Sworn To Transfer

He looked at her as if she were crazy. With a motion he called forth his shadow. Out of the darkness of the trees behind him it came, first a dark indistinct blob moving on the forest floor. When it reached a bright pool of moonlight in the clearing, it began to rise up. The blob elongated until it was as tall as a man, and then it began to take a human shape with arms and legs, a head, and a chest. Ciardis watched in detached fascination. And then the shadow man extended its two middle fingers into a long, pointed shape. Ciardis knew she was in trouble. It was a sword.

Ciardis began to backpedal across the grass. Stumbling and looking around for an escape, she noticed her way was blocked by the shadow vines, which had grown shoulder-high and were writhing together to form a wall.

“Damn vines,” she muttered, turning desperately in a circle.

The man watched her dispassionately as his shadow stalked her.

“It’s not personal,” he said lazily, “but with your death I can spark the war. It’s funny, really, how one death among so many counts for everything. Maybe then you’ll amount to something bigger, something great.”

“What do you mean?” she asked shakily.

Seeing the shadow pause as he contemplated her, she asked again. Desperate to get more time.

“What do you mean?” she repeated. “Why does my death mean so much?”

“There are bodies and there are bodies, Miss Weathervane.” He shrugged. “I’ve been killing for years—at the behest of the emperor, at the behest of the nobility. But they don’t care if the job gets done with casualties. Especially non-human ones.”

“So you’re one of the emperor’s men?” she said, trying to sound calm while eyeing him and his shadow. If she could keep him calm, then maybe, just maybe, she could reason with him.

He laughed cruelly. “The emperor’s man? No, never that. I do my work for the empire, but I was never good enough to be called the emperor’s man. I do the Empire’s dirty work and disappear into the shadows.”

“What kind of dirty work?”

She noted that although the clearing they stood in was devoid of weapons of any sort, long vines were hanging loose from the trees above into the clearing below. If she could reach them perhaps she could climb over the vine barrier.

Assuming the shadow man stays where he is and assuming the living vine barrier doesn’t grab me. Lots of assumptions there.

“Assassinations and disappearances mostly,” he said resentfully.

She took note of his tone. “And you wanted to be more? To be recognized for more?”

“Impossible,” he hissed. “Always impossible living in the shadow of my brother. I was never good enough to be a true mage. I could do parlor tricks calling shadows and fading into the night, but now I can do more—so much more.”

His mouth curled distastefully. “The mages had no use for things like that after the wars. Well, now...now they will.” He said it in a tone that gave her the creeps. The man was insane.

But he was still talking to her, and as long that kept up she was still alive.

“There’s another war,” she said. “One in the North. You can go there and be the important person you’re supposed to be.”

He laughed. “My brother’s war, you mean?”

“Who’s your brother?” she said, fishing for a name, anything to link him to a place, a time, or a family.

He continued furiously, ignoring her query. “He never wanted me by his side. Never thought I was good enough. Well, we’ll see who is good enough now.”

Looking at her in surprise, he admitted, “You’ve been a good listener.”

Ciardis smiled, relieved that she was breaking through his barriers.

He smiled back and looked over at his shadow man to give a single order.

“Kill her.”

Chapter 29

Barren had successfully tracked Ciardis to the clearing.

Biting his lip, he whispered to Terris, “She’s in there.”

Terris didn’t bother replying; she could hear Ciardis speaking now and was looking for a way around those damn vines. The best way seemed to be to climb the tree trunks. Surging forward, she tried and fell on her ass just as quickly. Her people were great swimmers and divers, having lived on small islands their whole lives, but tree climbers they were not.

“Quiet,” whispered Barren. “I’ll go over the barrier. Once I get those shadow vines down, you come in as backup.” Before she could object that she hated his plan, he was up and scaling the large tree like a squirrel. As he disappeared into the leaves, she hoped he got over the barrier.

She paced around the perimeter, keeping an eye out for weaknesses and hoping for a fallen branch that arced over the side. A girl can dream, right?

A crunch of leaves was her only warning that something was behind her. She felt something hit her across her back and push her face first into the dirt and leaves. It felt large. She tried to get up. Whatever it was still lay on top of her. Maybe it was just some dead forest thing that had fallen on her. She raised herself up on to her hands and knees, trying to roll it off. And then she felt its warm breath on her neck.

Her heart pounding as the thing moved, Terris looked at the clawed hands resting on either side of her own and she almost sobbed in fear.

Then she heard its voice.

“Human. Food,” it cooed.

“No,” Terris corrected desperately. “Friend. Not food.”

“Food,” it insisted.

Terris was frightened beyond belief. Any second now it was going to bite down on the back of her exposed throat.

Feeling the wendigo on top of her, she prepared for death, closing her eyes and hoping it would be over quickly. And then her eyes snapped open. How had she known it was a wendigo, and why did it feel familiar?

Tapping into her power silently, Terris sent her feelers out. There was a bond there. However slight, she could feel a tenuous connection between her and the disgusting creature that was crouching on top of her, ready to eat her brains.

Pushing for more, she realized that it was the same wendigo that had nearly killed her that first night in the forest. Then it began to hum deep in its throat. Why wasn’t it chomping down on her neck yet?

She felt its confusion and its hunger. It wanted to eat her, but it also recognized her.

Second shock of the night: The thing was sentient. Most kith were but she never expected a cannibalistic carnivore that howled in the night like a banshee and looked like the living dead to be intelligent.

She tried once more to reason with it. “Up! Get off me. Not food. Friend.” It stayed put, still humming with hunger, confusion radiating from its mind.

Talking wasn’t helping. Maybe magic would. Her talent was supposed to give her the ability to assume control of any creature, magical or mundane. As the wendigo’s drool crept down her neck and it sniffed her, she felt like there was no time like the present to figure out if her ability to assume control of the practice dogs in Sandrin extended to kith.

Silently hoping that Barren and Ciardis were doing okay—Ciardis was still talking, after all—she mind- merged with the wendigo. Just as she lost herself in the creature’s mind, she heard the shadow man say two chilling words: “Kill her.”

Barren managed to drop from the trees at the exact instant the shadow mage announced the death sentence. With the strength of a childhood spent in the Ameles Forest, he tackled the shadow mage, bringing him down quickly. Unfortunately Barren had no weapons on him and the shadow mage was no slouch—he clearly knew hand-to-hand combat.