The Shadow Sorceress

by Victor Gischler

  While that would definitely have warmed me considerably, her tone made it clear it wasn’t an invitation.

  I turned and followed her gaze to the treeline.

  A column of riders emerged from the forest two by two.

  “I thought you said they couldn’t follow us.”

  Lill made an irritated sound in her throat, something halfway to a growl. “Even if they had hounds, we would have thrown them off in the stream. Then they would have had to spot our tracks in the snow by torchlight. It’s impossible.”

  I gestured at the men coming out of the forest, perhaps sixty of them. “And yet here we are.”

  “In the Wastes we have trackers,” she said. “Legendary men who can …” She trailed off, her face going blank, and I knew she’d tapped into the spirit. She leaned forward, eyes squinting. “Do you see those two, right behind the leaders?”

  I looked, but they all appeared the same at this distance. “My eyes aren’t as good as yours.”

  “They wear furs,” Lill said. “And axes strapped across their backs. I think they are trackers from my homeland.”

  “From the Glacial Wastes? What are they doing here?”

  “I can’t think of an answer to that question that doesn’t worry me. Let’s go. We’ve got to throw them off.”

  “Easier said than done evidently.”

  “Shut up. We’re going.”

  We slid down the boulder and got back on our horses, and Lill led us higher into the rocky hills. We reached the next plateau, and Lill halted. I could see her looking around, some plan forming.

  “Get off your horse,” Lill said. “You’re going to ride double with me.”

  “Oh?”

  “I’m sending your gelding around the other side of the hill. It will draw some of them off.”

  I climbed down from the gelding and took my saddlebags.

  “Leave them,” Lill said. “There’s no time.”

  “This is the last of my worldly possessions, meager as they are,” I told her. “I’m bringing them.”

  I didn’t bother to mention the capture net. Frankly, I hoped she’d forgotten about it. During the course of our previous exploits, we’d come away with some interesting items. Lill possessed a small vial of extract from the murder blossom, the most powerful poison in the world. She had a very specific use for it. Long story. Lill also possessed a healing stone created by a goddess. It was so powerful it could heal any wound, cure any disease, even counteract the deadliest poison in the world.

  Another long story.

  After our adventures, I’d come away with the capture net. It was weighted at the corners for throwing and entangling an opponent. This capture net was different in that the weighing stones were covered with magical runes. The net sapped an ink mage of her spirit. I’d seen it in action and didn’t need to wonder why Lill didn’t like the thing. I wasn’t even sure why I’d kept it, but it was magical and valuable after all.

  I slung the saddlebags over the stallion, and Lill reached down to pull me up behind her. I put my arms around her waist and hung on, my cheek against her broad back. I fancied I could feel her warmth even through the chain mail and thick cloak.

  She slapped my horse hard on the rump, and sent it galloping around the other side of the hill.

  “That might draw some of them away,” she said.

  I hoped so. Waste of a good horse otherwise.

  She spurred the stallion, and we climbed the other way higher into the hills. We road quickly for a while. I closed my eyes and hung on. Even bouncing in the saddle, it would have been so easy to let sleep draw me down into cottony oblivion. Indeed, I’d almost fallen into a doze, when she reined the horse suddenly, dismounted and climbed to the top of another large boulder.

  I looked up at her, waited as she squinted back down the trail at our pursuers.

  “Good,” Lill said. “Half have broken off to follow your horse. Still too many.”

  She climbed down from the boulder and told me to dismount.

  “Bring your saddlebags if you still want them.”

  I looked at the saddlebags, back at Lill. “What are we doing?”

  “Sending the horse on another diversion.”

  “I’m not trying to dazzle you with my mathematical skills, but that would, in fact, leave us with zero horses.”

  “Scholar, you are.”

  She slapped the horse on the haunch and it took off down the trail which twisted down the south side of the hill.

  Then Lill picked me up and threw me over her shoulder.

  And climbed the hill, heading over barren rock for the top.

  It was a bit insulting at first, being carried like a sack of potatoes, but the fact is my arms and legs were frozen stiff, and I’d never have been able to keep up if I’d been able to climb at all.

  A few minutes later, she said, “It’s flat for a while. I’m going to run. Fast. Try to put some distance between us and them. Try not to shift around. If I drop you at the speed I’ll be going, you could get very hurt.”

  And she ran.

  Fast.

  Maybe I could have kept up with her if I’d still had the horse. She moved just that fast, the frozen landscape going by in a blur. The lightning bolt tattoos on her ankles evidently performed as expected. I bounced on her shoulder, wishing it would all end.

  And then a minute later it did. We were climbing rocks again at normal speed, and then a few minutes later she set me on the ground.

  “Did we lose them?” I barely had the strength to ask it.

  “We were never going to lose them,” Lill said. “Not completely. I just want to get them down to a manageable number.”

  She went to one knee, looking back, waiting.

  When she finally spoke again, it roused me from a doze.

  “They’re coming. Only ten now, including one of the trackers. The rest are following my horse, I guess. Ten is good. I can do ten. They’ll have to leave their horses if they climb up after us. We’ll need to pick our spot.”

  She lifted me to my feet, and I walked after her, stumbling, my feet frozen and numb. Thankfully, we didn’t go far. She found a spot where the path widened slightly, rock walls rising up on either side of us. She found a small flat boulder to the side and sat me on it.

  “I need your help,” she said.

  “You’ll have to lend me a weapon. I can try.” I tried to make a fist. My fingers cracked and ached. I doubted I could even bend them around a dagger hilt, but if she needed my help, it would be cowardly to refuse.

  “I just need you to sit here and look helpless,” Lill told me. “If you draw their attention even a few seconds, it might give me an advantage.”

  “Sit and look helpless.” I forced a chuckle. “You’ve come to the right man.”

  She unclasped her cloak, took it off and draped it around my shoulders.

  I lowered my head and closed my eyes. The cloak wasn’t much, but even the small increase in warmth was enough to make me nearly weep with gratitude. I marveled again that any human could survive in the Glacial Wastes where Lill was from. Winter in the northern part of Helva was no laughing matter. But the Wastes were something else. Even without the tattoos of an ink mage, Lill was one of the toughest people I’d ever met.

  I wouldn’t last a day in the Wastes. I wouldn’t last an hour.

  I picked my head up, opened my eyes. Lill was nowhere to be seen. She’d placed herself somewhere for the ambush obviously, but I still found her absence disturbing. I was alone. I sat and listened to the wind whistle through the rocks.

  Time seemed to warp as I huddled within the cloak. Perhaps a long time had passed, or maybe it was just a few minutes, but I soon heard the crunch of snow, approaching footsteps.

  A second later, they tromped into view, all of them dressed in black cloaks and armor as seemed standard for those in service of the sorceress.

  All except one.

  The man marching behind the leader was gaunt, facial features sharp
, eyes piercing. Strapped leather armor peeked out between layers of black and white furs. No helm or hat, black braids hanging past his ears. Could this be anyone else but one of the tracker’s from Lill’s homeland?

  They walk right toward me, seemingly oblivious to my presence. Huddled and immobile as I was within Lill’s cloak, I must have blended into the bleak background.

  But in the next instant, they spotted me, stopping in mid-stride. The steel hiss of blades leaving sheaths echoed along the ravine. They said nothing but spread out as the space allowed, eyes going in every direction. They weren’t stupid.

  I mentally rehearsed a few quips before abandoning the notion. I had neither the strength nor the inclination. I sat and watched them slowly advance.

  The one in the lead came toward me with quickened steps. “Where is she?”

  I overcame my shivering to offer him a shrug and an apologetic smile.

  He reached for me. “We’ll see about—”

  A dagger sprouted from the side of his neck, blood spraying. He fell in a heap at my feet. The rest of the men brought their swords up, eyes frantically searching the rocks. Steel flashed through the air and three more men fell.

  And then Lill was among them, a whirling storm of death, her sword blade rising and falling and thrusting until a red mist of blood hung in the air like a gossamer veil. There was a long, quiet moment as she stood amid the dead and the dying, some of the men quivering or spending their last breaths in mewling cries.

  Typically, I would have said something encouraging to her like good work killing all those fellows, but the knife at my throat dissuaded me.

  The Wastelander had a fist-full of my hair, pulling my head back to expose my throat. A flick of his wrist and the short knife he held would open my jugular.

  “Lillandrabellafendazallarendok, I presume,” he said.

  She turned to face him, eyes hard, tiny specks of blood across her white face. “Who are you?”

  “Dontella’mesra’dak.”

  “Don for short?”

  “Dak.”

  She grunted disapproval. “An ender.”

  “Not all of us are lucky to run in such elevated circles as you.”

  “You work for the sorceress?”

  “No, not exactly,” Dak said. “We passed through her lands a week ago asking after a woman from the Wastes, one with special powers. The baroness told us she knew of no such person. But then a few days later she sent for us, wanted our tracking skills and said we both wanted to find you if for different reasons.”

  Lill nodded as she listened. “The chief has tired of waiting for someone to collect the bounty on me.”

  “You know how he is,” Dak said. “Not a patient man.”

  “What happens now?”

  A sigh from Dak. “Well, I don’t think I’ll be collecting any bounties today.”

  “No.”

  “Then I am open to suggestions.”

  I cleared my throat nervously. “If I could interject. We all might be a bit less tense if the sharp edge of your blade wasn’t digging into the flesh of my throat. Just a suggestion to facilitate civilized discussion.”

  Dak eased the blade away from my throat a few inches. To me, such a simple action happened in a moment. A second. Less time than it takes to breathe in and out.

  But Lill was an ink mage.

  When I’d spoken, Dak’s eyes had shifted to me, and Lill was already on the move. To Lill, it must have appeared as if Dak moved through molasses as he pulled the knife away. The eternity it took for Dak to shift weight from one foot to the other. By the time his eyes came back to her, she was already leaning forward, arm straight in a lighting sword thrust.

  The tip of her sword slid into the narrow space between Dak’s knife and my throat. A flick of her wrist, the clang of steel on steel.

  Dak’s knife flew back over his shoulder and away. For a split-second, his eyes followed the blade. He realized his mistake too late. Her sword tip tapped his chin, his hand frozen an inch over the short sword hanging from his belt.

  “Don’t move.”

  “No,” Dak said. “I don’t think I will.”

  “You didn’t come alone,” Lill said.

  “Kellon’brah’tulk was with me. He went with the others when the tracks split. I guess we shouldn’t have divided forces. Live and learn.”

  “Who else?”

  “Another pair of trackers down the eastern coast. I don’t know their names” Dak said. “If there’s anyone else, I don’t know about them.”

  They stood that way for a long moment, Dak’s hand hovering above the hilt of his short sword, Lill’s sword tip just under his chin.

  “I could tell them you got away. Mislead them in another direction.” Dak licked his lips nervously. “But I don’t suppose you can really let me go.”

  Lill shook her head. “No.”

  Dak sighed, shoulder’s sagging. It wasn’t a bad feint. He actually got the sword halfway out of its sheath before Lill shoved her blade through Dak’s throat. He staggered back, mouth working but only strangled croaks coming out.

  Lill flicked the sword sharply, and Dak’s blood flew off the gleaming steel, droplets spattering red across white snow. She sheathed the sword, turned her back on a writhing Dak to bend, scoop me up, and toss me over her shoulder again.

  “They’ve come looking for me sooner that I thought,” Lill said. “I shall have to return home soon.”

  “We’re t-turning n-north then?” I asked through chattering teeth.

  “Not that soon. I have business first. In Klaar.”

  I lifted my head as Lill carried me away and saw Dak on the ground, eyes bugging, hands to his throat, blood seeping thick between fingers, one leg still twitching and kicking.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Lill and I sat astride our new mounts, looking down the length of the Long Bridge and at the city gates beyond. As a child, I’d been a constant delight to my tutors. I had an agile mind and especially loved history, possibly as it was often shaped into exciting tales of clashing armies and world-shaking intrigue. I took a special interest in the great landmarks of the world.

  So I’d heard of Klaar’s Long Bridge well before ever setting eyes on it, the longest of its type across which countless armies had failed to approach and take the city for centuries. It was only twenty years ago – after the city had been betrayed from within – that a foreign army had crossed the bridge and breached the gates. The invaders had eventually been defeated.

  I hadn’t been quite as interested when my tutor’s lecture had turned to the math and engineering which had made the bridge possible. But sitting there now looking at the bridge, I had to admit those engineers must have been at the top of their game.

  Lill and I spurred our horses, and began to cross at a slow walk, travelers in carts or on foot passing us in the other direction.

  A day after defeating the sorceress’s men in the hills, I’d woken in the soft bed of a warm inn. Lill had carried me like baggage the whole way. I was told I’d narrowly avoided losing fingers and toes to frostbite. A hot bath and a hot meal had made me a new man. A short shopping spree had replaced our horses and other gear. I now wore a heavy – if not especially fashionable – cloak, and at Lill’s insistence, I’d replaced my rapier with a more manly broadsword. These and various other sundries along with the horses had all but depleted my supply of silver. I had an obscene amount of wealth stashed in various banks, but only a few coins clinked in the purse hanging from my belt.

  Halfway across the bridge, I stood in my saddle, leaning over to look at the chasm which the bridge spanned. It was a long way down. I returned my backside to my saddle, slightly dizzy from the view.

  “You’ve never quite explained what we’re doing in Klaar,” I told Lill.

  “I told you. I need to ask questions about the shadow magic. That takes a wizard,” she said. “There is a man here I need to talk to. A wizard called Knarr. I want to show him the items I took from the Shado
w Sorceress. I think he can tell me if this magic is something I can use or not.”

  “I’ll help you,” I assured her as we passed through the gates and into the city. “As visiting nobility, it behooves me to present myself at the castle to the duke’s people. Knowing the right people will give us an advantage as we make our way around the city.”

  “No.” Lill reined her horse.

  I turned my horse to face her. “No?”

  “I have to do this alone.”

  I frowned. “You ditch me for three weeks, then drag me halfway across the kingdom though the bitter cold while men are trying to kill us, and now you want to run off again?”

  “The man I seek is reclusive,” Lill explained. “I can’t bring a tag-along.”

  “A tag-along. I’m baggage again.”

  “I’ll come find you when I’m done.”

  She turned her horse and headed down one of the eastern cobblestone streets. I watched a few seconds to see if she’d look back, maybe offer one of those rare, mischievous smiles.

  She didn’t.

  I sighed, turned my own horse in the opposite direction, and headed for Castle Klaar.

  * * *

  Even though noble blood ran in my veins, I hadn’t had a lot of practice marching up to a duke’s castle and introducing myself. The Kane lands on the western frontier – even in their heyday – had not been well-known, nor had the household commanded any special level of respect. The fields had gone to seed years ago, the manor house overgrown with vines – if it even still stood at all. I wouldn’t know. I hadn’t been home in years.

  But I had letters of introduction and credit from the great banking houses in Merridan and Tul-Agnon, confirming both my wealth and lineage. Gold was the ultimate problem solver, the great leveler. With enough gold in the bank, the smelliest beggar could pass himself off as a count or a baron. I might have been the most minor of minor nobility but at least I wasn’t a fraud.

  Well, mostly, I wasn’t a fraud. A person in my position did need to get inventive now and then.

  I presented myself at the castle’s visitor’s entrance where a bored guard escorted me to a small ante room where a neatly dressed women in her mid-sixties looked up from the stack of parchments on her desk and regarded me with sharp eyes.