Shadow Magic (12 page)

“How did you do that?” K’leef asked him as he wrestled with his own bow.

“Use your whole body to bend it, not just your arms.”

“I get it. Thanks.”

“I’ll tell you what,” said Old Colm, holding a silver crown between his finger and thumb. “See this? I’ll give it to the first boy who scores a bull’s-eye. Halloween’s eleven days away, but the fair’s already setting up on Devil’s Knoll. A lad with silver in his pocket could have a fine old time at the fair.” He winked. “Know what I mean?”

The boys laughed, but there were plenty of hungry eyes on the coin. A crown was a man’s weekly wage.

The boys lined up in four columns, each facing one of the targets. Thorn was last in line. Arrows flew. Some hit the hay, others the walls, and plenty skimmed across the courtyard floor. One boy put his through his boot, and the foot within it, and was carried off to the infirmary, howling. None hit the bull’s-eye, and Old Colm’s coin remained unclaimed in his pocket.

Thorn reached the front. He picked a good arrow, one that was straight and its fletching neat and smooth. He nocked it and hooked his thumb around the bowstring.

“What do you think you’re doing?” said Old Colm.

Thorn looked down at his thumb. “This is how my dad taught me.”

“Oh, did he? Now tell me, troll, was your pa a legendary archer? Perhaps he was taught by elves, was he? Your fingers not good enough?”

“No, sir.” Thorn blushed as the boys snickered. He rearranged his grip, holding the bowstring with his fingers, like everyone else. One above the notch, two below.

“No, no, no,” said Old Colm. “That won’t do at all. Gather around, trolls. Let the new boy show us how’s it done. With his thumb. What do I know? I’ve only been teaching archery fifty years.” He folded his arms. “Come on, troll, show me. Please, teach us all how to shoot.”

Thorn’s heart beat rapidly, and he felt the gaze of the other boys. A few laughed, and they jostled one another. They liked it when a new boy got humiliated.

Old Colm nudged him. “The target’s over there.”

Thorn took a deep breath. He turned side-on to the target. He relaxed his shoulders and blocked out the giggles and noise around him.

He hooked his thumb around the bowstring, raised the bow, drew the string to his chin, and saw down the line of the arrow, the target a haze beyond.

Don’t worry about the target,
Dad would say.
Make the arrow do the worrying. You just send it on its way straight and true.

Thorn let the bowstring go. The arrow flew.

He heard the
thunk
. He didn’t need to look. The gasp from the boys told him everything.

Bull’s-eye.

Old Colm scowled. He handed Thorn another arrow. “A fluke. Do it again.”

Thorn took it.

There was someone watching from the steps that led to the main doors. Thorn saw a match flame and a glow settle within a pipe.

Tyburn. The warm red light lit his stark, hard face. The boys murmured among themselves. A few inflated their chests, and others stood straighter, all wanting to impress the executioner.

But not Thorn.

He should do what his dad had told him.

Keep your head down. Don’t attract attention. Stay out of trouble.

Thorn’s archery was what had landed his father in so much trouble. Thorn’s archery and arrogance.

I’ll miss.

That was the sensible, clever thing to do. Make his first shot seem like sheer luck. A fluke.

Miss.

Go on. Just miss.

Why was it so hard? The bull’s-eye was right there, just waiting to be hit. It seemed huge.

I…can’t miss. I don’t
want
to miss! Why should I?

Miss!

Thorn nocked the second arrow, drew, and loosed.

The arrow sailed high. Well over the targets. It flew upward and toward the keep wall.

It buried itself down the open throat of one of the gargoyles. It went clean in, so only the white goose-feathered fletching remained visible, jutting out between the gargoyle’s fangs.

Thorn had missed. Spectacularly.

K’leef stared at it. They all did.

“Well, I’m not going up there and getting it,” muttered one of the boys.

Old Colm grunted. “As I thought, a fluke. Now everyone, line up. Watch Harry. He’ll show you how to shoot
properly
.”

Tyburn puffed out a smoke ring and went back inside the keep.

While the other boys were distracted, Old Colm tossed Thorn the crown. “Here, catch. I don’t know what you’re up to, troll, but I don’t appreciate being made a fool of.”

“A fool, sir? I don’t understand. I missed.”

“Did you?” He looked up at the gargoyle. “In which case that’s the best worst shot I’ve ever seen.”

Thorn drew the brush over the horse’s coat.

Why had he made that shot?

Stupid. All it did was make everyone suspicious. Especially Tyburn.

Practice had gone on until well after sunup, and Thorn had made sure not to be too good, but it was too late. At breakfast everyone was talking about two things: the poisoning at the feast and Thorn’s shooting. As soon as breakfast was over, Thorn had escaped to the stables.

And that suited him fine. Thorn enjoyed grooming horses. Especially ones like Thunder. His coat was so black it held all the other colors. Purples and blues and even shades of green rippled within it. They’d had a cart horse back home, and Thorn had spent a summer learning to ride on it. It had been equally big, seventeen hands, but it had been slow, docile, and not too bright. Thunder was different. Despite his size he looked nimble enough to dance on a penny.

Thorn picked out another stone from the horse’s hooves. This was his sort of work. Not too complicated and no surprises. As long as you fed one end and cleaned the other, you couldn’t go far wrong.

Out of the corner of his eye, Thorn glimpsed a squire heading toward him.

Now what?

The squire stopped a healthy distance away. “That’s Thunder, isn’t it?”

“You want something?” He looked at him properly. “I met you last night, didn’t I? You brought the puppy. What was your name?”

“Wade.” The boy was dressed in a black outfit fancier than Thorn’s, but he looked nervous, and his eyes darted about like a mouse in a kitchen. “It’s just that I was over at the lesser hall, where the Solars are? I heard Gabriel talking. He isn’t happy.”

“Of course he ain’t. He probably saw himself in the mirror.”

“He was talking about revenge. For what you did to him.”

Thorn frowned. He’d hoped that K’leef had been wrong about Gabriel. No such luck.

“Mean little toad, ain’t he?” Thorn looked over at the other stable boys, all dressed in black, like him. They were pretending not to eavesdrop. “You come over to help me, Wade?”

He shook his head. “Don’t you get it? Gabriel’s going to marry Lilith Shadow. We can’t risk making an enemy of our future ruler.”

“Then why are you telling me this?”

“Come on. We all know what you did to him. Every one of us would have loved to do the same. But we’re—”

“A bunch of cowards?”

“We’re not stupid,” answered Wade. “I’m sorry, but you’re on your own.”

On his own. Some things never changed.

“How long have I got?”

The barn doors swung open, and Gabriel and a dozen of his white-clad squires marched in. Some had cudgels, others daggers. Gabriel had his longsword out and wore a shiny steel breastplate. He saw Thorn and grinned.

“Not long,” said Wade.

“T
hink you can make a fool of me, peasant?” Gabriel snarled. “Think you can get away with what you did?”

“You mean shove your face in manure?” Thorn grinned. “Yeah, I reckon I can.”

Gabriel smiled maliciously. “I’m going to teach you a lesson about respecting your betters. I’m going to
carve
it into you so you never forget it.”

Wade and the other stable boys were gone. No last-minute help coming from them. Gabriel’s cronies blocked the door. The only thing nearby was a broom.

So Thorn grabbed it.

Gabriel tightened his grip on his longsword. “Pathetic.”

Thunder stamped his hoof. He whinnied and shook his head. He knew Thorn was in trouble.

“Get him!” ordered Gabriel.

Thorn grabbed hold of the horse’s mane and swung himself up, broom still in his other hand.

“Go, boy!” shouted Thorn, kicking his heels.

The horse charged.

It didn’t matter that they had clubs and knives. It didn’t matter that there were more than ten of them. What mattered was they were on foot and Thorn was on a massive, muscular warhorse trained to trample
everything
in his path. Seventeen hands high, he was built to carry a fully armored knight into battle. With hooves that could cave in skulls and teeth big enough to snap off hands, Thunder crossed the small gap between his pen and the stable doors in a second.

The squires dove aside. Two weren’t quick enough, and the horse glanced them with his shoulder, sending them tumbling.

Thorn couched the broom handle under his right armpit and aimed the brush at the biggest target he could see.

Gabriel.

The broom smacked dead center with a deafening clang. Gabriel flew twenty feet through the air, flipping over and over like a tin chicken, then smacked down in a fresh mound of horse dung.

“Whoa, boy!” Thorn tried to get control of Thunder, but the warhorse had his own ideas.

Thunder spun around, searching for more enemies, and that was too much for Thorn. He wasn’t a horseman. Fighting off squires with a broom and staying on was one job too many.

So he fell off.

Solar squires spilled out of the stables. Others got to their feet after having dived away from the charging Thunder, their white tunics filthy with mud. A couple dragged Gabriel out of the fly-infested mountain of brown stuff. His breastplate had a big broom-shaped dent in it.

“Get him!” yelled Gabriel, frothing at the mouth. “Get him!”

No way was Thorn going to win this. He dragged himself up out of the mud and ran. He dashed toward a gap between a tower and a wall. He didn’t know where he was running to, but it had to be out of the courtyard.

He ran between tottering walls and leaning towers and over crumbling walls and under half-demolished bridges. Sometimes the cries of the squires faded away to almost nothing, then suddenly they’d be at his shoulder.

Thorn ran as fast as he could, not looking back, deep into the labyrinthine paths of Castle Gloom.

He ran until his legs burned and his chest ached. He found an alcove, just a break in the wall, and stopped to catch his breath and look around.

He was totally lost. None of Castle Gloom made sense. It was a hodgepodge of buildings, all in different styles from different centuries, made of marble, granite, brick, and who knew what else. All of it ancient. Breath caught, Thorn raced on. Down an alley and around—

Disaster struck.

Thorn hit a dead end.

A wall blocked his way. It was high, more than fifty feet, and covered in stiff black ivy. The squires were closing in.

Thorn took hold of a vine. It was brittle, and he didn’t have any idea how strong it was.

This wasn’t like climbing trees back home. There he could just glance at a branch and know if it would take his weight.

Would they kill him? Back in the courtyard, with others standing there, someone might have stepped in to make sure things didn’t get out of hand. But now, in the alleyway, with no one else around? Led by a guy like Gabriel?

If they catch me, I’m dead.

He began to climb. As quickly as he dared. A thorn jabbed into his palm, but he ignored it. He was going to get a whole lot more punctured if he stayed down there in the alleyway.

Thorn reached up and his hand came down flat on roof tiles. He pushed himself through the last few inches and slid across the roof on his belly.

“He’s up there!”

Thorn glanced down. A group of squires stared up.

He waved at them. “Hard luck, lads. You can get lost now.” No one was going to risk climbing after him. Not unless they were stupid. He kicked a few loose tiles off. “Oops.”