The phantom barked a rough, throaty laugh. “The gods left this land to tear itself apart long ago. Look how selfish thrones have corrupted the power of those gods they pretend to worship.” He stopped his prowl. “But never has a melder faced me here. Until you. Why is that, I wonder?”
I faced away from the palace chamber. Instead of ferns and trees in clay pots, thick darkness flowed over crumbling walls of the outer gates, and opened to the eerie shapes of the distant knolls tucked behind the line of trees on the edge of Stonegate.
This place held no barriers. If I desired to look elsewhere, the mirror would adjust, it would shift; the cold would pull back shadows until I found where I wanted to be.
Bones were in the knolls facing Myrda. As Damir said, there was a sense of where old burial mounds might be unearthed.
“My craft pulls me toward bones of the fallen. We must forage them.”
The phantom said nothing, merely followed me with his gaze.
Beneath the shadow of the hood I could make out a sharp jawline, skin like gray stone. Lips, colorless and pale, were drawn tight. A man of sorts, a demon, perhaps. He stepped in front of me again. Cold rose from him, adding a puff of white in front of my lips with every breath.
“Who are you?” The question came out in a whisper, rough and edged in fear.
“I am he,” his rasp of a voice frosted against my cheek. “And we are we.”
“Yes, you said that before. It explains nothing.” I stepped around him. He allowed it, studying my movements with a harrowing curiosity. Like he might still be considering using his blade to cut me down, but was a bit more intrigued than bloodthirsty.
I flexed and curled my fingers once, twice, and kept my spine rod straight. If he was an illusion of my fears, of my own mind, why was he not fading?
If anything, he’d damn well gotten more solid.
The shadow’s silky presence followed me. Sometimes a coldstrand of mist would curl over my wrists and shoulders, as though he were tasting me with his darkness.
“Screams.” The phantom’s eyes closed into blackness for a breath, then sparked open, almost with a strange touch of humanity when he pulled back. “I remember your screams.” With a quick motion, he drew me against him. I struck a cold, broad chest, and a shriek split from my throat. “How are you doing this?”
“Doing what?” I pushed back. “Leave me be.”
With a rough snarl the shadow recoiled, fastening us together. Left in the space between us was a thin thread of sunlight gold. I screamed and tried to step back. The thread only stretched, and the phantom groaned as if unsettled.
His hellish eyes locked on me. “Whatareyou? What have you done?”
“Nothing! You touched me, now…break this away.” Gods, what if I was trapped here, chained to this creature. I stepped back. The thread between us only stretched longer. “I-I-I don’t know what this is.”
He pulled me closer, his shadowed nose cold and dry along my cheek. “What cruel games the Norns play.” His nearness sent a tremble dancing up my arms, and the whisper of his rasp bit like a frosted wind. “You will not claim me with whatever dark casts you’ve spun.”
“What?” My eyes darted between his. “I don’t want to claim you. Craft is pulling me toward you. Let me go and it will break.”
“Yes. This thread is doomed to be severed. It must be or it was all for naught.”
He made little sense, but there was an odd touch of melancholy in his hissing tone.
“Continue taking the bones, Melder, and the Thief King willcorrupt everything,” he snapped. “There will be no voice but his, and you will force my hand to end you.”
I struggled against him. “Soul bones add strength to an army, they don’t corrupt everything.”
A sort of low rumble rose from his chest. “With you, the Thief King will find the one he wants. Let the ancient one rest.”
“Ancient one?”
In the distance something snapped, like the crack of a heavy tree bough. The shadow tilted his head and sniffed. He took an abrupt step back. “Let him rest. Tell the Thief King to do the same. I will see you again, Melder. It would seem fate demands it.”
He flicked the weak thread sewn between us.
“Let who rest?” Another crack echoed in the distance. The shadow drew his blade, those thin lips curling into a snarl. I held out an arm. “Wait. What orwhoare you?”
The phantom paused. When he turned to look back at me over his shoulder, shadows billowed like silk in the wind around his shoulders.
