cut the horizon, and the cloud scud seemed to fall out of the sky and drift along the ground. A dust storm approached.
“Where are we?” the woman asked. She sounded frightened. She reached for Ilvani’s hand, but Ilvani slapped it away. “Can’t you help me, please?”
Her voice was a needle in Ilvani’s skin. Pleading, crying, begging-none of it did any good. Help yourself or die.
Shaking her head furiously, Ilvani suppressed a cry of her own. She wanted to go away, to hide in that safe place in her mind-the place where she made no memories. Her dreams never let her. In dreams, she faced everything.
“Look at the sky!” the woman cried, pointing to the horizon.
Ilvani looked, but she didn’t understand what she saw. The dust storm bore down on them, but at its center was a calm space, an eye in the vast, deadly squall. Within the eye a darkness formed, growing arms, legs, and a head. The dark figure walked toward them across the plain and dragged stinging, slashing death behind it.
“Run,” Ilvani said. She grabbed the woman by the shoulder and tried to turn her, but the little rabbit sat rigid in the grip of her own fear. The wind whipped up in a vortex, snatched the woman’s braid, and began to pull her bodily toward the eye of the storm.
“Help me!” the woman shrieked, grabbing for Ilvani. The women locked arms again, but the force dragging them was immense. Yet it did not pull at Ilvani. The figure in the storm didn’t want her. It wanted the little snow rabbit.
A red stain soaked the front of the woman’s dress. Ilvani felt the lifeblood flowing out of her. The woman whimpered in fear and pain.
“Hold on!” Ilvani cried, but her voice got lost in the roaring wind. It didn’t matter. Her grip faltered, and the woman’s hands, slick with fear sweat, slipped down her arms. She screamed and screamed, but the storm tore her away from Ilvani. She flew through the air like a flailing doll and disappeared into the dark figure’s arms.
The weight released, Ilvani fell to the ground. The woman’s blood covered her arms. She didn’t have time to wipe it off before the storm was upon her. The dust covered her body, blinding and choking her.
Ilvani woke and screamed. She clawed at her hair and eyes, trying to scrape away dust that wasn’t there- more than dust. There were symbols, words whispered in a language she’d never heard before. They crawled over her skin, her ears, and into her mouth. She tried to speak, and the words that came out were in the same language. What was she saying? She screamed again and reclaimed the shadar-kai tongue.
Fully awake, Ilvani looked down at herself. Blood streaked her palms where she’d dug sharp nails into her skin. One of her boxes, the Ashok box, lay in her lap. While she slept, her hand had instinctively clutched it. Unlike the others, this box contained something more than memories. It held tattered remnants of parchment and ashes- tools that had helped save a life.
There was no dust storm, no snow rabbit. For a breath, all seemed right and normal-as normal as could be expected. Then she widened her gaze and realized she was not in her room at Tower Athanon where she’d fallen asleep.
She was on the Shadowfell plain.
Cold wind whipped at her hair. The ground beneath her was unforgivably hard, and her body ached from lying on it too long. Had she walked all the way out here while her mind slept?
The landmarks around her, the rock crags, and rutted caravan paths, looked familiar. She knew she wasn’t more than a mile from the portal to Ikemmu. The guards must have let her pass, thinking her awake and aware, perhaps on an errand for the city. She’d often made such journeys, but that was before her capture.…
Ilvani cradled the Ashok box between her hands. It hadn’t come open. The memories were still inside. She could picture them, if she closed her eyes. She saw Ashok’s face.
The snow rabbit was there too. She heard the woman’s screams as she flew away into the storm. Ilvani hadn’t been able to stop it. Her strength had failed her again.
Ilvani stretched out on the ground with her ear pressed against the earth. She wished her brother, Natan, were here. He would have led her back home, stayed with her until she fell asleep. He would have held the storm at bay.
But Natan was dead, and the storm was still coming. She smelled the dust rising from the dry plain. The wind whispered to her in that same incomprehensible tongue echoing in her mind. She heard it in the earth. Symbols danced in front of her eyes, pictures she’d never seen before, images she couldn’t banish from her thoughts.
To escape the sounds, the symbols, and the storm, she went to that safe place in her mind, the space of oblivion she’d created to cope with her mad world.
All the while Ilvani held the Ashok box in her hands.
CHAPTER ONE
IKEMMU, THE SHADOWDARK
5 MARPENOTH, THE YEAR OF DEEP WATER DRIFTING (1480 DR)
'You can’t kill a ghost.”
Ashok appeared on Ikemmu’s vast guard wall and whipped his spiked chain above his head. Flesh and feeling returned to his incorporeal body, and he brought the weapon slashing down to tangle with a pair of bright katars.
The owner of the deadly push-blades, Cree, used them to drag Ashok to the edge of the thirty-foot wall. The dizzying height would have terrified a human, but Ashok and Cree were shadar-kai. Dancing close to the edge got the blood pumping in Ashok’s veins and brought a surge of energy to his limbs. He let Cree pull him almost to the brink before he abandoned his weapon and dived for Cree’s legs to unbalance him.
As usual, the young shadar-kai was quicker. He yanked his katars free of the slack chain and jumped aside. Swinging overhand, he aimed for Ashok’s exposed neck, but he stopped the blades before they cut flesh.
“I’ve seen that trick before, remember?” Cree spoke the words haltingly. He was out of breath, as was Ashok.
Ashok rolled over onto his back and kissed the edge of Cree’s katar. “You have a good memory.” He sprang to his feet. “But someday I’ll get to you before those blades reach my neck.”
“Keep boasting,” Cree’s brother, Skagi, drawled from a few yards down the wall. “Only way to slow that one down is to hack off his legs.”
“Don’t worry. Even crawling, I’d still outpace you, Brother,” Cree said cheerfully. He sheathed his katars.
Ashok watched the brothers exchange insults, but he had to agree with Cree. The two brothers couldn’t have been more different in their builds and fighting styles. Cree was smaller and wiry. He kept his close-cropped brown hair shaved at the temples to display a pair of curved blade tattoos. When he fought, he aimed to end the battle quickly, before his opponent had a chance to feel the blade slip between his ribs.
Skagi was his brother’s opposite. Built like a block of stone, Skagi towered over most of his opponents and used blunt force to bring them down. A field of green tattoos covered the exposed upper half of his body, a wild forest that depicted chains and spikes wound together. His scarred lower lip gave him a grisly smile that his enemies rightly feared.
“What about it, Ashok?” Skagi said. He drew his falchion. “Did this pup take all the fight out of you, or are you ready for a real match?”
Ashok stood at the edge of the wall. The cave breezes ruffled his long gray hair. Beneath his bone scale armor, sweat cooled on his skin. His heart still beat wildly from the force of the sparring match. Tense muscles demanded an outlet for the energy. He wanted to take on both brothers. He’d done it once, not far from this same spot, when he’d first come to the city of Ikemmu. It seemed like a lifetime ago.
Taking deep breaths, Ashok reined in the wild impulses shivering through his body. Asserting that deep control was its own kind of pain, as sharp and reviving as a dagger slash to the skin but not nearly as damaging. Ashok used that pain the way all shadar-kai must-to stay alive.
When he was in control of himself, Ashok grinned at Skagi. “Another time,” he said. “Neimal wants us.” He pointed down the wall behind Skagi, where a shadar-kai witch clothed in gray and black robes stood surrounded by
