But there was a viciousness in the girl that Magda could not comprehend. It was as if she'd taken in all the destructiveness of the storm that shook Gundarak on the night she was born. The unearthly tempest had followed hard upon Duke Gundar's death. Some said it was the land itself mourning his demise. If so, it was all the grieving Gundar would get; his subjects marked the occasion with more festive displays of emotion. Perhaps that storm had damaged the newborn's soul somehow.
Magda ran a hand through her hair and winced as she brushed against a raw patch of scalp. The wounds she'd received at the bridge had been slow in healing. Her hiss of pain made Sabak glance up at her, canine worry in his eyes.
"Don't mind me, boy," she soothed, scrubbing him behind one ear. "My mood will brighten with the sunrise."
Her smile drifted away, and she gazed into the fire. It had been some time since she had tried to use her powers of precognition. Up until the day Soth rose from his throne, events had been unfolding as they should, in ways she could predict even without resorting to foresight. Things were different now. She could scarcely imagine what the morning would bring, let alone the coming months. The incidents at the bridge still preyed heavily upon her mind, but more unsettling still were the secrets she had uncovered on her journey.
One part of Malocchio's rant had been correct- forces more ancient, more relentless than the lord of Invidia were stalking Soth. Magda had seen their faces. Soth would, too, before long. But what horrors would that long-delayed reunion unleash upon the Wanderers, upon all of Sithicus?
Magda focused on the fire. She tried to open her mind to the future, looking for its pattern in the flames. Flashes of white and red, curls of black smoke, filled her vision. They expanded into roses that burst into bloom, then withered. None held the field for long. Each overpowered another, only to be overwhelmed itself a moment later.
The raunie tried to turn her sight to the tribe's future. As she did, the fire roared up and filled the night with crimson light. Gone were the roses, drowned in a red sea-a sea of blood.
Magda pulled back sharply, forcing herself from the trance. At her side, Sabak growled softly. Magda thought the hound had sensed her discomfort at the vision's grim theme until she realized his attention was focused on something lurking by the vardos.
Magda turned to the semicircle of barrel-topped wagons. Shadows swayed over the brightly painted side of her vardo. They warped into unbelievable shapes, slithered and flowed down along the spoked wheels and onto the ground. Magda rubbed her eyes. Shadows played across the other wagons, too, but they were faint, fleeting things compared to the dark silhouettes creeping across hers. Nothing lay between the fire and her wagon to cast such weird shapes there.
Magda was on her feet the instant that thought was complete, a moment before the telltale saline reek reached her. "Salt shadows!" she screamed.
At the cry of recognition, the shadows retreated a little. For all that they were deadly, they were cowardly things more used to ambush than battle.
Muffled shouts sounded from inside the vardos, and Magda's warning was echoed and re-echoed. "'Ware," the others hollered. "Shadows! Shadows!" The Wanderers burst from their homes, armed with whatever weapons were at hand. The mundane swords and knives would do no good against the animate darkness, but the Vistani hoped that they might distract the things long enough for their raunie to deal with them.
As the gypsies surrounded the dozen or so shadows, Magda held out her hand and summoned Gard. The cudgel had been carved by her ancestor, Kulchek the Wanderer, from the tree at the top of the world. The enchantments upon the weapon were strong. Its wood was unbreakable, able to turn back steel or stone with ease. Normal weapons might not be able to touch the salt shadows, but Gard could surely do them harm.
Since she had first unlocked the weapon's secrets, Magda had only to think of Gard and the cudgel would appear in her hand. This time, though, she closed her fingers on empty air. She could feel the club's reassuring weight in her hand, but it had no substance.
Cursing, she sidestepped a salt shadow as it slithered toward her foot. Sabak lunged at the oozing darkness, and it turned. The hair between the dog's shoulder and along the ridge of his spine bristled as the black shape darted across the ground toward the hound's paws.
"Sabak, back," Magda shouted, and the hound leaped out of the way.
Vitorio, the first Vistana to join Magda's fledgling troupe in Gundarak, drove a spear into the shadow's center. The darkness paused, then flowed around the offending spearhead like water around a post.
"Raunie," he cried, "where have these come from? We're nowhere near the mine!"
Magda didn't reply, for she had no answer. Salt shadows were denizens of Veidrava. Dark rites performed deep within the mine, in a chapel once known as a haven for hope, had resurrected the souls of the pit's countless victims. Clothed in the mine's eternal darkness, the shadows hungered for new flesh. They could not leave the dark; sunlight was fatal to them. How these lost souls had got so far from Veidrava was a mystery, one the raunie had no time to solve.
The Wanderers had succeeded in drawing the shadows apart. The gypsies taunted the shades with the simple lure of their own warm flesh. Men and shadows turned in wary circles like dancers at some macabre ball.
Magda concentrated again on conjuring Gard. As she understood the workings of its magic, the weapon resided in some hidden pocket, intangible but close to hand. It seemed now, though, that someone else had taken hold of it. She could feel the resistance, cold hands countering her own.
"I am Kulchek's heir," Magda snarled. "Gard belongs to me!"
With that she wrenched the weapon free. No sooner did Gard appear in her hands that Magda lashed out with it.
Like a rock breaking the surface of a still pond, the blow from Gard sent ripples across the shadow's form. The thing screamed, a liquid hiss that made Magda tremble. Another blow and the shadow detonated. Globs of darkness splashed in all directions.
Where they struck flesh, the awful missiles burned. They withered grass, peeled paint from wood, and leeched dye from cloth. The fragments lacked the power of the sum. The disrupted shadow could not press its assault. The lumps and puddles only wriggled and oozed across the ground, slowly but steadily reforming into a lethal whole.
Sabak pawed at the assembling pieces, delaying their merger for as long as possible. In quick succession, Magda shattered two more of the shadows. Each time the cudgel fell, the things let out agonized screams that chilled the Vistana to the core. Still, she felt hopeful. The Wanderers were holding their own against the creatures.
"Mother, help me!"
The cry came from the forest's verge. There, at the very edge of the firelight's reach, stood Inza. Two salt shadows had somehow escaped the Wanderers' notice. They had the girl cornered, one on the ground, the second on a thick old oak. If she retreated back into the woods, it would be too dark to distinguish the salt shadows from the normal nighttime gloom. The shades would have her at their mercy.
Magda hesitated. The others were tiring. They needed her help, too. But this was her daughter. Of all the ragtag troupe, only she was the raunie's blood. Magda dashed across the clearing.
She struck the shadow on the ground three times before it finally broke apart. The spattering ooze caught Inza full in the face, and the girl fell back against the tree. The shadow there slithered onto her hand. It wrapped itself around Inza's fingers, pulsing up to her forearm before Magda lashed out again with Gard. The blow fell upon the part of the shadow that still clung to the oak. That one strike blasted the thing apart. From the sharp crack that rang out, drowning out the creature's scream and Inza's shrieks for help, Magda thought that she had cleft the tree.