“And so a lieutenant I am,” Marius said.
“So you are,” Palos agreed.
“If combat does commence,” Marius went on, obviously embarrassed by his lack of authentic military experience, “I intend to fight, my lord. I witnessed enough training while I served the Commandant to know how to handle a sword,” he said.
Holte laughed behind him. “When we fight, and we will be fighting, you’ll stay with Palos until it is over,” he said sternly.
“Yes, sir,” Marius replied without hesitation. “As you command.”
It took a moment for Palos to remember that Holte, a captain, outranked the younger Marius, despite Marius’ closeness with the king. “Very well,” Palos said, defusing any tension before it could build. “I’m sure what fighting comes to pass will be a short-lived affair,” he added, though visions of a grander war danced through his head.
“No!” Rai screamed. He stretched his arms toward the pool, but his already blistered skin burned more with every inch, and he pulled his hand back almost as quickly as he had sent it out.
He backed away from the pool far enough to not fear being lit aflame by it, but he could not bring himself to look away. “Alster!” he yelled. “Alster!”
To the right side of the pool, Alster’s horse whinnied and tapped the ground nervously with a hoof. The liquid shimmered and boiled, but Alster did not emerge. Rai looked back toward where he had left Alster and Elsey before he had run through the field of shades and, luckily, Elsey had not moved. Between them, the shades still stood guard, though there was an empty void carved through their center left by Alster’s wild charge.
“Alster?” Rai called toward the murky pool one last time. There was no response. Solemnly, Rai got to his feet and held his injured hands close to his chest. Everything hurt. A myriad of cuts and tears given to him by the shades lined most of his body, and the intense heat of the pool had burned almost all of the exposed skin on his hands and face. The burns were not serious enough to be fatal, but Rai wondered if he would ever look the same again. He had known a woman in Mournstead who had been burned when she was a child, and she had been treated as some sort of outcast for her disfigurement.
Rai wanted to rub the side of his face to make the pain go away, but his skin was raw. Touching his burnt flesh was even more painful than letting the wind tear at it. Mustering his resolve, Rai collected his arrows from the ground. Curiously, he noticed how they had been changed by the water of Scalder’s Inlet. Once grey and entirely ordinary, the arrowheads had taken on a strange hue of red and orange, similar to the dagger Alster had left behind on the ground near the pool.
Mesmerized, Rai turned each of the arrowheads over in his hands, careful not to let the metal touch his injured skin. The metal felt different somehow, as though some of the pool’s liquid had been trapped inside it. The red and orange veins shifted through the arrowheads as he watched. Rai shook his head as he wondered what the liquid was doing to Alster’s body. He couldn’t imagine the pain he would feel if he touched the pool with even his fingertips. Being submerged in the pool, if it did not instantly bring death, would be excruciating.
Rai took one final look at the pool before mounting Alster’s horse. He thought of taking the dagger, but quickly dispelled the notion.
“I-” Rai began, trying to think of something to say to Alster. After a moment, Rai turned the horse toward the path Alster had carved through the shades and left.
“What happened?” Elsey asked when Rai returned to the cold, snowy fringes of Scalder’s Inlet.
Rai let out a heavy sigh. “Alster fell into the water,” he said, unsure of how blunt he should be with the young girl.
Elsey looked down at the ground.
“The water was hot beyond anything you could imagine,” Rai told her. He held up his hands so she could see the burns covering them. “I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to shoot my bow again,” he added. Rai had never been more than a simple hunter, and he was often clumsy even at that, but he knew if his fingers did not fully heal, he would never be able to hunt again.
“Should we wait?” Elsey asked past a growing lump in her throat.
“I don’t think Alster is coming back…” Rai said, his voice drifting off into the wind.
Elsey nodded.
“There’s supposed to be a city nearby,” Rai said, looking eastward toward the horizon. “Alistair the Fourth made this place his command post when he fought against the shades. We should try to find it, or what’s left of it,” he said.
Again, Elsey only nodded.
Rai dismounted and helped Elsey onto the horse. He gave her his quiver of strange, red arrows, and wrapped a bit of fur-lined hide around his wounded hands and face, cringing and wincing with every movement. “To the east,” he said from behind the wrapping. He walked next to the horse’s face, listening to the creature breath and watching its wounds. All the while, he wondered what he would do in the coming days, weeks, and months.
The two took a wide arc around the field of shades, careful not to get close to them, but also remaining within sight of the shoreline, their only indicator that they were going in the correct direction. After a few hours and several miles, they saw what appeared to be ruins perched on the rocky coast. The land rose up from the beach around it, a small plateau of sorts reminiscent of Karrheim. On the top of the rise, several wooden pillars still stood, and bits of tattered, faded cloth fluttered in the breeze.
Rai and Elsey trudged toward the small outcropping with heavy feet. They were tired, battered, and mentally exhausted. At the top of the rise, maybe thirty feet above the ocean, Rai looked toward the field of icy pillars to the west. He could see the largest of the monoliths still standing there, but he did not detect any signs of movement. Part of him was thankful that he could no longer see the shades, but the rest of him mourned Alster.
All around them, the ruins of the small military outpost stood as a haunting reminder of both Alistair the Fourth and Alster. Rai kicked a piece of rotten wood off the edge of the rise and into the sea. “What are we doing here?” Rai asked, turning toward Elsey.
The girl shrugged. For the first time, Rai considered the sheer absurdity of their quest. Elsey and Alster were maybe sixteen years old, and he had agreed to lead them to the ends of the world.
“What is our plan?” Rai demanded. He couldn’t help but blame both Alster and Elsey for the wounds on his hands, the cold biting through his clothes, and the utter helplessness which strangled him with every passing moment.
Elsey shrank back against the flank of the horse.
“Without Alster, we have nothing. We can’t cross the Rift. We lost the gauntlets!” he yelled, throwing his hands up in defeat.
“Why did you try to help us?” Elsey asked timidly.
Rai turned back to the ocean, staring at the giant mass of ice drifting just offshore. “Do you want to know the truth?” he asked.
“Yes,” Elsey replied. Finding her resolve, she stomped up to Rai. “Tell me why you brought us here!” she roared, her hands clenching into fists.
Rai let out a curt laugh. “Do you know what else is buried in The Shadow King’s tomb?” he cackled. “Before Alistair killed him, the king of Vecnos offered The Shadow King one hundred chests of gold as a means of surrender! The chests were so heavy they had to build special oxcarts just to move them! And you know where all that gold is buried?” he shouted, his eyes wild with greed.
“You took advantage of us,” Elsey snarled. She had never felt so much rage in her life. When she breathed, she felt like her chest expanded to its limits, devouring the air to fuel the fire coursing through her veins.
Rai continued to laugh, his eyes wild. “Of cour-” he howled, but his words were cut short as Elsey struck him in the chest. Her fist thudded into the man’s heavy clothing, and he staggered backward.
Working in the Lightbridge stables had made her arms strong, stronger than she had expected.
Rai’s long, red hair danced in
front of his face as fell backward. His laughter turned to screams when his foot hit nothing but air behind him.
Elsey gasped when she heard Rai land on the rocky shoreline below the small plateau. “No!” she yelled, but her regret was short lived. As quickly as the new emotion had come, her anger returned, vindicating what she had done.
Hesitantly, Elsey peered over the edge. Rai’s crumpled form didn’t move. The gentle waves of the icy ocean lapped the ground a few feet from the man’s left arm.
“Rai?” Elsey said quietly. She wasn’t sure if she wanted him to be alive or not. Exhaling for what felt like the first time since Rai had revealed his true intention, she let her hands relax. Her fingers ached from clenching her fists so tightly.
She watched Rai’s body for several minutes before turning away. Thoroughly confused, she returned to the horse with a blank expression on her face. She thought she should feel some kind of remorse, but Rai’s callous arrogance kept replaying over and over in her mind. “He was a liar,” she told herself, though she wondered what she had become—and if it was worse than a liar.
Sometime in the middle of the night, Elsey shivered under the makeshift shelter she had constructed from the ruins. She didn’t try to sleep or to eat. Instead, she sat in the darkness with her back against her sleeping horse’s side, thinking.
More than anything, Elsey thought of her father. She longed for his direction, his calming voice, and his steadfast commitment to doing what was right. “Father, tell me what to do…” she whispered into the darkness. No one whispered back.
TRANSFORMATION
Just before sunrise, when Vecnos was still covered in moonlight, Elsey led her horse to the shore. She stood twenty feet from Rai’s body. “Rai?” she called out, though she knew he wouldn’t respond.
She approached him, her heart pounding furiously in her chest, and saw what she had wrought. The stony soil around Rai’s head was stained with the man’s blood. His neck was twisted at an impossible angle, and his tongue lolled out of his mouth, rigid, and covered with frost.
A wave of nausea rushed through Elsey’s body, and she rushed to the sea, vomiting into the icy water. Staring at her uneven, distorted reflection in the edge of the water, she fought to gain control of her emotions.
“What have I become?” she asked her reflection. “What?”
Heat was the only sensation Alster could feel. The horror of being burned alive was the only perceivable thought he could process.
His mouth opened to scream, and a torrent of the boiling liquid washed into his body, cooking his organs from the inside as it charred the flesh from his bones on the outside. He tried to swim upward. His arms reached toward the opening of Scalder’s Inlet—and then he was alive.
In some sort of fevered, death-driven haze, Alster was alive, and he felt no pain. He stood, his feet connecting to what felt like the bottom of the ocean, and he could see. A round circle of light was the only thing visible to him, but he could see it nonetheless.
When he tried to breath, he felt nothing. No air moved into his mouth or lungs. With no other option before him, Alster pushed off from whatever was beneath him. He felt the resistance of water weighing down his body, so he stretched his arms above his head once more to swim.
A glimmer of red caught his eye. Something flashed, and he thought it was a gemstone or some other object clutched in his hand, but his fingers were outstretched—he held nothing. Then he realized the glow was emanating from his hands, not from some object he possessed.
Alster reached the circle of light on the surface and burst forth, erupting from Scalder’s Inlet in a shower of molten fluid. He spat onto the ground, spilling the boiling liquid from his mouth like a fountain. Coughing heavily, he pulled himself forward, lifting his body from the small hole and collapsing onto the steaming ground.
Pillars of scalding vapor ascended from his back where they rose to entwine with the night sky. When his coughing subsided and he breathed normal air once more, Alster looked down on his hands in disbelief. He had been wearing Alistair’s gauntlets when he had fallen into the pool, and they had melted into his flesh. His skin pulsed in time with his heartbeat, his veins brilliantly outlined with the same red filigree which had been etched into the armor.
When he flexed his hands, Alster did not feel the incredible burn of Scalder’s Inlet, or even a trace of soreness. Instead, he felt strength. He felt the power of Alistair the Fourth taking over his body and filling the muscles of his arms with life. A few feet from the pool, he saw his dagger sticking up from the ground, blade buried in the dirt. Slowly, he pulled the weapon free and gripped it in his hand. It had not changed, but his connection to it had grown immensely. Without even looking, he knew exactly where the weapon was, how it was angled, and how it balanced in his fingers.
A smile crept onto Alster’s face. He wondered if Alistair the Fourth had bathed in Scalder’s Inlet, or if anyone in the history of Vecnos had previously attempted such a feat. He tucked the dagger into his belt and turned, remembering the field of pillars and the army of shades only a few paces from where he stood. Everything was silent.
“Rai!” he called. He heard nothing. “Elsey!” he called again. No sound answered his voice. In the pale moonlight, he could see almost all of the pillars standing guard. They cast small shadows, but none of them held shades.
When Alster looked back down at his hands, the red glow highlighting his veins had vanished, and he appeared normal once more. He took a step forward, and a familiar twinge shot through his legs. He knew his arms had been somehow emboldened by the gauntlets which had melted into his skin, but the rest of his body remained unchanged.
“If I find Alistair’s greaves, perhaps my legs will be healed,” he said aloud with a laugh. The thought of willingly entering Scalder’s Inlet filled him with a strange mixture of fear and hope. He shook his head. “Elsey!” he called again. “Rai!”
When Alster moved away from the pool, he felt the frigid bite of ice once again cutting through his body. He couldn’t explain it, but he considered himself lucky that his clothes had not been destroyed by the heat of the liquid. In fact, they weren’t even wet. With a sigh, Alster wrapped his heavy cloak tighter around his body and began trudging eastward. He didn’t know how long he had been underwater, or where his companions might have gone. When he reached the place where he remembered waiting for Rai with Elsey, he saw no tracks. There were a few impressions in the dirt, but the ground was too cold to leave enough evidence for Alster to follow.
Without any other options, he set out toward the east, continuing along the path he and the others had intended to take. As he saw it, he had no choice but to move. He had no food, no horse, and no shelter.
It was nearly sunrise when Alster came upon the ruins of Alistair’s ancient command post. His legs throbbed with pain, and his stomach continually rumbled with hunger. Near the top of the slanted plateau, he saw what appeared to be a makeshift shelter assembled from various poles and pieces of cloth stacked on top of each other.
“Rai!” Alster called from the bottom of the rise. “Elsey! Anyone!” His throat burned from shouting in the cold, dry weather, and it made his voice crack.
From the shore, he thought he heard a horse whinny. He couldn’t tell if the noise was an illusion created by his weary mind or something real, but it gave him a purpose.
“Rai! Elsey!” he yelled again, hobbling toward the coast.
“Alster?” he heard a female voice call back to him through the wind.
“Elsey!” he shouted in response. He tried to hurry to her, eager to learn what had happened and how long he had been underwater, but he stumbled on the loose, rocky soil. He fell forward, pangs of sharp pain radiating through his legs as he tried to catch himself. When his hands hit the ground, they flared to life with lines of red, as if the impact with the ground reignited the fire within his veins.
Just then, Elsey came around the side of the rise leading their horse. “Alster!” she exclai
med, but she stopped short when she saw the light coming from Alster’s hands.
“Elsey!” Alster yelled back. He saw the apprehension on her face and tried to hide his hands behind his back as he got up off the ground. “I’m alright,” he said. “It doesn’t hurt.”
“What… what happened?” Elsey stammered.
“I don’t know,” Alster quickly responded. “I fell into the pool when I jumped from the horse,” he explained.
“You jumped from the horse?” Elsey asked, her eyes darting to Alster’s crippled legs.
“The dagger made me stronger,” he clarified.
“And your hands?” Elsey asked. She walked the horse closer to him, but she stayed about ten paces away.
“I don’t know,” Alster explained, showing her the red glow which was already beginning to fade. “I think Alistair’s gauntlets melted into my body when I fell in the pool.”
“What does it feel like?” she asked.
Alster shook his head. “I don’t really feel any different, even when the light is there.”
“And when does the light appear?”
“It was there when I climbed out of the pool, but then it faded. It only came back when I tripped,” he answered.
“Hold out your hand,” Elsey told him. She picked up a small rock and threw it at Alster’s open palm. Nothing happened.
“I’m not sure it works like that,” he said with a chuckle.
“Well,” Elsey said, scratching her head. “What do we do now?”
“Where’s Rai?” Alster asked. He looked past Elsey and their horse, but saw no one.
“He-” Elsey stammered. She pointed to the top of the rise where her makeshift camp was. The sun’s rays were just beginning to find their way through the clouds, revealing the landscape in the full glory of dawn. “He fell,” Elsey finally said.
Shadowlith (Umbral Blade Book 1) Page 13