Aoife and Scathach, Shadow Twins Read online

  “I wonder who you are,” she murmured. “Brigands or assassins?”

  Road thieves were commonplace, and she’d been long enough on this world to have made a few enemies—the price on her head brought out assassins with all manner of skills. The tonbogiri rifles made her wonder if some new players had entered the game, or had some old enemies tracked her down?

  Rolling over onto her stomach, resting her chin on her folded arms, the young woman absently traced a route down the hillside, picking out a pathway that would bring her in and behind the ambushers. Once—when she had been called Scathach the Pitiless—she would have taught her ambushers a fatal lesson. But that had been a long time ago. Over the centuries she had seen too much death and destruction, fought in too many wars on too many Shadowrealms. She had mellowed as she aged, and she’d grown weary of the endless cycle of death and destruction. She had made a promise to herself that she would not kill unless her own life, or the lives of those she loved, was in danger. She’d more or less managed to keep to the promise on this Shadowrealm.

  “Who are you,” she wondered aloud. Somehow she doubted it was the Anpu. The jackal-headed warriors were excellent shots and would have been using the modern repeating tonbogiri rifles. The Torc Clans on this world had no access to tonbogiri and she doubted they’d used them; the were-clans preferred to fight hand to hand. So that left the humani.

  Scathach had fought with and against the humani. They were among the most extraordinary of the many races she had encountered: brilliant, creative, imaginative and passionate. But all too often that same brilliance and creativity, the same imagination and passion that allowed them to produce wonders, had taken them down dark roads: into making weapons, waging wars and finding ever more inventive ways to kill one another. It was such a waste. They lived such brief lives, but were prepared to squander them needlessly. Not all of them, it was true. She had seen what they were capable of if the shadow of war was removed from their lives.

  Her sister, Aoife, on the other hand, did not agree with her: Aoife always believed that the greatest acts of humani invention and creativity came during times of war. Scathach didn’t know; she’d ask Marethyu the next time she saw him. He’d know; the hook-handed man knew everything.

  Cradling her head in her forearms, she settled down to wait, idly wondering who was attacking her. The Iron Mountains and the Great Northern Forest were occupied by scattered bands of humani who lived in uneasy co-existence with creatures straight from the darkest of legends. Feuds and clan wars were commonplace, and strangers were not welcome. But it was unlike them to shoot at a single traveler. She wondered if those shots had been designed to scare her away or to kill? Perhaps the really important question was, were they waiting just for her?

  Scathach looked longingly at her leather pack still attached to the saddle, lying in the middle of the track. She could see the outline of a Fomor blowpipe in the nearest bag. If she could only reach it and the selection of darts in their wooden cases, she could send her attackers a little stinging present. She had darts tipped with lethal poison, others with numbing agents or sleeping potions, and a handful coated with the secretions of a tree toad that brought on the most terrifying visions. She had no doubt she could hit the attackers below. But the bag, for the moment, was out of reach. If she made a move for it, she would reveal her location, and while she didn’t think the shooters were good enough to hit her, they might get lucky. Immortality was no guard against death. She could be injured and killed, and though she looked no older than seventeen, her age was measured in centuries and she fully intended to live for at least a millennium. She would not die here.

  Scathach’s hands moved absently to the leather pouch cinched tight around her throat. At least she hadn’t lost that. The bag was the reason she was on this road. She occasionally took employment as a courier, specializing in discreetly delivering high-value merchandise. Her reputation was impeccable, and she’d never lost a package. She wondered if someone had learned that she was heading north with a package of immense value. Was this an ambush?

  Possible, but unlikely. There were a dozen places on the road better suited to an ambush, and given her reputation, they’d hardly have attempted it with just two attackers. The last time someone had tried to steal a package from her, they’d brought twenty-two heavily armed men. She hadn’t actually killed any of them, but every one had ended up with the local healer. While only some would limp for the rest of their lives, all of them would carry the scars of fighting the Shadow.

  Centuries ago she’d learned that the simplest way to grow your legend was to let your enemies live. No one wanted to admit that they’d been defeated by a girl. So the losers boasted that they had been bested by an ancient warrior, a goddess, a warrior queen. Of course, in her case, most of that was true. Even the goddess title. There were worlds on which she—and her sister, Aoife—were worshipped as The Shadow Twins. On those Shadowrealms, twins—especially twin girls—were considered holy and gifts from the gods.

  Scathach squinted toward the heavens; the sun was low in the sky, and the second of the five moons had risen. She could see storm clouds growing angrier in the north, pulsing white with unheard thunder. It would be dark soon, and she would be able to retrieve her bag. Then she could slip away. But even as she was formulating the thought, she knew—deep in her heart and soul—that she was going to go down to see who or what had attacked her.

  Easing her double-edged knife out of her right boot, she quickly mapped out her options.

  They were depressingly few.

  She was without a mount in the high country, at least two days’ ride from the nearest settlement. This far north the weather was unpredictable, and a storm could whip down from the Ice Lands without warning. Creatures that were little more than legend in the rest of the country roamed freely here, surviving in the hidden valleys and isolated caves. There were few human settlements left; the Road Fever that had swept along the length of the Bothar Ri, the King’s Road, in previous generations had devastated many of the towns and villages, leaving them nothing but tumbled ruins.

  Scathach was not humani, had no need to eat or drink and rarely slept. And although she was more or less immune to extreme weather, if it got cold enough she could fall into a coma so deep it would seem that she was dead. Mythology was littered with characters who had fallen asleep and awoken centuries later; they were usually Next Generation, like her.

  The first fat droplets of icy rain spattered into the ground about her.

  Scathach hated the rain. It was the one abiding memory of her childhood in the Celtic lands on the Earth Shadowrealm. She’d spent far too many years cold, wet, and thoroughly miserable. When she’d finally discovered that there were countries where it seldom rained, she’d left her damp homeland, and she rarely went back. One of these days she was going to retire to a nice warm desert town.

  Rain sleeted in again, peppering the ground with speckles of hail.

  That settled it; she hated rain, but she really detested hail. She wasn’t going to hang around here a moment longer and get drenched. Time to change tactics. Squinting through the gathering clouds, she peered down into the valley again. Her attackers probably had mounts of some sort—horses, oxen, or deer. And she needed a mount. So she’d head down into the valley and ask them for a mount to replace the one they’d scared away. No doubt they’d refuse, but she’d take one anyway. Or maybe two.

  Scathach spotted movement on the far side of the valley, across the ravine, hunched and twisted shapes scuttling through the undergrowth, heading toward the shooters. Reinforcements. She squinted again, trying to make sense of what she was seeing. They were well camouflaged, but from the way they moved, she knew they were not humani. They were unlikely to be were-folk, and she got the impression that these might be one of the Fir races: Fir Mhor, Fir Dearg, or even the dreaded Fir Bolg, a creature more beast than man. They often hunted in packs
. A knife would prove little protection against the armored hide of a Fir Bolg, and she was thinking she might have to break her promise not to kill anyone.

  She heard a crack, and then a fist-sized green ball came sailing up out of the valley to spatter against the wall almost directly above her head. Scathach jerked back instinctively as thin green slime dripped off the rock. The stench was overwhelming: foul, bitter, a noxious mixture of rotten eggs, sour milk, and rancid food.

  She recognized the stink immediately. It was a moor pod.

  She knew then that she was in real trouble. Only the Fir Bolg and Fir Dearg, the hairy stunted dwarves, used the moor pods in their slingshots, and this far north, they were rumored to eat humani flesh. She idly wondered if Next Generation flesh tasted different from humani. She didn’t think the Fir Dearg would be too fussy.

  Another pod burst on the narrow path almost directly in front of her, sticky green pustules spattering across her jerkin. Ducking her head, Scathach gulped air, jumped to her feet, and darted out onto the track. Putting as much space as she could between herself and the stinking fumes of the moor pod was more important than avoiding the chance of being hit by the tongobiri. She snatched her pack off the ground and darted down the track, the edge of the path crumbling beneath her left boot. But even as she took her first staggering steps, she knew she had inhaled some of the moor pod gas. The world was shifting, rainbow colors bleeding at the very edge of her vision turning the world vivid and startling. Speckles of light danced before her streaming eyes, and the muted colors of the northern landscape became brighter, sharper, cleaner.

  She should have done this from the beginning, she thought. Instead of lying on the ground and allowing them to plan a new strategy, she should have waited until they had fired, then leapt to her feet, grabbed her bag, and run.

  The sky turned bright yellow, and all the colors were smeared in long streaks as if they were flowing past her face. The ground beneath her looked so very far away, and she felt as if she was running in slow motion.

  She heard a buzz, and suddenly a stone chipped flakes of rock from the cliff face alongside her head; another struck her a glancing blow on the shoulder, numbing her entire arm, and then a puffy green ball exploded directly in front of her. Unable to stop her forward momentum, Scathach raced directly into its billowing cloud…and instantly the world lit up in a kaleidoscope of fractal colors. She stopped as abruptly, as if she had run into a stone wall, and stood swaying. Then, slowly, she dropped to her knees and fell forward. She knew she was falling, and it seemed to take a long time before she finally hit the earth. The sudden shock and the sting of gravel on her hands and knees brought her briefly back to consciousness.

  With the last of her strength, she attempted to pull herself toward the ravine. If she could throw herself over the edge, she might be able to mimic the deer and slide into the dark valley below, where she could disappear into the forest. Sure, she’d get scraped up and maybe break a bone or two, but at least she would not be eaten alive….

  2

  The face was hideous.

  A hairless head covered in leathery skin, the nose flat and piglike, eyes yellow, speckled with broken veins, and a ragged mouth filled with two upward jutting tusks. “I know what you’re thinking. And you should know that I am considered beautiful among my people.” The voice of the creature was a shocking contrast to its appearance. It sounded like that of a young woman, high and pure without a trace of an accent, and all the more disconcerting because it issued from the creature’s mouth.

  Scathach struggled to sit up, grateful that the creature—neither Fir Bolg nor Fir Dearg, though obviously kin to both tribes—made no effort to help. She had a crushing headache and felt sick to her stomach, and her right arm was aching from shoulder to elbow. Drawing her knees up to her head, she pressed both hands to her throbbing temples while surreptitiously taking stock of her surroundings. She was in a reed hut, circular in the Bolg fashion, but decorated with woven beads and spectacularly beautiful knitted tapestries on the walls and floor, which were completely alien to Bolg culture. Beyond the walls, she could hear children’s voices and laughter over the gurgling backdrop of a nearby stream.

  Finally, she looked back at the creature waiting patiently at the side of her bed. Scathach had traveled the length and breadth of Tír fo Thuinn, had seen most of the myriad beasts that inhabited the land, but she had never encountered anything quite like this creature.

  By the voice, Scathach assumed she was female. From her thick armored hide, it was clear that there was Fir Bolg blood in her, but the deep ocher hue of her skin and the shape of her skull suggested that she might also be related to the Fir Dearg. Her decorated tusks were Torc Allta, and yet her voice had all the pure tones of a trained De Danann myth singer. She was wearing a long robe stitched and worked with countless thousands of beads, shells, and polished pebbles, similar to that a De Danann priestess might wear.

  The creature proffered a beautifully carved stone goblet. “Drink. It will clear your head and ease your stomach.” She smiled at Scathach’s hesitation, showing terrifying tusks and a thick black tongue. “If we had wished to harm you, we could have done so before now,” she said reasonably.

  “That is true.” Scathach nodded, dipping her head to hide her smile, well aware that some cultures took the baring of teeth as a threat. She sipped the green liquid. It was bitter, with a slightly chalky aftertaste.

  “We make it from the root of the moor pods. It is only the fruits and pods that are poisonous; the leaves and roots have many medicinal uses.”

  “I feel better already,” Scathach admitted. The headache had lifted almost immediately, and she could actually feel the liquid move through her body. Her stomach rumbled. She pushed herself upright, then sat back on the bed, pressing her spine against the wall of the hut. She was surprised to find her pack on the ground beside the straw pallet. It looked untouched.

  The creature caught her gaze. “It is as you left it. We are not thieves.”

  Scathach finished the last of the liquid and handed over the goblet. She noticed that each of the woman’s six short, blunt nails were painted a rainbow of striped colors. “How long have I slept?”

  “Though the night. Sun has just risen.”

  The Shadow groaned. “I need to get back on the road. I have an appointment I must keep.” Then she added, “Forgive my rudeness. I am Scathach.”

  “And I am Moriath. I am of the Clan of Eriu.”

  “I’ve not heard of your clan before,” Scathach answered.

  “Few have,” Moriath said in her quiet, musical voice. “We are a solitary people. We keep to ourselves and have little commerce with the rest of the world. Do you have a clan?”

  “Not anymore,” Scathach said cautiously. She wasn’t sure how the creature would react if she learned she was a vampyre. Nearly every Shadowrealm had some version of a vampire, but most were monsters and all were blood drinkers. Many killed the blood drinkers on sight.

  “It must be lonely without a clan,” Moriath said.

  “I am not entirely alone,” Scathach answered frankly. “Although my birth clan is long gone, I found as I got older that I’d built another clan around me, a clan of choice rather than one of blood.”

  “Family is everything,” Moriath agreed.

  “What happened on the mountain?” Scathach asked, leaning forward to drag her pack toward her. The woman made no effort to stop her. She’d been shot at, drugged, and kidnapped, but she didn’t feel she was in any real danger. “I was attacked for no reason.”

  “I’m afraid some of our young men got a little overenthusiastic,” Moriath answered without a trace of apology in her voice.

  The Shadow bit back a snap of anger. “Do your young men usually attack lone travelers in the mountains?”

  “Not usually,” Moriath said. “But these are not usual times.”

&
nbsp; Something was terribly wrong here. Scathach wondered if she still had some of the drug in her system, because things weren’t making sense. The woman had just admitted that theirs was a solitary community, virtually unknown to the outside world, and yet they had brought her here, into their village. She found herself idly wondering again if she was on the menu. Scathach opened her pack and pulled out a small stone jar of sweet-smelling salve. She rubbed it on her grazed and scratched hands, wincing as it stung her flesh. But she had seen too many warriors lose fingers and even limbs because they hadn’t cleaned even the simplest of wounds. Carefully peeling off her scuffed leather jacket, she examined the bruise on her shoulder.

  “I suppose I should be grateful that it wasn’t a tonbogiri bullet. Why did they change back to catapults and stones?”

  “I would imagine they were probably shooting at the stag. Stones have little effect against their thick hides.” She smiled quickly. “And bullets are too expensive to waste on humani. A stone will do.” She stretched out her hand. “If you will allow me?”

  Scathach handed over the jar.

  Moriath brought it to her nose and breathed deeply. “Lambsbane, beeswax, mint, and bruiseworth.”

  “You are a healer?”

  “I am many things,” Moriath said. “You sound surprised.”