By Blood Betrayed (The Kingsblood Chronicles)

by Houpt, David

  “They mount here on the back of the engine,” Cedrick explained, showing Lian the small hole where the stone fitted to the ballista. Cedrick turned the crank until the latch snapped home, and the bolt engaged, ready to fire. The firestone began to glow, casting its orange light forward onto the spear, which appeared to be engulfed in flames. The flame had disappeared from the center of the gem, and in its place appeared a scene of dark waves and rainfall.

  “That’s no illusion, Alan,” Cedrick commented, aiming the weapon first left and then right. The image within the gem changed with the motion of the ballista. “The gem reflects what will be hit, so keep the center of the viewpoint on the target.”

  He triggered the firing mechanism, and the spear transformed into a bright lance of fire, leaping across the waters before it was lost in the rain. As it flew, it sizzled and steamed from the raindrops. “Amazing, isn’t it?” exclaimed Cedrick. Speechless, Lian could only nod.

  Now Lian understood how Searcher had been able to fire upon the Pirate Lords’ keep, and why the siege engine mounts could be elevated for indirect fire.

  The image of the target disappeared as soon as the spear was launched, and the flame returned to the center of the gem. To Lian’s eyes, it seemed slightly diminished, but still flickering strongly. “It’s dimmer,” he said, peering at it closely while gently touching the ballista to see if it was hot. “How many shots before it has to be replenished?”

  Cedrick was impressed that Lian had noticed, and said so. “This one’s good for about five shots, as is the starboard one,” he continued, pointing at the other stern ballista. “The forward one is larger, and can handle between seven and eight, if you’re lucky. Reidar has to recharge them, so don’t waste any shots. You have my permission to show this to Snog, and Kess has already seen it in action.”

  “Yes, sir. Is Reidar the only mage that can re-energize them?” he asked. Some magical devices could only be repowered by their creator.

  “No, but he’s the only one on board who knows the spell to do so,” Cedrick replied. “And I don’t want anyone to discover how we manage the fire-throwing trick, especially another mage. Our enemies assume that Reidar creates the fire-bolts during the battle. This causes our adversaries to overestimate Reidar’s powers, and that suits our purposes admirably.”

  “Your secrets are safe with me, sir,” Lian said, as he replaced the gem in its compartment and closed the hatch. He noted that the inside of the compartment was criss-crossed with a lattice of entwined silver and lead threads, which explained why Gem hadn’t detected the magic before it was opened. Either metal could effectively deaden magical senses, and both woven together would be nearly proof against either detection spells or witchsight.

  “You’d better go bed down, Alan,” Cedrick suggested. “It’s late and I’ll need you to take charge of second watch. Whether you stay or not, you are still an officer right now.”

  Lian returned to his cabin, which he found empty. He surmised that Snog was still busy with the wounds he was tending, and he didn’t envy the wounded. The thought of Goblinish medical practices made him shudder.

  His dreams, as had become customary, were haunted.

  ***

  Deep in the bilge, the rats gathered expectantly around their mistress, who stroked the nearest idly, suppressing its natural terror of her. She cast her mind toward Lian and gently eased her way into his dreams, as she had done each night since the ship left Mola. This maneuver required a certain amount of finesse and grace, for her subject could easily become alert to her attentions. She didn’t want the mercenary to discover what she was doing.

  This night, he was particularly exhausted from his exertions in battle, which made her task easier. She slipped into his nightmare effortlessly, remaining in the shadows, out of the way. She recognized Dunshor Castle from the single time she had visited the capital after the rebellion. Although the castle had been under construction at that time, she still recognized the stone-lined great hall.

  Casting her memory back to the skirmish between the rebel army and Kolos’ guardsmen, she recalled Adrienne’s face easily. Although “Alan’s” features didn’t resemble those of the Queen of Dunshor, his dream-self looked almost exactly like her.

  He is one of Evan’s sons, she realized, garnering scattered thoughts and memories as the nightmare progressed. This dream possessed a solid reality that she found disturbing, and she’d encountered this same feeling of unease in the dreams of others before. Those dreamers had largely been of the Argesh clans, and all of them had been soothsayers or fortunetellers.

  The dream concluded with Lian, whose name she now knew, nearly waking in panic. The vampire felt a new touch upon his mind, originating from his enchanted blade. This touch was at once firm yet soothing, and Lian settled down into deep slumber once again as the sword sang its mental lullaby. Sileth retracted the tendrils of her thoughts well away from the sword’s contact, and discerned no more than a fleeting vague unease emanating from the sword’s end of the mindlink.

  As soon as Lian lapsed once again into a dream, Sileth whispered a suggestion into the prince’s mind, asking him to begin at the beginning. Smiling briefly as he accepted the instruction, she watched gravely as Lian remembered the night the assassins had invaded Dunshor Castle. Even she, many centuries old and incredibly worldly, was stunned by the attack. It rocked her to the core that someone, grand duke or no, had been able to bring such a plan to fruition. The very idea threatened the vampire’s long-standing belief that she was safe in her own lands.

  As the prince recalled his entry into Firavon’s Tower, Lian’s siblings appeared, frightening and threatening. They closed in on him at once, but Sileth quickly banished the apparitions with slight effort, then calmed her subject. When his dream returned to the scrying chamber where Lord Grey had rested, she accessed Lian’s memories of the skull and what he represented. This is the darkness I sensed with him, she thought. The necromancer didn’t concern her, since necromancy had little power over the children of Lilith.

  The dream progressed on to the battle against Lyrial, and her interest sharpened. “Saul,” the erstwhile king of Greythorn, appeared quite different to her eyes than he had to Lian’s. There was no evidence of the miserable countenance he had displayed after the battle with Evan, or the self-pitying depression that had settled onto Kolos in the aftermath. He acted as he had before he’d let his heart override his obligations.

  And that made him dangerous to her.

  Even more dangerous was his creation of a new Companion, even one with the questionable stability of an ogre. Teg might go mad and have to be put down, or the metamorphosis might unravel because of some incompatibility between Teg’s blood and Kolos’. Still, the emotional investment involved in creating a fledgling represented to Sileth a return to his former confidence and stature.

  Having gained what she needed from the prince, she withdrew from his mind, leaving behind a suggestion that he not dream for the next three nights. Sileth felt that he needed a few dreamless nights to recover from his repetitive nightmares. She, too, had lost her entire family. Although the events were in the distant past and the circumstances far different, the loss had been as total, as absolute. She no longer remembered the actual pain, merely the fact that she had been in pain.

  She left the now-dreamless prince behind her, and drew her consciousness back into her body. Her feast upon the lizards still provided her with nourishment, so she allowed the rat she had been caressing to slip back into the shadows. After all, it would be there later when she did have need of it.

  ***

  In Lian’s cabin, Gem was mildly troubled. She had encountered a feeling in Lian’s thoughts that disturbed her, although she wasn’t able to interpret exactly what the feeling meant. She decided that she must have briefly touched Lian’s nightmare, and considered the possibility of discussing the problem with Lord Grey. Her distrust of the skull had not left her, however, and so she decided against it. The last thing L
ian needed was for the necromancer to gain an emotional window into her charge’s mind.

  I’ll wait and watch, she decided. If it turns out to be a real problem, I’ll discuss it with Lord Grey, but not until then. Settling her thoughts, she guarded her wielder as he slept and prayed for the gods to watch over him, as she did every night.

  Chapter Thirty

  “Humans do not understand loss, for their lives are too fleeting. But we will teach them.”

  -- General Ailen of the Dragon Fleet, before his defeat at the hands of the Pelorians

  The rain continued throughout the night and halfway through the next day. Lian could feel the almost palpable relief of the crew when Searcher broke free of the clouds and they first saw the breath-taking double rainbow that accompanied Rula Golden’s appearance. The cook had circulated an offer that garlic could be purchased from him for a copper, and from the number of cloves that hung about sailors’ necks, he was obviously doing brisk business.

  Most of the crewmen also wore the gold-chased brass medallions of the Sunlord, or a facsimile of them hammered from brass tacks or coins. Snog told Lian that he’d sold Sar and Kar some of his own junk jewelry as “wards against the Dead,” though the goblin admitted that they had no real power beyond that granted by the wearer’s belief in the protection.

  Despite the fact that a vampire remained somewhere in the bilge, the men seemed to be in fairly good spirits. Their victory over the lizards was being perversely viewed as a stroke of good fortune, since the losses had been surprisingly light, despite the loss of Robin and Doval. Lian was generally considered to be a good sort for an officer, and the crew gave him little trouble.

  The remainder of the voyage to Seagate was spent in lessons and drill on the running of a ship, and Lian proved himself equal to the task of learning the skills of ship officer. The crewmen who served as his teachers usually framed their examples in terms of “how it’s done on a ship like Searcher,” and “how it’s done on a barge like the Golden Gull.” There was obvious pride in the warship’s speed and agility, and confident knowledge that Arden and Cedrick would win the day should there be trouble.

  I think they’re all mad, Gem commented. They’ve had such bad luck recently that they must be cursed, Lord Grey’s findings notwithstanding.

  Lian thought back, They just defeated a big band of dangerous lizards, they’ve got a vampire protecting them, and they’re making port in a large city where they’ll get to spend their wages. I think they feel, whether they voice it or not, that their luck has taken a turn for the better.

  And they probably feel that it will get even better when Ylen leaves the ship, he added.

  Gem chuckled in response, not sharing the crew’s suspicions about the little man, but liking him as little as Lian did.

  The Island Kingdoms were a collection of small kingdoms united under the rule of the high king, headquartered in Seagate. Each of the individual kings ruled his own land as he wished, so long he maintained peace among member nations. According to Elowyn’s reports, the current high king, Rivan, was a strong ruler who maintained the various kings under rigid control. In other times, various islands of the chain had been the home of violent pirates and worse, with the high king serving as no more than a puppet.

  Under Rivan’s heavy-handed rule, the navy of the Island Kingdoms had been strengthened to the point that the islands considered themselves undisputed lords of the seas to the east of Dunshor, from the sands of the desert nomads to the edge of the waters claimed by the Southron Empire. The Islander ships were fast and maneuverable, although they didn’t match the Searcher’s capabilities. Islander captains were generally arrogant and overconfident, but much of that attitude was rightfully earned.

  Only the legendary navies of the elves had once been greater than the Island Kingdoms’ navy, and they had long been no more than an ancient memory.

  Evan had recruited heavily from the Island Kingdoms’ sailors to man his own navy and had used Seagate as a base of operations during the early days of the rebellion. The shipyards of Kent and Hyriel, two of the Island Kingdoms, had built the great ships of Evan’s fleets with magical assistance from Adrienne and her apprentices. Rivan’s father, Ogden, had possessed a particular (and well-deserved) hatred for the Theocracy as a result of their repeated betrayals in his dealings with them. The mages of Dunshor had considered themselves superior to everyone else, and had become so arrogant that they didn’t feel they had to honor treaties, commitments, or promises.

  Ogden hadn’t survived the rebellion, since the Theocracy had punished him for aiding Evan and Adrienne. Demons descended upon his chambers, killing the high king, two of his three wives, and fourteen guardsmen before they were stopped. Rivan’s mother survived only because she kept an assignation with a guard officer that particular evening, which made for a good ribald tale on its own.

  Lian had studied maps of Seagate, but they did not do the actual city justice.

  Hyriel, the island that belonged to the high king, was surrounded by high granite cliffs, presenting natural fortification against sea-borne attackers. Seagate was built into the side of the western face, in a cove formed by two outcroppings of granite that extended from the cliffs. The passage between the terminus of the granite “arms” was two hundred yards wide and bridged by huge stone gates. These titanic valves, half as high as they were wide, could be closed, sealing the deep harbor from the sea. Sea giants had built the gates in payment for an ancient high king’s service. The underwater portion of the gates was fitted to the granite, such that nothing larger than a dolphin could fit through the space.

  The granite walls that formed the cove were dotted with watchtowers and fortifications, armed with a variety of siege weaponry, from ballistae to trebuchet.

  The harbor was rimmed with wooden dockworks that could be raised and lowered as the tides rose and fell. The naval docks were located on the southern face of the harbor and had slips to accommodate thirty warships. There was a keep just above these docks, where the navy sailors were billeted when they were in port.

  The city itself was constructed in five tiers, terraced into the sides of the harbor. The first tier, called the Sea Tier by the natives, was carved above the highest tide level. Warehouses and shipping businesses were located on this tier, as well as supply houses where ships could purchase new sail, rope and cable, and other materials needed to fill their needs. Few people actually resided on the Sea Tier, since the space was mostly allocated to the large warehouses carved back into the rock. None of the warehouses interconnected.

  The second tier, commonly referred to as the Thieves’ Tier, was comprised of the inns and boarding houses that served the merchant crews that arrived from every corner of Tieran. Unlike the Sea Tier, the hollowed-out passages that formed the buildings of the Thieves’ Tier interconnected, creating intersections where markets stood. The high king’s police force, the Green Men, kept the major passages clear for traffic, but Elowyn’s tales of Seagate described mazes of carts, vendors, and beggars on the Thieves’ Tier. It’s a good place to lose one’s pursuers, the elf had told Lian.

  The Thieves’ Tier was also home, as the name implied, to the less savory folk of Seagate. An array of whores offered their services throughout the level, from the common streetwalkers to the classier prostitutes who worked in the brothels. Thieves and cutthroats stalked the passageways, and it was an unwise sailor who wandered away from the more populated tunnels alone. The city’s sewer system was more than large enough to accommodate a body or two, and the ocean scavengers who waited below the outlet pipes on the northern edge of the city ensured that corpses were quickly disposed of.

  There were a few gambling houses on the Thieves’ Tier, but Elowyn had warned Lian not to play there. Whether you win or lose, they’ll have your money out of you. Winners usually become dead winners before they can leave the casino. To Lian, it made little sense to kill the winners, since it might discourage patrons. But the elf had told him that sailors regul
arly filled the second tier gambling houses to capacity, despite the practices of the casino owners. Every gambler thinks he can beat the system, Elowyn had explained. It isn’t true, but the belief is strong.

  The third tier, the Merchants’ Tier, was where the finer shops and artisans were found, as long as they could afford it. Lian knew that Elowyn employed spies there who were no more than merchants who could not afford to pay the rent required to keep their shops on tier three. Desperate not to be forced down to the Thieves’ Tier, they had gladly accepted the master assassin’s coin. Like the second level, the structures carved into the Merchants’ Tier were interconnected, but the Green Men kept all of the passageways clear of carts and peddlers. There were brothels on this level, too, but it was the rare sailing man who possessed the kind of coin they required. High-class whores, who regularly journeyed to the upper tiers, could be had here, if one’s purse was full enough.

  There were also gambling houses here, but they, too, were of a much more respectable mien. The two largest were the Silver Porpoise and Ashira’s Wheel. Alec had visited High King Rivan several times and had frequented both establishments. Though the crown prince had lost his stake in both houses, he reported that he had quite a lot of fun losing, and that if he’d laid off the drinks, he was certain he’d have been much more successful. Elowyn had merely chuckled when Lian informed his teacher of Alec’s words.

  The Merchants’ Tier was the lowest of the two levels that had passages leading to the top of the cliffs, where the farms that grew the city’s food could be found. These passages had a nearly even grade and were wide enough to allow mule-drawn wagons to pass in both directions. Each end of these huge tunnels could be sealed with giant-made gates of their own, a full three feet thick and controlled by water-driven machinery. The tunnels could subsequently be flooded, sealing the lower doors with tremendous pressure and preventing attacks from gaining easy access to the High King’s Keep. Seagate was theoretically self-sufficient, but there were usually more people in the city than the official census allowed. Fishermen brought in more than enough seafood, however, to make up the difference in peacetime, and the high king kept storehouses of grain and corn in his keep against the possibility of war.