The Blood Wars Trilogy Omnibus: Volumes 1 - 3

by T. A. Miles

  The sea harbored a curious air of tranquility about it. Deitir studied the still waters from the office, high above the rest of the city, noting that the only real sign of anything significant happening was the movement of the ships. Even so, watching them maneuver could have been observing the harbor on a particularly active day among merchants and traders. Not that he had been a witness to war or battle of any kind in his life, so he supposed he wouldn’t know precisely what it should look like. Still, he imagined it differently. A part of him expected to already see things on fire.

  Soon enough, he assured himself unhappily.

  At this moment the anticipation was the worst of it. It had been a long night and it was panning out to be a longer morning. Deitir was learning quickly that leadership involved a fantastic amount of waiting to see how one’s orders would be carried out. It came with a certain note of helplessness that he had not anticipated, even observing his father lead the city for years. Deitir had felt better in charge when he was sneaking about trying to gain audience with a mage whom his father wanted nothing to do with. He had asked Cayri to help his father then—not very long ago—and she had, but in doing so Raiss had fallen out of one spell and into another. Deitir had been acting in his father’s role since then and it had not taken a long time doing it for him to feel all the tension and frustration the office could hold.

  “We’ve received word that the skiffs are being aligned as planned. Evacuation of the designated areas is making progress. Men are positioning along the cliffs.”

  Fersmyn’s words were not lost on Deitir, but he withheld response while he considered time, and how they seemed to have very little of it, and all too much at the same time. He felt as if the enemy were already present somehow. With that feeling, he couldn’t be comforted by the knowledge that the enemy they had discovered within the caves had already been removed as an immediate threat. If they had infiltrated so easily once before, what was to stop them from doing so again? It had been the purists who enabled it, though the beginnings of it had been initiated by the cult from the Islands. True, the purists had assisted in undoing the wrong committed by their former leader, but how loyal were they to the city? Could they yet pose a threat?

  He disliked not knowing more about them, and though Lord Ceth had cautioned him to make himself more familiar with them, there had been no time for it. It would have helped a great deal, even if only in the realm of comfort, if either of the mages who had partaken of that endeavor regarding the uncovering of the purists’ secret agenda were present.

  But neither of them were.

  “Ships are out,” the deputy governor continued, “And a roughly formed unit of constables is on its way to the Islands’ inner rim.”

  Cayri was present, of course, but she’d had very little to do with that entire affair. As far as Deitir knew, neither she nor Vlas had entered foot into the caves which networked the cliff wall.

  As the thought formed, Deitir looked over his shoulder for the lady mage, finding her sat in one of the office chairs, looking over a book that belonged to Irslan Treir. Writings by the man’s uncle, Deitir believed. She must have been looking for clues about the Islands’ cult, individuals in positions of leadership … something.

  Did they have time for that just now?

  Don’t fall apart, he told himself and in the process, he finally looked over his shoulder at Fersmyn. “Good,” he said to the man. “Thank you.”

  It was at that point when Cayri looked up at him. Deitir made eye contact with her, which lingered long enough for him to form a questioning look that he changed his mind about near immediately. Cayri did that often, particularly when she was analyzing. If she was analyzing him, he wasn’t entirely certain that he wanted to hear about it just at the moment. He felt a mess and out of his league.

  Behind him, Cayri and Fersmyn exchanged niceties. Deitir tried not to hear them, perhaps in preparation for not listening to what followed when he and Cayri were alone again.

  “How are you faring?” the lady mage asked him.

  As much as Deitir didn’t want to discuss the topic, he did understand that it served no one to hold anything in at this hour. He needed Cayri’s support, which meant that he had to remain open with her. Glancing over his shoulder in her direction served him a new weakness lately, one that had little to do with the impending battle with an enemy fleet.

  “Deitir,” Cayri prompted in his silence.

  “It’s nothing,” he lied. With a frown and a short exhale, he corrected himself. “It’s everything.”

  Cayri stood, and that did little to help him cope as she had a beautiful form. Her layers of brown riding garb covered her to her collar region, but it covered her well and the color accentuated the honey-gold of her long hair and the liquid green tone of her large eyes. Deitir supposed that he was attracted to her from the start, though without being so acutely aware of it. It must have been the stress of the hour insisting that he recognize it now.

  Whether or not Cayri was in any way percipient to these passing notions, she said nothing to indicate that she was. Her advice came in typical form. “Maintain vigilance, Deitir. This city requires it, as does Edrinor.”

  The weight of that statement should have collapsed him, but whenever Cayri said such things it did not. He felt renewed, because something about her enabled him to see the scope of things and how connected all of it was.

  “Can we expect any more assistance?” Deitir asked.

  Cayri watched him for a moment, and then shook her head. “We must not expect it. Though it is my hope that some will arrive.”

  Deitir’s jaw tensed briefly and he nodded. So be it, he determined, casting his gaze back to the ships.

  Stood before the grand windows of the Treir library, Vlas felt that he preferred the privacy of Irslan’s house to the governor’s manor. Though, as much as he felt that, he realized that privacy meant detachment from current affair as it was occurring. It was unfortunate that he had to choose one location over another. He would like to receive information from both sources simultaneously.

  “The practice of magic among the Islands began as a form of folk art and ritual,” Irslan was saying from his seat in a plush chair before a small table. “My uncle’s descriptions of it are not too different from the purist rituals that carry on within Indhovan. Of course, my commentary on the matter is restricted to my limited knowledge on the topic, most of it acquired recently through time spent in the company of Ersana, and Dacia.”

  The latter party was indicated with a nod in the direction of a bench before the parlor window, where the mentioned girl was currently sat. Long dark hair fell around her shoulders while she pored her concentration over many thick threads, which she had been weaving together throughout the morning.

  “Yes,” Vlas murmured, watching the young cousin of his continued host, now that his attention had been directed to her. She was a child of a misguided man and a woman possessed by a Master of the Vadryn.

  What did that mean, exactly?

  To observe her, it meant very little of immediate notice. Of course, she was somewhat … strange, for lack of a better word, but it was debatable as to whether or not that strangeness could be attributed to her parenting, or to her lifestyle as the adopted daughter of a leader of a community of witches. Dacia’s behavior was on the whole polite. She seemed reasonably considerate of others, though her social grace was somewhat clumsy—she had a habit of blatantly staring at individuals who caught her interest. Her oddest, and perhaps, more hazardous attribute, was the manner in which she could be so readily possessed, not only by demons, but by spell of her father as well.

  The spell had been of Islands cult origin, and no such spell seemed to be within the catalogs of either the mages of the Seminary, or the purists within Indhovan. The nature of it reeked of the Vadryn, so it made sense to assume that the Islands cult had been developed by magic sourced fr
om demons. The magic of demons was as ill-begotten as anything of ill origin could be, and by the appearances of the well that had been buried, the primary resource had been the cultists themselves. So, not only were they feeding a demon, but they were feeding off themselves as well, being fed of what had been harvested from their own blood. It was cannibalism.

  Vlas couldn’t conceive of a more dangerous way for men to empower themselves, short of possession itself. Possession had been the fate of the woman who had hosted Serawe. Her followers had been dying slowly as they donated their life literally to a collection pool. The process had turned many of them to ghouls, Vlas recalled all too clearly. Thankfully, most of them had been put under with the well. Without the demon present, he could only wonder if the practice could carry on. His imagination allowed for the possibility that if the cultists were to ingest affected blood from the well itself….

  But the well currently lay beneath a considerable mound of rock. At least they had that assurance.

  Irslan murmured something in consideration and Vlas abandoned his ruminations. He walked across the parlor to take a seat upon a sofa near to Irslan’s chair.

  “Did you learn something new?” Vlas asked him.

  Irslan paused over his reading material. A moment to gather his thoughts yielded words. “There’s another present.”

  “Another what?”

  “Another traitor.”

  Assuming the first traitor was their missing Master Ossai, Vlas asked, “Who?”

  To that, Irslan raised his shoulders mildly. Finally looking up from the book in his lap, he said, “A man to whom Konlan referred as his messenger.”

  “A messenger?” Vlas echoed, then quickly connected thoughts and added, “A spy.”

  Irslan nodded slowly in agreement.

  Vlas was half standing while he spoke his next words. “That could mean that someone has been … that someone is relaying our plans of defense to Morenne.”

  “What can we do?” Irslan inquired, half-closing the book while he sat forward.

  “You stay planted in that chair, Master Trier,” Vlas told him. “Look for any clues as to this ‘messenger’s’ identity. I’ll return to the governor’s manor and see if Cayri has any insight into this possibility.”

  Irslan gave a nod and spread the pages open once again. Before the man had fully returned to his reading, Vlas was on his way to the door. As his hand settled on the knob, he glanced back at Dacia, who seemed not to have noticed anything of their conversation whatsoever. Her fingers continued to work with thread as if that thread were all that existed in the world as she knew it.

  Vlas let her be, and hurried from the room. Flushing out a traitor would be a difficult and delicate task at such an hour. Such an adversity had not crossed his mind, and of course, it should have. Of course, Konlan had not worked alone in Indhovan. There would have been times when he would not have been able to make meetings without rousing suspicions. And for those moments, there would have been someone else … someone easily overlooked.

  “There’s something about Jahcery that I dislike,” Lerissa expressed with a tremendous amount of ease, which was the typical nature by which Lerissa expressed anything.

  “He’s peculiar,” Korsten offered without paying the matter too much mind for the moment. They were waiting to board a vessel north and Korsten couldn’t help that his thoughts were half preoccupied with the prospect of a brother.

  That was when Lerissa gave his arm a merciless pinch. “I recall you a better listener,” she stated with false hauteur.

  Korsten looked at her, and down at the reddening mark at the back of his hand. He’d been too mentally preoccupied to even flinch at the assault, but now that he was looking at it, the blunt pain was beginning to blossom. “I recall you precisely as you are,” he said in return, then saw it fit to apologize, though he wasn’t smiling and perhaps for that reason she wasn’t either. Or maybe it was that her misgivings about Cenily’s governor were deeper than Korsten had credited them.

  Finally, Korsten gave the subject his full attention. “I detected sincerity from him … sincere concern for this city, though I will admit that he held back considerably on his point of view beyond disliking that the resources here have been so generously tapped by allies.”

  “So he does still hold himself an ally of the Seminary?” Lerissa pressed.

  “The Seminary specifically?” Korsten shook his head. “He didn’t proclaim any loyalty, but he exhibited no animosity and no distrust, both of which have been significant factors in dealing with anyone too far along the borders of Edrinor.”

  “I suppose so,” Lerissa conceded and settled herself to silence, standing with the top of her head level with his shoulder, wispy blonde strands fluttering across her brow and at her temples in the salty breeze.

  Sharlotte was perched several paces away on a mooring post, one leg draping the stout wooden pillar while the other was braced against it. Her brown hair sat in a long rope over her shoulder, her attire a silver-blue shirt with wide sleeves paired with darker blue trousers and knee-tall boots in the same tone as her shirt. A thin sword was slung at her hip and she looked more as if she were waiting to assault the ship than to board it. In spite of her aggressive posture, she was actually quite pretty. Her features were delicate and her eyes gleamed of intelligence and passion. Of course, Lerissa loved her. Of course, anyone could if she would let them.

  Korsten understood now why she wouldn’t, and he took his mind from that subject by continuing the conversation with Lerissa. “What is it that you dislike about Governor Jahcery?”

  Lerissa looked at him sidelong. “He thought you were lovely, didn’t he?”

  Korsten couldn’t help that his brow lifted at that, but he nodded. “I believe so.”

  Before he could ask what relevance such a thing bore, Lerissa lifted her face with clear indignation, and said, “He thought Sharlotte was as well. The lecher.”

  Korsten refrained from smiling—it wasn’t truly as amusing as the moment tried to make it. He said to Lerissa, “One’s social predilections do not necessarily dictate their political views or conduct. I honestly believe that he will take heed.”

  Lerissa offered only a simple nod in response and Korsten let her be. However, he did glance again in Sharlotte’s direction and he wasn’t able to help the small smile that drew to his lips. Even at the surface, she couldn’t force people to dislike her. He understood that she probably would have viewed the nature of Jahcery’s admiration as dangerous, and it certainly could be, but what she shouldn’t believe was that any eye on her was one of potential malice. No one should have ever believed that, but least of all one who had been harmed by someone’s lust. That only empowered their enemies; the personal ones as well as the Vadryn.

  The Vadryn made themselves personal, by burrowing to the roots of their despairs and suckling, like children from an unhealthy mother. They grew, like twisted caricatures of family, roosting in the heart, cluttering it with debris, sending poison out to the rest of the body. Sickness and depression, lethargy and weakness, desperation and insanity; those were what the Vadryn brought to men. They truly were as a plague.

  Korsten’s smile was long dissipated as the thoughts carried. His gaze had traveled to the water, where he envisioned himself, far out from shore … death clinging to him in the form of demons and the inexorability of the water itself. He envisioned them again, falling off as the ocean’s immense current of energy literally drained them of life.

  “I could love you,” Serawe had said, and as Korsten heard the words again in his mind, a note of sympathy replayed itself. His eyes felt immediately wet, and the notion that the reaction had been inspired by not only a demon, but a Master—one of the grand conspirators against Edrinor’s survival—struck a chord of terror in him as well.

  “I cannot despise him,” Korsten had once said of Renmyr. Now he wondered
; had he been speaking of his once-human lover, or of the demon? Was that the true hazard of the Song talent, or of casting Siren; to become emotionally intimate with demons? To feel them beyond an inherent human fear and the latent fascination men could have with darkness? Again, he considered the possibility of Adrea having been overwhelmed by her own talent.

  The sea of recent memory churned around him, bubbles of red boiling to the surface, carrying many black arms, all of them reaching for him. “Master!”

  Korsten shut his eyes tightly and forcefully took his gaze from the water, moving it tersely to the ship they were waiting to board. He blinked at the complex construction of the merchant vessel, ignoring the moisture that ran down his cheek, and looked over the men preparing The Song of the Coast for her journey north, and dared not consider the sea again for the time present. He could not help but to wonder now, if he had chosen an ill path for the return to Indhovan.

  Water peeled away from the bow of the Song of the Coast as if a gray-blue flower offering its crystalline blossom to the sun and then fading in an instant, then doing it all again, over and over. Korsten watched from the deck railing, considering the delicate and intricate beauty of water. The thought gradually transmogrified to what may lay beneath now. He had put the demons there himself, that much he knew to be fact. He had full recall of the circumstances occurring within the caves in Indhovan. It had been his decision to draw Serawe from her battle with the crone to her lair, for lack of a better term for it. His Reach had taken him out to sea, where the energetic currents had expunged the consciousness and cohesive forms of multiple demons, including the Master leading them. But what would become of their dark essence? Had they already found passage to some other place … to other bodies?

  While Korsten’s gaze followed the steady and rapid flow of water turned by the ship’s course, he envisioned the sketchy forms of many within its rolling folds. They passed through his vision as shadows beneath the sunlight glinting off the ever-changing surface. They were long and thin, the equivalent of phantom swimmers tumbling in the waves. But their forms were scarcely human.