Shadow's master

Then he felt something, a texture to the air that reminded him of…home. Not Othir, but his real home in Eregoth. His father's estate. For a moment he could almost smell his old room, the sunshiny scent of his favorite blanket, the beeswax polished into the wooden chair where his mother had held him and rocked him to sleep.

The images were dispelled by a burst of pain flaring in his chest. Caim crouched against the wall as a figure in black armor stepped out of the shadows. The swordsman had one hand on the long hilt of his sword, which was still in its scabbard. His visor was up. Caim shifted to a forward stance as the swordsman took something from his belt and held it up. The seax knife. He moved his arm, and Caim tensed, but the knife sailed in a gentle arc between them. Caim dropped the butcher's knife and caught the seax by the hilt.

The swordsman did not move, did not draw his sword. “The Master foresaw this. You and I here at this moment. I doubted, but here we are.”

Caim gripped his knives tight, feeling every ridge and whorl in the hilts as he advanced. “And now one of us will die.”

“That is unfortunate. I have come to regret the need to eliminate you.” The warrior retreated a pace, arms by his sides. “We are both killers. Predators. Unfit for this world.”

Caim tried to ignore the words, but they slipped past his guard and struck home. He'd thought much the same himself. Would the world be a better place if I'd never been born? “If you're trying to make it sound like we're the same, save your breath.”

The swordsman's eyebrows rose. His lean features were more haggard than at their last meeting. Black stubble shadowed his jaw. “The same? Hardly. You kill for yourself, for profit, for desire. I kill for a cause to which I have devoted my entire life.”

Caim recalled some words he'd said to Josey on a rooftop overlooking her dead foster father's mansion. Why is it that if a lord or a king sends you to kill a man, it's somehow noble? But if you do this for yourself, it's murder. Explain that to me.

Caim let the memory slide from his thoughts as he lunged. The swordsman's hands flashed, and his weapon appeared, slashing across the intervening space between them. Caim beat aside the sword and lunged with a stop- thrust that was likewise deflected.

Caim stayed low, knees flexed to carry him in any direction. The sword tried to cut off his approach routes, but he fought with every trick at his disposal, fueled by the cold fury bubbling inside his gut. As they traded cuts and parries, he alternated between pressing his opponent and falling back to draw him in.

“You believe I am evil,” the swordsman said as he circled away. “And perhaps I am. But are you without sin? Have you not killed to defend your beliefs? I accept what I am. Do you?”

Caim felt his lips curl back in a snarl as he lunged again. Just before their weapons met, he channeled his powers and made a short shadow-hop. There was a moment of resistance, as if a skin had formed in the air to prevent him passage, but he pushed through it.

He reappeared behind and to the side of his foe. As the swordsman spun, with an upward slash that cut through thin air, Caim attacked low and fast. The black sword deflected the seax knife, but the suete stabbed deep into the tendon under the kneecap.

The swordsman jerked his wounded leg back and made a circular disengaging slash between them as he retreated a few steps. Caim hung back. The wound was crippling. The pain must have been extreme, but the swordsman settled into an off-balance stance and waited, as still as a pillar of ice.

Caim drew in a deep breath. His fury remained, unabated, but this victory gave him no joy. His opponent hadn't fought with passion or pride, or even fear. He's a pawn, like me. His master points, and he follows orders.

Caim lowered his knives, even though he wanted to cut open the man's throat and let him bleed out on the floor. The swordsman stood up as straight as he was able, favoring his injured leg, and let his blade droop. “Your mother, Lady Isabeth, is held in the caverns beneath the citadel, deep underground. But none can pass the wards without the Master's leave.”

“So if I find him…,” Caim said.

“You will find the way to her. But this is a trap. The Master is waiting for you.”

Caim pointed with his seax knife. “Why are you telling me this?”

“My name is Balaam. I have no house save my Master's and I am the last of my line, but I still have my honor.” The swordsman opened a portal beside him. “And there is one thing more. They have your woman.”

A tremor wriggled down Caim's spine. “Kit?”

The swordsman gestured, and a cool touch caressed Caim's calf. A picture formed in his mind. The grand audience chamber, draped in darkness.

Caim blinked, but the swordsman was gone. Could he trust him? There's only one way to find out.

Caim squeezed his fingers around his knife hilts. The power thrummed inside him like a second heartbeat. He fed his rage into it, feeling the inferno grow higher and hotter. Then he opened his own portal.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Kit brushed the hair out of her eyes as she turned the corner. The building looked simple from the outside, just four walls and a point at the top, but inside it was a warren of passages and halls, most of them empty. She had started off trying to be quiet, until the clang and clatter of Malig lumbering in her tracks with his huge sword made her give it up as useless.

Seeing that the corridor ran due south, toward what she hoped was the way out, Kit started down it. With every step she thought of Caim. She shouldn't have let him go on alone. She had become human to help him, but then he'd sent her away when he needed her most. It's just like him. He never listens.

The corridor widened into a long, high chamber. Arcades ran along either side, topped with balconies overlooking the room. Kit wondered what the place was meant for. It looked like a ballroom or a theater. There were a few doors to choose from, although none of them seemed to head in the right direction.

“You got any idea where you're going, lass?” Malig asked.

“Of course.” The bit of hair fell over her eyes again. She licked her palm and pasted it back behind her ear. “A little.”

“Let me take the lead, then. Maybe I'll find us some action.”

“I don't want any action, you oaf. I just want”-she almost said “Caim,” but amended it to-“to get out of here.”

“And when we get out? What then?”

“Caim said-”

“Caim won't be there,” Malig said. “You got any idea how far it is back to Eregoth? We won't make it. Well, I might. But a little thing like you? Never in a hundred years.”

Kit blinked back the tears that had been hovering in the corners of her eyes since they'd left Caim. “I know! All right? So shut up and let me think.”

He watched her closely while she considered the options, which made her self-conscious. Just to get moving, she selected the southernmost door in the right-hand wall, but as she headed in that direction, a cold draft blew down the back of her smock. Kit stopped, shivering, and looked up. Two black eyes peered from behind a black visor on the balcony above. The chill took root in her stomach and seized her legs. The face vanished, and then something moved in the far left corner of the chamber. Kit looked, but saw nothing. Only darkness and shadows…

“What's the problem?” Malig said as she backed into him. “I almost cut off your-”

He shoved her aside with a hairy hand, and Kit fell to her knees as a slender figure dressed in black stepped out of the shadows under the balcony. A short spear rested on his shoulder.

Malig pointed his new sword at the man. “I remember you, boyo. But you don't have your brothers around to protect you, huh?”

Shadows swirled about the room, and another figure in black appeared. And then a third behind them.