Then the Shadow flowed forward, covered the horse from neck to shoulder, latching itself onto the horse’s form, sinking deeper into the horse’s flesh as if it were insubstantial. The horse shuddered and stilled. Its eyes rolled and its lips pulled back, baring teeth. It snorted once, then collapsed to its knees and rolled to the ground, dead, its head twisting as the reins held it upright, its neck contorting to an unnatural angle.
The Shadow rose up from its body, a malevolent shroud, glistening and throbbing.
Then it turned. Colin sensed it focus on those closest, on Colin and everyone huddled on this side of the wagon, and he felt a cold dread sink into his chest.
Paul charged. Everyone gasped. Colin’s father shouted, “No!” The smith swung his ax, grunting with the effort, his face suffused with a mixture of rage and fear.
It should have cleaved the Shadow in two. Instead, the ax passed through the Shadow as if it weren’t there.
The swing pulled Paul off-balance. He stumbled, cried out in surprise—
And then the Shadow lashed out, a tendril passing through Paul’s outstretched arm.
Paul screamed, the ax dropping from his grip. He jerked the arm toward his chest, cradled it as if it had been broken, his breath sucked in sharply. Sam bellowed, “Watch out!” and rushed forward, caught by Tom before he could take two steps. Paul looked up in time to see the Shadow rear above him, and Colin saw utter fear register on his face—
And then the Shadow descended, falling like a shroud, smothering him. In less than a heartbeat, Paul’s body crumpled to the ground.
Colin found he couldn’t breathe, that his arms and legs had gone numb. He could hear his heartbeat, could taste something sour on his tongue, could smell his own rank sweat, but he couldn’t move, couldn’t think.
Everything was happening too fast. Far, far too fast.
Fresh screams broke out, and Colin tore his gaze away from Paul’s body as more Shadows emerged from the forest, surging forward toward the line of men and the women and children huddled at the base of the wagon. The nearest guardsman swung his blade, more reflex than thought, but like Paul he staggered as his sword passed cleanly through the Shadow in the lead. In the next instant the black creature had swept through his arm and leg. He cried out and fell to the ground, his sword slipping free of his grip as he rolled to escape the next slash of the Shadow. But it ignored him, heading toward the women and children near the wagons, heading toward the group closest to Colin.
It sprang, and the children scattered, screaming as it lashed out in all directions in a strangely graceful, violent dance. Two bodies fell to the ground, skin blanched white. A boy struggled away on his elbows, his legs dragging behind him, tears streaming down his contorted face. And still more Shadows emerged from the forest, gliding out into the sunlight and striking at the sudden chaos that raged on all sides. Colin stood rigid, Karen’s hand clutched tight, unable to move. He heard names being called out, orders barked, heard someone bellow desperately, “Nothing stops them!” while before him more bodies fell to the ground. Colin could barely breathe, the sound of his heart pulsing in his ears, overwhelming the screams, drowning them out. The sour taste in his mouth turned bitter and dry, as if his tongue were coated with ash. He watched in silence as Lyda ran past, shrieking, her hair streaming out behind her, her hand on her swollen belly, a slew of the black Shadows trailing her. He watched as she stumbled, watched her roll onto her back, still shrieking, her face twisted into pure terror, watched as the Shadows converged on her like carrion birds to dead flesh. She rolled to her side and clawed at the ground, dragging herself away, but the Shadows were too swift, pouncing on her, feeding off of her, off of the unborn child inside her, their actions far more frenzied than they were with the others, far more greedy, more gluttonous. Her fingers dug at the earth as her screams broke down into tortuous sobs, as tears streaked her face, and then a Shadow lashed out, almost impatiently, its form passing through her neck, and with a gasp her head fell to the ground and her struggles ceased.
Colin choked, his stomach seizing, his chest tightening, bile rising up sharp and acrid in the back of his throat. He struggled to draw air into his lungs, but he couldn’t, struggled to swallow the bitterness and nausea and horror—
Until a hand clamped onto his shoulder, the grip so hard he winced, the paralysis shuddering in his chest beneath the wave of pain. He sucked in air, felt something tear in his throat, and deeper, in his lungs, and coughed as he staggered and turned.
“Colin! Karen!” his father barked, his voice rougher than usual, higher in pitch. He shook him, shook Karen as well, her eyes wide and shocked. “You have to get out of here. We can’t stop them. We can’t even hurt them. You have to run! Both of you! Back to the plains!”
“But what about—”
Before he could finish, his father’s grip tightened. Leaning forward, his voice black, he growled, “Run, goddamn you!” And then he shoved them both, hard, shoved them back toward the space between the wagons, back toward the plains and the dwarren’s battle. Colin tripped, landed hard on his ass, Karen’s hand tearing free from his, but his father had already turned. He scanned the chaos before him, face tight, then shouted, “Ana!” and dashed off to the left.
Colin lurched to his feet, took off after his father, but within two steps he was brought up short by Karen as she grabbed his arm, spun him around. “Where are you going? You heard your father. We have to get out of here!”
“I have to help him. I have to find my mother.”
“But he told you to get out!”
“The dwarren are out there! There’s nowhere to go.” Karen bit her lower lip, wavering, so he drew in a sharp breath and added, “What about your father?”
Her eyes darkened, angry and concerned at the same time. “You bastard,” she whispered. Then she spun, searching those nearest, trying to see past them. “Over here.”
They stumbled away, one of the Armory guardsmen staggering in front of them, a Shadow reaching for the man’s chest. Colin dodged, slipped to his knees in the grass, Karen keeping him upright, shot a glance left and right, searching for his mother, for a glimpse of either of their fathers—
And caught sight of Walter instead.
The Proprietor of Haven stood with his back to one of the wagons, his sword leveled before him, the blade twitching back and forth among three different Shadows. A fourth Shadow writhed on the ground, feeding off Jackson, the Company’s representative staring up into the sunlight, eyes glazed with death, skin white, yet still beaded with sweat. Walter hissed as one of the Shadows feinted with a tendril of darkness, his sword jerking toward the black shape. He wiped sweat from his face with the back of one arm, the gesture short and rough and desperate, then barked as another Shadow slid closer, this one from the opposite side. His sword swung toward the second Shadow, hovered point first, trembling there, while his gaze followed the movements of the third.
Colin frowned. The Shadows were playing with him, like cats who’d trapped a mouse in a dusty corner of an alley. They didn’t seem as frenzied as when they’d first attacked, and the ones surrounding Walter glistened with a fluid gold color.
And then Walter noticed them, his eyes settling on Colin with a flare of hope. “Colin!” His voice was tight and thick and shook with fear. “Colin, help me!”
One of the Shadows slipped closer, and Walter growled a warning, his sword swinging toward the new threat as another Shadow edged forward, almost imperceptibly. The fourth one—the one feeding on Jackson—began to rise, shimmering with a patina of gold in the light. It moved sluggishly, but with more intent, as if it had been sated.
Colin didn’t move. He could feel Karen at his side, slightly behind.
“Colin!” Walter yelled, and Colin jerked. No fear this time in Walter’s voice. It was threaded with demand, with arrogance. The voice of a Proprietor.
Colin thought about the alley, about the beatings, about the day Walter had kicked him hard enough that he’d pis
sed his own pants. He thought about the arrest, the gallows, the day spent in the pillory, unable to move, unable to even scratch an itch, thirsty and hungry, covered in blood from his own struggles and the spit of the other townspeople. He thought about the look on Walter’s face as he left him in the alley, about the satisfied smirk he’d given him on the gallows, and he heard Walter’s laughter as he pissed on him from the darkness while he was in the penance locks.
A cold rage settled over Colin, the same rage he’d felt as his mother cleaned his wounds after the locks, as she cleaned the piss from his body. A rage Colin had shoved deep down inside himself, that had simmered next to his heart since he’d been released from the pillory, seething as they crossed the plains, as they climbed the Bluff, as they hunted and camped and struggled to survive.
Colin let that hate out now, let it course down his arms, tingling with heat, prickling his skin. He let it show in his eyes, his back straightening.
Walter stilled, his eyes widening slightly, his sword dropping a few inches toward the ground.
With a surge of satisfaction, Colin spat to one side and turned his back, turned toward Karen. He caught a flicker of motion as one of the Shadows leaped, heard Walter curse, saw the so-called Proprietor duck down and roll beneath the underside of the wagon out of the corner of his eye, the Shadows a flicker of black movement behind him, and then he dismissed Walter completely from his mind.
Karen eyed him with a faint frown. “We need to find our parents. Now.”
The space between the wagons and the trees was littered with bodies, with Shadows and shrieking forms. He saw Sam swinging wildly with a whip, two women at his back, saw another group of men make a break for the open plains behind, saw three children huddling in the grass beneath one of the wagons and recognized Lissa’s face as she raised her head and stared out at the chaos, her younger brother’s body held protectively to her chest, his face buried in her arms so he wouldn’t be able to see. Colin headed toward the kids, had made it halfway to them, dodging feeding Shadows as he went, when Karen pulled him up short with a frantic, “Dad!”
Colin spun around. Karen’s father stood protectively over three others, a mother and her two children, their backs to the last wagon, a sword held uselessly before him. His face was lined in fury, with pure and unadulterated rage, the most alive and intense Colin had seen the man since he’d met Karen and her father in Lean-to. All the sorrow, all the grief over losing his wife and two children on the passage across the Arduon Ocean, had been transformed into one goal, one purpose: keep the Shadows at bay.
And the Shadows were playing with him, as they’d played with Walter. Nearly all of them were now, their initial frenzy gone. They moved with purpose, with intent, with a cold intelligence.
Karen’s shout distracted her father. He turned, yelled, “Karen!”
And the Shadows struck.
Karen’s hand wrenched from Colin’s. He cried out, tried to catch her, to hold her back. He heard her scream, “Dad!” again as she charged forward, her hair streaming out behind her, her dress flapping around her feet.
Colin leaped after her, his heart thundering in his chest, his skin flushed with sudden prickling heat. Not enough to smother the coldness, but it burned in his arms, his legs, his lungs. Nothing mattered but Karen and her father, nothing but the Shadows that had drawn back, their glistening darkness—so like cloth—shuddering outward as they readied to attack. All sound dampened except for his breath and the pulse of blood in his ears. Everything faded except for the brilliant patch of sunlight before the wagon.
Karen’s father drew himself up, back straight, as the Shadows streamed forward, smooth and deadly. He didn’t even use the sword. He tried to block the Shadows with his own body, his own life. The Shadows slid through his chest and pulled themselves up over his torso even as Colin saw the life in his eyes dim, as his body began to fall.
“No!” Karen screamed, and stumbled, reaching for her father, ignoring the Shadow that had bypassed him and those he protected, that was converging on her. Colin felt his heart shudder in his chest, felt the metal and glass of the vow burning against the skin beneath his shirt, felt a spurt of adrenaline shove him the last short space between them as a roar built in his throat.
He threw himself at Karen, the roar escaping. A roar of denial, of hatred, of anger and fury and determination.
A moment before he struck her, before his arms wrapped around her and pulled her down, he saw a tendril from one of the Shadows lash out, saw it connect, felt its bitter coldness as it passed over his shoulder.
Then he and Karen were rolling, his roar choked off as they struck the ground. Pain tore through his shoulder and he gasped, but he held Karen tight, tried to protect her as they tumbled, arms flailing wildly. They struck the wheel of the wagon. Wood cracked, and Colin’s shoulder twisted even more, pain shooting down his back, his entire arm going numb, tingling viciously, but he ignored it all, not even crying out. He struggled with Karen’s body, with the limp arms tangled with his own, with the folds of her dress. Rolling onto his back, his shoulders propped against the broken wheel, legs straight before him, her body over his, he shifted her toward him, fumbled for her face.
“Karen,” he gasped, and tasted blood on his lips, felt where he’d bitten the inside of his mouth. “Karen! It’s all right. It’s all right. I couldn’t save your father, but—”
His hands found her face, touched the skin there. Skin still slick with sweat but cold, so very cold. Like ice.
His breath caught, and something squeezed his chest hard, tightened like iron, like the slats of the penance locks. Tightened and wouldn’t let go. Beneath, something hard and bitter and fluid began to build, began to press outward, constrained by the locks.
He tried to swallow and couldn’t. His mouth was suddenly full of saliva, the back of his throat thick with phlegm, with the taste of blood, and still he couldn’t swallow, his throat working, a strange heat seething up his neck and into his face, burning in the skin beneath his eyes, prickling in his hair. He shoved the sensations away, shoved down hard on the pressure in his chest. His hand brushed Karen’s hair away from her brow, and he moved, so that her face rolled toward him, the motions careful, gentle.
“Karen?” he choked out, the name barely audible, almost lost in the pounding of blood in his ears, in his head. He reached for Karen’s cheek, his hand trembling, reached to touch her forehead above her dusky dead eyes, reached for the freckles that brushed her skin, even though he could feel the Shadows closing in around him, around them both. He traced the contours of her nose, touched the corner of her mouth, her too pale lips.
And then the pressure inside became too much. The penance locks broke.
He screamed and clutched her body close, felt the vow’s pendant crushed between them, felt its heat burning into his skin. He screamed into the blackness of the Shadows that loomed before him, the sunlight bright around them—a sunlight far, far too bright for the death taking place all around him, far, far too golden. He screamed into the face of the sukrael as the pain inside him surged outward, as it coursed along his arms and through his body, as it shuddered through his chest in waves. He shoved the hatred and grief away, toward the closest Shadow, the one reaching toward him with a tendril of darkest night, glistening with flecks of gold. A tendril that bled cold, that bled death.
And the Shadow hesitated.
Colin’s scream grew ragged and then broke.
He stared up at the Shadow before him—at the sukrael—stared up into its cold, considering darkness—
And then he pulled Karen’s limp body even closer, leaned forward over it, his head bowed down over hers, her face hidden in his shoulder. He could smell her hair, like freshly cut hay, like sunlight, like a breeze from the sea.
“I should have run faster,” he whispered into Karen’s ear, her hair tickling his face, catching in his mouth. “I should never have let go.” His face twisted into a soundless sob, and he squeezed his eyes shut,
tears slick against his skin, tasting of salt.
The Shadows hesitated, then closed in. But not in a frenzy. He felt the first tendril slide through his arm, touching, tasting, testing. For what, he didn’t know, but they did not swarm over him as they had the others. They’d already fed. They needed him for something else. He shuddered, the ice of its touch sinking deep, the entire limb tingling, frigid, then going mercifully numb. He pulled Karen closer still with his other arm, buried his face in her shoulder, and felt one of the tendrils slide smoothly into his twisted shoulder, flicker deeper into his chest, sampling him. He gasped as the cold touched his lungs, as air froze deep inside him, and he felt the Shadows respond with an ecstatic shiver. They savored his grief, savored his pain, reveled in his soul, in his life, in his warmth. The gold against their black forms shifted in patterns, as if they were speaking to each other, arguing, coming to a decision.
Without looking, he felt them rear above him, felt them tense to smother him, their ethereal forms blocking out the sun.
But the Shadows halted. Another shiver passed through them. Gold glistened in hatred and contempt and rage.
And then they withdrew.
Colin lifted his head from Karen’s shoulder, his face smeared with tears, with snot. It required more effort than he thought it would, because where the Shadows had tasted him, the coldness had sunk in deep. But in the space between the forest and the circled wagons, all of the Shadows were fleeing, slipping back into the forest, back beneath the trees, leaving dozens of bodies behind in the grass. He could see where Sam had fallen, could see Lissa’s crumpled form beside that of her brother beneath one of the wagons, could see the bodies of the horses, still trapped in their harnesses.
None of the bodies were moving. Except for the faint roar of battle from the dwarren somewhere farther out on the plains, there was no sound. Here, near the wagons, it was unnaturally silent, unnaturally still.
The last of the Shadows vanished beneath the trees. A wisp of darkness in the sunlight, and then nothing.
Well of Sorrows Page 24