Shadow Magic (16 page)

“Gabriel Solar is a fool,” said Tyburn. “If Thorn can’t outwit Gabriel, then he really is of no use to anyone.”

“Tyburn, that almost sounds like a compliment.”

“The boy’s likeable and has many useful qualities.”

“‘Useful qualities’?” repeated Lily. This was too much fun. The whole castle was in an uproar. Every Shadow squire wanted to be Thorn’s best friend. “He just rode in on a giant bat. I think that counts as rather fantastic, don’t you? Still, we can deal with Thorn and Hades later,” she looked around the room, double-checking that it was just the three of them now. “I want to talk about what Rose told me. She saw Gabriel put poison in my cup, Uncle. What more proof do we need?”

Pan shook his head. “This again? You cannot be serious.”

“This is about the Solars trying to take over Gehenna, Uncle. I’m very serious.” She would never let that happen. She’d heard that the Solars were already hiring stonemasons to put windows in. Never!

Lily would not be remembered as the Shadow who let light into Castle Gloom.

“Lily, be reasonable. Why would Gabriel want, or need, to do such a thing?”

“But she
saw
him.”

“Who knows what that silly girl saw?” Pan grunted. “And the word of a mere servant against the heir of Lumina? No one would believe her. If the duke was here, he’d demand she be whipped for her impertinence.”

“No one touches Rose.” Lily wasn’t giving up. “I don’t see why her word means less than Gabriel’s, or anyone’s, when it’s the truth. Gabriel’s evil! He tried to poison me, and he tried to have Thorn killed. Wade told me that Gabriel had his squires chasing Thorn with knives, Uncle.”

Pan scoffed. “As I said, that Thorn is nothing but trouble.”

Tyburn shook his head. “Gabriel is not the poisoner.”

“Why not?” she asked.

“He lacks the guile.”

“Are you quite sure?”

“It’s my job to be sure, m’lady.”

Pan folded his arms and considered the executioner. “Then who is this mysterious poisoner?”

“The man I’ve been hunting for the last five months. The sixth brigand.”

It was as if a cold hand had seized Lily’s lungs and was squeezing the breath out of her. The pain grew every second as the agony of her family’s deaths became fresh all over again.

Pan swallowed his wine. “He must be long gone by now, Tyburn.”

Lily’s hands shook. Despite the crushing tightness in her chest, she forced herself to speak. “Six men were responsible for killing my parents and brother, Uncle. We found five. Let Tyburn finish.”

“Your father’s carriage was ambushed in Spindlewood. Why would brigands pick such a spot? There is little traffic in that part of the woods. Little chance of a rich merchant or well-to-do farmer traveling through. No, there are better places, with richer pickings.” Tyburn met her gaze. She knew he’d been loyal to her father, but there was no emotion in the man’s eyes. No sense of loss or pain. Lily turned away.

Tyburn continued. “They were there on purpose. Not to rob, but to kill the Shadows. No mere brigand would risk taking on a sorcerer as powerful as your father. It would have to be someone special.”

Lily whipped around. “They were assassins, you’re saying?” Her eyes flashed as the idea sunk in. “A special kind? But you caught five and…took care of them. That doesn’t sound so special to me.”

“Five were pawns, I think. Mere hired hands. The sixth one, though…he was injured by an arrow but escaped. We searched Spindlewood with troops and hounds, and we found nothing. No trail, no mark of his passing.”

Tyburn paused, resting his hand on his sword hilt. The shadows were heavier in the faint candlelight, deepening the wrinkles and creases in his face. “I have spent months searching and still haven’t found him. No man has ever evaded me for so long.”

“It was sloppy of you to let him get away in the first place.” Pan’s hands tightened around the goblet. “I gave you extra men to make sure they were dealt with properly.”

“And you think the sixth brigand and our poisoner are one and the same?” asked Lily.

Tyburn didn’t answer immediately; he seemed to be weighing his response. Lily knew he didn’t like to guess. “Most likely. He would have had to lie low to recover from his arrow wound—that would account for the last few months—and now he is back to finish the job. Remember, m’lady, you were supposed to be in that carriage, too. You were meant to be killed alongside the rest of your family.”

Pan put his hand gently on her back. “Enough, Tyburn. Can’t you see you’re upsetting her?”

“No, it’s all right. I need to know this.” Lily stared at her hands, clenched fiercely into fists. “I want to help,” she said. “I want to know who this man is. I should—”

Pan squeezed her shoulder. “Leave this to Tyburn, Lily.”

“They were my family. I owe this to them, Uncle.”

Pan spoke to Tyburn. “Do you think he’s still nearby?”

“Near enough to put the life-bane in the goblet during the feast. I am questioning the various servants….”

They weren’t listening to her. They weren’t going to let her do anything.

After five months, she thought her heart had started to heal, but hearing about the man responsible for killing her loved ones had torn it apart again. She
had
to find him, but she knew she’d get no help from Tyburn or Uncle Pan.

It’s time to stop playing by the rules.

So now she needed to break them, starting with the biggest one of all.

T
he next evening, Lily took K’leef and Thorn off to explore Castle Gloom.

They started with a secret doorway behind a statue of Baron Moloch Shadow, standing at the head of the Corridor of Woe.

Thorn peered down the unlit passageway. “Why do I think this is a bad idea?”

K’leef looked down the same passageway and nodded. “A very bad idea.”

Lily glanced back at them. “Don’t tell me you’re scared?”

K’leef straightened his robes. “Of course not. I was just…worried for Thorn.”

“I’m a lot less scared than you, K’leef,” snapped Thorn. “Back in Stour, Dad and me went hunting—”

“All right. You’re both very brave.” Lily huffed and tugged K’leef’s sleeve. “Come on. I need to find this poisoner.”

“Are you sure it’s not Gabriel?” said Thorn. “He’s a louse.”

“Tyburn’s convinced it’s this sixth brigand. Whoever he is.”

So down they went.

“What are we doing here, exactly, apart from getting covered in cobwebs?” asked K’leef, brushing his cloak.

“We’re breaking the rules.”

They stopped in a small chamber while Lily figured out which way to go. Thorn listened at a door. “Can you hear that?”

“Hmm.”
Which arch should we go through? The first one or the second? Or the third?

“It’s just that I can hear something.” Thorn reached for the door handle.

“I wouldn’t.” Lily slapped his hand. “That’s the Hall of Forgetfulness. Going in there would be a very bad thing indeed.”

“Why?”

“I can’t remember.” She peered this way and that. “Left, I think.”

Lily led them farther into the depths of the castle, down winding staircases and through hidden doors, and the air grew staler and the cobwebs thicker.

“Are we there yet?” said Thorn as they marched through another empty chamber. “Wade and the other squires were heading to the fair. I was gonna go with ’em.”

“This is more important.”

“For you, maybe.”

Lily scowled. Why had she brought him, anyway?

“Don’t worry, Lily, I’ll help you,” said K’leef, grinning back at Thorn, who picked up his pace.

A pair of black marble doors barred the way.

Carved into them were leering, monstrous faces and grinning demons, each frozen in terrifying detail.

“This is the Shadow Library, isn’t it?” K’leef took a step backward. “Lily, I hope you’re not planning what I think you’re planning.”

“Library?” said Thorn, blushing. “I can’t read.”

Lily crossed her arms. “This is the only way I can find out what’s going on. The only way I can save Gehenna. The only way I can protect it now that my father’s gone. I need to learn magic, and you, K’leef, are going to teach me.”

Thorn spluttered. “Are you insane?”

Lily poked him in the chest. “It was you who told me to start breaking the rules!”

“Yeah, break the rules, not upset the natural order of the world!” Thorn shook his head. “I ain’t having it. I’m in enough trouble as it is. Let’s go back before anyone knows we’re missing. My grandpa always said—”

“Oh, shut up about your grandpa, Thorn.” Lily smirked, and it was sly and more than a little wicked. “Or do you want to stay here for a year?”

“What do you mean?”

“I am Lady Shadow, you know. If you help me, I’ll give you a sack of silver and a ship to take you back home. By next week.”

“And what will Tyburn have to say about that?”

“Tyburn works for me.” Lily looked over at K’leef. “And the same applies to you, or have you gotten too comfortable being Solar’s hostage?”

“I gave my word to the duke I’d not try and escape.” K’leef frowned. “Anyway, the Solars would catch me before I got a mile from here.”

“The duke doesn’t know the secret ways through Gehenna, K’leef. This is my country. I could have you back in yours before the snow falls. Provided you teach me magic, that is.”

They scowled. They frowned and crossed their arms and kicked the dust, but she had them.

We’re all the same, with the same desire: home.

“All right,” said Thorn, a slow, big smile spreading across his face. “It’s a deal.”

Lily turned to the Sultanate boy. “And you, K’leef?”

K’leef didn’t have the same smile as Thorn. “I don’t know….I gave my word.”

“Does your honor mean so much?”

He started as if she’d slapped him. “It is all I have, Lily.”

“It’s all you have while you’re away from home,” she clarified. “If you help me, you will gain something much more important: freedom.”

He nodded, though he still looked troubled.

Lily drew out a key made of bone, the Skeleton Key, and put it in the lock and turned.

With the sound of grinding rock, the doors unfurled like petals on a giant flower. A stale, cold wind blew out, shaking the dust and cobwebs.

She’d never been inside. There’d never been any need; after all, it was a library of magic, no place for a girl. Lily had always been envious when her father took Dante down for a lesson. Secrets that only father and son could share.

“We could use some light,” said Lily.

K’leef blew gently across his palm.

Candles hissed to life. Torches in wall brackets spluttered and bright flames awoke, spreading golden, dancing light on the dark gray walls.

Waves of illumination spread outward as more candles brightened along tunnels and endless corridors, and in alcoves and nooks among dusty parchments and ancient scrolls.

How far back did the library go? She had no idea.

“Wow.” Thorn entered, gazing about him. Then he stopped, mouth agape. “Who. Are. They?”

As the candlelight revealed more and more of the library, they suddenly realized that they were standing within a circle of statues.

Not just any statues, but titanic gods of stone, each over seventy feet tall.

K’leef gazed up at them in awe. “The Six Princes.”

The ancient founders of the six Great Houses of magic, the first sorcerers the world had ever known, and the most powerful.

“I…I never seen nothing like it,” whispered Thorn. “They’re your ancestors?”

Lily nodded. “K’leef’s, too. And Gabriel’s.”

“We inherited our magic from them,” added K’leef.

“Is it true they were brothers?” asked Thorn. “The children of a barbarian king and his elf wife?”

“She wasn’t an elf. She was the daughter of a demon lord,” said Lily.

“You’re both wrong,” interrupted K’leef. “She was a desert spirit. She’d been trapped in a bottle, and when he freed her, she fell in love with him. She passed her magic down to their six sons. That’s the true story.”

“And I bet House Coral will swear she was a mermaid.” Lily shrugged. “Elf, demon, or spirit, it just means she came from the otherworld, a place of pure magic.”