The man staggered back, and a voice boomed from somewhere behind Alesh. “Get inside! Now!”
He twisted, looking back toward the castle, to see a barrel-chested, gray-haired man of at least seven feet in height standing in the doorway. One hand held the door while the other carried a device that looked similar to a crossbow but was different in ways Alesh’s fevered mind couldn’t comprehend. He glanced back at the Broken and saw that the man was even now working himself free of the net. In seconds, he would be out, and he would finish what he’d started.
Hissing in pain, blinking back the black spots gathering in his vision, Alesh stumbled to his feet, then grabbed Darl and, leaning on each other for support, they started toward the castle. As they neared the door, Alesh turned and tensed as he saw the Broken rising from where he’d untangled himself from the net. Then, without preamble, the man began charging toward them, his expression still blank.
“Come on, damnit!” A hand grabbed Alesh, and the next thing he knew, he was being tossed through the large, open doorway as if he weighed nothing. He rolled on the ground and looked up in time to see the Broken through a crack in the door, only feet away from the castle entrance. Then the door slammed shut, and the gray-haired giant’s thick arms tensed with strain as he slid a massive beam into place, barring the gate.
Alesh’s vision was blurring badly now, but he got the vague impression that they were in some kind of courtyard, with grass and bushes that seemed incongruous with the desert surrounding them. He was relieved to see Katherine, Rion, and Marta standing to one side, their forms indistinct, as his vision failed him. “I…thank you,” he rasped.
The giant man loomed over him, and though Alesh couldn’t see clearly, he could make out the scowl on the man’s face. “Sure, why not?” the stranger grated. “And, since we’re on that, why don’t you tell me who you are before I kill the lot of you?”
Alesh opened his mouth, meaning to answer. But the darkness that had been gathering in his vision, his mind, surged forward, and the only answer he was able to give was passing out.
***
Heat, burning through him, scouring him from the inside out. And pain. Terrible, shocking pain. He could hear voices, but they were muted and unclear, unable to make it through the storm of agony raging inside him. Vague shapes hovered around him, smears of light and shadow, indistinct and unknowable. More pain, a growl from someone, what might have been a curse. And then he fell into the darkness again.
Alesh’s eyes came open slowly. They felt heavy, thick, and there was a creeping numbness spreading through his body. Such a feeling might have alarmed him at another time, but after days, weeks spent in constant pain, he could feel only relief. He tried to turn his head, to look around, but his body didn’t want to obey his commands. A surge of panic threatened at that, but he fought it down. He was alive, and that was more than he had expected to be. “Hello?” he asked, his voice a croaking whisper, his throat impossibly dry, as if he’d swallowed a bucketful of sand.
No answer, and he cleared his throat, trying again. A moment later, there was the sound of a door opening, of rapid footsteps, and a familiar figure appeared above him. Relief and joy flooded through Alesh as he gazed at the face above him. “S-Sonya?”
“You’re awake!” the girl exclaimed, and Alesh grunted as she leaned over, hugging him tightly. “Uncle said you might not wake up for days, if at all, but I told him you would.”
“Y-you were right,” Alesh said, straining the words out past the fierce embrace. “And you have no idea how happy I am to see you, but if you don’t stop hugging me so tight, I’m liable to pass out again.”
Sonya giggled at that, but she let go, and Alesh took a deep, grateful breath. Something the girl had said struck him, and he tried to speak but broke into a coughing fit.
“Oh, I’m sorry, he said you’d be thirsty.” The next thing he knew, a glass of cool water was pressed to his lips, and he drank greedily, thinking he had never tasted anything so good.
“T-thanks,” Alesh said. “But…who’s ‘Uncle’?”
Sonya winced. “He’s not really my uncle—he just told me to call him that. You’ll like him, Alesh. He’s fun. And he knows all sorts of games. He saved me. He’s also the one that saw to your wounds.”
Alesh felt a little of his strength returning and glanced down to see that his body was practically covered in bandages. And, what was even more noticeable, the dull, throbbing pain in his arm where the crossbow quarrel had pierced him, the pain that had been his constant companion for the last several days, was gone. “Good riddance,” he mumbled. “What about the others? Katherine and—”
“They’re fine,” Sonya said. “All of them. Darl was a little hurt, but Uncle saw to him, and he’s all better now.”
Alesh breathed another sigh of relief, nodding slowly. “Now, this uncle of yours. Who is h—”
“Larin, that’s my name.” Alesh followed the sound of the voice to see the giant gray-haired man from the gate standing in the doorway.
Larin. Something about the name struck Alesh as familiar, then his eyes widened in realization. “Do you mean Chosen Larin? One of the Six? The one everyone knows as the Shaper?”
The big man grunted, frowning. Then he knelt beside Sonya. “Why don’t you go see to the others, little miss? Make sure they’re not touching any of uncle’s stuff. Your friend and I just need to have a little talk. We’ll be along directly.”
“Okay, Uncle,” she said, smiling widely, then she reached up and gave him a peck on the cheek before disappearing through the doorway.
They watched her go, and the big man gave another grunt. “Never much cared for people, but that little girl…she’s something else.”
“Yes,” Alesh managed, “she is.”
Larin turned back to him, frowning. “She’s also the only reason you’re not dead right now. I don’t like unwelcome visitors to my home, stranger, and I damned sure don’t like it when they arrive with an army at their backs. To answer your question, yes, my name is Larin, once Chosen of Amedan. Though it’s a name I haven’t heard uttered in years. As for that ‘Shaper’ nonsense, you can keep it to yourself. I’ve always liked to build things, that’s all, liked working with my hands. It isn’t my fault if some superstitious fools want to go giving titles to everything they come across, as if everything has to have a damned name, has to be labeled and categorized so those pretend scholars can turn their noses up at it.”
Alesh frowned. During his time spent in the library of Olliman’s castle in search of the identity of his parents, Alesh had read what few writings there were on Chosen Larin, known to most as the Shaper. A quiet man, they had said, one who preferred to work behind the scenes. But they had never mentioned the man’s obvious dislike of people—nor had they mentioned that he was over seven feet tall. “But…but you’re famous,” he said. “All the world loves you. Why would you hide away in the desert like this?”
The big man snorted. “All the world loves me, eh? Sure, and this year maybe long-sleeved tunics are in, and the next short. Stranger, peoples’ likes and dislikes change with the seasons—most quicker than that—and they never need much of a reason to start hating what they once loved.”
Alesh found himself thinking of Olliman, of the way the citizens of Ilrika had gone from adoring him, thinking him nearly a god himself, to despising him, over the course of a single year. “I think I understand.”
The man grunted, as if it didn’t matter to him one way or the other. Fun, Sonya had said. The man didn’t seem like much fun, not then, not with the way he was scowling at Alesh like he was a particularly ugly bug he was considering squashing. “Thank you for patching me up. My name’s Alesh, by the way, Cho—”
“I know who you are,” the big man said. “I know what you are. Your friends filled me in while you were sleeping. Now, why have you come, Alesh, Chosen of Amedan? And why have you brought death with you?”
Alesh winced. “I’m sorry for that. We came to
get help from the Ferinan, the Palietkun tribe, Darl’s people. But…”
“But the men you brought to my door killed them. I know.” The man shook his head. “A damned shame. Those Ferinan were as good as they come. They didn’t deserve what happened to them.”
“No. But, you see, that’s what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to stop those bastards from being able to do anything else like that again.”
The giant snorted. “I’ve heard it all before, boy, long before you were ever born. There’s always some great evil needs fightin’, and that’s the thing about evil—it never ends. Neither does the fightin’. And all for what? More blood, and little else ever comes of it.”
“So what then?” Alesh demanded, suddenly angry. “We’re all supposed to just hide in the desert like hermits? Just let the world be damned?” He shook his head, shocked at the difference in this man, one of Amedan’s Six, compared to Olliman, the man he’d grown up serving. “Olliman would never have—”
“Don’t talk to me about Olliman, boy!” the man suddenly roared, a wildness in his eyes. He hesitated then, his massive chest heaving as he fought to get himself under control. When he spoke again, it was in a normal voice, but Alesh could hear the barely-contained anger. “I knew Brent. He was a friend, maybe the only real friend I ever had. Oh, he was the wisest of the Chosen, sure, the best of us, but he was also just a man. A man with his own doubts, his own fears, a man who sacrificed everything for his people, and for what? If what I’ve heard is true, the bastards thanked him for all his sacrifices by killing him.”
He shook his head, and when he went on, his voice was haggard, tired. “I tried to tell him, once the war was done, when Argush, the king of the nightlings, was destroyed, to leave it, to come with me. I told him that without the nightlings to hate, the world would find something or someone else soon enough. Leave them to it, I said, let them pick up the pieces. You’ve done enough.” He turned to regard Alesh. “Do you know what he said to me?”
Alesh shook his head, finding it difficult to speak when he could see the naked grief on the old giant’s face.
The man smiled, his gaze getting a far-off look. “He said, ‘Larin, you love to build—the Evertorches, your inventions, all of it. Why not, then, build a better world?” He wiped a thick finger across his eyes. “A better world, that’s what he wanted. And for that, the bastards killed him.” He sighed. “When I first saw all you at the front of the castle, I just assumed they’d come to finish me too, figured maybe my days of hiding—” The older man cut off at a crash from somewhere outside. “Damnit. Alright, boy, it’s time to move—you going to get up or just lie around all day?”
Alesh opened his mouth to say that he couldn’t move, but then he realized that, as they’d been talking, the strength had slowly returned to his body. He grunted, rising, expected there to be pain but finding hardly any at all. He stood, taking an inventory of his wounds and tried to flex his hurt arm. The fingers at the end of it moved, if barely.
“You’ll get feelin’ back in it eventually,” the giant said. “You’re lucky to have the arm at all—any healer I’ve ever met would have had it off and called it a job well done, as full of infection as it was.”
“So…how did you fix it?” Alesh said.
The big man grunted. “It’s what I do—fix things. Anyway, maybe I’ll tell you later. Assuming we survive the next few hours.”
Alesh nodded, and then they were moving. They’d barely left the room when there was another crash from outside, and he thought he heard wood splinter. “Nightlings?” he asked the other man as they hurried through the castle hallways.
“No, not those bastards. Those damned things learned long ago not to try to enter my home, lights or not. Not particularly smart, but even dumb beasts will learn eventually, if they see enough of their fellows die. Not worth it just to gnaw on the grizzled bones of one ancient, ornery bastard. I’ve got enough booby traps around this place to wipe out a generation of them, they make an issue of it.”
Alesh frowned at that, but he remembered the way the nightlings had shied away from the castle, backing up as they drew near even though no lights had been lit. “What then?” he asked.
The man paused at a window, opening it, and pointed with a thick finger, withdrawing a cylinder from his tunic as he did. He gave the item a twist then tossed it through the opening with a casual motion, yet for all that, it hurtled through the air, and brilliant light shot in all directions. Alesh realized with shock that it was an Evertorch, and was stunned that the man had so casually thrown one away, as they were worth a small fortune.
But his true surprise came when the light of the Evertorch illuminated an army. Men in red and black, and others wearing the uniforms of Tesharna’s soldiers. Hundreds, possibly thousands of them. “T-that’s impossible,” he said, staring. “There…there weren’t that many before. How long have I been unconscious?”
The man raised an eyebrow at him. “Two days.”
Alesh blinked at that. Two days. And now they were trapped. They couldn’t fight their way out, not against so many. They walked on and soon he followed the big man into the entryway of the castle. The others stood there, whispering in nervous voices and glancing out the windows at the army. They turned at Alesh and Larin’s approach.
“Ah,” Rion said, “you’re awake. And just in time for the show.”
Katherine met Alesh’s eyes, giving him a smile that was at once relieved and anxious, and he returned it the best he could. Rose and Sonya stood a little away from the rest of the group, talking in hushed tones. Just met and already best friends, but then that was the way of children.
“Dawn Bringer,” Darl said, “it is good to see you awake and well.”
Alesh was still sore, and he didn’t know if “well” was how he’d describe himself, but he nodded. “Darl, about your people…I’m so sor—”
“Later,” the Ferinan interrupted in a soft voice. “Later, my friend. For now, we must concern ourselves with the present.”
Alesh nodded again. “Of course.”
“So…” Katherine said, “do we have a plan?”
“Preferably,” Rion interjected, “one that doesn’t end with the lot of us getting murdered.”
“Wish I’dve kept my invisible horses,” Marta muttered.
They all turned to look at her, and she shrugged. “You know, they’d be handy in a situation like this. But I gave ‘em away to a man I met. He was invisible too, so I suppose that’s alright.”
They all studied her incredulously, but it was Rion who spoke. “What good would a damned invisible horse do us, even if such a thing did exist? I mean, we’re not invisible, are we?”
The girl nodded, thoughtfully. “That’s a good point.”
Alesh blinked, not sure of what to say to that, then another crash from outside, and they all looked to see that the soldiers had gotten a tree—the gods alone knew where they’d found it out here in the desert—and fashioned a battering ram, and were now smashing it against the door. Alesh turned to Larin. “You said you had booby traps. Enough for that many?”
The big man snorted and shook his head. “No. When I built this place, I counted on nightlings, prepared for them. What I didn’t count on was an army of men hungry for blood showing up on my doorstep. Still,” he said, a glitter in his eyes, “the first of ‘em to come through’ll be in for a nasty surprise, anyway.”
“That’s great,” Rion muttered, “maybe we’ll find time to celebrate before we die.”
The giant scowled at that but said nothing, and Alesh found the others looking to him, waiting for what he would say. “Alright,” he said, glancing at Larin, “is there another way out of this place? A back door?”
The man nodded. “Yes.”
“Good.” Alesh sighed. “We’ll have to try to push through. They should be weaker at the back, if indeed they have surrounded the place. If we can force a hole…” He trailed off.
“Then what?” Rion said. “A
ssuming we even make it through their lines, who cares? We’ll be in the middle of the desert with no way of knowing where we are or where we’re going.”
Alesh opened his mouth to speak, but Larin beat him to it. “Might be there’s another way,” he said grudgingly.
They all turned to him, and he shifted, obviously uncomfortable with so much attention. “Well. I told you, I figured it’d be only a matter of time before someone came for me, bastards like the ones did for Brent. So…” He shrugged, almost sheepishly. “I rigged the place to blow.”
“To blow?” Alesh asked.
The big man nodded. “That’s right. There’s certain herbs that when dried…suffice to say that the place’ll go up like some of those firecrackers merchants sell at fairdays. Only…bigger.”
Alesh shared a glance with the others. “How much bigger?”
“A lot.”
“Wait a minute,” Rion said, “do you mean to tell me that for the last two days we’ve been sitting in a castle that could…what, explode?”
“That’s right,” Larin said.
“Well, sure,” Rion said dryly. “Why not?”
Just then, there was a crash from outside, far louder than those which had come before it, and they all looked out the window to see that the castle’s gate had been broken down. Red-cloaked men and Tesharna’s soldiers poured through the opening like ants, then Alesh heard a distinct click. A moment later, what appeared to be dozens of crossbow bolts flew out from either side of the courtyard’s wall, impaling the intruders who screamed as they died.
“By the gods,” Rion breathed. “Remind me to never visit you uninvited.”
The giant grinned widely, a glint in his eyes. “You already did.”
Rion swallowed hard, and Alesh couldn’t help but agree with his anxiety. It was one thing to be killed in battle; it was quite another to be killed without ever even seeing your enemy. Still, for all the devastation the booby trap had wreaked, leaving dozens of soldiers dead or dying on the courtyard ground, more were piling through every moment. “If you have a way out of here,” Alesh said, turning to Larin, “we’d better take it. We’re running out of time.”
The Truth of Shadows Page 37