Still, thinking of my promise to Evander reminds me that I made another promise, to bring back the missing Dead, and I imagine the disappointment in Valoria’s eyes when she hears I didn’t find her mother. That I’m never coming back.
Brushing dirt from the tunnel floor off my trousers, I let my eyes adjust to the dimness, grateful none of my fire potions exploded in the jump. I’m carrying them in a sack the apothecary gave me because they wouldn’t all fit in my cloak pockets. Then I make sure the vials of blood and honey on my belt are still intact. Just in case.
Potions secure, I march on through the shadows. I still have the whistle Master Cymbre gave me the last time we came here, and I fish it out from underneath my tunic as I near the tunnel’s end, running my thumb over the smooth ivory of the mouthpiece.
The Shade mimicked this whistle before. Hopefully it remembers the sound and comes straight for me.
When the tunnel leads me out into the Deadlands’ twilit landscape, I wade into a knee-high field of roses as big as my fist and check for any Dead who might be lurking nearby. I don’t want the spirits here getting killed, their souls destroyed just because they happened to be in the way of my battle.
A flash of white hovers at the corner of my gaze, but when I turn, all I see are the heavy heads of flowers nodding in a slow breeze.
Someone giggles, a high girlish sound.
“If anyone’s out here,” I call into the field, “you’d better leave now. I’m hunting the foulest Shade that’s ever walked the Deadlands, and you don’t want to be here when I find it. Or it finds me.”
A small pale figure peeks out of the tall flowers, grinning despite the massive pox scars on her face and arms. She seems to be an ordinary spirit, not one of my hallucinations, but something about her stirs a memory and makes me take a second glance.
“I recognize you.” While the spirits have no voices, she can hear mine. “We met in the Ashes. You had a doll. You’d lost your mother, is that right?” When the girl nods, I add, “I hope you’ve found each other again. Now please, go hide somewhere and tell any others you meet to stay hidden, too.”
She nods, her expression determined. As she dashes through the field, grass whipping at her legs, my thoughts wander to Valoria’s Dream City of wide roads and flowing canals that would wash away sickness even from places like the Ashes. I hope King Wylding will find the strength to listen to her ideas someday, even if most of them are unsettling at first. I know he’s happiest seeing Karthians at work, healthy and strong.
Raising the whistle, I make the first shrill blast.
All is silent. This particular Shade seems to like toying with its victims, which means when it finally arrives, it’ll try to take me by surprise. I’ll only have a few heartbeats to light it up in a glorious blaze.
I curl my fingers around one of the fire potions and wait, scanning the horizon. The landscape is gently shifting, bringing the distant mountains closer, and the tunnel I came through has disappeared.
I wait for what feels like hours, until my legs start to ache. I blow the whistle again, my hands shaking slightly in the absence of the calming potion. I didn’t think to bring any with me, but then, I didn’t expect to have to wait this long. Pulling the vial of blood from my belt, I drizzle all the contents on the ground at my feet. Yet still, nothing stirs.
“I’m right here!” I shout into the quiet, to the mountains and the trees, their bare branches stretching toward the sky like grasping fingers. “Come get me! Can’t you smell this nice fresh blood?”
That gives me an idea.
Drawing my sword, I cut a horizontal slash across my arm, gritting my teeth to hold back an embarrassing groan. My head swirls as I shake drops of red onto the roses, fresher blood than what was in my vial.
If the Shade doesn’t come now, I’ll have to wander the Deadlands searching for it. I use my blade to cut a piece of cloth from my cloak, and I’m so focused on tying a tight bandage that the sound of flowers being ripped and trampled steals my breath.
The Shade seems to soar across the field on all fours, the few dark hairs clinging to its skull flying in its wake. I see myself reflected in the smooth expanse of its bony forehead, a shimmering speck in a vast dark sky. Abandoning my sword, I grab a handful of fire potions and hurl them at the oncoming Shade. This is what I’ve been waiting for.
Yet every part of me is screaming run. Flee, and don’t look back.
A billowing cloud of flame erupts in front of the monster, but it only slows for a moment. It hisses and snaps as the fire crackles across its skin. Fighting the urge to run, I have just enough time to grab another handful of potions and throw them at the struggling Shade.
Fire eats away the stump of its missing arm, and the monster howls until my ears ache.
I reach for another potion. Hot breath on my neck makes me spin around, smacking into the grasping bony hands of another Shade. I break a glass vial on its skin, falling into the flowers to escape the blaze that follows.
Crawling backward, I realize with a shudder that the molten pain on my arm isn’t from my sword. I’m burning like the Shades.
I didn’t count on there being two of them.
Beating out the flames with my cloak, I stagger toward the edge of the field. Panic fills my head, a buzzing like a cloud of angry bees, making it hard to think. I could run for the mountains, but the part of me that wants to watch them burn to ash wins out. I freeze in my tracks and turn back toward the two smoldering figures.
Wreathed in fire, struggling for their lives, they look almost human.
Their hissing and spitting drowns out the sound of the third Shade until it’s too close. But I manage to grasp a vial and throw it at the monster whose rotten breath blows my hair back from my face. My shaking hand ruins my aim, and the potion explodes at the monster’s feet. The Shade leaps sideways, and I throw another potion that again smashes near its feet. Every time it darts sideways, I try to hit it with another potion, but my hands aren’t obeying and I continue to miss until there are no vials left.
I could surrender now, a little voice in my head whispers. I could stop fighting and join Evander. Maybe I’d see his face again.
The third Shade snarls at me, rolling on the ground to snuff out a lick of flame. I frantically gaze past it, checking for an escape route, and realize we’re trapped, this monster and I, inside a circle of flames as high as my head and leaping higher with each passing breath. It’s just a matter of which fate will come first: burning alive or being torn apart and eaten.
The Shade lunges, and I stumble backward into the flames. A strong hand yanks me through the fire, then forces me to the ground.
Dimly, like I’m underwater, I hear the Shades’ howls as someone smothers the flames that prick my skin like thousands of needles.