Shadowlith (Umbral Blade Book 1) by Stuart Thaman

Author:Stuart Thaman
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781942212782
Publisher: Hydra Publications
Published: 2017-04-17T06:00:00+00:00

“No!” Rai screamed. He stretched his arms toward the pool, but his already blistered skin burned more with every inch, and he pulled his hand back almost as quickly as he had sent it out.

He backed away from the pool far enough to not fear being lit aflame by it, but he could not bring himself to look away. “Alster!” he yelled. “Alster!”

To the right side of the pool, Alster’s horse whinnied and tapped the ground nervously with a hoof. The liquid shimmered and boiled, but Alster did not emerge. Rai looked back toward where he had left Alster and Elsey before he had run through the field of shades and, luckily, Elsey had not moved. Between them, the shades still stood guard, though there was an empty void carved through their center left by Alster’s wild charge.

“Alster?” Rai called toward the murky pool one last time. There was no response. Solemnly, Rai got to his feet and held his injured hands close to his chest. Everything hurt. A myriad of cuts and tears given to him by the shades lined most of his body, and the intense heat of the pool had burned almost all of the exposed skin on his hands and face. The burns were not serious enough to be fatal, but Rai wondered if he would ever look the same again. He had known a woman in Mournstead who had been burned when she was a child, and she had been treated as some sort of outcast for her disfigurement.

Rai wanted to rub the side of his face to make the pain go away, but his skin was raw. Touching his burnt flesh was even more painful than letting the wind tear at it. Mustering his resolve, Rai collected his arrows from the ground. Curiously, he noticed how they had been changed by the water of Scalder’s Inlet. Once grey and entirely ordinary, the arrowheads had taken on a strange hue of red and orange, similar to the dagger Alster had left behind on the ground near the pool.

Mesmerized, Rai turned each of the arrowheads over in his hands, careful not to let the metal touch his injured skin. The metal felt different somehow, as though some of the pool’s liquid had been trapped inside it. The red and orange veins shifted through the arrowheads as he watched. Rai shook his head as he wondered what the liquid was doing to Alster’s body. He couldn’t imagine the pain he would feel if he touched the pool with even his fingertips. Being submerged in the pool, if it did not instantly bring death, would be excruciating.

Rai took one final look at the pool before mounting Alster’s horse. He thought of taking the dagger, but quickly dispelled the notion.

“I-” Rai began, trying to think of something to say to Alster. After a moment, Rai turned the horse toward the path Alster had carved through the shades and left.

“What happened?” Elsey asked when Rai returned to the cold, snowy fringes of Scalder’s Inlet.

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