Shadow Queen - By Deborah Kalin Page 0,75

fixed on me. Abrupt and unpractised, a grin split his face. Not any grin – Dieter’s. Dieter’s with great white slabs of teeth and a tongue behind them red as a beating heart.

‘Matilde.’ His voice was like boulders shifting, like rocks rolled along a streambed by the current. ‘I’ll find you. I’ll carve out your heart.’

When I swung a disbelieving look at Dieter, he nodded. ‘I warned you – remember?’

I flailed backward and the room drifted away, shrinking and fading.

‘Don’t go,’ Dieter called mockingly.

But the golem had a different message: ‘I’m coming to find you, little queen.’

THIRTY

I WOKE GASPING like a landed fish, the golem’s voice still ringing in my ears, the memory of Dieter’s grin cracking wide that clay-wrought face chilling the blood in my veins.

‘Bad dream again?’ Roshi asked, stoking sparks from the fire.

I didn’t answer, my throat full of the taste of betrayal. Not only was Dieter not worried for me – he’d set an assassin on my trail. It wasn’t the action of a man who loved me. It wasn’t the action of a man even mildly fond of me. My stupidity and blindness tasted worse than the tea Roshi passed me.

‘Tilde?’ said Sepp, frowning. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘I dreamed of Dieter,’ I said. ‘It was a true dream somehow. I was in the Turholm, in the fireplace of Grandmother’s old room. It’s now Dieter’s room.’

‘How were you in the fireplace?’ Roshi demanded, suddenly intent.

‘I don’t know. I fell asleep watching the fire here, and the next thing I knew the fire was in between me and Dieter’s room. Around me, too.’ No need to mention that this was the second time.

Roshi pursed her lips. ‘You told me you hadn’t inherited the gift.’

When I didn’t answer, she hugged her knees into her chest and said, ‘What did you see?’

My hand rose to my brow, brushing the marks Dieter had put there. The skin beneath them felt no different, neither thickened nor stiffened nor raised, yet my fingertips tingled every time they touched the ink.

Roshi noted the gesture and intuited what it meant. ‘He threatened you?’

‘He’s created a golem,’ I said.

Their expressions told me the word was unfamiliar to them.

‘A construct, a creature of clay and will. It’s coming after me.’

Sepp’s eyes widened.

‘Sepp.’ Roshi snapped her fingers, dragging his gaze to her. When she had his attention, she said, ‘This creature, it either left last night or, if we’re lucky, this morning. Unless it can fly it won’t find us right now, or today. We still have time.’

Her words gave me no comfort. ‘Do we?’ I asked. ‘We’ve spent the last two days heading more west than south. We’re probably only three full days ahead of it. Can we reach the Ayrholm before the golem catches up with us?’

Sepp buried his head in his hands. I wanted to do the same. My only reason for seeking out the army had been a foolish, irrational, heartsick desire to return to Dieter. It made no sense now – if he was so ready to punish me, I doubted I could convince Dieter of my innocence in this flight.

‘We have to seek the army,’ said Sepp, his voice strangely flat, fear stark in his eyes. I gaped at him, stunned by his sudden change of mind.

‘No!’ said Roshi. ‘If we head directly west now, we’ll only shrink our lead on the creature. We need to reach House Falkere’s stronghold. If we continue south, we still have a chance,’ she said, though her voice didn’t express any real hope.

The canyons and gorges of the Dragonstail still barred our way south, and the Ayrholm lay deep in the heart of the Naris tribelands. How fast could the golem travel? Was the army too close to risk further travel west?

‘Maybe we should turn east?’ I hazarded. ‘Or venture into the deeps of the Dragonstail as far as we can, and hide?’

‘We need to seek the army,’ Sepp insisted. ‘We need bodies between us and the creature, and a shadow-worker besides. The Ayrholm is too far away.’

‘You’re coming to your senses just as Sepp loses his. The creature doesn’t know where we are,’ said Roshi, cutting me off when I tried to interrupt. ‘Trust me, cousin. Unless you specifically told Dieter where we were, he doesn’t know, and neither does the creature. We still have time.’

‘But we don’t know how it hunts,’ Sepp argued.

I remembered Dieter holding up the vial of my blood, and feared I did know how the golem hunted.

‘What if it can smell