The Shadowed Path

by Gail Z. Martin

  “You have the other things I told you to bring?” she asked the others. One by one, they nodded. “Good,” she said. “We’ll need them—and the luck of the Lady.”

  This crossroads suited, Alyzza said, because there was a burying ground in sight, further down the valley. One of the roads led into the forest, and the other crossed a stream. Both augured well for the magic to be worked. Alyzza gathered her things, and turned to look at the small group that had come with her. Linton rode up to join them.

  Alyzza led them to the center of the crossroads. She instructed them to step back, giving her room to pace off the circumference of a huge circle, which she drew with a line of salt. Then she walked widdershins around the circle, burning a bundle of sage as she muttered to herself.

  “Stand just outside the circle,” Alyzza ordered. “Leave an equal distance between each of you. The circle will contain the dimonn, if we’re lucky. When it comes, do as I told you, but don’t cross the circle. If the circle is broken, the dimonn is loosed.”

  And we all die, Jonmarc silently finished her sentence. Tonight he wore both swords, the last his father had forged. They remained sheathed. In each hand he held a length of iron rod, as did all the others. Trent and Corbin set up torches on iron poles to ring the circle and lit them.

  Jonmarc looked to each side. Dugan and Kegan stood with him, and each looked terrified. He guessed that they saw the same fear in his face.

  Alyzza carried a burlap sack with her into the center of the circle. She drew a knife and cut the burlap, seizing the frantic chicken inside. Alyzza held the bird aloft by its legs, paying no attention as its beak opened bloody tears on her arm.

  Alyzza was muttering, but Jonmarc could not hear her words. She lifted the screeching bird once to each of the four quarters, and Jonmarc knew she called on the light Aspects of the Lady: Mother and Childe, Warrior and Lover. Walking widdershins once more, Alyzza offered the bird again, this time for the dark Aspects: Crone, Whore, Formless One, and the Dark Lady.

  Abruptly, Alyzza raised her knife and plunged it into the squawking bird, then swung its carcass back and forth to sprinkle the dry ground with warm, fresh blood. Her chanting grew faster and louder, and Alyzza’s footsteps grew quicker, until she was dancing within the warded circle, spattered with blood, her stained hands raised to the moon.

  The night sky was clear, but a crack like thunder broke the stillness. Darkness obliterated the stars like a rift in the heavens. Out of the darkness a shadow descended, and became the form of a man dressed in black, holding a spine like a whip.

  “We’ve come for what is ours,” Alyzza demanded. “You are bound here, without power. Return Pol to us, unharmed, and be gone.”

  In the torchlight, the man’s face was the color of a drowned corpse. His black eyes darted from side to side like flies on carrion, and his mouth was a bloody slash that ran from ear to ear. When he spoke, his voice was a low growl that raised the hair on the back of Jonmarc’s neck, a voice from nightmares.

  “You have no power over me, witch.”

  “Give us back Pol, and our business is finished,” Alyzza said, raising her face defiantly to the dimonn.

  “Take him from me,” the dimonn challenged, throwing his right arm open and spreading his fingers wide. Pol appeared in the circle with him, but the night had worked a horrible change. Pol’s pox scars were swollen into oozing pustules, covering his body in sores, twisting his features and nearly closing both eyes. His hands were crabbed into claws, and patches of his hair had fallen out.

  Alyzza raised one hand, and a flash of light burst from her palm, driving the dimonn back.

  The dimonn dissolved into dark mist and swept out of the way of the light, solidifying a few steps away. “You’ll have to do better than that.”

  From the folds of her skirts, Alyzza withdrew a length of iron in one hand, and a gold piece in the other. “Fie,” she muttered. “You are bound by iron and gold, sage and salt, blood and fire. Give me Pol—as he was.”

  At Alyzza’s cue, each of the watchers held up their iron rods and gold coins. The dimonn turned to look at them, and the slash of a smile widened. “But what of those bound to me?” the voice grated.

  Jonmarc heard footfalls behind him and spun around. Shadowy shapes approached from all sides. Even before he could make out their features, he knew them by their movement. The spider girl skittered with unnerving speed across the dry grass. The stawar-man prowled toward them with all the power of the legendary big cat. A dark, hulking shape lumbered toward them like a bull, and a thick shadow, low to the ground, undulated like a massive snake.

  “They’re all ashtenerath,” Karl said. “Even the boy. He’s past helping.”

  “Don’t you dare say that!” Corbin challenged.

  Karl dropped the gold piece into his pocket, then grabbed one of the torches from its sconce, holding the iron bar in his other hand. “Doesn’t matter whether you believe me or not. It’s the truth.”

  Jonmarc had barely gotten a torch in hand when the stawar-creature lunged for him. Powerful jaws with long fangs snapped just short of his arm as Jonmarc dodged aside. He thrust the torch at his attacker, then brought the iron bar down hard on its thick skull. The stawar-man let out a howl of rage and attacked again, barely missing him with its claws.

  “Fire!” Karl shouted. “You’ve got to burn them!”

  Jonmarc swung the bar again, slamming the creature on the side of the head. He heard bones break, and ichor oozed from the wide gash. Jonmarc jabbed again with the torch, going for the tattered clothing that hung from the creature’s frame. The cloth caught fire, spreading to the fur, and the monster screamed as the flames engulfed it, a howl both animal and human.

  Trent and Dugan together battled the spider-thing, hacking at its many legs, frustrated by its unnatural speed. Trent’s sword sliced down with a stroke that should have snapped bone, only to skid along the hard carapace of the creature’s skin. To Jonmarc’s left, Corbin and Linton were hard-pressed to hold their own against the bull-monster. Linton jabbed with the torch, dancing around it like a drunken boxer, while Corbin rained down blow after blow that should have felled anything mortal. More of the things loomed in the shadows, shuffling their way toward the fight. Some moved faster than others, but it would not take many to overrun the rescue party.

  Inside the warded circle, the dimonn and Alyzza were warily circling each other. Alyzza brandished her gold like a shield, while the dimonn flicked his bone whip, waiting for an opening.

  A streak of blue-white lightning sizzled from Alyzza’s outstretched hand, and at the same instant, the spine-whip snapped out. The lightning grazed the dimonn, sending him reeling, but the whip struck Alyzza on the shoulder and she stumbled.

  “Not tonight!” Karl shouted, running toward the circle.

  “Karl, no!” Jonmarc yelled, sprinting to intercept him. “You can’t break the warding.”

  “There won’t be a warding if that thing gets in another blow,” Karl snapped, and with one leap, cleared the salt line without breaking it. Muttering a curse, Jonmarc followed an instant later.

  Karl managed to land next to Alyzza, and he thrust the torch between her and the dimonn. “Go back to the depths where you came from, monster!” he shouted.

  Jonmarc eyed the spine-whip as it flicked, and glanced toward Pol, who had inched his way closer to the fight. Jonmarc almost moved to intercept, but there was a flicker of something human enough in Pol’s eyes to make him pause.

  Alyzza had regained her footing, and she straightened, paying no heed to where the whip had laid open a gash on her shoulder. She raised her hands to chest level and opened them. With a word of power, iron nails flew like darts into the dimonn’s body. Jonmarc struck at the arm with the whip, bringing his iron rod down on the dimonn’s hand as he held his torch aloft. The whip flailed, knocking the burning brand from Jonmarc’s hand and throwing it across the circle.

  With a battle cry, Karl dove toward the dimonn, holding his
torch like a lance. The dimonn shrieked an ear-splitting howl, opening its toothed maw wide. Alyzza seized a fistful of gold coins from her skirt and leapt forward, pouring the golden treasure into the dimonn’s mouth. The dimonn began to smoke and shriek, falling to the ground though one hand scrabbled for its whip.

  “Go.” The voice sounded behind Jonmarc, drawn out like the shuddering breath of a dying man. Pol had grabbed Jonmarc’s fallen torch, and his twisted hands held it in a tight grip.

  “Pol!” Jonmarc shouted as the dimonn snatched back its whip and cracked it toward Jonmarc.

  Pol fell toward the dimonn, impaling it with the torch, and blocking the whip’s strike. The spine-whip cut Pol’s flesh deep enough to show his ribs, but Pol held tight to the torch. Alyzza leveled another blast of blindingly bright light, and Jonmarc was struck by something heavy, taken off his feet, and thrown into the air. He landed hard on the dirt, still blinking from the flare, scrabbling to get to his feet before one of the ashtenerath attacked.

  “You’re safe,” Trent said.

  Jonmarc blinked again, and as his eyes adjusted, he saw the circle completely engulfed in flames. “Alyzza… Karl—”

  “Right here,” Karl assured him, sitting on the ground not far from Jonmarc. He spotted Alyzza near the circle but outside the warding, watching to assure herself that nothing escaped.

  Flames lit the empty field bright as a bonfire. The misshapen creatures of the monstrosity show lay dead, cut down by the sword or burned by torches. Thick black smoke rose from the conflagration inside the circle, smelling of old blood and putrefying flesh.

  Corbin was on his knees near the circle, head in his hands, grieving. Jonmarc stared into the fire, but nothing stirred.

  “He was already dead, or near enough,” Karl said quietly, coming up behind Jonmarc. “Too far gone to help.”

  “You don’t know that,” Jonmarc snapped.

  “You can tell yourself that,” Karl said. “But it was too late. Pol used the last bit of himself to save us. Honor that, and move on.” He turned and walked away, toward the horses, and Jonmarc saw that Karl was limping.

  Trent’s heavy hand came down on Jonmarc’s shoulder. “You’re bleeding,” he said, with a glance toward where the bone whip had knocked the torch from Jonmarc’s hand. “Best get you back to a healer soon. A wound like that can go bad.”

  Jonmarc never took his eyes from the fire. “They were people once,” he said. “All those things. Before they were monsters, they were people.”

  Trent nodded. “They always are.”

  BAD PLACES

  “YOU’RE GOING TO get him killed.” Trent’s voice carried in the cool air. The smoke from the blacksmith’s forge hung on the wind as the coal fire grew hot enough to work.

  “No, I’m trying to keep him from getting killed,” Karl Steen argued. “He’s going to go, prepared or not, and if he isn’t prepared, he won’t make it.”

  Jonmarc Vahanian slowed down, trying to listen without being seen. He was certain the conversation was about him, and his plans to leave Maynard Linton’s caravan once they reached the border in order to sign on with one of the many mercenary troops in Principality.

  “He doesn’t need to leave,” Trent snapped. “He’s got a steady job with the caravan. Linton favors him. He’s good at the forge—Corbin and I depend on him.” Corbin, the caravan farrier, often borrowed Jonmarc from his apprenticeship with Trent. Blacksmiths and farriers went together like coal and iron.

  “He’s not ready to settle down,” Karl replied. “This caravan is a last resort, a place people gravitate to when they’ve lost everything else.”

  “Which is why he came here in the first place,” Trent said, banging the iron rods around more than necessary. “The kid’s been through a lot. Being a soldier won’t help.” Trent knew most of Jonmarc’s story, at least that he had lost his family to raiders and his wife and relatives to wild, magicked beasts. Some things he didn’t know, like the part about the red-robed vayash moru mage whose bargain had led to the tragedy, a powerful enemy who was somewhere in Margolan still nursing a grudge against Vahanian.

  “He’s a natural fighter,” Karl countered. “He’s better with a sword at eighteen than most men are after several years in the army. Jonmarc picked up the Eastmark kick quickly— and that’s a move few soldiers ever master.”

  “He’s safe here.” Trent’s voice was a growl. Although the blacksmith was only ten years older than Jonmarc, in the year Jonmarc had traveled with the caravan, Trent had become not just his master but his friend, and he was as protective as an older brother.

  “Men become mercs when they’ve got nothing left. They’re a rough bunch, and the mercs who make it aren’t the kind of people you want to know.” From where Jonmarc stood, he could hear the squeak and blast as Trent pumped the bellows. “He doesn’t have to end up like that.”

  “No one could have told me that at his age,” Karl said. Karl, who had signed on a few months prior as one of the caravan’s many hired guards. From what little he had shared with Jonmarc, Karl had done his time both as one of King Bricen’s soldiers and as a merc. So had Trent. “How well would you have listened, at eighteen?”

  Trent barked a harsh laugh. “Me? I didn’t listen to anyone. Got me where I am today.” There was a note of bitterness in his voice. Jonmarc knew almost nothing about Trent’s life before the caravan, but here within the tight-knit group of the traveling company, Trent had a wife and children, a respected position, and the trust of the caravan’s owner and impresario, Maynard Linton.

  “The caravan isn’t big enough for him, Trent,” Karl said. There was a note of sadness in his voice that Jonmarc had never heard before, a jaded disappointment and a certainty that nothing ever went as planned. “He might come back to it someday, but he’s got to strike out on his own, leave his ghosts behind. Most of us sign on with a troupe like this after we’ve spent all our dreams and come up a few coins short.”

  Jonmarc decided that he had eavesdropped long enough, so he made a noisy approach before he rounded the side of the blacksmith’s lean-to and came into view.

  “Hello Trent, Karl.”

  “You’re late,” Trent grumbled. The conversation had put Trent in a dark mood, and Jonmarc also guessed that Trent surmised the discussion had been overheard.

  “Still trying to get the tents set up,” Jonmarc said, although from the look on both men’s faces, his excuse didn’t fool anyone. “I got waylaid to help people on the way over.”

  “I’ll see you when you’re done with your work,” Karl said, taking his leave. Jonmarc and Karl sparred nearly every night after he finished up in the forge and the supper fires were banked. In the months since Karl had signed on with the caravan, Jonmarc knew he had improved as a swordsman, and his natural skill only deepened his resolve to seek his fortune in Principality.

  Maynard Linton’s caravan traveled the breadth of the kingdom of Margolan, and occasionally into the neighboring kingdoms of Principality and Dhasson. Linton’s marvelous troupe included acrobats, jugglers, musicians, and wild animal trainers, artisans and merchants, healers, tent riggers, hedge witches, and the assembly of wagon masters, cooks, farriers, blacksmiths, and guards that it took to keep such an entourage on the road. The individual members changed along the route as people came and went, but the caravan’s ability to amaze and mystify never waned.

  Linton had taken Jonmarc in when there had been nowhere else for him to go, and for that, Jonmarc would be forever grateful. But Karl had summed up Jonmarc’s restlessness exactly, and as much as Jonmarc had come to care for his friends with the caravan, he was increasingly ready to strike out on his own and see what he could do. He suspected that Trent understood, even if he didn’t like it.

  “How long do you think we’ll camp here?” Jonmarc said, tying on his leather apron and getting to work. “We’re not going to draw any crowds in the middle of nowhere.”

  Trent shrugged and took out his frustrations on the hot bar o
f iron he worked on the anvil. “Not too long. Give everyone a rest after how busy it’s been, fix the wagons and the tents, and pasture the horses.”

  “Linton decide yet which way we’re going after this?” Jonmarc hurried to bring more coal for the fire and ready more iron bars in the forge, since he figured he was partially responsible for Trent’s sullen mood.

  “Not that I’ve heard,” Trent muttered. “Linton keeps his own counsel—too much, if you ask me, and he doesn’t.” He struck the iron a few more times. “I’ve already told him what I think. Too damn dangerous trying to take everyone across on barges down by the floating city. I’d much rather go across the North Bridge—soldiers be damned.”

  Jonmarc had heard Trent’s thoughts on the matter before. If they went north, a large bridge connected Margolan and Principality across the wide Nu River. That bridge, however, was guarded by King Bricen’s troops and those who crossed not only paid a toll, their goods were subject to inspection.

  Since the caravan made some of its money by smuggling, Jonmarc understood why Linton was loathe to subject his wagons to the inquiries of the king’s guards. The alternate route involved going south to a less formal arrangement of river traders who would take groups across for a fee, no questions asked. Trent and Corbin had already expressed their opinions about the traders, but Jonmarc expected Linton would take the southern route. He was also curious about what everyone called a ‘floating city’, an arrangement of houseboats, barges, rafts, and other boats that tied up to each other when the mood struck them and went their separate way when necessity required.

  “How did Linton pick this forsaken spot to camp?” Jonmarc asked. Usually, the caravan chose an open meadow large enough for the performance tents and trader’s stalls, with room in the back for the tents, wagons and lean-tos of the crew, plus their horses, cook fires, and the moveable blacksmith’s forge. When they were performing, the meadow also had to be close to well-traveled routes and several towns or villages in order to bring in plenty of customers.