The Book of Shadow, page 30
part #1 of The Curse of the Unnamed Series
“We have to get out of here,” he said, desperation coloring his tone.
She faced him, tucked the tomes under one arm, and signed at him, “They need us.”
“Need us to what? Squash some monster with a thick book? We can better perform our god’s teachings if we leave the killing to those practiced in doing so and stay alive to spread his gospel.”
She cringed at his words. His role was to teach her to serve the almighty, and he’d brought up the lord’s name many times in the months she’d been with him—though usually slurred. This was different. This time, he used the word as a shield. The thought of it made her queasy as he dragged her away toward the edge of the forest, feet scuffing on the ground. As they went, she gripped the books tightly against her chest and watched the fight unfold.
Pris and Prue’s gyrations continued and, a few seconds later, she saw four of them instead of two. Confused, Tesfira glanced around, wondering where the others had come from. When she looked again, they numbered six. It required but an instant to realize new women hadn’t joined the originals.
They are multiplying.
Three Prises and an equal number of Prues stood before Rein and Cirril, then four, then five. Each version appeared out of a dust cloud swirling up from the ground. When they totaled twelve, they ceased their contortions, and the dozen witches faced the men.
“You’ve ruined everything.” The Prues spoke as one, their voices loud with the amplification of so many. “Why couldn’t you be a man like the others, Shriken? Then we’d have you tucked away in the cellar with our other friends, waiting to return us to our youth.”
Rein didn’t reply, but Tesfira watched his face as it tightened with rage. His mouth opened and he let out an angry cry before raising his sword and rushing forward. Cirril Feron hesitated a second before following.
She glared over her shoulder at the cleric, her expression imploring him to help.
“Hush, child. This isn’t for the likes of us. Do you know what happened to my wineskin?”
She pulled against his grip on her shirt, but he’d intertwined his fingers in the fabric, holding fast. To the left, Hinter and Jai engaged the first of the monstrosities clawing their way out of the earth—skeletons devoid of flesh, their bones clattering when they moved. The knight slashed at one with his sword, cleaving its spine in two below the rib cage. The top half tumbled to the ground while the bottom stayed upright, continuing its advance. He swiped again, shattering the pelvis, and it toppled. As Tesfira watched it fall, she realized the upper part remained animated, using its bony fingers to crawl along the ground toward him. She opened her mouth to call out a warning when Hinter stepped in, kicking the skull clean off. The thing faltered and slumped.
Her head felt light, as if she’d held her breath too long. In her life, she’d never seen a battle of any sort, let alone one involving the living dead and witches. The thought returned her attention to Rein and Cirril. The enormous snake had blocked their approach, inserting itself between them and the women. Despite its enormity, the creature moved with a speed almost faster than her eye could register. When either swung their swords, it darted out of the way, leaving them to cut empty air. Whenever it struck at them, they needed to use every bit of strength and agility they possessed to avoid its dripping fangs. She watched the thing keep them at bay as their adversaries crept into place, encircling the two fighters.
“Oh no.” Her lips formed the words, though no sound came from her mouth as she pulled against the cleric’s hold again.
This time, she caught him off guard. The fabric of her chemise slipped from his fingers and she stumbled forward three steps, carried by her own inertia, but kept her balance. When she heard his feet shuffle as he reached out to grab her again, she scrambled away, putting another five paces between her and her mentor.
“Come back,” he cried, voice filled with fear. “What are you doing?’
She confronted him, a stern expression hardening her face as she dropped the tomes to the ground and used both hands to sign. “God wants me to help.”
Before he responded, she faced toward where their compatriots fought for their lives. She crouched, moving aside the volume Hinter had given into her safe-keeping to open her study book. Though the young woman had instructed her to guard the subject of their search with her life, she saw little point in it if they died.
She flipped past familiar headings on expectations of a neophyte, artifacts, sermonizing, and a dozen other topics she’d struggled to memorize, until she reached the section titled Alternate Religions . Here, alternate meant wrong, or perhaps evil. A few pages in, she found the chapter on witchcraft and began reading, dragging her finger along the page as she searched for a way to help her friends.
Behind her, Emeryn Aryzath crept away, trying neither to stop nor aid her.
Trees and brambles pressed in around Llyris, the forest growing dense and impassible. She struck out with the dagger she’d taken from the wagon before abandoning it, but it did little good. The at-first-sharp blade—dulled after hacking at thick branches and leathery creepers for over an hour—glanced off most obstacles instead of cutting them away. With no other choice, she lowered her shoulder and forged ahead with nothing more than determination to carry her. A thorny branch caught in her hair, nearly pulling her off her feet, forcing her to stop to untangle it.
Her fingers worked at it, but each manipulation increased its entanglement, frustrating her. She huffed a discouraged sigh and let her arms drop to her sides.
“I can’t do it,” she said, a hitch in her voice.
Her shoulders sagged and her wrist bumped against her thigh and the cylinder in her pocket. The thought of Flayre brought her back to herself and she slid her hand into her pocket, touched the Unnamed’s smooth hide.
“What do I do?”
She expected no reply from the creature but received one anyway. She warmed to her touch, offering encouragement or answer—Llyris knew not which. Did she suggest they leave here? Travel to some place they’ve been before and abandon her companions to whatever might befall them?
Her mind wandered, imagining what she’d do. She couldn’t return to Carpera’s or Sylleth’s—doing so would require her to lie about what happened. Two other possibilities occurred to her, one which she dismissed without more than a second’s consideration—returning to the guild was the worst possible choice. They’d strip her of her duties, take Flayre away and, though being a handler wasn’t glamorous, she loved the Unnamed.
The last alternative was to run.
She imagined herself traveling from place to place, hiring herself and Flayre out when she needed money, hiding and living under an assumed name otherwise. She’d climb from under the guild’s thumb, live her life for herself for the first time. In her mind, she pictured herself on horseback, riding across grasslands she’d heard of but never seen, then saw herself standing on the deck of a ship, wind tousling her hair as she traveled to a new and exotic land. A much simpler existence.
Her fingers tightened around the cylinder in her pocket, and she pulled it out, held it up in front of her. The sounds continued, clashing metal and rending earth, but they washed over her and disappeared, unnoticed as she stared at the Unnamed, wondered what Flayre thought of her plan. She closed her eyes and pictured the glade where she’d watched Rein kill the shifter. As good a place as any to make her escape. But the image of it sobered her—they’d send him after her. Would the knight track her, intent on separating her head from her neck, as he’d done to the young wolf-man? Of course not. Without her, he’d never return.
She snapped her eyes open, a pang of guilt bolting through her chest. How could she think of none but herself like this? Her companions needed her. She closed her fist around Flayre and slipped her into her pocket, then returned her attention to finding an escape from the tangled forest. The task appeared as difficult as before, and the noise sounded both near and far off, emanating from everywhere.
“What do I do?” she whispered. “Which way do I go?”
The leaves before her rustled as if stirred by a brisk wind, though it didn’t shift so much as a strand of her hair. She frowned, reached her hand out toward the brush, and the foliage moved away from her touch.
Llyris sucked in a gasp of air, took a step, and the forest parted before her.
Bones clattered to the ground at Hinter’s feet. She kicked them aside to avoid tripping and danced forward to engage the next skeleton scrabbling out of the earth. They proved easy to dispatch, but so damned many of them kept coming. Soon, she’d find it difficult to take a step without finding a splinted femur or shattered jaw underfoot.
Beside her, Jai’s sword swung in wide arcs, making shorter work of them than boot and dagger. The thought of wielding such a weapon left her cold—she’d done so occasionally, but normally sought alternatives better suited to her—yet now she envied the blade. Its length kept the animated dead at a distance, sometimes obliterating more than one at a time. She considered destroying them at a quicker pace desirable; for each she knocked to pieces, two more took its place. She didn’t recall so many in the underground chamber, but maybe it had been bigger than she estimated, or more rooms she hadn’t discovered lay hidden under the ground.
Did Pris and Prue kill all of them? she wondered.
She couldn’t guess how long they’d been luring bewitched men to their cabin. Years? Decades? Centuries? And to what end? As she fought the things, she saw rings rattling on bony fingers, pendants bouncing against bleached sternums. If they brought them here to relieve them of their riches, then Hinter needed to teach them a thing or two. No, their purposes for seducing their prey appeared far more foul.
Behind them, she heard voices—more than should have been present. She stole a peek over her shoulder, glimpsed Rein, Ilkari, and Cirril standing back to back amid a circle of women. Her brow creased as she wondered where the others came from, but her bewilderment disappeared in an instant. Given what she’d seen of these witches, nothing should surprise her. The men needed their help. She opened her mouth to say so when another thought occurred to her.
Where is the snake?
She put her boot to the midsection of an approaching skeleton—the spot she’d found most effective at sending them to pieces—before facing the knight fighting at her side. Sweat glistened on Jai’s brow as he swung his weapon, cutting asunder a man with dry flesh pulled tight across his bones and tattered clothes hanging from him. Its lifeless expression appeared mildly concerned with the event. He canted his head in her direction and offered a nod before launching an attack at the next creature. Hinter took a step toward him, intending to gesture for him to follow her to the rescue of their companions. She stopped, arm half raised, and gaped as the yellow python reared up behind him, its white belly exposed and venom dripping from its three-inch fangs.
“Jai,” she shouted, jumping forward. “Watch out!”
The tip of Tesfira’s finger dragged along the parchment as she scanned the page, desperately searching for anything to help their friends. In her mind, she chastised herself. Why hadn’t she studied harder? Read faster? If she’d been more diligent and known of this section before the book fortuitously fell open, revealing it, maybe she’d know what to do.
Fortuitously. As though God wanted her to see.
She flipped to the next page, skimming the words, and wondered what to do if she found a way to help. What if the study tome contained an incantation for dispelling witches requiring her to speak? Should she throw away all her hard work to save them? Risk being expelled from the order for failing the simplest of tasks?
What choice did she have? She couldn’t let them die.
Ahead of her, Rein and Cirril danced in and out, lunging forward to keep their adversaries at bay, then darting to their safe position at the center of the circle. Ilkari wielded his weapon with the confidence of a man familiar with doing so, but he lacked the speed and stamina of the others. The twelve women with two faces amongst them snarled and hissed, gestured and gyrated. They were at a standstill, neither side wanting to try the other. But how long could it last? They outnumbered the men four to one. It wouldn’t take much of a coordinated effort for the women to overwhelm them, especially with the snake and the dead at their sides.
She returned her attention to the volume open on the ground in front of her, held up by the other given to her by Hinter. It spoke of witchcraft, the dangers of the religion, how the lifestyle seduced young women to abandon their families to cavort with the devil. She leafed through two more pages, and the chapter ended. The next section, Dragon Worship , began with a stunning illustration of a behemoth drake with a screaming woman dangling from its mouth as it crushed a house with its foot. A village burned in the background.
Tesfira slammed the volume shut in disgust and pushed it aside. The one beneath it displayed as plain a cover as any tome she’d ever seen. Brown, unembossed leather, weathered by age and fraying at the corners. She did not know what the book contained, other than the man they called Misk required it to heal Mr. Carpera’s son. If its contents included such knowledge, maybe it held information to help them, too.
She flipped the cover open and found a blank title page. The next page proved the same, and the next. She stuck her thumb halfway down the volume and opened it up to the middle. Another bare white sheet, yellowed at the edges. Panic building in her, she rifled backward to the beginning and discovered every one identical to the previous.
Hinter stole the wrong book, she thought.
She raised her eyes, looked past the circle of women toward the crumbled shack. The living dead continued crawling out of the ground, and Hinter swung at them with dagger and fist and boot, her attention now divided. The clacking skeletons occupied her, but she kept glancing at the knight fifteen feet away from her, and the snake wrapping itself around him, pinning his arms to his sides.
Tesfira rose, abandoning any hope of finding help in either of the books. She peered from the beleaguered fighter to the circle of witches and the men trapped within, then toward the forest’s edge. Her mentor stood staring, back to the woods, gaze darting from one place to the other. He may have been watching, concerned for his companions, but she suspected he searched for his wineskin. Truthfully, even she felt she’d benefit from a drink about then. More so when she noticed brush tremoring to Emeryn Aryzath’s right. Leaves shuddered, branches shook, and Tesfira wondered what fearsome beast might emerge from the woodlands to add to their woes. Her hands balled into fists, fingernails digging into her palms.
A second later, the foliage parted and Llyris stepped into the clearing.
Their faces. They’re all the same.
Ilkari glanced from one woman to the next. Pris, Prue, Pris, Prue. Twelve women, two appearances. As he stared at their contorted features, his chest ached as though he’d lost something dear to him, but he couldn’t figure why he felt this way. The time since they’d reached the cabin had become a haze of blurry memories and half-forgotten events.
“What do we do?” Cirril growled.
He, Ilkari, and Rein stood with their backs to each other, weapons held out before them as though simple steel possessed the power to keep the creatures who used to be women from them. A memory returned to the squire, a feeling. Somehow, he’d been enamored with them.
“It’s them or us,” Rein replied between clenched teeth. “Either we won’t walk away from this, or they won’t.”
“Where’s Kove?” Ilkari said. “We could use his sword.”
“Idiot,” Cirril spat. “He’s dead. Killed by these demons and now buried under the rubble of their lair.”
The ring of hideous women circled them, each sidestepping in unison in a jerky choreography. The squire chewed his bottom lip; he recalled nothing happening to the merchant’s man. He narrowed his eyes, watching the Prises and Prues while scouring his memory. Was he drunk? The way his body and brain acted suggested it a plausible excuse. Lethargy weighed on his limbs and a cloud filled his mind.
The women’s circling ceased, one of the Priscillas standing in front of him.
“We fucked him,” she said, all the others wearing the same face speaking along with her, multiplying the voice. “Then we ate him. You’d have been next, squire. Looks tasty, you do.”
The pacing resumed, and Ilkari gawked at each woman as they passed. If not for whatever Hinter had done, he’d likely be dead. He intended to jab the long dagger in his hand toward the nearest abomination, but the energy in his arm failed and it dangled limp at his side. The Prue closest to him laughed, and the others grinned along with her.
Behind him, Cirril lashed out, swinging a wide arc with his sword, the stroke cutting nothing but air as the woman danced out of his reach. When he returned to their defensive position, the circle shrank around them again.
“I don’t understand,” he said. “What is their intent?”
“To keep us here,” Rein said. “They’re waiting.”
“For what?” Ilkari asked.
From where he stood, the squire faced toward the chicken coop and pig pen, the opposite end of the clearing from the well where he’d gotten water for the women. Thinking of it nauseated him—he’d been so pleased to help them, hoping to win their favor, he now recalled. Why had he cared about attracting the affections of these…creatures? To his left, he glimpsed the cabin sunken into the ground, boards twisted and rent, as Hinter and Jai fought an unending tide of dead men rising from the dirt. Out of the corner of his eye to the right, he spied the cleric’s girl leafing through a tome—what an odd time to be reading. He didn’t spy the cleric anywhere.
“Jai! Watch out!”
They all heard the young woman’s warning. Behind him, Ilkari felt Rein tense. The women surrounding them laughed, a cackle jumping from one to the next, until their heads bobbed with it and saliva drooled from their lips. The sight sapped more of the squire’s strength, and he worried himself incapable of standing for much longer.
