Shadow Witch: Horror of the Dark Forest Read online

  Thom walked back down the main road with nothing and nobody to buffer the gales. The warmth of ale and fire left his bones, pulled out through his skin by the shrieking wind. With his head lowered against the blowing snow, he didn’t see the approaching mare or its rider. The horse’s whinny brought Thom’s head up with a start.

  A cloak of red and gold—the colors of the Mylan Guard—swirled around the figure riding horseback. With the sun behind him, the rider became a blackened silhouette with muted light wrapped around his frame. He appeared like a mythical hero walking out of a storybook. Thom cupped his hands over his eyes until he made out the sharp features of Gavin Lambert.

  Gavin dismounted with a grace that belied his aging body. Gray of hair and beard, the former first soldier of the Mylan Guard strode forward to meet him. No taller than Thom, Gavin’s heavyset, muscular frame approached with an air of confidence that seemed to add several inches to his height. A gleaming broadsword hung from his waist with a golden eagle on the hilt, the symbol of the guard. The villagers of Droman Meadows lived without their own soldiers and took comfort in having men like Gavin Lambert riding within the borders.

  “Good day to you, Thom Meeks.”

  “Good day, Gavin.”

  “What is on the good Master Sams’s menu this day?”

  “Lamb, but not for another hour. Rowan is still polishing the floors after some mugs were broken.”

  “Broken? I trust there was not any trouble at the inn?”

  “Nothing he couldn’t handle.”

  Gavin grinned wide. “I believe that to be true, Thom. I have never seen a man in these parts who could give Rowan Sams real trouble. But tell me, who caused the commotion?”

  Thom shuffled his feet. “Rowan, himself, broke the mugs.”

  “Yet there was someone, or perhaps two someones who pushed him to do it, I think. I’ve never known Rowan Sams to risk damage to his own inn.”

  Thom nodded. “The Felcik brothers all but accused him of being in league with the Shadow.”

  Gavin grimaced. “The Shadow,” he said. “Nothing but dark fairytales and the whispers of old women, but an insult of the lowest order. I trust Rowan knocked some sense into both of them.”

  “They ran out before he could get his hands on them.”

  Gavin leaned back and laughed. “Lucky for them. I would not want to be on the wrong side of Rowan Sams. What madness overcame those idiots?”

  “Rowan told them he always keeps a surplus of food, in preparation for a winter such as this. Yet they were convinced he was being aided by the Shadow.”

  Gavin looked to the sky and shook his head.

  “There has never been a winter such as this. Flowers should be in bloom and still the snow flies,” he said.

  The wind tumbled down the Wyvern Mountains and he looked over his shoulder as though something was coming up behind them. “The fools should be thankful there is still somewhere in the village to have a hot meal. If this cold doesn’t break soon, the inn may become the only source of food in Droman Meadows.”

  Wisps of snow skittered across the road like miniaturized versions of the swirling storms that raked the land in spring. The noontime sun fought through the suffocating clouds, shunting the two men’s shadows close to their bodies. As Gavin looked east down the main road, his eyes followed the Mylan Road that branched northward.

  “Perhaps if a few of us were to make the ride to Mylan, we would not be without food, should winter linger,” Thom said. He looked in the same direction as Gavin.

  Gavin turned back to Thom, regarding him with sharp, blue eyes. “That be a most dangerous ride. Nothing but brigands and rogues between here and there.”

  “So dangerous it would not be worth the effort? I have no more than two weeks’ worth of food to feed my family, and still the spade meets the soil with nothing but ice. If I were to ride to Mylan, would you come?”

  “And leave the village undefended?” Gavin asked.

  “Is there a danger to the village you are hiding from me?”

  Gavin’s stare was hard now, the red and gold of his cloak whipping about his body like the crackling flames of the Fair Haven Inn fireplace. “I will not leave Droman Meadows. We have no guard as it is. If word were to spread no one of arms was in the village, cutthroats would descend on us like vultures.”

  “Then perhaps I must go alone.”

  “You’d be dead in less than a day if you traveled alone along the Mylan Road. Every delivery wagon that arrives from Mylan comes with no fewer than three armed guards. And that is in a normal spring with no shortage of food. Even the peddlers arrive with hired mercenaries, lest their wares be stolen and their throats slit.”

  “If I traveled by night, keeping to the shadows—”

  “You would be murdered and Kira and your four daughters would be left to fend for themselves for the rest of their days. Is that the fate you would choose for them?”

  Thom pulled his cloak tight against his body, feeling the wind sapping away what little remained of his body heat. But it was not the cold that made him shiver. Thom detected something hidden behind Gavin’s eyes, a truth more terrifying than cutthroats and brigands.

  What evil resides between Droman Meadows and Mylan?

  “Then I suppose I must join the other fools of this village who sit back and do nothing, wishing for this endless winter to break.”

  As Thom moved past him, Gavin gripped his arm. “Don’t do anything foolish.”

  Gavin’s eyes stared hard into Thom’s. The man’s grip was like an iron clamp, yet when Thom pulled his arm away, Gavin released and let Thom pass.

  “Do not take the Mylan Road. I mean what I say.”

  Gavin’s voice trailed off, swallowed whole by the wind carrying the icecaps of the Wyvern Mountains in its breath. Pulling his cloak about him, Thom lowered his head to the gale.

  Chapter 3

  Thom kept his past buried in a casket of privacy. His wife knew more about him than most in Droman Meadows, and even that was only a sliver of what made him into a man. Kira knew a tribe of elderly women raised him as an orphan. The village both feared and admired the crones, for they housed the forgotten ones–although with suspicious motives. The women in the village told stories about what the crones did with the children out in the woods, far from the accusing eyes of the rest of Droman Meadows. They talked of bizarre rituals and worship, even ritualized sacrifice. Kira never pressed Thom on his childhood and he never offered information.

  Thom’s parents traveled through the kingdom as part of a nomadic troupe of entertainers. His mother, Gladia, bore seven children to Thom’s father, Hegg. The youngest of them, Thom did not know his brothers and sisters. Before he saw his first full moon, Gladia believed her son would be dead. As an infant, Thom struggled to breathe, his face turning blue before he would pass out. It would happen three or four times every day and Hegg began making arrangements to bury his youngest son in a potter’s field when they reached the next village.

  The troupe arrived in Droman Meadows three weeks before the fall harvest, a time when villagers expected the last drip of peddlers and entertainers before the long, cold winter and its bitter bite. Hegg helped raise the tents and tend to the caged beasts that became an integral part of the traveling show. When he returned to the family’s camp on the outskirts of the temporary fairground, Gladia faced Hegg with Thom swaddled in her arms. He saw his son’s shallow breath and the color in the infant’s face became the dull blue of a winter sky.

  Hegg looked into his wife’s eyes and past her watery pain before realizing his youngest son would not survive the night. He would have to finalize the arrangements he hoped to never make.

  But Hegg and Gladia knew something else as well. Their youngest and last child, Thom, had the curse. The gnarled witches of the Old Land warned them. They said the Shadow, while never predictable, could manifest its most menacing powers in the youngest of the line. After Gladia gave birth to their sixth child, a daughter named Ne
la, Gladia and Hegg spent the better part of her first year examining her for signs. To their relief, none appeared.

  So when Gladia conceived again, most unexpectedly, she knew the chance existed. So did Hegg. Thom’s breathing difficulties made the future more certain. The couple enjoyed the excitement of Thom’s birth, at the same time dreading what they knew could be.

  One of the old crones from the outskirts of Droman Meadows appeared in their camp that day, a mere hour after Gladia met Hegg with a blue baby in her arms. Hegg would never know the woman’s true intention, but she looked into their eyes and ate the grief building up inside them. She tasted their conflict, wishing their cursed child would die and be free of the Shadow’s infestation, at the same time clinging to the hope he would survive both the physical and spiritual ailment.

  The woman extended her hands to Gladia and, without speaking, asked for the child. Gladia looked at Hegg and he nodded. With arms shaking and through a wall of silent tears, Gladia handed Thom to the woman. As soon as the child left her grasp, Gladia clawed at the baby’s wrap but the old women held fast. She shook her head back and forth before uttering a few words to the grieving parents. Her voice rattled like a rusty chain.

  “He shall live, but he will be dead to you. That is the only way.”

  Gladia began to speak when Hegg cut her off, holding his hand up to his wife. He faced the old woman.

  “The Shadow. Can you protect him?” he asked.

  “He is the youngest?” the old woman asked.

  Gladia nodded.

  “One cannot dispel the Shadow, only provide moments of temporary light.”

  Gladia looked at Hegg. She knew the power of the Shadow, the way it could infest the righteous like an unseen plague. And yet, she could not turn away from her newborn son. Hegg embraced his wife and whispered in her ear, absolving her of a guilt she would take to her grave.

  “Go,” Hegg said, turning his head to the woman but still holding on to his wife. “Just go.”

  The old woman turned with Thom tucked to her bosom. Gladia took a step in pursuit before Hegg clasped her shoulder. He held her tight, for her own good and for his. They watched the woman glide through the meadow and toward the trees, taking Thom away forever. Seven days later, the troupe collapsed the tents, loaded the carts and returned to the Mylan Road. The dark, thick smoke from the chimney of the Fair Haven Inn would be the last they saw of Droman Meadows and the final memory of their youngest son, Thom.

  Thom knew nothing of his birth parents. The old women raised him along with several other forgotten children, misfits and cast offs from the kingdom’s whores not careful enough to protect their livelihood. When he began to see the symbols at age five, Thom knew he was not like other children. A year later, the squalid orphanage in the woods burnt to the ground. All of the old women died along with several of the children. Thom and two others survived and the good families of Droman Meadows took them in. His mind erased those years, protecting him from the painful memory of his beginnings. The fiery destruction of the orphanage would be forever lost to Thom but the feelings of abandonment and isolation remained. And the symbols. The symbols would return to Thom like the deadly chill of winter’s call.

  Chapter 4

  Half a mile beyond the branch road to Mylan, Thom turned left and followed a trail worn by decades of foot traffic. The surrounding meadow would bloom during springtime with wildflowers and tall grasses dancing like joyful children in the mountain breeze. Now it was a mass of frozen mud that rose and fell, stretching toward the forest like a pulsing tumor. Twin oaks to either side of the path stretched leafless toward the sky like skeletal guardians. As he passed between the trees, he thought he heard them screaming as the shrill wind clawed at their trunks.

  The sweet scent of his woodstove danced on the wind for more than a mile, drawing him forward like music from another room. The pleasant smell of cherry and maple woods wrapped about him. If he so desired, he could close his eyes and the scent would lead him to his front door.

  “Daddy.”

  Thom raised his head toward the child's voice coming from up the path.

  “Why aren't you wearing your coat, Delia? Get inside before you freeze yourself,” Thom said.

  The young girl bounded toward him, holding her skirt up to her shins so she did not trip. She wore her blonde hair tied in twin ponytails that bounced with each step, like a bird flapping its wings. She leapt into his arms.

  “Where did you go? Is there music at the inn?”

  “Aren't you full of questions this afternoon, little one? I went to see Rowan, if you must know. Now on to the house before your mother sees you outside without your coat on.”

  He patted her on the behind and she giggled. As they walked together toward the tiny, thatch-roofed house beyond the oaks, she held his hand and skipped as she talked.

  “What did Master Sams have to say? Is he going to have a minstrel singing songs again soon?”

  “I'm sure a singer will come once the weather breaks.”

  “Promise to take me to see him, Daddy?”

  “The Fair Haven Inn is no place for a young girl when a minstrel is performing.”

  “Oh, Daddy. You let Sarra watch the last time,” she said with a frown.

  “Your sister is seventeen and you are ten. When you are her age, I will gladly take you.”

  “I will never be her age. She will always be older than I am.”

  “I meant when you are seventeen.” But Thom's explanation did not quell her indignation. The years between ten and seventeen might as well be two hundred for Delia.

  When Thom entered the doorway, he was met by the scent of cooked leeks and mutton. His mouth watered and he realized he hadn’t eaten since dawn. His stomach rumbled.

  Kira met him at the threshold to the kitchen, her fair hair pulled tight into a bun. “Go play with your sisters,” she said to Delia.

  “But I'm hungry, Mommy. And I want to talk more with Dad.”

  “Dinner will be ready in a few minutes but now I must speak with your father.”

  “Mind your mother,” Thom said.

  Delia turned right down a short hallway toward the girls' bedroom.

  When she heard the door close and the muted sound of laughter follow, Kira wrapped her arms around her husband’s shoulders and looked up into his eyes. “Did you speak to Rowan?”

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  “And there is no food to spare.”

  “Rubbish.”

  “It is true. You know Rowan would lie to no one, least of all to his friends.”

  Kira's shoulders firmed and her eyes flared. “We will find a way. Even if we have to cut our meals in half—”

  “That will not be necessary.”

  “But we will have nothing left beyond the fortnight and the land cannot yet be planted.”

  “The king will not allow any of his villages to starve.”

  “If he cares so, why has there not been a wagon since autumn?”

  “It has only been in the last few weeks the snow has begun to melt off the Mylan Road. But there is no reason to wait for a wagon to come to us when I can make the journey. Now that the road is clear for travel, I can—”

  “You? That is a job for a warrior, not a shepherd.”

  Thom winced at the remark. “Besides Gavin Lambert, there is no warrior in our village. And he will not leave Droman Meadows undefended.”

  She raised an eyebrow, her hazel eyes fixed on his. “Then send someone else. Perhaps those two Felcik fools. Nobody will miss them. Besides, the task of gathering food requires a wagon. We own neither horse nor wagon. Now stop this foolish talk and gather more wood before dinner. Marik says it is going to be most cold for the rest of the week.”

  “Marik? The only weather prediction that old sorcerer ever gets correct is when he calls for the sun to set in the west.”

  “That old sorcerer was the one whose potions cured Krea and Jasmine of their fevers last winter. Hur
ry with the firewood. Dinner will be ready soon.”

  With the ice barely melted off his ears, Thom exited the house. As though the chill wind was lying in wait for him, a sudden gust knocked him off balance and he stumbled against the house. He cursed and righted himself, hefting the wood ax. At least he had plenty of fuel remaining and an endless supply to be harvested from the forest should he ever run low.

  We may be warm, but soon there will be nothing to eat, he thought to himself. What good is it to be warm when one is dying of starvation?

  Loud, sharp cracks intermixed with the howling wind as he split the logs. The winter sucked all of the moisture from the logs leaving them like dried bones in a desert grave.

  The exertion kept his limbs from going numb but nothing could hold back the wintry chill that seemed to burrow itself into his skin. As he caught his breath and wiped a cold sweat off his brow, his eyes looked east to a thin strip of brown interrupting the desolate landscape of bramble and mud hummocks: the Mylan Road. The sun floated past its apex and though the days grew longer, the orb's afternoon descent seemed to be hastened as though the earth dragged it into an open grave.

  The shadows of bare trees stretched longer across the Mylan Road like gnarled claws. At that moment, Dain Felcik’s insane ramblings about the Shadow seemed almost plausible.

  Nonsense. Soon you’ll start to believe in dread wolves, too.

  “Dread wolves,” he muttered before finishing the thought in his head. Why not believe in the childhood tales of half-man, half-wolf creatures that served the forces of evil when the seasons no longer obeyed the calendar?

  From the swaying tree above his head came the whistle of a whippoorwill. The wind raced through the treetops like the wail of a frightened child, the gust carrying the scent of something hidden, something dead, evil. Thom dropped the ax and shivered.

  Chapter 5

  Four days passed without sign of winter’s end, the calendar now closer to summer than the start of spring. And still the food stores diminished like a shallow pond in drought, evaporating.