Page 39 of Sun, Moon & Shadow (Fate of Aemoria #1)

The feud was over livestock. Or was it property lines?

Callan couldn’t recall and, honestly, didn’t care either way.

His agreement with Thorn obligated him to attend Assembly held in the Great Hall.

But while Callan’s attendance was required, his participation—gods be praised—was not.

Each appeal bled into the next, continuing on with mind-numbing monotony, until he found himself weighing whether dozing off for a bit was worth the reprimand he’d surely receive from his uncle. He decided it probably was not.

Thorn dispensed his latest wisdom, and the griping landowners parted ways, disappearing into the crowd. It was standing room only in the hall. Callan squinted, then opened his eyes wide, rubbing a hand over his face to keep himself awake.

The herald announced the next complainant, and the crowd parted, allowing a disheveled male with long, stringy hair and wrinkled clothing to approach the platform where Callan sat on a simple chair set back from his uncle’s throne.

The visitor’s bloodshot eyes suggested it had been some nights since he’d last slept.

Intrigued for the first time in the hours since the meeting began, Callan shifted in his seat as his uncle acknowledged the male and asked his reason for coming before the throne.

“I am Anders, my Lord. I’ve come from the ice fields of the Whitepeak District.”

Callan knew the place. Roughly two days’ ride from the capital.

“Three days past, my village was attacked.”

“Attacked?” Thorn asked.

“Yes,” Anders said. “By a pack of yaesira.”

Murmurs and whispers rose from those standing closest to the dais, a wave of disbelief rippling out to the four corners of the room.

The predatory cats were massive and covered with thick, armorlike scales in place of fur.

Native to Silvergard, it was almost unheard of to encounter yaesira in Nivali; the creatures rarely strayed from their established hunting grounds north of the Nephari Mountains.

“How can you be certain?” Thorn raised his voice and held up an authoritative hand to silence the crowd.

“I observed the tracks myself, and some of the townsfolk managed to kill one of the beasts. Its body lies there still.” Anders turned to address the gentry gathered in the hall.

“The yaesira slaughtered at least three, but the rest of the townsfolk are missing. No bodies. No footprints in the snow.”

“This is the Shadowbringer’s doing!” The shout came from a stocky, blond male with a long braided beard. Callan didn’t recognize him. “He controls the wicked beasts and sends them to do his bidding.”

“The Realm hasn’t seen an attack by Raven’s Isle in decades. Why would the Shadowbringer suddenly strike again?” a female warrior questioned, her muscled arms crossed over a chest plate of thick brown leather.

“I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation. There’s no sense in spreading needless panic,” Thorn reassured the crowd. “Perhaps the creatures simply tracked a herd of elk down through one of the passes. Gods only know what the conditions are like beyond the northern border.”

Callan rose from his seat and approached the front of the platform.

“If I may speak, my Lord,” he began, bowing his head to his uncle. Thorn waved a hand, granting him permission to continue. “A similar attack was carried out in Tundara only a few weeks ago—”

“That proves it!” the blond male interrupted, instigating the folk around him until everyone was shouting and swearing angry oaths.

“Enough!” Callan yelled, his command instantly bringing silence over the room. Realizing he had overstepped, he glanced at his uncle. Thorn’s mouth hung open for an instant before he collected himself.

“Karlsen, I’ll have you removed from the hall if you can’t respect the rules of Assembly.” His authority re-established, Thorn nodded at Callan to continue.

“The attacks in Tundara and Whitepeak may be unrelated. Or they may be related but have nothing to do with Raven’s Isle. And, yes, there is a possibility both attacks were carried out by the Shadowbringer.”

Callan turned to his uncle.

“My Lord, I ask to travel north to Whitepeak to investigate the circumstances of the attack and determine whether or not Nivali is at risk.”

“You.” Thorn pointed at Anders. “How did you survive to bring this news before Assembly?”

“I was out with a hunting party when the creatures attacked. The others in my group stayed behind in Whitepeak, guarding the bodies in the hopes that someone would be sent.”

“Very well.” Thorn turned to address Callan. “Accompany him north to the ice fields and return with your findings.”

Thorn clapped his hands, and a servant stepped forward.

“See that this man is fed and given a bed.”

The servant led Anders away, and Thorn dismissed the crowd.

Callan turned to leave and make preparations for the journey, but his uncle caught him around the wrist.

“Keep your wits about you, Callan. These are strange times, indeed.”

Less than an hour’s ride remained before Callan and his guide would arrive at the ice fields of Whitepeak.

Mercifully, the clear weather had held since they departed the Estate, though the gusting winds blew bitterly cold.

Callan had cobbled together a few hours of sleep the night before, stretched out on the hard ground beneath an awning of ancient spruce, his cloak pulled tight around him.

Few words had passed between them on the journey.

Callan wasn’t particularly talkative under normal circumstances.

His nagging unease about the scene awaiting him had him clenching his jaw too tightly to engage in idle chat.

Anders didn’t seem to take offense, giving Callan the wide berth to which he’d grown accustomed.

He sensed the apprehension emanating from the hunter, who rode a short distance behind him, his watchful gaze fixed on Callan’s back. On the weapon sheathed there.

The path cutting through the snowy wood widened, and Anders picked up speed, bringing his horse to ride alongside Callan.

“I know who you are,” he said, the slight tremor in his voice proof it had taken him nearly two days to gather the courage to speak.

“Do you?”

“You’re Callan Nyhauslen. Aemoria’s Blade.” The hunter’s voice held a hint of childlike wonder.

Inwardly, Callan recoiled at the name forced upon him, a name he had never once claimed.

The Council hadn’t spared even a fleeting thought for the part of him that’d been lost in the Wylds all those years ago.

The Council only cared about maintaining its image of authority and control throughout the Realm.

He had no choice but to bear the title, even if it cut him like the flick of a knife each time he heard it uttered.

“I go by Callan,” he said, voice low and words clipped, refusing to look at the awestruck male keeping pace beside him.

The gods heeded Callan’s prayer for silence, and Anders went quiet again. They rode on for a time, the trill of the birds making the journey almost pleasant.

“Is that it? The blade that slayed Ithan Greylock?”

For an instant, Callan was back in the abandoned temple in Maedwen, kneeling in a pool of blood on the cold stone floor.

Hands shaking and stained red as he struggled to focus on the tall columns of speckled granite swirling around him.

On the face of his friend Arik, dark eyes flashing with concern, as he came to kneel before Callan.

“Yes,” Callan snarled, returning to the present moment and snapping his head toward the hunter. “And it always thirsts for fresh blood.”

Anders fell back once again, his chestnut mare following a short distance behind Frost. Callan exhaled sharply through his nose, his breath a cloud of steam rising in the frigid air.

He preferred to think of his sword as the one that had once belonged to his father.

A reminder of the male Callan had been before fate intervened, leaving him forever changed.

When Nova had admired the blade on the training field in Pyralis, simply appreciating it for what it was with no knowledge of its history, he’d hoped she viewed him the same way.

Exactly as he was. Unmarred by the many mistakes of his past.

Frost trotted through the tree line, and a vast expanse of ice, thick and tinged with blue, spread out before them. On the opposite side of the field, Callan spied wooden structures. Anders pulled ahead, leading the way across the frozen ground.

They reached the village a short time later, and a corpse greeted them as they passed through the high wooden gates.

The female’s eyes were cloudy, staring at the sky, her mouth open in a silent scream.

A pool of frozen blood surrounded her, still bright red nearly a week after her death, stemming from a savage wound to her throat.

Callan trembled with a shudder that had nothing to do with the icy wind racing across the flats surrounding the village.

He slid down from the saddle, his boots landing with a crunch on the packed snow covering the roadway. A male and a female emerged from a trading post: the rest of Anders’s hunting party. They greeted the hunter with silent nods and made no attempt to speak to Callan as he crouched beside the body.

The female’s skin was tinged blue, like the ice.

She’d been mauled by a beast of considerable size.

Callan raised the apron tied at her waist, draping the bloodstained fabric over her face.

Before he could stand, something caught his eye—a streak of black against the pool of garish crimson.

He pinched the object between his gloved thumb and forefinger, holding it before his face.

The wind ruffled the black barbs of a raven’s feather.

“Where is the creature?” he asked, rising to his feet and securing the feather in the leather pouch hanging at his hip.

The female hunter gestured with a jerk of her chin, turning to lead Callan farther into the settlement.

The wind swept along the ice fields, producing a faint, high-pitched whistle, an eerie sound without the bustle of a village to mask it.

His guides turned onto a narrow alleyway between the trading post and tavern.

Two more bodies lay on the ground with injuries similar to the first. A short distance away, nearly stretching from one side of the alleyway to the other, lay the yaesira.

Callan approached cautiously despite knowing full well the creature was dead. A large ice hook protruded from the side of its neck. The beast was huge, not so different from the snow cats of Nivali. But instead of a coat of soft white fur, the yaesira had thick scales, black and shiny.

Callan returned to the bodies, both males, one older, the other little more than a youngling.

The older one lay curled around the younger, shielding him with his body.

Bile rose in Callan’s throat as he confronted the horror laid out before him, the village so similar to the one where his parents met their ends.

His head swam with the acrid, coppery tang of blood in the air.

Callan swallowed hard, his mouth twisting into a grimace.

“We need to burn them,” he said, clenching his fists at his sides.

“We’ll gather the firewood.” Anders and his companions hurried out of the alley, leaving Callan alone to see to the dead.

He found several bolts of finely woven fabric inside the trading post. After gathering the bodies in the village square, Callan set to work carefully wrapping each one in a shroud of deep indigo.

Twilight painted the sky purple by the time the others had finished constructing the pyre.

Together, they laid the bodies on top. Callan touched a torch to the dry wood, flames fully engulfing the bodies within seconds.

He took several steps back, the scorching heat singeing his cheeks as he watched the thick smoke billowing into the sky, bearing the souls of the dead to the After Realm.

There had been nothing to burn after his parents’ deaths.

Even if there had been, he had lacked the courage to return home.

Perhaps if there had been a pyre for them, if he’d seen the smoke carrying them away, he would have been able to accept that they were truly gone.

The intervening centuries had done little to ease his doubt.

Callan whispered a prayer for his parents and the souls of the villagers to the darkening sky.

Anders and the others felled an elk on the hunting trip that had spared them from the attack.

They all took refuge within the tavern for the night, the female called Bronna roasting cuts of meat over an open fire.

Callan ate out of necessity but struggled to get the food down past the taste of ash and iron clinging to the back of his throat.

He was certain the attack was Omen’s doing.

The similarities were glaring, and there was the raven’s feather.

As he chewed on a hunk of meat, he puzzled over why the Shadowbringer had suddenly resumed his aggression against the Realm after lying dormant for so many years.

It was uncommon for yaesira to leave their territory in the North, just as it was uncommon for lycane to hunt in pairs.

Perhaps Nova was the catalyst for Omen’s reawakening.

Had Omen sent the beast that nearly took Nova’s life only minutes after she crossed into Aemoria?

Callan’s brows pinched together. He was thankful he was the only one, apart from her own mother, of course, who knew the truth about Nova’s paternity.

Callan shoved his plate of half-eaten venison across the tabletop stained with rings from countless overflowing mugs of ale, then stretched himself out on the floor at the edge of the fire’s light, tucking his hands behind his head.

He watched the flicker of the fire as it danced across the ceiling, listening to the hushed voices of the hunters whispering tales of Aemoria’s Blade.