the trees like a plague of locusts. One soldier with wild, yellow locks turned and ran back into the woods. The others pummeled themselves with their fists as the shadows slithered inside their armor.
Caim called off his minions before they killed. For a moment, they remained as if testing him, but then left with sullen slothfulness.
The duke’s son stood alone as his men writhed on the ground. When Caim approached, the young noble slashed the air with his sword. Caim blocked it and punched him flush in the nose. The duke’s son fell on his back in a jingle of mail links.
Caim kicked the lordling’s sword away and crouched over him. The point of his knife hovered over the young man’s eyes. Do I let him live, and possibly have to face him again, maybe at the head of an army? Or kill him now and get it over with?
The buzzing in his head had gotten worse. No matter how he tried to ignore it, the droning remained nonetheless. The duke’s son looked up without expression. With a frown, Caim touched the man’s throat with the tip of a knife. Then he stood up and beckoned to the siblings. They stepped around the soldiers and joined him under the trees.
“What are we going to do?” Liana asked.
“Hide,” Keegan said. “Wait for them to leave, and then I’ll take you back home.”
“I’m not going back!”
“Yes, you are!”
Caim ground his teeth together. Somewhere nearby, Kit was probably laughing her ass off. Shouts echoed through the surrounding forest.
“Quiet!” he whispered. “Hiding is a good idea. Do you know someplace nearby?”
Keegan chewed his bottom lip for a moment, until Liana hit him. The youth rubbed his arm and glared at her. “The hills. There are places they won’t find us.”
“Secret places,” Liana added.
Caim considered the idea. Getting to higher ground was a good plan, as long as they didn’t starve or freeze to death. For now, he’d have to trust these people.
“All right. We’ll-”
The words caught in his throat as a sudden pressure expanded behind his breastbone, squeezing the air from his lungs. Fighting the pain, he motioned for Keegan and Liana to go ahead. They looked at him for a moment.
“Go on!” he growled.
Keegan led his sister away through the trees. Caim waited until they were gone before he turned around. Something moved beyond the bonfires on the other side of the clearing. Then he saw it, a black pillar emerging from the space between two tree trunks. The pressure in his chest throbbed as a figure stepped out onto the snow.
The warrior was huge. His thick arms swung like tree trunks as he strode into the clearing. A cloud of shadows clung to him like a cloak ripped from the night sky. Yet it wasn’t the intruder’s size or the company of shadows that slowed the blood in Caim’s veins, but the armor that encased him from crown to foot-plates of black steel with scalloped edges that seemed welded to his body. Caim had seen that style of armor before. In his dreams, the night the soldiers came to kill his father.
Caim froze as the visored helmet turned in his direction. Before he realized what he was doing, he started back into the clearing. He stopped himself. The shadows crowded around his feet, their touch colder than the winter air, while long-buried emotions roiled inside him. He had come north to find some clue related to his mother’s disappearance, and the gods had sent him this darkly shining gift. He wanted to go out there and peel the armor from the giant’s body, and then go to work on the flesh underneath until he got some answers.
Two Northmen entered the clearing. They looked like children beside the armored giant. One tossed something into the nearest bonfire. Caim saw it just before it fell into the flames. A severed head.
He let out a slow breath. He wasn’t in any shape for another fight. Cursing, he jogged back among the trees in the direction of the siblings. His leg ached, worse than it had in days, and his arm hurt so much he wanted to cut it off. How fast could he move with two kids hanging on his apron strings? Not fast enough. The Northmen would be on their trail with a vengeance. Unless they were distracted.
Caim gathered up the shadows around him. They whispered and crooned in the trees overhead. Taking a deep breath, he sent them back toward the clearing.
Through the canopy of branches, the horned moon emerged from behind a bank of clouds. Its rays cast silver halos around ice crystals hanging in the trees. Caim pulled down his hood and concentrated on keeping his footing.
It was going to be a long night.
CHAPTER TEN
S ybelle gazed down at her lover reclining on the bed, and thoughts of murder turned in her head. He slept like a man half in his grave, drunk on rich southern wine and kafir and sex. So fragile, this life he clung to. She could extinguish it as easily as putting out a candle. Some how, that made her love him all the more. She bit down on her tongue.
I will not love him anymore. I will not!
He stirred, his lips pursing as if to kiss her, and the murderous thoughts fled. As she leaned down to meet his mouth, an icy tentacle caressed her ankle. Turning away from the bed, she opened a shadow door, and stepped through…
… onto the cool stone floor of her sanctum. Shadows flocked to her as she went to the pool.
The waters were in flux. Leaning over the low retaining wall, Sybelle saw bodies on the snow amid puddles of congealing blood. So it was no surprise to her when a great helmet filled the pool. Flecks of moonlight glinted from its black metal, but no light intruded upon the narrow eye slits. Soloroth had been taken from her not long after he was born to be raised by his grandfather, and she hadn’t seen him again until he came of age. By then his eyes-as dark as her own-had become empty. The eyes of a stranger.
“What did you find?”
“The information was accurate.” His voice echoed through the cavern. “An unlawful gathering took place here, but the area is now under our control.”
The view shifted to a nearby body. The man had been split nearly in half at the waist-Soloroth’s handiwork, no doubt.
“All were slain?”
“A handful escaped. My wolves are in pursuit.”
His wolves. With a hiss, Sybelle slashed her fingers across the water’s surface where the helmet loomed. “I told you to eliminate them completely!”
The slits of his helmet remained fixed upon her across the intervening distance until the waves stilled. “They will be found.”
“There is something else. What is it?”
“There was a shivalar among the outlaws.”
A shadow walker?
“Impossible. There are no shivalar in this-” A wayward thought froze the words on her lips. She swallowed. “The scion?”
He stared at her without answering. She had known it might come to this after she communed with Levictus’s shade. She could send Soloroth after the target, but it would take him into unknown territory. Still, if he succeeded…
Sybelle’s heart almost stopped as a deep tone echoed through the sanctum. A summons.
“Find him,” she told Soloroth. “And kill him.”
“There is another matter. Lord Arion wishes to return to the city.”
No surprise in that. She wished she could allow Soloroth to eliminate the duke’s whelp while he was at it, but Erric adored his son and that tenderness was a useful vulnerability.
“Convince him. Tie him over a horse if need be, but bring me the scion’s head.”
