Blood Seed: Coin of Rulve Book One

by Dale, Veronica

  # # #

  The beetle-man half-saw, half-sensed the bulk of a house, and stumped to the door. Glittering filaments winked around the frame. Wards, put there by the woman now dead. They were weak, and its lumpy hands pulled them down like cobwebs. Staring at the door, the beetle-man willed it to open. With a faint groan, the bar inside lifted, and the heavy door turned inward. Warm air wafted out, as well as the rush of the heady, sweet smell.

  This was the house. What it sought lived within. The beetle-eyes discerned only shadows.

  One with bright hair stood in its way.

  # # #

  A chill was seeping into the room. Into her dream.

  She was cold, even though, for some reason, she was wearing Sheft’s sheepskin jacket. Tense, listening for what she knew was out there, she sat against a great tree, her arms wrapped around her knees. The darkness of the Riftwood hemmed her in on every side and the presence of ancient trees bent over her. Light from the meager campfire in front of her shuddered over the ground. Roots lay over the soil like fat snakes—unmoving when she glanced at them, but creeping toward her the moment she looked away. She leaned forward, her eyes straining to penetrate the blackness beyond the fire.

  Chills ran like centipedes down her arms. Something was approaching. It was crunching toward her, coming out of the dark.

  Mariat jerked awake. Every instinct within her cried out. Something rustled beside her, and she rolled over. Incredibly, Sheft had gotten to his feet.

  # # #

  He stood there, eyes fixed on the door. Of its own, the bar began to rise. The door creaked open, to the sound of chittering beetle wings. Cold air poured in from the night beyond.

  Something large filled the opening—a stiff and lumpy form.

  Chapter 26. Darkness at the Door

  A swampy odor emanated from the earth-brown thing that filled the entrance. It wore a robe of leaves so rotted it was nothing but a thin net of veins. The face and hands crawled with what looked like slowly-moving cysts under the skin. They contorted the lump that was its face into a series of expressions—avid, tortured, triumphant. Chitinous wings whirred in one of the eye sockets, and as Sheft watched in horrified fascination, a beetle crawled out. It left an empty hole.

  Behind him, Mariat uttered a strangled sound. Her terror beat against his back, and he moved to block the creature’s view of her. Its gaze was fixed so hungrily on his face it did not seem aware of anything else.

  Wask the beetle-man heaved itself into the room, and only the kitchen table stood between them. The lipless mouth flopped open and a tentacle—felt more than seen—flicked out.

  Sheft jerked aside, but not in time. Like a fat night-crawler, the moist, ribbed power of Wask slipped inside him. Sickened, he clutched the edge of the table as, with a kind of slimy tenderness, Wask exuded words into his mind.

  “Come. I will take you home.”

  Home. In spite of the nausea that filled him, the word resonated. Home was a place where he belonged. A place where he would not be despised or accused, where his people would look him in the eye and accept him with a smile. Hadn’t Yarahe called him to go there? Hadn’t the voices, all his life? And now this creature called him too.

  Except. Except, for him, home would be a place not of comfort but of challenge, a place where he would face failure. He struggled to break free from the beetle-man’s tether. “I will go home,” he got out, “but you won’t take me there.”

  The beetle-man’s power inside him rapidly changed form—into something dry and many-legged. It picked its way over his veins as delicately as a spider over its web.

  “Be rid of these roots inside you. Let me suck out of you this cursed black blood.”

  It promised what he longed for: an end to self-disgust, an end to the filth that ran in his veins. He had once imagined how a knife would do the job, but ice had intervened. Now this creature offered him release.

  “Yes!” the beetle-man hissed. “Come and be drained. Let me make you clean at last.” Eager, it took another step toward him.

  It was what he had prayed for. Now he could fall into the beetle-man, let it paralyze his will, roll him in silky threads of oblivion. Let it suck out his blood and do what the fire had not.

  But even as his body leaned toward it, an inner instinct screamed in protest. Wask was offering, not cleansing, but beetles swarming over his skin, burrowing and gnawing—making of him what this thing was. He tried to twist away, but Wask’s power held him fast, and its awareness probed deeper.

  It came upon his spirikai, and reaching out with one tentative spider-leg, touched it. “Ahh,” it breathed. It scuttled over the tensely-coiled strands, over the sensitive, looping nerves. It unearthed his deepest desire, and stroked it.

  Sheft shuddered with a horrible mix of repulsion and pleasure.

  “How you long to bleed,” the beetle-man crooned. “How you yearn to give your life! Beyond the land of Rûk, the soil is dying of thirst. It cries out for your sweet, black blood.”

  The words shivered over him like an obscene caress. He felt the shame of it, but could no longer deny it: to bleed into the ground was his heart’s desire, and for this utter emptying he knew he had been born.

  The creature opened its arms for him, and it was the personification of the far-off voices he had heard all his life. It was the pull of the bell in his long-ago dream, the whisper of a wind that tousled his hair: “Come, S’eft.”

  His very veins responded. He moved forward.

  And bumped into the kitchen table. Its mundane solidity brought him up short. It wasn’t suffering people that called him, but the voice that had almost ensnared him at the Rites. “Leave me alone!” he tried to shout, but only a strangled sound came out.

  A look of pity rippled over the lumpy face. “For most humans there is only one end: the mold and the worms. For you there is a choice. Follow me into your destiny.”

  A vision flashed. A yellow blanket disappearing under shovelfuls of dirt. Ane being buried under soil that writhed with blind and probing mouths. Even now, they were eating at her face. His gorge was rising and he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t swallow.

  “She’s not down there, Sheft. She’s in Rulve’s hands.”

  Rulve’s hands. Hands that had held him up in the forge, kept him alive while he burned. Hands carved into the pendant he wore, its cord rough around his neck. With an effort of will, he pushed words past the repulsion in his throat. “I’ve already died. I’ve walked through clean fire, and will not now be commanded by bugs!”

  The beetle-man lowered its arms, then grinned horribly. One leg stumped forward. The kitchen table between the creature and Sheft began to slide away.

  He grasped the toltyr, at the thin disk that was his only strength, and held it up. “I call on this Toltyr Arulve,” he choked out. “I claim the power of niyalahn-rista!” He hardly knew what he was saying, using words he didn’t understand and could barely pronounce. But the table abruptly stopped moving.

  The beetle-man stared at him. Its grin disappeared. “Ah, niyalahn-rista. Now I see. Listen, for I speak to your soul. Come. Pour out your life. Bleed freely and water the earth. Release your power and be transformed, and from a great height you will look down upon those who despise you.”

  Oh God, it was a seduction more powerful than he had ever known. It promised everything he wanted, everything he desperately needed: expiation, transformation, a final and glorious justification. The villagers would have to look up to see him. Gwin would shrink beneath his gaze. Every cruel remark, every untruth, every dark, hard look would be ground into their faces like a rotten potato. The creature stood only two arm-lengths away. Its hands were extended, full of power and the pull of truth. All he had to do was step around the table and walk into them.

  “Sheft?” It was Mariat’s voice, small and tremulous.

  The beetle-man’s head swiveled toward her, and Sheft’s heart sank. Its gaze turned back to him, and its power twined around his spirikai. “Come
, emjadi. She is nothing. Your destiny is beyond her. You are intended for sacrifice and redemption, and she cannot understand what you must do.”

  It was true. Beyond his choosing, the burden was his. How could she understand what he did not? How could she bear what his own heart flinched from, yet burned to do?

  He felt her at his back. Her kiss had anointed his shoulder and her eyes had looked upon him with grace. She had touched his wounds and was not repelled. Now he alone stood between her and this thing of the outer dark.

  “You know you must leave her. You have already chosen it.” The beetle-man took another step forward. Its hand snaked out, impossibly long, and grasped his wrist.

  At the instant of physical contact, Sheft constricted his spirikai. Ice crackled, and with an abruptness that made him gasp, Wask’s power whipped out of him and back into the creature’s mouth.

  But its hand tightened. “You will come,” it growled. “You have no choice. One way or another, you will come.”

  “No!” With a wrenching effort, Sheft thrust ice down his arm and slammed it into the creature’s hand. The beetle-man let go of him so suddenly Sheft sprawled onto the table. The cracked rib stabbed into his side.

  “If you do not come, I will take the woman instead.” The creature turned stiffly toward Mariat, its expression crawling into a leer.

  Sheft pulled himself upright. “If you want my blood,” he said through his raw throat, “ice comes with it.” He constricted, shoved the table aside, and with hands that felt like frozen, impervious blocks, advanced upon Wask. Grinning, it wagged the worm of power at him. With an icy fist, Sheft hit it in the mouth.

  The beetle-man reeled back, its lips rimmed with frost, but still the mind-words gloated, “The Riftwood awaits you. Death will swallow you.” It locked its hands together and smashed them into Sheft’s broken rib.

  Hot pain shattered the ice. With a gasp, he dredged up more; but now the snake-like arms were grabbing at his throat, swiping at his eyes, trying to encircle his wrists. He fended them off, but fire streaked down his back and the fractured rib ground into him with every thrust.

  The creature’s eyes whirred in glee. “You are a fool to fight me, for I am part of your deepest self. There is no way to win.”

  The beetle-man’s fist hit his cheek like a pouch packed with stones, but Sheft managed to block the next blow. Step by step, twisting out ice, he drove it back. The creature never stopped grinning, as if it were merely toying with him. But was it death or the truth that he fought?

  “You contend with both, for in this speech I cannot lie.” Abruptly, it stepped backward through the door and disappeared into the dark.

  Sheft grabbed a torch, lit it with a thrust in the hearth, and stumbled after Wask into the yard. Panting, half blind with fire and ice, he looked wildly around. Shadows jittered in the torch-flame, and the folded-over mattress seemed to quiver.

  A blow from behind knocked him to the stony ground. Pain ripped through his back and the torch fell. The beetle-man stood over him, its face crawling. “You will fail, niyal’arist.”

  “Not yet,” he shouted. “Not here.”

  On his knees, he lunged out and chopped at Wask’s shin with the side of his icy hand. Its skin tore open and the creature lurched back. Beetles poured out of its leg. A flood of them rushed at Sheft. He scrambled to his feet, snatched up the still-burning torch, and swept the insects back.

  Fixed on Sheft, the beetle-man’s eyes spun and glittered. It began dissolving its other leg and more insects churned out, boiling over the ones that had fled from the torch. They swarmed toward him like a brown, chittering tide, surging in closer after each sweep of fire. Every movement sent pain clawing through his shoulder, he couldn’t fill his lungs with air, and still they came.

  Bleeding, failing, he sank down to one knee, the creature’s voice thrumming in his head. “The dark will take your blood, niyal’arist, down to the last dregs.”

  Chapter 27. Niyalahn-rista

  A second torch flared. Its flame swept the beetles back, and Mariat stood there, facing Wask.

  The creature, now up to its calves in insects, sputtered with laughter. “There is too much of me,” it said, “and not enough of you.” It chittered a command, and a low wall of night-beetles, multi-legs churning and antennae waving, turned and roiled toward her.

  Sheft groped over the dark ground and seized a good-sized rock. He grasped it tightly in both hands and bore down hard on his spirikai. Ice crystallized, ran down his arms and into the rock. He could hear Mariat frantically sweeping the torch, hear the squeals of terror in her throat, but he didn’t dare look up, didn’t dare break his concentration. He squeezed the rock until frost glittered on the rough surface, then hurled it into the beetle-man’s chest.

  It hit hard. A hole tore open, bleeding beetles. Unbalanced on its dissolving legs, the creature fell onto its back. It opened its rictus mouth and issued a high, thin call. The tide of insects, now barely an inch away from Mariat’s feet, swerved and rushed to the creature’s aid. They carried the disintegrating remains of its upper body onto what was left of the mattress and burrowed into the pile of bloody straw and fabric. There they sought new sustenance, new strength.

  Sheft got to his feet and propped himself up with his hands on his knees. “The lantern, Mariat,” he gasped. “Get the oil lantern!”

  Topped with the grotesque head and neck, most of Wask’s torso had collapsed into a living, churning heap; but the insects were refilling it, swelling into a thick chest, bulging shoulders, and stumps of what would soon be arms. The head turned to look at him, beetles swirling in its eye sockets. “You will fail, niyal’arist. Redemption always involves failure.”

  Mariat shoved the lantern into his hands. He flung it onto the beetle-infested mattress, grabbed her torch, and thrust it into the spilled oil. The straw burst into flames.

  With an inhuman cry, Wask tried to twist its torso out of the fire as beetles fled wildly from its body. Like an exhaling lung, the skin emptied and flattened. Abruptly, Wask changed into an inky rivulet. It abandoned the mattress and rushed toward the barn. Sheft careened after it, wielding the torch with an icy hand. His boots crunched over the spot where a terrified little boy had first encountered the Groper, but now he bore the toltyr and a flame held high, and the night-time horror fled from him.

  The rivulet rolled into the shadow of the barn. It tossed last words back to him. “Because of you, she also will be taken.”

  His breath coming in painful gasps, Sheft stopped and watched the Groper disappear into the night. It left behind a dead silence. The Riftwood, black against the starlit sky, stretched unmapped over the curve of the world, and the flame of his torch was nothing but a brief spark. His victory was a hollow gourd, and fear for Mariat rattled inside it. A deep instinct told him that the beetle-man had spoken the truth, that its every threat was a prophecy.

  Sheft made his way back to her, the torch suddenly so heavy it was an effort to hold it upright. Mariat, one hand clutching her skirt, was sweeping beetles into the flaming straw with the torch he had dropped earlier. But now the insects had lost their animating force and were running about in mindless panic, so he pulled her aside and allowed the beetles to scuttle off.

  The blazing pile soon settled into ash, and the last of the sparks sailed like glowing orange crystals into the dark. It must be after midnight. Shivering inside, Sheft turned to Mariat. Her eyes were enormous, her face white.

  “Are you,” they both asked in breathless unison, “all right?”

  Together, they nodded.

  He guided her toward the house, extinguishing the torches on the way. Just inside the door, Mariat looked down and yelped. A lone beetle had scurried in, and she ground it furiously under her boot. With a grimace, she wiped it on the doorstep, then shut the door. They looked at each other and swallowed.

  Mariat lowered herself onto the bench at the table. “Wine,” she said. “Wine would be good now.”

  Wine? T
arn had no wine. But then Sheft remembered: Mariat had brought some when she had stitched up his arm in Hawk. It was far back in the cupboard. He set the bottle and two cups on the table, sank down across from Mariat, and poured a glass for her, his hand shaking so much the bottle clattered against the cup rim. She took two big gulps while he managed to pour some for himself.

  “Wait,” she said when he brought the cup to his lips. “Wait. You shouldn’t drink that on an empty stomach. When was the last time you had something to eat?”

  “I d-don’t know,” he stammered. “Groats. I had a bowl of groats just after the field-burn.”

  “That’s too long!” She jumped up. “I made soup. You’ve got to eat.”

  He put the cup down, too hard, and wine splashed out. “No, wait a minute, Mariat. Please, sit down.” All unknowing, she had come to heal him and wound up fighting the darkness at his side. She was innocent, and he had involved her, endangered her, yet again. He owed her everything—including the truth.

  “Mariat, I have to talk to you. But I don’t have much time. I think pretty soon I’m going to wind up on that mattress again.” The pain in his back, which his battle with the beetle-man had largely driven from his head, was beginning to reassert itself with a vengeance. His wounds felt swollen and hot, and the room blurred under an ice-reaction daze.

  “I don’t know how you ever got off it!” she exclaimed. “What happened? Why did that—that creature—why did it come here? How did you drive it away?” She pointed at the toltyr. “With magery?”

  Magery? He stared at her. “N-no. No magery. This is called a toltyr. The Toltyr Arulve.”

  “Toltyr Arulve?”

  “I don’t know what that means. Something about Rulve.”

  “Riah left it to you?”