I Walked with Shadows (Sightless Book 1)

by K. C. M.

  From there, the next few hours were a blur. Jonas had untied her and she’d rushed inside to tell the innkeeper, who was too busy to listen. She’d been yelled at and told to not bother him in front of his customers. She’d had to retreat to the kitchen, where she told the cook. Cook snapped, telling her to stop making up stories. Holly had retorted that if they went up to the Masks’ room, they’d see for themselves. Cook finally relented and they enlisted the innkeeper’s wife, who had keys to all the rooms. Holly’s keys had mysteriously disappeared.

  She should have guessed the dark man was smarter than that. They’d returned to find the room trashed, but empty. Nothing out of the ordinary in an inn. The innkeeper’s wife lamented the mirror and than ranted at Holly.

  After that, Holly had been frantic. It was dark and she knew that somehow the man was going to do something awful, most likely to Sir Frost, the champion of humans. It only made logical sense for him to be arriving on a boat, so she ran down to the harbor. Then it was a matter of picking out strangers.

  In the end, she’d tried to demand entrance to three ships and been rebuffed at all three.

  “Cussed nuisance,” She ground her teeth, her jaw aching from how much she’d been grinding and clenching her teeth today. Her entire body ached, actually, probably a dratted side effect of having been drugged. Or it was from her own stupidity in jumping out a second story window. “Think, Holly,” She demanded of herself, refusing to be distracted by the aches and pains. “Just think.”

  She couldn’t get anyone to listen to her just because she was a lowly maid and there were no bodies to back up her claim. Her mind skedaddled about, searching for a solution. After a moment, a gleam lit her eye and she took off running away from the docks, towards the edge of town where the wall between city and forest was located.

  Holly’s lungs burned after just a short while and she had to stop. She bent and put her hands on her knees, her body trembling. After a few deep breaths, she made herself keep going, pushing her body to run as fast as it could. She had a feeling deep inside that she wasn’t running fast enough.

  Wham.

  Holly fell in a tangled heap of arms and legs.

  For a confused moment, she couldn’t sort out which limbs were hers. Then a hand covered her mouth and she was blinking up into a pair of brilliant green eyes. A sense of déjà vu swept over her.

  “You’re quick to find trouble.” The dark man said.

  She started to reply, but his hand was tight across her mouth. She couldn’t breathe through her mouth let alone speak. She settled for glaring, because if she concentrated on her anger, she didn’t feel so afraid.

  Indulgently, the assassin smiled. With a start, she realized that he had lowered his cowl. Determined to report him to the authorities (any authorities, at this point; she wasn’t feeling picky), she studied his face, committing it to memory.

  To match his high forehead, he had high cheekbones. His nose was perfectly straight, but his eyebrows were uncommonly angled. Somehow that fit his face, all sharp angles…like a fox. There was an unnatural stillness in him, too, that called to mind a great predator. As if he was sensing things going on around them, biding his time, waiting to strike…Holly swallowed, feeling cold. His hands were strong, the calloused fingers long and capable. He could kill her easily. She’d been lucky to escape alive before.

  But he didn’t kill her. Instead, his hand slipped from her mouth, down to her neck. She thought he might squeeze and strangle her, but he didn’t. His fingers gently brushed the frantic pulse pounding away in her neck.

  “Are you afraid of me?”

  He broke the silence and she flinched at the suddenness of his voice. She almost blurted yes and then pride stopped her. She lifted her chin, acting as if it was perfectly natural for a man to hold her neck like he intended to strangle her.

  He had probably been clean-shaven earlier, but now a coarse, days growth marred his chin and the area around his mouth. His eyes were bright green, watching her, evaluating her…with a start, she realized he was studying her as intensely as she was studying him.

  “Are you going to kill me?” She asked instead of replying. There was no sense in lying; the man was literally touching her pulse. He could feel how frantically her heart was beating.

  His well-formed lips tilted slightly. “You’re not important enough for me to kill.”

  “I suppose Sir Frost is important enough to merit your blade?” She retorted.

  The hint of a smile fled and his face was unreadable as he bluntly said, “Was important enough.”

  The blood drained from her flushing cheeks. She felt suddenly weak. “Was? You…you’ve already…”

  He watched her eyes close as if she were pained. “Where are you heading?” He asked.

  Unhearing, she continued, “I knew what you were about…but they wouldn’t listen…and now he’s…gone.”

  Quite suddenly, the murderer’s hand grasped her neck, choking off her words. He shook her slightly and she stared at him frightened, her hands grasping at his wrist uselessly. He released her once he had her attention. “Go home and be grateful you’re alive.”

  Then he turned and strode off. In another second, he was gone, the shadows forming and clinging around him as if he were some creature of darkness. Holly stared wide-eyed after him, still having difficulty breathing.

  Go home? As if she could go home now. He’d just confessed to killing someone! She recovered her breath and licked her lips, before jogging down a side alley. Laney’s brother was one of the soldiers stationed by the farms on the outskirts of town. He’d risen through the army ranks quickly. If anyone could convince the Masks that Holly was telling the truth about the assassin, it was him. At least, she hoped it was him.

  The gnomes were waiting in the shadows of the forest.

  Connor had to turn back towards the town to avoid them. The shadows whispered in his ear that the gnomes were stirring, their knives and swords catching the gleam of starlight, and their eyes hungry.

  Of course they’d attack the humans tonight.

  For being the best at what he did, this job was not going at all like Connor had planned.

  He backtracked quickly.

  The shadows filled with war cries.

  If he’d been a cursing man, he would have cursed. These outer houses were filled with a combination of farmers who worked the fields and soldiers, who protected the fields. Right now, soldiers were streaming out of the houses.

  Connor reached up and tugged the familiar cloth around his face. The shadows wrapped around him. Most of the soldiers hurried past him and the few who did see him, only cast a passing glance at him. As soon as he was back in the town, he made a beeline for an empty alley.

  Unfortunately, it was just then that his luck really ran out.

  Magic slammed into him, casting aside the shadows.

  He reacted instantly. He threw himself to the side, rolling across the ground, coming up in a crouch next to a wall. Shadows wrapped themselves like the air around him, over him, in him. In his hands he held a sword and curved knife.

  Like a force, the five men who called themselves Masks, advanced. For a people who hated magic, these men were well equipped. The enchanted weapons in their hands were trained on him. One of them had momentarily cast away Connor’s shadows, which meant that at least one Mask was a trained magician.

  In just a few seconds, Connor evaluated and found himself in a very dangerous circumstance. For the first time, he’d underestimated his prey. He was getting lax, but that wouldn’t stop him.

  He extended his senses to all the nearby shadows of the night.

  Then he attacked, putting himself on the offensive.

  The man closest went down easily. Connor swiped the man’s sword out of his hand and knocked him off his feet. In a smooth, practiced motion, he turned and caught the next man’s blade. At the same time, he tugged on the shadows behind the men. From the corner of his eye, Connor noted the tall, fair-haired man wh
o raised his hands, murmuring. The magician. With a fierce tug, the shadows whipped across the man’s face, filling his mouth, and choking the man, stopping the words. Letting his anger fill him, Connor faced the last two men who were charging at him.

  One of the men was favoring his right leg. Connor twisted away and planted a foot on the man’s weak leg. With a cry, the man went down. The remaining man stabbed, but Connor was already moving. Parry with his sword, twist, and then a smooth flow of muscle that guided his knife into the man.

  He freed the knife and turned to the Mask on the ground, slamming the hilt of his sword into the man’s temple.

  Not waiting for more men to attack, he turned and headed towards the magician, still choking on shadows.

  His sword was posed to end the man’s life when a woman shouted, “No!”

  More annoyed, than deterred, he paused and met the maid’s wide, horrified eyes.

  Then pain bloomed and shattered at the base of his skull.

  As he dropped to his knees, he saw a shadow detach itself from a side doorway.

  There’d been a second magician.

  He fought the senselessness, the shadows around him swirling violently. In an agonizing, slow moment, he faded.

  Magic never kept him unconscious for long, but the smoke helped wake him up faster. As his nose and lungs filled with the acrid odor, he choked and snapped to attention. He was in a building of wood, his arms chained above him to the ceiling. Chains also wrapped around his ankles. What’s more, two circles surrounded him. The first, a circle of salt, made him chuckle. The second, a circle of chalked runes, made him frown. The second was inconvenient.

  He could escape. The problem was, did he have time to escape?

  The very building he was in was on fire. Likely a result from the gnome attack. Somehow, Connor didn’t think anyone would be rushing to save him.

  He gritted his teeth and yanked at his own shadow, forcing it up his body to his wrists. The shadows fit themselves into the keyholes of his chains. Connor tasted blood in his mouth from the effort of manipulating his own shadow, but after a few more severe twists, the irons clicked open and he was free. He bent and tugged at the chains around his feet. Also locked. With his hands, he covered the keyholes, filling them with shadows. Another click and he was completely free of the chains.

  Unfortunately, it would take longer to free himself from the circle of runes and the roof was starting to collapse. His lungs burned from the smoke.

  The door banged open and Connor tightened the shadows around himself for protection as a huge chunk of ceiling broke loose and fell.

  The good news was that the falling ceiling had fallen on top of the circles, breaking the runes power over him. Connor leapt over the piece of ceiling and ran for the open door. In his haste to be free, he charged into the slight figure, squinting with watery eyes into the building.

  The girl stumbled back and then tripped and fell. His foot caught under her leg and for the second time in one day, he found himself sprawled half on top of the maid from the inn. For a moment, he could only draw raw, refreshing breaths of clean air. He let his forehead press against the cool dirt.

  But he couldn’t stay like that for long.

  A battle was taking place, practically on top of them, and he had to get back to the forest. Not to mention, the girl was squirming under him, trying to push him off. Fighting the pain in his body, Connor gained his feet and took off towards the distant, shadowy forest.

  “No, wait. Wait!”

  The maid caught the edge of his cloak, but he kept running, outdistancing her easily. He wove through streets and dodged between soldiers of all kinds. He didn’t stop until he was finally and blissfully hidden away in the forest.

  3 Into the Woods

  “Fiddlesticks, bogus, drat, cuss, and blazes,” Holly whispered to herself.

  It was late into the night, she hadn’t slept at all, and she was well and truly lost in the midst of the magic forest. The worst part was that she didn’t dare stop moving for fear of what could be following her.

  After she had run to Aldrik, Laney’s brother, and told him of the plot, he’d gone to the Masks and convinced them to believe her. By then, they’d already found Sir Frost’s body. They’d caught the assassin, but with the battle raging, they’d had to tie him up and throw him in a building for a later judgment. No one had cared that the building caught fire. No one except Holly. Although she’d been to warn the soldiers of the assassin, it hadn’t seemed right to leave him to die in a burning building. Even if he was just a killer.

  She almost wished she had left him there to die, now.

  In her effort to get him out of the building, he’d escaped and disappeared into the night. She’d foolishly tried to follow, until she realized that there was an entire brigade of magical warriors right behind her. Then she’d just been intent on escaping.

  Somehow she’d ended up here in the forest, out of breath and terrified of everything that moved. And it didn’t seem to matter how many ridiculous curses she came up with, none of them were making her feel any better about her situation.

  She was behind enemy lines.

  She wasn’t even dressed for this, still wearing nothing but her thin brown work dress with the sleeves rolled up. In the dark, she couldn’t even see the inn’s blue insignia on the dress’s left breast. She wished she had a cloak. A chill was settling in the air. She’d never had to spend the night out in the middle of the woods like this. She was probably going to freeze before she found her way out.

  Somewhere in the distance, she heard gruff voices.

  I’m going to die, she thought. Her mouth twisted. Somehow this was not even close to how she’d imagined her life would end. Not that she spent much time imagining the end…truthfully, she really hadn’t imagined it at all. She’d just always assumed it would come when it came. Apparently life was full of surprises.

  Like assassins appearing in normal inn rooms.

  Holly forced her thoughts away and paused to listen. The voices were coming from somewhere to her left, she thought. She darted the opposite direction.

  Bushes with their thorny branches caught at her skirt, scratching her legs. Occasionally, she was jerked to a stop and had to yank at her skirt to free the cloth. There was a half moon out, but the large, leafy trees blocked most the light.

  Her foot caught on something hard, possibly a stone or a root, and Holly careened forward. Her shoulder smashed into a tree where she caught herself. She paused, her forehead pressed to the craggy bark, and waited for the pain in her shoulder to die down. Her hand, where she pressed it against the tree, felt oddly wet. Sap? She was suddenly too tired to care if she got sticky. She wanted to lie down…

  “Okay, Holly,” She whispered to herself. “Just keep moving. A few more steps.”

  She dragged herself onward, crunching leaves, stumbling occasionally. When she fell, it seemed to take an enormous amount of strength to regain her feet. The aches in her body grew until she felt like she lived in a world of dazed pain.

  By the time dawn came, Holly was crawling. Inch by agonizing inch, she made her way. Her only clear thought was that she had to keep moving. If she stopped, something bad was going to happen. Some time during the night, she’d come across a rocky ridge and now she dragged herself along its edge, following it through the forest. As if watching from a distance, she murmured to herself that the ridge might act like a breadcrumb if she needed to find her way back to Myre. The ridge itself looked as if a section of the forest had suddenly chosen to sink down a good ten feet. In some places the ridge grew and the fall was more like twenty or thirty feet. Holly didn’t care for heights and at those points, her progress slowed even more, as one hand stayed near the ridge, while she tried to keep the rest of her body as far from it as possible. Yet, she hardly possessed the strength to raise her head. She was exhausted, worn out.

  Something crashed nearby and she froze.

  Dimly she thought, whatever was after me has
caught up.

  Her hands closed on what was nearest them. In one was a rock and in the other a pinecone. Pinecone? She thought hazily. Who knew there were pinecones in the magic forest? Somehow it seemed…too normal. She dropped the pinecone and found a sturdy stick, about the length of her forearm.

  She caught her breath then, trying to listen, but soon her lungs strained and the breath expelled in a noisy whoosh of air. She gasped in a new breath and tried to listen again. Perhaps the first crash had been in her mind…

  Should she try to stand and look around?