Jon Sprunk - Shadow's master

Caim started to take a step forward, but he was jerked backward by an arm across his windpipe. He grabbed for the arm out of instinct as his feet left the ground, but the limb was insanely powerful, its muscles and tendons as hard as petrified oak. White spots appeared before his vision before he remembered his knife. Caim stabbed behind him, aiming for the midsection, but the point of his knife rebounded off something solid. While the white spots grew and pulsed, Caim reversed the grip and plunged the knife over his shoulder. The arm around his neck loosened, and Caim kicked backward and thrashed his head back and forth until he was free. As soon as his heels hit the floor, he spun around and drew his suete knife. He could make out the outline of a big man, so big he first thought it was Malig, but then a chill touched his ankle and the gloom lifted.

Hoek stood before him. Blood ran in a thick stream from a puncture in his cheek, but the wound didn't seem to slow the big man as he shambled forward. Caim ducked under outstretched hands and lunged with both knives. He wanted to inflict nonlethal wounds, but found himself aiming for the bowels and groin anyway. His knives pierced woolen garments, but stopped when they hit the flesh underneath like they'd struck plate armor without the accompanying clang. Caim didn't have time to recover before Hoek barreled into him. Powerful fingers gouged into his face and shoulder. Caim slashed his way free, but again Hoek didn't stop, as if the pain didn't register. Caim threw himself to the side. He rolled to his feet beside a hammock and saw Dray lying in the rope sling. Malig was in another hammock. Both men stared up at the ceiling as if drugged.

Caim shouted, “What's wrong with you two? Get up!”

A light blossomed in the far corner. He risked a glance over his shoulder to the corner where Shikari stood, smiling as she held a twisting flame in her hand. She had changed into a rust-red… Oh, shit.

Shikari wore an asherjhag robe. A black medallion hung around her neck on a long cord. Caim squinted. The medallion was shaped like a tower with square battlements. He'd seen that design before.

The breath left Caim's lungs as Hoek grabbed him by the head and threw him to the floor. A huge boot rose into the air, and Caim rolled aside before it connected with his skull. Shadows appeared along the low ceiling. Their tiny voices echoed in his head, making it hard to concentrate. Then Hoek was upon him again. Caim slashed at everything that came at him-hands, wrists, and kneecaps-until Hoek staggered back, bleeding from half a hundred slices. The big man's mouth gaped as if he suddenly understood what he was doing, but then his features slackened, and he charged again.

Caim braced himself. His knives trembled in his grip. He was on the edge of losing control. The smell of blood in the room was overpowering. The shadows urged him to let go, to give in to the killing lust. Hoek closed within three steps.

Two.

One.

Caim unleashed the shadows. They dropped from the ceiling, inundating Hoek in a night-black deluge. His arms churned as if trying to swim from the shadows, until his legs gave out and he collapsed on the floor to the sound of soft chittering. Through the swarm of darknesses, Caim could see the big man's arms changing color from pale white to black and gray. He pushed the shadows away with his thoughts. They resisted at first, but then oozed away at his insistent command. Where Hoek had lain was now a horrid, mottled creature, roughly man-shaped, but with longer arms and plate-sized hands with curled talons. Knobby lumps covered the thing's bald skull. For reasons he couldn't discern, Caim was reminded of the shadow serpent that had attacked him in his apartment in Othir. The Shadow had caught up to him again.

Caim stared across the room at Shikari, still with the flames dancing in her hands. Her eyes shined with the fiery light. “You escaped my trap in Jarnflein,” she said. “But I knew I would find you again, scion. My rewards shall be boundless when I bring you before the Master's throne.”

Not alive, you won't. Caim pushed off from the wall toward her, knives extended-

— and leapt back as an axe swept across his peripheral vision. The blade struck the wall just above his shoulder in a shower of wooden splinters.

“No!” Shikari shouted. “I need him alive!”

Caim turned and slashed with his knives, but pulled up as Malig's bearded face reflected in the firelight. He dove under Malig's arm and circled around behind him. “Mal, what the fuck has gotten into-?”

Caim hissed as a pack of shadows adhered to his torso, sinking through his jacket and shirt to cleave to his skin with frigid claws. Before he could react, a spear thrust from out of the gloom. The point struck him below the nipple, but deflected from the layer of shadows instead of piercing his lung. Dray followed up with a low counter-thrust, but Caim batted the spear away. What in the hells was going on? Malig and Dray were crazy, sure, but not this crazy. Caim blocked Dray's next thrust and got in close, but instead of burying his knives in his companion's heart, he cracked him in the forehead with a pommel butt. Dray didn't even blink, but swung his spear across his body and forced Caim to leap back. Malig recovered his broadaxe and lumbered at him again.

The Eregoths came at him side by side. By the firelight, their eyes were black as squid ink. Caim retreated until his heels hit the wall behind him. His companions came on with silent intensity, aiming stroke after stroke that he deflected or evaded. They moved slowly, like they were swimming through oil, but he had nowhere to go. Behind them, Shikari hummed a strange, hypnotic song while the flames twisted in her palms, looking almost like two small people as she manipulated them back and forth. Every time she turned her wrist, the Eregoths lurched forward.

Caim twisted sideways to avoid a stab from Dray as Malig chopped down with a two-handed swing. A gap opened between them, and Caim lunged through it. Before he could take three steps, a wall of orange flames burst from the floor in front of him. Caim jumped back from the hellish heat. Dray and Malig turned with jerky motions and were once again attacking him. Caim ducked under an axe stroke aimed at his neck, pivoted on his heel, and threw.

The seax knife spun pommel over tip through the flaming curtain and struck with a wet thud. The flames evaporated in puffs of smoke from Shikari's hands as she looked down at the steel protruding between her breasts. A slithering sensation ran through Caim, like an invisible line between him and the sorceress. As Shikari collapsed to the floorboards, a burst of energy exploded inside him. It happened so fast he hardly understood what had occurred. As the strange vitality surged through his body, Caim lifted his suete against the next attack from the Eregoths, but they were standing motionless, weapons hanging limp in their hands.

With effort, Caim took a deep breath and exhaled through his nose. Dray groaned. Malig shuddered and snorted as if he'd been plunged into an icy lake. But their eyes had cleared of the black film.

“What the-?” Dray started to ask, but his voice was hoarse.

Caim grabbed them both and shoved them toward the door. Once the Eregoths were out, Caim darted back inside the burning room. The curtain of flames had spread to the walls and ceiling, feeding on the stone as if it were kindling. He started to form a portal for a short hop through the fire, but then recalled the shadow-jumping he'd seen the shadow swordsman do during their brief duel. Without knowing exactly what to do, Caim concentrated on being on the other side of the room. Nothing happened except that the fire burned closer and sweat dripped down his face from the intense heat. He almost gave up, but then a sharp pain pinched behind his eyes. His stomach twisted upside down, and he landed on his feet, standing over Shikari's body.