Without a Shadow, page 25
The woman caught her breath. She steadied herself, watching Luth’s shadow retreating with something akin to hunger, Adlai thought. That shadow could as easily kill her as it had dragged her across the room, but still the woman looked at it like it was something she could reach out and take for her own.
“They aren’t resurrecting,” Dressla said, quietly as though to herself. She picked up the broken watch Luth had discarded. “The shadows are released, but they don’t attach themselves . . .” Again, it was like she was making notes to herself. She looked up at the black smoke pulsing above them. The released shadows had grouped together and were drifting untethered. Raw power just waiting to fall down on them.
“What does that mean?” Luth said. “You’re here.” He pointed to Adlai’s father. “Why would you be the only one to resurrect?”
Her father opened his mouth to answer, but Adlai answered for him.
“It’s you,” she said to her uncle. “Your shadow killed them.”
Luth shook his head. “No. I—there were others downstairs. I killed trappers on the floor below. It’s their deaths that are destroying the suraci now.”
But he didn’t sound convinced, looking around the room with new eyes. There were still some bodies his shadow hadn’t reached. Adlai could see the suraci metal gleaming in the distance.
“They’re dead,” Dressla said, astonished. “My subjects are really dead.”
30
THE GOD OF DEATH
The shadows above them shifted. Like a curtain being drawn, the huge black cloud split into two and then fell. Each half spilled onto the floor and reformed. Smoke swirling and flickering, switching to fire and back again. Two raging black fires were before them, and through the smoke, shapes appeared. Figures. A figure that looked like a woman formed in one, while a man formed in the other. They were faceless, flickering eerily between body and smoke.
The room had been cold before; now it was freezing. The black flames radiated ice. Adlai’s father hugged her but she couldn’t stop shaking.
Then a third flame came, and from it emerged a single shape: a huge black beast. It didn’t flicker; this shape was solid, a physical and alive presence that she recognized from the shadow world. Manni. The god of Death was in Arbil.
All the light in the room suddenly dimmed and even the shape of the beast seemed to sink into the darkness until Adlai could see only the eyes.
Cold blue eyes.
Life should really hold more value.
The voice came from the beast, though not from its mouth. The words bled out from somewhere inside those eyes.
Then the darkness moved. Adlai was aware of the two black flames still blazing behind the beast as it moved toward them.
“You have to go.” Her father’s voice. He was pulling her back, but it was hopeless. The darkness took over the whole room, it froze her in place.
“I—I can’t.”
Adlai’s father spun her toward him. His eyes were frantic.
“Go with that boy,” he said. Kanwar had run over to them as soon as the beast had materialized. His shadow flickered in panicked waves.
She shook her head at her father. “What about you? Do you know the hideout?”
“I know it. I’ll be right behind you.”
He wasn’t looking at her, and his fingers pressed too deep into her arms.
“You’re lying.” She pulled out of his grasp. But why would he lie? Why wouldn’t he leave with them?
"Your shadow,” she said. “Bring it out.”
Her father paled. He looked so sick. So lost.
He doesn’t have his shadow.
“It’s time we go,” Kanwar said.
“No.” She moved away from them. Luth was fixated on Manni, pleading with him about something, and the research woman looked like she was about to faint.
Adlai couldn’t leave here without her father. And then there was Erikys. She closed her eyes and saw Erikys lying on the floor. Warm, brown eyes that looked so wrong in death.
Death. Death was everywhere. Her mother was supposed to have resurrected; all the shadow casters were supposed to be saved, and yet nothing had gone as planned.
Adlai stumbled through the maze of tables. A corpse lay on every surface. She wanted to be sick. Her uncle had pushed several out of the way to kneel in front of Manni. Adlai stopped still at the sight. He’d looked so powerful before, but now darkness loomed over her uncle and he seemed a tiny, flickering candle, desperate for the wind to be kind.
“Leena’s watch is destroyed, but her shadow is gone,” Luth said.
“Her shadow?” There was unmistakable anger in the beast’s voice. The entire room was blackening. Shadow seeped over the walls, the floor, the tables. It was as though the room had become part of the shadow world and the beast’s shape was getting lost in the darkness. But the voice, the voice pierced straight through her. “It was never her shadow. You can’t know how insulting it is to see a human wearing shadow. And what you do with it, performing your little tricks . . . it is a gross misuse of the power. Today, at last, is the beginning of the end.”
“The end of Arbil,” her uncle said, rising. He spoke as though trying to find his footing on loose soil. “The end of trappers.”
Manni didn’t answer. He came from the shadow world; it seemed impossible that he could be here with them now. Not hidden in her shadow but a physical form looming down on them.
“Luth, brother,” her father said, “remember Leena. Remember what this thing did to her. What her shadow became because of him! You can’t trust a word he says.”
“You promised me her shadow,” Luth said. It was hard to see his face in the darkness but she knew he wasn’t talking to them. Perhaps he hadn’t even heard her father.
“I promised you that I would help you destroy suraci,” Manni said. “You are the one that stopped me from completing that task.”
“But the shadows—”
“They are released, also as promised.” A sharp frost entered his voice. “I never said I would return the shadows to your kind.”
His voice was a low, rough growl. He paced the room as suddenly as a shift in the air. “It’s selfish of you really. You have power you’ve no right to. Power that is needed to restore balance in this life and the next. I have done my best and I have waited for your lines to die out naturally, but you keep breeding, diluting the power more and more until I begin to think my siblings will never return. The trio must be reformed. The world of the dead is mere shadow without my brother’s power, and the world of the living grows too fat without my sister’s.”
Adlai didn’t understand. The shadows were supposed to resurrect the shadow casters, but Manni was talking as if he planned to resurrect his siblings—resurrect gods.
“Please,” her uncle said, desperate. “Give me her shadow.”
“And which would that be? Your sister’s? Your wife’s?”
Luth fell to his knees. He was silent. As though he couldn’t say the word.
But Manni, Adlai knew, could speak to him through his shadow.
What deal are you making with him? she asked into the depths of her shadow.
Cold laughter filled it. And then the god’s voice rippled through. He’s choosing his wife. He’s giving up his shadow for hers.
Adlai didn’t believe the voice. But as she watched her uncle, she saw his shadow stretch toward Manni. A black wave that became consumed by one of the flames. Then, out of the other flame a small, faint shadow fluttered over to Luth. He wept as it wrapped around him. In his hands he made it smoke.
“Luth!” her father yelled. He understood what her uncle was going to do before Adlai did. But again her uncle didn’t seem to hear. The smoke turned into flames and her uncle was gone.
“Damn him,” her father said.
What will your choice be?
Adlai froze. Her pulse seemed to throb through her ears as she listened again to Manni’s voice in her shadow.
Your mother or that boy you loved? Give me your shadow and one of them will live again.
Her chest tightened. She understood her uncle falling on his knees. She understood his desperation, and she thought . . . she thought she might even have understood his choice. But it wasn’t one she could make.
Pinpricks of light came from the scant few suraci watches left. They glowed like dying stars in the dark; there were still some shadows trapped inside them.
Shadows were what Manni wanted, and if there was one thing Adlai knew how to do, it was stealing what others wanted.
She stretched her shadow out. Sweat poured off her even in this cold room. Her skin felt like fire, like it was about to explode.
“No!” Manni saw what she was doing. Her own eyes were blacking out and yet she felt each of the watches as they dropped into her shadow like pebbles into water. Each one was a person who could be woken. Those were the lives she could save.
You think you can keep them? he growled. Very well. In the next moment he pulled the research woman and her father toward him like strings through the air. The only two people in the room without shadows. The only two people who couldn’t defend themselves.
Adlai grabbed her father. Not with her hands, but with her shadow. He was suspended in the air. Tugged on one side by a god of Death, and on the other side by his daughter.
Dressla was thrown into one of the two black fires burning behind Manni.
Adlai yanked harder. She wasn’t going to lose her father. Not again.
Her father fell to the ground. Manni’s shadow retreated, but only for a moment, and then whipped out again. This time it took Kanwar in its grip.
Adlai crouched over her father, exhausted. She watched with horror as Kanwar struggled in Manni’s grip, his own shadow swallowed up by the god, before being tossed into the other open flame.
“Stop!” Adlai yelled.
“Your kind called us the Death Trio,” Manni said. “But it isn’t a trio if only one god is left to do the work. I have more need of these shadows. The old powers of my siblings must be reawakened. I tried to do it once before with your mother. There weren’t enough shadows then.”
Adlai shuddered. There were plenty of shadows now. She looked up and saw the research woman writhing in the air, black flames licking through her and so many shadows snaking around her, into her.
Adlai’s father was whispering to her, urging her to use her shadow and go. She shook her head. The flames were getting colder and colder.
Deep in the other flame Kanwar’s eyes shot open. The whites of them were full black. He was drenched in shadow, and yet Adlai sensed he was looking straight at her. As if a void had opened up in the space between them and was pulling her toward him.
Hot tears ran down her cheeks, but her skin was so cold. She was shaking. She didn’t think what was happening to Kanwar could be stopped, but she was afraid to leave him, afraid to leave Erikys, afraid to leave her mother. Leaving meant accepting they were gone.
“Run!” Kanwar yelled.
Manni laughed. It was the least animal his voice had sounded, and yet it didn’t sound human either.
“You can’t run from me,” the beast said. “Everywhere you go, I’ll be waiting in your shadow.”
Even now Adlai felt Manni in her shadow. A cold, clawing presence. And yet he didn’t comprise all of her shadow. Her power was her own—only his when she’d given it to him.
She needed that power now. It was hers, and she would use it to save her father. Ignoring the beast, she focused only on her power. Her shadow started to smoke. Power burned through her and it was more than she could handle. She’d already stretched herself so much, she could feel her hold slipping as the enormity of her shadow crashed over her.
It was the power of death. It was a changing force. A shift in time and space. It wanted to take everything it touched. It wanted so much.
But its wants were tied to Adlai’s. It was a part of her.
She reached for her father, the same way she had a thousand times before in the desert market. Her shadow grabbed him, and his weight sank into it.
Her shadow was fire as it raced back to her, ready to take them out of this place of death.
When she closed her eyes, it wasn’t cold, endless black that greeted her. Instead she was surrounded by warmth and color. The bright tents of the desert market blazed in her mind and she heard the raindrops of tiny hammers, felt the ridge of a shell and her father’s arms wrap around her as she thought of home.
EPILOGUE
Adlai stood on the island’s beach. Her shadow trailed smoke as it left her father and came back to her.
She’d done it. She’d brought herself and her father home.
Or not quite home. The ocean was vast and nothing like Libra and the little shopkeeper’s apartment they’d once lived above. But it was full of memories and glittered like its possibilities tipped the waves.
Her fingers reached inside her skirt’s pocket, where the tiny shell Erikys had given her was tucked away. She hadn’t been able to throw it away, and now it was all she had of him. His life had been in her shadow. It was as much her fault as her uncle’s or Manni’s, because she hadn’t been able to take back control. She’d failed him.
Her father shivered and eased himself down on the white sand. He looked ready to fall into a deep sleep. He seemed to have aged in the last seven years, though Adlai knew his body had been suspended in an ageless state for most of it. His exhaustion came from the strain of being without his shadow. Being without power.
She knelt down beside him. His hand reached for hers, and he smiled.
“Little Drizzle,” he said. “I didn’t think I would ever leave that place.”
“We can’t stay here,” she said. “Manni will come for us.”
For me. He’d want the suraci watches and the shadows inside them. He’d want all their shadows. He wouldn’t stop until his siblings, the Death Trio, were fully restored. Adlai didn’t know what that would mean for Kanwar, but she knew the people on this island wouldn’t be safe with her tainted shadow around, one Manni could whisper into at any moment.
And yet she’d seen her uncle take his wife’s shadow, and she’d used her father’s shadow for all those years, hadn’t she?
Adlai drew out the suraci watches from her shadow. Clumped together they looked like a small fire pit on the beach. She took one and handed it to her father.
“Take the shadow in there,” she said.
He hesitated, perhaps feeling the wrongness, as she did, of taking someone else’s lifeline.
Adlai picked up another of the watches. Wisps of black smoke drifted up as she opened it. She let them drift a moment, drawing out her own shadow.
I’ll still find you.
Manni’s voice rumbled through her shadow, an edge of desperation making it louder than before.
You might not like me when you do.
To protect the others, she would have to trap her shadow, which could kill, in the suraci watch for now. Manni had used her shadow to kill. He’d taken Erikys, her mother, and so many others. Even now he had Kanwar at his mercy.
Adlai didn’t care how long it took: she was going to send the god of Death back to the shadow world and make sure he never had the ability to kill again. She was done losing people. She was done running. And she was done fearing her power.
It had just been a game at the start, but the rules had changed; her shadow could do so much more than she’d believed herself capable of. She was no longer playing the Shadow Game her father had taught her. She’d been tricked into playing her uncle’s version, and Manni had tricked them all. Now, she thought, it’s time to play mine.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
H. J. Reynolds is a British writer. She was born in Reading and studied Film Studies at the University of Exeter. She then went on to complete her Masters in Creative Writing at the University of Lincoln. She now lives in Lincoln with her husband, two little ones, and her even more needy cat. You can follow her on her blog where she posts reviews of books, dabbles in writing advice, and features bonus content of short stories, usually of the surreal/supernatural variety; because fiction is magical, so why not add zombies or pirates with wings? Without a Shadow is her debut novel.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Am I really at the acknowledgment stage? I love reading this section in books—it’s always so crazy to read how much work goes into every one of the books you find on the shelf.
My first thanks have to go to my parents. You can be the biggest dreamer in this life, but it’s important to have people who believe in your dream as much, or maybe more, than you do. My parents imagined my work being published long before I thought it possible. They not only took my writing seriously, but I have my mum to thank for my book-nerdiness, and my dad to thank for my movie-geekery. Both forms of storytelling shape every idea I’ve ever had. Thank you for being the kind of parents that cheerlead and inspire.
Thank you also to my husband, who was my very first reader—at least of the first page, which I wrote in Spain, the country that inspired me to write about shadow magic. For all the adventures we go on, for all the love and support you give, I know this book would not have been possible without you. That and the crazy pregnancy hormones, which I also have you to thank for.
Without a Shadow was an abstract idea back in 2016 that I tried to develop for my master’s degree, then dropped and didn’t come back to until 2020, when I merged it with another story idea. Many, many drafts later it started to take shape but couldn’t have become the story it is today without my incredible, insightful, truth-telling editor, Elana Gibson. Thank you, Elana, for pushing me on the world-building, for all your cool ideas for the characters and for pointing out what wasn’t working while somehow making me genuinely excited to do the necessary changes. I love the transformation the novel made in your hands. Thank you also to Abby Conlon for your comments in the first read through—everything you pointed out was spot on and your enthusiasm was hugely appreciated.
