Shadow Hunted Read online

  SHADOW HUNTED

  Book Five of

  the epic fantasy series

  Chaos and Retribution

  Stone Bound: Book One

  Sky Touched: Book Two

  Sea Born: Book Three

  Chaos Trapped: Book Four

  Chaos and Retribution is the sequel to

  Immortality and Chaos

  Wreckers Gate: Book One

  Landsend Plateau: Book Two

  Guardians Watch: Book Three

  Hunger’s Reach: Book Four

  Oblivion’s Grasp: Book Five

  Also by Eric T Knight

  the action-adventure series

  Lone Wolf Howls

  the action thriller

  Watching the End of the World

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  Chapter 1

  Karliss floated above the man with the scarred face who had just taken the key fragment and ordered his death. No, not a man, only something that wore the shape of a man. A Shaper, like Kasai.

  With the Shaper were two black-robed, tattooed companions. All three of them were looking at the spot where Karliss had been only moments ago.

  “I have to say, I wasn’t expecting that,” the Shaper said. “That kid has learned a lot. Well, the important thing is that he did what I needed him to. And then he went even further by removing himself as a threat. If he ever was. Stone is stronger than Sky,” he said loudly, looking up at the sky. “If you return, remember that. Though I doubt you will return. You will find that putting yourself back together is more difficult than taking yourself apart.”

  He held up the fragment. The sunlight glinted redly off it. “Thank you for this. You’ve been very helpful.” He took out a pouch and dropped the fragment into it. There was a clinking sound as it struck the piece already in there.

  “Goodbye. Wherever you are.”

  The black staff he held began to lose shape, widening, growing taller, dissolving into shadow.

  It occurred to Karliss that he should try to stop him, that the key should be protected. But he could do nothing. He had no will to control the wind. He was nothing. He was helpless.

  Did he really care anyway? What were the concerns of the world to him?

  The Shaper and his tattooed companions stepped into the shadow. The shadow wrapped around them, rippled, then faded away. Karliss was left alone.

  Karliss drifted. He had no center. He was nobody. An aranti blew through him, but he had no voice to speak to it, no way to order it to serve him. He was a ghost.

  He was dissolving, the essence of what made him Karliss drifting further and further apart. If he did not stop it, if he could not find some way to hold himself together, soon there would be nothing left of him. Already he could feel his thoughts becoming disjointed, breaking up into pieces and slipping through his grasp. His vision was splintering as well. He no longer saw one view of the world, but many. And those views were steadily diverging.

  At first, he was unable to summon the will to resist. Why should he? Life brought only pain. Soon he would be nothing, and the pain would go away.

  He remembered losing himself in the third word of power. That had been enjoyable, blissful even. This was something else altogether. He felt as if he were being pulled apart and scattered to the winds. He would still remember who and what he once was, but only in scattered fragments that were mostly disconnected from each other. It was a truly frightening feeling.

  He fought back, trying frantically to hold himself together. But it was futile, like trying to catch the smoke with his hands. The pieces escaped his clutches over and over. There was nothing he could do.

  Then it was all gone, leaving only a simple animal awareness. He forgot the struggle for the key. He forgot his family, his friends. He forgot himself. He was as empty as the wind, as mindless as a cloud.

  In some fragment of his splintered awareness, motion caught his eye. In that fragment he was looking down on a high, mountain valley with a pond in its center, a few copses of ragged trees hugging its edges. Near the pond was a bizarre collection of bone sculptures, some as small as a bird, the one in the center huge.

  Standing amongst the bone sculptures, looking up, was a man. On his head, large enough that he could wear it like a helmet, was the bleached skull of some nameless creature. Two long canine teeth curved down from the upper jaw of the skull, framing the sides of his face. He was clad completely in bones. Bones of all sizes had been strung together with sinew, covering his torso and upper arms and legs. All of his exposed skin was painted white, except for the areas around his mouth and eyes, which were blackened.

  He spoke, but Karliss had already forgotten words. His awareness that this thing below him was a man was fading. Soon he would count no more than a tree or a rabbit. Karliss drifted further away.

  The bone-clad man took up a long, forked stick from the ground. The twigs and leaves had been stripped from it. The two ends of the fork had been lashed together, forming a roughly circular area. Cords of dried gut crisscrossed the circular area, forming a web. Tiny bones and feathers were tied into the web.

  He swung the web through the area where Karliss was. As he did, something peculiar happened. Whole sections of disjointed vision disappeared. After several more passes, his vision narrowed into a single focus once again. His thoughts regained cohesion at the same time. That is, they were focused now on this one area. They still did not make sense to him, but they were no longer scattered.

  The bone-clad man swung the web again, and for the first time Karliss felt something. He was reminded that he’d once had a body. Around him the hazy outline of it appeared. It was little more than mist still, but it was undeniably him. He could again feel the wind on his skin, along with something unpleasant, a sense of confinement. He was trapped in the web. He tried to struggle against it, but he couldn’t remember how to move his body.

  The bone-clad man headed for the center of the strange boneyard. Still trapped in the web, Karliss was pulled along with him. As he walked, the man placed two fingers in his mouth and let out a piercing whistle. The whistle was answered from several places around the small valley, and then others began to appear.

  They emerged from behind bushes which should have been too thin and sparse to hide them. They stood up from behind rocks too small to crouch behind. They rose up from seemingly bare ground. Their skin was the color of dust.

  The bone sculpture in the center of the boneyard was huge, more than twice the height of a person. Its legs were the thigh bones from some unknown creature, the bones longer and thicker than a human leg. It had four arms, each one different. One was tiny and appeared to be the skeletal remains of a child’s arm. One was a bird wing, though from a bird larger than any seen on the steppes. One of the others was the leg of a deer. The last one, the largest of them all, ended in long claws.

  Perched at the top was a monstrous skull with a pointed snout and teeth the length of a hand. Painted stones were set in the empty eye sockets.

  The bone-clad man pointed at the ground a dozen paces from the huge bone sculpture and said something to the others. Using sharpened sticks and flakes of stone, several men began to dig a shallow trench in the stony soil, a trench about the length and width of a body.

  While they were doing this, the women and children gathered wood and dried grasses. They piled these at one end of the shallow trench. When the wood was in place, they lit it. Soon a fire was blazing.

  The bone-clad man removed a leather pouch from inside his clothing and upended it over the fire. The powder contained in it flared up when it hit the flames, clouds of
white smoke rising from it. He thrust the web into the smoke and held it there.

  Karliss could feel the smoke immediately. It was the most peculiar feeling, as if the smoke was adhering to him. He disliked the feeling, and he struggled to get away, but the net held him fast, and the smoke made him heavy.

  Karliss felt himself begin to change. He was becoming more substantial. The last bits of his scattered perception coalesced around a specific point. In the clouds of smoke, the dim outlines of his body became clearer. The bone-clad man stared at him, his gaze piercing. Karliss tried to move but was only able to make his limbs twitch a little.

  The smoke from the powder faded away. The bone-clad man held the web down to the trench the men had dug. He began to chant, a single line over and over. Karliss felt as if the man were calling him. He had a sudden memory of himself as a small boy, standing beside a river while someone called his name in the distance. He felt the weight of his body against the bottom of the trench, faint, but undeniably there. When the bone-clad man raised the web, Karliss’ body stayed in the trench, a thing of smoke and haze, still not really a body.

  From another pouch, the bone-clad man poured some black powder into his palm. He spat on it and mixed it in with his finger until he had a thick paste. Crouching beside the trench, he daubed some of the paste on Karliss’ forehead.

  A sudden pain lanced through Karliss, and he screamed, though he could make no sound. He tried to get away, but he had no control over this insubstantial body. The shaman took more of the paste and drew a line down the center of Karliss’ face, along his neck, and down his torso. The pain was incredible. It felt like thousands of tiny needles were stitching the pieces of his body back together. Karliss fought to get away and this time managed a feeble twitch. The bone-clad man repeated the process for both arms and legs, spreading a line of paste down the center of each. The whole time Karliss writhed helplessly.

  When he was finished, the bone-clad man stood and said something to the others. Two men began piling small bones on Karliss. His body was substantial enough by then that the bones didn’t pass through him. Soon he was completely covered in bones, at which point two others began throwing dirt over him.

  Horror gripped Karliss—his lifelong fear of tight, enclosed places returning—and he renewed his efforts to get away. His limbs moved more than before, but he still had no strength. The dirt kept coming. The sunlight grew dimmer and finally faded to black.

  How long he lay there he had no idea. All was blackness. There was no sound. He might have been dead, a spirit tethered to a body that no longer lived. But gradually, so slowly that at first he didn’t notice it, his awareness began to crystallize. Who he was began to return.

  More memories appeared in his mind: being cradled in a woman’s lap, someone touching his cheek and saying something to him, someone hugging him. The memories accumulated like layers of sediment at the bottom of a lake. Learning how to swim, running after some boys, catching frogs in the river, hiding in the grass.

  As the memories accumulated, they pushed away the creature of animal instinct that he had been and left in its place a living human filled with fear and regret and guilt. He had failed at something. He couldn’t remember what it was, only that it was vitally important. He didn’t like these feelings, and he tried to flee from them, but it was no use. They clung to him like an unbearable weight, dragging him down, always down.

  Then, all at once, he was himself again, his body and thoughts whole and knit back together. He tried to draw breath but couldn’t. There was no air, only dirt and bone. It pressed down on him with terrible weight.

  Panic filled him, and he thrashed around. At first he was as weak as a newborn and could do nothing, but he didn’t give up, and finally one arm broke through to sunlight and air. The other arm followed, and he managed to lever himself into a sitting position. He sat there, his chest heaving, his eyes tightly closed. His skin felt raw, as if the outermost layer had been peeled away. His whole body hurt. His brain hurt. His thoughts were painful things that burned as they passed through his mind.

  He felt something touching him. Though he tried to pull away, it held him fast. His head was tilted back, his mouth forced open. Something thick and bitter was poured into his mouth, then a hand clamped over it. He fought, but he had no choice finally except to swallow the stuff. It burned its way down his throat and into his stomach.

  He was let go and fell over on his side, retching violently. Most of the stuff came back up, but not all of it. Some was still inside him. He could feel its fingers spreading throughout his body, completing the work of knitting him back together.

  When the sickness had faded somewhat, he sat up and opened his eyes. The sun was high overhead, the light bright. He blinked against it, his eyes watering and refusing to focus.

  Crouching in front of him, staring into his eyes, was the bone-clad figure. A smile stretched the old man’s loose lips. Small bones pierced each of his ears and his forehead above his eyes. Another bone pierced his nose. He sprinkled something into his palm, then blew it in Karliss’ face, causing him to cough. The man said something and stood up.

  Karliss raised his head and saw that the man had turned to others who were standing behind him in a loose group. They were barefoot and dressed in roughly-tanned animal hides stitched together with gut and sinew. Bones of different sizes were attached to their clothing and woven into their hair. The children only had a few bones attached to them, the young adults more. The oldest of them were nearly covered in bones.

  One of them, an old woman who was barely visible under all the bones attached to her, emerged from the group and walked toward Karliss. She carried a small blanket. Bird wings were sewn all over it. She placed the blanket around Karliss’ shoulders and stepped back.

  “Who are you?” Karliss asked them.

  The bone-clad man—probably the tribe’s shaman—replied, but Karliss did not understand his words.

  The tribe began to leave then, walking away in ones and twos. The shaman was among the last to leave. As he turned away, Karliss became alarmed.

  “Where are you going? Don’t leave!” he called after the man. He tried to stand and follow, but he was too weak, and he fell immediately.

  The shaman turned back. He motioned Karliss to stay and said something.

  Karliss felt a sudden terror at being left alone. “Are you coming back? When?” He was on his hands and knees looking up at the man.

  The shaman nodded. He pointed at the sun. With his finger he traced an arc across the sky, stopping at the western horizon. He looked at Karliss to see if he understood.

  Karliss shook his head. The shaman nodded and turned away. Karliss stared after him, marking where he went in case he didn’t return. Before his eyes the shaman slowly faded and was gone. It didn’t seem possible. There wasn’t enough cover to hide him, only scrubby bushes and some short yellow grasses. Karliss rubbed his eyes, unsure if his vision was misleading him.

  Looking around, he saw that almost the whole tribe had disappeared from sight already. The wind was blowing quite hard, he noticed. For a moment it seemed to him like the wind was blowing them away, as if they were people of dust, and the wind was scattering them.

  Soon only one woman was still visible, walking toward the eagle rock formation. She reached the base of the scree slope leading up to it, the wind gusted, and then she was gone as well.

  Karliss felt terribly alone. He was frayed, his thoughts a tattered blanket that fell to pieces when he tried to grab them. He had memories, but he didn’t think they all belonged to him. The deepest and oldest of the memories spanned eons: watching a nascent world slowly take shape, wild primordial seas, stark, lifeless rock, howling winds. It was all very confusing.

  He heard a high-pitched voice behind him and turned his head to see a small girl standing there. She wore the same crude furs as the rest of them, though only two small bones hung from her clothes. Her hair was wild and matted, her arms and legs brown like old lea
ther and skinny. But it was her eyes that drew his attention. They were bright blue and piercing. She spoke again, her teeth very white against her face.

  “I don’t know what you’re saying,” Karliss said. “I don’t understand.”

  She walked up to him. She was tiny, a mere wisp of a thing. Even sitting down, he was taller than she was. But she carried herself with the assurance of one much older, and when she walked, her gait was not that of a small child.

  She stopped right in front of him. Her head tilted to the side as she spoke again. Karliss held up his hands to show he didn’t understand. She made a soothing sound and stroked his hair with one small hand.

  “I don’t know—” he began, but she shushed him. She patted his head and gestured around the small valley. He followed her gesture with his eyes but saw nothing that stuck out.

  She turned and walked away.

  Alarmed that he would be alone again, Karliss called after her. She looked over her shoulder and said something but didn’t slow. He watched her go with dread, sure she would disappear as the others had.

  But she didn’t. Instead she walked over to the huge bone sculpture. She knelt at the foot of it and looked up at it. She looked so small next to it. She said something to it that sounded like a question. Then she waited. Time passed. Finally, she stood up, made a dismissive gesture, and walked back toward Karliss.

  Karliss looked from her to the bone sculpture, then to all the other, smaller sculptures gathered around. There must have been a hundred of them. “What is this place?” he asked.

  She looked at him and said something. He shrugged. “I don’t understand.”

  She laughed. Then she began to whirl around in a circle, her arms out, singing as she did so. Puffs of dust rose from her bare feet as they slapped the ground.

  The wind began to blow. Movement caught Karliss’ eye, and he turned his head, taking his eyes away from the little girl. The wind was blowing through the boneyard, and it was making the bone sculptures move. All of them, from the tiny ones the size of mice, to the large ones as tall as a man. For a moment he was sure she was bringing them to life, that they would climb down off the stakes that held them up and walk. But they didn’t walk. Their arms rose into the air, as if in supplication.