Lord of Shadows

by Alix Rickloff

  Daigh’s gaze swung over the group. Settled on her, the flicker of some lost emotion surfacing in the empty hollows of his eyes.

  The world wavered and spun, the path dropping from under her, the trees bleeding into a haze of spring white and green. As she watched, the flick of a fur-lined cloak and a sword’s silver edge overlapped Daigh’s coarse linen and leather. She blinked, the vision vanishing as Daigh’s rage slammed at the base of her skull. Hot. Terrible.

  She grimaced at the headache now clamping her brain. And though he seemed in complete control of the situation, she got the sense Daigh held to sanity by the thinnest of threads. And that—unlikely as it sounded—he looked to her for rescue.

  The alien, probing presence pounded against his brain. Some undefined evil slithered along his nerves. His vision filled with a crackling, pulsing light. A wash of frozen fire behind which everything hovered in shades of nightmare.

  Through the haze of his own madness, he felt the men shift, a grumble like distant thunder as they took his measure. Adjusted their attack. He allowed them their fill. It would avail them nothing, though how he knew this was lost to him like so much else.

  At some invisible signal, a man struck from the trees. A knife thrust at his side. Scoring his ribs.

  Cursing, he caught his attacker’s wrist. Bones grinding under his fingers. The man’s scream ripping through the last barrier between conscious thought and animal instinct.

  A turbulent, endless void warped him like a sword upon the smithy’s anvil. Heart beating with the hammer’s clang. Reshaping him into something unnatural. Unstoppable. Unheeding of pain or fear or loss. Knowing only killing. Only hate. Only death.

  The man’s groaning agony seemed to break the stand-off. The rest flung themselves forward like a pack of snarling, snapping dogs scenting rabid prey.

  He reacted without thought. Without reason. Muscles stretched and rippled beneath his skin. Blood ran like acid through narrowed veins. Hazed his vision in scarlet hellfire.

  The assault faltered as the dead and dying sprawled in tumbled broken heaps. At one point, he found himself clutching a rusty, pitted dagger, hot and dripping with his own blood. He flipped it in his hand. Gripped the handle. Embedded it in the stomach of a man charging him in a screaming bull-rush.

  Shouts filtered through the roar in his ears, but he ignored them. They shouted a name that meant nothing to him. His true identity ground to dust among the scattered fragments of his injured mind.

  He wasn’t Daigh. He wasn’t a man.

  He was death undone.

  Sabrina watched in growing horror. Held her breath for the moment when Daigh hesitated. Faltered. Weakened. And the remaining men would close in for the kill.

  But it never came. Every moment seemed to strengthen his killer cunning, the unearthly sixth sense that kept him alert and alive beneath the onslaught. Until those remaining fled the chaos. Faded into the shielding twilight. Were replaced by the whispering shush of skirts upon the ground. The murmur of worried fearful voices as the sisters approached.

  Slimy gripped her in an ever-increasing stranglehold, his elbow clamped around her throat. Cutting her air until pinpricks spotted her vision and her lungs cramped with effort. He jerked at each loss, his curses loud and increasingly panicked. Clutching Sabrina as the last buffer between Daigh and imminent death.

  “I’ll kill her.”

  Harsh words pierced the fog of his madness. A blood-freezing sight met Daigh’s hazy vision.

  Sabrina caught around the neck, a pistol jammed beneath her breast.

  He paused, blood-soaked. Chest heaving as his lungs fought for air. Met the man’s stare, each seeing murder in the other’s eyes.

  Actions slowed to infinity. A weapon leveled at his chest. The explosion of sound and flame. Followed immediately by a punch to the chest. Blood hot and streaming from the wound. The sudden weight of drugged limbs.

  Lurching to his knees, he concentrated his aim. Let his dagger fly. Watched with ruthless satisfaction as it found its intended target.

  The brigand dragged at Sabrina’s skirts as he fell. Dead as he hit the ground.

  She screamed.

  And oblivion swallowed him.

  “What was he doing out here?”

  “Lambing time. Sent him to check on the ewes.”

  “Have you ever seen the like?”

  “Mad. He’s mad. Dangerous. Summon the authorities.”

  “Saved Jane. Sabrina. A hero.”

  The clucking worried babble of the bandraoi. The hum of nervous confusion. The shush of heavy skirts and cloaks as they moved among the carnage.

  Sabrina knelt beside Daigh, rifling among her bag as if the potions and cures she carried could stanch the blood or halt the ebbing life beneath her hand. Pain bit deep lines into the gray pallor of his face. Blue tinted his lips. No human medicines would avail him now. But if she delved within the magic of her race, she might buy him time if not survival.

  She tore the remnants of his shirt open. Laid bare the shredded and bloody flesh. Swallowed the bile clawing its way up her throat. Focused instead on the mage energy rising like a tide within her. The texture and quality and weight of the power. Using what she’d learned from Sister Ainnir to shape its flow. Hone it. Sharpen it to scalpel brilliance.

  “Sabrina?”

  She met his pain-clouded gaze with a smile of false reassurance.

  “It’s not needed,” he explained through clenched teeth.

  “Don’t talk,” she comforted. “You’ll be all right. I can . . .”

  A shadow loomed over her. The rustle of skirts. Breathing heavy and frantic.

  Daigh’s gaze moved beyond her. “Tell her. You understand.”

  Sabrina threw a confused look over her shoulder. Ard-siúr. Sister Ainnir. Both frowning. Both frightened.

  “He’s right, Sabrina,” Ard-siúr intoned. “Your gifts are not necessary.”

  “But . . .” She clamped down on her fear. Focused instead on the blood. The gore. Sticky. Black. A stench of murder and vicious death rising in fetid waves.

  Daigh shuddered, his muscles leaping in spasms. His breath quick and sharp and painful. Pupils dilated and unseeing.

  But no wounds.

  Nothing but puckered pink flesh marring the hard-packed ridges of his stomach. The broad expanse of his chest.

  “He’s . . .” Her hands curled to claws, the nails digging into her palms. Unable to shake the image of a man reveling in the battle. Drunk on mayhem. Lost to everything but killing. “It makes no sense. He was shot. I saw it.” She searched the faces of the bandraoi. “Why? How?”

  “That would be a question for Mr. MacLir.” Ard-siúr’s attention never left the man lying upon the ground in his own spilled blood.

  He shook his head. Spoke through chattering teeth. As horrified as any of them. “I don’t know. I can’t remember.”

  “Rapid healing from lesser injuries, I’ve seen. But never from a killing wound. Never to such an extent and so quickly.” Sister Ainnir shook her head as she paced the room with slow, arthritic steps, hands clasped behind her back. “I’d say it was impossible did I not see it with my own eyes.”

  “It’s unfortunate you were not the only one among us to witness it. Already the order’s abuzz with lurid stories of our mysterious guest.” Ard-siúr followed Sister Ainnir’s painful perambulations from her desk, face a study of thoughtful worry as she stroked the fat, purring tabby.

  Sabrina huddled in her corner seat, mind swirling with questions and possibilities. None of them sensible. All of them the stuff of wild, outrageous fantasies.

  Was Daigh true Fey? That would explain his apparent invincibility. The crushing, impenetrability of his stare. The strength contained within a titan’s frame. But a tiny voice persisted in denying that explanation. Pushed her to look elsewhere for answers. It was the same irritating voice whispering to her in the bleak hours of night, warning her Daigh’s arrival was not coincidence. He’d been brought here fo
r a purpose. And if she could only puzzle out the bizarre bond they shared, all the other answers would follow like tumbling dominoes.

  “So do we follow Sister Brigh’s stern counsel and send him on his way?”

  “It would seem the most prudent course.”

  Ard-siúr and Sister Ainnir’s back-and-forth sounded as a dull bass line to her own noisy thoughts.

  If not Fey, what? No normal human could survive a pistol shot square to the chest. Or the myriad dagger cuts spilling a river of blood she relived in nauseating crimson detail every time she closed her eyes. But if he wasn’t Fey and wasn’t human, what did that leave?

  “Or would it be wiser to keep him close while we seek to unravel what nature of man he is?” Ard-siúr continued with her slow deliberation.

  Sabrina picked at the dried blood remaining beneath her nails despite a hasty scrubbing. Skin still crawling with the feel of the bandit’s hand at her throat. The stench of his unwashed body souring her nose. Daigh had saved her. He’d been her knight-errant. Her champion. Could she remain silent while others argued out his fate? Or should she risk speaking out?

  She lifted her head. Searched out Ard-siúr’s cool, appraising eyes. “You can’t send him away,” she decreed.

  Sister Ainnir regarded her with shock, as if she were a piece of furniture sprung to life. Or a normally submissive apprentice gaining will and voice.

  Ard-siúr’s pale brows rose to be lost in her kerchief. “You have something to say, Sabrina?”

  Now that she’d become their focus, she lost the certainty of her own conviction. Who was she to tell Ard-siúr what to do? What did she know? It was her larking about that had resulted in her and Jane being caught in the ambush.

  “I . . . that is, he . . . we can’t just . . . that is after . . .” Her words trailed off as she deflated beneath their level, questing stares, returning to the childhood comfort of silence.

  Sister Ainnir shook her off like a bothersome fly. Resumed her worried pacing. But Ard-siúr’s gaze never faltered. She caught Sabrina in a disconcerting look that seemed to see right through her to the wall behind. “Go on. If you have something to add to the discussion, voice it now.”

  Courage surfaced through an icy layer of nervousness. Now that the urge to speak her opinion had come, it slid over her like a glove on a hand. “No matter who or what he is, he didn’t abandon me. I can’t abandon him.” Hurried to amend. “We can’t abandon him.”

  Ard-siúr’s smile felt like sun through clouds. She nodded. “Well spoken, Sabrina. And though Mr. MacLir’s body remains inviolate, I am as unclear about his mind. His is an odd tangle of impossibilities that makes me question my scrying’s accuracy. As a result, I believe keeping him within our care would be best.”

  As if only waiting on Ard-siúr’s official word, Sister Ainnir immediately shifted focus. “Perhaps a consult of the texts that deal with this type of magic,” she agreed eagerly. “Sister Ursula would know where best to search.”

  “A good thought. And I have my own sources who may be able to guide us in our understanding.”

  Absorbed with their own planning, they turned their attention from Sabrina.

  Each passing moment spiraled her deeper into an unknown, unnamed fear shredding her insides. Tugging her to her feet. This was wrong. All wrong. Daigh needed her. He looked to her for help. Not them. Her. She sensed the call more strongly each moment. As if the gods guided her thoughts.

  She scrambled out of her chair, an immediate need to escape pressing against her heart. Fresh air. Rain upon her face. A scrubbing of his blood off her skin. If only she could cleanse the endless well of his horrified gaze from her mind. His pounding dread from her soul.

  “Sabrina.” Ard-siúr’s sharp voice, catching Sabrina short.

  “Ma’am?”

  “Remember. A wounded animal can be unpredictable. Trapped, he can become deadly.” Her stare drew inward on some scene invisible to Sabrina, her face falling into careworn lines. “Daigh MacLir is both.”

  He collapsed on his pallet, head in hands. Body braced against a flash of pain that struck him like the slam of an axe between the eyes.

  A man’s face. Rage burning like hellfire in his gold-brown eyes. His mouth open on a scream of hate.

  The image filled every corner of Daigh’s mind until his brain threatened to spill out his ears and sickness churned his gut. Twisted him into so many knots it left him retching his supper into the slops jar.

  Instantly the coiling nightmare awareness he’d experienced in the woods slid up out of the darkest parts of his consciousness. He sensed it waiting upon the far side of that vast empty chasm of memory. Seeking entry. Enjoying his anguish.

  Anger touched him like spark from a flint. Burned up through him in a funeral pyre conflagration. Muscles constricted on a destructive emotional whirlpool, his vision clouding as the man’s enraged features receded to a crimson fog blanketing and thick as the rain clouds outside.

  A hand upon his shoulder threw Daigh to his feet in an instinctual defensive move that swung him around, one arm dragging the intruder close. Another locking around their neck, windpipe crushed in the crook of his elbow.

  A gurgling plea chased the red from his eyes. Pulled him back from the brink. The enemy beneath his hold dissolved into a gray-gowned woman, kerchief dangling, hair falling in a cascade of lost pins over thin, trembling shoulders.

  He released her with a broken oath. Stumbled back to fall heavy on his pallet. “Gods, forgive me.”

  Sabrina stood shaking in the far corner of the still-room, her face white as the kerchief she threaded through unsteady fingers. “I startled you. I . . . you didn’t mean to hurt me.”

  He flexed his hands. The scars incised into his palms, a sickening reminder that what he didn’t know about himself might kill. “Are you sure of that?”

  He looked up to see her straighten, certainty asserting itself. Bright steel entering a gaze that until now had always remained petal soft. “You didn’t mean to harm me,” she said again.

  Whom did she seek to convince?

  Exhaustion rushed in to replace the earlier maelstrom as if he carried the weight of centuries upon his back. “You were in the woods. You saw what happened, Sabrina. By rights I should be dead.”

  The men on the beach. The knife. The tearing, clutching hands. It became clearer.

  “This isn’t the first time it’s happened.”

  “There’s an explanation. You’ll see.” She knelt to gather up pieces of broken crockery; less fortunate victims of his attack, giving him a perfect view of the sleek spill of gilded brown hair, the arch of her neck where the fragile bones moved beneath skin flushed pink.

  Heat that had nothing of anger about it sparked down leaden limbs. Flashed across a gulf between past and present. Between a dim vision of this woman laughing up at him amid a wrinkled heap of blankets and another more tactile impression of a body sweet and taut molded to his chest. Breathing quick and fast. Her fragrance clean and fresh and holding none of the grave about it; important to him though he’d no idea why.

  She sucked in a sharp breath, her hand closing on a broken shard, a stinging between her fingers. Her body swayed as if she might faint.

  “Sabrina?” he spoke roughly through a throat scratchy and hoarse with his own hesitation. Took her under the arm to steady her.

  She flinched before allowing him to assist her. But even then, she seemed off-balance and confused.

  “Your hand,” he said, turning her palm up to examine the narrow cut in the flesh between thumb and finger.

  “It’s nothing.” She sucked away the thin line of blood before shoving her hand into her apron pocket.

  “Are you unwell?” he asked.

  She gave a shrug and a confused smile. “A little light-headed. No supper. I wasn’t hungry.”

  She studied him as if she searched for something in his face, and he met her clear gaze head-on. Stars glowed in the blue depths of her eyes. Points of light hold
ing at bay a midnight void that seemed to suck him always downward. He held her gaze as if he gripped a cliff edge. Drew himself up to stand above her, her face tilted to meet him.

  She barely reached as high as his collarbone, and his hands could span her tiny waist, but she never once regarded him with fear or hesitation. As if she read beyond the menacing strength of his body and the violence lurking in his mind.

  “So much for the pitcher of water I brought you.”

  He tipped her chin. Swam in that star-shot sea of blue. Sensed her curious excitement in the hesitant parting of her lips, the slight sway of her body toward him. If he kissed her, she’d respond. It wouldn’t take more than moments to have her answering his need with her own.

  Caressing the line of her jaw, the column of her throat, he felt her mounting anticipation. A passion bound but not broken by the order’s constraints.

  He bent to brush his lips against hers. She closed her eyes, fluttering black lashes shadowing the rose of her cheeks. One shy hand touched his chest. Fingers spread against the jump of muscles beneath his skin.

  And with an earth-rocking explosion that tore through him with the force of a gunshot, present exploded into past.

  The coiled serpent freed itself. Shattered his control, bringing with it a bowel-knifing ferocity. The man’s face returned. Pitiless. Twisted in frenzied, ruthless hate. A sword cut the air. Its downward thrust punching through Daigh’s flesh with screaming agony. And again. The blade sending ice cascading along his veins. And an answering ferocity that singed his heart.

  He shoved her away, falling onto the pallet, head on fire. Body numb. Struggling against the memory while battling the menacing presence that seemed bent on its own dark purpose. It wanted him. But for what?

  “Oh gods, let me help you.” She knelt at his side, taking hold of his hand, but he shook her off. Unable to endure the transformation of her touch from desire to sympathy.

  “Leave me.”

  Hurt clouded her clear blue gaze.

  “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll get out.” He hardened his heart. Not difficult while his body remained caught in this malignant storm. Retching, he drew himself into a fetal ball, shuddering against the paroxysms raking him like a fusillade.