My Shadow’s Keeper Part 2: Ancestors (Excerpt)

By Rory Hatchel

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            Ximo cracked his knuckles and stepped out of the brush. The two Dwarf sentinels grabbed their weapons as soon as they saw his skin. He raised up his hands, showing he was unarmed.

            “I mean you no harm.” He smiled. It was a good lie, with a ring of truth to it. From behind him an arrow sprang forth into the forehead of the Dwarf on the right. There was a small puff of sound, and Lucan appeared behind the other Dwarf, putting a dagger against his throat and pulling. Both Dwarves crumpled soundlessly onto a cushion of Thiala’s magic. She and Dara ran up behind him.

            The plan was simple: the quiet ones would do their work while Ximo caught any stragglers. They would clean up the bodies later, but as he approached, he couldn’t help but sink low and say a quick prayer over the dead.

            “May your descendants keep your story.” He slid his thumb down their forehead to the tip of their nose and stood up straight. Both Dwarves had crossbows. One had an axe and the other a warhammer. Ximo grabbed the hammer and tossed it in his hands. He gave it a few practice swings and let himself relax. Korthar was back in the brush; he’d get it later. In the meantime, this would have to do.

            The sticky blackness of the mines didn’t bother him as he stepped in. He could make out figures and even shadows in the pale light. The only places he couldn’t see through were the spots of what his squad called Darkness. No light penetrated that. It made Ximo uncomfortable to be around so much of it. They claimed they could look through it, but to Ximo, it was worse than a wall, worse than blindness. There wasn’t just nothing in the darkness; it was oblivion.

            A Dwarf with his neck covered in blood, making a horrible gurgling sound, stumbled out of one patch of Darkness. Ximo lifted his new hammer mechanically and swung for the knee. He didn’t need to risk hitting armor and causing more noise. The man would bleed out, he just needed to stay still.

            Ximo took a deep breath and thought of Ber. He always wanted to see the Sungrounds. And yet, Vaeril sent us back underground. Ximo smirked at the thought, heading into the opening of the mineshaft.

            The caverns were carved for people of various heights, but clearly Dwarves ran the place. Ximo stared at one desk covered in food and cards. He imagined crushing the chairs if he tried to sit at that table. Still seated in those chairs, as if frozen in time, were four Dwarves playing cards. Small trails of red dripped down the chest of two. The others had their necks broken. Ximo noticed the bulge of bone awkwardly jutting to the side despite his best efforts. While keeping his eyes on the tunnels sprawling out from this room, he ran his thumb from their forehead to nose, muttering his prayer.

            The room split up into three different hallways. Each path was obscured by the milky fog of Darkness. Behind them men were dying, but Ximo only heard the gentle shuffle of feet or the graceful collapse of bodies. The mine whispered as its caretakers tripped into the afterlife. Somewhere men were still at work, harvesting the precious saltpeter that Vaeril was after. They would never know that their friends, their brethren, were going to the Father’s house. They had no clue how close they were to heaven.

            Thiala stepped out of one patch of Darkness. The stuff clung to her like mist as she approached. Her acolyte’s robes were splattered with fresh blood that would soon be impossible to tell apart from the intricate red patterns. She said the markings spoke of her god, but she didn’t act like a cleric. More like a fanatic.

            Thiala quickly made the hand signals for all clear. Ximo gestured back, asking if there were any problems. She shook her head. Ximo asked how many, and she flashed him a ten, then a zero. Ximo sighed. He hoped Thiala hadn’t reaved them. It was the one kindness she could give a foe, but it was a foolish hope. Thiala had no desire to show kindness to the Empire, even if they had been honorable.

            Two Dwarves dashed out of the Darkness of a different tunnel. The panic in their eyes quickly retreated as they took sight of Thiala and Ximo. They raised their mattocks and swung for her, but Ximo was quicker. He reached out his hand, and a thin veil of light wrapped itself around his squad-mate. Faintly, as though a reflection in a window, the image of Ximo’s ancestors crawled over the thin wall of light. They deflected the blow of the two Dwarves, giving Thiala time to react as Ximo worked to close the gap.

            Thiala’s form melted like smoke. She would appear on the other side of the cavern, probably behind Ximo, while he charged. One Dwarf gawked at where Thiala had just been while Ximo took the opening to crush his ribs with one long swing of the hammer. The miners hadn't been armored, and the only sound it made was the cracking of bone and the thwump of air as the Dwarf crumbled to the ground.

            The other was faster and went to swing for Ximo’s exposed side. Ximo tried to twist, making the man miss if not score a weak strike, but he was too slow, too old. Instead, the Dwarf, beardless now that Ximo could look at him, held his strike in mid-air above his head, frozen. Tendrils of shadow wrapped around his wrist, holding him there. Ximo muttered a silent thanks to Thiala and stood, pulling back his hammer to swing.

            Before he could, another tendril of shadow wrapped around the young Dwarf’s neck. The tendril jerked to the side, and the snap of spine and neck filled the room. Ximo turned around, and Thiala’s hands glowed with an eerie grey. She smiled, dropping the spell as she approached. She kept her eyes on her prey, but Ximo’s old battle training kicked in. He closed his eyes, listening intently for any other Dwarves coming through the tunnels. He’d hate to be caught off guard twice.

            When he opened his eyes, Thiala was standing over the younger Dwarf. Her fingers were making a pinching motion, but she held onto nothing. Ximo’s eyes widened, and he turned to the first Dwarf. He was dead, but in the dim torchlight of the mine, his corpse cast no shadow. He looked back at Thiala to see her pulling away from the young Dwarf, and as she did, his shadow followed her hand, moving towards the light as it crept closer and closer to her hand.

            “Do you think they knew what role they were playing in our suffering?” she asked, looking at Ximo while she slowly reaved.

            “I doubt it,” was all he could manage to say. He hoped his eyes said more. He hoped his body told Thiala exactly how disturbing and grotesque her actions were to him.

            “Surely they know what saltpeter is for.” She was immune to his disgust. She and the twins ignored Ximo as often as they could. They were a third his age and all twisted followers of Entropos. If they were the future, part of Ximo was glad Ber wouldn’t see it.

            Thiala gave a final tug and the shadow of the Dwarf ripped free silently. It pooled around her, tangling like a loose cloth. She lifted it and put it into her satchel. What else did she keep there? Hopes and dreams?

            “What?” she asked when she saw Ximo still staring. “You don’t mind, do you?”

            Ximo shrugged and turned back, facing the patches of Darkness and readying a stance in case more stragglers escaped the twins. “I don’t want a distraction,” he muttered.

            She must have accepted the answer because she entered another cloud of Darkness wordlessly. When she was gone, Ximo looked down at the young Dwarf with no shadow. He’d seen so few male Dwarves without beards. They looked no different than children, though their musculature said otherwise. He knelt down and ran his thumb over the young Dwarf’s forehead to nose, committing him to the Father’s House, though he knew that was impossible now.

            He looked around the room at the other corpses filling the mines. They all sat still, never knowing today would be their last. The twins had killed them, but Thiala had damned them. She damned them all.

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