Jon Sprunk: Shadows son

He turned in place, all senses tuned for the slightest sign of the sor cerer. His face burned like he had been tagged with a hot iron. The knife dragged in his hand, almost too heavy to lift. He longed to close his eyes, just for a moment, but the sorcerer lurked somewhere in the darkness, watching him, waiting for an opening.

His ears caught a sound, a near-silent whisper of a foot dragging across wet slate, as black metal gleamed out of the corner of his eye. He closed his stance a moment too late. Two lightning-quick cuts left him disarmed and bleeding from fresh wounds across his injured side. Bile filled his mouth as his knife hit the tiles and clattered over the side. Again, Levictus vanished.

Tears of frustration burned in Calm's eyes as he limped in a slow circle. "What did you do with my mother?!" he screamed. "Did you kill her, too?"

A mocking voice floated in the wind. "You know the truth, but you cannot face it. Cannot embrace it, as I have."

"Stop talking in riddles and tell me where she is!"

The wind died down for a moment, making the sorcerer's next words resound like thunder crashing over Calm's head. "She dwells in the peerless realm of her ancestors, beyond the Veil in the Land of Shadow."

The words echoed inside Caim. In his memory he was looking up at his mother, standing on the widow's walk of their family home, her features framed in black tresses like the waters of a tempestuous sea. Her dusky skin glowed in the light of the setting sun as she faced the wild Northlands and the great dark forest beyond his father's demesne. Caim tried to swallow in a mouth gone dry. He hadn't been able to believe it before, but now, like a blind man feeling the surf on his toes for the first time, he couldn't deny it any longer. His mother really was one of the Shadowfolk. His father, a mortal man, had brought her home as his new bride, never guessing the Shadow would come to reclaim its own. He was a half-breed, a freak caught between two worlds, and now he was going to die without the chance to discover what he had lost.

His chest contracted in a painful spasm.

Caim hissed as the breath left his body. Then he caught sight of a dark mass looming in the sky over the palace. He looked up, dreading some new attack, but a familiar voice called to him from the storm-shrouded sky.

"Caim!"

Kit.' Her voice sounded distant, as though she were shouting from the other side of the city.

"Kit, where are you? I need you."

"I'm trapped. He's blocking me."

"What?" Caim glanced up and around. The rounded dome of the palace was topped by a narrow steeple, but the dark cloud hovered above even that.

"Caim… Help!"

She sounded weaker. A gust tickled the nape of his neck and Caim spun around, only to be confronted with a wall of dense shadows. He could feel his death approaching on silent footsteps. "What can I do, Kit?"

But she was gone. Caim ground his teeth together. Just when he needed Kit most, she was beyond his reach. But something she said nipped at his brain. He's blocking me. What did that mean? Was she talking about Levictus? How could he…?

Shadow magic. The sorcerer must have detected Kit's presence and taken steps to separate them. But how could he help her?

Kit's words at the cabin came back to him. The blood calls to its own, Caim. You already possess everything you need.

The blood calls to its own.

The sorcerer appeared out of nowhere. Caim backpedaled across the slippery tiles as the black blades sought his flesh. He evaded their touch with a roll and came up on his feet perilously near to the edge. He was trapped. The rage returned, fiercer than before, burning away his fear. If he was going to die, he would do it as he had lived, on his feet and facing his enemies. As Levictus approached with firm, steady strides, Caim reached up over his shoulder.

An electric shiver ran through him as his fingers closed around the smooth hilt of his father's sword. A vision appeared before his eyes: his father's estate as it had been sixteen years ago. The villa in flames. Glowing embers fluttering into the night sky like a cloud of angry fireflies. Levictus standing over his father. Above the wrappings of long black robes, the sorcerer's pallid features shone in the moonlight. The blade pierced his father's chest and Caim cried out, pain bursting from his insides as if the weapon had pierced his flesh instead.

Caim blinked.

He ran through a field of wildflowers in every hue and variety. His parents chased after him, their laughter ringing in the summer air. He glanced over his shoulder, but they had fallen far behind. He could barely see them. Yet their eyes latched onto him from across the distance, watching him, waiting for…

Caim blinked.

He was back on the palace rooftop. The sword shimmered like a shard of black ice in his hand. Water danced along the temper of its razor-keen edges. It felt odd, holding it, and at the same time familiar, like coming home. His father's voice reached across the years.

Justice.

Levictus had stopped half a dozen paces away. The sorcerer stood there with raindrops streaming down the hard planes of his face. Watching. Waiting.

With a grim smile, Caim stepped toward his enemy, and the ache in his chest exploded. Kit appeared as a sensation of weightlessness enveloped him. Joy radiated from her smile like the dawn of the first morning. He had never seen her like this before. Gone was the girlish ingenue. In her place was a woman in full bloom, the woman Caim had always imagined she could be.

She bent down to him, and the darkness flowed along her body like a second skin, but it wasn't entirely black. Murky patterns twisted within the dark. As he reached up, they played along the flesh of his hand and arm like tiny vibrations, and then penetrated his skin, through the muscles and sinews down into his bones. Colors beyond description spun around him, striations of light and shadow cast into physical form.

"Trust yourself," she whispered.

Caim took a deep breath. He knew what had to be done, but could he do it? Could he release the bands of self-control that had held him together for so long? If he let go, would he lose himself? He took another glance over the side. The darkness parted around him like a veil of sheerest gossamer and he saw Josey, clinging to a stone projection. How she fought for life! She wouldn't give up, not as long as a single breath remained within her. Yes. He could do it, for her.

Caim released the breath, and with it all his reservations. The sorcerer stood like a statue of some forgotten demigod of the night. But Kit had said he could bleed. If he could bleed, he could die.

Caim saluted with the sword. His sword now. Levictus nodded as if they had come to some agreement, and then advanced across the rainsplattered tiles. Again the shadows darted at Caim. He could see them better now, not as amorphous blobs, but as small, sleek creatures with sharp teeth and glittering black eyes. But before they could reach him, a black shape erupted from the darkness. The tiny shadows scurried out of the beast's path. It was huge. Striding on four big paws, it resembled a great sable mastiff.

Caim leveled his sword at the creature. But instead of attacking him, the thing turned to pursue the shadows, scooping them up in its massive jaws and tearing them to bits. Then he realized this was the same shadow creature he had seen before, at the Vine and in the cellar under Josey's manor. It had never threatened him, only his enemies, and by the vibration thrumming in his head as the beast tore through the sorcerer's pets, this thing was somehow bound to him.

A violent hiss was the only warning Caim got. He lifted the sword in time to deflect a black knife aimed at his throat. Phosphoric sparks flew as the weapons connected, recoiled, and clashed again. The shadows had fled into the darkness, and the beast with them. Caim almost felt like his old self. On the next pass, he beat the sorcerer's counterattack by a fraction of a heartbeat. He feinted high and slashed. The sword tore through black fabric and found flesh underneath.