by Jayne Castel
Light exploded in the center of the clearing, like a second sun, turning the dark forest into daylight for one long drawn out heartbeat. Asher cried out, blinded even as he squeezed his eyes shut.
Boom.
Asher felt himself lifted high into the air, the roar of fire around him, heat blistering his skin. Men’s screams filled the night, and the smell of burning flesh seared his nostrils.
And then he was falling through ash and smoke. He hit the forest floor, the wind rushing out of him.
Shadows.
Asher rolled on his side, coughing as smoke caught in his lungs. He opened his smarting eyes and watched men burn on the perimeter of the clearing. They danced, beating at the flames, their screams flaying his nerves bare. Some of the trees had also caught alight: flaming torches against the night sky.
He watched the burning men fall. Their screams died to whimpers before they eventually lay still as the fire consumed them.
Bile rose, stinging the back of his throat. His healer’s instinct railed against this; he hated to see senseless death. Even if he’d done it to save them all, he had unleashed Ninia.
The girl stood a few feet away. Men lay around her, charred corpses on the damp forest floor. Ninia ignored them; she merely stared down at her right hand, still stretched out before her, as if it didn’t belong to her.
Asher’s gaze swiveled right, searching for Mira. She lay face down a few feet away, still clutching her sword. The Captain of Anthor lay on his side around five yards back from her, groaning as he came to.
Asher crawled over to Mira and rolled her over, relief swamping him when he saw the rise and fall of her chest. She’s breathing.
Mira’s eyelids flickered, and she opened her eyes, gazing up at him. “What happened?” she croaked.
“Ninia.”
Her attention shifted past him to where the princess still stood, as if carven from ice. “Is she hurt?”
He shook his head and helped Mira sit up. Truthfully though, he wasn’t sure how Ninia was. Gathering the Light appeared to have traumatized her.
“Who are you, girl?” The Captain of Anthor had staggered to his feet and stood staring at Ninia—although he wisely made no move toward her. For the first time since entering the clearing, the inscrutable mask the captain wore had slipped. Soot covered his face, and the fire had burned his red cloak to tattered scraps. Behind him, no more than five of his men had survived the inferno. Groaning, they roused themselves from the ground.
Ninia ignored the captain. Instead, her gaze shifted to Asher. The look in her eyes haunted him. “I warned you,” she whispered.
Asher stared back at her. “Aye,” he replied hoarsely. “You did.”
Around them, the trees smoked as the flames burned out. The odor of charred flesh filled Asher’s mouth, making him feel queasy.
“This is unexpected.” The captain spoke again, his dark gaze speculative. He hadn’t taken his attention from Ninia. “My father didn’t tell me you were an enchanter … or perhaps he doesn’t know.”
Ninia blinked, as if realizing the man was there for the first time. “No one knew,” she whispered. “Only mother.”
“Another reason to rid the world of you then. An enchanter of royal blood is a precious thing indeed.”
Asher rose to his feet, pulling Mira up against him. He swayed slightly. The explosion had knocked him off-balance. His ears were ringing, and he felt as if he stood upon the deck of a pitching ship.
“You think you can take her on?” Asher asked. “After what you’ve seen her do?”
The captain’s dark gaze swiveled to him, and they looked at each other for a long moment. In that instant Asher realized the man didn’t have a choice. Returning home with the news the princess had eluded him wasn’t an option. The captain would die here in this forest rather than face failure.
Who is he?
Once again, looking at the man, Asher was reminded of someone. Only he still couldn’t place it. The cast of the features, the arrogant bearing were both hauntingly familiar.
Something else was familiar too—the bind to duty. In the man’s eyes, Asher saw himself reflected back. He’d once been like him, imprisoned by loyalty, a sense of duty that bordered on the self-destructive. Hadn’t he come after Ninia and Mira with the same purpose?
He was no longer that man, yet he saw how duty yoked the Captain of Anthor. Just like Asher’s unquestioning loyalty to his order, his duty defined him. He would die for his king.
The captain didn’t speak. The tightening of his hands on the hilt of his blade said it all.
“Captain.” One of his soldiers, a lean, sharp-featured man with a short beard stepped forward. “Should we—”
“Quiet,” his leader cut him off. “We stand here.”
Beside Asher, Ninia flexed her fingers. Fire still burned on the margins of the clearing around them, enough for her to wreak serious damage if she gathered the Light again. Asher took a cautious step back, drawing Mira with him. For their own safety, they needed to distance themselves.
It was then that something on the fringes of the trees caught his attention.
Mist.
It was a windless night, and there were no rivers or lakes nearby. Yet a dense, milky fog crept through the trees as if pushed by a stiff wind, as if it had rolled in from a great, dark lake.
Asher’s body went cold.
He’d seen this mist before, in the forests around The Royal City when he and the other enchanters of the Light had gone out hunting shadow creatures, during those months of darkness the year before.
Fear slithered through his gut. He felt Mira tense against him. “What’s happening?” she whispered.
Likewise, the Captain of Anthor and his remaining five men had all noticed the change. They drew close together, their gazes wary as they scanned the curling mist.
A cackle split the night, the sound confirming what Asher had realized already.
The wraiths of the dead didn’t inhabit this forest—the servants of the shadows did. And they were coming for them.
Another cry echoed through the trees, followed by a series of hoots and howls that made Ninia blanch. It seemed that she too knew what was out there.
Asher tightened his grip on Mira. She glanced up at him, and their gazes fused.
One of the men of Anthor muttered something in his own tongue, a string of words that sounded like a prayer, a plea to long-forgotten gods. It would do no good though. The trees had stopped burning on the edges of the clearing and were now smoking. Asher glanced over at Ninia.
The girl’s face had gone the color of milk. She looked down to find the mist wreathing around her. Panic flooded across her features when she tried to raise her hands and found them pinned against her sides. Likewise, Asher found himself frozen to the spot, the encircling mist hugging him tight. Across the clearing, the Anthor soldiers struggled against it, before they too were held fast. Only their captain didn’t fight the mist’s embrace. Instead, he was looking in the direction of the forest path, where ghostly figures appeared through the mist.
Asher’s breathing quickened when he too saw them. Hiriel—both terrible and beautiful—moved toward them. The ethereal figures crept through the trees, their slender forms rippling and billowing around them, blending in with the surrounding mist. Their eyes burned into Asher like two white-hot stars, and upon their heads horns resembling deer antlers rose into the fog.
Small, coal-black imps scuttled past them, chattering as they went. The Dusk Imps had long, rat-like tails, and hooked claws that could flay a man’s flesh from his bones in one swipe. They hunted in packs and were deadly. Asher remembered them well from the Battle of the Shadefells.
A third type of creature emerged from the darkness and loped into the clearing. Hunched, its naked limbs gleaming pale, the Nightgenga peered at them through a curtain of lank hair. Wolf eyes took in the figures clustered together at opposite end of the glade.
Asher’s belly cramped. They were
trapped, helpless, as the tide of shadow creatures drew in, surrounding them on all sides.
A cluster of Hiriel, their milky forms bleeding and mixing together, stepped forward from the rest.
“Who dares enter our domain?” they called in unison. Their voices were hollow and high-pitched, echoing as if they stood within a great stone cavern.
Asher didn’t reply; he couldn’t find his voice. None of the others spoke either. After a lengthy silence, it was eventually Mira who answered for them.
“We’re traveling to the coast,” she croaked. “We mean no offence.”
“You shatter the silence, set fire to the trees,” the Hiriel sang back. “You’re not welcome here.”
“Sorry about disturbing your peace,” Mira replied, the tremor in her voice giving her terror away. “Let us go, and we’ll never bother you again.”
Hollow laughter reverberated around the clearing.
Shadow creatures flooded into the clearing—large and small, some ghostly, others resembling carrion. Their nearness and sheer numbers even caused the Captain of Anthor to grow tense and pale. A few feet from where Asher and Mira stood, Ninia looked on the verge of fainting.
“You’re not leaving,” the Hiriel chorused, their voices alive with mirth. “This forest will be your tomb.”
27
The Dim Hold
MIRA STUMBLED, NEARLY pitching forward into a mat of briar rose. A strong hand, clammy and cold, fastened around her neck and hauled her back.
“Careful, girl,” the Nightgenga leered at her. Its breath smelled putrid, like sweet, rotting meat. “Those thorns go deep.”
Mira twisted, attempting to free herself from that fish-like grip. Yet the Nightgenga held on for a heartbeat longer, shaking her before the iron band of its grip on the back of her neck released. A shudder rippled through her body.
If you’re going kill us, just get it over with.
But it appeared their captors had other plans.
To Mira’s surprise, the shadow creatures had merely herded them out of the clearing and onto the forest path.
Only one of group had resisted. A soldier, the oldest of the five that followed the captain, lost his nerve and attempted to slash his way out of the mist with his sword. He’d gotten three feet, snarling curses as he went, when a wave of Dusk Imps brought him down. The other captives had looked on in mute horror as the creatures clambered up his tall, broad bulk, teeth flashing and claws slashing. The soldier had fallen, his screams quickly turning to wails. Mira had never heard a man make such a sound.
She’d looked away after that, wishing she could block out the wet sounds of their feasting. Next to her, Ninia had heaved up the contents of her stomach on the damp ground, her small body quivering. Asher had merely looked sickened, his face gaunt and pale in the silvery light the Hiriel emitted. The other soldiers, even their captain, had gone still as they watched the violent death and the silent warning it held. After that they all gave up their weapons without a struggle and went meekly where the shadow creatures bid.
Mira continued walking, although she tried to pay more attention to where she was putting her feet this time. Exhaustion weighed her down; she felt as if they’d been traveling for most of the night. They’d left the forest path a way back and now trudged south through densely packed trees and undergrowth.
“Dawn’s approaching,” Asher whispered from beside her. “They won’t be able to remain out here after the sun rises.”
“Silence.” The Nightgenga who had yanked Mira up by the neck, belted Asher around the back of the head. The enchanter lurched forward from the blow. “No talking.”
Asher straightened up and cast a dark look over his shoulder at where the creature loped at his heels. In response, it grinned—a ghoulish expression on a flat, featureless face—daring him to speak once more. The enchanter wisely held his tongue. He glanced right at Mira once more, and their gazes fused. She understood his warning. Their destination—wherever these creatures were taking them—must be close by.
Mira shifted her attention to Ninia. The girl walked a few yards ahead, leading the way behind where Dusk Imps cleared a path through the undergrowth, whipping the clumps of bramble, black thorn, briar rose and ferns aside with their meat-hook claws. The men of Anthor brought up the rear of the group, surrounded by the Hiriel who trailed their milky cloaks behind them.
They walked on, and Mira was aware of the sky above beginning to lighten, bleeding from the east. And then the press of trees and vegetation around her drew back, and they stepped beyond the line of trees.
A great dark fortress rose before them.
Mira’s step faltered, and like her companions, she halted. She heard gasps behind her as the men of Anthor stepped out of the forest and into another world.
Although she knew The Swallow Keep well, Mira hadn’t seen any of the royal fortresses in the other kingdoms. She had heard the Royal Palace of Rithmar was a white and glittering citadel, whereas Anthor’s palace in Mirrar Rock was made of obsidian. She had heard that Farras had a palace made entirely of mud and sandstone.
But she couldn’t imagine any of them resembled this keep.
Great twin horns of dark stone thrust out of the forest floor, forming an arch above an iron gate. Studded with spikes, the gate was enormous. It appeared at least thirty-foot high, and framed by a row of stone columns either side the thickness of giant oaks. There were no windows, just slabs of dull stone and sheets of black iron. It didn’t resemble a fortress as much as a king’s safe box—or a giant tomb.
Mira glanced around her, at where shadow creatures loped, crawled, or glided past her toward the gate. Her stomach clenched. Of course this place didn’t look like the buildings she was used to—her kind didn’t live here.
“The Dim Hold.” The Nightgenga was back, whispering in her ear, its rancid breath nearly overpowering. “You are the first mortals to ever see it.”
A low oath sounded next to Mira. She was aware then that the Captain of Anthor had stepped up and was now standing to her right. His dark gaze was riveted upon the fortress. “This place isn’t on any map,” he rasped. “How long has it been here?”
The Nightgenga smirked. “The Dim Hold has stood for nearly five hundred years. Valgarth himself ordered it built. That stone was mined in the Shadefells, the iron forged in Anthor. It isn’t on any map because this land doesn’t belong to men, but to us.”
Mira swallowed. “Why show it to us then?”
“Enough questions.” The Nightgenga placed a hand between her shoulder blades and shoved Mira forward. “Time to enter the darkness.”
Mira stepped forward, walking alongside Ninia. The girl wore a haunted expression. She glanced over at Mira, her gaze desperate. Like Mira, Ninia’s arms were still pinned to her sides by the strange mist that the Hiriel had bound them with. It prevented her and Asher from gathering the Light—not that there was much light about for them to wield.
The captives advanced on the gate. The Dim Hold dwarfed them. It was a vast structure that looked as if it had been forged by giants—each spike the size of a man’s arm. And as they drew nearer still, Mira heard the clunk of heavy locks releasing, before the creak and whine of metal straining followed.
The gate inched open.
Dawn was almost upon them now, a grey light that filtered through the trees. It caused the Dusk Imps to chatter nervously, and the Nightgengas to shield their eyes. It was time to get inside.
The gate had now drawn open a few yards, darkness yawning within. Mira walked toward it, her heart hammering so loudly she was sure her companions could all hear it. Behind her, she heard the rasp of a man’s breath as he fought panic, while beside her Ninia was gasping, as if she might bolt at any moment.
“Steady, Ninia,” Mira whispered to her. It was easier to focus on the girl, to think about anything save her own fear and that yawning maw of darkness that opened up before them.
A moment later it swallowed them, and they halted in total blackn
ess as the gate clanged shut behind them. Mira drew in a deep breath and tried to quell the rising panic that clawed at her throat, threatening to choke her. She felt as if she’d just been buried alive. She inhaled cold, damp air tinged with an odd odor—that of hot iron. It was the same smell she and Ninia had encountered all those months ago, right before they had run from shadow creatures, only here it was stronger.
She breathed in once more, through her mouth this time in an attempt to block out that smell. As her eyes adjusted, she realized that they weren’t in total darkness. The Hiriel had followed them in here. Their glowing bodies illuminated the interior of the Dim Hold in a faint ghostly light.
Mira’s panic ebbed slightly. At least they weren’t blind in here. She glanced around and could make out the lines of a lofty entrance hall. Stone slabs lay beneath their feet, and a high vaulted ceiling rose above. Before them stretched a forest of thick rock pillars.
“Move,” the Nightgenga ordered.
The thud of their foot falls echoed through the stone hall as an escort of Dusk Imps, Hiriel, and Nightgengas herded them up its length. There was intense purpose in the way these creatures moved, in their insistence they keep moving, and Mira wondered once more at their destination, and why they were even still alive.
She looked over at where Asher walked beside her. He stared ahead, his profile bathed in hoary light. She couldn’t believe he hadn’t known about this place. The whole point of the Order of Light and Darkness was to keep watch over The Four Kingdoms of Serran and ensure the shadows never again held sway, that enchantment was never put to ill-use.
She wanted to be angry with him, to blame him for leading them into danger, but the words stuck in her throat. Raging against him was pointless. He’d done what he thought was best. He hadn’t known that the shadow creatures had taken refuge in this forest.
Their journey together was now coming to an end.
Grief twisted under Mira’s rib cage, catching her by surprise. Bitter disappointment followed. She’d wanted to lie with Asher, to give herself to him. He’d given her a chance to start again. Only now her one chance was slipping from her.