by ML Spencer
Prologue
It was said the gods weep every time a dragon falls from the sky.
But it wasn’t true.
Maranth the Black fell on a cloudless, rainless day, the event of his death unmourned by the divine. Only his rider remarked his fall, for he felt it like a knife-thrust through his soul.
Tears welled in his eyes, fed by a kind of grief most mortals who have never known the love of a dragon will never experience. He cast himself back from the cliff’s edge with a wail of torment, sinking to his knees as his strength fled. It was not only for his soul-bound companion that he mourned, but for all the creatures of the Greenwood, whom his failure had doomed.
His mighty star-steel blade hung limp at his side, and his shoulders stooped beneath the crippling weight of his despair. His spirit had died along with his dragon, for no human could survive such a mortal loss. He was certainly no exception.
An Archon stood across the rift from him, haloed in purple flames, swathed in silken robes, a therling’s snakelike body tangled about him. Against such a foe, he had never stood a chance. Only an Auld Champion able to bend the colors of the world could prevail against such a demon, and the last one had fallen four hundred years before.
He may not be a Champion, but he was all they had, even if he wouldn’t be enough. He couldn’t defeat such a monster, but he had to die trying.
Wiping his tears, he rose to face his adversary.
I
The Old Blood
Chapter One
The seaside village of Anai awoke this morning the same as it did every other morning; only, this day was unlike any other. It was rumored that a bard was coming, and the entire village was abuzz with anticipation.
On the docks, the fishing boats remained tied to their moorings, their rowdy escorts of gulls squawking riotously at the change of routine. Spice-scented smoke poured from the curing houses, though the great treadwheel crane on the wharf stood idle. The marketplace was feverish with folks readying for the occasion, scrambling to purchase fresh milk and butter, barrels of beer and hearty ale. The pig sellers were having one of their best days of the season, as were the chandlers, though the peat merchants were bemoaning their losses.
There were many reasons why the people of Anai were anxious for the bard’s arrival. As always, the old women would be ready to swoop in first, pecking like seabirds at the bard, eager for crumbs of information about eligible young men and women to add to their matchmaking lists. The young children were excited for stories and the occasional magic trick, while the adults awaited tales of a much more serious, and secretive, nature. However, it was the older boys who awaited the bard’s arrival with breathless anxiety, for word had it that this particular man was looking for an apprentice.
Morning was getting on by the time the shout finally came that their eagerly anticipated visitor had been spotted on the seafront road. Flocks of children flew like starlings from their huts, racing to the edge of the village to be the first to cheer his arrival. They collected atop the wall behind the smithy and lined the sand-drift dike along the roadway. There was a general sense of bubbling exuberance in the air as young folk bobbed their heads and stood on tiptoes to vie for a better view.
One of the older boys was not among the other children, but instead sat upon an overturned boat at the edge of the marketplace, showing no interest whatsoever in bards or festivities or anything that involved a crowd. His attention was riveted on a bit of hemp twine in his hands, over which his fingers danced eagerly with the dexterity of one long acquainted with knotwork. He was small for his age, with reddish brown hair that constantly fell into his eyes—eyes that were the color of mother-of-pearl, which held a stare most found intense and unnerving.
Aramon Raythe, or Aram, as everyone liked to call him, had no interest in becoming a bard’s apprentice, for that would involve interacting with strangers, an exercise he found particularly terrifying. No, he was meant for the comforting seclusion of the sea. When he reached the age of choice, he would become a sailor, and he would spend the rest of his life in the forecastle of a ship, where he would tend to the running rigging, for ropes and cordage were what he loved best. He had studied knotwork his entire childhood and spent most of his spare time at the wharfside communing with sailors, whose lives depended on knots far more than any other craft.
The sound of cheers made it known that their long-awaited visitor had arrived at the outskirts of the village. Aram was indifferent. The twine in his hands was starting to take shape, and the refinement of that shape was far more deserving of his attention. Working a knot was both artform and adventure, and this particular piece, more than any other, he had to get right. Nothing short of perfection would suffice.
The piece he was working on would be a clothes bag lanyard when it was finished, which he intended for Mora Haseleu, the kindest girl in the world. Mora’s father owned one of the local salt shops, where they mixed burned peat dug from local bogs with heated seawater to make salt for curing herring. Whenever Aram looked at Mora, he saw around her a yellow aura the color of primroses, the most beautiful color of all. The aura was a reflection of her personality, for she was generous and gentle and always free with kind words. She was one of the few girls in the village who didn’t look away whenever he came near, and Aram would always be grateful to her for that.
The sound of cheering was growing louder and harder to ignore. Biting his lip, Aram applied all his concentration to his knotting, and the twine flew through his fingers. Soon, even the sound of the commotion blurred in his ears, his focus narrowing until the bit of string in his hand was the only thing that existed in all the world.
“What is it you’ve got there, son?”
Aram glanced up from his last knot, his attention broken. His hand opened spontaneously, and his careful work fell from his fingers onto the hull he sat upon, sliding to the ground. His jaw relaxed and his eyes widened in terror, his thoughts staggering to a halt.
The bard stood in front of him, surrounded by a mob of eager children who, one and all, stood staring at Aram.
Bending, the bard picked up the lanyard and spread it between his hands. He turned it over, holding it before his face, squinting to examine its intricacies better. All the while, Aram sat gaping straight ahead, paralyzed by fright. Not because of the attention he was receiving from his peers, which would normally horrify him, but because of the bard himself, who stood surrounded by an aura of deepest, screaming red, a color he had never in his life seen around a man.
“This is fine work,” said the bard. “Fine work, indeed.”
Sound returned to Aram’s ears, and the motion of the world started forward again. Along with it came the knowledge that every stare in the entire village was trained exclusively on him. Worst of all, on the far side of the road stood pretty Mora Haseleu, her kind gaze riveted on him. The bard knelt until his face was at a level with Aram’s, peering intently into his eyes. Aram squirmed, his gaze locked on Mora’s like a buck confronted by a hunter. He couldn’t dare look at the man.
“You have the most interesting eyes,” the bard whispered, low enough so only Aram could hear. “Tell me, what color am I?”
Aram blinked in surprise, for no one had ever asked him that before. Breathless, he muttered, “Red.”
The bard’s lips drew into a smile. Aram hardly felt the lanyard return to his hand, and his fingers squeezed closed around it. Patting him on the shoulder, the bard rose.
Only then did Aram dare to really look at him. He was a man in his late thirties or so, his complexion the color of cinnamon, his hair slightly darker and tousled by the sea breeze. Like everyone else of Vardic stock, his eyes were gentle and glinting with intelligence. As the bard moved on, children and adults alike fell in behind him like g
oslings, leaving Aram sitting on the hull of the bark, staring across the road at Mora Haseleu, who, for some reason he couldn’t fathom, had remained behind.
He remembered what he was holding in his hand: the clothes bag lanyard he had made especially for her. He had intended it as a gift, but just the thought of approaching her with it made his hand tremble and his stomach twist. After all the days he had spent dreaming up the perfect gift for her, he had never decided upon the way he should present it. He had entertained the idea of leaving it on the brick doorstep of the hut where Mora lived with her parents and brothers, but then she’d never know the lanyard came from him. He had imagined finding her alone somewhere away from the other children and handing it to her (he had actually rehearsed this strategy over and over in his mind). In the end, he always discarded the idea as a fancy he’d never be able to work up the nerve for.
But now he was confronted with exactly that situation, and it was terrifying. For there she was, standing alone in the dirt of the marketplace, the rest of the children swept away in the bard’s wake. Worse, her attention was focused solely on him.
Aram swallowed, feeling like a drawcord was tightening around his throat. Mora was the loveliest creature in the world, and he was odd and ugly—at least, that’s what everyone kept telling him. He didn’t know how she might react to the gift of the lanyard, and he was petrified to find out. In his daydreams, she would smile and thank him and perhaps even kiss his cheek. In his nightmares, she would shove him and call him a lackwit.
But she was here now, and she was waiting. For him. The sky had gone to rainbows and the world was floating. She was staring at him, the softest smile on her face.
Oh, help.
Gritting his teeth and girding his courage, Aram lifted his feet and slid off the curving hull of the boat—and stood frozen, unable to take even one step toward her.
No. He wouldn’t let this happen. He couldn’t let his own cowardice spoil this the way it spoiled everything else. He was going to give her the lanyard, and that was that. Biting his lip, he forced his legs to carry him forward, step by step, on the longest and most arduous journey of his life. It took all of his nerve and most of his childhood to arrive before her but, eventually, he was there, and she hadn’t run away yet or called him an idiot.
Instead, she gushed, “You’re the luckiest boy in the whole village!”
He knew he was, for Mora Haseleu was speaking to him. Aram’s knees almost buckled, for the road was suddenly yawing like a bark rocked by ocean swells. He gripped the lanyard as though it were a lifeline.
She went on, “The bard spoke to you! I bet every boy in this village wishes he was in your shoes right at this moment!”
That was unlikely. No one would touch him, let alone his shoes, and certainly no one would want their feet in his shoes. Besides, he doubted his shoes would fit most of them; all the boys his age were taller than him. But he didn’t want to tell Mora this because she might laugh, so he held it in, along with all the other things he wanted to tell her.
Trembling, Aram offered her the lanyard. Mora took it from his hand and held it up, appearing to inspect it. The braided cord was a tapered sinnet decorated with a variety of diamond knots of increasing complexity, finished with his proudest accomplishment, a turban knot of eleven leads, molded into a square shape. He couldn’t look at her as she examined it, instead wanting to crawl under the boat and never come back out.
“It’s beautiful,” she pronounced at last, offering it back. “I understand why the bard admired it.”
Tingling euphoria drained the feeling from his face, and for a moment, Aram teetered dizzily on his feet. Emboldened by her praise, he offered the knotted cord back to her.
“I made it for you,” he whispered in a voice just as shaky as his courage.
“You did not!” she exclaimed, her words dashing his hopes like a keel grounded on a reef.
Instantly, he was transported back to his bleak reality, from where he should have never tried to emerge in the first place. It had always been a thin chance that she would accept such a gift, coming from someone like him. Tears burned his eyes, and his hand dropped to his side. He started backing away.
“Wait!” Mora cried out, taking a step toward him, her pretty hair tossed by the ocean breeze. “I didn’t mean it like that! Did you really make it for me?”
“I… I…” did, he wanted to say, but his tongue was stuck to the roof of his mouth, and his jaw was trembling.
“May I…?” she asked, reaching out.
He raised the lanyard again, which looked suddenly crude and ill-made to his eyes. But before she could take it, his handiwork was jerked right out of his grasp.
A hoot of laughter behind him made him whirl. To Aram’s horror, he found Jory Kannet standing behind him along with three other miscreants, the same group of boys who patrolled the village on a daily basis looking for problems to cause. They seemed to despise everything most people valued, returning kindness with cruelty. If they found a lizard, they were prone to smashing it, and if they found an injured dog, they were likely to beat it. Three of the four boys had auras the deep green of a lagoon—except Jory, whose aura was streaked with indigo.
“What’s this?” Jory held up the lanyard, which dangled, swaying, from his hand.
Aram reached out to grab it but, quick as a cat, Jory tossed it to Galrad, who in turn tossed it to Lorin, who tossed it to Kasry. Wadding it into a ball, Kasry held it over his head just out of reach.
Aram was unable to speak, so violent was the anger boiling within him. He jumped as high as he could, but Kasry was taller, and he kept jerking his hand away. Aram jumped higher, but Kasry just threw the lanyard to Galrad, who tossed it to Jory, to the boisterous amusement of them all.
“Got to be faster than that, moron!” Jory shouted while the others laughed.
Aram glanced at Mora, and the look of disgust on her face squeezed tears from his eyes. Why? Why did they have to pick this moment to torment him, right when Mora was watching? Now all she would see in him was a coward and a wretch, for that’s all he was. Tears slipped down his cheeks, dribbling from his chin.
“Look at him! He’s crying like a baby!” shouted Kasry. “Is that why your father abandoned you, because you’re a sniveling halfwit?”
“Stop it!” Mora screeched.
It was too much. Aram couldn’t stand it. His legs gave right out from under him, and he crumbled to the dirt in a ball, covering his ears and squeezing his eyes shut as tightly as he could, desperate to block them out—to block the entire world out.
They started kicking him. He cried out as a foot took him in the ribs, another striking the back of his head. Then the blows were raining down from all directions at once.
“Stop it! Stop it!” Mora howled. “You’re hurting him!”
The blows landed harder and smarter. His head thundered with pain. Someone rolled him over, while another boy stomped directly on his privates. Aram cried out in anguish, clutching himself and rolling back and forth in the dirt.
“What the hell’s going on here?” bellowed a new voice.
The beating ceased, the mongrels scattering. Aram lay crying and moaning in the street, dazed and shaking. The odor of urine hit his nose, and he thought he had wet himself. It took him a moment to realize that one of the boys had piddled on him. Strong hands rolled him over, grappling his arms away from his face.
“Easy. You’re all right.”
It was a kind, gentle voice, and one he recognized. It belonged to one of the older boys, Markus Galliar, whose father owned several fishing boats. Looking around blearily, Aram saw that Mora wasn’t there anymore. She must have fled, disgusted by his cowardice. In the dirt lay the lanyard he had woven for her, dirty and trampled. The sight of it was revolting enough to turn his stomach.
Leaning over, Aram vomited into the dirt.
Choking, he spat the rest of his breakfast out of his mouth. His vision still swam with tears that showed no sign of let
ting up. It wasn’t like he was a stranger to a beating—he’d gotten more than his share over the years. But he’d never felt so humiliated. The shame hurt worse than the beating, and he feared it would leave even deeper scars.
“Thank you,” he said in a trembling voice.
He raised his eyes to look at his rescuer’s face. The image of a tall youth with shaggy dark hair and a lopsided smile came into focus. Looking at Markus, he felt an overwhelming surge of gratitude accompanied by an almost painful feeling of devotion. Never before had anyone near his own age ever championed him. Within him grew a budding hope that he had somehow found a friend.
“They’re cowards, one and all.” Markus spat over his shoulder then turned to look back at Aram. When he did, his jaw dropped, his face slackening, his eyes going wide and round. “Your blood…”
Mortified, Aram quickly wiped the blood and snot from his face with his shirtsleeve.
“No. Look.” Markus took Aram’s arm and, holding it up, showed him the bloodstain. “Your blood’s not red. It’s brown.”
Chapter Two
Markus blinked several times. The blood coming out of Aram was all wrong. It was a dark, muddy brown that looked like syrup spilling down his face. It came from a wound just above his left temple where Kasry Hamlen had kicked him in the head.
“We need to get you to Mistress Dayslin!” Markus gasped, still not quite believing what he was seeing, or how a person could even be alive with blood that color.
Taking Aram by the arm, he helped him to his feet. The boy was a little wobbly at first, as he had every right to be. Jory and his thuggish friends had given him a sound thrashing. His nose was bloody, and he had a cut on his cheek beneath his right eye, which already showed signs of swelling.
“Come on, now!” insisted Markus, taking Aram by the shoulder and pressing him gently forward.
He guided him out of the marketplace, leading him in the direction of the village gate, the boy following along willingly enough. They made their way past rows of workshops that produced barrels of salted fish and hurried past the bakehouse, where Mister Pedieu stood with his arms bared, working dough in a large trough, the smell of baking bread perfuming the street. As they passed by the village green, Markus glanced at Aram’s brown-smeared face and picked up his pace.
