Nightfire | The Whispering Wall #1

Thirty One: Shadelings

Jordan put down his pencil.

The arguing in the front room had been going on for almost an hour. Nika had fallen on Yddris like some kind of bird of prey when they returned from the inn, full of jabbing insults and sharp reprimands. Jordan had slipped away as Yddris stirred to defend himself, and neither of them seemed to notice him leave. He had shut his bedroom door, sat at the desk with his sketchbook, and promptly forgotten that the world outside existed. For the first time in hours he felt something more than numbness.

He looked down at what he had on the page. He had tried to recreate a few of the runes he had seen, but they weren't right; the feel of them as he traced their shapes was jarring and dissonant, not at all like the firm sense of rightness he had felt surrounded by the others. He had done a reasonable job of remembering what a thrall looked like. On the other page, he didn't remember drawing the Death consciously; he had begun scribbling, but the scribble had a glowing hole in the centre and the faint suggestion of a gaping mouth among the mists. Looking at it made him feel sick, so he got up, frowning at the ache in the base of his spine.

Perhaps it had been more than an hour.

A knock on the door drew his attention to the fact that the shouting had stopped. He paused but didn't answer, unable to tell from the shadow under the door who it was. He wasn't much inclined to see Yddris at all, and he didn't want Nika to baby him. When Koen pushed the door wide a moment later, all he felt was relief.

"Hi," he said. His voice croaked, throat still sore from crying. Behind Koen there was a squeak, and Ren skittered inside, running to him and scrambling up his clothes to sit on his shoulder. He reached up and stroked her, and the gentle rumble of her body calmed his pounding heart.

Koen shut the door behind him and sat on the end of the bed before he spoke.

"How are you doing?"

Jordan blinked. He didn't want to think about it again.

"It's hard, isn't it?" the other apprentice said softly. "I'd never seen anything like it before Hap showed me. The runework on our farm was really good and our parents kept us away from it, so I had as much of an idea as you."

"You have siblings?"

"Five of them," Koen said, snorting. "I know. It was just as bad as you're probably thinking it was. I wasn't the oldest, though. I think my parents might have gone spare if I had been, they needed someone to take over the farm after da smashed his legs."

"Jesus," Jordan said, joining Koen on the bed. Ren squeaked and jumped off, exchanging his shoulder for a hideout underneath his pillow.

"He was bringing a wagonload of wood back from the forest," Koen said, nodding. "A branch got wedged under the axle and he had to go under it to kick it out. Course, the wagon was old and the bottom fell out on his legs soon as the bugger came loose. My brother and I had to dig him out. His bones broke in too many places for him to walk like he used to, the physician said, so he can't do as much around the farm. My brother and his wife took it over a few months after I left."

"I thought you said you set it on fire."

"Oh, I did." Koen chuckled. "Yeah, I did. A demon came after my little sister while she was in the yard sulking about something or other, and I jumped in front of her. That's when it happened; it took the barn down and caught the house alight, too. I met Hap when he came to replace the runework on our buildings." He shrugged. "He was very good to us. He put my family up at an inn in the Reach and made sure my parents knew exactly what was happening to me so they wouldn't worry as much."

Jordan said nothing. He couldn't see Yddris doing that; Grace was more clueless than Jordan was, and Jordan knew almost nothing about the Gift except that he didn't want it.