Shadow Cross (The Shadow Accords Book 5)

by D. K. Holmberg

  They must be dosed with something to keep them incapacitated, but what?

  It was hard coaxing her mind into action as she tried to think through the fog. If she was here, could Dara be with these girls as well? She didn’t see her, but that didn’t mean that she wasn’t in this room or another.

  She licked her lips, and her mouth felt dry and sticky. When she worked moisture back into her tongue, she leaned forward, trying once more to reach for the shadows and, when they failed, to reach for the power of the flame. Neither worked.

  “Where am I?” Carth asked.

  None of the women looked in her direction.

  Carth frowned. Why wouldn’t they at least acknowledge her? Were they so scared to answer? Or did they fear her?

  “Where am I?” she asked again.

  Two of the women sitting along the benches towards the middle glanced her way, but neither said anything. The rest simply stared.

  The answer dawned on her slowly. They weren’t scared of her. They were scared of their captors.

  She tried forcing her mind to think through what she knew, but it was difficult. She recognized the connection between what had happened with Dara and the fact that she was now captive. The man who had captured her had recognized Dara. She remembered that much. He had said a name… what was it?

  The name came to her slowly, like surfacing from a great depth. Carth grabbed for it, struggling to hold the name in her mind, but knowing that it was important for her to do so.

  Terran had been his name.

  That was all she had. A name. The reason she was here, chasing after information regarding that name. There was nothing else, no other way of pursuing him, only the name and the fact that Dara was missing, but more than missing. She had been added to the collection. She remembered that term as well.

  The thoughts were coming easier. She licked her lips, hoping that if her mind lurched forward, that meant that perhaps her magic would return to her as well. Each time she tried accessing it, she failed.

  The movement stopped, and she staggered forward. A door opened that she had not noticed before, and bright sunlight spilled inside. She shielded her eyes and instinctively tried to remain patient as she waited to see what might be coming for her—for all of them—but struggled to think of whether there was anything more.

  A face appeared in the doorway, one she recognized. It was the man who had captured her, who had taunted her.

  No… that wasn’t it.

  He hadn’t taunted her; he had allowed her to reveal her abilities. She remembered sitting in the room with him, bound with ropes at her arms and legs, until she had made the mistake of severing that connection. Had she only been more patient, perhaps she would’ve allowed him to reveal himself, and the fact that he possessed a poisoned knife.

  That had been Ras’s warning to her. She always had a tendency to act a little too aggressively, taking the fight towards her opponent as opposed to waiting and letting the game come to her. Ras had used that tendency. Carth knew that now was not the time for her to act impulsively. She needed patience, even when that patience might be difficult.

  “Come on, get out.”

  The man’s gaze swept over the women before pausing on Carth, and a smile spread across his face before he turned away, leaving the flash of sunlight once more streaming into the enclosed wagon.

  The women began filing out, one after another, moving in a practiced sort of motion. None of them spoke, none of them did anything other than follow their captor’s instructions.

  They had been through this before.

  Carth understood the look she’d seen on the women’s faces. Maybe it wasn’t entirely the look of someone who was drugged or intoxicated. These were the faces of those resigned to their fate.

  What did this man intend for them?

  He had referred to a collection and stated that he was going to add Carth to it. She knew that slavers moved through Asador, and she knew there was likely a connection to them, and to what had happened to Dara. She still hadn’t learned what connection the slavers had to Guya, if any.

  And Lindy… she was alone in the city now, not knowing what had happened to Carth, likely worried that the same thing had happened to Carth as had happened to Dara and Guya.

  When it was Carth’s turn to exit, she hesitated. She felt stupid for allowing herself to get captured. This should not have been her fate. She was too powerful, too strong, and too skilled at playing these sorts of games to have allowed herself to be captured.

  Except… she wasn’t.

  When she stepped free from the back of the wagon and into the sunlight, she saw the women all standing around, none of them making an attempt to run. There were only two men standing outside, one of whom was the one who had captured her. The other was a slightly older man, one whose face wore the signs of previous battles, scars marking his cheeks and neck. He had a clean-shaven jaw and narrow slits of eyes.

  She glanced back and noted a second wagon behind hers.

  Could Terran be there?

  If it was, maybe that meant Dara would be there as well.

  Anger started seething through her—and not only for herself and for the stupidity with which she had let herself be captured. As she looked around at these women, she felt anger at what had been done to them.

  It was no different than the way the blood priests had attacked the villagers along the shores. They had used them, used the women. The men in the south were no different.

  As the two men swept their gazes over the congregated women, Carth made a quiet vow to herself. She would get free.

  There was no question in her mind of her ability to do that. She had been trained by the A’ras, and even without her magical abilities, she had skill in hand-to-hand combat and was not helpless. But these other women, those who had already given up, those who appeared to have resigned themselves to their fate, those were the women who needed her help. Women like the villagers who had been taken by the blood priests. She would not allow harm come to them.

  But first… first she must be patient. She needed to understand what was happening here, and when she did, then she would act. Then she would destroy not only her captor, but all those who worked with him.

  His gaze settled on her, his eyes a flat blue that matched the sun in the sky. She wondered if he knew her thoughts. Carth made no expression. And when the women were motioned towards a barrel of water, Carth followed them, cupping her hands into it the same as they did, drinking freely of the water, moistening her lips, all the while not taking her focus off her captor.

  She would destroy him.

  14

  The caravan moved slowly over the next few days. Carth felt the steady swaying from the wagon, her mind remaining in some sort of haze, and she struggled to form coherent thoughts, only able to maintain the desire to see the flat-eyed man injured. Every time they stopped, the women filed out of the wagon, and she followed with them.

  They usually went long enough in between stops that her mouth was incredibly thick and dry, with her tongue feeling bloated, so that she eagerly consumed the water she was given. Meals consisted of meager portions of dried meats and occasionally lumps of bread. The flat-eyed man, whose name she had discovered was Lothan, forced the women to prepare the meals on a routine basis.

  Carth hadn’t taken a turn at preparing meals, but she watched the other women as they did, and noted that most worked without saying a thing, mindlessly following the directions of the two men who led the caravan.

  Every so often, her mind cleared enough for her to feel a renewed surge of anger at her situation and what these men forced the women to do. She felt helpless, impotent to do anything more than simply observe, hating that she was not able to reach the powers buried within her.

  Even with her foggy mind, the memory of using the flame and the shadows never faded. Each time she attempted reaching for them, that power seemed to skirt away from her.

  Carth lost track of days.

 
They had traveled for more than a few days but not much more than that, though she couldn’t keep track. Her focus was on following the commands of the wagon drivers, and obtaining the water and food with each stop. The one time she’d attempted to avoid drinking, she had begun retching.

  Remembering what had happened to Dara, she hurriedly took a small sip of water, thinking that if nothing else, she didn’t want to get dehydrated.

  She still hadn’t seen Dara.

  Would she recognize her if she did? Had it been too long already?

  During one of the stops, as she waited in line for her turn to drink from the bucket of water, she had a flash of a memory and began thinking of the Goth Spald. What had happened to the ship? With Guya, Dara, and now her missing, what would Lindy have done? She couldn’t have managed the ship on her own, and Carth doubted she would’ve attempted to.

  She sipped the water, letting the cool, clear liquid run through her fingers, and let herself forget about what might be happening with the Goth Spald.

  It didn’t matter.

  Nothing mattered other than getting free of her captors, finding what they did to poison her, and discovering if there was some sort of antidote.

  At times, she attempted conversation with the other women, but they rarely spoke to her. A few times they would acknowledge her presence, but more than that, they seemed to prefer staying engrossed within their own worlds, as if anything Carth might do would disrupt the tranquility they had with their silence.

  Every so often in the evenings, one or two women would be brought off the wagon, and they would disappear. Carth hadn’t learned where they went, and most of the time they returned, saying nothing.

  One of the nights, a woman disappeared and did not return.

  Carth waited throughout the night, thinking that she must have been assigned a chore like cleaning the cook site, helping to tend the fire, or any one of the other half a dozen tasks that they were given in the night, but the woman never returned. At one point in the overnight hours, she thought she overheard voices, but it came through something like a fog, drifting to her consciousness almost as if more of a dream than something real.

  When the woman didn’t return the following day, no one seemed to mind, and no one seemed to say anything. It was as if her absence were not remarkable. How many others had been like this?

  At first, that troubled Carth, but the more time passed, the more she began to forget about it, and began to forget about the fact that anything was amiss.

  On a night after she’d been assigned to assist with the fire, tending it to ensure logs were tossed carefully onto the fire, making sure that the flames built properly and the heat maintained a consistent warmth, Carth was called from the wagon in the middle of the night.

  The door opened, and moonlight streamed in.

  There should be something about the moonlight that drew her, but she didn’t recall what that was. A strange chill was on the air, and she shivered, wrapping her arms around herself.

  A hooded figure met her at the doorway, and she recognized the face of the flat-eyed man. He motioned to her, gesturing with that strange curved knife of his, the one that gave her chills each time she saw it. That seemed important, but why would it be?

  Carth stood, her body aching and joints creaking as if she were older than she thought she might be, and she made her way towards the open doorway, not certain what tasks she might be assigned this evening.

  One of the women did look up at her then. She eyed Carth, her mouth pinching into a thin line, and as Carth passed, she touched Carth’s hand, squeezing her fingers almost reassuringly. Carth lingered longer than she should have, and the flat-eyed man reached into the wagon and grabbed her, pulling her out.

  Once out of the wagon and back under the moonlight, Carth wrapped her arms around herself, fighting against the chill in the air, blinking to clear the haze that hung over her mind, knowing that she should be able to think more clearly, almost able to remember a time when her thoughts didn’t require such effort to drag from the back of her head.

  The flat-eyed man watched her, waiting as if she might say something, but when Carth never did, he motioned for her to follow him.

  Was she going to be like the women who’d returned, or was she going to be like one of the women who hadn’t? Worse, she didn’t know the difference between the two and what that might mean for her.

  They followed a trail from where they camped for the night. It led through a grassy plain, with trees visible to her in the distance. Shadows flickered at the edge of her vision, brought on by the moonlight, almost as if she could feel where they began and ended. Cool air carried a hint of dust and earth along with a threat of rain.

  There was something about the moonlight that was important. Or was it the shadows? She wished she remembered why.

  When the flat-eyed man stopped, Carth noted some lights in the distance. Was that a village? A city? Maybe that was the destination where they brought them.

  She opened her mouth to question, but the man smacked her across the face, as if anticipating the fact that she had intended to question him.

  Carth bit back her reaction.

  But the strike had done something.

  It had created a boiling anger within her.

  Heat surged within her, as if her blood boiled with anger. With the heat and the anger, her mind started to clear.

  She remembered.

  This was the man who had abducted her when she had sought to learn what had happened to Dara.

  And what of Dara? Did they have her?

  She couldn’t recall seeing Dara with either of the wagons, but given the way her mind had been working, she wasn’t sure she would remember.

  Carth considered attacking, but she needed an answer.

  Why had this man brought her here tonight?

  It was tied to whatever their reason was for abducting her. And the more her mind began to clear, the more she began to suspect that it was related to the same horrible reasons that women had been abducted from Asador for countless years. It had been bad enough when others had been the ones taken, bad enough when she had done everything she could to help save them, but this time it was her.

  It was personal in a way that it had not been before.

  She would wait. And then she would make her move.

  She didn’t have to wait long.

  Another man appeared, emerging from the darkness, from the shadows that she should be able to reach but could not. As he did, he glanced from the flat-eyed man back to Carth, as if appraising her.

  “This is the girl?” the newcomer asked.

  The flat-eyed man nodded. “You’ll like her. She’s spirited, which I believe you said you sought. You’ll need to work with her, and it will take some time to break her, but I have no doubt that you’ll succeed.” He held out something in his hand, and the moonlight reflected off a vial of a powdery substance.

  Carth frowned. Was that the reason her mind was so foggy? If it was, how did they manage to continue doping her? She didn’t recall being drugged, unless it was in her food. Or… the water.

  What a horrible way to drug the women. It would work, too, especially given that she suspected the side effect of the drug was the dry mouth she now had. Why wouldn’t they immediately reach for something to drink, a way to rinse out the cottony sensation in their mouths, and to quench the thirst given to them by the drug?

  Anger boiled within her even more strongly.

  Carth recognized it this time for what it was. It was the power of the S’al magic burning within her. It strained to escape, but more than that, it strained to help release her from the captivity of the drug.

  The newcomer nodded again. “Spirited. Yes… I like spirited.”

  He had a slickness to his voice, almost as if there were an accent she weren’t able to place. Though she had traveled the north extensively, she didn’t know nearly as much about south and wouldn’t recognize the accents of this land.

 
“And she won’t be recognized in Cort?” the man asked.

  The flat-eyed man shook his head. “She won’t be recognized. All of my girls are brought away from places they might be recognized. You’ll be safe. Claim her as your wife, claim her as your mistress, or claim her as your sister. No one will question.”

  Carth wondered if this was what had happened to the other women, and if so, whether some had returned.

  Had they been brought out like this for a bargain that had never occurred? Had there been another intent with them? Had something else happened when they were brought out from the wagon?

  Carth wanted to attack, but with no weapon, she had no way of ensuring that she would be able to succeed.

  Her mind continued to lurch forward. She hadn’t been thinking clearly for some time. How long had she been poisoned?

  If she escaped now, she could likely free herself, but there were others who were a part of that caravan who needed help. The women might’ve stared at her with their blank expressions, but they would not have known any way to find freedom, perhaps not knowing whether such a thing were possible. That didn’t mean they wanted to remain captives.

  That meant Carth needed not only to get free, but to find a way to reach for her powers. Once she did, she thought she could attack and could rescue them.

  After that, she could discover what might have happened to Dara. Maybe she was there. If not, the rescue still needed to happen.

  Besides, the flat-eyed man seemed to know something. There was a reference to a man named Terran. That would be where she started.

  The best move in this game was keeping her mouth closed. Then she could attempt to escape.

  The buyer stepped forward and peered at her, grabbing her cheeks between his thumb and first finger and pinching, twisting her face from side to side, almost as if studying her like she was some sort of animal. And to a man like this, she suspected that she was. To him, she was probably no more than another slave.