Shadows Beyond

Chapter 1

As the sun sank behind the mountains, taking with it any remaining warmth, Emtani watched familiar shapes transforming into menacing outlines. She rubbed her frozen hands together, stubbornly refusing to let the gathering darkness swallow her, and listened to the emerging whispers of the night. Unable to identify them, she shrank down in her shelter, poor though it was.

Tagg had warned her not to go, saying nights on the rocky plain were bitter-cold, but she had chosen not to trust the word of a common thief. Hugging her knees in a miserable attempt to stay warm, she wished she had delayed her illegal journey until dawn, for illegal she knew it to be. Attempting to cross the plains without a permit was against village law. Such an infringement could result in being sentenced to a minimum of eight moons working in the dark and dangerous rat-infested mines under the river.

Tagg had offered to undertake the journey for her, but she did not trust him. She thought he would disappear for a few days, as usual, and then return saying her sister was lost without ever having properly looked for her. Emtani was Galeena’s only hope. She would keep searching, even if that meant going as far as the City.

She shuddered at the thought of her little sister being nabbed by Rooters, certain that they would sell her in the City as a slave. If the nabbing had occurred on any other day someone might have noticed and raised the alarm, but to have happened so soon after the accident, when the village was in uproar, meant no one noticed until it was too late.

Emtani wondered if her brother was already dead and her heart ached at the thought of never seeing Nye again. She hoped that leaving him on his death-bed had been the right decision. Surely he would approve of her searching for their sister. Sadly, she would never know for certain, because she had not been allowed to see him. She was his closest kin and yet the village council had kept her away. Inwardly, Emtani railed at a regulation that kept sister from dying brother. They supposed she was not strong enough, but they were wrong.

She huffed on her fingertips and tried to push thoughts of Nye and Galeena to the back of her mind so she could sleep. Pretending she was in her warm hammock at home, she tried to snuggle down, but Nye’s clothes, hastily selected for her journey, were nowhere near warm enough and she shivered.

A nearby noise had her eyes popping open again. It sounded like the tread of a large animal, possibly a man. Emtani took a deep breath to help steady her nerves and reasoned that it must be Tagg. She could imagine him following her onto the plain, hoping to spook her when night fell. Well, she would not give him the satisfaction. She was a maid, it was true, but she was as resolute as any man when it came to her responsibilities.

As she forced her eyes shut again, a scorching pain suddenly ripped across the top of her scalp and she was brutally wrenched from her hiding place by an unknown hand. Her first thought was Tagg. This had to be him. Kicking out, she tried to hit back, but fell instantly silent when the cold blade of a knife pressed against her neck. This could not be Tagg unless thief had turned murderer.

‘Got yer now, me pretty,’ a gloating voice rasped in her ear, his foul breath clouding the night air.

For herself, Emtani would have chosen to fight. She knew what Rooters did to teenage girls and preferred to die. But with Nye gone, there would be no one to rescue Galeena. Emtani had no choice but to accept her fate, hoping to be able to escape afterwards, and so she stopped struggling.

‘What? No fight in yer?’ the man growled. The stubble on his chin scratched the soft flesh of her cheek. ‘I like it when the pretty ones struggle.’

With heart beating wildly, Emtani tried to resign herself to the inevitable when, without warning, the man’s knees buckled and the knife slipped from her throat. Not knowing what was happening, but eager to take advantage, Emtani brought her elbow down hard into his midriff. He grunted and fell to his knees. Someone struck him on the back of the head and, with a dull thud, the man pitched forward on to his face.