Thief With No Shadow (3 page)

CHAPTER THREE

M
ELKE REACHED THE
valley in the thin gray light of predawn. The nightmares that had kept pace with her drew back. She had survived the darkness, the memories.

Exhaustion blurred her eyesight, but even if she’d been blind she would have known she had arrived. The sounds were normal—the drowsy, stuttering song of birds rousing to a new day and the whisper of leaves moving in the breeze—but the scent was wrong. There was an extra something in the cool morning air: a spiciness, a hint of sulphur.

The narrow valley was unforested. Trees hung back, clinging to the hillsides as if they too were afraid of the salamanders. Grass grew thickly on the valley floor. Yellow and white and pink wildflowers waited for the sun’s touch, their petals loosely furled.

Her weary eyes mistook the salamanders’ den for an outcrop of boulders, lumpy and irregular, squatting in the middle of the valley. She blinked, and blinked again, and saw the den for what it was: a fortress, asymmetric, a rough structure of red rock and baked mud. It looked organic, as if it had grown without design or forethought.

Melke shivered. Within those high red walls were an adult salamander and her kits. And Hantje, captive in the darkness and the heat.

The track through the meadow was overgrown; only the most foolhardy of humans approached a salamander’s den. Or the most desperate. The long grass didn’t dull the pain of her feet. She flinched from each step, lurching, her breath catching in her throat. The smell of sulphur became stronger. The grass began to grow less thickly.

Dawn broke as Melke stepped onto the bare red earth that ringed the den. She halted, swaying. Exhaustion almost dragged her to her knees.

She let her eyelids close. Her head hung heavily on her neck. “Moon, guide me,” she whispered, and concentrated deep within herself. There was a moment of dizziness and nausea, when her skin turned inside out, then she opened her eyes, staggering, and clutched at the air with clumsy hands.

She could
see
her hands.

She saw scratched arms, bare and flecked with mud. Filthy trousers, bloody at one knee, and her feet... The bandages that she’d fashioned from her shirtsleeves were dark with blood.

Seeing the blood made it worse. Tears stung her eyes.

Hantje. Help me.

Thought of Hantje steadied her. Her feet didn’t matter, if only her brother lived.

Melke blinked back the tears. The necklace was wound twice around her throat. She fumbled to unfasten the catch. Her fingers were stiff and slow, shaking with fatigue.

The necklace slid into her hands, cool. The stones held the colors of the sea, rich blues and intense greens, smoky grays and glints of gold. Fifty, perhaps sixty teardrops, set in a delicate filigree of dark metal.

Melke inhaled deeply. The scent of salamander choked in her throat, heavy and spicy. She raised her chin. “Salamanders,” she called.

The misshapen mass of red clay and rough rock towered above her. She had walked around it two days ago when she’d come to find Hantje. She’d seen no windows, only half a dozen narrow, irregular fissures and a stinking midden. It had taken no more than a few minutes to circumnavigate the den and realize there was only one entrance.

Melke closed her fingers around the necklace. “Salamanders,” she cried again, and took an agonizing step towards the den. A second step. A third. “Salamanders!” She stood so close to the entrance that her breath brushed the heavy iron door. Silence.

Melke cast a fearful glance behind her. Had the birds stopped singing because the hound and its master approached?

The door swung inward and she stumbled back, her heart thudding hard in her chest. Panic flared inside her. Lizard eyes. Bright eyes in which flames seemed to burn. A sense of something that wasn’t human, wasn’t animal, wasn’t anything but...
other.
She took another involuntary step backwards, heedless of pain.

“Ssss.”

Salamanders crowded in the doorway, lithe and slender. They stood no taller than her shoulder, with blood-red skin and burning eyes and spiny crests ridging their skulls.

“You have the necklasss?” asked the one in front.

The words were sibilant. The hiss of flames was audible in the creature’s voice.

She counted them in the shadowy doorway. Four kits, not fully grown. Their mother wasn’t with them. She’d chosen to stay inside the hot darkness of her den.

Melke swallowed the tight fear in her throat. She forced herself to breathe, inhaling the creatures’ thick odor. “I have it.”

The young salamanders hissed their glee. They crowded closer in the doorway. Heat radiated from them. The sinuous eagerness and the gleaming suppleness of their skin, the flame-bright lizard eyes, the choking scent, the nearness, the otherness... Panic beat loudly in her chest.

Melke took another lurching step backwards. She clenched the necklace in her hands and gasped to breathe, gasped to stand her ground and not flee. “Where’s my brother?”

“Ssshow usss.”

Melke opened her hands.

“Ssss.” It was a hissed exhalation of air, hot and excited. The sound raised hairs on Melke’s arms and the nape of her neck.

One of the salamanders stepped from the shadow of the doorway. She saw it fully, the sharp fan of its crest and the slender snaking tail—her eyes flinched from the strangeness of it. A creature of legend. Not lizard, not man, but something else.

The salamander’s carriage was proud. Her eyes wanted to call it man—two arms, two legs, an upright posture—but no human moved with such agile grace. The creature was young, half-grown. In adulthood it would stand taller than her, but now its bright eyes were only level with her shoulder. It was naked and asexual, lithe and bold. “Give it to me.”

Melke felt the heat of salamander’s breath. She thought her skin might blister from it. “No.” The word was a dry croak. “Give me my brother.”

The creature blinked its bright eyes lazily. Sharp, carnivorous teeth showed in a smile. “Asss you wisssh.”

The shadowy doorway was suddenly empty. She hadn’t seen or heard them move, but the other salamander kits were gone.

Melke shivered despite the heat that came off the salamander’s skin. The creature’s odor caught in her throat. She averted her eyes and struggled to breathe, clutching the necklace tightly, grateful for its chill. Hope swelled beneath her breastbone.
Hantje.

The salamander yawned. The sound, so human and ordinary, caused Melke’s heart to lurch in terror. Her pulse hammered in her throat.
Fool. Relax. It’s only a child.

A dangerous child. A creature of fire, of cruelty and greed and hedonism. And no child in human terms. How old was it? Thirty years? Forty? Salamanders lived for centuries.

Curiosity overcame fear for a quick second. She glanced at it. What sex would it choose when it reached adulthood?

As if it felt her gaze, the salamander’s eyelids raised, snake-quick. Eyes as bright as flames stared at her, fierce and intelligent. It yawned again, showing white, sharp teeth. Its breath flickered across Melke’s bare arm, as hot as if she stood before a fire.

She’d not heard the other salamanders leave, but she heard them return. There was a faint swell of sound, a susurration of hissed breaths, and the dark doorway was full again. The three blood-red kits carried a limp and awkward shape. She saw black hair, a charcoal gray cloak, a dangling hand.

“Hantje!” She tried to step forward but the young salamander barred her way.

“The necklasss.” The creature met her eyes again. Flames flared in the glowing irises. It held out a sharp-clawed hand.

The kits placed Hantje roughly on the ground. He lay utterly still, wrapped in his cloak. Melke couldn’t see his face.

Her fingers clenched around the necklace. “Is he alive?”

The salamander hissed a laugh, showing its teeth again. “Yesss.”

Melke opened her hands. The necklace lay cupped in her palms.

There was a moment of silence, of stillness and expectation and heat, and then she let the necklace fall into the salamander’s hand.

The creature flinched slightly, as if the coldness of the stones stung. It inhaled sharply. “Ahhh...”

It turned away from her so fluidly and swiftly that her eyes almost missed the movement. The rust-pitted metal door closed with a grating
clang
, and the salamanders were gone.

“Hantje!”

He lay on the ground, unmoving.

Melke dropped to her knees and pulled at the cloak that wrapped him. It was torn and filthy and stank of burned wool and something foul. A thick, noisome substance caked the fabric. Hantje’s hair fell black and tangled onto the bare dirt. His face, when she saw it—

Her throat constricted. Tears filled her eyes and spilled down her cheeks, running salty into her mouth. “Hantje...”

He lay as if dead. Swelling distorted his face. Beneath the soot and blood his skin was dark with bruises. A deep, raw burn slashed across cheek and jaw, the skin black and peeling at the edges. His mouth was torn and bloody, his eyelids swollen shut.

Melke bent her head to listen for his breath. She heard nothing. “Hantje,” she whispered. “Please, Hantje, please don’t—” Hot tears fell into his hair and blinded her as she fumbled to unfasten the cloak. Charred and stinking wool flaked at her touch.

She bared her brother’s throat and laid trembling fingers on his skin, seeking a pulse. “Please live,” she whispered. “Please don’t leave me...”

A hound barked, deep-throated, at Melke’s back. She jerked around on her knees. Fear strangled breath and scream. The beast stood on the bare red dirt, as tall as she was. Taller. Huge.

The tears were gone from her eyes. Her heart pounded fast and hard in her chest. She saw pricked ears and raised black hackles and fierce, pale wolf-eyes.

Melke reached for her knife. The hound pulled its lips back, showing sharp teeth. It took a stiff-legged step towards her.

CHAPTER FOUR

B
ASTIAN STAGGERED TO
a halt. The first gleams of sunlight touched the hilltops. He took it as a sign of hope, although fear that he was too late twisted in his belly.
Is that her
? he asked, gulping for air. His pulse hammered in his ears.

Endal growled.
Yes.

Like the scum she was, the wraith crouched on the ground. The body of a man lay behind her. She stared wide-eyed at Endal. Black hair straggled from a long braid. Her face was filthy and scratched, streaked with blood and mud.

Rage filled Bastian’s lungs and blurred his vision. It knotted in his muscles and vibrated in his chest. He reached for the wraith. Her gaze flicked to him and she flinched away, too slowly. He fisted his hand at the scruff of her neck, grasping shirt and plaited hair, and hauled her to her feet.

He shook her hard. “Where is it?”

The wraith tried to jerk away from him.

Bastian tightened his grip. He shook her again, more fiercely, making her stumble. “Where is it?”

She raised her eyes and met his gaze boldly. “Where is what?” Her voice was unafraid.