Shifting Shadows: Stories from the World of Mercy Thompson Read online

  “Ariana,” purred her father’s voice.

  She turned around and faced him. He wore his wild aspect, stag horns reaching upward and tangling in the lower branches of the tree he stood under.

  A shiver slid through her, a feeling of inevitability, as if this moment had been fated since her birth. That other part of her, the one she’d warned Haida to be careful of, stirred restlessly, ready to shield her from her father. The thought of the hobgoblin reminded her that Ariana was not the only one her father had reason to be angry at.

  “Father.” She stepped squarely in front of her little, faithful friend.

  He looked around the woods, at Haida, at the grass at Ariana’s feet—at everywhere other than Ariana herself—and smiled gently. “Did you think to flee me with the artifact still undone?”

  “No, Father,” she said staunchly. He would kill her. When he knew it all, he would kill her. “It is finished.”

  He held the little silver bird out to her. She hadn’t realized that he’d been holding it.

  “This?” He tossed it on the ground, and in a voice that carried the low rumble of distant thunder, he said, “This is garbage. You have broken your promise, your sworn word. To do so is death for the fae.”

  She raised her chin as triumph rushed through her. Whatever she and her beast had managed, it had thwarted her father’s will. She might die, but he could not use her to destroy the world. “It does what I promised you it would. What the thing you turned me into by the tender care of your hounds promised you that the artifact would do. It eats the magic of any fae the wielder desires and allows it to be consumed again. Finished and sealed, so it cannot again be altered.”

  She could not lie and did not need to. The first part had been done when she and Haida had sought to deflect the artifact’s purpose. The last she knew as well. However else the artifact functioned, she had not broken the word given by the beast.

  He narrowed his eyes at her and snarled. The glimpse of the fangs in his mouth tightened her stomach and left her light-headed.

  “You knew what I wanted,” he said.

  “Yes,” she agreed, finding that the light-headedness had brought with it a sort of sereneness—or maybe that had come from the earlier feeling that this meeting had been fated for them. He would kill her. Hopefully, it would not hurt too much, but there was nothing she could do to prevent it. “You knew that I did not want to build what you wanted. The strictures you gave me were loose enough that I could slide around them.” Her father was powerful but not clever, not like her mother had been or Haida.

  “You will make me another artifact, then,” he said. “Or fix this one.”

  She shook her head. “The bird is finished. It is an artifact sealed and immutable. And I?” She smiled at him. “Artifacts demand a price. I do not have enough magic left in me.”

  Artificers were rare, even among the most powerful of the fae. He would not find another he could bend to his will before the terms of his agreement with one more powerful than he would come due. She closed her eyes and raised her face to the sun; she didn’t expect to live long enough to see another day. Her only satisfaction was that he had not won: her magic would not destroy the fae—and her father would not outlive her by long.

  Her father picked the bird up off the ground and rolled it around in his hand—and she saw that his right arm ended in a rough and bloody lump of bandaging.

  “Father,” she said before she considered the wisdom of it, “what did you do to your hand?”

  SIX

  Samuel

  My father ran his fingers through Adda’s unhealthy brown coat, and growled, “I thought you said she demanded the forest lord’s hand to power the spell.”

  The witch had called Adda as soon as the forest lord—one arm wrapped in bandages—had left. She kept him until late in the afternoon, then dumped him outside when she was finished with him. As soon as he fell, my father and I had changed back to human. Adda needed help no wolf could render.

  I brought the bowl of water to the weakened wolf and fed the water to him, one handful at a time. I made no answer to my da’s accusation. His anger wasn’t directed at me, and there was no way to answer the anguish in his eyes. Words didn’t come to me as they once had, anyway.

  Instead, I crooned to the suffering beast as he swallowed. Da patted my shoulder in mute apology for his sharpness, and I nodded an acknowledgment.

  She’d mutilated Adda again.

  His left front paw had not regrown from the last time; moreover, it was festering despite all I could do. I’d noticed that the wounds she made to feed her magic were more likely to rot than other, naturally acquired wounds, more difficult even for werewolves to heal.

  To work the spell for the fae, tonight she’d taken Adda’s right front paw, too. He could not walk in wolf form and he had not the strength to try to take on a human form, even if he knew how, which I was not certain of.

  The wolf in my father’s arms whined at him, and Da bent his head. “It will be well,” he murmured. He looked at the cottage and the corners of his mouth whitened.

  My mother’s voice whispered in my ears. Look now to your da. If you’ve never seen rage on his face, you have now. Those old fools won’t know what hit them.

  I couldn’t remember what long-ago conflict she’d been talking about, but I knew that she’d been right. Then. But this was a fight he could not win, and we all knew it. I began changing back to wolf. There was nothing more to do for Adda that my da wouldn’t do, and I would be more use to him in my wolf form than as a weak human.

  Dafydd made a soft sound, as gentle as I’d ever heard out of his mouth. The rest of the wolves hovered uncertainly.

  “And a fat lot of help you have been,” snarled my father at Dafydd. “He is your son, and you watch as she kills him.”

  Though Dafydd had always been quick to punish any sign of disrespect before, this time he didn’t take any action at all. I couldn’t read his emotions—of all the wolves, Dafydd was the most difficult to read. It was as though the only thing he ever felt was anger or fear of the witch, nothing else.

  Adda woofed, catching Da’s attention.

  “I,” my father said, “am through watching.” He kissed Adda on the forehead, then broke the wolf’s neck with a quick jerk of his hands.

  It was so fast. One moment Adda had been panting in pain and the next he was gone.

  That was when Dafydd finally growled, and the heat of his anger swept through the air.

  Da stood up, let the dead wolf roll off his lap and onto the ground. He started the change that would turn him back to wolf. Dafydd and my da had disagreed before, even fought a time or two—and Da had always backed down before matters grew serious. But in my da’s eyes, I could tell that he’d reached his breaking point. He was done.

  I stepped between them, so Dafydd could not attack Da until Da was fully wolf. I didn’t think it would happen, Dafydd was usually fair. But I stepped in anyway, just in case I was wrong.

  A horn blew in the distance, a clear soft note that wrapped itself around my throat and tugged. The forest lord’s call was more than any of us could resist, and I found myself running beside Dafydd, shoulder to shoulder. Da finished his change while we ran.

  We would answer the fae’s call and do his bidding if he could control us, and kill him if he couldn’t—and I didn’t much care which. When we were finished, there would be a reckoning either for my father’s defiance or for Dafydd’s complicity. The battle had only been delayed, not halted. Dafydd was huge and violent—only a little smaller than I was. My da was a little less than three-quarters of Dafydd’s weight, but he was canny, my da. I did not know who would win.

  I’d expected a short run to the fae, but it turned out to be a fair distance and I revised my estimates of his power—the chances of avoiding doing whatever he asked of us went down with each mile. It
didn’t bother me much. What could he ask that we had not already done for my grandmother? Any pretense of goodness that I ever claimed was spent long ago. The only thing that mattered to me was Da.

  We topped a rise, and there was a small clearing laid out before our eyes. The fae lord was there, the bandage on his right arm red with his blood. He was less human-seeming out here in his woods. Antlers rose from his head and spread the width of his shoulders and more—and he was huge. He blew on his horn again, and it called songs from our throats.

  We half slid, half ran down the backside of the rise and leaped over the creek on the bottom. Once across the water, Dafydd slowed to a cautious dogtrot, and the rest of us followed his lead into the meadow where the forest lord waited.

  SEVEN

  Haida

  “My hand?” the forest lord said, raising the stump of his arm. “This is the price I paid for what you have done to me.” He threw the artifact Haida’s lady had made at a tree. It hit and tore bark from the trunk, leaving a weeping wound. The little silver bird dropped to the ground out of sight.

  He waited, but her lady was not such a fool as to say anything with her father in a towering rage. Not that her silence was likely to buy her safety in the long run. Haida understood that the lady had known that, really, since she made the decision to make sure that her little bird would never serve his purposes.

  Haida said, her voice stinging with contempt, trying to draw his attention away from her lady, “You went to the crone by the white spring. To a witch. A human.”

  The forest lord hissed, his deerlike ears flattening with ire. He flung a hand out toward Haida, and the little hobgoblin stiffened her spine and prepared to accept the poison she’d spun.

  But her lady stepped to the side and took the blow of magic herself. Haida wailed and started forward as the pain dropped her lady to her knees. The hobgoblin touched her lady’s shoulder, trying to dilute the effect of the forest lord’s anger.

  “Go,” said her lady with power in her voice. “Leave me. Hide.” And such was the strength of the lady, even diminished as she was, that Haida could only follow her orders.

  The forest lord, rage forcing a bellow like one of the great deer in rut out of his throat, threw another bolt of pain into his daughter. Hating herself for her inability to defend Ariana, Haida found a place under some bushes, where she could at least bear witness and give what aid she could.

  The lord took the horn he wore on a thong around his chest and blew again, summoning his hounds.

  The sound did what the pain had not. When Ariana raised her head, it was the beast who looked out of her eyes. The beast’s lips curled back from white teeth, and it started to get to its feet. Haida felt a breathless instant of hope. The beast was more powerful in its way than her lady was. Haida could feel the power of the beast’s magic, full and strong. Proof, if she’d needed it, that the beast and her lady were truly different from each other. Had the beast had more time, even a moment, it might have destroyed the forest lord—but the howls that answered the great horn caused the beast to freeze, and fear robbed it of its power. The beast rolled into a ball on the ground and waited for what would come.

  The animals responding to the forest lord didn’t sound like his hounds. Evidently the fae lord felt the same, for he paused, taking his attention off his daughter for a moment. If only her lady hadn’t sent her away, Haida might have managed to make use of the momentary lapse, but she was too far away to do anything but watch.

  EIGHT

  Samuel

  There was a moment when we were free of thrall, after the forest lord blew his horn the second time, after we topped the rise, so he could plainly see that what had come to his call was not his hounds. While he stood in shock, we were free. I had not realized until then that the witch had given up her hold upon us when he summoned us with his horn.

  I was of free will for the first time since she’d knocked upon my door and turned my father and me into monsters. We stopped, looking down upon them. Dafydd whined, and the others shuffled around, but my father and I stood frozen.

  The forest lord’s face twisted with anger, and he looked at us and closed his single fist. I felt his determination, his magic, roll over me. I snarled in protest, but we were his.

  The forest lord turned his attention to the girl curled up on the ground in front of him. “You are of no further use to me.” Next to his bulk, she looked frail and helpless. I could not see her face, only a long fall of pale silver hair touched with lavender that could not have belonged to a human. He looked at us then, smiled savagely, and said, “Direwolves. I had heard the witch had such to serve her. You are not my hounds, but you will suffice for this. Hurt this woman for me. She is meant to die today, but I want her to suffer first.”

  Slaved to his purpose, the pack ran to do his bidding. All except my father and I. Tantalized by that breath of freedom, I fought him, fought the magic that tried to hold me. And I failed. All I could do was slow my obedience so that the rest of them were already attacking the defenseless fae woman by the time I reached her, conscious that my father’s pace was just a little slower than mine.

  I closed my fangs on the fae woman’s shoulder, biting deep, teeth scraping against bone. I had meant to crush her throat, and so to rebel against the fae lord’s command—and save her from her suffering as my da had saved Adda. But the fae lord’s magic was too strong for me.

  Dafydd snarled at me and snapped his teeth in my direction. Maybe I was in his way, maybe he had seen what I tried to do. Dafydd believed in obedience. I released my grip and snarled back at him.

  Which was why I saw Da attack the forest lord. Such a fae in his other form is a huge thing, heavier and taller than the biggest horse I’d ever seen. My father ran up the fae lord’s side, digging in with claws like a cat climbing a tree. His fangs sank deep into the fae lord’s neck—and the leash controlling us was no more.

  I leaped away from the dying fae woman and dove to my father’s aid. Dafydd hesitated. His prey was bleeding and helpless—but there was no longer anything forcing him to continue to hurt the woman.

  For a moment, it was only Da and I. The forest lord broke my father’s grip and tossed him to the ground. I leaped and got lucky, biting deep into the tendon behind his knee. The fae roared—and the forest answered. Magic, wild and painful, seared over my back like a swarm of angry bees.

  But Da harried him from the other side, and the magic scattered as the forest lord lost concentration. He drew a bronze knife from his belt and swiped it at Da, who flowed away like water. Then he brought the blade back, so quickly I could tell it was an intentional strike, and I was the target he’d intended in the first place.

  I could have dropped my hold, but I was close to crippling him. I wasn’t afraid of death, had been waiting for it since my wife and children had died. To die as Adda had would be a release. I hung on grimly, feeling the tendon start to tear, but it would not give way before his knife found me.

  Before it could connect, Dafydd’s jaws closed on the fae lord’s wrist and dragged the knife off course. The forest lord staggered, pulled off balance by Dafydd’s unexpected weight and further off balance by the leg I’d damaged.

  With a high-pitched scream that hurt my ears, he dropped the knife and grabbed Dafydd—and impaled him upon his sharp, pale ivory horns. One tine pierced Dafydd’s throat and came out his eye. As I saw him die, I felt it, too. Like a tear in my chest that opened me to the pain he’d felt as he died.

  For a moment, my eyes quit working, blinded by Dafydd’s trauma. When I could see again, Pedr was dead. His head pulled off his body, and my own body convulsed as I felt that, too.

  Adda had been my pack mate. But it had been his dying that had dwelt in us all, not his death, which had been a release. Dafydd’s death, Pedr’s death was no release. They had been vital and healthy, then dead, and their deaths rippled through bonds I had not re
alized were there until they hurt so.

  This morning there had been seven of us—and now we were four—and our pack had no leader.

  That last bothered my wolf, and if he had been in charge of our body, as he was during most battles I had engaged in since I was Changed, he would have disengaged and run. But neither witch, nor forest lord, nor wolf held my leash. I would not abandon my da to this creature.

  My fangs severed the tendon, and I dropped to the ground, unable to keep hold where the fae’s flesh had given way. The forest lord’s leg collapsed, toppling him like a woodsman toppled an oak. Unlike an oak, he did not lie still when he landed. He rolled, grabbed his knife, and stuck it into a wolf too distracted by the other wolves’ deaths to get out of the way of the clumsy strike. Ieuan’s belly ripped upward, spilling intestines and soft organs on the ground. Though the initial strike had been luck, the fae lord adjusted his grip and pulled the knife in a twisted path that ended in a thrust into the wolf’s spinal column. So fast, Ieuan was dead, too.

  This time, my pack mate’s death didn’t slow me down. It didn’t hurt any less—but the shock of it was gone. I knew what it felt like now when one of our pack died.

  From first impact to death was less than a breath’s time. Ieuan was older than I and only a moment ago he was alive and unhurt. There had been times that I would have killed him myself if it had not been for the witch’s hold upon me. I would not have thought I would mourn his death.

  The fae lord was quick. So quick. Even half-crippled and one-handed, he dealt out painful wounds and the three of us who were left, Da, Deiniol, and I, learned to be swift and wary, to hit and move. If my first attack had not been from behind him, I’d already have joined Dafydd and the others in death. But the fae lord was too wary to let any of us behind him so easily again.

  I suppose that time lasted no more than a few minutes, but it seemed like a long time that we fought with none of us gaining advantage. Then he stuck the knife deep in my da’s hip. It caught there and he had to jerk to get it out. Deiniol dove to help Da—and I jumped and caught onto his mutilated right arm and ripped and tore with ferocity born of fear. He swung his arm, and I flew loose, my head hitting a tree like a smith hit an anvil. When I staggered to my feet, the forest lord was dead.