Shadowlith (Umbral Blade Book 1)

by Stuart Thaman

  “Look, Elsey, I don’t-” he tried to say.

  “Let’s just get to the road,” Elsey said, cutting him off.

  Alster nodded. “It should be this way,” he said sullenly.

  A few hours of tense silence later, Alster and Elsey found the small dirt path which they had seen before. The road went northeast, a relatively straight path of packed soil and wagon tracks. “It looks like someone used this road recently,” Alster said after they came upon a series of somewhat fresh horse droppings.

  “Every road has to lead somewhere,” was Elsey’s only reply.

  After several more miles, they began to see small farms with cottages and barns off to the sides of the road. It was apparent that few people traveled the road on any regular basis, but it did bring them a measure of comfort to see the trappings of civilization once again.

  Around nightfall, they saw two great figures looming ahead and flanking the road. “We’re here,” Elsey said.

  “Wherever here might be,” Alster replied.

  They saw no one as they neared the huge statues marking the entrance to the strange place they had found. Two carved, marble figures looked down at them from either side of the road. They wore crowns and flowing capes, and each had a stone sword strapped to its side. Farther ahead, a modest collection of buildings were scattered along a tangle of streets, though most of the buildings looked too run down to still be in use.

  Once they were in the city proper, Alster finally saw someone. A man dressed in the blue and white checkers of the Karrheim military sat in front of a dimly lit tavern and struggled to cut through a piece of food with his knife. From the way he rocked back and forth on the barrel he used for a chair, it was easy to see he was drunk. Inside the tavern, Alster heard a few voices, but not many.

  “What is this place?” Elsey asked no one in particular. She gazed around the darkening town square. Deeper into the city, a large stone wall with fixed battlements rose up from the ground, almost cutting the city in half.

  The drunkard laughed when saw Alster and Elsey approaching him. He lifted his old knife and pointed at the two. “What do you want?” he slurred loudly, spitting little pieces of fruit as he spoke.

  “What is the name of this place?” Alster asked. He ignored the man’s confrontational attitude, hoping to learn at least where they were.

  The drunk turned a bit on his barrel and pointed up to the painted sign hanging above his head. “You blind?” he laughed, spitting more of his food onto the street. “That’s a mug of beer, is it not?”

  Alster sighed. “Obviously,” he muttered under his breath. “But what is the name of this town? I don’t care about the tavern.”

  The drunken soldier stood up from his barrel, and his ruddy expression quickly turned sour. “You mocking me, boy?” he shouted, stumbling forward with his knife held out before him.

  Alster tried to urge his horse backward, but the creature only whinnied beneath him. “No!” he shouted back at the man. “We don’t want to fight.”

  Beside him, Elsey crept to the side of the building as inconspicuously as she could. Luckily, the drunk didn’t seem to pay her any attention. When she was behind the corner of the building, she took Rai’s bow from its place on the quiver and strung it. Her hands shook from nervousness as she nocked an arrow.

  “It was just a question!” Alster yelled at the man. He thought of galloping forward, of simply leaving the drunk in the street, but he couldn’t leave Elsey. Before he thought to draw Alistair’s dagger from his belt, the drunk slashed at his leg. Alster tried to move away from the attack, but his crippled muscles responded too slowly to be effective.

  The knife cut into Alster’s shin, but there wasn’t enough strength behind the blade to inflict any serious damage. “Time to teach you a lesson, boy!” the man bellowed. He grabbed Alster’s leg with a meaty hand and pulled, ripping the boy violently from the horse’s back.

  All the air rushed out of Alster’s lungs when he crashed onto the hard-packed ground. He didn’t know if the drunk lunged after him or simply fell, but either way, the man was upon him in an instant.

  Alster yelled for help. He thought he saw movement in the window to his right, but he couldn’t be sure. Above him, the drunken soldier’s breath filled his nostrils. The man leaned back and balled his left hand into a fist. The punch landed, and Alster’s head cracked painfully against the ground.

  A second strike came almost as quickly as the first, and he felt a bit of blood welling up in his mouth from where his teeth had crunched together on his tongue. Alster tried to push the man off of him, but he was far too weak. All he managed to do was flail awkwardly to the side of the man’s broad shoulders as a third punch hit him on the side of the jaw.

  The soldier gasped.

  Red light pulsed from Alster’s hands, filling the space between him and the soldier. The man fell backward on his rear and tried to scramble away on his hands, his face a mask of terror and drunken confusion. Alster turned back toward his horse as quickly as he could. He grabbed the side of the creature’s mane and used it to pull himself fully upright.

  The man pointed at Alster’s glowing hands from his position on the ground. “Sorcerer!” he shouted. He kicked wildly from his back, causing the horse to retreat a step.

  Suddenly unbalanced, Alster lost his tenuous hold on the horse and tumbled forward, falling directly to the left of the drunken soldier. At the same time, Alster saw the door to the pub fly open, and several other soldiers spilled forth into the street with mugs of beer in their hands.

  Alster’s drunken assailant shrieked and screamed, drawing the attention of the others in the street. When Alster managed to get to his knees, he saw what he had wrought. The man’s shadow, cast by the faint light coming from the tavern window to the right, struggled against Alster’s red hands as though it was its own sentient being. It writhed and clawed, tearing at the air above it, trying to rip the skin from the boy’s arms.

  With fury in his eyes, Alster slammed his left hand back into the dirt. He felt the shadow’s essence, its incorporeal form, squirming under his grasp. Alster wasn’t sure what he had done. His hands pulsed with violent energy. Somewhere deep inside his mind, he felt the urge to drink the man’s shadow.

  With a primal growl, Alster sank his hand deeper into the shadow until his fingers were bleeding against the stony ground. The man who owned the shadow screamed again, and the other soldiers in the street drew their swords, though none of them dared to move closer to the scene.

  Alster yanked his hand upward in one clean, fast motion. The sound which followed his movement thundered through the street and knocked him several feet backward. When he opened his eyes, the man’s shadow, his shade, stood to its full height. Alster wasn’t sure if it was terror or something he had done, but the drunken soldier slumped quietly onto his back.

  The shade hissed and screeched. Its arms spread wide as if it meant to engulf Alster where he knelt. Then, in an instant, an arrow flew through the side of the shade’s body, shredding it to pieces.

  Seconds passed which felt like hours in the quiet street.

  The man on the ground slowly shriveled. His body deflated and went completely limp. It looked like the only thing which remained was the man’s skin.

  Then, nearly a full minute later, the soldiers by the tavern door began to scream. “Tell the commander!” one of them shouted, stumbling into his friends. The trio of blue and white clad soldiers pushed each other out of the way in their haste to flee. One of them tripped badly, probably breaking his wrist, but he was on his feet in a heartbeat, sprinting away from the boy and the corpse.

  To his right, Alster saw Elsey crouched, Rai’s bow in her trembling hands.

  “Come on!” Alster roared at her. He didn’t feel the burst of strength he normally felt after slaying a shade, but then again, he hadn’t been the one who had killed the shade.

  In one quick motion, Elsey sprang from the ground and slid the bow over her shoulder. Sh
e ran toward the horse, vaulting onto its back with ease. She held out her hand to help Alster up behind her, and he could see the veins bulging in her forearm. Her grip on his hand felt like soft metal being pressed in a vice. Without any real effort, Elsey hoisted him onto the horse’s back, and they took off.

  Elsey steered the mount down a tight alley on the far side of the tavern. Junk and debris were scattered everywhere, but the horse charged through it all without hesitation. “Toward that wall,” Alster said, pointing to his left. “We can follow it out of the city.”

  The horse veered left at the next intersection of dilapidated streets and crumbling buildings. Elsey pushed the beast hard, its hooves drumming a furious rhythm into the street. Before long, they were riding parallel to the strange stone wall which bisected the city, heading south. They heard some commotion behind them, but it sounded distant, perhaps even unrelated to the chaos they had caused.

  DISCOVERY

  “Sir!” a soldier yelled, bursting into the room where Palos was staying and jolting him awake.

  “What is it?” Palos shouted back. Startled, he rubbed the sleep from his eyes and quickly rolled from his bed. He was naked, but he didn’t care.

  “Sir, there’s been an attack,” the man said.

  “Where?” Palos growled. A long, silk robe hung on a wooden peg next to his door. He grabbed it and wrapped it about his body. His sword belt was there as well, and he wasted no time buckling it around his waist.

  “The Rifty Wench, a tavern down on the main road,” the man explained.

  Palos stopped for a moment. “If you woke me in such a manner for a tavern brawl, I’ll kill you,” he said flatly.

  The soldier swallowed hard. “No, my lord, not a brawl,” he clarified. “Someone killed one of the men.” The man trembled in the hallway, and his vision darted around the walls.

  “Spit it out!” the lord barked.

  The soldier shook his head. “I don’t know how to describe it,” he stammered. “Like something, or someone, drained him—killed him without ever touching him,” he said with obvious confusion.

  Palos grunted in acknowledgment. “Summon Captain Holte and Lieutenant Marius at once. Have them meet me at the scene,” he commanded the soldier before rushing out of the small room.

  Once he reached the street, Palos wondered where his horse had been taken. He knew roughly where the stables were, but he didn’t know the city well enough to get his bearings at night. Palos spotted one of Westhaven’s residents walking nearby and quickly accosted the woman. “The Rifty Wench!” he shouted in her face. “Which direction?”

  Frightened, the woman shrank backward, but she pointed south nonetheless.

  When Palos arrived at the Rifty Wench, the rest of the tavern’s patrons had gathered in the street. They were forming a semicircle around the corpse which Palos promptly barged through.

  The soldier’s body looked strikingly similar to Wilkes’ corpse. All the substance of it, the volume, was gone. “Which way did the killer run?” Palos shouted.

  “He had a horse,” one of the soldiers replied.

  Palos shook his head. He considered rousing his contingent and having them do a sweep of the city, but he knew investigation on such a large scale rarely turned up a perpetrator. If the killer had a horse, he was long gone.

  “All right,” Palos began after a moment of contemplation. “Back to the garrison. Unless any of you saw something important, I don’t need you lingering around to spread rumors.” All but one of the men left, most muttering wild theories to each other. The one who stayed wasn’t wearing the blue and white checkers of Karrheim, and Palos took him to be local.

  “Sir,” the man began hesitantly.

  Palos recognized him as the same soldier who had greeted him from the top of the wall earlier that day. “Did you see something?” Palos asked.

  The man pointed across the street to another building. “An arrow, over there,” he said. “Though the archer missed.”

  Palos walked to the building and looked back, tracing the arrow’s path in his mind. “Did you see who fired it?” he asked, hoping to get a solid lead.

  “No, sir,” the man said. “It came from around the corner of the tavern. Must have been someone lying in wait,” he explained.

  “An ambush?” Palos asked skeptically. “Who was this man? Someone important?”

  Marius and Holte arrived on the scene, out of breath and still strapping their weapons to their sides.

  “Did you know this man? Who was he?” Palos asked the two officers.

  Marius leaned over the corpse. “I was told someone was drained, but I had no idea what to expect,” he said quietly.

  “Did you know him?” Palos asked for the third time.

  “No,” Lieutenant Marius finally concluded. “He was just a soldier.”

  “So if it was an ambush, it was likely random,” Palos surmised.

  “Unless he carried some personal vendetta with him,” Captain Holte added. He shot Palos a knowing glance.

  Marius shook his head and backed away from the corpse. “What could do such a thing?” he muttered.

  Palos turned to the local soldier who still stood in the road. “There was someone waiting with the bow, and there was another man fighting our soldier in the street?” he asked.

  “Yes, my lord,” the soldier replied. “I didn’t get a good look at him, but he had a horse with him. He looked young, maybe sixteen, but it was hard to tell.”

  Palos considered the new information. “An assassin so young seems unlikely,” he thought aloud. Turning back to the corpse, he commanded the local soldier to leave.

  “You know something, my lord,” Marius said when the three of them were alone.

  Holte let out a curt laugh. “Shadow magic,” he spat. He pricked the fallen soldier in the side of the neck with his sword, and the subsequent lack of blood proved his point. “You’ve studied the history of the shades, yes?” he began.

  Marius nodded.

  “When a shade is killed, the shadowlith who summoned it dies.” He pointed at the body. “Then they look like this,” he said.

  “Shades and shadowliths?” Marius stammered, his eyes going wide. “I thought they were all dead,” he stammered.

  “Ha! One of the worst-kept secrets in all of Vecnos,” Holte replied. “There are always people trying to learn the old shadow magic, though most of them never succeed.”

  “So this man was a shadowlith?” Marius asked.

  “It would seem,” Palos answered quietly. “There was a similar incident before we departed,” Palos added. He considered telling the lieutenant more, but shook the thought away. “A man was killed in exactly the same manner,” he concluded.

  “There might be a shade hunter following us,” Holte said flatly.

  “How many shadowliths are there?” Marius asked.

  Palos ensured no one was within listening range before he answered. “There may be more than we thought,” he whispered, leaning close to the two officers. “Our mission here concerns them.”

  Marius nodded as it all began to come together in his head.

  “Hademar has returned to Vecnos, at Mournstead. He seeks shadow magic to bring his wife back from the dead,” Palos went on.

  “And we’re to stop him,” Marius finished.

  Palos smiled. “Exactly.” He turned to speak directly to Captain Holte. “Burn the body. Station guards throughout the city. If there is a shade hunter tailing us, I want him captured. Once we have enough supplies to leave, I’ll tell the men what we are doing out here. Understood?”

  The captain gave a curt nod to Palos.

  Marius plucked the arrow from the wall where it was lodged and turned it over in his hands. “No poison,” he said. “A planned ambush feels more and more unlikely. Any true assassin would not have missed.”

  “He would have also taken his arrow with him,” Palos added. Marius handed it to him. “Completely unremarkable,” Palos said, running his fingers alon
g its length. “This is a simple hunting arrow. The fletchers in Karrheim make far different missiles for our archers. Perhaps this was an isolated incident, though the coincidence is too much to write off.”

  “Amateurs,” Marius laughed. “Amateur assassins of some sort, perhaps. A poorly executed ambush.”

  “You might be right,” Palos replied.

  “Still, sleep lightly,” Marius said. “I’ll send one of my officers to guard your door, my lord.”

  “Thank you, Lieutenant,” Palos said. With that, he left the street, confident that his officers would execute his commands perfectly.

  Near the southern limit of the town, Elsey pulled her horse to a stop. They hadn’t seen any signs of pursuit, though the horse would have easily allowed them to escape any of the soldiers on foot. Luckily, the city was so deserted they never saw anyone, much less soldiers.

  “What did you do to that man?” Elsey asked breathlessly when they were safely hidden behind a roofless building.

  “I…” he stammered. “I don’t think I did anything. You were the one who shot him, remember?”

  Elsey slid down from the horse’s back and began to pace. “I wasn’t aiming for him,” she said after a moment. “I shot his shadow.”

  “You got stronger, didn’t you?” Alster said, his voice suddenly full of wonder.

  Elsey nodded.

  “That man was a shadowlith,” Alster continued. “He must have been. You killed his shade, which killed him.”

  “I don’t know,” Elsey said, taking the bow from her shoulder and returning it to the side of the quiver on her back. “You said the shadowliths were all dead. Why would that man be one of them?”

  “Maybe…” Alster trailed off. He tried to remember what he had felt when he had touched the man’s shadow, when his arms had glowed red. “I think I might have… pulled… his shadow away.”

  “You separated his body from his shadow?” Elsey asked.