The Shadow Sorceress Read online

  “Damn him and his words.” I was suddenly furious, blood filling my face with heat. “I’ll go anyway.”

  “No.”

  “Blast it, why not?”

  “Because he is a wizard and he says no,” Lill said flatly. “There’s no reason to complicate things, and nothing to gain earning the ire of a wizard. And we don’t need you.”

  And there it was, boiled down to an absolute simple fact. They didn’t need me. I glanced at Mireen, her eyes filled with sympathy, her words echoing in my mind. Does she care for you? I’ve seen no evidence of it.

  “We’ll be back as soon as it’s finished,” Mireen said. “Wait for us if you can.”

  I watched Lill and Mireen ride out. Kaygen’s men pushed the gate closed again with a hollow thunk.

  I slumped in the saddle, cast resigned eyes on Kaygen. “Well, is there at least a place I can get a drink while waiting?”

  “The Wounded Bird has food and drink,” Kaygen said. “And can attend to … other needs.”

  * * *

  If my mind hadn’t been so firmly focused on Lill and Mireen, I might have picked up on what Kaygen meant by other needs.

  The Wounded Bird was a brothel.

  And the beautiful women were getting more beautiful by the minute as I worked my way to the bottom of the wine pitcher.

  It was with some slight embarrassment, that I admitted to a better than average knowledge of brothels, having experienced both low rent dives and palatial houses across the width and breadth of Helva, From the outside, the Wounded Bird didn’t look like much, but once inside, it was obviously a top end establishment. Deep carpets and heavy tapestries in the common room, comfortable, cushioned chairs and divans. A fireplace of carved stone big enough to stand up in, the roaring fire giving the entire room a toasty feel.

  And the ladies were clean. Not cloying perfume sprayed to cover old sweat, but genuinely clean, the fresh smell of soap left in their wake whenever they passed my table. They wore fine clothing, unstained, although some of the necklines were so daring, they almost made me blush.

  Almost.

  That the brothel actually had glass in the windows was another sign of quality.

  I’d chosen a small table near the window with a view of the gate. I wanted to know immediately when Lill and Mireen returned. Snow fell again, and I watched it drift past the window.

  I drank, and I stared into the night.

  The ladies knew their business. They weren’t pushy, but they were persistent. They had to earn a living after all. The one I like best was Benna, and she knew it. She kept coming around, becoming a very real test of my willpower.

  She stopped at my table for the third time, placing a warm hand on my shoulder so casually and unobtrusively, I wondered if it was something she’d practiced. Her touch was light, but I could still feel the heat of her presence.

  She smiled. Good teeth. It really was a top-notch brothel.

  Her silken dress clung to her, so thin that I felt surely I could see through it if only I squinted hard enough. Lavish red hair to her shoulders. A spray of freckles across her nose.

  “You keep looking out that window. Are you expecting someone to come through that gate?” Benna asked. “At this time of night?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  Her hand slid to my neck. “I’ve got time.”

  I breathed her in. Soap with a hint of lilac. I mean, was there any point really in watching the gate? Mireen would return to the castle. And Lill –

  Well, Lill was the question, wasn’t she? I supposed I was watching because I suspected she might sneak off again and leave me behind. Indeed, she’d basically declared her intent to head back to the Glacial Wastes.

  And what would I do then?

  But Benna was here and the wine was good, and maybe it was time to start living my life again as if Lill had nothing to do with it. After all, it wasn’t Lill’s purpose to give my life direction.

  So why not? Benna would join me for a drink, and then join me for something else, and then maybe –

  I sat up straight, leaned toward the window. Benna pulled her hand back, sensing the change in my demeanor.

  I stood, pressed against the window glass.

  “What is it?” Benna asked.

  A thick line of black mist oozed along the base of the city wall toward the gatehouse, and my eyes went wide.

  “Benna,” I said. “Tell the boy who took my horse to the stable to saddle it and bring it around front as fast as he can.”

  I tossed silver coins on the table, enough to cover both wine and Benna’s company if I’d had the chance to partake. I don’t know if it was the tone of my voice, or the color of my coin, but she turned and ran from the room.

  The black mist split in two, expanded, swirling into shape, growing and forming until at last becoming recognizable.

  The hounds. The same as those which had tracked Lill back in Tul Agnon. They began sniffing the cobblestones of the courtyard, eyes red as glowing embers. They left a trail of oily darkness as they went. They looked impossibly solid and much larger than normal hounds, and suddenly I wished I hadn’t waited, wished I’d gone back to the castle or upstairs with Benna.

  I turned so abruptly and crossed the room so fast, that ladies in my path squealed alarm, barely scurrying out of the way. There was a collection of torches in a barrel next to the fireplace. I took one, lit it in the fire, then headed for the exit.

  A sudden and unexplained courage – well, explained by the wine perhaps – surged through my veins.

  I erupted from the brothel and into the courtyard, torch in one hand, and drew my sword with the other. The hounds’ heads came up, fiery eyes narrowing at the sight of me.

  The hound closest to me sprang forward, barreling toward me. He growled, a hollow, piercing sound like something from the depths of the underworld.

  My wine-fueled courage nearly evaporated, but I lifted my sword and swung it down hard. The blade bit between the beast’s neck and shoulder, and I realized immediately I’d made a mistake. I’d brought the torch because I remembered the effect of fire when I’d previously encountered shadow hounds, but with a sword in my hands, reflex had taken over.

  The strike didn’t feel like hitting meat. More like my blade had lodged into a mass of gooey black sap. I tried to pull my sword free, but the beast’s oily shadow flesh sucked my blade in further, like a struggling man sinking in quicksand.

  Now my courage did leave me, my spine turning to water.

  “Alarm!” I screeched, not the manliest of sounds, but I was going for volume, not style. “Hullo, the gatehouse! Foes in the courtyard!”

  The hound’s oozing sap flesh began to travel up my blade, black tendrils looping, and climbing.

  I tried in vain to jerk the sword free. Panic raced through my veins as the oily tentacles neared my hand.

  I remembered the torch and shoved it in the hound’s face.

  A harsh sizzle followed by a howl like the death of a thousand souls. The black tendrils let my blade go. I stumbled back but recovered quickly and leapt forward, swinging the torch again. I hit the hound in the head, orange sparks flying with another sizzle.

  The gatehouse door flew open, and four men in chain mail spilled out, Kaygen leading them. They pulled up short at the sight of the hounds, eyes going wide, but Kaygen rallied them, and they charged with a shout.

  One of the guards thrust a spear at the other hound. It sank deep into the animal’s dark, gooey flesh and got stuck there just as my sword had. The next man moved up next to his comrade, stabbing his spear and achieving the same result. The black tendrils climbed the spear shafts. The men yelled, dropping their weapons, stepping backward as fast as they could.

  “Fire!” I yelled. “They don’t like fire!”

  But I didn’t have time to see if they heeded my advice.

  My hound came at me with renewed ferocity, snapping and snarling. A sizzling orange line glowed across the hound’s face from my l
ast swipe with the torch, like the edge of a parchment which had begun to burn but was then blown out. The fire bothered them, but the sorceress had made these hounds of sterner stuff than the ones who’d been so easily scattered before.

  A backhanded swing, and I smacked the torch across the beast’s teeth, sparks flying, the hound snarling more enraged than ever. He backed up a few steps, coiled to spring, ears back and growling.

  I thought about running, but by the time the thought was complete, it was too late.

  The hound leapt.

  Its jaws opened wide, teeth like black daggers, throat like a bottomless black hole that would take me under, like the beast intended to swallow me whole.

  I jammed the torch straight into the hound’s gaping maw.

  It lodged there, and the hound staggered back, thrashing its head, the torch refusing to come unstuck. An orange glow built within the creature, shining through its black hide. The glow spread to the hound’s head, growing brighter until –

  The hound’s head exploded in a ball of fire. The headless corpse fell over sideways and hit the cobblestones like a bucket of black water, splashing apart on impact but then becoming mist and vanishing on the wind. It was as if the hound had never existed at all.

  I shifted my attention to Kaygen and his men fighting the other one. One of the guard’s lay facedown on the cobblestones, a pool of blood slowly spreading from his throat. The others had heard my advice about fire and had retrieved torches from the bucket near the brazier.

  They circled the hound, taking turns swiping with the torches. When the beast would whip around to snap at one, others would close in from behind and strike fast, lines of sizzling orange spreading across the creature’s black skin.

  At Kaygen’s signal, he and his men all charged the hound at once, jabbing their torches, sparks flying, the beast howling rage and pain. The fire spread across the hound until it became a single glowing ember and then exploded, a wave of heat knocking Kayen and his men to the ground.

  Kaygen sat up, blinking stars from his eyes just in time to see the hound’s black corpse turn into mist and vanish. “What in bloody blue blazes was that?”

  I heard movement behind me, the scrape of hooves on cobblestone. I turned abruptly, sword up and ready to strike.

  The boy from the stables. His eyes went wide at the sight of my blade, a frightened yelp popping out of him. He held my horse by the reins.

  I leapt into the saddle. “Get inside, boy.”

  He didn’t ask why, turned and bolted.

  I trotted over to Kaygen and his men who were picking themselves up and dusting themselves off. Kaygen had a sick expression on his face, looking at the fallen guard lying in his own blood.

  No time to be delicate. “I need that gate open. Now.”

  His eyes came up to mine. “But why –” He shook his head. Never mind. He gestured to his men. “Get it open.”

  His men obliged.

  Some instinct pricked at the back of my neck. I twisted in the saddle, squinted into the darkness. A half dozen of them, the Shadow Sorceress’s men in black armor and cloaks. Their swords were drawn.

  I pointed at them. “Stop those men. They’re after Mireen!”

  I didn’t wait to see what Kaygen thought of that. I spurred my horse and passed through the gate at a full gallop. Almost immediately, I was forced to slow. The sharp left turn and the path up to Knarr’s tower was narrow and twisty.

  In minutes, the sounds of Klaar dwindled behind me. There was only cold wind and darkness, and the clop of horse hooves along the rocky, narrow path. The path twisted up and up and up.

  I climbed as fast as I could and finally found myself in an open area before the tower.

  Lill stood in front of the tower’s doorway, sword unsheathed, the blade leaning on one shoulder. I supposed if anyone wanted to get through that door, they’d have a difficult time.

  “Hounds,” I said. “And the Shadow Sorceress’s men. They’re coming.”

  “I know,” Lill said. “They tower was built to watch the Small Road that leads from Backgate down the mountain, but it also commands a view of the courtyard below. That’s why I’m standing here.”

  “I see. Well then. Shouldn’t we run away or something?”

  Lill shook her head. “Knarr has already begun to apply the runes down Mireen’s back. He says he can’t stop once he’s started.”

  “And your job is to …?” I raised an eyebrow.

  “To make sure he has time to finish.”

  “Great. Fantastic. Absolutely wonderful. I’m being sarcastic. You can detect the sarcasm, yes?”

  “Go if you want,” Lill said. “Nothing is keeping you.”

  “You could keep me!” I yelled. “Say that you need me to help.”

  “I need you to help,” she said flatly, her face stone.

  “Damn it, must you always be so cold?”

  “I’ve asked nothing of you,” Lill said. “Would you prefer I made some claim? That I burden you with some obligation? I have insisted upon nothing, and yet you are ungrateful for it.”

  “Ungrateful? Are you out of your fucking—”

  It grew so cold so suddenly that it took my breath away. As I’ve said, it was deep winter in Klaar. To say it was cold, was an eye-rolling understatement. But this was something altogether different. All possible warmth was sucked from my body, a numbing chill going deep into my bones. From the look on Lill’s face, I could see she felt it too.

  I looked around, eyes wide, to see what had changed. My breath created crusts of ice along my lips and around my nostrils. I looked up.

  The inky blackness between the stars drained away, leaving only a dull, uniform gray. The darkness gathered, pulling together into a twisting column that fell from the sky and landed with a solid crack, the sound of stone splitting in two. It was as if the hands of some god had simply scooped the darkness from the sky and molded it into a shaft that now stuck into the ground, solid and black, fifty feet from us.

  Lill gripped her sword hilt tighter. “She’s here.”

  I swallowed hard and drew my own weapon.

  The column compacted to a fifteen-foot high mass of darkness. It roiled, shifted and began to take shape. Curves sloping. Black chunks elongated and smoothed into limbs. The form of an enormous woman took shape, legs, hips, breasts. A face seemingly of liquid obsidian, expression twisted with rage. I’d seen the Shadow Sorceress in the flesh at the Duke’s reception and looking at the face of the thing now before me, there could be no doubt this was her. Monstrous, yes, but still the Shadow Sorceress.

  She took a step forward, and the ground shook, black mist rising from her footfall like darkly glittering dust. Another step closer, and she lifted an enormous hand, black light trailing from the fingers. I looked up, frozen with fear, and waited to be smashed.

  Instead I was smashed from behind, Lill ramming her shoulder into mine, knocking me out of the way as the Shadow Sorceress’s dark hand fell, her wide palm slamming flat on the ground where I’d been standing a moment before.

  I rolled away and came up with my sword held in front of me, the collision with Lill bringing me back to my senses.

  Lill had taken the Shadow Sorceress’s attention away from me. The ink mage and the Shadow Sorceress faced off, circled one another. Lill was a tall woman, broad-shouldered, yet she looked like a child compared to the massive black thing looming over her.

  The Shadow Sorceress swiped at Lill backhanded. Lill sidestepped, bringing her sword down in a mighty two-handed swing, the blade slicing through the monster’s wrist. Normally the sorceress’s hand would have gone flying in a spray of blood, but Lill wasn’t fighting flesh and bone. Her sword passed through the Sorceress’s wrist as if it were smoke, pure darkness swirling in the blade’s wake.

  Hand and wrist reformed, turning solid, and the sorceress swiped at Lill again.

  The flat of her huge, black hand caught Lill in the ribs. The ink mage lifted in the air and flew twenty feet,
landing hard. Lill sprang up immediately, expression ice cold, impassive. When she was tapped into the spirit, pain could be held at bay, injures and wounds to be felt once the heat of battle had passed.

  The Shadow Sorceress advanced, fists high. And then she was swinging, slamming the ground everywhere Lill had just been a split-second before. With the preternatural speed that came from the Lightning Bolt tattoos, Lill darted to and fro, easily avoiding the sorceress’s every blow. When an opening presented itself, Lill attacked, sword piecing legs or torso.

  To no avail.

  Each time it was like stabbing at smoke.

  My hands ached from the white-knuckle grip on my sword hilt. A half-dozen times, I took a halting step forward to join the fray only to stop myself. If Lill couldn’t harm the thing, then there was nothing I could do.

  Movement in the corner of my eye.

  I turned and saw them, three of the sorceress’s shadow cloaks coming up the path from Backgate, swords drawn. I braced to meet them. I didn’t like the idea of three on one, but at least these opponents were human. A sword would work against them as it was supposed to.

  But instead of attacking, they sprinted for the front door of the wizard’s tower.

  “Stop them!” Lill shouted. “They’re after Mireen!”

  Taking her attention off the sorceress to shout to me cost her dearly. The monster grabbed her with both hands, lifted her three feet off the ground. Lill’s sword went flying, clattered along the ground. Lill writhed in the sorceress’s grip, head back, teeth clenched against pain. I imagined I could hear ribs crack.

  But here was the sorceress’s miscalculation. To be solid enough to seize Lill and hold her tight meant she was also solid enough to get hurt.

  Lill drew a dagger from her belt, stabbed at the fleshy part of the sorceress’s hand between thumb and forefinger. The sorceress’s black maw stretched wide, and a scream erupted, the deafening sound of the world breaking. The sorceress dropped Lill who rolled away, snatching up her sword again.

  Lill’s eyes found me, an annoyed look on her face. “Go!”

  Right.

  I didn’t hang around to watch what happened next. There was nothing I could do to help Lill against the Shadow Sorceress anyway. I raced for the three soldiers who were slamming their shoulders against the tower door, wood cracking and splintering. They were big men, heavily armored, and if the door were simply locked instead of barred on the other side, they’d gain entrance soon.