Shadow Moon Read online

  The ground gave way beneath him and he slipped forward to put his face in the muck.

  “Too much effort,” he heard in casually disdainful tones, “too little reward.”

  He exhaled a hard puff and Rool yelped in protest as the brownie suddenly found himself blown onto his own backside.

  “Thorn.” Mindspeech, from one of the eagles, sorrow mingling with reproach. For an awful moment he thought one of them had been hurt.

  It was the mare.

  She lay on her side and he marveled that she still had strength to breathe, that there was blood enough within her for her noble heart still to pump. She’d given a magnificent account of herself, that was plain from the bodies scattered about her; her hooves had broken legs and backs and heads and the crimson stains across her muzzle were from the bites she’d inflicted. But she’d been alone. In the end, that had proved the difference.

  She responded to his presence as he knelt beside her. Nostrils flared and she tried a nicker of greeting that faded into a gargling cough. He stroked her neck, offering all the warmth within him, poised to wipe away her pain, then snip the last frayed cords that bound her to the world.

  He couldn’t. It enraged him to feel her misery. She hungered for life as much as any he’d known, she’d earned it and more, and all he had to give in return was quick, convenient oblivion.

  “A kindness, folk call this,” he said, more to himself, “a mercy,” and he could hear the acid in his voice, heard as well the laughter of the spirit hound within young Faron’s soul.

  “I’ve lost enough friends, damn you. If there’s a chance—the smallest hope—never again!”

  He cast loose his own spirit and with ghostly senses—his InSight—reached deep into the mare. For those first moments he almost wished he hadn’t. Bad as she’d looked from without, the damage within was significantly worse.

  “This will hurt, I’m afraid,” he told himself, as much as her. “Nothing much for that. Too much to do, too little time, too little strength. Haven’t the energy to spare to keep the pain of healing at bay. We’ll just have to endure together.”

  They merged, and in that moment he understood the transcendent physical glory of running. That was the heart of her being, the center of life and joy; to race, to eat the endless miles with flashing hooves, to feel the breeze of her own making stretch out her mane like a banner. The old tales said those with eyes ahead were hunters; those with eyes aside, prey. The mare didn’t consider herself either. From first breath to last, existence was speed.

  Thorn made a noise that put the howls of the Death Dogs to shame, guttural and harsh, baring teeth as icefire flayed him from the heart out. Life pounded in his breast like a hammer, harder and faster with each breath, demanding ever more of him to sustain the wounded mare he was trying to save. He took that energy and sent it surging from her own heart, refusing to hear the protests of muscles already pushed past endurance—his own as much as hers—ignoring the spiked bands gathering snug about his chest, as about hers. This was as much a battle as the other, with the Death Dogs and with Faron, and one he was as determined to win.

  She uttered a cry he’d never heard from any horse, couldn’t help a twitching specter of a grin as he recognized it as her version of the bellow he’d just made. Her feet spasmed, eyes rolling, his own body making a feeble attempt to match hers. There was poison in her system; he cleansed it. There were bones chipped and broken; he smoothed them back into place. There were slashes, deep and shallow, across her body; he stitched them closed. All the while he kept her blood burning through her veins, until her skin felt hot to the touch and she seemed to glow in the shadow light of the waning moon. Not fever so much as fire, a cleansing blaze that made flesh malleable as a forgeflame made metal.

  At the same time he grew ever more cold. His skin paled, lips and fingertips turning slightly blue, as though he’d been sketched with ice. His heart thundered, each beat like a blow, yet there was no sense of movement within his chest, not a hint of blood at any pulse point. Life remained with him solely as an act of will, all else was devoted to his patient. It was the most delicate of tightropes to dance across, the slightest misstep would doom them both. Yet he didn’t hesitate and didn’t falter. He actually grinned, with an excitement and exultation he hadn’t felt in a long while.

  Light flashed across his vision and he blinked desperately to keep from being blinded. Before him, the sun popped over the distant horizon into a sky unmarred by even a hint of cloud. The air was still bitter chill and would be for some while.

  He wanted to move, but found he couldn’t. There was a terrible ache across his chest and for a brief moment he feared his heart had burst. Not quite. It was merely upset at the effort demanded of it, as was every other muscle in his body. He’d thought himself exhausted after the battle with the mountains, and later with the Death Dogs; they were nothing compared with this. Stone was more lively.

  He let his head loll forward. The mare’s head lay in his lap, her eyes closed. He knew she wasn’t dead, she still radiated his cleansing warmth and he drew on that gratefully to restore some sensation to his frozen hands. The awareness that the balance between them was shifting woke the animal; she gazed sleepily at him, warm and content, safe in ways he knew she hadn’t felt since she was a foal. He did nothing to disturb that feeling, for once she regained her feet and her proper self, she’d never feel it again, the price demanded for her natural speed and grace. Truth to tell, he didn’t mind basking in its glow himself.

  At last, however, this good thing came to its end. The mare whickered, bending her legs gingerly at first, as though to reassure herself they were still attached and functional. That done, she tucked them under herself, roll-twisting from side to belly and from there to her feet. She was a little wobbly, one hoof landing perilously close to Thorn, followed by an immediate projection of shame and apology.

  “Windfleet,” Thorn said, as though knowing her name was as natural as knowing his own.

  She leaned her great head down and puffed warmth into his face. She bent lower, forelegs splaying awkwardly until she was hunkered down enough for him to latch an arm over her neck. Then she gently lifted and supported him until he could trust his own limbs to hold himself in place.

  He ran a practiced eye along her flanks. She wasn’t pretty anymore, the wounds had been too deep and too many and he hadn’t the strength to tidy after himself when his work was done. She didn’t mind; these were the sigils of a battle won and a friendship forged; she’d wear them with pride for as long as she drew breath.

  “Tough lady,” he muttered. And staggered back a step or three as she shook out her mane. His own legs were stiff as posts, they seemed to have forgotten how to bend at the knee, and he went through an entire choreography of gyrations to keep from falling, much to the mare’s amusement.

  She was bigger this morning than he remembered, his head barely surpassed her knees, and she carried herself with the eager confidence of one who couldn’t wait to discover what this new day would bring.

  He sensed a change in the mood as he turned from her to the Daikini, pausing along the way to wearily pick up a stray bit of tack, her bridle. Windfleet wasn’t happy to see it, and as he turned the construction of leather and steel in his hand, he felt his mouth twist in sympathetic memory, a resonance of the bond he and the mare had shared. She had accepted the bit as she had her rider, because she’d had little choice. She’d seen what happened to those who fought and had no desire to have her spirit broken as well. She liked the man, after a fashion; he was a decent enough sort, with gentle hands and a calm, unflappable manner. From the beginning, though, she’d sensed an underlying dissatisfaction; the Daikini always seemed to be on the prowl for something better; whatever he had, whatever he was, wasn’t enough. He wanted more.

  Now so did she.

  Thorn flicked the bridle aside, then turned to the mare with a shrug of the shoulders and a ques
ting lift of the hands, as if to say, What, you’re still here?

  She cocked her head a little to the side, with so human an expression of perplexity on her features that he had to laugh out loud. He repeated the gesture, with more exaggeration, making a game of it. She drew herself to her full height and he let his smile fade, matching her assumption of formality with one of his own. He offered a bow, which she returned.

  With a cry of pure delight, she wheeled on her hind legs and sped from the campsite, picking her way unerringly along a path only she could see, until she reached the open plains. And he learned that her name had been well chosen.

  He didn’t watch too long, although one of the eagles kept an eye on her from on high, until she crossed the visible horizon and safely made the grasslands where the wild ponies ran. She’d have a good life there. His stomach was growling something fierce, but he thrust that awareness from his mind; this was no place for a meal.

  “Brilliant move. A veritable masterstroke.”

  He ignored the words and the brownie and concentrated instead on gathering his belongings, and those of the Daikini.

  “I swear, it’s a stratagem I certainly never would have thought of.”

  Thorn rounded on Franjean, who stood his ground with a monumental lack of concern, leaning against a stone, legs crossed, idly examining his fingernails as though he stood at Court and not in a wildlands battlefield.

  “You have something to say?” Thorn challenged.

  “Heaven forfend.”

  Thorn turned back to the task at hand. Franjean didn’t let him take another step.

  “Why should I criticize in the slightest the casting loose of our sole mode of transport?”

  “Forgotten how to walk, have you?”

  “We’re none of us giants, Drumheller. In a world designed for the likes of them”—Thorn didn’t need to see the gesture or the expression that went with it to know the brownie meant the Daikini—“we need all the help we can get. I for one would prefer putting as much distance as possible between us and this place.”

  “No argument.”

  “You could have asked, for precious’ sake.”

  “She needed to be free, Franjean. The Daikini wouldn’t have allowed that. Or would you have our next scrap be with him?”

  The Daikini coughed.

  “We’ve managed this far on our own,” Thorn finished patiently.

  “You’d think some of us would have learned some sense along the way!”

  The Daikini yawned. Big mouth. Lots of teeth, mostly straight. He made noises, blinking himself blearily awake, taking no notice of Thorn hunkering down just out of arm’s reach. He scratched himself and shivered with genuine cold; the sun was higher but the ground hadn’t noticed.

  He tried to speak, only to come out with worse sounds than before, all colored by the rasping croak of a dry throat. Thorn had a water bottle at hand; he tossed it over and the much bigger man took a monstrous swallow, followed by a heartfelt sigh.

  “By the Blessed, I needed that!”

  He flopped onto his belly, but didn’t try for more, rubbing his hands over face and skull as though to reassure himself that all the pieces remained. He cast a glance at the creature stretched beside and behind him.

  “Damn, tha’s one huge puppy. Thought I was done fer sure when it come at me. Figured I was slashin’ air, for all the harm I did.”

  “It’s their breeding. They’re a warped branch of the line of warhounds the Veil Folk raised, more resistant than most to the touch of cold iron, to defend their holdings against you Daikini. You work steel, same as we Nelwyns and the Forge Folk; the Veil Folk can’t bear the touch of it. They thought it only fair to come at you with creatures who were substantially immune to it.”

  The Daikini levered himself up to a sitting position.

  “The Veil Folk have truck with such as this?”

  Thorn shook his head. “This is a bastard breed, as I said. Tainted. I thought we’d seen the last of them.”

  “Oh. Who are yeh, then? Got a name, have yeh?”

  “Thorn,” was the reply. “Thorn Drumheller.”

  The Daikini’s name was Geryn Havilhand; rank of trooper, serving with the Royal Angwyn Pathfinders, attached to the outland garrison at Bandicour.

  He wasn’t happy about the horse.

  His mood wasn’t improved by Thorn’s insistence that they be gone before sunset. Not that he had any objections to leaving, he just didn’t want to walk.

  To Thorn’s surprise, Geryn’s gear proved to be a lot less trouble than it looked. With surprising ease, the saddle was modified into a fairly serviceable backpack, the equipment attaching itself to the man as freely as to his mount.

  “What?” the Daikini grumped, when he caught Thorn watching. “You think this in’t the first animal ever got lost or kilt? Tack’s expensive, an’ it weren’t no small job breakin’ it in, neither. Nor,” he finished pointedly, “my horse.”

  Thorn said nothing. He had his own tasks to perform.

  He hooked his hands under the armpits of the last of the hounds and backpedaled toward the Scar. He hadn’t asked for help, and once Geryn had seen what he was doing, the Daikini hadn’t offered. The effort of disposing of the slain had consumed pretty much all his remaining strength; every few steps, he had to stop for breath and each time it was harder and harder for him to get going again.

  Clothes and beard and hair were stiff with caked blood and mud and filth, and although his nose had long since grown numb and senseless, he knew he stank abominably. He had the feeling he could wash himself from now until the sun grew cold and never again believe himself wholly clean.

  At the edge of the crater, standing where his hands had left imprints in the fused rock when he’d pulled himself back up over the top after the fight, he hugged the body as upright as he could manage. A challenge at the best of times, a virtual impossibility now that rigor had begun to freeze the corpse’s joints. He managed nonetheless, aware that the sun was higher in the sky and he still had much to do.

  There were no special words to speak; he simply gave the creature a shove and toppled him into the pit.

  The body bounced once before it flamed. It never touched earth a second time.

  Only one left.

  “Leave it lie, Thorn,” said a small voice, uncha­racte­risti­cally still, with a rare use of the name Sorsha had given him.

  “Let the wind take it,” echoed Rool.

  “No…decent…wind…will,” he gasped in reply, needing a full breath for every word as he readied himself for what was to come.

  “It’ll taint whatever it touches,” he finished.

  “Then let it go,” Franjean cried, with a passion Thorn had never heard from him before.

  “You didn’t kill him,” Rool said, more matter-of-factly. “Isn’t your debt, isn’t your task.”

  “Wrong.”

  The body hadn’t stirred from where it fell, a sad little shape as bereft of innocence as life.

  “I know you mean well, Rool….” he started to say as he approached the boy.

  “Was the sorcerer who made him did the killing, Drumheller,” the brownie said, as though stating a fact of nature. “There’s no blame on you for what was done here.”

  “Doesn’t matter. It’s my job because the Shadow Arts are involved and I may well be the only one left with even a hope of bringing the fiend responsible to justice. And my debt…because mine were the first hands to touch him, and the first face his eyes saw. I breathed life into him, Rool. There’s but one reason to take this particular boy and twist him to so foul a shaping—because he’s linked with me.”

  He took the boy in his arms, ignoring the protests of his muscles and joints as he had the squabbles of the brownies, and made his way to the edge of the crater.

  “I should have found you sooner, Faron,” he said, voice thickening with every word. J
ust because he could no longer bring himself to cry didn’t mean he’d lost the capacity to grieve; if anything, it made that emotion all the more keenly felt. “When there was still a chance to free a portion of your soul. For that, I am truly sorry.”

  He couldn’t let go. The boy had to be dropped, as the Dogs were, so that not even ashes would be left to further befoul this already blighted landscape. But his arms and hands wouldn’t do as they were told. Quite the opposite, in fact; the more he demanded release, the tighter they gathered the body close.

  Suddenly the air about him blazed hot as a furnace. There was an incendiary breeze across his face, like the gusts that came across his working coals with each plunge of the bellows, and the smell of clean burning in his nostrils. A flash of InSight gave him a view from the brownies’ perspective as he was wrapped snug in streamers of raw flame that seemed to erupt from the solid earth at his feet. They swirled around his legs, up his back, over his shoulders, down his arms, stretched themselves out full length along the body that he held until it was as encased as he.

  Then, with the faintest pop of imploding air, both fire and burden were gone, the one reducing the other in a moment to less than ashes, as though it had never been.

  Thorn was untouched, at least in body.

  He sank to his knees and laid his palms across the imprints he’d made, inpulling his defenses as both invitation and gesture of friendship. He sensed no tangible reply, the mountain spirits were keeping a healthy distance.

  He made a helpless little fiddle with his hands, not really an apology, for there was nothing he could say that could take away the hurt inflicted here and he’d already refused to do what was wanted of him.

  At the last, he said, simply, “Thank you.”

  He forced himself to look one last time at the Scar, using all his perceptions, human and wizardly. OutSight showed him a vast, smooth depression, so dark and fathomless even beneath broadest daylight it might have been the fabled Black Water of childhood stories. He remembered his father telling him the tales, and his mother—scandalized that her beloved would frighten a child so—gathering Thorn into her arms; the thing was, though he’d squealed and cried and buried himself beneath his comforter, he hadn’t been scared, not really, no more than his own children had been when he’d become the storyteller….