High
Priest Urkhrist has settled to his task as the keeper of Beauwallin’s prison.
With his long-time friend and companion, Vorgren, guarding his back, and the
spymaster’s apprentice, Tara Bloodthorn, acting as his representative in the
city of Thargood, he had thought the battle over, but something is wrong.
Beauwallin stirs within his prison, and wizards, priests and sorcerers are
being taken from Thargood’s streets. The pattern is similar to the one they saw
when Beauwallin attempted to break free the last time. Gilzereet must find out
if the Old One is trying to escape, again, and discover how he is garnering the
power to do so—and then he must try to find a way to defeat him, to succeed,
where a pantheon of gods has already failed.
Shadow’s Fall is available on Smashwords, Kindle, Kobo, Smashwords, iTunes and Nook.
First Chapters: Shadow's Fall
Darkness in the Snow
The
raiders struck before the sun had fully cleared the mountain. Callum heard them
coming, and rolled from his bed, his hand reaching for the crossbow hanging on
the cabin wall. He died before he could use it to defend himself or his family.
The
shuttered window of his cabin erupted in a shower of wooden shards as his bare
feet touched the floor. With a snarl as fierce as a winter wolf’s, but in a
form shaped more like a man, the raider came through the window, its momentum
matching Callum’s own, as he leapt across the room. It tore out his throat as
his hand touched the crossbow’s stock. A second invader followed the first, and
Callum’s wife screamed.
Her
grief was short-lived. A third raider burst through the door in a swirl of
snow, and silenced her shrieks before she could draw breath to scream again. A
fountain of red spray drifted softly down amidst the tearing veil of white,
brightening the raider’s gray skin with scarlet. As the droplets began to
darken, their leader looked for his designated prey.
He’d
been sent for the hunter’s daughter, and it did not take him long to find her.
She was at the edge of the loft, looking down at those that had come. Her long
hair hung loose in a soft, brown veil, and her full lips moved silently beneath
cheeks that had lost their color. She was trying to calm her mind, enough to
gather the energy for a spell.
Her
hands weaved the signs. Her lips parted, and she forced the words past a throat
that threatened to close off any sound. The first of the raiders leapt towards
her, his clawed hands reaching out to grip the boards at her feet.
She
stepped back, voicing the final word of her incantation. One of those below her
became a statue of ice; it didn’t even have time to roar a protest. The raider
clinging to the edge of the loft laughed.
Callum’s
daughter looked at him, and the words of her next summoning died in her throat.
The raider hanging from the boards at her feet was dead, yet he lived, and
moved, and swung himself into her loft with the ease of any man she had known.
The creature was something of a mage as well, for he stretched a hand toward
her, and she found she could not move or speak or draw the breath to scream.
From below her came the sound of meat being torn, and wild beasts feeding.
“Maelinna,”
the thing before her crooned, “we have traveled far in our search for you. Come
with me now. No harm will be done.”
No harm to what?
She wanted to scream but found that only her legs would move as the beast
turned to lower the loft’s ladder-like staircase. Maelinna tried to run.
Perhaps she could fling herself from the loft’s edge, and die before the
creature could wreak its foul purpose on her. She tried, but her feet only
moved to stand behind the thing, and her hand reached out to grasp the
proffered fingers as it led her down the steps.
The
carnage on the cabin floor nearly broke the spell that held her. The beasts,
those other raiders, were feeding from the still warm bodies of her parents,
but that was not the worst. As she followed their leader towards her front
door, her father stirred. Hope that he still lived warred with fear of the
same. The raiders stood away from him, letting him rise to stand among them.
For a long moment he swayed on his feet, looking at the faces that surrounded
him, until he saw his daughter.
“Maelinna,”
he whispered, “come. Your papa is hungry.”
Maelinna
saw the change in her father’s face, and shrank from him. Her escort stood
between them.
“Not
yet,” he commanded. “The Lord wants this one. Go with your brethren; they will
show you where you may hunt, and on whom you may feed.”
The
raiders around her mother began to back away, but Maelinna did not see any
more. The raider’s leader grasped her wrist, and towed her from the cabin’s
fading warmth. The predawn chill clawed its way through the thin covering of
her night gown, as her feet sank into the powder of newly-fallen snow. Now she
understood how the raiders had come so close to the cabin without her father
hearing. She understood more, when she saw the nature of the beasts the raiders
rode.
Horses
they might once have been, but now they were creatures as fearsome as their
masters. Some power had been spent in their making, for their eyes glowed red,
and sharp fangs protruded from behind their lips. As one they turned their heads
in her direction. Their lips curled up and their jaws parted. Gray tongues,
elongated and narrow, lapped the air for her scent, and the lead horse pawed at
the snow, nodding its head up and down in approval.
Maelinna
had seen such a gesture before—when she brought hay to her pony. It made her
pull against the hand that held her. Her captor turned his gaze toward her.
“It
is not far,” he said. “We shall not need the horses.”
Maelinna
felt a calmness in his words reach out and wrap itself around her, so she no
longer tried to free herself from his grasp. This new peace lasted, until the
raider murmured soft words under his breath. The sense of them jarred against
her mind, but Maelinna could not raise the strength to fight it, and the spell
bonds tightened their enshrouding weave.
Suddenly
her feet would not move, and her arms hung against her sides like wooden beams.
The raider let go of her hand, before her grip trapped his fingers and then,
when she was perfectly still and only her eyes mirrored her fear, he wrapped
his arms around her and carried her.
He
did not have to take her far. An area had been cleared of snow, and stripped
bare of vegetation. Colored yarn was tied between sticks of willow and larch in
a spell pattern Maelinna had never seen before. She stared, trying to decipher
its purpose.
Grandmama
would have known, Maelinna thought, as the raider set her down in the center of
the pattern. The raider’s hands rested on her hips for a long moment, his
fingers lingering as he pressed his face close to her neck and drew in a deep
breath of her scent. Maelinna saw his face twist with abruptly-stilled desire,
as he took his hands away from her and stepped back from the circle.
“You
would have been a worthy meal, indeed,” he said, then the yarn exploded into
colored flame, and Maelinna felt herself carried to another place.
The
raider’s spell was broken by the wards of the transportation. She felt them
tear as the yarn-woven spell took her further and further from home. The
morning’s cold combined with the ice of teleportation to take the feeling from
her limbs, and soon she became afraid that she would freeze to death in the
whirling limbo that held her. Maelinna flailed, trying to keep her balance as
the spell cast her across an unknown distance.
She
landed hard, the jarring of stone beneath her feet driving her to her knees,
and her palms stung where they slammed into the floor. For a minute she
crouched there, gasping for breath, relieved the penetrating cold had
diminished. This reprieve, however, was short-lived; strong hands seized her
before she could recover, and she was lifted from the ground.
“So
glad you could make it.” The voice was male and smooth as velvet. Hands pinned
her arms to her sides, before arms wrapped around her from behind. Another form
moved into her view, stooped, and took hold of her ankles. Still shaking from
the cold and disoriented from her journey, Maelinna tried to center herself.
She could sense a presence in the room and it was neither human nor undead like
the raiders at her cabin. When her eyes had adjusted to the dull light of her
destination, she looked around. The entire room was made of stone, and she
could see no windows.
There
was a wooden table at one end of the room with a bench on either side of it.
There was a small cabinet and a fireplace. These she noted, as she was carried
backwards. She also noted the face of the woman that held her feet. Green eyes
stared back at her, hard as stone in a face losing its tan to being inside too
long. Short, brown hair curled around the face, framing it, but failing to
soften the deep lines there.
Maelinna
turned her head, trying to see the man pinning her arms. She could not, and his
grasp crushed her against his chest, so she couldn’t tilt her head back far
enough to see his face. They carried her only a short way, before lifting her,
and laying her on something hard, and smooth as stone. She felt chains loop
about her body, and shackles close around her wrists and ankles, and a deep,
cold terror froze her limbs and voice. Lamplight flared and a third person
stepped from behind a pillar. Darkness shrouded him, enhancing his features and
making the winter’s cold seem more balmy than a fine spring day.
“Shaikhan
did well,” he said, and Maelinna felt some other, darker power echo his words
with satisfaction.
Well, indeed,
it murmured, as the newcomer came to stand beside her. He raised fingertips to
her cheek, tracing its line to the edge of her mouth. Maelinna shrank away from
him. His eyes were almost black, and full of shadows, hiding secrets that
seemed too terrible for her mortality to bear. His hair was dark brown, and
glinted with auburn highlights in the lamps.
He
smiled, and his teeth were frightening in their perfection. The presence that
came with him made her more frightened still. Maelinna felt the blood drain
from her face with the strength of her fear. Her captor must have noticed the
change. He looked towards her and, with none of the growing amusement she
sensed in the presence that rode him, spoke.
“Don’t
be afraid. We will not keep you for long.”
END FIRST CHAPTER
If you would like to read more,Shadow’s Fall is available on Smashwords, Kindle, Kobo, Smashwords, iTunes and Nook.
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