The Outstretched Shadow

by Mercedes Lackey

It was the first he’d seen—after their encounter with the Centaur-shepherd, he and Jermayan had steered well clear of any possible locals—but it didn’t take any great act of imagination to figure out what the hut represented, and what sort of inhabitant it had, especially with the small herd of agitated goats milling and bleating in the stone pen beside the door. The only question was, why had the magic drawn him here?

  Who was it that was in trouble?

  Shalkan slowed from his bounding gallop to a fast trot as they drew closer, caution overtaking urgency.

  Then, shattering the silence, ringing out across the valley, came screams. A woman’s screams, coming from inside the hut.

  Kellen didn’t have to think twice. He kicked free of the stirrups and vaulted from Shalkan’s back, running toward the door of the hut.

  The hut was small and dark, but enough light came in through the tiny windows to allow Kellen to see that someone large had someone else—the woman who had screamed, almost certainly—trapped in a corner of the hut, savagely beating her with a short club. That was enough for him. He crammed himself inside—there wasn’t a lot of room, and three people seriously crowded the tiny hut—and grabbed the man’s arm before he could land another blow.

  If the shepherd was surprised to have his beating interrupted by a knight in full armor, he wasn’t surprised enough to keep from attacking Kellen. He swung his club savagely at Kellen’s head, and only Kellen’s helmet saved him from a nasty concussion. The club was thick wood, wrapped in bands of black lead. It was a deadly weapon, meant for killing, and the blow rattled Kellen’s teeth and left his ears ringing.

  There wasn’t enough room here for Kellen to draw or use his sword, but he had his fists, and his armored gauntlets, and plenty of muscles from Jermayan’s sword-training and his time in the Wildwood. And he’d taken—and given—enough beatings growing up back in the City to know what to do in a fight.

  But this wasn’t the place to try.

  He wrestled the man around, then rammed his shoulder into the bully’s gut and shoved, carrying them both outside. They tumbled over together, but the man was swift, strong, and agile, and scrambled to his feet as quickly as Kellen did.

  Now Kellen had room to pull his sword—

  No.

  Blade against club, however deadly the club—no.

  He waded in with his armored fists. He took a good pounding—and he added several new dents to his armor, with corresponding bruises beneath—but at last Kellen was able to finish the fight with a solid blow to the gut, followed by a cracking—and heartfelt—punch to the shepherd’s jaw.

  The man toppled over like a felled tree, measuring his full length on the ground. He was unconscious, and would stay that way for some time, Kellen hoped uncharitably. But he was alive. Which he would not have been if Kellen had pulled his sword.

  Kellen turned back to the hut, to the shepherd’s victim. He had to bend down a little to get in through the door, and in the dimness, all he could see was a huddled female shape in the corner. She was completely muffled in a long dark cloak of homespun with a deep hood. Kellen lifted her gently, hoping she didn’t have any broken bones. At least she was alive as well. A few moments later, and she wouldn’t have been.

  He carried her out of the hut, seeing without any particular surprise that Jermayan had finally elected to follow him. The Elven Knight dismounted and came hurrying forward just as Kellen lay the woman gently on the ground and looked up toward him, about to explain what he’d found when he reached the shepherd’s hut.

  But to his shock, Jermayan’s face contorted with horror and anger, and the Elven Knight drew his sword and lunged forward, intent upon attacking the woman Kellen had just rescued.

  “No!” Ignoring his aches and bruises, Kellen jumped into Jermayan’s path, grappling with him. A quick glance over his shoulder showed him that the woman was awake and moving, crawling weakly away. There was something not quite right about her face, but Kellen didn’t have time to figure out what. Jermayan was far stronger than he was, and determined to free himself from Kellen in order to reach her.

  He held tight to the wrist of Jermayan’s sword-hand, and held him like a wrestler trying to force his opponent out of the ring.

  “Don’t you see what she is?” Jermayan shouted in his ear. “She’s a Demon! I’ve got to kill her!”

  No. If he was sure of anything at the moment, Kellen was sure of that. The Wild Magic had brought him here. The Wild Magic was Anathema to anything Demonic, if Jermayan and Idalia were to be believed. So whatever this looked like, the woman couldn’t be a Demon.

  He had to believe that … .

  “Think!” he urged Jermayan, holding the struggling Elf’s sword-arm in a vise-grip. “If she’s a Demon, why was she letting that lout in there beat her to death?”

  “To trap us, you fool!” Jermayan shouted in exasperation.

  Kellen finally managed to get the leverage he’d been seeking, twisting Jermayan’s sword-hand so that he had to let go of the blade or—even in armor—end up with a broken wrist, and with a well-placed shove, sent Jermayan sprawling. When Jermayan hit the ground, he lost his grip on his sword, and it went slithering away over the wiry grass.

  But Jermayan didn’t give up. He struggled to his feet once more, obviously deciding that Kellen had to be dealt with before the Demon.

  Kellen risked another wary backward glance. The woman was sitting with her back to the hut now, watching both of them with an expression of terror on her face. Her skin was the rosy-red of ripe cherries; her short curly hair a darker shade of the same red, and her ears were as pointed as an Elf’s. Pale gold horns sprouted from just above her slanting eyebrows and curved back over her head. Her eyes were the same yellow-gold as a cat’s, with the same narrow slitted pupils.

  He looked back barely in time to block Jermayan’s attack. He knew Jermayan didn’t actually want to kill him, and unfortunately there were few things you could do to a man in a full suit of Elven plate armor short of that. But suppose Jermayan managed to knock him unconscious, or tie him up somehow? What would happen to the woman then?

  Then Jermayan slammed into him, knocking him to the ground. As the two men rolled noisily over and over, Jermayan’s fingers scrabbled for the straps of Kellen’s helmet. Kellen gritted his teeth. If Jermayan could manage to get his helmet off, it would be fairly easy for the Elven Knight to knock him senseless.

  “Stop it. This has gone on long enough.” Shalkan’s voice wasn’t loud, but it carried, and there was a power in that command that shocked both of them into quiet. For a moment Kellen and Jermayan stopped fighting to stare at the unicorn.

  Shalkan paced over to where the woman huddled against the side of the hut and lowered his horn until it touched the side of her face.

  Nothing happened.

  “But the touch of a unicorn’s horn will slay a Demon!” Jermayan gasped in shock. He got to his knees, releasing Kellen.

  Shalkan knelt down and placed his head in the woman’s lap. She flung her arms around his neck and buried her face in his fur. Great wracking sobs shook her.

  Kellen glanced back at Jermayan—if there was one thing all Jermayan’s lessons had taught him, it was never to take your attention off your enemy until that enemy was unconscious or dead. Preferably dead, though of course he had absolutely no desire to kill Jermayan.

  But Jermayan no longer seemed interested in fighting. He was staring at Shalkan and the woman with an expression as close to utter shock and dismay as Kellen had ever seen on his face, as if everything Jermayan had believed in had been brutally overturned, all in a single moment.

  “Still so sure of yourself?” Kellen muttered crossly, rolling to his knees and getting to his feet.

  “Apparently,” Shalkan said caustically, keeping an eye on them both, “things are not what they seem. And we need to be gone from here before that brute that was trying to kill this child wakes up. Gentlemen, shall we?”

  “Go on,” Kellen said to Jermayan
, still not really willing to trust him too near the woman he’d just rescued. While Jermayan seemed to have had a change of heart—or at least a profound shock—Kellen didn’t really trust what he didn’t understand. He never would have thought that Jermayan would attack him, after all, and a moment ago, he had. “We’ll be right behind you.”

  As Jermayan silently went in search of his dropped sword, Kellen shook himself like a dog, that being the quickest way to set his armor and surcoat straight.

  He sounded, he thought ruefully, like an entire blacksmith’s shop falling downstairs.

  Not that the noise he and Jermayan had made fighting had been any quieter.

  Carefully, he approached Shalkan and the strange woman. He was thankful he’d had the foresight to leave the keystone on the unicorn’s saddle this morning—if it hadn’t gotten broken in the brawl in the hut, it certainly wouldn’t have survived Jermayan’s attack afterward.

  “Uh … hello?” he said tentatively.

  The woman raised her head from Shalkan’s neck with a gasp, and cringed back. She was much younger than Kellen had originally thought—a girl, not a woman, someone close to his own age. And terrified.

  “Don’t worry,” he said hastily. “I’m not going to hurt you. Nobody is. Not even Jermayan. Not now that Shalkan’s proved that you aren’t—what you look like.”

  Very tactful, Kellen.

  “He’s my unicorn,” Kellen added, rather awkwardly.

  “It would be more accurate to say,” Shalkan drawled, “that you’re my boy. But let it pass.”

  “Anyway,” Kellen said, hurrying on, “we’ve got to get out of here before the bas—I mean, the fellow who was hurting you—wakes up and causes more trouble. Do you think maybe you could ride Shalkan if I helped you mount?” He crossed his fingers mentally as he said it, hoping that would be okay with Shalkan as well. But the unicorn had let her touch him …

  She blinked up at him, doubtfully, as if she didn’t quite believe what she was hearing. “I … yes,” she said in a trembling voice.

  Shalkan stood up and backed away so that she could stand, and she reluctantly held a hand out to Kellen. He took it without hesitation, drawing her to her feet.

  She was limping badly, unable to put much weight upon her right foot at all, and after a few steps Kellen simply picked her up and set her on Shalkan’s back. Shalkan made no objection.

  “Free with my favors, aren’t you?” Shalkan said in a voice so low that only Kellen could hear.

  “Come on,” Kellen said, pointing off to where Jermayan and the mule had gone.

  NOW that the Obligation had left him, Kellen felt the mild disorientation he’d come to expect after the Wild Magic was satisfied, but that didn’t stop him from thinking clearly as he walked along beside Shalkan. Yes, the strange girl looked the way he’d been told Demons looked—red skin, slitted pupils, claws, horns, and all. And Jermayan had certainly thought she was one.

  But he’d also said that all Demons were evil, and could not bear the touch of a living unicorn’s horn … and she’d certainly proven that she could.

  And the Wild Magic had sent Kellen to rescue her as the price for Jermayan’s healing. And Kellen knew he wasn’t Tainted—confused, maybe, but not Tainted. Whatever might happen in the future, whatever his ancestors might have done, he’d so far paid every price the Wild Magic had asked of him willingly. And Shalkan … Shalkan was perfect.

  In a way, it was a kind of problem in Maths … you couldn’t end up with evil if there hadn’t been evil in the equation to start with.

  And he knew with a conviction too deep and certain to put into words, that she wasn’t evil. But what was she, then? Could you look like a Demon, but not be one?

  The answers to that would have to wait until they reached a safe stopping place.

  The three of them caught up with Jermayan at the point where the goat track plunged over the edge of the hill. Jermayan untied the mule’s lead-rope from Valdien’s saddle and tossed it to Kellen without a word, then headed Valdien down the trail. He didn’t look back, either at Kellen or at Shalkan and his new rider.

  Apparently the truce that Shalkan had forced upon the Elven Knight was something Jermayan was finding very hard to bear.

  “I’ll wait till he’s down, then follow him down with Lily. You wait till I’ve gotten down with her, so falling gravel doesn’t spook her, okay?”

  “I will,” the girl said softly. She’d pulled the hood of her cloak up again as she rode, and her face was in shadow once more, as if she was ashamed to be seen.

  Maybe she was. Or maybe it was just good sense. It stood to reason that just about anyone you encountered was going to try and kill you if you looked like a Demon, after all! Unless, of course, they were Demons.

  Which, if you weren’t a Demon, but only looked like one, might be even more dangerous …

  Kellen glanced around. From the hilltop he had a good view of the surrounding countryside, and he could see that the right-hand fork of the trail looped around the hill and seemed to run parallel to it. They might as well take the left-hand fork if they wanted to get anywhere, and no Finding Spell needed. That was a relief.

  The bruises he’d gotten from the fight at the cottage were starting to ache, and his skin was probably the color of Jermayan’s pretty blue armor in places by now, between the shepherd’s club and Jermayan’s fists. If there’d been any additional price to be paid for his magic, Kellen was pretty sure he’d paid it—in full.

  Valdien reached the bottom of the twisting track. To Kellen’s relief, Jermayan didn’t just ride on, but waited for the others to join him. Kellen started down, leading the reluctant mule. His metal boots slipped and skidded on the dusty trail, and the mule set her feet and grunted her displeasure, but they reached the bottom without mishap.

  He’d hoped—now that the two of them had a little privacy—that they might talk things out, but Jermayan continued to ignore him utterly. Kellen set his jaw. Fine. Let him.

  “I’m here,” Shalkan said.

  Kellen turned and regarded the unicorn, suddenly realizing they had another problem. He wasn’t looking forward to spending the rest of the day on foot, and it would slow their speed enormously. On the other hand, he knew the girl couldn’t walk, and there was absolutely no point in asking Jermayan to take her up behind him on Valdien. He could Heal her, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to risk another spell—both because of adding another layer of obligation, and because of the possibility, which seemed much more real now, that the enemy might be watching.

  “I can carry both of you. She doesn’t weigh much,” Shalkan said. “And I’m a great deal stronger than you think. She gets down, you mount, then she gets up again behind you. Simple.”

  Simple it might be, but it took a few minutes to accomplish, and when it was done, Shalkan’s back felt rather … crowded. But as soon as they were both settled, Shalkan trotted off, leading the party down the left-hand trail and leaving Jermayan to bring the mule, quite as if he was in charge now, and not the Elven Knight.

  Perhaps he was.

  IT was only after they’d started off that Kellen realized he’d just assumed without asking that the girl was going to come along with them. It had been obvious he couldn’t leave her where she was. Even though he and Jermayan were riding into danger, she’d been in danger when he’d found her.

  “Um … I know this is a little late to ask, but … is there somewhere safe we could take you? Do you have any family?” Kellen asked.

  “Safe? Me?” The girl laughed bitterly. “I have no family, or none that would not hate me on sight. You’ve seen my face, gentle Knight. Is there anyone in all the world who wouldn’t slay me the moment they saw it?”

  “Well,” Kellen said after a moment’s thought, “I didn’t.”

  There was a moment of surprised silence from behind him.

  “No,” she agreed. “You didn’t. And your companion does not love you for that, I think. But … tell me … if you don’t
mind, that is … what are two knights—one of them an Elven Knight—doing here in the mountains? Elves don’t usually come here.”

  Kellen hesitated—not because he thought the girl was Tainted—he was certain she wasn’t—but because he wasn’t sure he ought to tell anyone what they were doing here. But Shalkan settled the matter in his usual pragmatic fashion.

  “I don’t suppose I need to tell you what Demons are, do I?” the unicorn said.

  Kellen felt the girl shudder, even through his armor.

  “I thought not,” Shalkan said. “And as you probably also know, Demons hate Elves more than they hate any of the other races of the Bright World, and so they’ve set a nasty spell to destroy the Elven lands, by making sure no rain falls there. Ever.”

  “Ever?” the girl said. “They—would make a desert of it? All of the Elven lands?”

  “At least,” Shalkan replied.

  “Goddess bless—” she said, sounding shaken.

  Kellen flicked a glance sideways at Jermayan, who was riding at Shalkan’s flank. The Elven Knight’s face was set in what was threatening to become a perpetual glower, but there was little Jermayan could do to stop Shalkan from saying whatever he wanted. Even among the Elves, Kellen was coming to realize, unicorns were a law unto themselves.

  “So Kellen here, who’s a Wildmage, like his sister Idalia, is taking the spell she made to the Barrier that Shadow Mountain has set up to keep the rain from falling. Once Kellen sets Idalia’s spell against theirs, the Barrier will fall and the rains will come to Elven lands again. The only trouble is, nobody’s quite sure where Shadow Mountain hid their spell. So that’s what we’re out here looking for. And hoping we find it before they find us, milady.”

  “But—if you’re looking for Demon magic—I think I know where you want to go!” the girl exclaimed in surprise.

  “I told you it was a trap,” growled Jermayan, breaking his long silence.

  Kellen clutched at the front of the saddle as Shalkan whirled, fleet as a cat, to block Valdien’s path. Behind him, he felt the girl clutch at his belt.