Shadowborn (Light & Shadow, Book 1)
Light and Shadow, Book 1
By Moira Katson
All rights reserved, including the right of
reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
Cover art by Zezhou Chen.
Book II: Shadowforged
Book III: Shadow’s End
Mahalia
Inheritance
Origins
whose support, encouragement, and
feedback
have helped me to take this leap!
Excerpt of Shadowforged (Book
II)
Cast of
Characters
The Duke’s Household
Catwin – servant to the Duke, Miriel’s
Shadow
Donnett – a member Palace Guard, who fought
with the Duke at the Battle of Voltur
Eral Celys – Duke of Voltur
Emmeline DeVere – younger sister of the
Duke, Miriel’s mother
Miriel DeVere – niece of the Duke, daughter
of Emmeline and Roger DeVere
Temar – servant to the Duke, the Duke’s
Shadow
Roine – a healing woman, foster mother to
Catwin
Members of the Royal Family: Heddred
Anne Warden Conradine – sister of Henry,
aunt of Garad; Duchess of Everry
Arman Dulgurokov – brother of Isra
Cintia Conradine – daughter of Anne and
Gerald Conradine
Elizabeth Warden de la Marque – cousin of
Henry, mother of Marie
Henry Warden– father of Garad
(
deceased
)
Garad Warden – King of Heddred
Gerald Conradine – husband of Anne; Duke of
Everry
Guy de la Marque – husband of Elizabeth
Warden, father of Marie; Royal Guardian to Garad
Isra Dulgurokov Warden – mother to Garad,
widow of Henry; the Dowager Queen
Marie de la Marque – daughter of Elizabeth
and Guy
Wilhelm Conradine – son of Anne and Gerald;
heir to the throne
William Warden – Garad’s uncle, Henry’s
older brother (
deceased
)
Members of the Royal Family: Ismir
Dragan Kraal – brother of Dusan, father of
Kasimir (
deceased
)
Dusan Kraal – King of Ismir
Jovana Vesely Kraal - Queen of Ismir
Kasimir Kraal – nephew to Dusan
Marjeta Kraal Jelinek – daughter of Dusan
and Jovana
Vaclav Kraal – son of Dusan and Jovana, heir
to the Ismiri throne
Heddrian Peerage
Edward DeVere – courtier; Duke of
Derrion
Efan of Lapland - courtier
Elias Nilson – son to Piter; betrothed to
Evelyn DeVere
Elizabeth Cessor – daughter of Henry and
Mary Cessor
Evelyn DeVere – daughter of Edward,
betrothed to Elias Nilson
Henri Nilson – brother of Piter
Henry Cessor – courtier, father of
Elizabeth
Henry DeVere – courtier, younger brother to
Edward
Linnea Torstensson – a young maiden at
Court; daughter of Nils
Maeve d’Orleans – a young maiden at
Court
Piter Nilson – Earl of Mavol
Roger DeVere – father of Miriel DeVere
(
deceased
)
Other
Anna – a maidservant in service to the
Duke
The High Priest – head of the Church in
Heddred; advisor to the Dowager Queen
Jacces – leader of a populist rebellion in
the Norstrung Provinces
Chapter 1
I was an ice child, having the ill luck to
be born early, in the deepest storms of the winter, when the drifts
of snow can bury whole caravans without a trace, and the winds will
cut a man open with slivers of ice. So they say, in any case, in
the village in which I was born, the village huddled at the base of
the mountain that houses the Winter Castle, the last outpost before
the road winds west into Ismir.
And so, ill luck to me, and ill luck to my
mother, for I came months early. The peasants who make their living
in the unforgiving world of the mountains are notoriously
superstitious, but it does not take superstition to make ill luck
of a birth in a blizzard. With no way to call for a midwife, the
birth nearly killed her, small as I was, and when it was over, she
and I huddled together in the drafty little hovel, wrapped in the
only blankets the family could afford. I, despite being undersized
and weak, screamed to high heaven, and my mother, being half-dead
of blood loss, slipped into a fever and spoke like a madwoman.
So it was that the sorceress Roine was
called from the great castle itself, and she made her way down the
steep steps, in the biting cold, to see me and cure my mother. Her
poultices and teas—“Aye, and spells,” the maids whispered
knowingly—brought down the fever, and at last my mother’s soul
returned from its wandering in the lands of the dead, and came back
to her body.
Roine begged my mother’s leave to take me to
the castle itself until I was stronger. The Lady had given birth
not a month past, Roine told my mother. The wet nurse could take
another child, and there was goat’s milk as well, and Roine had all
of her herbs. It would spell my mother, so she could recover as
well. When I was healthy and strong, Roine would bring me back.
“
And then what?” I begged
to know when I first heard the story. I was six years old, and in
the way of children, I had taken a liking to one of the maids,
Anna, and had followed her on all of her chores, dogging her heels
and clinging to her dress despite her sharp words to go sit by the
fire. Finally, when she had told me that she had no time for a
cuckoo’s child, I had demanded to know what that meant. Anna, tired
of my questions and eager to teach me a lesson, had been only too
happy to tell me the story.
“
And then,” she said,
leaning towards me, and smiling, eyes bright with malice, “your
mother said not to bring you back. She didn’t want you back at all,
for she said you were a cursed child.” I stared at her.
“
So?” I asked. I had been
raised by Roine, a woman I knew was not my mother. I knew that
other people had mothers, but I had only the dimmest concept of
what mothers actually were. In the self-centered way of children, I
had never wondered much about them, and so I could not be entirely
sure what to think about this new development—although I was
somewhat offended, even at that young age, that someone had not
wanted me around.
“
Cursed,” Anna
repeated.
“
Well, what does
that
mean?” It was my
favorite question at the time. Anna did not think much of it,
having been subjected to an entire morning of the query.
“
Go ask Father Whitmere if
you don’t know,” she said rudely, and I—not thinking highly of
Father Whitmere—heaved a great sigh and went to go find Roine
instead.
Roine sighed as well when she heard my
question, and she set aside her spindle and lifted me onto her lap,
where she ran her fingers through my fair hair as she talked. I
leaned back and looked up into her beloved face, and I wondered, as
I often did, why it was that Roine always looked sorrowful.
“
Your mother did not say
you were cursed,” she said. “She told me that you were born to be
betrayed.”
“
Well, what does
that
mean?” I demanded
at once, and Roine considered.
“
What do you think it
means?” she asked, finally, and I shook my head so that my braid
flopped about.
“
I don’t know.”
“
Neither do I.” Roine
kissed my forehead and set me down on the floor again. “Maybe it
means nothing.”
“
I don’t think so,” I said
stoutly. “How could it mean nothing?”
Roine had a peculiar look on her face. “One
can always hope,” she said.
“
Did anyone ever say
something like that about you?” I asked, for a moment she went
quite pale.
“
Not quite like that,” she
said. “Now run along, and keep out of the way. The Duke is coming,
and there is much to prepare.”
The Duke. The one terror of my childhood was
the Duke, the Lady’s brother. Her husband had died in the war, and
the Lady had never remarried; she lived in this castle on the
charity of the Duke, some said as a half-prisoner. I heard servants
whisper that she wished to go back to the court, but he would not
allow her—not after what had happened the last time. When they
spoke of it, the servants would laugh in a way that I, as a child,
could not quite understand, and once or twice it was murmured that
Miriel was lucky she had her father’s hair, her father’s eyes.
The Lady might plead with the Duke—and, to
be sure, there were always eavesdroppers to those conversations,
and whispered accounts of her begging, and his cold refusals—but
she would never defy him. No one defied the Duke. When he rode into
the Winter Castle, it was with a great train of retainers and
soldiers and priests, all wearing black and looking as grim as
their lord. As if the soldiers were not terrifying enough, and the
priests in their robes, like a flock of ravens, the Duke went
nowhere but that he was accompanied by Temar, the man they called
his shadow—and, some whispered, his assassin.
Worse, this grim man was the sole authority
in my world. If the Lady could not make a decision, she would say,
“I will write to the Duke.” If someone would not obey, she said,
“it is the Duke’s order.” If I misbehaved, from stealing a pastry
to breaking a statue, the maids told me, “I’ll tell the Duke on
you,” and I was told, in excruciating detail, just how the Duke had
tortured a man to death once, or how he had put down a rebellion in
the south, or just how he had won the Battle of Voltur, or how…
until I ran away in tears.
Having a mortal terror of the Duke, who had
most likely never noticed me at all, I had decided that the best
way to avoid his wrath was to avoid being seen, and so I had become
very good at that. I practiced by sneaking around after the maids
on their chores, or the soldiers on their rounds. I knew where to
stand so that the candlelight would not glint off of my hair as
much, and I knew how shadows fell in doorways, and I knew how to
move very quietly, and very quickly.
On his visit that day, the Duke took not the
slightest notice of me. Nor did he see me the next time he came, or
the next, or the time after that. For each visit, there were feasts
in his honor, and Miriel, the Lady’s daughter, was paraded out and
shown off. Each time, he was said to test her, to make sure that
she was perfect. Never mind that the little girl was as isolated
from the world as a girl could be—she must still be able to dance,
and sing, and dress as finely as any lady of the Court. The Duke
expected perfection from her, it was said.