Reign of Shadows (Reign of Shadows, #1)(4)

I stepped closer and touched a palm to the solid stone wall. Several inches thick, it was sturdy and reliable. It kept us in and them out. And yet Perla still worried. Always she worried.

I listened longer. I was good at listening. Waiting. Knowing when to move. Sivo said it was my gift. The thick, cloying dark made picking out sounds easier. Sounds and smells lingered, never seeming to dissipate.

After a few moments, I decided it was only one creature dragging its feet over leaves. Its tread was a steady staccato of shuffling thuds. I could count them one after another. A beat hovered between each footfall with no other overlapping of footsteps.

The dweller breathed in that way they did with deep saws of wet, fizzing breath passing through the feelers squirming at its mouth.

I waited for it to pass and move deeper into the forest. Satisfied that it was too far now to hear me when I emerged, I unbolted the door in the floor. There was only one visible entrance to the tower. The most obvious way in and out. We rarely used it in case anyone was ever watching the tower and waiting to see someone emerge. Another one of Sivo’s precautions.

Clutching the metal hoop in my fingers, I swung the door open, grateful for the silence of the well-oiled hinges. I descended into the tunnel, mindful of the slippery moss as I secured the door over my head, making certain it was shut firmly.

Lowering my hands, I turned, grinding the heels of my soft-soled boots into the slick stone floor. I hastened through the tunnel beneath the tower, slowing as I neared the end. Lifting my hands, I sought the dangling latch for the secret door above. Seizing it, I climbed up the few footholds in the rock wall, and waited in the dripping dark, listening for any nearby sound.

After several moments of silence, I unbolted and pushed open the door, sliding out into the night. I eased the hidden door, flush with the forest floor, shut and covered it back up with leaves and dirt.

Rising, I inhaled a freeing breath. Life buzzed all around me. No tower walls hemmed me in. A murder of crows squawked, tearing through the air with wildly flapping wings. Frogs croaked. A monkey scampered in a tree above, jumping from limb to limb, clicking its tongue down at me. Blood-swollen insects buzzed and chirped. One of them whizzed past me, its wiry legs brushing my shoulder. Perla thought they carried disease, but they never bit us. They were so fat and well fed from feeding off the dwellers. We were paltry temptations.

The wind rustled through branches and leaves, lifting the tiny hairs that framed my face. There was no time to savor it though. I needed to be back before Sivo and Perla woke.

My feet moved swiftly toward the stream where the berries grew. Even if I hadn’t made the walk several times with Sivo by my side, my nose and ears could guide me through the press of perpetual blackness. I had learned how to use the wind currents, how to listen and feel the airflow change and alter given the location of objects. The world had its own voice and I listened to it.

I heard the swift burble of the stream before I smelled the crisp water. I risked moving a little faster, knowing that the sound of running water helped mask any sound I inadvertently made.

I stepped from the tree line up to the stream and squatted along the pebbly ground and drank greedily. Icy water dribbled down my chin and throat. I swiped at it with my hand as I sank back on my heels, listening as a fish splashed close to the surface.

Aside from the rain catch we rigged atop the tower, the only water we had was what Sivo carried back in buckets. It was a laborious and dangerous process.

Rising, I dried my hands on my jacket and moved to the boonberry bushes. I flipped open the flap to my satchel and began plucking berries, stuffing a few into my mouth as I worked, letting the dark, tart flavor burst on my tongue. My bag was almost full when I heard the anguished shout. I felt it like a vibration through me.

I ceased to chew. That very human scream was close. My mind raced, mentally mapping the area, seeing so vividly what I couldn’t see in darkness. The stream. The tower. The direction in which the shout originated.

With a sinking sensation, I realized the reason for the shout. It was one of several traps Sivo left out to catch game. Sometimes he caught a dweller and finished it off. One less to plague the land.

I flinched as another agonized shout stretched long over the air. A person was out there and in trouble because of us. My stomach muscles convulsed. I didn’t even know this faceless individual, but I wanted to grab him, shake him, slam a hand over his mouth, and command him to silence. He couldn’t have lived this long and not known the importance of silence. Sivo’s voice whispered through me, ordering me to turn my back and come home.

Listening to that imaginary voice, I dropped the flap on my satchel and turned for the tower, my footfalls just short of a run over the spongy ground.

And then I heard the first dweller.

It was a signal cry, beckoning forth more of its brethren. Long and keening, sharp and discordant as no human could make. The eerie call ground through me like nails on glass. My heart seized and then kicked into a full sprint. Where there was one dweller—

An answering call followed, then two more in fast succession. I counted rapidly in my head. Four dwellers.

Inhaling, I searched for the sound of them, trying to determine how close they were. Weaving through clawing vines and trees, I listened, tasting the air for copper. The blood of the dead always drenched dwellers. They were coming. The air was already thicker with a layer of loam and copper over the forest’s usual odor of rotting vegetation.

I pulled my sword free as I ran, flexing my sweating palm around the aged leather hilt. The wind thinned, the current shifting, blocked by a large object ahead. The tower.