James West - Queen of the North

“I can never repay such a gift.”

“I can think of a few ways you can try,” Nesaea said, joining him on the bed.

Rathe hid his smile. It seemed that she had fallen into his trap.

Cloaked by a heaving and unnatural darkness, Algar’s lips twisted as the sounds of lovemaking began again, thrusting through the wooden door and into his ear like a cold dagger. His thin lips contracted in disgust. Do they ever stop?

He had trailed Rathe for years, ever waiting for the right moment to strike. As such, he knew well the man’s penchant for tumbling any woman foolish enough to have him. Nesaea, Rathe’s current wench, was mistress of an entire troupe of likeminded sluts who concealed their true purpose behind singing and dancing. She apparently didn’t mind that the once esteemed Rathe Lahkurin had fallen so low as to be considered a common brigand in his homelands.

But then whores were whores, and cared only for the coin they earned in pleasuring men. This Algar knew all too well, having suckled milk from the teat of a common slattern-his mother.

Kill ‘im, Algar, her warbling, wine-soaked voice crooned in his mind. Stray thoughts never failed to summon his dear dead mother. Carve ‘is heart an’ have yer revenge, boy. Slaughter him and the whore he’s plowin’! Do it now!

Algar gripped the hilt of his sword. The shadows around him boiled and pulsed, provoked by his hatred for both his mother and Rathe.

Do it, Algar!

Teeth grinding, he drew the blade an inch from the scabbard. He sucked in a breath and prepared to pass through the wooden door as easily as a ghost. Such was the gift of the dark magic nested within his flesh.

No more waitin’, boy!

Algar envisioned himself materializing in his enemy’s room from a cloud of shadow. He saw Rathe and Nesaea’s gasps of shock when they recognized him, the one they had named the Shadowman.

Now, boy!

A whine of tortured ecstasy squeezed from his throat, as he pictured Rathe and Nesaea’s astonishment become agony when he impaled them upon the length of his blade. Both at the same time! Two with one deadly thrust! Rathe and his filthy slut!

Do it, boy!

Algar saw them die in his mind, their corpses bound together by blood, steel, and the issue of their loins.

Now! his mother howled.

The spent breath burning in Algar’s chest burst out of him, cold now, foul, acrid. I cannot! He slammed his sword home. The shadows grew still as frozen smoke. Rathe will die , Algar promised the unrelenting harpy that had birthed him into such a detestable world, as will his whore … in time. But not yet. No, no, not yet.

When will you act, you pissin’ wretch? asked his mother. Though she was long dead, Algar hated her as much as he ever had, maybe more, as her spirit was with him more now than she had ever been in life.

Soon , he answered.

Soon? How soon? How soon afore you stop shittin’ down yer leg whenever tha’ black-hearted monk says you must, boy? How soon afore you stand on yer own, and do wha’s yours by right to do?

Algar tensed at the mention of his current accomplice. Jathen doesn’t command me .

Well then, you mus’ be affrighted, boy. Affrighted the Scorpion’ll beat you a third time … and mayhap that’d be for the best .

Algar ignored her last slight. First Rathe must know who will kill him and why … the Scorpion must acknowledge who is the better of us … the Champion of Cerrikoth must admit that he took for himself what was mine! And when he does, I’ll make him watch as I slaughter his whore, so that he feels the loss I felt at his treachery.

You been makin’ the same promise for years, Algar. Methinks fear stays yer hand. As the boy was, so now is the man-a snivelin’ coward. Tha’s why you failed to cleave the Scorpion’s stinger not once, but twice, and tha’s why you stand here shakin’ now.

No.

No?

No! Algar screamed in his mind. He cheated me of my honor and the king’s blessing! He took everything from me!

Even now, years after their first meeting-a meeting Rathe no doubt didn’t recall-and long before hounding him over the Gyntors and crossing blades with him in the halls of Ravenhold, Algar could still hear the roaring jubilance of the crowd, could still feel the shame of defeat while lying in the shadow of the man who’d humiliated him. Rathe Lahkurin, with his upraised sword glittering in the summer sun, turning slowly before the King of Cerrikoth and the folk of Onareth. He was only boy then, as was I. The sharpest memory of that day was the cocky victor’s smile that had spread across Rathe’s lips when he leaned over Algar, hand outstretched like a father reaching to lift his fallen child.

Taking my glory was not enough! Algar seethed. No, the bastard had to twist the dagger of disgrace by shaming me in front of his legions of admirers … in front of the king … in front of the entire realm … even in front of you, mother!

Hard, that’d be, his mother snickered, as I was naught but bones an’ dust by then. You mus’ remember that, don’t you, m’sweet boy-

Leave me!

For a wonder, she did go, though he sensed her mirth waiting to bubble to the surface. Most times, she refused to leave him in peace, choosing instead to squat in the back of his mind like some humpbacked fiend, endlessly prodding him, endlessly belittling him. He hated her, wanted to kill her again, a thousand more times and in a thousand different ways-

Behind the door, Nesaea let out a soft cry of pleasure. Guts churning, Algar edged back, his face knotted like a fist.

As a child in various flesh-houses of Onareth, Algar had had no choice but to listen to his mother’s false cries as strangers labored between her legs. Sometimes after those men spilled their seed, they would then defile him. A shiver of remembered pain and humiliation gripped Algar’s lean frame, for that was not the entire truth. Rather, his mother had coaxed a few more coppers from the purses of those men by offering up her son to use as they wished.

Sneaking footsteps coming up the stairs dragged a startled hiss through Algar’s teeth. Still cloaked within shadows, he wheeled in absolute silence and merged with the natural shadows farther down the hallway.

He squatted on his heels, the fingers of one hand parting the collar of his tunic to touch the source of his power, a cloudy gray gemstone the size of his fist, sunk deep into the raw meat and knitted to the fractured bones of his chest. A necromancer living amongst the highest crags of the Mountains of Arakas had placed it there at great cost, but Algar had never considered the price anything less than a bargain.

Marking the approaching footsteps, he muttered arcane words he had engraved upon his heart and mind. The hue of the Spirit Stone changed to charcoal shot through with veins of red and gold. It grew warm within his breast, then hot, then blistering. He felt himself changing, becoming less than flesh and blood, less even than air.

A scream of torment clogged the back of his throat as the searing fires spread, filling him up until he thought he must soon burst into flame. When the agony had stretched him to the limits of endurance, the stone went as cold and gray as a chunk of dirty ice. He let out a panting gasp and lifted his head.

The details of the hallway remained unchanged, but all was darker to his eyes, as if a thunderhead had blotted out the light of day.

And he was no longer alone.

Hidden as he was between two worlds, he saw spirits flitting through the walls, floor, and ceiling. The gossamer figures, their distorted features smudgy and smoke-gray, ignored him as always. In this place between life and death, what the necromancer had named the Zanar-Sariit, Algar was not truly dead, nor was he truly alive, yet he could pass through the worlds of each, as if he were both. The necromancer had warned him that the Zanar-Sariit was a dangerous place to visit often, unless you fancied losing your soul. Yet Algar had never felt threatened here. If anything, the between realm was the only place he had ever know true peace.