Shadow and Light

by Peter Sartucci

  Terrell’s eyebrows climbed at the blunt honesty of Kirin’s thought. *I don’t think I could be so . . . philosophical if such a thing happened to me.* He found his right hand cupping his groin again. I don’t want to be celibate, especially not involuntarily!

  Kirin evidently caught the gist of the thought, for he chuckled. *Me neither!*

  They lay silently for a while, Kirin remembering his wife in melancholy.

  Someday I too will have a wife, Terrell reminded himself. The closeness in Kirin’s memories could make a stone envious. A night with the concubines had never been the same, and for the first time Terrell understood what his parents shared. Will that be my fate? Royal marriages are usually arranged for mutual gain, not mutual happiness, and I can tell Osrick hasn’t been happy with his wife. He certainly isn’t faithful to her.

  Somewhere in the desert a jackal howled. Beyond the cave mouth bats flew across the faces of the moons.

  The women in our lives redeem us or damn us, according to their choosing, Terrell remembered Father once saying to him after an argument with his sisters. Mother had merely smiled and linked hands with him.

  Then Terrell’s mind returned to the faint memory trail that had been bothering him earlier. Something about Herrip’s vision.

  *I have a request that may make you sad,* Terrell told Kirin.

  The acrobat’s answer was guarded. *What?*

  *Please remember your mother.* Terrell held his breath as he waited.

  For a moment Kirin hesitated, then his mind swirled with memories that peeled back in layers. A grave where masked corpsetakers carelessly shoveled dirt over a body that didn’t even have a shroud, much less a coffin. A woman lying on a pile of straw, her face bruised from a terrible beating, eyes closed and breathing labored. The same woman healthy and vibrant, dancing while pale thuggish men with pointed ears leered, until the strongest among them stepped forward to claim her. The woman sitting on a woven mat under palm trees surrounded by other women as brown of skin as herself, only now her face had a vacant expression as she plaited palm fronds. A close memory of her prying nutmeats from their shells with a bone pick, face still vacant as she fed the fruits of her labor to Kirin. All the memories made her and everyone else in them seem huge, so Kirin must have been no more than six or seven years old.

  Terrell remembered Herrip declaring that he’d seen Kirin swimming in his vision. *Where did you live when you were small?*

  *On an island in the Sundering Sea.* Memories of sand and blue water under an endless arch of sky. *We called it Pearl Island, for the pearls that the men took from giant clams in the lagoon. Xir traders would come once a year to trade for them. That was our undoing, eventually, when a Klinto ship full of Gwythlo and Klinto slavers followed the traders and found us. They attacked, captured most of us and carried us off to their own island.* A memory of violence that made Terrell wince.

  *That dance she did,* he asked. *Were those the slavers around her?*

  *Yeah, they were separating all the children to be sold together, the men to another buyer and the women to a third. She didn’t want me to be separated from her, so she told me to hide in the jungle when no one was looking, while she danced to distract them. It worked, I hid, and the buyer left with the other kids but not me. She tried to explain it to me afterwards, but it wasn’t until I grew up, years later, that I finally understood. Their chief made her his woman, but he treated her cruelly. It took us most of a year to escape, and she’d become very sick by the time we did, feverish and babbling nonsense. She died the night we finally made it to Aretzo.* Old grief mingled with new.

  Terrell hesitated, then delicately asked, *Did she ever tell you anything about your father?*

  Surprise, then resentment, but Kirin answered, slowly thinking through the old memories. *No. He must have been a Gwythlo because of my skin and ears. The villagers called Gwythlos rapers and said one surely got me on her. The other kids tormented me over that.* Memory of pointing fingers as brown-skinned children sang a cruel song at him.

  *Did she ever confirm that?* Terrell asked, holding his breath for the answer. His guess looked like a certainty, but he had to be sure.

  *Hunh?* Kirin’s thoughts sounded bewildered now. *No, Mother hardly ever talked at all; people called her simple. Except after the slavers took us. They hit her in the head, and when she woke up afterwards she didn’t remember me at first.* More old sorrow, a pain worse than a body blow as the face he knew best gazed on him with doubt. *But she changed after that, got more aware and clever. I hid in the woods on the slaver’s island and she put food out for me. Sometimes the other slavers tried to catch me, and I had to hide for days, but she always found a way to get food to me. Even when the slavers went out after new slaves we couldn’t really talk much. The slavers’ own women didn’t have any way off the island, and the chief always left a couple of older men behind to watch over us. Even when those got drunk we still had to be secret, because the slavers’ women didn’t like Mother and were mean to her when they could get away with it.* A mental picture of a bevy of angry pale-skinned women hitting the brown one he had called mother.

  *What did she tell you during that time?*

  *Not much. Even in the forest we couldn’t talk for long or the slavers’ women might find us.* Resentfully Kirin answered, *Why are you asking me all these questions?*

  Terrell hesitated, then slowly said, *Because I think perhaps I may know who you are.*

  Bafflement as Kirin demanded, *What in the Nine Hells are you talking about? I’m Kirin Sule DiUmbra, an acrobat with the DiUmbra Troupe!*

  Terrell shook his head, feeling Kirin’s black curls brush his nose. *One more question then. Was your mother native to that island?*

  Perplexedly, Kirin thought, *No. They found her in the lagoon one morning tied to a mess of wreckage after a terrible storm. The villagers told me about it. She had me, only a newborn then, tied to her breast with a piece of fine cloth. The women still talked about that cloth years later though it had rotted away by then. She must have been on a ship that sank.*

  *And took twenty loyal lives to the bottom with it.* Terrell nodded again, his own heart filling with emotion. *That’s why Herrip’s vision showed you holding the Crown, why Jina saw us both standing before the Stone Throne.*

  Kirin wrenched his body around violently, the blanket flapping as he turned to stare directly into Terrell eyes. *What are you talking about?*

  *Osrick tried to kill you and your nursemaid, and everybody thought he’d succeeded because no mage could find you, even using your birth hair for a link.* Terrell raised his free hand to trace the bones of Kirin’s face, so close to his own. Kirin flinched yet did not pull away. *But no mage can ever find you, because you can walk through any magic ever made by man and it doesn’t see you unless you want it to. Until you walked through the Dragon doors of the Royal Chambers in the Aretzo Palace, right?*

  Kirin stared at him, his mind in a whirl that Terrell shared as if it were his own. *They opened for me. I thought they must approve of, ahh, of what I did.*

  *They let you in because the spirits that inhabit them knew you belonged there,* Terrell told him, a churning mix of emotions filling his chest. *Because you are my twin brother, Ryghar DuRillin DiGwythlo.*

  * * *

  “That can’t be true,” Kirin whispered, shock roaring through him.

  He pushed away from the prince, rolled out of the blanket into cold night air and staggered to his feet. “It can’t be true!” Kirin cried to the uncaring night.

  Jina and the men stirred in their blankets. Both sentries lay still on the sand, black blood glistening in the moonlight while a dim form got to its feet. Another rushed at him with glinting steel.

  He barely dodged the blade, knew a tug as it sliced the sleeve of his robe and kissed his left arm with fire. The attacker, a man wrapped in black cloth almost invisible in the night, recovered his balance and bored in with another lunge. Kirin reached for his own knife—and it wasn’t
on his belt.

  The second stab tore his shirt and scratched his ribs.

  Kirin’s attacker stumbled; Terrell had flung a rock and hit the man. Kirin kicked the attacker’s knee to send him tumbling, but the second attacker rushed forward. In the corner of one eye Kirin saw two more struggling with three of the Duermus.

  *Catch your knife!* Terrell sent, tossing it.

  Kirin reached for the flying weapon’s handle and missed, saving himself from slashed fingers. The knife clattered among rocks.

  “Dung!” Before he could add more, the second assassin came at him with a knife in each hand while the first scrambled for his own dropped knife.

  Kirin buried them both in Shadow.

  The new attacker slashed wildly with both blades and again Kirin dodged. This assassin cocked his head to listen for footsteps, then lunged again almost correctly. Kirin let him get close enough to kick him in a knee, and nearly got spitted in return by the lefthand knife. He backed up and circled while the second recovered his balance and the first managed to regain his feet. Both men wobbled in pain for a moment and then stood there, knives poised and listening. Jina crawled through the Darkness along the foot of the cave wall. Four men fought two outside the cave mouth, while four others lay too still.

  *Where in the Nine Hells did they come from?* Kirin demanded, his heart pounding.

  *Are they all Duermus?*

  *Yeah. Single eyebrow, copper skin, stink like goats.*

  *Then likely Herrip sent them,* Terrell answered, drawing his own sword and discarding the sheath. *Watch out, the two out front might join this fight.*

  Kirin looked over his shoulder. Terrell had got to his feet and stood with his back to the rock wall of the cave. The Shadow didn’t cover him but blocked him into the alcove like a wall. The prince listened intently. Kirin tried to watch both of his attackers while also keeping an eye on the fight out front. For a moment everybody stood still, looking or listening or both.

  A distant jackal howled in the cold night.

  “You shall die,” the first assassin said in a loud voice. “Accept your fate.”

  “The hell I will, you smelly bastard!” Kirin growled back, then knew himself a fool when both assassins charged the sound of his voice.

  The second managed to run right out of the Shadow for a moment before Kirin hastily lapped it over him again. But the moment had been enough. The assassin redirected his run to head for Terrell.

  *Watch out!* Kirin warned, dodging the first as the man grimly hobbled at him.

  *Let me see him!*

  Kirin managed to draw the Shadow up off the ground enough that Terrell saw the assassin’s legs two steps before the man reached him. The second assassin burst from the darkness barely a foot from the tip of the prince’s sword. Incredibly, the Duermu managed to twist aside and block Terrell’s stroke with one knife. He nearly got the other blade into Terrell’s right shoulder as he passed; the point ripped the prince’s silken sleeve. Terrell ducked, dodged, and then the assassin had his own back to the rock wall and the prince staggered into the shadow blindly.

  *He’s fast!* Terrell gasped. *Stung my shoulder but I can still use my sword arm.*

  *He’s too damn smart,* Kirin growled back. *Keep your guard up! He might charge you again. Give me a moment.*

  He kicked the first man again to send him sprawling, then used the moment’s respite to search among the rocks. He found his knife and sheathed it, then picked up two fist-sized rocks and began carefully walking wide around his own attacker toward Terrell. *I’m going to try to lift my shadow off the ground enough that you can see your man’s legs, but he can’t see us.*

  But before he got there the second assassin charged again, this time toward the noise of Kirin’s footsteps. Kirin set himself and heaved one rock, then the other.

  Both hit. The first grazed the Duermu’s right hand and clanged off a knife, the second smashed the assassin’s nose and broke two teeth.

  “Bastard of a whoreson pig fucker!” The second assassin snarled, spitting out teeth and blood. He weaved side to side while slashing furiously all around him. “I swear by The One I will feed you your own balls!”

  The first man snapped something in a pain-wracked voice, evidently making sure his slashing partner knew where he was, but this time he didn’t try to rise. Kirin hoped he had broken the bastard’s knee.

  Kirin backpedaled while drawing his Shadow off Terrell and closer around both assassins. *As soon as you see him,* he sent, *Cut him!* Aloud, he said for the assassin’s benefit, “Bite yourself, you desert goat fucker! You must have been banging every nanny in Silbar, you stink so bad! The billies too!”

  The second assassin growled and shifted his attention towards the taunting voice. Kirin threw another rock, this time hitting the Duermu on the left collarbone. A bone cracked and the man dropped that arm, but didn’t lower his other weapon. Kirin went on with a description of the assassin’s ancestry and a catalog of even more unsavory habits, trying to hold his attention as he lifted his Shadow up off the ground.

  The other two assassins, fighting the three surviving men of Jina’s entourage, both bolted toward the sound of his voice. They charged into the Shadow without hesitation, then slowed.

  Terrell crouched, peered under the floating Darkness until he could see the second assassin and gage his footing, and then darted in. The man, despite his pain and Kirin’s taunts, nearly skewered the prince. Terrell backed away barely ahead of the knife, but his sword had opened the assassin’s leg. Blood poured from the cut.

  “Die!” shouted the second assassin as he threw himself after the prince.

  Kirin rang the third assassin’s head with a rock. The man stumbled but forged on doggedly, weaving a net of moving steel in front of him as he searched for his target. The fourth one took up a station at his right and wove a third knife into the matrix. Jina’s men hesitated, ran around the outside of the Shadow to find and guard her. She had reached the mouth of the cave by crawling along the back wall.

  Kirin drew his knife and darted up behind the second assassin. Before he could stab him, the man twisted like a snake and nearly knifed him instead.

  Then Terrell sank his sword into the second assassin’s lower back and twisted; the man dropped to his knees. For a moment he tried to rally, stabbing toward Kirin’s legs, but his strength gave out and he collapsed face first in the dirt. Kirin stomped on the nearest knife hand to disarm him before he saw the blood gushing from the assassin’s back. Terrell had opened a kidney and the second assassin bled out in moments.

  Then the first assassin almost hamstrung Kirin. The tip of the knife sliced a finger-long hole in his hose and left a shallow gash across the back of his leg.

  “Dung!” Kirin swore, whirled, and jammed his knife through the man’s eye. The first assassin joined his partner on the cave floor.

  The last two were still slashing the air and slowly forcing Terrell back, any moment now they’d break out of the Shadow. Kirin strained to raise it off the floor while sending, *Get down!* to Terrell.

  The prince obediently dropped to a crouch as the Shadow rose, looked under it and found his target. The third assassin’s knife flashed over his head as the prince lunged from his crouch and ran his sword straight through the man’s belly. The third assassin strained to stab him, only tore his sleeve. Then the fatally wounded man fell backward as Terrell’s sword ripped free and spilled his intestines. He dropped his knife and curled around his ruptured guts with a mewling sob, pain finally triumphing.

  The fourth sensed his partner fall, turned toward Terrell—and Kirin jammed his knife under the assassin’s right ear. The man dropped like a puppet with cut strings.

  *Any more of them?* Terrell demanded, hastily cleaning his dripping sword on a dead assassin’s garment while he crouched under the Shadow and peered about.

  Kirin looked around. The three surviving Duermus had made a protective triangle around Jina where she crouched against the wall of the cave. The Sh
adow billowed scant feet from them and their eyes were white rings in the night, bugged out in terror, but they didn’t run.

  Kirin thought the fight had probably made enough noise to scare off every wild thing nearby. Jina said something sharp to her escort and they spread out slowly, looking carefully around the outside of the cave. The rocks revealed no more assassins bearing down on them with deadly intent. Outside the cave Calm’s wan crescent peered over a shoulder of Skyrock.

  *I think that’s all,* Kirin answered tentatively. *If Herrip had more than four to send against us, I think he’d have used them all at once. I hope.*

  Terrell stood up as Kirin drew the Shadow back inside his chest. *They were too eager. They should have waited until we were both asleep.*

  Kirin snorted bitterly as he cleaned his knife. *Maybe the bastards thought we were. Or maybe they wanted the fight. Maybe they got impatient.*

  *Thank The One for that. If they had waited until we were truly unconscious—*

  *We’d be dead. Two sentries were no match for four assessins.* Kirin gave in to the shudder that wanted out, gasped a few times before he could master his breathing again. He knew Terrell did likewise as the prince shared his own horror. But also, a shaky triumph. Their minds united in the same thought.

  *We’re alive!*

  But four of their escorts were not, and a fifth had been badly wounded. Jina finished working on him, left him propped against a rock in more-or-less comfort and approached them. Her eyes were wide with more than the night as she pointed to the blood on their clothes. “Are you injured, young lordlings?”

  The slash on Kirin’s leg chose that moment to dump its hoarded pain on him and he winced as he looked at it. “Yeah, but it’s only a bleeder. I just need something to patch it.”

  “My healing talent is small, but I may be able to close your wounds if you wish, Shadow-lord?”

  “I’m not a Lor—” Kirin choked off his reflexive denial. Or am I? He managed to nod, and stand still while her touch slowly knit the raw edges of his skin back together. His Shadow surged and strained against his control but he bottled it inside his chest long enough for her to work. The three Duermus had built up the fire, two stood watch while one spoke with their injured companion. They all gave Kirin awed looks while Jina worked and he strained to keep his face impassive. The healing seemed odd, he had never had any other Healer work on him but Dona Zella.