“You have to place yourself in the position of the other person,” Carth said.
“Like when I play both sides of the board? I’ve seen you doing that, which was why I thought to try it, but I never manage to do anything other than make a few moves differently than I otherwise would have.”
“It’s like that, but there’s something else to it as well. You have to think through what you know, and use that knowledge to play as the other person. When I first played by myself, I played as people I know, like my father and mother, building up until I was able to play with increasing complexity.”
“So you play as me to defeat me?”
Carth shook her head. “I don’t think that would work. When I played myself as me, I never managed to beat me. I knew what I would do, and it was easy enough to start thinking about how to counter it, even if I took a different tack. The more I played like this, the more I started mixing styles.”
“Is that what you do now? You’re mixing styles?”
Carth shrugged. She wasn’t sure if that was how she played. Was it a mixture of styles, or was that now her? Was her style a combination of others’?
“I don’t know.”
“It works.”
She nodded. “It works. Maybe it won’t always. It’s helpful to get a sense of how someone thinks. That’s why Ras liked the game.”
Dara smiled. When she did, the hollows of her eyes faded and she appeared actually happy. “What does playing this teach you about me?”
Carth shook her head. “That’s not why I was playing you. I want to help you get better.”
“But you come up with a judgment when you play me.”
“With Tsatsun, it would be hard not to. You can learn about someone by playing them, and can come to understand them.” Especially her enemies. If she could understand the Hjan—if she could know how they would react and how they would move—she would be better equipped to block them.
“And?”
Carth sighed, picking up the stone. “I can tell you’re hesitant. You have some skill, but you don’t have the experience using it. Other than your capture, you haven’t seen hardship to push you.”
Dara sat back, resting her hands in her lap. “You get all of that by playing me?”
“I get lots of things by playing you. Even if I didn’t want to, I have to put myself into your perspective as we play so I can understand where you’re going to move and how you’re going to play out your side. The more we play—”
“I’m easy to defeat,” she said, lips pressed in a pout.
“Not easy, but you haven’t learned a sophisticated game.”
Dara nodded. “My father taught me. He was the one gifted with the S’al. He knew how to play the game, and he was the best player in our village. Those strongest with the S’al often are the strongest players.”
“I would like to have a chance to play him.”
Dara shook her head. “I think you would have beat him quickly. Father… Father liked being the one everyone looked up to. I think losing to someone so young as you would have been hard on him.”
“Still.”
Dara swallowed and nodded.
Carth smiled. “You haven’t asked to return home yet.”
“I’m not ready yet.”
“Why?”
Dara sighed. “I’m different than you, Carth. Not as strong. I know you want to find your father to demand he tell you why he abandoned you.” Seeing Carth’s face, she flushed. “I hear you with Guya. I know that’s what you’re after, even if you’ve never said it. We’re searching for the Reshian. You don’t have to worry that I’ll do something stupid if we find them.”
“I’m not worried about that,” Carth said softly.
“Then why haven’t you told me?”
Carth sighed. “I don’t know why I’m searching for them. Or if I’m searching for them.” That was the greater issue. She hadn’t decided whether she wanted to find him again. What would she say to him? What would she expect when she found him? “My father is with them, but more than that… I don’t really know. If I find him and manage to ask the questions I’ve had since I lost him, I don’t know what I expect.” She stared at the empty Tsatsun board and looked at the stone standing alone in the middle of the board. “I don’t intend to demand answers from him either. I don’t know what I think I’ll get.”
“Weren’t you heading toward the Reshian when you were stranded in Odian?”
She nodded. “That had been the plan. When I left Nyaesh, they were going to bring me to the Reshian so I could learn more about my shadow abilities.”
“I’d say you know how to use them well enough.”
Carth frowned. “That’s just it. I don’ know if I do know how to use them well, or if there are things others who use the shadows could teach me. It was the same reason my mother wanted me to go to Nyaesh. She thought I might be able to use the S’al.”
Dara’s face lit up when she said it. “Would they teach me?”
“You’d have to become A’ras, but there’s no reason they wouldn’t. You have everything they want. Strength and a deep ability with what they call the A’ras flame. You might be older than they prefer, but I think they’d teach you. Invar would, at least.”
“I’d love to know more. Father taught me what he could, but…”
Carth stood. What Dara asked required Carth to return to Nyaesh, and she wasn’t ready for that. Carth wasn’t certain she could ever be ready. When she’d left the last time… she had been forced away, treated like she was a traitor to the A’ras.
“We’re sailing north to Lonsyn,” Carth said hurriedly. “It will take a few days, but we’ll get more supplies there.”
Dara nodded. Carth was thankful that she didn’t seem to catch how her comment had unsettled her. It shouldn’t, but hearing that Dara’s father had worked with her—that he had taught her—bothered her. Her own father had played games with her, but none had really prepared her for what she had faced.
Taking the Tsatsun board, she left Dara’s room and stopped in the one she’d claimed for herself. She set the board down and set up the pieces. As she began the game, she played it out as Dara. As much as she wanted to help her, would she ever be able to get her to the point where she would be able to learn what she needed?
Guya thought working with Carth might help bring Dara out of her shell, but Carth didn’t know if that was true or not. Since getting used by the Hjan, she’d been reserved, and the edge that Carth had first seen in her was no longer present. It might be better to bring her back to her home and let her father continue to work with her. Carth began to doubt whether she could.
They sailed along the outer shores, moving quickly along the coast. Standing in the peak of the bow or, occasionally, the crow’s nest, gave Carth a different point of view than she had ever had before. Guya made a point of staying close to the shore, letting them see the outline of the rocks as they passed through. Dara came to the surface from time to time, but most of the time she remained belowdecks. It was as if she had no interest in seeing the landscape around them.
These were lands Carth had traveled when she was younger, but she had always done so on foot. She had not spent any time viewing them from a distance, noting the loveliness of the rock, the way it swept away from the shore and up towards the gentle sloping peak of a mountain Guya had named but Carth had already forgotten. On the third day of sailing past the village, they came across a forest that ran nearly all the way to the sea. Carth pointed and Guya nodded.
“That’s the Rastor Forest,” he said. “Loggers once tried to make a living cutting down trees through the forest, but they were chased away by the men who live within its borders.”
Carth smiled. “There are men inside the forest who would chase away loggers?”
“Think of what you did in Nyaesh when the Hjan came. Didn’t you attempt to chase them away?”
The smile faded from her face as she realized that it would’ve been the
same. She could almost imagine living in the forest, living with the trees. There was darkness, and she would’ve felt welcomed there, but there was a foreboding sense within the forest as well. It reminded her that she was not alone in having magical powers; the forest itself seemed to possess a power and might of its own. Carth could almost imagine the forest attempting to keep her out, forcing her from its borders, wanting nothing to do with her shadow magic or the power of the flame.
Perhaps the S’al more than anything. What was the S’al to the forest but destruction?
They stopped on the fifth day at another village along the coast. She and Guya rowed in and then back out after finding the village empty, much like the last. Neither Carth nor Guya could speak, not knowing what to make of the emptiness within the village.
When they had nearly reached the ship, Carth sighed. “That’s the second empty village. How many more will we find?”
“The second village, but I saw no sign of struggle. No sign of violence. It’s as if the people within the village simply left.”
Carth thought the same. At the first village, they had seen blood and what they’d thought was evidence of a struggle, but perhaps that had been wrong. What would make the villagers simply leave? What would drive people from their homes?
Playing it out, she could think of several possibilities. Violence would. She had seen it. Her father and mother had left Ih-lash because of violence in her homeland. Had the war between the A’ras and the Reshian stretched so far as to reach the coast? Who would tell the villagers the war was over, that accords were signed and peace now settled on the land?
Or was it something else? There were other things that might drive people to abandon their homes. The scarcity of resources would do so. Maybe the fishing had dried up or trade no longer came.
“Guya, did you ever trade along the coast here?”
Guya shook his head. “Hard to make it worthwhile trading in places like this. You have to anchor too deep into the sea and row yourself in. There’s only so many supplies you can bring on a dinghy like this.”
Carth looked at the items they had brought from the village. Most were simple foodstuffs. “You’d bring your supplies to Lonsyn, and then what would happen?”
“In Lonsyn, the merchants would request various items, picking and choosing from what came in off the ships and what they would know would sell. They’d take these down the coast, I presume. There is only so much trade that can happen in a place like Lonsyn, and the merchants wouldn’t see the same value to collecting goods as they would outside of the city.”
Once back about the ship, they secured the dinghy. Dara didn’t question what had happened. She was observant, and Carth suspected she knew that something had come to the village. They passed several more villages much the same on their way to Lonsyn. With each one, Carth struggled with why. Why were villages so close to Lonsyn empty?
Carth had been resting in her bunk when a knock came at her door. She was in the middle of a game, playing as Ras again and trying to get him to beat her when she played as herself, but he could not.
Dara glanced at the board when she opened the door, her face ashen.
“What is it?”
“You have to come,” she said.
Carth made another move and then followed Dara.
3
The sun cast strange shadows when Carth reached the deck of the ship, and she grasped for them without waiting for what she might find. Whatever had happened here had been upsetting to Dara. Considering all they had been through together, anything that could upset Dara that much must be truly awful.
Guya stood at the railing near the bow, staring down toward the sea. Carth slid toward him, gliding on the shadows.
When she reached him, she noted the stench in the air. It started gradually and built quickly. The stink was that of rot, like an animal sitting in the sun, or fish washed up on the shore, or… a body lying with its throat slit in a dinghy.
Gulls had pecked at the body, leaving chunks of flesh missing from its cheeks. Where the eyes had been, there were now hollows, nothing more than bloody gaping wounds. Even the ears were missing. Bits of cloth had been torn free as well, though it was clear that the person had once been dressed in a long dark cloak. Black hair was matted with blood.
“Where did they come from?” Carth asked.
Guya glanced over, and she noted the color had drained from his face. He’d seen as much as she had over the last few months, and this had challenged him in a way that little else had. “Just saw it floating here.”
“And where is here?” Carth surveyed the horizon but didn’t see any land nearby.
“Middle of the Great-Watcher-be-damned ocean. There’s nothing else around us, and certainly no reason a little clap of a boat like that should be out here on its own.”
“You ever see anything like that?” Dara asked.
Carth shouldn’t be surprised that Dara held herself together as well as she did. She had proven herself stronger than Carth would have suspected the first time they had met. Maybe her abduction had made her stronger than Carth had realized, or maybe she only pretended to hold it together. Given what she’d seen from Dara recently, the quiet and the hesitation, that was more likely.
“Unfortunately, I have,” Guya said.
Carth turned to him. “You have?”
“It’s considered a sign of disrespect. Leave a man to die in the midst of the sea, no oars, nothing but the sun and the salt water for company. Most kill themselves like this one here.”
Carth frowned, studying the body. Through the blood and the bits of flesh, she could make out few details about it, but enough to tell her that something wasn’t quite as it appeared. “There’s a couple of problems with that, Guya.” When he turned to her, she went on. “First, that’s a woman. Second, where’s the knife?”
Guya blinked, the puzzlement that flittered across his face fading quickly. “Well, damn,” he whistled. “Even worse that it happened to some poor lass.”
Carth laughed bitterly. “Some poor lass? Are you sure about that? That could have been me. Would you have called me a poor lass?”
He shrugged. “Might be I would. You’ve got gentle enough features. Then I get to know you and I’d wonder if you deserved it.”
Carth frowned. “What do you think happened here?”
“There would have been someone who came through here and left them. We’ll probably never know why or when.”
Carth pulled on the shadows, drawing the small vessel toward her, and jumped down to the dinghy.
Inside the small boat, the stench was even more pronounced. She held her nose, trying to ignore the stink, but gagged regardless. Up close, the body’s decay was easier to see. The hunks of flesh missing made the body more grotesque. Blood had clotted in some places, but not completely.
How was that possible?
Carth touched the blood. It was still wet.
A pool of it had accumulated in the bottom of the boat. This was congealed, a layer of thick and deep maroon forming a strange shape. The death was fresh enough that there should be other signs of what happened here.
She looked up toward Dara and Guya. Both stood at the railing, neither saying anything. Like Guya had said, leaving the body floating like this seemed like an insult of some kind. A message. What could this woman have done to deserve this?
Nothing.
No one deserved this.
There wasn’t anything on the body that would explain what happened here. After all the time she’d spent chasing down the Hjan, it was almost a relief to find something without any magical cause.
Pulling on the ring she wore on her middle finger, she sent a surge of S’al magic, that which she’d once called the A’ras flame, through her and into the bow of the dinghy. Fire licked at the wood, gradually taking hold.
Releasing the S’al, she drew upon the strength of the shadows and launched herself back onto the deck of the Goth Spald. She scanned the horizon, not
ing darkness moving in the distance. Carth tried shifting the shadows, cloaking herself briefly. Doing so could often allow her to see more clearly, but it didn’t help her this time. Darkness meant clouds, land, or other ships. They weren’t near land, and the sky was mostly clear. That left only one other possibility.
Tearing her gaze from the distance, she turned to Guya. The captain stood with his muscled arms crossed over his thick chest. The way his brow furrowed, the deep sun-kissed wrinkles creating shadows of their own, told her all she needed to know about his feelings about what they’d seen.
“I couldn’t leave her like that,” she said to Guya.
“Wouldn’t have expected it of you.”
Carth gazed into the boat. The flames had spread, leaping from the bow and reaching the dead woman. When they touched the blood, it crackled softly. Carth almost imagined sparks of flame within it.
“We should keep going,” she said to Guya. She used a hint of shadow magic to push their ship forward. “You don’t want to risk the flames spreading to the Spald.”
“Thought you could control them if they did.”
The fire had consumed the small vessel, now situated behind the stern of the boat. At the pace they were sailing—and with the addition of her power—they would move well beyond it quickly. The flames were bright, and getting brighter, and she could still feel the heat coming off of it, though wasn’t sure if that was something she imagined through her connection to the S’al or whether it was real.
“I can, but we still need to be careful. And that’s not why we’re going to want to get going.”
Dara looked up. She’d been staring into the water, following the burning dinghy as they passed, her eyes seeing something that Carth couldn’t quite make out.
Shadow Lost (The Shadow Accords Book 4) Page 2