Wild Blood (Book 7)
Page 1
Wild Blood
Shadow Series Book 7
Anne Logston
Published by Mundania Press
By Anne Logston
Shadow
Shadow Hunt
Shadow Dance
Dagger's Edge
Dagger's Point
Greendaughter
Wild Blood
Guardian's Key
Exile
Firewalk
Waterdance
Wild Blood
Copyright © 1995, 2013 by Anne Logston
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Cover Art © 2013 by Skyla Dawn Cameron
First Mundania Edition • May 2013
eBook ISBN: 978-1-59426-971-4
Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-1-59426-969-1
Published by Mundania Press
An imprint of Celeritas Unlimited LLC
6457 Glenway Ave., #109
Cincinnati, OH 45211
All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher, Celeritas Unlimited LLC, 6457 Glenway Avenue, #109, Cincinnati, Ohio 45211, books@mundania.com.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
Legal File Usage—Your eBook Rights
Payment of the download fee for the ebook edition of this book grants the purchaser the right to download and read this file on any devices the purchaser owns, and to maintain private backup copies of the file for the purchaser’s personal use only. It is a violation of copyright law for the purchaser to share or redistribute the ebook edition of this book to anyone who has not purchased the eBook.
The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this or any copyrighted work is illegal. Authors are paid on a per-purchase basis. Any use of this file beyond the rights stated above constitutes theft of the author’s earnings. File sharing is an international crime, prosecuted by the United States Department of Justice Division of Cyber Crimes, in partnership with Interpol. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is punishable by seizure of computers, up to five years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000 per reported instance. Please purchase only authorized electronic or print editions and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted material. Your support of the author’s rights and livelihood is appreciated.
Production by Celeritas Unlimited LLC
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Table of Contents
Table of Contents 4
Prologue 5
Chapter One—Ria 9
Chapter Two—Valann 27
Chapter Three—Ria 43
Chapter Four—Valann 64
Chapter Five—Ria 84
Chapter Six—Valann 98
Chapter Seven—Ria 109
Chapter Eight—Valann 120
Chapter Nine—Ria 132
Chapter Ten—Valann 144
Chapter Eleven—Ria 151
Chapter Twelve—Passage 162
Prologue
Excerpt from High Lady Rivkah’s written history of the attempted invasion of Allanmere:
“...rumors of an invasion force of barbarians sweeping down from the north, looting and destroying every settlement in its path. High Lord Sharl, then in Cielman at the time, arranged for additional shipments of supplies and negotiated for additional troops, the hiring of mercenary soldiers and mages, and other defensive measures for the city. He arranged also for the manufacture and shipment to Allanmere of a wagon full of trade goods in the hope of entering into a treaty with the elven clans in the forest known as the Heartwood near Allanmere, although these elves had previously reacted with hostility to any approach of the forest.
“High Lord Sharl, Rivkah, and High Lord Sharl’s personal guard then departed for Allanmere with all possible speed to warn the city, to increase the city’s fortifications, and to attempt to negotiate an alliance with the elves of the Heartwood. As High Lord Sharl’s party rounded the northern edge of the Heartwood, however, they were attacked by a small band of fur-clad barbarians armed with only the most primitive of weapons yet ferocious in battle, likely an advance scouting party for the invading force. High Lord Sharl and his guards fought off the attackers bravely, although only two of his guards survived, and the three surviving barbarians fled into the forest. High Lord Sharl and his folk bravely pursued the barbarians into the forest.
“At length High Lord Sharl and his people came upon their attackers near the center of the forest, where they found the barbarians attacking two elves, a male and a female. High Lord Sharl and his guards killed the barbarians and rescued the elves Valann and Chyrie, persuading the elves to guide them through the forest to the city. During their journey they met and spoke with Rowan, ruler of most of the elven clans of the Heartwood, who eagerly assented to High Lord Sharl’s plan for an alliance between human and elf, and as a gesture of her good faith sent the elves Valann and Chyrie with High Lord Sharl and his people to the city of Allanmere, there to learn the ways of humans and to teach their own customs. High Lord Sharl in his great kindness suggested that when the army should reach the lands near the forest, the elven clans should send those unfit to fight to the city to shelter in the greater safety there.
“High Lord Sharl conveyed both the elves to Allanmere, although an attack by hostile elves near the edge of the forest cost him the life of his guardswoman Doria. High Lord Sharl made the elves welcome in his home and began the fortification of Allanmere in preparation for battle. He received into his house and protection those elves coming from the forest begging for food and shelter. High Lord Sharl took to wife his companion Rivkah and pledged that she would bear the people of Allanmere an heir.
“At length the barbarian army approached Allanmere, wielding mighty weapons and potent fire magic. High Lord
Sharl sought to focus the brunt of the barbarian attack against the city, hoping that the elves in the forest would be left in peace, and to that end ordered a mighty storm to counter the barbarians’ fire. High Lord Sharl’s mages conjured the image of a great fire god, the enemy of the barbarians’ ice god, and a great earthquake, which caused the barbarians to flee the city. In due course the mighty magics and bold warriors of the city were able to repel the attack and send the barbarians forth, though at a cost of considerable damage to the city.
“When it became apparent that the city had been rendered unfit for habitation by the damage during the attack, High Lord Sharl resolved to return to Cielman to raise money to rebuild the city. He first visited the forest to learn how the elves had fared and was told by Rowan that there was no longer any unity among the elven peoples. The elf Chyrie, who had been with child and whose husband had perished in the battle, had borne twins, a boy and a girl. She gave the girl-child, Ria, to High Lord Sharl and High Lady Rivkah to foster in the hope that one day the elves of the Heartwood and the people of Allanmere could again stand together in peace and unity.
“To understand these events surrounding the founding of the great trade city of Allanmere, it is first necessary to understand the proposed economic base of the city and High Lord Sharl’s expectations...”
From the oral clan history as told by Rama
n, Eldest of the Inner Heart Clan:
“...so it was that Rowan of Inner Heart had joined the clans of Inner Heart, Moon Lake, Redoak, and Owl Can until they lived as one clan, and the women who had ripened danced the High Circle together, and fruit was brought to loins thought barren. And it was Rowan’s desire that other clans be brought to deal in friendship with Inner Heart and with each other, so that all in the Heartwood should prosper together.
“It was in that time that Valann and Chyrie of the Wilding Clan, who were mates, Valann gifted as a healer and Chyrie as a beast-speaker, journeyed to the Forest Altars upon Chyrie’s ripening, to seek the Mother Forest’s blessing of their coupling that they might conceive a child. Thus they came together at the Altars that Valann might plant seed in Chyrie’s womb, but were most foully attacked by fur-clad humans who, despite Valann and Chyrie’s fiercest struggles, rendered Valann insensible and took Chyrie’s body by force. They were in turn attacked by the humans Sharl, Rivkah, Romuel, and Doria, who dared to draw their weapons and spill blood on the most sacred earth of the Forest Altars, but did thereafter somewhat heal Valann and Chyrie by use of their outland magic.
“Thereafter the humans professed friendship to Valann and Chyrie and in the guise of food and fire cast a geas upon them, binding them to guide the humans through hostile territories despite Valann and Chyrie’s injuries and despite Chyrie’s ripeness and possible pregnancy. Through great guile Valann and Chyrie managed to lure their abductors into a trap laid by Inner Heart, and the humans were captured successfully.
“Our Gifted One, Dusk, completed Chyrie’s healing and so learned that Chyrie was with child, but that she bore two sparks of life in her womb, a great and unknown blessing of the Mother Forest portending events of the greatest import.
“Under truthspell the humans were forced to admit that they had knowledge of a great barbarian army approaching the forest from the north, posing a threat to both the forest and the human city. They had deliberately sought to conceal this knowledge and had abducted Valann and Chyrie with the intention of holding them hostage to force the elven clans to grant trade favors to the city.
“In punishment for their crimes against Valann and Chyrie, Rowan placed a geas on the humans to grant asylum to those most precious to the elven clans, the children, pregnant and ripe females, and those too sick to fight in defense of their land, within the city during the battle, and to render unto the forest clans such weapons and aid as the human city possessed. Rowan bound the humans to say nothing of the geas laid upon them or of the crimes they had perpetrated, that those who looked to the human Sharl for leadership should obey him more willingly. Rowan sent Valann and Chyrie to watch and assure the humans’ fulfillment of their obligations to the forest, and to shield Chyrie and the lives she bore from harm. Rowan sent messages of goodwill to all the clans of the Heartwood, bringing together many to fight as one against the enemies approaching, and inviting them also to send some of their people to the city to shelter.
“So it was that Valann and Chyrie journeyed from the forest into the human city, where they gave welcome and comfort to those of our clans who came to the city for shelter, and shielded them against the taunts and abuse of the humans of the city. Valann and Chyrie and the elves who came to the city worked together to help the humans, to teach them in the ways of preparing and preserving food and in the magic of the forest.
“In time the barbarian force swept down from the north like a great tempest, ravaging the edges of the Heartwood as they journeyed around it toward the city. Many brave clans fought and fell to keep the invaders from the forest, and many clans who had fought fiercely one against the other now stood back to back as if born of the same womb, binding together their gifts and their swords striking as one against the enemy. Still the invaders won deeper into the forest, ravaging its very heart so that it seemed that the forest must fall.
“Inside the human city, those who had gone to shelter fought bravely as well, but in a great strike the barbarians slew Chyrie’s mate. So it was that Chyrie, heavy with child and dark with grief, flung her spirit into the very heart of the Mother Forest and raised the forest itself against the invaders, raising vine and tree and every beast of the forest against the barbarians. And a great shaking came from the earth, and the barbarians fled northward once more, leaving the forest gutted and half-dead behind them.
“And in these great trials the alliance of the elven clans was no more, for many clans had died and many others had lost their lands, and there was little game. But Chyrie in her time bore twin children of elven and human blood mixed together, and she gave her daughter Ria to the human lord Sharl and her son Valann to Rowan as the Mother Forest willed, as a symbol of hope that humans and elves might once more thrive and dwell as peaceful neighbors. And Chyrie returned to the forest, where she who was most greatly tried and most greatly blessed by the Mother Forest dwells and stands as guardian of the peace and prosperity of our lands.
“And so it is that the Mother Forest has decreed that a great destiny awaits the children of Chyrie, that one day all the peoples of the forest will once again stand together in friendship, and that peace will be made between the forest and the humans as well.
“And so it was that Rowan set about rebuilding the village of Inner Heart, where many had perished and the lands had suffered and the game had fled...”
Chapter One—Ria
“Come back here, you savage little beast!”
Ria darted around the corner and ducked through a doorway, knocking furniture aside as she leaped for the window. Almost she didn’t make it; this was the council chamber, and the small windows were set high in the wall for security reasons. Her tiny fingers and bare toes, however, found purchase between the stone blocks, and Ria scrambled merrily through the opening, shrieking delightedly as Lady Sivia raged him-potently behind her. Ria jumped down from the window ledge and glanced frantically around her for a hiding place; the keep’s grounds, however, were level and bare of trees and bushes.
Without hesitation, Ria ran for her one sure sanctuary: the stables. Lady Sivia was as terrified of horses as Ria was fond of them, and Ria had fled to the stable loft to escape her governess so many times that the horses no longer startled when the tiny barefoot figure charged into the stables and scrambled recklessly up the ladder to the loft. She burrowed into the hay and curled up in her hasty den, giggling to herself even as the dust of last autumn’s hay made her sneeze. In a few minutes, if events followed their usual pattern, one or two of the guards or servants would appear on Lady Sivia’s behalf, hunting for the governess’s errant charge. They’d look around the stable, and search even in the loft, but thanks to what Ria thought of as her “don’t-see-me,” they’d leave baffled and tell Lady Sivia that Ria must have somehow sneaked back into the hall and hidden there. Where else could the child have gone, after all?
Where else, indeed? This was only a small country holding belonging to her foster father Sharl’s brother Emaril, with but a few outbuildings—and those were now so tightly packed with supplies that even tiny Ria could not have wriggled into a hiding place there. It was early in the year and, although the kitchen gardens had begun to grow their crops of vegetables and herbs, there wasn’t enough foliage there to hide a good-sized cat. And there was nothing else within the keep’s wall except the keep itself.
Outside the wall, the land was similarly featureless. The few stands of trees that had once grown near the holding had been burned sixteen years earlier, the year of Ria’s birth, when the great barbarian army had swept down from the frozen lands beyond the great northern mountains. The main thrust of the army, Ria had been told, had passed west of this small holding, but the surrounding lands had been looted and burned by small raiding parties looking for food, and ravaged again later when the defeated barbarian force had retreated northward. The lands around the holding had been replanted in crops to feed the citizens of Cielman through the postwar famine, and even after the famine was over, the lush flow
er gardens and topiary mazes Lord Sharl had often described had never reclaimed their rightful places from the usurping wheat fields.
And a topiary maze would have made a wonderful hiding place just now, too. The thick, green late-spring grain was almost tall enough now to hide Ria’s slight form, but anyone standing on the wall of the keep and looking down could easily spot her. No, there was nowhere to hide but here in the stables, and unfortunately everybody knew it. Footsteps outside the stable—to Ria’s sensitive ears, the tread of the slipper-shod feet seemed as loud as the clop-ping of horses’ hooves. Ria smiled to herself and burrowed deeper into the hay, although the scratchy blades insinuated themselves down the neck and sleeves of her tunic and itched almost intolerably. She quieted her breathing and imagined herself small and insignificant. The stable door creaked open and feet scuffed in the scattered hay on the stable floor. The horses stirred in their stalls and snorted at this less familiar intruder.
“Ria?”
Ria almost jumped in surprise at the sound of the voice. If her foster brother Cyril, son of Lord Sharl and Lady Rivkah, had been sent after her instead of one of the servants or the guards, either Lady Sivia was far cleverer than Ria would have believed the stout matron to be, or she’d been so angry that she’d stomped straight off to Lord Sharl and Lady Rivkah to complain, and that boded disaster. Ria and Cyril had been the best of friends since they could do little more than toddle, but for the last few years Cyril had seemed more annoyed by her presence than otherwise, uninterested in what had always been their favorite games and pastimes, and he rarely sought out her company anymore of his own volition. If he’d come looking for her, he’d been sent.