Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell (8 page)
Read Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell Online
Authors: Brandon Sanderson
Tags: #Sci Fi & Fantasy, #Fantasy, #Fiction & Literature, #Horror
The back door opened and someone stepped in.
. . . to deal with Theopolis. She exhaled softly, looking at him in his clean clothing and condescending smile. He tracked mud onto her floor as he entered. “Silence Montane. Nice morning, hmmm?”
Shadows,
she thought.
I don’t have the mental strength to deal with him right now.
He moved to close the window shutters.
“What are you doing?” she demanded.
“Hmmm? Haven’t you warned me before that you loathe that people might see us together? That they might get a hint that you are turning in bounties to me? I’m just trying to protect you. Has something happened? You look awful, hmmm?”
“I know what you did.”
“You do? But, see, I do many things. About what do you speak?”
Oh, how she’d like to cut that grin from his lips and cut out his throat, stomp out that annoying Lastport accent. She couldn’t. He was just so blasted
good
at acting. She had guesses, probably good ones. But no proof.
Grandmother would have killed him right then. Was she so desperate to prove him wrong that she’d lose everything?
“You were in the Forests,” Silence said. “When Red surprised me at the bridge, I assumed that the thing I’d heard—rustling in the darkness—had been him. It wasn’t. He implied he’d been waiting for us at the bridge. That thing in the darkness, it was you.
You
shot him with the crossbow to jostle him, make him draw blood. Why, Theopolis?”
“Blood?” Theopolis said. “In the night? And you
survived
? You’re quite fortunate, I should say. Remarkable. What else happened?”
She said nothing.
“I have come for payment of debt,” Theopolis said. “You have no bounty to turn in then, hmmm? Perhaps we will need my document after all. So kind of me to bring another copy. This really will be wonderful for us both. Do you not agree?”
“Your feet are glowing.”
Theopolis hesitated, then looked down. There, the mud he’d tracked in shone very faintly blue in the light of the glowpaste remnants.
“You followed me,” she said. “You
were
there last night.”
He looked up at her with a slow, unconcerned expression. “And?” He took a step forward.
Silence backed away, her heel hitting the wall behind her. She reached around, taking out the key and unlocking the door behind her. Theopolis grabbed her arm, yanking her away as she pulled open the door.
“Going for one of your hidden weapons?” he asked with a sneer. “The crossbow you keep on the pantry shelf? Yes, I know of that. I’m disappointed, Silence. Can’t we be civil?”
“I will never sign your document, Theopolis,” she said, then spat at his feet. “I would sooner die, I would sooner be put out of house and home. You can take the waystop by force, but I will
not
serve you. You can be damned, for all I care, you bastard. You—”
He slapped her across the face. A quick but unemotional gesture. “Oh, do shut up.”
She stumbled back.
“Such dramatics, Silence. I can’t be the only one to wish you lived up to your name, hmmm?”
She licked her lip, feeling the pain of his slap. She lifted her hand to her face. A single drop of blood colored her fingertip when she pulled it away.
“You expect me to be frightened?” Theopolis asked. “I know we’re safe in here.”
“Fort city fool,” she whispered, then flipped the drop of blood at him. It hit him on the cheek. “Always follow the Simple Rules. Even when you think you don’t have to. And I wasn’t opening the pantry, as you thought.”
Theopolis frowned, then glanced over at the door she had opened. The door into the small old shrine. Her grandmother’s shrine to the God Beyond.
The bottom of the door was rimmed in silver.
Red eyes opened in the air behind Theopolis, a jet-black form coalescing in the shadowed room. Theopolis hesitated, then turned.
He didn’t get to scream as the shade took his head in its hands and drew his life away. It was a newer shade, its form still strong despite the writhing blackness of its clothing. A tall woman, hard of features, with curling hair. Theopolis opened his mouth, then his face withered away, eyes sinking into his head.
“You should have run, Theopolis,” Silence said.
His head began to crumble. His body collapsed to the floor.
“Hide from the green eyes, run from the red,” Silence said, retrieving the silver-tipped crossbow bolt from where it lay by the back door. “Your rules, Grandmother.”
The shade turned to her. Silence shivered, looking into those dead, glassy eyes of a matriarch she loathed and loved.
“I hate you,” Silence said. “Thank you for making me hate you.” She held the crossbow bolt before her, but the shade did not strike. Silence edged around, forcing the shade back. It floated away from her, back into the shrine lined with silver at the bottom of its three walls, where Silence had trapped it years ago.
Her heart pounding, Silence closed the door, completing the barrier, and locked it again. No matter what happened, that shade left Silence alone. Almost, she thought it remembered. And almost, Silence felt guilty for trapping that soul inside the small closet for all these years.
Silence found
Theopolis’s hidden cave after six hours of hunting.
It was about where she’d expected it to be, in the hills not far from the Old Bridge. It included a silver barrier. She could harvest that. Good money there.
Inside the small cavern, she found Chesterton’s corpse, which Theopolis had dragged to the cave while the shades killed Red and then hunted Silence.
I’m so glad, for once, you were a greedy man, Theopolis.
She would have to find someone else to start turning in bounties for her. That would be difficult, particularly on short notice. She dragged the corpse out and threw it over the back of Theopolis’s horse. A short hike took her back to the road, where she paused, then walked up and located Red’s fallen corpse, withered down to just bones and clothing.
She fished out her grandmother’s dagger, scored and blackened from the fight. It fit back into the sheath at her side. She trudged, exhausted, back to the waystop and hid Chesterton’s corpse in the cold cellar out behind the stable, beside where she’d put Theopolis’s remains. She hiked back into the kitchen. Beside the shrine’s door where her grandmother’s dagger had once hung, she had placed the silver crossbow bolt that Sebruki had unknowingly sent her.
What would the fort authorities say when she explained Theopolis’s death to them? Perhaps she could claim to have found him like that. . . .
She paused, then smiled.
“Looks like
you’re lucky, friend,” Daggon said, sipping at his beer. “The White Fox won’t be looking for you anytime soon.”
The spindly man, who still insisted his name was Earnest, hunkered down a little farther in his seat.
“How is it you’re still here?” Daggon asked. “I traveled all the way to Lastport. I hardly expected to find you here on my path back.”
“I hired on at a homestead nearby,” said the slender-necked man. “Good work, mind you. Solid work.”
“And you pay each night to stay here?”
“I like it. It feels peaceful. The homesteads don’t have good silver protection. They just . . . let the shades move about. Even inside.” The man shuddered.
Daggon shrugged, lifting his drink as Silence Montane limped by. Yes, she was a healthy-looking woman. He really
should
court her, one of these days. She scowled at his smile and dumped his plate in front of him.
“I think I’m wearing her down,” Daggon said, mostly to himself, as she left.
“You will have to work hard,” Earnest said. “Seven men have proposed to her during the last month.”
“What!”
“The reward!” the spindly man said. “The one for bringing in Chesterton. Lucky woman, Silence Montane, finding the White Fox’s lair like that.”
Daggon dug into his meal. He didn’t much like how things had turned out. That dandy Theopolis had been the White Fox all along? Poor Silence. How had it been, stumbling upon his cave and finding him inside, all withered away?
“They say that this Theopolis spent his last strength killing Chesterton,” Earnest said, “then dragging him into the hole. Theopolis withered before he could get to his silver powder. Very like the White Fox, always determined to get the bounty, no matter what. We won’t soon see a hunter like him again.”
“I suppose not,” Daggon said, though he’d much rather that the man had kept his skin. Now who would Daggon tell his tales about? He didn’t fancy paying for his own beer.
Nearby, a greasy-looking fellow rose from his meal and shuffled out of the front door, looking half-drunk already, though it was only noon.
Some people. Daggon shook his head. “To the White Fox,” he said, raising his drink.
Earnest clinked his mug to Daggon’s. “The White Fox, meanest bastard the Forests have ever known.”
“May his soul know peace,” Daggon said, “and may the God Beyond be thanked that he never decided we were worth his time.”
“Amen,” Earnest said.
“Of course,” Daggon said, “there
is
still Bloody Kent. Now
he’s
a right nasty fellow. You’d better hope he doesn’t get your number, friend. And don’t you give me that innocent look. These are the Forests. Everybody here has done something, now and then, that you don’t want others to know about. . . .”
With every
project, there are many hands working behind the scenes. I want to thank everyone involved.
Thanks go out to Gardner Dozois and George R. R. Martin, on whose prompting I wrote the novella. My agent Joshua Bilmes gave early feedback. Isaac St
€
wart is responsible for the look of the finished product. The Ineffable Peter Ahlstrom did his usual marvelous editing job. Miranda Meeks provided the awesome cover art. Emily Sanderson supported me as always.
Community proofreaders for this volume include Alice Arneson, Aaron Biggs, Jakob Remick, Corby Campbell, Kelly Neumann, Megan Kanne, Maren Menke, Bob Kluttz, Lyndsey Luther, Kalyani Poluri, Rahul Pantula, Aaron Ford, Ruchita Dhawan, Gary Singer, and Bart Butler. Thank you for all of your input!
Brandon Sanderson
Novelettes
Novellas
Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell
The Stormlight Archive
The Reckoners
Mistborn
Legion
The Evil Librarians
Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians
Alcatraz Versus the Scrivener’s Bones
Alcatraz Versus the Knights of Crystallia
Alcatraz Versus the Shattered Lens
The Wheel of Time, with Robert Jordan
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in these stories are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
SHADOWS FOR SILENCE IN THE FORESTS OF HELL
Copyright © 2013 by Dragonsteel Entertainment, LLC
All rights reserved.
First appeared in
Dangerous Women
edited by George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois (2013)
Cover illustration copyright © 2015 by Miranda Meeks
Cover design and art direction by Isaac Stewart
Electronic book design by Peter Ahlstrom
A Dragonsteel Entertainment Book
Published by Dragonsteel Entertainment, LLC
American Fork, UT
ISBN 978-1-938570-08-7
First electronic edition: March 2015
TITLE PAGE
PREFACE
PrologueACKNOWLEDGMENTS
1
2
3
4
5
6
Epilogue
ALSO BY BRANDON SANDERSON
COPYRIGHT NOTICE