Page 97 of Slaying the Shadow Prince
The rock plateaued below into the ledge of a second bluff, and what Drue saw made her heart seize. Her steel cuff blazed against her skin.
There was only darkness.
Only doom.
24
Talemir
At the edge of the midrealms was a cesspit of evil incarnate.
Across the plateau of jagged rock, the band of wraiths lingered, tendrils of onyx power leaking from their talons, coiling around each other like serpents of the night. Their membranous wings folded behind their backs, mirroring those that had speared from Talemir’s flesh. Not beautiful, as Drue had told him, but horrific – monstrous.
As though in recognition, his shadows writhed within him, begging to be released, begging to join his brethren below. It took all his might to contain them, to speak in an even, steady voice.
‘We need to get closer. We need to find out how many there are, and if Gus and your people are there…’
Talemir and the others dismounted, urging their horses to run back to safety before wriggling on their stomachs to peer over the ledge at the horrors that festered below. The wraiths stalked the cliff, their elongated, sinewy frames and slow, predatory movements making them the stuff of nightmares. Talemir couldn’t look away… They were a part of him.
From here, he was able to study them in more detail than the close quarters of battle had ever allowed him before. Their builds, although warped, told him they had been men once, like him, and that darkness had corrupted them from the inside out, twisted their bodies and their minds until they were the slaves of the shadows.
Is that the fate that awaits me?Talemir felt suddenly nauseous.
Drue was moving along the cliff’s edge, searching for a way down.
She can’t be serious…But the determined set of her jaw, the fire in her eyes, told him otherwise.
‘There’s two dozen…’ Wilder murmured beside him. ‘With the right strategy, we could take them.’
But Talemir shook his head. What they saw was not the complete picture. He could feel the obsidian magic whispering against his bones. The power he felt thrumming here was far greater than twenty-four wraiths, far more ancient, too. Something didn’t add up.
‘There’s a narrow path,’ Drue called quietly, nudging Terrence from her shoulder onto a lone branch. ‘We can get closer this way.’
‘Only to scout,’ Talemir said, filling his voice with command as he approached her, the same tone he used with the shieldbearers at Thezmarr.
Drue’s gaze gleamed with defiance as she gave Terrence a reassuring stroke. ‘Wait here. We’ll be back.’
‘And I go first,’ he added, gently pushing her aside and unsheathing one of his swords. He reached the top of the rocky track, so narrow he couldn’t stand with his two feet side by side.
Both Drue and Adrienne wordlessly allowed him to lead.
Wilder frowned. ‘Since when do either of you ladies allow us to take the lead with anything?’
‘Leave it, Wilder,’ Talemir growled, starting down the path in a half-climb, half-scramble.
Frustration rolled off his protégé in waves. He could feel it, tangling with the power that thrummed below. But there was no time to deal with him now. In single file, the four of them made their way down the cliff face at a snail’s pace. With a weapon in one hand and the other held out for balance, there was no room for error.
The sickening scent of burnt hair drifted towards them on a sharp, icy breeze, lodging in Talemir’s nostrils. He almost gagged.
When they reached the foot of the first bluff, they took cover behind a series of giant boulders and peered out at the wraiths still stalking the ledge.
Twenty-four of them. Wilder was delusional if he thought they had a chance at defeating them. But that was his grief talking.
And yet, even with two dozen monsters before them, what Talemir felt in his bones didn’t match the sight before them. ‘This doesn’t feel right…’
A scrape of rocks beneath boots sounded and his heart froze as Drue disappeared behind more jagged stones —
Talemir lurched after her in a panic, but someone grabbed the collar of his shirt, dragging him back.
