today.
Taking a deep breath, she stepped onto the path.
A cool breeze rustled through the trees and wrapped around her as she entered the garden, raising goose bumps on her arms. Kit walked past rows of plants and flowering bushes. Their open blossoms followed her as she wondered where she was supposed to go. Would she know mortality when she found it? Following the curve of the path, she came to a crossway. She turned left on a whim and kept going until she arrived at another crossing and chose the right-hand track. It was getting darker as a bank of storm clouds tumbled across the sky. Kit turned another corner and another, until she lost all sense of direction. Finally, she stopped in the middle of the path. She turned in a circle to figure out where she was going, but it was hopeless. She couldn't see beyond the wall of vegetation.
Kit was about to try to retrace her steps when she heard a sound that sent chills down her backbone. She held her breath and listened. She started to exhale as the only thing she heard was the wind, but then it came again, an ominous crackle in the bushes. Kit whirled around, and stopped when she faced a mass of scarlet flowers. Two yellow eyes watched her from the shadows at the base of the plants. Kit shuddered when a sleek, black head elongated into the light. She couldn't help herself. She ran.
Kit raced blindly through the garden maze, pushing through hedges, trampling flowers, knowing that Death stalked in her wake. She jumped to get a glimpse of her grandmother's house, and finally found it.
She was darting through a bed of daffodils when she realized what she was doing. Stopping in the soft loam and turning around took every ounce of her willpower. She had to face this. This was what she wanted.
But the fear returned like a vise around her throat when the serpent slid into view. The creature was as thick as her wrist and very long, extending more than twice her height before it drew in its coils. Kit swallowed. She was shaking while sweat ran down her back. The serpent's eyes were enthralling, cold and incredibly deep at the same time. She didn't want to look away. A strange languor had infiltrated her limbs.
Yet even as she tried to comfort herself, another part of her brain was screaming and thrashing about like a wild bird trapped in a cage. The serpent's lower jaw yawned as it approached. Kit took a deep breath as Death touched her foot and crawled up her leg, its raspy scales caressing her calf. Her thigh. Her hip. She couldn't control her shaking.
When the fangs pierced her flesh, they hardly hurt at all.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Caim ducked out of the path of a slave coffle, hardly sparing a glance for the shackled men and women marching past to the crack of whips.
He was tired. Not just in body, but in his spirit. The citadel loomed in his mind, titanic and impregnable. How many shadow people lived inside? Too many for him to overcome. He needed an army, but all he had were Dray and Malig and two escaped slaves.
Caim turned a corner and pressed his back to a wall. He almost reached for the shadows, but caught himself in time as a group of Northmen priests in dirty red robes passed by. The few people on the street, slaves and warriors alike, made way for them.
Once the priests were out of sight, Caim crossed the street and slipped into a narrow alley between two squat tenements. A quick jaunt down a zigzag brought him to the courtyard at the rear of the tavern where he'd left his crew. He only hoped they had managed to stay out of trouble.
A candle was lit in the foyer, with a tin plate to catch the drippings. Caim went to the door of their room and lifted the latch. It was pitch-black inside. He squinted, but his eyes didn't adjust to the gloom. A smell like seared grass met his nose. He reached down with his right hand as he stepped over the threshold. He expected to feel the presence of shadows, but they were strangely absent. There was no sound either. Then something slid across the floor. Hard leather. A boot. Caim eased the seax knife free of its sheath as he maneuvered sideways around where he guessed the noise had originated.
Caim started to take a step forward, but he was jerked backward by an arm across his windpipe. He grabbed for the arm out of instinct as his feet left the ground, but the limb was insanely powerful, its muscles and tendons as hard as petrified oak. White spots appeared before his vision before he remembered his knife. Caim stabbed behind him, aiming for the midsection, but the point of his knife rebounded off something solid. While the white spots grew and pulsed, Caim reversed the grip and plunged the knife over his shoulder. The arm around his neck loosened, and Caim kicked backward and thrashed his head back and forth until he was free. As soon as his heels hit the floor, he spun around and drew his
Hoek stood before him. Blood ran in a thick stream from a puncture in his cheek, but the wound didn't seem to slow the big man as he shambled forward. Caim ducked under outstretched hands and lunged with both knives. He wanted to inflict nonlethal wounds, but found himself aiming for the bowels and groin anyway. His knives pierced woolen garments, but stopped when they hit the flesh underneath like they'd struck plate armor without the accompanying clang. Caim didn't have time to recover before Hoek barreled into him. Powerful fingers gouged into his face and shoulder. Caim slashed his way free, but again Hoek didn't stop, as if the pain didn't register. Caim threw himself to the side. He rolled to his feet beside a hammock and saw Dray lying in the rope sling. Malig was in another hammock. Both men stared up at the ceiling as if drugged.
Caim shouted, “What's wrong with you two? Get up!”
A light blossomed in the far corner. He risked a glance over his shoulder to the corner where Shikari stood, smiling as she held a twisting flame in her hand. She had changed into a rust-red…
Shikari wore an
The breath left Caim's lungs as Hoek grabbed him by the head and threw him to the floor. A huge boot rose into the air, and Caim rolled aside before it connected with his skull. Shadows appeared along the low ceiling. Their tiny voices echoed in his head, making it hard to concentrate. Then Hoek was upon him again. Caim slashed at everything that came at him-hands, wrists, and kneecaps-until Hoek staggered back, bleeding from half a hundred slices. The big man's mouth gaped as if he suddenly understood what he was doing, but then his features slackened, and he charged again.
Caim braced himself. His knives trembled in his grip. He was on the edge of losing control. The smell of blood in the room was overpowering. The shadows urged him to let go, to give in to the killing lust. Hoek closed within three steps.
Two.
One.
Caim unleashed the shadows. They dropped from the ceiling, inundating Hoek in a night-black deluge. His arms churned as if trying to swim from the shadows, until his legs gave out and he collapsed on the floor to the sound of soft chittering. Through the swarm of darknesses, Caim could see the big man's arms changing color from pale white to black and gray. He pushed the shadows away with his thoughts. They resisted at first, but then oozed away at his insistent command. Where Hoek had lain was now a horrid, mottled creature, roughly man-shaped, but with longer arms and plate-sized hands with curled talons. Knobby lumps covered the thing's bald skull. For reasons he couldn't discern, Caim was reminded of the shadow serpent that had attacked him in his apartment in Othir. The Shadow had caught up to him again.
Caim stared across the room at Shikari, still with the flames dancing in her hands. Her eyes shined with the fiery light. “You escaped my trap in Jarnflein,” she said. “But I knew I would find you again, scion. My rewards shall be boundless when I bring you before the Master's throne.”
