By Blood Hunted
David Houpt
Text, map design, and graphics copyright © 2015 David J. Houpt
Map artwork copyright © 2015 Emily Hershey (aryiea.deviantart.com)
Cover art copyright © 2015 Miranda Seeling
All rights reserved
Dedication
This book could not have existed without the support and love of my wife and best friend, Lorri. As always, all my love.
To my two excellent artists, thank you for doing such wonderful work for me and helping me make Tieran more real.
To my proofreaders, your efforts have made this book a much better work, and I appreciate your help, guidance, and always constructive criticisms.
And finally to my readers, thank you for taking the journey through Lian’s world with me.
Preface
This book is my first sequel (and hopefully, far from my last!), and I found that I was unprepared for the battle required to produce it. Not because I didn’t know what story I wanted to tell (I did), but because of the attention to detail writing the sequel demanded. It was harder than I thought was going to be to avoid the pitfalls any sequel can offer, and I have no doubt that I missed a few!
Any such mistakes are my fault and not those of my friends who agreed to proofread it for me, or of Lorri, my editor-in-chief.
We have come a long way from the shortstory “Zaria,” the origin of Lian’s story, and we have a long way to go before the end of the chronicles. May Rula Golden light thy path and may Sinah’s cool touch bring you peace.
Northern Continent of Shara
Island Kingdoms
Southern Continent of Vella
Tieran and Her Moons
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty One
Chapter Twenty Two
Chapter Twenty Three
Chapter Twenty Four
Chapter Twenty Five
Chapter Twenty Six
Chapter Twenty Seven
Chapter Twenty Eight
Chapter Twenty Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty One
Chapter Thirty Two
Chapter Thirty Three
Chapter Thirty Four
Epilogue
Prologue
See the Watchman fly
Pale ghost across the sky
Through Sineh’s dark embrace
Seems long his endless trace
Though he seems far away
His heart is made of clay
And when his number comes
Even kings can be undone
-- Nursery rhyme describing Sterath, Lord of Fate, origin unknown
His Majesty, King Rishak of Dunshor, gritted his teeth as he descended the long winding stairwell, surrounded by the sounds of near-constant wailing and screaming. Rishak, who some called Usurper—though not in his hearing, nor that of his agents—had proven his bravery in battle many times and against many foes, but the oppressive atmosphere in the stairwell and the horrific echoes from below chilled even his icy blood. Had there been anyone to witness his descent they would have seen the muscles on the ruined side of his face working compulsively as he trod the steep stairs.
Rishak was never without his bodyguards, who consisted of both well-trained men-at-arms and wizards, and he often worried that Jisa, who disdained such guardians, put too much trust in her powers and magical defenses. His ever-present bodyguards, however, remained at the top of this particular winding stairwell. They believed that Rishak and his beautiful queen desired privacy because of some shared dark sexual obsession, one that they dared let no one discover. Speculation about what such an obsession might be in a kingdom once again home to the amoral power of the wizards of the old Theocracy was fierce, but even their darkest fantasies were far off the mark.
The mere fact that the root cause of the screams was sorcery did not faze him. He was more than familiar with the wondrous and terrible things that Witchbreed could invoke with the power of their magic and music. Rishak, at the head of his Red Hounds, had devoted much of his younger life to hunting down and destroying those wizards who had escaped the ruin he and his brother had wreaked upon the mage-ruled Theocracy of Dunshor. In those early days, he’d also used the Hounds to silence mages within his own lands, when one of them dared voice disaffection or dissention against his relatively young rule. It was, in fact, one of those latter wizards who’d forever scarred his face.
His dearly departed brother, the former King Evan, had trusted Rishak to rule the southwestern region of Dunshor in his name, and for many years the Grand Duke was content to do so. The power he wielded as the lord of the largest territory outside of the central kingdom itself had been intoxicating, though, and Rishak began to plot his half-brother’s downfall. Despite the ruthlessness with which he had used the Hounds to eliminate escaped wizards from the old Theocracy, he discovered that the survivors, when given the opportunity, were more than willing to support him, and so he found himself allied with the very men and women he’d once endeavored to destroy. Allies whose magical abilities had given him the power he required to overthrow the reign of his half-brother.
Not all of the wizards in his service, however, came from the days of the Theocracy, and despite his dread of what was happening below, he smiled as he picked one voice out of the confusion of horror. That voice belonged to his wife Jisa. An apprentice—though a very talented one—when they’d first met, she had blossomed over the years of their acquaintance. In addition to her great natural beauty, she was possessed of an exquisite voice and almost incomparable musical talent. Further, his Queen Jisa’s innate magical power was as formidable as that musical talent.
On the world of Tieran, one with mastery of both music and magic was lethal.
Rishak had been surprised at first that Jisa had returned his love, but her ruthless nature and his were of a kind, and over the years of their marriage they had each demonstrated absolute loyalty to the other. He was not a trusting man—for good reason, given the example of his recent overthrow of the former king. For him, the ability to trust Jisa was precious beyond measure. He knew she prized that trust as much as he, and there was no one else in the entire world they did trust, not even their own children.
Necromancy was an old art, and many spells existed to bind the bodies of the dead into service and more besides to bind the spirits of the dead, trapping them in the mortal realm, corporeally or incorporeally, to serve the power of such black magicians. Still other incantations could wrest control of such beings from another caster or reassert control over the will of Undead creatures that had slipped their bonds. Such spells stripped the inherent humanity from their victims and transformed them into monsters, spell-sustained tools possessed of neither remorse nor compunction nor, usually, sanity. The unfortunate beings had little or no recollection of their former lives and behaved as the spells that crea
ted them intended—as ruthless weapons at the disposal of their masters.
Exceptions existed, as was almost always true with magic, and some types of Undead retained knowledge of their past life and at least some of their drive and motivations. Free-willed Undead were rare indeed, but there were examples. Some ancient civilizations of the southern Vella continent had venerated such creatures, choosing from amongst volunteers to create crypt guardians and Undead warriors to act as the loyal deathless legions of the ruling nobility.
All Undead, with the notable exception of vampires, were influenced by the power of the Dark Corruptor, a deity so dreaded that even his least names were never spoken in favor of an oblique moniker like “Unnamed One.” The “children” of the Dark Corruptor were of no consequence to the god of Undeath, for his drive was ever to twist all of existence into infinitely more corrupted and vile forms, and he had no loyalty to any of his subjects; they were merely fodder for even greater corruption.
Wraiths were among the more common incorporeal Undead, created or bound by necromancers in need of speedy messengers and avengers, for they could fly faster than any bird by will alone. Tales of such beings sent after a necromancer’s enemies abounded, and they were among the most feared of the more common types of Undead. The process that created such beings eradicated any semblance of who and what they were in life. It made powerful, merciless, and pitiless servants, but the substance of their souls, for the most part, perished.
And that would make them useless to the king and queen’s objective.
Rishak descended the final steps and entered the well-lit conjuring room to join his wife. As he surveyed the four wretched spirits held within four well-constructed binding circles, he felt regret, and possibly something which might have been remorse, for these four had never done him any harm; in fact, they had been his blood relatives.
For two and a half months now, his queen had labored alone in this dreadful place to first capture the souls of his murdered nephews and nieces and then begin the process of corrupting them into forms that would serve their purpose. Even with her great powers and reserves of energy—not all of it originally hers—Queen Jisa had been forced to work slowly and carefully. This was even truer than one would expect from the effort of such a massive conjuring alone, for it was vital to the stability of their new reign that she be seen and that her powers appear as formidable as possible. Fear of her magic was part of why the mages of the old order held their own rebellious natures in check, and if they realized her powers were at ebb, they might find the courage to strike out at King Rishak and his lithe, auburn-haired sorceress-queen.
Given the need to shepherd her power, Jisa had worked deliberately, embedding pacing into the spell itself to give time for each stage of corruption to establish fully before moving on to the next. She would continue the process for another seven weeks until the Moon of Darkness, Dalshana, was both in its dark phase and in orbit of Tieran, for that confluence would trigger the climax of the ancient spell she’d uncovered and then modified for her own ends—their own ends, Rishak amended in his thoughts. They shared the burden of the horrible wrong they were perpetrating against these four souls, and he knew it absolutely.
He no longer held much hope, after almost three months’ time, that the killers he’d paid to complete the job by the more traditional means of assassination would find their quarry. Something powerful protected his quarry from magical detection, and the prey was too well trained to make himself easy to find and destroy.
Despite his reservations, he’d eventually decided that Jisa’s proposal to use his brother’s children in this way was the only means to bring the threat to his sovereignty to a close, for only one thing would truly consolidate his hold on the throne: the death of the legal heir Prince Lian Evanson
Chapter One
Seir nai’la lothel’n aiailianna’d heith’a.
Sorrow is not by vengeance assuaged.
-- Aesidhe proverb
The man known as Alan by the majority of his comrades-in-arms stood by the portside ballista in the fo’c’sle, watching his commanding officer’s progress along the quay and wondering how the negotiation had gone. Although he knew that Captain Arden didn’t particularly like the contract they were under—or by whom it was ultimately held—it was the sort of work Searcher and her mercenary force were quite capable of performing. The city-states of Pellorn and Varsha had been rivals amongst the Island Kingdoms for centuries, and although open warfare between them was forbidden by the High King’s edict, there were other ways to demonstrate their ire that didn’t quite step over the line of what the High King would tolerate.
The usurpation of the throne of Dunshor by the former Grand Duke Rishak had triggered destabilization in the entire region of eastern Shara, including the Island Kingdoms. This was an inevitable consequence of the coup, as the late King Evan’s carefully woven diplomacy unraveled after he was assassinated by his half-brother.
Alan clenched his teeth tight at the thought, and he forced himself to think of something else. Only four individuals aboard Searcher knew his true identity—Prince Lian, the youngest and last surviving child of Evan Kolvanson, fleeing from the assassins in his uncle's employ—and he had to be vigilant to maintain the persona of Alan of Staikal, a yeoman warrior seeking his fortune abroad. His fair features were hidden under a powerful seeming, an illusion woven with great skill by the sorcerous power of the blade at his side. The man he appeared to be was of darker complexion, with dark brown hair rather than Lian’s own auburn hair, and eyes several shades darker brown. In appearance he was in his mid-twenties, nearly ten years older than the fifteen he’d turned just a month ago.
He’d been with the mercenary ship for almost four months now, and although his sleep was still tormented with nightmares of the frightful events of that terrible evening, he’d begun to breathe a little bit easier about being discovered and brought down by his hunters. He knew that he wasn’t completely free of them even now. He was well aware that the enchantments shielding him from the scrying of Rishak’s seers and soothsayers could fail or, more likely, the apparatus that provided his protection could be lost.
Do you think the Varshans agreed to the settlement? a voice interjected into his thoughts. Although laced with her very real love for Lian, the voice carried an edge that the prince knew was part of her nature.
I doubt it, Gem, “Alan” replied, his own thoughts conveying his affection in return. Even in their telepathic communications they were careful to use his assumed name lest they inadvertently provoke a slip. Had Princess Marshelle wanted to be reasonable in the first place, we wouldn’t have this job at all. King Givern actually wants peace according to Elowyn’s last report on Island Kingdom affairs, but Marshelle isn’t about to forgive Givern’s past transgressions.
Captain Arden’s contract with Princess Marshelle of Pellorn had several clauses, one of which was to deliver her terms to the court of the King of Varsha. Although Givern was a hot-tempered man, he’d never been particularly treacherous, or so Arden had hoped was still true. Over the objections of his senior mercenaries, he’d gone to court accompanied by only three of his company. It was a reasonable objection, in Gem’s opinion. Kings and queens were known, after all, to sometimes kill the messenger.
That certainly seems to be true in Rishak’s case, mused the spirit of the sword named Gem. She, too, was covered by illusion, her true form—a gilded Truesilver blade whose hilt was encrusted with an array of gemstones, the pommel wrapped in blue leather—hidden beneath its own seeming. She was still obviously magical to those who could sense such things, for no illusion could completely hide the powerful enchantments that created and sustained her, and her blade had demonstrated to be quite sharp indeed. But instead of her gleaming silver form, she appeared to be a worn, well-used enchanted blade.
Although the news out of Dunshor was sparse, it was clear that the new King and Queen didn’t tolerate bad news terribly well. The sword-spirit personally attr
ibuted that intolerance to Queen Jisa—how it rankled to even think of her as the Queen!—as she and Alan had seen her temper at work during their escape from the kingdom. True, Rishak had also shown signs of a terrible temper, but he’d seemed more in control of himself than the frighteningly talented sorceress that was his wife and queen.
Anything that destabilized Rishak’s hold on Dunshor was a good thing from the fugitive prince’s point of view, but Gem suspected that the Usurper was far too politically savvy and capable to let that kind of excess go on for too long. Once he’d established that he was the King in fact as well as name, he’d lighten his current stranglehold on his nobles and merchant houses. That his hired killers had missed the mark on Evan and Adrienne’s youngest—a fact that the spirit of the enchanted blade thanked the gods for every night as she watched over her sleeping wielder—was a major thorn in Rishak and Jisa’s sides, and Gem had no hope whatsoever that the assassins had given up.
One can always hope Princess Marshelle’s demands weren’t too unreasonable, Gem responded to her wielder. Although she was confident in Alan’s training and skill, her own abilities had to be carefully concealed lest they betray their identity, and that meant her primary magical ability was useless. She’d been constructed for a number of things, but the greatest of her magical powers was the ability to defend Alan from magical attack in battle. Alan had other protections available to him, some quite powerful indeed, but Gem didn’t trust in those like she did in her own abilities and, especially, in her own motivations.
You knew as well as I did that we’d have to go through with the rest of the contract, he said, his mental tone making his commiseration with her own feelings clear.
“Ho, Captain Arden!” Alan exclaimed as the swarthy mercenary commander approached to within earshot. Arden was from the western kingdoms, as the collection of nations north and west of Dunshor was called, although Alan had never discovered exactly where he called home. His hair was black and his eyes were such a deep brown that made it hard to distinguish his irises from the pupil. “Orders, sir?”
By Blood Hunted: Kingsblood Chronicles Part Two (The Kingsblood Chronicles Book 2) Page 1
