Short Story: The Shadowed Blade Signed Paperback

• A brutal warlord with two devastating swords.
• The healer who’ll try do anything to stop him.

Desolation hung over the moors in the feeble blue of the thin-stretched sky. Keeper Chesavia battled up the rise through the scrub brush as prickly leaves grabbed at her legs like grasping fingers. Impressions of trails offered easier passage just to her right or off to the left. But there were no trails to follow on the moors. Just the rumor that anchored into the vow she’d made long ago, pulling her relentlessly forward.

Sunshine fell in a soothing shower of life-giving vitalle as it did in other, more lively, parts of the world. There was vitalle in anything that had its own energy, of course. The plants at her feet held their own subtle traces of it, but nothing compared to the sunlight.

She held out her arms and drew a little into herself. It washed through her until her skin hummed with it. The ache in her legs faded, and her sluggish mind roused.

She reached the top of the hill, and the moors rolled away in every direction, fading into blue-green haze on the horizon. The wind shoved at her back, tugging stray hairs out of her braid. Behind her, a blotch of darker green—the green of actual trees—was just visible far to the west. She would have been back in those trees days ago, her tasks in this part of the world long done, if she hadn’t heard the rumor.

Chesavia turned her sigh into a long, bracing exhale.

To the southeast, a smudge of smoke rose at a sharp angle, driven by the wind. From this far away, there was no sign of the tasari, the canvas tents that would be clustered beneath the smoke. It would take hours to reach the clan’s encampment. If she made it by dusk, she’d be surprised.

The thought of approaching the Monnton without the sunlight set her feet to moving again.

An errant eddy of fear escaped her control, and she drew in a long breath, counting heartbeats on the inhale and more on the exhale. Her vow had driven her to plenty of objectively dangerous places over the years, and there was no actual proof that this would be worse than those.

It’s not the violence of the storm, she thought, rubbing the rune tattooed above her wrist. The truth of it steadied her, and her apprehension quieted.

The stories of Chief Naj of the Monnton Clan circled in her mind, varied and sensational. It wasn’t only that he’d conquered three clans in the past half year. Battles were endless on the moors. It was the troubling undercurrents to the stories that she couldn’t quite discount. They said he had some dark power that lent him strength. That in a land where a man’s status was displayed by the quality of his weapons, Naj was so fierce he used only crude, common swords and was still unstoppable. They said that he fought like a man possessed, or—more often—that he really was possessed by a demon that he controlled through an enchanted cuff he wore on his arm.

As a Keeper, Chesavia had spent the last decade of her twenty-eight years collecting and recording such stories. Normally, she’d take these with a fortifying skepticism, but somehow, here on the endless windswept moors, her mind kept circling back to them.

It’s not a demon, she told herself for the tenth time. It’s a man with a dying son. I can endure some discomfort in the effort to fix that. Shifting the pack of healing herbs on her back, she strode forward.

By the time she could make out individual tents, the sun sat low, its light barely tingling across the back of her neck. The air cooled with the coming evening, and she pulled on her black Keeper’s robe. In parts of the world that felt very far from here, it would gain a decent amount of attention. Even in the king’s council it afforded her respect—not from King Lenus, of course, but from most others. Here on the trackless moors, though, no one would recognize it. Which, all things considered, would be to her benefit.

She topped the current rise, and the full size of the Monnton encampment came into view.

Unlike the usual small gathering of tents, ahead of her sprawled a massive collection of tasari. Around them, children dressed in red and gold drove herds of goats and moor sheep and squat southern cattle into pens for the night.

Chesavia’s shadow stretched toward the encampment, and the dark alleys between the tasari seemed to swallow it up. A shiver of fear trickled down her neck, and she fought the urge to back away and separate herself from it.

She drew the evening sunlight into herself, funneling it down into her hands, storing it in the four roughly made rings on her fingers. Vitalle filled them, pressing against the hidden runes carved on the inside of each.

Not a demon, she repeated, but even her internal voice sounded unconvinced.

One of the sentries shouted, pointing at her. She took in the half-dozen men between her and the camp, searching for anything welcoming. Anything but naked hostility. I don’t even need welcoming. After a week on the moors, I’d settle for anything as mild as suspicious curiosity.

But by the time she reached the sentry line, six battle-scarred Monnton warriors blocked her path, their postures and expressions openly hostile. She barely came up to their shoulders, and they gauged her like men assessing a breeding goat. She forced herself not to shift as their eyes trailed over her arms, looking for brands.

So much for curiosity. She soaked in more sunlight, funneling it in streams of tingling warmth down to her hands. Perhaps everyone on the moors has a more mundane sort of demon. One that makes them hate everyone the slightest bit different from themselves.

“I come to see Chief Naj’s son,” she said, keeping her voice even. Their expressions darkened at the audacity of a woman addressing them. “I heard he was wounded in battle.”

“You’re a healer?” asked the only one with streaks of grey in his long black hair. His southern accent caught on consonants.

“From Queensland,” Chesavia answered, her black Keeper’s robe feeling like a beacon proclaiming her identity.

The tallest man circled behind her, and she drew in more light until her palms hummed with it. Don’t do this. Just extend a little trust, like normal, non-paranoid adults.

“You are a long way from home,” the older man said.

The hiss of a drawn sword sounded from behind her, and she couldn’t stop a flinch of uneasiness this time, but it warred with a simmering irritation. “I mean none of you harm. I have vowed to heal any I find in need. No matter how far from—”

Steel glinted as the tall man brought his sword around to her throat, and her untamed fear rose again.

Chesavia grabbed his forearm and pushed vitalle out of the tiny moon-shaped ring on her smallest finger. In a stream of lavender light, which none of the men gave any sign of seeing, it surged up his arm. It raced into his mind even as its warmth drove away her nerves. He grunted, then sagged against her.

As he toppled to the side, she pulled the hilt of his sword out of his limp hand and held it out—point down. The other sentries drew their swords and spread out around her.

She dropped the sword, holding up her hands. “He’s just asleep.”

Her ring was empty, and she poured a little more vitalle into it from her hands, considering the remaining men. She could put one more of them to sleep if they attacked, maybe two, but not all of them. Her hammered ring would take the motivation out of another, leaving him aimless.

Reluctantly, she focused on the thick bronze band on her thumb. Don’t make me use this one, she thought. Her other rings would immobilize three of them, but if all five attacked…

“I’m only here to heal the chief’s son,” she said, trying to make them listen. “Judging from what I’ve heard, I may be the only person on the moors who can.” She met the gaze of the older man, whose expression had grown vicious. A little discomfort can be endured…

When he didn’t answer, she added, “You might not want to harm me before you see if I’m telling the truth.”

“If you’re not speaking the truth, you will not survive long.” He reached for her, then seemed to think better of it and motioned her toward the tents instead. Two more fell in behind them, leaving the others to tend to the man crumpled on the ground.

They entered the cluster of tents, moving quickly through winding alleyways of fabric walls. The thick linen canvas shifted to a higher quality the farther they went.

When they stepped into the open space that would be a town square in any permanent village, she stopped, staring at the extravagant sprawling tasarr that filled the far side. Its fabric was woven in rich hues of scarlet and gold. Easily ten times larger than any tent around it, it dominated the space like a king gracing the common folk with his presence.

The sentry shoved the pommel of his sword into her back, and she stumbled forward, pulling the last of the dying sunlight into her before ducking in through the open flaps of the front entrance. The wind cut off abruptly as she stepped into a wide chamber draped with reds and oranges.

A dozen hanging lanterns cast golden light against the crimson fabric walls. Thick animal hides covered the ground, and fur-covered seats lined the walls. The scent of roasting meat rose from a fire pit in the center of the room, mixing with a citrus smell from incense burning in the far corner. Though the incessant wind blew over the open chimney hole in the roof above it, the air inside the tasarr was still and the sheltering feel of it almost relaxed Chesavia’s shoulders.

Except the entire place was too…unexpected.

Brilliantly colored paintings and tapestries of battles hung on the walls. Artwork that would be at home in a royal palace.

But instead of uptight noblemen, six long-haired, wild-looking men stared at her from where they relaxed around the room. Five of them were dressed in the rough leathers of warriors, but the sixth…

The older sentry drove her to her knees. The vitalle from the sunlight still thrummed in her hands, but she held it in.

“Naj’Tok”—the sentry stepped up beside Chesavia with a bow—“this woman claims to be a healer.”

“She’s too young to be a wise woman,” a dark-haired warrior said from beside her. “And too pretty to be a witch.”

The other warriors laughed.

The sixth man did not.

• 64 pages