Shadowlands Read online

  “He can’t afford to miss another shift,” No Food added.

  Wolf waited. Finally Apple drifted away to the east and disappeared behind a wide marble staircase. Wolf glanced to his right. He would have to go that way, as it appeared the remaining two could go on talking about the illness of their comrade for hours.

  Swiftly, silently, Wolf darted through the shadows to a set of double doors that had been left ajar and into a food market that smelled of cleaning fluids not quite masking spoiled food. Somewhere beyond the market stalls he thought he could smell outside air.

  The exit doors were locked shut, but Wolf used his gra’if dagger to cut through the metal of the locks. The gra’if glowed slightly in the darkness, but Wolf had it sheathed before it could give him away. Stepping out, he was faced with a narrow stretch of roadway, another set of double glass doors on the other side. There were streetlights above him, and the sounds and smells of traffic overhead. That would be Front Street. The Prince’s home was in the building on the other side. Wolf eyed the parapet, an easy leap.

  He put his hand to his chest, touched through his shirt the key the High Prince had given him.

  “Go in through the front doors of the hotel,” she had said. “But use the east lobby elevators and go to the top floor. The apartment is in the southeast corner of the building, and has a silver knocker in the shape of a dragon on the door.”

  As if the thought of a Guidebeast triggered his senses, Wolf’s nostrils flared. Somewhere here, in this submerged laneway, there was a faint scent of Rider. He turned, intent on fixing this scent in his mind—and his attackers were on him almost before he knew they were there. Sound more than scent gave them away. Too many shadows, too many conflicting odors, had masked their approach. Two of the three grabbed him by the upper arms and were dragging him toward the darkest corner while the third was dodging in front, trying to reach Wolf’s feet.

  They weren’t trying to hurt him, he realized, just secure him, but while they were touching him, he could not Move without bringing them with him. Wolf planted his feet, shrugged off the dark form on his right, flinging out his arm. As that person was still airborne, Wolf spun, swinging the one holding his left arm into the man in front. The impact broke the man’s hold on Wolf’s arm, and he immediately Moved, first to the shadowy spot in the train concourse he had used earlier, then to a safe spot in the market area, behind the juice vendor.

  He could hear the people who had accosted him. They were still outside, the one he had thrown groaning. Apparently Wolf had broken some ribs. The High Prince had warned him that humans were more fragile than Riders, but evidently he had not paid sufficient attention. Instead of setting themselves to watch once more, the two relatively uninjured men helped the third away, and the laneway was once more deserted. Now alert, Wolf Moved back to where he had been attacked, immediately leaping onto the parapet, and stepping down onto the wide sidewalk.

  In a moment he was across the street and pushing through the revolving doors of the hotel. He barely took in the vast lobby, as large as the great hall of a prince’s palace. Even at this late hour there were a few people about, but Wolf had dressed carefully in a good suit, though the collar of his shirt was open. Only one woman said, “Good night, sir,” to him as he passed. He nodded at her, and tried to smile. He must have succeeded, for she smiled back.

  He had already dismissed the attack. Young men, he thought, likely trying to rob him. What was occupying Wolf’s mind as he pressed the button for the elevator was the faint spoor of Rider he’d detected where they had jumped him.

  Later, having settled into the bed of what was clearly the guest room, he dreamed.

  He puts his clawed feet to the ground, but they are no longer clawed, and his tentacles, sooty gray, at once scaled and leathery, find no easy purchase. He sees the scent he is following, leading away from him like a ribbon of soft golden silk floating through the air. Reaching away from him into the world. Then he sees them, a Starward male and a Moonward female, and he knows them, smells their dra’aj so like his own. They turn and greet him with smiles. They do not see what he is; they do not lock themselves away from him.

  Wolf woke up cold with sweat, the sheets damp. Swung his legs over the side of the wide bed, and sat with his elbows on his knees, rubbing his face with his hands, unable to work any warmth into his skin. He thrust his hands into his hair.

  “I am the Hound of the Dragonborn Prince,” he said aloud, shocking himself with the harshness of his voice. “My mother—my mother was Rain at Sunset and the Chimera guides me. I am Wolf in the Storm.”

  This was by no means the first time he had dreamed about what he had been before Truthsheart had made him real again. Always the same, the same shapes and smells. Always he had returned home, and destroyed what he found there. Though the dreams were getting better, he told himself as he stood under the shower, washing away the fear that stuck to his skin. At least now they stopped before he began to feed.

  As he padded back to the sitting room, passing through shafts of moonlight, he stopped and stood looking around him. There had been something new. He had never before wondered, while dreaming, why his parents had not locked their door to him. There was a way, a very simple way. After all, parents whose children could Move still required privacy from time to time.

  What did this mean? He could not close the apartment to Moving, or he would lose the use of it himself. But there was something he could do…Wolf went to the door of the apartment, wondering if he would remember the Chant. It had been so long ago, but he had heard it many times. He placed his hands on the door frame, wood and darkmetal and paint. It would have to do. He licked his lips, and began to Sing.

  Tomorrow, once the sun was up, he would follow the Rider’s trail.

  Walks Under the Moon lifted her forehead from the neck of the Cloud Horse when Lightborn’s silhouette blocked the light from the doorway.

  “I thought I would find you here,” he said. He was a Starward Rider, as she was herself, and even inside the stable his platinum hair shone.

  “I knew you would come.” Moon smiled, trying to keep her voice light. “You might have gone without letting me know, but never without a horse.” The Cloud Horses that now looked at them with interest from their stalls were Lightborn’s special pride, raised by him in this very stable.

  He came straight to her, and took her hands in his own. “I would have found you, before I left,” he said. “This is not the best time, but I’ve been trying to find the right words.”

  Moon clenched her teeth. This did not sound like anything she wished to hear.

  Lightborn drew her to a seat on the nearby bench. “I don’t want to leave you under a cloud. No, not you my handsome one.” Lightborn pushed away an inquisitive muzzle, another horse snorted, and Moon laughed despite the cold feeling in the pit of her stomach.

  “There, that smile’s more genuine.”

  “But you are leaving, aren’t you? I saw the messenger come, and I saw that you were called into your mother’s receiving room.” She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. The light from the doorway did not seem to touch his dark blue eyes. “And I was not.”

  “It’s a soldier they need, Moon, not an expert on lore. The High Prince’s attention has been on Healing the Lands, but reports have come of Warriors of the Basilisk who are not laying down their arms.” He paused, his lips pressed tight. “They may even be preparing a stronghold somewhere near the Tourmaline Ring.”

  “And you must go?”

  “I go, your sister the High Prince goes; Max, the Prince Guardian, also.”

  Moon studied Lightborn’s face. He still called his cousin Max, and not Dawntreader, the name they had used when they were both children. “And I suppose Windwatcher, and all the others?”

  Lightborn hesitated. “It must be one of us who leads, the Princes or someone of their blood. My mother has armed herself also, and if you were a soldier, you would be sent as well.”

  “And
as I am not a soldier…” Moon glanced around the stable as she searched for the right words. Her eyes came to rest on the metal that banded her left wrist, metal that shone with a light of its own. “I can Ride,” she said. “I bear gra’if, and I am, as you said, an expert on lore. Why should I not come with you?”

  Lightborn was quiet a long time. Long enough that Moon, touching him lightly on the arm, was about to withdraw her request, when suddenly she found herself facing him, his hands gripping her shoulders.

  “Do you think I would take you into danger? Do you think I would risk your life?”

  “But you—”

  “The Princes have asked; I cannot refuse.”

  Moon shook her head, her smile returning. “You would not.”

  His eyes shut and he released her. “No. I would not.”

  Moon nodded. “We have not been lucky, have we?”

  Lightborn’s laugh was more than half sigh. “No, we have not.” He turned to face her and took her hands again. “Moon. This call was so unexpected, we have just begun to talk around this thing between us—I thought we had more time, I—”

  Moon lifted her hand, afraid to move too much. “You don’t have to say anything. We both of us knew that there was—that there is—something between us.” Though in truth, she hadn’t known. Now she knew, and she could feel the singing in her heart.

  “I am speaking straightly to you now,” he said. He drew a small, sparkling object from the breast of his tunic and held it out to her in the palm of his hand. It was a broach, fashioned in the shape of a griffin. Moon touched it, and it turned to nuzzle against her hand.

  “We are not Wild Riders, we cannot exchange gra’if. Take this instead. When my task is over, when the Basilisk’s Warriors have been dealt with, we will wed, you and I.”

  “Yes, we will.” His lips were warmer than she had expected, and his hands more strong.

  Sometime later the snorting of the horses woke them.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Lightborn said.

  “No, I believe it’s called something else. Ah!” she rolled away. His fingers were as good at tickling as they were at other things.

  “Lovely one, I would like it if you stayed here, in my home, while I am away.”

  Moon took in a deep breath and released it. “Without either you or your mother here? I don’t think so,” she said, rolling over on her side to see his face more clearly. “I make people uncomfortable.” She tried to make her tone as even as possible. “They don’t forget that I was once with the Basilisk.”

  “You are the one who can’t forget.”

  “Perhaps.” Let him think so. “But I can’t stay here.” Moon’s gesture took in the whole of the fortress that lay outside the stables. “Not without you. I will go to my sister’s camp. Perhaps I am no warrior, but who knows? She may find some use for me.”

  “Just you be sure you don’t find a use for one of those Wild Riders.”

  “That entirely depends on how long you will be.”

  “However long, I will come back.”

  After, when she watched him Ride away, she fastened the pin to the collar of her tunic, and felt the tiny jeweled griffin move under her fingers. She patted it into place, then lowered her hands to her belly and smiled.

  “Yes,” she said. “You will be back.”

  Max Ravenhill, Prince Guardian, was pulling on a pair of gra’if gloves when he saw a small knot of three Riders approaching the Prince’s pavilion from the perimeter of the camp. Not, as he might have expected, a captured minion of the Basilisk come to throw himself on the High Prince’s mercy, but a Sunward Rider walking casually between two of the Wild Riders who had today’s watch. And not only that, but a Sunward Rider dressed—

  “Well, well,” he said. “The man in the gray flannel suit.” Too bad Cassandra wasn’t here—no one else was going to catch the movie reference.

  “My Prince?” It was Wings of Cloud who approached Max with the newcomer just behind him.

  Max took a short step away from the entrance of the pavilion. “That’s definitely a suit and tie,” he said, smiling.

  “I don’t know if you will remember me, my lord Prince.” The man in the suit was older, his auburn hair as carefully trimmed as his sharply pointed beard, and his amber eyes hooded.

  “Nighthawk, of course I do.” Max stuck out his hand. At least people from the Shadowlands knew what to do when he did that.

  Max waved two seats into existence, proper cushioned ones, and waited until Nighthawk was seated before sitting himself. “Stormwolf reached you, then?”

  “He did. And you can imagine my joy, not to say my relief, when I heard his news. And the High Prince?” Nighthawk glanced around, but no more than politeness would allow.

  “She’s away just now, but she’ll be pleased to learn you made it back.”

  “Stormwolf told me of this as well.” Hawk accepted a cup of wine with a distracted nod. “So it is not only in the Shadowlands that the Basilisk’s old followers continue to make trouble?”

  Max sighed. “It’s not that we expected everything to go smoothly—we knew that the Lands themselves would need Cassandra’s special touch, but there’s been more determined opposition than we expected.”

  “That cannot be easy for Cassandra.”

  Max shook his head, but in agreement. “It isn’t. But she is High Prince of the Lands.” He fixed his eyes on Nighthawk. “All the Lands, and all the People, including the Basilisk’s followers, and even including the Hunt. She must find a way to help any and all of the People who require it.”

  Hawk’s amber eyes narrowed. “Even the Hunt?”

  “Even the Hunt, now that we know what it is.”

  Hawk’s gesture was almost dismissive, and Max found himself stifling a smile. Part of the Sunward Rider was reacting with the habit of years, and still saw Max as his human self. Hawk didn’t see that he was no longer speaking with his Ward, but with the Prince Guardian. “The Hunt is an old danger, always with us, from Cycle to Cycle if we believe the Singers. A walking hunger,” he said. “Their purpose is to destroy, and they cannot be helped.”

  “A natural danger? You think they’re just a part of the Lands like the Abyss or the Blood Desert?” Max shook his head. “The Hunt are Riders, Hawk. Riders who became addicted to dra’aj, needing more and more, until it changed them utterly.”

  “Addicts.” Hawk sat straighter in his chair. “Cassandra discovered this?”

  “She did. She saw the beginnings of it in the Basilisk Prince. The inability to hold his true shape, the uncontrollable hunger.”

  Hawk was frowning. “What are you suggesting, then? Some kind of ‘Hounds Anonymous’? Hello, my name’s Incisor, and I admit I’m powerless over dra’aj?” He shook his head. “It will not work, and it is too risky; we have to kill them.”

  Max studied the surface of his own wine. “You forget that Cass is a Healer.”

  “Max, if you know addiction, you know not everyone can be cured. We can’t take such a chance with the Hunt.”

  “We already have. The Rider, Stormwolf.” Max fixed Hawk’s amber eyes with his own. “He was a Hound.”

  Hawk froze, his cup halfway to his lips. “The Rider she sent to the Shadowlands? Who sat in my home and drank my fino? He’s a Hound?”

  “Not anymore.”

  Head tilted to one side, Hawk raised his hand, index finger extended, mouth open to lecture. But before he could speak, three Wild Riders, one from each Ward, presented themselves in front of Max, far enough away for courtesy, but too close to be ignored. Max looked up and nodded.

  “Your pardon, Dawntreader.” Since Max was himself, technically, a Wild Rider, they sometimes took the liberty of calling him by his name, rather than his title. “As the High Prince is not here, we have brought this supplicant to you, for judgment.”

  Behind the Wild Riders stood a pair of Moonwards. At Max’s gesture, the older of the two stepped forward. Her jet-black hair was loose and curly, falling a
lmost to her knees, and in sharp contrast to the gra’if mail shirt that was all she wore over full green trousers and polished dark brown half-boots. She indicated her companion with a wave of her pale hand.

  “My Prince,” she said. “I am Falcondream, my mother was Flight of Arrows, and the Roc guides me. This is my son, and the only one of my blood I have left to me. I was among the guard of Windwatcher, and he will speak for me if needed, but I am here to speak for my son.”

  The younger Moonward Rider resembled his mother in his alabaster skin, and the curl of his black hair. He was dressed, however, in the purple colors of the Basilisk Prince, and he seemed to find it difficult to raise his green eyes from the toes of his scuffed boots.

  “Can you look up, and name yourself?” Max tried to keep his voice gentle, but judging from the young Rider’s reaction, there must have been some steel in it.

  The green eyes flicked up at Max, down, and up again. “I—I’m Visionflight, my mother you know, and the Dragon guides me.” The green eyes were dry, but Max thought he could hear tears in Visionflight’s voice. Yeah, and what kind of tears? Rage? Frustration? Or remorse?

  “How do you come to be here, Visionflight?” Max leaned forward, his elbows on his knees.

  At first the young one said nothing, until Falcondream gave him a nudge that was very nearly a push.

  “I’d like to offer my service to the High Prince.” The words were spoken almost too quickly to make any sense. The mother rolled her eyes and let out a long sigh that spoke of her own frustration.

  “You might as well tell me the whole story,” Max said, now leaning back in his chair, fingertips braced against fingertips.

  “I went to serve the Basilisk Prince—” His mother clouted him. “Ow! I mean Dreamer of Time.”

  “That’s all right, Falcondream,” Max said. “I’m not offended by anyone calling him a Prince.”

  In a voice that wavered between surliness and wheedling, Visionflight told a story Max had already heard many times. How he had wanted to serve in the court of the High Prince and lots of Riders had said the Basilisk would be the next one, how he had never risen to any position of importance, and on and on. Finally he wound down, and looked at Max with a mix of hope and defiance in his face.