The Wounded Shadow

by Patrick W. Carr

  “Yes,” Pellin whispered, “but regardless, he fought the evil to a standstill within Elieve’s mind for hours.” At that moment he was certain of what needed to be done. “Your strength and mine may be the margin of victory.”

  Dukasti gasped. “If it’s not, we will carry the poison. The twin evils of the forest and the desert will be loosed on the world.”

  “Do you refuse?” Pellin asked.

  Dukasti shook his head. “No. Together, then.”

  “Allta,” Pellin said, “you must stand ready to administer the mercy stroke if we are taken.” When his guard nodded, he reached out, his movements twin to Dukasti’s, and put his hand on Elieve’s head.

  The desert, moon, and stars vanished as he plummeted into the delve, but the river of thought and the cavern of consciousness he’d been expecting were absent. Battle raged within Elieve’s mind. Noise that he’d never before encountered testified to the conflict, but of Igesia, there was no sign.

  Without warning, threads of black-forked lightning erupted from the vault beneath Elieve’s river, racing unerringly toward him and Dukasti along a jagged path. With dual screams, the two of them slashed at the threads with their gift, and they disappeared. More came immediately, searching for them with the sentience of the desert. Again they struck at the same time duplicating their effort. “We must coordinate,” Pellin screamed.

  By unspoken agreement they divided the fight into two spheres of conflict, destroying threads that came at them from the dark. “What do we do?” Dukasti yelled.

  Pellin turned his head to make himself heard, even as he slashed at a trio of threads that attacked from the darkness. “Find Igesia!”

  “He’s not here.” Panic and loss broke Dukasti’s voice.

  “He is!” Pellin screamed. “Look.” He pointed toward the vault.

  Dukasti slashed a pair of threads that came for his legs, then gaped at the scroll. “It’s monstrous.”

  Pellin nodded. Confused by the battle at first, they hadn’t noticed that the black scroll that comprised the vault within Elieve’s mind had grown huge, making it appear far closer than it was. “He’s there, fighting with us.”

  “How do you know?” Dukasti asked.

  “The threads would be more numerous if he were not.”

  Dukasti gaped, his face stricken. “More?”

  “Yes.” Pellin reached out to squeeze the southerner’s shoulder. “Your gift is more powerful than you know. We must go to him.”

  Fear made Dukasti’s face go slack for an instant before some reservoir of courage or resolve took hold and he nodded. Like men walking into a gale, they plowed forward, their power to destroy memories flashing at the threads of poison that came for them.

  The evil within Elieve’s mind must have sensed their intent. After they’d taken no more than three steps, a flurry of threads erupted from the scroll, the attacks coming so quickly that Pellin and Dukasti were forced to a standstill.

  But like men who’d found the capacity to bear blows regardless of cost, they refused to retreat, standing their ground as the air erupted around them. An ululating cry erupted from Dukasti’s lips as he tore through a handful of threads. “For Igesia!” he screamed.

  Love, fierce and savage, broke loose from Pellin’s heart and he thrust his hands forward, turning a dozen threads into wisps. “For Elieve!” Space opened unexpectedly before them, the attacks dwindling to almost nothing.

  Intuition burst into Pellin’s mind, as though a dam had burst. “Hurry! The desert seeks to end Igesia now.”

  They surged forward toward the scroll, flying across the distance with the speed of thought, stopping as they reached the vault. Swollen and grotesque, it loomed above them. Black writing covered it, but the glyphs made no more sense to Pellin than they ever had. The surface of the vault writhed, testimony to the battle that raged within it, but there was still no sign of Igesia.

  “Where is he?”

  Pellin swallowed against the sudden fear of a child who knows better than to enter the dark. “Inside.”

  Dukasti took his arm. “Together. Again.”

  With the strength of their gift, they tore a hole in the surface of the vault and passed through.

  Pellin found himself on the inside of a sphere. Threads came for them, striking like vipers, but he and Dukasti slashed at them with their gift. They forged a path to the center and found Igesia.

  The Honored One sat in repose, but fatigue had etched new furrows on his visage until he appeared on the point of death. His lungs worked to draw air, the tendons of his neck straining with effort. “Sit,” he groaned in time with his exhale. He and Dukasti positioned themselves on either side, and with the motion of a man trying to lift boulders, Igesia held out his hands.

  Pellin and Dukasti reached out. On impulse, Pellin reached for Dukasti with his free hand and the three of them joined within the depth of Elieve’s mind.

  Shocks buffeted him as Igesia’s and Dukasti’s thoughts flooded into his with the force of a tidal wave. He grappled with the waters, but the forces were too strong.

  “Flow with them,” Igesia’s mind whispered into his.

  Pellin’s mind rebelled, working to maintain his sense of self, fearful of losing his identity. But Igesia’s and Dukasti’s hands still held his. Letting go of his thoughts, he focused instead on the feeling of their mental touch. The tidal wave didn’t calm, but he swam with it instead of fighting it.

  Presently, he found himself.

  “Words within words,” Igesia said. “Help me, my brothers. I haven’t been able to see it all.” With the merest nod, Igesia indicated the walls of Elieve’s vault. Writing covered its interior, teasing Pellin with words he could almost understand, but threads formed and leapt from the surface.

  Realization exploded in his mind. The evil in Elieve’s mind was attacking them to keep Igesia from seeing the writing. Even now, threads gathered to obscure their vision inside the vault.

  Coordinating their gift, Pellin and Dukasti fought the threads that came for them while Igesia burned them from the surface. Slowly, sections appeared and though the script defied comprehension, Pellin committed each glimpse to memory.

  Igesia moaned, his body shuddering.

  “Honored One,” Dukasti yelled. “What’s wrong?”

  “The evil of the forest,” Igesia panted. “It’s trying to withdraw.”

  “Help him read the writing!” Pellin said. “I will fight the threads.”

  Dukasti withdrew his defense. Pellin felt him drop away. Threads leapt at them from everywhere, working to overwhelm them as the evil sought to escape.

  Pellin paused, expecting the unslaught to lessen, but attacks still came from the walls, striking to get past their defenses. Exhaustion ached within his mind, a burden he could neither shed nor shoulder. “We need to withdraw,” he begged.

  “Yes,” Dukasti pleaded.

  “A little more my brothers,” Igesia groaned. “Only a little more.”

  They fought on as the attacks grew more desperate, more frantic. Dukasti pitched forward, his gift flaring and guttering until it ceased and his presence disappeared. Pellin redoubled his efforts, but his counterattacks were slowing.

  A score of threads came for them. He would never be able to destroy them all.

  Inches away they stopped.

  Light flared within Elieve’s mind. Awareness ceased.

  Chapter 42

  Pellin woke to sunlight in his eyes and the grit of sand beneath his hands. Mark held Elieve, crooning to her, his words too soft to hear, his tone begging. Beside him, Igesia lay staring unblinking at the morning sun, a smile fixed on his face, but the rise and fall of his chest had ceased, and no pulse disturbed the withered flesh of his neck. Beyond him, Dukasti lay with his eyes closed, but after a moment, he shifted, drawing breath.

  Then Pellin slept.

  It was dark when he woke again. Someone had taken him back to Igesia’s house. Lamps burned all around. Allta sat by his bed, h
is sword naked in his lap.

  “Dukasti?” Pellin asked. He knew better than to ask after Igesia. The memory was real. The Honored One had died.

  “Sleeping, Eldest,” Allta said.

  “It’s night,” Pellin said, then shook his head at the observation. “Brilliant,” he muttered.

  “Yes, Eldest,” Allta said. “I would have bound Elieve to be safe, but there seems to be no need.” Something broke for the barest instant in Allta’s expression, an unmasking of the thoughts that lay behind it that Pellin had never seen before. “Eldest . . .” The word barely made it past his lips. “Eldest, she won’t wake up. Mark’s grief will break him. I asked him to give me his knives, but he refused.”

  Pellin needed to sleep in a way he hadn’t felt in centuries, but Allta’s news placed demands on him he couldn’t ignore. “Take me to them,” he ordered.

  “Eldest, I’ve never seen that depth of mourning,” Allta said.

  He nodded. “Ordinarily I would tell you to let Mark’s grief run its course, but I have learned the value of impatience. Carry me if you have to.” He worked to get his hands beneath his chest and roll from the bed, but his arms might have been weighted with lead for all the success he had.

  “Eldest?”

  He struggled for a moment more. “I think you’ll have to.”

  Allta set aside his sword, then bent to scoop him up and cradle him in his arms like a child. When he turned for the door, Pellin caught sight of Dukasti on a makeshift pallet, his skin pale. In the main room, with enough candles blazing to banish the specter of the desert, Mark sat like a statue, if a work of marble could have matched his hopeless expression—unmoving, uncaring of the heat, his gaze fixed on Elieve.

  Allta set Pellin on an empty chair. When Pellin reached out, his guard grabbed his wrist. “Eldest, you cannot. You almost died.”

  Pellin sighed. Even now he could feel his gift guttering like a candle in the wind, but he had to know. He pulled back his hand. “Bring me wine or spirits,” he said to Allta. “Anything you can find.”

  As soon as his guard left the room, Pellin extended one trembling arm to brush Elieve with his fingertips. His gift took him, and he felt his mind begin to snap, cracking like a board under too much weight.

  Then it passed, the room and Elieve visible once more, though his vision had narrowed to a pinpoint. Someone put a cup in his hand, and he drank, the sweet syrup of date wine washing the grit of the desert from his throat.

  “Gone,” he whispered.

  A sound broke from Mark, soft weeping that neither diminished nor scaled upward, a wellspring of grief that might last forever. The effort it took to reach for Mark made the room spin, threatened to pitch Pellin from his chair, and he grasped his apprentice’s tunic as much to keep himself from falling as to get the boy’s attention. “No,” he whispered. “Her vault. It’s gone. She’s herself.”

  Mark turned to stare at him as if Pellin had assayed some cruel joke. “Her memories?”

  Even smiling made the room tilt in his vision. “She has them. I must speak with Dukasti.” He took another drink of date wine, and the pinpoint of light narrowed some more. “When I wake.” His last sensation was of falling from the chair.

  When Pellin woke again, Dukasti sat by his side. Circles darker than bruises lined the man’s red-rimmed eyes, mute testimony to the extremity of his effort. “Greetings, Honored One,” Pellin breathed.

  To his credit, Dukasti didn’t waste time on rebuttals, only nodded in acknowledgment. Yet the solemnity of the gesture carried awareness of the burden he bore. “Greetings, Eldest. Your guard and apprentice tell me you have delved the girl and found her vault to be gone.” Dukasti’s eyes widened at this, as if his own words held the power to amaze him. “Is this true?”

  Pellin nodded. “Have you not delved her?”

  His counterpart gave a brief shake of his head. “I am far younger in the gift than you, Eldest. It will be some days before I can exercise it again. Even the thought of using my gift makes my stomach roil.”

  Pellin stared at the ceiling. “Did you see it, there at the end?”

  “No, Eldest,” Dukasti said. “I lost consciousness. How is it Elieve has emerged from the night without her vault?”

  “Igesia,” Pellin said. “Some intuition or insight of Aer must have told him.”

  Dukasti nodded his agreement. “I think he would have said the extremity of our circumstances allowed Aer to show us what we needed to know.”

  Pellin smiled. “Amazing. We passed to the inside of Elieve’s vault, and Igesia used his gift to keep the evil of the Darkwater from withdrawing. When the morning sun hit Elieve with her vault open, it destroyed it.”

  Dukasti nodded. “It took everything we had to manage it. We’re fortunate beyond reckoning that the corruption didn’t take us as well.”

  Pellin nodded. “Indeed, but if the Vigil were at full strength, I believe it could be done with less risk.” His heartbeat increased in pace and intensity. “We have a way to break Willet Dura’s vault without destroying him.” A thought struck him. “Aer have mercy on me. We’ve killed hundreds. We could have saved them.”

  “You are not Aer,” Dukasti admonished him. “There was no writing or lore to tell you how to save those who dared the forest.”

  Pellin swallowed. “We didn’t think to ask.”

  Dukasti said. “Do not fault yourself for what you couldn’t have known. You are not Aer. What of the writing in Elieve’s mind? Why did the evil work so hard to keep us from seeing what we couldn’t possibly read?”

  “I don’t know yet,” Pellin said, “but I believe Lord Dura can summon those who can.” He took a moment to compare memories. “The writing inside Elieve’s mind is different than the writing I saw in Almawt’s memories.”

  “Perhaps every vault is unique,” Dukasti said, “tied in some way to its owner.”

  Pellin nodded. “Perhaps. Regardless, we will find our answers on the northern continent. There are none in the south who are infected with the poison of the desert.”

  “Thank Aer for that,” Dukasti breathed.

  “Yes,” Pellin agreed, “unfortunately, we have enough people with a vault in the north to test any number of theories.”

  “I am the Honored One now, Pellin,” Dukasti said. “I could send some of the southern Vigil with you.”

  His heart leapt at the offer, but after a moment, he demurred. “The ancients divided those with a gift for a reason. If we strip the defenses of the desert, we will find ourselves fighting a two-front war.” He looked outside. The deep night revealed hints of moonlight that bathed the sands in argent ghost light. He couldn’t see the stars, but in the sky overhead there would be scattered grains of light, testifying to the power of the Creator.

  His bones ached with age and fatigue, and he wondered, idly, what it would be like to surrender his gift to Mark and sleep.

  “I’m glad it’s night,” he said at last. “I need sleep. Tomorrow we leave for the northern continent.” He looked at Dukasti. “We will need whatever speed your authority and wealth can provide.”

  The new Honored One assented with a small bow. “I will ride with you and ensure you have whatever you require.”

  Pellin offered his thanks. “I must contact Toria Deel and the Chief of Servants and let them know of our success and my return.” He turned to Allta. “Would you bring my scrying stone?”

  As he waited, Pellin thought of all that had occurred in the last day. For the first time in history, they had healed someone of their vault. He retreated into the sanctuary in his mind and floated past each door—so many—where he’d sequestered the memories of those he’d broken.

  One by one, by name and visage, he apologized to their memory and pled Aer’s forgiveness. When he opened his eyes, he found Allta and Dukasti staring at him, their expectation plain. “I found myself in need of absolution,” he said. “Now, let us share the news of our victory with those who fight the battle with us.”


  Allta placed the perfect shard of green diamond in Pellin’s hands, but when he called into the stone, no one answered.

  Allta’s voice intruded. “Eldest.”

  Pellin lifted a hand, asking for silence, then called again, but still no one responded. “I don’t understand.”

  “Eldest,” Allta called again. “Look.” He pointed.

  There on the topmost edge of the stone, a nick, hardly more than the width of a hair, marred the diamond’s perfection. A new fear gripped Pellin, and he clutched at Allta’s arm. “The evil of the Darkwater has tasted defeat for the first time. It will become desperate now.” The nick in the scrying stone might have been etched on his heart. “I have no way to warn them.”

  Chapter 43

  A half hour before sunrise, Fess awakened Toria. “They’re returning, Lady Deel.”

  Three days had passed since they’d been reunited with Lelwin. In that time the girl had had refused all contact and conversation except what was absolutely necessary for battle. After Toria’s persistent questioning, Lelwin finally assured her that Branna had arrived safely to the healers in Elbas. She refused, however, to explain why she, too, was not with them.

  Pulling her thoughts back to the conflict at hand, Toria looked to Fess. “Wag?”

  “He’s with them and unhurt.”

  She sighed. “Praise Aer for that, anyway. And the soldiers?”

  “They’ve suffered heavy losses, Lady Deel, again.”

  She stood, stamping her feet to settle them into her boots. “The same as the other camps,” she said. “Rymark’s inner ring is crumbling. We’ll have to fall back.”

  “Lelwin won’t agree,” Fess said.

  “Perhaps not, but let’s see if she refuses before we argue against it.”

  They exited the tent to the charcoal-colored sky of predawn. A group of twenty men and women, many bearing wounds, entered the camp, their eyes already veiled against the light. “That’s all?” Her voice broke with the question.