JOURNEY OF THE SACRED KING III

by JANRAE FRANK

  "For what?" Osterbridge had never heard students speak so casually of the Patriarch, and it piqued his interest. If there was a conspiracy in here someplace, he hoped it was a good one.

  "We're going vampire hunting tomorrow," Jimi said, taking his measure carefully.

  Osterbridge, working in records and research knew almost as much history as Yahni had, and he suddenly realized what was happening. "Count me in. What do you want me to do?"

  "Come with us for the briefing." Alora rubbed her face against Twizzle's fur.

  Jimi nodded, offering Osterbridge his hand, which the older Guildsmon accepted with a firm handshake. "Come on. Eshraf is waiting."

  "I'm coming." Osterbridge stood. Of his friends, he had been the least. But perhaps he could be enough for these youngsters. Compared to these raw kids, he was an old mon being all of twenty-six. He had more experience than they did. More importantly, they were offering him a chance to strike back at the creatures that had murdered his friends, his adopted family. Osterbridge felt himself stirring to life again. He tucked the prayer beads into his belt, found a little snap strap, and fastened them in place.

  * * * *

  The Patriarch pulled a book from the shelf, feeling behind it for the switch. The bookcase slid back, revealing a narrow stair. He went down to a pleasant room with a single narrow window at the top level with the ground. A mattress with quilts thrown loosely over it sat in the far corner. A female shadow hound played with her pups on the mattress while the male stretched out in the middle of the floor. Eshraf watched for a moment before interrupting them.

  They were awe-inspiring creatures. Most thought of the shadow hounds as animals; Eshraf knew the truth. They were sapients. And more than that. Hanadi and Brundarad had trusted him with their secret. Hanadi was smaller than Brundarad, who rose to face Eshraf, ears pricked forward. He stood twelve hands at the shoulder, wiry steel-dust coat, deep chested, raw-boned, built as much for speed as power. Two ivory horns curled tightly above his long hanging ears. A long blunt muzzle extended from his squarish head. Two emerald eyes gleamed with intelligence. They had odd, double-handed forepaws: the dog-like primary paw, broad, blunt and strong capable of carrying the creature along swiftly as a horse or leaping deer; the secondary paw, three toed, diverging like a huge thumb, with retractable poison claws.

  Normally, when the seventh year arrived and the change came over Hanadi Majios, she and Brundarad withdrew from Creeya to the Willodarian Monastery of St. Tarmus, where Hanadi would bear her pups. This time, scenting trouble, they had secretly guested with Patriarch Eshraf for the year that Hanadi could not resume her human form.

  The Patriarch squatted beside Brundarad, scratching around his ears and horns. "Brundarad, Hanadi, my friends, I need a favor. You remained here because you were worried about Talons. What I am about to ask is not directly related to Talons, but perhaps indirectly so."

  < Ask. > Brundarad sent.

  Hanadi studied him intently as he spoke.

  "Vampires. One of them was feeding on Talons. Dynarien warded and shielded her chambers and it stopped. But it's come to my attention that these same creatures are feeding on my people in the poor quarter."

  Hanadi hissed. < Women and children, no doubt. >

  "Mainly, yes."

  < You want us to track them. >

  "Yes, if Hanadi is willing."

  < Dynarien must ward and shield this chamber first. I know you have warded it already, but I will feel better if Dynarien does this. Two priests must sit with the pups until we return. > Hanadi sent.

  "Done."

  * * * *

  Sirikit, a slender dark youth, answered the knock at Talons' door. She was the only one there, since the knights had gone to the temple along with Dynarien, and Edouina was off on some errand of her own. Sirikit had no sooner cracked the door than Bryndel shoved past her. She caught the door as it whipped suddenly back in her face.

  "What's the matter with you?" Sirikit demanded. "You almost hit me."

  "Who's in with Talons? Edouina?" Bryndel ignored her question. His face was flushed and his eyes bright with emotion.

  "No one. Talons is sleeping. She's still not feeling well."

  Bryndel spun and lashed out, taking Sirikit by surprise. His fist connected with her chin and she went down, stunned. He grabbed her, threw her out the door, and dropped the bar.

  Two cats hissed at Bryndel from Talons' bed. He seized them by the scruff of the neck and threw them into a closet in the parlor, dropping the little latch to hold it closed. He got scratched for his efforts, but did not notice it.

  "Bryndel?" Talons stirred sleepily.

  He dropped on top of her, pinning her arms with his knees before she could move. He took the vial from his pocket, seized her hair, and twisted her head around. Then he pulled the stopper with his teeth and poured the contents into her mouth. She choked, tried to spit it out. He covered her mouth with his hand and hit her in the face. She swallowed. Bryndel took his hand back.

  "Why?" she asked softly as her body went numb.

  "I'm teaching you who's the master here."

  * * * *

  Sirikit pounded on the door. "Bryndel. Talons. Let me in."

  "Having problems, my dear?" a soft voice purred.

  Sirikit turned. "Bryndel's acting strange. He threw me out and dropped the bar."

  "Maybe he just wanted some privacy. I could use some myself."

  Sirikit saw the fangs and tried to react, but she was not fast enough. Lord Wrathscar crushed her windpipe as he tore her throat out.

  Galee, standing beside him, laughed. She knocked on the door. "Bryndel, bring her out so I can have a taste."

  * * * *

  Edouina found the door standing open. She entered cautiously, drawing her blades. The door to the bedroom stood ajar. She prodded it and stepped through, spinning in case someone lurked behind it. Then she saw Talons. Her discipline held and she checked the room, finding no one hiding there. She went back, closed the outer door, and dropped the bar. The two cats, hearing her, began yowling. She released them and they bounded into the bedroom. She sheathed her blades, returning to kneel beside Talons.

  She brushed bloody strings of dark hair from her lover's bruised face. Judging from the amount of swelling, this had happened an hour or more ago. Talons' robes lay open and her bruised chest moved in shallow breathing. Fresh puncture wounds in her throat and breast showed the vampires had been feeding on her again. Gods, and she was already so terribly weak!

  Her left arm rested near her head at an odd angle, clearly broken just above the elbow. Blood and male juices coated her loins and inner thighs. One single thing struck Edouina, making some jarring connections: they had been careful to strike her where it would not injure the children and the only ones with a vested interest in the children were the Wrathscars. The Wrathscars were leagued with the vampire and they were murdering Talons.

  By the letter of the law, if Talons could name them, then Edouina could kill them both out of hand. "Talons honey. Talons, who did this?"

  Talons opened her eyes, looking at Edouina in a glazed, unfocused manner. "I don't remember. Gods! I hurt ... so bad..." She slipped away again, her eyes closing.

  "Dynarien, get the hell over here."

  "Edouina? What – Hells, no! Talons." Dynarien sat down beside her, took her wrist, and Read her. He summoned his satchel from his home near Imralon and began working on her. "They broke her arm. They beat her." His voice had a strangled catch, as if he struggled to contain his outrage and grief. "They got more of the drug down her. If this keeps up she'll be so weak she'll never survive the–" Dynarien gave Edouina a stricken look and said slowly, his voice going soft and haunted. "The childbirth. She won't survive the childbirth. She has to marry him, because everyone thinks she's pregnant by him, as she was supposed to be if the original plan had been carried out successfully. She dies; Bryndel – or his father – becomes regent for the children, which puts them in control of the throne if Ta
khalme dies.

  "This is a warning. They want us to know they can and will hurt her."

  The ginger cat stood up, her form shimmering. "It was Bryndel. He threw Sirikit out, barred the door. Locked us in the closet. We heard her die, but don't know who did it. He carried Talons out to them. They were a male and a female."

  "And we can't formally accuse Bryndel without compromising the catkin," Edouina said.

  "If I killed them both – Wrathscar and Bryndel – we would still not get the mon behind them, the vampire. And it would probably start a civil war."

  "You know it, honey. Now, why don't you hop out of here and fetch some healers. We can't hide this."

  "I want to simply start killing them. Proof or no proof."

  "Well, you mustn't. Now go."

  * * * *

  Bryndel huddled in his rooms, staring at his hands. He knew what he had done, yet could not understand it – had it been this way with Belyla and Yahni? He remembered how much in love his little sister had been with her Guildsmon, how happy they had seemed. It had been marvelous to see Belyla happy for the first time in her life. Could his sister have loved Yahni as much as he loved Talons and yet, owing to what Galee and his father had done to her, been driven to kill him against her will? They had told him that Belyla murdered Yahni. He refused to believe it.

  When he came fully free of Galee's triggering, he had been appalled at the blood on his hands and clothes: Talons' blood. He threw the clothing in the hearth, burned them. Then he washed himself – despite his efforts, his mind still saw the blood. He felt sickened and filthy.

  Someone knocked on the door and he jumped.

  "Bryndel, I want to talk to you," Edouina said, taking a low, stern tone with him.

  "Go away."

  "No. I'm not going away. I know you did it."

  Bryndel let her in. She turned and dropped the bar. Bryndel backed away from her. "Don't hurt me."

  "Why shouldn't I?" She saw the scratches on his arms, the terror in his eyes, the way he trembled like a leaf in a hard wind. It set off alarms and misgivings. Far more was going on than it had occurred to her walking over, and she determined to find it out.

  Bryndel sank to his knees, weeping. "I didn't want to."

  Edouina squatted, caught his chin, and kissed him. The bi-kyndi slithered through his pleasure centers, giving her a glimpse of his mind and body. Something felt wrong. He had been fine yesterday, but now there was what? A taint? She could force him to tell her, but the process would probably kill him or reduce him to a gibbering idiot for the rest of his life – especially if the vampire had placed either blocks or coercions in his mind.

  "Bryndel, I believe you. Honey," she said more gently. "The vampire was in your mind."

  "You're a mind reader?" Bryndel asked, wincing.

  "No. But, I can move through the pleasure centers in your brain, and I sense when some one else has been there. Tell me who she is?" Edouina tried to sound gentle and encouraging. This was not the Bryndel she had taken to the taverns and entertainments, delighting in things and places new to him, playing at romantic conspiracies like a child running loose and free. She saw now that she had not even begun to reach him.

  "I – can't. I can't! Edouina, please," Bryndel whimpered, retreating from her.

  "Bryndel," she spoke his name softly, trying to be as reassuring as possible. "Bryndel, honey. I need to check for bites. Take your clothes off, sweetheart."

  Bryndel shook so hard he could not manage the buttons. Edouina felt him flinch when she touched him, trying to help him undress. She caught his shirt to keep him from fleeing and stroked his face in feather-soft touches, sending a warm reassurance through him. Bryndel calmed. He undressed himself, turning his face away as she checked him over.

  "Oh, shit," Edouina cursed. There on his inner thigh, pressed along the black thatch, where they would be hard to notice unless one was looking for them, were three old scars and a fresh one. While they were clearly easy to miss, Edouina still felt angry with herself for not noticing them before. All of Bryndel's behavior patterns came together and made sense. The vampire owned him – whether he wanted it or not, whether he realized it or not. His mind was probably a spider's web of coercions. Poor Bryndel. Poor, dangerous, tyrannized Bryndel. Sad little boy. Not even his mind is his own. His heart probably is. He clearly loves Talons. But they're making him the tool of her destruction. They're destroying him along with her and they probably don't care.

  Bryndel bent forward to see what she was looking at. His eyes widened, his face paled, and he went into a thrashing panic, screaming, "Get out of here! Get out of here."

  Edouina retreated into the corridor, striding quickly back to her apartments. She had no idea what to do about Bryndel – he was as much a victim as Talons – but that did not make him any less dangerous for it. At least she knew what she was fighting for control of Bryndel, if not who. For the first time since she had achieved mastery of the bi-kyndi, she wondered if her gifts would prove strong enough.

  * * * *

  The Grand Master shivered in his blankets, covered in cold sweat. The mon had come to him in his dreams again, as she had been doing for months now. He could never remember her face, just her body, the touch of her lips bringing pain and pleasure. But he knew she was beautiful beyond all imagining. The dreams often left physical signs on his body that he hid from view, as she told him to. Takhalme pushed the sleeve of his night-robe up and gazed at the two tiny punctures in the bend of his elbow. She had marked him again as her own. He grew weaker and more ill after each of the visitations, yet he craved them like an addict without his next dose.

  Tonight he had written letters, many letters under her directions while waiting for her kiss. Only after they had been sealed and placed in her pouch did she take him on the floor beneath his desk. Some would go east, far east where a thousand truehearted Guildsmyn would die and her agents replace them at the Grand Master's signed order. But some were for special ears in the palace.

  * * * *

  The Patriarch led the assembled knights and Osterbridge into the innermost reaches of the High Temple, down corridors where only the priests traveled. They entered a chapel in the center, the heart of the temple. He ordered the knights to strip bare to the waist, male and female alike. They knelt, laying their weapons on the ground before them and prayed as he had instructed them. Osterbridge, who had gone through this rite himself at sixteen, withdrew to the side, knelt, and began to pray from his beads. The danger must be terrible indeed if the Patriarch was consecrating students who had not yet finished their studies.

  Eshraf lit incense and candles before beginning to intone at the altar. Golden light filled the chamber. A core of light materialized upon the altar, shimmering and shifting through all the colors of sunrise. A mon formed in the core, stepping down. The Patriarch went to his knees, bowing low before him. Osterbridge pressed his forehead to the floor, continuing to pray.

  The mon turned, touching the Patriarch on his shoulder. "Be at peace, justice will be done." Then he went to Osterbridge and touched his shoulder. "Stand. You will have vengeance for your friends."

  Osterbridge obeyed, rising to his feet with tears running freely down his face.

  The mon moved next to the nearest knight, placing his hand on the young mon's chest over his heart. Jimi heard his name called and looked up. The mon's eyes were the dancing colors of that core of light, without whites, iris, or pupil. Power surged. The place where his hand touched Jimi burned painfully, but Jimi bore it in silence. When the mon removed his hand the pain ended. He moved on, going to Jysy next.

  "Are you certain, Jysy," the mon asked. "Although I affirmed Talons at fourteen, I did not mark her until she was nineteen. You will be the youngest I have ever marked."

  Jysy straightened still more, throwing her shoulders back. She would not be fourteen until mid winter. "Yes. I am ready."

  The mon pressed his hand between her breasts over her heart and she bore it stoically. Wh
en the mon had moved on, Jysy glanced at Jimi before looking down at herself.

  Jimi looked at his chest and saw that the tendriled rune of Hadjys had been burned into his flesh over his heart, and realized that this was not a mon at all, but a manifestation of the god himself. A reverent glow spread through him and a feeling of being uplifted, a strengthening of purpose and commitment to a just cause. His heart sang with exultation.

  Isen came next and Hadjys paused before her. "And so a sinjin has come to me at last. You must reveal yourself to your father eventually, child. Unlock the doors your mother closed so that he knows who he is and what he is."

  "When the time is right, Holy One."

  Then he marked her.

  And so it was for each of the knights.

  When Hadjys finished, he returned to Jimi. "One of your number is not here."

  "Sirikit, lord," Jimi told him.

  "Sirikit is dead. Vengeance is mine and you will claim it for me from those who murdered her."

  "Yes, lord," Jimi said, tears starting in his eyes. The knights had suffered their first loss. Hadjys departed. Their exultation was swept away in sorrow. In silence, their eyes asked each other, "How?"

  Jimi pulled his shirt on and took up his weapons. The others followed his example. Osterbridge came to stand at Jimi's shoulder.

  "Jimi," Alora said. "Sirikit was watching Talons. We should get over there."

  The words struck Jimi like a blow and all he could think was that Sirikit must have fallen in defense of Talons.

  "Listen up!" Jimi pitched his voice to carry and the knights fell silent to listen. "Sirikit was guarding Talons. Osterbridge, Tulik, Alora, Jysy, come with me. The rest of you get some dinner and some sleep. We're going vampire hunting in the Poor Quarter tomorrow."

  "But Sirikit!" One of the youths protested. Some of them clearly looked for vengeance and others for solace.

  "Pay back is tomorrow," Jimi told them. "Get ready for it. Think like Guild."

  As the four knights and the Patriarch left the temple, a messenger accosted them halfway across the quad. "Patriarch, you are called to the heir's rooms. The vampires got her. She is alive, but badly injured. The healer wants you to Read her immediately."