Shadow's master

“Mal…,” Kit said.

But he'd seen them, too. The Eregoth looked around as he hefted his borrowed weapon. “Run along, little girl, while I entertain these rotten pricks.”

Kit started to say that she wouldn't leave him, but her words turned to a gasp as a warrior darted in close and slashed Malig across the middle of his back with a hooked knife. Malig swung and missed as his enemy drifted away. Kit climbed to her feet. She didn't have a weapon, not even a knife anymore. Thank you very much, Caim!

She stepped away from the melee. Malig was turning faster now, trying to keep all three warriors in view, but they were too elusive. Just watching, Kit lost sight of them as they dipped and wove in a swift circle. Malig's sword would have sliced any of them in half if he connected, but he never came close. Inch by inch, foot by foot, they tightened the ring around him. Kit backed away until she touched the wall. She was under the balcony, hidden in the darkness, but she knew the warriors would see her as clear as day when they finished with Malig. They ignored her for the moment. She was no threat to them. Just a mud-woman. Just a pretty face.

Spotting a torch in a holder above her head, Kit reached up on her tiptoes for the unlit brand. It was little more than a short wooden stick topped with a wad of pitch-soaked cloth, but it had some heft. If I only had a flame…

Kit jerked back as a tall shadow loomed over her. Behind the warrior, Malig knelt on one knee with long ribbons of blood running down his side and back. He continued to swing at the other two warriors, but it was over. We're done for.

Kit swung the torch with both hands. She put all of her rage and hopelessness into the attack, all of her love for Caim and her wishes for a future with him. The warrior caught the torch with his hand and wrenched it from her grasp. In his other hand, a wicked knife pointed toward her.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Rays of crimson light slanted down from the throne chamber's vaulted ceiling as Caim leapt out of the portal. The light shone on a person curled up in the center of the floor, but left the walls and periphery swathed in deep shadow.

Caim froze when he saw the silver hair. Kit lay on her side, her arms and legs sprawled lifelessly on the black stones. Knowing it was a trap, and damning it anyway, Caim ran over to her side. He shook her gently, but there was no response. He pressed his fingers into the groove of her neck and released the breath he'd been holding when he found a faint pulse. The skin around her eyes was purple.

As Caim reached to lift her eyelids, a sharp pain pierced his chest. He rose to his feet as the darkness lifted from the room, revealing a crowd of people around him. Their dusky faces watched him, impassive. Four shadow warriors stood at the foot of the dais, black steel weapons in their hands, but his attention was focused on the throne's occupant. The Shadow Lord's face was hidden within a deep cowl, but his presence overshadowed the court like a great black bird of destruction.

Caim's hands sweated inside his gloves. The energy inside him wanted release. It wanted blood. The shadows crawling along the walls hissed and snapped. He moved between Kit and the throne, and stopped a dozen steps from the dais. A short throw. Just a flick of my wrist.

“Caim.” The Shadow Lord's voice rang out through the chamber, and the shadows on the ceiling rustled. “We are come to preside over your execution.”

The shadow warriors spread out into a semicircular formation in front of him. Caim didn't react, his gaze still on their liege.

“However.” The Shadow Lord gestured to the floor in front of the dais. “I will stay your death if you would bow before me now and claim your rightful place as the defender of your people.”

Caim wanted to laugh, but it came out in a rumbling growl. “Whenever people start offering me things, I know they're either trying to stab me in the back, or they're afraid. That's what happened with Sybelle and your other stooges in Othir. None of them understood that all I ever wanted was to be left alone.”

The Shadow Lord opened one hand, and the air beside his throne split open. The swirling vapors resolved into a picture of a woman. At first sight of her profile, Caim took her for his aunt. She had the same narrow nose and full lips, but her features were stony gray, frozen in a horrified rictus. Caim was ready to ignore the image as a statue, though fantastically lifelike, when he noticed the eyes. They were deep and black, boring into him from across the distance.

A tumult of emotions punched through Caim's chest like a spear. For a moment he was a young boy again, sitting on her knee as she sang to him. Words he hadn't understood, and didn't understand now, tickled his ears. A harsh roar scattered the lullaby. Caim looked past his mother's image to a huge black gateway poised behind her. In its unfathomable depths, darkness strove against itself and roiled in eternal combat. He knew its destination at once. The Other Side. The Realm of Shadow.

The window vanished, swallowed back into the air as the Shadow Lord closed his fist. “I think you want more than that, my son. What do the mortals of this world offer you? Nothing but a life of skulking and murder, without purpose, without honor. Here, with your people, is where you belong.”

“Where was that?” Caim asked, taking a step toward the dais. “What have you done to her?”

The Shadow Lord pulled back his hood. His skin appeared duller, perhaps even looser, than it had before in the audience hall. His eyelids drooped a little. “I did what was necessary to protect my people. When we first came to this world, there were some who believed we would eventually return to the Other Side. I could not allow that false hope to exist, so I hid the gateway and made it seem as if it were lost forever.”

Murmurs whispered through the hall. The warriors, though, stood as still as eidolons.

The Shadow Lord stood up from his throne. “We have endured all these years because of my efforts and sacrifices. I even gave my own daughters for this cause! Who dares question me?”

The voices fell silent, but Caim still could feel the tension. He tightened his grip on his knives. Only nine steps separated them. A leap and a long lunge. In less time than it took draw breath, he could plant his knives in the adversary's chest. My mother's father. Blood of my blood. “Is she dead?” he asked.

The Shadow Lord shook his head, and a pained look crossed his face. “No, she is as you saw her, trapped between our two worlds. I could not destroy the gateway, but I have been able to keep it sealed so that its influence would not interfere with my plans. But keeping it at bay has been difficult. I needed another source of energy, and Isabeth provided that source.”

Caim didn't see the attack coming. The Shadow Lord didn't move, but the air around Caim filled with darkness. Icy fangs tore into his flesh from all directions, ripping into his chest and back, his legs and arms, and across his face. Caim lashed out with his knives, but they encountered nothing. Hissing as an attack slashed across his forehead, he lost his patience and tried to open a portal, only to have it collapse before it fully formed. Something was blocking him. Not something. Someone.

Blood dripping down his face, he pushed outward with the energy pulsing inside him, and bit by bit the oppressive blackness retreated. When it cleared, Caim didn't have time to brace himself as terrible agony ripped up his spine. It spun him around and shoved him to the floor.

The Shadow Lord descended the dais steps. “When I first heard of your existence, I considered exterminating you. Sybelle could have snuffed out your life the night she retrieved your mother, but I withheld my judgment. I wanted to see what would become of you. But I am not impressed.”

Caim started to get up, but a swarm of shadows rained from the ceiling. He could feel their hunger as they sped toward him. Caim reached out to the incoming creatures, and the shadows collided with a bulwark of solid air, sliding down the bubble to the floor where they milled around in circles. On one knee, Caim wrenched himself around and threw. The shadow warriors tried to move in front of their lord, but they were a step too late. The seax knife flew past them, only to halt in midair. The blade shimmered in the ruddy light, six inches from the Shadow Lord's chest.

Caim started to get up, but a massive unseen force shoved down on his shoulders and drove him onto his hands and knees.

The Shadow Lord gestured, and the knife fell to the floor. “Pathetic. And to think I might have chosen you as