Sometimes the happiness of a child is even more important than delivering a package, especially when it gave those around her a reason to make the world a better place. Marsh took that thought and held it close. She was going to make a difference—not just to Aisha, but to the caverns. The raiders and their shadow monsters had to be stopped, no matter what it took.
When they arrived at the gate, Henri, Lennie, Gustav, and Jakob were waiting. Their armor had been patched or replaced, and their weapons and harnesses gleamed with care.
“Shadow Master says we’re to go with you,” Gustav told Roeglin, and Marsh stared.
What about his duty to the cavern founder? It was a question that went unanswered as the shadow mage on the gate nodded his confirmation and Gustav and his guards formed up around them.
“We’re to keep you safe on your journey to see the Stone Master, and we’re to bring you safely back. Shadow Master says the cavern might not be safe to travel with both raiders and a hoshkat on the loose.”
Well, she couldn’t argue with him there, even if he had missed another danger. Raiders, hoshkats, and shadow monsters were all on the loose, and Marsh was glad they had more weapons protecting them than just her blade. It made stepping into the dark space between the gates much easier.
“Is it much of a walk?” she asked, and Roeglin laughed.
“Should take us most of a day,” he answered. Marsh heard Tamlin groan, but the shadow mage had no sympathy. “Strong young man like you shouldn’t have any trouble. Let’s get moving.”
They set out as soon as the last gate opened, stepping into the caverns’ perpetual dark. Marsh found comfort in the soft luminescence of different fungi, shrooms, and mosses. She noted patches of glow worms on a distant wall and knew there was water nearby. She wondered how Fabrice and her children were settling in.
She strode along, taking one step after another and wishing the quartermaster hadn’t been quite so generous with her stores. The weight soon became part of her, though. She followed the pace Roeglin set as he turned off the road leading to the fortress and took a smaller, less well-defined trail around the monastery’s side. As she walked, she let her eyes adjust to the cavern’s darkness, seeing the ripple and shimmer of heat around the fungal growth.
She’d lost track of the time they’d traveled before Roeglin called a halt. He instructed them to eat and drink and to relieve themselves in the sturdy stone structure set beside the trail for exactly that purpose.
“We’re halfway,” he told them, and the children groaned.
Marsh didn’t blame them. She felt like groaning too, but someone had to be the adult. Still, she couldn’t suppress a sigh when the shadow mage got to his feet, lifted his pack, and headed back out onto the trail. The journey continued, the children keeping pace, Aisha stubbornly refusing to go slower than her brother. Tamlin, for his part, was also being stubborn and pushing to keep the pace Roeglin set. Between the two of them, they were keeping up, and the group was making swifter progress than Marsh had thought it would.
By the time they stopped for a mid-afternoon snack at yet another of the solid stone facilities, Marsh had noticed that the fungi and other plant life were growing thicker, their colors more vibrant than before. She had also started noticing more animal and insect life around them, as well as a flash of heat from something larger.
She tried not to think about that larger thing. Tried really hard not to imagine what a hoshkat would be doing stalking in perfect silence beside the trail or why it would be accompanied by two smaller flashes of heat that were never very far from its side. She tried equally hard not to wonder why Scruffknuckle was pressing closer and closer to Aisha’s side, looking very much like he was torn between trying to protect the little girl or asking her to protect him.
Marsh scanned the fungi and the quiet shadows between stalactites, stalagmites, and boulders. She studied each shadow before the children drew alongside it, her hand creeping to the hilt of her sword. Around her, the guards seemed to grow more wary, their heads in constant motion as they surveyed the surrounding cavern.
Roeglin led the way, seemingly oblivious to the tension flowing through the group, but Brigitte kept a tight hold on Aisha’s hand, and the little girl’s other hand never left the ruff of fur at Scruffknuckle’s neck. They traveled that way for what seemed like hours until shouts and the clash of stone on metal caught their ears.
Now more than tension crackled through the air. Marsh felt power tugging at the shadow strands around her, reminding her that she wasn’t limited only to her eyes. She walked swiftly to where Roeglin stood, his hand upraised to command them to halt. Gustav joined them.
“Let me look along the shadows,” Marsh said as a man screamed.
“Will it take long?” Gustav demanded.
“Coupla breaths,” she told him, hoping it was true; also hoping that he wouldn’t want to go charging in blind.
She was true to her word, relieved to be able to find the relevant strands of shadow quickly and easily. It didn’t take her long to draw the images back, although it surprised her when Roeglin plucked them directly from her mind and shared the situation with Brigitte, Gustav, and the rest of the guards.
“You know what to do,” he said, and Gustav led the guards forward, sharing his plan of attack for Roeglin to relay.
Marsh went with them, glad that Gustav didn’t care what Roeglin thought of him using her as another sword. The shadow mage made no argument but stayed back with the children and Brigitte—or he would have, except that Brigitte put Aisha’s hand into his palm and ran after Marsh and the rest.
“You keep forgetting what I can do,” the apprentice journeyman snarled as she raced forward, pulling swords from the air around her as she ran.
Roeglin sent them a mental warning, so none of the fighters turned to confront the woman as she joined them. Instead, they took in the scene before them, noting that the raiders had fallen on a small group of men and women in brown robes. The group had clearly stopped to eat when they’d been attacked.
Food lay scattered around their feet, and one man was fighting by swinging his water canteen in one hand as he tried to edge toward a long staff propped against the trunk of a calla shroom. When his opponent’s blade smashed against the canteen with a crack, Marsh realized that the canteen wasn’t made of wood, leather, or steel, but some kind of stone.
It met the blade, causing it to ring, and then the man moved his wrist and the canteen deflected the blow, forcing the raider to swing again. All around them, the fighting was similarly mismatched. There seemed to be one raider for each robed man and woman, and then there were the mages. Three in all, they were starting to call the shadows to entangle the group.
“You should have agreed to join us peacefully,” a shadow mage called. “Things would have been a lot easier.”
“For you, maybe,” replied the man with the canteen, “but not for us.”
He ducked under another sword swipe and drove his fist into the raider’s gut, only to gasp as his hand hit metal. Marsh winced. That had to hurt. At least he was in grabbing range of the stick…until another raider snatched the staff away and threw it into the surrounding fungal forest. The man backed up, trying to keep out of reach of both his opponents—which was when Marsh decided to even things up.
She charged, her shout drawing the attention of the raider who’d tossed the staff. Beside her, she could hear Brigitte laughing, and she caught a glimpse of twin blades gleaming ebon in the cavern’s darkness as the journeyman leapt forward. They both struck at the same time, Marsh trying to take the head off the raider who’d thrown the staff and Brigitte driving one shadowy blade through the other raider’s gut even as she parried his sword with the other.
After that, Marsh didn’t have time for watching. She usually fought with a leather buckler strapped to her left forearm, but she’d left it on the fallen mule when she’d grabbed the children. It was just something else she wasn’t going to get back. She missed the shi
eld, barely remembering she needed to parry with the blade and not block with the non-existent buckler. It would have been nice to be able to conjure one the same way Brigitte had conjured her matching blades.
She marked it down as something to try to learn and changed her fighting style to suit the single weapon she had. A block, a feint, a parry, and a swift thrust, and the raider was backing off, his sword wavering in front of him in useless defense as Gustav sliced through his back from behind.
“Not bad work, girl,” the soldier said. “You’re out of practice and need some time in the yards, but you’ll do.”
Well, that was nice of him to say. Marsh turned, looking for another raider to fight. What she saw instead was a shadow mage making the final sweeping gesture that tore a rent in the fabric of shadow clustered between a calla shroom and a stalagmite. Screams rang from within, and Marsh almost froze. Only Gustav’s panicked shout broke through the horror conjured by the sound.
“Don’t let them through!”
Hearing his voice, Marsh leapt forward to meet the first shadow to emerge.
Get the mage, echoed in her mind as Gustav repeated Roeglin’s order, but Marsh held her ground. She didn’t know how many shadow monsters were behind the rift, but she couldn’t break away from it without risking that one of them getting through—and if one got through, then more might follow, and there weren’t enough of them to handle that kind of flood.
Behind her she sensed movement, but she couldn’t shift her focus. She had to rely on the others to have her back. And speaking of back, Marsh took a step away from the rift, trying to avoid the clawed arm that slashed out at her. The arm was impossibly long, and the claws tore through her tunic like butter. Heat scored lines across her chest and stomach, but Marsh didn’t stop to check the damage.
She spun her blade, parrying another attack, and then reversed the strike, taking off the arm. The shadow beast howled beyond the portal and began to push through. As it did so, it shoved the beast facing off against Gustav, which lost its balance, momentarily dropping its guard. It was all the invitation the guard needed.
He swept his blade in a clean arc, taking the monster’s head from its shoulders as its mouth stretched impossibly wide in another scream. There was no time to celebrate, however. More monsters appeared, three forcing their way through while Gustav was off balance, three pushing them back so another two could begin clawing their way through behind them.
Marsh kept fighting; losing ground, but opening up enough space beside her for Lennie to fill.
“You mages have all the fun!” The blonde guard laughed, carving through one monster’s chest and wrenching her blade free. “How about you leave some for me?”
Another claw got through Marsh’s defenses, scoring a series of lines down her ribs as she kicked the monster back. A hand grabbed her by the shoulder and yanked her out of the melee, spinning her out of the way so its owner could take her place. As she turned, trying to regain her balance, Marsh caught sight of the shadow mages who had led the attack sliding in behind the monsters.
“Stop them!” she cried, but it was too late.
The shadow mages slipped behind the first row of shadow monsters and slithered, wraithlike, between them. To Marsh’s surprise, the creatures’ attacks went through them as if they were smoke, their bodies parting around claws, and coming together on the other side as though the attack had never happened.
Marsh stared, slowly relaxing as Lennie dispatched the monster before her, stepping smoothly into the attack of the creature behind it. She watched as another monster came out of the rift, then another, then saw the rift snap shut behind them.
As it closed, the shadow monsters roared, their attacks becoming more frenzied and vicious, but the guards held them back and defeated them. Marsh stood behind them, ready to step in and protect anyone overcome by the attacks. As the last monster fell, she swayed, lowering her sword and dropping to her knees.
“I’m okay,” she said, waving off the first guard who came to help.
She had just registered the blood seeping through the rent in her armor when the hoshkat leapt from the nearest clump of calla shroom to land right in front of her.
Great, she thought. Now she’s gonna eat me.
22
The Hoshkat’s Request
To Marchant’s surprise, the hoshkat didn’t eat her. It snapped its head right, then left, hissing fiercely at the guards as it stepped over and lowered its head so it could look into Marsh’s eyes. She managed to hold up a hand to stop Gustav’s rush toward her before she tripped on the edge of the hoshkat’s gaze and fell.
This time she landed in the midst of sorrow, outrage, and need, and she rested her forehead against the kat’s and brought the palm of her upraised hand to its cheek.
“Tell me,” she said as a small part of her stared in shock at what she was doing.
She should have been afraid. She should have been asking the kat not to eat her; should have been feeling the tear of her claws and teeth as she took her apart. Instead, she was asking her to tell her what was wrong, tears running down her face as the mother kat’s grief washed over her, her fury rising to meet and mingle with her outrage.
“Tell me,” she repeated, and the answer came in a flurry of images.
The kat had been hunting and returned to find the raiders at her lair. Her kits were fighting, but it was doing them no good. Two had already been trapped by balls of shadow, held tight inside the darkness, unable to escape. They’d been carried through a portal as she’d arrived and were beyond her reach before she’d discovered they were in danger.
The other two she had been swift to rescue, leaping into the fray before the raiders had known she’d returned and crushing the skull of the mage who’d wielded shadow before he could encapsulate another. One kit had leapt to her back and she’d seized the other in her teeth, lifting it out of harm’s way and vanishing into the cavern dark before the other raiders had been able to bring their crossbows to bear.
She’d known of only one human she had any chance of asking for help. Need rushed over Marsh.
Could she help? Would she help? The kits were young and vulnerable. They needed to be rescued!
“Yes,” Marsh said, “but…”
The kat understood; first Marsh had to heal.
She did?
Marsh slipped out of her mind and looked down. She’d pressed her free hand over the gash in her tunic while she’d been speaking to the kat, and blood now trickled over her fingers.
Oh. She looked over at the humans standing a wary distance from the feline, their eyes full of concern. Marsh figured that if she didn’t do something soon, someone was going to try something stupid. She glanced at the kat once more.
“Don’t hurt them,” she said. “They will help us.”
The big beast turned her head and moved forward, sliding around Marsh so she didn’t fall. When the kat had settled, she raised her head and gave a curious whistling mew. Marsh registered surprise and shock on the face of one of the mages they’d rescued and made a note to talk to him later since he clearly knew more about kats than she did.
He stared, rapt, as the two half-grown kits leapt out of the middle of a clump of brown noses and blue buttons, bounding swiftly to their mother to settle between her forepaws. Marsh had time to register a furious bark and groaned as Scruffknuckle forced his way between the humans’ legs and raced over to confront the big kat, a furious Aisha in his wake.
“Scruff! You get back here!”
The little brat ducked past Gustav’s startled grab and sidestepped Lennie’s lunge before coming to a stop face to face with the seated kat. Marsh twisted just enough to watch as the child put her hands on her hips and looked the kat in the eye.
“You are a bad, bad kitty!” Aisha scolded, and the kat yawned, showing dagger-length fangs and a purple-pink tongue as long as her arm.
Marsh would have laughed if she hadn’t been hurting so badly. The look on the child’s face sai
d that Aisha might for the first time be having second thoughts about the creature she was confronting. The kat caught the little girl’s eyes and they stared at each other.
To Marsh it was obvious they were talking, but the watching adults didn’t know that. Marsh was grateful when the mage who’d recognized the kat’s call to her kittens put his hand on Roeglin and Gustav’s arms to stop them from rushing forward.
A short moment later, Aisha nodded.
“’Kay,” she said, then, “Promise?”
The kat gave a rumbling growl and curled her paw around her kits, resting her chin on the nearest one’s head.
“’Kay,” Aisha said and looked at the gathered adults. “Dis is Mordanlenoowar. Mordan. She is a friend and needs our help. She says help Marsh. She won’t hurt us.”
When no one moved, Aisha stamped her foot.
“Help! Marsh!” she shrieked, her voice bouncing off the cavern ceiling, then she hurried around to Marsh, grabbing her hand and pulling it off her side.
When she had a firm hold of it, she lifted it so they could see the blood covering Marsh’s fingers and palm.
“Help!”
She dropped Marsh’s hand and turned to wrap her arms around the kat’s neck. The stunned adults gaped as the child buried her face in the big kat’s fur, and one of the kits edged close enough to lean on her. Scruff bounced closer, his barking becoming uncertain as he gazed at the kat. Finally, he sat just out of paw’s reach and whined.
Aisha looked at him and patted her leg.
“Come, Scruffy. Come.” The puppy trotted cautiously forward so she could tangle her hand in his fur.
As he did so, Roeglin hurried over to Marsh, kneeling in front of her. She hissed in pain as he brushed aside her tunic so he could see the wound better.
“A la putain!”
Trading into Shadow (The Magic Beneath Paris Book 1) Page 20