Shadow Lands (13 page)

C
ayan and Shanti
set out early the next day once Shanti had changed her bandages and applied more salve. They headed north, aiming towards the city, hoping to get this leg of their journey over with. As the sun peered through the clouds now and again, Shanti turned up her face to catch the warmth.

“I missed this,” she said with a smile, holding onto Cayan’s sleeve so she could close her eyes while still moving. “It rains so often in this place, it’s no wonder everyone is so pale.”

“Your home had more sun?”

“Oh yes. Lots of fog, especially during the summer—it rolled in off the ocean—but the spring and fall were beautiful.”

“Yet you always complain about the heat in my city.”

Shanti could hear the smile in Cayan’s voice. She opened her eyes and enjoyed the lush green of their surroundings. “We had sun, but it wasn’t the blistering kind.”

“Ah.”

They stepped through two trees close together. Their
Gifts
unfurled like a tongue from a serpent. It blossomed and flowed, plucking out and offering up small animal minds as it
searched
.

Shanti stopped dead as it rolled over a host of human minds, laying in wait.

Cayan dove behind the trees, dragging her with him, as a blast of power rocked into her mind. She slammed down her shields at the same time Cayan did, but not before she felt activity as the enemy rose up to attack.

“Shadow?” Cayan asked, jumping to a crouch and ripping out his sword.

“No!” Shanti snatched two knives, left her pack, and dodged to the other side of the tree, throwing her knife. It stuck into a Graygual neck, off-center. Despite the error, the man fell, clutching at the handle. Shanti ducked back at the sound of a bowstring being loosed. An arrow flew past.

“Let your power loose, Cayan!” she yelled, opening up and immediately fighting the barrage of power that battered her mind.

Cayan stepped around the tree, threw a knife and ducked back in as two arrows whizzed by. He gave Shanti a glance before his shields dropped. Shock waves of intense power boomed from him, heading toward the horde of Graygual and Inkna. The counterattack stopped the Inkna assault, having them ducking behind their mental shields quickly. Shrieks and grunts sounded, men now unprotected as the Inkna focused solely on protecting themselves.

Shanti sprinted toward the three nearest Graygual, hunkered on the ground holding their chests or heads. Another blast of power surged from Cayan. Shanti slashed through a neck, stooped to grab her knife from the neck of the Graygual, and stabbed another in the eye.

She felt the build of power as more than twenty Inkna merged together. A man in white stood upright before a single shot of fire pierced through Cayan’s attack. Shanti’s power was freed up with the merge she and Cayan had created, and more powerful for it. With her mind she worked within that tight weave, unraveling and redirecting, freeing Cayan up from defense.

His next blast of power pushed out as he ran into the clearing, sword swinging, movements so fast they almost blurred. Shanti stabbed her knife through a cranium as she dodged between the cringing men. She targeted the mind of the head Inkna and
blasted
into it, shaking his merge. As Cayan’s powerful blasts fell she worked within them,
slashing
and
stabbing,
then
wrestling
with the other minds as she did the same with her knives.

Voices screamed around her. She dodged the feeble swing of a sword as the merged mind slashed at her. She shielded for a moment so she could smash her foot into a Graygual’s face, breaking his nose. She tossed her knife up, grabbed it by the tip of the blade, and threw, hitting a Graygual in the back as he advanced on Cayan.

“Stop your power and take some of the men down, Cayan,” she yelled, stabbing a Graygual chest before bending to grab another’s head and wrench. His neck snapped. She scooped up his sword, hefted it twice, getting the feel for the weight, as Cayan’s power fell away.

With a burst of single-minded focus, he whirled into the enemy, blocking and cutting people down as if they were tied together and unable to move. They were just too slow and less skilled than him. It showed.

The Inkna mind was back, hammering at her shield. She blocked a Graygual sword strike before turning to combat another thrust. She
stabbed
out with her mind, pushing back the mental assault while she physically stabbed the Graygual through the belly. As he fell she summoned all the power at her disposal, a huge undercurrent of her and Cayan’s combined strength, and
thrust
at the head Inkna mind in the merge.

Horrified, terrorized screams erupted as the Inkna minds fractured. The white-shirted Master Executioner crumpled to the ground, his brain turned to pulp. The others withered in agony and confusion, barely alive. Shanti summoned another surge of power, gathered it up, and
TORE
through the minds that still remained. Her power
raked
,
clawed
and
chewed
through the intellects. The screams rose in pitch before one by one they fell silent as the Inkna died.

Wasting no time, Shanti whirled between two Graygual, slashing the chest of one, feinting, and stabbing the thigh of the other. The second man yelled and clutched at his leg. Shanti hacked down on his neck before ducking an attacker from her left.

Another man ran towards her, but didn’t make it. As Shanti took out the man to her left, gathering her power to take out Graygual with both mind and body, the running man arched his back with a blood-curdling scream. He reached for his shoulders as he sank down to his knees.

Cayan stood behind him, huge and bloodied, blue eyes wild. He glanced at the man falling to her left before turning his gaze to the side, looking for more.

Trying to catch her breath, Shanti stepped backwards out of the tangled limbs of those on the ground and looked around. Blood ran freely from Graygual bodies, pooling in the mud and shining crimson in the wet grass. Cayan had taken down more than half as he’d worked his way through them. Lifeless Inkna lay on the ground, their faces still screwed up in pain.

She glanced down at the throbbing ache in her leg. Blood splotched her pants, both from the spray from killing and the seeping from bleeding. She pushed down her pants and stepped out. Her bandages were soaked through, the scabs torn open and bleeding freely.

“Blood is good—blood cleans the wound,” Cayan said, catching his breath with his hands on his hips. “I tend to get a lot of practice with these Graygual.” He smiled through his heavy breathing, his dimples masked by the shadow of his unshaven face.

“You took down more than me,” she said in faux-irritation.

He laughed, a great booming sound. His gaze scanned the back line of Inkna. “Not if you count all of them.”

“True.” She searched the littered men for an officer. The highest ranked had four slashes, a few had three. These weren’t the worst Xandre had to offer, but they weren’t the best, either. He was testing her by sacrificing those he was most able to lose.

“He’ll have learned a lot about the strength of our power and our fighting ability from this,” Shanti said, finding a clean undershirt and stripping the Graygual.

“Without a verbal report?”

“He sent in this many, of this fighting caliber, and none will come back. It’s a pretty clear message.”

“At least he didn’t kill or take us,” Cayan answered, rifling through a pack he’d taken off of a Graygual. “A map. They’ve mapped this whole place, it looks like. Whoever’s in charge has been at this a while—he’s done his homework. And this is a copy.”

“Xandre always does his homework. At least this isn’t my fault—this started before I got here.”

“None of this is your fault,
mesasha.”

Shanti suspected that Cayan was trying to soften his tone for that name, but with adrenaline running through his body, it came out more like a growl.

She kind of liked that better.

A disturbance fluttered the edges of her severely weakened power. More minds came, slow and focused. She knew it would be the Shadow people, readying their attack.

“More,” she said, bowing with the strain.

Another flutter at their back, then their side. They were being boxed in. The attack was completely synchronized.

“
Flak,”
she breathed, plotting the minds in her head and factoring in her speed given her throbbing leg. “If we run, we may be able to get through on the north-east.”

“You won’t make it. There are only ten of them, though.”

Shanti breathed deeply, trying to catch her breath before she willed her body back into battle-mode. “Those ten all have the
Gift,
and will be well trained. They’ll give us just as much trouble as these thirty.”

“Forty. Almost.”

“Forty. Right.” Shanti looked around with wide eyes, not bothering to count. “No wonder Xandre wants me; but he’s got better.”

“And now he’ll know he has to use them.”

Cayan walked to her, his eyes lingering on her wound. “You should probably put your pants back on. We don’t have much time.”

Shanti shrugged. “What’s the difference? Blood comes off skin easier than it does fabric, and they’re the only pair that fit me. If they were armored, then we’d have something to talk about.”

A grin quirked Cayan’s lips. “I guess now we know there are benefits to not caring about nudity.”

“Not caring in general, I think.”

Shanti took a last deep breath before retrieving her knives. She took a few of the Inkna’s, too. Then she faced the mind that seemed the strongest, coming from the north.

Cayan put himself at her back, facing away from her. He didn’t ask why she hadn’t picked another battle area. He was no novice. The new enemy would have to climb over all the bodies to get to them, and that would slow them down. Hopefully it would slow them down enough.

“I’m glad I’m used to beating on you or I might have a real problem hitting these women I feel sneaking in.” Cayan’s voice was hard, ready for what might be coming.

She felt them, but didn’t hear them. They were right beyond the trees; excellent stalkers, one and all. They’d obviously had a lot of practice at it from the previous hopefuls, and more: they must’ve trained religiously.

Shanti saw a flash of movement to the right.

“One coming left,” Cayan said.

Shock and outrage flared in the minds as someone called, “
Stop!
” in the Shadow’s tongue. “
Wait until I assess.
”

“What did he say?” Cayan asked in a low hum.

Minds flashed with approval, some with validation, and one with traces of fear. The man in the north—the mind she had turned to face—stepped out of the trees. Bright orange flared as the sun caught his hair. His gaze was on hers before it swept the ground around her. Anger seethed from his mind as he stopped at the man with the white shirt. When he looked back up, he stared at her for a moment before he said, “You have no pants.”

Shanti couldn’t help the huffed laugh, expecting something completely different. “My leg hurts,” she admitted. “Soon I’ll be without shirt, too, because my side must be bleeding through by now.”

“Yes.” He shook his head and yelled to his people, “
Stand away. Come out. They have already fought enough for the day.
”

“He’s calling off their attack,” Shanti translated for Cayan.

“Can we trust them? Is what I feel from them correct?” he responded, not dropping his guard.

“Yes.” She dropped her knife onto her pants. Her stolen sword followed a moment later. “I am very glad to hear you say that,” she called to the orange-haired man. “I wasn’t overly excited about fighting you.”

“If there wasn’t the ban on killing, the sentiment would be duplicated.” The orange-haired man walked toward them before stopping at the edge of the bodies. His fighters stepped out of the trees, sheathing their swords or knives.

“Not everyone uses swords?” Shanti asked as she bent to an officer to retrieve cloth for bandages.

“Don’t take that—” the man said, threading through the bodies. His eyes were focused on her wounds. “We brought bandages. And yes, we all use swords, but it was thought that this many against just two would be largely unfair, so we intended to even the stakes. Judging by what lays before you, I think my assessment was that of whoever sent these Graygual.”

Shanti straightened as the man peeled away her bandages. The wound was a mess of scabs and oozing red. The light green salve began to drip down her leg as the pus and blood overwhelmed the gashes. “Are the other wounds this bad?” he asked in a soft voice.

“Yes. That beast wasn’t very nice.” Shanti winced as he pressed the swollen, red flesh around the wound.

“This is in danger of becoming infected. And you almost killed him—he would probably say the same about you, if he could speak.”

“He is a pet?” Cayan asked with a flat voice. Shock radiated from his mind, however, something everyone in that clearing probably felt because he wasn’t holding his emotions in check. But, with all she’d had to teach him, there had been little time to spend on that lesson.

“Yes. And will probably not be fond of you after this.” The orange-haired man straightened. “I am Sonson.” He offered a slight bow.

“Do the Graygual know about him?” Shanti asked as someone else threaded his way through the Graygual bodies. The others were picking pockets and analyzing weapons, no doubt trying to learn more of the enemy encroaching upon their lands.

“He killed one of theirs, but it wasn’t a hopeful-Chosen,” Sonson said. “There are Graygual slipping into the trials. I’m not sure what they are trying to assess…”

“They’ve made a map, for a start.” Shanti handed over the Graygual pack. “And Xandre makes it his business to know everything about a nation he plans to rule.”

“If you weren’t so deadpan, I would think you were trying to scare me.” Sonson smiled and stepped aside as a man dropped to one knee to assess her wound.

“Can we do this somewhere else?” Cayan asked, picking up Shanti’s items.

“Not quite yet,” Sonson said, looking over his shoulder, and then out to the side. He then glanced up at the fog drifting in to cover the sky. “I want to use her as bait to see if more are coming. They must know they’ve lost their Inkna by now.”