Shadowborn. Katie MacAlister

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      Chapter 1

      “Now, that’s what I like to see.” Thorn smiled with mingled satisfaction and goodwill at the sight of the embracing couple before him. “I’m glad to know that you and the priest haven’t been so grief-stricken over my loss that you parted ways. Did you miss me while I was in the spirit world? I have no doubt you’ve had endless trouble without me here to help, but there was little I could do about that. Oooh, is that land I see through the porthole?”

      Despite the fact that he was unheard and incorporeal in his spirit form, he moved over to gaze out of the open window. “Hmm. Judging by the scrubby trees along the shoreline, I’d say that was Genora. Which means you’ve sailed all the way from Eris back home. Good work, lad. And I see by the carving next to the porthole that you’ve been hard at work making me a new physical form. That’s not a swallow, though. Tail’s all wrong, and the whole thing is bigger than my old form. I can’t see the front of it, but you should consult a book of birds if you want to make a proper swallow for me. Er…lad? Should you be touching Allegria like that? In front of me, that is?”

      It was at that point Thorn remembered that although Hallow was a talented arcanist, he hadn’t yet perfected the art of talking to those who resided in the spirit world. Opting for discretion, Thorn took himself out of the small cabin…but not before getting rather too much an eyeful of the lad’s hindquarters when he stooped to remove his boots.

      The tang of salt air slapped Thorn full in the face as he emerged from the cabin—or it would have if there had been a physical face to slap. “Regardless,” he said aloud, looking around him with pleasure—for he was a sociable being who counted conversation with his fellow kind as a treat—“it is a sensation nonetheless. Ah, this is Genora! Excellent! Now we shall see some action. My arcanists shall rise up and smite those who need smiting, and then Hallow and I will settle back to running Kelos the way it should be run. Greetings, Quinn. Who’s that you’re kissing? Ouch. That slap looked like it hurt.”

      Thorn watched with interest as a red-headed young woman, her dark eyes alight with indignation, stomped by him muttering things that he was prepared to wager were anatomically impossible. He remembered the girl from the village where he’d found Allegria after having lost both her and Hallow on the continent of Eris; he assumed she was a native Shadowborn. “One with a bit of fire in her blood, eh?” he said with a knowing wink to Quinn.

      The captain, he was sorry to see, also did not possess the ability to notice those who, sadly, were confined to the spirit realm until their new physical forms were made. Instead Quinn rubbed his face with a rueful expression that turned into a grin when the large form of Deosin Langton marched past saying, “You’d better watch out. One of these days Ella’s going to borrow Allegria’s gelding knife.”

      “She loves me,” Quinn called after Deo. “She just doesn’t want to disappoint her master, so she pretends she doesn’t like my attentions.”

      “What’s this? Allegria is mentoring a Shadowborn?” Thorn drifted past a number of sailors working in fluid synchronicity to trim sails and paused before the figure of a small girl sitting cross-legged on a wooden crate. “Ah, it’s you, the vanth. What’s your name? Er…Dara. Demo. Disius?”

      The girl looked up and gave him a good long appraisal before returning her attention to the small book in which she was writing with a pencil that left unpleasant rusty-red marks.

      “Dexia, you didn’t happen to see the blue tunic that Allegria gave me, did you?” The red-headed Shadowborn woman paused next to Thorn, glancing around the deck just as if she expected to see it hanging from the spar.

      Thorn clicked his tongue at his bad memory. “Dexia, that’s right. I remember now. You’re with Quinn, or at least that’s what Hallow told me. So much seems to have changed since that bastard Harborym destroyed my physical form. Here we are, almost to Genora, and a Shadowborn seems to have joined our company, not to mention the question of just where exactly are the queen and Lord Israel?”

      “Not here,” Dexia murmured.

      “Frogsbane,” Ella swore. “If Quinn stole it again just so he can pretend to find it and get me to kiss him in gratitude for returning it, I’ll…I’ll…well, I don’t know what I’ll do, but it will be something.” She marched off with a determined set to her mouth.

      “So the queen and her swain aren’t with us.” Thorn thought on this a few minutes, absently moving with the ship as it rocked in the swells common to the west coast of Genora. He’d always been a good sailor, and didn’t let the fact that he had no physical body stop him from enjoying the movement of the deck under his feet. “Are they on Aryia? Together? I expected Queen Dasa would have high-tailed it home to Starfall City as soon as she could in order to deal with that weakling Darius.”

      Deo’s shadow fell through Thorn’s incorporeal form when the latter turned at the bow and marched past Dexia, heading aft.

      “You pace just like your mother when she’s bored,” Dexia told Deo, who paused long enough to shoot her an unreadable look. She met it with one of her own, tipping her head to the side to add, “Maybe you should have traveled north with her instead of accompanying us to Kelos.”

      “I can do more to help the queen retake her throne here than in the north,” Deo said, the abrupt way he had of snapping off each word reminding Thorn of an ancient turtle who had lived in a fountain that sat in the center of Kelos back when it was a sight to behold. That turtle, like Deo, was known to be extremely cranky.

      He reflected for a moment, a bit startled to realize that fountain had disappeared into rubble at least four hundred years before. Had it really been so long since he had been Master, leading his arcanists to glory with the Starborn against their most bitter enemies?

      His gaze fell on Deo as the latter continued his path to the rear of the ship. “And there is the child who was supposed to bring peace to both the Starborn and Fireborn.” He sighed, but brushed aside the regrets. “Too much introspection never did anyone any good,” he told Dexia. “The queen is in the north, eh? She must be rallying the Starborn faithful to her before she routs that puling Darius from Starfall. Well, well, well. If Deo is going to Kelos, Hallow must have some grand plan in place. What of Jalas? Did Idril finally overthrow her father?”

      “You had best heed the Shadowborn woman,” Dexia said suddenly, tilting her head up to look at Quinn when he stopped to order a change to the rigging.

      “No, no, we have to get past the shoals. Don’t drop the handling sail until we’re well by the Miser’s Fingers and almost to Bellwether. What’s that, Dex?”

      The vanth grinned, her sharp, pointed teeth looking strangely at odds with her otherwise childlike countenance. “Ella. She’s not like the white-haired witch you lusted after. She’ll chew you up and spit you out.”

      “Who, Idril?”