The barkeep emerged from the tavern above carrying four huge pitchers of ale in his right hand and a plate of aged cheese in his left. The muscles in his right arm bulged from the effort, and Alster wondered if most of the damage upstairs had been caused by the patrons or the barkeep.
When all the ale had been distributed between Rai and the red-haired gamblers, one of them began asking questions about the horse. Alster felt awkward leaning against his stick and watching the exchange, but no one told him to do anything else, so there he leaned. Elsey seemed captivated by the strange accents and occasional words which struck her ear as something new altogether.
It only took a handful of minutes for the four pitchers of ale to be emptied and the cheese completely devoured. Apparently, Rai concluded his negotiations at almost exactly the same time, and he stood up to lead Alster and Elsey from the dingy gambling back into the morning sunlight. One of the other easterners, a tall man with dirty clothes, followed them.
Back in the tavern, the barkeep was busy pushing most of the rubble to one corner with an old broom. Rai was about to speak to the man again, but something he glimpsed through the window caught his attention and made him stop.
“Someone is inspecting the horse,” Rai said quietly. “He doesn’t seem happy.” He looked to Alster. “Do you recognize him?” Rai asked.
Alster hobbled to the window and looked through the dirty glass. The man was somewhat short with dark hair, and had the stubble of a freshly-shaved beard. Alster had seen him before, but he did not know his name. “He’s from the estate,” Alster said. He pressed himself up against the wall and tried to become as small as possible. Elsey hid behind him, her heart racing.
Before Alster could begin to formulate a plan, Rai burst from the tavern with a jovial expression and approached the man, his hand stretched forth. “Do you like the horse?” he asked cheerfully, seamlessly adopting the air of a merchant.
The man faltered for a moment and his fingers touched the pommel of his sword, but he did not grasp it. “This horse is stolen,” the man said. He refused Rai’s hand.
Rai feigned offense. “I assure you it is not, good sir!” he said, placing his hand over his chest in shock. “This horse was found in the wilderness, not stolen.”
The man thought for a moment on those words. “When you found it,” he began, returning his focus to the bags strapped to the horse’s back. “Was there a rider? Any barding?” he asked.
“Not even a saddle,” Rai replied. “It wandered near my farm, and I simply made it my own, though I would be happy to sell it should the price be to my liking.”
“Ha,” the man chortled. “You’re a thief. You stole this animal from my master’s estate, and I shall return it.” He spoke the way Alster had seen his father treat peasants, with his nose slightly upturned and each word enunciated slowly as though the listener was dim-witted.
Rai took a step closer. With his left hand behind him, he signaled to the other red-haired man in the tavern to walk out and join them. “I’ve already sold this horse,” Rai said. As if on cue, the other easterner, who stood taller than the both of them, puffed out his chest and balled his fists.
“That’s my horse,” the taller man said. He wasn’t quite large enough to tower over the newcomer, but he was certainly intimidating.
To Alster’s relief, the man from the estate appeared to back down. “I understand,” he said, moving backward toward his own horse. “I’m sure my master would enjoy the opportunity to discuss the matter with you further,” he continued.
Rai laughed again. “That isn’t going to happen,” he told him evenly. “Go home,” he went on. “You found the horse, you saw who owns it now, take your information and go.”
The man took one final look at the pair of foreigners before he untied his horse and started to ride back to the estate. When he was finally out of sight, Alster and Elsey emerged from the tavern.
“We need to leave,” Rai said. His voice left no room for argument.
“Let me get you some gear,” the other man said.
The four of them, leading the stolen horse, made their way as hastily as they could to a small general store several streets down from the tavern. “Still want the horse?” Rai asked the taller man when they reached the store.
The other man only laughed as they entered the building.
“Mount up,” Rai told Alster. He held out his hand to make a platform for Alster to use as he climbed to the horse’s back. With their gear, Alster had barely enough room to sit and keep his balance.
Less than a minute later, the taller man emerged from the store with a leather pack, a shortsword, and bundle of arrows tied with twine. “This is all you get,” he told Rai gruffly.
Rai took another piece of silver from his pocket and tossed it to the man. “I know it isn’t what we agreed upon, but it’ll have to do for now,” he explained.
The man dropped the coin into a small pouch at his waist. “You owe me, Rai,” he said. “You know that horse is worth more than this, and you offered me the whole horse.” He sighed. “And I know that estate. If they send soldiers here, you’ll owe me more than this,” he finished with his hands in angry fists at his sides.
“You may want to lay low for a while,” Rai said. “There are only a handful of us easterners in Velnwood. They might come after all of you if they think you’re involved.”
“I don’t know what you’ve gotten me into,” he replied with a shake of his head.
Rai thanked him once more before leading the horse back to the east and out of the village.
Palos and Captain Holte were sitting at a small table in the estate’s banquet hall when the rider they had sent returned from Velnwood.
“I found the horse, sir,” the rider said. “Two easterners had it in Velnwood at a small tavern near the northern bridge.”
“Easterners?” Palos exclaimed.
“Red hair and eyes?” Holte asked.
“Yes, sir,” the man confirmed. “There were two of them. One claimed to have found the horse and sold it to the other, though I do not believe it.”
Palos thought to himself for a moment before dismissing the rider. He turned back to Holte. “There have always been a small handful of easterners living in Velnwood. Do you think one of them could be the shade hunter?” he wondered.
Holte nodded. “It seems unlikely for one from the east to be killing shades and not helping them, but it would not be the first time one of the red-haired fiends betrayed his own kind,” he replied.
“They cannot be trusted,” Palos agreed.
“Perhaps there is more to this conspiracy than we once imagined,” Holte suggested. “The only piece that doesn’t fit is the old man being a shadowlith. If one of the easterners killed him, they probably did us a favor.”
Palos sighed. “Had the man come to me first, exposed Wilkes as a shadowlith, and killed him with my blessing, I would have paid him!” he said. He knew there was something he must have been missing.
“The kidnapping makes no sense,” Holte added. “In any case, we should have received word of a ransom by now.”
“This must go deeper than a mere kidnapping,” Palos decided. “If they wanted a ransom or to hold my son as political leverage, they would have taken Jarix.”
Holte laughed. “Perhaps Jarix was the intended victim, and his injury made him too difficult to abduct,” Holte replied.
“You may be right,” Palos answered. “If this conspiracy does involve easterners beyond some lone shade hunter, King Gottfried will certainly be interested.”
“The runner has already departed for Karrheim. Should I send someone to call him back?” he asked.
Palos stretched the muscles in his arms. He had been fit and toned in his younger days, but the cushioned life of a nobleman had replaced his muscle with fat over the past twenty years in a way which Palos did not have the time to correct. The thought of outpacing a messenger on the road to Karrheim brought a bit of youthful spark to his eye
s.
“I need to pay the king a visit myself,” Palos declared.
Holte smiled. “Shall I accompany you?” he asked. The captain enjoyed filling his role as bodyguard during Palos’ biannual journeys to serve on the king’s high court, and he did not want to miss any opportunity to visit the wondrous city of Karrheim.
“I would have it no other way, Holte,” Palos said. “There are few people I trust in Vecnos, and you are among them.”
Holte offered him a salute. “Thank you,” he said. “As always, riding at your side will be my pleasure. It is a great honor to protect a member of the king’s high court. I do not take my responsibilities lightly.”
“That is why you are still here, my friend,” Palos replied somewhat coldly. “Prepare the fastest horses we have,” he commanded. “Every hour we delay will have to be made up on the road. We leave by sundown.”
With only a single horse, Alster, Elsey, and Rai moved slowly. Without a map, Rai was only vaguely aware of the path they were trying to follow, but he could at least tell which direction was south. “When we get to the Frosted Coast, we will know which way to go,” he had said, trying to convince himself as much as the others.
“How far away is it?” Alster asked from atop their steed. He had seen the Frosted Coast labeled on maps before, but since he had never traveled far, his sense of distance was completely unreliable.
“Maybe two hundred miles,” Rai answered unconvincingly.
“Where did you get all the silver?” Elsey asked him. Alster hadn’t even realized the implications of a solitary man such as Rai owning so much money. In the estate, Alster had been used to seeing gold and silver on a regular basis. It had never occurred to him that Rai’s station should have meant he was poor.
Rai laughed at the question. “You should have seen the gold I used to bribe my way across the Rift,” he said. “What I spent in Velnwood was nothing.” He tousled a leather pouch hanging from his belt, and it jingled with the sound of coins.
“But how did you get it?” Elsey asked him once more.
“If you must know, I stole it,” Rai replied with an air of candor. “There was a merchant in Mournstead who knew how to make ordinary things look old. He claimed the things he sold were relics from before the war, so people paid fine prices to own them. Let’s just say he accidentally dropped a large sum of gold one day, and I was in the right place at the right time.”
Alster wasn’t sure he believed the story, but Elsey seemed satisfied with the answer so he let it go.
The forest south of Velnwood was sparse, dotted with small villages and farmsteads, and crisscrossed by streams headed for the western coast. When the sun began to set, Rai knew they had not traveled far enough. “If anyone is trying to follow us, they’ll catch us in a day or two at this rate,” he said.
“We need another horse,” Elsey remarked.
“You’re right,” Rai said. “We need to move faster. I don’t know what kind of animals there will be to hunt along the Frosted Coast, and our supplies will not last forever.”
“How cold will it be?” Alster asked. It typically snowed each winter at the estate, but not for more than a few weeks at a time, and he’d had a roof over his head to protect him from the elements.
“I have no idea how cold it will be,” Rai said. “I’ve heard stories, but I have not seen it with my own eyes.”
“What kind of stories?” Elsey asked.
“Ice floating on the ocean for as far as anyone can see,” Rai began. “In some places, they say the ice rises up from the water thousands of feet into the air. But according to legend, the spring at Scalder’s Inlet is so hot it can reforge steel.”
Alster shuddered. The Frosted Coast sounded altogether hostile. He knew he could never return to his home, but the sense of adventure which kept his spirits high began to fade as he imagined a giant wall of ice towering before him.
The three made a makeshift camp on the bank of a stream around dusk. Rai used several animal hides to create a simple shelter above them, and he laid down mats to insulate them from the ground. They tied the horse to a tree, made sure that the beast ate, and created a small fire to provide warmth through the night.
Alster never let his hand leave the hilt of his dagger. As far as he could tell, no one lived within several miles of their position, but that fact did little to calm his fear of shades. “How far can a shadowlith send their shade?” he asked, hoping Rai would know more about shadowliths than his tutor had taught him.
“I don’t know,” Rai said.
Alster’s heart sank.
“The legends say The Shadow King only left his keep once, and that was to fight Alistair the Fourth. He commanded his army through his shade, sending it thousands of miles away,” Rai explained. “But The Shadow King was the most powerful shadowlith who ever existed. I do not know if any of his underlings ever achieved even a fraction of that power.”
Alster looked from shadow to shadow, his knuckles white on the hilt of his dagger. “Why does everyone think all the shades are dead?” he asked. “My teacher told me they all died during the war.”
Rai took off his boots and stretched his feet up to the fire. “People tell you what they want you to believe,” he began. “And some people tell you what they want themselves to believe.”
“What do you mean?” Alster asked.
“Here in the west, things are different. You have an abundance of food. You have glorious cities and unclaimed prairies. You live far enough from the Rift to not have to worry about it. People often choose to ignore what does not directly affect them. I believe the existence of shades and shadowliths is something the west has chosen to ignore,” he explained. Rai took a chunk of smoked meat from the pack next to him and bit into it.
Alster thought of the shade he had slain in the stables. It must have been controlled by a shadowlith, but before that, he had been led to believe they did not exist. “When Alistair’s army killed shades, did the shadowliths who controlled them also die?” he asked, considering for the first time that perhaps he had slain more than a shade.
Rai handed him and Elsey each a piece of meat. “Weapons forged in Scalder’s Inlet are strong enough to destroy shades, but Alistair the Fourth and a handful of his elite shade hunters were the only ones who could kill a shadowlith by cutting a shadow to pieces,” he answered.
“What made them different?” Alster wondered aloud. The smoked meat was tough and barely chewable, but it had a grainy texture which he found unique and pleasing. Rai had brought what looked to be somewhere around fifty pounds of the stuff with them.
“According to the stories my mother told me, Alistair the Fourth did not harden his sword in Scalder’s Inlet, he found it there,” Rai said. “Supposedly, his sword could even separate a person from their own shadow, thereby creating the shadowliths. The Shadow King had a similar weapon, a spear, which he used to cut the shadows away from his followers and create his army of shadowliths.”
“I wonder what it would feel like to command my shadow,” Alster said to himself between bites of meat. If anyone heard him, they did not respond.
KARRHEIM
Palos looked over his shoulder to ensure Holte was not lagging far behind. They had ridden for almost the entire afternoon, and they had pushed their horses hard. Palos’ horse, a tall stallion with a flowing, white mane, was panting loudly. Sweat glistened everywhere on its coat. Palos knew he could not ride the beast any harder for fear of killing it.
At normal speeds, the two hundred mile journey to Karrheim typically required about one week spent on the road. Pushing the horses to their breaking point, Palos knew he could make it to the capital in well under five days. He hoped to catch the messenger he had sent sometime during the third day, and then they could slow their relentless pace.
Around the next bend in the well-worn road, Palos saw smoke rising in the distance which marked the location of one of his favorite roadside inns. He considered stopping there as he typically did on
his trips to and from Karrheim, but the thrill of the ride filled his veins with fire. A few moments later he rode past the inn, never slowing his pace.
By nightfall, Palos had slowed his horse to a gentle walk, and he used a lantern to scout for places within the woods to make camp for the night. Holte rode up at his right side, a lantern in his hand as well. “We can camp until dawn,” Palos said curtly.
Holte nodded. A little ways up the road, he found a place where a small game trail turned in toward a pond. He had seen the place dozens of times before, and had occasionally stopped there to let his horse drink.
When their simple camp was set and Holte had retrieved a few rations from a saddlebag, he sat down with his back against a mossy tree. “You think this could be the beginning of some larger plot?” he asked.
Palos took a bite of dried goose. “It certainly could be,” he replied.
“What do you expect the king to do?” Holte asked, tearing into his own chunk of cold meat.
“I intend to ask him for a contingent of soldiers,” Palos said. “If some group of easterners is behind a plot to kidnap my son, they must be exterminated.”
“Interrogated,” Holte added, “then exterminated.”
“Certainly,” Palos agreed. “If the plot goes deeper than some bandits looking for political leverage, perhaps we can get the king’s inquisitor to return to Velnwood with us. That man could force the walls to spill their secrets if you gave him an iron rod and an hour.”
Holte laughed. He had never met the king’s inquisitor, but he had heard stories. Remembering those stories made him shiver with a wave of nausea. Though he hated the idea of personally witnessing any torture, he had to admit the methods were effective.
“Do you think the shadowliths have returned to Vecnos?” Holte asked, shaking the thought of the inquisitor from his head.
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