by T. A. Miles
A Raventide Books Publication
Ames, IA
Copyright © T.A. Miles 2013 – 2015
Map © T.A. Miles 2016, map elements by Ignacio Portilla M.
Ebook design & formatting by Write Dream Repeat Book Design LLC
The Blood Wars Trilogy Omnibus, Blood Lilies, Blood Song, and Blood Reign are a works of fiction. All incidents and dialogue, along with all characters are products of the author’s imagination. Any similarities to any person, living or dead, is merely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
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First Edition
Moonlight trickled through a canopy of sparse branches. A young woman lay basking in the night’s silver glow, dressed in blood and the tattered remains of clothing and flesh.
Merran hovered over the body, covering his mouth instinctively. He had seen death before, but it wasn’t only death that he looked upon now. It was the ruination of yet another soul. That he’d come upon it indicated he had traveled the right course from Vassenleigh, and also that he had come too late. Too late for this woman, at any rate. And how many others?
Lowering his hand slowly, Merran proceeded across the clearing and into the woods. He walked for less than a quarter of an hour before coming to the top of a short cliff which overlooked a large conglomeration of gray stone and peaked roofs. It appeared a moderate town, sprawled in its bed of trees and shadow, like an errant child asleep in a secret place, dreaming securely under the notion that he could be neither found nor disturbed.
On the opposite end of the city lay another hill and signs of a great house protruding above the thick forest cover. There was little doubt that it belonged to the resident lord, someone who may have been interested in knowing that a demon was lurking in his town.
The morning’s caller was strange to say the very least.
Korsten Brierly sat opposite his guest in his home’s comfortable parlor and began to feel decidedly uncomfortable. The man’s gaze was like a cloudless winter sky, piercing and without warmth. He dressed entirely in black, from tall leather boots to a long overcoat, and the breeches and tunic mostly hidden beneath. Not a stitch of color could be seen, though he did boast a peculiar brooch on his lapel. It resembled a palm-sized moth, the exceptionally white wings lightly traced with black. Upon first meeting the stranger, Korsten was inclined to shoo the odd decoration away, but he quickly realized that it hadn’t moved and wasn’t likely to. So instead, he had guided his guest to a chair and now they sat staring at each other, listening to the moments slip past in the form of morning birds, bartering peddlers, and children at play in the waking streets of Haddowyn.
“Are you certain that I can’t get you anything?” Korsten finally asked the man. “Some wine perhaps? You seem a bit harried, if you don’t mind my saying so.”
The black-clad stranger shook his head slowly, changing the subject after a moment more of observing his host. “You seem familiar, Master Brierly. I wonder if we’ve met before?”
“I don’t believe so,” Korsten replied amicably while sitting back in his own seat. He’d been told that he had an elegant way at relaxing and so didn’t worry about appearing bored before his guest. In the words of his departed mother he was long and lean, effeminate and fair with a pleasantly gangly aspect. In his father’s words, he had a starved form, and his features were dismal and depressing, but perhaps that was more bitter observation than honest. Regardless, Korsten’s posture was usually a secondary observation. It was often his spectacularly red hair that strangers noticed first. The near crimson locks drew added attention to his pale complexion, and perhaps it was that uniqueness his guest believed he recognized. Perhaps he had seen someone else with similar features.
Whatever the case, the man didn’t pursue his previous observation. “As I told your porter,” he said with steady confidence, “my name is Merran. I’ve come to your city on business that requires an audience with Lord Camirey. I was informed that to gain such a thing, one must first go through the governor’s deputy.”
Mention of his position made Korsten shudder inside. It was not a station he particularly cherished, preferring the solitude of his library over the incessant visits from local businessmen, town leaders, and outside emissaries. However, etiquette had left him little choice in the matter. His late, sonless uncle had been very specific in his will as to who he wished to carry on with his duties in the event of his passing. On top of that, Lord Camirey had been very specific himself in assigning those duties to Korsten, whom he respected not only as a scholar, but as a longtime friend of his second son, Renmyr. It was not what Korsten wanted, but the only other option, even if not openly presented, would have been to offend Lord Camirey by refusing the position offered. That was nothing that interested Korsten either, and so he settled for the political task handed to him. He only wished that it didn’t involve the entertaining of quite so many visitors, particularly one so strange as his current guest, whose character as yet awaited appraisal.
Korsten set himself to the task, giving the man and his presentation another study. An assassin should have had a more thorough story prepared. A lunatic, however, might not have cared to consider the details. Part of Korsten’s responsibilities was to screen potential visitors to the lord’s manor whenever possible. Although the truly dangerous ones never followed etiquette and simply went straight for the house, or whichever place they believed they would find their target. Renmyr had told Korsten a number of stories concerning unpleasant intruders on his father’s private grounds.
With that in mind, Korsten entered the ensuing interview carefully. “Is this business urgent, sir?” he asked civilly. “You were right to come here if you are seeking an audience, but if it is anything in the way of an emergency, you ought to have gone to Constable Hedren first.”
Merran nodded once, calmly. “I did,” he answered. “To report the body.”
“Body?” Korsten echoed, feeling a sudden twinge of illness in his gut.
“A young woman,” his guest explained. “I came upon her body in the southern woods, ravaged as if by some beast.”
“I’ve had no reports of anyone gone missing,” Korsten informed.
“It happened late last night, I suspect,” Merran said. “It was near to morning when I arrived here. I hope no one will be offended that I took the liberty of having the body cremated.”
Korsten did nothing but stare at the man for a moment. Then he sat forward a bit, shifted his weight, and said, “I think, sir, that a great many people will take offense. The young lady’s family, for one. You say you’ve been to Constable Hedren? He should have already issued his complaints that you left him nothing to examine.”
“An examination is not necessary,” Merran replied. “It was a murder.”
Korsten failed to see his logic. “If that is the case….”
“It is,” the man assured. “And an examination would have proved that to be true, Master Brierly, in the worst possible manner. The body had been corrupted by the assailant. Infected, you might say.”
“Are you suggesting that a diseased beast attacked the young lady? Or perhaps you mean that one took interest in the corpse?”
His guest frowned. “The
corpse itself would have become a diseased beast by midday and it would have done to an examiner what was done to it, or worse.”
Korsten blinked, uncertain what to say. Naturally, he’d come upon a fair amount of grim legends throughout his studies, stories about a poisonous spirit inhabiting a body, the living as well as the dead. But what this man was suggesting; that there was something more than myth to the tales, made Korsten want to usher him from his home and take a stiff drink for breakfast. It seemed more likely, if the man wasn’t mad and imagining that he’d seen a body, that he had been the one to commit the murder and burned the body along with any solid proof of the deed.
“Are you telling me, sir,” Korsten finally said, “That the young lady was killed not by man or animal, but by….”
“A demon, yes,” the man supplied. “To be specific, it was one of the Vadryn.”
Now Korsten stood. He was going to have that drink after all. He carried himself to the short table under the parlor window and unstopped a decanter. “Master Merran, if what you’re saying is—will you have some?” His guest declined with an upheld hand. Korsten saw to a glass for himself. “If what you’re saying is true, then I would say Haddowyn is faced with a very urgent situation. And yet, you do not appear overly concerned.”
Merran fixed him with his blue, blue gaze and said soberly, “I believe the demon has only just arrived. According to your chief constable, there has not been an abundance of bizarre killings or unexplained disappearances as of late.”
As of ever, Korsten thought in reply. Keeping that thought to himself, he turned to face his guest, drink in hand. “There have not been, no.”
“That agrees with my own experiences over the past several weeks. The Vadryn I have been tracking, if true to the course I predicted, should have arrived here approximately a half a day ahead of me. It would have killed at once and hastily, out of need. And then it would have gone into hiding.”
“Even demons require rest,” Korsten added, trying not to sound terribly cynical, though he imagined he failed in that effort.
His guest, however, did not appear affronted. He continued in the same calm, impersonal manner. “That is true, Master Brierly. Because while it may be immortal, the body it has elected to inhabit is not.”
“The Vadryn are possessive spirits,” Korsten said thoughtfully. “That’s right … if one were to follow the legends. They claim the soul of a living body, twisting it to their will. A dark, hungry will that can only be satisfied through the devouring of living human bodies.”
Merran’s eyes narrowed just a bit, as if he believed Korsten were making fun. He said evenly, “It is the blood they are after, Master Brierly. And it does not satisfy them, no matter how much they steal. There is a greater darkness in their bite than death, a darkness which awakens the victim to a ravening madness, the urge to prey upon flesh, that of the living or of the dead. They have no preference.”
Korsten decided that he didn’t like the man’s tone, which bordered on condescending, as if his audience were a child or a simpleton. He sipped from his drink then gave the man a light frown of disapproval. “And you are one who chases after such creatures and slays them perhaps? Who would sponsor such a profession? Or do you set your fee by the job, in which case I can tell you straight away that Lord Camirey does not abide or support mercenaries, no matter what services they would offer.”
Merran fixed him with a stern glare. “My orders are given to me by Mage-Superior Ashwin of the Vassenleigh Seminary of Magecraft.”
Korsten let out a helpless gasp before issuing a hard frown. “The Seminary … Are you so convinced that you’re in the company of a fool? The city of Vassenleigh was obliterated by the Crimson Plague, decades ago. No one lives there anymore and the institution you speak of was nothing more than a haven for charlatans and madmen content to rob the king of his wealth, when Edrinor had one. Now, I suggest you take this story of yours back to the constable, with my recommendation that he lock you away at once and for a very long time. At least until this spell of madness or dishonesty, whichever it may be, subsides.”
The man calling himself Merran stood. “I will be staying at the Moon’s Glow Inn, waiting for an audience with Lord Camirey.”
Korsten glared at him while his lips formed a soft, sarcastic grin. “In that event it looks as if you’ll be taking up permanent residence. Good day, sir.”
Merran inclined his head in parting and walked himself from the parlor. Korsten stayed behind, glowering at his glass for several moments before downing the remains of its bittersweet contents.
The woods north of Haddowyn were quiet, peacefully so. And yet, Korsten envisioned bloodied corpses slumped against the narrow conifer boles. In his mind’s eye, they all looked like Seryline Rolce; the young woman who was indeed missing and who unerringly fit the description Merran had given Constable Hedren. After the man left his house, Korsten felt inclined to visit the constabulary himself and to hear another version of the morning’s story. It was unsettlingly similar to the one that had come from the lips of the black-clad stranger.
Perhaps what was more unsettling was that Hedren seemed halfway to believing the spectacular tale of a demon snatching people in the night and murdering them. Korsten advised him to suspect Haddowyn’s newcomer first, above legendary soul-snatching beasts. Hedren, typically a sensible man, agreed for the time being. However, because Merran had firmly rooted himself at Moon’s Glow, the two of them decided jointly that it was not necessary to arrest him just yet. He may have been nothing more than a wandering fanatic, who happened upon the scene of an unfortunate accident involving wolves or some other predatory animal and decided to make it something far more than what it was.
Korsten still had difficulty believing the claim Merran had made; not only that there was a demon lurking about, but that Merran himself was a Mage, charged to hunt the Vadryn. Mages had been all but unheard of in Edrinor for nearly a century. They were as much legend as the Vadryn and the only things inhabiting the Seminary at Vassenleigh now were ghosts. The man was clearly mad. Korsten was not about to trouble Lord Camirey with such absurdity.
“Is there more on your mind than usual?” someone asked.
Previous thoughts were put aside with effort. Korsten looked to the individual riding beside him, a man of carefully inherited grace. Unlike Korsten, who had had all of his mother’s charms heaped upon him at once, Renmyr Camirey had been constructed of equal portions of his parents’ noble qualities, sculpted as if by the gods’ hands, with the utmost care.
“I apologize,” Korsten finally said. “Did you say something, Ren?”
Renmyr grinned and said, “You seem to be riding in the clouds. Is anything the matter?”
Korsten couldn’t help but to smile back at his charming friend. “Shall I tell you about it?”
“Yes. The sooner the better.”
Korsten agreed by veering off their typical path through the woods surrounding the Camirey manor. Renmyr followed easily on his tawny steed, which was bulkier than Korsten’s black mare and not as fast, though there was little doubt that his animal could endure longer. It was not Korsten’s aim to find that out today and so he found an adequate stopping place within a short span; a comfortable grove with a narrow spring running through it. Here, they both dismounted and allowed the horses to drink.
Korsten absorbed the peaceful stillness of this part of the forest, forgetting what he had to say. Under these circumstances he could forget everything. This level of solitude was second only to his library. He hated to disturb it and almost believed that if he were going to speak at all he should do so in a whisper.
Renmyr was not so moved by the atmosphere, however, and soon broke it. “Don’t tell me you’ve received another proposal of marriage from some not-so-virtuous young lady’s opportunist father?”
“What?” Korsten let a small laugh escape him. “No. Though, to be compl
etely honest, I think I would have preferred having had that to deal with this morning.”
“Rather than….”
“Rather than the mentally disturbed gentleman who came calling shortly after sunrise.” Korsten sighed, looking out across the clearing. “I fear I’m never at my best when dawn is just breaking anyway.”
“I’ll vouch for that,” Renmyr said.
Korsten arced one eyebrow, glancing back at his friend. “Will you?”
Mischief gleamed in Renmyr’s silver-blue eyes. He leaned close, dropping his firm chin on Korsten’s shoulder. “I could be persuaded to change my opinion on that.”
“Oh?” Korsten pretended to be interested in the water flowing at their feet rather than his heart hammering in his chest as his friend drew still nearer.
“Perhaps I would find myself in a position to reevaluate. I haven’t visited your home in quite some time.”
Korsten closed his eyes as Renmyr set a very light kiss on his neck. “It hasn’t changed at all.”
“I’m glad,” Renmyr answered, the words tickling across Korsten’s skin. “Did I mention that I love the way you keep the servants’ quarters and your own rooms at opposite ends of the house?”
Frowning helplessly, Korsten said, “They think that I do it in order to keep my lessons with the not-so-virtuous ladies you just mentioned more private than they ought to be.”
Renmyr exhaled a little laugh, raising Korsten’s pulse. “You do have a marvelously convenient reputation with women. I’ve heard tavern talk of how your nose may be in the books, but your….”
“Please, Ren,” Korsten interrupted, mildly disgusted. He turned his face away from the other man, but not for long. “I don’t need to hear anymore. I let that reputation develop and I have allowed it to fester for you. For us.”
“And that’s why I’m not jealous,” Renmyr answered. He put the words in Korsten’s ear, literally. “Well … maybe a little.”
