucas asked.
“Just?” Elanora asked, looking faintly insulted. “How would you feel if I said that you were just meat, Lucas Danse?”
“I’m sorry,” Lucas said. “Would it be better to say that you do not have a physical form?”
“A little,” Elanora said. “We can still touch the world when it pleases us; you can still be hurt here, warrior, but we are not as you are. We will be harder for you to hurt. You will have to understand that if you’re going to find what you’re looking for.”
Lucas was a little taken aback by how easily this spirit woman seemed to accept what he was there for.
“I half expected that whoever had the stones would not wish to part with them,” Lucas said.
“Oh, we had those arguments when we first saw all this,” Elanora said. “But we were only ever custodians, and this is right for the world. Of course, just because we say that in the village doesn’t mean that it will be easy. The stone was put in a safe place, several layers deep.”
“Layers?” Lucas asked.
Elanora beckoned him forward, leading the way to where another scrap of cloth hung from another tree.
“The village is one step removed from your world. One layer. In each, there may be ways through to another, and another, going deeper and shallower, further away, or further back. A man who goes too far might never find his way back to the island.”
That thought frightened Lucas. It wasn’t a death with any honor to it, wasn’t a warrior’s death. More importantly, it would mean that he would never see his sisters again. It would mean that Sophia and Kate would never be able to stand against the Master of Crows.
“I need to find my way to the stone,” Lucas said.
“I know,” Elanora replied. “And I might be persuaded to help you.”
“Persuaded how?” Lucas asked. He thought that the people there had already agreed among themselves to help.
Before he could react to it, she kissed him. It was a brief, almost ghost light kiss, but as Elanora pulled back, Lucas felt something being pulled with her.
“What are you doing?” Lucas asked.
“Some of your kind have a taste for connecting to the spirit,” she said. “I like to connect to the material. A little taste of reality, and you do taste real, Lucas. Promise me another kiss, a real one, when we’re done and I’ll help you find your way.”
Lucas didn’t know what to say to that. He was still reeling from the effects of the first kiss. Still, if that was all it would take to find what they were looking for, there were definitely worse fates.
“All right,” he said. “I agree.”
“Don’t sound so serious, Lucas,” she said with a smile. “I like you. I have done since the moment we saw that you were coming here.”
Lucas wasn’t sure what to say to that. He’d seen how happy Kate and Sophia were with the people who loved them, but he’d never thought anyone would look at him the same way. He was just a figure in the background, silent and not a part of events.
“Come with me,” Elanora said, reaching out a hand for his. It felt strangely solid. “I’ll show you the way.”
She led the way to the corner of a house. One of the strips of silk dangled there, high enough that no one would touch it by accident.
“This is the first step,” she said. “On the other side, you need to believe where you are fast, and we need to run, because it’s… not a pleasant path. Are you ready?”
Lucas tried to take stock, but how could he hope to prepare for something like this? He wasn’t sure if his weapons would help him here, or if his powers would. He wasn’t sure where he was going, or what he would be facing. On the other hand, if this was the only way to get the spirit stone, then there was only one answer.
“I’m ready,” he said.
CHAPTER TEN
Kate stepped through the gate, a part of her hoping that she could somehow leave everything that she was feeling behind as she did it: that she could somehow bundle up all the grief and anger and hatred and abandon it behind her the way… the way that her parents had abandoned her.
“No,” she told herself. “I won’t think like that. I won’t.”
It was so hard not to though, because the grief was almost overwhelming. Grief for her parents, and not just because they were gone but because they had never been there. Kate didn’t have the early memories that Sophia did. She had glimpses of her parents in visions, but now, the only real memory she had of them was of their death.
Now here she was in a place that looked as though it was made of black glass, fraught with jagged edges and spurts of flame, shadows writhing in places that Kate suspected that they shouldn’t have been. It reminded Kate of the way she felt right then.
“I have to find the stone,” Kate reminded herself. “I have to be strong enough again.”
If she was strong again, she could protect the people she loved. She could protect her sister, and her brother, Violet, and Will…
Fresh pain came as she thought of what her parents had said: that Will was gone, killed in the violence that the Master of Crows had brought to Ashton, killed so that everyone else could get away. Kate would have sacrificed every one of them just for one more moment with him…
“Not Violet,” Kate said, feeling a wave of disgust at that thought. She just… she wished that Sophia were here, and her parents, anyone who might understand the sheer pain of it all right then.
Kate shook her head. She had to focus. She had to be strong again so that no one else she cared about died. Only one more person was going to die, and that was the Master of Crows.
This place was… she couldn’t make sense of what it was. It didn’t look like a place that anyone could live, and yet she could see signs of people in the distance, in brittle looking towers and houses of black marble. People moved between them in silence, wearing dull grey and black robes that reminded Kate far too much of the kind of thing the nuns back in the House of the Unclaimed might have worn. A part of Kate wanted to avoid all of them, yet she knew that even on an island, there was no way that she could simply search every inch of it. She had to hope that the people there would be able to help her find what she was looking for.
If any of them tried to stop her, they would die for it.
Kate headed down towards the settlement, her feet picking their way over the jagged rocks. She kept her eyes on the ground, on the shadows around her, on the creatures that flew through the air, furred and scaled in equal measure. Some of the shadows seemed to shift, reaching for her with tendril like fingers. Kate stepped aside from them and kept going.
A man in dark clothing stood ahead of her, apparently scavenging for mushrooms in the shadows. He looked up as Kate approached, and there must have been something about the way that she did it that gave away the kind of thoughts she was having right then, because he took a step back, hands raised.
“I’m looking for the shadow stone,” Kate said. It was hard even to form the words right then. Why was she doing this when she should have been grieving?
Her hand rested on her sword, and her thoughts reached out towards his. In a place like this, she’d half expected everyone who lived there to be evil, or at least uncaring. Maybe she’d even hoped that they would be, so that there would be nothing to stop her from sating some of the anger that ro
se up in her. Instead, she just heard the kind of thoughts that any peasant outside Ashton or Ishjemme might have had.
“I don’t know where you’d find that,” he said. “That’s the watchers’ business.”
“Where do I find the watchers?” Kate asked.
The man pointed. Kate nodded, and she couldn’t work out then if it was acknowledgement, or thanks, or something else. Instead, she started to stumble her way down towards the settlement.
It was as somber as she felt. There were processions in the street that seemed to involve icons that cast shadows on the ground that shifted and changed while Kate watched. They seemed to be part of some larger ceremony, heading towards a kind of altar at the heart of a circle of columns whose shadows intersected upon it. Robed figures stood there, overseeing the ceremony, and Kate couldn’t be sure exactly what was involved in it. The trappings made it look as though it should be something dark, something to be stopped, but so far, there was no sign of blood, or death, or anything else to give her a reason to.
Maybe at another time, Kate might have waited for it to be over before she did anything. Then again, maybe not. She started forward towards the altar, determined to demand answers. The sooner she did that, the sooner she could get what she needed to kill the Master of Crows.
A hand came out of the shadows and settled on her arm.
Kate spun, sword half out of its sheath before she knew what she was doing. A woman stood there, robed like the others, with almost ghostly pale skin that stood out against the shadows where it wasn’t covered by her robes.
“You’d better let me go,” Kate said. “I need answers.”
“You need more than that,” the woman said. She smiled gently. “There are all kinds of shadows in this world. I can see the one that’s hanging over you. I’m Lisare.”