Authors: Jon Sprunk
“A shame about your fair duke,” he said. “Whose handiwork was that?”
Caim threw himself flat to the floor as furious shrieks assaulted him from all sides. Blasts of ice-cold air exploded above him. Rubble showered the floor. Confined to the darkness, he imagined titanic sorceries gouging holes in the walls and ceiling.
When the clamor died down, he crawled to his feet. Deep sobs sounded in various spots around him. Then he realized what she was doing, and a plan came to him. It was risky, maybe even fatal, but he didn’t see that he had many options.
Let’s see how you enjoy it when I play your game
.
Opening his mind to the Shadow, he formed a portal and stepped through. It snapped shut the moment his feet touched down on the other side of the room. The vertigo lasted only a heartbeat or two as he stood still, listening for any sign he might have been heard.
“I will make an example of you.” Her voice had dropped to a whisper. “For what you’ve done to me and my family, I will feed your soul to demons of the Outside, bit by screaming bit.”
Caim turned to his right. He thought he had a bead on her now. When she dropped the volume of her voice, the reverberation was lessened and the source seemed to come from a far corner. He kept low as he circled toward her position.
“Would you like to see her again?” the witch asked. “One last look upon your dear mother before you die? I could make that possible.”
Caim halted in his tracks. The shadows trembled against him, and the sword swung back and forth regardless of how he fought to hold it back. He growled as something inside him refused to remain silent.
“She’s dead.”
“No.” The witch’s voice echoed around him. “She lives.”
Before he could draw it back, the sword sliced through the space beside him. But it met no resistance and quivered in his hand at the end of the arc. The witch’s laughter filled the chamber.
“Put down your sword,” Sybelle commanded. “Kneel and bow your head to me. Then perhaps I will let you see her.”
Caim’s fingers tightened around the hilts of his weapons as the craving to feel the witch’s blood on his hands gnawed at him, but he had to know what she knew. It was a hunger deeper than rage, fiercer than vengeance. He hadn’t fully appreciated it before, but a gaping hole had yawned inside him his entire life, ever since that fateful night. He’d tried to fill it with money and women, with discipline and death, even with Kit, but the only thing that could make him whole was the sure knowledge of what had happened to his family. And the witch would tell him, one way or another.
Sybelle’s laughter floated past. This time Caim was ready. He opened another portal. As soon as he landed, he swung both weapons, low cuts at the height of a woman’s knees. An invisible punch slammed into his chest out of nowhere and knocked him back a couple steps, followed by a second clout, and a third. Caim dipped and wove, but the rain of ethereal attacks battered his body and face with the force of mule kicks. The shadows encased around his body absorbed some of the impact, but enough got through to leave him shaky. A punch caught him flush in the midsection and flung him against a wall. He landed on his knees and rolled through another gateway.
He collided with another wall when he emerged. Face smarting, he turned around and put his back to the surface.
You’re cutting it close
,
Caim
.
Next time you might land inside one of these walls
.
His chest burned where he’d been struck, and it took a few breaths before his lungs stopped aching so bad he wanted to throw up.
That was stupid. You might have known she would be better at this than you
.
But what else did he have? Her sorcery was superior, and he couldn’t get close enough to strike. He didn’t even have Kit to help him out. Thinking of her, Caim felt a soreness inside him that had nothing to do with the bruising he’d suffered. There was too much left unanswered between them, as usual.
Caim stalked the darkness with a sense of resolve. Before he took more than a few steps, a thunderous growl broke the stillness. Caim spun to his left as the witch shouted—only a single Word, but the sound of it stopped up his ears and stung his eyes. Caim jumped in the direction of the noises. One moment he was moving through the dark, and then the veil lifted. He emerged to see the witch huddled against the wall, dark blood pouring down her arm from a vicious bite. The shadow beast was crouched to spring.
Stop!
He wanted to shout, but the beast was already pouncing.
The point of Caim’s sword pierced its side. The beast yowled and twisted around. Caim launched a series of stop-thrusts. To his shock, the creature retreated. He waded in closer, forcing it back, but even as he did so Caim felt bad for the creature, which looked confused by this treatment. The shadows wriggled up and down his body as if in protest. What would Kit say if she saw this? He pushed the thoughts out of his head as he pressed forward, driving the beast away from Sybelle and the answers he needed.
Step by step, he pushed the shadow beast back into a corner. Caim’s knee connected with something low, a retaining wall of dark gray stones, but he focused on keeping the beast at bay. The creature snarled and snapped, but it would not come within range of his sword.
Caim started to turn away, but a grip like solid ice closed around his head. The witch’s fingers, cold and caressing, clamped onto his temples. A wave of bitter cold closed around him, locking his muscles. The shadows shrouding his body shivered and spat as Caim struggled to break free, but she turned him with inexorable power until he faced the low stone wall. A still pool lay inside, its waters dark and impenetrable.
“Look,” Sybelle whispered.
The waters roiled and bubbled, but no steam rose from the pool. Then the gray miasma cleared, and the chamber—along with the witch and everything else—fell away. When the gloom rolled back before his gaze, Caim was soaring high above a bleak wilderness. The land below was cracked and pitted, devoid of any vegetation he could see. A pallid splinter of the moon hung above the dark horizon, where jagged mountains rose against the night sky. His perspective raced toward them at a terrific rate, though he felt no sense of movement.
This is a dream
.
Yet by the clarity of the vision, he was sure it must be a real place. Was this the Shadow realm? That didn’t seem right. For all its depressing monotony, the scenery appeared ordinary enough. As the mountains rushed closer, his vantage plunged toward the ground. The view wavered for a moment. When it cleared, he hovered before an enormous construction perched on the desolate plain. Its construction was foreign. The angular black walls were riddled with silver veins and pockets of polished crystal. Gargantuan towers rose like titanic fingers, topped with dagger-sharp spires. As his view flew over the outer curtain wall, Caim felt a presence before him. Even though he knew this wasn’t real, a kernel of anxiety opened in his gut. The vantage slowed as it approached a massive structure at the center of the cyclopean city, a pyramidal building of the same black stone. A window yawned in the side of the structure, and Caim’s perspective halted before a narrow balcony. A man wrapped in a loose cloak stood looking over the city. Shadows cloaked his face, but his eyes shone with the dark majesty of a new moon. Caim forced himself to meet those haunted eyes without flinching. There was something about him …
Caim’s gaze was wrenched away, to another window near the top of the building. A slender figure was silhouetted in the lighted space, with long dark hair hanging down to her waist.
Wake up
,
Caim
!
This isn’t real
.
Wake up
!
The mountains and the vast citadel were gone. He was flying again. The sky had lightened to a sheet of purple; the orange patina of dawn’s arrival glowed in the distance. The rooftops and walls of a great city spread out beneath him. He knew its winding streets and high rooftops at once. Othir.
“Look,” the witch crooned in his ear. “And see what the future holds.”
Dust and smoke wafted from fallen gatehouses as packs of large, brutal men roamed the city streets, their fur cloaks thrown back over brawny shoulders. The dead were piled in alleyways and against buildings like stacks of cordwood. Caim turned his gaze to the highest point in the city. The sight of the Luccian Palace, reduced to a pile of slag and rubble, hit him like a hammer to the forehead. Columns of black smoke rose from the ashes.
The pool darkened, returning Caim to the chamber. Despair crushed his windpipe. Was all this for nothing? Supple hands massaged his temples.
“Give your life over to me, Caim. I can be merciful. Take my son’s place and save the ones you love.”
His weapons were like lead weights. He didn’t want to fight anymore. He saw his mother in his imagination, standing in a field of summer grass, her gaze turned longingly to the northern woods. To see her again, to touch her hand, to smell the lush perfume of her hair. Just one more time …
A faint sound buzzed in the back of his mind, but it was hard to hear, and he was so tired.
Fight her, Caim!
The words filtered through his consciousness. Fight? A shudder raced through his hand.
His small hands gripped the hilt of the sword and pulled. The wound made a sucking sound as the blade slid free
.
Caim shook his head. His father had died rather than relinquish his freedom. Caim understood now. There was another side to death, a noble side. To die in the pursuit of justice was not to perish in vain. The muscles in his right arm trembled.
“You were born of the Shadow.” Her cool breath rustled the hairs at the back of his neck. “You cannot deny your blood, Caim. Accept it and claim your birthright.”
Caim opened his eyes. The shadow beast crouched before him, its bright gaze locked on him. He felt like there was a question in its look.
What do you want from me?
But the answer shivered in his hand. The sword twitched, wavering before Caim, and he saw the blade for what it was, a weight around his neck dragging him down. Killing had become easy, convenient. How long before he started to enjoy it?
Or is it already too late?
Caim flung out his hand. The hilt stuck to his palm for a moment, and then the blade sprang free with a tearing sound. Before it touched the floor, the shadow beast leapt.
Caim opened his arms as the creature struck. Instead of knocking him down, the beast plunged into his chest. Not through him, as Kit had done countless times, but
into
him, into his flesh. The pain was beyond anything he’d ever felt, worse than the bear mauling. It tore all coherent thought from his brain. He saw his mother again, leaning over his bed. The pillow came down … No!
She sang to him as she touched his chest. For a moment he could not breathe. It felt like he was underwater. And then …
With a small, sad smile she pulled away. In her hand was a ball of darkly shining light. For a moment it looked like a little animal, all black and glossy, curled up in her palm. He sat up as she left the room
. Don’t go, Mommy. I’ll be good. I’ll be …
Caim grunted as the witch’s icy nails dug into his skull. Caught between the twin torments of the beast and her touch, he could only hold onto the tattered edges of consciousness and ride the pain, hoping to see the other side of it. He heard the sound of breaking glass, and then he was splintering into a thousand pieces.
I’ll be good. Just come back
.
The agony faded. He was whole again. Not just in body. Something pulsed inside him, filling a space he had never known was vacant. Before he could plumb the new feeling, a furious hiss erupted behind him.
Caim turned, faster than he expected. His body moved with a speed and a grace he had never known before. Sybelle glared at him, holding up her hands as if they had been singed. Her lips parted to speak, and Caim opened a portal before him. As he passed through, a sudden inspiration made him split the gateway’s path into two forks. He didn’t know quite how he did it, but when he exited the portal, another empty hole yawned on the other side of the room. He hurled his
suete
knife as Sybelle turned to the wrong one. A pair of shadows flew up to deflect the missile. She reached out to Caim, and a shaft of pitch-black energy leapt across the distance between them.
Caim thrust out his empty hand without thinking. The air shimmered in front of him as the bolt of energy vanished.
How in the hells did I…?
But he was too busy to think as the witch launched a volley of spectral attacks at him. Some he saw coming, but others he could only defend by instinct. Time and time again he neutralized them. He took a step toward the witch. Her features changed as he closed in, from rage to frustration to the first inkling of apprehension. When she hurled another bolt of black lightning, Caim focused his attention on her motions. The energy dissipated into the air before it reached him. Sybelle curled her hands into white-knuckled fists. Something passed behind her eyes. A portal opened beside her. Caim traced its path through the darkness; it led outside the chamber to somewhere in the north quarter of the city. Before she could step through, he slashed the air with his hand.
Sybelle emerged from the portal only a few yards from where she had entered and jerked to a halt before she collided with the wall. She turned to him with an expression of astonishment. She opened her mouth as if to speak, but he didn’t give her the opportunity to bewitch him; he lashed out with every shadow at his disposal. He lost sight of her in the vicious whirlwind of darkness. When she fell to the floor, he lifted a hand.