A Sword’s Promise (The Shadow and the Sword Duology #1)

1. The Feywood

T he mist clung to the ancient trees like ghostly fingers, obscuring the path ahead. Viola Windbright kept her sword held tightly in her grip. She thought about using her glowstone to illuminate the way forward, but she was conscious of alerting whatever might be lurking in the mists to her presence.

The brooch on her chest started to flash. She pressed it, whispering towards the white stone at the centre. “Heindrich. Any luck?”

“ None so far ,” Heindrich’s voice whispered back. “ Captain says to proceed to Manticore’s Pass .”

“Understood.”

The light in the brooch’s stone faded, and Heindrich’s voice vanished along with it. Viola ventured deeper into the Feywood, the mist becoming thicker, coiling around the trees like basilisks.

Luckily, no basilisks had been seen in the Feywood for a good decade. Viola was probably safe from them.

Probably.

The forest floor beneath Viola’s boots was soft and damp, every footstep leaving behind a fleeting imprint that quickly dissolved into the lingering haze. The air grew colder. It could just be mist, of course, or she could have veered off course into Kelpie’s Marsh, or the path of a wandering banshee. In her head, she started to list the monsters that could be responsible for the change in weather, calculating how best to take down each one.

It could be the Feywood itself, too. It was as ancient as Auro, a sprawling range of trees and mountains that divided the capital Lysandra from the rest of the country. It grew from the bones of dragons, the primordial trees still seeped in magic. It could turn a traveller’s mind, confound their senses, have them travel in circles or envelope them in illusions.

If it felt like it. Sometimes it would offer shelter or grant visions, although the magic had waned in the last few centuries. You were far more likely to be waylaid by a monster if travelling on foot.

And most never did. It was far safer, far easier, to fly over it in an airship or a flying stead, but unfortunately a troll had been causing trouble for some of the villages that sat on the outskirts, and Viola had been sent in with another handful of knights to dispose of the monster.

Unfortunately, the mist was making it decidedly difficult to track.

Viola continued on her path, the sunlight struggling to pierce through the mist. Shafts of pale light danced through the fog, creating an ever-shifting tapestry of ethereal shapes and soft shadows. Her breath hung in the cool morning air, filled with the scent of moss and mulch. The Feywood groaned with it.

A subtle movement caught Viola’s eye—a dark silhouette weaving through the mist. It was too small to be a troll, but Viola quickened her pace, determined to confront it.

Ahead of her, something snapped, followed by a sharp scream of annoyance and the rustling of leaves. Someone—a young girl, by the sounds of it—let out a curse.

Viola froze. It was unusual for anyone to evoke the name of the goddess of death. There was no particular taboo on it, it was merely that most would instead call out for her sister, Auriel, or possibly one of the other five gods and goddesses, if they felt more apt at the time. If you were complaining about the wind, you would almost certainly be cursing Zephyros, god of storms and change. If beholding a ghastly wound, you might utter “Naiadon’s grace…” in the vain hope that the goddess of water and healing might bestow some of her favour on you.

Viola didn’t place much stock in the gods, none of whom had been sighted in centuries, but she was curious as to why someone was calling on a goddess so infrequently spoken off that Viola would likely have forgotten her name if the final day of the week wasn’t named for her.

Viola proceeded carefully, not calling out, not yet. It might sound like a girl, like someone in need of assistance. That didn’t mean it was. There were all manner of creatures that could confuse the senses, and she wasn’t about to be the victim of one of them.

Every step she took was calculated, deliberate. She took her time moving through the mist, until a deep, round hole opened up in the ground, and she caught a flash of a thin, brown-skinned girl with thick, natural curls, wearing a ragged dress of faded lavender .

Viola sucked in her breath.

Miranda.

This must be an illusion, a trick of some kind. She’d wandered into the trap of some faerie creature. A land-based siren. A demon laced with death. Because the girl in front of her couldn’t be Miranda.

Because Viola had watched her die.

She squinted down into the hole. She’d been taught how to pick apart glamours and illusions. Sometimes there was a shimmer to them, like the sheen of a bubble. Other, more powerful creatures might not quite get the details right: an extra digit, a third ear, a horn in a strange place. This girl had no horns and the correct number of ears, although there did seem to be something wrong with the fingers on her right hand. Viola peered through the mist, trying to get a better look.

“ There’s the voice, too ,” her instructor had told her. “ When the vision speaks, question them. Search every word. A lot of them can’t lie, or have trouble mimicking human voices. ”

“Hello there,” said Viola, alerting the girl to her presence. “Are you all right?”

The girl looked up at her and scowled, and the illusion shattered.

Not Miranda. Not at all. She had her hair, similar colouring, and large, doe-like eyes, but that was where the similarities ended. This girl’s face was gaunt and hollow, her face speckled with white freckles, like a splattering of snow or stardust. Miranda had a lovely, round face, her mouth was fuller. This girl was all elbows and edges.

But still, for all Viola could tell, a girl. An ordinary, mud-covered one.

“I’m in a hole,” the girl said.

That was not a lie, though her voice sounded older than her stature. Viola would have been surprised if she was older than ten. She didn’t sound as terrified as one might have expected a child to be.

“I can see that,” Viola countered. “Would you like some help getting out?”

“Who wouldn’t?”

Hmm, another not-lie. She could definitely still be a fey creature in disguise.

“Forgive me,” Viola said, “but you aren’t some sort of fey creature, are you?”

“Are you serious?” the girl bit back. “Either get me out of this hole, or stop asking foolish questions!”

Before Viola could think of a response to this, or question the girl further, a tremor rocked through the wood. The girl in the pit paled. “That wasn’t me. ”

Viola didn’t question why the girl felt the need to clarify. She didn’t have the time. Ahead of her, stomping through the mist, was the unmistakable outline of a troll.

Viola froze. Taking down a troll alone was no easy feat, especially with her vision impounded by the fog. She couldn’t make out much around her. She could try to find a tree to scale, but she didn’t have much time, and she didn’t want to leave the girl undefended—

The girl. The hole.

It was the best shelter she had.

Viola jumped down into the bottom of the pit, pulling her cape over the two of them and instructing the girl to hush. The cape was spelled, woven with bunyip hair and stitched with runes, standard issue for all the Knights of Lysandra. It couldn’t make her invisible, but it could keep them both camouflaged.

As long as they were quiet. And still.

The girl seemed to have understood. She froze beside Viola, her entire body rigid. Barely a breath left her body.

Overhead, the troll towered over them. Viola spied him through the weave in the fabric, a lumbering, misshapen creature, like someone had rolled a series of boulders in clay and draped them with straggly hair. It was eight feet tall, four feet wide. It carried no weapon; it didn’t need one.

Its massive stride cleared the pit, hovering only momentarily, in a handful of seconds that stretched forever. A warty, blank face seemed to stare straight through the cape… and then it turned and continued on its way.

Viola waited until the creature’s dull steps had disappeared before finally wriggling out of her spot. She tapped her brooch.

“Heindrich, Flameborn, Rainwood, Thornflame—Troll spotted. Heading south of Manticore’s Pass.”

“ Understood ,” came Heindrich’s voice after a moment. “ Heading there now .”

The rest of her lance chimed in, accepting her information. Viola let them know she was dealing with a civilian first, and would follow as soon as she could.

“Well, a lot of use that was,” said the girl, her dark eyes still fixed in a scowl. “Now we’re both in a hole.”

Viola grinned. “For now.”

She held out her hands to boost the girl up. The girl stared at her interlocked fingers. “What are you doing?”

“I’m going to boost you up.”

Realising that the girl didn’t understand—and hoping her inexperience was due to her age and not because she was actually a shape-shifting creature—Viola quickly explained. The girl looked sceptical, but dutifully grabbed hold of a tree root in the side of the pit and levered herself up as Viola boosted her, scrambling inelegantly to the top. Viola half expected her to vanish without a word, but she glanced back into the hole.

“How are you getting out?” she snapped, as if Viola and placed herself in this position purposefully to irritate her.

Viola flashed her another grin, unsheathing her sword and driving it into the side of the pit. She tested the weight, grabbed hold of the pommel, and then swung herself upwards, bouncing briefly against the other side before leaning down to retrieve her sword.

“Simple,” she said.

The girl blinked at her, like Viola’s actions were the least impressive thing she’d ever seen in her life. Viola wanted to laugh at her strange, scowling face. She usually got some kind of reaction from a child when they witnessed her athleticism.

Maybe she really was a fey creature.

Before Viola could resume her line of questioning, her ears pricked, registering something moving through the mist seconds before it sliced straight across her knuckles, drawing blood and hitting the tree behind her, disappearing into—

Nothing.

The tree splintered, a gash cutting straight across the bark. But the projectile, whatever it was, had vanished.

Viola held tight to her sword, ignoring the pain across her fingers, even as the blood slithered across the grip. She forced the girl behind her, turning to face her opponent, scanning for shelter—

Another projectile sliced through the fog. Viola dodged, watching it as it hit another tree, dissolving into—

Shadow. It was a shadow. A shadow given sharpness, a feat only possible by one creature.

A shadowmancer.

“Run,” Viola hissed to the girl.

She thought she might have heard a laugh, but when she turned, the girl was gone.

Viola cursed herself for not keeping a better eye on her, but she hoped she was somewhere safe. There was no time to track her. Viola ran, boots squelching in the mud.

Viola had never fought a shadowmancer before. She doubted that there were many in all the land that had. They were rare, and dangerous and—

Human. A human fully capable of tracking her. She had no way to disguise her steps, not in this terrain .

Another shadow sliced overhead, cutting clean through a birch. Viola leapt over it, skirting into the brambles. Dimly, the sound of water caught her attention.

The Arrow River ran nearby. If there was a way to disguise her tracks, that was it.

Barely knowing which direction she was heading in, Viola sprinted towards the sound, half skidding into the water with a terrific splash. She prayed the shadowmancer was far enough away not to hear it. Scrambling straight up the bank the other side wouldn’t make for much of a break in her tracks, but the river was up to her knees, too deep to traverse easily, and despite how light the Crown’s clothmancers had managed to make her armour, it wasn’t weightless. She needed to hide, to get out of here—

Something stirred through the mists. Viola inclined her head towards it, the hairs on the back of her neck rising to attention.

A wyvern was crawling through the undergrowth, snapping, its smoky, membranous wings twitching like the legs of a spider. Viola had never seen a wyvern like this before. It was composed entirely of shadow, black as pitch, not a sliver of colour save its white, empty eyes.

Eyes trained in Viola’s direction.

She reached into her belt, finding her glowstone, holding it above her head. The light seared against the wyvern’s smoky flesh, making it hiss. It leapt into the air, winding through the rays of light. Viola used her sword to direct the stone’s glow, but her aim was poor and off-balanced.

The mists parted, only for a second, and Viola saw a dark-haired, pale-skinned man standing beneath the trees, his face half-obscured by a gold mask.

Another shadow lunged from his feet.

Alarmed, Viola stumbled, her foot catching on a rock. She shot backwards, losing her stone. The light rayed out from under the water, shooting daggers at her shadowy attackers.

Viola had fought many beasts in her time as a knight. But she’d never fought a shadow.

runs from a fight they may win, she had been told during her training. Not unless the protection of the innocent depends upon it.

But Viola also knew the value in running from a fight you couldn’t win.

She scrambled to her feet and pelted upstream, leaving the light to distract them. She knew there were some caves nearby, caves that ran deep enough that the sunlight couldn’t touch them.

And without light, there were no shadows .

Viola crawled up the bank, not daring to look behind her. Several times, she fancied she could hear something snarling, only to be hit with the realisation that everything was silent… because shadows didn’t make a sound. That sense was useless to her.

She reached the rocks, clambering across them, boots sliding across the mossy rocks. The wyverns circled overhead, swooping, diving, snapping. Viola vaulted over them, darting and dodging their shadowy limbs. The mouth of the first cave swam into view…

“ Vi—Viola! Are you there ?”

Viola didn’t have the breath to answer, or the time to explain. She grabbed her brooch and ripped it off, tossing it onto the stones, hoping it would cause a distraction or at least prevent the shadowmancer from discovering her hiding place… providing he couldn’t communicate with his monsters or see through their eyes. She didn’t know. She’d never researched shadowmancers before. She hadn’t had to.

One of the wyverns caught the front of her padded doublet, shredding the fabric. The other slashed at her cheek with an ice-cold talon. Viola turned at the last second, feeling only a slight sting. Another inch and it could have taken off half of her face.

She skidded under them, sliding into the darkness of the cave, running until she hit the wall at the back and turning to the entrance where the light vanished. One wyvern hit the shadow and dissipated. The other hovered, extending a claw, and then flapped away.

Viola sank to the floor, catching her breath. She examined the cut on her cheek and then clutched her knuckles, which were far worse. The blood had trickled all the way down to the Sunscript tattoo on the inside of her wrist.

She rubbed the mark now, partly for comfort, before dropping it in favour of her sword, just in case the shadowmancer decided to crawl in and finish her off the manual way.

Let him try. She doubted he’d pose much of a challenge without his shadows. She might not have fought a shadowmancer before, but facing off against mancers was another matter. Most of them were powerless when separated from the substance they commanded.

She hoped the girl was all right. Hopefully the shadowmancer had focused his attention on Viola instead, giving the little girl time to escape.

Come to think of it, why had he even attacked Viola? She hadn’t noticed him. She would shortly have moved out of the area. Most people didn’t attack strangers—didn’t attack anyone that they didn’t perceive as a danger. She was no threat to him at the time, so why bother with her at all?

It must be true, what they said about shadowmancers . They truly must all be monsters.