Shadow's Son (40 page)

Ral adopted a casual fencing stance, sword arm halfway extended, feet
apart. The gleaming point of his weapon wove small circles between them
as he glanced to Calm's shoulder.

"Pick up a new toy, Caim? Watch out. You might pick up a little
style and ruin your reputation."

Knees bent, knife held low,
Caim slunk toward his prey. "Worry
about how you're going to get away."

"Get away?" Ral laughed. "This is exactly where I want to be. You
and me, the winner takes all."

Caim couldn't believe the man's hubris. Ral was no slouch with the
sword and as cold-blooded as any killer on the street, but even he couldn't
hope to defeat Caim in a fair fight. "Do you really think you can-?"

A sudden motion cut off his words.
Caim dropped flat to the rooftop
as a steel sliver sailed from Ral's off-hand. The throwing blade spun over
Calm's head to strike the wall behind with a metallic clink. Caim ground
his teeth together, pissed at himself for forgetting Ral's penchant for dirty
tricks. Ral didn't give him time to browbeat himself, but rushed in
behind the throw.

Caim pushed off the wet tiles. He blocked the first thrust and spun
away from the follow-up. In turning, however, his foot slipped on a loose
tile. Pitched off balance, he parried a swift slash, but the impact knocked
him on his back. He grunted as a tearing sensation ripped through his
side. A trickle of warmth oozed down his ribs. He rolled back to his feet
on the unsteady surface and scuttled sideways. All the while, Ral
hounded him with cuts and jabs. Somehow during the exchange they had
traded places. Now Ral backed him toward the precipice above the
bailey. Caim kept low and made himself as small a target as possible. He
reacted a split second too late to an attack and paid the price with a slice
down his right biceps, not too deep, but it bled with a vengeance. Caim
switched the knife to his left hand and responded with a riposte to create
some space between them.

"How does it feel?" Ral advanced on light steps. His sword cut lazy
figure eights in the air. "Knowing you're about to die at my hands? It has
to hurt. I know you've always considered yourself the better man."

Calm's breath came in shallow puffs as he gazed into the eyes of his
enemy. Behind the arrogant twist of Ral's feature dwelt a frightened man,
a man who had lived in Calm's shadow for so long he couldn't imagine a
future without him. Caim tilted his head to let the cool rain patter on his
face. He and Ral were two edges of the same blade, more alike than he had ever realized. With a momentous effort, Caim let the anger pour out of
him, and he smiled.

Ral's lips twisted into an ugly frown.

When Ral glided forward behind a long thrust,
Caim didn't retreat
or dodge the attack. Instead, he leapt to meet it straight-on. Ral dug in
his heels, but he couldn't curtail his lunge before Calm's blade caught the
outthrust sword and twisted it away. A stiletto came up in Ral's other
hand for a swift stop-thrust, but Caim grabbed the wrist. They grappled,
chest to chest, both heaving for advantage. Caim drove with his hips, and
the
suete
knife punched into Ral's navel like a blade returning to its
sheath.

Ral convulsed against Calm's shoulder. His breath wheezed in Calm's
ear. "You aren't ... better ... than ..."

Caim pushed.

Ral sprawled on the tiles, one hand pressed to his abdomen, the other
stretched over his head as if reaching for something that wasn't there. A
livid welt pulsed on his open palm.

Caim left the man to gasp out his final breaths alone. He went over
to the roof's edge. The storm had intensified. He couldn't see anything.
He called out to Josey. If there was any response, he couldn't hear it over
the wind.

He was searching the face of the building for a way down when a
shiver that had nothing to do with the cold skittered up his spine. The
queticoux
flashed through his mind, and the voracious shadows he had
faced in Ral's suite.

Calm's fingers tightened around the hilt of his knife as he moved.

aim toppled toward the roof's edge as a line of fire sliced across
his lower back. His hands slipped on the wet tiles; his right leg
was dead weight beneath him. With a frantic heave, he lurched sideways
and saved himself.

A black-robed shape perched on the roofs peak. Amid flashes of lightning, the sorcerer's stoic features emerged, glistening like alabaster under
his gaping cowl.

Caim took stock as he watched his enemy through the haze of rain and
mist. He was hurt. How bad, he couldn't tell, but every movement sent
rippling talons of agony clawing through his body. The twinge in his
chest returned, pulsing under his heart, whispering its seductive call into
his ears. Just surrender, it said, and the pain will be gone. Part of him
wanted to give in. It would be easy to let the power take over.

With a deep breath, Caim pushed himself to his feet.

Sensation returned to his leg as he staggered away from the edge of
the roof. His aches faded into the background when a small, almost
innocuous knife appeared in the sorcerer's hand. Where did its matte
black metal come from? The same metal as his father's sword. The answer
was staring him in the face, so simple, and yet the implications reverberated to the core of his being.

"You killed the earl." Caim climbed the roof's sloped pitch. "You
killed my friend Mathias. And sixteen years ago, you killed my father. I
want to know why."

Levictus rose to his full height like an uncoiling serpent. His voice
echoed in the darkness, as cold and forlorn as a tomb. "Before, we were an
instrument; we went where bidden, unseen, unheard. To take those who
were marked for death. Baron Du'Vartha was one of many."

Baron? His father was nobility?
And I never knew.
Red-hot anger
flooded his thoughts as he brooded over all the things he'd never gotten
the chance to know about his parents, but he tamped it down. He had to
stay in control.

"Why? Of what value was my father's death to you?"

"Our masters commanded it. We obeyed without knowing the
reason, but now we know many things that were mysteries before. About
secret dealings. About the heir of House Tenebrae, born of a mortal father
and a daughter of Shadow."

"What are-?" Caim swallowed the question before it passed his lips.
His mind turned in a dozen different directions. "Daughter of Shadow.
You mean my mother?"

The sorcerer took a step toward him, not threatening in itself, but
Caim had seen the man move and felt the measure of his strength.
Although thin of frame, this foe was more lethal than a dozen thugs like
Ral. Something moved in Calm's peripheral vision. Dark shapes gathered
in the gloom surrounding the rooftop.

"We considered allowing you to live." The sorcerer produced a second
knife from the folds of his robe. "But the Lords of Shadow have demanded
your extermination, and we must obey in order to be free."

Caim braced himself, but nothing could have prepared him as a thousand points of darkness swarmed from every direction. The shadows
crawled up his boots, latched onto his cloak, and stung him with tiny
needle-sharp fangs. He lashed out with his knife, but they came too fast,
flowing like quicksilver around his attacks. Pain burst anew from his
back, accompanied by the sickening sensation of things trying to wriggle
into his wound.

Levictus glided through the mass of his pets, his knives glittering like
black jewels in the night. Caim thrust to halt the advance, but the sorcerer shifted without moving and the
suete's
point met empty air. Caim
jerked back just in time as the black knife traced a searing incision down
his cheek. Two inches lower and it would have severed his throat. He spun
and attacked from a different angle, but his enemy was gone. The shadows
vanished as well, but Caim could feel their presence in the dark, stalking
him.

He turned in place, all senses tuned for the slightest sign of the sor cerer. His face burned like he had been tagged with a hot iron. The knife
dragged in his hand, almost too heavy to lift. He longed to close his eyes,
just for a moment, but the sorcerer lurked somewhere in the darkness,
watching him, waiting for an opening.

His ears caught a sound, a near-silent whisper of a foot dragging
across wet slate, as black metal gleamed out of the corner of his eye. He
closed his stance a moment too late. Two lightning-quick cuts left him
disarmed and bleeding from fresh wounds across his injured side. Bile
filled his mouth as his knife hit the tiles and clattered over the side.
Again, Levictus vanished.

Tears of frustration burned in Calm's eyes as he limped in a slow
circle. "What did you do with my mother?!" he screamed. "Did you kill
her, too?"

A mocking voice floated in the wind. "You know the truth, but you
cannot face it. Cannot embrace it, as I have."

"Stop talking in riddles and tell me where she is!"

The wind died down for a moment, making the sorcerer's next words
resound like thunder crashing over Calm's head. "She dwells in the peerless realm of her ancestors, beyond the Veil in the Land of Shadow."

The words echoed inside Caim. In his memory he was looking up at
his mother, standing on the widow's walk of their family home, her features framed in black tresses like the waters of a tempestuous sea. Her
dusky skin glowed in the light of the setting sun as she faced the wild
Northlands and the great dark forest beyond his father's demesne. Caim
tried to swallow in a mouth gone dry. He hadn't been able to believe it
before, but now, like a blind man feeling the surf on his toes for the first
time, he couldn't deny it any longer. His mother really was one of the
Shadowfolk. His father, a mortal man, had brought her home as his new
bride, never guessing the Shadow would come to reclaim its own. He was
a half-breed, a freak caught between two worlds, and now he was going
to die without the chance to discover what he had lost.

His chest contracted in a painful spasm.

Caim hissed as the breath left his body. Then he caught sight of a dark
mass looming in the sky over the palace. He looked up, dreading some new
attack, but a familiar voice called to him from the storm-shrouded sky.

"Caim!"

Kit.' Her voice sounded distant, as though she were shouting from the
other side of the city.

"Kit, where are you? I need you."

"I'm trapped. He's blocking me."

"What?" Caim glanced up and around. The rounded dome of the
palace was topped by a narrow steeple, but the dark cloud hovered above
even that.

"Caim ... Help!"

She sounded weaker. A gust tickled the nape of his neck and
Caim spun
around, only to be confronted with a wall of dense shadows. He could feel
his death approaching on silent footsteps. "What can I do, Kit?"

But she was gone. Caim ground his teeth together. Just when he
needed Kit most, she was beyond his reach. But something she said
nipped at his brain.
He's blocking me.
What did that mean? Was she talking
about Levictus? How could he ... ?

Shadow magic. The sorcerer must have detected Kit's presence and
taken steps to separate them. But how could he help her?

Kit's words at the cabin came back to him.
The blood calls to its own,
Caim.
You already possess everything you need.

The blood calls to its own.

The sorcerer appeared out of nowhere. Caim backpedaled across the
slippery tiles as the black blades sought his flesh. He evaded their touch
with a roll and came up on his feet perilously near to the edge. He was
trapped. The rage returned, fiercer than before, burning away his fear. If
he was going to die, he would do it as he had lived, on his feet and facing
his enemies. As Levictus approached with firm, steady strides, Caim
reached up over his shoulder.

An electric shiver ran through him as his fingers closed around the
smooth hilt of his father's sword. A vision appeared before his eyes: his
father's estate as it had been sixteen years ago. The villa in flames.
Glowing embers fluttering into the night sky like a cloud of angry fireflies. Levictus standing over his father. Above the wrappings of long black
robes, the sorcerer's pallid features shone in the moonlight. The blade
pierced his father's chest and Caim cried out, pain bursting from his
insides as if the weapon had pierced his flesh instead.

Caim blinked.

He ran through a field of wildflowers in every hue and variety. His
parents chased after him, their laughter ringing in the summer air. He
glanced over his shoulder, but they had fallen far behind. He could barely
see them. Yet their eyes latched onto him from across the distance,
watching him, waiting for ...

Caim blinked.

He was back on the palace rooftop. The sword shimmered like a shard
of black ice in his hand. Water danced along the temper of its razor-keen
edges. It felt odd, holding it, and at the same time familiar, like coming
home. His father's voice reached across the years.