Shadowborn by Katie MacAlister

Author:Katie MacAlister
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2020-06-04T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

“This is a disturbingly bleak place.” I stood with my hands on my hips and surveyed our surroundings. “What did you say it was called?”

“Me?” Mayam stood up from where she’d bent to examine a small flowering plant. Like the ground beneath our feet, it was black—everything from the stem to the leaves and flowers all bore slightly different hues of the same color. “Did I say what it was called? I don’t remember.”

I disregarded that statement. “I don’t remember” had become a frequent refrain the last few days. I frowned at that thought, something niggling in the back of my mind, something disturbing, but whatever it was refused to come forward and let me see it. “I suppose it doesn’t matter. I just thought you called it by a specific name.”

Mayam glanced around. “The stones here are pretty. What would you call it, if you could name it?”

“The stones, or this place?” I scrambled to the top of a black rocky outcropping, noticing that the texture of the stone was oddly smooth, as Mayam had pointed out. It was almost glass-like, glistening onyx in the dulled daylight.

Black lay before me: black ground, black rock, a few scrubby black plants, and black skeletons of scorched trees long dead, their jagged, naked branches resembling the fingers of a withered crone.

Or those of a…of a…my mind came to a stuttering halt at the word I wanted to draw forth. “Kiriah blight it,” I muttered to myself, having the same sense of something trying to get my attention and feeling irritated with my inability to think properly.

“It’s not very descriptive of the land itself, but I agree that as a sentiment, it suits,” Mayam said, climbing up onto the ebony remains of a fallen tree that looked like it had been blasted by lightning. “Blighted is a good word for it.”

“No, that was meant for myself. There’s a word I want—the people who were affected by those big red ones—they were all shrunken in on themselves, and had claw-like fingers.”

Mayam wrinkled her forehead in thought. “Night talkers, you mean?”

“I have no idea what that is.” I glanced behind me, in the direction we’d come. The edge of the forest was dull grey, as was right and proper in the spirit realm. This blackness that consumed everything was not. “It’s just wrong, and yet at the same time, it feels oddly…right,” I said aloud.

“No, they really are called night talkers. I’m certain that’s the right name for them. They were well known on Eris, and highly sought after. It’s said they could summon the shadows, and slip into them to hide from view. My mother said she had a night talker in her family, but I never saw him.” Mayam picked up a smooth bit of polished onyx stone, examined it, and, after a moment, tossed it aside. “The rocks here are pretty, though.”

“Well, whatever this place is called—and to answer your question, I think I would call it deep night, since it

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