Darkyn.

Master of Shadows.

by Lynn Viehl.

April 17, 1298

"Out with ye, crow bait," the pale, sweating guard snarled as he dragged him across the moldering straw of the prison cart's cage.

"Yer necklace awaits."

The torn, b.l.o.o.d.y condition of Liam's back and his battered limbs kept him from walking upright, but still the peasants lining each side of the dirt road leading to the town gibbet pelted him with rotten vegetables, clumps of manure, and their spit. Most of them looked as sickly as the king's guards, which explained their rage. He had given up trying to fathom why they had blamed him, a common poacher, for the plague that had swept through Sherwood. The jailer's whip and cudgel had beaten the caring out of him.

The gibbet, made of four old, toppled druids' stones around a lightning-struck dead oak, stood empty for once. A stained length of rope hung from the thickest of the blackened, twisted branches, and had been knotted into a noose at the very end. Liam had seen bodies of the condemned left to hang for months; they didn't fall until the local crows literally picked them to pieces. Compared to his fate, that now seemed almost merciful.

Two more guards, armed with short swords, waited on either side of the stones. The horses they held by their bridles were big, bulky shire mares he had seen plowing a field to the north. He had hoped for a pair of swift hunters, but no, they meant to make him suffer until his last breath. Then, when it was finished, they would drop what was left of him in tar before hanging him from the gates of town.

The sun burned his eyes, as he had been imprisoned away from it for three months or better, and no one had given him so much as a candle stub to light his dark cell. They had stopped bringing him food when he had begun coughing, and he had thought the starvation would have finished him off, but no, 'twas just his bitter luck to have survived the sickness so that they might execute him. He didn't feel hungry anymore, not since his last beating, but he would have traded his soul for a drink of cool water.

"Let me through." A thin, dirty girl in a stained over shift and threadbare undergown pushed past the jeering villeins and threw herself to the ground in front of the guard. "Please, marster, I beg you, give me leave to say a prayer wi' Red."

The guard kicked at her. "Away with ye, wench."

"Please." She looked up, tears making her pale eyes huge. "He were kind to my ma before she pa.s.sed. He brought soup and chopped wood for her."

Liam swore under his breath. He'd told Clary to keep her distance, but she never listened. At least she hadn't called him by his real name-that would have made everything he'd suffered for naught.

"Let the s.l.u.t bid her lover farewell," someone yelled, setting off dozens of shouted agreements.

"Pray you fast, wench." The guard picked up Clary by the back of her shift and tossed her toward Liam.

Liam brought up his hands too late to catch her, and his manacles became caught between their faces as she knocked him flat on his back. He almost bit through his tongue, and saw bright red blood streak down her chin.

"Clary, why are you here?" He pressed the shreds of his sleeve against the split in her lower lip. "You promised."

She bent as if to kiss his cheek, and whispered, "Your master is coming for you."

He almost laughed. "The Prince of Trees, rescue me? He cannot even save himself." He glanced down at her overtunic, smelled soot and rot, and his amus.e.m.e.nt vanished. "My G.o.d, girl. What have you done?"

"He needed the silver. The cottage was not mine, nor the mill. I had nothing else to sell." She tried to smile. "'Twill not be forever.

You will come back."

She had sold herself into service to pay a madman to save a fool. Were he not so dry, Liam would have wept. "Aye, love. I will come for you." If not in this life, then in the next.

She yanked the cord from around her neck and pressed the small wooden cross hanging from it into his hand. "I will be waiting."

She pulled him to his feet. "G.o.d bless and keep you, Red."

Liam gripped the tiny cross. At least there was one soul in all the world who didn't despise him-at least, not yet. When she would have drawn back, he held on to her hands and kissed her mouth, and for a long moment the world went away. When he lifted his head, he was almost glad he was about to die, for the look in her wide eyes would have haunted him forever.

The guard took hold of her and shoved her back into the crowd. A moment later she was gone.

"Attend me, all ye here," the bailiff shouted before he read from the scroll in his hands. "The man known as Mad Red has been found guilty of plotting and devising an uprising against his majesty the king, in a felonious and treasonable effort to overthrow the monarchy. In full knowledge of his own wickedness, he arranged for men of mercenary persuasion to act as accomplices, the very same men who came into England sick with the pestilence that has now stricken our land. Therefore, being devoted to the cause of justice, wishing to maintain and defend his gracious majesty, to tear out by the roots such heresies in his kingdom, to the best of our ability, and to inflict a fitting punishment on the convict according to both human and divine law, and to canon law customarily observed in such cases, the aforesaid traitor Mad Red will be hanged, drawn, and quartered within the liberty of the town as a clear example to his majesty's other subjects of how abhorrent is this kind of crime. So ordered by the Sherriff of Nottingham on this day, the seventeenth of April, in the year of our Lord one thousand twelve hundred ninety-eight." He rolled up the scroll and turned to face Liam. "Mad Red, have you any last words before sentence is pa.s.sed?"

A fist-size stone struck Liam's temple, and his vision blurred as blood streaked down his face. "I'm no traitor or killer. Ask your wife."

The bailiff spit on the ground. "G.o.d have mercy on your black soul."

The hooded executioner, a tall, lean, grinning fellow with scarred hands, slipped the noose over Liam's bloodied head. "Red, if you are not too mad," he said in a low, husky voice, "I would beg your forgiveness."

He scowled up at the shadowed face. "Break my neck on the first draw, and you'll have it."

"What, and cheat these fine folk of this spectacle of justice?" The hangman cuffed the back of his head. "Do that and I'll be the next one to dangle." He produced a black hood. "Not to worry. It'll be quick, lad."

Liam closed his eyes. "Be done with it, then."

The black wool hood felt suffocating, especially when the hangman jerked the slipknot tight around his throat. He felt the screams he had fought for three months boiling up inside him, but he would not let them loose, not even if he had to bite through his own tongue to silence them.

The rope bit into his neck as he was yanked off his feet and dangled helplessly. He expected the choking, but not the roar of fury inside his head. Bright spots of eerie light danced on the insides of his eyelids as he felt his heartbeat slow. Just as the thick wool of the hood seemed to swallow his mind, something hissed near his ear and the rope snapped. He fell, landing with a brutal thud facedown in the cold dirt, his wrist snapping under the weight of his body.

The little wooden cross fell from his limp fingers into the dirt.

Next they will slice me open, Liam thought, gasping in precious air and trying to brace himself as rough hands jerked him up. He hoped that Clary had gone, prayed that she had, for she did not have to know this day that she had sold her freedom for nothing.

He heard steel sliding from a sheath and went still, but he didn't fear the blades as much as the horses. He realized that his last moments on this earth would be spent in unimaginable agony. Any moment now they would hack into his body, tie it to the horses, and then drive them to pull it apart. His bones would crack and his flesh would tear-slowly-before it was done, and at last he could sleep. As the tip of a blade pressed against his belly, Liam realized something else, something that bewildered him.

He could no longer hear any voices at all.

CHAPTER ONE.

APRIL 17, 2008.

"Know what the three greatest pleasures in life are, buddy?"

Will Scarlet glanced at the inebriated mortal and the sweaty, beefy hand he had dropped on his shoulder. "Sobriety, courtesy, and daily attention to one's personal hygiene?"

"Wrong." The drunk grinned. "Blondes, brunettes, and redheads." He leaned over and dropped his voice to a liquor-scented whisper as he pointed past Will. "See that one down there, the one in the pink? I've had my eye on her all night. She's been acting real particular and standoffish, but you know it's an act. She didn't come here to leave alone. She only wants a real man." Will didn't have to look at the slim, stylish woman on the other side of the bar; he'd been watching her since following her and his master into this place. "Perhaps she's waiting for someone."

"d.a.m.n straight she is. Me." The mortal straightened and used his belt to hitch up his trousers. "Now watch and learn something, buddy." He staggered off toward the redhead.

Will followed his progress by watching the mirror behind the bar. During his mortal life, he, too, had pursued his pleasures-wine, women, and song-with the same dogged, oblivious determination. Had he not, he would not be sitting in this noisy, crowded nightclub, surrounded by bountiful measures of all three. He would certainly not be wishing for silence, solitude, and a cup of tea.

He would be long gone and forgotten, a layer of dust in an ancient unmarked grave.

The gla.s.s of red wine he was neglecting, while of pitifully infantile vintage, was far superior to the thick, sour stuff he had drunk too much of as a youth. For all its clarity and sophistication, however, it had no spine to it. Perfumed water had more character.

Then there were the ladies, in which he generally had a considerable interest. No woman from his village would have dared display as much beauty or skin as the innumerable females milling about this place. Certainly women of this era were prettier and smelled infinitely cleaner, but like the wine, they, too, had little substance.

As for song...

Will turned to eye the three bards playing their electronic instruments with mechanical indifference. They cared nothing for the music they produced; that much was obvious. As for the one singing, had he screeched like that in public during Will's time, he would have been carted off as a madman.

The Bar with a View had only two merits, as far as Will was concerned: It was within walking distance of his master's city home, and it closed at two a.m. Within the next hour he'd see to it that Robin was suitably occupied for the evening and perhaps steal a few hours for himself.

Gilded emerald eyes looked out of memories he should have banished centuries ago. You could stop. You could stay with me, and take me to wife.

It is too late for me now, child.

Then take me with you.

Will rubbed his brow. Claris of Aubury had been dead and buried for centuries, and still not a day went by that he didn't think of her in some fashion. He could recall perfectly every word she had ever spoken in his presence, exactly as she had said them. He could sketch the sweet grace of her countenance in his thoughts whenever he closed his eyes. Sometimes, when he felt most alone, he thought he could smell her skin, and taste again that one, sweet kiss he had stolen from her.

Take me with you.

After Clary's mother had died of the coughing sickness, Clary'd had no one else in the world but him. He'd known that. But by the time she was old enough to marry, he'd been branded an outlaw. To save her from sharing his fate he'd left her behind, and in doing so sacrificed her and any hope of happiness. When he had become Kyn, he had gone back for her, only to discover he had lost her again, this time to her own frail mortality. The orphaned girl had died alone and friendless, her body carted away to be burned with the other victims of the plague.

Perhaps that was why she had lingered in his mind for so long. She had no one else to haunt.

"Anyone sitting here?"

A young female dressed in a dark business suit stood indicating the empty bar stool next to Will's, but she addressed another female sitting on the other side. He didn't care for her ignoring him, her dismal garments, or the tight way she'd pinned her honey-colored hair to the top of her head.

"Not anymore," the other woman said. "Go ahead; he's not coming back."

"Thanks." She placed a slim briefcase under the edge of the bar before taking the seat and waving a ringless hand at the bartender. When he came over, she said, "Coffee, black, please."

As she took out a mobile phone and began reading text messages, Will watched her. Cleverly applied eye and lip color and that torturous topknot of hair couldn't disguise how young she was. Her jewelry, a pair of simple gray pearl ear studs and a modest string of the same around her slim throat, seemed too drab.

To add to his annoyance, tonight she had sprayed herself with some expensive scent that women fancied made them seem more alluring. That vexed him more than mannish clothing; he liked the natural smell of a woman's skin.

She reached for the coffee the bartender brought her, causing her sleeve to slide back and reveal a small oval shadow on the inside of her right wrist. No profile had yet been etched in the center of her black cameo tattoo, nor would there be until she pledged her loyalty to the immortal Darkyn lord she chose to serve. Will had been hoping for the last six months that it would be the face of his lord, Robin of Locksley.

As she sipped the vile-smelling brew, she tapped something on the diminutive, slide-out keyboard of her phone-but she still didn't address or look at him.

Amused, Will leaned closer and spoke in an exaggerated American drawl. "Are you angry with me, sweetheart?"

"I'm not your sweetheart." She glanced up, impatient. "And why would I be angry?"

"Any number of reasons, I daresay." He watched as the bartender walked past. "So how shall I get back into your good graces?"

"You were never out of them." She leaned over and gave his cheek a surprisingly chaste kiss. "It's good to see you again, Will."

"You might have seen more of me"-he turned her face so he could return the kiss on her soft mouth-"had you come to my bed last night, as you promised."

"Work takes priority." Something flickered in her eyes, chased away by her smile. "You know how it is."

Officially Reese Carmichael was employed by Archer Enterprises as an advertising executive who promoted the various products and goods produced by the Atlanta jardin. Unofficially she served Robin of Locksley as one of his many human servants. Reese knew exactly what he and Will were, because she had been born into a family of tresori, mortals who had served and protected the Kyn for more than five hundred years. They had also trained her to do the same.

They had been casual lovers for the last year. All their busy lives permitted was a stolen night together once or twice each month, and most of the time Will was glad of it. Like him, Reese was strong and energetic, in the very prime of her life. Unlike him she would grow older by the year until her time to pa.s.s came.

"I do. All the same, I missed you." He picked up her warm hand and kissed the back of it before holding it between his cool palms. "So, what have you been doing that keeps you so d.a.m.nably busy?"

"There's a regional sales conference going on this week for sporting equipment manufacturers and distributors." She made a face.

"I had one of the last presentations of the day, and as usual the program schedule ran insanely late."

As she told him of her work, Will watched her face. Reese did not use the wretched beige-colored paint so many females did that made the face into an anonymous mask; for this he was grateful. She possessed exquisite skin, smooth and golden as warm cream, that took on a slight glow no matter what light played over it. Tonight he noticed it more than he had in the past, perhaps because he wanted so badly to taste every inch of it.She glanced around him. "Where's his lordship?"

"Off in the shadows." He nodded toward Rob, who was sitting on the other side of the room and trying to intrigue the young red- haired female he had lured to him. "He's rather occupied this evening." He felt her touch his sleeve. "Do you like my new shirt?"

"I've always loved that color." She smiled. "Not many men would be brave enough to wear as much red as you do."

"What's wrong with red?" Indignant now, he regarded his shirt and trousers. "'Tis a cheerful color. Father Christmas wears it."

"So do prost.i.tutes." She chuckled and tapped his side with her elbow. "I'm just giving you a hard time. I like it; it makes a statement."

"So does your undertaker's suit."

"This, I will have you know, is the latest in unis.e.x professional wear." She made a contemptuous sound. "Someday, when I actually own my soul again and don't have to worry about how I'm perceived by the old boys of advertising, I'm going to burn everything in my closet. Until then, it's nothing but dressing like I don't possess b.r.e.a.s.t.s."

"I'd burn now and worry later." In the bar mirror Will saw Robin speaking to the redhead. "I think I'm about to be relieved of my duties for the evening."

"Good. I need to talk to you somewhere quieter." She emptied her cup of coffee before she slid to her feet. "Come on."

Will didn't want to leave the club, but it didn't appear as if Robin needed him, and it was obvious that something was troubling Reese. She spoke and behaved with her usual careless charm, but tonight her smile didn't reach her eyes.

Fortunately he knew how best to chase away her worries.

Will followed her out of the club and into the maze of corridors leading to the elevators, the front desk, and the exercise room.

When he saw where she meant to go, he caught her around the waist and guided her in a different direction.

She glanced down the short, empty corridor. "I think we'd be more comfortable in the lobby."

"Too many people." He took the hotel key card from his pocket and unlocked the day manager's office door. "No one will interrupt us in here."