Shadow Born

The rocking of the ship no longer soothed Carth as it swayed against the massive dock. They’d been tied here too long for her comfort, long enough that Jhon claimed they should be venturing back onto the sea, but with each passing day they remained in the port. None of it was his fault—or any of the sailors’; they couldn’t affect the weather—but that didn’t change the unease she felt.

“You need to practice your breathing,” Jhon told her. He barely glanced at her over the top of the book propped open on his lap. The long ink-coated quill rested on a strip of paper next to him, and his fingers were stained with the dark blue ink that he preferred.

“My breathing?” she snapped, before taking a calming breath and shaking her head. Maybe he was right, and she did need to practice her breathing. “We’ve been here for nearly two weeks, Jhon. Two weeks, and I’ve been stuck on this stupid ship the entire time!”

“This stupid ship is bringing you to the next step in your training. It will bring you to the Reshian, who can train you.”

“You say that, but I have no evidence of it.” He kept telling her about the next step in her training, but she never felt any closer to it. Instead, it felt as if she ran from those she needed to help.

“You would rather the captain risk the storms?”

Carth breathed out. The captain claimed reports from other ships coming north told of terrible storms, and he preferred to remain in port until they were known to have passed. This was the only deepwater port for leagues, but that didn’t make her feel any better. “I would rather get as far as we can from the Hjan.”

“You shouldn’t fear them. You were the reason they were stopped in Nyaesh,” Jhon chastised.

“You do.”

A hint of a smile played across his mouth. “Do I?”

“I saw you when they attacked in Nyaesh. And when the A’ras fought.”

He sniffed and glanced back to the book. Since they’d been stationed in the port, he had spent all his time reading, occasionally taking notes, but never seeming to have the same anxiety as her. It was almost as if he truly felt as calm as he tried to portray.

“Any sane person would know a hint of fear when it comes to the Hjan. Your parents did, Carthenne, which was why they wanted to bring you to the A’ras. They knew what might happen.”

She sighed. Her parents. It had been months since she’d thought about what had happened to her parents, months since she had mourned them. In some ways, that felt unfair to their memory. In others, she was thankful for the ability to forget. She’d spent enough time in the weeks after their passing trying to understand why they would have been killed. Now she knew the Hjan had killed them, and thought she knew why. It was the same reason they had come after her.

Leaning against the bunk, one that reminded her of the bunk she’d been given by Vera all those years ago, she stared up at the slatted ceiling. “Did I ever tell you of the game my father used to play at night?” she asked.

“Your father was of Ih-lash. I believe you said he played many games with you, Carthenne.”

That was true. Most had been designed to help her learn to move in the shadows and the darkness, but it had been the games he hadn’t taught her that she wished she still had him around for. There would have to have been games for her to understand the shadows and what it meant for her to be shadow born. She controlled the shadows in ways that even the shadow blessed weren’t able to do, but there wasn’t anyone who could help her understand what she needed to do with the shadows, and what she was really capable of doing. She had hints, but that was it.

“Why do you think they used games?” she asked.

Jhon set the book down and looked over to her. “Games have the advantage in that they make training enjoyable. When you played with your father, did it ever feel like work?”

“I was young, Jhon. Nothing they did would have felt like work.”

“Youth doesn’t mean you couldn’t be put to work, Carthenne. Many your age can be put to work. Think of the A’ras. Did you enjoy your lessons there?”

Carth grunted. “I don’t think the A’ras wanted to teach me.”

“They didn’t know what you were capable of. Even near the end, I don’t think Invar fully understood. That was not his fault, but I can understand how that made it harder for you.” He picked up his book and set it on his lap once more. His dark-stained fingers tapped along the surface of the book as he began reading it again. “Even the A’ras could have made your studies more entertaining. I think the shadow blessed of the Ih-lash understood that. Few ever do.”

Jhon fell silent and Carth waited for him to say something more, but he didn’t. She hopped off her bunk and reached the door before he spoke again.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

“Topside.”

“You will stay on the ship.”

“You have already told me that, Jhon. I will remain on the ship.”

He nodded and returned his focus to the book. As Carth pulled the door closed behind her, she wondered what he found within that held his interest as it did. Were there secrets to powers she didn’t yet understand written in those pages or was it something more mundane?

Jhon had to be forced to open up to her, though she wondered what more he could tell her. She had so many questions, and he made it clear he didn’t have all the answers she wanted. Eventually he might share more, but that might not come until they reached their destination, wherever that might be. Jhon still hadn’t told her that much, only that it was away. She no longer knew if they sailed north or south—when they finally did sail, that was.

She reached the top deck and looked out into the darkness. Candles glowed from dozens of buildings along the docks, most likely inns or taverns, much like those she had known in Nyaesh. There was something about the docks that drew taverns and gambling and drinking to them, like flies to a carcass, she supposed. Within the shadows, she could make out more shapes than most, especially when she sank into the shadows and wrapped them around her like a cloak. When she did that, though, she felt the shadows change the darkness, shifting it so that she had not so much a sense of shadows, but a sense that the shadows lightened. Sounds muted, making everything in a fog, but that was the price she paid for the advantage the shadows offered.

“See anything tonight?”

Carth glanced over to see Adam standing along the railing, his heavy beard thick in the shadows of the night. Muscled arms revealed the strange tattoos he and many of the other sailors preferred. They had meaning, she suspected, but Carth hadn’t managed to get them to share with her what each symbol meant.

“Only the city and the sea. Strange they both seem so far away.”

Adam chuckled. “We’ll be underway again soon enough. If we move too soon, we run the risk of the storms or worse.”

“What’s worse than the storms?” she asked. She’d never learned why the sailors feared heading out into the storms. The ships were large enough that they should be able to handle the rains they’d been through so far. None had been so powerful that a ship the size of the Levelan should have trouble, but then Carth wasn’t much of a sailor.

Adam laughed again. “Not coming back from them,” he said. “The sea claims ship as well as man, and when the storms become really large… many have sunk over the years, and some have come back.”

“You say that like it would be bad.”

Adam turned his attention to the darkness of the sea. Wind gusted over the deck, flapping the rolled sails, and tinged with the hint of rain, though it had been promised for days and still hadn’t come. “There are times when death is the better option, Carth of Ih-lash.”

She shook her head at the mention of her homeland. All of the sailors had said it with the same sort of reverence, something Carth didn’t fully understand, though she hadn’t known her homeland. Her parents had left there when she’d been very young, bringing her from city to city as they made their way south, eventually stopping in Nyaesh. Now Carth traveled without them, and it felt wrong.

“I don’t know anything about your superstitions.”

“Superstitions like the shadows?”

She’d been on the ship for nearly a week before realizing that most of the sailors treated her with a sense of awe. They served the Reshian, and while they had known of the shadow blessed, they hadn’t met one before. So far, Jhon had hidden from them the fact that she was more than shadow blessed. Carth wasn’t about to be the one who revealed she was shadow born as well. They might not know what that meant, but she wasn’t about to be the reason they learned.

“The shadows are real,” she said. “I can see them. You can see them. And with enough strength, you can sink into them.”

He studied her, his eyes the color of the night, something she had learned was a sign of Ih-lash. She hadn’t learned if they were of Ih-lash the way that she was, or if they only shared features. Those weren’t questions that she felt comfortable asking, not until she knew Adam and the others better.

“They are real enough for you, one who is born to see them. They are nothing more than stories to me. See?” he said, opening his hands and spreading them as if trying to show her all of the sea. “We are not so different.”

Carth laughed. “If you say so.”

“You shouldn’t listen to Adam. He barely knows how to find his way through the storms.”

Tessa appeared on the deck, her feet nearly soundless on the wood. She had the same dark eyes as Adam, but her light skin was nearer to Carth’s than to the deeply tanned skin Adam possessed. She had none of the tattoos either. She smiled as she gripped the railing, looking out into the darkness. “You come here each night, Carth of Ih-lash.”

“Where else is there for me to go? Jhon suggested I remain on the ship until we get underway again.”

“You would rather go into the city?”

Carth glanced at the buildings, staring at the lights in the windows. She thought of the Wounded Lyre and wondered what had happened to those she once had lived with. The Lyre had never been really home, but it had been a place where she had been safe for a while. Would Kel still be there? Would Vera and Hal still be okay? She’d have liked to tell them so many things, and thank them for taking her in and giving her a place where she could be safe in the days after her parents had died.

She sighed. “I want off the ship, even if it’s for a few hours.”

Adam and Tessa glanced at each other. “You are shadow blessed, Carth of Ih-lash. You can go where you would like.”

“I don’t think Jhon would see it the same way.”

“The shadows will protect you if that’s what you fear,” Adam said. “Even that one must understand how they will.”

“We will be underway again soon,” Tessa said. “Do not worry, Carth of Ih-lash.”

Carth sighed. “Not soon enough,” she said.

Adam laughed. “When it comes to sailing, it is never what we want, but always enough. You will have to understand, Carth of Ih-lash.”

“I understand others think they know what I am to be, but I don’t know what that is.”

“You are shadow blessed. That is enough.”

Carth almost told him that she was more than shadow blessed, but decided against it. What would it matter? What would it change? She traveled with Jhon to wherever he was taking her, so that she could continue to learn, and eventually she would understand her destiny. But for now, she was Carth of Ih-lash, shipbound.

From the shore, she heard a scream.

Adam and Tessa went to the rail and peered into the darkness. The scream came again, this time weaker and somehow closer.

“What was that?” she asked.

“The reason Jhon does not wish for you to enter Odian.”

“Why?”

Fire bloomed in the night before it was stamped out.

Another scream came, this one quieter than the others, more muted, as if the shadows were subduing it, though she knew that could not be the case. She barely held on to them.

“Adam?”

“Carth of Ih-lash, you should go back below deck. Jhon would be irritated if he knew we allowed you to remain here.”

“I thought you said I was shadow blessed, so I would be protected.”

“From most,” Adam said, “but there’s no reason to risk danger when it comes to this place.”

Another cry came in the night, this one more like a whimper than a cry. It was more distant; whoever had been hurt was now moving away. Carth strained to listen, pulling on the shadows, but nothing came.

“You should go back below,” Adam suggested. He stared into the night, as if he might see something there that Carth could not.

“Adam—”

“It is not safe, Carth of Ih-lash,” Tessa said.

Another scream came, this time yet more distantly. Neither of the sailors moved.

Carth wanted to go, to see if there was anything that she could do to help, but how? She didn’t know this city. And it was clear Jhon wanted her to remain on board, worried that something might happen to her. Worse, the sounds reminded her of the screams she’d heard in Nyaesh during the battles, the sounds of those dying…

With a sigh, she turned away.

Even as she did, she couldn’t shake the mournful sounds that seemed to follow her, like the sound of her fear chasing her.