Path of Shadows

by Ben Wolf

  “It’s nice to meet you. I greet you with the light of Laeri.” Ferne released Mehta’s hand and gave them a slight bow.

  Aeron and Kallie stood there, each of them wearing exhausted expressions. Mehta hadn’t warned them that they’d be encountering an energetic young girl upon arrival.

  When Ferne straightened up again, she stared at Kallie. “You are really, really pretty.”

  Kallie blushed, and her tired grin widened into a full smile of crooked teeth. Given what she’d been through, a genuine comment from someone totally truthful had to feel great.

  Mehta hadn’t given much consideration to Kallie’s appearance thus far. They’d been busy trying to save her from Lord Valdis, and whether she’d looked like a goddess or a golem wouldn’t have mattered.

  But now, he took a good look at her.

  All his life, he’d been trained to ignore the appearances of people he encountered except insofar as it might affect his ability to sift them. He took in every person as if studying a fortress, trying to identify weaknesses and faults as well as strengths. It all coalesced into better performance on his commissions.

  As such, he’d learned to deny his feelings toward women, regardless of what they looked like. They were nothing but tactical information to him, the same as men were.

  But now, staring at Kallie in the relative safety of the village, Mehta felt something different than he ever had before.

  Kallie was objectively beautiful. There was no question about that. Even in spite of being unwell, she radiated beauty and personality. Her smile, although accented with crooked teeth, sent shudders into Mehta’s belly, the likes of which he hadn’t felt since the beginning of adolescence.

  Incidentally, at that same time, his Xyonate instructors had started to train him to quell any such feelings. After all, a distracted Xyonate was an ineffective Xyonate. Possibly even a dead Xyonate.

  But Mehta wasn’t a Xyonate anymore. He’d left that way of life behind, and it had resulted in a whole new world of possibilities for him. Perhaps learning how to manage attraction was a part of that—even though it terrified him to consider it.

  Kallie’s eyes, blue like Ferne’s, met Mehta’s. Her wide smile softened, but it didn’t lose any of its sincerity. If anything, her focus sharpened, now on him.

  The shuddering in his stomach heightened. He tensed and blinked it away.

  “Are they staying here? With us?” Ferne asked.

  Before Mehta could answer, a stern female voice called him from behind. “Mehta.”

  He turned back and saw Palomi standing in the doorway to the house. Her arms were folded across her chest, and she wore an all-too-familiar frown.

  “I will speak with you, please,” she stated more than asked.

  Mehta didn’t mind her direct approach. It very much reminded him of his years as a Xyonate.

  Yet some part of him still longed for her to demonstrate some sort of affection for him—at least gladness that he’d returned safely.

  “Yes, Palomi?” he asked as he approached.

  “We already have one vagabond staying with us,” Palomi said. “Now you wish to bring in two more? And grown adults, at that?”

  “They need our help.” It was simple, and it was true.

  “Our house is not big enough.”

  “It will suffice for now.”

  “And what about food?” Palomi’s voice hardened. “You are my brother, and I love you, but you must consider these factors before you burden us with more unexpected troubles.”

  “They are not troubles, Palomi,” a scratchy voice said from within the doorway. “Nor is little Ferne.”

  Grandfather’s wizened, white-haired head emerged from the darkness inside the house, followed by the rest of his frail body. He looked even more withered than he had when Mehta had left, and he now leaned on a walking stick he hadn’t needed before.

  “They are people,” Grandfather finished his statement. “And we will show them compassion.”

  “I have nothing against showing compassion,” Palomi countered. “But even compassion has limits. If we do not care for ourselves, then we certainly cannot care for anyone else.”

  Grandfather waved a wrinkly hand, not dismissively but rather as if reassuring her. “We will survive. The gods view charity favorably. It is an honor to aid others, and the gods honor those who do so.”

  Palomi kept her arms folded and exhaled a long sigh through her nose.

  Mehta looked back at the only three white faces in the entire village. Ferne touched the fabric of Kallie’s robe, petting it like she might stroke the fur on a dog’s back, and Kallie had crouched down beside her, now smiling and talking with her.

  Aeron stood beside them, also smiling but occasionally glancing around with concern etched onto his face. A soldier, trained to be alert. An inseparable a part of Aeron, just like his devotion to his sister.

  “Please, Mehta.” Grandfather motioned toward the house. “Bring them inside.”

  Mehta stole a glance at Palomi, whose frown had deepened even further. But the decision had been made, so Mehta called to all three of them and ushered them inside his family home.

  “Do you remember when you left me to die, out in the cold?” Falna asked from across the campfire.

  Garrick had ignored Falna at every possible opportunity, but she refused to leave him alone. They’d been trekking through the Thornback Mountains, making reasonable progress thus far, including a few stops for food, water, and rest.

  But whether moving or stopped, Falna persisted in her harassment of Garrick.

  The quality of the harassment wasn’t the issue. She wasn’t threatening him or making loud accusations or otherwise behaving like the shrill harpy he knew she was.

  It was the consistency of it that grated on Garrick.

  She kept trying to engage him in conversation, kept asking prying, unnerving questions in a sickeningly sweet tone of voice that needled at him. It was infuriating, and he’d only responded when he’d had to, for the sake of the mission at hand.

  But that question, specifically, had brought him to his breaking point.

  He didn’t snap at her. He didn’t swing his new battle-axe at her. Instead, he brandished the truth in a voice equally as calm as her tone in asking the question.

  “Yes,” he replied. “And I regret not killing you instead.”

  Falna blinked at him from across the fire. Night had fallen, and they’d taken shelter in one of the many caves scattered throughout the Thornback Mountains. Garrick had ventured into some of them during previous travels, but he’d never entered this particular one before.

  “So the brute does speak,” Falna quipped. “And with sour words, no less.”

  “It’s the truth.”

  Falna scoffed and shook her head.

  Kent sat next to him, the one person Garrick trusted out of everyone here—mostly, anyway. There was still much to sort out between them over what had happened back at Valdis Keep, but for the time being, they shared a common enemy in Falna.

  Even so, Kent had proven almost as annoying since leaving Xenthan. He’d been asking questions, too—but they were quiet questions designed to make Garrick doubt this course of action.

  They were questions that made Garrick doubt Kent’s sincerity about accomplishing their mission.

  “Do you want to know how I managed to survive that night?” Falna asked.

  “No,” Garrick replied. “I don’t care.”

  “It was easy, actually.” Falna fixed her blue eyes on Kent. “You probably have no idea what we’re talking about, do you, handsome?”

  Kent frowned at her. “Given our history, I am inclined to agree with Garrick’s sentiment.”

  “I like the way you talk.” Falna pointed at him and smiled. “You sound regal. Wealthy, even.”

  “In another life, perhaps,” Kent said.

  She continued to smile at Kent, and it sickened Garrick. The thought that she might be trying to develop any sort o
f camaraderie with Kent bothered him, even if Kent wasn’t receptive to it.

  If he couldn’t keep Kent on his side, he’d be truly alone yet again. It was a position of weakness Garrick couldn’t afford.

  “When Garrick and his friends left me behind, the pub I’d been working in was still burning in the distance,” Falna started. “They’d doused me with some sort of foam that snuffed out my fire and made it impossible to reignite it—at first.

  “There was snow everywhere, and I used it to wash the foam off me. By that point, I was freezing, so I headed back toward the fire. I’d been trained to wield fire magic from the very first day I joined the Crimson Flame, so getting warm again wasn’t a problem.

  “I called the fire to me, and I didn’t stay cold for long. From that point on, all I had to do was maintain the fire as I headed toward the nearest town.” Falna grinned again, this time at Garrick. “You should’ve seen the path I burned through the snow and those hills—a scorched black line stretching for miles through central Etrijan.”

  Garrick had heard enough. He didn’t tolerate bluster from anyone, least of all from a witch like Falna. He stood and headed toward the cave entrance.

  “Where are you going?” she called after him.

  “To get some air,” he replied. She didn’t deserve a response, but maybe it would shut her up.

  “What’s wrong with the air in here?” she asked.

  “You’re breathing it, too,” he answered just before he stepped out of the cave.

  Garrick stared up at the moon, now just a sliver of white barely visible amid the stars in the night sky. He just wanted this all to be over. He’d come so close, and then Aeron and Mehta had ruined everything.

  A moment later, Kent joined him, and they both stood there in silence, exhaling vapor into the cold winter air.

  Kent had played a role in how it had all gone down. He was culpable, too, but not enough to be a scapegoat. He’d seen to that by staying out of the fight with Lord Valdis’s men.

  Garrick expected him to say something, but Kent just stood there. Finally, Garrick asked, “What?”

  Kent shrugged. “Nothing. I am just enjoying the night air, the same as you.”

  Garrick thought back to the time they’d gone out to gather firewood after facing down an entire squad of wyvern knights in Govalia. Their partnership had been in its infancy, and they weren’t seeing eye-to-eye yet.

  That conversation hadn’t gone exactly the way Garrick had intended it to, but they’d come to an understanding, albeit a tense one at first. Over time, they’d come to trust and even rely on each other, at least until Kent had withheld the knowledge of Kallie’s involvement from Garrick.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about Aeron’s sister?” Garrick asked.

  “You know why,” Kent replied.

  “I want to hear you say it.” Garrick looked at him, but Kent continued to stare into the sky.

  “If I had told you, you would have expelled Aeron from our group due to the conflict of interest,” Kent began. “And you very likely would have expelled me as well, given my preexisting friendship with him.”

  “I would’ve made sure you still got paid,” Garrick said.

  “Of that, I have no doubt,” Kent said. “But you knew from the beginning that our primary motivation was finding and freeing Kallie, not coin.”

  As much as Garrick hated to admit it, Kent had a point. From before the moment they’d met, all Aeron had wanted to do was rescue his sister from the Crimson Flame. Aeron had told Garrick as much, long before they found the map that led them to the dragon egg.

  “You still should’ve told me,” Garrick grumbled. “I’m the one in charge.”

  Kent glanced over his shoulder at the entrance to the cave. “Not anymore.”

  “That’s beside the point.” Garrick squared his body with Kent, but Kent didn’t move to face him. “Because you didn’t tell me, it almost got us killed, and now we gotta clean up the mess Aeron made.”

  “It was a difficult decision, but it was the right decision,” Kent said calmly. “I apologize for the harm it caused you, but I could not allow Aeron’s sister to be sacrificed.”

  “Then what’re you doing here?” Garrick asked.

  “Making another difficult decision.”

  The frigid wind picked up, sending chills racing across Garrick’s skin. Having troll blood in his veins had hardened his skin, made him stronger, and helped him heal faster, but it didn’t keep him from getting cold.

  He glanced over his shoulder at the cave entrance. Orange light glowed inside. He wanted to return to the warmth of the fire, but he just couldn’t tolerate Falna anymore. He needed a break. So he pulled his cloak tight around his shoulders and gritted his teeth against winter’s wrath.

  “She’s an evil wench,” Garrick continued, keeping his voice low so only Kent could hear him. “Tried to kill me and two of my friends. Mark my words, she’ll try again once we’re done, regardless of whatever Lord Valdis told her.”

  “What are you doing here?” Kent asked.

  The question caught Garrick off-guard, even though he’d just asked Kent the same thing. He turned toward Kent again and stared down at him. Kent was taller than most men, but Garrick still had him by seven or eight inches in height and nearly double his weight.

  “I have to finish the job.”

  “Will you walk with me?” Kent motioned toward a path along the mountainside. “I would rather not risk anyone overhearing this conversation.”

  Kent’s suggestion reminded Garrick of the way his father used to call him to account for bad behavior—except that Garrick’s father had usually ended those conversations with savage beatings that left Garrick bloody and bruised.

  Perhaps it was the tinge of silver in Kent’s hair, or his formal demeanor, or both, that gave Garrick that sense, even though Garrick was older than Kent by twenty-something years. He didn’t look it of course—yet another benefit of having troll blood in his veins.

  Ultimately, Garrick agreed, and they started down the path. They walked side-by-side except when the path occasionally narrowed, making that impossible. Once they’d ventured about twenty-five yards from the opening of the cave, Kent spoke again.

  “What are you doing here?” Kent repeated his question.

  Garrick’s jaw tensed, and he frowned. “I already answered you.”

  “We were hired to retrieve a dragon egg and return it to Lord Valdis. We succeeded.”

  “And then two members of our crew stole something from our employer and ran off, which we also just discussed.”

  “Something?” Kent asked.

  Garrick frowned. “You know what I mean.”

  Kent stopped and looked up at Garrick. “No. I do not.”

  “Don’t stand there and try to cast me as a villain.” Garrick pointed his finger at Kent’s chest. “It’s not like I wanted to do this. You three didn’t give me a choice. I did what I had to do to save myself. And you.”

  “Please do not misunderstand me,” Kent said. “I am grateful that your actions and commitments to Lord Valdis saved our lives. Having met Lord Valdis face-to-face, I can understand why you desire to please him, and it is not solely because he is wealthy.”

  It’s because he can kill me in more ways than I can count. Garrick waited for Kent to get to his point.

  “But now that we are free of his grasp, why do you insist on continuing on this mission if you do not approve of it?”

  “Are you dense?” Garrick snapped. “What other choice do I have?”

  Kent’s eyebrows arched down, and Garrick immediately regretted the insult. Kent was one of the most intelligent people Garrick had ever met, though he’d never say it to his face. Nor was he about to apologize, even if he’d been wrong in saying it.

  “Perhaps I should skip to the end,” Kent said. “We do not need to continue on this path. We can just leave.”

  Garrick shook his head. “We need to make up for failing Lord Valdis. We
brought him the egg, but we cost him something in the process. We’ll never work again if we don’t restore our reputation. It’s the right thing to do.”

  “Lord Valdis ordered us to kill our friends and deliver Kallie to him. He only wishes to sacrifice her to gain more power. There is nothing right about any of that.”

  “Your morals are different than mine.”

  “No. They really are not,” Kent countered. “You did what you had to do to survive. I understand that. But now you have another choice. Do you really want Lord Valdis to become even more powerful than he already is? Especially if it comes at the cost of Kallie’s life and the lives of Aeron and Mehta?”

  Garrick had been through this in his head dozens of times already, first with Noraff and Phesnos and their betrayal, then again with Aeron and Mehta. And, to a lesser extent, Kent. Did he want to kill Aeron and Mehta because of what they’d done?

  Yes.

  Did he have the same kind of drive to kill them compared to what he intended to do to Noraff and Phesnos?

  No.

  Noraff and Phesnos had betrayed him for coin. It was a petty, small-minded, shortsighted reason.

  Aeron and Mehta had betrayed him to save Aeron’s sister. They didn’t want to betray him, and based on how it all went down, they weren’t even planning to betray him at all. Aeron wasn’t the planning type. When Lord Valdis had refused to give up Kallie, Aeron had improvised the rest.

  Garrick didn’t fault them for their reasons, so the scenario wasn’t the same thing at all. But the end result needed to be the same.

  Didn’t it?

  Garrick started, “If we give up now, we don’t get paid—”

  “The coin is the least of my concerns,” Kent said, “and I suspect it does not rank highly among yours, either.”

  “Let me finish,” Garrick grunted. “We don’t get paid, and Lord Valdis will hunt us down and have us killed. Then he’ll just send someone else to get Kallie, and he’ll still get what he wants in the end. At some point, I gotta do what’s best for me.”

  “Even if it is wrong,” Kent stated more than asked.

  Garrick gritted his teeth. “It’s wrong to you. To me, it’s what I need to do to stay alive. And it’s what you need to do to stay alive.”