Free Viator (The Viator Chronicles Book 1) by Jane Ralston-Brooks Page B

dissipated like a heavy mist, flowing out into the surrounding murkiness. The others stepped closer to Erin with their swords drawn and staffs raised; their blades glinted like ice.
    “Leave this place,” she commanded.
    They laughed at her, hollow and mocking. “You have no power here.”
    “Where is the man?” she asked.
    They laughed again. “We have eaten him. There is nothing left.”
    She stepped forward bracing for the attack, but her arm was grabbed from behind, and she was pulled back. Her head struck the stone wall, and she hit the ground. She tried to force herself to her feet but froze at the sight in front of her, and she could only watch.
    A tall man dressed in black was attacking the mortifers with fury, his sword cleaving them, destroying them before their weapons could reach him. A fifth shadow had been hiding low in the darkness beside her, and the man whirled around and sliced through it. Its wail filled the cavern, its bitter cold flowing across the floor like hoarfrost. The man leapt in front of Erin and swung his sword, splitting the next in two, and its screech echoed as its darkness dissolved in the cavern. Another shadow struck the man with its staff, knocking him to the ground. He rolled and scrambled back to his feet, but it lunged toward him, flashing its long sword. The man blocked it and swung his own sword through the shadow’s face as it screamed and fell backwards into the darkness of the cave. The last mortifer turned and fled, and the man followed it like the shadow of a phantom.
    Erin jumped to her feet and tore after them. She knew the mortifer would be headed for the dreamer, and she had to reach him. But who was this man? What was he? What was he doing here?
    She ran over the jagged rocky floor through the maze of caverns, trying to keep him in sight. They raced on and on until Erin no longer had any sense of how far they had gone, or in what direction the entrance lay. In nearly complete darkness, her night-eyes could still make out the wraithlike shape of the man running in front of her. He favored his right side, limping slightly—probably wounded from the mortifer’s blow. Gradually he slowed, then stopped. Erin stopped behind him.
    “Shhhh…” he breathed.
    She froze.
    They crept forward again without a sound, and then Erin could hear it: a low moan came from up ahead. They were close now. The man reached back and touched Erin’s arm with his gloved hand.
    They crept nearer, and the moaning grew louder. At last, around the next corner, they found the terrified dreamer.
    A small chamber, lit by the red flame of a candle on the floor, opened off the passageway. Frost covered the walls, which glowed red like blood from the flame, and red icicles hung from above the door. Shadows grew and faded as the flame flickered. The stench gagged Erin, and she covered her mouth. The dreamer, maybe fifty years old, was naked and chained to the wall with his arms overhead. The mortifer loomed over him with his knife, tracing long lines across the dreamer’s chest with its pointed blade. Blood oozed from the wounds and trickled down his body, dripping to the floor. Erin’s heart beat hard in her throat, and her stomach lurched with every moan the dreamer made. He tried to shrink against the wall, but the shadow laughed deeply in its throat and began to slice his skin again.
    Suddenly it stopped and stood up tall, nearly filling the chamber. Its gleaming red eyes turned toward them, and it swung its knife up to attack.
    Erin clenched her teeth and reached into her boot. She pulled out her own knife and let it fly. It hit the shadow squarely in the chest and split it open, its hollow cry filling the cavern as it exploded into black mist. The dreamer screamed, and the strange man rushed to him. Erin’s knife fell to the floor. The man touched the shackles, and they fell away from the dreamer’s arms and legs, while he crumpled to the ground, trembling and sobbing.
    Erin dropped to her