Shadow’s Lure (11 page)

It has been more than two months since my apprentice departed to the northern marches
.
I am anxious to learn whether my efforts in those lands have been for gain or ill
.
If the northern lands cannot be tamed
,
then all this effort and treasure have been for naught
,
and there will be a reckoning within the Council
.
Yet that may also work to my advantage
.

The entry went on about Vassili’s personal agenda for two pages before Caim found another name he recognized.

Levictus has returned
.

I have grave misgivings about the northern campaign
,
even more than before
.
The countryside is awash in uprisings
,
and the governor’s militia dares not muster beyond the walls of Liovard
.
Perhaps more disturbing
,
the stories of evil happenings in the outlands seem to have some basis in truth
,
though Levictus could find no direct proof
.
His distant gaze upon me as I write this is evidence enough
.
I intend to request an audience with the Holy Office today
.

Caim set down the journal. Eighteen years ago, the north was in disarray, and the political winds were shifting. In the chaos, few would notice an assault against a foreign lord. And less would care. As Caim tried to imagine what those times must have been like for his mother and father, images of the old dream flashed through his head. Of Levictus standing over his father’s corpse. And behind the sorcerer, a great mountain of darkness.

A low droning sound intruded upon his rest. Caim tried to ignore it, but the buzzing persisted, and a feeling developed in his stomach. Like he was being watched.

Caim’s eyes snapped open as he stood up. The night was full upon the land now, its darkness blanketing the forest. Throwing his cloak around his shoulders, he slipped the sword into his belt and left the shelter.

Beyond the firelight, the buzz grew louder. Caim stalked the sensation in a slow circle until he faced the northern horizon. He didn’t see anything moving on the bright, snowy plain, but the feeling never left him. There was something out in the darkness. He stood for a few minutes more, until the cold and the mounting pain in his leg forced him to move. He turned to find a figure standing behind him. It melded so perfectly with the darkness he almost didn’t see it. By its petite outline, his first thought was it might be Kit. Then it hissed and flew toward him.

Both
suetes
flashed in Caim’s fists. The figure raised a slender hand. He slashed, but the blades cut through nothing. The campfire shone through the thing’s parted fingers as it clawed at him. He leapt back, cutting again and again, but the thing paid no attention to his defenses. When the smoky hand touched him, a lance of freezing cold speared through his chest. The knives fell to the ground as his muscles spasmed.

As the specter reached up with its other hand, Caim struggled for his sword. He fumbled with the burlap covering until his fingers found the sword’s cool pommel. A jolt ran through his hand, jangling his nerves, as he drew the blade. All at once, the bizarre paralysis left him, and the night came alive in amazing clarity. He jumped back as the hands—suddenly become skeletal claws—reached for his face. Caim swung, and a new pain cut through his shoulder as the sword connected.

He drew back the blade, expecting another attack, but the figure was gone. Caim turned in a slow circle. The sword trembled in his grip. A faint scent snared his attention. Warm and sweet, it was familiar in a way he could not pinpoint, like the ghost of a memory. It continued to tantalize him even after it faded into the cold night air.

With a mumbled curse, Caim gathered his knives and headed back to the camp. He stooped under the tree branches to find Hagan awake. The guide was tending the campfire.

He glanced up as Caim entered. “Stay near the fire. Safer here.”

Caim sat down. His chest ached like a spike had been pounded through his breastbone where the apparition had touched him. The campfire blasted him like a furnace, but the flames could not touch the chill lingering inside him.

“What was—?” he started to ask, but he didn’t know what to say. What had he seen? It had seemed more like a dream than reality.

“There’s things out there.” Hagan cocked his head toward the outside. “People who go wandering in the dark sometimes don’t come back.”

Caim leaned back against his satchel. The adrenaline was draining out of him, suppressed by deep exhaustion. His eyes shut of their own accord. As he let his chin droop, he remembered where he’d smelled that scent before. It had surrounded him as a child, an invisible blanket that made him feel safe when he was hurt or afraid.

The smell of his mother’s hair.

Arion’s boots clacked on the stone tiles as he strode through the palace corridors. For a day and a half they’d ridden hard back to Liovard. He didn’t know how Yanig held on, punched full of holes as he was, but the army doctors said he’d gotten to them just in time. Okin hadn’t spoken a word since they left the roadside inn. He’d survived the attack by those little black creatures, whatever they had been, but an unnerving look had taken over his eyes, as if he’d glimpsed damnation and couldn’t forget it.

Arion passed a servant carrying a silver ewer. A livid bruise darkened the boy’s eye. Arion smacked his gauntlets into the palm of his hand. He’d hoped things would improve while he was away, but they had only gotten worse. The sentries at the gates lounged in their guard shack, drinking and playing cards. The stables where he left his horse were filthy, with no grooms in sight; he’d had to brush his mare and put her in a stall himself. Worst of all, he knew the root of these problems, but could do nothing about it.

His father’s mistress.

Just the thought of her made him want to punch the wall. His life had been easier before she arrived. It was a little more than two years ago since she had appeared in the midst of a cold winter night, she and the Beast and his Northmen. The people called her a witch, and Arion could see why. Not only had she convinced his father to embark on a campaign to take the city and declare himself duke of Eregoth, recently there had been rumors she was urging him to take the next step—to conquer all of the northern states and take up the mantle of king. It was beyond madness. Whereas Eregoth’s clans had lived in uneasy peace since winning their freedom from Nimea, now there was open warfare. Add to that the covert raids they were launching across the southern border, and even he was ready to suspect witchcraft.

If things don’t change
,
the entire country will collapse around our ears
.
If father won’t get rid of the witch
—

The doors of the great hall opened before him. Arion remembered this chamber from years ago when his father had brought him to the city as a boy. Then, the castle had been a place of light and laughter where thanes discussed their disputes without rancor or bloodshed. Those days were gone. Half a dozen men slouched at a table that looked ridiculously small in the vast chamber. The brilliant banners that had covered the walls were gone, revealing sooty wooden panels and bare windows looking out onto a smoke-smudged sky.

The lean man with graying sideburns sitting at the head of the table glanced up and wobbled to his feet. “My son returns!”

Arion could see at once that his father was drunk, or befuddled by the noxious herbs he smoked. The others at the table, his captains, nodded and grumbled their greetings. Arion tried not to show what he was thinking when he saw the old warriors, some he had known since boyhood. Once they had been a proud lot, fiercely protective of his father. Now they sat around this hall, draped with chains and jeweled rings, like a pack of toothless old lions. Some couldn’t even meet his gaze. His father was a sick man, but no one said anything.
Can you blame them? They’re afraid to lose their place at the table
.

As Arion embraced his father, he smelled strong spirits and the stink of days-old sweat. His father’s clothes were soiled and wrinkled. His laugh was a pale whisper of its former self.

“Tell me everything, Arion. Did you see Hamock? How do the men look?”

Arion brushed a dead fly off the bench as he sat down. “The men are well, and Commander Hamock sends his regards. But something happened on the ride back, Father.”

The duke chuckled, and it turned into a cough. A servant rushed forward with a cup. The duke guzzled it down. Setting the cup aside and mopping his tangled beard with a grimy sleeve, he sighed.

“Father,” Arion said. “Do you remember the first time we came to Liovard together?”

The duke stared off into the distance for a moment. Then he nodded, slowly at first, but with growing vigor. “It was the Feast of Saint Olaf. You were just a boy.”

Kulloch, the oldest of his father’s captains, rapped his hairy knuckles on the table. “I remember that day. Allarand held games, and you won the sword match, Your Grace.”

For a moment, Arion saw a glimmer of his father’s old self, the powerful man who had defeated a host of rivals to take the reins of their clan. Then a voice filled the hall, and the duke slouched back in his seat.

“
Majesty
.”

The captains looked down into their cups. Arion gripped the table as Sybelle came around the throne to perch on his father’s lap.

“We must all address His Majesty as he is due,” she said. “For someday he will be king.”

Arion wanted to hurl the words back in her face. King? His father barely controlled the lands just a few leagues from the city walls, but she filled his head with dreams of conquest and glory.

Arion focused on his father. “I was trying to tell you. On the way back we stopped at a comfort house along the road and had some trouble with the locals. We caught an insurrectionist—he had the mark. But another man interfered with our arrest.”

The duke snorted. “Did you string him up as an example?”

“We tried to take him into custody, but he escaped. And not before he cut down my men.”

“One man defeated your entire entourage?” Sybelle’s throaty laughter clawed Arion’s spine.

His father grinned as he pounded the arm of his throne. “You were drunk again, Arion! And you tried to molest some of my commons, and one of them showed you the useful end of a spade. Ha!”

Arion’s grip on the tabletop tightened until he thought he would break his fingers. “I know what I saw. Brustus is no slouch with a blade, and Sergeant Stiv is stronger than any two men in the company, but this stranger was fast—faster than anyone I’ve ever seen. He toyed with us like we were children. And then something happened.”

As Arion remembered, his stomach clenched. “The inside of the house became as dark as night. And there were these … things …”

Sybelle pushed away from his father. “What kind of things?”

“I don’t know how to explain them, except that they seemed …”

He would have stopped there. Every eye was on him, magnifying his shame. But Sybelle leaned closer. Her gaze burned into him.

“It seemed like the darkness shattered into pieces and came to this man’s aid,” Arion said. “Like they were his pets, or guardians.”

A couple of the captains chuckled. His father just looked away.

Arion struck the table with his open palm. “Ask the others if you don’t believe me! Better yet, go down to the infirmary and see what those things did to Okin’s face. It doesn’t matter. Stiv and I are going back out to find this man.”

The duke rubbed his lips. “That’s out of the quest—”

“An excellent idea,” Sybelle interrupted. “You should find this person and bring him to justice. Lord Soloroth will accompany you.”

Arion shoved himself back from the table. “I don’t need any help from your demon spawn—”

“Careful.” Sybelle raised a finger. The dark irises of her eyes reflected no light. “Soloroth holds his honor as dearly as you. Erric, as you have heard from your progeny’s own words, the maneuvers in the south are well under way. It is time to consolidate your control of this land. We cannot strike southward until our flanks are secure.”

The duke reached for his cup. “As you say, Sybelle. It is time for Eregoth to bow to one master. Wine!”