Children of the Blood

by Michelle Sagara

  That decided him; foolish or no, he’d be damned if he discarded it. He clenched his teeth as another cold laugh echoed down the walls.

  “The lines called this the Gifting of Lernan; the water was a symbol of his blood. I should say it’s a rather appropriate title for sewage.” The shadow moved, bending slightly further, and spat into the water.

  “For the blood of the Bright Heart, child. Consider it your epitaph.” Starlight filtered down the well in a faint circle; by the light Darin could see that his tormentor had left. He was alone, surrounded by the sound of water as it responded to his slight movements.

  He scraped his forehead along the stone in soundless fury. How dare she spit into the well? How dare she mock the lines?

  The lines are dead now.

  They aren’t dead while I’m still alive!

  They will be dead soon. You will drown in the blood of Lernan.

  The creature had spit into the water.

  What difference. does it make?

  But it did make a difference. Dead leaves, mildew, algae—these were the marks of age, of neglect; there was no malice in them and no inherent evil. The saliva of this creature was defilement.

  So get angry, then. There isn’t anything else you can do.

  Bitterness rose like bile. He choked on it, felt impotent tears start down his cheeks again. Angrily he shook them away.

  You’re going to die, Darin. And because you can’t do anything, your Sara will die as well. Maybe you’ll meet at the Bridge of the Beyond—if the beyond has a use for the weak and the hopeless in the after.

  “I’m not useless?” Water dulled the edge of his words.

  You couldn’t stop the defiling of this holy place. You thought you were an initiate; you thought the Circle had accepted you. How could it truly accept one in league with a priest of Veriloth?

  A priest of the Dark Heart. Tears fell faster than he could shake them; salt mingled with foul water beneath his trembling chin.

  He ordered the Dark Ceremonies. He called for the lifeblood of the unwilling.

  “He did it for Sara.”

  It doesn’t matter why.

  But it did matter to Darin. He held onto the image of Lord Darclan; the way he had kissed the helpless Sara; the reason that he had exhausted himself in the grim and hopeless struggle with the nightwalker. He thought of Sara, her arms wrapped around his memory; the way she had named him; her defiance in the breakfast hall. He thought of her pale forehead under the fingers of the nightwalker, and the grisly way the creature had taken on substance and form.

  We love her.

  You have failed her.

  Yes. His right hand hurt. It was open again. Yes. His eyes widened and then closed. But I will not fail God.

  You already have.

  No. Watch. Gritting his teeth to stop them from chattering, he pulled his hands away from the wall. His robe spun about him like a serpent, pulling him to an underwater lair.

  For a moment he flailed, his hands reaching for the wall, and then he forced himself to be still.

  I am an initiate of the Circle. He began to sink and kicked at the water with slow strokes to buoy himself up. It took effort—the weariness of the day’s work and the shock of the fall had already started to take their toll.

  I gave you my blood once, Bright Heart, and you answered. You spared my lady that death.

  His head bobbed under the water, and he spread his arms out and down, propelling himself above the water again. Numb fingers began to dance sluggishly beneath the dark surface. Reaching out, he closed his eyes and dug his nails into the open wound of his right hand.

  Come again. Take the lifeblood I offer you freely. Cleanse this place of the stain of our Enemy.

  He felt sharp cold against warm flesh and opened his hand further. He slipped under the water a final time and knew that he wouldn’t be able to reach air. He was tired, but he forced his fingers to twist against the water in the pattern of the True Ward.

  Let blood call blood, Lernan, God.

  His lungs cried out for air; his head felt light, almost translucent. A rumbling tremor took his arms and legs; they began to shake uncontrollably. He felt them strike the walls of the well. It seemed to him that he was moving upward, toward blessed air.

  Darin tried desperately not to give in to false hope; to gain an acceptance of death that might calm him and lend him dignity. He tried to tell himself that the swirling rush of water that started at his ankles and moved up to his torso was imagination, nothing more. It did no good; he was caught in a sudden lurch of adrenaline, and his arms began to flail wildly in an attempt to propel himself upward.

  He opened his eyes automatically as a rush of night air touched his face. Opened them and looked around in confusion. He was no longer surrounded by cold, smooth rock; he could perceive the dark shadows of the hedges through starlight and feel the breeze that lingered across the wetness of his hair and face. His mouth fell open, and he stopped moving for an instant. The water had risen.

  He realized his mistake as the water took him again, filling his mouth. He choked and kicked upward, stretching his arms out to touch the solid stone of the well’s lip. He felt its rough texture against his fingers and managed to pull himself to one side as water swirled gently around him.

  With slow, deliberate movements, he pulled himself up and onto the stone, and after a few seconds he rolled off and came to rest on the dry grass. He lay there trembling, the smell of dirt and grass all around.

  “Well done, Initiate.”

  All Darin could do in response was to raise his head at the sound of the voice. Blades of grass that had not been crushed by his roll blocked his sight.

  “You have gone through much. Rest awhile; your strength will return to you.” A shadow passed over his prone body. He could hear the tinkle of water and the low, soft murmur of words that he couldn’t quite catch.

  A battered tin cup appeared before his face, held in pale hands. The hands were smooth, not bent or gnarled, but he shivered nonetheless.

  For the voice did not just touch his ears; it went deeper than that, it dwelt longer. It had little in common with the coarse roughness of age, but he knew that the voice was still the same.

  He had survived the well. How much more could he take before succumbing? With a trembling hand, he reached out and deliberately knocked the cup over. Clear liquid trickled away into the grass; the ground absorbed it quickly. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath; the cost of the simple gesture made plain to him the extent of his helplessness. He lay there, determined to play no more of these games.

  A fragrant smell caught his attention and tugged at wisps of memory. He opened his eyes; they shone with his pain and curiosity. In front of him, where the water had spilled, a small white flower had blossomed. It stood alone in the midst of poorly tended grass, the ivory of four petals gleaming preternaturally.

  “Orvas,” he whispered, and he reached out to touch it. It was cool and smooth beneath the tentative search of his hand.

  “Yes, Initiate. The eye of God.” Pale hands reclaimed the cup from where it had fallen. “I will return to the Gifting and draw the blood I have waited for these centuries. Will you drink this time, or will you try to grow a field of these flowers?”

  Footsteps receded, paused, and returned. The tin cup gleamed dully as it came to rest again inches from his face. He looked at it in silence and then turned his gaze to the flower that bloomed beside it.

  Weary fingers curled around the crude tin handle.

  “You have accomplished a great task, Initiate. Lernan cleansed his blood with your blood; they have mingled, and they are one. Drink and accept his Gifting.”

  “Gifting?” The cup moved unevenly toward his mouth, spilling tiny drops as it bumped across the uneven earth.

  “The Gifting of the lifeblood of Lernan. What you have offered twice, He offers back to you. Drink and be whole.”

  The water smelled clean and fresh. He looked at it, lifted the cu
p, and hesitated.

  “Initiate, I am indeed a Servant; Keranya of Lernan. Do you think that only the Dark Heart has them?”

  “Why?” His voice was harsh; the cup trembled against his lips.

  “To tell you more, to do other than what I did, would have made the task nigh impossible.” The voice seemed suddenly hollow. “It was no easy thing.”

  With a ghost of a sigh, Darin tilted the cup forward. Clean, icy water tumbled into his mouth. It was sweet, almost too sweet to bear, although it tasted like nothing he had ever drunk before. It slid easily down his throat, and although it was chill, he felt a warmth rise in response to it. That warmth touched all of him, quickening his limbs and mind in one strong surge.

  He rolled over and sat up, amazed that he could. The night air seemed sharper, and the starlight brighter. He looked at the well; it shone in the remnants of wilderness like a radiant beacon.

  “Yes. It is whole; you have cleansed the wound and the blood will flow freely, as it once did.”

  He looked up then to meet her eyes; they were green, and framed by the lines of an ancient, gentle smile. No Servant should have worn her age so harshly; indeed none of the stories that he had been raised with lent credence to her words. The tatters of robes were gone, as were the stoop and gnarled joints. But the hair was still pale, near white, and the age that she carried somehow more evident. She stood, her regard unblinking.

  This, he thought, is a Servant of God?

  As if she could hear him, she smiled sadly.

  He tried to remember that she had pushed him down the well, to an almost certain watery death. But perhaps the Gifting had healed more than exhaustion, for he felt no anger. She didn’t seem to have the strength just to stand, never mind to carry out such an attack.

  He looked around in the grass and found the tin cup. Without hesitation, he picked it up and walked to the well. He could see the surface of the water bubble gently as he approached. No hint of death was in it now; the stigmata of decay and age had vanished. He dipped the cup into the water with care and felt a tingle rush through his fingers.

  Only when he had pulled the cup away did he realize that he had done so with his right hand. Where there had been pain, he now felt a steady warmth. He looked at the back of his hand; a small white circle, with slender, pale filaments, was all that remained of his two offerings.

  He returned and took a seat facing the Servant. The cup he held out in steady hands.

  “Not for me, Initiate.”

  Her voice—if voice it was—seemed even weaker.

  “But it helped me.”

  “Yes.” Again she smiled, and again the smile was tinged with shadows of pain. “But it will not aid me; I made my choice and must abide it. Yes, in this, the Lady of Elliath was correct. I have waited long.” She sat, suddenly, as if her legs could not bear her weight.

  “Let me explain, Initiate, as the Grandmother or Grandfather of your vanquished line might once have done. This meeting with God, as you have done, is the gateway to all that is adult. But many times, to the dismay of the lines, such a True Ward fails.

  “It fails, not because of lack of faith, but because of too much faith. Fear, mortal fear, is the link between our Lord and your life.

  “I am sorry for the pain I have caused you this evening. I still feel its echoes, and I am weary. But to tell you who I was was to risk your confidence, and therefore your failure. You must understand that that risk was unacceptable. Forgive me.”

  Here she stopped, passing a hand before her eyes. Darin thought it looked oddly translucent; he could see that the dark of the night was fading into the early gray of morning.

  “This Gifting of God is one of two wounds that he accepted for love of his followers. And these two were taken by those who serve the Darkness.” Again she paused.

  Darin nodded; it made clear the presence of a priest of the Enemy. He still didn’t understand why the lord had brought Lady Sara here, but he understood why the lord could not remain if the Gifting was to be invoked.

  “Each of your kind made a pilgrimage to one of these two. They blooded themselves at the well, for by doing so they believed that they became brethren with God, and servitors no longer.

  “You have made the last such journey. And yours was hardest of all.” She bowed her head in respect, and then raised it, looking eastward.

  “The sun ... ah, light.” Her arms stretched outward in supplication. Then she smiled again, but much that was bitter was in it.

  “The Lady of Elliath foresaw one last journey here, one last initiate after the Fall. And one of the Servants of the Bright Heart chose to tie herself to the mortal Earth to wait, in darkness.”

  “You,” Darin said softly. He looked at the Gifting. Even in the early traces of morning it had a distinct light of its own.

  “Yes. And it will shine so until the Malanthi come again.” She rose then, her back bent into pink sky.

  Darin rose, also, and, walking over to the well, retrieved the staff that he had set aside.

  “No, Initiate. That, too, was part of my task, and it is finished. The staff is yours.”

  He looked at it carefully; it seemed to shine the same way that the well did, but more faintly.

  “You will have need of it. In the time I have watched, in the battles that have passed by me, the seven lines have become two.”

  “Two?”

  “The line of Bethany of Culverne exists in you. And the line of the Lady of Elliath, First of the Sundered.” A shadow crossed her face as she spoke the name. She turned then and began to walk toward the hedges.

  “Wait!”

  Her back stopped moving, but she did not turn. “The Gifting of Lernan was our greatest work, and the work most difficult to accomplish in all of our history. We paid the price for it willingly. But it is hard. I am alone. I am weary.”

  Darin dropped slowly to the ground and bowed his head. He could feel the words she continued to speak, but they came to him as if from a great distance.

  “I am mostly dead, Initiate, as I was in a beginning I no longer clearly remember, for I am of the Sundered of the true Light. Do not feel pity; while these two lines exist, there is hope for an end to my task. And it is a hope I had almost forsaken, for it has been long in coming.

  “But she saw, and saw truly, the events that the night has brought.

  “Ah, First among us, may your vision not fail. May the cost buy us our Lord’s hope.”

  She lifted her arm; it trailed shadow along the bones of her upturned face. “But the day—even mortal light—is not for me. I am truly a shadow, a shade of the past.”

  “But the Servants ...” were of the Light. He stopped the words from leaving his lips and bent his head.

  “Take the staff; it was fashioned by Bethany, and it may do more than serve as a symbol of your office. You are the line now.”

  He looked up as she faded, her face turned toward the sun. He didn’t understand what her work was, but he knew that if what she had told him was true, she was of those closest to the Light in the beginning. It seemed a bitter fate for her to live in the dark and night alone. Now he understood the age she wore, that was like no other Servant’s. What other Servant of Lernan had chosen to live only in Darkness?

  And then her words penetrated his mood.

  He was all that was left of the Line Culveme—but the line of the Lady, the greatest line of all, had somehow survived the butchery of the Servants of Malthan.

  He was no longer alone.

  The war wasn’t really over.

  A sharp, sweet joy pierced him, and a heady defiance as well. He swung the staff gleefully overhead and let out a great, wordless yell. He was not alone, he had survived the night, and the world in front of him seemed, for the moment, conquerable. He was young, then; for a moment his hope outshone the scars that the Empire had inflicted to shape and control him.

  chapter twelve

  Lord Darclan sat beside Sara, streams of curtained light troubling his
brow. He smiled, a tenuous mixture of the grim and the gentle. The waning of the night had seemed endless, but this slow creep of silent dawn was infinitely worse.

  “Sara.” He stroked her hair softly. “Did you feel it, too? It will not be long. Darin accomplished—what he had to.” But he didn’t know if Darin had survived the task. The well, cleansed, was useless to him without the boy—less than useless.

  He was tired; he had depleted much of his power, and it was slow to return to him. But he would not walk in the Dark Heart’s hand to restore it; he would wait. His head fell slowly and came to rest on Sara’s shoulder. He closed his eyes.

  And snapped them open again as the door gave a loud creak behind him. He whirled around as Darin slid into the room. Darin’s robe was damp and hung round his small frame like a tent; his eyes were ringed black. He leaned against a small staff, which his left hand curled around. The lord grimaced at the sight of it, but forbore comment.

  For Darin’s right hand was unbandaged, and looking at it, Darclan could see the silver of scar tissue. In this hand-made-whole was a small, battered tin cup, one that slaves might use.

  “Lord.” Darin held out the cup. “For Sara.”

  Lord Darclan started forward with outstretched hand. His face twisted slightly in pain, and he drew back.

  “Yes,” he murmured, with satisfaction and a profound sense of relief. “Yes.” He ignored the pain—what did it matter? Had he been any other man he would have been laughing or crying for sheer joy. He was Lord Darclan; he allowed himself a wide, deep smile.

  “Lord?”

  Darclan shook his head. “No, you will not call me that here.” His eyes traced the outline of the staff. “I know that wood well; I know who made it, and I know what it means.” He bowed. “Patriarch of Culverne.”

  “And you?” Darin’s fingers whitened against the grain of the staff. “Do you also serve ... God?”

  Darclan’s voice hardened at the tone of Darin’s. “I will not discuss that with you. Not now.” He turned to look at Sara.