Unbroken Chain: The Darker Road (single books)

  Unbroken Chain: The Darker Road

  ( Single books )

  Jaleigh Johnson

  Jaleigh Johnson

  Unbroken Chain: The Darker Road

  PROLOGUE

  THE VILLAGE OF TINNIR, RASHEMEN

  4 MARPENOTH, THE YEAR OF DEEP WATER D RIFTING (1480 DR)

  The body is here, sister,”said the ethran, the village healer. “Bhalla be merciful, the blood-”

  “Be quiet,” Sree hissed. “You’ll wake the child. I’ll not have her remember her mother this way.” However, Sree did smell the blood. Behind her mask, the reek of it mingled in her nostrils with the scent of cold earth.

  The house was an old stone nub set into the side of a low hill. Heather roots poked through the ceiling. Wisps of smoke and ash rose from a dying cookfire, and by the light of the gray-gold embers, Sree saw the body of Yaraella lying on her back in the corner of the main room.

  Slack fingers cradled an ivory-handled knife protruding from her abdomen. The blood pool had soaked her thick brown braid and spread to the threshold of the small bedchamber Yaraella shared with her daughter, Elina.

  “Wait outside,” Sree instructed the ethran.

  Sree stepped over the coagulating pool and entered the bedchamber. Yaraella’s child was barely four years old. She slept soundly, buried underneath thick wool blankets with only her tiny nose and a thick mop of brown hair showing.

  Bhalla, show mercy, Sree prayed silently, echoing the ethran’s words. Let her sleep through this nightmare.

  The witch lifted the sleeping child and the blankets from her bed and carried her quickly from the hut. The little girl sighed once and buried her face in Sree’s shoulder. She didn’t wake.

  Outside, the horizon shone gray with predawn light. The air tasted of frost, and Sree’s boots crunched on the white-tipped grass. Reina, the ethran, was waiting. Though she was not yet a hathran like Sree, the younger witch wore a mask at Sree’s command. Pain and grief lay heavily on the village tonight. The witches would show neither emotion.

  “Take off my cloak,” Sree said. “Put it around the child. Cover her head with the hood, or the frost will have her ears.”

  Reina did as Sree told her, and when she’d properly swaddled the child, Sree handed her off to the ethran. Removing a folded piece of parchment from her pouch, Sree read Yaraella’s letter again silently. The parchment was ash-stained from lying too near the fire. Addressed to Elina, it was a short message, full of love. It would be years before the child could read it herself.

  “Why did she do it, Sister?” Reina asked. “She left her child behind, alone in the world.”

  “She is no more alone than you or I,” the hathran said calmly. “Elina will be cared for. I’ll see to it myself.”

  “But will she be like her mother?” Reina stroked the child’s back. “Bhalla forbid such a thing, if death be the result.”

  “We must not let it happen,” Sree said. Squinting in the dim light, she thought she saw something in the child’s hand. She folded back the hood of her cloak to see. The child clutched a small square object against her chest.

  “What is it?” Reina asked. “A doll?”

  Sree shook her head. “It’s a box.” Gently, she worked it from the child’s grip. The box was made of dark wood with purple heather flowers painted on the lid. Sree opened it and peered inside.

  “What’s in it?” Reina asked.

  “Nothing,” Sree said. No cherished treasures, no memories of the life the little girl had shared with her mother. Sree gripped the box tightly and then slid it into the pocket of the child’s sleeping shirt. “Whatever was in it is gone now.”

  IKEMMU, THE SHADOWDARK

  4 MARPENOTH, THE YEAR OF DEEP WATER DRIFTING (1480 DR)

  Ilvani fell asleep in her bed surrounded by carved wood and stone boxes, glass spheres, and even rags hastily bound with string-anything that would hold memories. Precious creatures they were, but easily lost. She had to keep them confined, or they would fly away on the wind. She’d already lost too many.

  Ilvani dreamed, and in her mind, she gasped at the vision rising before her eyes, a landscape she’d only ever beheld in books and paintings. She saw a vast pine forest in shades of deep green, the ground covered in snow. Clouds veiled the winter sun. What light there was reflected diamond bright off the snow. She stood on a path that wound through the trees and disappeared into shadow.

  She walked barefoot, wanting to feel the cold, soft snow beneath her feet, but the dream denied her these sensations. The air was full of silent expectancy. Without knowing how, Ilvani understood that someone waited for her here.

  A white rabbit appeared in front of her. When it saw Ilvani, the creature hunkered down in the snow, pressing its body flat against the ground until only its black eyes were distinguishable from the white blanket.

  Ilvani stepped forward and extended her hand to the creature. The rabbit jumped up on its hind legs, nose twitching, and vanished.

  “Where did you go, little snow rabbit?” the dreaming Ilvani said. Her words turned to fog on the air and disappeared. Another memory gone, but that didn’t trouble her. Only the vital ones were worth catching.

  “Will you help me?”

  The voice drifted down from the pines. Ilvani looked up and saw a young woman perched on a bare branch. Her tattered wool skirt bunched underneath her, exposing legs blue with cold and feet as bare as Ilvani’s. A thick brown braid lay against her neck. Her face was the color of the snow.

  Humans are so beautiful, Ilvani thought, but this one’s eyes give her away. They were glass spheres, black like the snow rabbit’s but empty.

  “I can’t help you,” Ilvani said. “You’re dead.”

  A trickle of blood ran down the woman’s leg behind her knee. It dripped from her heel and made a bright stain on the snow.

  “Won’t you help lift me down?” the woman pleaded. Her dead eyes filled with tears. She reached for Ilvani with strong, solid arms, arms she should have been able to use to lift herself down from the tree.

  Ilvani looked at her own arms. They were thin gray sticks, kindling from a dead fire. They had power but no strength. She already knew their limits. In a dark hole in the ground, she’d been tested and failed.

  Involuntarily, she touched her hair. The pale red strands had grown back, but they were still uneven, wild. It sickened her to run a comb through them. The comb always turned to fingers, and the fingers reeked of dirt, sweat, and her blood.

  Ilvani dropped her hand to her side and waited until her trembling body calmed.

  Memories were strange and malicious creatures. The cruel ones refused to fade, and she’d never found a box that could hold them.

  “Are you all right?”

  Ilvani had almost forgotten the dead woman and her rabbit eyes. The dream went on without her. If she wanted it to end, she must play her part.

  She stepped to the foot of the pine tree and raised her gray arms. “Give me your hands,” she said. “I’ll help you, snow rabbit, but then leave me alone.”

  The woman clasped Ilvani’s forearms. A shock, like a spell gone awry, shot into her chest. Gasping, Ilvani dragged the woman from the tree, and they fell, stumbling, into the snow.

  Except it wasn’t snow. Ilvani looked around and beheld the vastness of the Shadowfell plain. Purple lightning cut the horizon, and the cloud scud seemed to fall out of the sky and drift along the ground. A dust storm approached.

  “Where are we?” the woman asked. She sounded frightened. She reached for Ilvani’s hand, but Ilvani slapped it away. “Can’t you help me, please?”

  Her voice was a needle in Ilvani’
s skin. Pleading, crying, begging-none of it did any good. Help yourself or die.

  Shaking her head furiously, Ilvani suppressed a cry of her own. She wanted to go away, to hide in that safe place in her mind-the place where she made no memories. Her dreams never let her. In dreams, she faced everything.

  “Look at the sky!” the woman cried, pointing to the horizon.

  Ilvani looked, but she didn’t understand what she saw. The dust storm bore down on them, but at its center was a calm space, an eye in the vast, deadly squall. Within the eye a darkness formed, growing arms, legs, and a head. The dark figure walked toward them across the plain and dragged stinging, slashing death behind it.

  “Run,” Ilvani said. She grabbed the woman by the shoulder and tried to turn her, but the little rabbit sat rigid in the grip of her own fear. The wind whipped up in a vortex, snatched the woman’s braid, and began to pull her bodily toward the eye of the storm.

  “Help me!” the woman shrieked, grabbing for Ilvani. The women locked arms again, but the force dragging them was immense. Yet it did not pull at Ilvani. The figure in the storm didn’t want her. It wanted the little snow rabbit.

  A red stain soaked the front of the woman’s dress. Ilvani felt the lifeblood flowing out of her. The woman whimpered in fear and pain.

  “Hold on!” Ilvani cried, but her voice got lost in the roaring wind. It didn’t matter. Her grip faltered, and the woman’s hands, slick with fear sweat, slipped down her arms. She screamed and screamed, but the storm tore her away from Ilvani. She flew through the air like a flailing doll and disappeared into the dark figure’s arms.

  The weight released, Ilvani fell to the ground. The woman’s blood covered her arms. She didn’t have time to wipe it off before the storm was upon her. The dust covered her body, blinding and choking her.

  Ilvani woke and screamed. She clawed at her hair and eyes, trying to scrape away dust that wasn’t there-more than dust. There were symbols, words whispered in a language she’d never heard before. They crawled over her skin, her ears, and into her mouth. She tried to speak, and the words that came out were in the same language. What was she saying? She screamed again and reclaimed the shadar-kai tongue.

  Fully awake, Ilvani looked down at herself. Blood streaked her palms where she’d dug sharp nails into her skin. One of her boxes, the Ashok box, lay in her lap. While she slept, her hand had instinctively clutched it. Unlike the others, this box contained something more than memories. It held tattered remnants of parchment and ashes-tools that had helped save a life.

  There was no dust storm, no snow rabbit. For a breath, all seemed right and normal-as normal as could be expected. Then she widened her gaze and realized she was not in her room at Tower Athanon where she’d fallen asleep.

  She was on the Shadowfell plain.

  Cold wind whipped at her hair. The ground beneath her was unforgivably hard, and her body ached from lying on it too long. Had she walked all the way out here while her mind slept?

  The landmarks around her, the rock crags, and rutted caravan paths, looked familiar. She knew she wasn’t more than a mile from the portal to Ikemmu. The guards must have let her pass, thinking her awake and aware, perhaps on an errand for the city. She’d often made such journeys, but that was before her capture.…

  Ilvani cradled the Ashok box between her hands. It hadn’t come open. The memories were still inside. She could picture them, if she closed her eyes. She saw Ashok’s face.

  The snow rabbit was there too. She heard the woman’s screams as she flew away into the storm. Ilvani hadn’t been able to stop it. Her strength had failed her again.

  Ilvani stretched out on the ground with her ear pressed against the earth. She wished her brother, Natan, were here. He would have led her back home, stayed with her until she fell asleep. He would have held the storm at bay.

  But Natan was dead, and the storm was still coming. She smelled the dust rising from the dry plain. The wind whispered to her in that same incomprehensible tongue echoing in her mind. She heard it in the earth. Symbols danced in front of her eyes, pictures she’d never seen before, images she couldn’t banish from her thoughts.

  To escape the sounds, the symbols, and the storm, she went to that safe place in her mind, the space of oblivion she’d created to cope with her mad world.

  All the while Ilvani held the Ashok box in her hands.

  CHAPTER ONE

  IKEMMU, THE SHADOWDARK

  5 MARPENOTH, THE YEAR OF DEEP WATER DRIFTING (1480 DR)

  "You can’t kill a ghost.”

  Ashok appeared on Ikemmu’s vast guard wall and whipped his spiked chain above his head. Flesh and feeling returned to his incorporeal body, and he brought the weapon slashing down to tangle with a pair of bright katars.

  The owner of the deadly push-blades, Cree, used them to drag Ashok to the edge of the thirty-foot wall. The dizzying height would have terrified a human, but Ashok and Cree were shadar-kai. Dancing close to the edge got the blood pumping in Ashok’s veins and brought a surge of energy to his limbs. He let Cree pull him almost to the brink before he abandoned his weapon and dived for Cree’s legs to unbalance him.

  As usual, the young shadar-kai was quicker. He yanked his katars free of the slack chain and jumped aside. Swinging overhand, he aimed for Ashok’s exposed neck, but he stopped the blades before they cut flesh.

  “I’ve seen that trick before, remember?” Cree spoke the words haltingly. He was out of breath, as was Ashok.

  Ashok rolled over onto his back and kissed the edge of Cree’s katar. “You have a good memory.” He sprang to his feet. “But someday I’ll get to you before those blades reach my neck.”

  “Keep boasting,” Cree’s brother, Skagi, drawled from a few yards down the wall. “Only way to slow that one down is to hack off his legs.”

  “Don’t worry. Even crawling, I’d still outpace you, Brother,” Cree said cheerfully. He sheathed his katars.

  Ashok watched the brothers exchange insults, but he had to agree with Cree. The two brothers couldn’t have been more different in their builds and fighting styles. Cree was smaller and wiry. He kept his close-cropped brown hair shaved at the temples to display a pair of curved blade tattoos. When he fought, he aimed to end the battle quickly, before his opponent had a chance to feel the blade slip between his ribs.

  Skagi was his brother’s opposite. Built like a block of stone, Skagi towered over most of his opponents and used blunt force to bring them down. A field of green tattoos covered the exposed upper half of his body, a wild forest that depicted chains and spikes wound together. His scarred lower lip gave him a grisly smile that his enemies rightly feared.

  “What about it, Ashok?” Skagi said. He drew his falchion. “Did this pup take all the fight out of you, or are you ready for a real match?”

  Ashok stood at the edge of the wall. The cave breezes ruffled his long gray hair. Beneath his bone scale armor, sweat cooled on his skin. His heart still beat wildly from the force of the sparring match. Tense muscles demanded an outlet for the energy. He wanted to take on both brothers. He’d done it once, not far from this same spot, when he’d first come to the city of Ikemmu. It seemed like a lifetime ago.

  Taking deep breaths, Ashok reined in the wild impulses shivering through his body. Asserting that deep control was its own kind of pain, as sharp and reviving as a dagger slash to the skin but not nearly as damaging. Ashok used that pain the way all shadar-kai must-to stay alive.

  When he was in control of himself, Ashok grinned at Skagi. “Another time,” he said. “Neimal wants us.” He pointed down the wall behind Skagi, where a shadar-kai witch clothed in gray and black robes stood surrounded by guards. She gestured to them imperiously.

  Neimal was visible from any point on the wall by the sword she held in her hand. Purple fire danced along the blade, reacting to the portal set into the cavern wall several yards away. Strangely, Neimal had not yet activated it to admit the caravan that approached the city from the Shadowfell above
.

  As he followed the brothers to where the witch stood, Ashok looked out over Ikemmu, the city of towers. Four spires rose in the distance: the towers Makthar, Pyton, Hevalor, and Athanon. His gaze lingered on Athanon, the soldiers’ house and the domain of Uwan, the city leader. Though the city appeared calm, with the shadar-kai and the trader races mingling as usual, Ashok felt an inexplicable restlessness, as if the city itself were waiting for something. He didn’t know what it was, but he’d sensed the feeling grow over the past several tendays.

  Cree nudged him. “Something wrong?”

  Ashok forced a careless grin onto his face. “Afraid you might have bruised my tender neck?”

  Cree scoffed. “You know I’m not. You look weary, and you haven’t been weary for eight months. What’s wrong?”

  Ashok’s smile turned rueful. He’d forgotten that Cree was often more perceptive than his brother. “Last night, I had strange dreams.”

  “What sort of dreams?” Cree asked.

  “I don’t remember,” Ashok said. “But I thought I heard someone screaming.…”

  Cree’s expression reflected Ashok’s concern. “Do you think it’s the nightmare?”

  Ashok felt an involuntary surge of excitement at the mention of the demon horse he’d trained and released back to the Shadowfell. “I don’t see how,” Ashok said. “As you said, it’s been eight months since we saw the beast.”

  “Maybe you should ask Uwan about it,” Cree suggested.

  “Uwan has more important things to worry about than what goes on in my dreams,” Ashok said.

  Cree started to reply, but Ashok motioned him silent. They were within earshot of Neimal and the other guards on the wall. The witch looked more agitated than usual.

  “The caravan is overdue,” she told them. “The guards at the upper portal sighted a dust storm coming fast across the plain. They believe the caravan is somewhere in the middle of it.”

  “Send a patrol out after it,” Ashok said. “If we can get to them, we can guide them through.”