Darkness & Light (2 page)

The run was a nightmare. Undergrowth that had
seemed to slide out of his way before, now tore at his fur, trying
to slow him down. He'd expected the dogs to gain on him, but not
this rapidly. Every time he slowed down to catch his breath he
could feel them getting closer.

A single misstep was all it took to tilt
things further against him. He was jumping over a rosebush and
landed on a thorn. The needle-sharp point pierced the pad on his
right foreleg, and then he was limping.

Each step was agony, the dogs getting closer
by the minute. He was now headed directly away from the outcropping
though, so the wind was no longer in their favor.

Shawn jumped a tiny trickle of water, likely
a tributary of the stream he'd used earlier, and ducked under a
pair of fallen trees. He was halfway through to the other side when
he heard the hunter.

A stray breeze brought the scent of gun oil
and cleaner. A person by themselves wasn't a threat to a shape
shifter, but a rifle made all the difference. Nobody could outrun a
bullet.

He's waiting for me. He doesn't know what the
pack found, but he knew I'd be trying to get further away from the
steep rock wall.

The dogs were getting closer. They had their
noses down so they could track his scent but, every so often one
would look up and howl.

Shawn felt his muscles trembling. He was
caught between two unbeatable opponents with only minutes before
one or the other would find him.

He’d nearly given up hope when the hunter
slapped the arm holding the rifle. Shawn took advantage of the
momentary distraction provided by the mosquito to slip away.

Running was harder now. He was starting to
get tired and his paw still hurt. The blood trail he was leaving
made it even easier than normal for the dogs to track him. His only
hope now was to make it back to the stream.

He was shaking and cold by the time he
finally heard the low gurgle of flowing water. He jumped between a
couple of tall ferns and landed with all four legs paddling
furiously. The dogs were only a minute or two behind and he needed
to be out of sight before they arrived.

The current wasn't very strong but he made
good time, he was several curves away by the time the dogs came to
the end of the trail, yelping as they slid down the bank and fell
into the stream. Fifteen minutes later the barking had faded into
the distance.

Shawn finally worked his way back over to the
bank and collapsed, wet and tired on the muddy ground. He wanted so
badly to close his eyes and sleep but there was still a chance the
dogs would work their way downstream looking for him.

He pulled himself back onto his paws,
freezing as a new scent registered in his sensitive nose.

Another person. Maybe my age, and traces of
something else, something bigger that I've never run into
before.

Shawn nearly turned and ran away, but
something about the smells pulled him forward, limping on his hurt
paw. He finally found her down at the bottom of a sinkhole at the
edge of the stream. She'd smelled hurt even from a distance, and
now he could see why.

She'd somehow managed to fall and knock
herself unconscious. Her lips were turning blue, but even more
alarming was the way and the sinkhole was slowly filling with
water, threatening to swallow her.

A low whine escaped his throat. The sinkhole
was too deep for him to jump out in his wolf form even
unencumbered. He briefly considered jumping down and then changing
back to a person, but he wasn't nearly as strong in that form.
Trying to climb up the walls one handed wasn't likely to work.

Shawn's mind whirled as he tried to come up
with a plan. Sarah would be strong enough to help but there wasn't
time to go back, explain why he'd been outside of the estate, and
bring her all the way back. He was fast, but the water was rising
too quickly.

The distant sound of the hunter's dogs
finally helped a plan form inside his mind. It was risky. He spent
a couple of seconds trying to come up with something better and
then turned and headed back towards the hunter.

Every step hurt and the smell of dogs and
gunpowder ahead filled him with dread, but he kept on, creeping
closer and closer until he was only a few feet from the nearest
panting canine.

Shawn took a deep breath and then charged out
into the clearing. He bowled over the hunting dog and then turned
so he could sprint back towards the injured girl. He nearly wasn't
fast enough. He'd never expected the hunter to react so
quickly.

A shot rang out before he made it back to
cover, ripping through the air a few feet from his head. The dogs
were close on his heels, and with the way he was limping he wasn't
sure he was still fast enough.

The question was answered a few seconds later
when a big German Shepherd got close enough to lunge at him. The
barest whisper of sound alerted Shawn to the attack and he dodged
to the right just in time. The dog missed him by a couple of
inches.

The hunter apparently decided against taking
another shot at him with the dogs so close, but Shawn could hear
the man panting as he gave chase several yards back.

The yards between him and the unconscious
girl rolled by with alarming speed and after dodging another couple
of attacks Shawn found himself within sight of the sinkhole.
Another of the dogs was within a few feet of him now.

Shawn suddenly spun around, grabbing the
larger dog by the back of its neck and flipping it towards the
sinkhole.

The dog yelped in surprise as it sailed
through the air. For a second it looked like Shawn's plan wouldn't
work. The other dog righted himself midair, but landed with too
much momentum and slid into the sinkhole, disappearing with another
yelp of astonishment.

Shawn couldn't wait around, he sprang into
the water again, and swam downstream as the other dogs came
barreling into view. Two of the pack stopped to investigate their
barking comrade, the last jumped into the stream to follow.

The pursuing dog seemed to be a better
swimmer and was steadily gaining. They'd made it a hundred yards
downstream before a shrill whistle from the hunter called the dog
off.

Shawn wanted to lie down and give into his
exhaustion, but he had to make sure the hunter was going to help
the girl. He waited until the dog was out of sight and then swam
over to dry land and started back upstream.

He'd only thought he’d been quiet before. Now
he moved incredibly slowly, taking care not to disturb even the
smallest twig. It seemed like hours passed, but finally after a few
minutes he'd advanced far enough to see the sinkhole.

He almost let out an audible sigh of relief
when he saw all four dogs huddled around the hunter who'd just
finished carrying the girl up to ground level.

"Hush you," scolded the hunter. "We've got to
get her to a hospital and I don't need the four of you jumping up
on me the whole way back to the truck."

The hunter wrapped the girl in his large down
coat and headed directly away from the stream. Shawn sat motionless
for several minutes after the people and dogs had disappeared
before finally rolling back onto all four paws and limping over to
the stream.

The swim back upstream wouldn't be any fun.
The journey back home on three paws would be even worse. Still,
there was a pretty good chance Sarah wouldn't realize anything
unusual had happened.

Author's Note:

"I'rone" was the short story that started
my binge of short stories. 
Frozen
Prospects
 (currently available) represented my first
real foray into epic fantasy, and I was more than a little
surprised when a sequel pretty much demanded to be written before I
started on anything else. At the time I was trying very hard to get
as many different series started as possible, so writing book two
in the Guadel Chronicles wasn't part of the plan. After a couple of
false starts with other stories over the course of a few days, I
gave into the muse and buckled down to continue Va'del's story. The
third book hasn't ever let me know it was ready to be written, so
I've occasionally toyed with the idea of working on a prequel. I'd
always expected that prequel to be a series that dealt more with
the story of the Goddess, the Exodus, and just how Va'del's people
came to live in such an inhospitable environment. I was very
surprised when instead I found myself writing a prequel that dealt
with the time just a decade or so before Va'del's story.

I'm glad I did however, and I'm glad I wrote
the stories in the order I did. Even though Va'del doesn't make an
appearance in "I'rone", I learned things about him while writing it
that will ultimately help me as I sit down to write the third and
possibly the fourth books in the Guadel Chronicles.

I think one of my favorite things about
writing has always been the way that pieces I never expected to be
related to each other turn out to fit together in compelling ways.
My characters always have something of a history, enough I hope to
make them feel like real people, but sometimes I don't know
particular aspects of how their life developed until I run into a
plot problem that makes me flesh their past lives out even
further.

Occasionally I'm fortunate enough to have a
story idea occur to me that lets me do a prequel. When that
happens, I generally write the story with an eye towards taking the
readers back in time so that we can both discover new things about
already-beloved characters. After all, that's the real reason we
come back to the same stories time and time again-sometimes we just
need to spend quality time with people we've come to know and
love.

Writing "I'rone" has been one such journey.
It's been immensely rewarding for me, and I hope you'll find it
equally so.

On'li sighed as she looked around the
dull-gray stone cavern. It was packed with people, but they were
still too few for the task at hand. Every Guadel and guardsman in
the city could have been tasked with exploring the underbelly of
the Capital and they still wouldn't have had a decent chance of
finding the child that'd wandered off into the darkness.

The adults all seemed to understand the
futility of the search. An unprecedented number of glow spheres had
been brought down from the main caverns but instead of adding
warmth and light to the gathering it just revealed too many faces
defeated before they'd even started.

Some of the searchers were only a few years
older than the missing child. It seemed irresponsible to be sending
teenagers out in a search that was all too likely to yield a body
at best, but every passing second decreased the odds of finding
anything and there were simply too many tunnels to search for them
not to recruit every able body.

The only exception to the somber mood was the
circle of Daughters gathered in one corner. The entire group of
girls was giggling at something, as if this was nothing more than a
holiday. One of the teenage girls looked up in time to catch
On'li's scrutiny and actually threw off a perky wave.

Betreec, the girl who'd just waved, giggled
again at whatever story her friend was relating, but it was obvious
from the way she was craning her neck around that she wasn't really
listening. She was doubtlessly looking for On'li's adoptive son,
I'rone, which wasn't something designed to calm On'li.

In all fairness, Betreec was a cut above most
of the rest of the girls her age, but she was still far too
irresponsible. On'li wasn't sure she ever thought beyond the next
bit of gossip or the next male whose attention she was determined
to capture.

Unfortunately Betreec seemed to have I'rone
firmly in her sights, and she wasn't the type to abandon the chase
short of success, at least not while her prey had proved as elusive
as I'rone.

Javin, On'li's husband of more than a decade,
seemed to have finished receiving instructions from the head of
their bloodline. He scanned the room as he returned to On'li, but
the effort was completely unneeded. I'rone materialized out of the
deepest shadow in the room, the one he'd fled to almost as soon as
they'd entered the cavern, and walked quickly over to rejoin his
sponsors.

On'li still felt a pang of sorrow each time
she thought about how I'rone had been when they found him. He was
still shy, and often tentative in asserting his rights, but back
then he'd refused to make eye contact with anyone. Even bribery
hadn't been enough to induce him to talk. Now his youthful frame
was filling out with muscles at an astonishing rate. The amazing
mind behind his guarded face still ran constantly, but now one
could occasionally convince him to share some of the insightful
comments that'd been locked away for so long.