Magic Below Paris Complete Series Boxed Set (Books 1 - 8): Trading Into Shadow, Trading Into Darkness, Trading Close to Light, Trading By Firelight, Trading by Shroomlight, plus 3 more

by C. M. Simpson

  “Shadow’s Heart,” she whispered.

  The damn thing really was going to fit.

  Even as she thought it, the cat lowered its head, a growl rumbling from its throat as it stalked into the chamber. Marsh did not doubt that she had its attention. Its gaze was fixed firmly on her face as its growl stroked her skin. She shuddered and readied her blade. Behind her, the girl whimpered and was hushed, and claws skittered on stone, then fell silent.

  Marsh took a slow, deep breath and looked into the hoshkat’s azure eyes.

  “It’s time you left,” she told it, and its lips curled back from its teeth.

  A second growl echoed through the chamber and the big beast crouched.

  Marsh wrapped her free hand around the sword hilt so that she had a two-handed grip and faced the kat. She figured she only had one chance, and she was going to need all the strength she had.

  “You’re making a really bad choice,” she told the kat, staring into its eyes and really wishing she didn’t have to kill it—or die trying. “You really are.”

  “Don’t!” the boy cried—and Marsh’s world changed.

  She fell, although her feet were firmly anchored to the ground. Yet she fell, and the hoshkat rose to meet her, swallowing her with its eyes until their thoughts met and mingled. Marsh snarled at it as she prepared for its strike, her voice echoing in the chamber. The kat lifted its lips, assessing her with a steady gaze.

  “We’re both going to die because of this,” Marsh told it, drawing the sword hilt close to her shoulder and preparing to meet the kat’s leap.

  “No!”

  Somewhere in another world where her body mirrored the actions of her mental self, Marsh heard the boy shout in angry denial.

  “Sorry, kid.”

  Her lips moved, her voice soft in the stillness surrounding them, but Marchant’s attention didn’t shift. She couldn’t let it. She would have one chance, like the kat, but it was the kat who had to choose which way this meeting went. It could die, or it could live. It only had to turn away.

  If it turned, she would let it go. If it didn’t pursue them through the caverns, she would let it go, and it would live to continue its hunt and feed its cubs. If it turned, she would not strike.

  Marsh tried to picture what that would look like—her, standing, sword poised to meet its leap, while it turned back along its own length, trusting its strength and ferocity to be enough for her to let it depart. That was what she hoped for—the great beast moving back through the gap and out into the many-tiered cavern to hunt to its heart’s content, but not her and the children. A truce between them.

  She could imagine the alternative, too: the kat leaping to the attack and her stepping into the sweep of its paws and the gape of its jaws so that she could drive the blade deep into its chest or stomach. What followed…

  Marsh swallowed hard against the fear in her throat. The blade would be trapped, and the kat would go into a frenzy. She wouldn’t be able to let go, or it would take the children next. She stared at the beast opposite , willing it to leave her and her own cubs be.

  The kat hissed and Marsh snapped free of its eyes, landing in her own skin more completely than before. She bent her knees, preparing to take the impact of its leap, but she didn’t try to strike.

  “Leave us alone,” Marsh whispered. “Leave us—and live. My word for your life, your word for ours.”

  It made no sense to speak to the kat. The beasts were known for their ruthless cunning and their ability to kill, but their private lives were a mystery. How she’d known it had kits was beyond her. She locked eyes with it, but this time she didn’t fall into its gaze.

  The kat’s lips rippled, a soft hiss gliding between them, and it glanced back to the chamber’s entrance before returning its attention to her face. Marsh froze, hardly daring to breathe. The kat shifted its eyes to her blade as though noting that it hadn’t moved and then it slowly uncoiled, pulling out of its crouch and extending its forepaws.

  Marsh still didn’t move, hardly able to believe her eyes as the big beast stretched in front of her, its eyes both wary and mocking as though daring her to attack. Marsh resisted the urge to strike, as well as the one that told her to shake her head. The boss might call her all kinds of stupid, but that wasn’t one of them. She stayed as still as the walls around them as the kat gave a languid yawn before coming out of its stretch to curl back along its own length as she had imagined.

  Marsh held her breath.

  She was still holding it when the last of the kat disappeared. The gap in the wall was an empty patch against the darkness, although it was hard to tell if the kat was really gone or waiting just outside. The longer she stood there, the more Marsh became aware of the sounds traveling through the dark, including the distant cough as the hoshkat resumed hunting through the hall beyond.

  The cough broke through her fear and Marsh slowly lowered the sword. It surprised her to find that the chamber was darker than she remembered. She turned, looking for the children, and saw only shadow, ink-black and thick as paint. Raising the sword, she thought about poking the darkness and then decided against it.

  As effective as it would be, she didn’t want to risk poking holes in either of the children—which reminded her that she didn’t know either of their names. Until she’d grabbed them in the attack, there’d been no need, and their parents had discouraged them from talking to the other members of the caravan.

  “Kids?” she asked, reluctant to take the single pace that would take her into the thick black.

  And the shadow dropped away.

  It was replaced by a slowly brightening glow. The light shuddered unsteadily as the boy held it in his cupped hands, his lips moving as though he were whispering it into existence. Beside him, his sister crouched, her eyes as wide as saucers—as if what her brother was doing was more impressive than the creature that had just left.

  When the glow steadied, the boy huffed out a quick breath and pushed up onto one knee, setting the glow on top of the boulder beside him. His face looked drawn and pale in the light, and he wobbled unsteadily as he got to his feet. Marchant tossed a quick glance back toward the entrance and then focused on the boy.

  “Are you okay?” she asked. It was his sister who answered.

  “It always makes him tired.”

  “What does?”

  “Playing with the shadows and the light. Mama gets so cross.”

  Marsh realized what she had seen.

  “You called the shadows?” she asked as the boy sagged against the rock.

  He nodded, and Marsh indicated the glow.

  “And you made that.”

  This time it was more a statement of fact than a question. After all, she had watched it grow in his hands. Again he nodded. Marsh looked at the girl.

  “Can you do the same thing?” she demanded.

  The child stood and wound her hand around her brother’s, ducking her head and looking up at Marsh through her fringe.

  “Well?” Marsh insisted, and the child shook her head, pressing into the boy’s side.

  Before she could ask anything else, the boy spoke.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Ruins Hall,” Marsh said and looked around the chamber. “Just as soon as I can remember the way.”

  “And the kat?”

  “She won’t come after us.”

  That got his attention.

  “How do you know?”

  Marsh shrugged.

  “I just know.”

  His frown got deeper.

  “How?”

  Marsh frowned. It was a good question. In the end, she just shrugged and made a show of looking around the room.

  “What do you think about staying here for the night?”

  This time the boy didn’t answer. He just plopped back down on the floor.

  “They took our parents,” he said.

  For a moment Marsh thought he might say more, but then one of the nearby rocks stirred, its movement
catching her eye. Marsh dropped her hand to the hilt of her sword and took a step toward it, but the little girl gave a horrified shriek and dropped down beside the rock, wrapping her arms around it.

  As soon as she had, the “rock” shuddered, becoming a fluffy ball of black and gray fluff with striations of khaki and brown. A pointed snout and two pricked ears became apparent, and Marchant stared as the krypthund puppy turned its head and washed the little girl’s face. The child looked at it adoringly, her blue eyes shifting to a glowing green. The pup froze, staring into her face as though mesmerized.

  The boy looked across at her.

  “Aisha, no!” he muttered. Marsh was sure that was supposed to come out as a shout.

  Aisha glared at her brother, pursing her lips as she hung onto the dog.

  “He is my puppy,” she said in a tone that brooked no argument. “All mine!”

  The fluffball wriggled closer.

  Marchant looked from one to the other of them.

  “What just happened?”

  The boy shrugged.

  “Don’t know, but Dad said we should never look in a wild beast’s eyes or we might lose our ability to think like a human.”

  Marchant’s eyebrows lifted as the boy continued.

  “He said I had to be careful because I had magic.” His voice crumbled around the edges. “We were moving so we could be near the shadow mages.” Marchant didn’t know what to say when he added, “We were moving because of me.”

  Marsh heard the tears and searched frantically for something to head them off. In the end, it wasn’t much.

  “We need to eat,” she said, unslinging her pack and setting it on the ground in front of them.

  The boy watched her, eyes dull and face still drawn. Whatever he’d done, it seemed to have sapped him of all his energy. Marchant dug into her pack and pulled out a loaf of travel bread, and Aisha stepped cautiously closer. Her expression was still wary, but her eyes were on the bread. The pup was not so shy.

  It watched as Marsh tore off a piece of bread and held it out to the boy, panting slightly as he took it and held it in his lap. When Marsh did the same for the girl, the pup lunged forward, nipping the bread from Marsh’s hands and turning away from them to wolf it down, its small jaws ripping and crunching through the crust.

  “Hey!”

  Aisha was not impressed, but Marsh grabbed her before she could try to get it back.

  “I have some more.”

  When the little girl was nibbling her bread, Marsh took a small piece for herself, realizing she had another problem. There were three of them, not counting the hund. She only carried a couple of days’ supplies in her pack, and the water canteen would need filling. She was going to have to get them to Ruins Hall quickly—or ask the boy to conjure up some more bread.

  She wondered if he could.

  3

  A Path Through the Dark

  Marchant woke stiff, her eyes adjusting as she glanced around the chamber. The soft light of the glow made it easy to notice things she hadn’t registered the night before—like the lockers lining one wall, the darker brown of a creeping mass of moss, and the water stain in one corner.

  At least it was a stain and not an actual pool.

  Marsh stood, checking on the children, who were curled under her blanket. She was sore from spending a night on the floor, and bone-achingly tired from the previous day’s run and pushing the rubble across the gap leading into their refuge.

  She was surprised to see the krypthund puppy curled up under Aisha’s arm, but not surprised to see its gleaming eyes watching her as she stretched.

  “Don’t you have a home to go to?” she asked it, but it didn’t respond except to raise its head and watch as she crossed to the nearest locker.

  It was probably a waste of time, but Kearick would kick her tail if she told him she’d seen them and not looked inside.

  The first one was full of nothing but dust and black-furred moss, and the second had more of the same. It was as she went to open the third one that the puppy started to growl.

  Marsh glanced at him.

  “What? It’s not like anyone cares.”

  But he wormed his way out from under the blanket, letting Aisha’s arm drop to the floor as he trotted toward her. Marsh shook her head and laid her hand on the locker’s door—and the pup gave a sharp bark and bounded over, sinking his sharp little teeth into her trouser leg and pulling.

  Marsh let go of the latch and took a step in the direction the hund was yanking. The tips of her fingers snagged as she moved away, and it lifted a little, but she ignored it, following the determined tugs on her ankle.

  “Okay, fine. Okay. I’ll leave the lockers alone!”

  At least she could tell Kearick she’d opened a couple and they’d been empty.

  The pup had woken the children up with its growling, and they were staring at her in sleepy confusion. Aisha was pouting, as though it was Marsh’s fault that the dog had left her. Suddenly the pout turned to wide-eyed alarm and she scrambled to her feet, climbing onto the boulder holding the glow with a shrill squeal of fear.

  At the same time, the pup let go of Marchant’s leg and bounced past her.

  Marsh turned, both to see what it was doing and to see what had put the look of fear on Aisha’s face. It didn’t help that the boy had picked up the blanket and the pack and stepped up onto a piece of rubble of his own. What in the Shadows….

  Oh.

  The slender form of a cave viper had emerged from the locker’s partially opened door. Its head and the first foot of its rough-scaled body were heading in her direction—or they had been until the pup had leapt between them. Marsh was just in time to see the pup bounce once to the left, feint forward, and then pounce.

  The snake reared, and the pup’s small jaws closed over its neck.

  “Scruffknuckle!”

  “Aisha!”

  The cries were all the warning Marchant got, but she was still able to grab Aisha as the girl rushed by. She pulled the youngster back, relieved when the boy got a firm grip on his sister and freed Marsh up to help the dog.

  Because he needed help. He might be doing something he’d seen his parents do, but he was nowhere near big enough to deal with the viper on his own. It hissed angrily as its body looped and coiled, trying to pull free of the pup’s jaws. The pup growled in response, shaking his head from side to side.

  Marsh brought her foot down on the snake’s curling body before pulling the broad-bladed dagger at her belt. She only hoped the pup could keep its grip a couple of seconds longer. Scruff growled louder, pulling so that the snake stretched taut between Marsh’s boot and his bite. It was all Marsh needed. She slashed the dagger down, severing the snake’s body, and then kicked the remains into the gleaming, brown moss.

  Scruff continued to growl and jerk his head back and forth, refusing to let go of the viper until it had stopped hissing and moving. And then he trotted over to the edge of the moss, and, with a flick of his head, threw those remains into the patch as well. He danced away quickly, yapping and snarling at the brown mass, before trotting over to Aisha.

  “You are a good boy!” the little girl crooned, kneeling in front of him and tangling her fingers through the thick fur of his neck. “Bon puppy. Tres, tres bon! Yes, you are.”

  “You better come away,” the boy said, and Marsh glanced at him.

  He waved his hand toward the moss.

  “It’s not safe.”

  Not safe? How would he know? Marsh hadn’t seen that kind of moss before, so it was unlikely the kid had. She glanced down at it—and then backed quickly away as a fringe of inch-long tendrils sprouted around the snake’s carcass, lengthening as they curled around it and pulled it deeper into the spongy surface. A faint fizzing sound reached her ears as a light brown froth bubbled up around the body.

  She backed off another couple of steps, surprised to see more tendrils sprouting around the edges of the brown mass—and mildly alarmed when they grew to a
hand-length long and stroked curiously over the bare floor closest them.

  “What is that?”

  “Unfriendly?”

  As the boy scrambled off the rock, Marsh noticed the color had returned to his cheeks and that his face looked less gaunt.

  “We saving the bread for tonight?”

  Marsh knew what he was asking. He wanted to know how much they had left, and as much as she didn’t want to tell him, he had a right to know. Ten was old enough, right?

  “Yes,” she said, and would have left it at that if he hadn’t pushed for more.

  “So, when do we have to get to Ruins Hall by?” he asked, and his eyes darted to his sister.

  Marsh understood; he wanted to know how many days’ food they had left, but he didn’t want to worry Aisha. That was good, because she didn’t want to worry the child either.

  “Three days at the most,” she told him and wondered how in all the Shades she was going to manage it.

  “Do you know the way?”

  The question gave her pause. Truth? She didn’t know the way. Did she think she could work it out? Sure. Well, maybe. It depended on how far these ruins went before they turned back into tunnels. Outside of Ruins Hall, this was her first experience with what the Ancients had left behind—and she didn’t quite know what to make of it. What she did know was that she needed to get back out into the corridor if she was going to try to match up the maps in her head with the direction they’d traveled in.

  “I can figure it out.”

  The boy stared at her, demanding an explanation, and Marsh gave an exasperated sigh.

  “Look…” She paused. “What is your name, anyway.”

  “Well, it’s not ‘anyway,’” the boy snapped back, “but thanks for asking. It’s about time you bothered. I’m Tamlin. She’s Aisha.”

  Aisha was horrified.

  “Tams! That’s rude!”

  “Yeah, well, it’s not like she bothered to ask.”

  They were both right, but Marsh narrowed her eyes at them.