“There is a path of ruin stretching all the way back to the plains. And this was the place you chose? Was it still enchanted when you killed it?” the Masai asked. The other sprites listened intently, ears twitching, arms folded across. The Masai’s eyes narrowed. “Was it ever enchanted?”
Of course it was, Ahraia conveyed, trying to muster all her truth into thought. She had been comforting it when she killed it, and that was far worse than just holding it still.
The Masai shook her head. She frowned and looked to the Astra.
“This isn’t how the test was supposed to go,”
The sprites butchering the great beast stopped and listened, ears turning and twisting towards the group. The Astra nodded towards the antlers.
“I think no shade as ever come close to killing something like this. No sprite has, either. I think she’s marked by the Masah, for all to see.” She nodded towards the Bright Moon. I doubt even you or I could have managed this as shades.
I agree, Ahraia’s father conveyed quickly.
A muscle in the Masai’s cheek twitched. “I’ll tell you what I think,” she said, staring right at Ahraia, her eyes nearly golden. “I think she’s lying.”
Ahraia’s ears twitched. Losna tensed next to her, ready to leap to her aid.
“Lying? What do you think happened?” the Astra asked, her brow furrowing sharply. “You can’t tell me she managed to kill a keress with a drain and think she didn’t enchant it.”
The Masai’s face was rigid. “I can,” she said, her voice deadly quiet. “I think Losna’s pack helped corral the keress, driving it into the tree. I think it was their doing, not Ahraia’s.”
Ahraia’s breath caught in her throat. She looked from the Astra to the Masai.
Is she condemning us? Losna thought, growling low.
To the Shad-Mon, a sprite conveyed across the group. Every hair on Ahraia’s body stood on end. She was vaguely aware of the burning sets of eyes all about her. A welling excitement was growing among the sprites.
“That is absurd,” the Astra said, snapping the tension like a howl would split the night. “How could she manipulate a whole pack of wolves?”
“And if she did, wouldn’t that be an even greater feat,” her father said. “The enchantment of an entire pack of wolves?”
The Masai turned to them, her ears stiff and aggressive.
“Beran is right,” the Astra said, her ears flickering belatedly for him to speak aloud. “If she didn’t manage to kill it by enchantment, how did she guide and direct an entire pack of wolves?”
“Indeed,” the Masai said.
“It would be a powerful enchantment. More powerful than any binding enchantment of a keress.”
“Is that what happened, Shade Ahraia?” her father asked quickly.
Ahraia remembered all too well what the truth could bear; she recalled what the Astra had done to Tev and knew that the Masai would do the same to her, if not worse. But perhaps if she conceded a small part of that truth, the Masai would find her story more believable. She nodded.
I did enchant the keress . . . but I also bound the wolves, she admitted. The conveyance carried true.
The Masai shook her head and seemed to resign her opposition. Her ears dropped slightly and the tension passed. Her demeanor shifted, her ears turned back just a hair. In disappointment? In defeat? Ahraia couldn’t tell. She spoke before Ahraia could discern her thoughts.
“What you did was foolish. Whether you did it by misjudgment or misfortune, you should have failed. And you should be given to the Shad-Mon for such absurd exploits.” She paused and Ahraia held her breath, her spine tingling at the implied edge they were poised upon. The Masai went on. “In a way, however, I am more impressed than if you would have done as you were asked.”
The Astra’s smug look returned and her father let out a visible sigh.
A few of the sprites fidgeted in disappointment. Ahraia shifted nervously, wondering what punishment was still to come.
“As it is, you’ve succeeded. You killed a keress by enchantment. You have passed your first task, but only just.”
Ahraia let out a sigh. It was as though a great tightness had burst around her chest and she could suddenly breathe. She smiled, but the Masai did not return the look.
Well done, Ahraia, the Astra conveyed, but the Masai held up a hand.
“Your second task, however, will not be so easy.”
The Astra’s eyes narrowed. Ahraia let out an easy breath. She didn’t care what the Masai had to say about her second task. It didn’t matter. She and Losna would be under the shadow of the mountains by the time the Bright Moon was full again. The Masai’s sprites could chase her under the bright fire if they wished, but she would never know the depravities of her second task.
But the Masai hadn’t finished. Her sprites moved closer to Losna. Ahraia hesitated, wondering what was happening.
“Tonight, I am returning for Angolor,” the Masai said. The Astra and her father looked up, apparently surprised. The Masai stared dangerously at Ahraia.
“And your shadow is coming with me.”
19
Separation
Ahraia felt as though a spring branch had suddenly splintered in her hands—plunging her downward with no ground beneath her—plummeting her towards a fate she had never imagined and one she couldn’t accept. She grabbed Losna defensively.
“You can’t take my shadow!” she said, her hands wrapping tightly in Losna’s fur.
“This is her shadow test,” the Astra said. “You can’t do that—” The Astra faltered as the Masai’s ears turned back dangerously.
“I don’t care if this is her shadow test. I’m the Masai, am I not?” Her eyes glinted dangerously, ears tucking back even lower. “Unless you wish to challenge that.”
Sprites recoiled, and the Astra grimaced at the implication. It was an invitation for a Posturant.
The Astra, however, lowered her eyes and ears in a bow of deference.
The Masai’s voice reverberated with finality. “Her shadow is coming with me.”
What does she mean? Losna thought, her ears twitching about and her body suddenly stiff.
Why? Ahraia conveyed desperately. “Kren didn’t lose her shadow,” she said, unable to keep her voice in. It was true; Kren had stalked gloomily through Daispar for three full turnings before her final test, followed every night by Flit, swooping behind her like some brooding cloud, right until the end.
“Your sister likely followed instructions,” the Masai said. “And Kren was not in position to be the next Masai.”
I followed instructions, Ahraia conveyed. I passed, didn’t I? The Astra and her father were signaling silently for her to stand down.
“You may have passed your test but not in the manner it was meant to be,” the Masai answered.
She enchanted an entire pack of wolves, her father conveyed, his tone careful and measured.
Ahraia looked on helplessly. Losna couldn’t be taken from her, not now, not when they were going to flee. She looked about for someone to help her, but the Astra was silent, and her father’s face was just as helpless. Losna’s eyes were wide with fear, begging Ahraia to do something.
“Did she?” the Masai asked. “Did you enchant the pack? Or did your shadow?”
Ahraia opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out.
“If you mean to become a sprite, Ahraia, then you’ll pass your second test without your shadow.”
Ahraia bit down on her desire to reject the test then and there. “You can’t take her from me,” she pleaded.
“One more word aloud and you’re both dead!” the Masai said. Her ears flickered three times. “Not only can I, but your shadish insistence forces me to. This isn’t some game, Ahraia. This is life and death.” A shared bonding took shape, and the Masai’s threats flashed before her eyes: Losna dead, the Shadow Woods, a ghastly monster with a bloody mouth.
Ahraia dropped her gaze to the ground, knowing that she
had crossed the line.
What’s happening? Losna asked. I’m not going with her. She whined loudly, drawing the ire of the sprites around them.
The Masai’s eyes narrowed. They were true golden now.
“I am leaving for Angolor tonight. Your second task begins when the Bright Moon is new and must be complete by the time the Bright Moon and Blood Moon are full together. If you wish to see your shadow again, then you will arrive in Angolor before that turning is complete. And your second task better be finished as intended.”
The Masai glowered at them, and with a wave of her hand, she dismissed Ahraia and the other sprites. Losna stood with her tail between her legs and her ears down, twitching all about. Her eyes shifted nervously.
What’s happening? she asked again. You can’t do your second task without me. Ahraia, don’t let them do this.
One of the Masai’s sprites stepped towards Losna, producing a thorn-covered rope. He fixed it in a hasty loop.
Losna bared her teeth and raised her hackles. The Masai turned towards Ahraia.
“Tell your shadow to cooperate or she’ll be shown the light.”
Ahraia’s face flushed, suddenly wanting to attack the Masai. She barely stifled the urge. Every sprite watched on.
The Masai stared at her. Do it. Now.
An icy enchantment billowed over her, a second warning of what awaited if she didn’t cooperate. She saw haunting details: the bridging tree springing back, leaving her on the far bank, the roar of the Shad-Mon, hauntingly close, Losna’s eyes staring forward, dead. Ahraia’s resistance folded.
“Losna. Let them,” she heard herself say with wretched guilt. I’ll come for you, she conveyed, crumbling under the Masai’s threats. Losna whimpered as the sprite tied the rope around her neck.
Where are they taking me? she thought, with the same desperation flooding her mind as was in Ahraia’s. The sprite tugged at her leash and wrenched it tight around her neck. Losna resisted, trying to keep her eyes on Ahraia. The sprite pulled harder on the rope, jerking Losna after him.
“It’s okay, Losna,” Ahraia said. I’ll come for you. I’ll find you. An ache hollowed out her chest, stripping out her insides and numbing her lungs until she thought she would never breathe again. “Go with them.” I’ll be there soon.
Losna let out a deep woof. No! She jerked against her leash but it only earned her a sharp tug and a handful of insults. Ahraia flinched as Losna was cuffed over her head and pulled through the woods, whining.
Don’t let them do this. Please. Don’t let them take me. You can’t let this happen, Ahraia. The second task—don’t make a binding. You can’t make a binding—
The sprite jerked Losna hard, causing her to yelp. The barbs of the rope pinched into her neck, and the more she struggled, the sharper they gouged her.
Losna’s barks soon turned to howls that ripped at Ahraia’s heart. They were slow to fade, and even when they eventually did, Ahraia still felt them pulling at her.
And with that, she was shadowless.
Ahraia’s wrist was still drenched in the sallow blood of the keress. It had run and dried right to her elbow, red and sticky—a mark of her feat.
A mark of becoming a sprite.
Her other wrist was etched with light-scars, startlingly bright, to the point of permanence. She looked at them both, leaning over a quiet creek she was standing next to. The water stilled, showing her unsettled face. Her tears had smeared with blood on her cheek, mixing with the light streaks and markings, giving her a wild and frightening look.
Blood and light.
She turned her hands, taking a shuddering breath.
To flee or fight?
She lowered her arm to the water, rubbing and scraping the blood from herself. It spread in the eddy, circling with the slow currents and defiling the cool stream. It stuck to her, holding on as a reminder, clinging to the space beneath her nails, filling her nose with the lingering odor of death.
She pulled her tarry-vine from her hair and dipped her head. The biting water shocked her, flushing all the way to her fingers and toes. She scrubbed her neck and pulled out, breathing sharply. She was free of the blood.
But not the light-scars; she didn’t try to wash those away. They were hers. Earned and true. And they would be brighter again.
Soon enough, they’ll show like beacons, she promised herself.
Ahraia stood up, looking down at her reflection: silver-white hair and yellow-bright eyes, just like Losna.
I’ll come for you, she promised to the night, turning back towards Daispar. She could still feel the faded echoes of Losna’s howls tugging at her heart, and though she was surrounded by sprites, she was alone.
The hollow in her chest deepened when she stepped into the darkening. It was the first time in years she had returned without Losna. Her heart felt like it was tearing from her chest. The rest of the sprites were celebrating her kill, making a feast of the keress. Ahraia retreated to her nit, feeling a void so deep that it threatened to suffocate her. She sat in the pitch black, too sick to even move and wishing beyond reason that they had run when Losna had first wanted to.
The nit was empty. Hayvon, Altah, and Kaval were dead. Kren had become a sprite. Kyah and the spritelings had been taken by the Astra. And now Losna had been taken from Ahraia. The tree felt like a cage—a bare and bitter cage.
She missed the steady presence of her brothers: the shuffle and shift of fox paws and owl wings, the air thick with conveyance and fiendish laughter. She missed Kaval’s trickery and Altah’s screeching laugh. She missed Hayvon lumbering about, so impossibly different from Vesta. She missed Kren, remembering bitterly when her sister had been herself, ordering them about, counting off who was meant to do what—arguing with them all as they negotiated for the easiest and laziest tasks.
Most of all, Ahraia ached for the comforting presence of Losna. She missed everything about her shadow: her quiet padding feet and constantly rumbling belly; her ears perking up with any mention of food; her long, silly tail streaming behind her as she chased Ahraia farther and farther onto the plains. But more than anything, Ahraia missed the touch of her mind: that steadying presence that guided and protected Ahraia, that part of her which was not her, and yet, was the best of her.
The shade tree made the pit in her stomach tighten even further, sour bile spreading into the corners of her mouth. The ground where Losna usually slept was worn into a painful reminder of what had been taken from her. Sleep wouldn’t come, so instead, she sat in the endless dark, hugging her knees and wondering how she was going to get her shadow back.
Day came and passed in a fog, and when night fell again, she still didn’t bother getting up. It would still be a half a turning before she could go after Losna.
Eventually, she did fall asleep but her dreams were worse than her waking thoughts. An endless howling drifted across a plain that she couldn’t cross. She saw the Dae-Mon rising over her, and it had the eyes of the great Shad-Mon. She dreamed of death and daemons and awoke to helpless separation and paralyzing loneliness. She lay in a mindless stupor.
Ahraia? Are you in there?
At first, she thought she had imagined the thought.
“I know you can hear me.”
It took her a moment to realize that she hadn’t been dreaming, and that the voice was her father’s. He stood just outside of her shade tree.
She didn’t answer. She hadn’t spoken to him alone in half a turning: not since before seeing Shim in the chasms, not since she had discovered the truth in her suspicions. His role in her current plight blinded her of any coherent thought or reason. She wanted to cast light upon him for laying the roots of this evil; she wanted to watch him writhe beneath the Dae-Mon. His voice was entirely too fatherly.
“You need to come out. Your second task is approaching and there are things that you must do in the meantime. You’re going to have to make the journey to Angolor and you need to be ready.”
Ahraia heard him step forwar
d. She made a quick binding of her shade tree, flexing it rigidly to make sure that it wouldn’t move. She heard him push against the branches and saw the boughs rustle, but no opening formed.
Go away.
“Ahraia.” His reproval bled from his voice. She felt his mind trying to pry open the branches, but she stubbornly held them closed.
“I said, go away.” She mustered every ounce of anger and hatred as she spoke, hoping that he would know the pain that she had suffered. He wouldn’t, of course. He didn’t have the capacity to feel.
“The Astra has called for you.”
“Wonderful.”
“She’s still your Astra,” he said with a note of impatience. “If you don’t come out right now—”
“You’re going to what? Going to give me to the Shad-Mon?” Ahraia kept her mind focused on keeping the closure tight. “Your threats can’t touch me anymore.”
“What about Kyah and the spritelings?” he said, holding the Astra’s promise in his mind, holding their lives in his thoughts.
Before she knew what she was doing, Ahraia leapt up, the closure bursting open before her. Her drain was in her hand, and she formed a stifling enchantment of her father, catching him off guard and holding him paralyzed. In an instant, she had the drain pressed to his throat, his blood pulsing right beneath the point of her blade. She shook, hardly able to contain her anger.
“I should end you right here,” she whispered with teeth bared. “And believe me, I would love to. What would your Astra do? What could she do? Nothing. She needs me more than anyone. Without me, there are no seeds—no new darkenings—her plans go bursting into the light. But without you . . . none of this happens.”
Her father took a deep breath. He struggled against her enchantment but she held him all the firmer. Her heart hammered in her chest. She felt his hammering in unison through the bond, but a smile spread across his face.
Between the Shade and the Shadow Page 26