Shadow's Voice

by Natalie Johanson

  He fisted her hair and yanked her back to him. She swung at him with her bound hands and backhanded him. She pulled against his grip in her hair and Rose felt clumps yanked out. Fabien let go of her hair and closed a hand around her neck. She tried to kick him off but he squeezed and her air cut off. Her scream was reduced to a small squeak.

  Fabien relaxed his hold on her neck enough that she could gasp for breath and with the breath she started to cry. She forced herself to control her breathing. Terror had her frozen as he pressed his free hand against her, groping her. But she remembered, she knew how to fight. She knew how to escape this. She had to fight against the terror to remember, but she did. She thrashed and tried to kick his hand away but he pinned her down with his weight.

  Rose rolled and twisted to her side. Her hands came free and she reached for his face, clawed at his eyes. Her thumbs found purchase and now Fabien was the one screaming. He pulled back from her and beat her arms away. He knelt above her and raised his hand for a strike, but Rose jerked her knees up with all her strength.

  He groaned and fell to his side clutching himself. Rose rolled and reached for his dagger in his belt. Fabien got another handful of her hair just as Rose fisted the dagger. She swung and plunged it into his arm. Fabien screamed and Rose didn’t hesitate. She pulled the dagger and stabbed it down into his neck. He gurgled and grabbed for her, but she twisted the blade and his hands fell away.

  She sat there shaking and panting. Her mind kept trying to go back years ago, when she first learned to fight through this. She was sticky with blood now; could feel it through her shirt sleeves. Rose had been covered in blood that night, too.

  “Stop. This isn’t then,” she hissed at herself. “Think.”

  She moved to wipe her face but stopped. Her hands and most of her arms were covered. Her panting got worse and her hands trembled.

  With weak hands, she felt along Fabien’ belt for her dagger. She found it tucked in his pocket. It slipped several times before Rose could grip it with her slick fingers and saw through her bindings. She slipped it into the small sheath in her boot.

  “All right . . . now what . . . now what . . . .” Rose tugged at the cuff and finally remembered Simone. She must’ve heard that.

  Slowly and shakily she worked her way back to camp, staying low in the bushes. Simone was poking at the dying fire with her back to her. Rose crept up behind her.

  “I wish you wouldn’t do that,” she spoke without turning around.

  Rose knelt, picked up rock and crept closer.

  “Fabien, why must you do that?”

  She was almost close enough. Just a few more steps.

  “Fabien?” Simone started to turn around and Rose slammed the rock against the woman’s face. She fell silently to the ground and didn’t move. Rose tossed the rock away and didn’t care to check if the woman was alive or not. She didn’t care anymore.

  She stumbled over to her horse and huddled against his neck until she could pull herself onto his back. She looked at the sky and found the one star she could identify and turned south, keeping it on her left. She clutched at the horse’s mane and let him go where he would.

  Rose tried to relax into the rhythm of the horse. “Name . . . I need to think of a name for you.” She talked softly to the horse and tried to distract herself. “What about . . . let me think.” She wiped her face on her shoulder. “How about Taspa, after the God of Hope, hmm?”

  The horse flicked his ears and kept walking through the trees.

  “All right, Taspa it is.”

  She rode until the sun started to peek through the leaves. By then she was too exhausted to try to ride longer. Rose mostly fell off Taspa and curled up where she lay, clutching the small dagger.

  Rose had jerked awake what felt like moments later. It wasn’t enough sleep and she dozed while slumped on Taspa. The slow rocking motion of his pace kept lulling Rose to sleep. The fever was trying to pulling her under when the rocking didn’t. She tried to set her mind back to locating a river. What if I can’t find any river? What if I’ve traveled farther than I thought? How am I going to navigate the forest? The thoughts swirled around in her mind and the panic started to come bubbling back. She glared at the cuff on her wrist and hit it uselessly. If only she’d thought to look for the key. If only she had thought, not reacted. If only . . . .

  The sun was dipping well into the mountains and Rose had to admit defeat for the day. She stopped Taspa in a small clearing with several large boulders scattered around. Her legs were a useless mess. The infection was getting worse. Rose slumped to the ground and curled into a ball. She was so tired. So tired. Just before her eyes closed, she thought she saw eyes staring at her from the trees. A pair of red eyes.

  Rose dreamed wolves hunted her. They circled her as their prey. One emerged from the pack to stare at her with red eyes.

  She jerked awake.

  Panting, with beads of sweat rolling down her face, she slowly pushed herself up. A fog had rolled in while she slept, and it obscured the trees around her, thick and rolling like the storm clouds that came off the coast in the summer. This far north there shouldn’t be any fog like this. Somewhere in the mist she heard Taspa whinny. Then, just as in her dream, large dark wolves emerged from the mist.

  She blinked sweat from her eyes. She looked at them again. No, they were not like normal forest wolves. They were larger, their jaws wider. They looked like large feral dogs and wolves come together. Their fur was as dark as night, but the more Rose looked at them the less solid they looked. Their fur moved and blurred at the edges with the fog. Rose heard Taspa whinny and cry again, more urgently than before.

  Terror ran through Rose’s veins. She tried scooting backwards away from the beasts. Why wasn’t she being mauled? They didn’t even growl at her, they just stared in silence. Rose crawled awkwardly on her side until she was backed into a boulder. The group of wild beasts parted and a much larger wolf stepped into the group. Its eyes glowed with fire.

  Rose’s breath caught in her chest as the leader padded its way over to her. Its pointed ears flickered and it came to stand squarely in front of Rose. Its nose was barely a hand’s breadth away from Rose’s as it stared into her eyes. Time seemed to slow as the giant wolf creature peered through her and almost into her soul. What are you waiting for? she thought at it. It blinked and looked down at her bound wrists. It sniffed the cuff and a high whine came from its throat. It looked back at Rose and its large eyebrows seemed to be scrunched together. The wolf laid its ears flat against its skull and cried again.

  “Yes,” she whispered to the strange creature. “Yes, it hurts a lot.”

  The wolf let out one last preen then slowly turned away. The rest of the pack had disappeared into the mist but the dark, thick mist remained around the clearing. The leader started walking off into the night but paused at the edge and looked back at her. Its eyes beckoned her to follow and Rose swore she could almost hear the command.

  In a daze, Rose found Taspa and painfully climbed onto his back. He kicked up his front hooves in a small buck and she had to clutch onto his neck to stay on. The night seemed to close in around her, and mist swirled around Taspa’s long legs. Rose looked around and realized she was in the shadows, but it wasn’t her doing.

  Taspa whined and the whites of his eyes showed, huge breaths puffed from his nostrils. Rose patted the horse’s neck then urged him to follow the large wolf.

  Rose followed the giant ghost wolf. Although she did not see them, she could sense the other members of the pack watching her from the fog. She could feel them watching her the same way she could feel and see things when she was a shadow. Her magic had saver her before and this felt familiar. It felt safe. Strange . . . but safe.

  The lead wolf stopped and turned to look her in the eyes. She didn’t know what it saw, what it was looking for, but
it blinked its terrifying red eyes and resumed its trek.

  Rose followed but soon her hands sat limp on Taspa’s back. The forest shifted and flowed through the darkness. Rose felt and sensed the forest move and change around her as she traveled a great distance. The thick spruce trees thinned, and then disappeared. Leafy trees, tall thin trees started appearing in the forest. She was moving south, and quickly. She knew, somehow, these beasts were helping her travel through her shadows at a pace and scale she didn’t know was possible.

  The beast stopped and turned to her. The mists dropped away so suddenly Rose gasped. The night returned to normal, save for the lone creature staring her down.

  The shadows were never yours.

  Rose shook as she tumbled from Taspa. The horse puffed great breaths and sweat glistened on his hide in the moonlight. Rose’s vision swam, and the fever made her ears ring. She sunk to the ground and closed her eyes, the creature’s strange words repeating over and over in her mind until sleep came.

  Chapter 5

  Rose woke in a crumpled heap with hazy sun in her eyes. She tried to swallow but her tongue was thick in her mouth. For a few moments, Rose just laid where she woke; trying to remember where she was, cataloging all her pains. Finally, she forced herself to roll over, and when she did she saw she was looking at a well-traveled road.

  No one was out yet, but it was still early. Rose looked over her own clothes, covered in blood and other stains, torn, and let out a breath. Looking over at Taspa, who was content to munch on the soft grass in the tree line, Rose started toward the road. She crawled as she got closer and hid beneath the bushes, the twigs and branches jabbing her. Rose waited.

  It didn’t take long for people to begin passing by.

  A lone traveler. A pair of soldiers. A small group of merchants. Rose lay hidden for most of the afternoon, the sun slowly rising, until a wagon rolled past her hiding spot. Rose groaned as she rolled out from the bushes, her body stiff from staying still. She bit back a curse as her battered body resisting moving. She hurried after the slow-moving cart.

  Rose sobbed softly as she pulled herself over the back of the cart and slid down onto the floor. She pushed herself upright to start searching the bins. A pair of trousers and a too-long tunic were draped over the furthest bag. Rose shoved them under her arm and slipped back over the back of the wagon. She landed hard and her weak legs collapsed beneath her.

  She tried to roll out of the fall, but her body was too weak, too sore, too broken, and Rose fell hard on her side. Groaning, Rose pulled herself to her feet and back into the woods to Taspa. She changed clothes, pulled Nico’s coat back on, and heaved herself into the saddle. On the road, she nearly blended in with the other weary travelers now. Within minutes, Rose passed a road sign. She was on the main thoroughfare into the castle. She had to stop and look again at the sign to be sure her eyes were not betraying her. She’d traveled impossibly far, from one province to another. Out of the northern mountains of Amora and into the valley of Haven Province.

  Rose let out a long breath and felt tears gather in her eyes. Once she’d delivered Nico’s message, made up for his death, she could think about what the mysterious creatures were and what they wanted. But first Rose needed to finish Nico’s quest. He died because of her, because he tried to save her. And maybe . . . .

  Rose sighed and looked toward the hill in the distance with a castle buried somewhere on it. Maybe something there would be worth it. Worth any of this.

  Rose rode quickly toward the caste and made good time. Her pace was broken when she reached the city. It was teeming with people. The streets were crowded with merchant stalls and traders. Nearly every open space had either people or stalls packed with food and leathers and various goods. She passed through the cobbled streets, passing tall stone and brick buildings sandwiched between older and rickety buildings; the wood was old and weathered, the stone crumbling. Rose navigated her way through the city and reached the narrow, winding road that led up to the castle. An hour of tedious travel up the long, twisting switchbacks exhausted her. The tall stone walls on either side made Rose feel trapped.

  The giant portcullis hung high in the air. It was a massive thing, built generations ago by a clan of metalworkers. The steel they forged never rusted, never grew brittle with age. It shone in the sky like it was new. No one else has ever been able to reproduce steel like the Revast Clan, not even the clan’s descendants. Whatever magic or manner they used to create such things had been lost to time. The Revasts still were the best forgers in the land, even without their magic, time-defying steel.

  Rose slowed Taspa as she neared the guardtower.

  “Who goes there?” A guard shouted down.

  Rose squinted against the setting sun. “A traveler seeking an audience with the king.” She rasped back.

  They waved her through. Rose rode through the gates and through the courtyard. Workers and servants hurried back and forth across the yard. Her heart pounded in her ears. She road through the large courtyard, passing stables and barracks. People rushed around the courtyard and no one noticed her presence among all the other travelers as she approached the castle’s main doors.

  A stable boy appeared, seemingly from nowhere, and grabbed Taspa’s bridle as Rose slid to the ground. Rose startled at the boy who frowned at her and led Taspa away. She watched for another second before tugging her coat tight around herself and hurried up the stone steps through the doors. Quickly, she made her way through the hallways of the castle. She passed richly dressed nobles and suits of armor lining the corridors. As she got closer and closer to the audience chamber she passed more and more guards. Her stomach turned.

  “Stop.”

  Rose stopped and so did her breathing.

  A guard in royal amethyst stood in front of her, his hand on the pommel of his sword. “What is your business here?”

  Rose had to swallow twice before she could find words. “I am delivering a message to the king.”

  The guard looked her up and down several times. “I do not know your face. Explain your state, the blood.”

  “I had some,” Rose had to lick her lips, “trouble on the road.”

  A second guard came and stood at her side. He raised a hand and gestured at someone down the hall. “Captain? A moment, please.”

  Rose waited in petrified silence as a blond woman wearing the same crest as Nico walked up to them. She tucked the letter she was reading in her breast pocket and looked first at the guards then at Rose. Her eyes hardened as she looked over Rose’s cracked and split lips, the scabbed gash on her cheek, the blood.

  “Yes?”

  “Is this one of your officers, Captain? She claims she was delivering a message to the king.”

  The captain looked hard at Rose and all she could do was swallow and wait.

  The blond woman’s eyes widened a touch and the moved between Rose and the guards. “I’ll deal with her. Thank you, Dean.”

  She gripped Rose’s elbow with strength that spoke of authority more than physical strength.

  “Ma’am, I—”

  “Shut it.”

  Rose clamped her mouth shut and let the woman lead her down the hallways. The captain led her down a corridor into a different wing, and eventually into a small room with a cluttered desk and a small battered chair in the corner.

  “Sit.” She pointed to the chair.

  Rose collapsed more than sat and waited as the crisp woman sat behind the desk.

  “You have five minutes to explain why you’re wearing one of my officer’s coats or I’ll have you unconscious on the ground before the guards even know I’ve called for them.”

  Rose swallowed and her vision narrowed a bit. “I met a man named Nico, it’s his coat ma’am. He . . . was attacked. Before he died, he gave me some information for the king. A warning.”

&
nbsp; The captain’s eyes narrowed. “Officer Falden is dead? How am I to know you didn’t kill him?”

  I’m going to die. That’s the end of it, she thought with dismay before answering in a deadpan voice, “I didn’t. Captain, the mercenaries hunting him did. He made me promise to deliver his information. The same mercenaries caught up with me.” Her head snapped forward and the room swirled from the movement. “Why do you think I look like this?”

  The captain had her finger tapping against her lips, her eyebrows pinched nearly together with her frown. “There can be many reasons,” she murmured. After a moment, she sniffed and leaned back in her chair. “Tell me about the night you say Officer Falden died.”

  Rose let out a long breath and she felt like the last of her hope left with it. “We were traveling together. He was ambushed, and I tried to help.” Rose swallowed and felt the guilt sharp in her chest. “He died trying to save me. It’s my fault. He told me his message and I promised to take it to the king.”

  “Why would you do that if you knew you were going to be hunted?”

  Rose looked away. As though being hunted is new to me? “I owe him a life debt. I could not refuse him.”

  The captain stared at her from under lowered brows before continuing. “And this information?”

  Her head fell back against the chair. “Nico overheard a plan to kill the king. He said there was more, but he didn’t have the time.” She expected a rebuttal, but none came. The captain sat quietly at her desk.

  “I will speak with the king and arrange a meeting. Stay here.”

  As if I have anywhere else to go. Rose sighed and slumped down again.

  The captain glared down at her once more and slipped out. Rose let her eyes close against the swirling room and let herself rest. She couldn’t fight the tide of exhaustion. The captain shaking her shoulder woke her.