The Book of Shadow, page 7
part #1 of The Curse of the Unnamed Series
She spread her hand open, set the Unnamed standing straight against her palm. The candle-like creature stood vertical and steadfast on her narrow base without feet to hold her, with no hint of unbalance. Llyris closed her eyes and pictured the farthest spot she’d been closest to the merchant’s estate. She merely needed to concentrate, bring her memory of it fully to mind, so Flayre sensed it from her thoughts and opened the path to take them. More people and horses made no difference to the process, other than they required a larger tunnel sustained longer. And more stable.
Nothing to worry about.
She thought of the trees, their boughs hanging overhead, turning the sunshine patchy on the forest floor. Moss and bark, ferns and foliage became clear in her mind, as though she stood in the glen rather than in the middle of a pasture leagues away. It congealed and coalesced in her mind’s eye, like a master painting a picture as she watched.
Until the young shifter appeared.
He lay on the ground, blood seeping from a hole in his chest and the ragged cut on his neck where he once possessed a head. Fur poked through his skin and a string of ivy had wound itself around one of his legs.
Llyris gasped and opened her eyes. Flayre wobbled and fell over in her hand.
The handler stared at her charge, then jerked her attention over her shoulder at the others, where she found them staring at her. She turned her gaze away.
“Is everything okay?” Ilkari asked, raising his voice to be heard over the distance between them.
“Yes, fine,” Llyris replied, though it wasn’t. “I need another minute to get our bearings.”
She shook her head, suppressed a shiver threatening to find its way along her spine. Focus and clarity of purpose were the first things taught at the handlers’ guild. Without both, a handler was useless to their Unnamed. How could a magik perform its role if its keeper lost concentration?
That was what happened to Marita, she guessed.
She stared at the cylinder lying in her hand, unable to keep her arm from trembling. The small creature bore no teeth or claws like the shifter, but she understood the power held in the purple form she thought of as Flayre. She didn’t have talons to shred her the way the young man did Marita, but she might easily send her somewhere nobody would consider searching for her.
“Flayre,” Llyris repeated, more tentatively than before.
The familiar shiver came in response and the handler released a sigh of breath. Maybe the Unnamed hadn’t noticed her distraction, or it didn’t matter. She needed to get the tunnel open for the knights, or it meant the end of her life’s path.
“Let’s give it another go, little one.”
She closed her eyes again, paying closer attention to the details in the picture her mind conjured to keep from straying from it. She imagined the grain in the wood of a broken tree trunk, the trail left behind by a slug crawling over a fern’s leaf, the smell of loamy earth. Vivid greens and browns filled her vision, and she noticed Flayre stirring on her palm, standing once more. With the envisioning of the glade held firmly in her imagination, she opened her lids, tilted her head, and called over her shoulder to the others.
“Come. It’s time.”
The air ahead of her grew hazy and corrugated, as though a lake stirred by a gentle wind found its way in front of her. Momentarily, the shimmering spot would open into a tunnel to transport them to the place she held in her mind. She needed to worry about nothing other than making it big enough for horse and rider and cart to pass.
Her companions approached in a clatter of hooves on grass, creaking wagon boards, and settling cargo. In the minute it took them to reach her, the air swirled and opened to reveal a white path leading away from her.
The knights pulled up beside her and stopped. She felt their hesitation and couldn’t blame them for it.
“Are you sure the horses will be okay passing through it?” Rein asked.
She directed her eyes toward him but didn’t speak. Opening the route required the greatest amount of concentration. Taking the effort to respond may have collapsed it, so she shrugged, but the knights understood.
“You don’t know?” Jai squeaked in his high-pitched voice. “What if they bolt? What then?”
Llyris ignored his concern, redirecting her attention to broadening the path in the hope they’d avoid finding out what happened when a horse bolted. Behind her, Ilkari shifted in his seat and took the burden of response from her.
“You should’ve thought to ask before we were getting ready to go, Sir Jai,” he said. “She might have provided an answer for you when she possessed the ability to talk.”
The knight grumbled something unintelligible to her. The squire responded on her behalf again.
“Your choice.” She imagined him shrugging along with the words, as he so often did. “Can always leave everything behind.”
“We will do nothing of the sort,” Rein said. “Let us know when you are ready, handler.”
Llyris narrowed her eyes and released a slow breath between her lips as she silently prodded Flayre to do more, to open the path wider. The creature’s narrow and normally steady base shuddered against her palm, but the tunnel expanded to a point wide enough to accept a wagon. She nodded; they’d understand she meant them to enter.
They did, and Rein prompted his mount toward the white hole in the air. It paced forward five steps before slowing, then stopping, hesitant to chance whatever lay before it. Its rider shook the reins, dug his heels in. Dubious, the steed inched ahead.
And then horse and knight entered the tunnel.
The animal swayed but kept its balance. Rein lurched to one side, but righted himself and retained his seat, then they moved forward along the blank path. Jai sighed aloud and prompted his own mount into moving. It did so with less fuss, having seen the other go in without harm. Ilkari snapped his reins and got the wagon rolling, too.
When the squire and his wain entered, the weight of Flayre grew unexpectedly; she grabbed her wrist with her other hand to help support her arm lest the creature tumble off her palm. If she did, the path might slam closed with her companions caught inside it.
Panic flooded through her and she started forward herself, knowing the best way to keep the pathway open was for her and Flayre to be in it as well. When she crossed from grass to tunnel, the noise of the world vanished. She hadn’t noticed the singing birds, the sighing of the wind, the drone of insects until they disappeared. Now she heard saddle leather creaking, the rattle of wagon boards in need of tightening, the rasp of her companions’ breath.
Once she gained the path, she saw their destination.
The knights did, too, and they prompted their mounts to go faster, the expected clomp of hooves silenced against the white nothingness beneath their feet. Beyond the cart and horses and men, she glimpsed green ferns, brown trees, and the rusty color of dried blood. Her stomach tightened, but she did her best to ignore it, to concentrate on the integrity of the path.
She advanced at a slow pace, the unexpected weight of Flayre against her palm a burden for which she hadn’t prepared. Keeping the tunnel open for a few people to traverse while she walked it wasn’t a strain, but she wondered if she knew enough to maintain it as wide as necessary for horses and wagon if she continued moving herself. She stopped a few steps inside the space’s mouth, watching the others, holding in her mind the forest she glimpsed at the other end.
Each pace forward they took weighed her further, the tiny creature’s mass increasing as they progressed. Llyris’ arms grew tired, and her strength flagged. An ache through her shoulders caused her to clench her teeth. Her eyelids slipped closed. Pain slid across her back, the pang of it inserting itself into her thoughts, a red streak across the verdant landscape.
The path shook beneath her feet.
She popped her eyes open and inhaled a sharp breath. Flayre trembled against her palm, spun in a tight circle, the top of her leaning precariously, drawn outward by centrifugal force. She’d never seen her behave in this manner; the Seniors at the guild mentioned nothing like this happening in preparation for her travels.
The tunnel rumbled again.
“Llyris!”
She thought it Rein’s voice reaching her from a long distance away, but more likely Ilkari’s. She dragged her scrutiny from Flayre and gazed toward the tunnel’s far end. Her companions had reached their goal and the baron’s champion sat his horse at the terminus of the path, waving his hand. Not in greeting, but in warning. Beyond him, she glimpsed Ilkari twisting in his seat on the wagon, concern knitting his brow.
“We can do this, Flayre,” she whispered, and took an uncertain step forward.
The weight resting on her palm leeched its way through her body and into her legs. Each time she lifted her foot, it weighed her down as though someone surreptitiously tied a blacksmith’s anvil to her sole. She barely got them off the floor of the path, her boot heels dragging along, throwing up puffs of white dust.
Her heart beat hard against her ribs, its effort impinging on her lungs, so breathing became dear. Another halting step, then a second, but the tunnel’s end grew no closer. Rein yelled to her again, and she detected Jai and Ilkari adding their voices, warning her, encouraging her, prompting her on.
“Come,” she grunted. “On.”
Step by step, she began making progress toward them, but the exertion drained her, physically and mentally, until she no longer held the picture of their destination in her mind.
The tunnel shrank around her.
It did so without sound—no groan or creak as with wood, no shriek of metal—it simply became smaller, bit by bit. Llyris stumbled on, the muscles in her thighs and calves tight and knotted, each movement sending fresh pain through her legs. A few more yards. She saw the lines of worry on the old squire’s face. Rein’s expression revealed either concern or anger. She knew not which. The knight reached toward her but she remained too far away to grab it.
Then her knees buckled.
Llyris sank, putting the remainder of her strength and concentration into keeping her arms up and providing a flat surface for the candle-like creature. Flayre spun wildly, but didn’t tip. The tunnel squeezed in around them, close enough for her to reach out in any direction and run her fingers along it. Claustrophobia flared in her, sending a jolt of panic through her body. The shock of it made her shuffle onward involuntarily, and the movement threw her off balance.
I don’t know what to do.
As she pitched forward, her mind searched through the lessons they’d taught her at the guildhall but found nothing to aid her. Instead, the process forced the last thought of her destination from her thoughts. She hit the ground, the impact forcing the air from her lungs, her fingers curling over the magical creature in her hand.
“I’m sorry, Flayre,” she gasped.
Her chin rested against the bottom of the tunnel, keeping her from seeing the path closing around her, preparing to swallow her up, but she felt it. A great pressure pushed on her, squeezing her, and she wondered what came next. Would it crush the life out of her? Transport her somewhere too far away for anyone to ever find her? Its weight made it impossible to draw breath, impossible to think.
Then hands gripped her, and she sensed motion before the world turned black.
Chapter 6
A spider scuttled along the desk, its tiny feet kicking up dust from the thick layer on the wood surface. Misk watched it, distracted from the tome open in front of him, until it disappeared over the edge. He sighed and returned his attention to the calligraphy swirling across the pages.
He traced a line of handwriting with his index finger, lips moving without making sound as he read the text penned in a language so old he assumed himself the lone person who hadn’t forgotten it. How could he? His own hand scribed the letters.
“Nothing,” he muttered. “Nothing here I can use.”
He slammed the book closed, frustrated, the force sending a spurt of air across the desktop, swirling dust and shaking the lantern perched at the corner. His eyes followed the whirling particles until his gaze fell on his reflection in the mirror mounted over the desk. No red glows returned his stare from out of the gloom this time. Instead, he peered upon the face of a wizened old man. Deep lines crossed his forehead, loose gray skin sagged on his cheeks. Except for the depth of knowledge and experience glinting in them, he might have been any octogenarian preparing to die.
“What have I become?”
He stood and lifted the thick volume from the desk, spine protesting with the weight of it. With the small size of his chambers, he needn’t go far to replace it in the stack of tomes he’d taken it from. The single desirable thing about being relegated to the cellar. On the negative side, it meant his possessions—made up almost entirely of books and scrolls—weren’t as organized as he might have liked. He scanned the stacks for the next ledger he wanted to peruse, but failed to identify it immediately. With an exhalation, he crouched, knees popping.
“God help me.”
He ran his finger along the spines of book after book, sensing what they contained more than using his vision to decide which to take. When he found the one he searched at the bottom of a stack of nine thick tomes, he let out an exasperated sigh.
“Once I’d have remembered its contents,” he said to the empty room. “I didn’t record this for myself; only did so for others to learn.”
He moved the first book from the pile onto his bed, then the second.
“Thank goodness I did.”
The third followed, then the fourth, before he paused to catch his breath. Between climbing up and down the stairs and moving around the tomes, he’d either become healthier or end up dead. He wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead and returned to transferring volumes from one place to the other. The problem with ascending staircases or shifting items was, once complete, the steps needed to be descended, and the things transferred whence they came.
When he reached the intended volume, he lifted it, bending at the waist, and the muscles in his lower back seized. He stumbled forward, the book slamming onto the desk as he fell into the chair, its squared edge digging into the right cheek of his scrawny backside. He righted himself on the seat, rubbed at his buttock, and flexed his spine, attempting to loosen the knot.
When he raised his attention again, the countenance staring from the mirror appeared more haggard and weary than before. He stared at himself, one hand continuing to massage his ass, the other resting on top of the tome he’d expended so much energy to retrieve.
“I’ve worked so hard and achieved so little, it seems,” he said to his reflection. The drooping eyes peered back at him. “Anyone can get old.”
The difference was he needn’t have reached this age. Unlike everyone else, Viden Misk chose to grow older. Sometimes, as when he struggled with simple tasks such as climbing stairs and moving books, he wondered if he’d made the right choice.
“No choice to make, really.” He stretched up, rolled his shoulder. His spine protested but moved. “The world is in this state because of you. How could you walk away?”
He shook his head, admonishing himself. How selfish to worry for his own comfort and well-being when so many others had suffered for so long. Entire generations had lived as slaves while the rest celebrated him for enslaving them, tricked into doing so like a child. He watched his cheeks blush in the mirror, embarrassment lending them color. How had he allowed himself to be duped?
“The unicorn,” he whispered, eyes dropping to the tome on the desk before him.
He flipped open the cover, revealing the yellowed pages within. Somewhere in the world existed a grimoire which appeared remarkably similar to this one, yet was altogether different. The Book of Shadow held the key to finding the elements he needed to rescue the rest of his kind from the fate to which he’d doomed them. All he had to do was hope for the baron’s champion to find it, and pray he himself retained enough energy to use it.
Misk flipped through the pages, scanning the cursive inscribed on the parchment, lips moving as he combed the ancient words. Much of it returned to his memory as he skimmed through the volume—the reason he read the tomes over and over. Not because he expected to discover something new, but because he needed reminding. For more than a thousand years he’d recorded and studied, transporting the ever-growing library with him wherever he went.
Day after day he’d written until nothing remained to write. An entire life and history filled the pages, along with observations, findings, thoughts, extrapolations, and hopes. Every letter scribed to help locate the grimoire, the staff, the horn. With them, he felt near certain of his ability to undo the wrongs he’d perpetrated upon the innocent and unsuspecting.
His knobby, arthritic fingers moved faster, turning over page after page, his rheumy eyes skimming over the words, refreshing his memory. When he flipped one sheet and came to a meticulous picture drawn in great detail, he stopped.
The unicorn.
He traced his finger along the inked horn, caressed its illustrated mane, then closed his eyes. He recalled the day it happened—a single incident destined to change the world forever. A deep breath tainted with dust passed between his lips, over his tongue.
“I’m sorry, my friend,” he said, opening his lids.
The depiction of the unicorn neither replied nor moved. How could it? It was naught but the representation of a creature centuries dead, the ripples of consequence of its death still traveling through time.
Misk reached a trembling hand to flip the page, hesitating before doing so, because he knew what he’d find next. He extended his finger, grasped the corner of the parchment, and lifted the sheet. The shadow cast by the lantern light fell across the one-horned creature, reminiscent of a storm cloud crossing the sky on a sunny day. He glanced at it once more, then let the page fall, revealing the larger illustration covering the following two pages.
The dragon.
He held his breath, staring at the detailed image of the beast. Its blue, green, and gold scales appeared iridescent, even on the age-yellowed vellum; its crimson eye stared at him, baleful. Misk extended a fingertip, intending to stroke the frightful being’s hide as he’d done with the unicorn’s mane, but he hesitated, his shaking finger a hair’s breadth from touching it. Of all the harm his actions caused, this one might have given him the greatest grief in a life filled with sadness.
