Jack Of Shadows Read Online Free PDF Page B

and liable to speedy cancellation, but it existed wherever light and objects met to make a lesser darkness.
    With the lesser darkness about him, Jack placed his will upon the boulder.
    There was, of course, resistance as he reversed their previous roles. The power that had compelled him fought back, became the victim itself. Within himself, Jack stimulated the hunger, the open space, the vacuum. The current, the drain, the pull was reversed.
    ...And he fed.
    You may not do this to me. You are a thing.
    But Jack laughed and grew stronger as its resistance ebbed. Soon it was unable even to protest.
    Before the candle bloomed brightly and died, the mosses had turned brown and the glow had departed. Whatever had once lived there lived no longer.
    Jack wiped his hands on his cloak, many times, before he departed the valley.

3
    THE STRENGTH HE had gathered sustained him for a long while, and Jack hoped that soon he might quit the stinking realm. The temperature did not diminish further, and there came one light rainfall as he was preparing to sleep. He huddled beside a rock and drew his cloak over his head. It did not protect him completely, but he laughed even as the waters reached his skin. It was the first rainfall he had felt since Glyve.
    Later, there were sufficient pools and puddles for him to clean himself as well as to drink and to refill his flask. He continued on rather than sleep, so his garments might dry more quickly.
    It brushed past his face so rapidly that he barely had time to react. It happened as he
    neared a shattered tower that a piece of the darkness broke away and dropped toward him, moving in a rapid, winding way.
    He did not have sufficient time to draw his blade. It passed his face and darted away. He managed to hurl all three stones which he carried before it was out of sight, coming close to hitting it with the second one. Then he bowed his head and cursed for a full half-minute. It had been a bat.
    Wishing for shadows, he began to run.
    There were many broken towers upon the plain, and one at the mouth of a pass led between high hills and into the range of mountains they faced. Because Jack did not like passing near structures-ruined or otherwise-which might house enemies, he attempted to skirt it at as great a distance as possible.
    He had passed it and was drawing near the cleft when he heard his name called out.
    "Jack! My Shadowjack!" came the cry. "It's you! It really is!"
    He spun to face the direction from which the words had come, his hand on the hilt of his blade.
    "Nay! Nay, my Jackie! You need no swords with old Rosie!"
    He almost missed her, so motionless did she stand: a crone, dressed in black, leaning upon a staff, a broken wall at her back.
    "How is it that you know my name?" he finally asked.
    "Have you forgotten me, darlin' Jack? Forgotten me? Say you haven't..."
    He studied the bent form with its nest of white and gray hair.
    A broken mop, he thought. She reminds me of a broken mop.
    Yet...
    There was something familiar about her He could not say what.
    He let his hand drop from the weapon. He moved toward her.
    "Rosie?"
    No. I could not be...
    He drew very near. Finally, he was staring down, looking into her eyes.
    "Say you remember, Jack."
    "I remember," he said.
    And he did.
    "...Rosalie, at the Sign of the Burning Pestle, on the coach road near the ocean. But that was so long ago, and in Twilight..."
    "Yes," she said. "It was so long ago and so far away. But I never forgot you, Jack. Of all the men that tavern girl met, she remembered you the best. -What has become of you, Jack?"
    "Ah, my Rosalie! I was beheaded-wrong fully, I hasten to add-and I am just now re turning from Glyve.-But what of you? You're not a darksider. You're mortal. What are you doing in the horrid realm of Drekkheim?"
    "I am the Wise Woman of the Eastern Marches, Jack. I'll admit I was not very wise in my youth-to be taken in by your ready smile and your promises-but I learned better as I grew older. I nursed